Charlotte of Bourbon

Charlotte of Bourbon (1546/1547 – 5 May 1582), was the fourth daughter of Louis, Duke of Montpensier and Jacqueline de Longwy, Countess of Bar-sur-Seine (died 28 August 1561). She was the third wife of William the Silent, Prince of Orange, the main leader of the Dutch revolt against the Spanish.

Biography

Her paternal grandparents were Louis, Prince of La Roche-sur-Yon and Louise de Bourbon, Duchess of Montpensier. Her maternal grandparents were John IV de Longwy, Baron of Pagny, and Jeanne of Angoulême, illegitimate half-sister of King Francis I of France.

Her mother, Jacqueline, was a believer in the Reformed doctrines, and she secretly taught them to her children. Charlotte's father, finding this out, determined to thwart his wife's influence by sending three of his daughters to convents. Charlotte was then only thirteen years old and begged to be allowed to stay with her mother, who died during the time Charlotte was in the convent. ^[1] Her father, influential in the court of Catherine de' Medici, placed her in the royal convent of Jouarre, near Meaux, to be raised as a nun. When she was professed as a nun at the age of thirteen, she made a formal written protest.^[2] The young Charlotte shocked both her family and the royal court by escaping the convent in 1572, announcing her conversion to Calvinism and, on the advice of Jeanne d'Albret, fleeing to the Palatinate, well beyond her parents' reach.^[3]

On 24 June 1575 Charlotte married the Protestant William, Prince of Orange, and had six daughters, including Louise Juliana of Nassau, from whom descended the House of Hanover.

Charlotte allegedly died from exhaustion while trying to nurse her husband after an assassination attempt in 1582. Following her death, William married on 24 April 1583, his fourth and last wife, Louise de Coligny, by whom he had a son Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange.

References

Ancestry

Bibliography

• Blaisdell, Charmarie, ‘Religion, Gender, and Class: Nuns and Authority in Early Modern France’, in Michael Wolfe (ed.), Changing Identities in Early Modern France (London, 1997), pp. 147–168.
• Dalberg-Acton, John Emerich Edward, et al. The Cambridge Modern History. Vol. III, New York: Macmillan Co, 1902. googlebooks.com Accessed July 30, 2007
• Robin, Diana Maury; Larsen, Anne R; Levin, Carole (2007). Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France, and England. ABC-CLIO.