Louis Henri, Duke of Bourbon

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Louis Henri, Duke of Bourbon : biography

18 August 1692 – 27 January 1740

Louis Henri de Bourbon, Duke of Bourbon, Prince de Condé (Louis Henri Joseph; 18 August 1692 – 27 January 1740) was head of the Bourbon-Condé cadet branch of the France’s reigning House of Bourbon from 1710 to his death, and served as prime minister to his kinsman Louis XV from 1723 to 1726.

Despite succeeding as head of the House of Condé in 1709, he never used that name, preferring the title "Duke of Bourbon", and was known at court as Monsieur le Duc. As a member of the reigning House of Bourbon, he was a prince du sang.

Marie Leszczynska

The choice finally made was the daughter of the deposed king of Poland. Her name was Marie Leszczyńska; 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 had given him a house at Wissembourg in Alsace, a pension of fifty thousand livres, irregularly paid, and, as a sign of respect, a few regiments of soldiers as an honour guard; 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, was healthy as well as kind, generous, and calm. She had already been thought of as a wife for the duc de Bourbon. Now he and Mme de Prie decided she would be ideal for the King. On 31 March 1725, the Council met and agreed that the offer would go to Marie Leczińska. On 27 May, the name of the Queen-to-be was made public.

The young duc d’Orléans stood in for the bridegroom during the marriage by procuration, which took place in the cathedral of Strasbourg, and was officiated by the Cardinal de Rohan, bishop of Strasbourg and Grand Almoner of France. The bride and groom were wed in person at Fontainebleau.

Bourbon remained prime minister until his dismissal in 1726 in favour of the young king’s tutor, Cardinal Fleury.

Saint-Simon, the memoir 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.

The King’s affairs

One of the most notable achievements of the Duke’s premiership was the arrangement of the King’s marriage. The King had been betrothed to Mariana Victoria, the infanta of Spain, daughter of the Spanish king, in 1721, when she was just three years old, and the French king only eleven. By 1724, the king was fourteen 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 because, if Louis XV died without an heir, it was feared that, armed with a hereditary right he had renounced when he became king of Spain, Philip V de Bourbon would ignore the Treaty of Utrecht and claim the French throne, thus plunging France and Spain into conflict with the other European powers.

It appears that by the summer of 1724,Bernier, p. 50. the marquise de Prie, and possibly also Monsieur le Duc, were considering breaking Louis XV’s engagement with the infanta, despite the great offence this would cause Spain, and finding him a wife who might provide the country with an heir at an earlier date."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. If this request had been granted, the infanta would probably not have been sent away…" ― Letter of Stanhope. Perkins p. 58, footnote 1.