Henri IV of France and Navarre, His Wives and Mistresses. Conclusion

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Catherine-Henriette de Balzac d'Entragues, Charlotte Marguerite of Montmorency, François Ravaillac, Henri de Bourbon Prince of Condé, King Henri IV of France and Navarre, Marie de Medici of Florence, Queen of France and Navarre, Royal Mistress

Henriette d’Entragues never reconciled herself to Henri’s marriage, and she drove Marie to tears by calling her his “fat banker”, claiming her own children were Henri’s legitimate heirs and branding the dauphin a bastard. Henri’s devotion to d’Entragues was tested during the revolt of Marshal Biron in 1602, in which her half-brother, Charles, Count of Auvergne, was implicated and she was compromised.

Though Marshal Biron was executed, Henri released Charles, Count of Auvergne to please Henriette. In 1604, she was at the heart of a Spanish-backed plot to install her son by the king as heir to the throne. Her father, the sieur d’Entragues, was involved in this plot, along with, again, her half-brother.

Henriette d’Entragues was sentenced to confinement in a convent, but Henri was moved to spare her even that and allowed her to retire to her estate at Verneuil. Despite the king’s clemency, Henriette d’Entragues may have continued to plot further against him.

According to a government report of 1616, a former companion of d’Entragues, Mlle d’Escoman, had claimed in 1611 that d’Entragues had met François Ravaillac, Henri’s assassin of 1610. However, this evidence is compromised by the fact that, at the time she made this accusation, Mlle d’Escoman was in prison on another charge.

The dauphin, Louis, turned out to be a difficult and temperamental child, and some historians have blamed this on his parents and the circumstances of his upbringing. He was raised just outside Paris at the château of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, not only alongside Marie’s other children by Henri but, as Henri insisted, with several children of Henry’s mistresses.

Henri always seemed to get his mistresses pregnant at the same time as Marie. Just as Marie was in constant competition with Henri’s mistresses, so her children were forced to compete with their children for his affection.

The fact that Henri’s three children by Gabrielle d’Estrées were older than the heir to the throne caused particular problems of rivalry. César and Alexandre were later to rebel against Louis when he was king. He did not hesitate to throw them into prison.

Louis shared his father’s stubbornness, but he may have inherited his temper tantrums from his mother, who often gave Henri tongue-lashings in public.

Although Queen Marie has been accused of lacking affection for her children, a study of her letters reveals the contrary, though she was a stern disciplinarian. She wrote to the dauphin’s governess, for example, asking her to avoid whippings when the weather was hot and to beat Louis only “with such caution that the anger he might feel would not cause any illness”.

On another occasion, she reprimanded her middle daughter, Christine, for being ill, accusing her of not following the advice of her doctors. Marie personally educated the children in practical matters, such as etiquette. After Henri’s assassination in 1610, she became regent of France and retained influence over Louis XIII until he finally rejected her in 1617.

Catherine Henriette de Balzac d’Entragues, Marquise de Verneuil

Henri’s last passion was for Charlotte Marguerite of Montmorency, the fifteen-year-old wife of Henri, Prince of Condé, First Prince of the Blood. The king had arranged Charlotte’s marriage to Condé for his own convenience, in order to sleep with her himself when he pleased.

To escape from this predicament, the couple fled to Brussels. The king was enraged and threatened to march into Flanders with an army unless the Habsburg governors returned Condé and his wife at once.

At the time, he was also threatening war with the Habsburgs over the succession to the United Duchies of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, so historians are unsure how crucial in itself Charlotte’s return was as a reason for war. Condé continued to provoke Henri from Flanders. When asked to drink to the Queen of France, he replied that there seemed to be more than one queen of France, maybe as many as four or five.

King Henri IV was the target of at least 12 assassination attempts, including one by Pierre Barrière in August 1593, and another by Jean Châtel in December 1594. Some of these assassination attempts were carried out against Henri because he was considered a usurper by some Catholics and a traitor by some Protestants.

Charlotte Marguerite of Montmorency

Henri was killed in Paris on May 14, 1610 by François Ravaillac, a Catholic zealot who stabbed him in the Rue de la Ferronnerie. Henri’s coach was stopped by traffic congestion associated with the Queen’s coronation ceremony.

Hercule de Rohan, duc de Montbazon, was with him when he was killed; Montbazon was wounded, but survived. Ravaillac was immediately captured, and executed days later. Henry was buried at the Saint Denis Basilica.

His widow, Marie de’ Medici, served as regent for their nine-year-old son, Louis XIII, until 1617.

Henri IV of France and Navarre, His Wives and Mistresses. Part IV.

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Archduchess Joanna of Austria, Charlotte des Essarts, Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, Henriette d'Entragues, Jacqueline de Bueil, King Felipe I of Castile, King Henri IV of France and Navarre, Marie de Medici of Florence, Queen Joanna of Castile, Queen of France and Navarre

By early 1599, Henri’s marriage to Margaret of Valois looked likely to be annulled at last. And so, at the age of forty-six and still without a legitimate heir, Henri felt free to propose to Gabrielle d’Estrées. On Mardi Gras, Henri placed on her finger the ring with which he had “married” France at his coronation in 1593.

During Holy Week, however, Gabrielle, who was pregnant at the time, fell ill; by Holy Saturday, to the relief of many in France, she was dead. Rumours flew that she had been poisoned, but in fact she died from eclampsia and a premature birth of a stillborn son.

Though grief-stricken, Henri grasped that his fiancée’s death had saved him from disaster: his plan to declare his two sons by d’Estrées heirs to the throne would have precipitated a major political crisis.

Henri IV, King of France and Navarre

Henri provided Gabrielle d’Estrées with a grandiose funeral and drowned his sorrows with a sustained spree of womanising. Sir Henry Neville, the English ambassador, reported that Henry was spending time “in secret manner at Zamet’s house”, where “la belle garce Claude” was known to entertain, and that he was fervently courting Henriette d’Entragues, the daughter of Charles IX’s former mistress, Marie Touchet.

Royal accounts record that Henri was soon making large payments to “Mademoiselle d’Entragues”, as well as to “Mademoiselle des Fossez”. D’Entragues quickly replaced d’Estrées as Henry’s principal mistress.

She extracted from him, in Neville’s words, “100,000 crowns in ready money and an yearly pension” as proof of his commitment. At about the same time, Henri began affairs with Marie Babou de la Bourdaisière and with two wives of Paris parlement members, madames Quélin and Potier.

Marie de’ Medici

In October 1599, the parlement of Paris officially petitioned that Henri marry a princess worthy of his dignity. Henri took note and began considering candidates from several foreign states. According to Sully, however, he ruled out a German wife, on the grounds that it would feel like going to bed with a wine-barrel.

Henri IV was keenest on Maria de’ Medici of Florence, the niece of Ferdinando I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.

Maria was the sixth daughter of Francesco I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Archduchess Joanna of Austria, the youngest daughter of Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor and Anna of Bohemia and Hungary.

She was a descendant of Lorenzo the Elder –a branch of the Medici family sometimes referred to as the ‘cadet’ branch– through his daughter Lucrezia de’ Medici, and was also a Habsburg through her mother, who was a direct descendant of Queen Joanna of Castile and King Felipe I of Castile.

Although Maria’s ancestry was impressive, what Henri found particularly attractive about Maria was her enormous wealth.

On December 17, 1599, the Archbishop of Arles pronounced the annulment of Henri’s marriage to Margaret of Valois. The Medici marriage contract was signed in April 1600, pledging a huge dowry of 600,000 écus, part of which was subtracted to pay Henry’s debts to Ferdinando.

Henri played his part by proclaiming undying devotion to Maria in a series of letters, though he was sending similar love letters to Henriette d’Entragues, telling her in one that he wanted to kiss her a million times.

Young Marie de’ Medici of Florence

A proxy marriage took place in Florence in October 1600, and then Maria—to be known in France as Marie—sailed in great pomp for Marseille, where she disembarked on November 3. Marie was 26 and King Henri was 47 at the time of thier marriage.

Henri on campaign in Savoy, rode to meet her at Lyon, where he found her at supper. He visited her afterwards in her chamber; according to Ralph Winwood, secretary to English ambassador Sir Henry Neville:

She met him at the door, and offered to kneel down, but he took her in his arms, where he held her embraced a long time … He doth profess to the World the great Contentment he finds in her, how that for her Beauty, her sweet and pleasing carriage, her gracious behaviour, she doth surpass the relation which hath been made of her, and the Expectation which he thereby conceived.

The couple underwent a second marriage ceremony in Lyon; and Marie finally reached Paris on February 7, already pregnant. She found her new home, the Louvre, so shabby that at first she thought Henri was playing a joke.

She gave birth to a son, Louis, at the Palace of Fontainebleau on September 27, 1601, to the delight of Henri IV, who had rushed from military duties to her bedside to serve, he joked, as one of her midwives. The moment Henri was told that the child was a boy, he ushered two hundred courtiers into the chamber to share the euphoria.

The baby was fed a spoonful of wine and handed over to a governess, Baroness Robert de Harlay, baron de Monglat [fr], and to the physician Jean Héroard [fr], an expert on the bone structure of horses. According to Winwood, the baby was a “strong and a goodly prince, and doth promise long life”. The birth of a dauphin, as the first son of a French king was known, inspired rejoicing and bonfires throughout France.

Marie believed that after bearing a son, she “would begin to be a Queen ueen”. However, a few weeks later, Henriette d’Entragues also produced another son (Gaston Henri, Duc de Verneuil) and Henri not only made just as much fuss over this son but declared that he was better-looking, not fat and dark like Louis and the Medici.

In the words of biographer David Buisseret, “the royal couple was well embarked upon nine years of mutual recrimination and misunderstandings, in which the fault plainly lay with the king”.

Marie de’ Medici, Queen of France and Navarre

Henri had made Marie’s position clear to her from the first. When she began by pressing him to accept the decrees of the Council of Trent, he told her to keep her nose out of state business and look after herself. Shortly after Marie’s arrival in Paris, Henri had introduced Henriette d’Entragues to her, reportedly pushing Henriette further towards the ground when her curtsey was not low enough.

He housed his senior mistress close to the Louvre and was seen dining with the queen and d’Entragues together. Marie also had to cope with a second public mistress, La Bourdaisière, as well as with Henry’s continued visits to Zamet’s house for services provided by “la belle garce Claude”.

In the next nine years, Marie bore Henri six children; but he also sired five more by d’Entragues, Jacqueline de Bueil, and Charlotte des Essarts. Nonetheless, Henri often wrote affectionate letters to Marie and in other ways treated her with respect.

Henri IV of France. His Wives and Mistresses. Part I.

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Catherine de Médici, Jeanne d'Albret, King Charles IX of France, King Henri IV of France and Navarre, King Philip II of Spain, Pope Gregory XIII, Princess Margaret de Valois, Queen Joan III of Navarre, Queen of France and Navarre, St. Bartholomew's Day massacre

Henri IV of France’s wives and mistresses played a significant role in the politics of his reign.

Henri’s womanising became legendary, earning him the nickname of Le Vert Galant. His sexual appetite was said to have been insatiable, and he always kept mistresses, often several at a time, as well as engaging in random sexual encounters and visits to brothels. Even so, he tended to elevate one mistress above the others and shower her with money, honours, and promises.

First Marriage

After the signature of the peace of Saint-Germain, Catherine de’ Medici, the powerful mother of King Charles IX, was convinced by François of Montmorency to marry her daughter Margaret with Henri III of Navarre.

The match was in fact assumed almost thirteen years earlier by the late King Henri II. Catherine, who believed in dynastic marriage as a potent political tool, aimed to unite the interests of the Valois and the Bourbons, and create harmony between Catholics and Huguenots in the reign of France.

By all accounts, Margaret of Valois was deemed highly attractive, even sexually magnetic: “The beauty of that princess is more divine than human, she is made to damn and ruin men rather than to save them”, said about her Don Juan of Austria came to court just to see her.

King Henri IV of France and Navarre

Margaret had also an enterprising and flirtatious character. Shortly before this marriage plan with Henri of Navarre, she had been involved in a scandal: it was discovered that she encouraged the handsome Henri of Guise, who intended to marry her, entertaining a secret correspondence with him. When her family discovered it put an end to the crush between them and sent Henri of Guise away from court.

Some sources claim the duke of Guise was Margaret’s first lover, but this is highly unlikely. For political reasons, the duty of a Daughter of France was to be a virgin at the wedding and for this she was very guarded.

If Margaret had really compromised her reputation, Jeanne d’Albret (Queen Joan III of Navarre) would not accept the marriage between her son Henri and the princess. Although certainly after the wedding, Margaret was unfaithful to her husband, many of the extramarital adventures are the result of pamphlets that have had to politically discredit her and her family: the most famous was Le Divorce Satyrique (1607), who described her as a nymphomaniac.

Margaret complied with her mother’s desire to marry Henri of Navarre, provided she was not forced to convert to Protestantism. When Jeanne d’Albret arrived at the French court after receiving numerous pressures from Catherine, she was extremely impressed by Margaret: “She has frankly owned to me the favourable impression which she has formed of you.

With her beauty and wit, she exercises a great influence over the Queen-Mother and the King, and Messieurs her younger brothers.” The problems began when the Protestant Jeanne discovered that Margaret had no intention of abjuring Catholicism. Meanwhile the marriage negotiations were repeatedly impeded by the Pope Gregory XIII and King Felipe II of Spain.

Tired of the duration of the negotiations, Charles IX decided that the wedding would be celebrated by the Cardinal of Bourbon even without papal dispensation, so Jeanne gave her consent to the wedding by promising that Henri could remain a Huguenot.

When Jeanne arrived in Paris to buy clothes for the wedding, she was taken ill and died, aged forty-four; and Henri succeeded her as the King Henri III of Navarre. Henri arrived in Paris in July 1572 and saw Margaret after six years of separation (they had spent their childhood together with the French court). Despite subsequent historiographic interpretations, contemporaries do not point out any mutual dissatisfaction between future spouses.

Princess Margaret de Valois, Queen of France and Navarre

The controversial wedding took place on August 18, 1572 at Notre-Dame, Paris. After a nuptial lunch, four days of balls, masques and banquets ensued, only to be interrupted by the outbreak of violence in Paris.

After the attempted assassination of the Huguenot leader Gaspard de Coligny on August 18, 1572, Dowager Queen Catherine and King Charles IX, to forestall the expected Huguenot backlash, ordered the murder of the Huguenot leaders gathered in Paris for the wedding. The result was the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, in which thousands of Huguenots were killed in Paris and throughout the reign.

Margaret later described in her Memoirs the chaos and bloodshed in the Louvre Palace, where she and her new husband were lodged. Henri found himself escorted to a room with his cousin Henri of Condé, and told to choose between death and conversion to Roman Catholicism.

Henri chose the latter. After the massacre, the Queen-Mother proposed to her daughter that the marriage be annulled, but Margaret replied that this was impossible because she had already had sexual relations with Henri and was “in every sense” his wife. She wrote in her Memoirs: “I suspected the design of separating me from my husband was in order to work some mischief against him.“

September 16, 1824: Death of Louis XVIII, King of France and Navarre

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Emperor of the French, French Revolution, House of Bourbon, King Felipe V of Spain, King Louis XVIII of France and Navarre, Napoleon Bonaparte, Princess Marie Joséphine of Savoy, Queen of France and Navarre, The One Hundred Days

Louis XVIII (November 17, 1755 – September 16, 1824) was King of France and Navarre from 1814 to 1824, except for a brief interruption during the Hundred Days in 1815. He spent twenty-three years in exile: during the French Revolution and the First French Empire (1804–1814), and during the Hundred Days.

Youth

Prince Louis Stanislas Xavier de Bourbon of France, styled Count of Provence from birth, was born on November 17, 1755 in the Palace of Versailles, a younger son of Louis, Dauphin of France, and his wife Maria Josepha of Saxony, daughter of Augustus III, Prince-Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, and Archduchess Maria Josepha of Austria (daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Joseph I and Wilhelmine Amalie of Brunswick-Lüneburg).

Louis, Count of Provence was the grandson of the reigning King Louis XV. As a son of the Dauphin, he was a Fils de France. He was christened Louis Stanislas Xavier six months after his birth, in accordance with Bourbon family tradition, being nameless before his baptism.

By this act, he also became a Knight of the Order of the Holy Spirit. The name of Louis was bestowed because it was typical of a Prince of France; Stanislas was chosen to honour his great-grandfather King Stanislaus I of Poland who was still alive at the time; and Xavier was chosen for Saint Francis Xavier, whom his mother’s family held as one of their patron saints.

King Louis XVIII of France and Navarre

At the time of his birth, Louis Stanislas was fourth in line to the throne of France, behind his father and his two elder brothers: Louis Joseph, Duke of Burgundy, and Louis Augusté, Duke of Berry. The former died in 1761, leaving Louis Augusté as heir to their father until the Dauphin’s own premature death in 1765.

The two deaths elevated Louis Stanislas to second in the line of succession, while his brother Louis Augusté acquired the title of Dauphin.

On April 16, 1771, Louis Stanislas was married by proxy to Princess Maria Giuseppina of Savoy. The in-person ceremony was conducted on May 14 at the Palace of Versailles. Marie Joséphine (as she was known in France) was a daughter of Victor Amadeus, Duke of Savoy (later King Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia), and his wife Infanta Maria Antonia Ferdinanda of Spain who was the youngest daughter of Felipe V of Spain and of his second wife Elisabeth Farnese.

A luxurious ball followed the wedding on May 20. Louis Stanislas found his wife repulsive; she was considered ugly, tedious, and ignorant of the customs of the court of Versailles. The marriage remained unconsummated for years. Biographers disagree about the reason.

The most common theories propose Louis Stanislas’ alleged impotence (according to biographer Antonia Fraser) or his unwillingness to sleep with his wife due to her poor personal hygiene. She never brushed her teeth, plucked her eyebrows, or used any perfumes. At the time of his marriage, Louis Stanislas was obese and waddled instead of walked. He never exercised and continued to eat enormous amounts of food.

Despite the fact that Louis Stanislas was not infatuated with his wife, he boasted that the two enjoyed vigorous conjugal relations – but such declarations were held in low esteem by courtiers at Versailles.

He also proclaimed his wife to be pregnant merely to spite Louis Augusté and his wife Marie Antoinette, who had not yet consummated their marriage. The Dauphin and Louis Stanislas did not enjoy a harmonious relationship and often quarrelled, as did their wives.

Louis Stanislas did impregnate his wife in 1774, having conquered his aversion. However, the pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. A second pregnancy in 1781 also miscarried, and the marriage remained childless.

On September 21, 1792, the National Convention abolished the monarchy and deposed Louis XVI, who was later executed by guillotine. When his young nephew, nominally Louis XVII died in prison in June 1795, the Count of Provence proclaimed himself (titular) king under the name Louis XVIII.

Following the French Revolution and during the Napoleonic era, Louis XVIII lived in exile in Prussia, England, and Russia. When the Sixth Coalition finally defeated Napoleon in 1814, Louis XVIII was placed in what he, and the French royalists, considered his rightful position.

However, Napoleon escaped from his exile in Elba and restored his French Empire. Louis XVIII fled, and a Seventh Coalition declared war on the French Empire, defeated Napoleon again, and again restored Louis XVIII to the French throne.

Princess Marie Joséphine of Savoy, Queen of France and Navarre

Louis XVIII ruled as king for slightly less than a decade. The government of the Bourbon Restoration was a constitutional monarchy, unlike the Ancien Régime, which was absolutist. As a constitutional monarch, Louis XVIII’s royal prerogative was reduced substantially by the Charter of 1814, France’s new constitution.

His return in 1815 led to a second wave of White Terror headed by the Ultra-royalist faction. The following year, Louis dissolved the unpopular parliament, referred to as the Chambre introuvable, giving rise to the liberal Doctrinaires. His reign was further marked by the formation of the Quintuple Alliance and a military intervention in Spain.

Death

Louis XVIII’s health began to fail in the spring of 1824. He was experiencing obesity, gout and gangrene, both dry and wet, in his legs and spine. Louis died on 16 September 16 1824 surrounded by the extended royal family and some government officials. Since didn’t have a son or heir hewas succeeded by his youngest brother, Prince Charles Philippe, the Count of Artois, as King Charles X of France and Navarre.

Louis XVIII had no children and was the last French monarch to die while still reigning, as Charles X (1824–1830) abdicated and both Louis Philippe I (1830–1848) and Napoleon III (1852–1870) were deposed.

September 10, 1638: Birth of Marie Thérèse of Spain, Queen of France and Navarre.

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House of Habsburg, Louis XIV of France and Navarre, Marie Thérèse of Spain, Palace of Versailles, Philip IV of Spain and Portugal, Queen of France and Navarre

Marie Thérèse of Spain (September 10, 1638 – July 30, 1683), was by birth an Infanta of Spain and Portugal (until 1640) and Archduchess of Austria as member of the Spanish branch of the House of Habsburg and by marriage Queen of France and Navarre.

Born at the Royal Monastery of El Escorial, she was the daughter of King Felipe IV-III of Spain and Portugal, and his wife Elisabeth of France, who died when Maria Thérèse was six years old. As a member of the House of Austria, Maria Theresa was entitled to use the title Archduchess of Austria. She was known in Spain as María Teresa de Austria and in France as Marie Thérèse d’Autriche. She was raised by the royal governess Luisa Magdalena de Jesus.

Unlike France, the kingdom of Spain had no Salic Law, so it was possible for a female to assume the throne. When Marie Thérèse’s brother Balthasar Carlos died in 1646, she became heir presumptive to the vast Spanish Empire and remained such until the birth of her brother Felipe Prospero, in 1657. She was briefly heir presumptive once more between 1–6 November 1661, following the death of Prince Felipe Prospero and until the birth of Prince Carlos, who would later inherit the thrones of Spain as Carlos II.

In 1658, as war with France began to wind down, a union between the royal families of Spain and France was proposed as a means to secure peace. Maria Thérèsa and the French king were double first cousins: Louis XIV’s father was Louis XIII of France, who was the brother of Maria Thérèsa’s mother, while her father was brother to Anne of Austria, Louis XIV’s mother.

Spanish procrastination led to French Princess Christine Marie started communicating with France in order to secure a marriage between her daughter Margherita Violante and the young Louis XIV of France. Margaret Yolande of Savoy was the first cousin to Louis XIV, and the fifth child born to Victor Amadeus I, Duke of Savoy and his wife Christine Marie of France, daughter of Henri IV of France and Marie de’ Medici.

Negotiations with France and Savoy went as far as Louis XIV and Margherita Violante, known to the French as Marguerite Yolande de Savoie, meeting the French royal family at Lyon on October 26, 1658. The French entourage included the Dowager Queen, Louis XIV, Philippe d’Anjou, la Grande Mademoiselle and Marie Mancini. The French were impressed by her appearance despite saying her skin was too tanned. They also said she was a quiet girl.

When Felipe IV of Spain heard of a meeting at Lyon between the Houses of France and Savoy he reputedly exclaimed of the Franco-Savoyard union that “it cannot be, and will not be”. Felipe then sent a special envoy to the French court to open negotiations for peace and a royal marriage.

The negotiations for the marriage contract were intense. Eager to prevent a union of the two countries or crowns, especially one in which Spain would be subservient to France, the diplomats sought to include a renunciation clause that would deprive Maria Theresa and her children of any rights to the Spanish succession. This was eventually done but, by the skill of Mazarin and his French diplomats, the renunciation and its validity were made conditional upon the payment of a large dowry. As it turned out, Spain, impoverished and bankrupt after decades of war, was unable to pay such a dowry, and France never received the agreed upon sum of 500,000 écus.

A marriage by proxy to the French king was held in Fuenterrabia. Her father and the entire Spanish court accompanied the bride to the Isle of Pheasants on the border in the Bidassoa river, where Louis and his court met her in the meeting on the Isle of Pheasants on June 7, 1660, and she entered France. On June 9, the marriage took place in Saint-Jean-de-Luz at the recently rebuilt church of Saint Jean the Baptist. After the wedding, Louis wanted to consummate the marriage as quickly as possible. The new queen’s mother-in-law (and aunt) arranged a private consummation instead of the public one that was the custom.

On August 26, 1660, the newlyweds made the traditional Joyous Entry into Paris. Louis was faithful to his wife for the first year of their marriage, commanding the Grand Maréchal du Logis that “the Queen and himself were never to be set apart, no matter how small the house in which they might be lodging”.

Maria Thérèsa was very fortunate to have found a friend at court in her mother-in-law, unlike many princesses in foreign lands. She continued to spend much of her free time playing cards and gambling, as she had no interest in politics or literature. Consequently, she was viewed as not fully playing the part of queen designated to her by her marriage. But more importantly, she became pregnant in early 1661, and a long-awaited son was born on November 1, 1661.

The first time Maria Thérèsa ever saw the Palace of Versailles was on October 25, 1660. At that time, it was just a small royal residence that had been Louis XIII’s hunting lodge not far from Paris. Later, the first building campaign (1664–1668) commenced with the Plaisirs de l’Île enchantée of 1664, a week-long celebration at Versailles ostensibly held in honour of France’s two queens, Louis XIV’s mother and wife, but exposed Louise de La Vallière’s role as the king’s maîtresse-en-titre.

The celebration of the Plaisirs de l’Île enchantée is often regarded as a prelude to the War of Devolution, which Louis waged against Spain. The first building campaign witnessed alterations in the château and gardens in order to accommodate the 600 guests invited to the celebration. As time passed, Maria Thérèsa also came to tolerate her husband’s prolonged infidelity with Françoise-Athénaïs, Marquise de Montespan. The king left her to her own devices, yet reprimanded Madame de Montespan when her behaviour at court too flagrantly disrespected the queen’s position.

Later, the governess of Montespan’s illegitimate children by the king, Madame de Maintenon, came to supplant her mistress in the king’s affections. At first she resisted the king’s advances and encouraged him to bestow more attention on his long-neglected wife, a thoughtfulness which Maria Thérèsa repaid with warmth toward the new favourite. After the queen’s death, Maintenon would become the king’s second, although officially secret, wife.

There have long been rumours that Maria Thérèse had an illegitimate daughter, Louise Marie Thérèse (The Black Nun of Moret). Shortly after the death of the French Queen Maria Thérèsa of Spain, courtiers said that this woman could be the daughter, allegedly black, to whom the Queen gave birth in 1664. The nun herself seemed convinced of her royal birth, and Saint-Simon states that she once greeted the Dauphin as “my brother”. A letter sent on June 13, 1685, by the Secretary of the King’s Household to M. De Bezons, general agent of the clergy, and the pension of 300 pounds granted by King Louis XIV to the nun Louise Marie-Thérèse on October 15, 1695, “to be paid to her all her life in this convent or everywhere she could be, by the guards of the Royal treasure present and to come.” This suggests that she may, indeed, have had royal connections. The duc de Luynes claimed that she was the daughter of two black gardeners, too poor to educate her, who applied to Mme. de Maintenon for patronage

Maria Thérèse played little part in political affairs except for the years 1667, 1672, and 1678, during which she acted as regent while her husband was away on campaigns on the frontier.

Death

During the last week of July 1683, Maria Thérèse fell ill and, as her illness worsened, her husband ordered for the sacraments to be kept nearby. She died a painful death on July 30, 1683, at Versailles. Upon her death, Louis XIV said: “This is the first chagrin she has ever given me.” For the grand funeral ceremony, Marc-Antoine Charpentier composed dramatic motets H.409, H.189, H.331 and Jean-Baptiste Lully his Dies irae. The funeral prayer was by Bossuet.

Of her six children, only one survived her, Louis, le Grand Dauphin, the oldest one, who died in 1711. One of her younger grandsons eventually inherited her claim to the Spanish throne to become King Felipe V of Spain in 1700. He was able to claim the throne of Spain because Spain never paid the 500,000 écus as part of the agreement that would have made the descendants of Marie Thérèse ineligible for the Spanish Crown.

This date in History: October 16, 1793: Execution of Queen Marie Antoinette of France and Navarre.

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French Revolution, Gullotine, King Louis XVI of France, King Louis XVIII of France, Kings and Queens of France, Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Queen of France and Navarre

The last Queen of France and Navarre before the French Revolution was born (Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna; November 2, 1755 – October 16, 1793) an Archduchess of Austria and was the penultimate child and youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria and Franz I, Holy Roman Emperor. She became Dauphine of France in May 1770 at age 14 upon her marriage to Louis-Auguste, heir apparent to the French throne. On May 10, 1774, her husband ascended the throne as Louis XVI and she assumed the title Queen of France and Navarre, which she held until September 1791, when she became Queen of the French as the French Revolution proceeded, a title that she held until September 21, 1792.

On September 21, 1792, the fall of the monarchy was officially declared and the National Convention became the governing body of the French Republic. The royal family name was downgraded to the non-royal “Capets”. Preparations began for the trial of the king in a court of law.

Charged with undermining the First French Republic, Louis XVI was separated from his family and tried in December. He was found guilty by the Convention, led by the Jacobins who rejected the idea of keeping him as a hostage. On 15 January 1793, by a majority of one vote, that of his cousin, Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, known then as Philippe Égalité, he was condemned to death by guillotine and executed on 21 January 21, 1793.

After Louis’ execution, Marie Antoinette’s fate became a central question of the National Convention. While some advocated her death, others proposed exchanging her for French prisoners of war or for a ransom from Franz II, Holy Roman Emperor. Thomas Paine advocated exile to America.

After months of captivity Marie Antoinette was tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal on October 14, 1793. Some historians believe the outcome of the trial had been decided in advance by the Committee of Public Safety around the time the Carnation Plot was uncovered. She and her lawyers were given less than one day to prepare her defense. Among the accusations, many previously published in the libelles, were: orchestrating orgies in Versailles, sending millions of livres of treasury money to Austria, planning the massacre of the gardes françaises (National Guards) in 1792, declaring her son to be the new king of France, and incest, a charge made by her son Louis-Charles, (the nominal King Louis XVII) pressured into doing so by the radical Jacques Hébert who controlled him. This last accusation drew an emotional response from Marie Antoinette, who refused to respond to this charge, instead appealing to all mothers present in the room; their reaction comforted her, since these women were not otherwise sympathetic to her.

Early on October 16, Marie Antoinette was declared guilty of the three main charges against her: depletion of the national treasury, conspiracy against the internal and external security of the State, and high treason because of her intelligence activities in the interest of the enemy; the latter charge alone was enough to condemn her to death. At worst, she and her lawyers had expected life imprisonment. In the hours left to her, she composed a letter to her sister-in-law, Madame Élisabeth, affirming her clear conscience, her Catholic faith, and her love and concern for her children. The letter did not reach Élisabeth. Her will was part of the collection of papers of Robespierre found under his bed and were published by Edme-Bonaventure Courtois.

Preparing for her execution, she had to change clothes in front of her guards. She put on a plain white dress, white being the color worn by widowed queens of France. Her hair was shorn, her hands bound painfully behind her back and she was put on a rope leash. Unlike her husband, who had been taken to his execution in a carriage (carrosse), she had to sit in an open cart (charrette) for the hour it took to convey her from the Conciergerie via the rue Saint-Honoré thoroughfare to reach the guillotine erected in the Place de la Révolution (the present-day Place de la Concorde). She maintained her composure, despite the insults of the jeering crowd. A constitutional priest was assigned to her to hear her final confession. He sat by her in the cart, but she ignored him all the way to the scaffold.

Marie Antoinette was guillotined at 12:15 p.m. on October 16, 1793. Her last words are recorded as, “Pardonnez-moi, monsieur. Je ne l’ai pas fait exprès” or “Pardon me, sir, I did not do it on purpose”, after accidentally stepping on her executioner’s shoe. Her head was one of which Marie Tussaud was employed to make death masks. Her body was thrown into an unmarked grave in the Madeleine cemetery located close by in rue d’Anjou. Because its capacity was exhausted the cemetery was closed the following year, on March 25, 1794.

Both Marie Antoinette’s and Louis XVI’s bodies were exhumed on January 18, 1815, during the Bourbon Restoration, when Prince Louis Stanislas, Comte de Provence ascended the newly reestablished throne as King Louis XVIII of France and of Navarre. Christian burial of the royal remains took place three days later, on January 21, in the necropolis of French kings at the Basilica of St Denis.