The trial and execution of Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), formerly the queen of France, was among the opening events of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution (1789-1799). Accused of a series of crimes that included conspiring with foreign powers against the security of France, Marie Antoinette was found guilty of high treason and executed on 16 October 1793.
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Since at least the time of the affair of the diamond necklace in 1785, Marie Antoinette was immensely unpopular in France, the subject of wild rumors and scandalous libelles. Accused of being an Austrian spy, a careless spendthrift, and a morally bankrupt deviant, her association with France's monarchy helped to lessen her popularity at the start of the Revolution. At the outbreak of the War of the First Coalition (1792-1797), she hoped to bring about the Revolution's destruction by sending military secrets to her contacts in Austria, but was impressed by the revolutionaries alongside her family following the Storming of the Tuileries Palace in August 1792.
After the trial and execution of Louis XVI in January 1793, she remained imprisoned along with her sister-in-law, Madame Elizabeth, and her children: the fourteen-year-old princess Marie-Thérèse, and the eight-year-old princess. year-old Louis-Charles, who was recognized by royalists as Louis XVII, rightful king of France.
The execution of Louis XVI of France (r. 1774-1792) left the king's widow, Marie Antoinette, overwhelmed with grief. Like a ghost, she haunted her chambers in the Tower of the Temple, the Paris prison fortress where she and her children were being detained by the revolutionary government. In the days after her husband's death, the former queen barely spoke and rarely ate. She refused to even go into the gardens for fresh air, since doing so required passing through the king's empty chambers, now painfully silent. Marie Antoinette had turned pale and sickly during her imprisonment, her hair having prematurely gone white from stress. No longer referred to reverently as “Her Majesty”, she was now known as “the Widow Capet” or, more plainly, as Antoinette Capet.