Louis Auguste I. de Bourbon, duc du Maine

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Louis Auguste de Bourbon, Duc du Maine at a young age, portrait by François de Troy , Musée de Sceaux

Louis Auguste de Bourbon (born March 31, 1670 , † May 14, 1736 ) was Duke of Maine and an illegitimate, but legitimate son of the French King Louis XIV with Madame de Montespan . In the time of the Régence he became a rival of the regent Philip of Orléans ; after an attempted coup he was banished from this.

Life

youth

Louis Auguste was the second child of Madame de Montespan's association with the Sun King; the first child was about a year older than him, but died in 1672. Louis Auguste was his father's favorite son. His birth was in the utmost secrecy, as he was the fruit of a double adultery and Madame de Montespan's husband was very jealous. Immediately after the birth, the baby was secretly handed over at night to the widow Scarron - later Madame de Maintenon - who waited in a fiaker masked and drove with him to Paris. Louis Auguste spent some of the first years of his life in a house in Vaugirard near Paris. He would maintain an intimate relationship with his governess Madame de Maintenon throughout his life - probably more than with his own mother, Madame de Montespan. Louis Auguste was handicapped from birth - according to Liselotte von der Pfalz he limped - and therefore had to a. in the summer and autumn of 1675 go to Barèges for a thermal cure , accompanied by Madame de Maintenon.

Like all of King Ludwig's children with Madame de Montespan, Louis Auguste was legitimized by his father in December 1673 together with Louis César, Comte de Vexin (1672–10 January 1683), and Louise Françoise, later Mademoiselle de Nantes ( 1673-1743). The mother's name was not mentioned in the official legitimation document because it was feared that Monsieur de Montespan might claim the children for himself. After that, from the end of 1673 the children lived at the court near the king and the Montespan.

Louis Auguste de Bourbon, Duc du Maine, 1695

In 1691, over ten years after his mother had fallen out of favor, Louis Auguste is said to have been the one who made her leave Versailles. After that he lived in her former apartment. According to Liselotte von der Pfalz, he had the Montespan's luggage packed as soon as she left and her furniture to be thrown out the window to prevent her return.

Despite his mobility problems, he took part in the campaign in Flanders in 1692 under the command of Monsieur le Prince , the son of the great Condé , and at the side of Francois-Louis de Conti . During the war he did not always attract attention because of the bravery expected of him, rather he avoided the enemies at Namur in 1695 and let them escape - to the great disappointment of the king, who lost his usual composure at the news and, unusually, gave himself up in a fit of anger. Nevertheless, King Louis Auguste and his brother Louis Alexandre, the Comte de Toulouse , sent to Flanders as lieutenants general in 1701 under the command of Boufflers.

Louise Bénédicte de Condé, Duchesse du Maine

Louis Auguste married Louise Bénédicte , daughter of Henri III, in 1692 . Jules de Condé . Madame de Montespan, his mother, was not invited to the wedding. The marriage resulted in seven children, three of whom reached adulthood but had no offspring:

In 1700 Louis Auguste bought the castle of Sceaux from the former property of the Minister Colbert . In July 1714, Louis XIV officially elevated Louis Auguste, Duke of Maine, and his youngest brother, the Count of Toulouse , to princes of the blood - to the reluctance of the nobility and the court. At the urging of Louis Auguste and Madame de Maintenon, the king also changed his will: in the event of his death, he entrusted the guardianship of his great-grandson, the little heir to the throne Louis (XV) , his natural son Louis Auguste, and addressed him and his Brother, the Count of Toulouse, the right of succession to the throne in the event of extinction of the legitimate line. This decree was controversial from the start, but is understandable from the situation of the royal family in 1714. After a series of deaths in direct line to the throne and after Philip V of Spain's forced renunciation of the line to the French throne by the Allies of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713, the little Duke of Anjou , later Louis XV. , only one direct heir to the throne. The next contenders for the throne were the Bourbon branch lines Orléans and Condé . Both lines were therefore from the beginning against the inclusion of the king's legitimate sons (whom they still viewed as ' bastards ').

In mid-August 1715 the king's health deteriorated drastically. On the 22nd of that month he was no longer able to personally attend a troop parade held in his honor in the courtyard of the Palace of Versailles . As a sign of the rise of the Duke of Maine in rank, he was entrusted with this task at the side of the Dauphin . That caused further resentment, especially in the Orléans house.

Régence

The king died on September 1, 1715. According to the will, the dukes of Orléans and Maine would now jointly reign over the minor Louis XV. should lead. Philipp von Orléans was to be in charge of political reign, while his brother-in-law Louis Auguste ( Colonel général of the Swiss Guard since 1674 ) was to be the personal guardian of the child king, to be in charge of the court and to exercise authority over the life guard . But as early as September 2nd, Philip of Orléans had the King's will interpreted by the Paris Parliament in such a way that he was entitled to the military supreme command over the life guards, and he left the guardianship untouched for the time being. The turn of the era in the Regency had begun.

While Philip took office and appointed the future Cardinal Dubois as his foreign minister and later prime minister, the Duke of Maine was politically sidelined and limited to the affairs of court in the Palais des Tuileries , where Louis XV. grew up. The Duke, but above all his wife Benedicte, did not want to come to terms with this situation. They also belonged to the "Spanish party" at court, which did not accept the anti-Spanish triple alliance formed in 1718 between France and Great Britain and the Netherlands. To disempower his critics, Philip held a throne court on August 26, 1718, through which the Duke of Maine the guardianship of Louis XV. revoked and his promotion to Prince of Blood was reversed. As a result, the Spanish ambassador, Prince of Cellamare, with the support of the Duchess, instigated the so-called Cellamare conspiracy against the regent to depose or kill him. But the Minister Dubois found out about the conspiracy in good time in December 1718 and immediately crushed it. 1,500 people were arrested, including the Duke and Duchess of Maine, who came to the Bastille temporarily . As a result of her conspiracy, the Duchess of Maine was then exiled to Dijon Castle and her husband interned in the Doullens Citadel . This ended all ambitions of the ducal couple in exile. In 1720 they were pardoned by the Regency Council and then withdrew most of the time to Sceaux Castle .

Mademoiselle de Blois and Mademoiselle de Nantes by Philippe Vignon. Palace of Versailles

siblings

Of his six siblings reached adulthood:

literature

  • Dirk van der Cruisse: To be a Madame is a great craft ...: Liselotte von der Pfalz - a German princess at the court of the Sun King. Piper, Munich 1990, unabridged paperback edition: 1997 (3rd edition)
  • Warren Hamilton Lewis: Louis XIV. The Sun King. Heyne, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-453-55034-X .
  • Warren Hamilton Lewis: The sunset of a splendid century. The life and times of the Duc de Maine 1670-1736. Eyre & Spottiswodde, London 1955.
  • Jacques Levron: Louis XV. The misunderstood king of France. Heyne, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-453-00115-X .
  • Klaus Malettke : The Bourbons. Volume 1: From Heinrich IV. To Louis XIV. (1589–1715). W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart et al. 2008, ISBN 978-3-17-020581-9 , p. 252 ff. ( Excerpts online ).
  • Gilette Ziegler: The court of Louis XIV. In eyewitness reports . Rauch, Düsseldorf 1964.

Web links

Commons : Louis Auguste, Duke of Maine  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gilette Ziegler: The court of Ludwig XIV. In eyewitness reports . Rauch, Düsseldorf 1964, p. 129.
  2. ↑ Helga Thoma: 'Madame, my dear beloved' - the mistresses of the French kings. Ueberreuter, Vienna 1996, p. 119
  3. ↑ Dirk van der Cruisse: To be a Madame is a great craft ...: Liselotte von der Pfalz - a German princess at the court of the Sun King. Piper, Munich 1990, unabridged paperback edition: 1997 (3rd edition), p. 351
  4. ^ Gilette Ziegler: The court of Ludwig XIV. In eyewitness reports . Rauch, Düsseldorf 1964, p. 129.
  5. ^ Gilette Ziegler: The court of Ludwig XIV. In eyewitness reports . Rauch, Düsseldorf 1964, p. 260.
  6. ^ Gilette Ziegler: The court of Ludwig XIV. In eyewitness reports . Rauch, Düsseldorf 1964, p. 269.
  7. ^ Gilette Ziegler: The court of Ludwig XIV. In eyewitness reports . Rauch, Düsseldorf 1964, p. 291.
  8. ↑ Dirk van der Cruisse: To be a Madame is a great craft ...: Liselotte von der Pfalz - a German princess at the court of the Sun King. Piper, Munich 1990, unabridged paperback edition: 1997 (3rd edition), p. 438
  9. ↑ Helga Thoma: 'Madame, my dear beloved' - the mistresses of the French kings , Ueberreuter, Vienna 1996, p. 106
  10. ^ Gilette Ziegler: The court of Ludwig XIV. In eyewitness reports . Rauch, Düsseldorf 1964, pp. 382–385, here 384.
  11. ↑ Dirk van der Cruisse: Being a madam is a great craft ...: Liselotte von der Pfalz ... Piper, Munich 1990, unabridged paperback edition: 1997 (3rd edition), p. 577.
  12. ^ Gilette Ziegler: The court of Ludwig XIV. In eyewitness reports . Rauch, Düsseldorf 1964, pp. 385-387.
  13. ↑ a b Dirk van der Cruisse: Being a madam is a great craft ...: Liselotte von der Pfalz ... Piper, Munich 1990, unabridged paperback edition: 1997 (3rd edition), p. 601.
  14. ^ Thea Leitner : Scandal at court . Ueberreuter, Vienna 1993, ISBN 3-8000-3492-1 , p. 117.
personal data
SURNAME Bourbon, Louis Auguste de, duc du Maine
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Son of the French king Louis XIV.
DATE OF BIRTH March 31, 1670
DATE OF DEATH May 14, 1736