It is a story whose characters and actions look so surreal that it sometimes resembles a work of fiction. However, the Diamond Necklace Affair was a scandal that proved quite responsible for its final execution. Marias Antoinette– the last queen of France before the French Revolution, reports history.com.
It all started with a dubious “countess”, Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy, who was called only the Countess of Mott, who died as a descendant of the former French royal family, the Valois, but whose connections to nobility were quite doubtful.
Realizing that her husband’s meager income would never fund the extravagant lifestyle she wanted, Count Mott believed she could win the favor of the Queen herself, who, hearing La Mott’s shady background, refused to meet.
Anxious as she was from her denial queen and her unfortunate future, La Mot was associated with a soldier who served with her husband, Rétaux de Villette, and in 1783, became the mistress of the famous Cardinal de Rohan. The cardinal, who was French ambassador to Vienna a few years ago, had lost the favor of Marie Antoinette’s mother, Empress Marie Therese, and wanted nothing more than to regain her favor. So La Mot saw it as her only chance to make money.
He discovered that jewelers Charles Auguste Boehmer and Paul Bassange were trying to sell an extremely expensive necklace originally designed for Madame du Barry, the mistress of former King Louis XV. The necklace is worth about 2,000,000 pounds (about $ 15 million today). With the king’s death, the necklace was not paid for and the jewelers were faced with bankruptcy. They had already tried to sell it to their modern-day King Louis XVI, but he refused, saying: “We need ships more than necklaces.”
La Motte, then, convinced the cardinal that he was enjoying the Queen’s secret favor. Upon hearing this, the cardinal decided to use it to regain the Queen’s favor. La Motte encouraged the cardinal to start writing to the Queen and claimed to have given her the letters. In fact, with the help of Villette’s other lover and a forger, she created her own answers from the “Queen”.
In these fake letters, the queen spoke of her desire for the necklace, but, aware of the king’s reluctance to buy it due to the current ominous economic situation of the country, she hoped that the cardinal could lend her the money as a secret. grace.
THE cardinal he believed that these letters were authentic and agreed to buy the necklace for the queen. A secret meeting was held late at night in the garden of the Palace of Versailles, where the cardinal was to meet the “queen”. In fact, La Mot sent a queen-like prostitute named Nicole le Guay d’Oliva, who assured him of her forgiveness. Now fully convinced of his close relationship with the Queen, the cardinal contacted the jewelers, agreeing to pay the necklace in installments.
The jewelers were asked to give the necklace to La Motte, who handed it over to her husband, who in turn immediately started selling the individual diamonds in London. The deception was finally revealed when the cardinal did not pay the first installment, with jewelers complaining to the queen – who revealed her ignorance of the whole affair.
The cardinal was arrested, along with La Mott, the forger, Villette, the prostitute and Count Cagliostro, one of the cardinal’s clients, whom La Mott accused of orchestrating the whole scam. The cardinal was acquitted and exiled to one of his properties in the south of France, La Motte lover Villette was found guilty of forgery and exiled, while the prostitute was acquitted and Count Cagliostro, although acquitted, was exiled from France on his orders. king.
La Motte, the protagonist of the scam, was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison at the Salpêtrière, a notorious prison for prostitutes. However, she managed to escape disguised as a boy and went to London where in 1789 she published her memoirs. In fact, it is not surprising that he blamed Marie Antoinette for the whole affair.
THE Lewis XVI and Marie Antoinette, although not fully aware of the fraud, decided to publicly prosecute La Motte to defend their honor. Unfortunately, this had the opposite effect, ruining the queen’s reputation, as many believed that she was the one who manipulated La Mott to avenge her enemy, the cardinal.
The whole affair completely discredited the Bourbon monarchy in the eyes of the people and the queen’s reputation from that incident onwards could never recover. A few years later, he would face the guillotine, the symbol of the death of the corruption of the ancient regime.
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