Philis of Charce

Biography

Originating in an eminent family of the nobility of the Dauphine , it is the girl of Pierre III of the Tower of the Pine-Gouvernet, marquis of Charce and general Lieutenant of the Military household of the king de France, and Catherine Francoise of the Tower of the Pine-Mirabel, born from Montmorin.

Its family is Protestant since the conversion of one of her ancestors, Hector of the Tower of the Pine-Montauban (1585 - 1630), a war leader calvinist. The son of this last, Rene (not to be confused with the writer a same name), had taken share in the campaigns of Louis XIV with Saint-Gothard, in Holland and Franche-Comté.

Philippe is educated in an large family with Montmorin and Nyons and is good pupil. Of 1672 with 1674, it remains in Nyons where it become acquainted there with the Woman of letters Antoinette Of Houlières.

It is after the reading of Astrée , work of Honore d' Urfé, which it changes its first name into Philis, of the name of the one of the characters of the novel.

When Louis XIV fact of revoking the Edict of Nantes in 1685, it converts with the Catholicisme.

In 1692, when the prince Victor-Amédée II of Savoy invades the Dauphine one during the Guerre of the league of Augsburg, it organizes popular resistance with the Savoyards. According to the legend, it is with horse and the sword with the hand that it releases Gap, the Diois and the Baronnies with the head of an army of peasants. This version is often disputed by the historians who allot the majority of the feat of arms of Philis of Charce to the marshal Nicolas de Catinat.

The king Louis XIV then decides to reward his engagement by a pension for 2 000 pounds, of the weapons and the books of Charles Perrault. Its portrait is also carried out by the painter Pierre Mignard.

Died with Nyons in 1703, it is initially buried in the church of the city before being buried in a mausoleum of this same church in 1853.

Posterity

An article in the Mercure de France , a portrait epic of Voltaire, the account of its history by Madam de Sévigné with the Court, of the street names (with Grenoble, Nyons and Gap) like several artistic representations (tables, statues) made it pass to the posterity.

She is often regarded as the “Jeanne d' Arc of Dauphine”, especially by the catholic while the Protestant , which did not approve its conversion with Catholicism, often minimized the facts.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the catholics of the “Philis Circle of Charce” ordered an equestrian statue of Philis but the obstruction of some Protestants made that it was the town of Grenoble which, having paid the founder, inherited the statue. The company “the friends of Philis of Charce” hopes to be able to make repatriate the statue in their city.

Appendices

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