Anne Marie Louise d'Orléans, Duchess of Montpensier, (, – ) known as La Grande Mademoiselle (, ), was the only daughter of Gaston d'Orléans with his first wife, Marie, Duchess of Montpensier. One of the greatest heiresses in history, she died unmarried and childless, leaving her vast fortune to her cousin Philippe I, Duke of Orléans. After a string of proposals from various members of European ruling families, including Charles II of England, Afonso VI of Portugal, and Charles Emmanuel II of Savoy, she eventually fell in love with the courtier Antoine Nompar de Caumont and scandalised the court of France when she asked Louis XIV for permission to marry him, as such a union was viewed as a mésalliance. She is best remembered for her role in the Fronde, for bringing the composer Jean-Baptiste Lully to the king's court, and for her Mémoires.
Early years
Anne Marie Louise d'Orléans was born at the Palais du Louvre in Paris on 29 May 1627. Her father was Gaston, Duke of Orléans; as the eldest surviving brother of King Louis XIII, he was known at court by the traditional honorific Monsieur. Her mother, 21-year-old Marie, Duchess of Montpensier, was the only surviving member of the Montpensier branch of the House of Bourbon. When she died five days after giving birth, she left the newborn Anne Marie, the new Duchess of Montpensier, heiress to an immense fortune which included five duchies, the Dauphinate of Auvergne, and the sovereign Principality of Dombes, found in the historical province of Burgundy.
As the eldest daughter of Monsieur, Anne Marie Louise was officially known as Mademoiselle from the time of her birth, and, because she was the granddaughter of a King of France, Henry IV, her uncle Louis XIII created for her the new title of Petite-Fille de France ("Granddaughter of France").
Mademoiselle was moved from the Louvre to the Palais des Tuileries and placed under the care of Madame de Saint Georges, the governess of royal children, who taught her how to read and write. Mademoiselle always had a great sense of self-importance and when asked about her maternal grandmother Henriette Catherine de Joyeuse she replied that she was not her grandmother, because her grandmother was "not a queen". She grew up in the company of Mademoiselle de Longueville, as well as the sisters of the Maréchal de Gramont.
Mademoiselle was very close to her father Gaston, Duke of Orléans. Gaston was involved in multiple conspiracies against Louis XIII and his chief advisor Cardinal Richelieu, and generally on bad terms with the court. When Gaston fell in love with Marguerite of Lorraine, Louis XIII refused to give his brother permission to marry— France and Lorraine were enemies, and a prince of the blood and heir to the throne was not legally allowed to marry without the king's permission. Nonetheless, Gaston secretly married Marguerite in January 1632.Velde, François. Heraldica.org. Morganatic and Secret Marriages in the French Royal Family. Royal Consent: the case of Gaston d'Orléans. Retrieved 27 February 2010 When Louis found out, he had the marriage annulled and the couple exiled from court.
As a child, Mademoiselle lived with her governess at the Palais des Tuileries. Gaston resided at Blois, where Mademoiselle visited him frequently. After his secret marriage, Mademoiselle did not see her father for two years. When she finally did see him again in October 1634, the seven-year-old Mademoiselle "flung herself into his arms". After learning that Cardinal Richelieu, her godfather, was behind her father's exile, Mademoiselle would sing street songs and lampoons in the presence of the cardinal himself, earning her a scolding from the cardinal.
At the birth of the future Louis XIV in September 1638, the determined Mademoiselle decided that she would marry him, calling him "her little husband" to the amusement of Louis XIII. Richelieu subsequently reprimanded her for her remarks. Her father on the other hand wanted her to marry Louis, Count of Soissons, a descendant of Charles, Duke of Vendôme, one of his old co-conspirators. The marriage never materialised.
When Mademoiselle's governess, Madame de Saint Georges, died in 1643, Mademoiselle's father chose Madame de Fiesque as her replacement. Mademoiselle was devastated at the death of her former governess and, not keen on having a new governess, was an awkward student; she later recalled that she once locked Madame de Fiesque in her room and Madame de Fiesque's grandson in another.
On his deathbed in May 1643, Louis XIII finally accepted Gaston's plea for forgiveness and authorized his marriage to Marguerite; the couple were married in July 1643 before the Archbishop of Paris and, as the Duke and Duchess of Orléans, were finally received at court.
Louis XIII's death left Louis XIV (then 4 years old) as King of France, and Louis XIII's widow Queen Anne as regent during her son's minority. When the wife of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III died in May 1646, Mademoiselle considered marriage to Ferdinand, but the regent, Queen Anne, under the influence of Mazarin, ignored Mademoiselle's pleas. Louis XIV (then 8 years old) and his younger brother, Philippe, Duke of Anjou (then 6 years old) were too young to be married. Queen Anne suggested her brother, Cardinal Ferdinand of Austria, but Mademoiselle declined. The "wealthiest single princess of Europe" was left without suitable marriage prospects.
Fronde
One of the key areas of the life of Mademoiselle was her involvement in the period of French history known as the Fronde, a civil war in France marked by two distinct phases known as the Fronde Parlementaire (1648–1649) and the Fronde des nobles (1650–1653). The former was precipitated by a tax levied on judicial officers of the Parlement of Paris that was met with a refusal to pay and the emergence of Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Condé (future Grand Condé), as a rebel figure who took the city of Paris by siege. The influence of Cardinal Mazarin was also opposed.
At the Peace of Rueil of 1 April 1649, the Fronde Parlementaire ended, and the court returned to Paris in August amid great celebration. Mademoiselle caught smallpox, but survived the illness. Having convalesced, Mademoiselle befriended Claire Clémence de Brézé, Madame la Princesse, the unwanted wife of the Grand Condé. The pair sojourned in Bordeaux, where Mademoiselle was involved in the peace which ended the siege in the city in October 1650. Her role in the matter made her look like a frondeuse in the eyes of Queen Anne.
Even in uncertain times, the possibility of a marriage between Mademoiselle and the Prince of Condé arose when Claire Clémence became critically ill with erysipelas. Mademoiselle considered the proposal, as she would still have maintained her rank as one of the most important women at court, and her father had a good relationship with Condé. These plans failed, however, when Claire Clémence recovered.
In 1652, there was another Fronde, this time involving the Princes of the Blood. Mazarin was in exile and was not recalled until October 1653. The city of Orléans, Mademoiselle's namesake and the capital of her father's duchy, wanted to stay neutral in the civil war; the magistrates of the city had seen what the war had done to the nearby area of Blaisons and wanted to avoid the same fate. The city requested the input of Mademoiselle's father in order to avoid being pillaged. Gaston was undecided and Mademoiselle took it upon herself to go to Orléans to represent her father and put an end to the troubles. Travelling via Artenay, Mademoiselle was informed that the city would not receive her because she and the king were on different sides, referring to Mademoiselle's dislike for Mazarin.
When Mademoiselle arrived at Orléans, the city gates were locked and the city refused to open them. She shouted that they should open the gates, but was ignored. An approaching boatman offered to row her to the Porte de La Faux, a gate on the river. Mademoiselle got onboard "climbing like a cat" and "jumping over the hedge" in order not to hurt herself and climbed through a gap in the gate. She entered the city and was greeted triumphantly, being carried through the streets of Orléans on a chair for all to see. She later said that she had never been "in so entrancing a situation".
Staying for five weeks, she became attached, calling it "my town", before returning to Paris in May 1652. Paris was once again under a state of panic on the eve of the Battle of the Faubourg St Antoine; Mademoiselle, in order to allow the Prince of Condé into the city, which was controlled by Turenne, fired from the Bastille on the army of Turenne on 2 July 1652. Mazarin remarked "with that cannon, Mademoiselle has shot her husband."
Exile
Fearing for her life, Mademoiselle fled Paris for the safety of her residence at Saint-Fargeau. She remained in exile until 1657 when she was welcomed to the court once again. She went with Madame de Fiesque and Madame de Frontenac, wife of the future Governor General of New France.
Having never been to Saint-Fargeau before, she was unaware of the state of the building and thus stayed at a small residence in Dannery having been received by the bailiff of her estates. Convinced to return to Saint-Fargeau, she settled into her home for the next four years and soon began to improve the building under the direction of François Le Vau, brother of the renowned architect Louis Le Vau.
Le Vau redid the exteriors of Saint-Fargeau at a cost of 200,000 livres. They were lost in a fire in 1752 and suffered further damage in 1850, thus all evidence of the appearance of Mademoiselle's residence was lost. Despite being an exile, she still visited her father at Blois. While at Saint-Fargeau, she dabbled in writing and wrote a small biography under the title of Madame de Fouquerolles despite her bad spelling and grammar. Mademoiselle looked to her financial affairs, which had been under her father's management. Having reached her majority in 1652 it was discovered that her father had not been entirely honest with the management of her finances and that was the reason for her 800,000 livres of debt. At the same time her grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Guise, tricked Mademoiselle into signing away money to her under false pretences. Her father was involved with this, which caused her relationship with Gaston to deteriorate. In 1656, hearing that her father had been excused for his various scandals, Mademoiselle herself said she would forget the bad blood caused by his financial misdemeanours and resumed her close relationship with him.
Return to court and family life
When her father was welcomed back to court, it paved the way for Mademoiselle. She left for Sedan, Ardennes, where the court was established in July 1657. Having not seen any of her family for some five years, she was greeted with forgiveness and the added compliment that her "looks had improved", according to Queen Anne.
In a pen portrait of herself executed later the same year, she noted how she was neither "fat nor thin" and "looked healthy; my bosom is fairly well formed; my hands and arms not beautiful, but the skin is good...". The same year, she met Christina of Sweden, who had arrived in France in July 1656. The two ladies met at Essonne where they watched a ballet together. Mademoiselle later exclaimed that Christina "surprised me very much. [...] She was in all respects a most extraordinary creature". "Greatness of birth and the advantages bestowed by wealth [...] should provide all the elements of a happy life...yet there are many people who have had all these things and are not happy. The events of my own past would give me enough proof of this without looking for examples everywhere"Mademoiselle on the subject of her wealth