A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country/Parthenai, (Catherine de)
PARTHENAI (CATHERINE DE), Niece of the preceding; Daughter and heiress of John de Parthenai, Seigneur de Soubise.
She had a turn for poetry; as appears from some poems published in 1572, when she was not above eighteen years of age. She is generally thought to be the author of the apology for Henry IV. which was printed as hers in the new edition of her journal of Henry III. Daubigny assures us, that the king shewed it him as a piece written in her stile. Bayle declares, that whoever wrote it, is a person of wit and genius. It is in reality a very sharp satire. Catherine wrote also tragedies and comedies, which have not been printed; and the tragedy of Holofernes, which was represented on the theatre at Rochelle, in 1754.
When only 14 years of age, she married Charles de Quellence, baron de Pont, in Britainy, who, upon the marriage, took the name of Soubise; under which name he is mentioned with honour in the second and third civil wars in France, and fell in the general massacre of St. Bartholomew, 1571, after fighting valiantly for his life.
His wife wrote several elegies, deploring her loss; to which she added some on the death of the admiral, and other illustrious personages.
She married secondly, 1573, Renatus, viscount Rohan, the second of that name, who dying 1586, though she was not yet above 32 years of age, she resolved to spend the remainder of her life in the education of her children.
Her eldest son was the famous duke de Rohan, who asserted the protestant cause with so much vigour, during the civil wars in the reign of Lewis XIII. Her second the duke of Soubise. She had also three daughters, Henrietta, who died in 1629; Catherine, who married a duke of Deux Fonts in 1605, and whose beauty having attracted the eyes of Henry IV. when he declared his passion, she immediately replied, "I am too poor to be your wife, and too nobly born to be your mistress."
Her third daughter was Anne, who survived all her brothers and sisters, and inherited both her genius and magnanimous spirit. She lived unmarried with her mother, and with her bore all the calamities of the siege of Rochelle. The daughter's resolution was remarkable, but the mother's more, as she was then in her 75th year. They were reduced for three months to the necessity of living upon horse-flesh, and four ounces of bread a day. Yet notwithstanding this dismal situation, she wrote to her son to go on as he had begun, and not let the consideration of the extremity to which she was reduced prevail upon him to make him act any thing to the prejudice of his party, how great soever her sufferings might be. In short, she and her daughter refused to be included in the articles of capitulation, and remained prisoners of war. They were conveyed to the castle of Niort, 1628, and she died there 1631, aged 77.