Marie Antoinette, a French queen belonging to an Austrian family, was born in Vienna on November 2, 1755, and married in 1770, Duke de Berry, Crown Prince of France, who in 1774 became King Louis XVI, becoming the last Queen of France, and in 1793 he was executed The French revolutionaries with the guillotine.

She was given several titles during her reign, such as "Queen of Poverty and Elegance", "The Most Beautiful Beauties of the 18th Century", and "The Lady of Economic Impotence", and she is considered among the most important and symbolic figures in the history of the Versailles Palace.

Early life and scientific formation

Marie Antoinette was born in Vienna on 2 November 1755, the penultimate daughter of the 16 children of Queen Maria Theresa and Emperor François I, Duke of Lorraine.

When Maria was baptized, she was given the name Antoine in the family and in court. Despite the severe restrictions inside the royal court, she had a happy childhood, and she was supervised by a permissive nanny who gave her extra care. .

Since her childhood, Marie was characterized by beauty and softness, and her temperament was characterized by stubbornness and determination.

And while she got everything she wanted from her nanny, she was afraid of her mother, who was known for her toughness and firmness, and she tended to her father, whose death made a deep impression on her when she was ten years old.

When Mary reached the age of 12, she could not read and spoke neither French nor German properly, while she was fluent in Italian.

marriage of political interests

The war at the time was between Austria and France, so it was agreed between the two countries to marry Louis XVI, at the age of 15, to Marie Antoinette at the age of fourteen, so that the war would be ended, and new relations began between their countries against England.

This marriage was orchestrated by Sir Etienne Francois, Duc de Choisole, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, who is considered one of the main architects of the Franco-Austrian Reconciliation.

In 1770, the bride was delivered in a hall in the middle of a suite that was built on one of the deserted Rhine islands between France and Germany, and this meant her separation from everything that linked her to the Austrian house, people and things.

According to custom, no one accompanies her beyond the border line, and the bride must take away from her everything that comes from her country, and from the moment she becomes the wife of the French crown prince, she must wear only French textiles.

The wedding ceremony of Louis and Mary took place on May 16, 1770, in the Palace of Versailles in the Chapel of Louis XIV, and thus the Austrian princess became the heir to the French throne.

This marriage aroused some reluctance and reluctance among the French public, which kept bad memories of the long conflicts with Austria.

Mary suffered first, from her husband’s neglect of her and the strictness of French royal traditions and formalities she was unfamiliar with in her country, which contradicted her lame nature, and the formalities of the protocol had deprived her of a few real years of childhood life. Adaptation to French rites and customs.

Marie Antoinette's children

After 8 years of marriage, Marie gave birth to her first daughter, Marie Therese Charlotte, in December 1778, and in October 1781, she gave birth to her son, Louis Joseph, and in March 1785 she gave birth to Louis Charles, who was appointed crown prince following the death of his older brother. In 1789, she gave birth to her last daughter, Sophie Beatrice, who died a few months later.

Portrait of Marie Antoinette at the Palais National Museum in France (Getty)

Queen of luxury and elegance

After the death of King Louis XV on May 10, 1774, Louis XVI rose to the throne at the age of twenty, while Mary became Queen of France at the age of 19.

The French had placed great hopes on the two kings, Marie and her husband, and with the end of the reign of Louis XV, the news of his death left the public with great relief.

After assuming the throne, the young queen rebelled, against the admonitions and advice of moderation, and dismissed her hardened governess (the Countess de Noaille), and did not hesitate to dismiss the ministers of France whose pleasures threatened to cut royal expenditures.

According to historian Kimberly Chrisman Campbell, who tells about the period of rule before Marie Antoinette, he said: "The concubines of kings were the leaders of fashion, as they had money and prestige without accountability." As for the queens, they were expected to "glam up in their clothes, but in a traditional way." They were also technically in charge of the royal treasury, and were expected at least to spend the money with discipline.”

But Queen Mary did not apply any of this to her, since from her early days in her royal palace she was passionate about keeping up with the latest fashions and developing new designs, and she would order a dress almost every day of the year, and receive the dress designer Rose Bertin at the palace, without observing the protocol of her job as Queen Mary greatly irritated her mother by these matters.

Will Bashur mentions in his book “The Head of Marie Antoinette”, that the royal hairdresser became one of the queen’s closest relatives, while he was styling her hair, which she used to raise in the air about 4 feet, and adorned it with feathers and ornaments, and even decorated it once with a model of a French warship.

The Queen - who is fond of entertainment and the arts - was enthusiastically merging in the balls she held inside the palace, and was attributed to her having special romantic relationships, the most famous of which is with the Swedish Count Axel von Fersen, who was one of the masterminds in 1791 of the failed escape of the royal couple who were arrested in Varennes area.

The Queen had meetings in her apartment, where she had a penchant for billiards and card games excessively, often losing large sums of money.

Marie Antoinette, wife of King Louis XVI of France (Getty Images)

She belonged to many artists in favour, such as the painter Elisabeth Vigée Lubran, who had completed some 30 drawings of the queen, to whom she owed her success in her artistic career.

The Queen's reputation worsened and her popularity declined due to the greed of her surroundings from the family of the "Polyniac" nobles, who spent most of her time with them in her inner salon located behind her apartment, which she extended to the upper floor, or inside the smaller suite that her husband gave her after his coronation as king.

She changed the buildings of her residence, and the gardens, in the middle of which elegant buildings and a theater were built, and she also ordered the construction of a miniature countryside along the palace, in an attempt to find in it what she lived in her childhood of simplicity and amusement.

On the other hand, the people were suffering from poverty and need, and the state and the church only had to raise taxes, while the people only wished for bread, and when told that the people had no bread, she said harshly: “Let them eat cake!”, as attributed to her.

Under the influence of her mother, the queen sought to have a political role, but she was not appreciated in court circles.

The King's aunt, "Adelaide", called Mary "Austrian" contemptuously, and printed and distributed pamphlets accusing her of infidelity, extravagance and recklessness, and she was also called "The Lady of Economic Deficit".

Mary was the target of defamation in the caricatures, which doubled in 1785 with the outbreak of the expensive diamond necklace case, which was obtained by a thief disguised as the Queen and fled to London, and despite the innocence of the Queen, the rumor greatly affected her reputation.

Her expenditures became a subject of control, and she was accused of exhausting the kingdom's finances, and all her attempts to regain public support continued to fail miserably, and at the outbreak of the revolution, Marie Antoinette was subject to outright hatred, and became an example of the recklessness and excess of the French monarchy, and constituted one of the causes of the outbreak of the unrest that led to the revolution, and to the end of the revolution. property after that.

revolution against the queen

In 1789, the beginning of the revolution was when the people demanded representatives from the common people in the People's Assembly, and Mary did not accept and sent 100,000 soldiers to suppress them.

On July 15, 1789, the people revolted against the (Bastille) prison, which was the center of the force of repression in royal France, and after its fall, the people went to the Palace of Versailles, and all the way they were chanting ugly words about the profligate Marie and the news of her love.

Their goal was to kill her immediately, and when they reached the palace they killed her guards, so Mary came out and bowed to the people and considered this movement an insult to her dignity.

When the revolution erupted, it took a stand against it to the end, and refused any compromise. Even after its arrest, it refused to meet with any of its leaders, as well as the idea of ​​the Constitutional Court project.

King Louis XVI was weak-willed, and it prompted him not to give in to the demands of the revolutionaries, to stand up to and resist the revolution, and to flee to Vienna shortly after the revolution, in 1791, and prepare from there for a counter-revolution.

News of her influence on her husband, the king, was circulated and pushed him to take positions in the interest of her country, Austria, at the expense of France, and was accused of having leaked military plans in 1792 to the Vienna court, as well as her rejection of any royal reforms or amendments.

Marie was placed under house arrest in the Tuileries Palace with the royal family, and in 1792 the monarchy in France was abolished by a decision of the French National Congress, the royal couple were arrested, and a meeting was held for their trial.

They were sentenced to death.

The trial was described as hasty, weak evidence and few accusations, including the accusation of Marie Antoinette of favoring the interest of her country, Austria, at the expense of France, and her influence on her husband's decisions, and she was sentenced to death for treason.

According to some historians, the last queen in the old French regime is not considered among the top criminals in history, but rather appears as a "stupid and selfish princess", and her political role is reduced to a minimum.

Death

Four years after the outbreak of the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette was tried and executed, 9 months after the execution of her husband, the King, who was executed on January 21, 1793.

In August 1793, the queen was placed in solitary confinement and appeared before the Revolutionary Court on October 14, 1793, and was guillotined two days later.

According to some historians, she bravely climbed in front of the guillotine that fell on her neck on the morning of October 16, 1793 in the Place de la Concorde, and died at the age of 37, and her body was placed in a coffin and thrown in a public cemetery behind the Madeleine Church.

As for their captive child, the Crown Prince, who was installed by his uncle on the side of the bloc against the revolution, as a king under the name Louis XVII or Louis Charles, he died shortly after the age of 10 years.

In 1815, after Louis XVIII's restoration to the throne, he ordered the exhumation of the remains of his brother, Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, and their "proper burial", along with members of the French royal family, in Saint-Denis Cathedral.