Jump to content

Marie Louise de La Tour d'Auvergne

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Marie Louise
Princess of Guéméné
Born(1725-08-15)15 August 1725
Hotel de Bouillon, Paris, France
Died1793
Paris, France
SpouseJules Hercule Mériadec de Rohan
Issue
Detail		Henri Louis Marie, Prince of Guéméné
Names
Marie Louise Henriette Jeanne de La Tour d'Auvergne
FatherCharles Godefroy de La Tour d'Auvergne
MotherMaria Karolina Sobieska

Marie Louise de La Tour d'Auvergne (Marie Louise Henriette Jeanne;[1] 15 August 1725 – 1793) was a French noblewoman and member of the House of La Tour d'Auvergne. She was the Princess of Guéméné by marriage.

Biography

[edit]

Early life and family

[edit]

Louise was the first child born to Charles Godefroy de La Tour d'Auvergne and his wife Maria Karolina "Charlotte" Sobieska. Charlotte was the granddaughter of King John III Sobieski of Poland (famous as the winner of the Battle of Vienna) and older sister of Clementina Sobieska (wife of the Jacobite pretender James Francis Edward Stuart).[1] Charlotte and Clementina were co-heiresses to the vast Sobieski lands in Poland as the family's last members. Through her grand-aunt, Theresa Kunegunda Sobieska, Louise was second cousin to Emperor Charles VIII, Maria Antonia, Electress of Saxony, and Empress Maria Josepha. Following Louise's birth on 15 August 1725, the couple had a son, Godefroy Charles Henri, in 1728.[2]

Before marrying Charles Godefroy, Charlotte had been married to his elder brother, Frédéric Maurice Casimir.[3] When he died within weeks of the wedding, his father Emmanuel Théodose convinced Charlotte to marry the second son, Charles Godefroy. He needed Charlotte's dowry to settle his enormous debts, and this way he could avoid having to return it to Charlotte's father, Prince James Sobieski.[4] Sobieski was furious over this second marriage, to which he had not consented, and broke off communication with his daughter.[5]

The marriage of Louise's parents was strained and unhappy. Her mother, who had been promised a quasi-royal position, was dismayed when she was treated like other duchesses at court.[6] Her father was known for womanising, heavy drinking, fighting, and gambling, and he accrued heavy debts.[7] His contemporaries nevertheless considered him "a man of honour and integrity",[8] and he enjoyed King Louis XV's favour and even friendship. In 1730, he inherited the titles of grand chamberlain, grand master, and grand squire from his father, as well as the sovereign Duchy of Bouillon. The family lived in one of Paris' most luxurious palaces, the Hôtel de Bouillon.[7]

Louise was raised in the Chasse-Midi Benedictine convent in Paris, one of the most fashionable boarding schools for aristocratic girls.[9] She had a governess called Mademoiselle de Minières, who probably had more influence in her childhood than her mother.[10] She was known by the courtesy title mademoiselle d'Auvergne or mademoiselle de Bouillon, and bore the rank of princess of Bouillon. As all members of the family, she was a princesse étrangère in France, entitled to the address of altesse (highness) and to sit on a tabouret in the royal presence.[11]

Life in Poland and first marriage plans

[edit]

Background

[edit]

In September 1735, Louise's mother travelled to Żółkiew in Poland (today Zhovkva, Ukraine) to try to reconcile with her father.[12] Following the death of her sister Clementina earlier that year, she and her husband hoped to secure the Sobieski inheritance to repay their debts.[13] James Sobieski first refused to see Charlotte, but soon showed interest in his grandchildren, asking why Louise had not come to Poland. He suggested that Louise could marry Frederick Christian of Saxony, eldest son of King Augustus III of Poland.[14]

Charlotte did not want Louise to marry too soon and miss a better match. She wrote to her husband that Louise is "rich enough and of a good enough house to marry well without leaving" France. She begged Charles Godefroy not to send Louise to Poland unless the Polish king had clearly committed to a marriage. Besides negotiations about a possible Saxon marriage, there were by then numerous proposals for the ten-year-old.[15]

It was concluded by the Bouillons that the only way to persuade Sobieski was through Louise. They told him that it would be dishonourable to disinherit his grandchildren for their mother's error.[15] Charlotte, however, still refused to use her daughter as a pawn,[16] especially because now only the second-born son of the Polish king, Francis Xavier of Saxony was being mentioned as her possible husband. Nevertheless, after Sobieski finally received her in February 1735, father and daughter became close, and Charlotte asked her husband to send Louise to Poland.[17] Her possible marriage to Francis Xavier became European news.[18]

Life in Poland

[edit]

On 13 June 1736, eleven-year-old Louise started the journey to Poland with her governess, Mademoiselle de Minières, her father's surgeon, Jean Henri Bourgeois, and servants. She was told that she would marry a son of the Polish king.[11] The travel was difficult because of bad roads and storms. While her letters to her father prove Louise's affection for him, she had been alienated from her mother by Charles Godefroy and his advisors.[19] She was received in Żółkiew on 25 August with public honours.[20] Her grandfather was impressed by her and wanted to spend as much time together as possible. Sobieski and Charlotte fought over who would control Louise's marriage.[19]

In October 1736, the Polish royal couple ended marriage negotiations, saying that their six-year-old son was too young.[21] Charlotte saw this rejection as a "disgrace" and a "shame for our house".[22] Charles Godefroy tried to persuade Sobieski to will his estate directly to Louise, bypassing Charlotte's claim.[23] In case he did so, Augustus III of Poland offered to make Louise his ward and raise her at his court. This plan was "very much to [the] taste" of Charles Godefroy but opposed by Charlotte, who feared that others would think they could not afford to marry their daughter off properly.[23] However, according to Polish law, Louise could not inherit the lands unless she married a Polish prince.[24] In the end, the plan to send her to Augustus' court faltered.[25]

Because of their differing financial interests, the marriage of Louise's parents completely broke down. Charles Godefroy offered to give Charlotte her dowry back if she promised never to return to France.[26] He asked his envoy to tell Louise how much he loved and missed her. She herself took her father's side, and her relationship with her mother was contentious. Charlotte said that Louise "was so sullen and so ill-bred that she brought [Charlotte] shame",[27] complaining that "I do all that I can to show her my maternal tenderness and I believe few mothers do as much [as I do]".[28] She believed that her husband's agents "inspired distrust and disobedience" in Louise towards her.[29]

In April 1737, Charles Godefroy suggested to Sobieski that Louise should marry one of her maternal cousins, the Stuart princes.[27] Soon, he instructed his wife to send Louise back to France.[30] Sobieski, however, was negotiating her marriage with Polish nobles and feared humiliation. He had also grown to genuinely love his granddaughter.[31] He and Charlotte wanted to marry Louise to the wealthy Jan Klemens Branicki, whom they hoped could become king of Poland.[32] Twelve-year-old Louise was instructed by her father's agent to "obey [her father] like God" and to say "no" in any marriage ceremony, unless "she had seen an order from the hand" of Charles Godefroy.[33] She was surrounded by violent fights between her father, mother, and grandfather over her,[10] which probably traumatised her for life.[34]

Your orders will be, all my life, law for me. I would more easily suffer death than to stray from your will for a moment. [...] I am still uncertain of what time I will have the happiness of kissing the hand of My dear Papa and of assuring him of the profound respect and full submission of his little daughter.

Louise de La Tour d'Auvergne, Letter to his father (Bongie 1986, 66)

James Sobieski was prone to violent bouts of rage. Once he questioned Louise why she had not yet learnt Polish. She replied that it was a difficult language, at which Sobieski became so angry that she started sobbing and fled to her governess. When Louise went to say goodbye to him, Sobieski pushed her away.[34] She could barely sleep and was still distressed the next day. Afterwards, Sobieski declared that he no longer considered Charles Godefroy his son-in-law and consequently Charlotte was his mistress and Louise a "bastard". Nevertheless, Louise generally remained a favourite at her grandfather's court, surrounded with celebrations, dancing, and music.[35]

At Charles Godefroy's request,[36] Louis XV asked Augustus II of Poland for a document by Sobieski promising not to marry Louise without her parents' consent.[37] In December 1737, after being assured of the support of the French and Polish kings, Charles Godefroy ordered her daughter to leave Żółkiew immediately, "without having any consideration for her health or for the [cold] season". However, he added that whether Charlotte "stays in Poland or goes to China", he was "totally indifferent" to her fate,[38] and he stopped sending her annuity (the interest on her own dowry).[39] The family conflict was ended by James Sobieski's sudden death on 19 December 1737.[40] Louise stayed a little longer in Poland due to a prestigious marriage proposal from Charles Theodor, Elector of Bavaria, but her mother's negotiations did not succeed.[41]

By the time she left Poland, Louise and her mother were completely estranged. Charlotte wrote to her husband, "I send you back your daughter, since you desire it so much, and about whom I do not want to hear from now on". Louise's biographer Bongie concluded that she detested her mother. They reportedly fought bitterly before her departure.[42] Leaving around mid-May, Louise was back in the Chasse-Midi convent by summer 1738, and she never communicated with her mother again.[43] Charlotte died on 8 May 1740, following a long illness.[44]

Life at Chasse-Midi and French marriage plans

[edit]

Little is known of Louise's youth and education, but she did have a large staff at the convent, including a valet de chambre, a footman, a maid, a maid of the wardrobe, and a cook. Marriage plans continued. The most likely candidate, preferred by her father, was Louis Marie Léopold de Lorraine-Harcourt, Prince of Guise.[45] Guise had first been proposed in 1737, when Charlotte refused the idea as she considered him debauched. He was brother to Louise's paternal step-grandmother, Louise Henriette Françoise de Lorraine, who probably suggested the idea to Charles Godefroy[46] (the two had an affair, Charles Godefroy being a year older than his stepmother[7]). Guise was well-connected at the French court and considered an advantageous match for Louise. In late 1738, marriage negotiations started. The betrothal had just been agreed when Guise's father suddenly died in April 1739, and Guise dropped the matter in search of a higher-born bride.[47]

In March 1740, Louis XV granted an annuity of 12 000 livres to fourteen-year-old Louise. Her paternal grandfather had held valuable tobacco plantations in his viscounty of Turenne. When the King seized these, he granted the annuity as a compensation to the family. However, in 1738, Louise's father sold the viscounty to the French state to settle his gambling debts, thereby losing the annuity. In 1740, he convinced the King that some revenues had not been calculated into the price paid for Turenne, and Louis XV reinstated the allowance. The Duke asked that it be paid to his daughter, being unable to provide a suitable dowry to her, and because Louise was not expected to inherit after her mother.[45]

Betrothal to Honoré III of Monaco

[edit]

In December 1740, fifteen-year-old Louise's marriage was arranged to the wealthy Honoré III, Prince of Monaco.[48] The engagement, with royal assent, was announced officially on 1 February 1741.[49] The wedding was planned for May or June, as the Hôtel de Bouillon needed to be renovated for the couple's use.[49]

Soon afterwards, Louise received an anonymous letter claiming that her fiancé was in love with another woman. Honoré admitted to his father that he was in a relationship with the widowed Madame de Néri, and had only signed the marriage contract reluctantly. On 19 March, the engagement was broken off by Louise's father. Honoré's behaviour caused great scandal in Versailles, and everyone pitied Louise.[50] This failed engagement seems to have had a lasting effect on Louise, causing her to fear abandonment.[51]

Marriage and affair

[edit]

In February 1743, Charles Godefroy announced Louise's engagement to Jules Hercule Mériadec de Rohan, Prince of Guéméné. His mother, Louise Gabrielle Julie de Rohan-Soubise, Madame de Guéméné, required the young couple to live at her Paris residence.[52] Alongside Louise's father, the Rohan-Guéménés were among the most important supporters of the Jacobite pretenders.[1] The couple married on 19 February 1743 in Paris when Louise was not yet seventeen. On 6 February, Louise was presented at court by her aunt, Marie Hortense Victoire de La Tour d'Auvergne, Madame de La Trémoille, so she could ceremonially take her seat on the tabouret. This had to happen before her marriage to claim the Bouillon's privilege as princes étrangers. It was agreed that for the wedding, the groom would be known as le prince Jules and Louise as la Princesse de Rohan, to represent their claim on the title of Jules' maternal grandfather, Hercule Mériadec de Rohan-Soubise.[53]

The betrothal took place on 17 February 1741 in the evening, in the Œil-de-Bœuf room of Versailles; Louise was not yet seventeen and Jules almost sixteen. First, the marriage contract was signed by the entire royal family and the couple. Louise wore a black-and-gold robe de cour with a long golden mesh mantle borne by her husband's cousin, Eléonore Louise Constance de Rohan, Mademoiselle de Montauban.[54]

In November 1746, Louise contracted smallpox, an often deadly disease. During Louise's convalescence, her family received a sympathy note from her first cousin, Charles Edward Stuart After recovering, in August 1747, Louise met Stuart. She fell passionately in love with him and they began an affair. In the beginning, it was easy for the two to see each other, as Louise's husband was serving at the Siege of Bergen op Zoom.[1] She could also visit Charles Edward's residence in Saint-Ouen under the pretext of going to her uncle's neighbouring house. However, when she had to go back to the Guéméné palace in Paris for the winter, their affair became difficult to hide. The suspicious movement of a coach (in which Charles Edward was travelling to see Louise) around the prince's house alerted police, who suspected an assassination plot.[55]

The two seem to have been deeply in love from the beginning. Charles Edward's biographer McLynn claims that this was because they were both highly sexual and passionate people, and they both felt like "rebel[s]" and "outsider[s]". The prince even offered to renounce his claim in the contested Sobieski inheritance.[55] In October, Louise became pregnant. When, in December, her husband returned, she started having sex with him again to disguise her child's paternity. Combined with the mounting difficulties of accessing his mistress, this made Charles Edward extremely jealous.[55]

Adultery was widely accepted in Louise's circle so long as it was done discreetly. However, as neither Louise nor her husband had been unfaithful before, her mother-in-law kept a very strict eye on her[1] Thus, servants had been ordered, by the mother-in-law, to guard Mary Louise's virtue. This led to secret midnight coach-rides with Stuart. However, the mother-in-law had knowledge of those as well. She alerted the Paris police, who reported what went on.

Nevertheless, Louise's husband did nothing as gossip spread. In January 1748, when confronted by her father and mother-in-law, Louise was forced to write Stuart and end their affair. To refute any further gossip, Stuart was allowed to visit Mary Louise and her family.

In despair, Louise continued to send letters to Stuart. She threatened suicide if he didn't come to see her. He did some three months later, again in a midnight assignation, but told Louise he had a new mistress, Clementina Walkinshaw. Clementina later gave birth to Charlotte Stuart, Duchess of Albany, the only one of Stuart's children to survive infancy.

On 28 July 1748, Louise gave birth to a son, who was baptised Charles Godefroi Sophie Jules Marie de Rohan. It was her mother-in-law who wrote to Charles's father, "the Old Pretender," in Rome to report the news, albeit not that the infant was his grandchild. Despite the boy being accepted as a member of the Rohan family, several genealogical books note that the Rohans fail to mention the child again. Allegedly, Charles Godefroi died around five months old, in either December 1748[citation needed] or 18 January 1749.[56]

Later life

[edit]

Louise lived at least another thirty-three years and apparently was never unfaithful again. To all appearances, she was a good wife and mother to her first-born son, Henri, but never had another child after the death of her second son. She made occasional appearances at court, then later in life became religious and devoted much of her time to charity.

When she died, Louise was buried in the couvent des Feuillants together with her second child. However, there is uncertainty as to exactly when her death occurred -- either naturally in September 1781 or on the guillotine in 1793. The latter is widely accepted.

It is through Louise that the present Princes of Guéméné are pretenders to the Duchy of Bouillon.

Issue

[edit]

Ancestry

[edit]

Fiction

[edit]

Louise is a character in the 1992 Diana Gabaldon novel Dragonfly in Amber, and is portrayed by Claire Sermonne in season 2 of the television adaptation, Outlander.[57]

References and notes

[edit]
  1. ^ a b c d e McLynn 2003, p. 336.
  2. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 26.
  3. ^ Bongie 1986, pp. 22–23.
  4. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 24.
  5. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 25.
  6. ^ Bongie 1986, pp. 25–26.
  7. ^ a b c Bongie 1986, p. 28.
  8. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 29.
  9. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 297.
  10. ^ a b Bongie 1986, p. 59.
  11. ^ a b Bongie 1986, p. 38.
  12. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 21.
  13. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 31.
  14. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 32.
  15. ^ a b Bongie 1986, p. 33.
  16. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 34.
  17. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 35.
  18. ^ Bongie 1986, pp. 35–36.
  19. ^ a b Bongie 1986, p. 39.
  20. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 40.
  21. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 44.
  22. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 45.
  23. ^ a b Bongie 1986, p. 46.
  24. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 47.
  25. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 48.
  26. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 71.
  27. ^ a b Bongie 1986, p. 52.
  28. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 53.
  29. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 74.
  30. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 54.
  31. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 64.
  32. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 55.
  33. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 58.
  34. ^ a b Bongie 1986, p. 67.
  35. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 72.
  36. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 65.
  37. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 69.
  38. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 76.
  39. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 79.
  40. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 80.
  41. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 81.
  42. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 82.
  43. ^ Bongie 1986, pp. 82–83.
  44. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 86.
  45. ^ a b Bongie 1986, p. 87.
  46. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 88.
  47. ^ Bongie 1986, pp. 87–88.
  48. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 90.
  49. ^ a b Bongie 1986, p. 91.
  50. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 95.
  51. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 96.
  52. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 97.
  53. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 98.
  54. ^ Bongie 1986, p. 99.
  55. ^ a b c McLynn 2003, p. 337.
  56. ^ Charles Godefroi Sophie Jules Marie de ROHAN in: gw.geneanet.org [retrieved 9 July 2015]
  57. ^ Bastién, Angelica Jade (16 April 2016). "Outlander Season 2, Episode 2: The Wounds We Carry". The New York Times. Retrieved 21 June 2016.

Bibliography

[edit]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Marie_Louise_de_La_Tour_d%27Auvergne&oldid=1298288598"