Suzanne Curchod (1737 94) was living at Lausanne when she agreed to marry the young Edward Gibbon, but the engagement was broken off. Employed as companion to the then fiancee of Jacques Necker (1732 1804), later the finance minister of Louis XVI, she married him in 1764. Their only daughter, Anne Louise Germaine, is better known as Madame de Stael. Madame Necker was eager for her husband, a wealthy banker, to pursue a political career, but Jacques Necker's efforts towards financial reform made him unpopular at court, and his dismissal in July 1789 was one of the triggers for the French...

Suzanne Curchod (1737 94) was living at Lausanne when she agreed to marry the young Edward Gibbon, but the engagement was broken off. Employed as companion to the then fiancee of Jacques Necker (1732 1804), later the finance minister of Louis XVI, she married him in 1764. Their only daughter, Anne Louise Germaine, is better known as Madame de Stael. Madame Necker was eager for her husband, a wealthy banker, to pursue a political career, but Jacques Necker's efforts towards financial reform made him unpopular at court, and his dismissal in July 1789 was one of the triggers for the French...