‘Queen Marie Antoinette’ was a fashion icon, known for her fantastic outfits and gravity-defying hairdos. Her extravagant life of excess eventually made her the target of revolutionary fury, and she was guillotined in 1793. Although she became a byword for opulence, she was a kind and generous character who did not deserve her brutal fate. Born in 1755 in Austria, Marie Antoinette was the 15th child of the Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa. Antoinette would gain a reputation for being simple-minded from a young age, and she struggled with reading, writing, and foreign languages as a young girl. At the age of 10, she still had difficulty writing in her own language of German. Nonetheless, those who knew her personally consistently said that she was a charming and sweet young girl who loved music and the arts. As a child, she was soon engaged to the French Dauphin, who would become King Louis XVI of France one day. In the wake of her engagement, a team of French ambassadors was sent to teach the young royal how to style herself fashionably; in other words – clothing her in a way deemed suitable for a queen. While Marie Antoinette has frequently been vilified as a shallow woman – obsessed with fashion and clothes – this role was imposed upon her from quite an early age. After her engagement, she was given an extensive makeover to transform her in accordance with the French beauty standards of the day. Her simple and characteristically Austrian fashion was critiqued, and her crooked teeth were straightened using an early form of orthodontic braces.
At this time, France had extremely elaborate court ceremonies, and newcomers to the Palace at Versailles had to learn hundreds of etiquette rules. Antoinette was groomed to fit into this rigid and snobby environment in a manner befitting a queen. By the age of 14, Antoinette and the 15-year-old Dauphin were married, and the young girl was transported to the Palace of Versailles, where she lived a very public life. She was dressed daily by a group of handmaidens, spending most of her time mixing in crowds of influential notables until she went to bed late at night. As a teenager, she wrote to her mother complaining that she desperately missed Austria and how much she hated the lack of privacy she had to endure. Later in life, she fought hard to win some solitude for herself, but as a young girl who barely spoke French, she simply did what was expected of her. By 19, Marie Antoinette was already Queen of France, and although she took to her role with great gusto, she had little chemistry with her husband, the King. Louis XVI was introverted and enjoyed practical pursuits, while Marie was jolly and vivacious. She was known for staying up late to party, gamble, and socialize with the other members of the French court, while Louis went to bed early. The couple's relationship was hindered by failing to consummate their marriage for almost seven years. While it was not unusual to delay the wedding night with so young a bride, the lengthy pause created concern when Antoinette was in her 20s. When questioned, the young prince claimed that coitus was simply too painful for him to perform, although doctors who visited him said there was no visible issue. Embarrassing rumours spread across Europe that the king was physically deformed and simply could not perform the act. Finally, Marie's brother, the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, arrived at court to resolve the matter. While Historians still debate what may have been physically wrong with the King, Emperor Joseph wrote that the royal couple was quite simply "blunderers" who did not understand what they were physically supposed to do. Whatever the Emperor said to Louis, it appears to have fixed the problem, and Marie Antoinette became pregnant almost soon after. Antoinette would have many children with Louis, although later in life, it is believed she had at least one affair with a Swedish Count named Axel Von Fersen. It was rumoured at the time that fathered at least one of the Queen's many offspring. Trapped in a lacklustre marriage – and with lots of money to burn – Marie Antoinette dove into fashion, finery, and the gossipy world of the court. The Queen's sense of style was bombastic – and wildly popular with her well-heeled contemporaries. She wore English and Polish-style gowns in colourful patterned fabrics. Her personal designer, Rose Bertin, helped her create many spectacular outfits that changed contemporary fashion trends. Antoinette's hairdos were particularly famous, and she became embroiled in a fashion race with other nobles to create the tallest, most elaborate hairstyle possible. Her personal hairdressers used wigs and hairpins to pile her hair to great heights, and her towering locks were covered with jewels and elaborate ornaments. One of her most famous hairstyles even included a model battleship, designed to celebrate a French naval victory. Unfortunately, the Queen's profligate behaviour did not go unnoticed for long. She was increasingly lampooned in the day's satirical literature for her absurdly over-the-top lifestyle, even earning the nickname "Madame Deficit" for the money she shelled out on frivolous expenses. Her annual clothing budget alone was the equivalent to today’s ‘3.6 million dollars’, and she hardly ever stuck to it, sometimes doubling that figure. Besides her clothes and hair, Marie embellished her personal estate, the Petit Trianon. She created fantastic gardens, and her grand estate at Versailles remains a popular tourist attraction to this day. As people became increasingly alarmed by Antoinette's spending habits, her mother sent her a letter, warning that her lavish lifestyle was not appropriate.
At this time, France was in enormous debt due to severe financial mismanagement and a series of costly wars. It was the worst possible time for a Queen of France to show off her great wealth. While her husband, King Louis, did try to fix France's financial problems, the nobility kept rejecting the introduction of additional taxes. Instead, France's substantial financial burden was shouldered primarily by the poorest in society, whose anger about their unfair treatment began to grow. While Marie was undoubtedly both frivolous and out-of-touch, she was also quite generous; it was apparent that she cared for other people and genuinely desired to help them. Early in her reign, she had refused to accept revenues from the customary Queen's Belt Tax because she had heard many impoverished people could not afford to pay it. She spent a lot of her free time involved in charitable organizations, adopted orphaned children, and even built houses within the palace's grounds to provide for poor families. While her charitable efforts were notable, it was not enough to bridge the gap between her and the general public. To add insult to injury, the Queen built an enormous model village within her estate grounds, resembling a romanticized version of rural France. Late in her reign, Antoinette was falsely implicated in a scam to acquire a diamond necklace, worth the equivalent of around ‘15 million dollars’ today. It created a massive scandal, and although Antoinette had no part in the crime, the rumour she was involved tarnished her already poor reputation. By 1788, the royals were in trouble. A major crop failure and an immense hike in bread prices had worsened the peasantry's already terrible plight. Unrest spread across France, and many ordinary people were increasingly incensed by the French government's failure to do anything about widespread poverty and famine. One of the best-known anecdotes about Marie Antoinette is that during this period of turmoil, she was told that the people had no bread, to which she replied, "Let them eat cake."
While the story may be fictitious, it illustrates perfectly how ignorant the people believed their Queen to be about their terrible situation. By 1789, patience was wearing thin. A meeting of the Estates-General was convened in May that year to discuss once again raising tax money. However, the representatives of the common people, known as the Third Estate, were so fed up with the endless stalemates caused by the tax issue, they decided to hold their own meeting a month later. The Third Estate represented 95% of the population, but traditionally their vote had the same weight as that of the First Estate (the clergy) and the Second Estate (the nobility), who could band together to overrule them 2-1. Barred from the public assembly hall, the people held a momentous meeting on the largest open space available, the royal tennis courts. At this meeting, the crowd resolved to write a new and fairer constitution for France, inviting the two other Estates to join them. Unable to prevent the people from gathering, Louis caved to popular demands and permitted the new general assembly to proceed. However, he also gathered his troops, and as soldiers poured into Paris over the following month, the nervous peasantry became more and more agitated, fearing severe reprisals. Tensions reached a head on July 14th, 1789, when an angry crowd of protesters stormed the Bastille fortress, an infamous political prison in Paris. The French Revolution had begun. In the month that followed, many radical reforms were introduced. Feudalism was officially abolished, as was the tithe the peasants officially "owed" to the church. On August 26th, the Declaration of the Rights of Man was published, a document declaring that all men were born free and equal. Resentment towards the royals – and particularly the lavish Marie – was continuing to grow. On October 5th, a crowd of women protesting the lack of bread marched towards the Palace of Versailles. As the hours wore on, the crowd swelled from a small mob to a sea of thousands, and they arrived outside the palace demanding that something be done to feed the people. While bread was distributed to placate the crowd, it quickly ran out, and by six o'clock the next morning, the mob had broken into the building itself. When the intruders finally found Antoinette, she was cowering in the royal bedchamber. A tense moment passed before the intruders finally lowered their muskets. The military hero and revolutionary, the Marquis de Lafayette, intervened to help the Queen, and the royals were escorted back to Paris. Although they had just gone through a terrifying ordeal, the royal family remained optimistic, and Marie Antoinette's death was not yet an inevitability. The family was imprisoned in the comfort of Tuileries Palace in the centre of Paris, and the Queen even charmed some of the passing crowds when they stopped to talk to her. However, any possibility of mercy would soon evaporate. The Swedish Count Von Fersen, who is believed to have been Marie Antoinette's former lover, helped the royals escape the palace. Dressing as peasants to fool the guards, they snuck into a carriage and headed to the French border.
The royals were terrible at pretending to be peasants, and they happily chatted with ordinary people and even gave out presents to strangers on the road. They managed to get to within 30 miles of their supporters in Montminy before they were caught. A man on the road recognized Louis' face from the paper money he had, and the group was promptly arrested and dragged back to Paris. The ordeal so shook Antoinette that her hair turned completely white from the shock. The royal's attempt to escape proved to ordinary people that the king's efforts to negotiate with the commoners was simply a sham to buy time. The privileges the family had been allowed were suddenly revoked, and the royals were moved to a real prison, the Temple in Paris. The monarchy was officially abolished, and King Louis XVI was guillotined in 1793. After his execution, the Queen spent nine agonizing months in prison waiting to discover her fate. Finally, members of the revolution coerced Antoinette's youngest son to testify that the Queen had abused him. In October 1793, the Queen was charged with conspiring against the revolution and – more to her horror - child abuse. She was sentenced to death for high treason. The terrified Queen was graceful in her final hours. Dressed in white, she was said to have apologized to her executioner for standing on his foot as she made her way to the guillotine. Antoinette was one of the first victims of the revolutionary Terror, a dark period during which 17,000 nobles and counter-revolutionaries were indiscriminately killed. Although vilified in life, in modern times, she is remembered as an unfortunate victim of one of history's bloodiest revolutions.
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