How to Ruin a Queen: Marie Antoinette and the Diamond Necklace Affair (56 page)

286
   
‘from head to foot’
: quoted in
Cagliostro and Company
, Funck-Brentano, pp. 166–7.

286
   
‘the windows were open’
: quoted in op. cit., pp. 167–8.

286
   
‘this cruel design’
: AN F7/4445/2–4550/2/49.

287
   
‘few friends attended’
: AN F7/4445/2–4550/2/29.

287
   
‘bastard heroic’
: ‘The Diamond Necklace’, Carlyle, p.78.

287
   
‘infant wretchedness’
: LJSRV I, p.319.

287
   
‘a renovated Empire’
: LJSRV I, p.vii.

288
   
‘from public knowledge’
: quoted in
Blackmail, Scandal, and Revolution
, Burrows, p.137.

288
   
Nicolas into activity
: the details of Nicolas’s life after Jeanne derive from his own memoir and
Cagliostro and Company
by Frantz Funck-Brentano.

288
   
‘and ferocious vizier’
: AN F7/4445/2–4550/2/11.

288
   
‘contrary to the law’
: quoted in
Cagliostro and Company
, Funck-Brentano, p.183.

288
   
the queen’s political role
: the account of Marie Antoinette’s life until her execution draws on the biographies by Antonia Fraser and Evelyne Lever.

289
   
‘the Court of France’
: quoted in
Marie Antoinette
, Fraser, p.231.

289
   
‘and the baker’s boy’
: quoted in op. cit., p.281.

289
   
‘feet of the king
’, quoted in op. cit., p.287.

290
   
‘Paris to Versailles’
: quoted in
The Wicked Queen: The Origins of the Myth of Marie Antoinette
by Chantal Thomas, p.113. Other works consulted on the libelling of Marie Antoinette are
Marie-Antoinette et les pamphlets royalistes et révolutionnaires
by Henri d’Alméras and
Les Pamphlets Libertins contre Marie-Antoinette
by Hector Fleischmann.

292
   
‘Revolutionary Tribunal’
:
Correspondance entre le comte de Mirabeau et le comte de La Marck
, vol. 1, p.60.

292
   
‘vindictive’
: quoted in
Marie Antoinette
, Fraser, p.403.

292
   
‘her criminal intrigues’
: quoted in
La Vérité sur l’affaire du collier
, Hastier, p.316.

292
   
‘Did you not’ . . . ‘to speak it’
: quoted ibid.

292
   
‘against a mother’
: quoted in
Marie Antoinette
, Fraser, p.402.

293
   
‘than to die’
: quoted in
Marie-Antoinette et les pamphlets royalistes et révolutionnaires
, d’Alméras, p.390.

29. Madness, Sadness, Poverty

294
   
‘to Orvieto white’
: quoted in
Cagliostro
, Gervaso, p.204.

295
   
‘up my arse’
: quoted in op. cit., p.211.

295
   
‘instruments of lechery’
: quoted in op. cit., p.207.

296
   
‘regard to religion’
: quoted in op. cit., p.213.

296
   
‘severe public correction’
: quoted in op. cit., p.216.

296
   
‘in religious matters’
: quoted in op. cit., p.218.

296
   
‘possibility of pardon’
: quoted in
The Seven Ordeals
, McCalman, p.207.

296
   
‘fortress in Europe’
: quoted in op. cit., p.213.

297
   
‘and her followers’
: quoted in op. cit., p.221.

297
   
‘to flee, two legs’
: quoted in
Louis de Rohan
, Haynin, p.302.

298
   
‘exaudi vocem meam’
: quoted in op. cit., p.316.

299
   
‘have separated us’
: quoted in op. cit., p.324.

299
   
‘he was improving’
: quoted in op. cit., p.329.

300
   
‘feather in the breeze’
: quoted in op. cit., p.330.

300
   
‘weather-cocks’ . . . ‘name of Valois’
:
Les Misérables
by Victor Hugo (Penguin, 1976), pp. 523–4.

300
   
‘on the civil list’
: quoted in
Cagliostro and Company
, Funck-Brentano, p.247.

301
   
‘strike a deal’ . . . ‘as an annuitant’
: quoted in op. cit., pp. 263–4.

301
   
‘in his favour’
: quoted in op. cit., pp. 275–6.

302
   
‘name of Valois-Collier’
: quoted in
The Queen’s Necklace
, Mossiker, p.590.

30. Flashes in the Crystal: A Conclusion

303
   
‘on her shoulder’
: quoted in
Cagliostro and Company
, Funck-Brentano, p.281.

303
   
‘in her life’
: quoted in op. cit., pp. 282–3.

304
   
‘in golden frames’
:
Italian Journey
in
Goethe: The Collected Works
, vol. 6 (Princeton, 1994), p.208.

304
   
‘of noble birth’
: op. cit., p.211.

304
   
‘the story of’ . . . ‘destroyed royal dignity’
:
Théatre complet: Goethe
(Gallimard, 1998), p.1662.

304
   
‘Romance’ . . . ‘passion’
: ‘The Diamond Necklace’, Carlyle, p.1.

304
   
‘spark of life’
: op. cit., p.42.

304
   
‘radical vigour’ . . . ‘sluttishly simmering’
: op. cit., p.23.

305
   
‘in the rock’
: op. cit., p.13.

305
   
‘that of Bankruptcy’
: op. cit., p.18.

305
   
‘
aesthetic
feeling’ . . . ‘scientific curiosity’
: op. cit., p.44.

305
   
‘arch-quack’
: op. cit., p.84.

305
   
‘fellow scoundrels’
: ibid.

305
   
‘Chaos of Being’
: see ‘On History’ by Thomas Carlyle.

305
   
‘Fire-sea’
: ‘The Diamond Necklace’, Carlyle, p.92.

305–6
‘properly an intrigue?’
: op. cit., p.21.

306
   
‘Chaos of Lies’
: op. cit., p.15.

306
   
‘steal the necklace’
: review by Munro Price of
Private Lives and Public Affairs: The Causes Célèbres of Prerevolutionary France
by Sarah Maza in
Journal of Modern History
(Vol 67, December 1995), p.939.

307
   
‘in public power’
: quoted in
Cagliostro and Company
, Funck-Brentano, p.181.

307
   
‘beneficent deity’ . . . ‘that of her family’
: quoted in op. cit., pp. 95–6.

307
   
credit from merchants
: see
General Evening Post
, 30 November 1786–2 December 1786.

308
   
‘French Revolutionary rhetoric’
:
Politics, Culture and Class in the French Revolution
, Lynn Hunt, p.39.

308
   
akin to excrement
: see ‘The Notion of Expenditure’ in
Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927–39
by Georges Bataille, p.119.

309
   
22-stone
sautoir
respectively
: see
The Queen’s Necklace
, Mossiker, p.584.

Note on the Sources

I first came across the story of the Diamond Necklace Affair in an eight-page scherzo in
Citizens
, Simon Schama’s history of the French Revolution, and was mesmerised by the involuted and precipitous tableau he presented. After some investigation, I discovered that there had not been a work published in English which made full use of the available sources since a cack-handed translation of Frantz Funck-Brentano’s excellent
L’affaire du Collier
in 1902. The available printed sources – memoirs by Jeanne, Nicolas, Villette, Georgel and Beugnot; and trial briefs on behalf of all the accused – are self-evidently partial, vitiating the approach of Frances Mossiker in
The Queen’s Necklace
(1961), which anthologised these texts with lavender-scented connective tissue to form a decide-for-yourself whodunnit. Thankfully, a number of other manuscript sources exist to triage the conflicting accounts of the protagonists. The interrogations of the main suspects were printed as an appendix to Emile Campardon’s
Marie-Antoinette et le procès du collier
(1863). The trial dossier in the Archives nationales (once Rohan’s townhouse) contains, additionally, interviews with witnesses and transcripts of the confrontations staged between them and the accused and among the accused themselves. The Archives nationales also contains the manuscript journal of the maréchal de Castries, minister of the navy, who maintained good relations with ministers sympathetic to both sides of the case. The Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris contains the Dossier Target, a collection of Target’s research and correspondence during the trial. The view from the other side is found in the Bibliothèque nationale in the Fond Joly de Fleury, which contains the
procureur-général
’s notes and briefing papers. The journal of Siméon-Prosper Hardy, a Parisian bookseller who kept a diary of public events, is also kept here and
provides a valuable insight into shifts in public opinion during the trial and rumours about the accused. The Archives des affaires étrangères holds information about the French government’s attempts to extradite Nicolas and Jeanne from England, after their respective escapes. The Archives nationales also contains a number of documents pertaining to the La Mottes in England and France, just before and during the Revolution, the most significant of which are Jeanne’s letters to Nicolas and her sister Marianne (the other side of the correspondences do not survive). Sadly, the letters at the centre of this strange episode – those which Rohan believed he was exchanging with Marie Antoinette – were destroyed, though I attempt in Chapter 8 to reconstruct as much of their content and tone as possible.

Bibliography

MANUSCRIPT SOURCES

Archives de l’Aube

EE 1623

Archives de la Bastille

MS 12457

MS 12517

Archives des affaires étrangères, La Corneuve

Correspondance Politique, Angleterre 328, 554–69

Correspondance Politique, Autriche 350–1

Correspondance Politique, Genève 95

Correspondance Politique, Pays-bas 174–5

Correspondance Politique, Rome 901–3

Mémoires et Documents, France 1399–1405

Archives nationales

AP 306/17 – Journal of the maréchal de Castries

F7 4445/2–4550/2

K 162

K 163

X2 B1417 – Trial dossier

Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris

MS 690

MS 691 – Dossier Target

MS 713

Bibliothèque municipale d’Orléans

MS 1423

Bibliothèque nationale

BN Nouv. acq. fr 6575–8

MSS France 6685 – Siméon-Prosper Hardy’s Journal

MS Joly de Fleury 2088–9

British Library

Add 8760

Folio 707.g.26

PRIMARY PRINTED SOURCES

Adhémar, Gabrielle-Pauline, comtesse d’,
Ma reine infortunée: souvenirs
(Paris: Plon, 2006)

Addresse de la comtesse de La Motte-Valois a l’Assemblée nationale pour être déclarée citoyenne active
(London, 1791) (spurious)

Almanach de Versailles

Arneth, Alfred von (ed.),
Marie Antoinette, Joseph II und Leopold II: Ihr Briefwechsel
(Leipzig, Paris & Wein, 1866)

Arneth, Alfred d’ & Flammermont, Jules (ed.),
Correspondance secrète du comte de Mercy-Argenteau avec L’empereur Joseph II et le prince de Kaunitz
(Paris, 1889–91)

Arneth, Alfred d’ & Geffroy, Mathieu Auguste (ed.),
Correspondance secrète entre Marie-Thérèse et le comte de Mercy-Argenteau
(Paris: Mesnil, 1874)

Arrêt du parlement, la grand’chambre assemblée, du 31 mai 1786
(Paris, 1786)

Auckland, William Eden, Lord,
The Journals and Correspondence of William, Lord Auckland
(London, 1860–2)