East India Company
The East India Company known as the Honourable East India Company or the British East India Company and informally as John Company, Company Bahadur, or The Company, was an English and British joint-stock company. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region with Mughal India and the East Indies, with Qing China; the company ended up seizing control over large parts of the Indian subcontinent, colonised parts of Southeast Asia, colonised Hong Kong after a war with Qing China. Chartered as the "Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies", the company rose to account for half of the world's trade in basic commodities including cotton, indigo dye, spices, saltpetre and opium; the company ruled the beginnings of the British Empire in India. In his speech to the House of Commons in July 1833, Lord Macaulay explained that since the beginning, the East India company had always been involved in both trade and politics, just as its French and Dutch counterparts had been.
The company received a Royal Charter from Queen Elizabeth I on 31 December 1600, coming late to trade in the Indies. Before them the Portuguese Estado da Índia had traded there for much of the 16th century and the first of half a dozen Dutch Companies sailed to trade there from 1595; these Dutch companies amalgamated in March 1602 into the United East Indies Company, which introduced the first permanent joint stock from 1612. By contrast, wealthy merchants and aristocrats owned the EIC's shares; the government owned no shares and had only indirect control until 1657 when permanent joint stock was established. During its first century of operation, the focus of the company was trade, not the building of an empire in India. Company interests turned from trade to territory during the 18th century as the Mughal Empire declined in power and the East India Company struggled with its French counterpart, the French East India Company during the Carnatic Wars of the 1740s and 1750s; the battles of Plassey and Buxar, in which the British defeated the Bengali powers, left the company in control of Bengal and a major military and political power in India.
In the following decades it increased the extent of the territories under its control, controlling the majority of the Indian subcontinent either directly or indirectly via local puppet rulers under the threat of force by its Presidency armies, much of which were composed of native Indian sepoys. By 1803, at the height of its rule in India, the British East India company had a private army of about 260,000—twice the size of the British Army, with Indian revenues of £13,464,561, expenses of £14,017,473; the company came to rule large areas of India with its private armies, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions. Company rule in India began in 1757 and lasted until 1858, following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Government of India Act 1858 led to the British Crown's assuming direct control of the Indian subcontinent in the form of the new British Raj. Despite frequent government intervention, the company had recurring problems with its finances, it was dissolved in 1874 as a result of the East India Stock Dividend Redemption Act passed one year earlier, as the Government of India Act had by rendered it vestigial and obsolete.
The official government machinery of British India assumed the East India Company's governmental functions and absorbed its navy and its armies in 1858. Soon after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the captured Spanish and Portuguese ships with their cargoes enabled English voyagers to travel the globe in search of riches. London merchants presented a petition to Queen Elizabeth I for permission to sail to the Indian Ocean; the aim was to deliver a decisive blow to the Portuguese monopoly of Far Eastern Trade. Elizabeth granted her permission and on 10 April 1591 James Lancaster in the Bonaventure with two other ships sailed from Torbay around the Cape of Good Hope to the Arabian Sea on one of the earliest English overseas Indian expeditions. Having sailed around Cape Comorin to the Malay Peninsula, they preyed on Spanish and Portuguese ships there before returning to England in 1594; the biggest capture that galvanised English trade was the seizure of the large Portuguese Carrack, the Madre de Deus by Sir Walter Raleigh and the Earl of Cumberland at the Battle of Flores on 13 August 1592.
When she was brought in to Dartmouth she was the largest vessel, seen in England and her cargo consisted of chests filled with jewels, gold, silver coins, cloth, pepper, cinnamon, benjamin, red dye and ebony. Valuable was the ship's rutter containing vital information on the China and Japan trades; these riches aroused the English to engage in this opulent commerce. In 1596, three more English ships were all lost at sea. A year however saw the arrival of Ralph Fitch, an adventurer merchant who, along with his companions, had made a remarkable fifteen-year overland journey to Mesopotamia, the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia. Fitch was consulted on the Indian affairs and gave more valuable information to Lancaster. On 22 September 1599, a group of merchants met and stated their intention "to venture in the pretended voyage to the East Indies, the sums that they will adventure", committing £30
Palais-Royal
The Palais-Royal called the Palais-Cardinal, is a former royal palace located in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France. The screened entrance court faces the Place du Palais-Royal, opposite the Louvre. In 1830 the larger inner courtyard of the palace, the Cour d'Honneur, was enclosed to the north by what was the most famous of Paris's covered arcades, the Galerie d'Orléans. Demolished in the 1930s, its flanking rows of columns still stand between the Cour d'Honneur and the popular Palais-Royal Gardens; the Palais-Royal now serves as the seat of the Ministry of the Constitutional Council. Called the Palais-Cardinal, the palace was the personal residence of Cardinal Richelieu; the architect Jacques Lemercier began his design in 1629. Upon Richelieu's death in 1642 the palace became the property of the King and acquired the new name Palais-Royal. After Louis XIII died the following year, it became the home of the Queen Mother Anne of Austria and her young sons Louis XIV and Philippe, duc d'Anjou, along with her advisor Cardinal Mazarin.
From 1649, the palace was the residence of the exiled Henrietta Maria and Henrietta Anne Stuart and daughter of the deposed King Charles I of England. The two had escaped England in the midst of the English Civil War and were sheltered by Henrietta Maria's nephew, King Louis XIV. Henrietta Anne was married to Louis' younger brother, Philippe de France, duc d'Orléans in the palace chapel on 31 March 1661; the following year the new duchesse d'Orléans gave birth to a daughter, Marie Louise d'Orléans, inside the palace. After their marriage, the palace became the main residence of the House of Orléans; the Duchess created the ornamental gardens of the palace, which were said to be among the most beautiful in Paris. Under the new ducal couple, the Palais-Royal would become the social center of the capital; the court gatherings at the Palais-Royal were famed all around the capital as well as all of France. It was at these parties that the crème de la crème of French society came to be seen. Guests included the main members of the royal family like Anne of Austria.
Philippe's favourites were frequent visitors. The palace was redecorated and new apartments were created for the Duchess's maids and staff. Several of the women who came to be favourites to King Louis XIV were from her household: Louise de La Vallière, who gave birth there to two sons of the king, in 1663 and 1665. After Henrietta Anne died in 1670 the Duke took a second wife, the Princess Palatine, who preferred to live in the Château de Saint-Cloud. Saint-Cloud thus became the main residence of her eldest son and the heir to the House of Orléans, Philippe Charles d'Orléans known as the duc de Chartres. In 1692, on the occasion of the marriage of the duc de Chartres to Françoise Marie de Bourbon, Mademoiselle de Blois, a legitimised daughter of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan, the King deeded the Palais-Royal to his brother. For the convenience of the bride, new apartments were built and furnished in the wing facing east on the rue de Richelieu, it was at this time that Philippe commissioned the gallery for his famous Orleans Collection of paintings, accessible to the public.
The architect was Jules Hardouin-Mansart, the cost of this reconstruction was totaled to be 400,000 livres. Hardouin-Mansart's assistant, François d'Orbay, prepared a general site plan, showing the Palais-Royal before these alterations were made; the garden shown on the plan was designed by André Lenôtre. After the dismissal of Madame de Montespan and the arrival of her successor, Madame de Maintenon, who forbade any lavish entertainment at Versailles, the Palais-Royal was again a social highlight; when the Duke of Orléans died in 1701, his son became the head of the House of Orléans. The new Duke and Duchess of Orléans took up residence at the Palais-Royal. Two of their daughters, Charlotte Aglaé d'Orléans the Duchess of Modena, Louise Diane d'Orléans the Princess of Conti, were born there. Over a decade or so, sections of the Palais were transformed into shopping arcades that became the centre of 18th-century Parisian social and social life. Inspired by the souks of Arabia, the Galerie de Bois, a series of wooden shops linking the ends of the Palais Royal, was first opened in 1786.
For Parisians, who lived in the virtual absence of pavements, the streets were dirty. Thus, the Palais-Royal began what the architect, Bertrand Lemoine, describes as l’Ère des passages couverts, which transformed European shopping habits between 1786 and 1935. Designed to attract the genteel middle class, the Palais-Royal sold luxury goods at high prices. However, prices were never a deterrent, as these new arcades came to be the place to shop and to be seen. Arcades offered shoppers the promise of an enclosed space away from the chaos that characterised the noisy, dirty streets. Promenading in the arcades became a popular eighteenth century pastime for the emerging middle classes. Within a decade, new arcades were opened at the Palais site, it was transformed into a complex of gardens and entertainment venues situated on the external perimeter of the grounds, under the original colonnades; the area bo
Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon
Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon was the second wife of King Louis XIV of France. She was known during her first marriage as Madame Scarron, subsequently as Madame de Maintenon, her marriage to the king was never announced or admitted, as it was morganatic, thus she was never considered Queen Consort of France. So, she was influential at court, was one of the king's closest advisers, she founded the Maison royale de Saint-Louis, a school for girls from poorer noble families, in 1684. Françoise d'Aubigné was born on 27 November 1635. A plaque suggests her birthplace was at the Hotel du Chaumont in western France; some sources indicate she may have been born in or just outside the prison at Niort because her father, the Huguenot Constant d'Aubigné, was incarcerated there for conspiring against Cardinal Richelieu. Her mother, Jeanne de Cardilhac, was the daughter of Constant's jailer, her grandfather was Agrippa d'Aubigné, a well-known Protestant General, a former intimate servant of Henry IV, an epic poet.
Jeanne had her child baptised in her own Catholic religion. Suzanne would go to serve Anne of Austria and Maria Theresa, the first wife of Louis XIV. In 1639, Françoise's father was released from prison and went with his family to the island of Martinique in the West Indies. Jeanne was a strict mother, allowed her children few liberties, gave them a Protestant education, despite their Catholic baptism. Constant returned to France. Jeanne was forever trying to be "mother and father" to her children, she made it back to France, to join her husband in 1647. Within months of her return to France Jeanne's husband died and Françoise returned to the care of her beloved aunt, Madame de Villette, her father's sister; the Villettes' house, became a happy memory for Françoise, in the care of her aunt and uncle before leaving for Martinique. The de Villettes were wealthy and took good care of the child, but they were ardent Protestants and they continued to school Françoise in their beliefs; when this became known to her godmother's family, an order was issued that Françoise had to be educated in a convent.
Françoise disliked convent life, but she grew to love one of the nuns there, Sister Céleste, who persuaded Françoise to take her First Communion. "I loved her more than I could say. I wanted to sacrifice myself for her service."Madame de Neuillant, the mother of Françoise's godmother Suzanne, brought her to Paris and introduced her to sophisticated women and men, who became vital links that she would use in the future. In her excursion with Madame de Neuillant, Françoise met Paul Scarron, 25 years her senior, began to correspond with him. Scarron was an accomplished poet and novelist, who counted Marie de Hautefort, a favourite of King Louis XIII, among his patrons, he offered her marriage. Although Scarron suffered from chronic and crippling pain from polio, she accepted his proposal and became Madame Scarron in 1652; the match permitted her to gain access to the highest levels of Paris society, something that would have otherwise been impossible for a girl from an impoverished background. For nine years, she was a fixture in his social circle.
On the death of Scarron in 1660, the queen dowager, Anne of Austria, continued his pension to his widow increasing it to 2,000 livres a year, thus enabling her to remain in literary society. After Anne's death in 1666, Louis XIV suspended the pension. Once again in straitened circumstances, having spent several years living off the charity of her friends, Mme Scarron prepared to leave Paris for Lisbon as a lady-in-waiting to the new Queen of Portugal, Marie-Françoise de Nemours. Before setting off, she met Madame de Montespan, secretly the king's lover. Madame de Montespan took such a fancy to Mme Scarron that she had the king reinstate her pension, which enabled Françoise to stay in Paris. In 1669, when Madame de Montespan's first child by Louis XIV was born, she placed the baby with Madame Scarron in a house on Rue de Vaugirard, provided her with a large income and staff of servants. Françoise took care to keep the house well guarded and discreet doing the domestic duties herself, her care for the infant Louis Auguste, Duke of Maine first brought her to the attention of Louis XIV, though he was put off by her strict religious practice.
When Louis Auguste and his siblings were legitimized on 20 December 1673, she became the royal governess at Saint-Germain. As governess, she was one of few people permitted to speak with the king as an equal, without holding back. Madame de Sévigné observed. Due to her hard work, the King rewarded her with 200,000 livres, she purchased the property at Maintenon in 1674. Saint-Simon was told by his father-in-law that the King had disliked Madame Scarron, but, as he tired of Madame de Montespan's bad temper, began to find her rival sympathetic. In 1675, the king gave her the title of Marquise de Maintenon after the name of her estate; such favours incurred Madame de Montespan's jealousy. At court, she was now known as Madame de Maintenon. Madame de Montespan and Françoise sparred over the children and their care."Madame de Maintenon knows how to love. There would be great pleasure i
Guillaume Delisle
Guillaume Delisle spelled Guillaume de l'Isle, was a French cartographer known for his popular and accurate maps of Europe and the newly explored Americas. Deslile was the son of Claude Delisle, his mother died after his father married again, to Charlotte Millet de la Croyère. Delisle and his second wife had as many as 12 children. Although the senior Delisle had studied law, he taught history and geography, he served as a tutor to lords. Among them was the duke Philippe d’Orléans, who became regent for the crown of France, collaborated with Nicolas Sanson, a well-known cartographer. Guillaume and two of his half-brothers, Joseph Nicolas and Louis, ended up pursuing similar careers in science. While his father has to be given credit for educating Guillaume, the boy showed early signs of being an exceptional talent, he soon contributed to the family workshop by drawing maps for his father's historical works. Some have questioned the authorship of these first maps, saying that Delisle only copied what his father had done before him.
In order to perfect his skills, Guillaume Delisle became the student of the astronomer Jean-Dominique Cassini. Early on he produced high-quality maps, the first being his Carte de la Nouvelle-France et des Pays Voisins in 1696. At 27, Delisle was admitted into the French Académie Royale des Sciences, an institution financed by the French state. After that date, he signed his maps with the title of "Géographe de l’Académie". Five years he moved to the Quai de l’Horloge in Paris, a true publishing hub where his business prospered. Delisle's progress culminated in 1718, he was appointed to teach geography to the Dauphin, King Louis XIV’s son, a task for which he received a salary. Again, his father's reputation as a man of science helped the younger Delisle. Historian Mary Sponberg Pedley says, "once authority was established, a geographer's name might retain enough value to support two or three generations of mapmakers". In Delisle's case, it could be said. Up to that point, he had drawn maps not only of European countries, such as Italy, Germany, Great Britain and regions such as the Duchy of Burgundy, but he had contributed to the empire's claims to explored continents of Africa and the Americas.
Like many cartographers of his day, Delisle did not travel with the explorers. He drew maps in his office, relying on a variety of data; the quality of his maps depended on a solid network to provide him first-hand information. Given his family's and his own reputation, Delisle had access to recent accounts of travellers who were returning from the New World, which gave him an advantage over his competitors. Being a member of the Académie, he kept current with recent discoveries in astronomy and measurement; when he could not confirm the accuracy of a source, he would indicate it on his maps. For instance, his Carte de la Louisiane shows a river that the baron of Lahontan claimed he discovered; as no one else could validate it, Delisle noted a warning to the viewer. Delisle's search for exactitude and intellectual honesty entangled him in a legal dispute in 1700 with Jean-Baptiste Nolin, a fellow cartographer. Noticing Nolin had used details that were considered original from his Map of the World, Delisle took Nolin to court to prove his plagiarism.
In the end, Delisle convinced the jury of scientists that Nolin knew only the old methods of cartography and must have stolen the information from Delisle's own manuscript. Nolin's maps were confiscated and he was forced to pay the court costs of the case; the high scientific quality of the work produced by the Delisle family contrasted with the workshop of Sanson. While Sanson knowingly published outdated facts and mistakes, Delisle worked to present up-to-date knowledge. After Guillaume Delisle's death in 1726, his widow tried to preserve the workshop and protect the family, she appealed to the king with the help of the abbot Bignon, the king's librarian and president of the academies. By that time, Guillaume's brothers Joseph-Nicolas and Louis had left France to serve Peter the Great in Russia; the youngest Delisle, Simon Claude, lacked practical knowledge in cartography. The Delisle workshop was bequeathed to Philippe Buache. Dutch cartographer Jan Barend Elwe reissued maps by Delisle in the late 18th century.
Historian David Buisseret has traced the roots of the flourishing of cartography in the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe. He noted five distinct reasons: 1) admiration of antiquity the rediscovery of Ptolemy, considered to be the first geographer; the reign of Louis XIV is considered to represent the beginning of cartography as a science in France. The evolution of cartography during the transition between the 17th and 18th centuries involved advancements on a technical level, as well as those on a representative level. According to Marco Petrella, the map developed "from a tool used to affirm the administrative borders of the reign and its features…into a tool, necessary to intervene in territory and thus establish control of it." Because unification of the
War of the Spanish Succession
The War of the Spanish Succession was a European conflict of the early 18th century, triggered by the death of the childless Charles II of Spain in November 1700. His closest heirs were members of the Austrian Habsburg and French Bourbon families. Charles left an undivided Monarchy of Spain to Louis XIV's grandson Philip, proclaimed King of Spain on 16 November 1700. Disputes over separation of the Spanish and French crowns and commercial rights led to war in 1701 between the Bourbons of France and Spain and the Grand Alliance, whose candidate was Archduke Charles, younger son of Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor. By the end of 1706, Allied victories in Italy and the Low Countries forced the French back within their borders but they were unable to make a decisive breakthrough. Control of the sea allowed the Allies to conduct successful offensives in Spain, but lack of popular support for Archduke Charles meant they could not hold territory outside the coastal areas. Conflict extended to European colonies in North America, where it is known as Queen Anne's War, the West Indies as well as minor struggles in Colonial India.
Related conflicts include Rákóczi's War of Independence in Hungary, funded by France and the 1704–1710 Camisard rebellion in South-East France, funded by Britain. When his elder brother Joseph died in 1711, Charles succeeded him as Emperor, undermining the primary driver behind the war, to prevent Spain being united with either France or Austria; the 1710 British election returned a new government committed to ending it and with the Allied war effort now dependent on British financing, this forced the others to make peace. The war ended with the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, followed in 1714 by the treaties of Rastatt and Baden. In return for confirmation as King of Spain, Philip V renounced his place in the line of succession to the French throne, both for himself and his descendants; the Dutch Republic was granted its Barrier Fortresses, while France acknowledged the Protestant succession in Britain and agreed to end support for the Stuart exiles. In the longer term, the commercial provisions of Utrecht confirmed Britain's status as the leading European maritime and commercial power, while the Dutch lost their position as the pre-eminent economic power in Asia and the war marked their decline as a first-rank power.
Other long-term impacts include the creation of a centralised Spanish state and the acceleration of the break-up of the Holy Roman Empire into larger and more powerful German principalities. In 1665 Charles II became the last male Habsburg King of Spain. In 1670, England agreed to support the rights of Louis XIV to the Spanish throne in the Treaty of Dover, while the terms of the 1688 Grand Alliance committed England and the Dutch Republic to back Leopold. In 1700, the Spanish Empire included possessions in Italy, the Spanish Netherlands, the Philippines and the Americas and though no longer the dominant great power, it remained intact. Since acquisition of the Empire by either the Austrian Habsburgs or French Bourbons would change the balance of power in Europe, its inheritance led to a war that involved most of the European powers; the 1700-1721 Great Northern War is considered a connected conflict, since it impacted the involvement of states such as Sweden, Denmark–Norway and Russia. During the 1688–1697 Nine Years War, armies had increased in size from an average of 25,000 in 1648 to over 100,000 by 1697, a level unsustainable for pre-industrial economies.
The 1690s marked the lowest point of the Little Ice Age, a period of colder and wetter weather that drastically reduced crop yields. The Great Famine of 1695-1697 killed between 15-25% of the population in present-day Scotland, Finland, Latvia and Sweden, with an estimated two million deaths in France and Northern Italy; the 1697 Treaty of Ryswick was therefore the result of mutual exhaustion and Louis XIV's acceptance that France could not achieve its objectives without allies. Leopold refused to sign and did so with extreme reluctance in October 1697. Unlike France or Austria, the Crown of Spain could be inherited through the female line; this allowed Charles' sisters Maria Theresa and Margaret Theresa to pass their rights as rulers onto the children of their respective marriages with Louis XIV and Emperor Leopold. Despite being opponents in the recent Nine Years War, Louis XIV and William III of England now attempted to resolve the Succession by diplomacy. In 1685, Maria Antonia, daughter of Leopold and Margaret, married Maximillian Emanuel of Bavaria and they had a son, Joseph Ferdinand.
The 1698 Treaty of the Hague or First Partition Treaty between France and the Dutch Republic made the six year old heir to the bulk of the Spanish Monarchy and divided its European territories between France and Austria. The Spanish refused to accept the division of their Empire and on 14 November 1698, Charles published his Will, making Joseph Ferdinand heir to an independent and undivided Spanish monarchy; when he died of smallpox in February 1699, a new solution was required. This was of doubtful legality but France and the Nethe
Françoise Marie de Bourbon
Françoise Marie de Bourbon, légitimée de France was the youngest illegitimate daughter of Louis XIV of France and his maîtresse-en-titre, Françoise-Athénaïs, marquise de Montespan. At the age of 14 she was wed to her first cousin Philippe d'Orléans, future regent of France during the minority of Louis XV. Through four of the eight children she bore him in an unhappy marriage she became the ancestress of several of Europe's Roman Catholic monarchs of the 19th and 20th centuries, notably those of Belgium, Italy and France. Françoise Marie was born in 1677, at the château de Maintenon, owned since 1674 by Françoise d'Aubigné, marquise de Maintenon, the governess of Madame de Montespan's illegitimate children by Louis XIV, she and her younger brother, Louis Alexandre de Bourbon, Count of Toulouse were cared for by Mmes de Monchevreuil, de Colbert and de Jussac under Mme. de Maintenon's' supervision, their mother being ostracized from court. As a child, she was brought to Versailles to visit her parents.
On 22 November 1681, at the age of four and a half, Françoise Marie was legitimised by Louis XIV and given the courtesy title of Mademoiselle de Blois, a style held by her older half-sister, Marie Anne de Bourbon, a legitimised daughter of the king by Louise de La Vallière. The name of her mother was not mentioned in the act of legitimisation because Madame de Montespan was still married to the Marquis de Montespan, who might have counter-claimed paternity and custody of his wife's children. By the time of her birth, her parents' relationship was coming to an end because of Madame de Montespan's possible involvement in the Affaire des poisons, her older siblings Louis Auguste and Louise Françoise had been legitimised on 19 December 1673 by letters patent registered at the Parlement de Paris. Her younger brother, Louis Alexandre, was legitimised at the same time as she and given the title of comte de Toulouse, she remained close to him all her life, as well as to their older brother, Louis-Auguste de Bourbon, duc du Maine.
She was never close to her legitimate half brother, Dauphin of France. Françoise wielded little political influence considering her near relationships to France's rulers during most of her life, she was involved in the botched Cellamare Conspiracy in 1718, supposed to oust her own husband as regent in favour of her full brother Louis-Auguste de Bourbon, Duke of Maine. She inherited her mother's beauty, Madame de Caylus commented that Françoise was timid and glorious and was a little beauty with a beautiful face and beautiful hands, she was proud of her royal ancestry and of the royal blood of the House of Bourbon she inherited from her father: Later, it was joked that she would "remember she was a daughter of France while on her chaise percée The marquis d'Argenson said she was like her mother, but had Louis XIV's orderly mind with his failings of injustice and harshness. Among her male line descendents are Philippe Egalité, Louis-Philippe I, King of the French, Prince Henri, Count of Paris, the present Orléanist pretender to the French throne.
She is an ancestor of Juan Carlos I of Spain, Albert II, King of the Belgians, Grand Duke of Luxembourg and Vittorio Emanuele, Prince of Naples, the pretender to the Italian throne. Madame de Maintenon was a childless widow who, as the king's morganatic wife from the mid 1680s, promoted her charges' interests, scandalizing the court by securing the marriage of Mlle de Blois to the king's only legitimate nephew, Philippe d'Orléans in 1692. Known by his father's subsidiary title, Duke of Chartres, he was the son of Philippe de France, duc d'Orléans known, as the king's only brother, as Monsieur; the mésalliance between bastard and legitimate blood royal disgusted Philippe's mother, Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate, whose prejudice against her brother-in-law's bastards was well known. Upon learning of her son's acquiescence to the betrothal, she slapped him in front of the court turned her back on the king who had bowed in salutation to her, she indifferent to her grandchildren by her. On the occasion of the marriage between their respective children, Louis XIV gave to his brother the Palais-Royal where the Orléans had been residing, but which they had not owned.
Known as the Palais Cardinal, the palace had been bequeathed to the crown by its builder, Cardinal Richelieu, upon his death in 1642. Louis XIV promised an important military post to the Duke of Chartres and gave 100,000 livres to the Duke of Orléans' favourite, the Chevalier de Lorraine. Upon being informed of the identity of her future husband, Françoise remarked: Je ne me soucie pas qu'il m'aime, je me soucie qu'il m'épouse. Françoise and Philippe d'Orléans were married on 18 February 1692 in the chapel of the Palace of Versailles; the service was conducted by the Cardinal de Bouillon – a member of the House of La Tour d'Auvergne. In 1685, the Cardinal de Bouillon had refused to take part in the marriage of the Duke of Bourbon and Françoise's sister, Mademoiselle de Nantes, and, as a result, had been sent into exile, but he was recalled for the wedding of Françoise and the Duke of Chartres. After the ceremony, a banquet was given in the Hall of Mirrors with all the princes and princesses of the blood in attendance.
Other guests included his consort, Mary of Modena. At the newlyweds' bedding ceremony that evening, Queen Mary handed the new Duchess of Chartres her night shirt. Madame de Montespan had not been invited to the wedding of her daughter; as her new husband was a legitimate grandson of a king, Françoise assumed the rank of petite-fille de France
Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye
The Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye is a royal palace in the commune of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, in the département of Yvelines, about 19 km west of Paris, France. Today, it houses the musée d'Archéologie nationale; the first castle, named the Grand Châtelet, was built on the site by Louis VI in around 1122. The castle was expanded by Louis IX in the 1230s. Louis IX's chapelle Saint Louis at the castle belongs to the Rayonnant phase of French Gothic architecture. A 1238 charter of Louis IX instituting a regular religious service at the chapel is the first mention of a chapel having been built at the royal castle; this was a Sainte Chapelle, to house a relic of the Crown of the True Cross. Its plan and architecture prefigure the major Sainte-Chapelle which Saint Louis built within the Palais de la Cité at Paris between 1240 and 1248. Both buildings were built by Louis's favourite architect Pierre de Montreuil, who adapted the architectural formulae invented at Saint Germain for use in Paris. A single nave ends in a chevet, with all the wall areas filled by tall thin glass windows, between which are large exterior buttresses.
The ogives of the vault rest on columns between the bays and the column bases are placed behind a low isolated arcade. The building can thus be empty of all internal supports; this large number of windows is enabled by the pierre armée technique, with metal elements built into the structure of the walls to ensure the stones' stability. The west wall is adorned by a large Gothic rose window in the "rayonnant" Gothic style, it was in this chapel in 1238 that Baldwin II of Constantinople presented Louis with the relic of the crown of thorns and, though they were intended for the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, they were housed here until the Paris chapel was consecrated in April 1248. The castle was burned by the Black Prince in 1346; this Château Vieux was rebuilt by Charles V in the 1360s on the old foundations. The oldest parts of the current château were reconstructed by Francis I in 1539, have subsequently been expanded several times. On 10 July 1547 a political rivalry came to a head in a bloody game here.
Against the odds, Guy Chabot, 7th baron de Jarnac triumphed over François de Vivonne, seigneur de la Chasteigneraie, giving rise to the coup de Jarnac. Henry II built a separate new château nearby, to designs by Philibert de l'Orme, it stood at the crest of a slope, shaped, under the direction of Étienne du Pérac into three massive descending terraces and narrower subsidiary mediating terraces, which were linked by divided symmetrical stairs and ramps and extended a single axis that finished at the edge of the Seine. "Étienne du Pérac had spent a long time in Italy, one manifestation of his interest in gardens of this type is his well-known view of the Villa d'Este, engraved in 1573."The gardens laid out at Saint-Germain-en-Laye were among a half-dozen gardens introducing the Italian garden style to France that laid the groundwork for the French formal garden. Unlike the parterres that were laid out in casual relation to existing châteaux on difficult sites selected for defensive reasons, these new gardens extended the central axis of a symmetrical building façade in rigorously symmetrical axial designs of patterned parterres, gravel walks and basins, formally planted bosquets.
According to Claude Mollet's Théâtre des plans et jardinage the parterres were laid out in 1595 for Henry IV by Mollet, trained at Anet and the progenitor of a dynasty of royal gardeners. One of the parterre designs by Mollet at Saint-Germain-en-Laye was illustrated in Olivier de Serres' Le théâtre d'agriculture et mesnage des champs, but the Château Neuf and the whole of its spectacular series of terraces can be seen in an engraving after Alexandre Francini, 1614. Louis XIV was born at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1638. One of du Pérac's retaining walls collapsed in 1660, Louis undertook a renovation of the gardens in 1662. At his majority he established his court here in 1666, but he preferred the Château Vieux: the Château Neuf was abandoned in the 1660s and demolished. From 1663 until 1682, when the king removed definitively to Versailles, the team that he inherited from the unfortunate Fouquet—Louis Le Vau, Jules Hardouin-Mansart and André Le Nôtre laboured to give the ancient pile a more suitable aspect.
The gardens were remade by André Le Nôtre from 1669 to 1673, include a 2.4 kilometre long stone terrace which provides a view over the valley of the Seine and, in the distance, Paris. Louis XIV turned the château over to King James II of England after his exile from Britain in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. King James lived in the château for thirteen years, his daughter Louise-Marie Stuart was born in exile here in 1692. King James lies buried in the nearby Church of Saint-Germain, their son James left the château in 1716 settling in Rome. Many Jacobites—supporters of the exiled Stuarts—remained at the château until the French Revolution, leaving in 1793; the Jacobites consisted of former members of the Jacobite court, the apartments left empty in the chateau by the Jacobite court pensioners upon their death, were passed down to their widows and children by the caretaker of the chateau, Adrien Maurice, the Duke de Noailles. The Jacobite colony at Saint-Germain was still dominant in the 1750s, when they were however treated with increasing hostility.
After the death
.gif)
_par_Santerre.jpg)
