Jeanne Josephe Marie Antoinette, of Lorraine, archduchess of Austria, the unfortunate queen of Louis XVI. of France, was the daughter of Francis I. and Maria Theresa, and was born at Vienna, in 1755. She was educated with the utmost care, and nature had bestowed upon her the highest beauty of person. Her accomplishments, talents, grace, virtue, and uncommon loveliness, fitted her for the queen of a gallant nation; and as such she would have been honored in France, had she lived before oppression had roused the people to madness. Her mother, in a letter to her future husband, after alluding to the care with which she had formed her mind, says, “Your bride, dear dauphin, is separated from me. As she has ever been my delight, so she will be your happiness. For this purpose, I have enjoined upon her, as among her highest duties, the most tender attachment to your person, the greatest attention to every thing that can please or make you happy. Above all things, I have recommended to her humility towards God, because I am convinced that it is impossible for us to secure the happiness of the subjects confided to us without love to Him who destroys the sceptres and the thrones of kings according to his will.”

The marriage took place at Versailles, May 16th, 1770, and was celebrated with uncommon splendor; but, immediately after the ceremony, a thunder-storm of unparalleled violence broke over the palace of Versailles, darkened the surrounding scenery, and struck terror into the hearts of the people for miles around. On May 30th, the festivities at Paris were saddened by a most terrible accident; a number of citizens being crushed to death in the Rue Royale, by some mismanagement on the part of the proper authorities. Fifty-three persons were found dead, and three hundred more were dangerously injured.

The magnanimity of Marie Antoinette displayed itself soon after her elevation to the throne, on the death of Louis XV. An officer of the body-guard, who had given her offence on some former occasion, expressed his intention of resigning his commission; but the queen forbade him. “Remain,” said she; “forget the past. Far be it from the queen of France to revenge the injuries of the dauphiness.” She devoted herself to the interests of her people with an assiduity unparalleled in a sovereign of her age; yet, becoming obnoxious to the court party, her character was assailed in every shape and quarter; she was accused of setting on foot conspiracies which never existed, and of entertaining views which never entered her mind. She was termed the Austrian, and it was openly asserted, as well as privately insinuated, that her heart was estranged from the country of her husband, and her mind solely occupied with the interests of her native land.

In her conduct, there was matter for gentle reproof, but none for malevolent accusation. A gayety which sometimes degenerated into levity, a passion for fashionable novelties, and an undisguised contempt for court formalities, instead of being regarded as the foibles and imprudences of a young and innocent mind, were construed into evidences of the existence of loose principles, unbridled extravagance, and hatred for the nation. She was likewise charged with pettishness under reproof; and we can readily conceive how a female of so high a rank, conscious of the purity of her intentions, and perpetually assailed by reckless cavillers, assumed, in reply to the unworthy insinuations of her enemies, the tone which her virtue and her birth appeared to warrant. The affair of the diamond necklace created an extraordinary sensation. A jeweller at Paris demanded payment for a necklace so costly that the finances of a queen would hardly warrant its purchase. The result of an examination was the proof of the queen’s integrity.

On the 6th October, 1789, the mob broke into the palace of Versailles, murdered some of the bodyguards, and threatened the queen in the most frightful language. At midnight, she received a letter from a friendly clergyman, advising her to seek safety in flight, as her life would be sacrificed early the next morning. She resolved to remain, and destroyed the warning letter. She heard the footsteps of the ruffian rabble; she thought her time had come, but her life was saved. The progress of the ruffians was arrested at the very door of her chamber, where her faithful guardsmen laid down their lives to secure for their queen a retreat to the chamber of the king. The king and queen showed themselves, with their children, in the balcony. The mass of heads beneath for a moment ceased to be agitated; but it was only for a moment. Silence was broken by a thousand tongues “No children no children! The queen! the queen alone!”

This was a trying moment; but Antoinette had firmness for the crisis. Putting her son and daughter into her husband’s arms, she advanced alone into the balcony. A spectacle like this filled the fierce people with admiration, and thundering sounds of “Vive la Reine!” succeeded to the imprecations of the preceding moment. Such is the fickleness of a mob! The march to Paris was a succession of terrors! The heads of the two faithful guardsmen, elevated on pikes, met the eyes of the poor queen as she looked from her carriage windows.

The fate of Antoinette darkened rapidly. With the king, she fled to Varennes with him was brought back to Paris. Her courage did not fail in the scene of the Legislative Assembly, before which body she was present with her husband, heard his deposition pronounced, and then went into the Temple, where he was imprisoned. Here, where the light of heaven faintly fell through grated windows, surrounded by her family, she appeared to feel entire resignation to the will of Him on whom the happiness of the humblest individual depends. When she heard the condemnation of the king from the lips of the royal victim, she had the firmness to congratulate him on the speedy delivery from trouble that awaited him. Her eternal separation from her son did not shake her firmness, and, with a heart apparently unbroken, she was consigned to the loathsome depths of a dungeon, August 5th, 1793.

The accusations brought against the unhappy queen, on her trial, were all unfounded, and merely advanced because her enemies had still respect enough for justice to mimic its forms in their guilty court. She was charged with having squandered the public money, and with leaguing in secret with the common enemies of France. The clearness of her innocence, the falsehood and frivolity of the witnesses, the eloquence of the defenders, and her own noble bearing, were of no avail: Marie Antoinette was doomed to die upon the scaffold.

The expression of her countenance, as she passed to the place of execution, awed the bloodthirsty populace; but the once matchless beauty of that noble countenance was gone forever. One unacquainted with the ravages of grief could not believe that the haggard and forsaken being whom they led to sacrifice, was the same young queen, who, a short time before, held in thrall the chivalry of France, by her exquisite loveliness, her winning grace, and sportive gayety. Antoinette cast back a long, last look at the Tuileries a look which told of sorrowful remembrance and of agonizing emotion; then, with an air of dignified resignation, she ascended the scaffold. “My God,” cried she, as she kneeled on that fatal platform, “enlighten and affect my executioner! Adieu, my children, my beloved ones: I am going to your father!” Thus she perished, in her thirty-eighth year, October 16th, 1793.

In the gayety of youth and the sunshine of prosperity, Marie Antoinette had exhibited some foibles amid many virtues. In the beginning of her trials, she displayed, as well as those around her, serious mistakes of judgment; but in the dark hour of adversity, she exhibited a spectacle of truth, firmness, and dignity, hardly less than sublime. When confined with her family in the prison of the Temple, with only a glimmering ray of light stealing through the iron bars, she displayed the utmost calmness, cheered all around with her counsel and example, and taught them to disregard privation, sickness, and suffering.

When her husband told her that he was condemned to the scaffold, she congratulated him upon the speedy termination of an existence so painful, and the unperishing reward that should crown it. Before the Revolutionary Tribunal she was unabashed, and, when accused of a horrid crime, she put her traducers to shame by exclaiming, “I appeal to every mother here whether such an act be possible!” In solitude, and in the depths of a damp and loathsome dungeon, where she was confined for weeks, she was still serene and uncomplaining. In parting with her son; in taking a last adieu of the palace which had witnessed her triumphs; in facing the scaffold, and the wretches around it; and in bidding a final farewell to life, Marie Antoinette evinced that patient, deep, and touching heroism which a woman and a Christian alone can display.