Birth of a Future Duchess of Parma on 14 August, 1727

It was on this day 292 years ago that Louise-Elisabeth of France was born to Louis XV and his consort, Marie Leczinska. Ten minutes after she appeared, her twin Henriette emerged.

The two infants were the eldest of seven surviving daughters and one son, and were dubbed Madame Première and Madame Seconde. Louise-Elisabeth was her father’s favourite. He called her ‘Babette.’ Her witty remarks could always make him laugh. Nonetheless, her arranged an early marriage for her. She would be the only one of the sisterhood to marry.

Louise-Elisabeth was married to one of her Spanish Bourbon cousins, the Infante Felipe, in 1739, when she was just 12 years old. The Infante was a younger son of King Felipe V, himself a grandson of Louis XIV, by his second wife, Isabel Farnese. Isabel was the heiress of the Farnese dukes of Parma, but the duchy had been conquered by the Austrians during the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1713). Her claim passed to Felipe’s elder brother Carlos, who won the duchy back from the Austrians during the War of the Polish Succession (1733-1736), only to exchange it (understandably) for the Kingdom of Naples.

The new Infanta, stagnating in the dull court of Madrid, where she and her husband were minor figures outranked by Felipe’s older brothers and their wives, determined to secure Parma. Her biggest asset was of course her father’s support. She embarked on a letter-writing campaign to enlist it. After the next round of warfare, namely the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748), Louis XV saw to it that the duchy was assigned to the Infante Felipe at the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.

The new duke and duchess triumphantly took possession of their duchy, or rather Felipe took possession of it while Louise Elisabeth journeyed to Versailles to thank her father for his support. She would now be known there as Madame de Parme. After a stay of 10 months, she finally made her way to Parma.

Once settled in her new capital, Louise-Elisabeth became bored. She made two further visits to Versailles, staying a year each time. The first was after the death of her twin Henriette, who succumbed to small pox in 1752. During the second visit, in 1759, Louise-Henriette herself contracted the disease and died on 6 December. She was buried next to her sister in the royal necropolis at St. Denis.

Louise-Elisabeth and Duke Felipe had 3 surviving children. The eldest, Isabel (1741-1763), married the future Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, but died before his election. They had no children. The younger two were twins: Ferdinand (1751-1802) and Marie-Louise (1751-1819). It’s their descendants who have transmitted the blood of Louis XV to all the Catholic royal houses of Europe.

Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Élisabeth_of_France .

Image: Louise-Elisabeth of France, Duchess of Parma, by an unknown artist after Nattier. Credit — WikiCommons.

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.

It was on this day 271 years ago that Louis XV’s mother-in-law, Catherine Opalinska, died in Nancy, then still the capital of the autonomous duchy of Lorraine.

Catherine Opalinska, Queen of Poland and Duchess of Lorraine, painted by Van Loo circa 1725; credit: Wikimedia.

Born in 1680 into the powerful Opalinsky family in Poznan, Poland, she married Stanislas Leszczynski (1677-1766) in 1698. As his consort, she was twice Queen of Poland and Grand Duchess of Lithuania. Both times they were driven off their throne and exiled.  While the first exile, during the Great Northern War (1700-1721), resulted in poverty, the second, after the War of the Polish Succession (1733-1736), led to riches and comfort, since they were given the duchy of Lorraine as compensation for the loss of their Polish crown.

Their only surviving child, Marie Leszczynska (1703-1768), married Louis XV. Through their son, the Dauphin Louis (1729-1765), Catherine was the ancestress of Louis XVI, Louis XVII, Louis XVIII, and Charles X. Like her daughter, Catherine was very pious and given to good works, thus prompting her husband to remark that his wife and daughter were the dullest princesses in Europe.  Louis XV doesn’t seem to have been especially fond of his in-laws, but he did pay for a lavish funeral mass for Catherine at Notre Dame in Paris.

Funeral ceremonies for Catherine Opalinska in Notre Dame de Paris in 1747. Collection Hennin no. 8584, Etching and line-engraving, Department of Prints and Photographs, Bibliothèque nationale de Paris, courtesy of Wikimedia.

Catherine was a loyal, long-suffering wife. She stood by her husband through his shifting political fortunes, followed him through exile in half a dozen countries, shared his (relative) poverty in periods when he was crownless and landless, and tolerated his mistresses.

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It was 251 years ago today that the Dauphine Marie-Josèphe, the widow of the Dauphin Louis, Louis XV’s only son, died at Versailles.  Her husband had predeceased her by 15 months. During their 19-year marriage they’d had a total of 13 children. Sadly, less than half of these little ones lived to adulthood. Among those who did were the future kings Louis XVI, Louis XVIII, and Charles X.

A bust of the Dauphin Louis (1729-1765), husband of the Dauphine Marie-Josèphe,  in one of his sister Victoire’s rooms at Versailles.

Marie-Josèphe was a Saxon, the daughter of Augustus III, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony. She was brought to France to marry the Dauphin in 1746 when she was only 15. His first wife, a Spanish infanta, had died in the first year of their marriage. The Dauphin’s mother, Queen Marie Leszczynska, was opposed to the match because her father and Marie-Josèphe’s father had been rivals for the Polish crown, which the latter had won. There is a charming story that one day the young Saxon princess was seen to be wearing a portrait bracelet. The Queen asked to see it and was touched to find the portrait of her own father, King Stanislas. The Dauphine seems to have applied the same tact to her dealings with all her new family, and was therefore genuinely mourned after she died.

Stanislas Leszczynski (1677-1766), King of Poland and Duke of Lorraine, grandfather-in-law of the Dauphine Marie-Josèphe de Saxe.

The Dauphin and Dauphine, along with Queen Marie Leszczynska, were the centre of the “moral” faction at court that disapproved of Louis XV’s libertine ways, and of worldly ways in general.  After their deaths, Louis XV’s eldest surviving daughter, Madame Adélaïde, became the leader of this so-called “Old Court.”

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The following events occurred in different years of the Versailles Century (1682-1789) between 12 February and 16 February.  I compile these events mainly from the English and French wikipedias.  Whenever possible, I link to further reading or suggest a print work.

Death of Le Brun on 12 February, 1690

It was on this day 328 years ago that Charles Le Brun, Premier Peintre du Roi (First Painter to the King), died. Le Brun was born into a family of artists and showed early signs of great promise. He came to Louis XIV’s notice in the early 1660s, perhaps because of his work at Vaux-le-Vicomte. He was soon commissioned to work at the royal chateau of St. Germain and at the Louvre. His masterpieces, however, are the ceilings of the Hall of Mirrors, the Salon de Paix, and the Salon de Guerre at Versailles. He died rich and ennobled.

Image: A portrait of Le Brun by Largillière, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Madame Louise de France was the youngest child of Louis XV and his Polish consort, Marie Leszczynska.  Dubbed Madame Septième, in reference to her place in the birth order of the royal daughters, on her birth in 1737, she was one of only two of Louis XV’s nine children  to leave the Court of Versailles and seek a life elsewhere.

In 1738, Mme Louise and three of her elder sisters were sent off to the abbey of Fontevraud for their education.  It was there, in fact, that Louise was baptized.  The decision to send them there had been made by Cardinal Fleury, Louis XV’s de facto prime minister, on the grounds of economy.  It was thought that it would be significantly cheaper to raise them there than with large households at Versailles.  Be that as it may, it meant that Louise spent most of her earliest years away from her home and family, apart from the sisters who were also at Fontevrault.  The decision might been justified by the quality of the education that the young princesses were to receive, but in later years Mme Louise alleged that she did not even know the alphabet when she left the abbey.

Mme Louise painted by Nattier in 1748, when she was still at Fontevrault.

The elder girls started returning to Versailles in the late 1740s.  Louise herself returned in 1750.  By this time, life at Court had changed a good deal since her birth, which had marked the end of her parents’ intimate life.  Asked what he intended to call his new daughter, Louis XV responded, “Madame Dernière” (“Madame the last”).  He then took up with the first of his many mistresses.  When Louise returned to Versailles, the reigning mistress was the celebrated Madame de Pompadour.  The mistress was tolerated by the Queen, but the King’s children were against her.  There were now six royal siblings living at court: the Dauphin Louis (the only son), Mme Henriette (who was soon to die), Mme Adélaïde, Mme Victoire, Mme Sophie, and Mme Louise.  In addition, the Dauphin had a wife, Marie-Josèphe of Saxony-Poland, who would give birth to the future Louis XVI in 1754.  The eldest daughter, Mme Élisabeth, had married the reigning Duke of Parma.  She was the only one of Louis XV’s daughters to marry.  The remaining royal children resented la Pompadour and formed a nucleus of opposition to the favourite.

The salon hostess and writer Mme de Boigne (1781-1866), née Adèle d’Osmond, was literally born in the Château de Versailles, and spent her childhood at the court of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette.

In the first chapter of her memoirs, Mme de Boigne writes, “It was soon after my parents settled into Versailles that I came into the world.  My mother had already been delivered of a still-born infant, so I was welcomed with transports of joy and pardoned for being a girl.  I was not swaddled, as was still the custom, but dressed in the English manner and nursed by my mother in the midst of Versailles.  I promptly became the plaything of the princes and the court, all the more since I was very well-behaved, and also since children in those days were as rare a species in a drawing room as they are common and tyrannical today.”

Adéle d’Osmond, Comtesse de Boigne (1781-1866).

This remarkable circumstance is due to the fact that her mother was a lady-in-waiting to Mme Adélaïde, one of the daughters of Louis XV.  She and her sisters were generally referred to as “Mesdames,”and later, in the reign of their nephew Louis XVI, as “Mesdames Tantes.”  It was not usual for ladies-in-waiting to keep their children at court, but Mme de Boigne’s parents, the Marquis and Marquise d’Osmond, chose — and were permitted — to do so.

The Abbé de Bernis is one of those fascinating, worldly prelates, more at home in the drawing room than the confessional, who inhabited the haut monde of pre-Revolution Paris and Versailles.  It was on 2 October in 1758 that the red biretta was bestowed on him.

The Cardinal de Bernis (1715-1794). Credit: Wikipedia.

The future Cardinal de Bernis was born in 1715 and took minor orders after finishing his studies at a seminary in Paris.  Before embarking on his political and diplomatic career he was known as a writer, indeed he was elected to the Académie Française at age 29. He was a friend and protégé of Mme de Pompadour, and through her influence was appointed ambassador to Venice (1752-1755).  He remarked on his appointment to this post, which was not one of the more important or prestigious ones, that the worst thing that could happen to him there would be to be forgotten.

It was on this day in 1725 that the wedding of Louis XV and Marie Leczinska took place at the Château de Fontainebleau.

It was a union that no one would ever have predicted.  Louis was the 15-year-old king of the largest and richest kingdom in Europe, while Marie was the 22-year-old daughter of a deposed and exiled King of Poland.  An old maid by the standards of the day, she was also not considered a beauty.

Marie Leczinska in 1730 by Alexis Simon Belle. Credit: Wikipedia.

How did this penniless princess land the most eligible crowned head in Europe (never mind that he was a teenager)?

Our friends at the official Château de Versailles website have published this stunning rooftop view from the centre block (I assume) down the central axis of the gardens to the Tapis Vert and the Grand Canal beyond.

View from the roof of the Château de Versailles towards the Grand Canal. Credit: http://www.chateaudeversailles.com

Looking at this view makes me feel quite kingly.  Why?  Because Louis XV is known to have enjoyed spending time on the roof of the Château.