Then, Louis XV died, and the courtiers coming to salute the new nineteen-year-old king found him and his queen on their knees weeping bitterly, "Oh, God," they cried, embracing each other, "protect us we are too young to reign."Īndré Castelot, a distinguished French scholar and historian, has in this book written one of the most brilliant of recent biographies, which makes Marie Antoinette, from her arrival in France, to the day she rode to her death in a cart, amazingly alive for the reader. Yet she soon won everyone's heart and had all Paris at her charming feet.īut as time went by, not only the court but the country as a whole and Marie Antoinette's mother (Maria Theresa of Austria, four hundred leagues away, and constantly advising her daughter by mail) were alarmed by the fantastic parties, wild extravagances, and excessive pleasures of the Dauphin's bride. The girl had many problems to cope with at the French court, among them her husband's lack of interest, the King's spinster daughters (almost her only companions at first) and Madame du Barry, the King's favorite. He was a shy, heavy young man, overshadowed by his grandfather, Louis XV. She was fourteen when she first met her fifteen-year-old husband, the Dauphin of France. She was Marie Antoinette, a lovely Austrian princess.
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