Who said eat cake

While this cake was worthless, it still had nutritional value. It would have been free to anyone who wanted it. If this explanation is true; and Marie Antoinette actually said let them eat cake instead of brioche, she would have meant this free stuff the peasants could get when bread became too expensive.

If she thought this was practical advice; it would have shown how naive she was. There would have been far too little of it to feed the poor people of France. And it would still have been an arrogant statement, although in a different way from the usual interpretation. I read about it elsewhere. The story says that in France, greedy bakers used to hide bread so that people would by the expensive brioche. The government reacted by forcing bakers to sell brioche to people at the lower ordinary price for bread should they claim they had no bread.

I am originally French but been living in English speaking countries. So tired of explaining that brioche is not cake ahaha. Next time I will just copy paste this post their wall ;- great blog, very interesting topics in many niches Click here to cancel reply. Close Menu Home. Marie Antoinette, let them eat cake! Source: nation. The origins of many English phrases are unknown. Nevertheless, many people would say that they know the source of this one. She is supposed to have said this when she was told that the French populace had no bread to eat.

The original French is 'Qu'ils mangent de la brioche' , that is, ' Let them eat brioche' brioche is a form of cake made of flour, butter and eggs. Related: How many French revolutions were there?

But the "brioche" quote is problematic, too, because there's no reliable evidence that the queen ever said it. Another gross misrepresentation indeed. France has endured no shortage of revolutions. The following century then saw the country flip flop between monarchies and republics, with each side fighting a propaganda war in addition to armed skirmishes.

It was during one of these later revolutions, long after Marie Antoinette's execution, that the misquote first came to pass.