THE PRINCESS DES URSINS.
THE MARRIED LIFE OF MARIE ANNE DE LA TRÉMOUILLE--SHE BECOMES THE CENTRE
OF CONTEMPORARY POLITICS IN ROME.
AMONG the heroines of the Fronde there were certainly lofty minds and
strongly tempered souls to be found; but, when the French nation
remitted to those Erminias and Hermengildas the care of its destiny upon
some grave emergency or decisive occasion, those very women so
conspicuous for their generous impulses, delicate tastes, and unsparing
self-abnegation, only profited by their possession of power to
inaugurate a policy the record of which has remained branded with
opprobrium in history as a treason to their country. The bare
remembrance, indeed, of those sterile agitations proves the first rock
upon which the memory of the Princess des Ursins suffered shipwreck. In
the brilliant daughter of the Duke de Noirmoutier, heiress of a name
mixed up with all the struggles of that epoch, we behold a last survivor
of the Regency, and the dramatic vicissitudes of a life devoted to the
pursuit of political power, have blinded the mental vision of posterity
to the grandeur of a work of which that eminent woman was the principal
instrument. Proud and restless, as largely dominated as any other of her
sex by the vivacity of her preferences and her dislikes, but full of
sound sense in her views and in the firmness of her designs, the skilful
adviser of a King and Queen of Spain has not received at the hands of
posterity the merit due to an idea pursued with a wonderful perseverance
amidst obstacles which would have daunted men even of the strongest
resolution. Because her public career ended in a catastrophe, popular
opinion, which readily follows success, considers as merely abortive
that long career during which her hand sustained upon the brow of a
French prince the tottering crown against which the arms of Europe, the
distrust of Spain, and the discouragement of France vied in conspiring.
Yet in her girlhood, during the last days of the Fronde, Marie Anne de
la Trémouille must early have observed how greatly beauty can aid
ambition, and how, by tact, endowments the most frivolous may be brought
to the service of interests the most serious and complicated. Married in
1650 to the Prince de Chalais, of the house of Talleyrand, she conceived
for her young husband the sole passion to be noted throughout a life in
which, especially during its later period, love figured only in the
dullest of hues. This marriage took place during the wars of the second
Fronde, and at an epoch when a rage for duelling, the anarchical and
ruthless effect of Frenchmen's ideas touching the "point of honour," had
infused a new element into the spirit of party, and had become a
veritable mania. It chanced on the occasion of one of those duels in
1663--that of the two brothers Frette--wherein four fought on either
side, and in which the Duke de Beauvilliers was slain, that the Prince
de Chalais figured as one of the champions. The law against duelling,
enforced by Henri Quatre, and revived with so much rigour by Richelieu
against the father of the famous Marshal de Luxembourg, and from which
practice the blood of Bouteville had not completely delivered France,
was still in full vigour. The consequences being so terrible, that the
Prince de Chalais, to place himself beyond reach of them, was compelled
to seek safety in flight. He succeeded in escaping to Spain, whither his
wife followed him.
During this brief period of her union with the Prince de Chalais, whom
she adored, Marie Anne de la Trémouille had shone as conspicuously by
her wit as by her beauty in the famous circle of the Hôtel d'Albret,
where she first met Madame Scarron, whose destiny it was later on in
life--as Madame de Maintenon--to be so closely allied with the Princess.
Thus united by ties of the tenderest affection, scarcely had the young
couple quitted Madrid, after a three years' sojourn, to establish
themselves at Rome, when the death of M. de Chalais left her a childless
widow, without protection, and almost destitute--a prey to grief
apparently the most profound, and to anxieties concerning the future
readily conceivable.
Madame de Chalais was then in the plenitude of that attractive beauty so
closely observed and described in all its most delicate shades by the
graphic pen of the Duke de Saint-Simon when at a more advanced period of
her life, but on which beauty, by a miracle of art and nature, the
wasting hand of time had as yet scarcely brought a blemish.
The first years of her widowhood, passed in a convent, were marked by
the liveliest sorrow. By degrees, however, love of society resumed its
sway over her, and she reappeared therein with all her wonted
attractiveness, markedly patronised in the highest circles of Roman
society by Cardinal d'Estrées, the French ambassador--assuredly not
without design, since at the same time that high functionary so
distinguished her, he directed the attention of Louis XIV. to the wit
and capacity of the charming widow. It was, therefore, in great measure
with a political purpose, and by the diplomatic tact of the two brothers
d'Estrées, that the second marriage of the Princess de Chalais with
Flavio Orsini, Duke di Bracciano, himself a widower, was arranged
(1675). Thenceforward the Palazzo Orsini became the focus of French
influence, which was further increased by a marriage promoted between
her sister Louise Angélique de la Trémouille and her brother-in-law, the
Duke de Lanti.
She thus, therefore, became definitively an inhabitant of Rome and
_quasi_ Roman. What did she do there? How did she consort with an
Italian husband? With what ambition was she soon inspired in the more
elevated position in which her second marriage placed her at Rome? What
talents, what political aptitude were manifested by her, and developed
at a court which at that time bore the highest repute for skill in
politics and diplomacy? How did Italian finesse and cunning blend and
harmonize with the quick penetration and delicate tact of the
Frenchwoman? What advantage did the French government, which, after the
death of the Prince de Chalais, could no longer treat her as a
proscribed subject, seek to draw immediately from her position and
disposition? What were her relations with the first personages at the
court of France, with the Roman cardinals, with the French ambassadors
at Rome, with the representatives or the principal personages of other
nations, and what splendour did her palace display, whether through the
influence of natural taste or a calculating ambition? In a word, what
was the mode of life, and what was the career of the Duchess di
Bracciano, at Rome, before she proceeded to make application of the
science she must there have acquired upon another and a wider stage?
These are the curious and interesting points, upon which the recent
discovery in the public library at Stockholm, of copies of nearly one
hundred inedited letters addressed by the Princess des Ursins to Madame
la Maréchale de Noailles and Madame de Maintenon, in addition to five
long letters published by the Abbé Millot,[15] enable us to furnish very
nearly complete details, ranging from 1675 to 1701.
[15] Among the _pièces justificatives_ appended to the Mémoires du
Maréchal de Noailles.
Owning as its mistress a woman so abundantly charming, the Palazzo
Orsini became more than ever the rendezvous of the best society. The
Duchess di Bracciano held therein an actual Court, as numerous also as
it was distinguished. Each visitor delighted to frequent it, in order to
witness with his own eyes to what a degree of perfection and
gracefulness a French lady could attain. The men especially sought her
society; for although womanly, and more so than many around her, the
habitual subject of their conversations pleased her better than those of
persons of her own sex, and she therein exhibited a solidity of
understanding, a correctness of view, together with a perfect lucidity
of expression which captivated the Roman nobles, and made them feel it a
satisfaction to submit their ideas to her, and hear her discuss them.
The Duke di Bracciano was not mentally up to her mark, nevertheless in
the first season which followed their union, a season of complaisant
affection, when susceptibility was held in check by a more spontaneous
admiration, he felt himself flattered by the homage she received, and
which wore the semblance of an eulogium upon his choice and good taste.
But, eventually, too mediocre, or too much kept in the background, not
having wit enough himself to appreciate that of his brilliant partner
without blushing at his own defect, or, it might be, sufficient
consideration not being given to the inevitable arousing of his
masculine _amour propre_, he sought to attribute to himself the
popularity which she obtained, and that which might have constituted his
pride became his torment. It would have been wanting in dignity to
himself, he felt, ever to have owned or even in the least degree
betrayed the secret motive of his wounded self-love; but the excessive
extravagance of his wife, and the enormous expenses in which she
involved him afforded ample pretext for his complaints: such was the
ground, therefore, upon which he fell back. The Princess unhappily
comprehended all this, and went to greater lengths than ever: hence
untoward misunderstandings ere long arose between them.
Nevertheless, through the effect of her irresistible attractions, the
Duchess di Bracciano became the centre of a cosmopolitan society which,
in the midst of the noisiest diversions, debated daily in the capital of
the papal dominions the weightiest problems of contemporary politics.
Whilst externally her palace on the Piazza Navone blazed broadly with
illuminated devices and coloured fires, and made all the echoes of Rome
resound in pealing harmonies with the name of Louis the Great, in the
interior of her magnificent saloons the vicissitudes of the long
struggle waged between that monarch and the Holy Father were watched
with inquietude, whether as concerning regal claims or the question of
religious freedom--a portentous strife which seemed to increase in
energy at each fresh act of violence on the part of Louis XIV. against
his Protestant subjects. To the arduous questions in which theology ran
so closely parallel with State interests, to the burning rivalries of
doctrines and persons which then set by the ears the most illustrious
among Christian prelates, were added the daily accidents of a policy to
which fell the burden of maintaining in all corners of the universe a
constant equilibrium between the Houses of France and Austria--a
permanent problem which soon helped to complicate the perspective opened
by the next succession to the Crown of Spain.
In such a school--borne along the brimming tide of pleasure by the soft
breeze of homage--did Madame di Bracciano's political intelligence
rapidly ripen: and if by a glittering gaiety, ease of manner, and a
species of decorous gallantry, her life appeared to continue the
traditions of Anne of Austria's time, the restrained firmness of her
opinions, her reverence for absolute authority, her settled resolve to
owe nothing to any one save to her own Great King, combined to link her
fast to the new school of power and respect founded by Louis XIV. in the
plenitude of his sway. Thus the passion for politics and power was not
slow to obtain the mastery over the mind of a woman constituted like
Marie Anne de la Trémouille, who had failed to find in her second
marriage any community of taste or intellect.
The disputes between Louis and Innocent XI. proved, perhaps, another
source of disunion between the ducal pair. The Orsini were in some sort
a sacerdotal family, at the same time that they stood at the head of the
Roman aristocracy: it had always furnished Pontiffs and Cardinals to the
Church. It was not, therefore, probable that the Duke di Bracciano, who
was its chief, should hold, in those famous quarrels, an opinion
contrary to that of the Holy Father, more especially if, as it was
rumoured, having no child, he had by an adoption long kept secret,
sought for a son in the family of Innocent XI. himself. The same
induction cannot be drawn from acts which were comprised in the life of
the Duchess di Bracciano. Whether at Rome or at Madrid, the ideas held
by the Court of Versailles upon dogmatic questions, or upon the
relations of the Church with the State, were hers also; and in Italy, in
the halls of the Vatican, she openly evinced her detestation of the
Jesuits, in whom the Ultramontane doctrines were personified. Therein,
in all probability, lay a new stumbling block against which the conjugal
harmony jarred, already shaken as it was by all the dissemblances of
habit, appreciation, and of taste, which difference of nationality
engendered. "_Ce ménage ne fut pas concordant_," says Saint-Simon;
"_quoique sans brouillerie ouverte, et les époux furent quelquefois bien
aises de se séparer._"
To escape from these different causes of domestic ennui, the Duchess di
Bracciano varied her sojourn in Italy by long and frequent visits to
France, going thither to present, by clever and well-timed calculation,
the spectacle of a Roman princess whom no one even within the grandiose
precincts of Versailles surpassed either in true French _esprit_ or
steady devotion to the Sovereign. The Duchess formed a close intimacy
with the Maréchale de Noailles, to whom she was related; she made the
acquaintance of the minister Torcy, who was capable of appreciating all
the varied resources of her woman's nature and her woman's wit; and she
was presented to Madame de Maintenon, who had become the goddess of the
Court. Her second visit took place shortly after the period of the
Treaty of Ryswick--that is to say, near upon that fatal conjuncture at
which Louis XIV. saw England escape him for ever, supported as she was
by the Dutch alliance, and had hope only from the Court of Spain to
counterbalance the formidable union of his enemies. This was the reason
that each of those personages, at Versailles or Paris, had for
retaining the Duchess di Bracciano in the interests of France in the
future succession of Spain, and recommended them to her at the Papal
Court, to the Spanish Ambassador at Rome, the Duke d'Uzeda, or indeed to
any other Spaniard of distinction whom she might meet with in that
capital.
The letters addressed to the Duchess Lanti, her sister, which are, as it
were, a last echo of the conversations of the Hôtel d'Albret,[16] were
for the most part written from Paris between the years 1685 and 1698,
the latter being the date of the demise of the Duke di Bracciano. The
advanced age and failing health of her second husband had, in that year,
summoned her back to Rome, and a kind of reconciliation, brought about
chiefly through the good offices of Cardinal Porto-Carrero--soon
afterwards destined to play a great part in the political affairs of his
native country--had preceded that demise, which placed the Duchess in
possession of estates and property reputed to be considerable, but upon
which heavy incumbrances, increased by lawsuits, brought down upon her
endless anxiety and almost ruin.
[16] Collection of M. Geffroy, pp. 1-25.
The obligation of discharging an immense amount of debt compelled Madame
di Bracciano to part with the property of the duchy bearing that name.
She was, therefore, forced to relinquish that title and adopt that of
Princess des Ursins (Orsini), under which she has taken her place in
history. The beneficence of the French King was assured beforehand to a
noble widow married under his auspices, ruined, so to speak, in his
service, and whose palace had become the residence of his ambassador
from the moment that the Prince de Monaco had superseded the disgraced
Cardinal de Bouillon in that high post. The Princess obtained,
therefore, one of those Court pensions, the ordinary patrimony of all
great families, and of which the good offices of the Maréchale de
Noailles, the staunch patroness of her kinswoman, had ere long succeeded
in doubling the amount, when the death of Cardinal Maidalchini had left
the considerable subsidy disposable by which that member of the Sacred
College was secretly secured to the policy of Louis XIV. She had,
indeed, herself solicited an increase of her pension in a charmingly
witty letter, in which she undertook to prove how useful it would be for
the King's service that she should be richer. "My house," says she, "is
the only French abode open to the public. It is in my assemblages there
that one can speak to people whom it would be difficult to meet with
elsewhere." And thus she rose sufficiently high in the esteem of the
cabinet of Versailles to obtain even the recall of the French Ambassador
from Rome.