October 16: Today is the anniversary of the execution of Marie Antoinette, in 1793, for the judgments of the French Revolution.

Louise Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun - Marie-Antoinette dit « à la Rose »

Widow of former absolute monarch Louis XVI, following his betrayal of France on October 16, 1793, Mary Antoinette of Austria was brought to the public square and guillotined before the people, causing a stir in the rest of Europe.

Marie Antoinette at the clavichord, by Franz Xaver Wagenschön (1768).

Maria Antonia Josepha Joanna of Habsburg-Lorraine, nicknamed Marie Antoinette of Austria, was Archduchess of Austria and Queen consort of France and Navarre.

Marie Antoinette, at the age of thirteen; this miniature portrait was sent to the Dauphin, for him to see what his future bride looked like. Joseph Ducreux(1769).

Many French hated the queen for being Austrian, and most of all because she had very expensive tastes, besides her frivolity. In fact, she was nicknamed "Madame Deficit" unfairly blamed for the French financial problems at the time, caused by inflation, unemployment, hunger and lack of bread.

Portrait by Jean-Baptiste Gautier Dagoty, 1775. Musée Antoine Lécuyer.

Delayed and prolonged winter wheat crop dwindled. Support for the US Civil War, as French revenge against England, did indebted to the king of France.

Arrest of the royal family at the house of the registrar of passports, at Varennes, night of 21–22 June 1791, by Thomas Falcon Marshall (1854).

When the queen was led to the gallows, the people in the square shouted insults. While Marie Antoinette climbed the ladders to the guillotine she tripped and pushed the executioner was going to decapitate minutes later. The Queen said, "Excuse me sir, I did on purpose."

Marie Antoinette's execution on 16 October 1793: Sanson, the executioner, showing Marie Antoinette's head to the people. (Anonymous, 1793. Musée Carnavalet, Paris).

Once executed by a guillotine, she and her husband nine months before, the bloody head was displayed to the people, to prove it was red blood like her husband’s instead of blue blood as people used to believe. Marie Antoinette died at the age of 38 years.