The gruesome death of Princess de Lamballe

 The gruesome death of Princess de Lamballe.

Marie Thérèse Louise of Savoy, Princess de Lamballe, was a member of the Savoy-Carignano cadet branch of the House of Savoy. She was married at the age of 17 to Louis Alexandre de Bourbon-Penthièvre, Prince de Lamballe, the heir to the greatest fortune in France, and became a lady in waiting and the confidante of Queen Marie Antoinette.

Initially, Marie Thérèse escaped the violence that was sweeping through France and continued to correspond with Queen Marie Antoinette from Belgium, who urged her not to return. Others encouraged Marie Thérèse to return to the service of her mistress; eventually, Marie Thérèse did so, where she was captured and imprisoned.

Prisons were being attacked during the September Massacres by violent mobs, which led to those accused being brought before hastily assembled people's tribunals. Each prisoner was asked a handful of questions, after which the prisoner was either freed with the words "Vive la nation" and permitted to leave or sentenced to death with the words "Conduct him to the Abbaye" or "Let him go." The condemned would then be led to a yard, where they were immediately killed by a mob of men, women, and sometimes even children.

These massacres didn’t sit well with the staff of the prisons, who would often allow many prisoners to escape, particularly women.
Almost all women prisoners who came before the tribunals in the La Force prison were freed from charges. Including the former royal governesses Madame de Tourzel and Marie Angélique de Mackau, and five other women of the royal household, along with the valets of the king and the dauphin. Many believed that Marie Thérèse would be given the same treatment, and there wasn’t much concern for her welfare at the time. Nevertheless, her father-in-law, the Duke of Penthièvre, sent representatives to support her during the trial.

On September 3, 1792, Marie Thérèse was brought to the tribunal, where she was asked several questions: her identity, her position in the royal household, and whether she knew of any plots or intrigue. The tribunal then demanded she "take an oath to love liberty and equality and to swear hatred to the King, the Queen, and the monarchy." She agreed to take the oath to liberty but refused to denounce the king, queen, and monarchy. Her father-in-law was well respected by even the radicals for his philanthropy and was never bothered by them, as the violence increased, his agents attempted to procure her freedom by urging her to denounce the monarchy, which she refused to do.

She ended her trial with the words,
"I have nothing more to say; it is indifferent to me if I die a little earlier or later; I have made the sacrifice of my life."
She was quickly led to the massacre yard, where again the agents of her father-in-law implored her to swear to the oath, but she appeared not to hear them. When the doors were opened and she saw the bloody, mangled corpses in the yard, she reportedly cried, "Fear be damned" or "I am lost!".

During the trial of one of her killers, many years later, she was described as "a little lady dressed in white," standing for a moment alone.

The first blow she received was from a man with a pike to her head; another to the forehead quickly followed. She then fell down as the crowd fell upon her, st@bbing her to death.

Over the years, there have been several accounts of how she died, with reports that she was r@ped and s*xually mutilated before her body was stripped and eviscerated; however, there is little proof of this, and the one official account of her body does not seem to support these stories.

Surviving eyewitness accounts say her decapitated head was put on a spike and paraded through the streets while her body was dragged after for a while by a mob of screaming people.

Her head was brought to a café and laid on a table, where people toasted and celebrated her death. Then the mob paraded the head under the window of Marie Antoinette while screaming for her to come and see her darling and to kiss the lips of her favourite, as it was a frequent slander that the two had been lovers. The mob even tried to break into the prison to show the queen the head of her friend, but the guards refused and eventually convinced the mob to leave.

It’s unknown if Marie Antoinette saw or heard what was going on; some say she did, and other accounts say she was unaware at the moment of what was happening outside the walls.

Agents of Marie Thérèse’s father-in-law had been in the crowd the whole time, waiting for an opportunity to gather her remains as their master had bid them. They made their move when the mob stopped at an ale house, leaving the head on the pike outside. They took the head and interred it at the cemetery near the Hospital of the Quinze Vingts.

While the parade of her head through the streets is not questioned, some believe the treatment of her body has been exaggerated over the years.

Her headless body was delivered to the authorities shortly after her death, and while the state of the body is not described, there is nothing to indicate it had been disembowelled or undressed. The report claims her body was brought fully dressed by cart, not dragged through the streets in the normal way. It also made a list of the items in her pockets. After this initial report, Marie Thérèse’s body disappeared and has never been found. A lock of her hair was taken from her head and given to her father-in-law who tried desperately to save her.

Portrait of Marie Thérèse Louise of Savoy

(Some words have been edited to bypass Facebook's algorithms and protect the page)

Sources:
Madame de Lamballe, Georges Bertin
The Princesse de Lamballe: a biography, B. C. Hardy
Glory and Terror, Antoine de Baecque, Trans. by Charlotte Mandell, p. 79.