page_title: Marie Leszczyńska
section_title: Negotiations for marriage to the king
hierarchical_section_title: Marie Leszczyńska / Marriage / Negotiations for marriage to the king
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Portrait Maria LeszczynskasEnglish: Portrait of Maria Leszczynska
context_page_description: Maria Karolina Zofia Felicja Leszczyńska, also known as Marie Leczinska, was a Polish princess and Queen consort of France from 1725 until 1768 by marriage to Louis XV. The daughter of King Stanislaus I of Poland and Catherine Opalińska, her 42-year service was the longest of any queen in French history. A devout Roman Catholic throughout her life, Marie was popular among the French people for her generosity and introduced many Polish customs to the royal court at Versailles. She was the grandmother of Louis XVI, Louis XVIII and Charles X of France.
context_section_description: Marie was on a list of 99 eligible European princesses to marry the young king. She was not the first choice on the list. She had been placed there initially because she was a Catholic princess and therefore fulfilled the minimum criteria, but was removed early on when the list was reduced from 99 to 17, for being too poor. However, when the list of 17 (including Barbara of Portugal, Princess Charlotte Amalie of Denmark, Elisabeth Therese of Lorraine and Enrichetta d'Este) was further reduced to four, the preferred choices presented numerous problems.   Anne and Amelia of Great Britain, who were considered with the understanding that they would convert to the Catholic faith upon marriage, were favored by the Duke of Bourbon and Madame de Prie because it was supported by their political financiers, the firm of Paris Brothers Joseph Paris Duverney.  Cardinal Fleury easily prevented the British match because of religious reasons.  The last two were the sisters of the Duke of Bourbon, Henriette-Louise and Therese-Alexandrine, whom the King himself refused to marry because of the disapproval of Cardinal Fleury. Cardinal Fleury himself favored a match with Princess Charlotte of Hesse-Rheinfels-Rotenburg, which was supported by the grandfather of Louis XV, the King of Savoy, through his spy the Princess of Carignan, Maria Vittoria of Savoy.
  In these complicated disputes over the choice of a royal marriage partner, Marie Leszczyńska eventually emerged as a choice acceptable to both the party of the Duke of Bourbon and Madame de Prie, as well as the party of Cardinal Fleury, mainly because she was politically uncontroversial and lacked any of the alliances which could harm either party. At this point, there were already negotiations of marriage between Marie and the Duke of Bourbon. The Duke of d'Argensson had already left a favorable report of her, and the groundwork had been done.  Cardinal Fleury accepted the choice as Marie posed no threat to him because of her lack of connections, while the Duke of Bourbon and Madame de Prie, precisely because she lacked any personal power base, expected her to be indebted to them for her position. Marie was, finally, chosen because she was a healthy adult Catholic princess ready to procreate immediately after the wedding.  Reportedly, Madame de Prie had a flattering portrait painted of Marie, in which she was deliberately made to look like the King's favorite portrait of his mother, and when he was shown it, he was impressed and exclaimed: "she is the loveliest of them all!", and became enthusiastic of the match, an episode which attracted some attention.
  The formal proposal was made on 2 April 1725. The announcement of the wedding was not received well at the royal court. Marie's father Stanislaus had been a monarch for only a short time and she was thought to be a poor choice of inferior status not worthy of being queen of France. The Dowager Duchess of Lorraine, sister of the former Duke of Orléans, was also insulted that her own daughter Elisabeth-Therese had not been chosen. The nobility and the court looked upon the future queen as an upstart intruder, the ministers as a cause to diplomatic trouble with Spain and Russia, whose princesses had been refused in favor of Marie, and the general public was also reportedly initially dissatisfied with the fact that France would gain "from this marriage neither glory nor honor, riches nor alliances." There were rumors before the wedding that the bride was ugly, epileptic and sterile. The 6 May 1725, Marie was forced to undergo a medical examination, which ruled out epilepsy and also gave reassuring reports about her menstruation and ability to procreate. In the marriage contract, the same terms were given to her as was previously to the Spanish Infanta, and she was thus guaranteed fifty thousand crowns for rings and jewelry, two hundred and fifty thousand crowns upon her wedding, and the further guarantee of an annual widow allowance of twenty thousand crowns.
caption: Maria Leszczyńska in 1730, by Alexis Simon Belle.
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