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Mid_cdc_the_princess_de_lamballe.jpg
Marie Thérèse Louise de Savoie-Carignan, princesse de Lamballe (September 8, 1749 - September 3, 1792), was one of the best-known victims of the French Revolution.
The fourth daughter of Louis Victor of Carignano (d. 1774) (great-grandfather of Charles Albert of Sardinia), and of Christine Henriette of Hesse-Rheinfels-Rothenburg, she was born at Turin. In 1767 she married Louis Alexandre Stanislaus de Bourbon, prince of Lamballe, son of the duke of Penthièvre, a grandson of Louis XIV's natural son, Louis Alexandre, comte de Toulouse. Her husband died the following year, and she went with her father-in-law to Rambouilet, where she lived until the marriage of the dauphin, when she returned to court.
Marie Antoinette, charmed by her gentle and naïve manners, singled her out as companion and confidante. The two became fast friends. After her accession Marie Antoinette, in spite of the king's opposition, had her appointed superintendent of the royal household. Between 1776 and 1785 the comtesse de Polignac supplanted the princesse de Lamballe as favourite; but when the queen tired of the avarice of the Polignacs, she turned again to Madame de Lamballe. From 1785 to the Revolution she was Marie Antoinette's closest friend and the pliant instrument of her caprices. She came with the queen to the Tuileries. As her salon served as a meeting-place for the queen and the members of the National Assembly whom she wished to win over, the people believed her to be the source of all the intrigues.
After a visit to England in 1791 to appeal for help for the royal family she made her will and returned to the Tuileries, where she continued her services to the queen until August 10, when she shared her imprisonment in the Temple. On August 19, she was transferred to La Force for refusing to take the oath against the monarchy, however she had agreed to preach the freedom and legality of the men. Since she refused the oath, on September 3, she was delivered over to the fury of the populace. The mob beat her, gang raped her, beheaded her, then dismembered her and cut off her breasts and mutilated her genitalia. After these acts, the body parts were all placed on a pike and carried before the windows of the queen.
References
- George Bertin, Madame de Lamballe (Paris, 1888)
- Austin Dobson, Four Frenchwomen (1890)
- BC Hardy, Princesse de Lamballe (1908)
- Comte de Lescure, La Princesse de Lamballe d'après des documents inédits (1864)
- some letters of the princess published by Ch. Schmidt in La Revolution française (vol. xxxix., 1900); L Lambeau, Essais sur la mort de madame la princesse de Lamballe (1902)
- Sir F Montefiore, The Princesse de Lamballe (1896).
- The Secret Memoirs of the Royal Family of France ... now first published from the Journal, Letters and Conversations of the Princesse de Lamballe (London, 2 vols., 1826) have since appeared in various editions in English and in French. They are attributed to Catherine Flyde, Marchioness Govion-Broglio-Solari, and are apocryphal.de:Marie Thérèse Louise von Savoyen-Carignan