Louis XIV organised the marriage of Louise-Françoise, his eldest daughter by Mme de Montespan to the future Prince de Condé. She was 12 and he was 16.
In spite of the fact he neglected her, they managed to have nine children, all of whom survived to adulthood.
Their eldest son succeeded his father as Duke of Bourbon at the age of 17.
Only one of their six daughters married.
Two of their daughters became Abbesses. Another became the Superintendent of the Queen Marie Lesczcynska’s household. The youngest daughter lived with her lover for 20 years. They had no children. She became a close friend of Madame de Pompadour.
The most famous of the daughters was Louise-Anne, known as Mademoiselle de Charolais.
Although several marriages were proposed, she preferred to remain single. Like so many of the noble women, she became a lover of the infamous Duke de Richelieu.
Among her residences was one of the outbuildings of the old Château of Madrid in the Bois de Boulogne. Mademoiselle de Charolais became friends with the wife of the famous military man, the Maréchal d’Estrées. At 38, the Maréchal had married 15 year old Lucie-Félicité, one of the 18 children of Anne Jules de Noailles, another Maréchal of France.
The various lodgings in the Bois de Boulogne, as in other royal hunting areas, were allocated by the king to dignitaries. In 1720 the Maréchal received one of these from Louis XV. He had an architect replace the modest dwelling with an elegant pavillion. The joke about its exorbitant cost gave the pavillion its name of “Bagatelle”.
The Maréchal’s young wife, like Mademoiselle de Charolais, was the polar opposite of virtuous. The two women used the Bagatelle for parties for the most libertine members of the court.
A number of portraits exist of Mademoiselle de Charolais, including at Versailles, where she is dressed as a Cordelier monk.
In fact she had the habit of wearing this outfit over her nude body when she received her lovers because it was much quicker to get out of than the complicated court dresses. She also reportedly made use of the ropes. Voltaire wrote a poem about her which roughly translates –
“Brother angel of Charolais, tell us by what adventure the cordon of St Francis serves as the belt of Venus”.
She is the person who is believed to have set up Louis XV with his first mistress, the eldest of the Mailly-Nesle sisters.
