Prince étranger

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Prince étranger (French for foreign prince ) was a high nobility in the Ancien Régime , i.e. in pre-revolutionary France. People who were entitled to this rank were referred to at the French court as "haut et puissant Prince".

Basically, the term Prince implies potential or actual sovereignty and thus as a title belonging to the group of those who can succeed a ruler on the throne. However, in monarchical France there were also fine gradations within this group:

  • die princes de titre , princes without a sovereign principality
  • the princes légitimés , the illegitimate but recognized children and male agreements of the French kings
  • die prince du sang , the princes of the blood, the legitimate great-grandchildren of the French kings and their descendants, as well
  • the famille du roi , the family of the king consisting of the children and grandchildren of the king or Dauphin , as well
  • the princes étrangers , the foreign princes, to whom the other princes enjoyed a prominent position.

Within the princes étrangers there were three groups:

  1. those who lived in France and were recognized by the king as younger members of foreign ruling houses, such as
  2. the rulers of mostly smaller principalities living in France, for example
  3. those who were descendants of former sovereign dynasties (or at least claimed to be and were recognized with this claim), such as

In the 17th and 18th centuries, when the French court was considered the most important in all of Europe, a number of members of the nobility found themselves in Paris and Versailles, taking on the change of location for the most varied of reasons: exile or Escape (such as Eduard von Simmern ) or the search for fame, influence or wealth. Some ruled even smaller principalities outside the French national borders, such as the Prince of Orange , others had extensive property holdings in France, but all could count on it, not only being accepted and accepted, but also with military commands, lands, governorships, diplomatic tasks and sinecurs or titles, sometimes even to be provided with a substantial dowry as the husband of a royal princess.

On the other hand, these nobles were often troublemakers at court and sometimes even a danger to the king; since her noble descent not only attracted the attention of the monarch, but also that of the French nobility, the bourgeoisie and even individual provinces, who secured their intercession at court, often against the representatives of the crown. The foreign princes saw themselves as equal to the king and sometimes even challenged the power of the sovereign, such as Philippe-Emmanuel de Lorraine, duc de Mercœur , who holed up in his castles in the country, or Frédéric-Maurice de La Tour d'Auvergne , duc de Bouillon , who openly dared war against the king; they allied themselves with French princes (as in the Fronde ) or made alliances with foreign powers, such as Marie de Rohan-Montbazon, duchesse de Chevreuse .

Although their sovereign roots were recognized at the court, they were only members of the Parlement of Paris if they had a French fiefdom - a circumstance which led to the disputes with the French dukes, of whom Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon reports, with determined, which on the other hand, at the royal table (and in society in general) towered over the normal pairs, were only exacerbated.

The most famous of the Princes étrangers were the strict Catholic Guises , especially when the Valois family was nearing its end, the Huguenots' power grew, they themselves saw the throne under their control and even hoped that one day would take over the inheritance. Their pride was so great that Henri I de Lorraine, duc de Guise, openly courted Margaret of Valois , daughter of King Henry II and later wife of Henry IV , but was then forced to marry Catherine de Clèves to avoid that the angry brothers Margarete physically attacked him. After Bartholomew's Night in 1572, the power of the Guisen was so great that King Henry III. ordered the murder of the brothers Henri I de Lorraine and the cardinal and archbishop of Reims Louis II de Lorraine , in order to get rid of them.

The status of prince étranger was not an automatic mechanism for foreign nobles, but required recognition by the king both in principle and with regard to any privilege granted to them. Many families and individuals never managed to achieve this status. The most famous of these was Prince Eugene of Savoy , Count von Soissons , who then entered imperial service and then was a feared opponent of France for a generation.

The ducal families of France, on the other hand, rejected the rank of prince, even if they claimed it for themselves. Often they used it for the eldest son and at the same time made it clear that they considered him subordinate to the title of duke. Typical here were the La Rochefoucauld (the Duke's eldest son carried the title of "Prince de Marcillac", although such a principality had never existed), who claimed to be descended from Duke Wilhelm IV of Aquitaine , but who did not succeed because of this to be recognized as princes étrangères .

Most of the foreign princes , however, did not have their princely titles. Since the families of this rank were known and there were not many in the ancien régime , one title was less valid for them than the family name - the princes étrangères sometimes called themselves simply chevalier in the 16th and 17th centuries . It was not until the 18th century, when dukes and simple nobles acquired prince titles, that foreign princes followed suit , referring to their privilege of associating a territory with a courtesy title , even if this territory was no longer owned by the family (e.g. Prince de Joinville (Guise), Prince de Soubise (Rohan), Prince de Talmond (La Trémoïlle)). They later began to adopt the custom, which was emerging abroad, of adding the prefix "le Prince" to their first name. The genealogist Père Anselme initially dismissed this behavior in his documents with the word dit ( named ), but later renounced this distinction.

In the 18th century, some of the princely titles of the German Empire, the papacy and Spain were recognized in France ( Broglie , Bauffremont , Orsini ). Unlike most French princes, although they had a legal basis for their title, they were not entitled to the corresponding rank because their families were not sovereign.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ New Encyclopædia Britannica (1990), La Rochefoucauld Family: "The family's claim to princely privileges in France was urged without success in the mid-17th century ..."