page_title: Maison royale de Saint-Louis
section_title: Organisation
hierarchical_section_title: Maison royale de Saint-Louis / History / Organisation
caption_attribution_description: Demoiselles de Saint-Cyr, gravure de Nicolas Bonnard entre 1680 et 1715.
context_page_description: The Maison Royale de Saint-Louis was a boarding school for girls set up in 1684 at Saint-Cyr in France by king Louis XIV at the request of his second wife, Madame de Maintenon, who wanted a school for girls from impoverished noble families. The establishment lost its leading role on the deaths of Louis and then Maintenon, but it nevertheless marked an evolution in female education under the Ancien Régime. Its notable students included Maintenon's niece Marthe-Marguerite Le Valois de Villette de Mursay, marquise de Caylus, and Napoleon's sister Élisa Bonaparte, grand duchess of Tuscany.
  It remained in existence during the first years of the French Revolution, but closed for good in March 1793, with its empty buildings being taken over by the École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr in 1808. However, the Maison royale later provided Napoleon with the inspiration for his Maison des demoiselles de la Légion d'honneur, which still exists as the Maison d'éducation de la Légion d'honneur.
context_section_description: The Maison Royale de Saint-Louis was opened "to the daughters of gentlemen who have been killed or exhausted their health or their fortune in the service of the State", who would enter the school aged between 7 and 12. The king himself decided on who the school admitted, after consulting with experts on French genealogy who could guarantee that applicants possessed at least four generations of noble birth on their father's side. Many pensionnaires were daughters, nieces or orphans of soldiers and, though many of them were from Paris and its outskirts, the school had students from every province of France and even from abroad (e.g., three  Québécoises in the 1750s). The school buildings housed 250 students, cared for by 36 female educators or "professes", 24 "converses" sisters carrying out domestic tasks, some priests, and lay personnel.
  The students, aged 7 to 20, were divided by age into four "classes". They wore a uniform in the form of a brown muslin robe akin to court robes, tied with ribbons whose colour indicated the wearer's class—red for 7 to 10 years old; green for 11 to 14; yellow for 15-16; and blue for 17-20. They also wore a white bonnet which left their hair partly uncovered. Each class had its own room. This uniform and division by age were echoed in Noisy:
  [Madame de Maintenon] had a grand morning meeting one day in Noisy, carrying a basket full of blue, yellow, green and red ribbons by which she designated each Demoiselle in the class to which she was suited ... They were separated out into different bedrooms and thus called according to the name of their ribbon, the Red class, the Blue class, etc. There was some question of giving the students clothing that was uniform, simple, modest, but noble ... it was decided that they were to dress in brown Mans muslin, then more fashionable than it is today. This dress consisted of a coat and a skirt, the bonnet being of white canvas with a lace piece, all decorated with a ribbon.
  Each class was headed by a "maîtresse de classe", who was herself supported by a second mistress and sub-mistresses. Some of the oldest and most talented students were deputised for these mistresses and wore black ribbons. Indeed, the role of the "blacks" was wider. Chosen from among the most talented and disciplined of the "blues", they were in charge of helping the teachers and in the hospital, refectory, accounts, etc. The class mistresses were led by a "Maîtresse générale des classes", who not only coordinated the different classes but also had responsibility for the students outside of school hours.
  The mistresses and other ladies were not nuns but took "simples" or temporary religious vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, as well as vows to "devote their life to the education and instruction of the demoiselles", which Madame de Maintenon judged to be the most important vow of all. They were uniformly dressed in black muslin, with a black bonnet.
  The students were housed at Saint-Cyr until they reached 20 and were not supposed to leave it until that age, unless in cases of dismissal, marriage or "exceptional family circumstances." When they left the school at the end of their studies, they received a dowry of 3,000 livres either for a suitable marriage or to allow them to enter a convent. However, some ex-students did not leave and remained there as teachers. To guarantee the quality of teaching, students who wished to become teachers followed a "noviciate" of 6 years during which they were trained in teaching by the "Maîtresse des novices".
  The revenues to maintain the establishment came from rents and exploitation of its domaines, subsidies from the Généralité de Paris and revenues of the Abbaye de Saint-Denis to which it was attached.
caption: Two "Demoiselles de Saint-Cyr".
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