Political Women, Vol. 2

THROUGHOUT the political conflicts which agitated the Court of England since the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough had left their native shores, the Duke maintained a steady corre...

VERY little is known for certain concerning the antecedents of Louise Querouaille before she figured at the Court of France as one of the maids of honour to the unfortunate Henr...

MAZARIN might well have claimed the right of accompanying to Paris, on the 21st October, 1652, Louis the Fourteenth and Anne of Austria, and to share the joy of their victory ov...

On her accession Queen Anne had found three parties in action--the Tories, the Whigs, and the Jacobites. The first asserting the sovereignty of the royal prerogative; the second...

IT was the peculiar misfortune of Madame des Ursins to scarcely meet with a single sincere friend in Spain: she was submitted to there, rather than accepted. She had been sought...

HAVING rapidly summarised the fate and fortunes of the leading male actors who figured in the Fronde, we will now glance briefly at the closing scenes in the careers of the fair...

ONEROUS AND INCONGRUOUS DUTIES OF THE _CAMERARA MAYOR_--SHE RENDERS THE YOUNG QUEEN POPULAR WITH THE SPANIARDS--POLICY ADOPTED BY THE PRINCESS FOR THE REGENERATION OF SPAIN--CHA...

IN the balls given at Marly, she appeared loftily self-possessed, easy and familiar by turns, ogling people one after another with her eye-glass; and at one of these balls she m...

IT was, therefore, with a paraphernalia almost regal that Madame des Ursins set forth to conduct the Princess of Savoy to her husband. Our heroine was then in her fifty-ninth ye...

MADAME DES URSINS had long continued fearlessly to face the storm that growled all around her, and by degrees the horizon showed signs of clearing. As it often happens in the co...

"FIND me a wife!" The sentence was like a thunderclap in the ears of Madame des Ursins, so long accustomed as she had been to govern and domineer. Where to find one--one like Ma...

ANNE MARIE LOUISE D'ORLEANS, Duchess de Montpensier, whom history distinguishes by the epithet of _La Grande Mademoiselle_, after telling us in her memoirs, at least twenty time...

AMONG the heroines of the Fronde there were certainly lofty minds and strongly tempered souls to be found; but, when the French nation remitted to those Erminias and Hermengilda...

THE succession of the Duke d'Anjou to the Spanish crown had, in fact, destroyed the balance of power in Europe; and our William the Third, then recently dead, but even beyond th...

AMONG so many heroines of beauty, glory, and gallantry, who achieved celebrity at this stirring epoch of French history, there is one whose name ought not to be effaced from, no...

TO recall Madame des Ursins at the earliest possible moment and inflict upon her a well-merited disgrace was the earnest desire of Louis XIV.; but, omnipotent as that Prince was...

THE second-rate actors in this shifting drama presented no less diversity in the motives of their actions. Beaufort, who commanded the troops of Gaston, and Nemours those of Con...

THE result of the trial of Sacheverell made Harley and the favourite sure of the temper of the nation, and they resolved to hesitate no longer. The cabal had succeeded, and the...

MADAME DES URSINS had received Louis XIV.'s command to withdraw into Italy. Quitting Madrid as a State criminal (_en criminelle d'etat_), the Princess directed her steps towards...

AMONGST the celebrated women of the first half of the seventeenth century, many were, says Bussy Rabutin, "pitiable," whilst some were "brazen." We must assert unhesitatingly th...

IF the new ministry of Queen Anne succeeded in inducing the English nation to support the treaty of Utrecht, that was nothing less than to prove undeniably, without fear of cont...

THE political importance of the Princess Palatine dates from 1650, when the arrest of Conde, Conti, and the Duke de Longueville urged her, as we have seen, to take part in the s...

THE disgrace of the Duchess involved the fall of the Whigs. A few days after the scene at Kensington, Anne named two Tories to court appointments, and next dismissed successivel...

AT the moment when the Court of Versailles very earnestly sought the support of the Princess des Ursins, the important business of the Spanish succession engrossed the attention...

THE Princess des Ursins, as it will be seen, shared the fate of Portocarrero, of Medina-Coeli, and of all those whose power she had broken or whose designs she had frustrated; a...

SIDE by side with the two great statesmen, Richelieu and Mazarin, the clever, daring, vivacious, charming Marie de Rohan occupied a more elevated position, and certainly played...

AT the outset of that historic period known as the _War of the Spanish Succession_ a remarkable feature presents itself in the fact that two women were chosen to be, as it were,...

SOME few days after the fierce fight of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, Conde had an interview with the Duke d'Orleans, "who embraced him with an air as gay as though he had failed...

CHAP. I.--Delicate and perilous position of the Princess des Ursins after the Battle of Almanza--She effects an important reform by the centralisation of the different kingdoms...

V.--Onerous and incongruous duties of the Camerara-Mayor--She renders Marie Louise popular with the Spaniards--The policy adopted by the Princess for the regeneration of Spain--...

II.--State of parties in action on the accession of Queen Anne--Harley and Bolingbroke aim at overthrowing the sway of the female "Viceroy"--Abigail Hill becomes the instrument...