<P> The quotation, as attributed to Marie Antoinette, was claimed to have been uttered during one of the famines that occurred in France during the reign of her husband, Louis XVI . Upon being alerted that the people were suffering due to widespread bread shortages, the Queen is said to have replied, "Then let them eat brioche ." Although this anecdote was never cited by opponents of the monarchy at the time of the French Revolution, it did acquire great symbolic importance in subsequent histories when pro-revolutionary historians sought to demonstrate the obliviousness and selfishness of the French upper classes at that time . As one biographer of the Queen notes, it was a particularly useful phrase to cite because "the staple food of the French peasantry and the working class was bread, absorbing 50 percent of their income, as opposed to 5 percent on fuel; the whole topic of bread was therefore the result of obsessional national interest ." </P> <P> However, there is no evidence that Queen Marie Antoinette ever uttered this phrase . It was first attributed to her by Alphonse Karr in Les Guêpes of March 1843 . Other objections to the legend of Marie Antoinette and the cake / brioche comment centre on arguments concerning the queen's personality, internal evidence from members of the French royal family and the date of the saying's origin . For example, the Queen's English - language biographer, Antonia Fraser, wrote in 2002: </P> <P> (Let them eat cake) was said 100 years before her by Marie - Thérèse, the wife of Louis XIV . It was a callous and ignorant statement and she, Marie Antoinette, was neither . </P> <P> The attribution also has little credibility . Fraser cites as justification for the alternative attribution to the wife of Louis XIV the memoirs of Louis XVIII, who was only fourteen when Rousseau's Confessions were written and whose own memoirs were published much later . He does not mention Marie Antoinette in his account, but states that the saying was an old legend, and that within the family it was always believed that the saying belonged to the Spanish princess who married Louis XIV in the 1660s . Thus, Louis XVIII is as likely as others to have had his recollection affected by the quick spreading and distorting of Rousseau's original remark . </P>

Where does let them eat cake come from