Ernestine Lambriquet
Ernestine de Lambriquet born Marie-Philippine Lambriquet (31 July 1778- 31 December 1813), was the adopted daughter of King Louis XVI of France and Queen Marie Antoinette.
Biography
She was born in Versailles as the daughter of Jacques Lambriquet and Marie-Philippine Noiret. Her father was a servant to the king's brothers and her mother was a chamber maid at the royal palace of Versailles. She was regarded to have a physical resemblance to the king and to his daughter Marie Thérèse of France, and there have been unconfirmed speculations that she was the illegitimate daughter of Louis XVI of France.[1]
She was chosen by the queen to be the playmate and daily companion of Princess Marie Thérèse, and was always in her company from their early childhood onward.[1]
Adopted daughter
Upon the death of her mother, and already having been a part of the family of the king and queen for years, she was formally adopted by the royal couple on 9 November 1788, and awarded a pension of 12,000 livres by the king.[1] She slept in the same room as Marie Thérèse, was educated with her and treated as a royal child by the royal governesses, though she was never given a formal rank as a princess and her presence at court was an informal one.
Lambriquet was not the only adopted child of the royal couple, who adopted three other children: "Armand" Francois-Michel Gagné (c. 1771-1792), a poor orphan adopted along with his three older siblings in 1776; Jean Amilcar (c. 1781-1793), a Senegalese slave boy given to the queen as a present by Chevalier de Boufflers in 1787, but whom she instead had freed, baptized, adopted and placed in a pension; and "Zoe" Jeanne Louise Victoire (born in 1787), who was adopted in 1790 along with her two older sisters when her parents, an usher and his wife in service of the king, had died.[2] Among the eight adopted children however, only two (Armand and Zoe) actually lived with the royal family in the manner of Ernestine Lambriquet: Jean Amilcar and the elder siblings of Zoe and Armand simply lived on the queen's expense until her imprisonment, which proved fatal for Amilcar, as he was evicted from the boarding school when the fee was no longer paid, and reportedly starved to death on the street.[2] Armand and Zoe had a position which was more similar to that of Ernestine; Armand lived at court with the king and queen until he left them at the outbreak of the revolution because of his republican sympathies, and Zoe was chosen to be the playmate of the Dauphin, just as Ernestine had once been selected as the playmate of Marie-Therese, and sent away to her sisters in a convent boarding school before the Flight to Varennes in 1791.[2]
During the French Revolution, Ernestine accompanied the royal family from Versailles to the Tuileries in Paris. During the Flight to Varennes, she was sent to her father in the country, but was returned after the royal family was brought back to Paris. On the 10 August, Marie Antoinette ordered the royal sub-governess Renée Suzanne de Soucy to bring her to safety.[1] Passing the Carousel square in front to the palace, de Soucy left Lambriquet to fetch a coach; when she was away, a rebel mistook Lambriquet for Marie-Therese and threw the corpse of a member of the Swiss Guard in front of her feet, but a shop-keeper defended her, also believing she was Marie-Therese.[1] During the reign of Robespierre, she was taken care of by the family of de Soucy's father, the Mackau family.[1]
Later life
Ernestine Lambriquet, under the name of Marie Philippine Lambriquet, married a widower called Jean-Charles-Germain Prempain, a proprietor in Paris on 7 December 1810. She died on the 30 December 1813, in Saint Denis Arrondissement, Paris, aged 35. The death certificate records her parents as Jacques Lambriquet and Marie Philippine Noirot. There were no children.
Switch theory
A theory claims that Marie-Thérèse of France, daughter of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, swapped identities with her adoptive sister, Ernestine Lambriquet, when she was released from the Temple.[1]
When Marie Thérèse was released from Temple in 1795 and allowed to depart for Austria, Renée Suzanne de Soucy was chosen to accompany her on her journey to the border in Huningue after her mother Marie Angélique de Mackau, who had been the first choice of Marie-Therese, was forced to decline because of health.[1] Marie-Therese, who travelled under the name Sophie, sat in the carriage with de Soucy and the guards Mechin (posing as the father of Sophie) and Gomin; the male servants Hue and Baron, the cook Meunier, as well as the maid Catherine de Varenne and a teenage boy called Pierre de Soucy followed them in the next carriage.[1] According to the switch theory of the Dunkelgrafen, Renée Suzanne de Soucy assisted Marie-Therese in changing place with Ernestine de Lambriquet during the trip to Austria in 1795-96.[1]
Among the eight people accompanying Marie-Therese during her trip through France in 1795, the maid Catherine de Varenne and the teenage boy Pierre de Soucy is mentioned in the passports but are otherwise impossible to identify.[1] Pierre de Soucy is stated in the passport to be the son of Renée Suzanne de Soucy, but she had no son by that name.[1] According to the Switch theory, Pierre de Soucy (or possibly Catherine de Varenne) was in fact Ernestine de Lambriquet, who switched place with Marie-Therese during the journey with the assistance of Renée Suzanne de Soucy, after which Ernestine de Lambriquet continued to Austria posing as Marie-Therese while Marie-Therese herself settled in Germany as the Dunkelgrafen.[1]
The Austrian emperor had in fact requested for Ernestine de Lambriquet be allowed to accompany Marie-Therese to Austria, but Minister Benezch had given the reply that Ernestine de Lambriquet could not be located.[1] In reality, however, there would not have been any trouble to locate Ernestine de Lambriquet, as she had lived under the protection of Renée Suzanne de Soucy and the Mackau family since the storming of the Tuileries.[1] The alternative suggestion is that "Pierre de Soucy" was in fact one of the daughters of Renée Suzanne de Soucy, dressed as a boy to make the travel group less identifiable, as Marie-Therese was estimated to have been exposed to threats not only from anti-royalists but also from agents sent by foreign powers to kidnap her during her journey to the border.[1]
Theories as to why Marie Thérèse did the switch took place is abound; she is speculated to have been raped and gotten pregnant or to have suffered trauma and wanted to disappear.[1]
According to the theory, she became the 'Dark Countess', who resided at Hildburghausen in Thuringia, Germany. The Dark Countess, called Sophia Botta by the Count she was living with, went out in public with a veil only over her face or in a carriage. She died at Hildburghausen on 28 November 1837 and was buried quickly and discreetly. Her companion, Leonardus Cornelius Van Der Valck (called the Dark Count) lived there until his death on 8 April 1845.
DNA evidence
DNA analysis conducted in 2013[3] has disproved the conjecture that the Dark Countess was the true Princess Marie Thérèse Charlotte of France.
The remains of the Dark Countess were exhumed, and bone fragments were analyzed at independent laboratories in Innsbruck, Austria and Freiburg, Germany. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) genome was sequenced. MtDNA is solely maternally inherited (mother to child) and there are numerous copies of the mtDNA genome in each human cell, making this DNA type useful for the analysis of ancient tissue samples.
Princess Marie Thérèse (the presumed identity of the Dark Countess) and the living reference, Alexander, Prince of Saxe-Gessaphe, a maternal descendant of Marie Antoinette’s sister, Archduchess Maria Carolina of Austria were compared. Although separated by six generations, the maternal inheritance of mtDNA means that there is no recombination at each generation; hence it remains the same. If the Dark Countess was truly Marie Thérèse, the bone fragments would have had the same mtDNA profile as Alexander (whose maternal line crosses with Marie Antoinette’s mother, Maria Theresa of Hungary).
However, the analysis indicated that was not the case. The mtDNA profile from the Dark Countess differed significantly from Prince Alexander. Furthermore, the mtDNA of Marie Thérèse’s brother (Louis-Charles) determined in a previous study[4] matched that of Prince Alexander, as expected, but differed from the Dark Countess.
References
- Nagel, Susan. Marie-Thérèse: The Fate of Marie Antoinette's Daughter. Bloomsbury, 2009.
- Philippe Huisman, Marguerite Jallut: Marie Antoinette, Stephens, 1971
- Parson, W; Berger, C; Sänger, T; Lutz-Bonengel, S. (2015). Molecular genetic analysis on the remains of the Dark Countess: Revisiting the French Royal family. Forensic Sciences International, 19.
- https://lirias.kuleuven.be/bitstream/123456789/7857/1/5200227a.pdf
- Nagel, Susan. Marie-Thérèse: The Fate of Marie Antoinette's Daughter. Bloomsbury, 2009.
- Carolin Philipps: Die Dunkelgräfin. Das Geheimnis um die Tochter Marie Antoinettes. Piper Verlag, München 2012, ISBN 978-3-49295426-6.
- Kirsten Klein: Tochter von Frankreich. Das Geheimnis der Dunkelgräfin. neobooks Self-Publishing, 2014, ISBN 978-3-84769026-9.