Luise Christine of Savoy-Carignan

Luise Christine von Savoyen-Carignan, portrait from 1654/55

Luise Christine von Savoyen-Carignan ( French Louise Christine de Savoie-Carignan ; born August 1, 1627 in Paris , † July 7, 1689 in Paris) was a Savoy princess and by marriage Margravine of Baden-Baden . Her refusal to follow the unloved husband from glamorous Paris to the comparatively provincial-looking Baden-Baden caused a scandal at the time and the corresponding talk at all European royal courts.

Life

Luise Christine was the eldest child of Thomas Franz von Savoyen , Prince of Carignan , and Marie de Bourbon-Condé (1606–1692), Countess of Soissons , in Paris. Through her mother she was a distant relative of the royal family, her brother Eugen Moritz von Savoyen-Carignan was the father of the famous Prince Eugen . When Luise Christine was of marriageable age, a marriage agreement was reached between the House of Savoy-Carignan and the margravial house of Baden through the mediation of the French King Louis XIV : Luise Christine became heir to the throne of Baden-Baden on March 15, 1653, Ferdinand Maximilian of Baden-Baden engaged. The marriage contract was signed with great pomp in the Louvre in Paris . The dowry of the Savoyard bride was substantial: the French royal family gave 100,000 livres, and the bride's father gave another 600,000. In addition, there were other valuable trousseau worth 15,000  Scudi . The actual marriage took place around a year later on March 15, 1654 per procurationem in the oratory of the Hôtel de Soissons . Luise Christine's brother Eugen Moritz represented the groom, because Prince Ferdinand Maximilian did not arrive in Paris until June of that year.

The Hôtel de Soissons in Paris

13 months after the marriage, on April 8, 1655, the couple's son, Ludwig Wilhelm von Baden , was born. His godfather was Louis XIV. The marriage of the two new parents, which was concluded purely for political reasons, turned out to be not particularly happy. Luise Christine was strongly influenced by her mother, who did not like the son-in-law chosen by the king, and so the young mother refused to leave Paris to travel to his homeland with her husband. Ferdinand Maximilian therefore left France after a violent argument with his wife and mother-in-law for Baden without his wife, but he took the three-month-old son with him. He had him brought to Baden-Baden , where the young Ludwig Wilhelm grew up without his mother. In their place came the second wife of his grandfather, Countess Maria Magdalena von Oettingen . His father warned him urgently in a letter: “Flee like the plague to marry one of the French ladies: otherwise you will not find rest all your life and you will undermine the peace of your home. Believe me this, my dear child, and let your own mother serve you as a warning example: it was said that she had the best mind of everyone at court, and yet she was so badly seduced by her mother and other people and hers Avoid duty. "

Luise Christine continued to live at the French court. She was court lady of the queen mother Anna of Austria and held the office of dame du palais there , for which she received an annual pension of 180,000  livres . In 1668, however, she fell out of favor and was denied access to the royal court . Her husband died on October 8 of the following year, but Luise Christine accepted the news of Ferdinand Maximilian's death with obvious indifference. However, when she supported the marriage of her younger brother Emmanuel-Philibert von Savoyen-Carignan to Maria Angela Caterina d'Este in 1684, against the express wish of the king , she was completely banished from the court and sent into exile in Rennes . As the future Prince of Carignan, Louis XIV would have preferred to have married Emmanuel Philibert to a French noblewoman. However, the exile was lifted four years later, so that Luise Christine was allowed to return to Paris in July 1688. There she died at the age of 61 on July 7, 1689 and was buried in the Carthusian monastery of Aubevoye .

literature

• Gaudenzio Clarétta: Le relazioni politiche e dinastiche die principi di S avoja coi margrave die Baden dal secolo XV al XVIII, narrate su documenti inediti. Turin 1890.
• Jean-Fred Tourtchine: Le Royaume d'Italie. Volume 1 (= Les Manuscrits du Cèdre. Dictionnaire historique et généalogique ). Cercle d'études des dynasties royales européennes, Paris 1995, ISSN  0993-3964 , pp. 154-155.

Web links

• Savoyard Princesses at the Courts of Europe (Italian)

References and comments

1. ↑ Louise Christine was not her parents' first child, but her sister, who had been born a year earlier, had died shortly after birth.
2. ^ ^{A b} Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon : Mémoires de Saint-Simon. Nouvelle édition collationnée sur le manuscrit autographe. Volume 14. Hachette, Paris 1899, p. 250, note 6 ( online ).
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Savoyard Princesses at the Courts of Europe , accessed March 9, 2012.
4. ^ ^{A b} Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon: Mémoires de Saint-Simon. Nouvelle édition collationnée sur le manuscrit autographe. Volume 10. Hachette, Paris 1893, p. 72, note 6 ( online ).
5. ^ ^{A b} Philippe Le Bas: France. Dictionnaire encyclopédique. Volume 8. Firmin Didot, Paris 1842, p. 759 ( online ).
6. ↑ Johannes Linneborn: Review of the book "Margrave Ludwig Wilhelm von Baden. In: Literarischer Handweiser. Volume 44. Theiss, Münster 1906, Sp. 626.
7. ↑ On higher matters, refer to monumente-online.de , accessed on March 9, 2012.
8. ↑ ^{a b} Aloys Schulte: The youth of Prince Eugene. In: Communications from the Institute for Austrian Historical Research. Volume 13. Wagner, Innsbruck 1892, p. 480.
9. ↑ Anatole Caresme Charpillon: Dictionnaire historique de toutes les communes du département de l'Eure. Histoire, geography, statistique. Volume 1. Delcroix, Les Andelys 1868, p. 155 ( online ).