Du Barry

Du Barry, MARIE JEANNE GOMARD DE VAUBERNIER, COMTESSE, favourite of Louis XV., was born August 19, 1746, at Vaucoleurs, the daughter of a dressmaker. Coming very young to Paris as Mademoiselle Lange, she became a milliner of more than dubious character, next the mistress of the disreputable Jean, Comte du Barry, by whose means she was presented to Louis XV., already, at sixty years of age, in his dotage of shame. Her handsome face, but still more her piquant if vulgar wit, amused the worn-out dotard, who procured her presentation at court as Comtesse du Barry, in 1769, by marrying her to Guillaume, Comte du Barry, the reprobate brother of her earlier reprobate protector. Her influence henceforth reigned supreme, and the greatest courtiers were content to abase themselves before her. The Duc de Choiseul attempted to resist her influence, but was soon displaced, while she, with her confidant the Duc d'Aiguillon, governed France. On the death of Louis (1774) she was dismissed from court, but was allowed to live on in her house at Luciennes. In 1792 she went to London to dispose of her jewels, but on her return next year was arrested, tried before the Revolutionary Tribunal for having wasted the treasures of the state, and worn in London mourning for the late king. She was guillotined, 7th December 1793. It has been estimated that Du Barry cost France 35,000,000 francs: her one merit was that she was liberal to artists and men of letters, probably from a dread of epigram and caricature. Her Mémoires (6 vols. Paris, 1829-30) are unreliable; not so Vatel's Mademoiselle Du Barry (3 vols. 1882-84). See her Life and Times by R. B. Douglas (1896).