Elizabeth Charlotte, Princess Palatine

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For the wife of Elector George William of Brandenburg, see Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate (1597-1660).
Elizabeth Charlotte von der Pfalz

Elizabeth Charlotte von der Pfalz
Born May 27, 1652(1652-05-27)
Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Died December 9, 1722 (aged 70)
Château de Saint-Cloud near Paris, France
Spouse Philippe de France, duc d'Orléans
Children 1 Alexandre Louis d'Orléans,

Duc de Valois;
2 Philippe II d'Orléans, Duc d'Orléans
3 Élisabeth Charlotte d'Orléans,

Mademoiselle de Chartres.
Parents Charles I Louis, Elector Palatine,
Charlotte of Hesse-Kassel

Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate (German: Elisabeth Charlotte von der Pfalz May 27, 1652 – October 9 /December 8, 1722) was a German princess by birth, wife of Philippe, duc d'Orléans, younger brother of Louis XIV of France. Proud, blunt, opinionated and prolific, her vast correspondence provides a detailed account of the personalities and activities at the court of Louis XIV, her brother-in-law.

Contents

[edit] Early life

Born May 27, 1652 in the castle at Heidelberg, to Charles I Louis, Elector Palatine of the Simmern branch of the House of Wittelsbach, and Charlotte of Hesse-Kassel. In childhood she became known as Liselotte - a mixture of her names. Her parents were in an unhappy dynastic marriage and in 1653 her father began an affair with Marie Luise von Degenfeld, one of his wife's attendants. He purported to marry her without benefit of a judicial divorce, eventually prompting Liselotte's mother to return to her paternal home. Their daughter was five years old when she was sent to live with her father's sister, Sophia, wife of Ernest Augustus, Elector of Hanover.

She always remembered her time with her aunt as the happiest of her life, although she became close enough to her younger half-sisters to correspond with them at at least weekly after she married. In 1663 Liselotte had to move back to Heidelberg where she lived with her stepmother, fifteen half-siblings, and brother, the future Charles II, Elector Palatine.

Liselotte in 1671
Liselotte in 1671

. Several marriage alliances with German princes were considered, but all were declined prior to her engagement to the French king's widowed brother.

[edit] Names

She is known by different names and styles in different languages with:

  • Variations of her given names, such as Charlotte Elisabeth, Elisabeth Charlotte and Liselotte
  • Variations of her titles and territorial designations, such as Electoral Princess, Princess Palatine, of the Palatinate, of the Rhine, etc (also in respective forms in French and German)

At any rate, the dynastic titles she was entitled to were Countess Palatine of the Rhine and Duchess of Bavaria.

[edit] Marriage

On November 16, 1671 she was married by proxy at Metz. By prearrangement, after leaving her father's realm but prior to arriving in France, she formally converted to Roman Catholicism. She never saw her homeland again. At the French court, her husband was known by the traditional honorific of Monsieur. As his wife, Elizabeth Charlotte assumed the style of Madame.

[edit] Monsieur

The homosexual proclivities of her husband, Monsieur, were well known at court. Elisabeth Charlotte even confided that he needed "rosaries and holy medals draped in the appropriate places to perform the necessary act" with her.[1]

Apparently she did not mind that her husband was homosexual, but objected to money spent on his favorites and the exercise of their influence with him to enrich themselves.[2] She said on the subject:

I could put up with it if Monsieur only squandered his money in gaming, but sometimes he gives away as much as 100,000 francs at one swoop, and all the economies fall upon me and the children. That is not at all pleasant, besides putting me in a position where, as God is my witness, we would have to live entirely on the King's charity, which is a miserable thing.[3]

Madame had apartments at Versailles, use of various châteaux around France, and use of the beautiful château de Saint-Cloud on the outskirts of Paris, which was the couple's main residence when not at the palace of Versailles.

The marriage at first proved to be happy, with the birth of two male heirs. After the death of the couple's first son, the duc de Valois, she experienced depression and worried about her third pregnancy (with Élisabeth Charlotte of Orléans). After this birth, the relationship between husband and wife was never as close as it had been. The couple had the following children:

Liselotte with her children; Philippe II d'Orléans and Élisabeth Charlotte d'Orléans.
Liselotte with her children; Philippe II d'Orléans and Élisabeth Charlotte d'Orléans.

[edit] Children

After the birth of their daughter, known as Mademoiselle de Chartres, the couple mutually agreed to cease conjugal relations.[4] Monsieur turned to his mignons, and Madame to her writing.

Her letters to her aunt Sophia and others created not only a vivid picture of life during the reign of Louis XIV, but also of the Regency era of her son, Philippe. They reflect her alienation from her husband and other family members, as well as her warm relations with the king, and with her son and daughter.

[edit] Gallery

Philippe I, Duke of Orléans

Philippe II, duc d'Orléans

Duchess of Lorraine, sovereign Princess of Commercy

[edit] Court Life

As the king's only brother and sister-in-law, the couple were expected to be in usual attendance at court, where her husband's rank as a fils de France ensured her precedence before all save the queen, and the wives of the king's son and grandsons — and his current maîtresse-en-titre. This last position, whether occupied by Madame de Montespan or Madame de Maintenon, rankled her, and she disliked the king's illegitimate children, especially Montespan's son, Louis-Auguste, légitimé de Bourbon, duc du Maine.

Montespan's youngest daughter, Françoise-Marie de Bourbon, would eventually marry her son. No inducements ever reconciled Madame to the marriage. When she discovered that her son had agreed to it at the king's insistence, she slapped his face in front of the whole court, and turned her back on the king as he greeted her with a bow. Later, writing on the subject she put:

If, by shedding my own blood, I could have prevented my son's marriage, I would willingly have done so; but since the thing was done, I have had no other wish than to preserve harmony[5]

After the king transferred his affections from La Montespan to La Maintenon, Madame became obsessively resentful toward and suspicious of the latter; In her correspondence, Elisabeth Charlotte refers to her as the "King's old skank", the "old witch", and the "old whore".[6]

In addition to letters to her aunt Sophia and her morganatic half-sisters the Raugravines, she also corresponded with the former's courtier Gottfried Leibniz, although they never met. After he died, she insisted that the Académie des Sciences, of which he had been a member, honour his passing.[citation needed] The resulting eulogy to Leibniz, by Fontenelle, was the only one ever delivered anywhere.

[edit] Later life

When the Simmern branch of the Wittelsbach dynasty became extinct in the male line with the death of her brother Karl II in 1685, Louis XIV sent troops to claim the Palatinate in his sister-in-law's name, launching the War of the Bavarian Succession (1688 - 1697).

[edit] Widowhood

On June 9 1701, her husband of just under thirty years died of a stroke at the château de Saint-Cloud. Earlier, he had a heated argument with his brother at the château de Marly about the conduct of his son — who was also the king's son-in-law.

After her husband's death, Madame feared that the king would send her to a convent, as stipulated in her marriage contract. Instead she was confronted with secretly-made excerpts of her all-too-candid letters to correspondents abroad. She was warned to change her attitude toward Madame de Maintenon.

Liselotte in later life by Hyacinthe Rigaud.
Liselotte in later life by Hyacinthe Rigaud.

She remained welcome at court. She was allowed to keep her apartments at all the royal residences and retained her rank. From her husband, she inherited 40,000 livres a year. Louis XIV added 250,000 livres, and her son promised her another 200,000.[7][citation needed] Some time after Monsieur's death, she wrote:

If those who are in the next world could know what was happening in this one, I think His Grace, the late Monsieur, would be most pleased with me, for I have gone through his boxes to find all the letters written to him by his boyfriends and have burnt them unread, so that they will not fall into other people's hands...then...I receive great comfort from the King, otherwise I could not endure my position. When the King speaks about Monsieur he is quite moved

[8]

[edit] The Regency

In 1715, Louis XIV died aged seventy-seven at the Palace of Versailles. In his will he divided the regnal prerogatives among relatives and courtiers, allocating to his legitimised son, the duc du Maine, guardianship of the new king, Louis XV, who was five years-old. The Parlement of Paris overturned the will's provisions at the request of Madame's son, who thus became regent of France in the king's behalf.

In her memoirs Madame describes the new era of the Regency. Although no longer outranked by any woman at court and freed from the imagined persecutions of Madame de Maintenon, she did not cease daily complaints to her correspondents about the antics of what she regarded as an increasingly decadent court, about which she wrote:

I believe that the histories that will be written about this court after we are gone will be better and more entertaining than any novel, and I am afraid that those who come after us will not be able to believe them and think they are just fairytales. [9]

[edit] Death

Elizabeth Charlotte died at the age of seventy on 8 December 1722, like her husband before her, at the château de Saint-Cloud. Her son lived for another year and her daughter for twenty-two.

Her descendants by her son form the House of Orléans, which came to the French throne in the person of Louis-Philippe in 1830. Through her daughter she was the great-grandmother of Marie Antoinette and ancestress of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine.

[edit] Nature and Appearance

She was earthy, even vulgar at times, quoting folksy sayings such as "The snow falls as easily on a cowpat [Kuhfladen] as it does a rose petal." She spoke with a noticeable German accent and disliked dancing, which put her at odds with the French fashion. Compared to her predecessor, Henrietta Anne Stuart, who was pretty and graceful, Elisabeth Charlotte was stolid and Amazonian. She possessed the stamina to hunt all day, refusing to wear the mask that Frenchwomen were accustomed to use to protect their skin while watching their men hunt. Her face developed a ruddy and weatherbeaten look.

She walked too rapidly for most courtiers to keep up, save the king. She had a "no-nonsense" attitude, and was not given to gallantry, but lacked the prudery to prevent her ladies-in-waiting from flirting with courtiers or royalty. Her hearty appetite caused her to gain weight as the years went by, and when describing herself she once commented that she would be as good to eat as a roasted suckling pig.

Raised a Protestant, she was not given to the guilt of Catholicism nor was she a fan of lengthy Latin masses. However she remained virtuous and at times outraged by the open infidelity practiced by the aristocracy. Her views were frequently the opposite of those prevalent at the French court.[10]

[edit] Ancestry

Madame descended from many of the royal houses of Europe:

Elizabeth Charlotte, Duchess of Orleans: ancestors in three generations
Elizabeth Charlotte, duchesse d'Orleans Father:
Charles I Louis, Elector Palatine		 Paternal Grandfather:
Frederick V, Elector Palatine		 Paternal Great-grandfather:
Frederick IV, Elector Palatine
Paternal Great-grandmother:
Louise Juliana of Nassau
Paternal Grandmother:
Elizabeth Stuart		 Paternal Great-grandfather:
James I of England
Paternal Great-grandmother:
Anne of Denmark
Mother:
Charlotte of Hesse-Kassel		 Maternal Grandfather:
William V, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel		 Maternal Great-grandfather:
Maurice, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel
Maternal Great-grandmother:
Agnes of Solms-Laubach
Maternal Grandmother:
Amalie Elisabeth of Hanau-Münzenberg		 Maternal Great-grandfather:
Philip Louis II of Hanau-Münzenberg
Maternal Great-grandmother:
Catharina Belgica of Orange-Nassau

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Fraser, Antonia: "Love and Louis XIV", p140. Anchor Books, 2006
  2. ^ Crompton, Louis, Homosexuality and Civilization (Cambridge, MA; Belknap, 2003), p. 348.
  3. ^ From translated memoirs: [1]
  4. ^ Fraser, Antonia: "Love and Louis XIV", p 140. Anchor Books, 2006
  5. ^ Memoirs of the duchess d'Orléans by Elisabeth Charlotte, duchesse d'Orléans
  6. ^ All from [2]
  7. ^ All financial information from Brother to the Sun king:Philippe, Duke of Orléans by Nancy Nicholas Barker
  8. ^ From translated memoirs: [3]
  9. ^ From translated memoirs: [4]
  10. ^ .Fraser, Antonia: "Love and Louis XIV", Anchor Books, 2006

[edit] Further reading

  • Life and letters of Charlotte Elizabeth, Princess Palatine and mother of Philipp d'Orléans, régent de France 1652 - 1722 / compiled, translated, and gathered from various published and unpublished. London: Chapman & Hall, 1889.
Elizabeth Charlotte, Princess Palatine
Born: May 27 1652 Died: December 9 1722
French royalty
Preceded by
Princess Henrietta Anne of England		 duchesse d'Orléans
1671–1722		 Succeeded by
Françoise-Marie de Bourbon