Marie Antoinette

Through the history of the world, the people of Earth have seen every kind of leader. We've seen good leaders, average leaders, and terrible leaders. Many cases in France's history they have had many leaders go through all of these ranks. For example, Napoleon Bonaparte started out great and slowly went down hill. But never in France's history have they seen such a terrible leader as King Louie the XVI. Louie was not exactly king material. Louie was fat, shy, gluttonous, gentle, weak minded, not particularly smart and unambitious . He was everything a king shouldn't be. As the French king Louie made just about every mistake a king could possibly make. These mistakes lead to the French Revolution and even the beheading of King Louie. Throughout Louie's rein one mistake stands out more than any other. The biggest mistake Louie made was when he bribed the Austrian princess Marie Antoniette at the age of fifteen . Because of Antoniette and Louie's passion for her France underwent a horrible time period. She is the worst queen France has ever seen. Blinded by beauty, she led to Louie's death and the uprising of the French people.

Louie upon taking his first glance at Marie was breathtaking. Marie Antoinette is depicted as an absolute beauty . But beauty is at the eye of the beholder, plus she was the queen so many portraits of her might have been fudged a bit to make the unbeautiful seem gorgeous. Marie was actually not all that attractive. She had body problems, such as a hump and other deformities. Louie, despite the look of her, was in love at first sight. In 1770 by ways of bribes and offers to the Antoinette family the two were married.

The bribe to get Marie's hand in marriage was one of the first mistakes that Louie had faced. Louie showered Marie with jewelry and hundreds of dresses. Marie got exactly what she asked for every time she asked for it. This had a horrible affect on the economy in France. All of this buying of dresses and jewelry for the queen was depleting the French money. She was said to have dresses of gold. Some dresses even were covered in diamonds. Marie had a huge amount of dresses all different and all extravagant. There is little doubt that Marie was one of the most well dressed queens in France's history. Not only did she need dresses, she wanted many other exotic things. She demanded parties for her and her friends and even made a small scale model of Paris . With all of this it is obvious that Marie was a big problem when it comes to the French money. Another way that Marie loved to give away the French money was when some radicals from America came. These radicals asked Louie for some aid in the American Revolution. The money borrowed by these radicals was promised to be paid back. Marie thought this idea was a great investment and urged Louie to fund these radicals. Well the radicals won and France saw no money for their help. France was in a great depression. France was bankrupt. On top of this was a drought in France making the cost of living skyrocket but the wages of the people stayed the same. This is a cause of the people of France to get increasingly mad at the leaders.

For these reason tells what a terrible lady this was. To me Marie is a perfect example of the woman stereotype. She was the materialistic queen that demanded everything from the king. The queen would even threaten the king with divorce if the king did not give her exactly what he wanted. So this weak minded king knowing the country was running low on money gave the queen everything she asked for without question. This is just one of the reasons that Marie was a plague on France. The French people were outraged. Here they are, thousands of peasants that work as hard as they can and struggle to live, then a drought comes, the living wages rise and now their kids are starving. While all of these is going on, the queen is picking out her next dress.

Even with all the gifts from kind king Louie that just was not enough for the queen. Marie was very promiscuous. She was often see with many other men and had a lot of affairs. So not only was she a terrible queen she was a horrible wife as well. It is totally obvious that Marie was the worst queen France has seen. She was given everything she wanted but that was not enough for her. One of these affairs got her in a lot of trouble in the world famous diamond necklace affair.

The diamond necklace affair was a con against the queen. The queen actually had no involvement in this con but the blame was put to her and this was a huge reason that the French people started to hate this Austrian lady. The con started with a con-woman named Jeanne de St Remy de Valois. What this woman did was con a Cardinal named Louis de Rohan. It was said that Marie did not favor Rohan very much because Rohan talked poorly about the queen to her mother. Well Rohan wanted Marie to like him because Rohan wanted to be the Prime Minister. Valois, who was aware of this, thought up a naughty little trick to get herself some cash. The con went pretty well. What Valois did was she made Rohan believe that Marie was actually in love with him. She told Rohan that she speaks for the queen and that the queen really enjoyed him and started a fake affair between the two. Rohan decided that he wanted a secret meeting with the queen herself. Valois went and got a dress similar to that of the queen's and actually pretended to be the queen. The "queen" convinced Rohan to purchase a necklace for her and she was going to repay the Cardinal. The Cardinal went to the jewelers and told them that the queen wanted this necklace and if they gave it to him he would repay them with the queen's money. The jewelers gave the necklace to the Cardinal and he took it to Valois. It was said that Valois took the necklace to London and sold it. A theory on why Valois made this con was to get money to get a higher social class. After a while the jewelers went to the queen in order to receive these payments for the necklace and the queen told them that she never ordered the necklace. The queen investigated and the Cardinal and some others were arrested and Valois seemed to get away with this con. This all may not have been Marie's fault but the whole incident did not help Marie's popularity. Gossip swept the country with stories of Marie and her affairs with other men and the people got even more furious with Marie as their queen. Also as a result of this Louie was to become aware of his wife's secret life drawing him closer to her.

This lady was terrible to France. She would spend and spend and would give nothing back. The logical thing for this queen to do would be to stop spending. If she stopped spending money and buying her dresses and jewelry then the country would not lose as much money. This was the exact intent of Louie's financial advisor