Louis XVI of France - Family Life

Family Life

On 16 May 1770, at the age of fifteen, Louis-Auguste married the fourteen-year-old Habsburg Archduchess Maria Antonia (better known by the French form of her name, Marie Antoinette), his second cousin once removed and the youngest daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and his wife, the formidable Empress Maria Theresa.

This marriage was met with some hostility by the French public. France's alliance with Austria had pulled France into the disastrous Seven Years' War, in which France was defeated by the British, both in Europe and in North America. By the time that Louis-Auguste and Marie-Antoinette were married, the people of France generally regarded the Austrian alliance with dislike, and Marie-Antoinette was seen as an unwelcome foreigner. For the young couple, the marriage was initially amiable but distant – Louis-Auguste's shyness meant that he failed to consummate the union, much to his wife's distress, while his fear of being manipulated by her for Imperial purposes caused him to behave coldly towards her in public. Over time, the couple became closer, though while their marriage was reportedly consummated in July 1773, it was not in fact really so until 1777.

Nevertheless, the royal couple failed to produce any children for several years after this, placing a strain upon their marriage, whilst the situation was worsened by the publication of obscene pamphlets (libelles) which mocked the infertility of the pair. One questioned, "Can the King do it? Can't the King do it?"

The reasons behind the couple's initial failure to have children were debated at that time, and they have continued to be so since. One suggestion is that Louis-Auguste suffered from a physiological dysfunction, most often thought to be phimosis, a suggestion first made in late 1772 by the royal doctors. Historians adhering to this view suggest that he was circumcised (a common treatment for phimosis) to relieve the condition seven years after their marriage. Louis's doctors were not in favour of the surgery – the operation was delicate and traumatic, and capable of doing "as much harm as good" to an adult male. The argument for phimosis and a resulting operation is mostly seen to originate from Stefan Zweig.

However, it is agreed amongst most modern historians that Louis had no surgery – for instance, as late as 1777, the Prussian envoy, Baron Goltz, reported that the King of France had definitely declined the operation. The fact was that Louis was frequently declared to be perfectly fit for sexual intercourse, confirmed by Joseph II, and during the time he was purported to have had the operation, he went out hunting almost every day, according to his journal. This would not have been possible if he had undergone a circumcision; at the very least, he would have been unable to go out hunting for a few weeks after. Their consummation problems have now been attributed to other factors, around which controversy and argument still continue today.

In the long run, and in spite of all their earlier difficulty, the Royal couple became the parents of four children:

• Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte (19 December 1778 – 19 October 1851)
• Louis-Joseph-Xavier-François, the Dauphin (22 October 1781 – 4 June 1789)
• Louis-Charles (the future titular King Louis XVII of France) (27 March 1785 – 8 June 1795)
• Sophie-Hélène-Béatrix, who died in infancy (9 July 1786 – 19 June 1787)

Karl Shaw in his book, "Royal Babylon: The Alarming History of European Royalty," wrote that It is said Louis XVI was noteworthy for being the first French monarch to adopt the use of both knife and fork, bathe regularly and brush his teeth. An Italian ambassador to the court of France left his written estimation of the King's habits as a "peculiar interest in hygiene."