In 1792, the queen of Louis XVI was guillotined.
When the beautiful Queen Mary walked to the guillotine, even the fierce executioner was confused, her eyes were round, and her feet could no longer move.
Just when the executioner was in the palm of the horse, the queen accidentally stepped on his foot, and there was the classic last words that have been passed down for more than two hundred years:
Sorry, sir, I didn't mean to.
At the last moment of her life, the last words left by the French queen turned out to be an apology to the person who was about to kill her!
What crime did the beauty that can make the executioner move? Why push her to the guillotine?
One
Mary was born in 1755 at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, the fifteenth child and youngest daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor and Empress.
She is elegant, lively and generous, kind and gentle to people, and very attractive. At the age of 7, Marie met Mozart, a talented musician of 6 years old, who played a piece on the spot. When the Empress asked him what he wanted as a reward, Mozart replied that he hoped to kiss the Empress's youngest daughter at the wedding.
Austrian biographer Stefan Zweig described this in The Severed Head:
When Mozart saw 7-year-old Mary, he was shocked, and immediately proposed to her in a serious way, saying: "I will marry you in the future!" ”
Due to the influence of Zweig's book, this description was also widely recited. This is enough to see that Princess Mary has been extraordinarily beautiful since she was a child.
In 1766, out of political necessity, the French royal family officially proposed to the Austrian royal family. The original candidate was Mary's eighth sister, but she unfortunately died of smallpox, and 11-year-old Mary became an alternate candidate.
The Austrian court gladly agreed, but due to her young age, the wedding was delayed for nearly 4 years, until Mary was 14 years old and finally set foot on French soil and became the crown princess of Louis Auguste (later Louis XVI), the crown prince of France.
When Marie was about to leave Vienna and embark on a journey of peace, she was in love. The Queen Mother said to her whimpering daughter, "Farewell, my dearest child." Be very kind to the French princes so that they can say that I sent them an angel. ”
In fact, the marriage was unfortunate for Mary and eventually led to a tragedy that was guillotined.
Three
In the fourth year of Mary's arrival in France, Louis XV died, her husband Louis XVI ascended the throne, and Mary became King of France and married France.
When she became queen, Mary began to splurge, and every day she was enthusiastic about balls, fashion and feasts, and she decorated the garden, which attracted many noble ladies every day.
In court affairs, she embodies the proud beauty and delicate dignity of a queen, more assertive than her husband Louis XVI, and has offended many ministers.
There is a rumor that a minister told Marie: "What should the French people do if they don't even have bread?" ”
Mary smiled innocently and sweetly: "Then why don't they eat cake?" ”
This sentence is the same as Emperor Jin Hui's "why not eat minced meat"!
"Jin Shu Hui Di Ji" contains: The world is desolate, the people are starving to death, and the emperor said: "Why not eat minced meat?" ”
In fact, Mary never said this in history, but the descendant (the poet Rousseau) vented his indignation on this empress who was keen to dress up.
In 1789, Mary rejected the National Assembly's call to abolish feudalism and limit royal power, and the result was criticism. Coupled with the fact that France was heavily indebted during the reign of Louis XVI, the French portrayed her as an evil and murderous witch, a shameless adulteress, and the people's anger was almost entirely focused on her alone.
Refusing to sit still, Mary secretly moved to ask for help from a group of exiled nobles. But instead of helping, these nobles fell into the trap, and they all wanted to exchange the king's head for a ransom. The royal couple had no help left and right and had to plan their own escape again and again.
Two
However, her several secret escapes with the king were discovered and had to return to Paris to live under surveillance.
In 1792, when France declared war on Austria, Mary was distraught - on the one hand, her mother's family and her mother-in-law's family, weighing the pros and cons, she tilted the weight of her feelings towards Australia.
She secretly provided the battle plan to Austria in an attempt to suppress the French Revolution through the power of her mother's family. But despite Mary's destruction of all the letters and the various actions were well hidden, the matter was finally revealed.
The queen's treason immediately angered the French people, which directly led to the uprising of the people of Paris and the complete overthrow of the monarchy. Subsequently, she was imprisoned with the king.
On October 12, 1793, Queen Marie was brought to trial, and a number of trumped-up charges were imposed on her—including one count of "incest with her own son, Louis XVII."
When the complainant asked her why she didn't answer whether she had an incestuous relationship with her son, Mary couldn't hold back any longer, and she changed her calm mood since entering the courtroom, protesting excitedly:
The reason why I do not answer is because it is human nature to refuse to answer such an accusation of extreme rudeness to mothers! I appeal to all the mothers present to give me this right.
During Marie's trial, her young daughter, later Duchess of Angoulême, was beaten and gang-raped by mobs and jailers, who forced her to give perjury accusing her mother of incestuous relations with her brother.
Due to her young age, she was beaten into a trick, cried and signed the accusation form, and narrowly escaped death.
But this incident left a great shadow in her heart, she hated her cowardice and timidity, often cut her pulse to commit suicide, and took poison many times, but without success.
Mary's trial lasted several days until October 15, 1793, when Mary was formally sentenced to death.
Four
On the morning of October 16, 1793, Mary was taken by prison van to the Square of the Revolution, where she was about to be publicly executed.
The scene was crowded, and people rushed to witness the demeanor of this French queen, shouting and cheering endlessly!
When Mary was guillotined, the executioner just stared at her, unable to move...
So, Queen Mary accidentally stepped on the executioner's foot, and she quickly said: "I'm sorry, you know, I didn't mean it." ”
This woman known for her beauty in European history died at the age of 38.
Until her death, she did not really bow her head and always maintained the dignity of the queen.
Queen Mary was guillotined
After Marie's death, her body was thrown into mass graves and buried, and it was not until 22 years later, when the Count of Provence was restored to Louis XVIII, that she was re-exhumed.
At this time, her body turned into a pile of white bones, and it was impossible to see that she was once a beautiful and moving queen!
Five
To execute such a beautiful young woman, why should she be guillotined, not allowed to commit suicide or hang?
In fact, severed heads are a noble way to die in the West, and only the nobles can use it.
In the eighteenth century, the French created a new decapitation machine, which was put into service immediately after successful experiments with several live sheep.
But this decapitation machine has its drawbacks, that is, the chopping knife is easy to roll the blade. When Louis XVI, the king of France at the time, heard the news, he suggested that the chopping knife be changed to a triangle, and he also personally modified it on the drawings.
However, it is extremely ironic that he personally participated in the guillotine improvement work, and later became the guillotine!
When Mary's husband Louis XVI was beheaded, he used a triangular chopper, weighing about forty kilograms, and its wooden support was four meters high. His head fell heavily to the bottom of the basket, his head rotated at the bottom of the basket, and the brain cells were immediately deprived of oxygen, and the person began to lose consciousness and leave.
The whole process, less than 20 seconds.
In January 1793, Louis XVI of France was guillotined and executed
According to statistics, during the French Revolution, 17,500 people were sent to the guillotine, and in the city of Paris alone, 2,636 people died on the guillotine.
Relatively speaking, the guillotine seems to be hanged is a murderous nature for people, such as German war criminals, Saddam Hussein, Tojo Hideki, etc.!
epilogue
Regarding Mary's life, Stephen Zweig commented, "She was too young to know all the gifts of fate, and had already secretly marked the price. ”
What he meant was that since Queen Mary enjoyed the honor that belonged to the queen, she deserved to pay for it when the dynasty fell.
It's just that the price she paid was too heavy!
Her short life is more like a canary kept by the French royal family who only knows how to eat, drink and have fun. It can be said that she has no sense of responsibility, but she is only a political victim.
The authenticity of the classic quote in which she apologized to the executioner from the guillotine was questioned, as it was rumored that those who were beheaded at that time would be tied up and gagged.
But when she was executed, someone drew a sketch in pencil to prove that the queen was only tied to her hands.
What's more, one of the executioners' tasks at that time was to collect the dying lines of those big people, and this sentence, together with Madame Roland's phrase "freedom, do countless goodness in the name of Ru" were all famous dying words at that time.
For more than two hundred years, Queen Mary's last words have been widely praised, which also reflects her personality charm from the side.
Thank you for reading, please correct any inappropriateness in the text.
Image from the web
Resources:
Peerless queen, Baidu Encyclopedia.