Marie Antoinette

“I was a queen, and you took away my crown;

a wife, and you killed my husband;

a mother, and you deprived me of my children.

My blood alone remains:

Take it, but do not make me suffer long.”

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These words are reported to have been said by Marie Antoinette, after the prosecutor read his indictment.

But little did the fallen queen know then, that she would spend two-and-a-half months before her trial and execution, in a noisy, mouldy dungeon, that reeked of pipe smoke, rat urine, and poor sanitation.

On the 2nd August 1793, Marie Antoinette arrived at the Conciergerie in the Temple Prison, Paris, at 03.00am.

She was torn from the arms of her daughter, Marie-Thérèse, and her sister-in-law, Madame Élisabeth.

Her husband King Louis XVI, had been executed earlier in the year. Her youngest son Louis Charles, had been taken from her a month earlier.

Marie Antoinette was quickly escorted to a cell below the level of the prison courtyard.

The brick-tiled floor was covered with muddy slime, and water trickled down the walls due to the proximity to the Seine.

When the river was low, it was possible to see shreds of the old wallpaper – decorated, ironically, with the fleur-de-lis.

Marie Antoinette’s lengthy trial began with a 15-hour session on 14th October, and a 24-hour session over 15th-16th October.

After 10 weeks in the Conciergerie, the queen’s incarceration was coming to an end.

The verdict of the jury was affirmative.

It was 4.30am when she heard her sentence, death by guillotine.

She didn’t utter a single word.

After guards returned Marie Antoinette to her cell, she asked Warden Bault for a pen and paper.

He complied, and she wrote a letter to Elisabeth, the late king’s sister:

“I write to you, my sister, for the last time.

I have been condemned, not to an ignominious death – that only awaits criminals – but to go and rejoin your brother.

Innocent as he, I hope to show the same firmness as he did, in his last moments.

I grieve bitterly at leaving my poor children, you know that I existed but for them and you – you who have by your friendship sacrificed all to be with us.”

When the queen finished the letter, she reportedly kissed each page repeatedly then folded it without sealing it, and gave it to Warden Bault.

The gendarme standing guard outside the cell, confiscated the letter.

Elisabeth would never receive the queen’s last testament.

At 11am the next morning, on 16 October 1793, the executioner, Sanson appeared.

Sanson cut the queen’s hair, and placed the locks of hair in his pocket.

At 12.30pm, Marie Antoinette was taken to the guillotine at the Place de la Revolution.

She was taken to her execution, in an ordinary cart.

Haggard and prematurely aged by her tribulations, she met her death bravely, as the executioner Charles Henri Sanson publicly guillotined her.

After the queen’s head fell it was shown to the crowd, who cried:

“Vive la République!”

Her body and severed head, were then taken away and buried in an unmarked grave, in the Madeleine Cemetery.

Madam Tussaud had known Marie Antoinette well, from her time living at Versailles when she had created models of the living royal family.

In her 1838 biography, Madam Tussaud told the tale of how she came to make Marie Antoinette’s death mask.

Tussaud had watched the former Queen’s procession to the scaffold, although she fainted before the execution.

However, later, she was forced to take her bag of sculpting tools, to the Madeleine Cemetery where, under the watchful eyes of the National Assembly, she made a mask of the dead queen’s face.

Madame Tussaud kept the masks, and took them with her on her twenty-year-long tour of Britain, where they found their final home.

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https://www.historyextra.com/.../marie-antoinette-facts.../

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https://ko-fi.com/thetudorintruders

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Portrait of Marie-Antoinette with a rose by Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun 1783