The trial of Marie-Antoinette

Résumé du document

After the execution of King Louis XVI on January 21, 1793, Marie Antoinette, who was responsible for the act, was not sued initially. There are different hypotheses surrounding the execution. Some among the revolutionaries wished to keep her as a bargaining ship for the Austrian Empire, and some historians even think that the Girondins wished to preserve "a future regent for the Constitutional King Louis XVII (the son of Marie Antoinette), because they hoped he would be able to come to the throne in the end".
None of these assumptions can be easily proved, but we can also assume that the execution of the King traumatized some supporters of the Revolution in a way, and it increased the fear to be invaded by foreign armies. The reason for the fear was that the revolutionaries were by now regicidal, and the members of the Convention probably thought it wiser to delay the issue of Marie Antoinette's statement. But in March 1793, there was the uprising of "rebels" in Vendée, followed by the murder of Marat by Charlotte Corday in July; which rekindled the threat of a counter-revolution and revenge from their part.

Extraits

[...] However, the trial was a strong political symbol, different from the King's one, since it had been the specific work of the Convention whereas Marie-Antoinette was judged not only by the Revolutionary Court, but in an underlying way, by the city of Paris: shedding the blood of the former Queen appears as an act of communal violence to bind the sans-culottes to the new established Court. p.507-8). No wonder Hébert claimed in his newspaper Le Père Duchesne have promised the head of Antoinette. I will go and cut it myself if there is any delay in giving it to me. I have promised it on your behalf to the sans-culottes who are asking for it, and without whom you will cease to p508). [...]

[...] They harshly criticized Marie-Antoinette for years and they contributed to build a popular mythology around the queen, which played a major role in the trial. At that point, “Playing the game to find the worst trait of Marie-Antoinette was not only played by the people but also by the revolutionaries” So the prohibition on the name of during the trial can also be explained by the litany of insults it produced because of the sacred aura remaining attached to it. The nature of Queen of Marie- Antoinette couldn't be forgotten by the revolutionaries. [...]

[...] That depravation is obviously deemed to have infiltrated a monarchy already out of breath. However, there is always a risk, when it comes to the trial of Marie- Antoinette, to dissociate two figures and to superpose two distorted images of the young and frivolous adolescent-Queen and the old and sick Widow Capet of the Conciergerie, like 2 Marie-Antoinette distinct from one another. So, we must be cautious not to reduce the whole Revolution to that single trial. That view is epitomized by Thomas Jefferson who wrote that the Queen had been shut up in a convent, the whole Revolution would never have happened” p.547). [...]

[...] One possible explanation for those libels was the presumed sexual impotence of Louis XVI, and it took a long time before she acquired a political legitimacy, since that legitimacy was based upon her ability to give an heir to the Crown: crime of Marie-Antoinette does not lie in an act but in a status of being” Indeed pamphlets about the Queen are the expression of the mythical images or clichés? - cast by the people on the Queen, and with the Revolution, symbol of Marie-Antoinette as a wicked queen has a power of unification” and the testimony of Hébert attested of the permanence of that collective myth of a depraved Queen. Marie-Antoinette was convicted on the 3 charges of secret agreement with foreign powers, including the émigrés, her shipping of money abroad to help them, and her attempt to arouse civil war among the French people. [...]

[...] But in the pamphlets those queens from the past recognized the supreme evil of Marie-Antoinette. Besides Marie-Antoinette's trial and execution are often put in parallel with other said criminal women of the Revolution, even though in reality they didn't share anything in common: Mme Roland, Olympe de Gouges, Charlotte Corday blamed for their sexual gender and also for their assumed sexual emancipation”. Besides, being a monster, Marie-Antoinette is said to be thirsty with the people's blood. A witness accused her of being responsible for the crime of the Champs de Mars, another of desiring the destruction of the Nation and of having drunk with the Flanders garrison in the honour of monarchy and contempt, while they trampled the revolutionary cockade and ended the night in orgy. [...]