Birth of a Portuguese Princess (Who Married Her Nephew) on 25 July, 1746

It was on this day 273 years ago that the Infanta Maria Francisca Benedita of Portugal was born in Lisbon. She was the last born of the children of the then heir to the Portuguese throne, the Infante José, Prince of Brazil, and his Spanish Bourbon wife.

Now pay attention, good reader, because the story might get confusing.

After José became king in 1750, his only surviving children were 4 daughters: Maria Francisca (b. 1734), Maria Ana (b. 1736), Maria Dorotea (b. 1739) and Maria Benedita herself. The middle 2 girls never married, but the eldest and youngest ended up contracting incestuous marriages. Maria Francisca, now heiress presumptive to the throne and titled Princess of Brazil, married her paternal uncle, the Infante Pedro, in 1760. They had 6 children, including 2 surviving sons. The elder of them was the Infante José, Prince of Beira. When he was 15, in 1777, he was married off to his 30-year-old youngest aunt, Maria Benedita. Three days later, King José died, Maria Francisca succeeded as Queen Maria I, and young José became heir to the throne as Prince of Brazil, thus making his wife/aunt Princess of Brazil.

Got that?

Unfortunately, there would never be any children. Maria Benedita miscarried twice, and then her much-younger husband died in 1791. The Queen, already mentally unstable, was completely undone by the death of her beloved eldest son. She was declared insane in 1792 and her younger son, the Infante João, became Prince Regent for the rest of her reign, which ended on her death in 1816.

Maria Benedita, now Dowager Princess of Brazil, was also much affected by her husband/nephew’s death. She lived quietly for the rest of her long life, devoting herself to good works. In 1808, when the court was evacuated to Rio de Janeiro in the midst of the Napoleonic wars, she went along and remained in Brazil until her brother, now King João VI, returned to Lisbon in 1821. In her final years, she founded a military hospital for veterans at Runa, which still exists and where there is a museum in her honour in her former rooms.

Maria Benedita died in Lisbon on 18 August, 1829.

BIRTH OF MARIE LECZINSKA ON 23 JUNE, 1703

It was on this day 316 years ago that Maria Karolina Zofia Felicja Leszczynska, better known as Marie Leczinska, future consort of Louis XV, was born in Poland.

Her father, Stanislas Leszczynski, was a noble Polish landowner who was set up as King of Poland between 1704 and 1709 by the force of Charles XII of Sweden’s arms. When the latter was defeated by Peter the Great at Poltava, Stanislas and his family were forced to flee to Germany. They lived in Zweibrücken and later in Wissembourg, Alsace, where they were reduced to very unroyal circumstances.

By a stroke of unbelievable good fortune, Marie Leczinska was selected in 1725 as the bride of Europe’s richest and handsomest monarch, Louis XV. The youthful king’s chief minister, the Duc de Bourbon, influenced by his mistress Madame du Prie, reckoned that as an impoverished exile Marie Leczinska came with no political strings attached and was no threat to anyone at the French court, since she had no power base of her own. In other words, the duke and du Prie calculated that Marie would be beholden to them and under their control. She was indeed grateful to them, but Louis XV had no intention of allowing his wife any political influence and the plan backfired. Bourbon was soon dismissed from his post and exiled to his country estates, as was du Prie, who died soon after.

Marie Leczinska went on to be the longest-serving queen consort of France, giving her 7-years-younger husband 8 children and tolerating his numerous mistresses. Charitable, devout, and kind, she was popular and respected until her death in 1768.

The pictured portrait is an enlarged copy of the original one by Nattier, which he painted sometime in the 1750s. It can be seen at Versailles. I photographed this copy at the Musée Cognacq-Jay in Paris at Easter, 2018.

Wedding of the Future Charles X on 16 November, 1773

It was on this day 245 years ago that Charles-Philippe de France (b. 1757) married Marie-Thérèse de Savoie (b. 1756) in the royal chapel at Versailles.

The groom, styled Comte d’Artois, was the youngest grandson of Louis XV. The bride was a daughter of Victor Amadeus III, King of Sardinia and head of the house of Savoy. Two of the teenaged newlyweds’ elder siblings had already been joined in matrimony; Louis-Stanislas de France, Comte de Provence, the next elder brother of the Comte d’Artois, had married Marie-Thérèse’s elder sister, Marie-Joséphine, on 14 May, 1771. The eldest brother, the Dauphin Louis-Auguste, having married Marie-Antoinette d’Autriche-Lorraine in 1770, the set was now complete, so to speak.

Unlike her sisters-in-law, Marie-Thérèse started producing heirs very soon. The first 3 children of the Artois family appeared within 5 years: Louis-Antoine, Duc d’Angoulême, in 1775; a girl never baptized but referred to as Sophie, in 1776; and Charles-Ferdinand, Duc de Berri, in 1778. A fourth child, a baby girl who died in the cradle, was born in 1783. Since the Artois were said to have stopped living as man and wife after the birth of the Duc de Berri, it was rumoured that the last child’s father was one of the many guardsmen whose company Marie-Thérèse was reputed to enjoy. On hearing that Louis XVI had sent one particular guardsman off to service in a distant colony after the news of the Comtesse d’Artois’s final pregnancy broke, Madame Adélaïde, Louis XV’s favourite daughter, remarked, “Whole companies would have to be sent away.”

Marie-Thérèse survived the Revolution, escaping France with her husband in 1791. Their flight, however, marked the beginning of their true separation. Marie-Thérèse did not live to become queen, dying alone in Graz in 1805. The Comte d’Artois eventually succeeded as Charles X in 1824, but was driven off the throne in 1830.  The only grandson of Charles and Marie-Thérèse, who died in 1883 having never reigned, was the last Bourbon of the male line of Louis XV.

It was on this day in 1754 that the future Louis XVI was born.

His parents were Louis, Dauphin of France (1729-1765), and Marie-Josèphe, Dauphine of France, née princess of Saxony-Poland (1731-1767).  The infant prince was immediately named Duc de Berri by his grandfather, Louis XV, and was soon christened Louis-Auguste to distinguish him from his elder brother, Louis-Joseph.

Louis, Dauphin de France (1729-1765). I photographed this bust of him in his sister Victoire’s drawing room at Versailles in March, 2016.

Louis-Auguste was in fact the third child in the family.

Anne Stuart, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, died on this day in 1714, thus bringing to and end the Protestant branch of the Stuart dynasty, which had ruled England and Ireland for 111 years, and Scotland for 343 years.

Queen Anne by Le Marchand. Photographed at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), 2016.

Born the daughter of James Stuart, Duke of York, the second son of Charles I, and Anne Hyde, daughter of Charles II’s minister the Earl of Clarendon, in 1665, she likely never expected to succeed to the throne.

Although her father was Catholic, she and her elder sister Mary were raised in the Church of England, to which their mother belonged.  After their mother’s death, James married Mary of Modena, who gave birth to their half-brother, also James, who superseded them in the line of succession.  When James II (who had succeeded his childless brother Charles II in 1685) was deposed, however, the infant James was excluded from the succession, as were all Catholics.  Mary and her husband William of Orange took the throne in 1688 as Mary II and William III, the only joint monarchs in British history.  They too were childless, so Anne became heiress to the throne.

In the meantime, Anne had married Prince George of Denmark, who came to live in England.  Poor Anne endured 17 pregnancies, most of them difficult, of which only one resulted in the birth of a living baby that survived its infancy.  This was William, created Duke of Gloucester by William and Mary.  Tragically, he died aged 11 in 1700.  This left Anne herself as the last living Protestant Stuart.  As such, she succeeded William III on his death in 1702, becoming Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland, then of Great Britain and Ireland subsequent to the 1707 Acts of Union.

By the 1701 Act of Settlement it had already been determined that Anne would be succeeded by her nearest Protestant relative, the Electress Sophia of Hanover, who was a grand daughter  of James I through his only daughter Elizabeth, who had married the Elector Palatine, briefly also King of Bohemia.  Sophia, however, predeceased Anne by 2 months, so it was her son who succeeded Anne as George I, the director ancestor of the present queen, Elizabeth II.

In some ways, the Kingdom of New Spain, centred in what we now call Mexico, was at its height in the Versailles Century (1682-1789).

It certainly reached its greatest territorial extent in the 1700s, as the map below illustrates.

By Eddo – Own workFile:BlankMap-World-90W.svgFile:New Spain.pngFile:Nueva España 1795.pngFile:Spanish Provinces in the Pacific.png, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11435488

The light green areas represent the last areas to be claimed by the Spanish before the onset of the Napoleonic Wars and the War of Independence, which resulted in the collapse of Spanish rule and Mexico’s independence in 1821, not to mention that of the other countries of Central and South America.

The Rue du Bac is a narrow but fascinating street in Paris to wander along.  Lined with antique shops, boutiques, restaurants, and cafes, it stretches from the quai opposite the Louvre deep into the heart of the Left Bank.

Rue du Bac in Paris.

It’s also home to the Paris Foreign Missions Society, usually abbreviated as MEP using the French initials (Missions Étrangères de Paris).  The unassuming street entrance to the MEP complex is shown below.

The entrance to the MEP complex at 128 Rue du Bac.

This venerable organization, still active today, was responsible for the Catholic evangelization of North America and much of East and Southeast Asia.

With Part 6, which covers the years 1710 to 1714, we conclude our series of posts on the War of the Spanish Succession.

In 1710, Louis XIV’s luck began to turn.  He sent a new army into Spain to help Felipe V.  In command was the Duc de Vendôme, this time without the Duc de Bourgogne to get in his way.  Left to his own lights, the old duke defeated the Anglo-Austrian forces and drove them out of Spain by the end of the year.  He returned to Versailles covered in glory and left Felipe V firmly on the Spanish throne once and for all.

The fighting season of 1706 had ended very badly for France, with its armies driven out of Flanders and in retreat everywhere else.  The Archduke Charles, with an Anglo-Austrian army behind him, had even taken Madrid and been proclaimed king as Carlos III, one of the main objectives of the War of the Spanish Succession.  In short, Louis XIV and his allies were beaten to their knees.

Peace Offer

So parlous was the state of France that Louis, for the first time in his career, sued for peace.  He offered to surrender his Flemish fortresses to the Dutch and to recognize the Archduke Charles as King of Spain on the condition that his grandson Felipe V be allowed to keep Sicily, Naples, and Milan.  The Grand Alliance was not impressed, except for the Dutch, whose aims had been achieved for them by Marlborough’s victories. England, Austria and the allied German states, however, scented blood and were determined to bring France low.  The war continued.

Today we bring you Part 4 of the War of the Spanish Succession.  In Part 3, we saw that war was officially declared on France and Spain by England, the United Provinces (today’s Netherlands), and Austria in the spring 1702.

The States of Europe Take Sides

In the beginning, France and Spain faced Europe alone.  They were soon joined by Bavaria, whose Elector still believed that his late son, Prince Joseph Ferdinand, the designated heir to the Spanish throne in the late 1690s, had been poisoned by Austrian agents.  The Elector of Cologne also signed on.  The last addition to the team was Savoy. It should perhaps be explained that the duchy of Savoy was an independent state at this time.  Its duke also possessed the principality of Piedmont and ruled from its capital, Turin.  The Duke of Savoy was more or less obligated to support France and Spain because one of his daughters was married to the Duc de Bourgogne, third in line in to the French throne as the eldest grandson of Louis XIV, and another daughter was married to Bourgogne’s younger brother, the newly minted Felipe V of Spain.  Savoy was an unreliable ally, however.  Nancy Mitford remarks in her biography of Louis XIV, The Sun King, that Duke Vittorio Amadeo was famous for never finishing a war on the same side that he started on.  On the whole, it was an underwhelming team.  Apart from Savoy’s unreliability, there was the problem of Spain’s near bankruptcy and general weakness. The Elector of Bavaria was a solid ally, but lacked resources.  Cologne, of course, was too insignificant to make much of a difference.  France would have to shoulder most of the financial and military burden itself.

Those who have been following this series from the beginning will recognize the map below because I used it in Part 1.  It may be helpful here in Part 4, too, so I’m reproducing it again.

Europe in 1700. Credit: Wikipedia.

On the other side, the Grand Alliance, as the England-United Provinces-Austria axis called itself, was joined by Portugal, Brandenburg-Prussia, Hanover, and various other German states, the most important of which was the Palatinate (German: Pfalz), a Rhineland state on the French border that was coincidentally ruled by another branch of the Bavarian ruling dynasty.  The Palatinate, to the horror of Louis XIV’s sister-in-law, a Palatine princess, had been devastated by French armies in a prior war and was itching for revenge.  It was more or less understood that Austria would supply most of the military muscle on the continent while England and the United Provinces would provide sea power.