Marie Antoinette defends herself during her trial
The process that the ex queen of France Marie Antoinette suffered in 1793 was a farce, like most of those that took place during the French Revolution, all, from the outset, with a predictable outcome, namely the death sentence of the accused.
During the trial the woman defended herself from the specious accusations with the grit, vehemence and pride that were her own, but she was stunned for a moment when she was charged with the most serious and infamous guilt:the incest .
But what happened?
For weeks Marie Antoinette had been forcibly removed from her son Luigi Carlo , aged 8, entrusted to the not exactly loving care of the cobbler Antoine Simon and his wife, charged with "educating" the child according to revolutionary dictates; it was thus that the royal scion learned the Marseillaise, to swear and swear, but it was still not enough.
As the time approached to bring Louis XVI's wife to trial and aware of the inconsistency of the evidence gathered to prove her guilt, the revolutionaries attempted a card as surprising as it was abject: forcing the child to accuse the mother of incestuous practices .
Luigi Carlo, forced to drink wine and certainly driven by unkind methods, finally signed, without fully realizing the gravity of his gesture, the incriminating document.
When the contents of the same were read in the courtroom, dismayed, Marie Antoinette at first remained motionless and mute, then jumped to her feet and spoke, in her defense, the most famous words of the entire trial:
“If I have not answered, it is because Nature herself refuses to answer such an accusation against a mother. I appeal to all mothers who are present! ”.
An instinctive and sincere phrase that moved even the commoners who ran to see the incomparable "spectacle" of an ex sovereign conduct to the bar of the accused, which however did not change the fate, already written, of Marie Antoinette.