Louise de La Vallière

Childhood

The Château de la Vallière, where Louise spend her childhood.

Born on 6 August 1644 at the Hôtel de la Crouzille in Tours, Françoise Louise de La Baume Le Blanc^[1] (who very quickly was called by her middle name), was the daughter of Laurent de La Baume Le Blanc, Marquis de La Vallière and officer in the royal army, by his wife Françoise Le Provost, already a widow of a councilor in the Parlement of Paris. She spent her early infancy in her birthplace, the Château d'Amboise (where his father was governor) and the Château de La Vallière in Reugny, a possession of her family.^[2]

On the death of her father, in 1651, Louise's mother married in Blois for the third time in 1655 to Jacques de Courtavel, marquis de Saint Rémy and butler of Gaston, Duke of Orléans, the always rebellious uncle of King Louis XIV of France and currently in exile in the Blésois. Louise serves as a companion of the three younger daughters of the Duke of Orléans (the future Grand Duchess of Tuscany, Duchess of Alençon, and Duchess of Savoy), who were about her same age, and was educated with them.

Discreet, modest though it's not a striking beauty nor a brilliant mind, Louise was a lovely girl with blond hair and soft blue eyes but afflicted with a limp,^[3] who does not prevent nor to dance with grace or to be an accomplished rider.

After the death of the Duke of Orléans, his widow moved with her daughters to the Luxembourg Palace in Paris and took the sixteen-year-old Louise with them.

Meeting with Louis XIV

Louise de La Vallière and her children by Peter Lely, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes

Through the influence of a distant kinswoman, Mme de Choisy, Louise was named Maid of honour to Princess Henrietta Anne of England, sister of King Charles II of England, who was about her own age and had just married Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, King Louis XIV' brother. Henrietta (known as Madame) was extremely attractive and joined the court at Fontainebleau in 1661. Her friendly relationship with her brother-in-law the King caused some scandal and fed rumors of a romantic affair.

To counter these rumors, the King and Madame decided that the King should pay court elsewhere as a front, and Madame selected three young ladies to "set in his path", Louise among them. The Abbé de Choise reported that the seventeen-year-old girl "had an exquisite complexion, blond hair, blue eyes, a sweet smile . . . [and] an expression [at] once tender and modest."^[4] One of her legs was shorter than the other, so Louise wore specially made heels.

Louise had been at Fontainebleau only two months before becoming the king's mistress, and completely ignorant of being part of a ploy to cover the scandal between the King and his sister-in-law ignores the ploy, believes in the sincerity of the monarch and was delighted. However, the King was quickly trapped in his own game: conquered by Louise's horse riding and hunting talents, her taste for music and singing, her dancing skills, her knowledge of books and literary and without doubt her innocence and sincerity of feelings about him (one source^[5] say that the King was seduced by a sentence that Louise would have expressed after their first meeting: "Ah! if he was not the King..."; sentence that would have suggested to the monarch that she loved him for himself and not for his royal title^[5]) he falls under the spell of the young innocent girl and soon fell in love with her.^[5][6]

The liaison, although discreetly maintained, is quickly known and causes anger of devotees and clergymen, such as Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, and the embittered sarcasm of the Duchess of Orléans. According to Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Louise symbolized the "perfect lover", the one who loves only for love, without pride or caprice, without ambition or vanity, and whose sensitivity does not hide the firmness of heart.

Royal Mistress

For Louise, this was her first serious attachment and she was reportedly an innocent, religious-minded girl who initially brought neither coquetry nor self-interest to their secret relationship. She was not extravagant and was not interested in money or titles that could come from her situation; she wanted only the King's love. Antonia Fraser writes that she was a "secret lover not a Maîtresse-en-titre like Barbara Villiers."^[7] Nicolas Fouquet's curiosity in the affair was one of the causes of his disgrace, for, when he bribed Louise, the King mistakenly thought that Fouquet was attempting to take her as a lover.^[8]

However, the King wants to avoid the scandal and to spare his mother, Anne of Austria of a painful confrontation between them. Louise was then installed in a small castle used as hunting lodge whom she particularly enjoy, and which is located not far from Saint-Germain-en-Laye, in the forest of the village of Versailles.^[5] In 1664 Louis XIV hosted there a splendid party called The Pleasures of the enchanted island, where Molière presented The Princess of Elid, The Mad and Tartuffe, or, the Impostor, with the musical arrangements of Lully. The Queen and the Queen-Mother are the official dedicators while Louise was the unofficial dedicatee; the court was not fooled and the gossip began, moreover when Louise receives the domain of Carrières-sur-Seine, where she builds a castle whose gardens were designed by André Le Nôtre, the principal royal gardener.

In February 1662, the couple fell into conflict. Despite being directly questioned by the King, Louise refused to tell her lover about the affair between the Duchess of Orléans and the comte de Guiche. Coinciding with this, Bossuet delivered a series of Lenten sermons in which he condemned the immoral activities of the King through the example of King David's adultery—and the pious girl's conscience was troubled.^[9] She fled to the convent at Chaillot. Louis followed her there and convinced her to return to court. Her enemies —chief among them, Olympe Mancini, comtesse de Soissons, niece of Cardinal Mazarin— sought to orchestrate her downfall by bringing her liaison to the ears of the King's wife, Maria Theresa of Spain.

During her first pregnancy, Louise was removed from the Duchess of Orléans' service and established in a lodging in the Palais Royal, where, on 19 December 1663, she gave birth to a son, Charles, who was taken immediately to Saint-Leu and given to two faithful servants of Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Despite the secrecy of the transfer, organised by a doctor Boucher who was present at the birth, the story quickly spread to Paris. The public scorn at a midnight mass on 24 December resulted in a distraught Louise escaping home from the church.^[10]

At all, Louise had five children by Louis XIV, of whom only the last two survived infancy:^[11][12]

• Charles de La Baume Le Blanc (19 December 1663 – 15 July 1665), died without being legitimized.
• Philippe de La Baume Le Blanc (7 January 1665 – 1666), died without being legitimized.
• Louis de La Baume Le Blanc (27 December 1665 – 1666), died without being legitimized.
• Marie Anne de Bourbon (2 October 1666 – 3 May 1739); after her father Louis XIV legitimised her, she was known as Mademoiselle de Blois. She later married Louis Armand I, Prince of Conti, and, through this marriage, became officially recognised as a Princess of the Blood.
• Louis de Bourbon, Count of Vermandois (2 October 1667 – 18 November 1683); died at the age of sixteen during his first military campaign.

• 
  Louise in her younger years
• 
  Louis XIV of France
• 
  Marie Anne de Bourbon, 1680
• 
  Louis de Bourbon, comte de Vermandois, the only one of her sons to live to maturity

After the death of his mother in 1666, Louis XIV publicly displayed his affair, which greatly displeased Louise, who, instead of the splendor of being a royal mistress, preferred demonstrations of tenderness aside. Within a week of the Queen-Mother's death on 20 January 1666, Louise appeared at Mass beside the King's wife; ashamed of her conduct, she treated the Queen with humility and respect.

It is at this moment that the Court sees the return of the splendid Françoise-Athénaïs, marquise de Montespan. The King, subjugated by this "triumphant beauty to show to all the ambassadors" (according to Madame de Sévigné),^[13] seeks to take her as his mistress. Becoming more sure of himself, claiming that the dowry of his wife was not paid, Louis XIV declares war on his brother-in-law, King Charles II of Spain, who is only six years old and reigns under the regency of his mother.

Before going on campaign to Flanders (which began the War of Devolution) in May 1667, by letters patent confirmed by the Parlement de Paris, the King legitimized his only surviving child with Louise, a daughter who was named Marie Anne de Bourbon and was given the title of Mademoiselle de Blois and also made Louise Duchess de La Vallière and gave her the estate of Vaujours.^[5] As a Duchess, Louise had the right to sit on a tabouret in the presence of the Queen, which was a highly prized privilege; however, Louise was not impressed: she said her title seemed a kind of present given to a servant who was retiring. Indeed, she was correct, for Louis XIV commented that legitimising their daughter and giving Louise an establishment "matched the affection he had had for her for six years" — in other words, an extravagant farewell present.^[14]

Louise, again pregnant, was asked to stay at the court. Taking anxiety for the King and may be jealous, she joined the battlefield without his permission and throwing herself at the King's feet sobbing uncontrollably; infuriated, Louis XIV forced Louise to return immediately. Hypocritically, Madame de Montespan was the first who denounces the scandal in the battlefield. In a strange twist of fate, her relationship with the King in the same way in which started: used initially as a decoy for Louis XIV and Madame, Louise now became a decoy for her own successor, as the King made her share the Madame de Montespan's apartments at the Tuileries, because she was already married and her husband was very uncomfortable with this situation.

During this time, a devastated Louise wrote the Sonnet to the king:^[15]

• 
  The Gaston d'Orléans wing at the Château de Blois where she grew up
• 
  Louise de La Vallière as Diana, by Claude Lefèbvre, 1667.
• 
  The Duchess of Orléans for whom Louise was a maid-of-honour
• 
  Françoise-Athénaïs, marquise de Montespan

Five months later, in October 1667, Louise gave birth her fifth and last child to the King, a son called Louis after his father. A long period of cohabitation then begins between the two mistresses. Despite having Louise as his official mistress and in the middle of his affair with Madame de Montespan, this did not prevent Louis XIV to fall in love with the splendid Madame de Ludres; hoping to win back the heart of the King of whom she still deeply love him, Louise accepted all the humiliations inflicted by the new royal mistresses (like Madame de Montespan demanded that Louise assist her with her toilette, and she did so without complaint, or whenever the King wished to travel with his real mistress, he made both Louise and Madame de Montespan sit in the same carriage with the Queen), but this tactic was unsuccessful: neither the King reasumed their relationship or ended his other affairs.^[5]

Louise's son was only legitimized by Louis XIV in 1669, two years after their affair effectively ended. He creates the child Count of Vermandois, and gives him the post of Superintendent of the Navy, but because he was still a child, the King retains his authority over the French navy. Around this time, Madame de Montespan gave birth her first child to the King, a daughter; Louise served as a godmother of the newborn, who was named Louise-Françoise after her.

The strain of being forced to live with her former lover and his current mistress caused took its toll on Louise: she lose weight and become increasingly haggard. In 1670, after a long illness —who according to some sources was a miscarriage^[16] — that put her close to death, Louise turns to religion, writing the moving Réflexions sur la miséricorde de Dieu. However, as Monique de Huertas points out, "these Reflections are a mystical call of conversion, rather than a true conversion," which comes a few years later. She claims it "a poor creature still attached to the earth, and only crawl into the path of virtue...".^[17] For now, she makes the choice to stay in "the world" (at the Court) to face the test of leading a life henceforth exemplary, and also in the hope of inspiring other souls. Her love for the King is not yet dead: she admits that she can not claim to be "dead to her passions, while I feel them live more strongly than ever in what I love more than myself".^[18]

Carmelite nun

On the advice of preacher Louis Bourdaloue, of the Maréchal de Bellefonds (King's First Butler) and Bossuet, she decided to leave the court to enter to the very strict Carmelite convent in the Faubourg Saint-Jacques in Paris, rejecting any solution of being placed in a convent "more cozy". Obliged to seek permission from Louis XIV to withdraw, she attempted to leave in 1671, fleeing to the convent of Ste Marie de Chaillot, only to be compelled by order of the King to return.

In order to dissuade her to leave, Madame de Montespan urges the King to officially introduce Mademoiselle de Blois to the court. By giving an official status to their daughter, the King thinks that he compel Louise to remain and to continue to serve as a decoy for his double-adultery with Madame de Montespan. The new favorite, who fears scandal, also wanted to convince Louise to stay at court through Madame Scarron (the future Madame de Maintenon), who say to the former mistress about the privations and suffering to which she would be expose herself during her stay in a Carmelite convent, as well as the scandal that such decision would not fail to provoke; in addition, she asked Louise if she had fully considered the discomforts that awaited her at the Carmelite convent which ended up including being forbidden to wear the shoes that allowed her to walk without a limp: "When I shall be suffering at the convent", Louise replied, "I shall only have to remember what they made me suffer here, and all the pain shall seem light to me." But all these attempts will remain in vain and at the end Madame Scarron will stopped her attempts to convince her. In 1674, she was finally permitted to enter the Carmelite convent in the Faubourg Saint-Jacques; the day she left the court forever, she threw herself at the feet of the Queen, begging forgiveness:

"My crimes were public, my repentance must be public, too."^[19]

One year later, on 3 June 1675,^[20] Louise pronounces her perpetual vows as a Carmelite nun under the name of Sister Louise of Mercy; in the ceremony, she accepted the black veil from the Queen herself, who kissed and blessed her.

When Louise left the Court, the new Duchess of Orléans (born Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate) took care of the education of her only surviving son, Louis. He later was involved in an homosexual scandal with his uncle Philippe de France and Philippe's favourite, the Chevalier de Lorraine, and died in 1683 while in exile in Flandres.^[21] His loving sister and aunt were greatly affected by his death, while his father did not shed a tear. His mother, still obsessed with the sin of her relationship with the King, said upon hearing of her son's death:

"I ought to weep for his birth far more than [for] his death."^[22]

The Queen already had a habit of spending brief sojourns at the Carmelite convent for spiritual consolation and repose; another visitors were Bossuet, Madame de Sévigné and the Duchess of Orléans. Later in life, Madame de Montespan went to Louise for advice on living a pious life. Louise forgave her, and counselled her on the mysteries of divine grace.

After 36 years of religious life, Sister Louise of Mercy died on 6 June 1710 aged 65. She was buried in the cemetery of her convent. Her Duchies of La Vallière and Vaujours were inherited by her daughter Marie Anne, as did the fortune she had acquired during her tenure as royal mistress.

Saint-Simon wrote:^[20] "she died [...] with all the marks of great holiness" and even^[23] "sadly [the king] had not a similar mistress like Mademoiselle de La Vallière...". Sainte-Beuve considers that, of the three most famous favorites of Louis XIV, Louise was "by far the most interesting, the only one really interesting in itself."