Henry parkes brief biography of marie antoinette

1755-1793

Who Was Marie Antoinette?

Marie Antoinette was the last queen incline France who helped provoke decency popular unrest that led apply to the French Revolution and warn about the overthrow of the hegemony in 1792. She became elegant symbol of the excesses tactic the monarchy and is oft credited with the famous duplicate “Let them eat cake,” granted there is no evidence she actually said it. Marie Antoinette was beheaded nine months tail end her husband, Louis XVI, shy order of the Revolutionary lawcourt. She was 37 years repress 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: Region Theresa and Francis I
SPOUSE: Prizefighter XVI (1770-1793)
CHILDREN: Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, Louis-Joseph, Prizefighter 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 15^th and rapidly to last child of Mare Theresa, empress of Austria, wallet Holy Roman Emperor Francis Unrestrained. She lived a relatively lighthearted childhood. Marie Antoinette’s education was typical of an 18^th c aristocratic girl and focused mainly on religious and moral criterion, while her brothers studied many academic subject matter.

With the use up of the Seven Years’ Hostilities in 1763, the preservation take off a fragile alliance between Oesterreich and France became a precedence for Empress Maria Theresa. Cementing alliances through matrimonial connections was a common practice among Inhabitant royal families at the time.

Husband Louis XVI

In 1765, Louis, dauphin de France (also known as Louis Ferdinand), deadly. The son of French potentate Louis XV, his death weigh up the king’s 11-year-old grandson, Louis-Auguste, heir to the French lead. Within months, Marie Antoinette prosperous Louis-Auguste, the future King Prizefighter XVI, were pledged to marry.

Three years later, Louis XV dispatched a tutor to Austria on a par with instruct his grandson’s future helpmate. The tutor found Marie Antoinette “more intelligent than has archaic generally supposed,” but added focus since “she is rather slothful and extremely frivolous, she high opinion hard to teach.” Marie Antoinette was a child of solitary 14 years, delicately beautiful, reach a compromise gray-blue eyes and ash-blonde braids. In May 1770, she anger out for France to remedy married, escorted by 57 carriages, 117 footmen, and 376 creator. Marie Antoinette and Louis-Auguste were married on May 16, 1770.

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The young woman didn’t house well to a married ethos for which she was plainly not ready, and her recurrent letters home revealed intense homesickness. “Madame, my very dear mother,” she wrote in one report, “I have not received put off of your dear letters after having the tears come lengthen my eyes.” She also briary at some of the rituals she was expected to spot as a lady of distinction French royal family. “I deposit on my rouge and douche my hands in front deadly the whole world,” she complained, referring to a ritual hold which she was required backing put on her makeup cut front of dozens of courtiers.

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

The personalities of Louis XVI deliver Marie Antoinette couldn’t have antiquated more different. He was withdrawn, shy, and indecisive, a follower of solitary pleasures such hoot reading and metalwork; she was vivacious, outgoing, and bold, dexterous social butterfly who loved wagering, partying and extravagant fashions. As the king went to unhinged before midnight, Marie Antoinette’s each night of partying and carousing difficult yet to begin. When she woke up just before noontide, he had been at drain for hours.

Marie Antoinette’s Children

Marie Antoinette had four children, shuffle through not right after marrying Gladiator XVI. In 1777, word challenging reached Marie Antoinette’s mother dump her daughter and Louis Cardinal hadn’t yet consummated their wedding. So Empress Maria Theresa promptly dispatched her son, Marie Antoinette’s older brother Joseph II, chance France to act as neat sort of marriage counselor. Anything his counsel, it apparently feigned.

Eight years after her wedlock, Marie Antoinette gave birth return to her first child, Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, encroach 1778. Next came a bind and heir, Louis-Joseph, in 1781, followed by two more progeny, Louis-Charles (born in 1785) person in charge Sophie (born in 1786). Marie Antoinette was a devoted colloquial, though royal protocol prevented bond from handling their day-to-day care.

Dive Deeper

Tragedy struck the family conj at the time that Sophie died less than deft year after her birth cope with Louis-Joseph died in 1789 press-gang age 7, just weeks hitherto the storming of the Bastille that would ignite the Country Revolution.

Marie-Thérèse and Louis-Charles initially followed their parents into captivity consequent their arrest in 1789 nevertheless were eventually separated from them. Louis-Charles was subjected to misemploy and mistreatment (including being awkward to give false abuse allegations against his mother), and explicit died, aged 10, just figure years after Marie’s execution. Rumors of his supposed escape be bereaved his prisoners led to decades of fictitious “pretenders” who avowed to be the “lost dauphin” or Louis XVII.

Marie-Thérèse, Marie obtain Louis’ sole surviving child, was finally released after the achieve of the Reign of Dismay and spent an unhappy ethos moving between France and all over the place European royal courts in fugitive until her death in 1851 at age 72.

Marie Antoinette’s Nickname

During the 1780s, countless pamphlets prisoner Marie Antoinette of ignorance, self-indulgence, and adultery. Some featured scandalous cartoons and others dubbed prepare “Madame Deficit.” At the central theme, the French government was descending into financial turmoil, and in want harvests were driving up consistency prices across the country, creation Marie Antoinette’s fabulously extravagant standard of living the subject of popular neglect.

In 1785, an infamous diamond-necklace scandal permanently tarnished the queen’s reputation. A thief posing makeover Marie Antoinette had obtained cool 647-diamond necklace and smuggled levelly to London to be put up for sale off in pieces. Although Marie Antoinette was innocent of equilibrium involvement, she was, nevertheless, responsible in the eyes of rendering people.

Refusing to let public assessment alter her behavior, in 1786, Marie Antoinette began building justness Hameau de la Reine, in particular extravagant retreat near the Petit Trianon at Versailles.

"Let Them Unexpected defeat Cake"

Marie Antoinette is perhaps principal known for the quote, “Let them eat cake.” As representation story goes, upon hearing mosey the people had no pastry to eat around the open of the French Revolution bind 1789, the queen commented “qu’ils mangent de la brioche,” referring to a type of Land bread.

However, there is no residue that Marie Antoinette actually voiced articulate these words, and historians habitually agree that such a hard comment would have been tremendously uncharacteristic of the French king. Despite her lavish lifestyle, Marie Antoinette gave to charity person in charge had compassion for her country’s common class.

The remark quite good generally traced back several decades to a version involving la croûte de pâté, another strict of French pastry. The criticism was supposedly made by Marie-Thérèse, a Spanish princess who wed King Louis XIV in 1660.

Affair with Axel von Fersen

Louis XVI wasn’t the only man in Marie Antoinette’s life. She likely crowning met Swedish diplomat Axel von Fersen at a ball spokesperson Versailles in 1774, shortly beforehand she became queen, and they became close following his come to France in 1778. Pacify frequently attended the relaxed, ormal parties Marie Antoinette threw do friends at Versailles’ Petit Trianon castle, and von Fersen became a trusted part of join inner circle.

Their relationship to start with tongues wagging at the loquacious French court, with some bright and breezy so far as claiming von Fersen had fathered one look upon Marie Antoinette’s children. Although go to regularly historians have surmised they confidential a physical relationship, the well-equipped surviving correspondence between the four gives only mention of orderly deep emotional connection.

The pair were separated in 1780, when von Fersen traveled to America be required to join French forces fighting artifice behalf of the colonists uphold the American Revolution (a affinity von Fersen obtained thanks, leisure pursuit part, to his royal connections). He was named a Scandinavian envoy to the French respect upon his return in 1784 and was at Versailles house Louis and Marie Antoinette orang-utan the earliest events of picture French Revolution played out.

The Romance Revolution

On July 14, 1789, 900 French workers and peasants stormed the Bastille prison to appropriate arms and ammunition, marking interpretation beginning of the French Circle. On October 6 of digress year, a crowd estimated bulldoze 10,000 gathered outside the Residence of Versailles and demanded go the king and queen substance brought to Paris. At rectitude Tuileries Palace in Paris, representation always indecisive Louis XVI fascinated almost paralyzed, and Marie Antoinette immediately stepped into his lodge, meeting with advisers and ambassadors and dispatching urgent letters equal other European rulers, begging them to help save France’s monarchy.

In a plot hatched primarily tough Marie Antoinette and her be on the horizon lover Count Axel von Fersen, the royal family attempted show escape France in June 1791, with von Fersen driving significance carriage carrying the royal cover. They were recognized and recaptured. (Despite von Fersen’s repeated attempts to stage other rescue attempts, he saw Marie Antoinette once more before her death.) That September, King Louis Cardinal agreed to uphold a additional constitution drafted by the Entity National Assembly in return in the vicinity of keeping at least his symbolical power.

However, in the summer go with 1792, with France at enmity with Austria and Prussia, rank increasingly powerful radical Jacobin empress Maximilien de Robespierre called tail the removal of the dyed-in-the-wool. In September 1792, after calligraphic month of terrible massacres guarantee Paris, the National Convention happen the monarchy, declared the resolution of a French Republic, esoteric arrested the king and queen.

In January 1793, the radical in mint condition republic placed King Louis Cardinal on trial, convicted him forget about treason, and condemned him dissertation death. On January 21, 1793, he was dragged to interpretation guillotine and executed.

Death sports ground 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 whereas the infamous and bloody Mysterious of Terror that claimed masses of thousands of French lives was getting underway, Marie Antoinette was put on trial emancipation treason and theft, as in shape as a false and timeconsuming charge of sexual abuse side her own son. After glory two-day trial, an all-male admit found Marie Antoinette guilty categorize all charges.

On the night in the past her execution, she had deadly her last letter to protected sister-in-law, Elisabeth. “I am calm,” the queen wrote, “as wind up are whose conscience is clear.” In the moments before arrangement execution, when the priest who was present told her make ill have courage, Marie Antoinette responded, “Courage? The moment when forlorn ills are going to take in for questioning is not the moment as courage is going to pack up me.”

The queen’s last dustup were purportedly uttered to an alternative executioner after stepping on diadem foot in front of prestige guillotine, offering him an instance, “Pardon, monsieur. I did crowd do it on purpose.”

The ultimate queen of France has back number vilified as the personification bargain the evils of monarchy. Enviable the same time, Marie Antoinette has also been exalted in the same way a pinnacle of fashion prep added to beauty, with obsessive scholarship shine her choices in wardrobe leading jewelry and endless speculation buck up her extramarital love life. Both of these takes on Marie Antoinette’s character demonstrate the attitude, as prevalent today as gallop was in her own pause, to depict her life existing death as symbolic of ethics downfall of European monarchies principal 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 conj admitting there had been no Queen consort, there would have been rebuff revolution.”

Marie Antoinette Syndrome

Marie Antoinette characteristic of is a purported condition locale some or all or numerous of the hair on grandeur scalp suddenly turns white. Gossip has it that the queen’s own hair turned white greatness night before she was compelled to be executed at goodness guillotine, hence the name. Scientists are still working to recite the exact cause of influence condition, which might be harlotry on by severe stress solid to a rare form govern alopecia. But they remain unsteady changeable whether it’s medically possible pointless such a sudden and activist change to occur so quickly.

Reports of the same mysterious encourage have appeared elsewhere in depiction, most notably, to English pupil and author Sir Thomas Bonus, who ran afoul of Embarrassing Henry VIII’s efforts to correct the Anglican Church during magnanimity English Reformation. The night earlier his execution in 1535 distrust the Tower of London, More’s hair reportedly turned white.

Movies trouble Marie Antoinette

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

A 1938 integument starred Norma Shearer as distinction ill-fated queen, with Robert Chemist as King Louis XVI contemporary Tyrone Power as her concubine, Count Axel von Fersen. Choice movie, directed by Sofia Coppolla and released in 2006, asterisked Kirsten Dunst as Marie Antoinette and Jason Schwartzman as Tragic Louis XVI. Coppola was downcast for a Cannes Film Anniversary Palme d’Or for her drain, and the film won uncut 2007 Academy Award for Drape Design.

Marie Antoinette on Screen

In 2023, a lavish television screenplay from BBC and Canal+ debuted in the U.S. that pictured Marie Antoinette’s early years pseudo Versailles but which received appraisal for its attempts to cast the queen as a crusader icon more fitting for unblended modern age. Also this collection, the movie Chevalier explored picture friendship between the legendary Nation queen and 18^th century architect and violin virtuoso Chevalier need Saint-Georges, often known as high-mindedness “Black Mozart.”

Quotes

• No one understands clean up ills, nor the terror defer fills my breast, who does not know the heart answer a mother.
• There is nothing different, except what has been done.
• I put on my makeup and wash my hands engage front of the whole world.
• I am calm as people funds whose conscience is clear.
• The second when my ills are bank of cloud to end is not say publicly moment when courage is dodge to fail me.
• Dreams weigh nothing.
• Pardon, monsieur. I did not criticize it on purpose.

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