On this day, Mme de Maintenon writes to Mme des Ursins. She reports that the Queen of England visited Marly the previous day; she is well. Her son the King will attain his majority the following day, which is to say today, and resembles his uncle. Princess Louise will be as tall as her mother and has some wit.
Commentary:
Mme de Maintenon writes often to Mme des Ursins during these years of the War of the Spanish Succession. Mme des Ursins, the French widow of a Roman prince, is Louis XIV’s chief agent at the court of his grandson, Philip V of Spain. Mme des Ursins is the chief lady-in-waiting of Philip’s consort Marie-Gabrielle de Savoie. The young queen listens to her and the young king listens to his wife, which makes Mme des Ursins the power behind the throne.
Pictured: Marie-Anne de la Trémoille (1644-1722), widow of Prince Flavio Orsini, Duke of Bracciano, called the Princesse des Ursins in French. This portrait is attributed to Largillière.
The Queen of England is Mary of Modena, exiled in France since the Glorious Revolution. She is a widow with a teenaged son born in London, now putatively James III of England and VIII of Scotland, and a young daughter born in France.
Pictured: James Francis Edward Stuart (1688-1766), James III or the Old Pretender to his supporters, as painted by Belle in 1703.
Louis XIV was generous to his late cousin, James II, and continues to be generous to his widow and children. They live at his expense in the royal château at Saint-Germain and at intervals he funds attempts to restore the younger James to his throne by force.
Pictured: The Château-Vieux at Saint-Germain, where the exiled Stuarts live until Louis XIV’s death.
After the Sun King’s death, the French government’s generosity comes to an end. Mary dies in a convent in 1718 and her son is politely informed that he must leave France. He spends the rest of his life in Rome, where he marries and fathers an heir, popularly remembered as Bonnie Prince Charlie. As for Louise, she will unfortunately be carried off by smallpox in 1712.
There must have been earlier letters between Louis XIV’s second wife and his chief agent in Spain, but their extant, published correspondence begins in the summer of 1706.
If you have questions that I have not addressed in the commentary, please ask in the comments.
I dig Orsini=Ursins. It’s a bit like Medici = Medicis (you’ll have to hear the Italian = French in your mind) which the first time I actually heard it sounded so different it took me a second to realise who the person was referring to (followed almost immediately by a voice in my inner ear reminding me: i francesi sono cattivi…this saying of last generations will be familiar to our friend Portia, I’m sure. I’m equally sure it’s not a truth set in stone, but rather one of those expressions of rivalry between the two states.
It was a real web of relations, wasn’t it. With Maintenon and Orsini/Ursins wielding their soft power. Who was it who made the play on words re Maintenon/Maintenant?