Philippe was the third child and second son of
Henri de Lorraine, Comte d'Harcourt and his wife,
Marguerite-Philippe du Cambout. His father, Henri de Lorraine, was created the
Count of Harcourt in 1605, aged 4. Henri was also the
Grand Squire of France, a prestigious office in charge of the royal stables, the transport of the king, and his ceremonial entourage. He was known as
Monsieur le Grand. Philippe de Lorraine's mother, Marguerite-Philippe du Cambout, was a member of the
House of Cambout, who traced their ancestry back to the
Sovereign Dukes of Brittany. Known to be "as beautiful as an angel," Philippe became the lover of the Duke of Orléans (known as Monsieur at court) in 1658, while living at the duke's
Palais-Royal residence in Paris, where the young
Princess Henriette of England was living with her mother
Queen Henriette Marie. The two Henriettes had fled England due to the
English Civil War and had lived at the Palais-Royal as a grace and favor residence. After the Duke of Orléans married Henriette of England (known as Madame at court) at the Palais-Royal in 1661, Lorraine remained a prominent presence within the household. Contemporary correspondence and later memoirists attest to the tension between Lorraine and Henriette, as well as to Philippe's limited discretion regarding his long-standing relationship with Lorraine. Lorraine remained Monsieur's
maître en titre (official favourite) from the 1660s to the end of the duke's life in 1701, and as such he was entrusted with running the Orléans household. In this capacity he oversaw the duke's finances; ran the duke's residences at the
Palais-Royal and the
Château de Saint-Cloud; and exercised some influence over household appointments and dismissals. At times during their relationship, Lorraine and the duke lived in a
ménage à trois with
Antoine Coëffier de Ruzé, Marquis d'Effiat or Charles, Marquis de Beuvron. The relationship between Philippe, Duc d'Orléans and Philippe de Lorraine reportedly affected Monsieur's first marriage to Henriette Stuart. Contemporary accounts indicate that the Duke of Orléans declared he could not love his wife without Lorraine's approval, contributing to marital tensions. Louis XIV may have ordered the arrest for a variety of reasons, including Lorraine's role in forming a rift between the king and Monsieur over Monsieur's exclusion from negotiations of the
Secret Treaty of Dover; possible demands from
Charles II of England, Madame's brother, that Lorraine be removed; and "as a result of Monsieur’s overreaching demands for ecclesiastic benefices for his favourite." Lorraine was imprisoned first in the
Château de Pierre Scize, near
Lyon, and then at the island fortress of
Château d'If, offshore of
Marseille. In protest of Lorraine's imprisonment, Monsieur removed himself to the
Château de Villers-Cotterêts and forced Madame to Saint-Germain. Henriette's absence from court prevented her from fulfilling her role as go-between for the signing of the Secret Treaty of Dover, forcing King Louis to negotiate with his brother for his permission for Madame to return. In February 1670, Louis agreed to mitigate the severity of the punishment, and sent Lorraine into exile in
Rome with a pension of 10,000
écus.
Charles, Count of Marsan, Lorraine's brother, was exiled with him. Lorraine was allowed to return to the French court in 1672, possibly because the king viewed him as a means by which to control the Duc d'Orléans.
Accused of poisoning When in 1670 Henriette died suddenly and mysteriously at
Saint-Cloud, it was suspected that she had been poisoned by Lorraine, the Marquis d'Effiat, and the Marquis de Beuvron. The autopsy ordered by Louis XIV reported that Henriette had died of
peritonitis caused by a perforated
ulcer. Poisoning was never proven and, despite several hypotheses, the precise cause of death remains unknown. Nevertheless, rumours persisted that Lorraine and Effiat had poisoned Henriette. These rumours were taken up between 68 and 78 years later by
Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon in his
Mémoires, in which he claimed that with the intention of killing the duchess, while exiled in Italy: Monsieur's second wife,
Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate, also believed that Lorraine had poisoned the first Madame, this time with the help of Effiat and Antoine Morel de Volonne. She wrote of the incident:
Second exile In 1682, Lorraine was exiled again, having been accused of seducing the young
Comte de Vermandois (legitimized son of Louis XIV and
Louise de La Vallière) with his set (including the
Prince of Conti) and inducing the Count of Vermandois to begin practicing
le vice italien (the contemporary term for homosexuality). He returned to court approximately six months later.
Final decade Lorraine was blamed for helping to arrange the 1692 marriage between Monsieur's only surviving son, the
Duc de Chartres, and his first cousin,
Mademoiselle de Blois, who was the legitimized daughter of Louis XIV and
Madame de Montespan. Chartres was the son of the Duc d'Orléans and his second wife,
Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate, who did not get on with Lorraine at all and merely "tolerated his existence." By 1701, near the end of his life, Philippe de Lorraine had lost much of the furniture in his apartment at the Palais-Royal and in his country residence (filled with remains from the Palatinate), his four abbeys, and all of the money he had obtained (more or less with permission) from the coffers of the State, by gambling and exploitation of his lovers; however, he did manage to reconcile with Elizabeth Charlotte. Saint-Simon reported rumors that Lorraine married in secret his cousin
Béatrice Hiéronyme de Lorraine (1662–1738),
Abbess of Remiremont. Biographer Joan Pieragnoli argues that Lorraine had been putting his affairs in order since July of 1701, just four weeks after the death of the Duke of Orléans. Philippe de Lorraine died in the
Palais-Royal after midnight on 8 December 1702, aged 59, after suffering an attack of apoplexy in the afternoon of 7 December.
Honours, titles, and properties Between 1674 and 1680, Lorraine became the
titular abbot of four wealthy abbeys: the
Sainte-Trinité de Tiron in 1674;
Saint-Jean-des-Vignes, near
Soissons in 1678;
Fleury in 1679; and
Saint-Père-en-Vallée in the
Diocese of Chartres in 1680. Each of these abbeys were "heads of much larger monastic networks," and likely provided an income of tens of thousands of
livres annually. In 1687, Lorraine acquired the
Château de Frémont, located on the royal route between Paris and the king's hunting retreat at the
Palace of Fontainebleau. Lorraine maintained rooms at his château for both Monsieur and Madame. The Chevalier de Lorraine was created a knight of the
Order of the Holy Spirit, the most prestigious military knighthood of the
ancien régime, on 31 December 1688 at
Versailles. Two of his brothers,
Louis, Comte d'Armagnac and
Charles, Comte de Marsan, were also created members of the order on the same day. ==Relatives==