How did Marie Antoinette die?

Marie Antoinette died by beheading on October 16, 1793, when she was executed by guillotine during the French Revolution. The execution took place at the Place de la Révolution in Paris, now known as the Place de la Concorde.

Born in 1755 as an archduchess of Austria, Marie Antoinette married the future Louis XVI and became queen of France in 1774. Public anger toward the monarchy intensified during France’s financial crisis, political upheaval, and war with Austria, her birthplace. Revolutionary propaganda also portrayed her as extravagantly wasteful and dangerously sympathetic to foreign powers.

After the monarchy fell in 1792, she was imprisoned and later tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal. She was convicted of treason and executed several months after Louis XVI, who had been guillotined in January 1793.

“Beheaded” is correct, though “guillotined” is the more specific description of how the execution was carried out. The famous phrase “Let them eat cake” is also commonly linked to her, but historians have found no reliable evidence that she actually said it.