Charlotte de Bourbon-Montpensier

Charlotte was the fourth daughter of Louis III de Bourbon , Duke de Montpensier, and his wife, Jacqueline de Longwy, Countess Bar-sur-Seine. Desiring to leave all his land holdings to the only son of Francois , the old duke decided to send his still unmarried daughters to various monasteries so that over time they would occupy leading posts there (abbtis). So, Charlotte was in the monastery of Notre Dame de Juire, which was led by her native aunt Louise. Although it was planned that over time Charlotte would take over her abbess aunt, Louise died early enough when the girl was only 12 years old. Despite the fact that Charlotte did not have the slightest desire to devote herself to a spiritual career and, moreover, to abandon the relying on part of the inheritance, she was forced by her parents to take tonsure and in 1559 was officially approved as abbess of Notre Dame de Jouar. However, she could only begin to fulfill her duties upon reaching adulthood in 1565.

Unlike her father, with the beginning of the Religious Wars in France in 1561, he took the side of Catholics, Charlotte took the side of the Huguenots and in 1571 fled from the monastery to the Protestant Palatinate . Palatine Frederick III took it under his protection. In the spring of 1572, William I of Orange came to the capital of the Palatinate, Heidelberg, where he met a former nun. Two years later, through his personal representative Philip van Marnix , he offers her his hand and heart. The wedding took place on June 12, 1575 in Bril. This marriage caused confusion among many supporters of William, as he, having huge debts, took as his wife the former abbess, deprived of his father's right to inheritance after fleeing from the monastery. Relatives of the second wife of William, Anna of Saxony , showed serious resistance to this marriage. The latter, although she signed a divorce agreement in 1571, was not officially divorced yet. According to contemporaries, Wilhelm’s marriage to Charlotte was caused precisely by mutual sympathy and spiritual closeness, and not by political or mercantile considerations. This is confirmed by the preserved correspondence between them.

In subsequent years, Charlotte de Bourbon-Montpensier supported her husband in every possible way in the liberation struggle against Spanish rule in the Netherlands, acting as an information source and collecting information about the situation in the warring provinces, and as a link between the husband and the individual rebel units. After the assassination attempt against William of Orange on March 18, 1582, when her husband was seriously injured, Charlotte spent a lot of effort to put her husband on her feet. However, when Wilhelm was already recovering, his wife, exhausting herself, fell ill with a severe form of pneumonia, and as a result she died. She was buried in the palace church of Antwerp.

For seven years spent in marriage with William I of Orange, six daughters were born to Charlotte de Bourbon-Montpensier:

• Louise Juliana (1576–1644), with 1593 married to Frederick IV of Palatinate
• Elizabeth Flandrina (1577−1642), with 1595 married to Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne , Duke of Bouillon
• Katarina Belgika (1578–1648), with 1596 married to Philip Ludwig II, Count of Hanau-Münzenberg
• Charlotte Flanders (1579-1640), Abbess de Saint-Croix
• Charlotte Brabantina (1580-1631), with 1598 married to Claude de La Tremuil , Duke of de Thoir
• Emilia Secunda of Antwerp (1581–1651), with 1616 married to Frederick Casimir , Duke of the Palatinate-Zweibrucken-Landsberg.

• Jane Couchman: Charlotte de Bourbon, Princess of Orange. Lettres et documents (1565-1582) . In: Anne R. Larsen, Colette H. Winn: Writings by Pre-Revolutionary French Women. From Marie de France to Elizabeth Vigée-Le Brun . Garland, New York 2000, ISBN 0-8153-3190-8 , S. 107-121
• Jules Delaborde: Charlotte de Bourbon, Princesse d'Orange . Fischbacher, Paris 1888
• Frances M. Cotton-Walker: Cloister to Court: Scenes from the Life of Charlotte de Bourbon. Longmans, London 1909.

• Liesbeth Geevers: Charlotte de Bourbon-Montpensier . to: Digitaal Vrouwenlexicon van Nederland (Dutch)
• Jane Couchman: Charlotte de Bourbon-Montpensier . in: Dictionnaire des femmes de l'Ancien Régime (in French)