Did Marie-Antoinette really say, “Let them eat cake?”

We’ve all heard of the famous phrase, “Let them eat cake”; which was said by Marie-Antoinette, the wife of King Louis XVI, the Queen of France around 1789. This phrase helped anger the Paris population, but the question is: did she really say that phrase, and was it used during the French Revolution? Let’s find out.

Marie-Antoinette was born on November 2nd 1755 in Vienna, Austria. She was married at the age of 14 in May 1770. Four years later she would become queen when her husband Louis XVI took the throne. This marriage was seen more of an act of keeping the peace between Austria and France since the Seven Years’ War had just concluded. Many of the French people already saw her as an enemy to the state. Her massive spending while France was suffering economically did not help her image and damaged her reputation among the French population. Many saw the massive spending as what was wrong with the nobility and the monarchy in general. During the economic hardship of 1789, is when the so called “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” which translates roughly to, “Let them eat cake” was said by Marie-Antoinette.

Historians and the author of Marie-Antoinette’s biography, Lady Antonia Fraser, suggests that the quote –if it was said by her—would have been quite opposite of her character. Despite her massive spending she also spent a lot of her money in donations to the poor and charitable causes. If we went off Marie-Antoinette’s character, if she heard about the hardship the poor faced, she would have helped them. It was out of character, but it does not mean something could not have happened to change her to say that. We would need more evidence; luckily there is.

A series of novels by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, called Confessions, written around 1766 gives another piece of evidence. In his sixth book he tells a story where a great princess turned her nose up at to the poor when they had no bread. That great princess said “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche”. Some historians suggest that the great princess Rousseau was talking about was Marie-Thérèse, the ruler of the Habsburg realm and mother to Marie-Antoinette.

At the time of Rousseau wrote the story and coined the phrase “Let them eat cake”, Marie-Antoinette was 10 years old. Hardly a comment a small princess would make about French peasants and poor people. She did not even live in France at the time. How could she make a comment while not being there? She can’t, so it must have been someone else.

It is out of character for Marie-Antoinette, she did not live in France and was known to the French people and to Rousseau. This clearly shows that the phrase, “Let them eat cake” was not actually said by Marie-Antoinette.

Let’s move onto the question: did the organizers of the French Revolution use that phrase out of context and blame Marie-Antoinette to help the revolution? Researchers don’t think so, since there is no evidence or quotes in newspapers, pamphlets or any other material published at the time used that the quote was used to help fuel the revolution. If a monarch truly said that, it would have been in newspapers and pamphlets to try and anger as many people as possible. The fact that it is absent from any of the media shows that the phrase was not used for the revolution.

The first time the phrase was directly connected to Marie-Antoinette was during 1843, when a French writer, Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, reported on finding the phrase, “Let them eat cake” in a book written in the 1760s. Karr had hoped this would stop the spread of the rumor that Marie-Antoinette said that phrase, but clearly it will take more time for the quote and Marie-Antoinette to be separated.

Braden Harrison

Braden is a second-year student of the Professional Writing program at Algonquin College. He enjoys learning history, via reading books or watching videos, and reading fantasy novels.