Author | Lotus Delight
Contact WeChat | youhistory1
Starter | Finance National Weekly
In 1770, on a desert island on the Rhine between France and Germany, a fourteen-year-old girl walked nervously into a uniquely constructed wooden building.
The two front rooms of the building face the right bank of the Rhine, i.e. in the direction of Germany, and the other two front rooms face the left bank of the Rhine, i.e. in the direction of France. In the middle of the building is a hall. The fourteen-year-old was Marie Antonette, Holy Roman Emperor Franz I and Empress and the youngest daughter of The Grand Duke of Austria, Bohemia and Queen Maria Theresia of Hungary. When she entered the small building from the room on the right bank of the Rhine, she was still an Austrian princess. But when she came out of the room on the left bank of the Rhine, she was already the Princess of France.
In the historical chronicle film "The Magnificent Queen" produced by Columbia Pictures, Spider-Woman Kirsten Dunst starred in the role of Mary Antonette.
Growing up together, the maids who looked like girlfriends were all left outside the building, and Marie Antonette, played by Dunst, entered the hall with a nervous and uneasy smile to hold a handover ceremony. Every piece of clothing and ornaments on her body belonged to Austria and could not be brought into France. When the beloved puppy was also forcibly taken away, the fourteen-year-old girl finally couldn't help but cry. From this moment on, she had to leave her native Austria, which had given her infinite pampering, freedom, and joy, and although she entered Versailles as the most noble woman in all of Europe, the princess of France, she would have to face the uncertain fate of the future alone.
Yes, Marie Antonette, the soon-to-be Queen of France, became famous only because she and her husband, Louis XVI, were guillotineed by the scrappy revolutionary masses during the magnificent French Revolution.
Actually, as far as personal preferences are concerned, I don't think Dunst is suitable for the role of Mary Antonette. The famous book of The Austrian writer Stephen Zweig, published in unity in 2006, contains several full-page colorful portraits of the Queen of France. The woman in the painting is more beautiful and elegant, far from being able to interpret Dunster, who became popular as the girl next door in the corner of spider woman.
Zweig's Mary is a Rococo-like queen. Born in France in the eighteenth century, Rococo is popular in European art styles, she is light, delicate, delicate and complex. The beauty of Marie Antonette has such an artistic temperament.
Such a charming beauty once brought Marie Antonette the universal support of the French people. Her frame was through the triumphal arches and city gates full of romantic garlands amid the cheers and applause of the people along the way, and finally entered Versailles. At versailles, Marie Antonette awaited a teenager who was only a year older than her—the future Louis XVI.
Strictly speaking, neither Louis XVI nor Marie Antonette was the kind of tyrant and demon whose hands were stained with blood.
Louis XVI liked to read, read a lot of books, and had a wealth of historical knowledge and geographical knowledge. But he was a man of medium intelligence and lacked opinion, suitable for doing some mechanical, unconscioned work behind others. If he were an ordinary nobleman, he might be a man of integrity, gentleness, and goodness. But alas, he was the king. Goethe's assessment of Louis XVI is this: Why is a king swept out of the house? If he had been good at power, he would still be alive in the world.
Marie Antonette is the most delicate rose in Versailles. She has a gentle personality, is sincere, kind, lively and intelligent. But at the same time, her shortcomings are also prominent: childish, frivolous, and hedonistic. As the hostess of versailles, she spent almost all her time dressing, dressing and entertaining.
A beautiful woman does not need to have a brain, she is only responsible for being beautiful as a flower, and she is responsible for pouring out the country and the city. Conquer the world, that is the responsibility of men. If Marie Antonette was just an ordinary aristocratic woman, or even an Austrian princess, then it would be harmless for her to spend her whole life in glitzy pleasures. Unfortunately, she was the Queen of France.
Marie Antonette's frivolity and profligacy seriously damaged her personal reputation and the image of the royal family. There was a rumor that the minister reported to her that the people were in distress and could not even eat bread, and she replied, "Then why don't they eat cake?" ”
"Why not eat minced meat?" This is the famous quote of Sima Zheng, the famous idiot emperor in Chinese history. But it is clear that Marie Antonette is by no means an intellectually problematic woman, and this is the propaganda that was carried out to discredit her during that particular period. On the contrary, she is very clever and resourceful, and it is only in her ten years as queen of France that the frivolity and floating waves of an immature woman have taken the pinnacle of her character.
A mediocre but magnanimous king and a frivolous but virtuous queen may be able to achieve a pair of benevolent rulers in times of political stability. However, we have encountered an era of great change and great turmoil, which requires dexterous political skills and superb political wisdom to control. Now the universal love of the French people for this charming Austrian princess has become a universal hatred.
In 1789, the French Revolution broke out, and this year, Marie Antonette was thirty-four years old, the exact age at which a woman was on her way to true maturity. Unfortunately, history will not give her any more time.
In October 1793, Marie Antonette was brought to trial by the Revolutionary Tribunal. By this time, her husband, Louis XVI, had been sent to the guillotine by the revolutionary masses. History, however, is doomed because Marie Antonette wrote one of the most dishonorable and immoral footnotes to the French Revolution.
Marie Antonette's charges, in addition to fighting against the Revolution, conspiring to collude with Austria, and betraying France, were also charged by the Revolutionary Tribunal with adultery with her eight-and-a-half-year-old son.
Having a child accuse his own biological mother, not to mention, is such an evil and vicious crime. Zweig said in the biography of Mary Antonette: "This is probably unique in history." Thus Marie Antonette became the embodiment of the devil, and the French court became what we call the "birthplace of lasciviousness" in our textbooks.
Three hours before walking to the guillotine, Mary Antonette thought not of herself, but of writing a letter to her sister-in-law, Mrs. Elizabeth, who was also accused of adultery with Mary's son. The letter said, "I know how much pain this child has caused you. But forgive him, my dear sister, please think he's only 9 years old. It is easy to borrow a child's mouth and say what others have said, or even to ask him to say something he does not understand. Hopefully, one day, this child will better understand the value of your love and warmth. ”
Before walking to the guillotine, the rose that Versailles had once been the most delicate, had finally learned to mature and reason.
The French Revolution was one of the most intense revolutions in Europe at that time. From the capture of the Bastille to the Girondins, to the Jacobins, to the Thermidorians, and finally to Napoleon. The scrappy revolutionary masses set off one revolutionary upsurge after another, countless people shed blood and died in violent struggles, and countless people were sent to the guillotine.
Over the next two hundred years, French thinkers, philosophers, and writers reflected on this history over and over again.
"When a great revolution aimed at destroying all the systems of the past has been carried out, people are surprised to find that the result of such a revolution is the destruction of a totalitarian system, and then the establishment of a new totalitarian system, and even further strengthened and more oppressive." In the book "The Ragtag" by the French thinker Le Pen, this is the French Revolution and its consequences.
Robespierre was the leader of the Jacobins during the French Revolution and the most revolutionary revolutionary. During the Jacobin dictatorship, the French Revolution was pushed to the "peak", declaring that the French Revolution was the most thorough break with the old system. According to sources, in just one year of the Jacobin dictatorship, nearly 20,000 people were executed throughout France.
The year after Louis XVI was executed, Robespierre was also guillotineed by the Thermidorians.
It is said that the Humorous Frenchman wrote on Robespierre's epitaph: I, Robespierre, are buried here, passers-by, do not mourn for me, if I live, none of you will live.
Of course, in our historical narrative, Robespierre remains the greatest people's revolutionary of the French Revolution.