Madame de Pompadour (French: Madame de Pompadour, December 29, 1721-April 15, 1764), also known as Madame de Pompadour, full name Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour. Marquise de Pompadour), famous mistress and socialite (courtesan) of the French Emperor Louis XV. A controversial historical figure, she was once a powerful woman with an iron fist, and by virtue of her talent, Madame de Pompadour influenced the reign of Louis XV and the arts in France. Together with her brother ****, she planned many of the palace buildings, including the Place Louis XV (now the Place de la Concorde). She patronized craftsmen of all kinds as well as most of the writers of the Encyclopedists, promoted the Duke of Choiseul to minister, and allied herself with the Austrian Habsburgs against the Protestant lords of Germany. After losing the Seven Years' War, he contracted tuberculosis and died. Pompadour's withering rise and fall is almost as legendary as Napoleon's. Her name was Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson and she was born in Paris to a modest middle-class family. Her father, Fran?ois Poisson, renewed his marriage when he was in his forties to a young beauty of the right caliber who was known far and wide. Poisson traveled extensively for work. At one point, he had to live abroad for a long time in order to avoid prison for his speculative business. During this period, it was rumored that Mrs. Poisson had a wife. There was a long debate on the question of who Jenny's biological father was. She resembled her godfather, Charles François Paul Le Normant de Tournehem, in character, and the wealthy godfather later became her legal guardian, although it was rumored that the tax bagger Tournehem also had an affair with his mother. Contemporaries found it hard to believe that this radiant little girl could be the daughter of such a vulgar man as Poisson.
Tournem financed Jeanne's good education and single-handedly arranged her marriage to his nephew, Etios, through which she acquired a property in the Étiolles region, close to the Royal Ranch (28 kilometers from Paris.) Charles helped Jeanne to enter the world of society. In the salons of high society, Madame de l'étios met Voltaire, a great cultural figure who became Madame de l'étios' lifelong mentor and friend. Voltaire praised her as having "a fine brain and a heart full of justice," though his judgment may have been slightly clouded by his infatuation with her.
When Jeanne was nine years old, a famous witch predicted that she would become the king's mistress, and in 1730 Louis XV was not only truly in control of absolute worldly power, but also a handsome Prince Charming at the age of twenty. It is not hard to imagine that any young girl would dream of his love. However, he had married an unimpressive Polish princess, Marie Lezinska, at the age of fifteen, and had also coddled her greatly. Nevertheless, Madame Poisson encouraged her precious "little queen" not to give up on her Cinderella dreams. The queen of France was seven years older than her husband, and by the time Louis XV met Madame de l'étios in 1745, Leszczinska was a dull, uninteresting forty-two year old woman and the mother of seven children, five princesses in the womb and a pretentious Dauphin. She had fulfilled her duties and was currently devoting her attention to prayer, gambling (though with poor luck), and charitable activities. Louis's courtiers often sought out women for him, and one was said to have been the mistress of Madame Berthon. However, as a pious man of power, he always chose his official mistresses from among the nobles of the Peychauds. At this time, he was looking for another new favorite, and all factions of the court had their own candidates. But, with the exception of Madame de l'Etios and her associates, everyone thinks that this woman of dishonorable birth is not even close. Nevertheless, the reputation of the "most beautiful woman in Paris" spread through the court with great care. The royal family sometimes hunted through the forest near her house. There, "dressed in light blue and riding in a pink carriage, or in pink and riding in a light blue carriage," she stopped in the king's path and finally caught his attention.
Jenny had no intention of becoming a passer-by in the king's erotic history. By her own account, she eventually became the king's mistress at a masquerade ball in Versailles. The king and his attendants were dressed as pruned yew hedges, and one of the yew trees made a quiet exit with the soft, lithe goddess Diana. When the masks were removed, it turned out to be His Majesty the Emperor and Mrs. Ettios. For weeks afterward, her carriage continued to appear on the road to and from Versailles. By March, she had become the king's mistress and arranged to stay in the king's downstairs apartment in Versailles. On May 7, she officially announced her divorce.
In 1745, France was at war with Austria, the Netherlands and England. Louis XV, with his new love, marched off to the front in high spirits, while Madame de l'étios returned home to begin preparations for an audience with the king. Louis's love letters were almost daily, and he crowned Madame de l'Etios Marquise de Pompadour and received a fief coat of arms, chateau, with a coat of arms attached by that name. The fate of her family changed: her brother, who was very close to her, had the title of Marquis of Vandiere; her nominal father, who in the eyes of the nobility was far from being worthy of the splendor of court life, was abandoned and eventually forgotten; and her husband, a man who was no longer of any use to her, but who could not see that the situation was still uncontrolled in his jealousy of her new royal love, was given the title of Marquis of Pompadour, and was then given the title of Marquis of Pompadour, with a coat of arms and a castle. Her husband, who is no longer of any use to her, but still cannot see the situation and is jealous of her new royal love, is repudiated and expelled from the country. The new Marquise had a quick and extraordinary memory, and in one summer she had learned how to walk and talk like a noblewoman, and had mastered the precepts of life that were exclusive to the court and especially to the king. Louis XV was extremely proud of her transformation. The Marquise, however, hardly cared to change her peasant style, always speaking loudly and freely, and laughing whenever she wished without any inhibitions, without the slightest pretense. Even Louis was attracted by some of her style of speech. In any case, on the day she entered the palace for her audience, despite the hostility of the court, which was ready to crush her with ridicule, she was the embodiment of perfection with her ease and grace. With regard to Pompadour, one almost gets the impression that the nymphs, perhaps on a wager, perhaps on a whim, decided to create a perfect female specimen as their toy. So they bestowed on this sentient doll all the good traits of each of them, with the aim of seeing how this gift would affect her in the world, and of seeing how she would come to use it. Like all voluptuous women, her songs were haunting and unforgettable. She was always looking for ways to please Louis and make the king swoon over her. She also organized a revolving troupe of reserved plays, performing amateur dramas at a professional level in several private theaters she had built, each at a considerable cost. In the five years of her career with this revolving company, the King's favorite starred in and directed one hundred and twenty-two performances of sixty-two operas, plays, and ballets, all of which are said to have outstripped some of the great names in French comedy.
However, the future wasn't going to be a carefree road filled with flowers, and being the king's mistress was no easy task. Her king was notoriously fickle and fickle, and she had to use all of her personal gifts of charm and ingenuity to keep him in love with her, even devising some of the extravagant indulgences that would later make her infamous. She was rewarded with a chateau, a bedroom at Versailles and the position of queen's lady-in-waiting, whom the king called a "flawless marvel" and who was given the honor of speaking out on important political matters.
Unlike the queen or other lovers, Madame de Pompadour accompanied Louis on hunting trips, played poker, went on parades, even skipped dinners for him and lifted him up in plays she choreographed. On the other hand, she had her portrait painted by an artist, who made her look younger to attract the emperor's attention. Her hold on the king was particularly notable in the case of Marie-Louise O'Murphy de Boisfaily ("la belle Morphyse"), who, in 1755, having been Louis's mistress, was married, because of her youth and inexperience, to Jacques de Beaufranchet, an Auvergne nobleman. Their son Louis Desai later followed Napoleon in the French Revolution.
Politically she supported General Belleau and the Duke of Choiseul. Madame de Pompadour became close friends with the ministers of the Parisian police and of the postal service in order to obtain information and to communicate with Louis. Austria, which had been defeated by Prussia in the War of the Austrian Succession in 1756, intended to avenge its defeat and sought French support at the beginning of the war against Prussia. At the instigation of Madame de Pompadour (some historians say this was Madame de Pompadour's intention to use the war to consolidate her position), Louis XV decided to enter the Seven Years' War. The war was actually controlled by Madame Pompadour, and the generals at the front even received battle plans drawn by her with her eyebrow pencil. The Seven Years' War cost France a lot of money and lost a lot of overseas colonies.
She had supported Cardinal Bernice and Choiseul. The League of Families, the suppression of the Jesuits, and the Treaty of Paris (1763) all had her behind the scenes.
And there were many at court who did not like her, the nobles feeling that it was unseemly for the king to follow such a commoner. She was often teased about her surname, poissonnades (poisson means "fish" in French).
But the downside was that Pompadour was weak, suffering from chronic migraines, lung and gynecological problems, and she died at the age of forty-two. Some say she died of a myocardial infarction, others that her hummingbird-like lifestyle consumed her.
During their time in Louis' favor, they were always on the move. Much of her energy and a good portion of the kingdom's taxes were squandered on buying, building and decorating houses, in effect block after block of shelters. In grand and elegant chateaux, in hidden, secluded places, there was no need to observe strict court etiquette, and one could escape the critical scrutiny of thousands of pairs of eyes. Louis XV even liked to make a cup of coffee for the two of them at the end of the meal. For nearly two decades before her death, in the second most luxurious bedroom at Versailles, Pompadour ruled as the de facto Empress of France - and arguably the country's first elite civil servant. Posterity cannot help but suspect that Pompadour was like the supreme miracle doctor, giving Louis XV a dose of medicine that was neither too much nor too little, and with the right amount of sweetness and bitterness. She soothed and comforted him unconditionally, like a mother, and kept him in a perpetual state of semi-consciousness, forming a habit and dependence on herself as a check on his power and rage. Then, when she needs him to lash out or shower grace universally for her personal gain, she will use the killer power of love.
The legitimate queen is surprisingly tolerant of her new love interest. In return, the king's mistress honors and obeys Her Majesty very much. Soon after they began their fornication, this new favorite convinced the king to pay off the queen's gambling debts, redecorated the queen's shabby and dilapidated chambers, and gave the queen a gold snuffbox that she had intended to reward Madame de Poisson with. Lastly, she proposed to the queen that she should be admitted as a lady-in-waiting (an honor reserved for duchesses without the slightest fault). In that case, she herself would have been morally elevated. This, however, she failed to achieve.
No royal mistress in the previous hierarchical regime had ever been the equal of a queen, but this one made herself the king's master. Even as she lost her soulful looks and Louis XV sought to satisfy his desires with others, Pompadour was able to consolidate and strengthen her power and prestige. During her lifetime, the young girls of Louis XV's private brothel, the "Deer Park", the cabals of the court that plotted to overthrow her, the hostility of the common people who blamed her extravagance for the taxes and famines, or the hatred of the Christian Louis XV who saw her as the source of the evils of the Church and the family that he had abandoned, were all in her favor. The clergy who saw her as the source of the sins of the Christian Louis XV, who had turned his back on the Church and the family, or the military defeat in the Seven Years' War, for which she, her poor choice of men, and the stupid maps were all to blame, could not in the slightest degree shake her power. Apart from Napoleon, Robespierre and de Gaulle, no other French commoner - and certainly not any woman - has ever gained such supreme power and influence. But even so, what has she gained?
Pompadour's adviser and close friend, Father Bernis, writes, "The Marquise has none of the bad behavior of those ambitious women. She is, however, as narrow-minded and untrustworthy as those women who revel in their flowery looks and think themselves clever." Diderot caps her even more harshly: "This woman has cost us so much, has left us no glory or power, and has undermined the whole political system of Europe. What is left of her beyond that? A paper of the Peace of Versailles (1783, paraphrased); Bouchardon's Mistresses, which will be admired for ever; a few stone carvings by Guy, which will astonish and amaze future antiquarians; a fine portrait from the Vanloo family, which people will occasionally look at; and a shovelful of earth." Had she served France as she loved Louis XV, the Bourbon dynasty might still have continued. What she left the world, I fear, besides a staggering fortune that took a group of clerks a year to estimate, is a mystery: did Pompadour fulfill or betray a great providence? This mystery remains worth pondering. Madame de Pompadour suffered two miscarriages, in 1746 and 1749, and was devastated by the death of her daughter Fanfan in 1754. However, she did her best to minimize the number of lovers around Louis XV in order to secure her position. Although they ceased to be lovers after the 1750s, Louis maintained his friendship with her and she died of tuberculosis on April 15, 1764, at the age of forty-two. After her death, she was publicly accused by her enemies of being responsible for the Seven Years' War. When Madame de Pompadour passed away, Louis XV, her negative lover, watched her coffin leave in the rain, and with a little pathetic sadness, said faintly: "Madame's journey did not meet with good weather".