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Essay:Greatest Myths of World History (view source)
Revision as of 19:54, March 20, 2009
, 19:54, March 20, 2009→"Let them eat cake!": try again
==="Let them eat cake!"===
==="Let them eat cake!"===
[[Marie Antoinette]]'s "Let them eat cake" was almost certainly never uttered. The phrase was likely invented by anti-monarchist revolutionaries seeking to have Marie and Louis XVI executed. Moreover, even if it was uttered, it would have made sense because there was a shortage of bread and cake was a rational substitute.
[[Marie Antoinette]]'s "Let them eat cake" was almost certainly never uttered. The phrase was likely invented by anti-monarchist revolutionaries seeking to have Marie and Louis XVI executed. Moreover, even if it was uttered, it would have made sense because there was a shortage of bread and cake was a rational substitute.
The original French would have been "''Qu'ils mangent de la brioche''" (''brioche'' being a rough form of cake made of flour, butter and eggs). Apparently, French law required bakers to sell loaves at fixed prices and fancy loaves had to be sold at the same price as basic breads. Given a flour shortage at the time, brioche would have been an affordable, and available, alternative. Conversely, Rossouw in his memoirs, Confessions says in Vol 6, "At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, 'Then let them eat pastry!'" However, Rousseau wrote this in early 1766, when Marie Antoinette was only 10 years old.<ref>http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/227600.html</ref>
==Notes==
==Notes==