wealth left by marie antoinette

Bourbons of France the marriage of the Due
d'Angouleme and Madame Roy ale could not take
place without the consent and assistance of the
House of Austria, to whose care the princess's fortune
had been entrusted. It consisted of a sum of five
hundred and forty-nine thousand Viennese florins,
which, in June 1791, at the time of the flight to
Varennes, Marie-Antoinette had contrived to send
to her brother the Emperor, through the intervention
of the Comte de Mercy. In addition to this capital,
which had been converted into Netherlands stock,
there was the interest arising from it, at the rate of
four per cent. On the Emperor alone it depended
whether this interest should be calculated from the
day when the Court of Vienna received the money,
or only from the month of October 1793, the date of
the Queen's death.

On the other hand there was a conviction in the
King's circle that the Austrian Treasury had never
paid Marie- Antoinette's dowry. 1 In that case a sum
of " two hundred thousand golden sun-crowns " 2

1 This question was not settled. Austria refused to pay, on the
grounds that the dowry had already been paid, and supported the
assertion by producing a perfectly correct receipt. The King's party
declared that it was a fictitious receipt, and had only been given to
save the Austrian Court from an awkward position, since at the time
it was too deeply in debt to be able to pay. To this it was objected
that the dowries of princesses were never paid. " In the position to
which Madame Royale is reduced, 1 '' said d'Avaray, "it is ignoble,
and disingenuous, and indeed unjust, to make use of such a plea to
rob her of a patrimony that her unparalleled misfortunes have made a
necessity for her support, and for that of the prince -she is to marry."