Did Marie Antoinette really say 'Let them eat cake'?

There is no evidence that Marie Antoinette ever said it. Historians and reference sources agree that no documents or eyewitness reports record her saying these words or anything like them. The phrase is now generally regarded as a journalistic cliché rather than a historical quotation, and it was attached to her long after she died. [1] [2] [3] [4]

The French line is "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche." Brioche is a luxurious bread enriched with butter and eggs, not cake in the sense of an iced gateau, so the usual English version is a mistranslation. Brioche was still more expensive than ordinary bread, which is why the remark was taken to show either frivolous disregard for the starving or a poor grasp of their plight. [2] [1] [3]

The earliest known appearance is in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions. The first six books were written around 1765 and published in 1782. Rousseau attributes the line to an unnamed "great princess" who was told the peasants had no bread. Marie Antoinette was a child then and had not yet come to France, so she cannot have been the princess he meant. Wikipedia notes that Rousseau may have invented the anecdote, since the Confessions is not considered entirely factual. [3] [5]

Similar tales circulated earlier. Antonia Fraser, Marie Antoinette's biographer, traces the story to Marie-Thérèse, the Spanish wife of Louis XIV, who in that version told the people to eat the crust of the pâté. Wikipedia reports that Louis XVIII's memoirs call it an old legend and say the family believed Marie-Thérèse originated it. History.com adds that other royals, including two aunts of Louis XVI, were also blamed. [6] [5] [3]

The writer Alphonse Karr linked the phrase to Marie Antoinette in the journal Les Guêpes in 1843, about fifty years after her death in 1793. Even then, he wrote that the rumour was false. Wikipedia says anti-monarchists during the Revolution never cited the anecdote; it gained symbolic weight later, when pro-revolutionary commentators used it to portray the old aristocracy as oblivious. Denise Maior-Barron, a researcher on portrayals of the queen, told Live Science the misattribution took hold during the Third French Republic, from 1870, as the past was being reconstructed. [2] [4] [3] [1]

Other arguments against the attribution concern character and context. Fraser describes the queen as a generous patron of charity who was moved by the poor, making the remark out of character. Wikipedia also notes that Louis XVI's reign saw only two serious bread shortages, in 1775 and 1788, and quotes a 1775 letter in which she wrote of the duty to work for the people's happiness. These points are supporting arguments; the main case rests on the missing evidence and the earlier dates. [3] [5]