Marie Antoinette Habsburg-Lotharingen 1 2
- Born: 2 Nov 1755, Vienna, Austria
- Marriage: Louis XVI of France de Bourbon on 16 May 1770 in Versailles, France
- Died: 16 Oct 1793, Paris, France aged 37
Cause of her death was the guillotine.
General Notes:
Marie Antoinette, queen consort (1774-1792) of Louis XVI of France; her unpopularity helped discredit the monarchy in the period before the French Revolution.
Born in Vienna on November 2, 1755, Marie Antoinette was one of the daughters of Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and Empress Maria Theresa. Her marriage (1770) to Louis, the heir to the French throne, was intended to cement an alliance between France and her parents' dynasty, the Habsburgs of Austria. She and her husband had a daughter and two sons after he succeeded to the throne in 1774. Disliked by the French as a foreigner, she made herself more unpopular by her devotion to the interests of Austria, the bad reputations of some of her friends, and her extravagance, which was mistakenly blamed for the financial problems of the French government. Especially damaging was her supposed connection with the so-called Diamond Necklace affair (see Diamond Necklace, Affair of the), a scandal involving the fraudulent purchase of some jewels (1785).
After the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789, Marie Antoinette sided with the intransigents at court who opposed compromise with the moderate revolutionaries, and began appealing for help to her brother, Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II. Marie and Louis tried to escape from Paris with their surviving son in 1791, but they were captured and brought back prisoners. In 1792 the monarchy was overthrown, and after the execution of the king and separation from her son, she was sent before the revolutionary tribunal the following year. Sentenced to death for treason, she was guillotined in Paris on October 16, 1793.
Marie married Louis XVI of France de Bourbon, son of Louis de France de Bourbon and Marie-Josephe de Saxe Wettin, on 16 May 1770 in Versailles, France. (Louis XVI of France de Bourbon was born on 23 Aug 1754 in Versailles, France and died on 21 Jan 1793 in Place de la Révolution (now Place de la Concorde), Paris.) The cause of his death was the guillotine.
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