Princess Thèrése of France - The Penultimate Daughter of King Louis XV of France & Queen Maria Leszczyńska
Posthumous portrait of Princess Thérèse, by Jean-Marc Nattier (1748). Princess Thérèse of France was born on 16 May 1736 at the Palace of Versailles in Versailles, Yvelines, France. She was the seventh daughter and ninth child of King Louis XV of France and his wife, Queen Maria Leszczyńska. King Louis XV was the son of Louis, Duke of Burgundy, and Marie Adélaïde of Savoy. Maria Leszczyńska was the daughter of Stanisław I Leszczyński and Countess Catherine Opalińska. Since birth, Thérèse had six siblings: Élisabeth, Henriette, Louis, Adélaïde, Victoire, and Sophie. Two siblings, a sister and a brother, died in childhood before the birth of Thérèse: Marie Louise and Philippe. In 1737, one year after the birth of Thérèse, her mother gave birth to one more daughter, Louise. Because of the expenses of the king's official mistress, Louise Julie de Mailly-Nesle, Cardinal Fleury, the king's chief minister, sent Thérèse and her sisters Victoire, Sophie, and Louise to the Abbey of Fo...