Louise Henriette de Bourbon
Louise Henriette de Bourbon | |
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Louise Henriette de Bourbon (20 June 1726 – 9 February 1759), Mademoiselle de Conti at birth, was a French princess, who, by marriage, became Duchess of Chartres (1743–1752), then
The new Duke of Orléans and his wife were then addressed as
Background
Louise Henriette was born in Paris, the only daughter of
Her father died in 1727 due to a "chest swelling". Her father was known to have been abusive to his wife and left her without even having apologised to his wife. As such her oldest surviving brother
Marriage
One of Louise Henriette's cousins,
Louise Henriette's mother, Louise Élisabeth de Bourbon, hoped the marriage would put an end to conflict between the House of Bourbon-Condé and the House of Orléans, the source being animosity between Louise Élisabeth's mother,
In 1731, a marriage between the two families had already taken place, that of Henriette's elder brother
Among her extramarital affairs, she is said to have had a relationship with the Count of Melfort whom she met at the Château de Saint-Cloud after the birth of her son. During the Revolution of 1789, Philippe-Égalité publicly claimed that his real father was not his mother's husband at all but instead a coachman at the Palais-Royal.[2] This assertion was likely for political reasons to distance the ambitious Duke from the ancien regime. However DNA testing in a 2014 established the Y-chromosome haplogroup and ySTR pattern of the House of Bourbon, and has indeed confirmed the biological legitimacy of Louise Henriette's eldest son, Philippe-Égalité. As part of this project samples were taken from 3 living genealogical descendants of Louis XIII, namely Axel, Prince of Bourbon-Parma; Henri, Prince of Bourbon-Parma, and João Henrique, Prince of Orléans-Braganza. The former 2 are documented male line descendants of Philip V of Spain, who was a grandson of Louis XIV.
The latter is a direct male line descendant of Philip I, Duke of Orleans - a younger brother of Louis XIV and the ancestor of Louise Henriette's husband. All 3 testers were a genetic partilineal match on a ySTR comparison, and were assigned to sub-haplogroup R1b1b2a1a1b*(R-Z381), now deemed the upstream patrilineal snip of the House of Bourbon.[3]
Issue
The couple had three children:
- A daughter (Château de Saint-Cloud, 12 or 13 July 1745 – 14 December 1745, Château de Saint-Cloud);
- Louis Philippe Joseph d'Orléans (Château de Saint-Cloud, 13 April 1747, – 6 November 1793, Place de la Révolution, Paris (executed)), who succeeded his father as Duke of Orléans in 1785,
- Duke of Montpensierat birth,
- Duke of Chartresat the death of his grandfather in 1752,
- Duke of Orléans at the death of his father in 1785,
- known as Philippe-Égalité during the French Revolution;
- possible husband for Princess Kunigunde of Saxony (1740–1826), youngest daughter of Augustus III of Poland;
- married Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon, Mademoiselle de Penthièvre, and was the father of Louis-Philippe King of the French;
- Louise Marie Thérèse Bathilde d'Orléans (Château de Saint-Cloud, 9 July 1750 – 10 January 1822, Paris), the last princesse de Condé,
- possible bride for Ferdinand, Duke of Parma,
- married Louis Henry II, Prince of Condé,
- known as Mademoiselle at court prior to her marriage,
- known as Citoyenne Vérité during the French Revolution.
- possible bride for
Death
Louise Henriette died on 9 February 1759 at age 32, with her husband and children at her side, at the
In June 1759, shortly after his twelfth birthday, Louis Philippe, her only son, was presented before the court at Versailles, officially meeting King
Ancestry
Ancestors of Louise Henriette de Bourbon Madame of Montespan | |||||||||||||
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Notes and references
- ^ "The Spring (La Source)". Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- ^ ISBN 2903702578, pp. 190-196.
- PMID 24105374.
- ^ Profile, corpusetampois.com; accessed 15 April 2014.
- ^ 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. 45.