In 1785, France was already simmering with unrest when a bizarre scandal shattered the royal court's credibility. Parisian jewelers Boehm and Bassenge had spent years assembling a 2,800-carat diamond necklace, originally intended for Madame du Barry. After King Louis XV died, the jewelers tried to sell the astronomical piece to Marie Antoinette, but she repeatedly refused it.
Enter Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy, a cunning schemer who targeted Cardinal de Rohan, a wealthy nobleman desperate for the Queen's favor. Jeanne persuaded Rohan that she was Marie Antoinette's close confidante. She produced fake letters stamped with forged royal signatures requesting Rohan's help in secretly purchasing the necklace on credit.
To seal the trick, Jeanne even arranged a brief midnight meeting in the Versailles gardens with a prostitute named Nicole d'Oliva, who disguised herself as the Queen. Convinced he had won royal approval, Rohan acquired the necklace and handed it over to Jeanne's accomplice husband, who promptly disassembled it to sell the gems in London. When the jewelers sought payment directly from Marie Antoinette, the plot unraveled.
King Louis XVI ordered Rohan's public arrest in the Hall of Mirrors. Though a trial acquitted Rohan and condemned Jeanne to public whipping and imprisonment, the French public refused to believe the Queen was innocent. Libelous pamphlets painted Marie Antoinette as a manipulative, jewel-obsessed tyrant.
The forged letters successfully weaponized public disdain against the monarchy, acting as a crucial spark for the French Revolution just four years later.