Affaire du Collier - livre: How to Ruin a Queen (J. Beckman)

Voici un livre sur l'affaire du collier que je ne connais pas:


How to Ruin a Queen: Marie Antoinette, the Stolen Diamonds and the Scandal That Shook the French Throne - auteur: Jonathan Beckman





A tale of greed, lust, deceit, theft on an extraordinary scale, charlatanry, kidnapping, assassination attempts and an escape from the Bastille. On 5 September 1785, a trial began in Paris that would divide the country, captivate Europe and send the French monarchy tumbling down the slope towards the Revolution. Cardinal Louis de Rohan, scion of one of the most ancient and distinguished families in France, stood accused of forging Marie Antoinette's signature to fraudulently obtain the most expensive piece of jewellery in Europe - a 2,400-carat necklace worth 1.6 million francs. Where were the diamonds now? Was Rohan entirely innocent? Was, for that matter, the queen? What was the role of the charismatic magus, the comte de Cagliostro, who claimed to be two-thousand-years old and capable of transforming metal into gold? This is a tale of political machinations and extravagance on an enormous scale; of kidnappings, prison breaks and assassination attempts; of hapless French police disguised as colliers, reams of lesbian pornography and a duel fought with poisoned pigs. It is a detective story, a courtroom drama, a tragicomic farce, and a study of credulity and self-deception in the Age of Enlightenment.
http://www.bookdepository.com/How-Ruin-Queen-Jonathan-Beckman/9780007351534

Publisher: FOURTH ESTATE LTDPublished: 31 December 1950Format: Hardback 300 pagesSee: Full bibliographic data Categories: European History Modern History To 20th Century: C 1700 To C 1900

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Tale of greed and deceit which helped to destroy Marie Antoinette's reputation


Diamonds are supposed to be a girl's best friend. But that isn't always the case and they certainly did Marie Antoinette no favours. The affair of a galumphing necklace that the Queen of France was wrongly accused of wasting cash on – which she never wanted, let alone bought – did much to lower the prestige of the French royal couple in the years leading up to 1789. Those ropes of stones dragged the Queen down, confirming a growing hunch that she was excess baggage as far as France was concerned. How was it possible for a piece of bling to cause so much mayhem?

As Jonathan Beckman goes to show in this rollicking, if sometimes complicated, whodunnit, the Queen's destroyer-in-chief in the necklace affair was – ironically – a woman whose only goal was to be accepted as royal herself. Jeanne de la Motte was the impecunious daughter of a rustic noble family that claimed descent from the former royal house of Valois. Bored of begging in the streets and of whoring around in the provinces, Jeanne took herself off to Paris and brazenly re-launched herself as a Countess. It seems to have been a surprisingly easy trick to pull off, as titles were routinely faked.

Soon, she was running a business from home, claiming friendship to the Queen and soliciting cash from various desperados in return for promises to obtain favours from a woman she'd never even met. Jeanne hit the big time when she became a real friend to – and possibly lover of – a snobbish bishop who was desperate to get into Marie Antoinette's favour. Incredibly, he agreed to buy a vast, hideous diamond necklace on the Queen's behalf after Jeanne told him that Marie Antoinette had chosen him to be the intermediary in the transaction.

This was truly odd, as it was well known that the Queen did not like clunky bits of jewellery. By then she was into her "shepherdess" look, which involved free-flowing garments and clutching a crook, not a load of diamonds. Needless to say, after the trusting cleric handed the necklace to a woman in the dark – an actress, not the Queen – the jewels ended up in Jeanne's measly flat, not in the Queen's sumptuous apartments in Versailles.

Matters now began to unravel. Jeanne could not flog the vast, stolen necklace and was reduced to hacking it up and selling off the stones in dribs and drabs. The jewellers clamoured for their cash; all they had received was a down payment. Even the credulous bishop became suspicious of Jeanne. Why was the Queen never seen wearing the trophy he had gone to such trouble to obtain? When King Louis heard of the rumours involving his wife, he had the case sent before the parlement, which was not a parliament but a court. Humiliatingly, the bishop was arrested while celebrating mass in front of the royals, while Jeanne was branded with a hot iron as a thief and jailed.

But there's no keeping a bad person down. Jeanne used her well-honed bedroom skills with her jailors to skip prison and, on reaching England, penned an influential, self-serving mémoire in which she posed as a simple country girl whom the Queen had duped. It was all outrageous stuff, but in the hall of mirrors that was late 18th-century France it was Marie Antoinette's image that ended up being distorted.

Beckman is excellent at conveying the febrile atmosphere of the French court, where the royals lived in a state of virtual siege from an army of ne'er-do-wells who lurked behind the pillars and in the ante-rooms, all plotting for a piece of the action. He ends the tale on an intriguing note, too. Jeanne was supposed to have died in England after sustaining a fall while fleeing her creditors. But, years later, after the dust had settled in France, a mysterious old Countess of uncertain provenance returned to Paris where she spent her last years prattling away about her friendship to the late Queen. Could it have been…? As for the diamonds, Beckman notes, they are practically imperishable. The stones that tripped up a dynasty presumably are still out there, glittering in some pricey tiara.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/how-to-ruin-a-queen-by-jonathan-beckman-book-review-tale-of-greed-and-deceit-which-helped-to-destroy-marie-antoinettes-reputation-9492707.html


Bien envie de me procurer ce livre, moi!   

Chouette titre pour ce compte rendu:

The queen, the cardinal and the greatest con France ever saw

http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/9228671/how-to-ruin-a-queen-by-jonathan-beckman-review/

Un autre commentaire ici:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/29/how-ruin-queen-marie-antoinette-diamonds-jonathan-beckmanreview

Euh... la couleur "smoker's teeth", je suis moins convaincue.   

Un autre compte rendu:

JShe achieved notoriety as the French queen who suggested her starving subjects should eat cake if they had no bread. While this story is unlikely to be true, Marie Antoinette was dragged in a raging scandal – four years before the French Revolution – that irreparably tarnished the French royalty’s image, earned them the label of tyrants and was one of the factors which led to the events of 1789, said author Jonathan Beckman at a session of the Jaipur Literature Festival 2015.

The scandal involved a foreign queen never at home in the formal atmosphere of the French court, an ambitious clergyman willing to go to any ends to achieve his desire of high political office, a noble-born conwoman skilled at pretending to be more influential than she was, and jewellers who created an expensive ‘masterpiece’ but couldn’t sell it off, said Beckman.

Beckman, who revisits in “How to Ruin a Queen: Marie Antoinette, the Stolen Diamonds and the Scandal that Shook the French Throne” the 1785 scandal that has been dealt with by Thomas Carlyle and Alexander Dumas and inspired at least two Hollywood films, says the real force behind the scam was Jeanne de Saint-Remy de Valois who devised the scam to ensure a comfortable life ahead.

Her unwitting dupe was Cardinal de Rohan, who had fallen out of royal favour and was seeking to re-establish himself, and she convinced him she was close to the queen and could help him, said Beckman.

She carried his letters to the queen and brought back “her replies”, said Beckman, adding she sought on the behalf of the queen, money, which de Rohan was more than happy to pay.

She even arranged a midnight meeting at Versailles with the “queen” (played by a prostitute who resembled Marie Antoinette) for him, said Beckman.

Jeanne’s final plan was to acquire a 16 million franc necklace, comprising over 640 diamonds that jewellers Boehmer and Bassenge had created for a previous French king who however died before it was completed.

Marie Antoinette refused to buy it claiming it was “hideous”. The jewellers tried in vain to sell it but found no buyers. However, Jeanne convinced Rohan the queen wanted him to serve as an intermediary to buy it secretly in view of present circumstances. He was ready to oblige as usual.
The necklace was acquired and spirited by Jeanne and her associates to Britain where they tried to sell it unsuccessfully. The scandal came out when the jewellers wrote to Marie Antoinette thanking her for finally purchasing it, said Beckman.

Rohan was questioned and Jeanne and the other conspirators were traced and arrested.

However, while they were found guilty and punished, he was acquitted but sent into exile by King Louis the 16th, said Beckman. It was this decision and the people’s propensity to believe the worst of the highly unpopular queen and her extravagance and other salubrious allegations (the midnight meets) that dealt the monarchy a blow it never recovered from.

Marie Antoinette was further savaged by Jeanne who escaped prison and in her “very unreliable” memoirs, claimed the queen – with whom she had a lesbian affair – had orchestrated the entire scam before denying involvement as the scandal broke. She died in London in mysterious circumstances in 1791, said Beckman.

The effect of the whole episode and its aftermath was disastrous for the monarchy, he said, and the necklace scandal was one of the charges on which Marie Antoinette was held guilty at her trial and sent to the guillotine – though history absolves her of any complicity.

“She was simply unfortunate,” he said.
http://www.weeklyvoice.com/world-news/a-diamond-necklace-scandal-that-doomed-the-french-throne/