Tricentenaire de la naissance de la duchesse d'Enville

12.5 x 18.5 cm / 168 pages / March 2020

isbn: 978-2-35137-285-2

Edited by: Daniel Vaugelade

In French only

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The Duchess of Enville was a key figure of the Age of Enlightenment in many respects.

A woman of the salon whose aura beyond national borders. After the death of her husband, the Duc d'Enville, in 1746 near Halifax, and that of her father, the Duc Alexandre de La Rochefoucauld in 1762, the Duchess decided to manage her manage her vast estates herself (the Duchy of La Roche-Guyon but also in Poitou, Limousin, etc.). She befriended with Turgot, the physiocrats and philosophers, for whom she became protector and interlocutor. Her salon in Paris was frequented and many foreigners. Alongside her ls Alexandre, she took up the cause of the American Insurgents

so much so that Franklin and then Jefferson became family friends. In Geneva, where she made several several times to consult Dr Tronchin and treat her daughter, she made some very strong and sincere friends (Saussure, Bonnet, Le Sage...). Alongside Voltaire, she intervened to save the Calas family and defend Protestants. Her estates were a veritable laboratory for economists, and her château a place to work and holiday, as well as a refuge for philosophers (Turgot, Mably, Condorcet...). The  duchess d'Enville was a woman of the Enlightenment, a cosmopolitan in a Europe of philosophers and scholars dominated by France, which was to become the world's leading centre of intellectual activity.