Anne Geneviève de Bourbon
Anne Geneviève de Bourbon, born in 1619 in a royal prison, was a prominent figure in 17th-century France. As a member of the Bourbon family, she was the daughter of Henry II de Bourbon, prince of Condé, and Charlotte-Marguerite de Montmorency. Her life was marked by political intrigue, particularly during the Wars of the Fronde, a series of civil wars against the French Crown. Married to Henry II d'Orleans, duke of Longueville, Anne displayed a spirited personality that contrasted sharply with her husband. She became a leader among the aristocratic factions opposing King Louis XIV, securing alliances and participating actively in negotiations.
Her role in the Fronde included notable military and political maneuvers, and she garnered respect for her strategic acumen. However, the rebellion ultimately faltered, leading to her temporary estrangement from her husband and imprisonment of her family members. Despite these challenges, she later reconciled with her husband and took on significant responsibilities in managing their estates. In her later years, Anne retired to the convent of Port Royal, where she became a staunch supporter of Jansenism. Her life illustrates the complex dynamics of noblewomen's influence and the constraints they faced in a male-dominated political landscape during her time.
Anne Geneviève de Bourbon
French noblewoman and administrator
- Born: August 28, 1619
- Birthplace: Vicennes Prison, near Paris, France
- Died: April 15, 1679
- Place of death: Paris, France
As an ambassador, rebel against the Crown, and inspiration for French writers, the duchesse de Longueville was one of the most politically active noblewomen of the seventeenth century. She rallied support from French aristocrats, helped negotiate treaties with both the Crown and with Spain, and rallied the province of Normandy to oppose the monarchy.
Early Life
The birth of the duchesse de Longueville (lohng-veel), Anne-Geneviève de Bourbon-Condé, in Vincennes prison outside Paris in 1619 seemed to presage a life of political controversy. Born into the cadet branch of the reigning Bourbon family, her father, Henry II de Bourbon, prince of Condé (1588-1646), was imprisoned by King Louis XIII for suspected disloyalty. Her mother, Charlotte-Marguerite de Montmorency, gave birth to the princess in the royal prison, leaving imprisonment two months later after the family had sworn fidelity to the king.
The twenty-three-year-old duchess was married in 1642 to the forty-seven-year-old Henry II d’Orleans (1595-1663), duke of Longueville, governor of Normandy, and head of the most powerful aristocratic family in the Norman province. Memoirs universally described the couple as ill-matched; the new duchesse de Longueville was said to be far more high-spirited, daring, and intelligent than her older husband. She would soon take essayist François de La Rochefoucauld as a lover (in 1646).
Life’s Work
In August, 1648, the duchesse de Longueville’s restless energy found an outlet with the outbreak of the Wars of the Fronde. A complex series of rebellions against the Crown, the Fronde (French for sling or slingshot) erupted during the minority of Louis XIV and lasted until 1653. It brought together an ever-changing coalition of parlementaires (sovereign court judges), aristocrats, clergy, and local and provincial authorities. Most were opposed to the high royal taxes imposed during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648); to the regency of foreign-born Anne of Austria and her minister, Italian-born cardinal Jules Mazarin to the Crown’s attempts to curb the independence of the grands, or high nobility.
The duchess became a driving force in the aristocratic Fronde almost immediately. She cemented a small coalition of important aristocrats in Paris, who sided with the parlement of Paris against the Crown in late 1648. Most importantly, she secured the support of her husband, Longueville; her youngest brother, the prince of Conti (Armand de Bourbon); and her lover, La Rochefoucauld. In January, 1649, as rebellion flared in the provinces, the duke and duchess of Longueville moved quickly to the capital of Normandy. There they persuaded the parlement of Rouen to formally join the rebellion, adding one of the richest provinces of France to the lists of opposition. The duchess helped negotiate the Treaty of Rueil with the Crown in March, 1649, which brought a temporary end to the siege of Paris.
Her most important ally, however, would become her younger brother, Louis II, prince of Condé (later known as the Great Condé). By the age of twenty-seven, Condé had become the celebrated hero of France’s battles against Spain during the Thirty Years’ War. After winning the Battle of Lens (1648), he had ridden to the Crown’s defense in Paris the following winter with royal troops, opposing frondeurs in the city. Embittered by the Crown’s lack of recognition for his achievements, however, he was eventually persuaded by his sister and by his aristocratic pride to abandon the court, and he later entered into outright rebellion. As the scion of a family that virtually controlled Burgundy and other regions of France, his enlistment in the cause was a serious setback for the monarchy.
By January of 1650, however, the tide seemed to turn against the frondeurs. Several of the rebellious princes were arrested by the Crown, including the duchess’s husband and her brothers Condé and Conti, who were imprisoned for more than a year. As the young King Louis made a royal entry into Rouen to demand allegiance from the Norman province, the duchess fled to the Longueville château with a garrison of more than one thousand soldiers. She summoned the city officers of nearby Dieppe to secure their cooperation with her troops, but within days her garrison had surrendered. The duchess then attempted to flee the port of Dieppe under male disguise in a boat, narrowly survived its sinking, and escaped by carriage out of France.
Undaunted, the duchess continued the fight from the Low Countries (now the Netherlands and Belgium). She contacted the Spanish for military support and rode to Stenay on the frontier to shore up frondeur general Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, viscount de Turenne. On April 30, 1650, the duchess and Turenne signed a treaty with invading Spanish troops to fight in opposition to the French crown. Aided by revolts erupting elsewhere in the kingdom, their combined forces managed to keep royal troops from winning a decisive victory in the north. By February, 1651, First Minister Mazarin was in flight, and the frondeur princes were released from prison, but the lack of commonality of interests between the aristocratic rebels and the frondeurs of the parlements fatally weakened the rebellion. Despite Condé’s capture of Paris for the rebels in July, 1652, the continued bloodshed and disorder had wearied even the many staunch supporters of the rebellion.
By 1652, even the duchess’s husband and Turenne had rejoined the royalist side. The estranged couple, both with important supporters in Normandy, proceeded to fight passionately over the loyalty of the Rouen parlementaires. With the declaration of Louis XIV’s majority in December, 1651, however, the frondeurs could no longer claim to be rebelling against the misrule of the king’s regent and minister. They were now rebelling against the king himself. In October of 1652, Louis XIV re-entered Paris, and the Fronde began to dissolve. In November, the duchess was declared a rebel and a traitor, along with her brothers and La Rochefoucauld.
In December, 1654, the duchess reconciled with her husband. Two months later, he interceded with the Crown on her behalf, and she was cleared of charges of rebellion. Her brother Condé eventually was pardoned and returned to France in 1659, after the Treaty of the Pyrenees had ended continuing warfare between France and Spain. Cardinal Mazarin, the duchess’s implacable foe during the Fronde, later paid her the compliment of calling her one of only three women he knew who could rule or overthrow an entire kingdom.
In later life, the duchess took an active role in administering the Longueville estates in Normandy. She handpicked seigneurial judges for the ducal courts and prosecuted court cases before the parlement of Rouen to protect the rights of the duchy. She was highly esteemed by royal officers, both for her intimate knowledge of the province and for her administration of the immense Longueville estates.
After the death of her youngest son in battle (widely thought to be the son of La Rochefoucauld), the private incarceration of her eldest son for mental illness, and death of her husband in 1663, she astonished everyone once more by retiring to the aristocratic convent of Port Royal. While never entirely giving up the worldly life of Paris, she became a passionate and powerful defender of the Jansenists at Port Royal. She died there in 1679.
Significance
In the past, much has been made of the duchesse de Longueville’s affairs (as well as her platonic flirtations) with other aristocratic political figures, especially La Rochefoucauld and Turenne. Both were men whom she strongly influenced to remain in opposition to the Crown, but in the early-modern world, where politics was almost always conducted through bonds of personal patronage, clientage, and exchanges of favors, her relationships with powerful men were part of the normal political process. Like them, she used her considerable personal wealth to help finance the Fronde, and drew on the loyalties of clients and family members. Unlike them, however, she was not allowed to lead an army into battle, or to hold political office.
Along the way, she inspired the playwright Pierre Corneille as a model for his heroines, while also inspiring some of La Rochefoucauld’s most bittersweet reflections in his famous Maximes (1665). The duchesse de Longueville’s activities as an aristocratic rebel, center of political influence, and seigneur of noble estates show us the possibilities, as well as the real limitations, of political noblewomen in the seventeenth century.
Bibliography
Bannister, Mark. Condé in Context: Ideological Change in Seventeenth-Century France. Oxford, England: Legenda/Oxford University Press, 2000. Examines the intellectual, political, and social context of the French Fronde and discusses the duchess’s influence upon her brother Condé. Contains a useful chronology.
Cousin, Victor. Madame de Longueville Pendant la Fronde. Paris: Didier, 1863. This nineteenth century work remains the only full-length biography of the duchess in any language. Although romanticized and lacking a modern historical interpretation of the period, it captures the power of her personality.
La Rochefoucauld, François de. Moral Maxims. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2003. A dual language edition of La Rochefoucauld’s classic work. Many of his bitter love maxims were inspired by his several-year affair with the duchess, with whom he had a son. Includes an introduction and notes. Based on the 1749 English translation.
Moote, Lloyd. The Revolt of the Judges: The Parlement of Paris and the Fronde, 1643-1652. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971. While focused on the parliamentary revolt in Paris, this definitive work sheds light on the revolt in Normandy and the role of the Longuevilles in the provincial Fronde.
Ranum, Orest A. The Fronde: A French Revolution, 1648-1652. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993. A reinterpretation of the Fronde that argues for its revolutionary character, as opposed to the standard interpretation that it was a rebellion without revolutionary goals.