PRESENTATION OUTLINE
Born : November 2, 1755 In Hofburg Palace, Vienna Austria
Executed: October 16, 1793 at age 37 in Paris, France due to French Revolution
She was Roman Catholic
Marie Antoinette was the 15th child of Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and the powerful Habsburg empress Maria Theresa. In 1766, as a way to cement the new alliance between the French and Habsburg thrones, Maria Theresa promised her young daughter’s hand in marriage to the future king Louis XVI of France. Four years later, Marie Antoinette and the dauphin were married by proxy in Vienna. They were 15 and 16 years old, and they had never met.On May 16, 1770, a lavish second wedding ceremony took place in the royal chapel at Versailles. More than 5,000 guests watched as the two teenagers were married. It was the beginning of Marie Antoinette’s life in the public eye.
Life as a public figure was not easy for Marie Antoinette. Her marriage was difficult and, as she had very few official duties, she spent most of her time socializing and indulging her extravagant tastes. For example, she had a model farm built on the palace grounds so that she and her ladies-in-waiting could dress in elaborate costumes and pretend to be milkmaids and shepherdesses. Newspapers and pamphlets made fun of the queen’s behavior and spread , even pornographic rumors about her. It had become fashionable to blame Marie Antoinette for all of France’s problems.
Why was she so admired?
Because of everything about her. She was absolutely different then any other queen the world had seen. She was very stylish and had a way of dressing herself that made everybody look at her and want to copy her. Her character was soft and gentle, but also naive and easily bored. She was also a very strong woman for her time.
Napoleon once said of her that "there was just one man on the throne, and that was the queen", meaning that the queen was much stronger of character and more capable of making a decision than her husband the King. She turned the fashion industry around and made Paris the most stylish capital of the world. She was also the one introducing the croissant to France!
France's difficulties were not the queen’s fault. Eighteenth-century colonial war, the American Revolution, in which the French had intervened on behalf of the colonists. They had created a tremendous debt for the French state. The people who owned most of the property in France, such as the Catholic Church didn't have to pay taxes on their wealth; ordinary people, on the other hand, felt squeezed by high taxes and resentful of the royal family’s conspicuous spending.
Revolutionaries began to argue that the most insidious enemies of the state were not the nobles but the monarchs themselves. In April 1792, partly as a way to test the loyalties of the king and queen, the Jacobin government declared war on Austria. The French army was in a shambles and the war did not go well. Many blamed the foreign-born queen. In August, another mob stormed the Tuileries, overthrew the monarchy and locked the family in a tower. In September, revolutionaries began to massacre royalist prisoners by the thousands.
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"Marie Antoinette." - Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Mar. 2015.
"Marie Antoinette." Bio.com. A&E Networks Television, n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2015.
"10 Things You May Not Know About Marie Antoinette." History.com. A&E Television Networks, 16 Oct. 2013. Web. 05 Mar. 2015.
"Marie-Antoinette." History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 28 Feb. 2015.
