Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/687

Rh When only 14 years of age, she married Charles de Quellence, baron de Pont, in Britainy, who, upon the marriage, took the name of Soubise; under which name he is mentioned with honour in the second and third civil wars in France, and fell in the general massacre of St. Bartholomew, 1571, after fighting valiantly for his life.

His wife wrote several elegies, deploring her loss; to which she added some on the death of the admiral, and other illustrious personages.

She married secondly, 1573, Renatus, viscount Rohan, the second of that name, who dying 1586, though she was not yet above 32 years of age, she resolved to spend the remainder of her life in the education of her children.

Her eldest son was the famous duke de Rohan, who asserted the protestant cause with so much vigour, during the civil wars in the reign of Lewis XIII. Her second the duke of Soubise. She had also three daughters, Henrietta, who died in 1629; Catherine, who married a duke of Deux Fonts in 1605, and whose beauty having attracted the eyes of Henry IV. when he declared his passion, she immediately replied, "I am too poor to be your wife, and too nobly born to be your mistress."

Her third daughter was Anne, who survived all her brothers and sisters, and inherited both her genius and magnanimous spirit. She lived unmarried with her mother, and with her bore all the calamities of the siege of Rochelle. The daughter's resolution was remarkable, but the mother's more, as she was then in her 75th year. They were reduced for three months to the necessity of living upon horse-flesh, and four ounces of bread a day. Yet