A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Chateauroux, Marie Anne, Duchess de
CHATEAUROUX, MARIE ANNE, DUCHESS DE,
Was one of four sisters, daughters of the Marquis de Nesle, who became successively mistresses of Louis the Fifteenth. She was married at the age of seventeen to the Marquis de la Tournelle, who left her a widow at twenty-three. She far surpassed all her sisters in personal charms, and was an accomplished musician.
Madame de Chateauroux displayed a character of great energy and ambition. Her sense of virtue always remained sufficiently strong to cause her to feel humbled by the splendid degradation she had sought and won; but though she had not sufficient principle to recede from the path she had taken, she resolved, as an atonement, to arouse her royal lover from his disgraceful lethargy. Madame de Tencin spared no efforts to make a tool of her; whose aim it was to govern the king through his mistress, by means of her brother Cardinal Tenchi. But Madame de Chateauroux had not acquired her power to yield it up to a woman, and especially to so clever and intriguing a woman. Far seeing, like Madame de Tencin, she was convinced of the necessity for some radical change in the government. Of the confusion by which it was characterized, she said, "I could not have believed all that I now see; if no remedy is administered to this state of things, there will sooner or later be a great bouleversement."
Though the aim of Madame de Chateauroux was good, the means she took to effect it were not equally praiseworthy. Reckless of the real interests of the country, and looking only to the personal glory of the king, she partly precipitated France into a fatal war. While absent with the army, the king was seized with a dangerous illness. Urged by the religious party attached to the queen, Louis, through fear of dying without the last sacraments of the church, was induced publicly to discard his mistress. Scarcely had this been done when he recovered. His repentance had never been heartfelt, and he soon was mortified and humiliated at the part he had acted. Grieved at the loss of Madame de Chateauroux, he sought an interview with her, and she consented to receive his apology, provided it was made in a public manner, which, by her arrangement, was done by Maurepas, whom she wished to humble, in the presence of a large assembly. He requested forgiveness in the name of the king, and begged her return to court. But to that station which she had purchased at the cost of peace and honour, she was never destined to return. She became alarmingly ill, and died a few days after this public atonement. It would be unjust to deny to Madame de Chateauroux the merit of having sought to rouse Louis the Fifteenth from the state of apathetic indolence into which he had fallen. The means she took were injudicious, but they were noble. Experience would have taught her better; and, had her power continued, Louis the Fifteenth might have been a different man.
Madame de Chateauroux was one of those far-seeing women, who, with that instinctive foresight which arises from keenness of perception, had predicted the breaking out of the storm already gathering over France.