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“Qu'ils mangent de la brioche!” (“Let them eat cake!”) Marie Antoinette, the queen of France, reputedly said when she was told that her starving people had no bread to eat. That callous remark came to symbolize the huge gap between the lives of the bulk of Europeans at the end of the 18th century and those of the privileged minorities who ruled them. And the flamboyant, extravagant Marie Antoinette became the focus of the hatred of the people who would eventually topple the French monarchy of her husband, Louis XVI.
Marie Antoinette
