MARIE ANTOINETTE,QUEEN OF FRANCE (1755-1793) WIFE OF KING LOUIS XVI .SHE WAS ONLY 14 YEARS OLD WHEN SHE MARRIED THE FUTURE LOUIS XVI.QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE AND HIS HUSBAND KING LOUIS XVI EXECUTED IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
Since her birth, Marie Antoinette had been primed and prepped to become a queen. Born the 15th child of the formidable Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa, the only woman to serve in the role, her mother was strict and distant with her youngest daughter, determined she should serve as a bridge between the two great warring dynasties of Habsburg and Bourbon. Maria was a clever woman, and she ensured that her beautiful young daughter became the talk of the French capital. The French king Louis XV was convinced, and arranged the marriage of the young archduchess to his grandson and heir, Louis XVI.
Since her birth, Marie Antoinette had been primed and prepped to become a queen. Born the 15th child of the formidable Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa, the only woman to serve in the role, her mother was strict and distant with her youngest daughter, determined she should serve as a bridge between the two great warring dynasties of Habsburg and Bourbon. Maria was a clever woman, and she ensured that her beautiful young daughter became the talk of the French capital. The French king Louis XV was convinced, and arranged the marriage of the young archduchess to his grandson and heir, Louis XVI.
Born Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna, Archduchess of Austria, the woman known as Marie Antoinette became Queen of France and Navarre on May 10, 1774. She was the country’s last queen.Her marriage to Louis-Auguste was designed to create peace between Austria and France after the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756 and the onset of the Seven Years’ War. Crowns have many thorns, cruel thorns that not infrequently pierce the wearer to death. Marie Antoinette learned all the bitterness of this sad truth. She first opened her eyes in the palace at Vienna, November 2, 1755. She was the youngest daughter of the Emperor Francis, and the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. Her childhood was peaceful and happy amongst her brothers and sisters. She saw little of her stately mother, and her father died when she was only ten years old. She had an irrepressible propensity for fun and amusement, but possessed not that love and aptitude for the acquisition of book knowledge, without which teachers are in vain, and opportunities well-nigh useless.She survived shifting political sands of palace intrigue and upheaval between European countries but couldn’t survive the revolution boiling over in her own adopted nation.Marie Antoinette became a queen as a pawn, a child bride at 14 paired with a 15-year-old Dauphin to seal the union between two countries that had previously been at odds. The marriage took place by proxy on April 19, 1770 in Vienna, with Marie Antoinette’s brother standing in for the groom; a ceremonial wedding occurred May 16 at the Palace of Versailles.Looking to connect with her hunting enthusiast husband, Marie Antoinette sought to learn horseback riding, but was told (particularly by her escort to France, the Count of Mercy-Argenteau) that it was far too dangerous. Fortunately, riding donkeys was deemed acceptable, so the court sought calm, pleasant donkeys for Marie Antoinette to ride. She grew so enamored of her donkey-accompanied treks into the woods that she would host processions into the forest as often as three times a week with onlookers gathered for the spectacle.The flattened historical view of Marie Antoinette as a puff-headed monster who loathed the poor obscures her generally kind, giving nature. She founded a home for unwed mothers, visited and gave food to poor families, and, during the 1787 famine, sold off the royal flatware to buy grain for those in need. Her generosity wasn’t solely institutional either. One story shows her jumping quickly to the aid of a vintner who was hit by her carriage, paying for his medical care, and supporting the family until he was able to work again.When the couple ascended to the throne, the country was already in deep trouble financially, and Louis XVI’s monetary policies failed while he sent massive amounts to support the American Revolution. Propaganda of the time that was typically aimed at kingly mistresses was aimed at Marie Antoinette (since Louis XVI had no mistresses), and populist presses depicted her as being even more extravagant than she was.Anti-royal propaganda of the era was so effective that we still believe it to this day, including the idea that Marie Antoinette’s response to the plight of the French not being able to afford bread was “Let them eat cake.” The next time a friend brings that up at a party (happens all the time, right?) you can bet all the money in your pocket that it’s not true. Or, at least, that there’s no record of her having ever said it. On the other hand, stories of oblivious royals suggesting richer pastries when bread’s not available date back to the 16th century, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau told a similar story about “a great princess” in Confessions, but it’s doubtful he was referring to the then-teenaged Marie Antionette.Marie Antoinette can’t escape all accusations of extravagance, though. Like other royals she had expensive tastes, but her construction of a replica of a peasant farmyard where she and her friends could dress up like shepherdesses and play at being poor farmhands was beyond the pale. Built in 1783, Le Petit Hameau (“The Little Hamlet”) looked like a real farm except the farmhouse interior’s opulence was fit for a Queen.Despite not consummating their marriage until seven years in, Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI eventually had four children: Marie Thérèse in 1778, the Dauphin Louis Joseph in 1781, Louis Charles in 1785, and Sophie in 1786. Sophie died before her first birthday, and Louis Joseph died at age 7 (probably from tuberculosis), but Marie Antoinette also adopted several children. They included the daughter of a maid who died, and the three children of an usher following his death. When some loyalists attempted to rescue her from the Revolutionary forces, she responded that she “could not have any pleasure in the world” if she abandoned her children.After Louis XVI was executed, Marie Antoinette—then called Widow Capet and prisoner 280—was imprisoned in the Conciergerie. Her friend Alexandre Gonsse de Rougeville visited her wearing two carnations, one of which concealed a note promising her bribe money to help her escape. He dropped it while in her cell and either it was picked up by the guards, or Marie Antoinette read it and scribbled an affirmative response that was then read by the guards. On the night of the attempted escape, the guards were bribed and Marie Antoinette was brought down to meet her rescuers, but one of the guards foiled their plan despite already having pocketed the bribe.For someone who lived such an extraordinary, lavish life, Marie Antoinette’s final words were profoundly humble. On her way to the guillotine, the very instrument of death that was used to kill her husband 10 months prior, she accidentally stepped on the executioner’s foot and said, “Pardon me, sir. I meant not to do it.”After her execution at 12:15 p.m. on October 16, 1793, her body was dropped into a mass grave in the Madeleine cemetery, which was closed the following year because it had reached capacity. During the Bourbon Restoration following the fall of Napoleon, Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI’s bodies were exhumed on January 18, 1815, with a royal burial at the Basilica of St. Denis just a few days later. Their remains are still there, but the Expiatory Chapel dedicated to them was designed in 1816 on the site at the Madeleine cemetery where they’d previously been unceremoniously interred.Louis Auguste de Bourbon and Marie Antoinette were married on May 16, 1770, in the royal chapel at the palace of Versailles. The next day, news that the union had not been consummated spread through the court. It was only the beginning; by all accounts, the marriage went unconsummated for seven years. By this time, Louis XV had died (of smallpox, in 1774) and his teenage grandson had acceded to the most powerful throne in Europe.After encouraging her daughter to "lavish more caresses" on her husband, Maria Theresa dispatched her son, Joseph II, as she put it, to "stir up this indolent spouse." Whatever he said apparently did the trick; in any case, the couple wrote to thank him. Many historians conclude that Louis suffered from phimosis, a physiological handicap that makes sex painful, and that he eventually had surgery to correct the problem.
Marie commissioned paintings of herself and her family in simple but stately dress, in the hope it would improve her reputation,On 4 June 1789, tragedy struck. The dauphin, Marie’s eldest son and all-important heir to the throne, died. The royal couple were overcome with grief for the child they had anticipated for so long, but the people were not. The death, usually cause for national mourning, was ignored by the people desperate to end the famine that was killing their own children. Marie was outraged, and when demand after demand poured through for reform, she urged the king to remain strong against them. For a woman who believed in the absolute power of monarchy, who had spent all her childhood and adult life in palaces, the revolution opposed and offended everything she believed in and had worked for.
Marie commissioned paintings of herself and her family in simple but stately dress, in the hope it would improve her reputation,On 4 June 1789, tragedy struck. The dauphin, Marie’s eldest son and all-important heir to the throne, died. The royal couple were overcome with grief for the child they had anticipated for so long, but the people were not. The death, usually cause for national mourning, was ignored by the people desperate to end the famine that was killing their own children. Marie was outraged, and when demand after demand poured through for reform, she urged the king to remain strong against them. For a woman who believed in the absolute power of monarchy, who had spent all her childhood and adult life in palaces, the revolution opposed and offended everything she believed in and had worked for.
The opposite might be said of her mother, Austrian empress Maria Theresa, who regarded her eight daughters as pawns on the European chessboard, to be married off to seal alliances. She barely paused in her paperwork to give birth on November 2, 1755, to her 15th child, In France, Louis Auguste, the 11-year-old grandson of French monarch Louis XV, became a prime matrimonial candidate when, in 1765, his father, Louis Ferdinand, died, making the grandson heir to the throne. Within months, 10-year-old Antoine was unofficially pledged to Louis to cement the union of the Hapsburgs and Bourbons—bitter rivals since the 16th century.Dispatched to Vienna in 1768 by Louis XV to tutor his grandson's future wife, the Abbé de Vermond encountered an easily distracted 13-year-old who could barely read or write her native German, much less French. But "her character, her heart, are excellent," he reported. He found her "more intelligent than has been generally supposed," but since "she is rather lazy and extremely frivolous, she is hard to teach." Blessed with thick, ash-blond hair, large, grayish blue eyes and a radiant complexion, Marie Antoinette possessed a delicate beauty, marred only slightly by a pouty Hapsburg lower lip.With the possible exception of the Corsican-born Napoleon, another outsider who overstayed his welcome, no one haunts French history like the Hapsburg princess. The frivolous, high-spirited tomboy who arrived at Versailles at age 14 was quickly embraced by her subjects. Yet by the time of her execution 23 years later, she was reviled.Italian was the only language that she could speak and write, although later, she learned to converse in French. She was ignorant of history, philosophy, even of her own native German. In after years she keenly felt her deficiencies, yet she nowhere discovers the weakness, so common to little minds, that of being envious or jealous of others more fortunate than herself in these things.When she was fifteen years old she was married to Louis Charles, heir apparent of the French throne. She was at this time very graceful and lovely, full of vivacity, and apt at repartee. She was tall, her movements easy and majestic, and there was something in the way she carried her head, in the spirited, animated expression of her countenance, in the very curve of her stately neck, that told you she could do and dare all that was heroic, if occasion required. Her prominent nose and cheek bones, though they marred the regularity of her features, added to the energetic expression of the face. Her hair was a light auburn color, and her eyes blue, frank, and sparkling. Her full lips, often parted by merry smiles, disclosed handsome teeth. Her high, broad forehead and arched eyebrows seemed suggestive of the ready mirthfulness that dimpled her cheeks, and the witty sayings that fell like pearls from her mouth.t was almost impossible to make a stiff woman of society of this free, wild, impulsive creature. She horrified ceremonious individuals by her reckless disregard of etiquette, disgusted intellectual circles by her ignorance, and prejudiced the mass of French people against her by her excessive frivolity and extravagance. She was, however, sincere and kind-hearted, and would not do what she considered wrong. Her husband resembled her only in the latter qualifications. He liked books and retirement, yet he was too wise to interfere with his wife’s pleasures, he had too much judgment and delicacy to say, “Behold my way of doing, act thou right, like myself.”Their marriage had been one of policy, and such unions have their advantages, for if the young couple have no opportunity to fancy that they are ill a grand passion, they likewise have not the unhappiness so often known, that of recovering from their delusion after living together a few weeks. The young husband kept on in his own quiet pursuits, studied his wife at a respectful distance; saw that she was lovable, and possessed many traits worthy of admiration, and he patiently waited for her love.After she had been married seven years, the gay butterfly, wearied of her artificial life, folded her wings and lovingly nestled close to her husband’s heart. He gladly welcomed her, and in return, gave her a strong, honest manly affection. Theirs had become the love that beautifies both palace and hovel. No element was in it that could mar its glory. No remorse with slow and deadly creep turned each sweetness into gall as soon as tasted. No warning conscience forbade pleasant reveries of the beloved, or the presence that was bliss.Their attachment was founded on perfect knowledge of each other, and respect for the real good in the character of each. They did not vex and annoy each other with the many trifles and shallow jealousies that some couples are so ingenious in finding. Their love was deep and sincere, a love that met with God’s approving smile, that ennobled, purified, and made fit for heaven. No more indefinable sadness, no more loneliness of heart, no more unsatisfied yearning was theirs, but a fullness, a completeness, a blessedness that rounded out all their capacities for the enjoyment of life. In such a love, what thousands of bright, fresh, new hopes spring up in the spirit; how all the capabilities of the soul for wisdom are strengthened! Rare indeed is such an attachment, although it is perhaps prized more than either wealth, fame, or knowledge by the majority of mankind.The queen valued it more than she did the costliest of her jewels, and fairly lived in the devotion of her husband. Beautiful children grew around this affectionate hearth, binding still closer together the hearts of their parents. No outward clouds could ever darken the soft, mellow, amber-tinted happiness of such a union. Danger would only more closely attach the two, and adverse fates would be felt only for the sake of the beloved. Thus they lived for twelve years without sorrow, except when they mourned the death of two of their children, and even such a bereavement loses half its poignancy when the heart is filled with conjugal affection.It is always a pleasure to contemplate the felicity of good people, and we will glance at them in one of their happiest moods. Marie Antoinette was seated in a fauteuil, in a luxuriously-furnished boudoir in her little palace, the Trianon within the bounds of Versailles. Her attire was a simple white dress, her hair was arranged in a plain and becoming manner, and she wore no jewelry. Her children were seated on each side of her. One arm was wound around her son, whilst her little daughter toyed with the disengaged hand. The king sat opposite them holding an open book, which he closed when his wife signified her wish to converse with him.
Marie Antoinette and her daughter,Marie dressed for success. She robed herself in a huge array of luxurious silk dresses, placed her dainty hands into scented gloves, stood strong in high heels and literally made herself taller with her towering pouf hairstyle. She broke court traditions, abandoning heavy make-up and replacing wide-hooped panniers with simple feminine dresses that complemented her full figure. Her costume was strategy for survival; it sent a loud and clear message – “I can do exactly what I please” – and this message filtered into her lifestyle. As her husband slept, she partied into the early hours, gossiping with friends and attending masked balls. She commissioned a painting of herself riding in the style of a man and she even dared to own a property independently of her husband. The young Austrian was making waves; if tradition wouldn’t accept her, then she would smash it to pieces.
Marie Antoinette and her daughter,Marie dressed for success. She robed herself in a huge array of luxurious silk dresses, placed her dainty hands into scented gloves, stood strong in high heels and literally made herself taller with her towering pouf hairstyle. She broke court traditions, abandoning heavy make-up and replacing wide-hooped panniers with simple feminine dresses that complemented her full figure. Her costume was strategy for survival; it sent a loud and clear message – “I can do exactly what I please” – and this message filtered into her lifestyle. As her husband slept, she partied into the early hours, gossiping with friends and attending masked balls. She commissioned a painting of herself riding in the style of a man and she even dared to own a property independently of her husband. The young Austrian was making waves; if tradition wouldn’t accept her, then she would smash it to pieces.
Whatever Marie Antoinette's faults in addition to her renowned extravagance, she was unable to comprehend the French people's thirst for democracy—she did not respond to news that starving Parisians had no bread by saying: "Let them eat cake." According to Fraser, this monumental indifference was first ascribed, probably also apocryphally, to Maria Theresa, the Spanish princess who married Louis XIV more than a century before Marie Antoinette set foot in France. Still, for more than two centuries, historians have debated whether Marie Antoinette bore the blame for her fate or was a victim of circumstance. Although she remained a fervent supporter of absolute royal power and an unrepentant enemy of democratic ideals, her many acts of compassion included tending to a peasant gored by a stag and taking in a poor orphan boy and overseeing his education. "She was so happy at doing good and hated to miss any opportunity of doing so," wrote Madame Campan, the First Lady of the Bedchamber. The softhearted queen, it seems, hungered more for tenderness than power.The warm summer air was tempered by a gay, breezy, frolicsome wind, which bore on its fleecy wings an echo, as it were, of some delicious, dreamy, poetic refrain. It playfully touched the queen’s fair brow, and the loose locks of her children. She looked out of the window into the tranquil blue above, and gave herself up to the influence of the scene. There are in this world moments of such exquisite rapture, when it seems as if the heavens were bent low, and the whole world wears an aspect of such new, rare, and divine loveliness, that we scarcely breathe with blissful awe; thought is suspended, and we are borne far above reality by waves of fanciful, ecstatic emotion.Perhaps this is one of the blessings reserved for the saints in heaven, and we are permitted such foretastes of bliss in order to convince us how greatly celestial felicity can excel the beatitude of every other. For such moments, although they make life very delightful, likewise preach to us eloquently of the joys of a heavenly existence. The queen felt this as she gazed out on the sailing clouds, with their quaintly-changing shapes. After a few moments, she exclaimed:“My dear Louis, how potent must be the charm of your book, when it can win you from all the living, wonderful beauty so freely displayed in these delightful views from our window.”“I thank you for what you say, with all my heart, for I know that you are sincere,” replied Marie Antoinette, as a look of wifely tenderness irradiated her expressive face. “It is so delightful,” she continued, “to have one true, noble, loving friend in this false, hollow, artificial sphere of ours.”“I’m glad you find it so,” returned tile king, with voice and eyes that bespoke grateful emotion.“Is not this your experience, likewise?” she asked with simple frankness.“It is,” responded the husband. “I was a stranger to real happiness until I knew a true affection for yourself, and received the same from you; but then I never could make an admired and attractive figure in any gay assembly.”“Thanks for your implied compliment to myself,” laughingly rejoined the queen. “I own that I find plenty of fun, and a degree of enjoyment in amusing society, but it is never deep, satisfying happiness like the quiet hours I spend with you and the children. These awaken all that is noble in my nature; whilst amongst frivolous persons I only see something to make me laugh; and you will pardon me, when I tell you that people are very comical in the French court.”“Their manners are so prim, not at all like the graceful freedom of our gay courtiers in Vienna. Many of the French ladies seem like mechanical machines that have been patented, and warranted to move, act, and look in just such a way.”The French Revolution of 1789 began, or rather that most dreadful of terrors, the reign of cowardly mobs. For mobs are always cowardly; started in the first place by one or two cowards, then augmented by ignorant, brutal human animals, ragged, idle, filthy, and drunken, that arm themselves with whatever can maim or kill, and creep from low, dirty dens, like loathsome serpents bent on destruction.The queen urged the king to take decided steps to at once quell the rebellion. But he was of opinion that gentle means were best. She was advised to fly from the scene of danger with her children, but she refused to desert her husband.The mob, emboldened by scarcely any opposition, hating the queen for imaginary crimes, and because she was an Austrian, crowded around the palace at Versailles, butchered her soldiers, and called upon her to show herself in the balcony. A friend threw himself before her, entreated her not thus to risk her life, and offered to go in her place. She refused his generous protection, took her two children, Marie Theresa, who was eleven, and Louis Charles, who was eight years old, and obeyed the call of the rabble. She thought to move their compassion at the sight of these tender innocents. She had yet to learn that pity does not exist in a mob. Hoarse, rough, brutal voices shouted, “Away with the children!” Without any hesitation or a change of countenance, she sent them away, and stood alone, sublime in her fearlessness. Her heart swelled with an heroic impulse of which the rude, ruffianly concourse before her never dreamed. That noble woman shrank not nor quailed from what was in all probability certain and sudden death. Her hands were clasped, her eyes lifted upwards, and an expression of lofty and serene elevation was in her face. There was a moment of intense stillness. Has God, in looking down on this mixed world, ever witnessed a braver act than that of the queen, who stood there prepared to give herself a ransom for her family? Would not even angels feel mute admiration? and would it be strange if, for one instant, the music of the spheres were stilled? Immovable as marble stood the fair, heroic queen.The misguided crowd were abashed. They admired a courage that would have been impossible in any of their number; and suddenly, hardly realizing what they did, they screamed, “Live the queen! live the queen!”The effect of Marie Antoinette’s heroism was of short duration on these brutal creatures. They demanded that Louis XVI. should return with them to the city. The faithful wife would not for a moment forsake her husband in his peril. She accompanied him with her children. Thirty thousand creatures surrounded their carriage— human animals, incomparably more cruel and bloodthirsty than hungry wolves. Their fierce eyes gleamed with malignity; a demoniac expression was on their hardened visages; their coarse, irregular features grew every moment more distorted; they were like a band of fiends let loose from tile infernal regions. And these creatures wore the forms of men and women. They sang obscene songs to insult the queen, and their choruses were maniacal laughter, more appalling than the yells of wild beasts could be. They shrieked, they howled, they murdered the friends of the royal couple, and held the ghastly heads on pikes before the windows of the imperial carriage. The brave queen sat close beside her husband, her boy on her knee, and with a calm voice soothed his childish terrors.
The storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789 was a key moment of the French Revolution.In her execution, Marie displayed the courage and markings of a true queen until the end. But that was the problem exactly: she was a queen in every sense of the word. She was born to be a queen, trained to be a queen, had performed her duties as queen throughout her entire life – but France didn’t want a queen. Her lifeless body was dragged from the guillotine and tossed in a cart and her head was thrown between her legs. Her remains were dumped in an unmarked grave, but the memory of Marie Antoinette would live on as France’s hated, but eternal, queen
The storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789 was a key moment of the French Revolution.In her execution, Marie displayed the courage and markings of a true queen until the end. But that was the problem exactly: she was a queen in every sense of the word. She was born to be a queen, trained to be a queen, had performed her duties as queen throughout her entire life – but France didn’t want a queen. Her lifeless body was dragged from the guillotine and tossed in a cart and her head was thrown between her legs. Her remains were dumped in an unmarked grave, but the memory of Marie Antoinette would live on as France’s hated, but eternal, queenOn 4 June 1789, tragedy struck. The dauphin, Marie’s eldest son and all-important heir to the throne, died. The royal couple were overcome with grief for the child they had anticipated for so long, but the people were not. The death, usually cause for national mourning, was ignored by the people desperate to end the famine that was killing their own children. Marie was outraged, and when demand after demand poured through for reform, she urged the king to remain strong against them. For a woman who believed in the absolute power of monarchy, who had spent all her childhood and adult life in palaces, the revolution opposed and offended everything she believed in and had worked for. Now she was ready to use force to get the rebellious masses to understand.The queen did not understand for one moment the justifications or hopes that underpinned the revolution. All that she witnessed was the brutality and murderous tactics of its leaders, and she wanted to blast every trace of it from existence. What she saw was not liberty, but rebellion and chaos.Marie decided that the revolution must be crushed with mercenary Germanic troops. She believed, deep down, that the people were good natured and would respect the authority of the monarchy when faced with force. But she was wrong. As news of an armed attack swept through Paris, the revolutionaries took their cause a step further, stormed the Bastille and turned the streets red with blood.As royalists fled Paris for their lives, the woman most at risk remained with her husband and was forced to stand by as his power was signed away to the National Assembly that was now ruling Paris. But this was not enough for the outraged population. The king had hoped that by agreeing to demands and staying at the palace in Versailles he could keep a low profile until the revolution died down, but on 5 October a mob of outraged women marched from Paris to Versailles. They had one aim in mind, and navigated their way through the palace to Marie’s private suite. Fuelled by revolutionary passion, they cut down their foes and sacrificed their own lives to confront Madame Déficit directly.However, the cries of support did not continue as the royal family was transported from Versailles to their essential captivity in the Tuileries Palace in Paris. Marie sunk down as she sat in the carriage, hoping to avoid the glare and insults of the uncontrollable mob. She loathed the palace. Though it had housed royalty, she had been forced there against her will and in complete humiliation. She was furious that the entire world would now know that the divine right of kings had been challenged and, like a petulant child, refused to do anything that might improve her popularity.For Marie, the truth was clear – the mob had won, and she refused to remain a prisoner of a force of chaos. After two painful years of her powers being sapped, Marie had had enough and focused on escaping Paris. In 1791, the royal family, disguised as common travellers, were smuggled away in a carriage. The coach travelled some 200 miles, though it was anything but subtle. The queen had refused to travel without all her comforts, and the heavy, slow carriage with its extra horses attracted attention. Their faces were among the most recognisable in the land, and the escapees were inevitably discovered. Disgraced and humiliated, they were forced to make the long journey back to Paris. Dusty, weary and aged beyond her 35 years, as Marie travelled through the crowds to her prison she was spat on, beaten and pushed by the crowds. The monarchs had chosen to abandon their people, so the people made a decision in kind – the monarchy had to go.The queen knew it was useless to try to find sympathetic ears in France. With the revolution out of control and the hatred against her reaching fever pitch, she appealed to her powerful relations. She pushed her brother, Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II, and his son Francis II to threaten France on her behalf. But this led to France declaring war on Austria on 20 April 1792. Not only was the ‘Austrian woman’ hated, but now she was also an enemy. Foreign armies poured into France, threatening the people that if any harm was to come to the royal family, they would pay with their lives. But this was a crowd as unrelenting as their queen.Marie’s actions had brought war to France, and the people brought war to her. On 10 August, an armed mob stormed into the palace, forcing the king and queen into a tiny reporter’s box. Under heckles and the glare of the crowd, they stood by helplessly as the 900 Swiss guards charged with defending them were massacred. All their precious objects were gathered and piled on desks as they were forced to listen to the debates that declared a republic and ended the monarchy.In December, Louis, Marie’s ever indecisive and conservative husband, was found guilty of high treason and sentenced to death. A month later he was executed. Although the royal couple had always been a mismatched pair, and rumours of Marie seeking comfort elsewhere may not have been entirely untrue, he had been the father of her children, her companion for more than 20 years and her only security in time of terror and uncertainty. There is no doubt that his execution shocked and saddened Marie to her core.She had always found comfort in her children, but in July, despite her pleas, her beloved son was taken from her, and in September she was taken from the only family she had left – her daughter and sister in law. She was condemned to a month of horrific solitary confinement in a dank underground cell in the Conciergerie. Under constant surveillance, she had no chance of escape, but she would not have to wait long to discover her fate.On 14 October, Marie was taken to face her enemies at the Revolutionary Tribunal. The charges against her were more an attack on her person than her politics; the headlines that had filled the libelles were presented as fact. They accused her of organising orgies in Versailles, orchestrating the massacre of the Swiss guards, sending France’s money to Austria and, most appalling of all, sexually abusing her own son. At this she refused to respond, simply uttering: “If I make no reply, it is because I cannot. I appeal to all mothers in this audience.” Her unbelievable defiance and strength despite the horrors she had endured was remarkable, but the verdict had been decided before she even entered the room. Guilty.
