Charles d'Albert d'Ailly

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Charles d'Albert d'Ailly, duc de Chaulnes, Robert Nanteuil , 1676, Princeton University Library

Charles d'Albert d'Ailly, duc de Chaulnes (* 1625 - † September 4, 1698 ) was a French nobleman, military man and diplomat. He became governor of Brittany in 1670 and took part in three conclaves as French ambassador .

biography

Charles d'Albert d'Ailly is the third son of Honoré d'Albert , 1st Duke of Chaulnes , and Charlotte Eugénie d'Ailly; in 1653 he became the 3rd Duke of Chaulnes after his older brother. He was u. a. also Vidame d'Amiens , Baron the Picquigny , Seigneur de Raineval .

He was probably born in Amiens , where he was baptized on June 15, 1625 in the Saint-Rémy church. His godparents were George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Henrietta Anne Stuart , Queen of France. In 1653 he succeeded his brother Henri-Louis d'Albert d'Ailly as the third Duke of Chaulnes .

On April 11, 1655 he married Elisabeth Le Féron, widow of Jacques Stuer de Caussade, Marquis de Saint-Maigrin . She was the heir to Dreux Le Féron, Seigneur de Savigny, Conseiller in the Parlement of Paris, and Barbe Servien de Montigny. The marriage remained childless. In the same year he was appointed Lieutenant-général des Armées du Roi.

In 1661 he became Chevalier des Ordres du Roi . In 1664 he was a lieutenant in the Compagnie des Chevau-légers de la Garde du Roi . In 1667 he was the French envoy in Rome on the occasion of the conclave that Pope Clement IX. chose. He returned to Rome for the 1669–1670 conclave , which ended in late April 1670 with the election of Pope Clement X.

After the end of the conclave, he asked, under pressure from his wife, that the new Pope work with Louis XIV to ensure that the Marquis de La Frette, who through his mother was a half-brother of Elisabeth Le Férons, and in 1663 after the duel between the Marquis de La Frette and the Prince de Chalais had to leave France, was pardoned and could return to Paris.

In the same year 1670 he became governor of Brittany. Three years later he was sent to Cologne as the King's Plenipotentiary Minister , where he led the French delegation in the first (and failed) peace negotiations to end the Dutch War , which lasted from June 28, 1673 to April 16, 1674 and through the Departure of the French delegation were canceled.

As the king's commander in chief in Brittany, he initially failed to contain the uprising against the paper tax (April – September 1675) and therefore demanded the intervention of the army and the punishment of the rebels. The acts of violence by the military alienated him from his last noble Breton allies and earned him the nickname "fat pig" (French gros cochon , Breton high lart ), which was given to him publicly by the common people, as well as "damned duke" ( duc damné ) ; and Saint-Simon drew an uncompromising portrait of the Duke: "[put] Under the obesity, the clumsiness of gravity, the physiognomy of an ox, the sharpest, most subtle to take advantage of its benefits cleverest mind, and drive [did] with all the pleasure and finesse that are possible ... "

In 1689 he traveled a third time as the French envoy to a conclave in Rome, this time for the election of Pope Alexander VIII. In 1695 he gave up the governorship in Brittany in favor of Louis-Alexandre de Bourbon, comte de Toulouse and received the governorship in Guyenne that he practiced until his death.

Charles d'Albert d'Ailly died on September 4, 1698 in Paris in his Hôtel de Chaulnes on Place Royale, today Place des Vosges 9. He was buried in the collegiate church of Saint-Martin in Picquigny . His wife died four months later, on January 6, 1699, and found her final resting place at his side. The title Duke of Chaulnes expired with his death, but was reassigned in 1711 in favor of a relative

A bust of the 3rd Duke of Chaulnes by the sculptor Antoine Coysevox is in the Louvre after it was mistaken for a while for a bust kept in the Musée de Picardie in Amiens.

literature

  • Louis Gabriel Michaud , Biographie universelle ancienne et moderne , Volume 8, Paris, 1843.
  • Christophe Levantal, Ducs et Pairs et Duchés-Pairies laïques à l'époque moderne (1519-1790) , 1996, Paris, Maisonneuve & Larose, pp. 511–519, ISBN 2-7068-1219-2 .

Remarks

  1. ↑ Amiens (Saint-Rémy): baptêmes, mariages, sépultures (1582–1667), in: Archives Somme ( online )
  2. ↑ Sous la corpulence, l'épaisseur, la pesanteur, la physionomie d'un bœuf, l'esprit le plus délié, le plus délicat, le plus adroit à prendre et à pousser ses avantages avec tout l'agrément et la finesse possible. .. , cited in: Yvan Christ, Jacques Silvestre de Sacy, Philippe Siguret, Jean Sadoul, Le Marais, ses hôtels, ses églises , Paris, 1986, p. 47
  3. ↑ François Irénée Darsy, Picquigny et ses seigneurs, vidames d'Amiens , Abbeville, P. Briez, 1860, pp. 74–76
  4. ^ Louvre online
  5. ↑ Valérie Carpentier-Vanhaverbeke, La physionomie d'un bœuf et l'esprit le plus délicat - Le duc de Chaulnes par Antoine Coysevox , in: Grande Galerie - Le Journal du Louvre , June / July / August 2017, No. 40, p 18
personal data
SURNAME Ailly, Charles d'Albert d '
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Duc de Chaulnes, Charles d'Albert d'Ailly (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French nobleman, military man and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH 1625
DATE OF DEATH September 4, 1698