What is the Affair of the Diamond Necklace?

The Affair of the Diamond Necklace was an infamous scandal implicating Marie Antoinette and her husband King Louis XVI of France which only added to the French people's disenchantment with the monarchy. Although the details of the scandal are private and rather apolitical, the Affair of the Diamond Necklace was still considered to be historically significant as one of the many events leading up to the French Revolution.

 The story begins with the creation of an exquisite diamond necklace in 1772. Louis XV requested that the famous Parisian jewelers, Boehmer and Bassenge, design the most beautiful and grand diamond necklace in the world for Madame du Barry, Louis infatuation. During the creation of the necklace which took several years of amassing the highest quality stones, cutting the stones, designing the setting in the most precious metals and then embedding the diamonds, Louis XV died of smallpox and Madame du Barry was expelled from the court.

 When the diamond necklace was finally completed, it was positively extraordinary. The necklace incorporated many large diamonds which were elaborately arranged in festoons, pendants and tassels. After investing so much time and money in creating a diamond necklace fit for royalty, jewelers Boehmer and Bassenge hoped to sell their creation to the new king of France, Louis XVI. They marketed the necklace to the king who offered to buy if for his wife Marie Antoinette as a present, but she refused the offer. According to some rumors, the Queen refused the necklace in a letter that implied the money should instead be used to fund military efforts. Others said that she refused simply because she wasn't willing to wear any jewelry that had been originally designed for another woman. Still others claim that Louis XVI changed his own mind and decided in the end of things to forgo the purchase of the necklace.

 This put the two jewelers in a bind. They were left with an extremely expensive diamond necklace in which they had invested overwhelming amounts of time and money. Even after putting the necklace on the international market they were unable to find buyers. A second attempt was made in 1781 to sell the necklace to the Queen in honor of the birth of her son, Louis-Joseph, but Marie Antoinette again refused.

 Meanwhile, a woman known by the name of Jeanne de Saint-Rémy de Valois was cooking up a scheme that would move her up in the ranks of the court and possibly gain her power and wealth. De Valois happened to be a descendant of a bastard of Henry II of France, meaning that she had some royal blood in her. This allowed for her to marry the comte de la Motte, and she even received a small financial allowance from the King.

 In March of 1784, Jeanne de Valois (now Jean de la Motte) befriended Louis Rene Edouard, cardinal de Rohan, the former ambassador to Vienna. The cardinal de Rohan had fallen out of favor with Queen Antionette and had been trying to regain her trust in a campaign for the position of Prime Minister of France. With this in mind, de la Motte convinced the cardinal de Rohan that she was quite friendly with the queen and agreed that she would put in a good word with the queen on his behalf. De la Motte then set up a false correspondence between the cardinal de Rohan and the queen, writing fake letters from the Queen that grew warmer and warmer. The correspondence culminated in a fake meeting between Rohan and a woman he believed to be the queen. De la Motte was so cunning that she had Nicole Leguay, a prostitute who looked remarkably like Queen Antoinette, meet Rohan in August 1784 in a grove in the garden at Versailles. At the meeting Rohan offered the woman a rose, and Nicole, acting as the queen, promised Rohan to forget all of their past disagreements.

 In return for all of her "help", Rohan allowed the countess de la Motte to borrow large sums of money from him. According to de la Motte, this money was to go to some of the Queen's charitable efforts. However, de la Motte used them to move up in society and began to boast publicly of her friendship with the queen.

 The jewelers, Boehmer and Bassenge, caught word of this supposed friendship with the queen and requested de la Motte's help in selling their famous diamond necklace to the queen. The countess eventually accepted to help them sell the diamond necklace to the queen on commission.

 On January 21, 1785, the Countess de la motte declared that the queen would buy the diamond necklace through an intermediary. She sent the cardinal de Rohan as the intermediary, and he negotiated a purchase of the diamond necklace for 1,600,000 livres, which he said would be paid in installments. He arrived with false documents of the queen's authorization and was handed the necklace. Rohan brought the diamond necklace to countess de la Motte house. Soon afterwards, the countess' husband, the Comte de la Motte, is said to have headed to London with the impressive diamond necklace which he broke up in order to sell each diamond individually.

 When the first payment was due, the countess was unable to provide sufficient funds. The jewelers then complained to the Queen who replied that she had no knowledge of the matter. Once she heard the story, she went searching for the culprits.

 On August 15, 1785, the cardinal de Rohan was preparing to officiate Assumption Day for the entire royal court, including the king and queen. Before the ceremony, he was arrested and taken to the infamous Bastille prison. However, before his arrest, he somehow succeeded in destroying the documents that he believed to be between him and the queen. The countess was arrested two days later having also destroyed all evidence. Soon after, Nicole Leguay was arrested as well another accomplice of the countess who helped her write fake letters from the queen in an imitation of her handwriting.

 On May 31, 1786 a sensational trial began in which the cardinal de Rohan was acquitted while the countesse de la Motte was sentenced to whipping, branding and a life in the prostitutes prison, the Salpetiere. Her husband was sent to prison for life.

 The public was never certain whether or not the countess was employed by the queen to possibly ruin the cardinal, or whether she was simply an extraordinarily successful con-artist. Most historians believe that Marie Marionette had no hand in any events connected with Valois, Rohan or the diamond necklace. However, Marie Antoinette had already fallen out of favor with the public who generally believed that the Queen had used the countess against Rohan in her hatred of him which added to her unpopularity. The public's belief was fueled by Marie Antionette's disappointment at Rohan's acquittal, Lamotte's escape from prison which the public believed to be aided by the Court, and from the publishing of la Motte's memoires in which she accused the Queen of wrongdoing.

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