Victoire of France (1733–1799)

Victoire
Victoire by Jean-Marc Nattier, 1748
Born	(1733-05-11)11 May 1733 Palace of Versailles, France
Died	7 June 1799(1799-06-07) (aged 66) Triest, Italy
Burial	20 January 1817 Basilica of Saint-Denis
Full name Victoire Louise Marie Thérèse de France
House	Bourbon
Father	Louis XV of France
Mother	Maria Leszczyńska
Religion	Roman Catholicism
Signature
Coat of arms of a princess of France

Victoire de France, (Marie Louise Thérèse Victoire; 11 May 1733 – 7 June 1799) was a French princess, the seventh child and fifth daughter of King Louis XV of France and his Queen consort Maria Leszczyńska. She was named after her father, and Maria Theresa, Queen of France, her great great grandmother and the consort of Louis XIV of France

Originally known as Madame Quatrième, signifying the fourth daughter of the King (an older sister had died in February 1733, before her birth), she was later known as Madame Victoire. She outlived eight of her nine siblings, and was survived by her older sister Madame Adélaïde by less than a year. The sisters were collectively known as Mesdames.

Marie Louise Thérèse Victoire de France was born at the Palace of Versailles. Unlike the older children of Louis XV, Madame Victoire was not raised at the Palace of Versailles. Rather, she was, in June 1738, sent to live at the Abbey of Fontevraud with her younger sisters, 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. She remained there till 1748 when she was 15.

According to Madame Campan, the Mesdames had rather a traumatic upbringing in Fontrevault and were 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."