Adrien-Louis de Bonnières, duc de Guînes

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Adrien-Louis de Bonnières, comte then duc de Guînes (Lille 1735 — 1806) was a French nobleman at the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, whose favourite he was. He was French ambassador briefly at Berlin, 1768-69 then at London, during a period when Britain and France were not at war, 1770-76, returning to Paris when the French aid to the American colonies occasioned a diplomatic breach.

Following a brief military career during the Seven Years War, which found him a brigadier in the French army, Bonnières entered upon a diplomatic career, buoyed and hampered by a dry wit: "It was a most lively animated gazette," M. de Genlis reported after a visit to the prince de Conti in 1766, with Guînes in the company: "his whole reputation hangs on a manner of spying out all the little ridiculous trifles and of an ill grace, which he relates in few words with an amusing manner".[1] A protegé of the Choiseul and the Noailles, and a friend of Frederick II of Prussia, who had visited him in 1766, he was named ambassador at Berlin in 1768, but soon fell out of favour to such a degree he was recalled in November 1769.

As a consolation, at the urging of the queen, he was named ambassador to the Court of St. James's the following year, and remained at that post, with periodic recalls to Versailles, until 1776.[2] His reputation in London was magnificent, in stark contrast to his predecessors Châtelet, Guerchy and Durand. His affair with Lady Elizabeth Craven was overlooked, in part because of her beauty and charm. It was said of him that when the noon gun was fired, and someone in his entourage asked what that was, he retorted "I think they've sighted the sun." He made a wider reputation with the awkward "Guînes affair" in which he pressed charges, 20 April 1771, against his secretary, Barthélemy Tort de la Sonde, whom he accused of having used his name in speculating in the public funds. Tort, on being arrested, asserted that he had acted upon Guînes' directions and for his account. In Paris the duc d'Aiguillon, named secretary of state for foreign affairs, 6 June, took Tort's part, whereas the queen defended her friend Guînes, and the affair was taken up by the antagonistic parties of Choiseul and Aiguillon.[3] Guînes was eventually found not guilty, by a narrow margin, in a special commission of councillors of state, who had been named by the king.[4] The affair rankled; it served among the reasons for the dismissal of Aiguillon, under the queen's lasting displeasure.

On his return to France he was made duc de Guînes[5] and remained in royal good graces, becoming a chevalier of the Order of Saint Esprit 1 January 1784.[6] His only daughter Marie-Adrienne was married in 1778 to Charles de La Croix de Castries, who, when he was made duc de Castries in 1784, secured the promise of the reversion of the Guînes title, which never transpired, as the duke outlived the Bourbon monarchy.

He was named to the council of war, 1787, and made governor of Artois, 1788. On the eve of the French Revolution, Guînes was named to the second Assembly of Notables which sat from 6 November to 12 December 1788. He emigrated to England at the outset of the French Revolution and returned under the Consulate. He died in 1806.

The duc de Guînes, who, like Frederick of Prussia, was an accomplished flautist, commissioned from Mozart the familiar Concerto for Flute and Harp (K. 299), written in 1778. When the time came for Mozart to collect his fee for the commission from the flautist duke and the 24 lessons on the harp he had given the duke's daughter, de Guînes was unavailable; his housekeeper could only offer half the agreed amount. "There's noble treatment for you," Mozart wrote his father.

The duc de Guînes was immensely corpulent. He had two sets of breeches, one for sitting, and a tighter set when he would only be standing. His valet would ask each morning, "Will Monsieur be sitting today." If not, he would be lowered into a pair of breeches with the aid of two footmen.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ "c’était une très vivante gazette animée... toute sa réputation tient à une façon d’espionnage de toutes les petites choses ridicule et de mauvais ton qu’il conte avec en peu de mots d’une manière plaisante. (J. Bormans, "Un ambassadeur homme de Cour sous Louis XV: le duc de Guînes" Revue d’Histoire diplomatique, 1924, pp. 39-­60, p. 41.
  2. ^ He was in London 27 November 1776 to 26 August 1771, from 13 January 1772 to 31 July 1773, and from 10 July 1775 to 26 February 1776.
  3. ^ A volume of Correspondance de Monsieur le Duc d'Aiguillon au sujet de l'Affaire de M. le Comte de Guînes et du Sieur Tort et autres intéressés was published in Paris, 1775.
  4. ^ Mme de Campan, Memoirs Vol. iv. ch. 11 (On-line text).
  5. ^ Again at the queen's insistence, according to the Swedish ambassador. (Marie Florimond-Claude Mercy-Argenteau,, Marie-Antoinette: Correspondance secrète entre Marie-Thérèse et le comte de Mercy-Argenteau (Paris) 1875:447, note (16 May 1776)
  6. ^ État Militaire de France pour l’année 1789
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