Marie Antoinette of Austria (1755 - 1793), she was the queen consort of France between 1774 and 1792. The reign of her husband, Louis XVI, ended when he was deposed from the throne by the republicans who promoted the French Revolution.
She was the youngest daughter of Emperor Francisco I with Empress Maria Teresa I of Austria. Marie Antoinette's marriage to Luis Augusto Borbón served to strengthen the ties between Austria and France, which had been in dispute for generations..
When she arrived in France, she was not popular at court, as they saw her as a foreigner and resented the fact that she did not give the king heirs in the first years of her marriage..
The queen managed to be accepted by the courtiers, but the French people did not change their perception of her. Republicans created a myth around Marie Antoinette and gave her the image of insensitive and wasteful.
From 1792 the queen consort and her family were imprisoned; at the end of that year the monarchy was abolished in France and in January 1793 Louis XVI was guillotined. Nine months later, Marie Antoinette of Austria was also executed in Revolution Square..
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María Antonia Josefa Juana de Habsburgo-Lorena was born on November 2, 1755 in the Hofburg Imperial Palace, Vienna, Austria. She was the daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor and her mother was Archduchess Maria Theresa I of Austria, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia..
She was the penultimate of the 16 children of the emperors, and the youngest among girls. In accordance with custom, Maria Antonia was educated by a governess, Countess von Brandeis, who also took over the upbringing of her older sister, Maria Carolina..
He spent his early years between the Hofburg and Schönbrunn Palace. She was not a brilliant young woman in the academic field, as it was particularly difficult for her to learn languages (at the Viennese court they spoke German, Italian and French, but Maria Antonia did not handle any of them correctly).
However, María Antonia was excellent in the musical area, she could play various instruments, she was also a good singer and dancer, qualities highly admired in a young noblewoman. The rest of his instruction was focused on religious and moral issues..
In 1766 Austria and France were to cement their alliance. To achieve this, they decided to compromise the youngest of the daughters of Maria Teresa I and the heir to the French throne, the young Louis Augusto, a dolphin of France (the eldest male descendants in direct line of the king received the title of "dolphin").
However, at the time the promise of marriage was made, Marie Antoinette was very young, as was her future husband.
In 1769, the formal request for a hand was made by the French ambassador in Vienna and it was accepted by the Empress and Archduchess María Teresa I.
The marriage took place on April 19, 1770 through powers of attorney, that is, with a legal permit, since the bride and groom were not in the same city.
She traveled to France in May of that same year, since then she began to call herself Marie Antoinette (Marie Antoinette), the French form of his name. Two days after their arrival in the country, a formal wedding ceremony was held.
The presence of Marie Antoinette of Austria in the French court was not well seen at first; the other nobles nicknamed her "the Austrian." Added to the discontent was the fact that the marriage between the dolphins was not consummated and years went by without conceiving an heir.
Marie Antoinette turned out to be a dolphin (title of the wife of the dolphin of France) pleasant to the people at first, for qualities such as her beauty and sympathy.
The young dolphin was only a teenager and proved unprepared for marriage at the beginning of their marriage. Nor did he easily adapt to French customs, such as dressing and grooming in front of a group of courtiers..
Her position did not have many official obligations, besides procreating, so she spent a lot of time unoccupied. That is why Marie Antoinette devoted herself for long hours to leisure and entertainment activities..
The union of the French heir with his wife was finally consummated in 1777. It is said that, although he was faithful to her during the marriage, he treated her distantly, since he feared that she wanted to manipulate him politically..
When King Louis XV, grandfather of the dolphin Louis Augustus, died, on May 10, 1774, his grandson became King of France and Navarre. He was thereafter known as Louis XVI and his wife became the queen consort.
As was customary within the court since the time of Louis XIV, Marie Antoinette of Austria took excessive care of her appearance and constantly held social events. That behavior was not alien to the French, but it irritated them to see it in a foreign queen..
They began to feed myths about the expenses of the wife of the Bourbon king and spread them. They said that she had ordered her rooms upholstered with gold and diamonds, they also claimed that she was unfaithful to her husband.
Finally, she was blamed for the economic problems of the kingdom, although she did not have any real role within the government, since her husband did not allow her to intervene in political affairs..
Marie Antoinette of Austria did have friendships with some noblemen close to her circle, but there is no concrete evidence that she has consummated any extramarital affair.
The lack of children within the royal marriage was a serious problem for the stability of the French government.
In 1777 Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, visited his sister Marie Antoinette and took the opportunity to ask about the married life of King Louis XVI.
José II advised his brother-in-law, Louis XVI, on conjugal matters and explained to him how he should maintain intimate relations with his wife. Shortly after the visit of Marie Antoinette's brother the French kings finally consummated their union.
The following year, in April 1778 it was announced that the queen was pregnant. The couple's first daughter was born in December and was named María Teresa Carlota. The title assigned to it was "madame royale".
At that time Marie Antoinette of Austria began to have a more important role in French politics, since she had gained some influence with her husband after the birth of their first daughter..
Among the events that are presumed influenced by the queen is the conflict known as the war of the Bavarian succession to which France turned in favor of Austria.
Also at that time, Louis XVI favored a coalition that assisted Washington's troops in the American Revolution..
The first male child of King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette of Austria was born on October 22, 1781. The heir to the throne received the title of Dauphin of France and was baptized as Luis José Javier Francisco de Borbón.
The following year, she gave the position of royal governess to one of her closest friends, the Duchesse de Polignac. This was not pleasant for the national aristocracy, since the one selected to educate the king's children did not come from a sufficiently noble family..
Despite the fact that the birth of an heir to the crown had aroused great joy in the French people, Marie Antoinette's situation did not improve. In fact, the publication of pamphlets with sexual themes about the queen was normalized.
The rumors of spending and excess that surrounded Marie Antoinette earned her the nickname "Madame Deficit." In 1782 the construction of a "village" began on the grounds of Versailles, constructions that became popular within the nobility as places of retirement..
Although it was totally normal for French nobles to build villages on their land, in the case of Marie Antoinette of Austria it was perceived as an extravagance by her detractors.
The second son of the French kings, Luis Carlos, was born on March 27, 1785 and received the title of Duke of Normandy.
During that same time, the so-called necklace affair arose, in which a renowned jeweler demanded the payment of 1.5 million pounds for an alleged commission from the queen.
Marie Antoinette refused to acknowledge the financial responsibility of the diamond necklace and blamed the Cardinal of Rohan for wanting to incriminate her for the great expense that this garment represented..
It was later discovered that neither the cardinal nor the queen had been responsible for the affair. Those responsible were scammers, including the Counts of La Motte, Nicole Lequay (a prostitute), Rétaux de Villette and Alessandro Cagliostro.
Despite the fact that it was proven that the queen had nothing to do with it, the French people held her responsible for the event and her reputation was forever stained..
The youngest of the daughters of Marie Antoinette of Austria was born on July 9, 1786; the little girl contracted tuberculosis and died a month before her first birthday.
The queen tried to show her motherly side and commissioned a portrait of her surrounded by her children, but that did not manage to reverse her bad image. Marie Antoinette was the face of the excesses of the court before the people and went on to embody the image of aristocratic frivolity.
In reality, the economic difficulties of France had been a burden for previous generations; the costs of wars and the lives of the nobility in general were one of the great problems.
The nobility and the clergy had practically exonerated all the taxes that were applied to the common people. That made a financial restructuring prevailing that the nobles did not seem willing to accept..
In 1789 the States General were called with double representation of the third State made up of the bourgeois or common people. The third State began to request a vote for each delegate, to obtain equal representation, but it was not granted..
During June of that same year, Luis José, a French dolphin, passed away, leaving his parents, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, deeply affected. However, the people did not give them rest or sympathy for their loss, the commons decided to constitute a National Assembly.
A mob of Parisians marched to Versailles on October 5, 1789 in protest at the shortage of bread, the next day they forced the kings to move to the Tuileries Palace in the center of Paris, where they remained by force in what what is considered a house arrest.
In this context, the phrase "let them eat cake" was attributed to Marie Antoinette, in reference to the claims for the high cost of bread for the French people. But that was just another one of her enemies' campaigns, since she never spoke those words..
During June 1791 members of the royal family attempted to escape captivity by posing as servants of a fictional Russian aristocrat. They were arrested once more in less than a day in Varennes.
The king's attempted escape ended the little trust the people had in him. As a result, the security that guarded them increased after their return to the capital..
The royal family was formally arrested in the Temple tower on August 13, 1792. In September of the same year the end of the monarchy was officially declared and the government of the National Convention on the Republic of France was established..
Louis XVI was tried on charges of attempting against the integrity of the Republic, after being found guilty, he was assigned a death sentence. He was allowed to meet for the last time with Marie Antoinette and her children, and on January 21, 1793, he was executed by guillotine..
The former queen was taken to an isolation cell in a prison known as the Conciergerie to await her trial in October, which was held by the Revolutionary Court..
The accusations against her were a compilation of all those malicious rumors that had been spread about Marie Antoinette by the revolutionaries: orgies, defrauding the national coffers by sending money to Austria or squandering it in banal excesses.
Also added to his charges was the massacre of the French National Guard of 1792. The last and most painful accusation for Marie Antoinette was that of incest, signed by her son Luis Carlos (manipulated by Jacques Hébert to do it).
He did not want to give credit to the latest charge of rape and incest, so he did not respond to it, instead he requested the empathy of the mothers present so that they would recognize that this accusation was not true..
The former queen was found guilty of depletion of the national treasure, conspiracy against the security of the French state and high treason.
Marie Antoinette of Austria was executed by guillotine on October 16, 1793 in Paris, France. His body was buried in an unnamed grave in the Madeleine Cemetery..
The remains of the queen were exhumed during the Bourbon restoration (1815), after that Marie Antoinette was buried in the Basilica of St. Denis.
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