, known as (24 June 1772 – 7 January 1830), was a Savoyard aristocrat. During the French Revolution, she became a popular hostess in Paris, and modelled for Jacques-Louis David's 1799 painting The Intervention of the Sabine Women.
Married to an officer in the Sardinian army, de Bellegarde fled Savoy at the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars in 1792, but returned at the end of the year to protect her family property from confiscation. She became the lover of Marie-Jean Hérault de Séchelles, and accompanied him to Paris in 1793. After de Séchelles' arrest and execution, she was in turn arrested and imprisoned in the Saint-Lazare prison, where she met Aimée de Coigny, a prominent . Released after the fall of Maximilien Robespierre in July 1793, de Bellegarde became a fixture of culture and established relationships with many leading figures of the period, including Talleyrand, Thérésa Tallien and Rouget de Lisle.
De Bellegarde's role in the creation of The Intervention of the Sabine Women has been described as part of the painting's "legend". It provoked numerous, often contradictory, Parisian stories and rumours, which often revolved around de Bellegarde's status as a sex symbol. Her involvement, along with that of her sister Aurore, was considered a significant influence on Parisian cultural tastes, and has been discussed at length in later scholarship on the painting.
She maintained her during the French Empire, where she became known as a royalist and an opponent of Napoleon, and during the Bourbon Restoration. In later life, she became known for her religious and charitable activity in the town of Chenoise, where she owned a château. She died in Paris on 7 January 1830.
De Bellegarde and her sister Aurore were known as . The art historian Ewa Lajer-Burcharth has written that the sisters were "known to epitomise the whole world of fashionable femininity under the Directoire."
Early life and family
was born on 24 June 1772 in Chambéry, the former capital of the Duchy of Savoy and its largest city on the French side of the Alps.
Adèle was the elder daughter of , and a general in the army of the Dutch Estates. Her mother, , was a Picard noblewoman and sister of the French general Louis Charles d'Hervilly. The family were one of the oldest in Savoy: since 1530, they had owned the , a castle constructed in 1342 on the border between Savoy and Dauphiné. The family divided their time between the castle and an hôtel particulier at 1 in Chambéry. Her sister was born on 30 September 1774, while her mother died giving birth to her youngest sister, (known as ), on 3 July 1776.
On 5 November 1787, de Bellegarde was married to , the son of her father's brother Jean-François de Bellegarde and a frequent visitor to the family home. Friedrich, a freemason, a native of Saxony and a captain in the Sardinian army, was thirty-five; she was fifteen. The couple had two children — a daughter and a son — between 1787 and 1791. Her father died early in 1790, leaving Adèle the title of , while died in May 1792 at the age of eighteen.
French invasion of Savoy (1792)
After the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789, tensions grew between France and its monarchical neighbours, including the Kingdom of Sardinia, of which Savoy was a part, largely over the mutual hostility between revolutionary and monarchical ideals, the perceived threat to the revolutionary state from émigré aristocrats, and European monarchs' concern for the safety and rule of Louis XVI. Riots broke out across Savoy, including in Chambéry, prompted by unrest at the French abolition of seigneurial dues (which prompted calls among the rural population for the same) and at rising prices, partly caused by the immigration of wealthy French aristocrats. Little is known of de Bellegarde during this period: Vermale suggests that she and her husband may have sheltered some of the numerous French émigrés who fled across the border to Savoy.
On 20 April 1792, the French National Assembly voted for war with Austria and France invaded the Austrian Netherlands, beginning the War of the First Coalition. In August, news reached Savoy that the French armies were preparing an invasion. Friedrich de Bellegarde, now a lieutenant-colonel in Sardinian service, was given command of the area around Chambéry, while the was fortified, garrisoned and equipped with cannon. The château was made the headquarters of the Sardinian forces, commanded by General de Lazary.