How did peasants fell about Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution?

Question

Did they like them? Did they want them dead? Did they support them? etc.?

Answer 1

Ascending the throne in 1774, Louis inherited a realm driven nearly bankrupt through the opulence of his predecessors Louis XIV and XV. After donning the crown, things only got worse. The economy spiraled downward (unemployment in Paris in 1788 is estimated at 50%), crops failed, the price of bread and other food soared. The people were not happy. To top it off, Louis had the misfortune to marry a foreigner, the Austrian Marie The anger of the French people, fueled by xenophobia, targeted Marie as a prime source of their problems.
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/louis.htm

Another good source, which refers to Marie Antoinette's response to a plea that the people did not have bread was "Let them eat cake!" is this site:
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/louis.htm

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So, as you can see, the peasants did not like the royal pair, especially Marie Antoinette.

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Answer 2

The peasants' feelings about Louis and Marie Antoinette were very different, at least in the end. At the beginning of their reign, they were both adored by the populace, but satirists eventually turned them into horrible figured. However, with Louis XVI, the nation mourned his death, even though he had been villified - he was, after all, the king, the soveraign, and the symbol of their country's power. Marie Antoinette, of course, being the evil foreign wife, was booed and jeered on her way to the guillotine, and condemned pre-and-postmortem as the main reason France fell to revolution in the first place- which wasn't true, but nevertheless, to keep the king's memory sacred....

Keep in mind, though, that the peasantry did not actually kill the royals - the bourgeois, the educated classes, were responsible for it. Though the common people certainly started some of the violence due to the price of bread, and stormed Versailles (keep in mind that they only wanted to kill Antoinette and NOT Louis..), it was the intellectuals such as Robespierre and Herat who took the Revolution the way it ended - and were the ones who ultimately killed the royals. As mentioned above, the peasants loved their king, hence why they welcomed Napoleon - he was a return to "normalcy" (so to speak).

One book that really touches on this topic well is "Marie Antoinette" by Antonia Fraser. While it is primarily about the queen, it does shed a great deal of light on how the king really was treated in comparison to the queen, particularly when it came to their trials and executions. It also explains how the French and Indian Wars, the Revolutionary War, an exceedingly overbloated royal bureaucracy, and ministers chosen more by family background than competence - and not neccessarily the queen's purchasing of fancy shoes - was the real reason France was bankrupt. There are few modern sources as well-researched.

Answer 3

Not all peasants wanted Marie Antoinette dead. In the West of France, in a region called the Vendée, there were many people who wanted the revolution to be rolled back and monarchy reinstituted. As for Louis XIV, he had been dead for yonks when the French revolution started, having died in 1715. Maybe you should get your Roman numerals right, kiddo!

Answer 4

The peasants they hated them with a passion because Marie Antoinette spent of France's money of this of no real purpose and King Louis was very incompatent when it came to matters of France. Thats why they were both murdered by the peasants. Serves them right.

Answer 5

didn't care to much at first but in the end they couldn't stand them hated their guts. most did any way there is always the loyalists.
the reason for all the hatred was because Louis was spending to much money and raising taxes and at one point they made to much food at a banquet and gave the left overs to the peasants and when they saw all the food that was "unsuitable" for the nobles and was the best they had ever seen they flipped, an other contributor to that was the fact that Antoinette bathed in milk regularly, milk that could have went to all the starving people of France

Answer 6

They wanted them DEAD! Brown bread dead... In fact, the F word was used by the French aristocracy back then... It's the peasants who overthrew them and the new rule outlawed the F word because they detested the aristocracy so much. So a good word became profanity because of that era.

Answer 7

The peasants and common citizens did not like them (Louis15(!) and Marie Antionette), the people had hunger, they where fed up to have hunger .
Robespierre was not much better, he got also killed at the end .
The people robbed all the castles(all antiques where stolen that time), after the reign of Napoleon (so much later) it mostly was recovered back my the Government and museums for about 70-80%.

Answer 8

the peasantry did not support the crown, infact they wanted to shorten them a little bit, which they eventually did.

Answer 9

How did they feel? They hated them. While they were starving and begging, the king, queen, royalty, and church officials lived like... well, like royalty.

Answer 10

i don't think they liked them since all social classes started revolution.