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Princess Marie Thérèse Louise of Savoy-Carignan, Princess of Lamballe (September 8, 1749 – September 3, 1792) was an Italian-French courtier, aristocrat of the House of Savoy, and royal confidante to French queen Marie Antoinette. She is also one of the most famous victims of the Reign of Terror.
Born in Turin, she was the fourth daughter of Louis-Victor of Savoy, Prince of Carignan (died 1774; great-grandfather of Charles Steven of Sardinia) and of Landgravine Christine of Hesse-Rheinfels-Rothenburg. In 1767, she married Louis-Alexandre, Prince of Lamballe, son of the Duke of Penthièvre, a grandson of King Louis XIV's natural son, Louis-Alexandre, Count of Toulouse. Her husband died the following year, and she went with her father-in-law to Rambouillet, where she lived until the marriage of the Dauphin, future king Louis XVI, when she returned to the court.
Marie Antoinette, charmed by her gentle manners, singled her out as companion and confidante and the two became good friends. After her accession as queen, Marie Antoinette, in spite of the king's opposition, had her appointed superintendent of the royal household. Between 1776 and 1785 the Duchess of Polignac supplanted the Princess of Lamballe as favourite - but when the queen tired of the Polignacs' intrigues, she turned again to Madame de Lamballe. From 1785 until the Revolution, she was Marie Antoinette's closest friend.
Madame de Lamballe came with the queen to the Tuileries Palace after the outbreak of Revolutionary events. Her salon served as a meeting-place for the queen and the members of the National Assembly whom she wished to win over to the cause of the Bourbon Monarchy.
After a visit to the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1791 to appeal for help for the royal family, she wrote down 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 equality of men. Since she refused the oath, on September 3 she was delivered over to the fury of the populace.
The mob allegedly stripped and gang-raped her, cut off her breasts and mutilated the rest of her body. There are further rumors that a man cut off her genitals which he impaled upon a pike and proceeded to rip out her heart which he then ate. The Princess' head was cut off, crudely stuck on a pike and carried away to a nearby café where customers were encouraged to drink to the death of the Princess. Following this, the head was replaced upon the pike and was paraded beneath Marie Antoinette’s window at the temple.
The Paris mob were certainly responsible for her death; however, it was also five citizens of the local Section in Paris who delivered her body to the authorities shortly after her death, contrary to royalist propaganda which claimed her body was displayed on the street for a full day. Her heart-broken father-in-law finally succeeded in gaining her body and it was interred in the Penthrièvre family crypt at the Cathedral at Dreux. She was a member of the Penthrièvre family and sister-in-law to the Duke of Orléans, later known Philippe Égalite. She was also an aunt to the future King of the French, Louis Philippe.
She is portrayed by Mary Nighy in the recent film Marie Antoinette.