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Louis Henri, Duc de Bourbon
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Louis IV Henri Joseph de Bourbon-Condé, prince de Condé (duc de Bourbon and d'Enghien) (August 18 1692, Versailles – January 27 1740, Chantilly) was head of the cadet Bourbon-Condé wing of the French royal house from 1710 to his death, and served as prime minister to his kinsman Louis XV from 1723-26.
Life
Early years
He was born at Versailles, the eldest son of Louis III de Bourbon, prince de Condé (1668–1710) and Louise-Françoise de Bourbon, Mademoiselle de Nantes (1673–1743), the eldest illegitimate daughter of King Louis XIV of France and his most famous mistress, Madame de Montespan.
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Louis IV Henri Joseph de Bourbon-Condé, prince de Condé (duc de Bourbon and d'Enghien) (August 18 1692, Versailles – January 27 1740, Chantilly) was head of the cadet Bourbon-Condé wing of the French royal house from 1710 to his death, and served as prime minister to his kinsman Louis XV from 1723-26.
Life
Early years
He was born at Versailles, the eldest son of Louis III de Bourbon, prince de Condé (1668–1710) and Louise-Françoise de Bourbon, Mademoiselle de Nantes (1673–1743), the eldest illegitimate daughter of King Louis XIV of France and his most famous mistress, Madame de Montespan. As a member of the reigning House of Bourbon, he was a Prince du Sang.
He was the great-grandson of Louis II, le Grand Condé, who died in 1687. Following the deaths of several members of the French royal family in the early 1700s, he was left as one of the premier princes of France, probably second in hereditary standing only to the King and the duc d'Orléans. He was king Louis XV's Premier Ministre (first, or prime, minister) from 1723 to 1726. He was often called simply "Monsieur le Duc". This style applied specifically to him as the duc de Bourbon. The following is a contemporary description of him:
He was moderately good looking as a young man, but being over-tall he afterwards began to stoop, and became 'as thin and dry as a chip of wood.'
Regarding this and other information, in the duke's era, satirical pamphlets directed against royalty were a common form of literature, and the chronicles left by noblemen and others attached to the court were often influenced by rivalries or prejudice. In other words, he might not have looked so bad. Based on collaborating evidence from other sources, however, it is probably safe to assume that he was tall, and not plump.
It is fairly certain he only had the use of one eye:
He was disfigured by an accident which befell him while hunting, when the Duc de Berry put out one of his eyes. This probably happened before he was twenty five.
Marriages and children
On 9 July 1713, he married Marie Anne de Bourbon-Conti (1689–1720). They had no children. He married secondly on 23 July 1728, Caroline of Hesse-Rheinfels-Rothenburg (1714-1741) a daughter of Ernest Leopold, Landgrave of Hesse-Rheinfels-Rothenburg.
They had one son,
La Régence
In Sep. 1715, the duc d'Orléans, who had just become Regent for the five year old king Louis XV, appointed the then 23 year old Duc de Bourbon to his first Regency Council. The Regency Council was the highest consultative body in the French government during the Regency, equivalent to the Conseil d'en Haut (High Council) which was appointed by the King.
In 1718, he supplanted the duc du Maine in the position of superintendent of the king's education. This happened at the famous Regency Council meeting of 26 Aug, at which Maine and the comte de Toulouse, illegitimate sons of the late king Louis XIV, were demoted to the rank of ordinary dukes and peers. The actual teaching of the young king was not much disturbed however, since it was mostly done by his old and trusted tutor, the bishop of Fréjus, who remained in place.
Many of the surviving descriptions of the duke's personality are highly uncomplimentary. They fall under the general categories greed, bad manners, stupidity. As mentioned earlier, one must be wary of the sources. For example Barbier said he "had a very limited mind, knows nothing, and only likes pleasure and hunting." But then we are relieved to find, in an indictment for toadyism, that he didn't like hunting: he pretended to like it to ingratiate himself with the king.
Premier Ministre
The Regency ended when Louis XV reached the age of majority, thirteen, in Feb. 1723. Cardinal Dubois, who had been the Regent's Premier Ministre, remained in that capacity for the king. However Dubois died in August 1723. Thereupon Orléans, the former Regent, became the king's Premier Ministre, but he too did not remain long at the post. On the evening of December 2nd, 1723 he died of a stroke. The Duc de Bourbon rushed to see the king that very evening and requested the Prime Ministership. It was granted immediately.
There is a story that the king's tutor, the bishop of Fréjus, who was his closest and most trusted confidant, was present at the meeting, recommended acceptance, and that the king indicated his assent by a silent nod. Guizot says that Louis "sought in his perceptor's [tutor's] eyes the guidance he needed". Gooch and Perkins also say that Fréjus acquiesced in the appointment. Jones, on the other hand, says that Fréjus was not there; also that after the meeting, in order to protect his own influence with the king, which was great, Fréjus got the king to agree never to hold discussions with de Bourbon unless he too was present.
There is not much disagreement on this latter point: all sources say that throughout his premiership, de Bourbon could never get an audience with Louis XV without Fréjus being there. This was an unusual, and for de Bourbon, eventually an intolerable, situation. Orléans had been able to see the king whenever he wanted. It illustrates the power of Fréjus, who in a few years was to assume control of the government himself.
To assess why the king — or Fréjus — chose, or allowed, de Bourbon to become Premier Ministre, says the French lawyer and writer d'Angerville, writing in 1781:
[On Louis XV choosing de Bourbon:] In making the choice, which no doubt was not the best he might have made, because he lacked the necessary experience not only of men but of himself, he nevertheless acted in strict accordance with the rules of etiquette. He deemed it his duty to confer the post, which was the most important in the kingdom, upon a prince of the royal house. As they were all young men, he appointed the eldest, who, however, was but thirty one years old. The manner in which His Royal Highness [the Duc de Bourbon] had managed his own revenues, and had added to them, despite his youth (that being a period when a man's thoughts are wont to be exclusively centred upon pleasure) was a strong presumption that he would prove a capable public administrator, and the fact that he was already rich led people to imagine that he would not trouble his head about adding to his fortune. Finance, indeed, was the most important branch of public affairs at that time. What France needed was a government which would pursue a policy of peace, conciliation and retrenchment, and avail itself of the tranquil condition of Europe in order to bring about by trade, industry and the gradual restoration of the metal reserve, a recovery from the state of exhaustion into which the country had fallen. [From the wars in Louis XIV's reign.] No one, however, failed to appreciate how immensely inferior in talent the Duke was to the Regent.
One of de Bourbon's first moves as premier was to replace d'Argenson, the minister of police, with Ravat d'Ombreval, who was a relative of Mme de Prie's. This gave de Bourbon control of press censorship, and also gave him control of much of the mail.
He announced a new promotion of the Marshals of France — the first since 1715 — and made some new appointments to France's highest chivalric order, the Knights of the Saint Esprit. The conferees were almost all supporters of Monsieur le Duc.
Persecution of Protestants
The persecution of the Huguenots under the reign of Louis XIV was stopped by the Regent. Nevertheless there remained those who advocated rigour in the treatment of the Protestants. Prominent among these was the Archbishop of Rouen, Louis III de La Vergne de Tressan, grand almoner to the Regent. He argued with both the Regent and his most influential minister, Cardinal Dubois, in favour of severe measures against the Protestants. They rejected his ideas.
When Bourbon came to be premier, however, the bishop found in him a more receptive audience, and he was given the go-ahead to draw up a general law against "l'hérésie".
The King’s affairs
One of the greatest achievements of the Duc's premiership was the arrangement of the King's marriage. The King had been betrothed to Mariana, the infanta of Spain, daughter of the Spanish King, in 1721, when she was just three years old, and the King only eleven. By 1724 the King was fourteen, and well-grown for his age, but the infanta was still a decade away from child-bearing age. Some felt that this was too long for France to wait for an heir. This was especially so since if Louis XV died without an heir, it appeared possible that Philip V of Spain would throw away the Treaty of Utrecht, leap upon the French throne, to which he had a hereditary claim, and thus plunge France and Spain into a terrible conflict with the other European powers.
It appears that by the summer of 1724, Mme de Prie, and possibly also M le Duc, was considering breaking Louis XV's engagement with the infanta, despite the great offence this would cause to Spain, and finding him a wife who might provide the country with an heir at the earliest date. Despite this,it appears that M le Duc would have been quite willing to leave the infanta in place if Philippe V had granted him a certain personal favour; of all our sources only Perkins mentions this, but he appears to have ample substantiation:
The Duke of Bourbon asked Philip to make the husband of Mme de Prie a grandee, a title which would have descended to a child Bourbon had by her. (See his letter to Tessé.) If this request had been granted, the infanta would probably not have been sent away… ? Letter of Stanhope.
By, at latest, the winter of 1725, the question of who should be the infanta's replacement was being considered. Candidates included the sisters of M. le Duc, especially Mlle. Vermandois. De Prie came to be opposed to this choice because it would give the Duchesse de Bourbon, Vermandois' and M. le Duc's mother, too much influence. The duchesse and Mme. de Prie did not like each other. Furthermore, Fréjus was opposed to Louis marrying anyone from the Bourbon-Condé branch of the royal family.
So it came to pass that in April 1725, the infanta was sent back to Madrid — Louis did not even say goodbye. A replacement candidate was sought urgently, partly because, should Louis have died with no heir, and assuming Philippe V of Spain did not seize the throne, then it would pass to the young Duc d'Orléans; the Orléans house and the house of Condé were rivals, so this would cast M le Duc into the political wastelands.
Prominent among these was a daughter of George I of England. The prize was offered to her if she would consent to become a Catholic. However that would have caused great difficulties for her father, as he was occupying the throne mainly because he was Protestant, whereas his rival, James Stuart, was Catholic; he had to politely decline the offer of France to his daughter.
Another prominent contender was the grand duchess, later empress, Elizabeth of Russia.
Others on the list included the daughter of the Duc de Lorraine; a princess of Savoy who was Louis XV's first cousin, and the princess of Hesse-Rheinfels.
Marie Leszczynska
The choice finally made was the daughter of the deposed king of Poland. Her name was Marie Leszczynska; her father, Stanislaus, had occupied the Polish throne from 1704 with the backing of Charles XII of Sweden. He lost it after five years because his sponsor was beaten by Peter the Great of Russia, at Poltava. Stanislaus had found refuge, first in Germany, then in France, where the Regent, the Duke of Orléans, had given him a house at Wissembourg in Alsace, a pension of 50 thousand livres, irregularly paid, and, as a sign of respect, a few regiments of soldiers as companions; they, along with a handful of retainers who had followed the forsaken king in his wanderings, comprised his bare little court. "His property in Poland had been confiscated and his wife's jewels pawned."(Gooch)
Marie did not have a reputation for great beauty or intelligence, but she was not ugly, and was healthy and had a very agreeable character: kind, generous, and calm. She had already been thought of as a wife for the Duc de Bourbon. Now he and Mmme de Prie decided she would be ideal for the King. On March 31, 1725, the Council met and agreed that the offer would go to Marie Leczinska. On May 27 the name of the Queen-to-be was made public.
The duc d'Orléans, who was angry at not having been consulted about the marriage plans, was
placated by making him the bridegroom in the marriage by procuration, which took place before Marie travelled across country for the real ceremony with the King. The marriage by procuration was performed at Strasbourg Cathedral by Cardinal de Rohan, Grand Almoner of France. In it, Marie was dressed in a grand Habit de cérémonie "made of silver brocade and embroidered with precious stones." The true wedding which followed took place at Fontainebleau.
M le Duc remained as Prime Minister of France until his dismissal in favour of the young king's tutor, Cardinal Fleury, in 1726.
Saint-Simon, the famous French memoirs writer known for his acid portraits of grandees, described the Duke of Bourbon as a man with "an almost stupid foolishness, an indomitable obstinacy, an insatiable self-interest". On the other hand, the Cardinal de Fleury said that he found in the Duke of Bourbon "goodness, probity, and honour" and that he considered himself one of the duke's friends.
Later life
After his spell in the government if France, he was then exiled to his country estate of the Château de Chantilly outside Paris. It was during this time the château went under a sort of renaissance. He redecorated the building along with the grounds and entertained there when he could making sure to stay away from the parisian set which had exiled him. It was at his favourite home, that he died in 1740 on January 27. He was aged 47. The titles of the Bourbon-Condé family then passed onto his 4 year old son who was to hold the title of prince de Condé for over a period of over 7 decades.
Wealth
He was wealthy, and kept a "splendid residence at Chantilly.". During the Regency his several pensions, together with the income from his extensive estates, gave him an income of 1.8 million livres. To make this figure meaningful to the modern reader, the historian Bernier, writing in 1984, says: "Although it is very difficult to equate money in the preindustrial era with our own, the best possible equivalence would be about $4.50 to the livre.
During the Regency he made large amounts of money by speculating in the financial Système (1716–20) of John Law. He bought paper notes, waited for their value to rise, then, before the Système failed in 1720, took them to Law's bank (which had become the national bank) and traded them in for gold. On March 3, 1720, following the example of the Prince de Conti who the day before had gone to Law's bank and withdrawn fourteen million livres in gold, which he took away in several large carts, de Bourbon went to the bank and took away twenty-five million. The bank closed later that year due to lack of reserves. De Bourbon made 40 million livres off the Système, or perhaps 20 million. Good timing might not have been the only reason for his success in exploiting the Système; his high position in aristocracy and government was an advantage. Historian James Breck Perkins says, "he asked enormous advantages in return for the protection he extended [to John Law and his associates], and the unfortunate adventurer [Law] was not in a position to say no to so powerful a nobleman." After the Système went under, "the government compelled some humbler speculators to disgorge their gains, but no one ventured to disturb the head of the house of Condé."
Ancestry
Sources
- Olivier Bernier,Louis the Beloved, The Life of Louis XV. 1984, Garden City, New York; Doubleday & Co.
- Mouffle d'Angerville, The Private Life of Louis XV. "Annotated and amplified by quotations from original and unpublished documents by Albert Mirac." Translated from the French by H.S. Mingard. 1924, New York; Boni and Liveright. D'Angerville's original title: Vie privée de Louis XV, ou principaux évènements, particularités et anecdotes de son règne. 4 vols. crown 8vo., published in London in 1781. Meyrac says he "extracted these piquant pages" from the original.
- G. P. Gooch, Louis XV: The Monarchy in Decline. 1956, London; Longmans.
- Guizot, . Transl. from the French by Robert Black. No date, but a publisher's note is dated 1876; New York; Klemscott Society. , p. 110ff.
- Colin Jones, The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon. 2002, New York; Columbia University Press.
- G.W. Kitchin, D.D., F.S.A., dean of Durham, History of France vol. III. 1903, Oxford, at the Clarendon Press.
- Ernest Lavisse, Histoire de France, reprinted from the editions of 1900–1911, Paris. 1969, New York; AMS Press, Inc. Vol. VIII, part 2.
- James Breck Perkins, France Under Louis XV, vol. i. 1897, Boston; Houghton Mifflin Co.
- J.H. Shennan, Philippe, Duke of Orleans. 1979, London; Thames and Hudson.
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