Louis XVIII et la duchesse d'Angoulême. Lot n° 27

Rare embroidery showing Louis XVIII and the Duchess of Angouleme walking in the snow with a poodle. In a wooden frame (wear). Restoration period, around 1814-1820. H. 55,5 x W. 45 cm. Accidents History The Count of Provence fled Paris on June 20, 1791, the same day as his brother King Louis XVI, but he was lucky enough to be neither recognized nor caught. Joining the army of the emigrants in Coblence, he will thereafter lead a life of exile, and this life will depend only on the subsidies and hospitality of foreign sovereigns. This is how he arrived in Mitau on March 29, 1798, at the invitation of Tsar Paul I. He was to find a bit of pomp in the former palace of the Dukes of Courland (the Duchy had been annexed by Russia in 1795), with a retinue of 108 people and a hundred or so bodyguards equipped at the expense of the Tsar, who also granted him an annual pension of 200,000 roubles. But above all, the one who is officially King Louis XVIII since the death of the Dauphin in the Temple prison in 1795, is going to elaborate a political program destined to be applied upon his return to France. In addition, it was in Mitau that the marriage of Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, the orphaned daughter of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, to the Duke of Angouleme, eldest son of the Count of Artois, took place on 10 June 1799. But, on January 20, 1801, following the intemperate language of Louis XVIII's entourage, he was expelled to Warsaw, then in Prussia. It was during this trip that Louis and his retinue were blocked by a snowstorm on January 24, 1801, and the King was forced to spend two hours on foot in the snow.