Marie Antoinette

22:29He's referring to this story of this out-of-touch princess, and she was so out-of-touch when the people were starving and they said they had no bread, she said, why did they eat briot? It's only the 1840s where we get the first case of that story being told in print as, oh, that was Marie Antoinette. It's one of these things about historical figures that just recurs, but unfortunately no truth whatsoever.

22:53But now, though the coronation goes smoothly despite the unrest, the problem of childlessness in the royal marriage remains unresolved. The new queen's desperation rising when a four-year-old orphan is injured by her horses. She secures his grandmother's permission to raise him herself at Versailles. There she has him washed and dressed in lace, only returning him to his family when he howls with homesickness. Her husband distracts himself from the problem with his support for the American colonists in their American War of Independence from Britain, which adds hundreds of millions of livres to the national debt.

23:34Meanwhile, Marie Antoinette finds solace in pleasure. She essentially takes what one of her biographers has referred to this as a kind of displacement activity so she flings herself into having a nice time into fashion, into gambling into parties, into champagne She takes refuge at a place called the Petit Triennant a mini palace that's built away from the main palace of Versailles and Louis gives this to her just shortly after they take the throne and she takes a lot of refuge there

24:10Eventually, her family see fit to intervene in the delicate issue of an heir Marie Antoinette's brother, the Emperor Joseph Comes on a mission to sort the problem Every time I read about this I feel visceral cringe Thinking about your brother coming to have a chat with your husband About why you're not knocked up yet And he writes back to friends of his And he's like, I don't think there's anything physically wrong I think he just doesn't know what he's doing it. But despite the awkwardness, it's possible her brother's mediation works. Because the following spring, after eight years of marriage, Marie Antoinette is pregnant with her first child.

24:50On December the 19th, 1778, a baby daughter arrives named Marie Thérèse, after the queen's mother. And three years later, a longed-for son is finally born to a euphoric Marie Antoinette, whose popularity soars for a while.

25:12But the royal couple's joy will prove fleeting. A malicious engraving emerges, questioning the baby Dauphin's paternity by depicting Marie Antoinette cradling the baby, accompanied by Louis XVI wearing a cuckold's horns. One of the key things to bear in mind is that because Louis XVI doesn't take a royal mistress or mistresses, as his grandfather had done, it's just her. So before this, these kind of things would have been normally targeted at royal mistresses. They're the kind of thing that you sort of write about Madame du Barry or du Pompadour. These are kind of safe female targets. And it is misogynistic because it allows people to attack the king without running the risk of being accused of treason or of the crime of les majestés, which is an attack on the dignity of the person of the king, which could still result in very, very serious convictions.

26:07And this is why people end up in the places like the Bastille for writing these things, these what they call libel, these libelous pamphlets. So when it's just her, that means that the focus is wholly on her as this target for frustration, for ire, for anger with the situation, with the economic crisis, with the perceptions of the monarchy and so long. As France's economic woes deepen, Marie Antoinette's targeting by the Libelle will get progressively worse.

26:56And the food tastes better because Pepsi brings out more flavor, more fun, and more of the moment. Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a Pepsi Zero Sugar today. Get your tickets now for the Dog Stars. It's no surprise how fast civilization can disappear. Out there. Kill or be killed. Jacob Elordi. There are people out there. They need our help. Josh Brolin. Shoot first and inquire afterwards. Margaret Qualley. Okay, tough guy. And Guy Pearce. Arm up! The Dog Stars, directed by Ridley Scott. In theaters August 28th. Get tickets now. Rated R. Under 17, not admitted without parents. On October the 19th, 1781, a long way from France, a victory takes place in Yorktown, Virginia, where George Washington's forces, supported by the French fleet, defeat the British in the American War of Independence.

27:51One French hero of the conflict, the Marquis de Lafayette, is graciously received by the king and queen on his return, though he notes that the cost of just one of their lavish court balls could have equipped a whole regiment in America. Even so, the profligacy of Versailles continues apace. In the early 1780s, Marie Antoinette develops a model village where she plays at being a shepherd and dairymaid, and her husband gifts her with the palace of Saint-Cloud. Before long, her spending wins her the unflattering nickname Madame Deficit. Even the birth of a second son fails to move the needle on her approval, with the libelle again questioning the child's paternity and painting his mother as an extravagant and lecherous queen.

28:41There are various stories of her affairs. There are stories of her having affairs with men, with women, nonsense stories, both in terms of King's brother, no, her friends being her lesbian lovers, no. But there was at least one, even if we can't prove definitively, that there was a physical affair. I think it's pretty clearly that it was an emotional romantic affair, which is a relationship with a Swedish soldier and aristocrat called Axel von Fersen, Count von Fersen. Part of the problem is that a lot of their letters went missing or destroyed or redacted. Work that has been done to kind of scan the redacted letters and see the information that's underneath, it does now kind of suggest there was an emotional relationship, an emotional affair of some kind there.

29:26Though many of the rumours are groundless, the scene is set for a scandal in the 1780s that is known as the Diamond Necklace Affair.

29:38Cardinal Louis de Rohe, who is keen to win the Queen's favour, is tricked by a conwoman called Jeanne de la Motte, who persuades him to help buy a diamond necklace, apparently on behalf of Marie Antoinette. But the crook and her accomplices steal it and sell off the diamonds. In the meantime, Marie Antoinette is billed by the jeweller for 1.5 million francs for a necklace she doesn't own and didn't agree to buy. Even though the Countess de Lamotte was discovered and convicted as a thief, She is branded with the letter V for voles, or a French word for female thief. Even though this happens, the Queen's reputation is tarnished because she now fits even more with that negative image of her in the public imagination as a spendthrift, but also as a scammer, as someone who is willing to manipulate and to control other people to do her bidding.

30:35She has a common theme in the way that she was seen in some of the pamphlets written about her. After the fallout from the diamond necklace affair, and the birth of a fourth child, Sophie, who dies in infancy, Marie Antoinette becomes Stelia. Now in her thirties, and an adoring mother, she has much to protect. Things only get worse for her when the Dauphin falls ill with tuberculosis of the spine. Meanwhile, her husband, overwhelmed by his failure to resolve France's debt, falls into a depression. The pressures of the financial crisis and the efforts at reform and the calls for reform coming from different sections of French society, including some members of the aristocracy, that pushes Louis into what has been described by some historians as a kind of breakdown in the 1780s.

31:27And at this point, she really steps into politics, which doesn't make her popular at court and also seems to be transgressing female gendered expectations as well. She's the first queen consort in France to ever attend a meeting of the Council of State, for example. That's before the revolution. She opposes reform. She dismisses popular ministers before the revolution who are looking at introducing reforms as well.

31:56To manage France's financial crisis, Louis summons the Estates General, a gathering of representatives from the clergy, the nobility, and the common people. But during the meeting, the first of its kind since 1614, the royal couple are distracted by the deteriorating health of their eldest son. Then, aged just seven, he dies, leaving his parents devastated.

32:26In the world beyond their private grief, the challenges faced by the estates general intensify. Bread prices continue to rise, and public order is on the verge of collapse. Taking matters into their own hands, the deputies of the Third Estate, that of the common people, create what they call the National Assembly. When they are locked out of their meeting hall at Versailles, they gather in a nearby tennis court, where they take what becomes known as the Tennis Court Oath. They will not disband until they have written a constitution.

33:03At first, Louis XVI vacillates in his response, but eventually orders the deputies of the first and second estates, the clergy and nobility, to join the assembly, turning it into a unified body. An uneasy peace settles between monarch and assembly, but rumors swirl that the king is preparing to dissolve the assembly by force. The fear of a royal crackdown grows, and Parisians begin arming themselves, until, on July the 14th, 1789, a crowd storms the Bastille, a medieval fortress holding weapons and gunpowder, as well as a small number of prisoners. At Versailles, Louis is oblivious to the chaos in the capital, until he receives word in bed of what has happened from a duke.

33:50Is it a revolt? he asks. To which the nobleman replies, no, sire, it is a revolution.

34:03With the opening shots of the French Revolution now fired, members of the aristocracy begin to decide that staying in France is too dangerous. After the summer of 1789, a lot of French aristocrats and some members of the monarchy or the extended French royal family have gone to other parts of Europe, where in some cases they have rallied with armies and military from other countries, to start sort of planning a kind of a tax and to try to put the monarchy back where it was. Back in Paris, the revolutionary leaders work on establishing a constitutional monarchy in which the sovereign has reduced powers, limited by France's first written constitution, which they're in the process of drawing up.

34:44But first, they set out a statement of intent, known as the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, a foundational text of the revolution that proclaims liberty, equality, and the rights of all citizens before the law. But the king is in no rush to sign it. Now the assembly makes the laws. He only has the power of a suspensive veto over them. His use of the power earns him and the Queen new nicknames, Monsieur and Madame Vito. Aware of her own unpopularity, Marie Antoinette attempts to keep a low profile, but she can barely take a walk in her own gardens without being insulted through the gates.

35:27In part for her protection, the King summons a new regiment to Versailles and welcomes them with a banquet. Except, in the Paris press, the event is portrayed as a decadent royal orgy. The bread shortages continue, as does Louis' failure to fully cooperate with the Assembly. Every day, breaking point seems nearer. In early October, thousands of Parisian market women march to Versailles. Temporarily calmed by the grain and bread Louis offers, as well as his eventual signing of the Declaration, the crowd erupts again at night. The women break into the palace and storm into the chamber of the queen, where they tear her bed apart.

36:16The next day, the royal family are forcefully accompanied to Paris by the market women, where they are installed in the Tuileries Palace, prisoners in all but name. With the help of the queen's confidant, Count von Fersen, they consider their options. So in the summer of 1791, they eventually agree that they're going to try to get out and they will go to the east. The assumption is that they will try to get to Vienna. We have to remember, of course, at this point that there is saber-rattling in various parts of Europe about the French Revolution and there's a risk to them getting out and the fears that they would encourage an uprising to come back in and undo the revolution.

36:56In the middle of one night in June 1791, the royal family, along with Louis' sister and the children's governess, leave Paris in disguise. But before the carriage can rendezvous with the royalists waiting for them at the border, they are stopped in Varennes, a small town in the northeast. Louis is recognized as the face on the Assignat, the new paper currency, and the family is escorted back to the capital. But when they come back in 1791, The people of Paris who line the streets to watch them coming back don't do anything. They just stare at them in silence. Some people just turn their backs.

37:36And that's somehow worse than hurling abuse because at least you care if you hurl abuse. But just staring at them in total silence says something very, very powerful about the way they were now seen. The flight to Feren is a turning point because it really marked the no-going back in terms of the monarchy as something that can coexist with the revolution. Austria and Prussia now officially declare their backing of the king, and thousands of army officers join the émigrés and gather at the frontier. In April 1792, France declares war in Austria because there has been some threats from Austria and from Prussia about, if you do anything to the royal family, we're going to come in and we're going to destroy you, or we want the monarchy back the way it was.

38:17The rest of Europe is very afraid of the French Revolution and its impact because it shows what can happen. And it makes them think, actually, they might come for our monarchies next. We don't like this. So there's real fear about the old order falling apart. For the Austrian-born queen, war with Austria makes her position in France ever more precarious.

38:40But by now, she is far from an innocent victim. Even her sympathetic biographers agree that Marie Antoinette did give military information to the Austrians. She did share information about French plans she was privy to. This did directly lead to the defeat of the French Revolutionary Armies in some engagements. So there is that direct intervention. She liaised with Axel von Fersen, her lover, to essentially reimburse Prussian military costs out of French coffers. So there's definitely truth to the idea that she was the real power behind the throne as her. Not wholly, not singly, it's not all of her doing.

39:19But equally, she does play a role. She's not the sort of mute, hapless figure that I think some kind of people want her to be.

39:30In August 1792, revolutionary fury escalated by the war with Austria and suspicions of the Queen's treachery boils over. A Parisian mob storms the Tuileries Palace. This time, the guards of the royal family are butchered, though the king, queen, and their children flee in time to the assembly. The family, including the 13-year-old Marie-Thérèse and Louis, who was just seven, are now imprisoned in the Tower of the Temple, a medieval fortress. The summer ends with darker horrors. The prisons of Paris become abattoirs in the bloody September massacres, as enraged citizens slaughter hundreds of suspected royalists.

40:16The head of Princes de Lambal, the close friend of Marie Antoinette, is placed on a pike and paraded past the queen's window. Soon after, France declares itself a republic, formally abolishing the monarchy. One of its first decisions is to put its former king on trial for treason. In January, stripped of his titles and now addressed by the court simply as Louis Capet. The former Louis XVI is found guilty and sentenced to death.

41:12more fun, and more of the moment. Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a Pepsi Zero Sugar today. Get your tickets now for the Dog Stars. It's no surprise how fast civilization can disappear. Out there. Just kill or be killed. Jacob Alordi. There are people out there. They need our help. Josh Brolin. Shoot first and inquire afterwards. Margaret Qualley. Ow! Okay, tough buddy. And guide peers. Arm up! The Dog Stars, directed by Ridley Scott. In theaters August 28th. Get tickets now. Rated R. Under 17, not a minute without parents.

41:53It is 7 o 'clock in the evening on January the 20th, 1793, inside the Tower of the Temple in Paris. Marie Therese, the teenage daughter of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, follows her mother up the cold stone steps, making their way to the king's quarters. Close behind are her younger brother, eight-year-old Louis Charles, and Madame Elizabeth, the king's devoted sister. When the guards leading them reach the king's apartments, they knock firmly. The door creaks open, and Marie Therese stumbles in shock at the sight of her father. Louis has been imprisoned apart from them for six weeks, but he appears to have aged years in that short time.

42:45His face is drawn, his skin pale with worry and exhaustion. He rises from the desk where he has been writing farewell letters, and the family rushes into his arms. Marie Antoinette presses herself against her husband, holding little Louis Charles tightly as he sobs. Madame Elizabeth clings to her brother, weeping quietly. Soon, the guard gruffly intervenes. It is time to say goodbye. Gently, Louis extricates himself from his family, promising they will see him again in the morning. He kisses them one final time and retreats to his small bedroom as they are led away.

43:35That night Marie-Thérèse lies rigid in her narrow bed, dreading what the morning will bring. Outside the thick stone walls of the temple tower, the bells of Paris toll through the long cold hours. At last, just after six o 'clock in the morning, there is a sharp knock at the door. Marie-Thérèse scrambles up, hoping a guard has come to escort them to her father. But the expressionless man at the threshold asks only for a prayer book, which the former king has requested for his final devotions. The realization settles with a sickening weight. She will not see him again.

44:22Peering through the narrow window, she notices that the great gates of the temple have been locked, the surrounding streets empty of the usual bustle. An eerie hush has settled over the city. Marie-Thérèse strains for a final glimpse of her father being led away, but to no avail. Then, just before half past ten, the rhythmic beat of drums carries through the air from the Place de la Révolution. Moments later, a cannon is fired, and a burst of wild cheering echoes back across the rooftops.

45:05Marie-Thérèse turns to see her mother, Marie-Antoinette, sitting pale and silent in her grief. But Aunt Elizabeth can't hold back her anguish. The monsters, she cries, her voice breaking. They are satisfied now.

45:28After the death of Louis, his wedding ring finds its way back, through friendly hands, to Marie Antoinette, along with a message telling her he only parted with it with his life. The former queen is felled by grief, and her health, fragile for some time, begins to deteriorate. She suffers from hemorrhages that have since been attributed to early menopause, fibroids, or the early signs of cancer of the womb. But there is a flicker of hope.

45:59In the wake of Louis' execution, Britain, Spain, and others join forces against revolutionary France while royalists stage uprisings elsewhere in the country, determined to avenge the king they regard as a martyr. In Paris, the mood darkens. The so-called convention has replaced the assembly and forms the Revolutionary Tribunal, a special court for the trial of political offenders accused of counter-revolutionary activities. The new nine-member Committee of public safety, also promises to root out enemies in a period known as the Reign of Terror. Then, in one of the greatest tragedies for Marie Antoinette, in July she is separated from her young son Louis Schaar.

46:46He is placed in the care of a cobbler who indoctrinates him with lies about his mother that later lead to shocking allegations.

46:58Austrian victories that summer mean Marie Antoinette comes to the forefront of discussions at the convention and the Committee of Public Safety. She is moved from the rooms she shares with her daughter and sister-in-law and taken to the much grimmer surrounds of the conciergerie prison where suspected enemies of the state are held. She is denied writing materials much of the time, and privacy always, with two gendarmes watching her day and night. A rescue plot only makes things worse for her, and after two months she is officially charged with immorality and treason. Elsewhere, at an all-night meeting of the Committee of Public Safety, radical journalist and politician Jacques-René Hébert is keen to make good on a public pledge he made to the French people.

47:47I have promised the head of Antoinette, he says. I will go and cut it off myself if there is any delay in giving it to me. A trial begins on October the 14th, 1793. Had they concentrated on, we think that you've been involved in giving information to our enemies, I think it probably wouldn't have backfired in terms of the revolution's legacy and the revolution's image in the way that it did but they pushed it a little bit further and one of the things that's leveled at her she's not on trial for this but it's used to sort of smear her reputation is an accusation of sexual abuse and incest involving her son who she would have seen as the heir to the french crown this is for her the absolute worst thing you can say i mean i think for anyone it would be the worst thing you could imagine to be said about you that's the accusation that really provokes a reaction from her.

48:42She says, I call upon all mothers present to say whether such a thing is possible. And that's the point where even in the courtroom, there's a sort of rumbling of, oh, this has gone a little bit too far.

49:00After her eloquent defense of herself, Marie Antoinette hopes the trial might still go her way, ignorant of the promise of her head that has been made. When she returns to the court, she is handed the verdict of the jury. Guilty on all counts, she is given the death penalty. That night, she writes to her sister-in-law to extend her pardon to her son, whom she understands was manipulated into making the allegations. On the day of her execution, she is denied the carriage that was afforded to her husband and is taken instead to the scaffold in an open cart. Her hair has been shorn, and her hands tied roughly behind her back.

49:44As she approaches the guillotine, she steps on the foot of the executioner. Her apology to him, Excuse me, monsieur, I did not mean to do it, will serve as her last words. The blade falls just after midday, and the head of the former queen is held up to the ecstatic crowds.

50:08Her body is thrown in a communal grave, but not before a young artist makes a death mask of her face. The artist will exhibit this keepsake in the London Museum that she opens in her own name, that of Madame Tussauds. Another memento records Marie Antoinette's last moments. There is a sketch by artist Jacques-Louis David, who's a very important revolutionary and Napoleonic artist. He sketches her going to the guillotine, and it's just literally just like a little line drawing. And what it shows us is a woman who is sitting ramrod straight with her hands tied behind her back. So there's a kind of a defiance there.

50:51In the image, some see the determination of a woman who lived out her entire life in the public eye with courage and defiance, even in the face of hatred and persecution. others interpret her stance as indicative of the haughtiness and arrogance of which she was long accused and in the years since her death historians writers filmmakers and others have continued to disagree about who she was and how she should be remembered in truth she was neither the heartless villain of revolutionary propaganda nor the blameless smarter of legend since, but something less definable. A queen caught in a collapsing world, trying imperfectly to survive.

51:36It's striking how often she's still, in the public imagination, presented as a kind of naive, innocent, who's caught up in events beyond her control. She's a hapless victim of a revolution. She's just a mother trying to do her best. You know, she just had some nice clothes and people didn't like her because of that. Which is a misconception. because she does try to influence French politics before and during the revolution. She does enter into politics in a way that other queens hadn't. She does commit treason, technically, in her actions during the revolutionary wars. On the other hand, there's a tendency that is also untrue and inaccurate to present her as this kind of proto-feminist figure, as a kind of girl boss.

52:17She's a strong woman doing strong woman things. And, you know, she's kicking ass against big, bad revolutionaries. This is a total misconception. that's not what she was she is of her time and she's very much of her time and she isn't the sort of female badass that people want her to be if you want female badasses there are lots of others in the revolutionary period that you can talk about she is not one of them

52:50next time on Short History we'll bring you a short history of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. I think the use of the bomb led to other nations wanting to develop it. And whether they would have done the same if they'd simply learned about the existence of the bomb, a bomb that had not been used, I don't know. If you want one silver lining, no one has used one since Nagasaki. And one can only hope that memories of the utter destruction of these bombs, of what they did to human beings, will prevent people, prevent governments from ever deploying them again.

53:38That's next time.

53:45If you can't wait a week until the next episode, you can listen to it right away by subscribing to Noiser Plus. Head to www.noiser.com forward slash subscriptions for more information. The perfect lunch combo. That first bite of your favorite sub, followed by ice-cold Pepsi. Add a couple of friends, and now that's next level. Suddenly, the laughs get louder, the stories keep flowing, and the food tastes better. Because Pepsi brings out more flavor, more fun, and more of the moment. Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a Pepsi Zero Sugar today. Hi, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Are you looking for a beach read this summer?

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