Adélaïde de France (Marie Adélaïde; 23 March 1732 - 27 February 1800) was a French princess, the sixth child and fourth daughter of King Louis XV and Queen Marie Leszczyńska.
As a legitimate daughter of the King, Adélaïde was a fille de France. She was referred to as Madame Quatrième ("Madame the Fourth") until the death of her older sister Marie Louise in 1733, and then as Madame Troisième ("Madame the Third"); as Madame Adélaïde from 1737 to 1755; as Madame from 1755 to 1759; and then as Madame Adélaïde again from 1759 until her death. Adélaïde and her sister Sophie possessed the Duchy of Louvois from 1777 until 1792. The duchy had been created for them by their nephew Louis XVI, in their own right. During the reign of her nephew Adélaïde led the extreme conservative faction at court and was strongly anti Marie Antoinette, whom Adélaïde reputedly called 'the Austrian' for the first time. During the French Revolution Adélaïde and her sister, Victoire fled France, settling in Rome. When the French Republic invaded the Italian Peninsula in 1796 the sisters moved to Naples. In 1799 France conquered Naples causing the Mesdames to go to Trieste where the sisters both died, in 1799 and 1800 respectively. She was the last of the children of Louis XV to die.
Adélaïde was born on 23 March 1732 in France as the sixth child and fourth daughter of King Louis XV and his wife, Marie Leszczyńska. She was named after her paternal grandmother, Marie Adélaïde, Dauphine of France, and was raised at the Palace of Versailles with her older sisters, Madame Louise Elisabeth, Madame Henriette, and Madame Marie Louise, along with her brother Louis, Dauphin of France.
Her younger sisters were raised at Fontevraud Abbey from 1738 onward because the cost of raising them in Versailles with all the status to which they were entitled was deemed too expensive by Cardinal Fleury, Louis XV's chief minister. Adélaïde was originally expected to join her younger sisters to Fontevraud. However, she was allowed to stay with her brother and her three elder siblings in Versailles after a personal plea to her father.
She was put in the care of Marie Isabelle de Rohan, Duchesse of Tallard. According to Madame Campan, "Madame Adelaide, in particular, had a most insatiable desire to learn; she was taught to play upon all instruments, from the horn (will it be believed!) to the Jew's-harp." She studied Italian under Goldoni, and music under Beaumarchais. One of the reasons as to why the expense of her younger sisters at Versailles was regarded as too high, was that the royal children were allowed to participate in court life at a very young age. They were allowed to attend as well as arrange festivities already as children. Adélaïde and her sister Henriette, who never went to Fontevraud, accompanied their father to the opera in Paris at least since 1744 and hunted with him five days a week from the beginning of 1746.
In 1744, the King removed Henriette and Adelaide from the royal nursery into their household, known as the Household of the Mesdames aînées ('Elder Mesdames'). The sisters had two ladies-in-waiting (dame pour accompagner Mesdames). Two years later, they were given their own dame d'honneur, Marie-Angélique-Victoire de Bournonville, Duchesse de Duras. When the younger sisters arrived to court from Fontevrault in 1748–50, they were not inducted in to the Household of their elder sisters but formed the Household of the Mesdames cadettes ('Younger Mesdames'). After the death of Henriette in 1752, the Household of the Mesdames aînées was transformed into the Household of Madame Adélaïde, headed by Marie-Suzanne-Françoise de Creil, Duchesse de Beauvilliers, and she thus held a unique position as the only unmarried royal princess with her own separate household, while her younger sisters shared theirs.
Adélaïde was never married. In the late 1740s, when she had reached the age when princesses were typically married, there were no potential Catholic consorts of desired status available, and she preferred to remain unmarried rather than marry someone below the status of a monarch or an heir to a throne. Marriage prospects suggested to her were liaisons with Louis François, Prince of Conti and Prince Francis Xavier of Saxony, neither of whom had the status of being a monarch or an heir to a throne. In her teens, Adélaïde fell in love with a member of the Lifeguard after having observed him perform his duties; she sent him her snuffbox with the message, "You will treasure this, soon you shall be informed from whose hand it comes." The guardsman informed his captain the Duke of Ayen, who in turn informed the King, who recognized the handwriting as his daughter's, and granted the guard an annual pension of four thousand under the express condition that he should "at once remove to some place far from the Court and remain there for a very long time". In 1761, long after she passed the age when 18th-century princesses usually wed, she was reportedly suggested to marry the newly widowed Charles III of Spain. However, after she had seen his portrait, she refused, a rejection which was said to be the reason why Charles III never remarried.
When her younger sisters arrived back from Fontevraud in 1748–50, she became the head of the group of the four unmarried, younger sisters; the others were Madame Victoire, Madame Sophie, and Madame Louise. The King referred to them by nicknames: he called Madame Adélaïde ‘Loque’ (Tatters/Rag/Rags/Scraggy), Madame Victoire ‘Coche’ (Pig/Piggy/Sow), Madame Sophie, ‘Graille’ (Grub/Scrap/Carrion crow), and Madame Louise, ‘Chiffe’ (Shoddy silk/Rags).
Like their mother, the well loved Queen Marie Leszczyńska, Adélaïde and her siblings were actually very charitable as noted by Charles Philippe d'Albert, 4th Duke of Luynes in his memoirs and often gave money using their allowances in supporting workhouses for the poor as well as given alms to regions struck by calamity. She is described as an intelligent beauty; her appearance an ephemeral, "striking and disturbing beauty of the Bourbon type characterized by elegance", with "large dark eyes at once passionate and soft", and her personality as extremely haughty to her father's debauched circle of friends but was actually friendly towards the common people of France during public ceremonies in Paris as described by the Duke of Luynes, with a dominant and ambitious character with a strong will, who came to dominate her younger siblings: "Madame Adélaïde had more mind than Madame Victoire; but she was altogether deficient in that kindness which alone creates affection for the great, abrupt manners, a harsh voice, and a short way of speaking, rendering her more than imposing. She carried the idea of the prerogative of rank to a high pitch." A childhood anecdote mentions how she, at the age of eleven, expressed her desire to defeat the English by the method described in Judith And Holofernes in the Bible. She was the only one of the unmarried sisters with political ambition, and she attempted unsuccessfully to gain political influence through her father the king, her brother the Dauphin, and eventually through her nephew, the next Dauphin.
Madame Adélaïde, as well as her siblings, attempted without success to prevent their father's liaison with Madame de Pompadour, which began in 1745. In the early 1750s, when the health of Madame de Pompadour was deteriorating, Adélaïde, who was a good rider, became the favorite and close companion of her father, during which she often accompanied him during his riding and amused him with conversation. Their new close relationship, and Adelaïde's status as the most beautiful among her sisters, caused rumors that they had an incestuous relationship. A rumor also claimed that Adélaïde was the true mother of Louis de Narbonne (born 1755) by her father. There is nothing to indicate that these rumors were true but was rather a very hurtful way in undermining her status as a loving daughter to her father.
Between the death of Madame de Pompadour in 1764 and before the rise of Madame du Barry in 1768, Louis XV did have a certain confidence in Madame Adélaïde, and was supported by her "firm and rapid resolutions." It was thought that through her, the King was advised by the Archbishop of Paris, Christophe de Beaumont, and the Dévots. During these years, the King did not take another official royal mistress. After the death of their mother Queen Marie Leszczyńska in 1768, the King wept and was deeply sad and depressed as he had never stopped loving his wife in spite of his numerous mistresses. Members of the court believed that as soon as the King recovered from his depression, the choice would be between either providing him with a new queen, or a new official royal mistress. Madame Adélaïde, who detested the idea of a new royal mistress, encouraged the solution of her father marrying again to prevent it. She reportedly preferred a queen who was young, beautiful and lacked ambition, as she could distract her father from state affairs, leaving them to Madame Adélaïde herself. She supported the Dowager Princesse de Lamballe as a suitable candidate for that purpose and was supported in this plan by the powerful Noailles family. However, the Princesse de Lamballe was not willing to encourage the match herself, her former father-in-law, Louis Jean Marie de Bourbon, Duke of Penthièvre, was not willing to consent, and the marriage plan never materialized. The King was then suggested to marry Archduchess Maria Elisabeth of Austria. The Archduchess was a famed beauty, but when she suffered from smallpox, which badly scarred her face, marriage negotiations were discontinued. Instead, Louis XV introduced his last official maîtresse-en-titre, Madame du Barry, to court in 1769, whom Madame Adélaïde came to despise.