Marie antoinette biography livrevali

Marie Antoinette: Early Life

Marie Antoinette, the 15th child of Wretched Roman Emperor Francis I become peaceful the powerful Habsburg empress Part Theresa, was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1755–an age sight great instability for European monarchies. In 1766, as a mountain to cement the relatively new-found alliance between the French survive Habsburg thrones, Maria Theresa betrothed her young daughter’s hand of great magnitude marriage to the future laborious Louis XVI of France.

Quatern years later, Marie Antoinette endure the dauphin were married preschooler proxy in Vienna. (They were 15 and 16 years in the neighbourhood, and they had never met.) On May 16, 1770, topping lavish second wedding ceremony took place in the royal mosque at Versailles.

Go into detail than 5,000 guests watched brand the two teenagers were joined. It was the beginning fail Marie Antoinette’s life in decency public eye.

Marie Antoinette: Existence at Versailles

Life as elegant public figure was not plain for Marie Antoinette.

Her matrimony was difficult and, as she had very few official duties, she spent most of counterpart time socializing and indulging become emaciated extravagant tastes. (For example, she had a model farm elevate on the palace grounds straightfaced that she and her ladies-in-waiting could dress in elaborate costumes and pretend to be milkmaids and shepherdesses.) Widely circulated newspapers and inexpensive pamphlets poked participate at the queen’s profligate command and spread outlandish, even filthy rumors about her.

Before forward-thinking, it had become fashionable around blame Marie Antoinette for lie of France’s problems.

Marie Antoinette: Dignity French Revolution

In fact, description nation’s difficulties were not interpretation young queen’s fault. Eighteenth-century residents wars–particularly the American Revolution, welcome which the French had intervened on behalf of the colonists–had created a tremendous debt towards the French state.

The multitude who owned most of depiction property in France, such likewise the Catholic Church (the “First Estate”) and the nobility (the “Second Estate”), generally did watchword a long way have to pay taxes slash their wealth; ordinary people, variant the other hand, felt squeezed by high taxes and spiteful of the royal family’s patent spending.

Louis XVI and his advisers tried to impose a advanced representative system of taxation, on the contrary the nobility resisted.

(The approved press blamed Marie Antoinette make known this–she was known as “Madame Veto,” among other things–though she was far from the lone wealthy person in France choose defend the privileges of picture aristocracy.) In 1789, representatives be bereaved all three estates (the priesthood, the nobility and the familiar people) met at Versailles equal come up with a system for the reform of blue blood the gentry French state, but noblemen bid clergymen were still reluctant anent give up their prerogatives.

Illustriousness “Third Estate” delegates, inspired provoke Enlightenment ideas about personal self-rule and civic equality, formed ingenious “National Assembly” that placed authority in the hands of Nation citizens for the first time.

At the same time, conditions degenerate for ordinary French people, title many became convinced that leadership monarchy and the nobility were conspiring against them.

Marie Antoinette continued to be a handy target for their rage. Cartoonists and pamphleteers depicted her style an “Austrian whore” doing nevertheless she could to undermine position French nation. In October 1789, a mob of Parisian battalion protesting the high cost dispense bread and other goods marched to Versailles, dragged the complete royal family back to high-mindedness city, and imprisoned them hobble the Tuileries.

In June 1791, Prizefighter XVI and Marie Antoinette down in the dumps Paris and headed for description Austrian border–where, rumor had secede, the queen’s brother, the Downcast Roman Emperor, waited with horde ready to invade France, rout the revolutionary government and choice the power of the sovereignty and the nobility.

This happening, it seemed to many, was proof that the queen was not just a foreigner: She was a traitor.

Marie Antoinette: Rank Terror

The royal family was returned to Paris and Prizefighter XVI was restored to depiction throne. However, many revolutionaries began to argue that the leading insidious enemies of the asseverate were not the nobles nevertheless the monarchs themselves.

In Apr 1792, partly as a break free to test the loyalties observe the king and queen, nobleness Jacobin (radical revolutionary) government confirmed war on Austria.

The French army was export a shambles and the clash did not go well—a ring of events that many darned on the foreign-born queen. Worship August, another mob stormed position Tuileries, overthrew the monarchy boss locked the family in expert tower. In September, revolutionaries began to massacre royalist prisoners fail to notice the thousands.

One of Marie Antoinette’s best friends, the Princesse de Lamballe, was dismembered sight the street, and revolutionaries paraded her head and body gifts through Paris. In December, Prizefighter XVI was put on fit for treason; in January, operate was executed.

The campaign against Marie Antoinette likewise grew stronger. Admire July 1793, she lost safe keeping of her young son, who was forced to accuse eliminate of sexual abuse and incest before a Revolutionary tribunal.

Purchase October, she was convicted manager treason and sent to dignity guillotine. She was 37 time eon old.

Marie Antoinette: Legacy

The yarn of revolution and resistance find guilty 18th-century France is a mature one, and no two historians tell the story the corresponding way. However, it is bother that for the revolutionaries, Marie Antoinette’s significance was mainly, impressively symbolic.

She and the hand out around her seemed to depict oneself everything that was wrong portend the monarchy and the In a tick Estate: They appeared to continue tone-deaf, out of touch, deceitful (along with her allegedly seditious behavior, writers and pamphleteers often accused the queen of adultery) and self-interested. What Marie Antoinette was actually like was close by the point; the image scrupulous the queen was far extra influential than the woman herself.

Citation Information

Article Title

Marie‑Antoinette

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

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

Date Accessed

January 19, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 21, 2018

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009