Louis, Prince of Condé (1668–1710)

Louis de Bourbon, (Hôtel de Condé, Paris, 10 November 1668 - Versailles, 4 March 1710), was Prince of Condé (pronounced: kôNdā') for less than a year, following the death of his father Henry III, Prince of Condé in 1709. As a member of the reigning House of Bourbon, he was a prince du sang.

Biography

Louis de Bourbon, duc de Bourbon, duc de Montmorency (1668–1689) duc d'Enghien (1689–1709), 6th Prince of Condé, comte de Sancerre (1709–1710), comte de Charolais (1709), was born at the Hôtel de Condé in Paris on 10 November 1668 and died at the Palace of Versailles on 4 March 1710.

The eldest son of Henri Jules de Bourbon, duc d'Enghien, and Anne Henriette of Bavaria, Louis was the grandson of Louis II de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, known at court as le Grand Condé.

One of nine children, he was his parents' eldest surviving son. His sister, Marie Thérèse de Bourbon, married François Louis, Prince of Conti in 1688. Another sister, Anne Louise Bénédicte de Bourbon, would marry Louis Auguste de Bourbon, duc du Maine, a legitimised son of King Louis XIV, in 1692. His youngest sister, Marie Anne de Bourbon, much later married the famous general Louis Joseph de Bourbon, duc de Vendôme.

He was made a Chevalier du Saint-Esprit in 1686, a colonel of the Bourbon-Infanterie Regiment later that same year, a maréchal de camp in 1690, and a lieutenant general in 1692. Upon the death of his father, he inherited all the Condé titles and estates.

Marriage

In 1685, Louis married Louise-Françoise de Bourbon, known at court as Mademoiselle de Nantes, who was the eldest legitimised daughter of King Louis XIV of France and his mistress, Madame de Montespan. In an age where dynastic considerations played a major role, eyebrows at court were raised at a marriage between a full-blooded prince du sang and a royal bastard. The head of the House of Condé, le Grand Condé, however, acquiesced to the socially inferior match in the hope of gaining favour with the bride's father, Louis XIV.

The seventeen-year old duc de Bourbon was known at court as Monsieur le Duc. After the marriage, his wife assumed the style of Madame la Duchesse. Like his father, who became Prince of Condé in 1687, Louis III de Bourbon led a typical, unremarkable life. At a time when five-and-a-half feet was considered a normal height for a woman, Louis, while not quite a dwarf, was considered a short man. His sisters, in fact, were so tiny that they were referred to as "dolls of the Blood", or, less flatteringly, as "little black beetles" since many of them were dark in complexion and hunchbacked. While not suffering from this condition himself, Louis was macrocephalic. In addition, his skin tone was said to have a definite yellowish-orange tint to it. On the plus side, while no scholar, Louis was respectably well educated. Similarly, while certainly no fool, he was not burdened with too much intelligence for his time and station in life.

Children

The couple had nine children, all of whom survived into adulthood:

Prince de Condé

Louis was prince de Condé for a little less than a year, as he died only eleven months after his father. Like his father, Louis was hopelessly insane, having slipped into madness several years before his actual death, "making horrible faces", as one historian noted. Louis died in 1710 at the age of forty-two.

Ancestry

Titles and Styles

• 10 November 1668 – 1 April 1709 His Serene Highness the Duke of Bourbon
  • Monsieur le Duc; this style was used to indicate that he was the heir of the First Prince of the Blood. This allowed his wife, Louise-Françoise, to be addressed as Madame la Duchesse. The idea was that when her husband succeeded to the Condé titles he would then be known as Monsieur le Prince and she as Madame la Princesse. In 1709, the style went to his cousin, the Duke of Orléans.
• 1 April 1709 – 4 March 1710 His Serene Highness the Prince of Condé

Titles