How a scandalous affair about a diamond necklace brought down the French monarchy

Jeanne de Saint-Rémy de Valois, who apparently came from royal blood, spent her childhood surrounded by hardship.

Her mother struggled to raise Jeanne and her siblings, who often survived on charity from local churches, because her father, who was descended from the Valois line and who claimed illegitimate descent from King Henry II, drank heavily and died in poverty, which left the family with no source of income.

As Jeanne grew older, she developed a fixed belief that noble birth entitled her to wealth that promised status and honours which opened doors and produced channels of influence among courtiers.

When Jeanne married a discharged soldier named Nicolas de La Motte, she acquired a new surname and created the illusion of higher status.

She began to use the invented title Comtesse de La Motte-Valois, which she believed lent her claims of nobility greater authority.

Over time, she learned how to exploit her social circle, and she presented herself as a woman of influence and offered favours she could not deliver.

At court, she met men who longed for access to royal power, especially Cardinal Louis de Rohan.

Previously, Rohan had served as ambassador to Vienna, where he angered Empress Maria Theresa with his arrogance and rudeness.

His poor reputation followed him back to Versailles, where Marie Antoinette refused to speak with him or acknowledge his presence.

Publicly humiliated, Rohan became obsessed with restoring his reputation. As Grand Almoner of France and a member of an ancient noble family, he still held considerable influence at court.

Jeanne took advantage of his urgent need. She told him she had influence with the queen and promised to act as a secret messenger.

Since he wanted to believe her, he did not question her story.

During the final years of Louis XV’s reign, the Parisian jewellers Charles Boehmer and Paul Bassenge designed a necklace so expensive that no private buyer could afford it.

The piece took several years to complete, contained hundreds of diamonds, and ultimately reached a total value of 1.6 million livres.

They had originally hoped to sell it to Louis XV for Madame du Barry, but her exile from court after the king’s death left the necklace unsold, and as a result, the jewellers struggled to recover their investment for several years. 

They offered the necklace to Marie Antoinette and hoped that she would purchase it for herself or the royal treasury.

However, she refused, citing the absurd cost and the association with her husband’s father’s mistress.

According to later accounts, she even remarked that France had more need of ships than diamonds.

At the same time, France faced a growing financial crisis. Public anger focused increasingly on the spending habits of the royal family.

For the queen to buy such an item would have confirmed the worst fears of her critics.

By mid-1785, Jeanne de La Motte had devised a scheme to acquire the necklace, and as part of that scheme she allegedly told Rohan that the queen secretly wanted it but needed a third party to make the purchase.

According to her story, Marie Antoinette feared the backlash that a public sale would bring.

Jeanne claimed the queen would pay for it in instalments, and that Rohan could act as her silent agent.

The cardinal agreed, seeing this act as a way to prove his loyalty. 

For their part, the jewellers believed that they were entering a private deal sanctioned by the queen herself, so they accepted the terms.

To maintain the illusion, Jeanne had forged letters that were written to look like Marie Antoinette’s own writing.

Each letter praised Rohan for his loyalty and urged him to continue to work with Jeanne.

Since Rohan already believed Jeanne had access to the queen, he accepted the letters as genuine and at no point did he ask to verify their origin.

Soon after, Jeanne arranged a nighttime meeting in the gardens of Versailles between Rohan and a woman dressed to look like the queen.

Nicole Le Guay d’Oliva, who worked as a prostitute, had been hired to impersonate Marie Antoinette for a brief, whispered conversation.

She had not been told the true purpose of the impersonation, and she believed that she had only a simple role to play.

The setting was a dark garden with a white dress and a few rehearsed lines and created just enough illusion to convince Rohan he had been forgiven, and as a result, after the encounter, he placed his full trust in Jeanne’s hands.

Jeanne moved quickly. She urged Rohan to act as the queen’s financial agent and arrange for the purchase of the necklace.

He contacted Boehmer and Bassenge, who agreed to transfer the necklace on the promise of future payment.

Rohan had delivered the necklace to Jeanne’s courier, who claimed to be a servant of the queen.

Within days, the diamonds had been broken apart and were quickly sold across Europe, and because they had received no payments, Boehmer and Bassenge approached Versailles to demand compensation.

Court officials were confused by the claim and asked the queen directly. Marie Antoinette denied ever hearing of the necklace, and, shocked by the confusion, the king launched an investigation, which uncovered the scheme and led to multiple arrests.

On 15 August 1785, Cardinal Rohan arrived at the palace in his full clerical regalia for a religious ceremony.

There, royal guards arrested him in front of witnesses and led him away to the Bastille.

His public disgrace caused surprise among courtiers and set off a wave of rumours across Paris.

Soon after, police arrested Jeanne de La Motte, her husband, Nicole d’Oliva, and the forger Rétaux de Villette.

The case reached the Parlement of Paris, which was the body responsible for trying nobles and high clergy.

Though Marie Antoinette wished the matter to remain private, Louis XVI insisted on a public trial to clear the crown’s name.

She had never spoken to Rohan and had never ordered the necklace. Yet, many people refused to believe her.

The scandal appeared to confirm what critics had long said about the queen’s vanity and dishonesty.

During the proceedings, every detail of the deception became public knowledge.: the forged letters, the garden meeting, the use of prostitutes, and the secret sale of the diamonds were all recounted in court and printed in newspapers.

Paris became obsessed and crowds waited outside the courtroom. Pamphlets appeared daily, and they mocked the queen and turned court intrigue into public entertainment.

The Parlement resented royal interference and used the trial to assert its independence from the crown.

In May 1786, the Parlement delivered its verdict: Rohan was acquitted. The court ruled that he had acted in good faith and had been misled.

In contrast, Jeanne had received a sentence that combined public whipping and branding with a long prison sentence.

Nicole d’Oliva was also acquitted. The forger received a term of imprisonment.

Although the queen had committed no crime, her public image suffered the greatest harm.

Not long after, Jeanne escaped from the Salpêtrière prison disguised as a boy and fled to London, where she published memoirs that attacked Marie Antoinette.

Before the scandal, Marie Antoinette had already faced criticism for her extravagance and her perceived indifference to the needs of the people.

Afterwards, her reputation fell apart. Many now believed she had used public funds to purchase jewellery while commoners starved.

Even though the evidence had cleared her of wrongdoing, few accepted the verdict as justice being served.

The affair confirmed growing suspicion that the monarchy had become corrupt and detached from the realities of ordinary life, and as a result, satirical prints depicted the queen as a thief, a liar, or a manipulator.

Songs mocked her, while writers accused her of plotting behind the scenes while pretending to live virtuously.

She became, to many, a symbol of everything that had gone wrong with the French monarchy.

The affair also fuelled the rise of libelles, scandalous pamphlets that portrayed the queen in shocking and insulting ways.

Soon after, the queen tried to repair her image, and, as part of that effort, she appeared more often in public, spent more time with her children, and gave to charity.

Still, the necklace affair stuck to her. It remained a story people repeated as they lined up for bread or paid new taxes, and it became part of a larger story that explained why the country faced ruin. 

When revolution erupted in 1789, few people remembered the trial’s verdict.

They remembered only the diamonds, the queen, and the rumour that she had once said the people could eat cake.

The Affair of the Diamond Necklace did not cause the Revolution, but it arguably convinced many that the royal family had lost the moral right to rule.