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cahnIn the previous post Charles II found AITA:
Look, I, m, believe in live and let live. (And in not going on my travels again. Had enough of that to last a life time.) Why can't everyone else around me be more chill? Instead, my wife refuses to employ my girlfriend, my girlfriend won't budge and accept another office, my brother is set on a course to piss off everyone (he WILL go on his travels again), and my oldest kid shows signs of wanting my job which is just not on, sorry to say. And don't get me started about Mom (thank God she's living abroad). What am I doing wrong? AITA?
Look, I, m, believe in live and let live. (And in not going on my travels again. Had enough of that to last a life time.) Why can't everyone else around me be more chill? Instead, my wife refuses to employ my girlfriend, my girlfriend won't budge and accept another office, my brother is set on a course to piss off everyone (he WILL go on his travels again), and my oldest kid shows signs of wanting my job which is just not on, sorry to say. And don't get me started about Mom (thank God she's living abroad). What am I doing wrong? AITA?
Re: Louis XIV gossip
Date: 2022-03-21 09:34 am (UTC)Bits and pieces: Spangler knows how to start a story/essay, to wit, thusly:
In June 1701, the only brother of Louis XIV of France, Philippe, Duke of Orléans, passed away in his château in Saint-Cloud just outside of Paris. He left behind a widow and a son, but also a significant male favourite, with whom he had shared his life for nearly forty years: Philippe, Chevalier de Lorraine. The new Duke of Orléans offered to continue his late father’s gift to the Chevalier of a pension (about 10,000 écus, or 30,000 livres), and to allow him to keep his apartments at the Palais-Royal. Several contemporaries noted the gesture, and added that the Chevalier retained the rooms, but refused the pension. Dangeau quotes the young Orléans as offering it because, “I inherit the totality of his wealth, thus it will always be him who gives it to you”. With a similar gesture towards fidelity and generosity of spirit, Saint-Simon says the Chevalier’s refusal was made “with grandeur, since by grandeur it had been offered”. Sourches adds that in addition to the apartment, the Chevalier wished only to retain the honour of the young duke’s protection. The Chevalier outlived his long-term patron and partner by only a year, dying in his apartments at the Palais-Royal in December 1702.
Had not known Philippe the Regent had acted thus towards his Dad's boyfriend, but, despite neither Monsieur nor the Chevalier being nice people: awww.
In case anyone was wondering how and whether the Chevalier was related to FS: the Chevalier (whose first name was Philippe which is why no one refers to him that way, there are just too many Philippes in this story already) was the younger son of a younger son of a Duke of Lorraine, meaning he was a distant cousin to the Lorraine main line, but this still made him a prince - as opposed to, say, Philippe's previous favourite, de Guiche, who had been a noble but not in the prince category, which mattered in status-obsessed Versailles, and so initially Lorraine was seen as a more suitable companion for a King's brother. The "Chevalier" title was due to the fact that this particular younger son to a younger son was supposed to become a Knight of Malta, only he never bothered to show up, as opposed to one of his brothers who actually did fight for the order in some battles. Otoh the Chevalier did distinguish himself in battle for France a couple of times during the phase when Philippe d'Orleans also reaped some laurels as a general, before Louis, supposedly because he himself had not won a single battle as the main general (he won plenty of battles in his capacity as King, but other generals had the primary command in those), arranged it so his brother had no supreme command of a battle agian
- the Chevalier being physically gorgeous is universally testified to, including by both of Philippe's wives (neither of whom had good things to say about his character), Madame de Sevigné the letter writer and the various memoirists like Saint Simon who couldn't stand him; his looks and charm (along with his high birth) certainly gave him an entry (he had no money at all when starting at court and died rich), but don't explain that he and Philippe remained an item - with him as the primary favourite - for forty years, especially since neither man was monogamous, and his control over the Orleans household; Spangler more than once compares him to Madame de Pompadour, who also managed to make herself indispensible to her royal and retain control until her death far beyond the early phase of phsysical fashion
- on a note that makes you, well, me, exclaim "Vive la Revolution" and wish it had started a century earlier: I had known that the event that ultimately triggered the Chevalier's brief banishment (a two years exile in Rome where he had a fling with Louis' first love Marie Mancini) was Philippe demanding benefices for his boyfriend, i.e. the income (and titular abbotship) of various high prestige abbeys, and Louis saying no way was a guy of the Chevalier's character qualified for this; what I hadn't known was that the Chevalier actually did get the abbeys in question once his brief Roman holiday had ended; to show just how high prestige and rich they were, Spangler points out that previous titular abbots had included Cardinal Richelieu
- while Philippe d'Orleans the first, Monsieur, comes across as a homosexual in the modern sense - i.e. his preference is consistently for men, and the only two sexual relationships with women that he demonstrably had were with his wives, i.e. a social obligation, not a choice -, the Chevalier had female lovers as well as male ones, some for career reasons (early on, for example, he had an affair with one of Minette's ladies-in-waiting, whom he used a spy and then discarded9, others seem to have been because he could, so he probably was a bisexual in the modern sense; he also had some illegitimate children
- here's a footnote story about one of his illegitimate sons: There is more to this story than is fully known: Dangeau states that Beauvernois defected from the army in 1690, and he is later found at the court of Hanover, where he had married into the circle of prominent Hanoverian courtly and ministerial families. Perhaps ironically, these Hanoverian nobles were closely connected to one of the second Madame’s favourites, Frau von Harling. One can only speculate on the relationship between the illegitimate child of Madame’s nemesis and the court of her favourite aunt, the Electress Sophia. Would Madame have patronized him to show favour to her rival, to please her husband, or perhaps to spite him?
=> I'm wondering this as well, Spangler. Frau von Harling, btw, wasn't just a favourite of Liselotte's, it was the governess who raised her, and she loved her as dearly as Wilhelmine did Sonsine or MT Frau von Fuchs. So, what do you think, why did she help the Chevalier's bastard son?
- back when Mildred was reading Horowski, she ocmmented on Horowski's assumption that the existence of Louis' very gay brother meant that in Paris at least, gay men in general could not be prosecuted, and she and I both agreed that this would be true only for the nobles of Philippe's social circle, not for, say, a gay baker caught by the police; Spangler provides a bit of justification for Horowski's assumption with the following story:
According to the memoirs of the curé of Versailles, François Hébert, when he asked Madame de Maintenon what she thought the king should do about “those detestable vices” at the court, she responded that she had urged the king to set things right and punish this criminal behaviour, but that the king had answered, “So I must begin with my brother?”
=> gay bakers still have no luck, imo, but it seems that Philippe's orientation did provide cover for anyone gay at court because Louis thought it would be unfair otherwise
- Louis probably had mixed feelings about the Chevalier; in later years, he did grant him occasionally a one on one audience, which is an cinredible mark of favour because those were otherwise reserved for the royal family (and of those, for the innermost circle; for example, in this article I learned Philippe d'Orleans visited his brother every day for an hour in which they were alone), but the memoirs-writing courtiers at least never thought he liked the Chevalier as such; whereas Spangler concludes:
Though we certainly do not have to go as far as historians of previous generations in condemning Monsieur out of hand as effeminate and weak, easy (or even craving) to be dominated, the evidence does seem clear that Louis XIV recognized the benefits of supporting a clever and secure favourite for his brother, someone from the most respected rank in society, someone he had known all his life, through whom he could watch over and control both him and his household.
- Spangler repeatedly points out that Liselotte's problem with the Chevalier or the many other guys her husband had sex with wasn't that he had sex with them but that a) he spend a great amount of money on them, some of which was hers, some of which was the "Orleansgeld" which Louis had pressed from the sacked Palatinate in Liselotte's name to her horror, and of which she never saw a dime, and b) the Chevalier and the Marquis d'Effiat (the second best consistent favourite who at times formed a triangle with Monsieur and the Chevalier) at times schemed against her (till the 1690s, when Liselotte and de Lorraine came to something of a lsting truce); she also was horrified when the Marquis d'Effiat, whom she believed to have poisoned the first Madame, Minette, was considered as governor of her son, and she hated that the Chevalier had the power to dismiss people from her personal household if he wanted to, no matter how much she wanted to keep them (so not only had her husband the usual times inherent social power over her, but also her husband's boyfriend). Says Spangler:
In her letters, Madame frequently rails against the “cabale de Lorraine”, ranged against her in Monsieur’s household: she blamed the triumvirate of Lorraine, Effiat and Madame de Grancey for the removal of one of her few confidantes at the French court, Mademoiselle de Théobon. She was convinced that Effiat was among those responsible for the death of the first Madame, remarking sarcastically that, true or not, “poisoner” was a “fine title of honour for someone to whom I entrust my son”, when he was proposed as her son’s governor. Again it seems that Madame did not dislike one of her husband’s favourites for his sodomy, but for standing between herself and Monsieur, and for “poisoning his soul” towards her.
- another quote: Madame’s strongest condemnatory words seem to have been towards a man foisted on her as her own premier maître d’hôtel. Antoine Morel de Volonne was in charge of her household from 1673 to 1683, and was an active part of the male patronage network of her husband and the Chevalier. She described in a letter how the Chevalier de Lorraine delegated some of his “recruitment details” to Morel, who with the spirit of the devil, “soulless and lawless”, sold boys like horses, going to the pit at the opera to conduct his deals.
- on a more positive note, Philippe and the Chevalier travelled to Bretagne when there was a famine there and personally oversaw relief efforts! (This was one of the things Louis let his brother do once he didn't allow him to be general anymore)
- perhaps in case there's someone among his readers who wants to know whether anyone other than Liselotte explicitly describes her husband as gay, and the relationship with the Chevalier as a romantic one, Spangler not only quotes Queen Anne's envoy to the effect (he also could have quoted from the earlier letters between Minette and brother Charles), but a mocking song in which the Parisians both lampooned Louis/Madame de Maintenon and Philippe/his boyfriends
- and then there's the art of the time: It remains however, to search further for other indications of public opinion towards the relationship of Monsieur and the Chevalier de Lorraine. In the arts was there any element of playing off popular classical themes, the ancient Greek heroes with known male favourites like Alexander or Achilles? Monsieur had been compared to Achilles in a song written for him after his victory at Cassel in 1677 (“on the field of Mars, Philippe is an Achilles”). And biblical references? The year of the promotion to the Order of the Saint-Esprit, 1688, was also the year of the premiere of the opera David et Jonathas by a composer, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, whose very career had been built and nurtured by the family of the Chevalier de Lorraine. Is it too much of a stretch to conceive that the openly romantic arias between the two male protagonists were in any way meant to represent a same-sex love affair at the Palais-Royal? In Act 4, Scene 2, they sing together: “Parmi de mortelles horreurs, / Malgré d’inutiles fureurs, J’irai, j’irai chercher & sauver ce que j’aime.” Then in Scene 3, Jonathan declares: “Ne pourrai-je accorder le devoir & l’Amour?” (capitalized in the published seventeenth-century edition). And in Act 5, Scene 4 (dying in David’s arms): “Malgré la rigueur de mon sort, / Du moins je puis vous dire encor que je vous aime.” David responds by naming Jonathan as, “L’objet le plus doux de mes voeux.”165 Monsieur was a very public supporter of Charpentier’s music, often in the face of his rivals (and indeed, the king’s favourite, Lully). This was made evident through the composer’s collaborations with Molière and the Comédie Française at the Palais-Royal; his appointment as music tutor to Monsieur’s son; Monsieur’s attendance at four of the eight performances of Médée in 1693 (possibly to quash a plot being mounted against the opera); and particularly in the pressure applied on his behalf to obtain the post of master of music at the Sainte-Chapelle in 1698.166 The household shared by Monsieur and the Chevalier de Lorraine was thus connected to cultural and political patronage at the highest levels.
Re: Louis XIV gossip
Date: 2022-03-23 09:16 pm (UTC)Spangler / the Chevalier
Date: 2022-03-24 04:56 am (UTC)despite neither Monsieur nor the Chevalier being nice people: awww.
Hee, this is what I thought! :)
that he and Philippe remained an item - with him as the primary favourite - for forty years, especially since neither man was monogamous, and his control over the Orleans household; Spangler more than once compares him to Madame de Pompadour, who also managed to make herself indispensible to her royal and retain control until her death
That is really interesting -- it's fascinating to me when that kind of thing happens, especially when the person isn't perhaps very nice, much more so than the jerk getting dumped after the first infatuation.
Kalckreuth: Why are you looking at me?
Kaphengst: I was indispensable enough to get a nice palace, anyway.
Mara: What?
(I still have to look up the
what I hadn't known was that the Chevalier actually did get the abbeys in question once his brief Roman holiday had ended
lol!
According to the memoirs of the curé of Versailles, François Hébert, when he asked Madame de Maintenon what she thought the king should do about “those detestable vices” at the court, she responded that she had urged the king to set things right and punish this criminal behaviour, but that the king had answered, “So I must begin with my brother?”
Heh. Well, he has a point there :P
Spangler repeatedly points out that Liselotte's problem with the Chevalier or the many other guys her husband had sex with wasn't that he had sex with them but that a) he spend a great amount of money on them, some of which was hers, some of which was the "Orleansgeld" which Louis had pressed from the sacked Palatinate in Liselotte's name to her horror, and of which she never saw a dime, and b) the Chevalier and the Marquis d'Effiat (the second best consistent favourite who at times formed a triangle with Monsieur and the Chevalier) at times schemed against her (till the 1690s, when Liselotte and de Lorraine came to something of a lsting truce)
These... seem like good reasons not to like him (them)! How did they come to a truce?
on a more positive note, Philippe and the Chevalier travelled to Bretagne when there was a famine there and personally oversaw relief efforts!
okay, this is cool! I always like finding out good things about people I thought were villains :P
And in Act 5, Scene 4 (dying in David’s arms): “Malgré la rigueur de mon sort, / Du moins je puis vous dire encor que je vous aime.”
...okay, I did actually laugh at this. Opera slash fandom a thing even in the 17th C!
Re: Spangler / the Chevalier
Date: 2022-03-24 07:47 am (UTC)okay, this is cool! I always like finding out good things about people I thought were villains :P
It definitely helps making them more dimensional and human!
How did they come to a truce?
I'm speculating here, but: if it's the 1690s, this is also when Liselotte, for whatever reason, does the Chevalier a big favor by arranging for his illegitimate son the army deserter to get a place at the Hannover court with her aunt and marry into her governess' family. Bear in mind that while Louis wasn't FW, deserting from the army was presumably not handwaved in 17th France, either, and at the very least the guy would not have had a career to look for in France during Louis' lifetime. (Which was reaaaaaally long as you might recall.) Now the Chevalier scored big advantages for his family on his own, but that was his legitimate family, the Lorraine dynasty of which he was the younger son of a younger son. His biggest coup being that Liselotte's and Philippe's daughter married the reigning Duke of Lorraine (and thus became FS' mother, making Monsieur the ancestor of all the post MT Habsburgs). But for a bastard, who wasn't there to keep up the family name and only demonstrated that hey, the Chevalier voluntarily slept with a woman, I think there were limits of what he could have reached for with Monsieur, let alone Louis.
Also, I've been wondering why the Chevalier, the Marquis d'Effiat and assorted minions gave Liselotte such a hard time at first anyway, because it wasn't like she tried to end their relationships with Philippe, or could have been a serious rival for his love. And as opposed to Minette, she wasn't the sister of a reigning foreign King; her political use to Louis was that she provided him with an excuse to invade and sack the Palatinate, but that was it, and he could have done that even if she had died once she had provided his brother with living children who were her heirs. HOWEVER, one must avoid hindsight, and consider it from the perspective of professional courtiers. And then I thought of something which would also explain why a later truce came to be. So, in the first few years, Louis was actually very fond of Liselotte, whose candour he found refreshing. (Despots always like candour until it turns towards and wounds them.) They were both enthusiastic hunters, and spend a lot of time together. Time with the King is influence in an absolute monarchy. So, if you're the Chevalier (and his clique), and remember the quarrels with the previous Madame who also had a connection to Louis (if of another sort), you're bound to be a bit paranoid. Especially once Liselotte has produced living offspring, because that means an annulment of the marriage is out, she's there to stay. And Philippe's and Louis' mother, Queen Anne, certainly was an example of a woman influencing her sons, big time. So I think what the Chevalier did, nasty as it was, was from his pov a pre-emptive strike. He went for minimizing Liselotte's leverage with the King by encouraging Monsieur to badmouth her to Louis. He kept control of her household, and insisted on the choice of teachers for her son, so that said son would not be influenced by his mother against the Cevalier et al. but would rather favour them.
However, once we're in the 1690s, all this kind of scheming is superflous, because by then, the reigning mistress (and secret morganatic wife) of Louis is Madame de Maintenon, and she and Liselotte hate each other, which already means an automatic distance between Liselotte and Louis. It's clear that she will never be in a position to push Louis to do something about her husband's boyfriends, even if she wanted to. And her son is old enough to demonstrate he likes the Chevalier and won't be a mother avenger once the power is his. So the Chevalier has no more reason to make trouble for Liselotte. (Whose way of describing the Chevalier's famed looks, btw, was tartly declaring that if his character had matched his exterior, she'd never had a single objection to him at all.) Added to which: she does him the above named favor. Presto, truce. At least that's my current speculation.
Incidentally, I just recalled that you asked about the farting competition - that was a reference to this letter of Liselotte's to her aunt Sophie about a lighthearted moment chez Orleans from a letter dated January 1st, 1693:
I won't hide a recent conversation between Monsieur and myself to your Grace, and I hope your Grace will as heartily laugh about it as my two children have done. The other day the four of us - that is Monsieur, myself, and my son and daughter - were all having dinner in the cabinet. Monsieur, whom our company doesn't always inspire to actually talk with us after a long silence let go a fart, by your leave, by your leave, turned towards me and said: »qu'est que cela, Madame?" I turned my backside towards him, let one go in the same fashion and said: "C'est cela, Monsieur!"
My son said: "S'il ne tient que cela j'en ay auttant d'envy que Monsieur et Madame", and also let loose a brave shot. Then we all started to laugh, and walked out of the room. So these are our princely conversations, Your Grace, and if anyone should be curious enough to open my letters before they reach your Grace, I offer the same sweet incense as a new year's greeting to that person!
Her letters were indeed all read, which is why she wrote the majority of them in German, but that also ensured her opinion of Madame de Maintenon was known to both Louis and Madame. After Monsieur's death, Liselotte's big fear was that she would be forced into a nunnery, since nunneries were the standard retirement for royal widows (unless they were regents for their sons, of course), and that's when Madame de Maintenon took her revenge, by confronting Liselotte with some of her letters. Liselotte then was reduced to saying that her expressed loathing of Maintenon in these letters were triggered by her fear that Maintenon would influence the King against her. (Which as Antonia Fraser points out might even have been true, in addition to the two other reasons, a) the fundamentalist Catholicism - Liselotte blamed her nemesis for Louis' hardcore policies in his later reign - , and b) the aristocratic snobbery.) Having thus reduced her enemy to an apology, Madame de Maintenon accepted it and Liselotte wasn't ordered into a nunnery but remained free of same. (And even had a late life kind of first lady position once her son became Regent.)
Re: Spangler / the Chevalier
Date: 2022-03-29 03:22 am (UTC)Liselotte, for whatever reason, does the Chevalier a big favor by arranging for his illegitimate son the army deserter to get a place at the Hannover court with her aunt and marry into her governess' family... I think there were limits of what he could have reached for with Monsieur, let alone Louis.
...that makes total sense! (That it changed her relationship with the Chevalier, I mean.)
So I think what the Chevalier did, nasty as it was, was from his pov a pre-emptive strike.
*nods* In my family-of-origin there's a lot of fear of stepmothers, and I could totally see this kind of pre-emptive strike thing happening.
So the Chevalier has no more reason to make trouble for Liselotte. (Whose way of describing the Chevalier's famed looks, btw, was tartly declaring that if his character had matched his exterior, she'd never had a single objection to him at all.) Added to which: she does him the above named favor.
I can see how that would work. Thank you! :) I've been wondering about that for a while.
Having thus reduced her enemy to an apology, Madame de Maintenon accepted it and Liselotte wasn't ordered into a nunnery but remained free of same.
I'm glad that Liselotte didn't have to go! Though now of course I am wondering what she said about Maintenon :)
Liselotte about Maintenon
Date: 2022-03-29 09:38 am (UTC)A lot. Keep in mind that Madame de Maintenon's ascendancy to exclusive maitresse en titre happenened simultanous to Louis invading Liselotte's home, and the Chevalier and friends are on the attack, so yes, she's in a terrible mood.
The King imagines himself to be devout now because he doesn't have sex with young women anymore, but all his piety consists of is being awful, having spies everywhere, to flatter his brother's lovers and to plague all humanity in general. The old bitch Maintenon has fun making all the members of the royal family hated by the King, and thus to rule unchallenged, except for Monsieur, whom she flatters. (...) But afterwards the old woman is afraid that people should believe she actually esteems Monsieur, and thus as soon as someone at court talks to her about him, she demonnizes (literally: makes a devil of)him: says he's of no use to anyone, that he's the most debauched man at court, unable to keep a secret, faithless and disloyal.
(You can imagine that at this point if his spies made a copy of this letter, Louis stopped being charmed by Liselotte's frankness.)
Another example:
That the woman as your Grace says should have become pregnant by a fart, by your leave, by your leave, doesn't divert me; on the contrary, I can't believe there to be a worse devil in the world than her with all her devoutness and hypocrisy, and I find she proves the truth of the old German saying that where the devil can't go, he sends an old woman towards.
Maintenon wasn't pregnant. It's also worth remembering that like Liselotte, she had started out as a Protestant, but unlike Liselotte, who had converted solely because that's what you did if marrying a Catholic prince and remained an only nominal Catholic with no liking for the religion for the rest of her life, the former Francoise Scarron converted out of her own free will and was full of the zeal of the converted, which is another reason for the bad blood between the two women.
On a more cheerful note, before settling into pious monogamy with Madame de Maintenon, Louis' breakup with his previous Maitresse en titre, Madame de Montespan, came in various steps, one of which illustrates why Athenais de Montespan was so famed for both her wit and her charm. So, imagine at this point, she and Louis are already technically broken up and "just friends", and Maintenon is in the ascendancy. Then, according to Antonia Fraser (Bossuet is the priest with high hopes on Maintenon reforming Louis' character.)
Great care was taken that 'respectable ladies' should be present as chaperones, and at first Louis spoke to his former mistress in grave tones as though he was some kind of cleric - a Boussuet, Athenais interrupted him: "It's useless to read me a sermon; I understand that my time is over.' then gradually the pair - who had not been alone together for fifteen months - withdrew to a windowed alcove, while the courtiers, including the respectable ladies, remained at a respectful distance. The conversation grew more intense, and later still more tender. "You're mad," said Athenais. "Yes, I am mad," replied Louis ardently, "since I still love you." After this avowal, both King and Athenais "made together profound reverence to these venerable matrons". Then they withdrew to her bedroom. This was the moment feared by Bossuet and Madame de Maintenon alike.
Presumably that's when Madame de Maintenon decided to become Louis' mistress and make her bedroom a chapel after all.
Re: Liselotte about Aurora von Königsmarck
Date: 2022-03-29 11:36 pm (UTC)Re: Liselotte about Maintenon
Date: 2022-04-07 05:15 am (UTC)But afterwards the old woman is afraid that people should believe she actually esteems Monsieur, and thus as soon as someone at court talks to her about him, she demonnizes (literally: makes a devil of)him:
Yes, I can see why Louis might not... be overly charmed by this! (But I'm charmed :) )
"You're mad," said Athenais. "Yes, I am mad," replied Louis ardently, "since I still love you." After this avowal, both King and Athenais "made together profound reverence to these venerable matrons". Then they withdrew to her bedroom.
Hee! Go Madame de Montespan :D
Re: Louis XIV gossip
Date: 2022-03-26 10:45 pm (UTC)Thirding "awww"!
had known that the event that ultimately triggered the Chevalier's brief banishment (a two years exile in Rome where he had a fling with Louis' first love Marie Mancini) was Philippe demanding benefices for his boyfriend,
See, I'm glad you read this, because Schultz, like Wikipedia, says it was Minette working together with her brother Charles II to get the Chevalier banished, but Spangler says, "Some historians hold to older ideas that it was solely through the efforts of Madame that the Chevalier was exiled."
- on a more positive note, Philippe and the Chevalier travelled to Bretagne when there was a famine there and personally oversaw relief efforts!
Yes, good for them! But I enjoy the quote from Spangler's source: "This solidly bought the heart of the people for this prince."
It's hard to say without more context, but "bought" feels a bit barbed to me?
“So I must begin with my brother?”
=> gay bakers still have no luck, imo, but it seems that Philippe's orientation did provide cover for anyone gay at court because Louis thought it would be unfair otherwise
Ha! Look at Horowski knowing things. I agree about the baker, though (sadly).
What this episode most reminds me of is Ferdinando II of Tuscany (grandfather of Gian Gastone). Reminder for
On a cold winter's evening he was warming himself by a fire in his apartment, when his mother, the Archduchess Maria-Maddalena, paid him an impromptu visit. She told him with dismay that she had suddenly discovered the existence of a particular carnal abuse in Florence ; among people, more over, of distinct parts, power and social standing. In spite of whatsoever virtues they might possess, she was determined to have them all severely punished, and submitted a long list of offenders to his scrutiny.
When the Grand Duke had read it, he remarked that this information did not suffice. There were others of similar tendencies he could append to her list. And taking a quill, he added his name in capitals.
The Archduchess said he had done this merely to save the guilty, but that she would have them chastised all the same. The Grand Duke inquired to what punishment she chose to condemn them, and she replied with some vehemence: 'They must be burned.' So the Grand Duke, flinging the list into the fire, said: 'There they are, Madame, punished just as you have condemned them.'
Schultz also says that Louis was reluctant to punish courtiers who practiced the "ultramontane" (lol) sin, unless, like the Chevalier, they were also a political nuisance. (He also agrees with Spangler that the reason the Chevalier was brought back and tolerated by Louis was that he was a useful spy and check on Monsieur.)
By the way, the book Sodomites, Pederasts and Tribades in Eighteenth Century France that I've been dipping into says that executions and persecution of sodomy in France declined in the latter part of the pre-revolutionary 18th century, and that part of the reason may relate to a view expressed by contemporaries that big scary public executions acted as a deterrent for some people, but gave other people ideas. Which you may remember was Fritz's rationale for not executing Prussians for sodomy.
Re: Louis XIV gossip
Date: 2022-03-28 12:30 pm (UTC)Unfortunately stories where same-sex partners are disregarded or treated badly by the biological family of their beloved are still so common that a story set several centuries earlier in a country what was far from progressive in general where the family member in question behaved very differently, with respect and kindness, is definitely worthy an aww and then some.
(Incidentally, the Chevalier turning down the continued pension and just wanting to keep his living quarters is the first time I‘ve read of him NOT taking offered money. I wonder whether he had a feeling he would not survive Monsieur for long, and/or whether it was plain old depression and grief. After all, spouses who have spent decades together dying shortly after another isn‘t exactly unheard of.)
If I recall the editor of the Minette/Charles correspondence correctly, it was mentioned there, too that was finally pushed Louis into action were Monsieur demanding the benefices in combination with the Chevalier reacting badly (and publically so) when not getting them, but also that Charles did try to help his sister re: the Chevalier before, though diplomatically rather than by direct demands - for example, he offered the Chevalier an honored place at his own court if only he‘d leave the Orleans household. (Can‘t blame the Chevalier for not going for that. After all, how was he to know Charles would keep his word beyond maybe a few months? Then he‘d be stranded at a place where he didn‘t speak the language of and where he had no influence and would have to start again, and Monsieur would feel he‘d been sold out and would not take him back.)
Re: Louis XIV gossip
Date: 2022-03-29 02:45 am (UTC)except for all of Emilie's lovers, because she was just that coolI got the impression they often got sloughed off back then? Though I guess in that case they were usually women. Oh! I guess Elizaveta's lover turned out OK :)Also, even if the Chevalier wasn't a super nice guy, I also feel a little "aww" about him not surviving Monsieur for long.
Re: Louis XIV gossip
Date: 2022-03-29 02:36 am (UTC)