Famous Quotes | Anne of Austria (with great...
Anne of Austria (with great submission to a Crowned Head do I say it) was a B----. She had spirit and courage without parts, devotion without common morality, and lewdness without tenderness either to justify or to dignify it. Her two sons were no more Lewis the Thirteen’s than they were mine.
- Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield
Attribution: Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773), British statesman, man of letters. Letter, “Miscellaneous Pieces,”Letters Written by the Late Right Honourable Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl, Earl of Chesterfield, to his Son, Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl, Esq, 5th ed., vol. IV, p. 324, London (1774). Anne of Austria (1601-1666), who married Louis XIII of France when she was only fourteen, went on to become the interim ruler. On the death of her husband in 1643 she became Regent until 1661 when her elder son, Louis XIV, the Sun King, achieved his majority. Chesterfield’s comment apparently alludes to the rumor that the father of both Anne’s sons, born when she was in her late thirties, was Cardinal Mazarin (1602-1661), Anne’s First Minister and reputedly the most powerful man in France.
Categories: Adultery, Character, Man Of Letters, Royalty, Statesman
