Theft of The Crown Jewels During The Revolution
The Crown Jewels were stolen in 1792 when the Garde Meuble (Royal Treasury) was stormed by rioters. Most, though not all, of the Crown Jewels were recovered eventually. Neither the Sancy Diamond nor the French Blue Diamond were found in the years after, however. The Royal French Blue is believed to have been recut, and it is now known as the Hope Diamond.
The Hope is famously alleged to have been surrounded by bad luck. Marie Antoinette who supposedly wore it was beheaded (in fact, it was actually worn by her husband, Louis XVI, although he too was beheaded). Other owners and their families experienced suicides, marriage break-ups, bankruptcy, deaths in car crashes, falls off cliffs, revolutions, mental breakdowns, and deaths through drug overdoses. It was even tangentially associated with the case of the murdered Lindbergh baby, when its then owner, silver heiress Evalyn Walsh McLean, pawned it to raise money that she ended up paying to a con-man unconnected with the actual kidnapping. Most modern historians view the tales of a curse on the Hope to be spurious; the first mention of such tales is documented to 1908. Pierre Cartier, the Parisian jeweler, is widely credited with publicizing the stories of a curse on the diamond in hopes of increasing its saleability. Since 1958, it has been in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., where it is the single most-viewed object in the Smithsonian's collection.
The Crown Jewels were augmented by jewels added by Napoleon I and Napoleon III along with their empresses.
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