Marie Antoinette's Darkest Days

This compelling book begins on the 2nd of August 1793, the day Marie Antoinette was torn from her family's arms and escorted from the Temple to the Conciergerie, a thick-walled fortress turned prison. It was also known as the "waiting room for the guillotine" because prisoners only spent a day or two here before their conviction and subsequent execution. The ex-queen surely knew her days were numbered, but she could never have known that two and a half months would pass before she would finally stand trial and be convicted of the most ungodly charges.
Will Bashor traces the final days of the prisoner registered only as Widow Capet, No. 280, a time that was a cruel mixture of grandeur, humiliation, and terror. Marie Antoinette's reign amidst the splendors of the court of Versailles is a familiar story, but her final imprisonment in a fetid, dank dungeon is a little-known coda to a once-charmed life. Her seventy-six days in this terrifying prison can only be described as the darkest and most horrific of the fallen queen's life, vividly recaptured in this richly researched history.

Will Bashor is the author of the award-winning Marie Antoinette's Head: The Royal Hairdresser, the Queen, and the Revolution and Marie Antoinette's World: Intrigue, Infidelity, and Adultery in Versailles. He holds a doctorate in international studies from the American Graduate School in Paris and is professor of global issues at Franklin University. Visit him at www.willbashor.com.

AUTHOR'S NOTE
PROLOGUE
CHRONOLOGY
INTRODUCTION
PART ONE: THE CONCIERGERIE
Chapter 1: Transfer from the Temple Prison
À Savoir: "The Queen of France at the Conciergerie"
Chapter 2: The Queen's Dungeon Cell
À Savoir: The Queen's Final Portrait
Chapter 3: The Horrors of the Conciergerie
À Savoir: The Game "Guillotine"
Chapter 4: Kindhearted Souls
À Savoir: Rosalie Lamorlière
PART TWO: RESCUE THE QUEEN!
Chapter 5: Royalist Supporters
À Savoir: The Queen's Expenses in the Conciergerie
Chapter 6: The Carnation Plot
À Savoir: "Le Chevalier de la Maison Rouge"
Chapter 7: The Queen's New Cell
À Savoir: The Controversy
Chapter 8: Tightened Security
À Savoir: Count Fersen Meets Rougeville
PART THREE: THE QUEEN'S ARRAIGNMENT
Chapter 9: Prosecutor Fouquier-Tinville
À Savoir: Jacques-Louis David
Chapter 10: The Indictment, the Jury, and the Witnesses
À Savoir: Le Tribunal Révolutionnaire
Chapter 11: The Revolutionary Tribunal - Day One
À Savoir: Meteorologists Report
Chapter 12: The Revolutionary Tribunal - Day Two
À Savoir: Meteorologists Report
PART FOUR: OCTOBER 16, 1793 - COLD & CLOUDY
Chapter 13: The Queen's Last Rites
À Savoir: The Queen's Dog
Chapter 14: The Route of the Fatal Tumbril
À Savoir: Sanson Obituary
Chapter 15: The "National Razor"
À Savoir: Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin
PART FIVE: THE ABSURDITY
Chapter 16: The Unfortunates and the Sole Survivors
À Savoir: Madame Élisabeth of France
Chapter 17: La Cimetière de la Madeleine
À Savoir: Basilica of Saint-Denis
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS & CREDITS
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
ENDNOTES