One of the dramas that led to the French Revolution of 1789 revolved around a royal order to create polished diamond jewels of incomparable beauty and the subterfuge among French courtesans which led to its eventual disassembly. To this day, this drama is referred to as the Diamond Necklace Affair.
Fifteen years before the revolution, French monarch Louis XV ordered Parisian jewelers Boehmer and Bassenge to create a diamond necklace worth 2,000,000 livres for his chief mistress. Fashioning such a complex piece of jewelry took several years, and before it was complete, the king passed away. Hopes that the new King Louis XVI would purchase it for his Queen, Marie Antoinette, were dashed when she rejected the proposal.
So the jewelers used a courtesan, Jeanne de la Motte, to arrange for letters forged in the name of the Queen to convince a Cardinal de Rohan to purchase it on her behalf. Upon purchase of the necklace, Rohan left it with de la Motte to pass on to the queen, but instead de la Motte’s husband took it to London, where the component stones were sold off individually.
When news of the scandal broke, many common folk came to believe that the Queen was involved in the affair and took it as further proof of her extravagance, which ultimately led to her demise and to that of the French monarchy.
