ARMIE
(French b. Rouen (76) Seine Maritime 1889 — d. >1957
active
1916-1948
(anagram of Marie, Pseud. de Mlle Marie Louise Thérèse Tassin de
Tassin)
Mlle Tassin belongs to a family of high
ranking civil servants and militaries. The family had its roots in Orléans & is
divided into numerous branches.
Since the beginning of times a Tassin has always been at the service of a King
in one capacity or another. One Tassin de Breuil was the taylor of Jean
le Bon
(best remembered as the king who was vanquished at the Battle
of Poitiers and taken captive to England).
Armie is the daughter of Henri Charles Armand (b. Alger 1853-d.Rouen 1921) Commandeur
Legion Honneur Général commandant 9th Brigade Infanterie (1921)
and Marie de Cabrol (b.1858-d.1938) who was known
as la
Générale Tassin.
She had a brother, who, as early as 1922 was known as Baron
Tassin de Friedenau
(or Fudonau)
The Tassins lived at Rouen until 1922 and then Caen. They holidayed
in San Sebastian where Armie learned to speak castillan.
The
Tassins were royalistes and légitimistes, partisans of the Bourbons
as legitime kings of France (as opposed to the Orléans). Par
manque of
a French king in residence they had taken up the cause of the "legistimist" pretenders
to the throne of France, the Spanish Bourbons, who during part of Armie lifetime
were embodied in the person of Alphone XIII, king of Spain.
Her fascination with the King started when just seventeen as plain
Marie Tassin, she was one of the runner-ups in a competition of piropos (compliments)
for the newlywed Alphonse and Ena de Battenberg in May 1906, organized by Je
sais tout which were presented bound in volume to the couple.
During the years, Armie in her own right, her
mother and her brother contributed to the many charity activities of Queen
Victoria wife of Alphonse. ABC reported in 1927 their
donations for the funding of the University of Madrid, patronized by the Palace. "
Mlle. Marie Tassin de Tassin , 300 francos; madame la genérale Tassin
, cien francos; M. le barón de, Tassin de Fudonau, 200 francos "
By the Twenties ARMIE had become the acknowledged
agiographer of King Alphonse XIII and the Spanish royal family whom she met numerous
times.
Since
1905 Armie had been going from from Caen to Paris to pay her hommages to Alphone
at the Gare to Nord every time he left or arrived in Paris.
On
one occasion, while waiting for the king's arrival , Armie was mistook for
an anarchist, arrested and jailed. As ever faithful, she was there, on the 21
of March 1931 "Pero aquí está la señorita
Maria Luisa Tassin erguida y protocolaria y como ensimismada, como ausente,
creyendo a caso vivir una página de los Chuanes o de la Vendée" reported
ABC.
Three
weeks later the
King fled Spain at the advent of the Second Spanish Republic.
Alphonse XIII went to live in Rome and then
in Paris where Armie became part of his "court" in exile. On the death
of the incumbent
Alfonso Carlos de Bourbon, Duke of San Jaime in 1936, he was acknowledged by
the French "légitimistes" as
King of France and Navarre.
After the death of Alphonse in 1941 Tassin
continued to support the cause through his
heir, Don Jaime de Bourbón, Duke of Segovia and Anjou.
She was still part of his followers in Paris as late as 1955.
In 1957, nearly seventy, M.lle de Tassin became president of the short lived "Association
générale
des légitimistes de France". She never married. She died in Paris,
having spent her life in the pursuit of the impossible dream of restoring the
French Monarchy.
Author of "Un descendant de Louis XIV, SA MAJESTE LE ROI ALPHONSE XIII".
Rouen, imp. Gabriel Dervois , 1926, Reina María Cristina, madre
de un gran rey by Marie Tassin de Tassin (Armie), 1935, Deux grandes
figures d'exilés : Alphonse XIII et le Cardinal Ségura, (Librairie
du Régionalisme, Rouen, Maugard, 1939), and poetry (Treize Chansons
d'une Autre Age, Airs et Paroles d'Armie, Lecerf, Rouen, 1928, Poèmes
de guerre, 1914-15-16, Dervois, Rouen, 1916)
(sources: Universidad de Navarra:www.unav.es & ABC
& others omitted)
