Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King Read Free

Liebow; Frédéric Malle for his photograph of the blocked marriage door of Louis XIV; M. Bernard Minoret for allowing me yet again to borrow from his precious library; Graham Norton for information about the history of the West Indies; Dr Robert Oresko, especially for help in Turin; Dr David Parrott for Rantzau discussions; Judy Price for information about Cotignac; Professor Munro Price for a felicitous shared visit to the birthplace of Louis XIV; Professor John Rogister, the Vicomte de Rohan, President of the Société des Amis de Versailles, and Madame Anémone de Truchis, also of Versailles; Mme Jean Sainteny (Claude Dulong); Mme Dominique Simon-Hiernard, Musées de Poitiers; Chantal Thomas; Hugo Vickers; Dr Humphrey Wise, the National Gallery, London; Anthony Wright; Francis Wyndham; the staff of the Archives Nationales and Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the British Library, the London Library and Kensington Public Library in London.
My editors on both sides of the Atlantic, Nan Talese of Doubleday and Alan Samson of Weidenfeld & Nicolson, were enormously supportive. I thank Steve Cox and Helen Smith for the copy-editing and Index respectively. My PA Linda Peskin, who put the book on disk, must at times have felt like an extra lady-in-waiting at the court of the Sun King. My French family, the four Cavassonis, made visits to Paris an extra pleasure. Lastly, this book is justly dedicated to my husband, as ever the first reader.
Antonia Fraser
Feast of St Catherine, 2004–Lady Day, 2006
Note There are three perennial problems writing historical narrative for this period, to which I have offered the following solutions. First, names and titles, so often very similar, can be extremely confusing. For the reader's sake, I have tried to be clear rather than consistent; the list of Principal Characters, awarding one (slightly different) name to each person, is intended as a guide. Second, dates in England, Old Style (OS), lagged behind those on the Continent until 1752; I have used the French New Style (NS) unless otherwise indicated. Third, where money is concerned, I have included rough comparisons to the present day, again for the reader's sake, although these can never be more than approximate.

CHRONOLOGICAL POLITICAL SUMMARY

1610       
Accession of nine-year-old Louis XIII as King of France following the assassination of his father, Henri IV. Regency of his mother, Marie de Médicis.
1615
Double royal marriage: Louis XIII weds Anne of Austria, daughter of Philip III of Spain; his sister, Elisabeth, weds Anne's brother, who accedes as Philip IV of Spain in 1621.
1617
Louis XIII assumes power, after countenancing murder of his mothers's unpopular favourite, Concini.
1618
Thirty Years War begins in Prague with a Protestant revolt against the anti-national Catholic policy of the Habsburg Emperor in Vienna. In 1621 the war spreads to the Rhineland Palatinate and gradually involves all Europe.
1624
Cardinal Richelieu becomes King's chief minister. Over the next eighteen years his ruthless policies impose the autocratic authority of a centralised monarchy, destroying the last fortified strongholds of the French Protestant Huguenots and curbing the rights of the nobility. In foreign affairs he challenges Habsburg hegemony on France's eastern and southern frontiers.
1625
Charles I ascends the English throne; marries Louis XIII's sister Henrietta Maria.
1626
Richelieu subsidises Protestant Sweden's entry into Thirty Years War against the Emperor and Spain. He authorises the Company of the Hundred Associates to control New France and develop trade along the St Lawrence valley and regions explored by Champlain (who founded Quebec in 1608).
1635
France enters the Thirty Years War, grouped with Sweden, Savoy and the Dutch against the Spanish and Austrians.
1638
Birth of Dauphin Louis, future Louis XIV.
1640
Birth of his brother Philippe, to be known as Monsieur.
1642
Richelieu dies: the Italian-born Cardinal Mazarin, a