_from_the_studio_of_Pierre_Gobert_(Versailles).jpg) |
Élisabeth-Charlotte d'Orléans, Duchess of Lorraine.
School of Pierre Gobert, Château de Versailles MV3690 [Wikimedia] |
One result of the explorations of Lorraine's place in the wider European dynastic history - a "major axis" of recent research - has been a reassessment of the role of Leopold's consort, the Duchess Élisabeth-Charlotte.
The following is (mostly) summarised from a paper by Francine Roze, former director of the Musée Lorrain in Nancy, delivered to the Académie Stanislas in 2005.
Perhaps because little of her own voice survives, the Duchess has tended to be viewed primarily through the eyes of her mother, the inimitable Princess Palatine, and portrayed simply as a devoted wife and mother, beset by family troubles, reticent in manner, self-effacing and constrained by her situation. Francine Roze, however, emphasises her standing as a French princess, her personal determination and intelligence, and the important political position she occupied after 1729 as Regent to her son, the Duke Francis III.
A Royal Princess
As the niece of Louis XIV, Élisabeth-Charlotte d’Orléans, "Mademoiselle de Chartres", was a senior member of the most powerful dynasty in Europe. She was born on 13th September 1676 in Paris, the only daughter of Louis XIV's brother, "Monsieur" and his second wife, Elizabeth Charlotte of Bavaria, the Princess Palatine; her brother Philippe, elder by two years, was to become the Regent of France. Assessments of the Regency period differ, but no-one, then or now, has disputed Philippe's superior intelligence. In Francine Roze's view, he was born to become a great prince; had he been the son of Louis XIV he would have dominated his age. He was gifted in many spheres, particularly the art of war, and, despite his reputation for debauchery, showed political acumen and engaged in numerous reforms.
There are hints that Élisabeth-Charlotte too inherited her mother's lively mind; as a child she was a "buzzing bee", prone to "des vivacités échappées par surprise" (letter of the Princess Palatine, August 1698.) She seems to have received little or no formal education, but was kept under firm maternal supervision in order to avoid the petty politics of the Court. Her mother later affirmed, with characteristic frankness, that her daughter was no beauty, but had "bons sentiments". The 19th-century editors of her letters wrestled with her illegible handwriting, lack of punctuation and bizarre phonetic spelling, but confirmed,"If her orthography was worse than a cook's, she wrote in the purest French style" (Bonneval, Lettres d'Élisabeth-Charlotte d' Orléans ... (1865) p.vi). She had a keen interest in theatre and music, and, somewhat more surprisingly, in architecture.
Contemporary sources inevitably concentrated more on Élisabeth-Charlotte's physical appearance; she was generally considered plain - her mother commented cruelly on her pug nose and sunken eyes. Even in flattering portraits, she is represented with with a square face, broad forehead and heavy jaw. Although as a young woman she was considered to have a good figure, in later years childbearing and good living took their toll and she became stout. However, according to the Prussian ambassador Ezechiel Spanheim "without being exactly pretty, she had éclat and grace" . Her moral seriousness was universally admired and she had a princess's pride and sense of decorum..
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Portrait of Élisabeth-Charlotte, Mademoiselle de Chartres. Attributed to Ferdinand Elle le Jeune (1648-c.1717).
Purchased for the Musée du Château de Lunéville in 2017 |
The Lunéville portrait, of Élisabeth-Charlotte aged about 12, is derived from an earlier painting by Nicolas de Largillière, which exists in several versions, including one in Versailles. The original, a pendant to a portrait of her brother Philippe, is now in the Prado: "The setting and her billowing Arcadian dress, accented with diamond brooches a plenty, allude to an opulence befitting a royal subject".
Readings
Nature seemed to have endowed her, in abundance, with all its rarest gifts. By the age of 10 or 11 years old she was already the talk of Louis XIV's court on account of both her external charms and her personal merit. In the midst of so much flattery she retained a solid character and never showed the slightest amour propre....
R.P. Collins,
Histoire abrégée de la vie privée et des vertus de Son Altesse Royale. Elisabeth-Charlotte d'Orléans, petite-fille de France, duchesse de Lorraine (Nancy, 1762), p.3-4 [On
Google Books]
MADEMOISELLE, as she is known...is short, well-built for her age, of mediocre beauty; her face is square rather than round or oval; her eyes are pretty but her mouth is less attractive and she is rather snub-nosed. She is cheerful and honest in manner, with a lively animated air, and a personality to match; her repartie is quick-witted, her inclinations elevated and honorable; for example one day [when the Dauphine suggested she might marry Prince Clement of Bavaria] the little Mademoiselle replied instantly, "I am not made, Madame, for a younger brother".
Ezechiel Spanheim,
Relation de la cour de France en 1690, Paris: Société de l’histoire de France, 1882, p.69-70 [On
Google Books]
From the letters of the Princess Palatine:
29th September 1683: My daughter is a real knight-of -the-rustling leaves. She won't do her lessons - only her jaw is busy, for she chats and laughs all day long. She has all sorts of amusing ideas that would make you laugh. I must be careful not to be too familiar with her, for I am the only person in the world whom she respects. When Monsieur tries to scold her, she laughs in his face. She deceives her governess from morning till night. I don’t know what’ is to become of the girl, she is so terribly wild. I wish she and her brother could exchange temperaments. He is intelligent too, but calm and dignified, just as a girl ought to be, whereas she is as rough as a boy. I think it must be in the nature of all Liselottes to be so wayward in childhood, and I hope that in time a little lead will find its way into the quicksilver, and that she will grow less impulsive, just as I have since I’ve been in France.
24th April 1718: I am asked how I brought up my daughter so well; I replied that it was by always reasoning with her, showing her why such and such a thing was right or wrong, never ignoring any caprice on her part; by seeking as far as possible to shield her from bad example. I corrected her without temper, praised her virtues and inspired in her a general horror of vice.
29th March 1691: I would much rather my daughter remained Mademoiselle all her life than see her married unsuitably. She is growing enormously, and is almost as tall as I am. Her figure is not too bad and her skin is lovely, but her features are plain. She has an ugly nose, a large mouth, colourless eyes and a flat face, as you will see from her portrait. [Letters from Liselotte, p.58]
13th May 1696: My daughter is tall, for she is half a head taller than me; she is well-made and has pleasant features. 17th May 1697: My daughter has no regard for coquetry or gallantry; in this respect she gives me no concern, and I have nothing to fear. She is not beautiful but she has a good figure and a pleasant face, and means well.
6th May 1718:
My daughter is ugly; even more so than she was before, for she used to have a fine complexion but has now become sun-burnt. This has greatly changed her appearance and makes her look old. She has an ugly pug nose, and her eyes are sunken; but her figure is well-preserved, and, as she dances well, and her manners are easy and polished, any one may see that she is a person of breeding. I know many people who pride themselves upon their good manners, who are not as accomplished in this respect. In any event I am content with my child as she is; and I would rather see her ugly and virtuous than pretty and coquettish like the rest.
30 June 1718: My daughter has a pleasant appearance and good figure, but her face is not attractive - she does not have what they call here "des traits". Fortunately, she has honest intentions and a taste for virtue, which I find preferable to beauty.
Translated from the French versions of the letters as they appear in the secondary sources. Where available I've used the English versions published in Maria Kroll,
Letters from Liselotte, 1970 [Available for loan on
Internet Archive]
A Dynastic Union
The marriage between Élisabeth-Charlotte and Duke Leopold of Lorraine was an "eminently political" one. The young couple, who made their solemn entry into Nancy on 10th November 1698, embodied the hopes the duchies of Lorraine and Bar, which had been given back their independence by the Treaty of Ryswick the year before. For Louis XIV the union guaranteed French influence in Lorraine and, with it, the promise of continued peace on his Eastern frontiers.
The complex interplay of dynastic ties, so characteristic of the minor European ruling families, meant that Leopold's background, in contrast to his wife's, was thoroughly Austrian. He had been spent his childhood in Innsbruck with his father, the exiled Duke Charles V, governor of the Tyrol and a brilliant soldier in the service of Emperor Leopold I. His mother, Eleonore Maria Josefa of Austria, was the Emperor's half-sister. Already the nephew of the Hapsburg Emperor, he now became the nephew of the Sun King by marriage. The young Duke was just 19 years old, his bride 22.
The contract of marriage was signed in February 1698, as Leopold prepared to enter into his duchies. The financial negotiations were long and delicate, since they involved not only questions of dowry but also the thorny problem of any future Orléans inheritance. Once agreement had been reached, however, Louis and Monsieur, the bride's father, contributed generously and bestowed suitably magnificent wedding gifts.
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Pierre Gobert, Élisabeth-Charlotte of Orléan, c.1698
Musée Lorrain, Nancy [Wikimedia] |
Pierre Gobert (1662-1744) enjoyed great favour among the ladies of the French Court as a "painter of women and children... rosy skin, fine hands and gracious features". He was to make many portraits of the Duchess.
In this example, painted immediately prior to her marriage, Élisabeth-Charlotte is depicted as Venus, surrendering her arms to Cupid. The work is probably the one referred to in a letter of Leopold's dated 19th March 1698. Her status as a French princess is underlined by the fleurs-de-lys on her cloak.
Gobert made two sojourns in Lorraine, between September 1707 and October 1708, and again in 1720-21, during which he produced many images of the ducal family. These portraits, which were often charged with political connotation, were copied by his atelier and distributed in large numbers, both in Lorraine and abroad.
The standard image of the Duchess, in her heavily brocaded court dress, varied little over the years:
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| Portraits from Versailles and Lunéville (taken from Wikimedia) |
Gérard Voreaux, "Les peintres à Nancy et Lunéville au temps d'Henry Desmarest", in Henry Desmarest (1661-1741), ed. Jean Duron and Yves Ferraton (2005), p.152 [Preview on
GoogleBooks]
Mindful of her son's unhappy marriage, the Princess Palatine was apprehensive about her daughter's future. She had successfully fought off the threat of an inferior alliance to the duc du Maine. There had been also serious consideration of a match with the future George II of England, though this had been rapidly discounted due to his Protestantism.
According to Saint-Simon Mademoiselle herself was delighted to be promised to a sovereign prince with a considerable household, only 70 leagues from Paris, "in the middle of an area of French domination". No doubt she counted herself lucky to have escaped a fate like that of her half-sister Marie-Louise, who who had died of misery far away in Madrid as the wife of the imbecilic Charles II of Spain. Perhaps too, as Saint-Simon maliciously suggested, she was glad to escape "the iron rule of Madame" Mémoires de Saint-Simon, vol. 6, p.5 - 1698
Though reassured by her future son-in-law's pedigree, the Princess Palatine described the union as "a middling match" and worried about the state of the Duke's finances. Élisabeth-Charlotte, however, had no such reservations: "what give me hope that this marriage will make my daughter happy, is that she does not fear the poverty of her future, whatever is said to her. She imagines that she is still going to be happy with him." (Letter of 13th February 1698) She does indeed seem to have sincerely loved her husband all her life - even if the reciprocal sentiment was to prove less enduring.
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Portrait of the young couple. Oil on copper
From the collection of Marc Beauvau-Craon auctioned by Sotheby's in 2017. |
On 12th October 1698 the marriage contract was signed and the betrothal celebrated at Fontainebleau, in the cabinet du roi. On the 13th the Duc d'Elbeuf, standing in for Leopold, went through the marriage ceremony. It was a magnificent and moving affair: the King embraced his niece and shed emotional tears. Her parting from the young Duchess of Burgundy, the daughter of her half-sister, the Queen of Sardinia, was particularly painful. But, according to Saint-Simon, Élisabeth-Charlotte soon cheered up, and "there was no question of sadness" on her journey to Lorraine.
Prior to the official arrival in Le Bar, the Duke went out incognito to meet the cortege at Vitry-le-François. He introduced himself over supper. Madame, following etiquette, attempted to kneel to him, but Leopold prevented her and, according to onlookers, the two young people conversed cordially. The following day the marriage was renewed in Le Bar with great splendour, marking the start of a round of grand ceremonies and celebration which accompanied the progress of the couple to Nancy.
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| Drawing of the ceremony at Fontainebleau, probably for an almanach. Atelier of Sébastien Leclerc. Sold by Drouot in April 2024. |
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| The official meeting of the couple at Sermaize, on the frontier between France and Bar-le-Duc. Engraving from a French almanach of 1699. Musée Lorrain. |
From the letters of the Princess Palatine - A promising honeymoon:
25th October 1698: My daughter’s journey is progressing happily. I had a letter from her today which she wrote in Châlons. It will be a hard day for her today, because this is where she officially leaves the King’s house and becomes a wife in earnest. She and her husband are to sleep together tonight. That will seem very peculiar to her. Although my daughter finds her Duke attractive, she says she is feeling very apprehensive at his coming to collect her; she says she’s so beside herself with fear about the night that she is all of a tremble and hardly knows what she is saying. She may not be all that wrong, one hears such strange reports of our son-in-law. Apparently once, when he was taking a bath, the man who was washing him said, ‘Would His Grace move his arm so that I can wash His Grace?’ It turned out that it wasn’t his arm that was in the way at all, but, by your leave, quite a different thing. I am incredibly impatient to hear how the first night passed [Letters from Liselotte, p.84]
Paris 16 November 1698 My daughter has soon become used to her new state, and it is reported from Nancy that the Duke is extraordinarily keen on married life. After the entry into the town, my daughter was obliged to change her clothes because her dress was so heavy that she couldn’t stand up in it, and just as she had taken off her skirts, along came the Duke and paid her one of his visits. She’s quite used to it by now, and doesn’t dislike that business as much as I did.[p.85].
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| Musée du Château de Lunéville. |
In this version of a formal portrait by Court painter Nicolas Dupuy, dating from c. 1700, Leopold is shown "en cheveux", without the heavy wig which he later adopted.
If Élisabeth-Charlotte was plain, the Duke himself was equally unprepossessing, especially in later years.
In December 1697 he was described to the Princess Palatine as short and stout "with a typical German mouth"; on his visit in 1718 his mother-in-law found him so changed as to be unrecognisable - he had become brick-red and "even fatter than the Regent". (See Letters from Liselotte, p.192)
Events of the reign
Journey to Paris 1699: Even after the triumphal return of the Lorraine dynasty, the peace was fragile and the European situation remained unstable. As Duke of Bar, Leopold was obliged to make a traditional act of homage to the King of France, a humiliating ceremony which the Duke made haste to complete as quickly as possible. The journey to Paris was planned for the end of 1699. At first it was feared that Élisabeth-Charlotte, who was pregnant with her first child, would not be able to accompany her husband; but in the event she was safely delivered. (Sadly, this first child, a son named Leopold lived only a few months). The couple enjoyed several weeks of festivities in Versailles and Paris. Élisabeth-Charlotte contracted smallpox in France, but recovered safely, thanks to the care of the royal physician Helvétius.
Flight from Nancy, 1702: Almost immediately following their return, the political situation went awry, due to the renewed outbreak of Franco-Austrian hostility in the War of Spanish Succession. Although Leopold succeeded in having Lorraine's neutrality recognised, he was powerless to prevent another French occupation of Nancy in 1702. The Duke and his court were obliged to abandon the capital.
The evening before the comte de Tallard's entry into Nancy on 3rd December the Duke, accompanied by only four companions, rode out across country to Lunéville. Élisabeth-Charlotte, ill and heavily pregnant, was forced to negotiate the rigours of winter and the bad roads by coach, with her daughter of two years old. It was impossible to hide the preparations - the stunned population found themselves witness to the flight of the niece of Louis XIV before a French Army.
"At ten in the morning Madame Royal left for Lunéville in tears, carried in a sedan chair through the streets of the two towns of Nancy; her maids-of-honour, hunched in their carriages, were in despair. All the people who saw the miserable spectacle were reduced to tears "
Claude-Joseph Baudouin, Journal d'un bourgeois de Nancy, (quoted by A. B. de la Chaulme, p.1030)
The Duchess's second daughter Gabrielle-Charlotte was born on 30th December. Both the little girls were to be claimed by the smallpox epidemic of 1711.
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Princesses Élisabeth-Charlotte and Gabrielle-Charlotte of Lorraine, 1704.
Portraits in the collections of the Palazzo Spinola, Genoa. |
Journey to Paris, 1718. The ducal couple spent a second sejourn in France in 1718 following the Treaty of Paris of 21st January 1718, which resolved several outstanding issues with respect to Lorraine. Leopold confirmed the cession of Sarrelous and Longwy and received in exchange Rambervillers. He also gained recognition of the title His Royal Highness, hitherto refused by France. The Duke travelled incognito under the title of the Comte de Blamont. - but nonetheless the trip is reported to have cost him 100,000 écus.
After nineteen years, Élisabeth-Charlotte rediscovered the capital; but, according to her mother, was shocked by the sexual debauchery of fashionable society :
She is in a perpetual state of amazement, unable to contain herself, and her astonishment often makes me laugh. Above all she cannot get used to the sights at the Opera, where ladies with great names lie publicly in the laps of men who are said not to hate them. "Madame, Madame!" she cries, and I say, "Que voulez-vous que j'y fasse, ma fille? Ce sont les manières." "Mais elles sont vilaines", says my daughter, and that is true.
Letter of 13th March 1718 [Letters from Liselotte, p.193]
A fire at Lunéville, 1719: The following year, the château at Lunéville suffered a major fire.
We have bad news. The entire palace of Lunéville was burnt down, with all the furniture, on the third of this month at 5 o'clock in the morning. A hut caught fire and the people in the house, wanting to keep quiet about it, started digging trenches underneath and thought they had scotched the flames. But the wind carried the fire to a nearby timber yard, the wood caught instantly, and the fire spread to the ballroom, from the ballroom to the roof, and in an hour everything was burnt down. The garde-meuble was the first thing to go. They tried to save the archives and papers, but a hundred people were burnt to death in the attempt. The palace chapel too, which was newly built and said to have been very beautiful, is in ashes. The loss is reckoned at fifteen or twenty million. The children were saved, and carried out wrapped in blankets with only their shirts on their backs. My daughter, who had nothing to cover her legs, intended to have herself carried out in a chaise, but her porters were trembling too much to be able to carry her, and my poor daughter was forced to walk through the snow in the garden with far feet, and the snow lay two foot deep.
Letter of 8th January 1719 [Letters from Liselotte, p.205-6]
Coronation of Louis XV, 1722 : The Duchess of Lorraine attended Louis XV's coronation in Rheims with her children. It was on this occasion that she saw her mother for the last time.
My daughter was quite astonished when she saw me, because she had thought that my illness was only an excuse. But when she saw me in Rheims she had such a shock that she burst into tears. She has fine children, although I'm afraid the eldest will be a giant; although he is only fifteen, he is six feet tall. The other four are neither big nor small for their age...."
Letter of 5th November 1722. [Letters from Liselotte, p.244]
The Princess Palatine died only a few weeks later, plunging her daughter into profound misery.
A Magnificence Court
The contribution of the Duchess was crucial to the life of the new Court at Lunéville.
Francine Roze confirms that Élisabeth-Charlotte brought a considerable amount of wealth to the marriage. She was obliged to renounce her Orléans inheritance, but received a substantial dowry and allowance from Louis XIV - a not insignificant contribution to the Duke's coffers.
(The text of the marriage contract is given in Don Calmet's official history of Lorraine. Mademoiselle's dowry was fixed at nine-hundred thousand livres from the King and four hundred thousand from Monsieur and Madame, payable on their deaths, plus three hundred thousand in jewels. The comte de Convonges, on behalf of the Duke of Lorraine, was authorised to offer jewels worth four hundred - a pearl necklace, bracelets, earrings.., plus diamond rings - worth four thousand livres to the new Duchess. Histoire de Lorraine, Vol. VII, preuves,col.467)
Equally, both the King and Monsieur presented Élisabeth-Charlotte with numerous items of furniture, silverware and tapestries. The list of all that she brought with her to Lorraine, preserved in the Meurthe-et-Moselle departmental archives, includes every conceivable item, down to a chaise percée and musical instruments. The journey of the ducal couple to Paris in 1699 also provided an opportunity take advantage of the fashionable merchants of the capital. The party arrived in Paris on 20th November, but Élisabeth-Charlotte, who had been taken ill with smallpox, remained until 26th December. A series of invoices and receipts which survive give details of the considerable baggage train which accompanied her return to Lorraine.
She was credited 3,000 livres annually for purely personal expenditure - "menus plaisirs et frais de garde-robe" (See the article by Sarah Lebasch, Dix-huitième siècle, 2012) .
Élisabeth-Charlotte exercised a significant influence on the design of the palace - plans survive which are annotated in her own hand. In a letter addressed to Leopold, dated 19th January 1719, following the devastating fire at the palace, Madame Palatine explained that her daughter owed her interest in architecture to her father, Monsieur. Boffrand had completed work for the maison d'Orléans in Paris, before being named as Leopold's premier architect in 1711.
The Duchess's magnificent state apartments in the South Wing of the Château have been singled out for future restoration, and throw light on her crucial role in court ceremonial. For the Duchess this centred on the formal toilette which took place each morning in the magnificent antechamber with her ladies-in-waiting in attendance.
In 1702 the household of "Madame Royale" totalled 32 women, officials and personal servants (Baumont, Études sur le règne de Léopold (1894), p.252) This rose in the course of the reign: according to Sarah Lebasch, 40 to 50 individuals were employed more or less directly in the maintenance of the royal wardrobe. On arrival in Lorraine Élisabeth-Charlotte was obliged to relinquish her French entourage in favour of attendants from the grand nobility of Lorraine; as was the case in all the courts of Europe, such positions brought great prestige and were deeply coveted. Her chief attendant was her dame d'honneur, a position occupied successively by the Marquise de Lenoncourt-Blainville, the Comtesse de Viange dès 1704 and, from 1713 onwards, by Leopold's mistress, the Marquise de Craon. The dame d'atour presided over the public toilette, instructing the women charged with dressing the Duchess and dressing her hair . The Duchess's principal femme de chambre, Madame Petit, was in charge of her wardrobe, which occupied one or more rooms, filled with coffers and vast armoires.
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Allegorical portrait of the Duchess Élisabeth-Charlotte, attributed to Nicolas Dupuy.
Musée du Château de Lunéville. Photo by Patrick on Flickr |
This painting, is a pendant to a similar portrait of Leopold, dated 1706, now in Innsbruck. It underlines the Duchess's dynastic importance.
To the right representatives of the Church and the Army pay her homage. The figures to the left are personifications of the duchies of Lorraine and Bar.
Thierry Franz, director of the Château museum at Lunéville,notes that in matters of taste Élisabeth-Charlotte favoured the French influence in furnishings, ceramics and tableware. Sarah Lebasch has made a particular study of her role as a trendsetter in the sphere of court dress, based on surviving invoices and correspondence. Etiquette imposed strict code of costume, hairstyle and make up - and, as a French princess, the Duchess was expected to set the tone. Like the Duke she maintained a service de garde-robe, with a Grand Master in charge of the purchase of linen, clothing and furnishings. There are mentions of suppliers, not only in in Lorraine but abroad, particularly in Paris.
The reign coincided with the appearance in women's fashion of the "panier", as seen in the pictures of Claude Jacquard. In late 1720s the Duchess requested lighter fabrics, in modest colours. Gobert's portraits generally show dresses with a shaped bodice and with three-quarter length puffed sleeves, pinned by a broach to allow the chemise to be seen underneath. In the majority of portraits the Duchess also wears a formal cloak of ermine pinned at the shoulders. Accessories - ribbons, lace, bijoux and pompoms - varied according to fashionbut were always copious. A portrait of 1722 by Alexis Simon Belle, shows the by-now plump Duchess with white powdered hair, dressed in a loose fitting but sumptuous "robe volante":
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With François-Étienne in 1722. Portrait by Alexis Simon Belle
Musée du château de Lunéville.(Wikimedia) |
A Private life
The evolution of private space within the formal setting of the palace of Lunéville is a major theme of recent research. The state apartments in the South Wing ended in a suite of private and family rooms which opened directly onto a parterre of flowers, hidden behind trellis of jasmine and honeysuckle. The quest for privacy was exemplified by the famous mechanical table, table volante, which allowed meals to be served without the intrusion of servants. After the fashion of the time, Élisabeth-Charlotte herself enjoyed cooking; from the time of her arrival in Lorraine she had a kitchen installed in her private apartments, which was superbly decorated and equipped. She also maintained a jardin potager and, after 1712, a small model farm, "la ménagerie" on the outskirts of the town, where she and her friends could enjoy butter, cream and cheese made from the milk of her cows, far from the court. In this she anticipated the pastoral idylls of Marie-Antoinette by more than half a century.
The Duchess and her children
As Leopold embarked upon the politics of reconstruction, Charlotte-Élisabeth fulfilled her dynastic role by bearing children. Despite health problems, her pregnancies succeeded one another rapidly: "My daughter's letters always give me pleasure", wrote the Princess Palatine, "but they are seldom happy, since she is either ill or pregnant, or has other subjects to complain about". We also learn she always said her final goodbyes before the ordeal of labour (letter of 22nd May 2016).
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| Attributed to Jacques Van Schuppen, The Duke of Lorraine with his family, probably in Spring 1709. Musée Lorrain |
The artist Jacques Van Schuppen (1670-1751) arrived in Lunéville in the Autumn of 1707, when he was commissioned to paint a ceiling in the apartments of Marc Beauvau-Craon. Apart from a much later portrait of Charles-Alexandre (after 1738, Épinal), this family group was, until recently, the only canvas by him in a public collection. It is not known who commissioned it. It represent a half-way point between the formal and informal; note, in particular, the presiding bust of Leopold's father Charles V. Van Schuppen departed from Lunéville for Vienna in December 1712, but he continued to receive a pension and be part of the ducal household. He was later the director of the Academy of Vienna.
Notice:
Gérard Voreaux, "Les peintres à Nancy et Lunéville au temps d'Henry Desmarest", in Henry Desmarest (1661-1741), ed. Jean Duron and Yves Ferraton (2005), p.152 [Preview on GoogleBooks]
A study for a second family group by Van Schuppen was acquired at auction for the Musée du Château in December 2021. It is thought to date from c.1715.
Between 1699 and 1718 Élisabeth-Charlotte gave birth to fourteen children. Privilege conferred no protection against the ravages of infant mortality which took a terrible toll on the family. Several of the babies, like her first born, survived only a few months.
As time progressed, bereavements continued to come thick and fast. In 1709 Élisabeth-Charlotte lost her two little girls Élisabeth-Charlotte and Gabrielle-Charlotte to smallpox. In May 1711, smallpox carried off three more of her children in the space of a week, including the little Prince Louis, the seven-year old heir in whom so much hope had been invested. At this point, of ten children born to the Duchess, only the two little boys, Léopold-Clément, aged four, et François-Étienne, aged two-and-a-half remained to her. Léopold-Clément survived only to succumb to smallpox in his turn in 1723 at the age of sixteen.
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Autographed letter from Élisabeth-Charlotte, responding to condolences on the sudden death of her eldest son prince Léopold-Clément in June 1723, a terrible event which has plunged her into "an affliction that she cannot express". Currently offered for sale by Traces Ecrites.
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In the end only four of her brood reached adulthood : François-Étienne, the future Holy Roman Emperor, born in 1708, Élisabeth-Thérèse, born in 1711, Charles-Alexandre, born in 1712 et Anne-Charlotte, born in 1714. A further little girl born in 1715 when the Duchess was 39, was stillborn or survived only a few hours. In 1715 too Leopold lost his two younger brothers, Charles and Francis, to smallpox in the space of a few months. The 26-year-old Francis had been brought up in Lunéville and was only eight when the Duchess had arrived in Lorraine; she mourned him as one of her own sons. As her 19th-century biographer La Chaulme comments, by 1715 joy had left the house of Lorraine forever.
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Pierre Gobert, The Duchess with Prince Louis, c. 1707-1709.
Musée Lorrain [Wikimedia] |
For Gobert's many portraits of the ducal family - Pascale Debert, "L’enfance au château de Lunéville, par Pierre Gobert", Couleur XVIIIe post of 20.03.2018
https://www.histoiresgalantes.fr/blog/2018/03/20/lenfance-au-chateau-de-luneville-par-pierre-gobert/
The surviving children received an excellent education and, particularly once widowed, their mother fought with determination for their futures. Charles-Alexandre became governor of the Austrian Netherlands in 1741, then married the sister of Maria-Theresa, the archduchess Marie-Anne; Elisabeth-Therese became queen of Sardinia, whilst the youngest, Anne-Charlotte was elected abbess of Remiremont, then of Mons.
The Duchess's state of mind in later years is illuminated by the survival of her correspondence with the marquise d'Aulède, née de Lenoncourt, which was published in 1865. More than four hundred letters span the period from December 1715 to January 1738, six years before Élisabeth-Charlotte's death.
They show, above all, her attachment to her family, her love for her children and her continued affection for her husband, despite his infidelities. Her main preoccupation in later years was to secure her daughters' future. She was extremely discontent to learn of Louis XV's marriage to the daughter of King Stanislas of Poland and took pleasure in repeating rumours concerning Marie Leszczyńska's poor health.
E. Alexandre de Bonneval, ed., Lettres d'Élisabeth-Charlotte d'Orléans, duchesse de Lorraine, à la marquise d'Aulède. 1715-1738. (1865)
Regency and Exile
The sudden premature death of Leopold on 27th March 1729 at the age of 51, plunged the courts of Europe into consternation. His successor, Francis III, was 21 years old, but had been living for the past six years at the Imperial Court in Vienna, where he was to marry the Emperor's daughter Maria-Theresa. To the surprise of Leopold's State Council, the Duke did not designate the Duchess to rule in their son's absence, but instead appointed a Regency Council. Élisabeth-Charlotte nonetheless successfully imposed her authority, and had her status as sole Regent ratified by the Sovereign Court of Lorraine and confirmed by Francis himself. The reluctance of her son to return to Lorraine caused her great sadness; the Duke did not return until November 1729, in time to reorganise the administration and pay Louis XV the traditional homage on behalf of Le Bar. Then, on 25th April 1731, he left Lunéville forever, toured the courts of Europe and returned Vienna.
 |
Portrait of the Duchess of Lorraine by
?Nicolas-Philippe Dupuy [Wikimedia] |
This portrait, from the Maison-Musée Charles Friry in Remiremont, furnishes a useful corrective to the idealised images of Pierre Gobert.
The author of the blog "Nouvelle Feuille", who originally posted the picture, speculates, very reasonably, that it shows Élisabeth-Charlotte towards the end of her life.
If so, it cannot be by Dupuy who died in 1711.
As Francine Roze observes, Élisabeth-Charlotte's assumption of power as Regent shows a different aspect of her personality, up until now confined to her role as mistress of the house. For nine years she controlled the state in a situation of particular delicacy and was able to restore some order to the financial chaos left by Leopold. She struggled to impose her authority between the claims of the State Council in Lunéville and the Duke in Vienna. Her relations with Francis were fraught and ambiguous. Her handwriting was so illegible that she had to have copies made of her letters, so that her messages reached Vienna without ambiguity (p.337).
The Dowager Duchess was among the first to realise that the future independence of Lorraine was fatally compromised by the War of Polish Succession. During the hostilities the duchies were once again occupied by French troops. Lorraine found itself isolated and treated with suspicion on the international stage. According to the preliminary Peace of Vienna of 3rd October 1735, Francis would be obliged to cede his sovereign territories to Stanislas, the deposed King of Poland, at whose death they would revert to France. In compensation he would be given Tuscany. Élisabeth-Charlotte pleaded with him to not to abandon Lorraine as long as his future in the Hapsburg Empire was not assured. For more than a year she pressed, even threatened him, in a series of letters and memoirs which show an astute understanding of the geopolitical situation.
Élisabeth-Charlotte's pleasure in Francis's marriage to the Archduchess Maria-Theresa was entirely marred by the threat which hung over the duchies:
I see, my dear son, that your marriage with the Archduchess is to take place. I would be at the height of joy if Lorraine was not the price, but I tell you that the loss of your estates...by this cession to France, plunges me into dismay.... I do not see that the Emperor is doing you any great favour in giving you his daughter, if you loss your states. May God watch over you, that one day, when I am dead, you will not repent for having consented to this abominable treaty... You have never wanted to listen to my advice. I wish you well through the tender love I bear you, even though you have never reciprocated my feelings. This, my son is all I have to say. Nonetheless I give you my blessing on your marriage which I hope will be a happy one.
Letter to Duke Francis III, 21st December 1735, quoted Roze, p.322.
To her friend, the Marquise d'Aulède, she confessed angrily, that her son's marriage overwhelmed her with sorrow if the price was the secession of Lorraine: "I recognise nothing of my blood in all that he has done to the detriment of himself, his brother and his sisters".(Letter to the Marques d'Audlede, 11th June 1736).
In the end, however, she was powerless to influence the course of events.
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| Élisabeth-Charlotte dowager duchess and regent of Lorraine, c.1730. Musée Lorrain. |
This anonymous portrait is based on Rigaud's well-known image of the Princess Palatine. According to Thierry France, whilst it is true that the duchess put on weight in later years and came to resemble her mother, the point of the portrait is to emphasise her dynastic links to the French monarchy and her own claim to sovereign status in Lorraine.
Notice by Thierry Franz
There are various detailed accounts of the events which followed Leopold's death, see for example Auguste Digot,
Histoire de Lorraine, vol.6 (1880), p.152ff. [On
Google Books].
Henri Baumont, Études sur le règne de Léopold (1894) p.375ff.
19th-century historians tended to be less generous than Francine Roze in their assessment of the Élisabeth-Charlotte's period as Regent. According to Digot, she was "without experience and had no political intelligence".
On 13th February 1737 Francis was invested as Duke of Tuscany and formally surrendered Lorraine. Élisabeth-Charlotte was obliged to cede Lunéville to Stanislas.
She was at first advised to seek exile abroad, in Brussels or Versailles, but this she refused to countenance. It was finally agreed that she should retire to the ducal estate at Commercy which retained the symbolic status of a sovereign principality.
On 5th March 1737 the she made her last official appearance at the marriage by proxy of the eldest princess, Élisabeth-Thérèse, with King Charles Emmanuel III of Sardinia. On the following day, before grief-stricken crowds, the family left Lunéville forever. The Duchess and her two daughters spent the night at the château d'Haroué, then the future Queen of Sardinia began her journey towards her new states, and the Princess Anne-Charlotte made her way to Remiremont as abbess, leaving their mother to continue on to Commercy. On 3rd April, when the former King of Poland arrived at Lunéville, he was to find his new palace empty, the furniture and archives already sent on to Vienna.
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| Musée Lorrain, Nancy: Le départ de la duchesse Élisabeth-Charlotte du château de Lunéville le 6 mars 1737 (Salomon Kleiner after Jean Girardet) |
This engraving, show the ducal family and its retinue leaving the palace. The first carriage, drawn by six horses, and with the arms of Lorraine on the door, has almost left the cours d'honneur. Inside the Dowager Duchess has her hands joined; the two princesses are at the front. Despite the escort of guards, people hang on to the horses and their harnesses in their efforts to impede the departure.
Notice by Thierry Franz:
The scene is described by the Duke's librarian Duval, who commissioned the plate:
I saw Her Royal Highness Madame the Duchess Regent, and the two august Princesses her daughters [Élisabeth-Thérèse et Anne-Charlotte] torn away from their palace, their faces bathed in tears, their hands raised to the sky and their cries expressing the most violent grief. It would be impossible to describe the consternation, expressions of regret, weeping, and all the symptoms of despair to which the people gave way at what they regarded as the dying moments of their country. It is almost unbelievable that hundreds of people managed to avoid being crushed under the wheels of the coaches or trampled by the horses as they threw themselves blindly in front of the carriages to prevent their departure. Whilst cries, lamentations, horror and confusion reigned in Lunéville, crowds of country people rushed to linethe route through which the Royal family passed. Prostrating themselves on their knees they held out their hands and begged them not to abandon them. A few days after this tragic scene, King Stanislas came to take possession of the Palace of Lunéville.
Oeuvres de Valentin Jamerai-Duval, vol. 2 (1784) p.313-14 [On
Google Books].
By Urbain-François de Molitoris, secretary to Francis III,
Never has a sadder or more touching spectacle been witnessed than this departure; the tears and lamentations of the Court were awful and the crying and wailing of the people surpassed all imagination. All the foreigners, who were present in large numbers, were affected by this sorrow and regretted having to witness so mournful a scene, so miserable a catastrophe. By heart bled and my spirit was heavy with sadness to see the dissolution of this Court and, however expected the sad event, I found it difficult to come to terms with.
MS dated 9th March 1736, in the National Archives, Vienna, cited by Thierry Franz.
Other sources are given in:
Louis Lallement,
Le départ de la famille ducale de Lorraine (6 mars 1737) 1860 [On
Google Books]
Final years
Despite the reassurances of Cardinal Fleury in Paris, Élisabeth-Charlotte's day-to-day life at Commercy was precarious. Although theoretically she exercised full sovereignty over the tiny principality, she had been obliged to sign an agreement with France which tied the administration very closely to that of Lorraine and Le Bar. In addition she had little money at her personal disposal, and was obliged to depend almost entirely on the generosity of her son. The château, which had been unoccupied for fifteen years, was in a poor state of repair.
With the years she suffered increasingly from poor health. Her correspondence with the Marquise d'Aulède from the 1720s catalogues a host of minor, but debilitating and depressing, ailments - headaches, bad teeth, an ulcerated leg, varicose veins, digestive difficulties. She was also all too well aware of her family history of heart disease.
On 23rd December 1744 the Dowager Duchess Élisabeth-Charlotte died from an attack of apoplexy which killed her within a few hours. Her daughter Charlotte, the abbess of Remiremont, who had been at her bedside, presided over her funeral rites at Commercy and over the transportation of her remains to the church of the Cordeliers in Nancy where she was laid to rest alongside Leopold in the ducal crypt.
References
Francine Roze, "Élisabeth-Charlotte d’Orléans, dernière duchesse de Lorraine ", Académie de Stanislas, séance du 1er avril 2005. Mémoires de l’Académie de Stanislas, 2004-2005, p. 323-344
Sarah Lebasch, "Elisabeth-Charlotte d'Orléans",
Dictionnaire de SIÉFAR (Société Internationale pour l’Étude des Femmes de l’Ancien Régime), 2015.
https://siefar.org/dictionnaire/fr/Elisabeth-Charlotte_d%27Orl%C3%A9ans
_____, "Élisabeth-Charlotte D'Orléans (1676-1744) : une femme à la mode?"
Dix-huitième siècle, 2012/1 (n° 44), p. 399-423 [open access article]
Thierry Franz, "L’art de cour lorrain face au jeu des modèles européens : l’exemple des résidences ducales sous le règne de Léopold" in Anne Motta, ed.
Échanges, passages et transferts à la cour du duc Léopold (1698-1729). Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2017 p. 209-232. [open access book]
https://books.openedition.org/pur/155010
Exhibitions:
"La Lorraine pour horizon - Une indépendance retrouvée? (1697-1737)" (works from the 2016 exhibition at the Musée Lorrain)
https://musee-lorrain.nancy.fr/les-collections/catalogues-numeriques/la-lorraine-pour-horizon/une-independance-retrouvee-1697-1737
"La duchesse Elisabeth Charlotte, dans l'intimité du pouvoir", Exhibition at the Château de Lunéville, 14th October 2022 to 31st December 2023.
Reported in L'Est Républicain, 30.12.2023.
Photos uploaded by Pierre Dubois on his blog Histoires d'universites:
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