Mazarinettes

Cardinal Mazarin

The Mazarinettes were the seven nieces of Cardinal Jules Mazarin, (1639–1661[1]), chief minister to the Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV of France from 1642 until his death.[1]

They were the daughters of the cardinal's two sisters, Laura Margherita (died 1685), the wife of Girolamo Martinozzi, and Girolama, (1614–1656), the wife of Michele Lorenzo Mancini. In 1647, Mazarin brought Laura Margherita and her two daughters, ten-year-old Anne Marie and eight-year-old Laura from Italy to Paris, then, in 1650, when Girolama was widowed, she moved to France, too, with her five daughters and three sons: thirteen-year-old Laura and Paul Jules, eleven-year-old Olympia, ten-year-old Marie, nine-year-old Philippe, six-year-old Alfonso, four-year-old Hortense, and one-year-old Marie Anne.

Mazarin wished to establish a dynasty in France and secure his legacy through advantageous marriages, but could have no children of his own as a member of the Catholic clergy. He also wanted to surround himself with his family, in whom he could confide, as he had many enemies at court.

Anne of Austria

Anne of Austria, who was ruling as regent after the death of her husband, Louis XIII, and during the minority of his son, Louis XIV, from 1643 to 1651, supervised the education of the Martinozzi and Mancini children herself. She even allowed for the younger children to be educated with the king and his younger brother, Monsieur Philippe, Duke of Anjou.

In Paris, where the beauty ideal was pale skin and a full figure, the darker complexion and thinner build of the Italian girls were widely talked about.[2] The Mazarinettes were discussed in the Mazarinades, the anti-Mazarin pamphlets published in France between 1648 and 1653. One of them described them as follows:

French original English translation

Elles ont les yeux d'un hibou,
L'écorce blanche comme un chou,
Les sourcils d'une âme damnée,
Et le teint d'une cheminée.

They possess the eyes of an owl,
The bark as white as a cabbage,
The eyebrows of a damned soul,
And a complexion of a chimney.

Other Mazarinades called them "dirt princesses" and "stinking snakes".[3]

When the Mazarinettes were officially presented at court, Marshal Villeroy said to the king's uncle, Gaston, Duke of Orléans:[4][5]

Here are young ladies who just at present are not rich at all, but who soon shall have beautiful castles, good incomes, precious stones, substantial silver plate, and perchance great rank...

Voilà des petites demoiselles qui présentement ne sont point riches, mais qui bientôt auront de beaux châteaux, de bonnes rentes, de belles pierreries, de bonne vaisselle d'argent, et peut-être de grandes dignités...

The Mazarinettes' lives and luck were tied to the fortune of their uncle. During the series of civil wars known as the Fronde (between 1648 and 1653), they were forced to flee Paris and go into exile twice. Once the revolts were crushed and Cardinal Mazarin restored to power, he arranged advantageous marriages for his nieces with powerful French and Italian aristocrats, and gave large dowries to their husbands in order to overcome their reluctance to marry women of lower origins.[6]

The Mazarinettes were:

  1. ^ a b Saint-Evremond (1728). The Works of Monsieur de St. Evremond: Made English from the French Original: with the Life of the Author. J. and J. Knapton, J. Darby, A. Battesworth.
  2. ^ Guth 1973, p. 638
  3. ^ Guth 1973, p. 639
  4. ^ Savoie-Carignan 1911, p. 64.
  5. ^ Renée 1858, p. 37.
  6. ^ Jurewitz-Freischmidt 2002, p. 20.