Marie Antoinette

Queen of France from 1774. She was the fourth daughter of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria and the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I, and married Louis XVI of France in 1770. Her devotion to the interests of Austria, reputation for extravagance, and supposed connection with the scandal of the Diamond Necklace made her unpopular, and helped to provoke the French Revolution of 1789. She was tried for treason in October 1793 and guillotined.

Marie Antoinette influenced her husband to resist concessions in the early days of the Revolution – for example, Mirabeau's plan for a constitutional settlement. She instigated the disastrous flight to Varennes, which discredited the monarchy, and sought foreign intervention against the Revolution, betraying French war strategy to the Austrians in 1792.