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Henri Jules, Prince of Condé

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Henri Jules
Prince of Condé
Portrait of Henri Jules de Bourbon
Prince of Condé
Tenure11 November 1686 – 11 April 1709
PredecessorLouis II
SuccessorLouis III
Born(1643-07-29)29 July 1643
Paris, Kingdom of France
Died1 April 1709(1709-04-01) (aged 65)
Paris, France
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1663)​
IssueMarie Thérèse, Princess of Conti
Louis, Prince of Condé
Anne Marie, Mademoiselle de Condé
Louise Bénédicte, Duchess of Maine
Marie Anne, Duchess of Vendôme
Names
Henri Jules de Bourbon
HouseBourbon-Condé
FatherLouis le Grand Condé
MotherClaire-Clémence de Maillé
SignatureHenri Jules's signature

Henri Jules de Bourbon (29 July 1643, in Paris – 1 April 1709, in Paris, also Henri III de Bourbon) was prince de Condé, from 1686 to his death. At the end of his life he suffered from clinical lycanthropy and was considered insane.[citation needed]

Biography

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Henri Jules was born to Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé in 1643. He was five years younger than King Louis XIV of France. He was the sole heir to the enormous Condé fortune and property, including the Hôtel de Condé and the Château de Chantilly. His mother, Princess Claire-Clémence de Maillé-Brézé, was a niece of Cardinal Richelieu. He was baptised at the Église Saint-Sulpice, Paris on his day of birth. For the first three years of his life, while his father was duc d'Enghien, he was known at court as the duc d'Albret.

Henri Jules' four surviving daughters, Gobert.

Upon the death of his grandfather, he succeeded to his father's courtesy title of duc d'Enghien. As a member of the reigning House of Bourbon, he was born a prince du sang and styled as Monsieur le Duc.

Childhood and education

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Because of his father exile from France and fighting for Spain, Henri Jules spent much of his youth in the Spanish Netherlands where he was also beginning in 1652 when he was seven years old educated by Pierre Bourdelot who taught him Latin. The following year Henri Jules was enrolled in a Jesuit school in Namur to be taught alongside other children.[1]

Throughout much of his life, Henri Jules was mentally unstable. His maternal grandmother Nicole du Plessis,sister to the Cardinal Richelieu had suffered from the belief that her bottom was made of glass and therefore refused to sit down. Henri-Jules manifested in that he would imagine himself a dog and would bark like one.

He was a short, ugly, debauched, and brutal man not only "repulsive in appearance", but "cursed with so violent a temper that it was positively dangerous to contradict him".[2] He was well educated but had a malicious character.

Trained as a soldier, in 1673 he was made official commander of the Rhine front, but in name only, as he lacked the military ability of his father. He also displayed a recklessness in battle and this lack of judgement made him as much a threat to his own troops as the enemy.[3] His father would instead transfer his hopes on a worthy military sucessor for the Condé name on Henri-Jules cousin Francois-Louis.

Henri Jules was accorded the responsibility of governing the Condé estates, a task wich he proved to be much more suitable.

A possible bride considered for him at this time was his distant cousin, Élisabeth Marguerite d'Orléans, daughter of Gaston d'Orléans, but the marriage did not materialize.

Marriage

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He eventually married the German princess Anne Henriette of Bavaria in the chapel of the Palais du Louvre in Paris in December 1663. The bride was the daughter of Edward, Count Palatine of Simmern and the political hostess Anna Gonzaga. The couple had ten children, only half of whom lived to adulthood. The young princess was noted for her pious, generous and charitable nature. Many at court praised her for her solicitude towards her disagreeable husband. Despite her good qualities, Henri Jules often beat his quiet wife during his rages.

In addition, he had an illegitimate daughter by Françoise-Charlotte de Montalais (1633-1718). The child was known variously as Julie de Bourbon, Julie de Gheneni (anagram of Enghien, aka de Guenani), or Mademoiselle de Châteaubriant. She was legitimised in 1693 at 25 years of age and was married to Armand de Madaillan de Lesparre, Marquis de Lassay[3], a member of her fathers entourage. She died on 10 March 1710, at age 43.

Later life

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Henri Jules mental instability worsened towards the later end of his life and he became convinced that he was already deceased and therefore he began taking his meals in an underground chamber wich he was convinced was the home of M. de Turenne. He would also invite guests to this chamber to dine with him and pretend they were also dead and converse on the afterlife.[4] while served by servants dressed in white sheets.

Though all indications point to his actions being a symptom of his mental illness it should also be noted that he was a fervent Jansenist and part of that belief included preparing for ones death through reflection and lausterious living,and learning how to die well.[5]

Death

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Henry Jules was succeeded by his only surviving son, Louis III de Bourbon, who only survived his father by a few months[3].Therefore the title passed to Henri Jules grandson Louis-Henri.

Ancestry

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Issue

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Name Portrait Lifespan Notes
Marie Thérèse de Bourbon
Princess of Conti 		1 February 1666 –
22 February 1732 		Born in Paris and known as Mademoiselle de Bourbon in her youth, she married her cousin François Louis, Prince of Conti and had issue; she was briefly titular Queen of Poland in 1697.
Henri de Bourbon
Duke of Bourbon 		5 November 1667 –
5 July 1670 		Died in childhood.
Louis de Bourbon
Duke of Bourbon
Prince of Condé 		10 November 1668 –
4 March 1710 		Born in Paris, he became the heir apparent of his father on his brother's death in 1670; he married Louise-Françoise de Bourbon, légitimée de France a daughter of Louis XIV; the couple had issue.
Anne de Bourbon
Mademoiselle d’Enghien 		11 November 1670 –
27 May 1675 		Died in childhood.
Henri de Bourbon
Count of Clermont 		3 July 1672 –
6 June 1675 		Born at Saint-Germain-en-Laye and died at the age of two in Paris.
Louis Henri de Bourbon
Count of La Marche 		9 November 1673 –
21 February 1677 		Born in Paris, he died at the age of three in the same city.
Anne Marie Victoire de Bourbon
Mademoiselle d'Enghien
Mademoiselle de Condé 		11 August 1675 –
23 October 1700 		Born in Paris, she died at the age of 25 at the Château Asnières.
Anne Louise Bénédicte de Bourbon
Duchess of Maine 		8 November 1676 –
23 January 1753 		Born in Paris, she was known as Mademoiselle d’Enghien and then Mademoiselle de Charolais during her youth; she married another illegitimate child of Louis XIV, Louis Auguste de Bourbon, duc du Maine; the couple had issue.
Marie Anne de Bourbon
Duchess of Vendôme 		24 February 1678 –
11 April 1718 		Born in Paris, she was known as Mademoiselle de Montmorency and then Mademoiselle d’Enghien during her youth; she married her cousin, Louis Joseph de Bourbon, duc de Vendôme; the couple had no issue and Marie Anne died at the Hôtel de Vendôme.
N de Bourbon
Mademoiselle de Clermont 		17 July 1679 –
17 September 1680 		Born and died in Paris.

References

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  1. ^ The Worlds of Knowledge and the Classical Tradition in the Early Modern Age: Comparative Approaches. BRILL. 2022-02-22. ISBN 978-90-04-46233-5.
  2. ^ Williams, H. Noel (1912). "Love Affairs of the Condé family". pp. 268–280.
  3. ^ a b c Swann, Julian (2003-08-21). Provincial Power and Absolute Monarchy: The Estates General of Burgundy, 1661–1790. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-44083-7.
  4. ^ Ladurie, Emmanuel Le Roy (July 2001). Saint-Simon and the Court of Louis XIV. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-47320-8.
  5. ^ Booth, Philip; Tingle, Elizabeth (2020-11-23). A Companion to Death, Burial, and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, c. 1300–1700. BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-44343-3.
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Media related to Henri Jules, Prince of Condé at Wikimedia Commons

Henri Jules, Prince of Condé
Born: 29 July 1643 Died: 11 April 1709
French nobility
Preceded by Prince of Condé
11 November 1686 – 11 April 1709 		Succeeded by
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