Marie Antoinette - The Downfall & Death of a Queen Documentary

The woman known to history as Marie Antoinette was born on November 2, 1755, in the Hofburg Palace in Vienna. Her parents, Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, gave her the name Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna. Her birth was welcomed but not particularly celebrated, as she was the second to last of sixteen children, ten of whom would survive to adulthood. Since each of her sisters, as well as her mother, were also called "Mary", the fifteenth daughter of the Emperor and Empress of Austria was called "Madame Antoine" and sometimes "Antoinette" within the family. Despite her illustrious Habsburg lineage, few, including her own parents, imagined that her life or her experiences would be especially momentous.

Certainly no more so than her own mother, whose strength, intelligence, and skill in statecraft and diplomacy had made her one of the most celebrated

queen

s ever to rule Europe. It is unlikely that anyone could have predicted that Madame Antoine, Austria's youngest archduchess, would ever achieve greater notoriety or, indeed, that she would become one of the most famous (and infamous) women in history. Antoine was born during a period of notable diplomatic and geopolitical tension in Europe. Austria had regained control of most of the territories lost or challenged during the War of the Austrian Succession a decade earlier, except for Silesia, which was still in the hands of Maria Theresa's inveterate enemy, Frederick the Great of Prussia.

When Prussia signed a treaty with England, France's greatest rival in both Europe and the overseas colonial world, Austria immediately turned to France as a potential ally, despite the long history of cautious hostility between the two countries. When Antoine was only six months old, her parents cemented her new alliance with King Louis XV of France by proposing her betrothal to the king's grandson, Louis-Auguste, Duke of Berry, who was only a year older than Antoine. The marriage, which was not officially approved until the two children were twelve and thirteen years old respectively, would figure prominently in a series of crises that would trigger revolution and war, and not only in France, but throughout Europe.

Antoine was born on what is known as All Souls' Day or the Day of the Dead in various Catholic traditions. As it is a day of mourning associated with

death

, the Austrian royal family always celebrated Antoine's birthday the day before, on All Saints' Day. Not only was the day of her birth inauspicious, but on that same day, a massive earthquake caused untold destruction and caused 30,000

death

s in Lisbon, Portugal. The king and

queen

of Portugal, who had been asked to serve as Antoine's godparents, were forced to flee their ruined capital. Naturally, these coincidences were not observed or commented on for years.

The communication barriers of the time meant that weeks passed before news of the disaster reached Vienna, nor were the Portuguese king and queen expected to arrive for Antoine's baptism, as baptisms were invariably performed within the three days after birth, and the parents almost always. she stood in for her royal godparents. But reflecting on the decades and centuries following Marie Antoinette's death, one could be forgiven for commenting on the implicit foreboding surrounding her birth, especially given the ultimately tragic course of her life and the manner of her death. he. From the beginning, bad luck seemed to haunt the little princess.

Despite his dark place in his family, Antoine appears to have had a fairly happy childhood, although his early life is not particularly well documented. Her older brothers were almost two decades older than her, but five of them were old enough to be playmates and classmates. While Antoine loved all of her brothers and sisters, she was especially close to her sister Charlotte, who was three years older than her. She also enjoyed a strong relationship with her older brother Joseph, the future Holy Roman Emperor, despite the large age difference. María Teresa's children seemed to look at her with a mixture of love and fear.

She was committed to her family, she loved her children and took her responsibilities as their mother very seriously, but as Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary and Bohemia in her own right, she also had the administration of an empire. Maria Theresa's father, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, had promulgated a special international treaty in 1713 known as the Pragmatic Sanction, which recognized his eldest daughter as his heir, in the absence of a male child. . He then arranged Maria Theresa's marriage to the former Duke of Lorraine, Francis Stephen. After the death of Charles VI, Maria Theresa acceded to the hereditary government of Austria, Bohemia and Hungary, while ensuring the election of her new husband to the position of Holy Roman Emperor, since the title could not be held. by a woman.

However, it was the Empress herself who exercised royal power and assumed most of her responsibilities. Maria Theresa's devotion to her duty was such that she reportedly continued reading and signing important state documents while she was in her delivery bed, for which she hated wasting time. Historians have observed that the empress's vast responsibilities gave her a brusque and harsh nature, even with those closest to her, even though she encouraged a close family life. She also constantly criticized her children and especially insisted on arranging her marriages with the greatest possible benefit for the Austrian empire in mind. The Latin motto of the Austrian Habsburgs, Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria cloud, translates as "Let others make war, you, happy Austria, marry!" Virtually none of Maria Theresa's children were allowed to choose her own spouses, and all were expected to do her duty and marry to strengthen the dynasty.

Maria Amalia and Maria Carolina, known within the family as “Charlotte,” had been required to marry royal suitors of dubious character or ability for the benefit of Austria. On the eve of Charlotte's wedding to the mentally unstable King of Naples, Empress Maria Theresa wrote: “As long as she fulfills her duty to God and her husband and earns salvation, even if she is unhappy, I will be satisfied.” Even María Cristina, her mother's favorite, had to admit María Teresa's harsher qualities. “You know how I loved her children,” she wrote a few years after her mother's death. "Mixed with her love was always a dose of distrust and a palpable coldness." As for young Antoine, like most of his siblings, his own love for his mother was always complicated by the Empress' criticism and her generally low opinion of his mother's attitude, intelligence, and abilities.

Antoine's capabilities. The little archduchess had a much closer and warmer relationship with her father. Francis I did not have much in common with his wife. His notorious pleasure-seeking contrasted sharply with his firm work ethic, and he seemed more interested in amusements such as hunting, gambling, and mistresses than in ruling. However, Francis seemed content to maintain his largely ceremonial position, and while Maria Theresa held state power, she was largely dependent on Francis to manage Austria's financial affairs. Considering the financial precariousness of many of Europe's royal treasuries during the mid-to-late 18th century, Francis performed quite well in these duties.

The most unfortunate aspect of Francis and Maria Theresa's marriage was that she almost certainly loved him more than he loved her. Francis, the young Duke of Lorraine, had been “adopted” at the Austrian court at the age of fourteen, as Emperor Charles VI intended for him to marry his eldest daughter and heir. Maria Theresa was said to have loved Francis from the beginning, feelings which he did not reciprocate, although he seemed to have genuine affection, respect and sympathy for her. Unfortunately, he proved compulsively unfaithful during his marriage, and his incurable and often indiscreet womanizing saddened his wife.

However, as a group, his family seemed to adore him. He was described as cheerful, lively, joking and playful when he relaxed in the company of his children, and showed them all, including his youngest daughter, Antoine, the kind of affection and warmth that his mother's own he often didn't show. The Austrian royal family had several residences and pleasure palaces, but lived primarily at Hofburg Palace during the colder months and at Schönbrunn Palace during the warmer months. Both palaces were formal royal residences where politics and diplomacy were regularly formulated and power was properly exercised. Courtiers, ambassadors, bureaucrats and other dignitaries visited these palaces daily and interacted formally with the royal family.

However, both palaces were built and improved over time with a view to preserving a sphere of privacy for the family. Unlike other European royalty of the mid-18th century, the Austrian Habsburgs maintained a sharp distinction between the public and the private. By contrast, the French royal family was exposed at all hours of the day. Even their bathing and dressing routines could be attended by government ministers and the most important nobles of France, each of whom was fully convinced of their right to have such access to the royal family. In contrast, Austrian royal palaces were built with much sharper distinctions between public chambers for official receptions and audiences, and private chambers that could only be accessed by express invitation of the royal family.

As a result, Antoine and his siblings grew up enjoying a relaxed and informal family life that was quite different from that of their royal European contemporaries. Naturally, the children of Maria Theresa and Francis I were expected to be present and play their royal roles at public functions, but they also regularly had opportunities for family recreation outside the public eye. The Austrian Habsburgs enjoyed outdoor activities together, such as sledding in the winter months and horseback riding and hunting in the warmer months. Vienna was one of the richest cultural centers in Europe and, naturally, the entire family were lovers and patrons of the arts.

Whether in public to entertain the court or in private for their own amusement, the royal family especially enjoyed music, dancing, and staging amateur plays. From an early age, Antoine was exposed to performing and mentoring some of Europe's greatest musicians, composers and dancers. She had the privilege of meeting the six-year-old child prodigy, Wolfgang Mozart, who was only two months younger than her, when he visited Schönbrunn Palace to play for the royal family in October 1762. Her dance instructor was one of the most great ballet masters. masters of the time, Jean-Georges Noverre, and his music teacher was the famous composer Christophe Willibald Gluck, who gained Maria Theresa's official patronage the same year Antoine was born.

Naturally, the arts formed an important part of Antoine's upbringing and he proved to be quite talented in multiple artistic pursuits. She was a particularly excellent dancer and was described by contemporary observers as exceptionally graceful and poised, even when she was a small child. Antoine also proved to be a good musician. She was skilled on the harp and harpsichord, she could sight-read music at a professional level by the time she reached her teens and it was said that she had a beautiful singing voice. But beyond her outstanding artistic achievements, she was not a particularly good student. She eventually came to enjoy his history lessons, but she did not remain interested in any other academic subjects.

When her new tutor, Mathieu-Jacques, Abbe de Vermond, arrived from France in 1768 to assess her previous education and begin preparing her for her role as the Dauphin's wife, he was shocked and horrified to discover that the twelve-year-old student -The Old Woman princess barely knew how to write in her own mother tongue. This is quite surprising considering that the Austrian Habsburgs had access to the best educational resources available in Europe, and several members of Antoine's immediate family were quite cultured and erudite. Furthermore, Vienna was one of the most notable cities in Europe for its intellectualism, sophistication, and cosmopolitan approach to learning.

A considerable proportion of the Viennese, and several of the Habsburgs themselves, were trilingual, regularly speaking German, which their local subjects spoke, Italian, because they also governed several regions of Italy, and French, because it was the lingua franca of the century. XVIII. Europe of the 19th century. At barely thirteen years of age, Antoine only spoke her first language, French, somewhat fluently, although her speech was overlaid by many German linguistic elements and she spoke with a strong German accent. Several potential factors may have contributed to her generally mediocre academic performance. Antoine's father, the emperor, was the former Duke ofLorraine, whose first language was also French.

Although he became Emperor of Austria (albeit in a largely ceremonial position), he flatly refused to speak or even learn German, behavior that may well have influenced his daughter. Additionally, some sources described Antoine's head governess as having been quite negligent towards her young pupil. Antoine always disliked reading and may have been allowed to neglect those lessons he did not enjoy. Furthermore, Antoine's parents may not have considered his rudeness important enough to rectify it. Until it became virtually certain that she would marry the Dauphin of France, no one at the Austrian court seemed to care much about Antoine's education or training, perhaps because until her marriage to the future king of France was assured, no one thought that she was particularly worth it. teach for any purpose other than being a pretty ornament to a royal court.

Her tutor, the Abbe of Vermond, wrote that her student had a tendency toward laziness and frivolity, which is not surprising in a girl with so little structure or coherence in her early education. However, she expressed confidence in what was perceived as her natural intelligence. Despite the gaps in her education, Antoine proved to be a quick learner. Vermond noted that when she was motivated enough to learn, she grasped new lessons quickly and used reason admirably to suggest solutions to problems. Under her tutelage, Antoine's literacy and learning ability improved quickly and dramatically. Although the Austrian Habsburgs seemed to lead the most charming life, even for a royal family, they would have their share of tragedy.

It is quite remarkable for 18th century Europe that in a family of sixteen children only three did not survive childhood. Another scourge that repeatedly struck the Austrian royal family: smallpox. Six members of Antoine's immediate family contracted the disease at one time or another in the late 1750s and 1760s, including the empress herself. This prompted Maria Theresa to mount a vaccination campaign in Vienna, and both Antoine and her younger brother Maximilian received the new procedure that involved the introduction of biological material from people infected with the virus. This early vaccination method was exponentially more dangerous than modern methods, but fortunately both children survived and without scarring.

Three of Antoine's older siblings, Charles, Maria Johanna and Maria Josepha, died from the smallpox virus during the 1760s. The family suffered another cruel blow with the sudden death of Emperor Francis I in August 1765, already be it from a stroke or heart attack. Empress Maria Theresa was devastated and immediately fell into deeper mourning. She wore only widow's black for the rest of her life. Nine-year-old Antoine was as devastated as the rest of the family. Legend has it that, before his final departure for Innsbruck, he said goodbye to his family, but returned impulsively to hug her youngest daughter again.

Francis I died a few days later in his carriage when he returned from the Opera. In a memorandum of his will, he admonished his children to be careful to whom they befriended him and not to be too quick to place their trust in others. Furthermore, he ordered them to avoid gambling and other dissolute behavior. Those with the benefit of hindsight might claim that all of this was good advice to the young Antoine, and many historical commentators have condemned her for appearing to ignore it in the years that followed. In April 1770, fourteen-year-old Antoine anxiously said goodbye to his family, his friends, and his country.

Her mother urged her to conform to her new husband and her family, and to use all her charm and kindness to win the favor of the French court. “Do so much good to the French people,” she wrote, “that they may say that I have sent you an angel.” King Louis XV and his fiancée, the dauphin Louis, met Antoine's carriage at Compiègne, near Austria's border with France. Before being introduced to her new family, Ella Antoine underwent a ritual, entirely symbolic change of clothing. On an island in the Rhine River, the traditional border between Austria and France, Antoine's assistants helped her remove all the clothing and jewelry brought from Austria and dressed her in French clothing and jewelry, despite the fact that the highly tailored suit she was wearing The one she had worn previously was also designed in the French style, the most popular fashion in Europe.

Maria Antonia, Madame Antoine, the Habsburg princess of Austria, was no more. She would now be known as Marie Antoinette, Madame le Dauphine, a French princess. Apprehensive and immediately homesick, she cried as her Austrian attendants said goodbye to her, but she tried to pull herself together long enough to be introduced to King Louis and her fiancée, the Dauphin. Maria Theresa and Joseph, the elder brother of Antony, the new Holy Roman Emperor, had impressed upon him the great importance of Austria's alliance with France. The knowledge that the responsibility of nurturing the fragile new alliance fell on her must have been truly disheartening.

On May 18, 1770, Marie Antoinette and Louis Augustus of Bourbon were married in the royal chapel of Versailles. If his girlfriend was nervous, Louis, who was just a year older at fifteen, was equally nervous. Observers noted that his posture remained rigid throughout the service and that his hands trembled when he placed the ring on her girlfriend's finger. Unfortunately, his arrest was justified. Their early years of marriage would be tense and difficult and would have a lasting impact on her public reputation. At first, Marie Antoinette was dazzled by the grandeur and magnificence of the French court. Versailles had become the gold standard for palaces in Europe and was endlessly copied by other European royals.

In fact, Schönbrunn Palace in Antoine's native Vienna was built much like a miniature Versailles, but the princess was impressed by the scale and exquisite detail of the original. She quickly learned that fashion, aesthetic appeal, refinement, wit and charm were key to earning the admiration of the French aristocracy and royal court and consequently she set out to please, determined to be the most elegant, charming woman. and wanted from France. . Marie Antoinette initially had great success at Versailles. King Louis XV instantly liked her for her warmth, vivacity and impressive musicianship. Because the king liked her, the Dauphin's early experiences at the French court were promising, and it may have been King Louis's favor that kept some criticism of the young princess at bay for a time.

Despite the admiration for her beauty and youthful energy, she was still a young teenager and ill-prepared for the role in which she was immediately expected to excel. As many fourteen-year-olds would have done, she mismanaged relationships with several important political figures at court, including "Les Tantes," the king's older sisters who were considered arbiters of conduct at the French court. Marie Antoinette was taken aback by the complete lack of privacy that comes with being a member of the French royal family. Having grown up accustomed to a clear distinction between public and political spaces and private spaces enjoyed only by family members, she was horrified to discover that she was virtually never allowed to be alone or perform the slightest personal tasks herself.

Her resistance to her royal protocol and her sometimes open mockery of it caused her husband's elderly great-aunts to dislike her. Furthermore, she managed to alienate the courtiers of powerful aristocratic families when she removed them from their domestic service in favor of younger, livelier ones she liked more. Marie Antoinette also made enemies of Madame du Barry, the king's official mistress, whom she refused to even politely acknowledge during her first months at Versailles. Furthermore, most of King Louis's advisors had opposed an Austrian union for the Dauphin and distrusted the princess on general principle. Those at Versailles who feared the possible influence she could exert over the Dauphin on behalf of Austria scathingly nicknamed her: "the Austrian." Unfortunately, Marie Antoinette's new husband had been firmly indoctrinated by his guardians with the same suspicious distrust of both the Austrian alliance and his new bride, further complicating an already difficult marriage between two young, inexperienced teenagers.

Louis Augustus of Bourbon and Marie Antoinette were as different from each other as two people could be. They both had blue eyes and their ash blonde hair was only a few shades darker than his, but that was where their similarities ended. While she was lively and outgoing, he was shy and awkward. He struggled with indecision while she was resolute and quick to act. He loved to read, a hobby she had never enjoyed. Even his great height contrasted sharply with his small stature, as Louis stood six feet four inches, which was quite impressive for 18th century France.

Although he privately admitted that he eventually came to love her wife, in some ways, and did find her beautiful, he continually refused to consummate the marriage, a situation that remained unchanged for the first seven years of their union. . The initial lack of consummation is not surprising considering the extreme youth of the bride and groom, who were only fourteen and fifteen years old respectively. Since sexual topics were rarely discussed, even among family members, when the young couple was left alone on their wedding night, they probably didn't know what to do. They were almost certainly terribly nervous and had only met a few days before.

Louis wrote in his diary that he simply went to sleep on their wedding night, as well as the two following nights. Since Versailles was the least private place in all of France, especially for the royal family, the lack of consummation between the dauphin and the dauphin was immediately made public. An unconsummated marriage meant that there was still no chance for royal children and heirs to safeguard the French throne. As this was an important matter of state, the courtiers hurried to communicate the news to King Louis XV. The old king loved both his grandson and his granddaughter-in-law and seemed to show some understanding.

He insisted that no one should try to press the Dauphin on the issue and expressed confidence that the young couple would adjust to their marriage in time. Empress Maria Theresa was not as patient with what she considered her daughter's mistakes and deficiencies. The correspondence between Maria Theresa and Marie Antoinette during their early years at Versailles strongly highlights the difficult relationship between mother and daughter. Kept well informed by her spies at Versailles, the empress constantly criticized Antony for alienating members of the French court, for his excessively luxurious and extravagant lifestyle, and, above all, for failing to cajole or seduce her husband into finally consummated the marriage.

Maria Theresa scolded her daughter for allowing herself to become the center of French tabloid gossip because of her frivolity and frivolity. She criticized Antoine for not trying to better herself, encouraged her to read more, and warned him that she did not have the intelligence, talent, culture, or character to withstand the much worse criticism that the Empress believed would surely follow. Marie Antoinette often responded defensively to these letters, expressing sadness and pain that her mother believed the worst about her and assuring Maria Theresa that she did indeed have the best interests of France and the Austrian alliance at heart.

As her mother predicted, it didn't take long for Marie Antoinette to develop a reputation for frivolous extravagance. Historians and biographers have speculated that the ostentatious and decadent tastes she had developed in the early years of her marriage, especially after becoming queen, were in part an attempt to compensate for her unhappiness. She not only remained physically dissatisfied but also emotionally distanced from her husband, who persisted for several years in distrusting his wife and suspecting her Austrian loyalties. On May 10, 1774, King Louis XV succumbed to smallpox and died in his bed at Versailles at the age of sixty-four. He was very unpopular towards the end of his reign and few of him, apart from his grandson, seemed to genuinely mourn him.

The French people now looked at Louis XVI with hope and optimism. The new king was young, only nineteen years old, and although he did not have the grace or imposing presence of his grandfather, Louis XV, or his third great-grandfather, Louis XIV, he was perceived as a kind, genuine, brilliant and and a conscientious young man, all promising qualities for a potentially great and just ruler. Queen Marie Antoinette was also initially very popular among the French people, known for her beauty, style and charm. But four more years passed without the royal marriage being consummated. And the longer the situation remained unchanged, the more the public image of the King and Queen began to suffer.

Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette became even more estranged as husband and wife after ascending the French throne.Luis got up early, took care of the day's affairs, and went to bed early. Antoine, on the other hand, loved to stay up late and rarely got up before ten or eleven in the morning. He enjoyed reading, horseback riding and hunting and he tended to be shy and soft-spoken in company. He loved the joy and distraction of evenings in Paris, attending the theater, the opera or the masked balls. He spent lavishly on fabulous clothing and jewelry, wearing wigs up to three feet high, often dressed in towering net poufs and plumes of feathers.

He loved gambling and often lost exorbitant sums at the gambling tables in Paris. This behavior earned him the uncomplimentary nickname “Madame Déficit” among the French public, who were increasingly convinced that his spending contributed greatly to France's economic problems. If Marie Antoinette was compensating for her loneliness and dissatisfaction in her marriage, then perhaps Louis was doing the same. After becoming king, Louis gifted his wife the property known as Le Petit Trianon on the grounds of Versailles, which once belonged to Louis XV's official mistress, Madame de Pompadour. Knowing that Marie Antoinette found the complete lack of privacy at Versailles boring and confining, Louis gave her the property as her private retreat.

He could only receive those whom he wished to invite and could renovate and improve the house and grounds as he pleased. The king also regularly settled all of his wife's considerable debts quietly and without censure. A sense of guilt may have played a role in Louis's remarkable indulgence of his queen's every whim. In the summer of 1777, Antoine's older brother, the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, quietly and unofficially visited France on behalf of his mother to check on the health of the Franco-Austrian alliance and, in particular, the troubled marriage. of his sister. He and Louis apparently got along well, so much so that Louis confided in Joseph about his sexual problems.

Historians have long assumed that Louis XVI might have had some type of physical condition that made sexual activity unpleasant or painful, such as phimosis. The theory that the king underwent circumcision to address such a condition has been mostly rejected by more recent historians. Rather, they point to letters that Joseph II wrote to his mother and brother Leopold, which indicate that Louis's sexual impediments were psychological and probably arose from shame at his lack of knowledge and experience, and from an intense anxiety or fear of sex. itself. It didn't help the situation that her husband's reluctance in the marital bed made Antoine frustrated, resentful, and much less willing to attempt any supportive persuasion.

After all, Joseph's visit and the interventions between the king and queen of France bore fruit, so to speak. A few weeks after her departure for Vienna, Marie Antoinette happily informed her mother in a letter that, after seven years, her marriage had been “finally and perfectly consummated.” “I don't think I'm pregnant yet,” she wrote, “but at least I have hope that I will be very soon.” The Queen was right. The following year, on December 19, 1778, Marie Antoinette gave birth to her first child, a girl she named Maria Theresa Carlota, after her mother and her favorite sister. The birth of a son and the progress they had made in their marriage helped the King and Queen build a closer, more trusting relationship.

And although her first child was not a boy, the royal family enjoyed a surge in popularity for a time. The birth of a daughter meant that there could soon be a Dauphin for France as well. A hundred years or more earlier, these developments might have been enough to improve political stability and reduce criticism of the monarchy, but France, in the mid- to late 18th century, was undergoing dramatic social, political, and ideological changes, teetering on the cusp. . of a new world whose values ​​were totally incompatible with the traditional images and prerogatives of royalty. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette had grown up in the rarefied atmosphere of European royalty.

None of them knew anything about how the people of their countries lived and they remained almost completely isolated from the deep cracks that were forming in the foundations of French society. But the strictly hierarchical and deeply unequal French social system was subject to intense economic pressure during the mid- to late-18th century, largely thanks to the costs of war. France's conflicts with its European neighbors over the previous decades and Louis XVI's generous support of the American Revolution aimed at weakening Britain had brought the French treasury to the very brink of financial ruin. At the same time, the French people periodically suffered waves of hunger due to multiple consecutive crop failures.

High food prices and persistently high taxes led to alarming episodes of civil unrest as angry and desperate people struggled simply to house themselves and feed their families. In addition to these serious structural problems, the ideas of the Enlightenment had begun to deeply permeate French society, converting some aristocrats, many members of the bourgeoisie, and the working class alike into republican sympathizers. Inspired by the American Revolution and by increasingly valued notions of governmental responsibility, the abolition of noble privileges, and the intrinsic rights of each person, the ideas of philosophers and revolutionaries threatened the power and legitimacy of the French monarchy in the moment of his greatest weakness.

Marie Antoinette gave birth to three more children during the 1780s, a Dauphin of France in December 1781, baptized Louis Joseph Xavier Francois, and two more children, Louis Charles in March 1785 and Marie Sophie Hélène Béatrix in July 1786. Despite the appearance of greater stability and domesticity within the royal family, the public reputation of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette continued to decline. The years during which their marriage had not been consummated had taken their toll on the public perception of both the King and Queen. Louis was perceived as weak, ineffective, and his sexual defects were equated with an inability to rule competently.

The Queen was seen as domineering, greedy and exploiting the weakness of her husband. In the defamatory libelles or scandalous pamphlets circulating throughout France, Louis XVI was sometimes depicted as a castrated pig, smiling foolishly and lazily. Marie Antoinette was often lampooned in the tabloids for her lavish extravagance and her suspected political domination of her husband in the name of Austria. But more than this, the public attacks launched against the Queen in libels tended to be sexual in nature, and became increasingly darker, more obscene and more threatening as France approached the revolutionary milestone of 1789. Over the years When his marriage remained unconsummated, rumors began to circulate that he must have enjoyed many, even countless, lovers.

This is highly unlikely, but some historians now believe that there is sufficient evidence to confirm that Marie Antoinette had at least one intimate love affair during her marriage to the Swedish count Axel von Fersen. The Count was handsome, dashing, an adventurer who, upon his return from fighting the British in the American Revolution, devoted himself to Marie Antoinette and remained her closest advisor and friend. Fersen was a frequent guest at Le Petit Trianon during the 1780s, and the Queen gave him her bedroom directly above hers. It is perhaps worth noting that her husband, Louis XVI, is believed to have never spent a night at Le Petit Trianon, although he occasionally spent the day there with his family, at the invitation of his wife.

Historians have traditionally reserved judgment on the nature of the relationship between Count Fersen and Marie Antoinette due to the fact that most of their correspondence was lost, intentionally destroyed, or heavily redacted later. However, in 2016, historians working in French and Swedish archives claimed to have found and eventually deciphered several letters verifying that Fersen and the Queen were intimately involved and deeply in love for many years. Because of the public stain on her moral virtue, becoming a mother did nothing to repair the Queen's reputation. Her detractors were quick to suggest that none of her children, not even the Dauphin, were fathered by the king.

Although Le Petit Trianon was intended to be a court-free refuge for Marie Antoinette, she probably did not realize that her activities there contributed greatly to undermining her reputation. Queens of France traditionally did not enjoy privacy, the pursuit of which only gave the public reason to believe that the queen might have something to hide. Sexual immorality was the most imagined vice. However, the way the Queen renovated the property was also controversial. She spent extravagantly to create a rustic retreat on the estate, and even hired a farming family to tend the livestock and produce food. Meanwhile, she, her friends, and her children, dressed in simple white muslin, lounged at picnics and performed together in amateur plays, in which they played peasant roles such as milkmaids and shepherdesses.

The idea of ​​the Queen spending enormous amounts of money pretending to be a peasant while the real people at the bottom of France's social ladder were starving seemed an example of callous ignorance and disregard for everything except royal whims and consequences. Marie Antoinette probably never thought about how others viewed her actions until it was too late. Following the birth of her children, Marie Antoinette began to withdraw from the social turmoil that had characterized her early years as Dauphin and Queen of France, but that did little to repair her extremely negative public image. She began to take a more active interest and role in politics and Louis seemed increasingly open to her advice, particularly around bureaucratic and military appointments.

However, her tendency to intercede for Austria did nothing to endear her to those at court who had always distrusted the Austrian alliance. Furthermore, she was seen much less frequently in the Parisian ballrooms or at the gaming tables, and she had begun to show much more restraint in her fashion choices and a more economical approach in demands on her treasury. But many of these efforts were too little, too late. The period between 1787 and 1789 was characterized by a confluence of economic and public relations disasters that brought the French monarchy, Europe's oldest, to the very brink of collapse. 1787 was a difficult year for Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI.

Madame Sophie, her little daughter, succumbed to tuberculosis when she was only eleven months old. A few months later, Parisian jewelers Boehmer and Bassenge approached the Queen, still mourning her daughter, and offered her the opportunity to purchase a fabulous diamond necklace, originally made for Louis XV's mistress, Madame du Barry. It featured a staggering six hundred and forty-seven diamonds of incredible clarity and cut and would be worth approximately seven million euros, or eight million US dollars today. The Queen admired the necklace but quickly refused to buy it. When a group of thieves hatched a conspiracy to steal the necklace, they tricked an aristocratic and gullible cardinal into believing that Marie Antoinette wanted him to quietly buy the necklace for her and that she would reimburse him for the money later.

Desperate to gain the Queen's favor, the Cardinal eagerly consented. When he overcame the money, the king and queen were outraged. Two of the thieves had fled with the necklace, which, of course, they never gave to Marie Antoinette, and Louis XVI ordered the arrest of the cardinal as an accomplice. Given that the cardinal came from one of the most powerful noble families in France, it is not surprising that the Parliament of judges, who were also overwhelmingly aristocratic, declared him innocent of all charges. Marie Antoinette was devastated. The proclamation of the Cardinal's innocence implied that the theft must have been the Queen's fault for coveting the necklace, and in fact, the Collier de la Reine Affair, or the Queen's Necklace Affair, as the debacle became known, He did more than anything else. anything else to destroy her reputation.

During the period between 1787 and 1789, Louis XVI's physical and mental health began to deteriorate. He coped with the stress by drinking heavily and overeating. He fell more and more frequently into attacks of crippling depression. Out of necessity, Marie Antoinette became more directly involved in French politics and wielded more power than she ever had before. With her husband on the verge of a nervous breakdown, she began attending meetings of the King's council, where Louis' top ministers struggled to address the economic crisis that threatened to bankrupt France. Unfortunately, she was not prepared to take on that role and she knew little aboutpolitics or economics.

Still, her actions demonstrate a determination to keep her family and the French monarchy together. Having had role models like her mother, Marie Antoinette perhaps couldn't help but believe that it was her duty to rise to the occasion. She was instrumental in the appointment and dismissal of several finance ministers, each of whom, for various reasons, was unable to find a way out of the debt crisis, which was slowly crushing the country. Efforts were made to enlist the help of French nobles, but not many of them were willing to give up their trade monopolies or tax exemptions to help rescue the economy.

Finally, in desperation, the king called a meeting of the States General, the closest thing to a parliament or national legislature that France had ever had. Louis's summons to the States General was unprecedented. The representatives of the three “estates” of French society: the clergy, the nobility, and the common people, had not met since 1614. Since the participants pursued such different objectives during the proceedings of the States General, nothing was achieved. The Third Estate, representing the overwhelming majority of the French people, advocated the creation of a constitutional French republic, while neither Louis XVI nor Marie Antoinette could ever imagine sharing power with elected politicians.

The conservative nobility defended their traditional privileges, while many others demanded solutions to France's bread crisis, which was starving the urban and rural poor alike. The talks went nowhere. One month after the opening of the States General, on June 4, 1789, the seven-year-old Dauphin died of tuberculosis. As all of France was preoccupied with the upcoming meeting of the States General, there was little public discussion or recognition of the royal family's loss. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were devastated. “My poor boy is dead,” the Queen wrote a few days later, “and the nation hardly seemed to notice.” On June 20, while the king and queen were still mourning their son, representatives of the Third Estate arrived at Versailles to find the door to their meeting room closed.

Believing that the king had ordered a lockout, they moved to a nearby tennis court, where they collectively declared themselves the National Assembly of France and promised not to dissolve until they had formulated a constitution. The newly formed National Assembly immediately began proposing, debating and instituting reforms. Alarmed by the way these events were continuing without the sanction of the monarchy, Marie Antoinette convinced the king to bring a contingent of Swiss troops to Paris. This caused riots in the city as the fearful population wondered if their own government would launch an attack against them and the changes taking place in the National Assembly.

On July 14, anger boiled over and led to the storming of the ancient fortress known as the Bastille, the release of its prisoners, the assault on its armory, and the murder of the prison director. Paris had erupted into chaos and violence. At two in the morning, the king was suddenly awakened in Versailles and informed that the Bastille had been taken. “Is it a riot?” asked the King. “No, sir,” was the response. "It's a revolution." After the fall of the Bastille, royal authority quickly crumbled. A “great fear” arose among aristocrats across the country that new popular uprisings were imminent, and many began to quietly leave France.

Most of the extended royal family and many high-ranking courtiers left Versailles in the following days. Marie Antoinette was also firmly in favor of flight, but when Louis XVI firmly stated that she would not consider leaving, she decided resolutely to remain by her husband and her children. Events began to move more quickly in the following months. The National Assembly worked tirelessly to enact its new constitution and reforms, but the far more urgent food crisis was causing unrest across France. On October 5, rumors circulated in Paris about a grand banquet being held at Versailles for high-ranking members of the king's Swiss guard.

Anger erupted among women in the city's street markets: why should there be feasting and plenty in Versailles while bread remained unaffordable for most Parisians and their own children were starving? Armed with knives, pitchforks, axes, clubs, whatever they could get their hands on, several hundred women marched toward Versailles to demand bread. They were joined by many other men and women later that day, and in their numbers they overwhelmed the palace guards. A mob rampaged through Versailles directly toward Marie Antoinette's bedroom and killed two of her guards. She heard them coming and escaped through a secret door seconds before they burst in and fled to her husband's bedroom.

Howling with rage upon discovering she was gone, the mob destroyed the Queen's bed. The Marquis de Lafayette arrived just in time at the head of the National Guard to restore order at Versailles. That night, Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and their two children left the palace for the last time, never to return. They were escorted by the mob and members of the National Guard to the Tuileries Palace in central Paris, where they could be more closely guarded and monitored. The enormous pressure the royal family was now under had opposite effects on Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Louis sank deeper into his depression and indecision, while his wife felt more motivated to act than ever before.

The next two years saw an extraordinary process of learning and maturation for the Queen, who discovered that it was now up to her to keep the monarchy together, if possible. Since the death of her son a few months earlier, she seemed to have grown up overnight. And in the following months she would play the dangerous game of double agent. On the one hand, she worked closely with members of the National Assembly and, later, the Legislative and Constituent Assemblies of France to influence policy. It was largely thanks to Marie Antoinette's intervention that Louis XVI retained his power to declare war and veto legislation.

Despite his perception of France's new powerful politicians as a “pack of madmen,” he attempted to work with republicans such as the Comte de Mirabeau, the mayor of Paris, Jean Sylvain Bailly, and the Marquis de Lafayette, whom he despised as much as he did. he. he hated her. But at the same time that she collaborated with the leaders of the Revolution, earning their respect for her determination, bravery, intelligence and dignity, she also stayed up late into the night, secretly writing coded letters to royalist allies. throughout Europe, in particular to his family in Austria. She covertly kept these contacts informed about developments in France.

It is now unclear exactly what her final intentions were, but she seemed determined to keep open channels of possible escape and also, perhaps, the possibility of one day recovering France from the revolutionaries. It is possible that Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI could have risen to the challenge of a constitutional monarchy. But they could do little about the deep divisions that were forming among the revolutionary leaders and among the people of France in general. No longer content with a constitutional monarchy and the end of noble and clerical privileges, many were now in favor of dispensing with both the monarchy and the Church altogether.

After the death of Mirabeau, her greatest ally among the revolutionary leaders, Marie Antoinette began to more seriously consider escaping France. The Revolution became more radicalized every day. The Queen managed to convince her husband to flee before her freedom of movement was further restricted and escape became impossible. Late on the night of June 14, 1791, the royal family quietly slipped into a carriage in front of the Tuileries Palace. Less than an hour later, they had escaped Paris and were heading to the Austrian border with Count Axel Fersen, who had helped Marie Antoinette orchestrate her escape by driving the carriage.

Once they were far enough from Paris, Louis ordered the Count to leave, apparently because he did not want it to appear that he was accepting a foreigner's help in fleeing France. However, it is very likely that he was eager to send away his wife's lover for his own peace of mind. The royal family arrived as far as Varennes, where Louis, who had only briefly stepped out of the carriage, was recognized by the local postmaster. Incredibly, the man had only seen the King's face on his coins. The fact that Louis was recognized is a testament to how poorly executed the escape was.

His carriage, clothes and luggage were too luxurious and expensive, and worse still, when his belongings were searched, the royal insignia and the king's crown were also found. Now truly prisoners, vilified by their own people who believed they had brought Austrian armies to invade France, the royal family was escorted by the National Guard back to Paris. The crowd lining his carriage route was eerily silent, under penalty of death from General Lafayette, but they watched the King and Queen pass by with hostile, accusing eyes. The following year, the Revolution became even more radical when the Jacobins came to power.

Marie Antoinette made a last attempt to work for the promotion of the constitutional monarchy, in particular by establishing correspondence and political collaboration with Antoine Barnave, probably the most moderate and influential member of the Constituent Assembly at the time. However, in April, France had declared war on Austria. The atmosphere in Paris became more tense and combative during the summer. Fear of an Austrian invasion to restore the monarchy led to an attack on the Tuileries Palace. In September, the Assembly had abolished the monarchy. Just a few weeks later, there was a city-wide massacre of all royalists, alleged sympathizers and counter-revolutionaries who were then detained in Paris prisons.

The royal family was moved to much safer and heavily guarded quarters in the fortress known as the Temple. The family enjoyed a few months of peace, but in December, the former Louis XVI, now known as “Citizen Louis Capet,” was tried for treason. He was found guilty and sentenced to be executed by guillotine in January 1793. He was allowed to say a private farewell to his family before going to execute him the next day with dignity and quiet bravery. The loss of her husband made Marie Antoinette become even closer to her children, but within a few months, her son Luis Carlos and her eldest daughter Maria Teresa were also taken from her.

The Dauphin was seen as a serious threat, a potential king in waiting. His jailers subjected the seven-year-old prince to terrible emotional and physical abuse, doing everything possible to indoctrinate him in the ideals of the Revolution. Marie Antoinette's daughter would eventually escape to Austria, but poor Louis Charles would die in the Temple, of tuberculous fever, at the age of ten. Marie Antoinette was now completely helpless and, on the eve of the announcement that she would be tried for treason, she was moved to a bare, squalid and dark cell in the ruined fortress known as the Conciergerie. Marie Antoinette's trial was a farce.

She was accused of conspiring with Austria against France, of careless squandering of the country's treasury, and of moral and sexual degeneration. It is now known that the Queen regularly provided intelligence information to Austria and other European allies, but at the time of her trial there was absolutely no evidence that she did so. In the absence of concrete evidence, her trial became a repetition of all the unfounded rumors that had been published about her in scandalous newspapers over the years. Her judges even tried to add an accusation of incest to the list of charges. Louis-Charles' jailers had somehow forced him to accuse his own mother of sexually abusing him.

When asked why she did not respond to the accusation, Marie Antoinette responded icily: “Nature refuses to respond to such an accusation leveled against a mother. I appeal in this matter to all mothers present in court.” There was an embarrassed and embarrassing silence, and then several women called out to her with sympathy and support. The judges did not pursue the incest charge, but still found Marie Antoinette guilty of treason. When asked if she had anything to say, she replied: “I was Queen and you took away my crown, wife and you took away my husband, mother and you took away my children.

Only my blood remains. Take it if you want, but don't make me suffer too much. On the morning of October 16, 1793, Marie Antoinette changed her only remaining black dress for a shabby white one brought to her by her jailers. They tied her hands behind her back and led her from her cell in the Conciergerie to her courtyard, where a small open cart was waiting for her. WhileIt moved slowly through the streets of Paris, the crowd booing and shouting obscenities at the still, silent figure dressed in white. She looked decades older than her thirty-eight year old self, but she kept her head up and her bearing and expression worthy of her.

Journalists who came to see Marie Antoinette's execution later wrote that she carried herself with all the remorseless haughtiness of the most unrepentant criminal. However, if she had cried, lamented, and begged for her life, the same commentators would probably have denigrated her for being a coward. The Queen went to her death with incredible courage. Atop a platform in the middle of the Place de la Révolution, the guillotine waited, surrounded by a crowd of people loudly calling for Marie Antoinette to be executed. She climbed the few steps without hesitation or hesitation and accidentally stepped on the executioner's foot.

The last words he spoke of her seemed to sum up everything she had experienced from the day of her arrival in France until this terrible final moment. "Forgive me, sir," she said softly. "I didn't do it on purpose." Resolutely, she knelt before the block. The sword fell. There was an eerie silence for a moment, and then a roar as the executioner lifted the Queen's head before the baying crowd. For more than a century after her death, Marie Antoinette's legacy had been luxurious and remorseless excess, tone-deaf conduct and governance, and disregard for the suffering of others. These accusations are justified to a certain extent, especially considering what it cost France to maintain the royal family in the decadent style in which she had always lived.

It is true that as Queen she had made many mistakes, but more and more historians in recent decades have begun to rehabilitate her image and claim that she did not deserve what happened to her. She had not been well prepared or trained to play the role she had been given when she was little more than a child, nothing more than a pawn on her mother's dynastic chess board. She had done what she believed was expected of her as Queen of France, but being completely isolated from the changing world outside Versailles, she had no idea that something like public sentiment was now powerful enough to destroy her.

She had been a scapegoat, and it was a testament to the deep, dark vein of misogyny that ran through French society that people could believe that her supposed greed, sexual voracity, and dominance over her husband had been solely responsible for the weakness. of the king, his for not embracing the Revolution and for the collapse of France. Tragic as it was, the execution of Louis XVI made terrible sense in the context of the Revolution: as long as the king was alive, there would be plots to restore him to the throne and the new French constitutional republic would never exist. sure.

However, it is difficult to consider the execution of Marie Antoinette as equally necessary. All authority had fallen to Louis, not his queen. She no longer had the power to pose a threat to the revolutionaries who were holding her prisoner. More than an act of justice, Marie Antoinette's sham trial and execution resembles an act of public anger. Much more than the king, she was the most hated person in France, regardless of what could or could not be proven about her. Very few of the accusations leveled against her in libelles and public rumors had any basis in fact, not even the Queen's most famous misquote: "Let them eat cake," as she was believed to have responded when told that the Los French had no bread to eat.

The execution of Marie Antoinette was a symbolic sacrifice to the Revolution. Her blood would be an atonement, to show that, for France, there could be no turning back. What do you think of Marie Antoinette? Was she really a doomed woman, trapped in historical circumstances she could never have controlled? Did she miss opportunities to work with reformers and help keep the Revolution moderate, or were the fall of the French monarchy, the radicalization of the Revolution, and the coming of the Terror inevitable? Let us know what you think in the comments section. And as always, thank you so much for watching!