Élisabeth of France

Élisabeth Philippine Marie Hélène of France (May 3, 1764 - May 10, 1794), commonly called Madame Élisabeth, was a French princess, the daughter of Louis, dauphin de France and Marie-Josèphe of Saxony, and the younger sister of King Louis XVI.

The princess was born at Versailles in 1764. Orphan at the age of three, she was brought up by Madame de Mackau, and had a residence at Montreuil, where she is said to have given many proofs of her benevolent character. Élisabeth was deeply religious and extremely devoted to her brother the king, refusing all offers of marriage so that she might remain by his side. One of the staunchest conservatives in the royal family together with her brother the Comte d'Artois, Élisabeth, unlike him, refused to emigrate when the gravity of the events set forth by the Revolution became clear, and was confined in the Tuileries with the king and his family. She accompanied them in their ill-fated escape attempt on June 20 1791, and was arrested at Varennes and returned to Paris with them.

Madame Élisabeth was present at the Legislative Assembly when Louis was suspended, and was imprisoned in the Temple with the royal family. With the execution of the king (January 21, 1793) and the removal of her nephew, the young dauphin (July 3), Élisabeth was left alone with Queen Marie Antoinette and her niece Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte in the tower until the queen was taken to the Conciergerie on August 2, 1793 (she was executed on October 16). The two royal women lived on in ignorance of Marie Antoinette's death. On May 9, 1794, Élisabeth was herself transferred to the Conciergerie, and haled before the Revolutionary Tribunal. Accused of assisting the king's flight, of supplying émigrés with funds, and of encouraging the resistance of the royal troops on the 10th of August 1792. She was also accused of the outrageous crime of molesting her nephew, the dauphin. This was a false charge, extracted from the child under torture and it actually helped provoke sympathy for Élisabeth from the people. Nonetheless, she was condemned to death, and guillotined the following day.

All the men and women executed with Madame Élisabeth bowed and kissed her, she also blessed them. She was made to sit closest to the guillotine, but was executed last and thus had to hear the blade fall on the heads of all the people before her. It is said that when she was strapped to the board her shawl fell off, exposing her shoulders, and she cried to the executioner "For the sake of decency, Monsieur, cover me up" just before being guillotined. Élisabeth, who had just turned 30 at the time of her death, and who was executed essentially because she was the sister of the king, is perhaps one of the most pathetic victims of the French Revolution. However, the general consensus of the French revolutionaries was that she was a supporter of the ultra-right Royalist faction. There is much evidence to support that she actively supported the intrigues of her brother, the Comte d'Artois, to bring foreign armies into France to crush the Revolution. Despite this, in her private life Elisabeth was much-praised for her charitable nature, familial devotion and devout Catholic faith. There can be no question that she saw the Revolution as the incarnation of evil on earth and that civil war was the only way to drive it from the land.

Royalist literature since then has praised her as a Catholic martyr, whilst left-wing histories severely criticise her for her extreme conservatism which, in her lifetime, seemed excessive even to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Several biographies have been published of her in the French language, whilst extensive treatment of her life is given in Antonia Fraser's biography of Marie Antoinette and Deborah Cadbury's investigative biography of Louis XVII.