Missing scene from film: Marie Antoinette (1938) ▻ Marie Antoinette’s Trial
When Marie Antoinette was summoned for trial, she was separated from her children and removed to prison.
Unknown to Marie Antoinette, the new government had decided to use her imprisoned son, the dauphin Louis-Charles, to give testimony against her. Holding the boy in the most horrible of circumstances, his keepers got him to say that his mother had behaved inappropriately with him, i.e. that she had abused him sexually. Jaques René Hébert came up with this plan to destroy the last bit that was left of Marie Antoinette and her public image after he had found out that whenever her son was frightened she would comfort him and let him sleep in her bed. Since Louis Charles was subject to all manner of physical abuse by his jailers, which made it easy for Hérbert to force a vulnerable and easily-led boy to do what he wanted, he made him sign a pre-drafted confession.
On October, 14, 1793, the Marie Antoinette appeared before her judges. After Hérbert droned about recollections of finding counter-revolutionary symbols belonging to Marie Antoinette, and insinuations about Lafayette’s role in the escape plan, he finally got to the center of his plan and accused her of having sexually abused her son (with some political plan in mind, as Hérbert said).
The court fell silent as the accusations landed, then an ambiguous murmur rippled round the crowd. Fouquier-Tinville hastily asked Marie Antoinette what she had to respond, Marie Antoinette replied “I have no knowledge of the facts of which Hebert speaks”. Even Fouquier-Tinville now seemed unwilling to delve any deeper into this appalling line of questioning, and instead began asking questions about some of Hébert’s earlier, more mundane accusations. Interrupted by a member of the jury, who demanded that the Queen answered the accusations about her son, suddenly she said the bricked-off, emotionless, almost robotic: “If I have not replied it is because Nature itself refuses to answer such a charge laid against a mother”. Standing to face the assembled crowd directly, she challenged them. “I appeal to all mothers here present – is it true?” This noble and simple reply affected all who heard it.
The verdict was never in doubt, nor was her sentence. Marie Antoinette would be executed, by guillotine, on the 16th of October.
At about 4:30 in the morning, on the day of her death, she wrote a final letter to her sister-in-law Elizabeth (who would soon be executed, too.) She was not allowed to see her two surviving children. [x] [x]
