Antoine Hamilton facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Anthony Hamilton
Detail from the portrait below
Born	1644 or 1645 Ireland, probably Nenagh
Died	21 April 1719 Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France
Father	George Hamilton, 1st Baronet
Mother	Mary Butler

Anthony Hamilton PC (Ire) (c. 1645 – 1719), also known as Antoine and comte d'Hamilton, was soldier and writer. As a Catholic of Irish and Scottish ancestry, his parents brought him to France as a child in 1651 when Cromwell's army overran Ireland.

Hamilton became a soldier and fought in French service in the Franco-Dutch War (1672–1678). After the accession of the Catholic king James II in 1685, he joined the Irish Army and fought for James in the Williamite War (1689–1691). He saw action in the battles of Newtownbutler and the Boyne. The defeat led him into his final French exile at Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

Hamilton became a writer only after the end of his military career while living at the Jacobite exile court. He chose French as his language and adopted a light and elegant style, seeking to amuse and entertain his reader. He is known for the Mémoires du Comte de Grammont, which focus on the time his brother-in-law Philibert de Gramont, spent at the court of Charles II. These Mémoires are a classic of French literature and a source for the history of the English Restoration.

Birth and origins

Anthony was born in 1644 or 1645 in Ireland, probably in Nenagh (/ˈniːnæ/), County Tipperary. He was the third son of George Hamilton and his wife Mary Butler.

His father was Scottish, the fourth son of James Hamilton, 1st Earl of Abercorn. He supported the Marquess of Ormond, lord lieutenant of Ireland, during the Irish Confederate Wars and the Cromwellian conquest, and called himself a baronet.

Anthony's mother was Irish, the third daughter of Thomas Butler, Viscount Thurles (courtesy title), who predeceased his father, Walter Butler, 11th Earl of Ormond, and therefore never succeeded to the earldom. She also was a sister of James Butler, marquess of Ormond and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Her family, the Butlers, were Old English.

Anthony's father has been confused with his granduncle George Hamilton of Greenlaw and Roscrea. Both are called George and both married a Mary Butler. In 1640 Ormond had granted Anthony's father Nenagh for 31 years. Anthony was probably born there, despite some giving Roscrea, where the granduncle lived. Hamilton's parents had married in 1635, despite earlier dates reported in error, due to the mistaken identity.

Anthony was one of nine siblings. See James, George, Elizabeth, Richard, and John. Anthony's parents were both Catholic, and so was Anthony.

Irish childhood

Hamilton was born during the Irish Confederate War. His father, despite being Catholic, sided with the lord lieutenant against the Confederates. The war had been halted by a truce in 1643, and was believed to have ended when the first Ormond peace was signed in March 1646. However, strong opposition to the peace from the Catholic Church caused the Confederates to split into a clerical and a peace faction. In May, Lady Hamilton, with Anthony and his siblings, left Nenagh and was brought to Dublin for their security. Similar rescues were organised for her mother, Lady Thurles, and her sisters, Lady Muskerry and Lady Loughmoe. In August the Papal Nuncio Rinuccini rejected the first Ormond peace. In September the Confederate Ulster army, in support of the clerical faction, took Roscrea, where Hamilton's aunt (not his mother despite contrary opinions) was spared when the castle was taken.

In January 1647 Hamilton's father returned to Dublin from a mission to the king for Ormond. He brought secret instructions directing Ormond to hand Dublin over to the English rather than to the Irish when the need came. Ormond therefore abandoned Dublin to Michael Jones in July and left for England. Little Anthony, his mother and siblings seemed to have stayed behind in Ireland until 1651.

In the summer of 1648, Ulster troops under Phelim MacTuoll O'Neill stormed Nenagh, but Inchiquin with his Protestant Munster army soon retook the town for the king. Anthony, his mother, and siblings avoided both these dangers by having been removed to Dublin.

In August Hamilton's father was in France at Queen Henrietta Maria's exile court, preparing Ormond's return to Ireland in September.

In 1649, during the Cromwellian conquest, Ormond made Hamilton's father receiver-general of the revenues and governor of Nenagh Castle, which he tried to defend when Henry Ireton attacked it in November 1650.

First French exile

Having lost the leadership, Ormond left for France in December 1650. Hamilton's father could not leave with him as he was accused of fraud by the clerical faction. Found innocent, Hamilton's father, accompanied by his family, left Ireland in spring 1651. Anthony, his mother and siblings, seem to have always stayed in Ireland until then. Anthony was about seven. They went to Caen, Normandy, where they were accommodated for some time by Anthony's aunt Elizabeth Preston, the Marchioness of Ormond. His father and his elder brothers, James and George, served Charles II in various functions. Lady Ormond with her children left for England in August 1652, whereas Anthony's mother moved to Paris where she lived in the Convent of the Feuillantines [fr]. The Hamilton brothers frequented the court of the young Charles II and his mother, Henrietta Maria, the dowager queen, at the Louvre.

Restoration

Portrait attributed to François de Troy (c. 1700)

In May 1660 the Restoration brought Charles II on the English throne. His father and his elder brothers moved to the court at Whitehall. Charles II restored Donalong, Ulster, to Hamilton's father. About that year Charles allegedly created Hamilton's father baronet of Donalong and Nenagh, but the king, if he really went that far, refused to go further because the family was Catholic.

Anthony's elder brothers, James and George, became courtiers at Whitehall. In 1661 the King helped to arrange a Protestant marriage for James. Early in 1661 Anthony's father also brought his wife and younger children to London, where they lived for some time all together in a house near Whitehall.

In January 1663 at Whitehall, Anthony met Philibert, chevalier de Gramont, a French exile, who had got into trouble by courting a maid of honour, on whom Louis XIV had set his eyes.

Gramont had no difficulties to integrate as French was spoken at the court. Hamilton befriended Gramont, who soon became part of the inner circle. Gramont courted Anthony's sister Elizabeth. He married her in London, either in December 1663 or early in 1664. In March 1664, Louis XIV, having heard of Gramont's marriage, allowed him to return.

Second French exile

In 1667, Anthony's brother George refused to take the oath of supremacy and went to France. It seems that Anthony went with him. In 1671 George recruited a regiment in Ireland for French service. Anthony seems to have been with him and helped his cousin John Butler to save Dublin Castle from destruction by fire. Anthony then took service in that regiment, fighting in the Franco-Dutch War (1672–1678). They were later joined by Anthony's younger brother Richard. In 1672, the desastrous "rampjaar" of the Dutch, the regiment garrisoned Liège and fought at the siege of Utrecht. In 1673 Captain Anthony was in Limerick recruiting for the regiment.

Portrait engraved by Edward Scriven, from the 1811 London edition of the Mémoires

Anthony probably fought together with George under Turenne against German imperial troops in the Battle of Sinsheim in June 1674, and did surely so at Entzheim in October, where they were wounded. In the winter 1674/5 Anthony, together with George and Richard, travelled to England from where George returned to France while Anthony and Richard continued to Ireland to recruit. French ships picked up the recruits at Kinsale in April 1675 after a missed appointment at Dingle in March.

Anthony's Irish voyage caused him to miss Turenne's winter campaign in which the French marched south and surprised the Germans in upper Alsace, beating them at Turckheim in January 1675. George was there.

In July 1675 Hamilton's regiment, probably including Anthony, was at Sasbach where George witnessed Turenne's death. At the retreat from Sasbach in August, the regiment suffered 450 casualties in the rearguard actions of the Battle of Altenheim. Condé was called in and stopped the German advance. However, Condé was soon replaced with Luxembourg. In the winter 1675/6 the Hamilton brothers again went recruiting and visited Lady Arran, the wife of Richard Butler, 1st Earl of Arran in January 1676. She called them "ye monsieurs" and one of them "comte Hamilton". In June George was killed while commanding Luxembourg's rearguard at the Zaberner Steige (Col de Saverne) where imperial troops under the Duke of Lorraine pursued the French who were retreating eastward to Zabern (Saverne) in lower Alsace.

Reputedly, Anthony succeeded his brother as comte d'Hamilton, but that title may never have existed. Thomas Dongan, who had been lieutenant-colonel, was preferred over Anthony as the new colonel of what had been Hamilton's regiment. Louis XIV told him that he had no other regiment for him. Anthony left while Richard became lieutenant-colonel. In August 1678 the Peace of Nijmegen ended the Franco-Dutch War. The regiment was disbanded in December 1678.

Hamilton seems to have lived in Ireland between 1677 and 1684. He may have been the "comte d'Hamilton" who in 1681 played one of six zephyrs needed in the performance of Quinault's ballet the Triomphe de l'Amour, to music by Lully, at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye before the king. However, it could also have been Richard.

Ireland

In February 1685 the Catholic James II acceded to the English throne. In April James sent Richard Talbot, a Catholic, to Ireland to purge the Irish army of "Cromwellians". Talbot started replacing Protestant officers with Catholic ones, recruiting among others Anthony and his younger brothers Richard and John. Anthony was appointed lieutenant-colonel of Sir Thomas Newcomen's infantry regiment. In June James created Talbot earl of Tyrconnell. In August Anthony was appointed governor of Limerick where Newcomen's regiment was garrisoned, replacing Sir William King, a Protestant. Anthony attended Mass in public. In October 1685 Henry Hyde, 2nd Earl of Clarendon was appointed lord lieutenant. He arrived in Dublin in January 1686. In March 1686 James entrusted Talbot with the command of the Irish army. At the end of 1686 Hamilton was appointed to the Irish privy council. In February 1687 Hamilton was promoted to colonel. By September 1688 Hamilton is mentioned as the colonel of a regiment of foot.

At the eve of the Glorious Revolution in late September 1688, James asked Tyrconnell to urgently send four Irish regiments to England. Hamilton's was among them. The troops landed on the English west coast in October and marched across the midlands to southern England. Hamilton's regiment was stationed in Portsmouth where Berwick, James's illegitimate son, was governor. The regiment surrendered in Portsmouth on 20 December 1688. On 23 of that same month James II embarked for France. It seems that Hamilton also fled to France and returned with the King to Ireland in March 1689.

In 1689 during the Williamite War, Tyrconnell promoted Hamilton major-general and gave him the command of the dragoons of an army under Justin McCarthy, Viscount Mountcashel, that he sent north to Belturbet, County Cavan, to fight the rebels of Enniskillen. In the battle of Newtownbutler, in July, Hamilton commanded the horse. The outcome would show that he was "better with his pen than with his sword". Mountcashel asked him to pursue retreating enemy troops, but the enemy led him into a trap and Hamilton's dragoons were routed. He was wounded in the leg at the beginning of the action and fled the scene. With Captain Peter Lavallin of Carroll's dragoons he was court martialled by de Rosen. Given his family's influence, Hamilton was acquitted, but Lavallin was shot. This affair destroyed Hamilton's reputation as a soldier. When in spring 1690 the first Irish Brigade was formed, the French insisted that neither Richard nor Anthony must be among its officers.

Hamilton rode in the cavalry charges at the Battle of the Boyne in July 1690. He also fought at William's Siege of Limerick. When William raised the siege end of August, Tyrconnell sent Hamilton to France to report the deliverance. He does not seem to have returned and seems to have been absent at the Battle of Aughrim in 1691, where his youngest brother, John, was fatally wounded.

Final French exile, death, and timeline

Hamilton spent most of the last thirty years of his life, from about 1690 on, at the exile court at the Château Vieux of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. He held no office, but James II gave him a generous pension, 166 livres, or about £13 per month, equivalent to about £2,000 in 2021. He also was given an partment in the castle

At Saint-Germain Hamilton got acquainted with the Bulkeleys, especially Anne and Henrietta, two of the daughters. Their father, Henry Bulkeley, Master of the Household, died in 1698. Their mother, Sophia, was a sister of the Belle Stuart. Anne married Berwick in 1700 at Saint-Germain, as his second wife. Hamilton seems to have been in love with Henrietta. They did not marry because she had no dowry and Hamilton thought his pension insufficient to support a family.

Hamilton was part of the circle around the Duchess of Maine, and it was partly at her seat at Sceaux that he wrote the Mémoires that made him famous. In 1701 he accompanied Berwick on a mission to Rome to ask the new pope, Clement XI, to support the Jacobites. Anthony resented the oppressive religiosity of James's last years. In September 1701 James II died at Saint-Germain. Hamilton wrote a poem about his death, "Sur l'agonie du feu roi d'Angleterre". In 1703 Louis XIV gave Hamilton's sister Elizabeth a house called Les Moulineaux at the end of the park of the Château de Versailles, where Hamilton often visited her. She found the name ordinary and wanted to call it Pontalie.

In 1704 Hamilton visited his friend Gramont at his castle of Séméac in Gascogne where he decided to write Gramont's memoirs. In 1707 Gramont died in Paris. In 1708 Hamilton's sister Elizabeth died, also in Paris.

In the summer of 1712, James III, the Old Pretender, left Saint-Germain as France was about to drop the Jacobites, a concession they made in 1713 at the Peace of Utrecht. Hamilton's brother Richard followed James III to Bar-le-Duc in Lorraine, whereas Hamilton stayed behind at Saint-Germain and was allowed to keep his apartment. The dowager queen, Mary of Modena, also stayed behind. Hamilton met the young Voltaire at the suppers of the Society of the Temple [fr] shortly before 1715.

Hamilton never married and died at the Château Vieux of Saint-Germain-en-Laye on 20 April 1719. He was buried on 21 April in the parish church.

Works

Hamilton came from an English-speaking family but chose to write in French. People often wonder how a foreigner could write French so well in that light and elegant style considered so typically French. Hamilton was a well known author in the 18th century. Voltaire and La Harpe mention him honourably. Today, Hamilton is mainly known for a single book: the Mémoires du Comte de Grammont, the only work published while he was alive. He also wrote at least five tales and many poems, songs, epistles, and letters. One might enumerate the following as worthwhile mentioning (ordered by year of publication):

• 1713 Mémoires de la vie du comte de Grammont [Memoirs of the Life of the Count of Grammont] (Cologne: Pierre Marteau), read online in French or in English
• 1730 Le Bélier [The Ram] (Paris: Jean François Josse), read online in French or in English
• 1730 Histoire de Fleur d'Epine [Thornflower Story] (Paris: Jean François Josse), read online in French or in English
• 1730 Quatre Facardins [Four Facardins] (Paris: Jean François Josse), read online in French or in English
• 1731 in Œuvres mêlées en prose et en vers [Miscellaneous works in prose and verse] (Paris: Jean François Josse):
  • De l'usage de la vie dans la vieillesse [Of the use of life in old age], p. 63 of Poésies [Poems], read online
  • Sur l'agonie du feu roi d'Angleterre [On the Agony of the King of England], p. 66 of Poésies [Poems], read online
  • Epistle à monsieur le comte de Grammont [Epistle to Count Gramont], written in 1704, p. 1 of Epitres et lettres, read online in French or in English
  • Zeneyde (or Zénéide), read online in French or in English
• 1776 L'Enchanteur Faustus [The Enchanter Faustus], read online in French or in English

Grammont Memoirs

The Mémoires du Comte de Gramont were originally planned to cover Gramont's entire life but were cut short so that they end with his marriage. Hamilton pretended the memoirs were dictated to him by Gramont. He started work on the memoirs in 1704 and completed them in 1710. For Gramont's life up to his arrival in London in January 1663, Gramont was Hamilton's only source. This first part of the memoirs may have been jotted down in a form quite similar to how Gramont told it. The second, "English", part seems to be more Hamilton's work. The subtitle of the first edition "l'histore amoureuse de la cour d'Angleterre" (lovelife of the English court) describes this part, for which Hamilton had Gramont, who died in 1707, and also Elizabeth, who died in 1708, as witnesses. Hamilton's brothers James and George, important characters of the second part, had died in 1673 and in 1676.

The book was a bestseller of its time and made Hamilton a classical writer of France. It is still admired for its graceful and elegant French. The memoirs were written to amuse and entertain the reader and sometimes depart from the correct chronological order. The memoirs situate themselves at the cross-roads between memoirs, biography, and fiction.

The memoirs were first circulated in manuscript and then published in 1713, apparently without Hamilton's knowledge. The imprint says: Cologne by "Pierre Marteau", a pseudonym often used for books forbidden by the censors. The real publisher might have been hiding in Holland, or at Rouen. In 1817 the Catholic Church inscribed the book on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, probably for its lack of morals. Early French editions often deformed the English surnames and placenames. Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill Press edition of 1772 corrected them.

The first English translation, by Abel Boyer, followed in hot pursuite in 1714. In this edition Boyer, fearing an uproar, hid the persons' identities behind their initials.

Frontispiece of the 1713 edition

Tales

Hamilton's tales (contes) or short stories were inspired by Charles Perrault's fairy tales, published in 1697, and by Antoine Galland's Thousand and One Nights, published between 1704 and 1708. Hamilton's tales are their parodies or fan fictions. They play in fantasy worlds with fairy-tale or orientalist accessories. The characters' adventures are often surrealistic, absurd, difficult to understand, or do not make sense beyond surprise and entertainment.

Hamilton wrote Le Bélier, in 1705. It pretends to give an etymology for "Pontalie", the name that his sister Elizabeth invented for her house at Versailles. The Bélier is full of comical and absurd inventions. The exhortion, "Belier, mon ami, tu me ferais plaisir si tu voulais commencer par le commencement," became a proverb. Voltaire, in a letter written in December 1729, mentioned that Josse (a Parisian editor) was printing the Bélier.

In imitation and parody of Thousand and One Nights Hamilton wrote three ironic and extravagant tales: Fleur d'Épine, Zénéyde, and Les quatre Facardins; the last two left incomplete. Fleur d'Épine was praised by La Harpe. Zénéyde was written in 1695 as it mentions the death of François de Harlay, Archbishop of Paris, who died that year.

Hamilton's Enchanteur Faustus tells how Faust conjures up Helen of Troy, Fair Rosamond, and other beauties to appear before Queen Elizabeth of England. Contrary to Hamilton's other tales, this one is linear and easy to follow. Hamilton dedicated it to his niece Margaret, his brother John's daughter.

Hamilton's tales were circulated privately as manuscripts during his lifetime. The first three were published individually in Paris in 1730, ten years after the author's death. A collection of his works, Œuvres mêlées en prose et en vers, published in 1731, contained the unfinished Zénéyde. L'Enchanteur Faustus was published belatedly in 1776 but might have been written much earlier, probably even before the Memoirs.

Other works

Hamilton also wrote songs and exchanged amusing verses with the Duke of Berwick. He helped his niece Claude Charlotte, Gramont's daughter, who had married Henry Stafford-Howard, 1st Earl of Stafford in 1694, to carry on a witty correspondence with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.