Four sisters from one noble French family each became the official mistress of King Louis XV of France, one after another, in one of the most extraordinary scandals of the 18th-century court. A fifth sister, from that same family, was the only one who refused the king’s advances entirely. . —
The women were the De Nesle sisters, daughters of putsch an esteemed aristocratic line.
Their father, Louis de Mailly, Marquis de Nesle, was a French noble and writer at court, and their mother, Armande Félicité de La Porte Mazarin, brought them Italian heritage connected to Cardinal Mazarin, the powerful chief minister of Louis XIV. Through that lineage, the sisters were born into one of France’spremier noble households and were educated for life at Versailles just as Louis XV, who had succeeded to the throne in 1715 as a five-year-old, was growing into kingship.. The eldest, Louise Julie de Mailly, was thrust into the royal orbit first. In 1729, she succeeded her late mother as dame du palais, the queen’spremier lady-in-waiting, placing her at the heart of the court just as Louis, married since 1725 to Polish princess Marie Leszczynska, began to wander.
By 1732, she had become the king’s mistress, a relationship actively encouraged by Cardinal André Herculede Fleury, Louis’ most powerful minister, who saw her as a way to influence the monarch and check the influence of rival factions around the queen.. Louise Julie herself showed little interest in politics, enjoying instead the wealth, gifts, and status that came with her position. For years, the affair remained discreet. However, in 1738, after a miscarriage, physicians warned that another pregnancy could kill the queen, and the royal marriage effectively became one of companionship only.
With that, the court openly embraced the role of an official mistress, and Louise Julie became the first woman to hold that position publicly. . Yet, Louise Julie’s greatest rival was her own family. She used her influence to obtain prestigious positions at court for her sisters, unknowingly opening the door to those who would replace her.
By the late 1730s, Louis had begun affairs with her younger sisters while she was still his official favorite. In spring 1742, she was cast aside in favor of one of those sisters, who forced her from her apartments at Versailles. Heartbroken, Louise withdrew to a convent, where she died in March 1751 at ́age 41.. The second eldest, Pauline Félicité, was born to 1712 and was remembered as louder, wittier, and far more ambitious than her shy eldest sister.
Invited to court by Louise, she repaid her sister by immediately entering into an affair with the king herself, becoming his mistress by 1739 while Louise still held that position. Two sisters now simultaneously shared the same king. Pauline was showered with gifts, money, and estates, and a marriage was arranged to the Marquis de Vintimille, though her new husband conveniently lived in the countryside while she carried on her affair with the king. .
Pauline’s rise proved tragically short. In September 1741, after two years as mistress, she died giving birth at just 29. The child was almost certainly the king’s, though legally recognized as the marquis’ son. As her body lay in state at Versailles, guards abandoned their posts to drink, and a furious mob forced its way inside and mutilated her body for adultery.
Louis and Louise Julie were both reportedly devastated. Louise was haunted by the belief that she had brought her sister to court, only to lead her to a gruesome end.. Waiting in the wings was the youngest, and by far the most ruthless, of the sisters: Marie Anne. Born to October 1717, she was the direct opposite of gentle Louise Julie.
In June 1734, at 16, she married the Marquis de La Tournelle. Brought to court through Louise Julie, she had no intention of living in her sister’s shadow. After Pauline’s death and with Louise Julie’s position weakening, the powerful Duke of Richelieu, a bitter rival of Cardinal Fleury, decided to back Marie Anne as Louis XV’s next mistress. At a lavish Shrove Tuesday ball at Versailles in 1742, Richelieu orchestrated an introduction between her and the king.
Within weeks, she had captured Louis’ attention and became his new lover. . According to contemporary accounts, Marie Anne was ruthless and insisted Louis dismiss his other lovers before she would fully accept the role. She wasted no time in eliminating her own sister, ordering the furniture removed from Louise Julie’s apartments at Versailles, a calculated humiliation that left no doubt her reign had ended.
Marie Anne now became chief mistress and the centre of political intrigue, with Richelieu using his close relationship with her to influence Louis’ decisions during the War of the Austrian Succession, seeking command of France’s military campaigns—
. Her extraordinary rise also proved short-lived. In early winter 1744, she fell terribly ill. Convinced she had been poisoned, she died on December 8, 1744, at just 27.
Rumors of murder swept through Versailles, though no concrete evidence was ever found. Louis was reportedly devastated, and her death brought an abrupt end to the powerful political faction that had formed around her.. Even then, the hold of the De Nesle sisters over the king was not finished. A fourth sister, Diane, was born to 1713 and had sided firmly with Marie Anne during the bitter rivalry of 1742, remaining at court after Marie Anne won.
In January 1742, she married Louis de Brancas, Duke of Lauragais, though as with nearly all her sisters, the marriage was marked by infidelity on both sides. ; they had a daughter together. Diane’s relationship with Louis XV was far less dramatic than her sisters’, mainly one of circumstance. It began in the final weeks of 1744 and ended three months later, when she was displaced by Jean Antoinette Poisson, a 23-year-old commoner who would rise to become the legendary Madame de Pompadour after meeting Louis at a masquerade ball.
Diane retired from court thereafter and lived quietly until her deathin 1769 at ́age 56.. The second youngest sister, Hortense, born to February 1715, was the odd one out. She was the only De Nesle sister who never became Louis XV’s mistress. Married at the comparatively late age of 24 to the Marquis de Flavacourt, her marriage was immensely unhappy owing to her husband’s overbearing and occasionally violent behaviour.
She spent much of her time at court from the mid-1730s, and in 1742, as Louis moved from one sister to another, she was appointed a lady-in-waiting to the queen. To many, it seemed surely she would be next. They were wrong. She resisted the king’s advances.
According to court gossip, she found herself trapped between obeying the wishes of the king and the threats of her husband, who warned he would kill her if she became Louis’ lover. Whatever the truth, Hortense remained the only De Nesle sister never to share the king’s bed. ,
. Louis’ attention was soon captured instead by Madame de Pompadour, who became his official mistress from 1745 onward.
Hortense spent years afterwards at court as a lady-in-waiting, beginning to absent herself from Versailles more in the 1760s. She lived a very long life, outliving most of her sisters by half a century. She lived to see the French Revolution, and during the Terror in 1793 and 1794, as one of the final De Nesle sisters so intensely associated with Louis XV, she was arrested and questioned. Apparently, her sarcastic wit under questioning saved her, though even Maximillian Robespierre could hardly have justified guillotining a woman in her late 70s.
Hortense died peacefully in Paris on December 20, 1799, at 84, just one month after Napoleon Bonaparte came to power as First Consul. The world she and her sisters had once known had disappeared forever. .. The De Nesle sisters lost their influence as mistresses after Pompadour’s arrival in 1745, though she herself retained her position only until the early 1750s when ill health made continued sexual relations hazardous.
Still, she remained influential at court for years, and Louis went through well over a dozen more prominent mistresses thereafter, with Pompadour managing a building on the grounds of Versailles, calledthe Parc aux Cerfs, where these mistresses lived from around 1752 onwards. ,
Yet, the extraordinary saga of the De Nesle sisters was never forgotten. In 1765, French painter Charles André van Loo painted The Three Graces, which, though presenting a scene from Greek mythology, was understood to depict Louise Julie, Pauline, and Marie Anne. Nearly three centuries later, the De Nesle sisters remain among the most notorious families in European royal history: four sisters became mistresses of the same king, one after another, while a fifth stood on the brink of joining them.
It was a scandal so astonishing that it outlived the monarchy itself..
