Victoire de Rohan

At the age of seventeen, Victoire married her cousin, Henri Louis de Rohan, Duke of Montbazon, who was fifteen at the time. He was a member of the senior branch of Rohan, the Princes of Guéméné. He was a nephew of the Cardinal de Rohan, who was disgraced in the infamous Affair of the Diamond Necklace. Henri Louis eventually became the Grand Chamberlain of France. The couple had five children.

Upon the death of his father in 1788, the Duke inherited the title of Prince de Guéméné. Afterwards, Victoire was known at court as Madame de Guéméné. At the death of her father, her spouse became heir to the title Prince de Soubise. She and her family lived lavishly in Paris at the Hôtel de Rohan-Guéméné, located on the famous Place des Vosges.

In 1775, Marie Louise de Lorraine, Comtesse de Marsan resigned the post of governess to the royal children in favour of Victoire, who was her niece. From 1778 to 1782, Victoire was in charge of the household of Louis XVI's oldest child, Marie Thérèse of France, known at court as Madame Royale. In this role, she was in charge of a staff of over one hundred courtiers and servants.

Victoire de Rohan with Madame Royale.

During her tenure as royal governess, she was in accordance with her position not allowed to leave court except with a written permission from the monarch, a permission she asked only to attend the parties of the Archbishop of Narbonne at Hautefontaine.[2] She became an influential personal friend of Marie Antoinette, and was alleged to have had a bad influence upon her, mainly by introducing her to wasteful and expensive habits such as arranging illegal games with high stakes, particularly Pharaoh, which she introduced in her salon at Versailles, and the new English fashion of horse races, interests which made the Queen acquire huge debts.[3]

She had a relationship with Augustin Gabriel de Franquetot de Coigny (1740–1817), the father of one of her charges, Aimée de Franquetot de Coigny, Duchesse de Fleury (1769–1820), muse of the poet André Chénier. The Prince of Guéméné, meanwhile, had an affair with Victoire's close friend, Thérèse-Lucy de Dillon, Comtesse de Dillon. Because of this, Abbot de Vermond reportedly reproached Marie Antoinette for keeping company with women of ill repute like Dillon and Guéméné.[4] In 1776, Emperor Joseph, during his stay in France, chastised his sister Marie Antoinette for attending the salon of the Princess, which he called a gambling den.[3]

She was described as intelligent and with an interest in spiritualism: "though endowed with considerable intellectual power, spent her time in pursuing the follies of spiritualism",[2] and in possession of a large collection of famous jewels, which she seldom wore but regularly lent to others and were therefore frequently seen at formal occasions.[2]

In 1782, Victoire was forced to resign her post due to a scandal created by her husband's mounting debt of 33 million livres, a debt that eventually, in 1787, led to the sale of the Hôtel de Rohan-Guémené. Marie Antoinette did secure a pension for Victoire for her service at court, but the couple was banned, and the friendship between the Queen and Victoire was discontinued.[3]

After the bankruptcy, which was viewed as a scandal, the couple was ostracized from society, and Victoire took residence in a palace provided by her father; she was regarded to bear the scandal with dignity.[2]

Victoire and her spouse lived to see the French Revolution in 1789, later fleeing to Austria. They eventually settled in Bohemia, living at Sychrov Castle, and it was here that the Rohan family remained for 125 years.

Victoire died in Paris in September 1807 at the age of sixty-three. Her widower surviving her by two years.