Marie Antoinette

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Marie Antoinette

Married Life:Before the couple were married, Louis XV sent a tutor to Austria to structure his grandson's future wife. The tutor found that Marie Antoinette was more intelligent than most people took her for but she was rather lazy and extremely carefree and very hard to teach.Marie was only 14 years old when all this happened. She was quite beautiful, with ash-blonde hair and grey-blue eyes. In May 1770 she went to France to be married. She was escorted by 57 carriages, 117 footmen and 376 horses. Marie and Louis XVI were married on May 16 1770. The young woman didn't adjust well to her new life and frequently wrote letters home expressing her intense homesickness. She also hated many of the rituals she had to perform as a lady of the French Royal Family.

Early Life:Marie was born on November 2 1755She was the 15th child of Francis I, the Roman Emperor and Empress Maria Theresa. Marie was born Archduchess of Austria (she spoke German, not French) When Marie was 11, her mother arranged that she marry the future King of France, Louis XVI to cement an alliance between Austria and France. She married four years later, when she was just 15. She was married in Vienna and there were more than 5000 guests at the wedding

Queen of France:Louis XV died leaving Louis XVI to the throne so this lead to Marie Antoinette being Queen at only 19. They were very different in personalities: he was shy and a lover of solitary pleasures such as reading; where as she was outgoing and quite a social butterfly. In 1778 Marie gave birth to a daughter, Marie Therese Charlotte. In 1780's the French were sliding into financial problems with poor harvest driving the grain prices up. Because Marie Antoinette's lifestyle was so extravagant, she became the subject of anger. On July 14 1789, 900 French peasants and workers stormed into the Bastille prison to take arms and ammunition. This was the beginning of the French Revolution. On October 6th of that year, a crowd estimated of 10 000 gathered outside her palace and demanded that the king and queen be brought to Paris. Louis XVI acted almost paralysed with fright, so Marie stepped into his position, meeting with advisers and ambassadors and writing letters to other European monarchies begging them to save the French government. In September 1789 King Louis XVI agreed to a new constitution drafted by the Constituent National Assembly in return for at least keeping his symbolic power. In September 1792, the National Convention put the monarchy to an end. They declared the establishment of a French Republic and arrested the king and queen.

Her Death:On January 21 1793, Louis XVI was taken to the guillotine for treason. A couple of months after her husband was beheaded and soon after the reign of terror, Marie was sentenced to the guillotine for treason and theft. After a two day trial, she was beheaded on October 16 1793. She wrote a letter to her sister in law that said "I am as calm as people are whose conscience is clear." The moment before she was beheaded the priest ,who was present, told her to have courage. "Courage?" She responded, "The moment when my ills are going to end is not the moment when courage is going to fail me!"

Marie Antoinette

Cartoon Marie Antoinette

"Let them eat cake!"

Cartoon Marie Antoinette


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