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La Duchesse: The Life of Marie de Vignerot—Cardinal Richelieu's Forgotten Heiress Who Shaped the Fate of France
A rich portrait of a compelling, complex woman who emerged from a sheltered rural childhood into the fraught, often deadly world of the French royal court and Parisian high society—and who would come to rule them both.
Married off at sixteen to a military officer she barely knew, Marie de Vignerot was intended to lead an ordinary aristocratic life, produce heirs, and quietly assist the men in her family rise to prominence. Instead, she became a widow at eighteen and rose to become the indispensable and highly visible right-hand of the most powerful figure in French politics—the ruthless Cardinal Richelieu.
Richelieu was her uncle and, as he lay dying, the Cardinal broke with tradition and entrusted her, above his male heirs, with his vast fortune. She would go on to shape her country’s political, religious, and cultural life as the unconventional and independent Duchesse d’Aiguillon in ways that reverberated across Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas.
Marie de Vignerot was respected, beloved, and feared by churchmen, statesmen, financiers, writers, artists, and even future canonized saints. Many would owe their careers and eventual historical legacies to her patronage and her enterprising labor and vision. Pope Alexander VII and even the Sun King, Louis XIV, would defer to her. She was one of the most intelligent, accomplished, and occasionally ruthless French leaders of the seventeenth century. Yet, as all too often happens to great women in history, she was all but forgotten by modern times.
La Duchesse is the first fully researched modern biography of Vignerot, putting her onto center stage in the histories of France and the globalizing Catholic Church where she belongs. In these pages, we see Marie navigate scandalous accusations and intrigue to creatively and tenaciously champion the people and causes she cared about. We also see her engage with fascinating personalities such as Queen Marie de Médici and influence French imperial ambitions and the Fronde Civil War. Filled with adventure and daring, art and politics, La Duchesseestablishes Vignerot as a figure without whom France’s storied Golden Age cannot be fully understood.
Married off at sixteen to a military officer she barely knew, Marie de Vignerot was intended to lead an ordinary aristocratic life, produce heirs, and quietly assist the men in her family rise to prominence. Instead, she became a widow at eighteen and rose to become the indispensable and highly visible right-hand of the most powerful figure in French politics—the ruthless Cardinal Richelieu.
Richelieu was her uncle and, as he lay dying, the Cardinal broke with tradition and entrusted her, above his male heirs, with his vast fortune. She would go on to shape her country’s political, religious, and cultural life as the unconventional and independent Duchesse d’Aiguillon in ways that reverberated across Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas.
Marie de Vignerot was respected, beloved, and feared by churchmen, statesmen, financiers, writers, artists, and even future canonized saints. Many would owe their careers and eventual historical legacies to her patronage and her enterprising labor and vision. Pope Alexander VII and even the Sun King, Louis XIV, would defer to her. She was one of the most intelligent, accomplished, and occasionally ruthless French leaders of the seventeenth century. Yet, as all too often happens to great women in history, she was all but forgotten by modern times.
La Duchesse is the first fully researched modern biography of Vignerot, putting her onto center stage in the histories of France and the globalizing Catholic Church where she belongs. In these pages, we see Marie navigate scandalous accusations and intrigue to creatively and tenaciously champion the people and causes she cared about. We also see her engage with fascinating personalities such as Queen Marie de Médici and influence French imperial ambitions and the Fronde Civil War. Filled with adventure and daring, art and politics, La Duchesseestablishes Vignerot as a figure without whom France’s storied Golden Age cannot be fully understood.
463 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 7, 2023
35 people are currently reading
246 people want to read
About the author
Bronwen McShea
4 books6 followersBronwen McShea earned a Ph.D. in History from Yale University and an M.T.S. focusing on the History of Christianity from Harvard Divinity School.
She was an Associate Research Scholar in the James Madison Program at Princeton University from 2018-2020 and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Institut für Europäische Geschichte in Mainz, Germany.
She was an Associate Research Scholar in the James Madison Program at Princeton University from 2018-2020 and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Institut für Europäische Geschichte in Mainz, Germany.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
May 3, 2023
Due to excessive novel reading in my youth, I've always had an interest in Cardinal Richelieu but don't ever recall reading anything about his niece, Marie de Vignerot. Bronwen McShea has brought this accomplished woman's life into a deserved place of honor in this excellent biography.
Marie's achievements include her successful maneuvering through treacherous political waters for over fifty years; her astute financial investing and management despite family members leaching off of her wealth; her patriotic devotion to France; her deep religious faith and care for the poor. She helped establish hospitals in Paris, and later throughout France. She sponsored Catholic missionaries traveling around the world (New France/Canada, Algeria and Tunis, India, Southeast Asia (Vietnam). She was generous to these missionaries as well as to family members and the many people she employed on her estates.
This impressive biography recounts many of the events in Marie's life, but unfortunately there seem to be relatively few surviving letters written by her at a time when letter writing was as common as email and texting are today. That is a shame, but probably due to the depredations of the French Revolution.
Overall, I found this biography a great addition to my library.
Marie's achievements include her successful maneuvering through treacherous political waters for over fifty years; her astute financial investing and management despite family members leaching off of her wealth; her patriotic devotion to France; her deep religious faith and care for the poor. She helped establish hospitals in Paris, and later throughout France. She sponsored Catholic missionaries traveling around the world (New France/Canada, Algeria and Tunis, India, Southeast Asia (Vietnam). She was generous to these missionaries as well as to family members and the many people she employed on her estates.
This impressive biography recounts many of the events in Marie's life, but unfortunately there seem to be relatively few surviving letters written by her at a time when letter writing was as common as email and texting are today. That is a shame, but probably due to the depredations of the French Revolution.
Overall, I found this biography a great addition to my library.
June 4, 2024
During a very busy week, I really treasured a book that would help me sleep! Which sounds like an insult, but I enjoyed reading about a place and time I didn’t know well: 17th century France. Marie de Vignerot, later Duchess of Aguillon, is a pretty obscure figure today, but was extraordinarily globally powerful in her day. The niece and heir of Cardinal Richelieu, she spied for him as a lady in waiting to King Louis XIII’s mother, then used her wealth and power to play politics and support French religious and commercial colonialism to Canada, North Africa and Vietnam. It is a little hard to get enthusiastic about her positions on Janseism (hated) and the civil war known as the Fronde (changed sides a lot) but her religious and resolute character is drawn well by the Canadian author Bronwen McShea. It’s remarkable that she isn’t better known.
April 1, 2023
Well sourced, well written, and unafraid to provide the truth even when unflattering to its subject. A remarkable piece of historical scholarship about a remarkable figure. Highly recommend.
November 8, 2023
The writing style was hard to follow sometimes as it jumped around a little on the timeline and the author referring to duchess-peeress was driving me insane lol. Other than than a great and informative read!
November 25, 2023
I love when a historian can tell the story of a fascinating woman lost to history. I enjoyed learning about Marie’s relationships with her family, the French royal court, and the Catholic Church. Fascinating read, but at times I did find the content repetitive and hard to follow. Still a must read!
September 3, 2024
Overall, it was a very enjoyable read. I liked Ms McShea's confident style, her clear & concise chapters, occasional clever use of modern turns of speech. I felt at all times that she knew very well what story she wanted to tell, and while I understand that such an approach entails a fair bit of subjectivity, I prefer it to cases when scholars keep throwing minutiae, unnecessary details and mutually exclusive opinions at you in an attempt to achieve complete objectivity that may fail all the same (e.g. earlier this year I read Sherwin and Bird's biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, and found it a bit underwhelming precisely for this reason).
Also, while I didn't research it specifically, I understand that Ms McShea is a practising Catholic, and for me it was an additional advantage of the book. As the duchess was clearly a very religious person and advancement of Catholicism was the biggest cause of her life, it is great that the story of her life is told by someone who shares her faith. I find that too often the religious aspect in such cases is ignored completely, downplayed or dismissed as a facade for some very earthly motivations, which I cannot agree with (e.g. I had to put aside Aldous Huxley's Grey Eminence a long time ago because of what struck me as a very condescending tone he adopted when speaking about Richelieu as a prince of the church).
Finally, I liked the portrayal of the duchess in the book as someone who was denied her wish of taking monastic vows, but who practised obedience - one of the main three monastic vows - by serving her uncle as a high-ranking hierarch of the church. The book is clearly structured to show her time at Richelieu's side as some sort of novitiate that then enabled her to thrive, when she became her own woman after his death. This vision resonates nicely with me. It was remarkable how she was able to harness religious institutions for political purposes and vice versa, something she surely learned from her uncle (although I personally side with Vincent de Paul on this one, what is God's and what is Caesar's are best kept separate)! I also never realized she was such a prominent political actor during the Fronde and worked to remove Mazarin from office. I liked how she seemed to favour compromise both in her private affairs (when she was willing to pay big chunks of money to her relatives who tried to have Richelieu's will revised, although she may have won the case in court) and in political matters. On a side note, I am always in awe of what people of the past were able to accomplish within the same 24 hours that we have... And on top of actually doing things, they wrote gazillions of letters! Like, daily! I am a subscriber to the esoteric theory of time flowing more slowly back then, because I can find no other explanation to how they pulled it off!
Otherwise, I believe the book could have benefited from more direct speech: quotes from letters, memoirs etc. I understand quite a few letters/papers of the duchess have survived, and I am sure her contemporaries mentioned her a lot in their own correspondence/notes too. I was a bit disappointed that the author chose not to quote from sources most of the time, and the few quotes that are given are very bland, I couldn't hear "the person" in them. I also would have been happy about more context: e.g. what church reforms the Council of Trent declared and why they were needed (as d'Aiguillon's lifelong work, as far as I understand, was to help the church implement them), the status of women in the XVII century France etc. It would help the reader appreciate the significance of the duchess' status & activities better. I also think a concluding balance chapter briefly outlining d'Aiguillon's major accomplishments would have been great.
Also, while I didn't research it specifically, I understand that Ms McShea is a practising Catholic, and for me it was an additional advantage of the book. As the duchess was clearly a very religious person and advancement of Catholicism was the biggest cause of her life, it is great that the story of her life is told by someone who shares her faith. I find that too often the religious aspect in such cases is ignored completely, downplayed or dismissed as a facade for some very earthly motivations, which I cannot agree with (e.g. I had to put aside Aldous Huxley's Grey Eminence a long time ago because of what struck me as a very condescending tone he adopted when speaking about Richelieu as a prince of the church).
Finally, I liked the portrayal of the duchess in the book as someone who was denied her wish of taking monastic vows, but who practised obedience - one of the main three monastic vows - by serving her uncle as a high-ranking hierarch of the church. The book is clearly structured to show her time at Richelieu's side as some sort of novitiate that then enabled her to thrive, when she became her own woman after his death. This vision resonates nicely with me. It was remarkable how she was able to harness religious institutions for political purposes and vice versa, something she surely learned from her uncle (although I personally side with Vincent de Paul on this one, what is God's and what is Caesar's are best kept separate)! I also never realized she was such a prominent political actor during the Fronde and worked to remove Mazarin from office. I liked how she seemed to favour compromise both in her private affairs (when she was willing to pay big chunks of money to her relatives who tried to have Richelieu's will revised, although she may have won the case in court) and in political matters. On a side note, I am always in awe of what people of the past were able to accomplish within the same 24 hours that we have... And on top of actually doing things, they wrote gazillions of letters! Like, daily! I am a subscriber to the esoteric theory of time flowing more slowly back then, because I can find no other explanation to how they pulled it off!
Otherwise, I believe the book could have benefited from more direct speech: quotes from letters, memoirs etc. I understand quite a few letters/papers of the duchess have survived, and I am sure her contemporaries mentioned her a lot in their own correspondence/notes too. I was a bit disappointed that the author chose not to quote from sources most of the time, and the few quotes that are given are very bland, I couldn't hear "the person" in them. I also would have been happy about more context: e.g. what church reforms the Council of Trent declared and why they were needed (as d'Aiguillon's lifelong work, as far as I understand, was to help the church implement them), the status of women in the XVII century France etc. It would help the reader appreciate the significance of the duchess' status & activities better. I also think a concluding balance chapter briefly outlining d'Aiguillon's major accomplishments would have been great.
November 12, 2024
A long overdue book! A much underappreciated and unrecognized person - one who had such an influence over arts, culture, religion, and government in France, but also extending from Southeast Asia, Middle East, North Africa, and Canada.
Books of this period are a bit hard (for me, anyway) because to the tendency of the people to be referred to by their name, or by different titles as their life progresses. A family tree would have also helped!
Books of this period are a bit hard (for me, anyway) because to the tendency of the people to be referred to by their name, or by different titles as their life progresses. A family tree would have also helped!
May 11, 2023
Interesting, but a little repetitive. I understand why it is structured the way it is, but the repeating gets...a little bothersome as things add. Because there isn't much extant of her life, documents and such, everything comes from those around her, which makes sense because of the time, but sucks because we don't really know much about these powerful women. How many more pivotal women are we completely (or almost completely) unaware of?
July 10, 2023
She really did shape the Fate of France - amazing powers for a woman at that time
March 4, 2024
Impossible to put down. Very good book about the shadows around one of history’s most intriguing people, Cardinal Richelieu.
March 31, 2024
A amazing woman who was years ahead of her time. I like to think I am pretty knowledgeable about French history but I never really knew her story. Highly recommend
June 12, 2023
I am of two minds about this book. On the one hand, it is a revelation of someone who was powerful and consequential in her day, and then promptly forgotten. On the other hand, some of the things she devoted herself to are not appealing today - foreign missions, eradication of protestantism in France, the power of the monarchy. Despite being an unconventional woman, Marie was no liberal.
It was hard to keep track of some of the people among the nobility because of their similar names. Occasionally the chronology caused some confusion as events were mentioned more than once due to context. And I was often a little bored on a page by page basis even as I was fascinated by the overall story.
It was worthwhile to persist, however, because Marie was a serious player in the politics of 17th century France and she should not be overlooked.
It was hard to keep track of some of the people among the nobility because of their similar names. Occasionally the chronology caused some confusion as events were mentioned more than once due to context. And I was often a little bored on a page by page basis even as I was fascinated by the overall story.
It was worthwhile to persist, however, because Marie was a serious player in the politics of 17th century France and she should not be overlooked.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews