History Gets Scandalous

The Affair of the Diamond Necklace

In 1772, Louis XV, King of France, commissioned Boehmer and Bassenge to create a maginificent diamond necklace for his mistress Madame du Barry. Before it could be completed, the king died  and Madame Du Barry was exiled from court.

King Louis XVI offered the necklace to his wife- Marie Antoinette. Either the King changed his mind or the Queen refused the necklace. She may have refused the gift because she didn’t want jewelry made for another woman, or she may not have wanted to anger her husband’s mother by wearing the jewellry of her rival. In any case, Marie Antoinette never wore the necklace. It was wirth 2,000,000 Livres.

Enter one of the greatest con-women in history: Jeanne, “Comtesse” de La Motte. Jeanne became friendly with the Cardinal de Rohan, who had got on Queen Marie Antoinette’s bad side.

He wanted to regain her favor. Jeanne told the gullible Rohan that she was in the Queen’s good graces. He decided to “use” her. Jeanne  pretended to be a go between, carrying forged letters to Rohan that he believed were from  the Queen. The letters began to be quite steamy and Rohan was convinced that the Queen was in love with him. Jeanne also took great sums of money from Rohan to the Queen, claiming they were for “charity”.

Finally, the infatuated Rohan asked Jeanne to arrange a meeting with the Queen. So, she hired a prostitute to impersonate the Queen and tell him that all past disagreements were forgotten. Because she bragged openly about being a favorite of the Queen, people assumed she knew what she was about. Boehmer and Bassenge wanted to try to sell the famous diamond necklace to Queen Marie Antoinette.

Image via Wikipedia

Jeanne duped Cardinal Rohan into acting as an intermediary for the Queen. She gave Rohan a letter with the Queen’s forged signature and he went to Boehmer and Bassenge, bought the necklace for 2,000,000 livres (to be paid in installments) and brought it to a man he thought was a valet for the Queen.

Jeanne La Mott’s husband took the necklace to London, where it was broken into individual diamonds and sold.

Eventually, B and B wanted their money. They complained to the Queen, who truthfully said she knew nothing about it. Rohan was brought before the Court, where he showed the document he’d been given. The paper was signed Marie Antoinette de France. The King demanded to know how Rohan could have been so stupid: royalty  don’t use surnames.

The Cardinal and the prostitute accomplice were acquitted while Jeanne Lamott was sentenced to be whipped, branded and sent to the whore’s prison. She later dressed as a boy, escaped and later wrote a memoir in which she blamed the Queen for the whole thing.

 Even though the Court did not implicate the Queen, public opinion turned strongly against her. She was already the victim of vicious rumor and it was widely believed that she used the La Motts to get the necklace. She ws characterized as a hussy, a brazen spendthrift who chased diamonds and men while the people of France starved.

From the Affair of the Necklace onward, Marie Antoinette’s days were numbered. She ended up on the guillotine.

Marie Antoinette

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