Marie Thérèse Françoise Boisselet (1731 – 1800) was a '' petite maîtresse'' of King

Louis XV of France Louis XV (15 February 1710 – 10 May 1774), known as Louis the Beloved (), was King of France from 1 September 1715 until his death in 1774. He succeeded his great-grandfather Louis XIV at the age of five. Until he reached maturity (then defi ...

. Boisselet was born to Pierre Sulpice Boisselet and Marie Thérèse Carouailles. Her father was an employee of the king's kitchen staff, with the title Contrôleur de la Bouche du Roi et chef du gobelet de Mme la Dauphine'''. Marie Thérèse Françoise Boisselet was described as a beauty, and she agreed to become the lover of the king. The affair was not an official one; she was recruited to be a ''petite maîtresse'' (unofficial mistress) of the king in

Parc-aux-Cerfs A Parc-aux-Cerfs (; "park of stags"), in France, was generally the name given to the clearings that provided hunting fields for the French aristocracy prior to the French Revolution. The name is most notoriously known in history for an area in ...

. She had one child with the king, Charles Louis Cadet de Gassicourt (1769–1821). In 1771, she married the chemist

Louis Claude Cadet de Gassicourt Louis Claude Cadet de Gassicourt (24 July 1731 – 17 October 1799) was a French chemist who synthesised the first organometalic compound. He obtained a red liquid by the reaction of potassium acetate with arsenic trioxide. This liquid is ...

, who adopted her son. According to

Paul Thiébault Paul Charles François Adrien Henri Dieudonné Thiébault (; 14 December 1769, Berlin – 14 October 1846, Paris) was a general who fought in Napoleon I's army. During his military career he wrote a number of histories and memoirs, the last of ...

, Louis XV benefitted the career of Cadet de Gassicourt in the Royal Academy because of his marriage to his former lover.Mémoires du general-baron Thiebault, réédition de Fernand Calmettes en 1895, page 371

References

* Jean Tulard, Jean-François Fayard und Alfred Fierro: Histoire et dictionnaire de la Révolution française. 1789–1799, Paris 1987 {{DEFAULTSORT:Boisselet, Marie Therese Francoise 1731 births 1800 deaths 18th-century French people Mistresses of Louis XV