WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: Mancini Sisters 0:00:02.520 --> 0:00:05.520 Happy Saturday. This episode is coming out on the three 0:00:05.640 --> 0:00:09.800 hundred eightieth birthday of Hortense Mancini, who was born on 0:00:09.920 --> 0:00:12.960 June sixth, sixteen forty six. She is one of the 0:00:13.000 --> 0:00:16.800 two Mancini sisters we talk about in Today's Saturday Classic. 0:00:17.280 --> 0:00:21.000 This episode originally came out on November fourteenth, twenty twenty two. 0:00:21.520 --> 0:00:27.400 Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a 0:00:27.440 --> 0:00:37.640 production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm 0:00:37.680 --> 0:00:41.479 Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. Today we are 0:00:41.520 --> 0:00:45.239 going to talk about a pair of sisters who, along 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:48.280 with their other sisters and their cousins, get a lot 0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:54.120 of comparisons to whatever influencer, slash media celebrity is making 0:00:54.160 --> 0:00:57.440 the most headlines at any given moment. Like over the 0:00:57.480 --> 0:00:59.200 past few years, I've seen a lot of people call 0:00:59.280 --> 0:01:04.240 them the seventeenth century Kardashians. They are Hortense and Marie Mancini, 0:01:04.360 --> 0:01:06.920 and they tried to make a place for themselves in 0:01:06.959 --> 0:01:11.840 the seventeenth century in Europe, really defying all kinds of 0:01:11.959 --> 0:01:17.160 conventions along the way. We mentioned them extremely briefly, like 0:01:17.760 --> 0:01:20.840 just a couple of sentences way back when we interviewed 0:01:20.920 --> 0:01:25.560 Jason Porath about his book and website Rejected Princesses in 0:01:25.600 --> 0:01:29.679 twenty sixteen, so they've had not even like a six 0:01:29.760 --> 0:01:33.600 impossible episodes level of exploration. It just really is just 0:01:33.680 --> 0:01:37.360 like paragraph. A thing to note upfront with this episode 0:01:37.760 --> 0:01:41.280 is that I love a lot of these two women's stories. 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:44.319 There are big chunks of their lives that are a 0:01:44.440 --> 0:01:47.480 really wild ride, and they sound full of adventure and 0:01:47.560 --> 0:01:51.800 daring and writing memoirs and hosting salons and becoming the 0:01:51.840 --> 0:01:55.360 favorites of various monarchs. But really a lot of this 0:01:56.080 --> 0:01:58.560 was also happening as they were trying to get away 0:01:58.560 --> 0:02:02.520 from their husbands, both of whom were controlling and abusive 0:02:02.600 --> 0:02:05.240 and just frightening. And this was all happening in an 0:02:05.240 --> 0:02:08.600 era when women just really didn't have the right to 0:02:08.720 --> 0:02:13.639 get a divorce from a bad marriage. So I can 0:02:13.639 --> 0:02:16.000 see how just that whole setup would be very troubling 0:02:16.560 --> 0:02:19.080 to people. We're also going to talk a little bit 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:23.839 about some pregnancy loss, and there are some very young 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:29.720 marriages in this story, even to the point of seeming 0:02:30.440 --> 0:02:34.840 inordinately young given the time period. This is a heads up, 0:02:35.639 --> 0:02:39.480 so Hortense and Marie Mancini were two of the women 0:02:39.600 --> 0:02:42.799 known as the Mazarinets. They were the nieces of Cardinal 0:02:42.919 --> 0:02:46.720 Jule's Mazzarins, chief minister of France. So we need to 0:02:46.760 --> 0:02:48.960 talk a little bit about him. Just set the stage. 0:02:49.960 --> 0:02:54.720 He was born Julio Mazzarini in Naples in sixteen oh two, 0:02:55.040 --> 0:02:58.000 and he changed his name after moving to France, where 0:02:58.040 --> 0:03:01.320 he became an advisor and eventually chief minister to King 0:03:01.400 --> 0:03:05.800 Louis the thirteenth. In sixteen forty one, Mazarin was named 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:08.280 a cardinal and he was one of the people present 0:03:08.440 --> 0:03:11.480 at the baptism of the dauphin the future King Louis 0:03:11.520 --> 0:03:14.640 the fourteenth, who of course also became known as the son. 0:03:14.720 --> 0:03:18.480 King Louis the thirteenth died in sixteen forty three, and 0:03:18.560 --> 0:03:21.480 that was when Louis the fourteenth was still a child 0:03:21.680 --> 0:03:25.480 and the young king's mother, Anne of Austria, became his regent. 0:03:26.480 --> 0:03:30.800 She and Mazarin did not initially get along. There was 0:03:30.840 --> 0:03:33.800 some butting of heads, but he was so charming and 0:03:33.919 --> 0:03:38.480 persuasive they eventually became very close, so close that there 0:03:38.520 --> 0:03:41.400 were rumors that the two of them were secretly married. 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:44.360 Now there is a whole swath of history that we're 0:03:44.400 --> 0:03:47.560 kind of skipping over here, including the Thirty Years War 0:03:47.760 --> 0:03:51.480 and Mazarin being exiled for a while and a series 0:03:51.520 --> 0:03:54.920 of civil wars in France known as the Fronde. But 0:03:55.000 --> 0:03:59.280 eventually Mazarin became one of the most powerful people in France, 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:02.120 which it's he was one of the most powerful countries 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:06.240 in Europe. He had also become extremely wealthy, with money 0:04:06.280 --> 0:04:09.080 and titles and land to pass down to an air. 0:04:09.960 --> 0:04:13.200 He had no children of his own, though his one 0:04:13.280 --> 0:04:17.640 surviving nephew had a reputation as an irresponsible libertine, so 0:04:18.279 --> 0:04:21.000 Mazarin did not think that this would be a great 0:04:21.120 --> 0:04:24.560 candidate for his successor, so he really focused on his 0:04:24.800 --> 0:04:28.880 seven nieces, moving all of them from what's now Italy 0:04:28.960 --> 0:04:32.039 to France and managing their educations to make sure that 0:04:32.080 --> 0:04:35.599 they would be witty and cultured and personable able to 0:04:35.680 --> 0:04:41.000 fit into French society, and then he arranged advantageous marriages 0:04:41.040 --> 0:04:44.920 for all of them to build a legacy for himself 0:04:45.000 --> 0:04:49.039 that way. Five of Mazarin's nieces were the daughters of 0:04:49.160 --> 0:04:54.159 Hieronima and Lorenzo Mancini. That included Hortense and Marie, who 0:04:54.240 --> 0:04:57.839 were going to come back to you. Their sister laur Victoire, 0:04:58.080 --> 0:05:01.599 married Louis de Vendome, Duke de Mercueur, who was King 0:05:01.640 --> 0:05:05.680 Henry the Fourth's grandson. Sadly, she died at the age 0:05:05.720 --> 0:05:08.559 of twenty, shortly after giving birth to their third son. 0:05:09.480 --> 0:05:14.400 Another sister, Olimpe, married Eugene Maurice of Savoy Contes Soisson. 0:05:15.279 --> 0:05:20.000 The youngest mancini sister, Marie Anne, married goud Froid Maurice 0:05:20.040 --> 0:05:24.839 de la Tour d'auvel, Duke of Bouillon. Mazarin's two other 0:05:24.960 --> 0:05:28.680 nieces were the two daughters of Girolamo Martinozzi and Laura 0:05:28.680 --> 0:05:33.039 Margherita Mazzarini. They were Anne Marie, who married Armand de Bourbon, 0:05:33.279 --> 0:05:37.000 Prince of Conti, and Laura, who married Alfonse the fourth 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:42.039 dest Duke of Modena. In addition to Hortense and Marie, 0:05:42.080 --> 0:05:45.200 some of these women wound up being famous and even 0:05:45.279 --> 0:05:48.920 notorious in their own ways. There were court scandals and 0:05:48.960 --> 0:05:52.040 affairs with kings, and, in the case of Olampe and 0:05:52.040 --> 0:05:56.640 Marie Anne Mancini, allegations of poisoning people. During the Affair 0:05:56.800 --> 0:06:00.479 of the Poisons, as its name suggests, the fare of 0:06:00.520 --> 0:06:05.039 the poisons, involved poisonings and alleged poisonings, and allegations of 0:06:05.040 --> 0:06:08.320 people using black magic and love potions to try to 0:06:08.400 --> 0:06:12.640 sway the King. Previous hosts of the show did an 0:06:12.680 --> 0:06:15.839 episode on this. It came out on January nineteenth of 0:06:15.880 --> 0:06:19.039 twenty eleven. We're not running this one as a Saturday 0:06:19.040 --> 0:06:21.920 Classic because it's in the middle of a series that 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:25.800 they did on the House of Bourbon. It builds on 0:06:25.960 --> 0:06:29.160 the previous episodes that they had released over the prior 0:06:29.240 --> 0:06:31.200 couple of weeks. It was just a little bit more 0:06:31.240 --> 0:06:34.359 in medius race than we would generally try to do. 0:06:35.640 --> 0:06:38.359 I think you can follow it. It just was a 0:06:38.400 --> 0:06:42.160 little like, it's not quite a standalone right right, So 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:45.200 we didn't want to stick it into the feed by itself. 0:06:46.160 --> 0:06:50.560 Marie Mancini was born Anna Maria Mancini on August twenty eighth, 0:06:50.560 --> 0:06:55.040 sixteen thirty nine. Her younger sister, Hortense, was born Ortensia 0:06:55.080 --> 0:06:59.520 Mancini on June sixth, sixteen forty six. In spite of 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:02.400 the seventh gap in their ages, these two sisters became 0:07:02.600 --> 0:07:06.440 very close. In sixteen fifty four, when Marie was fifteen 0:07:06.520 --> 0:07:10.240 and Hortense was eight. Their caregivers judged them as being 0:07:10.320 --> 0:07:13.920 ready to start making their way into French society, but 0:07:14.000 --> 0:07:17.280 when Mazarin met with them, he disagreed with that assessment, 0:07:17.400 --> 0:07:20.120 and he sent them to a convent together for another 0:07:20.240 --> 0:07:24.400 eighteen months for further study and refinement, just in case 0:07:24.480 --> 0:07:27.160 anyone is wondering, why are you not saying her name 0:07:27.440 --> 0:07:29.960 or Tense as she might have said it in French. 0:07:30.720 --> 0:07:34.320 She eventually moved to Britain, and everybody new his Hortense, 0:07:34.360 --> 0:07:37.600 and it seemed weird to change pronunciations part way through 0:07:37.640 --> 0:07:41.880 the episode. Neither of these sisters was considered to be 0:07:41.960 --> 0:07:46.360 particularly exceptional when they were very young. In her younger years, 0:07:46.400 --> 0:07:50.880 Marie was described as awkward and uncooperative, while Hortense was 0:07:50.920 --> 0:07:55.360 pretty and charming, but also described in terms like apathetic 0:07:55.800 --> 0:08:01.040 and insignificant. Seventeenth century French writer Madame Lafayette wrote of 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:04.600 Hortense quote, she was not only the most beautiful of 0:08:04.600 --> 0:08:07.320 the cardinal's nieces, but she was the most beautiful of 0:08:07.360 --> 0:08:10.600 all the court beauties. Had she been gifted with more 0:08:10.680 --> 0:08:13.960 intelligence and a greater vivacity of manner, she would have 0:08:14.000 --> 0:08:17.640 been perfect. Not that everyone considered that a weak point 0:08:17.720 --> 0:08:20.840 for her. For many people found her careless attitude and 0:08:21.040 --> 0:08:25.800 languid manner a distinct attraction. Once they got to court, 0:08:26.080 --> 0:08:29.920 Marie caught the eye of one particular man, the King 0:08:30.200 --> 0:08:34.080 Louis the fourteenth, with the two teens becoming deeply devoted 0:08:34.120 --> 0:08:37.000 to one another. So this might sound like a pretty 0:08:37.040 --> 0:08:40.880 great development, considering that Cardinal Mazarin was trying to marry 0:08:40.880 --> 0:08:44.760 his nieces to high ranking men. Marie's father was a baron, 0:08:44.920 --> 0:08:47.800 so marrying the king would have been an enormous step up. 0:08:48.720 --> 0:08:53.240 But Louis needed to marry royalty, ideally someone who could 0:08:53.280 --> 0:08:57.760 solidify an alliance between France and another powerful country. By 0:08:57.800 --> 0:09:01.080 sixteen fifty nine, when the king was twenty and Marie 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:05.400 was nineteen, he was begging to be allowed to marry her, 0:09:05.960 --> 0:09:09.160 and meanwhile his mother and her uncle were working to 0:09:09.240 --> 0:09:13.400 separate them. Marie was finally sent away from court in 0:09:13.480 --> 0:09:17.240 the company of her sisters Hortens and mary Anne. Reportedly, 0:09:17.400 --> 0:09:20.680 the last thing she said to him was quote, Sire, 0:09:21.160 --> 0:09:24.440 I am leaving you to weep, and yet you are king. 0:09:25.280 --> 0:09:29.240 In spite of efforts to keep them apart, Louis and 0:09:29.280 --> 0:09:33.520 Marie kept up a continual secret correspondence including sending one 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:37.680 another gifts. One of these gifts was a puppy sent 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:40.520 from Louis to Marie with a caller that said, I 0:09:40.640 --> 0:09:43.240 belonged to Marie. I would have been pretty hard to 0:09:43.320 --> 0:09:48.000 keep secret. Yeah, just gonna keep a puppy secret from everybody. 0:09:49.080 --> 0:09:53.120 In the ends, a marriage was arranged between King Louis 0:09:53.160 --> 0:09:56.080 the fourteenth of France and Maria Teresa and Fanta of 0:09:56.160 --> 0:10:00.400 Spain and arch Duchess of Austria. Their marriage part of 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:03.720 the Peace of the Pyrenees, which ended the Franco Spanish War. 0:10:04.800 --> 0:10:08.920 Louis managed to arrange a brief visit to Marie on 0:10:09.160 --> 0:10:12.360 his way to make the final marriage negotiations, and during 0:10:12.400 --> 0:10:14.400 this visit the two of them had a bunch of 0:10:14.559 --> 0:10:20.880 very sad, apologetic like teen romance conversations, most of them 0:10:21.000 --> 0:10:24.640 happening in front of her sister Hortense. Then, after Louis 0:10:24.760 --> 0:10:27.800 was married, Marie and Hortense followed a process that was 0:10:27.840 --> 0:10:31.640 outlined in Ovid's Cures for Love, to ritually get rid 0:10:31.679 --> 0:10:35.120 of anything that might remind her of him or otherwise 0:10:35.640 --> 0:10:40.160 soothe her heartbreak. Meanwhile, Mazarin was working on arranging a 0:10:40.200 --> 0:10:42.560 marriage for Marie, not just to try to put a 0:10:42.600 --> 0:10:45.920 final end to her feelings of the king, but also 0:10:45.960 --> 0:10:48.560 because his own health was declining and he wanted to 0:10:48.600 --> 0:10:51.560 make sure all of his nieces were settled before he died. 0:10:52.920 --> 0:10:57.440 Marie's marriage contract to Italian Prince Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna was 0:10:57.480 --> 0:11:01.880 signed on February twenty first, sixteen sixty one. Hortense was 0:11:01.920 --> 0:11:06.000 married very soon after. Like her sister, she had already 0:11:06.040 --> 0:11:09.480 captured the interest of someone much more powerful than she 0:11:09.920 --> 0:11:12.760 or her family, and that was Charles the Second of 0:11:12.800 --> 0:11:15.560 England at the time, though he was not on the 0:11:15.600 --> 0:11:18.720 throne of England, he was in exile in France, having 0:11:18.840 --> 0:11:23.560 fled England during the English Civil Wars. Charles actually proposed 0:11:23.600 --> 0:11:27.119 to Hortense, But unlike her sister and Louis the fourteenth, 0:11:27.160 --> 0:11:30.400 the issue wasn't that Charles really needed to make a 0:11:30.480 --> 0:11:34.920 royal marriage alliance. It was that Cardinal Mazarin did not 0:11:35.040 --> 0:11:37.600 think it was very likely that Charles was actually going 0:11:37.679 --> 0:11:39.840 to get to return to the British throne, so he 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:43.320 declined this offer. He was like, no, I'm not marrying 0:11:43.400 --> 0:11:47.400 my niece to a deposed king. Would the point of 0:11:47.400 --> 0:11:52.240 that be? However, Charles was indeed restored as monarch in 0:11:52.280 --> 0:11:55.199 sixteen sixty, which was not long after all of this happened, 0:11:56.480 --> 0:12:01.400 made a mistake. Instead, Hortense married mon Charles de la Bertai, 0:12:01.920 --> 0:12:04.720 who had been considered a suitor for some of her sisters, 0:12:05.080 --> 0:12:09.400 but who had always been particularly interested in Hortense like 0:12:10.200 --> 0:12:13.439 interested in a way that multiple people commented on as 0:12:13.520 --> 0:12:17.679 disturbing and frankly inappropriate. He had been fixated on her 0:12:17.800 --> 0:12:20.800 since she was nine, and he was about fourteen years 0:12:20.800 --> 0:12:24.319 older than she was. When they married on March first 0:12:24.360 --> 0:12:27.480 of sixteen sixty one, he was twenty nine and she 0:12:27.640 --> 0:12:32.400 was just fourteen. Mazarin's acceptance of this proposal seems to 0:12:32.480 --> 0:12:35.000 have been largely based on the fact that he thought 0:12:35.120 --> 0:12:38.199 Armand would take care of his estates and his fortune. 0:12:38.960 --> 0:12:42.320 He had decided that the vast majority of that fortune 0:12:42.400 --> 0:12:45.480 was going to go to whoever Hortense married, and that 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:49.240 person would also become the Duke of Mazarin and inherit 0:12:49.400 --> 0:12:55.760 Mazarin's other titles. Armand was deeply religious and mature and responsible, 0:12:55.880 --> 0:12:58.440 so the Cardinal didn't think he was likely to just 0:12:58.640 --> 0:13:02.440 fritter away his inherent or otherwise make an embarrassment of 0:13:02.440 --> 0:13:08.240 his legacy armand came into that inheritance really quickly. Cardinal 0:13:08.320 --> 0:13:12.240 Jules Mazarin died on March ninth, sixteen sixty one, just 0:13:12.400 --> 0:13:15.319 days after the wedding. We're going to talk more about 0:13:15.320 --> 0:13:27.400 all of this after a sponsor break. In some ways, 0:13:27.640 --> 0:13:32.559 Marie and Hortense Mancini's marriages were similar at first, especially 0:13:32.600 --> 0:13:34.839 in that both of them were very focused on having 0:13:34.880 --> 0:13:37.880 babies and particularly on trying to have a male heir. 0:13:38.840 --> 0:13:43.040 After recovering from a serious illness and then experiencing a miscarriage, 0:13:43.120 --> 0:13:47.480 Marie gave birth to three sons, Filippo, Marcantonio, and Carlo, 0:13:47.559 --> 0:13:50.560 who were born in sixteen sixty three, sixteen sixty four, 0:13:50.640 --> 0:13:56.040 in sixteen sixty five. Hortense had four babies in five years, 0:13:56.920 --> 0:13:59.920 Marie Charlotte in sixteen sixty two, Marie Anne in sixty 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:03.800 teen sixty three, Maria lamp in sixteen sixty five, and 0:14:03.920 --> 0:14:07.600 Paul Joule's in sixteen sixty six. But in other ways, 0:14:07.640 --> 0:14:11.240 the early years of their marriages were almost completely opposite 0:14:11.240 --> 0:14:15.199 from one another. It became clear pretty much immediately that 0:14:15.280 --> 0:14:19.720 Hortense's husband, the new Duke Mazarin, was a religious fanatic 0:14:19.800 --> 0:14:24.560 to the point of being really irrational. He micromanaged minute 0:14:24.560 --> 0:14:26.840 details of the lives of people who lived on the 0:14:26.920 --> 0:14:30.480 land that he managed, arguing that by doing so he 0:14:30.560 --> 0:14:33.960 was going to save their souls. And this included things 0:14:34.080 --> 0:14:36.760 like trying to get the milkmaids to spend less time 0:14:36.800 --> 0:14:40.600 milking because he thought they might find it erotic, and 0:14:40.680 --> 0:14:43.880 believing that churning milk into butter was immodest and could 0:14:43.920 --> 0:14:47.440 lead to arousal sounds like the milkmaids are not the problem. 0:14:48.000 --> 0:14:51.040 He ordered mothers to teach their babies too fast by 0:14:51.080 --> 0:14:54.840 refusing to nurse them on Fridays. When a fire broke 0:14:54.880 --> 0:14:57.120 out at the palace, he ordered the servants who put 0:14:57.120 --> 0:14:59.840 it out to be flogged, and he flogged some of 0:14:59.840 --> 0:15:03.120 them of himself, because he thought that they had interfered 0:15:03.160 --> 0:15:07.360 with the will of God. He was also extremely possessive 0:15:07.440 --> 0:15:11.920 and controlling of virtually everything about Hortense's life. By the 0:15:12.000 --> 0:15:15.400 terms of her uncle's will, they were enormously wealthy as 0:15:15.400 --> 0:15:19.640 a couple, but almost none of that wealth was exclusively hers. 0:15:20.440 --> 0:15:23.600 The only thing of material value that was actually considered 0:15:23.680 --> 0:15:27.440 her property and only hers, was her jewelry, which her 0:15:27.520 --> 0:15:30.400 husband tried to confiscate from her because he said that 0:15:30.440 --> 0:15:33.760 it was going to lead her into temptation. In terms 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:36.640 of Marie's marriage, there were some ways that her husband, 0:15:36.680 --> 0:15:40.880 Lorenzo could be controlling. For example, he blamed her pregnancy 0:15:40.960 --> 0:15:43.920 loss on her love of riding horses, and when she 0:15:43.960 --> 0:15:46.840 got pregnant again, he forced her to give up riding 0:15:47.160 --> 0:15:50.920 and to be carried on a sedan chair. But unlike 0:15:51.000 --> 0:15:53.840 Hortense's husband who tried to lock her away and keep 0:15:53.840 --> 0:15:57.640 her from anything that might be a temptation, Marie's husband 0:15:57.720 --> 0:16:01.440 wanted to show her off, hosting masks, balls and salons 0:16:01.800 --> 0:16:05.440 and lavish galas. They became patrons of the arts, theater, 0:16:05.520 --> 0:16:08.080 and culture, and they spent lots of time in Venice, 0:16:08.320 --> 0:16:12.240 where they crossed paths with past podcast subject Christina of Sweden. 0:16:12.920 --> 0:16:17.640 But Marie's relationship with her husband seems to have really deteriorated. 0:16:17.760 --> 0:16:21.160 Around the time of her pregnancy with their third son. 0:16:22.400 --> 0:16:25.360 He had an affair with another woman who gave birth 0:16:25.400 --> 0:16:29.360 to a child that everyone knew was his. Then Marie 0:16:29.480 --> 0:16:32.520 had a really difficult delivery and she was worried that 0:16:32.600 --> 0:16:37.840 she wouldn't survive another pregnancy. That combined with her mortification 0:16:37.960 --> 0:16:40.600 over her husband's affair to lead her to try to 0:16:40.640 --> 0:16:44.960 put an end to their physical relationship. Lorenzo, of course, 0:16:45.080 --> 0:16:49.320 was not happy about that idea at all. Meanwhile, Hortense, 0:16:49.400 --> 0:16:52.680 having provided her husband with a male heir, was trying 0:16:52.680 --> 0:16:56.760 to end her physical relationship with him as well. Armand 0:16:56.800 --> 0:17:02.080 had become incredibly controlling and paranoid about preconceivable thing, all 0:17:02.120 --> 0:17:07.080 within this framework of extreme religious piety. When Hortense started 0:17:07.119 --> 0:17:10.159 trying to avoid him, all of that got worse. And 0:17:10.400 --> 0:17:14.359 contrary to what Cardinal Mazarin had expected, Armand was not 0:17:14.560 --> 0:17:18.000 being that careful with his inheritance. He gave huge amounts 0:17:18.000 --> 0:17:20.480 of money away to the church and charities, and he 0:17:20.520 --> 0:17:23.159 bought land that wasn't really going to pay off as 0:17:23.160 --> 0:17:26.240 an investment. Hortense thought that they were going to wind 0:17:26.320 --> 0:17:29.159 up with nothing, and in sixteen sixty six she started 0:17:29.160 --> 0:17:33.360 trying to legally separate their assets. This wasn't the same 0:17:33.359 --> 0:17:35.679 thing as dissolving the marriage. She was just trying to 0:17:35.840 --> 0:17:38.399 kind of partition off some of their money so that 0:17:38.440 --> 0:17:41.760 it was under her control, just so Armand couldn't spend 0:17:41.800 --> 0:17:45.160 it all. When Armand said that they should pull out 0:17:45.200 --> 0:17:48.640 their daughter's front teeth so that men would not find 0:17:48.680 --> 0:17:53.840 them tempting. Hortense fled to her sister, Alemp. Alemp promised 0:17:53.880 --> 0:17:56.560 to try to protect the children, but she also didn't 0:17:56.600 --> 0:17:58.959 really want to bring her sister in to live with 0:17:59.000 --> 0:18:02.440 them full time. So a lamp tried to mediate between 0:18:02.480 --> 0:18:06.680 Hortense and armand Hortense did not think their issues could 0:18:06.720 --> 0:18:09.800 be reconciled, and when her husband said that she could 0:18:09.840 --> 0:18:12.080 either live with one of her sisters or go to 0:18:12.119 --> 0:18:16.040 a convent, she went to the convent. While in the convent, 0:18:16.160 --> 0:18:20.399 Hortense developed an intense relationship with the Marquise mariei Donis 0:18:20.440 --> 0:18:24.840 de Carcel, who was there under charges of adultery. She 0:18:25.040 --> 0:18:28.240 was seventeen and Hortense was twenty one, and together the 0:18:28.280 --> 0:18:31.080 two of them ran roughshod over the nuns who were 0:18:31.200 --> 0:18:34.919 essentially acting as their jailers, including playing a whole lot 0:18:34.960 --> 0:18:39.080 of pranks, like putting ink in the holy water. That's funny. 0:18:41.520 --> 0:18:47.199 It really sounds almost like a weird comedy about a 0:18:47.240 --> 0:18:53.240 boarding school, like playing pranks on the teachers. Marie Sony 0:18:53.359 --> 0:18:57.280 helped Hortense with her legal filings, and eventually Hortense did 0:18:57.359 --> 0:19:00.880 get a partial victory. The court order that her husband 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:03.920 grant her a pension of twenty thousand livres a year 0:19:04.800 --> 0:19:07.760 and to document what he was doing with all of 0:19:07.800 --> 0:19:11.040 their money. She was also supposed to return back to 0:19:11.080 --> 0:19:13.879 their home while her husband, who was the grand Master 0:19:13.960 --> 0:19:17.360 of Artillery, would instead live at the Arsenal of Paris. 0:19:18.080 --> 0:19:22.360 Hortense left the convent, but Armand refused to do any 0:19:22.400 --> 0:19:24.320 of the things he had been ordered to do, and 0:19:24.600 --> 0:19:28.680 also destroyed the theater that Hortense had used to stage 0:19:28.720 --> 0:19:33.240 small productions at their home while she was away. Meanwhile, 0:19:33.720 --> 0:19:37.720 Maurice Donis reconciled with her husband, and that was something 0:19:37.720 --> 0:19:40.640 that made Hortense so jealous that she told him that 0:19:40.680 --> 0:19:44.200 Maurice Doni had been receiving secret visits from another man. 0:19:45.640 --> 0:19:48.840 This led to a duel between Maurice Donise's husband and 0:19:48.920 --> 0:19:52.199 her lover, after which both of them were imprisoned for 0:19:52.359 --> 0:19:56.760 violating the prohibition on dueling. In the face of Armand's 0:19:56.800 --> 0:20:01.760 increasingly erratic and frightening behavior, Hortense moved from trying to 0:20:01.880 --> 0:20:07.000 legally separate their assets into a formal separation from their marriage, 0:20:07.560 --> 0:20:11.159 and on June thirteenth, sixteen sixty eight, she fled to Italy, 0:20:11.440 --> 0:20:13.639 with the help of her brother Philippe and a friend 0:20:13.640 --> 0:20:18.200 of theirs, the Chevalier of Rohan. She left her children behind, 0:20:18.359 --> 0:20:20.879 hoping that she would be better able to advocate for 0:20:21.000 --> 0:20:24.159 them Away from her husband. She took a couple of 0:20:24.200 --> 0:20:30.119 servants with her, disguised as men. This was just not done. 0:20:30.160 --> 0:20:33.560 Women of her social class did not leave their husbands, 0:20:33.560 --> 0:20:37.280 and they certainly did not travel without male escorts. The 0:20:37.359 --> 0:20:41.600 trip itself involved a perilous journey through the Alps. In Milan, 0:20:41.720 --> 0:20:44.880 Hortense reunited with her sister Marie, who had come out 0:20:44.920 --> 0:20:48.840 from Rome with her husband. Lorenzo wanted to go back 0:20:48.840 --> 0:20:52.040 home immediately, but Hortense and Marie convinced him to stop 0:20:52.040 --> 0:20:55.200 in Siena for a couple of weeks instead, and there 0:20:55.280 --> 0:20:58.720 they spent their time riding and hunting, apart from the 0:20:58.840 --> 0:21:02.480 social norms that Hortense had really abandoned here. This was 0:21:02.640 --> 0:21:07.800 basically an international incident, with Hortense, a duchess, fleeing her 0:21:07.840 --> 0:21:11.080 home in France to join her sister, whose husband was 0:21:11.119 --> 0:21:15.560 an Italian prince. Hortense also quickly started having an affair 0:21:15.640 --> 0:21:19.560 with the Chevalier of Rohann's squire, which was yet another 0:21:19.640 --> 0:21:22.920 layer of scandal, and also came across as a huge 0:21:22.920 --> 0:21:25.480 annoyance to Marie and Lorenzo. They were sort of like, 0:21:25.520 --> 0:21:27.600 we're trying to help you out, and you're having this 0:21:27.680 --> 0:21:30.000 public affair with the squire, why are you doing this? 0:21:31.080 --> 0:21:35.760 More generally, though, Lorenzo was annoyed with his wife Marie. 0:21:36.119 --> 0:21:39.840 They were both living fairly separate lives by this point, 0:21:39.880 --> 0:21:43.119 but he was increasingly frustrated by how much money she 0:21:43.240 --> 0:21:46.760 spent on things like artwork and improvements to their home 0:21:46.880 --> 0:21:49.920 and cultural projects, and as well as the many, many 0:21:50.000 --> 0:21:54.080 outings that she took with her sister. In sixteen seventy one, 0:21:54.320 --> 0:21:58.040 Marie got really sick and people thought her husband was 0:21:58.119 --> 0:22:03.480 poisoning her than while the Chevalier's squire also accused Philippe 0:22:03.480 --> 0:22:06.159 and the Chevalier of trying to poison him. This was 0:22:06.280 --> 0:22:08.960 during the whole affair of the poisons era. There was 0:22:09.040 --> 0:22:11.080 a lot there's a whole lot of poison going on, 0:22:11.320 --> 0:22:15.840 poisoning and accused poisoning and potential poisoning happening. A marriage 0:22:15.920 --> 0:22:18.639 was arraigned for Philip that year, and Hortense went with 0:22:18.760 --> 0:22:20.680 him to Paris to try to get some kind of 0:22:20.800 --> 0:22:25.320 legal resolution to her marriage. Her husband was irate when 0:22:25.400 --> 0:22:28.040 he heard how Hortense had been spending her time in Rome. 0:22:28.880 --> 0:22:31.520 She and her sister had filled their time with parties 0:22:31.560 --> 0:22:35.560 and masked balls and musical performances, with Hortons being so 0:22:35.760 --> 0:22:38.560 popular with men that two of them allegedly fought a 0:22:38.640 --> 0:22:43.760 duel over her armand called for Hortense's arrest, but city 0:22:43.840 --> 0:22:47.720 officials refused to do it, and he became so irate 0:22:48.200 --> 0:22:51.560 that he destroyed a lot of their art collection. He 0:22:51.760 --> 0:22:54.960 smashed the genitals of the statues with a hammer and 0:22:55.040 --> 0:22:58.840 cut them out of paintings with scissors. King Louis the 0:22:58.880 --> 0:23:03.360 fourteenth was upset about this. In addition to the King's 0:23:03.440 --> 0:23:07.040 love of and patronage for art, the king and other 0:23:07.080 --> 0:23:10.480 people also considered this art collection that had been destroyed 0:23:10.520 --> 0:23:14.560 to have been a national treasure. So whatever goodwill people 0:23:14.640 --> 0:23:17.440 might have had for Armand at this point really have oporated. 0:23:18.119 --> 0:23:20.280 In France. At this time, divorce as we know it 0:23:20.320 --> 0:23:24.359 today really didn't exist. There was a process for separating 0:23:24.400 --> 0:23:28.760 a couple's assets. Hortense had already tried that, and separac 0:23:29.080 --> 0:23:32.520 de coeurs, or physical separation, in which a couple were 0:23:32.560 --> 0:23:37.280 still technically married but lived legally separated lives. But this 0:23:37.440 --> 0:23:39.200 was not common at all, and a lot of people 0:23:39.280 --> 0:23:43.440 were still pushing for some kind of reconciliation between Hortense 0:23:43.480 --> 0:23:47.040 and Ormond. Hortense proposed that she be allowed to live 0:23:47.080 --> 0:23:50.439 in a convent with servants that she chose and the 0:23:50.480 --> 0:23:53.879 freedom to come and go, based on what had happened 0:23:53.880 --> 0:23:57.880 with Maurice Donis de crocell. The abbesses at the convents 0:23:57.920 --> 0:24:01.360 proposed as options were pretty wary of this whole idea. 0:24:01.800 --> 0:24:06.040 He did not want any more ink in the holy water. Finally, 0:24:06.680 --> 0:24:10.560 still without the settlement that she wanted, Hortons left Paris again. 0:24:10.760 --> 0:24:13.240 She returned to her sister in Rome in May of 0:24:13.320 --> 0:24:17.399 sixteen seventy one, and then about a year later, both 0:24:17.440 --> 0:24:20.360 of them fled. We're going to talk more about that 0:24:20.800 --> 0:24:33.600 after we paused for a sponsor break. Marie Mancini's relationship 0:24:33.680 --> 0:24:37.600 with her husband Lorenzo had clearly been deteriorating for a 0:24:37.720 --> 0:24:41.320 long time before she fled from Rome with her sister 0:24:41.359 --> 0:24:45.199 Hortons on May twenty ninth of sixteen seventy two. She 0:24:45.560 --> 0:24:49.560 was afraid of her husband, and she admired her sister's 0:24:49.600 --> 0:24:52.880 will to have left her own husband Armand. But if 0:24:52.880 --> 0:24:57.320 there was like some specific last straw that prompted Marie 0:24:57.359 --> 0:25:02.520 to decide to leave, like noted anywhere mystery, it may 0:25:02.520 --> 0:25:05.760 have just come to that point. The Mansini sisters wanted 0:25:05.800 --> 0:25:08.680 to travel unobtrusively, so they didn't take much with them, 0:25:08.720 --> 0:25:11.560 apart from some money and jewelry and a letter of 0:25:11.600 --> 0:25:15.679 safe passage from King Louis the fourteenth. The sisters and 0:25:15.760 --> 0:25:19.199 two maids all warman's clothing under their dresses, and they 0:25:19.200 --> 0:25:22.400 took a valet with them as well. They took steps 0:25:22.440 --> 0:25:25.000 to try to throw people off the trail, like getting 0:25:25.040 --> 0:25:27.679 a carriage and loudly talking about where they were going 0:25:28.119 --> 0:25:30.440 when really they were headed to a boat to make 0:25:30.480 --> 0:25:35.439 their escape by water. Meanwhile, Lorenzo kept sending people to 0:25:35.560 --> 0:25:38.679 find them and trying to put barriers in the way 0:25:38.840 --> 0:25:42.320 of their escape, like spreading the word that people should 0:25:42.320 --> 0:25:45.200