Key Takeaways
WhenMarie Antoinettedied under the heavy blade of the closure by compartment Oct. 16 , 1793 , it was a emphatically humdrum affaire . That ’s not to say it was n’t a celebration : Many Gallic revolutionaries were ecstatic to bid the extravagant queen regnant adieu eternally . After the blade add up down , the executioner flourish Marie Antoinette ’s head in a triumphant wave so that the entire crowd could see it .
Yet for the thousands of people gathered to watch the scene , it was a disappointment . They wanted to see the 38 - year - old world-beater of France seism in fear and cower penitently . A well - known eighteenth - one C journalist and radical , Jacques Hébert , pen in the newspaper publisher Le Père Duchesne that she was " bold and impertinent to the very end . " Despite the fact that the public executioner had cut off all her hair’s-breadth and place her to get into a tired white displacement ( likely soil by the clip she made it up the stone’s throw to the closure by compartment ) , Marie Antoinette maintained her composure .
Marie Antoinette ’s demise was one of the biggest scandals of her liveliness . Was it good riddance or not ? To this day , there are wavering judgment about the unseasoned faggot . Sympathizers point to the fact that young Antoine , as she was called in her native Austria , was nothing more than a bargaining chip for her female parent . When Marie Antoinette was only 10 class sometime , her mother set for her to we d Louis Auguste , a carefully orchestrate brotherhood that would join the AustrianHapsburgsand the French Bourbons . But detractor reason that while she had very little say in the conditions of her life , she certainly could have lived her days at Margaret Court in a fashion more beseem the fag of a nation on the cusp of gyration .
While there ’s no point in moot her virtue or vices , we can ravish in being Peeping Tom into the opulent court of law atVersailles , the panorama of many Marie Antoinette outrage . We begin with the oft - quoted dismissal of her hungry subjects .
1. ‘Let Them Eat Cake!’
As notable as she is for having exclaim , " countenance them eat cake , " when she get a line that the peasant were starving , Marie Antoinette really never said it . The untried fairy was hump to be quite tenderhearted , in dividing line to her less flattering attribute as a spendthrift and wild merrymaker . There are accounts of her administering aid to a Goth who ’d been gored by a violent animal , as well as taking in an orphaned boy .
There also are fact that prove she never uttered this scandalous remark . The verbal expression likely come from Jean - Jacques Rousseau ’s " Confessions , " a treatise penned in the late 18th C . There ’s a possibleness that Rousseau turn the idiomatic expression himself ; other historian reckon itmay have been verbalise by Maria Theresa , the Spanish princess who wed Louis XIV 100 years before Marie Antoinette ever went to France .
And the construction is n’t as callous as it may sound . From an economical standpoint , it was a perfectly coherent thing to say .
The phrase is " qu’ils mangent de la brioche " and actually means " let them eat an testicle - free-base bread , " which was a rich case of dinero than the typical bread made of flour and irrigate the Parisian pauper was corrode . A Gallic law mandated that bread maker sell their brioche at the same price as their cheap lettuce if supply ran out . Later , the police force would be the fall of the hungry humble classes when bakers responded by bake very short supplies of bread to save themselves from economical laying waste .
2. The Affair of the Diamond Necklace
Like most right scandals , this one necessitate a smatter ofdiamonds , a prostitute and forged commensurateness . We ’ll begin with the diamonds .
Parisian jewelersBoehmer and Bassengenearly went broke create a necklace that they presumed King Louis XV would corrupt for his fancy woman Madame du Barry in 1772 . Weighing in at 2,800carats , the necklace was worth roughly 1.6 million livres — about US$ 100 million today . regrettably for Boehmer and Bassenge ( and Madame du Barry ) , King Louis die out of smallpox before he could purchase it . Boehmer and Bassenge hop that the new Riley B King , Louis XVI , would buy the necklace for the fresh queen mole rat , Marie Antoinette . But Marie Antoinette made a patriotic , sentient decision todiscourage Louisfrom buy the necklace .
The necklace languished in the jewelers ' possession until a desperate , enterprising char named Jeanne de la Motte Valois devised a plot to deplume herself out of debt by acquire the necklace and selling it for part . The Comtesse de la Motte attract to Cardinal de Rohan , who was rather unpopular at motor lodge . From 1772 to ' 74 , he ’d attend to as the Gallic ambassador to Vienna , where he became a flying enemy of Marie Antoinette ’s female parent — and of Marie Antoinette herself . The comtesse told the cardinal that Marie Antoinette urgently wanted the diamond necklace but that she did n’t want to ask Louis for it . La Motte foxily suggested that if Cardinal de Rohan could detect a way to secure it for Marie Antoinette , his unspoilt reputation would be restored at court .
La Motte had her lover , Rétaux de Villette , write letters in Marie Antoinette ’s manus and send them to the cardinal number , asking him tobuy the necklace . The comtesse even paid a prostitute who looked like the pouf to have a hidden tête - à - tête with the Richmondena Cardinalis in the Versailles gardens one dark . At last , the cardinal wrangle the diamond from Boehmer and Bassenge on credit . The jewelry maker present the necklace to the queen ’s footman for delivery — only the footman was Rétaux in disguise . He seized the necklace and headed to London .
When his first defrayal was due , Cardinal de Rohan could n’t cough up the amount . Thejewelers involve moneyfrom Marie Antoinette , who had no noesis of the necklace . By then , the necklace had been trade . A wild Louis had the cardinal grosbeak arrested who was later acquitted of all charges and expatriate . The scheming mastermind la Motte was imprisoned but break away gratuitous and accept up residence in England . There , she circularise propaganda about the pouf .
Marie Antoinette ’s repute ( already hanging tenuously in the balance ) was ruined . The scandal confirmed that she was , indeed , " Madame Déficit . " The diamond necklace affair would be one of the final wheat before theFrench Revolutionand Marie Antoinette ’s destruction condemnation .
3. The Deed With the Swede
Marie Antoinette met the Swedish soldierAxel von Fersenin January 1774 at a ball in Paris . At the time , she was still the dauphine ( not yet the poove ) , and Fersen ’s military career had just begun . Marie Antoinette was instantly attracted to Fersen who was giving , solemn and gallant . She invite him to Versailles , and he became known as one of her favorite guests . Fersen returned Marie Antoinette ’s affections , but could n’t offer stability : His military career blossomed into a diplomatical post and take him to England for several years and then to the American colonies , where he fought with the colonists on behalf of France .
When Louis officially became male monarch , he give Marie Antoinette Petit Trianon Palace , a three - account " pleasure house " tucked away in the vast reason of Versailles . The mansion had been under construction from 1762 - 68 — it had been intended for Madame de Pompadour , a kept woman of Louis XV . Marie Antoinette was delighted with her acquisition and expanded its domain to include a rustic farm and town that she called Le Hameau ( " the hamlet " ) .
She passed her time in these shrouded quarters , and members of the court considered it a heavy honour to be invited there . In fact , those who were n’t invited to Trianon Palace circulated rumors about the queen ’s debauchery and reputed love affair with her tight acquaintance the Duchesse de Polignac .
Fersen was a much more frequent visitant . He had his own apartment straight above Marie Antoinette ’s , and judging from thecorrespondence between the two , they had a very familiar kinship . While they were involve , Marie Antoinette still quest for her uxorial obligation of creating an heritor to the potty ; there ’s really no fashion to tell if her children were Louis ' or Fersen ’s . But Louis accept the children as his own , and Marie Antoinette and her lover were measured to avoid any undesirable pregnancies .
When Marie Antoinette and her family were imprisoned at the Tuileries during the first poke of the French Revolution , Fersen was instrumentalin diagram their evasion . He borrowed large summation of money and even mortgage his house to help oneself them flee , and he never did devote it back in full — nor did the escape workplace . The party was apprehended in the town of Varennes , naut mi from the Austrian border .
Fersen outlived Marie Antoinette by nearly 20 yr . He die June 20 , 1810 , when he was ticktock to death by a Stockholm rabble for his suspected intimacy in the top prince ’s dying .
4. The Brick Wall in the Bedroom
For seven class , Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette ’s man and wife was not consummate — and it was all anyone could speak about . Well that , and the brewing Gallic gyration .
The couple we d in May 1770 , and the ceremony and ensue celebration had all the trapping of a lucullan royal fête . At Versailles , customs duty permit the king ’s courtiers to accompany the newlyweds to their sleeping accommodation , where they reposed on display . It did piffling to stoke the fires of passion .
Marie Antoinette was frustrated . She was willing and able to sexually receive her husband ; as a affair of fact , she endure in a nation of anxiety that he would never warm to her and that she ’d be sent home to Austria as an utter failure . Her female parent , Maria Theresa , reminded her of this dangerat every potential juncture in their correspondence . She indite to Marie Antoinette to " lavish more caress " on Louis . What ’s more , it was clean something was wrong with the couple . It was n’t just the vernal couple ’s physical satisfaction at interest : France was waiting for Marie Antoinette to bring forth an heir to the commode .
News of the twain ’s problems spread from the court of Versailles to the streets of Paris , where booklet mocking Louis ' impotency were distribute . The propaganda plant the seeded player that if Louis could n’t perform in the bedroom , he sure enough could n’t do on the throne . Louis XV watched forlornly as his grandson failed to execute his mission ; the predominate king had a rapacious sexual appetite and an insatiate schoolma’am , Madame du Barry .
Louis was doughy , waxy and more fascinated by locks , languages and hunting than he was by his lovely untested wife . Marie Antoinetteexplained to a acquaintance , " My tastes are not the same as the King ’s , who is only concerned in hunting and his metal - working . " But dissimilar tastes or not , Maria Theresa send her son Joseph to assess the couple ’s damage . He called them " two unadulterated sad sack " and surmised that nothing else stand up in their path of consummation .
Joseph may not have been entirely right in his analysis . Louis had been diagnosedwith a condition that made sex very painful . There was an mathematical operation available to correct the circumstance , but Louis was loath to go under the tongue . Some historians think he finally acquiesced and had the procedure while some say he never did ; no matter , the couple finally consummate .
Marie Antoinette and Louis later wrote to Joseph , thanking him for his help . Who knows what significative advice he might have whisper in their ears during a walk around the priming of Palace of Versailles ?
5. The National Wardrobe
When she was a young girl in Austria , Marie Antoinette was rather rough - and - spill . She like horseback riding and hunting . But at Versailles , her tomboy tendencies were squeezed out of her with each tightening of her stays . Marie Antoinette hat being put on display and having grand ceremonial made out of everyday activities like getting dressed and eating meal .
She need only experience a letter from her mother to remind her of her place . Marie Antoinette was , after all , in a man and wife of statecraft . Maria Theresa could n’t stand for her daughter to fail Austria . Though she acquired the reputation of a spendthrift , Marie Antoinette was n’t always so fast and loose with her budget . Her female parent rebuked Marie Antoinette for keeping a slovenly coming into court , and the letters she wrote to her homesick daughter were full of reminders about wearing clean clothes and prepare her hair .
Marie Antoinette doffed her unstylish togs for the latest in French couture from thehouse of Rose Bertin . Queen Marie Antoinette made designer Marie Jeanne Bertin Versaille ’s Minister of Fashion and she had significant influence over the fashion of the geological era .
During Louis ' reign , he debt by contribute reenforcement to the American Revolution ; Marie built up her debt in her loo . She had well-nigh 300 dress made p.a. for her various social engagement at the court of Versailles , her private parties atTrianon Palaceand for the leg of her jewel - boxwood theater .
But it was n’t just clothes that Marie and her couturier fussed over . Rose Bertin create the loom " pouf " for Marie Antoinette and Jean - Louis Fargeon even made an exclusive fragrance made for that had a scent supposedly so strong , itgave her awayduring her category ’s planned escape cock from the Tuileries .
Her pricy party and extensive press earned Marie Antoinette the sobriquet Madame Déficit . She could n’t shake the form of address — not that she tried . Marie Antoinette was far removed from the rotatory murmurs in Paris . And her ignorance ultimately culminated in her death sentence .
