@Silja
I understood what you said...But you don´t got the point i actually meant.... AS I SAID...i wasn´t talking about her actions and behavior in the Revo. ONLY! There where enough happenings she did before too.
No, you obviously did not get my point because I had indeed been referring precisely also to the time BEFORE the Revolution. This is why I said that MA had had practically NO influence on Louis XVI UNTIL very shortly before the Revolution. I don't agree with your view that it was MA who was
mainly responsible for the destroying of Louis's reputation
before and after the Revolution since, as I tried to point out, in my opinion this was rather the result of the court's gossip, the pampleteers AND
finally the revolutionaries who set out to justify the Revolution also by discrediting Louis XVI's rule - unjustly - as the rule of a pathetic weakling who let himself and thus the country be ruled by a depraved foreign woman.
The pamphleteers and the court were obviously acting BEFORE the Revolution, so consequently, I was referring to the time before as well!!!
Certainly MA was not helping Louis much either, but I think it's rather unfair to make her responsible for all the gossip that was going on.
I thought Bernard Fay's book on Louis XVI was one of the worst books I have ever read. It is not only totally unscholarly but also incredibly sexist.
Disagree about Annette Taeger although her account is indeed limited as regards many aspects.
Try also Hardman's Louis XVI.
Ok and where it was sexist? Did i miss something? And where he is/was unscholarly? Fay was the totally FIRST who figured out the Louis never had an phimosis. He was the one who doesn´t showed Louis weak and stupid like before Zweig tried in his book/novel to MA!Fay explain the relationship between his oldest brother and gave a close view about his childhood... Also of his relationship to MA. Which wasn´t these "true" love, just at the beginning. (ok thats a different point now we didn´t talked about ^^°) Out of his book you get that it wasn´t also Joseph II earnings that they got their first child. Ok, Fay is a lil bit hard to read cause of all the politc-parts...yes... But sorry, your aspects sounds really far-fetched.
Writer like Evelyne Lever or Stefan Zweig and sadly also Antoinia Fraser where worse in the opposite...and with their rubbish view of Louis, which is in fact so sad, just cause to keep their illusion about MA.
It's been a long time since I read Fay, so I don't remember the exact passages which annoyed me so very much. If I find the time I'll try to have a look at the book again to give some quotations. I generally didn't like it how Fay judged MA according to her supposed "female" ways. He was supposed to analyse her character and conduct on the grounds of sources but not of her supposed "female" flaws.
