Marie Antoinette

V/G to LIKE NEW CONDITION. 1982 St. Martin’s Press hardcover, Desmond Seward (The Hundred Years The English in France 1337-1453). Giddy and extravagant, Marie Antoinette came to France as a child-bride from Austria, France’s traditional enemy, but the hatred she aroused was out of all proportion to her faults. It was not the sansculottes who first called her ‘L’Autrichienne’ or accused her of the campaign of vilification and scurrilous ballads originated among the nobility, even the royal family. Posterity sees her as foolish, immoral and devious, as a meddler in politics who unduly influenced her husband, the amiable and incompetent Louis XVI. Re-examining correspondence and memoirs, Desmond Seward finds a different Marie strong-minded, religious, devotedly maternal, surrounded by enemies, forced by her husband’s lethargy to intrigue as best she could to save the monarchy. She failed, but could any woman have done better in Revolutionary France? – Amazon