Marie Antoinette
Chapter Oone
A Small Archduchess
"Her Majesty has been very happily delivered of a small, but completely healthy Archduchess."
Count Khevenhuller, Court Chamberlain, 1755
On 2 November 1755 the Queen-Empress was in labour all day with her fifteenth child. Since the experience of childbirth was no novelty, and since Maria Teresa, Queen of Hungary by inheritance, Empress of the Holy Roman Empire by marriage, hated to waste time, she also laboured in another way at her papers. For the responsibilities of government were not to be lightly cast aside; in her own words: "My subjects are my first children." Finally, at about half past eight in the evening in her apartments at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Maria Teresa gave birth. It was a girl. Or, as the Court Chamberlain, Count Khevenhuller, described the event in his diary: "Her Majesty has been happily delivered of a small, but completely healthy Archduchess." As soon as was practical, Maria Teresa returned to work, signing papers from her bed.
The announcement was made by the Emperor Francis Stephen. He left his wife's bedroom, after the usual Te Deum and B ...
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