ACEO, 2.5 x 3.5 inches, watercolour and gouache, August 2007 The Princesse de Lamballe was a friend and confidante of Marie Antoinette. She was born Princess Marie Therese Louise of Savoy Carignan in 1749 in Turin. In 1767 she married Louis Alexandre, Prince of Lamballe but he died the following year. She and Marie Antoinette became friends. The Princesse was known as "The Good Angel" - she had a senstiive, melancholic nature and was renowned for her purity - she had stayed a widow. She was also not particularly clever, nor a gossip. They became close friends. After Marie Antoinette became Queen she was given the position of Superintendant of the Household, so was a constant companion of the Queen. She moved with the Royal Family when they were removed from Verailles to the Tuileries after the start of the Revolution. After the Royal Families attempted escape in 1791, Lamballe had fled abroad. After initially opposing the idea and telling her to stay away, Marie Antoinette was eventually persuaded to ask her to return to her. Prudently, Lamballe wrote her will and then returned to Paris. In August the Royal party were transferred to the Tower, then ten days later Lamballe and the other attendants of Antoinette were removed and taken to the prison of La Force. It was here that she met a terrible end. The September Massacres began on the 2nd - a mob descended on the prisons of Paris and massacred the inmates - priest, prostitutes, children, raped and murdered. The killing continued for several days. At La Force prison, Lamballe was taken before a tribunal and asked to denounce the Queen and the Royal Family. She refused. She was taken out to the courtyard where the mob awaited her. What exactly happened to her is not exactly certain. She appears to have been hit unconscious with a hammer - one hopes so. It is possible she was gang raped. What is certain is that her body was stripped and mutilated, her head cut off and placed on one pike, her entrails (some reports say her sexual organs) on another. It was then decided that Antoinette should give her one last kiss. After being taken to a cafe where they drank to her death, her head was paraded through Paris. They stopped along the way, first to have her head cast by wax modeller Marie Grosholz (later known as Madame Tussaud) and then to have it's hair coiffured. It was then paraded past the windows of the Tower, the mob shouting for Antoinette. She was spared the grisly sight but could not be spared the taunts of the mob or the knowledge of her friends terrible fate. The head and remnants of the body were later rescued and the poor Princesse was given proper burial.