Duchess of Courland In the historical chronicle of Russia, the period of the reign of Empress Anna Ioannovna (1730–1740) is one of the saddest. With the accession to the throne of this last scion of the Romanov boyars in a straight line, which was accompanied by many very

Bearing the title Monsieur, he was the youngest son of King Henry IV. Thus, Anne was the cousin of Louis XIV. Mother, Marie de Bourbon, Duchesse de Montpensier was the great-granddaughter of the 1st Duke of Montpensier and inherited from her ancestors a huge fortune with a large number of titles. She died giving birth to Anna. The girl was raised at the court of King Louis XIII under the tutelage of his wife Anne of Austria.

Personal life

Being a princess of royal blood and heir to a huge fortune left by her mother, she seemed to represent a brilliant match. One of the first suitors of the Duchess de Montpensier was the Prince of Wales, the future King of England Charles II, who was then forced to stay in France while his father tried to maintain power in England. However, Anna considered the candidacy of the prince in exile insufficiently suitable. In addition, in May she learned that Maria Anna of Spain, Queen Anne's sister, had died, leaving Emperor Ferdinand III a widower. Then she came up with the idea of ​​becoming an empress by marrying him. However, the matchmaking matter did not progress, and in the end it turned out that the emperor was going to marry not her, but the Archduchess of Tyrol. Anna was offended by the courtiers when she found out that they were hiding the true state of affairs from her.

Anna Maria Louise did not give up the thought of a successful marriage. She decided to marry her cousin Louis XIV, who was ten years younger than her. But her hopes were not destined to come true; the duchess was imbued with the ideas of the Fronde. Like her father, she took the side of the frondeurs, which was greatly facilitated by her hostility towards Cardinal Mazarin, whom she considered guilty of a failed marriage. In the Fronde of the Princes, Anne joined the forces of the Grand Condé. Her actions during the armed clashes in Paris were very decisive. She not only nominally commanded one of the armies on the side of the princes, but also personally participated in military operations. On July 2, the Duchess rescued the Prince of Condé and his men by firing cannons at the royal troops and controlling the gates to the city. At the end of 1652, when Queen Regent Anne of Austria and Mazarin regained power, Anne, along with other frondeurs, was expelled from the capital. Only in 1657, having received the king's forgiveness, did she reappear at court. Mademoiselle was still unmarried, but no one was in a hurry to marry her, due to her rebellious past. And the princess’s first youth has already passed. She was almost forty when her attention was attracted by Antoine Nompart de Caumont, son of the noble Count of Lauzun and Charlotte, daughter of Henri-Nompart de Caumont La Force. In 1670, Mademoiselle solemnly demanded the king's permission to marry Lauzun. Louis understood that he could not allow his cousin to marry any of the princes, since Anna’s impressive dowry and status would make the groom too influential. Therefore, he allowed her to marry an ordinary nobleman. However, not everyone at court agreed with the king's decision. For an unknown reason, a year later, in December, Losen was arrested; he spent the next ten years in Pinerolo, and Anna tried her best to free him from there. Ten years later, the Duke was released after Anne agreed to give Dombes and some of her other possessions to the king's illegitimate son, Louis Auguste. The elderly lovers (when Lozen was released, he was almost fifty, and Anna was fifty-four) secretly got married. But the Duke treated his wife with contempt, and after several cases of obvious disrespect, Anna Maria Louise broke off all relations with him and refused to see him even on her deathbed.

Last years

The Duchess lived for several years at the Luxembourg Palace, where she died on April 3, 1693. Anna Maria Louise was buried in the Abbey of Saint-Denis; her grave, like many others, was looted during the French Revolution. The duchess's heart was given to the church of Val-de-Grâce for safekeeping.

Memoirs

In the last years of her life she wrote the memoirs she had begun when she was out of favor thirty years earlier. Her memoirs, first published in 1729, are of great literary and historical value, despite the fact that they are self-absorbed and extremely fragmentary. The author of memoirs pays attention not so much to historical events as to picturesque episodes from his own life. The memoirs allow you to imagine the celebrities of the 17th century - Louis XIV, Anne of Austria, Gaston of Orleans, Prince of Condé, Henrietta of England - in their homely, everyday guise. The portrait of the famous Queen Christina of Sweden, who visited France in 1656, is of great interest to the costume historian:

“She was wearing a skirt made of gray silk fabric with gold and silver lace, a fiery camelot caftan with lace of the same color as the skirt, and a small braid - gold, silver and black; also on the skirt there was a knotted scarf of Genoese lace with a fiery bow: a light wig, and at the back a ring, as women wear; hat with black feathers, which she held in her hands." (Trans. V. D. Altashina)

In her memoirs, Mademoiselle de Montpensier quite successfully mixes different genres - diary, novel, short story, comedy, farce.

Titles

Anna had a title from birth Mademoiselle, which was worn by the eldest unmarried daughter of the Duke of Orleans. Her father, the Duke of Orléans, bore the title Monsieur, and subsequently, when Louis XIV ascended the throne, Gaston began to be called Grand Monsieur to distinguish him from his nephew, Louis XIV's brother Philippe of Anjou, who received the title Petit Monsieur. Following her father, Anna also added the prefix Great (Grand) to her title (fr. La Grande Mademoiselle), it is by this name that she is known in the novels of Dumas.

Anna inherited possessions and titles from her mother, including:

• Duchesse de Montpensier, Saint-Fargeau, Chatellerault, Beaupréau;
• Princesse de Dombes, Luc, la Roche-sur-Ion, Joinville;
• Dauphine d'Auvergne;
• Marquise de Maizières;
• Countess d'E, Forez, Mortain, Bar-sur-Seine;
• Viscountess d'Auge, Bresse, Domfront;
• Baroness de Beaujolais, Montague-en-Combray, Mirbeau, Roche-en-Renier, Thiers-en-Auvergne.

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Notes

Literature

• (French)
• Altashina V.D. The art of small talk: “Memoirs” of the Great Mademoiselle // Poetry and the truth of memoirs (France, XVII-XVIII centuries). - St. Petersburg. : Russian State Pedagogical University named after A.I. Herzen, 2005. - P. 87-108.

Counts of Clermont-en-Beauvesy Dukes of Bourbon Counts of La Marche Counts and Dukes of Vendôme Counts and Dukes of Montpensier Kings of France Kings of Spain Kings of Naples and the Two Sicilies Dukes of Orleans Princes of Condé Counts of Soissons Dukes of Parma Grand Dukes of Luxembourg

Excerpt characterizing Anne de Montpensier

The friends were silent. Neither one nor the other began to speak. Pierre glanced at Prince Andrei, Prince Andrei rubbed his forehead with his small hand.
“Let’s go have dinner,” he said with a sigh, getting up and heading to the door.
They entered the elegantly, newly, richly decorated dining room. Everything, from napkins to silver, earthenware and crystal, bore that special imprint of novelty that happens in the household of young spouses. In the middle of dinner, Prince Andrei leaned on his elbow and, like a man who has had something on his heart for a long time and suddenly decides to speak out, with an expression of nervous irritation in which Pierre had never seen his friend before, he began to say:
– Never, never get married, my friend; Here's my advice to you: don't get married until you tell yourself that you did everything you could, and until you stop loving the woman you chose, until you see her clearly; otherwise you will make a cruel and irreparable mistake. Marry an old man, good for nothing... Otherwise, everything that is good and lofty in you will be lost. Everything will be spent on little things. Yes Yes Yes! Don't look at me with such surprise. If you expect something from yourself in the future, then at every step you will feel that everything is over for you, everything is closed, except for the living room, where you will stand on the same level as a court lackey and an idiot... So what!...
He waved his hand energetically.
Pierre took off his glasses, causing his face to change, showing even more kindness, and looked at his friend in surprise.
“My wife,” continued Prince Andrei, “is a wonderful woman.” This is one of those rare women with whom you can be at peace with your honor; but, my God, what I wouldn’t give now not to be married! I’m telling you this alone and first, because I love you.
Prince Andrei, saying this, looked even less like than before that Bolkonsky, who was lounging in Anna Pavlovna’s chair and, squinting through his teeth, spoke French phrases. His dry face was still trembling with the nervous animation of every muscle; the eyes, in which the fire of life had previously seemed extinguished, now shone with a radiant, bright shine. It was clear that the more lifeless he seemed in ordinary times, the more energetic he was in these moments of almost painful irritation.
“You don’t understand why I’m saying this,” he continued. – After all, this is a whole life story. You say Bonaparte and his career,” he said, although Pierre did not talk about Bonaparte. – You say Bonaparte; but Bonaparte, when he worked, walked step by step towards his goal, he was free, he had nothing but his goal - and he achieved it. But tie yourself to a woman, and like a shackled convict, you lose all freedom. And everything that you have in you of hope and strength, everything only weighs you down and torments you with remorse. Living rooms, gossip, balls, vanity, insignificance - this is a vicious circle from which I cannot escape. I am now going to war, to the greatest war that has ever happened, but I know nothing and am no good for anything. “Je suis tres aimable et tres caustique, [I am very sweet and very eater,” continued Prince Andrei, “and Anna Pavlovna listens to me.” And this stupid society, without which my wife and these women cannot live... If only you could know what it is toutes les femmes distinguees [all these women of good society] and women in general! My father is right. Selfishness, vanity, stupidity, insignificance in everything - these are women when they show everything as they are. If you look at them in the light, it seems that there is something, but nothing, nothing, nothing! Yes, don’t get married, my soul, don’t get married,” Prince Andrei finished.
“It’s funny to me,” said Pierre, “that you consider yourself incapable, that your life is a spoiled life.” You have everything, everything is ahead. And you…
He didn’t say you, but his tone already showed how highly he valued his friend and how much he expected from him in the future.
“How can he say that!” thought Pierre. Pierre considered Prince Andrei to be a model of all perfections precisely because Prince Andrei united to the highest degree all those qualities that Pierre did not have and which can be most closely expressed by the concept of willpower. Pierre was always amazed at Prince Andrei's ability to calmly deal with all kinds of people, his extraordinary memory, erudition (he read everything, knew everything, had an idea about everything) and most of all his ability to work and study. If Pierre was often struck by Andrei’s lack of ability for dreamy philosophizing (to which Pierre was especially prone), then in this he saw not a disadvantage, but a strength.
In the best, most friendly and simple relationships, flattery or praise is necessary, just as greasing is necessary for the wheels to keep them moving.
“Je suis un homme fini, [I am a finished man,” said Prince Andrei. - What can you say about me? Let’s talk about you,” he said, after a pause and smiling at his comforting thoughts.
This smile was reflected on Pierre’s face at the same instant.
– What can we say about me? - said Pierre, spreading his mouth into a carefree, cheerful smile. -What am I? Je suis un batard [I am an illegitimate son!] - And he suddenly blushed crimson. It was clear that he made a great effort to say this. – Sans nom, sans fortune... [No name, no fortune...] And well, that’s right... - But he didn’t say that’s right. – I’m free for now, and I feel good. I just don’t know what to start. I wanted to seriously consult with you.
Prince Andrei looked at him with kind eyes. But his glance, friendly and affectionate, still expressed the consciousness of his superiority.
– You are dear to me, especially because you are the only living person among our entire world. You feel good. Choose what you want; it does not matter. You will be good everywhere, but one thing: stop going to these Kuragins and leading this life. So it doesn’t suit you: all these carousings, and hussarism, and everything...
“Que voulez vous, mon cher,” said Pierre, shrugging his shoulders, “les femmes, mon cher, les femmes!” [What do you want, my dear, women, my dear, women!]

INTERVIEW WITH BERTRAND TAVERNIER

We had the opportunity to tell a love story that would be both lyrical and frank. When we started working on the film adaptation, our main concern was how to show, in the context of the time period, the depth of feeling and passion present in the book, in all its unvarnished cruelty. After Jean's films such as "Life and Nothing Else", "Captain Conan" and "Pass", he again managed to amaze me with the ingenuity, humor and beauty of his language. The dialogues written by him awaken this era to life and trigger the imagination of me and the actors who managed to penetrate the spirit of that time and bring it closer to modern times.

On this film you worked mainly with young actors...

This is another reason why I wanted to make this film - I got to work with many actors for the first time. During the eight weeks of filming, I thought every day how right Michael Powell was when he said that thanks to good actors, words are no longer a screen behind which the writer hides. They become musical instruments on which actors perform enchanting melodies.

Before our eyes appear such human joys and hardships that we had no idea about. The director stops worrying about costumes and shooting schedules. He releases his imagination and for a moment becomes truly happy. I was truly happy. I didn't feel like I was directing the actors, I was watching them. They inspired me, captivated me and excited me. It was amazing.

Your princess is rebelling against the world she lives in...

Marie de Montpensier is a young woman who has to learn life through her own mistakes, learn to restrain and channel her feelings and make difficult and painful decisions, and yet she is still essentially a little girl. During filming, Mélanie Thierry delighted and amazed me with her acting and, of course, her beauty, but most importantly, the emotions that she brought to her character. After participating in the production of “The Doll” with Melanie, Monique Chaumette told me about her that she, like Stradivarius, is ready to go much further than is required of her and this is the true truth.

Like the princess, Chabanne refuses to dance to someone else's tune...

Chabanne is the backbone of this film. He is able to awaken feelings, and thanks to him we can see a different side of Marie. He reminds me of the great literary heroes of those years, a teacher and a warrior, a mathematician and a philosopher, fighting intolerance in all its forms. To understand the full strength of his humanism and commitment to the ideals of peace, one must see how he will behave in the conditions of the horrors of war. Lambert Wilson has all the qualities of this character, through whose eyes we see the difficult choices Marie must face.

You offer a completely new interpretation of the image of the Duke of Anjou, the future king Henry III...

I wanted to do away with the caricature that had been formed over the course of history. The Duke of Anjou was a great general with a very inquisitive mind. They say he could have become an excellent king if he had lived in a more favorable time period. Rafael Personaz played him with his characteristic spontaneity, elegance and charm, perfectly portraying the character's keen intelligence and ambiguity.

The Duke of Guise and the Prince of Montpensier, on the contrary, are warriors...

Giz is a warrior to the core. Hunter. He embodies brute strength, courage and religious uncompromisingness with a touching dash of sincerity and dubiousness. Gaspard Uliel shows all his strength, cruelty, sensuality and, at times, sincere love in this role. Compared to Guise, Philippe de Montpensier is a deeply sincere man and less thirsty for power. He falls in love with his wife after marriage and follows the flow of this passion, while Guise is under the destructive influence of his ambition. Grégoire Leprance-Ringuet brings a lot of inner strength to Montpensier, interspersed with unexpected and effective flashes of cruelty. On the first day, I saw that he managed to break out of all the conventions associated with his character.

In general, you adhere to a rather feminist position.

I'm clearly on Marie's side. She is torn between her upbringing and what others expect of her on the one hand, and between her passions and desires on the other. She doesn't want to be a submissive wife. She wants to get an education and embrace the world. Her passion for learning gives her strength and allows her to resist.

This film is not historical at all.

I wanted this film to be as modern and natural in terms of storytelling as The Pass or In the Electric Mist. I didn't plan to recreate the era, I just wanted to convey its essence. For example, I didn't want to use sixteenth-century music.

Even though Philippe Sarde took his inspiration from composers of the time, such as Roland de Lassus, we made the arrangements and motifs sound very modern through the extensive use of percussion. In fact, we created a rather original musical structure, consisting of three baroque performers, four trombonists, seven double bassists and cellists, and five percussionists. And not a single violin!

PRINCESS DE MONTPENSIER. ARTICLE BY DIDIE LE FURE

"" was first published anonymously in 1662, perhaps because it paralleled the relationship between Henrietta of England, the wife of King Louis XIV's brother and the Comte de Guiche. In any case, Madame de Lafayette did everything in her first novel to cover her tracks. She moved the action of her novel from the court of the “Sun King” a century earlier, during the reign of King Charles IX and the religious wars. All the characters actually existed, even though the author changed the names of some of them. She invented only a love story: a young girl, Marie de Maizières, who belongs to her husband Philippe de Montpensier and secretly loves another man, Henry, Duke of Guise. For some time, she believes that the distance between them and the company of the Count de Chabanne will reduce the passion to nothing. But fate brings them together again, and Marie is no longer able to resist.

The betrayal of her beloved and the hostility she feels towards her husband become a punishment for her. As for de Chabanne, a faithful and reliable friend, he sacrifices himself for the sake of the woman with whom he also happened to fall in love.

Despite the fact that another novel by Madame de Lafayette, “The Princess of Cleves,” has already been repeatedly adapted for film, with “The Princess of Montpensier” everything turned out somewhat differently. It was left behind The Princess of Cleves in book sales and influence on the masses. When 19th-century readers rediscovered this period of history, considered too morally corrupt during the Bourbon reign, the court of King Henry II, where The Princess of Cleves takes place, seemed nobler and more in keeping with people's impressions of the 16th century than the reign of his second. son of Charles IX, bringing back memories of wounds that had not yet healed. “The Princess of Cleves” captured the greatness and prosperity of a country at the peak of its glory, for which the greatest minds of the Renaissance did a lot, and the people of the 19th century preferred to look up to this worthy image. La Princesse de Montpensier, on the other hand, was set in a time of disunity, intolerance and carnage, a past best forgotten and a future avoided. In the 19th century, “The Princess of Cleves” was reprinted 28 times, while “The Princesse de Montpensier” was not published even once.

Although this unjust state of affairs changed in the 20th century, it happened too late. The decision of Bertrand Tavernier and Jean Cosmos to film this novel is based not so much on returning a forgotten literary work to its rightful place, or even on recreating historical reality in order to use it to talk about modern problems, just as they had to do in her time Madame de Lafayette to avoid censorship. When they chose this novel, they first of all wanted to tell a story of passion and love in all their forms.

To make things easier for themselves, they could move the action to modern times. The filmmakers decided not to change anything, but this decision required them to depict a rather obscure historical period in such a way that the film did not turn into a boring history lesson. As a result, the same cannot be said for sure about “Princess de Montpance”. Bertrand Tavernier and Jean Cosmos deliberately moved away from those dates and political events that had little impact on the plot. Charles IX does not appear even once in the film, and his mother, Catherine de Medici, has only one scene.

This film does not aim to retell the entire history of the religious wars. And although there are fights and battles, their purpose is to reveal the images and characters of the characters. La Princesse de Montpensier is also not a costume drama, with all the negative traits of that genre - excessive sets and ornate costumes designed to distract from weak points in the script. The strength of the plot of La Princesse de Montpensier, which Bertrand Tavernier and Jean Cosmos follow almost religiously, speaks for itself. However, this time period had to be recreated and had to be given a face. The filmmakers were able to achieve this by adding a number of scenes into the script that subtly give the impression of touching on everyday life of the time without detracting from the plot. The banquet on the occasion of the wedding of Marie de Maizières and the evening of the same day, the death of a wild boar, the preparation for bed of the Duke of Anjou in Champigny, a visiting messenger, how Marie learns to read, all these episodes eloquently show the life and customs of that time. The clutter of scenery never gets in the way of the audience, and the characters do not break under the weight of full skirts and corsets, but they give us a glimpse into a world that often eludes the eye in the pages of history books, and which Madame de Lafayette herself did not describe in much detail. A splash of color here, a hint of scent there, a sound in the distance, gestures, poses elsewhere, all of this carries a message, and when added to well-written characters, plot and quality filming, it strangely makes us believe that the essence of an era separated from us by four centuries can be captured on film.

Princess Montpensier

La Princesse de Montpensier

Micro paraphrase: 1562, France is ruled by Charles IX, religious wars are raging in the country... Marie de Maizières, one of the richest heiresses of the kingdom, loves the young Duke of Guise, who later received the nickname "Marked", and he, it seems to her, shares her feeling. However, the girl’s father, the Marquis de Maizières, seeks to elevate his family and gives his daughter in marriage to Prince Montpensier, whom she does not even know. Charles IX summons the prince to join him in the fight against the Protestants...

The story takes place in France at the end of the Wars of Religion, before the infamous Night of St. Bartholomew.

Marie de Maizières, a descendant of an ancient family of French kings, one of the richest heiresses of France, is in love with the young Duke of Guise. Parents are against their relationship; they promised the girl to de Guise’s younger brother, the Duke of Mayenne. Marie believes that Henry Guise loves her too.

Soon Marie's father changes his mind and gives his daughter in marriage to the unknown Prince de Montpensier. After the wedding, King Charles XI calls the prince into military service. In France, there is a bloody civil war between Catholics, supporters of the king, and the rebel Huguenots. On the road, Montpensier meets his old friend and teacher, Count Chabanne, who was tired of the bloody massacre and deserted from the royal army. Now he is being pursued, threatened with death, both by the Huguenots, whom he had previously killed, and by the royal troops.

Montpensier sends his friend to his Champigny castle. so that he would protect his young wife. Arriving at the castle, Shaban falls in love with a young woman, but she remains indifferent to him, despite the difference in age and position, they become friends.

After a two-year absence, Montpensier returns to the castle, but as soon as the war flares up again, he leaves for Paris. He is accompanied by Chabann, who was able to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of Queen Catherine de Medici.

During the fighting, the king's brother, the Duke of Anjou and de Guise, showed themselves bravely. During the next inspection, the Duke accidentally meets de Guise, and they go to Montpensier Castle. The Duke of Anjou is also captivated by Marie's beauty and begins to court her in the presence of her husband. It turns out to be a kind of polygon: a princess, constantly watched by her husband; the Duke of Anjou, courting her; the Duke of Guise, who likes the princess; husband and Count Chabanne, who is in love with the princess.

Chabanne's loyalty to Princess Montpensier goes so far as to help the Duke of Guise escape when her husband appears on the doorstep. Montpassier considers the Count to be his wife's lover, but he denies this. And only the girl’s fainting will save Shabanna from the bloody reprisal by her husband. The Count goes into hiding, joins the royal army and dies during clashes near Paris. Absolutely by accident, Montpensier finds the corpse of his former friend on the battlefield.

The princess, meanwhile, is waiting for letters or news from her lover de Guise, who already has a new lover. Having learned about this, the girl plunges into depression, falls ill and soon dies.