Marie Antoinette's dogs: pugs, papillons, and one Leonberger

Part 1

Which dogs Marie Antoinette actually kept

Her childhood pug from Austria

A 1770 letter from the Austrian ambassador, the Comte de Mercy-Argenteau, records that the young dauphine asked for a Mops dog to be sent to her from Vienna. In German, Mops is the word for the pug breed, not a specific dog's name, and the letter's own footnote confirms this. The same letter notes she already owned two dogs, which Mercy described as unfortunately unclean. Later biographies turned Mops into a named pug taken away and later reunited with her, a version the original correspondence does not support that specifically.

The papillon-type spaniel she favored at Versailles

Papillon dogs had been favorites at the French court since the reign of Louis XIV. Both Madame de Pompadour and Marie Antoinette were known as great dog lovers, and papillons were a particular favorite of theirs. If your own dog is small and toy-sized, it is easy to see why these dogs suited apartment life at a busy court like Versailles.

Names recorded for her dogs

• A later toy spaniel, thought to be a papillon, is recorded under different names in different sources: Thisbée, Coco, or Mignon, and was said to be a gift from her friend the Princesse de Lamballe.
• A Leonberger, a large breed unlike her small dogs, was reportedly a gift from the Swedish count Axel von Fersen and was named Odin.
• A small poodle known as Pompon appears in a painting connected to her, though there is no firm evidence linking the dog she requested from Vienna to this particular animal.

Toy spaniels as a fashion among nobility

Marie Antoinette's fondness for small dogs fit a wider trend at the French court. Louis XIV kept Great Pyrenees dogs and Louis XV favored poodles, showing that dogs were common companions among French royalty.

Part 2

Life with dogs inside Versailles

Where the dogs lived and what they did to the rooms

Marie Antoinette's dogs scratched a hole in the carpet of the Antechamber of the Grand Couvert, and her rooms were often marked with muddy paw prints. If you have ever come home to a chewed rug, you will recognize the complaint, even if the setting was a palace.

Portraits and paintings

A painting believed to show her dog Pompon, a small poodle, sold at auction for far above its estimate. More broadly, papillon-type toy spaniels appear often in French and other European court portraits of the period, since women of rank commonly posed with a small dog on their lap.

Pets versus hunting dogs

Louis XV, for instance, dedicated a separate room in his private apartment to his hunting dogs, where they slept and where he visited them after a hunt. Lapdogs like Marie Antoinette's were untrained pets who left muddy paw prints and damaged furniture.

Part 3

The dog said to accompany her final days

The often-repeated story

The earliest known version of this story appears in an account of French prisons published in 1797, which describes a dog that followed Marie Antoinette to the Temple prison and then waited outside the Conciergerie after she was moved there, unable to enter. That 1797 account says the dog was fed by nearby households and eventually disappeared, with the author presuming it died. A much more detailed version appeared in a newspaper in 1858, sixty-five years later, giving the dog a name, Thisbé, a rescuer, and a dramatic ending at the Seine. Other later tellings go further still, describing the dog present at the execution itself, howling at the moment of the beheading, and even being struck by a guard.

What contemporary records can and cannot confirm

The memoirs written by her surviving daughter, Marie-Thérèse, who was imprisoned alongside her, do not mention a dog at all. The 1858 version that names the dog Thisbé and stages its death at the execution was not even included in the edition of those memoirs it was meant to accompany. A separate account instead says the dog survived, was kept by the children's governess, and lived for many years afterward.

Why the story gets exaggerated

Each retelling over the decades added new characters and more dramatic detail rather than new evidence, moving from a plain 1797 account to an emotional 1858 newspaper version with a rescuer and a tragic ending.

Part 4

How her dogs shaped the papillon's image

Papillon popularity in French portraiture

Small toy spaniels that are ancestors of today's papillon appear in European paintings going back to the sixteenth century, well before Marie Antoinette's time. By the eighteenth century, women of rank at the French court, your dog's toy-breed ancestors among them, were rarely painted without one of these dogs on their lap.

Royal ownership and breed prestige

Papillon dogs had already been brought into fashion at the French court during the reign of Louis XIV, and King Henry III is said to have declared an early version of the breed the official dog of his court. Marie Antoinette's own fondness for papillons, alongside Madame de Pompadour's, followed a taste for the breed that dated back to Louis XIV's court.

Compared with other royal-dog associations

Marie Antoinette's link to papillons was one thread in a wider pattern rather than something unique to her. Louis XIV kept Great Pyrenees, Louis XV favored poodles, and other courtiers favored breeds like Dachshunds, so royal dog ownership at Versailles spanned many breeds across many owners over generations.

Part 5

Separating fact from legend

If you read several accounts of Marie Antoinette's dogs side by side, as I have done here for you, the gaps between them become clear. Sources describe the details about her dogs as scant and sometimes contradictory, even down to which breed a given dog was.

• The name Mops is often treated as a specific pug's name, but the original 1770 letter uses it only as the German word for the pug breed.
• The story of a dog present and struck at her execution builds on an earlier, plainer account from 1797 that does not include the scaffold scene at all.
• A story about a building in Paris nicknamed the Papillon House, said to have sheltered a pardoned dog, is repeated on pet and breed sites.

What does hold up across sources is that she asked for a pug-type dog from Vienna, favored papillon-type spaniels as an adult, and later received a Leonberger as a gift. Beyond that, exact names, exact numbers of dogs, and the fate of her last dog remain open questions that the surviving letters and memoirs do not fully settle.