Marie An-toinette (1755~1793), the former princess of the Austrian Empire, was born in Vienna. She was the daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Francois I and Queen Maria of Austria. Theresa (also translated as: Maria Theresa) the fifteenth child (the youngest daughter, she also has a brother). Born on November 2, 1755 in the Hofburg Palace in Vienna. She was named Maria-Antonia-Joseph-Johanna. Maria is in honor of the Virgin Mary, Antoinette is in honor of Saint Anthony of Padua, Josephine is in honor of her brother Archduke Joseph, and Johanna is in honor of Saint John the Evangelist. A minister described the newborn as follows: "A petite but completely healthy Grand Duchess."
In 1766, for political needs, the French royal family officially gave birth to the 11-year-old Marie-Antoine. Princess Nate proposes. The Austrian court readily agreed. But due to various reasons, the wedding was delayed for several years. It was not until 1770, when Marie Antoinette was almost 15 years old, that she finally set foot on French soil and became the crown prince of France, Louis-Auguste de Bourbon (later Louis XVI).
In 1774, Louis XV died and Louis XVI ascended the throne. Marie Antoinette became Queen of France, her mother-in-law was France. But it is a pity that she does not have the sense of responsibility and mission that a queen should have. After entering the French court, Marie Antoinette made no political achievements. Every day she is just passionate about balls, fashion, fun and banquets, decorating the garden, and is extravagant. She is known as the "Deficit Lady". After the French Revolution began, she unexpectedly showed the pride and dignity of a queen, acting more assertive and stubborn than Louis XVI.
On July 14, 1789, when the masses stormed the Bastille, Marie Antoinette persuaded Louis XVI to lead his troops to take refuge in Metz. She supported the king and rejected the National Assembly's request to abolish the feudal system and limit royal power, and became a target of public criticism. However, both at that time and in later generations, there were still many people who stood on the side of the queen, such as Hugo of France and Stefan Zweig of Austria, who all sympathized with the queen. There were, of course, many other lesser-known royalist figures.
In October 1789, he moved back to Paris from the Palace of Versailles with Louis XVI and was under the surveillance of the revolutionary masses. She worked secretly and asked for help from a group of exiled nobles, but instead of helping, they even added insult to injury. Everyone wanted to use the king's head in exchange for a ransom. This group of nobles included the king's younger brother, the Count of Provence (later Louis XVIII), and his younger brother, the Count of Artois (later Charles X). The king and his wife were helpless and forced to plan their own escapes again and again.
In June 1791, he secretly escaped with the king and was discovered when he arrived in the border city of Wallen. His escape attempt failed.
In 1792, France declared war on Austria. She continued to collude with Austria and provided combat plans to foreign intervention forces in an attempt to use external forces to suppress the revolution. At this time, the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa (Marie Antoinette's mother) and Emperor Joseph II (Marie Antoinette's brother) died one after another, and the Austrian monarchy was in the hands of Marie Antoinette. Toinette's nephew, Franz Joseph.
The exposure of the treason angered the French people, leading to a popular uprising in Paris on August 10, 1792, which completely overthrew the monarchy. She was subsequently imprisoned with the king at Temple Fort. In October of the following year, he was handed over to the Revolutionary Court for trial, sentenced to death, and sent to the guillotine. He was 38 years old. After her death, her body was thrown into a mass grave and buried. It was not until 22 years later, when the Earl of Provence was restored as Louis XVIII, that her bones were exhumed and properly buried.
It is said that Mary left two famous quotes in her short life:
When the minister told Mary that the French people did not even have bread to eat, Mary smiled innocently and sweetly. : "Then why don't they eat the cake?" Mary probably did not say this in history. It was later generations who vented their indignation on this queen who was keen on dressing up.
When Mary was pushed onto the guillotine, she stepped on the executioner's foot. At this time Mary said: "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do it." (This incident is also seen in the biography of Stefan Zweig. In the novel "The Beheaded Queen") In fact, the prisoners on death row during the French Revolution were bound and gagged, and Mary was no exception.
Death penalty·Falling of the flower that ruined the country During the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette's fate took a tragic turn. In this irresistible anti-royal wave, the king and queen have become the primary targets of attack - especially the queen. The gentle and kind king is not so harmful in the eyes of the people, but the spendthrift queen is really intolerable. Someone has made statistics. During the twelve years of Louis XVI's rule, France's debt reached 1.25 billion! The king himself was thrifty and thrifty. Who spent the money? The answer is self-evident. People at that time described her as an evil and ferocious witch and a shameless whore. Almost all the people's anger was focused on her alone. Louis XVI, on the other hand, was described as a good monarch who was kind and loving to his people, but he was just burdened by her.
On July 11, 1789, the French Revolution officially began. Subsequently, on the 14th, the Bastille was captured. Louis XVI understood the meaning of revolution, but he was unable to deal with it. Queen Mary, on the other hand, believed that "revolution is rebellion" and was determined not to bow to the revolutionaries. When the entire French aristocracy was fleeing, and some even voluntarily gave up their aristocratic status and joined the revolutionary ranks, Marie Antoinette was still using her meager strength to defend the throne. The woman who originally only knew about pleasure finally burst out with amazing willpower. As the French politician Mirabeau said, "She was the only man in Versailles at that time."
However, even if the queen was so strong, on the one hand the nobles were uncooperative and on the other hand the revolutionary wave was irresistible, the king and his wife still had to lose. On October 5, 1789, the Palace of Versailles was captured by a group of female (and male disguised as female) revolutionaries. On the 6th, Louis XVI, the queen, the prince, and the princess were escorted to Paris and lived in the Tuileries Palace.
Here, all the movements of the king's family are monitored to prevent them from escaping at any time, and all correspondence and information transfer are strictly monitored. But Antoinette did not give up. She used all her intelligence and wisdom to contact the outside world, ask for help from foreign countries, and seek help from the exiled nobles. It is a pity that everyone wants to be alone and even wants to profit from it. No one really cares about their life and death.
Only the loyal Faison stood up bravely at this time. He designed a sophisticated escape plan for Antoinette, but it ultimately failed due to the king's family's lack of emergency knowledge and various other accidental factors. They were discovered in the border city of Varennes and escorted back to Paris.
After returning to Paris, Louis XVI accepted the constitution drawn up by the revolutionary masses and established the National Assembly. Marie Antoinette agreed outwardly, but she still refused to give in. She supported the king's refusal to convene the Estates-General, which only heightened popular anger.
In 1792, Franz, the Austrian emperor and Antoinette’s nephew, came to the throne. That same year, war was officially declared between Austria and France.
This war gave Marie Antoinette new hope. She continued to use her advantage at home to pass intelligence to the Austrian military in a variety of codes. There is no doubt that she expected her nephew's army to enter Paris, rescue his aunt, and help restore their royal prestige.
Although Mary destroyed all the letters and hid her various actions very well, the matter was eventually exposed. In addition, Braunschweig, the then commander-in-chief of the Prussian-Austrian coalition, issued a declaration asking the French revolutionary masses to respect the royal family. The words in it were fierce and the attitude was arrogant, which greatly angered the revolutionaries. On August 10, 1792, angry people in Paris poured into the Tuileries Palace and threatened to kill the king and his family. The frightened king and queen had no choice but to take the prince and princess to seek the protection of the National Assembly.
After August 13, 1792, the king's family was transferred to Temple Fort and lived like a prisoner. On September 21, the Legislative Assembly announced the abolition of the royal government. The next day, the First French Revolutionary War was established. The royal power that Antoinette spent so much effort to maintain finally evaporated.
As the revolution progressed, a large number of documents secretly hidden in the Tuileries Palace on colluding with foreign enemies and conspiring to suppress the revolution were discovered. Louis XVI was executed for treason by the National Convention. On January 20, 1793, he saw Marie Antoinette for the last time and was guillotined the next day. The guillotine used in France at that time was the Gironde-style guillotine. extremely efficient). Antoinette became a widow. According to legend, she still refused to give up and made several attempts to escape, but all ended in failure.
On October 12, 1793, Mary was put on trial. Many charges were brought against her, some of which were simply unbelievable, such as having an incestuous relationship with her own son, Louis XVII. This trial lasted for several days, and on the 15th, Mary was officially sentenced to death.
At approximately 11 o'clock on October 16, 1793, Marie Antoinette was publicly executed in the Place de la Révolution (Place de la Concorde), and then buried hastily. It can be said that until her final death, she never really lowered her head and always maintained her dignity as a queen.
Louis XVI (1754-1793), King of France (reigned from 1774 to 1792), grandson of Louis XV, the last emperor of France before the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty, and also France The only emperor in history to be executed. Louis XVI had an indecisive character. After taking the throne, he changed prime ministers and ministers many times, allowing internal strife in the cabinet. Policies varied from radical reforms to conservative frugal measures. Louis XVI had no interest in government affairs and often came to his hardware workshop to work with various locks. Louis XVI's lock-making skills were very high and very creative. Almost every lock was a work of art. His achievements are somewhat similar to China's Ming Xizong, a genius emperor who did not mend the sky. He hired the famous coppersmith Garman with a high salary and even had free access to his palace. After France fell into a financial crisis in the 1880s, it often resorted to hunting and other activities to escape complicated state affairs. After the French Revolution broke out, Louis XVI was forced to organize the constitutionalists to support the bourgeoisie in taking real power. Due to threats from Austria and other countries, France was forced to declare war on Austria in 1792. After that, France's more than 20 years of foreign war began. At first, Louis XVI secretly colluded with foreign invaders to suppress domestic revolutionaries. In 1792, a volunteer army formed by the French people repelled the domestic invaders and established the First French French Republic. The Bourbon dynasty has since perished. The people urgently demanded the execution of Louis XVI. Later, under the openness of the Girondins, he was guillotined in the Place de la Revolution in Paris in 1793.