ABSTRACT
This is how Louise de Coligny closed a letter she wrote to her stepdaughter Charlotte-Brabantine de La Tremoille in July 1601. The same sentiments recur with variations in all her letters to Charlotte-Brabantine: The “little darlings” are Charlotte-Brabantine’s children Henri, Charlotte, and Frédéric de La Tremoille. As Evelyne Berriot-Salvadore has written, “Louise de Coligny seems to be the emotional centre around whom a warm and supportive family developed.”2 We are fortunate that Louise’s letters to Charlotte-Brabantine, along with letters written to Charlotte-Brabantine by her older sister Elisabeth de Bouillon, some letters from their other siblings, and from Charlotte-Brabantine’s husband the Duke de La Tremoille, and letters exchanged among the children and their parents, have been preserved in the La Tremoille family archives.3
