The painting of the Duc de Choiseul reminded me of my webpage about his niece, who was guillotined during the Terror and was in fact one of the very last victims.
Françoise-Thérèse de Choiseul-Stainville, Princesse Joséph de Monaco is one of my personal obsessions. She is one of those historical figures that one will glean random odd facts about from different sources but who will never get her own book. One is always left looking for more. Françoise-Thérèse was the daughter of Jacques Philippe de Choiseul, Comte de Stainville and his wife, Thérèse de Clermont d'Amboise who married on 3 April 1761 in Paris. Jacques was the younger brother of the powerful Duc de Choiseul, advisor to Louis XV while Thérèse was the daughter of the Marquis de Reynel. The match produced two daughters: Marie-Stéphanie on 10 November 1763 and Françoise-Thérèse on 8 December 1766. The marriage was not a happy one and both parties were unfaithful - the Comte de Stainville, as was the custom of the time got away with this but Madame la Comtesse was found out, disgraced and immured in a convent, where she eventually died as a social pariah.
(Painting of the disgraced Madame de Stainville with her sister in law Béatrix, Duchesse de Gramont and the Duc de Biron.)
The two Stainville girls were sent to convent school at this time although rumours abounded that the younger was not the daughter of the Comte, which may explain why the Choiseul family took little interest in her, led by the fearsome Béatrix, Duchesse de Gramont, who was the favourite sister of the Duc de Choiseul and ruled the rest of the family with an iron fist. The only exception to the cold shouldering was her aunt by marriage, the Duchesse de Choiseul who was extremely fond of her, probably because she was just as ignored by the Choiseul family due to her mercantile origins.
(The Duchesse de Choiseul.)
The rumours about Françoise's parentage did nothing to deter suitors and on 6 April 1782 she was married to Joseph Grimaldi, son of Honoré III Grimaldi, Prince de Monaco and Mary Catherine Brignole-Sale, which was a brilliant match. The young couple were extremely fond of each other and had three daughters: Honorine, born on 22 April 1784; Athénaïs, born on 22 June 1786 and Delphine, born on 22 June 1788.
Françoise emigrated after the initial outbreak of the Revolution in 1789 and travelled Italy with her friend Aimée de Coigny, Duchesse de Fleury. She met with the famous artist Vigée-Lebrun, who admired her sweet expression and became great friends with Emma Hamilton when they met in Naples. The principality of Monaco signed a treaty with France on 21 September 1791 but on 14 February 1794 Monaco was annexed to France, with disastrous results for Françoise, who up until that date had been regarded as a foreigner in France and was therefore free to travel as much as she liked. As soon as she became a French citizen again in 1793 she immediately returned to Paris in order to avoid being denounced as an emigré and losing her property, however it was too late and she was arrested in Paris while trying to regularise her situation. She presented forged residence papers and was released, at which point it was discovered that her husband had joined the royalist insurrection in the Vendée. Another warrant was issued for Françoise's arrest and she was hidden by a friend, Rollet d'Avaux in her old school, the exclusive convent school Panthémont on the Rue de Grenelle.
She was eventually arrested in the Winter of 1793-4 and sent to the Petit Force, one of the very worst Parisian prisons. She was later transfered to the Anglaises, which was much more comfortable and then later moved on to Saint-Pélagie. During this time her scary aunt Béatrix was also guillotined, defiant and haughty to the last. She was denounced by a prison spy, Ferrières-Sauvebeuf and then promptly sentenced to death. The Princesse immediately responded by informing the authorities that she was pregnant - pregnant women were not executed until their children were born so this postponed execution.
She wrote this letter to Fouquier-Tinville:
"
Citizen, I wish to inform you that I am not pregnant. I wanted to tell you. Though I can no longer hope you will come, I beg you do so nonetheless. I did not soil my mouth with this lie out of fear of death, nor to avoid it, but to give me one day more, so that I might cut my own hair, and not have it done at the hands of the executioner. It is the only legacy that I can leave to my children; at least it must be pure.
Choiseul-Stainville-Joseph-Grimaldi-Monaco, foreign princess, and dying from the injustice of French judges."
To her children she wrote:
"
My children, here is my hair. I have postponed my death by one day, not out of fear, but because I wanted myself to cut off these sad remains of me so that you might have them. I did not want it to be left to the hands of the executioner and these were my only means. I have spent one more day in this agony, but I (crossed out) do not complain.
I ask that my hair be put under glass, covered with black crepe, put away for most of the year and brought out only three or four times a year in your bedchamber so that you may have before you the remains of your unfortunate mother who died loving you and who regrets her life only because she can no longer be useful to you.
I commend you to your grandfather: if you see him, tell him that my thoughts are with him and that he stands in place of everything for you, and you, my children, take care of him in his old age and make him forget his misfortunes."
To her children's governess she wrote:
"
I have already written to you and I am writing to you again to commend my children to you. When you receive this note, I shall be no more, but let my memory make you take pity on my unhappy children. That is the only feeling that they can now inspire.
I leave you, as a souvenir, the ring in which my children's names were inscribed and which you should have received by now - it is the only thing at my disposal to give. Let Louise know the reason why I postponed my death, that she may not suspect me of weakness."
She cut off her long hair with a piece of broken glass and it was indeed smuggled to her children who were safely in Monaco by this stage. It is still kept in the Grimaldi palace in Monaco, protected from the elements in a glass case under a cloth.
The delay meant that the Princesse was in what was to be the very last such tumbril from the Conciergerie on the afternoon of 9 Thermidor 1794. The cortège was held up by excited crowds in the wake of Robespierre's fall that day but the executions continued nonetheless. She was the last person to be guillotined that day and as Olivier Blanc writes: '
She climbed the steps in her turn. On the platform, her youthful beauty shone in the dazzling July light.'
Her last words? 'Courage! Only crime can show weakness.'
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madame_guillotine at 01:09pm on 31/05/2009
