Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Louis Joseph de Bourbon
Basilica of St Denis
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1753; died 1760)​
​
​
(m. 1798; died 1813)​
Caroline of Hesse-Rotenburg
SignatureLouis Joseph de Bourbon's signature

Louis Joseph de Bourbon (9 August 1736 – 13 May 1818) was

Prince du Sang
.

Youth

Born on 9 August 1736 at

Louise Françoise de Bourbon, legitimated daughter of Louis XIV and Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart, Marquise de Montespan
.

During his father's lifetime, the infant Louis Joseph was known as the Duke of Enghien, (duc d'Enghien). At the age of four, following his father's death in 1740, and his mother's death in 1741,[1] he was placed under the care of his paternal uncle, Louis, Count of Clermont, his father's youngest brother.

Family

Louis Joseph had an older half sister, Henriette de Bourbon, Mademoiselle de Verneuil (1725–1780).

Through his mother, he was a first cousin of King

Viktoria of Hesse-Rotenburg, the Princess of Soubise
, was another first cousin.

In 1753, Louis Joseph married

Versailles
on 3 May 1753.

Together, they had three children: a daughter, Marie de Bourbon, who died young; an only son, Louis Henri de Bourbon, who would later become the last Prince of Condé; and a daughter, Louise Adélaïde de Bourbon. In 1770, his son married Bathilde d'Orléans, daughter of Louis Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, and sister of Philippe Égalité. The marriage was supposed to heal relations between the Condé and Orléans branches of the royal family.[2]

Louis Joseph's wife Charlotte died in 1760, and as time passed, his relationship with Maria Caterina Brignole, Princess of Monaco, became serious. Maria was the daughter of Giuseppe Brignole, Marquis of Groppoli and Maria Anna Balbi. By 1769, Maria had begun to set up a home in the Hôtel de Lassay, an annex of the Prince of Condé's primary residence, the Palais Bourbon.[3] In 1770, her jealous husband, Honoré III, Prince of Monaco, ordered the borders of Monaco closed in an attempt to prevent her from escaping. She managed, nonetheless, to cross into France and found her way to Le Mans, southwest of Paris, where she took refuge in a convent. Eventually, she was able to return to Paris.

Due to Maria Caterina's illicit position as the Prince of Condé's mistress, the new French queen, 18-year-old

Hôtel de Monaco, which was to be her permanent home in Paris. It was in the rue Saint-Dominique, near the Palais Bourbon, and was completed in 1777.[3] Subsequently, Prince Honoré of Monaco finally realized his relationship with Maria Caterina was completely finished and thereupon turned his attention to his own love affairs. Maria Caterina later wrote to her husband that their marriage could be summarised in three words: greed, bravery, and jealousy.[citation needed
]

Later life

Arms of the Prince of Condé

During both the reigns of

Burgundy
.

Furthermore, the Prince was the leader of the Condé army of émigrés. He used her great fortune to help finance the exiled French community's resistance movement.

In 1765, named the heir of his paternal aunt,

garden in the English style as well as an hameau, much like the contemporary one that Queen Marie Antoinette had created at Versailles and at the Petit Trianon
château.

Louis Joseph lived with his mistress Maria in France until the French Revolution, when the couple left for Germany and then Great Britain. In 1792, he wrote the Brunswick Manifesto, which further spurred French people's revolutionary fervor. In 1795, Prince Honoré of Monaco died, and on 24 October 1798, the Prince of Condé and Maria were married in London.[6][7] The marriage was kept secret for a decade, the couple reportedly becoming openly known as husband and wife only after 26 December 1808.[6]

Exile

During the French Revolution, Louis Joseph was a dedicated supporter of the monarchy and one of the principal leaders of the counter-revolutionary movement. After the

Madame Élisabeth
, was beheaded in 1794.

Louis Joseph established himself at

Armand-Emmanuel du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu, Pierre Louis Jean Casimir de Blacas and François-René de Chateaubriand
.

The

First French Republic, formally ending its hostilities against the French. With the loss of its closest allies, the army transferred into the service of the Russian tsar, Paul I and was stationed in Poland, returning in 1799 to the Rhine under Alexander Suvorov. In 1800 when Russia left the Allied coalition, the army re-entered English service and fought in Bavaria
.

The army was disbanded in 1801 without having achieved its principal ambition, restoring Bourbon rule in France. After the dissolution of the corps, the prince spent his exile in England, where he lived with his second wife, Maria Caterina Brignole, the divorced wife of Honoré III, Prince of Monaco, whom he had married in 1798. She died in 1813.

With the defeat of

Basilica of St Denis
.

Issue

  1. Marie de Bourbon, Mademoiselle de Bourbon (16 February 1755 – 22 June 1759) died in infancy.
  2. Louis Henri Joseph de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, Duke of Bourbon (13 April 1756 – 30 August 1830) married Bathilde d'Orléans and had issue.
  3. Louise Adélaïde de Bourbon (5 October 1757 – 10 March 1824) died unmarried.

Ancestry

References and notes

  1. ^ a b "BIOGRAPHICAL ETCHING". The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser. 15 January 1820. Retrieved 15 November 2013.
  2. Mademoiselle de Blois
    , legitimated daughters of Louis XIV
  3. ^ a b Braham (1980), p. 215.
  4. ^ It was at the Hôtel de Condé that the Marquis de Sade was born, his mother was a lady-in-waiting to Louis Joseph's mother, Caroline
  5. Napoleon I of France
  6. ^
    ISBN 0-85011-029-7
    .
  7. ^ The Royalty, peerage and aristocracy of the world, Vol 90
  8. ^ Genealogie ascendante jusqu'au quatrieme degre inclusivement de tous les Rois et Princes de maisons souveraines de l'Europe actuellement vivans [Genealogy up to the fourth degree inclusive of all the Kings and Princes of sovereign houses of Europe currently living] (in French). Bourdeaux: Frederic Guillaume Birnstiel. 1768. p. 42.

External links

Media related to Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé at Wikimedia Commons

Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé
Cadet branch of the House of Bourbon
Born: 9 August 1736 Died: 13 May 1818
French nobility
Preceded by Prince of Condé
27 January 1740 – 13 May 1818 		Succeeded by
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