The French Revolution is remembered as one of the key events in Western history, a watershed between the ancient and modern worlds. The protagonist, in spite of itself and, at the same time, the victim of the fire of the rebellion that wiped out the Ancien Régime was the Queen Marie Antoinette (1755-1793). A woman who, on the one hand, truly understood the essence of her role only when it was too late but, on the other, was overwhelmed by events and crushed by slander, by what today we would call “fake news”. In particular, there was a plot against the sovereign that forever undermined her already shaky reputation in the eyes of the people: the Affair of the Necklace. An intrigue that has all the ingredients of a novel, from the thirst for power to the craving for wealth, from the desire for revenge to the splendor of a jewel that was an emblem of the splendor of the French court. An intricate story that led Marie Antoinette on the road to the gallows.
The Queen’s Last Embroidery
Not many people know that in the house museum of Alessandro Manzoni the last embroidery made by Marie Antoinette of France before her death on the guillotine, which occurred on October 16, 1793, is preserved. It may seem strange that such an object crossed France to arrive at the home of one of the greatest Italian authors, in via Gerolamo Morone 1, in Milan. The history of the embroidery, which depicts a blond cherub arranging flowers in a wicker basket (apparently the Queen used the face of her son, the unfortunate Louis Charles, as a model) is very fascinating.
Behind the frame that holds the delicate embroidery, as explained by Il Corriere.it and Harper’s Bazaar, there is a message from Manzoni’s granddaughter, Vittoria Brambilla, in which it is revealed that the work was created by Maria Antonietta during her period of imprisonment at the Temple and then gave it to her sewing teacher to thank her for the time spent together. The embroidery teacher, however, did not keep this memento forever, as many of us might have expected, but preferred to give it to the writer Sophie de Condorcet, wife of the mathematician and philosopher Nicolas de Condorcet.
Sophie did not keep it for long either, as she also decided to give it as a gift to a great friend of hers: Giulia Beccaria (1762-1841), daughter of Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794, author of the famous work “Dei Delitti e Delle Pene”, against torture and the death penalty, published in 1764) and mother of Alessandro Manzoni. We can imagine the profound meaning of that gift: the embroidery made by a Queen condemned to death that arrived at the home of the daughter of the Enlightenment jurist to whom we owe a fundamental text in the history of criminal law.
Marie Antoinette’s embroidery is, even today, the symbol of the imprisonment and suffering of this sovereign. An ordeal that began even before her arrest and the outbreak of the French Revolutionwith a conspiracy and, at the same time, an at times incredible fraud, which acted as a detonator to the hatred harboured against the French royal family and the monarchy.
The necklace that Marie Antoinette didn’t want
In the second half of the eighteenth century, the Parisian jewelers Charles Auguste Böhmer and Paul Bassenge created a very precious diamond necklace, worth over one and a half million livres, with the aim of selling it to the Countess Du Barryfavourite of Louis XV (1710-1774).
The King, however, died of smallpox on May 10, 1774, before the jewelers could complete the sale. So they decided to offer it to the new sovereigns, Louis XVI (1754-1793) and Marie Antoinette. The royal couple refused to buy the necklace: according to some versions, the Queen would have preferred to buy a ship. According to others, it was the monarch who opposed such an expenditure of money. In any case, the result was that the desperate jewelers Böhmer and Bassenge found themselves with a necklace of inestimable value that nobody wanted. They even tried to sell it on the foreign market. In vain.
At this juncture, Jeanne de Saint-Remy de Valois, Countess of La Motte (1756-1791), a noblewoman and adventurer, descendant of Henry II, entered the scene. Despite her origins, Jeanne lived in financial straits with her husband, Antoine Nicolas de La Motte. Ambitious and determined to conquer the riches and position at court that, according to her, were hers, the woman thought of concocting a diabolical plan, exploiting the naivety and fragility of the cardinal. Louis Rene Edward de Rohan (1734-1803), whom she had first met in 1781 and had helped her pay off the many debts she had accumulated over the years.
Rohan, in fact, had a weak point, a fixed thought that he just couldn’t get out of his head: the non-existent relationship with Queen Marie Antoinette. The sovereign despised the cardinalbecause she was convinced that he had spread gossip about her mother, the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. Rohan would have done anything to get back into Marie Antoinette’s good graces and obtain economic advantages. Jeanne took advantage of this impatience to put her plans into action.
The Necklace Affair
Jeanne de LaMotte managed to convince Rohan that she was a confidant of Marie Antoinette and that she could help him restore relations with the Crown. The cardinal received letters signed by Her Majesty, without even imagining that they were fakes, written by a certain Rétaux de Villette at the request of Jeanne and certainly not by the Queen. The purpose of the scam was simple: to extort money from Rohan. In the letters, the fake Marie Antoinette asked for large sums to finance charitable works. The cardinal, anxious to please her, gave her everything she asked for. He never stopped to reflect on the absurdity of that situation, on how unlikely that correspondence was.
Jeanne, moreover, did not stop at simple letters: she convinced the cardinal that the sovereign wanted to meet him in secret, in the Grove of Venus, inside the palace of Versailles. In August 1784, Rohan went, at night, to the appointed place and thought he saw and spoke with Marie Antoinette. In reality, it was her double, the prostitute Nicole Leguay D’Oliva, paid by de La Motte.
The matter, already intricate, became dangerous when the jewelers Böhmer and Bassenge word got out that Jeanne was a friend of the Queen. The two thought of asking her help to propose the necklace to the royal couple again. La Motte could not resist the idea of the wealth she would obtain thanks to the diamonds of that necklace. As often happens in similar circumstances, the mania for wealth, greed and the total lack of scruples were the cause of her downfall.
In January 1785 the noblewoman informed the jewelers that Marie Antoinette would buy the necklacebut in installments and through an intermediary. Necessary precautions given the cost of the jewel, which would certainly have aroused popular discontent. Needless to say, Jeanne convinced Rohan to act as intermediary, showing him a false note in which Marie Antoinette would have authorized him to take care of the purchase.
The necklace ended up in the hands of the countess and her husband, who resold the diamonds. When the first installment was due, no one paid the jewelers what was due and they asked to speak to Marie Antoinette, explaining what had happened. Queen he denied ever having wanted to buy the necklace and the deception was discovered.
The Queen is innocent
Cardinal Rohan was arrested and taken to the Bastille August 15, 1785. The authorities also captured Nicole Leguay, Rétaux de Villette and Jeanne de la Motte, but not Antoine Nicolas de La Motte, who managed to escape to England. Rohan, judged by Parliament, was acquitted. The same fate befell Leguay. The counts de La Motte, however, were sentenced to life imprisonment and Jeanne was also sentenced to flogging and to being branded with the “V” of “volunteer”that is, “thief”.
In June 1786 the noblewoman She managed to escape from Salpȇtrière prison and arrived in London in August 1787, where she remained until her death on 23 August 1791. Rohan’s acquittal deeply disappointed Marie Antoinette, who had hoped for an exemplary punishment. Parliament, however, believed in the Queen’s innocence and historians also agree that nothing linked her to the Affair of the Necklace.
The French, however, were of a completely different opinion, convinced that the sovereign must necessarily be guilty. After all, the cardinal had managed to demonstrate his innocence in the facts, while everyone knew of Marie Antoinette’s passion for clothes and jewels. How could the version according to which the Queen had renounced the purchase of the fabulous necklace by Böhmer and Bassenge be reliable? Instead, things went exactly like this, but the subjects had already made up their minds. The intrigue definitively compromised Marie Antoinette’s low popularity, increasing suspicions and gossip about her, which would be used against her during the Revolution.
The scam was the beginning of the end for His Majesty and for the French monarchy. Fertile ground that favored the strengthening of the conditions that had already been created and that would soon lead to rebellion. The Affair of the Necklace stained Marie Antoinette’s name for life, making her unpopular throughout France. In a certain sense, it represented the point of no return for the sovereign.
The initial phase of a rapid decline that would take her from the glories of Versailles to the guillotine, passing through a very harsh imprisonment, during which the former Queen of France tried to keep herself busy by embroidering and, perhaps, thinking about a past that would never return.