MONTPENSIER (Anne-Marie-Louise d'Orléans, duchesse de, known - Lot 172

MONTPENSIER (Anne-Marie-Louise d'Orléans, duchesse de, known as "La Grande Mademoise") Born in the Louvre. 1627-1693. Granddaughter of Henri IV, daughter of Louis XIII's brother Gaston de France and Marie de Bourbon, COUSINE GERMAINE DE LOUIS XIV. L.A.S. "Anne Marie Louise Dorleans" to Cardinal Mazarin. Paris, June 11, 1658. 4 pages in-4. VERY RARE LETTER TO CARDINAL MAZARIN IN WHICH THE GERMAINE COUSIN OF LOUIS XIV LASSURES HER FRIENDSHIP ...Nothing can give more joy than the prosperity of the King's arms and I beg V.E. very humbly to believe that the one I know she had in mind (?) is sensitive to me to the last point and that the greatest satisfaction I can have is to see the things your Excellency undertakes succeed as happily as they do. I think she is well persuaded of this truth and she does me the justice of believing me to be her friend by gratitude and inclination... The Princess is planning to go to Forges-les-Eaux, a fashionable spa renowned for its ferruginous waters, ...I await the fine weather with the utmost impatience to go to Forges, having much to do after the Court, but the weather is not kind to me. Monsieur [her father]'s stay in Orléans was so short and so uncertain that I was unable to go and see him. I do not yet know what it will please Mlle de Guise to do, although I keep asking her to accommodate herself... Here, she says, is the ...account in a few words to V.E. of everything that passes here with regard to me. It is a great advantage to me that she does me the honor of finding it good that I use it in this way... Marie Louise d'Orléans, Duchesse de Montpensier, took her name "Grande Mademoiselle" from her father Gaston de France, brother of King Louis XIII and, as such, "Grand Monsieur". During the Fronde, the popular discontent that began in 1648, she chose to join her father in fighting against the absolute monarchy. On July 2, 1652, the Frondeuse fired on the royal troops from the fortress of La Bastille. Thanks to her action, the Prince de Condé was saved. Triggering the King's wrath, the Grande Mademoiselle was sent to her lands at Saint-Fargeau, in the Yonne, until 1657, when she returned to the Court. She wrote her Memoirs, inspired by the Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, whom she admired. A close friend of Mme de Sévigné and Mme de La Fayette, in her youth she, like them, had frequented the Hôtel de Rambouillet.