The Trial and Execution of Marie Antoinette
... hearsay and gossip. One of the things Marie Antoinette was accused of was making the Swiss Guards drunk in order to provoke a massacre of the French people because empty wine bottles were found under her bed in the Tuileries after she left (Fraser, 2001, pp. 430). On the second day of the trial, October 16th, 1793, she was found guilty on all accounts and was to be executed the following day (Fraser, 2001, pp. 436). Before she was executed she wrote her last letter to her sister-in-law, but it never made it to her because it was stolen by Robespierre and found nearly twenty years later (Haslip, 1987, pp. 290). The day after Marie Antoinette’s trial was a day filled with humiliation for her (Fraser, 2001, pp. 438). Unlike Louis XVI, her hands were tied behind her back and she was placed in an open cart whereas Louis XVI was put in a carriage. When she sat in the cart, she automatically sat facing the horses, but was immediately corrected and was told to sit the other way around for humiliation (Fraser, 2001, pp. 439). As she was being escorted through the streets of Paris, her escort yelled out “Make way for the Austrian woman!” and “Long live the republic!” (Fraser, 2001, pp. 439). Most people were happy about Marie Antoinette’s execution. One woman in the crowd held up her laughing child, but many of the aristocrats kept their sympathy silent. According to Herbert’s Le Pere Duchesne, Marie Antoinette was “audacious and insolent to the end” (Fraser, 2001, pp. 439). Ten days before she was executed she said, “The moment when my ills are going to end is not the moment when courage is going to fail me” (Fraser, 2001, pp. 440). When she was stepping down from the cart, she accidentally stepped on the executioner’s foot. Her last words were to him; she said, “Monsieur, I ask your pardon. I did not do it on purpose” (Fraser, 2001, pp. 440). Her head was cut off cleanly at 12:15 Wednesday October 16th of 1793 (Fraser, 2001, pp. 440). Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser was very descriptive when giving the atmosphere in the courtroom when Marie Antoinette went to trial. Antonia Fraser also did a good job of explaining everything Marie Antoinette was being accused of and who the witnesses were. Fraser gave the reader conversations that were held in the courtroom and briefly described what went on in Marie Antoinette’s cell the night before her death. Fraser described also the day of the execution very well. “The day was fine, slightly misty, and the deep cold of the night hours had gone” (Fraser, 2001, pp. 439). Fraser also mentioned that Marie Antoinette went “willingly, even eagerly, to her death” (Fraser, pp. 440). Just as in Fraser’s, Marie Antoinette: The Journey, Andre Castelot wrote in his book, Queen of France: A Biography of Marie Antoinette how altered the queen looked going into court. Castelot had much more conversation in explaining the trial and the execution. He quotes what the witnesses said, what the President said, the questions asked and what Marie Antoinette said, all in quotations. Doing this makes it more like a story and more descriptive of what was happening each minute. It is the same when he de...