True Crime-Paranormal-Conspiracy Theories Stories Part V #Wattys2023

Marie Antoinette Part II

French Revolution before Varennes(1789–1791)

The situation escalated on 20 June asthe Third Estate, which had been joined by several members of theclergy and radical nobility, found the door to its appointed meetingplace closed by order of the king. It thus met at the tennis court inVersailles and took the Tennis Court Oath not to separate before ithad given a constitution to the nation.

On 11 July, at Marie Antoinette'surging, Necker was dismissed and replaced by Breteuil, the queen'schoice to crush the Revolution with mercenary Swiss troops under thecommand of one of her favorites, Pierre Victor, Baron de Besenval deBrünstatt. At the news, Paris was besieged by riots that culminatedin the storming of the Bastille on 14 July. On 15 July Gilbert duMotier, Marquis de Lafayette was named commander-in-chief of thenewly formed Garde nationale.

In the days following the storming ofthe Bastille, for fear of assassination, and ordered by the king, theemigration of members of the high aristocracy began on 17 July withthe departure of the Comte d'Artois, the Condés, cousins of theking, and the unpopular Polignacs. Marie Antoinette, whose life wasas much in danger, remained with the king, whose power was graduallybeing taken away by the National Constituent Assembly.

The abolition of feudal privileges bythe National Constituent Assembly on 4 August 1789 and theDeclaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (La Déclarationdes Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen), drafted by Lafayette with thehelp of Thomas Jefferson and adopted on 26 August, paved the way to aConstitutional Monarchy (4 September 1791 – 21 September 1792).Despite these dramatic changes, life at the court continued, whilethe situation in Paris was becoming critical because of breadshortages in September. On 5 October, a crowd from Paris descendedupon Versailles and forced the royal family to move to the TuileriesPalace in Paris, where they lived under a form of house arrest underthe watch of Lafayette's Garde Nationale, while the Comte de Provenceand his wife were allowed to reside in the Petit Luxembourg, wherethey remained until they went into exile on 20 June 1791.

Marie Antoinette continued to performcharitable functions and attend religious ceremonies, but dedicatedmost of her time to her children. She also played an importantpolitical, albeit not public, role between 1789 and 1791 when she hada complex set of relationships with several key actors of the earlyperiod of the French Revolution. One of the most important wasNecker, the Prime Minister of Finances (Premier ministre desfinances). Despite her dislike of him, she played a decisive role inhis return to the office. She blamed him for his support of theRevolution and did not regret his resignation in 1790.

Lafayette, one of the former militaryleaders in the American War of Independence (1775–1783), served asthe warden of the royal family in his position as commander-in-chiefof the Garde Nationale. Despite his dislike of the queen—hedetested her as much as she detested him and at one time had eventhreatened to send her to a convent—he was persuaded by the mayorof Paris, Jean Sylvain Bailly, to work and collaborate with her, andallowed her to see Fersen a number of times. He even went as far asexiling the Duke of Orléans, who was accused by the queen offomenting trouble. His relationship with the king was more cordial.As a liberal aristocrat, he did not want the fall of the monarchy butrather the establishment of a liberal one, similar to that of theUnited Kingdom, based on cooperation between the king and the people,as was to be defined in the Constitution of 1791.

Despite her attempts to remain out ofthe public eye, Marie Antoinette was falsely accused in the libellesof having an affair with Lafayette, whom she loathed, and, as waspublished in Le Godmiché Royal ("The Royal Dildo"),and of having a sexual relationship with the English baroness LadySophie Farrell of Bournemouth, a well-known lesbian of the time.Publication of such calumnies continued to the end, climaxing at hertrial with an accusation of incest with her son. There is no evidenceto support the accusations.