Philippe, Chevalier de Lorraine

Philippe
Chevalier de Lorraine
Presumed portrait by an unknown artist
Born28 September 1643[1]
Died8 December 1702 (aged 59)
Palais-Royal, Paris, France[2]
Names
Philippe de Lorraine
HouseGuise
Lorraine
FatherHenri de Lorraine, Count of Harcourt
MotherMarguerite-Philippe du Cambout

Philippe de Lorraine (28 September 1643 – 8 December 1702), known as the Chevalier de Lorraine, was a French nobleman, descendant of the Dukes of Elbeuf, member of the House of Guise, cadet branch of the ducal House of Lorraine. He was the renowned lover of Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, brother of Louis XIV.

Biography

Presumed portrait of the Chevalier de Lorraine as Ganymede by Baldassare Franceschini

Philippe was the third child and second son of Henri de Lorraine, Comte d'Harcourt and his wife, Marguerite-Philippe du Cambout. His father, Henri de Lorraine, was created the Count of Harcourt in 1605, aged 4. Henri was also the Grand Squire of France, a prestigious office in charge of the royal stables, the transport of the king, and his ceremonial entourage. He was known as Monsieur le Grand. Philippe de Lorraine's mother, Marguerite-Philippe du Cambout, was a member of the House of Cambout, who traced their ancestry back to the Sovereign Dukes of Brittany.

Known to be "as beautiful as an angel," Philippe became the lover of the Duke of Orléans (known as Monsieur at court) in 1658, while living at the duke's Palais-Royal residence in Paris, where the young Princess Henriette of England was living with her mother Queen Henriette Marie. The two Henriettes had fled England due to the English Civil War and had lived at the Palais-Royal as a grace and favor residence.

After the Duke of Orléans married Henriette of England (known as Madame at court) at the Palais-Royal in 1661, Lorraine remained a prominent presence within the household.[3] Contemporary correspondence and later memoirists attest to the tension between Lorraine and Henriette,[4] as well as to Philippe's limited discretion regarding his long-standing relationship with Lorraine.[5][6]

Lorraine remained Monsieur's maître en titre (official favourite) from the 1660s to the end of the duke's life in 1701, and as such he was entrusted with running the Orléans household.[7] In this capacity he oversaw the duke's finances; ran the duke's residences at the Palais-Royal and the Château de Saint-Cloud; and exercised some influence over household appointments and dismissals.[8] At times during their relationship, Lorraine and the duke lived in a ménage à trois with Antoine Coëffier de Ruzé, Marquis d'Effiat or Charles, Marquis de Beuvron.[9]

The relationship between Philippe, Duc d'Orléans and Philippe de Lorraine reportedly affected Monsieur's first marriage to Henriette Stuart. Contemporary accounts indicate that the Duke of Orléans declared he could not love his wife without Lorraine's approval, contributing to marital tensions.[6]

According to Henriette, Elizabeth Charlotte, and Saint-Simon, Lorraine frequently manipulated the Duke of Orléans. The Duke of Orléans married Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate in 1671, who later wrote of Lorraine:

Philippe de Lorraine was three years younger than Philippe d'Orléans. Insinuating, brutal and devoid of scruple, he was the great love of Monsieur's life. He was also the worst enemy of the latter's two wives. As greedy as a vulture, this younger son of the French branch of the House of Lorraine had, by the end of the 1650s, hooked Monsieur like a harpooned whale. The young prince loved him with a passion that worried Madame Henriette and the court bishop, Cosnac, but it was plain to the King that, thanks to the attractive face and sharp mind of the good-looking chevalier, he would have his way with his brother.[10]

First exile

On 31 January 1670, the king's guard surrounded Monsieur's apartments at the Château de Saint-Germain and arrested the Chevalier de Lorraine.[11] Louis XIV may have ordered the arrest for a variety of reasons, including Lorraine's role in forming a rift between the king and Monsieur over Monsieur's exclusion from negotiations of the Secret Treaty of Dover; possible demands from Charles II of England, Madame's brother, that Lorraine be removed; and "as a result of Monsieur’s overreaching demands for ecclesiastic benefices for his favourite."[12][13] Lorraine was imprisoned first in the Château de Pierre Scize, near Lyon, and then at the island fortress of Château d'If, offshore of Marseilles.[14][15]

In protest of Lorraine's imprisonment, Monsieur removed himself to the Château de Villers-Cotterêts and forced Madame to Saint-Germain.[16] Henriette's absence from court prevented her from fulfilling her role as go-between for the signing of the Secret Treaty of Dover, forcing King Louis to negotiate with his brother for his permission for Madame to return.[17]

In February 1670, Louis agreed to mitigate the severity of the punishment, and sent Lorraine into exile in Rome with a pension of 10,000 écus. Charles, Comte de Marsan, Lorraine's brother, was exiled with him.[18] Lorraine was allowed to return to the French court in 1672, possibly because the king viewed him as a means by which to control the Duc d'Orléans.[19]

Accused of poisoning

When in 1670 Henriette died suddenly and mysteriously at Saint-Cloud, it was suspected that she had been poisoned by Lorraine, the Marquis d'Effiat, and the Marquis de Beuvron. The autopsy ordered by Louis XIV reported that Henriette had died of peritonitis caused by a perforated ulcer.[20][21] Poisoning was never proven and, despite several hypotheses, the precise cause of death remains unknown.[22]

Nevertheless, rumours persisted that Lorraine and Effiat had poisoned Henriette. These rumours were taken up between 68 and 78 years later by Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon in his Mémoires, in which he claimed that with the intention of killing the duchess, while exiled in Italy:[23]

the Chevalier de Lorraine sent a sure and rapid poison to his two friends [Effiat and Beuvron] by a messenger who did not probably know what he carried.[24]

Monsieur's second wife, Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate, also believed that Lorraine had poisoned the first Madame, this time with the help of Effiat and Antoine Morel de Volonne. She wrote of the incident:

Madame was very young, beautiful, agreeable, and full of grace, and surrounded by the greatest coquettes in the world, the mistresses of Madame’s enemies, who sought only to get her into trouble and make Monsieur quarrel with her. They say here that she was not handsome; but she had so much grace that everything became her. She was not capable of forgiving, and was determined to drive away the Chevalier de Lorraine. In that she succeeded, but it cost her her life. He sent the poison from Italy by a Provençal gentleman named Morel, and to reward the latter he was made chief maître-d’hôtel.[25]

Second exile

In 1682, Lorraine was exiled again, having been accused of seducing the young Comte de Vermandois (legitimized son of Louis XIV and Louise de La Vallière) with his set (including the Prince of Conti) and inducing the Count of Vermandois to begin practicing le vice italien (the contemporary term for homosexuality).[26] He returned to court approximately six months later.

Final decade

Lorraine was blamed for helping to arrange the 1692 marriage between Monsieur's only surviving son, the Duc de Chartres, and his first cousin, Mademoiselle de Blois, who was the legitimized daughter of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan. Chartres was the son of the Duc d'Orléans and his second wife, Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate, who did not get on with Lorraine at all and merely "tolerated his existence."

By 1701, near the end of his life, Philippe de Lorraine had lost much of the furniture in his apartment at the Palais-Royal and in his country residence (filled with remains from the Palatinate), his four abbeys, and all of the money he had obtained (more or less with permission) from the coffers of the State, by gambling and exploitation of his lovers; however, he did manage to reconcile with Elizabeth Charlotte.

Saint-Simon reported rumors that Lorraine married in secret his cousin Béatrice Hiéronyme de Lorraine (1662–1738), Abbess of Remiremont.[6]

Death

Saint-Simon records that Lorraine collapsed suddenly on 7 December, 1702, and died shortly thereafter, noting that there was no evidence of prolonged illness.[6] This claim is disputed by the contemporary accounts of Louis I de Bouchet, Marquis de Sourches and Philippe de Courcillon, Marquis de Dangeau, who both record that Lorraine had suffered an attack of apoplexy (a contemporary term for a stroke-like illness) three months prior to his death, in September of 1702, which left him with half of his body paralyzed and difficulty speaking.[27] Biographer Joan Pieragnoli argues that Lorraine had been putting his affairs in order since July of 1701, just four weeks after the death of the Duke of Orléans.[28]

Philippe de Lorraine died in the Palais-Royal after midnight on 8 December 1702, aged 59, after suffering an attack of apoplexy in the afternoon of 7 December.[29]

Honours, titles, and properties

View of the Château de Frémont in the seventeenth century

Between 1674 and 1680, Lorraine became the titular abbot of four wealthy abbeys: the Sainte-Trinité de Tiron in 1674; Saint-Jean-des-Vignes, near Soissons in 1678; Fleury in 1679; and Saint-Père-en-Vallée in the Diocese of Chartres in 1680.[30] Each of these abbeys were "heads of much larger monastic networks," and likely provided an income of tens of thousands of livres annually.[31]

In 1687, Lorraine acquired the Château de Frémont, located on the royal route between Paris and the king's hunting retreat at the Palace of Fontainebleau. Lorraine maintained rooms at his château for both Monsieur and Madame.

The Chevalier de Lorraine was created a knight of the Order of the Holy Spirit, the most prestigious military knighthood of the ancien régime, on 31 December 1688 at Versailles. Two of his brothers, Louis, Comte d'Armagnac and Charles, Comte de Marsan, were also created members of the order on the same day.[32]

Relatives

His niece, Marie de Lorraine, (12 August 1674 – 30 October 1724), was a princess of the House of Lorraine-Guise and Princess of Monaco as the wife of Antonio I.[33]

Later genealogical traditions have attributed descendants to Philippe de Lorraine through unacknowledged or collateral lines, including associations with the old Counts of Oeynhausen, Marquess of Alorna and a line of the Counts of Stolberg-Wernigerode; however, no contemporary documentation confirms direct descent from Philippe de Lorraine.

Issue

  • Alexandre, Chevalier de Beauvernois (dates unknown, active after 1734), known as le bâtard de Lorraine, was a figure at the French court whose sobriquet reflected a contemporary belief or rumor of illegitimate connection to the House of Lorraine. Later genealogical sources associated him with Philippe de Lorraine, Chevalier de Lorraine, though no contemporary documentation formally establishes his parentage. Some later sources further associate Claude de Souches with this belief; however, contemporary records do not substantiate this attribution.

Portrayals in media

Philippe de Lorraine has been portrayed in:

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Pieragnoli 2025, p. 34
  2. ^ Pieragnoli 2025, p. 370
  3. ^ Fraser, Antonia. Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King. New York: Anchor Books, 2007, pp. 86–92.
  4. ^ Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate. Letters from Liselotte, trans. and ed. Elborg Forster. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970.
  5. ^ Sévigné, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de. Correspondance, ed. Roger Duchêne. Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1972–1978.
  6. ^ a b c d Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy, duc de. Mémoires, ed. Yves Coirault. Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1953–1961.
  7. ^ Lurgo 2018, p. 150
  8. ^ Spangler 2017, p. 6, 11
  9. ^ Spangler 2017, p. 3, 12
  10. ^ Van der Cruysse, Dirk (1988). Madame Palatine, princesse européenne (in French). Fayard. p. 165. ISBN 2-213-02200-3. Philippe de Lorraine était de trois ans le cadet de Philippe d'Orléans. Séduisant, brutal et dénué de scrupules, il fut le grand amour de la vie de Monsieur. Il fut aussi le pire ennemi des deux épouses de celui-ci... Rapace comme un vautour, ce cadet de la branche française de la maison de Lorraine avait mis dès la fin des années 1650 le grappin sur Monsieur comme on harponne une baleine. Le jeune prince l'aimait avec une fougue qui inquiétait Madame Henriette et Cosnac, mais qui fit comprendre au Roi que, grâce à la figure charmante et la tête bien organisée du joli chevalier, il aurait barre sur son frère.
  11. ^ Lurgo 2018, p. 111
  12. ^ Lurgo 2018, p. 112
  13. ^ Spangler 2017, p. 10, 12
  14. ^ Lurgo 2018, p. 112
  15. ^ Pieragnoli 2025, p. 153-154, 157
  16. ^ Pieragnoli 2025, p. 154, 156-157
  17. ^ Pieragnoli 2025, p. 157-158
  18. ^ Lurgo 2018, p. 115
  19. ^ Lurgo 2018, p. 150
  20. ^ Robinson, James. "The History of Gastric Surgery, chapter 20". The History of Gastroenterology. p. 239.
  21. ^ Bély 2019, p. 377-380
  22. ^ Walch 2010, p. 258
  23. ^ Le Roy Ladurie and Fitou 2001, p. 16
  24. ^ Saint-Simon 1857, p. 305
  25. ^ Princess Palatine 1899, p. 166
  26. ^ Spangler 2017, p. 17-18
  27. ^ Pieragnoli 2025, p. 368-369
  28. ^ Pieragnoli 2025, p. 367
  29. ^ Pieragnoli 2025, p. 370-371
  30. ^ Spangler 2017, p. 12
  31. ^ Spangler 2017, p. 12
  32. ^ Spangler 2017, p. 15
  33. ^ "Maison de Lorraine". Almanach de Gotha. Gotha: Justus Perthes. 1701.
  34. ^ "Angélique". unifrance.org. Retrieved 10 April 2026.
  35. ^ "Merveilleuse Angélique". unifrance.org. Retrieved 10 April 2026.

References

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