Marie Antoinette . Vienna , ( 1755 ) – Paris , ( 1793 ). Queen of France . Daughter of the Emperors of Austria , Francisco I and Maria Teresa, she married in 1770 with the Dauphin of France , Louis, who ascended the throne in 1774 under the name of Louis XVI. A frivolous and fickle woman, with expensive tastes and surrounded by an intriguing clique, she soon gained a reputation as reactionary and wasteful. She exerted a strong political influence on her husband (whom she never loved), ignored the misery of the people and, with her licentious behavior, contributed to the discredit of the monarchy in the years before the French Revolution .
Biographical synthesis
Since her birth in 1755 , Marie Antoinette Josefa Ana of Austria, better known as Marie Antoinette of Austria , had lived immersed in the sumptuousness of the Viennese court,
surrounded by attentions and tenderness. Her father, Emperor Francis I , adored her. The Empress Maria Teresa , like the entire country, was enraptured with her daughter and could not deny her any whims. His two favorite diversions were playing with his many brothers in the gardens of Schoenbrunn Palace and hiding from their teachers. The composer Gluck barely managed to make her a mediocre Harpsichord player , and her language teachers only managed to make her speak French bad enough and express herself correctly in German, but they could never teach her spelling, because the princess would get sad and disarm them with lovely pouts.
At the age of 12 she knew that she was going to be queen of France . Her mother set out to make her a perfect Parisian princess and assigned her two experts to take full care of the future royal head: an ecclesiastical preceptor and an illustrious hairdresser. The former had to strengthen his faith and his French; The second was entrusted with the no less delicate mission of building in the infanta’s hair a versatile golden tower full of loops. A week later, both confessed defeat. The tutor assured that Marie Antoinette had an ingenious and alert brain, but rebellious to all instruction; the hairdresser could not finish his work due to the too high and bulging forehead of the young woman.
At age 14, when she married the Duke of Berry, then Dauphin and future king [[Louis XVI | Louis
XVI]], Marie Antoinette was already a delightful, splendidly formed girl, with an exquisite oval face, a complexion between lily and rose, bright blue eyes capable of condemning a saint, a long, slender neck and walk worthy of a young goddess. To French taste, only her mouth, small and endowed with the scornful Hapsburg lower lip , was unpleasant. The English writer Horace Walpole , who appreciated her charms during a wedding celebration, wrote:
“There were only eyes for Marie Antoinette. When she stands or sits, she is the statue of beauty; when she moves, she is grace in person. It is said that when she dances, she does not keep the measure; wrong … “
Marriage to the future King of France was blessed on May 16 , 1770 . There were festivities, parades, great parties and solemnities. Soon after, at night, there was nothing. A single, annoying word that she will keep writing for seven years, until she has the first of her four children. At the age of 23, she had her first daughter, three years later she had her first son, who was followed by two more children, the last, Sofía, died with only one year of life.
But Marie Antoinette was not only not hated by the French people, since her arrival at Versailles she aroused criticism among the nobles of the court itself. In addition, she was constantly accused of influencing her husband politically and thus benefiting Austrian interests.
Marie Antoinette, vital and not inclined to sanctity, was sovereignly bored with her husband and soon began to go out incognito at night, hidden behind the velvet mask or the satin mask, and to make up for herself with something more than mere gallantry.
She was always considered a foreign spy more interested in carnal affairs (several lovers presumed to be) and in squandering the royal coffers for her own benefit, than in feeding the French people. France was starving and its kings lived oblivious to reality.
Queen of france
As for the Dolphin, he was robust and kind, but also weak and not overly intelligent. Converted into Louis XVI at the age of 20, Marie Antoinette will write to her mother: ” What will become of us? My husband and I are terrified of being such young kings. Mother of the soul, advise your unfortunate children at this hour! fateful! “.
Marie Antoinette soon became a scandalous symbol of the most licentious court in Europe . He tried to please and to be right, but he couldn’t. His faults,
exaggerated by public opinion and considered a living example of the debauchery of the court, were none other than his contempt for French etiquette, his extravagances and the constant search for pleasure in the lavish group of the Count of Artois , as well as his capricious interference State affairs to elevate your favorites. Wasteful, reckless and mocking, the underground press began to paint her as a depraved being and sold to the interests of the Austrian house . Slander peppered his throne, being exaggerated to the paroxysm by the libels of the Revolution. According to the pamphlets, the list of her lovers was endless and her excesses worthy of a Messalina. Soon she was known among the people with the derogatory nickname “the Austrian.”
In 1785 , a new scandal attributed to his greed came to deteriorate his already more than beaten fame. The whole thing revolved around the richest jewel of the time. The famous necklace, made by the best goldsmiths in Paris for Madame Du Barry , a favorite of King Louis XV , was an unsurpassed piece. Its more than a thousand diamonds, rubies and emeralds seemed to have been patiently forged by the gods in the bowels of the earth with the sole purpose of receiving the caress of gold in a precise place of the jewel.
The Du Barry dead before the work was finished , the Countess de La Motte , an adventurer who served at court and belonged to the gloomy Count Cagliostro’s circle , duped Cardinal Louis de Rohan , a wealthy and dissolute courtier in disgrace, making him believe that Marie Antoinette wanted to obtain the magnificent necklace and that, not having enough money, she was willing to sign a purchase contract if he guaranteed it. The cardinal, eager to ingratiate himself with Marie Antoinette, met with who he believed to be the queen, supplanted by a beautiful young woman surnamed d’Oliva, acceded to her request and on February 1 , 1785 the necklace was transferred to Versailles .
But it did not reach the queen’s hands, but through a succession of intrigues it went to the Countess de La Motte, who disappeared from Paris with her husband and busily sold the gems separately. Once the scam was discovered, the countess claimed to be a close favorite of Marie Antoinette and wielded some forged compromising letters from the queen. Marie Antoinette was accused of scheming and ambitious, and although the trial proved her innocence, the orchestrated political campaign to discredit her was successful. The Cardinal de Rohan was banished, the Countess de La Motte publicly flogged and her husband sentenced to galleys, but the exemplary punishment could not erase the new baldness that had fallen on the honor of the queen.
The revolution
The fall of the Monarchy was forged in a few months. Neither Louis XVI nor Marie Antoinette understood the character of the changes that were coming, thus causing their own ruin. There was no longer any chance of reconciliation between the people and the king. The attempted flight of the monarchs only accentuated this rupture and made it clear that the country had turned its back on the crown. The Swedish Count Axel de Fersen , Marie Antoinette’s most faithful lover, was in charge of preparing the escape plan with a group of select and secret monarchists. The royal family had to flee Paris by leaving the Tuileries at night through a false door and leaving a proclamation of traditional accents addressed to the people ofParis :
“Return to your king; he will always be your father, your best friend.”
They only managed to reach Varennes , where they were recognized and arrested. When Louis XVI read the decree forcing him to return, he said:
” There is no longer a king in France .”
The Legislative Assembly had no choice but to submit to revolutionary leaders like Robespierre and Danton . He could not avoid the assault by the masses of the royal residence, he seized the powers from the king and allowed him to be imprisoned in the Temple Tower .
Then, for royalty, there was nothing left but a tragic epilogue. Marie Antoinette accompanied
her husband went to prison displaying a courage that ennobled her figure, later bordering on heroism by accepting with pathetic serenity the separation of her children and the execution of her husband in January 1793 .
Transferred to the Conciergerie seven months later and locked in a cell without light or air, without a coat, watched at all times by guards who were often drunk, her nerves were on the verge of breaking on the eve of the trial. But he resisted. The trial was a Pantomime , the two lawyers who defended her, Tronçon-Ducoudray and Chauveau-Lagarde , inexperienced young people, made a very poor plea based on the few notes they could write. During the trial, she was accused of having sexual games with her son Louis XVII , and at no time was it taken into account that it was she who interceded and made her husband Louis XVI accept the ConstitutionAlthough the only thing that really earned him was to die the 21 of January of 1793 stripped of all his titles by the Republican government (question of form, presumably). During the process, he tried to defend himself with his last remnants of dignity, he answered in terms that confused his cruel enemies and, faced with the supreme accusation of having corrupted his children, he first kept silent and then, addressing the public, exclaimed:
“I appeal to all the mothers here!”
The court’s deliberations lasted three days and three nights, and she was finally found guilty of high treason as the widow of Capet. No image more expressive or more eloquent of the enormous change that had taken place in her than her famous drawing: there is no resemblance between that human ruin that marches to meet its destiny and the woman who had been, as Walpole appreciated, elegance personified .
The Guillotined Queen
Legend has it that the day of his execution, 16 of Octubre of 1793 , after suffering the death of a child, her own husband, the separation of her other three children and the humiliation of being insulted and despised by all France , had one last degradation in store for her. She must have passed through the exit door of her cell, which was less than a meter high, supposedly bent over, with her head looking at the ground in submission to the people who had condemned her. She did not accept this last humiliation and squatted, crossing the tiny exit with her torso erect and her head held high. In a way he demonstrated to the French people, very given to symbolism of this type ( Napoleon Bonaparte also has a similar anecdote) the meaning of a phrase that she herself sentenced:
“He who fears dying loves very little.”
The 16 of October of 1793 , at midmorning, would be displayed wagon for Paris in the eyes of the crowd and Jacques-Louis David , “the painter of the Revolution.” Then he would slowly climb the steps of the scaffold, the drums would beat, the blade would fall and the bloody head, seized by the hair by one of the executioners, would be shown to the vociferous crowd.
Analyzing her negative side, she was surely a capricious, frivolous and wasteful young woman, who was raised to live surrounded by luxury. That he probably didn’t care about the calamities the People suffered. But there is no doubt that his death symbolizes the end of one era and the beginning of another and that, perhaps, asking a teenager for certain responsibilities, at any time in history is simply a mistake.