Lindy Vinke

Memoirs of the Princesse de Tarente, 1789-1792 Lindy Vinke

In August 1792 the Princesse de Tarente, Louise-Emmanuelle de Châtillon, was interrogated by the Comité de Surveillance and incarcerated in the Abbaye Prison in Paris. Her crime was that she refused to provide any information that might incriminate Queen Marie Antoinette or anyone else that she knew, in particular the Princesse de Lamballe. She remained in prison until early the next month, witnessing the horrific September massacres first hand, waiting hour after hour for her own trial and probable slaughter and eventually escaping Revolutionary "Justice" by the skin of her teeth. Shortly afterwards she fled to England where she joined an ever increasing group of émigré aristocrats and where she wrote her memoirs. As one of Marie-Antoinette's ladies-in-waiting, the Princesse is able to provide a unique insight into the character of one of history's most famous Queens and a "behind the scenes" account of some of the most important events of the early years of the Revolution: the Women's march on Versailles; the removal of the Royal Family to the Tuileries; the Day of the Daggers; the Flight to Varennes; the acceptance of the Constitution; the Storming of the Tuileries and the imprisonment of the Royal family in the Temple. However, it is her account of prison life, her description of other prison inmates such as the wonderful Mademoiselle de Sombreuil, her own harrowing trial and her traumatic experiences of the butchery during the first few days of September 1792 that make the most riveting reading. The memoirs have been translated by Dr Lindy Vinke, who has also provided an account of the Princesse's life, a summary of the political background to her story and a painstaking investigation into the identity of the numerous, and often obscure, people that the Princesse mentions.