Philippe de Lorraine (28 September 1643 – 8 December 1702), known as the chevalier de Lorraine, was a French nobleman and the favourite lover of Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, brother of Louis XIV. He was a descendant of the Dukes of Elbeuf and a member of the House of Guise, a cadet branch of the ducal House of Lorraine, and therefore held the rank of prince étranger at court. He was the commendatory abbot of Sainte-Trinité de Tiron, Saint-Jean-des-Vignes, Fleury, and Saint-Père-en-Vallée.

Biography Early life Philippe de Lorraine was born on 28 September 1643, likely at the Hôtel du Quai Malaquais, which was the official Paris residence of the family of Henri de Lorraine, Count of Harcourt and his wife, Marguerite-Philippe du Cambout. Philippe de Lorraine's father, the count of Harcourt, had in August 1643 been given the role of Grand Squire of France, a prestigious office in charge of the royal stables, the transport of the king, and his ceremonial entourage, and was thus entitled to be referred to as Monsieur le Grand. Less than a week after Lorraine's birth, in his capacity as Grand Squire, Harcourt set out for England under the orders of Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin to act as an intermediary in a dispute between Charles I of England and his parliament.

Lorraine was baptized on 6 June 1644, in the same ceremony as his elder brother, Louis, Count of Armagnac. Lorraine's godmother, Anne of Austria, then-regent of France, named him Philippe, which was the name she also wished to give to her son, the duke of Anjou (later Philippe, Duke of Orléans).

Between 1649 and 1651, Lorraine and the other younger sons of Harcourt and Cambout spent some time in the company of the young King Louis XIV and his brother, the duke of Anjou, although they likely did so with less frequency than did the count of Armagnac, who was one of the king's designated childhood companions.

In January 1649, during the Fronde des Parlements, the king and his court fled Paris, planning to lay siege to it. The count of Harcourt had not been informed, and therefore his family, including Lorraine, were left trapped in their residence, where they were functionally prisoners.

Lorraine was created a knight of Malta on 24 November 1649, at the age of six, at the same time as his two-year-old brother, Raymond-Bérenger de Lorraine. The count of Harcourt purchased positions in the Order of Malta for three of his sons at a price of 3,990 livres each. Such a position allowed his sons to hold ecclesiastical offices, while also affording them the opportunity to have a military command. It was around this time that Lorraine began to be referred to by the title of "chevalier de Lorraine."

At the age of seven, Lorraine was breeched, and received a governor and a preceptor. Lorraine's governor is unknown, but his preceptor was the king's almoner, Gilles Le Jouynel. Lorraine was educated in mathematics, French, Latin, Italian, history, geography, dance, and fencing. He was noted to have been a precocious child with regards to military practice, including equestrianism and hunting.

On the night of 12 January 1652, Lorraine and his brothers escaped the chaos in Paris during the Fronde des Princes to seek safety at the Abbey of Royaumont; however, their mother, Cambout, was arrested while attempting to leave.

Monsieur's favourite and sexuality

There is some debate as to when Lorraine became the lover of the duke of Orléans (known as Monsieur at court), with hypotheses ranging from 1658 to 1668. Based on the account of Daniel de Cosnac, Monsieur's confessor, Pieragnoli argues that the affair likely began sometime in the winter of 1666-1667. Barker generally concurs, placing the beginning of Monsieur's and Lorraine's relationship during the 1667-1668 War of Devolution.

During the War of Devolution, the duke requested that the chevalier and his Harcourt Regiment be placed under his command; after initially denying his brother's request, the king eventually approved it. On the night of 24-25 August 1667, Lorraine was wounded in the foot by a grenade during an assault at Lille; contemporaries noted that Monsieur had him moved to his own tent and that Monsieur passed entire days there. Following his return from the campaign in Flanders, Monsieur declared "that he had resolved to distinguish [Lorraine] from all others in the realm [and] to give him a place in his house."Cosnac 1852, p. 360, "...qu'il avoit résolu de le distinguer de tous les autres du royaume, de lui donner logement dans sa maison, grand crédit sur son esprit, sachant qu'il étoit attaché à sa personne préférablement à celle du roi..." Upon arriving at the Château de Villers-Cotterêts, Cosnac records that Lorraine "was received by Monsieur with incredible joy. From that moment, [Monsieur's] favour had been declared."Cosnac 1852, pp. 361-362, "...le chevalier de Lorraine arriva à Villers-Coterets [sic]; il fut reçu de Monsieur avec des transports de joie incroyables. Dès ce moment, sa faveur fut déclarée." Monsieur and Lorraine were for days inseparable.

Lorraine remained Monsieur's maître en titre (official favourite) or favori déclaré (declared favourite) from the end of the 1660s to the end of the duke's life in 1701, in a "long-term partnership in a very modern sense." As such, Lorraine was entrusted with running the Orléans household. In this capacity he oversaw the duke's finances; ran the duke's residences at the Palais-Royal and the Château de Saint-Cloud; and exercised some influence over household appointments and dismissals. At times during their relationship, Lorraine and the duke lived in a ménage à trois with Antoine Coëffier de Ruzé, Marquis d'Effiat or Charles, Count of Beuvron.

Primi Visconti relates that beginning in the 1670s, Lorraine supplied young men to Monsieur's court, without removing himself as an option as a partner. He kept himself in favour by controlling who Monsieur would have affairs with, without putting himself "outside the ranks."

By the end of the 1670s, Monsieur seems to have considered Lorraine a spouse: on the occasion of her visit, Monsieur insisted that Sophie of Hanover kiss Lorraine, as she was expected to do only with members of the royal family.

The relationship between the Lorraine and the duke reportedly affected Monsieur's first marriage to Henriette Stuart. Saint-Simon indicates that the duke of Orléans declared he could not love his wife without Lorraine's approval, contributing to marital tensions.

Contemporary correspondence and later memoirists attest to the tension between Lorraine and Henriette,Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate. Letters from Liselotte, trans. and ed. Elborg Forster. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970. as well as to Philippe's limited discretion regarding his long-standing relationship with Lorraine.Sévigné, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de. Correspondance, ed. Roger Duchêne. Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1972–1978.Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy, duc de. Mémoires, ed. Yves Coirault. Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1953–1961.

According to Henriette, Elizabeth Charlotte, and Saint-Simon, Lorraine frequently manipulated the duke of Orléans. The duke of Orléans married Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate in 1671, who later wrote of Lorraine:

Lorraine's relationship with the second Madame was complex; although she did not fault Monsieur or his favourites for their homosexual relationships, she complained of Monsieur's tendency to overspend on his favourites and of Lorraine's having "poisoning [Monsieur's] soul" against her. They had reconciled by the end of the 1690s.

Lorraine was likely bisexual, having had recorded relationships with several people of both genders (many of which occurred during his relationship with Monsieur), including Elizabeth de Fiennes, Louise-Elizabeth de Rouxel, Madame de Grancey (it was rumoured that Lorraine had sons with both Fiennes and Grancey), Monsieur, Effiat, and possibly Armand de Gramont, Comte de Guiche.

Imprisonment and first exile

On 31 January 1670, the king's guard surrounded Monsieur's apartments at the Château de Saint-Germain and arrested the chevalier de Lorraine. Louis XIV may have ordered the arrest for a variety of reasons, including Lorraine's role in forming a rift between the king and Monsieur by informing Monsieur of his exclusion from negotiations of the Secret Treaty of Dover; "as a result of Monsieur’s overreaching demands for ecclesiastic benefices for his favourite"; and to appease repeated demands for Lorraine's removal from Madame's brother, King Charles II of England, and his ministers, who threatened that to do otherwise "could very well change the whole fact of the affairs under negotiation [the Secret Treaty of Dover]." Lorraine was imprisoned first in the Château de Pierre Scize, near Lyon, and then at the island fortress of the Château d'If, offshore from Marseille.

In protest of Lorraine's imprisonment, Monsieur removed himself to the Château de Villers-Cotterêts and forced Madame to Saint-Germain. Henriette's absence from court prevented her from fulfilling her role as go-between for the signing of the Secret Treaty of Dover, forcing King Louis to negotiate with his brother for his permission for Madame to return.

In February 1670, Louis agreed to mitigate the severity of the punishment, and on 24 February, Monsieur returned to court. The king initially proposed sending Lorraine to fight the Barbary pirates in fulfillment of his military obligation to the Order of Malta (he had not yet completed the military service to the Order necessary to become a full member, and likely never did); however, Lorraine's brother, the count of Armagnac, interceded, using his favour with the king to convince him to send Lorraine into exile in Rome instead. Lorraine was provided with a pension of 10,000 écus, and was exiled together with his brother, Charles, Count of Marsan, who had defended him.

Lorraine stayed until April in Marseille, and arrived in Genoa on 15 April. Marsan had left the French court a few days earlier; they arrived together in Rome at the beginning of May 1670.

Lorraine and Marsan were allowed to return to the French court in 1672, possibly because the king viewed Lorraine as a means by which to control the duke of Orléans, or because Louis was planning another war with the Dutch Republic (this would become the Franco-Dutch War), and viewed Lorraine's proven military capabilities as an asset for his war effort.

Accused of poisoning

On 30 June 1670, Henriette died suddenly and mysteriously at Saint-Cloud, convinced that she had been poisoned. Although Monsieur was initially suspected, his genuine grief over her passing exonerated him in the eyes of most, and blame for the poisoning fell on Lorraine, the marquis of Effiat, and the count of Beuvron or Antoine Morel de Volonne.

For the king, the accusations that Madame had been poisoned threatened the reputation of his family, his court, and his relations with England. He and Monsieur demanded an open autopsy, which was conducted by the best physicians and surgeons in France, and presided over by French and English diplomats and an English surgeon. The autopsy concluded that Henriette had died of natural causes, having found that several of her vital organs were decomposing, including her stomach, intestines, and liver; her abdominal cavity had advanced gangrene; and she had a punctured lung. In addition, the autopsy found that Madame had been suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis when she died. She had been in poor health for several weeks before collapsing at Saint-Cloud, having been unable to eat anything but milk when she departed for England three weeks prior, and having been complaining for days of "pains in her side and stomach."