It is one of the most famous quotes in history. The story goes that Marie Antoinette, the last pre-revolutionary queen of France, said “let them eat cake” when she was faced with the news that the Parisian peasants were so immensely poor that they could not afford even a loaf of bread. It was sometime around 1789. With that cruel comment, the queen became a hated symbol of the decadent monarchy and fueled the revolution that would end her, literally, losing her mind a few years later.
According to historians, Marie Antoinette, the wife of King Louis XVI and the Queen of France during the French Revolution, never uttered these words. Lady Antonia Fraser, author of a biography of the French queen, believes that saying such words did not fit the personality of Marie Antoinette, an intelligent woman who always donated generously to charitable causes who, although she lived in luxury and ostentation everywhere , also showed sensitivity towards the most disadvantaged population of French society.
After her marriage to Louis XVI, she spent most of her days living in the opulent palace of Versailles and even created a miniature farm in Versailles where stories say the animals were washed before she was allowed to “play with them.” “. This new display of luxury only added to the discomfort as the French starved.
The earliest known source for this enduring myth is a French magazine from 1843. And there is absolutely no historical evidence that Marie Antoinette ever said “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” or anything of the sort. In fact, there is no historical evidence of the quote in newspapers, pamphlets and other types of materials published by the revolutionaries.
The revolutionaries probably took this quote initially described by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau who in book VI of Rousseau’s Confessions (1767) tells a story in which a great princess declares this quote (remember that at this time Marie Antoinette was only a girl, so he would not have been able to pronounce those words. Perhaps he was referring to Maria Theresa of Austria, wife of Louis XIV, queen consort of France and Navarre from 1660 until her death). The revolutionaries used this phrase and falsely attributed it to Marie Antoinette, disseminating it as propaganda, as a way of arousing opposition to the monarchy.
France has not suffered from a shortage of revolutions, we already know. The first, in 1789, ended very badly for Marie Antoinette and her husband, Louis XVI. In 1791, Marie Antoinette was imprisoned in the Conciergerie on the Île de la Cité. She remained there until her execution in 1793.
The next century saw the country flip between monarchies and republics, with each side waging a propaganda war as well as armed skirmishes. It was during one of these later revolutions, long after the execution of Marie Antoinette, that the first misquote regarding the cliché phrase “Let them eat cake” occurred.