Haha. Quite.
Seriously though...
Top 5 Marie Antoinette Scandals
BY HOWSTUFFWORKS.COM CONTRIBUTORS
5
'Let Them Eat Cake!'
As famous as she is for having proclaimed, "Let them eat cake," when she heard that the peasants were starving from the dearth of bread, Marie Antoinette actually never said it. The young queen was known to be quite tender-hearted, in contrast to her less flattering attributes as a spendthrift and wild reveler. There are accounts of her administering aid to a peasant who'd been gored by a wild animal as well as taking in an orphaned boy. Besides accounts like these that attest to her kind and generous nature, there are straightforward facts that disprove her utterance of this scandalous remark.
The expression comes from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Confessions," a treatise penned in the late 18th century. There's a possibility that Rousseau turned the phrase himself; other historians think it may have been uttered by Maria Theresa. Maria Theresa was a noblewoman of Spanish descent who wed Louis XIV
