| Louis Victor | |
|---|---|
| Prince of Carignano | |
| Spouse | Christine of Hesse-Rotenburg |
| Issue | |
| Victor Amadeus II, Prince of Carignano Leopoldina, Princess of Melfi Gabrielle, Princess of Lobkowicz Marie Louise, Princess of Lamballe Caterina, Princess of Paliano Eugenio, Count of Villafranca |
|
| Full name | |
| Luigi Vittorio di Savoia | |
| Father | Victor Amadeus I, Prince of Carignano |
| Mother | Maria Vittoria of Savoy |
| Born | 25 September 1721 Hôtel de Soissons, Paris, France |
| Died | 16 December 1778 (aged 57) Palazzo Carignano, Turin, Italy |
Louis Victor of Savoy (25 September 1721 – 16 December 1778) was a northern Italian nobleman and the Prince of Carignano from 1741 till his death.
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Louis Victor was born at the Hôtel de Soissons[1] in Paris to the Prince Victor Amadeus of Savoy and his wife Maria Vittoria of Savoy. His father was a grandson of Thomas Francis, Prince of Carignano and thus a descendant of Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy and Infanta Catherine Michelle of Spain. He was doubly descended from the latter pair due his mother being an illegitimate daughter of Victor Amadeus II of Sardinia and his mistress Jeanne Baptiste d'Albert de Luynes.
One of five children, he was the second son of his parents; his older brother Joseph Victor Amadeus died in 1716 aged 5 months. Louis Victor was thus the heir to the so called House of Savoy-Carignano from birth. His older sister Anne Thérèse married the Frenchman Charles de Rohan and was Princess of Soubise by marriage. Anne Thérèse was the mother of Madame de Guéméné, governess to the children of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI.
Louis Victor grew up in Paris, his father was an inveterate gambler. Heavily in debt, and sued by his sisters whose dowries he had gambled away, he fled to France where he lived such a luxurious life that his son was forced to sell the great fortune he owned in that country. He later moved to Piedmont, between Turin and Racconigi, where his father would establish relations with the greatest European families, such as the Bourbon, the Rohan and the Lorraine Armagnac in France, the Lobkowicz in Bohemia, and the Colonna and Doria Pamphili in Italy. Many of his daughters would later marry into these families.
On 4 May 1740 Louis Victor married the Landgravine Christine of Hesse-Rotenburg; she was a Princess of Hessen-Rheinfels-Rotenburg and was the sister of the then Kings deceased wife Polyxena Christina of Hesse-Rotenburg (1706–1736). The couple would have many children; eight in total.
Their most famous child was Princess Maria Teresa Louisa of Savoia, better known as the princesse de Lamballe and best friend of Marie Antoinette.
Maria Teresa married in 1767 to the Louis Alexandre, Prince of Lamballe, heir to one of the largest fortunes of the era and great grandson of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan. Widowed the next year, Louis Victor's daughter was given a large fortune making her an extremely wealthy women in her own right.
In 1741, he lost his father and thus became the Prince of Carignano. The fief of Carignano had belonged to the Savoys since 1418, and the fact that it was part of Piedmont, only twenty km south of Turin, meant that it could be a "princedom" for Thomas in name only, being endowed neither with independence nor revenues of substance.[2]
Louis Victor lost his wife in September, 1778. Louis Victor would follow on 16 December 1778 dying at the Palazzo Carignano, the Turin residence of the Savoy-Carignano family. Since 1835 his wife's grave has been in Turin's Basilica of Superga, as is that of Louis Victor.
His present descendants include the pretending cousins Vittorio Emanuele, Prince of Naples and Amedeo, 5th Duke of Aosta. There is also Prince Lorenz of Belgium, Archduke of Austria-Este.
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