The Diamond Necklace Affair
A confidence trickster stole a diamond necklace in 1785 by convincing a cardinal that the queen wanted it, and Marie Antoinette never recovered from it. The necklace had been made by Parisian jewellers for Louis XV's mistress, contained some 650 diamonds, and was unsold when he died; Marie Antoinette had refused it twice as too expensive. Jeanne de la Motte, a woman of impoverished noble descent living by her wits, discovered that Cardinal de Rohan, the Grand Almoner of France, was desperate to recover the queen's favour after having offended her years earlier in Vienna. She produced forged letters from the queen, arranged a midnight meeting in the gardens of Versailles with a prostitute hired to impersonate her at a distance, and persuaded Rohan to buy the necklace on the queen's behalf and in secret, as her agent. He handed it over to a man he believed was a royal servant. The stones were broken up and sold in London. The queen knew nothing about any of it until the jewellers presented the bill. Louis XVI then made the decision that turned a fraud into a catastrophe: instead of handling it privately, he had the cardinal arrested at Versailles in his vestments and tried before the parlement of Paris. The trial acquitted Rohan, which was in effect a verdict that the story had been believable. Napoleon later said that the queen's death should be dated from it. Jeanne de la Motte was branded with a V for voleuse, escaped from prison in men's clothes, and published memoirs in London that sold well. The queen had done nothing, which made no difference at all to what the country concluded from it.
- Year: 1785 CE
- Category: Political
