The life story of the famous adventurer Jeanne de LaMotte, the prototype of Milady from Dumas's Three Musketeers, is so rich in incredible events that it seems fictional. But the intrigue described in the novel with the diamond pendants of Anna of Austria, which caused the queen great trouble, actually took place and played its fatal role in the fate of Marie Antoinette. And not only. This adventure, according to Mirabeau, provoked the beginning of revolutionary events in France.
In 1756, in one impoverished family of direct descendants of Valois, whose family was similar in antiquity and nobility to the Bourbons themselves, a girl was born, named Jeanne. True, there is another version of the origin of Jeanne de Lamotte, née Saint-Remy de Valois: she was allegedly the illegitimate daughter of the king and Madame Saint-Remy.
Be that as it may, poverty and poverty forced the girl to beg on the streets, using the well-known method of beggars - to mention her noble origin: "Give the orphan Valois." This phrase, which sounded from the lips of a six-year-old girl, moved the Marquess of Bouleville, who once passed by, and she decided to take part in the fate of the child. Making inquiries about Jeanne's family, the marquise found out that the blood of French kings really flows in her.
Thanks to the efforts of a noble lady, the position of Jeanne's family became much better: her father got a job, her mother left prostitution, her son entered the officers' school, and the daughters were sent to be raised in a boarding school for a nunnery for noble maidens. Zhanna was an intelligent and capable student, only she was completely lacking in modesty and humility, in addition, she constantly lied.
When she was 22 years old, she fled from the monastery with one of her admirers, the Comte de Lamotte. A former gendarme officer, a completely unprincipled brilliant swindler, independently appropriated the title of count. Nevertheless, the future adventurer began to call herself Countess de LaMotte.
In 1780 the de Lamotte couple moved to Paris. Capital life seemed to them a more fertile field for intrigue and enrichment than the province. It was in Paris that Jeanne met Louis de Rohan, Cardinal of Strasbourg. At the same time, the second fateful acquaintance of the Countess de Lamotte took place - with the famous Giuseppe Balsamo, a famous magician, alchemist, freemason, who became famous under the name of Count Cagliostro.
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The cardinal at that time was out of favor with Marie Antoinette and did his best to rectify the situation, but all efforts were in vain. Access to the French court and the king was closed, and Rogan so dreamed of the place of the first minister of France. It was on this that Jeanne de LaMotte played.
The cunning schemer somehow became a regular at Versailles, she was received by many influential nobles. In fact, the countess did the same thing as in childhood - begging. For this purpose, she even had a legend in store: as if the possessions of her ancestors were appropriated by dishonest businessmen, so she knocks the doorsteps of offices in search of justice.
For greater persuasiveness, Jeanne once fainted in front of everyone, this was the reason for rumors that the countess almost died of hunger in the reception room of the royal palace. Repeating this technique several times, she achieved the fact that they started talking about her, she was remembered. Thanks to her acquaintance with the cardinal, the bankers opened a loan for her, and the Lamotte couple healed on a grand scale.
Jeanne entertained the guests who visited her mansion with details from the life of the queen, and very soon they began to consider her a close friend of Marie Antoinette, and some were even sure that there was an intimate relationship between women. The ground was prepared for the main intrigue of her life.
Once Jeanne hinted to the cardinal that she could help him restore good relations with the royal couple, and offered to write a letter to Marie Antoinette. The delighted cardinal did not hesitate, immediately wrote a detailed message and even received a favorable response. Correspondence ensued. Only he could not know that the letters of the queen were not written by her, but by the countess's accomplice, Reto de Viiette, who knew how to masterly forge handwritings.
Cardinal Louis de Rogan
The next step of the adventurer was to arrange a meeting between the cardinal and Marie Antoinette. For these purposes, she had another assistant - Nicole Lege, outwardly similar to the queen. The meeting took place at dusk, and the fooled cardinal again did not understand that he was being circled around his finger and that the rose, which the queen graciously presented to him, had nothing to do with the latter. But from that moment on, Rogan was absolutely sure of the queen's special trust in Jeanne de Lamotte.
When the countess gave him a small request from the queen for a certain amount, which she allegedly wanted to spend to help one impoverished noble family, the cardinal without hesitation took a loan for 40 thousand livres and handed the money to the queen's closest friend, the Countess de Lamotte. Naturally, the queen never saw this money.
Appetite comes with eating, and Jeanne de Lamotte eventually realized that there is never a lot of money. She conceived a grandiose scam, in the center of which was a diamond necklace consisting of 600 gems with a total weight of 2,500 carats and a value of 1.6 million livres. The countess learned about the existence of this decoration from the court jeweler, who, like all the other characters, fell under the spell of a swindler.
At one time, Louis XV ordered the necklace for his then favorite, but did not have time to present the gift, as he died. The jewelers who made the jewel and invested all their money in it were left with nothing. Marie Antoinette really wanted to acquire a masterpiece of jewelry art, but the king refused her this. Meanwhile, the debts of the jewelers were becoming overwhelming, and they were already ready to take apart the necklace and sell the stones separately. And then, luckily for them, the Countess de LaMotte appeared on the horizon.
It was enough for Joan to only hint to the cardinal that the queen was eager to receive jewelry, and complain about the king's stinginess. And at the beginning of 1785, an agreement was signed between the jewelers and de Rogan, which stated that the jewel should be handed over to the buyer immediately, and he would pay the money in installments (400 thousand livres every six months).
This transaction somewhat alarmed the cardinal, and he asked Joan to put her signature on the treaty. Of course, the request was fulfilled, but not by Marie Antoinette, but by the same accomplice of the Countess Reto de Viiette. Before handing over the necklace to Jeanne, the cardinal decided to seek advice from the magical powers, which, as you understand, were mediated by Count Cagliostro.
Giuseppe Baalsamo (Cagliostro)
Now it is difficult to say for sure why the great hoaxer followed the countess's lead and confirmed that she was doing a good deed. Perhaps he was in a share, or perhaps Jeanne, who managed to make friends with his wife, influenced through her. Be that as it may, the grandiose scam happened. And in the evening of the same day, the necklace turned into a heap of pebbles: removing them from the jewelry, the fraudsters did not stand on ceremony, so many diamonds were damaged.
After such a large theft, the fraudsters would have to hide, but they loved the luxurious life so much that they immediately began to sell stones and spend the money they received in style. The fact that the queen never appeared in a new piece of jewelry alerted the jewelers. In addition, when the time came for the first installment of 400 thousand livres, de Lamotte told the cardinal that the queen now had no money and she was asking for an adjournment, and he told the jewelers about it.
At this point they became very excited and began to seek an audience with the queen, who soon received them. Hearing the story of a necklace that she seemed to have acquired in installments, Marie Antoinette alternately blushed and turned pale. She was sure that this whole scam was the work of the cardinal, who wanted to dishonor her name, and demanded a severe and public punishment from the king for the intriguer.
Bastille
De Rogan was arrested and placed in the Bastille, but he did not take all the blame on himself, but spoke frankly about the participation of the Countess de Lamotte. Soon Jeanne was also arrested, and along with her and her accomplices. The husband of the adventurer managed to escape to England, taking unsold diamonds with him.
The court sentenced Madame de Lamotte to flogging, stamping with the letter V (voleuse - "thief") and life in prison. De Rogan was recognized as a victim of intrigue, but was exiled from the capital to the province. However, everything happened as in the well-known anecdote: "The forks were found, but the sediment remained" - the name of the queen was tarnished by this scandal, especially since the French never loved her.
The branding of Madame de LaMotte
Insults rained down at her, dirty pamphlets were spread, society despised her, popular hostility spilled out. The necklace scandal served to erode the Bourbons' prestige and the crisis of royalty that began the French Revolution.
The Countess de LaMotte in some incomprehensible way, dressed in a man's suit, was able to leave the prison dungeons in broad daylight and flee to England. There she began to write memoirs in which the queen was presented as the protagonist in this whole story, and everyone else was her victims.
Undoubtedly, the memoirs only added fuel to the revolutionary fire and served as one of the main proofs of the queen's guilt in neglecting the interests of the state during her trial. In the fall of 1793, Marie Antoinette died under the knife of the guillotine.
Marie antoinette
Almost nothing is known about the further fate of Jeanne. There are several versions of her death that have not been documented. According to one of them, she threw herself out of the window of an English hotel, mistaking the people entering the room for agents of the French government. Her husband lived for many more years, but his affairs did not go well, and in 1831 he died in poverty in a dirty Paris hospital, abandoned by everyone.
It is believed that the Countess de LaMotte did not die in England, but simply faked her death, wanting to hide from the persecution of creditors and her husband. On the eve of the war with Napoleon, she allegedly appeared in St. Petersburg under the assumed name of Countess Gachet and seemed to have received Russian citizenship. At that time, they even wrote about her in the Russian Archive magazine:
An old woman of medium height, rather slender, in a gray cloth coat. Her gray hair was covered with a black beret with feathers. A pleasant face with lively eyes. Many whispered about her oddities, hinting that there was something mysterious in her fate. She knew this and was silent, neither denying nor confirming the guesses.
At that time, Jeanne was already 68 years old, but she still avoided her former compatriots. Petersburg was full of rumors that Jeanne was hiding from justice and that untold treasures were in the basements of her house.
"Devil's house" in Crimea
These rumors reached Alexander I, and he appointed an audience to the mysterious countess. It is not known what they talked about, only after this conversation Zhanna, having left Petersburg, moved to Crimea, and lived for another twenty years in the “damn house” on the Artek estate. This is mentioned in the memoirs of Count Gustav Olizar, the owner of the neighboring estate. In pre-revolutionary Crimea guidebooks, the name of Madame de Gachet is also constantly encountered.
In 1826, Countess Gachet died. As soon as the sovereign learned of her death, a courier was sent to the Crimea with an order from the chief of staff of His Majesty, which contained a demand to remove the dark blue box from the belongings of the deceased. After a long search, the box was found, but it was empty.
The famous adventurer was buried in a cemetery near the village of Elbuzla, the grave was covered with a slab of white marble, which Jeanne had ordered in advance. On it was carved a vase with acanthus leaves - a symbol of triumph and overcoming difficulties, and under it - an intricate monogram with Latin letters. A shield is carved in the lower part, on which the name and dates are usually placed. But he stayed clean. Over time, the slab disappeared somewhere, and the grave was lost.
The Countess has been gone for a long time, but the questions related to her remain: what was kept in the dark blue box? Perhaps the documents shedding light on this seemingly fantastic story and proving the involvement of the first persons of France in the intrigue? Or is it the same diamond necklace that may have remained intact?
Used materials from the article by Galina Belysheva