Madame Du Barry - Death of Louis XV and Exile

Death of Louis XV and Exile

In time, the king started to show his age by constantly thinking of death and repentance, even missing 'appointments' in Jeanne's boudoir. During a stay at the Petit Trianon with her, Louis XV felt the first symptoms of smallpox. He was brought back to the palace at night and put to bed, where his three daughters and Madame du Barry stayed with him. On 4 May 1774, the king suggested to Madame du Barry that she leave Versailles, both to protect her from infection and to prepare for confession and receiving last rites. She immediately retired to her estate near Rueil. Following the death of Louis XV, she was quickly exiled to the Abbaye du Pont-aux-Dames near Meaux-en-Brie.

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