Royal marriages had been so constantly regarded as affairs of state, to be
arranged for political reasons, that it had become usual on the Continent
to betroth princes and princesses to each other at a very early age; and
it was therefore not considered as denoting any premature impatience on
the part of either the Empress-queen or the King of France, Louis XV.,
when, at the beginning of 1769, when Marie Antoinette had but just
completed her thirteenth year, the Duc de Choiseul, the French Minister
for Foreign Affairs, who was himself a native of Lorraine, instructed the
Marquis de Durfort, the French embassador at Vienna, to negotiate with the
celebrated Austrian prime minister, the Prince de Kaunitz, for her
marriage to the heir of the French throne, who was not quite fifteen
months older. Louis XV. had had several daughters, but only one son. That
son, born in 1729, had been married at the age of fifteen to a Spanish
infanta, who, within a year of her marriage, died in her confinement, and
whom he replaced in a few months by a daughter of Augustus III., King of
Saxony. His second wife bore him four sons and two daughters. The eldest
son, the Duc de Bourgogne, who was born in 1750, and was generally
regarded as a child of great promise, died in his eleventh year; and when
he himself died in 1765, his second son, previously known as the Duc de
Berri, succeeded him in his title of dauphin. This prince, now the suitor
of the archduchess, had been born on the 23d of August, 1754, and was
therefore not quite fifteen. As yet but little was known of him. Very
little pains had been taken with his education; his governor, the Duc de
la Vauguyon, was a man who had been appointed to that most important post
by the cabals of the infamous mistress and parasites who formed the court
of Louis XV., without one qualification for the discharge of its duties. A
servile, intriguing spirit had alone recommended him to his patrons, while
his frivolous indolence was in harmony with the inclinations of the king
himself, who, worn out with a long course of profligacy, had no longer
sufficient energy even for vice. Under such a governor, the young prince