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MARIE ANTOINETTE

Marie Antoinette was Archduchess of Austria and Queen of Louis XVI of France. She was born in 1755 and died in 1793 when she was executed for treason during the French revolution. The youngest daughter of the Emperor Francis I and of Maria Theresa she was married at the age of fifteen to the Dauphin, afterwards Louis XVI, but her manners were ill-suited to the French court, and she made many enemies among the highest families by her contempt for its ceremonies, which excited her ridicule. The freedom of her manners, indeed, even after she became queen, was a cause of scandal. The extraordinary affair of the diamond necklace, in which the Cardinal Louis de Holian, the great quack Cagliostro, and a certain Countess de Lamotte were the chief actors, tarnished her name, and added force to the calumnies against her. Though it was proved in the examination which she demanded that she had never ordered the necklace, her enemies succeeded in casting a stigma on her, and the credulous people laid every public disaster to her charge.

There is no doubt she had great influence over the king, and that she constantly opposed all measures of reform. The enthusiastic reception given her at the guards' ball at Versailles on the 1st of October, 1789, raised the general indignation to the highest pitch, and was followed in a few days by the insurrection of women, and the attack on Versailles.

When practically prisoners in the Tuileries it was she who advised the flight of the royal family in June, 1791, which ended in their capture and return. On the 10th of August, 1792, she heard her husband's deposition pronounced by the Legislative Assembly, and accompanied him to the prison in the Temple, where she displayed the magnanimity of a heroine and the patient endurance of a martyr. In January, 1793, she parted with her husband who had been condemned by the Convention; in August she was removed to the Conciergerie; and in October she was charged before the revolutionary tribunal with having dissipated the finances, exhausted the treasury, corresponded with the foreign enemies of France, and favoured the domestic foes of the country. She defended herself with firmness, decision, and indignation; and heard the sentence of death pronounced with perfect calmness - a calmness which did not forsake her when the sentence was carried out the following morning. Her son, eight years of age, died shortly afterwards, as was generally believed by poison, and her daughter was suffered to quit France, and afterwards married her cousin the Duke of Angouleme.

Marie Antoinette was renowned for rarely carrying money with her, and rather borrowing money from her associates for which she earned the nickname 'Madame Deficit'.
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