Speaker 1: You're listening to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Aaron Minky listener Discretion advised. The streets of
Speaker 1: Paris on September third, seventeen ninety two were chaos and anarchy,
Speaker 1: reeking of blood and sweat and spit. Thousands of starving
Speaker 1: people and desperate bodies pressed together overnight. Hasty tribunals were
Speaker 1: built outside prisons for aristocrats to be swept through one
Speaker 1: at a time, pulled from their cells in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night to stand trial for a teeming crowd.
Speaker 1: These trials would go on until sunrise. Marie Antoinette, her
Speaker 1: husband Louis the sixteen, and their children were still not
Speaker 1: technically imprisoned. Yet they lived in a fortress palace called
Speaker 1: the Temple, under something close to house arrest, forced to
Speaker 1: wait their days staring at walls, listening to the mocking
Speaker 1: man not in his chance, of the guards and the
Speaker 1: cries for blood from the street. One of Marie Antoinette's
Speaker 1: favorite ladies in waiting, the Princess de Lembaal, was brought
Speaker 1: into the courtyard. The Tribunal of revolutionaries asked the Princess
Speaker 1: de Lembald to take an oath swearing her love of
Speaker 1: liberty and her hatred of the queen. I can swear
Speaker 1: readily to the former, the princess said, but not the latter.
Speaker 1: It is not in my heart. Those with sympathetic hearts
Speaker 1: looked upon the princess with horror. Some whispered to her,
Speaker 1: begging her to take the oath and save her own life.
Speaker 1: The princess de lemball shook her head. The leader of
Speaker 1: the tribunal brought his hand down and shouted. The princess
Speaker 1: was thrown to the crowd. Her body was torn apart,
Speaker 1: stabbed and beaten. Those with knives cut pieces of her
Speaker 1: flesh to keep a souvenirs. Her head they stuck on
Speaker 1: a pipe to parade through the city, and so from
Speaker 1: cafe to cafe, the princess's lifeless head was placed before
Speaker 1: patrons who were told to drink in celebration of the
Speaker 1: death of traders. Then someone in the crowd had an idea,
Speaker 1: shouldn't the queen get to see her favorite once more?
Speaker 1: Should she not get to give her friend a kiss goodbye?
Speaker 1: But the princess's head was bloodied and swollen, her hair
Speaker 1: madded and thin, and so the crowd brought it to
Speaker 1: a hair stylist who was forced to style the decapitated
Speaker 1: head until it had the same blonde, cascading curls that
Speaker 1: the princess had been famous foreign life. When the head
Speaker 1: was recognizable, the crowd brought it to the temple. They
Speaker 1: raised the head on its pike until it was directly
Speaker 1: outside the Queen's window. The crowd began chanting, demanding Marie Antoinette,
Speaker 1: kiss the princess this cold blue lips, look into her
Speaker 1: hooded swollen eyes, see her gray skin, her sunken cheeks,
Speaker 1: and her perfect, beautifully quoffed golden hair. The meniscus thin
Speaker 1: bubble that had kept her safe at Versailles had popped,
Speaker 1: leaving Marie Antoinette with only the shutters on her windows
Speaker 1: to shield her from having to see her friends grotesque head.
Speaker 1: The sounds from the street, though, the taunts and the jeers,
Speaker 1: there was no protection from, and even when the crowd scattered,
Speaker 1: bored with waiting for Marie Antoinette to appear, ready to
Speaker 1: find a fresher body. Marie Antoinette, now, sooner or later
Speaker 1: that that body would be hers. I'm Danis Schwartz, and
Speaker 1: this is noble blood. Marie Antoinette's first death came when
Speaker 1: she was thirteen years old, on an eye and in
Speaker 1: the middle of the Rhine between Austria and France, where
Speaker 1: she was to begin her new life as a dauphine,
Speaker 1: the wife of the country's young prince. She left everything
Speaker 1: Austrian behind in an elaborate tent. She was stripped, naked
Speaker 1: of all of her clothes and dressed anew all French.
Speaker 1: Her Austrian dog, Mops, was taken away. All of her friends,
Speaker 1: her ladies, the ones who had taken the week's long
Speaker 1: journey with her by carriage here to her new life,
Speaker 1: were turned back. Only the little princess, born a new
Speaker 1: continued on in a sky blue carriage of gold and velvet.
Speaker 1: No longer Maria Antonia but Marie Antoinette. She was the
Speaker 1: fifteenth child of the Empress Maria Teresa and was only
Speaker 1: gifted with the prize role of Dauphin of France thanks
Speaker 1: to random happenstance, an unlikely circumstance befalling her older sister.
Speaker 1: Her education up until that last minute betrothal had been minimal,
Speaker 1: But even if she wasn't studious, she was beautiful and
Speaker 1: charming and agreeable she would be happy in France marrying
Speaker 1: the awkward young prince only a few months her senior.
Speaker 1: But even if she wasn't, her happiness wasn't the point.
Speaker 1: She was a pawn to secure an alliance between Austria
Speaker 1: and France. Twenty two years after she became a French princess,
Speaker 1: after two decades of decadence in the most cultured and
Speaker 1: luxurious palace in the world, Marie Antoinette was alone in
Speaker 1: a cell in the heart of Paris, with mobs outside
Speaker 1: calling for her head to join that of her husband
Speaker 1: and her friends in the guillotine. Marie Antoinette's prison cell
Speaker 1: at the Conciergerie was not a place of warmth and kindness,
Speaker 1: but the jail keeper, Madame Rochard, tried to make the
Speaker 1: woman who had once lived in a palace comfortable. Madame Richard,
Speaker 1: who ran the Concert der Jurie with her husband, had
Speaker 1: watched the queen hanging a small golden watch on the
Speaker 1: wall of herself, the only bit of adornment in the
Speaker 1: dark room, where the walls dripped and moaning could be
Speaker 1: heard from all hours of the night. It was a
Speaker 1: gift from long ago from her mother. The Empress Maria Theres.
Speaker 1: Madame Richard had also watched the guards confiscate the watch.
Speaker 1: Five days later, the queen was mostly quiet after the
Speaker 1: her hands stayed in her laps. She thanked the guards
Speaker 1: and they brought her food, and thanked Madame Richard when
Speaker 1: the jailer brought fresh flowers to the cell before those
Speaker 1: two were banned. One afternoon, to try to cheer up
Speaker 1: the queen, Madame Richard brought her own son to the prison.
Speaker 1: Marie Antoinette had always famously loved children. She once stopped
Speaker 1: her carriage to help a poor boy on the street,
Speaker 1: paying for his boarding and education. She had clutched her
Speaker 1: own children to her so tightly and for so long
Speaker 1: that Versailles had wagged their tongues at her over indulgence.
Speaker 1: When Madame Richard's son, fan Fan arrived at the Conciergerie,
Speaker 1: Marie Antoinette burst into tears for the first time in weeks.
Speaker 1: Her voice rose above a whisper. She wailed while hugging
Speaker 1: the boy, pulling her arms tighter and tighter around him.
Speaker 1: It was a cry of misery. Fan Fan was seven
Speaker 1: at the time, the same age as Marie Antoinette's son,
Speaker 1: Louis Charles, imprisoned somewhere far away being re educated by revolutionaries.
Speaker 1: When Madame Richard took her son's hand and led him
Speaker 1: back into the hall, she confessed to a maid that
Speaker 1: she had made a mistake and she would never again
Speaker 1: bring fan fun to visit Marie Antoinette. Six months prior,
Speaker 1: Marie Antoinette's family had all been together for what would
Speaker 1: be the last time. It was the night before the
Speaker 1: former King Louis the sixteenth execution, and the man now
Speaker 1: called Louis Capette was permitted one last meal. Marie anto
Speaker 1: Anette and Louie's younger sister Elizabeth cried the entire evening,
Speaker 1: while the children, a boy and a girl, looked up
Speaker 1: at their stoic father with wide watery eyes. Promise me,
Speaker 1: the ones king said to his children that you will
Speaker 1: not seek revenge for those who do this to me.
Speaker 1: Little Louis Charles nodded his head. Marie Antoinette would not
Speaker 1: stop her weeping. She and her husband had been married
Speaker 1: for twenty three years. Louis the sixteenth had never taken
Speaker 1: a mistress. Perhaps if he had, things would have been
Speaker 1: easier for his queen someone else to deflect the gossip
Speaker 1: and attention. But I was far too late to try
Speaker 1: to imagine how things might have been different. Louis the
Speaker 1: sixteenth had been sent into to death, and his head
Speaker 1: would be on the guillotine the next morning. To stop
Speaker 1: his wife, and his sister and his children from crying,
Speaker 1: Louis promised that he would see them tomorrow morning, that
Speaker 1: he would say one final goodbye. This was just good night,
Speaker 1: will say goodbye tomorrow morning. He lied. The next morning,
Speaker 1: Marie Antoinette, now called the widow Capette, was taken to
Speaker 1: a new prison cell. Her son, seven years old, was
Speaker 1: now technically the king of France and it was time
Speaker 1: for him to be re educated in the ways of
Speaker 1: the revolutionaries. Young Louis Charles was ripped from his mother's
Speaker 1: arms and taken away, but still within earshot. That was important.
Speaker 1: The guards wanted to make sure that Marie Antoinette heard
Speaker 1: her son's crying, heard his beatings at the hand of
Speaker 1: his new teacher, a cobbler named Simon. Marie Antoinette became
Speaker 1: obsessed with trying to catch just a glimpse of her
Speaker 1: small son. She would spend days pressed against a wall
Speaker 1: in the spot where if she craned her neck. She
Speaker 1: could just see him being brought to his new exercises.
Speaker 1: The guards would laugh at little Louis Charles, giving him
Speaker 1: wine until he got drunk, then more wine until he
Speaker 1: got drunker. They beat him until he agreed that he
Speaker 1: hated his parents, that the former king and queen were traitors,
Speaker 1: and he loved only liberty and the revolution. They beat
Speaker 1: him until he agreed that his mother had molested him,
Speaker 1: forced him to lie with her, that she was a harlot, degenerate,
Speaker 1: a monster. Marie Antoinette heard it all. Eventually she stopped crying.
Speaker 1: When she was moved to yet another cell, she accidentally
Speaker 1: hit her head on a door frame. A guard asked
Speaker 1: her if she was all right. Marie Antoinette answered, nothing
Speaker 1: can hurt me anymore. The queen was to be moved
Speaker 1: to the prison of the Conciergerie. In the middle of
Speaker 1: the night, her guards lifted their bayonet to knock on
Speaker 1: the prison door. A young man named Louis Larrivier answered.
Speaker 1: When Louis was a boy, he had worked at Versailles
Speaker 1: as a pastry cook. He had caught glimpses of the
Speaker 1: queen and all of her splendids. The woman before him
Speaker 1: now was sallow as wax, dressed all in black. Even still,
Speaker 1: it's impossible that the young Louis did not recognize her,
Speaker 1: that he could not see the shadow of the woman
Speaker 1: who had once been the sun. What is your name,
Speaker 1: Louis Larrivier asked her, determined to obey the proper intake
Speaker 1: protocols for the woman who is now just prisoner number
Speaker 1: two hundred and eighty. What could Marie Antoinette say? Was
Speaker 1: she Maria Antonia Josefa Joanna Are, Duchess of Austria, the
Speaker 1: dowager Queen of France, or was she just the widow Capette?
Speaker 1: There was no answer she could give. Instead, Marie Antoinette
Speaker 1: just simply replied, look at me. Marie Antoinette was brought
Speaker 1: to her cell. The sun had only just begun to rise.
Speaker 1: Madame Richard, a former haberdasher, had managed to get linen
Speaker 1: for the Queen's bed and a lace edged pillow, but
Speaker 1: the cell was still a cell, damp brick floors and
Speaker 1: peeling walls, furnished only by a canvas bed, a table,
Speaker 1: and two chairs. Madame Richard had brought a stool from
Speaker 1: her own room. There was a bucket in the corner.
Speaker 1: The room itself was humid with stinking, stagnant air. Marie
Speaker 1: Antoinette began to undress, and Madame Richard offered to help.
Speaker 1: Thank you, my child, the queen said, but since I
Speaker 1: no longer have any of my household with me, I
Speaker 1: will look after myself. When one of the maids brought
Speaker 1: Marie Antoinette a small mirror, a little cheap thing with
Speaker 1: a red border and an oriental pattern on its back,
Speaker 1: Marie Antoinette held both of the maid's hands in her
Speaker 1: own and kissed her on the cheek. The small mirror
Speaker 1: she kept safe in a cardboard box, and she prized it.
Speaker 1: Marie Antoinette watched the guards play their card games. She
Speaker 1: requested a needle and thread from broidery, but she was denied,
Speaker 1: and so she pulled the frayed edges of the Sells
Speaker 1: wallpaper and wove with that. She read adventure novels over
Speaker 1: and over again, like the travels of Captain Cook, lent
Speaker 1: to her by one of her sympathetic jailers. The queen
Speaker 1: still had allies. Technically there was her family in Austria,
Speaker 1: but her mother, Maria Terrace, was long dead, and her brother,
Speaker 1: the next emperor, was also dead. Now on the throne
Speaker 1: was his son, her nephew, a boy who had never
Speaker 1: met his aunt. That doomed queen so far away. Marie
Speaker 1: Antoinette had not seen her home country since she was
Speaker 1: sent away to become a princess of France when she
Speaker 1: was thirteen years old. But there were still loyalists in France,
Speaker 1: those who tried to imagine ways the queen could escape
Speaker 1: to freedom. A former military officer, Alexandre d' rouville, visited
Speaker 1: the queen in her cell and dropped a single red
Speaker 1: carnation at her feet. Inside the tightly packed pedals, there
Speaker 1: was this tiny note. The note had a plan for escape.
Speaker 1: The guards could be bribed and the queen could be
Speaker 1: spirited away in a carriage to the home of an
Speaker 1: ally and then onto Germany. All the queen needed to
Speaker 1: do was to use a needle to prick her answer
Speaker 1: in one of the pedals of the flower. But before
Speaker 1: the plan had even begun, it was foiled. A guard,
Speaker 1: knowing that the queen escaping would cost him his own head,
Speaker 1: gave the game up. The queen was escorted to a deeper,
Speaker 1: more secure dungeon, the kind. Madam Urchard and her husband
Speaker 1: were thrown in prison for their lady, replaced by another couple,
Speaker 1: grim and brutal. None of the small indulgences the queen
Speaker 1: had enjoyed were to remain. If one had bothered to
Speaker 1: look at the carnation, after all, that they would have
Speaker 1: seen the queen's answer, her response to some self proclaimed
Speaker 1: heroes escape attempt that had ended up casting her her
Speaker 1: final bits of freedom in tiny letters. With the pin
Speaker 1: the queen had punctured the letters of the word negative.
Speaker 1: When Marie Antoinette was finally brought in for her trial,
Speaker 1: there were gasps from the crowd. They knew the queen
Speaker 1: from her glistening portraits and from the propaganda that was
Speaker 1: circulated depicting her as a wild harlot, cheeks rouged and
Speaker 1: hair stacked. Tie she was drawn as a harpie sometimes
Speaker 1: or a silly flamboyant ostrich. The woman before them was
Speaker 1: hardly recognizable. In the year and a half she had
Speaker 1: been in prison, her hair had gone wiry and gray,
Speaker 1: her eyes lifeless, her cheeks were sunken, and her hands shriveled.
Speaker 1: She was dressed all in black, in a simple dress
Speaker 1: that had been mended over and over, but the shock
Speaker 1: of the crowd did not mean mercy. Her husband had
Speaker 1: been given time to prepare a case with the lawyers,
Speaker 1: as if he might have been declared innocent. There was
Speaker 1: no similar show of fairness for the queen. One by one,
Speaker 1: the cases against her were listed, that she had manipulated
Speaker 1: her husband, that she was treasonous, that she had passed
Speaker 1: along information to Austria and communicated with foreigners to sabotage France.
Speaker 1: Marie Antoinette remained impassive the entire time, no expression flickering
Speaker 1: across her face, until the court reached its final accusation.
Speaker 1: On the confession of her son, Louis Charles, Marie Antoinette
Speaker 1: was accused of sexual abuse, that she had laid with
Speaker 1: him in bed and taught him pernicious practice. Says Marie
Speaker 1: Antoinette's composure drained from her and the woman became fire.
Speaker 1: One of the jurors turned to the court and said,
Speaker 1: the accused has not responded to the facts regarding what
Speaker 1: took place between her and her son. Marie Antoine answered,
Speaker 1: if I have not replied, it is because nature itself
Speaker 1: refuses to respond to such a charge. Laid against a mother.
Speaker 1: Her eyes scanned across the entire courtroom, mad and desperate
Speaker 1: and determined. I appeal to all mothers who may be present.
Speaker 1: A murmur went through the court for the first time
Speaker 1: in the entire trial. The women in the room seemed
Speaker 1: to soften. They looked at one another a hatred hard
Speaker 1: as a clenched fist began to unfurl. But it was
Speaker 1: too late. Marie Antoine it was guilty of being Marie Antoinette,
Speaker 1: and so she was sentenced to death by guillotine by
Speaker 1: the all male jury. Like her first death on an
Speaker 1: island in the middle of the Rhine so many years ago,
Speaker 1: the second death of Marie Antoinette also began with being
Speaker 1: stripped down. Marie Antoinette had not known when her trial
Speaker 1: and her death would come, and so she wore black
Speaker 1: continually so she would meet her lord in proper mourning
Speaker 1: for her husband. But on the morning of her death,
Speaker 1: her guards forced her to change into a simple white frock.
Speaker 1: She begged for them to leave her to change in privacy,
Speaker 1: but they refused. They were assigned to watch her, and
Speaker 1: so under the eyes of men who hated her, Marie
Speaker 1: Antoinette shed her morning clothes and put on white. Neither
Speaker 1: the guard nor Antoinette knew that white, not black, was
Speaker 1: actually the historic color for French queen's to wear in mourning.
Speaker 1: She asked to relieve herself. The guards did not respond,
Speaker 1: and so the queen squatted in the corner as they watched,
Speaker 1: and then she was taken out into the street. This
Speaker 1: time her carriage was not gilded or velvet. It was
Speaker 1: a cart with a cage at the back, and when
Speaker 1: the queen sat facing forward, the guards shouted at her
Speaker 1: she was to face the opposite way, her back to
Speaker 1: the horses. She sat in the open so the crowds
Speaker 1: could spit on her and throw cabbages as she passed.
Speaker 1: The night before, she had written letters to her family.
Speaker 1: Toward daughter, she sent her love and instructions to care
Speaker 1: for her brother to her son or remind her to
Speaker 1: heed his father's words that he would never avenge their deaths.
Speaker 1: This advice would prove unnecessary. Little Louis Charles would die
Speaker 1: two years later of prison fever. Marie Antoinette had also
Speaker 1: written to her sister in law at Sabeth, asking her
Speaker 1: to forgive Louis Charles for his testimony in court. Forgive him,
Speaker 1: dear sister. Think of his age and how easy it
Speaker 1: is to make a child say what one wants, even
Speaker 1: things he doesn't understand. The Queen's famous hair was cut
Speaker 1: short at the neck to make the guillotine's journey easier.
Speaker 1: As Marie Antoinette stepped onto the platform of her execution,
Speaker 1: she uttered her final words. She had stepped on the
Speaker 1: executioner's foot by mistake. I'm sorry, sir, she said, I
Speaker 1: did not do it on purpose. The blade came down.
Speaker 1: A man rushed from the crowd to soak his handkerchief
Speaker 1: and blood. Marie Antoinette's body was thrown into a mass grave,
Speaker 1: next to bodies of guards who had died in the
Speaker 1: attacks on her palaces, bodies of people who had been
Speaker 1: crushed to death, and nicks dad fireworks celebrations of her
Speaker 1: wedding to the Prince nearly a quarter of a century
Speaker 1: before the mass grave were That very prince, who became
Speaker 1: King Louis the sixteen, was himself interred. The queen was
Speaker 1: among her people at last. A young woman named Marie
Speaker 1: Grossholtz was also imprisoned in the Revolution. Marie had once
Speaker 1: been the art tutor to King Louise little sister Elizabeth
Speaker 1: at Versailles, and it was thought she was still a Royalist.
Speaker 1: To prove her loyalty to the revolution, the young woman,
Speaker 1: a sculptor, was brought to the grass where Marie Antoinette's
Speaker 1: head remained, still unburied. Marie took the bloody head in
Speaker 1: her lap and made a wax sculpture of it, just
Speaker 1: like the one she had made for the dead King
Speaker 1: Louis and for the martyr of the revolution, Shin Marah.
Speaker 1: When the revolution was over and Marie Grassholtz made it
Speaker 1: through alive, she got married and began touring her wax
Speaker 1: sculptures around Europe. Eventually she made it to England and
Speaker 1: opened a permanent exhibition on the second story of a
Speaker 1: building on Baker Street. Her husband, Frank, remained in France,
Speaker 1: but Marie continued to use his surname. It's the name
Speaker 1: that became associated with one of the most popular tourist
Speaker 1: attractions of all time, Madame Tussau. Noble Blood is a
Speaker 1: co production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Mankey. The
Speaker 1: show was written and hosted by Dana Schwartz and produced
Speaker 1: by Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams and Trevor Young.
Speaker 1: Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales,
Speaker 1: and you can learn more about the show over at
Speaker 1: Noble blood Tales dot com. For more podcasts from I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or where ever you listen to your favorite shows.