475. The French Revolution: Marie Antoinette (Part 1)

Frivolous, extravagant, liberty, orgeastic, lesbian, incestuous and bloodthirsty. A Poisoner and an Enfanta side. Marie Antoinette tried her hand at every crime. Through her wickednesses, she caused the revolution. She ruined the country, brought the people to despair, drove them to revolt. "Ul must be revealed. It was from your letchery that our goffers were emptied to bear for your pleasures." So declared the anonymous author of the cause of the French Revolution, or the secret conduct of Marie Antoinette of Austria, Queen France, published in 1790. "After having brought about the fall of the ancient regime, she struggled to preserve it. She was corruption personified, infinitely decadent." So that was Shondal Doma in Lachen Celerat, the wicked Queen, her biography, her account of Marie Antoinette through the eyes of the propaganda against her Tom. And what a way to kick off our great new series on the French Revolution. Then with Libertinism, orgeastic behavior, incest, bloodthirstyness, brilliant. Everything we associate with French history. And the perfect way for us, Tom, on the rest of history, to greet the beginning of the Paris Olympics. Absolutely. So yeah, the eyes of the world are on Paris and France. So how better than for us to contribute? A series on what is probably Dominic? I mean, one of the great seismic events, not just in European, but in global history. Certainly, one of the two or three greatest stories in world history. I mean, the rollercoaster of bloodshed, violence, utopianism, insurrection, excitement, you name it. In fact, such a terrific story, Tom, that we can take at least two series, probably three series, to do it justice, aren't we? So this is the kickoff for our first series, which will take us through the first couple of years of the revolution. Yeah, so we're going to look at some of the causes, some of the background of the revolution, and then we'll take through the storming of the Bastille and go up to the point where the king, Louis XVI and his queen, Mary Antoinette, who we've just been hearing about, trying to get out of France and spoiler alert, they fail. And that is the cliffhanger on which we will leave it. Yeah, because of course everybody knows what will then happen to the king and queen. Yes. And I think Mary Antoinette is a kind of wonderful focus for looking at some of the causes. I mean, she's one of the instantly kind of recognisable figures. She must be one of the two or three most well known people in more French history, I would have said. Yes. And as that kind of prefer a passage that you quoted from Shantau Thomas's wonderful book suggests, at the time, she is seen by enthusiasm for the revolution as the absolute embodiment of everything that prompted it. She is kind of the incarnation of Osiara Jean, arrogance of aristocratic splendor, and of a kind of quality of vampirism that has leached the French people of what should be rightfully theirs. So in her lifetime, before and then particularly after the revolution, she is the object of absolutely kind of obsessive hatred. And it's also a kind of prurient hatred because it is tied up with fantasies about what she's been getting up to. And I guess that, I mean, that runs through to the present day because the one phrase that everyone would associate with her, let them eat cake is still repeated, isn't it? Despite the fact that she never said it. She never said it. I know. The original phrase is "Killimange de la Prioche." So let them eat brioche. Has slightly different connotations, doesn't it? Yeah, because I always kind of imagine them, you know, a big gâteau with kind of strawberries on the top or something. But she never said it anyway, so there's no point in dissecting it, I guess, to some degree, other than the fact that people think she said it is indicative of this idea of her and Louis, who's supposedly kind of a puppet, then living this life of unbelievable depravity and licentiousness and arrogance and not caring, all of which are not all of which is completely wrong, but there are definitely huge problems with that. Neuos is. Yeah. Against that, against the image of Mary Antoinette as a kind of depraved vampire, there's also been right from the beginning for conservatives a sense that she is the archetype of the victims of the revolution. Her fate exemplifies what critics of the revolution see as its destructiveness, as its kind of bloodlust. So the revolution itself is cast as a vampire. And in England, the person who classically first articulates that is the Irish politician and Wig, so not even a Tory, Edmund Burke, who in November 1790, wrote reflections on the revolution in France. And in that, he famously recalls seeing Mary Antoinette kind of 16 or 17 years before at the court, glittering like the morning star full of life and splendor and joy. And he famously infuses. I thought 10,000 swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her within salt. But the age of chivalry is gone, that of sophistors, economists, and calculators are succeeded. And the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Edmund Burke's, I would say, among biographers and among people who studied the revolution, it's his take, actually, that is more enduring than the let them eat cake. She's a vampire school of thought, isn't it? Because actually now, I would say most writers are filled with horror when they look at what happened to Mary Antoinette. This young girl who arrived in France was turned into a hate figure for the mob. Shantelle Thomas, who we opened with, her book is about the fortuporation that is kind of lashed on Mary Antoinette. And she has a section where she talks about how biographers through the 19th and into the 20th century would debate about whether these were true or not. And she just says, you know, none of these stories about the incest and the vampirism are true. I mean, they're obviously not true. And she says that most recent biographies have been written to quota with sympathy, if not with love. And I would say that's probably true of her as well, because she wrote a novel that then got turned into a film called "Fair Were My Queen in English" that featured Diane Krueger, so Helen of Troy in Troy, as Mary Antoinette. And that's a French film. But of course, Mary Antoinette has also been a kind of an American pinup. So a film that was massively popular with my daughters when they were growing up, came out in 2006, is Sophia Coppola's "Mary Antoinette" first undunced, in which she's kind of cast as, you know, very much a contemporary heroine. She's surrounded by her squad. She's got converse trainers in the cabinet. You know, she rushes around for a sigh to new wave bands. And what was interesting about that? I was kind of reading up about the reception of it in France, because it was premiered at Cannes. And there it was greeted with booze and then with cheers, so kind of answering booze and cheers by the French journalist who'd been watching it, which I guess kind of sums up a massive division in France itself about her. Because Mary Antoinette stands for the Revolution to some degree, because what you think of Mary Antoinette, you know, you're an educated Frenchman or Frenchman, well, they think of Mary Antoinette and their answer will tell you, well, they think of the Revolution probably, and probably also where they stand politically even today in the 21st century, don't you think? I mean, I do. And I think to a degree that may be true as well in the broader world, perhaps, I mean, it's much more focused in France, obviously. And I think that that sense of ambivalence, you know, is Mary Antoinette a monster or is she a victim? Is she someone to be detested and loathed or is she someone to be pitied and admired? That's an ambivalence that is there even before the Revolution. So the way that she is viewed by the French public is a kind of mixture of loathing and desire. Yeah. Because she's not always hated. That's an important point to me. No, you know, she's very popular with certain segments of society. And I think that she's cast either as a kind of emblem of royal grace, because as we will see in a way, she's a very, very modern figure. Yeah, completely. She kind of basically, I think, invents the French ideal of fashion. She's way ahead of the game. But to other people, this makes her that the kind of the embodiment of frivolity or decadence. And she's a very proactive queen. Queen's in France generally are not expected to play a proactive role in court life, still less national life. Mary Antoinette comes to do that. And she's a kind of emblem of all the paradoxes that we'll be talking about in the context of the Revolution. And the fact that she's a figure of fantasy is really crucial, because not just her, but the Revolution itself is about the creation of stories, the projection of stories and narratives onto facts of, you know, the economy, agriculture, the crowds, the court, everything. It's how you structure the story that basically determines your attitudes to the Revolution, I think. Totally agree, Tom. I mean, historians like Simon Sharman, Robert Danton, have written brilliant books about how the French Revolution is a sort of hall of mirrors or hall of narratives, I suppose, very appropriate for Versailles, isn't it? Yeah. So let's start not at Versailles, but with Mary Antoinette herself. So she is born Tom in 1755. And of course, the single most important thing about her, I would say, is that she is not French. She is Austrian. She is. We love the Habsburgs on the rest of history. I don't think there'll ever be a historical podcast in the history of mankind that is so keen on the Habsburgs. As the rest is history, we've had Edward Habsburg talking about the Habsburgs. We've had Franz Ferdinand, great friend of the rest of history. And now another Habsburg Mary Antoinette. Yes, although she's born Maria Antoinette. And I think that it's fair to say that her identity as an Austrian and as a Habsburg is kind of fundamental both to how her at Myra see her and how her detractors see her. So to her at Myra's, she is an embodiment of a new age of peace between what traditionally have been the great rivals in European politics. Yeah. So going right the way back to the 16th century, Charles the Fifth and François the First, these are the people who are kind of tearing Europe up while Luther is busy getting on with his stuff. And France and the Habsburg Empire have been the great geopolitical rivals on the continent of Europe. But this has changed over the course of the 18th century due to the emergence of two new great powers. Yeah. One of those is Britain, very happy to say. So in the 70s war Britain is taking on France and winning as a kind of global power. But on the continent, there's the emergence of Prussia. Yes. And Prussia is hungry for a lot of Austria's traditional territories. And under its great king Frederick II, it annexes a province called Silicia, doesn't it? Which is basically now it's a chunk of Poland. Yeah. And the Habsburgs are terribly upset about this. And basically they kind of enter into an alliance with France so that they can get Silicia back. And France enters into an alliance with Austria so that she can have a counterweight to Britain. So the diplomatic revolution historians call this because it's such a seismic moment in European history. Yeah. So the 70s war breaks out in 1756 with Britain and Prussia against Austria and France. And the following year a very heavyweight figure in French politics the Duc de Choiselle arrives in Vienna as the French ambassador. And the rulers who greet him, there are a couple aren't they? So the emperor is France is the first. But the person who's really kind of cracking the whip is his wife, the Empress Maria Teresa. Yeah. And she is a very very proficient politician indeed one might say stateswoman. But she's also very very fertile. And the Habsburgs have always I mean it's been their boast isn't it that some empires get their way by fighting we do it by marrying off our daughter. Yep. And Maria Antonia is their 11th daughter and as it will turn out their last daughter. And the reason that the Duc de Choiselle is interested in her is that she is one year younger than the grandson of Louis the 15th the French king also inevitably called Louis. And his very fertile mind is sinking well you know we could maybe marry them off. A brilliant way to cement the alliance and to ensure that the alliance endures. Yes. And so in Duc cause Choiselle goes back from Vienna he goes back to Paris and he becomes the foreign minister basically the kind of almost the prime minister for Louis the 15th. And he's kind of pushing this idea he's saying we should really try and cement this alliance. And it comes into further focus in 1765 when Louis the 15th's son and therefore the father of this Louis who is being lined up to marry Maria Antonia. Yeah he dies. And so the grandson of Louis the 15th is now the dofa the kind of French equivalent to the Prince of Wales the heir to the throne. And he's 11 and Maria Antonia is then 10. Yes. And on the 4th of April 1770 it's all agreed. The marriage contract is signed there's a kind of weird thing where they do a proxy marriage in Vienna. Yeah. So the new emperor Maria Theresa's son Joseph he stands in for the dofa and then two days later Maria Antonia is put into a carriage along with 56 other carriages and they set off from Vienna to go to France. And people who are enthusiastic for this alliance think this is brilliant. Absolutely wonderful. But of course in France there are lots of people who are not enthusiastic because as you said I mean these are ancestral enemies they have of course come together under the pressure of Prussia and Britain. But culturally and imaginatively the idea of Austria to most French men and women is as this horrendous place our enemies the Austrians can't be trusted. And that baggage she is never able to shed it for the rest of her life. So right the way through her career and to an escalating degree she is always referred to as Lutrichien, so the Austrian. But if you put the emphasis on Chien that's bitch in France. Yeah of course. So it's the kind of the ostrich bitch. Yeah. So she's always being portrayed either as an ostrich or as a dog or both. And the weird thing is is that this isn't actually remotely fair because her father is basically French. So France is the first you know he's the Duke of Lorraine. He is a French royal descent. And there's a case for saying that Maria Trenette is actually one of the most French queens that the Bourbon, the Royal dynasty have ever had because normally they're marrying foreign queens who have no French connections at all. But what's interesting is that you know her father basically gets written out of the story and she is portrayed as being her mother's daughter, solely her mother's daughter. Maria Trenette is seen as this terrifying Virago who is out to destroy France. And so Maria Trenette is cast as a kind of Trojan horse who's been sent into the the very stronghold of French power. Yes. To destroy it from inside. In Simon Sharma's words the spy or he says that's the I mean we're jumping ahead but that's the image the people later have of her. Yes. And Maria Trenette she really does become Maria Trenette. So actually French has been her first language. She speaks it initially with a German accent but then she very rapidly loses that. And in preparation for her life at the French court she's had a French tutor called the Abbe de Vermeau who turns up and is appalled to discover that Maria Trenette basically she hasn't had any education at all. And throughout her life she has no interest in books. She's not remotely intellectual. Yeah. Although she is interested in kind of the cultural temperature isn't she? Yeah she is. But it's said of her that no one has ever seen her finish a book. And I think that that is kind of widely believed. And he complains of a quality that will be repeatedly applied to her which is her leisureate, her frivolity, her lightness. The fact that she is not a heavy person. Yeah. I think it would be fair to say. But he also acknowledges that you know she has great charm. She has great poise. She is also not conventionally pretty because she has you know the classic Patroubeurant lower lip of a Habsburg. Yeah. But she you know she has the Abbe says a perfect porcelain complexion. She has brilliant blue eyes. She has a very sweet oval face. So basically you know she will do. Robert Danson in his book The Revolutionary Tempa says that when the pamphlet is newspapers and more or not we're talking about her in France they all said she's actually very nice looking. You know she's blonde hair, beautiful pale complexion. She looks like a queen. She does. And as we will see she becomes a great icon of beauty and fashion and style. And there's a kind of symbolic moment where she sees us to be Austrian and becomes French which is you know she's traveling up from Vienna with her 57 carriages. And on the 7th of May 1770 they reach the Rhine and there's an island in the middle of it. And this wooden pavilion has been built that looks like a kind of you know perfectly tiny shadow. And it has five rooms inside it. And there's kind of two on the Austrian side, two on the French side and there's a kind of room in the middle. And Marathonette goes into the Austrian rooms. She's divested of her clothes down to her kind of underwear. She's then put into a French ceremonial dress. She's led into the central drawing room. The door leading into the French rooms is opened. She looks back. The Austrian doors have been shut. All the Austrian servants have have vanished. And Marathonette is handed over to this terrifying woman who is the May Testedicate. The woman who is going to instructor in the ritual of the court called the Contesta Neu. What was that noise? Contesta Neu. Neu. Neu. Neu. Yeah, it's just too many vowels. There's basically four vowels in that. Neu. Srabble heaven. Yeah, it is. And Marathonette births into tears at the side of this terrifying woman flings herself into into the contest's arms. The contest massively embarrassed. Very stiff shrugs her off, performs a low-curtsy Marathonette apologises and says pardon me, these are for the family and the fatherland I'm leaving for the future. I shall not forget that I am French. And the contested Neu. Neu. Neu. Neu. Says, yeah, you better not. I'm here to whip you into shape. So off they go. And Tom, just one thing. Yeah. She is 14 years old. She's not yet 15. Imagine what an unbelievably terrifying moment. This must be for her. And what makes it even worse? She has a adorable little dog who she has to leave behind, but we'll come to that later. It's a crucial part of the story. Oh. Anyway, on they rattle and it takes them a week to meet with the Do-Fair and the French king. And they do it outside the forest of Compien. And the Do-Fair and the Do-Fiennes, as Mariana Twentonette now is, are introduced three days later. They are married. And she is now the queen of France. Just on the marriage, Tom. One bad omen. One very dark omen. Anyone knows about Russian history. They were spot the resemblance. Nicholas II, Alexandra, when they were crowned. There was a massive stampede afterwards and hundreds of people were killed. Well, after the marriage of the Do-Fair and Mariana Twentonette, there was another stampede. There's a fireworks display that goes horribly wrong. Perhaps 150 people were killed in the crush. And doesn't a fireworks kind of drop on to a tent? Right. Exactly. There were two rive fireworks designers, a man called Monsieur Torre and a guy called Regierri. And Regierri goes second. So he wants to start to do the other bloke. It's an incredibly elaborate fireworks display. It goes wrong. A firework falls onto this temple that is built, a temple of Hyman. And in the crush, 150 people are killed. And so whenever people look back later on, they say, doomed from the start, what a bad omen we should never have gone involved with this Austrian woman. You know, the fireworks were a warning. Yeah. This is kind of great emblem, isn't there? The arms of France and the arms of the Habsburgs. Kind of intertwined. And the fact that it has generated this disaster, as you say, is seen as an omen. And I think that that reflects the fact that the French don't only hate the Austrians, but kind of look down on them because Austria relative to France has been declining since the 16th century. And France now is with the exception of Russia. It's by far the largest kind of European realm. In the 18th century, it's been described as the China of Europe. You know, it has by far the largest population, 28 million. Yeah. Twice as big as Britain. And Britain, even with Ireland. Yeah. So it has kind of geopolitical power. It has, you know, population as you said, and it has massive cultural prestige. And of course, the great symbol of this cultural prestige is the place where Mary Antoinette has gone and where she will spend much of her life, which is the enormous palace of Si. It's where they're married. This enormous palace, kind of 700 rooms, 2000 windows, the roofs cover 100 hectares. I mean, on an enormous scale. And it's basically the physical embodiment of the style of government that the French monarchy represents, which is a kind of monarchical absolutism. I mean, the French monarchy had always been powerful, but since the 16th and then through the 17th and definitely the 18th century, it's monopolized power more and more. And the cause of the figure who exemplifies that is the great grandfather of Louis the 15th and predecessor, Louis the 14th, who had basically annihilated the nobility as an independent political class. He had required them to come to Versailles and they are merely planets orbiting the sun, the sun king. And so Versailles sets fashion, manners, everything for the whole of Europe. So the great rival of Louis the 14th, the Duke of Bulbra, he celebrates his victories over Louis the 14th by building a kind of Urzats Versailles. But I think that for Marie Antoinette and indeed pretty much for everybody, I mean, it's a very oppressive place, isn't it? It's awful. So she's grown up in the Habsburg court, which is much more informal and is becoming more informal during her childhood. But the French court, and it's partly because it's governed by these very, very strict ceremonial hierarchical rules, but also it is a kind of snake pit of politics, isn't it, with people jostling for power the whole time? Yes. And one of the problems from Marie Antoinette is that her patron that Dr. Shuaizou falls from power only a few months after her marriage. And he'd been her sponsor, her protector. And that means that she's just a very young girl, teenager, and she's surrounded by people who hate her and hate Austria. So the answer to the Doe Faire. So Louis the 15th's daughters, they hate Austria. Also, the Doe Faire has younger brothers. And one in particular, the Comte de Provence, who in due course, vastly in the future, and I use the word vastly, advisedly, will become Louis the 18th, I mean, a man of colossal size. But at this point, you know, he's still very young. He's just a teenager himself, but he's consumed with resentment of the fact that he's not going to be king. So he's a potential snake. A younger brother who turns out to be a snake. That will never happen in Monarchical history again. Will it some? Never again. There are certain parallels to contemporary royals that we'll be teasing out over the course of this series, I think. So Paul Marry Antoinette feels completely cut off. And she complains that, you know, all her correspondence is being looked at, that nowhere that she locks anything is safe. I mean, this is the kind of treatment that all foreign queens in Versailles put through. They are kind of there as hostages as much as anything else. And, you know, they're not expected to have a good time. You know, they're not expected to enjoy themselves. But Marry Antoinette, she's strong enough, right from the beginning, it's clear that she's a much stronger character than her husband. And it's clear that when she becomes queen, she is going to kick back against this kind of formality. So there's a kind of classic moment where, for some reason, she's riding on a donkey. It's a kind of thing, I guess, you know, a teenage girl might enjoy doing. But the contested, no, no, no, really disapproves of. So she falls off the donkey and she kind of makes this witty quip that she'd better send to the contest to find out what the etiquette is for a dofine falling off a donkey. And you can see there that this is an attitude that is going to rub up against a lot that has made Versailles tick. However, having said that, that she's resentful of the kind of the formality and the stiffness of it all, there is also the fact that Versailles, particularly under Louis the 15th, is a kind of showcase for unsettling displays of royal libertinism because Louis the 15th, although personally quite a kind of modest and shy person, he's a bit of a dirty old man as well. I mean, from morning till night, he only ever thinks about one thing. Is it not true that the first thing he said when he was told about marriage on its existence? No, it's when she's arrived. Oh, right, when she's arrived. And the first thing he says is, does she have large breasts? I mean, that is, that's bad form. And it's disappointed to learn that she doesn't. From your father-in-law, you don't want to hear it, do you? No. And he's been a great man for mistresses. He had very celebrated mistress, madame, du pompadore. But she's gone. And the new mistress, the contested you, Barry, who's been elevated to that title. She's a kind of former courtesan. And she has, I mean, it's a kind of semi-formal title that may dress on teeth. But Mary internet is pulled by this. You know, she's been raised about Catholic. There's nothing like this in Vienna. And so she, she defies court protocol by refusing to even speak to the contest you, Barry. And Maria Treza, her mother, is furious about this because she's trying to get France to back her in a kind of dispute over a chunk of Poland. And she says, look, you've got to talk to Madame du Barry. You know, I need you to do this. So Mary Antoinette does eventually. And she says to Madame du Barry, there are many people at first sight today. And there's great cheering. Finally, the dam is broken. Yeah. She never says anything else. Okay. But fortunately for Mary Antoinette, neither Madame du Barry nor Louis XV, along for the world, because on the 27th of April, 1774, Louis XV falls ill. And gossip will say Madame du Barry has supposedly sourced a young peasant girl for him. And the valet has brought this peasant girl in. And the peasant girl turns out to have had a smallpox. And so his whole face ends up a great super rating mass of pastures, a bronze mask enlarged by the crusts is what it said. Oh, my word. That's nice. So that thing that you just said there, gossip has it or rumours it. That's really, really important because this is an age where the court is kind of hermatically sealed off from Paris and therefore from the rest of France. And so most people learn about the king and queen through rumour and gossip. And this is an age where there are pamphlets, ballads, it's a very literate, very news friendly society in a way that has not really existed before. And Dominic, what is more is that you say that it's hermetically sealed. I mean, it kind of is in one way, but in another way, it isn't because all the different factions in Versailles are leaking stuff. Yes. So the scandalous stories that are told about the queen and in due course about Marianne to a net, you know, these are not coming from disgruntled Republicans. They're coming from power players at the very heart of the court, often from the royal family itself. So the well spring of all the gossip and slander that will over well Marianne to net in the period of the revolution has been established by Versailles itself. Yeah. Anyway, so whether Louis the 15th is dying because he's been brought, you know, a peasant girl by his mistress or not is up for grabs. But what is clear is that on the 10th of May 1774, he dies. The news is brought to the Doha and there's kind of amazing descriptions of how the sound of the news being brought to him and of people running to come and tell him is like a kind of swelling tidal wave. The king is dead, long live the king. And the Doha is with Marianne to net. Of course, he's no longer the Doha, he's now Louis the 16th. And there are various accounts of what they say when they're told the news. But the most celebrated one is that they fall to their knees and cry out, may God guide and protect us for we are too young to reign because they were 18 and 19 something like that. And I think they're aware that France faces massive problems. But Marianne to net later writes to Maria Theresa her mother and says, I cannot refrain from admiring the workings of Providence, which has chosen me the youngest of your children to occupy the finest throne in Europe. But the question is Dominic, what will she do with that power? Well, we'll find out time after the break. We are getting statement from the 10th of that flight with 350 passengers on board. The great gain, strategic struggle between Britain and Russia. We assess, Prime Minister, with high confidence it was Russian. Holden the Russians accountable is world wars. We took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people. Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Go to ask yourself, you want to play or not. You're the Prime Minister. If done, nothing. We would need to understand the policy context. All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today. And disseminated into an operation order, or Frago. Frago that says to kill the President of Russia. Yes. New from Goldhanger. Who is going to be able to pull this off? An audio drama journey like no other. Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons. They have eyes that technically rigorous geopolitical action forever. We're Britain plays its strongest arm against its strongest foe. Don't do it, Duffy. Bear hunt. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the rest of history. Anyone could see that Marianne Twinett would dominate the new king. So says John Hardman and his book, Marianne Twinett, the making of a French queen. Now, that idea that Louis XVI, who of course is a very ill-fated king because as most of our listers will know, he ends up having an appointment with a guillotine. Is it fair to say, Tom, that he is merely her puppet? He is a weaker man, isn't he? The Marianne Twinett? Let's talk about their relationship a bit. Do they get on? Are they a happy couple? you say. There are significant incompatibilities. So we could just go through some of them. So one is attitudes to music. Mary Antoinette is very, very musical. She can play the harp, she can play the harpsichord, she can play the flute, her brother, Joseph II, who is ruling along with Meritreza, his mother, is the great patron of Mozart. Mary Antoinette had the met Mozart when they were six years old. Imagine meeting Mozart on your same age. You'd feel so inadequate, wouldn't you? I know. So she is very, very musical. Louis XVI is notoriously hostile to the arts and to music in particular, and this becomes the kind of topic of gossip. So in the pamphlets, you know, people laugh at him for his lack of musicality. He's like a British culture secretary. Yes, he is. That's exactly what he is. No knowledge of the arts or interest in any of the music or anything like that. He might once have seen Star Wars, but that would be the limit of his cultural engagement. And then of course, we mentioned the dog that Mary Antoinette was not allowed to bring into France because it was an Austrian dog. This dog was called mobs and it was a pug. And this, I think, is basically what makes her burst into tears and fall onto the bosom of the contest deny is being deprived of the dog, but listeners will be glad and relieved to know that she does end due cause get reunited with mobs. So that's happy. Louis hates dogs. And more particularly, I'm sad to say as a cat owner, he hates cats is right at that regard, but he's in dogs as madness. As madness cats are rubbish. No, he's not. He's absolutely not because he takes it to an unacceptable degree, which is so as a do for his favorite activity was to shoot cats. Love it on the roofs of Versailles. My wife is allergic to cats, so she would very much approve of that time. Basically, he's shooting strays. Yeah. And this apparently is acceptable for sport in Versailles, but he accidentally shoots the Angora cat of the Comtesse de Morapois. And when he does this, he's actually very upset and he apologises profusely. And I think it's a story that does sum up an aspect of his character, which is that on one level, he's very heedless of the suffering, whether of cats or of people out in the in the fields of Lafrosse performed. On another level, when he's informed of individual examples of suffering, he's very upset about it and worried about it. I think you're too harsh, though. I don't think he's any more heedless than anybody else sealed off in the palace of Versailles would be. Right. But I think if you're shooting stray cats, I mean, you just assume this is the kind of thing that a king does or, you know, it's acceptable sport. Yeah. But when it's brought home to him what the implications of that, then he worries about it. And I think you could say the same about his relationship to the broad troubles out in France, that he's not aware of it until he's informed about it. And then he doesn't really know what to do. I guess so. He's not casual about it. He's perhaps slightly oblivious to it. Yeah. His big thing is hunting, isn't it? We've had two tremendous huntsmen on the rest of history recently, Franz Ferdinand and the Kaiser and Custer. That would be a brilliant hunting party with those four men. Because Louis XVI is a tremendous huntsman. He absolutely adores it and he keeps a journal where he writes down how many animals he's killed. Yes. So the famous thing that everybody says than the day of the fall of the Bastille in 1789 that he wrote in his journal, Ria, as in, nothing happened today. That's rubbish. Actually, the nothing was because he hadn't killed any animals that day, so very disappointing day. I mean, I think it's also fair to say that he's not a great diarist. So on the day he meets Mary Antoinette, he says, met Mamoiselle L'Adolfine. All right. And the day his mother dies, he says, my mother died. Okay. Like Camus L'étranger, my mother died today. Oh, yesterday. I don't remember. Obviously a French tradition. Who knew? Yeah. Yeah. So he's not a great diarist. And as you said, he is a great huntsman. But I think one of the reasons why he adores it so much is that he's very good at it. You know, he's a very good horseman. But when he's on his own two feet, he's incredibly kind of maladroire, socially as well as physically. So he hates dancing. He's not good at kind of chitchat. You know, all the stuff that people at Versailles are doing. He doesn't really like it. And basically, he has the soul of a naval engineer. Yeah. So he loves fleets. He loves harbours. And he loves tinkering with locks. You know, he has his own workshop. Oh, I love this stuff. Simon Sharmer is brilliant on this. So he's got this study, hasn't he, with all these maps and nautical instruments. And he'll just sit there with a lock, like messing around, you know, surrounded by all this stuff. He's like a tinkering inventor. And actually, I think that comes over as quite endearing. Yeah. So Sharmer writes, the struggle to make the perfect lock. So this is something that Louis XVI is doing was a symbol of sublime happiness for the monarch who repeatedly failed to make things turn as he wished. But in his apart, the more privé, he moved silently in his plain frock coat amidst polished lenses, our milleries spheres, burnished brass and orries, with all the freedom and power of amegas. Oh, I love that. It's so good, isn't it? I mean, let me just say one thing right at the outset. For those people who haven't read it or have maybe heard about it and just can't be bothered through it because it's quite long. Simon Sharmer's book, Citizens. It's insanely enjoyable. It's just, I mean, I know it's, it's always tempting to be revisionist and to say of a great, historian and a great book, I actually rubbish. It is tipped up. It is brilliant. And it has great pictures as well. It does. Yeah. So Mary Antoinette would have enjoyed that. Yes, he would. She would have looked at the pictures. That's nice. But Donna, just to say that there is an alternative perspective on this. Yeah. Which is the perspective of pamphletiers, one of whom describes him as a zombie who spends his time making locks and bolts. And you may wonder, well, where is this tone coming from? I think it's coming from the Prince Harry of Versailles, who is the Compton Provence, right, who is consumed with envy and spleen. So he is, he is feeding all kinds of kind of hostile material out to the pamphletiers. But I think it also reflects the fact that the ultimate incompatibility it seems certainly in the early years of the marriage is sexual. And if there's one thing that a French king is supposed to do, it's to be sexually voracious. So it is better to be Louis the 15th, you know, an absolute goat. Who is this place grandfather, by the way, just to clarify? Yeah. Down to be sexually incompetent. Yeah. Which is clearly what Louis the 16th is. And it takes them seven years to consummate the marriage. And there's much debate at the time. And there is much debate to this day about what the problem was. So a favorite thesis is that Louis the 16th suffered from a condition called fimosis, which basically means that the foreskin covers the head of the penis, which means erections become very painful. Yeah. I think the consensus now, I gather, I don't quite know how they've arrived at this consensus, is that this isn't the case. Theo has written in the chat, thanks Tom. And I'm sure many other listeners are also very grateful to you for that slightly unnecessary detail. It's not unnecessary because actually the question of why the king and queen are not having children is a matter of profound state. And has discussed Tom at the highest level. So Joseph II who is the Emperor of Austria and his marriage when it's brother, she must have told him about it because he writes to another brother and says, I mean, I'm not going to go into all the gory details, but he basically says they do try to have marital relations. Louis and I quote stays there without moving for perhaps two minutes and then says, good night, you know, withdraws and says, okay, yeah, I was I was emitting that detail. Well, it's important, isn't it? But anyway, he says, good night. Thank you very much. All good. And they're not actually completing the necessary act. And basically they need doctors or courtiers or whoever to explain to them. Well, according to tradition, Joseph II makes that report after he's been on a trip to Versailles and he's spoken to both the king and the queen. Yeah. And the tradition is is that he explains what needs to be done to Louis XVI with reference to a lock and a key. Right. Yeah. He would enjoy the lock andality. I find the whole thing slightly implausible. But anyway, there's no question that this makes him a kind of object of some contempt, which in many ways is unfair because I think you're right. You know, he is beautiful. He is hard working. He is conscientious. He does develop a reputation for kindness. Maybe cats accepted. So Chantal Thomas writes for a sovereign, the line between goodness and imbacility was easily crossed. And I think that Louis XVI is on that line that people can admire him as a good man. Yeah. While simultaneously despising him as someone who is incompetent or useless as a sovereign. He's not an impressive man. He's not charismatic or formidable man. He doesn't inspire respect. He's probably quite a nice man, but a weak man. Is that fair, Tom? I think probably. Yes. I think it's felt that he is not a royal material really. But having said that, whether it's Joseph II or not, who managed to explain to him what he's got to do, they do finally get together. And Mary Antoinette gives Louis four children, including crucially two sons. So Adofa and Asper, yeah, which is obviously very important. And they end up, you know, quite a devoted couple. Yeah. Amazing. He doesn't take a mistress. So on one level, that of course only enhances the idea of him that he's not a kind of the libateen. He's not an alpha male. But on another, he's kind of upholding an almost bourgeois standard of kind of marital fidelity. He banishes Madame Dubarry, who gets packed off. And Madame Dubarry, like Madame Dubompadol before her, had this blended kind of grace and favor residents in the grounds of Versailles, kind of a little shadow called the petty triangle. And Louis gives this to Mary Antoinette. So now it's the Queens. Yeah. And she absolutely loves it. You know, we've talked about how resentful and hostile she is to the kind of stifling etiquette of Versailles. The petty triangle offers her a bolt hole. Yeah. And it gives her the perfect opportunity to vent all her, you know, qualities of spontaneity and simplicity and impulse that she loves. So on that, you were saying about her, not really a book. Simon Sharma says in Citizens, like all adolescent girls of her generation, she drank deep at the well of sentimental literature. Her library was full of Samuel Richardson, Russo Mercier, Reste de Breton, et cetera. Now, her library was full of them. Maybe she didn't necessarily read them. But as Sharma says, she is steeped in the culture that is the most modern, fashionable, forward looking. She's not stuck in the mud. She's not a relic of the Alessia regime. she's interested particularly in the stuff that people associate with the philosopher, the thinker Russo, which are virtue, simplicity, nature, a sort of, as you said, spontaneity. Yeah. And these are all qualities that will come to be seen in due course as features of the revolution. Yeah. But Mary Antoinette is a massive enthusiast for them so much so that, amazingly in 1782, she goes and visits Russo's grave outside Paris. So she's a kind of a pilgrim. You think she's picked up the ideas, but not read the books, basically? I don't know. I mean, she's probably skimmed through it. I think that's perfectly possible, too, by the way. I mean, that's how most people actually pick up fashionable ideas, isn't it? These days, you pick them up on Facebook or in conversation, but you don't necessarily read the wellspring. Yeah. And she is, for that reason, very, very fashionable because her lack of enthusiasm for fashion as prescribed by Versailles itself becomes the fashion. And the enthusiasm for Russo, the idea that one should lead a simple, unadorned life and that this is the key to virtue. At the Petitrionore, the emphasis is on hiding the presence of servants. So in Versailles, all about having as many servants as possible. You know, every time Mary Antoinette gets dressed, hundreds of maids surround her to do it. And the Petitrionore is different. And kind of famously, she commissions a landscape architect to design her an amoristic, a kind of a rustic hamlet, a rustic village that has cows with ribbons on, alpine sheep, a water mill. And this, of course, becomes an notorious, because it's the idea of a queen pretending to be a shepherdess that strikes up all kinds of unfortunate resonances. But you know, she is the embodiment of fashion. But only notorious because the revolution happens. Yeah. I think so. You know, had Francis finances been in better shape, and there's no revolution. People would be charmed by this. Yeah. People would say it was an entertaining quirk of 18th century, you know, monarchical life. They wouldn't think anything of it. Yeah. And far from kind of saying that the poor should eat cake, she's very worried about the poor. Okay. I mean, the poor as kind of represented by photogenic, porpers who can be given charity by her. She's the Angelina Jolie of the 18th century, Tom. Yes. So 1785, she lodges and feeds 12 poor families at the Petitrionore. So she's, she's very like a celebrity. Yeah. And there's a quality of the fact that I think she's very impressed by the sense she has of her own virtue. Right. And she wants people to know about it. While simultaneously, genuinely, being worried about it, I mean, all of those things can be true. Of course. And she wants to make sure that her children are raised in that she's a very, very good mother, a very attentive mother. So 1784, the year before that, it's been terrible winter. And she provides her children with what one of her companions describes as a lesson in doing good by bringing in a great kind of pile of toys and then saying, you can't have these because we're going to sell these toys and use them to get blankets and bread among children in need. Oh, that's quite surprising. Yeah. Very celebrity on Twitter. It's quite a Kenzian, I think. Yeah. Very a Kenzian. That as well. So Shontal Thomas describes this wonderfully. She was fond of charity and never tired of the spectacle of her own goodness. So I think again, she is a precursor of a kind of modern type of celebrity there, kind of celebrity charity. The Duchess of Sussex, Tom. Yeah. It's like quality there. So that's on the kind of the moral level, but she also creates this kind of new kind of fashion that is absolutely repudiating the kind of the stiff formality of her side. So she has this dressmaker, Rizbata, who shockingly is allowed ready access to her apartments. Yeah. You know, she doesn't go through all the court protocols that normally restricts people who can see the queen. And basically, Mary Antoinette is kind of discarding all the rich silks of the court for flowing white Muslims for kind of simple costumes, fresh flowers, kind of bucolic adornments. Right. And not only that, she stops wearing corsets and stays and all those things that kind of really button you up. Yeah. Again, it's very ruseau. Go back to nature. It's going back to nature. I mean, Sharma says, you can actually see what her body looks like under the dress, which of course is not the case with the incredibly rigid and structured dresses that people are wearing. It's not they're wearing them earlier, they're wearing them at the same time, but she is breaking with the rules of French kind of hierarchical dress. Absolutely. And, you know, I said that Mary Antoinette in a way, invents modern fashion. And she does that because she is whatever the French day, she is the queen of France. For that reason, she has the highest profile of any woman in Europe. But also because she's a genius at it. And the idea of waking up every morning and just deciding what you want to wear, you know, what clothes you're going to have, how you're going to do your hair, rather than having it prescribed according to rigid structures. It's something revolutionary, you know, literally revolutionary, because this is the style of fashion that will come in during the French Revolution. And Mary Antoinette, to that extent, I think is the godmother of France's modern reputation as the home of fashion. And we've talked about clothes, there is also hair. So there's an absolutely wonderful book with the great title Mary Antoinette's head by Will Bashor, which is about her hairdresser, who is a man called Monsieur Leonard, who will feature throughout the story. And again, this is very, very shocking that he's a male hairdresser, you know, not ladies made. He's a celebrity hairdresser. And like Madame Betain has ready access to her. So there's something very, very deeper about this. I mean, it's absolutely recognizable. And he gives her a whole succession of kind of unbelievably grandiose hairstyles. So the hairstyle that Mary Antoinette is initially promoting is called l'appouffe saunty mentale. The sentimental poof. I mean, that's a hard sentence to carry off, right? You can imagine they're kind of teased up, gauze, and plumes, and things. Very, very risky, because you know, there are candles in the chandeliers. So if you brush against it, you might just go up in flames. No, various kind of style. So you have the Erisaur, which is unpowered hair. So that's kind of going back to nature there. And they're kind of curled to the tips and rising in tears. It looks like an Erisaur hedgehog. There's the zephyre, which is flowers woven into the hair. So again, there's the sense that you're moving from kind of stiff formality to nature. And then in 1781, Mussulina is summoned by Madame Internet, who's distraught because she feels that she's losing her hair. You know, her is thinning. And Mussulina is devastated by this. And he goes away and he thinks about it. And then he comes back and he does something revolutionary. He cuts her hair. He gives her the Café à l'Orphan, a child's hairstyle. He starts to decorate it only with flowers, not with jewels. And it creates this fashion for natural hairstyles that spreads across Versailles, spreads across Paris, spreads across France, spreads across Europe. And she has people who are around her, doesn't she? She has, you use the expression her squad, which may sound like Taylor Swift. But she does have this coterie of very, very close friends who will later become like her controversy, some of whom, frankly, are doomed to incredibly tragic and blood-curdling ends. Yes. So there are two in particular, there's the Duchess de Polignac, who, I mean, it's very, very beautiful, exquisite manners, absolutely adores kind of gossip and intrigue. So I think it's kind of less Taylor Swift. It's more of the plastics in Mean Girls, which I know you haven't seen, but which I as a parent of two daughters have seen a lot, a brilliant, brilliant film. And I think that anyone who's seen that film, if you think of Mary Antoinette and the Duchess de Polignac as the plastics, who are the kind of the queen bees in a high school. And then there's this sidekick who's always trying to make fetch happen, the word fetch, and she never does. And I think that that character would be the process de l'ambale, who is very, very vapid, the kind of brilliantly bitchy account of her by the combatest de gamle. She never had an opinion of her own in conversation, she always adopted the opinion of the person who passed for the wittiest in a way that was utterly unique. Whenever there was a serious discussion, she never spoke pretending to fall into a trance. Then she was suddenly appeared to snap out of her reverie and repeat word for word, as though it came from her. What the person whose opinion she had decided to adopt had just said, she affected great surprise when told someone had just said the same thing, she assured everyone, she hadn't heard of it. So I think you get there a sense that Mary Antoinette likes these people, precisely because they are not witty. They are not brilliant. She can enjoy their company. Yeah. Inevitably, gossip will say that they're all lesbians, that they're all engaging in sapphic rights. The Duchess Di Poliniac in particular, who becomes widely, widely hated. But both of them are strongly disliked. There are also male guests going to the petty treanor of whom the most notorious is a dashing Swedish officer called Axel von der Fersen, who is the son of a field marshal and who had met Mary Antoinette at a mass ball at the opera in 1774 when she was still the doffin, and he hadn't recognized her, which is obviously a kind of great thrill for Mary Antoinette. From that point on, the regular visits, the two indisputably become close. Again, it is taken for granted that they are sleeping, I think this is most unlikely. Because it's not really in her character, you think, yeah. It's not her style. And it would be mad for her to do that. But there is clearly a kind of heedlessness about this. I mean, to have these kind of very close intimate relationships. Yeah. And to kind of thumb her nose at the formalities and the hierarchies of Versailles, to bring down everything that the contest deny had represented. I mean, she's building up trouble for herself. She is. There's an amazing quotation actually from her brother, Joseph II, who wrote to their brother, Leopold. And he said, she has no etiquette. She goes out and runs around alone with a few people without the outward signs of her position. She looks a little improper. And while this would be all right for a private person, she is not doing her job. And that is the issue, isn't it? She's not playing the part of a French queen as the French people expect. No, she's not. And I think what is more and even more damaging for her is that she's actually playing the part of a mistress, right? Because the petty tree anore is where the mistress lives, and queens are not supposed to live like mistresses. So over the course of Louis XVI's reign going into the 1780s, she is, she's coming to be hated as queens often are hated, as kind of, you know, the embodiment of royal arrogance and of kind of absolutism. But she's also being hated as favorites are, you know, she's being cast as a kind of a voracious, greedy, blood-sucking nymphomaniac. Yeah. And the pair of these images are kind of being fused because a mistress is always being accused of extravagance. Yeah. Comes with a serratory, right? That's what they're there to do. Yeah. And kind of amazingly, stories start to be repeated that Mary Antoinette is literally maintaining at the expense of the state a whole tank full of leeches, which is a kind of horrible idea. Yeah. That's sort of metaphor. Yeah. And also, of course, mistresses are sexually promiscuous. And so this is why the stories that she's having, you know, sapphic affairs and sleeping with, you know, Swedish officers and things like that. It's why they they have such currency. And the interesting thing about that, Thomas, that they start, I think it's Robert Dantermase's point that they start in 1774. So 15 years before the revolution and when she's still only 18, 19 years old. So very early on, these stories that she has this kind of voracious sexual appetite that her lock obsessed husband is not satisfying. And that, you know, there's this kind of extravagance and depravity sucking the energy and the money out of France. They start very early, don't they? And she's never able to shake them. Right. And to reiterate, because I think this is so important, these stories are not coming from Republican people who hate the monarchy. It's coming from her rivals at the court. These are the people who are spreading it. And it reflects a character of Libertanism that you get at the court that Louis XV had exemplified and which you get in the close, great novel. Dangerous liaisons as translated people who've seen the film. Yeah. I mean, the whole thing is about deborching people, the idea that the aristocracy accrual and sexually predatory. And of course, the writer who absolutely exemplifies this is the Marquis de Sard, who we did an episode on. And there's a sense in which the Marquis de Sard is reworking ideas that are very, very current in pornography at the time. And Mary Antoinette, who had refused to speak to Madame du Barry because, you know, she'd been a quarter-san, who had been so unsexualy voracious that, you know, the marriage hadn't been consummated for seven years. She comes to be the kind of the protagonist of pornographic fantasies that are increasingly revolting and shocking in the way that the Marquis de Sard's writings are revolting and shocking. And listeners maybe wondering, what does any of this matter? And it does matter because it comes to threaten the reputation not just of the queen, but of the king and of the monarchy itself. The thing is that in the early 1780s, all these rumors and stories and fantasies, they lack an obvious focus. They are underground. They are being percolated by kind of court rivalries. But then in 1784, there's an absolute catastrophe because Mary Antoinette finds herself engulfed in a complete firestorm of scandal and actually dominate. It's not just a scandal. It's an affair, the affair of the Diamond necklace. It's an amazing story. It is an absolutely incredible story. And you'll be taking us through this tomorrow. Actually, when you, people don't have to wait. It's tomorrow. Yes. Because we're going to be running this series over the next two weeks. Now, if you want to hear about the affair of the Diamond necklace and then we'll be getting into the corner of the stage general, the fall of the Bastille, the course of the revolution, the ideas behind the revolution and then the rising panic and terror of the king and queen and their decision to flee France, which obviously ends up going wrong. If you want to listen to all that right away, you can do so by being a member of the Restless History Club. If you're not a member already, you can subscribe at therestlesshistory.com. But Tom, thank you so much for that. I think there's only one expression given that we are in 18th century France. That was a genuine tour de force. Thank you very much Dominic. And on that bombshell of where everybody and see you tomorrow. Bye-bye. Adema.