She lost her head but did she actually say: Let them eat cake?

Question

Is it true that Antoinette did NOT say Let them eat cake; when told the peasents were starving? is it not true that in fact it was a court clingon (courtesan), 20 yrs prior that actually said this and that she, Headless Ann, was then supposed to have made the statement and the lie happened to stick?

Answer 1

You are correct, she did not say it. More than that, the meaning of the expression is quite different from what we have been led to think.

Here's the explanation from the Alt-English-Usage list:


The French is Qu'ils mangent de la brioche (not gateau as one might expect). And Queen Marie-Antoinette did *not* say this. (When famine struck Paris, she actually took an active role in relieving it.) Jean-Jacques Rousseau attributed the words to "a great princess" in book 6 of his Confessions. Confessions was published posthumously, but book 6 was written 2 or 3 years before Marie-Antoinette arrived in France in 1770.

John Wexler writes: "French law obliged bakers to sell certain standard varieties of loaf at fixed weights and prices. (It still does, which explains why the most expensive patisserie will sell you a baguette for the same price as a supermarket.) At the time when this quotation originated, the law also obliged the baker to sell a fancier loaf for the price of the cheap one when the cheap ones were all gone. This was to forestall the obvious trick of baking just a few standard loaves, so that one could make more profit by using the rest of the flour for price-unregulated loaves. So whoever it was who said Qu'ils mangent de la brioche, she (or he) was not being wholly flippant. The idea was that the bread shortage could be alleviated if the law was enforced against profiteering bakers.

http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxletthe.html

Answer 2

I was there when she said it so it is definitely true..

The full quote from her was

"That little fuc king wan ker just cut my fuc king noggin off, I can't eat that lovely bit of Battenburg cake wot my chuffin aunty just bought me, you might as well feed it to the bast ard plebs"

Chinese whispers carried it forth into the winds of literature history and changed it and the story to make it sit a little more pat with the rest of her life.

Answer 3

I believe it was her aunt that said that. And it was about the peseants not having any bread. Cake seemed a wise alternative.

Answer 4

She probably did not say it. It would have been good propaganda for the Revolutionaries.

Answer 5

didn't do it , it was that kid from down the block.