Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. You're and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined day as always by the
Speaker 1: ever Mary Josh Clark Mayad, my writer. How is it going, Candace?
Speaker 1: It's going very well because you've just taken a big
Speaker 1: bite of something. It's cake. Um. You know they're throwing
Speaker 1: a party in the conference room for Sarah Dowty's birthday.
Speaker 1: You know that, right, We've got to get some of
Speaker 1: those cake getters really good. It looks good anyway. So
Speaker 1: I was just in there and somebody, I think it
Speaker 1: was Katie Lambert says, let them meet cake, you know,
Speaker 1: just kind of jokingly. So I say, as to Clambert,
Speaker 1: I says, be careful because the last person who said
Speaker 1: that had her head cut off. What do you think, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's not true. Yea, it is. I mean it's kind
Speaker 1: of a cute thing to say, and I'm sure people
Speaker 1: laugh politely, but it's not true. I don't did get
Speaker 1: a politely that was about it. Well, Katy knows better,
Speaker 1: so she was humoring you. Well, no, I mean Marie
Speaker 1: Antoinette said up and for saying it. They stormed the
Speaker 1: best deal and cut her head off. Wrong and wrong
Speaker 1: and wrong. Well, okay, filmy and miss I know everything
Speaker 1: about the French Revolution, the frev as I like to
Speaker 1: abbreviate it um. Marie Antoinette was actually about ten years
Speaker 1: old when that phrase appeared in Jean jacqu Rousseau's confessions,
Speaker 1: and supposedly he either turned the phrase himself or he
Speaker 1: got it from Maria Raisa, who was married to King
Speaker 1: Louis the fourteenth. And if she actually did say it,
Speaker 1: which was just a rumor, she would have been saying,
Speaker 1: not literally, let the meat cake like the vanilla clime
Speaker 1: at the sugar flowers that you have, but brioche, which
Speaker 1: is actually an egg based bread that sounds much worse
Speaker 1: than the cake I have. You mean tasting, or I
Speaker 1: would prefer, you know, the sugary kind. I like a
Speaker 1: nice brioche at brunch, you know, at a birthday party.
Speaker 1: Perhaps not anyway, the point being from an economical standpoint,
Speaker 1: it was it was a pretty wise thing to say
Speaker 1: what she was. Well, she was referring to this law
Speaker 1: in France that dictated what prices bakers could saw their bread. Yes,
Speaker 1: the French baker law anyway, you laugh, but it's true.
Speaker 1: If I did laugh, you're right, I laugh at everything though. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So the law was you had to sell your fans
Speaker 1: your bread's like, you know, your brioche at the same
Speaker 1: price as your cheaper flower and water loaves if that
Speaker 1: supply ran out, if the cheaper ones ran out. Yes,
Speaker 1: so the peasants got the good stuff at the same price, right,
Speaker 1: that seems pretty fair. Yeah, so the peasants didn't go hungry.
Speaker 1: So you know, the story behind the falls left them
Speaker 1: cake thing was that the people in parish were starving
Speaker 1: and hungry. Marie Antoinette posedly said, left the meat cake.
Speaker 1: What really would have happened if Maria Theresa did say
Speaker 1: it was she heard that the peasants were hungry and starving.
Speaker 1: She said, well, if there is no bread, then let
Speaker 1: them have briosh at the same cost. And there you
Speaker 1: have it. A sweet little story, isn't it very sweet?
Speaker 1: That's heartwarming? Okay, so that's fiction. Yeah. Wow, that's like
Speaker 1: the one of the few things I know about Marie Antoinette.
Speaker 1: But I do know that that's not the only scandal.
Speaker 1: This woman was a very scandalous figure, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: she was there when the French revolted overthrew the monarchy
Speaker 1: and established their own system of government. Right, Yes, it
Speaker 1: was in part because of her, wasn't it precisely? I
Speaker 1: mean she like she had an affair with like a Swede, Right,
Speaker 1: that's what I heard. Tell me, that's not fiction, that's
Speaker 1: not fiction. Yes, that's true. That when you can you
Speaker 1: can cling on too. It was. It wasn't exactly a
Speaker 1: torrid rolling in the boudoir love affair. It was very
Speaker 1: tender and genuine from what I understand. You're referring to
Speaker 1: Count Axel von Person. He was a Swede and they
Speaker 1: met at a ball in Paris and they kept up
Speaker 1: communication over several years. He actually went away to help
Speaker 1: fight in the American Revolution and was back and forth
Speaker 1: between Sweden and France, and eventually he came back. And
Speaker 1: by this time Louis had given Marie Antoinette her own
Speaker 1: little place on the grounds of her side. It was
Speaker 1: called Petit trian On. Yeah, I've heard the descriptions of
Speaker 1: this place. That sounds beautiful. Yeah. Basically, go kim basing
Speaker 1: grim buy an entire town um kind of sort of.
Speaker 1: It was house originally built for I believe Madame du Pompadour.
Speaker 1: And of course the idea was just a pleasure house.
Speaker 1: It was a complete getaway. And Marie Antoinette was a
Speaker 1: tomboy when she was growing up. She really liked hunting
Speaker 1: and animals and the rough and tumble life, and so
Speaker 1: she wanted to bring a little bit of that flavor
Speaker 1: to your side. So she actually created her own provincial
Speaker 1: village outside Petit trian On, complete with cows and sheep
Speaker 1: one of my personal faith animals. Um. So she had
Speaker 1: all these rustic looking buildings, but while some of them
Speaker 1: actually operated, mo to them had other things inside, you know,
Speaker 1: like other little getaways or extensions of the house. It
Speaker 1: was almost like, I don't know, going to MGM and
Speaker 1: seeing all these backdrops, but behind, you know, you realize
Speaker 1: they're just a prop. Really, didn't she put on plays there?
Speaker 1: I mean that kind of that would coincide with that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was her own little fantasy world, and she had
Speaker 1: a jewel box theater and when she gave these performances,
Speaker 1: it was one of the only times that Louis would
Speaker 1: come to train on It was her getaway, but he
Speaker 1: would come by to see her perform and she would
Speaker 1: play the part of dairymaids. And for someone who had
Speaker 1: as much money and extravagant things as she did, she
Speaker 1: certainly liked, you know, taking off the dog as her
Speaker 1: personally expression. Guests, I guess what I'm putting on the dog?
Speaker 1: Isn't that the expression for getting all fancy? I have
Speaker 1: not heard that. Actually, well she took off the dog, okay, alright, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got the impression that she got homesick kind of
Speaker 1: kind of frequently for Vienna, and like you said, her
Speaker 1: tomboy upbringing her you know, childhood, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: So she did have the affair with the Swede then, yes, okay, fact.
Speaker 1: So the reason I heard I've got I've got another one.
Speaker 1: The reason I've heard that she had an affair with
Speaker 1: the Swede was because her husband, Louis was impotent. Is
Speaker 1: that is that fact? Your fiction? Um? Also a fact? Yes?
Speaker 1: Actually it was Louis sixt Yes, I know this room,
Speaker 1: the numerals, they're crazy. So two out of three ain't bad? No,
Speaker 1: not bad at all. Um, Well, it's you know, kind
Speaker 1: of bad from my aunt went out because we're laughing
Speaker 1: in her bedroom life and it was pretty pitiful and Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really was. And I'm not the only one to
Speaker 1: think so. During her lifetime, there were pamphlets that sort
Speaker 1: of amounted to what are you know tabloids today being
Speaker 1: circulated around Paris, and the headlines just screamed, King can't
Speaker 1: do it with queen. Well, royal couple fails to consummate marriage. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, they they're big into producing airs, so I
Speaker 1: can imagine that was pretty scan was how long did
Speaker 1: this go on for? Because I mean they eventually did
Speaker 1: have kids, right, yeah, seven years? Seven years that there
Speaker 1: are plenty of pamphlets. Yeah, and the first kid was
Speaker 1: a girl. Okay, Yeah, that didn't solve a whole lot,
Speaker 1: but they did have a boy. Eventually they did go
Speaker 1: on to have children. But you know, it's just so
Speaker 1: funny because there were so many factors about their lives
Speaker 1: that were really working against them in this. For one,
Speaker 1: Louis was really interested in locks. That yeah, and the
Speaker 1: big joke was that the king couldn't find where to
Speaker 1: put his key and little jokes like this, and a
Speaker 1: lot of pressure was on Marie Antoinette. You know, this
Speaker 1: marriage was obviously a political marriage. It was designed to
Speaker 1: night the Austrian Hapsburgs with the French Bourbons, and her
Speaker 1: mother would write her letter saying, you need to be
Speaker 1: kissing on him more and touching on him more, and
Speaker 1: be warmer in the bedroom, and you need to be
Speaker 1: taking better care of yourself to make yourself attractive to him,
Speaker 1: and she just felt really awful. You know, she was
Speaker 1: still really young at this time. They I think she
Speaker 1: was fifteen when they got married. Well it's pretty young,
Speaker 1: too young, almost too young, there you have it. But
Speaker 1: um by the time they became monarch, because I think
Speaker 1: she was in her twenties, very very early twenties. So
Speaker 1: you have a lot of pressure. Well that is a
Speaker 1: lot of pressure. So okay, so I'm two for three today,
Speaker 1: which isn't bad. That's better than my usual over one.
Speaker 1: So I appreciate you clearing that up. I'm going to
Speaker 1: go talk to Clamber and tell her I was wrong. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So thanks for this, And you want me to get
Speaker 1: you some cake, just some champagne, just champagne, you got it.
Speaker 1: I'm on glass number three, so I'll bring a couple
Speaker 1: for us. And you know what, if you want to
Speaker 1: dash back when you've got that other piece of cake,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you one more interesting tidbit about her. So
Speaker 1: we're back, and I promised you one more interesting to
Speaker 1: tail about Marie Antoinette's and here goes. What is it?
Speaker 1: Supposedly she was allowed a three point six million dollar
Speaker 1: and today's dollars allowance for her wardrobe, and she always
Speaker 1: surpassed that because she liked ordering gowns trend and silver
Speaker 1: and gold and dripping with diamonds and emeralds and stuff.
Speaker 1: I have a tuxedo that has um, you know, emeralds
Speaker 1: all over it. But that's just one well, and that's
Speaker 1: you know, that's practical. That's for the work party. We
Speaker 1: need those here. Sure, I forgot it today. Luckily, I'm
Speaker 1: wearing my ballgown. So if you want even more royal fodder,
Speaker 1: you can read the top five Mariantoinette scandals on how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. You've got to get some of
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