#madame de motteville

[histoireettralala]

Anne of Austria and Mazarin: a more nuanced reading.

The question of the queen mother’s relationship with Mazarin has been the stuff of historical speculation since the mazarinades first spread notions of illicit sexual relations, secret marriage, and the cardinal’s ‘bewitching’ of the queen. Since then, slightly more decorous historical discussion has sought to establish the nature of the relationship, with the obvious underlying question of how emotionally dependent Anne was on Mazarin. Much of this relies on reading meanings into letters from Mazarin to Anne whose tone and expression could encompass the possibilities of frustrated physical passion, heightened seventeenth-century notions of sentiment and friendship, calculated emotional manipulation, and a great deal in between these three. The relevant question in this context is whether the queen mother could contemplate abandoning Mazarin and leaving him in permanent exile, either because the emotional ties were less strong than Mazarin wished to believe, or because Anne calculated, on behalf of her son, that the political price —or political risk— of restoring the cardinal was too high. Here the only real source, given the queen’s own silence, are the memoirs of contemporaries around her at court, and opinions in these are divided. If some of these writers assert that Anne would never abandon Mazarin, others were quite prepared to argue that the queen’s affections were conditional and perceptibly diminishing as Mazarin’s absence continued. A third group did not doubt Anne’s affection for the cardinal, but were more sceptical of her resolution and commitment to him in the face of persuasion and contrary arguments advanced by those in her entourage and in the council.

Some of the shrewdest commentary can be found in the memoirs of Marie d’Orléans, duchesse de Nemours, who was not an intimate of Anne like Mme de Motteville, but no enemy of the queen either. Nemours’ memoirs assert that commentators had been so obsessed with the notion that the queen was entirely controlled by Mazarin that they had failed to note just how little correspondence there was between the two of them, and the amount of mutual misunderstanding that grew up during Mazarin’s exile. The queen mother, she argued, had little taste for the work of government and little confidence that she could handle it well; despite this, Nemours adds, she had a good sense of political judgement based on scepticism about the motives of everyone. So it suited the queen to allow Mazarin to take responsibility for government, but when he was not present she was prepared to take the advice of others around her, even when this cut across the actions and policies that she had previously agreed with the cardinal. This interpretation of the queen’s motivation was not good news for Mazarin’s aim to shape Anne’s actions on the basis of his intermittent correspondence. And it was echoed by two of Mazarin’s strongest advocates at court: his nephew by marriage, the duc de Mercoeur, and his military ally, the maréchal du Plessis-Praslin. Both stressed that the queen was, in Mercoeur’s words, ‘susceptible to being pressured’ by those ministers and courtiers with whom she was more immediately in contact.

These pessimistic judgements were not fully accepted by Mazarin, but he was certainly concerned that Anne might get used to managing affairs of state without him. It was not possible to insulate the queen mother from those around her, and many of them were either his undeclared enemies or those who believed that Mazarin’s return would complicate an already precarious political situation. His response, as we have seen, was to keep his return as the unremitting focus of all his letters, while simultaneously expecting his allies and appointees in the council and at court to maintain the pressure on the queen by stressing the miseries of his exile and the benefits that would be brought by his presence.

All of this took its toll: Mazarin was prepared to confront the queen directly about the extent of her commitment to him, and his replies suggest that he received some written reassurances from Anne in return. But he was no less aware that even the most detailed and painstakingly written account of the political situation and the role she should play was less immediately influential than direct conversation with the queen. Unless he could count on those around Anne to remain ‘on message’, his letters could easily be forgotten; and many of these courtiers saw Mazarin’s stock as having fallen to the point where his concerns could be ignored with impunity. An additional hazard in trying to build up a group of cheerleaders around the queen came from Anne’s suspicions that Mazarin’s letters to others in the court circle may have offered different perspectives and information from those sent to her personally. The duc de Mercoeur explained in a letter to Mazarin that the queen insisted that all those at the court who received letters from Mazarin should read them out to her in her apartments. Mercoeur recognized that this had the potential to embarrass Mazarin, if not worse, and suggested that the cardinal should send information that he did not want disclosed to the queen in separate, additional notes that could be kept apart from the letter for public consumption.

David Parrott - 1652: The Cardinal, the Prince, and the Crisis of the Fronde

[anamariamauricia]

Hi! Would you be so kind to recommend me books about Anne of Austria ( or people connected to her?) Thanks!

Sure thing! So my number 1 favorite biography of Anne is:

Anne of Austria: Queen of France by Ruth Kleinman

These other books aren't solely about her, but I still found them to have interesting information about her and those around her:

Raised to Rule: Educating Royalty at the Court of the Spanish Habsburgs, 1601-1634 by Martha K. Hoffman

Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King by Antonia Fraser

The Empress, the Queen and the Nun: Women and Power at the Court of Philip III of Spain by Magdalena S. Sanchez

[detsolkongen]

When it was dark, the Infanta Queen left the house of the queen-mother and went to the King, led by the King, the Queen Mother, and Monsieur. They supped in public, and at once the king asked to go to bed, and the queen with tears in her eyes said to the queen-mother: it is too soon, but when it is said to him that the king was undressed, she sat down to do so. much. She undressed without any way and when it was said that the king was waiting for her she said: quickly, quickly, the king is waiting for me. And both went to bed with the blessing of their mother.

Memoirs of Madame de Motteville

[nellygwyn]

Hi ! Could you tell me some facts about the couple Charles I of England and Henrietta Maria of France? Thanks :D

- When they met after Henrietta landed in England for the first time, Henrietta noticed Charles staring at her feet. She assumed he was trying to see if she was wearing high heels and so she said ‘Sire, I stand upon mine own feet. I have no help by art. Thus high am I, and neither higher nor lower.’ It turns out Charles had been led to believe she was much shorter than she actually was...although she was still tiny. She was about 4 foot 5 inches.

- The pair had actually met before, a few years prior to their marriage, when Henrietta was 14 and Charles was 23. Charles and the Duke of Buckingham had visited the French court in disguise in 1623, a stop on their way to Spain where Charles planned to offer his hand in marriage to the Infanta. That particular proposal went tits up.

- They were deeply in love, of course, but the earlier months of their marriage were a little rockier. Charles was annoyed at the influence Henrietta’s French Catholic ladies had over her (especially since she was being criticised publicly for this too) and when he told her he’d be sending them back to France and replacing them with English ladies, she pulled herself onto a window ledge and threatened to throw herself down onto the cobbles below unless he relented.  

- They were affectionate parents. They kept a record of the ever-changing heights of their children on an oaken staff at the Palace of Oatlands.

- They regular addressed each other in their love letters as ‘Dear Heart’

- One of the last messages Charles passed on before his execution was that ‘his thoughts had never strayed from her [Henrietta], and his love would be the same to the last.’

- After the execution of her husband, Henrietta would tell Madame de Motteville: I have lost a king, a husband and a friend, whose loss I can never sufficiently mourn, and this separation must render the rest of my life an endless suffering.

[delphes]

What was Louis XIV like as a father? Was he a good dad?

I wanted to answer shortly but… that question is so complex (as always when you talk about Louis XIV and familly), I just couldn’t.Like I was saying at the begining of that post about Philippe and Marie-Louise, I find it very hard to judge how good a parent could be back then, because being a parent was very different from how we see it now. That being said my first move would be to say, NO Louis WASN’T a good dad, but that’s because the man was king (which is not an excuse) and the fact that, well… his dad died when he was 5, and wasn’t very present like at all the few years he lived with him? So considering the last point he did as good as he thought, I guess.

So I wanted to know more myself, because tbh the only things I read were… quite negative when it comes to his natural children BUT more positive when it came to his illegitimate children, which is the usual stuff, supposedely because they were children of women he loved. Louis would pass longtime with them, would sing and play guitar for them, was worried when they were sick, really suffered when they died, he also fought the whole court to impose them as equals of the Blood Princes and tried real hard to give them political importance (The Duc du Maine said to be the Regent at his death ? Like WHUT ?). But was it a good thing for them ? Or as anyone in his familly, Louis used them only for his personnal glory ? Sun dad must’ve been good at some point. And in the end… I kinda have mixed feelings. 

I’m gonna stay on his legitimate children because it’s were I thought he was the less dad at all.Let’s start from the beginning, saying LABOUR, because being a good sun dad starts with being supportive with his wife/favorite no ?

Surprisingly enough, knowing how Louis didn’t love his wife, he was VERY concerned about her when pregnant and in labour, and not just only because she was supposed to give him heirs. At their first child’s birth, the Grand Dauphin, the queen was such in pain, that he didn’t left her side, held her hand, told her reassuring words and prayed for divine protection. He also insisted the court stand away. When the child was born and declared a male, Louis jumped to the window, and shouted “the queen gave birth to a boy !” After that, the queen was so weak, he feared she would die. Madame de Motteville, old confident and friend, wrote “As long as she was in great pain, the king looked so afflicted et roughly pierced by suffering, no one could doubt that the love he had for her put the queen in front of anyone else”.  

He respected Marie-Thérèse for her rank, who was the only one to be equal his in Europe and gave him authority over others (as France and Spain were the two most powerful countries at the time). He was a worried husband, and he supported her in labour, but also when their children died, especially at the death of the “Petite Madame” (also called Marie-Thérèse) who was one of the rare with the Dauphin to live more than a few months. When she died at 5 yo, in 1672 in her mother’s arm, the king’s affliction was terrible. He didn’t eat (which is something for such a great eater), didn’t sleep. The queen’s strong faith helps her to overcome those deaths, Louis has more difficulties. He will interrogate his doctors a few times, trying to understand why his children dies one after the other, ignoring the consequences of consanguinity. This will lead him to attach himself more to his other illegitimate children.In 1666, labour is very painful as usual. Louis is so impatient, he assists the doctor Félix and is asked to hold his wife knees as his wife suffers so much she contort herself and the king has to fight the pregnant woman to keep her still. He persevere wishing to take care by himself of this ungrateful task.The king involved himself personnaly in his wife labour and suffering, physical and psychological, which is a good point.

Now, his relation with Louis de France, first and only surviving child of 6 brothers and sisters, was the incarnation of transmission and state permanence. As such, I think the Grand Dauphin was seen by Louis XIV as a replica of himself and had to bear great expectations on his shoulders. Let’s see.

Apparentely Sun dad was VERY proud of his heir, and asked every minister, every gazette to talk about it for MONTHS saying he wanted to announced to everyone in Europe the birth of “another himself”(”un autre moi-même”). He also declared that the Parliament and court should adress the Dauphin with the new title of  “Monseigneur” (literally “mylord”), which was exceptionnal and never seen because they had only one “Seigneur” (lord), the king. But that was a thoughtful reaction for a sovereing to put his rightful heir on a very high institutionnal level, still coming from a Louis so suspicious of any counter power, giving such importance to a possible rival in coming is at the same time perfectly suited for his political views and a bold move. 

What really surprised me is the king’s personnal implication in the Dauphin’s education from the very start. Louis wanted to hold for his son the role Mazarin had for him as the informal intendant of his education (which is normally entrusted to someone else), considering that when he’ll die, the Dauphin would need to “prove” being a good king and not only by being his son but by his education and will. Colbert writes in a letter “the king his highly interested in the dauphin’s education, and regards it as one of his great state operation for future’s sake”. Moreover, whereas Henri IV, his grandfather kept his children away from him, and Louis XIII his father wasn’t much around, Louis XIV ordered his son to be next to him and his familly to facilitate private meeting and lessons. When at war, Louis wanted a very abundant correspondence with the Dauphin’s governess, Madame de la Mothe-Houdancourt, and his governor the Duke de Montausier. The king would always be advised when the Dauphin would change places and give his opinion and even refusal when he judged the place not healthy enough for him. Around 1670′s Louis had to abandon the idea of looking after the Dauphin by himself and asked Bossuet to take the place after the death of his not so good private tutor. Louis XIV tried to write a history of his life for the Dauphin’s education, which became his Memoirs. The thought was that when the Dauphin would be 20 yo, his education would be finished AND his father would be 40, which was approximately the age when Louis XIII died, the king thought that could also happened to him. This text was supposed to help the Dauphin to understand his father’s work and thoughts. Louis XIV almost toss it in the fire when his son and grandson died, out of distress and pain as the text became useless. Louis XIV apparentely was afraid of this paternal silence he had to face himself. In 1661, Madame de Motteville saw Louis XIV write advices and precepts giving by the just dead Mazarin, to always remember them.The attachment Louis had for his son is seen in the letter he wrote to his grandson, Philippe V of Spain, to announce his father’s death.

I’ve lost my son, and you lose in him a father who loved you as tenderly as I loved him. He deserved all my goodwill, by his attachment to me, his perpetual attention to please me, and I saw him as a friend to whom I could open my heart and give all my trust (…) believe I have for you the same tenderness, and the only pleasure I can taste now is to find from you in return the same feelings my son gave to me all his life.

That being said, Louis XIV crushed his son’s by his “greatness”even if he allowed him very soon to be at the councel in 1680′s plus of course they had different opinions sometime and the king could be… an asshole. When the king visited his son’s newly built castle of Meudon, he declared scornfully that it looked like a “bourgeois manor”. This would bring on the Grand Dauphin an image of a weak man, even stupid, who didn’t had the nerv to oppose himself to his father, which wasn’t true.

To conclude, even if I could continue for hours on how complex Louis’ relationships were, I think Louis was sincerely worried and interested in his children (and familly) but the guy was king, had to follow political and strategical views, plus had to built a dynasty and preserves France’s glory and power. If at the start of my researches I would have said that he was an awful dad (being a prick with the Dauphin, marying his niece (whom was the closest from being a daughter to him) to a king physically and mentally disabled -which was perfectly known-…) I must say now that I’ve discover a more tender man than I thought and certainly not a perfect nor even a good dad, but at least… someone who tried to be.

[madamehenriette]

(just some of my favorite quotes about Minette from Love and Louis XIV by Antonia Fraser. Highly recommend this book, it's super entertaining so far.)

Henriette-Anne had grown tall, and her slender figure had filled out, her natural grace helping to conceal the fact that her back was slightly crooked. She was a wonderful rider as well as dancer, with a passion for swimming which was perhaps one of the few things she owed to her English heritage. Charles II, the elder brother she reverenced and had recently visited in England to mark her future marriage, was a fanatical swimmer. Somehow she never seemed to need sleep, going to bed late and waking her people at dawn, in contrast to the somnolent Marie-Thérèse.

She had a fine picture collection, including a Van Dyck of her English Family and a Correggio of the penitent Magdalen. Henriette-Anne also loved to act as a muse to the writers. The young Racine (born the year after Louis XIV) dedicated his play Andromaque to her, complimenting her not only on her intelligence but her benign influence where the arts were concerned. But Madame de Motteville pinpointed the real secret of the attraction which everyone (including briefly, her homosexual husband) felt for Henriette-Anne: It was her charm, that “something about her which made one love her.’ a ‘certain languishing air’ she adopted in conversation, in the words of Bussy-Rabutin, which convinced people she was asking for their love ‘whatever trivial thing she said’. In short, she had not been able to become a queen, (...) but to remedy this defect it was her wish to ‘reign in the hearts of honest men; and to find her glory in the world by the charm and beauty of her spirit.’ Protocol dictated that this self-styled Queen of Hearts should, in the absence of the real Queen, head every entertainment, indoors and outdoors, with her brother-in-law, the real King. “Our court rediscovers its laughing face for while Mars flourished, Love languished,” wrote La Fontaine in his “Ode to Madame.” [how to get Minette to love you: write plays about her and tell her she’s pretty...]

If Henriette-Anne really was the Queen of Hearts, her ambition, it seemed to royal-watchers at court, and who was not permanently gazing at the king? That one heart she had captured was that of her brother-in-law. There can be no question that as some point that summer Louis and Henriette-Anne fell gently, happily in love, perhaps not even understanding what had happened to them for a while. Each incarnated the other's ideal. As Marie-Therese would have made a good Queen of Spain, Henriette-Anne, Gracious and cultivated, would certainly have made a wonderful Queen of France. The private life of Louis XIV might indeed have read differently if, by some diplomatic twist and chance, the Infanta had not actually been available. Anne of Austria would have promoted her other niece instead, and given the restoration of Charles II to the English throne in 1660, might well have succeeded. This is not to postulate improbable lifelong fidelity on the part of Louis XIV. Nevertheless, the respect he subsequently felt for intelligent sister in law and the true, deep affection he always bore her -a letter from him years later attests to it - reveals the best of his attitudes to the female sex. And she was a princess. Somewhere an opportunity was missed. [should have married henriette just saying]

Yet there was an innocence about it all, certainly on her behalf. Henriette-Anne believed that she only wanted to please Louis as a sister-in-law, but 'I think she was also attracted to him in another way. Similarly, she thought he only appealed to her as a brother in law although he actually attracted her as something rather more." [Ah, so he was more attracted to her hmmmm!]

Henriette-Anne with a brown and white spaniel Mimi she adored which had been given to her by Charles II, she even danced a Court Ballet with Mimi in her arms. [A WOMAN AFTER MY OWN HEART OKAY!]

Unlike the robust Athénaïs, Henriette-Anne never felt well during pregnancy, and needed various pain-killing remedies including opium. But the real cause of her melancholy and distress was the unkindness of her husband. This cruelty was the repeated theme of her letters, either to her brother Charles, or to her old governess, Madame de Chaumont. It was not imaginary. The English Ambassador, Ralph Montagu, wrote to a colleague at the end of 1669 that if Madame had married an English country gentleman with five thousand a year, she would have led a better life than she did in France, for Monsieur ‘takes pleasure in crossing his wife in every-thing’.Compared with this malevolence, often taking the form of public rudeness, her husband's sexual preference hardly upset her. There had to be a certain kind of philosophic acceptance of such matters in an arranged royal marriage (especially as he performed his marital duties regularly with the aim of begetting an heir).

In a passion of anger and loss, Monsieur withdrew to his distant property of Villers-Cotterets, dragging his wife with him. ‘We go today,’ she wrote miserably on 31 January, ‘to return I know not when,’ and Henriette-Anne spoke further of ‘the fear I feel that the King may forget me'. This departure again Louis could not stop outright – the rights of the husband were paramount – but he certainly showed no sign of forgetting his sister-in-law. He bombarded the exile with presents from some mythical Court Lottery: caskets full of cash, jewelled garters, perfumes and glove, even some country walking shoes with lavishly expensive silver buckles.

All in all Henriette-Anne cannot have been sad to part from the court at Lille before travelling to Dunkirk, where a British squadron awaited her for the journey to England. She had a long interview with Louis before departure and he clasped her hand tightly and tenderly in farewell. The disagreeable mood of Monsieur had not lifted: referring to his wife's marked pallor, he chose to meditate on the message of an astrologer who had predicted that he would marry several times … He duly made a last-ditch attempt to block the expedition, and made no affectionate sign of farewell.

Henriette-Anne arrived at the cliffs of Dover at dawn on 26 May. She got an ecstatic reception not only from her brothers King Charles and James Duke of York with his wife Anne (whose little Anne was currently in her household in France) but also from James Duke of Monmouth, Charles's handsome, twenty-one-year-old illegitimate son. To the annoyance of Monsieur, Henriette-Anne had had one of her light-hearted flirtations, an exercise in gallantry, with Monmouth at the French court.

Jollifications, many of them by sea, where the ‘fearless and bold' Henriette-Anne walked on ‘the edge of ships', covered the diplomatic negotiations considered vital by both kings. The way had been well prepared in advance and accord was reached by 1 June. And joy of joys, Louis XIV (not Monsieur) had agreed to an extension of her visit, so that Henriette-Anne actually remained in England until 12 June.

All too soon Henriette-Anne had used up her extended leave and had to return to the French court – and Monsieur. As she departed, her brother Charles was in visible anguish, rushing back three times to embrace her, seemingly unable to let her go. The French Ambassador commented that he had not realised until he witnessed this scene that the cynical English King was capable of feeling so much for anyone.

In spite of her torments, Henriette-Anne managed to retain that graceful quality which had marked her all her life. Now the court rushed to their adored Madame's side, Louise and Athénaïs among others. To Monsieur, she said sadly: ‘Alas, you have long ago stopped loving me, but I have never failed you.' The scene with the King was more affecting. He embraced her and embraced her again as the tears fell. She told him: ‘You are losing the truest servant you ever had.'

The stern Father Feuillet, a local priest of Jansenist sympathies, was introduced. He provided little solace: when Madame was convulsed with suffering, he suggested that this was a suitable punishment for her sins. Then the greater-souled Bossuet, now a bishop, arrived. It was Bossuet who gave her the Sacrament and Extreme Unction and promised her forgiveness. Later the English Ambassador, Ralph Montagu, arrived. It was typical of Madame's good manners that she tried to tell him in English about an emerald she wanted to bequeath to Bossuet lest the Bishop be embarrassed. Finally, she kissed the crucifix Bossuet held out. Henriette-Anne, Princess of England and France, died at two o'clock in the morning on 30 June. She was just past her twenty-sixth birthday.

In order to assuage the horrified grief of Charles II, Louis ordered a state funeral as for a Queen of France, while one of Henriette-Anne's rings was delivered back to her brother. In an even greater departure from tradition, Louis sent Queen Marie-Thérèse to the ceremony incognito. (The King himself by custom never attended such rituals.) It was Bossuet's oration at these obsequies in Saint-Denis on 21 August which crowned the life of Henriette-Anne with the nobility it deserved. He stressed the shortness of her life: ‘Madame passed at once from morning to evening like the flowers of the field.' He harked back to her early years in France: how ‘the misfortunes of her House could not crush her in her youth and already at that time we saw in her a greatness which owed nothing to fortune', she who had a head and heart even above her royal birth. But now: ‘O disastrous night! O frightful night! When there arrived all at once this astonishing news: “Madame is dying! Madame is dead!”' And the Bishop told Louis XIV that Madame had been ‘gentle towards death as she was to all the world.’ 

Just as La Fontaine had saluted Henriette-Anne for the recovery of ‘our court's laughing face', so Madame de Sévigné wrote to her cousin Bussy-Rabutin that ‘all happiness, charm and pleasure' had departed from the court with her death. The Comtesse de La Fayette put it quite simply: it was ‘one of those losses for which one is never consoled.’

[awhilesince]

Monday, 27 December 1830

7 1/2

1

the street covered with snow, and Fahrenheit 30° at 7 3/4 a.m. – out at 8 3/4 – the ground covered 3 or 4 inches deep with snow, and carts in the streets to carry it away – walked to the muette gate of the bois de B– (Boulogne) and back at 10 3/4 – dressed – breakfast in 3/4 hour – at my desk at 12 3/4 – Monsieur de Hagemann arrived last night – from 1 to 2 1/4 wrote a 1/2 sheet full to Lady Stuart and a note to Lady S– (Stuart) de R– (Rothesay) 

‘my dear Lady Stuart may I by for a little corner in the bag for this very little parcel for Lady Stuart? It is merely an almanac de Gotha – I hope you are all quite well, not suffering from this uncessant cold – I have more than once wished myself at Hières – Mr de Hagemann arrived last night, but we have not seen him – Believe me, my dear Lady Stuart, ever very truly yours A Lister monday morning 27 December’ – 

Chit chat to Lady S– Stuart – sorry to hear so bad an account of Lady Gordon – hope to match the almanack by Friday – 

‘I remember having heard you speak in praise of the almanach de Gotha, and I cannot resist sending you one to usher in the new year with my affectionate remembrance – adieu, dearest Lady Stuart – and believe me always yours very truly and attached A Lister’ – 

It is time to return Lord Stuart de R– (Rothesay) Miss Berry’s book so note the following reference – page 178. Reference to Maitland’s History of London – for 

an account of early comedy vide ‘Storia critica de’ Teatri Antichi e moderni di Pietro Napoli Signorielli. Napoli. 1813’ the 6th volume referred to – Refers to Madame de Motteville’s memories – St. Evremond’s works in which are pushed some of the letters of Nino de l’Enclos page 235 from which it seems ‘she perfectly knew how to 

grow old’ – ‘In spite of all the stories so often repeated of her having lovers at 80, we see by her letters to St. Evremond, that she perfectly knew how to grow old’ – she gave her portrait to Lady 

Sandwich (daughter of John Wilmot the Too celebrated Earl of Rochester) which at the death of Lady S– (Stuart) became the property of Horace Walpole Earl of Orford, and is now in the collection at Strawberry Hill.’ page 235.

p. 187. Reference to Schlegel, Cours de Littérature Dramatique, his well remarked on Shakespeare’s tome ii. comic characters page 377. ‘Les personnages dont il a dessirré les Traits avec detail sont, sous beaucoup de rapports, des individus d’une nature très-particulière, mais ils ont cependant une signification plus étendre, et l’on peut tirer des theories universelles de leurs qualités prépondérantes’ –

p. 191 ‘Schlegel alone seems penetrated with a just admiration of his genius. After an analytical view of his varied perfection as a dramatic writer, and candid and sometimes a too far-fetched apologetically for his faults, he thus sums up his titles to immortality’……. vide Schlegel tome ii. page 408.

page 216 ‘However varies the paths to distinction, honour, and fame, and however varies the decisions of men in their choice; it will invariably be found, that success attends only those whose character happens to suit the age in which they appear, and the circumstances and situation in which they are called into action. No abilities, however distinguished, without this adventitious did ever rose above their natural level, or even attained the success they deserved. Individual happiness yet more surely depends on the same causes. In the lottery of human life we are sometimes tempted to think that if the tickets were distributed, as the Duc de Mazarin is said to have drawn lots for the services of the different members of his household, lucky changes might often be made which benefit and relieve both parties. Thus Louis the 16th would probably have been honourly distinguished as a college preceptor, and his unfortunate queen as an amiable and fascinating individual, in the best society of her capitale; Charles the First might have served as the model of a well-educated English gentleman of his day; and Queen Anne as an appropriate wife to a country Tory clergyman’.

page 246. Speaking of the often-told tale of the brilliant days of Louis 14 ‘Madame de Sevigné has adorned it with all the graces of her inimitable peu, and has often drawn from it reflections the more excellent from being generally suggested as much by the heart as the understanding. St. Simon has entered into it, details with a caustic truth, rare from the mind of a devoted courtier; and Dangeau has recorded the trifling incidents of every day, which often present much more to the mind of the reader than ever entered the head of their historian’

speaking of Madame de Maintenon page 251. ‘Of all persons, she must have felt the most, that counts confer not that happiness which they prevent those accustomed to them from finding elsewhere.’

page 271. Reference to Chetwode’s General History of the stage.

page 282. ______ ‘Select tracts relating to the civil wars in England in the reign of King Charles the first Collected by baron Maseres, and published in 1815.

page 323: See on the character and works of Swift Edinburgh Review. No. 53. p 44.where it is asserted truly according to Miss Berry ‘that, whatever mints Swift might have as a writer, he was despicable as a politician, and hateful as a man’. –

at 3 20/60 sent off my letter to ‘the honorable Lady Stuart Whitehall’ enclosed in the small packet with an almanac de Gotha directed the same as the letter, and sent at the same time my note to ‘the Lady Stuart de Rothesay’ – then for 1/2 hour before and afterwards till 6 read from 234 to 330 Miss Berry’s book, and wrote the whole of this journal of today – at 6 Letter from Antoine Clavet enclosing a sort of memorial to be presented to Directeur general des Travaux publics de Paris, and a letter to Monsieur Alphonse de Gisors, architecte –

Dinner at 6 10/60 – Read the paper – came to my room at 8 5/60 – asleep – coffee at 9 20/60 – from 9 1/2 to 10 5/60 wrote rough draft of from 16 to 24 April last inclusive – Monsieur de Hagemann came at 10 5/60 and staid till 11 40/60 – he had dined at the Embassy – Long talk about politics – Lord S– (Stuart) thinks there will eventually be war, and so we allseem to agree – hazy sort of day – came to my room at 12 at which hour Fahrenheit 36 1/2° and raining as it has been for some time –

(SH:7/ML/E/13/0129) (SH:7/ML/E/13/0130)

[fuckyeahmonsieur]

Philippe on the contrary was small and almost a dwarf. Louis was of light complexion, Philippe was dark. Madame de Motteville says that as a youth he was well made, and his features were perfect. His black eyes were large and full of life, beaming with sweetness and gravity. His mouth resembled that of his mother. His dark hair, which curled naturally, set off his rich colour. Madame de Motteville had watched him from the cradle, and she could not repress her admiration. 'If the years do not diminish his beauty he will be able to dispute the prize with the most beautiful women.'

Hugh Stokes, A Prince of Pleasure : Philip Of France And His Court, 1640-1701 (1913).

[histoireettralala]

Condé vs Mazarin: power and legitimacy.

By April 1649 Mazarin had survived the biggest challenge so far to his ministerial rule. A political revolt had briefly united popular unrest with the discontents of the bourgeoisie, the most senior judicial officers, and a large group of the court aristocracy. A combination of military threats and wide-ranging concessions had apparently calmed the situation; most significantly perhaps for Mazarin’s future calculations, it had demonstrated that his opponents would find it extremely difficult to militarize their opposition in any effective way. But relief was premature. For Mazarin’s new problem was that the military support he had drawn upon in early 1649 had cost him his previous near-monopoly over power and influence. Condé’s blockade of Paris had set him, as the defender of absolute royal authority —and thereby Mazarin’s ministry— directly against his own relatives and much of the great nobility. Hitherto idolized as the young military hero, he was now execrated by all those who had regarded the uprisings since August 1648 as a justified attempt to overthrow ministerial tyranny. Setting aside his personal ambitions, it was essential to his reputation that he should demonstrate as publicly and as vigorously as possible that he was no lackey of the first minister, and that his actions had been on behalf of the crown, not Mazarin.

Who then was Louis II de Bourbon-Condé, who was to become Mazarin’s nemesis for a decade from 1649? The duc d’Enghien, as he was titled until his father’s death in 1646, was no stranger to the realities of ministerial power. His father, Henri II, had rebuilt the material and political fortunes of the cadet branch of the Bourbon family on the basis of a close alliance with cardinal Richelieu after 1626. Henri de Condé provided Richelieu and his regime with the legitimizing support of a prince of the blood, and Condé in return benefited from a spectacular flow of political and territorial rewards. The benefits of the alliance were so great that he was ultimately cajoled into marrying his son, Louis II, to Richelieu’s niece, Claire-Clémence de Maillé-Brézé. The marriage, celebrated at the Palais Cardinal on 9 February 1641, was a spectacular mésalliance for the duc d’Enghien, wished upon him by his father’s ambitions. Enghien, who until 1638 had stood only three lives from the throne, shared with his father an authoritarian ideology of an absolute monarchy mediated only by the king’s ‘natural advisors’, the princes of the blood. But the association with Richelieu and his family brought him into a close, stakeholder’s connection with the ministerial regime. Through this channel would flow the financial opportunities, patronage, and influence that had been enjoyed by his father over and above what would have been his as a prince of the royal blood.

Enghien would have been an important figure in the politics of the 1640s, just as his father had been in the previous decade. But the decision in 1643 to grant him the overall command of the army operating on the north-eastern frontier was not just a reflection of his status and political connections, but a remarkable act of confidence in a young man of twenty-three with no previous experience of overall military command. Enghien was surrounded by experienced lieutenants —most notably Jean, comte de Gassion— yet much would still depend on his untested ability to demonstrate qualities of leadership and decision-making. The French army faced a Spanish invasion, poised to take the town of Rocroi, and previous encounters in the field with the veterans of the Spanish army of Flanders had not ended well for the French. Enghien and his lieutenants took the decision to engage the Spanish army in an all-or-nothing bid to try to save Rocroi. Around 7.30 am on 19 May 1643 Enghien led a cavalry charge from the right flank of the French army which shattered the Spanish horse opposing him and left the infantry centre of the Spanish army exposed to his well-executed flanking attack. The magnitude of the victory over the best troops in the Spanish monarchy was unprecedented. The young duc d’Enghien became a legend overnight, a status that he never lost in the eyes of contemporaries.

Enghien’s successive military achievements through the 1640s in different campaign theatres were not just about heroic, charismatic leadership and calculated risk-taking. There was real tactical skill, partly learnt and partly intuitive, in his military deployments, his assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of his own and enemy positions, and, above all, his ability to exploit surprise, shock, and speed to devastating advantage. Like his great contemporary, Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne, he recognized the fundamental importance of keeping his troops fed and equipped, and was free with his own resources to maintain supplies. Unlike Turenne, who had the well-regarded reputation of being thrifty with the lives of his own troops, Condé was unconcerned by heavy casualties in pursuit of his strategic objectives. Yet soldiers serving under his command recognized his remarkable talent for victory. On the eve of the battle of Bléneau in April 1652, one of Condé’s lieutenants wrote of the effect of the prince’s arrival, pulling the army together through the belief, above all among the common soldiers, that he was invincible.

The charisma of a young, brilliant general extended beyond the armies: in the 1640s contemporaries noted that he was regarded with both awe and considerable fear. Madame de Motteville wrote that, even after Mazarin had arrested him, ‘the reputation of M. le Prince imposed itself on everyone, and generated a curious veneration for his person, such that sightseers would go to visit the chamber where he had been imprisoned at Vincennes’. Numerous accounts confirmed that even powerful and well-established individuals found it difficult to stand up to Condé in any face-to-face confrontation, and his anger had an unpredictable character that few wished to test. The legend gained further weight from the fictional, centre-stage representation of Condé in Madeleine de Scudéry’s best-selling novel Le Grand Cyrus, published between 1649 and 1653.

The very particular danger Condé posed to Mazarin, or to any government which sought to control him, was the intractable nature of his own ambitions. His father had been manageable because he was rebuilding the Condé inheritance after its devastation in the sixteenth-century Wars of Religion, and was rehabilitating his own political reputation after rebellion and imprisonment. By the 1640s the Condé had become the wealthiest aristocratic family in France, and more territorial grants, positions, and financial rewards, though demanded, were no guarantee of further tractability. Moreover, a family strategy that aimed to consolidate the pre-eminence of the Condé-Bourbon over any other aristocratic family in France would lead Condé to target further desirable assets, especially lands and governorships, whose possession would challenge the hegemony of the crown in areas of the kingdom.

Yet at base the prince was more interested in power and influence at the centre of the state than in local power and quasi-monarchical status built up across the provinces. This desire for influence did not mean that he wished to take over government, to oust Mazarin or supplant the role of ministers in general. Indeed, the detailed, procedural business of government, the workings of the executive, would have been considered by Condé to be beneath his status, and appropriate to (interchangeable or dispensable) professionals of modest birth like Mazarin. What Condé wanted for himself was a decisive influence in the formulation of royal policy, the ability to oversee and, where necessary, shape decision-making without negotiation or compromise with other parties. During the regency he considered that this was his right by virtue of his blood, and by his acquired status as the military paladin of the young monarch. He would expect to maintain this privileged role of high-status advisor and intimate councillor after the king came of age, with the assumption that his voice would naturally outweigh others in royal decision-making. Despite the charges variously made against him by Mazarin and the court, all on the basis of notably scant evidence, Condé was far too deeply committed to the principle of divinely ordained absolute monarchy to wish to replace the king. Such an act of usurpation would radically challenge his own ideology, which linked his own status to a God-given hierarchy headed by the sovereign. Indeed, his hostility to both the Parisian frondeurs and to Mazarin was precisely because they sought to trespass upon what were the fundamental prerogatives of the monarchy.

In seeking to unravel Condé’s personality and his motivation, it is no less necessary to retrieve him from the condescension of posterity. Equipped with hindsight which sees the defeat of the Fronde as a triumph for ministerial government and its modernizing, state-building initiatives, Condé’s fate becomes a facile metaphor for the fate of the traditional ‘sword nobility’ as a whole. His reckless and inappropriate ambitions for political autonomy, personal glory, and immoderate reward were vanquished by the agent of state power, cardinal Mazarin. Defeated, forced into exile and into the service of Spain at the end of 1652, Condé was required to make a humiliating submission to Louis XIV in 1659 as the price of his ‘pardon’. After this he was reduced to an obedient vassal of the monarch. This supposedly parallels the traditional nobility as a whole, whose last irresponsible and doomed act of self-assertion was the Fronde. After this final defeat they were reduced to well-ordered servitude in the court and army of the Sun King, whose powerful, centralized state represented the triumph of bourgeois administrators, the heirs of Mazarin’s victory over the frondeurs. On this interpretation, Condé’s chief crime, if he is relieved of the charge of attempted usurpation, is setting up an ideal of autonomous political action and individual liberty in defiance of the ‘modern’ requirement for disciplined, collective obedience to the crown imposed by its faithful ministers. Indeed, even by the standards of the collective ideal of aristocratic liberty, it is suggested that Condé went too far in pursuit of uncompromising self-assertion, and helped to undermine the very values that he sought to uphold.

The real problem posed by Condé for Mazarin and his regime was not Condé’s uncontrolled individualism, his ‘folle liberté’, but the perception of contemporaries that he held more legitimate right to participate in the decision-making of a regency by virtue of his blood than did a ministerial appointee of the queen mother. Indeed, it is a remarkable triumph of a well-entrenched historiography that Condé’s actions are perceived as illegitimate attempts to challenge what is treated as the legitimate royal government personified in its first minister. By conflating Mazarin with the authority of the crown, the crucial dynamic of the conflict building up from 1643 and climaxing in the Fronde is misunderstood. Mazarin’s attempts to resist Condé’s claims to involvement in the political decisions of the regency did not deny the essential legitimacy of those claims. His approach most frequently relied on alarming both the queen mother and the king’s uncle, Gaston d’Orléans, that Condé would squeeze them out of the decision-making which was no less their right by family. Mazarin hardly needed to be reminded, and the mazarinades would have done the job for him, that his own position enjoyed no such legitimacy.

David Parrott- 1652- The Cardinal, the Prince, and the Crisis of the Fronde.

[anamariamauricia]

Last days of Cardinal Mazarin

Quotes from Anne of Austria by Ruth Kleinman

Between the 5th and 6th of February 1661, a fire broke out in the gallery of the Louvre. “Mazarin’s quarters were adjacent and he had to be evacuated in a hurry. Almost helpless, whether from shock or smoke inhalation, he was carried down the stairs...and taken to his own palace. From there a few days later, he moved to Vincennes for the sake of better air, but for him the fire turned out to have been the beginning of the end. He died a little more than a month afterward, on 9 March” 

Louis in particular was in and out of the sickroom at all hours of the day, and Anne actually lived in a room adjacent until Mazarin’s cries of pain at night forced her to move upstairs so she could get some rest.

Mazarin paid tribute to Anne in his testament for her “incredible steadfastness and fidelity.” In gratitude he left her a great diamond, the “Rose of England,” as well as several other jewels and some precious furniture…Anne obviously prized these, since she gave them a place of honor in her summer apartment. 

When Mazarin died, “Louis wept copiously and bewailed the loss he had suffered, and Anne too was visibly moved” 

Louis “ordered the court into full mourning, a step as unprecedented as his commanding the vigil of forty hours before the exposed Sacrament in all churches during the last days of Mazarin’s life. Normally the court only wore full mourning for members of the royal family, and the forty hours were never kept for private subjects”

Quotes from Memoirs of Madame de Motteville on Anne of Austria and Her Court

“This is a strange crisis, monsieur; I am a man and a sinner, and I ought to fear the judgement of God; but one must hope in His mercy.“

He sent for his servants, and let them all see him; having had his beard trimmed, and being clean and agreeable-looking in a flame-coloured gown, with his cardinal’s cap on his head, like a man who braved death

On the 8th of March, the queen-mother…sent for Colbert, who told her he [Mazarin] was very ill, and that he did not think he would live through the night. The queen-mother was affected by these words and the tears came into her eyes; then, taking me aside, she did me the honour to tell me, speaking of the cardinal, that she had always known him better than any one...

[anamariamauricia]

Quotes from the Memoirs of Madame de Motteville on Anne of Austria and Her Court

Chapter XI 1664-1665

She had consulted doctors at the beginning of this strange malady [a pain in her breast], and they had then applied hemlock, which did her no good. At first she had the intention…of putting herself in the hands of Vallot, the king’s head physician….But he showed such feebleness in supporting his opinion against those that were opposed to it, that she was disgusted with him.

Her nights were bad; those who slept in her chamber said she seldom slept; but all the ills she had were known more by their own visible magnitude than by her complaint of them.

…she called the king and made every one leave her room….He was more than half an hour with her; and we saw that when he left her he flung himself on some seats on the other side of her bed, where he wept bitterly. We heard afterwards that his mother, when he was beside her weeping many tears, told him to go; because he would affect her too much if he continued to show such grief; and the king was compelled to do so, for his sobs strangled him.

“Here are both of you [the queen and Madame de Motteville] in tears; but do you not see that you and all who love me must resolve to see me die soon, for indeed I cannot escape; and death is so present to me that when I find I have lived another day it seems a wonder I did not expect.”

I hoped more in that Alliot of Lorraine than in all the others [physicians]…She had heard it said that his remedies were violent; she dreaded them and could not resolve to abandon herself to his management; she felt he was destined—not to cure her, but—to be her executioner; and one of my keenest distresses is to have known him and to have had a share in the resolution she finally took to employ him. He was a man, and therefore a liar; he assured us so strongly that he could cure the queen with his remedy that it was impossible not to let one’s self be caught by that winning thought

The archbishop [of Auch] told her she was quitting a corruptible crown to gain an everlasting one, but that in order to obtain the latter from the mercy of God she must offer Him with sincerity all that she possessed on earth. She answered: “Alas! That sacrifice is a small matter; I value my crown as mud.”

…she, feeling she had slept too much, woke suddenly and turning quickly, though with an effort, towards me said, “I do not wish to sleep. For fear I should die without thinking of it.”

“No one is very glad to die; but it is true that God has given me the grace to be less troubled by it than others.”

…she often said she never could have believed that a fate so different from that of other human beings could be hers; that usually no one rotted till after death, but for her, God had condemned her to rot in life.

[anamariamauricia]

Memoirs of Madame de Motteville on Anne of Austria and Her Court

Quotes from Chapter XII 1665-1666

The indifference of the queen-mother to all that concerned her life was so great that she seemed to have no determined will either to keep or leave Alliot [a physician].

…she passed very cruel nights, and the excess of pain forcing her at times to sigh now and then

“God wills to punish me in this way for having had too much vanity and for loving the beauty of my body too well.”

“I am not weeping; these tears that you see coming out of my eyes, it is pain that forces them out; for you know I am no weeper.”

“I have abandoned my body to the justice of God; men may do what they like with it.”

She had no pitying sentiments about herself; she showed no weakness in her words or actions. God gave her a firmness which, on all the great occasions when she had to resist either misfortunes or enemies, had never abandoned her.

The archbishop, holding the sacred Host, made the queen-mother a very Christian exhortation….The emotion of so sacred and important an action, added to the effect of fever, gave her such brilliancy in her eyes and such colour in her cheeks, that she seemed at this moment most beautiful to every one, and especially the king, who…said to her [Mademoiselle de Beauvais] in a low voice: “Look at the queen my mother; never did I see her so beautiful.”

…she desired her illustrious children to come nearer to her, and gave them her blessing….These four royal persons threw themselves on their knees beside the bed and kissed her hands and wept; but (as I make profession of speaking the truth sincerely) it seemed to me that they did not weep as much as when they thought to lose her at Saint-Germain—or at any rate they did not weep enough. It is in the nature of time to exhaust everything, and the state in which she had so long been no doubt diminished their sorrow

The Prince de Conde, beside whom I stood…turned to me…and did me the honour to say to me: “I have never seen anything so fine. There’s a woman whose merits are worthy of eternal esteem.”

Monsieur, who must be excepted from the number of those who did not weep enough, thought proper to open her curtains and say to her: “Madame, you have loved me so much here below love me still when you are above, in heaven, and pray God for me.”

She called Seguin, her doctor, and asked him if the cough she now had was not the death rattle; and as he left her without making any answer, she knew what his silence meant, and remained very peaceful. Little by little nature was seen to perish within her, her forces to diminish, her life to end, and her eyes to close forever on the things of life. This was on Wednesday the twentieth of January, 1666, between four and five o’clock in the morning.

Immediately after this terrible and fatal event Monsieur embraced her tenderly….The king sent after him to come and hear the will of the queen-mother and to take the key of her jewels. Monsieur returned a message that he entreated the king to excuse him, and to do all that he thought best; saying that whatever he ordered would be right and agreeable to him.

I know, from persons who slept in the same room with the king, that he wept in his bed nearly the whole night.

[anamariamauricia]

January 19, all the bad symptoms that were so soon to take her [Anne of Austria] from us increased; but her love of cleanliness, which in spite of the nature of her illness never left her, made her desire towards evening to have her bed made. She was obeyed with much difficulty, as she was very weak and very heavy. As soon as she was put back to bed the doctors, who saw that her pulse was bad and that she was sinking, told the king that it was time to make her think of receiving the holy viaticum. This was between five and six o'clock in the evening; and though she had never shown any fear of death, they thought it best to dress her wound before telling her of the state in which she was.

Memoirs of Madame de Motteville on Anne of Austria and Her Court