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Marie Antoinette (/ ˌ æ n t w ə ˈ n ɛ t, ˌ ɒ̃ t-/; French: [maʁi ɑ̃twanɛt] ⓘ; Marie Antoinette Josèphe Jeanne; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was the last queen of France prior to the French Revolution. She was born an archduchess of Austria, and was the penultimate child and youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa and ...
- Overview
- Early life and role in the court of Louis XVI
- The French Revolution
- End of the ancien régime and execution
Marie-Antoinette was queen of France from 1774 to 1793 and is associated with the decline of the French monarchy. Her alleged remark “Let them eat cake” has been cited as showing her obliviousness to the poor conditions in which many of her subjects lived while she lived decadently, but she probably never said it.
How did Marie-Antoinette come to power?
Marie-Antoinette was the youngest daughter of the Holy Roman emperor Francis I and Maria Theresa. She was only 14 when her parents had her married to the dauphin Louis, grandson of Louis XV of France, for diplomatic purposes. In 1774, when her husband ascended the throne as Louis XVI, she became queen.
What was Marie-Antoinette’s reign like?
As queen, Marie-Antoinette was always unpopular. She spent lavishly, but her extravagance was only a minor cause of France’s growing debt in the 1770s and ’80s. Because of Louis XVI’s indecisiveness, Marie-Antoinette played an increasingly prominent political role. Her rejection of reform and resistance to the French Revolution contributed to the monarchy’s overthrow in 1792.
What was Marie-Antoinette’s family like?
In more than one sense, Marie-Antoinette was a victim of circumstance. In her youth, she was a pawn on the diplomatic chessboard of Europe, as France and Austria attempted to navigate the complex web of allegiances that shaped the continent in the wake of the Seven Years’ War. The 11th daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and Maria Theresa, Marie-Antoinette was just 14 years old when she was married to the dauphin Louis, grandson of France’s King Louis XV, on May 16, 1770. The stigma of being a representative of Austria when a connection with Vienna was unpopular in France remained with her throughout her life. She was also unfortunate that the timid, uninspiring Louis proved to be an inattentive husband. By the time he ascended the throne in May 1774, Marie-Antoinette had withdrawn to seek companionship and distraction among a circle of favourites and politically vulnerable companions whom she might have avoided if her private life had been more satisfactory. Her most intimate friend from this time onward was the princesse de Lamballe. It was ultimately her husband’s personal weakness and political nullity that forced Marie-Antoinette to play such a prominent political role during the Revolution.
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The role that she played in French internal and foreign policy between the accession of Louis XVI and the outbreak of the Revolution has probably been much exaggerated. Her efforts, for example, to secure the return to power of Étienne-François de Choiseul, duc de Choiseul, in 1774 were unsuccessful. The fall of finance minister Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot in 1776 must be attributed to the hostility of chief royal adviser Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, comte de Maurepas, and to the differences that arose between Turgot and foreign minister Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, over French participation in the American Revolution rather than to the direct intervention of the queen. Marie-Antoinette was not, at that time, interested in politics except as a way of securing favours for her friends, and her political influence never exceeded that formerly wielded by the royal mistresses of Louis XV.
In foreign policy, she encountered the opposition of both Louis XVI and Vergennes in her efforts to advance Austrian interests, and it is certain that her brother, Emperor Joseph II, was gravely disappointed at her lack of success. Even her indulgence of the persistent requests of her favourites, such as Yolande de Polastron, comtesse de Polignac, did not entail a great drain on the treasury. Her other court expenditures contributed—though to a minor degree—to the huge debt incurred by the French state in the 1770s and ’80s.
Louis XVI’s inability to consummate their marriage and the queen’s resultant childlessness in the 1770s inspired rivals—including the king’s own brothers, who stood to inherit the throne if she did not produce a legitimate heir—to circulate slanderous reports of her alleged extramarital affairs. These vilifications culminated in the Affair of the Diamond Necklace (1785), in which the queen was unjustly accused of having formed an immoral relationship with a cardinal. The scandal discredited the monarchy and encouraged the nobles to vigorously oppose (1787–88) all the financial reforms advocated by the king’s ministers. This incident was all the more unfortunate for the queen’s reputation because, since the birth of her daughter Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte in December 1778 and of the dauphin Louis in October 1781, she led a quieter and more conventional life. Her second son, the future Louis XVII, was born in March 1785.
Though the queen had supported Jacques Necker’s return to power at the end of August 1788 and had approved of the concession of double representation to the Third Estate, her unpopularity was at its height when the Estates-General convened at Versailles in May 1789. This was because she was regarded, though without justification, as an associate of the reactionary coterie of the king’s brother Charles, comte d’Artois, and because of the aspersions cast on her character by the king’s cousin, Louis-Philippe-Joseph, duc d’Orléans. At the end of May she seemed to have intervened little in politics, as she was distracted by the illness of her elder son, who died early in June.
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During the crises of 1789 as well as those to come, Marie-Antoinette proved to be stronger and more decisive than her husband. After a crowd stormed the Bastille on July 14, 1789, the queen failed to convince Louis to take refuge with his army at Metz. In August–September, however, she successfully prodded him to resist the attempts of the Revolutionary National Assembly to abolish feudalism and restrict the royal prerogative. As a result, she became the main target of the popular agitators, whose animosity contributed to the legend that, on being told that the people had no bread, she callously remarked, “Let them eat cake!” (“Qu’ils mangent de la brioche!”). In October 1789 popular pressure compelled the royal family to return from Versailles to Paris, where they became hostages of the Revolutionary movement. During this time the queen had been deprived of the company of many of her most intimate friends, as they had emigrated after the fall of the Bastille, but she continued to display great personal courage that sustained the royal family both then and throughout its later disasters.
Discredited by the royal family’s failed escape, Marie-Antoinette attempted to shore up the rapidly deteriorating position of the crown by opening secret negotiations with the leaders of the constitutional monarchists in the Constituent Assembly, namely Antoine Barnave and Theodore and Alexandre de Lameth. Barnave and the Lameth brothers were anxious to check the progress of republicanism and to bring the Revolution to a close, and they gathered like minds under the banner of the Club of the Feuillants. The basis of their secret understanding with the queen was that, after the constitution had been revised so as to bolster the executive power of the king, it should be loyally accepted and implemented by Louis XVI. In foreign policy the aim of the Feuillants was to persuade the émigrés to return and to prevent Emperor Leopold II (Marie-Antoinette’s brother) from being committed to a counterrevolutionary crusade against France.
The queen remained wary of Barnave and the Feuillants, and, although she acquiesced in the king’s acceptance of the constitution in September 1791, she warned Leopold II that she was not in favour of either their domestic or foreign policy. Instead, she urged the necessity of an armed congress of the powers to negotiate from strength for the restoration of the royal authority. This duplicity paralyzed the pacific policy of the Feuillants and did not dissuade the émigrés from their more aggressive designs for the restoration of the ancien régime. After France declared war on Austria in April 1792, Marie-Antoinette’s continuing intrigues with the Austrians further enraged the French. Popular hatred of the queen provided impetus for the storming of the Tuileries Palace and the overthrow of the monarchy on August 10, 1792.
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Nov 9, 2009 · Marie Antoinette, the 15th child of Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and the powerful Habsburg empress Maria Theresa, was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1755–an age of great instability for European...
Jul 11, 2023 · Queen Marie Antoinette helped provoke the French Revolution that led to the monarchy’s end in 1792. Read about her children, death, movies about her, and more.
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Apr 4, 2022 · Marie Antoinette (l. 1755-1793) was the queen of France during the turbulent final years of the Ancien Régime and the subsequent French Revolution (1789-1799). With the ascension of her husband Louis XVI of France (r. 1774-1792), she became queen at the age of 18 and would shoulder much of the blame for the perceived moral failures of the ...
- Who was Marie Antoinette?Born in Vienna on 2 November 1755 as Maria Antonia Josepha Joanna, archduchess of Austria. the 15th child of Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa of Aust...
- What made Marie Antoinette so famous?A victim of her time and circumstance, she was made a scapegoat for everything wrong with the French monarchy. The lies spread about her were enoug...
- How many children did Marie Antoinette have?Marie Antoinette had four children: Marie-Thérèse in 1778, Louis-Joseph in 1781, Louis-Charles in 1785, and Sophie in 1786. Only her eldest child s...
- Why was Marie Antoinette executed?After the rise of the radical Jacobins, during the reign of the infamous Committee of Public Safety, the Revolutionary Tribunal charged her with a...
- What were Marie Antoinette's last words?Her last words, after accidentally stepping on the foot of her executioner, were "Pardon, monsieur. I did not do it on purpose."
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Queen of France 1755-1793. Described by her brother, Emperor Joseph II, as “honest and lovable,” Marie Antoinette was an Austrian princess and the wife of King Louis XVI. She remains one of the most iconic characters in Versailles’ rich history.
Nov 7, 2022 · The execution of Louis XVI of France (r. 1774-1792) left the king’s widow, Marie Antoinette, overwhelmed with grief. Like a ghost, she haunted her chambers in the Tower of the Temple, the Paris prison fortress where she and her children were being detained by the revolutionary government.
