Pauline Félicité de Mailly-Nesle

Pauline Félicité de Mailly-Nesle

Pauline-Félicité de Mailly, Marquise de Vintimille (* 1712 ; † September 9, 1741 in Paris ) was the mistress of the French King Louis XV.

origin

Pauline-Félicité was the second daughter of Louis III. de Mailly-Neslé (1689–1767) and his wife Armande Félice de La Porte Mazarin (1691–1729), granddaughter of Hortensia Mancini . Her sisters were Louise Julie, comtesse de Mailly , Diane-Adélaïde, duchesse de Lauraguais , Hortense-Félicité, Marquise de Flavacourt and Marie-Anne, duchesse de Châteauroux .

Mistress of Louis XV.

Pauline-Félicité was educated in a monastery. In 1738 she asked her older sister Louise Julie, who was then Louis XV's mistress. was to invite her to the royal court at Versailles . Pauline-Félicité is described as just as unattractive as Louise Julie, but in contrast to this she was very ambitious and strived for power and money. Louise Julie complied in good faith with her sister's wish to introduce her to court. But she soon had to realize that Pauline-Félicité, barely arriving in Versailles (September 1738), tried to oust her in the favor of the king. Pauline-Félicité had long pursued the plan to win the monarch for himself. Through her cheeky and carefree nature, her vitality and intelligence as well as through astute and original statements, she was able to meet the shy Louis XV. quickly take for yourself. Soon she was constantly taking part in the king's private, small evening parties and in his pleasure trips. Louis XV fell passionately in love with Pauline-Félicité, who rose to become his mistress. However, the king did not drop Louise Julie either, so he kept the two sisters as favorites.

In 1739 the king bought the Choisy Castle on the Seine for Pauline-Félicité . There he enjoyed leading a secluded private life with her, her sister Louise Julie and a few trusted friends. To keep up appearances, Louis XV wanted. but not that his mistress remained unmarried. So he made sure that Pauline-Félicité entered into a marriage with a man who would accept that his wife would continue to be the royal mistress. For a dowry of 200,000 livres and the sure favor of the king, Jean-Baptiste Hubert Félix, Marquis de Vintimille (1720–1777), was ready to enter into such a marriage. The groom was a nephew of the Archbishop of Paris, in whose palace the couple's wedding took place on September 4, 1739. Mademoiselle de Charolais , the sister of the Duke of Bourbon , who was overthrown in 1726 , hosted the subsequent dinner in her Palais Madrid, which the king also attended. Since then, Pauline-Félicité has held the title “Marquise de Vintimille”.

Pauline-Félicité tried to influence politics and persuade the king to evade the tutelage of the influential statesman and cardinal André-Hercule de Fleury and to take on more government responsibility himself. Fleury's cautious foreign policy was a thorn in the side of a warring party. At the beginning of the Austrian War of Succession (1740) Pauline-Félicité supported the war advocates and contributed to the fact that Louis XV. France gave up its wait-and-see attitude and became militarily involved in the conflict. The mistress even wanted to convince the king to earn further military laurels by personal presence in the theaters of war.

death

When Pauline-Félicité became pregnant in early 1741, health complications soon followed. For her protection and rest she was brought to Choisy, where the king stayed at her side. From August 1741 she became sicker and melancholy, suffered from a fever and no longer wanted to be treated by doctors. She was brought back to Versailles on August 24th and the king visited her every evening in her chambers. On September 2nd, she gave birth to a boy whom the Parisian archbishop who had hurried up gave him an emergency baptism. The prelate was accompanied by his nephew, who came only reluctantly because he had had a tense relationship with his wife for some time. Accordingly, the couple had exchanged unkindnesses. Louis XV was very happy, however, to have the newborn boy, who was healthy and baptized after his father Louis.

However, the health of Pauline-Félicité continued to decline, the doctors were at a loss and only prescribed bloodletting. The king even had the pavement covered with straw under their windows so that their rest was not disturbed by the noise of horses' hooves. He left his lover on the night of September 8th to 9th, 1741, as she seemed to be better, but she died a few hours later before the confessor could give her the sacraments. She was only 29 years old and passed away believing that she had been poisoned. Her body was transferred from Versailles to the Hôtel de Villeroy. But the guards left him unattended at night, so that a crowd could enter, who had hated the royal mistress and now desecrated her body. The king mourned his late lover, as did her sister Louise Julie. Pauline-Félicité's remains were finally buried near Versailles .

Pauline Félicité's son, Louis de Vintimille, duc de Luc (1741–1814) was considered the king's son and looked so similar to him that he was called “half Louis” (French “Demi-Louis”) or “little Louis” at court . Later, Madame de Pompadour wanted to marry her daughter Alexandrine-Jeanne d'Étiolles (1744–1754) to him, but the king rejected his mistress' marriage plans.

See also

• List of mistresses of the kings of France

literature

• Jean Baptiste Honoré Raymond Capefigue: Mesdemoiselles de Nesle et la jeunesse de Louis XV . Amyot, Paris 1864.
• Benedetta Craveri, Königinnen und Mätressen , Milan 2005, German Munich 2008, pp. 310–318.
• Edmont 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 . Katz Casimir, Gernsbach 2004, ISBN 3-925825-86-X .
• Uwe Schultz, Madame de Pompadour . CH Beck, Munich 2004, p. 67f.
• François-Vincent Toussaint: Anecdotes curieuses de la cour de France sous le regne de Louis XV . Plon-Nourrit 1908, p. 81.