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Marie Antoinette, 2 November 1775 – 16 October 1793 One of the most enduring images associated with the French Revolution is of Marie Antoinette facing her impending death, with disdain for the starving citizens of France. It’s a persisting myth that she said “Let them eat cake” – this quote was attributed to her 50 years after her death. However, her unpopularity in France was no tall tale. An Austrian princess, Marie Antoinette married the future Louis XVI when she was just 14 years old. Their union was intended to cement an alliance between Austria and France, which had been at war for many years. Although initially charmed by this young princess, popular opinion soon turned sour and she became despised by the ordinary working-class French for her lavish spending and extravagance. She even commissioned a model village to be constructed at Versailles as her own personal retreat, which was widely seen as a mockery of peasant life. Rumours circulated that she was having a number of affairs and she began to embody everything that the revolutionaries hated about the Ancien Régime. After the royal family’s failed attempt to flee Paris in June 1791, Antoinette spent the remaining months of her life in various prisons, and France’s declaration of war with Austria in April 1792 did nothing to help her situation. Her last prison, the Conciergerie, was infested with rats, and foul water ran through it from the nearby River Seine. The execution of Louis XVI saw the Queen’s two surviving children separated from her, including eight-year-old Louis-Charles who was later made to testify against his mother at her trial. Nine months later, Marie Antoinette was brought before a tribunal and found guilty of treason. She was guillotined on 16 October 1793. Her last words were an apology for standing on the foot of her executioner. Marie Antoinette’s body was thrown into an unmarked grave – her remains, and those of her husband, were exhumed in 1815 and relocated to the Basilica of Saint-Denis.
