Speaker 1: Hey, Happy Saturday, everybody. Our network has another new show
Speaker 1: coming out. This one is called Noble Blood and it's
Speaker 1: sort of combines history with the true crime show in
Speaker 1: a show that's hosted by Danish Wartz and it is
Speaker 1: produced by Aaron Bankey. So, as its name suggests, it's
Speaker 1: all about royalty, there's also maybe some crime involved might
Speaker 1: not have been considered crime at the time, but maybe
Speaker 1: and so to go along with the theme of that show,
Speaker 1: today's classic is on Charles the ninth of France. He
Speaker 1: was prone to just terrifying periods of rage. You can
Speaker 1: stay tuned at the end of this episode for a
Speaker 1: peek at Noble Blood, although just be forewarned it's a
Speaker 1: little more graphic in the gory details than our show
Speaker 1: tends to be. Welcome to Stuff you missed in History
Speaker 1: Class a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy.
Speaker 1: If you sin and Tracy, it's been a little while
Speaker 1: since we've done a Mad Royals episode we have. That's
Speaker 1: a theme that kept cropping up in previous hosts shows
Speaker 1: and then it just carried over into our work too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: more than anything else. Ours is more of like a cranky,
Speaker 1: temperamental probably doesn't have control of his emotions kind of royal,
Speaker 1: but we'll fit it into mad. There you could say
Speaker 1: he was mad. Uh. And much like many of the
Speaker 1: other mad Royals that we've discussed on the podcast throughout
Speaker 1: the years, Charles the ninth of France, as I just hinted,
Speaker 1: was really prone to fits of rage and these could
Speaker 1: be so intense that people at his court feared for
Speaker 1: their lives. And for a quick sort of fun background
Speaker 1: e bit that's not really super important to his biography,
Speaker 1: Charles at ninth was allegedly nicknamed the Snotty King, and
Speaker 1: that was because of a birthmark that he had on
Speaker 1: his upper lip that apparently made it look like he
Speaker 1: had a perpetually running nose, which seems like a terrible
Speaker 1: thing for a child to bear. But uh, he eventually
Speaker 1: grew a mustache to cover it up as once he
Speaker 1: became an adult and was able to grow facial hair.
Speaker 1: But that's only the tip of the iceberg on this one. Uh.
Speaker 1: And going by his famous portrait from when he was
Speaker 1: just a boy, uh that was painted by Frenchie, either
Speaker 1: this birth birthmark wasn't even that noticeable or the artist
Speaker 1: downplayed it. But that's just kind of a fun little factoid.
Speaker 1: As we go into this story about Charles the Ninth,
Speaker 1: he was also the son of Catherine de Medici, So
Speaker 1: his story brushes up against the series that previous hosted
Speaker 1: on the Medici Family. Uh. Katie and Sarah talk a
Speaker 1: lot about Catherine in previous episodes, and they bust Smiths
Speaker 1: about her reputation. But we're gonna look at this story
Speaker 1: and this piece of history as it relates specifically to
Speaker 1: her son, Charles. Charles was born Charles Maximilian on June
Speaker 1: near Paris, and his parents, as we already mentioned, were
Speaker 1: Katherine de Medici and Henry the second of France. Uh.
Speaker 1: And as you said, Catherine was covered at length back
Speaker 1: in the Katie and Sarah dates, and the couple all
Speaker 1: so had an older son, Francis the second, as well.
Speaker 1: They had other children. But this is just to kind
Speaker 1: of make it clear that at this point Charles was
Speaker 1: not immediately next in line for the throne. As a child,
Speaker 1: Charles was really coddled by his parents. His mother ordered
Speaker 1: numerous portraits of her children, and she'd often hire in
Speaker 1: troops of actors and other performers just to keep them entertained,
Speaker 1: and that's not unusual for royal families at the time,
Speaker 1: but she is usually described as being really quite doting
Speaker 1: on her children on some historians kind of suggests that
Speaker 1: that is what kind of fosters some of their bad
Speaker 1: behavior as they grew up, that they just were kind
Speaker 1: of spoiled um. The castle was also filled with entertainments
Speaker 1: of its own. They had a private zoo of exotic
Speaker 1: creatures and plenty of domestic animals available for the young
Speaker 1: children's and amusement, and they also had companion children the
Speaker 1: family would kind of hire in and keep handy, so
Speaker 1: that each of the royal children had another child the
Speaker 1: same age that they could play with. As you would
Speaker 1: probably expect, the royal siblings were very well educated. As
Speaker 1: a child, Charles showed some natural artistic ability, and he
Speaker 1: seemed to really enjoy literature and writing, but he wasn't
Speaker 1: that eager about being a scholar. His school work had
Speaker 1: more to do with making his mother happy than learning
Speaker 1: things for himself. So in the summer of fifteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: Catherine and King Henry the Second's daughter Elizabeth, who was
Speaker 1: four years older than Charles, was married to King Philip
Speaker 1: the Second of Spain in a proxy ceremony, and during
Speaker 1: this celebration, uh King Henry participated in a joust and
Speaker 1: there was an accident. Unfortunately, his opponent's lance actually shattered
Speaker 1: and the King's face was penetrated by splinters from this
Speaker 1: damaged weapon in multiple places. Over the course of the
Speaker 1: next eleven days, Henry became progressively more and more ill
Speaker 1: due to infection and swelling and a lot of various
Speaker 1: problems going on, and he eventually succumbed to those wounds
Speaker 1: and died on July nine. When Henry the Second died,
Speaker 1: his son, Francis the Second, became the King of France,
Speaker 1: but Francis, who was married to Mary, Queen of Scott's,
Speaker 1: did not reign for very long, just seventeen months. During
Speaker 1: that time, the teenage king was really influenced by Mary's family,
Speaker 1: and while the Protestant Huguenots of France wanted religious freedom,
Speaker 1: Mary's uncles were very, very Catholic and very against this idea. Eventually, Francis,
Speaker 1: his uncle's in law, engineered the execution of fifty seven
Speaker 1: Hugueno conspirators who were put to death for treason. Charles,
Speaker 1: of course, being a young boy and and part of
Speaker 1: this royal family, witnessed the entire spectacle of this execution
Speaker 1: along with the rest of his family. Francis the Second,
Speaker 1: who had tuberculosis, died of an abscess behind his ear
Speaker 1: on the evening of December five, fifteen sixty and at
Speaker 1: that moment the crown went to his younger brother, Charles
Speaker 1: the ninth. And before we get on to kind of
Speaker 1: Charles as a child king, it's a little early, but
Speaker 1: I want to go ahead and do a sponsor break
Speaker 1: here because that way we can keep kind of the
Speaker 1: next chunk of the story altogether. So is that cool
Speaker 1: with you, Tracy, it is, let's do it. To get
Speaker 1: back to Charles's story, he was only ten when his
Speaker 1: brother died, so his mother, Catherine was named as regent,
Speaker 1: and in this role she did everything that a ruler
Speaker 1: would normally do, and she stayed by her son's side
Speaker 1: at almost all times. For the rare occasions when she
Speaker 1: wasn't with Charles, the servants, of course, were expected to
Speaker 1: report back to her on even the most minute details
Speaker 1: in what he was up to. And again that that's
Speaker 1: one of those things that people will talk about in
Speaker 1: history when they're talking about royal families. But it really
Speaker 1: is not that unusual. I think most royal parents, particularly
Speaker 1: as you go further back, the habit was kind of
Speaker 1: to keep constant tabs on their kids as they were
Speaker 1: doing things. I'm using the air quotes on their own
Speaker 1: because they were never really on their own. But from
Speaker 1: early on, Charles had shown some signs of mental illness.
Speaker 1: And this really manifested initially is these fits, uh that
Speaker 1: could be attributed to the frustration of a child, Like
Speaker 1: we have all seen a toddler kind of hit the
Speaker 1: wall where they can't they don't have the language skills
Speaker 1: to like explain themselves, so they just kind of have
Speaker 1: these rage fits. But the problem was that this continued
Speaker 1: for Charles long past the age where that behavior is
Speaker 1: considered normal and part of the growing cycle. He was
Speaker 1: also physically pretty weak, although he enjoyed being physically active.
Speaker 1: At the same time, he also wasn't the only one
Speaker 1: in his family who was prone to developing infections and
Speaker 1: displaying these kind of rage tantrums. His brothers had the
Speaker 1: same characteristics. Yeah, this is pretty consistent throughout the family.
Speaker 1: Charles was also obsessively interested in hunting. Uh. Hunting, you know,
Speaker 1: very popular, but he was really obsessed with it, and
Speaker 1: the sight of blood during these excursions got him really excited,
Speaker 1: and he seemed to start to crave that excitement, almost
Speaker 1: like an addiction. He got lots of excitement outside of hunting.
Speaker 1: Due to the ongoing religious tensions in France. In fifteen
Speaker 1: sixty two, Francis of Gives, who was one of the
Speaker 1: same uncles of Mary, Queen of Scott's, who had been
Speaker 1: so influential over his older brother, briefly kidnapped Charles and
Speaker 1: his mother, threatening that if the young king entertained any
Speaker 1: ideas about becoming a Protestant, they really had no qualms
Speaker 1: with getting a new king. Yeah, you can imagine how
Speaker 1: that would be a terrifying event for a young child.
Speaker 1: You know. Again, he was only ten when his when
Speaker 1: he became king, even though he wasn't really ruling at
Speaker 1: that point. So this is a lot to deal with. Uh.
Speaker 1: Three years after Francis had died, so Charles would have
Speaker 1: been on the on the throne, but with his mother
Speaker 1: ruling his regent. UH. Charles turned thirteen and shortly after
Speaker 1: this he was proclaimed king without his mother's regency. And
Speaker 1: you may think that this would have been a problem
Speaker 1: for Catherine, but you would be wrong, because she still
Speaker 1: held the power. Charles was very young and indecisive and
Speaker 1: as we said, kind of physically weak, and he already
Speaker 1: showed these signs of mental illness. And now Catherine was
Speaker 1: in this position where really she was still making the decisions.
Speaker 1: She had that much influence, but Charles was the one
Speaker 1: that was ultimately held responsible for them. Charles had been
Speaker 1: named king in August of fifteen sixty three, and starting
Speaker 1: in fifteen sixty four, he started a two year tour
Speaker 1: of France at the insistence of his mother. In part,
Speaker 1: this was intended to show off the strength of the
Speaker 1: royal house and really try to unite the French under
Speaker 1: the king. But the Catholics and the Huguenots continued their
Speaker 1: bitter conflict, and during this sort of tour of France
Speaker 1: and these tr levels, one of the first real acts
Speaker 1: of violence on Charles's part took place. It's one of
Speaker 1: the first times that we have actual documentation of him
Speaker 1: kind of being violent outside sort of a normal scenario
Speaker 1: like hunting um. While he and his mother and this
Speaker 1: entourage were traveling from their starting point of Fontainebleu to
Speaker 1: their next destination. Charles came across a pig that had
Speaker 1: recently given birth, and he wanted to try to pick
Speaker 1: up one of the piglets, and when he tried to
Speaker 1: handle it, the sow attacked him, and his reaction was
Speaker 1: incredibly brutal, and he killed the pig and orphaned the
Speaker 1: litter and kind of left it that and it was
Speaker 1: again outside sort of the uh you know, it wasn't
Speaker 1: like going on a hunt. It was killing this mother
Speaker 1: animal and orphaning all of her piglets. And it's really
Speaker 1: the first time that we see him just being brutal
Speaker 1: in kind of a senseless way. Throughout the rest of
Speaker 1: the royal tour, he performed various acts of diplomacy and
Speaker 1: he made public appearing. Is some of the meetings he
Speaker 1: and his mother took with the Catholic royals of Spain
Speaker 1: really stirred the pot with the French wars of religion,
Speaker 1: because the Hugenos saw these meetings is likely being alliance
Speaker 1: meetings with their enemies. At this point, we should point
Speaker 1: out that Charles did not remain physically weak for the
Speaker 1: entirety of his life. We mentioned as a child he
Speaker 1: was kind of frail um, and as he passed through
Speaker 1: adolescence he grew a great deal, although he did always
Speaker 1: stay very thin, but he became quite tall um, and
Speaker 1: he just wasn't seen as so much frail, although I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone would ever describe him as like a
Speaker 1: hulking uh specimen of strength and fitness. But as his
Speaker 1: physical stature grew, his mental state really kind of took
Speaker 1: the opposite track and started to deteriorate. He was very
Speaker 1: close to his younger sister Marguerite, who you'll also see
Speaker 1: listed as Margaret and sometimes even Margot, and his behavior
Speaker 1: was peppered more and more with these angry rages. It
Speaker 1: started to seem like his sister was the only one
Speaker 1: who was safe from this and who could help calm
Speaker 1: him down. Even his mother started to gradually fear him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, he was always sort of like a hair
Speaker 1: trigger kind of potential violent person to be around, which
Speaker 1: I can imagine has no fune whatsoever. Charles also contracted tuberculosis,
Speaker 1: just as his brother Francis had, and he came quite
Speaker 1: near to dying from it in eight but he did
Speaker 1: recover from that, although after that point his health was
Speaker 1: fairly inconsistent. Eventually he developed an abscess in one of
Speaker 1: his arms from being bled routinely in an effort to
Speaker 1: fight this tuberculosis, but even so he managed to recover
Speaker 1: and continue his reign. As he recovered from this prolonged illness,
Speaker 1: Charles found love. He met Marie Touchet, and although she
Speaker 1: was from a bougeois family, Catherine approved of her son
Speaker 1: taking her as a mistress. She seemed to truly care
Speaker 1: for Charles and she helped calm his unsettled temper. Yeah,
Speaker 1: much like his sister, Like basically, anybody that could be
Speaker 1: around that would help keep him a little more relaxed
Speaker 1: and a little less likely to be violent. Catherine was
Speaker 1: game for that plan. But soon after, in fifteen seventy,
Speaker 1: the twenty year old Charles also got married, so he
Speaker 1: kept Touche as his mistress, but he married Elizabeth of Austria,
Speaker 1: and Charles is said to have actually loved both Elizabeth
Speaker 1: and Marie Touche, and the three of them seemed to
Speaker 1: get along fine. You know, Touche understood her position as
Speaker 1: mistress and she was very respectful of his wife, and
Speaker 1: the wife didn't seem to have, you know, any real
Speaker 1: issues of animosity or jealousy over the mistress, like they
Speaker 1: kind of all worked it out. Charles and Elizabeth had
Speaker 1: a daughter named Marie Elizabeth, and this was two years
Speaker 1: after they got married, but unfortunately the child died at
Speaker 1: the age of six. Charles also had a son, Charles
Speaker 1: de Vaudois, with his mistress Marie, the year after Marie
Speaker 1: Elizabeth was born, and that son lived to adulthood and
Speaker 1: he eventually became Duke of Angouleme. So the series of
Speaker 1: religious conflicts between French Catholics and Protestants went on in
Speaker 1: phases we referred earlier to the French Wars of religion,
Speaker 1: and these are they and these went on from April
Speaker 1: fifteen sixty two to May. But they were kind of
Speaker 1: in pockets. It wasn't always continuous. There would be moments
Speaker 1: of peace and then it would break into another, you know,
Speaker 1: fight again, and then they would reach an accord and
Speaker 1: that wouldn't last. But during the reign of Charles the Ninth,
Speaker 1: when Catherine de Medici was still incredibly powerful, the politics
Speaker 1: of French court were actually a huge factor and influence
Speaker 1: in these wars, Charles's younger brother, Alexandra Eduard, the Duke d'Anjou,
Speaker 1: defeated the Huguenos in battle in fifteen sixty nine. That's
Speaker 1: made nineteen year old King Charles a Second incredibly jealous,
Speaker 1: and it shifted his sympathies over to the Huguenos. Not
Speaker 1: only did not possessed the military or physical prowess that
Speaker 1: his brother did, his brother was also clearly his mother's favorite,
Speaker 1: So Charles was doubly irritated by his success. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it kind of had more to do with a this
Speaker 1: switch in kind of sympathies towards the Huguenot had more
Speaker 1: to do with this brotherly rivalry than it really had
Speaker 1: to do with the actual religious and political stuff that
Speaker 1: was going on. But in one Charles met with nobleman
Speaker 1: and Huguenot military leader Gaspar de Coligni, and Coligny had
Speaker 1: this plan to go up against the Netherlands in Spain,
Speaker 1: and he wanted the king to form an alliance and
Speaker 1: unite the country's warring religious groups to do so. And
Speaker 1: Charles was actually game for this, uh, and he was
Speaker 1: extremely fond of Coligny and is said to have actually
Speaker 1: sometimes called him father, but Charles's mother wasn't really enthusiastic
Speaker 1: about her son's political friends. While she had initially taken
Speaker 1: a stance in favor of reconciliation with Huguenos, particularly after
Speaker 1: Mary's Catholic uncle had kidnapped her and Charles, Catherine felt
Speaker 1: threatened by the influence that Gaspard de Colony had over
Speaker 1: her son. While there's some debate over who exactly ordered
Speaker 1: the move, it's believed by a lot of historians that
Speaker 1: Catherine conspired to have Colony assassinated. That effort ultimately failed
Speaker 1: and he was only wounded. The Hugeno Protestants were, of
Speaker 1: course angered at this attack, and King Charles the Second
Speaker 1: promised to investigate. And irritated by the failure of her
Speaker 1: move against Colonny, Catherine kind of took the situation as
Speaker 1: it was and took a new tactic. She advised her
Speaker 1: son that the safest course of action was to have
Speaker 1: all of the Hugueno leaders killed and to strike decisively
Speaker 1: and quickly. Charles agreed to this plan sort of. Her
Speaker 1: haranguing had sent him into a fit of rage eventually
Speaker 1: until he finally yelled killed the admiral. If you wish,
Speaker 1: but you must kill all the Huguenos so that not
Speaker 1: one is left to a lot of to reproach me.
Speaker 1: Kill the lot, kill the lot, kill the lot. Conveniently,
Speaker 1: during all the scheming, the king's sister, Marguerite de Vala,
Speaker 1: was marrying Henri of Navarre, who was the leader of
Speaker 1: the Huguenos, so that meant all of the other Hugueno
Speaker 1: leaders were in town to celebrate their wedding. But before
Speaker 1: we get to the massacre, I want to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about this wedding, uh, and not in a
Speaker 1: romantic Let's discuss the dress coin of way. But if
Speaker 1: you think Charles's sister Marguerite was miffed at being married
Speaker 1: off to Henri of Navarre, you would be correct. While
Speaker 1: the two siblings, Charles and Margot had been close when
Speaker 1: they were younger, in fifteen seventy, Margot had been caught
Speaker 1: alone with a lover in the in a bedroom of
Speaker 1: the royal home, and Charles was so enraged by this
Speaker 1: event that he brutally beat his sister in front of
Speaker 1: their mother until she lost consciousness. Her lover, Henri de Guise,
Speaker 1: was soon mary it off to a wealthy noble woman
Speaker 1: and kind of gotten out of the picture. The rift
Speaker 1: between the brother and sister stayed around for the next
Speaker 1: two years, but then it widened into a gulf when
Speaker 1: it was announced that Marguerite would be married to Nri
Speaker 1: of Navarre. The bride and groom had known each other
Speaker 1: since there were children, and there was absolutely no affection
Speaker 1: between them. Marguerite was fastidious and obsessed with cleoonis and
Speaker 1: Ri was not. He had a reputation for his odor yeah,
Speaker 1: and she had the opposite reputation. She is uh alleged
Speaker 1: to have been one of those rare people who bathed
Speaker 1: every single day during this time, which was not necessarily
Speaker 1: common uh. And during the marriage ceremony, Margot is said
Speaker 1: to have stood silent rather than utter the words of
Speaker 1: consent to the union when the cardinal asked it of her,
Speaker 1: and this became an uncomfortable silence, and eventually Charles, who
Speaker 1: had just grown furious at her behavior, stepped behind her
Speaker 1: and pushed her head forward and down in a knot
Speaker 1: of scent. So the massacre and the pre dawn hours
Speaker 1: of August colony was thrown from his bedroom window. He
Speaker 1: had already been severely beaten and stabbed, and he was
Speaker 1: beheaded in the street. This, along with the murders of
Speaker 1: additional key figures of Hugano leadership, many of whom were
Speaker 1: slain in the Royal Palace where they were wedding guests,
Speaker 1: set off a chain reaction of events now known as
Speaker 1: the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. As news of the Hugueno
Speaker 1: leadership's demise spread, Catholic mobs began attacking and killing Huguenos
Speaker 1: throughout the city. The slaughter was just brutal, and it
Speaker 1: went on and on. On August, Charles was attempting to
Speaker 1: put an end to it by means of a royal order,
Speaker 1: but no one paid any attention. As the weeks went on,
Speaker 1: the carnage spread out from Paris into the country. It
Speaker 1: went on for almost two months. A rough estimate of
Speaker 1: the death toll is about seventy thousand Hugueno Protestants. Several
Speaker 1: of the as were in Paris alone. And I wanted
Speaker 1: just to take a side note here. This is actually
Speaker 1: the first use of the word massacre in English. Uh
Speaker 1: And a lot of the people who were killed were
Speaker 1: just like working at their shops, are going about their
Speaker 1: normal daily lives. When people burst in and and cut
Speaker 1: them down. Um. The reason I know that is because
Speaker 1: back when we did our episode about the Boston massacre,
Speaker 1: which had an extremely small number of people who were killed,
Speaker 1: a lot of people that got angry that we didn't
Speaker 1: approach that with the proper gravita or like massacres weren't
Speaker 1: that big at the time. No, this is the first
Speaker 1: time that the word massacre appeared in English and it
Speaker 1: was horrible. Yeah. And I will say there are debates
Speaker 1: over the the accuracy of those counts. Uh. Some people
Speaker 1: will say the seventy thousand estimate is way too high,
Speaker 1: and that the several thousand that were in Paris h
Speaker 1: may or may not be accurate as well. But we
Speaker 1: know that it was tens of thousands, So even if
Speaker 1: it was half that, you're still talking about a great
Speaker 1: deal of people. Uh. Henri of Navarre, however, despite being
Speaker 1: a Huguenot leader, actually survived the massacre because he converted
Speaker 1: to Catholicism. He was kind of swept away uh by
Speaker 1: royal guards and kind of given this option. It sounds like, uh,
Speaker 1: he would eventually rule France with Marguerite's queen, but that
Speaker 1: wouldn't be for a bit. Then this move was also
Speaker 1: intended to quell the Hugueno uprising, but what it really
Speaker 1: did was to kick off the fourth of the eight
Speaker 1: French religious wars ya. As I mentioned earlier, those those
Speaker 1: wars kind of ebbed and flowed and went on and
Speaker 1: would erupt in in individuals, sort of what they call wars,
Speaker 1: but they went on through this long period of time,
Speaker 1: and they're all linked, all eight of them, as the
Speaker 1: French religious wars. We mentioned earlier that Charles had developed
Speaker 1: this serious passion for hunting, which is kind of a
Speaker 1: very gentle way to put it, and it seems that
Speaker 1: his obsession with it intensified as he grew and came
Speaker 1: angrier and angrier, and he kind of developed this blood
Speaker 1: lust for the hunt. His preference was to kill with
Speaker 1: a knife, because he wanted to be close to the
Speaker 1: blood UH, and this seemed to help him sometimes vent
Speaker 1: off his violent impulses, but it did not work long term.
Speaker 1: He also developed a taste for torturing animals UH, and
Speaker 1: he liked to lash servants rather violently. The stress of
Speaker 1: his position, this ongoing physical problems, and the UH, the
Speaker 1: tumult of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre all really took
Speaker 1: a toll on Charles. His temper became increasingly hair triggered,
Speaker 1: and he would just fly into violent rages without any warning.
Speaker 1: And as winter came on at the end of fifteen
Speaker 1: seventies three, he was at this point really quite incredibly frail,
Speaker 1: uh in constant pain, as tuberculosis really took a toll
Speaker 1: on his body. And his spring of fifteen seventy four
Speaker 1: came on. He said to have been sweating blood almost continuously,
Speaker 1: and he finally died on seventy four, just a month
Speaker 1: shy of his twenty four birthday. It's believed that Charles
Speaker 1: remained very melancholy about his involvement in the St. Bartholomew's
Speaker 1: Day massacre for the rest of his short life, although
Speaker 1: I was not really mentioned when he gave his confession
Speaker 1: on his deathbed, and he was after he passed, succeeded
Speaker 1: by his brother Henry the third. So that is our
Speaker 1: mad Royal du jour. And as I said at the beginning,
Speaker 1: I was a little you know um in the mad
Speaker 1: royal zone. He seems so much to be an angry royal,
Speaker 1: and I would be reluctant to diagnose him as insane,
Speaker 1: but he certainly seems like someone that is that blood
Speaker 1: lusty must be dealing with some severe mental illness. Uh,
Speaker 1: but that is the scoop. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining us on this Saturday. If you have heard an
Speaker 1: email address or a Facebook you are l or something
Speaker 1: similar over the course of today's episode, since it is
Speaker 1: from the archive that might be out of date now,
Speaker 1: you can email us at history podcast at how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com, and you can find us all over
Speaker 1: social media at missed in History and you can subscribe
Speaker 1: to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcast, the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. She was
Speaker 1: the fifteen child of the Empress Maria Teresa and was
Speaker 1: only gifted with the prize role of Dauphin of France
Speaker 1: thanks to random happenstance, an unlikely circumstance be following her
Speaker 1: older sisters. Her education up until that last minute betrothedale
Speaker 1: had been minimal, but even if she wasn't studious. She
Speaker 1: was beautiful and charming and agreeable. She would be happy
Speaker 1: in France, marrying the awkward young prince only a few
Speaker 1: months her senior. But even if she wasn't, her happiness
Speaker 1: wasn't the point. She was a pawn to secure an
Speaker 1: alliance between Austria and France. Twenty two years after she
Speaker 1: became a French princess, after two decades of decadence in
Speaker 1: the most cultured and luxurious palace in the world, Marie
Speaker 1: Antoinette was alone in a cell in the heart of Paris,
Speaker 1: with mobs outside calling for her head to join that
Speaker 1: of her husband and her friends in the guillotine. Marie
Speaker 1: Antoinette's prison cell at the Conciergerie was not a place
Speaker 1: of warmth and kindness, but the jail keeper, Madame Rochard,
Speaker 1: tried to make the woman who had once lived in
Speaker 1: a palace comfortable. Madame Richard, who ran the Conciergerie with
Speaker 1: her husband, had watched the queen hang a small golden
Speaker 1: watch on the wall of herself, the only bit of
Speaker 1: adornment in the dark room, where the walls dripped and
Speaker 1: owning could be heard from all hours of the night.
Speaker 1: It was a gift from long ago from her mother,
Speaker 1: the Empress Maria Therese. Madame Richard had also watched the
Speaker 1: guards confiscate the watch five days later. The Queen was
Speaker 1: mostly quiet after that, Her hands stayed in her laps.
Speaker 1: She thanked the guards and they brought her food, and
Speaker 1: thanked Madame Richard when the jailer brought fresh flowers to
Speaker 1: the cell. Before those two were banned. One afternoon, to
Speaker 1: try to cheer up the queen, Madame Rochard brought her
Speaker 1: own son to the prison. Marie Antoinette had always famously
Speaker 1: loved children. She once stopped her carriage to help a
Speaker 1: poor boy on the street, paying for his boarding and education.
Speaker 1: She had clutched her own children to her so tightly
Speaker 1: and for so long that Versailles had wagged their tongues
Speaker 1: at her over indulgence. When Madame Richard's son, Fan Fan
Speaker 1: arrived at the Conciergerie, Marie Antoinette burst into tears for
Speaker 1: the first time in weeks. Her voice rose above a whisper.
Speaker 1: She wailed while hugging the boy, pulling her arms tighter
Speaker 1: and tighter around him. It was a cry of misery.
Speaker 1: Van Van was seven at the time, the same age
Speaker 1: as Marie Antoinette's son, Louis Charles, imprisoned somewhere far away
Speaker 1: being re educated by revolutionaries. When Madame Richard took her
Speaker 1: son's hand and led him back into the hall, she
Speaker 1: confessed to a maid that she had made a mistake
Speaker 1: and she would never again bring fan Fan to visit
Speaker 1: Marie Antoinette. Six months prior, Marie Antoinette's family had all
Speaker 1: been together for what would be the last time. It
Speaker 1: was the night before the former King Louis the sixteenth execution,
Speaker 1: and the man now called Louis Capette was permitted one
Speaker 1: last meal. Marie Antoinette and louise younger sister Elizabeth cried
Speaker 1: the entire evening, while the children, a boy and a girl,
Speaker 1: looked up at their stoic father with wide watery eyes.
Speaker 1: Promise me, the once king said to his children that
Speaker 1: you will not seek revenge for those who do this
Speaker 1: to me. Little Louis Charles nodded his head. Marie Antoinette
Speaker 1: would not stop her weeping. She and her husband had
Speaker 1: been married for twenty three years. Louis the sixteenth had
Speaker 1: never taken a mistress. Perhaps if he had, things would
Speaker 1: have been easier for his queen some one else to
Speaker 1: deflect the gossip and attention. But it was far too
Speaker 1: late to try to imagine how things might have been different.
Speaker 1: Louis the sixteenth had been sent into to death, and
Speaker 1: his head would be on the guillotine the next morning.
Speaker 1: To stop his wife, and his sister and his children
Speaker 1: from crying, Louis promised that he would see them tomorrow morning,
Speaker 1: that he would say one final goodbye. This was just
Speaker 1: good night. We'll say goodbye to morrow morning, he lied.
Speaker 1: The next morning, Marie Antoinette, now called the Widow Capette,
Speaker 1: was taken to a new prison cell. Noble Blood is
Speaker 1: a co production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Mankey.
Speaker 1: The show is written and hosted by Dani Schwartz and
Speaker 1: produced 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 wherever you listen to your favorite shows.