“Sometimes it reminds me a bit of Marie-Antoinette. The Parisians were hungry, they were asking for bread, and she said: let them eat brioches”declared the deputy La France insoumise Elisa Martin Wednesday, February 15 at the National Assembly. By summoning this historic quote, she wanted to criticize the pension reform and the government which, in her eyes, is disconnected from the reality of the French. Except that Marie-Antoinette never said that.
You are like Marie-Antoinette who told starving Parisians to eat brioche! This case ended badly. Failing to have removed them as promised, tax hat pensions above 24k € / month to prevent the French from working 2 more years! https://t.co/hZtFRfI5eZ
— Elisa Martin (@ElisaMartinGre) February 15, 2023
A popular legend…
Historians have searched for the origins of this quotation, but they have found no mention of it in any biography of Marie-Antoinette, nor in any archive of the Revolution. She was not even reproached to him during his trial, before going to the guillotine. The preferred hypothesis is that of a kind of popular legend, dating from before the arrival of Marie-Antoinette in France, telling the story of a princess who would have told the poor to eat brioche or even pate crusts.
The first written trace of this rumor can be found in the confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He writes in Book VI: “I remembered the last resort of a great princess who was told that the peasants had no bread, and who replied: Let them eat brioche!” This book, published posthumously in 1782, was written in 1765, five years before Marie-Antoinette arrived in France.
The phrase has also been attributed to several people, before the wife of Louis XVI, only women, from Marie-Thérèse of Austria to Madame de Pompadour. Used as an insult each time, it aims to demonstrate their supposed cynicism or stupidity, demonstrates the historian Cécile Berly in her book The Scandalous Queen.
The historian Olivier Coquard explains, in History, that the quote must have been attributed to Marie-Antoinette by rumor, orally, without ever being written. It was only in 1843, 50 years after the Queen’s death, that Alphonse Karr asserted in his satirical diary The wasps : “We remember what indignation was aroused, in time, against the unfortunate Queen Marie-Antoinette, by spreading the rumor that, hearing that the people were unhappy and that they had no bread, she had replied: Well, let him eat some brioche.”
…became a formidable political weapon
Cécile Barly adds that this false quote is far from being the only received idea targeting Marie-Antoinette, sometimes accused of having had an unbridled sexuality, sometimes of having emptied the coffers of the kingdom and precipitated the fall of the monarchy. Over time, the phrase ended up sticking to Marie-Antoinette’s skin, becoming the symbol of the frivolity of the rich.
Two and a half centuries later, the image of Marie-Antoinette has not changed and summoning this false quotation has become a very frequent element of language, even a formidable political weapon: in a few words, everything is said of a certain condescension of the powerful, their ignorance of the living conditions of the poorest and of misery.
Already in 2018, François Ruffin and Danielle Simonnet of insubordinate France, but also Nicolas Dupont-Aignan of Debout la France and the Republican Marc Le Fur summoned Marie-Antoinette to criticize Emmanuel Macron. At the time, Checknews from Release had already made the effort to restore the truth, in vain.
A cultural reference
The phrase “Let them eat cake” is so ingrained in our collective memory that it has entered pop culture. In the USA, “Let them eat cake”, in English, is very often used, as noted by urban legend specialists Véronique Campion-Vincent and Christine Shojaei Kawan in an article. It has become the slogan of a brand of cognac, a collection of dresses that look like big cream cakes or even the name of several pastries.
Director Sofia Coppola couldn’t resist the temptation to put this false historical reference in her film Marie Antoinette (2006) but, for the first time, she allows the Queen to deny: “It’s so absurd, I would never say that.”