Matthew Turner
Hershey, Pennsylvania, United States

On May 16, 1770, Louis Auguste, the Dauphin of France and the future Louis XVI, married Marie Antoinette, an Austrian archduchess.¹ For the next eight years, the poorly matched couple failed to produce an heir, creating yet another source of political instability in France. It was not until December 19, 1778 that Marie Antoinette gave birth to their first daughter.¹

In the world of the eighteenth century, one of the primary duties of a king was to secure the line of succession as quickly as possible. The young couple’s nearly decade-long failure to produce an heir was a constant source of anxiety and embarrassment for the government, and carried very serious political ramifications,¹ as “all France was impatiently awaiting an heir.”²

In his 1932 biography of Marie Antoinette, Stefan Zweig proposed that Louis XVI may have suffered from phimosis, making intercourse extremely difficult and painful, which may have explained the delay in the birth of his first child.³ This was a common rumor among the court; Zweig based his hypothesis on a 1774 report by a Spanish envoy.³ This was a possibility that Louis’s grandfather, Louis XV, had considered. Soon after his wedding, the young Dauphin had suffered from a cold so severe that his physicians feared it may have been tuberculosis. Louis XV discretely asked his chief physician to determine if his grandson had any “natural defect.” The physician reported no evidence of any defect, phimosis or otherwise.¹ However, as the years passed without an heir, Louis XV grew more impatient. On October 28, 1772, he finally summoned the couple to his chambers and demanded an explanation. Embarrassed, the Dauphin admitted that he “… had attempted to consummate his marriage but feelings of pain always prevented him from doing so, and he was uncertain whether the pain was caused by a physical abnormality or some other factor…”¹ Exasperated, Louis XV personally examined his grandson and reassured him that he found no defects. He also referred the Dauphin to the royal physician, Joseph de Lassone, who performed an examination and concluded that the future Louis XVI had no physical abnormalities.¹

Louis XV died in 1774, making Louis, now the XVI, the monarch of France. Still without an heir, his rumored impotence was becoming something of a joke among the kingdom, greatly damaging his royal prestige.¹ Without an heir, the fragile alliance between France and Austria was in grave danger as well.⁴ For the good of the nation, something had to be done.

A number of historians have proposed that Louis may have finally had corrective surgery for phimosis—available at the time—done in 1777.⁵ However, the evidence for this is scant. Louis was assessed many times by different physicians and was never found to have any evidence of a penile abnormality.¹

Far more likely is that Louis and Marie were simply a poorly matched, naïve couple. Unlike his grandfather, Louis XVI appeared to have a naturally low sex drive and showed little interest in it while growing up. A “taciturn, watchful, and reserved” man who suffered from “chronic indecisiveness,” he was the only king in his dynasty to never have a mistress. This was extremely unusual; having a royal mistress performed a number of functions, including demonstrating the king’s power and sexual potency. Royal mistresses also provided a convenient scapegoat for kings like Louis XV, who were able to blame their failings of state on a “string of unpopular mistresses.”⁴ Marie Antoinette was strong-willed, impulsive, and outgoing, the opposite of her forlorn monarch. They made a poor couple, only having met two days before their wedding day when he was fifteen and she was just fourteen.¹ Although he would eventually grow close to her, Louis also did not trust his new Austrian bride. The two kingdoms had been rivals for centuries. Marie wrote to her mother that Louis’s tutor “…took pleasure in frightening his pupil with all the dark legends invented about the House of Austria.”⁴

By far the greatest single factor was the young couple’s naivety. During the future king’s wedding feast, Louis XV jokingly warned his young grandson not to stuff himself. Confused, Louis XVI replied, “Why not? I always sleep better after a good supper.” The couple slept in the same bed—one of the few times they ever did so—that night, and Louis woke up early to go hunting the next morning. The marriage remained unconsummated until at least March 1771, after Louis finally found himself growing fond of his new wife.¹ However, sex remained a great concern for the anxious Dauphin; at one point he admitted that he had once feared that “he was endangering his health by fulfilling his conjugal duties.”³

By 1777, the situation had become untenable. Joseph II, Louis’s brother-in-law, arrived in France to discuss the concerning lack of an heir. The two men quickly developed a close friendship, and Louis finally discussed the intimate details of his and Marie’s marriage.² Joseph was utterly shocked by the revelation and wrote in a letter: “Imagine! In his marriage bed—this is the secret—he has strong, perfectly satisfactory erections. He introduces the member, stays there for perhaps two minutes without moving, withdraws without ever discharging but still erect, and bids good night. It’s incredible … he’s happy, saying simply that he only does it out of duty and gets no pleasure from it.”²

Once he was over his shock at the bizarre situation, Joseph II had a number of very frank discussions with his brother-in-law. His advice seems to have worked; within two months, Louis XVI confessed to his aunts, “I delight in the pleasure, and I regret that I wasn’t aware of it for so long!”¹ The queen also wrote to her mother, describing her newfound “most fundamental pleasure” in the marriage.¹ Within ten months of Joseph’s visit, the king and queen conceived their first child together.² Ultimately, it appears that Louis XVI did not require surgery—just some frank advice from a close friend.

References

1. Androutsos G. The truth about Louis XVI’s marital difficulties. Could the phimosis of Louis XVI (1754–1793) have been responsible for his sexual difficulties and his delayed fertility. Prog Urol. 2002;12:132-7.
2. Johnson A. Louis XVI and the French revolution. McFarland & Company; London, 2013.
3. Parsons JC. Damned If She Didn’t and Damned When She Did: Bodies, Babies, and Bastards in the Lives of Two Queens of France. In Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady 2003 (pp. 265-299). New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
4. Price M. The Road from Versailles: Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and the Fall of the French Monarchy. New York; Macmillan, 2004.
5. Hardman J. The Life of Louis XVI. New Haven; Yale University Press, 2016.