Diane de Joannis de Chateaublanc

Pierre Mignard , portrait of Diane de Joannis de Chateaublanc, Dame de Ganges

Diane de Joannis de Chateaublanc , known as Marquise de Castellane , best known as Marquise de Ganges (* 1635 ; † June 5, 1667 in Ganges (Hérault) ) was a 17th century French noblewoman who was assassinated.

Life

Diane de Joannis was a daughter of Gabriel de Joannis, Seigneur de Roussanet de Chateaublanc (from the Giovani family, called Joannis, from Florence ) and Laure de Rousset de Saint-Sauveur de Saint-Louis. and a great-great-niece of Nostradamus . She was called "Mademoiselle de Chateaublanc" because of a property her parents owned near Avignon .

On May 1, 1647, at the age of 12, she married Dominique de Castellane, Marquis d' Ampus , who took her to the royal court in Versailles . There, the Marquise de Castellane , who was soon called “la belle Provençale”, caught the eye of King Louis XIV , who cast her with the role of Artémise , which she danced with him in the seventh Ballet de la nuit .

Appointed governor of the royal galleys, her husband was sent to the Mediterranean, where his ships sank after a storm and he drowned off Genoa in 1654. After becoming a widow, the Marquise retired to Avignon, which she only left three years later after a visit from a friend, the Duke of Candale.

On August 8, 1658, she married a young and brilliant aristocrat from Languedoc, Charles de Vissec de La Tude, Comte de Ganges (1639–1737), Baron des États de Languedoc, Governor of Ganges , royal finance lieutenant of Languedoc, Commander de Fort Saint-André in Villeneuve-lès-Avignon , whose fiefdom was raised to Marquisate on June 30, 1666 (date of registration with the Parlement de Toulouse ).

On March 30, 1663, the Marquise became the legate of her wealthy paternal grandfather, Melchior Jacques de Joannis, Seigneur de Nochères, after the latter had died under suspicious circumstances. When she felt threatened, she wrote a will for her children on March 19, 1664, with which she disinherited her husband, which is contrary to the custom of the time.

She very quickly came across the aggressiveness of her two brothers-in-law, Henri, known as l'Abbé, although he was not a churchman, and Bernardin, the Chevalier de Ganges. Some authors claim that it is because of the advances they made towards her that she disdainfully dismissed; others believe that the aim was to put pressure on her and force her to annul this will that she made her husband and thus indirectly also damaging his brothers, who often lived at Ganges Castle.

After the Abbé and the Chevalier tried several times to poison her with arsenic with the help of a priest, Father Perrette, they forced her to swallow a brownish drink, which she was able to vomit again immediately. She escaped into the village by jumping out of the window of her room and managed to hide with friends. However, the assassins pursued them and stabbed them with their daggers. She died a few days later, on June 5, 1667.

The Marquis de Ganges' share in this crime is difficult to assess. On the one hand, he was at the time with the États de Languedoc in Toulouse, on the other hand, he was acquitted by his dying wife of any complicity, which, however, strived to preserve the honor of the families of their children.

The Abbé and the Chevalier were sentenced to death in absentia in the Parlement de Toulouse from August 21, 1667, the priest Perrette was sent to the galleys, but died in prison before the sentence could be carried out. The Abbé had fled to the Netherlands, the Chevalier to Greece, where he died during the siege of Candia .

The Marquis de Ganges was banished and expropriated for passive complicity. He returned illegally to France, where it appears he died at the age of 99 in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue in the papal Comtat Venaissin . According to other sources, he also died during the siege of Candia

The Marquis and the Marquise de Ganges had two children:

• Alexandre de Vissec de La Tude de Ganges, 2nd Marquis de Ganges, captain and later Colonel of the Dragoons, Baron des États de Languedoc, friend of François Jules de Castellane, Comte de Grignan (1632–1714), son-in-law of the Marquise de Sévigné
• Marie-Esprite de Vissec de La Tude de Ganges (1662-1711); she married Henri de Fay, Marquis de Peyraud, Baron de Vézenobres in her first marriage, and in her second marriage Paul de Fortia d'Urban, the great-grandfather of Agricol-Joseph Fortia d'Urban .

The murder of the Marquise de Ganges, depicted on an engraving from 1825

Between truth and legend

The assassination of the Marquise de Ganges had a major impact on the entire kingdom for several reasons: the first was the cruelty of crime; the second, the personality of the Marquise who lived at court until the death of the Marquis de Castellane, her first husband, where she was greatly appreciated by the King and a friend, it is said, was Madame de Sévigné, who in one of her letters was writes about them; the third was the reputation of the Vissec de La Tude family, one of the oldest and most distinguished in Languedoc, and finally the personality of the assassins, two of their brothers-in-law, Henri, known as l'Abbé, and Bernardin, the Chevalier, who stood out for his military actions was. If the exact degree of complicity of the Marquis de Ganges is not really known, he was sentenced to the banishment and confiscation of his property.

The story has been picked up by many canards , those little newspapers that contain a single sensational article that peddlers sell through towns and villages. When the minutes of the murder trial contain facts that are close to the truth, as Claude Dionne showed, the writers who recorded the story did not hesitate to add romantic details and anecdotes, while claiming to have the most reliable information. This is particularly the case with the Marquis de Sade , who for his "Marquise de Gange" (without the "s") only used the already corrupted report by François Gayot de Pitaval .

Remarks

1. ↑ ^{a b} Bezzina-Dusfour
2. ↑ Guillaume de Wailly: her paternal grandmother was Thomine de Nostredame, daughter of Claude de Nostredame, granddaughter of Bertrand de Nostredame (1511-1602), the younger brother of Michel de Nostredame ( online )
3. ↑ Albin, p. 10
4. ^ Son of Henri de Castellane, Marquis d'Ampus, and Marie de Brancas; Marie de Brancas was the daughter of Georges de Brancas , 1st Duc de Villars , and Joséphine d'Estrées, sister of Gabrielle d'Estrées , mistress of King Henry IV.
5. ↑ The first performance of the Ballet Royal de la Nuit was on February 23, 1653, revivals were on February 25 and 27, and on March 2, 4, 6 and 1653; the latter would thus be the seventh Ballet de la Nuit ( online )
6. ↑ is meant Louis Charles de Nogaret de Foix , known as "le beau Candale" (1627-1658), 2nd Duc de Candale
7. ^ Nicolas Joseph Laurent Gilbert, Oeuvres complètes de Gilbert: publiées pour la première fois , 1823

literature

• B. Vignieu (ed.), Les Histoires tragiques de notre temps ... par François de Rosset , dernière édition ... augmentée des histoires des dames de Ganges, de Brinvilliers , 1721 (expanded version of the book by de Rosset)
• François Gayot de Pitaval , Histoire de la marquise de Gange , in: Causes célèbres et intéressantes: avec les jugements qui les ont décidées , Volume 5, new editions, 1733, pp. 256–323, ( online )
• Agricol-Joseph Fortia d'Urban , L'Histoire de la marquise de Ganges , Paris, 1810.
• Marquis de Sade , La Marquise de Gange , 1813.
• Eugène Cantiran de Boirie , Léopold Chandezon , La Marquise de Gange, ou Les Trois Frères, historical melodrama, 1815.
• Alexandre Dumas the Elder , Les Crimes célèbres. La Marquise de Ganges , 1856
• Albin Mazel, La Première Marquise de Ganges, sa vie, ses malheurs, sa fin tragique , Paris 1885, 248 pages ( online )
• Frédéric Boutet, La Marquise de Ganges et sa fille , 1932.
• Jeanne Galzy, Diane de Ganges , Lyon, 1943.
• Jean Héritier, La Belle Provençale, Diane de Joannis , Paris, 1984.
• Claude Dionne, La Part de verite. L'Histoire de la marquise de Ganges et ses réécritures , dissertation, University of Montreal , 1994.
• Raymond Trousson, Histoire d'un fait divers, du marquis de Sade à Charles Hugo , in: Revue littéraire en ligne , December 2003.
• Hubert de Vergnette de Lamotte, Filiations Languedociennes , Paris, Mémoire et Documents, 2006.
• Mireille Pluchard, "Le Choix de Diane", Presses de la Cité, Collection Terres de France, 2016, ISBN 978-2-258-11703-7
• Ferdy Bezzina-Dusfour, Un autre regard sur Diane de Joannis de Châteaublanc, marquise de Ganges (1635-1667) , 2017, ISBN 9782750445911