DIAMOND NECKLACE, THE AFFAIR OF THE, a mysterious incident at the court of Louis XVI. of France, which involved the queen, Marie Antoinette. The Parisian jewellers Boehmer and Bassenge had spent some years collecting stones for a necklace which they hoped to sell to Mme. Du Barry, the fav ourite of Louis XV., and after his death to Marie Antoinette. They were considerably embarrassed by their failure to do so.
Since his recall in disgrace from Vienna in 1774, Louis, cardinal de Rohan, had been anxious to be reconciled to the queen. In March 1784 he took as mistress a certain Jeanne de St. Remy de Valois, who had married a soi-disant Comte de Lamotte. She per suaded him that she had been received by the queen and enjoyed her favour, and carried on for him a pretended correspondence with the queen, the adventuress duly producing replies to Rohan's notes in the queen's name. The tone of the letters became very warm, and the cardinal, convinced that Marie Antoinette was in love with him, became ardently enamoured of her. A secret meet ing took place in Aug. 1784, in a grove in the garden at Versailles, between Rohan and a lady whom the cardinal believed to be the queen herself. Rohan offered her a rose, and she promised him that she would forget the past. The jewellers also believed in the relations of the countess with the queen, and they resolved to use her to sell their necklace. She agreed, and shortly after Rohan purchased it for 1,600,000 livres, payable in instalments. He said that he was authorized by the queen, and showed the jewellers the conditions of the bargain approved in the handwriting of Marie Antoinette. The necklace was given up. Rohan took it to the countess's house, where a man, in whom Rohan believed he recognized a valet of the queen, came to fetch it. Boehmer and Bassenge, bef ore the sale, in order to be doubly sure, had sent word to the queen of the negotiations in her name. Marie Antoinette allowed the bargain to be concluded, and after she had received a letter of thanks from Boehmer, she burned it.
When the time came to pay, the comtesse de Lamotte presented the cardinal's notes but these were insufficient, and Boehmer com plained to the queen, who told him that she had received no necklace and never ordered it. Then followed a coup de theatre. On Aug. 15, 1785, Assumption Day, when the whole court was awaiting the king and queen in order to go to the chapel, the cardi nal de Rohan, who was preparing to officiate, was arrested and taken to the Bastille. The police also arrested Mme. de Lamotte, and some minor accomplices. A sensational trial before the parle ment of Paris resulted (May 31, 1786) in the acquittal of the cardinal. The comtesse de Lamotte was condemned to be whipped, branded and shut up in the Salpetriere. Her husband, who is be lieved to have escaped with the necklace to London, was con demned, in his absence, to the galleys for life. Various circum stances fortified the popular belief that Marie Antoinette, in her hatred of the cardinal, had deliberately trapped Rohan—her dis appointment at Rohan's acquittal, the fact that he was deprived of his charges and exiled to the abbey of la Chaise-Dieu, and finally the escape of the comtesse de Lamotte from the Salpetriere, with the connivance, as people believed, of the court. Mme. de Lamotte, having taken refuge abroad, published Memoires, in which she accused the queen.
See Emile Campardon, Marie Antoinette et le proces du collier (1863) ; F. d'Albini, Marie Antoinette and the Diamond Necklace from another Point of View (19oo) ; M. Tourneux, Marie Antoinette devant l'histoire: Essai bibliographique (2nd ed., 19o1) ; P. Audebert, L'Affaire du collier de la reine, d'apres la correspondance inedite du chevalier de Pujol (Rouen, 1901) ; Funck-Brentano, L'Affaire du collier (1903) ; A. Lang, Historical Mysteries (1904) •