history help!!! please help me!!!!!!?

Question

ok so me and my friend are doing a report on the french revolution. but the entire thing was tooooooo long, so we just want to focus on the years of marie antoinette and how this revolution ended. was there like a certain name for the chunk of years she ruled - like for example, "The Age of Cakes?.? how close was she to the end of the revolution...ten years? twenty? who were other important peeps during her time and the time during the end of it? please help!!!!!!!!

Answer 1

Marie Antoinette never said "let them eat cake". The quote actually originates with the famous French philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau who wrote that a "certain princess" said it... this was written by Rousseau in 1766, when Marie Antoinette was only 10 years old and Rousseau actually refers to the event as occuring at a time prior to Marie Antoinette's birth. The certain pricess that Rousseau was referring to was probably Maria Theresa.

During the French Revolution, the quote was falsely attributed to her as propoganda so as to increase the general animosity towards her.

Answer 2

sounds cool. I'm guessing they want you to focus on the class disparity in the Ancien Regime and how Marie Antoinette plays into this. Also maybe include stuff like the Estate system
i.e. Clergy-first estate, Nobility-second estate, everyone else-third estate. I did something similar in high school and I also noted how important the middle class was in bringing the French Revolution to fruition and not just the peasantry. The middle class felt slighted by the nobles on many occasions because a lot of them were quite wealthy, but were seen as social inferiors by the nobility, even though some middle class people had more money than the nobles just no title or peerage. Without the guidance and financing of middle class thinkers, physicians, lawyers etc., the French Revolution would've been just another peasant revolt that would've been crushed.

Answer 3

Marie Antoinette was the classic "dumb blonde" of her age. She seemed clueless about what was going on, and became a symbol of the uncaring of the Royalty to the people. The revolution was caused in part by widespread famine after the bad winter of 1788-1789, and her "let them eat cake" comment was the wrong thing to say to the wrong people at the wrong time. Technically, she didn't rule, as she was the King's wife, but she did meddle in the selection of ministers.

Because she was a member of the Austrian Royal family, her mistreatment by the Revolution led to Austria declaring war with France, which was joined by other European countries. The specre of war in addition to the other problems the French Revolutionary government faced lead to the "reign of terror". The "terror" lasted from 1792-1794 and was characterized by suspicion of the Royalty and nobility and the guillotining of suspects for almost any crime. Marie went to the guillotine in 1792, and Louis XVI followed a few months thereafter.

Surprisingly, France won this war, and the people were united fighting it. The French national anthem "La Marseilles" was written at this period and was a call to arms to fight invaders who were killing people and destroying the countryside. One of the generals that developed from the war was a enterprising Corsican named Napoleon Bonaparte. He would be the main character later in the revolution and until 1815.