Louis III, Prince of Condé

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Louis III of Bourbon-Condé

Louis III of Bourbon (November 10, 1668 – March 4, 1710) was Prince of Condé (pronounced: kôNdā') for a short period of time, following the death of his father Henry III in 1709. For the most part of his life he thus was styled Duke of Bourbon. In 1685, Louis married Louise-Françoise de Bourbon, Mademoiselle de Nantes (1673-1743), an illegitimate daughter of King Louis XIV of France.

In an age and society where dynastic considerations played a major role in all but the most trivial of decisions, eyebrows were raised at this marriage between the powerful House of Condé and a bastard daughter, no matter how royal her father. But the head of the House of Condé, the ageing, ailing Louis II de Bourbon de Grand Condé [1621-1686], and cousin to the king, was a man whose mistakes, missteps, and misdeed of years gone by had begun to weigh heavily on his mind. A mind that was becoming more and more clouded as the years passed.

The marriage of his grandson to the king's illegitimate daughter must have seemed a heaven sent opportunity to Condé, throwing favorable weight on the scales of Louis XIV considerations not only for himself, but for the House of Condé itself.

And so the marriage came to be.

The groom was the seventeen year old Louis III de Bourbon, sixth prince of the House of Condé and known at Court simply as M. le Duc, his wife being known as Mme. la Duchesse. Like his father Henri II [1643-1709], who became head of the House of Condé ("M. le Prince") on the death of his father in 1687, Louis III lead a typical, unremarkable life. Doing things both correct and expected both for, and of, a late 17th century Prince of France.

The House of Condé had had and would continue to have in to the future, many strange off-springs, both physcially and mentally. Louis was no exception. In an age where five-and-a-half feet was considered awkwardly tall for a woman, Louis, not quite a dwarf, was considered a short man. His sisters, in fact, were so tiny that they were referred to as the "royal dolls", or, less flatteringly, as "little black beetles" since many of them where, in fact, hunchbacked. While not suffering from this condition himself, Louis was macrocephalic, that is having an abnormally large head. In addition, his skin tone was said to have a definite yellowish-orange tint to it. On the plus side, while Louis was no scholar he was respectably well educated for his time and station in life. Likewise, while certinally no fool, he was not burdened with too much intelligence for his time and station in life.

Louis III was Prince de Condé for a little less than a year. Like his father and grandfather, Louis was hopelessly insane when he died, having slipped into madness several years before his actual death. "Making horrible faces", as one historian discribed it, Louis died in 1710 at the age of forty-two.

Louis III and his wife Louise-Françoise de Bourbon had the following issue:

Louis Henry I, Prince of Condé (1692-1740)
Louise-Elisabeth de Bourbon-Condé (1693-1775), married Louis Armand II, Prince of Conti
Marie-Anne de Bourbon-Condé, Mlle de Clermont (1697-1741), married in secret and against her brother's wishes, to Louis de Melun, Duke of Joyeuse
Louise-Anne de Bourbon-Condé, Mlle de Sens (1695-1768)
Charles of Bourbon, Count of Charolais (1700-1760)
Isabelle de Bourbon-Condé, Mlle de Gex (1701-1765)
Henriette-Louise de Bourbon-Condé, Mlle de Vermandois, Abbess of Beaumont-les-Tours (1703-1772)
Louis de Bourbon, Count of Clermont (1709-1771)