The Education and Upbringing of Marie Antoinette: A Queen Unprepared
Marie Antoinette, the last Queen of France before the French Revolution, remains one of the most iconic and controversial figures in history. Her life, marked by extravagance and ultimately tragedy, has been the subject of countless books, films, and scholarly debates. However, a crucial aspect of her story often overlooked is her education and upbringing, which significantly shaped her character and ill-prepared her for the complex political landscape of the French court.
A Childhood in Vienna
Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna, later known as Marie Antoinette, was born on November 2, 1755, in Vienna, Austria. She was the youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa, ruler of the Habsburg monarchy, and Emperor Francis I of the Holy Roman Empire. As the 15th child in a large and powerful family, her early life was spent in the opulent surroundings of the Hofburg Palace and Schönbrunn, the imperial summer residence.
While her brothers received rigorous academic training, Marie Antoinette's education, like that of many aristocratic girls of the time, focused primarily on religious and moral principles, as well as accomplishments considered suitable for a woman of her station. She received private tutoring in music, dancing, and drawing, and excelled in French, German, and Latin. She learned to play the harp, the harpsichord, and the flute.
However, her academic education was notably deficient. At the age of 10, she struggled to write correctly in German or any other language commonly used at court, such as French or Italian, and her conversations were often stilted. According to Steadman, Marie Antoinette’s book learning was neglected. She knew nothing of history or geography.
Vermond's Assessment and Attempts at Improvement
Recognizing the deficiencies in Marie Antoinette's education, Louis XV of France dispatched Mathieu-Jacques de Vermond to Vienna in 1768 to serve as her tutor. Vermond's assessment of his young pupil was damning. He found her French to be impure and her writing skills lacking, with babyish handwriting and appalling spelling. He deemed her education unsatisfying.
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Despite these shortcomings, Vermond also recognized Marie Antoinette's potential, noting that "her character, her heart, are excellent." He focused on improving her French language skills and introducing her to history, though their studies never went further back than Henri IV, the first King of the Bourbon branch of the Capetian dynasty. Steadman points to Vermond questioning his young pupil about when the King had encountered a problem, what would she have done? He was pleased that she often took the right course of action, showing a capacity to reason rather than simply rely on memorized facts. Vermond is also credited with transforming her into a prolific letter writer during the revolution.
A Marriage of Political Expediency
With the conclusion of the Seven Years' War in 1763, Empress Maria Theresa sought to strengthen the fragile alliance between Austria and France. Cementing alliances through matrimonial connections was a common practice among European royal families at the time. In 1765, Louis, dauphin de France, died, leaving his grandson, Louis-Auguste, heir to the French throne. Within months, Marie Antoinette and Louis-Auguste were pledged to marry.
In April 1770, Marie Antoinette formally renounced her rights to Habsburg domains, and on May 16, 1770, at the age of 14, she was married by proxy to Louis Auguste in Vienna, with her brother Archduke Ferdinand standing in for the dauphin. On 14 May 1770 she met her husband at the edge of the forest of Compiegne. Upon her arrival in France, she adopted the French version of her name: Marie Antoinette.
The marriage was intended to solidify the alliance between Austria and France. The initial reaction to the marriage was mixed. On the one hand, the dauphine was beautiful, personable and well-liked by the common people. Her first official appearance in Paris on 8 June 1773 was a resounding success. The young woman didn’t adjust well to a married life for which she was obviously not ready, and her frequent letters home revealed intense homesickness. She also bristled at some of the rituals she was expected to perform as a lady of the French royal family.
The French Court: A World of Etiquette and Intrigue
Marie Antoinette's arrival at the French court marked a dramatic shift in her life. She was now the Dauphine of France, expected to uphold the strict etiquette and traditions of the court of Versailles. However, her upbringing had not prepared her for the complex social and political dynamics she encountered.
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The French court of Louis XV was steeped in etiquette, intrigue, and influential family factions. Marie Theresa disliked the rigid courtly manners of her father Charles VI, who as Holy Roman Emperor had boasted of being the representative of Ceasar. When Marie Theresa succeeded him, she introduced a more relaxed atmosphere to the Habsburg court. Francis, her husband, as Duke of Lorraine often interacted with his subjects and he disliked formal ostentation. Unfortunately for Marie Antoinette, the French court of Louis XV was steeped in etiquette, intrigue and influential family factions.
Married by proxy in Vienna with her brother Ferdinand standing in for the groom, the young Marie Antoinette then travelled to Kell where Russell refers to a ceremonial custom to which all foreign brides were subject. She was not permitted to bring anything from home, into her adopted country, this included all her clothes and her attendants. After being dressed in French attire she met Louis in Compiegne for the first time, where he greeted her with cold civility, they then continued onto Paris where they were married.
Marie Antoinette's lack of formal education meant she was ill-prepared for a French court that was steeped in a rigid hierarchy, governed by strict etiquette that had kept ruling families in place for many years. The naïve carefree girl was not only largely unsupported by her husband’s family but was viewed with suspicion as a supporter of Austria, a view hard to deny considering her mother’s influence and manipulation of her daughter.
Queen of France: Extravagance and Scandal
On May 10, 1774, upon the death of Louis XV, the dauphin ascended the throne as King Louis XVI of France and Navarre with Marie Antoinette as his queen consort. At just 19 years old, Marie Antoinette found herself Queen of France, a position for which she was woefully unprepared.
The personalities of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette couldn’t have been more different. He was introverted, shy, and indecisive, a lover of solitary pleasures such as reading and metalwork; she was vivacious, outgoing, and bold, a social butterfly who loved gambling, partying and extravagant fashions. When the king went to bed before midnight, Marie Antoinette’s nights of partying and carousing had yet to begin. When she woke up just before noon, he had been at work for hours. Louis XVI was besotted with his wife and allowed her to take on a role at Court that had never been bestowed on the two previous queens.
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Marie Antoinette enjoyed entertainment and was influential in choosing shows to be put on at Court. She encouraged artists and she loved court balls. She was a keen player of billiards and cards, often playing to excess, both losing and winning large sums, to such an extent that the King became worried and banned some of the more risky games that were swallowing up entire fortunes. Marie Antoinette was a musician, playing the harp and the harpsichord. She could also sing. She supported the composers she appreciated, like Grétry, Gluck and Sacchini. She had a very refined taste and as a result was patron for many artists, such as the painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, whose successful career as a portraitist owed much to the Queen’s support, and who produced around thirty portraits of her. The Queen also devoted a lot of time to fashion, much to the chagrin of her mother, who regularly lectured her on this subject.
Marie Antoinette's lack of political acumen and her tendency towards extravagance made her an easy target for criticism. She spent heavily on fashion, luxuries, and gambling, while the country was facing a grave financial crisis and the population was suffering. Rose Bertin created dresses for her, hairstyles such as poufs, up to three feet (90 cm) high, and the panache-a spray of feather plumes. She canceled the diamond necklace originally commissioned by Louis IV for his mistress, on the grounds that it was too expensive, but despite the jeweller’s fraud, she was still tainted by the scandal.
During the 1780s, countless pamphlets accused Marie Antoinette of ignorance, extravagance, and adultery. Some featured salacious cartoons and others dubbed her “Madame Deficit.” At the time, the French government was sliding into financial turmoil, and poor harvests were driving up grain prices across the country, making Marie Antoinette’s fabulously extravagant lifestyle the subject of popular ire. In 1785, an infamous diamond-necklace scandal permanently tarnished the queen’s reputation. A thief posing as Marie Antoinette had obtained a 647-diamond necklace and smuggled it to London to be sold off in pieces. Although Marie Antoinette was innocent of any involvement, she was, nevertheless, guilty in the eyes of the people.
The Revolution and the Fall of the Monarchy
Marie Antoinette’s ambiguous attitude at the outbreak of the French Revolution - she seemed uncertain whether to run away or seek reconciliation - accelerated her tragic demise. On July 14, 1789, 900 French workers and peasants stormed the Bastille prison to take arms and ammunition, marking the beginning of the French Revolution. On October 6 of that year, a crowd estimated at 10,000 gathered outside the Palace of Versailles and demanded that the king and queen be brought to Paris. At the Tuileries Palace in Paris, the always indecisive Louis XVI acted almost paralyzed, and Marie Antoinette immediately stepped into his place, meeting with advisers and ambassadors and dispatching urgent letters to other European rulers, begging them to help save France’s monarchy.
In a plot hatched primarily by Marie Antoinette and her likely lover Count Axel von Fersen, the royal family attempted to escape France in June 1791, with von Fersen driving the carriage carrying the royal family. They were recognized and recaptured. (Despite von Fersen’s repeated attempts to stage other rescue attempts, he saw Marie Antoinette only once more before her death.) That September, King Louis XVI agreed to uphold a new constitution drafted by the Constituent National Assembly in return for keeping at least his symbolic power.
However, in the summer of 1792, with France at war with Austria and Prussia, the increasingly powerful radical Jacobin leader Maximilien de Robespierre called for the removal of the king. In September 1792, after a month of terrible massacres in Paris, the National Convention abolished the monarchy, declared the establishment of a French Republic, and arrested the king and queen.
Louis XVI was executed on orders from the National Convention in January 1793, and in August the queen was put in solitary confinement in the Conciergerie. She was brought before the Revolutionary tribunal on October 14, 1793, and was guillotined two days later. On the night before her execution, she had written her last letter to her sister-in-law, Elisabeth. “I am calm,” the queen wrote, “as people are whose conscience is clear.” In the moments before her execution, when the priest who was present told her to have courage, Marie Antoinette responded, “Courage? The moment when my ills are going to end is not the moment when courage is going to fail me.” The queen’s last words were purportedly uttered to her executioner after stepping on his foot in front of the guillotine, offering him an apology, “Pardon, monsieur. I did not do it on purpose.”
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