Princess Lamballe was Queen Marie-Antoinette’s close friend, who was put to death during the Révolution. After reading about her terrible execution, I decided to follow her bouncing severed head from book to book.
First bounce: Cléry’s Journal de ce qui s'est passé à la tour du Temple pendant la captivité de Louis XVI Roi de France (Londres, 1798).*
Cléry was serving Louis XVI during his incarceration at the Temple prison in Paris. On September 3, 1793, he was having dinner with the warden and his wife: “We had just seated when a head stuck on a spade appeared at the window. The warden’s wife screamed; the murderers thought it was the Queen’s voice, and we could hear the frenetic laughter of the barbarians. Assuming His Majesty was having diner, they displayed their trophy so it couldn’t be missed; it was Princess Lamballe’s head; although covered with blood it wasn’t disfigured; her blonde and curly hair was floating around the spade.” Cléry saw the head again a few minutes later: “Looking through the window, I saw Princess Lamballe’s head for the second time; the man who carried it was standing on the debris of the houses that had been destroyed to isolate the Temple. Another man next to him, was waving his sword with the heart of this unfortunate princess stuck at the point of it.” She was close to Marie-Antoinette yet Lamballe was never involved in politics. Authoritative French historian Michelet writes: “We know the kind Princess had little conversation, and no idea whatsoever; she was somehow boring. She was a nice woman, and a mediocre one; born to be depending on someone, to obey, suffer and die.”
Second bounce: Hue’s Dernieres années du règne et de la vie de Louis XVI (Paris, 1814). **
Hue also served Louis XVI at the Temple prison. Lamballe used to sleep in the room below his at the Temple for a while. “Her head,” he says, “was stuck on a spade and carried around town and then under the windows of the Temple. Her dead body was dragged in the streets.” Does it sound ugly? Well, third bounce:
Mercier’s Le Nouveau Paris (Paris, 1790).*** Lamballe’s last moment: as she was about to be carried outside the courtroom, “several voices raised in the room, begging for mercy; there was a moment of general silence, and the murderers froze for a while—and suddenly hit her several times! She fell in a pool of her own blood, and they cut off her head, her breasts; her body was opened up, her heart was torn away; they stuck her head on a pike and they took it around Paris, dragging her body behind them. One of those monsters cut her genitals off, and wore them as a moustache.”
** www.rarebookhub.com/articles/3613
*** rarebookhub.com/articles/3843
Fourth bounce: Mme Guénard’s Mémoires historiques de la Princess de Lamballe. Got a copy of the 4th edition, printed in Paris in 1815—just as Monarchy had been temporarily restored.
It’s a 2-volume book that comes with a frontispiece showing the reputedly beautiful princess with her blonde hair. The early part of her life is indeed quite tedious—let’s jump to the conclusion. Lamballe is 40. Her rich father in law, the Duke of Penthièvre, has bribed several people among those who attend her trial—he wants to save her. As she’s stepping outside to be executed, they advise her to shout: “Vive la nation!” Had she compiled, she was saved. But she steps into a pool of fresh blood at this precise moment, and takes a glimpse at the piled fresh corpses in the yard: “What an abomination!” she cries. Miss Guénard (a.k.a Élisabeth Brossin de Méré) writes: “The crowd mistook this cry for her rejection of the nation. She looked around her, realized what was going on and whispered: “I’m lost.” Those were her last words.” She faints as they drag her into the yard, where her father in law’s satellites beg for her mercy—and almost obtain it. But during this fleeting moment, “one of the monsters decided to (...) take off her hat with the point of his sword. But as he was drunk, as they all were, he bruised her above her eyebrow and her blood spilled as her beautiful blonde hair were falling on her shoulder.” It sparks things off. “The said Charlat hit her with a log, and then twenty cannibals finished her off with their spades.” Her body is thrown at the corner of Rue St Antoine, where the “cannibals” tear her clothes off. She’s a beautiful woman, and an unreachable one for the men, who are now revenging on her sexual attributes... including her hair. “How can I write that the said Grison severed the head from this beautiful body; this charming head he took to a nearby wine seller and dropped it on the counter, forcing the owner to drink with him and his sad fellows. Shall I depict the same Grison, cutting off a breast that had remained so perfectly shaped? Or Charlat, disembowelling her body to tear off her heart, and taking it to the same wine seller? The poor man was unable to hide his repulse, and they dragged him outside, threw him onto a pile of corpses and forced him to shout: Vive la nation!” Miss Guénard doesn’t mention it but our jolly old fellows then went to a hairdresser, whom they forced to prepare the severed head. The poor man washed its hair and powdered its face. That’s why Cléry says that the head, “although covered with blood (...), wasn’t disfigured.”
What kind of world is that? Had all the people of Paris turned mad? Actually, most of them were like our poor hairdresser: horrified NPCs (non playable characters) in a wicked game played by “sixty to eighty individuals on the payroll of the most horrible men.” Indeed, this wild bunch was constituted of nine men only, when it reached the Temple. The guards refused to let them in although the mob had started to gather around. So after a while, they left the stick head on the gate the Palais Royal—the Duc d’Orléans, who had plotted against his cousin Louis XVI from the start, was inside. He saw Lamballe’s head and whispered: “Had she listened to me, this wouldn’t have happened.” Off they went, dragging Lamballe’s remains through Paris for hours. Penthièvre’s satellites followed them all the way, trying to retrieve the body from them. “But those monsters kept an eye on their prey like fierce animals,” Guénard says. In Les Halles, a butcher named Allègre “chopped the heart and offered it to the mob. Everybody volunteered to eat it. “It will be eaten by the dogs, then!” That’s when Lamballe’s humiliated body was finally thrown into a common pit, where “it was never possible to identify it.” It was then carried away with hundreds of unknown corpses to the plain of Mont-Rouge, outside Paris, where it was buried. Last bounce? Well...
Last bounce: the footnote of the last page of Miss Guénard’s book.
One of Penthièvre’s satellites followed the “cannibals”, “until they threw the princess’ remains on a pile of corpses, near Châtelet; he got hold of the Princess’ head, but couldn’t identify her body. He secretly kept the head at his place for 24 hours before taking it to Vernon, where the Duke of Penthièvre placed it in his family tomb.” But there’s a last bounce: “I give more details about it in my biography of the Duke of Penthièvre, to be found at Lerouge’s, bookseller in the Rue du commerce.” I felt sick at that point, and let this blonde hair go its way, feeling as if it was bound to bounce forever and ever, from street to street, book to book... The bloody curse of Princess Lamballe.
Thibault Ehrengardt
