Read How to Ruin a Queen: Marie Antoinette and the Diamond Necklace Affair Online
Authors: Jonathan Beckman
My editor Mark Richards spotted the potential in the Diamond Necklace Affair before anyone else and has held my hand, patted my back and shaped this into a far better book than it would otherwise have been.
Finally, my father, without whose manifold support – emotional, intellectual, financial, nutritional – I would have given up long ago. There are not words to express my love, admiration and gratitude.
Page 1: © The Trustees of the British Museum (1889,0806.53). Page 2: National Gallery of Art, Washington/Timken Collection 1960.6.41. Page 3 above left: Engraving by Louis Legrand © RMN-Grand Palais/Bibliothèque nationale Paris. Page 3 above right: Bibliothèque nationale Paris/photo DeAgostini Picture Library/Scala, Florence. Page 3 below: Bibliothèque national Paris/photo The Art Archive/ DeAgostini Picture Library. Page 4: The Frick Collection, New York/photo SuperStock/DeAgostini Picture Library. Page 5: Le Grand Trianon, Château de Versailles/photo Giraudon/Bridgeman Art Library. Page 6: Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio/anonymous gift in memory of Jessie B. Trefethen/photo Bridgeman Art Library. Page 7 above: La Salle du Jeu de Paume, Versailles/photo © Philippe Dessante. Page 7 below: National Gallery of Art, Washington/Samuel H. Kress Collection 1952.5.103. Page 8 above: Artist unknown/© RMN-Grand Palais/Bibliothèque nationale Paris. Page 8 below: Musée de la Ville de Paris/Musée Carnavalet Paris/photo Giraudon/Bridgeman Art Library.
Abbreviations
AAE: Archives des affaires étrangères
AN: Archives nationales
Bastille: Archives de la Bastille
BHVP: Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris
BN: Bibliothèque nationale
Campardon:
Marie-Antoinette et le procès du collier
(the transcripts of the investigating magistrates’ interrogations of the suspects are printed as an appendix)
Castries: Journal de Maréchal de Castries
CMA:
Correspondance de Marie-Antoinette (1770–1793)
, edited by Evelyne Lever
Compte Rendu:
Compte Rendu de ce qui s’est passé au Parlement rélativement à l’affaire de M le cardinal de Rohan
D’Arneth and Flammermont:
Correspondance Secrète du Comte de Mercy-Argenteau avec L’Empereur Joseph II et Le Prince de Kaunitz
, edited by Alfred d’Arneth and Jules Flammermont
D’Arneth and Geffroy: M
arie-Antoinette, Correspondance Secrète entre Marie-Thérèse et le Comte de Mercy-Argenteau
, edited by Alfred d’Arneth and M. A. Geffroy
Georgel:
Mémoires
, Abbé Georgel
Hardy: ‘Mes Loisirs’, Siméon-Prosper Hardy
HVJSR:
Histoire Véritable de Jeanne de S.-Remi, ou Les Aventures de la Comtesse de La Motte
JdF: Fond Joly de Fleury
LJSRV I:
The Life of Jane de St Remy de Valois, Heretofore Countess De La Motte
, Volume I
LJSRV II:
The Life of Jane de St Remy de Valois, Heretofore Countess De La Motte
, Volume II
MCB:
Mémoires du Comte Beugnot, 1779–1815
Mémoire Cagliostro:
Mémoire pour le Comte de Cagliostro, accusé; contre M le Procureur-Général, accusateur
Mémoire Jeanne:
Mémoire pour Dame Jeanne de Saint-Remy de Valois, Epouse de Comte de La Motte
Mémoire Rohan:
Mémoire pour Louis-René-Edouard de Rohan, Cardinal de La Sainte Eglise Romaine, Evéque & Prince de Strasbourg, Landgrave d’Alsace, Prince-État d’Empire, Grand Aumônier de France, Commandeur de l’Ordre du Saint-Esprit, Proviseur de Sorbonne, &c, Accusé, contre M Le Procureur-Général
MGO I:
Mémoire pour la Demoiselle Le Guay D’Oliva Fille Mineure, emancipée d’age, accusée
MGO II:
Second Mémoire pour la Demoiselle Le Guay D’Oliva Fille Mineure, emancipée d’age, accusée
MHV:
Mémoire Historique des Intrigues de la Cour
, Rétaux de Villette
MJ I:
Mémoires Justificatifs de la Comtesse de Valois de La Motte
, Volume I
MJ II:
Mémoires Justificatifs de la Comtesse de Valois de La Motte
, Volume II
NLM:
Mémoires Inédits du Comte de Lamotte-Valois
PLMA:
The Private Life of Marie-Antoinette
, Jeanne Louis Henriette Campan
Requête Rohan:
Requête au Parlement, Les Chambres Assemblées, par le Cardinal de Rohan
Prologue: Before the Law
1
Before Paris awoke
: see
Tableau de Paris
by Louis-Sébastien Mercier, ed. Jeanne-Claude Bonnet (Mercure de France, 1994), ‘Les heures du jour’, vol. 1, pp. 873–81.
1
the wrong one
: Hardy, 31 May 1786.
4
‘rock the throne of France’
: quoted in
The Queen’s Necklace
by Frances Mossiker (Phoenix, 2004), p.ix.
4
‘the Diamond Necklace trial’
: ibid.
4
actions of their betters
: see, for example, the work of Robert Darnton, Simon Burrows, Lynn Hunt and Sarah Maza.
5
‘Changes of Ministry’
: ‘The Diamond Necklace’ by Thomas Carlyle in
Critical and Miscellaneous Essays
, vol. 5 (Chapman and Hall, 1869), p.5.
1. Princess in Rags
7
lowlier, adoptive one
: see ‘Family Romances’ in
The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud
, vol. 9, pp. 237–41; for the application of ‘Family Romances’ and Freud’s work more generally to the late eighteenth-century France, see
The Family Romance of the French Revolution
by Lynn Hunt.
7
‘source of all belief
’: op. cit., p.237.
7
‘the west of Troyes’
: the account of Jeanne’s early life predominantly draws on her two memoirs,
Mémoires Justificatifs de la Comtesse de Valois de La Motte
and
The Life of Jane de St Remy de Valois, Heretofore Countess De La Motte
, the memoirs of Beugnot and the anonymous
Histoire Véritable de Jeanne de S.-Remi
.
8
less than a century
:
Aristocracy and Its Enemies in the Age of Revolution
by William Doyle, p.15.
8
illegally minting coins
: PLMA, p.15.
8
famines which afflicted France
: see ‘The Famine Plot Persuasion in Eighteenth-Century France’ by Stephen Kaplan,
Transactions of the American Philosophical Society
(1982), vol. 72, no. 3.
8
less than 1,000 livres a year
:
The French Nobility in the Eighteenth Century: From Feudalism to Enlightenment
by Guy Chaussinaud-Nogaret, p.62.
9
‘the natural whiteness of her skin’
: LJSRV I, p.5.
9
‘amounted to nothing’
: HVJSR, p.4.
9
for a share
: NLM, p.17.
9
herd the cows
: BHVP MS691/150.
9
‘like savages’
: MCB, p.16.
10
pummelled his wife
: MJ I, p.7; HVJSR, p.vi; LJSRV I, p.13.
10
native Parisians
:
Paris: Biography of a City
by Colin Jones, p.237.
10
prostitution and theft
: see
The Poor of Eighteenth-Century France 1750–1789
by Olwen Hufton, pp. 69–106.
10
‘King of France’
: LJSRV I, p.14.
10
Abbé Henocque
: the name is confirmed in
Description de la Généralité de Paris
by Philippe Hernandez.
11
‘welcome our approach’
: LJSRV I, p.16.
11
tremors through the living
: see
Paris
, Jones, p.238.
11
‘such a mother!’
: LJSRV I, p.18.
11
‘such degradation’
: op. cit., p.22.
12
no more than ten
: Hufton, pp. 38–40.
12
buy her dinner
: HVJSR, pp. 7–12.
13
one account
: HVJSR, pp. 8–9.
13
Jeanne’s own account
: LJSRV I, p.37ff.
13
‘history of the kingdom’
: entry for BOULAINVILLIERS (Henri, Comte de) in
Le Siècle de Louis XIV
by Voltaire.
14
‘by chance on the road’
: quoted in
Les Bâtards de la Maison de France
by the marquis de Belleval, p.46.
14
their title deeds
:
Mémoires de Mademoiselle Bertin sur la Reine Marie Antoinette
(Paris, 1824), pp. 96–7.
14
‘particularly in writing’
: LJSRV I, p.44.
14
‘ironing, housekeeping, nursing’
: op. cit., pp. 46–7.
14
‘person of my condition’
: op. cit., p.53.
15
‘
servant to a servant
!’
: ibid.
16
‘unreasonable to remonstrate’
: op. cit., p.68.
16
‘perhaps might offer’
: op. cit., p.66.
17
‘unbending in his judgements’
: MCB, p.18.
17
Brest in April 1776
: MJ I, p.9, HVJSR, p.31.
17
‘trifling’
: LJSRV I, p.92.
17
gambling debts
:
La Cour de France
by Jean-François Solnon, p.493.
17
‘passing in my breast’
: LJSRV I, p.108.
17
fermented gases unobtrusively
: op. cit., p.110; Hardy, 8 December 1776, 21 December 1776 and 2 January 1777.
18
than their religious calling
:
Histoire de l’Abbaye Royale de Longchamp
by Gaston Duchesne, pp. 92–4.
18
‘not a decent one’
: MCB, p.16.
18
the druids had done
: see
Histoire de Bar-sur-Aube
by L. Chevalier.
18
‘for a long time’
:
Essais historiques de la ville de Bar-sur-Aube, publiés d’apres un manuscrit inédit portant la date de 1785
par J.F.G., p.15.
19
demure and winsome
: MCB, p.20.
19
look too closely
: op. cit., p.21.
19
‘society of this demon [Jeanne]’
: op. cit., p.22.
20
‘the women in the town’
: ibid.
20
live with his mother
: Nicolas’s family history is found in NLM, p.6ff.
20
‘friendly and sweet’
: MCB, p.22.
20
‘excelled in the metropolis’
: LJSRV I, p.154.
21
‘counts, barons, and viscounts’
: quoted in
The Institutions of France
by Roland Mousnier, vol. 1, p.138.
21
titles were genuine
: see
Les Nobles et Les Villains du Temps Passé
by Alphonse Chasset, p.208.
22
‘up to all pleasures’
: BHVP MS691/151
22
‘to good use’
: MCB, p.24.