Madame de Maintenon - First Mistress, Then Wife

Hi, welcome to the channel The Kings of France. This video concludes the three-part series on the mistresses of the Sun King. Françoise d'Aubigné was the daughter of Constant d'Aubigné and his second wife, Jeanne de Cardillac. Constant d'Aubigné, after having abandoned his Protestant faith in 1618, assassinates his first wife and her lover in 1619 and is suspected of intelligence with the English with whom he is in contact. He was thus locked up in several prisons, including the prison of Bordeaux, the Château Trompette and the prison of Niart. Françoise was born on November 27, 1635, in the royal prison of Niart. She was baptized in Niart at the Notre-Dame parish. The young Françoise spends the first months of her infancy with Madame de Villette, her As a child, she lived for a while on the island of Martinique. After release from prison, her father was formerly governor of the neighboring island of Marie Galante, which meant nothing in practice, as that small island was still a wilderness at the time. The family lived in difficult circumstances, but their stay in the Antilles would make a deep impression on Françoise. Although she had been baptized as a Catholic, her father began to educate her in a Protestant way. In 1645, her father returned to France out of misery. His family followed two years later, but upon their return, they learned that Constant d'Aubigné had just died. Françoise lived with her mother and two siblings in La Rochelle, where they lived in poverty. Shortly afterwards, the later Madame de Maintenon came into the care again of her aunt, Madame de Villette, who furthered her Protestant education. Her Catholic baptismal godmother, Madame de Nuyens, who was lady-in-waiting to the Queen Mother Anne of Austria, found this to be unacceptable and managed to get Françoise removed from her Protestant aunt and placed her in a monastery. This was against Françoise's will, but under the influence of a very gentle nun, she became a devout Catholic. As a noble young lady, although without money, she was now able to frequent the high society in Paris. She visited the Salon of the celebrated and well-to-do poet Paul Scaron. Scaron, 25 years her senior and partly paralyzed, was impressed by her beauty and witty character. He suggested to her that she receive money from him so that she could enter the monastery or marry him. She chose the latter. She was 16 at the time. As Madame Scaron, she now acted as a hostess in his Salon. She became a highly cultured woman, which was much appreciated by ladies of class at the time. Paul Scaron died in 1660, leaving her only debt, so that she was once again in danger of falling into poverty. At the insistence of her influential acquaintances, Anna of Austria, mother to Louis XIV, provided her with a generous pension, which enabled her to maintain her position in Paris. When the Queen Mother died in 1666, her son Louis XIV suspended that pension, but it was quickly reinstated after the intervention of Madame de Montespan, who had visited the Queen Mother's drawing room several times and had just started up a relationship with the King. Meanwhile, the Marquis de Villersault was a good friend of the King. Françoise became his mistress, but after three years, she ended that relationship and went on to live as a devout widow. Madame de Montespan invited her to the French court in 1668. In 1669, she accepted the office of governess of the illegitimate children of the King and Madame de Montespan. Scaron accepted because she loved children, but also, and above all, because she knew very well that it was always beneficial to serve the King. She therefore settled near the capital in a large hotel in the village of Vaux-Girard, lived there in the greatest discretion, and met there for the first time the King, who had ventured there to see his children. When the King legitimized his children and brought them to court, he began to take an increasing interest in Madame Scaron, not only because of her appearance, but also because of her kind and pleasant nature. This led to frictions with the jealous Madame de Montespan. Scaron threatened to resign as governess, but the King persuaded her otherwise by giving her large sums of money. In 1674, she bought the castle of Maintenon to the west of Paris. The following year, the King granted her the title of Marquise de Maintenon. As Madame de Montespan gradually faded out of favor, and the new royal mistress, Madame de Scouraille, died unexpectedly in 1681, Madame de Maintenon became the companion of Louis XIV. However, she was not considered a mistress as she retained her devout image. After the death of Queen Maria Thérésia on July 30, 1683, and with the support of the Catholic Church in France, Françoise d'Aubigné, the widow Scaron, aged nearly 48, secretly married Louis XIV on October 9, 1683. De Maintenon caused the religious era to hover over the court at the end of the reign of Louis XIV. It is certain that her ambiguous status – she was a simple socialite in public, but a queen in private – was a source of great psychological tension for her. Unloved by the royal family, she was even less loved by courtiers and the people who attributed disproportionate power to her and saw in her the manipulator of Louis XIV. This was however not the case. Admittedly, the King listened to her and even willingly asked for her advice, but the King still followed his own absolute path. We also know that the King was not always gentle with her, sometimes condemning harshly her lowly background. We also know today that de Maintenon did not necessarily seek to have influence over the King. She had always called herself a novice in politics. After Louis' death in 1715, the Duc d'Orléans became regent for the minor Louis XV. He had Louis XIV's will, advocated by La Maintenon, invalidated by the Parliament of Paris. Madame de Maintenon lost all influence at court and retired to Saint-Cyr where, in 1685, she had founded a boarding school for girls from impoverished noble families like herself. She was visited there in June 1717 by Tsar Peter the Great, who had come to see everything that was worth seeing in France. She died there on April 15, 1719, four years after the King, at the age of 83. This concludes my three-part series of the Mistresses of Louis XIV. If you have enjoyed this video, please don't forget to comment, like and subscribe. Thank you for watching, take care!