Read How to Ruin a Queen: Marie Antoinette and the Diamond Necklace Affair Online
Authors: Jonathan Beckman
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This conversation was published in Nicole’s legal
mémoire
during the trial, in which Nicole was accused of the crime of
lèse-majesté
. Though the conversation must have followed this course, she had an obvious interest in foregrounding her devotion to the queen. This particular outburst is unlikely to be authentic: the hyperbole about laying down her life is out of character; even more damning is the very careful formulation – ‘which I believe to have been made in the name of the queen herself ‘ – that seems to have been crafted in hindsight to mitigate her actions.
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A number of historians, such as Louis Hastier, have suggested that the queen herself actually organised the performance to mock the cardinal. The only evidence on offer is a snippet from a letter from Marie Antoinette to Mercy-Argenteau written on 19 May 1786 – during the trial – that reads: ‘I say nothing to you of the great affair; the baron will tell you my thoughts, especially about not speaking of the meeting and the terrace, and he will explain my reasons.’ It is not obvious that the ‘great affair’, as these historians assume, refers to the affair of the necklace. And a grove, rather than the terrace, was the stage on which the gulling was played out. These events were by this time well known and had been so for a number of months, so why would Marie Antoinette only now have instructed Mercy to hold his tongue, if she had in some way been involved?
L
IKE SO MANY
of the La Mottes’ friendships, d’Oliva’s began with sugared compliments and ended with an acrid taste. After d’Oliva returned to Paris, she dined regularly with the couple, and they attended a performance of
The Marriage of Figaro
together to celebrate their triumph. But Jeanne was less forthcoming where money was concerned. Eventually d’Oliva received nearly 4,000 livres, about a quarter of the promised amount. She, however, had moved into more expensive rooms in anticipation of a greater windfall. But who would believe her if she complained that the queen owed her money for giving a rose to a lord on a summer’s evening in Versailles? Her lamentations made it simple for Jeanne to distance herself. They no longer ate together; when they did meet, Jeanne’s tone became
‘formal and grave’; and by the beginning of October the La Mottes had stopped seeing d’Oliva entirely.
How did Jeanne find 4,000 livres? Shortly after the midnight meeting, once Rohan had returned to Saverne, Jeanne offered him the opportunity to impress Marie Antoinette further. The queen was worried about a poor family in urgent need of 60,000 livres. Unfortunately, she did not have ready money available. Could Rohan help her out? This was the stress test of Jeanne’s plan; if Rohan refused, then he must have seen through her charade. Strung out, Jeanne waited for the courier. When he arrived with a full purse, Jeanne celebrated,
‘drunk with joy’.
It’s a strange kind of poor family that needs 60,000 livres, though one leading French family had recently required assistance on an even larger scale. Two years previously, Rohan’s cousin, the prince de Guéméné, the grand chamberlain of France, had been declared bankrupt with debts of 32 million livres. He had run an ill-conceived
scheme, selling annuities and funding them with credit. When rumours about his financial position deterred his lenders, thousands of ordinary Frenchman lost their investments. The princesse de Guéméné who, as a close friend of Marie Antoinette and governess of her children, was the most influential Rohan at Court, resigned from her office in shame. The cardinal led the family’s efforts to consolidate the debts, negotiating doggedly and impressing his uncle Soubise with ‘his
decisiveness and industry’. He even felt a leap of pride in the vast scale of the indebtedness: ‘It is only a king or a Rohan who could make
such a bankruptcy.’ The prince’s disgrace left the cardinal the undisputed leader of his generation of Rohan (he and Guéméné had been frostily jockeying for position). But his own wealth, already depleted, crumpled under the burden – over 300,000 livres were siphoned down the Guéméné sump.
Rohan needed to take out a loan for the 60,000 livres. Nonetheless, he instructed de Planta to draw on the funds in his treasury, even sell valuables, should Jeanne make further demands. Rohan felt reassured that the queen’s embrace was genuine, yet the syrupy pace of developments continued to vex him. The brief exchange in the
bosquet
only exacerbated his sense of the queen’s remoteness, day on day, and worries over his still-unsecured promotion to prime minister plucked at him. An inveterate gossip, Rohan was frustrated at being forbidden from sharing his reversal of fortune; there was always another reason – potential allies in need of convincing, the king’s tidal moods, the intrigues of his enemies – that precluded a public acknowledgement of his return to favour.
Jeanne’s reassurances were deftly improvised. Having noticed that the queen bobbed her head in a curious fashion each time she wandered through one of the doorways in Versailles, Jeanne – as Madame Cahouet de Villers had done – stationed Rohan in her line of sight and told him that the queen would silently signal her good wishes. As the queen walked past, the man standing next to the cardinal remarked that the queen’s attentiveness seemed overt: ‘I don’t know why they say that there is bad blood between you and the queen, for she appears to be looking at you
with great kindness.’ But tricks like this were single-shot – Rohan’s angst still needed managing. So early in September, the cardinal received a
letter from Marie Antoinette ordering him to Alsace, while final preparations were made, so she intimated, for his unveiling.
Had you popped into the La Mottes’ place on the rue Neuve-Saint-Gilles in the late summer of 1784, you would have noticed that the apartment looked considerably
sprucer than normal. The furniture no longer moulted; a new clock supervised the salon; Jeanne’s wrists and fingers were now armoured with gold jewellery. Though Jeanne maintained a facade of indigence towards Rohan – he still sent her a spill of money every now and then – she paraded her wealth to everyone else, and made clear that it flowed from the cardinal and Marie Antoinette.
Jeanne’s profligate invocation of the queen’s name quickly reverberated among people who knew she was lying:
‘You boasted of seeing the queen,’ a friend warned her, ‘of often spending time with Her Majesty, of chatting with her. Leonard, the queen’s hairdresser, who heard you do it, said that he would only need to say a word to the queen, and you would be locked up for the rest of your days. He said that you’ve never approached the queen. If you bragged about this, and it is not the case, you will be doomed.’ Jeanne replied with provocative ingenuousness: ‘I don’t boast of speaking to the queen. I see Her Majesty and mention it to no one.’ But she took care to make sure that Leonard was sufficiently satisfied not to report her. Most people were happy to believe her; the rest could be bought off.
Money bred more money, fraud more fraud.
A consortium of Lyonnaise businessmen approached Jeanne with a project they thought might be of interest to the government. Could Rohan facilitate an introduction? Jeanne would not arrange a meeting with the cardinal unless her palm was crossed with gold, though she was not, they should understand, mercenary: the cardinal insisted on it, since she was always doing good to others without any thought for her own welfare. A gift of gorgeous silks worth 12,000 livres arrived from Lyons. Strangely, Jeanne showed no more interest in the scheme.
Jeanne enjoyed the fawning which attended the influx of riches. But she still yearned, more than anything, for recognition from her own people in Champagne. She wished to replace their memories
of the uppity, penniless youth, who had married because she could not keep her petticoats on, by returning as a wealthy and esteemed lady.
On 8 September 1784, heralded by two outriders, the La Mottes set off to Bar-sur-Aube with a fleet of new carriages – a cabriolet, a coach and a berlin drawn by five horses. Jeanne had insouciantly written to her old friend Beugnot, informing him that she had sent her things ahead, and asking him to make arrangements for her accommodation. Beugnot was astounded to see an enormous wagon, wheezing like a consumptive under the weight of so many furnishings, draw up in the centre of Bar.
Jeanne insisted that a woman of her standing needed a country residence. Beugnot recommended a modest property but Jeanne bought the biggest house in town for double its value, then instructed architects to make further improvements. Chandeliers were hung, crystal polished, Sèvres vases stood guard. Gemstones dripped from Jeanne’s garments like sweat, and a battalion of servants was costumed in liveries threaded with gold. These adornments required more than the cardinal’s fat purse, but Jeanne was able to leverage her ostentatious wealth into credit with the town’s merchants.
For the most part Jeanne was received cordially. Even the duc de Penthièvre, a prince of the blood – his father was the legitimated son of Louis XIV – and a man who hauled up the drawbridge to
nouveaus
, welcomed her. Some, though, had longer memories. Respectable women, worried that their daughters’ heads might be filled with fanciful ideas, sought reasons to turn down invitations to her soirées. Jeanne, in turn, resented being shunned. She had wanted to take her place at the summit of society, to be admired but also loved by those whose charity she had lived off, but a number of her former friends regarded her more as a flash, condescending Parisian than a native girl done good.
When funds ran low in November 1784, Jeanne returned to Paris. Another note was sent by Marie Antoinette to Rohan in Saverne, with a request for 100,000 livres. Planta rode hard from Alsace to deliver the sum in person. Jeanne’s aspirations for her siblings bloomed under the shower of Rohan’s munificence: her brother Jacques ought to leave the navy – ‘a thankless and boring
service in peacetime’ – for a position in a prestigious regiment; her sister would become
a canoness; her husband, a captain at least, if he couldn’t obtain a colonelcy. In the Marais, the La Mottes kept open table, and were so generous that friends were invited to dine there even if they were absent. ‘Coquettes, kept girls, conniving monks, ruined officers,
idle lawyers [and] tradesmen’ was one cynical contemporary’s epitome of the company you would expect to find. But judges, generals and senior royal officials also made an appearance, enjoying the demimondaine frisson that arose from mixing with carnivorous sharpers and women whose reputation was certainly not in doubt.
The La Mottes were finally hauling themselves into society, but their marriage, never bursting with love, grew increasingly strained. ‘If I had married a man with a name and position at Court, as would have been
easy for me,’ Jeanne grumbled to Beugnot, ‘I would be rising faster; but my husband is an obstacle to me rather than of use. In order to achieve anything I must put my name above his, and that flies in the face of social conventions.’ They were repeatedly unfaithful to each other, though Nicolas was particularly shameless, bringing his mistress home for dinner.
Jeanne reacted to her husband’s infidelity histrionically – once she stormed off to the convent at Longchamps, swearing she would become a nun (she returned soon enough). She threatened suicide at least twice: on one occasion Nicolas grabbed her as she reared onto the windowsill; on another, he knocked a pistol out of her hand with a well-aimed book. The pressures multiplied beyond marital disagreement. She always had to wear a mask – of poverty to the cardinal, of carefree wealth to everyone else – yet her income was insufficient to sustain her opulence. The fear that Rohan would discover her deception squatted on her, especially since the longer a second meeting with the queen was delayed, the more difficult sustaining the pretence became. With exquisite timing, a business opportunity arose that would, if successful, dispel any worries about money for ever. All Jeanne needed was a dupe of prodigious credulity. Luckily, she knew exactly where to find one.
The necklace comprised 647 diamonds weighing 2,800 carats. Seventeen shallot-sized diamonds formed a choker round the neck, from which three festoons lolled. Two rows of smaller stones ran
crosswise like bandoliers from the shoulders, meeting at the breastbone. Two frills of diamonds hung from this knot, pawing at the waist like withered forearms. Down the back hung two streamers which counterbalanced the weight of the necklace and prevented the wearer from toppling forwards. Grotesque and almost literally unbearable, it more resembled an item of chain mail or something a monk might wear in penitential self-chastisement than a coveted piece of jewellery. But some contemporaries were complimentary: the marquis de Bombelles described it as ‘one of the best possible examples of its type, due to the size, purity, regularity and
sparkle of the stones’. It had been compiled by two Saxons, Charles Boehmer and Paul Bassenge, whose business had flourished under Louis XV: Boehmer, the senior partner, held the offices of crown jeweller and jeweller to the queen. The style was known as a
collier d’esclavage
, a necklace of slavery – an apt name, since it threatened to ruin its artificers’ business.
Why the Boehmers, as the firm was known, chose to invest so much money in a single piece is unclear, though by the time the necklace acquired its notoriety it was widely assumed to have been commissioned by Louis XV as a gift for his mistress,
Madame du Barry. Though the king inconveniently died before the Boehmers had completed it, they were confident they could sell their handiwork to the new queen. Since arriving in Court, she had spent nearly one million livres on jewellery: a set of earrings, each with three pear-drop diamonds; diamond bracelets; a
fan barnacled with rocks. It seemed like a done deal. But Marie Antoinette despised shoulder-cracking parures of the kind the Boehmers had created; she rarely wore necklaces at all, since they detracted from her neck’s sinuous grace; and, in addition to her purchases, she had inherited a vast quantity of gems from her late mother-in-law. As early as 1776 she had told Boehmer she had no interest in buying any more jewellery.