Royal Mistresses of France

Jeanne-Antoinette dressed up as a shepherdess for the ball and we can imagine how her heart thudded as she pushed her way around the crammed, candlelit Hall of Mirrors, looking at the masks worn by the enormous chattering crowd and wondering when her moment was to come. She had been told that the King and his closest friends had decided to attend in the rather novel disguise of a group of clipped Yew trees and so she must have peered closely at each topiaried bush as it danced past, wondering which one was the King until finally one came to a halt in front of her and removed his mask, revealing the monarch’s laughing dark eyes.

Matterhorn wrote:I always think that stories of mistresses and adulterous affairs are very sad.

The Duc faced Madame de Genlis. "It is very important for a prince to have a virtuous wife. That is one thing which I hope you have instilled in my sons."

"Someday, she will leave you." Madame de Genlis' usually musical voice came to him like an icy wave. "And someday, perhaps, so will I."

"The mother of my children will never leave me," replied the Duc. "And neither will their governess." He may have been against despotism, but he could sound dictatorial when he chose. He started for the door, but suddenly spun around and flashed her his most charming smile, his features handsome and seemingly benign.

"Now, Félicité. Now it begins."

"Now it begins," she echoed him in hollow tones. "But where will it end?" And she gazed with unseeing eyes out of the window into the depths of the night.

~from Madame Royale by Elena Maria Vidal

The Countess de Balbi, who first became the favorite of the Count de Provence, was the daughter of Bertrand de Caumont La Force and of Madeleine de Galard de Brassac de Beam. M. de Caumont was one of the Count's gentlemen, and his daughter was appointed 'dame pour accompagner' and afterwards 'dame d'atours' of the Countess, who was called Madame. M. de Balbi, her husband, was of a Genoese family and served as Colonel in the regiment of Bourbon. Madame de Balbi was tolerably pretty, was a great coquette, and was feared for her wit, which spared nothing and nobody. She pleased the Count de Provence by her conversation more than by her charms. The Count de Balbi was a jealous husband (a rare being at that time), but he was exiled to Senlis; he afterwards emigrated and returned to France at the beginning of the Consulate. Madame de Balbi became the great power in the house of the Count de Provence. 'She was a sort of Dubarry, but well born.'

In stating the motives that induced him to quit France he mentions his reluctance to accept the services of the revolutionized clergy:—

'I was convinced,' he says, 'that I had no choice between apostasy and martyrdom; the former revolted me, and I will own I felt no great vocation for the latter. I talked a great deal with Madame de Balbi on this subject, and we agreed that there was a third course open to me, which was to abandon a country where the usual exercise of our religious duties was about to be proscribed.'

Now Madame de Balbi (nee Caumont de la Force) was a lady separated from her husband, and supposed to be higher in Monsieur's favour than she ought to be; and we wish we could only smile at the simplicity with which the Prince makes a public confession that, though he would not accept the ministration of a Constitutional priest, he consulted Madame de Balbi on the spiritual concerns of his conscience!

The king's sentiment for this attractive woman had from the first the character of a love which hides from itself, under the name of friendship, what the age of the King and the reserve of the woman did not permit to be to be avowed; he felt an affection for her which he styled paternal, and he called her his daughter, not daring through respect for himself and respect for her, to call her by any other name. (The Duchess de Berry and the Court of Louis XVIII)

Gradually, Madame du Cayla succeeded in establishing almost as complete an ascendency over the mind of Louis XVIII. as she had over his heart, and used it without scruple in the interests of the ultra-Royalist party. 'From the day,' writes Pasquier, 'when M. Decazes had been taken from him by proceedings which had wounded his heart, his self-esteem, and his regard for the royal dignity, the King had only occupied himself with business so that it should not be said that he had given it up.' 2 Weighed down beneath the burden of his infirmities, he had begun to fall into a state of apathy which put him at the mercy of those who resolutely applied themselves to the task of governing him. Occasionally, a flicker of the old spirit would reveal itself, but it was speedily quenched; all he desired now was peace and quiet, and Madame du Cayla would give him none until he had surrendered to her will. To her influence may be traced the fall of the high-minded and patriotic Duc de Richelieu, who had refused to lend himself to the plans of Monsieur [Artois] and his friends ;8 the nomination of Villele as Prime Minister; the ignominious dismissal of Chateaubriand from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the acceptance by the King of the Septennial Bill of 1824 and other reactionary measures.

The attitude of the different members of the Royal Family towards the favourite is interesting. Monsieur, although he does not appear to have been a party to the plot woven around his helpless brother, at any rate in its early stages, did not scruple to take advantage of it, and repeatedly urged Madame du Cayla to 'ignore the things which spite and folly might say against her, and to enjoy in peace the noble use which she was making of the confidence and affection of the King.'4 The Duchesse d'Angouleme, on the other hand, could not bring herself to countenance a lady to whom gossip had attributed in her youth at least one unorthodox connection, and not only treated her with coldness, but expressed her displeasure at the intimacy which existed between her dame d'atours, Madame de Choisy, and the favourite. At the same time, we may venture to doubt if, at heart, Madame altogether regretted an intrigue which, however unworthy it may have been, had put an end to the dissensions in the Royal Family and was doing so much to promote the interests of the party whom she honoured by her protection.

As for the Duchesse de Berry, less fastidious in her choice of friends than her sister-in-law, she appears to have been on very good terms with the favourite, though she did not at all approve of the King's habit of referring to Madame du Cayla, even in the presence of his family, as 'his third daughter,' which seemed to place that lady on a footing of equality with the Duchesse d'Angouleme and herself; and, on one occasion, she expressed her sentiments upon the matter rather pointedly. However, the relations between the two ladies were, on the whole, excellent; indeed, Madame du Cayla appears to have entertained a real affection for the princess, since she remained faithful to her cause after the Revolution of 1830, corresponded with her frequently, and even intrigued on her behalf.

Nothing so perplexed and annoyed the Duchess d'AngouIeme and the Count d'Artois, in the last mouths of Louis the Eighteenth's life, as his obstinacy in refusing to receive the archbishop and to submit to the ceremonies which the Catholic Church imposes upon dying moments. He refused, as a condemned man would the visit of the executioner. At length Madame Du Cayla induced him to consent, and in so doing closed the door of the king's apartment against her for the rest of her days. Louis, grateful, made a will in her favor and left it on his desk. But Charles the Tenth entered his brother's cabinet, carried off all the papers, burnt the will, and made a beggarly compensation to Madame Du Cayla of a thousand a year for her life.

Elena wrote:

Matterhorn wrote:I always think that stories of mistresses and adulterous affairs are very sad.

I do, too. Such decadence and public scandal weakened the monarchy and then poor Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette had to bear the brunt of it all.

princess garnet wrote:

Elena wrote:

Matterhorn wrote:I always think that stories of mistresses and adulterous affairs are very sad.

I do, too. Such decadence and public scandal weakened the monarchy and then poor Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette had to bear the brunt of it all.

And also celebrated for all the wrong reasons. How many remember either Louis XIV or Louis's XV's wives?

Like Gabrielle de Polignac at the court of Louis XVI, Madame du Cayla eventually used her friendship with the royal family to promote a conservative political agenda - in this case, furthering the cause of the Ultras, the far-Right of nineteenth century French royalism. Louis XVIII had come to the throne in 1814 with the intention of attempting to arbitrate between the Left, liberalism and the Right, in the hope of healing the political scars caused by the Revolution. However, after the assassination of his nephew, the Duc de Berry, by a republican terrorist in 1820, the ageing monarch moved further to the Right. Liberal monarchists, dismayed at their sovereign's new-found sympathy for the Ultras, tended to blame Madame du Cayla, in much the same way as devotees of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette had castigated Gabrielle de Polignac as a canker at the heart of government in the 1780s. Given the closeness of the obese King Louis to the radiant and sophisticated du Cayla, many assumed (then and now) that she was his mistress.