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"Let them eat cake" is the traditional translation of the French phrase "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche ", said to have been spoken in the 18th century by "a great princess" upon being told that the peasants had no bread. The French phrase mentions brioche, a bread enriched with butter and eggs, considered a luxury food. The quote is taken to ...
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. “Let them eat cake” is the most famous quote attributed to Marie-Antoinette, the queen of France during the French Revolution. As the story goes, it was the queen’s response upon being told that her starving peasant subjects had no bread. Because cake is more expensive than bread, the anecdote has been cited ...
Jun 30, 2023 · It’s one of the most infamous stories in history: When told that French peasants were so poor they couldn’t afford bread, Queen Marie Antoinette replied, “Let them eat cake.”. This legend has been passed down for centuries, contributing to the narrative that the 18th-century French queen could not care less about her people.
The original French is ‘Qu’ils mangent de la brioche’, that is, ‘ Let them eat brioche’ (brioche is a form of cake made of flour, butter and eggs). The usual interpretation of the phrase is that Marie-Antoinette understood little about the plight of the poor and cared even less. There are two problems with that interpretation:
A French writer named Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr reported finding the quote “Let Them Eat Cake” in a book from 1760 when Marie-Antoinette was just five years old. Karr hoped this would end the rumor that she was responsible for the famous quote once and for all, but it did not work.
Oct 24, 2012 · That aside, what’s even more convincing is the fact that the “Let them eat cake” story had been floating around for years before 1789. It was first told in a slightly different form about ...
Feb 3, 2021 · Eventually, Marie Antoinette plotted (with the help of her Swedish lover, Count Axel von Fersen) an escape to Montmédy – a royalist stronghold near the Belgian border. There, she surmised, the family could gain local support and ultimately incite a counter-revolution. But the attempt, on the night of 20–21 June 1791, was an unmitigated ...
Mar 17, 2017 · A heartbroken Marie Antoinette spoke these words in 1789, at her beloved son Louis Joseph’s demise of tuberculosis. Marie Antoinette who was falsely accused of saying, "Let them eat cake!" became the icon of extravagance of French royalty. Find out how a wrongly attributed quote cost the Queen her head.
Mar 17, 2017 · Updated on March 17, 2017. The Myth. Upon being informed that the citizens of France had no bread to eat, Marie Antoinette, Queen-consort of Louis XVI of France, exclaimed "let them eat cake", or "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche". This cemented her position as a vain, airheaded woman who didn't care for the common people of France, or understand ...
In sixteenth-century Germany there was a story of a noblewoman wondering why the hungry peasants didn’t eat Krosem, a kind of sweet bread. There’s no evidence that Marie-Antoinette ever said “let them eat cake.”. But we do know people have been attributing the phrase “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” to her for nearly two hundred ...
