Louise Julie de Mailly-Nesle

Louise Julie de Mailly-Nesle, Comtesse de Mailly ( Alexis Grimou )

Louise Julie de Mailly-Nesle , Comtesse de Mailly (* 1710 , † 1751 in Paris ) was a mistress of the French King Louis XV.

family

Coming from an old but impoverished noble family, Louise Julie was the eldest of five daughters of Louis III. de Mailly-Neslé (1689–1767) and his wife Armande Félice de La Porte Mazarin (1691–1729), a granddaughter of Hortensia Mancini . Her younger sisters were named Pauline-Félicité, Marquise of Vintimille , Diane-Adélaïde, Duchesse de Lauraguais , Hortense-Félicité, Marquise de Flavacourt and Marie-Anne, Duchesse de Châteauroux . Due to the high gambling debts of the father, the finances of the Mailly-Nesle family were shattered. Both parents, however, had relaxed moral views and, according to Louise Julie, her younger sisters Pauline-Félicité and Marie-Anne were also to become the king's mistresses .

Royal mistress

In 1726 Louise Julie de Mailly-Nesle married her relatively poor second cousin, Louis Alexandre, Comte de Mailly-Nesle. She became the lady-in-waiting of Queen Maria Leszczyńska, succeeding her mother-in-law . In 1732 it attracted the attention of the then 22-year-old Louis XV, who after seven years of marriage was tired of his Polish wife and, despite religious scruples, was looking for extramarital sexual adventures. The matchmaker for establishing the relationship between the king and Louise Julie was the handsome, revealing Louise-Anne de Bourbon-Condé, Mademoiselle de Charolais , sister of the overthrown Duke of Bourbon , who at 37 years of age was too old to play royal mistress herself. But she chose Louise Julie because she was not too ambitious and would not only use her influence on the king for herself.

The Marquis René Louis d'Argenson described Louise Julie as young but ugly and not very funny. However, she tried to appear seductive to the king in daring, contemporary Parisian fashion and was informed about the etiquette to be observed by his first valet François Gabriel Bachelier. Bachelier also escorted her to the king's private apartments, where he secretly sought her out at night, since he had long tried to hide the affair. However, it could not be kept completely secret in the long run. The mistress's husband had given his consent to their extramarital relationship.

It was not until 1737, after Queen Maria Leszczyńska had permanently banished her husband from her bedroom, that the king made his affair with Louise Julie public. In 1738 he declared her official mistress (French maîtresse en titre ). In Versailles they now lived in rooms on the second floor that were higher than the private chambers of the king. In contrast to her two sisters, who later became royal mistresses, Louise Julie was very humble and obedient. She did not influence politics, so as not to arouse the anger of the very influential Cardinal André-Hercule de Fleury , and did not seek to secure any financial gifts. She also avoided intrigues at the French court, which she only called "little Mailly", and treated the queen with respect.

Since the monarch increasingly withdrew from his public representational duties at court and sought to enjoy more private life - for example by having dinner with a few trusted friends in the so-called "petits appartements" in Versailles after hunting trips - his collective also increased time spent with his mistress. Louise Julie feared that she would no longer be able to entertain the king sufficiently captivatingly at his small social gatherings and therefore introduced her younger sister Pauline Félicité to the court at the request of her by letter to support the lighter evenings. But Pauline used this to bewitch the king. You could soon the favor of Louis XV. and become his lover (1740). Despite this, Louise Julie also remained the king's mistress, who thus led a love triangle with two sisters. Although Louise Julie was certainly jealous, she kept Pauline's friendship. She cared for her sister when she became seriously ill during pregnancy and was very dismayed when Pauline died on September 9, 1741 giving birth to her son Louis de Vintimille, called Demi-Louis , at the age of only 29 and her body from was violated by a crowd.

The long friendship of Louise Julie and Louis XV. as well as their common grief for the dead Pauline caused them to resume their previous relationship. Louise Julie, however, soon found accommodation in Versailles for her youngest and prettier sister Marie-Anne at her urgent request. At the initiative of the Duke of Richelieu, she was swiftly ousted from royal favor by this sister too . Marie-Anne made her devotion to the king dependent on all sorts of demands, including the removal of her older sister from the court. The amorous Louis XV. complied with these wishes and on November 3, 1742, the outcast Louise Julie left Versailles for good.

Last years

After her banishment from the royal court, Louise Julie turned to a religious life of prayer and charitable works under the influence of Father Renaud, an eloquent Parisian preacher of the Oratorians . In simple garb, she often visited places of worship. Louis XV provided her with a pension of £ 40,000, paid off her debt of approximately £ 765,000, and placed her in an apartment. She donated her income mainly to the poor. Still, a man once cursed during her visit to the Saint-Roch church that there was so much "fuss about a whore", but the former mistress modestly replied that he should pray for her. Provided with ecclesiastical consolation, she died in Paris in March 1751 and was buried between the graves of the poor on the Cimetière des Innocents . Having no children, her nephew Louis de Vintimille became her universal heir.

literature

• Jean Baptiste Honoré Raymond Capefigue: Mesdemoiselles de Nesle et la jeunesse de Louis XV . Amyot, Paris 1864.
• Benedetta Craveri: Amanti e regine. Il potere delle donne . Adelphi, Milan 2005, ISBN 88-459-1999-4 .
  • German: queens and mistresses. The power of women, from Catherine de 'Medici to Marie Antoinette . Piper, Munich 2008, pp. 303-325, ISBN 978-3-492-25441-0 .
• Edmond and Jules de Goncourt : La duchesse de Châteauroux et ses sœurs . Charpentier, Paris 1879 ( PDF ; 10.2 MB).
• Sylvia Jurewitz-Freischmidt: Galant Versailles. The mistresses at the court of the Bourbons . Piper, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-492-24494-7 (EA Gernsbach 2004).
• Uwe Schultz : Madame de Pompadour or love in power . CH Beck, Munich 2004, pp. 63-69, ISBN 3-406-52194-0 .
• François-Vincent Toussaint: Anecdotes curieuses de la cour de France sous le regne de Louis XV . 2nd edition Plon-Nourrit, Paris 1908.