Marie Antoinette: The Journey

The Estates General, or États généraux, was a deliberative body composed of representatives of France’s three estates, or groups into which society was divided. The First Estate was the clergy. The Second Estate was the nobility. The Third Estate were the commoners. The Estates General did not have formal political powers, but served as an advisory body for the king. Its approval gave public legitimacy to his decisions.

In 1789, King Louis XVI called a meeting of the Estates General to garner public support for his tax reforms necessary to stabilize the nation’s finances. The First and Second Estates did not pay taxes; only the Third Estate did. Louis XVI hoped the Third Estate would side with him to levy taxes against the First and Second Estates, but after negotiations broke down, the Third Estate declared itself to be a sovereign body, the National Assembly, with the Tennis Court Oath of June 20, 1789.

Until the French Revolution of 1789, France was ruled by what is now termed the ancien régime, or ancient system: a monarchical feudal power structure that had prevailed from the 16th century. The ruling dynasty were the Bourbons, a powerful European royal family, whose branches also controlled Spain and had fiefdoms in pre-unification Italy. Louis XIV, the most renowned of the French Bourbon kings and the grandfather of Marie Antoinette’s husband Louis XVI, built the famed palace at Versailles to consolidate power. In a bid to lessen the capacity for rivals to challenge him by amassing power and militia on their home estates, he forced nobles who wanted access to the throne to live at Versailles starting in the 1680s, thus centralizing French government. In the book, Fraser points out that the marriage of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI was intended to end centuries-long enmity between the Houses of Bourbon and Habsburg.

The Habsburgs were one of the most powerful ruling families in Western civilization, whose scions controlled much of Europe starting in the 15th century. Marie Antoinette was born to Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Francis I, a branch of the Habsburgs who ruled the Holy Roman Empire (HRE), a sprawling territory that at its peak comprised what is today Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Italy, and parts of France, Denmark, and Poland. During Marie Antoinette’s childhood, the HRE had been primarily reduced to Germany and Austria.

The Habsburgs were famed for their inbreeding; the family often married close relatives in a bid to centralize power and prevent the dynasty from splintering. The children of Habsburg unions often had facial difference and sometimes more serious disabilities as well; in particular, Habsburgs had prominent lower jaws that prevented the mouth from fully closing.

Libelles, the cheap scandalous pamphlets that criticized powerful figures in society, were an early form of tabloid press; the information in these publication was often spurious, and from them we get the term libel, or intentional printed defamation. In the late 18th century, libellistes, or people who wrote libelles, took particular aim at the French court, especially Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI. They published rumors about Marie Antoinette’s profligate spending and her sex life, claiming that she had lesbian relationships with her female friends. They also included vicious caricatures of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI. According to Fraser, Marie Antoinette found the libelles personally distressing; more importantly, this criticism of the royal family contributed to the anti-monarchical sentiment in France in the years leading up to the revolution.

After the Estates General was unable to come to a consensus about the tax reforms needed to shore up France’s failing finances in 1789, a faction of the Estates General split off. The Third Estate, or the representatives of the commoners, broke away from the Estates General, titled themselves the National Assembly, and declared themselves France’s only legitimate deliberative body.

The National Assembly became France’s government during the first year of French Revolution; their relative leniency toward the royal family eventually devolved into the much more violent phase that followed the Storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789.

In the context of the French Revolution, Republicans supported the political ideology that government should be led by representatives elected by the people instead of a monarch. Many French Revolutionaries were Republicans; they sought to overthrow the monarchy and establish a popularly elected government instead. The First French Republic was established on September 22, 1792.

After splitting off from the Estates General, the Third Estate—now reconstituted as the National Assembly—met on a tennis court due to lack of available public space. On June 20, 1789, the members of the National Assembly took an oath on the court that became a formative event of the French Revolution. The oath was a declaration of independence from monarchical rule: It averred that political power is derived from the people and given to their duly chosen representatives rather than inherited by a dynastic autocrat. The National Assembly’s commitment to the oath cemented their power, precipitating the more violent aspects of the French Revolution.