Marie Françoise Catherine de Beauvau-Craon

Marie Françoise Catherine de Beauvau-Craon, marquise de Boufflers (1711-1787) was a French noblewoman.

Family

The daughter of Marc de Beauvau-Craon, she married Louis François de Boufflers (1714-1752), marquis d'Amestranges, and bore him Stanislas de Boufflers, later famous as a poet.

Life

Witty, well-educated and beautiful, the marquise de Boufflers wrote verse and drew in pastel. At the court at Lunéville, aged 34, she became the chief mistress to king Stanislas, then aged 64. This did not stop her also collecting other lovers - nicknamed "la Dame de Volupté", she was also the mistress of the poet Jean-François de Saint-Lambert, then of M. of Adhémar, of the intendant de Lorraine Antoine-Martin Chaumont de La Galaizière, of the lawyer and poet François-Antoine Devaux, of the abbé Porquet, and many others. To try to make the marquise de Boufflers jealous and regain her affections, Saint-Lambert attempted to seduce marquise du Châtelet when the latter arrived in Lunéville in 1748. The marquise du Châtelet fell passionately in love with the poet and became best friends with the marquise de Boufflers, thus completely ruining the plans of father Menou, Stanislas's confessor, who wanted to use her to dislodge the marquise de Boufflers as chief mistress to the king.