Madame Guillotine

Sometimes there seems to be so many portraits of someone that you start to wonder if they ever found time to do anything other than do sittings. The Princesse de Lamballe is a good example of this although I often wonder if many of the paintings that claim to be of her are in fact erroneously attributed.

The Princesse was born Maria Theresa Luigia di Savoia-Carignano in Turin on the 8th September 1749 to Luigi Vittorio di Savoia-Carignano, Principe di Carignano and his German wife Christine Henriette of Hesse-Rheinfels-Rotenburg. She was a cousin of the Savoyard royal family, which included the future Comtesses de Provence and Artois. Therefore this Princesse, who is often regarded as the ultimate French aristocrat was actually half Italian and half German.

She was married by proxy on the 31st January 1767 to Louis-Alexandre de Bourbon, Prince de Lamballe, the only son of the Duc de Penthièvre and great grandson of Louis XIV and Athénaïs de Montespan. The young prince was a dissolute libertine and died shortly after their marriage, presumably of venereal disease, leaving the unfortunate Princesse a widow at the age of nineteen and seemingly scarred for life by her short experience of the marital bed.

The painting above depicts the Princesse de Lamballe at the centre of her husband’s family, with her sister-in-law, the future Duchesse d’Orléans standing behind her.

The Princesse remained in France after her husband’s death and devoted herself to good works at the side of her father-in-law, who was a noted philanthropist. She became well known at court for being excessively virtuous and nervous and also rather prudish as well. She was pretty and had beautiful long blonde hair but was too prim to be of interest to Louis XV although he welcomed her into the fringes of his family.

Of course it must have helped that her husband had left her an enormous fortune at his death, which effectively made her one of the wealthiest women in France along with her sister-in-law.

Without a husband, the Princesse had no real role at court until the arrival of Marie Antoinette in May 1770. She was present at all of the festivities and the two young girls soon became great friends, no doubt linked by taste, their rather retiring personalities and also the dissatisfactory nature of their experiences of married life. I can imagine Marie Antoinette complaining to Madame de Lamballe about the Dauphin’s apparent lack of interest in her and poor Lamballe thinking that she should consider herself lucky not to be married to some awful libertine.

Wishing to keep her interesting and tragic new friend close, Marie Antoinette had her appointed Superintendent of the her Household, which was the highest rank of lady in waiting at court. It was a role that required an encylopedic knowledge of etiquette, good manners and also wealth, as the Superintendent was expected to entertain the other ladies of the court. In fact there were often complaints that Madame de Lamballe did not entertain enough, leaving the ladies who visited only on Sundays bored and kicking their heels around Versailles with nothing to do when there should have been a ball.

I am not sure that this portrait depicts Lamballe although it is often said to do so. She was so incredibly prudish that I think a flash of nipple would have been anathema to her. This didn’t stop people claiming that she and Marie Antoinette were lesbian lovers, of course but it is doubtful that anyone actually believed such nonsense.

After the arrival at court of the far more exciting and interesting Duchesse de Polignac with her card parties, lovers and airs and tantrums, Marie Antoinette began to go off the Princesse de Lamballe and considered her rather boring in comparison.

However, the Polignacs escaped France immediately after the fall of the Bastille in July 1789, while the Princesse de Lamballe remained loyally at the Queen’s side, accompanying her to the Tuileries in October 1789. Just as Marie Antoinette grew in character and nobility during the early years of the Revolution, at the same time she grew to fully appreciate the loyalty and essential goodness of the Princesse and also her own sister-in-law, Madame Élisabeth.

In 1791, the Princesse travelled to London to appeal for help for the royal family and drum up support for them. It was not her first visit to England – she had previously stayed at the Royal Crescent in Bath. Uncertain of her success, she returned to Paris despite knowing that this would result in personal danger to herself and went again to the side of her Queen. When the Tuileries were taken on 10th August 1792, she was arrested with the rest of the royal family and their attendants and taken to the Temple prison.

On the 19th August, the Princesse and the royal governess, Madame la Duchesse de Tourzel were separated from the royal family and taken to the La Force prison in the Marais district of Paris, close to the Rue des Francs-Bourgeois. They were not to remain there for long as on the 3rd September, both women and Madame de Tourzel’s young daughter, Pauline were brought in front of a hastily put together tribunal. Madame de Tourzel escaped with her life but the Princesse de Lamballe was less fortunate.

The drawing above is said to show the Princesse on the day of her death. The details of what happened are not clear as there is much rumour and conjecture about the events of that day but what is clear is that the Princesse was sent from the tribunal into the hands of the mob, whereupon she was struck down and decapitated before her head was stuck on a pike and paraded through the streets. There were reports that she was also raped, tortured and hideously mutilated but this may not be true as five citizens who were present at her death delivered her fully clothed albeit headless body to the authorities and there was no mention in the official records of any obvious mutilations.

The mob took the pike with her head on it to the Temple, in the hopes of showing it to Marie Antoinette. However, the prison authorities were warned in advance of their fell intentions and closed the shutters so that the royal family would be spared the dreadful sight. Upon learning of the awful fate that had befallen her friend, Marie Antoinette fainted clean away – both horrified and also no doubt frightened for herself and her family now that it was proved that sex and rank were no protection at all from the brutality of the mob.

A photograph, taken in September 2007 of the site where La Force used to stand on the corner of the Rue Pavée and the Rue de Roi de Sicile and the possible spot where the Princesse de Lamballe met her end. It is possibly a bit morbid of me to seek out this sort of thing but it is a little bit interesting, non?