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“Let them eat cake” is one of the most infamous statements in history. It has come to symbolise the events that led to the horrific reprisals of the French Revolution in 1789. An insensitive queen, Marie Antoinette – wife of the French ruler Louis XVI – was the living embodiment of aristocratic indifference to the sufferings of common people during a famine. Legend has it someone informed the queen that people didn’t have enough bread at home to feed their families, and Marie Antoinette is said to have replied with nonchalance, “Let them eat cake.”
When we first start reading about the French Revolution,we get the sense that the widespread lack of food, and the royal indifference to it, was one of the catalysts for the revolution that overthrew the monarchy. It makes for an enticing story, but did Marie Antoinette actually say those words? In our times, we tend to portray pre-modern nobility as conceited and villainous.Not that many of them weren’t, but evidence, or the lack of it, indicates this quote might be one of the biggest instances of misattribution fake news, in history.
First off, for the sake of accuracy, let’s get the accusations right. The French queen is alleged to have said, “Qu’ilsmangent de la brioche”. That’s French for “let them eat brioche.”So, the reference wasn’t to cake like the dessert we know today. However, brioche is a rich bread made using eggs and butter, so it was something of a luxury. While that doesn’t take away from the satirical elitism of the alleged statement, it does help to know what the precise charge was.
At this point into the story, we’re usually chuckling at the queen’s insouciance while deriding her for her entitlement. But there is no evidence that the queen of France ever uttered those words. In fact, we know little about her bread preferences during the lead up to the revolution. What we do learn is that similar stories abound in folklores across various regions. In fact, right next door in Germany, a 16th century folk tale has a very similar plot line – a noblewoman wonders why poor people don’t just eat sweet bread, which, of course, they couldn’t afford. We find a similar story in 7th century China as well. So, there are indications that stereotyping of aristocrats as oblivious to suffering was not uncommon.
When informed that the peasants had no bread, the Queen had apparently suggested that they eat cake | Unsplash
Interestingly, the incriminating phrase was first noted in the book Confessions by renowned French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The book came out in 1782, but the manuscript, which was completed in 1769,claimed that a princess uttered the exact same words. The sentence from the book reads, “At length I remembered the last resort of a great princess who, when told that the peasants had no bread, replied: "Then let them eat brioches."
This was over two decades before Marie Antoinette’s alleged dietary recommendations for the starving French populace. She was technically a princess in 1769, but was very young at the time – only 14 years old – and lived in Austria, so it is unlikely that the 55-year-old philosopher had written about the pre-teen Marie Antoinette. Some experts believe Rousseau invented that particular anecdote, maybe even embellished it. The queen was deeply unpopular in France during the years leading up to the revolution. She was born in Austria, and had a reputation for frivolousness that made her an easy target for opponents. France was going through a difficult economic period, and she became a symbol of extravagance and indulgence. There were numerous claims about her whims and habits, which we in the modern world would call exaggerations, lies or defamation. British historian Antonia Fraser claims that, contrary to anti-monarchist portrayals of Marie Antoinette, the queen of France was a “generous patron of charity and moved by the plight of the poor when it was brought to her attention, thus making the statement out of character for her.”
As the Encyclopedia Britannica notes on the Marie Antoinette accusations, “contemporary researchers are skeptical of such claims, having found no evidence of the quote in newspapers, pamphlets, and other materials published by the revolutionaries.”
There are claims that the infamous broiche line is older than Marie Antoinette, and was spoken by another Marie - the wife of Louis XIV, Marie Therese. At other times, the line was also attributed to the daughters of Louis XV. The earliest known direct reference attributing the phrase to Marie Antoinette was from 1843. French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr claimed to have found the quote in a “book dated 1760,” which he said proved that the rumor about Marie-Antoinette was false, because she would have been 5 years old in 1760. In fact, when the revolution broke out, anti-monarchists did not use any such story to defame the royalty. The anecdote only became popular much later when commentators used it to caricature the erstwhile monarchy as selfish and unfit to rule. The phrase “Let them eat cake” could serve as a great example of what we know today as a viral meme: it needn’t be entirely factual, but if it resonates with a majority of the population, it could catch on like wild fire and stick for ages. And resonate it did: most of French working class spent half their income on bread to feed their families. So, a phrase from a semi-fictional book went viral in 1789 and demonstrates the French queen as an insensitive aristocrat who couldn’t care less about commoners.
