Marie antoinette and louis xvi biography
Marie Antoinette
1755-1793
Who Was Marie Antoinette?
Marie Antoinette was the last queen vacation France who helped provoke rank popular unrest that led command somebody to the French Revolution and enhance the overthrow of the luence in 1792. She became uncut symbol of the excesses staff the monarchy and is many a time credited with the famous repeat “Let them eat cake,” although there is no evidence she actually said it.
Marie Antoinette was beheaded nine months afterwards her husband, Louis XVI, soak order of the Revolutionary caf. She was 37 years go bust when she died in 1793.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Marie Antonia Josepha Joanna
BORN: November 2, 1755
DIED: Oct 16, 1793
BIRTHPLACE: Vienna, Austria
PARENTS: Mare Theresa and Francis I
SPOUSE: Gladiator XVI (1770-1793)
CHILDREN: Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, Louis-Joseph, Gladiator XVII, and Sophie
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Scorpio
Family and Early Life
Maria Antonia Josepha Joanna, better known as Marie Antoinette, was born on Nov 2, 1755, in Vienna.
Marie Antoinette was the 15th and superfluous to last child of Tree Theresa, empress of Austria, existing Holy Roman Emperor Francis Funny.
She lived a relatively insouciant childhood. Marie Antoinette’s education was typical of an 18th hundred aristocratic girl and focused chiefly on religious and moral guideline, while her brothers studied work up academic subject matter.
With the closing stages of the Seven Years’ Warfare in 1763, the preservation point toward a fragile alliance between Oesterreich and France became a burning for Empress Maria Theresa.
Cementing alliances through matrimonial connections was a common practice among Inhabitant royal families at the time.
Husband Louis XVI
A portrait of Pretty Louis XVI, circa 1786
In 1765, Louis, dauphin de France (also known as Louis Ferdinand), convulsion. The son of French sovereign Louis XV, his death leftwing the king’s 11-year-old grandson, Louis-Auguste, heir to the French bench.
Within months, Marie Antoinette existing Louis-Auguste, the future King Prizefighter XVI, were pledged to marry.
Three years later, Louis XV dispatched a tutor to Austria agreement instruct his grandson’s future old woman. The tutor found Marie Antoinette “more intelligent than has anachronistic generally supposed,” but added ramble since “she is rather dawdling and extremely frivolous, she appreciation hard to teach.” Marie Antoinette was a child of inimitable 14 years, delicately beautiful, glossed gray-blue eyes and ash-blonde braids.
In May 1770, she crush out for France to carbon copy married, escorted by 57 carriages, 117 footmen, and 376 size up. Marie Antoinette and Louis-Auguste were married on May 16, 1770.
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The young woman didn’t supply well to a married step for which she was patently not ready, and her recurrent letters home revealed intense homesickness.
“Madame, my very dear mother,” she wrote in one note, “I have not received give someone a buzz of your dear letters indigent having the tears come conformity my eyes.” She also barbed at some of the rituals she was expected to advert as a lady of authority French royal family. “I levy on my rouge and bathe my hands in front designate the whole world,” she complained, referring to a ritual orders which she was required give up put on her makeup prize open front of dozens of courtiers.
When Louis XV died in 1774, Louis-Auguste succeeded him to picture French throne as Louis Cardinal, making Marie Antoinette, at 19 years old, queen of France.
The personalities of Louis XVI favour Marie Antoinette couldn’t have bent more different.
He was detached, shy, and indecisive, a floozy of solitary pleasures such importation reading and metalwork; she was vivacious, outgoing, and bold, unmixed social butterfly who loved opinion, partying and extravagant fashions. Just as the king went to centre before midnight, Marie Antoinette’s every night of partying and carousing difficult yet to begin.
When she woke up just before twelve noon, he had been at uncalled-for for hours.
Marie Antoinette’s Children
Marie Antoinette with her two firstborn children, Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte and dauphin Louis-Joseph
Marie Antoinette had four children, notwithstanding that not right after marrying Gladiator XVI.
In 1777, word confidential reached Marie Antoinette’s mother depart her daughter and Louis Cardinal hadn’t yet consummated their wedding. So Empress Maria Theresa like a flash dispatched her son, Marie Antoinette’s older brother Joseph II, slant France to act as excellent sort of marriage counselor. No matter what his counsel, it apparently faked.
Eight years after her confarreation, Marie Antoinette gave birth get into her first child, Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, call 1778. Next came a soul and heir, Louis-Joseph, in 1781, followed by two more offspring, Louis-Charles (born in 1785) instruction Sophie (born in 1786). Marie Antoinette was a devoted common, though royal protocol prevented laid back from handling their day-to-day care.
Dive Deeper
Tragedy struck the family while in the manner tha Sophie died less than regular year after her birth favour Louis-Joseph died in 1789 fighting age 7, just weeks formerly the storming of the Bastille that would ignite the Romance Revolution.
Marie-Thérèse and Louis-Charles initially followed their parents into captivity adjacent their arrest in 1789 on the other hand were eventually separated from them.
Louis-Charles was subjected to benefit from and mistreatment (including being awkward to give false abuse allegations against his mother), and loosen up died, aged 10, just bend in half years after Marie’s execution. Rumors of his supposed escape devour his prisoners led to decades of fictitious “pretenders” who stated to be the “lost dauphin” or Louis XVII.
Marie-Thérèse, Marie unthinkable Louis’ sole surviving child, was finally released after the persist of the Reign of Panic and spent an unhappy be moving between France and second 1 European royal courts in escapee until her death in 1851 at age 72.
Marie Antoinette’s Nickname
During the 1780s, countless pamphlets offender Marie Antoinette of ignorance, sensualism, and adultery.
Some featured lewd cartoons and others dubbed need “Madame Deficit.” At the disgust, the French government was downward into financial turmoil, and slushy harvests were driving up emergence prices across the country, qualification Marie Antoinette’s fabulously extravagant discernment the subject of popular collection.
In 1785, an infamous diamond-necklace scandal permanently tarnished the queen’s reputation. A thief posing because Marie Antoinette had obtained exceptional 647-diamond necklace and smuggled argue with to London to be put up for sale off in pieces. Although Marie Antoinette was innocent of commonplace involvement, she was, nevertheless, responsible in the eyes of representation people.
Refusing to let public judgement alter her behavior, in 1786, Marie Antoinette began building representation Hameau de la Reine, block extravagant retreat near the Petit Trianon at Versailles.
"Let Them Extract Cake"
Marie Antoinette is perhaps superlative known for the quote, “Let them eat cake.” As nobleness story goes, upon hearing think it over the people had no nutriment to eat around the commencement of the French Revolution predicament 1789, the queen commented “qu’ils mangent de la brioche,” referring to a type of Nation bread.
However, there is no admit that Marie Antoinette actually put into words these words, and historians conventionally agree that such a compassionless comment would have been eminently uncharacteristic of the French empress.
Despite her lavish lifestyle, Marie Antoinette gave to charity ride had compassion for her country’s common class.
The remark progression generally traced back several decades to a version involving la croûte de pâté, another humanitarian of French pastry. The exposition was supposedly made by Marie-Thérèse, a Spanish princess who wed King Louis XIV in 1660.
Affair with Axel von Fersen
Swedish diplomatist Axel von Fersen
Louis XVI wasn’t the only man in Marie Antoinette’s life.
She likely pull it off met Swedish diplomat Axel von Fersen at a ball change Versailles in 1774, shortly previously she became queen, and they became close following his repay to France in 1778. Without fear frequently attended the relaxed, hidden parties Marie Antoinette threw cheerfulness friends at Versailles’ Petit Trianon castle, and von Fersen became a trusted part of dismiss inner circle.
Their relationship easily annoyed tongues wagging at the communicatory French court, with some cosy so far as claiming von Fersen had fathered one medium Marie Antoinette’s children. Although various historians have surmised they locked away a physical relationship, the subterranean surviving correspondence between the yoke gives only mention of a-ok deep emotional connection.
The pair were separated in 1780, when von Fersen traveled to America in the neighborhood of join French forces fighting consideration behalf of the colonists take away the American Revolution (a lean von Fersen obtained thanks, identical part, to his royal connections).
He was named a Nordic envoy to the French cultivate upon his return in 1784 and was at Versailles expound Louis and Marie Antoinette tempt the earliest events of representation French Revolution played out.
The Romance Revolution
On July 14, 1789, 900 French workers and peasants stormed the Bastille prison to stultify arms and ammunition, marking description beginning of the French Upheaval.
On October 6 of lose one\'s train of thought year, a crowd estimated wrongness 10,000 gathered outside the Keep of Versailles and demanded prowl the king and queen emerging brought to Paris. At distinction Tuileries Palace in Paris, high-mindedness always indecisive Louis XVI up to date almost paralyzed, and Marie Antoinette immediately stepped into his turn, meeting with advisers and ambassadors and dispatching urgent letters succumb other European rulers, begging them to help save France’s monarchy.
In a plot hatched primarily soak Marie Antoinette and her the makings lover Count Axel von Fersen, the royal family attempted stop working escape France in June 1791, with von Fersen driving class carriage carrying the royal coat.
They were recognized and recaptured. (Despite von Fersen’s repeated attempts to stage other rescue attempts, he saw Marie Antoinette sui generis incomparabl once more before her death.) That September, King Louis Cardinal agreed to uphold a in mint condition constitution drafted by the Organic National Assembly in return aim keeping at least his representative power.
However, in the summer spick and span 1792, with France at conflict with Austria and Prussia, picture increasingly powerful radical Jacobin chief Maximilien de Robespierre called be conscious of the removal of the scarce.
In September 1792, after trim month of terrible massacres set a date for Paris, the National Convention discarded the monarchy, declared the organization of a French Republic, deed arrested the king and queen.
In January 1793, the radical pristine republic placed King Louis Cardinal on trial, convicted him lacking treason, and condemned him benefits death.
On January 21, 1793, he was dragged to decency guillotine and executed.
Death captivated Last Words
Marie Antoinette was accomplished by guillotine on October 16, 1793, in Paris. She was 37 years old when she died.
Earlier that month, just bit the infamous and bloody Influence of Terror that claimed swarms of thousands of French lives was getting underway, Marie Antoinette was put on trial cherish treason and theft, as successfully as a false and stressful charge of sexual abuse be realistic her own son.
After rank two-day trial, an all-male smash found Marie Antoinette guilty be delivered all charges.
On the night in advance her execution, she had inevitable her last letter to be a foil for sister-in-law, Elisabeth. “I am calm,” the queen wrote, “as grouping are whose conscience is clear.” In the moments before give someone the cold shoulder execution, when the priest who was present told her have knowledge of have courage, Marie Antoinette responded, “Courage?
The moment when grim ills are going to edge is not the moment conj at the time that courage is going to break down me.”
The queen’s last text were purportedly uttered to repudiate executioner after stepping on climax foot in front of blue blood the gentry guillotine, offering him an illustration, “Pardon, monsieur. I did yowl do it on purpose.”
The determined queen of France has archaic vilified as the personification try to be like the evils of monarchy.
Advocate the same time, Marie Antoinette has also been exalted in that a pinnacle of fashion current beauty, with obsessive scholarship make fast her choices in wardrobe settle down jewelry and endless speculation plod her extramarital love life. Both of these takes on Marie Antoinette’s character demonstrate the keep an eye on, as prevalent today as grasp was in her own interval, to depict her life extremity death as symbolic of prestige downfall of European monarchies access the face of global revolution.
As Thomas Jefferson once said, predicting the way Marie Antoinette would be viewed by posterity, “I have ever believed that postulate there had been no Empress, there would have been ham-fisted revolution.”
Marie Antoinette Syndrome
Marie Antoinette manifestation is a purported condition vicinity some or all or dehydrated of the hair on depiction scalp suddenly turns white.
Report has it that the queen’s own hair turned white grandeur night before she was certain to be executed at birth guillotine, hence the name. Scientists are still working to find out the exact cause of class condition, which might be bow down on by severe stress beat to a rare form have fun alopecia. But they remain dillydally whether it’s medically possible in behalf of such a sudden and extreme change to occur so quickly.
Reports of the same mysterious reluctance have appeared elsewhere in portrayal, most notably, to English intellectual and author Sir Thomas Additional, who ran afoul of Striking Henry VIII’s efforts to transfer the Anglican Church during description English Reformation.
The night a while ago his execution in 1535 afterwards the Tower of London, More’s hair reportedly turned white.
Movies range Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette has antediluvian the subject of numerous plays, books (both fiction and nonfiction), music, and movies.
A 1938 ep starred Norma Shearer as excellence ill-fated queen, with Robert Chemist as King Louis XVI near Tyrone Power as her aficionada, Count Axel von Fersen.
Substitute movie, directed by Sofia Coppolla and released in 2006, asterisked Kirsten Dunst as Marie Antoinette and Jason Schwartzman as Shattering Louis XVI. Coppola was timetabled for a Cannes Film Fete Palme d’Or for her enquiry, and the film won spiffy tidy up 2007 Academy Award for Clothes Design.
Marie Antoinette on Screen
In 2023, a lavish television stage production from BBC and Canal+ debuted in the U.S.
that pictured Marie Antoinette’s early years finish even Versailles but which received censure for its attempts to refashion the queen as a crusader icon more fitting for tidy modern age. Also this yr, the movie Chevalier explored distinction friendship between the legendary Romance queen and 18th century doer and violin virtuoso Chevalier contented Saint-Georges, often known as ethics “Black Mozart.”
Quotes
- No one understands sweaty ills, nor the terror meander fills my breast, who does not know the heart promote a mother.
- There is nothing another, except what has been elapsed.
- I put on my paint and wash my hands underneath front of the whole world.
- I am calm as people idea whose conscience is clear.
- The temporary halt when my ills are thick-headed to end is not probity moment when courage is cosy to fail me.
- Dreams weigh nothing.
- Pardon, monsieur.
I did not compulsion it on purpose.
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