The woman known to history as Marie Antoinette, was born on the second of November 1755, at the Hofburg Palace
in Vienna. Her parents, Holy Roman Emperor Francis I
and Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, gave her the name of 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 named “Maria,” the fifteenth child of the Emperor and Empress of Austria
was called “Madame Antoine” and sometimes, “Antoinette” within the family. Despite her illustrious Hapsburg lineage,
few, including her own parents, imagined that her life or experiences would be especially
consequential. Certainly not more than her own mother, whose
strength, intelligence, and skill at statecraft and diplomacy had made her one of the most
celebrated queens ever to rule in Europe. It is unlikely that anyone could have predicted
that Madame Antoine, the youngest Archduchess of Austria, would ever attain greater notoriety,
or that she would in fact 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 recovered control of most of the
territories lost or challenged during the War of Austrian Succession a decade before,
save for Silesia, which was still held by 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 wary hostility between
the two countries. When Antoine was just six months old, her
parents cemented their new alliance with King Louis XV of France by proposing her betrothal
to the King’s grandson, Louis-Auguste, Duc de Berry, who was just one year older than
Antoine. The marriage, which was not officially approved
until the two children were twelve and thirteen, respectively, would figure prominently in
a series of crises which would spark revolution and war, and not just 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. Because it is a day of mourning, associated
with death, the Austrian royal family always observed Antoine’s birthday the day before,
on All Saints’ Day. Not only was the day of her birth inauspicious,
but that very same day, a massive earthquake wreaked untold destruction and caused 30,000
deaths 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 really
observed or remarked upon for years. The communication barriers of the time period
meant that weeks elapsed before word of the disaster reached Vienna, and neither were
the Portuguese King and Queen actually expected to arrive for Antoine’s christening, since
baptisms were invariably performed within three days of birth, and proxies almost always
stood in for royal godparents. But upon reflection during the decades and
centuries following Marie Antoinette’s death, one could be forgiven for remarking on the
implied foreboding surrounding her birth, especially given the ultimately tragic course
of her life and manner of her death. From the beginning, an ill fate seemed to
follow the little princess. Despite her obscure place in her family, Antoine
seems to have had a fairly happy childhood, although her early life is not particularly
well-documented. Her eldest siblings were nearly two decades
older than she, but five of them were close enough to her in age to be both playmates
and schoolroom companions. While Antoine loved all of her brothers and
sisters, she was especially close to her sister Charlotte, who was three years older. She also enjoyed a strong relationship with
her eldest brother Joseph, the future Holy Roman Emperor, despite the vast difference
in their ages. Maria Theresa’s children seemed to view
her with a mixture of love and fear. She was committed to her family, loved her
children, and took her responsibilities as a mother very seriously, but as Empress of
Austria and Queen of Hungary and Bohemia in her own right, she also had the stewardship
of an empire. Maria Theresa’s father, the Holy Roman Emperor
Charles VI, had enacted a special international treaty in 1713 known as the Pragmatic Sanction,
which recognized his eldest daughter as his heir, in the absence of a son. 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 rule of Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary, while securing her new
husband’s election to the position of Holy Roman Emperor, since the title could not be
held by a woman. It was the Empress herself, however, who wielded
the real power and shouldered most responsibilities. Maria Theresa’s devotion to duty was such
that she reportedly continued to read and sign important state papers while in her child-birthing
bed, so loathe was she to waste time. Historians have observed that the Empress’s
vast responsibilities gave her a brusque and hard quality, even with those closest to her,
despite her noted encouragement of a close family life. She was also constantly critical of her children,
and especially insistent upon arranging their marriages with the greatest possible benefit
for the Austrian empire in mind. The Latin motto of the Austrian Hapsburgs,
Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube, translates to “Let others wage war, thee,
happy Austria, marry!” Virtually none of Maria Theresa’s children
were permitted to choose their own spouses, and all were expected to do their duty and
marry to strengthen the dynasty. Maria Amalia and Maria Carolina, known within
the family as “Charlotte,” had both been required to marry royal suitors of dubious
character or capacity for the benefit of Austria. On the eve of Charlotte’s wedding to the
mentally unstable King of Naples, the Empress Maria Theresa wrote: “So long as she fulfills
her duty towards God and her husband and earns her salvation, even if she is unhappy, I will
be satisfied.” Even Maria Christina, her mother’s favourite,
had to concede Maria Theresa’s harder qualities. “You know the manner in which she loved
her children,” she wrote a few years after her mother’s death. “Mixed in with her love there was always
a dose of mistrust and a coldness palpable.” As for young Antoine, like most of her siblings,
her own love for her mother was always complicated by the Empress’s criticism, and by her generally
low opinion of Antoine’s attitude, intelligence, and 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 noted pursuit of pleasure contrasted sharply
with her firm work ethic and he seemed more interested in amusements like hunting, gambling,
and mistresses than in ruling. Francis seemed content to hold his largely
ceremonial position however, and while it is true that Maria Theresa held the real state
power, she relied heavily on Francis to manage Austria’s financial affairs. Considering the financial precariousness of
many of Europe’s royal treasuries during the mid-to-late eighteenth century, Francis
actually acquitted himself 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
quote “adopted” into the Austrian court at the age of fourteen, as Emperor Charles
VI intended him to marry his eldest daughter and heir. Maria Theresa was said to have loved Francis
from the very beginning, feelings he did not return, although he did seem to hold a genuine
affection, respect, and liking for her. He unfortunately proved to be compulsively
unfaithful during his marriage, and his incurable and often indiscreet philandering saddened
his wife. Nevertheless, as a group, his family seemed
to adore him. He was described as cheerful, lively, teasing,
and playful when relaxed in the company of his children, and he showed them all, including
his youngest daughter Antoine, the sort of affection and warmth which their own mother
often did not. The Austrian royal family had several residences
and pleasure palaces, but lived primarily at the Hofburg Palace during the colder months,
and at Schönbrunn Palace during the warmer months. Both of these palaces were formal royal residences
where politics and diplomacy were regularly formulated and power duly exercised. Courtiers, ambassadors, bureaucrats, and other
dignitaries visited these palaces daily and interacted formally with the royal family. However, both palaces had been constructed
and improved over time with a view to preserving a sphere of privacy for the family. Unlike other mid-eighteenth-century European
royals, the Austrian Hapsburgs maintained a noted distinction between the public and
the private. In contrast, the French royal family was on
display every hour of the day. Even their bathing and dressing routines might
be attended by government ministers and France’s greatest nobles, 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 which were accessible only at the express invitation of the royal
family. As a result, Antoine and her siblings grew
up enjoying a relaxed, informal family life which was quite different to their European
royal contemporaries. Naturally, the children of Maria Theresa and
Francis I were expected to be present and play their royal roles in public functions,
but they also regularly had opportunities for family recreation out of the public eye. The Austrian Hapsburgs enjoyed outdoor activities
together such as sledding in the winter months and riding and hunting in the warmer months. Vienna was one of the richest cultural centers
in Europe and so naturally, the whole family were lovers and patrons of the arts. Whether it was in public for the entertainment
of the court, or in private for their own amusement, the royal family particularly enjoyed
music, dancing, and staging amateur theatricals together. From an early age, Antoine had been exposed
to the performance and tutelage of some of the greatest musicians, composers, and dancers
in Europe. She had the privilege of meeting the six-year-old
prodigy, Wolfgang Mozart, who was just two months younger than herself, when he visited
Schönbrunn Palace to play for the royal family in October 1762. Her dancing instructor was one of the greatest
ballet masters of the day, Jean-Georges Noverre, and her music teacher was the famed composer,
Christophe Willibald Gluck, who secured the official patronage of Maria Theresa the same
year Antoine was born. Naturally, the arts formed a major part of
Antoine’s education, and she proved to be quite talented in multiple artistic pursuits. She was a particularly fine dancer and was
described by contemporary observers as exceptionally graceful and poised, even as a small child. Antoine also proved to be a fine musician. She was adept at the harp and the harpsichord,
she could sight-read music at a professional level by the time she reached adolescence,
and she was said to have had a lovely singing voice. But beyond her noted artistic accomplishments,
she was not a particularly good student. She eventually came to enjoy her history lessons,
but remained uninterested 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 to
prepare her for her role as the wife of the Dauphin, he was shocked and horrified to discover
that the twelve-year-old princess could scarcely write in her own native language. This is rather surprising considering that
the Austrian Hapsburgs had access to the very best educational resources to be had in Europe,
and several members of Antoine’s immediate family were quite well-read and scholarly. Additionally, Vienna was one of the foremost
cities in Europe for intellectualism, sophistication, and a cosmopolitan approach to learning. A sizeable proportion of the Viennese, and
several of the Hapsburgs themselves, were trilingual, regularly speaking German, which
their local subjects spoke, Italian, because they ruled several regions in Italy as well,
and French because it was the lingua franca of eighteenth-century Europe. At barely thirteen years of age, Antoine only
spoke her first language – French – with any fluency, though her speech was overlaid
by a great many German linguistic elements and she spoke with a strong German accent. A number of potential factors may have contributed
to her generally unimpressive academic performance. Antoine’s father, the Emperor, was the former
Duke of Lorraine, whose first language was also French. Although he became Emperor of Austria – albeit
in a largely ceremonial position – he steadfastly refused to speak or even to learn German,
behaviour which might well have influenced his daughter. Additionally, Antoine’s principal governess
was described by some sources as having been rather neglectful of her young pupil. Antoine always disliked reading and it is
possible that she was permitted to neglect those lessons she did not enjoy. Further, Antoine’s parents might not have
considered her poor education important enough to rectify. Until it became virtually certain that she
would wed 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 became assured, no one thought her particularly worth teaching for any purpose
other than being a pretty ornament to a royal court. Her tutor, Abbe de Vermond, wrote that his
pupil had a tendency toward laziness and frivolousness, which is unsurprising in a child with so little
structure or consistency in her early education. He expressed confidence however, in what he
perceived to be her natural intelligence. Despite the gaps in her education, Antoine
proved to be a quick learner. Vermond noted that when sufficiently motivated
to learn, she grasped new lessons quickly and used reason admirably to suggest solutions
to problems. Under his tutelage, Antoine’s literacy and
learning capacity improved quickly and dramatically. Though the Austrian Hapsburgs appeared to
lead the most charmed of lives, even for a royal family, they would have their share
of tragedy. It is quite remarkable for eighteenth-century
Europe that in a family of sixteen children only three did not survive infancy. Another scourge was to visit the Austrian
royal family repeatedly – that of smallpox. Six members of Antoine’s immediate family
contracted the disease at one time or another during the late 1750s and 1760s, including
the Empress herself. This spurred Maria Theresa to mount an inoculation
campaign in Vienna, and both Antoine and her younger brother Maximilian received the new
procedure which involved introducing biological material from people infected with the virus. This early vaccine method was exponentially
more dangerous than modern methods, but luckily, both children survived, and without scarring. Three of Antoine’s older siblings, Charles,
Maria Johanna, and Maria Josepha, died of the smallpox virus during the 1760s. The family suffered another cruel blow with
the sudden death of Emperor Francis I in August of 1765, from either a stroke or a heart attack. Empress Maria Theresa was devastated, going
at once into deepest mourning. She wore only widow’s black for the rest
of her life. Nine-year-old Antoine was as shattered as
the rest of the family. Legend has it that prior to his final departure
for Innsbruck, he bid his family farewell but turned back on impulse to embrace his
youngest daughter once more. Francis I died just days later in his carriage
while returning from the Opera. In a memorandum to his will, he admonished
his children to be careful on whom they bestowed their friendship, and not to be too hasty
to place their trust in others. He further enjoined them to avoid gambling
and other dissolute behaviours. Those with the benefit of hindsight might
claim that all of this was good advice for young Antoine, and many historical commentators
have condemned her for seeming to have ignored it in the ensuing years. In April of 1770, an anxious fourteen-year-old
Antoine said farewell to her family, her friends, and her country. Her mother urged her to conform herself to
her new husband and his family, and to use all of her charm and amiability to win the
favour of the French court. “Do so much good to the French people,”
she wrote, “that they can say that I have sent them an angel.” King Louis XV and her fiancée, the Dauphin
Louis, met Antoine’s carriage at Compiegne, near the Austrian border with France. Before being presented to her new family,
Antoine first went through a ritualistic change of attire which was entirely symbolic. On an island in the Rhine River, the traditional
border between Austria and France, Antoine’s attendants helped her remove all of her clothing
and jewelry brought from Austria, and dressed her in French garments and jewels, despite
the fact that the grand court costume she had been wearing previously was also designed
in the French style, the most popular fashion in Europe. Maria Antonia, Madame Antoine, the Hapsburg
princess of Austria, was no more. She was now to be known as Marie Antoinette,
Madame le Dauphine, a French princess. Apprehensive and immediately homesick, she
wept as her Austrian attendants bid her farewell, but tried to collect herself sufficiently
to be presented to King Louis and her fiancée, the Dauphin. Maria Theresa and Antoine’s eldest brother
Joseph, the new Holy Roman Emperor, had impressed upon her the great importance of Austria’s
alliance with France. The knowledge that responsibility for nurturing
the tenuous new alliance rested with her must have been daunting indeed. On the eighteenth of May, 1770, Marie Antoinette
and Louis-Auguste de Bourbon were married in the royal chapel at Versailles. If his bride was nervous, Louis, who was just
a year older at fifteen, was equally so. Observers noted that his posture remained
stiff throughout the service and that his hands shook as he placed the ring on his bride’s
finger. Sadly, their apprehension was warranted. Their first several years of marriage would
be strained and difficult and would have a lasting impact on their public reputations. 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 constructed very 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 accordingly set out to please, determined to be the most fashionable,
charming, and sought after woman in France. Marie Antoinette was initially quite a success
at Versailles. King Louis XV took an instant liking to her
for her warmth, vivaciousness, and impressive musicianship. Because the King liked her, the Dauphine’s
early experiences at the French court were promising, and it may have been King Louis’
favour which kept certain criticism of the young princess in check for a time. Despite the admiration which her beauty and
youthful energy inspired, she was still just a young teenager and ill-trained for the role
at which she was immediately expected to excel. Like many fourteen-year-olds might have done,
she mishandled relationships with several important political figures at court, including
“Les Tantes,” the King’s elderly sisters who considered themselves the arbiters of
conduct at the French court. Marie Antoinette was taken aback by the utter
lack of privacy involved in being a member of the French royal family. Having grown up accustomed to a clear distinction
between public, political spaces and private spaces enjoyed only by family members, she
was horrified to find that she was virtually never permitted to be alone, or to carry out
the minutest personal tasks for herself. Her resistance to royal protocol and her sometimes
open mockery of it made her husband’s elderly great-aunts dislike her. Additionally, she managed to alienate courtiers
from powerful aristocratic families when she removed them from her household service in
favour of younger, livelier others whom she liked better. Marie Antoinette also made an enemy of Madame
du Barry, the King’s official mistress, whom she refused even to politely acknowledge
during her first months at Versailles. Moreover, most of King Louis’ advisors had
opposed an Austrian match for the Dauphin, and distrusted the princess on general principle. Those at Versailles who feared the potential
influence she might exert over the Dauphin on Austria’s behalf scathingly nicknamed
her: “the Austrian.” Sadly, Marie Antoinette’s new husband had
been firmly indoctrinated by his tutors with this same suspicious distrust of both the
Austrian alliance and his new bride, making an already difficult marriage between two
young and inexperienced teenagers more complicated still. Louis-Auguste de Bourbon and Marie Antoinette
were as different from one another as two people could possibly be. They were both blue-eyed, and her ash-blonde
hair was just a few shades darker than his, but that was where their similarities ended. Where she was lively and extroverted, he was
shy and awkward. He struggled with indecision while she was
resolute and quick to act. He loved to read, a pastime she had never
enjoyed. Even his great height contrasted sharply with
her slight stature, for Louis stood six feet four inches tall, which was quite impressive
for eighteenth-century France. Although he admitted privately that he eventually
came to love his wife, after a fashion, and did indeed find her beautiful, he continually
refused to consummate the marriage, a state of affairs which remained unchanged for the
first seven years of their union. The initial lack of consummation is hardly
surprising considering the extreme youth of the bride and groom who were only fourteen
and fifteen years old respectively. Since sexual matters were rarely discussed,
even amongst family members, when the young couple were left alone on their wedding night,
they likely did not know what to do. They were almost certainly terribly nervous,
and had only just met one another a few days before. Louis wrote in his diary that he simply went
to sleep on his wedding night, as well as the following two nights. With Versailles being the least private place
in all France, especially for the royal family, the lack of consummation between the Dauphin
and the Dauphine was immediately public knowledge. An unconsummated marriage meant that there
was not yet any possibility of royal children and heirs to safeguard the French throne. Since this was an important matter of state,
courtiers were quick to bring the news to King Louis XV. The old King was fond of both his grandson
and his granddaughter-in-law, and seemed to show some understanding. He insisted that no one should try to press
the issue with the Dauphin, and expressed confidence that the young couple would settle
into their marriage in time. Empress Maria Theresa was not nearly as patient
with what she viewed as her daughter’s mistakes and shortcomings. The correspondence between Maria Theresa and
Marie Antoinette during her first several years at Versailles strongly highlights the
difficult relationship between mother and daughter. Kept well informed by her spies at Versailles,
the Empress constantly criticized Antoine for alienating members of the French court,
for her excessively luxurious and extravagant lifestyle, and most of all, for failing to
cajole or entice her husband into finally consummating the marriage. Maria Theresa scolded her daughter for allowing
herself to become the focus of French tabloid gossip for her frivolity and flightiness. She castigated Antoine for failing to pursue
self-improvement, encouraged her to read more, and warned her that she did not have the intelligence,
the talent, the culture, or the character to withstand the much worse criticism the
Empress believed would certainly follow. Marie Antoinette often responded defensively
to these letters, expressed sorrow and hurt that her mother should believe the worst about
her, and assured Maria Theresa that she did indeed have the best interests of France and
the Austrian alliance at heart. As her mother predicted, it did not take very
long for Marie Antoinette to develop a reputation for frivolous extravagance. Historians and biographers have speculated
that her ostentatious and decadent tastes which she had developed in the early years
of her marriage, especially after she became Queen, were partly an attempt to compensate
for her unhappiness. Not only did she remain physically unfulfilled
but also emotionally distanced from her husband, who persisted for several years in wariness
of his wife and suspicion for her Austrian loyalties. On the tenth of May 1774, King Louis XV succumbed
to smallpox, dying in his bed at Versailles at the age of sixty-four. He was highly unpopular towards the end of
his reign and few besides his grandson seemed to mourn him in any genuine fashion. The French people now looked to Louis XVI
with both hope and optimism. The new King was young, just nineteen, and
while he did not have the panache or the commanding presence of his grandfather, Louis XV, or
his third-great grandfather, Louis XIV, he was perceived to be a kind, genuine, bright,
and conscientious young man, all promising qualities for a potentially great and fair
ruler. Queen Marie Antoinette was initially quite
popular with the French people as well, renowned for her beauty, style, and charm. But four more years passed without a consummation
of the royal marriage. 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 grew even further
apart as husband and wife after they ascended the French throne. Louis rose early, attended to the business
of the day, and went to bed early. Antoine, on the other hand, loved to stay
up late and rarely rose earlier than ten or eleven in the morning. He enjoyed reading, riding, and hunting and
tended to be shy and soft-spoken in company. She loved the gaiety and distraction of evenings
in Paris, attending the theater, the Opera, or masked balls. She spent lavishly on fabulous clothes and
jewelry, wearing wigs as high as three feet tall, often dressed with towering poufs of
netting and plumes of feathers. She adored gambling and frequently lost exorbitant
sums at Paris’s gaming tables. This behavior earned her the very uncomplimentary
nickname of “Madame Deficit” among the French public, who were becomingly increasingly
convinced that her spending was contributing as much as anything to France’s economic
problems. If Marie Antoinette was compensating for loneliness
and unfulfillment in her marriage, then perhaps Louis was doing the same. After he became King, Louis gifted his wife
with the estate known as Le Petit Trianon in the grounds of Versailles, which had once
belonged to Louis XV’s official mistress, Madame de Pompadour. Knowing that Marie Antoinette found the total
lack of privacy at Versailles tiresome and confining, Louis gave her the estate as her
private haven. She could receive only those whom she wished
to invite and she could renovate and improve the house and grounds at her pleasure. The King also regularly settled all of his
wife’s considerable debts quietly and without censuring her. It is possible that a sense of guilt may have
played a role in Louis’ remarkable indulgence of his Queen’s every whim. In the summer of 1777, Antoine’s elder brother,
Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, visited France quietly and unofficially on his mother’s
behalf to ascertain the health of the French-Austrian alliance and in particular his sister’s
troubling marriage. He and Louis apparently got on well, so much
so, that Louis took Joseph into his confidence about his sexual problems. Historians long supposed that Louis XVI might
have had some sort of physical condition which 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 the letters that Joseph
II wrote to his mother and brother Leopold, which indicate that Louis’ sexual impediments
were psychological, and probably arose from embarrassment at his lack of knowledge and
experience, and from an intense anxiety or fear of sex itself. It did not help the situation that her husband’s
reluctance in the marriage bed made Antoine frustrated, resentful, and far less willing
to attempt any supportive persuasion. Joseph’s visit and interventions between
the King and Queen of France did after all bear fruit, so to speak. A few weeks after his departure for Vienna,
Marie Antoinette happily informed her mother in a letter that after seven years, her marriage
had been quote “finally and perfectly consummated. I do not think I am pregnant yet,” she wrote,
“but at least have the hope of being so very soon.” The Queen was right. The following year, on the nineteenth of December
1778, Marie Antoinette gave birth to her first child, a girl whom she named Marie Therèse
Charlotte, after her mother and her favourite sister. The birth of a child and the progress they
had made in their marriage, helped the King and Queen build a closer, more trusting relationship. And although their first child was not a son,
the royal family enjoyed a rise in popularity for a time. The birth of a daughter meant that there might
soon be a Dauphin for France as well. One hundred or more years earlier, these developments
might have been enough to improve political stability and reduce criticism of the monarchy,
but France in the mid-to-late eighteenth century was undergoing dramatic social, political,
and ideological changes, teetering on the cusp of a new world whose values were utterly
incompatible with the traditional images and prerogatives of royalty. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette had both been
raised in the rarified atmosphere of the European royalty. Neither one of them knew anything about how
the people of their countries lived and remained almost completely insulated from the deep
cracks forming in the bedrock of French society. But France’s strictly hierarchical and deeply
unequal social system was subjected to intense economic pressure during the mid-to-late eighteenth
century, largely thanks to the costs of war. France’s conflicts with her European neighbours
during the previous few decades and Louis XVI’s generous support of the American Revolution
with the aim of weakening Britain, had pushed the French treasury to the very brink of financial
ruin. At the same time, the French people were suffering
through periodic waves of hunger due to multiple consecutive poor harvests. High food prices and persistently high taxes
caused alarming bouts of civil unrest as enraged and desperate people struggled simply to house
and feed their families. In addition to these serious structural problems,
the ideas of the Enlightenment had begun to thoroughly permeate French society, making
republican sympathizers out of some aristocrats, many members of the bourgeoisie, and of working-class
people alike. Inspired by the American Revolution and by
the increasingly valued notions of government accountability, the abolition of noble privilege,
and the intrinsic rights held by each individual person, the ideas of philosophes and revolutionaries
threatened the power and legitimacy of the French monarchy at the moment of its greatest
weakness. Marie Antoinette gave birth to three more
children during the 1780s, a Dauphin for France in December 1781, christened Louis Joseph
Xavier Francois, and two more children, Louis Charles in March 1785, and Marie Sophie Hélène
Béatrix in July of 1786. Despite the appearance of greater stability
and domesticity within the royal family, the public reputations of Louis XVI and Marie
Antoinette continued to decline. The years during which their marriage had
remained unconsummated had taken their toll on the public perceptions of both the King
and the Queen. Louis was perceived as weak, ineffective,
and his sexual shortcomings were equated with an inability to govern competently. The Queen was viewed as domineering, greedy,
and exploitative of her husband’s weakness. In the scurrilous libelles, or scandal sheets
circulating throughout France, Louis XVI was sometimes depicted as a castrated pig, smiling
dumbly and lazily. Marie Antoinette was often lampooned in the
tabloids for her luxurious extravagance and suspected political domination of her husband
on Austria’s behalf. But more than this, the public attacks launched
against the Queen in the libelles tended to be sexual in nature, and they became increasingly
darker, more obscene, and more threatening the closer France came to the 1789 Revolutionary
watershed. During the years in which her marriage had
remained unconsummated, rumours had begun to circulate that she must have enjoyed many,
even countless lovers. This is highly unlikely, but some historians
now believe there is sufficient proof to confirm that Marie Antoinette had at least one intimate
love affair during her marriage, with 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, remaining her closest advisor and friend. Fersen was a frequent guest at Le Petit Trianon
during the 1780s, and the Queen gave him the bedchamber just above hers. It is perhaps worth noting that her husband,
Louis XVI, is believed to have never spent even one night at Le Petit Trianon, although
he occasionally spent the day there with his family, at his wife’s invitation. Traditionally, historians have reserved judgment
about the nature of the relationship between Count Fersen and Marie Antoinette due to the
fact that the majority of their correspondence has either been lost, purposely destroyed,
or heavily redacted later on. However, in 2016, historians working in French
and Swedish archives claimed to have found and finally decoded multiple letters which
verify that Fersen and the Queen were indeed intimately involved and deeply in love for
many years. Because of the existing 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 meant to be
a haven of freedom from the court for Marie Antoinette, she probably did not realize that
her activities there did much to undermine her reputation. Queens of France did not traditionally 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 vice most often
imagined. However, the way that the Queen renovated
the property was also controversial. She spent extravagantly to create a rustic
farm retreat on the estate, even hiring a peasant family to tend livestock and produce
food. Meanwhile she, her friends, and her children,
dressed in simple white muslin, lounged over picnics, and acted in amateur theatricals
together, in which they played peasant roles such as milkmaids and shepherdesses. The idea of the Queen spending huge amounts
of money play-acting at being a peasant while the real people at the bottom of France’s
social ladder were starving, seemed an example of cruel ignorance and disregard for all but
royal whim and consequence. Marie Antoinette likely never thought about
how her actions appeared to others, until it was too late. Following the birth of her children, Marie
Antoinette began to withdraw from the social whirl which had characterized her first years
as Dauphine and Queen of France, but it 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 surrounding
bureaucratic and military appointments. Her tendency to intercede for Austria however,
did nothing to endear her to those at court who had always distrusted the Austrian alliance. Additionally, she was seen far less often
in Parisian ballrooms or at gaming tables, and had begun to show much more restraint
in her fashion choices and a more economical approach to her demands on the treasury. But many of these efforts were too little
too late. The period between 1787 and 1789 featured
a confluence of economic and public relations disasters which led France’s monarchy, the
oldest in Europe, to the very edge of collapse. 1787 was a difficult year for Marie Antoinette
and Louis XVI. Madame Sophie, their infant daughter, succumbed
to tuberculosis at just eleven months old. A few months later, the Queen, still mourning
her daughter, was approached by the Parisian jewelers Boehmer and Bassenge and offered
the chance 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 promptly
declined to buy it. When a group of thieves hatched a conspiracy
to steal the necklace, they duped a gullible aristocratic Cardinal into believing that
Marie Antoinette wished him to quietly buy the necklace for her and that she would reimburse
him later. Desperate to rise in the Queen’s favour,
the Cardinal eagerly consented. When the money became due, the King and Queen
were outraged. Two of the thieves had fled with the necklace,
which, of course, they never delivered to Marie Antoinette, and Louis XVI ordered the
Cardinal’s arrest as a co-conspirator. Since the Cardinal came from one of France’s
most powerful noble families, it is hardly surprising that the Parlement of judges, who
were also overwhelmingly aristocratic, found him not guilty on all counts. 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 indeed, the Affaire de Collier de la Reine, or the Affair of the Queen’s Necklace, as
the debacle became known, did more than anything else to destroy her reputation. During the period between 1787 and 1789, the
mental and physical health of Louis XVI began to deteriorate. He confronted stress by drinking heavily and
overeating. He lapsed more and more frequently into bouts
of crippling depression. Out of necessity, Marie Antoinette now became
more directly involved in French politics and exercised more power than she ever had
before. With her husband on the verge of a nervous
breakdown, she began to attend King’s council meetings where Louis’ chief ministers struggled
to address the economic crisis threatening to bankrupt France. She was, unfortunately, ill-prepared to step
into such a role and knew little about politics or economics. Still, her actions demonstrate a determination
to hold her family and the French monarchy together. Having had role models like her mother, Marie
Antoinette perhaps could not help but believe it her duty to rise to the occasion. She was instrumental in the appointment and
dismissal of several finance ministers, each, for various reasons, unable to find a way
out of the debt crisis, which was slowly crushing the country. Efforts were made to enlist the help of France’s
nobles, but not enough 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 Estates-General, the closest thing to a Parliament or national legislature
that France had ever had. Louis’ summoning of the Estates-General
was quite unprecedented. Representatives of the three “estates”
of French society: the clergy, the nobility, and the common people, had not met since 1614. Because the participants were pursuing such
different goals during the proceedings of the Estates-General, nothing was accomplished. The Third Estate, representing the overwhelming
majority of the French people, advocated for 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 numerous others demanded solutions to France’s bread crisis, which
was starving the urban and rural poor alike. The talks went nowhere. A month after the opening of the Estates-General,
on the fourth of June, 1789, the seven-year-old Dauphin died of tuberculosis. Because all France was preoccupied with the
next meeting of the Estates-General, there was little public discussion or acknowledgement
of the royal family’s loss. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were devastated. “My poor little boy is dead,” the Queen
wrote just days later, “and the nation hardly seemed to notice.” On the twentieth of June, when the King and
Queen were still in mourning for their son, representatives of the Third Estate arrived
at Versailles to find the door to their meeting room locked. Believing that the King had ordered them locked
out, they moved instead to a nearby tennis court, where they collectively declared themselves
France’s National Assembly and vowed not to disband until they had formulated a constitution. The newly-formed National Assembly began at
once to propose, debate, and institute reforms. Alarmed about the way these developments continued
to proceed without the sanction of the monarchy, Marie Antoinette convinced the King to move
a contingent of Swiss troops closer to Paris. This led to riots in the city as the fearful
populace wondered if their own government would launch an attack against them, and against
the changes proceeding in the National Assembly. On the fourteenth of July, the rage boiled
over resulting in the storming of the ancient fortress known as the Bastille, the release
of its prisoners, the raid of its armoury, and the murder of the prison’s governor. Paris had exploded into chaos and violence. At two o’clock in the morning, the King
was abruptly awakened at Versailles and informed that the Bastille had been taken. “Is it a revolt?” the King asked. “No sire,” came the reply. “It is a revolution.” After the fall of the Bastille, royal authority
quickly unraveled. A “great fear” rose among aristocrats
across the country that further uprisings of the people were imminent, and many began
to quietly leave France. Most of the extended royal family and many
high-ranking courtiers departed Versailles in the following days. Marie Antoinette was also strongly in favour
of flight, but when Louis XVI stated firmly that he would not consider leaving, she resolutely
decided to remain at the side of her husband and children. Events began to move more swiftly in the coming
months. The National Assembly worked tirelessly to
enact their new constitution and reforms, but the far more urgent food crisis was causing
unrest all over France. On the fifth of October, rumours were circulating
in Paris about a grand banquet being given at Versailles for the high-ranking members
of the King’s Swiss guard. Anger exploded among the women in the street
markets of the city: why should there be feasting and plenty at Versailles while bread remained
unaffordable for most Parisians and their own children starved? Armed with knives, pitchforks, cleavers, clubs,
whatever they could lay their hands on, several hundred women marched toward Versailles to
demand bread. They were joined by a great many other men
and women later in the day, and in their numbers, they overwhelmed the palace guards. A mob rampaged through Versailles directly
toward Marie Antoinette’s bedchamber, killing two of her guards. She heard them coming and escaped through
a secret door just seconds before they burst in, and fled to her husband’s bedchamber. Howling with rage to find her 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 departed 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 the center of Paris where they could be
more closely watched and guarded. The enormous pressure under which the royal
family now found themselves had opposite effects on Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Louis slipped deeper into his depression and
indecision while his wife became more motivated to action than she had ever been before. The next two years saw an extraordinary learning
and maturation process for the Queen, who found that it had now fallen to her to hold
the monarchy together if at all possible. Since the death of her son a few months before,
she seemed to have grown up overnight. And in the coming 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, France’s Legislative and Constituent Assemblies 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 her perception of France’s new political
powerbrokers as a “pack of madmen,” she tried to work with republicans like the Comte
de Mirabeau, the mayor of Paris, Jean Sylvain Bailly, and the Marquis de Lafayette, whom
she despised as much as he loathed her. But at the same time as she collaborated with
the leaders of the Revolution, earning their respect for her determination, bravery, intelligence,
and dignity, she also stayed up late night after night, secretly writing coded letters
to monarchist allies throughout Europe, particularly to her family in Austria. She covertly kept these contacts informed
of developments in France. It is unclear now exactly what her ultimate
intentions were, but she appeared determined to keep channels of potential escape open,
and also, perhaps, the possibility of one day re-taking France from the Revolutionaries. It is possible that Marie Antoinette and Louis
XVI might have been able to rise to the challenge of a constitutional monarchy. But there was little they could do about the
deep divisions which were forming among Revolutionary leaders and among the people of France in
general. No longer content with a constitutional monarchy
and the end of noble and clerical privilege, many were now in favour 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 contemplate escape from
France more seriously. The Revolution was radicalizing more every
day. The Queen managed to convince her husband
to flee before their freedom of movement was restricted any further and escape became impossible. Late at night on the fourteenth of June, 1791,
the royal family slipped quietly into a carriage outside the Tuileries palace. Less than an hour later, they had escaped
Paris and were on their way to the Austrian border with Count Axel Fersen, who had helped
Marie Antoinette orchestrate their escape, driving the carriage. Once they were far enough from Paris, Louis
ordered the Count to leave, ostensibly because he did not want to seem to be accepting the
assistance of a foreigner to flee France. However, it is just as likely that he was
eager to send his wife’s lover away for his own peace of mind. The royal family made it as far as Varennes,
where Louis, who had stepped out of the carriage for only a moment, was recognized by the local
postmaster. Incredibly, the man had only ever seen the
King’s face on his coinage. It is a testament to how poorly executed the
escape was, that Louis was recognized. Their carriage, clothing, and luggage were
too luxurious and expensive, and worse, when their belongings were searched, the King’s
royal regalia and crown were found as well. Now truly prisoners, reviled by their own
people who believed that they would have brought Austrian armies to invade France, the royal
family were escorted by the National Guard back to Paris. The crowds lining the route of their carriage
were eerily silent, on pain of death from General Lafayette, but watched the King and
Queen pass with hostile, accusing eyes. The following year saw the Revolution become
more radical still as the Jacobins rose to power. Marie Antoinette made a final attempt to work
for the promotion of the constitutional monarchy, notably by establishing a correspondence and
policy collaboration with Antoine Barnave, probably the most moderate and influential
member of the Constituent Assembly at that time. However, by April, France had declared war
on Austria. The mood in Paris grew more tense and combative
through the summer. Fear of an Austrian invasion to restore the
monarchy spurred an attack on the Tuileries palace. By September, the Assembly had abolished the
monarchy. Only weeks later, there was a citywide massacre
of all royalists, suspected sympathizers, and counter-revolutionaries then being held
in Paris’s jails. The royal family was moved to much more secure
and heavily guarded quarters in the fortress known as the Temple. The family had a few months of peace together,
but in December, the former Louis XVI, now known as “Citizen Louis Capet,” was put
on trial for treason. He was found guilty and sentenced to be executed
by guillotine in January 1793. He was permitted to say a private goodbye
to his family before going to his execution the next day with dignity and quiet courage. The loss of her husband made Marie Antoinette
cleave all the closer to her children, but within a few months, her son Louis-Charles
and her eldest daughter Marie-Therese, were taken away from her also. The Dauphin was viewed 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 with the ideals of the Revolution. Marie Antoinette’s daughter would eventually
escape to Austria, but poor Louis-Charles would die in the Temple, of tubercular fever
at the age of ten. Marie Antoinette was now entirely bereft and
on the eve of the announcement that she would be put on trial for treason, she was moved
to a bare, squalid, dark cell in the dilapidated fortress known as the Conciergerie. Marie Antoinette’s trial was a farce. She was accused of conspiring with Austria
against France, of careless profligacy with the country’s treasury, and of moral and
sexual degeneration. It is now known that the Queen did indeed
regularly provide intelligence to Austria and to other European allies, but at the time
of her trial, there was absolutely no evidence that she had. Lacking any concrete evidence, the proceedings
turned into a rehashing of all the baseless rumours which had been published about her
in the scandal sheets over the years. Her judges even tried to add an accusation
of incest to the list of charges. Louis-Charles’ jailers had somehow coerced
him to accuse his own mother of molesting him. When asked why she did not respond to the
charge, Marie Antoinette replied stonily: “Nature refuses to answer such a charge
brought against a mother. I appeal in this matter to all the mothers
present in the court.” There was an abashed and shameful silence,
and then several women called out to her in sympathy and support. The judges pursued the incest charge no further,
but found Marie Antoinette guilty of treason nonetheless. When asked if she had anything to say, she
replied: “I was a Queen and you took away my crown, a wife and you took away my husband,
a mother and you took away my children. My blood alone remains. Take it if you wish, but do not make me suffer
long.” On the morning of the sixteenth of October,
1793, Marie Antoinette changed from her one remaining black dress into one of shabby white,
brought to her by her jailers. Her hands were bound behind her and she was
led from her cell in the Conciergerie to the courtyard where a small open cart waited. As it wound slowly through the streets of
Paris, the crowds jeered and shouted obscenities at the still, silent figure in white. She looked decades older than her thirty-eight
years, but kept her head up and her bearing and expression dignified. Journalists who turned out to watch Marie
Antoinette’s execution, later wrote, that she bore herself with all the unapologetic
haughtiness of the most unrepentant criminal. Yet, if she had wept and wailed and begged
for her life, the same commentators likely would have denigrated her for being a coward. The Queen went to her death with incredible
courage. Up on a platform in the middle of the Place
de la Révolution, the guillotine stood waiting, surrounded by a crush of people noisily exhorting
Marie Antoinette to her execution. She climbed the few steps without faltering
or hesitating and accidentally trod on the executioner’s foot. The last words she spoke seemed to encapsulate
everything she had experienced from the day she had arrived in France to this terrible
final moment. “Pardon me sir,” she said quietly. “I did not do it on purpose.” Resolutely, she knelt before the block. The blade fell. There was an eerie silence for an instant,
and then a roar as the executioner held up the Queen’s head before the baying crowd. For more than a century following her death,
Marie Antoinette’s legacy had been one of unapologetic and luxurious excess, of completely
tone-deaf conduct and governance, and disregard for the suffering of others. These charges are merited to a certain extent,
especially if one considers what it cost France to support the royal family in the decadent
style in which they 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 to assert that she did not deserve what happened to her. She had been ill-prepared and ill-trained
to fill the role that had been thrust upon her when she was little more than a child,
nothing more than a pawn on her mother’s dynastic chessboard. She had done what she believed was expected
of her as Queen of France, but being completely insulated from the changing world outside
Versailles, she had no idea that such a thing as public sentiment was now powerful enough
to destroy her. She had been a scapegoat, and it was a testament
to the deep and dark streak of misogyny running through French society that people could believe
that her supposed greed, sexual voraciousness, and domination of her husband had been solely
responsible for the King’s weakness, his failure to embrace the Revolution, and for
France’s collapse. As tragic as it was, the execution of Louis
XVI made a terrible kind of sense in the context of the Revolution – as long the King remained
alive, there would be plots to restore him to the throne and the new constitutional French
republic would never be safe. Yet, it is difficult to view the execution
of Marie Antoinette as similarly necessary. All authority had been vested in Louis, not
his Queen. She had no power any longer to pose a threat
to the Revolutionaries who held her prisoner. Rather than an act of justice, Marie Antoinette’s
sham trial and execution resembles an act of public rage. Far more than the King, it was she who 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 the libelles and the public rumour mill had any basis in fact, not even the most
famous misquote from the Queen: “Let them eat cake,” as she was believed to have replied
when told that the French had no bread to eat. Marie Antoinette’s execution was a symbolic
sacrifice to the Revolution. Her blood would be an expiation – to show
that, for France, there could be no going back. What do you think of Marie Antoinette? Was she truly a doomed woman, caught in historical
circumstances which she could never have controlled? Did she waste opportunities to work with reformers
and help keep the Revolution moderate or was the fall of France’s monarchy, the radicalization
of the Revolution, and the coming of the Terror, all inevitable? Please let us know what you think in the comments
section. And as always, thank you very much for watching!
