Anne Couppier de Romans (1737 –1808) was a m''aîtresse-en-titre'' of King

Louis XV of France Louis XV (15 February 1710 – 10 May 1774), known as Louis the Beloved (french: le Bien-Aimé), was King of France from 1 September 1715 until his death in 1774. He succeeded his great-grandfather Louis XIV at the age of five. Until he reached ...

from 1760 to 1765.Lever, Maurice, Louis XV: libertin malgrè lui, Payot, Paris, 2001

Life

Anne Couppier de Romans was the daughter of an office clerk in Grenoble, Jean Joseph Roman Coppier, and Marie-Madeleine Armand. In 1760, she became acquainted with

Giacomo Casanova Giacomo Girolamo Casanova (, ; 2 April 1725 – 4 June 1798) was an Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice. His autobiography, (''Story of My Life''), is regarded as one of the most authentic sources of information about the c ...

, who made her a

horoscope A horoscope (or other commonly used names for the horoscope in English include natal chart, astrological chart, astro-chart, celestial map, sky-map, star-chart, cosmogram, vitasphere, radical chart, radix, chart wheel or simply chart) is an ast ...

claiming that she would be the lover of the king. Her sister, Marie-Madeleine Couppier-Varnier, was a courtesan in Paris and connected to

Dominique Guillaume Lebel Dominique Guillaume Lebel (1696–1768) or also Le Bel, was first chamber servant, or ''valet-de-chambre'', of king Louis XV of France.Patrick Wald Lasowski, L'Amour au temps des libertins, Editions First-Gründ, 2011 He is mainly known in history f ...

, who provided the king with lovers for his

Parc-aux-Cerfs A Parc-aux-Cerfs (literally, stag park), in France, was generally the name given to the clearings that provided hunting fields for the French aristocracy prior to the French Revolution. The name is most notoriously known in history for an area in ...

Royal mistress

She became the ''petite maîtresse'' (unofficial mistress) of the King in 1760, but she refused to become one of his lovers of the Parc-aux-Cerfs, where

Marguerite-Catherine Haynault Marguerite-Catherine Haynault (1736–1823) was a French noblewoman, mistress to Louis XV of France from 1759 to 1762.Sylvia Jurewitz-Freischmidt: Galantes Versailles – Die Mätressen am Hofe der Bourbonen. Katz Casimir Verlag, She was born in ...

and

Lucie Madeleine d'Estaing Lucie-Madeleine d’Estaing (1743–1826), was a French noblewoman, mistress to Louis XV of France from 1760 to 1763. Sylvia Jurewitz-Freischmidt: Galantes Versailles – Die Mätressen am Hofe der Bourbonen. Katz Casimir Verlag, Life She was ...

were housed at the time. Instead, she successfully demanded to be given her own house in Passy, where the king visited her. Her house was called ''Hotel de la Folie''. The king soon gave her the title Baronesse de Meilly-Coulonge. She had a son with the King: Louis Aimé de Bourbon (1761-1787), who became a priest. The king registered himself as the father of the child, which was unusual, as while he did take responsibility for many of his illegitimate children—he normally did not acknowledge them. Anne Couppier de Romans called her son 'Monseigneur', a title for a Prince, and displayed him in public in the

Bois de Boulogne The Bois de Boulogne (, "Boulogne woodland") is a large public park located along the western edge of the 16th arrondissement of Paris, near the suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt and Neuilly-sur-Seine. The land was ceded to the city of Paris by t ...

. The special treatment given by the king to Anne Couppier de Romans, so unlike anything given to his lovers at the Parc-aux-Cerfs, reportedly worried

Madame de Pompadour Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour (, ; 29 December 1721 – 15 April 1764), commonly known as Madame de Pompadour, was a member of the French court. She was the official chief mistress of King Louis XV from 1745 to 1751, and rema ...

, the king’s head mistress, and on one occasion she visited the Bois de Boulogne to observe Anne Couppier de Romans and her son.

Later life

In 1765, Anne Couppier de Romans was implicated in the affair of

Louis-René de Caradeuc de La Chalotais Louis-René de Caradeuc de La Chalotais (March 6, 1701 – July 12, 1785) was a French jurist who is primarily remembered for his role on the so-called "Brittany Affair", in which the Breton Parlement resisted the authority of the French m ...

. The same year, the king discontinued their affair and she was separated from her son. She was given an allowance of 500.000

livres The (; ; abbreviation: ₶.) was one of numerous currencies used in medieval France, and a unit of account (i.e., a monetary unit used in accounting) used in Early Modern France. The 1262 monetary reform established the as 20 , or 80.88 gr ...

, more than any of the lovers of the Parc-aux-Cerfs. In 1772, she married Gabriel Guillaume de Siran, Marquis de Cavanac (d. 1784). In contrast to most lovers of the Parc-aux-Cerfs, her marriage was not arranged by the king. She had two children prior to their separation. Anne left France during the

French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considere ...

and lived in Spain during the

Reign of Terror The Reign of Terror (french: link=no, la Terreur) was a period of the French Revolution when, following the creation of the First Republic, a series of massacres and numerous public executions took place in response to revolutionary fervour, ...

. After the fall of

Robespierre Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre (; 6 May 1758 – 28 July 1794) was a French lawyer and statesman who became one of the best-known, influential and controversial figures of the French Revolution. As a member of the Esta ...

, she returned to France and reclaimed her property. She died a millionaire.

References

* Michel Garcin, Mademoiselle de Romans, la « grande », Atlantica, 1 mars 2006, . {{DEFAULTSORT:Romans, Anne Couppier de 1737 births 1808 deaths 18th-century French people Mistresses of Louis XV