Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé
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Louis Joseph de Bourbon (9 August 1736 – 13 May 1818) was Prince of Condé from 1740 to his death. A member of the House of Bourbon, he held the prestigious rank of Prince du Sang.
Biography
He was the only son of Louis Henri de Bourbon, Duke of Bourbon and Landgravine Caroline of Hesse-Rotenburg (1714–41). He was usually an irresponsible ruler. As a member of the reigning House of Bourbon, he was a Prince du Sang. His father Louis Henri, was the eldest son of Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Condé (known as Monsieur le Duc) and his wife Louise Françoise de Bourbon, daughter of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan.
During his father's lifetime, the infant Louis Joseph was known as the Duke of Enghien (duc d'Enghien). He was placed under the care of his paternal uncle, Louis, Count of Clermont, his father's youngest brother.
He had an older half sister, Henriette de Bourbon, Mademoiselle de Verneuil (1725–1780) who was in turn the half sister of the Mailly sisters, future mistresses of Louis XV and descendants of Hortense Mancini.
Through his mother, he was a first cousin of Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia, Princess Eleonora Maria Teresa of Savoy and Princess Maria Luisa of Savoy (both rejected brides of Louis XV) as well as the princesse de Lamballe. His paternal cousins included the Duchess of Orléans (mother of Philippe Égalité) and sister of the Prince of Conti. His mother died in 1741 making Louis Joseph an orphan. Viktoria of Hesse-Rotenburg, the Princess of Soubise was another first cousin.
As a young man, he married Charlotte Élisabeth Godefride de Rohan (1737–1760), the daughter of King Louis XV's friend, the Prince de Soubise. Charlottes mother Anne Marie Louise de La Tour d'Auvergne was a daughter of the Duke of Bouillon. The couple were married at Versailles on 3 May 1753.
Together, they had three children (a daughter who died young); a son, Louis Henri Joseph, and a daughter, Louis Adélaide. In 1764, he embellished the Palais Bourbon<ref>The Palais Bourbon, built by his grandmother Louise Françoise de Bourbon, daughter of Louis XIV and La Montespan</ref> and decided to leave the Hôtel de Condé<ref>It was at the Hôtel de Condé that the Marquis de Sade was born, his mother was a Lady in waiting to Louis Joseph's mother Caroline</ref> where he was born. The latter residence was bought by Louis XV in 1770 only to later end up as the site of the Odéon Theatre.
In 1770, his son married Bathilde d'Orléans, daughter of Louis Philippe I, Duke of Orléans and sister of Philippe Égalité. The marriage was supposed to heal relations between the Condé line and the Orléans which were both descended from illegitimate daughters of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan<ref>Louis Joseph's grandmother, Mademoiselle de Nantes was the older sister of Louis Philippe I's grandmother Mademoiselle de Blois, children of La Montespan</ref>.
Louis Joseph also decided to build the Château d'Enghien on the grounds of the Château de Chantilly; designed to house guests when entertaining at Chantilly, it was constructed in 1769 by the architect Jean François Leroy. It was later renamed the Château d'Enghien in honour of his grandson Louis Antoine, Duke of Enghien<ref>The famous victim of Napoleon I of France</ref> who was born at Chantilly in 1772. He also commissioned a large garden in the English style as well as a Hameau much like the contemporary Marie Antoinette had created at Versailles and the Petit Trianon. Having fled in the revolution, Louis Joseph returned to Chantilly and restored the estate to its former glory and added another English garden, this time by Victor Dubois in 1817.
In 1765, named the heir of his paternal aunt Élisabeth Alexandrine de Bourbon, he received generous pensions which Élisabeth Alexandrine had in turn acquired from her cousin Mademoiselle du Maine.
Louis Joseph occupied an important place at court. During both the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI, he held the position of Grand Maître de France in the king's royal household, the Maison du Roi.
He served in the Seven Years' War with some distinction serving alongside his father in law the Prince of Soubise.
He was also Governor of Burgundy and a general in the French army. Louis Joseph decided to escape from France with his son and grandson following the fall of the Bastille in 1789 in fear of possible arrest or death. This decision proved fateful, since during the Reign of Terror that followed many of the Bourbons left living in France were arrested, put on trial and guillotined: King Louis XVI, Queen Marie Antoinette and the Duke of Orleans (Philippe Égalité) were executed in 1793, and the king's sister, Madame Élisabeth, was beheaded in 1794.
Army of Condé
Template:Commons category The prince established himself at Coblenz in 1791, where he helped to organize and lead a large counter-revolutionary army of émigrés. In addition to containing the prince's grandson, the Duc d'Enghien, and the two sons of his cousin, the dead king's brother, the Comte d'Artois, the corps included many young aristocrats who eventually became leaders during the Bourbon Restoration years later.
This group included the Duke of Richelieu, the Duke of Blacas and Chateaubriand.
The Army of Condé initially fought in conjunction with the Austrians. Later, due to differences with the Austrian plan of attack, however, the Prince de Condé entered with his corps into English pay in 1795. In 1796, the army fought in Swabia. In 1797, Austria signed the Treaty of Campo Formio with the First French Republic, formally ending its hostilities against the French. With the loss of its closest allies, the army transferred into the service of the Russian tsar, Paul I and was stationed in Poland, returning in 1799 to the Rhine under Alexander Suvorov. In 1800 when Russia left the Allied coalition, the army re-entered English service and fought in Bavaria.
The army was disbanded in 1801 without having achieved much. After the dissolution of the corps, the prince spent his exile in England, where he lived with his second wife, Maria-Caterina di Brignole-Sale, the divorced wife of the Prince de Monaco, whom he had married in 1798. She died in 1813.
After the defeat of Napoleon, Louis Joseph returned to Paris, where he resumed his courtly duties as grand maître in the royal household of Louis XVIII. He died in 1818 and was succeeded by his son, Louis Henri. His daughter, Louise Adélaïde de Bourbon, who was a nun and had become the abbess of Remiremont Abbey, survived until 1824. He was buried at the Basilica of St Denis.
