Rehabilitation for Marie-Antoinette at last

Started by Mutilated Mind, Sep 29 06 03:17

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Mutilated Mind

LONDON (AFP) - Marie-Antoinette, France's last queen, owes her reputation for loose living to London-based French blackmailers who made it all up, according to a British academic.

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"Marie-Antoinette, like Louis XV's mistresses, was the victim of master blackmailers working from London who wrote untrue things in order to get money out of them," Simon Burrows of Leeds University told AFP on Friday.

Burrows has written a book about how the blackmailers -- around fifteen of them -- made their living by producing pamphlets that never reached the public, being intercepted by the king's agents when they got across the channel.

But some copies of the pamphlets were hidden in the Bastille fortress and discovered when the building was stormed on July 14 1789.

"That's when the rumours started to circulate among the people. they say Marie-Antoinette's dissolute lifestyle sparked the revolution but these stories -- made-up stories at that -- were only discovered afterwards," Burrows said.

Marie-Antoinette was guillotined in 1793.

The blackmailers were not motivated by political concerns, according to the lecturer -- they were simply criminals, or perhaps "reformist patriots" at the most, most of whom were in favour of a constitutional monarchy.

Burrows's book "Blackmail, scandal and revolution; London's French libellistes 1758-1792" is published in Britain on October 30.

vny!://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060929/wl_uk_afp/britainfrancehistory_060929193241

Better late than never... but still a bit late.

This shows, as the article says, that the revolution was not sparked by Marie-Antoinette's "dissolute behavior". This is what the history books say and it is used as an excuse to justify the violence and cruelty of the revolutionaries.

Adam_Fulford

I am not at all surprised by this, seeing modern manisfestations of the same phenomenon.  It was amusing how audiences at Cannes got their righteous knickers in a twist over the Sofia Coppola's film, "Marie Antoinette" -- as if these latter-day aristocrats care about the well-being of French peasantry of the 18th century. These same huffy fancy-pant folks turn a blind eye to contemporary abuses and injustices.

Adam_Fulford

I'd have auditioned Paris Hilton for the role.

Mutilated Mind

Adam_Fulford wrote:
It was amusing how audiences at Cannes got their righteous knickers in a twist over the Sofia Coppola's film, "Marie Antoinette" -- as if these latter-day aristocrats care about the well-being of French peasantry of the 18th century.
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So according to you Marie Antoinette was portrayed favorably and those audiences felt this was undue ? I'm not sure I get your meaning.

Adam_Fulford

  I don't understand your question.

Mutilated Mind

Well, that makes two of us.
With two more, we could play a game of cards.

Quarter Pounder

I am glad for her, and I wish her all the luck and happiness she deserves.

Adam_Fulford

Mutilated Mind wrote:
Adam_Fulford wrote:
It was amusing how audiences at Cannes got their righteous knickers in a twist over the Sofia Coppola's film, "Marie Antoinette" -- as if these latter-day aristocrats care about the well-being of French peasantry of the 18th century.
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"So according to you Marie Antoinette was portrayed favorably and those audiences felt this was undue ? I'm not sure I get your meaning."

It's not so much that Marie Antoinette was portrayed favorably -- she wasn't, really -- but that the film focused on the trappings of Marie Antoinette's lavish lifestlyle, without tempering it with modern-day revisionist social commentary.  The critics -- themselves spoiled petit aristocrats, for the most part -- had a problem with that.  Yet, the film's focussing on the externals brings to mind they way the wealthiest members of society live nowadays, who also give little thought  given to the struggling masses apart from occasional lip-service.