Madame de Montesson

Charlotte-Jeanne Béraud de La Haye de Riou (4 October 1738[1] – 6 February 1806) was a mistress to Louis Philippe d'Orléans, Duke of Orléans, and ultimately, his wife; however, Louis XV would not allow her to become the Duchess.

On 11 October 1757, she married the seventy-year-old widower Jean Baptiste, Marquis of Montesson,[2] who died in 1769.

Her beauty and intelligence attracted the attention of the widowed Louis Philippe d'Orléans, the fat (his wife Louise Henriette de Bourbon had died in 1759), whom she secretly married in 1773 with the authorisation of Louis XV of France.

She was arrested on 20 April 1793 (1 floréal an II of the Republican calendar)[3] during the Terror, and first imprisoned in the La Force prison in Paris.

She was released on 28 September 1794 (after the fall of Maximilien Robespierre), befriended Joséphine de Beauharnais, and was a prominent figure at the beginning of the empire.