The Affair of the Necklace–Playing with History

The Affair of the Necklace (2001) staring Hilary Swank, Simon Baker, and Adrian Brody among others, has touches of historical accuracy that make the inaccuracies all the more difficult to bear.

Take for instance Jeanne’s fainting spell at the beginning of the movie. Jeanne is trying to get the attention of the queen, Marie-Antoinette. The normal ways have failed, so Jeanne decides to “faint” in the middle of one of the queen’s chambers (probably one of the ones furthest from the queen because that’s all she could get access to). Jeanne de La Motte-Valois, self-styled Comtesse de La Motte, did indeed faint in front of an important personage in an attempt to get attention. The person was Madame Elisabeth, the king’s sister, not Marie-Antoinette, the king’s wife. And Madame Elisabeth and her friend the Comtesse d’Artois (sister-in-law to the king) actually helped Jeanne for a short period, until Jeane started sleeping with the prolific Comte d’Artois. Or, that’s how rumor would have it.

In fact, speaking first in general terms, Jeanne’s character is ever so slightly off. First of all, she doesn’t have the smart, witty, and greedy edge of the real Jeanne, who was always brazen and unabashed. And the mentality was too modern–which is to say too sexually moral. Jeanne’s era was very loose as far as sexual matters go. Today, it’s hard to quite get a grip on the mentality. Everyone says that Hollywood is full of sex, but France in the ancien regime was a pretty lascivious place. It was assumed men had mistresses as well as wives and that women had lovers as well as husbands; in fact, it was unusual for husbands and wives to have much to do with one another at all. At least, this was the case in high society (this may be due to the way knowledge comes down to us–all the salacious stories make for interesting reading so we hear about them more than the faithful couples, whoever they were ). There was a fairly simple code: as long as marital duties were fulfilled and no one made too much of a spectacle of themselves, pretty much anything was acceptable behind closed doors.

Jeanne in particular wasn’t exactly known for chastity. She was married to Nicolas de la Motte, but was almost certainly sleeping with Retaux de Villette much of the time that she was married to Nicolas. She probably slept with Jacques Claude Beugnot (an old friend) and Cardinal Rohan, too, and there were stories about her and a cleric in her earlier days. In any case, this is pretty well glossed over in the movie, though they make hay out of the fact that Retaux was a gigolo (the historical Retaux was, too). There’s very little to suggest that Jeanne loved Retaux or vice-versa. In fact, Retaux spilled his guts when he was arrested. Jeanne did refuse to name him and a handsome young servant in Cardinal Rohan’s household when she was questioned, but she probably spared them for the simple fact that they were handsome. But since this is a product of Hollywood, the heroin had to have her love interest.

Location, Location, Location

You might be surprised that the setting for the Affair of the Necklace was not just Versailles, nor even just Paris. In fact, the setting wasn’t even restricted to France. To understand what occurred in 1784-6, we have to look at what happened before and afterwards. This means going from the town of Fontette to Brussels to London.

Fontette and Bar-sur-Aube: It was in the small town of Fontette, France, in the Aube department in the Champagne-Ardenne region, that Jeanne de Valois was born in 1756 to the last scion of a bastard line of the royal Valois family–and his wife, a former servant girl. About 15 miles away is the town of Bar-sur-Aube, which was a much larger town and the home of Jacques Claude Beugnot, who knew Jeanne longer than almost anyone else. It was in the dilapidated château de Fontette that Jeanne grew up in poverty. When she was still young, she was, according to her own tale, taken to Paris with her siblings by her parents. She returned to the region on occasion, to Bar-sur-Aube. It was here that she truly met Beugnot, when both were young adults. It’s possible he had been aware of Jeanne and her family as a child. Later, Jeanne would go to Paris and Versailles in an attempt to make good on the famous Valois name. She returned in triumph to Bar-sur-Aube after defrauding Cardinal Rohan out of a significant amount of money. It was here that she was later arrested for the theft of the Diamond Necklace (actually, she was told she was being “escorted” to Paris, but of course she was escorted right to the Bastille). This sleepy little town was the birthplace of one of the most famous ladies of her day.

Strasbourg and Saverne: Located in the long-disputed Alsace region in France, Saverne was the familial home of the Rohans. Cardinal Prince Louis de Rohan lived in the Château de Rohan there, but the nearby and larger town of Strasbourg was a common stomping ground. It was here in 1770  in Strasbourg that Marie Antoinette was first welcomed into France as the young bride of the dauphin Louis Auguste. She was greeted at the cathedral by none other than Cardinal (then bishop) Prince Rohan himself. He conducted mass for her benefit. Many years later, another lady, the Marquise de Boullainvilliers, arrived in Saverne to visit the Cardinal (and stopped along the way in nearby Strasbourg to visit the mystic/confidence man Count Cagliostro, who became a confidante of Rohan and later moved into Rohan’s palace in Saverne). In the Marquise’s wake came a young Jeanne de La Motte-Valois and her husband. Jeanne was the Marquise’s ward; her husband had just been discharged from his garrison at Luneville, and the couple were apparently looking to get some help from the Marquise. It was here that Jeanne first met the Cardinal who she would, later, use as part of her plot to steal the Diamond Necklace. This is where the most important meetings of the Affair took place. This is where the paths of the major players crossed. It was only a few years later, in 1784-6 that these connections would be used as part of a massive theft.

The Rohan family Palace in Saverne.

Versailles: The town of Versailles is not the same as the palace of Versailles–though usually “Versailles” refers to the palace. In the late 18th century, before the Revolution, the palace was the center of power. Most courtiers were housed in the vast palace complex, but some people lived outside the palace gates in the town. Jeanne de La Motte-Valois (self-styled “Comtesse” de La Motte) had a house outside the palace, according to Nicole d’Oliva, the prostitute hired by the Comtesse to play the part of the Queen as part of a hoax. This house was apparently on the Place Dauphine, a small square off of the southeast corner of the Palace. For some time, this is where the Comtesse lived as she weaseled her way into the confidence of credulous courtiers…….

Boehmer and Bassenge’s Memorandum to Her Majesty

As the confusion over the sale of a diamond necklace deepened in 1785, the royal jewelers Boehmer and Bassenge wrote this memorandum to explain their version of the story. To set the scene: some time earlier, the jewelers had been approached by Cardinal Rohan to purchase a massive diamond necklace on the Queen’s behalf. The Cardinal had been convinced by a woman named Jeanne de la Motte-Valois that Marie-Antoinette was willing to bring him back into royal favor and entrust him with the discrete purchase of an extravagance that she couldn’t easily afford. In February of that year, the jewelers gave the necklace to Rohan, who then gave it to Madame de La Motte (apparently) and from thence it disappeared.

The first payment was due on July 30 of that year. The jewelers had invested everything in obtaining the diamonds that made up the necklace, which was worth a warship, and were already selling the necklace at a deep discount. They needed the money on the agreed date in order to meet their own obligations. Surely the royal jewelers weren’t worried; after all, this was the Queen of France who had bought their necklace (or so they thought).

Imagine their distress when the money wasn’t forthcoming. Four-hundred thousand francs were due. A forged letter came to Cardinal Rohan from Madame de La Motte (keep in mind, this is based on evidence of biased parties, though I believe most this part of the story), and accompanying the letter was 30,000 francs which he passed on to the jewelers. Boehmer and Bassenge must have seen this as something of an insult; they were due more than ten times that amount.  The irritated jewelers went to Cardinal Rohan’s palace every day to harry him about the payment. Unfortunately for the credulous Cardinal, he had signed as guarantor for “the Queen’s” purchase, so he was responsible for the expense.

On August 3, Madame Campan reports, M. Bohmer came to speak to her at Crespy. Knowing she was an intimate of Marie Antoinette’s, he asked if she had a message for him from the Queen, which she did not. In July, Boehmer and Bassenge had sent to the Queen a brief note expressing their gratitude for her purchase of their necklace. They said they had reached the pinnacle of happiness to think that the most beautiful necklace in the world was to grace the neck of the greatest of queens. According to Madame Campan, Marie Antoinette was puzzled by the letter and thoughtlessly burned it and forgot it. Now, Boehmer told Madame Campan that the Queen owed him money, which she insisted the Queen did not. He said it was for a diamond necklace and that the Cardinal Rohan had acted as go-between for the purchase. Madame Campan realized something was amiss, and she told Boehmer to go to Baron de Breteuil, Minister of the King’s Household. But Boehmer went to the Queen, who, again according to Madame Campan, dismissed the jeweler because he insisted that she owed him money which she was sure she didn’t owe.

Over a rehearsal of some line from the Barber of Seville, Madame Campan learned about this visit the jewelers had paid to the Queen. Madame Campan told the Queen all she had heard the other day about the diamond necklace and Cardinal Rohan. The Queen was finally alarmed. One can hardly blame her for being confused. The jewelers had pressed her for years to buy this necklace, which she had constantly refused to purchase, and now they were telling her she had bought it from her though she hadn’t. Still, the proper course of action probably would have been to investigate that strange letter she first received  in July. If she had, the course of the Affair of the Necklace might have turned out very differently, and maybe the course of history as well.

On August 9, Boehmer and Bassenger were brought to Trianon to explain themselves. It was then that Madame de La Motte’s plot to steal the necklace began to come to light. Luckily, the self-styled comtesse and her friends had already fled Paris.

On August 12, Boehmer and Bassenge wrote the following memorandum explaining their story in writing. Parts of this are included in Frances Mossiker’s The Queen’s Necklace, though the note at the top of this link seems to question its authenticity. The note also says Rohan wanted to become the queen’s lover. I would disagree, although he may have harbored that hope; his main objective was to restore himself in the Queen’s favor, which isn’t the same thing as winding up in her bed.

 Three days after this was written, Cardinal Rohan was arrested and one of the most sensational trials of the century began.

http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/263/

Grove of Venus–the Mise-en-Scene

The gardens of Versailles in the late 17th c. The Grove of Venus is still “le labirinth”. From Wikimedia Commons.

Looking at the guide book I bought at Versailles (admittedly not the most comprehensive/expensive one available), you would be forgiven for being confused about where, exactly, the Grove of Venus is. It includes some rather nice maps of the gardens and the first two floors of the Chateau (they’re good mostly because almost everything is labeled).

Yet, if you had learned about the Grove of Venus (where the prostitute Nicole d’Oliva was paid to fool Cardinal Prince Louis de Rohan into thinking he was meeting with Marie-Antoinette), you would look in vain to find it on the map. The book fails altogether to mention the important and titillating episode, which I will write about in some detail in a later post.

Looking online at the official site of the Chateau de Versailles, you will find a description of the Queen’s Grove. Originally, it was a labyrinth built in 1669. It was old already when it was destroyed in a makeover of the gardens, to be replaced with the Queen’s Grove. The interactive map finally gives a quick summary of what happened in the Queen’s Grove: it bBecame famous because of the celebrated scandal of the queen’s necklace which discredited Marie-Antoinette.”

Why exactly did Madame de La Motte choose this as the setting for the farce that was meant to trick Cardinal Rohan? (For the story of why all of this was happening in the first place, look above and click on “The Short Story”.) First of all, Her Majesty had a habit of staying up late and taking night-time strolls in the grand surroundings of the Versailles gardens. These romps were innocent enough, but the public had come to have a rather low opinion of their queen’s doings. Amongst those who must have known about her nocturnal meanderings and her not-so-perfect reputation were Madame de La Motte and Cardinal Rohan. The Cardinal thought that it was reasonable to believe that Her Majesty might just choose to meet with him on one of those nighttime walks, that she might grant him her favor–and, perhaps he even thought it was reasonable to expect this to be the beginning of an illicit relationship with the queen. It certainly seems that he was thinking along these lines.

The setting could not have suited the play any better. It was midnight, and ergo very dark; in the modern age, we often forget how very dim it would be at night without electric lights glaring from every window. The Grove of Venus was heavily planted with trees and shrubbery. It was still something of a labyrinth, meaning a person could carry on a clandestine meeting–or hide in the bushes and watch just such a rendezvous. This is what Madame de La Motte claims was the Queen’s role: spectator. This farce was, Madame claimed, the queen’s plan to humiliate the Cardinal. If she was there (I find it highly unlikely the Queen had any knowledge whatsoever about all of these goings-on), then it was quite a nasty plan. The Cardinal basically melted when the whore d’Oliva, playing the part of Marie-Antoinette, handed him a rose and said, “You know what this means.” And, as it was so dark, he wasn’t able to see the face of the woman in front of him.

The Grove of Venus offered something else to aid Madame de La Motte. At any moment, someone could come near the Grove and disrupt the meeting between “Her Majesty” and Monseigneur. So, the moment that the false queen said her line, Madame de La Motte cried out that someone was coming. Everyone scattered and the mysterious little scene succeeded in duping the Cardinal into believing he had reconciled with Marie-Antoinette.

Madame de La Motte described the Grove as “surrounded by a maze of charmilles [arbors or bowers]; these trellises of greenery fanned out every three feet, so that to penetrate the labyrinth into the grove itself one must go all the way around to reach the one path that leads into it” (Mossiker 181). In my opinion, this sounds like she had scoped the place out very thoroughly in preparation for her little production.

The name now is usually given on maps as the Queen’s Grove (le bosque de La Reine), though it was actually named the Grove of Venus after the statue at is center. The name alone must have been just as suggestive to the Cardinal as the fact that the Queen had deigned to see him–they would be presided over by the goddess of love. In connection with the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, it is almost always referred to as the Grove of Venus, probably because it lends some mystique to the story. Otherwise, it is generally known as the Queen’s Grove.

The Grove lies just beside the Orangery and below the South Paterre. Standing on the stairs leading down to the Orangery, you can look over the railings down into the Grove of Venus. I did so, without even realizing I was looking at the correct spot; I had come to Versailles hoping to find the Grove of Venus, expecting it to be evident on the maps, but alas, its second, less famous name is printed on the maps.

Today, you will find Victorian sculpture in the Queen’s Grove. Nothing against the Victorians, but it seems their tastes weren’t always up to snuff, so though I haven’t personally seen the sculpture there, I don’t hold out great hopes for world-class pieces of art. I could be wrong, though.

By the by, I highly suggest the Chateau de Versailles website. They’ve recently upgraded and I like it a lot. There is plenty of information there, which goes into pretty good depth and seems to cover all the areas of the Chateau, gardens, and Trianons.

The Epilogue–Part 2

The people who took part in the Affair of the Diamond Necklace were some of the most extraordinary people ever thrown together into one of the most bizarre moments in history. Soothsayers, prostitute, queen, cardinal, jewelers . . . when the trial took place in 1786, they even brought in a clockmaker to give testimony. The lasting consequences of the Affair of the Diamond Necklace brought on the fall of the monarchy in France. So what happened to this amazing cast of (real-life) characters when the Revolution swept across France?

Jacques Clause Beugnot, later Comte Beugnot, was an old friend of Madame de La Motte. He had known her from her less prosperous days in Bar-sur-Aube and had probably been romantically involved with her before she married Nicolas de La Motte. There is some evidence that Beugnot was at least partially involved in the aftermath of the theft of the necklace. He was amongst a group of La Motte friends and family who convened after the first arrests were made, trying to decide what was to be done now. He also, apparently, ended up with a diamonds ring, according to Frances Mossiker. He was shrewd enough to stay out of sight and out of mind when the storm hit. In prison, Madame de La Motte asked him to be her legal counsel, but he wisely did not accept the offer. He was already too closely associated with Madame de La Motte for his own good. Madame de La Motte, for her part, never mentioned Beugnot’s name either during the interrogations or later, when she was writing tell-all memoirs from London. This could be contrued either as an insult (he had been her friend, after all, at the very least) or as a sign of her affection for him (she was making sure suspicion never touched his name).

Beugnot was arrested in 1793 as the Revolution took over Paris. He had been part of the National Assembly, but the Revolutionary fervor was at such a pitch that today’s heroes were tomorrow’s villains. He was let out through a web of hazy connections–his wife’s uncle knew someone who knew someone, and he was let out of prison without falling under the blade of Doctor Guillotine’s machine. He was given the title of Comte (it was clearly not hereditary) and held several posts under the restored monarchy: director general of the national police, Marine Minister, Postmaster General, and Minister of State. He became quite a respectable and respected figure, and it seems very few remembered the hints of the scandal that had almost clung to him. He must have been grateful, to his dying day, that Madame de La Motte had not spoken his name.

Retaux de Villette was literally kicked out of France after being exiled by the Parlement de Paris. He was, as tradition dictated, given a loaf of bread and was booted in the ass. He went to Venice, where he claimed in his memoirs to have languished, though he also made some pretty outrageous claims about his romantic life. In 1790, those memoirs were published, and nothing more was heard of him (at least, it seems Frances Mossiker could find no more information on him, and neither could I).

Marie-Antoinette of course was the guillotine’s most famous victim. When she arrived from Austria to France as the new, young, pretty Dauphine, she was well-received. Of course, this all turned very sour in the coming years. Was it all because of her own behavior–her extravagance and the appearance of callous uncaring about her starving subjects? Or was she the scapegoat of the coming revolution, which would have come with or without her? In either case, she was widely reviled as Madame Deficit, La Autrichienne (the Austrian bitch), and many other rude and crude things. Her image was used in pornographic pamphlets as well as in fashion plates. The Affair of the Necklace was a huge blow to her reputation. More accurately, it was the Parlement’s refusal to convict Cardinal Rohan for criminal presumption. The Parlement was, in effect, saying that Marie-Antoinette was so dishonorable and had such a bad reputation that the Cardinal was perfectly justified in believing he had arranged a midnight rendezvous with her. All the nasty rumors and tales were given official sanction. This was a very, very bad outcome for the Queen. Indeed, she somehow sensed that the verdict was a disaster and she collapsed in tears.

Shortly before Marie-Antoinette’s execution, the topic of Madame de La Motte was brought up by Public Prosecutor Fouquier-Tinville:

Question: Was it not at the Petit Trianon that you knew the woman La Motte?

Answer: I have never seen her.

Question: Was she not your victim in the famous affair of the diamond necklace?

Answer: She cannot have been, since I did not know her.

Question: Then you persist in your system of denial?

Answer: I have n system of denial. It is the truth I have spoken and will persist in speaking.

Toussaint de Beausire was the young man who was arrested alongside Nicol d’Oliva in Brussels, Belgium. The two of them had left Paris because Brussels was much cheaper and Toussaint was deeply, deeply in debt. [Naturally, I give this a slightly different spin in the work of fiction I’m slaving away at: they flee Paris because they hear everyone connected with the Comtesse de La Motte is being arrested, and they want to avoid being arrested; obviously, they fail.] Toussaint was a failed architect who had gotten into debt very early in life and never actually made it through school because he kept pulling very bad pranks and swindling people. His family threatened to put him in a mental asylum by declaring him mentally incompetent.

After being put in the Bastille for a short time, Beausire was let go because it was fairly clear he had no direct knowledge of what had happened concerning the La Mottes and the diamond necklace. He had simply been there when the police found Mademoiselle d’Oliva. His family promptly did as they had threatened, putting him in an asylum. He was released from there as well a little later on.

Beausire probably married Nicole d’Oliva at some point–Frances Mossiker refers to them as being man and wife though she never specifies when and where it happened. It might well be that Mossiker, writing in the 60’s, said they were married because they had a child (who was later legitimized). In any case, they certainly ended up together, though it was far from a happy reunion. Beausire was not a great guy; according to reports that quoted Nicole d’Oliva herself, he kept his wife and son in a squalid back room while he enjoyed himself in the front room with lots of women. Lots and lots of fishy stories pop up here and there about the characters in the affair of the necklace, so you can judge the veracity of this story for yourself. In any case, Nicole died shortly thereafter at a convent, leaving Beausire free to remarry, which he did (producing six children in the process).

Beausire was one of the people who brought down the Bastille on July 14, 1789. He became a firebrand of the Revolution and made quite a name for himself. Of course, no one was safe as the tides changed day by day during the Revolution, and Beausire ended up in jail. It is perhaps unsurprising, given his character, that he turned informant, saving his own ass and getting a hated relative (one of those who had put him in an asylum) guillotined. Beausire was tried but acquitted and lived until 1818. Good guys finish last, I guess.

Finding Toussaint

I uncovered a puzzling and rather unsettling error in historical research by an author I trusted.

A man by the name of Toussaint de Beausire played a very small part in history but a much bigger part in the work of historical fiction I’m currently slogging through. The fiction is really just the words and one or two characters–remarkable amounts of information exist about everyone, everything, and ever place involved.

In doing my research, I relied on Frances Mossiker’s The Queen’s Necklacefor my information on most things. The characters involved all gave his-hand accounts, which are translated and pieced together by Mossiker. What is said by the people involved is inherently suspect; these people all had strong motives to lie (generally speaking). Not to mention, quite a few of them were writing these years (sometimes many years) after the events, and their memories are demonstrably faulty.

Which is, I think, what must have happened in the case of Abbé Georgel, the secretary of Cardinal Prince Louis de Rohan [see the sidebar for a link to my post on Rohan], who was the man duped into handing over a necklace of 2400 carats to a pretty, youngish adventuress.

The error in question is this: Mossiker quotes Abbé Georgel’s summation of the end of both Beausire and Nicole d’Oliva [see the sidebar for a link to my post on Oliva]. He died by guillotine, she died alone and abandoned in convent. Having taken a look at some other secondary sources, and some birth and death records, it seems that Abbé Georgel and Mossiker (who supports his words in a footnote) are both wrong.

The person in question, Beausire, was the husband of one Nicole d’Oliva, a reformed lady of the night. Nicole was, as the link to my profile makes clear, involved in the jewel heist of the century without being aware of what she was doing. Nicole met Cardinal Rohan in the darkened gardens of the Chateau de Versailles and during the trials. There is no reason to believe that Beausire ever came any closer than that to Abbé Georgel: Beausire’s wife saw Georgel’s employer briefly in a garden. The relationship is pretty tenuous.

Georgel also wrote his memoirs in 1817, over thirty years after the events took place.

Both explain the error that Georgel made. These were, more or less, tangential characters, especially to Georgel, who was interested mostly with the Cardinal and the conniving Comtesse. He had barely known these people, and besides so many years had passed . . . he remembered the sad demise of Nicole d’Oliva, and remembered something vague about Beausire.

As it turns out, Toussaint de Beausire appears to have lived until 1818. In fact, he must have been alive when Abbé Georgel’s memoirs made the error about his (Beausire’s) death. I found this book online as I was doing a quick search to see if I could find anything more about Beausire’s exact date of death. On page 69 of Cagliostro and Company by Frantz Funck-Brentano and translated by George Maiment, I found a very full account of Toussaint de Beausire. His story is fascinating. He was quite the juvenile delinquint, running away from school, stealing from his teachers, running up debts.  The real kicker came at the end, when it says that Beausire not only lived until 1818, but had remarried after Nicole d’Oliva died (young and abandoned by Beausire). He had six children by his second wife and was a servant of the Empire under Napoleon.

This needed further investigation. As far as I knew, Beausire had been executed during the French Revolution. I was inclined to believe Mossiker, who I’d been following, and assume that the authors of this new resource had mixed up my Beausire with someone else with a similar name. I dug into a few genealogy sites and found a few interesting documents. There was a record of the birth of Toussaint’s child by Nicole d’Oliva. There was a marriage license for a man I could only assume was that same son many years later. Then I found some other births. The mother’s name seemed to match what was said in Cagliostro and Company. However, the name used for the father was slightly different. The initials were a bit off. It was as though Toussaint was used sometimes as a surname and other times as a first name. In any case, this still left some room open for the possibility that there were two men with similar names and that everything attributed to Beausire in Cagliostro and Company had been the works of another man.

Quite a lot is attributed to Beausire in Cagliostro and Company. He was active in the French Revolution, turning informant and getting a relative executed because of an old grudge. There are speeches and such attributed to him. There is an account of his trial–he was acquitted. This was still a little baffling; he was meant to have been condemned. With the records I’d found, I was beginning to suspect that Mossiker was wrong and Cagliostro and Company was right.

Then I stumbled across ancestry.com’s archive of those guillotined during the French Revolution. Search as I might, Beausire was not there. This, to my mind, closed the case. The mystery appears to be solved. As far as I can tell, Frances Mossiker took Georgel’s word for Beausire’s death. Unfortunately, she didn’t double check his words. This is understandable but a little sloppy. As said before, Beausire was peripheral and Mossiker clearly had some respect for Georgel’s words. She must have believed enough of what he said to not check on this one small item. Of course, I’m probably one of very, very few people who would ever think to ask about Toussaint de Beausire, but when I did, I found that Mossiker had fallen down a little here. Don’t get me wrong; the book is fantastic and I rely on it heavily, but it’s a lesson to check things if and when you can.

Nicolas de La Motte

The Characters #6: Nicolas de La Motte

Nicolas Marc-Antoine de La Motte was “homely but a man of splendid physique” according to Jacques Claude (late Comte) Beugnot. Monsieur de La Motte married a young lady by the name of Jeanne de Valois de St Remy. She was a member of an impoverished (and illegitimate) arm of the Valois royal line of France; her family was descended from Henri II the entire inheritance had been squandered. He was a gentleman and a cavalry officer in the Gendarmerie. According, again, to Beugnot (who may have not been well-disposed towards La Motte), La Motte was adroit at “Wrangling credit” and had poor behavior so that he never advanced within the cavalry.

He lived in Bar-sur-Aube where his uncle was one of the most prominent citizens. He met Mademoiselle de Valois (later Madame or Comtesse de La Motte) at his uncle’s house. He was a lively, powerful character, and she was an impetuous, wild character. They hit it off immediately. Mademoiselle de Valois is rather tight-lipped about the lead-up to her marriage to La Motte on June 6, 1780, and no wonder. Beugnot, who was something an admirer of Mademoiselle in his own right, says that he received letters from Bar-sur-Aube telling him that a romance had begun between Mademoiselle de Valois and Monsieur de La Motte. “All in the same month,” he says,” they wrote me, first, that there seemed possibility of an engagement; in the next letter, that the engagement had been announced . . . and then, in almost no time at all, that the marriage had been celebrated.” The marriage was sanctioned by Mademoiselle de Valois’s foster mother (the Marquise de Boullainvilliers) and the Bishop de Langres, an old friend (and perhaps lover) of Mademoiselle. Beugnot’s “astonishment” at the rapidity of the romance was relieved when Madame de La Motte gave birth to twins a month later.

Retaux de Villette

Characters #4: Retaux de Villette (1759-1797?)

Like almost everyone else involved in the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, Retaux de Villette left a first-hand account for posterity. Memoirs were something of a vogue, and nearly everyone had one–Madame de La Motte, Monsieur de La Motte, and Comte Beugnot to name a few involved directly in the affair. Villette’s memoirs were published in Venice in 1790 under the name “Mémoires Historiques des Intrigues de la Cour”.

The “intrigue” is, of course, the Affair of the Diamond Necklace which Retaux de Villette had a very intimate involvement in.

Plan of the grounds of the Chateau de Versailles, where Retaux de Villette took part in the “Grove of Venus” incident.

Villette, a tall blonde-haired blue-eyed young man, had known Nicolas Marc-Antoine de La Motte since childhood. They were both born in Bar-sur-Aube and both went into the cavalry at the garrison of Lunéville. Villette was relatively well educated and accomplished, with a good voice, the ability to play the mandolin almost professionally, and some real flair for penmanship and writing. He was published in a few European newspapers such as the Gazette of Leyden.

His relationship with his friend Nicolas’s wife (Jeanne de La Motte-Valois) is a little sketchy. But it seems fairly likely that there was a ménage à trois between them. He certainly was named Madame de La Motte’s “personal secretary”. Certainly he was good with a pen, but one suspects that “personal secretary” was as much a euphemism as a job title. Villette himself admits in his memoir that he “loved Madame de La Motte to distraction”.

In any case, Villette was always in financial trouble. According to a friend of Madame de La Motte’s, a young lawyer named Jacques Claude Beugnot, he lived an itinerant lifestyle, leaving a trail of debts and running from them. He therefore had something in common with Jeanne de La Motte-Valois: financial desperation. It wasn’t much of a leap, therefore, for the two to go from (probable) lovers to co-conspirators . . . with Nicolas de La Motte, the husband, in on it, too.

Count Cagliostro

The Characters #3: Count Cagliostro (1743-1795)

It has been ascertained that Count Alessandro di Cagliostro was almost certainly Giuseppe Balsamo, an Italian adventurer and occultist who made his living by tricking wealthy people into believing in all kinds of fantastic tales and in his own spiritual powers. In other words, he was a con man and a cheat.

This begs the question, What in the name of all that is [un]holy does a man like this have to do with a jewel heist perpetrated by a desperate and very obscure scion of a defunct royal house?

Castel Sant’Angelo, where Cagliostro was incarcerated and died. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

First, to begin at beginning; if Count Cagliostro was the Giuseppe Balsamo that he is believed to be, he was born in 1743 in Sicily. His lineage was very humble and his family not particularly wealthy. He did, however, receive a good education and began early to trick and swindle the wealthy people around him [some interesting stories are included in this Wikipedia article]. The story is that the coarse and crude Italian “metamorphosed” (as Frances Mossiker puts it) into the sophisticated, unctuous, sought-after, and influential Count Cagliostro. Frances Mossiker, for one, has her doubts that Giuseppe Balsamo was Count Cagliostro.

However, it is established fact that Count Cagliostro toured Europe extensively, selling his act. His act was that of a mystic and occultist, a knower of things and doer of incredible deeds.

Jeanne de La Motte-Valois

Starting with this post, I am going to be writing about the endlessly fascinating Affair of the Diamond Necklace. In this issue: the Comtesse de La Motte, the orchestrator of a diamond theft that rocked the world.

This is all prompted by the historical novel I’m working on. I’m 40k into the story (give or take 401 words; or, rather, take 401 words because it’s at exactly 39,599). Obviously, I’ve gotten a hell of a lot done already, and I’m pretty pleased with what I have. I will have to go back and do a little bit of cleaning up, I think, just to make sure I haven’t inadvertently given the wrong impression about this, that, or the other thing. The story is being set up rather like a thriller or a mystery, though the revelation (which I just wrote) comes around halfway through the story, not at the end. The denouement (or at least the aftermath of poor Nicole’s realization) is going to be much longer. Because, after all, it’s about her, not about the story.

The Characters #1: Jeanne de La Motte-Valois de St Remy (July 1756 – August 1791)

Jeanne de Valois de St Remy was born in the provinces, near the town of Bar-Sur-Aube, France. Her family were impoverished nobility, living in the ramshackle Chateau de Fontette. One of her ancestors, Henri de Saint-Remy, was born in 1557, the illegitimate son of Henri II of France. His descendants were given the surname “Saint-Remy” and this Henri was made Baron of Fontette. Several generations later, the family was in dire financial straits. They had kept themselves alive through a tradition of military service, but Jeanne’s father did not carry on this tradition. He married one of the maids as the family fortunes sank even lower. Jeanne had an older brother, a younger sister who died as a young child, and a sister who was near her age. Her family ended up walking to Paris to try to make their way with only a paper outlining their pedigree. The father died, the mother abandoned her children, and Jeanne and her brother were forced to beg.

According to Jeanne, she carried her little sister on her back and went to the road to Passy, where she met the Marquise de Boulainvilliers, who took her in. She was sent to school (and didn’t like it), worked for increasingly lowly couturiers (and didn’t like it), and was briefly in a convent (and didn’t like it). She returned to Bar-sur-Aube, running away from the convent. There she was supported by the Beugnot family. After what appears to have been what is called a “shotgun wedding” in common parlance, she went to Paris with her husband (Nicolas Marc-Antoine de La Motte), looking to make her fortune by importuning the queen with her sad story. She expected that, as the last (though illegitimate) living Valois, she would be given some support. She was actually given a fairly generous annuity, considering how distant her relation was to the king. She was also to be known as Mademoiselle de Valois, her brother was given the title Baron de Valois, and her sister was to be called Mademoiselle de St Remy.

Her publicity stunts at Versailles grew increasingly desperate. She fainted in front of Madame Elisabeth, King Louis XVI’s sister, and even managed to get into the good graces of Madame Elisabeth and the Comtesse d’Artois, the King’s sister-in-law. Then there was some little scandal involving Jeanne and the Comte d’Artois, her patroness’s husband. She fell out of favor. She went to one minister and refused to leave until she was listened to. This produced a slight increase in her pension. Still, she was in troubled waters.

This is where her story gets interesting. Jeanne, now calling herself a countess, had begun to convince people in about 1783 to 1784 that she was a close friend to the queen. She put around the story that she and the queen were on intimate terms. The pandering of influence was big business in a time and place where all good things flowed from the king and, especially there and then, from queen Marie-Antoinette. Jeanne roped in a Cardinal and Prince of the blood, a man named Prince Louis de Rohan. He had alienated the queen when she was still Dauphine (queen in waiting), and wanted to get back into her favor. Jeanne took advantage of him, bilking him for one hundred twenty thousand francs, a vast sum. She did it by having her “personal secretary” Retaux de Villette forge letters from the queen. The “queen” requested loans because she was more than usually hard up–because, of course, the queen of France typically had such troubles (or not). In any case, Jeanne apparently pocketed the money and showed sudden signs of affluence. She returned briefly to Bar-sur-Aube, lording it over the locals.

Then this all got very interesting.