Marie Leczinska (born Maria Karolina Zofia Felicja Leszczyńska; 23 June 1703 – 24 June 1768) was Queen of France as the wife of King Louis XV from their marriage on 4 September 1725 until her death in 1768. The daughter of Stanislaus I Leszczyński, the deposed King of Poland, and Catherine Opalińska, her 42-years and 9 months service was the longest of any queen in French history. A devout Catholic throughout her life, Marie was popular among the French people for her numerous charitable works and introduced many Polish customs to the royal court at Versailles. She was the grandmother of the French kings Louis XVI, Louis XVIII and Charles X.
Early life Born as a member of the House of Leszczyński, Maria Karolina Zofia Felicja Leszczyńska (Wieniawa)According to Polski Słownik Biograficzny which agrees with the entry for Louis XV in Burke's Royal Families of the World, where she appears as Marie-Caroline-Sophie-Félicité. was the second daughter of Stanislaus I Leszczyński and his wife, Countess Catherine Opalińska. She had an elder sister, Anna Leszczyńska, who died of pneumonia in 1717.
Maria's early life was troubled by her father's political misfortune. Ironically, the hopeless political career of King Stanislaus was eventually the reason why his daughter Maria was chosen as the bride of King Louis XV of France. Devoid of political connections, his daughter was viewed by the French as being free from the burden of international alliances.
She was born in Trzebnica in Lower Silesia, the year before her father was made King of Poland by Charles XII of Sweden, who had invaded the country in 1704. In 1709, her father was deposed when the Swedish army lost the military upper hand in Poland, and the family was granted refuge by Charles XII in the Swedish city of Kristianstad in Scania. During the escape, Maria was separated from the rest of her family; she was later found with her nurse hiding in a crib in a stable, although another version claims it was actually a cave in an old mineshaft. In Sweden, the family was welcomed by the queen dowager Hedwig Eleonora of Holstein-Gottorp and became popular members of society life on the estates of the nobility around Kristianstad. In 1712, they made an official visit to Medevi, the spa of the Queen Dowager. During this period in her life, Maria began speaking Swedish with a Scanian accent. As Queen of France, she was known to welcome Swedish ambassadors to France with the phrase "Welcome, Dearest Heart!" in Swedish.
In 1714, Charles XII gave them permission to live in his fiefdom of Zweibrücken in the Holy Roman Empire, where they were supported by the income of Zweibrücken: they lived there until the death of Charles XII in 1718. Zweibrücken then passed to a cousin of his. These lands were parallel to the confiscated Polish properties of Stanislaus. Stanislaus appealed to the Regent of France, the Duke of Orléans, and the Duke of Lorraine for help, with the Queen of Sweden acting as his mediator.
In 1718, with the support of the Duke of Lorraine, the family was allowed to settle in Wissembourg in the province of Alsace, which had been annexed by France, a place suggested by Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, a nephew of Louis XIV and Regent of the Kingdom of France during Louis XV's minority. The family lived a modest life in a large town house at the expense of the French Regent.
Their lifestyle in Wissembourg was regarded as very below standard for a royal at that time; they lived in a small house, and could not pay the salary of their small retinue from which a few "served as an apology for a guard of honour", and the jewels of the former Queen Catherine were reportedly held as security by a moneylender.
While her mother Catherine and grandmother Anna Leszczyńska reportedly suffered from a certain degree of bitterness over their exile and loss of position which worsened their relationship with Stanislaus, whom they occasionally blamed for their exile, Maria was close to her father and spent a lot of time conversing with him, though she was evidently of a different nature as she "possessed the gift of suffering in silence and of never wearying others with her troubles" and was said to have developed "a profound and intense piety", which gave "to her youthful mind the maturity of a woman who no longer demands happiness".
Marriage
Early negotiations
Maria was not described as a beauty; instead her characteristics in the marriage market were stated as those of being pleasant, well-educated, and graceful in manner and movement. In 1720, she was suggested as a bride to Louis Henri de Bourbon, Prince of Condé (who preferred to be known as the Duke of Bourbon, rather than Prince of Condé), but her intended mother-in-law Louise Françoise de Bourbon refused to give her consent. The cavalry regiment provided by the Regent for the family's protection included the officer Marquis de Courtanvaux, who fell in love with Maria and asked the Regent to make him a duke so that he might ask for her hand, but the Regent refused and because of his low rank the marriage was impossible. Louis George, Margrave of Baden-Baden, and the third Prince of Baden were suggested, but these suggestions came to nothing because of her insufficient dowry. Stanislaus unsuccessfully tried to arrange a marriage for her with the Count of Charolais, brother of the Duke of Bourbon. In 1724, Count d'Argensson proposed she marry the new Duke of Orléans, but her intended mother-in-law Françoise Marie de Bourbon wished for a dynastic match with political advantage.
In 1723, the Duke of Bourbon had become the Regent of France during the minority of Louis XV. The Regent was dominated by his lover, Madame de Prie. There were lengthy negotiations for a marriage between Maria and the now widowed Duke of Bourbon: Madame de Prie favored the match, as she did not perceive the reputedly unattractive Maria as a threat to her. The marriage negotiations, however, were soon overshadowed when a marriage for King Louis XV, then aged fifteen, was given priority. That year, he fell ill and, fearing the consequences of the unmarried King dying without an heir, the Duc suggested getting him married as soon as possible. He was already engaged to Infanta Mariana Victoria of Spain, who had been brought to France as his future wife some years earlier. As she was only five years old, there would be no issue expected for many years. When the king became sick, it was feared he might die without an heir and that the throne would pass to the Orléans line. This was an undesirable prospect for the Duke of Bourbon, who preferred that the throne should pass to the Spanish line rather than to the Orléans line. Louis XV's engagement was broken off and the Infanta was sent back to Spain, to the chagrin of the Spanish. The Duke of Bourbon and Madame de Prie began negotiations for the immediate marriage of the King to Maria.
Negotiations for marriage to the King
Maria Leszczyńska was on a list of 99 European princesses considered eligible to marry the young King. Maria was not the first choice on the list. She had been placed there initially because she was a Catholic princess and therefore fulfilled the minimum criteria, but was removed early on when the list was reduced from 99 to 17 for being too poor.
However, the candidates preferred to her were all eventually discarded from the list for a number of different reasons. Among the serious candidates were Landgravine Caroline of Hesse-Rotenburg; removed "on account of her bad temper"; Elizabeth of Russia; removed because of her mother's commoner background; Barbara of Portugal; removed because of the bad health of her family; Princess Charlotte Amalie of Denmark; removed because it could cause conflict with France's ally Sweden; Elisabeth Therese of Lorraine; removed because the House of Lorraine was too closely related to the Habsburgs; and Enrichetta d'Este; removed because of the disorderly situation within her family.Edmond et Jules de Goncourt: La duchesse de Châteauroux et ses soeurs, Paris, 1906
When the list of 17 was further reduced to four, the preferred choices still presented numerous problems. Anne and Amelia of Great Britain, who were considered with the understanding that they would convert to the Catholic faith upon marriage, were favored by the Duke of Bourbon and Madame de Prie because they were supported by their political financiers, the firm of Paris Brothers. Cardinal Fleury easily prevented the British match because of religious reasons. The other two women on the list were the sisters of the Duke of Bourbon, Henriette-Louise and Élisabeth-Alexandrine, whom the King refused to marry because of the disapproval of Cardinal Fleury. Cardinal Fleury favored a match with Princess Charlotte of Hesse-Rheinfels-Rotenburg, which was supported by the maternal grandfather of Louis XV, the King of Sardinia through his spy Maria Vittoria of Savoy, Princess of Carignan.
In these complicated disputes over the choice of a royal marriage partner, Maria Leszczyńska eventually emerged as a choice acceptable to both the party of the Duke of Bourbon and Madame de Prie, as well as the party of Cardinal Fleury, mainly because she was politically uncontroversial and lacked any of the alliances which could harm either party. At this point, there were already negotiations of marriage between Maria and the Duke of Bourbon. The Duke of d'Argensson had already left a favorable report of her, and the groundwork had been done. Cardinal Fleury accepted the choice as Maria posed no threat to him because of her lack of connections, while the Duke of Bourbon and Madame de Prie, precisely because she lacked any personal power base, expected her to be indebted to them for her position. Maria was finally chosen because she was a healthy adult Catholic princess ready to procreate immediately after the wedding. Reportedly, Madame de Prie had a flattering portrait painted of Maria, in which she was deliberately made to look like the King's favorite portrait of his mother. When he was shown the portrait, he was impressed and exclaimed: "She is the loveliest of them all!" and became enthusiastic of the match, an episode which attracted some attention.
The formal proposal was made on 2 April 1725. The announcement of the wedding was not received well at the royal court. Maria's father Stanislaus had been a monarch for only a short time and she was thought to be a poor choice and of inferior status, not worthy of being queen of France. The Duchess of Lorraine, sister of the former Duke of Orléans was also insulted that her own daughter Elisabeth-Therese had not been chosen. The nobility and the court looked upon the future queen as an upstart intruder, the ministers as a cause to diplomatic trouble with Spain and Russia, whose princesses had been refused in favor of Maria, and the general public was also reportedly initially dissatisfied with the fact that France would gain "from this marriage neither glory nor honor, riches nor alliances."
There were rumors before the wedding that the bride was ugly, epileptic and sterile. On 6 May 1725, Maria was forced to undergo a medical examination, which ruled out epilepsy and also gave reassuring reports about her menstruation and ability to procreate. In the marriage contract, the same terms were given to her as were previously given to the Spanish Infanta, and she was thus guaranteed fifty thousand crowns for rings and jewelry, two hundred and fifty thousand crowns upon her wedding, and the further guarantee of an annual widow allowance of twenty thousand crowns.
Private relationship to Louis XV