Charlotte Élisabeth Godefride de Rohan
Encyclopedia
Charlotte de Rohan was a French aristocrat who married into the House of Condé, a cadet branch of the ruling House of Bourbon
, during the Ancien Régime. She was Princess of Condé
by her marriage. She has no known descendants today as her grandson, heir to the Condé family, died without children and her daughter remained childless. Charlotte was praised for being a cultured and attractive princess of her age.
, prince de Soubise, a great friend of King Louis XV of France
. Her mother was Anne Marie Louise de La Tour d'Auvergne
. Anne Marie Louise was a granddaughter of Marie Anne Mancini
, one of the famous Mazarinettes
.
Through Marie Anne Mancini
, Charlotte was a cousin of both Prince Eugene of Savoy
and Louis Joseph de Bourbon, two famous generals during the reign of Louis XIV. Anne Marie Louise was also the great-granddaughter of Madame de Ventadour
, the governess of King Louis XV as a small child.
Charlotte was born at the Hôtel de Soubise in Paris, the townhouse of the Rohan family. She had a younger half sister, Victoire Armande Josèphe de Rohan
. Victoire would later become the governess of the future King Louis XVI
. Victoire was also a cousin of Queen Marie Antoinette
's ill fated friend, the princesse de Lamballe
.
As the House of Rohan claimed descent from the Dukes of Brittany, Charlotte and her family were accorded the rank of princes étrangers
at the French court with the corresponding style of Highness
.
In 1739, she was created Marchioness of Gordes
and Countess of Moncha, both of which she received from her mother when she died. In 1745, she was made the Viscountess of Guignen
in her own right. In her dowry, she was given the Lordship of Annonay, which she passed onto the Bourbons.
Charlotte and Louis Joseph de Bourbon, prince de Condé were married in a ceremony at the Palace of Versailles
on 3 May 1753. Charlotte's father reportedly gave a dowry of 20 million Livres.
Louis Joseph was a year older than Charlotte. Louis Joseph had been the prince de Condé since 1740 when at the young age of four he had lost his father, Louis Henri, prince de Condé. His father, as the duc de Bourbon, had been at one time the chief minister of King Louis XV and had been instrumental in arranging the young king's marriage to the Polish princess Marie Leszczyńska. He was only forty-eight at the time of his death.
Louis Joseph's mother, the German princess, Caroline of Hesse-Rotenburg
, died the next year in 1741 at the age of twenty-two. As a result, Louis Joseph was an orphan and had been raised by his uncle the Count of Clermont.
The new princesse de Condé was among the most important females at court, ranking behind Queen Marie Leszczyńska and her eight daughters, the Duchess of Orléans, and Mademoiselle
; Mademoiselle would later become her daughter-in-law.
Louis Joseph possessed the rank of prince du sang
at court with the corresponding style of Serene Highness
, a style Charlotte assumed when she became the princesse de Condé.
Three children were born to the marriage.
First, a girl was born in 1755, soon to be followed by a desired son in 1756. Another daughter was born in 1758. Charlotte lived at the Hôtel de Condé
in Paris, the Condé family residence, since the Palais Bourbon
built by Louis Joseph's grandmother, Louise-Françoise de Bourbon
, had been sold to the crown in 17. A cultured princess, she was kind to the poor.
It was at the Hôtel de Condé that Charlotte died after a long illness as reported by the Duke of Luynes. She was just twenty-two years old, the same age her mother-in-law, Caroline, had been at her death. She was buried at the Carmelite Convent of the Faubourg Saint-Jacques. The official time for mourning for Charlotte began on 11 March.
Her husband went on to marry again in 1798. He married as his second wife the Italian noblewoman, Maria-Caterina di Brignole-Sale
, the widow of Honoré III, Prince of Monaco
.
House of Bourbon
The House of Bourbon is a European royal house, a branch of the Capetian dynasty . Bourbon kings first ruled Navarre and France in the 16th century. By the 18th century, members of the Bourbon dynasty also held thrones in Spain, Naples, Sicily, and Parma...
, during the Ancien Régime. She was Princess of Condé
Princess of Condé
- Princess of Condé :-See also:*Duchess of Bourbon*Duchess of Guise*Duchess of Enghien*Duchess of Montmorency...
by her marriage. She has no known descendants today as her grandson, heir to the Condé family, died without children and her daughter remained childless. Charlotte was praised for being a cultured and attractive princess of her age.
Biography
Charlotte Godefride Élisabeth de Rohan was born on 7 October 1737 in Paris. Her father was Charles de RohanCharles, Prince of Soubise
Charles de Rohan , duke of Rohan-Rohan, seigneur of Roberval, and marshal of France from 1758, was a military man, a minister to the kings Louis XV and Louis XVI, and a notorious libertine. The last male of his branch of the House of Rohan, he was also the great grandfather to the duc d'Enghien,...
, prince de Soubise, a great friend of King Louis XV of France
Louis XV of France
Louis XV was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1 September 1715 until his death. He succeeded his great-grandfather at the age of five, his first cousin Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, served as Regent of the kingdom until Louis's majority in 1723...
. Her mother was Anne Marie Louise de La Tour d'Auvergne
Anne Marie Louise de La Tour d'Auvergne
Anne Marie Louise de La Tour d'Auvergne was a French noblewoman and the wife of Charles de Rohan. She was Marchioness of Gordes and Countess of Moncha in her own right as well as Princess of Soubise by marriage...
. Anne Marie Louise was a granddaughter of Marie Anne Mancini
Marie Anne Mancini
Marie Anne Mancini, duchesse de Bouillon , was the youngest of the five famous Mancini sisters, who along with two of their female Martinozzi cousins, were known at the court of King Louis XIV of France as the Mazarinettes because their uncle was the king's chief minister, Cardinal...
, one of the famous Mazarinettes
Mazarinettes
The Mazarinettes were the seven nieces of Cardinal Jules Mazarin, the Chief Minister of France during the youth of King Louis XIV. He brought them, together with three of his nephews, from Italy to France in the years 1647 and 1653. Afterwards, he arranged advantageous marriages for them to...
.
Through Marie Anne Mancini
Marie Anne Mancini
Marie Anne Mancini, duchesse de Bouillon , was the youngest of the five famous Mancini sisters, who along with two of their female Martinozzi cousins, were known at the court of King Louis XIV of France as the Mazarinettes because their uncle was the king's chief minister, Cardinal...
, Charlotte was a cousin of both Prince Eugene of Savoy
Prince Eugene of Savoy
Prince Eugene of Savoy , was one of the most successful military commanders in modern European history, rising to the highest offices of state at the Imperial court in Vienna. Born in Paris to aristocratic Italian parents, Eugene grew up around the French court of King Louis XIV...
and Louis Joseph de Bourbon, two famous generals during the reign of Louis XIV. Anne Marie Louise was also the great-granddaughter of Madame de Ventadour
Madame de Ventadour
Charlotte de La Motte Houdancourt, Duchess of Ventadour was the governess of King Louis XV of France, great-grandson of King Louis XIV. She is credited with saving Louis XV from the ministrations of the royal doctors when he was ill as a child...
, the governess of King Louis XV as a small child.
Charlotte was born at the Hôtel de Soubise in Paris, the townhouse of the Rohan family. She had a younger half sister, Victoire Armande Josèphe de Rohan
Victoire Armande Josèphe de Rohan
Victoire de Rohan, Princess of Guéméné was a French aristocrat who was the governess of the children of Louis XVI of France. She is known better as Madame de Guéméné...
. Victoire would later become the governess of the future King Louis XVI
Louis XVI of France
Louis XVI was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre until 1791, and then as King of the French from 1791 to 1792, before being executed in 1793....
. Victoire was also a cousin of Queen Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette ; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was an Archduchess of Austria and the Queen of France and of Navarre. She was the fifteenth and penultimate child of Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa and Holy Roman Emperor Francis I....
's ill fated friend, the princesse de Lamballe
Princess Marie Louise of Savoy
Maria Luisa of Savoy was a member of the House of Savoy. She was married at the age of 16 to Louis Alexandre de Bourbon, Prince de Lamballe, the heir to the greatest fortune in France. After her marriage, which lasted a year, she went to court and became the confidante of Queen Marie Antoinette...
.
As the House of Rohan claimed descent from the Dukes of Brittany, Charlotte and her family were accorded the rank of princes étrangers
Foreign Prince
Foreign Prince is the English translation of prince étranger, a high, though somewhat ambiguous, rank at the French royal court of the ancien régime.-Terminology:...
at the French court with the corresponding style of Highness
Highness
Highness, often used with a possessive adjective , is an attribute referring to the rank of the dynasty in an address...
.
In 1739, she was created Marchioness of Gordes
Gordes
Gordes is a commune in the Vaucluse département in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France.The residents are known as Gordiens...
and Countess of Moncha, both of which she received from her mother when she died. In 1745, she was made the Viscountess of Guignen
Guignen
Guignen is a commune in the Ille-et-Vilaine department of Brittany in north-western France.-Viscounts of Guignen:The title of Viscount of Guignen had been the property of the House of Rohan since the 15th century...
in her own right. In her dowry, she was given the Lordship of Annonay, which she passed onto the Bourbons.
Charlotte and Louis Joseph de Bourbon, prince de Condé were married in a ceremony at the Palace of Versailles
Palace of Versailles
The Palace of Versailles , or simply Versailles, is a royal château in Versailles in the Île-de-France region of France. In French it is the Château de Versailles....
on 3 May 1753. Charlotte's father reportedly gave a dowry of 20 million Livres.
Louis Joseph was a year older than Charlotte. Louis Joseph had been the prince de Condé since 1740 when at the young age of four he had lost his father, Louis Henri, prince de Condé. His father, as the duc de Bourbon, had been at one time the chief minister of King Louis XV and had been instrumental in arranging the young king's marriage to the Polish princess Marie Leszczyńska. He was only forty-eight at the time of his death.
Louis Joseph's mother, the German princess, Caroline of Hesse-Rotenburg
Landgravine Caroline of Hesse-Rotenburg
Princess Caroline of Hesse-Rheinfels-Rotenburg was the consort of Louis Henri, Duke of Bourbon.-Biography:Born at Rotenburg an der Fulda in Hesse, Germany, she was the daughter of Ernest Leopold, Landgrave of Hesse-Rotenburg, head of the Roman Catholic branch of the House of Hesse, by his wife...
, died the next year in 1741 at the age of twenty-two. As a result, Louis Joseph was an orphan and had been raised by his uncle the Count of Clermont.
The new princesse de Condé was among the most important females at court, ranking behind Queen Marie Leszczyńska and her eight daughters, the Duchess of Orléans, and Mademoiselle
Bathilde d'Orléans
Louise Marie Thérèse Bathilde d'Orléans, Princess of Condé , was a French princess. She was sister of Philippe Égalité, the mother of the executed duc d'Enghien and aunt of Louis-Philippe King of the French...
; Mademoiselle would later become her daughter-in-law.
Louis Joseph possessed the rank of prince du sang
Prince du Sang
A prince of the blood was a person who was legitimately descended in the male line from the monarch of a country. In France, the rank of prince du sang was the highest held at court after the immediate family of the king during the ancien régime and the Bourbon Restoration...
at court with the corresponding style of Serene Highness
Serene Highness
His/Her Serene Highness is a style used today by the reigning families of Liechtenstein and Monaco. It also preceded the princely titles of members of some German ruling and mediatised dynasties as well as some non-ruling but princely German noble families until 1918...
, a style Charlotte assumed when she became the princesse de Condé.
Three children were born to the marriage.
First, a girl was born in 1755, soon to be followed by a desired son in 1756. Another daughter was born in 1758. Charlotte lived at the Hôtel de Condé
Hôtel de Condé
The Hôtel de Mademoiselle de Condé, 12 rue Monsieur , has been referred to simply as the Hôtel de Condé, but this name can result in confusion, as it was also used for the main Paris seat of the princes of Condé. The building is also called the Hôtel de Bourbon-Condé, since it was built for Louise...
in Paris, the Condé family residence, since the Palais Bourbon
Palais Bourbon
The Palais Bourbon, , a palace located on the left bank of the Seine, across from the Place de la Concorde, Paris , is the seat of the French National Assembly, the lower legislative chamber of the French government.-History:...
built by Louis Joseph's grandmother, Louise-Françoise de Bourbon
Louise-Françoise de Bourbon
Louise Françoise de Bourbon, Légitimée de France was the eldest surviving legitimised daughter of Louis XIV of France and his maîtresse-en-titre, Madame de Montespan. She was said to have been named after her godmother, Louise de La Vallière, the woman that her mother had replaced as the king's...
, had been sold to the crown in 17. A cultured princess, she was kind to the poor.
It was at the Hôtel de Condé that Charlotte died after a long illness as reported by the Duke of Luynes. She was just twenty-two years old, the same age her mother-in-law, Caroline, had been at her death. She was buried at the Carmelite Convent of the Faubourg Saint-Jacques. The official time for mourning for Charlotte began on 11 March.
Her husband went on to marry again in 1798. He married as his second wife the Italian noblewoman, Maria-Caterina di Brignole-Sale
Maria-Caterina di Brignole-Sale
Maria Caterina Brignole, was the daughter of a Genovese nobleman. On 5 June 1757 she married Honoré III, Prince of Monaco, and became the Princess of Monaco...
, the widow of Honoré III, Prince of Monaco
Honoré III, Prince of Monaco
Honoré III ruled as Prince of Monaco and was Duke of Valentinois for almost sixty years from 1733 to 1793...
.
Issue
- Marie de Bourbon, Mademoiselle de Bourbon (16 February 1755 - 22 June 1759) died in infancy.
- Louis Henri, Prince of Condé (13 April 1756 - 30 August 1830) married Bathilde d'OrléansBathilde d'OrléansLouise Marie Thérèse Bathilde d'Orléans, Princess of Condé , was a French princess. She was sister of Philippe Égalité, the mother of the executed duc d'Enghien and aunt of Louis-Philippe King of the French...
and had issue. - Louise Adélaïde de BourbonLouise Adélaïde de Bourbon (1757–1824)Louise Adélaïde de Bourbon was a French nun. She was the last Remiremont abbess and founded at the beginning of the Bourbon Restoration a religious community that became famous among French Catholics under the name of Bénédictines de la rue Monsieur...
(5 October 1757 - 10 March 1824) died unmarried.
Ancestry
Titles and styles
- 7 October 1737 – 3 May 1753 Her Highness Charlotte Élisabeth Godefride, Princess of the House of Rohan
- 3 May 1753 – 4 March 1760 Her Serene Highness the Princess of Condé