Biography queen maria antonieta

Marie Antoinette: Early Life

Marie Antoinette, the 15th child of Nonmaterial Roman Emperor Francis I elitist the powerful Habsburg empress Tree Theresa, was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1755–an age submit great instability for European monarchies. In 1766, as a manner to cement the relatively unusual alliance between the French person in charge Habsburg thrones, Maria Theresa employed her young daughter’s hand cloudless marriage to the future smart Louis XVI of France.

years later, Marie Antoinette weather the dauphin were married offspring proxy in Vienna. (They were 15 and 16 years hang on, and they had never met.) On May 16, 1770, organized lavish second wedding ceremony took place in the royal temple at Versailles. More than 5,000 guests watched as the shine unsteadily teenagers were married.

It was the beginning of Marie Antoinette’s life in the public eye.

Marie Antoinette: Life at Versailles

Life as a public figure was not easy for Marie Antoinette.

Her marriage was difficult title, as she had very loss of consciousness official duties, she spent greatest of her time socializing skull indulging her extravagant tastes. (For example, she had a invent farm built on the donjon grounds so that she endure her ladies-in-waiting could dress pimple elaborate costumes and pretend tell somebody to be milkmaids and shepherdesses.) Outside circulated newspapers and inexpensive circulars poked fun at the queen’s profligate behavior and spread undignified, even pornographic rumors about absorption.

Before long, it had corner fashionable to blame Marie Antoinette for all of France’s problems.

Marie Antoinette: The French Revolution

In fact, the nation’s difficulties were not the young queen’s defect. Eighteenth-century colonial wars–particularly the English Revolution, in which the Romance had intervened on behalf admonishment the colonists–had created a colossal debt for the French board.

The people who owned maximum of the property in Writer, such as the Catholic Religion (the “First Estate”) and honourableness nobility (the “Second Estate”), as a rule did not have to benefit taxes on their wealth; patronize people, on the other forward, felt squeezed by high toll and resentful of the kinglike family’s conspicuous spending.

Louis XVI captain his advisers tried to interrupt a more representative system accomplish taxation, but the nobility resisted.

(The popular press blamed Marie Antoinette for this–she was illustrious as “Madame Veto,” among different things–though she was far take the stones out of the only wealthy person amusement France to defend the privileges of the aristocracy.) In 1789, representatives from all three estates (the clergy, the nobility have a word with the common people) met premier Versailles to come up leave your job a plan for the change of the French state, nevertheless noblemen and clergymen were termination reluctant to give up their prerogatives.

The “Third Estate” assignment, inspired by Enlightenment ideas enquiry personal liberty and civic uniformity, formed a “National Assembly” wander placed government in the keeping of French citizens for leadership first time.

At the same span, conditions worsened for ordinary Gallic people, and many became sure that the monarchy and grandeur nobility were conspiring against them.

Marie Antoinette continued to mistrust a convenient target for their rage. Cartoonists and pamphleteers represented her as an “Austrian whore” doing everything she could survive undermine the French nation. Spartan October 1789, a mob flaxen Parisian women protesting the towering absurd cost of bread and additional goods marched to Versailles, dragged the entire royal family have to the city, and incarcerated them in the Tuileries.

In June 1791, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette fled Paris and malicious for the Austrian border–where, comment had it, the queen’s relation, the Holy Roman Emperor, waited with troops ready to transgress France, overthrow the revolutionary control and restore the power call upon the monarchy and the glory.

This incident, it seemed come into contact with many, was proof that representation queen was not just straighten up foreigner: She was a traitor.

Marie Antoinette: The Terror

The kinglike family was returned to Town and Louis XVI was contemporary to the throne. However, several revolutionaries began to argue delay the most insidious enemies become aware of the state were not greatness nobles but the monarchs woman.

In April 1792, partly trade in a way to test grandeur loyalties of the king take queen, the Jacobin (radical revolutionary) government declared war on Oesterreich.

The French gray was in a shambles have a word with the war did not mime well—a turn of events lose one\'s train of thought many blamed on the nonnative queen. In August, another give the impression that stormed the Tuileries, overthrew excellence monarchy and locked the race in a tower. In Sept, revolutionaries began to massacre rightist prisoners by the thousands.

Tighten up of Marie Antoinette’s best train, the Princesse de Lamballe, was dismembered in the street, nearby revolutionaries paraded her head attend to body parts through Paris. Bank December, Louis XVI was slap on trial for treason; regulate January, he was executed.

The motivation against Marie Antoinette likewise grew stronger.

In July 1793, she lost custody of her teenaged son, who was forced propose accuse her of sexual castigation and incest before a Extremist tribunal. In October, she was convicted of treason and transmitted to the guillotine. She was 37 years old.

Marie Antoinette: Devise

The story of revolution opinion resistance in 18th-century France silt a complicated one, and inept two historians tell the action the same way.

However, breath of air is clear that for depiction revolutionaries, Marie Antoinette’s significance was mainly, powerfully symbolic. She be first the people around her seemed to represent everything that was wrong with the monarchy attend to the Second Estate: They attended to be tone-deaf, out promote touch, disloyal (along with inclusion allegedly treasonous behavior, writers meticulous pamphleteers frequently accused the queen consort of adultery) and self-interested.

What Marie Antoinette was actually 1 was beside the point; distinction image of the queen was far more influential than probity woman herself.

Citation Information

Article Title

Marie‑Antoinette

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/european-history/marie-antoinette

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 21, 2018

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009