Marie Antoinette

(1755-1793) (Marie-Antoinette)

   queen of France

   Marie-Antoinette-Joseph-Jeanne de Lorraine, archduchess of Austria and queen of France, was born in Vienna, the daughter of Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Francis i. she spent her childhood at the imperial court, where she received a negligible education. Destined, like her sister Marie-Caroline, to serve the political policies of the House of Habs-burg, she was married, thanks to the efforts of the French minister étienne de choiseul, to the dauphin, the future louis XVI (May 1770). From this marriage were born two sons, Louis-Joseph and Louis-Charles (the future louis XVIi), and two daughters, marie-thérèse charlotte (the future duchess d'angoulême) and Sophie-Hélène-Béatrice. The young queen Marie Antoinette soon became unpopular because of the bad reputation of her friends, her extravagance, which was mistakenly blamed for the government's financial problems, and intrigues, real or imagined, with the king's brother, the count d'Artois (see charles x), and Axel de Fersen, a swedish nobleman. Especially damaging was her supposed connection with the so-called Affair of the Necklace, a scandal involving the fraudulent purchase of some jewels (1785). Little inclined to the spirit of the Enlightenment, Marie Antoinette, who sided with the intransigents at court and opposed compromise, exercised an increasing influence on the king. in 1789, this influence would make reconciliation between the monarchy and the revolution of 1789 impossible. In spite of the advice of honoré de mirabeau, the queen refused to accept the idea of a constitutional monarchy and preferred to count on the possibility of foreign intervention to save the royal establishment. imprisoned in the Temple in Paris after the overthrow of the monarchy (August 10, 1792), she was transferred on August 2, 1793, to the Conciergerie. The king had already been executed and her children had been taken from her. she was subsequently tried before a revolutionary tribunal and, confronted with accusations of conspiring with foreign enemies of France and also with infamous calumnies, brought especially by the ultra-revolutionaries (in particular, jacques hébert). Queen Marie Antoinette nonetheless maintained a dignified and aloft demeanor throughout. Condemned to death, the "Autrichienne," as she was now pejoratively referred to, was executed on october 16, 1793.