The Misunderstood Last Queen of France

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Some speculated in print that the King’s brother, the comte d’Artois, was taking the King’s place in his wife’s bed.

Eventually the press gained freedom in 1789, and attacks on the royal couple were vicious, cruel and shameful. Countless pamphlets were published, spreading malicious rumors about the queen. Many pornographic drawings depicting the queen with numerous lovers, both male and female were circulated. Often, it was jealous courtiers who would instigate the material for these publications. Images of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette turned comical, insulting, and pornographic as the tide of the French Revolution swelled. The dissatisfaction with the King and the perception of the Queen as vulgar showed frequently in engravings, showing the growing hatred towards the royal couple. These actions by the people were hateful and inappropriate for the situation. Public opinion’s denigration of the royal family is clear in the image of the royal family as pigs circa 1791, a theme that repeated with regularity throughout the revolution.The press sexualized Queen Marie Antoinette completely, accused her of extreme sexual deviancy and indecent behavior, and laid much of the blame for France’s woes on her feet. These factors formed the basis of the public opinion of Marie Antoinette, but a series of unfortunate events helped secure her tragic fate.

Be as it may, in 1789, the French Revolution broke out. On October fifth, a mob of Parisian women came after Antoinette. Many revolutionaries stormed the palace chanting, "The Austrian, where is she? Her head, her head!" In October 1789, the royal family was forced to leave Versailles for the Tuileries palace in the heart of Paris, where they lived in prison like isolation. Marie Antoinette secretly requested help from other European rulers, including her royal siblings in Austria and Naples. On the night of June 20, 1791, the royal family attempted to flee. Their escape plan was said to have been engineered by Axel von Fersen, the Swedish count rumored to be the Queen’s lover. Marie Antoinette’s brother awaited the royal family just across the border and that he was accompanied by troops ready to invade. They were caught in the small town of Varennes, halfway to the border, and brought back to Paris, prisoners now of the Revolutionary government. Louis was executed a few months later.

Still Revolutionaries tended to view Marie Antoinette as thoroughly deserving the cruel treatment that she received. They felt that since she was from Austria, she always influenced the King to be lenient in actions towards the enemy. She was also the reason the revolution escalated, they believed, for she influenced the king to demand the continuation of his absolute power. When Marie was arrested and brought in front of the Revolutionary Tribunal, she knew it would only be a matter of time before she was executed. Some months after the execution of her husband, Marie Antoinette found herself in the dock of the public prosecutor, Antoine Quentin Fouquier–Tinville. The intervention of the radical journalist Jacques–René Hébert had pushed her case to the top, and she was accused most notably of immorality and treason. She defended herself bravely and calmly, But the judgment was never in doubt, as the revolutionaries had always doubted her. And acquittal in these conditions was difficult at best. After a two day trial, she was convicted and executed the next day, 16 October 1793.

It was during that most difficult final stage of her life that Marie Antoinette was able to become a positive figure for the first time. The courage and compassion she showed to her children would have made any mother proud.

“Shoved into a social and political hurricane, Marie Antoinette,” biographer Stefan Zweig wrote in the 1930s, “was perhaps the most signal example in history of the way in which destiny will at times pluck a mediocre human being from obscurity and, with commanding hand, force the man or woman in question to overstep the bounds of mediocrity." Ultimately, even Marie Antoinette herself grasped how suffering gave her fortitude.

"Tribulation first makes one realize what one is," the queen wrote in August 1791, soon after the royal family’s failed escape attempt from their detention in Paris.

A letter about her expressed,

“Little did I dream, when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor, and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult.”

Marie Antoinette represented the ultimate female in the public sphere, and by stripping her down to a purely sexual, lust-filled monster, all women participating in revolutionary and counter revolutionary activities were harmed. A pronounced fear of gender differentiation colored revolutionary France, with women operating salons, participating in protests, and acting outside their traditional domestic role. This fear contributed to the significance of the slander of the queen,and ultimately the importance of her trial and execution. Queen Marie Antoinette symbolized the opposite of an expectation for a woman living in the private sphere, and this contributed to her degradation by revolutionary men in part to bring women back into the domestic life.

As a final point, despite being portrayed as a corrupt and greedy ruler by the media, people should think twice before they place judgement on the young queen, Marie Antoinette and consider what they would do placed in her unfortunate position. Described by her brother, the emperor Joseph II, as “likeable and honest”, Marie Antoinette, Austrian princess and wife of Louis XVI, remains one of the most fascinating figures of the history of Versailles. She was a key figure in turning the anger and frustration of the French people into revolution. Whether one despised or respected Queen Marie Antoinette, her role will be argued about for many centuries, and she never uttered the words “Let them eat cake.”

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Citations:

"The Kingdom of This World." The Kingdom of This World. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Jan. 2016. <https://www.msu.edu/~williss2/carpentier/part2/antoinette.html>.

2. "Marie-Antoinette." Library Leaks. N.p., 09 Oct. 2015. Web. 07 Jan. 2016. <http://www.libraries.olemiss.edu/blogs/media/marie-antoinette>.

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