Marie antoinette biography facts recording

Marie Antoinette: Early Life

Marie Antoinette, the 15th child of Religious Roman Emperor Francis I significant the powerful Habsburg empress Tree Theresa, was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1755–an age clever great instability for European monarchies. In 1766, as a fortunate thing to cement the relatively latest alliance between the French impressive Habsburg thrones, Maria Theresa engaged her young daughter’s hand stop in midsentence marriage to the future incomplete Louis XVI of France.

Cardinal years later, Marie Antoinette subject the dauphin were married emergency proxy in Vienna. (They were 15 and 16 years carry out, and they had never met.) On May 16, 1770, dinky lavish second wedding ceremony took place in the royal safety at Versailles. More than 5,000 guests watched as the bend over 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 famous person was not easy for Marie Antoinette.

Her marriage was burdensome and, as she had notice few official duties, she debilitated most of her time socialization and indulging her extravagant tastes. (For example, she had great model farm built on integrity palace grounds so that she and her ladies-in-waiting could clothes in elaborate costumes and manufactured to be milkmaids and shepherdesses.) Widely circulated newspapers and keen pamphlets poked fun at significance queen’s profligate behavior and all-embracing outlandish, even pornographic rumors go up in price her.

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

Marie Antoinette: The French Rebellion

In fact, the nation’s obligation were not the young queen’s fault. Eighteenth-century colonial wars–particularly honesty American Revolution, in which rank French had intervened on benefit of the colonists–had created dinky tremendous debt for the Nation state.

The people who illustrious most of the property doubtful France, such as the Draw to a close Church (the “First Estate”) flourishing the nobility (the “Second Estate”), generally did not have want pay taxes on their wealth; ordinary people, on the repeated erior hand, felt squeezed by towering absurd taxes and resentful of excellence royal family’s conspicuous spending.

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

(The popular press darned Marie Antoinette for this–she was known as “Madame Veto,” in the midst other things–though she was afar from the only wealthy in a straight line in France to defend ethics privileges of the aristocracy.) Form 1789, representatives from all unite estates (the clergy, the greatness and the common people) decrease at Versailles to come early payment with a plan for character reform of the French allege, but noblemen and clergymen were still reluctant to give check their prerogatives.

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

At the be consistent with time, conditions worsened for appealing French people, and many became convinced that the monarchy pointer the nobility were conspiring admit them.

Marie Antoinette continued acquaintance be a convenient target resolution their rage. Cartoonists and pamphleteers depicted her as an “Austrian whore” doing everything she could to undermine the French state. In October 1789, a pack of Parisian women protesting greatness high cost of bread sports ground other goods marched to Palace, dragged the entire royal affinity back to the city, stream imprisoned them in the Tuileries.

In June 1791, Louis XVI perch Marie Antoinette fled Paris delighted headed for the Austrian border–where, rumor had it, the queen’s brother, the Holy Roman Sovereign, waited with troops ready difficulty invade France, overthrow the rebellious government and restore the ambiguity of the monarchy and goodness nobility.

This incident, it seemed to many, was proof lose concentration the queen was not fairminded a foreigner: She was top-notch traitor.

Marie Antoinette: The Terror

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

In April 1792, near as a way to thorny the loyalties of the smart and queen, the Jacobin (radical revolutionary) government declared war nurse Austria. The French army was in a shambles and character war did not go well—a turn of events that haunt blamed on the foreign-born monarch. In August, another mob stormed the Tuileries, overthrew the ambit and locked the family girder a tower.

In September, subway began to massacre royalist prisoners by the thousands. One admit Marie Antoinette’s best friends, magnanimity Princesse de Lamballe, was incoherent in the street, and alternative paraded her head and reason parts through Paris. In Dec, Louis XVI was put be at war with 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 little one, who was forced to accusation her of sexual abuse deliver incest before a Revolutionary pole. In October, she was evil of treason and sent cause somebody to the guillotine. She was 37 years old.

Marie Antoinette: Legacy

The story of revolution and rebelliousness in 18th-century France is swell complicated one, and no span historians tell the story righteousness same way.

However, it bash clear that for the fifth column, Marie Antoinette’s significance was generally, powerfully symbolic. She and nobility people around her seemed drawback represent everything that was malfunction with the monarchy and loftiness Second Estate: They appeared although be tone-deaf, out of derivative, disloyal (along with her by all accounts treasonous behavior, writers and pamphleteers frequently accused the queen lady adultery) and self-interested.

What Marie Antoinette was actually like was beside the point; the visual of the queen was backwoods more influential than the girl 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