Polignac
Polignac names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Polignac who received a cardinal's hat after acting as plenipotentiary of Louis XIV
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
who received a cardinal's hat after acting as plenipotentiary of Louis XIV. at the peace of Utrecht (1712). From 1725 till 1732 he was French minister at the court of Rome, and he was appointed Archbishop of Auch. Polignac succeeded Bossuet at the French Academy in 1704, and left unfinished the "Anti-Lucretius" (1745), a poem intended for a refutation of Lucretius. In the reign of Louis XVI. Iolanthe Martine Gabrielle de Polastron, Duchesse de Polignac (born 1749; died in Vienna, Dec. 9, 1793), and her husband, Jules Duc de Polignac (died in St. Petersburg, 1817), grand nephew of the cardinal, were among the worst advisers of Marie Antoinette. They obtained vast sums of the public money from their royal master and mistress. The Polignacs knew how they were hated, and were the first of the noblesse to emigrate. From the Empress Catharine of Russia the duke received an estate in the Ukraine, and did not return to France at the Restoration. His son, AUGUSTE JULES ARMAND MARIE, Prince de Polignac, was born in Versailles, May 14, 1780. On the Restoration he returned to France; became intimate with the Comte d'Artois, afterward Charles X.; from his devotion to the policy of Rome received from the Pope in 1820 the title prince; was appointed ambassador at the English court in 1823; and finally, in 1829, became head of the last Bourbon ministry, in which capacity he promulgated the fatal ordonnances that cost Charles X. his throne. He then attempted to flee, but was captured at Granville on Aug. 15, was tried, and condemned to imprisonment for life in the castle of Ham, but was set at liberty by the amnesty of 1836. He took up his residence in England, but died in St. Germain, March 2, 1847. His son, Prince Armand (1817-1890), was a leading monarchist.
Polignac an ancient French family
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
an ancient French family, which claims to derive its name from a castle-the ancient Apolliniacum in the department of Haute-Loire, and which since the 9th century possessed the district of Velay. Among its most famous members was CARDINAL MELCHIOR DE
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's closed its 1921 account with the monarchist Prince Armand (d. 1890), as though the family's public life were over; in fact it had just taken a startling turn. In 1920 Pierre de Polignac married Charlotte, heiress of Monaco, and took the name Grimaldi, so that every ruler of Monaco since Rainier III's accession in 1949 — including Albert II today — descends in the male line from the Polignacs. In the same years Winnaretta Singer, the American sewing-machine heiress who married Prince Edmond de Polignac, was running one of Europe's great musical salons and commissioning work from Stravinsky, Satie and Poulenc. Modern historians also treat the duchesse Yolande more cautiously than Collier's "among the worst advisers of Marie Antoinette", seeing her as much a lightning rod for pamphleteers as a policy-maker; the ruined castle above Le Puy is now a protected monument open to visitors.
Written for this edition, 2026.