The Runaway Duchess

spectators around them. I'm sure it's easy for you to imagine why they attracted so much tension, after all, they were two women publicly fencing in a park in the sixteen hundreds. But there was another reason the crowds were drawn to the fencers. Both women were famous. One was Anne Leonard, Countess of Sussex, the illegitimate daughter of the King Charles the Second and one of his long time mistresses, the Duchess of Cleveland. Rumor had it that Anne was

conceived on the night of the king's coronation. The other woman was one of the biggest celebrities in Europe at the time. A woman famous across multiple countries for her charm and looks and her outlandish gallivanting. This woman was Hortense Mancini, Horton's. Mancini was born in Italy but raised and educated in France as one of the seven nieces of the influential minister Cardinal Mazarin. Mazarin's nieces, called the Mazarinettes, were all well regarded in French court for their good looks,

but Hortense was considered the most beautiful. Before Horton's was twenty five, she was married to one of the richest men in Europe. She ran away from her husband disguised as a man, and she became the first woman, after Margaret of Valois to write her memoir. Certainly she was the first to publish it within her lifetime under her own name. Horton's memoir was a runaway hit, widely translated and widely read, the modern day equivalent of a bestseller.

But Mancini's story didn't end there. To continue to escape her abuse of husband's control, she fled to England, where she became mistress to King Charles the Second. She also began a relationship, most likely sexual, but certainly romantic with Charles's illegitimate daughter, and the two women took fencing lessons together, hence the whimsical practice in the park, all of which brings us to the final reason that people were staring at the Countess of Sussex and the Duchess Mazarine fencing

in St James Park. The two women were wearing only their undergarments. Horton's story has fascinated historians and biographers for centuries. It's the type of story of a woman in the six teen hundreds that seems tailor made for people to describe as quote badass, a woman with multiple lovers of both genders, a woman who dressed as a man, who enjoyed a life of freedom, almost unheard of for a woman of her era. Freedom certainly only afforded her because

of her privileged birth and good looks. It always struck me as a shame that the vast majority of interesting women who led lives that were written about in the early modern era also happened to be the ones whom people remark were unusually attractive. For centuries, the path to power for women was proximity to power. In other words, marriage or sexual relationships with powerful men. But Horton's case, being able to charm royals wasn't merely a path to

notoriety or relevance. It was essential to her very survival. When Horton's attempted to wrestle herself away from her domineering husband, the league system held her vast inheritance entirely in his control. It was the men whom Morton's charmed who provided her political and financial security. That her story ends in tragedy only makes all of this seem like some misbegotten morality tale, as in see Foolish Modern Women The Cost of a

Life of Freedom. But I do hope that if this podcast serves as anything, it's a reminder that historical figures are people, not heroes or idols, not quote badass girls to be molded into plastic action figures. Hortons took the cards that she was dealt and played them to the best of her magnificent ability. The results well nothing short of scandalous. I'm Danis Schwartz and this is noble blood.

Horton's man seen, born in Italy, was brought to France at six years old because her uncle, the Cardinal Mazarin, was incredibly powerful and incredibly wealthy, both important factors when it came to arranging marriages for young women. And the Mancinese had five young women that they needed to marry off, the arrangement was mutually beneficial for the cardinal as well. Muzzerin was a man who had clawed his way up from nothing with only his intelligence and a preternatural gift

for knowing the right people to befriend. The son of a chamberlain to a powerful Italian family, Muzerin studied at college in Rome and Madrid before eventually coming to France as part of a diplomatic envoy from the Vatican. He was taken under the wing of the famous statesman Cardinal Rishelieu, who served as first Minister to King Louis. When Rischelieu died, Muserin took his place. When King Louis died, Muserin served as the de facto head of the government while young

King Louis was too young to rule. But being a man of the cloth, the cardinal had no heirs to inherit the massive fortune he had massed or to continue on his title or legacy, but he did have nieces, seven of them, five from one sister and two of the others, along with a handful of nephews daughters, were important diplomatic tools to forge alliances with other powerful families, something Muserin was especially in need of at the moment.

Muserin was acutely aware that he was a new voreche, so to speak, an outsider among the highly born noble French families, and tensions were especially high after a rebellion called the Fronde, during which several high born princes rebelled against the control of the monarchy. Really Muserin's power because Louis the fourteenth had yet to reach the age of major party, and so Mozerin needed all of the weapons at his disposal to solidify his place in French society.

To use the common metaphor of chess for social climbing, Cardinal Mazarin was simply importing seven ponds from Italy. The girls came in three shipments. Hortens was in the middle batch, aged six, traveling with her older sister Marie. Hortons should have been too young to come to French court, but even at that early age she was precocious and considered the best looking of the lot. Muserin met his nieces

outside of Paris to size them up. When they first arrived, the girls had come by galleon ship from Italy rode by twenty slaves, which Hortense conveniently neglects to mention in her memoirs, although perhaps she was too young to understand. Before the girls formerly came to court, Mauserin wanted to make sure that they were well trained enough in basic French etiquette to hold their own. The young girls giggled as he reminded them of the French habit of kissing

on the cheeks and greeting. They passed Mazarin's inspection, but Hortense and Marie wouldn't remain at court for long. Marie, suffering from preteen angst or something more severe, was considered unruly and too skinny. Some sources describe her as having an eating disorder, and so in order to try to straighten her out, Marie was sent to a convent for

her education, with Hortense along with her. The pair of sisters bonded through the experience, which meant that Horton's would witness first hand and feel it acutely when Marie would suffer her first disastrous heartbreak back at court after their education, the seven nieces of Cardinal Mauserin became known as the Mazerinettes, a group of girls charming and pretty and distinctly Italian in French court, where blonde beauties had dominated the social scene.

The girls caught the eyes of several admirers, which made Mazarin's job of securing marriages easy enough. But then Marie caught the eye of the wrong person, or rather an impossible person. She fell in love with the young King Louis the four. He was just a year older than her twenty at the time, and the feeling was absolutely mutual.

The two were besotted with one another, and as they strolled through the gardens of Fulton Blue at midnight, they comforted each other with the fantasy that they would get married and lived together forever as king and queen. Quietly, I imagine, even Horton's knew that her sister's fantasy was ridiculous, but she never would have told Marie so. So So what mattered was that Cardinal mazar And knew it, and the

King's mother, Anne of Austria, certainly knew it. The King of France was never going to marry such a low born girl from an all but random Italian family. Eventually the King would learn it too. Their love was idealistic and childish and most likely never consummated, but it was love nevertheless. When the Queen forcibly separated the pair, sending Marie and Hortons to La Rochelle for a temporary exile, it said that Louis sobbed while Marie entered the carriage.

He desperately tried to press his final gift of pearls into her hands. The secret letters back and forth continued for a while, as did the gifts that Louise sent to his Marie, including a tiny pet dog. But then the letters became more distant, more cordial, than they slowed. Even Louis understood the truth of the situation, the inevitability

of his important, high ranking marriage. I imagine it probably affected King Louis when Mauserin wrote him a letter describing his own niece by saying, quote, she has an ambition without bounds, a restless and awkward spirit, a contempt for all the world, no prudence in her conduct, and inclination to all extravagancies end quote. The marriages of his nieces, the Cardinal ensured would be on his terms and for his own advantage. Murray was heartbroken, and Hortense listened to

her sobbing every night. Her sister was in love with a king, and a king loved her, and yet even God's own vessel on earth wasn't more powerful than the laws of family dynasty that compelled him to marry a

foreign princess. Louis Fourte was quickly married off to a cousin, Maria Theres of Spain, and Muserin equally quickly arranged a marriage between Marie and an important Italian nobleman, Lorenzo on Frio Cologna, who apparently was shocked to find that his bride was still a virgin, coming from the den of sin that was France. Finally, it was Hortense's turn for marriage for her uncle Mazerin, a man these sisters would

come to loathe for his coldness and disciplinarian manner. To pick one of the many glittering offers on the table for the prettiest of the Mazzarinets. One of the offers was from the exiled Charles the Second, the son of the executed English king Charles the First. Charles the Second had escaped England after the rise of Oliver Cromwell. While in France, Charles had been captivated by the young Hortens,

but Mazarin rejected his proposal. He didn't believe a man in exile would have much to offer his young niece. I'm sure he was kicking himself just a few months later, when the English monarchy was restored and Charles b hime King Charles the Second. Another of the proposals was from Charles Emmanuel the Second, the Duke of Savoy, but his squabble over the inclusion of an important castle in Horton's dowry caused the Duke to withdraw his offer. Still, no

one doubted that Hortens would make a fantastic marriage. Horton's was Mauserin's personal favorite of the girls for her beauty, her wit, and intelligence, and he decided that she, more than the others, would be his primary heir. This may be partly explained why the husband he chose for her was a rich, prominent man, the son of an important military officer, but surprisingly not a man with an illustrious

family history. Mazarin knew that he was approaching death, and he wanted Horton's husband to be able to take on the mauserin title and so at her uncle's behest, fifteen year old Hortens married a twenty a year old man named Armand Charles de Lamour de la Millier. Eight days later, Mazerin died, Armand became the new Duke de Mazarin, and, with the combined wealth of his new bride, became one of the richest men in Europe. Armand was an awful man.

For one, the report that he had an interest in Hortance from the time that she was nine years old, which is absolutely creepy enough, But after their marriage he became a downright terror. I don't know if it's worth diagnosing him posthumously with mental illness. Certainly some of his behavior comes across as erratic. Armand was wildly jealous of Hortens and possessive of her. He also became strangely religious and prudish in a way that veered into instability with

her dowry. Horton's inherited from her uncle a vast art collection of masterpieces, paint things and sculptures. Screaming that they were immoral, her husband raced through the halls of the palace, using a knife to cut or scratch over the exposed genitals of any nude paintings and chipping away at the nude sculptures. Horton's had to watch in tears as her deranged husband destroyed some of the most beautiful art in

the world. Armand also had it in mind that milking cows was too erotic for women, the utters he believed would lower them into immorality. He had all of the front teeth of all of his female servants knocked out so that they wouldn't attract any attention from the male servants. As for his wife, Horton's, well, she simply shined too

brightly in social situations in Paris. Jealous of her happiness and the time she spent with others, Armand forced her away to travel with him to the distant rural corners of France where he had inherited property. Even when Horton's was eight months pregnant. He would burst in on her in the middle of the night to try to catch her cheating, and he had her followed nearly any time

she left her chambers. But yes miserable as their marriage was, Hortense had four children with armand though in her memoirs her maternal warmth is somewhat lacking, the children are really only mentioned in regards to her own suffering, being forced to travel while pregnant, never allowed to rest. Perhaps that was a defense mechanism, distancing herself from her children because of what Hortons would do next. With the help of her brother, Hortens plotted her escape. Her brother procured the

horses for her and arranged the secret travel. Dressed as a man, Hortense left France by carriage, leaving her four young children behind. Under cover of darkness, Hortens made her way to Rome to escape her husband and be with her sister Marie, by then the Princess Colonna. Horton's attempted to end her marriage legally, but she had no power or recourse against the demands of her husband, who insisted

that she returned to him. Still, King Louis the fourteen took mercy on her, the girl he had grown up alongside at court and whose sister he had once loved. He offered Hortons his protection and an annual pension of twenty thousand livres. Hortens was also offered the protection of her former suitor, the Duke of Savoy, who allowed Hortons to come and live on his property and who may or may not have been having an affair with Horton's

at the time, depending on who you read. It was there at the Duke's comfortable estate in Chambre that Hortense wrote her memoirs. It was a brilliant strategic move on her part, even though Horton was at this time still in her twenties. It was a chance for her to frame her life on her terms, to tell of her escape from her husband, which was already well known as a scandalous piece of gossip, but to tell it with her as the heroine. The book was a wild success,

so popular that it actually spawned imitations. There were fake memoirs that claimed to be written by her sister Marie, who had also by this point run away from her own unhappy marriage. Marie actually eventually did follow Hortens's lead, and she wrote her own real memoir, claiming that she needed to set the record straight from all the fakes. While in Chambre, Hortense wrote that she had finally found the piece that had eluded her for the early part

of her life, but peace wouldn't last long. The Duke of Savoy died, and whether or not he and Hortense were actually lovers, his widow believed that they were, and she cast Hortense out. Horton's own husband took advantage of the tumultuous situation to freeze all of Horton's income, including the money that she was receiving from the king. Horton's options were running dry and she had few places left to turn. Fortunately for her, she was about to receive

an interesting offer. The English ambassador to France, a weasel faced man named Ralph Montague, was unhappy with his position in England. He blamed it on Charles the Second's favorite mistress, Louise de Caral, Duchess of Portsmouth. Montague needed his own way to advance himself, to gain the King's favor to return to the inner circle. His answer was Horton's Mancini. By this point, Horton's was a bona fide celebrity, beautiful and rich in terms of clout, but poor in terms

of money. Montague suggested a mutually beneficial arrangement. Try to become King Charles the Second's mistress. After all, he had been charmed by her a lifetime ago when he wanted to marry her, and now she was famous. So Hortons snuck into England on the pretense of visiting one of her nieces, Mary of Modina, who was married to King Charles, the second younger brother James, the Duke of York. The

seduction plan worked almost instantly. Charles was appropriately charmed by Hortense and accepted her into his retinue of mistresses, an illustrious group of women that included Portsmouth, the Duchess of Cleveland, and the actress Nell Gwynn. Portsmouth was apparently distraught and came to Montague weeping when she found out that the king was giving his attention to Hortense instead of her, and I'm sure Montague did his best to conceal his glee.

But Portsmouth didn't need to weep for long. Though Hortons was one of the king's mistresses, and though he gave a generous stipend to her, she didn't remain the favorite for long, and soon enough he returned to Louisa's portsmouths arms. Hortense, famous and attractive as she was, was too social for the King's tastes, and by that I mean she tended to flirt and do more than flirt with other men

and women. There was the relationship with the King's illegitimate daughter and the daughter of one of her fellow mistresses, and which we discussed earlier. Anne's husband was so scandalized by the fencing in their underwear thing that he whisked her away from London to the country, where it said Anne spend weeks in bed doing nothing but crying and kissing.

A portrait of Hortense. Hortens also had a relationship, whether flirtatious or more, with the Prince of Monico, which so miffed the King that he cut off Horton's salary, though he reinstated it a few days later. The King of England, for his part, liked Hortense plenty and couldn't, for the life of him understand why the King of France couldn't find a way to provide for this charming creature. But Hortons's real coup in England wasn't finding her way into

the King's bed. It was the parties and society events that she held in her living room. The term salon is a little anachronistic here, but it's what best described what Hortons was doing, bringing scientists, philosophers and writers to talk and drink and gamble. The salons were wildly influential in terms of culture. The scientific articles that she brought

up would become widely read and popular. In the case of a paper by Fontanelle, it actually led to it being translated, and Horton set London fashion what to wear, what to eat, what to drink. The salons were also tremendously important when it came to women. During a time when women were thought to be frivolous and unable to handle their own finances, Horton's and her friends were playing cards and gambling, women gambling alongside men, losing and winning

money as equals. All the while her incredibly litigious, stubborn and jealous husband back in France was attempting to get the courts to force his wife to come back to him. After the death of King Charles the Second in England, the throne went to his younger brother James, a Catholic, which didn't sit well with the Protestant population. In sixteen eighty eight, the Glorious Revolution in England bloodlessly overthrew James to leap frog the throne to his daughter and son

in law, who ruled jointly as William and Mary. The next year, Hortons's husband Armand, filed a lawsuit in France which said that Hortons had no right to her dowry and either needed to return to him or be locked away in a convent. The court ruled in his favor, but Horton's lawyers had an angle. Horton's had racked up a considerable debt in England, and English law prevented her from leaving the country until those debts were paid. Well,

that's ridiculous, Armand scoffed. My wife had no legal right to contract debts without her husband's permission. He refused to pay, let alone recognize those debts, and so legally he and Hortons were in a stalemate. Horton's remained in England through the brief reign of James into the rule of William and Mary, who still provided for her, albeit at a much reduced pension. They provided for her until Horton's died

in six nine at age fifty three. Some euphemistically say that she drank herself to death but more realistic scholars understand that it was most likely suicide. The diarist John Evelyn wrote of her death that you was quote reported to have hastened her death by the intemperate drinking strong spirits. It's understood that the euphemism meant that she drank a number of tonics that were known to cause death. At last, her jealous husband Armand would be able to get his

claws into her. After Hortense's death, he did pay her English debts, and he claimed her remains, carding her casket along to all of his remote visits to the French countryside, the way he had tried to take her in life. Only in a coffin was Hortense finally silent and obedient. Eventually she was buried with her uncle, as she had requested, but in the end that didn't matter. When the French Revolution came, her bones and Cardinal Mazarine's bones would be

thrown into the river. So ends the strange, fantastic life of Horton's Mancini, who did all she could to live of her life on her own terms, who took lovers and charmed kings, and wrote her own story in her own words before anyone else fully understood the power of that stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear

a little bit more about her legacy. One strange footnote in the story of Horton's Manzini is that her granddaughter would become the mother to five daughters herself, and four of those daughters would go on to become mistresses of Louis. There's another Hortons legacy that I find more personally relevant. While in England, her salons became the center of culture and trends. The food and beverages she served not only became trendy, but also became associated with the upper class

and the intellectual elite. Hortons is final affair and affair of mind, not the body. Was with the older fellow French exile, Charles de Saint Evremond. Hortense and Evremonde shared a taste for a newly popular type of wine, sparkling and especially grown in France. Although the Benedictine monk most famous for making it was trying his best to rid his wine of the bubbles, that monk was dumb. Parignon and Horton's Mancini serving his wine at her party's helped

to craft the drink's reputation for being sophisticated. He drink for bon vivants who enjoyed living life to the fullest. It's a reputation for the beverage that still persists to this day. I'm speaking, of course, of champagne. Noble Blood is a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minky. The show was written and hosted by Dana Schwartz. Executive producers include Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. The show is produced by rema Ill

Kali and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the show over at Noble blood Tales dot com. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. M