"I HAVE NO TEARS LEFT TO CRY"

LOOMING INVASION AND PROVINCIAL REVOLT BRING  PANIC AND HORROR

The "September massacres" follow the seizure of the Tuileries and the royal family's arrest: Prisoners are slaughtered in the belief that they form a fifth column that will attack when soldiers have left for the front.

(September 2-6 septembre 1792)

Women are spared — except for Marie Antoinette's close friend, the Princesse de Lamballe:

 Zoom

"With what torments do you not butcher Lamballe, the intimate friend of the Queen? You split open her body, dragged it through town, showed her head and heart to the King and Queen, confined in the Temple." 

The mob brandishes her head and frightfully mutilated corpse on pikes in front of the Temple so that the royals will see them. Marie-Antoinette faints. Her daughter will say that that was the only time she saw her lose her self control.

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The most determined revolutionaries execute the king, to make turning back impossible:

(On January 21 1793)

The Death of Louis XVI , English engraving, 1798 / zoom

"The king's farewell to his family" 

is the subject of innumerable royalist images. 

These are sold on the web. 

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Aged eight, Louis XVII is separated from his family to be made into a radical:

(On July 3, 1793)

The Dauphin Taken from his Mother by Domenico Pellegrini / zoom

Marie-Antoinette will wait for hours for a glimpse of him in the courtyard, but otherwise never see him again. 

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Guards wake the queen at 2 a.m., the time when people are most vulnerable. They take her to the Conciergerie, the dark, damp  prison where the arrested await trial and a death sentence that is almost certain.

(On August 2, 1793)

-- Marie-Antoinette by Antonia Fraser, 2001, is the source of the information here.

The Conciergerie evoked during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic games.  

Guards watch her continually, particularly after a rescue attempt fails. People bribe police to gawk at her. The young servant Rosalie Lamorlière does all she can to help her and non-juror priests* come in disguise to say mass.

*Those who refuse to swear loyalty to the Constitution.

She hemorrhages, probably a sign of cancer.

For her last portrait, that of an elderly woman though she was only 38, please click and scroll down.

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Her show trial is conducted with gratuitous cruelty:

• On October 12, she is awakened two hours after having gone to sleep, for a secret preliminary interrogation in the freezing cold. 

• One of her two lawyers arrives in Paris on October 13, with the trial beginning the next day. His request for time to read the documents receives no answer. 

• The most outrageous charge: that she abused her little son. She loses her composure and replies "J'en appelle à toutes les mères" (I call out to all mothers). Even the hostile market women say the trial should be stopped.

The Trial of Marie Antoinette of Austria at the Revolutionary Tribunal / zoom

• It takes place over two days, 8 a.m.-11 p.m. on the first day, 8 a.m. midnight on the second. Though she is ill, the queen's only sustenance is half a cup of bouillon toward 4 p.m. on the second day; the woman bringing it spills the other half.

In Europe, royal consorts had been sent to convents but not killed. And nothing against Marie-Antoinette had been proved. Yet at 4 a.m. she was declared guilty on all counts, and told she would be executed in the morning.

"I have no tears left to cry:" For her last messages to her sister-in-law and children, please click.

The Execution of Marie Antoinette on October 16, 1793, anonymous / zoom

Her execution came from her mistakes,

 from misogyny, 

from the need for a scapegoat

 and from baked-in lies.

 

It was "throwing red meat to the base."

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Next,

Marie-Antoinette attains grandeur