Marie Antoinette

Marie Antoinette (1755-93), queen consort (1774-92) of Louis XVI of France; her unpopularity helped discredit the monarchy in the period before the French Revolution.

Born in Vienna on November 2, 1755, Marie Antoinette was one of the daughters of Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and Empress Maria Theresa. Her marriage (1770) to Louis, the heir to the French throne, was intended to cement an alliance between France and her parents' dynasty, the Habsburgs of Austria. She and her husband had a daughter and two sons after he succeeded to the throne in 1774. Disliked by the French as a foreigner, she made herself more unpopular by her devotion to the interests of Austria, the bad reputations of some of her friends, and her extravagance, which was mistakenly blamed for the financial problems of the French government. Especially damaging was her supposed connection with the so-called Diamond Necklace affair*** a scandal involving the fraudulent purchase of some jewels (1785).

After the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789, Marie Antoinette sided with the intransigents at court who opposed compromise with the moderate revolutionaries, and began appealing for help to her brother, Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II. Marie and Louis tried to escape from Paris with their surviving son in 1791, but they were captured and brought back prisoners. In 1792 the monarchy was overthrown, and after the execution of the king and separation from her son, she was sent before the revolutionary tribunal the following year. Sentenced to death for treason, she was guillotined in Paris on October 16, 1793.

Diamond Necklace affair>>

Scandal of the period preceding the French Revolution. In 1785 Cardinal Louis Rohan, who was in disfavor at the French court, was convinced by his mistress, an adventuress known as the countess de la Motte that he could regain his position if he acted as an intermediary in securing a valuable diamond necklace for the queen, Marie Antoinette. Rohan ordered the necklace from a Parisian jeweler, who gave it to him and the countess, believing they were the queen's agents. The necklace was never seen again. It is believed that the countess's husband took it to London, where it was broken up and sold. When the jeweler failed to receive payment, Rohan and the countess were arrested and charged with fraud. He was exiled to a monastery; she was whipped, branded, and sentenced to life imprisonment but later escaped. Popular revulsion at the scandal, especially the queen's supposed involvement, helped discredit the monarchy on the eve of the Revolution.

French Revolution (1789)>>

Cataclysmic political and social upheaval, extending from 1789 to 1799. The revolution resulted, among other things, in the overthrow of the Bourbon monarchy in France and in the establishment of the First Republic. It was generated by a vast complex of causes, the most important of which were the inability of the ruling classes of nobility, clergy, and bourgeoisie to come to grips with the problems of state, the indecisive nature of the monarch, extortionate taxation of the peasantry, impoverishment of the workers, the intellectual ferment of the Age of Enlightenment, and the example of the American Revolution. Recent scholarship tends to downplay the social class struggle and emphasize political, cultural, ideological, and personality factors in the advent and unfolding of the conflict. The Revolution itself produced an equally vast complex of consequences. This article deals mainly with highlights of the revolutionary period. For an account of many of the important events that preceded and followed the Revolution.

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