Marie-Aurore de Saxe
Marie-Aurore de Saxe (1748–1821) was the illegitimate daughter of Marshal Maurice de Saxe and actress Marie-Geneviève Rinteau. She is known as the grandmother of the writer George Sand and was a noted free-thinker who liked Voltaire, Rousseau and Buffon.
She was born on 20 September 1748 and baptized on 19 October in Paris. Her father showed little interest in her, and she was registered under a false name. After money trouble and difficult support from relatives, she received some help from the Dauphine, Maria Josepha of Saxony, and Louis XV gave her a pension.
In 1766, the Dauphine arranged Marie-Aurore’s marriage to Comte Antoine de Horn. She had to change her baptismal record to prove her father was Maurice de Saxe. They married in Paris on 9 June 1766, but her husband was killed in a duel on 20 February 1767. Their marriage was said not to have been consummated.
Marie-Aurore later tried to find support, turning to famous figures like Voltaire, but with little success. She returned to live with her mother for a time. Her mother died in 1775, and Marie-Aurore moved to live with her granddaughter and a tutor.
In London she married Louis-Claude Dupin de Francueil on 14 January 1777, and they had a son, Maurice-François-Élisabeth Dupin de Francueil, born 9 January 1778. Their son later became the father of George Sand.
The couple lived lavishly for a while, and they owned homes in Paris and in the countryside. Louis-Claude Dupin de Francueil died on 6 June 1786.
During the French Revolution, Marie-Aurore bought the large estate of Nohant-Vic near La Châtre in 1793. She hid valuables and noble papers during the Terror, but was arrested on 25 November 1793 and imprisoned at the English convent in Paris. She was released on 21 August 1794 and returned to Nohant.
Her son Maurice Dupin became a soldier in the Napoleonic Wars. He secretly married Sophie Delaborde in Paris in 1804, and they had a daughter, Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin, who would become the author George Sand. The family later settled in Madrid for a time, where Maurice’s son Auguste was born and died in 1808, and Maurice Dupin himself died in a riding accident that same year.
Marie-Aurore cared for her granddaughter, introduced her to Rousseau, and helped shape Sand’s life. Marie-Aurore de Saxe died on 26 December 1821 at Nohant. Her last words were reportedly to her granddaughter: “You lose your best friend.” She was buried at Nohant beside her son.
George Sand later wrote about her grandmother, using the Parlement of Paris judgment from 1766 and other sources to tell the story of Marie-Aurore’s life.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 21:01 (CET).