Louise-Élisabeth de Bourbon-Condé

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Louise-Élisabeth sometime after her marriage to the Prince de Conti.
Louise-Élisabeth sometime after her marriage to the Prince de Conti.

Louise-Élisabeth de Bourbon-Condé, princesse de Conti (1693 - 1775) was the oldest daughter of Louis III, Prince of Condé and his wife, Louise-Françoise de Bourbon, an illegitimate daughter of Louis XIV.

Contents

[edit] Life

Born a princesse du sang on November 22, 1693, at the Palace of Versailles, she was known at court as Mademoiselle de Charolais (sometimes as Mademoiselle de Condé[1]), a style later borne by her younger sister. Her parents second daughter, she was a pretty, smart and fun loving girl and grew up with her various siblings in and around Paris.[citation needed]

[edit] Marriage and Children

At the age of 17, it was suggested by her mother that she marry her cousin, the duc de Berry and a Petit-fils de France. Unfortunaltly for Mlle de Charolais the marriage did not take place and Louise-Élisabeth lost out on privilages such as the coveted stool in front of the king, dictated by the strict ettiquete at Versailles. It was at Versailles where she would marry 3 years later.

In 9 July 1713, Louise-Élisabeth married her cousin Louis Armand II de Bourbon, prince de Conti. In August,1716, at the age of twenty-two, Louise-Élisabeth contracted smallpox. A year later she gave birth to her first child. Her children were:

Like her mother, she was of a very amourous nature and was often unfaithful (many knew of her liasons with one Philippe Charles de La Fare[2]) to her unattractive husband who, as a result turned into a violent man. After a particularly dramatic scene in the Bourbon-Conti household, she refused to live with her husband and then took refuge with her mother. She once said of him:

he did not have the power to make a prince of the blood without her[3]

The first years of her marriage were full of court cases at the Paris Parlemant against her husband due to his violence and her wanting to leave him.[4] She later retired to a convent. In 1725, she returned to her husband who then had her practically confined in the Château de l'isle-Adam outside Paris. She then managed to convince her husband to return to paris where she gave birth to her daughter, the future duchesse d'Orléans. He died a year later.

[edit] Princesse douarière

A posthumous painting of Louise-Élisabeth de Bourbon-Condé

In order to tell the wives of the various Princes of Conti apart after their deaths, the widows were given the name of Douarière or dowager and a number corresponding to when they lost their husband. After being widowed their full style would be Madame la Princesse de Conti 'number' Douarière. Between 1727 and 1732, there were three widowed Princesses de Conti. They were:

[edit] Later life

After the death of her husband, Louise-Élisabeth led the typical life of the Ancien Régime, visiting the the various châteaux of her cousin, King Louis XV, and attending the court at the Palace of Versailles.

In order to try and smooth over the family rift between the the House of Bourbon-Condé and House of Orléans, she married her son off to her first cousin, Louise Diane d'Orléans, and her daughter off to the nephew of Louise Diane, the heir to the House of Orléans.

This helped, but the family rivalry that had been started by the animosity between her mother, the princesse de Condé, and her aunt, the duchesse d'Orléans, both illegitimate daughters of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan, was difficult to diminish.

After the death of her mother, the princesse de Condé, in 1743, she acquired the Château de Louveciennes, which was later given to the Crown. Louis XV in turn gave it to the successor of Madame de Pompadour, Madame du Barry. The princesse de Conti later also acquired the Château de Voisins.

Later, in 1746, the Princesse de Conti was asked by Louis XV to help present his mistress, the future Madame de Pompadour, at court. She obliged in order to encourage the King to forget about her debts, a tactic which worked. The King did not forget the favour she had done for him.

After living to be eighty-one years old, she died in Paris on 27 May 1775.

[edit] Ancestry

[edit] References

  1. ^ Louise-Élisabeth de Bourbon-Condé
  2. ^ He was often assumed to have been the father of her son
  3. ^ il ne pouvait pas faire un prince du sang sans elle, prince de Condé site
  4. ^ Memoirs of Saint Simon

[edit] Titles

Louise Élisabeth de Bourbon-Condé was the princesse de Conti from 1713 - 1727. After the death of her husband, in 1727, she became the princesse douairière de Conti. She was later created comtesse de Sancerre in 1740 and held that title till her death in 1775. The title went back to the Condé family and was the sold to the title (along with many others) for 1,4 million Livres to the Sahuguet family.

Louise-Élisabeth was the Dames d’Étampes or Lady of Étampes. She held the title in her own right and had received it at the death of her aunt Marie-Anne de Bourbon-Condé, 1718, who was the wife of duc de Vendôme. She gave it to her daughter in the year of her marriage to the duc de Chartres.[1]

Louise-Élisabeth de Bourbon-Condé
Born: November 22 1693 Died: May 27 1775
French nobility
Preceded by
Anne-Louise Bénédicte de Bourbon-Condé		 Mademoiselle de Charolais
1693–1713		 Succeeded by
Louise-Anne de Bourbon-Condé
Preceded by
Louis IV Henri de Bourbon-Condé, prince de Condé		 comtesse de Sancerre
1740–1775		 Succeeded by
the Sahuguet Family
Preceded by
Marie Anne de Bourbon		 duchesse d'Étampes
1718–1752		 Succeeded by
Louise Henriette de Bourbon-Conti
French royalty
Preceded by
Marie-Thérèse de Bourbon-Condé		 princesse de Conti
1713–1775		 Succeeded by
Louise Diane d'Orléans
Royal titles
Preceded by
Marie-Thérèse de Bourbon-Condé		 Madame la Princesse Douarière
1727–1775		 Succeeded by
N/A