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Louise-Emmanuelle de Chatillon
Title(s) Princesse de Tarente
Spouses Charles-Bretagne-Marie-Joseph prince de Tarente, duc de la Trémouille, pair de France
Biography
Birth date 1763
Death 1814
Biographical entries in old dictionaries


Entry by Elena Gretchanaia, 2003

Louise Emmanuelle de Tarente, was born in Paris on July 23, 1763. Her parents were Louis Gaucher, Duke of Châtillon, the last of the name, and Adrienne-Emilie-Félicité de la Baume le Blanc de La Vallière. She died some time between June 22 and July 4, 1814, in Saint Petersburg. In 1781, she married Charles-Bretagne-Marie-Joseph, Prince of Tarente, later duc de la Trémouille, a Peer of France. The couple's only child, a girl, died while still an infant. In May 1785, Louise Emmanuelle was appointed lady-in-waiting to Queen Marie-Antoinette, who "loved her and had infinite esteem for her" (Mme Campan, Mémoires, Paris, Mercure de France, 1998, p. 332). Even at the height of the French Revolution she refused to leave the royal family, witnessing the fall of the Tuileries palace on August 10, 1792. She was arrested a few days later and thrown into the Abbaye prison for refusing to testify against the queen. She escaped the massacres of September 1792 by disguising her identity and managed to reach safety in England. In exile in London, she lived on an allowance paid by Marie-Antoinette's sister, Marie-Caroline of Naples. During her time in London, she wrote her Souvenirs, describing the first years of the Revolution and her own detention. They are written in a sober, laconic style reminiscent of historical chronicles. The main theme of the text is the author's steadfast loyalty to the queen. In March 1797, Louise Emmanuelle de Tarente was invited to Russia by Emperor Paul I and his wife Marie Feodorovna. She had first met the emperor and empress when they were traveling in France in 1782. She arrived in Saint Petersburg in July, accompanied by her brother-in-law the Duke of Crussol. Appointed lady-in-waiting to the Russian empress, she soon fell out of Paul's favor -he was renowned for his mercurial temperament. Despite this setback, she remained involved in court life as a lady-in-waiting and was welcomed into the family of the Countess Varvara Golovina. Many of her letters to the countess survive. Louise Emmanuelle took the manuscript of the Souvenirs with her to Russia and gave it to the countess and her family and friends to read. In Fall 1801, she returned to France to stay with her mother in Paris and Wideville, some thirty kilometers from the capital. She chose not to rejoin her husband. For the rest of her life, she was to remain on the list of émigrés. She returned to Russia in 1804 with the Golovine family, who had come to Paris in 1802. She resumed living with them and thus had the opportunity to meet a number of French émigrés including the fervent Catholic royalist J.-D. Bassinet d'Augard and the Jesuit Father Rozaven. Count Joseph de Maistre was also a regular visitor. This Catholic circle of friends is seen as having played an important role in the conversion to Catholicism of Countess Golovina, her two daughters, and a number of other Russian ladies, including the famous woman of letters Sophia Svetchina. Louise Emmanuelle de Tarente kept in touch with Marie-Antoinette's daughter the Duchess of Angoulême, and was obliged to join her after Napoleon's downfall. However, she fell seriously ill and returned to Russia shortly after the allied troops entered Paris. She died in the Golovine family's country house near Saint Petersburg. Louise Emmanuelle was a favorite of the wife of Alexander I, Empress Elizabeth Alexeyevna, and a number of other Russian women of noble birth, who called her "blessed" after her death. Jacques Delille wrote the poem Le Malheur et la Pitié (first edition, entitled simply La Pitié, 1803) in praise of her heroic conduct during the Revolution. Countess Golovina remembers her in her Souvenirs, written from 1813 to 1817 and published in 1899.

(traduction Susan Pickford)

Works

- 1792-1797 : Souvenirs. Éd. Louis de La Trémoïlle, Nantes, E.Grimaud et fils, 1897.
- 1798-1799, 1801-1803, 1805-1806 : Lettres à la comtesse Golovina, inédites sauf trois. -- "Deux lettres de la princesse de Tarente à la comtesse Golovina", éd. E.Gretchanaia, Dix-huitième siècle, 31, 1999, p.331-343; "Lettres de la princesse de Tarente à la comtesse Golovina", in Elena Gretchanaia, Interaction littéraire russo-française et le contexte religieux (1797-1825). Moscou, IMLI RAN, 2002, p.248-262 (en français et en russe).

Selected bibliography

- Pingaud, Léonce. "Les Russes à Paris (1800-1830)". Le Correspondant, 25 juillet 1904, p.205-209.
- Gretchanaia, Elena. "Deux lettres de la princesse de Tarente à la comtesse Golovina". Dix-huitième siècle, 31, 1999, p.331-343.
- Gretchanaia, Elena. "Du Petit Trianon aux bords de la Volga: Lettres de l'émigrée française la princesse de Tarente et le problème de l'identité culturelle", in Elena Gretchanaia, Interaction littéraire russo-française et le contexte religieux(1797-1825). Moscou, IMLI RAN, 2002, p.16-46 (en russe).

Selected bibliography of images

- Anonyme. Portrait ovale de la princesse de Tarente (peinture) -- Souvenirs de la princesse de Tarente. Nantes, 1897.

Reception

- "Quels prodiges de foi, de constance et d'amour!
Tarente, que te veut cet assassin farouche?
A trahir ton amie, il veut forcer ta bouche.
En vain s'offre à tes yeux le sanglant échafaud;
Ta reine, dans les fers, te parle encor plus haut.
Chaque âge, chaque peuple ont eu leur héroïne;
Thèbes (?) eut une Antigone, et Rome une Epponine [...]»
(J. Delille, La Pitié, Paris, Giguet et Michaud, 1803, p.93).
- «La princesse de Tarente, dit M.Bertrand de Moleville, se sauva à force d'héroïsme. Traduite devant les juges-bourreaux du 2 septembre, après avoir attendu son tour pendant quarante heures, sans fermer l'oeil, au milieu des cris des victimes qu'on immolait, et des angoisses de celles qui allaient être massacrés, elle retrouva toute son énergie, lorsqu'elle vit que les interrogatoires qu'on lui faisait tendaient à obtenir d'elle des déclarations qui inculpassent la reine. Elle réfuta si victorieusement toutes les calomnies sur lesquelles elle était interrogée, que l'opinion de tout auditoire, hautement prononcé, força ses juges à la déclarer innocente" (Ibid., p.184-185. J. Delille cite l' Histoire de la Révolution de France de Bertrand de Moleville, parue en 1801-1803).
- "Son âme ardente et belle est susceptible d'apprécier l'amitié. Tous les jours je voyais la sienne s'accroître pour moi. Son caractère altier et ferme repose et calme par l'appui qu'il semble offrir" (Souvenirs de la Comtesse Golovine, Ed. K.Waliszewski, Paris, Plon, 1910, p.194).
- "Cette singulière femme avait quelque chose de repoussant dans l'extérieur et les manières, et cependant son âme était susceptible des affections les plus profondes. Jamais je n'ai rencontré un plus grand caractère et un esprit plus rétréci. Elle ne jugeait rien qu'à travers la lunette de ses préjugés. [...] La princesse de Tarente [...] se flattait en même temps de trouver un jour en moi une prosélyte catholique, semblable à la comtesse Golovine et à plusieurs autres personnes de la même société" (Comtesse Edling, Mémoires, Moscou, imprimerie du Saint-Synode, 1888, p.46, en français).
- "Mme de Tarente, pour tous ceux qui n'avaient avec elle que des relations indifférentes, avait des défauts; mais je conçois bien que dans la famille où elle avait concentré ses plus chères affections, on n'ait senti que ses vertus, ou du moins on ne se souvienne que d'elles et de ce dévouement rempli d'âme qui l'identifiait à tous les intérêts de sa famille d'adoption" (Lettres de Madame Swetchine, éd. le comte de Falloux, Paris, Didier, 1881, t.1, p.173).

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