Résumé - Oeuvres - Choix
bibliographique - Choix iconographique
- Liens électroniques - Jugements
Marie-Antoinette was born in Vienna on
Nov. 2, 1755, the fifteenth child of Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor,
and Maria-Theresa, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia. In 1770, Marie-Antoinette
wed the future Louis XVI. Arranged to re-enforce the alliance
of France and Austria, the marriage made her the most visible
symbol of the troubled union between these two countries.
Marie-Antoinette was initially well-received by the French, who
expected her to exert a benign influence over her unprepossessing
husband. But her popularity declined soon after she became queen
in May, 1774. Her disdain for French etiquette offended many courtiers,
and her blatant favoritism embittered those she proclaimed her
enemies. For still uncertain reasons, her marriage was not consummated
until 1777, prompting false rumors she was cuckolding the King
in the arms of lovers of both sexes. Her much delayed maternity
left her time to indulge her love of gambling and fashion. Once
she bore children -Marie-Thérèse (1778-1851), Louis-Joseph
(1781-89), Louis-Charles (1785-95), Sophie-Béatrice (1786-87)-
the Queen actively intervened in their upbringing. Her maternity
brought mixed political results. She acquired more political credit
and used it to win ministerial appointments for three favorites;
but many feared she was using her influence to advance Austrian
interests. Marie-Antoinette did lobby on occasion in support of
Austrian policies, and these interventions gave rise to false
rumors she was exporting huge sums of money to Austria. Tainted
by her association with the rapacious Polignac faction, Marie-Antoinette
was falsely implicated in the Diamond Necklace Affair (1785).
Her purchase of the Saint-Cloud palace at state expense (1786)
reinforced her reputation for venality. Thereafter she was denounced
as "Madame Deficit" for allegedly bankrupting the state.
Just before 1789, the Queen's political influence increased. On
June 4, 1789, her first son died, but political events left little
time for grief.
Throughout the Revolution, Marie-Antoinette
remained a staunch monarchist. On October 5-6, 1789, a mostly
female crowd stormed Versailles, broke into her bedroom threatening
death, and forced the royal family to move to Paris. Henceforth,
Marie-Antoinette lived in fear of dismemberment, and her blonde
hair turned white. Although moderates advocated her political
rehabilitation, the radical press ran a scurrilous, pornographic
campaign against her as the epitome of Old Regime vice. In 1790,
Marie-Antoinette was accused of directing an "Austrian Committee"
bent on subverting the Revolution for Austria's sake. She and
her family fled Paris in June, 1791, but the poorly executed flight
failed. A virtual captive, the Queen looked to foreign military
intervention to rescue her and her family, but not even her Austrian
relatives tendered support. The outbreak of war against Austria
on April 20, 1792 further compromised her position. When the monarchy
collapsed on Aug. 10, 1792, the royal family was imprisoned in
the Temple. The National Convention put Louis XVI on trial and
executed him on Jan. 21, 1793. Tearfully separated from her son
Louis-Charles on July 3, 1793, Marie-Antoinette was indicted for
conspiring against France on Aug. 1, 1793 and moved to the Conciergerie.
Lacking material evidence, the prosecution delayed the trial until
it had suborned the perjured testimony of Louis-Charles, who deposed
not only that his mother had met with Counter-Revolutionaries,
but also that she had committed incest with him. At her trial,
Marie-Antoinette won a moral victory by refusing to reply to the
incest libel in the name of offended motherhood, but she was convicted
and guillotined on Oct. 16, 1793.
Always under public scrutiny, Marie-Antoinette
became a screen on which her subjects and later observers projected
their dreams, fears, and frustrations. To austere republicans,
she represented the embodiment of court corruption; to French
nationalists, she was an Austrian agent bent on comprising national
security. In reaction to Revolutionary vilification, Counter-Revolutionaries
rehabilitated her as a saintly martyr during the Restoration.
Thereafter Marie-Antoinette was variously seen as a symbol of
virtuous motherhood, feminine frivolity, lesbian sexuality, and
indifference to popular suffering. If no one view has prevailed,
it is still fair to say that she was a woman of no extraordinary
talents thrown into an extraordinary situation.
OEUVRES
- 1770-1793: Correspondance de Marie-Antoinette (1770-1793)
-- Éd. Évelyne Lever, Paris, Taillandier, 2005.
CHOIX BIBLIOGRAPHIQUE
- Goodman, Dena (dir.), Marie-Antoinette: Writings on the Body
of a Queen, New York et Londres, Routledge, 2003.
- Lever, Évelyne, Marie-Antoinette, Paris, Fayard,
1991.
- Kaiser, Thomas E, «From the Austrian Committee to the
Foreign Plot: Marie-Antoinette, Austrophobia, and the Terror»,
French Historical Studies, 26, 2003, p.579-617.
- Kaiser, Thomas E., «Who's Afraid of Marie-Antoinette?
Diplomacy, Austrophobia, and the Queen», French History,
14, 2000, p.241-71.
- Price, Munro, The Road from Versailles: Louis XVI, Marie
Antoinette, and the Fall of the French Monarchy, New York,
St. Martin's Press, 2003.
CHOIX ICONOGRAPHIQUE
- 1778: Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Portrait de Marie-Antoinette
(huile sur toile), Vienne, Kunsthistorisches Museum.
- Salon de 1783: Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Marie-Antoinette
en chemise (huile sur toile), Allemagne, coll. privée.
- 1787: Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Portrait de Marie-Antoinette
avec ses enfants (huile sur toile, 275 x 215 cm), Musée
national du château de Versailles (MV 4520).
- 1788: Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Marie-Antoinette,
reine de France (huile sur toile, 271 x 195 cm.), Musée
national du château de Versailles (MV 2097).
- 1793: Jacques-Louis David, Marie-Antoinette conduite au supplice
le 16 octobre 1793 (dessin à la plume), Paris, musée
du Louvre, département des Arts graphiques.
CHIOX DE LIENS ELECTRONIQUES
- http://www.royalty.nu/Europe/France/MarieAntoinette.html
- http://www.batguano.com/VigeeMAgallery.html
(pour des portraits par Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun).
CHOIX DES JUGEMENTS
- «Elle a le coeur très bon, aime beaucoup son fils
et sa fille, mais une grande dissipation nuit nécessairement
à la sensibilité, et l'on s'étourdit souvent
sur ce qui devrait nous affecter le plus» ([1782] Marc-Marie,
marquis de Bombelles, Journal, éd. Jean Grassion
et Frans Durif, Geneva, Droz, 1977-98, 4 vols., t.1, p.326).
- «Depuis qu'Elle s'occupe de l'éducation de son
auguste fille et qu'Elle la tient continuellement dans ses cabinets,
il n'y a presque plus moyen d'y traiter d'aucun objet important
ou sérieux qui ne soit à tout moment interrompu
par les petits incidents des jeux de l'enfant royal, et cet inconvénient
ajoute à un tel point aux dispositions naturelles de la
Reine à être dissipée et inattentive, qu'Elle
écoute à peine ce qu'on Lui dit et le comprend encore
moins» ([1784] Alfred d' Arneth et Jules Flammermont, Correspondance
secrète du comte de Mercy-Argenteau avec l'empereur Joseph
II et le prince de Kaunitz. 2 vols. Paris, Imprimerie Nationale,
t.1, p.151).
- «Surely 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 just began to
move in--glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendour,
and joy» ([1790-1792] Edmund Burke, Reflections on the
Revolution in France [1790], éd. Conor Cruise O'Brien,
Oxford, 1981, p.169).
- «...Par ses intrigues et manoeuvres et celles de ses agents,
[elle a] tramé des conspirations et des complots contre
la sûreté intérieure et extérieure
de la France, et d'avoir à cet effect allumé la
guerre civile dans divers points de la république, et armé
les citoyens les uns contres les autres, et d'avoir par ce moyen,
fait couler le sang d'un nombre incalculable de citoyens...»
([1793] Antoine-Quentin Fouquier-Tinville, «Acte d'accusation»,
Le Moniteur universel, 18, No.25, 16 oct. 1793, p.124).
- «Jusqu'au tombeau fut l'attachement exclusif qu'on lui
supposa pour son pays natal. On prétendait que, malgré
qu'elle parlât constamment de son amour pour la nation française,
dans le fond de son coeur elle était toujours autrichienne»
(Joseph Weber, Mémoires de Weber, frère de lait
de Marie-Antoinette, reine de France, Paris, Firmin Didot
[1804-1809], 1847, p.189).
- «Fille de Marie-Thérèse, soeur de l'Empereur,
elle ne transigea pas un instant, au fond de sa coeur, avec des
nouveautés qui lui paraissaient autant d'outrages. Toujours
prête à croire à des forces qu'elle ne possédait
pas, elle appelait le combat, la violence. Et quand les choses
lui résistaient, ses larmes arrivaient comme la suprême
autorité, mais jamais devant ses adversaires» (Edgar
Quinet, La Révolution, Paris, Lacroix, Verboeckhoven
et Cie., 1865, t.1, p.96).
- «Aimant la vie, l'amusement, la distraction ainsi que
l'aime, ainsi que l'a toujours aimée la jeunesse de la
beauté, une femme un peu vive, un peu folâtre, un
peu moqueuse, un peu étourdie, mais une femme honnête,
mais une femme pure, qui n'a jamais eu, selon l'expression du
prince Ligne, 'qu'une coquetterie de Reine pour plaire à
tout le monde'» (Edmond et Jules Goncourt, Histoire de
Marie-Antoinette, Paris, G. Charpentier, 1878, p.5).
- «Her weaknesses, although manifest, were of trivial worth
in the balance of her misfortune. Ill-luck dogged her from her
first moment in France, the unwanted and inadequate ambassadress
from a great power, the rejected girl-wife, until the end, when
she was the scapegoat for the monarchy's failure» (Antoinia
Fraser, Marie-Antoinette: the Journey, New York, Doubleday,
2001, p.458).
Thomas E. Kaiser, 2005.