Marie Antoinette: The Last Queen of France Before The French Revolution | Mini Bio | BIO

Born the 15th child of Austrian Empress Maria Theresa, Marie Antoinette was sent to France at age 14 to live her life as the future queen. When Marie Antoinette and her husband Louis XVI first met, it was like hot girl and nerd. She was bored by him and he was really afraid of her. Seven years into their marriage, there still was no heir. Marie Antoinette's mother grew concerned and sent Joseph II, Marie Antoinette's brother, to help the couple. The problem was that Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette simply did not know how to have sex. Joseph instructed his brother-in-law as to how to go about doing it and Marie Antoinette got pregnant very soon thereafter. As queen, Marie had a reputation for extravagant spending. When peasants complained of the high price of bread, she is falsely rumored to have said, let them eat cake. In 1789, Marie and Louis' son and heir died of tuberculosis of the spine. Marie Antoinette was thrown into great depression by the death of Louis Joseph just before the outbreak of the French Revolution. She couldn't understand why the death of the Dauphin of France was not being publicly mourned and for her it was a very serious blow. On July 14th, 1789, 900 French revolutionaries took the Bastille prison and began the French Revolution. On October 5th, thousands of Parisian women stormed the palace at Versailles. They ransacked the place and they killed a couple of her guards. They then essentially took her and her family prisoners and brought them back to Paris where she would spend the rest of her very short life. The royal family lived at the Tuileries Palace for two years while the French Revolution raged on outside their door. After October 1789, Marie Antoinette becomes the central figure in the French counter-revolution. She conspires with powers abroad and with sympathizers within France attempting to reverse the French Revolution. In 1792, a mob stormed the Tuileries killing hundreds of guards and noblemen and took the royal family to the Temple prison. On December 26th, Louis was put on trial and executed. She was in the worst depths of grief. Toward the end of their relationship they had gotten so much closer than they had been at the young ages of 14 when they first got married. On October 14th, 1793, Marie Antoinette was tried for treason. Two days later she was taken to the guillotine. The last queen of France was dead. Her trial was a mockery. They had her eight-year-old son testify against her in court that she had interfered with him in an inappropriate way. Even as Marie Antoinette said, is there any mother in this courtroom who would accept this knowing what a mother's love for her son is like? Even that couldn't save her and she was destined to go to the guillotine.