Marie de Nemours

Marie d'Orléans
Duchess of Nemours
Marie in 1705 by Rigaud
Born	5 March 1625 Paris, France
Died	16 June 1707 (aged 82) Paris, France
Spouse	Henri II of Savoy, Duke of Nemours
Full name Marie d'Orléans
Father	Henri II d'Orléans, Duke of Longueville
Mother	Louise de Bourbon-Estouteville

Marie de Nemours, originally known as Marie d'Orléans-Longueville (1625–1707), was the daughter of Henri II d'Orléans, duc de Longueville. After the death of her brother Jean Louis Charles d'Orléans-Longueville in 1694 she succeeded him as sovereign Princess of Neuchâtel, by then the last monarchical state within the Swiss Confederation, although she remained a prominent member of the French royal court.

Biography

Descended from Jean d'Orléans, illegitimate son of Louis I, Duke of Orléans, she was known as Mademoiselle de Longueville prior to her marriage. The Dukes of Longueville had acquired the principality of Neuchâtel through marriage to a Swiss princess, Margravine Johanna of Baden-Hochberg-Sausensberg. After the death of her brother Jean-Louis-Charles d'Orléans in 1694 she succeeded him as Princess of Neuchâtel.

By her marriage with Henri of Savoy, she became Duchess of Nemours. The couple were married on 22 May 1657 at Trie. The dukes of Nemours were descendents of the Dukes of Savoy having settled in France in the sixteenth century, where they ranked as princes étrangers.

At an early age she was involved in the first Fronde, of which her father and stepmother, Anne Geneviève de Bourbon, were leaders. She married Henri II, Duke of Nemours in 1657. When he died in 1659, leaving her childless, the rest of her life was mainly spent in contesting her inheritance with her stepmother. Her Savoyard nieces included Marie Jeanne, Duchess of Savoy and Marie Françoise, Queen of Portugal.

She left some interesting memoirs, published by C. B. Petitot in the Collection complete des memoires (1819–1829).

She was the muse for Jean Loret's Muse historique (1650, 1660, 1665), a collection of weekly gazette burlesque reporting on the news of Paris society and the court of Louis XIV in the form of letters to Marie d'Orléans-Longueville which are considered an early example of French journalism.

Her childless death in 1707, without close relatives, opened a conflict about her vast inheritance. For example, see Duke of Estouteville.

Ancestry

External links

Media related to Marie d'Orléans at Wikimedia Commons

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.