Madame de Pompadour: The Life and Legacy of French King Louis XV's Chief Mistress

*Includes pictures*Includes contemporary accounts*Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading“After us, the deluge. I care not what happens when I am dead and gone.” – Madame de PompadourJean Antoinette Poussin, the woman who would become known as Madame de Pompadour, was a middle-class girl of uncertain parenthood who became one of many in a long line of King Louis XV’s mistresses before she died at the age of 42. While none of that stands out on its own when it comes to French history and royalty, historians have labeled her “no ordinary king’s mistress…She made and unmade ministers, she selected ambassadors, she appointed generals, [and] she conferred pensions and places.” In fact, her most savage critics concede her vital importance and historical legacy, even if begrudgingly, as one 1869 magazine noted: “If one could create an expurgated edition of history, one might put Madame de Pompadour out of sight; but alas! the eighteenth century, and even the French Re