Marthe de Vogüé, Marquise de Mac Mahon (21 November 1860 - 9 June 1923) was a French political activist and monarchist. She was the leader of the Dames Royalistes from the 1900s until her death and was a prominent figure of the Action Française movement.
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Early and personal life
Marthe Marie-Thérèse de Vogüé was born in Paris on 21 November 1860, the second daughter of cousins Marguerite and Melchior de Vogüé. Her father was a diplomat, ambassador, archaeologist and prominent agrarian, president of the traditional and conservative Société des agriculteurs de France. Her mother died only days after her birth, and her father remarried in 1866 to Béatrix Claire Marie des Monstiers-Mérinville and had four further children, his second wife also dying as a result of childbirth.
On 22 June 1881, Marthe de Vogüé married Charles-Marie de Mac Mahon, (1856–1894) a retired military officer and a member of the senior branch of the de Mac Mahon family.
He was the grandson of the elder brother of Marshal Patrice de Mac Mahon, President of the French Third Republic from 1873 to 1879. The couple had a daughter, Henriette, who lived only five days (31 May 1882 to 4 June 1882).
She was widowed in 1894 and inherited the Château de Sully (Saône-et-Loire) from her husband. She commissioned significant building works, including the Renaissance Revival architecture south facade and the restoration of the moat. She also lived in a mansion on rue Fabert, in the 7th arrondissement of Paris.
Involvement in l'Action Française movement
The Marquise de Mac Mahon supported a public school near her château where the students were taught by nuns, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny. These nuns were expelled in August 1902, under an anti-clerical policy against schools run by religious congregations, passed into law of 1 July 1901 by the government of Émile Combes. The Marquise de Mac Mahon had opposed the removal of the teaching nuns to no avail, and this was reported by the press.
In 1903, she became one of the vice-presidents of a "comité central des dames royalistes de France" (committee of royalist ladies of France), founded the previous year on the initiative of Paul Bézine, head of the political office of the exiled pretender, Philippe d'Orléans, who claimed the title of Duke of Orléans. The committee was chaired by the Duchesse de Mortemart. de Mac Mahon took over the chairmanship on the latter's death in March 1904. She gave regular lectures and spoke at royalist congresses and meetings, alongside supporters of the Orleanist monarchist world, most of them men who professed to hate the French Republic. In December 1905, she was the only woman on the patronage committee of the royalist daily La Gazette (France).
From 1903, she chaired the Œuvre Notre-Dame de France, a charity founded in the name of the Duchess of Orléans, Archduchess Maria Dorothea of Austria, which distributed clothes to the poor in winter. Her charitable activities were inseparable from her anti-republican and Catholic convictions and embedded in her network of women's and aristocratic royalist committees.
In February 1906 she was one of the few women in the group of Catholics who physically opposed the inventory of the Basilica of Sainte-Clotilde in Paris and the church of Saint-Pierre-du-Gros-Caillou in the 7th arrondissement, following the passage of the 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State, which established state secularism in France. Article 3 of the act required that an inventory be made of all houses of worship previously supported by the government. The report in the Catholic newspaper L'Univers noted: "Mme la marquise de Mac Mahon, who has always shown remarkable courage and composure, refused to leave her place of honour in front of the main gate. “I am not afraid” she said “and I will defend our church like all the others”.
Death and commemoration
Marthe de Vogüé, Marquise de Mac Mahon died on 9 June 1923 in Paris. Her funeral took place at the church in Sully, Saône-et-Loire; the funeral address was given by the parish priest of Sully, Abbé Paul Muguet, on 19 June 1923.
Following her death, Charles Maurras paid tribute to her in an editorial in the daily newspaper L'Action française. Léon Daudet wrote of her "gentle voice" and "persuasive power" in his memoirs. "Infatigable voyageuse, conférencière de talent, ... elle fut incontestablement la plus influente personnalité féminine de l’Action française. (A tireless traveller and talented lecturer ... she was undoubtedly the most influential female figure in Action Française).