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France was one big raucous mess in the 18th century. Enter Marie Antoinette, the youngest daughter of
Empress Maria Theresa. At the age of 14, Marie was shipped from Austria to marry the intelligent yet shy Dauphin, Louis XVI. She was then thrown into the glittering court of Versailles full of senseless rituals and gossip hungry courtiers. But while Versailles sparkled on the surface, France's debts from the Seven Years War were growing larger and larger. To make matters worse, Louis although a devoted father and husband, prefered to tinker with watches instead of waging wars. And Marie was just plain bored. So she did what any young lady would do with time and money on her hands... she poofed her hair out and went on one long shopping and gambling binge.
But let's not place all the blame on Marie. Politics in France were unfair before she ever stepped her jewel-clad slipper into France. The poor were taxed heavily while the rich didn’t pay any taxes. This tax system caused the peasants and working classes to get poorer and poorer. Then, France had some nasty weather that caused a bread shortage. Marie had already developed a reputation in her teen queen days for being a shopaholic bubblehead, so everyone blamed the bread shortage on Marie, on her husband, and on the whole unfair government.
Bread was the main staple of the French diet. The average French person ate two pounds of bread a day! Without bread, the poor were forced to eat street rats (which didn’t taste like chicken). Wouldn’t you get a bit grumpy if you had to eat rat stew every night for dinner?
During France’s food shortage, Marie cut back on her expenses, removed the gambling tables from her drawing room, wore simpler clothes, and took an interest in politics. Marie grew up. So could she really have been cruel enough to tell the poor to eat cake? Read the book to find out just how hard it is to kill a rumor >>
 
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Marie Antoinette 
Why all the fuss over bread?