Everyone’s heard it: “Let them eat cake”. It’s quoted in movies, textbooks, and dinner-table debates. But there’s a twist—Marie Antoinette probably never said those words. Historians have traced the phrase back decades before her reign, to a philosopher’s book that mentioned a nameless “great princess”. So how did she end up taking the fall? Rousseau’s Confessions, written in the 1760s, contains the first known version of the quote—“Qu’ils mangent de la brioche”. At the time, Antoinette was still a child in Austria. The “great princess” could’ve been any royal. Yet, once the French Revolution took hold, she became the perfect scapegoat for royal arrogance.
Charles X of France lived in the lap of luxury, but his ultra-royalist policies ended with a harrowing escape—and a humiliating exile.
It started as a protest over the price of bread, but the women's march on Versailles ended up shaking the foundations of the French monarchy.
The famous French Blue diamond was missing for years. When it resurfaced, it was smaller, and became the Hope Diamond—but some began to claim it was cursed.
Louis XV can be forgotten between his powerful grandfather and his grandson who lost his head, but there is plenty to know about this French monarch.
Few tyrants have as much blood on their hands as Maximilien Robespierre—yet most people don't know this grim revolutionary's dark history.
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