User:Lacomtesse/Marie-Charlotte Hippolyte de Campet de Saujeon, comtesse de Boufflers-Rouverel

= Marie-Charlotte-Hippolyte de Campet de Saujeon, comtesse de Boufflers-Rouverel =

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 * Marie-Charlotte Hippolyte de Campet de Saujon
 * Comtesse de Boufflers

Marie-Charlotte-Hippolyte de Campet de Saujon (1724 - 1800, Rouen), by marriage Comtesse de Boufflers-Rouverel, was an aristocrat, lady of letters and salon hostess in pre-revolutionary 18th century France,.

The daughter of Charles-François de Saujon, Baron de la Rivère, and Louis-Angélique de Barberin de Reignac, she married on Febuary 1746 Édouard de Boufflers, Comte de Boufflers-Rouverel and captain of the Bellefonds regiment, by whom she had one child, Louis-Édouard (born 1746).

A little after her marriage, she became a lady-in-waiting to the Duchesse de Chartres, through whom she met and later became the mistress of the latter's brother Louis François, Prince of Conti.

In 1749, Conti bacame Grand Prior of the Order of St.John of Jerusalem, and moved her into a private mansion opposite his new palace at the Temple. There, she hosted her famous salon, receiving regularly Encyclopédistes such as Denis Diderot, David Hume, Grimm, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, l'abbé Prévost, l'abbé Morellet, and Beaumarchais. The success of the countess' salon was such that Madame du Deffand coined her as 'the idol'. Under the influence of the Encyclopédistes, the countess became author of some works of literature and light poetry.

In 1763, as companion to Madame d'Usson, the wife of the French ambassador, she went to London where she met Samuel Johnson and Horace Walpole, whom she later received at both her Paris salon and her chateau of Stors.

At the death of her husband in 1764, she hoped to marry the Prince de Conti, but soon gave up this project when her lover showed no inclination.

After the death of Conti in 1776, the countess retired to a house in the vicinity of Auteuil which she had bought in 1773. In the 1780s, she became an agent for Gustav III of Sweden and in 1786, arranged the marriage of Germaine Necker, daughter of Jacques Necker (1732-1804) Finance Minster at various intervals during the reign of Louis XVI, and the Swedish ambassador, Baron von Staël.

She avoided Versailles for the most part, and was not officially presented at court until 1770 by her good friend, the Maréchale de Luxembourg.

Arrested but acquited during the Terror, she nevertheless was forced to sell her family's chateau de La Rivière in Fronsac in 1794.