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Marie Antoinette

January 10, 2023

For other uses, see Marie Antoinette (disambiguation).

Marie Antoinette Josèphe Jeanne (/ˌæntwəˈnɛt, ˌɒ̃t-/;[1] French: [maʁi ɑ̃twanɛt] (listen); née Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was the last queen of France before the French Revolution. She was born an Archduchess of Austria, and was the penultimate child and youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Francis I. She became dauphine of France in May 1770 at age 14 upon her marriage to Louis-Auguste, heir apparent to the French throne. On 10 May 1774, her husband ascended the throne as Louis XVI and she became queen.

Marie Antoinette
Portrait of Marie Antoinette, 1775
Queen consort of France
Tenure10 May 1774 – 21 September 1792
Born(1755-11-02)2 November 1755
Schoenbrunn Palace, Vienna, Archduchy of Austria, Holy Roman Empire
Died16 October 1793(1793-10-16) (aged 37)
Place de la Révolution, Paris, French First Republic
Cause of deathExecution
Burial21 January 1815
Basilica of St Denis
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1770; d. 1793)​
Issue
Names
  • German: Maria Antonia Josefa Johanna
  • French: Marie Antoinette Josèphe Jeanne
HouseHabsburg-Lorraine
FatherFrancis I, Holy Roman Emperor
MotherMaria Theresa
ReligionRoman Catholicism
Signature

Coat of arms of Marie Antoinette of Austria

Marie Antoinette's position at court improved when, after eight years of marriage, she started having children. She became increasingly unpopular among the people, however, with the French libelles accusing her of being profligate, promiscuous, allegedly having illegitimate children, and harboring sympathies for France's perceived enemies—particularly her native Austria. The false accusations of the Affair of the Diamond Necklace damaged her reputation further. During the Revolution, she became known as Madame Déficit because the country's financial crisis was blamed on her lavish spending and her opposition to the social and financial reforms of Turgot and Necker.

Several events were linked to Marie Antoinette during the Revolution after the government had placed the royal family under house arrest in the Tuileries Palace in October 1789. The June 1791 attempted flight to Varennes and her role in the War of the First Coalition had disastrous effects on French popular opinion. On 10 August 1792, the attack on the Tuileries forced the royal family to take refuge at the Assembly, and they were imprisoned in the Temple Prison on 13 August. On 21 September 1792, the monarchy was abolished. Louis XVI was executed by guillotine on 21 January 1793. Marie Antoinette's trial began on 14 October 1793; she was convicted two days later by the Revolutionary Tribunal of high treason and executed, also by guillotine, at the Place de la Révolution.

Early life (1755–1770)

 
Watercolour of Archduchess Maria Antonia at the age of 7 (portrait by Jean-Étienne Liotard, 1762)

Maria Antonia was born on 2 November 1755 at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Austria, at 8:30 in the evening.[2] She was the youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa, ruler of the Habsburg Empire, and her husband Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor.[3] Her godparents were Joseph I and Mariana Victoria, King and Queen of Portugal; Archduke Joseph and Archduchess Maria Anna acted as proxies for their newborn sister.[4][5] Maria Antonia was born on All Souls' Day, a Catholic day of mourning, and during her childhood her birthday was instead celebrated the day before, on All Saints' Day, due to the connotations of the date. Shortly after her birth she was placed under the care of the governess of the imperial children, Countess von Brandeis.[6] Maria Antonia was raised together with her sister, Maria Carolina, who was three years older, and with whom she had a lifelong close relationship.[7] Maria Antonia had a difficult but ultimately loving relationship with her mother,[8] who referred to her as "the little Madame Antoine".

Maria Antonia spent her formative years between the Hofburg Palace and Schönbrunn, the imperial summer residence in Vienna,[5] where on 13 October 1762, when she was seven, she met Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, two months her junior and a child prodigy.[9][5][6][10] Despite the private tutoring she received, the results of her schooling were less than satisfactory.[11] At the age of 10 she could not write correctly in German or in any language commonly used at court, such as French or Italian,[5] and conversations with her were stilted.[12][5] Under the teaching of Christoph Willibald Gluck, Maria Antonia developed into a good musician. She learned to play the harp,[11] the harpsichord and the flute. She sang during the family's evening gatherings, as she was known to have had a beautiful voice.[13] She also excelled at dancing, had "exquisite" poise, and loved dolls.[14]

Later in 1768, Mathieu-Jacques de Vermond was dispatched by Louis XV to tutor Maria Antonia as she became the future wife to Louis XVI. Serving as an educator, Abbe de Vermond found her to be unsatisfactorily educated and lacking in, at the age of 13, important writing skills. Nonetheless, he also complimented her stating "her character, her heart, are excellent". He found her "more intelligent than has been generally supposed," but since "she is rather lazy and extremely frivolous, she is hard to teach".[15]

Dauphine of France (1770–1774)

 
Portrait of Archduchess Maria Antonia at the age of 13 (by Joseph Ducreux, 1769)

Following the Seven Years' War and the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756, Empress Maria Theresa decided to end hostilities with her longtime enemy, King Louis XV of France. Their common desire to destroy the ambitions of Prussia and Great Britain, and to secure a definitive peace between their respective countries led them to seal their alliance with a marriage: on 7 February 1770, Louis XV formally requested the hand of Maria Antonia for his eldest surviving grandson and heir, Louis-Auguste, Duc de Berry and Dauphin of France.[5]

Maria Antonia formally renounced her rights to Habsburg domains, and on 19 April she was married by proxy to the Dauphin of France at the Augustinian Church in Vienna, with her brother Archduke Ferdinand standing in for the dauphin.[16][17][5] On 14 May she met her husband at the edge of the forest of Compiègne. Upon her arrival in France, she adopted the French version of her name: Marie Antoinette. A further ceremonial wedding took place on 16 May 1770 in the Palace of Versailles and, after the festivities, the day ended with the ritual bedding.[18][19] The couple's longtime failure to consummate the marriage plagued the reputations of both Louis-Auguste and Marie Antoinette for the next seven years.[20]

The initial reaction to the marriage between Marie Antoinette and Louis-Auguste was mixed. On the one hand, the dauphine was beautiful, personable and well-liked by the common people. Her first official appearance in Paris on 8 June 1773 was a resounding success. On the other hand, those opposed to the alliance with Austria had a difficult relationship with Marie Antoinette, as did others who disliked her for more personal or petty reasons.[21]

 
Queen Marie Antoinette of France, at the age of 16 years. The pastel portrait was drawn in Versailles and then sent to Austria to her mother, Empress Maria Theresia. Painted by Joseph Kranzinger.

Madame du Barry proved a troublesome foe to the new dauphine. She was Louis XV's mistress and had considerable political influence over him. In 1770 she was instrumental in ousting Étienne François, Duc de Choiseul, who had helped orchestrate the Franco-Austrian alliance and Marie Antoinette's marriage,[22] and in exiling his sister, the Duchess de Gramont, one of Marie Antoinette's ladies-in-waiting. Marie Antoinette was persuaded by her husband's aunts to refuse to acknowledge du Barry, which some saw as a political blunder that jeopardized Austria's interests at the French court. Marie Antoinette's mother and the Austrian ambassador to France, Comte de Mercy-Argenteau, who sent the empress secret reports on Marie Antoinette's behaviour, pressured Marie Antoinette to speak to Madame du Barry, which she grudgingly agreed to do on New Year's Day 1772.[23] She merely commented to her, "There are a lot of people at Versailles today", but it was enough for Madame du Barry, who was satisfied with this recognition, and the crisis passed.[24] Two days after the death of Louis XV in 1774, Louis XVI exiled du Barry to the Abbaye de Pont-aux-Dames in Meaux, pleasing both his wife and aunts.[25][26][27][28][29] Two and a half years later, at the end of October 1776, Madame du Barry's exile ended and she was allowed to return to her beloved château at Louveciennes, but she was never permitted to return to Versailles.[30]

Queen of France and Navarre (1774–1791)

Early years (1774–1778)

Upon the death of Louis XV on 10 May 1774 the dauphin ascended the throne as King Louis XVI of France and Navarre with Marie Antoinette as his royal consort. At the outset, the new queen had limited political influence with her husband, who, with the support of his two most important ministers, Chief Minister Maurepas and Foreign Minister Vergennes, blocked several of her candidates from assuming important positions, including Choiseul.[31] The queen did play a decisive role in the disgrace and exile of the most powerful of Louis XV's ministers, the Duc d'Aiguillon.[32]

On 24 May 1774, two weeks after the death of Louis XV, the king gave his wife the Petit Trianon, a small château on the grounds of Versailles that had been built by Louis XV for his mistress, Madame de Pompadour. Louis XVI allowed Marie Antoinette to renovate it to suit her own tastes; soon rumours circulated that she had plastered the walls with gold and diamonds.[33]

The queen spent heavily on fashion, luxuries, and gambling, though the country was facing a grave financial crisis and the population was suffering. Rose Bertin created dresses for her, and hairstyles such as poufs, up to three feet (90 cm) high, and the panache—a spray of feather plumes. She and her court also adopted the English fashion of dresses made of indienne (a material banned in France from 1686 until 1759 to protect local French woolen and silk industries), percale and muslin.[34][35] By the time of the Flour War of 1775, a series of riots (due to the high price of flour and bread) had damaged her reputation among the general public. Eventually, Marie Antoinette's reputation was no better than that of the favourites of previous kings. Many French people were beginning to blame her for the degrading economic situation, suggesting the country's inability to pay off its debt was the result of her wasting the crown's money.[36] In her correspondence, Marie Antoinette's mother, Maria Theresa, expressed concern over her daughter's spending habits, citing the civil unrest it was beginning to cause.[37]

As early as 1774, Marie Antoinette had begun to befriend some of her male admirers, such as the Baron de Besenval, the Duc de Coigny, and Count Valentin Esterházy,[38][39] and also formed deep friendships with various ladies at court. Most noted was Marie-Louise, Princesse de Lamballe, related to the royal family through her marriage into the Penthièvre family. On 19 September 1774 she appointed her superintendent of her household,[40][41] an appointment she soon transferred to her new favourite, the Duchesse de Polignac.

In 1774, she took under her patronage her former music teacher, the German opera composer Christoph Willibald Gluck, who remained in France until 1779.[42][43]

Motherhood, changes at court and intervention in politics (1778–1781)

Amidst the atmosphere of a wave of libelles, the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II came to France incognito, using the name Comte de Falkenstein, for a six-week visit during which he toured Paris extensively and was a guest at Versailles. He met his sister and her husband on 18 April 1777 at the Château de la Muette, and spoke frankly to his brother-in-law, curious as to why the royal marriage had not been consummated, arriving at the conclusion that no obstacle to the couple's conjugal relations existed save the queen's lack of interest and the king's unwillingness to exert himself.[44] In a letter to his brother Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, Joseph II described them as "a couple of complete blunderers."[45] He disclosed to Leopold that the inexperienced—then still only 22-year-old—Louis XVI had confided in him the course of action he had been undertaking in their marital bed; saying Louis XVI "introduces the member," but then "stays there without moving for about two minutes," withdraws without having completed the act and "bids goodnight."[46]

Suggestions that Louis suffered from phimosis, which was relieved by circumcision, have been discredited.[47] Nevertheless, following Joseph's intervention, the marriage was finally consummated in August 1777.[48] Eight months later, in April 1778, it was suspected that the queen was pregnant, which was officially announced on 16 May.[49] Marie Antoinette's daughter, Marie-Thérèse Charlotte, Madame Royale, was born at Versailles on 19 December 1778.[8][50][51] The child's paternity was contested in the libelles, as were all her children's.[52][53]

In the middle of the queen's pregnancy two events occurred which had a profound effect on her later life: the return of her friend, the Swedish diplomat Count Axel von Fersen[54] to Versailles for two years, and her brother's claim to the throne of Bavaria, contested by the Habsburg monarchy and Prussia.[55] Marie Antoinette pleaded with her husband for the French to intercede on behalf of Austria. The Peace of Teschen, signed on 13 May 1779, ended the brief conflict, with the queen imposing French mediation at her mother's insistence and Austria's gaining a territory of at least 100,000 inhabitants—a strong retreat from the early French position which was hostile towards Austria. This gave the impression, partially justified, that the queen had sided with Austria against France.[56][57]

Meanwhile, the queen began to institute changes in court customs. Some of them met with the disapproval of the older generation, such as the abandonment of heavy make-up and the popular wide-hooped panniers.[58] The new fashion called for a simpler feminine look, typified first by the rustic robe à la polonaise style and later by the gaulle, a layered muslin dress Marie Antoinette wore in a 1783 Vigée-Le Brun portrait.[59] In 1780 she began to participate in amateur plays and musicals in a theatre built for her by Richard Mique at the Petit Trianon.[60]

 
Marie Antoinette en chemise, portrait of the queen in a muslin dress (by Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, 1783). This portrait was criticized for showing improperly informal attire for a queen[61]

Repayment of the French debt remained a difficult problem, further exacerbated by Vergennes and also by Marie Antoinette's prodding[62] Louis XVI to involve France in Great Britain's war with its North American colonies. The primary motive for the queen's involvement in political affairs in this period may arguably have had more to do with court factionalism than any true interest on her part in politics themselves,[63] but she played an important role in aiding the American Revolution by securing Austrian and Russian support for France, which resulted in the establishment of the First League of Armed Neutrality that stopped Britain's attack, and by weighing in decisively for the nomination of Philippe Henri, Marquis de Ségur as Minister of War and Charles Eugène Gabriel de La Croix as Secretary of the Navy in 1780, who helped George Washington defeat the British in the American Revolutionary War, which ended in 1783.[64]

In 1783 the queen played a decisive role in the nomination of Charles Alexandre de Calonne, a close friend of the Polignacs, as Controller-General of Finances, and of the Baron de Breteuil as the Minister of the Royal Household, making him perhaps the strongest and most conservative minister of the reign.[65] The result of these two nominations was that Marie Antoinette's influence became paramount in government, and the new ministers rejected any major change to the structure of the old regime. More than that, the decree by de Ségur, the minister of war, requiring four quarterings of nobility as a condition for the appointment of officers, blocked the access of commoners to important positions in the armed forces, challenging the concept of equality, one of the main grievances and causes of the French Revolution.[66][67]

Marie Antoinette's second pregnancy ended in a miscarriage early in July 1779, as confirmed by letters between the queen and her mother, although some historians believed that she may have experienced bleeding related to an irregular menstrual cycle, which she mistook for a lost pregnancy.[68]

Her third pregnancy was affirmed in March 1781, and on 22 October she gave birth to Louis Joseph Xavier François, Dauphin of France.[69]

Empress Maria Theresa died on 29 November 1780 in Vienna. Marie Antoinette feared that the death of her mother would jeopardize the Franco-Austrian alliance (as well as, ultimately, herself), but her brother, Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, wrote to her that he had no intention of breaking the alliance.[70]

A second visit from Joseph II, which took place in July 1781 to reaffirm the Franco-Austrian alliance and also to see his sister, was tainted by false rumours[53] that Marie Antoinette was sending money to him from the French treasury.[71][72]

Declining popularity (1782–1785)

Despite the general celebration over the birth of an heir, Marie Antoinette's political influence, such as it was, was perceived to greatly benefit Austria.[73] During the Kettle War, in which her brother Joseph attempted to open the Scheldt River for naval passage, Marie Antoinette succeeded in obliging Vergennes to pay huge financial compensation to Austria. Finally, the queen was able to obtain her brother's support against Great Britain in the American Revolution and she neutralized French hostility to his alliance with Russia.[74][75]

In 1782, after the governess of the royal children, the Princesse de Guéméné, went bankrupt and resigned, Marie Antoinette appointed her favourite, the Duchesse de Polignac, to the position.[76] This decision met with disapproval from the court as the duchess was considered to be of too modest origins to occupy such an exalted position. On the other hand, both the king and the queen trusted Madame de Polignac completely, gave her a thirteen-room apartment in Versailles and paid her well.[77] The entire Polignac family benefited greatly from royal favour in titles and positions, but its sudden wealth and lavish lifestyle outraged most aristocratic families, who resented the Polignacs' dominance at court, and also fueled the increasing popular disapproval of Marie Antoinette, mostly in Paris.[78] De Mercy wrote to the empress: "It is almost unexampled that in so short a time, the royal favour should have brought such overwhelming advantages to a family".[79]

In June 1783 Marie Antoinette's new pregnancy was announced, but on the night of 1–2 November, her 28th birthday, she suffered a miscarriage.[80]

Count Axel von Fersen, after his return from America in June 1783, was accepted into the queen's private society. There were claims that the two were romantically involved,[81] but since most of their correspondence has been lost, destroyed, or redacted, for many years there was no conclusive evidence.[82] However, in 2016, the Telegraph's Henry Samuel announced that researchers at France's Research Centre for the Conservation of Collections (CRCC), "using cutting-edge x-ray and different infrared scanners" had deciphered letters from her that proved the affair.[83][84]

Around this time, pamphlets describing farcical sexual deviance including the queen and her friends in the court were growing in popularity around the country. The Portefeuille d’un talon rouge was one of the earliest, including the queen and a variety of other nobles in a political statement decrying the immoral practices of the court. As time went on, these came to focus more on the queen. They described amorous encounters with a wide range of figures, from the Duchesse de Polignac to Louis XV. As these attacks increased, they were connected with the public's dislike of her association with the rival nation of Austria. It was publicly suggested that her supposed behaviour was learned at the court of the rival nation, particularly lesbianism, which was known as the "German vice".[85] Her mother again expressed concern for the safety of her daughter, and she began to use Austria's ambassador to France, Comte de Mercy, to provide information on Marie Antoinette's safety and movements.[86]

In 1783 the queen was busy with the creation of her "hamlet", a rustic retreat built by her favoured architect, Richard Mique, according to the designs of the painter Hubert Robert.[87] Its creation, however, caused another uproar when its cost became widely known.[88][89] However, the hamlet was not an eccentricity of Marie Antoinette's. It was en vogue at the time for nobles to have recreations of small villages on their properties. In fact, the design was copied from that of the Prince de Condé. It was also significantly smaller and less intricate than many other nobles'.[90] Around this time she accumulated a library of 5.000 books. Those on music, often dedicated to her, were the most read, though she also liked to read history.[91][92] She sponsored the arts, in particular music, and also supported some scientific endeavours, encouraging and witnessing the first launch of a Montgolfière, a hot air balloon.[93]

On 27 April 1784 Beaumarchais's play The Marriage of Figaro premiered in Paris. Initially banned by the king due to its negative portrayal of the nobility, the play was finally allowed to be publicly performed because of the queen's support and its overwhelming popularity at court, where secret readings of it had been given by Marie Antoinette. The play was a disaster for the image of the monarchy and aristocracy. It inspired Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, which premiered in Vienna on 1 May 1786.[94]

On 24 October 1784 putting the Baron de Breteuil in charge of its acquisition, Louis XVI bought the Château de Saint-Cloud from the Duc d'Orléans in the name of his wife, which she wanted due to their expanding family. She wanted to be able to own her own property. One that was actually hers, to then have the authority to bequeath it to "whichever of my children I wish"; choosing the child she thought could use it rather than it going through patriarchal inheritance laws or whims. It was proposed that the cost could be covered by other sales, such as that of the château Trompette in Bordeaux.[95] This was unpopular, particularly with those factions of the nobility who disliked the queen, but also with a growing percentage of the population, who disapproved of a Queen of France independently owning a private residence. The purchase of Saint-Cloud thus damaged the public's image of the queen even further. The château's high price, almost 6 million livres, plus the substantial extra cost of redecorating, ensured that much less money was going towards repaying France's substantial debt.[96][97]

 
Marie Antoinette with her two eldest children, Marie-Thérèse Charlotte and the Dauphin Louis Joseph, in the gardens of the Petit Trianon (portrait by Adolf Ulrik Wertmüller, 1785)

On 27 March 1785 Marie Antoinette gave birth to a second son, Louis Charles, who bore the title of Duc de Normandie.[98] The fact that the birth occurred exactly nine months after Fersen's return did not escape the attention of many, leading to doubt as to the parentage of the child and to a noticeable decline of the queen's reputation in public opinion.[99] The majority of Marie Antoinette's and Louis XVII's biographers believe that the young prince was the biological son of Louis XVI, including Stefan Zweig and Antonia Fraser, who believe that Fersen and Marie Antoinette were indeed romantically involved.[100][101][102][103][104][105][106][107] Fraser has also noted that the birthdate matches up perfectly with a known conjugal visit from the king.[53] Courtiers at Versailles noted in their diaries that the date of the child's conception in fact corresponded perfectly with a period when the King and the queen had spent much time together, but these details were ignored amid attacks on the queen's character.[108] These suspicions of illegitimacy, along with the continued publication of the libelles and never-ending cavalcades of court intrigues, the actions of Joseph II in the Kettle War, the purchase of Saint-Cloud and the Affair of the Diamond Necklace combined to turn popular opinion sharply against the queen, and the image of a licentious, spendthrift, empty-headed foreign queen was quickly taking root in the French psyche.[109]

A second daughter, her last child, Marie Sophie Hélène Béatrix, Madame Sophie, was born on 9 July 1786 and lived only eleven months until 19 June 1787.

Prelude to the Revolution: scandals and the failure of reforms (1786–1789)

Diamond necklace scandal

Main article: Affair of the Diamond Necklace

Marie Antoinette began to abandon her more carefree activities to become increasingly involved in politics in her role as Queen of France.[110] By publicly showing her attention to the education and care of her children, the queen sought to improve the dissolute image she had acquired in 1785 from the "Diamond Necklace Affair", in which public opinion had falsely accused her of criminal participation in defrauding the jewelers Boehmer and Bassenge of the price of an expensive diamond necklace they had originally created for Madame du Barry. The main actors in the scandal were Cardinal de Rohan, Prince de Rohan-Guéméné, Great Almoner of France, and Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy, Comtesse de La Motte, a descendant of an illegitimate child of Henry II of France of the House of Valois. Marie Antoinette had profoundly disliked Rohan since the time he had been the French ambassador to Vienna when she was a child. Despite his high clerical position at the Court, she never addressed a word to him. Others involved were Nicole Lequay, alias Baronne d'Oliva, a prostitute who happened to look like Marie Antoinette; Rétaux de Villette, a forger; Alessandro Cagliostro, an Italian adventurer; and the Comte de La Motte, Jeanne de Valois' husband. Madame de La Motte tricked Rohan into buying the necklace as a gift to Marie Antoinette, for him to gain the queen's favour.

When the affair was discovered those involved (except de La Motte and Rétaux de Villette, who both managed to flee) were arrested, tried, convicted, and either imprisoned or exiled. Madame de La Motte was sentenced for life to confinement in the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, which also served as a prison for women. Judged by the Parlement, Rohan was found innocent of any wrongdoing and allowed to leave the Bastille. Marie Antoinette, who had insisted on the arrest of the Cardinal, was dealt a heavy personal blow, as was the monarchy, and despite the fact that the guilty parties were tried and convicted, the affair proved to be extremely damaging to her reputation, which never recovered from it.[citation needed]

Failure of political and financial reforms

Suffering from an acute case of depression the king began to seek the advice of his wife. In her new role and with increasing political power, the queen tried to improve the awkward situation brewing between the assembly and the king.[111] This change of the queen's position signaled the end of the Polignacs' influence and their impact on the finances of the Crown.

Continuing deterioration of the financial situation despite cutbacks to the royal retinue and court expenses ultimately forced the king, the queen and the Minister of Finance, Calonne, at the urging of Vergennes, to call a session of the Assembly of Notables, after a hiatus of 160 years. The assembly was held for the purpose of initiating necessary financial reforms, but the Parlement refused to cooperate. The first meeting took place on 22 February 1787, nine days after the death of Vergennes on 13 February. Marie Antoinette did not attend the meeting and her absence resulted in accusations that the queen was trying to undermine its purpose.[112][113] The Assembly was a failure. It did not pass any reforms and, instead, fell into a pattern of defying the king. On the urging of the queen, Louis XVI dismissed Calonne on 8 April 1787.[111]

On 1 May 1787 Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse and one of the queen's political allies was appointed by the king at her urging to replace Calonne, first as Controller-General of Finances and then as Prime Minister. He began to institute more cutbacks at court while trying to restore the royal absolute power weakened by parliament.[114] Brienne was unable to improve the financial situation, and since he was the queen's ally, this failure adversely affected her political position. The continued poor financial climate of the country resulted in the 25 May dissolution of the Assembly of Notables because of its inability to function, and the lack of solutions was blamed on the queen.[66]

France's financial problems were the result of a combination of factors: several expensive wars; a large royal family whose expenditures were paid for by the state; and an unwillingness on the part of most members of the privileged classes, aristocracy, and clergy, to help defray the costs of the government out of their own pockets by relinquishing some of their financial privileges. As a result of the public perception that she had single-handedly ruined the national finances, Marie Antoinette was given the nickname of "Madame Déficit" in the summer of 1787.[115] While the sole fault for the financial crisis did not lie with her, Marie Antoinette was the biggest obstacle to any major reform effort. She had played a decisive role in the disgrace of the reformer ministers of finance, Turgot (in 1776), and Jacques Necker (first dismissal in 1781). If the secret expenses of the queen were taken into account, court expenses were much higher than the official estimate of 7% of the state budget.[116]

 
This State Portrait of Marie Antoinette and her three surviving children, Marie Thérèse, Louis Charles (on her lap) and Louis Joseph holding up the drape of an empty bassinet signifying the recent death of Marie's fourth child Sophie was meant to improve her reputation by depicting her as a mother in simple, yet stately attire (by Vigée-Lebrun, 1787).

The queen attempted to fight back with propaganda portraying her as a caring mother, most notably in the painting by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun exhibited at the Royal Académie Salon de Paris in August 1787, showing her with her children.[117][118] Around the same time, Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy escaped from prison and fled to London, where she published damaging slander concerning her supposed amorous affair with the queen.[119]

The political situation in 1787 worsened when, at Marie Antoinette's urging, the Parlement was exiled to Troyes on 15 August. It further deteriorated when Louis XVI tried to use a lit de justice on 11 November to impose legislation. The new Duc d'Orléans publicly protested the king's actions, and was subsequently exiled to his estate at Villers-Cotterêts.[120] The May Edicts issued on 8 May 1788 were also opposed by the public and parliament. Finally, on 8 August, Louis XVI announced his intention to bring back the Estates General, the traditional elected legislature of the country, which had not been convened since 1614.[121]

While from late 1787 up to his death in June 1789 Marie Antoinette's primary concern was the continued deterioration of the health of the dauphin, who suffered from tuberculosis,[122] she was directly involved in the exile of the Parlement, the May Edicts, and the announcement regarding the Estates-General. She did participate in the King Council, the first queen to do this in over 175 years (since Marie de' Medici had been named Chef du Conseil du Roi, between 1614 and 1617), and she was making the major decisions behind the scene and in the Royal Council.

Marie Antoinette was instrumental in the reinstatement of Jacques Necker as Finance Minister on 26 August 1788, a popular move, even though she herself was worried that it would go against her if Necker proved unsuccessful in reforming the country's finances. She accepted Necker's proposition to double the representation of the Third Estate (tiers état) in an attempt to check the power of the aristocracy.[123][124]

On the eve of the opening of the Estates-General the queen attended the mass celebrating its return. As soon as it opened on 5 May 1789, the fracture between the democratic Third Estate (consisting of bourgeois and radical aristocrats) and the conservative nobility of the Second Estate widened, and Marie Antoinette knew that her rival, the Duc d'Orléans, who had given money and bread to the people during the winter, would be acclaimed by the crowd, much to her detriment.[125]

The death of the dauphin on 4 June, which deeply affected his parents, was virtually ignored by the French people,[126] who were instead preparing for the next meeting of the Estates-General and hoping for a resolution to the bread crisis. As the Third Estate declared itself a National Assembly and took the Tennis Court Oath, and as people either spread or believed rumours that the queen wished to bathe in their blood, Marie Antoinette went into mourning for her eldest son.[127] Her role was decisive in urging the king to remain firm and not concede to popular demands for reforms. In addition, she showed her determination to use force to crush the forthcoming revolution.[128][129]

French Revolution before Varennes (1789–1791)

The situation escalated on 20 June as the Third Estate, which had been joined by several members of the clergy and radical nobility, found the door to its appointed meeting place closed by order of the king.[130] It thus met at the tennis court in Versailles and took the Tennis Court Oath not to separate before it had given a constitution to the nation.

On 11 July at Marie Antoinette's urging, Necker was dismissed and replaced by Breteuil, the queen's choice to crush the Revolution with mercenary Swiss troops under the command of one of her favorites, Pierre Victor, Baron de Besenval de Brünstatt.[131][132][133] At the news, Paris was besieged by riots that culminated in the storming of the Bastille on 14 July.[134][135] On 15 July Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette was named commander-in-chief of the newly formed Garde nationale.[136][137]

 
The Storming of the Bastille in Paris, and the arrest of its Governor Bernard-René de Launay, 14 July 1789

In the days following the storming of the Bastille, for fear of assassination, and ordered by the king, the emigration of members of the high aristocracy began on 17 July with the departure of the Comte d'Artois, the Condés, cousins of the king,[138] and the unpopular Polignacs. Marie Antoinette, whose life was as much in danger, remained with the king, whose power was gradually being taken away by the National Constituent Assembly.[136][139][140]

The abolition of feudal privileges by the National Constituent Assembly on 4 August 1789 and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (La Déclaration des Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen), drafted by Lafayette with the help of Thomas Jefferson and adopted on 26 August, paved the way to a Constitutional Monarchy (4 September 1791 – 21 September 1792).[141][142] Despite these dramatic changes, life at the court continued, while the situation in Paris was becoming critical because of bread shortages in September. On 5 October, a crowd from Paris descended upon Versailles and forced the royal family to move to the Tuileries Palace in Paris, where they lived under a form of house arrest under the watch of Lafayette's Garde Nationale, while the Comte de Provence and his wife were allowed to reside in the Petit Luxembourg, where they remained until they went into exile on 20 June 1791.[143]

Marie Antoinette continued to perform charitable functions and attend religious ceremonies, but dedicated most of her time to her children.[144] She also played an important political, albeit not public, role between 1789 and 1791 when she had a complex set of relationships with several key actors of the early period of the French Revolution. One of the most important was Necker, the Prime Minister of Finances (Premier ministre des finances).[145] Despite her dislike of him, she played a decisive role in his return to the office. She blamed him for his support of the Revolution and did not regret his resignation in 1790.[146][147]

Lafayette, one of the former military leaders in the American War of Independence (1775–1783), served as the warden of the royal family in his position as commander-in-chief of the Garde Nationale. Despite his dislike of the queen—he detested her as much as she detested him and at one time had even threatened to send her to a convent—he was persuaded by the mayor of Paris, Jean Sylvain Bailly, to work and collaborate with her, and allowed her to see Fersen a number of times. He even went as far as exiling the Duke of Orléans, who was accused by the queen of fomenting trouble. His relationship with the king was more cordial. As a liberal aristocrat, he did not want the fall of the monarchy but rather the establishment of a liberal one, similar to that of the United Kingdom, based on cooperation between the king and the people, as was to be defined in the Constitution of 1791.

Despite her attempts to remain out of the public eye, Marie Antoinette was falsely accused in the libelles of having an affair with Lafayette, whom she loathed,[148] and, as was published in Le Godmiché Royal ("The Royal Dildo"), and of having a sexual relationship with the English baroness Lady Sophie Farrell of Bournemouth, a well-known lesbian of the time. Publication of such calumnies continued to the end, climaxing at her trial with an accusation of incest with her son. There is no evidence to support the accusations.

Mirabeau

A significant achievement of Marie Antoinette in that period was the establishment of an alliance with Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau, the most important lawmaker in the assembly. Like Lafayette, Mirabeau was a liberal aristocrat. He had joined the Third Estate and was not against the monarchy, but wanted to reconcile it with the Revolution. He also wanted to be a minister and was not immune to corruption. On the advice of Mercy, Marie Antoinette opened secret negotiations with him and both agreed to meet privately at the château de Saint-Cloud on 3 July 1790, where the royal family was allowed to spend the summer, free of the radical elements who watched their every move in Paris.[149] At the meeting, Mirabeau was much impressed by the queen, and remarked in a letter to Auguste Marie Raymond d'Arenberg, Comte de la Marck, that she was the only person the king had by him: La Reine est le seul homme que le Roi ait auprès de Lui.[150] An agreement was reached turning Mirabeau into one of her political allies: Marie Antoinette promised to pay him 6.000 livres per month and one million if he succeeded in his mission to restore the king’s authority.[151]

The only time the royal couple returned to Paris in that period was on 14 July to attend the Fête de la Fédération, an official ceremony held at the Champ de Mars in commemoration of the fall of the Bastille one year earlier. At least 300,000 persons participated from all over France, including 18,000 national guards, with Talleyrand, bishop of Autun, celebrating a mass at the autel de la Patrie ("altar of the fatherland"). The king was greeted at the event with loud cheers of "Long live the King!", especially when he took the oath to protect the nation and to enforce the laws voted by the Constitutional Assembly. There were even cheers for the queen, particularly when she presented the dauphin to the public.[152]

Mirabeau sincerely wanted to reconcile the queen with the people, and she was happy to see him restoring much of the king’s powers, such as his authority over foreign policy, and the right to declare war. Over the objections of Lafayette and his allies, the king was given a suspensive veto allowing him to veto any laws for a period of four years. With time, Mirabeau would support the queen, even more, going as far as to suggest that Louis XVI "adjourn" to Rouen or Compiègne.[153] This leverage with the Assembly ended with the death of Mirabeau in April 1791, despite the attempt of several moderate leaders of the Revolution to contact the queen to establish some basis of cooperation with her.

Civil Constitution of the Clergy

In March 1791 Pope Pius VI had condemned the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, reluctantly signed by Louis XVI, which reduced the number of bishops from 132 to 93, imposed the election of bishops and all members of the clergy by departmental or district assemblies of electors, and reduced the pope’s authority over the Church. Religion played an important role in the life of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, both raised in the Roman Catholic faith. The queen’s political ideas and her belief in the absolute power of monarchs were based on France's long-established tradition of the divine right of kings.[citation needed] On 18 April, as the royal family prepared to leave for Saint-Cloud to attend Easter mass celebrated by a refractory priest, a crowd, soon joined by the Garde Nationale (disobeying Lafayette's orders), prevented their departure from Paris, prompting Marie Antoinette to declare to Lafayette that she and her family were no longer free. This incident fortified her in her determination to leave Paris for personal and political reasons, not alone, but with her family. Even the king, who had been hesitant, accepted his wife's decision to flee with the help of foreign powers and counter-revolutionary forces.[154] Fersen and Breteuil, who represented her in the courts of Europe, were put in charge of the escape plan, while Marie Antoinette continued her negotiations with some of the moderate leaders of the French Revolution.[155]

Flight, arrest at Varennes and return to Paris (21–25 June 1791)

Main article: Flight to Varennes
 
Arrest of the royal family at the house of the registrar of passports at Varennes on the night of 21–22 June 1791 (by Thomas Falcon Marshall, 1854)

There had been several plots designed to help the royal family escape, which the Queen had rejected because she would not leave without the king, or which had ceased to be viable because of the king's indecision. Once Louis XVI finally did commit to a plan, its poor execution was the cause of its failure. In an elaborate attempt known as the Flight to Varennes to reach the royalist stronghold of Montmédy, some members of the royal family were to pose as the servants of an imaginary "Mme de Korff", a wealthy Russian baroness, a role played by Louise-Élisabeth de Croÿ de Tourzel, governess of the royal children.

After many delays, the escape was ultimately attempted on 21 June 1791, but the entire family was arrested less than 24 hours later at Varennes and taken back to Paris within a week. The escape attempt destroyed much of the remaining support of the population for the king.[156][157]

Upon learning of the capture of the royal family, the National Constituent Assembly sent three representatives, Antoine Barnave, Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve and Charles César de Fay de La Tour-Maubourg to Varennes to escort Marie Antoinette and her family back to Paris. On the way to the capital they were jeered and insulted by the people as never before. The prestige of the French monarchy had never been at such a low level. During the trip, Barnave, the representative of the moderate party in the Assembly, protected Marie Antoinette from the crowds, and even Pétion took pity on the royal family. Brought safely back to Paris, they were met with total silence by the crowd. Thanks to Barnave, the royal couple was not brought to trial and was publicly exonerated of any crime in relation with the attempted escape.[158]

Marie Antoinette's first Lady of the Bedchamber, Mme Campan, wrote about what happened to the queen's hair on the night of 21–22 June, "...in a single night, it had turned white as that of a seventy-year old woman." (En une seule nuit ils étaient devenus blancs comme ceux d'une femme de soixante-dix ans.)[159]

Radicalization of the Revolution after Varennes (1791–92)

 
Marie-Antoinette, c. 1792. Unfinished portrait by Alexander Kucharsky, damaged with a pike by a revolutionary.

After their return from Varennes and until the storming of the Tuileries on 10 August 1792, the queen, her family and entourage were held under tight surveillance by the Garde Nationale in the Tuileries, where the royal couple was guarded night and day. Four guards accompanied the queen wherever she went, and her bedroom door had to be left open at night. Her health also began to deteriorate, thus further reducing her physical activities.[160][161]

On 17 July 1791, with the support of Barnave and his friends, Lafayette's Garde Nationale opened fire on the crowd that had assembled on the Champ de Mars to sign a petition demanding the deposition of the king. The estimated number of those killed varies between 12 and 50. Lafayette's reputation never recovered from the event and, on 8 October, he resigned as commander of the Garde Nationale. Their enmity continuing, Marie Antoinette played a decisive role in defeating him in his aims to become the mayor of Paris in November 1791.[162]

As her correspondence shows, while Barnave was taking great political risks in the belief that the queen was his political ally and had managed, despite her unpopularity, to secure a moderate majority ready to work with her, Marie Antoinette was not considered sincere in her cooperation with the moderate leaders of the French Revolution, which ultimately ended any chance to establish a moderate government.[163] Moreover, the view that the unpopular queen was controlling the king further degraded the royal couple's standing with the people, which the Jacobins successfully exploited after their return from Varennes to advance their radical agenda to abolish the monarchy.[164] This situation lasted until the spring of 1792.[165]

Marie Antoinette continued to hope that the military coalition of European kingdoms would succeed in crushing the Revolution. She counted most on the support of her Austrian family. After the death of her brother Joseph in 1790, his successor, Leopold,[166] was willing to support her to a limited degree.[citation needed] Upon Leopold's death in 1792, his son, Francis, a conservative ruler, was ready to support the cause of the French royal couple more vigorously because he feared the consequences of the French Revolution and its ideas for the monarchies of Europe, particularly, for Austria's influence in the continent.[citation needed]

Barnave had advised the Queen to call back Mercy, who had played such an important role in her life before the Revolution, but Mercy had been appointed to another foreign diplomatic position[where?] and could not return to France. At the end of 1791, ignoring the danger she faced, the Princesse de Lamballe, who was in London, returned to the Tuileries. As for Fersen, despite the strong restrictions imposed on the Queen, he was able to see her a final time in February 1792.[167]

Events leading to the abolition of the monarchy on 10 August 1792

Leopold's and Francis II's strong action on behalf of Marie Antoinette led to France's declaration of war on Austria on 20 April 1792. This resulted in the queen being viewed as an enemy, although she was personally against Austrian claims to French territories on European soil. That summer, the situation was compounded by multiple defeats of the French armies by the Austrians, in part because Marie Antoinette passed on military secrets to them.[168] In addition, at the insistence of his wife, Louis XVI vetoed several measures that would have further restricted his power, earning the royal couple the nicknames "Monsieur Veto" and "Madame Veto",[169][170] nicknames then prominently featured in different contexts, including La Carmagnole.

Barnave remained the most important advisor and supporter of the queen, who was willing to work with him as long as he met her demands, which he did to a large extent. Barnave and the moderates comprised about 260 lawmakers in the new Legislative Assembly; the radicals numbered around 136, and the rest around 350. Initially, the majority was with Barnave, but the queen’s policies led to the radicalization of the Assembly and the moderates lost control of the legislative process. The moderate government collapsed in April 1792 to be replaced by a radical majority headed by the Girondins. The Assembly then passed a series of laws concerning the Church, the aristocracy and the formation of new national guard units; all were vetoed by Louis XVI. While Barnave's faction had dropped to 120 members, the new Girondin majority controlled the legislative assembly with 330 members. The two strongest members of that government were Jean Marie Roland, who was minister of interior, and General Dumouriez, the minister of foreign affairs. Dumouriez sympathized with the royal couple and wanted to save them but he was rebuffed by the Queen.[171]

Marie Antoinette's actions in refusing to collaborate with the Girondins, in power between April and June 1792, led them to denounce the treason of the Austrian comity, a direct allusion to the Queen. After Madame Roland sent a letter to the King denouncing the Queen's role in these matters, urged by the Queen, Louis XVI disbanded[citation needed] the government, thus losing his majority in the Assembly. Dumouriez resigned and refused a post in any new government. At this point, the tide against royal authority intensified in the population and political parties, while Marie Antoinette encouraged the king to veto the new laws voted by the Legislative Assembly in 1792.[172] In August 1791, the Declaration of Pillnitz threatened an invasion of France. This led in turn to a French declaration of war in April 1792, which led to the French Revolutionary Wars and to the events of August 1792, which ended the monarchy.[173]

 
Marie Antoinette with her children and Madame Élisabeth, facing the mob that had broken into the Tuileries Palace on 20 June 1792: Musée de la Révolution française

On 20 June 1792, "a mob of terrifying aspect" broke into the Tuileries, made the King wear the bonnet rouge (red Phrygian cap) to show his loyalty to the Republic, insulted Marie Antoinette, accusing her of betraying France, and threatened her life. In consequence, the Queen asked Fersen to urge the foreign powers to carry out their plans to invade France and to issue a manifesto in which they threatened to destroy Paris if anything happened to the royal family. The Brunswick Manifesto, issued on 25 July 1792, triggered the events of 10 August[174] when the approach of an armed mob on its way to the Tuileries Palace forced the royal family to seek refuge at the Legislative Assembly. Ninety minutes later, the palace was invaded by the mob, who massacred the Swiss Guards.[175] On 13 August the royal family was imprisoned in the tower of the Temple in the Marais under conditions considerably harsher than those of their previous confinement in the Tuileries.[176]

A week later, several of the royal family's attendants, among them the Princesse de Lamballe, were taken for interrogation by the Paris Commune. Transferred to the La Force prison, after a rapid judgment, Marie Louise de Lamballe was savagely killed on 3 September. Her head was affixed on a pike and paraded through the city to the Temple for the Queen to see. Marie Antoinette was prevented from seeing it, but fainted upon learning of it.[177]

On 21 September 1792, the fall of the monarchy was officially declared and the National Convention became the governing body of the French Republic. The royal family name was downgraded to the non-royal "Capets". Preparations began for the trial of the King in a court of law.[178]

Louis XVI's trial and execution

Charged with treason against the French First Republic, Louis XVI was separated from his family and tried in December. He was found guilty by the Convention, led by the Jacobins who rejected the idea of keeping him as a hostage. On 15 January 1793, by a majority of six votes, he was condemned to death by guillotine and executed on 21 January 1793.[179]

Marie Antoinette in the Temple

The queen, now called "Widow Capet", plunged into deep mourning. She still hoped her son Louis-Charles, whom the exiled Comte de Provence, Louis XVI's brother, had recognized as Louis XVI's successor, would one day rule France. The royalists and the refractory clergy, including those preparing the insurrection in Vendée, supported Marie Antoinette and the return to the monarchy. Throughout her imprisonment and up to her execution, Marie Antoinette could count on the sympathy of conservative factions and social-religious groups which had turned against the Revolution, and also on wealthy individuals ready to bribe republican officials to facilitate her escape;[180] these plots all failed. While imprisoned in the Tower of the Temple, Marie Antoinette, her children and Élisabeth were insulted, some of the guards going as far as blowing smoke in the former queen's face. Strict security measures were taken to assure that Marie Antoinette was not able to communicate with the outside world. Despite these measures, several of her guards were open to bribery and a line of communication was kept with the outside world.[181]

After Louis's execution, Marie Antoinette's fate became a central question of the National Convention. While some advocated her death, others proposed exchanging her for French prisoners of war or for a ransom from the Holy Roman Emperor. Thomas Paine advocated exile to America.[182] In April 1793, during the Reign of Terror, a Committee of Public Safety, dominated by Robespierre, was formed, and men such as Jacques Hébert began to call for Marie Antoinette's trial. By the end of May, the Girondins had been chased from power.[183] Calls were also made to "retrain" the eight-year-old Louis XVII, to make him pliant to revolutionary ideas. To carry this out, Louis Charles was separated from his mother on 3 July after a struggle during which his mother fought in vain to retain her son, who was handed over to Antoine Simon, a cobbler and representative of the Paris Commune. Until her removal from the Temple, Marie Antoinette spent hours trying to catch a glimpse of her son, who, within weeks, had been made to turn against her, accusing his mother of wrongdoing.[184]

Conciergerie

On the night of 1 August, at 1:00 in the morning, Marie Antoinette was transferred from the Temple to an isolated cell in the Conciergerie as 'Prisoner nº 280'. Leaving the Tower she bumped her head against the lintel of a door, which prompted one of her guards to ask her if she was hurt, to which she answered, "No! Nothing now can hurt me."[185] This was the most difficult period of her captivity. She was under constant surveillance with no privacy. The "Carnation Plot" (Le complot de l'œillet), an attempt to help her escape at the end of August, was foiled due to the inability to corrupt all the guards.[186] She was attended by Rosalie Lamorlière, who took care of her as much as she could.[187] At least once she received a visit by a Catholic priest.[188][189]

Trial and execution (14–16 October 1793)

Marie Antoinette was tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal on 14 October 1793. Some historians believe the outcome of the trial had been decided in advance by the Committee of Public Safety around the time the Carnation Plot [fr] was uncovered.[190] She and her lawyers were given less than one day to prepare her defense. Among the accusations, many previously published in the libelles, were: orchestrating orgies in Versailles, sending millions of livres of treasury money to Austria, planning the massacre of the gardes françaises (National Guards) in 1792,[191] declaring her son to be the new King of France, and incest, a charge made by her son Louis Charles, pressured into doing so by the radical Jacques Hébert who controlled him. This last accusation drew an emotional response from Marie Antoinette, who refused to respond to this charge, instead appealing to all mothers present in the room. Their reaction comforted her since these women were not otherwise sympathetic to her.[192]

 
Marie Antoinette on her way to the guillotine (pen and ink by Jacques-Louis David, 16 October 1793)
 
Marie Antoinette's execution on 16 October 1793: Sanson, the executioner, showing Marie Antoinette's head to the people (anonymous, 1793)

Early on 16 October, Marie Antoinette was declared guilty of the three main charges against her: depletion of the national treasury, conspiracy against the internal and external security of the State, and high treason because of her intelligence activities in the interest of the enemy; the latter charge alone was enough to condemn her to death.[193] At worst, she and her lawyers had expected life imprisonment.[194] In the hours left to her, she composed a letter to her sister-in-law Madame Élisabeth, affirming her clear conscience, her Catholic faith, and her love and concern for her children. The letter did not reach Élisabeth.[195] Her will was part of the collection of papers of Robespierre found under his bed and was published by Edme-Bonaventure Courtois.[196][197]

Preparing for her execution, she had to change clothes in front of her guards. She wanted to wear a black dress but was forced to wear a plain white dress, white being the colour worn by widowed queens of France. Her hair was shorn, her hands bound painfully behind her back and she was put on a rope leash. Unlike her husband, who had been taken to his execution in a carriage (carrosse), she had to sit in an open cart (charrette) for the hour it took to convey her from the Conciergerie via the rue Saint-Honoré thoroughfare to reach the guillotine erected in the Place de la Révolution (the present-day Place de la Concorde).[198] She maintained her composure, despite the insults of the jeering crowd. A constitutional priest was assigned to her to hear her final confession. He sat by her in the cart, but she ignored him all the way to the scaffold as he had pledged his allegiance to the republic.[199]

Marie Antoinette was guillotined at 12:15 p.m. on 16 October 1793.[200][201] Her last words are recorded as, "Pardonnez-moi, monsieur. Je ne l’ai pas fait exprès" or "Pardon me, sir, I did not do it on purpose", after accidentally stepping on her executioner's shoe.[202]Marie Tussaud was employed to make a death mask of her head.[203] Her body was thrown into an unmarked grave in the Madeleine cemetery, located close by in rue d'Anjou. Because its capacity was exhausted the cemetery was closed the following year, on 25 March 1794.[204]

Foreign response

After her execution, Marie Antoinette became a symbol abroad, and a controversial figure of the French Revolution. Some used her as a scapegoat to blame for the events of the Revolution. Thomas Jefferson, writing in 1821, claimed that "Her inordinate gambling and dissipations, with those of the Count d’Artois, and others of her clique, had been a sensible item in the exhaustion of the treasury, which called into action the reforming hand of the nation; and her opposition to it, her inflexible perverseness, and dauntless spirit, led herself to the Guillotine," adding that "I have ever believed that, had there been no Queen, there would have been no revolution."[205]

Others were shocked by her fate and viewed it as evidence of the dangers of Revolution. In his 1790 treatise, Reflections on the Revolution in France, which was written during Marie Antoinette's imprisonment in Paris, but prior to her execution, Edmund Burke lamented that "the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever" and now "Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex."[206] After receiving the news, Maria Carolina, Queen of Naples and close sister to Marie Antoinette, spiraled into a state of mourning and an anger against the revolutionaries. She quickly suspended protections of reformers and intellectuals in Naples, allowed Neapolitan bishops wide latitude to halt the secularization of the country, and offered succor to the overflowing number of émigrés fleeing from revolutionary France, many of whom were granted pensions.[207]

Bourbon Restoration

Both Marie Antoinette's and Louis XVI's bodies were exhumed on 18 January 1815, during the Bourbon Restoration, when the Comte de Provence ascended the newly reestablished throne as Louis XVIII, King of France and of Navarre. Christian burial of the royal remains took place three days later, on 21 January, in the necropolis of French kings at the Basilica of St Denis.[208]

Legacy

For many revolutionary figures, Marie Antoinette was the symbol of what was wrong with the old regime in France. The onus of having caused the financial difficulties of the nation was placed on her shoulders by the revolutionary tribunal,[209] and under the new republican ideas of what it meant to be a member of a nation, her Austrian descent and continued correspondence with the competing nation made her a traitor.[210] The people of France saw her death as a necessary step toward completing the revolution. Furthermore, her execution was seen as a sign that the revolution had done its work.[211]

Marie Antoinette is also known for her taste for fine things, and her commissions from famous craftsmen, such as Jean-Henri Riesener, suggest more about her enduring legacy as a woman of taste and patronage. For instance, a writing table attributed to Riesener, now located at Waddesdon Manor, bears witness to Marie Antoinette's desire to escape the oppressive formality of court life, when she decided to move the table from the queen's boudoir, de la Meridienne, at Versailles to her humble interior, the Petit Trianon. Her favourite objects filled her small, private chateau and reveal aspects of Marie Antoinette's character that have been obscured by satirical political prints, such as those in Les Tableaux de la Révolution.[212]

A catalog of Marie Antoinette's personal library of 736 volumes was published by Paul Lacroix in 1863, using his pseudonym P.L. Jacob.[213] The listed books were from her library at the Petit Trianon, including many found in her boudoir, and mostly consist of novels and plays. A random selection of her books includes Histoire de Mademoiselle de Terville by dame de. Madeleine d'Arsant Puisieux, Le Philosophe parvenu ou Lettres et pièces originales contenant les aventures d'Eugène Sans-Pair by Robert-Martin Lesuire, and Oeuvres mêlées... contenant des tragédies et différents ouvrages en vers et en prose by dame Gabriel de. Madeleine-Angélique Poisson Gomez. A larger and more official library belonging to Marie Antoinette was kept at the Tuileries Palace in Paris.[214]

Long after her death, Marie Antoinette remains a major historical figure linked with conservatism, the Catholic Church, wealth and fashion. She has been the subject of a number of books, films, and other media. Politically engaged authors have deemed her the quintessential representative of class conflict, western aristocracy and absolutism. Some of her contemporaries, such as Thomas Jefferson, attributed to her the start of the French Revolution.[215]

In popular culture

Main article: Cultural depictions of Marie Antoinette

The phrase "Let them eat cake" is often attributed to Marie Antoinette, but there is no evidence that she ever uttered it, and it is now generally regarded as a journalistic cliché.[216] This phrase originally appeared in Book VI of the first part of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's autobiographical work Les Confessions, finished in 1767 and published in 1782: "Enfin Je me rappelai le pis-aller d'une grande Princesse à qui l'on disait que les paysans n'avaient pas de pain, et qui répondit: Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" ("Finally I recalled the stopgap solution of a great princess who was told that the peasants had no bread, and who responded: 'Let them eat brioche'"). Rousseau ascribes these words to a "great princess", but the purported writing date precedes Marie Antoinette's arrival in France. Some think that he invented it altogether.[217]

In the United States, expressions of gratitude to France for its help in the American Revolution included naming a city Marietta, Ohio, in 1788.[218] Her life has been the subject of many films, such as Marie Antoinette (1938) and Marie Antoinette (2006).[219]

In 2020, a silk shoe that belonged to her was sold in an auction in the Palace of Versailles for 43,750 euros ($51,780).[220]

In 2022, her story was dramatised by a Canal+ and BBC English-language television series.

Children

Children of Marie Antoinette
Name Portrait Lifespan Notes
Marie Thérèse Charlotte
Madame Royale 		  19 December 1778 –
19 October 1851 		Married her cousin, Louis Antoine, Duke of Angoulême, the eldest son of the future Charles X of France.
Louis Joseph Xavier François
Dauphin de France 		  22 October 1781 –
4 June 1789 		Died in childhood on the very day the Estates General convened.
Louis XVII of France
(Nominally) King of France and Navarre 		  27 March 1785 –
8 June 1795 		Died in childhood; no issue. He was never officially king, nor did he rule. His title was bestowed by his royalist supporters and acknowledged implicitly by his uncle's later adoption of the regnal name Louis XVIII rather than Louis XVII, upon the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1814.
Sophie Hélène Béatrix   9 July 1786 –
19 June 1787 		Died in the Palace of Versailles at the age of 11 months after suffering several days of convulsions, possibly related to tuberculosis.[221]

In addition to her biological children, Marie Antoinette adopted four children: "Armand" Francois-Michel Gagné, a poor orphan adopted in 1776; Jean Amilcar, a Senegalese slave boy given to the queen as a present by Chevalier de Boufflers in 1787, but whom she instead freed, baptized, adopted and placed in a pension; Ernestine Lambriquet, daughter of two servants at the palace, who was raised as the playmate of her daughter Marie Thérése and whom she adopted after the death of her mother in 1788; and finally "Zoe" Jeanne Louise Victoire, who was adopted in 1790 along with her two older sisters when her parents, an usher and his wife in service of the King, had died.[222] Of these, only Armand, Ernestine, and Zoe actually lived with the royal family: Jean Amilcar, along with the elder siblings of Zoe and Armand who were also formally foster children of the royal couple, simply lived at the queen's expense until her imprisonment, which proved fatal for at least Amilcar, as he was evicted from the boarding school when the fee was no longer paid, and reportedly starved to death on the street.[222] Armand and Zoe had a position which was more similar to that of Ernestine; Armand lived at court with the king and queen until he left them at the outbreak of the Revolution because of his republican sympathies, and Zoe was chosen to be the playmate of the dauphin, just as Ernestine had once been selected as the playmate of Marie-Therese, and sent away to her sisters in a convent boarding school before the Flight to Varennes in 1791.[222]

References

Notes

  1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2003) [1917], Peter Roach; James Hartmann; Jane Setter (eds.), English Pronouncing Dictionary, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-3-12-539683-8.
  2. ^ "The Birth of Marie Antoinette | History Today". www.historytoday.com. Retrieved 20 November 2022.
  3. ^ Fraser 2002, p. 5
  4. ^ Fraser 2002, pp. 5–6
  5. ^ a b c d e f g de Decker, Michel (2005). Marie-Antoinette, les dangereuses liaisons de la reine. Paris, France: Belfond. pp. 12–20. ISBN 978-2714441416.
  6. ^ a b de Ségur d'Armaillé, Marie Célestine Amélie (1870). Marie-Thérèse et Marie-Antoinette. Paris, France: Editions Didier Millet. pp. 34, 47.
  7. ^ Lever 2006, p. 10
  8. ^ a b Fraser 2001, pp. 22–23, 166–70
  9. ^ Delorme, Philippe (1999). Marie-Antoinette. Épouse de Louis XVI, mère de Louis XVII. Pygmalion Éditions. p. 13.
  10. ^ Lever, Évelyne (2006). 'C'état Marie-Antoinette. Paris, France: Fayard. p. 14.
  11. ^ a b Cronin 1989, p. 45
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Bibliography

  • d'Arneth, Alfred Ritter; Geffroy, A., eds. (1874). Correspondance secrète entre Marie-Thérèse et le comte de Mercy-Argenteau, avec les lettres de Marie-Thérèse et de Marie-Antoinette (in French). Vol. 3. Firmin-Didot.
  • Bonnet, Marie-Jo (1981). Un choix sans équivoque: recherches historiques sur les relations amoureuses entre les femmes, XVIe–XXe siècle (in French). Paris: Denoël. OCLC 163483785.
  • Castelot, André (1957). Queen of France: a biography of Marie Antoinette. trans. Denise Folliot. New York: Harper & Brothers. OCLC 301479745.
  • Castelot, André (1962). Marie-Antoinette. Paris, France: Librairie académique Perrin. ISBN 978-2262048228.
  • Cronin, Vincent (1974). Louis and Antoinette. Collins. ISBN 978-0-00-211494-3.
  • Dams, Bernd H.; Zega, Andrew (1995). La folie de bâtir: pavillons d'agrément et folies sous l'Ancien Régime. trans. Alexia Walker. Flammarion. ISBN 978-2-08-201858-6.
  • Facos, Michelle (2011). An Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Art. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-136-84071-5. Retrieved 1 September 2011.
  • Farr, Evelyn (2013). Marie-Antoinette and Count Fersen: The Untold Love Story (2nd Revised ed.). Peter Owen Publishers. ISBN 978-0720610017.
  • Fraser, Antonia (2001). Marie Antoinette (1st ed.). New York: N.A. Talese/Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-48948-5.
  • Fraser, Antonia (2002). Marie Antoinette: The Journey (2nd ed.). Garden City: Anchor Books. ISBN 978-0-385-48949-2.
    • Fraser, Antonia (2002b). Marie Antoinette: The Journey. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 9781400033287.
  • Hermann, Eleanor (2006). Sex with the Queen. Harper/Morrow. ISBN 978-0-06-084673-2.
  • Hibbert, Christopher (2002). The Days of the French Revolution. Harper Perennial. ISBN 978-0-688-16978-7.
  • Johnson, Paul (1990). Intellectuals. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 978-0-06-091657-2.
  • Lanser, Susan S. (2003). "Eating Cake: The (Ab)uses of Marie-Antoinette". In Goodman, Dena (ed.). Marie-Antoinette: Writings on the Body of a Queen. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-415-93395-7.
  • Lever, Evelyne (1991). Marie Antoinette. Fayard.
  • Lever, Evelyne (24 September 2001). Marie Antoinette: The Last Queen of France. Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-312-28333-9.
  • Schama, Simon (1989). Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution. New York: Vintage. ISBN 978-0-679-72610-4.
  • Seulliet, Philippe (July 2008). "Swan Song: Music Pavillion of the Last Queen of France". World of Interiors (7).
  • Sturtevant, Lynne (2011). A Guide to Historic Marietta, Ohio. The History Press. ISBN 978-1-60949-276-2. Retrieved 1 September 2011.
  • Weber, Caroline (2007). Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution. Picador. ISBN 978-0-312-42734-4.
  • Wollstonecraft, Mary (1795). An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution and the Effect it Has Produced in Europe. St. Paul's.

Further reading

  • Bashor, Will (2013). Marie Antoinette's Head: The Royal Hairdresser, the Queen, and the Revolution. Lyons Press. p. 320. ISBN 978-0762791538.
  • Erickson, Carolly (1991). To the Scaffold. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc. ISBN 0-312-32205-4.
  • Farr, Evelyn (2016). I Love You Madly: Marie-Antoinette and Count Fersen: The Secret Letters. Peter Owen Publishers. ISBN 978-0720618778.
  • Jacob, P.L. (1863). Bibliothèque de la reine Marie-Antoinette au Petit Trianon d'après l'inventaire original dressé par ordre de la convention : catalogue avec des notes inédites du marquis de Paulmy. Jules Gay. OCLC 12097301.
  • Kaiser, Thomas (Fall 2003). "From the Austrian Committee to the Foreign Plot: Marie-Antoinette, Austrophobia, and the Terror". French Historical Studies. 26 (4): 579–617. doi:10.1215/00161071-26-4-579. S2CID 154852467.
  • Kates, Gary (1998). The French Revolution: Recent Debates and New Controversies 2nd ed. Routledge. pp. 201–218. ISBN 0-415-35833-7.
  • Lasky, Kathryn (2000). The Royal Diaries: Marie Antoinette, Princess of Versailles: Austria-France, 1769. New York: Scholastic. ISBN 978-0-439-07666-1.
  • Loomis, Stanley (1972). The Fatal Friendship: Marie Antoinette, Count Fersen and the flight to Varennes. London: Davis-Poynter. ISBN 978-0-7067-0047-3.
  • MacLeod, Margaret Anne (2008). There Were Three of Us in the Relationship: The Secret Letters of Marie Antoinette. Irvine, Scotland: Isaac MacDonald. ISBN 978-0-9559991-0-9.
  • Naslund, Sena Jeter (2006). Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette. New York: William Morrow. ISBN 978-0-06-082539-3.
  • Romijn, André (2008). Vive Madame la Dauphine: A Biographical Novel. Ripon: Roman House. ISBN 978-0-9554100-2-4.
  • Thomas, Chantal (1999). The Wicked Queen: The Origins of the Myth of Marie-Antoinette. Trans. Julie Rose. New York: Zone Books. ISBN 978-0-942299-40-3.
  • Vidal, Elena Maria (1997). Trianon: A Novel of Royal France. Long Prairie, MN: Neumann Press. ISBN 978-0-911845-96-9.
  • Zweig, Stefan (2002). Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman. New York: Grove Press. ISBN 978-0-8021-3909-2.

External links

  • Marie Antoinette's official Versailles profile on en.chateauversailles.fr
  • The marais of Marie-Antoinette on parismarais.com
  • Celebrating Marie-Antoinette blog article on waddesdon.org.uk
  • Marie Antoinette: a childhood overshadowed by politics on habsburger.net
Marie Antoinette
Cadet branch of the House of Lorraine
Born: 2 November 1755 Died: 16 October 1793
French royalty
Vacant
Title last held by
Marie Leszczyńska 		Queen consort of France
1774–1792
from 1791 Queen of the French 		Vacant
Title next held by
Joséphine de Beauharnais
as Empress of the French
Titles in pretence
Loss of title
 — TITULAR —
Queen consort of France
4 September 1791 – 21 January 1793 		Vacant
Title next held by
Marie Joséphine of Savoy

January 10, 2023
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For other uses see Marie Antoinette disambiguation Marie Antoinette Josephe Jeanne ˌ ae n t w e ˈ n ɛ t ˌ ɒ t 1 French maʁi ɑ twanɛt listen nee Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna 2 November 1755 16 October 1793 was the last queen of France before the French Revolution She was born an Archduchess of Austria and was the penultimate child and youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Francis I She became dauphine of France in May 1770 at age 14 upon her marriage to Louis Auguste heir apparent to the French throne On 10 May 1774 her husband ascended the throne as Louis XVI and she became queen Marie AntoinettePortrait of Marie Antoinette 1775Queen consort of FranceTenure10 May 1774 21 September 1792Born 1755 11 02 2 November 1755Schoenbrunn Palace Vienna Archduchy of Austria Holy Roman EmpireDied16 October 1793 1793 10 16 aged 37 Place de la Revolution Paris French First RepublicCause of deathExecutionBurial21 January 1815Basilica of St DenisSpouseLouis XVI of France m 1770 d 1793 wbr IssueMarie Therese Duchess of AngoulemeLouis Joseph Dauphin of FranceLouis XVII of FrancePrincess SophieNamesGerman Maria Antonia Josefa JohannaFrench Marie Antoinette Josephe JeanneHouseHabsburg LorraineFatherFrancis I Holy Roman EmperorMotherMaria TheresaReligionRoman CatholicismSignatureCoat of arms of Marie Antoinette of AustriaMarie Antoinette s position at court improved when after eight years of marriage she started having children She became increasingly unpopular among the people however with the French libelles accusing her of being profligate promiscuous allegedly having illegitimate children and harboring sympathies for France s perceived enemies particularly her native Austria The false accusations of the Affair of the Diamond Necklace damaged her reputation further During the Revolution she became known as Madame Deficit because the country s financial crisis was blamed on her lavish spending and her opposition to the social and financial reforms of Turgot and Necker Several events were linked to Marie Antoinette during the Revolution after the government had placed the royal family under house arrest in the Tuileries Palace in October 1789 The June 1791 attempted flight to Varennes and her role in the War of the First Coalition had disastrous effects on French popular opinion On 10 August 1792 the attack on the Tuileries forced the royal family to take refuge at the Assembly and they were imprisoned in the Temple Prison on 13 August On 21 September 1792 the monarchy was abolished Louis XVI was executed by guillotine on 21 January 1793 Marie Antoinette s trial began on 14 October 1793 she was convicted two days later by the Revolutionary Tribunal of high treason and executed also by guillotine at the Place de la Revolution Contents 1 Early life 1755 1770 2 Dauphine of France 1770 1774 3 Queen of France and Navarre 1774 1791 3 1 Early years 1774 1778 3 2 Motherhood changes at court and intervention in politics 1778 1781 3 3 Declining popularity 1782 1785 3 4 Prelude to the Revolution scandals and the failure of reforms 1786 1789 3 4 1 Diamond necklace scandal 3 4 2 Failure of political and financial reforms 4 French Revolution before Varennes 1789 1791 4 1 Mirabeau 4 2 Civil Constitution of the Clergy 5 Flight arrest at Varennes and return to Paris 21 25 June 1791 6 Radicalization of the Revolution after Varennes 1791 92 7 Events leading to the abolition of the monarchy on 10 August 1792 7 1 Louis XVI s trial and execution 8 Marie Antoinette in the Temple 8 1 Conciergerie 9 Trial and execution 14 16 October 1793 9 1 Foreign response 9 2 Bourbon Restoration 10 Legacy 10 1 In popular culture 11 Children 12 References 12 1 Notes 12 2 Bibliography 13 Further reading 14 External linksEarly life 1755 1770 Watercolour of Archduchess Maria Antonia at the age of 7 portrait by Jean Etienne Liotard 1762 Maria Antonia was born on 2 November 1755 at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna Austria at 8 30 in the evening 2 She was the youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa ruler of the Habsburg Empire and her husband Francis I Holy Roman Emperor 3 Her godparents were Joseph I and Mariana Victoria King and Queen of Portugal Archduke Joseph and Archduchess Maria Anna acted as proxies for their newborn sister 4 5 Maria Antonia was born on All Souls Day a Catholic day of mourning and during her childhood her birthday was instead celebrated the day before on All Saints Day due to the connotations of the date Shortly after her birth she was placed under the care of the governess of the imperial children Countess von Brandeis 6 Maria Antonia was raised together with her sister Maria Carolina who was three years older and with whom she had a lifelong close relationship 7 Maria Antonia had a difficult but ultimately loving relationship with her mother 8 who referred to her as the little Madame Antoine Maria Antonia spent her formative years between the Hofburg Palace and Schonbrunn the imperial summer residence in Vienna 5 where on 13 October 1762 when she was seven she met Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart two months her junior and a child prodigy 9 5 6 10 Despite the private tutoring she received the results of her schooling were less than satisfactory 11 At the age of 10 she could not write correctly in German or in any language commonly used at court such as French or Italian 5 and conversations with her were stilted 12 5 Under the teaching of Christoph Willibald Gluck Maria Antonia developed into a good musician She learned to play the harp 11 the harpsichord and the flute She sang during the family s evening gatherings as she was known to have had a beautiful voice 13 She also excelled at dancing had exquisite poise and loved dolls 14 Later in 1768 Mathieu Jacques de Vermond was dispatched by Louis XV to tutor Maria Antonia as she became the future wife to Louis XVI Serving as an educator Abbe de Vermond found her to be unsatisfactorily educated and lacking in at the age of 13 important writing skills Nonetheless he also complimented her stating her character her heart are excellent He found her more intelligent than has been generally supposed but since she is rather lazy and extremely frivolous she is hard to teach 15 Dauphine of France 1770 1774 Portrait of Archduchess Maria Antonia at the age of 13 by Joseph Ducreux 1769 Following the Seven Years War and the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756 Empress Maria Theresa decided to end hostilities with her longtime enemy King Louis XV of France Their common desire to destroy the ambitions of Prussia and Great Britain and to secure a definitive peace between their respective countries led them to seal their alliance with a marriage on 7 February 1770 Louis XV formally requested the hand of Maria Antonia for his eldest surviving grandson and heir Louis Auguste Duc de Berry and Dauphin of France 5 Maria Antonia formally renounced her rights to Habsburg domains and on 19 April she was married by proxy to the Dauphin of France at the Augustinian Church in Vienna with her brother Archduke Ferdinand standing in for the dauphin 16 17 5 On 14 May she met her husband at the edge of the forest of Compiegne Upon her arrival in France she adopted the French version of her name Marie Antoinette A further ceremonial wedding took place on 16 May 1770 in the Palace of Versailles and after the festivities the day ended with the ritual bedding 18 19 The couple s longtime failure to consummate the marriage plagued the reputations of both Louis Auguste and Marie Antoinette for the next seven years 20 The initial reaction to the marriage between Marie Antoinette and Louis Auguste was mixed On the one hand the dauphine was beautiful personable and well liked by the common people Her first official appearance in Paris on 8 June 1773 was a resounding success On the other hand those opposed to the alliance with Austria had a difficult relationship with Marie Antoinette as did others who disliked her for more personal or petty reasons 21 Queen Marie Antoinette of France at the age of 16 years The pastel portrait was drawn in Versailles and then sent to Austria to her mother Empress Maria Theresia Painted by Joseph Kranzinger Madame du Barry proved a troublesome foe to the new dauphine She was Louis XV s mistress and had considerable political influence over him In 1770 she was instrumental in ousting Etienne Francois Duc de Choiseul who had helped orchestrate the Franco Austrian alliance and Marie Antoinette s marriage 22 and in exiling his sister the Duchess de Gramont one of Marie Antoinette s ladies in waiting Marie Antoinette was persuaded by her husband s aunts to refuse to acknowledge du Barry which some saw as a political blunder that jeopardized Austria s interests at the French court Marie Antoinette s mother and the Austrian ambassador to France Comte de Mercy Argenteau who sent the empress secret reports on Marie Antoinette s behaviour pressured Marie Antoinette to speak to Madame du Barry which she grudgingly agreed to do on New Year s Day 1772 23 She merely commented to her There are a lot of people at Versailles today but it was enough for Madame du Barry who was satisfied with this recognition and the crisis passed 24 Two days after the death of Louis XV in 1774 Louis XVI exiled du Barry to the Abbaye de Pont aux Dames in Meaux pleasing both his wife and aunts 25 26 27 28 29 Two and a half years later at the end of October 1776 Madame du Barry s exile ended and she was allowed to return to her beloved chateau at Louveciennes but she was never permitted to return to Versailles 30 Queen of France and Navarre 1774 1791 Early years 1774 1778 Upon the death of Louis XV on 10 May 1774 the dauphin ascended the throne as King Louis XVI of France and Navarre with Marie Antoinette as his royal consort At the outset the new queen had limited political influence with her husband who with the support of his two most important ministers Chief Minister Maurepas and Foreign Minister Vergennes blocked several of her candidates from assuming important positions including Choiseul 31 The queen did play a decisive role in the disgrace and exile of the most powerful of Louis XV s ministers the Duc d Aiguillon 32 On 24 May 1774 two weeks after the death of Louis XV the king gave his wife the Petit Trianon a small chateau on the grounds of Versailles that had been built by Louis XV for his mistress Madame de Pompadour Louis XVI allowed Marie Antoinette to renovate it to suit her own tastes soon rumours circulated that she had plastered the walls with gold and diamonds 33 The queen spent heavily on fashion luxuries and gambling though the country was facing a grave financial crisis and the population was suffering Rose Bertin created dresses for her and hairstyles such as poufs up to three feet 90 cm high and the panache a spray of feather plumes She and her court also adopted the English fashion of dresses made of indienne a material banned in France from 1686 until 1759 to protect local French woolen and silk industries percale and muslin 34 35 By the time of the Flour War of 1775 a series of riots due to the high price of flour and bread had damaged her reputation among the general public Eventually Marie Antoinette s reputation was no better than that of the favourites of previous kings Many French people were beginning to blame her for the degrading economic situation suggesting the country s inability to pay off its debt was the result of her wasting the crown s money 36 In her correspondence Marie Antoinette s mother Maria Theresa expressed concern over her daughter s spending habits citing the civil unrest it was beginning to cause 37 As early as 1774 Marie Antoinette had begun to befriend some of her male admirers such as the Baron de Besenval the Duc de Coigny and Count Valentin Esterhazy 38 39 and also formed deep friendships with various ladies at court Most noted was Marie Louise Princesse de Lamballe related to the royal family through her marriage into the Penthievre family On 19 September 1774 she appointed her superintendent of her household 40 41 an appointment she soon transferred to her new favourite the Duchesse de Polignac In 1774 she took under her patronage her former music teacher the German opera composer Christoph Willibald Gluck who remained in France until 1779 42 43 Motherhood changes at court and intervention in politics 1778 1781 Amidst the atmosphere of a wave of libelles the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II came to France incognito using the name Comte de Falkenstein for a six week visit during which he toured Paris extensively and was a guest at Versailles He met his sister and her husband on 18 April 1777 at the Chateau de la Muette and spoke frankly to his brother in law curious as to why the royal marriage had not been consummated arriving at the conclusion that no obstacle to the couple s conjugal relations existed save the queen s lack of interest and the king s unwillingness to exert himself 44 In a letter to his brother Leopold Grand Duke of Tuscany Joseph II described them as a couple of complete blunderers 45 He disclosed to Leopold that the inexperienced then still only 22 year old Louis XVI had confided in him the course of action he had been undertaking in their marital bed saying Louis XVI introduces the member but then stays there without moving for about two minutes withdraws without having completed the act and bids goodnight 46 Suggestions that Louis suffered from phimosis which was relieved by circumcision have been discredited 47 Nevertheless following Joseph s intervention the marriage was finally consummated in August 1777 48 Eight months later in April 1778 it was suspected that the queen was pregnant which was officially announced on 16 May 49 Marie Antoinette s daughter Marie Therese Charlotte Madame Royale was born at Versailles on 19 December 1778 8 50 51 The child s paternity was contested in the libelles as were all her children s 52 53 In the middle of the queen s pregnancy two events occurred which had a profound effect on her later life the return of her friend the Swedish diplomat Count Axel von Fersen 54 to Versailles for two years and her brother s claim to the throne of Bavaria contested by the Habsburg monarchy and Prussia 55 Marie Antoinette pleaded with her husband for the French to intercede on behalf of Austria The Peace of Teschen signed on 13 May 1779 ended the brief conflict with the queen imposing French mediation at her mother s insistence and Austria s gaining a territory of at least 100 000 inhabitants a strong retreat from the early French position which was hostile towards Austria This gave the impression partially justified that the queen had sided with Austria against France 56 57 Meanwhile the queen began to institute changes in court customs Some of them met with the disapproval of the older generation such as the abandonment of heavy make up and the popular wide hooped panniers 58 The new fashion called for a simpler feminine look typified first by the rustic robe a la polonaise style and later by the gaulle a layered muslin dress Marie Antoinette wore in a 1783 Vigee Le Brun portrait 59 In 1780 she began to participate in amateur plays and musicals in a theatre built for her by Richard Mique at the Petit Trianon 60 Marie Antoinette en chemise portrait of the queen in a muslin dress by Louise Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun 1783 This portrait was criticized for showing improperly informal attire for a queen 61 Repayment of the French debt remained a difficult problem further exacerbated by Vergennes and also by Marie Antoinette s prodding 62 Louis XVI to involve France in Great Britain s war with its North American colonies The primary motive for the queen s involvement in political affairs in this period may arguably have had more to do with court factionalism than any true interest on her part in politics themselves 63 but she played an important role in aiding the American Revolution by securing Austrian and Russian support for France which resulted in the establishment of the First League of Armed Neutrality that stopped Britain s attack and by weighing in decisively for the nomination of Philippe Henri Marquis de Segur as Minister of War and Charles Eugene Gabriel de La Croix as Secretary of the Navy in 1780 who helped George Washington defeat the British in the American Revolutionary War which ended in 1783 64 In 1783 the queen played a decisive role in the nomination of Charles Alexandre de Calonne a close friend of the Polignacs as Controller General of Finances and of the Baron de Breteuil as the Minister of the Royal Household making him perhaps the strongest and most conservative minister of the reign 65 The result of these two nominations was that Marie Antoinette s influence became paramount in government and the new ministers rejected any major change to the structure of the old regime More than that the decree by de Segur the minister of war requiring four quarterings of nobility as a condition for the appointment of officers blocked the access of commoners to important positions in the armed forces challenging the concept of equality one of the main grievances and causes of the French Revolution 66 67 Marie Antoinette s second pregnancy ended in a miscarriage early in July 1779 as confirmed by letters between the queen and her mother although some historians believed that she may have experienced bleeding related to an irregular menstrual cycle which she mistook for a lost pregnancy 68 Her third pregnancy was affirmed in March 1781 and on 22 October she gave birth to Louis Joseph Xavier Francois Dauphin of France 69 Empress Maria Theresa died on 29 November 1780 in Vienna Marie Antoinette feared that the death of her mother would jeopardize the Franco Austrian alliance as well as ultimately herself but her brother Joseph II Holy Roman Emperor wrote to her that he had no intention of breaking the alliance 70 A second visit from Joseph II which took place in July 1781 to reaffirm the Franco Austrian alliance and also to see his sister was tainted by false rumours 53 that Marie Antoinette was sending money to him from the French treasury 71 72 Declining popularity 1782 1785 Despite the general celebration over the birth of an heir Marie Antoinette s political influence such as it was was perceived to greatly benefit Austria 73 During the Kettle War in which her brother Joseph attempted to open the Scheldt River for naval passage Marie Antoinette succeeded in obliging Vergennes to pay huge financial compensation to Austria Finally the queen was able to obtain her brother s support against Great Britain in the American Revolution and she neutralized French hostility to his alliance with Russia 74 75 In 1782 after the governess of the royal children the Princesse de Guemene went bankrupt and resigned Marie Antoinette appointed her favourite the Duchesse de Polignac to the position 76 This decision met with disapproval from the court as the duchess was considered to be of too modest origins to occupy such an exalted position On the other hand both the king and the queen trusted Madame de Polignac completely gave her a thirteen room apartment in Versailles and paid her well 77 The entire Polignac family benefited greatly from royal favour in titles and positions but its sudden wealth and lavish lifestyle outraged most aristocratic families who resented the Polignacs dominance at court and also fueled the increasing popular disapproval of Marie Antoinette mostly in Paris 78 De Mercy wrote to the empress It is almost unexampled that in so short a time the royal favour should have brought such overwhelming advantages to a family 79 In June 1783 Marie Antoinette s new pregnancy was announced but on the night of 1 2 November her 28th birthday she suffered a miscarriage 80 Count Axel von Fersen after his return from America in June 1783 was accepted into the queen s private society There were claims that the two were romantically involved 81 but since most of their correspondence has been lost destroyed or redacted for many years there was no conclusive evidence 82 However in 2016 the Telegraph s Henry Samuel announced that researchers at France s Research Centre for the Conservation of Collections CRCC using cutting edge x ray and different infrared scanners had deciphered letters from her that proved the affair 83 84 Around this time pamphlets describing farcical sexual deviance including the queen and her friends in the court were growing in popularity around the country The Portefeuille d un talon rouge was one of the earliest including the queen and a variety of other nobles in a political statement decrying the immoral practices of the court As time went on these came to focus more on the queen They described amorous encounters with a wide range of figures from the Duchesse de Polignac to Louis XV As these attacks increased they were connected with the public s dislike of her association with the rival nation of Austria It was publicly suggested that her supposed behaviour was learned at the court of the rival nation particularly lesbianism which was known as the German vice 85 Her mother again expressed concern for the safety of her daughter and she began to use Austria s ambassador to France Comte de Mercy to provide information on Marie Antoinette s safety and movements 86 In 1783 the queen was busy with the creation of her hamlet a rustic retreat built by her favoured architect Richard Mique according to the designs of the painter Hubert Robert 87 Its creation however caused another uproar when its cost became widely known 88 89 However the hamlet was not an eccentricity of Marie Antoinette s It was en vogue at the time for nobles to have recreations of small villages on their properties In fact the design was copied from that of the Prince de Conde It was also significantly smaller and less intricate than many other nobles 90 Around this time she accumulated a library of 5 000 books Those on music often dedicated to her were the most read though she also liked to read history 91 92 She sponsored the arts in particular music and also supported some scientific endeavours encouraging and witnessing the first launch of a Montgolfiere a hot air balloon 93 On 27 April 1784 Beaumarchais s play The Marriage of Figaro premiered in Paris Initially banned by the king due to its negative portrayal of the nobility the play was finally allowed to be publicly performed because of the queen s support and its overwhelming popularity at court where secret readings of it had been given by Marie Antoinette The play was a disaster for the image of the monarchy and aristocracy It inspired Mozart s Le Nozze di Figaro which premiered in Vienna on 1 May 1786 94 On 24 October 1784 putting the Baron de Breteuil in charge of its acquisition Louis XVI bought the Chateau de Saint Cloud from the Duc d Orleans in the name of his wife which she wanted due to their expanding family She wanted to be able to own her own property One that was actually hers to then have the authority to bequeath it to whichever of my children I wish choosing the child she thought could use it rather than it going through patriarchal inheritance laws or whims It was proposed that the cost could be covered by other sales such as that of the chateau Trompette in Bordeaux 95 This was unpopular particularly with those factions of the nobility who disliked the queen but also with a growing percentage of the population who disapproved of a Queen of France independently owning a private residence The purchase of Saint Cloud thus damaged the public s image of the queen even further The chateau s high price almost 6 million livres plus the substantial extra cost of redecorating ensured that much less money was going towards repaying France s substantial debt 96 97 Marie Antoinette with her two eldest children Marie Therese Charlotte and the Dauphin Louis Joseph in the gardens of the Petit Trianon portrait by Adolf Ulrik Wertmuller 1785 On 27 March 1785 Marie Antoinette gave birth to a second son Louis Charles who bore the title of Duc de Normandie 98 The fact that the birth occurred exactly nine months after Fersen s return did not escape the attention of many leading to doubt as to the parentage of the child and to a noticeable decline of the queen s reputation in public opinion 99 The majority of Marie Antoinette s and Louis XVII s biographers believe that the young prince was the biological son of Louis XVI including Stefan Zweig and Antonia Fraser who believe that Fersen and Marie Antoinette were indeed romantically involved 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 Fraser has also noted that the birthdate matches up perfectly with a known conjugal visit from the king 53 Courtiers at Versailles noted in their diaries that the date of the child s conception in fact corresponded perfectly with a period when the King and the queen had spent much time together but these details were ignored amid attacks on the queen s character 108 These suspicions of illegitimacy along with the continued publication of the libelles and never ending cavalcades of court intrigues the actions of Joseph II in the Kettle War the purchase of Saint Cloud and the Affair of the Diamond Necklace combined to turn popular opinion sharply against the queen and the image of a licentious spendthrift empty headed foreign queen was quickly taking root in the French psyche 109 A second daughter her last child Marie Sophie Helene Beatrix Madame Sophie was born on 9 July 1786 and lived only eleven months until 19 June 1787 Prelude to the Revolution scandals and the failure of reforms 1786 1789 Diamond necklace scandal Main article Affair of the Diamond Necklace Marie Antoinette began to abandon her more carefree activities to become increasingly involved in politics in her role as Queen of France 110 By publicly showing her attention to the education and care of her children the queen sought to improve the dissolute image she had acquired in 1785 from the Diamond Necklace Affair in which public opinion had falsely accused her of criminal participation in defrauding the jewelers Boehmer and Bassenge of the price of an expensive diamond necklace they had originally created for Madame du Barry The main actors in the scandal were Cardinal de Rohan Prince de Rohan Guemene Great Almoner of France and Jeanne de Valois Saint Remy Comtesse de La Motte a descendant of an illegitimate child of Henry II of France of the House of Valois Marie Antoinette had profoundly disliked Rohan since the time he had been the French ambassador to Vienna when she was a child Despite his high clerical position at the Court she never addressed a word to him Others involved were Nicole Lequay alias Baronne d Oliva a prostitute who happened to look like Marie Antoinette Retaux de Villette a forger Alessandro Cagliostro an Italian adventurer and the Comte de La Motte Jeanne de Valois husband Madame de La Motte tricked Rohan into buying the necklace as a gift to Marie Antoinette for him to gain the queen s favour When the affair was discovered those involved except de La Motte and Retaux de Villette who both managed to flee were arrested tried convicted and either imprisoned or exiled Madame de La Motte was sentenced for life to confinement in the Pitie Salpetriere Hospital which also served as a prison for women Judged by the Parlement Rohan was found innocent of any wrongdoing and allowed to leave the Bastille Marie Antoinette who had insisted on the arrest of the Cardinal was dealt a heavy personal blow as was the monarchy and despite the fact that the guilty parties were tried and convicted the affair proved to be extremely damaging to her reputation which never recovered from it citation needed Failure of political and financial reforms Suffering from an acute case of depression the king began to seek the advice of his wife In her new role and with increasing political power the queen tried to improve the awkward situation brewing between the assembly and the king 111 This change of the queen s position signaled the end of the Polignacs influence and their impact on the finances of the Crown Continuing deterioration of the financial situation despite cutbacks to the royal retinue and court expenses ultimately forced the king the queen and the Minister of Finance Calonne at the urging of Vergennes to call a session of the Assembly of Notables after a hiatus of 160 years The assembly was held for the purpose of initiating necessary financial reforms but the Parlement refused to cooperate The first meeting took place on 22 February 1787 nine days after the death of Vergennes on 13 February Marie Antoinette did not attend the meeting and her absence resulted in accusations that the queen was trying to undermine its purpose 112 113 The Assembly was a failure It did not pass any reforms and instead fell into a pattern of defying the king On the urging of the queen Louis XVI dismissed Calonne on 8 April 1787 111 On 1 May 1787 Etienne Charles de Lomenie de Brienne Archbishop of Toulouse and one of the queen s political allies was appointed by the king at her urging to replace Calonne first as Controller General of Finances and then as Prime Minister He began to institute more cutbacks at court while trying to restore the royal absolute power weakened by parliament 114 Brienne was unable to improve the financial situation and since he was the queen s ally this failure adversely affected her political position The continued poor financial climate of the country resulted in the 25 May dissolution of the Assembly of Notables because of its inability to function and the lack of solutions was blamed on the queen 66 France s financial problems were the result of a combination of factors several expensive wars a large royal family whose expenditures were paid for by the state and an unwillingness on the part of most members of the privileged classes aristocracy and clergy to help defray the costs of the government out of their own pockets by relinquishing some of their financial privileges As a result of the public perception that she had single handedly ruined the national finances Marie Antoinette was given the nickname of Madame Deficit in the summer of 1787 115 While the sole fault for the financial crisis did not lie with her Marie Antoinette was the biggest obstacle to any major reform effort She had played a decisive role in the disgrace of the reformer ministers of finance Turgot in 1776 and Jacques Necker first dismissal in 1781 If the secret expenses of the queen were taken into account court expenses were much higher than the official estimate of 7 of the state budget 116 This State Portrait of Marie Antoinette and her three surviving children Marie Therese Louis Charles on her lap and Louis Joseph holding up the drape of an empty bassinet signifying the recent death of Marie s fourth child Sophie was meant to improve her reputation by depicting her as a mother in simple yet stately attire by Vigee Lebrun 1787 The queen attempted to fight back with propaganda portraying her as a caring mother most notably in the painting by Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun exhibited at the Royal Academie Salon de Paris in August 1787 showing her with her children 117 118 Around the same time Jeanne de Valois Saint Remy escaped from prison and fled to London where she published damaging slander concerning her supposed amorous affair with the queen 119 The political situation in 1787 worsened when at Marie Antoinette s urging the Parlement was exiled to Troyes on 15 August It further deteriorated when Louis XVI tried to use a lit de justice on 11 November to impose legislation The new Duc d Orleans publicly protested the king s actions and was subsequently exiled to his estate at Villers Cotterets 120 The May Edicts issued on 8 May 1788 were also opposed by the public and parliament Finally on 8 August Louis XVI announced his intention to bring back the Estates General the traditional elected legislature of the country which had not been convened since 1614 121 While from late 1787 up to his death in June 1789 Marie Antoinette s primary concern was the continued deterioration of the health of the dauphin who suffered from tuberculosis 122 she was directly involved in the exile of the Parlement the May Edicts and the announcement regarding the Estates General She did participate in the King Council the first queen to do this in over 175 years since Marie de Medici had been named Chef du Conseil du Roi between 1614 and 1617 and she was making the major decisions behind the scene and in the Royal Council Marie Antoinette was instrumental in the reinstatement of Jacques Necker as Finance Minister on 26 August 1788 a popular move even though she herself was worried that it would go against her if Necker proved unsuccessful in reforming the country s finances She accepted Necker s proposition to double the representation of the Third Estate tiers etat in an attempt to check the power of the aristocracy 123 124 On the eve of the opening of the Estates General the queen attended the mass celebrating its return As soon as it opened on 5 May 1789 the fracture between the democratic Third Estate consisting of bourgeois and radical aristocrats and the conservative nobility of the Second Estate widened and Marie Antoinette knew that her rival the Duc d Orleans who had given money and bread to the people during the winter would be acclaimed by the crowd much to her detriment 125 The death of the dauphin on 4 June which deeply affected his parents was virtually ignored by the French people 126 who were instead preparing for the next meeting of the Estates General and hoping for a resolution to the bread crisis As the Third Estate declared itself a National Assembly and took the Tennis Court Oath and as people either spread or believed rumours that the queen wished to bathe in their blood Marie Antoinette went into mourning for her eldest son 127 Her role was decisive in urging the king to remain firm and not concede to popular demands for reforms In addition she showed her determination to use force to crush the forthcoming revolution 128 129 French Revolution before Varennes 1789 1791 The situation escalated on 20 June as the Third Estate which had been joined by several members of the clergy and radical nobility found the door to its appointed meeting place closed by order of the king 130 It thus met at the tennis court in Versailles and took the Tennis Court Oath not to separate before it had given a constitution to the nation On 11 July at Marie Antoinette s urging Necker was dismissed and replaced by Breteuil the queen s choice to crush the Revolution with mercenary Swiss troops under the command of one of her favorites Pierre Victor Baron de Besenval de Brunstatt 131 132 133 At the news Paris was besieged by riots that culminated in the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 134 135 On 15 July Gilbert du Motier Marquis de Lafayette was named commander in chief of the newly formed Garde nationale 136 137 The Storming of the Bastille in Paris and the arrest of its Governor Bernard Rene de Launay 14 July 1789 In the days following the storming of the Bastille for fear of assassination and ordered by the king the emigration of members of the high aristocracy began on 17 July with the departure of the Comte d Artois the Condes cousins of the king 138 and the unpopular Polignacs Marie Antoinette whose life was as much in danger remained with the king whose power was gradually being taken away by the National Constituent Assembly 136 139 140 The abolition of feudal privileges by the National Constituent Assembly on 4 August 1789 and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen La Declaration des Droits de l Homme et du Citoyen drafted by Lafayette with the help of Thomas Jefferson and adopted on 26 August paved the way to a Constitutional Monarchy 4 September 1791 21 September 1792 141 142 Despite these dramatic changes life at the court continued while the situation in Paris was becoming critical because of bread shortages in September On 5 October a crowd from Paris descended upon Versailles and forced the royal family to move to the Tuileries Palace in Paris where they lived under a form of house arrest under the watch of Lafayette s Garde Nationale while the Comte de Provence and his wife were allowed to reside in the Petit Luxembourg where they remained until they went into exile on 20 June 1791 143 Marie Antoinette continued to perform charitable functions and attend religious ceremonies but dedicated most of her time to her children 144 She also played an important political albeit not public role between 1789 and 1791 when she had a complex set of relationships with several key actors of the early period of the French Revolution One of the most important was Necker the Prime Minister of Finances Premier ministre des finances 145 Despite her dislike of him she played a decisive role in his return to the office She blamed him for his support of the Revolution and did not regret his resignation in 1790 146 147 Lafayette one of the former military leaders in the American War of Independence 1775 1783 served as the warden of the royal family in his position as commander in chief of the Garde Nationale Despite his dislike of the queen he detested her as much as she detested him and at one time had even threatened to send her to a convent he was persuaded by the mayor of Paris Jean Sylvain Bailly to work and collaborate with her and allowed her to see Fersen a number of times He even went as far as exiling the Duke of Orleans who was accused by the queen of fomenting trouble His relationship with the king was more cordial As a liberal aristocrat he did not want the fall of the monarchy but rather the establishment of a liberal one similar to that of the United Kingdom based on cooperation between the king and the people as was to be defined in the Constitution of 1791 Despite her attempts to remain out of the public eye Marie Antoinette was falsely accused in the libelles of having an affair with Lafayette whom she loathed 148 and as was published in Le Godmiche Royal The Royal Dildo and of having a sexual relationship with the English baroness Lady Sophie Farrell of Bournemouth a well known lesbian of the time Publication of such calumnies continued to the end climaxing at her trial with an accusation of incest with her son There is no evidence to support the accusations Mirabeau A significant achievement of Marie Antoinette in that period was the establishment of an alliance with Honore Gabriel Riqueti Comte de Mirabeau the most important lawmaker in the assembly Like Lafayette Mirabeau was a liberal aristocrat He had joined the Third Estate and was not against the monarchy but wanted to reconcile it with the Revolution He also wanted to be a minister and was not immune to corruption On the advice of Mercy Marie Antoinette opened secret negotiations with him and both agreed to meet privately at the chateau de Saint Cloud on 3 July 1790 where the royal family was allowed to spend the summer free of the radical elements who watched their every move in Paris 149 At the meeting Mirabeau was much impressed by the queen and remarked in a letter to Auguste Marie Raymond d Arenberg Comte de la Marck that she was the only person the king had by him La Reine est le seul homme que le Roi ait aupres de Lui 150 An agreement was reached turning Mirabeau into one of her political allies Marie Antoinette promised to pay him 6 000 livres per month and one million if he succeeded in his mission to restore the king s authority 151 The only time the royal couple returned to Paris in that period was on 14 July to attend the Fete de la Federation an official ceremony held at the Champ de Mars in commemoration of the fall of the Bastille one year earlier At least 300 000 persons participated from all over France including 18 000 national guards with Talleyrand bishop of Autun celebrating a mass at the autel de la Patrie altar of the fatherland The king was greeted at the event with loud cheers of Long live the King especially when he took the oath to protect the nation and to enforce the laws voted by the Constitutional Assembly There were even cheers for the queen particularly when she presented the dauphin to the public 152 Mirabeau sincerely wanted to reconcile the queen with the people and she was happy to see him restoring much of the king s powers such as his authority over foreign policy and the right to declare war Over the objections of Lafayette and his allies the king was given a suspensive veto allowing him to veto any laws for a period of four years With time Mirabeau would support the queen even more going as far as to suggest that Louis XVI adjourn to Rouen or Compiegne 153 This leverage with the Assembly ended with the death of Mirabeau in April 1791 despite the attempt of several moderate leaders of the Revolution to contact the queen to establish some basis of cooperation with her Civil Constitution of the Clergy In March 1791 Pope Pius VI had condemned the Civil Constitution of the Clergy reluctantly signed by Louis XVI which reduced the number of bishops from 132 to 93 imposed the election of bishops and all members of the clergy by departmental or district assemblies of electors and reduced the pope s authority over the Church Religion played an important role in the life of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI both raised in the Roman Catholic faith The queen s political ideas and her belief in the absolute power of monarchs were based on France s long established tradition of the divine right of kings citation needed On 18 April as the royal family prepared to leave for Saint Cloud to attend Easter mass celebrated by a refractory priest a crowd soon joined by the Garde Nationale disobeying Lafayette s orders prevented their departure from Paris prompting Marie Antoinette to declare to Lafayette that she and her family were no longer free This incident fortified her in her determination to leave Paris for personal and political reasons not alone but with her family Even the king who had been hesitant accepted his wife s decision to flee with the help of foreign powers and counter revolutionary forces 154 Fersen and Breteuil who represented her in the courts of Europe were put in charge of the escape plan while Marie Antoinette continued her negotiations with some of the moderate leaders of the French Revolution 155 Flight arrest at Varennes and return to Paris 21 25 June 1791 Main article Flight to Varennes Arrest of the royal family at the house of the registrar of passports at Varennes on the night of 21 22 June 1791 by Thomas Falcon Marshall 1854 There had been several plots designed to help the royal family escape which the Queen had rejected because she would not leave without the king or which had ceased to be viable because of the king s indecision Once Louis XVI finally did commit to a plan its poor execution was the cause of its failure In an elaborate attempt known as the Flight to Varennes to reach the royalist stronghold of Montmedy some members of the royal family were to pose as the servants of an imaginary Mme de Korff a wealthy Russian baroness a role played by Louise Elisabeth de Croy de Tourzel governess of the royal children After many delays the escape was ultimately attempted on 21 June 1791 but the entire family was arrested less than 24 hours later at Varennes and taken back to Paris within a week The escape attempt destroyed much of the remaining support of the population for the king 156 157 Upon learning of the capture of the royal family the National Constituent Assembly sent three representatives Antoine Barnave Jerome Petion de Villeneuve and Charles Cesar de Fay de La Tour Maubourg to Varennes to escort Marie Antoinette and her family back to Paris On the way to the capital they were jeered and insulted by the people as never before The prestige of the French monarchy had never been at such a low level During the trip Barnave the representative of the moderate party in the Assembly protected Marie Antoinette from the crowds and even Petion took pity on the royal family Brought safely back to Paris they were met with total silence by the crowd Thanks to Barnave the royal couple was not brought to trial and was publicly exonerated of any crime in relation with the attempted escape 158 Marie Antoinette s first Lady of the Bedchamber Mme Campan wrote about what happened to the queen s hair on the night of 21 22 June in a single night it had turned white as that of a seventy year old woman En une seule nuit ils etaient devenus blancs comme ceux d une femme de soixante dix ans 159 Radicalization of the Revolution after Varennes 1791 92 Marie Antoinette c 1792 Unfinished portrait by Alexander Kucharsky damaged with a pike by a revolutionary After their return from Varennes and until the storming of the Tuileries on 10 August 1792 the queen her family and entourage were held under tight surveillance by the Garde Nationale in the Tuileries where the royal couple was guarded night and day Four guards accompanied the queen wherever she went and her bedroom door had to be left open at night Her health also began to deteriorate thus further reducing her physical activities 160 161 On 17 July 1791 with the support of Barnave and his friends Lafayette s Garde Nationale opened fire on the crowd that had assembled on the Champ de Mars to sign a petition demanding the deposition of the king The estimated number of those killed varies between 12 and 50 Lafayette s reputation never recovered from the event and on 8 October he resigned as commander of the Garde Nationale Their enmity continuing Marie Antoinette played a decisive role in defeating him in his aims to become the mayor of Paris in November 1791 162 As her correspondence shows while Barnave was taking great political risks in the belief that the queen was his political ally and had managed despite her unpopularity to secure a moderate majority ready to work with her Marie Antoinette was not considered sincere in her cooperation with the moderate leaders of the French Revolution which ultimately ended any chance to establish a moderate government 163 Moreover the view that the unpopular queen was controlling the king further degraded the royal couple s standing with the people which the Jacobins successfully exploited after their return from Varennes to advance their radical agenda to abolish the monarchy 164 This situation lasted until the spring of 1792 165 Marie Antoinette continued to hope that the military coalition of European kingdoms would succeed in crushing the Revolution She counted most on the support of her Austrian family After the death of her brother Joseph in 1790 his successor Leopold 166 was willing to support her to a limited degree citation needed Upon Leopold s death in 1792 his son Francis a conservative ruler was ready to support the cause of the French royal couple more vigorously because he feared the consequences of the French Revolution and its ideas for the monarchies of Europe particularly for Austria s influence in the continent citation needed Barnave had advised the Queen to call back Mercy who had played such an important role in her life before the Revolution but Mercy had been appointed to another foreign diplomatic position where and could not return to France At the end of 1791 ignoring the danger she faced the Princesse de Lamballe who was in London returned to the Tuileries As for Fersen despite the strong restrictions imposed on the Queen he was able to see her a final time in February 1792 167 Events leading to the abolition of the monarchy on 10 August 1792Leopold s and Francis II s strong action on behalf of Marie Antoinette led to France s declaration of war on Austria on 20 April 1792 This resulted in the queen being viewed as an enemy although she was personally against Austrian claims to French territories on European soil That summer the situation was compounded by multiple defeats of the French armies by the Austrians in part because Marie Antoinette passed on military secrets to them 168 In addition at the insistence of his wife Louis XVI vetoed several measures that would have further restricted his power earning the royal couple the nicknames Monsieur Veto and Madame Veto 169 170 nicknames then prominently featured in different contexts including La Carmagnole Barnave remained the most important advisor and supporter of the queen who was willing to work with him as long as he met her demands which he did to a large extent Barnave and the moderates comprised about 260 lawmakers in the new Legislative Assembly the radicals numbered around 136 and the rest around 350 Initially the majority was with Barnave but the queen s policies led to the radicalization of the Assembly and the moderates lost control of the legislative process The moderate government collapsed in April 1792 to be replaced by a radical majority headed by the Girondins The Assembly then passed a series of laws concerning the Church the aristocracy and the formation of new national guard units all were vetoed by Louis XVI While Barnave s faction had dropped to 120 members the new Girondin majority controlled the legislative assembly with 330 members The two strongest members of that government were Jean Marie Roland who was minister of interior and General Dumouriez the minister of foreign affairs Dumouriez sympathized with the royal couple and wanted to save them but he was rebuffed by the Queen 171 Marie Antoinette s actions in refusing to collaborate with the Girondins in power between April and June 1792 led them to denounce the treason of the Austrian comity a direct allusion to the Queen After Madame Roland sent a letter to the King denouncing the Queen s role in these matters urged by the Queen Louis XVI disbanded citation needed the government thus losing his majority in the Assembly Dumouriez resigned and refused a post in any new government At this point the tide against royal authority intensified in the population and political parties while Marie Antoinette encouraged the king to veto the new laws voted by the Legislative Assembly in 1792 172 In August 1791 the Declaration of Pillnitz threatened an invasion of France This led in turn to a French declaration of war in April 1792 which led to the French Revolutionary Wars and to the events of August 1792 which ended the monarchy 173 Marie Antoinette with her children and Madame Elisabeth facing the mob that had broken into the Tuileries Palace on 20 June 1792 Musee de la Revolution francaise On 20 June 1792 a mob of terrifying aspect broke into the Tuileries made the King wear the bonnet rouge red Phrygian cap to show his loyalty to the Republic insulted Marie Antoinette accusing her of betraying France and threatened her life In consequence the Queen asked Fersen to urge the foreign powers to carry out their plans to invade France and to issue a manifesto in which they threatened to destroy Paris if anything happened to the royal family The Brunswick Manifesto issued on 25 July 1792 triggered the events of 10 August 174 when the approach of an armed mob on its way to the Tuileries Palace forced the royal family to seek refuge at the Legislative Assembly Ninety minutes later the palace was invaded by the mob who massacred the Swiss Guards 175 On 13 August the royal family was imprisoned in the tower of the Temple in the Marais under conditions considerably harsher than those of their previous confinement in the Tuileries 176 A week later several of the royal family s attendants among them the Princesse de Lamballe were taken for interrogation by the Paris Commune Transferred to the La Force prison after a rapid judgment Marie Louise de Lamballe was savagely killed on 3 September Her head was affixed on a pike and paraded through the city to the Temple for the Queen to see Marie Antoinette was prevented from seeing it but fainted upon learning of it 177 On 21 September 1792 the fall of the monarchy was officially declared and the National Convention became the governing body of the French Republic The royal family name was downgraded to the non royal Capets Preparations began for the trial of the King in a court of law 178 Louis XVI s trial and execution Charged with treason against the French First Republic Louis XVI was separated from his family and tried in December He was found guilty by the Convention led by the Jacobins who rejected the idea of keeping him as a hostage On 15 January 1793 by a majority of six votes he was condemned to death by guillotine and executed on 21 January 1793 179 Marie Antoinette in the TempleThe queen now called Widow Capet plunged into deep mourning She still hoped her son Louis Charles whom the exiled Comte de Provence Louis XVI s brother had recognized as Louis XVI s successor would one day rule France The royalists and the refractory clergy including those preparing the insurrection in Vendee supported Marie Antoinette and the return to the monarchy Throughout her imprisonment and up to her execution Marie Antoinette could count on the sympathy of conservative factions and social religious groups which had turned against the Revolution and also on wealthy individuals ready to bribe republican officials to facilitate her escape 180 these plots all failed While imprisoned in the Tower of the Temple Marie Antoinette her children and Elisabeth were insulted some of the guards going as far as blowing smoke in the former queen s face Strict security measures were taken to assure that Marie Antoinette was not able to communicate with the outside world Despite these measures several of her guards were open to bribery and a line of communication was kept with the outside world 181 After Louis s execution Marie Antoinette s fate became a central question of the National Convention While some advocated her death others proposed exchanging her for French prisoners of war or for a ransom from the Holy Roman Emperor Thomas Paine advocated exile to America 182 In April 1793 during the Reign of Terror a Committee of Public Safety dominated by Robespierre was formed and men such as Jacques Hebert began to call for Marie Antoinette s trial By the end of May the Girondins had been chased from power 183 Calls were also made to retrain the eight year old Louis XVII to make him pliant to revolutionary ideas To carry this out Louis Charles was separated from his mother on 3 July after a struggle during which his mother fought in vain to retain her son who was handed over to Antoine Simon a cobbler and representative of the Paris Commune Until her removal from the Temple Marie Antoinette spent hours trying to catch a glimpse of her son who within weeks had been made to turn against her accusing his mother of wrongdoing 184 Conciergerie On the night of 1 August at 1 00 in the morning Marie Antoinette was transferred from the Temple to an isolated cell in the Conciergerie as Prisoner nº 280 Leaving the Tower she bumped her head against the lintel of a door which prompted one of her guards to ask her if she was hurt to which she answered No Nothing now can hurt me 185 This was the most difficult period of her captivity She was under constant surveillance with no privacy The Carnation Plot Le complot de l œillet an attempt to help her escape at the end of August was foiled due to the inability to corrupt all the guards 186 She was attended by Rosalie Lamorliere who took care of her as much as she could 187 At least once she received a visit by a Catholic priest 188 189 Trial and execution 14 16 October 1793 Marie Antoinette was tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal on 14 October 1793 Some historians believe the outcome of the trial had been decided in advance by the Committee of Public Safety around the time the Carnation Plot fr was uncovered 190 She and her lawyers were given less than one day to prepare her defense Among the accusations many previously published in the libelles were orchestrating orgies in Versailles sending millions of livres of treasury money to Austria planning the massacre of the gardes francaises National Guards in 1792 191 declaring her son to be the new King of France and incest a charge made by her son Louis Charles pressured into doing so by the radical Jacques Hebert who controlled him This last accusation drew an emotional response from Marie Antoinette who refused to respond to this charge instead appealing to all mothers present in the room Their reaction comforted her since these women were not otherwise sympathetic to her 192 Marie Antoinette on her way to the guillotine pen and ink by Jacques Louis David 16 October 1793 Marie Antoinette s execution on 16 October 1793 Sanson the executioner showing Marie Antoinette s head to the people anonymous 1793 Early on 16 October Marie Antoinette was declared guilty of the three main charges against her depletion of the national treasury conspiracy against the internal and external security of the State and high treason because of her intelligence activities in the interest of the enemy the latter charge alone was enough to condemn her to death 193 At worst she and her lawyers had expected life imprisonment 194 In the hours left to her she composed a letter to her sister in law Madame Elisabeth affirming her clear conscience her Catholic faith and her love and concern for her children The letter did not reach Elisabeth 195 Her will was part of the collection of papers of Robespierre found under his bed and was published by Edme Bonaventure Courtois 196 197 Preparing for her execution she had to change clothes in front of her guards She wanted to wear a black dress but was forced to wear a plain white dress white being the colour worn by widowed queens of France Her hair was shorn her hands bound painfully behind her back and she was put on a rope leash Unlike her husband who had been taken to his execution in a carriage carrosse she had to sit in an open cart charrette for the hour it took to convey her from the Conciergerie via the rue Saint Honore thoroughfare to reach the guillotine erected in the Place de la Revolution the present day Place de la Concorde 198 She maintained her composure despite the insults of the jeering crowd A constitutional priest was assigned to her to hear her final confession He sat by her in the cart but she ignored him all the way to the scaffold as he had pledged his allegiance to the republic 199 Marie Antoinette was guillotined at 12 15 p m on 16 October 1793 200 201 Her last words are recorded as Pardonnez moi monsieur Je ne l ai pas fait expres or Pardon me sir I did not do it on purpose after accidentally stepping on her executioner s shoe 202 Marie Tussaud was employed to make a death mask of her head 203 Her body was thrown into an unmarked grave in the Madeleine cemetery located close by in rue d Anjou Because its capacity was exhausted the cemetery was closed the following year on 25 March 1794 204 Foreign response After her execution Marie Antoinette became a symbol abroad and a controversial figure of the French Revolution Some used her as a scapegoat to blame for the events of the Revolution Thomas Jefferson writing in 1821 claimed that Her inordinate gambling and dissipations with those of the Count d Artois and others of her clique had been a sensible item in the exhaustion of the treasury which called into action the reforming hand of the nation and her opposition to it her inflexible perverseness and dauntless spirit led herself to the Guillotine adding that I have ever believed that had there been no Queen there would have been no revolution 205 Others were shocked by her fate and viewed it as evidence of the dangers of Revolution In his 1790 treatise Reflections on the Revolution in France which was written during Marie Antoinette s imprisonment in Paris but prior to her execution Edmund Burke lamented that the age of chivalry is gone That of sophisters economists and calculators has succeeded and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever and now Never never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex 206 After receiving the news Maria Carolina Queen of Naples and close sister to Marie Antoinette spiraled into a state of mourning and an anger against the revolutionaries She quickly suspended protections of reformers and intellectuals in Naples allowed Neapolitan bishops wide latitude to halt the secularization of the country and offered succor to the overflowing number of emigres fleeing from revolutionary France many of whom were granted pensions 207 Bourbon Restoration Both Marie Antoinette s and Louis XVI s bodies were exhumed on 18 January 1815 during the Bourbon Restoration when the Comte de Provence ascended the newly reestablished throne as Louis XVIII King of France and of Navarre Christian burial of the royal remains took place three days later on 21 January in the necropolis of French kings at the Basilica of St Denis 208 LegacyFor many revolutionary figures Marie Antoinette was the symbol of what was wrong with the old regime in France The onus of having caused the financial difficulties of the nation was placed on her shoulders by the revolutionary tribunal 209 and under the new republican ideas of what it meant to be a member of a nation her Austrian descent and continued correspondence with the competing nation made her a traitor 210 The people of France saw her death as a necessary step toward completing the revolution Furthermore her execution was seen as a sign that the revolution had done its work 211 Marie Antoinette is also known for her taste for fine things and her commissions from famous craftsmen such as Jean Henri Riesener suggest more about her enduring legacy as a woman of taste and patronage For instance a writing table attributed to Riesener now located at Waddesdon Manor bears witness to Marie Antoinette s desire to escape the oppressive formality of court life when she decided to move the table from the queen s boudoir de la Meridienne at Versailles to her humble interior the Petit Trianon Her favourite objects filled her small private chateau and reveal aspects of Marie Antoinette s character that have been obscured by satirical political prints such as those in Les Tableaux de la Revolution 212 A catalog of Marie Antoinette s personal library of 736 volumes was published by Paul Lacroix in 1863 using his pseudonym P L Jacob 213 The listed books were from her library at the Petit Trianon including many found in her boudoir and mostly consist of novels and plays A random selection of her books includes Histoire de Mademoiselle de Terville by dame de Madeleine d Arsant Puisieux Le Philosophe parvenu ou Lettres et pieces originales contenant les aventures d Eugene Sans Pair by Robert Martin Lesuire and Oeuvres melees contenant des tragedies et differents ouvrages en vers et en prose by dame Gabriel de Madeleine Angelique Poisson Gomez A larger and more official library belonging to Marie Antoinette was kept at the Tuileries Palace in Paris 214 Long after her death Marie Antoinette remains a major historical figure linked with conservatism the Catholic Church wealth and fashion She has been the subject of a number of books films and other media Politically engaged authors have deemed her the quintessential representative of class conflict western aristocracy and absolutism Some of her contemporaries such as Thomas Jefferson attributed to her the start of the French Revolution 215 In popular culture Main article Cultural depictions of Marie Antoinette The phrase Let them eat cake is often attributed to Marie Antoinette but there is no evidence that she ever uttered it and it is now generally regarded as a journalistic cliche 216 This phrase originally appeared in Book VI of the first part of Jean Jacques Rousseau s autobiographical work Les Confessions finished in 1767 and published in 1782 Enfin Je me rappelai le pis aller d une grande Princesse a qui l on disait que les paysans n avaient pas de pain et qui repondit Qu ils mangent de la brioche Finally I recalled the stopgap solution of a great princess who was told that the peasants had no bread and who responded Let them eat brioche Rousseau ascribes these words to a great princess but the purported writing date precedes Marie Antoinette s arrival in France Some think that he invented it altogether 217 In the United States expressions of gratitude to France for its help in the American Revolution included naming a city Marietta Ohio in 1788 218 Her life has been the subject of many films such as Marie Antoinette 1938 and Marie Antoinette 2006 219 In 2020 a silk shoe that belonged to her was sold in an auction in the Palace of Versailles for 43 750 euros 51 780 220 In 2022 her story was dramatised by a Canal and BBC English language television series ChildrenChildren of Marie AntoinetteName Portrait Lifespan NotesMarie Therese Charlotte Madame Royale 19 December 1778 19 October 1851 Married her cousin Louis Antoine Duke of Angouleme the eldest son of the future Charles X of France Louis Joseph Xavier FrancoisDauphin de France 22 October 1781 4 June 1789 Died in childhood on the very day the Estates General convened Louis XVII of France Nominally King of France and Navarre 27 March 1785 8 June 1795 Died in childhood no issue He was never officially king nor did he rule His title was bestowed by his royalist supporters and acknowledged implicitly by his uncle s later adoption of the regnal name Louis XVIII rather than Louis XVII upon the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1814 Sophie Helene Beatrix 9 July 1786 19 June 1787 Died in the Palace of Versailles at the age of 11 months after suffering several days of convulsions possibly related to tuberculosis 221 In addition to her biological children Marie Antoinette adopted four children Armand Francois Michel Gagne a poor orphan adopted in 1776 Jean Amilcar a Senegalese slave boy given to the queen as a present by Chevalier de Boufflers in 1787 but whom she instead freed baptized adopted and placed in a pension Ernestine Lambriquet daughter of two servants at the palace who was raised as the playmate of her daughter Marie Therese and whom she adopted after the death of her mother in 1788 and finally Zoe Jeanne Louise Victoire who was adopted in 1790 along with her two older sisters when her parents an usher and his wife in service of the King had died 222 Of these only Armand Ernestine and Zoe actually lived with the royal family Jean Amilcar along with the elder siblings of Zoe and Armand who were also formally foster children of the royal couple simply lived at the queen s expense until her imprisonment which proved fatal for at least Amilcar as he was evicted from the boarding school when the fee was no longer paid and reportedly starved to death on the street 222 Armand and Zoe had a position which was more similar to that of Ernestine Armand lived at court with the king and queen until he left them at the outbreak of the Revolution because of his republican sympathies and Zoe was chosen to be the playmate of the dauphin just as Ernestine had once been selected as the playmate of Marie Therese and sent away to her sisters in a convent boarding school before the Flight to Varennes in 1791 222 ReferencesNotes Jones Daniel 2003 1917 Peter Roach James Hartmann Jane Setter eds English Pronouncing Dictionary Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 3 12 539683 8 The Birth of Marie Antoinette History Today www historytoday com Retrieved 20 November 2022 Fraser 2002 p 5 Fraser 2002 pp 5 6 a b c d e f g de Decker Michel 2005 Marie Antoinette les dangereuses liaisons de la reine Paris France Belfond pp 12 20 ISBN 978 2714441416 a b de Segur d Armaille Marie Celestine Amelie 1870 Marie Therese et Marie Antoinette Paris France Editions Didier Millet pp 34 47 Lever 2006 p 10 a b Fraser 2001 pp 22 23 166 70 Delorme Philippe 1999 Marie Antoinette Epouse de Louis XVI mere de Louis XVII Pygmalion Editions p 13 Lever Evelyne 2006 C etat Marie Antoinette Paris France Fayard p 14 a b Cronin 1989 p 45 Fraser 2002 pp 32 33 Cronin 1989 p 46 Weber 2007 page needed Marie Antoinette Smithsonian Magazine November 2006 Fraser 2001 pp 51 53 Pierre Nolhac amp La Dauphine Marie Antoinette 1929 pp 46 48harvnb error no target CITEREFPierre NolhacLa Dauphine Marie Antoinette 1929 help Fraser 2001 pp 70 71 Nolhac 1929 pp 55 61harvnb error no target CITEREFNolhac1929 help Fraser 2001 p 157 d Arneth amp Geffroy 1874 pp 80 90 110 115 Cronin 1974 pp 61 63 Cronin 1974 p 61 Fraser 2001 pp 80 81 d Arneth amp Geffroy 1874 pp 65 75 Lever 2006 Fraser Marie Antoinette 2001 p 124 Jackes Levron amp Madame du Barry 1973 pp 75 85harvnb error no target CITEREFJackes LevronMadame du Barry1973 help Evelyne Lever amp Marie Antoinette 1991 p 124harvnb error no target CITEREFEvelyne LeverMarie Antoinette1991 help Goncourt Edmond de 1880 Charpentier G ed La Du Barry Paris France pp 195 96 Lever Evelyne Louis XV Fayard Paris 1985 p 96 Vatel Charles 1883 Histoire de Madame du Barry d apres ses papiers personnels et les documents d archives Paris France Hachette Livre p 410 ISBN 978 2013020077 Fraser 2001 pp 136 37 d Arneth amp Geffroy 1874 pp 475 480 Castelot 1962 pp 107 108 Fraser 2001 pp 124 27 Lever 1991 p 125 Cronin 1974 p 215 Batterberry Michael Ruskin Batterberry Ariane 1977 Fashion the mirror of history Greenwich Connecticut Greenwich House p 190 ISBN 978 0 517 38881 5 Fraser 2001 pp 150 51 Erickson Carolly 1991 To the Scaffold The Life of Marie Antoinette New York City William Morrow and Company p 163 ISBN 978 0688073015 Thomas Chantal The Wicked Queen The Origins of the Myth of Marie Antoinette Translated by Julie Rose New York Zone Books 2001 p 51 Fraser 2001 pp 140 45 d Arneth amp Geffroy 1874 pp 400 410 Fraser 2001 pp 129 31 Fraser 2001 pp 131 32 Bonnet 1981 Fraser 2001 pp 111 13 Howard Patricia Gluck 1995 pp 105 15 240 45harvnb error no target CITEREFHoward Patricia Gluck1995 help Lever Evelyne Louis XVI Fayard Paris 1985 pp 289 91 Cronin 1974 pp 158 59 Fraser 2002b p 156 Circumcision and phimosis in eighteenth century France History of Circumcision Retrieved 16 December 2016 Cronin 1974 p 159 Fraser 2001 pp 160 61 Cronin 1974 p 161 Hibbert 2002 p 23 Fraser 2001 p 169 a b c Fraser Antonia 2006 Marie Antoinette The Journey Phoenix ISBN 9780753821404 Samuel Henry 12 January 2016 Marie Antoinette s torrid affair with Swedish count revealed in decoded letters The Telegraph Cronin 1974 pp 162 64 Fraser 2001 pp 158 71 d Arneth amp Geffroy 1874 pp 168 170 180 182 210 212 Kindersley Dorling 2012 Fashion The Definitive History of Costume and Style New York DK Publishing pp 146 49 Cronin 1974 pp 127 28 Fraser 2001 pp 174 79 1 Archived 18 March 2015 at the Wayback Machine Kelly Hall Impropriety Informality and Intimacy in Vigee Le Brun s Marie Antoinette en Chemise pp 21 28 Providence College Art Journal 2014 Larkin T Lawrence 2010 A Gift Strategically Solicited and Magnanimously Conferred Winterthur Portfolio 44 1 31 76 doi 10 1086 651087 JSTOR 10 1086 651087 S2CID 142922208 Marie Antoinette Biography amp French Revolution Encyclopaedia Britannica Retrieved 3 February 2018 Fraser 2001 pp 152 171 194 95 Charles Alexandre de Calonne French statesman Britannica www britannica com Retrieved 16 December 2021 a b Fraser 2001 pp 218 20 Price Munro amp Preserving the Monarchy The Comte de Vergennes 1774 1787 1995 pp 30 35 145 50harvnb error no target CITEREFPrice MunroPreserving the Monarchy The Comte de Vergennes 1774 17871995 help Meagen Elizabeth Moreland The Performance of Motherhood in the Correspondence of Madame de Sevigne Marie Therese of Austria and Josephine Bonaparte to their Daughters Chapter I Contextualizing the correspondence p 11 Archived 2 February 2017 at the Wayback Machine retrieved 1 October 2016 From Vienna to Versailles from Imperial Princess to Crown Prince PDF Arneth Alfred 1866 Marie Antoinette Joseph II und Leopold II in French and German Leipzig Paris Vienna K F Kohler Ed Jung Treuttel Wilhelm Braumuller p 23 footnote Fraser 2001 pp 184 87 Price 1995 pp 55 60harvnb error no target CITEREFPrice1995 help Fraser pp 232 36 Lettres de Marie Antoinette et al pp 42 44harvnb error no target CITEREFLettres de Marie AntoinetteLe Marquis de Beaucourt1895Vol ii help Lever 1991 pp 350 353 Cronin 1974 p 193 Fraser 2001 pp 198 201 Munro Price amp The Road to Versailles 2003 pp 14 15 72harvnb error no target CITEREFMunro PriceThe Road to Versailles2003 help Zweig Stephan amp Marie Antoinette 1938 p 121harvnb error no target CITEREFZweig StephanMarie Antoinette1938 help Wheeler Bonnie Parsons John Carmi 2003 Eleanor of Aquitaine Lord and Lady Farr Evelyn 12 October 2013 Marie Antoinette and Count Fersen The Untold Love Story 2nd Revised ed Peter Owen Publishers ISBN 978 0720610017 Fraser 2001 p 202 Samuel Henry 12 January 2016 Marie Antoinette s torrid affair with Swedish count revealed in decoded letters The Daily Telegraph Farr Evelyn 1 July 2016 I Love You Madly Marie Antoinette and Count Fersen The Secret Letters Peter Owen Publishers ISBN 978 0720618778 Hunt Lynn The Many Bodies of Marie Antoinette Political Pornography and the Problem of the Feminine in the French Revolution In The French Revolution Recent Debates and New Controversies 2nd edition ed Gary Kates New York and London Routledge 1998 pp 201 18 Thomas Chantal The Wicked Queen The Origins of the Myth of Marie Antoinette Translated by Julie Rose New York Zone Books 2001 pp 51 52 Lever 2006 p 158 Fraser pp 206 08 Gutwirth Madelyn The Twilight of the Goddesses women and representation in the French revolutionary era 1992 pp 103 178 85 400 05harvnb error no target CITEREFGutwirth Madelyn The Twilight of the Goddesses women and representation in the French revolutionary era1992 help Fraser 2002b p 207 Fraser 2001 p 208 Bombelles Marquis de amp Journal vol I 1977 pp 258 65harvnb error no target CITEREFBombelles Marquis deJournal vol I1977 help Cronin 1974 pp 204 05 Fraser 2001 pp 214 15 Fraser 2002b p 217 Fraser 2001 pp 216 20 Lever 1991 pp 358 360 Fraser 2001 pp 224 25 Lever 2006 p 189 Stefan Zweig Marie Antoinette The portrait of an average woman New York 1933 pp 143 244 47 Fraser 2001 pp 267 69 Ian Dunlop Marie Antoinette A Portrait London 1993 Evelyne Lever Marie Antoinette la derniere reine Fayard Paris 2000 Simone Bertiere Marie Antoinette l insoumise Le Livre de Poche Paris 2003 Jonathan Beckman How to ruin a Queen Marie Antoinette the Stolen Diamonds and the Scandal that shook the French throne London 2014 Munro Price The Fall of the French Monarchy Louis XVI Marie Antoinette and the baron de Breteuil London 2002 Deborah Cadbury The Lost King of France The tragic story of Marie Antoinette s Favourite Son London 2003 pp 22 24 Cadbury p 23 Fraser 2001 p 226 Fraser 2001 pp 248 52 a b Fraser 2001 pp 248 50 Fraser 2001 pp 246 48 Lever 1991 pp 419 420 Fraser 2001 pp 250 60 Fraser 2001 pp 254 55 Fraser 2001 pp 254 60 Facos p 12 Schama p 221 Fraser 2001 pp 255 58 Fraser 2001 pp 257 58 Fraser 2001 pp 258 59 Fraser 2001 pp 260 61 Fraser 2001 pp 263 65 Lever 2001 pp 448 453 A diary of the French Revolution 1789 93 amp Morris Gouverneur 1939 pp 66 67harvnb error no target CITEREFA diary of the French Revolution 1789 93Morris Gouverneur1939 help Nicolardot Louis Journal de Louis Seize 1873 pp 133 38 Fraser 2001 pp 274 78 Fraser 2001 pp 279 82 Lever 1991 pp 462 467 Doyle William 1990 The Oxford History of the French Revolution Oxford University Press pp 100 105 iFraser 2001 pp 280 85 Letters vol 2 pp 130 40harvnb error no target CITEREFLetters vol 2 help Morris 1939 pp 130 35harvnb error no target CITEREFMorris1939 help Fraser 2001 pp 282 84 Lever 1991 pp 474 478 a b Fraser 2001 pp 284 89 Despaches of Earl Grower Oscar Browning amp Cambridge 1885 pp 70 75 245 50harvnb error no target CITEREFDespaches of Earl GrowerOscar BrowningCambridge 1885 help Journal d emigration du prince de Conde 1789 1795 publie par le comte de Ribes Bibliotheque nationale de France 2 Archived 7 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine Castelot Charles X Librairie Academique Perrin Paris 1988 pp 78 79 Despaches of Earl Grower Oscar Browning amp Cambridge 1885 pp 70 75 245 50harvnb error no target CITEREFDespaches of Earl GrowerOscar BrowningCambridge 1885 help Fraser 2001 p 289 Lever 1991 pp 484 485 dossiers d histoire Le Palais du Luxembourg Senat senat fr Fraser 2001 pp 304 08 Discours prononce par M Necker Premier Ministre des Finances a l Assemblee Nationale le 24 Septembre 1789 3 Archived 3 December 2022 at the Wayback Machine Fraser 2001 p 315 Lever 1991 pp 536 537 Fraser 2001 p 319 Castelot 1962 p 334 Lever 1991 pp 528 530 Memoires de Mirabeau tome VII p 342 Lever 1991 pp 524 527 2001 amp Fraser pp 314 316sfnm error no target CITEREF2001Fraser help Castelot 1962 p 335 Fraser 2001 p 313 Fraser 2001 pp 321 323 Lever 1991 pp 542 552 Castelot 1962 pp 336 339 Fraser 2001 pp 321 325 Castelot 1962 pp 340 341 Fraser 2001 pp 325 48 Lever 1991 pp 555 568 Lever 1991 pp 569 575 Castelot 1962 pp 385 398 Memoires de Madame Campan premiere femme de chambre de Marie Antoinette Le Temps retrouve Mercure de France Paris 1988 p 272 ISBN 2 7152 1566 5 Lettres de Marie Antoinette vol 2 1895 pp 364 78harvnb error no target CITEREFLettres de Marie Antoinette vol 21895 help Lever 1991 pp 576 580 Fraser 2001 pp 350 360 71 Fraser 2001 pp 353 54 Fraser 2001 pp 350 52 Fraser 2001 pp 357 358 Castelot 1962 pp 408 409 Marie Antoinette as queen of France Die Welt der Habsburger Retrieved 15 December 2020 Lever 1991 pp 599 601 2001 pp 365 68harvnb error no target CITEREF2001 help Fraser 2001 pp 365 68 Lever 1991 pp 607 609 Castelot 1962 pp 415 416 Lever 1991 pp 591 592 Castelot 1962 p 418 Fraser 2001 pp 371 73 Fraser 2001 pp 368 375 78 Fraser 2001 pp 373 379 Castelot 1962 pp 428 435 Fraser 2001 pp 382 86 Fraser 2001 p 389 Castelot 1962 pp 442 446 Fraser 2001 p 392 Fraser 2001 pp 395 399 Castelot 1962 pp 447 453 Castelot 1962 pp 453 457 Marie Antoinette Last Queen of France Jane Austen Centre and the Jane Austen Online Gift Shop Retrieved 13 December 2021 Fraser 2001 pp 398 408 Fraser 2001 pp 411 12 Fraser 2001 pp 412 14 Funck Brentano Frantz Les Derniers jours de Marie Antoinette Flammarion Paris 1933 Furneaux amp 19711 pp 139 42harvnb error no target CITEREFFurneaux19711 help Fraser p 437 sfn error no target CITEREFFraser help G Lenotre The Last Days of Marie Antoinette 1907 Fraser 2001 pp 416 20 Castelot 1962 pp 496 500 Proces de Louis XVI de Marie Antoinette de Marie Elisabeth et de Philippe d Orleans Recueil de pieces authentiques Annees 1792 1793 et 1794 De Mat imprimeur libraire Bruxelles 1821 p 473 Castelot 1957 pp 380 385 Fraser 2001 pp 429 435 Le proces de Marie Antoinette Ministere de la Justice 17 October 2011 French 4 Archived 21 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine Furneaus 1971 pp 150 54harvnb error no target CITEREFFurneaus1971 help Last Letter of Marie Antoinette Tea at Trianon 26 May 2007 Courtois Edme Bonaventure Robespierre Maximilien de 31 January 2019 Papiers inedits trouves chez Robespierre Saint Just Payan etc supprimes ou omis par Courtois Baudoin via Google Books Chevrier M R Alexandre J Laux Christian Godechot Jacques Ducoudray Emile 1983 Documents interessant E B Courtois In Annales historiques de la Revolution francaise 55e Annee No 254 Octobre Decembre 1983 pp 624 28 Annales Historiques de la Revolution Francaise 55 254 624 35 JSTOR 41915129 Furneaus 1971 pp 155 56harvnb error no target CITEREFFurneaus1971 help Castelot 1957 pp 550 558 Lever 1991 p 660 Fraser 2001 p 440 The Times 23 October 1793 Archived 1 November 2009 at the Wayback Machine The Times Famous Last Words 23 May 2012 Marie Tussaud encyclopedia com Retrieved 28 March 2016 Ragon Michel L espace de la mort Essai sur l architecture la decoration et l urbanisme funeraires Michel Albin Paris 1981 ISBN 978 2 226 22871 0 5 Archived 3 December 2022 at the Wayback Machine Passages from his autobiography bartleby 1854 Retrieved 17 May 2021 Burke Edmund 1790 Reflections on the Revolution in France And on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event In a Letter Intended to Have Been Sent to a Gentleman in Paris 1 ed London J Dodsley in Pall Mall Retrieved 7 September 2021 Maria Carolina 1752 1814 Cengage 2019 Retrieved 17 May 2021 Fraser 2001 pp 411 447 Hunt Lynn 1998 The Many Bodies of Marie Antoinette Political Pornography and the Problem of the Feminine in the French Revolution In Kates Gary ed The French Revolution Recent Debates and New Controversies 2nd ed London England Routledge pp 201 18 ISBN 978 0415358330 Kaiser Thomas Fall 2003 From the Austrian Committee to the Foreign Plot Marie Antoinette Austrophobia and the Terror French Historical Studies Durham North Carolina Duke University Press 26 4 579 617 doi 10 1215 00161071 26 4 579 S2CID 154852467 Thomas Chantal 2001 The Wicked Queen The Origins of the Myth of Marie Antoinette Translated by Julie Rose New York City Zone Books p 149 ISBN 0942299396 Jenner Victoria 12 November 2019 Celebrating Marie Antoinette on her birthday Waddesdon Manor Retrieved 18 November 2019 P L Jacob Bibliotheque de la reine Marie Antoinette au Petit Trianon d apres l inventaire original dresse par ordre de la convention catalogue avec des notes inedites du marquis de Paulmy Paris Jules Gay 1863 Marie Antoinette LibraryThing https www librarything com profile MarieAntoinette Archived 24 October 2021 at the Wayback Machine Accessed October 23 2021 Jefferson Thomas 2012 Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson Mineola New York Courier Dover Publications ISBN 978 0486137902 Retrieved 29 March 2013 I have ever believed that had there been no queen there would have been no revolution Fraser 2001 pp xviii 160 Lever 2006 pp 63 65 Lanser 2003 pp 273 90 Johnson 1990 p 17 Sturtevant pp 14 72 luizhadsen Paulnewton 24 September 2016 Marie Antoinette 2006 Full Movie archived from the original on 1 March 2020 retrieved 1 December 2016 Marie Antoinette s silk slipper fetches US 50 000 at auction CTV News 15 November 2020 Retrieved 26 February 2021 Fraser Antonia Marie Antoinette The Journey Anchor Books USA 2001 p 257 ISBN 0 385 48949 8 a b c Philippe Huisman Marguerite Jallut Marie Antoinette Stephens 1971 Bibliography d Arneth Alfred Ritter Geffroy A eds 1874 Correspondance secrete entre Marie Therese et le comte de Mercy Argenteau avec les lettres de Marie Therese et de Marie Antoinette in French Vol 3 Firmin Didot Bonnet Marie Jo 1981 Un choix sans equivoque recherches historiques sur les relations amoureuses entre les femmes XVIe XXe siecle in French Paris Denoel OCLC 163483785 Castelot Andre 1957 Queen of France a biography of Marie Antoinette trans Denise Folliot New York Harper amp Brothers OCLC 301479745 Castelot Andre 1962 Marie Antoinette Paris France Librairie academique Perrin ISBN 978 2262048228 Cronin Vincent 1974 Louis and Antoinette Collins ISBN 978 0 00 211494 3 Cronin Vincent 1989 Louis and Antoinette London The Harvill Press ISBN 978 0 00 272021 2 Dams Bernd H Zega Andrew 1995 La folie de batir pavillons d agrement et folies sous l Ancien Regime trans Alexia Walker Flammarion ISBN 978 2 08 201858 6 Facos Michelle 2011 An Introduction to Nineteenth Century Art Taylor amp Francis ISBN 978 1 136 84071 5 Retrieved 1 September 2011 Farr Evelyn 2013 Marie Antoinette and Count Fersen The Untold Love Story 2nd Revised ed Peter Owen Publishers ISBN 978 0720610017 Fraser Antonia 2001 Marie Antoinette 1st ed New York N A Talese Doubleday ISBN 978 0 385 48948 5 Fraser Antonia 2002 Marie Antoinette The Journey 2nd ed Garden City Anchor Books ISBN 978 0 385 48949 2 Fraser Antonia 2002b Marie Antoinette The Journey Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group ISBN 9781400033287 Hermann Eleanor 2006 Sex with the Queen Harper Morrow ISBN 978 0 06 084673 2 Hibbert Christopher 2002 The Days of the French Revolution Harper Perennial ISBN 978 0 688 16978 7 Johnson Paul 1990 Intellectuals New York Harper amp Row ISBN 978 0 06 091657 2 Lanser Susan S 2003 Eating Cake The Ab uses of Marie Antoinette In Goodman Dena ed Marie Antoinette Writings on the Body of a Queen Psychology Press ISBN 978 0 415 93395 7 Lever Evelyne 1991 Marie Antoinette Fayard Lever Evelyne 24 September 2001 Marie Antoinette The Last Queen of France Macmillan ISBN 978 0 312 28333 9 Lever Evelyne 2006 Marie Antoinette The Last Queen of France London Portrait ISBN 978 0 7499 5084 2 Schama Simon 1989 Citizens A Chronicle of the French Revolution New York Vintage ISBN 978 0 679 72610 4 Seulliet Philippe July 2008 Swan Song Music Pavillion of the Last Queen of France World of Interiors 7 Sturtevant Lynne 2011 A Guide to Historic Marietta Ohio The History Press ISBN 978 1 60949 276 2 Retrieved 1 September 2011 Weber Caroline 2007 Queen of Fashion What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution Picador ISBN 978 0 312 42734 4 Wollstonecraft Mary 1795 An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution and the Effect it Has Produced in Europe St Paul s Further readingBashor Will 2013 Marie Antoinette s Head The Royal Hairdresser the Queen and the Revolution Lyons Press p 320 ISBN 978 0762791538 Erickson Carolly 1991 To the Scaffold New York William Morrow and Company Inc ISBN 0 312 32205 4 Farr Evelyn 2016 I Love You Madly Marie Antoinette and Count Fersen The Secret Letters Peter Owen Publishers ISBN 978 0720618778 Jacob P L 1863 Bibliotheque de la reine Marie Antoinette au Petit Trianon d apres l inventaire original dresse par ordre de la convention catalogue avec des notes inedites du marquis de Paulmy Jules Gay OCLC 12097301 Kaiser Thomas Fall 2003 From the Austrian Committee to the Foreign Plot Marie Antoinette Austrophobia and the Terror French Historical Studies 26 4 579 617 doi 10 1215 00161071 26 4 579 S2CID 154852467 Kates Gary 1998 The French Revolution Recent Debates and New Controversies 2nd ed Routledge pp 201 218 ISBN 0 415 35833 7 Lasky Kathryn 2000 The Royal Diaries Marie Antoinette Princess of Versailles Austria France 1769 New York Scholastic ISBN 978 0 439 07666 1 Loomis Stanley 1972 The Fatal Friendship Marie Antoinette Count Fersen and the flight to Varennes London Davis Poynter ISBN 978 0 7067 0047 3 MacLeod Margaret Anne 2008 There Were Three of Us in the Relationship The Secret Letters of Marie Antoinette Irvine Scotland Isaac MacDonald ISBN 978 0 9559991 0 9 Naslund Sena Jeter 2006 Abundance A Novel of Marie Antoinette New York William Morrow ISBN 978 0 06 082539 3 Romijn Andre 2008 Vive Madame la Dauphine A Biographical Novel Ripon Roman House ISBN 978 0 9554100 2 4 Thomas Chantal 1999 The Wicked Queen The Origins of the Myth of Marie Antoinette Trans Julie Rose New York Zone Books ISBN 978 0 942299 40 3 Vidal Elena Maria 1997 Trianon A Novel of Royal France Long Prairie MN Neumann Press ISBN 978 0 911845 96 9 Zweig Stefan 2002 Marie Antoinette The Portrait of an Average Woman New York Grove Press ISBN 978 0 8021 3909 2 External linksThis article s use of external links may not follow Wikipedia s policies or guidelines Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references June 2021 Learn how and when to remove this template message Marie Antoinette at Wikipedia s sister projects Media from Commons Quotations from Wikiquote Texts from Wikisource Data from Wikidata Marie Antoinette s official Versailles profile on en chateauversailles fr The marais of Marie Antoinette on parismarais com Celebrating Marie Antoinette blog article on waddesdon org uk Marie Antoinette a childhood overshadowed by politics on habsburger netMarie AntoinetteHouse of Habsburg LorraineCadet branch of the House of LorraineBorn 2 November 1755 Died 16 October 1793French royaltyVacantTitle last held byMarie Leszczynska Queen consort of France1774 1792from 1791 Queen of the French VacantMonarchy abolishedTitle next held byJosephine de Beauharnaisas Empress of the FrenchTitles in pretenceLoss of titleRepublic declared TITULAR Queen consort of France4 September 1791 21 January 1793 VacantTitle next held byMarie Josephine of Savoy Portals France Biography Law Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Marie Antoinette amp oldid 1132542581, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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