Marie Antoinette

Marie Antoinette

Even though history portrayed Marie Antoinette in a bad way, she was actually an intelligent and concerned with humanity.

Marie Antoinette was born November 2, 1755 in Vienna, Austria. She was the youngest and most beautiful daughter one of sixteen children of Francis Stephen I and Maria Theresa, Emperor and Empress of the Holy Roman Empire. Marie Antoinette was brought up believing her destiny was to become queen of France.

Unlike so many royal couples, her parents had married for love and truly enjoyed family life. Although the court was a place of great formality on important occasions, in private the royal family was rather casual. Marie dreaded her mother but was close to her good-natured father. A shadow fell over Marie Antoinette's sunny life in 1765, when her father died of a stroke at the age of 56.

A few years later, Marie Antoinette's childhood came to an end. Her mother had arranged Marie Antoinette's marriage to the dauphin (crown prince) of France to cement an alliance between Austria and France. In 1770, at age fourteen, Marie Antoinette left her homeland and traveled to the French palace of Versailles to be married.

Her fifteen -year-old groom, Louis, was fat, awkward, and kind of shy. He neglected his royal duties, instead he enjoyed hunting or working in his locksmith shop. He also suffered from a medical condition known as phimosis, which prevented him from fathering children for the first seven years of his marriage. The public, knowing nothing of this, blamed Marie Antoinette for her failure to bear heirs to the throne, as she would so often be blamed for things beyond her control.

In 1774, the old king died and Marie Antoinette's husband became King Louis XVI. Three years later he had minor surgery that enabled him to father children. Marie Antoinette's first child, Marie Therese Charlotte, (called Madame Royal) was born the following year. By most accounts, Marie Antoinette then settled down to married life and became a devoted wife and mother.

Many French people hated the queen for her Austrian blood and her formerly frivolous ways. She was rumored to have had numerous affairs. The most persistent rumor centered on Count Hans Axel Fersen, a Swedish diplomat. He was definitely one of the queen's favorites, but it is doubtful that they were lovers. Yet Marie Antoinette was reviled in pornographic songs, pictures and pamphlets. Someone even published a fake autobiography in which the queen supposedly confessed her sins, calling herself a prostitute.

Marie Antoinette was also called Madame Deficit and blamed for the country's financial problems. It is true that she enjoyed a lavish lifestyle; her mother wrote to warn her "a queen can only degrade herself by this sort of heedless extravagance in difficult times." But Marie Antoinette was not quite as foolish and spoiled as the public believed. It certainly is not true that she said, "Let them eat cake" when told that people were starving. Supposedly, she spoke these words upon hearing how the peasantry had no bread to eat during the French revolution. As a woman and a foreigner she made a convenient scapegoat for the nation's problems, and it seemed that no slander against her was too wild to be widely believed.

As she matured, Marie Antoinette became less extravagant. She tried to change her image by wearing simple gowns and posing for portraits with her children, but her efforts had little effect on the unforgiving public. The greatest damage to her reputation was created by a scandal in which she played no part at all, the Diamond Necklace Affair.

The Cardinal de Rohan wished to improve his social status at Versailles, and a woman calling herself the Comtesse de La Motte offered to help him. Unfortunately, for the cardinal, Jeanne De La Motte was not really a comtesse. She was a con artist. She hired a woman to dress like Marie Antoinette and meet the cardinal in the gardens of Versailles at night. The false queen gave the cardinal a rose and hurried away, leaving the cardinal under the illusion that he had met Marie Antoinette.

Next Madame La Motte told the cardinal that the queen wanted him to purchase a very expensive diamond necklace on her behalf. Obediently, the cardinal obtained the necklace and gave it to Madame La Motte, expecting the queen to pay for it. Of course, Marie Antoinette never saw the necklace. Madame La Motte gave the diamonds to her husband, who took them to London and sold them. When the jewelers demanded payment, the Diamond Necklace Affair became public. The cardinal and Madame La Motte were arrested. The cardinal was tried and acquitted. Madame La Motte was imprisoned, publicly flogged, and branded. Eventually she escaped to London, where she spread malicious rumors about Marie Antoinette.

Although Marie Antoinette was innocent in the whole affair, it was widely believed that she had accepted the necklace and refused to pay for it. There were even rumors that she had had an affair with Mme La Motte! The Diamond Necklace Affair contributed greatly to Marie Antoinette's downfall.

Louis XVI was in the first year of his reign in 1775, the year the American Revolution began. He secretly aided the colonies for the war's first three years, and then supported them openly. It is possible that the colonies would have lost the war without French aid.

Lafayette, the French marquis who became an American general, was at Versailles during the reign of Louis XV but was never comfortable there. He was a poor dancer and felt he was too provincial for court life. At age nineteen he joined the American Continental Army. It was considered patriotic for a French man to fight against England, France's traditional enemy. However, Lafayette had gone to America without royal approval, and when he returned to France after the war, Louis XVI had him placed under house arrest. But this was a mere formality. After a week the king released Lafayette and invited him to a royal hunt to show there were no hard feelings.

At first Marie Antoinette had viewed Lafayette as a country bumpkin, but when he returned from the American Revolution her attitude changed, and she had him appointed commander-in-chief of the King's Dragoons. Still, unlike many of her contemporaries, she felt ambivalent about the American Revolution. Perhaps she sensed the danger that loomed in France.

In 1789 the French Revolution erupted. Its causes were many, but much of the revolutionaries'