Understandably, Queen Marie Antoinette was rather confused by their demand for payment for a necklace she had refused in the past.įinally, the trickery came to light, and King Louis XVI had the Cardinal arrested and later exiled and deprived of all his offices.

When the Cardinal failed to raise the first installment in full, the jewelers went above him and asked the Queen directly. The plan was a total success… at least for a couple of months. Needless to say, Queen Marie-Antoinette never saw the diamond necklace! The Comtesse de La Motte gave the necklace to her husband, who in turn quickly set off to London to disassemble it and sell the 647 diamonds separately. The Comtesse de La Motte suggested to the Cardinal that the Queen wished to acquire the necklace secretly and would be ready for a formal reconciliation at Court if he would facilitate its purchase by negotiating with the jewelers.Īfter reading forged letters supposedly from the Queen – cordial letters at first, then a little bit flirty – that turned into a brief nocturnal interview in the gardens of Versailles with a prostitute disguised as the Queen, Rohan went to see the jewelers to purchase the diamond necklace on the Queen’s behalf.īoehmer and Bassange negotiated a payment plan of four installments over the next two years and gave the diamond necklace to Rohan, who in turn gave it to Jeanne to pass along to the Queen. After a few months, Jeanne and the Cardinal became both confidantes and lovers.

Jeanne started to hang around with the Cardinal by claiming to be a close friend of the Queen. The Countess’s scheme involved Cardinal de Rohan, who was anxious to be restored to favor at the French Court. In an attempt to recuperate her family’s lost fortune, the Comtesse de La Motte decided to steal the necklace for herself. Affair of the Diamond Necklace – The Plot

Cardinal necklace