Diamond Necklace

Diamond Necklace, The, in French history, gave rise to a scandal, which eventually intensified the feeling against the unhappy Marie Antoinette. The necklace, which was to surpass anything previously conceived, consisted altogether of 800 diamonds, in three triple rows, with a pendant in the form of a cross and crown, surmounted by the fleur-de-lis. Its value is estimated at between £80,000 and £100,000 sterling. The makers (Boehmer and Bassauge, jewellers of Paris) offered it in 1783 to Louis XVI. for Marie Antoinette. She, however, patriotically declined it as too expensive. In 1785, however, M. Boehmer complained to a lady-in-waiting that the queen had not yet paid the first instalment of the price of the necklace, which he said she had bought privately through Cardinal de Rohan, a dissolute nobleman, lately ambassador at Vienna, who had been excluded from Court. This led to the discovery of an elaborate plot. One Madame de Lamotte, of noble descent but disreputable antecedents, had persuaded the Cardinal that by acting as intermediary for the queen in the purchase of the necklace he would be restored to favour, and by finding a woman to personate the queen and a man to personate a confidential servant, had obtained the necklace, the fate of which was never ascertained. De Rohan's enemies at Court prevented the scandal from being hushed up, and the persons implicated, including Cagliostro (q.v.), were tried in 1786. Madame de Lamotte was sentenced to be publicly whipped, branded, and banished, her husband condemned to the galleys (but he had escaped), the valet banished; the rest were acquitted. To the last many persons believed in the queen's complicity.