Anne-Marie-Louise d’Orléans

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V.

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Speaker 2: Wilson. And well before the storming of the Bastille and the dethroning of Francis, King Louis the sixteenth and his wife Marie Antoinette, there were plenty of instances of uprisings and infighting and scandals among the royals and nobility who occupied the French court.

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Speaker 1: And there's one.

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Speaker 2: Woman who was part of that scene in the later years of Louis the thirteenth reign and the transition to Louis the fourteenth, who I just find ceaselessly fascinating, and that is Anne Marie Louise d'Orleans. And part of why she's so fascinating is because she has been described over the years by historians as having been one of the richest heiresses in history, as an insurgent, as an unaccomplished woman, as an amazon, as a writer, and even as a fool. And the thing that makes it really interesting is that she sort of was all of those things. She led just an incredibly privileged life that enabled her a great deal of freedom, more than most people, and unlike most women in the court of France at the time, she was never forced into a marriage, although her potential as marriable was a big issue for France for a long time. So today we're gonna unravel her story and how closely tied she was to the son King's birth as well as his eventual reign. As a note, I just want to point out because in doing research on her it was easy to get multiple things. There are multiple women whose names if you type them up we'll come up with they'll all get kind of lumped together in your results. But this is Anne Marie Luise Dorleon, not Anne Marie Dorleon. Those two women were born about forty years apart. Anne Marie Louise is the earlier of the two. Anne Marie Louise Dorlean was born May twenty ninth, sixteen twenty seven in Paris, specifically in the Louver when it was still being used as a royal residence. She was a princess of France. Her mother was Marie de bourbonmont Ponsier, Duchess of Montponsier. Marie was the only heir of the wealthy Montposier family, so it had been a very strategic move to marry her to Gaston, Duke Dorlean. This was an arrangement that had been orchestrated by King Louis the thirteenth and Cardinal Richelieu. Gaston was the son of King Henry the fourth of France and the brother of King Louis the thirteenth.

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Speaker 1: Marie de Bourbonmont Pontier died less than a week after Anne Marie Louise was born. You'll sometimes see that she died in childbirth. I saw various dates, but it appears that that happened during childbirth did result in her death very shortly after Amory Louise, and at that point the infant inherited a great deal of money and assets, and this made her, according to a nineteen fifty nine biography by Victoria Sackville West, the richest baby in France and possibly the world. She was moved to Tulerie and cared for by a large and dedicated staff, with a governess known as Madame de Saint George serving as her mother figure. She was frequently visited by the King and Queen, and as she grew up she was an outgoing and vivacious child, who was called La Mademoiselle and then eventually Lan Grande Mademoiselle to acknowledge her high rank. Mademoiselle does not just indicate that she was an unmarried woman. This is an inheritance of title from her father, who has brother to the king, was known by Monsieur as a title, and speaking of her father, he was largely absent, and it seems that Anne Marie Louise didn't really get the whole story. There are a few different things that we'll talk about, but her father, when she was particularly young, had remarried in secret to Marguerite of Larene. That was a marriage the King did not approve of, so Gustave was pretty absent from court. But when father and daughter were reunited, Anne Marie Louise described herself being completely overjoyed to see him. Given her standing in lineage from two important lines, it was natural for Montpontier to expect that she too would have a marriage arranged or orchestrated by the crown to an impressive husband. Really everyone expected this. In the two thousand and seven book Against Marriage, the correspondence of La Grande Mademoiselle, translated by Jean de Jon. This situation is concisely summed up this way quote. In early modern Europe, the marriage of an aristocratic woman was always a thoroughly political matter. It was understood by all that she was first and foremost a commodity. She belonged to her family, whose role it was to negotiate the exchange of her hand for whatever it needed, most money, social advancement, a military alliance. But Momtposier occupied a really unique position in this practice because she was basically independently wealthy. She had inherited so many assets from her mother well before she was able to even understand what wealth was, and the matter of a marriage arrangement for her was a source of ongoing conflict. Efforts were made to match her to various men, but because she did not need any of them, she had more agency than was usual for a woman to say no to any such arrangements. On September fifth, sixteen thirty eight, Louis the fourteenth was born, and there was immediate speculation that Anne Marie Louise might be betrothed to the future king. This is allegedly sparked by his mother, Anne of Austria, who apparently mentioned this jokingly that pairing did not materialize, but the possibility of it was gossiped about at all levels of society for quite a while. Montpalsier is also said to have called Louis her little husband, which undoubtedly helped stoke such gossip, but she was also a kid at the time. She was very young and may have only meant it in jest. She visited him frequently in his early days the Chateau de Saint Germain, because his mother adored her and wanted her with her. She later wrote in her memoirs, quote, the birth of Monsieur de Dauphin gave me a new occupation. I went to see him every day, and I called him my little husband. The king was diverted by this, and he thought that I did well.

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Speaker 2: But though King Louis the thirteenth might have thought she was a delightful child, Cardinal Richelieu really did not. She described his response to her instant affection for her newborn cousin Louis the fourteenth, and her memoirs as well, quote Cardinal de Richelieu, who does not like me to as myself to being there, nor to have them accustomed to seeing me there, had me given orders to return to Paris. The Queen and Madame d' hautefert did all that was possible to keep me. They could not obtain their wish, which I regretted. It was all tears and cries when I left there. Their majesties gave many proofs of friendship, especially the Queen, who made me aware of a particular tenderness on that occasion. After this displeasure, I had still another to endure. They made me pass through Yu to see the cardinal who usually lived there when the King was at Saint Germain. He took it so to heart that I had called the little Dauphin my little husband, that he gave me a great reprimand he said that I was too large to use such terms, that I had been ill behaved to do so. He spoke so seriously, just as if I had been a person of judgment, that, without answering him, I began to weep. To pacify me, he gave me collation, but I did not pass it over. I came away from there very angry at all he had said to me. Charles the second of England was the next candidate, as a husband of note, who came into the picture when he was exiled to France in sixteen forty six. Montposier was nineteen at the time, so the idea of a marriage between the two royals was a natural one to be contemplated, but she turned that marriage down, recognizing that her assets were more valuable to Charles Stewart than anything he could offer her. As an exile in sixteen forty seven, Anne Marie Louise had another potential spouse, Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand the Third. There was a different problem there. France and the Habsburg Empire were at war, and that could not be part of the peace negotiations. Apparently. In a biography of Anne Marie Louise written in nineteen oh two by Arved Barn and translated by Helen E. Meyer, it described this period of her lif life this way quote, Mademoiselle was courted and ardently admired.

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Speaker 1: The people worshiped her.

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Speaker 2: Paris was determined to place her upon the throne of France. Well employed though her time had been, she had done nothing to distinguish herself, nothing to give her a place among heroines like the Princess de Conde and the enticing Madame de Longville. But the year sixteen fifty two was on its way and it was to bring her her long awaited glory. We will get to the source of that glory in a moment, because we need to establish some contexts regarding the fraud, and we're going to dig into the Fronde and eventually how Amory Louise was involved in it. Right after we paused for a sponsor break in sixteen fifty one, the twenty four year old Amrie Louise, having grown somewhat frustrated with the crown, became involved with the effort to fight the central assa of the monarchy's power.

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Speaker 1: This conflict became known as the Fronde, and the Frond had begun in sixteen forty eight. This is an important moment in French history because had the Frond not happened, Louis the fourteenth may not have become as powerful as he ultimately was. The conflict called the Frond is actually a series of conflicts, kind of like many civil wars. Sometimes you'll see this referred to as a civil war, and other times it could have been a civil war had it gotten any bigger. So just know you'll see it characterized different ways, and it's the series of conflicts within France as concerns over the monarchy's power grew. Sometimes too, you will see the Frond referred to as a civil war singular, instead of a series of civil wars or a series of conflicts. It's written about in all the different ways. There is one big thing called the Frond, and under that umbrella there are multiple separate issues going on, which we'll talk about. Though it began officially in sixteen forty eight, the seeds of the Frond were shown earlier that decade, when Cardinal Richelieu and Louis the thirteenth died in sixteen forty two. In sixteen forty three.

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Speaker 2: Louis the fourteenth was heir to the throne, but he was only five when his father, the King died. His mother, Anne of Austria, served as regent for her child king, and she was aided in this role by Cardinal Mazarin. You may remember from our episode on Marie and Hortense Mancini. He was an Italian who had been hand selected to be part of the French government by Richelieu. France at this time was facing a number of issues. It had been engaged in an expensive, long term war with the Spanish Habsburg's. Various members of the nobility saw the arrangement with Anne of Austria as regent as weak. They sought to exert their own influence on the country's political dealings. This included King Louis the Thirteenth's younger brother, Gaston that was Anne Marie Louise's father. Additionally, the Parisian Catholic Church, led by Cardinal Deuretz, saw an opportunity to gain more power. All of them thought this was a vacuum they could fill. The tax known as La Paulette had been instituted in sixteen oh four under King Henry the Fourth. So this tax was paid to the crown by holders of government offices. It secured their right to the office and conferred them the power to transfer that office. It might help to think of this as sort of like a lease on power, paid to retain that power annually, with the ability to pass that position through hereditary lines, and the money collected from it supported the crown with a steady, reliable income. But in sixteen forty eight, La Paulette was up for a renewal, and Mazarin and Anne of Austria thought that it would be a good bargaining chip to get other things that they wanted, including additional taxation to fund the military, but Anne and Mazarin overplayed their hands. Instead, the judges of Paris banded together against the monarchy to demand reform, and they had the support of the church and a portion of the nobility. This all began at an assembly known as the Chambre Saint Louis. Mazarin in particular was a problem for the Frond, and he was characterized as an untrustworthy foreigner. Things became so heated that Anne, Mazarin and the nine year old At this point Louis the fourteenth left Paris for Saint Germain, just outside the city. But this was only the first phase of the Fronde. The judges of the city parliament, the Regent, Anne and her advisor negotiated a resolution to their conflict. This deal got the magistrates a lot of the things that they wanted, and they were promised amnesty for their part in the conflicts that had broken out, But in doing so they had excluded the nobility, which meant that when they announced the deal that ended the Frond, of parliaments called the Peace of Rey. A second phase of the Frond. The Frond of the Princes started, and this is when Anne Marie Louise and her father Gustave got deeply involved in the fighting. In some ways, the Frond of the Princes was a more complex affair than the Frond of Parliament, because there were various deals being made among nobles to support each other, to turn on others, to exclude some members of the nobility, et cetera. It was like a lot of cliquish, interconnected deals being made. But the big turn of events that happened was from within the monarchy's own defenses. Louis the second de Bourbon, the fourth Prince of Conde, who was a general who had fought to protect the monarchy in the first phase of the Frond, turned against the crown in the second phase. Mazarin had him arrested. That stoked anger against Mazarin to a degree that in early sixteen fifty one he left the country. That, however, did not end the conflict. All of those various allegiances and orals within the rebelling nobility were still in play as everyone jockeyed for power, and then the young, barely teenage Louis the fourteenth was recognized as king in sixteen fifty one. This stopped short the efforts of many nobles who had sought to gain more influence in the absence of a fully vested king, and it especially stopped the efforts of Louis the second of vermon And while there were additional efforts at resting power from the throne, they did not succeed. The fraud is named that after the fact because a frond was a kid's toy. It was kind of like a slingshot, and the name suggests that the whole lengthy episode was ultimately kind of silly infighting and not a serious threat to the monarchy. On the contrary, it ended up bolstering support for the monarchy in its final stages, enabling Louis the fourteenth to ultimately rule at an almost unprecedented level of power. Momtponsier's father, Gaston, had initially supported and Mazarin in the Fronde, but as the aristocracy mounted the Frond of the Princes, he was against the king's mother and her advisor, and he was no stranger to conflict with the throne, having instigated a number of rebellions against his brother during Louis the thirteenth reign. Gaston and Anne Marie Louise were quite close, though he was often gone during her childhood because of his involvement with all these various intrigues.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we mentioned his problematic marriage, but he also was constantly like, let's revolt against my brother. Now, this involvement in the fraud is the phase of Anne Marie Louise's life that I and I think a lot of people find most fascinating. She got directly involved in the battles of the Fraud in the sixteen fifties, and by directly involved, I mean on the ground fighting. She was not the only woman of nobility to do so. She is often mentioned with two others, the Duchess de Chevreuse and the Duchess de Longueville. All all of these women led troops on horseback into conflicts. That's why the three of them are sometimes grouped together and called the Amazons. On March twenty seventh, sixteen fifty two, Montponcier took command of an army that battered its way into Orleans and occupied the city. On July second, sixteen fifty two, at the Battle of Faubourg, Saint Antoine Conde's troops were in trouble. The conflict was within the city, near the Bastille, and credit is given to Montponcier for ordering the Bastille cannon to be fired into the royal army. This gave the rebel forces under Conde a reprieve. While Conde survived the day thanks to the Grand Mademoiselle, the rebellion ultimately was defeated.

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Speaker 2: Conde was arrested and with Louis the fourteenth back in Paris, ann Marie Louise found herself no longer welcome in the city.

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Speaker 1: She was exiled.

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Speaker 2: This was not as though she was sent to some desolate place of misery. She went to the Ynge region, where she had an estate at Saint Fogo, about one hundred and eighty five kilometers or one hundred and fifteen miles south of Paris. Her father was also exiled, but returned to Paris with a royal reconciliation in sixteen fifty seven. And while she was living in exile in the country, mom Polsier certainly was not sulking.

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Speaker 1: She still lived like a royal. She had a court of attendance, and she had social connections. She spent time overseeing upgrades and decor to the Saint Frago estate, and there were all manner of entertainment stage for her and her friends. Sometimes this is called like her Petite Court. She also started writing during this time, with assistance and teaching from poet and novel Jeangno de Sergree and scholar Pierre Daniell Lue, and the level of formal education she ever received is unknown. It is not generally described as much at all when she was younger, so this time of taking up writing would have really been a time of great learning for her, and it was probably really challenging. One of the things that she wrote about in her correspondence during this time was how when she was living in Paris, she had always thought life in the country would be just miserable, but it turned out that she quite liked it.

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Speaker 2: Montponsier did return to the court at Paris eventually. We'll talk about her life after that after we hear from the sponsors that keep the show going. Montpolsier returned to Paris five years after her exile in sixteen fifty seven. She started working on her memoirs once she was there, and there had been sort of a cruel angle to the timing of her exile period, because in deeming that five years was how long she had to stay away, that meant she would be away from court from the age of twenty five until she was thirty, so that by the time she had returned she had aged out of desirability as a perspective on this, however, did not seem to trouble her, and she also didn't seem eager to stay in Paris. She left for another period of country living to write, this time at another estate she owned about two hundred and ninety five kilometers southwest of Paris, Champigni Cheveude. She worked on a project there called Diverse Portrait, which contained fifty nine biographical portraits of people of the royal court. She was not the only writer on it. That piece was privately published in early sixteen fifty nine. When she was traveling with other members of the court in early sixteen sixty to the wedding proceedings of Louis the fourteenth to Maria Theresa of Spain, she started to discuss an idea that really sounds quite modern with some of the other people on the trip. Was the idea of a community of people who might choose to leave the court, stay single and live communally. Sounds kind of like the fantasy of owning a brownstone with all your friends as your neighbors.

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Speaker 1: Who among us has not had that fantasy.

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Speaker 2: The correspondence she shared with Francoise Berto de Montville about this idea is the basis of the biography we mentioned earlier. Motvilla had been married off at eighteen to a man who was ninety, but she did not inherit anything when he died just two years later. She was probably a sympathetic ear to Montponcier's ideas of just flipping the table on what was expected of women in the nobility at the time.

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Speaker 1: One of Montpontier's early letters to Montvilla reads quote, it is essential, in my opinion, that the people who would like to withdraw from the court or from society distance themselves from those places without feeling obliged to leave them, but rather because they are aware of how little constancy can be found in this type of life, and even among one's friends. One can also find one's self at an age when ambition is less compelling and when reasonable people are easily cured of it. She goes on to describe the ideal companions and placement of her theoretical dream community, writing quote, I would rather there were no married people, and that everyone would either be widowed or have renounced this sacrament, for it is said to be an unfortunate undertaking. You know how lucky we are to be out of it. For my part in this matter, I have come to this decision in such a way as those who do not know me will not guess who I am by what I say about it. It would be good to come to an absolute agreement about the place where we would live, and to consider whether we would choose the banks of the Loire or those of the sin. She describes a place where they could grow fruits and vegetables, and have other gardens that they could watch grow. She notes that each person would have a house that suited their tastes, both in design and in placement, and that it would be a place where community areas would enable them to play games together and have concerts and other entertainment. She is very clear that this commune she envisions isn't intended to cut the residents off from the society that they've known. It It's a rather charming.

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Speaker 2: Section where she says she would absolutely go to events when invited, but that quote, I believe that I would be bored, and that I would be very happy to return home. But I would not let it show for fear that this affectation would make others despise me, or would expose me to a mockery. All the more dangerous because it is well founded and that it is brought on by ridiculous behavior. Yeah, she's kind of like, I know, this is a kooky dream.

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Speaker 1: Not everybody's gonna get it well. Polsier's rural republic, as she dreamed of it, would be a place of leisure and socializing. She wanted it to have a hospital for poor children and quote a beautiful church staffed by capable and zealous clerics. She wanted livestock so the residents could milk them and make cheeses and cakes. She envisioned this as a very religious community, and she wanted it to also include a carmelite convent as well as abodes for hermits in the woods. There are a lot of detailed letters back and forth between Montpalsier and her friend Moltaville about all the ways that they were going to set up this commune, which of course never actually happened, but it does seem that Amory Louise was deeply emotionally invested in the idea. She wrote, quote, my most agreeable hours are spent dreaming about our plan and thanking God that the obstacles that could have stood in its way in the past have finally been removed, with no signs of new ones ahead. That means marriage, She continues, quote I find myself like those little birds who have been in a cage for a long time, and who are so overjoyed to fly wherever they like. While she was back in Paris and in the good graces of the court, her father Gaston died in sixteen sixty. That left her with even more of an immense fortune. One of the things that she did at this time was purchased the Chateau Dux in Normandy. The grand chateau had been started as a construction project in fifteen seventy eight by Henry, the first Duke of Keys.

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Speaker 2: It was still unfinished eighty years later when Anne Marie Louise purchased it. She had the construction completed and set about decorating it with fine art Also during this time, her cousin Louis the fourteenth, was looking for potential marriage alliances for her, because he understood completely how valuable her holdings were and he wanted them to be used to secure additional power for France. This culminated in conflict with the king once again, and in sixteen sixty two, Montponcier was once again exiled. This time she had refused a royal match. A marriage deal had been struck that would wed her to the King of Portugal, Alfonso the sixth, but ann Marie Louise was not having it. Louis the fourteenth was angry enough about this that he sent her away again, this time for two years. She returned to court in sixteen sixty four, but is described as having been kind of distant and less central to its various goings on. In December of sixteen seventy, it seemed that Montponcier would finally marry, this time because she actually wanted to. She had fallen in love with the Count de Lauzoon, Antonine Nampar de Camman. This whole situation was kind of odd, given all that had come before it, and other reasons as well. Montponsier had been keenly aware of her fortune's value in a marriage match. She had always stated that she didn't want a potential husband who just needed her assets.

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Speaker 1: But the Count de Lauzoon was not in line for any kind of valued position or inheritance. He had no wealth. He was not the kind of man who would ever be considered a match for her. The two of them, though, asked King Louis the fourteenth for permission to marry, and he granted that permission on December fifteenth, sixteen seventy.

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Speaker 2: Mont Poncier immediately started and transferring some of her titles to her future husband. This would have raised his rank at court and made the match less lopsided, at least on paper, but that was premature. The approval she had been given by the King was something of a shock to the court. It was seen as Louis the fourteenth being soft on a woman who had gone against him at every turn, even with violence.

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Speaker 1: The King quickly.

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Speaker 2: Reversed his decision and rescinded the permission three days after he had given it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, there's also the patina of you're going to marry a poor into our court. Montponsier and Lauzun protested this reversal, but it did no good, and it probably just annoyed Louis the fourteenth, because a year later he had Lauzun, who had been a member of his guard, imprisoned in the remote fortress at Pinole in the Alps. This is the same place that the French convict who became known as the Man in the Iron Mask, was imprisoned before being moved to the Bastille a. Marie Louise worked to get Lauzoon freed for the next decade, and then, finally, in sixteen eighty, Montponcier made the sacrifice of personal wealth to gain Lauzoon's freedom. She gave up a lot of her estate, which became the property of Louis Auguste, the King's son with his mistress Francoise, at Dene de Rocheois de Montemart, Marquis of Monte di Spon. Some biographies about Montponcier suggest that Madame de Montespon had been instrumental in having Lauzun imprisoned because she saw the potential opportunity to seize Amrie Louise's assets for her son. Sometime after Lauzun's release, although the exact date is not known, he and Anne Marie Louise were married in a secret ceremony, secret because Louis the fourteenth had never given them permission to wed after having given it and then resented it, and there's some speculation that there never was a formal marriage. This is not a happily ever after. She had spent at that point eleven or twelve years fighting to be with him, but it turned out that Montponsier and Lauzun were ill suited to have a life together. This marriage only lasted a couple of years. Lauzun is said to have been kind of a womanizer and not especially attentive to the woman who had agreed to be with him, despite being so far above his station, Anne Marie Louise ended things abruptly and sent him away. After that, she lived alone, working on her memoirs. She still had a number of estates, even though she had given a lot up, and she moved from one to another in the last decade of her life. She reportedly lived for a short time at the end of her life in a convent in Paris. There's a lot of speculation about whether she had considered becoming a nun throughout her life. She died in that convent on April fifth, sixteen ninety three, from a bladder issue. Lauzoon It said, attempted to see her when she was on her deathbed, but she refused his visit. She was sixty five when she died. Because she had never married or had any children, her cousin, Philippe, the first Duke d'orleon inherited all of her assets and Montponcier was buried in the Basilica de Sant Denis. There's also some details about her funeral which are a little horrifying, and we're gonna save those for Friday.

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Speaker 2: Oh no, but that is the life of Anne Marie Louise Montpontier, who I just like heaps. I just feel like she's an interesting person. I feel like she was probably a lot of fun to be around. She's the party girl, but also possibly a pill's herd. Yeah, she knew her own heart. I have to say that she's got props. You have listener mail I have. I know, I keep doing things about our various calendar things. But a lot of people had comments and thoughts about them that were interesting. This one got me very excited. It's Reurlessener Jessica. Uh who actually titled it? Another Advent calendar email. Jessica writes, Hi, I don't know if either of you are puzzle people, but my sister stumbled on Advent puzzles last year. My family suffers from an inability to not finish a puzzle the same day we started. But with the Advent puzzle, you get many puzzles each day that make the whole picture. She bought one for each household, so we trade them out on Thanksgiving. Attached a picture of mine this year. Yes, one piece is missing. I was doing the last day outside because the puppy also attached solo and in matching Christmas jammies with his older sister needed to run out some energy and one piece ended up going through the deck slats, atlantic clay dirt underneath the deck, and with the rain in the past few days, that piece is a goner. I hope you've had a RESTful winter holiday season. Jessica. Okay, this is brilliant. I love this idea event puzzles. I'm gonna look for those. Also, puppies puppies and pajamas I want the cutest.

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Speaker 1: These are puffy little things. They look almost like maybe Australian shepherds or a cattle dog. I can't quite tell. I'm sorry if I have misidentified your sweet babies, but they are both gorgeous. They need hugs and kisses on their snooch. See. I love finding out about all of the advent calendars that people have found because it's just gonna feed my little addiction and I'm going to live in a pile of them soon. If you have a cool advent calendar we have not yet heard, please tell me, because you know what I need is more stuff. If you would like to.

00:32:41
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