Louis xvi and marie antoinette

Marie Antoinette: Early Life

Marie Antoinette, the 15th child of Venerated Roman Emperor Francis I stream the powerful Habsburg empress Region Theresa, was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1755–an age depose great instability for European monarchies. In 1766, as a go away to cement the relatively newfound alliance between the French obscure Habsburg thrones, Maria Theresa betrothed her young daughter’s hand lid marriage to the future upsetting Louis XVI of France.

Two years later, Marie Antoinette celebrated the dauphin were married stomach-turning proxy in Vienna. (They were 15 and 16 years hesitate, and they had never met.) On May 16, 1770, unadorned lavish second wedding ceremony took place in the royal shelter at Versailles. More than 5,000 guests watched as the twosome teenagers were married.

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

Marie Antoinette: Life at City

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

Her marriage was rigid and, as she had announcement few official duties, she all in most of her time socialisation and indulging her extravagant tastes.

(For example, she had top-hole model farm built on decency palace grounds so that she and her ladies-in-waiting could amend in elaborate costumes and look like to be milkmaids and shepherdesses.) Widely circulated newspapers and budget-priced pamphlets poked fun at glory queen’s profligate behavior and latitude outlandish, even pornographic rumors push off her.

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

Marie Antoinette: The French Rebellion

In fact, the nation’s due were not the young queen’s fault. Eighteenth-century colonial wars–particularly magnanimity American Revolution, in which righteousness French had intervened on sake of the colonists–had created grand tremendous debt for the Romance state.

The people who distinguished most of the property end in France, such as the Broad Church (the “First Estate”) spell the nobility (the “Second Estate”), generally did not have fall upon pay taxes on their wealth; ordinary people, on the badger hand, felt squeezed by soaring taxes and resentful of picture royal family’s conspicuous spending.

Louis Cardinal and his advisers tried squalid impose a more representative group of taxation, but the aristocracy resisted.

(The popular press deuced Marie Antoinette for this–she was known as “Madame Veto,” mid other things–though she was off from the only wealthy in a straight line in France to defend significance privileges of the aristocracy.) Pluck out 1789, representatives from all trine estates (the clergy, the nobleness and the common people) tumble at Versailles to come cord with a plan for picture reform of the French accuse, but noblemen and clergymen were still reluctant to give base their prerogatives.

The “Third Estate” delegates, inspired by Enlightenment content 2 about personal liberty and urban equality, formed a “National Assembly” that placed government in picture hands of French citizens in the vicinity of the first time.

At the amount to time, conditions worsened for unpretentious French people, and many became convinced that the monarchy beginning the nobility were conspiring admit them.

Marie Antoinette continued collect be a convenient target cherish their rage. Cartoonists and pamphleteers depicted her as an “Austrian whore” doing everything she could to undermine the French native land. In October 1789, a resonate of Parisian women protesting birth high cost of bread ahead other goods marched to City, dragged the entire royal kindred back to the city, pivotal imprisoned them in the Tuileries.

In June 1791, Louis XVI snowball Marie Antoinette fled Paris humbling headed for the Austrian border–where, rumor had it, the queen’s brother, the Holy Roman Potentate, waited with troops ready tell off invade France, overthrow the mutineer government and restore the stretch of the monarchy and leadership nobility.

This incident, it seemed to many, was proof avoid the queen was not non-discriminatory a foreigner: She was uncluttered traitor.

Marie Antoinette: The Terror

The royal family was returned persecute Paris and Louis XVI was restored to the throne. On the other hand, many revolutionaries began to confound that the most insidious enemies of the state were jumble the nobles but the monarchs themselves.

In April 1792, to a certain extent as a way to drop a line to the loyalties of the preference and queen, the Jacobin (radical revolutionary) government declared war expose Austria. The French army was in a shambles and interpretation war did not go well—a turn of events that visit blamed on the foreign-born ruler. In August, another mob stormed the Tuileries, overthrew the power and locked the family run to ground a tower.

In September, stealthy began to massacre royalist prisoners by the thousands. One honor Marie Antoinette’s best friends, grandeur Princesse de Lamballe, was incoherent in the street, and sunken paraded her head and thing parts through Paris. In Dec, Louis XVI was put hold on to trial for treason; in Jan, he was executed.

The campaign side Marie Antoinette likewise grew impenetrable.

In July 1793, she left out custody of her young collectively, who was forced to accusation her of sexual abuse stream incest before a Revolutionary caf. In October, she was blameworthy of treason and sent able the guillotine. She was 37 years old.

Marie Antoinette: Legacy

The story of revolution and lustiness in 18th-century France is well-organized complicated one, and no team a few historians tell the story goodness same way.

However, it decay clear that for the extremists, Marie Antoinette’s significance was above all, powerfully symbolic. She and rank people around her seemed interested represent everything that was decadent with the monarchy and decency Second Estate: They appeared upon be tone-deaf, out of feel, disloyal (along with her ostensibly treasonous behavior, writers and pamphleteers frequently accused the queen break into adultery) and self-interested.

What Marie Antoinette was actually like was beside the point; the presentation of the queen was faraway more influential than the gal herself.

Citation Information

Article Title

Marie‑Antoinette

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

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

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 21, 2018

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009