Marie Antoinette did indeed become France’s most dazzling Queen as well as one of the most tragic. Four years after she arrived at the Court of Versailles, King Louis XV died on May 10, 1774. Marie Antoinette was in a room by herself when she heard a commotion and then the cries, “The King is dead! Long live the King!” The new King was her husband, Louis Auguste, King Louis XVI.
The people were joyous at the prospects of this new King and his beautiful and animated young wife. She was, of course, thrilled, for it seemed to her that her destiny had been fulfilled, and she wrote to her mother, the Empress Maria Theresa, “Although God decreed that I should be born in the rank I now occupy, I cannot but marvel at the dispensation of Providence thanks to which I, the youngest of your children, have been chosen to be Queen over the finest realm in Europe.”
Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI did not have children for several years. On the night of December 8, 1778, over one hundred and fifty people were crushed into Marie Antoinette’s bedchamber, held back only by the gold railing, to watch as she gave birth to her and Louis Auguste’s first child, a girl, Princess Marie Thérèse, named for her mother, the Empress. The spectators in the bedchamber behaved so terribly that what Madame Campan referred to as “the cruel etiquette” of witnessing Royal births was abolished shortly thereafter. The birth of their second child was much more peaceful, and only a handful of people were present to greet the arrival of the new Dauphin, the child everyone thought would be the next King of France.
This, however, was never to be. The tragic tale of Marie Antoinette and Louis Auguste had already begun to unfold long before the births of their four children. Marie Antoinette was a good and loving mother, but she knew nothing of ruling, nor did her husband. She loved parties and extravagances. She was quickly nicknamed Madame Deficit for all the money she squandered. She became addicted to gambling. Meanwhile, the conditions for the people of France, the ordinary citizens, were growing worse and worse. There was widespread hunger and there was a terrible financial crisis, but Marie Antoinette and her husband, shut away in the lavish Court of Versailles, were blind and ignorant to these problems.
Resentment grew. The nobles of the Court wanted nothing to change. They loved their lives of extravagance, high fashion, and endless parties. Marie Antoinette never stopped spending. She loved the fine things that the extraordinary French craftsmen could make, not to mention the fashions of the modistes. Fashion and senseless spending reached disastrous proportions and, finally, in 1789, the French people’s anger exploded in revolution. The King and Marie Antoinette and their children were put under arrest and taken to a small palace, and eventually to a prison. By this time the Royal couple realized how wrong they had been. They desperately wanted to restore order and peace to France at any cost, but it was too late.
Soon they realized that their lives were indeed in danger. In 1791, they attempted an escape. They were captured, however. In 1792, the Austrians invaded France in an attempt to stop the revolution and restore the couple to their thrones, but they were beaten into retreat.
In August, the leaders of the revolution declared that Marie Antoinette and Louis Auguste had no right to rule. Things began to slide toward their tragic end very quickly. In December, Louis Auguste was tried for crimes against the state and found guilty. He was publicly beheaded on January 21, 1793. The executioners used a new device called the guillotine, invented by a Parisian doctor, Joseph-Ignace Guillotin. The guillotine featured a heavy blade that fell across the victim’s neck and cut off the head.
Several months later, on the morning of October 16, a gaunt and worn woman in a ragged black dress was led from her prison cell. She was prisoner number 280, also known as the Widow Capet, a name given to her by the revolutionaries. Also known as Marie Antoinette, also as Antonia, she was loaded into a cart used for common criminals. She was then driven through jeering mobs to a scaffold where the guillotine awaited her. Marie Antoinette was composed. Her last words were to her executioner, whose foot she accidentally stepped on. “Pardon me, Monsieur, I did not mean to do it.”
A few minutes later the blade dropped and the people cheered.
The period from September 1793 to July 1794, during which Marie Antoinette was executed along with fifteen thousand other “enemies of the revolution,” was known as the Reign of Terror.
One of the most famous of the revolutionaries was a lawyer by the name of Maximillien Robespierre. After the King and Queen’s execution, the leaders of the revolution tried to spread their ideas of freedom and equality with the hopes of conquering other parts of Europe.
The commander of the French army was Napoleon Bonaparte, and in 1799 he declared himself the new ruler of France.
Marie Antoinette and Louis Auguste had four children in all. One, Sophie Beatrice, died in infancy. Their oldest son, Louis Joseph, the new Dauphin, was a sickly child and died of tuberculosis four years before his parents were executed. The two remaining children, Marie Thérèse and Louis Charles, shared their mother’s prison cell until she was taken away to be executed. Marie Thérèse was handed over to the Austrians upon her mother’s death in exchange for French prisoners of war. She eventually married her uncle’s son, the Duc d’Angoulême. Louis Charles was held prisoner for two more years after his parents’ executions and died in the same prison he had shared with his mother.
The eighteenth-century world into which Marie Antoinette was born was a dramatically changing one. It was a world that was increasingly uncomfortable with kings and queens and the old ways of ruling. Indeed, the atmosphere was laced with the new and exciting notions of liberty, equality, and independence.
In America, the Thirteen Colonies were rebelling against British rule. They saw themselves as an independent nation and not a tax source for Britain. When the American Revolution broke out and the first shot was fired at the Battle of Lexington and Concord, it was said to be “the shot heard round the world,” for it seemed to be heard by oppressed people everywhere who were longing for independence. It was most definitely heard by the people of France, who were in fact suffering under the rule of a senseless aristocracy.
Not only was the world ready for these new ideas, but it was easy for such notions to be communicated. Ships were faster, and there were better navigation techniques. Indeed, before the middle of the century there was no precise way for ships to determine their longitude and there were many disasters at sea because ships had no way of predicting landfalls. With the perfection of the chronometer by Englishman John Harrison in 1764, navigators were able to pinpoint their position at sea at any hour of the day or night. Captain James Cook, in the course of three historic voyages, explored and charted more portions of the globe than any person before or since. His discoveries and explorations ranged from Antarctica to the Bering Straits, from Hawaii to Australia and New Zealand. So a new world of ideas and a new world of continents and previously undiscovered seas was opening up.
It was also a time of splendid and very rich art. The art of this period was made to impress, to be grand for the most part, and in many ways as frivolous as the age in which Marie Antoinette and Louis Auguste lived. Thus there was much gilt and decorated furnishings, as well as delicate porcelains. And Versailles set the style. Nothing was left undecorated, be it an inkwell or a chair. Indeed, Marie Antoinette insisted on having likenesses of the heads of her favorite dogs carved on the armrests of her chairs.
But there were great painters as well as craftsmen during this time, such as Antoine Watteau, a Frenchman, and Thomas Gainsborough, an Englishman, both of whom painted beautiful landscapes. And certainly some of the greatest musicians and composers lived during this century, composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Franz Joseph Haydn. The famous German composer George Frideric Handel wrote operas and one of the most famous choral works ever written, Messiah. But the music, the furnishings, and the paintings were most certainly for the rich. The poor could not even afford a ticke
t to a concert or an opera, let alone a beauiful gilt chair.
There is no doubt that Marie Antoinette loved the arts and loved spending money as much on pieces of furniture and decorations for her apartments as she did on her clothes.
The marriage of Marie Antoinette of the Habsburg dynasty and Louis Auguste of the Bourbon dynasty was considered of utmost importance to the stability of Europe, because for much of the 1700s, the various nations in Europe were at war. The three main powers during this time were Austria, France, and Prussia. When one country grew too strong, it threatened the entire balance of Europe. In the northern part of Europe there was another power struggle between Sweden and Russia for control of the countries bordering the Baltic Sea.
The Holy Roman Empire ruled over by Marie Antoinette’s mother was really an assemblage of small states in central Europe. Each state had its own prince, sometimes called an elector, to rule, yet the supreme ruler was an emperor or an empress. [This Christian, hence “Holy,” Empire began in the time of Charlemagne around A.D. 800 and lasted until 1806.]
From the tenth century the Habsburg dynasty, the family of Marie Antoinette, had been identified with the Holy Roman Empire and Austria. It was in the eleventh century that they became a world power. Their name Habsburg comes from the name of a castle called Habichtsburg, or Hawk’s Castle, built in 1020 near Strasbourg, France.
There were two branches of the Habsburg dynasty — one Spanish and one Austrian. By intermarriage within these branches and to other princes and princesses in Europe, the dynasty reached the peak of its power before the end of the sixteenth century.
The situation in France in 1774 was unique in many ways. When Marie Antoinette and Louis Auguste ascended the throne, they did not create the problems that ultimately defeated them; they inherited them and made them decidedly worse. But they cannot be blamed entirely. Both of these individuals had been very poorly educated in comparison with other royalty. Queen Elizabeth I of England, for example, who lived in the sixteenth century, had a rigorous education, even though no one ever expected her to be Queen. She also had a sense of inner discipline and knew how to balance her taste for fun and fine clothes with the requirements of governing in a sensible and caring manner. Marie Antoinette had the example of her mother, the Empress Maria Theresa, but although her mother was smart in many ways, and had much to teach, she was late to turn her attention to Antonia and perhaps underestimated what kind of preparation her young daughter really needed to become a ruler in France. Marie Antoinette certainly lacked the political skills and the industriousness of her mother, but she would have been a much better Queen had she been older and better educated when she married.
Louis Auguste was similarly ill prepared. He had seen nothing but a frivolous court his entire life. He, too, was very poorly educated when he came to the throne. Both of them were children when they married and as children had led very confined lives. They had seen practically nothing of a world outside of Court life. They had been taught to appreciate nothing of real value, but they were extremely well versed in terms of material things — clothes, furnishings, paintings, decoration, porcelains, as well as sports and amusements from hunting to gambling.
Their lives were dominated by the ridiculous protocols and rules of etiquette that were deemed necessary for royalty, but served only to remove them from the real concerns of life and governing. It had been this way for two centuries in France. The most important decision either one of them ever had to make each day was what they should wear. In the time of Louis XIV, the great-grandfather of Louis Auguste, there had been even more ritual and etiquette. It was said that Marie Antoinette’s modiste, or dressmaker, Madame Bertin, was listened to more carefully by her and had more influence over her than the ministers of state. And it was during the reign of Marie Antoinette that hairstyles became even more elaborate, with entire scenes and landscapes built into ladies’ towering wigs that were so high that women had to stoop to enter carriages and rooms. Fashion had reached the point of ridiculous, yet people were starving in the streets of France.
It was indeed a strange time in history.
The House of Bourbon, one of the greatest royal dynasties in European history, descended from Louis IX, a thirteenth-century King of France.
The great Habsburg dynasty was the imperial house of Austria-Hungary. The marriage of Habsburg princess Maria Theresa to Francis of Lorraine produced sixteen children, thirteen of whom survived to adulthood. The marriage of their youngest daughter, Maria Antonia, to the Bourbon, Louis Auguste, Dauphin of France, provided much hope for a peaceful alliance between two rival royal houses.
The family tree chart shows Marie Antoinette’s royal lineage beginning with her parents. Dates of births and deaths are noted where available. The crown symbol indicates those who ruled nations. Double lines represent marriages; single lines indicate parentage.
Empress Maria Theresa: Born on May 13, 1717, in Vienna, Austria. At 19 years old, she married Francis Stephen of Lorraine. She was Archduchess of Austria, and Queen of Austria and Hungary for 40 years beginning in 1749.
Emperor Francis I: In 1736, Francis of Lorraine, Grand Duke of Tuscany, married Habsburg heir, Maria Theresa. He ruled as Holy Roman Emperor Francis I from 1745 until 1765, when he died suddenly of a heart attack.
Marie Antoinette: Born on November 2, 1755, in Vienna, Austria, Maria Antonia Josepha Joanna married the Dauphin of France, Louis Auguste, on May 16, 1769, at Versailles. She became Queen of France at age 18 on May 10, 1774, and was executed by guillotine on October 16, 1793.
Louis Auguste: The third son of the Dauphin Louis and his second wife, Maria Josepha of Saxony. At age 15, he married Archduchess Marie Antoinette. The heir and grandson of King Louis XV, he became King of France as Louis XVI. He was sent to the guillotine on January 21, 1793.
Children of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI
Marie Thérèse Charlotte de Bourbon: The Madame Royale, Princess of France, born December 19, 1778, at Versailles. She was imprisoned with her mother and her brother Louis Charles, in 1792. Freed in December 1795, Marie Thérèse later married Louis Antoine, the elder son of Charles, Count d’Artois, who was her father’s youngest brother. Marie Thérèse died in 1851 without ever having children.
Louis Joseph: Dauphin of France, born October 12, 1781. Louis Joseph suffered from the disease of the Bourbons, tuberculosis of the bones. He died on June 4, 1789.
Louis Charles: Duke of Normandy, born in March of 1785. He was seven years old when his father was executed and he inherited the kingship as Louis XVII. Imprisoned with his mother and sister, Louis XVII developed tuberculosis of the bones and a severe skin disease. He died in the fortress prison, called the Temple, on June 8, 1795.
Sophie Hélène Béatrice: The last of Louis and Marie Antoinette’s children, Sophie was born in the summer of 1786. She died suddenly at 11 months old in the summer of 1787.
Portrait of young Maria Antonia, by Jean-Baptiste Charpentier, after the painting by Joseph Ducreux.
Portrait of Queen Marie Antoinette by artist Mme. Elisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun.
An eighteenth-century portrait of the portly King Louis XVI in his coronation robes.
Marie Antoinette and her children — Marie Thérèse Charlotte, Louis Joseph, and Louis Charles, who later became King Louis XVII — from a 1787 canvas by Mme. Vigée-LeBrun. Daughter Sophie Hélène died the summer before this portrait was completed. It is said that she had been posed inside the cradle but was painted out before the painting was officially displayed.
The steel will of Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria, mother of Marie Antoinette, is unmistakable in this eighteenth-century portrait.
Madame du Barry, mistress of King Louis XV, archrival of Marie Antoinette, as captured by Mme. Vigée-LeBrun.
A woodcut of the grand-scale Palace of Versailles with its elaborate gardens. It was the official residence of the French monarchy from 1682
until 1790. Versailles is now a national monument.
A photograph of the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles. Part of the wedding celebrations of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI took place in this great room.
The French ridiculed the extravagant royals with quirky cartoons such as this one of the Queen and her family, 1792.
A woodcut illustrating the infamous storming of the Bastille, when angry citizens mobbed the prison fortress demanding weapons for their fight in the French Revolution.
Taken from an original painting by Paul Delaroche, this nineteenth-century engraving, done by John Sartain, depicts a plain and somber Marie Antoinette being led from the court to her execution by guillotine.
Kathryn Lasky has always loved history. She says she has always been fascinated by the lives of young people who found themselves in extraordinary historical situations because of their parents. “Princesses and princes had a special fascination for me. They never asked to be born this way and yet so much was expected of them.” Marie Antoinette especially intrigued Lasky. “She was so pretty and she was in so many ways so powerless. There was such promise and it all ended in disaster. To me, Marie Antoinette personified all the best and the worst things about being a princess.”