Catherine Henriette de Balzac d'Entragues

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Portrait of Catherine Henriette de Balzac d'Entragues' by an anonymous 17th century painter

Catherine Henriette de Balzac d'Entragues (* 1579 in Orléans , † February 9, 1633 in Paris ) was after the sudden death of Gabrielle d'Estrées ' 1599 the mistress of the French king Henry IV. A written promise of marriage by the king was a nuisance for the young Queen Maria de 'Medici . Coming from the Balzac family, she was also Marquise of Verneuil.

Life

Catherine Henriette was the daughter of François de Balzacs , seigneur d ' Entragues , and Marie Touchets , a former mistress of Charles IX. , of whom Henry IV was also comforted during Bartholomew's Night. Charles IX's natural son, Charles de Valois, duc d'Angoulême , was Catherine's half-brother.

Her relationship with Henry IV was shaped less by love than by the calculating ambition of her family. Before she gave herself to the king, she had him give her a written promise of marriage, subject to the condition that she had a son. Henry IV gave her this compromising piece of paper, although at the same time he was negotiating with the Grand Duke of Florence about marrying his niece Maria de Medici. In fact, Henriette became pregnant, but suffered a miscarriage when a ball lightning struck her room. Heinrich IV continued to maintain his relationship with her and she also gave birth to a son with Ludwig XIII shortly after Maria de Medici's birth. Henriette regarded herself as a lawful wife and her children as the actually legitimate heirs of the crown. Because there were quite a few influential nobles who supported this claim, she became a dangerous competitor to the queen.

Henriette afforded numerous other lovers in addition to the king, and her ambitious demands made her very difficult. Even so, the king, who in turn had other lovers besides her, never broke with her for good until his death. Not even after a treasonable intrigue she hatched with her relatives in 1604. The Entragues family sought the help of King Philip III of Spain to carry out their plan . to win and incite part of the French high nobility against Henry IV. This should evidently be eliminated and Henriette's son should become the new king of his. The plot was uncovered, her father and half-brother were arrested, but the death sentences were not carried out. Henriette's father handed the vows to the king in exchange for his pardon. He was released; Henriette's half-brother was to serve a life imprisonment. In 1605 Henriette was allowed to move freely again.

After the failure of this plan, Catherine Henriette de Balzac d'Entragues was temporarily replaced by the new mistress Jacqueline de Bueil , later Countess of Moret, a ward of Charlotte de la Trémouilles, the princess of Condé . It was finally pushed aside with the death of Henry IV. Her children, legitimized by the king, were called Gaston, later Henri de Bourbon, duc de Verneuil , who was appointed Prince-Bishop of Metz at the age of five, and Gabrielle Angélique, the Bernard de Nogaret de La Valette , the Duke of Épernon, married.

literature

  • Charles Brainne, J. Debarbouiller, Charles Ferdinand Lapierre: Les Hommes illustres de l'Orléanais. Biography générale des trois départements du Loiret, d'Eure-et-Loir et de Loir-et-Cher . Volume 2. Gatineau, A., Orléans 1852, pp. 337-345 ( online ).
  • Jean-François Dreux du Radier: Mémoires historiques, critiques, et anecdotes des reines et régentes de France . Volume 6. Mame, Paris 1808, pp. 57-107 ( online ).
  • Thornton Hall: Love Affairs of the Courts of Europe . Reprint of the 1913 edition. Plain Label Books, ISBN 978-1-60303-354-1 , pp. 215-225 ( online ).
  • Jean Chrétien Ferdinand Hoefer : Nouvelle biography générale depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu'à nos jours . Volume 46. Firmin Didot, Paris 1866, Col. 15-16.
  • Louis Jarry: Henriette d'Entragues et son vœu singulier à Notre-Dame de Cléry . Herluison, Orléans 1897 ( online ).
  • Sylvia Jurewitz-Freischmidt: Mistresses of the Louvre. France's regents Maria dei 'Medici and Anne d'Autriche . Casimir Katz, Gernsbach 2005, ISBN 3-925825-98-3 , pp. 35-40, 43-44, 50-53, 95-97, 167, 217.
  • Agricol Hippolyte de Lapierre de Châteauneuf: Les favorites des rois de France. Depuis Agnès Sorel, d'après les sources les plus authentiques . Volume 1, 2nd edition. Jehenne, Paris 1826, pp. 156-182 ( online ).
  • Sutherland Menzies: Royal Favorites . Volume 1. Maxwell and Company, London 1865, pp. 352-354, pp. 361-373, 387-388.
  • Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd (Ed.): Burke's Royal Families of the World. Volume 1: Europe & Latin America . Burke's Peerage, London 1977, p. 85.
  • Léon Marlet: Henriette de Balzac d'Entragues . In: Esther Singleton (Ed.): Famous women as described by famous writers . Dodd, Mead, 1904, pp. 208-213.

Web links

Commons : Catherine Henriette de Balzac d'Entragues  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Catherine Henriette de Balzac, Marquise de Verneuil on thepeerage.com , accessed August 18, 2015.
  2. ^ Ernst Hinrichs : Heinrich IV. In: Peter Claus Hartmann (ed.): French kings and emperors of the modern age . CH Beck, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-406-38506-0 , p. 166.
personal data
SURNAME Balzac d'Entragues, Catherine Henriette de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Balzac d'Entragues, Henriette de; Verneuil, Catherine Henriette de Balzac d'Entragues de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Mistress of the French King Henry IV, Marquise of Verneuil
DATE OF BIRTH 1579
PLACE OF BIRTH Orleans
DATE OF DEATH February 9, 1633
Place of death Paris