Marie Antoinette of Austria, royal princess of Hungary and princess of the house of Austria, queen of France and Navarre (1774-1791) and later of the French (1791) - 1792) by her marriage to Louis XVI. In 1770 she married the French dauphin, Louis, who ascended the throne in 1774 under the name Louis XVI. A woman with very expensive tastes, frivolous and surrounded by an intriguing clique, who gained a reputation for being wasteful and reactionary.
Daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I, Grand Duke of Tuscany and his wife Maria Teresa I, Archduchess of Austria, Queen of Hungary and Queen of Bohemia, she was born on November 2, 1755. She is the fifteenth and penultimate daughter of the imperial couple.
She exerted a strong political influence on her husband (whom she never loved), ignored the misery of the people and, with her licentious behavior, contributed to the discrediting of the monarchy in the years before the French Revolution. it is her dramatic end: condemned to die on the guillotine.
On May 10, 1774, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette became the kings of France and Navarre.
From the summer of 1777 the first hostile songs began to circulate like the little queen of the twenties. Marie Antoinette surrounds herself with a small court of favorites that arouses the envy of other courtiers. Multiply their costumes and parties, and organize card games where big bets are made.
Marie Antoinette attempts to influence the king's policy by appointing and firing ministers whimsically or by following the interested advice of her friends.
On August 14, 1793, Marie Antoinette was brought before the Revolutionary Court and presented as Fouquier-Tinville prosecutor. If in the trial of Louis XVI he had tried to maintain the appearances of a certain fairness, he did not process Marie Antoinette. He is accused of being in league with foreign powers.
Fouquier-Tinville asks for the death penalty and declares the accused: "declared enemy of the French nation." Marie Antoinette's two lawyers, Tronçon-Ducoudray and Chauveau-Lagarde, young and inexperienced, cannot counter the verdict.
Marie Antoinette is sentenced to death on October 16, two days after the start of the trial, accused of high treason. At noon the next day, Marie Antoinette dies on the guillotine, not wanting to confess to the proposed constitutional priest. After the execution of Marie Antoinette, war was declared between France and Austria, ending the alliance that had resisted until then.
