Pod Insights Short History Of... Marie Antoinette About this episode The last Queen of France before the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette is best known today for her extravagant lifestyle and controversial legacy. Initially admired for her grace and charm, as revolutionary fervour gripped her adopted homeland, she became a symbol of royal excess, and a lightning rod for public resentment.
But did she truly deserve her reputation of vain indifference? To what extent did misogyny and xenophobia shape her downfall? And did she ever utter those infamous words, ‘Let them eat cake’?
This is a Short History Of Marie Antoinette.
A Nosier Production. Hosted by John Hopkins. With thanks to Laura O’Brien, Associate Professor at Northumbria University, and author of The Republican Line: Caricature and French Republican Identity, 1830-52.
Written by Nicola Rayner | Produced by Kate Simants | Assistant Producer: Nicole Edmunds | Production Assistant: Chris McDonald | Exec produced by Katrina Hughes | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design by Oliver Sanders | Assembly edit by Dorry Macaulay, Rob Plummer | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Ralph Tittley | Fact check by Sean Coleman
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Transcript 8,016 words · 10 speakers
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1:04 Speaker 03 It is the afternoon of October 5, 1789.
1:09 Speaker 03 Marie Antoinette, the 33-year-old queen of France, watches the rain from a window of the Petit Trionon, her neoclassical palace in the gardens of Versailles.
1:21 Speaker 03 Though it's quiet here, there is a restlessness among her ladies in waiting, a tension in the air.
1:30 Speaker 03 In the wider country, beyond her manicured lawns, there's not enough bread, and prices are rising. Just months ago, revolutionaries stormed the Bastille, a fortress symbolizing royal authority, stealing its gunpowder and releasing the few prisoners it held.
1:48 Speaker 03 Marie Antoinette's husband, Louis XVI, has been forced to recognize the new National Assembly. But his reluctance to collaborate has stoked their indignation. And out here, despite the beautiful surroundings and the fact that they're miles from the capital, it is as if everyone is waiting for something bad to happen.
2:14 Speaker 03 Marie Antoinette suggests a card game, but none of them could settle into it.
2:21 Speaker 03 Finally, there is a knock at the door.
2:26 Speaker 03 A breathless messenger informs the queen that she is being summoned by the king.
2:32 Speaker 03 As she hurries along beside him to the courtyard, he tells her why. A crowd is marching on Versailles from Paris. Many of them market women furious about the scarcity of grain.
2:48 Speaker 03 She rushes down the steps, risking her fine hairstyle in the downpour, and is helped into a waiting carriage by her frightened attendants.
2:59 Speaker 03 Rain drums on the roof as they bounce along the short ride to the main palace of the sprawling royal complex.
3:07 Speaker 03 Soon, she is hastening through the corridors towards the king's apartments, her skirts still damp from the rain.
3:17 Speaker 03 She finds her husband surrounded by advisors, their faces tense. A valet suggests decamping to the king's hunting lodge, but Louis is resolute, he will remain where he is. And Marie Antoinette insists that her place is by his side. For now, they wait.
3:40 Speaker 03 Then, at four in the afternoon, there is the sound of voices outside. A few at first, but it grows.
3:49 Speaker 03 Peeking from a window, Marie Antoinette watches the market women and the men accompanying them gathering outside the palace. Dressed in bonnets and aprons, their long dresses sodden with mud, many are clutching kitchen or garden implements as weapons. And there are thousands of them, demanding bread and grain. Their fury evident in the barrage of obscenities.
4:16 Speaker 03 The shouting goes on for what feels like hours, until, after meeting the women's representative, Louis orders the grain to be released in the Versailles granaries. The gift brings about an uneasy peace. But by nightfall, the crowd is still out there.
4:36 Speaker 03 The royal family goes to bed, though Marie Antoinette sleeps alone. She knows that her unpopularity might endanger Louis and their children.
4:45 Speaker 03 She tosses and turns through the night, until four in the morning, when a dreadful noise breaks out downstairs. Screams, a stampede of feet, and then a yell from a guard that confirms her worst fear: The women are coming to kill her.
5:03 Speaker 03 In frantic haste, Marie Antoinette's ladies dress her and bundle her into the secret staircase up to the king's apartments. The door closes not a moment too soon. Behind them, they hear the mob storm into her bedroom.
5:17 Speaker 03 Later, she will be told how her bed was torn apart with pikes.
5:23 Speaker 03 And though she escapes with her life that night, time will eventually grant the revolution is what they sought: the head of Marie Antoinette.
5:41 Speaker 03 The last queen of France before the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette is best known today for her extravagant lifestyle and controversial legacy.
5:51 Speaker 03 Initially admired for her grace and charm, as revolutionary fervor gripped her adopted homeland, she became a symbol of royal excess and a lightning rod for public resentment.
6:06 Speaker 03 But did she truly deserve her reputation of vain indifference? To what extent did misogyny and xenophobia towards a foreign-born queen shape her downfall? And did she ever utter those infamous words: "Let them eat cake"? I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Network, this is A Short History of Marie Antoinette.
6:38 Speaker 03 At the start of November 1755, at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Maria Theresa, the Empress of the Holy Roman Empire, gives birth to her fifteenth child. Named by her parents Maria Antonia Josefa Joana, as a child she is simply Antoine.
6:57 Speaker 03 But while she is still an infant, changes are afoot in the alliances in Europe, which will dictate the course of her life.
7:06 Speaker 03 In May 1756, Austria joins with its traditional enemy, France. Soon, along with Russia, these allies are fighting Prussia and Britain in the Seven Years' War, a complex conflict sparked by colonial rivalries, shifting power dynamics, and territorial disputes. To consolidate the alliance between Austria and France, the respective monarchs consider a marriage between their first descendants. Though little Antoine's mother, the Empress, is for now undecided on which of her daughters to promise.
7:44 Speaker 03 Largely oblivious of these machinations, the young Archduchess has a happy childhood. Her father, the Holy Roman Emperor, is a cheerful and indulgent parent. With a passion for animals, his menagerie includes a camel, a rhinoceros, and a puma.
8:03 Speaker 03 Inheriting her father's nature, Antoine receives limited formal education, but her childhood is filled with music and dancing. In 1762, aged six, she meets the child prodigy Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who is roughly the same age and has come to play for the royal family. One story of the meeting tells how the young musician flings himself at her, declaring he will marry her one day. Though it's likely apocryphal, it has tempted historians to consider how different the lives of both might have been at such a match taken place.
8:40 Speaker 03 Though she appreciates music, Marie Antoinette's mother, the Empress Maria Theresa, is preoccupied with the more serious business of statecraft. She works diligently at her papers while her husband spends his time hunting. Laura O'Brien is associate professor at Northumbria University and author of The Republican Line: Caricature and French Republican Identity, 1830 to 1852.
9:05 Speaker 04 Maria Theresa, Marie Antoinette's mother, is the Empress of Austria, and she's the only woman to have ever ruled in that capacity. They call it solo dure, so entirely by herself. And her husband's titles came through marriage to her rather than the other way around. Maria Theresa is formidable. She is very powerful. Her husband died when Marie Antoinette was about nine, so after that point, she's even more the formidable figure, to the point where some people refer to her as King Maria Theresa.
9:43 Speaker 03 Devastated by the death of her husband, Maria Theresa cuts off her hair and wears black for the rest of her life. Her eldest son, Joseph II, is crowned Holy Roman Emperor, but though he rules alongside his mother, in truth, she retains the real power. The royal family's misfortunes continue in 1767, when smallpox tears through the household, claiming Joseph's wife, nearly killing the Empress and snatching away one of Antoine's sisters who had been promised to the King of Naples. Another sister is sent in her place, but she had informally been earmarked to marry the heir to the throne of France, the grandson of the current Louis XV.
10:27 Speaker 03 So the dynastic chessboard shifts, and young Antoine is moved into position for the French match.
10:34 Speaker 04 There's this Austrian motto, so it says, let other nations wage war, you happy Austria achieve your ends through marriage. So marriage alliances are very, very important in terms of consolidating Austrian power. She offers her youngest daughter to France as a bride for the heir, and this is part of Maria Theresa's diplomatic efforts and strategic alliance-making, to use her youngest daughter as a prize, essentially.
11:03 Speaker 03 As the marriage approaches, the empress casts a critical eye over her young daughter. Though she's reasonably good-looking, with blue-gray eyes and glowing skin, her crooked teeth are now corrected with a device known as the Pelican, a forerunner for braces.
11:20 Speaker 03 Then there's her education to consider. Efforts are made to improve her French, refine her manners, and polish her appearance to meet the famously exacting standards of the Versailles Court.
11:34 Speaker 03 A proxy marriage takes place on April the 19th, 1770, with her brother, Archduke Ferdinand, standing in for Louis. So now, when she sets off from Austria to France, she does so with the official rank of Dauphin, and the new French version of her name, Marie Antoinette.
11:55 Speaker 03 On April the 21st, she says goodbye to her family and leaves Vienna in a procession of 57 carriages, filled with royal attendants, craning her neck out of the window to watch her childhood home disappear in the distance.
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14:15 Speaker 03 It is early afternoon on May the 7th, 1770.
14:20 Speaker 03 In the pouring rain, a gold carriage leads the way in a formal procession over a wooden bridge spanning the Rhine River near Strasbourg.
14:29 Speaker 03 This small island in the middle of the water is right on the border of French and Austrian territory. Inside the velvet lined carriage, the 14 year old Marie Antoinette sits peering out of the window, clutching her beloved pug, Mops.
14:48 Speaker 03 At last, the carriage pulls up and there is a firm knock at the door.
14:54 Speaker 03 An aide from France, wearing a perfectly powdered wig, helps her from the carriage and leads her to a specially constructed symmetrical wooden building where she will be formally handed over to the French.
15:10 Speaker 03 A clutch of attendants wait for her in the rain at what she learns is the Austrian entrance. Inside, she finds herself in a room draped with crimson velvet and the double headed eagle of the Habsburgs.
15:23 Speaker 03 Mops is whipped from her arms and the French ladies take every item of clothing off the teenager, including her jewelry.
15:32 Speaker 03 She is then redressed in French clothing, the corsets biting hard into her skin.
15:42 Speaker 03 Now, in an enormous, hooped dress, Marie Antoinette is led into the central salon of the pavilion for the handover.
15:53 Speaker 03 There, Marie Antoinette signs a document that renounces her claim on any Austrian titles. She is then formally handed over by the Austrian diplomat to his French counterpart, who in turn presents her to his wife, the Comtesse de Noailles, the young Dauphin's mistress of the household. When the teenager flings her arms around the Comtesse, the older woman coolly untangles herself and dips into a deep, formal courtesy. Hugs aren't how they do things in Versailles, as the teenage Dauphin will soon learn.
16:30 Speaker 03 After she exits the pavilion from the French side, she once again picks up her dog and is permitted to embrace her Austrian attendants to say goodbye. But Mops, who is Austrian, is not allowed to accompany her as she moves on into her new life in France. As he is wrestled from her arms, Marie Antoinette's eyes fill with tears. It is her only protest as she leaves behind the last piece of home.
17:04 Speaker 03 The country into which Marie Antoinette arrives is rigidly hierarchical, governed by a system of privileges that benefit the nobility and clergy. The elites are largely exempt from the taxes that burden the poor, and at the apex of that society is the absolute monarch, Louis XV.
17:26 Speaker 03 Marie Antoinette now meets the king, as well as her husband, the Dauphin, for the first time. A shy and introverted young man, the future king is not a natural leader.
17:39 Speaker 04 He's the grandson of Louis XV, so that tells us his father should have been king, but his father died. And then his elder brother should have been the king, and then his elder brother died. So he's quite far down generationally. He is very interested in things like locksmithing and taking apart and putting back together locks. He does this with clocks as well. He likes to hunt as well.
18:03 Speaker 03 Marie Antoinette also now meets the Princess de Lamballe, who becomes a lifelong friend, and the king's mistress, the Comtesse de Barry.
18:15 Speaker 03 When the Dauphin inquires about the identity of this glamorous woman, she is told de Barry is there to give pleasure to the king. "Oh, then I shall be her rival," she replies innocently, "because I too wish to give pleasure to the king."
18:33 Speaker 03 Finally, almost a month after leaving home, Marie Antoinette arrives at Versailles, the royal palace about 12 miles southwest of Paris.
18:43 Speaker 03 Just after lunch on May 16, 1770, dressed in an expansive white brocade dress, she walks with the Dauphin through the palace's famous Hall of Mirrors on the way to the royal chapel for their official wedding.
19:02 Speaker 03 After the service, the Archbishop of Rome blesses the marital bed. Then, at last, the young couple are left alone.
19:13 Speaker 03 But things don't go quite according to plan.
19:17 Speaker 04 There are quite a few challenges faced by the young couple in the early years of their marriage. The most significant of these is the fact that the marriage, as far as we are aware, is not properly consummated for probably about seven years.
19:34 Speaker 04 There are various debates about why this was the case. Some people suggest something that's physical on Louis's part, where they're just not into each other, but then they kind of what we think is a fairly loving relationship. In any case, that is a major problem because her role is to have an heir. The role of the royal female body is to produce the bloodline. And this causes concern both within Versailles because the ultimate decision would be, well, clearly it's her fault automatically. And then also there's concern back home in Vienna because Maria Toreta is sort of sitting there going, where is my grandchild? Where is this baby that's going to consolidate the line and the alliance?
20:17 Speaker 03 Despite these challenges, Marie Antoinette proves herself a natural fit for Versailles.
20:24 Speaker 03 Charming and graceful, she embraces the ornate court fashions from the gowns with the hoops and trains, to towering powdered hairstyles, to the rouge worn in circular patches on the cheeks. Adaptly navigating the elaborate and often bewildering etiquette, she even excels at the graceful Versailles glide. A movement so smooth, it makes noble women appear to hover just above the ground.
20:50 Speaker 03 The young dauphin wins a reputation for compassion, too. When a peasant is gored by a stag during a royal hunt, she conveys the injured man in her own coach and makes arrangements for his family. But such efforts can't make up for the underlying concern about the lack of heirs.
21:10 Speaker 03 This matter becomes more urgent when Louis XV dies from smallpox in 1774. Marie Antoinette and her 19-year-old husband, waiting in her apartments, are said to drop to their knees when they hear the news. "Dear God, guide us and protect us," they say. "We are too young to reign."
21:36 Speaker 03 By the spring of the following year, preparations are underway for the coronation of Louis XVI. A new crown is made for him, glittering with rubies, emeralds and sapphires, and the famed Regent Diamond, while Marie Antoinette commissions a magnificent new gown.
21:52 Speaker 03 But questions are already being asked about the spending.
21:59 Speaker 03 Since the Seven Years' War, which ended in defeat for the French a little over a decade earlier, the economy has floundered, and a disastrous harvest has sent prices skyrocketing. The weeks before the coronation see the eruption of violent protests known as the Flower Wars, during which time Marie Antoinette is alleged to have said, "Let them eat cake."
22:23 Speaker 04 Originally, the quote is, "Why don't they eat brioche?", which I think is even better. And it has nothing to do with her. I mean, the first identified instance of it turns up in writings by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Swiss-French Enlightenment writer and philosopher, written before she even got to France, I think it's written in the 1760s. He's referring to this story of this out-of-touch princess, and she was so out-of-touch when the people were starving and they said they had no bread, she said, "Why don't they eat brioche?" It's only the 1840s where we get the first case of that story being told in print as, "Oh, that was Marie Antoinette." It's one of these things about historical figures that just recurs, but unfortunately, no truth whatsoever.
23:06 Speaker 03 But now, though the coronation goes smoothly despite the unrest, the problem of childlessness in the royal marriage remains unresolved. The new queen's desperation rising when a four-year-old orphan is injured by her horses, she secures his grandmother's permission to raise him herself at Versailles. There, she has him washed and dressed in lace, only returning him to his family when he howls with homesickness.
23:35 Speaker 03 Her husband distracts himself from the problem with his support for the American colonists in their American War of Independence from Britain, which adds hundreds of millions of libra to the national debt. Meanwhile, Marie Antoinette finds solace in pleasure.
23:52 Speaker 04 She essentially takes, what one of her biographers has referred to this as a kind of displacement activity. So she flings herself into having a nice time, into fashion, into gambling, into parties, into champagne. She takes refuge at a place called the Petit Chiano, a mini palace that's built away from the main palace at Versailles. And Louis gives this to her just shortly after they take the throne. And she takes a lot of refuge there.
24:23 Speaker 03 Eventually, her family see fit to intervene in the delicate issue of an heir. Marie Antoinette's brother, the Emperor Joseph, comes on a mission to sort the problem.
24:34 Speaker 04 Every time I read about this, I feel visceral cringe, thinking about your brother coming to have a chat with your husband about why you're not knocked up yet. And he writes back to friends of his, and he's like, I don't think there's anything physically wrong. I think he just doesn't know what he's doing.
24:51 Speaker 03 But despite the awkwardness, it's possible her brother's mediation works. Because the following spring, after eight years of marriage, Marie Antoinette is pregnant with her first child. On December the 19th, 1778, a baby daughter arrives, named Marie Therese, after the Queen's mother. And three years later, a longed-for son is finally born to a euphoric Marie Antoinette, whose popularity soars for a while.
25:25 Speaker 03 But the royal couple's joy will prove fleeting.
25:29 Speaker 03 A malicious engraving emerges, questioning the baby Dauphin's paternity, by depicting Marie Antoinette cradling the baby, accompanied by Louis XVI, wearing a cuckold's horns.
25:41 Speaker 04 One of the key things to bear in mind is that because Louis XVI doesn't take a royal mistress, or mistresses, as his grandfather had done, it's just her. So before this, these kind of things would have been normally targeted at royal mistresses. They're the kind of thing that you sort of write about Madame de Paris or de Pompadour. These are kind of safe female targets. And it is misogynistic because it allows people to attack the king without running the risk of being accused of treason or of the crime of "les majestés", which is an attack on the dignity of the person of the king, which could still result in very, very serious convictions. And this is why people end up in places like the Bastille for writing these things, these what they call libelles, these libelous pamphlets.
26:26 Speaker 04 So when it's just her, that means that the focus is wholly on her as this target for frustration, for ire, for anger with the situation, with the economic crisis, with the perceptions of the monarchy and so on.
26:41 Speaker 03 As France's economic woes deepen, Marie Antoinette's targeting by the libelle will get progressively worse.
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27:55 Speaker 03 On October the 19th, 1781, a long way from France, a victory takes place in Yorktown, Virginia, where George Washington's forces, supported by the French fleet, defeat the British in the American War of Independence.
28:10 Speaker 03 One French hero of the conflict, the Marquis de Lafayette, is graciously received by the king and queen on his return, though he notes that the cost of just one of their lavish court balls could have equipped a whole regiment in America.
28:25 Speaker 03 Even so, the profligacy of Versailles continues apace. In the early 1780s, Marie Antoinette develops a model village where she plays at being a shepherd and dairy maid, and her husband gifts her with the Palace of Saint-Clou.
28:42 Speaker 03 Before long, her spending wins her the unflattering nickname Madame Deficit. Even the birth of a second son fails to move the needle on her approval, with the libelle again questioning the child's paternity and painting his mother as an extravagant and lecherous queen.
29:00 Speaker 04 There are very stories of her affairs. There are stories of her having affairs with men, with women, nonsense stories, both in terms of king's brother, no. Her friends being her lesbian lovers, no. But there was at least one, even if we can't prove definitively that there was a physical affair. I think it's pretty clearly that it was an emotional, romantic affair, which is a relationship with Swedish soldier and aristocrat called Axel von Fersen, Count von Fersen. Part of the problem is that a lot of their letters went missing or were destroyed or redacted. Work that has been done to kind of scan the redacted letters and see the information that's underneath does now kind of suggest there was an emotional relationship, an emotional affair of some kind there.
29:45 Speaker 03 Though many of the rumours are groundless, the scene is set for a scandal in the 1780s that is known as the Diamond Necklace Affair.
29:56 Speaker 03 Cardinal Louis de Roi, who is keen to win the Queen's favour, is tricked by a conwoman called Jeanne Delamotte, who persuades him to help buy a diamond necklace, apparently on behalf of Marie Antoinette. But the crook and her accomplices steal it and sell off the diamonds. In the meantime, Marie Antoinette is billed by the jeweler for 1.5 million francs for a necklace she doesn't own and didn't agree to buy.
30:25 Speaker 04 Even though Countess Delamotte was discovered and convicted as a thief, she is branded with the letter V for volaille, or a French word for female thief. Even though this happens, the Queen's reputation is tarnished because she now fits even more with that negative image of her in the public imagination as a spendthrift, but also as a scammer, as someone who is willing to manipulate and to control other people to do her bidding. She has a common theme in the way that she was seen in some of the pamphlets written about her.
31:01 Speaker 03 After the fallout from the diamond necklace affair and the birth of a fourth child, Sophie, who dies in infancy, Marie Antoinette becomes Stélia. Now in her 30s and an adoring mother, she has much to protect. Things only get worse for her when the Dauphin falls ill with tuberculosis of the spine. Meanwhile, her husband, overwhelmed by his failure to resolve France's debt, falls into a depression.
31:30 Speaker 04 The pressures of the financial crisis, the efforts at reform, and the calls for reform coming from different sections of French society, including some members of the aristocracy, that pushes Louis into what has been described by some historians as a kind of breakdown in the 1780s. And at this point, she really steps into politics, which doesn't make her popular at court and also seems to be transgressing female gendered expectations as well. She's the first Queen consort in France to ever attend a meeting of the Council of State, for example, that's before the revolution. She opposes reforms, she dismisses popular ministers before the revolution who were looking at introducing reforms as well.
32:15 Speaker 03 To manage France's financial crisis, Louis summons the Estates General, a gathering of representatives from the clergy, the nobility, and the common people. But during the meeting, the first of its kind since 1614, the royal couple are distracted by the deteriorating health of their eldest son. Then, aged just seven, he dies, leaving his parents devastated.
32:45 Speaker 03 In the world beyond their private grief, the challenges faced by the Estates General intensify. Bread prices continue to rise, and public order is on the verge of collapse.
32:57 Speaker 03 Taking matters into their own hands, the deputies of the Third Estate, that of the common people, create what they call "the National Assembly".
33:07 Speaker 03 When they are locked out of their meeting hall at Versailles, they gather in a nearby tennis court, where they take what becomes known as the "Tennis Court Oath". They will not disband until they have written a constitution.
33:22 Speaker 03 At first, Louis XVI vacillates in his response, but eventually orders the deputies of the First and Second Estates, the clergy and nobility, to join the assembly, turning it into a unified body. An uneasy peace settles between monarch and assembly, but rumors swirl that the king is preparing to dissolve the assembly by force.
33:45 Speaker 03 The fear of a royal crackdown grows, and Parisians begin arming themselves. Until, on July 14, 1789, a crowd storms the Bastille, a medieval fortress holding weapons and gunpowder, as well as a small number of prisoners. At Versailles, Louis is oblivious to the chaos in the capital, until he receives word in bed of what has happened from a duke. "Is it a revolt?", he asks, to which the nobleman replies: "No, sire, it is a revolution."
34:22 Speaker 03 With the opening shots of the French Revolution now fired, members of the aristocracy begin to decide that staying in France is too dangerous.
34:31 Speaker 04 After the summer of 1789, a lot of French aristocrats and some members of the monarchy, or the extended French royal family, have gone to other parts of Europe, where in some cases they have rallied with armies and military from other countries to start sort of planning a kind of attacks and to try to put the monarchy back where it was.
34:49 Speaker 03 Back in Paris, the revolutionary leaders work on establishing a constitutional monarchy in which the sovereign has reduced powers, limited by France's first written constitution, which they're in the process of drawing up. But first, they set out a statement of intent, known as the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, a foundational text of the revolution that proclaims liberty, equality, and the rights of all citizens before the law.
35:19 Speaker 03 But the king is in no rush to sign it. Now, the assembly makes the laws. He only has the power of a suspensive veto over them. His use of the power earns him and the queen new nicknames: Monsieur and Madame Vito.
35:37 Speaker 03 Aware of her own unpopularity, Marie Antoinette attempts to keep a low profile, but she can barely take a walk in her own gardens without being insulted through the gates. In part for her protection, the king summons a new regiment to Versailles and welcomes them with a banquet. Except, in the Paris press, the event is portrayed as a decadent royal orgy. The bread shortages continue, as does Louis's failure to fully cooperate with the assembly. Every day, breaking point seems nearer.
36:08 Speaker 03 In early October, thousands of Parisian market women marched to Versailles. Temporarily calmed by the grain and bread Louis offers, as well as his eventual signing of the Declaration, the crowd erupts again at night. The women break into the palace and storm into the chamber of the queen, where they tear her bed apart.
36:35 Speaker 03 The next day, the royal family are forcefully accompanied to Paris by the market women, where they are installed in the Tuileries Palace, prisoners in all but name. With the help of the queen's confidant, Count von Fersen, they consider their options.
36:50 Speaker 04 So in the summer of 1791, they eventually agree that they're going to try to get out and they will go to the east. The assumption is that they will try to get to Vienna. We have to remember, of course, at this point, that there is saber rattling in various parts of Europe about the French Revolution, and there's a risk to them getting out and the fears that they would encourage an uprising to come back in and undo the revolution.
37:15 Speaker 03 In the middle of one night in June 1791, the royal family, along with Louis's sister and the children's governess, leave Paris in disguise. But before the carriage can rendezvous with the royalists waiting for them at the border, they are stopped in Varennes, a small town in the northeast. Louis is recognized as the face on the assinat, the new paper currency, and the family is escorted back to the capital.
37:44 Speaker 04 But when they come back in 1791, the people of Paris who line the streets to watch them coming back don't do anything. They just stare at them in silence. Some people just turn their backs. And that's somehow worse than hurling abuse, because at least you care for your abuse. But just staring at them in total silence says something very, very powerful about the way they were now seen. The flight to Varennes is a turning point because it really marked the no going back in terms of the monarchy as something that can coexist with the revolution.
38:14 Speaker 03 Austria and Prussia now officially declare their backing of the king, and thousands of army officers join the emigres and gather at the frontier.
38:23 Speaker 04 In April 1792, France declares war on Austria because there has been some threats from Austria and from Prussia about if you do anything to the royal family, we're going to come in and we're going to destroy you. We want the monarchy back the way it was. The rest of Europe is very afraid of the French Revolution and its impact because it shows what can happen. And it makes them think, oh, actually, they might come for our monarchies next. We don't like this. So there's real fear about the old order falling apart.
38:50 Speaker 03 For the Austrian-born queen, war with Austria makes her position in France ever more precarious.
38:59 Speaker 03 But by now, she is far from an innocent victim.
39:03 Speaker 04 Even her sympathetic biographers agree that Marie Antoinette did give military information to the Austrians. She did share information about French plans she was privy to. This did directly lead to the defeat of the French Revolutionary Armies in some engagements. So there is that direct intervention. She liaised with Axel von Fursten, her lover, to essentially reimburse Prussian military costs out of French coffers. So there's definitely truth to the idea that she was the real power behind the throne, it's her. Not wholly, not singly, it's not all her doing. But equally, she does play a role. She's not the sort of mute, hapless figure that I think some kind of people want her to be.
39:49 Speaker 03 In August 1792, revolutionary fury escalated by the war with Austria and suspicions of the Queen's treachery boils over.
40:00 Speaker 03 A Parisian mob storms the Tuileries Palace. This time, the guards of the royal family are butchered, though the king, queen, and their children flee in time to the assembly. The family, including the 13-year-old Marie Therese and Louis, who was just seven, are now imprisoned in the Tower of the Temple, a medieval fortress.
40:22 Speaker 03 The summer ends with darker horrors. The prisons of Paris become abattoirs in the bloody September massacres, as enraged citizens slaughter hundreds of suspected royalists. The head of Princess de Lamballe, a close friend of Marie Antoinette, is placed on a pike and paraded past the Queen's window.
40:46 Speaker 03 Soon after, France declares itself a republic, formally abolishing the monarchy. One of its first decisions is to put its former king on trial for treason. In January, stripped of his titles and now addressed by the court simply as Louis Capet, the former Louis XVI is found guilty and sentenced to death.
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42:16 Speaker 03 It is 7 o'clock in the evening on January 20, 1793, inside the Tower of the Temple in Paris. Marie-Thérèse, the teenage daughter of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, follows her mother up the cold stone steps, making their way to the king's quarters. Close behind are her younger brother, eight-year-old Louis Charles, and Madame Elizabeth, the king's devoted sister. When the guards leading them reach the king's apartments, they knock firmly. The door creaks open, and Marie-Thérèse stumbles in shock at the sight of her father.
43:00 Speaker 03 Louis has been imprisoned apart from them for six weeks. He appears to have aged years in that short time. His face is drawn, his skin pale with worry and exhaustion. He rises from the desk where he has been writing farewell letters, and the family rushes into his arms. Marie-Antoinette presses herself against her husband, holding little Louis Charles tightly as he sobs. Madame Elizabeth clings to her brother, weeping quietly.
43:34 Speaker 03 Soon, the guard gruffly intervenes. It is time to say goodbye.
43:41 Speaker 03 Gently, Louis extricates himself from his family, promising they will see him again in the morning. He kisses them one final time and retreats to his small bedroom as they are led away.
43:58 Speaker 03 That night Marie-Thérèse lies rigid in her narrow bed, dreading what the morning will bring.
44:04 Speaker 03 Outside the thick stone walls of the temple tower, the bells of Paris toll through the long cold hours.
44:13 Speaker 03 At last, just after six o'clock in the morning, there is a sharp knock at the door.
44:19 Speaker 03 Marie-Thérèse scrambles up, hoping a guard has come to escort them to her father.
44:25 Speaker 03 But the expressionless man at the threshold asks only for a prayer book, which the former king has requested for his final devotions. The realization settles with a sickening weight. She will not see him again.
44:44 Speaker 03 Peering through the narrow window, she notices that the great gates of the temple have been locked, the surrounding streets empty of the usual bustle. An eerie hush has settled over the city.
44:59 Speaker 03 Marie-Thérèse strains for a final glimpse of her father being led away, but to no avail.
45:06 Speaker 03 Then, just before half past ten, the rhythmic beat of drums carries through the air from the Place de la Révolution.
45:15 Speaker 03 Moments later, a cannon is fired and a burst of wild cheering echoes back across the rooftops.
45:27 Speaker 03 Marie-Thérèse turns to see her mother, Marie-Antoinette, sitting pale and silent in her grief. But Aunt Elizabeth can't hold back her anguish. "The monsters," she cries, her voice breaking. "They are satisfied now."
45:51 Speaker 03 After the death of Louis, his wedding ring finds its way back through friendly hands to Marie Antoinette, along with a message telling her he only parted with it with his life.
46:02 Speaker 03 The former queen is failed by grief, and her health, fragile for some time, begins to deteriorate. She suffers from hemorrhages that have since been attributed to early menopause, fibroids, or the early signs of cancer of the womb. But there is a flicker of hope.
46:22 Speaker 03 In the wake of Louis's execution, Britain, Spain, and others join forces against revolutionary France, while royalists stage uprisings elsewhere in the country, determined to avenge the king they regard as a martyr.
46:36 Speaker 03 In Paris, the mood darkens. The so-called Convention has replaced the Assembly and forms the Revolutionary Tribunal, a special court for the trial of political offenders accused of counter-revolutionary activities. The new nine-member Committee of Public Safety also promises to root out enemies in a period known as the Reign of Terror.
47:01 Speaker 03 Then, in one of the greatest tragedies for Marie Antoinette, in July, she is separated from her young son Louis Charles. He is placed in the care of a cobbler, who indoctrinates him with lies about his mother that later lead to shocking allegations.
47:20 Speaker 03 Austrian victories that summer mean Marie Antoinette comes to the forefront of discussions at the Convention and the Committee of Public Safety. She is moved from the rooms she shares with her daughter and sister-in-law and taken to the much grimmer surrounds of the conciergerie prison, where suspected enemies of the state are held. She is denied writing materials much of the time, and privacy always, with two gendarmes watching her day and night. A rescue plot only makes things worse for her, and after two months, she is officially charged with immorality and treason.
47:58 Speaker 03 Elsewhere, at an all-night meeting of the Committee of Public Safety, radical journalist and politician Jacques René Ebert is keen to make good on a public pledge he made to the French people. "I have promised the head of Antoinette," he says. "I will go and cut it off myself if there is any delay in giving it to me."
48:19 Speaker 03 A trial begins on October the 14th, 1793.
48:24 Speaker 04 How they concentrated on, we think that you've been involved in giving information to our enemies. I think it probably wouldn't have backfired in terms of the revolution's legacy and the revolution's image in the way that it did. But they pushed it a little bit further. And one of the things that's leveled at her, she's not on trial for this, but it's used to sort of smear her reputation, is an accusation of sexual abuse and incest involving her son, who she would have seen as the heir to the French crown. This is, for her, the absolute worst thing you can say. I mean, I think for anyone, it would be the worst thing you could imagine to be said about you. That's the accusation that really provokes a reaction from her.
49:04 Speaker 04 She says, "I call upon all mothers present to say whether such a thing is possible." And that's the point where, even in the courtroom, there's a sort of a rumbling of, "Oh, this has gone a little bit too far."
49:22 Speaker 03 After her eloquent defence of herself, Marie Antoinette hopes the trial might still go her way, ignorant of the promise of her head that has been made. When she returns to the court, she is handed the verdict of the jury. Guilty on all counts. She is given the death penalty.
49:42 Speaker 03 That night, she writes to her sister-in-law to extend her pardon to her son, whom she understands was manipulated into making the allegations. On the day of her execution, she is denied the carriage that was afforded to her husband and is taken instead to the scaffold in an open cart. Her hair has been shorn and her hands tied roughly behind her back.
50:06 Speaker 03 As she approaches the guillotine, she steps on the foot of the executioner. Her apology to him, "Excuse me, monsieur, I did not mean to do it," will serve as her last words.
50:20 Speaker 03 The blade falls just after midday, and the head of the former queen is held up to the ecstatic crowds.
50:30 Speaker 03 Her body is thrown in a communal grave, but not before a young artist makes a death mask of her face. The artist will exhibit this keepsake in the London Museum that she opens in her own name, that of Madame Tussaud. Another memento records Marie Antoinette's last moments.
50:50 Speaker 04 There is a sketch by artist Jacques Louis David, who's a very important revolutionary and Napoleonic artist. He sketches her going to the guillotine, and it's just literally just like a little line drawing. And what it shows us is a woman who is sitting ramrod straight, with her hands tied behind her back. So there's a kind of a defiance there.
51:13 Speaker 03 In the image, some see the determination of a woman who lived out her entire life in the public eye, with courage and defiance, even in the face of hatred and persecution. Others interpret her stance as indicative of the haughtiness and arrogance of which she was long accused.
51:32 Speaker 03 And in the years since her death, historians, writers, filmmakers, and others have continued to disagree about who she was and how she should be remembered.
51:42 Speaker 03 In truth, she was neither the heartless villain of revolutionary propaganda, nor the blameless martyr of legend since, but something less definable. A queen caught in a collapsing world, trying imperfectly to survive.
51:59 Speaker 04 It's striking how often she's still, in the public imagination, presented as a kind of naive, innocent, who's caught up in events beyond her control. She's a hapless victim of the revolution. She's just a motherer trying to do her best. You know, she just had some nice clothes and people didn't like her because of that. Which is a misconception, because she does try to influence French politics before and during the revolution. She does enter into politics in a way that other queens hadn't. She does commit treason technically in her actions during the Revolutionary Wars. On the other hand, there's a tendency that is also untrue and inaccurate to present her as this kind of proto feminist figure, as a kind of girl boss. She's a strong woman doing strong woman things and, you know, she's kicking ass against big bad revolutionaries.
52:44 Speaker 04 This is a total misconception. That's not what she was. She is of her time and she's very much of her time. And she isn't the sort of female badass that people want her to be. If you want female badasses, there are lots of others in the Revolutionary period that you can talk about. She is not one of them.
53:12 Speaker 03 Next time on Short History, we'll bring you a short history of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.
53:19 Speaker 08 I think the use of the bomb led to other nations wanting to develop it. And whether they would have done the same if they'd simply learned about the existence of the bomb, a bomb that had not been used, I don't know. If you want one silver lining, no one has used one since Nagasaki. And one can only hope that memories of the utter destruction of these bombs, of what they did to human beings, will prevent people, prevent governments from ever deploying them again.
54:01 Speaker 03 That's next time.
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