LONGUEVILLE, Anne Geneviève, Duchesse de (1619-1679), who played the greatest part in the troubles of the Fronde, and whose name has come down to posterity as the brilliant intriguer in polities in her early and the pious protectress of the nuns of Port Royal in her later years, was the only daughter of Henri de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, and his wife Charlotte Marguerite de Montmorency, and the only sister of Louis, the great Condé. She was born on August 28, 1619, in the prison of Vincennes, into which her father had been thrown for opposition to Marshal D’Ancre, the favourite of Marie de’ Medici, who was then regent in the minority of Louis XIII. She was educated in the convent of the Carmelites in the Rue St Jacques at Paris, which had been recently established under the influence of St Teresa’s reforms by nuns of the strictest piety, whose teaching she never entirely forgot. Her early years were clouded by the execution of the young and brilliant Due de Montmorency, her mother’s only brother, for intriguing against the great Richelieu in 1631, and that of her mother’s cousin the Comte de Montmorency Boutteville for duelling in 1635; but, in spite of their sorrow, her parents made their peace with Richelieu, and when she was introduced into society in 1635 she found plenty of court gaiety to enjoy. She soon became one of the bright particular stars of the Hôtel Rambouillet, where all that was learned, witty, and gay in France used to assemble, and which had not yet degenerated into the meeting place of those précieuses whom Molière was to laugh out of existence. It was first proposed to marry her to the young Prince de Joinville, and thus unite the Guises and Condés, but he died in 1639, and her parents could only find for her husband the Duc de ...