WT? Facts: She Actually Never Said That…

(“Let Them Eat Brioche!”)

Did you know that Marie Antoinette never said, “Let them eat cake”?

 

First off, this is completely taken out of context. In Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions he recounts the words of a “great princess”:

Finally, I recalled the stopgap solution of a great princess who was told that the peasants had no bread, and who responded: “Let them eat brioche.”

This is referring to the law that if the cheaper bread ran out during the day the bakers must sell to the peasants the more expensive bread (brioche) at the same price as the less expensive bread. “Brioche” and “cake” can be used interchangeably and at the time, everyone would understand the reference as a high-quality bread.

Now that is all beside the point because, more importantly, Marie Antoinette was most likely not the “great princess” Jean Jacques Rousseau is referring to because she was only a small child when the book was written and not even in France during the time it was published, plus Confessions has been marked as an unreliable autobiography, so it is possible this “great princess” didn’t even exist.

Too bad Snopes wasn’t around during the 18th century.