18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 33

[cahn]

And, I mean, it doesn't have to be just 18th century characters, either!

(also, waiting for Yuletide!)

Comments

Re: Sending back princesses

[mildred_of_midgard]

Hee! :D

Here to deliver more gossip: in the volume that felis linked to is a short essay by Weber on the events of 1724, specifically when Louise Elisabeth got placed under house arrest.

Weber starts by saying that the rumors that went around concerning the incident were very similar to the Königsmarck affair. But whereas the Hanoverian affair is still talked about, the Spanish one has been totally forgotten. Possibly the Spanish court was better at coverups!

Weber then says that our sources about this episode are all unreliable, third-hand, and full of holes. So he only very tentatively draws conclusions, and makes it clear we have no idea what happened. Here's his account of what we know.

In 1723, just before his father Philip V abdicates and makes him king, soon-to-be Luis of Spain marries Louise Elisabeth, daughter of Regent Philippe d'Orleans. The groom is sixteen, the bride fourteen. Being used to France, young Louise Elisabeth rebels like you'd expect a teen to rebel when she encounters the strict etiquette of the Spanish court. Nothing in this 19th century essay about taking off her clothes to scrub the windows and tiles, but she likes running around the palace all day and buying drums and kids' toys and playing with them. This is not considered commensurate with the dignity of a queen.

One hot summer evening, she's wearing light clothes and romping around in the park with her ladies and some cavaliers of the court. Her husband looks out a window and sends someone to her to stop and come back inside immediately. She obeys, but in a big huff with body language so annoyed and protesting that he can see it from the window. Teenager alert! So he places her under house arrest and takes away the members of her retinue that have been supporting her in this behavior. (My sympathies are 100% with her from this description. Not sure how its accuracy compares to the one in Wikipedia; one could be bowdlerized and the other could be wildly exaggerated rumors.)

She protests by refusing to eat and drink, but after a few days is eventually allowed to go for supervised walks.

So now all of Europe is buzzing with rumors. One such rumor is that Luis locked her up out of jealousy. Which naturally leads to rumors that she was caught with a lover.

Some rumors point to the Marquis d'Aiseau, an obscure nobleman who has recently traveled to Spain, as this hypothetical lover. His initial letters said he'd been received well at court, but then--! He disappears! No more word from him.

Rumors abound that he started flirting with the Queen, Luis gave him 24 hours to leave Spain, he refused and behaved more outrageously, and so he was killed. There are various rumors about his manner of death: he was caught at night while climbing a ladder to the Queen's room, he was stabbed in a corridor leading to her room, or even killed in her room!

Weber: So what really happened? We don't know, because our sources suck. All we know is that he disappeared. But it seems unlikely that it was connected to Louise Elisabeth, because Luis let her go after only a few days, apparently convinced that she hadn't really meant any harm. (OTOH, maybe he was just better at coverups than the Hanovers!)

But where it gets gossipy and fun is when these rumors make an appearance in Brussels. Now, in 1724, Eugene is governor of the now Austrian Netherlands, but since who would want to live in the Netherlands when you could live in Vienna, has a deputy there. The deputy's wife and daughter are exchanging letters with their contacts in Spain. One such letter contains this passage:

You won't be surprised that the Marquis d'Aiseau would dare to aspire to a queen, but what's really surprising is that such a well-formed young man would fall in love with such a little monster.

Enter the Comte de Bonneval. This Comte de Bonneval guy had an interesting career, to say the least. I'll supplement Weber with Wikipedia here.

First Bonneval joins the French army, pisses off his superiors, is court martialed, gets a death sentence, and flees to Germany. There he pisses off Eugene, who sends him to the Austrian Netherlands. There he pisses off Eugene's deputy, gets court martialed, and is condemned to death again. But Charles VI commutes his sentence to imprisonment and banishment. Banished, Bonneval goes to join the Turks, converts to Islam, and changes his name to Ahmed. While working for the Ottomans, Bonneval helps them defeat the Austrians in the late 1730s. This is FS's first war, where he *really* doesn't distinguish himself with his martial prowess like he was expected to, and the Austrians lose a bunch of territory that Eugene (d. 1736) had conquered. Then Bonneval--stop me if you saw this coming--pisses off his Ottoman superiors and gets banished to the Black Sea. Eventually, he dies in Constantinople.

So 1724 is the episode where he pisses off Eugene's deputy in the Netherlands. See, Bonneval claims to be related to the Bourbons! And when he hears what was said about the "little monster" he's allegedly related to, he has to defend her honor. Playing Don Quixote (as a contemporary described it), he gives the wife of the deputy such a chewing out that she "fears the sharpness of Bonneval's tongue more than the sharpness of his sword," and shuts up.

But then her husband, Eugene's deputy, has Bonneval locked up. Nothing daunted, Bonneval writes to Eugene that he's ready to risk his neck on the scaffold for this. Fortunately for him, that's when Charles VI comes through with the commutation of the sentence. And then Bonneval goes to Turkey and begins the next chapter of his life.

So what happened to the disappearing Marquis? At least in 1861, that was a mystery.

But more fun from Wikipedia:

The Memoirs published under his name are spurious. See

Prince de Ligne, Mémoire sur le comte de Bonneval (Paris, 1817);

It's our RPF writer again! (Weber has a footnote citing Bonneval's memoirs, but warning the reader that their authenticity is doubted.)