French Revolution dog breeds: which dogs lived through it

Part 1

Which dogs lived in France before the revolution

Small spaniels related to today's Papillon breed were popular with the French court well before 1789. According to one account, Marie's own spaniel had come to the French court from Spain on the backs of pack mules. Paintings from as early as the 13th century are said to show small droop-eared dogs like their ancestors, though other accounts trace the earliest such paintings to around 1500. In the 17th century, Louis the Fourteenth even created an official post responsible for the care and breeding of the royal court's small dogs.

Away from the palace, sheepdogs worked the pastures of the Brie region in north-central France. The earliest known written mention of these shepherd dogs appears in an agricultural treatise from 1783, which described a long-haired, usually black dog used to herd sheep and to defend them, when needed, from wolves. So if you keep one of these breeds today, its working ancestors were already active in the French countryside when the Revolution broke out.

Part 2

Marie Antoinette's dogs during the revolution

Marie Antoinette was imprisoned with her family at the Temple prison in Paris, and she was permitted to keep one of her dogs with her in her rooms there. She was executed by guillotine on the 16th of October, 1793. Stories about what happened to her dog differ, and the dog is given different names in different accounts, including Thisbe, Coco, and Mignon.

• In one version, the dog was a toy spaniel, possibly what would later be called a Papillon, and it is said to have howled when the Queen was executed before being killed by a guard.
• In another version, the dog survived, was kept safe by the children's governess, and lived for twenty-two years before dying not long after the monarchy was restored.
• The earliest known written account of this story was published in 1797, only a few years after the events it describes.
• A more detailed, more dramatic version of the same story appeared in a royalist newspaper in 1858, sixty-five years later, with new characters and a different ending.

A separate and often-repeated story says Marie Antoinette had to leave behind a pug named Mops when she left Austria for France as a teenager. Careful reading of the letters this story is based on shows that the word used, Mops, is simply the German name for the pug breed, not the name of one particular dog. If you have come across the Mops story before, it is worth knowing there is no evidence in the correspondence it is based on for a specific dog named Mops being separated from her and later reunited.

Part 3

A sheepdog leaves France as the revolution begins

In October 1789, Thomas Jefferson was in Le Havre preparing to sail home after serving as America's minister to France. He spent a stormy day searching the countryside for a pair of shepherd dogs from the Brie region before he left. He eventually bought a pregnant female of this type, whom he named Bergere, and she gave birth during the voyage to America. The Marquis de Lafayette, a hero of the American Revolution, later sent Jefferson more of these dogs at Monticello. So even as the Revolution unfolded in France, some of its sheepdogs were already crossing the Atlantic to a new home, a detail you might not expect from a history focused only on Paris.

Part 4

How french dog breeding recovered after the revolution

The Briard, as the Brie sheepdog came to be called, was first shown at the first Paris dog show in 1863. The first Briard entered into France's national stud-book was registered in 1885, and a dedicated breed society was formed in 1909. The Papillon's name and its trademark upright ears also came later: toward the end of the 19th century, a breeder produced a version of the toy spaniel with ears standing erect, and the older name for the breed was dropped in favor of Papillon, after the butterfly-like look of those ears.

1. 1783: the earliest written mention of the Brie shepherd dog appears in an agricultural treatise.
2. 1863: a Brie shepherd dog is shown at the first Paris dog show.
3. 1885: the first Briard is registered in France's national stud-book.
4. 1909: a dedicated breed society for the Briard is formed.

Part 5

What historical records actually tell us

One writer who examined old European portraits noted that the small dogs shown curled up on castle floors would never really have chosen to lie on cold stone, a sign of artistic license rather than accurate observation. In 2023 a small portrait sold at auction in New York for far above its estimate because it was said to show Marie Antoinette's dog, named Pompon, though the identification of the dog and even its breed, whether poodle or Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, remains uncertain. Written records have similar problems, since the story of Marie Antoinette's dog grew more detailed and more dramatic with each retelling over the decades that followed the Revolution. This pattern is worth keeping in mind whenever you read a confident claim about a specific French revolution dog breed: much of the detail may be later legend rather than something written down at the time.