Louise Françoise, Princess of Condé

Louise Françoise was born in Tournai on 1 June 1673 while her parents, King Louis XIV of France and Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart were on a military tour; her maternal aunt, the Marquise de Thianges, was there also. After returning from Tournai, her parents placed her and her older siblings in the care of one of her mother's acquaintances, the widowed Madame Scarron.

On 19 December 1673, Louis XIV legitimised the children he had had with his mistress in a legitimisation process that was recognised with letters patent from the Parlement de Paris. At the time of their legitimisation, her eldest brother, Louis-Auguste de Bourbon, received the title of Duke of Maine; her next eldest brother, Louis-César de Bourbon, became the Count of Vexin, while Louise Françoise received the courtesy title of Mademoiselle de Nantes. Her parents had nicknamed her Poupotte after her doll-like appearance.[5]

In the year after her birth, another sibling joined Louis-Auguste, Louis-César, and Louise Françoise at their residence in Paris. The future Mademoiselle de Tours had been born at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye in November 1674. The young Mademoiselle de Tours was legitimised in 1676 and would become a great friend of Louise Françoise.[5] The death of her younger sister, in 1681, deeply affected her.

After the death of Mademoiselle de Tours, Madame de Montespan wrote to the Duc du Maine:

I do not speak to you of my grief, you are naturally too good not to have experienced it for yourself. As for Mademoiselle de Nantes, she has felt it as deeply as if she were twenty and has received the visits of the Queen and Madame la Dauphine[6]

The Mesdemoiselles of Nantes and of Tours had been raised together in a private house on the Rue de Vaugirard in Paris, where the king's illegitimate children with Madame de Montespan had been hidden away from the prying eyes of the court by their parents.[5] Louise Françoise would never be close to either her older half-sister, Marie Anne de Bourbon, or younger full sister, Françoise Marie de Bourbon, as the three sisters were intensely jealous of each other. Louise Françoise and Françoise Marie were especially competitive, despising any increase in status or rank that the other, or any of her children, might achieve. Louise Françoise was, however, close to her half-brother Louis, Grand Dauphin.

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  Older half-sister Marie Anne de Bourbon
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  Younger sister Françoise Marie de Bourbon (left) and Louise Françoise (right)

Having inherited her parents' passion for music and dance, Louise Françoise became a good dancer. When she was nine, she played Youth in a ballet dedicated to the Dauphine of France.[7] She also inherited her mother's sharp and caustic wit, the famous Mortemart esprit, which made her popular with some but not with others. Saint-Simon later said of the future Princess of Condé:

her face was formed by the most tender loves and her nature made to dally with them. She possessed the art of placing everyone at their ease; there was nothing about her which did not tend naturally to please, with a grace unparalleled, even in her slightest actions. She made captive even those who had the most cause to fear her, and those who had the best of reasons to hate her required often to recall the fact to resist her charms. Sportive, gay, and merry, she passed her youth in frivolity and in pleasures of all kinds, and, whenever the opportunity presented itself, they extended even to debauchery.[8]

She was also called the..

prettiest, wittiest, and naughtiest of the fast set in the latter half of the reign, and was in constant hot water. Her comic verse, too often indecent, was genuinely amusing, except to the victims, and the king was not at all amused at a set which she had written on his august self[9]

The marriage of Mademoiselle de Nantes to the Duc de Bourbon (by an anonymous artist, 1685)

On 25 May 1685, at the age of eleven, Louise Françoise was married to Louis de Bourbon, Duke of Bourbon, a distant sixteen-year-old cousin of her father. Her husband was the son of Henry Jules, Duke of Enghien, the son of the head of the House of Condé, a cadet branch of the reigning House of Bourbon. His mother was Anne Henriette of Bavaria. Louis XIV gave his daughter a large dowry of one million livres upon her marriage.[5]

At court, Louise Françoise's husband was known by the courtesy title of duc de Bourbon, and was addressed as Monsieur le Duc. As a result, his new wife became known as Madame la Duchesse.[10]

Some time after her marriage in 1686, while the court was in residence at the Palace of Fontainebleau, Louise Françoise contracted smallpox. While her then seventeen-year-old husband did not help nurse her back to health, her mother and grandfather-in-law, Le Grand Condé, did.[11] Louise Françoise recovered, but Le Grand Condé died the following November after having caught her illness.[2] Louise Françoise and her husband eventually had nine children, all of whom survived into adulthood.

After her mother officially left court in 1691, Louise Françoise would visit her at the convent of the Filles de Saint-Joseph, in the rue Saint-Dominique in Paris,[12] where she had retired. As they saw each other often, the two became much closer, and Louise Françoise was deeply affected by her mother's death in 1707. Louis XIV forbade anyone at court to wear mourning clothes for his former mistress, but, as a mark of respect for their mother, Louise Françoise and her two younger siblings, Françoise Marie de Bourbon and the Count of Toulouse, decided not to attend any court gatherings. On the other hand, her older brother, the Duke of Maine, could barely conceal his joy at inheriting his mother's fortune. The Château de Clagny was bequeathed to him, but he rarely used it.[2]

Portrait of Louise Françoise and her daughter Henriette Louise (by Pierre Gobert)

In 1692, her youngest sister, Françoise Marie, was married to their first cousin, Philippe d'Orléans, the only son and heir of their uncle, Monsieur. As the wife of a petit-fils de France, Françoise Marie took precedence at court over Louise Françoise and their half-sister Marie Anne. This, combined with the fact that Françoise Marie received a dowry twice the amount given to her older sister, greatly angered Louise Françoise, who thereafter became quite competitive with her younger, more successful sister.[13]

Louise Françoise was a beautiful and vivacious woman. Around 1695, she began a romantic affair with François Louis de Bourbon, prince de Conti,[11] the handsome brother-in-law of her older half-sister, Marie Anne de Bourbon. François Louis' wife was the pious Marie Thérèse de Bourbon; Marie Thérèse was in turn the oldest sister of Louise Françoise's husband.[8] Louise Françoise's fourth daughter Marie Anne, born in 1697, was thought to have been the result of this affair.[11]

When her husband discovered his wife's infidelity, he was furious but did not openly quarrel with the Prince of Conti due to a fear of his father-in-law, Louis XIV. Her older half-brother, the Dauphin, to whom she was close, allowed the couple to meet at his country estate at Meudon away from her husband and the court.[5]

Upon the death of her father-in-law on 1 April 1709, her husband succeeded to the title of Prince of Condé. He did not, however, succeed to his father's rank of Premier Prince du Sang, which was instead officially transferred from the House of Condé to the House of Orléans. As a result, her younger sister's husband, the Duke of Orléans, became entitled to use the style of Monsieur le Prince. His wife, Louise Françoise's sister Françoise Marie, accordingly became entitled to use the style Madame la Princesse.[14] Despite the fact that Françoise-Marie never referred to herself as Madame la Princesse, this transfer in rank from the House of Condé to the House of Orléans greatly aggravated the rivalry between Louise Françoise and her younger sister.[15]

Louise Françoise in widow robes (by Pierre Gobert, 1737). Musée Condé

Louise Françoise's husband, who had by this time descended into madness,[5] did not survive his father long and died within the year in 1710. Although Louise Françoise should have officially assumed the style of Madame la Princesse de Condé douairière (Dowager Princess of Condé) upon the death of her husband, she instead chose to be known in her widowhood as Madame la Duchesse douairière. She had a portrait taken in widow's dress.[16] When her husband died she is said to have been affected but Madame de Caylus did not believe her grief was sincere.[8]

In the hope of ingratiating herself with the future king, Louise Françoise frequently attended the court of her older half-brother, Monseigneur,[13] at the Château de Meudon. At Meudon, she became close to Élisabeth Thérèse de Lorraine, princesse d'Epinoy and her older sister, Mademoiselle de Lillebonne, a future Abbess of Remiremont Abbey. Unexpectedly, the dauphin died in 1711, ruining his sister's plan of establishing a more solid relationship with the Crown. Despite her dashed hopes, Louise Françoise was deeply affected by the dauphin's death. This death made her nephew, Louis, Duke of Burgundy, and his wife, Marie Adélaïde, the new Dauphin and Dauphine.

Marie Adélaïde and Louise Françoise were to become bitter enemies because of the new dauphine's condescending attitude toward ladies of inferior rank. The Duchess of Orléans and the older Dowager Princess of Conti also grew to dislike their niece for her haughty behavior.

As a dowager, Louise Françoise became a good friend of Jeanne Baptiste d'Albert de Luynes, the former mistress of Victor Amadeus, Duke of Savoy. Jeanne Baptiste had escaped Savoy in 1700 and had been residing in Paris ever since. She was a great literary figure of the day.

Within two years, in 1712, the new dauphin and his young wife died, leaving only a small son, the duc d'Anjou, as the legitimate heir of Louis XIV. In 1715, the king died, and was succeeded by his five-year-old great-grandson, Louis XV. A controversy immediately arose between Louise Françoise's older brother, the Duke of Maine, and her brother-in-law, the Duke of Orléans, over which of the two should be declared Regent. After the Parlement de Paris had deliberated for a week, the Duke of Orléans was declared the official Regent. This of course exacerbated the rivalry between Louise Françoise and her younger sister, the Duchess of Orléans, now the highest ranking lady of France.[5]

During the Régence, Louise Françoise was frequently occupied with the escapades of her second daughter, Louise Élisabeth, Princess of Conti, who had become the mistress of Philippe Charles de La Fare. When her daughter's husband, the Prince of Conti, discovered the liaison, he became physically abusive toward his wife.[5] The only son of the Conti couple, Louis François de Bourbon, was thought to have been the result of his mother's adulterous relationship with La Fare. Louise Élisabeth later took refuge from her violent husband with her mother at the Palais Bourbon.

In 1714, her niece, Mademoiselle du Maine, the daughter of her older brother, the Duke of Maine, was named in her honour.

In the 1720s, Louise Françoise became the mistress of the Marquis de Lassay. In order to be closer to her, he built the Hôtel de Lassay[13] next to the Palais Bourbon, her residence in Paris. Later on, a gallery was built, housing the grander, more public part of the collection of paintings that made Lassay's reputation as a connoisseur redound in Parisian circles for a generation after his death;[17] the gallery that joined the two buildings also enabled the lovers to have better access to each other.

In 1737, she was asked to be the godmother to Louis XV's eldest son, Louis, Dauphin of France. The young dauphin's godfather was Louise Françoise's nephew, Louis, Duke of Orléans.

When her son was disgraced during the Regency of Philippe d'Orléans, Louise Françoise regarded his mistress Madame de Prie as the cause. As such, Louise Françoise detested her.[8] Her son died in exile in 1740 to be succeeded by his son, Louise Françoise's grandson, Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé, who was aged four.

Garden façade of the Palais Bourbon, facing the Seine, as built by Louise Françoise

During her long widowhood, Louise Françoise built the Palais Bourbon in Paris, not far from the residences of her surviving siblings. Named after her family, it was built after her stay at the Grand Trianon, which became the architectural inspiration for her new home.

Construction on the palace started in 1722, when she was forty-nine years old. Several designers were involved, including Robert de Cotte, who drew up plans around 1720,[18] Lorenzo Giardini, who died in 1722, and Lassurance, who died in 1724. Jean Aubert became the chief architect in 1726 and is given credit for the definitive design. Jacques Gabriel acted as a consultant.[19][20]

The Palais had a collection of large reception rooms, the main one being the Galerie which overlooked the Seine; the main salon of the Palais looked towards the Tuileries Palace to the east. The Palais was linked to the Hôtel de Lassay by means of a corridor overlooking a joint Parterre.

Her older half-sister, Marie Anne de Bourbon, who was the Dowager Princess of Conti, lived in the Hôtel de Conti, opposite the Louvre, on the Quai de Conti. Her older brother, the Duke of Maine, owned the Hôtel du Maine (destroyed 1838) on the rue Bourbon (now the rue de Lille), very near the Palais Bourbon.[21] Her younger sister, the Duchess of Orléans, lived at the Palais-Royal, the Orléans residence in Paris. Near the Louvre and the Palais-Royal, her youngest brother, the Count of Toulouse, lived in the Hôtel de Toulouse. In 1733 her daughter Louise Élisabeth moved into a house very near the Palais Bourbon, which became another Hôtel de Conti (now the Hôtel de Brienne), on the rue Saint-Dominique.

Louise Françoise de Bourbon died on 16 June 1743, at the age of seventy, at the Palais Bourbon. She was buried at the Carmel du faubourg Saint-Jacques,[22] a Carmelite convent on the Left Bank in Paris Latin Quarter.

Louise Françoise gave birth to nine children:

Name	Portrait	Lifespan	Notes
Marie Anne Gabrielle Éléonore de Bourbon Abbess of Saint-Antoine-des-Champs		22 December 1690 - 30 August 1760	Born at the Palace of Versailles; mentally ill; became abbess of Saint-Antoine-des-Champs in her teens; died in Villejuif. During her youth, she was known as Mademoiselle de Condé and de Bourbon.
Louis Henri Joseph de Bourbon Duke of Bourbon Prince of Condé		18 August 1692 - 27 January 1740	Born at the Palace of Versailles and married twice; first to his paternal cousin Marie Anne de Bourbon and had no issue. He later married Landgravine Caroline of Hesse-Rotenburg and had issue. He was the Prime Minister of France during the reign of Louis XV of France but the king had him exiled. Louis Henri died in exile at the Château de Chantilly.
Louise Élisabeth de Bourbon Princess of Conti		22 November 1693 – 27 May 1775	Born at the Palace of Versailles, she married her paternal cousin Louis Armand II, Prince of Conti. She was the maternal grandmother of Philippe Égalité. She died in Paris having outlived all her siblings.
Louise Anne de Bourbon Mademoiselle de Charolais		23 June 1695 - 8 April 1758	Born at the Palace of Versailles, she never married; she had a romantic affair with the Duke of Richelieu and was his mistress just like her cousin, Charlotte Aglaé d'Orléans. She never had any legitimate children, but was suspected of having illegitimate issue, although there was no proof. She owned the Hôtel de Rothelin-Charolais (where she died) and in her life was known as Mademoiselle de Sens and then Mademoiselle de Charolais.
Marie Anne de Bourbon Mademoiselle de Clermont		16 October 1697 - 11 August 1741	Born in Paris, she was said to have been the fruit of her mother's affair with François Louis, Prince of Conti. She married Louis de Melun, Duke of Joyeuse in 1719, in secret and against her brother's wishes; she died in Paris after having been for many years in the service of Queen Maria Leszczyńska; known as Mademoiselle de Clermont.
Charles de Bourbon Count of Charolais		19 June 1700 - 23 July 1760	Born at Chantilly, he was known as the Count of Charolais and on his death, the title was passed to his sister Louise Anne; He secretly married Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy, a descendant of Henry II of France via an illegitimate branch. Their son was Louis-Thomas (1718–1799), who was not legitimated by the king, later was exiled to England; he also had issue from his affair with one Marguerite Caron de Rancurel. Died in Paris.
Henriette Louise Marie Françoise Gabrielle de Bourbon Abbess of Beaumont-lès-Tours		15 January 1703 - 19 September 1772	Born at the Palace of Versailles, she was once considered as a possible bride for Louis XV; despite that, she never married; known as Mademoiselle de Vermandois, she was the abbesse de Beaumont-lès-Tours from 1728; she died at Beaumont.
Élisabeth Thérèse Alexandrine de Bourbon Mademoiselle de Sens		15 September 1705 - 15 April 1765	Born in Paris she was known as Mademoiselle de Sens; her vast fortune went to her nephew, Louis Joseph de Bourbon – future Prince of Condé.
Louis de Bourbon Count of Clermont		15 June 1709- 16 June 1771	Born at the Palace of Versailles, he was the Count of Clermont from birth and was the abbé de Saint-Germain-des-Près from 1737; never married and died at Versailles; he founded the Académie du Petit-Luxembourg, where scientists, artists and architects would meet. He was also the fifth Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of France, the supreme Masonic authority in France, which existed from approximately 1728 until its reorganisation in 1773.

• Fraser, Antonia (2006). Love and Louis XIV. Weidenfeld and Nicolson.