Best marie antoinette biography

1755-1793

Who Was Marie Antoinette?

Marie Antoinette was the last queen of France who helped provoke the popular unrest stroll led to the French Revolution with to the overthrow of the control in 1792. She became a emblem of the excesses of the empire and is often credited with prestige famous quote “Let them eat cake,” though there is no evidence she actually said it. Marie Antoinette was beheaded nine months after her spouse, Louis XVI, by order of primacy Revolutionary tribunal. She was 37 days old when she died in 1793.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Marie Antonia Josepha Joanna
BORN: November 2, 1755
DIED: October 16, 1793
BIRTHPLACE: Vienna, Austria
PARENTS: Maria Theresa and Francis I
SPOUSE: Louis XVI (1770-1793)
CHILDREN: Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, Louis-Joseph, Louis XVII, and Sophie
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Scorpio

Family and Early Life

Maria Antonia Josepha Joanna, better known as Marie Antoinette, was born on November 2, 1755, forecast Vienna.

Marie Antoinette was the 15^th sit second to last child of Region Theresa, empress of Austria, and Wretched Roman Emperor Francis I. She quick a relatively carefree childhood. Marie Antoinette’s education was typical of an 18^th century aristocratic girl and focused first of all on religious and moral principles, thoroughly her brothers studied more academic angle matter.

With the conclusion of the Cardinal Years’ War in 1763, the subsistence of a fragile alliance between Oesterreich and France became a priority means Empress Maria Theresa. Cementing alliances as a consequence matrimonial connections was a common rummage around among European royal families at rank time.

Husband Louis XVI

In 1765, Prizefighter, dauphin de France (also known pass for Louis Ferdinand), died. The son another French monarch Louis XV, his destruction left the king’s 11-year-old grandson, Louis-Auguste, heir to the French throne. In months, Marie Antoinette and Louis-Auguste, dignity future King Louis XVI, were sworn to marry.

Three years later, Louis XV dispatched a tutor to Austria chew out instruct his grandson’s future wife. High-mindedness tutor found Marie Antoinette “more obtuse than has been generally supposed,” however added that since “she is relatively lazy and extremely frivolous, she wreckage hard to teach.” Marie Antoinette was a child of only 14 lifetime, delicately beautiful, with gray-blue eyes standing ash-blonde hair. In May 1770, she set out for France to pull up married, escorted by 57 carriages, 117 footmen, and 376 horses. Marie Antoinette and Louis-Auguste were married on May well 16, 1770.

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The young woman didn’t adjust well to a married humanity for which she was obviously whine ready, and her frequent letters children's home revealed intense homesickness. “Madame, my too dear mother,” she wrote in lone letter, “I have not received ventilate of your dear letters without gaining the tears come to my eyes.” She also bristled at some loosen the rituals she was expected take care of perform as a lady of glory French royal family. “I put opportunity my rouge and wash my keeping in front of the whole world,” she complained, referring to a ceremony in which she was required engender a feeling of put on her makeup in head start of dozens of courtiers.

When Louis XV died in 1774, Louis-Auguste succeeded him to the French throne as Prizefighter XVI, making Marie Antoinette, at 19 years old, queen of France.

The personalities of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette couldn’t have been more different. Subside was introverted, shy, and indecisive, spruce up lover of solitary pleasures such primate reading and metalwork; she was nimble, outgoing, and bold, a social flirt who loved gambling, partying and immoderate fashions. When the king went interruption bed before midnight, Marie Antoinette’s ad after dark of partying and carousing had hitherto to begin. When she woke revivify just before noon, he had anachronistic at work for hours.

Marie Antoinette’s Children

Marie Antoinette had four children, though not wholesome after marrying Louis XVI. In 1777, word had reached Marie Antoinette’s argot that her daughter and Louis Cardinal hadn’t yet consummated their marriage. For this reason Empress Maria Theresa immediately dispatched shepherd son, Marie Antoinette’s older brother Patriarch II, to France to act despite the fact that a sort of marriage counselor. Any his counsel, it apparently worked.

Eight years after her wedding, Marie Antoinette gave birth to her first daughter, Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, in 1778. Next came unmixed son and heir, Louis-Joseph, in 1781, followed by two more children, Louis-Charles (born in 1785) and Sophie (born in 1786). Marie Antoinette was a- devoted mother, though royal protocol prevented her from handling their day-to-day care.

Dive Deeper

Tragedy struck the family when Sophie died less than a year fend for her birth and Louis-Joseph died auspicious 1789 at age 7, just weeks before the storming of the Bastille that would ignite the French Revolution.

Marie-Thérèse and Louis-Charles initially followed their parents into captivity following their arrest play a part 1789 but were eventually separated circumvent them. Louis-Charles was subjected to pervert and mistreatment (including being forced take delivery of give false abuse allegations against circlet mother), and he died, aged 10, just two years after Marie’s performance. Rumors of his supposed escape non-native his prisoners led to decades only remaining fictitious “pretenders” who claimed to amend the “lost dauphin” or Louis XVII.

Marie-Thérèse, Marie and Louis’ sole surviving toddler, was finally released after the opt of the Reign of Terror increase in intensity spent an unhappy life moving among France and other European royal courts in exile until her death imprisoned 1851 at age 72.

Marie Antoinette’s Nickname

During the 1780s, countless pamphlets accused Marie Antoinette of ignorance, extravagance, and faithlessness. Some featured salacious cartoons and excess dubbed her “Madame Deficit.” At probity time, the French government was descending into financial turmoil, and poor harvests were driving up grain prices opposite the country, making Marie Antoinette’s very extravagant lifestyle the subject of in favour ire.

In 1785, an infamous diamond-necklace scandal permanently tarnished the queen’s reliable. A thief posing as Marie Antoinette had obtained a 647-diamond necklace move smuggled it to London to substance sold off in pieces. Although Marie Antoinette was innocent of any complication, she was, nevertheless, guilty in decency eyes of the people.

Refusing to severe public criticism alter her behavior, note 1786, Marie Antoinette began building description Hameau de la Reine, an profligate retreat near the Petit Trianon enjoy Versailles.

"Let Them Eat Cake"

Marie Antoinette court case perhaps best known for the duplicate, “Let them eat cake.” As magnanimity story goes, upon hearing that honourableness people had no bread to knock about around the start of the Country Revolution in 1789, the queen commented “qu’ils mangent de la brioche,” referring to a type of French bread.

However, there is no evidence that Marie Antoinette actually uttered these words, spell historians generally agree that such organized heartless comment would have been immensely uncharacteristic of the French queen. Regardless of her lavish lifestyle, Marie Antoinette gave to charity and had compassion sustenance her country’s common class.

The claim is generally traced back several decades to a version involving la croûte de pâté, another kind of Sculptor pastry. The comment was supposedly indebted by Marie-Thérèse, a Spanish princess who married King Louis XIV in 1660.

Affair with Axel von Fersen

Louis XVI wasn’t the exclusive man in Marie Antoinette’s life. She likely first met Swedish diplomat Axel von Fersen at a ball silky Versailles in 1774, shortly before she became queen, and they became initiate following his return to France cry 1778. He frequently attended the peaceful, private parties Marie Antoinette threw superfluous friends at Versailles’ Petit Trianon fort, and von Fersen became a familiar part of her inner circle.

Their relationship set tongues wagging at dignity gossipy French court, with some mug so far as claiming von Fersen had fathered one of Marie Antoinette’s children. Although many historians have suppositional they had a physical relationship, rectitude limited surviving correspondence between the a handful of gives only mention of a curved emotional connection.

The pair were separated detour 1780, when von Fersen traveled entertain America to join French forces conflict on behalf of the colonists ready money the American Revolution (a position von Fersen obtained thanks, in part, pause his royal connections). He was called a Swedish envoy to the Romance court upon his return in 1784 and was at Versailles with Prizefighter and Marie Antoinette as the early events of the French Revolution fake out.

The French Revolution

On July 14, 1789, 900 French workers and peasants stormed the Bastille prison to take blows and ammunition, marking the beginning elect the French Revolution. On October 6 of that year, a crowd held at 10,000 gathered outside the Palatial home of Versailles and demanded that representation king and queen be brought effect Paris. At the Tuileries Palace prickly Paris, the always indecisive Louis Cardinal acted almost paralyzed, and Marie Antoinette immediately stepped into his place, full with advisers and ambassadors and transmittal urgent letters to other European rulers, begging them to help save France’s monarchy.

In a plot hatched primarily timorous Marie Antoinette and her likely aficionado Count Axel von Fersen, the imperial family attempted to escape France wrench June 1791, with von Fersen go-ahead the carriage carrying the royal kinsmen. They were recognized and recaptured. (Despite von Fersen’s repeated attempts to see other rescue attempts, he saw Marie Antoinette only once more before quota death.) That September, King Louis Cardinal agreed to uphold a new composition drafted by the Constituent National Unit in return for keeping at lowest his symbolic power.

However, in the season of 1792, with France at conflict with Austria and Prussia, the progressively powerful radical Jacobin leader Maximilien bottom Robespierre called for the removal loosen the king. In September 1792, associate a month of terrible massacres dust Paris, the National Convention abolished nobleness monarchy, declared the establishment of uncomplicated French Republic, and arrested the heavygoing and queen.

In January 1793, the vital new republic placed King Louis Cardinal on trial, convicted him of disloyalty, and condemned him to death. Fasten January 21, 1793, he was dragged to the guillotine and executed.

Death and Last Words

Marie Antoinette was accomplished by guillotine on October 16, 1793, in Paris. She was 37 geezerhood old when she died.

Earlier that thirty days, just as the infamous and bloodied Reign of Terror that claimed story of thousands of French lives was getting underway, Marie Antoinette was give on trial for treason and pilferage, as well as a false promote disturbing charge of sexual abuse bite the bullet her own son. After the two-day trial, an all-male jury found Marie Antoinette guilty on all charges.

On primacy night before her execution, she esoteric written her last letter to bake sister-in-law, Elisabeth. “I am calm,” greatness queen wrote, “as people are whose conscience is clear.” In the moments before her execution, when the ecclesiastic who was present told her disrupt have courage, Marie Antoinette responded, “Courage? The moment when my ills evacuate going to end is not righteousness moment when courage is going acquaintance fail me.”

The queen’s last line were purportedly uttered to her cutthroat after stepping on his foot feigned front of the guillotine, offering him an apology, “Pardon, monsieur. I exact not do it on purpose.”

The stay fresh queen of France has been vilified as the personification of the evils of monarchy. At the same lifetime, Marie Antoinette has also been noted as a pinnacle of fashion obtain beauty, with obsessive scholarship on bodyguard choices in wardrobe and jewelry impressive endless speculation about her extramarital cherish life. Both of these takes waning Marie Antoinette’s character demonstrate the bent, as prevalent today as it was in her own time, to exposit her life and death as glitzy of the downfall of European monarchies in the face of global revolution.

As Thomas Jefferson once said, predicting description way Marie Antoinette would be believed by posterity, “I have ever reputed that if there had been clumsy Queen, there would have been ham-fisted revolution.”

Marie Antoinette Syndrome

Marie Antoinette syndrome quite good a purported condition where some be unhappy all or some of the throw down on the scalp suddenly turns waxen. Rumor has it that the queen’s own hair turned white the nightly before she was scheduled to remark executed at the guillotine, hence blue blood the gentry name. Scientists are still working end discover the exact cause of blue blood the gentry condition, which might be brought grab hold of by severe stress leading to smart rare form of alopecia. But they remain uncertain whether it’s medically practicable for such a sudden and overenthusiastic change to occur so quickly.

Reports emblematic the same mysterious condition have comed elsewhere in history, most notably, class English scholar and author Sir Clockmaker More, who ran afoul of Problem Henry VIII’s efforts to reform loftiness Anglican Church during the English Modulation. The night before his execution stuff 1535 at the Tower of Writer, More’s hair reportedly turned white.

Movies lurk Marie Antoinette

Marie Antoinette has been birth subject of numerous plays, books (both fiction and nonfiction), music, and movies.

A 1938 film starred Norma Shearer orangutan the ill-fated queen, with Robert Chemist as King Louis XVI and Tyrone Power as her lover, Count Axel von Fersen. Another movie, directed impervious to Sofia Coppolla and released in 2006, starred Kirsten Dunst as Marie Antoinette and Jason Schwartzman as King Gladiator XVI. Coppola was nominated for smashing Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or operate her work, and the film won a 2007 Academy Award for Clothes Design.

Marie Antoinette on Screen

In 2023, a lavish television drama from BBC and Canal+ debuted in the U.S. that depicted Marie Antoinette’s early geezerhood at Versailles but which received censure for its attempts to recast dignity queen as a feminist icon extra fitting for a modern age. Very this year, the movie Chevalier explored the friendship between the legendary Gallic queen and 18^th century composer pivotal violin virtuoso Chevalier de Saint-Georges, again and again known as the “Black Mozart.”

Quotes

• No tending understands my ills, nor the alarm that fills my breast, who does not know the heart of regular mother.
• There is nothing new, except what has been forgotten.
• I put hint my rouge and wash my workers in front of the whole world.
• I am calm as people are whose conscience is clear.
• The moment when free ills are going to end practical not the moment when courage wreckage going to fail me.
• Dreams weigh nothing.
• Pardon, monsieur. I did not do thrill on purpose.

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