Louis I de Bourbon, comte de Vendôme

Louis and Blanche

Louis de Bourbon (German: Ludwig von Bourbon ) (* 1376 ; † December 21, 1446 in Tours ) was Count of Vendôme from 1403 until his death (as Louis I) . He was the second son of Jeans de Bourbon , Count of La Marche , and his wife Catherine († 1412), Countess of Vendôme and Castres .

Louis ruled with his mother in the county of Vendôme since the death of his father, while his older brother Jacques succeeded him in La Marche and Castres. From 1403 he ruled independently after paying homage to Duke Ludwig II of Anjou . Since 1406 he was in possession of the Barony of Mondoubleau in Maine , which he had bought from Charles de la Rivière .

Life

At a young age, Louis fought alongside the Earl of Derby in England against the rule of King Richard II. After the latter was overthrown in 1399, the Earl of Derby ascended the English throne as Henry IV , thus establishing the Lancaster dynasty .

After his return, Louis was in France a supporter of the Duke Louis d'Orléans , who had been King Charles VI since the spiritual decline . exercised the government over France and was in conflict with the Burgundy Duke Johann Ohnefurcht . After the murder of the Duke of Orléans in 1407, Louis was briefly imprisoned by Johann, but was appointed Lord Chamberlain of the Crown in 1408 under his reign . From then on, he supported Count Bernard VII d'Armagnac , who had taken the lead in the Orléans party (see: Civil War of the Armagnacs and Bourguignons ). During an invasion of Burgundy on the Vendômois in July 1412, Louis was captured again, but released a little later after the Treaty of Auxerre .

In September 1413, Louis was the French envoy to Aragon, where he was supposed to represent the rights of Princess Jolanthe , the wife of Duke Louis II of Anjou. In November of the same year he was appointed Grand Master of France and entrusted the government of the provinces of Champagne , Brie and Picardy . Another diplomatic mission took Louis to England to prevent its King Henry V from resuming the Hundred Years War . Among other things, he offered him the hand of Princess Catherine of Valois . However, the peace offers were rejected by King Heinrich.

After the English army had successfully landed on the coast of Normandy in the summer of 1415 , Louis fought in the disastrous Battle of Azincourt on October 25 , in which he was captured by Sir John Cornewall . He brought it to England and sold it to King Henry. The proceeds enabled Sir John to build a castle in Ampthill . For his freedom, Louis was supposed to pay the English king a sum of 100,000 écu , but since he was unable to pay such a large sum, he was released after transferring 54,000 écu.

Back in France, Louis supported the rights of Dauphin Charles VII against the provisions of the Treaty of Troyes and against the English occupation of the French north. The fight against the Duke of Burgundy, who had in the meantime allied with England, continued. On July 31, 1423, Louis was defeated as leader of a Franco-Scottish army in the battle of Cravant against a Burgundian-English army and was captured again. As a result of this defeat, Louis lost the county of Vendôme to the English, whose representative in France, the Duke of Bedford , appointed Robert de Willughby, who was loyal to him, as count.

Released from the captivity of Charles VII, Ludwig was appointed to the post of grand master for the second time in 1425, which he had to hand over to Thibaud de Neufchâtel in 1418. He then took part in the offensive against the English on the side of Joan of Arc and took part in the relief of Orléans (May 1429), the battle for Jargeau (June 1429) and the coronation of Charles VII in the cathedral of Reims (17th century) July 1429). The following year he took part in the siege of Compiègnes and was able to take possession of his county again after the English had withdrawn their occupation there. In 1435, Louis was among the Witnesses who signed the Treaty of Arras , which reconciled Burgundy with the king.

In 1438 Ludwig acted as a mediator of the marriage between Princess Katharina and Count Karl von Charolais . In 1440 he took part in the uprising of the nobility against the king's army reform (see: Praguerie ), but was pardoned by this after the revolt failed in July of that year. In 1446 Louis was once again active as an envoy in London, where he successfully brokered the Treaty of Troyes (1444) , which led to a brief peace between the two kingdoms. A few months later he died in Tours.

His body was buried in the collegiate church of Saint-Georges in Vendôme, the construction of which he had commissioned in 1428. His heart was buried in the Chapelle de l'Annonciation (also known as the Chapelle de Vendôme ) of Chartres Cathedral, the construction of which he had also sponsored.

Marriages and offspring

Louis of Bourbon was first married to Blanche († August 22, 1424), daughter of Count Hugo II of Roucy , from 1414 . The marriage remained childless.

In his second marriage in 1424 in Rennes , he married Jeanne de Montfort-Laval, daughter of Mr. Guido XIII. from Montfort from the house of Montfort-Laval . She died on December 18, 1468 at Lavardin Castle . The children of this marriage were:

• Catherine (* 1425; † died young)
• Gabrielle (* 1426; † died young)
• Jean (1428–6 January 1478), successor as Count of Vendôme

During his imprisonment in England, Louis also fathered Sybil Boston, an illegitimate son, Jean (* 1420, † 1496), who was legitimized by the king in 1449.

After Louis 'older brother Jacques II left only one heir daughter after his death in 1438, the younger branch of the House of Bourbon should continue through Louis' descendants and ascend the French royal throne in 1589 with his great-great-great-grandson Heinrich .

literature

• René de Belleval: Azincourt . Dumoulin, Paris 1865, ( PDF ; 10.1 MB).
• Michel Simon: Histoire de Vendôme et de ses environs . Volume 1. Henrion-Loiseau, Vendôme 1834, pp. 223-238 ( PDF ; 15 MB).

Individual evidence

predecessor	Office	successor
Jean I.	Count of Vendôme 1393–1446	Jean VIII.