“Let them eat cake” is the traditional translation of the French phrase “Qu’ils mangent de labrioche”, supposedly said by a French princess upon learning that the peasants had no bread. Asbrioche is a luxury bread enriched with eggs and butter, it would reflect the princess’s obliviousness to the nature of a famine.

Although commonly attributed to Queen Marie Antoinette,^[1] there is no record of these words ever having been uttered by her; they first appear in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions, his putative autobiographical work (completed in 1769, when Marie Antoinette was 13), where he wrote the following in Book 6:

Enfin je me rappelai le pis-aller d’une grande princesse à qui l’on disait que les paysans n’avaient pas de pain, et qui répondit : Qu’ils mangent de la brioche.

Finally I recalled the last resort of a great princess who was told that the peasants had no bread, and who responded: “Let them eat brioche.”