Agathe de Rambaud

Agathe de Rambaud, born Agathe-Rosalie Mottet at Versailles in 1764, was the official nurse of the royal children of France in the old court sense of the berceuse des enfants de France, a post of daily care for a child rather than a medical practice. Queen Marie Antoinette chose her in 1785 to look after her second son Louis-Charles, who became Dauphin in 1789, and she was in charge of him from his birth until the attack on the Tuileries palace on 10 August 1792. The historian Alain Decaux, quoted in her article, judged that she was more of a mother to the boy than the queen was. After the Revolution she asked in vain to serve the royal family in its captivity at the Temple, spent periods in hiding, and lived through the Republic, the Empire and the Restoration, surviving on a modest pension granted because of her former post. She died in 1853. Her entry belongs to the record of nursing as a court office and of the women who held it.