“Rousseau attributed the statement "Let them eat cake" to a princess, possibly Maria Theresa of Spain.”

Rousseau recounts that while seeking bread he remembered: "At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who was told that the country people had no bread, and who replied, 'Then let them eat pastry!'" The text does not name the princess or otherwise identify her; no reference is made to Maria Theresa of Spain or any specific royal person.

The French phrase “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” ("Let them eat brioche") appears in book 6 of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s *Confessions*. In it, Rousseau describes an instance of being so embarrassed at his shabby clothing that he could not enter a bakery; he then recalls the words of a "great princess" who, upon being told the peasants had no bread, replied that they could eat brioche. Rousseau gives no name for this princess. Later writers, including Louis XVIII, suggested it was Maria Theresa of Spain, wife of Louis XIV, but this attribution is conjectural and not made by Rousseau himself.

The famous words attributed to her, “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” (“Let them eat cake”), are almost certainly apocryphal. A similar saying appears in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions, written when Marie-Antoinette was a child, where it is placed in the mouth of an unnamed “great princess.” Later popular tradition sometimes identified that princess as Maria Theresa of Spain or other members of the Bourbon court, but no contemporary evidence confirms these attributions.

In his autobiographical *Confessions* Rousseau sometimes blurs fact and anecdote. One oft-cited passage in book six recalls a 'great princess' who, hearing that the peasants had no bread, is said to have answered that they might eat brioche. The episode illustrates Rousseau’s critique of aristocratic insouciance; he does not name the princess, and scholarship generally treats the story as either anonymous hearsay or a literary invention rather than a documented quotation from a specific individual such as Maria Theresa of Spain.

The site explains that this quotation is apocryphal: Marie‑Antoinette never said or wrote “S’ils n’ont pas de pain, qu’ils mangent de la brioche !” or “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche !”. It notes that pamphleteers later attributed to her a quotation from Rousseau’s *Confessions*: “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.’” Book VI of the *Confessions* was composed between 1765 and 1769, that is, before the arrival in France of the daughter of the Emperor of Austria; Rousseau does not name the princess.

The article notes that many pieces of evidence suggest the quotation is false and falsely attributed to Marie‑Antoinette. It explains that the first time the phrase was written was by the political philosopher Jean‑Jacques Rousseau. In 1767, in his book *Les Confessions*, he attributes the quotation to “a great princess”: he wrote of “a great princess who was told that the peasants had no bread, and who responded: Let them eat brioche.” Marie‑Antoinette was only 12 at the time, and the article points out that Rousseau does not identify the princess.

Modern historians and literary scholars generally agree that Rousseau, in Confessions Book VI, attributes the line "Qu’ils mangent de la brioche" only to an unnamed "grande princesse". Any association with Maria Theresa of Spain (queen to Louis XIV) or other specific royals arises from later memoirs and 19th‑century commentary; the primary text of Rousseau does not describe the princess as "possibly Maria Theresa of Spain" or hint at such an identification.

The phrase can be traced back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s *Confessions*, written in 1765, where he mentions it in passing: "At length I recollected the thought of a great princess, who, when told that the peasants had no bread, replied, 'Then let them eat brioche.'" Rousseau never identifies the princess. One possibility sometimes suggested by later writers is Maria Theresa of Spain, queen of France a century earlier, or, alternatively, Louis XV’s daughters, Princess Sophie or Princess Victoire. These identifications, however, are conjectures based on later memoirs and not on Rousseau’s own attribution.

One theory about the origins of the legend of the phrase "Let them eat cake" is that it is the misunderstanding of a passage from the memoirs of the Comte de Provence (Louis XVIII)… Provence makes the allusion to a remark made by the queen of Louis XIV, Maria Theresa of Spain, in this passage: “…we thought of Queen Maria Theresa, who hearing one day the poor people pitied for being in want of bread, replied, 'But, dear me, why do they not eat pie-crust?'" … Actually I would be VERY careful before accusing Marie-Therese of having said that. The infamous expression first appeared in Rousseau's Confessions… He merely accuses a "Princess" of having said that. He mentioned no names. Some people assumed it was Marie-Therese because she was the last Queen of France before Marie Leczinska, but there is no evidence of that.

The story of a princess joking "let them eat cake" had actually been told many years before Marie-Antoinette ever arrived in France, as a young princess of fourteen in 1770. Her brother-in-law, the Count of Provence, who hated her, later said that he heard the story as a child, long before his brother ever married Marie-Antoinette. The count claimed that the version he heard was that the woman who made the comment had been his great-great-great grandmother, Maria-Teresa of Spain, who advised peasants to eat pie crust (or brioche) during bread shortages. A French socialite, the Countess of Boigne, said she'd heard that it had been Louis the Sixteenth's aunt, Princess Victoria, and Rousseau wrote that he had heard the story about an anonymous great princess.