Charlotte Aglaé d'Orléans

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Charlotte Aglaé d'Orléans, portrait by Pierre Gobert , Versailles

Charlotte Aglaé d'Orléans (born October 22, 1700 in Paris , † January 19, 1761 ibid), also called Mademoiselle de Valois , was a member of the French royal family from the House of Orléans . Through her marriage to Francesco III. d'Este she became Duchess of Modena in 1737 . She made a name for herself in France primarily through her extravagance and craziness, for example her affair with the city-famous lady hunter Louis François Armand de Vignerot du Plessis . All the important memoirs of her time report on her eventful life , from those of Saint-Simons to Barbiers , René Louis d'Argensons and Besenvals to the notes of Jean Buvat and the Richelieu memoirs of Jean-Louis Giraud-Soulavie .

family

Charlotte Aglaé was one of six daughters of the French regent Philippe II. D'Orléans and his wife Françoise Marie de Bourbon . Through her mother, a legitimate daughter of Louis XIV and his maitresse en titre Madame de Montespan , she was a granddaughter of the Sun King. Her mother had a deep dislike for her daughter all her life, and her brother Louis did not like his sister either. The rejection of these two family members made Charlotte-Aglaé's life very difficult, especially in later years.

Charlotte Aglaé with her daughter Maria Teresa Felicita

Her parents married her in 1720 to the future Duke of Modena, Francesco III. d'Este. The marriage resulted in ten children, of whom only five reached adulthood:

  1. Alfonso d'Este (born November 18, 1723 - † June 16, 1725)
  2. Francesco Costantino d'Este (born November 22, 1724 - † June 16, 1725)
  3. Maria Teresa Felicita d'Este (* October 6, 1726 - April 30, 1754), ⚭ December 25, 1744 Louis Jean Marie de Bourbon , Duke of Penthièvre
  4. Ercole d'Este (1727–1803), 1780 Duke of Modena, ⚭ 1741 Maria Teresia Cybo (1725–1790), daughter of Duke Alderano Cybo of Massa and Carrara
  5. Matilda d'Este (February 7, 1729 - November 14, 1803)
  6. one son (* July 14, 1730; † July 12, 1731)
  7. Beatrice d'Este (born November 24, 1731 - † April 3, 1736)
  8. Maria Fortunata d'Este (July 15, 1734 - September 21, 1803) ⚭ February 27, 1759 Louis François II. De Bourbon , Prince of Conti
  9. Benedetto Filippo d'Este (September 30, 1736 - September 16, 1751)
  10. Maria Ernestina d'Este (February 12, 1741 - August 4, 1774)

Life

Childhood and youth

Charlotte Aglaé was born as the third surviving daughter of Philip II de Bourbon, Duke of Orléans , and his wife Françoise Marie de Bourbon in the Palais Royal in Paris. Her grandmother Elisabeth Charlotte described her as the laziest person on earth. She is “not at all badly made” and has beautiful eyes and beautiful skin, but on the other hand she has an ugly nose and a lack of grace in everything she does.

Her baptism did not take place until July 3, 1710 shortly before the wedding of her eldest sister Marie Louise Élisabeth with the Duke of Berry . Shortly after this event, when Charlotte Aglaé was not even ten years old, her parents and her sister Louise Adélaïde, who was two years older, sent her to Chelles for further training . Her grandmother had previously offered to take the two girls, who did not want to be sent to the monastery , to the castle of Saint-Cloud , but Charlotte Aglaé's mother had turned down the offer. Françoise Marie de Bourbon secretly hoped that her two daughters in Chelles would decide to become a nun , but this wish was only fulfilled in the case of Louise Adélaïde. Charlotte Aglaé stayed there until August 1714, her sister even until October 1715. Rumors circulated that Charlotte had only been fetched from the convent because she was about to be married, but this turned out to be incorrect. However, a year earlier her sister, the Duchess of Berry, had tried to arrange a marriage for her with the Prince of Conti , but the king refused.

Portrait of Charlotte Aglaés as a youth by Pierre Gobert

After the princess had been housed in the Val-de-Grâce Abbey since leaving the convent , she lived again in the Paris Palais Royal from the beginning of 1715 and accompanied her parents on various official occasions. Her grandmother Elisabeth Charlotte was disappointed with the physical development of her granddaughter: "When she was still a child, I thought she would be quite beautiful, but I am very much betrayed in my hope ..." she wrote in one of her numerous letters. Charlotte Aglaé's mother, who showed no interest in her daughters throughout her life, tried to warm her up to a wedding with her cousin, the Prince of Dombes , but was unsuccessful. As a consequence, Françoise Marie de Bourbon sent her unruly daughter to her grandmother in Saint-Cloud. She was of the firm opinion that her brother, the Duke of Maine , and his son would have been spared the lot of being downgraded from the rank of prince of the blood to ordinary pairs at the instigation of her husband, the regent , in August 1718 , if one of them Daughters would have been married to the Prince of Dombes.

From then on Liselotte von der Pfalz drew an even less flattering picture of her in her letters than before, since she was with her granddaughter every day. She is wrong, lies and would certainly cause a lot of trouble for her family. In contrast, Charlotte Aglaé was very popular with many of her contemporaries and valued as a gracious person. Her grandmother's prophecy was nevertheless to come true, because on one of the numerous social occasions she met the Duke of Richelieu in 1718 and began an affair with him, although at the same time her cousin Louise-Anne de Bourbon-Condé had a liaison with him . When the Duke was imprisoned in the Bastille on March 29, 1719 as an accessory to the Cellamare conspiracy , she visited him there in secret and tried to persuade her father to release him, but he remained firm. Charlotte Aglaé's grandmother did not know about the affair for a long time. However, when she learned how much her granddaughter had compromised the family through her behavior, she angrily sent her back to her mother in Paris, who, however, did not want her daughter with her either. Her father was well aware that he had to do something about his daughter's indecent behavior, because he feared that her behavior could affect the marriage negotiations for her younger sister Louise Élisabeth with the Crown Prince of Spain Ludwig . Marrying his enfant terrible abroad was therefore the best solution for his family.

Mademoiselle de Valois as a bride, painting by Pierre Gobert, around 1720

A marriage project between Charlotte Aglaé and the Count of Charolais , for which his brother Louis IV. Henri de Bourbon inquired of the princess' parents, burst as well as Charlotte's intended marriage to Charles Emanuel III. , Prince of Piedmont and later King of Sardinia . Liselotte von der Pfalz warned her beloved stepdaughter Anne Marie d'Orléans in a letter to her completely in vain of this poor choice. Towards the end of the summer of 1719 new rumors made the rounds in Paris and Versailles : Charlotte Aglaé was to be married to the 22-year-old Francesco, Hereditary Prince of Modena. The idea for this connection came from the Marquis Rangoni Machiavelli, who was a Modenese envoy in Versailles. The regent was very pleased with the proposal, because such a marriage would bind Modena and his ruling house, which had temporarily cooperated with the Holy Roman Empire , more closely to France and also remove his vicious daughter from the French court. The Count of Salvatico was sent to France as envoy extraordinary to officially petition Charlotte Aglaé. The bride-to-be, however, was not at all enthusiastic about getting married abroad and refused to consent to this connection. In order to change his daughter's mind, the regent offered the release of the Duke of Richelieu in return for her consent. She then accepted the politically insignificant prince's proposal, and Richelieu was released from prison on August 30, 1719. Although afterwards exiled from Paris first to Conflans, then to Saint-Germain-en-Laye and finally to Richelieu , the heartbreaker knew how to keep in touch with the princess and to give her hopes. She actually toyed with the idea of ​​resisting marriage despite the promise made. Only when his letters to her became increasingly rare and finally did not materialize did she give in to her fate. A dispensation from the Pope was necessary for the marriage because the bride and groom were related to one another several times. In the marriage contract signed on January 31, 1720, the princess was given an enormous dowry of 1.3 million livres . This did not include the almost 500,000 livres that she could already call her own in the form of jewelry.

Princess and Duchess of Modena

Charlotte Aglaé as Duchess of Modena

The marriage date originally set for January 25, 1720 was postponed again and finally set for February 12. The engagement ceremony took place the evening before at 6 a.m. in the king's cabinet in the Tuileries Palace and was chaired by Cardinal Armand I. Gaston Maximilien de Rohan-Soubise . Charlotte Aglaé's brother Louis acted as the fiancé's deputy, while her younger sister Louise Élisabeth held the post of tow-carrier. At lunchtime of the next day, the ceremony of the wedding by procurationem, also led by Cardinal Rohan, took place in the castle chapel of the Tuileries. Peter Viktor von Besenval wrote in his memoir that Charlotte-Aglaé made more of the impression of a victim at her wedding than a radiant bride. Even before the marriage, the bride made no secret of the fact that she loathed the bond that was forced upon her, and she did everything in her power to delay her departure for Italy to meet her husband. So she did not shy away from consciously becoming infected by visiting her sister Louise Adélaïde, who had measles , in order to be able to stay longer in France. But finally, on March 10, 1720, the final departure date was set. The newly crowned Princess of Modena showed no hurry on her journey to Antibes , where she was to embark for Genoa . Under the pretext that she was indisposed, she forced her tour company, which comprised more than 150 people, to make long stays in the cities of their stopovers or sometimes to travel only three hours a day. In addition, she made detours, as she liked, and traveled almost all over the south in order to delay her arrival at the port of departure as long as possible. They did not care about the enormous additional costs that their journey caused to the French crown. When the princess finally arrived in Antibes on May 28, 1720, her journey had taken eleven weeks, which under normal circumstances would have taken around a month.

After arriving in Genoa on June 3, Charlotte Aglaé went on to Reggio , where she met her husband, father-in-law Rinaldo d'Este and her brother-in-law Gianfrancesco for the first time on June 20 . Your first impression was disappointing. Her husband, Francesco, was sullen and very reserved, and not particularly handsome. Charlotte Agalé found him ugly and small. Nevertheless, she enjoyed the pompous entry into the city, which was followed by festivities lasting several days. Then it went on to Modena . The court there had nothing in common with the glamorous life she was accustomed to in Paris, but the princess arranged herself as best she could in her new life. She brought some glamor and entertainment to the Modeneser court, which she found desolate, and established friendly ties with her three sisters-in-law. When she became unwell in mid-August, her doctors first diagnosed a pregnancy but were quickly forced to change her diagnosis to smallpox . Charlotte Aglaé felt so bad in the course of this illness that the last sacraments were administered to her in anticipation of death , but unexpectedly she recovered. Meanwhile, Charlotte's father-in-law was impatiently waiting for a male heir from the young couple, who was still a long time coming, because the young woman refused to accept her husband in the hope that if there was no heir, their marriage would be annulled and they would return to France could. However, the princess apparently agreed to go on a pilgrimage to Loreto in March 1721 to pray for the birth of a son. In truth, however, she was speculating on traveling to France from there. She even managed to convince her husband to go to her homeland with her, and so the couple traveled incognito via Verona to Venice . Charlotte-Aglaé's father learned of his daughter's plans and forbade her to enter France, and so she returned to Modena without having achieved anything.

For the following years the couple resided in Reggio, where they led a rather modest life. On November 18, 1723, the long-awaited first child was finally born, a son who was baptized in the name of Alfonso. Charlotte-Aglaé's father-in-law was so pleased that he gave his son and daughter-in-law funds to build a palace in Rivalta. The young mother was heavily involved in the construction begun in 1724 about five kilometers southwest of Reggio, which she wanted to make her “little Versailles”. The death of the first-born and his younger brother, born in 1724, welded the couple closer together, especially since Duke Rinaldo then toyed with the idea of ​​excluding his older son from the line of succession and declaring his successor instead of Francesco's younger brother. In October 1726, the couple's first daughter, Maria Teresa Felicita , was born . Despite the addition of the family, the pension of the two was not increased, and their previously poor financial situation became even worse. In autumn 1728 the situation of Charlotte-Aglaé and her husband was so miserable that the French court was forced to intervene officially through a complaint. Only then did the Modenese government promise improvement.

Charlotte's situation changed fundamentally at the end of 1733 with the outbreak of the War of the Polish Succession . The Duchy of Modena was occupied by foreign troops and Duke Rinaldo fled to Bologna . Despite declarations of neutrality by the ducal house, the rumor spread towards the end of the summer of 1734 that the duke and his eldest supported the imperial side. Rinaldo therefore asked his daughter-in-law to intercede for herself at the French royal court. Charlotte-Aglaé was only too happy to comply with this request, as it gave her a valid reason to finally return to her home country. She embarked for Marseille without delay . In France, meanwhile, her mother and brother Louis tried by all possible means to prevent Charlotte from returning to France, with the success that they received a letter from King Louis XV in Marseilles . which forbade her to travel further than Lyon. There she had to wait more than four months for further instructions before she was given conditional permission to come to Paris. After more than 15 years of absence, she returned to the French capital on March 12, 1735. Her husband followed her, and Charlotte-Aglaé gave birth to her son Benedetto there in September 1736. The death of her father-in-law on October 26, 1737 made her husband Francesco III. to the new Duke of Modena and she to the Duchess. Francesco then went back to his homeland, while Charlotte-Agalé stayed in France. She did not return to Modena until June 1739, where she transformed the court there into one of the happiest and most extravagant in Europe.

Charlotte Aglaé's signature on the marriage contract for Louis Joseph de Bourbon and Charlotte de Rohan

However, the carefree life came to an abrupt end when the War of the Austrian Succession broke out. Because Francesco III. Did not want to decide for either of the two rival sides, troops of the King of Sardinia , Karl Emanuel , marched into the duchy in June 1742. The duke and ducal couple withdrew to Venice, while their children stayed in Sassuolo , where Karl Emanuel had guaranteed them an undisturbed life. Charlotte-Aglaé's husband finally decided to support the Bourbon King of Spain, and his wife was allowed to come to Paris one more time; despite renewed resistance from her brother. Thanks to the intervention of her ex-lover Richelieu, the Duchess now had Marie-Anne de Mailly-Nesle , the Duchess of Châteauroux and maîtresse en titre Louis XV, an influential advocate at the French royal court, who gave Charlotte a secure position in Versailles. She even managed to marry two of her daughters very favorably into the French aristocracy : her eldest married Louis Jean Marie de Bourbon , Duke of Penthièvre , a grandson of the Sun King, in 1744 , and Maria Fortunata was married to her cousin Louis François II . de Bourbon 1776 Princess of Conti. The reputation the Duchess enjoyed at the royal court again is shown by the fact that she was one of the signing witnesses in the marriage agreement for Louis Joseph de Bourbon , Prince of Condé , and Charlotte de Rohan in 1753 .

After the end of the War of the Austrian Succession, Francesco repeatedly asked his wife to return to him in Modena, but Charlotte-Agalé repeatedly raised alleged obstacles to returning to the field because she no longer wanted to give up the glamorous and comfortable life in Versailles. When she finally returned to Modena in 1759, her husband, who had no longer believed that he would ever see her again, had consoled himself with the widowed Marchesa Simonetti, Teresa di Castelbarco, as mistress. The Duchess stayed in Modena for only two months and then returned to France. She spent her last years there before she died on January 19, 1761 - sick and suffering from depression . She was buried in Paris, but, as she had previously determined, her heart was brought to Reggio and buried in the Church of the Salesian Sisters there.

literature

  • Tiziano Ascari:  Carlotta Aglae d'Orléans, duchessa di Modena e Reggio. In: Alberto M. Ghisalberti (Ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 20:  Carducci-Carusi. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1977.
  • Édouard de Barthélemy: Les filles du régent. La duchesse de Berry, l'abbesse de Chelles, la Princesse de Modène, la Reine d'Espagne, la Princesse de Conti, Mademoiselle de Beaujolais . Volume 1. Firmin-Didot, Paris 1874, pp. 347-411 ( online ).
  • Édouard de Barthélemy: Les filles du régent. La duchesse de Berry, l'abbesse de Chelles, la Princesse de Modène, la Reine d'Espagne, la Princesse de Conti, Mademoiselle de Beaujolais . Volume 2. Firmin-Didot, Paris 1874, pp. 1-239 ( online ).
  • Guy Raoul Jean Eugène Charles Emmanuel de Savoie-Carignan: Six great princesses . Holden & Hardingham, London 1913, pp. 218–256 ( online )
  • Hugh Noel Williams: Unruly Daughters. A Romance of the House of Orléans . GP Putnam's sons, New York 1913, pp. 50-55, 203-267, 341-353, 363-366 ( online ).

Web links

Commons : Charlotte Aglaé d'Orléans  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Charlotte Aglaé d'Orléans on thepeerage.com , accessed September 11, 2016.
  2. ↑ Friedrich Karl Julius Schütz: Life and Character of Elisabeth Charlotte Duchess of Orleans together with an excerpt of the most memorable from her letters . Voss, Leipzig 1820, p. 324 ( online ).
  3. ↑ Friedrich Karl Julius Schütz: Life and Character of Elisabeth Charlotte Duchess of Orleans together with an excerpt of the most memorable from her letters . Voss, Leipzig 1820, p. 325 ( online ).
  4. ^ Wilhelm Ludwig Holland (Ed.): Letters from Duchess Elisabeth Charlotte von Orléans from 1701 to 1715 . Literary Association in Stuttgart, Tübingen 1871, p. 186 ( online ).
  5. ↑ H.-N. Williams: Unruly Daughters , p. 52.
  6. ↑ H.-N. Williams: Unruly Daughters , p. 55.
  7. ↑ H.-N. Williams: Unruly Daughters , p. 204.
  8. ^ Wilhelm Ludwig Holland (Ed.): Letters from Duchess Elisabeth Charlotte von Orléans from 1701 to 1715 . Literary Association in Stuttgart, Tübingen 1871, p. 590 ( online ).
  9. ^ Wilhelm Ludwig Holland (Ed.): Letters from Duchess Elisabeth Charlotte von Orléans from the years 1716 to 178 . Literary Association in Stuttgart, Tübingen 1874, p. 221 ( online ).
  10. ↑ a b c d e T. Ascari: Carlotta Aglae d'Orléans, duchessa di Modena e Reggio . In: Alberto M. Ghisalberti (Ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI).
  11. ↑ H.-N. Williams: Unruly Daughters , p. 219.
  12. ^ Sylvia Jurewitz-Freischmidt: Galantes Versailles. The mistresses at the court of the Bourbons . Piper, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-492-24494-7 , p. 299.
  13. ↑ H.-N. Williams: Unruly Daughters , p. 221.
  14. ↑ H.-N. Williams: Unruly Daughters , p. 224.
  15. ↑ a b E. de Barthélemy: Les filles du régent , Volume 1, p. 369.
  16. ↑ H.-N. Williams: Unruly Daughters , p. 228.
  17. ^ Sylvia Jurewitz-Freischmidt: Galantes Versailles. The mistresses at the court of the Bourbons . Piper, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-492-24494-7 , p. 307.
  18. ↑ H.-N. Williams: Unruly Daughters , p. 233.
  19. ↑ H.-N. Williams: Unruly Daughters , pp. 242-243.
  20. ↑ H.-N. Williams: Unruly Daughters , p. 256.
  21. ↑ a b H.-N. Williams: Unruly Daughters , p. 348.
  22. ^ Information according to T. Ascari: Carlotta Aglae d'Orléans, duchessa di Modena e Reggio . In: Alberto M. Ghisalberti (Ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). But there is also an indication that her heart was buried in the Val-de-Grâce monastery.
personal data
SURNAME Orléans, Charlotte Aglaé d '
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mademoiselle de Valois; Bourbon-Orléans, Charlotte Aglaé de; Orléans, Charlotte Aglaé of
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Princess of France and, by marriage, Duchess of Modena
DATE OF BIRTH October 22, 1700
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH January 19, 1761
Place of death Paris