Princess Élisabeth of France

Who was Princess Élisabeth of France?

Élisabeth of France (3 May 1764 – 10 May 1794), known as Madame Élisabeth, was a French princess and the youngest sister of King Louis XVI. During the French Revolution, she remained beside the king and his family and was executed at Place de la Révolution in Paris during the Terror.

Élisabeth was born on 3 May 1764 in the Palace of Versailles in France, the youngest child of Louis, Dauphin of France, and his wife, Marie-Josèphe of Saxony. Her paternal grandparents were King Louis XV of France and his consort, Queen Maria Leszczyńska. As the granddaughter of the king, she was a Petite-Fille de France. Her maternal grandparents were King Augustus III of Poland, also the Elector of Saxony, and his wife, the Archduchess Maria Josepha, daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph I.

She was raised by Marie Louise de Rohan, comtesse de Marsan and Governess of the Children of France and sister of the Prince of Soubise. She was given a good education. A skillful rider, she was also interested in art; several of her drawings are preserved in the museum of the Château de Versailles.

Élisabeth was deeply religious. She was devoted to her brother the king, and refused to marry (as it would have been to a foreign prince) so that she might remain in France: in 1777, a marriage was suggested to Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, but she declined with her brother's consent.

Élisabeth and her brother Charles-Philippe, comte d'Artois, were the staunchest conservatives in the royal family. Unlike Artois, who, on the order of the king, left France on 17 July 1789, three days after the storming of the Bastille, Élisabeth refused to emigrate when the gravity of the events set forth by the French Revolution became clear. After the march of women to Versailles on 5 October 1789, and the transfer of the royal family to the Tuileries Palace in Paris, she remained with the king and his family, rather than with her aunts, Madame Adélaïde and Madame Victoire, at the château de Bellevue, near Paris. She corresponded with the exiled comte d'Artois, and one of her letters, in which she expressed her view that a foreign intervention by the exiled French royalists and foreign monarchies was necessary to restore the old regime, was intercepted by the National Assembly. She was loyal to the royal couple, but was more unyielding toward any compromises in the limitation of the powers of the Church and the monarchy.

In February 1791, she chose not to emigrate with her aunts Adélaïde and Victoire, but accompanied the royal family on its unsuccessful escape attempt of 20 June 1791, which was stopped at Varennes. During the storming of the Tuileries Palace, she showed herself to the crowd, who mistook her for the queen.

On 10 August 1792, when insurgents attacked the Tuileries, she followed the king and his family, seeking refuge at the Legislative Assembly, where she witnessed, later on in the day, her brother's dethronement. The whole family was transferred to the Temple Tower three days later. After the execution of the former king on 21 January 1793 and the separation of her nephew, the young "Louis XVII" from the rest of the family on 3 July, Élisabeth was left with Marie Antoinette, and Marie-Thérèse Charlotte, Madame Royale, in their apartment in the Tower. The former queen was taken to the Conciergerie on 2 August 1793, and executed on 16 October. Marie Antoinette's last letter, written in the early hours of the day of her execution, was addressed to Élisabeth, but never reached her. Élisabeth and Marie-Thérèse were kept in ignorance of Marie Antoinette's death.

Her body was buried in a common grave at the Errancis Cemetery in Paris. At the time of the Restoration, her brother Louis XVIII searched for her remains, only to discover that the bodies interred there had decomposed to a state where they could no longer be identified . Élisabeth's remains, with that of other victims of the guillotine, were later placed in the Catacombs of Paris. A...