Jagmohan Singh Barhok

On Her Birth Anniversary

Austrian born, Marie Antoinette, consort, socialite, was the last Queen of France before the French Revolution. She was the youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa and Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor .On 10 May 1774, her husband ascended the throne as Louis XVI and she became the Queen of France and Navarre, a title she held September 1792.

A majority of the French people disliked her, accusing her of being profligate and promiscuous and of harboring sympathies for France’s enemies, particularly her native Austria. Louis was mad after her bewitching beauty & voluptuousness and she delighted him on bed, providing vicarious sexual thrills ending in utter madness. During the Revolution, she was called Madam deficit or defunct because of the country’s financial crisis owing to her lavish expenditures .She was blamed on several counts before the government had placed the royal family under house arrest in the Tuileries Palace in October 1789.The Affair of the Diamond Necklace also damaged her reputation though she was not involved .Louis XVI and his queen consort, Marie-Antoinette, were guillotined on charges of counterrevolution in October 1793.

Born this day in 1755 at Vienna in Austria.