The Execution of Marie Antoinette:-

The Execution of Marie Antoinette:-

Today is the anniversary of the execution in Paris of Marie Antoinette, the last Queen of France before the Revolution. She was then two weeks short of her thirty-eighth birthday.

Some very brief background: Marie Antoinette or Marie Antonia Josepha Johanna was born in Vienna on 2nd November 1755, the fifteenth of the sixteen children of the Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Francis I. She was brought up with the sister closest to her in age, Maria Carolina (1752 – 1814), future Queen of Naples. As part of the rapprochement between France and the Habsburg Empire following the Seven Years War (1756-1763) a marriage was arranged between the dauphin, Louis-Auguste, the future Louis XVI,  grandson of Louis XV and Marie Antoinette. 

Marie Antionette and Louis were married in Versailles on 16th May 1770, when he was fifteen and she fourteen. They became King and Queen of France on 10th May 1774 and went to have four children, Marie-Thérèse (1778 – 1851), Louis Joseph (1781 – 1789), Louis-Charles (1785 –1795) and Sophie (1786 – 1787).

After the start of the French Revolution in July 1789 Versailles was stormed and the King and Queen and their two remaining children were brought to the Tuileries Palace in Paris in October, where they were joined by the King’s sister, Madame Élisabeth (1764 – 1794). They were to remain there until August 1792 when the family, including Élisabeth, were moved to the Temple; originally built by the Knights Templar this building was used as a prison by the time of the Revolution. On 21st September 1792 the first Republic was declared by the National Assembly and the monarchy was abolished. The royal family was given the surname Capet, after Hugh Capet (? 940 – 996), founder of the Capetian dynasty (and a descendant of Charlemagne), whose line was to rule what would become France.

On 21st January 1793, Louis XVI was executed. After the former king’s death the question of what to do with Marie Antoinette and her son, Louis-Charles, who was at least technically Louis XVII, became a matter of urgency. The Committee of Public Safety, formed in April 1793, decreed in July that eight-year-old Louis should be separated from his mother, sister, and aunt, in order to be re-educated as a republican. On 9th July, when the time for his removal had arrived, Marie Antoinette fought against this, clinging to her son and the bedpost until she realised it was futile. Before he was dragged away Marie Antoinette is reported to have said to him “My son, we are about to part ...... Never forget God who thus tries you nor your mother who loves you. Be good, patient and kind and your father will look down from heaven and bless you”. In order to ensure that Louis did not see his family, a fence was constructed around the area of the Temple gardens where he was allowed to takes exercise. Marie Antoinette managed to find a chink in it three weeks later and was able to see though not speak to him.

Overnight on 1st/2nd August 1793 Marie Antoinette was removed from the Temple and brought to the Conciergerie, formerly a palace but then used as a prison; she was placed in solitary confinement as prisoner No. 280. Also on that day, her son, Louis, was sent a gift of a toy guillotine by the Insurrectionary Commune (of Paris). She never saw her children again. 

Marie Antoinette was brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal (still called the Extraordinary Criminal Tribunal) for trial on 14th October. Her trial took place over two days and lasted in all about sixteen hours. Among the many charges against her, of which the most important was treason, was an accusation of incest between her and her son, made by the extreme radical Jacques René Hébert, editor of the revolutionary newspaper Le Père Duchesne. Marie Antoinette refused to respond to that accusation saying “Nature refuses to answer such a charge, but I appeal against it to the heart of every mother who hears me”. 

This appeal from the former queen brought her sympathy from many of the women spectators present, and caused Robespierre to feel concerned that the accusation would backfire. “That fool Hébert will make her an object of pity”. The verdict of death was given to Marie Antoinette informally at about 4am on the morning of 16th October.

A little later, Marie Antoinette wrote her last letter, to her sister-in-law Élisabeth:

“October 16th, at half-past four in the morning.

“It is to you, Sister, that I am writing for the last time. I have just been sentenced to death .....I am going to rejoin your brother ..... I am calm, as one may well be when one’s conscience is clear, though deeply grieved at having to forsake my poor children. You know that I existed only for them .....It was only during the trial that I learned my daughter had been separated from you. Alas, poor child, I do not dare to write to her, for she would not receive my letter; I do not even know if this one will reach you.....

“.....I hope my son will never forget his father’s words which I here purposely repeat for him: Let him never try to avenge our deaths!

“I die in the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion, in that of my fathers .....which I have always professed ..... Having no hope of spiritual consolation ..... I sincerely ask God’s forgiveness for all the faults I have committed since I was born. I trust that, in His goodness, He will hear my last prayers ..... (and), in His pity and His goodness, He may receive my soul.

“I ask the forgiveness of all those whom I have known .....I forgive my enemies..... I here bid farewell to my aunts and to my brothers and sisters. I had friends....Let them know, at least, that down to the last they were in my mind.

“Adieu, my good and affectionate sister ..... I send you my most heartfelt love, and also to my poor, dear children. How heartbreaking it is to leave them for ever! Adieu, adieu. I must now devote myself entirely to my spiritual duties.....” [i].

The provenance of this letter has often been disputed but most authorities now accept that it is genuine. Marie Antoinette was correct in her suspicion that this letter would not reach Élisabeth as it was found among other papers in Robespierre’s house, together with a lock of her hair, some time after his death. Presumably the former queen’s cell at the Conciergerie was searched after her execution and any effects she may have left would have been confiscated. Anyone caught smuggling such a letter would have been risking death themselves.

At this time Marie Antoinette’s health was very poor. She was eating very little and may have been in the early stages of tuberculosis, which had caused the death of her elder son Louis Joseph at the age of seven and possibly that of her elder brother, Emperor Joseph II. Marie Antoinette also suffered from various gynaecological problems manifested by prolonged and serious haemorrhages which some commentators have suspected may have been a symptom of possible cancer of the womb. At any rate, on the day of her actual execution she was bleeding heavily. She was offered breakfast by a young maid, Rosalie Lamorlière, who sympathised with the former queen and cried for hours, though in secret, when she realised that she (Marie Antoinette) was to be executed. Marie Antoinette did take a few spoonfuls of food but, not surprisingly, was not hungry.

At around 10 am that morning she was given the official verdict when she was visited by the clerk of the court and judges who read her the sentence.

By this time Marie Antoinette had almost no clothing left, but she was told that she was not to wear black to her execution. She put on her last remaining garment, a white dress and a white cap; coincidentally, white was also the traditional mourning colour of the queens of France. Shortly afterwards the executioner, Henri Sanson, arrived to escort her to her death. 

Marie Antoinette's hands were tied behind her back and she was placed in an open cart, drawn by two heavy horses, unlike Louis XVI who was taken to his execution in a closed carriage, with a priest and prayer book. Marie Antoinette’s journey to the guillotine was a public spectacle which must have been the intention. At 11 am she left the Conciergerie accompanied by Abbé Girard, a sworn priest, that is, one who had taken an oath of allegiance to the revolution, but she refused to acknowledge him. 

The route to the Place de la Révolution was lined by huge crowds, some jeering and calling out insults, and with the escort shouting “Make way for the Austrian woman” (L'Autrichienne had been a contemptuous way of referring to Marie Antoinette both before and during the Revolutionary era) [ii]. Marie Antoinette sat silent in the cart, looking neither to left nor right “Audacious and insolent to the end” was how she was described by Hébert’s newspaper the very radical Le Père Duchesne though all eye-witnesses, whether sympathetic or not agreed on her composure though she became tearful as she passed the Tuileries.

When the cart arrived at the Place de la Révolution, Abbé Girard told her “This is the moment, Madame, to arm yourself with courage” to which she is said to have replied “Courage? The moment when my troubles are going to end is not the moment when my courage is going to fail me”. Marie Antoinette was able step down from the cart on her own and accidentally stepped on the executioner’s foot to whom she said apologised saying “Monsieur, je vous demande excuse, je ne l'ai pas fait exprès”, “Sir, I ask you to excuse me, I did not do it on purpose”. These were her last known words.

Around 12.15 pm on 16th October, 1793, Marie Antoinette’s head was cleanly cut off by the guillotine and shown to a wildly cheering crowd. All those who witnessed the event agreed that Marie Antoinette, the last queen of France, met her death with courage and dignity.

Marie Antoinette’s son, Louis-Charles died in 8th June 1795, apparently from tuberculosis. Her daughter Marie-Thérèse, contrary to what Marie Antoinette had been told at her trial, had not been separated at that time from her aunt and remained in the Temple in the company of Madame Élisabeth until the latter's execution, aged thirty, in May 1794. Marie-Thérèse did not discover the fates of her mother and brother until August 1795. 

Marie-Thérèse was the only one of Marie Antoinette's children to reach adulthood. In 1799, aged twenty, she married a cousin, twenty-three-year old Louis Antoine, Duke of Angoulême. The marriage was childless and Marie-Thérèse died in October 1851, shortly before her seventy-third birthday. 

Marie Antoinette’s remains were taken and buried with Louis XVI in the Madeleine cemetery which was close by; they were exhumed in 1815 during the Restoration and re-interred in the Basilica of Ste. Denis.