Note 62 — Chapter X

Diane de France, Duchesse de Montmorency and d’Angoulême, legitimated daughter of Henri II by a Piedmontese girl called Filippa Duc, whom he had met during the campaign of 1537 in Italy. Born in 1538, she was brought up at the Court of France, and married in 1553 to Orazio Farnese, Duke of Castro, who was killed a few months later, whilst defending Hesdin against the troops of Charles V. In 1559 the young widow married François, Duc and Maréchal de Montmorency, elder brother of the Constable, who died in 1579. A beautiful, accomplished and highly intelligent woman, and a singularly loyal friend, Diane was greatly esteemed by the last Valois sovereigns and also by Henri IV. Her half-brother, Henri III, gave her the duchies of Angoulême and Châtellerault, the county of Ponthieu, and the government of the Limousin; and it was she who in 1588 brought about the reconciliation between that monarch and Henri of Navarre. She died in 1619, at the age of eighty, having seen no less than seven kings on the throne of France.