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Marie Antoinette's Speech

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The death of Marie Antoinette prompted the speech given by Edmund Burke in 1793. The speech was given in Versailles, France following the death of the last Queen before the French Revolution.

Marie Antoinette was born on November 2, 1755 in Vienna, Austria as Maria Antonia Josepha Joanna the Archduchess of Austria. She was the 2nd to last child of Maria Theresa (the empress of Austria) and Holy Roman Emperor Francis I. Her childhood was very carefree and she was given everything she asked for. She had a very good education and was very intelligent.

In 1765, the dauphin de France (a.k.a. Louis Ferdinand) the son of French monarch Louis XV, died. Louis Ferdinand’s death left the King’s 11 year old grandson, Louis-Auguste, in line …show more content…

This caused much of France to start looking at Marie in a bad manner.

During the 1780’s, the French government started sliding downhill and the economy started crashing. The price of grain skyrocketed across the country, and Marie Antoinette’s extravagant lifestyle was part to blame. She continued to spend all the money causing the French people to become very poor. The citizens of France started to starve and protested against Marie for using the money belonging to the country for personal items. This is when she said,”Let them eat cake,” for little did she know that she was one of the only wealthy people in the whole country.

On July 14, 1789, 900 French citizens stormed the Bastille prison to take arms and ammunition marking the beginning of the French Revolution. On October 6 of the same year, a mob of Parisian women protesting the high cost of bread and other goods marched to the castle and drug the entire royal family into the city and imprisoned them in Tuileries. The King and Queen tried to escape to the Austrian border where the queen’s brother waited with troops ready to invade France. This incident proved her to be a

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