Appendix: Biographical Sketches

I offer here brief descriptions of the men and women who figure most prominently in this study. These range from Blaise de Monluc, who died in 1577, through Gourville, Saint-Evremond, and Racine, who died in the early eighteenth century. The large majority, however, are drawn from a single, long-lived generation, born in the years around 1610 and surviving into the 1680s or 1690s.

The abbé Arnauld. Antoine Arnauld, son of Arnauld d'Andilly, 1616–1698. After eight years of military service, he retired in 1643 to the ecclesiastical career for which he had originally been educated. His brother the marquis de Pomponne became foreign minister in 1671 and was a close friend of Madame de Sévigné.

Arnauld d'Andilly. Robert Arnauld d'Andilly, 1589–1674. Oldest son of a famous Parisian lawyer, he entered the royal court in the 1620s and subsequently held several important administrative positions. At about the time he entered the court he became closely attached to the abbé Saint-Cyran, one of the intellectual leaders of the Jansenist movement in France, and his younger brother became a leading theologian in the movement. In 1644 d'Andilly retired to the Jansenist stronghold at Port Royal des Champs, where two of his sons already resided. He retained during his retirement friendships with several leaders of Parisian high society, including La Rochefoucauld, Madame de Lafayette, and Madame de Sévigné, and he continued to use his influence to advance the career of his son the marquis de Pomponne, who in 1671 became foreign minister.

Bussy-Rabutin. Roger de Rabutin, comte de Bussy, 1618–1693. A cousin and friend of Madame de Sévigné, Bussy was born to a substantial family of military nobility. He inherited a military command and enjoyed a successful career, but spent several months in the Bastille because his Historire amoureuse des Gaules made fun of leading court figures and of the king himself; thereafter he was exiled to his estate in Burgundy, where he continued an extensive correspondence with leading figures in Parisian literature and society. His memoirs were published just after his death, in 1694.

Campion. Henri de Campion, 1613–1663. A member of a relatively poor noble family of lower Normandy, Campion had a successful career as a military officer. He joined the comte de Soissons's conspiracies against

      Richelieu, and during the Fronde he followed Longueville and Beaufort against the court, after which he returned to his career in the royal armies. Both his brothers shared his literary and Philosophical interests and joined him in some of his political plotting. His memoirs remained unpublished until 1807.

Condé. Henri II de Bourbon, prince de Condé, 1588–1646. Condé's father was Henri IV's first cousin and a leader of French Protestants during the later Wars of Religion; Condé himself was born after his father's death and was raised a Catholic at the royal court. During the minority of Louis XIII he led the princely opposition to the regency government, but after three years' imprisonment in the Bastille he emerged as a loyal and moderately successful military leader. His marriage to the beautiful Charlotte de Montmorency brought him control of one of the great French landed fortunes and ownership of the palace of Chantilly.

Corneille. Pierre Corneille, 1606–1684. Born to a middle-class Rouennais family and educated at the city's Jesuit college, Corneille was trained as a lawyer and remained a lesser official until 1648; he continued to reside in Rouen all his life. His first comedy appeared in 1629; his tragedy Le Cid (1637) provoked a major literary controversy, briefly interrupted his career, but soon established him as a leading poet. In all he wrote thirty-five plays, remaining active, and much admired by aristocratic viewers such as Madame de Sévigné, through the 1670s.

Gourville. Jean Hérauld, sieur de Gourville, 1625–1703. Born to humble parents in the town of La Rochefoucauld, Gourville rose through service to the La Rochefoucauld family. He aided La Rochefoucauld and the Condés during the Fronde but also assisted Mazarin in the negotiations that ended the conflict. Thereafter he worked with the finance minister Nicolas Fouquet, accumulating a large fortune but having to flee France when Fouquet was arrested. he spent seven years in exile but thereafter returned to royal favor, wealth, and close connections with Parisian high society. At some point he secretly married a daughter of the La Rochefoucauld family. His memoirs were published in 1724.

The Grand Condé. Louis II de Bourbon, prince de Condé, 1621–1686, son of Henri II de Bourbon (above). In 1643 his success at the Battle of Rocroi, in which he led the French army to an unexpected victory over the Spanish, established him as one of the greatest generals of the age and as a popular hero. During the Fronde, courted by both sides, he turned from support of Mazarin to leadership of the princely opposition. After the defeat of the Fronde he fled to the Spanish and led their armies against France. He reentered France only after the peace treaty of 1659, but soon returned to military commands. In 1672 he led the French campaign against Holland. Condé was known as a literary patron and youthful freethinker; he became a fervent Catholic shortly before his death.

Madame de Lafayette. Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, comtesse de Lafayette, 1634–1693. Daughter of a military nobleman with a robe background, close connections to the court, but no great wealth, she married the much older comte de Lafayette; after 1661 she lived on her own in Paris, while he remained in the provinces. She moved in Parisian literary circles and wrote a series of short novels, the most important of them the Princesse de Clèves .

La Rochefoucauld. François VI, prince de Marcillac and (from 1650) duc de La Rochefoucauld, 1613–1680. A member of a famous and very wealthy aristocratic family with a well-known military history, François fought in Italy, then played a leading role opposing the court during the Fronde. He was the lover of the duchesse de Longueville, the Grand Condé's sister, during the Fronde, and a close friend of Madame de Lafayette from the 1650s on. He published his Mémoires abroad in 1662 and his Maximes in Paris in 1665, with many subsequent printings; both were very widely read by contemporaries.

La Trémoille. Henri, duc de La Trémoille, duc de Thouars, prince de Talmont, 1599–1674. Born to one of the greatest French aristocratic families, with an extensive landed base in Poitou and important interests in Brittany, Henri also enjoyed connections with leading families throughout Protestant Europe, as well as throughout France. His maternal grandfather was William of Orange, and his wife was the daughter of the duc de Bouillon, whose independent principality was an important Protestant refuge during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries; his aunt was the princesse de Condé, mother of the prince Henri II. Henri de La Trémoille abjured his Protestantism in 1628, following intense courtship from the Crown, but his wife remained Protestant. Wounded in military service, Henri spent most of his later life on his estates.

Molière. Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, 1622–1673. From a Parisian mercantile family, Molière received an excellent education at aristocratic Parisian schools and there established connections with the prince de Conti, the Grand Condé's brother. Captivated by the theater, under Conti's patronage he began writing and producing plays, first in Paris, then in southern France. In 1658 he returned to Paris with a series of triumphantly successful comedies. These secured him the king's support, and Molière retained this standing despite controversy surrounding his plays; his mockery of the pious in Tartuffe , in particular, led to his excommunication.

Monluc. Blaise de Lasseran-Massencombe, seigneur de Monluc, ca. 1502–1577. Born in Gascony of the high provincial nobility but in modest economic circumstances, Monluc began military service in his youth. He participated with great success in the French campaigns in Italy and became a favorite of the king Henri II; he played a leading role on the Catholic side during the Wars of Religion, acquiring a reputation for great ferocity and

      rising to the rank of maréchal de France. His Commentaries , written in retirement during the mid-1570s, were first published in 1592.

Nicole. Pierre Nicole, 1625–1695. The son of a lawyer and minor official at Chartres, Nicole received an extensive education in Paris, then taught at the Jansenist convent at Port Royal, becoming one of the movement's leading writers. He established close friendships with the Arnauld family and enjoyed the protection of aristocratic Jansenists such as the duchesse de Longueville, sister of the Grand Condé. The Crown's prosecution of Jansenism led to a brief period of exile in 1678, but thereafter Nicole returned to reside in Paris.

De Pontis. Louis de Pontis, 1583–1670. A member of a poor provincial family, he undertook a military career, fighting in the La Rochelle campaign against the French Protestants and in several campaigns of the Thirty Years' War and holding several high military offices. In 1650 he underwent a religious conversion and retired to Port Royal des Champs; his Mémoires were recorded there by a fellow Jansenist and were published in 1676, provoking enormous interest in contemporary high society.

Racine. Jean Racine, 1639–1711. Born of a family of provincial fiscal officers, he was given an extensive education by pious relatives, including three years at the Jansenist school at Port Royal. Despite his relatives' plans for his legal career, he sought to make his way in Paris as a writer. In 1664 his first tragedy established him as a noted literary figure. After Phèdre (1676) he ceased writing secular drama and also renounced his youthful dissipations; he was already heavily subsidized by the court and soon after became one of Louis XIV's official historians.

Retz. Paul de Gondi, cardinal de Retz, 1613–1679. His family were Florentine merchants who established themselves in Lyon in the early sixteenth century and received nobility and royal favor in the later sixteenth century. Self-consciously indifferent to religion, Retz was nonetheless directed to the priesthood by his family; in 1643 he became coadjutor of his uncle the archbishop of Paris, and in 1652 he was named cardinal. Retz played a complicated role during the Fronde, establishing himself as a leader of seditious Parisian popular opinion but also negotiating with the court in hopes of becoming a royal minister. The failure of the Fronde condemned him to several years of wandering exile. Eventually he returned to France, where he underwent a religious conversion. His Mémoires were first published in 1717. During his lifetime he had published several political pamphlets and a study of the Conjuration de Fiesque .

Saint-Evremond. Charles de Marguetel de Saint-Denis, seigneur de Saint-Evremond, 1613–1703. A member of a substantial noble family of lower Normandy, the extensively educated Saint-Evremond enjoyed a successful military career under the patronage of the Grand Condé. During the Fronde he supported the court but soon after spent three months in the

      Bastille for his critical comments about Mazarin. His military career resumed thereafter, but he underwent a second imprisonment in 1659 and was threatened with a third in 1661. At that point he fled to exile, first in Holland and then in England, where he lived comfortable and enjoyed close attachments with the English aristocracy and court. He continued to follow French literary developments while in England and was in close touch with English literary circles.

Madame de Sévigné. Marie de Rabutin Chantal, 1626–1696. A cousin of Bussy-Rabutin, she was born in Paris to a substantial family of military nobles. Widowed with two children at age twenty-five, she lived most of the rest of her life in Paris, closely attached to contemporary literary figures: she was good friends with Madame de Lafayette and La Rochefoucauld, Mademoiselle de Scudéry, and Retz, as well as with the finance minister Fouquet.

Tallemant des Réaux. Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux, 1619–1692. Tallemant was a member of a family of wealthy Protestant bankers, originally from La Rochelle but established in Paris during his childhood. He was extensively educated and closely connected with Madame de Rambouillet, who held the most noted salon of early-seventeenth-century Paris. In about 1659 he composed his Historiettes , biographical sketches of notable figures in French politics, society, and culture that were mixed with scandalous reports about their personal lives. These remained unpublished and almost entirely unknown until 1834.

Tarente. Henri-Charles de La Trémoille, prince de Tarente, 1620–1672. Son of Henri de La Trémoille (above), the prince de Tarente fled to Holland as a young man to learn military skills. There he served his great-uncle the prince of Orange for several years. He returned to France just before the Fronde and joined Condé's princely opposition to the court. After the collapse of the Fronde he fled to exile in Holland. He returned to France in 1655, was exiled to his estates, then returned to Holland and service in the Dutch army from 1663 to 1670. At that point he abjured Protestantism and spent his last years in France.