Marie-Aurore de Saxe

Marie-Aurore de Saxe (20 September 1748 – 26 December 1821), known after her first marriage as Countess of Horn and after the second as Madame Dupin de Francueil, was an illegitimate daughter of Marshal Maurice de Saxe and a grandmother of George Sand.

A notable free-thinker, she was interested in philosophers like Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Buffon. Her life was marked by the vicissitudes of history and personal dramas.

Marie-Aurore was born on 20 September 1748. She was the illegitimate daughter of Maurice de Saxe, Marshal of France, and Marie Rinteau, an actress. (Marshal Maurice de Saxe was himself the product of a love affair between Augustus II the Strong, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, and Maria Aurora von Königsmarck.)

Marie-Aurore was baptized a month after her birth, on 19 October in the Church of St-Gervais-et-St-Protais. The child was registered as a daughter of Jean-Baptiste La Rivière, in fact a non-existent person, and was named after her paternal grandmother, Countess von Königsmarck. Her godfather was the adjutant of the Marshal of Saxe, Antoine-Alexandre Colbert, marquis de Sourdis, and the godmother was her maternal aunt Geneviève. The Marshal de Saxe showed little interest in the fate of his illegitimate daughter and bequeathed her nothing.

Marie-Aurore's mother later had love affairs with Jean-François Marmontel and the fermier général, Denis Joseph Lalive d'Épinay. The latter spent generously on her, and installed her, along with her sister, in the Quartier d'Auteuil.

One of the nephews of the Marshal de Saxe, the Count of Friesen, known in France under the name of Comte de Frise, who inherited property from the Marshal, provided financial help to Marie-Aurore, but his death in 1755 deprived her of all support. A petition was addressed to the Dauphine, Maria Josepha of Saxony, a niece of the Marshal, the same year in favor of Marie-Aurore, proving her existence and ensuring her education. King Louis XV granted her a pension of 800 livres.

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