ARMIE
( b. Caen? ca1889 ? — d. ca1980?)
active 1916-1948
(anagram of Marie, Pseud. de Mlle Marie Louise Thérèse Tassin, a.k.a. Tassin de Tassin)

Blanche de Rosemai, Ill. Manon Iessel,
Nouvelle Bibliothèque de Suzette, 1955

Armie, Mlle Marie Louise Thérèse Tassin, is the daughter of Henri Charles Armand (b. Alger 1853-d.Paris 1921) Saint-Cyrien, Commandeur Legion Honneur Général commandant 9th Brigade Infanterie (1921) and Henriette Lucie Hélène de Cabrol de Mouté (b.1858-d.1938). They married in  Jouy-en-Josas (Yvelines ) in 1887.

She had a brother,  (André?) who, as early as 1921 was known as Baron Tassin de Friedenau (or Fudonau)

From her father's side, 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 in 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).

Through her mother, Armie was well connected to the landed gentry and the business aristocracy of the second empire. Henriette's father was Alfred Joseph Baron de CABROL de MOUTÉ Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur, Attaché à l'Ambassade de France London (1854); Attaché au cabinet du Ministre des Affaires Etrangères (1857); Mayor de Jouy-en-Josas (1868-mai 1879). In 1880 he bought the Domaine de Vilvert at Jouy on which he built what became known as  Le Château de Vilvert. The domaine remained the property of the Cabrols  until 1949.
Her maternal grandmother, Louise Mallet was, on one side the grandaughter of Christophe Philippe OBERKAMPF, inventor and manufacturers of printed cotton ( la toile de Jouy) on the other, the grandaughter of Guillaume Mallet of the Banque Mallet (founded 1713) who in 1800 became Regent of La Banque de France.

Armie's parents lived in Amiens and Caen until 1911 and then in Rouen.  They holidayed in San Sebastian where Armie learned castillan.
General Tassin died in 1921 in Paris following a routine operation. Mme Tassin died in Rouen in 1938 and was buried in Paris cimetière Montparnasse. As it is the custom in France she was known as la Générale Tassin after her husband military grade.

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 a runner-up 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.

In the following years, Armie in her own right, her mother and  her brother contributed to the many charity activities of the Spanish Royal family.
ABC reported in 1914 Marie Tassin's donation of one peseta for Pedagogium the foundation for poor Spanish children patronized by the Infanta Doña Paz; in 1927 the Tassins donations for the funding of the University of Madrid, patronized by Queen Victoria wife of Alphonse " 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.
Around this time, Marie acquired, maybe for services to the Spanish royal family, the appellative de Tassin, whilst her brother became baron Friedenau.

Since 1905 Armie had been going to Paris to pay her respects to Alphonse at the Gare du Nord every time he left or arrived in Paris.
On one occasion, while waiting for the king's arrival , Armie was mistaken 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". After much bickering the Association dissolved: for some legitimistes Don Jaime was not a winning card: he was deaf-mute therefore unsuitalbe to certain  aspects of governement, secondly he was divorced and remarried in a civil ceremony to a commoner singer.

Tassin never married. She lived the life of a rentière on the income of her mother's fortune and the occasional inheritances from her wealthy family.
Beside writing she was, like her grandmother Mallet, very active in charity work.
She was still alive and living in Paris in the early Eighties when she was interviewed by Philippe Montillet for his book "Les Princes ainés de la Maison de Bourbon  1883-1941". She died having spent her entire 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)