A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Marie Antoinette Josephe Jeanne de Lorraine
MARIE ANTOINETTE JOSEPHE JEANNE DE LORRAINE,
Archduchess of Austria and Queen of France, daughter of the Emperor Francis the First and Maria Theresa, was born at Vienna, November 2nd., 1755. She was carefully educated, and possessed an uncommon share of grace and beauty. Her hand was demanded by Louis the Fifteenth for his grandson, the dauphin, afterwards Louis the Sixteenth, to whom she was married in 1770, before she had attained her fifteenth year. A lamentable accident, which occurred during the festivities given by the city of Paris to celebrate the marriage, was looked upon as a sinister omen, which subsequent events having confirmed, has acquired undue importance. Owing to the injudicious arrangements for the exhibition of fireworks, a great number of people were thrown down and trodden to death, more than three hundred persons having been killed or wounded. In 1774 Louis the Sixteenth ascended the throne; in 1778 the queen became, for the first time, a mother. During the first years of her residence in France, Marie Antoinette was the idol of the people. After the birth of her second sou, when, according to usage, she went to church to return thanks, the populace wished to remove the horses from her carriage, and draw her through the streets; and when she alighted and walked, to gratify them, they flung themselves upon their knees, and rent the air with acclamations. Four years from this period, all was changed. The acts of kindness and benevolence which the queen had exhibited; her grace, beauty, and claims upon the nation as a woman and a foreigner, were all forgotten. Circumstances remote in their origin had brought about, in France, a state of feeling fast ripening to a fearful issue. The queen could no longer do with impunity what had been done by her predecessors. The extravagance and thoughtlessness of youth, and a neglect of the strict formality of court etiquette, injured her reputation. She became a mark for censure, and finally an object of hatred to the people, who accused her of the most improbable crimes. An extraordinary occurrence added fuel to the flame of calumny. The Countess de la Motte, a clever but corrupt woman, by a vile intrigue in which she made the Cardinal de Rohan her tool, purchased, in the queen's name, a magnificent diamond necklace, valued at an enormous sum. She imposed upon the cardinal by a feigned correspondence with the queen, and forged her signature to certain bills; obtained possession of the necklace, and sold it in England. The plot exploded. The queen, indignant at the cardinal, demanded a public investigation. The affair produced the greatest scandal throughout France, connecting as it did the name of the queen with such disgraceful proceedings; and though obviously the victim of an intrigue, she received as much censure as if she had been guilty. Accused of being an Austrian at heart, and an enemy to France, every evil la the state was now attributed to her, and the Parisians soon exhibited their hatred in acts of open violence. In May, 1789, the States-General met. In October the populace proceeded with violence to Versailles, broke into the castle, murdered several of the body-guard, and forced themselves into the queen's apartments. When questioned by the officers of justice as to what she had seen on that memorable day, she replied, "I have seen all, I have heard all, I have forgotten all."
She accompanied the king in his flight to Varennes, in 1791, and endured with him with unexampled fortitude and magnanimity the insults which now followed in quick succession. In April, 1792, she accompanied the king from the Tuilleries, where they had been for some time detained close prisoners, to the Legislative Assembly, where he was arraigned. Transferred to the Temple, she endured, with, the members of the royal family, every variety of privation and indignity. On the 21st. of January, 1793, the king perished on the scaffold; the dauphin was forcibly torn from her, and given in charge to a miserable wretch, a cobbler called Simon, who designedly did everything in his power to degrade and brutalize the innocent child.
On the 2nd. of August, Marie Antoinette was removed to the Conciergerie, to await her trial in a damp and squalid cell. On the 14th. of October, she appeared before the revolutionary tribunal. During the trial, which lasted seventy-three hours, she preserved all her dignity and composure. Her replies to the infamous charges which were preferred against her were simple, noble, and laconic. When all the accusations had been heard, she was asked if she had anything to say. She replied, "I was a queen, and you took away my crown; a wife, and you killed my husband; a mother, and you deprived me of my children. My blood alone remains: take it, but do not make me suffer long." At four o'clock, on the morning of the 16th., she was condemned to death by an unanimous vote. She heard her sentence with admirable dignity and self-possession. At half past twelve, on the same day, she ascended the scaffold. Scarcely any traces remained of the dazzling loveliness which had once charmed all hearts; her hair had long since become blanched by grief, and her eyes were almost sightless with continued weeping. She knelt and prayed for a few minutes in a low tone, then rose and calmly delivered herself to the executioner. Thus perished, in her thirty-seventh year, the wife of the greatest monarch in Europe, a daughter of the heroic Maria Theresa, a victim to the circumstances of birth and position. No fouler crime ever stained the annals of savage life, than the murder of this unfortunate queen, by a people calling themselves the most civilized nation in the world.
Marie Antoinette had four children. Marie Therese Charlotte, the companion of her parents in captivity, born 1778. In 1795 she was exchanged for the deputies whom Dumouriez had surrendered to Austria, and resided in Vienna till 1799, when she was married by Louis the Eighteenth to his nephew, eldest son of Charles the Tenth. Napoleon said of her, that "she was the only man of her family." The dauphin, Louis, born in 1781, and died in 1789. Charles Louis, born in 1785; the unfortunate prince who shared his parent's imprisonment for a time, and died in 1795, a victim to the ill-treatment of the ferocious Simon; and a daughter who died in infancy.