Jeanne Agnès Berthelot de Pléneuf, marquise de Prie
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Jeanne Agnès Berthelot de Pléneuf, marquise de Prie (1698 - 7 October 1727) was a French noblewoman notable for her intriguing during the reign of Louis XV.
She was the daughter of the rich but unscrupulous Étienne Berthelot de Pléneuf. At the age of fifteen she was married to Louis, marquis de Prie, and went with him to the court of Savoy at Turin, where he was ambassador.
She was twenty-one when she returned to France, and was soon the declared mistress of Louis Henri, Duc de Bourbon. During his ministry (1723-1725) she was in several respects the real ruler of France, her most notable triumph being the marriage of Louis XV of France to Marie Leszczynska instead of to Mlle de Vermandois, the younger sister of the Duc de Bourbon. But when, in 1725, she sought to have Bourbon's rival Fleury exiled, her ascendancy came to an end. After Fleury's recall and the banishment of Bourbon to Chantilly, Mme de Prie was exiled to Courbépine, where she committed suicide the next year.
See M. H. Thirion, Madame de Prie (Paris, 1905). Charlotte Rampling played de Prie in the 1996 TV movie La dernière fête, titled in English The Fall of the Marquise de Prie.
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
