Gabrielle d\' Estrées

Biography

It has all that makes a beautiful woman at the time: blonde, eyes blue, white, big size, sporting complexion.

The chance having led Henri IV, towards the end of 1590, to the castle of Cœuvres which Gabrielle lived (his/her father, Antoine d' Estrées, was marquis de Cœuvres), it conceived for her a sharp passion. It Maria for the form (with Damerval de Liancourt), then made it divorce to make it free, called it at the court, created for her the duchy of Beaufort and filled honors all his parents. She was marchioness of Heaps, duchess of Beaufort, duchess of Verneuil and duchess of Stamps. With the Castle of Montceaux, with Montceaux-the-Meaux (Seine-et-Marne), it built new buildings, in particular the four houses of angle.

After the pope had cancelled the marriage of Henri de Navarre and Marguerite de Valois (the Margot queen), the marriage of Henri IV with beautiful Gabrielle is planned for the April 10th 1599. She is then pregnant six months of the fourth child of king Henri but in the night from April 9th to 10th, a few hours before the marriage which was going to make of her the queen of France, she was taken convulsions, after having drunk a lemonade prepared by the financier Zamet. One suspected that it was poisoned. But the most probable assumption is that it was victim of striking down Apoplexie or of eclampsia. Against all probability, some affirmed that the Devil had strangled beautiful Gabrielle.

With its death, Henri IV repurchased the field with its heirs and to Marie de Médicis at the time of the birth of Louis XIII offered it.

It had had of Henri IV, inter alia children, César, chief of the house of Vendôme.

Glances of the contemporaries

The shortly after its death, Henri IV wrote: “My affliction is as incomparable as was to it the subject which gives it to me. The regrets and the complaints will accompany me to the tomb. The root of my heart died and will not reject any more…”

Beautiful Gabrielle was entitled to royal funeral. The king carried mourning while getting dressed very with black, which no French monarch had never yet done.

Children

Henri IV and Gabrielle d' Estrée had:

César (1594 - 1665), duke of Vendôme;
Catherine Henriette (1596 - 1663), known as “Miss de Vendôme”, married to Charles II of Lorraine, duke of Tweed and count d' Harcourt;
Alexandre (1598 - 1629), known as the “Knight of Vendôme”.

See too

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