On this day, our author takes advantage of a cease-fire in northwestern Germany during the first full year of the Seven Years War to visit the city of Celle. There he meets a resident Frenchman, M de Beaulieu. This gentleman, once the First Equerry to the Duke of Luneburg, fills him in on some local history involving a beautiful Frenchwoman:
“Mlle d’Olbreuse, the young and pretty daughter of a gentleman of Saintonge, went to Zelle after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The reigning Duke of Lunebourg at that time saw her at his court, where she was a maid of honour to the Duchess, and fell in love with her. However, his advances found the greatest resistance in the young girl. A few years later, the Duchess died. The sovereign Duke, still in love, proposed marriage to Mlle d’Olbreuse. She, being very clever, saw that she would either have to become a princess or marry secretly, and that the latter kind of ceremony would deprive her children, even though legitimate, of any succession rights, and she continued to resist. A little later, the Emperor needed the Duke of Lunebourg’s vote in the Diet. His minister addressed himself to Mlle d’Olbreuse with a view to winning over the Duke, who loved her. She accepted on the condition that the price of the success of her mediation would be recognition as a princess of the Empire. There was no delay in dispatching a document to that effect to her and she then consented to marry the Duke, who married her openly as a princess. They had no children and the duchies of Zelle and Lunebourg passed by inheritance to the house of the Elector of Hanover, King of England.”
Commentary:
The author garbles some facts, but he is correct about the origins of Mlle d’Olbreuse. She was indeed the daughter of a gentleman from Saintonge. His family seat, the château of Olbreuse, then in the province of Saintonge, is today in the department of Deux-Sèvres. The Olbreuse family were Huguenots (French Calvinists). Like all their co-religionists, they were persecuted after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.
Pictured: The château of Olbreuse in Usseau, Deux-Sèvres. Credit — Par Pegase44 — Travail personnel, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45932281
Eléonore d’Olbreuse did eventually get to Zelle, but long before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. She went first to the Hague, where she lived for a time under the protection of the Prince and Princess of Tarento, who, despite their Italian title, were French Huguenots. There she met their daughter-in-law, a princess of Hesse-Cassel, who took her along in 1664 on a visit to Cassel, where she first met George William, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg-Celle. The Duke, who in fact had never been married, then found occasions to visit the Hague. Mlle d’Olbreuse, contrary to what our author was told by this M de Beaulieu, or perhaps he misremembered it, married her duke secretly in 1665.
Pictured: Eléonore-Marie d’Esmier d’Olbreuse (1639-1722), initially Lady of Harburg and Countess of Wilhelmsburg, then Duchess of Brunswick-Luneburg-Celle by marriage to George William, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg-Celle.
It was in the palace at Celle, or Zelle, that they settled and spent their married life. They married again publicly in 1676 and in 1680 Eléonore was acknowledged as Duchess of Brunswick-Luneburg-Celle.
Pictured: A view of the palace at Celle. Credit — CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=549616
Valfons is wrong to say that George William and Eléonore had no children. Their daughter Sophia Dorothea was born in 1666. In 1682, she married her cousin Prince George of Hanover, later Elector of Hanover and King of Great Britain and Ireland as George I. It was a spectacularly unhappy marriage with a tragic outcome for their daughter, but through their Hanoverian grandchildren George William and Eléonore are ancestors of the present British royal family and many other royal families besides. Valfons is correct, however, that Celle and Luneburg passed to their son-in-law on George William’s death, which occurred in 1705.
Pictured: George William (1624-1705), Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg-Calenberg, then of Brunswick-Luneburg-Celle.
Eléonore founded a Calvinist church in Celle and sponsored the immigration of several hundred Huguenots to the city, where today there is a Hugenotten Strasse (Huguenot Street). She also arranged marriages for her sisters. Her sister Marie d’Olbreuse married a fellow Huguenot, Olivier de Beaulieu-Marconnay (1660-1751), who was given a prominent position at the court of Celle. The M de Beaulieu that Valfons meets in 1757 must be their son.
The translation from the French is my own, as it always is unless I credit someone else. If you have questions that I have not addressed in the commentary, please ask in the comments.