Gaston, duke d’Orléans

Gaston, duke d’Orléans (born April 25, 1608, Fontainebleau, Fr.—died Feb. 2, 1660, Blois) was a prince who readily lent his prestige to several unsuccessful conspiracies and revolts against the ministerial governments during the reign of his brother, King Louis XIII (ruled 1610–43), and the minority of his nephew, Louis XIV (ruled 1643–1715).

The third son of King Henry IV (ruled 1589–1610) and Marie de Médicis, Gaston was at first known as the Duc d’Anjou. As the only surviving brother of Louis XIII, he was known as “Monsieur” from 1611. He first came into conflict with royal authority in 1626, when Marie de Médicis and Louis XIII’s powerful chief minister, the Cardinal de Richelieu, attempted to force him to marry Marie de Bourbon-Montpensier. Several nobles, including the Duchesse de Chevreuse and her lover, the Marquis de Chalais, encouraged him to resist the marriage and drew him into a plot to assassinate Richelieu. Richelieu discovered the conspiracy and had Chalais beheaded; but Anjou, as heir presumptive to the throne, escaped prosecution. He went through with the marriage (August 1626) and was created duc d’Orléans, the first duke of the third dynasty of Orléans; nine months later his wife died in childbirth.

When Marie de Médicis was exiled from Paris by Louis in February 1631 for demanding Richelieu’s dismissal, Orléans declared his support for the Queen Mother and began raising troops; but he fled to the duchy of Lorraine in April. In January 1632 he secretly married Marguerite, sister of Charles IV, duc de Lorraine. A few days later Louis XIII’s troops invaded Lorraine and forced Orléans to flee to the Spanish Netherlands. He re-entered France with a small army in July to join a revolt led by the powerful Duc de Montmorency, governor of Languedoc. On the suppression of the uprising, Orléans was pardoned; but after the execution of Montmorency in November, he again withdrew to the Spanish Netherlands. Richelieu allowed him to return to France in 1634. Orléans campaigned for Louis XIII against the Spaniards in Picardy in 1636, but the king continued to refuse to recognize his marriage to Marguerite. The birth of the dauphin Louis (later King Louis XIV) in 1638 quashed his hopes of succeeding to the throne. He was further humiliated by the exposure of his complicity in the Marquis de Cinq-Mars’s plot against Richelieu (1642).

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In accord with the provisions of the will of Louis XIII, Orléans became lieutenant general of the kingdom on the accession of young Louis XIV. He helped the queen mother, Anne of Austria, to become sole regent; but she proceeded to appoint Richelieu’s protégé, Cardinal Jules Mazarin, as first minister. When the aristocratic uprising known as the Fronde broke out in 1648, Orléans at first supported Mazarin; in 1651, however, he joined the coalition of princes that forced Anne to dismiss the minister. Exiled by Louis XIV upon the recapture of Paris by government forces in 1652, Orléans was formally reconciled with the king four years later. His Mémoires were published in 1683.