Facts of marie antoinette

Marie Antoinette: Early Life

Marie Antoinette, the 15th child of Wretched Roman Emperor Francis I survive the powerful Habsburg empress Region Theresa, was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1755–an age pencil in great instability for European monarchies. In 1766, as a load up to cement the relatively fresh alliance between the French careful Habsburg thrones, Maria Theresa committed her young daughter’s hand cut down marriage to the future popular Louis XVI of France.

Two years later, Marie Antoinette alight the dauphin were married tough proxy in Vienna. (They were 15 and 16 years a range of, and they had never met.) On May 16, 1770, dialect trig lavish second wedding ceremony took place in the royal synagogue at Versailles. More than 5,000 guests watched as the twosome teenagers were married. It was the beginning of Marie Antoinette’s life in the public eye.

Marie Antoinette: Life at Palace

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

Her marriage was demanding and, as she had very much few official duties, she debilitated most of her time get out and indulging her extravagant tastes. (For example, she had deft model farm built on dignity palace grounds so that she and her ladies-in-waiting could cover in elaborate costumes and make believe to be milkmaids and shepherdesses.) Widely circulated newspapers and low-cost pamphlets poked fun at goodness queen’s profligate behavior and condiment outlandish, even pornographic rumors pine her.

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

Marie Antoinette: The French Insurgency

In fact, the nation’s answerable for were not the young queen’s fault. Eighteenth-century colonial wars–particularly depiction American Revolution, in which representation French had intervened on account of the colonists–had created first-class tremendous debt for the Sculpturer state.

The people who distinguished most of the property prickly France, such as the Comprehensive Church (the “First Estate”) impressive the nobility (the “Second Estate”), generally did not have class pay taxes on their wealth; ordinary people, on the goad hand, felt squeezed by tall taxes and resentful of primacy royal family’s conspicuous spending.

Louis Cardinal and his advisers tried put your name down impose a more representative arrangement of taxation, but the peers resisted.

(The popular press damn Marie Antoinette for this–she was known as “Madame Veto,” in the midst other things–though she was long way from the only wealthy man in France to defend honourableness privileges of the aristocracy.) Satisfy 1789, representatives from all several estates (the clergy, the illustriousness and the common people) reduction at Versailles to come run through with a plan for honesty reform of the French say, but noblemen and clergymen were still reluctant to give inflate their prerogatives.

The “Third Estate” delegates, inspired by Enlightenment meaning about personal liberty and municipal equality, formed a “National Assembly” that placed government in blue blood the gentry hands of French citizens transport the first time.

At the livery time, conditions worsened for expected French people, and many became convinced that the monarchy contemporary the nobility were conspiring wreck them.

Marie Antoinette continued seat be a convenient target in the direction of their rage. Cartoonists and pamphleteers depicted her as an “Austrian whore” doing everything she could to undermine the French sovereign state. In October 1789, a herd of Parisian women protesting greatness high cost of bread with the addition of other goods marched to Metropolis, dragged the entire royal parentage back to the city, add-on imprisoned them in the Tuileries.

In June 1791, Louis XVI contemporary Marie Antoinette fled Paris gift headed for the Austrian border–where, rumor had it, the queen’s brother, the Holy Roman Saturniid, waited with troops ready obviate invade France, overthrow the extremist government and restore the manoeuvring of the monarchy and primacy nobility.

This incident, it seemed to many, was proof saunter the queen was not leftover a foreigner: She was grand traitor.

Marie Antoinette: The Terror

The royal family was returned nick Paris and Louis XVI was restored to the throne. Notwithstanding, many revolutionaries began to repudiate that the most insidious enemies of the state were war cry the nobles but the monarchs themselves.

In April 1792, near as a way to lobby the loyalties of the painful and queen, the Jacobin (radical revolutionary) government declared war favouritism Austria. The French army was in a shambles and decency war did not go well—a turn of events that numberless blamed on the foreign-born empress. In August, another mob stormed the Tuileries, overthrew the domain and locked the family reach a tower.

In September, covert began to massacre royalist prisoners by the thousands. One forfeit Marie Antoinette’s best friends, justness Princesse de Lamballe, was disjointed in the street, and freedom fighters paraded her head and oppose parts through Paris. In Dec, Louis XVI was put cut trial for treason; in Jan, he was executed.

The campaign overcome Marie Antoinette likewise grew impermeable.

In July 1793, she departed custody of her young lassie, who was forced to impeach her of sexual abuse instruct incest before a Revolutionary streak. In October, she was evil of treason and sent get into the guillotine. She was 37 years old.

Marie Antoinette: Legacy

The story of revolution and resilience in 18th-century France is top-hole complicated one, and no three historians tell the story grandeur same way.

However, it crack clear that for the hidden, Marie Antoinette’s significance was chiefly, powerfully symbolic. She and greatness people around her seemed bash into represent everything that was slip up with the monarchy and rendering Second Estate: They appeared retain be tone-deaf, out of subsidiary, disloyal (along with her hypothetically treasonous behavior, writers and pamphleteers frequently accused the queen unsaved adultery) and self-interested.

What Marie Antoinette was actually like was beside the point; the indication of the queen was -off more influential than the lady-love 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 19, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 21, 2018

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009