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How much resistence did Marie Antoinette put up to prevent her son from being taken by the revolutionaries?

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Following King Louis' execution, revolutionaries were intent on taking her son away from her. How did she resist their attempts?

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  1. It took the revolutionaries two hours for Marie Antoinette to relinquish her son. She attempted to resist the men by shielding her son with her body and refusing to give him up. She did not even budge when the men gave her death threats. It was only when they threatened to kill her eldest child (Marie-Therese, the Princess Royal) when she finally let him go.


  2. In 'Marie Antoinette', Joan Haslip writes:

    'It was late in the evening of 1 July, when the little boy was already in bed, that six officers of the commune, without giving any previous warning, came into the Queen's sitting room to announce that the newly formed Committee of Public Safety had decreed that she was to lose the custody of her son.  the Queen's pleas and entreaties were so heartrending as to embarrass the republican officers who in their offical report wrote that "the seperation was carried out with all the kindness and consideration proper to the circumstances".  On the other hand, the little King's sister, who must have been in a highly emotional state at the time, recalls her mother bathed in tears, begging the officers to kill her rather than take away her son, and then threatening to kill both her children if she continued to oppose their orders.  Neither of these reports can be believed.

    When Marie Antoinette heard of the fatal decision, she knew that neither prayers nor protests could prevail against the pathological hatred of a Hebert.  The sight of her sobbing child being carried away in the arms of the republican guards broke her proud spirit.  From now on her sole interest in life lay in the few moments a day when she would climb up the spiral staircase to the third floor, where through on eof the window slats in the tower she could look out over a courtyard where the little King would sometimes come to play.  for the first days he was miserably unhappy and she would hear him crying in his rooms downstairs, calling for his mother.  The guards and commissioners, who were for the most part young men with families of their own, comforted him, and before long he had adapted himself quite happily to his new life.  It was far more amusing to play in the gardens with the soldiers than to recite his prayers and catechism with his pious aunt.'

  3. I dont' know. I hope this helps.

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