5 June 1769

From the Letters of Louis XV to the Infante Ferdinand of Parma

On this day, Louis XV writes from Marly to the Duke of Parma:

“My dear grandson,

I have come back here for about 15 days, and I shall go to Compiègne in the middle of next month. When you wrote to me on 20 May, you did not believe that you would be writing me so soon about the election of the Pope.

My arm is not making great progress, and the fine weather that I have been waiting for with such high hopes has not come. I count on us knowing soon from Vienna the date of the celebration of your marriage, as well as that of the consummation.

I embrace you very tenderly my dear grandson,

Louis.”

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Commentary:

The King had been at Marly in the first week of May. He is not as fond of it as his predecessor, and it is unusual for him to make 2 visits so close together. It is not explained why he has chosen to do so.

Pictured: An early view of Marly by Aveline from my own collection.

As has been mentioned a number of times in previous letters, the King fell off his horse in the hunting field in early February and sprained his arm.

Ferdinand of Parma is set to marry Archduchess Maria Amalia of Austria. There will be a gap between the dates of their marriage and its consummation because there will first be a proxy wedding in Vienna, and then an in-person one when she arrives in Parma.

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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 guides; 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.

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