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Revolutions

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The Queen of Louis XVI King of France at the Guillotine, 16 October 1793

An idealized portrait of Marie Antoinette at the moment of death. Unlike the pale, aged woman the contemporaries observed, this later print memorialized a beautiful, absolutely pure, woman.

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Execution of Marie Antoinette (16 October 1793) at the Place de la Révolution

This postcard in English and French does show the broader scene at the execution of the Queen. Before the guillotine stands Marie Antoinette with Sanson, the same executioner who had dispatched her husband ten months before.

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Image of the Queen’s Defense

The trial of the Queen is here depicted in a tinted engraving by Jean Duplessi–Bertaux as part of his series of Historical Scenes of the French Revolution.

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Trial of Marie Antoinette of Austria

Some months after the execution of her husband, Marie Antoinette found herself in the dock of the public prosecutor, Antoine Quentin Fouquier–Tinville.

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The Queen Exhausted

An image produced well after the Revolution shows a Queen, assaulted by the gaze of the people, controlled by the soldier, and tentative in her stance and appearance.

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Hell Broke Loose, or, The Murder of Louis

In this English image, as the King’s head is about to fall into the executioner’s basket, bats out of Hell emerge, symbolizing the Revolution. At the same time, God’s favor seems to fall on Louis through a shaft of light coming from heaven.

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Louis XVI, King of France, born 23 August 1754, beheaded 21 January 1793

Louis quickly became a matyr to the royalist cause, as this and other memorials indicate.

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Louis Arrives in Hell

In classical mythology, the journey to Hell involved crossing the river Styx. Revolutionary cartoonists often invoked this image when describing the fate of their enemies. This is no exception. See the boat on the left with the dog, Cerberus, who was the guardian of the gates of the underworld.

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Rare Animals; or, the Transfer of the Royal Family from the Tuileries to the Temple. Champfleury, 1792

Here the events of 10 August were expressed by reducing the royal family to animals. Driven from their palace to prison, the family became no more than a group of barnyard animals. Contrast these common four–footed animals with the erect revolutionary whipping them along.

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King and Queen as Two–headed Monster

The Queen, never popular to begin with in France, also bore the brunt of popular anger in 1792, as seen in images of the King and Queen as animals.