Henriette of Lorraine

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Henriette von Lothringen, Princess of Pfalzburg, copper engraving by Cornelius Galle the Younger , Philadelphia Museum of Art

Henriette of Lothringen (born April 7, 1611 in Nancy , † November 16, 1660 in Neufchâteau ) was the only princess of Pfalzburg and Lixheim. She was the eldest daughter of Franz von Lothringen (1572–1632) and Christina Katharina, Countess von Salm (1575–1627). Her father was Count of Vaudémont and Duke of Lorraine and Bar for five days in 1625 .

background

Duke Henry II of Lorraine , in his affection for Louis de Guise, baron d'Ancerville , comte de Boulay (born December 14, 1588), an illegitimate son of Cardinal de Guise, who was murdered in Blois in 1588, with Aimerie de Lescheraine, shook hands with him his older daughter Nicole , and at the same time his successor in the duchy intended. This intention divided him with his brother, the Count of Vaudemont, who, for lack of a fixed order of succession, saw the need to marry the Duke's heir to his eldest son. The brotherly quarrel became so intense that the Count of Vaudémont sent his wife and children to Vaudémont to bring them to safety, but deposed himself to Munich ; memoranda were published from both sides, Duke Heinrich tried to win over the estates for his project, while at the same time he sent the Baron von Lützelburg to Munich to start negotiations with his brother. On the way back, however, shortly before Nancy and on the open road, the baron was murdered by the Piedmontese Riguet, the Count's guard captain. The Duke could not help but recognize his brother's hand in this act. He therefore gathered an army and began a siege of Vaudémont (1620). The helpless sister-in-law pleaded for mercy, the estates tried to mediate, and Father Dominicus a Jesu Maria came from Bohemia , sent by the Count of Vaudémont, who pressed into the duke until he had achieved the reconciliation of the brothers. To seal the agreements, Nicole was betrothed to the eldest son of the Count of Vaudemont, Karl , on May 18, 1621 , while the bastard of Guise was to receive the hand of Henriette, the elder daughter of the Count of Vaudemont.

Marriage to Louis de Guise

As much as the father, mother and the bride resisted, they had to give in to the demand. On May 23, 1621 Henriette and Louis de Guise were married, on October 23, 1621 Nicole and Karl. Henriette, because of her legitimate origins, her beauty, intelligence and education, despised her forced husband, who tended to lack all of these qualities. Duke Heinrich II tried to make his favorite more attractive to her through property: he had already given him the rule of Apremont in 1610, then also Pfalzburg , later Lixheim , which was purchased in 1623 , and finally bequeathed him the great rule of Bitsch including a legacy of 300,000 livres . When Charles IV ascended the throne of Lorraine, the position of the brother-in-law became more difficult, although at the Duke's instigation in 1629 he was appointed "Prince de Lixheim et de Phalsbourg" - for his wife he remained an object of indifference and dislike.

Antoine de L'Age

Henriette's aversion to Louis turned into open enmity when, in the course of the same year, Duke Gaston of Orléans , the weak-willed and fickle brother of Louis XIII. , visited the court of Nancy. He was accompanied by his favorite, Antoine de l'Age , and the sight of this man enchanted the Princess of Pfalzburg. A relationship was arranged, the ambitious country nobleman from the county of La Marche saw himself not only as a lover, but also as a potential husband of the sister of the Duke of Lorraine. Henriette, with Puylaurens' help, arranged the marriage between the Duke of Orléans and her younger sister Margareta (* 1615), which was concluded in Nancy on January 3, 1632 without the consent of Louis XIII. had been caught. Louis de Guise had previously said goodbye to the Lorraine court and moved to Munich, where he died on December 4, 1631, leaving his principality to the childless wife. He was buried in the Sainte-Lucie church in Sampigny.

Shortly after the marriage between Gaston and Margareta, Gaston, who had taken part in the revolt against Richelieu , had to flee to Brussels. He had called for an armed uprising against him and thus the French crown, but could no longer show himself in France after one of the most important rebel leaders, the Duke of Montmorency , was defeated with his troops near Castelnaudary and taken prisoner himself in 1632 . Puylaurens organized the escape and went with him, but then achieved the reconciliation between the king and the Duke of Orléans and his return to France in 1634. Antoine de L'Age married a relative of Richelieu at the end of the same year and was appointed Duke of Puylaurens to be captured by the cardinal in February 1635 and to die in dungeon in July.

Escape to Brussels

Louis XIII again an army led to Nancy after Charles IV got involved in the Thirty Years' War on the imperial side . The duke rushed to support his capital, but was lured by Richelieu to visit the king's headquarters. Treated as a prisoner, Karl had to order the surrender of Nancy, which only the Princess of Pfalzburg found daring to contradict. Margareta, the Duchess of Orléans, had already left the city (on August 28, 1633), and the Duchess of Pfalzburg also managed to escape the attention of the French commandant and to flee to the Netherlands, whose governorship was the King of Spain is said to have applied, while the Paris Parliament passed resolutions against them, with which in particular all their possessions, including the county of Boulay, which the Duke had granted her as a pledge in 1633, were confiscated. Henriette took all the more lively interest in her brother's life; from Brussels she knew how to thwart his scandalous marriage to Beatrix of Cusance, which was to take place in 1634 (they then married in 1637), and when in the summer of 1635 Charles IV was important against the Duc de la Force and the Duke of Angoulême in Lorraine As she made progress, she brought him a carefully assembled and armed force.

The marriages with Carlo Guasco, Cristovão de Moura and Giuseppe Francesco Grimaldi

Henriette's economic situation remained tense, so that the marriage proposal of an illiterate, sick, but wealthy Italian nobleman, Carlo Guasco, Marchese di Solero was accepted. The marriage was concluded on October 11, 1643 in the presence of Jacobus Boonen , Archbishop of Mechelen , but did not last long as the Marchese, who was appointed Imperial Prince and Prince de Lixheim et de Phalsbourg, soon died. Her third marriage was in 1649 with the Portuguese, Cristovão de Moura, Conde de Lumiares, son of Manuel de Moura , Marquês de Castelo Rodrigo, who was governor of the Habsburg Netherlands from 1644 to 1647 . Cristovão de Moura must have died soon too, because in 1652 she married Giuseppe Francesco Marchese Grimaldi, a wealthy Genoese who ran business in Antwerp, due to lack of money - much to the displeasure of Duke Charles, who imprisoned her or her husband and for a while kept in custody. Nevertheless, the Marchese Grimaldi also received the title of Prince de Lixhheim et de Phalsbourg.

Henriette finally returned to Lorraine with her fourth husband, even before the Vincennes Peace Treaty (February 28, 1661), which followed the Peace of the Pyrenees (November 7, 1659). Since the castle of Sampigny had been devastated during the war years, Henriette and her husband had to renovate it with Grimaldi's fortune. They then lived in Neufchâteau, whose mistress was Henriette.

Through the intercession of Spain in the negotiations for the Peace of the Pyrenees, Henriette should have got her property back in full, but Louis XIV found the location of Pfalzburg too important to give the place back from his hands. It had to be ceded to him by the Treaty of Vincennes. Henriette of Lothringen had died shortly before, on November 16, 1660, in Neufchâteau. She was buried next to her first husband in the church of Sainte-Lucie in Sampigny.

Henriette de Lorraine had no direct heirs and, according to a judgment of the Lorraine Chamber of Accounts in 1661, her land passed into the possession of the Duke, with the exception of the Principality of Lixheim and the Castle of Sampigny, which Grimaldi kept until his death. Grimaldi was reconciled with the duke and stayed at the court of Nancy as chief steward, negotiated the Peace of Marsal with the French king on behalf of the duke in 1663 , and accompanied him when Charles again had to flee from the French in 1670. He died on August 29, 1693 in Sampigny and was also buried in the local church.

Anne Marie Louise d'Orléans , Gaston's daughter from his marriage to Marie de Bourbon, duchesse de Montpensier , known as "la Grande Mademoiselle", wrote the novel "Les Amours de la princesse de Phalsbourg", in which it becomes clear that her Henriette when stepmother's sister was hated.

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ Schwennicke; Publication / Gruber: * April 5, 1605
  2. ↑ Schwennicke; Erf / Gruber name May 22, 1621 for both couples and Father Dominicus as the wedding priest
  3. ^ After all, Henri de Beauvau, the Lorraine envoy to the Pope, writes: “A man of good looks and good size, meek, bourgeois, liberal and courageous, and although he did not have a very delicate mind, it can still be said that he has all the qualities who can make a man lovable. ”(" Homme de bonne mine et d'une belle taille, doux, civil, liberal et courageux, et quoiqu'il n'eut pas l'esprit fort délicat, on peut dire néanmoins qu'il possedoit toutes les qualités qui peuvent rendre un homme aimable ")
  4. ↑ Augustin Calmet wrote down your words in his “Histoire de Lorraine” (Volume VI, 97)
  5. ↑ Also Sellerio and Sallerio
  6. ↑ Schwennicke: † probably 1649/50
personal data
SURNAME Henriette of Lorraine
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Henriette Princess of Lixheim and Pfalzburg; Henriette de Phalsbourg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Lorraine nobles
DATE OF BIRTH April 7, 1611
PLACE OF BIRTH Nancy
DATE OF DEATH November 16, 1660
Place of death Neufchâteau