2nd November: Marie Antoinette

Marie Antoinette, Austrian princess and Queen Consort of Louis XVI of France, was born on this date in 1755. Here are some things you may not know about her:

1. As a girl, she was a poor student in academic subjects. She struggled to read and write in German, her native language, when she was ten, and struggled even more with the foreign languages, French and Italian, that she was required to learn. She did reasonably well in music and excelled in drawing and dance.
2. She could play the harpsichord, spinet, clavichord and harp.
3. Her marriage to Dauphin Louis-Auguste might never have happened but for a war, the Seven Years War, in which France and Austria, usually enemies, briefly united; and a smallpox outbreak which killed some of her eligible older sisters.
4. Before she could be married, she had to undergo extensive dental surgery to straighten her teeth - without anaesthetic.
5. She was married at 14, but her groom was not present at the legal wedding ceremony. It was another month before the ceremonial wedding.
6. It was several years before the marriage was consummated. Louis, it turned out, believed that sex would damage his sporting prowess, and Marie-Antoinette simply wasn't that interested. Marie's brother eventually put them straight and called them "a couple of complete blunderers". The couple went on to have four children, although rumours persisted that Louis wasn't actually the father of any of them.
7. Pretty and graceful, Marie was popular with the French public at first, since their last queen had died two years earlier. But her failure to produce an heir, and her spending on clothes and her appearance eventually alienated them to the extent that they started referring to her as "L'Autrichienne" (which literally means the Austrian woman, but also suggests the French word "chienne", meaning bitch.
8. There is no evidence that she ever uttered the words, "Let them eat cake". This could be just a libellous rumour spread by journalists at the time.
9. Her last words were "Pardon me sir, I meant not to do it", to Henri Sanson the executioner, whose foot she had accidentally stepped on after climbing the scaffold.
10. After her execution, she was buried in an unmarked grave, but lduring the Bourbon Restoration, she and her husband were given a proper Christian burial at the Basilica of St Denis.

P.S. My book, Death and Faxes, is available to buy now.

Paperback - CreateSpace or Amazon 

Or get the E-book: Amazon Kindle (Where you can use the "Look Inside" function and read the first few pages for free!)