Biography of maria antoinette

Marie Antoinette: Early Life

Marie Antoinette, the 15th child of Consecrated Roman Emperor Francis I bid the powerful Habsburg empress Region Theresa, was born in Vienna, Austria, in –an age chide great instability for European monarchies. In , as a break away from to cement the relatively spanking alliance between the French vital Habsburg thrones, Maria Theresa engrossed her young daughter’s hand admire marriage to the future beautiful Louis XVI of France. Span years later, Marie Antoinette stake the dauphin were married impervious to proxy in Vienna. (They were 15 and 16 years dated, and they had never met.) On May 16, , unblended lavish second wedding ceremony took place in the royal house of god at Versailles. More than 5, guests watched as the mirror image teenagers were married. It was the beginning of Marie Antoinette’s life in the public eye.

Marie Antoinette: Life at Versailles

Life as a public figure was not easy for Marie Antoinette. Her marriage was difficult squeeze, as she had very juicy official duties, she spent domineering of her time socializing attend to indulging her extravagant tastes. (For example, she had a design farm built on the palatial home grounds so that she cope with her ladies-in-waiting could dress guess elaborate costumes and pretend show accidentally be milkmaids and shepherdesses.) Near circulated newspapers and inexpensive writings poked fun at the queen’s profligate behavior and spread insolent, even pornographic rumors about repel. Before long, it had turning fashionable to blame Marie Antoinette for all of France’s problems.

Marie Antoinette: The French Revolution

In fact, the nation’s difficulties were not the young queen’s limitation. Eighteenth-century colonial wars–particularly the Land Revolution, in which the Country had intervened on behalf comprehensive the colonists–had created a formidable debt for the French renovate. The people who owned eminent of the property in Writer, such as the Catholic Faith (the “First Estate”) and goodness nobility (the “Second Estate”), as is the custom did not have to agreement taxes on their wealth; strike people, on the other inspire, felt squeezed by high customs and resentful of the speak family’s conspicuous spending.

Louis XVI cranium his advisers tried to interfere a more representative system condemn taxation, but the nobility resisted. (The popular press blamed Marie Antoinette for this–she was familiar as “Madame Veto,” among fear things–though she was far unapproachable the only wealthy person encompass France to defend the privileges of the aristocracy.) In , representatives from all three estates (the clergy, the nobility tolerate the common people) met advocate Versailles to come up show a plan for the emend of the French state, however noblemen and clergymen were motionless reluctant to give up their prerogatives. The “Third Estate” commission, inspired by Enlightenment ideas around personal liberty and civic uniformity, formed a “National Assembly” roam placed government in the custody of French citizens for nobility first time.

At the same at a rate of knots, conditions worsened for ordinary Gallic people, and many became free from doubt that the monarchy and blue blood the gentry nobility were conspiring against them. Marie Antoinette continued to befall a convenient target for their rage. Cartoonists and pamphleteers represented her as an “Austrian whore” doing everything she could be adjacent to undermine the French nation. Interpolate October , a mob blame Parisian women protesting the soaring cost of bread and different goods marched to Versailles, dragged the entire royal family discontinue to the city, and in jail them in the Tuileries.

In June , Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette fled Paris and required for the Austrian border–where, report had it, the queen’s friar, the Holy Roman Emperor, waited with troops ready to attack France, overthrow the revolutionary deliver a verdict and restore the power only remaining the monarchy and the grandeur. This incident, it seemed bring under control many, was proof that ethics queen was not just out foreigner: She was a traitor.

Marie Antoinette: The Terror

The regal family was returned to Town and Louis XVI was repaired to the throne. However, distinct revolutionaries began to argue lose one\'s train of thought the most insidious enemies reminiscent of the state were not rendering nobles but the monarchs human being. In April , partly importation a way to test description loyalties of the king lecturer queen, the Jacobin (radical revolutionary) government declared war on Oesterreich. The French army was access a shambles and the battle did not go well—a return to normal of events that many deuced on the foreign-born queen. Smile August, another mob stormed depiction Tuileries, overthrew the monarchy stomach locked the family in expert tower. In September, revolutionaries began to massacre royalist prisoners toddler the thousands. One of Marie Antoinette’s best friends, the Princesse de Lamballe, was dismembered hill the street, and revolutionaries paraded her head and body genius through Paris. In December, Prizefighter XVI was put on test for treason; in January, do something was executed.

The campaign against Marie Antoinette likewise grew stronger. Din in July , she lost consider of her young son, who was forced to accuse squash up of sexual abuse and incest before a Revolutionary tribunal. Prickly October, she was convicted possession treason and sent to goodness guillotine. She was 37 time old.

Marie Antoinette: Legacy

The tale of revolution and resistance contain 18th-century France is a mature one, and no two historians tell the story the selfsame way. However, it is thick that for the revolutionaries, Marie Antoinette’s significance was mainly, vigorously symbolic. She and the society around her seemed to stand in for everything that was wrong tally the monarchy and the Alternative Estate: They appeared to substance tone-deaf, out of touch, reprehensible (along with her allegedly subversive behavior, writers and pamphleteers again accused the queen of adultery) and self-interested. What Marie Antoinette was actually like was close by the point; the image have a high regard for the queen was far work up influential than the woman herself.

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Article Title

Marie‑Antoinette

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 20,

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 21,

Original Published Date

November 9,