Princess Sophie-Philippine of France

Madame Sophie
Duchess of Louvois
Sophie by Nattier
Born	(1734-07-27)27 July 1734 Palace of Versailles, France
Died	2 March 1782(1782-03-02) (aged 47) Palace of Versailles, France
Burial	Royal Basilica, France
Full name Sophie Philippine Élisabeth Justine de France
House	Bourbon
Father	Louis XV of France
Mother	Marie Leszczyńska
Religion	Roman Catholicism
Signature

Full name
Sophie Philippine Élisabeth Justine de France

Sophie Philippine Élisabeth Justine de France, (27 July 1734 – 2 March 1782) was a French princess, a fils de France; she was the sixth daughter and eighth child of Louis XV of France and his queen consort Marie Leszczyńska. First known as Madame Cinquième, she later became Madame Sophie. She and her sisters were collectively known as Mesdames.

Sophie is less well known than many of her sisters. Her birth at the Palace of Versailles was relatively unremarked. Her second name, Philippine, was given in honour of her second brother who had died the previous year. Unlike the older children of Louis XV, she was not raised at Versailles but, in June 1738, sent to live at the Abbey of Fontevraud with her older sister Madame Victoire and younger sisters Madame Thérèse (who died young) and Madame Louise, because the cost of raising them in Versailles with all the status they were entitled to was deemed too expensive by Cardinal Fleury, Louis XV's chief minister.

According to Madame Campan, the Mesdames had rather a traumatic upbringing in Fontrevault, and was not given much education: "Cardinal Fleury, who in truth had the merit of reestablishing the finances, carried this system of economy so far as to obtain from the King the suppression of the household of the four younger Princesses. They were brought up as mere boarders in a convent eighty leagues distant from the Court. Saint Cyr would have been more suitable for the reception of the King’s daughters; but probably the Cardinal shared some of those prejudices which will always attach to even the most useful institutions, and which, since the death of Louis XIV., had been raised against the noble establishment of Madame de Maintenon. Madame Louise often assured me that at twelve years of age she was not mistress of the whole alphabet, and never learnt to read fluently until after her return to Versailles. Madame Victoire attributed certain paroxysms of terror, which she was never able to conquer, to the violent alarms she experienced at the Abbey of Fontevrault, whenever she was sent, by way of penance, to pray alone in the vault where the sisters were interred. A gardener belonging to the abbey died raving mad. His habitation, without the walls, was near a chapel of the abbey, where Mesdames were taken to repeat the prayers for those in the agonies of death. Their prayers were more than once interrupted by the shrieks of the dying man."

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