A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Adelaide, Madame, of France
ADELAIDE,
Madame, of France, the eldest daughter of Louis the Fifteenth, and Aunt of Louis the Sixteenth, was born at Versailles, in the year 1732. This princess, although constantly exposed to the contaminating influence of a dissipated court, was distinguished for the purity of her morals; she kept aloof from any participation in the various intrigues that were in active operation around her, during the reign of both her father and nephew; and her strong good sense enabled her to detect the fallacy and foresee the danger of the financial schemes of the minister Calonne. Anxious to escape the revolutionary storm which she saw was about to break upon her unhappy country, she quitted Paris for Rome, in February, 1791, accompanied by her sister Madame Victoire. After several detentions on the route, the royal sisters reached Rome, where they remained until the approach of the French army in 1799, compelled them again to become fugitives. They first sought refuge in Naples, then in Corfu, and ultimately in Trieste, where Madame Adelaide died, in the early part of 1800, having survived her sister nine months.