Marie Antoinette is one of the most maligned characters in history. Her life has spawned movies, plays and many a bad romance novel. Hers is such a legacy that, though her husband’s name might not be remembered, hers certainly is. One only has to say her name to get a grin and a quote: "Let them eat cake!" Even now, two hundred and seven years after her death, she is such a popular figure that people recognize her, think they see her around town. Like some eighteenth century Elvis, Marie has been seen trolling about Versailles, holding her head like a football player about to make a dash for the forty-yard line. Supposedly, she is uneasy, unable to rest until her life has been put to rights, until people know that she wasn’t the gnome that popular history has made her out to be. Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, has wandered the gardens of Versailles for two centuries because she wants the world to know that, no, she did not buy that diamond necklace, no she did not say "Let them eat cake!" and no, she was not a bad mother.

Even before the great conflagration of 1789, Marie wasn’t the most beloved of figures in France. First of all, she was Austrian, or as her French contemporaries would put it, l’Austrichienne, with a subtle but pointed emphasis on the chienne. A kind translator would translate chienne as female dog. She came to France young and inexperienced—totally unprepared for the lecherous and intrigue ridden nature of the French Court. Due to her mother’s iron moralistic hand back in Austria, Marie had (despite her father’s proclivities towards lasciviousness) led an incredibly sheltered life. Before she was shipped off to France to become the Dauphine, she was given a hurried education in a few academic subjects and taught to play a few French games. Less importantly, her abysmal handwriting was painstakingly worked at so that she would not embarrass herself when she signed the marriage contract, which she did anyway, and her trousseau was prepared. She was taught the new French dances that were all the rage and a furrier was bought in to develop a becoming hairstyle that would cover her embarrassing receding hairline. These ministration done, she was ready to be shipped off to France to begin her new life as a complete French woman. After her marriage at the age of fourteen, Maria Antonia became Maria Antoinette, a name change that effectively signifies her complete switch over from all things German to all things French.

It is once Marie is married, and safely ensconced in France—several days journey away from her mother—that her true personality begins to show. She was at first charming, but then quickly began to align herself with the wrong camps at court, namely that of King Louis XV’s aunts, three instigating spinsters heavily steeped in Court intrigues who had absolutely no problem using the young Dauphine to their own ends. Wide-eyed and eager to find friends at the strange, overwhelming new Court, for a time Marie listened to whatever they had to say, a mistake that cost her for the rest of her reign.

The very first time Marie had supper with the French Court, she noticed a beautiful woman seated near the King. Trying to make conversation with the bored courtier seated next to her, she turned and asked "Who is the pretty lady with the blue eyes and the lisp?" referring the Louis XV’s flamboyant mistress, Madame du Barry. "She is charming. What are her functions at Court?" Suddenly interested, the Courtier answered "Oh, it is her function to amuse the King." "To amuse the King!" Marie exclaimed. "Then I want to be her rival!" At the time it was looked upon as a charming mistake by a naïve little girl, but later was referenced as proof of Marie’s sluttish nature.

King Louis XV was a known reprobate, yet public censorship was never upon him for his sexual lifestyle. First and foremost, he was a man, and such things were expected of him. After all, a King’s mistress had an extraordinary position of power within the Court and over the King himself. From Madame Pompadour on down to du Barry, these women wielded an enormous amount of power. Du Barry even sat in on important state meetings, annoying everyone in attendance except the King. Therefore, it was always a good tactical move to align oneself with the foremost mistress’s camp within the Court, or else find yourself socially quashed and feeling the displeasure of the King.

Eventually, Marie found out exactly what "amusements" du Barry was providing the King and was appalled. Such open displays of vulgarity would have been unheard of back home in Austria. Under her mother’s rule, indiscreet women were taken outside of the city and put into stocks. But here in France, it was an accepted practice. Shocked, Marie took a strong stance against du Barry and refused to speak to her. Upon hearing about it, her mother, worried about a breakdown of Austrio/Franco relations, told her to speak to the "horrid creature" at once, but Marie refused, bolstered by the support she knew she had from the King’s sisters. The snub reverberated across Europe and frantic missives between Maria Theresa, Marie Antoinette and Theresa’s spies in France shot back and forth between France and Austria and the Empress implored her daughter to say at least something to the woman. Marie held out for as long as she could, but eventually even she was able to see what was happening and relented. Forced to retreat, Marie uttered the blandest of all banalities at her command to pacify the affronted mistress. "There are a great many people at Versailles today." She murmured. Then, as soon as she was out of earshot of du Barry, "I have spoken to her once, but I am quite determined to stop there and that woman will never hear the sound of my voice again." Still, she understood the danger her unquestioning obeisance of the aunt’s had put her in and said "I was too young and thoughtless. Now I know where I stand."¹ In response, Adelaide, the eldest of the sisters, began spouting off all manner of abuse about the Dauphine, from the ridiculous to the seemingly plausible. After all, she would have conceivably had the inside scoop on what was going on in Versailles. Though most of her rumors were fanciful in the extreme, she tended to throw in a few grains of truth so that people really weren’t sure what to believe.

When young, Marie Antoinette was, according to most accounts, very beautiful, though one unimpressed and ungentlemanly courtier was heard to say that he "never could see it." Even so, in comparison to the ungainly Louis, scathingly described as a waddling, blinking, corpulent, bungling, incapable imbecile, defective in body, deficient in mind, with the low receding forehead of an idiot, and a monstrous double chin that measured the third of his face." anyone would have seemed beautiful.² Louis was an odd young man, "very much like a eunuch in his figure". He was "awkward and eccentric" an "enemy of all movement and exercise, without passion, even without taste; everything stifl[ed] him, nothing stimulat[ed] him. If there is a spark in him, it [was] a dying one, extinguished by fat and bigotry."³ Surely such an unattractive "pillar of lethargy" couldn’t be enough to keep Marie at home.⁴ When it became public knowledge that Louis was either impotent or suffering from "extreme shyness", the gossipmongers didn’t even attempt to keep their rumors within the bounds of plausibility. Marie was said to be eyeing everyone from the King to Louis XVI’s lively brother and other ladies at Court. She was holding early morning orgies in the gardens of Versailles while her husband slept. None of it was true, but all of it was bandied about as if it was, and all of it cost Marie in the end.

When the old King finally died in 1770 after confessing his sins for the first time in forty- six years and therefore perhaps narrowly making it into heaven, Louis became King Louis XVI and Marie became his regent and Queen. As soon as "The King is dead! Long live the King!" rang through the halls, the courtiers began to realign themselves into new camps. Giving their new King a hard look, they quickly realized that Louis XVI would be even more vacuous and ineffectual than his predecessor, so they tried to move close to the Queen, whom they sensed would be the real power at court. And indeed, Marie was now the most powerful woman in France. The flocked to the new Queen, "and made their approaches to her with al l the subtlety of leeches attaching themselves to a swimmer." ⁵

Marie however, had other ideas and she quickly formed a close circle of titled idiots about herself, all of them around the same age and all of them with less common sense than is usual. Those who were not among her favorites were snubbed mercilessly and they soon grew to hate her.

In her first show as Queen, Marie failed miserably, hating all the ceremony and denouncing the "older" ones of court as "centenarians and prigs" and "most improperly" bursting out laughing behind a fan, or in some cases, right in the "prigs" face. She was even heard to say that "When one has passed thirty, I cannot understand how one dares to appear at court." In response, all those older, seasoned courtiers who might have been able to help Marie steer a wiser course than her idiotic and youthful compatriots, joined the growing faction of Court that was anti-Marie. The larger the anti-Antoinette faction grew, the more vocal it was. They went from surreptitiously passing rumors to making up tuneful little rhymes that they could whistle in the Queen’s face without her knowing what the lyrics to the melody were.

"Little Queen, barely twenty,

You who mistreat people so badly,

You’ll be sent back home."⁶

And

"Little Queen, have a care;

If you behave with such an air

You’ll be sent back over there."

She had managed to alienate the majority of the court and annex herself into one small, vacillating part of it. She was only nineteen years of age and had been ruling all of one month. ⁷

Early in their reign, as a way to keep Marie out of state business, Louis granted her the Petit Trianon, a palace, small by Versailles standards, where she could go to escape the ceremonial burdens of being Queen and pretend that she was a simple country girl. She ordered a complete overhaul of the lands surround the Trianon, remodeled and redesigned the seven rooms inside of it and then constructed near it Le Hameau, a small village which she filled with real people. "It’s a doll’s house!" Marie exclaimed upon seeing it. She was delighted with the prospect of "living like a humble peasant". ⁸ The people of France and its surrounding countryside, people who actually were humble and starving peasants, were not so amused. Horrid tales of orgies within the guided walls of the Trianon began to drift out and the common people away from the debauchery of Court life were appalled. This is what the Queen was doing? They were starving, and the Queen was wasting money making wallpaper from pure spun gold and tearing down walls in her special home, while she had all of Versailles to call her own. The royal family already accounted for one sixth of the states total expenditures, but once Marie took on the Trianon as her pet, the royal disbursement shot even higher. Then too, Marie had developed an obsession with all things feathery, most of all ridiculously expensive feathered headdresses that she used to direct attention away from her unfortunate receding hairline. Another love, diamonds, and plenty of them.⁹ Perhaps Marie was simply trying to sublimate her distress at being childless, but since this behavior continued long after Marie had bred her "heir and a spare" this is no good excuse. But also probable is Marie’s own answer. "How could I have suspected that the finances were in such a bad state? When I asked for 50,000 livres I was brought 100,000."¹⁰ Yet and still, deputies later came to the Petit Trianon, they couldn’t believe the simplicity and thought that the richly furnished apartments they had for years been told were in the Trianon did not exist. Finally they just decided to lie and said that they’d found one which "was ornamented with diamonds, and twisted columns studded with sapphires and rubies." ¹¹

On the other hand, Louis saw that there would have to be major changes in the way France was running his finances. Instead of sharing that insight with his wife, he told her nothing, and so Marie continued to spend. She did however, know that she wasn’t to exceed a certain amount. She also knew that if she had to, she could wheedle the money out of one of the old accountants and keep the matter secret from Louis. It was this financial arrangement, along with Antoinette’s well known love for diamonds, that led to what Napoleon labeled as among the top three causes of the downfall of the French monarchy—the Diamond Necklace Affair.

In late summer of 1785, the particulars of the huge scandal known to history as the Diamond Necklace Affair came to light. Though the scandal involved Marie only by dubious proxy, it was extremely damaging to her and ultimately to the monarchy. More directly it involved the Cardinal de Rohan, Grand Almoner of France a con-woman and fabulously ugly necklace glutted with large, gaudy diamonds. ¹²

Right before King Louis XV died, he had commissioned the ugly thing for his equally gauche mistress, Madame du Barry. Court jewelers "Collected the finest stones in Europe sinking their capital" into the project with the hopes of selling it to du Barry. Louis XV died before it was completed, and after that there was no hope of du Barry ever owning it. Trying to keep from going under, they jewelers approached Antoinette, who was known for her great love of diamonds, but this necklace was too ostentatious even for Marie, who "Thought the necklace, which was rather like a slave collar, a little vulgar" and refused it.

A few years later, the jewelers returned and once again begged Marie to buy the necklace, worth 1,600,000 francs in the 1780’s. Once again, Marie refused the necklace. Upon hearing it, the jeweler threatened to throw himself into the river. Marie, impatient with being harassed, and angered by the frightening effect the man was having on her daughter, severely admonished him for his actions. The jeweler went away and Marie, once again, thought she’d heard the seen the last of it. ¹³

The Cardinal de Rohan was an offensive character, "a bad lot . . . perfectly incorrigible" who’d been an Ambassador to Austria in the early 1770’s, where he set "up a private brothel . . . ran up gigantic debts, led the heir to the throne astray . . and had the temerity to smuggle . . ." Maria Theresa had hated the man, and her opinion was born out in her daughter, who "refused to have anything to do with him." Marie hated the man so much that her detractors said that it was only a front—that the Cardinal de Rohan was yet another of her secret lovers. De Rohan himself, however, knew that her hate was genuine and therefore a barrier to his advancement at court, and so sought out every opportunity to place himself in her favor.

It was into this situation that a con-woman for the ages, Jeanne de Saint-Remy, who styled herself the fictitious Comtesse de la Motte-Valois, implanted herself. Jeanne, a penniless orphan, wheedled her way into court and, with the aid of a clever forger, was able to convince the Cardinal that she was bosom buddies with the Queen. Looking at a few letters with Marie Antoinette de France scrawled unconvincingly across them, the Cardinal was sold. After a while, Jeanne told the Cardinal that she had succeeded in getting Marie to forgive him, and hired a prostitute with a vague resemblance to the Queen to play her. At midnight in a garden at Versailles, the veiled prostitute handed de Rohan a rose and murmured "You know what this means."

Having seemingly arranged an audience with the Queen, Jeanne now had the gullible Cardinal in her pocket. Not only did De Rohan believe that Antoinette had forgiven him, but he also believed that she had fallen in love with him. Eager to prove his love in return, he agreed to hand over large sums of money to Jeanne, who would continue to act as a go-between. This arrangement was going fine for both parties when the crown jeweler, having heard of Jeanne’s close friendship to the Queen, approached her and asked her to help him get Marie to buy the necklace. Jeanne told the jeweler that the Cardinal would buy the necklace for the Queen, which he did. De Rohan procured the necklace and then handed the thing over to Jeanne, expecting her to turn it over to the Queen. Jeanne, of course, pocketed the necklace, just as she had the cash that had preceded it. The immense swindle didn’t come to light until the first installment of the payment for the necklace was past due and the jeweler came demanding payment. ¹⁴

Upon hearing about it, Marie immediately blamed the Cardinal, denouncing him as "a low and inept forger" who had "made use of [her] name like a vile and clumsy forger." Blinded by hate, Marie demanded the Cardinal be arrested and tried. The trial split the court. Those in Rohan’s camp wore hats of "Cardinal red" and said that the cardinal was nothing but gullible and truthfully, most of the court agreed. The true villain here was not the Cardinal but Jeanne de Saint-Remy. Sure the Cardinal had been a fool, but could he really be blamed for believing that the adulterous, covetous, diamond-hungry Queen would ask him to procure the necklace for her? The general consensus was no, and after eighteen hours of deliberation, the charges against the Cardinal were dismissed, and he was acquitted May 31, 1786.

The tide had turned. There wasn’t even a pretense of respect for the Queen anymore. Whereas the King might ride through Paris and receive a smattering of applause, the Queen would be met by silence, or worse yet, abuse. Libelous pamphlets, written by courtiers, but printed and generally distributed in Paris, were making their way into the palace. "The Queen was pregnant with the Cardinal’s child . . . was bankrupting the country . . ." until finally the Queen exploded " . . . it would be better if I were dead!" ¹⁵ The decision for the Cardinal was an enormous blow to the Queen. She had very publicly pushed against the Cardinal, and fully expected for him to be judged guilty. The verdict of innocence wasn’t just going against her express wishes; it was also quite nearly a slap in her face. In their verdict Parlement was saying that the Cardinal could be forgiven for assuming that the Queen would meet him in a secluded garden at midnight and admit that she was in love with him. Wasn’t the Queen wanton? Wasn’t she having affairs with other men in the Court? Why should the Cardinal think differently? Any other man would have believed it possible of the Queen. It was an insult heard around Europe, but the worst part of it was that Queen had brought it all upon herself. The affair of the necklace never should have been publicly known. It could have been investigated in private and then settled in private. The trial of the Cardinal was "subtly converted into a trial of the Queen . . .[who] was found guilty of all the absurd fictions which were" being passed around in the street. "The drama was played out with every conceivable insult to Marie Antoinette." ¹⁶

In truth, the Cardinal was guilty only of attempting to further his interests in court by playing up to the Queen. His greed allowed him to be taken in by one much greedier—but this is all that he was guilty of, just greed and gullibility. Had Antoinette been thinking clearly instead of letting herself be blinded by the prejudice of her mother, she would have seen this herself. Instead, she pressed for vengeance against him, and she herself was hurt the most. De La Motte was branded with a V and sent off to the Salpetriere "to live on blackbread and lentils for the rest of her life" while the "people of Paris declared her to be a heroine." Eventually she was able to escape and moved to England, where she made a fortune penning libel against the Queen. ¹⁷

Every enemy the Queen had stepped up to plate, making up songs about her and penning damning booklets that claimed to have the inside scoop on the debauchery of Versailles. Some even drew cartoons. Songs were sung about "Louis the Crack-Brained" and "Madame Deficit". The crowds of Paris were about to burn the Queen in effigy when the police stepped in. One of Antoinette’s oldest enemies, Adelaide "made a point of collecting the venomous literature . . . gathered all the spiteful gossip she could, then spread it widely, both in print and by word of mouth." Louis brother, Provence, was touring the country, "Very nearly usurping the king’s role" and trying to get the people of France to recognize him as the better heir to the throne. One of his best and most popular complaints was his claim that Antoinette had prevented him from joining his brother’s council. If not for l‘Austrichienne, he could be putting this wonderful gifts he had into practice for the good of the country. ¹⁸ What Provence did not seem to understand was that if Louis and Antoinette fell, he would too. The King had a "Wealthy dissolute" cousin, called the Duc D’Orleans, a "vain, selfish rake who cared for nothing but his own sordid pleasure" who "corrupted everything within his reach." Yet in still, he was very popular among the restless, anti-Antoinette throngs in Paris, which had by this time become a virtual "node of resistance" and became a spokesman for them. ¹⁹

In 1751, before Marie Antoinette was even born, Louis XV’s idiot daughter Sophie heard that the Parisians were once again crying out for bread. "If only those poor people could bring themselves to eat pastry!" She exclaimed. A hundred and some years later, the people of Paris were still crying out for bread and the remark was attributed to Marie Antoinette, who certainly never said it. Yet it remains the most lasting testament to the remarkable stories and just outright untruths told about the Queen that remained credited to this day. ²⁰

To conserve meager funds, Antoinette ceased holding balls and dinners, ordered old gowns mended and old shoes resoled. Her household was downsized when she let go two hundred servants "for reasons of economy." But even those that remained on the payroll couldn’t keep silent. One of the court musicians told Marie that "A Queen who does her duty will remain in her apartments to knit." ²¹ The servant was referring to Antoinette’s new practice of spending "hours mulling over letters, reports and memoranda" and was "entirely occupied with the arrangements regarding the interior, the economies, the reforms, the parliamentary discussions." Married to a man of limited intelligence, she felt forced to attended to things herself, "handling crises, meeting with ministers, reading documents, generally working to solve whatever difficulties Louis incapacity presented her with". At the first meetings of the Estate General, Antoinette sat quiet and attentive. "The King . . . sat on his velvet chair and dozed." ²² When he finally got up to give a boring speech about how he was a king and very powerful, but how he would use his power only for the good of his people, he stood, shifting around nervously, speaking in a falsetto and pulling his hat on and off. Members of the clergy and noble class removed their immediately, almost as a reflex, but some members of the third estate kept theirs uncovered the entire time. Those who saw what had happened looked closely, but no lightening bolt from heaven came down to strike them dead. "For many at that moment, an idol was shattered." ²³ Soon afterwards, the Tennis Court Oath was declared, and the revolution was underway.

On October 12 of 1793, little over four years later, Marie was bought in for her interrogation before the Revolutionary Tribunal. She was a widow. Her husband had been killed earlier in the year, and her children had been taken away from her. She was all alone and she knew that no matter what she said, the outcome of her trial would be the same. She was would be sentenced to death. Yet she still held her head high, still kept her nobility of manner throughout the indignity of being subjected to the whims of a common people. The Tribunal led her through all that she expected, questions about her expenses and role in the Diamond Necklace Affair and tales of her subjugation of the King and sedition, and through it all, she kept her calm. It was only when they asked her about her "improper" relations with the Dauphin that she lost her cool.

"That, finally, the widow Capet, immoral in every way and a new Agrippina, is so perverted and so familiar with every crime that, forgetting her position as a mother and the line drawn by the laws of nature, she did not recoil from indulging with Louis-Charles Capet, her son, as is confessed by the latter, in indecencies the mere idea and mention of which arouse a shudder of horror." The Prosecutor accused. ²⁴ For a few seconds, Antoinette sat absolutely still as if she couldn’t believe what she had heard. "The prisoner makes no comment on this accusation." She heard someone say. Then she stood, her indignation and anger reverberating from every pore and spoke. ²⁵ "If I did not answer that question, it was because nature itself refuses to answer such a question when put to a mother. I appeal to all mothers who may be here present." ²⁶ "I appeal to the conscience and feelings of every mother present, to declare if there be one amongst you who does not shudder at the idea of such horrors." At this, a "Wave of electricity swept the vast room." Women in the room were screaming and yelling and applauding. The judges had to call for order and after a few moments, the session had to be suspended and Marie was dragged out. ²⁷

Yet and still, the result of the trial was a foregone conclusion, as she well knew. "Pay attention," said the prosecutor on the last day of her trial. "Your sentence will be read to you." "It is useless to read it; I know the sentence only too well." Marie said. Earlier in the day she’d told someone close to her that "It was all over for [her]" ²⁸ And indeed it was, for she was condemned to death at four o’clock in the morning of October the sixteenth. ²⁹

Popular memory of Marie Antoinette puts her as a stupid woman who willfully ignored the plight of the French people and cared more for herself than her country. The hate is not so virulent, yet the misconceptions remain. The "Let them eat cake" story has withstood over two hundred years without any sign of abating, yet from the very start it was known that the story—at least as it is attributed to Marie—wasn’t true. The Revolutionary Tribunal and the Cardinal de Rohan so effectively vilified her that even two hundred some years after her death, only the black marks remain. Though one must doubt the reports of a head-in-hand Marie wandering around Versailles seeking absolution, it is certainly true that some sort of vindication is due her, if not for her sake, than at least for the sanctity and truthfulness of history. It is impossible to view the France of today without considering the struggles that allowed it to happen. Marie Antoinette is one of the unfortunate victims of that struggle; her life cut short to save a country, and to end the way of life she represented. Looking back from our vantage point of two hundred plus years, we can point back and easily see the many missteps that eventually cost her her life, but we can also look back and see her objectively, as a product of her times. A woman who was, as she said ". . . too young and thoughtless."