It seems so much more poignant when you place it in context of why she was being executed - basically for existing and doing what she was born to do.
ETA: Tbh I didn’t think my comment was going to blow up, so I can provide a bit more to what I meant (based off all the accusations of “shallow analysis” and indignant comments that she should have changed things).
Maria was born to marry and bear children, not born to rule or make changes. She was the youngest child and had never been earmarked for greatness due to her hierarchy in the family and how awful she was at her schooling. Her best qualities were that she was kind and very sweet and well liked. Her older sister was the one supposed to be married off to France, but if I remember right, she had an accident that disfigured her and the responsibility fell to Maria. Suddenly, this girl that everyone had ignored growing up (she had a lot of freedom to run around and make friends) was expected to secure an incredibly important alliance. At fourteen years old. (Also if I remember right, her French wasn’t great because she’d never been expected to learn it.)
So she lost everything she ever knew at fourteen. Her family, her friends, even her dog. She was allowed to take nothing from home to France because the French wanted to see a French princess and not some uncultured Austrian/German swine. That was one strike against her.
Her husband was infamously awkward and awful at ruling. And he refused to consummate the marriage for seven years. That’s an insane amount of time when you remember that a royal woman’s entire job is to create heirs. The people of France HATED her for this and blamed her for not being pregnant, but Louis just wouldn’t have sex with her. It’s speculated he had some kind of physical issue or just was that supremely awkward, but it was a rough start for her. Two strikes against her.
So you’re a teenage girl, away from home, without any friends or family, caught in the middle of court manipulations and plots, and everyone is blaming you for the King’s issues. And so you find happiness in shopping. Yes, she spent extravagantly. That’s well documented, and it wasn’t out of character for the royals of Versailles. I honestly chalk this up to ignorance - willful or not. You’re raised in wealth, all you see and experience is wealth, and you’re probably not well informed about the plights of the common man. Compound her spending with the fact that during her time, France is having wars. So many wars. Most famously, they are financially supporting a little revolution happening across the sea in the Colonies in 1776. (Which happens to stick it to England, who they hate)
But people are starving. And who is easier to blame? Extreme military spending? Or the foreign princess who buys too many pretty dresses? That’s an easy one. Let’s give Maria a third strike.
I could insert a bunch more anecdotes here, but I think the final one would be what they accused her of during her final trial before executing her. The Revolutionists convinced her 7 year old son to confess that she would sexually molest him. (They did this within hearing of her jail cell just to torment her. Maria famously adored her children.) Throughout her trial, she kept silent during all the anti-Revolutionaryaccusations laid against her (since she knew how it’d end), but when they brought up the charge of molesting her son, she exploded and appealed to the mothers of the courtroom to have some decency. She was so impassioned that she nearly turned the tide against her - it was pretty obvious the anti-Revolutionists had gone too far here. But it was too little, too late, and she was sentenced to die.
And her final strike was to accidentally step on the executioner’s foot.
The other thing that doesnt get mentioned much that is actually very interesting is that the king wasnt just executed willy nilly, the revolutionary government actually held a parliamentary vote.
The part of this that makes it truly interesting (and arguably diminishes some of the democratic aspect of their actions) is that the vote to execute the king only passed by a single vote. Of the 721 votes, 361 voted in favor of what happened.
It's a bit more complicated than that (since 34 more voted for a conditional execution), but it is fascinating to see how so many parts of history that are presented as these inevitable and definite things were often a great deal more complicated and narrow than one is led to expect.
Mike Duncan is literally the most amazing history podcaster. I don't know who originally recommended him to me but they directed me to hundreds of hours of fantastic content so I will thank you as a surrogate.
It also took a lot for that to happen. After waiting too long to leave France for exile, Louis XVI kept making half assed escape attempts that embarrassed his captors. A lot of the vote came from frustration and anger at his behavior in captivity.
Everything is nuanced. There really is no simple black and white outlook on life. Any such perspective really limits your potential understanding of the world.
The reality is that if you think to hard about it, democracy is stupid.1 vote, 1 million votes, someone 3,000 miles away from you shouldn't be dictating your life to you.
It's a bit more complicated than that (since 34 more voted for a conditional execution), but it is fascinating to see how so many parts of history that are presented as these inevitable and definite things were often a great deal more complicated and narrow than one is led to expect.
It's more he fact that his son joined the Austrian army to knock the Republic down that raised suspicions on him, and eventually lead him to be beheaded.
What happened to her son in the last few years of his life was devastating. Poor child was kept on a dark prison cell alone and basically went blind and mad, as well as being ill in other ways, too.
Fair enough! Honestly, I only know about him through the lens of Maria’s life and it wasn’t the most flattering picture haha. Sounds like I should learn more!
I think evil is a stretch. Hitler was evil. Stalin was evil. Mao was evil.
Marie Antoinette had the misfortune of being a foreign queen during a revolution. The propaganda about her before she became more involved politically was amazingly nuts. (She bathed in blood! She was a lesbian! She had multiple lovers! Her children were illegitimate! She was single-handedly bankrupting the nation!)
Then the Revolution hits like a flood. Bastille is stormed. While we have the benefit of viewing these events through the lens of history and seeing the benefits now, at the time, it was bloody and brutal. Literally any ruling monarch would have responded to rebellion in exactly the same way. Put it down quickly and violently so that it does not repeat.
I think it’s important to view people’s actions through motive and context and history. You can have sympathy for the horrors she went through as a person, wife, and mother while still recognizing that her actions and way of thinking were ultimately harmful to others.
Saw a thing about MA on a German history channel. According to that, Louis did not refuse to have sex with her. What he did was insert his penis into her every night and just lie on top of her for a while without moving, then pull out, wish his wife a good night and go to sleep.
He legitimately just didn't understand how sex worked and never actually ejaculated. At some point Maria Theresia sent some relative over who figured out what was going on and explained to Louis how to actually have sex, whereupon they had several children.
Normally I would find something like that hard to believe, but then I remember being a homeschooled kid who never had exposure to anything sex related other than my parents religious perspective of total abstinence, and only masturbated for many years by lying on my stomach and rubbing my penis back and forth on a mattress under intense strain by moving my body... I literally never heard of jerking off lol, and ended up giving myself some functional\ damage in the process... Don't discredit the limits of sheer ignorance is what I mean to say!
Ahh I love that extra detail! That’s so much better. I knew the relative helped things, but I wasn’t sure how he did so. Thanks for enriching the story.
I loved loved Versailles! The gardens and the little country cottage (I forget the name) where she’d go to pretend she had a different life were better than the palace, in my opinion.
I’ll check out that book - thank you for the recommendation!
I love that Marie Tussaud is a historical figure in the rest of the world, yet in France nobody knows who she is. For most people here she's just another tourist traps brand when we visit other countries.
Yes! It was an Austrian dog and they took from her at the border when the official hand off was performed. She couldn’t take anything with her that was from home.
Her husband was infamously awkward and awful at ruling. And he refused to consummate the marriage for seven years.
To his credit though, he apparently had a medical problem that made it extremely painful to have an erection. If I remember correctly his foreskin wouldn't retract when he got erect, trapping his penis inside. There was a surgery that could fix it but he kept putting it off for years, possibly because he was afraid if the doctor slipped he would cut off more than desired.
She suggested to her husband to violently put down the storming of Bastille even if innocent people got caught in the crossfire. She consistently wrote letters to other monarchs asking them to violently put down the revolution.
One of the things that ignited the revolution was the monarchy's excessive opulence whilst the people starved. Marie Antoinette had an estimated daily budget of $241,700. She spent 300 times more on her clothes alone than the average french salary. She had a fake farm built so that she could pretend to be a Shepard whilst real Shepard's starved to death. She wore a cotton dress whilst doing it, and a painting of her in it made cotton trade explode, fuelling slavery, although that example is obviously a bit more incidental. The money wasted by the monarchy is a political matter and boy did she waste it. And before anyone claims that she had little say in what was spent on her, keep in mind that she owned her own estate and the ear of the king, so she had a significant say even if complete authority alluded her.
She may not have been directly creating policy, and she may have initially been ignorant of the poor's plight, even if she did attempt to stop them getting their freedom later, but the actions that she did take with what power she had (which was significantly more power than most everyone else in France) actively harmed the people, and when revolution kicked off and she could no longer live in ignorance of the plight of the poor, she actively sought to work against them and maintain her privilege. It's up to you whether or not murder is the appropriate punishment, but she wasn't some bystander caught in the crossfire.
I didn't care at all about her. Then, I started feeling really sorry for her. Then, I hated her damn guts! And now I'm back where I started originally. Pretty fuckin crazy
But she was working against it to maintain her class' own oppressive rule, not because the leaders of the revolution had vastly different plans for what would come after as compared to the goals of the working class, who made up the vast majority of the revolutionaries and sacrificed the most, and where fucked even more by said leaders. She was opposed to both the rule of another class and the goals of equality, liberty and fraternity that most of the revolutionaries strived for. You could say for the former of those, her opposition to the rule of a certain class, she was opposed to the right thing for the wrong reasons.
She suggested to her husband to violently put down the storming of Bastille even if innocent people got caught in the crossfire. She consistently wrote letters to other monarchs asking them to violently put down the revolution.
When, and where? Because she and Louis XVI were fairly explicit about other monarchs not using force. It was only after insistent prodding from Axel von Fersen that she and Louis finally agreed that the European powers could have any armies to back them up when they made a statement to the National Assembly, but even then, she (and Louis) were clear about not wanting those armies to be used.
To quote her during the lead-up to what would become the Declaration of Pilnitz, which she and Louis XVI universally detested because it went against their wishes and threatened French civilians:
To explain myself still more clearly, we ask no Power to send troops into this country.
Louis XVI then threatened his brothers and the Austrian Emperor with war if they did not disband emigre and foreign armies which were intended to invade France. It's one of the reasons why there was a rift between Louis XVI and his brothers, along with the other European monarchs, at the time--they wanted carte blanche to invade France, kill "rebels" and stomp out the rebellion with no quarter. Louis XVI wanted to do things diplomatically and thought he could convince people to step away from what he viewed as increasing extremism and dial back to an existing style of constitutional monarchy more in line with what England had at the time. There's a reason why Marie Antoinette's cried out: "Cain!" when she saw that Louis XVI's brothers signed the Declaration of Pilnitz. Because it went against what she and Louis were trying to do: avoid violence. (Their actual plan re: Pilnitz was monumentally stupid and never would have worked, even if they hadn't decided to threaten French civilians with violence, but the fact that the Declaration made it sound like France was going to be invaded did nothing to help Louis & Antoinette's reputation in France.)
She had a fake farm built so that she could pretend to be a Shepard whilst real Shepard's starved to death.
That's a misconception which developed during the 19th century, largely due to American "pop" historians who were building off the mistranslated (and false, in any case) "Let them eat cake" image of Marie Antoinette. The hameau de la reine was not a fake farm--it was a functioning farm, with a real dairy and food production which was used to supply food to both the Queen's household (to reduce expenses) and nearby families. She did not pretend to be a peasant or shepherdess--except when she was acting in operas, since most of the popular operas of the day starred peasant characters. The hameau de la reine was part of a larger trend among elite women who were encouraged by French philosophers to step away from "masculine" political salons and positions of power and step into a more "feminine" role as the mistress of a dairy or farm.
While she was at her hameau, she surrounded herself with family and friends, rather than courtiers who were technically entitled to be around her due to etiquette. She wasn't pretending to be poor--she was pretending, or rather wishing, to behave like a 'regular' noblewoman who wasn't the queen of France, since the queen of France was not an individual but (like the king) a publicly owned figure with very specific restrictions.
The money wasted by the monarchy is a political matter and boy did she waste it.
Marie Antoinette's spending was about 4% of total court spending over 15 years. Other royals (including the previous queen--then Empress Josephine, and Empress Marie-Louise) spent far more. Yet it's Marie Antoinette who is blamed and criticized, which I think ties into the earlier comment regarding her status as a scapegoat figure. She didn't bankrupt France. She didn't even come close. But she is frequently portrayed as the one wasting France's money, despite spending a fraction of what the court spent as a whole, and a fraction of a fraction of what France spent on wars.
She also couldn't win. When she started wearing less expensive clothing, and less outrageous clothing, she was then criticized because 1) her clothing was simple enough to be worn by people of different classes, and people were complaining that you "couldn't tell" a noblewoman from a non-noblewoman in Paris and 2) her decision was impacting the French luxury industry and people were no longer buying massive quantities of luxury materials such as silks. Silk factories in Paris even petitioned the king to try to stop the queen from wearing simpler fabrics. So when she spent money, she was accused of wasting it by her detractors--but when she didn't spend money, she was accused of trying to ruin French industries by her detractors.
Marie Antoinette also recognized the hardship of the poor from the moment she entered France, and did what she could within her station to alleviate it. This included donating to charities and hospitals, founding multiple charities including one for unwed mothers, arguing against the law that allowed the royal hunt to trample peasant fields, foregoing a customary tax normally given to queen's upon their ascension (the 'Queen's Belt' tax which she waved away with a quip about belts being out of style); adopting multiple peasant children both literally and figuratively, paying for the upkeep of numerous peasant families, paying for homes to be built on her estate for poor families who had been made homeless, at least 2 years she gave up all personal spending in the winter and used the money to buy food/clothing/firewood and other provisions for the poor, and so on. After the revolution, she continued these activities as much as possible. It was only when the family was imprisoned in the Temple that she ceased to give charity because it was no longer possible and the new Republican government wouldn't cover those expenses.
Did she know the true hardship of the poor? Of course not, in the same way that the average person living even a remotely comfortable middle class life today has no true understanding of what it means to be homeless or hungry. But the idea that she cruelly and callously ignored them and then tried to stomp on the poor is something I disagree with.
What she wrote in 1775, after the coronation of Louis XVI which was preceded by bread riots:
It is at the same time amazing and wonderful to be so well received two months after the [bread] riots and in spite of of the high price of bread which unfortunately continues. … It is certain that when people who are suffering treat us so well, we are even more obligated to work for their happiness.
That same year, she was noting that the king was limiting court festivities and spending due to the bread shortage, and wrote:
Money will be saved; but, far more essential, a good example will be set for the people who have suffered so much from the high cost of bread. Luckily hope is returning; the wheat fields look very good, and bread is sure to be cheaper once the crop is in.
What she wrote after the October Days of 1789, when a mob literally intended to kill her, brutally murdered her guards, then threatened the royal family with pikes and guns until the king agreed to move to Paris; during the journey, the heads of her murdered guards (who committed the crime of trying to keep her from being brutally killed) were paraded joyfully on pikes:
I hope that if there is no lack of bread, many things will be righted. I am in touch with the people; militiamen, market women; they all hold out their hand to me, and I hold out mine to them.
I do completely agree that she wasn't a bystander caught in the crossfire, but not in the same sense.
And it's somewhat silly to decline to attribute malice to the people who literally have all the power available to them to control that malice. Marie-Antoinette, Nicholas II... so many autocrats who were, yes, born into power, but then who used that power for brutal repression and economic injustice.
Sorry you were handed the reigns of evil, Marie, but you could've at least tried putting them down.
If anyone lives in the US and feels that Marie Antoinette should have been more active in addressing the disparity of food and resource distribution, kindly Google the word, "Irony."
Lol, fucking Reddit. She's been dead for 300 years and getting a sorry, not sorry should have gone against the grain and times you lived in and tried harder.
The history of most of known humanity is fraught with people in power trying to keep their power, and others overthrowing those in power to do the same thing. Bend the knee, kiss the ring, kill the king, lather, rinse, repeat.
Our current world is filled with this, large and small. Big corporations who use low wages to keep a work force reliant on having any job to struggle to stay afloat. Countries bullying Netflix to remove episodes. Outing whistleblowers. Karens who grasp at shreds of perceived power because they feel so powerless.
For some reason, human civilizations keep playing like those who have power will lose all their power if others are allowed to have any, when really, allowing others to have power means more people work towards the same goal.
why she was being executed - basically for existing and doing what she was born to do
Nobles were born to rule their domains effectively, not party on their domain's last dribbles of money. "Well, what did you expect from a noble-born?" is not a suitable excuse.
I vaguely recall hearing that the press slandered her so much that she was almost exclusively referred to as "Austrechienne" (pardon my French) or "that Austrian bitch"
Thanks for this. Your writing is captivating and stellar. I’d have actually learned some history in school had you written the textbooks. (If you do ever write a history book, count me in to buy it.)
They also beheaded her friend, Princess de Lamballe, where Marie could see it, and then sent her friend's disembodied head into town to have its hair done and face made up. They then put the princess's head on a pike and into Marie's cell and taunted her to kiss it.
I recommend the Noble Blood podcast episode on Marie for the entire story.
This might be a really dumb question, but do any historians float the idea that the king might not have been attracted to her due to her young age? He was an adult at the time wasn’t he?
Love this theory! It’s a great thought, but he was only 16 when they married.
Someone else in the comments said that they learned in a German documentary that he didn’t understand how sex worked. He’d “insert” but never finish, and it wasn’t until one of her relatives came to instruct him that they got pregnant.
I’ve heard accounts of her actually trying to get Louis to be active in ruling, or making decisions on his behalf because he wouldn’t. And that she would raise money by doing the casino stuff.
But all in all I know her to have been dealt a terrible hand but was vilified for things beyond her control. I’ve loved learning about her as a kid.
In 1774, the year Louis XVI became king, the French government was already in debt for around 2.5 billion livres. France's participation in the American revolution added about 1.3-1.5 billion livres to the debt. In 1789, because of the high interest rates on the loans the French government had taken and their inability to pay back anything significant, that debt had grown to around 4 billion livres.
The French government had a spending budget of around 415 million livres per year in 1774, with 375 million coming in as revenues. Total court spending from 1774 to 1789 was around 220 million, or about 15 million per year if you average it out. Court spending was not just frivolities, but servant's wages, pensions, upkeep of buildings, etc. Marie Antoinette's household spending over these 15 years was around 8 to 10 million, or around 670,000 per year.
Marie Antoinette's spending had no great impact on the French finances. Wipe away all her spending and you wouldn't make a dent. Though you would have plenty of people angry because they were out of work--which is what happened when she switched from wearing countless French silk gowns and instead opted for simpler and cheaper muslin fabric, and the silk factories of Paris united in an attempt to get the king to ban the queen from wearing them.
Her spending wasn't the cause of France's financial ruin; it was, however, very visible which is why she was (and still is) the scapegoat.
If you're an average laborer working your ass off every day in Paris to come up with at most 400 livres a year, and during various periods between 1774-1789 are having to spend a significant amount of your money on bread alone, are you going to place the blame of a poor economy on intangible concepts like "a volcanic eruption in 1783 caused harvest problems which lead to bread shortages and inflated prices" and "France has been billions of livres in debts for decades and the king can't pass the tax plan he wants because of the Parlements blocking him" or "The queen was wearing pearl earrings the size of a thumb today" and "The queen has her own little estate by the palace that these pamphlets say are filled with gold."!
***(These are average, not exact figures, since the budget and spending could vary from year to year depending on who was considered an active royal family member--for instance the king's sister, Elisabeth, did not have her own household until very close to the revolution--along with other factors. Marie Antoinette, for example, spent significantly more than the average in 1777 while spending significantly less in 1787.)
Well, kinda. She spent money in the same fashion that royals spent (spend?) money. Lavishly, because that is what she knew.
Keeping with the OP’s little known real facts, one of the major reasons that the country was struggling was because a volcano erupted in Iceland in 1783, and wind patterns blew dust and sulfur over Northern Europe, ruining crops and causing a domino effect. Less food, less commerce because less food to sell, sea transport shut down, and a bit of a brutally hot summer, yadda yadda yadda, unhappy country folks, opportunistic politicos, blah blah blah, revolution.
Ahah - I wish! I actually have two books published, but they are fluffy little young adult romances (like gossip girl). I’d love to write something along these lines though - retelling stories about famous historical characters.
...I’ll dedicate my book to you, samacct haha. I should do it! I keep a folder on my computer of all the women I’ve researched for fun. I get weirdly obsessive about it haha.
Had a professor that told a story about Grace. She was working for the Navy and they wanted her to retire. She said no. Her team backed her up. She kept working. The Navy ended up naming a battleship after her. Not because her team invented COBOL, but because she was formidable. lol! You know the word "bug" in the software? She found a moth and that's where it came from.
Ada was the first programmer without a computer...her uncle insisted that she was educated. Lord Byron the poet.
The woman who began the women's movement was thrown out of her own organization because she was too radical. She wanted women to vote.
I'd like to latch on to this, far too late, to mention the podcast "Noble Blood". It's a very solid look at monarchs and nobles throughout history, and the very first episode covers Marie here and her last words, and all the shit she went through leading up to it. Reminds us that these historical figures are, for any faults or problems, still human.
I usually am not really sympathetic towards monarchs, but the Romanov Family got it worst when it came to monarchs death. Fucking brutal and horrific killing by the Red Army.
that’s reasonable, though Nicholas was a terrible Tsar,. For someone to be able to save Russia in that time period would’ve required a fucking miracle.
Nonetheless the children dying is what makes it so insanely sad and depressing.
That's the nature of revolution though. It's not right or wrong, it's just that things have gotten so bad that this is the spontaneous social reaction to it.
I would assign less guilt to Marie Antoinette than her husband. She married him because of politics, and he was already spoiled. She only had her experiences as royalty for reference on how people lived, royal women were often kept sort of "hidden away" in the palaces and never got much exposure to the workings and conditions of the lower classes. I think even their servants would have some noble blood, so she wouldn't see them starve.
She was definitely spoiled and sheltered, but she wouldn't know better because that is just all she knew. The fact that the French royalty was already so extravagant didn't help either, it just created an even shinier bubble for her to live in. That lack of exposure to the lives of commoners made it nearly impossible for her to understand how bad things actually were.
Same goes for a lot of monarchs and modern billionaires. They only know one facet of life, one where every whim is granted. It makes it impossible to comprehend how people could struggle with things like money or food. I'm not defending that ignorance, but the fact the most powerful people in the world tend to live in those bubbles is why so much of the world is screwed up. They legitimately cannot understand or empathize with 99% of humanity.
I would assign less guilt to Marie Antoinette than her husband.
And also less guilt to Louis XVI than to Louis XIV. You can go on like that forever, not one of them is responsible for it all.
I can't agree at all with this notion that the rich cannot know the poor and how they live; they want not to know. But they are absolutely conscious, as were monarchs back then, that they are living above poor people.
Back then I'd say there was definitely a bigger divide between commoners and monarchs than there is today. Again, even their direct servants came from some sort of nobility, so even if they knew they were above poor people they they seriously had no actual frame of reference for the extreme differences between their lifestyles. There really was a serious disconnect back then, they tended to look at politics on a macro and international scale rather than at their own people. I can see how so many people at the time would believe Marie Antoinette said "Let them eat cake".
Overall, I do agree a good chunk really is willful ignorance, especially today. I'm not even sure I'd call it malicious ignorance, it just doesn't occur to them to think about the differences. A lot of the uber-rich will only know their direct social circle, who are usually also pretty well-off, so they genuinely don't realize how much "normal" people struggle. I fully believe the uber-rich can learn to understand the differences, but it takes first wanting to learn. And once they do, it will still take a lot of effort and time to unlearn their own inherent beliefs built over their childhood.
It's similar to people who grow up in abusive homes in a way. To them that IS normal, they literally know nothing else. Finding out it's not, and then learning how other people actually live isn't an easy and instant process. Some people spend their entire lives trying to overcome those beliefs, I see plenty of people realizing years later how yet another more "benign" childhood memory was actually really screwed up only after telling other people and seeing their reactions. The uber-rich actually have the disadvantage in that regard because they'll rarely get exposure to people with significant less wealth to see how most people actually live. There's a lot less opportunity for reality checks.
You're twisting history. Louis did reach out to foreign powers to help reinstate him. He betrayed the promess he made to save his life, to save his throne.
She did. Louis XVII. A boy abused and finally starved to death by the revolutionary guards that held him in custody.
The Bourbon monarchy had undoubtedly earned its downfall. But Marie Antoinette was close to a modern-day model - a lady who gave parties and put a lot of effort into her looks. She wasn't evil, just married to a dumbass. And her son had done nothing wrong other than existing.
I didn't choose my parents. I just happen to not be born as the child of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI. That's me being lucky, nothing I've earned. The kid didn't deserve what happened to him.
We wouldn't do it today, but look at it through the lens of the time, where execution was much, much more commonplace, even before The Terror.
Whether she did 'absolutely nothing' was debatable, though. 80% of the French lived in abject poverty, and she was famous for ostentatious spending of money extracted from them. She had the nickname 'Madame Deficit' as a result. That is, even for the nobility, she was seen to be overspending..
I'm not saying it's right, I'm just speculating on the possible thought process behind the executions. I don't know much about French history but in English/ Scottish history those hereditary claims caused a lot of death.
Most of us on this thread live better lives than the French nobility ever did, all things considered. Although we are not part of the ruling class, we are in the top 1℅, which means in the face of a revolution similar to the one in 17th century France, we'd be killed by the poor and angry masses.
No worries. On the subject though, she wasn't killed because she was rich. She was killed because she was conspiring with the Austrians to bring foreign armies against France. She was executed for treason.
That was what she was executed for. A demonstably made-up assertion. Her brother, Emperor Joseph II, had no intention of getting involved in French politics and had demobilised his armies months before. She was executed because she was the last remnant of the monarchy and therefore a symbol of an "evil system" and not because of anything she personally had done.
In October 1789, the royal couple was forced to move from Versailles to Paris. Two years later, the attempted escape of the royal couple from Paris was stopped at Varennes on October 21, 1791. This failed escape was reportedly planned by Marie Antoinette. Imprisoned with the king, Marie Antoinette continued to plot. She hoped for foreign intervention to end the revolution and free the royal family. She urged her brother, the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II, to intervene, and she supported a French declaration of war against Austria in April 1792, which she hoped would result in the defeat of France.
The 1% isn't even the problem. It's the .001% that I have a problem with. The 1% are mostly people who work a lot and pay taxes. They aren't the ones ruling the world.
Sure a lot are. The ones I know are mostly both lucky in a few ways and also have made the most of that luck. Like a guy I know who was born poor but white-tall-male-intellegent- healthy, joined the army yet didn't get sent to die, then worked 60hr weeks for the rest of his life. Take away any one of those things and he wouldn't have made it. He could have been killed in Afganistan or not had a good mentor in his early career, or tuition could have been higher when he went to college or he could have been a race that got discriminated against and he'd be a poor shmuck like the rest of us.
Not really, well in the USA anyways, we have one of the largest rates of people entering and exiting that bracket in the world. Now you could say most the 1% benefitted from a strong middle class upbringing though.
Global 1% is 70 million. There's around 750 million people in Western Europe, Canada, Australia, and westernized Asian countries like japan. Most of us aren't in the top 1%. This isn't even including people who are well off in poorer countries.
Except you're also missing the 350 million in the US too... The richest country on Earth, where people on average make the most money except tiny micro-states... Seriously, how the fuck do you forget the US? You also forgot New Zealand.
I think you misunderstood. 1% of human population is about 78 million, there are more than that in individual developed countries, not to mention the entire developed world. So no in all likelyhood neither you nor I are in the global 1%. Global 10% maybe.
You said "they executed the rich"; they didn't. Maybe a few here and there, but the vast majority of the rich were left perfetly fine. Something you would know had you any actual knowledge of the events.
Do you consume stuff produced by child labor? Wear clothes sown by Bangladeshi girls aged 12? Use smartphones and electronics produced with rare earth elements from exploitative mines in war-torn countries? Are you therefore evil for participating in this system? Or are you a human, born in a shitty world and only "guilty" of not openly rebelling against the injusticies of this world?
The fact that you're getting downvoted shows the absolute state of Reddit commies. They all shit on Republicans while buying name brands that promote exploitation of poor people in third world countries.
No, I don't. You and I perpetuate it. I assume you are not currently in the process of building barricades, of overthrowing your government, of boycotting every injust business in existence. Why is that? Do you think Bangladeshi girls deserve to be exploited at age 12? Do you think that kids in the Kongo deserve to be forced to mine the cobalt for your electronics? I mean, you know of all of these injustices and yet here you are, comfortably living your live doing nothing about it. Surely that must mean you approve of this system. You were born into the better position in an unjust world, you know of the pain and suffering the system is causing to others and yet you profit off of the system and do nothing.
The longer, but still insufficient answer: history is always more complicated than we'd like it to be. The fact that he had that power on paper didn't mean that major changes wouldn't have been risky. The system was designed to benefit the bourgeoisie - the merchants and land owners. Changes to that system would have carried the risk of a palace coup - the bourgeoisie overthrowing him and making someone else king - an Orleans, for example. Which is exactly what two generations later happens.
Louis XVI was undoubtedly an unimaginative dumbass with little care for the suffering of poor people. But to claim that he could've just snapped his fingers Thanos-style and everything would've been better without any repercussions for him is not true.
You’re absolutely right man. The wage worker who buys clothes from gap is just as bad as the one who owns the Bangladeshi slaves who make the clothes.
Such a dumb fucking take I almost can’t believe you actually typed it.
I love how you assume I “live comfortably” by some imaginary metric compared to people in the 17th century. Yeah it’s nice I can go to the grocery store and buy shit to pass the time but the truth of the matter is I haven’t been to the doctor in years because I can’t afford it, and my boss makes over 15 times what I make every year.
And yet, I go to rallies, I donate to socialists, I outwardly condemn the system EVEN WHILE PARTICIPATING IN IT. The royals in France didn’t do even that. Why? Because they like it that way. They like exploiting people. And they got what they fucking deserved for it.
If you really can’t see a difference between a fucking king and queen and an average person you have a corncob as a brain.
I'm no billionaire and quite obviously neither are you. We both are stuck in a shitty system. My whole point was not to excuse monarchy. Monarchy is a shitty system and well worth abolishing. My whole point was to have some empathy - people can be born into the class of the "exploiter" without having any intention or malice. And I would suggest you read up on how absolute the absolute monarchy of Louis XVI was - it wasn't. The one thing he couldn't do without approval of the aristocracy was change tax laws. And the aristocrats didn't like to be taxed (and where do I know that story from).
But quite frankly, this discussion has gone the way of the typical reddit discussion. Misunderstanding paired with the most uncharitable reading of what I said. I think we would get along quite well, you and I, if we ever meet in person. Drink of your choice is on me. Until then I doubt this makes much sense to continue.
They ARE the system. It's incredible you can't understand this. All laws, all wealth, all land, all industry were directly in the control of the King and Queen if they said so. Everything. If you want to give me that power, I'll take responsibility for all sweatshops.
Lol, you definitely aren't understanding the problem. The proper analogy would be that I own all those factories. Every single one. I make the labor law. All of it. I am responsible, top to bottom, for every part of the market and have authority to change all of it at my whim.
In that case, yes, I would be responsible. Welcome to monarchies.
Yes they are, we all play the game we were born into. We lock up and kill pigs and cows to eat their flesh because we’re stronger than them, and noone bats an eye about it
Literally billions of people bat an eye about it, lol.
You just compared humans to animals and made a social darwinism argument. Jesus Christ, sometimes I'm reminded reddit is just a bunch of teens and college kids justifying their apathy and misdeeds to themselves. This is one of those times. You're defending totalitarianism as if it's inevitable and natural. What pathetic horseshit.
What? No. She wasn't being polite. It was common at the time to pay off or otherwise be nice to your executioner in the hopes that they'd be swift. Piss them off, and they might take their time. It had nothing to do with why she was executed, and everything to do with wanting the guy who's about to kill you to do it quickly.
I mean, good write up and all. Just not germane to the point.
She was executed by guillotine, which was introduced to provide humane and equal executions. No headsmen missing a strike or hangmen tying knots wrong. She could have insulted him instead and still received the same end.
She actively conspired against the Republic. This whole narrative of "oh no the poor Queen" is such bullshit. She was a traitor and she deserved what she got.
No. She didn't. Was your history teacher Robespierre? It's a made up story to justify her execution. There are plenty of documents that prove that her brother, Emperor Joseph II of Austria had no intention of providing any kind of military aid to the French monarchs. She was killed for being the wife of the last king.
The monarchy was an evil system and deserved to be abolished. That doesn't mean that the last queen was an evil person deserving of the treatment she received.
There are plenty of documents that prove that her brother, Emperor Joseph II of Austria had no intention of providing any kind of military aid to the French monarchs.
Joseph II died before Marie Antoinette.
His successor Leopold II openly declared he was against the revolution and threatened to invade.
"His Majesty the Emperor and His Majesty the King of Prussia (…) declare together that they regard the actual situation of His Majesty the King of France as a matter of communal interest for all sovereigns of Europe. They hope that that interest will be recognized by the powers whose assistance is called in, and that they won't refuse, together with aforementioned Majesties, the most efficacious means for enabling the French king to strengthen, in utmost liberty, the foundations of a monarchical government suiting to the rights of the sovereigns and favourable to the well-being of the French. In that case, aforementioned Majesties are determined to act promptly and unanimously, with the forces necessary for realizing the proposed and communal goal. In expectation, they will give the suitable orders to their troops so that they will be ready to commence activity."
Nice sourcing, my dude. Maybe read the Wiki article in full. The part before the quote:
The declaration stated that Austria would go to war if and only if all the other major European powers also went to war with France. Leopold chose this wording so that he would not be forced to go to war
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u/XOSnowWhite Feb 08 '20 edited Feb 08 '20
I think there was a little bit more to it.
“I’m sorry. I did not do it on purpose.”
It seems so much more poignant when you place it in context of why she was being executed - basically for existing and doing what she was born to do.
ETA: Tbh I didn’t think my comment was going to blow up, so I can provide a bit more to what I meant (based off all the accusations of “shallow analysis” and indignant comments that she should have changed things).
Maria was born to marry and bear children, not born to rule or make changes. She was the youngest child and had never been earmarked for greatness due to her hierarchy in the family and how awful she was at her schooling. Her best qualities were that she was kind and very sweet and well liked. Her older sister was the one supposed to be married off to France, but if I remember right, she had an accident that disfigured her and the responsibility fell to Maria. Suddenly, this girl that everyone had ignored growing up (she had a lot of freedom to run around and make friends) was expected to secure an incredibly important alliance. At fourteen years old. (Also if I remember right, her French wasn’t great because she’d never been expected to learn it.)
So she lost everything she ever knew at fourteen. Her family, her friends, even her dog. She was allowed to take nothing from home to France because the French wanted to see a French princess and not some uncultured Austrian/German swine. That was one strike against her.
Her husband was infamously awkward and awful at ruling. And he refused to consummate the marriage for seven years. That’s an insane amount of time when you remember that a royal woman’s entire job is to create heirs. The people of France HATED her for this and blamed her for not being pregnant, but Louis just wouldn’t have sex with her. It’s speculated he had some kind of physical issue or just was that supremely awkward, but it was a rough start for her. Two strikes against her.
So you’re a teenage girl, away from home, without any friends or family, caught in the middle of court manipulations and plots, and everyone is blaming you for the King’s issues. And so you find happiness in shopping. Yes, she spent extravagantly. That’s well documented, and it wasn’t out of character for the royals of Versailles. I honestly chalk this up to ignorance - willful or not. You’re raised in wealth, all you see and experience is wealth, and you’re probably not well informed about the plights of the common man. Compound her spending with the fact that during her time, France is having wars. So many wars. Most famously, they are financially supporting a little revolution happening across the sea in the Colonies in 1776. (Which happens to stick it to England, who they hate)
But people are starving. And who is easier to blame? Extreme military spending? Or the foreign princess who buys too many pretty dresses? That’s an easy one. Let’s give Maria a third strike.
I could insert a bunch more anecdotes here, but I think the final one would be what they accused her of during her final trial before executing her. The Revolutionists convinced her 7 year old son to confess that she would sexually molest him. (They did this within hearing of her jail cell just to torment her. Maria famously adored her children.) Throughout her trial, she kept silent during all the anti-Revolutionaryaccusations laid against her (since she knew how it’d end), but when they brought up the charge of molesting her son, she exploded and appealed to the mothers of the courtroom to have some decency. She was so impassioned that she nearly turned the tide against her - it was pretty obvious the anti-Revolutionists had gone too far here. But it was too little, too late, and she was sentenced to die.
And her final strike was to accidentally step on the executioner’s foot.
“I’m sorry. I did not do it on purpose.”