Louise Anne de Bourbon
| Louise Anne de Bourbon | |
|---|---|
| Mademoiselle de Charolais | |
Louise Françoise de Bourbon | |
| Signature |  |
Louise Anne de Bourbon, Mademoiselle de Charolais (23 June 1695 – 8 April 1758) was a French princess, the daughter of
Biography
Early life
Born at the Palace of Versailles, Louise Anne was the fourth child and third daughter of her parents. Her eldest sisters were Marie Anne Gabrielle Éléonore de Bourbon and Louise Élisabeth de Bourbon. She was baptised in the chapel of Versailles on 24 November 1698 with her brother Louis Henri and her sister Louise Élisabeth.
Louise Anne's father died in 1710, eleven months after having inherited the title of Prince de Condé at the death of his own father. Since her first cousin, Louis d'Orléans, never had a daughter who survived into adulthood, Louise Anne became known at court by the style of Mademoiselle, which she held from 1728 when Louis' daughter, Louise Marie d'Orléans, died at the age of one.
During the Regency
During the
Louise Anne never married. At one time, she was considered as a possible bride for her cousin,
Voltaire, a friend of Richelieu, wrote the following verse concerning Louise-Anne:
- Frère ange de Charolois
- Dis-nous par quelle aventure
- Le cordon de Saint François
- Sert à Vénus de ceinture.
Reign of Louis XV
As the years passed, Louise Anne constantly intrigued for political prominence. She would later help her cousin Louis XV in his search for new mistresses. It was common gossip at the time that Louise Anne was actually one of the king's former mistresses; that she was his first unofficial sexual partner after his wife, possibly as early as the late 1720s, and that they had an on-and-off-affair for a few years and that she introduced him to prospective new mistresses.[1] However, other contemporaries claim that while Louise Anne did wish to become his lover and did attempt to seduce him, she never actually succeeded to become his mistress.[2] The king did, in any case, enjoy her company, and she belonged to his circle of personal friends and frequently attended court. Louise Anne's older sister, Louise Élisabeth, introduced Madame de Pompadour to the French court in the 1740s.[citation needed]
Louise Anne owned several estates. In 1735, she became the owner of the , which further augmented her personal real estate holdings.
Louise Anne died in Paris, at the Hôtel de Rothelin-Charolais, at the age of sixty-two. She was buried in the Carmelite Convent of the Faubourg Saint-Jacques. Her brother, Louis Henri, Duke of Bourbon, and her two sisters, Marie Anne de Bourbon and Élisabeth Alexandrine de Bourbon, were also buried there.
Ancestry
| Ancestors of Louise Anne de Bourbon Madame de Montespan | | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30. Jean de Grandseigne, marquis de Marsillac | ||||||||||||||||
| 15. Diane de Grandseigne | ||||||||||||||||
| 31. Catherine de La Béraudière, dame de Villenon | ||||||||||||||||
References
- ^ Edmond et Jules de Goncourt: La duchesse de Châteauroux et ses soeurs, Paris, 1906
- ^ Louis XV intime et les petites maitresses
- ^ 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. 44.
