Through the history of the world, the people of Earth have seen every kind of leader. We’ve seen good leaders, average leaders, and terrible leaders. Many cases in France’s history they have had many leaders go through all of these ranks. For example, Napoleon Bonaparte started out great and slowly went down hill. But never in France’s history have they seen such a terrible leader as King Louie the XVI. Louie was not exactly king material. Louie was fat, shy, gluttonous, gentle, weak minded, not particularly smart and unambitious . He was everything a king shouldn’t be. As the French king Louie made just about every mistake a king could possibly make. These mistakes lead to the French Revolution and even the beheading of King Louie. Throughout Louie’s rein one mistake stands out more than any other. The biggest mistake Louie made was when he bribed the Austrian princess Marie Antoniette at the age of fifteen . Because of Antoniette and Louie’s passion for her France underwent a horrible time period. She is the worst queen France has ever seen. Blinded by beauty, she led to Louie’s death and the uprising of the French people.
Louie upon taking his first glance at Marie was breathtaking. Marie Antoinette is depicted as an absolute beauty . But beauty is at the eye of the beholder, plus she was the queen so many portraits of her might have been fudged a bit to make the unbeautiful seem gorgeous. Marie was actually not all that attractive. She had body problems, such as a hump and other deformities. Louie, despite the look of her, was in love at first sight. In 1770 by ways of bribes and offers to the Antoinette family the two were married.
The bribe to get Marie’s hand in marriage was one of the first mistakes that Louie had faced. Louie showered Marie with jewelry and hundreds of dresses. Marie got exactly what she asked for every time she asked for it. This had a horrible affect on the economy in France. All of this buying of dresses and jewelry for the queen was depleting the French money. She was said to have dresses of gold. Some dresses even were covered in diamonds. Marie had a huge amount of dresses all different and all extravagant. There is little doubt that Marie was one of the most well dressed queens in France’s history. Not only did she need dresses, she wanted many other exotic things...
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... people on October 16, 1793 the revolutionaries put Marie Antoinette to death by guillotine . This really made Austria mad at France making them a enemy to France.
For all of these reasons and more I believe that the biggest reason for the downfall of Louis XVI and the French revolution is Marie Antoinette. There is hundreds of cases where you can go through and point to different mistakes Marie made. If it was not for this woman history would be a lot different as we know it. France may not have went through all the hell they went through in the years following. Marie Antoinette was the worst mistake Louis XVI made in his rein of France.
Bibliography
Conrad, Lindsay, Who was more detrimental to the French Revolution: Marie Antoinette or Louis XVI?, http://www.aviators.stark.k12.oh.us/Historian/Onlinepolling/france1789.htm
Fay, Bernard, Louis XVI The End of a World, (London: W.H. Allen, 1968)
Furneaux, Rupert, The Last Days of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, (New York: The John Day Company, 1971
Wikipedia encyclopedia, Affair of the Diamond Necklace, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Necklace_Affair
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Beloved is the story of Sethe, a woman escaped from slavery. Shortly after her escape, members from the plantations on which she worked came to take her and her four children back to the plantation. In desperation, Sethe kills her young daughter by cutting her throat, and attempts to murder her other three children in order to prevent them from returning to slavery. The majority of the film is about the revisitation of the ghost of the daughter she killed, named Beloved. The ghost returns in the form of a woman who would be the daughter's age if she were alive at the time, approximately twenty years old. Throughout the rest of the film Beloved begins to absorb all of the attention and energy of those around her, especially her mother. This continues to the point where Sethe has lost her job and spent all of her money buying things to please Beloved. Ultimately, the...
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