Marie Antoinette

Queen of France, 1755–1793. Explained quotes and 1 wrongly credited to them.

✕ Misattributed · Start here

“Let them eat cake.”

Often credited to Marie Antoinette · 1765

✕ Misattributed

“Let them eat cake.”

Often credited to Marie Antoinette · Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions · 1765

A story about an unnamed “great princess” in Rousseau's memoirs, written when Marie Antoinette was about ten years old and living in Vienna. Revolutionary-era propaganda and later writers attached it to her.

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About Marie Antoinette

Marie Antoinette was born an archduchess of Austria and married the future Louis XVI of France at fourteen. As queen she became a target of hostile pamphlets that portrayed her as extravagant and heartless, and after the French Revolution she was tried and executed by guillotine in October 1793.

The line most associated with her, “let them eat cake,” appears in a book written when she was a child in Austria, and there is no evidence she ever said it.