What was the necklace affair

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You could not be signed in, please check and try again. Sign in with your library card Please enter your library card number. If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian. Rohan went away positively thrilled. They had presented it to Louis XVI in , but the queen had turned it down.

Despite the asking price having been reduced to 1. Mme de La Motte discussed the matter with the Cardinal, who agreed to act as an intermediary to buy the necklace on behalf of the queen, with payment to be made in four instalments over two years. The jewellers were delighted to have found a buyer at last and handed over the necklace to the Cardinal on 1 February The Cardinal promptly presented it to Mme de La Motte, who just as promptly disappeared with her accomplices.

Rohan received a convocation from the king. As he was leaving his cabinet he was arrested in the Hall of Mirrors , surrounded by the stupefied Courtiers. The scandal was about to reach the marketplace. Knowing nothing of the affair, she destroyed the letter.

The jewelers complained to the Queen—who revealed her ignorance of the entire affair. The diamond necklace of the affair, exhibited in Versailles, The cardinal was acquitted and exiled to one of his own properties in southern France. Nicole d'Oliva was acquitted. Count Cagliostro, though acquitted, was exiled from France by order of the King. However, she managed to escape disguised as a boy and made her way to London where, in , she published her memoirs.

They were tried before the Paris parlement the following spring. On 31 May In June of the following year, she escaped from prison disguised as a boy. Meanwhile, her husband was tried in absentia and condemned to be a galley slave. Cardinal de Rohan was acquitted, despite the weight of evidence against him and despite his sizeable role in the whole affair. If anything both Louis XVI and Antoinette had acted with caution and responsibility by deciding not to buy the necklace which would have cast the nation further into debt.

But in a climate poisoned by libelles , political pornography, and anti-royal gossip, many Parisians preferred to think the queen a willing player in the necklace fiasco. In the poisoned environment of s Paris, it was more convenient to think Marie Antoinette guilty of conspiracy, even if the evidence contradicted this. Diamonds, Gold, Passion!