In Our Time - Marie Antoinette

Episode Date: November 8, 2018

In a programme first broadcast in November 2018, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Austrian princess Maria Antonia, child bride of the future French King Louis XVI. Their marriage was an attempt to bring about a major change in the balance of power in Europe and to undermine the influence of Prussia and Great Britain, but she had no say in the matter and was the pawn of her mother, the Empress Maria Theresa. She fulfilled her allotted role of supplying an heir, but was sent to the guillotine in 1793 in the French Revolution, a few months after her husband, following years of attacks on her as a woman who, it was said, betrayed the King and as a foreigner who betrayed France to enemy powers. When not doing these wrongs, she was said to be personally bankrupting France. Her death shocked royal families throughout Europe, and she became a powerful symbol of the consequences of the Revolution. With Catriona Seth Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature at the University of OxfordKatherine Astbury Professor of French Studies at the University of WarwickandDavid McCallam Reader in French Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of SheffieldProducer: Simon Tillotson

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programmes if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoyed the programmes. Hello, Marie Antoinette was born in 1755 in Vienna, the 15th child of the Empress Maria Theresa and the Holy Roman Emperor, one of the most powerful rulers in Europe.

She was 13 when her mother married her off to the future King of France in the hope of making an ally of an old enemy. She died on the guillotine in Paris in 1793 at the age of 37 during the French Revolution, when France and Austria were at war again. Many people said she'd turned the king against his people, had bankrupted the nation, had produced an heir who was both illegitimate and her incestuous lover, and had dined well when Paris starved. Whether that was true or not, it didn't matter.

The revolution needed a scapegoat. With me to discuss Marianne Adire, Katjona Seth, Marshall Foch Professor of French Literature at the University, at the University of Oxford, Catherine Asprey, Professor of French Studies at the University of Warwick, and David McCallum, reading in French 18th century studies at the University of Sheffield. Cacciona, what were the expectations for Marie Antoine when she was born?

So when Marie Antoinette's born, as you said, she's the 15th of 16 children, and one of the things which the Austrians have been doing marvellously for the past few generations is marrying off their children and making sure that by marrying them to the right people, they have political allies. So another princess or another archduchess to give her the official title she had at court in Austria is another child to be married, so another political pawn in a sense.

So I think those are the initial expectations. So she's not thought of as someone who's going to have any form of political career. She doesn't need any great amount of learning. What she does have to do is to know how to comport herself as a princess, to behave like a princess, and how to serve Austria in a sense and to serve Austria probably over. overseas as the wife of a foreign prince. When you say she wasn't very intensively educated, can you elaborate on that? Yes, so education at court in Austria is handled by governesses for the girls,

and the governesses make sure that the girls can read and write. French is a court- To what level? She's supposed to be not very keen on reading. Marie Antoinette is not very keen on reading. She's given when it's decided that she will marry the heir to the throne of France, She's given a French abb to come along and tutor her, the Abbe Vermon, to help her not make mistakes in French,

to help her increase her knowledge of French literature and how sort of French families are related to each other and everything she might need to know at court. She's never been a great reader until then. She's not a great reader once she gets to France. She does, however, have some particular skills. For instance, she's a very good musician. She has a fine ear.

She enjoys music. who plays the harp. She spends a lot of time practicing, so she does have talents. She dances well. There's a lot of dancing which goes on at court, caught masks, caught balls and so on. So she does have some talents and some skills, but certainly not, an academic education, which is at a very high level. She wasn't originally intended to marry the King of France, but two of her older sister died, and her sisters died, so she was pushed up, wasn't she? Well, what happens in Austria is that by the time Marie Antoinette married,

is the dauphin. She is the one child who's in a sense available to marry him. And Maria Theresa, who's been marrying off all the other archduchesses, when one of them dies, then indeed pushes the others up. So for instance, the child who's supposed to be marrying the King of Naples dies of the smallpox and a younger sister can then step in if necessary or an older sister if there happens to be one and so on. So in a sense when you're married to a foreign prince, you're married because of the dynastic union and not at all because you have a character which might be compatible or because there might be any other reason to choose you as an individual.

She was married by symbolically married when she was 14 and he was 18 or 19 and then a year later they were properly married. Pretty young. So when Marie-Antoine was married to the dauphin, what happens, as is the case for all these marriages between two princes of separate dynasties, you have an initial proxy marriage in the woman's hometown or home city. So Marie Antoinette is married by proxy in the Augustina Kirche, which is the Hofburg's Palace Church and parish church indeed in Vienna.

She then undertakes a very long trip from Vienna to Versailles and the proper marriage takes place in Versailles. The same thing had happened when her brother, Joseph, the Archduke Joseph, future emperor, had married Isabella of Parma. Isabella had had a proxy marriage in Parma before having her real marriage in Vienna. But this procter marriage enabled her to travel through France as the prospective bride of the future King of France, so she had dignity and status from the word go. She has dignity and status. She has a very large retinue, lots of carriages going with her. She has an Austrian suite which accompanies her as far as the border.

where she sort of leaves the German-speaking world, and she's then handed over to France. That's an intriguing ceremony, because as I understand it, a posse of ladies-in-waiting from France, take her into a room, a tent, I don't know what it is, strip her of all her clothes, dress her in French clothes,

and even take her away her Austrian dog, and she comes out as a French person. So the exchange happens on a small island... Did they take the dog? The exchange happens on a small island, near Strasbourg, small island on the Rhine, there is a tent, a tent decorated with tapestries which I think represent Jason and Medea

or some other terrible, terrible legend. And Marie Antoinette is disrobed. She isn't made to undress completely, but is disrobed and symbolically puts on a French dress in order to become French. She's then expected to say goodbye to bid farewell to all her Austrian suite and indeed to her dog,

who's an Austrian dog. But rest assured, tender-hearted listeners, she gets the dog back afterwards. because she's so unhappy at not having him that he is sent to her in Versailles. Ah, well, somebody has a happy ending in her story anyway. Kate asked me, what role was she expected to play at the French court?

Okay. Marie Antoinette, as Katrina's already explained, was a pawn in a dynastic battle. France and Austria have been at war with each other hereditary enemies from the 15th century. But Louis XVIth and Maria Theresa had decided that to curb Prussia's powers, they would have an alliance. And Marie Antoinette becomes the seal of that alliance. So when she arrives in France, she is in part a hostage ambassador for Austrian good behaviour.

She is also primarily, as Queen of France, wife of the king, expected to ensure the dynasty survives. So her primary function in France is to bear. is to breed. She didn't for seven years. She didn't for seven years. There's a lot of debate as to whose fault that was. The marriage was not consummated for seven years, which was a very humiliating situation for her because her only function at court is to provide the male air that will guarantee the Bourbonne line continues. What's the most reliable gossip about the cause of that? The most reliable gossip is that, it depends, I say, it depends which she told you want to believe. You want the most reliable. I think consensus is now that Louis did not

suffer from Fimosis, but nevertheless found intercourse uncomfortable. Joseph the second certainly believed that he hadn't equated ejaculation with procreation. Whatever the actual reason... Being her brother who came to try to sort things out. He came to try and sort things out because Maria Theresa, as mother, was tearing her hair out because until the marriage is consummated, the alliance is not sealed. So it's absolutely crucial importance on both sides, both the French side and the Austrian side, that the marriage is consummated and that Marie-Anternet becomes pregnant as quickly as possible. So eventually, after seven years, the marriage is consummated to take another 15 months before a child is born, sadly a daughter, which was not going

to solve the problems of the dynasty. But then, whoopee, in those days, towns, a boy turned up. A boy turned up in 1781. Though by that time, the court had already, begun discussing rumours that Louis was not the father. One of the disadvantages of taking seven years to consummate the marriage is that it gave plenty of opportunity for court gossip to suggest that Louis was not capable of fathering children. And so we find from within the court and indeed Louis' own brothers encouraging gossip that might suggest that the child was not Louis's.

Actually, we're going to talk quite a bit or going to refer, or going to rely quite a bit on gossip in this, in this preface, program, it was vicious, layer on layer of it as time we don't, about her, because of about her. How much did it matter that he did not have a mistress? I think it's very significant that Louis did not have a mistress. From the more as the beginning of the Bourbon dynasty, Henry IV, onwards the tradition or the custom had been for the king to take a mistress, several mistresses, official mistresses, unofficial mistresses.

And in part, the official mistress in particular served as a way of deflecting attention from the queen whose role is to bear children. The official mistress can be blamed if the king makes unpopular decisions. The mistress is also a way to gain the king's ear. So the mistress fulfills several functions within the court. Because Louis showed no interest whatsoever

in either his wife or in having a mistress, It means that a lot of the gossip falls on Marie Antoinette. She effectively falls into representing both mistress and queen. The gossip is directed towards her. She's also the only one who has the king's ear. So there's a concentration of power in terms of offering favours and influence that mean that her position becomes perhaps more powerful than people would like it to be. Although they live separate lives in public,

they ended up being reasonably fond of each other, as I understand it. I think initially they're not particularly close, but as time goes on, they do grow fonder of each other. Louis is certainly always very supportive of the Queen and defends her. I think that they come to an amicable arrangement.

David, David McCallum, she became a symbol of what was wrong with France at the time. We're talking about the 70s 70s 70s and 7080s galloping towards the French Revolution. What were the main accusations against her? The main accusations, really, there's two of them. One is the Austrian influence within the French court, that she's a sort of Trojan horse for Austrian intrigues,

Austrian ways of undermining France as a rival power. But she's also accused of profligacy, of undermining the French regime by draining its resources. Now, this is ultimately not necessarily true. She's known as Madame deficit. She was, and by the 1780s she became known as that. The idea, to some extent, is that she's accused of profligacy because basically she's trying to distract herself

from the fact that the marriage is not consummated. So the frivolity and dissolution of her life are ways of basically not addressing this other issue. She's not exceptionally profligate by the standards of the court. And you have to remember that Versailles is created as a place of conspicuous consumption and ostentatious expenditure. The difference is that in the 17th century, the focus of that extravagance was Louis XIV. He embodied the regime, the realm, and so this was to the greater glory of France.

Whereas displacing that onto the Queen meant that it looked like unfettered self-indulgence. And it created a court within the court around her. It was pretty self-indulgent. As I understand it, she was 300,000 all the lira for clothes in the average a year, the average peasant and, if there is an average present, and 30 a year. Yeah, that's absolutely right. This is in the mid-1780s where the French economy has already hit the buffers very badly. It's in financial crisis, and the Queen is spending, as you say,

it's about 258,000 livres on her wardrobe, whereas this is about a thousand times what the average annual wage of a Parisian worker would be. So you can understand that her reputation suffered among a population, that was impoverished and highly taxed. That was the other important thing. The upper orders of society were not taxed. The taxes fell on the poorest most. And although money was being mostly lost in the French backing,

the Americans in the American War of Independence, it would often turn to her. And scandals grew around her, particularly the diamond necklace scandal. Yeah, the diamond necklace affair, again from 1785, is one of the biggest contracks of the 18th century is masterminded by a fake countess called Jean de la Mott who convinced her lover, Cardinal Louis de Rouen,

that the best way to gain the Queen's favour was ultimately to buy for her a big, ugly, expensive necklace. 2,800 carrots. Exactly, yeah, 647 jewels in looped chains. And the Queen supposedly was keen to have this, but couldn't because it would just enhance her reputation as a ruinous spendthift in France. So the way that Jean de Lamotte ultimately convinced her lover to buy it

was by two impersonations of the Queen. One was in writing, forging her signature. The other was having a prostitute masquerade as the Queen for a midnight trist in the gardens of Versailles. So basically Louis de Rouen fell for this and he bought the necklace, gave it to Jean. was spirited away to London, broken up and sold off. When the jeweller found out, he cried foul.

Louis XVIth tried to protect his wife's reputation and ultimately put Louis de Rond on trial. That was a huge political mistake. Because on trial, all the trial briefs could rehearse in public with impunity the Queen's potential incrimination in the affair. Well, what's interesting is although, it seems, from what I've read from the three of you, she was wholly innocent, She came out of a trial very tainted

and thought there must have been something in it. She had something to do with it. She's even more corrupt than we thought. Yes, she's sort of accused by association, by implication. It's almost as though the general population is saying, in principle she didn't do it, but if she could have, she would have. Did she try to cultivate a reputation for philanthropy?

Or was she generally moved by the poverty and desolation around her? She was as philanthropic in many ways as she was profligate. She did engage in a number of philanthropic enterprises, arms to the poor, especially in the terrible winters of 1783 and 88. She adopted children as royal wards of the royal household, including a poor orphan who was nearly run over by her coach and a poor black slave boy, Jean Amilcar, who she freed and had educated.

But it didn't break through it. It wasn't enough, was it? No, and ultimately these gestures of individual compassion or royal largesse were never enough to offset the deteriorating public image of the Queen as a scheming, manipulative, unpatriotic spendthrift. Was that it then, Catriona Seth? Was that what she was stuck with from early on and she couldn't shake that off?

I think that she arrives in France. Kate reminded us of the fact that Austria is not a natural ally of France. And so, Mariont arrives in France, as the representative of a foreign nation of which a number of the French still think that it is a hereditary enemy. In a sense, public opinion has not moved with the change of power in Europe.

And so she arrives at court and there's a very strong anti-Austrian lobby already within court. So from the start, she is the Austrian princess and she'll become the Austrian, the Austrian during the revolution, with Chien in Otrichien being the bitch, the Austrian bitch in a sense.

And that's something which will stick to her all the way through. The other thing is that when she arrives at court, she's a teenager. She has very little experience. And the person she's given as a sort of minder by her mother is the Austrian ambassador. Her mother says, if you need anything, ask Count Mercier-Genteau, who's the Austrian ambassador.

He'll tell you, he will advise you. And Merci Argento very much goes beyond his brief of looking after Marie-Anda-Dolette and checking that she's coming to no harm and uses her as much as he can to further Austrian interests. And he uses her sometimes or tries to use her against France's interests. And so Marie Antoinette, while she's very happy to go along and be helpful, you know, sort of if there's an Austrian coming to France,

to say, yes, of course, you know, I welcome the court or, you know, try and sort something out for ex's brother or, you know, Y's sister and so on, when Merci Argento starts asking her to lobby for political ends, which she feels run against France's interests. Then she says, I'm not going to do it. And there are extraordinary letters from Merci Argento, the Austrian ambassador to Chancellor Kahnit's saying, I mean, quite honestly, that girl, you know,

sort of she's not backing us, you know, she's a rotten apple and so on. So she's very much somebody whom Austria is trying to keep under its thumb via Merci Argento, and she's not doing it. But it means that in a sense she's seen as not Austrian enough by the Austrians, and two Austrian by the French. And I think that is something which all through her life is a problem. But can we get a snapshot of her life at court?

She took part in amateur theatricals. She often went to the theatre by herself. That is surrounded by a mere 500 people or whatever it was. Without her husband, that was the main thing. She liked music, as you say. She played music. She loved playing with her children. So we've been an idea of a sort of rather charming,

guileless, over-privileged, but innocent inside the overprivileged because how did she know she was going to be like that person? I think that's a very fair portrait of her in many ways. She is innocent. She is young when she arrives. As David said, you know, she has nothing to do with her life and therefore she's going to party, party, party initially

and, you know, buy pretty dresses and that sort of thing. She puts on plays with her friends. She goes to concerts. She goes to dances. Once she's had her children, she becomes very much, much, I think, more a sort of caring mother figure, someone who likes to spend much less time in sort of court ceremonies and much more time with her close friends at Triannon, in particular, the small sort of pleasure house which she's being given in the grounds of Versailles.

And then the engine of the French Revolution charges in, Kate. The fall of the Bastille, that starts to rock things. How did it affect her position in court? 1789 marks a crucial year in the life of both Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Louis has called the Estates General to meet at Versailles in June 1789 at the time the Dauphin, the heir to the throne is dying. And I think both the King and the Queen are distracted by the child dying in the course of the Estates General meeting.

When the Bastille is stormed on the 14th of July 1789, almost immediately the royal family recognise that power is shifting and the struggle that's been happening between the Estates General becoming a National Assembly and the Crown is tilting things and making the situation very unstable. The Queen knows that although she is mother of the children of France, which is how her children are referred to, she is a little bit of a liability for the monarchy. Louis is still popular, he's seen as father of the people, but is considered to have been misled by his courtiers.

And so the initial reaction of the royal family is to send away from Versailles anyone who is treated in the most hostile manner by the public. So some of Marie Antoinette's close friends are sent out of the country to try and as a damage limitation out. Louis Artois goes, the younger brother. Initially, province follows quite quickly afterwards.

but it's an attempt at damage limitation to prevent the monarchy from receiving too much criticism. It doesn't entirely work because the people of Paris come to Versailles in October, 1789, to take the king and his family back to Paris on the understanding that if they're in Paris, the revolution will go better because the king can't be misled, can't be led astray. Marie Antoinette tries to keep a very low profile because she knows that she may rock the boat in terms of the political developments. And she tries very much to concentrate on her children. But I think it's fair to say that from 1790 onwards,

both she and the King are actively counter-revolutionary, that they're struggling. They think they've made concessions to the revolutionaries, and there's a point beyond which they're not prepared to go. And David McCallum, it's at this time, we have these vicious libeles against her, published in Amsterdam and London mostly. Can you give the listeners some idea of them?

Yeah, absolutely. The Libel are basically scandal-mongering pamphlets that are produced, as you say, in London and Amsterdam. Most of them are suppressed before the revolution. They're bought up by royal authorities, and they're either burned or they're held in safe houses and royal prisons. What happens with the storming of the Bastille, incidental to the famous seven prisoners being released? There's also released into circulation. a number of scabrous pornographic vilifying tracts against Marie Antoinette, which circulate readily and are much imitated.

So that there's a turn in the appreciation of Marie Antoinette in 1789, which becomes one, which as I say is fundamentally pornographic. She's pictured, for example, in steamy lesbian sex scenes with the Princess de Lombal or the Duchess de Pollyneque, or in royal orgies with the Cond d'Artois. So this is the new realisation of what the Queen is. She becomes a monstrous figure. She's often presented, for example, in mythical terms as harpy or sphinx or Gorgon.

The idea being that she is a monstrous creature that lies somewhere outside of the wholesome new revolutionary body politic. What sort of truth is there in this? There's no truth in it at all, really. These are just a way of stimulating anti-royalist sentiment. And again, as Kate was saying earlier, it's a deflection tactic as well. It's to deflect things away from the king. The king at this point cannot be criticised because the idea is he will become the cornerstone

of a new revolutionary constitutional monarchy. The queen, however, is fair game. She doesn't actually have any political status as such. so there's a sense in which she can be scapegoated in this way. What happens do you have that these line was hardened into people thinking of them as real facts? I'm not sure there's that much evidence for that per se. I think they are so powerful and effective because they emphasise the graphic in the pornographic.

They're often very visual. They're either illustrated or accompanied with caricatures. For example, Katrioni was saying earlier about the, Eutrichien becoming chien as bitch. And obviously this is a dog on heat, is the notion with Marie Antoinette. But even the autrish bit becomes autrush. It becomes effectively an ostrich, a vain and foolish bird with a voracious appetite. And there's a 1791 cartoon of Marie Antoinette guzzling as an ostrich,

guzzling the nation's wealth, but with the new constitution sticking physically in her throat. So I think it's the visual aspect which makes them. believe because the literacy rates in the population were relatively low. So they had quite a lot of clout in that sense. Katiana, how much support did Marianne Antoinette get from Austria at this point? Did she seek it as well? Mariantonet seeks support from Austria. When the king and queen are brought to Paris, they're initially in the Touloguille. The Toulogu is a royal palace but which hadn't been used as a residence by the kings of France during Louis XVI reign. So they move in. It's all done in a bit of a hurry.

They're given rooms, things are sorted out. A semblance of court life starts up again, but it's a semblance of court life in which the royal family is semi-underhouse arrest. They're allowed to go to Saint-Clu from time to time, which is another of the royal palaces in the country, but they're not always allowed to do what they want. They know that they're being watched at all times. And in fact, they'll be stopped from going to Saint-Clu at one point at Easter.

But so they're in court, they're being watched, and they're trying to live apparently normal lives. One of the things Marie Antoinette will do is take things in hand in order to try and improve what's going on. And more and more, as time goes on, it becomes clear both to the king and queen that the concessions they're having to make are excessive. And so how can one stop making these concessions by getting people to react? how can one get people to react? Well, by using possibly external forces. So external forces either as lobbies or external forces possibly to invade France.

Kate, were there any signs that women were especially picked on or were they particularly irrelevant? Or the opposite, were they particularly irrelevant? The question of the role of women during the revolution is an extremely interesting one. I think the more radical the revolution becomes and more misogynistic it gets. What we find is,

in the Declaration of the Rights of Man, which is proclaimed on the 26th of August 1789, as a stopgap while they write a constitutional monarchy, write a constitution for a constitutional monarchy, the Declaration says that all men are born equal. They mean that in a universal sense, but quite quickly it becomes clear that they don't include women in that universal concept of men.

And that's because those who are writing the Declaration of the Rights of Man have an 18th century, concept of biological difference, inspired in part by Rousseau, that women belong in the private sphere and man belongs in the public sphere. So it never entered their minds that women should be seen as active citizens in the New France. When Olamte de Guz writes a declaration of the rights of women in 1791 and dedicates it to the Queen, she tries to show the paradox of a concept of a Republican, not a Republican, a concept of a revolutionary idea of citizenship

that excludes women. She says if women can have the right to be killed for their beliefs, they should have the right to be able to form the laws that sends them to the scaffold. As the revolution becomes more radical, we find that there's an attempt to suppress female voices because they're seen as disturbing the social order. David

Finally Marie Antoinette and Louis decide to get out of Paris He writes a letter denouncing The Revolution Rather foolish, he leaves it where it can be found And they set off for Varenne Now what was the point of all that

The point of all that really was The culmination of the stress they felt Of being under almost constant And intense surveillance as Katrioni was saying earlier, from about late 1790 onwards, the restrictions placed on the royal family's movements

became unbearable. So by June 1791, Marie Antoinette has convinced the king that their only hope of restoring royal authority is to flee Paris where they're being held as virtual prisoners and head for a northern fortified town such as Montmedie where they can make a stand and possibly rally around themselves monarchical support to reverse the course of the Revenue.

Now, at the same time, more problematically, they also bring up onto the Belgian frontier, Austrian and emigre forces. Now, the key is really that the royal family are not supposed to leave the French territory for this to be successful. The escape plan itself was dogged by both poor execution and bad luck. Marie Antoinette organized this basically in a coach that was possibly too large, too slow, too cumbersome. She preferred to take her trusted ladies in waiting with her instead of a useful man of action who could have helped the king make decisions on route. The harnesses broke on the first leg of the journey,

they missed the first rendezvous point. They were recognised at Saint-Menio. The guy who recognised them galloped ahead, alerted the National Guard, and they were halted, as you say, at Varenne, in time for the arrestor warrants to arrive. And that was at the time when the... Revolutionary forces were, as it were, moving towards some sort of constitutional monarchy.

But this flight and the discovery of his denunciation of the revolution changed all that. Yeah, absolutely. What it did was it undermined any credibility in a constitutional moniker with Louis as the monarch. He had left behind ample evidence that he was ultimately unconvinced by where the revolution was going and that he saw he as king had no place in it. it actually allowed republicanism to come out of the shadows and become a word that was a potential alternative to monarchy at this time. Catherine, one charge laid against Marianneur,

was that she was pro-Austrian, that she gave information to Austria, that she was treacherous. What do you make of that? So when the king and queen are in the chelry, particularly when they've got back after having been arrested in Varennes, as David was just saying, they are really prisoners of the Parisian people and of the Guard Nacional. They can't do what they want.

They can't go where they want. And Marie Antoinette arranges clandestine correspondence. And so it's like sort of cloak and dagger stuff where you have letters which are hidden, you know, underneath piles of other things. She's giving important information to the enemy. And so she's using, so she's sort of folding up all these letters and using them as sort of fake rappers for books and so on, writing them in cipher and so on. And she's corresponding essentially with two people outside France. And the two people she's corresponding with outside France

are the Count of Merci Argentour, whom I've already mentioned, the Austrian ambassador, and Axel de Fersenne, who is a Swedish nobleman and someone very dear to her heart. And she's trying with them to work out what can be done. And some of the time she will be passing on information which she has, and which might be considered classified information. What you have to understand is, A, that she is doing this with the king's full knowledge,

but she's doing it because the king is and has been, I think, probably almost since the death of their elder son in 1789, just before the Estates General, he's been in a state of depression, which means that he's finding acting very difficult. He's also finding it incredibly hard to put up with the fact that he's putting on a show and pretending to go along with the Constitution, for instance, and yet not believing all these things he's having to swear and so on. So Marie Antoinette is the one to whom action is left, but action which, of course, can only be accomplished by means of letters,

by means of a correspondence. So yes, she is getting information to different people, having a clandestine correspondence. She doesn't particularly know very much. She doesn't have lots of state secrets, but she is corresponding with foreign powers and is not meant to be. but the foreign powers are also, for instance, her brother. Kate, what was the case against Louis XVIth

when they decided that they would bring him to trial and execute him? In 1792, the monarchy is suspended on the 10th of August after war was going very badly against Austria, and the king is felt to be working against the nation. I should have mentioned that. It's a terrible thing, but it's been bad with my omission. Austria and France were at war again. Right.

Austria and France were at war by 1792. April 1792, Austria and France are at war again, which puts the Queen and the King in a slightly difficult position. And it increasingly felt that the King is acting against the nation. So in August 1792, after France has actually been invaded by Austrian and Prussian forces, there's an insurrection in Paris and the Twellery Palace. is stormed. The king and queen and their family take refuge in the National Assembly for safekeeping. The monarchy is suspended. And at that point, there's a lot of discussion over

whether the king can actually be tried. According to the Constitution, he is inviolable because of the terms of the Constitution. But they've scrapped the Constitution. So does that mean he can be tried for his actions? There are those who say he doesn't need to be tried. People like Saint-Just says you can't reign innocently. Robespierre says that the very fact that an insurrection took place is enough to prove him guilty. In the end, the concession is that he will be tried for working against the Constitution, against the revolution.

I don't think there was ever any doubt that he would be found guilty, but there was considerable discussion over whether or not he should be executed or simply kept prisoner. Louis himself consistently maintained his composure in front of the judge and jury that is the National Convention and says that he felt that he had a clear conscience and he never intended to spill French blood. But by a narrow majority, the National Convention condemn him to death on the basis that the impure blood would fertilise the revolution. David McCollum, how did she react to that?

How did Mary Antoinette react to that? And what was the consequences for her? Marie Antoinette was sunk in inconsolable grief at the death of her husband in January 1793. The initial reaction of the authorities was to relax security somewhat in the Taunple prison where the royal family had been held. There were still cries outside by demagogues

that she should be next to go and even that the guillotine was too good for her that she should be torn apart by dogs in the street like the biblical Harlot Queen Jezebel for example. In the Tompler prison itself, however, she was pinning her hopes on the possibility of a prisoner exchange with Austria as a means of springing the whole of the royal family from their imprisonment. This was not forthcoming. She was particularly keenness would happen though because her health was deteriorating. She had heavy vaginal bleeding at this point in time, which was either the onset of cancer of the uterus or was a of a premature menopause brought on by the intense trauma of recent events. So she tried to continue with life as it was, which meant educating her children,

praying daily with her very devout sister-in-law, Madame Elizabeth. But towards the end of the year, or towards the summer of the year, I should say, this is 1793, the war effort turns badly against the French, and the Austrians encroach into France, into Valenciennes, and as a result, it's decided that the royal family should be split up. Her son, Louis Chal, is ripped quite literally from her arms

and taken into a different part of the prison for a very brutal Republican re-education at the hands of an ignorant cobbler called Simon. She, at the start of August, is taken to the conciergerie for trial. Katrana, what happened at this trial? So Marianne Delette arrives at the conciergerie on the 1st of August. There's no immediate decision about what should happen to her. And it then becomes clear that she is going to be put on trial. She's accused of different things.

A number of them are totally insignificant. But there are two essential charges, I think. One which is that she has corresponded with the enemy and sent millions of livres overseas. So she hasn't at all been embezzling, but this is one thing she's accused of. She has been corresponding with. the foreign powers. She's also accused of incest with her son, which is a trumped-up charge,

and which, to a large extent, in fact, backfires against the people who make it. And Marie Antoinette, like Louis XVI, remains very composed during her trial until there's this accusation of incest. And she says, you know, I cannot answer this. You know, every mother will understand me. Any mother in this room is going to understand that this is not a possible charge to be levelled against me. And she is condemned, and on the 16th of all, October 1793, she's taken off to the scaffold to be executed. Yes. Is the crowd for her when she cuts her hair short? She goes in this cart facing backwards.

Her husband had gone in a coach. She's dressed as simply as possible. Is there any feeling of sympathy for her or are they baying for blood? I think at this point, the crowd's reaction is less important than those who are actually holding the power in the revolution. For them, Marie Antoinette has been. become the symbol of everything that threatens the republic. She's seen as someone who is dissimulating, who's a spider with webs of deceit. She represents the threat of women in power. So everything that's

threatening the republic from the outside and counter-revolution from within is summed up in her physical body. So I think that her death serves to try and unite a revolution that is increasingly trying to purify and get rid of anyone who doubts the direction that the revolution is going to be taking. But all this is lies? All this is, all, she was, she was in contact with people outside. Yeah, but most of it, all the charges are. The charges against her are lies, but she represents, we've already, David has said, the way in which she's been perceived from well before the revolution comes to a point,

in the execution, that she serves as a symbolic function rather than as an actual person at this stage. And she's thrown into a communal grave? Thrown into a communal grave, though we'll be rescued later for re-barial. David, what legacy did she leave? What did people think at the time? And then what was her legacy in the following 100 years or so? Her legacy basically is twofold, as you would expect at the time. It divides sharply along ideological lines.

she very rapidly became a royalist martyr, and this was hastened and consecrated by the Bourbon Restoration in 1814. Often 19th century portraits have her dressed in white, eyes, heavenwards being dragged by a bunch of dirty sancoulot towards the guillotine. And she's also a victim in the longer term as a gendered victim, not just of the revolution, but the Ancian regime as well. So she comes to represent women who are, are too close to power, who have a lot of public visibility, very little public voice,

which is the ideal combination for a scapegoat. So that's what she basically becomes. Last comment, Katriona. I think Marie Antoinette was at once a martyr of the revolution in some ways and has become a figure far larger than her real life. And we know more about her as a sort of mythical creature than we do about the historical figure. Thank you very much. Katriona Seth, Kate Asprey and David McCallum. Next week, Capadilla, it's the Roman poet Horace, who inspired writers for generation, including Wilford Owen. Thank you very much for listening. In Our Time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson. And a new In Our Time book, marking the programme's 20th birthday, and based on 50 of the most popular programs, is available now.

And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. I have one suggestion of something that we didn't put in. Are we actually still recording? Okay. One of the things I think it's quite important to think about in regards to Marie Antoinette is the way in which she tried to react against the stifling effect of court etiquette. She's trying to carve a private life for herself at a time when as a public body, she doesn't really have a private life.

Her childbirth is a public event because you have to be sure that the child is coming out of her womb. This is someone who doesn't have much of a private life. and in part her spending time with her children, in part her time down at the Petitriardin is a way of trying to get outside of the constraints she feels at court. It backfires in part on her when she has a portrait done by Madame Vigier Lebrun in a very simple white dress with a straw hat. She's criticised for being too informal

and not reflecting the grandeur of the French court. Yes, and I think that portrait and the diamond necklace affair, both feed into this image of Marie Antoinette who is seen as somebody who, in a sense, is like a common woman. So a common woman who could be a whore. And that sort of builds up, sort of little by little, this vision of her as not somebody who is dignified and queen-like,

but somebody who might have the type of life, which is not beyond reproach, and which is what makes it much easier afterwards to say, oh, well, look at her, She's the one who, in a sense, was implicitly put on trial in the diamond necklace effect. She wasn't put on trial, of course, but if what was being checked was whether the signature on the document was hers, it does mean that it could have been hers. If what was being said was that, you know, though it was not her in the garden,

that's because people might think it was her in the garden, having a clandestine trist with the Cardinal de Roan. So all of this is building up this figure of Marie Antoinette as having a shady double life potentially. and the shady double life will then morph into all these incredible creatures and all these sort of accusations of sexual encounters of various kinds with all sorts of individuals, animals and so on. Certainly with the portrait, what's interesting, the Vigille Le Brin portrait, is that she's in it alone, whereas in a lot of the portraiture of royal spouses, there is always a surrogate king in a picture,

whether that's a bust or a represent. of Royal Power that oversees what she's doing. This is, again, her stealing the show. She sort of strips the king of his spectacular role. Even when she's trying to do something like appear very natural, she still doesn't achieve that. It actually backfires in this sense. And this is true also in economic terms,

because she's wearing this very plain muslin dress, and she's setting the fashion for these very plain muslin dresses with sashes and big straw hats. and one of the most important industries in France at the time is the Lyon silk industry. And if Marie-Hontanette goes around wearing white muslin which is sent over from England, it is said she is going to be bankrupting France. So she's damned if she does and damned if she doesn't type of thing. If she wears the silk, said she's done on brocade, she's so she's bending too much.

If she wears simple white muslin, she's told that, you know, she's bankrupting France because she's setting a fashion for something which will mean that there's no way people are going to be able to sell what they produce. So there's no answer. Can I just go back to, I was doing a ideological divide and I did only half of it. The ideological divide in terms of her legacy is certainly among Republicans and thereafter. It's quite interesting because it sort of feeds into

the black legend of Marie Antoinette as the Wicked Queen. It's part of the Let Them Eat Cake historiography, which we all know is a notorious misattribution. But its persistence and its recurrence is quite fascinating because it speaks to a different political truth, which is Marie Antoinette, the frivolous figure partying on the precipice, while society basically divides into these two irreconcilable camps of the have-and-have-not, the 1% and the 99% as we call it these days.

And if I could just add something which is anecdotal, when I was working on Marie-Antoinette, you know when you go to dinner parties, and if you're an academic, people say to you, oh, and what are you working on now? And at last I could talk about something which everybody was interested in. I'd say I'm working on Marie Antoinette. And there was a clear political divide.

Either people would say to me, oh, you know, that whore, why are you wasting your time on her? And it would be the sort of black legend, as David was saying. Or it would be, oh, the poor darling. You know, what happened to was just so tragic. And those would be the people who are trying to rehabilitate Marie Antoinette. And it's very hard, I think, to be objective about Marie Antoinette in France, because there's so much tradition built up behind her.

In some ways, if you can ask someone their opinion of Marie Antoinette, you can work out their opinion on politics in general, not just the revolution. Certainly in France, yes. Do you think she was much maligned and much nicer than she was portrayed as the time? It's very hard to work out how nice an individual is. She leaves some quite charming letters to her mother. She's very young.

She's incredibly young. She's only just started her periods when she's married off to the king. I think we forget what a child she actually is. Her father-in-law, Louis X, the 15th, said of her, she's quite charming, but she's very childlike. She and Louis are actually effectively orphaned at a very young age. Louis becomes king in 1774. They've got no real guidance.

So I'm not going to necessarily defend all of her decisions and her behaviour. But I think that in part we need to consider that this is a child without any real guidance. And she does develop over time. And I think the letters show that during the revolution, she has extraordinary correspondences with revolutionary figures whom she wins over to her side, as well as with the people with whom she's corresponding overseas. There's no doubting her charm. Yeah.

Barnav Mirabour would be to a down course. Here comes the producer too. I need to tell you need to be somewhere else, Melbourne. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Well, thank you all right. Well, be careful where it takes you.

I hope it's a bit quicker than I want to Varen. Hello, I'm Tina Dehili, and alongside Matthew Price, we host the Beyond Today podcast from the BBC. Each weekday, we will tackle some. of the biggest news stories with help from some of the best and most informed journalists in the BBC. This is the news podcast that jumps right in to give you that little bit more. So make sure you head over to the BBC Sounds app and search for Beyond Today and subscribe. If you'd like to join in the chat, make sure you use our hashtag BBC Beyond.