THE HOPE ,( TITANIC) DIAMOND WAS STOLEN FROM LOUIS XIV ON 1792 SEPTEMBER 11

THE HOPE ,TITANIC DIAMOND 

WAS STOLEN FROM LOUIS XIV

ON 1792 SEPTEMBER 11

Add caption

The Hope Diamond is one of the most famous jewels in the world, with ownership records dating back almost four centuries. Its much-admired rare blue color is due to trace amounts of boron atoms. Weighing 45.52 carats, its exceptional size has revealed new findings about the formation of gemstones.

The jewel is believed to have originated in India, and is known to have been cut from the French Blue (Le bleu de France), presented to King Louis XIV. It acquired its name when it appeared in the catalogue of a gem collection owned by a London banking family called Hope in 1839. Later it was sold to Washington socialite Evalyn Walsh McLean who was often seen wearing it. Since 1958, it has been on exhibition at Washington’s National Museum of Natural History.


The Hope Diamond has long been rumored to carry a curse, possibly due to agents trying to arouse interest in the stone. It was last reported to be insured for $250 million 


History[edit]
Geological beginnings[edit]

The Hope Diamond was formed deep within the Earth approximately 1.1 billion years ago.[22] Like all diamonds, it is formed when carbon atoms form strong bonds.[22] 

The Hope Diamond was originally embedded in a kimberlite and was later extracted and refined to form the brilliant gem it is today. The Hope Diamond contains trace amount of boron atoms intermixed with the carbon structure, which results in the rare blue color of the diamond.[22]

India[edit]

Tavernier's original sketch of the Tavernier Blue

Cubic zirconia replica of the Tavernier Blue

Several accounts, based on remarks written by the gem's first known owner, French gem merchant Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, suggest that the gemstone originated in India, in the Kollur mine in the Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh (which at the time was part of the Golconda kingdom), in the seventeenth century.[23][24][25]

 It is unclear who had initially owned the gemstone, where it had been found, by whom, and in what condition. But the first historical records suggest that Tavernier obtained the stone in the mid-1600s, possibly by purchase[12] or by theft.[17] 

CURSE OF THE DIAMOND 

The rulers of Bahminis  time is worst to hindus ,after 1565 after the victory of vijayanagara dynasty their temples are demolished a rama kovil was lootted ,by bahmini sultans the golden idol of sitadevi eye were plucked one eye blue diamond near bhatrachalam area. 

According to the legend, a curse befell the large, blue diamond when it was plucked (i.e. stolen) from an idol in India - a curse that foretold bad luck and death not only for the owner of the diamond but for all who touched it.



Tavernier brought to Paris a large uncut stone which was the first known precursor to the Hope Diamond. This large stone became known as the Tavernier Blue diamond. It was a crudely cut triangular shaped stone of 115 carats (23.0 g).[11] Another estimate is that it weighed 112.23 carats (22.446 g) before it was cut.[17] Tavernier's book, the Six Voyages (French: Les Six Voyages de J. B. Tavernier), contains sketches of several large diamonds that he sold to Louis XIV in possibly 1668[9] or 1669; while the blue diamond is shown among these,

 Tavernier mentions the mines at "Gani" Kollur as a source of colored diamonds, but made no direct mention of the stone. Historian Richard Kurin builds a highly speculative case for 1653 as the year of acquisition,[26] but the most that can be said with certainty is that Tavernier obtained the blue diamond during one of his five voyages to India between the years 1640 and 1667. One report suggests he took 25 diamonds to Paris, including the large rock which became the Hope, and sold all of them to King Louis XIV.[27]


For this transgression, according to the legend, Tavernier was torn apart by wild dogs on a trip to Russia (after he had sold the diamond).

 This was the first horrible death attributed to the curse. Another report suggested that in 1669, Tavernier sold this large blue diamond along with approximately one thousand other diamonds to King Louis XIV of France for 220,000 livres, the equivalent of 147 kilograms of pure gold.[11][28] In a newly published historical novel, 

The French Blue, gemologist and historian Richard W. Wise proposed that the patent of nobility granted Tavernier by Louis XIV was a part of the payment for the Tavernier Blue. 

 In 1642 a man by the name of Jean Baptiste Tavernier, a French jeweler who traveled extensively, visited India and bought a 112 3/16 carat blue diamond. (This diamond was much larger than the present weight of the Hope diamond because the Hope has been cut down at least twice in the past three centuries.) The diamond is believed to have come from the Kollur mine in Golconda, India.


Tavernier continued to travel and arrived back in France in 1668, 26 years after he bought the large, blue diamond. French King Louis XIV, the "Sun King," ordered Tavernier presented at court. From Tavernier, Louis XIV bought the large, blue diamond as well as 44 large diamonds and 1,122 smaller diamonds.

According to the theory, during that period Colbert, the King's Finance Minister, regularly sold offices and noble titles for cash, and an outright patent of nobility, according to Wise, was worth approximately 500,000 livres making a total of 720,000 livres, a price about half Tavernier's estimate of the gem's true value.[29]

 There has been some controversy regarding the actual weight of the stone; Morel believed that the 1123⁄16 carats[17] stated in Tavernier's invoice would be in old French carats, thus 115.28 metric carats.

Tavernier was made a noble and died at he age 84 in Russia (it is not known how he died).1According to Susanne Patch, author of Blue Mystery: The Story of the Hope Diamond, the shape of the diamond was unlikely to have been an eye (or on the forehead) of an idol.2


France[edit]

In 1678, Louis XIV commissioned the court jeweller, Sieur Pitau, to recut the Tavernier Blue, resulting in a 67.125-carat (13.4250 g) stone[8] which royal inventories thereafter listed as the Blue Diamond of the Crown of France (French: diamant bleu de la Couronne de France[30]). Later English-speaking historians have simply called it the French Blue. The king had the stone set on a cravat-pin.[31]

 According to one report, Louis ordered Pitau[32] to "make him a piece to remember", and Pitau took two years on the piece, resulting in a "triangular-shaped 69-carat gem the size of a pigeon's egg that took the breath away as it snared the light, reflecting it back in bluish-grey rays."[12] It was set in gold and was supported by a ribbon for the neck which was worn by the king during ceremonies.[8]

At the diamond's dazzling heart was a sun with seven facets – the sun being Louis' emblem, and seven being a number rich in meaning in biblical cosmology, indicating divinity and spirituality.

— report in Agence France-Presse, 2008[12]

Marie Antoinette before her public execution by guillotine on Place de la Révolution, on 16 October 1793

In 1749, Louis XIV's great-grandson, King Louis XV, had the French Blue set into a more elaborate jewelled pendant for the Order of the Golden Fleece by court jeweler André Jacquemin.[8] The assembled piece included a red spinel of 107 carats shaped as a dragon breathing "covetous flames", as well as 83 red-painted diamonds and 112 yellow-painted diamonds to suggest a fleece shape.[12]

The piece fell into disuse after the death of Louis XV. The diamond became the property of his grandson King Louis XVI.[11] 

whose wife, queen Marie Antoinette, used many of the French Crown Jewels for personal adornment by having the individual gems placed in new settings and combinations, but the French Blue remained in this pendant except for a brief time in 1787, when the stone was removed for scientific study by Mathurin Jacques Brisson, and returned to its setting soon thereafter.












Theft and disappearance[edit]

On September 11, 1792, while Louis XVI and his family were imprisoned in the Temple in the early stages of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, a group of thieves broke into the Royal Storehouse, the Hôtel du Garde-Meuble de la Couronne (now Hôtel de la Marine), and stole most of the Crown Jewels during a five-day looting spree.[12]

 While many jewels were later recovered, including other pieces of the Order of the Golden Fleece, the French Blue was not among them and it disappeared from history.[9] On 21 January 1793, Louis XVI was guillotined and Marie Antoinette was guillotined on 16 October of the same year: these beheadings are commonly cited as a result of the diamond's "curse", but the historical record suggests that Marie Antoinette had never worn the Golden Fleece pendant because it had been reserved for the exclusive use of the king.[citation needed]

A likely scenario is that the French Blue, sometimes also known as the Blue Diamond,[12] was "swiftly smuggled to London" after being seized in 1792 in Paris.[12] But the exact rock known as the French Blue was never seen again, since it almost certainly was recut during this decades-long period of anonymity,[12] probably into two pieces, and the larger one became the Hope Diamond. One report suggested that the cut was a "butchered job" because it sheared off 23.5 carats from the larger rock as well as hurting its "extraordinary lustre."[12]

 It had long been believed that the Hope Diamond had been cut from the French Blue[33] until confirmation finally happened when a three-dimensional leaden model of the latter was rediscovered in the archives of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris in 2005. Previously, the dimensions of the French Blue had been known only from two drawings made in 1749 and 1789; although the model slightly differs from the drawings in some details, these details are identical to features of the Hope Diamond, allowing CAD technology to digitally reconstruct the French Blue around the recut stone.[34][35]

 Historians suggested that one robber, Cadet Guillot, took several jewels, including the French Blue and the Côte-de-Bretagne spinel, to Le Havre and then to London, where the French Blue was cut in two pieces. Morel adds that in 1796, Guillot attempted to resell the Côte-de-Bretagne in France but was forced to relinquish it to fellow thief Lancry de la Loyelle, who put Guillot into debtors' prison.

In a contrasting report, historian Richard Kurin speculated that the "theft" of the French Crown Jewels was in fact engineered by the revolutionary leader Georges Danton as part of a plan to bribe an opposing military commander,

Duke Karl Wilhelm of Brunswick.

Duke Karl Wilhelm of Brunswick.[12]




















 When under attack by Napoleon in 1805, Karl Wilhelm may have had the French Blue recut to disguise its identity;

 Caroline of Brunswick

 in this form, the stone could have come to Britain in 1806, when his family fled there to join his daughter Caroline of Brunswick. 


















Although Caroline was the wife of the Prince Regent George (later George IV of the United Kingdom),

caroline of brunswick with Prince Regent George

 she lived apart from her husband, and financial straits sometimes forced her to quietly sell her own jewels to support her household.













Caroline's nephew, Duke Karl Friedrich, was later known to possess a 13.75-carat (2.750 g) blue diamond which was widely thought to be another piece of the French Blue. 

 Duke Karl Friedrich

This smaller diamond's present whereabouts are unknown, and the recent CAD reconstruction of the French Blue fits too tightly around the Hope Diamond to allow for the existence of a sister stone of that size.

FRANCE KING LOUIS XIV BORN 1638 SEPTEMBER 5 -RULED 72 YEARS

FRANCE KING LOUIS  XIV BORN

1638 SEPTEMBER 5 -RULED 72 YEARS 

“L’État, c’est moi” (“I am the State”).“Roi-Soleil” (“Sun King”)

LOUIS XIV 

The reign of France’s Louis XIV (1638-1718), known as the Sun King, lasted for 72 years, longer than that of any other known European sovereign. In that time, he transformed the monarchy, ushered in a golden age of art and literature, presided over a dazzling royal court at Versailles, annexed key territories and established his country as the dominant European power. 

During the final decades of Louis XIV’s rule, France was weakened by several lengthy wars that drained its resources and the mass exodus of its Protestant population following the king’s revocation of the Edict of Nantes.




EARLY LIFE AND REIGN OF LOUIS XIV

Born on September 5, 1638, to King Louis XIII of France (1601-1643) and his Habsburg queen, Anne of Austria (1601-1666), the future Louis XIV was his parents’ first child after 23 years of marriage;

 in recognition of this apparent miracle, he was christened Louis-Dieudonné, meaning “gift of God.” A younger brother, Philippe (1640-1701), followed two years later. 

When the king died on May 14, 1643, 4-year-old Louis inherited the crown of a fractured, unstable and nearly insolvent France. After orchestrating the annulment of Louis XIII’s will, which had appointed a regency council to rule on the young king’s behalf, Anne served as sole regent for her son, assisted by her chief minister and close confidant, the Italian-born Cardinal Jules Mazarin (1602-1661).
?
 the Palace of Versailles, aristocrats were expected to compete for the privilege of watching Louis XIV wake up, eat meals and prepare for bed.

During the early years of Louis XIV’s reign, Anne and Mazarin introduced policies that further consolidated the monarchy’s power, angering nobles and members of the legal aristocracy. 

Beginning in 1648, their discontent erupted into a civil war known as the Fronde, which forced the royal family to flee Paris and instilled a lifelong fear of rebellion in the young king. Mazarin suppressed the revolt in 1653 and by decade’s end had restored internal order and negotiated a peace treaty with Hapsburg Spain, making France a leading European power. The following year, 22-year-old Louis married his first cousin Marie-Thérèse (1638-1683), daughter of King Philip IV of Spain. 

A diplomatic necessity more than anything else, the union produced six children, of whom only one, Louis (1661-1711), survived to adulthood. (A number of illegitimate offspring resulted from Louis XIV’s affairs with a string of official and unofficial mistresses.)

LOUIS XIV ASSUMES CONTROL OF FRANCE

After Mazarin’s death in 1661, Louis XIV broke with tradition and astonished his court by declaring that he would rule without a chief minister. He viewed himself as the direct representative of God, endowed with a divine right to wield the absolute power of the monarchy. 

To illustrate his status, he chose the sun as his emblem and cultivated the image of an omniscient and infallible “Roi-Soleil” (“Sun King”) around whom the entire realm orbited. While some historians question the attribution, Louis is often remembered for the bold and infamous statement “L’État, c’est moi” (“I am the State”).











Immediately after assuming control of the government, Louis worked tirelessly to centralize and tighten control of France and its overseas colonies. His finance minister, 

Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683), implemented reforms that sharply reduced the deficit and fostered the growth of industry, while his war minister, the Marquis de Louvois (1641-1691), expanded and reorganized the French army. 

Louis also managed to pacify and disempower the historically rebellious nobles, who had fomented no less than 11 civil wars in four decades, by luring them to his court and habituating them to the opulent lifestyle there.

THE ARTS AND THE ROYAL COURT UNDER LOUIS XIV

A hard-working and meticulous ruler who oversaw his programs down to the last detail, Louis XIV nevertheless appreciated art, literature, music, theater and sports. He surrounded himself with some of the greatest artistic and intellectual figures of his time, including the playwright Molière (1622-1673), the painter Charles Le Brun (1619-1690) and the composer Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687). He also appointed himself patron of the Académie Française, the body that regulates the French language, and established various institutes for the arts and sciences.

To accommodate his retinue of newly devoted nobles (and, perhaps, to distance himself from the population of Paris), Louis built several lavish châteaux that depleted the nation’s coffers while drawing accusations of extravagance. Most famously, he transformed a royal hunting lodge in Versailles, a village 25 miles southwest of the capital, into one of the largest palaces in the world, officially moving his court and government there in 1682. 

It was against this awe-inspiring backdrop that Louis tamed the nobility and impressed foreign dignitaries, using entertainment, ceremony and a highly codified system of etiquette to assert his supremacy. Versailles’ festive atmosphere dissipated to some extent when Louis came under the influence of the pious and orderly Marquise de Maintenon (1635-1719), who had served as his illegitimate children’s governess; the two wed in a private ceremony approximately one year after the death of Queen Marie-Thérèse in 1683.

LOUIS XIV AND FOREIGN POLICY

In 1667 Louis XIV launched the War of Devolution (1667-1668), the first in a series of military conflicts that characterized his aggressive approach to foreign policy, by invading the Spanish Netherlands, which he claimed as his wife’s inheritance. Under pressure from the English, Swedish and especially the Dutch, France retreated and returned the region to Spain, gaining only some frontier towns in Flanders. 

This unsatisfactory outcome led to the Franco-Dutch War (1672-1678), in which France acquired more territory in Flanders as well as the Franche-Compté. Now at the height of his powers and influence, Louis established “chambers of reunion” to annex disputed cities and towns along France’s border through quasi-legal means.

France’s position as the dominant power on the continent—coupled with a colonial presence that burgeoned under Louis XIV—was perceived as a threat by other European nations, including England, the Holy Roman Empire and Spain. In the late 1680s, responding to yet another spate of expansionist campaigns by Louis’ armies, they and several smaller countries formed a coalition known as the Grand Alliance. The ensuing war, fought on both hemispheres, lasted from 1688 to 1697; 

France emerged with most of its territory intact but its resources severely strained. More disastrous for Louis XIV was the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), in which the aging king defended his grandson Philip V’s inheritance of Spain and its empire. The long conflict plunged a famine-ridden France into massive debt, turning public opinion against the crown.

LOUIS XIV AND RELIGION

It was not only decades of warfare that weakened both France and its monarch during the latter half of Louis XIV’s reign. In 1685, the devoutly Catholic king revoked the Edict of Nantes, issued by his grandfather Henry IV in 1598, which had granted freedom of worship and other rights to French Protestants (known as Huguenots).

 With the Edict of Fontainebleau, Louis ordered the destruction of Protestant churches, the closure of Protestant schools and the expulsion of Protestant clergy. Protestants would be barred from assembling and their marriages would be deemed invalid. Baptism and education in the Catholic faith would be required of all children.

Roughly 1 million Huguenots lived in France at the time, and many were artisans or other types of skilled workers. Although emigration of Protestants was explicitly forbidden by the Edict of Fontainebleau, scores of people—estimates range from 200,000 to 800,000—fled in the decades that followed, settling in England, 

Switzerland, Germany and the American colonies, among other places. Louis XIV’s act of religious zeal—advised, some have suggested, by the Marquise de Maintenon—had cost the country a valuable segment of its labor force while drawing the ire of its Protestant neighbors.

DEATH OF LOUIS XIV

On September 1, 1715, four days before his 77th birthday, Louis XIV died of gangrene at Versailles. His reign had lasted 72 years, longer than that of any other known European monarch, and left an indelible mark on the culture, history and destiny of France. His 5-year-old grandson succeeded him as Louis XV.