Louise de La Fayette

Louise de La Fayette , actually Marie Louise Angélique Motier, comtesse de La Fayette , (born November 8, 1618 in Amathay-Vésigneux , † January 11, 1665 in Chaillot near Paris ) was a close confidante of the French King Louis XIII. and his platonic friend and advisor.

Life

Louise was a daughter of Jean Motier, comte de La Fayette and his wife Marguerite de Bourbon-Busset. Through her grandmother, Louise de Bourbon-Busset, she came to the French court in Paris and became lady-in-waiting to Queen Anna of Austria . Cardinal Richelieu disapproved of the influence that Marie de Hautefort had over time on Louis XIII. had attained. In 1635 he succeeded in ousting Marie from her position and replacing her with the court lady Louise de La Fayette. Louise was supposed to spy on the king on behalf of the cardinal, but she strictly refused. In 1637 the king turned back to his former girlfriend Marie, and Louise went to the Val-de-Grâce monastery . There she was often by Louis XIII. visited and maintained lively correspondence with the Queen. At the time of her death, Louise de la Fayette was the abbess of a monastery that she founded near Chaillot.

Trivia

The French royal couple is said to have reconciled through Louise de la Fayette. At the height of her disgrace, the Buckingham scandal (1625) and the Chalais affair (1626), Anna of Austria gave birth to a son on September 5, 1638, the future King Louis XIV.

In the novel The Three Musketeers (French Les trois mousquétaires ) by Alexandre Dumas published in 1843/44 , Louise de la Fayette was immortalized in the figure of D'Artagnan's friend "Constance Bonacieux".

literature

• Victor cousin : Madame de Hautefort. Nouvelles études sur les femmes illustres et la société du 17e siècle . 3. Edition. Didier et Cie., Paris 1868 ( online in the Google book search).
• Xavier Boniface Saintine : Une maîtresse de Louis XIII. 2nd Edition. Simon Baçon, Paris 1859 ( online in the Google book search).

Web links

• Louise de la Fayette (French)