Marie Louise de La Tour d'Auvergne

Biography

Ancestry and early life

Louise was the first child of Charles Godefroy de La Tour d'Auvergne, Prince of Turenne and his wife, Maria Karolina “Charlotte” Sobieska. Charlotte Sobieska was the granddaughter of King John III Sobieski of Poland (famous as the winner of the Battle of Vienna) and the older sister of Maria Clementina Sobieska, wife of the Jacobite pretender James Francis Edward Stuart. As their family's last members, Charlotte and Clementina were co-heiresses to the vast Sobieski lands and fortune in Poland. Through her mother's aunt, Theresa Kunegunda Sobieska, Louise was also second cousin to Emperor Charles VIII, Maria Antonia, Electress of Saxony, and Empress Maria Josepha. Louise's paternal family, the House of La Tour d'Auvergne, were known as the Bouillons after the duchy of Bouillon where they reigned as sovereigns. Reflecting this, they were considered princes étrangères in France, entitled to be called altesse (“highness”), and female family members had the coveted right of the tabouret (meaning that they could sit on a short stool without a back and armrest in the royal presence).

Charlotte Sobieska had been married to the elder Bouillon brother, Frédéric Maurice Casimir. This was considered a prestigious marriage and a great success for the Bouillons, but the husband died of smallpox within two weeks of the wedding. His father, Emmanuel Théodose de La Tour d'Auvergne, who had arranged the marriage, was unwilling to return Charlotte's dowry to her father (as he needed the money to settle his debts), and convinced her to marry his second son, Charles Godefroy. Charlotte's father, James Louis Sobieski, Prince of Oława, did not consent to the second marriage and was furious over the loss of the dowry; he broke off all communication with his daughter.

The marriage of Louise's parents was strained and often unhappy, although letters by Charlotte from the late 1730s show love and affection for her husband. Charlotte had been promised a quasi-royal position by her in-laws, and was dismayed to be treated like other duchesses at the French court, so she chose to live in social isolation in Paris. Charles Godefroy was known for womanising, heavy drinking, fighting, and gambling, and he accrued heavy debts. Contemporaries nevertheless considered him “a man of honour and integrity”, and he enjoyed King Louis XV's favour and friendship. In 1730, he inherited the titles of grand chamberlain, grand master, and grand squire from his father, as well as the Duchy of Bouillon. The family lived in one of Paris' most luxurious palaces, the Hôtel de Bouillon, and had a country seat, the Château de Navarre.

Life in Poland and first marriage plans

In September 1735, Louise's mother travelled to Żółkiew in Poland (today Zhovkva, Ukraine) to attempt reconciliation with her father, James Louis Sobieski, Prince of Oława. Following the death of her sister Clementina earlier that year, the Bouillons hoped to secure the Sobieski inheritance to repay their debts. Sobieski refused to see Charlotte but showed interest in his grandchildren, asking why Louise had not come to Poland. He suggested that she could marry Frederick Christian of Saxony, eldest son of King Augustus III of Poland. Charlotte did not want Louise to marry too soon and miss a better match (there were by then numerous proposals for the ten-year-old). She wrote to her husband that Louise was “rich enough and of a good enough house to marry well without leaving” France and begged him not to send Louise to Poland unless the Polish king had clearly committed to an engagement.

It was concluded by the Bouillons that the only way to persuade Sobieski about the inheritance was through Louise, arguing that it would be dishonourable to disinherit the grandchildren for their mother's error. Charlotte, however, still refused to use her daughter as a pawn, especially because now only the second-born son of the Polish king, Francis Xavier of Saxony, was being mentioned as her possible husband. Nevertheless, after Sobieski finally received Charlotte in February 1735, father and daughter became close, and Charlotte asked her husband to send Louise to Poland. Her possible marriage to Francis Xavier became European news.

On 13 June 1736, eleven-year-old Louise started the journey to Poland with her governess, Mademoiselle de Minières, her father's surgeon, Jean Henri Bourgeois, and servants. She was told that she would marry a son of the Polish king. The travel was difficult because of bad roads and storms. While her letters to her father prove Louise's affection for him, she had been alienated from her mother by Charles Godefroy and his advisors. She was received in Żółkiew on 25 August with public honours. Her grandfather was impressed by her and wanted to spend as much time together as possible, but he and Charlotte fought over who would control Louise's marriage.

In October 1736, the Polish royal couple ended marriage negotiations, saying that their six-year-old son was too young. Charlotte called this rejection a “disgrace” and a “shame for our house”. Charles Godefroy, meanwhile, tried to persuade Sobieski to leave his estate directly to Louise, bypassing Charlotte's claim. Augustus III of Poland offered to make Louise his ward and raise her at his court if she was made her grandfather's sole heir. This plan was “very much to [the] taste” of Charles Godefroy but opposed by Charlotte, who feared to create the impression that the Bouillons could not afford to marry their daughter off themselves. However, according to Polish law, Louise could not inherit the Sobieski lands unless she married a Polish prince, and the plan faltered.Because of their differing financial interests, the marriage of Louise's parents completely broke down. Charles Godefroy offered to give back Charlotte's dowry if she promised never to return to France. He asked his envoy to tell Louise how much he loved and missed her. She herself took her father's side and her relationship with her mother was contentious. Charlotte said that Louise was “so sullen and so ill-bred that she brought [Charlotte] shame”, complaining that “I do all that I can to show her my maternal tenderness and I believe few mothers do as much [as I do]”. She believed that her husband's agents “inspired distrust and disobedience” in Louise towards her.

Life at Chasse-Midi and French marriage plans

Little is known of Louise's youth and education, but she did have a large staff at the convent, including a valet de chambre, a footman, a maid, a maid of the wardrobe, and a cook. Marriage plans continued. The most likely candidate, preferred by her father, was Louis Marie Léopold de Lorraine-Harcourt, Prince of Guise, aged seventeen. Guise was the brother of Louise's paternal step-grandmother, Louise Henriette Françoise de Lorraine, who probably suggested the idea to Charles Godefroy in 1737 (the two had an affair, Charles Godefroy being a year older than his stepmother). Guise was well-connected at the French court and considered an advantageous match for Louise, but her mother fervently refused the idea as she considered him “debauched”. Nevetheless, her father started marriage negotiations in late 1738. The betrothal had just been agreed when Guise's father suddenly died in April 1739 and he backed out.

In March 1740, Louis XV granted an annuity of 12 000 livres to fourteen-year-old Louise. Her paternal grandfather had held valuable tobacco plantations in his viscounty of Turenne. When the King seized these, he granted the annuity as a compensation to the family. However, in 1738, Louise's father sold the entire viscounty to the French state to settle his gambling debts, thereby losing the annuity. In 1740, he convinced the King that some revenues had not been calculated into the purchase price and Louis XV reinstated the allowance as compensation. The Duke asked that it be paid directly to his daughter, himself being unable to provide a suitable dowry.

In December 1740, fifteen-year-old Louise's marriage was arranged to the wealthy Honoré III, Prince of Monaco, aged twenty. The engagement, with royal assent, was announced officially on 1 February 1741. The wedding was planned for May or June, as the Hôtel de Bouillon needed to be renovated for the couple's use. Soon afterwards, Louise received an anonymous letter claiming that her fiancé was in love with another woman. Honoré admitted to his father that he was in a relationship with the widowed Madame de Néri, and had only signed the marriage contract reluctantly. On 19 March, the engagement was broken off by Louise's father. Honoré's behaviour caused great scandal in Versailles and everyone pitied Louise. This failed engagement seems to have had a lasting effect on Louise, causing her to fear abandonment.

Marriage

In February 1743, Charles Godefroy announced Louise's engagement to Jules Hercule Mériadec de Rohan, Prince of Guéméné. Alongside Louise's father, the Rohan-Guéménés were among the most important supporters of the Jacobite pretenders, and the Stuart family therefore fully endorsed the union. On 6 February, Louise was presented at court by her aunt, Marie Hortense Victoire de La Tour d'Auvergne, Madame de La Trémoille, so she could ceremonially take her seat on the tabouret. This had to happen before her marriage to claim the Bouillon's privilege as princes étrangers. It was agreed that for the wedding, the groom would be known as le prince Jules and Louise as la princesse de Rohan, to represent their claim on the title of Jules' maternal grandfather, Hercule Mériadec de Rohan-Soubise. When presented to the king, Jules was titled duke of Montbazon.

The betrothal took place on 17 February 1741 in the evening, in the Œil-de-Bœuf room of Versailles; Louise was not yet seventeen and Jules almost sixteen. First, the marriage contract was signed by the entire royal family and the couple, then a blessing ceremony was celebrated by the groom's grand-uncle, Armand de Rohan, Cardinal de Soubise. Louise wore a black-and-gold robe de cour with a golden mesh mantle borne by her husband's cousin, Eléonore Louise Constance de Rohan, Mademoiselle de Montauban. The wedding itself took place two days later in the Paris residence of Louise's grand-uncle, Henri Oswald, Cardinal d'Auvergne, who lent them his bed for the wedding night.

Louise's mother-in-law, Louise Gabrielle Julie de Rohan-Soubise, Princess of Guéméné (known as Madame de Guéméné) required the young couple to live at her Paris residence in the Hôtel de Rohan-Guéméné (today Maison de Victor Hugo) on the place Royal (today place des Vosges). On 31 March, Louise presented again at court as the duchess of Montbazon. She gave birth to a son, Henri Louis Marie, on 30 August 1745.

Around 10 November 1746, Louise contracted smallpox. His father immediately travelled to her and they were quarantined together. On 14 November, the family received a sympathy note from Louise's first cousin, Charles Edward Stuart. Louise's quarantine ended on 22 December, and on that day Charles Edward travelled to the Bouillon country seat, the Château de Navarre, to spend Christmas with his relatives. There is no proof of attraction between the two from this time. Despite their clashing financial interests in the Sobieski inheritance, the Stuarts and the Bouillons had always corresponded amicably with each other. Charles Edward was close with his uncle, Louise's father, and spent a lot of time with him whenever he was in France, but it is unknown when the cousins first met or how much they had interacted before 1746.

Affair with Charles Edward Stuart

In the summer of 1747, Charles Edward was depressed due to the failure of his previous political plans and conflicts with his father. In July, he moved to the Saint-Ouen country house of Charles de Rohan, Prince of Soubise (who had been married to Louise's aunt, Anne Marie Louise de La Tour d'Auvergne). He became a celebrity among aristocratic women, a diversion while most men were serving in the War of Austrian Succession. On 13 August, he was hosted at dinner by Louise and her mother-in-law, Madame de Guéméné, in their Paris residence. At the end of August, he took a long holiday at the Château de Navarre. The affair between Louise and him probably started there or immediately afterwards in Saint-Ouen. This was the first known intimate relationship of Charles Edward, who had taken a vow of chastity as part of his strict regime of preparation for retaking the British throne.

Little is known about how or exactly where and when the affair started, other than that it happened in a country house (probably either in the Bouillon country seat or Charles Edward's summer residence), probably either in late August or early September 1747. Bongie sees the relationship as an act of rebellion by Charles Edward against his former disciplined and obedient self and his father's authority; at the same time he contemplated marriage to a Protestant princess and hunted illegally on royal grounds. He characterises the affair as “obsessive and insane”, Charles Edward putting aside his previous notions of royal duty and risking the Jacobite cause for Louise. Nevertheless, at first, the two hid their relationship diligently and successfully. Louise was surveilled by her mother-in-law, who tasked servants with watching her. Until late October 1747, the two could meet easily in Charles Edward's Saint-Ouen house, which Louise could visit under pretense of seeing her uncle, and they could spend time together publicly. As a sign of his affection, Charles Edward offered to give up his share of the contested Sobieski inheritance to Louise and her brother. Some time in late October, Louise became pregnant. Charles Edward took great pleasure in the pregnancy, talking to the baby in the womb.

The measures Charles Edward took to avoid Madame de Guéméné's notice instead drew police attention. On 29 October 1747, the Saint-Denis maréchaussée reported to the lieutenant general of Paris police, Nicolas René Berryer and Jean Frédéric Phélypeaux, Count of Maurepas, secretary of state of the maison du roi, that two or three times a week, a rental carriage approached Charles Edward's Saint Ouen house. This would happen around nine or ten in the evening, or, more often, at five in the morning, and a tall man in a white frock coat would get out and walk down a small road between houses. A local resident had reported the carriage after he tried to approach it and was threatened with a pistol by its passengers. Maurepas created a new secret police division to protect the Jacobite heir from a suspected assassin. On 7 November, the detectives discovered that the carriage took mysterious, heavily armed passengers including the prince's trusted valet, Daniel O'Brien, to a location near the place Royale (Louise's Paris address) through convoluted routes, almost every night. By mid-November, it was ascertained that the trips were made by members of the princely household and surveillance ended.

Later life

On 28 July 1748, Louise gave birth to her son by Charles Edward, named Charles Godefroi Sophie Jules Marie and acknowledged as the legitimate child of her husband. Madame de Guéméné informed Charles Edward's father of the birth, but not of the child's true paternity. The birth was unremarked by noble society, which usually followed such events with great interest. Louise kept up polite correspondence with her Stuart family.

Little is known of Louise's later life, although she lived for another 33 years. She seems to have lived peacefully and quietly. Her younger son died on 18 January 1749, at the age of five months and 21 days. According to custom, he was not publicly mourned due to his young age, but buried in the Rohan-Guéméné crypt in the convent of the Feuillants (demolished in the 19th century), after a simple service in the family's parish church, the Church of Saint Paul and Saint Louis. It does not appear that Charles Edward was affected by his son's death.

Louise occasionally appeared at the royal court, although less frequently than most women of her rank. After the 1749 death of her husband's maternal grandfather, she was known as the princess of Rohan. Her surviving correspondence shows her to have had a good relationship with her father, her husband, and her mother-in-law. She continued to have a warm and close relationship with her father in particular. She and her husband regularly spent holidays at the Château de Navarre with Louise's father. On 15 January 1761, her only surviving child, sixteen-year-old Henri Louis married his second cousin, Victoire Armande Josèphe de Rohan. Shortly after Louise's death, the couple became infamous for their bankruptcy, having accrued one of the largest debts (33 million livres) of the ancien régime.

Following the 1766 death of Charles Edward's father, Louise and her cousin exchanged formal New Year's greetings and occasional letters on family matters. In May 1772, Charles Edward (nominally Charles III of England) informed Louise of his marriage to Princess Louise of Stolberg-Gedern. In March 1774, he sent her small engraved portraits of himself and his wife.

Louise seems to have spent much of her time with charity work and religious activities. She died on 24 September 1781 (despite a later story that she was beheaded during the revolution). According to her will, she was buried “without any ceremony” in the convent of the Feuillants, next to her infant son. She left 28 000 livres across different parishes as donations to the poor, asking them to pray for her soul, and 60 000 livres to each of her four grandchildren. She promised an additional 90 000 livres to her second eldest grandson if he did not join the clergy, as a way of ensuring the continued existence of the family name. To her brother, she left a box decorated with the portrait of their mother. In addition, she made various bequests of her extensive library and jewel collection, which give the impression that she had a large and trusted group of friends and family around her. An unsigned and undated codicil was amended to the will containing large gifts to various members of the clergy, suggesting that Louise was under the strong influence of a priest in her last days. This codicil was invalid and never carried out.

Issue

Henri Louis Marie de Rohan, Duke of Montbazon, Prince of Guéméné (31 August 1745 – 24 April 1809) married Victoire de Rohan and had issue; she was the sister of the Princess of Condé

Charles Godefroi Sophie Jules Marie de Rohan (28 July 1748 – December 1748) illegitimate child.

Fiction

Louise is a character in the 1992 Diana Gabaldon novel Dragonfly in Amber, and is portrayed by Claire Sermonne in season 2 of the television adaptation, Outlander.