Marie Antoinette Guillotined: Monarchy's Final Act
Marie Antoinette was carted through the streets of Paris to the guillotine on October 16, 1793, nine months after her husband Louis XVI was executed. Her trial had been a grotesque spectacle: prosecutors accused her of incest with her eight-year-old son, a charge so outrageous it actually generated public sympathy. She was 37, her hair had turned white during imprisonment, and she reportedly apologized to the executioner for accidentally stepping on his foot. The famous line 'Let them eat cake' was never hers; it appeared in Rousseau's Confessions, written when Marie Antoinette was a child. Her execution eliminated the last figurehead around whom monarchists might rally and signaled that the Revolution would spare no one. The Reign of Terror intensified in the months that followed.
October 16, 1793
233 years ago
Key Figures & Places
What Else Happened on October 16
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