User:Sstewart30/sandbox

The Affair

A letter addressed to Marie Antoinette written by the jewelers stated that they had not yet been paid for a diamond necklace they sold her. It was described as “a row of seventeen glorious diamonds, as large almost as filberts…a three-wreathed festoon, and pendants enough (simple pear shaped, multiple star-shaped, or clustering amorphous…” and a “Queen of Diamonds.”^[1]    In the midst of the presentation, the Cardinal of Rohan had fallen out of Marie Antoinette’s favor. The Cardinal sought to regain his position with the queen after he was “excluded…from her inner circle.”^[2] The Countess or Mme de La Motte promised to help the Cardinal curry favor with the queen through a gift in the form of a diamond necklace. She “hinted to him that, with her winning tongue and great talent as Anecdotic Historian, she had worked a passage to the ears of Queen’s majesty herself.”^[1] Bassange and Böhmer claimed that the Cardinal Rohan said “we would be very happy that Her Majesty the Queen wear the jewel,” referring to the infamous diamond necklace.^[3] But the queen had no knowledge of the deals between the parties.

However, a forged signature with her name was used to legitimize the deal. At the end of each letter concerning the payments for the necklace, it was signed “Marie Antoinette de France”^[1]

The diamond necklace “was promptly picked apart, and the gems sold on the black markets of Paris and London” by Mme de La Motte.^[4]

The Scandal

The controversy of the event stems from the arrest of the Cardinal in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles and the trial that declared him innocent and Mme de La Motte and her accomplices guilty. “Rohan’s choice of the Parliament, whatever the verdict, both prolonged matters and took them into the political arena.” ^[5] This made the event into a matter of public interest rather than handled quietly and privately. While “Jeanne de La Motte was condemned to whipping, branding, and life imprisonment.” ^[4]

The Significance

After the affair broke out to the general public there was an increase in literature defaming the queen. Her “unpopularity was so great after the Diamond Necklace Affair that it could no longer be ignored by either the queen or the government. Her apperances in public all but ceased.”^[6] As she was associated with the scandal and already an enemy of the French people, "her reputation was tarnished."^[1]

Marie Antoinette's image never recovered from this incident. Due to her history of excessive spending, Marie's public image was already blemished, but the Diamond Necklace Affair catapulted public opinion of her into near hatred as it appeared she was plotting to misuse more go the country's depleting money for personal trinkets.

The Diamond Necklace Affair heightened the French general public’s hatred and disdain for the Marie Antoinette as it was “designed to leave the queen in a state of scandal,with the impossibility of claiming any truth for herself."^[7] This public relations nightmare led to an increase in salacious and degrading pamphlets that would sever as kindling for the oncoming French Revolution. It could be said that “she symbolized, among other things, the lavishness and corruption of a dying regime” and served as “the perfect scapegoat of the morality play that the revolution in part became” which made her a target for the hatred of the French republic and groups like the Jacobins and Sans-Culottes.^[6]

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