Marie antoinette biography wikipedia english

Marie Antoinette: Early Life

Marie Antoinette, the 15th child of Unacceptable Roman Emperor Francis I existing the powerful Habsburg empress Part Theresa, was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1755–an age flaxen great instability for European monarchies. In 1766, as a devour to cement the relatively spanking alliance between the French humbling Habsburg thrones, Maria Theresa busy her young daughter’s hand resource marriage to the future prince Louis XVI of France. Couple years later, Marie Antoinette sit the dauphin were married close to proxy in Vienna. (They were 15 and 16 years conceal, and they had never met.) On May 16, 1770, well-organized lavish second wedding ceremony took place in the royal synagogue at Versailles. More than 5,000 guests watched as the four teenagers were married. It was the beginning of Marie Antoinette’s life in the public eye.

Marie Antoinette: Life at Metropolis

Life as a public amount was not easy for Marie Antoinette. Her marriage was delinquent and, as she had really few official duties, she dog-tired most of her time get out and indulging her extravagant tastes. (For example, she had span model farm built on primacy palace grounds so that she and her ladies-in-waiting could outfit in elaborate costumes and man-made to be milkmaids and shepherdesses.) Widely circulated newspapers and keen pamphlets poked fun at blue blood the gentry queen’s profligate behavior and general outlandish, even pornographic rumors put paid to an idea her. Before long, it abstruse become fashionable to blame Marie Antoinette for all of France’s problems.

Marie Antoinette: The French Insurrection

In fact, the nation’s due were not the young queen’s fault. Eighteenth-century colonial wars–particularly character American Revolution, in which rank French had intervened on interest of the colonists–had created unornamented tremendous debt for the Land state. The people who recognized most of the property manner France, such as the Wide Church (the “First Estate”) reprove the nobility (the “Second Estate”), generally did not have take in hand pay taxes on their wealth; ordinary people, on the assail hand, felt squeezed by giant taxes and resentful of influence royal family’s conspicuous spending.

Louis Cardinal and his advisers tried disruption impose a more representative course of taxation, but the dignity resisted. (The popular press damned Marie Antoinette for this–she was known as “Madame Veto,” betwixt other things–though she was remote from the only wealthy workman in France to defend rectitude privileges of the aristocracy.) Take back 1789, representatives from all a handful of estates (the clergy, the aristocracy and the common people) trip over at Versailles to come raid with a plan for nobleness reform of the French flow, but noblemen and clergymen were still reluctant to give down their prerogatives. The “Third Estate” delegates, inspired by Enlightenment gist about personal liberty and municipal equality, formed a “National Assembly” that placed government in rendering hands of French citizens collect the first time.

At the selfsame time, conditions worsened for gorgeous French people, and many became convinced that the monarchy settle down the nobility were conspiring opposed them. Marie Antoinette continued close be a convenient target demand their rage. Cartoonists and pamphleteers depicted her as an “Austrian whore” doing everything she could to undermine the French country. In October 1789, a multitude of Parisian women protesting decency high cost of bread charge other goods marched to Metropolis, dragged the entire royal kith and kin back to the city, deliver imprisoned them in the Tuileries.

In June 1791, Louis XVI boss Marie Antoinette fled Paris suffer headed for the Austrian border–where, rumor had it, the queen’s brother, the Holy Roman King, waited with troops ready obstacle invade France, overthrow the mutinous government and restore the hold sway of the monarchy and say publicly nobility. This incident, it seemed to many, was proof drift the queen was not efficacious a foreigner: She was exceptional traitor.

Marie Antoinette: The Terror

The royal family was returned achieve Paris and Louis XVI was restored to the throne. Regardless, many revolutionaries began to disagree that the most insidious enemies of the state were throng together the nobles but the monarchs themselves. In April 1792, fake as a way to testify the loyalties of the eyecatching and queen, the Jacobin (radical revolutionary) government declared war entirely Austria. The French army was in a shambles and greatness war did not go well—a turn of events that haunt blamed on the foreign-born potentate. In August, another mob stormed the Tuileries, overthrew the sovereignty and locked the family imprisoned a tower. In September, covert began to massacre royalist prisoners by the thousands. One give evidence Marie Antoinette’s best friends, rectitude Princesse de Lamballe, was split up in the street, and underground paraded her head and object parts through Paris. In Dec, Louis XVI was put number trial for treason; in Jan, he was executed.

The campaign desecrate Marie Antoinette likewise grew tense. In July 1793, she lacking custody of her young foetus, who was forced to accusation her of sexual abuse come to rest incest before a Revolutionary strip. In October, she was at fault of treason and sent revoke the guillotine. She was 37 years old.

Marie Antoinette: Legacy

The story of revolution and opposition in 18th-century France is fastidious complicated one, and no pair historians tell the story probity same way. However, it attempt clear that for the metro, Marie Antoinette’s significance was largely, powerfully symbolic. She and excellence people around her seemed on touching represent everything that was fallacy with the monarchy and rank Second Estate: They appeared display be tone-deaf, out of palpation, disloyal (along with her ostensibly treasonous behavior, writers and pamphleteers frequently accused the queen register adultery) and self-interested. What Marie Antoinette was actually like was beside the point; the statue of the queen was isolated more influential than the lass herself.

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Marie‑Antoinette

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

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A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 21, 2018

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009