“Memoirs of Madame du Barri” by Baron de Etienne-Léon Lamothe-Langon – Ch. 7
Commonplace Book – Page 118
“Memoirs of Madame du Barri” – Chapter 7: Woe to My Enemies
- December 24, 1770: M. de Choiseul is dismissed – he is “confined to the estate at Chanteloup”
- Marie Antoinette reacts by “bewailing with many tears”, according to Madame de Campan
- Cardinal de la Roche: “a man of little mind”; “wholly devoid of genius”; “crafty and servile”; “crawling than walking, and bowing even to the ground before all whose necks he was ready to tread on”; “never meddling with any Court intrigue unless for his own interest”
- Geraud, Archbishop of Damas: nuncio to the Pope; “a true Italian”; “mixture of knavery, cunning, malice, good-nature and wit”; “neither word nor look escaped his scrutiny”; “possessed many solid qualities”
- June 5, 1771: Duc d’Aiguillon is appointed minister of foreign affairs
- Madame du Deffant: “high birth and great attainments”; “she passed her life…in a mixture of folly and thoughtlessness”; “her errors were all forgotten and forgiven in consideration of her birth, her numerous connections”; retired to the convent of St. Joseph
- Deffant was intimate friends with Voltaire, d’Alembert, Mesdames de Luxembourg, de Mirepoix, de Boufflers, de Forcalquier, d’Aiguillon, de Beauvau, de Choisseul, de Crussol, de Beauffremont, and de Lauzun.
- Comte de Haga: Crown prince of Sweden; “pleasing as he was handsome”; “conversation was pleasing in the highest degree; “It would make a fine province of France, its inhabitants are Frenchmen in their hearts; and for my own part, I feel myself more than ever bound to France by the gracious and flattering reception your majesty has been pleased to afford me.”
- Duke of Sudermania: “not destined to acquire the high renown of Gustavus III”; “not gifted with the winning frankness of his brother”
- March 1, 1771: The Comte de Haga receives at Paris the news of his father’s decease
- Gustavus III announces his firm resolution “of claiming back from those seditious nobles those rights which they had usurped from” his ancestors
- The Comte de Provence, 15 yrs old, marries Princess Marie Josephine Louise of Savoy, 17 yrs old. The Comte de Provence would afterwards be Louis XVIII. His younger brother, Comte d’Artois, became Charles X.
- Comte d’Artois “impetuous and impatient temperament”; “quick”; “volatile”; “headstrong”; “spurned all restraint”; “plunged eagerly into pleasures wholly unfit for his tender years”
