Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Supersluts of History: Royal Mistress Madam du Barry

Episode Date: June 12, 2026

Madam du Barry's life was remarkable: from rags, to riches, to... revolution. And she pi**ed off Marie Antoinette along the way, too.How did this courtesan from a poor background make it to be royal mistress in Versailles? How did the French Revolution impact her? And what her 'special talents' that attracted King Louis XV?In our new mini-series, we're exploring and celebrating women whose sexuality was used to define them.Joining Kate today is historian and author Professor Christine Adams, to take us back to 18th century France to find out more about this remarkable woman.This episode was edited by Hannah Feodorov. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. How the hell are you doing? Welcome back to Betwister sheets. Hello, let's make some room at the back, please. We've got new people, right?

Newbies who might not know what's going on. And because they might not know, we do have to tell them. Yeah, that's right. You can say it with me. This is an adult podcast, bug on my adults, to other adults, about adulty things, and an adult you wake up and age, adults of drinks, new spin, adult too. Right, let's crack on.

It's 1769 and I have managed to sneak us into Versailles. Everything is so excessive, not to mention my wig. No wonder a revolution is on the cards. These people are just dripping with jewels. But it's years before that's all going to kick off and we are here to see something truly historic and extraordinary and possibly one of the reasons why there was a revolution happen. Gianbeku, the daughter of a seamstress,

are now one of Paris's high-climing courtesans, in fact, the best courtesan, is about to be officially introduced to the aging King Louis XIV. She's nervous, she's had to jump through a lot of hoops and step on a lot of toes to get here, but fair play to her. She has climbed the social ladder from the very bottom to the very top, and here she is, dressed in gold and dripping with jewels,

and just the epitome of the rags to riches story, or just the riches, riches are going to get even richer to story. But the revolution's a while off. Let's find out what Madame de Barry has to say for herself. Hello and welcome back to Betwixtor Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal and Society with me, Kate Lister. Today is the second installment of our new limited series which celebrates and explores the so-called super sluts of history.

Who called them that? We did. We called them that. and we want to find out if it is a title well-deserved or deeply resented. These are women who have been defined by their sexuality for better or for worse, and Madame de Barry certainly falls into that category. The courtesan whose charm and beauty took her all away from the slums of Paris to the royal bedroom at Versailles. And what, by the way, did Marie Antoinette make of this? Well, spoiler alert, not very much at all.

And how did the story of Madame de Barry help kick off the revolution? I mean, it wasn't the only thing in the mix, but it certainly didn't help. Well, to help us find out that and even more is the wonderful professor Christine Adams of St. Mary's College of Maryland, who's the co-author of the phenomenal book, The Creation of the French Royal Mistress. So if anyone can tell us, it's Christine. Wigs and fans at the ready, everybody. Let's do this. Well, hello and welcome to. Betwixt the sheets. It's only Professor Christine Adams. How are you doing? I'm doing fine. Thank you very much. Thanks for inviting me today, Kate.

Well, I'm thrilled to have you here because the book that you were the co-creator of, the creation of the French royal mistress from Agnes Sorrel to Madame Dew Barry. I loved that book. It was so good. It was so clever. The introduction bit where you argued that the royal mistress and the wife aren't in opposition to one another, that they actually complement when you view it through the prism of the king. I thought, yes, I hadn't even thought of it that way before. That was so good. They serve very different roles. Very different roles. And you are obviously one of the best people we could get here to talk about one of the best royal mistresses, certainly one of the most infamous, Madame de Barry. Yes. She is indeed.

I mean, I think that if you think about the names that people know of French royal mistress, Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry are probably the best known. Yep. Probably in like the whole, if you just went out and just took a poll. of people in the street to name a royal mistress, Camilla is probably that they'd come up first. It's absolutely true. The recency bias. But then they might come up with Nell Gwynne, maybe. Yes. Okay. Yeah, they know the British ones, right. Well, I think they might know Madame de Barry and Madame de Pompadour as well, because they are, I mean, they were infamous in their own day and they're pretty infamous now. Indeed. Indeed. I mean, for all sorts of reasons. I mean, there's portraits

of them. If you go to museums, you'll see portraits of them. There's a really beautiful one at the National Gallery of Art in D.C. of Madame Dubari by Elizabeth Vigé Lebrun, who also painted Marie Antoinette, interestingly enough. This episode is our little mini-series. We have rather wryly titled Super Sluts. And looking at women who have been rather epically slut shamed or, you know, the rumors and the stuff, the scandal that surrounds them is such that perhaps they could deserve. of that monica. And we're just investigating it to see if it's true. Okay. So can you, let's talk about Madame de Barry's origin stories, because one of the things

I do love about, and I love this about a lot of the royal mistresses, is they often come from nowhere. It's like they just like come from just nothing and go on to, well, I'll let you tell the story. Tell us about Madame de Barry. That is certainly true of Madame DuBari. She was the daughter, they think, of perhaps a monk. And her mother, her mother, her Yes, her mother was a seamstress, and then she later became a cook. So a very humble origins of illegitimate birth. But in fact, that was in some ways for the French royal mistress at least, that was somewhat unusual. Because previous royal mistresses had had a reason to be at court. The reason that the king came into contact with them is they were already at court. And so they were to be at court. You were of noble background. Usually not of the highest noble background, but sort of the lesser nobility. And so the king would have come into contact with. them. That was what was unusual, both about Madame de Pompadour, who was who was Madame Dubari's immediate predecessor. She came from the financial bourgeoisie in Paris. Madame Dubari, though, came obviously from lower status. And, I mean, she got a good education. She was actually educated at a convent.

And, you know, she left the convent, which is 15. She worked as a domestic servant, they think, for a time. And then she worked at what was called a boutique de mood, a fashion store where people came to buy clothes. then at some point she met this kind of dissolute provincial nobleman, Jean-Baptiste Dubarie, who was nicknamed the Rue. Oh, is it always the way? Yes, always the way. And so they're not precisely sure how they met because obviously the details are kind of fuzzy as to her background since nobody was paying attention and keeping records through

her youth. But they became clandestine lovers. and then at some point he also became her pimp. Oh, God, how old was she here? She was in her teens. I mean, she was quite young when they met. She would have, well, she would have been, yeah, right around 1920 because she's 25 years old when she meets Louis and becomes his mistress.

So it was about five, six years before that. So she's very young. I mean, I think of my students. I mean, that's about their age, right? Yeah, it's true. So he introduced her to a fairly sumptial. was sociable lifestyle. She came into contact with nobleman and, and, you know, clearly, you know, was a high class courtesan, essentially. Her 19th century biographer, Shah Vatel, who wrote this

three-volume book about her, he claims that she was never a prostitute. She was not registered as a prostitute either a public one or a clandestine one. But as he said in sort of typical 19th century fashion, that did not keep her from having a good time and leading a dissolute life. So, so she, She got involved in these circles where she associated with these men. I mean, I think that Jean Dubarie was a casino owner, you know, that also had a sort of brothel on the side. This casino owning brothel on the side, Rue, just happened to go past a shop that she was working in. Well, apparently so. We don't know the details of that.

You get all this conflicting information. As you can imagine, there's all these sort of scurrilous biographies of her and trying to figure out what's true and what's not precisely is very true. tricky. What date is this, by the way? I should have asked that. What date is it? So this is in the 1960s. Right? She was born in 1743. She met Dubari sometime around 63, 64. There's sort of evidence of them showing up together by 64. But he introduces her to the Mechard de Richelieu, the Duke of Richelieu, who is a friend of the kings and who himself was very dissolute. I mean, some people claim that he was the model for Valmont from Dangerous Liaisons. So they met, they may have had an affair as well. And he decided that she was somebody who would be useful to introduce to the king.

The king had lost Madame de Pompadour in 1764. She had died. So he had lost his closest advisor, really. I mean, they were no longer sleeping together at that point, but he was still very devoted to her. And then his wife died right before he met Jean de Barrie. So, so. At this point, everybody knew that the best way to get the king's attention and to influence the king was through a woman. And so there was a lot of activity at court to introduce someone to the king that would be useful to you, right? That you could work through her then. So it appears that Rishal Yu was the man who could help put her before the king. Did she marry to bury?

Did she just take his name? No, she marries his brother. Oh, right. He introduced at court, and once she met the king, and once he became quite besotted with her, and they began this rather torn an affair in the summer of 1768, they decided that they wanted to find a way for her to legitimately be openly at court. And so for that, she had to be presented officially at court. And for that to happen, she had to have noble title. So Jean de Berri very conveniently has an older brother who does have noble title that goes back several centuries.

So they arrange a marriage. between Jean and the brother of her Pimp. And they get married and the husband goes off and she can be introduced at court now. Wow. So what was her original name? Gianne? Her original name was Jean-Bicue. Jean-Bicue.

Right, B-E-C-U. But she goes by several different names during her wild youth. She becomes Jean-Vaubernier. I'm not quite sure where that name comes from. She's also referred to sometimes as Mademoiselle Lange. which means the angel and apparently in reference to her angelic looks. She was stunningly beautiful apparently. I mean, the reports consistently are that she was very beautiful, curly blonde hair, tall,

you know, beautiful skin. They make sort of reference to her large bosom, which they call it unfashionable. But anyway, so she was apparently quite attractive. Well, you know, one of the things I've learned from studying Royal Mistresses, in particular your book, is that being good-looking is a help. Like, it's really helpful. It'll get you a foot in the door to be a hot. A necessary but not sufficient condition.

That's it. That's it. It'll only take you so far that. Like, if you think of the most gorgeous person you possibly could, they might be fun for a while, but if they've got nothing to back that up, you're going to go off and pretty quick. No, that's absolutely true.

I mean, the royal mistresses, there are very few that are not beautiful. And actually, as I sort of like think back, through. I mean, for the French kings, I mean, no, they're usually quite stunningly beautiful. Madame de Pompadour less consistently is referred to as beautiful or stunning. I mean, people refer to her. They say she has very nice eyes a little small, which it seems like that sort of. And, you know, so there's mixed commentary on her, but Dubari is sort of universally acclaimed as a stunning beauty. And that's probably what got her into the circles that she

was in, right? A total haughty. Which is funny because in a lot of the film adaptations where she features, they make a very dark, but she was actually described as being blonde. Right. Now, Aisha Argento, who plays her in the Marie Antoinette movie that Sophia Coppola made back in 2006. Yeah, she's very dark.

We would consider her beautiful today, but certainly would not have been considered so in the context of the court in the 1770s. And the same with My Wen, who just recently made a movie Jean-Dupé about her. no, I mean, she physically is nothing like her quite dark once again. And so I wonder if it's because so often in these movies, she's not exactly a villain, but she's vulgar, she's crude. I mean, they should have set her up. Isn't she? And she was not at all. She was not at all. I mean, that was one of the things that also anybody who is at all sympathetic to her says she was quite elegant that she, you would never have guessed her her origins, right? That she, now people who don't like her say the opposite. They'll talk about the fact that she was very. vulgar from the vile class. But in general, it seems like because she was in the social circles

that Dubari introduced her to, she was a nunbleman. And she also was educated in a convent. And so she had the social graces. So that's something that you certainly don't see in those movies so much. I mean, with my when, it's a little more complicated. I mean, she offers a sympathetic view of her

that is nothing like the historical Dubelari. No. In the Francis Ford Coppola one, though, she's burping. I know. She's vulgar in every way. And it's just, it's just so irritating. And they also make her look sort of petty and nasty. And that also is not the case. Yeah. I mean, she was quite generous towards most of her. Oh, really? I mean, the one exception, perhaps, is the Duke of Choiselle. He was one of the top officials at court when she first arrived. And he had hoped to place a different woman as the king's mistress. So he would have more influence. And as it turns out, Dubarie's protect. are his rivals. And so she gets caught up in these political rivalries. And so Choiselle is very unpleasant to her. If he had just been nice, I mean, she would undoubtedly have been willing to work with

him because he's not, she gets involved with the political intrigues that push him out by 1770. But no, she's somebody that universally people say she's nice. Okay, that's interesting. The Austrian ambassador, when he's trying to persuade Marie Antoinette to be a little more polite to her, he said, He says, she's not someone of elevated birth, and maybe not so smart, but she doesn't seem unpleasant. If you're just nice to her, she will come around to your side, essentially. It doesn't sound like she was very well received at Versailles, though, being very pretty and nice with big boobs. And obviously, the king is smitten.

And we will talk about why he smitten. It sounds like the reaction to her is just, you jumped up, hussy. What are you doing here? Yeah, and it's very difficult to find somebody who will actually present her at court. Because she's not noble. Right, she's not noble. Although she's now married. She's now married.

She has the title. But you still need somebody of the nobility to present you. And so it takes several months to locate a woman. It's eventually Madame de Beailleanne, the Contest de Beaille, who agrees to present her because the king agrees to pay off her debts. and then he agrees to promote her sons to better positions. And so on that basis, she agrees to present Dubari in April of 1769. But there's all this gossip among the memorialists at court who are keeping journals and stuff talking about all of the injuries behind the scene to get her to get her presented at court. Oh, they really don't like her, do they?

I mean, that must, I know he's the king, but that must have cost an arm and a leg just for this woman to stand there and go, yeah, this is Madame de Barry. Yeah, whatever. Yep. And once again, I mean, my one sort of, you know, makes a joke out of the presentation ceremony. But according to all of the accounts, Madame Dubari carried it off with great elegance, you know, great finash, great charm. Do you know, I'm really beginning to admire this woman, like the balls and the hoods, but to be to walk into this incredibly hostile world where people, like, they literally have to be bribed with thousands and thousands of pounds to even introduce you. And she's still there. she's still hanging in. And calling in favors for people, you know, trying to, I mean, some of the first favor she asks of the king, she gets, she asks to have a woman who was convicted of an infanticide pardoned because she was a poor woman who had been convicted of killing her baby in despair when she, you know, as a single mother. And she throws herself at the king's feet and says she won't, you know, that he wants her to, that she wants him to, to pardon her. she gets a noble couple who had shot someone who was trying to collect their taxes.

And she asks for a pardon for them as well at the request of the Contest de Bia, the same one who presented her at court. And so she does these favors for people who are not really even very nice to her. Wow. Yeah. So she's, I mean, like I said, she's universally known as somebody who is really very pleasant. In contrast, once again, to Pompadour, who took names. And, you know, know, and remembered who her enemies were and did them in. I'll be back with Christine and Madame de Barry after this short break. Okay, so why did Louis fall for Gian?

Because, as you said, women are just being hurled in his, in front of him. of just, you want to meet this person, you want to meet my sister, my niece, my daughter, my wife, my auntie. Why her? So she is quite beautiful, but also she's somebody who had more sexual experience than his previous mistresses or his previous lovers. If you go back and sort of look at his previous mistresses, he had, prior to Madame de Pompadour, he had a series of sisters who, like, in turn, served as, but they were noble women.

and there's... Not his sisters. Not his sisters. Okay. They were sisters to each other. Okay. Madame de Pompadour notoriously did not like sex. I've heard that.

I was going to ask you if that was true. I mean, it seems to be true. I mean, now the problem is, of course, that there are fake memoirs that talk about this and all the best anecdotes are sort of of questionable origins. But it does seem quite, quite... it does seem that she had a gynecological issue that made sex unpleasant for her. So their actual sexual relationship appears to have lasted only about five years from 1745 to 1750. And at that point, she transformed into his best friend. And so for the next 15 years, yeah, she was his advisor.

She was his best friend. They spent a lot of time together. And what he did for his sexual satisfaction is that a series of young women were brought to what called the Pakosef, this sort of location that was just not at Versailles, where a series of young, nubile women were brought, like 15, 16-year-olds, so that they were not sexually experienced, they would not have diseases, and he could meet up with them. Oh, less cool. Yeah.

Some people claim that Pompadour was involved in this. This seems unlikely, although it's likely she knew that it was happening and just sort of closed her eyes to it. So, as you can imagine, the series of 15 and 16-year-olds were also probably not sex. sexually experienced. Yeah, I guess. So suddenly he meets, he meets Madame Dubry, who was Jean-Vobinier, whatever she was going by at the time when they first met, and she has had a lot of sexual experience. And this is something that both the writers of memoirs and the sort of scandalous literature about her talk about that she was well versed in the arts of love. And I guess we can sort of use our imaginations as to what that meant. Do you think that's true, or do you think that's

just them being bitchy. It seems like she had a lot of experience or at least more experience than you average aristocrats. Right. And if you were hanging out with these noblemen and if you were a courtesan and if you in fact had this

I mean she had this relationship with Dubari who seems to have coached her. I mean interesting. It seems that I mean I don't find that implausible especially because he truly is, I mean, everybody at court says he's just besotted with her. Like, she goes to meeting.

Madame Campon, who is part of the household of Marie Antoinette, talks about her being perched on the arm of his chair during meetings. Really? She's going to meeting for him. Right. And so, and sort of the, what does she call it? She calls it. It's sort of silly childish, you know, banter between them. And so it. Oh, he's got it bad, doesn't he? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So. Right. And so I think that it's not, like I said, not implausible. Obviously, we can't get inside their bedroom and find out what they were actually doing. But it does seem that she came from a different world than certainly his other official mistresses. Yeah. And like I said, there doesn't seem to have been a way for him to have been exposed to cardizons prior to this.

Wow. So she's having a hard time being accepted by everyone except Lou. he's just having the best time. What about the other members of the royal family? How did they react to this? Oh, so his daughters loathe her. And they, you know, they're once again in the movie that Maewen made about Jean Dubarie. They're like these sort of cartoonish, you know, evil step-sister type daughters. But it is very clear that they did dislike her.

It also is true that they seem to have worked very hard to turn. and Marie Antoinette against her when she arrived at court very shortly after Dubourie was established. And so Marie Antoinette refused to have anything to do with her. She was finally forced into sort of being polite to her. But yeah. And so you have, and then the Duke de Choiselle, his sisters, his partisans, all disliked her. People were generally probably polite to her because you would not get very far at court being actively rude to the king. King's mistress. So probably most people were at least superficially polite and pleasant. And then she did have her partisans. The Mars de de Rischelieu, his son, the Duke of Aguillon, was quite important

at court. And he had a circle of counselors that he was involved with like Mopo and the Abitare. And these are the people who come to dominate the court in the last four years of Louis, the 15th reign. So she's allied with people who become very politically important at court. No one says that Dubaii herself was particularly interested in politics, but she's an important conduit of politics. And that this was sort of an accepted fact of court life by this point. Mistress had played this really important political role. And so people assume that the way to the king's ear is through his mistress. Is it true that Marie Antwery, was basically forced to talk to her, that she'd been snubbing her.

And because socially at Versailles, Madame de Barry could not speak to Marie Antoinette because of rank. So she has to say something first. And she's literally like dragged, kicking and screaming. And what did she manage to come up with? What did she say? She says, Ilia de Monde of Versailles, O'Don, there's a lot of people at Versailles today. That's it. Yeah, and that's it.

And she was basically pushed into it by her mother and by the, ambassador, Merci Argento, because it was becoming an international problem. Wow. That it was going

to affect relations between the French and the Austrians if she did not make nice with Madame Duvary. She's going to

make the king angry. Yeah. And he was angry. I mean, the king was very, very fond of Marie Antoinette when she first arrived.

But this was, this was a sore spot. And he made it pretty clear that she was going to have to say something. And Marie Antoinette, you know, not so much yet, but she found herself quite vulnerable over time as well because it took eight years before she had her first child with Louis XVI. And so there are, she was potentially vulnerable, but it was a problem for international affairs.

There's a lot of people at the Sioux today. It's just ice cold, isn't it? It's about as banal as it gets. If she was in Britain, she just said, we're having very fine weather today. Yeah, whether, whether, just whatever you can say that is, that is banal. Is she ever accepted at court? Does it ever reach a point where like people, like, maybe they don't, you know, think she's the best thing ever, but she's now part of the fixture and the fittings, or is she always regarded as a jumped-up outsider?

You know, she's just not there. I mean, she's there five years, which is not that long in the scheme of things, I guess. And, you know, there are people who really like her. I mean, when I was reading the various memoirs that make reference to her, there's, you know, the Count of Apincault, for example, who wrote about her. He's, you know, has sort of mixed views, but the Marquis de Belle Val think she's great. I mean, he thinks she's beautiful. She patronizes his military group. And so, but so he's a partisan.

So she has her partisan. She has people who say really nice things about her. it's just it's sort of hard to know because once again these memoirs were sometimes edited after the fact and so so they take a particular view but you know when louis comes down to smallpox in 1774 and he dies of smallpox she is not allowed to she's sent away does he send her away he is told that he's dying and he needs to sort of make himself right with god at that point so so that i mean this was something that always happened. He had been quite ill in 1744. He thought he was dying and he was persuaded to send

away his mistress at the time. And then he recovered and brought her back. But this was to make yourself right with God, you had to get rid of an illicit presence at court. So he does send her away. And then when he dies, Louis, the new king, Louis XVI, sends her to a convent where she stays for about a year. The two and nunnery. Yeah, that's always sort of the end, the end result of mistresses once they lose their position. Another good rule for a mistress along with you can be pretty, but you'll need to be more than pretty, is surely like take what you can get, take it and take as much as you can. But don't be too flashy with it because you'll piss people off. Did Madame de Barry adhere to that one particularly well?

No. No, no. I mean, even people who like her who say nice things about her do point out that she was really a spendthrift. And I'm forgetting what the source was, but apparently spent something like 12.5 million livres per year, pounds a year on jewelry and clothing and various amusement. I mean, she loves a bling, didn't she? She does love bling. And she eventually, she is given this estate called Lubisien, and that's where she goes. after Louis dies and after she gets out of the convent. And so, so no, I said, I have mixed feelings about it. I mean, not a good idea to, you know, when the French are starving, when the country is sort of on a downward slope, to spend this much money on luxuries is not, not really smart. On the other hand, you know, as a mistress, you probably know that your time may be short. Absolutely, yeah. Beauty does not last forever. And so one of the things that you,

you'd want to do is you'd want to sort of build up capital, I mean, to take care of yourself once you are no longer the king's favorite. So in a sort of strictly pragmatic sense, I mean, yeah, fair play. Well, and everybody did this. I mean, there's no greedier group of people. I would have done it. You would have done it. No, exactly. And no greedier group of people than the French nobility. I mean, do they really have the right to criticize her? I mean, they were always, you know, petitioning the king for favours and monuments of various kinds. And so I have a hard time getting too moralistic about it. I'll be about with Christine and Madame de Barry after this short break.

Some people who were getting moralistic about it, and obviously it's very easy when you're talking about the court of Versailles and, you know, the pomp and the ceremony to forget. get there was a world outside. And that world was getting quite angry by this point, not to mention Hungary. So we're gearing up to the French Revolution. Were the revolution? I know that the revolutionaries were very angry with Marie Antoinette and she becomes the target of satire and rumor and like real hatred. Was Madame de Barry involved in this? Was she a target for them? Or was she gone before it started? No, no, no. She is certainly a target. You know, in the 1770,

there's this whole sort of literature called the libel. These scandalous biographies, anecdotes about the corruption that's taking place at Versailles. And there's quite a few about Madame Dubaree. And a lot of the histories of the 19th and 20th century draw from these libel, which were of questionable accuracy. But it sort of reflected how people felt about her sort of spend thriftways at court. I mean, she was really hated by the people of France. in a way that seems at odds with her niceness that I was talking about. But by the time the revolution breaks out, oddly enough, she becomes sort of linked in people's

minds with Marie Antoinette. Despite the fact that Marie Antoinette had not liked her, Dubourie is actually a royalist, and she retains her sympathy for French royalty. And like I said, she becomes sort of linked with Marie Antoinette, the libel that are written about Marie Antoinette sort of draw from the very rich vein that you have of scandalous literature about Dubari. Marie Antoinette goes on trial in the fall of 1793, about nine months after Louis XVI is executed. And Marie Antoinette goes to the guillotine in October of 1793. Just a few months later, Dubari goes to the guillotine.

Oh, no. So she didn't stay in a convent then. No, no. She got out of her convent. She lived at Mubesienne. She had several lovers. She led a fairly pleasant life in the late 1770s, 1780s. But she makes a couple of suspicious trips to London in search of jewelry that was stolen from her house in the early 1790s. And that comes to the Revolutionary's attention. She's accused of treason. And actually, somebody who testifies against her is this young black servant. that she had been given as a gift when he was a child. This was a sort of popular, yeah, it's kind of, it's pretty gross. I mean, one of the sort of things that the French nobility did in the 1770s and under the Enson regime is they would bring these small black children and dress them up and sort of play with them like toys.

And so she has this young boy, Zamor, who's a servant to her. He grows up. He actually testifies against her at the trial. So she has found guilty, and she goes to the guillotine and deceit. of 1793 for treason for sympathy with the royalty. Could she have avoided all of this if she'd just kept, you know, ironically kept her head down instead of off? You know, it's just really hard to know. She made some unwise choices, I would say. She probably shouldn't have gone searching her money. She was looking for the money that, who stole it from her? I don't know. I mean, it's all sort of,

that stuff is also a mystery. It was jewelry that was she was apparently looking for. But there, I mean, this stuff is all, I, there's a lot of detail about this that I couldn't quite follow the sort of in and outs. But in general, I mean, she's put on trial, I think more than anything as a symbol of the old regime. I mean, she, people, it kind of got to that point, didn't it? People really hate the women who are associated with the old regime. And it reflects sort of the politics of this time, that the politics of the old regime are associated with the lack of transparency and the these sort of machinations of court life, right? And the new regime, the French revolutionary regime, was to be transparent and also male, because men, of course, are capable of putting the interests

of the country before their own personal interests, whereas women represent personal interests and these sort of intrigues. And so she's associated with that intriguing of the old regime, and that's how she and Marie Antoinette become very linked. They're also associated with the luxury in the spendthrift ways. So I don't know. if they would have come looking for her anyway. It's sort of hard to know. But her execution is really quite awful because most aristocrats who are executed went to their death stoically.

They had been trained in stoicism. And they made final statements that were moving. They did this in a very dignified fashion where she had to be dragged up the stairs and was screaming, you know, don't hurt me. What are you doing this? why, you know, and, you know, give me a little more time. And so, and people were really sort of queasy at the result. And I, I sort of wonder if more people had been dragged to their deaths like that, if it would have ended sooner. I don't know. I have read that, that her

react, I mean, it must, like, it's such a strange little vignette into what's going on, because these are crowds gathered to watch someone having their head cut off. And so they're watching that, like a spectacle, right, all day long. But there's even within that, there's like a code that is happening and the people having their heads cut off have to go, as you say, quietly, bravely, stoically, calmly to their death, holding it all together. And it just takes one woman to just absolutely fall apart and be drawn. And it has a real impact on the crowd. Yeah, it does.

I mean, they continue executing people. Oh yeah, it doesn't stop them, but it makes them feel a bit sad. It does. And the viciousness with which they went after her and even after her death and the sort of this, the sort of tragic death, I mean, you see it in the years that follow that, you know, once, once the terror comes to an end in the summer of 1794 and, and society sort of comes sort of slowly back to normal, the women who are well known under the directories, it's called, the government that is set up in place, if they are too politically engaged or if they are too rich or too

well-dressed, they'll call them, they'll refer to them as a dubari, you know, a modern in Dubari. And so you see this sort of continuation of the attacks that she's really much, very much associated with the old regime, the decadence of the old regime, the debauchery of the old regime, and women who are politically active and who are, who are too frivolous, who are too luxurious, they're associated with her. They continue to sort of draw that connection. As a slight side quest, do we know what happened to Zamor? That's just a fascinating part of this history. I mean, he becomes a revolutionary.

He shows up, when he shows up to testify, he's wearing the hat and, you know, the, the red hat that the revolutionaries wear. And so it's, but I can't remember what happens to him after that, yeah. Is his testimony recorded? Is that still on record? Do we know what he said about her? Jacques Lavand's book on Le Destin de Mme de Valle. He talks in detail about the trial and about Zamboer's testimony.

I think we talked specifically about her trip to England and that she was a royalist. Do we know what happened to her body? Because I know that the French Revolutionaries just, they didn't tend to bury people in respectful ways. She's buried in the same cemetery as Marie Antoinette was dumped into. Now, Marie Antoinette's body was later dug up and she was reinterred in Sandinie, which is where all the kings and queens are buried in the crypt underneath the Royal Abbey Church. but I don't know if her body was recuperated after the revolution. But yeah, they did just sort of dump them into these public cemeteries.

What do you think her legacy is? Do you think she had a legacy? I mean, you sort of hinted at it there that she went down as, you know, you don't want to be a debarie. Right. Right. I mean, I guess it's short term, long term. No, I mean, the short term, her legacy was sort of the symbol of the wicked woman, right? And Grakas Babouf, who was a communist, actually, who sort of in 1795 and 1796 tries to foment a sort of revolutionary activity.

He wants to bring back the sort of old constitution and sort of implement a more sort of communistic system in France. He particularly goes after Dubari and sees her as the symbol of everything that's evil and says that, you know, the happiest day for the French was when she was executed. He calls her Venus Dubari. So you do see this sort of a really negative legacy in the years immediately after the terror. But, you know, and that continues into the 19th century. I mean, the French historians of the 19th century or people who write about France in the 19th century, they continue to blame Pompidore, Dubari, the sort of corruption of these women for bringing down the regime, essentially. So that is very much her legacy, I'd say into the 20th century, that it's not a positive one.

She is seen in this extremely negative fashion as somebody who is responsible for the corruption that brought down the old regime. And so whether you are somebody who is pro-revolution or anti-revolution, they can all agree on these women are responsible, right? It's their fault. Today, you know, there's quite a few biographies of her that drawn all the usual tropes, right? There's quite a few of these sort of romanticized biographies of her. And some of them are sympathetic. But even the ones that are sympathetic, they criticize her for all. They'll say, well, you know, despite her sluttiness, she was really a nice person or, you know, something, something along those lines. They see her sexual misbehavior as something that's relevant. I think today, anybody who would seriously look at her would say maybe not politically smart to have been such a, to be running through, through money so fast, the public's money. But I don't know. I'm sort of sympathetic to, I mean, women didn't have, we're not dealt a great hand of cards in the 18th century. No, and she played hers spectacularly well. She uses her,

her erotic capital. She uses her physical attractiveness. She's, she's pretty smart. I mean, she's criticized sometimes for not being very smart, but she's pretty savvy. And so she uses these skills to try to make a comfortable life for herself. It's complicated when you try to impose our views about the way society should operate on the past. And so anyway, her legacy, I'd say, is complicated, as is always the case. Complicated. Yeah. Well, for the purposes of this show, and I will trespass on applying modern vernacular to history a little further. If If we use the working definition from urbanairdiction.com of what a slut is, and they define a slut is, a woman who knows how to enjoy life and sex like a man. Do you think that Madame de Barry will fit into that category?

Let's see. I would say not exactly because she was not going out looking, I think, to satisfy her libido, right? Good point. She made use of her sexual attractiveness. And if we accept the sort of traditional narrative, she was trained in the arts of love. And she used that as a tool to achieve a comfortable lifestyle and to bring herself close to the king. But I don't think she was acting like a man. She wasn't pursuing lovers.

I think she was enjoying her sexuality like a woman. Oh, I love that answer. It's very good. So I think we could say Madame de Barry, not a super slut, but somebody who liked to spend a lot of money. That's fair. She liked to live. She wanted a secure, uncomfortable life, right? And who can blame this about that?

She wanted a pleasant life. She wanted, I mean, you know, think of what life was like in the 18th century. Wouldn't you want a nice place to live and good food? And, yeah. And so I think that I think that her concerns were very. different than a man's concerns, right? Her, the way that she saw the world because of her status, because gender dictated so many things about one's life, especially if you were not born, to the man or born, you know, you had to, you had to strategize and make use of the skills

and the opportunities and the gifts you had. Oh, Christine, you have been wonderful. Thank you so much. You've just been marvelous. Thank you. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? I'm on threads in Blue Sky, although not all that much. I post them periodically, but CM Adams 41 on threads and Prof. Chris Adams on Blue Sky. And I occasionally, I publish opinion pieces occasionally. I'm sort of interested in modern politics and what we can learn from the past about them. So I've written for Made by History, which used to be at the Washington Post, and then was at Time magazine and is now moving to the Philadelphia Inquirer. Or send me an email. Or read your book. The creation of the French royal mistress from Agnes Sarel to Madame de Barry.

I really was very happy with that book, Tracy, I had a really good time writing it. And, you know, the new project that I'm working on, these women who sort of come to light after the terror, the women of the director who are called the Mavayus. The marvelous ones is what it translates as. And they're the women who wore the sort of the Greek-style dresses, the white Muslim dresses. So the Josephine Bonaparte's of the world that they were her social circle. So I'm interested in them because they are not necessarily conventional

in their sexual behavior. Thank you so much for coming by. You've been a treat. Thank you for listening. And thank you so much to Christine for joining us. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like review and follow along whatever it is you get your podcasts.

Coming up, we've got episodes on the fabulous history of Belesk and our next installment of our series, The Super Sluts of History. And we're going to be looking at the First World War spy matter harry. If you'd like us to explore a subject if you just wanted to say hello,

then you can email us at betwixt at historyhit.com. This podcast was edited by Hannah Fyodorov and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddie Chick. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal in Society,

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