Hortense Mancini
Hortense Mancini was one of the first women to openly publish her life story and what a story it was. The adventures of this Italian beauty unfold like a novel and would take her across Europe from Rome to Paris and on to London where she would become mistress of the King.
But this is just the beginning; she was an intrepid, independent and rebellious celebrity, who dared to thumb her nose at convention and who chose to live in the way she pleased and more importantly, she wielded her fame and status to allow other women to embrace freedoms only enjoyed by men.
Come with me to explore the rock and roll journey of this 17C Kardashian…
Ortensia Mancini was born in Rome on 6 June 1646 to an italian aristocrat, Baron Lorenzo Mancini and his wife Girolama Mazzarini. She was the fourth of five sisters, each of whom would go on to have colourful lives and who would become known as the Mazarinettes.
Her father died when she was a young child and at the age of six Hortense, already strikingly beautiful with long curly black hair, found herself waiting at the dockside in Citavecchia preparing to board a magnificent Genovese galley bound for France.
The vessel was powered below by twenty young men, most of them prisoners or slaves, and she and her family were carried as if they were royalty on the first of many journeys in her life, to be deposited a week later into the heart of French society.
The voyage had been arranged by Hortense’s powerful uncle, Cardinal Mazarin, who had worked his way up in the French court to a position of prestige and influence, amassing a fortune as he did so.
On arrival the newcomers were the subject of curiosity and excitement. Mazarin’s intention was to marry his many young nieces to the best in elite society and there would be no shortage of offers.
In Paris, Hortense and her older sister Marie stayed in a convent, where they studied French, literature, religion and the arts, but after the death of her mother when Hortense was ten, the two were educated by a governess and become accomplished young women.
Anne of Austria, mother to the young King, Louis XIV, took the beautiful sisters under her wing and by the age of 14 Hortense had become engaging, beautiful and much admired at court. Her uncle’s health was declining and he was determined to arrange a marriage for her before he died.
In 1649 King Charles I of England had been beheaded, and in most of the intervening years his son Charles had been in exile in France. He was much taken with Hortense and approached Mazarin to suggest a match, but as the Cardinal harboured doubts as to the young King’s future, the offer was declined.
Very soon in 1660 Charles was restored to the English throne as King Charles II, at which point Mazarin attempted to renegotiate. It was too late. Now in a position to seek a more ambitious proposal Charles had turned his sights to Portugal and the princess Catherine of Braganza. His union with her would sadly produce no offspring, but she would introduce England to the habit of tea drinking!
In haste to arrange a marriage before he died, Mazarin turned his attentions to Armand-Charles de la Porte de la Mailleraye, an awkward figure and religious fanatic, who had been in love with Hortense since she was 9 years old.
On his deathbed Cardinal Mazarin chose to marry the 14 year old to this religious nobleman, bestow on them the title of Duke and Duchess of Mazarin and leave them his entire fortune. As Hortense would later write the move was to make her “the richest heiress and the unhappiest woman in Christendom.
It was soon apparent that Armand-Charles was sexually obsessed with his new wife. He banned her from seeing her friends, forbad the staging of plays and concerts at their palace and soon was insisting they take long journeys out of town to the provinces away from society.
Hortense gave birth to a daughter in 1662, by which time the increasingly fanatical Armand-Charles was believing that the Angel Gabriel was speaking to him in dreams. He became concerned with the sleeping arrangements of the servants, who were forced to retire early. Conversation and laughter were not allowed.
He warned the milkmaids not to spend too long milking the cows, which he saw as having sexual connitations and he was also in the habit of knocking out the front teeth of female servants to make them look less attractive.
If Hortense showed a servant signs of favour, they would be immediately dismissed and her rooms would be searched nightly to look for hidden paramours. She wrote that he would display a “tireless diligence in disparaging me to everyone and in putting a shameful cast on all my actions.”
In short he was delusional, erratic, obsessively jealous and a tyrant. He was also mismanaging the family fortune and squandering it away.
2 more daughters were born, followed by a son and heir at which point the Duke moved his family to Brittany. He was so terrified that Hortense would leave him, he ordered her to give him her jewellery, the only part of her fortune that she legally owned, so denying her access to funds.
Hortense sunk into a depression. She was reluctant to openly oppose her husband, but in 1666 driven by desperation, she took her first steps toward a legal separation. She was ordered back to her husband, whereupon he attempted to physically restrain her and lock her up. She was finally driven to seek refuge in a convent.
Soon King Louis XIV had interceded and Hortense found herself escorted by Royal armed guard to be incarcerated in another convent where she was kept under surveillance by the nuns and which also served as a prison for wayward noblewomen. Her plight was desperate.
As a wife was seen to be her husband’s property, the threat of being locked up in a convent for going against your husband wishes, was a regular occurrence at the time. However the status of marriage and its power to enslave women was being vigorously challenged by writer and philosopher Madeleine de Scudery and was questioned in society at large.
At the convent she met a friend, the Marquise de Courcelles who was in a similar predicament and with whom it appears she had an affair. By all accounts the two resisted their incarceration with mockery, resilience and by playing pranks, which gradually wore the elderly nuns down. They garnered support from the ladies of Paris and popular opinion was on their side.
They were then moved to another convent. The two would speak to visitors through a metal grill and together they would plan their escape, whilst they appealed to the courts for legal separations, which would allow them both the income to live independently.
Hortense managed to secure an authorised separation and returned to the Mazarin Palace and to public life. However when she started to host productions in a small theatre at the palace her husband had it demolished.
The separation meanwhile was fragile and with the threat of an enforced reconciliation hanging over her, she realised she would have to act. Assisted by her brother Philippe, a secret plot was hatched to help her flee.
In the weeks leading up to the escape she was so nervous she became ill and couldn’t eat, but on the night of June 13th 1668, leaving her four children behind and with no idea what was ahead of her, Hortense made her audacious flight from her husband.
Just before midnight and disguised in men’s clothing she left Paris through a city gate accompanied by two servants.
Travelling by carriage, postal coach, open buggy and on horseback, they covered nearly 250 miles in two days. They rested in Nancy, the capital of the independent Duchy of Lorraine and then accompanied by twenty armed guards, were escorted safely through Switzerland and the Alps.
On learning that travellers arriving in Milan were being quarantined due to an outbreak of plague, they decided to settle for a time in Altdorf, where they heard that Duke Mazarin was planning to kidnap his wife and have her brought back.
But, finally they were able to make the dangerous journey to Milan, where Hortense was reunited with her brother and sister Marie, who was said to be embarrassed by Hortense’s Parisian stylishness and her fashion sense. Four months after her departure she arrived in Rome.
Here she joined her sister in high society, and together they would sponsor theatrical productions, in which Hortense would sometimes sing and dance. They would enjoy flouting the conventions of the time, moving around the city on their own and Hortense became a celebrity. She would sit for numerous portraits, many of which were miniatures and these be mailed around Europe to be coveted and fought over. Her image soon became the face of beauty in European paintings.
The images were set against a backdrop of the sky and natural surroundings, which contributed to the idea of her as a free spirit, who defied convention and who was known for her escapades.
In 1670 Hortense returned to Paris, but when her husband discovered that his wife by now had the support of the King, who had sent orders she should not be molested, he was so enraged that he set out for the Mazarin Palace with a hammer, a knife and a bucket of black paint.
On arrival he went to the long gallery which housed the fine collection of paintings and sculpture which had been left to them by Hortense’s uncle and he proceeded to spend all day mutilating the collection, slashing the tapestries, attacking the sculptures, dismembering the nudes and throwing the paint on any naked flesh that he could see in paintings which included Raphaels, Titians and da Vincis.
Hortense returned to Rome, but now made another daring escape again dressed as a man and this time accompanying her sister Marie, as she fled from her husband Lorenzo, escaping to France by sea.
But France was too dangerous for Hortense and she settled instead in Chambery, accepting the Duke of Savoy’s offer of patronage and protection. She became his mistress and established her home as a meeting place for authors, philosophers and artists.
In Savoy she learned a card game called basset, a gambler’s game which was based on chance rather than skill and which fascinated her. The Duke would give Hortense gifts in order to help her recoup her losses.
In Savoy Hortense wrote and completed her memoirs, in which she wrote of her abusive husband and her numerous exploits. It was the first memoir by a woman to be published under her own name as author. “I know that a woman’s glory lies in her not giving rise to gossip, but one cannot always choose the kind of life one would...lead.” she wrote.
Perhaps with all the spin about her in public, she saw this as her chance to tell her own story. If Hortense had lived in the 21st century one might imagine an interview with Oprah would figure at some point on her life’s journey.
It appears that her time in Chambery was a time of peace for Hortense, but in 1675 the Duke died in suspicious circumstances and his wife wasted no time in turning her out. At this point Hortense’s husband took control of her finances, including a pension she received from Louis XIV. It left her penniless and so Hortense decided to turn her sights to England. Three months later via a dangerous and circuitous route, and again dressed in men’s clothing, she arrived in London.
Hortense’s memoir had been translated into English and her arrival caused a huge stir. In a letter the French court Ambassador, wrote everyone was speaking about her, “the men with admiration and the women with jealousy and concern”.
John Evelyn wrote of the arrival - the Duchess of Mazarin “famous beauty and errant lady (all the world knows her story).
When King Charles II heard of the arrival of Hortense he was intrigued and by the Summer of 1676, she was sleeping with the King and had been granted a pension of £4,000 a year, much to the displeasure of the displaced mistress Louise de Kerouaille.
Hortense was not only mistress to the King, but enjoyed many lovers in London, which included Charles’ own illegitimate daughter, Anne, Countess of Sussex who was besotted with her.
The two women are said to have had an erotic public fencing match in St James’ Park whilst dressed in their night gowns and cheered on by a crowd of courtiers. This was to be the final straw for Anne’s long suffering husband however, who promptly sent her off to their country home, where she pined for Hortense and it is said she would spend her days in bed, kissing a miniature of her love.
Another of Hortense’s lovers was reputed to be Aphra Behn, one of the first English women to make a living as a writer. In Behn’s “The History of the Nun” she pays tribute to Hortense by saying, “how few objects are there, that can render it so entire a pleasure, as at once to hear you speak, and to look upon your Beauty?”
In 1685 when Charles II died, Hortense was well-provided for by his brother James II, possibly because of her relationship with the new queen, Mary of Modena. When James fled England three years later and William and Mary came to power, her pension was reduced, but she retained her position at court.
A 17C influencer, Hortense used her fame and celebrity to open a salon in the exclusive area of St James’s. It was a hugely influential space for women were they could converse about politics and current affairs.
The salon was filled with cats, dogs, an aviary of exotic birds and objects imported from around the world and these would stimulate conversation. It was held in a cosy, intimate space.
The royal mistresses would meet here and discuss science and literature, they would gamble and drink champagne. In fact it was said to be at her fashionable salon that champagne was introduced to English society and became associated with the aristocracy.
In the salon the women could enjoy the same freedoms as men, particularly at the gaming table, where they could gamble on an even footing and were able to shrug off the restrictions of their lives for a few hours.
They would read plays together and come to hear authors reading their latest work and hear theological arguments and new scientific theories. Men would normally have these conversations at coffee houses, but Hortense’s salon was one place where women could participate.
Hortense meanwhile lived a comfortable life in Chelsea, but she died in 1699 at the age of fifty three. It was reported that she “hastened her death by intemperate drinking strong spirits,” but it is possible that as she was heavily in debt, she may have committed suicide.
But her story didn't end there for it is at this point that Hortense’s estranged husband re-entered the scene and he jealously claimed her body. He then proceeded to parade it around France until finally he was persuaded to allow her corpse to be interred in the tomb of her uncle, Cardinal Mazarin.
There is little doubt that Hortense Mancini had a dramatic, roller coaster of a life. You couldn’t make it up. But when you look at the facts there is a huge amount to admire.
She was married at the age of 14 to a mentally unstable, jealous tyrant, but she refused to let her life be defined by her desperately unhappy marriage. When it was clear she couldn’t get away from him, she escaped, though sadly this meant the loss of her children and she had to live as an exile for the rest of her life.
She chose to write her memoirs down and had them published in her own name, one of the first women to do so, in order that her side of the story could be heard and for the last two decades of her life she opened a salon which allowed other women the freedom to pursue intellectual interests and freedoms on the same terms as men.
But would she have chosen this life? I leave you with her words: “If the events that I have to recount to you seem like something out of a novel, blame it on my unhappy fate rather than my inclination.”
Sources and Further Reading
The King’s Mistresses: Elizabeth C Goldsmith
Memoirs: Marie Mancini and Hortense Mancini (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe): Marie Mancini, Hortense Mancini, et al.
Restoration influencer: how Charles II’s clever mistress set trends ahead of her time: Article in The Observer by Donna Ferguson