Marie Antoinette.
Marie Antoinette (1755 - ?) was Queen of France from 1774 to 1793, Queen Mother from 1793, and regent for King Louis XVII from 1793 to 1799.
Marie Antoinette was born Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna on 2 November 1755, daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and his wife the Empress Maria Theresa of the House of Habsburg. Within a year of her birth, Europe underwent a diplomatic revolution, as the traditional alliance between Great Britain and Austria ended, with the Austrians allying with France and the British allying with Prussia. This Franco-Austrian alliance endured through the Seven Years War and was still in place in 1770 when Maria Theresa agreed to her daughter's marriage to Louis-Auguste, the grandson and heir of King Louis XV and the future King Louis XVI.
The marriage took place by proxy on 19 April 1770. After Marie Antoinette traveled to France the following month, the ceremony was repeated with Louis-Auguste. However, seven years would go by before the marriage was consummated, due to the Queen's lack of interest and the King's unwillingness to exert himself. It was not until Marie Antoinette's brother the Emperor Joseph II advised the King during a visit in April 1777 that the marriage was finally consummated. By this time, rumors about the couple's incompatibility were widespread, and when Marie Antoinette became pregnant in 1778 rumors insisted that the King was not the father. The rumors would recur every time the Queen became pregnant.
After the outbreak of the North American Rebellion in 1775 Marie Antoinette supported the policy of supplying the American rebels with money and supplies. When the rebellion collapsed in 1778 the Queen's unpopularity increased due to the expense of the failed policy, as well as the Queen's own profligacy and her opposition to fiscal reforms.
Marie Antoinette's elder son, the future King Louis XVII, fell ill with tuberculosis in 1787 but recovered in the summer of 1789. Buoyed by her son's recovery, the Queen pressed her husband to use force to put down the Paris Insurrection when a mob seized control of Paris and attempted to march on the Palace of Versailles. The result was known as the Terrible September Days, when an army under General Charles-Francois Dumouriez entered the capital and dispersed the mob, killing over 8,000 people and causing over 16,000 reformers and radicals to flee France, most to Britain and Prussia, but a few to the settlement of Jefferson in New Spain.
The Queen and some of the King's ministers such as Jacques Necker suspected British involvement in the Paris Insurrection, and pushed for war with the British. King Louis, however, feared the disruptions that war would bring, and refused to go to war. The King's death in a carriage accident on 23 September 1793 brought the young, sickly Louis XVII to the throne, and Marie Antoinette as Queen Mother made herself the head of a regency. The new Queen Mother was still hostile to the British and the Prussians, and in April 1794 she concluded a secret treaty with her nephew, the Holy Roman Emperoro Francis II, agreeing to a joint attack on the Prussians. News of the secret treaty was discovered by British spies in August, and by December the British had signed a defensive alliance with the Prussians and several other German states.
In spite of the British aid, the Prussians suffered several defeats at the hands of the Franco-Austrian alliance in the first year of the Trans-Oceanic War, and the Queen Mother was able to force the Spanish to join the Franco-Austrian alliance. Portugal's monarch, Queen Maria I, feared a Spanish invasion, and Portugal joined the Anglo-Prussian alliance. The Prussians were able to recover from their initial defeats, and in the fall of 1798 inflicted serious defeats on the French and Austrian armies. While peace negotiations were conducted in Aix-la-Chapelle in the winter of 1798-99, a second uprising broke out in Paris, which had to be put down by British and Prussian troops. Marie Antoinette's regency was abolished, and King Louis XXVII came under the control of advisors who were themselves under the control of the ambassadors from Great Britain and the newly-established Germanic Confederation. The Queen Mother remained powerless until her death.
Marie Antoinette does not have an entry in Sobel's index.
Sobel's source for the regency of Marie Antoinette is Martin Corn's translation of Pierre Clouzet's European Diplomacy on the Eve of the Habsburg War (London, 1939).
IOW Marie Antoinette was executed by the revolutionary French government on 16 October 1793.