Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 1 - Section III
III. Francois De la Rochefoucauld, Marquis De Montandre.
Genealogical authorities write Montendre, but the geographical orthography is Montandre, which was a fortress in Saintonge, and this is the spelling which our Marquis followed. He stood in the relationship of great-great-grandson to Louis, Seigneur De Montandre, who was a younger son of Francois, the first Comte De la Rochefoucauld (this Comte died in 1516). The second Seigneur of Montandre (also styled of Montguyon) was named Francois, and died in 1600. The third was Isaac. The fourth was Charles, styled Marquis De Montandre; he was the father of Charles Louis, second Marquis, and the grandfather of the refugee. The refugee’s mother was Madeline Anne Pithou, daughter of Pierre, Seigneur De Luyeres. Francois was the second son, but his elder brother, Isaac Charles, died without issue, 15th August 1702, when the refugee assumed the title of Marquis. His next younger brother, Louis, a captain in the French navy, was by French law the head of the family, and the true Marquis, but he died childless. The same tale has to be told of the youngest brother, Paul Auguste Gaston De la Rochefoucauld, who died 19th December 1714, and was styled (in right of his wife) Le Comte De Jarnac. These Montandres were afterwards represented by the posterity of their grand uncle, Francois, Seigneur De Surgcres, Marquises De Surgères.
The Montandre branch had been Protestant, but the apostacy of Isaac, the third baron, made it a Romanist family. The refugee was born in September 1672. He was educated in Popery, and was a Regular Canon in the Abbey of St. Victor at Paris.[1] But he became a convert to the religion of the open Bible, and fled to England, at what time does not exactly appear. We find him in Cambon’s, afterwards Marton’s, regiment, with a commission of Lieutenant-Colonel, dated 15th February 1693; he is called Francois Dc Montandre. We meet him as Colonel Montandre on October 3-14, 1701, receiving a pension of £200 per annum on the Irish establishment, for life.
Through the interest of the Earl of Galway, he was enrolled in the British army as a Brigadier in 1704, and he accompanied his patriotic chief to Portugal. When the General had been wounded at Badajoz in 1705, and the French were marching to raise the siege, the annalist states, “Marshal Tesse appeared upon some rising ground with part of his army; but the march of the confederate forces being covered by the Marquis De Montandre, with six battalions and eight squadrons, they drew off in very good order, and without any loss, on the 17th October 1705. The army rendezvoused at Elvas on the 19th, and then went into winter-quarters.”
Montandre visited England in the winter of 1706; and we learn from the Treasury Papers that he addressed a memorial to the Lord High Treasurer (Godolphin), which is thus summarized:— “He had acted as Major-General for the first campaign in Portugal, &c. — asks for his pay — and hopes to obtain a command from her Majesty as Major-General.” The following official memorandum is appended, “23 Nov. 1706, Mr. Bridges saies he has his pay as brigadier from 15 May 1705 to Xmas 1706 ready when he comes for it. He is to have pay as Major-General on ye establishment in ye service of ye K. of Portugal, pursuant to ye treaty, from Xmas next. My Lord thinks he has served well and deserves well to have a regiment.” The annalist says that the Marquis “who was a Major-General in the service of Portugal, and was made a Major-General in the English establishment, in consideration of his faithful and eminent services in Spain, set out in order to embark for that kingdom (from whence he had been sent by the Earl of Galway to represent the state of affairs there); having received a handsome present from her Majesty.” He was specially instructed to urge upon Lord Galway to continue in his high command in Spain. This was in December. In the following April, Lord Galway, having been abandoned to defeat at Almanza by the wayward King Charles, and having secured Catalonia for the ungrateful monarch, resumed the command in Portugal, and was accompanied by Montandre, who had been further rewarded with the colonelcy of a British regiment (the late Lord Dungannon’s). He never, however, had the honour of leading this regiment into action. On its way from Alicant, where its colonel had just died, to Lord Galway’s camp, early in the year 1707, the whole corps was lost to us. “A Person of Honour” (1740), in some gossiping reminiscences which he called “A true and genuine history of the two last wars against France and Spain,” has narrated the misadventure.
“The regiment set out under the command of their Lieutenant Colonel Bateman, reputedly a good officer. On his march he was so negligent (though he knew himself in a country surrounded with enemies, and that he was to march through a wood, and where they every day made their appearance in great numbers), that his soldiers marched with their muskets slung at their backs, and went one after another, himself at the head of them in his chaise, riding a considerable way before. A captain from the Duke of Berwick’s army had been detached, with threescore dragoons, to intercept some cash ordered to be sent to Lord Galway’s army from Alicant. This detachment, missing that intended prize, was returning disconsolately, when the captain observing the disorderly march of the English regiment, resolved to attack it in the wood. He secreted his party behind a barn, and as soon as they were half passed by, he, with his dragoons, fell upon them from the centre, cutting and slashing at such a violent rate, that he soon dispersed the whole regiment, leaving many dead and wounded on the spot. The three colours were taken; the Lieutenant-Colonel was taken out of his chaise, and carried away prisoner with many others. An ensign, so bold as to do his duty, was killed. The lieutenant who commanded the grenadiers, drew his men into a house, where he bravely defended himself for a long time, but he being killed, the rest immediately surrendered.”
At the battle of La Caya in 1709, the Portuguese brought on an action against the Spaniards against Lord Galway’s advice, and their cavalry of the right wing fled, abandoning their cannon to the enemy. Supported by the Portuguese cavalry on the left, Lord Galway brought up a British brigade and retook the cannon; but meanwhile his supports had run away, so that several regiments were made prisoners of war. The retreat of the Portuguese foot had thus been covered, while they repulsed their antagonists three times with great vigour and resolution. “The rest of the British infantry, commanded by the Marquis de Montandre. received the enemy’s fire on both flanks as well as in front, but made such bold stands and charges, that they secured the retreat of the Portuguese foot, and retired themselves in very good order, with the loss of about 150 men.” Langallerie says, “they performed wonders.” A journal printed at the Hague observes, “The Earl of Galway behaved himself with his usual prudence and bravery, but had the same fate as at Almanza, that is, to be abandoned by the Portuguese, which I hope will deter him or any other general in future to venture upon any battle in so wretched a company.” On Thursday, 29th September 1709, Montandre arrived in London to give the Queen a report of affairs in Portugal, and did not return to the camp, the Portuguese government having apparently resolved to limit military operations to the mere defence of the frontier. He was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-General, 1st January 1710.
This auspicious year was the year of his marriage. His bride was Mary Ann Spanheim, only daughter of Ezekiel, Baron de Spanheim, Ambassador Extraordinary from the King of Prussia, and grand-daughter to the elder Frederick Spanheim, Divinity Professor, latterly at Leyden, but, at the date of Ezekiel’s birth, at Geneva. There the said Ezekiel (born in 1629) was brought up under the best French Protestant influences, his mother being Charlotte Du Port, daughter of a gentleman of Poitou. His diplomatic life began under the Elector Palatine. In 1679 he entered the service of Prussia, and was Ambassador at Paris from 1680 to 1689. “After the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes he did several good offices to many French Protestants, who, being afraid of appearing in public, retired into his house till they could get out of France; he did not do it without running some hazaid, but, being very zealous for his religion, he rather chose to run some hazard than to refuse his assistance to many honest people who knew not where to hide themselves.” A postscript to a letter to the learned Le Clerc from the venerable Baron, dated London, May 16, 1710, announced his daughter’s marriage thus:—
“I believed you would suffer me rather to dictate this letter than to write it with my own hand, that it might be more legible; and to add, that the Almighty has been so gracious to me as to dispose of my daughter in a very honourable marriage (the only child He left me) this day fortnight. Her husband is the Marquis de Montandre, a chief of a branch of the House of Rochefoucauld in France, and who is a Lieutenant-General in the Queen’s service, and a man of confessed merit in other respects.”
Le Clerc completed his account of the life of Baron de Spanheim, from which I have quoted,[2] by saying:—
“He was so happy as to see, before he died, his only daughter married to the Marquis de Montandre, a lord of great merit, and the worthy spouse of a lady who has been highly esteemed everywhere, and particularly at the Court of England.”
The marriage was solemnised on the 21st April (old style), and the Baron’s lamented death took place on the 14th of the following November. The Marquise de Montandre received from the Queen the present of 1000 guineas usually given to a foreign ambassador on his bidding farewell to the British Court. The Baron De Spanheim, as a most distinguished scholar and statesman was buried in Westminster Abbey; he had been a widower since 5th January 1707, when Lady Spanheim died at Chelsea. Notwithstanding the many displacements which followed a change of ministry, the Marquis de Montandre retained his regiment, which (according to the enumeration at that date) was the 52d foot; it was placed on the Irish Establishment.[3]
In the reign of George I., the Marchioness’s German birth and mother tongue, combined with her accomplishments and excellences, secured for her the gracious notice of the king. This appears from Lady Cowper’s diary, which has the following entries: — December 6, 1714 — In the evening went out to sup at Madame Montandre’s to wait upon the king. April 27, 1720 — At St. James’s with Madame de Montandre.
George II. was Montandre’s chief royal benefactor. On the 16th January 1728, and in the first year of his reign, His Majesty appointed him Master (or Master-General) of the Ordnance in Ireland. This office he seems to have discharged principally by deputy. His residence continued to be in London, and he held the Irish office for life. His seal is still preserved; I saw it in the possession of the late Sir Erasmus Borrowes, who had obtained it from the Des Voeux family. His arms as a Marquis of the family of La Rochefoucauld are erected upon a ground-work, embellished with the ordnance insignia. In 1735 (October 27) he became a general in the army.
Under the date January 1736, the Historical Register has the following entry:—
“His Majesty, having erected a new post of honour, under the title of Field-Marshal of the Armies of Great Britain, conferred the same on His Grace the Duke of Argyle and the Right Hon. the Earl of Orkney.”
The above announcement gives great interest to the following:—
“June 1737. — The Marquess de Montandre, General of the Horse, is made Field-Marshall of all and singular His Majesty’s Forces, as well Horse as Foot, in the room of the Earl of Orkney deceased.”
In 1738 he was appointed “Captain, Keeper, and Governor of the Island of Gucrnzey, and Castle of Cornet, with the appurtenants, and of the islands and places of Serke, Krmon, and Southow, otherwise Gitton.”
Field-Marshal the Marquis de Montandre died in his house in Great Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, London, on August 8th, 1739, at 4 p.m., aged sixty-six years and eleven months. His will was in favour of his widow, — “in the name of God, eternal and Almighty, my Creator, and my judge, in whom I put all my trust and all my hope,” — dated London, 4th March 1736-37, proved 10th August 1739. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. The governors of Guernsey, with a salary of £1500 a-year, were not only permitted, but were commanded, to be non-resident. Montandre having enjoyed the revenue for so short a time, the Marchioness was left in possession for another year, and during that part of her widowhood, she was a subscriber to the fund for erecting new Government buildings in the island.
She lived to a great age. In English society those Countesses did not demean themselves who allowed her to have precedence as a Marchioness. But in any company where the hostess felt that strict rule must be observed, our noble Marquise had a plan to maintain her exalted position. Let the reader suppose that tea has been brought in. Before the groom of the chamber can offer it to the English Peeresses, she says to him in a loud tone of voice, “I would not have tea.” Then when the most of the company have been served, she calls out, “I have bethought myself; I think I will have one cup.” So writes Walpole to Miss Berry. The Marchioness is mentioned in Mrs. Delany’s diary.
4th February 1758. — “Went to my brother’s [Mr. Granville]. . . . He had made a tour of visits in the morning; among the rest was admitted to Madame de Montandre’s toilette, who was attended by her filles-de-chambre. Her hair is so long that when she sits it reaches below the seat of the chair, and is very thick, and only grey next her face, which is very extraordinary fo. a woman turned of fourscore. When she had frizzed and set the fore part, her two damsels divided the hind hair, and in the same instant braided it up, which she twisted round her head before she put on her cap. I asked him ‘if he did not say some fine thing on the occasion;’ but he had only silently admired.” [Her age at that date was not fourscore, but threescore and fifteen.]
Her chambermaids became persons of some importance when the sad duty of proving her ladyship’s will had to be attended to. Her last will and testament, dated in March 1769, was proved on the 21st February 1772 on the testimony of Jane Fowler and Eulalia Carter, who each received a legacy of £200 and an annuity for life of £30. In the “Annual Register” the following notice appeared:— “Died in January 1772, the Marchioness de Montandre, in Lower Brook Street.” The true date of her death was 5th February. Her age was eighty-nine. She was buried in Westminster Abbey, beside her parents and her husband. She had intended Miss Henrietta Louvigny to be her heiress and executrix. This lady was the only daughter of a widow lady and refugee, Madame Jane dc Louvigny of London, formerly of the Hague, Henrietta having administered to her personal property on the 3d June 1720.[4] But Miss Louvigny died before her benefactress; and, according to the provisions of the will (the only deductions being for the domestic servants’ benefit, £600 cash, and £167 per annum in annuities), the heir and sole executor of the Marchioness de Montandre was Samuel Pechell, Esq.
- ↑ Mr. Smiles believes that he was a Protestant, and only a prisoner in the Abbey, with a view to his conversion to Romanism. Neither in the Romanist nor in the Protestant authoritative books of reference have I observed any such statement, which, however, I would very much like to believe.
- ↑ “Memoirs of Literature,” vol. ii., art. 80; 2d Edit., 1722. [For Spanheim’s Letter sec an “Account of the Life and Writings of Mr. John Le Clerc,” London, 1712.]
- ↑ June 1717. — A proclamation was published in Ireland, promising a reward of £20 each for the apprehending of Forbes Latimer, a sergeant, and five privates, in the regiment of Montandre and the troop of Colonel La Bouchalier, who were the ringleaders of a mutiny in which many others were concerned, who refused to be disbanded according to the King’s orders. — Historical Register.
- ↑ Aufrère MSS.