Maria Anna of Austria, Queen and Regent of Spain

Maria Anna of Austria, queen and regent of Spain (born 24 December 1634)

Over the course of the year we've looked at many women of the Habsburg dynasty--the extended family that was one of the most important royal houses in western Europe. 

Maria Anna of Austria,

queen of Spain, c. 1655,

painted by Diego Velázquez

From their power base in Austria, the Habsburgs came to prominence in the thirteenth century as kings of the Romans, the title assumed by the men elected as king of the Germans. Habsburgs held the title of Holy Roman Emperor from the early fourteenth century until the middle of the eighteenth. They were also, at various times, kings, dukes, archdukes, grand dukes, and emperors of Burgundy, Bohemia, Hungary, Croatia, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Tuscany, Modena, Parma, and, in the New World, Mexico. 

Indeed, the political strategy of the Habsburgs, articulated by the fifteenth-century king of Hungary, Matthias Corvinus, emphasized the role of marriage in Habsburg dynastic ambitions: "Let others wage war. You, lucky Austria, shall marry!" (or, "bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube").

Of course this strategy produced some pretty complicated marital relationships, as we've seen in my posts on Habsburg women--but today we have one final opportunity, this year at least, for seeing "lucky Austria" and Habsburg marital strategy at work.

Maria Anna of Austria was the daughter of the Habsburg Ferdinand of Austria, who would become the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III in 1637. Her mother was Maria Anna of Spain, another Habsburg, the daughter of Philip III of Spain and his wife, Margaret of Austria (who was Philip's first cousin once removed).

When it was time for the younger Maria Anna to marry, it was clear that her husband would of course be a Habsburg. In 1646, her marriage was arranged with her first cousin, Balthasar Charles, prince of Asturias, the son of Philip IV of Spain and his wife, Elisabeth of France (not a Habsburg). But after the prince's death just months after the marriage was arranged, a new Habsburg spouse was found for the young Maria Anna--she would instead marry the widowed father of her deceased betrothed, who was also her mother's brother. In 1649, the fourteen-year-old married her maternal uncle, Philip IV of Spain. After that point, she was known as Mariana. 

While the marriage was not a happy one, it nevertheless produced five children between 1651 and 1661, only two of whom survived infancy, but, "luckily," one was the male heir that Philip needed. Kept busy with childbearing and religious devotion during her marriage, Mariana nevertheless became regent of Spain in 1665 at the death of her husband.

Even after her son Charles reached the age of majority in 1675, his infirmities required the queen's ongoing participation in government, though she was criticized by the council of Castile for governing with the assistance of "validos," or favorites, including her Jesuit confessor, Juan Everardo Nithard, who had accompanied the young Maria Anna to Spain to marry Philip IV, and Fernande de Valenzuela, who was suspected of having been Mariana's lover. 

The extraordinary dimensions of the Spanish Empire--then calculated to extend to nearly 5 million square miles--made governing incredibly difficult. In 1675, the regent fell victim to the intrigues, incapacities, and complication of the court when her husband's illegitimate son, Juan José of Austria, led a coup, took over the government of Charles II, and forced the the dowager queen to leave court.

Mariana returned to Madrid in 1679, after John's death (perhaps by poisoning), but she never regained her previous authority over her son. Rivals to her influence were Charles's wives. 

Maria Anna of Austria,
queen of Spain, c. 1687,
painted by Claudio Coello

Charles's first wife was Marie Louise of Orléans (the granddaughter of the Habsburg Anne of Austria), to whom he was devoted. According to rumor, the young woman was poisoned in 1689 by Olympia Mancini, the sister of Hortense Mancini, at the request of Queen Mariana, but in reality Marie Louise most likely died of acute appendicitis. (Mancini had gained notoriety in France for L'affaire poisons, and had been expelled in 1679 under suspicion of having poisoned, or threatening to poison, any number of people, including Louis XIV and her own husband. She had taken refuge in Spain, but after Marie Louise's death, she was forced to leave Spain in 1690.)

In 1689, Charles married Maria Anna of Neuburg, who was notably not a Habsburg, but a member of the House of Wittelsbach. She was at least in part selected as a likely bride for the Spanish king because her family was notably fertile--she was one of seventeen siblings. (Her elder sister, Eleonore Magdelene of Neuburg had become the third wife of the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I--whose first wife, by the way, had been Margaret Theresa of Spain, the daughter of Philip IV and Maria Anna of Austria! Yikes!)

While the relationship between Mariana and her son's first wife seems to have been fine (despite that pesky suspicion that the queen colluded in poisoning her daughter-in-law), the relationship between Mariana and her son's second wife was extremely difficult--despite the noted fertility of her family, Maria Anna of Neuburg had no children--the young queen loved intrigue, participated in exorcisms intended to release her husband from his "bewitchment," tried to amass as much money as possible, and schemed to have her nephew named as her husband's successor. 

But back to Maria Anna of Austria, queen consort and regent of Spain. Despite all the intrigues and upsets, she lived a relatively long life, dying of breast cancer on 16 May 1696. 

Hortense Mancini and "Traditional" Marriage

Hortense Mancini, duchess of Mazarin (born 6 June 1646)

The fourth of the five daughters of the Italian aristocrat (and notable necromancer and astrologist) Michele Lorenzo Mancini and his wife, Girolama Mazarini, Hortense Mancini would be celebrateded throughout Europe for her beauty, famed for her scandalous behavior, and pitied by what one contemporary called her "unhappy shipwreck" of a marriage. 

Hortense Mancini as Aphrodite,
portrait by Jacob Ferdinand Voet

Hortense Mancini's mother was the sister of Giulio Mazarini, the Italian cardinal, diplomat, and papal emissary who rose to power in France and became chief minister to Louis XIV.

As the favorite niece of Cardinal Mazarin, Hortense Mancini was destined for a politically advantageous alliance, to be arranged by her uncle. For the unfortunate Hortense, that meant marriage to a French nobleman, Armand-Charles de la Porte de la Meilleraye.

The marriage, which took place in 1661, was a spectacular failure. Armand-Charles proved to be abusive, unhinged, and profligate; Hortense at first tolerated her husband’s bizarre and controlling behavior but eventually abandoned him (and her four children) in 1668. 

Then she began an outrageous career of her own, involving herself in a series of rather swashbuckling escapades that made her the talk of Europe--there may have been no Twitter or tabloid TV in the seventeenth century, but, as Elizabeth Goldsmith demonstrates, Mancini's "itinerary" became "popular fodder for conversations, letter correspondences, and news gazettes" devoted to the scandal.

Mancini's adventures began when, while escaping from her marriage, she traveled in men’s clothing although, as she notes in her Memoirs, she and her maid were "recognized as women almost everywhere." (Interestingly, in yesterday's post we noted a similar "shocking" element in Queen Christina's departure from Sweden after her abdication in 1654--she wore men's clothing.) 

And after fleeing her husband, Mancini did not limit herself to cross-dressing. She embarked on a series of scandalous affairs with both men and women. She also managed to garner the sympathy--and financial support--of Louis XIV, who gave her a large pension that enabled her to live independently. She proceeded to do just that, setting up home in Haute-Savoie, where she became the mistress of the duke of Savoy until his death. 

At that point, having lost her protector, Hortense found that her spurned husband was able to take control of all of her finances, not only the wealth she had inherited from her uncle, Cardinal Mazarin, but also the pension she had been awarded by Louis XIV.

Penniless but not without resources, she traveled to England and arrived in London in 1675, "in the depth of winter,” dressed "as a cavalier wearing boots and spurs and an overcoat spotted with mud." Once in England, Mancini was not shy about sharing the details of her continental adventures--her account of her life up to this point, Mémoires D. M. L. D. M. (Mémoires de Madame la Duchesse de Mazarin), was published in Cologne in 1675; these memoirs were translated into English and published in England, first in 1676 and then again in 1690. 

Hortense Mancini, 1671,
by Godfrey Kneller

And her adventures had not come to an end. Mancini soon became the English king's mistress; she had arrived in London in January 1675--by August, Charles II had given her an apartment in his residence at Whitehall, one that had once been occupied by a previous mistress, Barbara Villiers. He also provided her with a handsome income.

Although their sexual relationship ended in 1677, Charles continued his friendship with and support of Hortense, and after the king's death in 1685, his brother, James II, continued  to support Mancini--after all, his wife, Mary of Modena, was Mancini's cousin. But after the abdication of James II in 1688, Hortense Mancini's circumstances began to deteriorate. 

It was at this point that Mancini's long-abandoned husband sued for divorce. Just as her earlier sexual adventures had proved food for scandal, the divorce case proved equally irresistible. A juicy account of the legal wrangling between husband and wife in 1689 appeared in print almost immediately after their divorce case was decided in the duke’s favor; the legal arguments in the case brought by Mancini’s husband to regain possession of his wife were published in 1690 by the duke’s lawyer. Another account was published in 1698, this one including the arguments of the duchess’s lawyer. An English translation of this account of the case was published in London in 1699. 

Having lost her divorce case and her royal patrons, Mancini moved to Kensington Square and then, in 1693, she moved to Chelsea, acquiring a home on Paradise Row. There, her neighbor was the English feminist and philosopher Mary Astell, who used the "unhappy shipwreck" of Mancini's marriage as the trigger for Some Reflections upon Marriage, published in 1700. Astell begins her devastating critique of "traditional" marriage with an extended analysis of the case of "Madam Mazarin."  Mancini died in Chelsea on July 2, 1699.

For Hortense Mancini's Memoirs, check out Sarah Nelson's wonderful new English translation. (The edition also includes the memoirs of Mancini's sister, Marie, whose marriage to Lorenzo Colonna was equally unhappy.)

For a biography of Hortense Mancini, I like Toivo David Rosvall, The Mazarin Legacy: The Life of Hortense Mancini, Duchess Mazarin--it's out of print, but you can find used copies. On Mancini and the contemporary “conversations, letter correspondences, and news gazettes” devoted to the scandal of her continental adventures, see Elizabeth C. Goldsmith, The Kings’ Mistresses: The Liberated Lives of Marie Mancini, Princess Colonna, and Her Sister Hortense, Duchess Mazarin.