How to Ruin a Queen: Marie Antoinette and the Diamond Necklace Affair

How to Ruin a Queen

Copyright © 2014 by Jonathan Beckman

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information, address Da Capo Press, 44 Farnsworth Street, 3rd Floor, Boston, MA 02210.

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First Da Capo Press edition 2014

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To the memory of my mother,
z”l
, who I hope would have liked it

Contents

Dramatis Personae

Prologue: Before the Law

  
1.
  
Princess in Rags

  
2.
  
The Man Who Never Grew Up

  
3.
  
Faith, Hope and Charity

  
4.
  
Antoinette Against Versailles

  
5.
  
In My Lady’s Chamber

  
6.
  
Notes on a Scandal

  
7.
  
To Play the Queen

  
8.
  
Diamonds and Best Friends

  
9.
  
The Greatest Man in Europe: An Interlude

10.
  
Follow the Money

11.
  
Days of Reckoning

12.
  
‘I Will Pay for Everything’

13.
  
Arresting Developments

14.
  
Hotel Bastille

15.
  
Witness Protection

16.
  
Tired and Emotional

17.
  
Nicolas Abroad: A Picaresque

18.
  
Questions, Questions

19.
  
Cheek to Cheek, Toe to Toe

20.
  
An Extraordinary Rendition

21.
  
The Truth Will Out

22.
  
In the Gossip Factory

23.
  
Judgement Day

24.
  
Catch Him if You Can: A Burlesque

25.
  
Farewell, My Country

26.
  
Down and Out in Paris and London

27.
  
Confessions of a Justified Sinner

28.
  
The Fall of the Houses of Valois and Bourbon

29.
  
Madness, Sadness, Poverty

30.
  
Flashes in the Crystal: A Conclusion

Acknowledgements

Illustration Credits

Notes

Note on the Sources

Bibliography

Index

Dramatis Personae

The Main Characters

Jeanne’s Family

Jeanne de Saint-Rémy, comtesse de La Motte-Valois,
an adventuress

Jacques de Saint-Rémy,
her father

Marie Jossell,
her mother

Jacques de Saint-Rémy
fils
,
her brother

Marianne de Saint-Rémy,
her sister

Marguerite de Saint-Rémy,
her sister

Marquise de Boulainvilliers,
Jeanne’s benefactress

Marquis de Boulainvilliers,
her husband

The Rohan

Louis, Cardinal de Rohan,
prince-bishop of Strasbourg and grand almoner of France

Prince de Soubise,
his uncle

Comtesse de Marsan,
his aunt

 Abbé Georgel,
Rohan’s vicar-general

 Baron de Planta,
Rohan’s major-domo

The Habsburgs

Maria Theresa,
archduchess of Austria, queen of Hungary and Bohemia, Holy Roman Empress and mother of Marie Antoinette

Joseph II,
her son, Holy Roman Emperor and co-regent

Prince Kaunitz,
the Austrian chancellor

The House of Bourbon

Louis XVI,
king of France

Comte de Provence,
his brother

Comte d’Artois,
his brother

Madame Elisabeth, known simply as Madame,
his sister

Louis XV,
his grandfather and predecessor

Madame du Barry,
Louis XV’s mistress

Servants of the Crown

Duc de Choiseul,
Louis XV’s chief minister

Duc d’Aiguillon,
foreign minister after Choiseul’s dismissal

Comte de Calonne,
minister of finance

Baron de Breteuil,
minister of the king’s household

Comte de Vergennes,
foreign minister

Maréchal de Castries,
minister of the navy

Marquis de Miromesnil,
keeper of the seals

The Queen’s Circle

Marie Antoinette,
queen of France

 Princesse de Lamballe,
a favourite

 Duchesse de Polignac,
another favourite

 Madame Campan,
a femme de chambre

Comte de Mercy-Argenteau,
Austrian ambassador to the French Court

Abbé de Vermond,
reader to the queen and a trusted counsellor

Jeanne’s Circle

Jacques Beugnot,
a lawyer

Nicolas de La Motte,
a soldier, later husband to Jeanne

Rétaux de Villette,
a messmate of Nicolas

Rosalie Brissault,
Jeanne’s chambermaid

Marie de La Tour,
Jeanne’s niece

Père Nicolas Loth,
a Minim friar

The English Connection

Chevalier O’Neil,
a friend of Nicolas

Barthélemy Macdermott,
a Capuchin monk

Nathaniel Jefferys,
a jeweller

William Gray,
another jeweller

Costa, also known as François Benevent,
a language tutor and spy

D’Arragon,
a secretary at the French Embassy

Comte d’Adhémar,
French ambassador to Great Britain

Charles Théveneau de Morande,
a muckraking journalist

The Jewellers

Charles Boehmer,
a Parisian jeweller, also crown jeweller and jeweller to the queen

Paul Bassenge,
his partner

Louis-François Achet,
a lawyer and friend of Bassenge

Jean-Baptiste Laporte,
Achet’s son-in-law, another lawyer

Claude Baudard de Sainte-James,
a financier

The Suspects

Nicole le Guay, later the Baronne d’Oliva,
a prostitute with a resemblance to Marie Antoinette

Toussaint de Beausire,
her lover

Comte de Cagliostro,
an alchemist and savant

Seraphina,
his wife

The Law Officers

Marquis de Launay,
governor of the Bastille

Louis Thiroux de Crosne,
lieutenant-general of the Paris Police

Quidor,
a police inspector

Etienne François d’Aligre,
chief magistrate of the parlement of Paris

François-Louis Joly de Fleury,
procureur-général of the parlement of Paris

Pierre Laurencel,
Fleury’s deputy

Maximilien Titon de Villotran,
one of the investigating magistrates

Dupuis de Marcé,
the other investigating magistrate

Lawyers

Guy-Jean-Baptiste Target,
Rohan’s lawyer

Maître Doillot,
Jeanne’s lawyer

Why, such have revolutionized this land

With diamond-necklace-dealing!

Red Cotton Night-Cap Country
, Robert Browning

Madame, il est charmant votre projet. Je viens d’y réfléchir. Il rapproche tout, termine tout, embrasse tout.

The Marriage of Figaro
,

Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais

Prologue

Before the Law

France, 31 May 1786

B
EFORE
P
ARIS
AWOKE
, before carriages troubled the streets, before clerks unbolted their offices and barbers stropped their blades, before hawkers tuned their voices and labourers sloped into town with their kit upon their backs, as the cafes stood shuttered and stray drunks bumped through the city, as the fishmongers and florists and grocers laid out their wares, glossy with dew on the dew-damp stalls, the kinsmen of the house of Rohan rose. In the Hôtel de Soubise in the Marais, in the Pavillon de Marsan in the Tuileries, in the Hôtel de Brionne nearby, they dressed in solemn black and rode in silence to the Ile de la Cité, the larger of the two islands on the Seine, to the Palais de Justice, where the highest court in the land was to sit in judgement. At half past five in the morning, while the light still shone cold, nineteen members of the Rohan family drew themselves up in two lines near the entrance of the palace to reverence the magistrates as they arrived. We have humbled ourselves before you, spoke the bowed heads silently. We, the Rohan, who stand above all the nobility of France, have humbled ourselves before you. Let not your verdict be
the wrong one.

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