21 July 1759
From the Letters of King Stanislas to Queen Marie (1754-1766)
On this day, King Stanislas writes from Commercy to Queen Marie:
“Dearest heart, you say have nothing new to tell me. Accustomed though I am to your goodness, is it not like new every time you give me assurances of it? It is said that the voyage to Lyon will take place. If it happens during my stay at Versailles, I will be content to have every free moment to spend with my dear and only Mareczka, whom I embrace tenderly with all my heart and soul.”
Commentary:
The Duc de Choiseul, Louis XV’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, is pushing for what we would now call a summit meeting in Lyon between his master and the King of Naples, with a view to forging an alliance. It does not happen because Charles of Naples suddenly succeeds Ferdinand VI as King of Spain and urgently has to travel to Madrid. The alliance is later concluded anyway. Called the Family Pact and signed in 1761, it unites the Bourbons of France, Spain, Naples, and Parma in a defensive alliance. It is the third such agreement among the Bourbon rulers.
Pictured: Charles III leaving Naples for Spain in 1759. Credit — Par Antonio Joli — Museo Nacional del Prado [1], Domaine public, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31306656
The second surviving son of Philip V of Spain, and the eldest by his second wife, Elisabeth of Parma, Charles conquered Naples and Sicily in 1734. Now that his childless elder half-brother is dead, he is going to rule Spain as Charles III, leaving his younger son behind as King of Naples. His elder son is now Prince of Asturias and will one day rule Spain as Charles IV.
King Stanislas usually visits Versailles or Compiègne annually, occasionally both. In his last years, Queen Marie will travel from Compiègne to Commercy to spare him the journey. For more on his duchy of Lorraine, with which Commercy is associated, please read Versailles Century Country: Lorraine.
The translation from the French is my own. Images that are not my own are in the public domain; I only explicitly credit them when the uploader has made it a condition of sharing his/her work via Wikimedia Commons. Words in italics in the body of the post or bold italics in verbatim translations and image captions are in the Glossary; the royal family and other Bourbons are in the Who’s Who; information about the sources is in the Bibliography; all of these are in the Resources section and freely available to paid subscribers and Grandes Entrées. If you have questions, please ask in the comments.
That's a beautiful painting. I looked at a few other works by the artist, and they are quite lovely if you enjoy that detailed Italian-school style.