The last hours of Marie Antoinette in a painting
Since the post on Queen Marie Antoinette always have great success and are among the most read of Pills of History, to those already written I add an old article that I did for the site Notizie.it, where I briefly reconstruct the last hours of life of the former sovereign of France , from imprisonment to the gallows to the exhumation of the body and its final translation to Saint-Denis.
Happy reading.
Marie Antoinette at the gallows
The naturally proud and proud character of Marie Antoinette he was able to clearly express himself in her last, very difficult days of her life; through an official document, we learn of her immediate reaction to the reading of the sentence by the Revolutionary Court who condemned her to the guillotine : “she Didn't reveal the slightest sign of fear, indignation or weakness; she went down the steps without a word, without making any gesture, walked across the hall as if she saw or heard no one, and when she reached the bar where the crowd was, she lifted her head in all her majesty ".
To be seen defeated and defeated by those who killed her, Marie Antoinette did not think about it.
The young maid who was next to the former queen in the last hours spent at the Conciergerie before the gallows, Rosalie Lamorliére , she left a precious memorial of those moments, obviously very useful from the historical point of view, since she tells in a chronicle and certainly completely truthful way, the behavior of the sovereign in those very delicate moments.
The girl, on the morning of October 16, 1793 , the day of her execution, he went to Marie Antoinette's cell at seven and asked her if he needed something of her: "My daughter, I no longer need nothing, it's all over for me Was the reply.
At eight o'clock her guards came to tell her to get ready, forbidding her to wear black; Marie Antoinette then wore a long white dress, the color of mourning for the queens of France.
After the executioner Sanson she had cut her beautiful long hair, her hands were tied behind her back, a useless and repulsive humiliation, which however the former queen endured with resignation.
Unlike Louis XVI , who at least had been led to the gallows with a carriage and without physical constraints, Marie Antoinette was made to get on a filthy cart for condemned and forced to sit on an uncomfortable plank of wood that made her jump at every imperfection in the road; during the whole journey, she was able, tired, pale and distraught as she was, never to lower her gaze, which she always kept straight in front of her, and not to allow herself to be in the least scratched by the insults and heavy insults coming from the mouths of the commoners gathered in the street to watch the sad procession, an attitude that surprised them not a little.
Arrived on the fateful Place de la Révolution (now de la Concorde), she refused to be helped to get off the wagon and climbed the steps with courage and serenity.
Some sources (whose truthfulness is not accepted by all) tells that the woman, climbing the steps that separated her from the guillotine, involuntarily stepped on the executioner's foot to which, to apologize, she addressed with these disarming words: "I sorry sir, I didn't on purpose ”.
Shortly after noon, the executioner showed the head of the former sovereign to the people present; her body was buried in one of the many mass graves of the cemetery of the Madaleine.
But she didn't end there.
A few years passed, the political situation changed and he ascended the throne of France, with the name of Louis XVIII , the brother of the former king Count of Provence that, perhaps in a regurgitation of conscience since he had not moved a finger to save the royal couple in due time, he took care at least to find their bodies to give them a more dignified burial.
And so it was; the bodies of the former rulers were exhumed, recognized and buried in the crypt of Saint-Denis , the church-cemetery of the French monarchs ( Article from:Notizie.it).