A massive crowd gathered, waiting with abated breath the execution of a man they had all once loved. In 1766, as a way to cement the relatively new alliance between the French and Habsburg thrones, Maria Theresa promised her young daughter’s hand in marriage to the future king Louis XVI of France. After a two-day show trial, an all-male jury found the former queen guilty on all charges and unanimously condemned her to death. Marriage to Marie-Antoinette 22.2.2: Marriage to Marie-Antoinette Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette’s marriage confirmed and strengthened the Franco-Austrian alliance, which had many opponents among French elites and commoners. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. Louis XVI was the grandson of Louis XV.He became Dauphin in 1765 and inherited the throne in 1774 at the age of 20. It took seven years for the future king and queen to consummate their marriage. https://www.sunsigns.org/famousbirthdays/d/profile/louis-xvi Queen Marie Antoinette of France. Eventually, in 1777, Marie Antoinette’s brother, Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, … While it wasn’t Marie Antoinette’s fault that turmoil and unrest came … In fact, the story of a fatuous noblewoman who said “Let them eat cake!” appears in the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions, which was written around 1766 (when Marie Antoinette was just 11 years old). Married 4 children together. The French public was hostile towards the marriage that confirmed the Franco-Austrian alliance. On the twenty-first of January, 1793, Louis XVI was sent to the scaffold. Early Life Louis was born on August 23, 1754, in Versailles, France. Louis the XV tried to instruct Marie but the tutor found out that Marie is exemplary in her studies but is very lazy and hard to teach. 2. Like all kings, Louis XVI had a duty … Marie Antoinette was married to King Louis XVI and in 1774 she became the Queen of France. After the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, the royal family was forced to live under the supervision of revolutionary authorities. On May 16, 1770, she and Louis were finally properly married at Versailles. (The popular press blamed Marie Antoinette for this–she was known as “Madame Veto,” among other things–though she was far from the only wealthy person in France to defend the privileges of the aristocracy.) It was the beginning of Marie Antoinette’s life in the public eye. Louis XVI However, he was the heir to the throne of France, so fat or not, the short life he did live was carried out in the lap of luxury. The remark was also ascribed to two aunts of Louis XVI before it was apocryphally tied to Marie Antoinette. Duchess Marie Therese Of Angoulême. She was a young, poised girl, who grew into a … In 1789, representatives from all three estates (the clergy, the nobility and the common people) met at Versailles to come up with a plan for the reform of the French state, but noblemen and clergymen were still reluctant to give up their prerogatives. The couple had 4 children. The couple had 4 children. Merely a strategic union … Unlike during her years as queen, Marie Antoinette captivated the French public in her early years in the country. The 11th daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and Maria Theresa, Marie-Antoinette was just 14 years old when she was married to the dauphin Louis, grandson of France’s King Louis XV, on May 16, 1770. Marriage of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI 1770. He was guillotined in 1793. Did you know? But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Marie Antoinette was born on November 2, 1755, in Vienna (now in Austria), the capital of the Holy Roman Empire. Marie Antoinette’s elaborate spending on frivolities such as the Petit Hameau infuriated revolutionaries and earned her the moniker “Madame Deficit.”. On May 16, 1770, Marie Antoinette and Louis xvi were married at Versailles. Louis was born at Versailles on 23 August 1754. In October 1789, a mob of Parisian women protesting the high cost of bread and other goods marched to Versailles, dragged the entire royal family back to the city, and imprisoned them in the Tuileries. Marie Antoinette was a teen idol. ... June 11: 20-year old Louis-Auguste is crowned King Louis XVI at the cathedral in Rheims. In 1770 he married the Austrian archduchess Marie-Antoinette, daughter of Maria Theresa and the Holy Roman emperor Francis I. Louis’s grandfather King Louis XV died in 1774. After the king blessed their bed, gave both a kiss and left the room to allow them to start work on producing a royal heir, nothing happened between the two relative strangers that night. Marie Antoinette continued to be a convenient target for their rage. Eighteenth-century colonial wars–particularly the American Revolution, in which the French had intervened on behalf of the colonists–had created a tremendous debt for the French state. Unlike during her years as queen, Marie Antoinette captivated the … About. Marie Antoinette was a teen idol. He ascended the throne in 1774 as Louis XVI. At the seat of the French monarchy in Versailles, an alliance between France and Australia was created as King Louis XVI married Marie Antoinette. In October, she was convicted of treason and sent to the guillotine. According to sources, the public suggested that the King was infertile. The “Third Estate” delegates, inspired by Enlightenment ideas about personal liberty and civic equality, formed a “National Assembly” that placed government in the hands of French citizens for the first time. (For example, she had a model farm built on the palace grounds so that she and her ladies-in-waiting could dress in elaborate costumes and pretend to be milkmaids and shepherdesses.) Ã’šÃ‚ At first it did appear the French people did indeed like the Queen, but after some time the public began to hate her. 3. In fact, the nation’s difficulties were not the young queen’s fault. Then on the 16th day of May, she was married to Louis-Auguste. © 2021 A&E Television Networks, LLC. Because she was very young at the time, she did not adjust well to the palace life. Marie Antoinette was born an Austrian princess. She was the eleventh daughter of the Holy Roman emperor Francis I (1708–1765) and the empress Maria Theresa (1717–1780). Louis XVI of France was previously married to Marie Antoinette (1770 - 1793). 10. Born as the daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and Empress Maria Theresa, Marie was married to Louis-Auguste who ascended the throne as Louis XVI of France in 1774. They named their new community—Marietta, Ohio—after the French queen and even sent her a letter offering the monarch a “public square” in the town. Widely circulated newspapers and inexpensive pamphlets poked fun at the queen’s profligate behavior and spread outlandish, even pornographic rumors about her. Marie Antoinette was 14 years of age; Louis XVI was 15. In 1770 she married Louis XVI (1754–1793). Her marriage was difficult and, as she had very few official duties, she spent most of her time socializing and indulging her extravagant tastes. 8. On 16 May 1770, at the age of fifteen, Louis-Auguste married the fourteen-year-old Habsburg Archduchess Maria Antonia (better known by the French form of her name, Marie Antoinette), his second cousin once removed and the youngest daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and his wife, the Empress Maria Theresa. She was only 14 years old when she married the future Louis XVI. During this period, French citizens razed and redesigned their country’s political landscape, uprooting centuries-old ...read more, The reign of France’s Louis XIV (1638-1715), known as the Sun King, lasted for 72 years, longer than that of any other known European sovereign. Marie Antoinette was born an Austrian princess. Louis XVI’s mother in law helped the royal couple in their sex life. She was convicted and sent to the guillotine on October 16, 1793. (They were 15 and 16 years old, and they had never met.) In April 1792, partly as a way to test the loyalties of the king and queen, the Jacobin (radical revolutionary) government declared war on Austria. Politics literally made strange bedfellows in the case of Marie Antoinette and Louis-Auguste. In the fifth month of 1770, Marie was sent to France to be married. The executions of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie-Antoinette are dramatic and have since been major symbols of the French revolution. Her sister Maria Carolina was married to Ferdinand IV, King of Naples, for similar reasons. Autié accessorized the queen’s fantastical poufs with feathers, trinkets and on one occasion even an enormous model of the French warship La Belle Poule to commemorate its sinking of a British frigate. At Versailles, Louis, the French dauphin, marries Marie Antoinette, the daughter of Austrian Archduchess Maria Theresa and Holy Roman Emperor Francis I. When he was only 15 years old, he married Marie-Antoinette of Austria. Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI were actually wed before they met. Cartoonists and pamphleteers depicted her as an “Austrian whore” doing everything she could to undermine the French nation. When told that starving French peasants lacked any bread to eat, the queen is alleged to have callously declared, “Let them eat cake!” There is no evidence, however, that Marie Antoinette ever uttered that famous quip. They were first married on April 19, 1770, by proxy in Vienna. This incident, it seemed to many, was proof that the queen was not just a foreigner: She was a traitor. But the fire isn’t the first time the cathedral has faced destruction. As Will Bashor details in his new book, “Marie Antoinette’s Head,” royal hairdresser Léonard Autié became one of the queen’s closest confidants as he concocted her gravity-defying hairdos, which rose nearly four feet high. 2. 1. Before long, it had become fashionable to blame Marie Antoinette for all of France’s problems. Marie Antoinette and Louis-Auguste were married at the ages of 14 and 15,... See full answer below. The phrase used to encapsulate the out-of-touch and indifferent royals first appeared years before Marie Antoinette ever arrived in France in philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s description of Marie-Therese, the Spanish princess who married King Louis XIV in 1660. She sought to return England to the Catholic ...read more, It is a story whose characters and actions are so implausible that at times it seems like the wild invention of a work of fiction. Marie Antoinette, the 15th child of Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and the powerful Habsburg empress Maria Theresa, was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1755–an age of great instability for European monarchies. A massive crowd gathered, waiting with abated breath the execution of a man they had all once loved. The couple was married for seven years, but they didn’t manage to have a child of their own. 16 May 1770. Her older brother Archduke Ferdinand stood in for Louis, and two days later, she left Austria for France, never to return to her home country. She and the people around her seemed to represent everything that was wrong with the monarchy and the Second Estate: They appeared to be tone-deaf, out of touch, disloyal (along with her allegedly treasonous behavior, writers and pamphleteers frequently accused the queen of adultery) and self-interested. Divine Intervention. In June 1791, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette fled Paris and headed for the Austrian border–where, rumor had it, the queen’s brother, the Holy Roman Emperor, waited with troops ready to invade France, overthrow the revolutionary government and restore the power of the monarchy and the nobility. In the mid of 1770, Louis XVI married Marie Antoinette. Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette When Louis took throne in 1774, only 19 years old Shy & taciturn, with awkward manners & little natural grace or personal flair Many observers—both at time & since—thought that his understated style was a sign of stupidity Louis wasn't dumb so much as pathologically indecisive—a serious problem for a king © 2021 A&E Television Networks, LLC. Queen Marie Antoinette of France. The day after Marie Antoinette met the 15-year-old future king of France, the two were wed in a lavish palace ceremony. Her towering bouffant hairdo once sported a battleship replica. Louis XVI was the last Bourbon king of France who was executed in 1793 for treason. While peasants starved in villages throughout France, Marie Antoinette commissioned the construction of the Petit Hameau, a utopian hamlet with lakes, gardens, cottages, watermills and a farmhouse on the palace grounds. https://www.history.com/topics/france/marie-antoinette. The story of revolution and resistance in 18th-century France is a complicated one, and no two historians tell the story the same way. Marie Antoinette was married to King Louis XVI and in 1774 she became the Queen of France. Marie Antoinette never said “Let them eat cake.” Marie, who became the Dauphine of France upon her marriage, was conferred the title ‘Queen of France and Navarre’ when her husband became the king. According to sources, the public suggested that the King was infertile. Marie Antoinette was only 14 years old when she married the future Louis XVI. On the twenty-first of January, 1793, Louis XVI was sent to the scaffold. At the same time, conditions worsened for ordinary French people, and many became convinced that the monarchy and the nobility were conspiring against them. More than 5,000 guests watched as the two teenagers were married. Finally in 1777, Maria Theresa dispatched one of her sons, Emperor Joseph II, to Versailles to intervene, and the problem was rectified either because the now King Louis XVI underwent surgery to correct the problem or because, in the words of the emperor, the couple had been “two complete blunderers.” Within a year, Marie Antoinette bore the first of the couple’s four children. In September, revolutionaries began to massacre royalist prisoners by the thousands. Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. However, it is clear that for the revolutionaries, Marie Antoinette’s significance was mainly, powerfully symbolic. Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette got married on May 16th 1770. In 1770, at age 15, Louis-Auguste married 14-year-old Habsburg Archduchess Maria Antonia, the youngest daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and his wife Empress Maria Theresa of the Habsburg dynasty. The French army was in a shambles and the war did not go well—a turn of events that many blamed on the foreign-born queen. It was not a marriage of love. Four years later, Marie Antoinette and the dauphin were married by proxy in Vienna. She was 37 years old. A U.S. city is named in honor of Marie Antoinette. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! He is most remembered for King of France. All Rights Reserved. French Royal Louis XVI of France was born Louis Auguste de France on 23rd August, 1754 in Palace of Versailles, France and passed away on 21st Jan 1793 Paris, France aged 38. In 1815, after the Bourbon Restoration returned King Louis XVIII to the throne following the exile of Napoleon, he ordered the bodies of his older brother, Louis XVI, and Marie Antoinette exhumed and given a proper burial alongside other French royals inside the Basilica Cathedral of Saint-Denis. On May 7, 1770, the 14-year-old royal bride was delivered to the French on an island in the middle of the Rhine River, and a grand procession escorted the archduchess to the Palace of Versailles. The last king of France received his last respect when he was put on a firing squad at a place known as Place de la Concorde. Louis XVI, King of France, was the son of Louis, dauphin of France, the son of Louis XV, and of Marie Joseph of Saxony, and was born at Versailles on the 23rd of August 1754, being baptized as Louis Augustus. Louis XVI However, he was the heir to the throne of France, so fat or not, the short life he did live was carried out in the lap of luxury. 4. In the mid of 1770, Louis XVI married Marie Antoinette. 9. It was an arranged marriage for the 15-year-old dauphin and 14-year-old archduchess to foster an alliance between Austria and France. 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