Tea at Trianon: Marie Antoinette and the Stories We Prefer to Tell

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, August 14, 2024

Marie Antoinette and the Stories We Prefer to Tell

Dauphin Louis-Charles or Louis XVII

Marie-Antoinette de Lorraine d'Autriche

Of course, Marie-Antoinette was never indifferent to the poverty of the people since some of her first recorded deeds as wife to the heir to the throne involved her efforts to relieve suffering. From Front Porch Republic:

The use of the dead Marie Antoinette as a republican icon is something that ought to be carefully considered. It is a willful simplification of the past in order to tell a gentler and more fun story to a modern nation. The French dislike of Marie Antoinette in the late 18th century is well documented and well deserved. Her lavish lifestyle and indifference to the poverty of the French people made her a public enemy when the revolutionary committee came to power. Her husband Louis XVI was executed for treason by guillotine, baptizing the revolution with the thrill of public blood. Marie and her children were imprisoned in the Concierge, initially together, and then forcibly separated. The revolutionary tribunal blamed her for the lavish expenditure of the royal court and for her ongoing communications with rival Austria. However, she was also accused and tried for a host of fabricated charges, including incest with her seven year old son (a false explanation for the wounds the boy suffered while in prison). The child signed an affidavit of this abuse by his mother after being visited in prison by radical members of the tribunal, certainly under pressure and possibly under compulsion. For these things, Marie was executed publicly at the guillotine. Her son spent three more years in prison, where he was tortured by his jailers and died of tuberculosis at age ten. He was not directly executed like his parents, but his death by abuse was a great convenience to the new republic, who feared that his royal blood might arouse sympathies in his powerful relatives across Europe.

The execution of Marie Antoinette and the treatment of her family is nothing for France to be proud of. Her punishment is the first evidence of a revolution run amok. The spirit of her trial was public vengeance and it can barely be considered a legal proceeding. Her child, age seven, was forced to testify under duress and in prison to incestuous rape by his mother. The effort put forth to bring this particular charge against Marie shows that the trial was not solely about her conduct of affairs of state, but rather about humiliating her publicly. Marie refused to answer the charge in the courtroom, saying it was beneath her dignity as a mother. Killing Marie was not an act of justice. It was extrajudicial public revenge and an act worthy of, if not outright condemnation, then at least very careful reconsideration. The imprisonment and death of her son is a clear example of cruelty and abuse to an innocent child for the sake of convenience and as an act of family retribution.

The Olympic torch traveled past the headless Marie and through a staging of Les Miserables’ famous barricades. The French opening ceremonies thematically tied all of these events together for the viewer. In their preferred story, Marie was justifiably killed by a righteous revolution, now remembered in heroic songs and glorified as a time of liberation for the people. Nobody should begrudge a nation’s desire to show the very best of their heritage and culture to the world. However, the conscious rewriting of an event and glorification of a national evil is troubling. A similar editing of national memory played out in the decades following the collapse of the Vichy government, France’s Nazi-collaborating wartime regime. (Read more.)