David Prashker's Book Of Days: March 9

1661

The death of Jules, Mazarin (born July 14, 1602), co-Regent of France during the childhood of Louis XIV, though originally he was Giulio Raimondo Mazarini, a native of Pescina, in Abruzzi, in the Kingdom of Naples. But really what makes his tale worthy of recording is not him but his five nieces, who he brought to France in hope of finding them all aristocratic marriages, the wealth that would accompany it, and the dynasty that would follow. He failed, but two of those nieces most certainly did not, albeit not in a manner that he would have wanted, let alone approved. Maria Mancini can be found on June 22; she and sister Hortense are together, unaccompanied by any male escorts, on the Ancien Régime page of "Woman-Blindness".