LAMBALLE, Marie Therese Louise de Savoie-Carignano, PIUNCESSE French-Italian princess, friend of Marie An toinette: b. Turin, 8 Sept. 1749; d. Paris, 3 Sept. 1792. She was the fourth daughter of Prince Lccuis Victor of Carignano and in 1767 was married to Prince de Lam balle who died in the following year. Upon the marriage of Marie Antoinette the prin cess returned to court and was accorded the favor of the royal lady, to whom her gentleness and submissiveness greatly ap pealed. They become close friends and upon Louis XVI's accession to the throne the queen made her superintendent of the royal house hold. The Comtesse de Polignac supeseded her in 1776-85, when the queen sought a rec onciliation and resumed their former intimacy. The salon of the princess was used by the queen as a sort of headquarters for her various intrigues, and as this became known the pop ulace believed the queen's innocent dupe to be the responsible party and hated her accordingly.
When, after the Revolution, the royal family, in 1791, attempted' to escape the princess made her way to England to appeal for aid for her royal friends. She returned to the Tuileries in November of that year and was permitted to share the queen's imprisonment in the Tem ple from 10 August until 19 August, when she was removed to La Force. On 3 September she was brought before the tribunal and com manded to take an oath against the king. Upon her refusal she was turned over to the mob, which tore her in pieces and bore her head on a pike before the windows of the queen in the Temple. Selections from her letters were pub lished in Volume XXXIX, (La Revolution frangais) (Paris 1900). Consult Bertin, Sir George, de Lamballe> (Paris 1888) ; Lescure, Comte de, Princesse de Lamballe' (1864); Hardy, B. C., Princesse de Lam bane) 1908).