Heirs and Spares in Early Modern France

Rumours flew across Paris in the summer of 1658 that the 19-year-old Louis XIV was seriously ill, perhaps near death. Senior courtiers rushed to form a new government around the king’s younger brother by two years, Philippe, duke of Anjou. Philippe himself – known at court simply as ‘Monsieur’ – did little in support of this potential coup and, by the autumn, Louis having recovered, was rewarded for his passivity with the gift of a large country house on the outskirts of Paris, the château of Saint-Cloud.The loyalty of a royal second son towards his older brother the sovereign was not always a given, and Philippe’s lack of active political ambition in this situation marks a turning point in the history of fraternal relations in the French royal family. Courtiers and government officials had sincere cause to worry in this brief political crisis; there are plenty of examples of more aggressive behaviour in earlier generations, notably by the previous Monsieur, Gaston, duke of Orléans, the younger brother of Louis XIII. Gaston’s rebellions had been legion in the 1620s and 1630s and a serious threat to the stability of the government of France, though they have often been romanticised and trivialised through novels and films set in the era of the Three Musketeers.Fraternal strife was nothing new in the 17th century, nor of course limited to France. Stories of brothers fighting over an inheritance go back as far as the Biblical tales of Jacob and Esau. And in the glare of modern media spotlights, rivalries between eldest sons and royal spares can still be seen in royal families today. In western European kingdoms, the system of primogeniture – everything passing to the eldest son – had been established in the Middle Ages as a means to prevent the civil wars and bloodletting that had plagued earlier generations. In France specifically, a system known as the apanage was developed, through which younger royal brothers were given sizeable portions of the royal patrimony to govern and from which to draw a princely income. French princes built up their patronage networks with the local nobility, constructed large palaces and sometimes developed wealth and power that rivalled the royal court itself.

View of the grotto in the gardens of Château de Saint-Cloud, c.1631-91.

Rijksmuseum Public Domain.. In response, the French monarchy of the 16th century tightened its control over the extended members of the royal dynasty. Still, some younger brothers threatened to outshine their sovereign. King Charles IX (r.1561-74), for example, was not known for his military valour and was frustrated to see his brother, Henry, duke of Anjou, gain glory on the battlefield. Charles and Henry’s youngest brother, François, duke of Alençon (1555-84) was the first prince to be known solely as ‘Monsieur’. The title had first developed in the 1570s as a way formally to mark Henry of Anjou as the second prince of the kingdom, a great honour but without inherent wealth or power attached, and Alençon took over this moniker (and the title of Anjou) once Henry succeeded as king (as Henry III, r.1574-89). Yet, although François was honoured with a title like Monsieur, he was increasingly frustrated. As someone whose birthright was to rule – a king in waiting, should his brother die without a son – he had an innate compulsion to express his authority in politics or warfare. If he did this too well, he was seen as a threat; if he did not, he was criticised as lazy or weak. It is a problem royal siblings face today: if they are active, they are seen as stepping out of line; if they do nothing, they are criticised for being idle.MalcontentsIn the 1570s, several young noblemen, sharing young Prince François’ frustrations at being left out of military and political decision-making, formed a group at court called the ‘Malcontents’. Their ‘Conspiracy of the Malcontents’ in spring 1574 was short-lived, but in September 1575, Monsieur and his supporters left court and took refuge in his apanage lands, where he issued a formal declaration: his primary interests were not personal, but to preserve the ‘ancient laws of the Kingdom’ – vaguely defined – and called for the removal of foreigners from their influential places in the government. At the height of the Wars of Religion, he pleaded for peace in the realm and for a general church council to be convened to settle religious differences.

In his text, Monsieur called for toleration, imploring Frenchmen ‘to treat one another as brothers, kinsmen, neighbours, and fellow countrymen’. The king feared Monsieur would ally with Protestant England or the Dutch, upsetting the fragile peace with Catholic Spain. But he lacked the resources to mount a serious rebellion and domestic harmony was restored by November.

Prince François, duke of Alençon and Anjou, 1572. National Gallery of Art. Public Domain. Yet by spring 1576, Monsieur was once again in the countryside, aligning his personal troops with Protestant rebels. In May he met with his mother, Catherine de’ Medici, who was able to negotiate the ‘Peace of Monsieur’, which did little for his Protestant allies, but did gain him a significant enhancement of his territorial power base.From here on, Monsieur would never openly rebel against his brother Henry III. But he did continue to pursue his own personal ambitions that often went against the policies of the royal government. Anjou looked outside the kingdom for opportunities to shine. He picked up where his older brother had left off as a suitor of Elizabeth I of England, being presented by his envoys as ‘less papistical’ than Henry and therefore more tolerable as a consort for Protestant England. Still, Elizabeth was over 40 and Anjou only 23, and the Protestant-Catholic divide as wide as ever. The story of their courtship, on and off between 1578 and 1581, is long and complex. Although at some points it looked as if Elizabeth genuinely desired their union, many commentators of the time (and historians since) concluded that both parties were merely using the idea of a marriage to push forward an Anglo-French alliance that would aid the Dutch in their bid for independence from Spain. This was not always in accordance with the desires of Henry III, however, who wanted above all things to maintain peace within his deeply fractured kingdom and to avoid provoking the wrath of Catholic Spain.Nevertheless, Dutch agents tried to make use of fraternal bonds: if one French prince was drawn into their conflict with Spain, surely his older brother the king would follow, in defence of family honour? Henry III made it clear again and again that this was not the case. Yet Monsieur sent a messenger to Paris to inform the king that ‘as a prince of France’ he could not ignore pleas for assistance.

A deal was made with the Dutch: in exchange for his military support, Anjou would be given a sizeable pension and would be appointed ‘Lord Protector’ of the Dutch provinces (Holland, Flanders, Brabant, etc).

Henry III, king of France, François Quesnel the Elder, c.1580. Musée Carnavalet, Histoire de Paris. Public Domain. Catherine de’ Medici wrote diplomatic letters furiously in an effort to keep the peace. Her frustration is best shown in a letter she wrote to Anjou in late 1579: ‘My son, you made all those negotiations without us, to my great regret, and it does not follow that you should place this kingdom in danger, destroy it, and displease the king your brother simply to keep your word.’ She once again highlighted his position as Monsieur: ‘No matter how much you owe this honour [of being elected lord of the Netherlands] to your position as brother of the king, you are nevertheless his subject and you owe him complete obedience.’Following a series of stately ceremonial entries into various towns of Flanders and Brabant in spring 1582, and an almost royal enthronement in Antwerp as ‘Sovereign Lord of the Low Countries’, Anjou attempted to organise his troops in defence of Dutch freedoms. But his princely authority was mostly ignored and his troops were unpaid and practically starving. On 17 January 1583, his soldiers took matters into their own hands and sacked the city of Antwerp, an event known as the ‘French Fury’. Monsieur lost the trust of the Dutch people and his brother, the king of France, never gave his full support to their cause. By July, Anjou was back in France in disgrace. His health deteriorated and by June 1584 he was dead.The role of Monsieur was not filled in the next reign, as Henry IV (r.1589-1610) had no brother. His early death, however, left a power vacuum that ultimately was filled by Cardinal Richelieu, first minister of Louis XIII (r.1610-43) and one of the chief architects of French absolutism. It was Richelieu’s desire for a kingdom to be ruled by only ‘one king, one faith, one law’ that led to the highly fraught period of rebellion by Louis’ younger brother, Gaston, duke of Orléans.

No one like GastonLike the previous Monsieur, Gaston d’Orléans (1608-60) thought of himself as the primary defender of the rights of the old nobility in the face of encroaching royal absolutism. One of the chief sources of discord was the fact that between 1610 and 1638 Gaston was heir to the throne. Louis XIII’s marriage to Anne of Austria was, for over 20 years, childless, so Gaston’s marriage choices were affairs of state and sources of contention. Political conflicts also centred on Louis XIII’s tense relationship with his mother, Marie de’ Medici, and her reluctance to yield power. These two issues developed into the ‘Chalais Conspiracy’ of 1626 and resulted in the imprisonment and death of the first of Monsieur’s chief favourites, Marshal d’Ornano. In the end, Gaston was obliged to marry his brother’s choice, but was rewarded with his own apanage, the duchy of Orléans. A pattern emerges: after a rebellion, a prince’s counsellors and friends are punished, but the prince himself is reconciled by means of a significant gift. Cardinal Richelieu, a great political tactician, knew how important it was to keep the ‘spare’ happy, writing in late 1628:To keep Monsieur content in all things that are not prejudicial to the State, and to deny him anything that would weaken the authority of the king, are the two maxims for how to handle this prince, who, if treated honourably, will never undertake anything against the peace of the kingdom and the true interests of the State. Gaston’s first wife soon died and, in 1629, he was once again angered by his brother’s refusal to approve his own choice of a new bride and his unwillingness to give him command of an army. Goaded by a new favourite, Antoine de Puylaurens, Gaston left court and fled to the nearby duchy of Lorraine. He was soon reconciled, however, and given another duchy: Valois. But following the ‘Day of the Dupes’ (10-11 November 1630), a palace coup ‘duping’ the queen mother and her supporters, he fled abroad once again, married the duke of Lorraine’s sister against the king’s will and settled in Brussels in the Spanish Netherlands.