|
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
Conti: A younger branch of the Condé who never played a great role in French politics but some are worth mentioning. François-Louis, the Great Conti, king of Poland and Armand who was engaged in the Fronde with his brother the Great Condé. | |
| French page | Armand
(1629-1666)
Prince de Conti. His parents: Henri II and
Charlotte de Montmorency
|
 |
| The title of prince of Conti was
revived in his favour in 1629.
Destined for the church, Armand de Bourbon was the French crown's immediate nominee for a cardinal's hat; this gave rise to intrigues aimed at securing the nomination for another candidate if he should renounce it. On the outbreak of the Fronde in 1649, when his brother was supporting the government, his sister took Conti to join the Parisians, whereupon he was made commander in chief of the Fronde but was the puppet of his supporters. Arrested with Condé and his sister's husband in 1650, he was released with them in 1651 as a result of the coalition between their faction and the Frondeurs, one of the terms of which was that he should marry Charlotte de Lorraine, daughter of the Duchess of Chevreuse. He accordingly renounced his ecclesiastical prospects, but the bargain was set aside by Condé. In 1652 he was left by Condé in command in Bordeaux, where government forces expelled him in July 1653. He then made his peace with Cardinal Mazarin, marrying his niece Anne-Marie Martinozzi in 1654 and being sent to command in Catalonia and in Italy. After figuring as a patron of literature, he fell like his sister under the influence of Jansenism. He died in Languedoc, where he was the governor. |
||
 |
François
(1556-1614)
Duc de Conti. His parents: Louis I and
Eléonore de Roye
|
French page |
François, who was a Roman
Catholic, appears to have taken no part in the Wars of Religion until 1587,
when his distrust of Henri, third duke of Guise,
caused him to declare against the League and to support Henry of
Navarre, (Henri IV). In 1589, after the murder of
Henry III, he was one of the two princes of
the blood who signed the declaration recognising Henry IV as king, and
he continued to support Henry, although on the death of Charles, Cardinal
de Bourbon, in 1590, he himself was mentioned as a candidate for the throne.
In 1605 François (whose first wife, Jeanne de Cöeme, heiress
of the Connétable, had died in 1601) married the beautiful and
witty Louise-Marguerite de Lorraine (1574-1631),  daughter
of the duc de Guise. His only child, Marie,
having predeceased him in 1610, the title lapsed.
His widow, the princess of Conti, followed the
fortunes of Marie Médicis,
|
||
| French page | Louis-Armand
I (1661-1685)
Prince de Conti. His parents: Armand and Anne-Marie Martinozzi. His brother: François-Louis. He married a legitimated daughter of Louis XIV, Marie-Anne de Blois. |
 |
| The eldest surviving son of Armand I de Bourbon, Prince de Conti succeeded his father in 1666. His marriage to Marie-Anne de Bourbon, daughter of Louis XIV and Louise de La Vallière, was the first union between a prince of the blood and one of the King's bastards. He served with distinction in Flanders in 1683 and, against the wish of the king, went to Hungary, where he assisted the Imperialists to defeat the Turks at Gran in 1683. After a dissolute life he died at Fontainebleau from smallpox. | ||
|
|
Louis-François
I (1717-1776)
His parents: Louis-Armand
II and Louise-Elisabeth de Condé
|
|
| He was the second son of his father. He adopted a military career and, when the War of the Austrian Succession broke out in 1741, went to fight in Bohemia. His services there led to his appointment to command the army in Italy, where he distinguished himself by forcing the pass of Villafranca and winning the Battle of Coni in 1744. In 1745 he was sent to check the Imperialists in Germany and in 1746 was transferred to the Netherlands, where some jealousy between Marshal de Saxe and himself led to his retirement in 1747. In 1747 a faction among the Polish nobles offered him the crown of that country, where owing to the feeble health of King Augustus III a vacancy was expected. He won the personal support of Louis XV for his candidature, although the policy of the French ministers was to establish the House of Saxony in Poland, because the French dauphine was a daughter of Augustus. Louis XV therefore began secret personal relations with his ambassadors in eastern Europe, who were thus receiving contradictory instructions-a policy known later as the 'secret du roi.' Although Louis-François did not secure the Polish throne he remained in the confidence of the King until 1755, when his influence was destroyed by the intrigues of Mme de Pompadour, so that when the Seven Years' War broke out in 1756 he was refused the command of the Army of the Rhine and began the opposition to the administration which caused Louis XV to refer to him as 'my cousin the advocate.' In 1771 he was prominent in opposition to the chancellor Maupeou. He supported the Parliaments against the ministry, was especially active in his hostility to Turgot, and was suspected of aiding a rising at Dijon in 1775. Conti inherited literary tastes from his father, was a brave and skilful general, and a diligent student of military history. His house, over which the Comtesse de Boufflers presided, was the resort of many men of letters, and he was a patron of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Beaumarchais. | ||