Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King

by Antonia Fraser

  The spring and summer were spent by Mazarin in peace negotiations, accompanied by parallel discussions for the hand of the Infanta. Certainly the Cardinal, in failing health, tortured by gout, saw the ‘Peace of the Infanta' as his ultimate gift to his adoptive country. Anything less advantageous either to his own reputation or France's future than marriage with his niece was hard to imagine. It was a crude, cruel truth: great kings simply did not marry girls like Marie Mancini, however bold, however amusing. They made them their mistresses.

  Still Louis rejected this alternative – which was probably not on offer anyway – and spent the summer racked by tears, by hopes and by his mother's reminder of his obligations. The two vital scenes which put an end to the crisis both had their symbolic element. Anne of Austria, taking a flambeau, conducted Louis into her Appartement des Bains, her intimate chamber of relaxation to which the King as a little boy had run so eagerly and where he had romped so happily. (The Appartement had a secondary purpose, as a private retreat; for example, it was there that Anne received Don Juan José, the illegitimate son of her brother Philip IV, on an unofficial visit to France.) Mother and son spent an hour alone together. Later Queen Anne, confiding in Madame de Motteville, gave vent to that classic parental prophecy: ‘One day Louis will thank me for the harm I have done him.’24

  As for Marie Mancini, her final desolate words when she realised the romantic game of love was over – that the empire of love was indeed a cruel one, in the words of Alcidiane – were simple: ‘You love me, you are the King and I go.' They were later to be adapted by Racine in his play Bérénice. The Emperor Titus referred sadly to the ‘inexorable’ need for glory which pursued him and was ‘incompatible' with his marriage to the foreign Queen. As Bérénice understood that her tearful royal lover was dismissing her, she exclaimed sadly: ‘Vous êtes empereur, Seigneur, et vous pleurez.’ (‘You are the Emperor, Sire, and yet you weep.')

  Louis's own view was perhaps best expressed by the celebrated aphorist of the period, the Duc de La Rochefoucauld, who declared ‘the greatest admiration for noble passions, for they denote greatness of soul … they cannot rightly be Condémned'. Louis had exhibited what he saw as his greatness of soul in his noble passion and did not think he should be Condémned. Now he moved on. The Comtesse de La Fayette wrote that having broken with the spellbinding Marie, for ever after Louis remained master both of himself and his love.25

  Marie's last interview with the King at which these sad words were spoken took place on 13 August 1659. She was dismissed with the wonderful pearls of Queen Henrietta Maria which Louis got Mazarin to purchase from the poverty-stricken widow – surely an unlucky gift. More endearingly Louis gave Marie a spaniel puppy bred from Queen Anne's favourite Friponne with ‘I belong to Marie Mancini' engraved on its silver collar. Marie went to the country and awaited what marriage her uncle would now provide for her. The eventual choice, an extremely grand Italian, Prince Colonna (proud Marie did not wish to linger as damaged goods at the French court), was surprised to find his wife a virgin. As the Prince said, he did not expect to find ‘innocence among the loves of kings'.

  *

  The Treaty of the Pyrenees between France and Spain was signed on 7 November 1659. By it, France gained territories such as Gravelines, most of Artois, part of Hainault and some places south of Luxembourg as well as Roussillon including Perpignan. Just as important was the state of peace between the two countries, and the opportunity for recovery from the inevitable depredations of war on both sides of the Pyrenees. The Grand Condé returned to the French court in January 1660, doing homage at Aix while Queen Anne and King Louis were making a southern tour. Once again, as with the Grande Mademoiselle, Louis showed himself master of the graceful words of reconciliation which promised forgiveness and even forgetfulness. Another relic of past troubles, Louis's uncle Gaston, died in February. This allowed Monsieur to assume the Orléans dukedom, traditional title of the second Bourbon son as well as its wealthy apanages or territories. As ‘Monsieur' he was already the first man in France after the King; just as any future wife would be known simply as ‘Madame', in its very simplicity the most honorific female appellation of all, barring that of the Queen.

  In the course of this tour Anne and Louis visited the shrine at Cotignac to which his mother attributed the ‘gift from heaven' of his conception – and his male gender. Together mother and son knelt for a long time in silent prayer in the chapel of Notre-Dame-des-Grâces before placing a blue ribbon of the Saint Ésprit at the foot of the statue of the Virgin. Queen Anne also paid for six masses to be said in perpetuity. Then they passed through Carcés on their way back to Brignoles.*

  Meanwhile many positive reports were being disseminated by the Cardinal about the character of the Infanta Maria Teresa. She was after all a major part of the deal, as the Cardinal's dialogue with Queen Anne demonstrated:

  ‘Good news, Madame!'

  ‘What! Is there to be peace?'

  ‘There is more than that, Madame. I bring Your Majesty peace and the Infanta.’26

  The girl's childish attachment to the idea of her cousin was stressed, and how that youthful hero-worship had ripened into something more tender with the years. Here was a young woman who blushed at her cousin's portrait, and the allusions of her ladies-in-waiting, half joking, half prurient, to her possible future with him. The fact that Louis had shown an early predilection for an intelligent, spirited woman, not a great beauty but one who understood the new art of agreeable conversation, was quite forgotten. But it provided a valuable clue for his behaviour in the future: this was a man who needed, no, expected to be amused. Infantas, after all, did not amuse people: that was not their role, and certainly not this sweet-natured, secluded girl who had been brought up according to the ruthless etiquette of the prison-like Spanish court. The restrictions placed upon her can be deduced from an anecdote told about the Infanta some years later. When a nun asked her if she hadn't wished to please the young men at her father's court, the former Infanta replied: ‘Oh no, Mother! For there was no king among them.’27

  In family terms it had been more of a desert than a prison. Her mother Elisabeth de France died when Maria Teresa was six, her only brother Don Balthasar Carlos when she was eight. After that Maria Teresa was heiress presumptive to the Spanish throne (it will be remembered that females could inherit it) until the birth of a half-brother Philip Prosper from her father's second marriage in 1657; there was also a half-sister Margarita Teresa born in 1651, famously painted as a little girl by Velázquez. Unfortunately this second marriage to Philip IV's own niece, Marianna of Austria, did not offer Maria Teresa the harmony for which her affectionate nature craved. Many stepmothers at this time of high maternal mortality stepped easily into the real mother's place and provided loving support for the existing family. The new Queen, only a few years older than Maria Teresa herself, was lazy and rather greedy: she was also resentful of her stepdaughter's position and her father's tender feelings for her.28

  Under the circumstances, it was touching how the young Infanta, in her formal interviews with the French plenipotentiary, emphasised her respect for her future mother-in-law Queen Anne. ‘How is the Queen my aunt?' was the first thing Maria Teresa asked the Duc de Gramont in Madrid. This was the message she wished to send: ‘Tell my aunt that I will always be obedient to her will.'

  Maria Teresa's references to Louis XIV were a great deal more formal. The young couple had already been allowed to exchange portraits, and Louis was now permitted to write to Maria Teresa. Addressed ‘To the Queen', Louis's letter began: ‘It was not without constraint that I yielded up till now to the arguments which prevented me from expressing to Your Majesty the sentiments of my heart.' Now that matters had fortunately changed, ‘I am delighted to begin to reassure her by these lines that happiness could not arrive at anyone who more passionately wishes for it… nor anyone feel themselves happier in possessing it.’29

  The sheer rigidity of the Spanish court may be judged by the f
act that Philip IV pronounced it ‘too soon' for this respectful if stilted letter to be delivered. A coy interview between the Infanta and Louis's emissary, the Bishop of Fréjus, resulted in the latter whispering in her ear that he had a secret to tell her. And he displayed the banned letter which had been hidden in his hand. Maria Teresa made no attempt to establish its contents (as many young women, including princesses, might have done) but merely repeated that her father had forbidden her to receive it. The most she allowed herself to say was that the King her father had assured her that everything would soon be arranged.

  Yet with Marie Mancini gone from his side, no longer whispering sweet and malicious nothings in his ear, unable to denigrate the Infanta, Louis seems to have adopted the idea of his marriage with some enthusiasm. With that sense of his own grandeur inculcated since birth, he was glad to be marrying a great princess. The fact that Maria Teresa was said to have long been in love with him (and France) was also very much in her favour. In getting married, a state of which he officially declared himself in urgent need, Louis was also abandoning sin. On the contrary, he was happily adhering to the rules of the Church which wanted young people of suitable degree to get married and procreate children: exactly what Mazarin and Anne wanted him to do. In terms of Church teaching, he was getting peace for his conscience, peace and the Infanta.

  According to the custom for European royals, there were to be two marriages. A proxy marriage, at which a Spanish dignitary Don Luis de Haro played the part of the bridegroom, took place at Fuenterrabia inside the borders of Spain on 3 June 1660: the venue was a simple church, although distinction was lent to it by the fact that the décor, including specially imported tapestries, was arranged by the ageing Spanish court painter Velázquez. The King of Spain, giving away his daughter, was pale and dignified in the sombre colours – grey and silver – favoured by the Spanish court. The most remarkable thing about the bride's appearance, as she was transformed from the Infanta Maria Teresa into Queen Marie-Thérèse,* was her bizarre (by French standards) bouffant hairstyle. Many jewels and a mass of false hair, topped by a further disfiguring ‘sort of white hat', completely extinguished one of her great advantages, which was her marvellously thick blonde hair. The description was that of the Grande Mademoiselle, who chose to attend the proxy wedding incognito and left a satisfyingly malicious account of it.30

  Apart from her hair, Marie-Thérèse had another much-praised beauty of the period, translucent white skin, the protected white skin of a supreme aristocrat on which no ray of common sun would fall. Her forehead was rather too high and her mouth rather too big. However, her protruding ‘Habsburg' lower lip, a trait believed to be inherited from the great heiress Margaret of Burgundy which would plague the Habsburg family for generations, was not considered a disadvantage at the time; more of a badge of royal descent. Her eyes, if not large, were of a particularly brilliant sapphire blue. But although charitable observers did discern in Marie-Thérèse a resemblance to Queen Anne, still beautiful on the verge of her sixtieth birthday, the fact was that this new Spanish bride lacked that preeminent quality of her predecessor which struck everyone, friend or foe: her queenly dignity.

  Marie-Thérèse, like Anne, tended to plumpness, but being much shorter than her aunt, she appeared dumpy. The enormous wide skirts she wore, extended by padded and boned petticoats called farthingales but described by a Frenchwoman as ‘monstrous machines', did not help matters. Just as she had not been taught French – a shockingly insensitive omission for an innately shy and bewildered girl – she had not been brought up to understand the importance of dance, an increasingly vital element of the French court, given the King's passion for it. (And incidentally one of the few public occasions when men and women could act in conjunction.) Marie-Thérèse was not badly educated, but it was teaching which had never encouraged any true interest in the arts that her future husband was beginning to love. With her jewels, her false hair and her huge touch-me-not skirts, Marie-Thérèse was a hieratic figure; but she was neither a graceful nor an alluring one.

  By the time of her proxy marriage, Marie-Thérèse as future Queen of France had already renounced her rights to the Spanish throne in a document which took one and a half hours to read. Among those present, some certainly took note of one particular clause in the marriage treaty demanded by the French: if the Infanta's dowry of 500,000 écus d'or was not paid by Spain, these rights of succession would revert to her … But few would have predicted the ominous long-term consequences of this apparently not-unreasonable provision.

  In early May the royal party of France had set out southwards for the second, ‘real' marriage scheduled to take place at St Jean-de-Luz, near Bordeaux, on 9 June.* A visit paid along the way pointed respectively to the future and the past. A courtesy call was paid to the château of Blois, where the King was much admired by his three young cousins, the beautiful Marguerite-Louise and her younger sisters Elisabeth and Françoise-Madeleine. One of their attendants, a fourteen-year-old girl called Louise de La Vallière, also gazed in awe at the man she had been brought up since childhood to regard as close to a god, and whose portrait dominated the salon of her family's home. But while the Orléans girls were encouraged to accompany their cousin onwards, the awe-struck Louise remained at Blois.

  By now Queen Anne was in a state of great happiness: she was on the verge of a triumph for which she had hoped and prayed for so long. She had written a letter to Maria Teresa in March (the lnfanta was allowed to receive this one) which began with the salutation: ‘Madame, my daughter and my niece' and went on ‘Your Majesty can easily believe the satisfaction and the joy with which I write to her, giving her the name [i.e. daughter] which I have desired to give her all my life.’31 Like Simeon in the temple, Queen Anne saw herself as departing in peace from the duties of the Queen of France she had carried out for so long, in favour of her hand-picked successor.

  The first sighting that the young couple had of each other demonstrated that Louis XIV had not forgotten every lesson of romantic courtship inculcated in him by Marie Mancini (herself still languishing in France at this point, waiting for her Italian marriage to be finalised). The sighting came about as the result of the formal – extremely formal – meeting at Fuenterrabia on 4 June between brother and sister, King Philip and Queen Anne. They had not seen each other for forty-four years, during which time their respective countries had for a long period been at war.

  It was another testimony to Spanish rigidity that King Philip merely inclined his head, instead of giving the embrace that Queen Anne, with her stiff Spanish years long behind her, might have expected, although both of them had tears in their eyes. When it came to the question of the war, however, King Philip provided a satisfactory, even theological explanation: ‘It was the devil that did that,’ he pronounced in Spanish.32 From this position, however, the brother and sister (who had themselves married a sister and a brother) moved happily on to a discussion, also in their native Spanish, of the future which was a great deal more relaxed.

  ‘At this rate,' said Philip, ‘we shall soon have grandchildren.'

  ‘Yes indeed,' replied the Queen. ‘But I want a son for my son more than I want a bride for my nephew.' She referred to Philip IV's son and heir by his second marriage, Philip Prosper, now three. It was all quite jocular, and there was even badinage on the subject of patriotism.

  ‘I am sure Your Majesty will pardon me for being such a good Frenchwoman,' remarked Anne, referring to the recent war. ‘I owed it to the King my son and to France.' To which Philip replied that the Queen, his late French wife, had been just the same in reverse: ‘only wanting to please me'.

  In the meantime Louis had been given permission to ride past the windows of the great chamber where all this was taking place, so that bride and groom could inspect each other: at a distance and in silence. Instead Louis sent a message to Mazarin that he was coming to the door of the conference chamber in the guise of ‘an unknown man'. Queen Anne readily agreed to this apparition
, but once again King Philip intervened heavily: Marie-Thérèse was not even to acknowledge the unknown's salute. ‘Not until she has passed through that door.' The mischievous Monsieur did however secure the admission from a nervously smiling Marie-Thérèse that ‘the door looks to me very fine and very good'.

  Nevertheless the pseudo-encounter was a success. Louis declared that Marie-Thérèse would be ‘easy to love' and Philip pronounced him a fine-looking son-in-law. As for Marie-Thérèse, in public she contemplated life in another country with ‘the door' in silence; but in private she admitted: ‘He is certainly very handsome …'

  For all that, Marie-Thérèse departed from Spain on 7 June in floods of tears, moaning to her chief lady the Duchess of Molina: ‘My father, my father …' Like Philip, the newly designated Marie-Thérèse knew that they were unlikely to meet again in their lifetime. It was not customary for foreign princesses to revisit the land of their birth: emotional ties were supposed to be severed. Marie-Thérèse's return to Spain would only be in exceptional circumstances, such as the failure and annulment of her marriage.

  Two days later, the ‘real' or French marriage took place in the little thirteenth-century church of St Jean-de-Luz which had recently been rebuilt. So august was the event felt to be, that the main portal through which the bridal pair passed was blocked up afterwards.* Marie-Thérèse, already technically Queen of France, wore a gown covered in the royal fleur-de-lys; her uncovered hair proved so thick that it was difficult to attach a crown to it. Her train was carried by two of the younger Orléans princesses. Louis looked both dashing and dignified in black velvet, richly jewelled. Having played his part with the aplomb demanded by custom and his own growing feeling for royally appropriate behaviour, Louis was now keen to cut, as one might say, to the chase: consummation of a royal marriage was quite as important a part of the ceremony, if not the most important, as the religious rites and the courtiers' agreements.