Places associated with Madame de Maintenon

Born Françoise d'Aubigné in 1635, she was known after her first marriage as Madame Scarron and later as Madame de Maintenon, a title she earned from Louis XIV. She took the name after the estate she bought in 1674, shown below. It is outside Paris, on the way to Chartres.

Maintenon first appeared at Versailles from 1669 when she became governess to the king’s illegitimate children. Her secret marriage to Louis XIV in 1683 was considered a “morganatic” marriage, which referred to a marriage between a man of very high rank and a woman of lower rank, where the woman kept her lower rank.  It meant that any children they had would not inherit their wealth or be considered in line for the throne.

Madame de Maintenon founded a boarding school for girls, the Maison Royale de Saint-Louis, better known as Saint-Cyr, just west of Versailles, in 1686. It became a military hospital in 1798 and Napoléon turned it into a military college in 1808, from which time St.-Cyr signified the elite of the French military. Most buildings were damaged heavily by bombing in World War II and the French military subsequently relocated to Brittany. Maintenon is buried at the restored St.-Cyr, shown below: