Beschreibung:

MAINTENON, Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de (1635-1719). Autograph letter signed ('Maintenon') to an unidentified correspondent (the Duke of Villars?), Saint Cyr, 26 May [1709], 4 pages, 4to .
MAINTENON, Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de (1635-1719). Autograph letter signed ('Maintenon') to an unidentified correspondent (the Duke of Villars?), Saint Cyr, 26 May [1709], 4 pages, 4to . An encouraging letter to a commander evidently in a critical situation (during the war of the Spanish Succession), confessing her great anxiety at the present danger to France and providing news of opinion at court and hinting at her influence on the King: 'M[onsieu]r le Prince Eugene dit hautement a la Haye qu'il entrera en France Comme rien n'eschape a mes craintes mon inquietude est qu'il ne se mette entre vous et nous. Mon esperance est en Dieu, et en vous qui ne vous laisseres pas surprendre et qui ne pouvés estre accablé que par le nombre [A]u reste ie ne cesse de persecutter le Roy, Mr Chamillart et Mr de Maretz pour votre subsistance'. Charles-Louis-Hector, Duke of Villars (1653-1734) was Louis XIV's most successful commander in the War of the Spanish Succession and when he was wounded at Malplaquet the King gave him the apartments of the Prince de Condé, where Madame de Maintenon visited him. Prince Eugène of Savoy commanded the Austrian forces. Françoise d'Aubigné, one of the most intriguing figures of the court of Louis XIV, was awarded a pension by Louis's mother, Anne of Austria, which enabled her to continue to frequent the literary salons to which her late husband, the writer Scarron, had introduced her. She was created Marquise de Maintenon in 1678 and after the death of the Queen, the King entered into a morganatic marriage with her.