Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, was a good friend of Marie Antoinette, Queen of the French. The Duchess was horrified when she heard of her friend's death. She wrote:
"The impression of the Queen's death is constantly before my eyes, how anxious I am to know how my dr sister will bear it. Besides the admiration that is universally felt for her and the horror at the barbarians, her answers, her cleverness, composure, greatness of mind blaze forth in double splendour, and the horror of making the child appear against her is what one shd have hop'd that the mind of man was incapible of..."