11 little-known facts about the "most unloved queen" Marie Antoinette, whom Mozart promised to marry

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Unloved by many, Marie Antoinette lived an amazing life. Critics considered her to be selfish and a wasteful, but in fact she was a loving mother and, according to some reports, kind and generous towards others. Obscene rumors were spread about her, attributing something that never happened. Despite the gossip and evil tongues, this woman from an early age knew how to charm men so much that even Mozart himself promised to marry her. However, other no less interesting facts from her life are further in the article.

1. Foster children

Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI gave birth to their first child eight years after their wedding. After Mary gave birth to four more children, two of them died young (Sophia and Louis Joseph). It is also rumored that Antoinette loved children and adopted at least five children during her lifetime. Four of those adopted were orphans of royal servants, and the fifth was presented to her as a "gift" in the 1780s. The boy known as Jean Amilcar was from Senegal, and Marie Antoinette, instead of taking him as a servant, baptized him and cared for him as her own son.

2. Flea color

During the 18th century, pus (the color of a crushed flea) was popular among the French elite. A deep shade of reddish and brownish purple ("pus" literally means "flea" in French) it gets its name from its similarity to the color of blood stains left by flea bites.

One contemporary noted that each lady of the court wore a dress of the color of a pusa, because it did not get so dirty, unlike other colors, and was much cheaper than light dresses. Marie Antoinette was no exception and was happy to add this color and its shades to her wardrobe.

3. Her son Louis testified against her

Mary's enemies, plotting against her, turned to her son and heir to the throne Louis Charles for help (despite the fact that he was the second son of Antoinette and King Louis XVI, the death of his older brother brought him to the throne when his father was executed in January 1793).

At the time, Maria and her children were in prison, and Louis soon came under the care of Antoine Simon. Simon taught him and, together with another anti-Royalist, Jacques Ebert, persuaded Louis to testify that his mother forced him to show her intimate courtesies. Louis also admitted to having inappropriate relationships with his mother on several occasions. At the trial, Ebert insisted that there was incest between Maria and her son Louis. Instead of defending herself, Antoinette stoically swallowed such an accusation.

4. Royal Village

Maria commissioned the architect Richard Meek and the artist Hubert Robert to create a secluded place, reminiscent of a farm, which, after completion, was named Le Hameau de la Reine.

At the Royal Village, visitors could milk the cows and tend other animals while enjoying the royal luxury set in the village cottages. The village also had a windmill with a decorated but non-functional wheel.

The envious courtiers accused Mary of squandering and inappropriate behavior. Many labels began to hang on her, attributing and talking about the fact that she and other women from the "village" were engaged in lewdness, both with other men and among themselves.

5. Clock

In 1783, someone (possibly her husband Louis XVI, or a Swedish statesman and rumored to be her lover, Axel von Fersen) commissioned the famous watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet to make a watch for Marie-Antoinette. No expense was spared. The watch was made of gold, platinum, sapphires and rock crystal, incorporating all the latest timing technologies. They were self-winding, had a calendar, marked the hours and minutes, and even showed the ambient temperature. However, Maria never received the watch. According to modern estimates, the cost of the watch is about thirty million dollars.

6. Marie-Antoinette syndrome

They say that on the night before the execution, Mary's hair turned gray very suddenly. At that time, she was only thirty-eight years old and such a sudden change in hair was attributed to stress, dubbing it "Marie-Antoinette's syndrome."

Antoinette was not the only historical figure to experience this phenomenon. When Sir Thomas More was held in the Tower before his execution in 1535, he, too, suddenly lost the pigment in his hair. As a result, some modern observers dispute the nickname of this ailment, insisting that "Marie-Antoinette syndrome", but for men it is still worth using the name "Thomas More syndrome."

7. Marie Antoinette's daughter was Queen of France for less than 30 minutes

The execution of King Louis XVI meant that his eldest son, Louis Charles, would take the throne. At the time, Louis was only eight years old, and he was first under the care of his mother, and then under the supervision of the anti-Royalists. The young man, now known as King Louis XVII, was imprisoned in harsh conditions. He fell ill and on June 8, 1795 died of tuberculosis.

When Louis XVII passed away (and until the 19th century it was rumored that he was still alive), his sister, Maria Teresa, became the only surviving child of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. She fled to Austria and in 1799 married her cousin and heir to the French throne, Louis, Duke of Angoulême. In 1830, against the backdrop of the revolution in France, the husband of Maria Teresa became King Louis XIX of France, but abdicated the throne after twenty minutes of his reign, taking his queen with him.

8. Nameless grave

Following the execution of Marie-Antoinette in October, her body was placed in an unmarked grave in the Madeleine cemetery in Paris. As one of the places where numerous victims of the guillotine were buried, the cemetery itself was the last resting place of peasants, nobles and, ultimately, members of the royal family.

Pierre Louis Olivier Declose, who lived near the cemetery, observed the burial, noting where the bodies of the king and queen were buried. Later he bought land and built a chapel on this site. With the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1815, King Louis XVIII ordered the exhumation of corpses. Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI were reburied in the Basilica of Saint Denis in January 1815.

9. Mozart promised to marry her

During a concert tour in the 1760s, Mozart played a concert for the royal court in Vienna. Rumor has it that Mozart was well received when he performed in front of Emperor Franz I, Empress Maria Theresa and their children, and became close to his family.

According to a story that has gained popularity but has not been proven, Mozart once stumbled in the presence of a young Marie Antoinette, and when she helped him up, he allegedly stated:

10. Public childbirth

Royal births were common at the time, so when Maria gave birth to her first child, Maria Teresa, in 1778, a crowd gathered in the room. According to one of the queen's court ladies, as soon as Maria gave birth, she immediately lost consciousness, possibly due to the heat or the violent activity of the people gathered around her. Her husband, Louis XVI, who was present at the birth, hurried to open the window, pushing through a huge crowd of cheering people.

11. She was doused with the contents of a chamber pot

By modern standards, the hygiene in the Palace of Versailles was less than adequate, if not repulsive. - wrote the daughter-in-law of Louis XIV Elizabeth Charlotte. When the time came to dispose of the contents of the chamber pots, it was often thrown out the window. One day, Marie Antoinette's retinue was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The contents of the chamberpot spilled out of a window on the second floor of the Grand Commune and onto her palanquin, as well as her chaplain and his followers. In the end, they all had to go back and change.

Read also about how was the fate of Maria de Medici - women, who at the end of her life had to become Rubens' kept woman.