Louise De Kerouaille Was History’s Most Scandalous Spy D
Louise de caroal was King Charles II’s most hated mistress and they had a dark secret behind bedroom doors near the end of his life Charles started going limp and was unable to satisfy his French Maiden even worse Louise repaid him with a heartbreaking betrayal King Charles II of England Was a Serial womanizer with a bevy of Mistresses yet something about his favorite Louise de Carell set her apart and that something was how much people hated her Louise was born in 1649 in France when it came to the noble pecking order her parents were pretty low on the ladder and they took on the name de caroal from an ARS ancestor to make themselves seem more important however they did have a stunning daughter and ious
[Music] plans Louise was legendary in the 17th century for her particularly naive Beauty and her many admirers just couldn’t get enough of her good girl looks and baby face she may have had innocent eyes but underneath her Serene facade Louise was wickedly clever this was a girl who knew exactly how to get what she wanted her parents’ plot was simple they threw Louise into the employee of Henrietta Stewart the sister-in-law of King Louis the 14th they wanted her to catch the king’s eye and become a royal mistress clearly they had no quams about how their daughter came about her riches as long as she got them but a plot twist was on the horizon King Louie wasn’t looking for a new side
piece he was too deep into negotiations with King Charles II of England and spurned her advances as it turned out the king hoped that Louise’s new boss Henrietta could help him out with his England problem after all King Charles just so happened to be her brother when Lou shipped Henrietta back to England to broke her a treaty Louise made sure she was also on the boat reportedly from almost the moment King Charles laid eyes on Louise he couldn’t get her out of his head or his bed Charles was quite a ladyes man and in jumping into his bed Louise was also jumping into a snake pit two of his other Mistresses were Barbara Palmer and Ne Gwyn
Palmer in particular was known as the uncrowned queen for her influence and she didn’t look kindly on an upstart elbowing her way in when Louise burst onto the scene Barbara Palmer was in deep trouble with King Charles true Queen Katherine of briganza Katherine absolutely despised Barbara who had done next to nothing to ingratiate herself Louise however knew just what to do she cozied up to Catherine with flattery quickly making herself the Queen’s favorite the English Court could be a little stuffy but the intimate emotional Louise de caroal was a breath of fresh French air even when those winds blew hot and cold she quickly became Infamous for her mood swings which ranged from
divinely happy to Dark and Stormy in 1672 nature ran its course and Louise found herself pregnant giving birth to a bouncing baby boy soon after she named the child Charles to ensure the king wouldn’t forget about his illegitimate [Music] son interestingly Charles had plenty of Mistresses and accordingly Spates of illegitimate children throughout his decadent Reign but still produced no Aires with with his rightful Queen Catherine a year after baby Charles’s birth Louise snagged the title of Duchess of Portsmouth plus a pension and a furnished Suite of 24 rooms in whiteall Palace many times richer and grander than even the Queen’s Chambers the king paid all his Mistresses a certain allowance from his own purse but Louise’s sums were
astronomical one year he paid her the whopping amount of £ 36,6 168 a pretty penny far beyond any of his other Mistresses including the uncrowned queen Barbara Palmer Charles had a not so romantic nickname for Louise FBS referring to her famous baby face the word meant chubby still back then welled cvey women signaled wealth Beauty and prosperity and the plump Luke was the height of fashion apparently Charles liked his little pet name so much he just couldn’t keep it to the bedroom in 1682 he built a royal Yacht for Louise and christened it with the Glorious name hm y FBS Palmer wasn’t the only woman ousted from the king’s favor when Louise
flounced into court Neil Gwyn one of the most famed and notorious actresses of her day ALS also lost Charles’s attention because of his new favorite even the easygoing nil was rankled at the thought of the French mink and she soon retaliated with spite Gwen found an inventive way to express her feelings about her rival as a Treader of the boards she knew a thing or two about good dialogue and she came up with some Choice names for Louise she scornfully called her squint Bella and Weeping Willow and reference to her sporadic emotional episodes because of the general mistrust between England and France in the 17th century the common people never took to Louise they despised her Catholic faith and other Dark Rumors certainly didn’t help matters in contrast most of the
public adored the body small town Gwyn Louisa’s respect for Queen Katherine of briganza only went so far in 1675 the already sickly Queen fell Gravely ill and doctors believed she wouldn’t live long this was enough for the young mistress to get her hopes up and Louise soon started imagining her own coronation over her friend’s dead body unfortunately for Louise Catherine would outlive Charles and remain his Queen until he died by the m mid 1670s Louise must have thought she’d won it all the king had largely discarded Barbara Palmer and Neil Gwyn as his Mistresses so she got to rule the Royal Roost with very little jealousy from Queen Catherine but she was in for a nasty surprise the other woman’s cardinal rule
is don’t get comfy and soon it all unraveled enter Hortense manini a beautiful Italian Duchess when Charles and Hortense were young the king caught the love bug and even proposed marriage to her astonishingly hen’s snooty family didn’t think a king was good enough and turned him down but now that a French woman was Chief Mistress of England Hortense had other ideas manini threw open the palace doors with her new girl energy and took over the court just as Louise had once done it helped of course that the English ambassadors were all rooting for someone to replace Louise in the king’s heart but Charles’s reaction was the cruestv himself to Hortense but Louise
got the last laugh though she was a Dame to end all Dames Hortense manini proved a little too much for Charles to handle she had an appetite for Scandal and after an extra extra marital Affair or two Charles finally had to cut her off once more Louisa’s canny way of keeping out of trouble won the day but that doesn’t mean she didn’t have scandals of her own Louise deero had excellent taste and the King was very appreciative of that she decorated her apartments in the latest French style and Charles often entertained important guests there for this reason Louise was fond of the high life and also spent generously on her always stylish clothes and jewels sadly this
would be her downfall Louise’s enemies at court went far beyond Charles’s Bevy of Mistresses her biggest rival was actually the notorious rake and middling poet John Wilmont the Earl of Rochester in one scathing satirical piece Rochester took him at Louise’s scandalous influence Louise looked sweet-faced but she never forgot a slight and soon after she got her revenge Rochester had never been very well behaved and Charles put up with his drunken Antics for years including in an Infamous time when Rochester destroyed one of his Sund dials bizarrely this was a huge insult back in the day but the Fatal blow came from Louise herself reportedly the minute Louise
told Charles about her low opinion the king sent Rochester packing the English annals are littered with conspiracies but in 1678 Louise found herself in the center of one of the most infamous plots in history that year the English priest Titus oats informed King Charles that Catholic forces were planning to assassinate him suddenly suspicion fell on the Catholic Louise by the time the smoke cleared on this so-called popish plot at least 22 people had lost their lives miraculously though Louise saved herself her kindness to Queen Catherine paid off and the queen was one of her most steadfast allies throughout the accusations apart from being Duchess of Portsmouth caroal also earned the titles
of baroness Petersfield and Countess of farum the French Court also gave her several presents and awarded her the title of Duchess of Obin on Charles’s request on February 6th 1685 King Charles II past at the age of 54 the day was tragic for Louise in more ways than one Not only was she barred entry from his chamber while he was on his deathbed she was also worried about her vulnerable position at court nonetheless Charles tried to protect her even with his last breath on his death bed he asked his family to do well by her sadly that’s not what happened although Charles’s family promised to protect Louise she met a heartbreaking end it was clear to her she wasn’t
welcome in England so she sailed to France and spent her last days alone and in debt she had never saved enough to keep her afloat once the money stopped coming in nor had she learned how to live within her means in November 1734 Louise de caroal passed at the rip hold age of 85 having outlived most of the important men in her life by several decades she had seen it all the height of extravagance and the lws of penury and she had done it like a true Queen even though she wasn’t her scandals continued long long after she passed and apparently it runs in her jeans both of Prince Charles’s wives Princess Diana and his former mistress Camila Duchess of Cornwall are descendants of hers there are many surviving portraits of Louise but only one is this disturbing in 1682 Pierre Minard painted The
Duchess sitting regally dressed in a chair while a black child presents her with peils and corals this symbolized the wealth and power of her position and emphasized the fairness of her skin in comparison to the child’s [Music] yikes the French poet Charles Rob famously remembered Louise as as sweet as she was beautiful she had dark hair and eyes and apparently had a melancholic yet elegant style of speech babyfaced Louise might also have been a nerd at heart at the time King Charles was consumed by the longitude problem worrying over how Sailors could navigate the Seas when no one had yet found a way to measure longitude Louise took an interest in the puzzle and even introduced Charles to a French scientist who thought he had solved it as it turns out he hadn’t solved the problem but the
introduction did change the state of British Science the turn of events spurred Charles to build the groundbreaking Royal Observatory in Greenwich near the end of Charles’s life he and Louise had a dark secret behind bedroom doors the Aging King was having performance problems and he often couldn’t prop properly satisfy his young mistress this is an embarrassing enough predicament but it didn’t take long for even worse rumors to start floating through the palace around this time the Restless Louise reportedly started getting up close and personal with the handsome Philipe Dev vondom Grand prior of France now Charles was never a fan of monogamy but he never meant for his Mistresses to exercise the same freedoms half mad with jealousy the king apparently marched right up to Philipe and demanded that he get the hell out of England the Duke smug and self-satisfied
with his prowess and power refused eventually King Lou the 14th himself had to step in and bring his Rogue subject back to France to prevent a sticky situation Louise lived the plush life of a courtier while she was in England but some say there was a darker reason for her being there in the first place according to rumor from the time the French King had handpicked Louise as a double agent knowing her good looks were tailor made to entrap Charles though many historians call this Prejudice there is disturbing evidence to the contrary whether or not the king chose her members of the French Court did use Louise as a spy for their causes the French Ambassador colbe deasi acted as her de facto runner in covert operations pushing her to keep in snaring Charles for the good of king and country and was she being paid for
advancing the interests of her French King well when historians looked into the Royal records from Louisa’s time as mistress they found one scandalous entry one year King Louie gifted Louise with a pair of earrings worth a whopping £18,000 an insane amount even for a monarch in the end Louise de caroal managed to hold on to the title of number one Royal mistress until the end of King Charles II’s life which was no easy feat from conspiracy theories to cat fights Serene Louise had truly seen it all and she did it without breaking a sweat on her babyfaced brow if you enjoyed this video please give it a like And subscribe for more videos
