The Affair of the Queen’s Necklace is one of the most resounding scandals in the history of the French monarchy, marking the end of the Ancien Régime and tarnishing the reputation of Queen Marie-Antoinette. The scandal involved court intrigue, conspiracy and manipulation, all revolving around an extravagantly valuable diamond necklace. Here’s everything you need to know to understand this complex affair, which played a significant role in the troubles that led to the Revolution of 1789.
Note
The affair of the Queen’s Necklace is one of the milestones in the history of the French Crown Jewels. To find out more about the history of the Crown Jewels, click on
Theft of the crown jewels during the French Revolution
and The jewels of the Crown of France, its eventful history.
In addition, to see the Crown Jewels on display in Paris today, go to
The jewels of the Crown today at Le Louvre Museum
or The jewels of the Crown at the Ecole-des-Mines of Paris
or The French Crown jewels of the Natural-History-Museum
Origins of Queen’s necklace affair
In 1772, jewelers Charles Boehmer and Paul Bassenge, located Place Louis-le-Grand (Today Place Vendôme) created a sumptuous diamond necklace. It was destined to be the most expensive and beautiful jewel ever conceived. They hoped to sell it to King Louis XV for his favorite, Madame du Barry. The project took a long time, due to the difficulty of gathering diamonds of the desired purity. When Louis XV died in 1774, Madame du Barry was exiled and the necklace was still unfinished. The necklace, worth a colossal fortune, remained unsold.
The necklace, a master piece of 1,600,000 livres (approximately €27,513,000)
Conceived as a masterpiece, this large diamond necklace adopts an elaborate composition known as “en esclavage”. It is a row of 17 diamonds, ranging in size from 5 to 8 carats, which forms a three-quarter neckline that closes at the back with silk bands.
It supports three festoons trimmed with six pear-cut solitaire pendants.
On the sides, two long ribbons of three rows of diamonds pass over the shoulders and fall down the back.
The two middle ribbons cross at the breastbone over a 12-carat solitaire surrounded by pearls, falling back into a panicle and ending, like the side ribbons, with diamond mesh and fringe topped with blue ribbon bows2.
The 2,842-carat jewel features a hundred pearls and 674 brilliant-cut and pear-shaped diamonds of exceptional purity. It is the largest diamond assemblage in the history of jewelry.
Böhmer and Bassenge were heavily in debt to manufacture the necklace, which was finally completed in 1778 after 7 years of work. They insistently offered their jewel to Marie-Antoinette as her taste for jewels was notorious. It also earned her the reprimands of her mother, Empress Marie-Thérèse of Austria.
Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette and the Queen’s necklace affair
When Louis XVI ascended the throne, the jewelers offered the necklace to his young wife, Marie-Antoinette. But she refused, finding it too extravagant and preferring to use the state’s money for other expenses, that the money would be better spent on building a ship at a time when France has just allied itself with the American insurgents. She added that the necklace would be of little use to her, as she now wears diamond ornaments only four or five times a year. Finally, the heavy necklace, which resembled those of the previous reign, was not to Marie-Antoinette’s taste, as she compared it to a “horse harness”.
However, this refusal becomes the first step in a plot to make people believe that the Queen secretly wanted to buy the jewel.
The Queen’s necklace affair : the central player
The instigator of the fraud at the root of the affair was Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy, descended through her father from the French king Henri II and his mistress Nicole de Savigny. A charitable lady, the Marquise de Boulainvilliers took steps to obtain a pension from Louis XVI as a descendant of the Valois family. Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy receives a good education in a convent near Montgeron.
In 1780, Jeanne married a young officer, Nicolas de La Motte, in Bar-sur-Aube. The couple soon usurped the title of Comte and Comtesse de La Motte. From then on, Jeanne called herself only Countess de La Motte-Valois.
The other players of the plot of rhe Queen’s necklace affair
Jeanne, Comtesse de la Mote made a trip to Saverne, to join Mme de Boulainvilliers. She introduced her to her friend Cardinal Louis de Rohan-Guémené. Jeanne wastes no time in soliciting the Cardinal financially to help her out of the misery with which she continued to struggle. She became her mistress.
It was also there that she met the magician Joseph Balsamo, who called himself Count de Cagliostro. He also gravitates towards Cardinal de Rohan, extorting money from him in exchange for alleged miracles.
The last person involved in the plot is Nicole Leguay. Orphaned at an early age, she was forced into prostitution to support herself. She nicknamed herself “Baronne d’Oliva” and worked in the gardens of the Palais-Royal. Marie Nicole Le Guay was chosen to play the role of the Queen because of her resemblance to Marie-Antoinette. She was easily convinced with the sum of 15,000 livres.
How the scam is organized
The idea is to steal the necklace from jewelers Charles Boehmer and Paul Bassenge. Cardinal Louis de Rohan-Guéméné had to be persuaded to act as Marie-Antoinette’s secret intermediary in the purchase of the necklace.
Cardinal Louis de Rohan-Guéméné had been recalled to France following his highly undiplomatic behavior towards the Empress of Austria, when he was French ambassador in Vienna. Since then, Queen Marie-Antoinette, true to her mother’s memory, had been more than a little on the outs with the cardinal. The latter despaired of this hostility.
Mme de La Motte managed to convince the cardinal that she had met Queen Marie-Antoinette, and that she had become her close friend. Mme de La Motte’s lover, Louis Marc Antoine Rétaux de Villette (a friend of her husband), used his forging skills to imitate the queen’s handwriting perfectly. For his mistress, he forged letters signed “Marie-Antoinette de France” (contrary to the custom of french queens signing only with their first name). The Comtesse de la Motte thus began a false correspondence, for which she acted as messenger, between the queen Maris-Antoinette and the cardinal.
She gave the cardinal hope of a return to favor with the sovereign. And any means are good enough. With the complicity of Cagliostro, of whom the Cardinal was a fanatic (he went so far as to declare “Cagliostro is God himself!” – Rather strange for a cardinal), the magician had a child medium announce an oracle revealing the most fabulous consequences for the prelate if he lent himself to the affair. The Cardinal will have the full recognition of the Queen, favors of all kind will rain down on his head, the Queen will have him appointed by the King as Prime Minister…
Queen’s necklace affair : how the plot unfolds
Mme de La Motte was in dire need of money, and began by extracting 60,000 livres (in two instalments) from the Cardinal on behalf of the Queen. The Countess provided him with false letters of gratitude from the Queen, announcing the hoped-for reconciliation, while postponing indefinitely the successive appointments requested by the Cardinal to ensure it.
Finally, on the night of August 11, 1784, the cardinal received confirmation of a rendezvous at the bosquet de Vénus in the Versailles gardens at eleven o’clock in the evening. There, Nicole Leguay, disguised as Marie-Antoinette in a polka-dot muslin dress (copied from a painting of Maris-Antoinette by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun), her face wrapped in light black gauze, greeted him with a rose and whispered, “You know what this means. You can count on the past being forgotten”.
But before the Cardinal can continue the conversation, Mme de La Motte appears with Rétaux de Villette in the Queen’s livery, warning that the Comtesses de Provence and d’Artois, the Queen’s sisters-in-law, are approaching. This mishap, invented by Mme de La Motte, shortened the conversation. The next day, the cardinal receives a letter from the “queen”, regretting the brevity of the meeting. The cardinal is definitely won over, his gratitude and blind trust in the Countess de La Motte unshakeable.
The scam of the Queen’s necklace affair takes shape
On December 28, 1784, still presenting herself as an intimate friend of the Queen, Mme de La Motte met the jewelers Boehmer and Bassenge, who showed her the 2,840-carat necklace. They wanted to sell it quickly, as they were in debt. She immediately devises a plan to gain possession of it.
She tells the jeweler that she will intervene to convince the Queen to buy the jewel, but through a nominee.
In fact, in January 1785, Cardinal de Rohan received a new letter, again signed “Marie-Antoinette de France”, in which the queen explained that she couldn’t afford to buy the jewel openly, so she had asked him to act as a go-between, contracting to repay her in instalments over time – four instalments of 400,000 livres – and granting him full powers in the matter.
The conclusion of the scam
On February 1, 1785, convinced, the Cardinal signed the four drafts and had the jewel delivered, which he took that very evening to Mme de La Motte in an apartment she had rented in Versailles. In front of him, she passes it on to an alleged footman in the Queen’s livery (none other than Rétaux de Villette). The schemer even receives gifts from the jeweler for facilitating this negotiation.
Selling the Queen’s necklace in pieces
Immediately, the crooks clumsily loosen the necklace, damaging the gems, and start selling them.
Rétaux de Villette runs into a bit of trouble negotiating his own. Their quality was such that, pressed for time, he traded them so far below their value that some diamond dealers suspected theft and denounced him. He managed to prove his good faith and left for Brussels to sell what he had left.
For his part, the Comte de La Motte offered the finest diamonds to two English jewelers in London. The latter, for the same reasons as their colleagues, smell a double-cross. They sent an emissary to Paris, but as no jewels of this value were known to have been stolen, they bought them, reassured. The last stones are sold in London.
As for the Cardinal, he is still waiting for a thank-you that never comes.
Emerging doubts
Meanwhile, the jeweler and the cardinal were expecting the first deadline to be August 1.
However, the craftsman and the prelate are astonished that the Queen is not wearing the necklace in the meantime.
Madame de La Motte assures them that a great occasion has not yet arisen and that, until then, if they are asked about the necklace, they must reply that it has been sold to the Sultan of Constantinople.
In July, however, with the first deadline approaching, the time had come for the Countess to buy time. She asked the cardinal to find lenders to help the queen repay the debt. Indeed, she would have trouble finding the 400,000 livres she owed by this deadline.
Second part of Mme de la Motte’s swindle: pressure on the Cardinal
The Countess de la Motte, sensing the suspicions, had in the meantime arranged to appease the Cardinal. She made an initial payment of 35,000 livres, thanks to the 300,000 livres she had received from the sale of the necklace. Some of this money had already been used to buy a manor house.
But this derisory payment is now useless. At the same time, the Countess informed the jewelers that the Queen’s alleged signature was a forgery, in order to scare Cardinal de Rohan into paying the bill himself for fear of scandal. The Comtesse really did have a great deal of imagination and composure.
The scandal erupts
But the jeweler Bœhmer was to hasten the outcome. Having learned of the payment difficulties ahead, he went straight to Marie-Antoinette’s first chambermaid, Mme Campan, and discussed the matter with her. She was stunned, and of course immediately reported her conversation with Boehmer to the Queen.
The king was informed of the fraud on August 14, 1785. On August 15, as the Cardinal – who was also Grand Chaplain of France – was about to celebrate the Assumption mass in the chapel of the Château de Versailles, he was summoned to the King’s apartments in the presence of the Queen, the Garde des Sceaux Miromesnil and the Minister of the King’s Household Breteuil.
Cardinal Louis de Rohan-Guémené, Grand Chaplain of France
On his way out of the king’s apartments, he is stopped in the Hall of Mirrors, in the midst of the stunned courtiers. With the Court in a state of shock, he asks a clergyman if he has paper and pencil, and then goes to find his Vicar General to hand him this hastily-written missive, so that he can burn the letters that the so-called Marie-Antoinette has sent him – in order to avoid a further correspondence scandal directly involving Marie-Antoinette.
The cardinal was imprisoned in the Bastille. He immediately began repaying the sums owed to the jeweler, selling his own property, including his château de Coupvray (until 1881, the descendants of his heirs continued to repay the jeweler’s descendants). The Comtesse de La Motte was arrested, and her husband fled to London (where he was granted asylum) with the last of the diamonds, while Rétaux de Villette was already in Switzerland. Cagliostro was also arrested, and on October 20, Nicole Leguay and her pregnant lover were arrested in Brussels.
The trial of the Queen’s necklace affair
On May 30, 1786, Parliament (Sitting in the Superior Court of Justice) delivered its verdict on the Queen’s necklace affair in the face of a raging press.
The Cardinal was acquitted (both for the fraud and for the crime of lèse-majesté against the Queen).
The Comtesse de La Motte was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Salpêtrière, after being whipped and branded on both shoulders with the “V” for “thief” (she struggled until one of the “Vs” was finally applied to her breast).
Her husband was sentenced to the galleys for life in absentia. Rétaux de Villette was banished (he went into exile in Venice, where in 1790 he wrote Mémoire historique des intrigues de la Cour, subtitled “Et de ce qui s’est passé entre la reine, le comte d’Artois, le cardinal de Rohan, madame de Polignac, madame de La Motte, Cagliostro, MM de Breteuil and de Vergennes”(And of what happened between the queen, the comte d’Artois, the cardinal de Rohan, madame de Polignac, madame de La Motte, Cagliostro, MM de Breteuil and de Vergennes).
Finally, Nicole Leguay was declared “hors de cours” (removed from the case after having moved the court with her baby in her arms). br>As for Cagliostro, after being imprisoned he was soon expelled from France (1786).
The humiliated Queen
Marie-Antoinette was at the height of her humiliation, considering the Cardinal’s acquittal a slap in the face. The Parliament that had judged the Cardinal was opposed in principle to all royal decisions, claiming to defend the interests of the nation. This obstruction of any attempt at reform prompted Louis XVI to convene the Estates General in 1789.
In fact, the decision meant that the judges could not hold the cardinal to task for believing that the queen could send him sweet bills, grant him gallant rendezvous in the park of Versailles and buy pharaonic jewels through front men in secret from the king. And so such antics would not have been improbable on the queen’s part. And it was in this spirit that the judgment was handed down, and received in the court of public opinion.
The queen, now aware that her image had deteriorated in the eyes of public opinion, got the king to exile Cardinal de Rohan to the abbey of La Chaise-Dieu (between Clermont-Ferrand and Le Puy-en-Velais). He stayed there for just three months, after which he moved to the Marmoutier Abbey near Tours. It was only after three years, on March 17, 1788, that the King authorized him to return to his diocese of Strasbourg.
Consequences
Although Marie-Antoinette was not involved in the whole affair, public opinion did not want to believe in the queen’s innocence. Long accused of contributing to the kingdom’s budget deficit through excessive spending, she was subjected to an unprecedented avalanche of opprobrium. Libellists gave free rein to slander in pamphlets in which the “Austrian” (or “other bitch”) was offered diamonds as the price of her love affair with the cardinal.
Mme de la Motte, who denied any involvement in the affair, acknowledging only that she was the cardinal’s mistress, managed to escape from the Salpêtrière and published an account in London in which she recounted her affair with Marie-Antoinette, the latter’s complicity from the start of the affair right up to her intervention in the escape. A pure lie.
Through the discredit it cast on the Court in an already hostile opinion and the strengthening of the Paris Parliament, this scandal was, for some, directly responsible for the outbreak of the French Revolution four years later and the fall of royalty. Goethe wrote “These intrigues destroyed the royal dignity. The story of the necklace is therefore the immediate preface to the Revolution.”
