Did Marie Antoinette really say ‘let them eat cake’?
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“Let them eat cake,” is one of the most famous quotes in history that has been attributed to the last queen of France prior to the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette.
As Antoinette was born on this day in history 268 years ago, it may be important to note that the quote’s attribution to the late queen has been false all this time or rather, hasn’t been supported by any facts.
Here’s how this famous quote was incorrectly associated with Antoinette.
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Did Marie Antoinette really say ‘let them eat cake’?
The story goes that Antoinette was so out of touch with her poor, starving subjects that her response to hearing of poor population’s plight during her reign was to, “let them eat cake!”
History reported that this supposed remark made the queen, “a hated symbol of the decadent monarchy and fueled the revolution that would cause her to (literally) lose her head several years later.”
The alleged original phrase that Antoinette said was, “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche,” which translates to “let them eat brioche.”
While brioche is a particular type of bread that is enriched with butter, milk and eggs and doesn’t really seem that different to cake, the late queen was reportedly not referring to the dessert that is commonly known as cake.
However it hasn’t exactly been proven that the French queen said anything of the sort as there is no evidence of her actually saying the phrase.
“Did she ever actually utter those words? Probably not,” Britannica reported on the subject.
The research guides within the Library of Congress report that, “It has never been proven that she heartlessly said, ‘let them eat cake’ to the hungry people of Paris.”
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Lady Antonia Fraser, author of a biography on Antoinette, reportedly believes that it would be incredibly uncharacteristic of Antoinette to say such a cruel phrase as she was “an intelligent woman who donated generously to charitable causes” and did end up displaying a sensitivity towards her subjects that were poor despite “her own undeniably lavish lifestyle.”
Biography reported that Antoinette’s tutor found her to be, “more intelligent than has been generally supposed,” adding that as “she is rather lazy and extremely frivolous, she is hard to teach.”
A little known fact about Antoinette is that she reportedly had “founded a home for unwed mothers, visited and gave food to poor families, and, during the 1789 famine, sold off the royal flatware to buy grain for those in need.”
Mental Floss further reported a story that after her carriage hit a wine merchant, she quickly jumped to the his aid and even ended up paying for his medical care as well as financially supporting his family until he was well enough to work after the accident.
Antoinette was not the only royal to be tied to this remark as, “many 18th-century royals were also blamed for the remark, including two aunts of Louis XVI,” according to Experience First.
History reported that another convincing piece of evidence that disassociates this quote from her is that the saying, “had been floating around for years before 1789.”
It was reportedly first said in a different way about Marie-Thérèse, the Spanish princess who married King Louis XIV in 1660.
The story that was published in 1766 when Antoinette was just 10 years old states that Thérèse allegedly suggested that the French people eat ‘la croûte de pâté’ (or the crust of the pâté).
