[War & Business] Antoinette's Cake

Portrait of Marie Antoinette [Image source= Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna]

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyunwoo Lee] "If there is no bread, let them eat cake."

This sentence, which became the origin of the phrase 'Pain-to-Anette' recently discussed in political circles, is known to have been said by Marie Antoinette, the queen consort of King Louis XVI of France in the late 18th century. Her one phrase has been called a symbol of tyranny that ignited the French Revolution and the subsequent Napoleonic Wars to this day.

However, there is no record anywhere that Marie Antoinette actually said such a thing. Although she was known for reckless extravagance, she was Austrian-born and reportedly did not even speak French properly, and due to her introverted personality, she rarely went out alone. Nevertheless, the image of her drinking all night, gambling, and acting like the queen of the ball is believed to have been a result of the medieval royal custom where the queen took the blame for the king’s misrule.

The phrase "let them eat cake" is originally known to have come from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Confessions." According to an anecdote Rousseau heard in 1740, a French queen once said such a thing. Marie Antoinette, born in 1755, was not even born at that time. The actual person who said this phrase is known to be Maria Theresa, a distant relative of hers and a 17th-century Spanish princess. The phrase did not signify tyranny but came from a story where she served cake from her palace to starving peasants as an act of charity.

The person who actually drove France to the brink of revolution in history was Louis XVI, who is often depicted as mild, kind, and somewhat lacking. Unlike his predecessors, he did not like alcohol, did not gamble, and did not openly indulge in extravagance, but he neglected France’s severe financial crisis and ruthlessly dismissed bureaucrats who tried to reform it.

From the reform plan proposed by Controller-General of Finances Anne Robert Jacques Turgot in 1774 to the reform plan presented by the last Controller-General Jacques Necker in 1788, one year before the revolution, the reform plans submitted by French bureaucrats over 14 years were similar. They called for increasing taxes on the privileged classes, reducing government spending, and cutting expenditures on foreign activities such as wars. However, Louis XVI blamed these reformers for the financial crisis and dismissed them whenever reform plans were proposed. This was because they also blocked his hobbies and various costly engineering experiments.

While neglecting financial and livelihood issues, Louis XVI poured money into his peculiar experiments. When Dr. Joseph Guillotin, an anatomy professor, invented the guillotine with Louis XVI’s support, it was Louis XVI who pointed out that the blade should be changed to a diagonal shape for more efficient beheading. The path to revolution was actually opened not by Marie Antoinette’s cake but by Louis XVI’s guillotine.