Marie Antoinette Information

Archive for August, 2008

Hello, history buff! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

French Revolution Causes

Question: What are the causes of the French Revolution?

Can someone please help me. I really need help and i been tryin 2 look it up but i cant. Please

Answer: France still practised feudalism in the 18th century. The nobles and clergy enjoyed special privileges. They did not have to pay taxes. The common people did not have power and freedom in politics. They worked hard and had to pay heavy taxes. The nobles and clergy made up the First and Second Estates in the Estates General. The common people (i.e. the middle class (bourgeoisie), peasants and artisans) made up the Third Estate. The nobles and clergy could outvote the common people easily though the Estates General was always not called by the king, who ruled as an absolute monarch. The common people became discontented with the privileged classes.

Bankruptcy of the Government

Louis XIV had spent too much. His successors did not cut down expenses. Louis XVI also failed to improve the financial situation. He dismissed ministers who tried to introduce financial reforms. By 1789, the government was bankrupt.

Influence of the Enlightenment and the American Revolution

The ideas and writings of Enlightenment thinkers like Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau became widespread. The French people were inspired to go against their king.

The suucess of the Americans to overthrow British rule encouraged the French to fight for their freedom.

Outbreak of revolution 1789

When Louis XVI finally called the Estates General to solve financial difficulties, the Third Estate did not agree with the unfair system of the Estates General. They formed the National Assembly to make a constitution. People were afraid that the king would suppress the National Assembly. They were also discontented that the king dismissed Necker, the popular Finance Minister. The hungry Parisians, who suffered from bad harvest, burst out their anger by attacking the Bastille prison (for political prisoners). The Fall of Bastille started the French Revolution. It spread out to other parts of France.

http://www.thecorner.org/hist/f3/fr_revo_causes.htm

Hope it helps

The French Revolution 5/9

The French Revolution Outline

Question: Need help writing 2 paragraphs on the role of women during the French Revolution..?

I need help with the outline and some of the details of a two paragraph essay on the role of women during the French Revolution. I need to use the “Fish Ladies” (I don’t know who they are? Does anybody?), Marie Antoinette, and Charlotte Corday. Possibly Olympe de Gouges. Please help :[

Answer: On 5th october 1789, in response to rumours (untrue) that the royal family were hoarding grain at Versailles, a march of 7,000 people, mostly women took place to Versailles. Many of the women worked in the fish markets of Paris, which is why they were known as fishwives. They stormed the palace of Versailles, and two of the royal bodyguards were killed. They stood outside the palace and demanded to see Marie Antoinette, and eventually she appeared on a balcony and stood there for hours. Some of the marchers were impressed by her courage. They then demanded that the royal family move from Versailles to live in Paris, which they did.

Marie Antoinette was a focus of hatred for the revolutionaries. She was regarded with suspciions because she was Austrian, and it was thought that she cared for the interests of Austria above those of France. She was also unfairly blamed for France's dire economic situation. It is true that she was frivolous and extravagent, but the personal expenditure of the royal family accounted for only a tiny fragment of state expenditure, and really made hardly any difference to the economy of France. She behaved with great courage during the stormin gof Versailles by the Parisienne women (which must have been a terrifying experience for her) and continued to behave to with courage during the rest of the revolution, and especially after her arrest and imprisonment, and the execution of her husband, when she must have realised that her own death could not be long in following his. When she was executed in October 1793, she behaved with perfect composure, even apologising to the executioner, Samson, for accidentaly standing on his foot when she was mounting the steps to the guillotine.

Charlotte Corday was a patriot and supporter of the revolution from Caen in southern France, who hoped to save the revolution from its extremist excesses by murdering Marat, one of the most extreme of the revolutionary leaders. She went to see Marat on 13 July 1793, saying that she wished to give him 'vital secrets' from Caen. Marat was in his bath where he spent much of his time due to a horrible skin disease he suffered from. charlotte stabbed him to death. She was guillotined on 17th July 1793.

Olympe de Gouges was a playwright and pamphleteer who aroused public hostility by pleading for the life of Louis XVI in 1792, and even more by criticising Marat and Robespierre. She was finally accused of undermining the Republic when her broadsheet Les Trois urnes, advocating a plebiscite to let the people decide between a Republican government, a federal government, and the monarchy, appeared on bills around Paris. She was tried and guillotined.

Different forms of Conservatism

Marie Antoinette Obituary

Tommy Dorsey – “Oh Look At Me Now” – vocals – Frank Sinatra,Connie Haines, & The Pied Pipers

French Revolution High School

Question: Did your school teach you about the haitian revolution ( American History)?

I recently learned about the Haitian revolution in college and wondered why I never heard about it in high school. The black Haitians had a slave revolt and killed many of the french. The revolt was lead by Tuosant and was so successful that Tuosant was raised into power before the french captured him. This is important because the French owned the Louisiana terrotories, but had to give up the land since the Haitians killed many of them in their revolt. Haitians told me that this info is devalued or not taught because when the revolt happened blacks in America were slaves and considered inferior; therefore knowledge of the revolt in haitia was not allowed. I want to know if this info is being taught in school or is the school system still withholding it. LET me know…

Answer: It was taught in my high school and in my college in Wisconsin.

French Revolution Rap

Louis Xvi Economic Crisis

In 1770, in a ceremony on an island in the middle of the Rhine river, Marie Antonia, Archduchess of Austria officially became Marie Antoinette, future wife 15 year old Dauphin, the future King of France, Louis XVI.

She was only 14 years old, her mother the Empress of Austria arranged this marriage as means of promoting peace between the two countries and Europe at large. Her future would be one that would never include returning to her home or seeing her mother again.

In the ceremony on the island, she finds herself having to shed all her clothes and leave behind anything Austrian, only to be re-dressed in French fashion. She does this with grace and commitment to help her future husband care for the people of France. In fact, in her first public moments soon after crossing the Rhine into France, she tells all present in Strausbourg to no longer speak to her in German, that she only wanted to hear French from then on.

Thus she embraced her new family and the French people in the splendor of Versailles. Her marriage occurs as soon as she meets the future King, and the country is anxious for there to be a male child and heir to the throne. With love and encouragement towards her husband, she is disappointed and confused as she discovers he will not, or cannot consummate their marriage. But she is still much too innocent to really understand all that happening around her in her new royal life.

Because of her isolation in Versailles within her social circle, she is unaware of the political turmoil and economic crisis going on in the country. As the years pass, she increasingly becomes the target of the peoples frustration and anger due to her seemingly frivolous lifestyle and foreign born origins.

This is when she is alleged to have said, “If they have no bread, let them eat cake!” In fact, this famous remark was made by a different Queen of France, the wife of Louis XIV over 100 years earlier.

Her life was really quite a quest for all things beautiful and loving, yet as the situation deteriorated politically, she became the subject of pamplets characterizing her as living a life of debauchery and drunken orgy. Much of what is currently known dispells these notions.

The figure who finds herself heroically facing the guillotine, in fact paints a tragic figure of a loving woman, eventually a mother (after 7 years of waiting to consummate her marriage) and losing two of her four children to early deaths. She deeply loved France and wanted to serve, but was terribly misunderstood.

If this is a historic figure you thought not of interest, you might want to get acquainted with Marie Antoinette. Her life is a fascinating story.

GM Scott enjoys learning about the true histories of many misunderstood famous people and sharing those tales with others.