Our story starts with the 17th century trader and adventurer Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, who purchased a 115 carat blue diamond on his travels in India: probably at the old diamond workings at Kollur, in the modern Indian Province of Andhra Pradesh. He returned to France and sold that gem to Louis XIV for the sum of 220,000 livres of French money, the equivalent today of 147 kilograms of pure gold (plus, it is rumored, a patent of nobility, the cost of which was approximately 400-500,000 livres at the time. The Video displays a French Blue Diamond, Cubic Zirconia Replica, Blue Topaz Color - Were you aware of the French Blue Diamond prior to this survey?

In 1749 Louis XV had the stone reset as part of the great ceremonial insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece (Toison d'Or), along with the Côte de Bretagne spinel (a red stone, cut into the shape of a dragon) and the Bazu diamond. The Medal of the Order of The Golden Fleece with (top to bottom) The Bazu Diamond, The Côte de Bretagne spinel and The French Blue diamond. Then came the French Revolution. After the insurrection of 10 August 1792, the French Crown Jewels were confiscated from King Louis XVI by the revolutionaries of the French National Assembly and deposited in the royal storehouse known as the Garde-Meuble.On the morning of 17 September 1792, three commisioners at the Garde Meuble discovered a robbery had taken place there the previous night. Thieves had climbed up the building's colonnade facing the Place Louis XV and gained access through a window. Once inside, they had broken the seals on eleven cabinets containing the Royal Crown Jewels, as well as the State and coronation regalia. Were you aware of the theft of the French Crown Jewels?

Marat discerned a counter-revolutionary plot to undermine government finances. Danton himself was widely suspected of orchestrating the theft in order to bribe the Duke of Brunswick. In 1805 the Duke of Brunswick supposedly had the diamond recut and then took it with him when he fled to England in 1806 to join his daughter Caroline, the wife of George IV. The only slightly tempting piece of evidence is that Caroline's nephew, Duke Karle Friedrich, is known to have possessed a 13.75-caret blue diamond. This was widely thought to have been a piece of the French Blue, but recent research has disproved this. The thief who had taken the Golden Fleece, a man named Cadet Guillot, had left Paris and traveled to Le Havre and then to London. What happened next is unclear. At some point the Toison d'Or was broken up and the diamonds sold. In 1796 Guillot returned to the Continent but fell foul of one of his fellow-conspirators and was consigned to a debtors' prison. The French Blue disappeared from sight. Do you think an exiled French Aristocrat did buy it in secret?

Napoleon Bonaparte, now in power, became determined to track down the missing French Crown Jewels. He offered rewards for any information that would lead to their recovery. It is likely that the Bleu Du Roi was recut at this time, in an attempt to disguise it. Did you know that Napoleon did recover many of the French Crown Jewels but did not succeed in finding the infamous French Blue Diamond?