Marie Antoinette Biography

Maria Antonia Josepha Joanna is better to know than to be Marie Antoinette. She was France's last queen, the one who aided in inciting popular unrest that culminated in the French Revolution and the monarchy's overthrow in 1792. (Aug). She also became an excess symbol of the monarchy. And, it is often credited with a famous quote, "Let them eat cake," although there is no piece of evidence she actually said it. In this article, we will discover more information about Marie Antoinette.

Marie Antoinette Early Life 

Let us start Marie Antoinette biography with her early life.

causMarie-Antoinette was the eleventh daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and Maria Theresa, and she was just 14 years old when she married the dauphin Louis, grandson of France's King Louis XV, on May 16, 1770. She carried the shame of being Austria's representative during a time when having ties to Vienna was undesirable in France for the rest of her life. She also had the misfortune of marrying an inattentive husband in the timid, uninspired Louis.

By the time Louis ascended the throne in May 1774, Antoinette had withdrawn to seek the distraction and companionship among a circle of favourites and politically susceptible acquaintances whom she could have avoided if her personal life had been more fulfilling.

Princesse de Lamballe was her most intimate friend from this time onward. Marie-Antoinette was forced to take such a major political role during the Revolution bee of her husband's political nullity and personal weakness.

Involvement in Louis XVI's Court

Between Louis XVI's (Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI) accession until the onset of the Revolution, she played a significant role in foreign policy and domestic affairs in France. Her efforts to restore the duc de Choiseul and Étienne-François de Choiseul to power in 1774, for example, were unsuccessful.

The finance minister named Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot fall in 1776 should be attributed to the hostility of chief royal adviser named Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, Comte de Maurepas, and to the variations that emerged between foreign minister Charles Gravier and Turgot, Comte de Vergennes, over France's engagement in the American Revolution, rather than the queen's direct intervention.

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Fig: In the British Museum, there is a mixed-method colour print of Marie-Antoinette on two paper sheets by Jean-François Janinet in 1777, which is a print after Jean-Baptiste-André Gautier d'Agoty.

In her efforts to promote Austrian interests in foreign affairs, she ran into opposition from both Louis XVI and Vergennes. And it's safe to assume that her brother, Emperor Joseph II, was dissatisfied with her lack of success. Even her repeated indulgence requests of her favourites, such as Yolande de Polastron, Comtesse de Polignac, did not result in a significant financial drain. Her other court expenses, while to a lesser extent, have contributed to the massive debt amassed by the French state between the 1770s and '80s.

In the 1770s, the queen's childlessness as a result of Louis XVI's inability to consummate their marriage inspired rivals - including the king's own brothers, who would inherit the throne if she failed to produce a legitimate heir - to spread her slanderous reports about suspected extramarital affairs.

All of these accusations culminated in the Diamond Necklace Affair (in 1785), in which the queen was falsely accused of having an affair with the cardinal. The scandal emboldened nobility and tarnished the monarchy, prompting them to actively resist (from 1787–88) all financial reforms proposed by the king's ministers.

This episode was particularly damaging to the queen's reputation because she had been leading a more conventional life since the birth of her daughter Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte in December 1778, as well as the dauphin Louis in October 1781. In March 1785, her second son, the future Louis XVII, was born.

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Fig: Reconstruction of necklace, which was at the centre of the scandal called Affair of the Diamond Necklace (1785).

The French Revolution

When the Estates-General assembled at Versailles in 1789, the queen supported the return of Jacques Necker to power at the end of August in 1788 May and accepted the concession of double representation to the third estate, her unpopularity was at its peak because she was regarded, without justification, as an associate of the reactionary coterie of the king's brother, named Charles, Comte d'Artois, and because of her character - aspersions cast by the king's cousin, named Charles, Comte d'Artois. Louis-Philippe-Joseph, Duc d'Orléans. She seems to have been involved in politics around the end of May while being distracted by the illness of her elder son, who died in early June.

During the 1789 and subsequent crises, Marie-Antoinette proved to be far more powerful and decisive than her husband. After a crowd stormed the Bastille on July 14, 1789, the queen was unable to persuade Louis to flee to Metz with his troops. During August–September, however, she urged him to successfully reject the Revolutionary National Assembly's attempts to limit the royal prerogative and abolish feudalism.

As a result, she became the principal target of popular agitators, whose enmity is said to have contributed to the tale that, when told the people didn't have any bread, she sneered and said, "Let them eat cake!" In the time of Oct 1789, the royal family was forced with all the members to return to Paris. It was the time after becoming Revolutionary War hostages in Versailles. 

Several of the queen's closest friends had emigrated after the fall of the Bastille, and she had been without their company throughout this period. However, she continued to exhibit great personal courage, which sustained the royal family both then and throughout its later disasters.

Marie-Antoinette was to play an increasingly important role in the secret attempts to free the royal family from its virtual captivity in Paris as a result of Louis XVI's irresolution (Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI). In May 1790, the queen met Comte de Mirabeau, a prominent member of the National Assembly, with the hope of restoring the monarchy's authority.

However, she never truly trusted Mirabeau, and the king refused to consider the civil war that would have inevitably resulted from Mirabeau's early ideas. They advocated for a flight to the interior of France, as well as a call for royalist support in the provinces. After the death of Mirabeau in Apr 1791, the queen turned to émigrés and her friends outside France for help.

It was with the Swedish count Hans Axel von Fersen, royalist general François-Claude-Amour de Bouillé and French aristocrat Louis Auguste Le Tonnelier de Breteuil assistance that the royal family was to be flown to Montmédy, on the eastern frontier, according to preparations. They planned for the king and queen to flee Paris on the night of June 20. The royal couple was seized by Revolutionary forces near Varennes (on June 25) and taken back to Paris. There is also more info, which can be known from Marie Antoinette books biography.

Death

At the age of 37, Antoinette, as a consort of Louis XVI, was killed by a decree of the Revolutionary tribunal 9 months after her husband. 

Marie-Antoinette was portrayed as a victim of circumstance in more ways than one. In her youth, she was a diplomatic chessboard prawn of Europe, attempting to negotiate the complicated web of allegiances that defined the continent in the aftermath of the Seven Years' War as Austria and France.