Madame Campan always was on the right side of politics... Furthermore, her souvenirs about Marie-Antoinette are highly suspect. For instance, she reports that Antonia was totally undressed while crossing the border. It's not true. Facts have been registered and we can see that Antonia simply changed her dress. Her narrative about the necklace affair must also be read very carefully, as well as her purpoted acts of bravery during the revolution. No doubt, this poor Henriette was nothing more than a chambermaid to the queen, and had no peculiar contatcs with her. She simply tried to emphatize on her closeness to Marie-Antoinette, exagerating her own importance. Let's add that, even while sincere, in many occasions, her memory is failing...
Sic transit gloria mundi...
Unlike the Vicar of Bray, Madame Campan was not always on the right side of politics. For example, she did not go to the revolutionary government and share what she knew about the political machinations of the royal family, even though doing so might well have kept her and her family safe. Campan was very lucky to survive the Terror.
After the Restoration of Louis XVIII, Campan discovered that she was in disgrace with the royal family and their court. Her crime, if one can characterize it as such, was her decision to accept Napoleonic pupils into the school that she opened after the Terror ended. This was not a political act: if she hadn’t accepted the rich Napoleonic pupils, she could not have afforded to keep her school open and she would have starved to death. Another reason that the royal family disliked her was the fact that one of her nieces was married to Marshal Ney, who had promised Louis XVIII to bring Napoleon to Paris in a cage but had switched sides soon afterwards. Ney’s volte-face was hardly Campan’s fault, but Louis XVIII would not or could not appreciate this.
It’s true that Campan made mistakes, almost always about things that she did not witness. She also omitted, or skipped lightly over, some interesting things, such as the true nature of Axel von Fersen’s relationship with Marie Antoinette. She also exaggerated some things, such as her efforts to help the royal family after the revolution began, but precisely how much she exaggerated is questionable. It's certain that the royal family utilized trusted servants as agents and go-betweens during their final weeks at Versailles and while they lived in the Louvre. Unfortunately, the activities of these agents are poorly documented at best, so precisely what Campan did and did not do for the royal family must remain uncertain. Again, it's certain that she didn't sell them out.
Campan’s mistakes, omissions, and exaggerations can in part be explained by the fact that she wrote from memory, not from notes or a diary, and that she relied on gossip and hearsay to explain things that she didn’t witness. They can also be explained if you examine the reasons why she wrote her
Memoirs. One reason was her wish to exonerate herself in the censorious eyes of the royal family by stressing her loyalty and past services. Another reason was the fact that she’d genuinely liked Marie Antoinette and was appalled that so little had been done to rehabilitate her memory. Her goal was to present Marie Antoinette as the antithesis of the monster that propaganda had made her out to be, and she succeeded. On a final note, many distinguished historians consider Campan a credible source if their footnotes and bibliographies are anything to go by.
