Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette was immature, brazenly self-indulgent, impetuous and wholly unprepared for the role history cast for her. Her sad attempts to consummate her marriage read like bedroom farce, and she did little to quell the rumors of her increasingly dangerous liaisons. Bolstered by the staged receptions that she mistook for papular approval, she was out of touch with the nation's economic troubles, the social and political climate of prorevolutionary France, and eventually retreated from both her husband and the public behind a wall of courtiers and into a world of opulent fantasy ( Lever 6). On November the second of 1755, the Empress Maria Theresa gave birth to her fifteen child, a daughter named Maria Antonia. Austria was at the time enjoying a brief period of prosperity and peace, but the chastening celebration was shadowed by the terrible earthquake which devastated three quarters of the town of Lisbon and prevented Maria Antonia's godfather, the King of Portugal, from attending the ceremony. In later years the tragedy of Lisbon was often referred to as the first portent of disaster in a life which began under the happiest of auspieces in the midst of a loving and united family (Haslip 10).
Upsetting the Empress was perhaps not very grave; far more unfortunate, the Queen's own subjects soon got to know her better. It was true, for instance, that she was compassionate when someone suffered; but it was her duty, not just to be kind to Far worse, it soon became clear that although Louis XVI had given his wife an allowance double that of the last Queen, she was in debt. This was partly because she became obsessed with fashion, spending the equivalent of some two million dollars a year for her clothes by 1777; partly because, she had the crown jewels at her disposal, she kept buying diamonds; and partly because she gambled frequently and recklessly, often losing the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars at cards in a single night ( Nardo 57). Maria Antonia did not choose to exert her power, at least not in the early part of the reign. For a few weeds, Maria Theresa had hoped to run the French government from Vienna, via the Austrian ambassador at Versailles and her daughter; but she quickly realized that the queen was far too frivolous, far too easily bored and averse to hard work ever to have more than episodic influence ( Nardo 50).
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1345
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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