Please note: In order to keep Hive up to date and provide users with the best features, we are no longer able to fully support Internet Explorer. The site is still available to you, however some sections of the site may appear broken. We would encourage you to move to a more modern browser like Firefox, Edge or Chrome in order to experience the site fully.

Supporting your high street Find out how »
La Duchesse : The Life of Marie de Vignerot-Cardinal Richelieu's Forgotten Heiress Who Shaped the Fate of France, EPUB eBook

La Duchesse : The Life of Marie de Vignerot-Cardinal Richelieu's Forgotten Heiress Who Shaped the Fate of France EPUB

EPUB

Download - Immediately Available
Please note: eBooks can only be purchased with a UK issued credit card and all our eBooks (ePub and PDF) are DRM protected.

Description

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 societyand 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 politicsthe 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 Medici 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.

Information

Other Formats

£14.54

Download - Immediately Available
Add to Basket
Sign in to add to wishlist
 
Delivered to your inbox

to transfer to your device

eBook Help

Is this the right eBook for
my device? How do I download
this eBook? See help and FAQs pages

Information