Dekho Suno Jano · Transcript · · Updated
French Revolution # 02 | Queen Marie Antoinette | by Usama Ghazi – Transcript
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Summary
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- When Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette ascended to the throne in 1775, the people of France initially hoped for good days ahead.
- Louis XVI entered the American War of Independence to help America and settle a score with Britain, which completely emptied the royal treasury.
- Rousseau's philosophy and his book Social Contract presented a new ideology of the state and society that played a pivotal role in the French Revolution.
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During the French Revolution, the sentence got currency: people should eat cake if the bread was unavailable. This sentence had such a satirical punch that it turned the hunger of the people into revenge This sentence was ascribed to the Queen of France and its veracity is unconfirmed.
However, the people of France believed it as they were already annoyed with her. This Queen also sank her husband with herself. I am Usama Ghazi and in the story The French Revolution, I will show you...
....how did France avenge Britain for the defeat? Who was that Madam Deficit? Why did people thank a she-beggar? Who assassinated the king? It goes that every successful man has the support of a woman. However, Louis XVI was the ill-luck king whose ruination...
...came more than his own inefficiency by the failures or disgrace of a woman. In 1775, when Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette ascended to the throne, people hoped for the good days ahead.
People did not know the king was good at heart but he did not know how to run state affairs. When he put on the crown for the first time, he observed it burdened me. Which challenges the king faced to understand it, first of all, look at the system enforced in France at that time.
France had a parliamentary monarchy system wherein parliament endorsed the decree of the king to make it a law. France had a federal parliament and provinces had their own assemblies. The Parliament had three parts, the first included priests etc. the second comprised courtiers and nobles, while ...
...in the third part, public representatives were included, which was also called the third the third state. But the theologians and courters made a 3% of the population but had majority representation in the Parliament.
The 97% population had very little representation in the Parliament and consequently... ...the religious quarters and courtiers joined together to reduce the king to a rubber stamp. The Parliament existed only in name over the 150-year history of France.
The courtiers with the help of the King, lifted all taxes on the rich class and imposed multiple taxes on the poor. A tax taille was imposed on anyone who would come out in clean dress and dressed hair...
....therefore, people would prefer to stay untidy with dishevelled hair. So they would wear rags all the time. Another was a salt tax payable by everyone from the age of eight.
These and similar other taxes minced the masses. In this situation, the new king made huge announcements to provide relief to the people. First of all, he refused to accept bounties from the people and announced to adoption of austerity and simplicity.
He also restored provincial assemblies and freed the farmers who were slaves to the landlords at some time. The king appointed one Anne Robert Jacques Turgot as Finance Minister for tax reforms.
He reduced taxes on the poor and imposed somewhat imposed taxes on the rich. However, a woman became a hurdle in his way. She was called Madam Deficit. The woman was the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette.
Marie Antoinette proved a highly profligate Queen but the king was not an exception in developing her habit. It was the case from day one relations between the king and the queen were bad. The king even did not like to see the face of the queen.
He had no idea that the life of the ruling coupe was public property and affected the people. Due to her idiocy, the king left the queen to her own. As a result, the queen found refuge in new fashions and money show-offs to drive away the pain of his faithlessness.
It goes that no other than Marie Antoinette was the most fashionable queen in French history. In the morning, she would take hours to make her hair and select dresses to wear. She had a different hairstyle every day and changed her dresses many times a day.
The best of the best dresses were prepared for her and she would also lavishly spend on her jewellery. One she had earrings studded with six diamonds. These earrings were valued at 460,000 pounds in the present-day currency.
It was more than 75 million in Pakistani rupees. The queen had a good liking for gambling and would lose even her valuables and jewellery in stakes. She lost 400,000 pounds just in a year.
When Marie Antoinette did not find peace of mind from ever-changing fashions and gambling, she thought of getting an escape from... ...the palatial life and got a bungalow at a distance vacated and began to stay mostly over there. It was a blunder on her part as in France the queen was required most of her time...
...in the palace and remain socially linked with the courtiers. When she did not do it, the courtiers got annoyed and got her surveillance to know why she hid herself in the bungalow... When the queen realised intelligence was on her, she got shutters on the windows to prevent peeping from outside.
Now the courtiers were certain something was fishy. So, in the first place, various stories about the queen were concocted and then conveyed to the public through the servants. The people already disliked the queen for she was from Austria...
France had lost the 7-year war due to Austria. When the royal family's tales reached the public they made them highly exaggerated. It was said the queen had objectionable relations with her servants. The queen was hugely defamed by her scandal with a Swedish politician Axel von Furon.
The imaginative images of the Queen's dissipation were printed and sent to every house. The blood of the people boiled in rage on hearing the name of the Queen. However, not all against the Queen was true as things getmuch currency in the time of revolution...
...which does not happen in normal circumstances. Since the Queen was fully disconnected from the public... ...therefore, she failed to assess the hatred of the masses against her. And even if she had any she paid heed to it and continued with her delightful activities.
Being fed with the bungalow, she got the palace altered with a small village in it. Like people like to live in huts, she would also spend days in that village.
However, the people made it spicy news to prove it was another step by the Queen to add to her luxuries. The people's hatred for the Queen could be assessed from an event when she pictured herself with a floral in plain white clothes...
...and at the public level, it was taken as an insult to France that the Queen wore plain white clothes instead of royal dress. Realising the public resentment, the Queen again pictured herself in the royal dress. The old picture was removed but the public indignation remained intact.
People in hate for the Queen termed his spending on the royal dresses as prodigality... ...and her dressing in plain was described as intentional on her part ... ...to force the closure of the textile industry of Paris which provided costly dresses for the royal palace.
That the masses are by no way happy with the Queen. Do know what major charge the Queen faced besides luxuries and dissipation? It was her issue-lessness even after seven years of the marriage.
In the 18th century, issueless ness was considered an offence exclusively of the woman. The people of France wanted the Queen to beget a maleto inherit the throne of the country. So firstly she was teased for not having a child and when she gave birth to a baby girl...