Hortense Mancini was a niece of Cardinal Mazarin, France's chief minister; she and her four sisters were famed beauties at the French and English courts, were they were known as the 'Mazarinettes'. In 1659, the exiled King Chales II proposed to Hortense, but her uncle refused him, believeing that he would not regain his throne. Instead, she married one of Europe's richest men, Armand Charles de La Porte de La Meilleraye, who became duc de Mazarin on their marriage. This marriage was not a success, due to Armand's jealousy and mental instability and Hortense fled his home on a June night in 1668, living from this point on under the protection of Louis XIV and her former suitor Charles Emmanuel II, Duke of Savoy. On the death of the latter, her financial situation beacem precarious and, at the instigation of the English ambassador to France, Ralph Montagu, she travelled to London in the hope of rekindling Charles' feelings for her. This was initially a success, and Hortense became his maîtresse en titre by mid-1676, but her promiscuity - both with men and women - meant she fell from favour, remaining friends with the King but no longer enjoying the perks of the favourite. Following Charles' death, she maintained her position at Court because the new King's wife was her cousin, Mary of Modena. It would be unfair to think of Hortense as someone who owed all her success to her feminine charms: she was a highly intellectual woman, presiding over a salon in London that included the great poet Charles de Saint-Évremond and the playwrite Aphra Behn (who may also have been her lover). With the exception of Marguerite de Valois, Hortense and her sister, Marie Mancini, were also the first women in France to put their memoirs into print.