| Louis Philippe I | |
|---|---|
| First Prince of the Blood Duke of Orléans | |
_as_Duke_of_Orl%25C3%25A9ans_by_Alexander_Roslin%2c_Stockholm.png) Portrait byAlexander Roslin,c. 1770 | |
| Born | Louis Philippe d'Orléans, Duke of Chartres (1725-05-12)12 May 1725 Palace of Versailles,France |
| Died | 18 November 1785(1785-11-18) (aged 60) Château de Sainte-Assise àSeine-Port, France |
| Burial | Val-de-Grâce, Paris |
| Spouse | |
| Issue | Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans Bathilde, Princess of Condé |
| House | Orléans |
| Father | Louis, Duke of Orléans |
| Mother | Margravine Auguste of Baden-Baden |
| Signature |  |
Louis Philippe I, Duke of Orléans (12 May 1725 – 18 November 1785), known asle Gros (the Fat), was a French royal of a cadet branch of theHouse of Bourbon. TheFirst Prince of the Blood after 1752, he was the most senior male at the French court after the immediate royal family. He was the father ofPhilippe Égalité. He greatly augmented the already huge wealth of theHouse of Orléans.
Louis Philippe d'Orléans was born at thePalace of Versailles on 12 May 1725. As the only son ofLouis, Duke of Orléans, and his wifeJohanna of Baden-Baden, he was titledDuke of Chartres at birth. He was one of two children; his younger sisterLouise Marie d'Orléans died at Saint-Cloud in 1728 aged a year and eight months. Louis Philippe's father, who had been devoted to his wife, became a recluse and pious as he grew older.
Louise Marie was known asMademoiselle in her short lifetime.
Louis Philippe was hardly fifteen when he and his young cousinPrincess Henriette of France (1727–1752), the second daughter of KingLouis XV and QueenMarie Leszczyńska, fell in love.
After considering the possibility of such a marriage, Louis XV and his chief minister,Cardinal Fleury, decided against it because this union would have brought the House of Orléans too close to the throne.[1]
In 1743, his paternal grandmother,Françoise-Marie de Bourbon the formidable Dowager Duchess of Orléans, andLouise Élisabeth, Dowager Princess of Conti arranged his marriage to his seventeen-year-old cousin,Louise Henriette de Bourbon (1726–1759), a member of theHouse of Bourbon-Conti, another cadet branch of the House of Bourbon. It was hoped this marriage would close a fifty-year-old family rift.
Louis Philippe's father,Louis le Pieux, gave his consent to the union in the belief that because the young bride had been brought up in a convent, she would be a paragon of virtue and as such be an ideal wife for his son. Louise Henriette was the only daughter ofLouis Armand de Bourbon, Prince of Conti and the earlier mentionedLouise Élisabeth de Bourbon. Louise Henriette was a Princess of the Blood (princesse du sang) and was known at court asMademoiselle de Conti.
The couple was married on 17 December 1743 in thechapel of the Palace of Versailles.
After a few months of a passion that surprised everyone at court, the couple started to drift apart as the young Duchess of Chartres began to lead a scandalous life. This caused her father-in-law to refuse to recognise the legitimacy of his grandchildren.[2]
The couple had three children:
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Because he knew that Louise Henriette was having affairs during her marriage and felt that Louis Philippe was physically incapable of having children, Louise Henriette's father-in-law refused to acknowledge any of her children as legitimate.[4]
In 1756, the Swiss physician and advocate for inoculation against smallpoxThéodore Tronchin was invited to the court of Louis XV at the request of Louis Philippe, who was in favour of inoculation. Louis Philippe wanted to have both his children inoculated in order to demonstrate the safety and effectiveness of the methods, but his wife Louise Henriette was against it. However, after Louis Philippe promised not to have the children inoculated without her consent, she agreed to the procedure, and Philippe and Bathilde were inoculated on March 12, 1756.[5]
Serving with the French armies in theWar of the Austrian Succession, he distinguished himself in the campaigns of 1742, 1743 and 1744, and at theBattle of Fontenoy in 1745. After the death of his first wife, he retired to hischâteau at Bagnolet, where he occupied his time with theatrical performances and the society of intellectuals. Louise Henriette accompanied her husband to the field despite being pregnant.
Upon the death of his father in Paris on 4 August 1752, Louis Philippe becameDuke of Orléans and head of theHouse of Orléans. He also becameFirst Prince of the Blood,Duke of Valois,Nemours andMontpensier. His father was buried at theAbbaye-Sainte-Geneviève where he had lived since 1740.
After the death of Louise Henriette on 9 February 1759 at thePalais-Royal, the Orléans residence in Paris, Louis Philippe took as his mistressÉtiennette Le Marquis, a former dancer who liked to act in comedy plays, and who introduced him into the world of the theater. At that time, thechâteau de Bagnolet, which he had inherited from his father, became his favorite residence.[6] Louis Philippe had three children with Étiennette;[7] they were raised under the care of the Orléans family:
In 1769, Louis Philippe sold Bagnolet and bought theChâteau du Raincy, located less than ten miles east from the center of Paris. The same year, his sonLouis Philippe, marriedLouise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon, heiress to the fortune of her father, theDuke of Penthièvre. Louis Philippe had wanted his son to have a prestigious marriage with the Polish princessMaria Kunigunde, the youngest daughter ofAugustus III of Poland andMaria Josepha, Archduchess of Austria. Princess Maria Kunigunde was the sister of the deceasedDauphine of France (1731–1767), mother ofLouis XVI.
It was King Louis XV who opposed this marriage on the pretence that the princess was too old for the youngDuke of Chartres. This caused the Duke of Penthièvre to ask if the Duke of Orléans if he would allow a union with the Orléans family. Louis Philippe is said to have rejected the idea of his son marrying Mademoiselle de Penthièvre due to herbastard race; this is an irony in itself due to Louis Philippe and the Duke of Penthièvre were both descended from two daughters of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan.
In spite of his liaison with Étiennette, Louis Philippe had several other mistresses until he met, in July 1766,Charlotte Jeanne Béraud de La Haye de Riou,Madame de Montesson, a witty but married twenty-eight-year-old. After the death of the Marquis of Montesson in 1769, Louis Philippe tried to obtainLouis XV's authorisation to marry the young widow. Finally, in December 1772, the King gave his consent on the condition that the Marquise of Montesson would never become Duchess of Orléans or succeed to any other Orléans titles. In addition, the couple was to live a quiet life away from the court. Themorganatic marriage took place on 23 April 1773 "dans la plus stricte intimité".[8] As a wedding gift, the Duke of Orléans gave his new wife thechâteau de Sainte-Assise atSeine-Port, in today'sSeine-et-Marne department of France.
Louis XV had added to the appanage of the House of Orléans thehôtel de Grand-Ferrare inFontainebleau (1740), the county ofSoissons (1751), the seigneuries ofLa Fère,Marle,Ham, Saint-Gobain, theCanal de l'Ourcq and thehôtel Duplessis-Châtillon in Paris (1766).[9]
In 1773, Orléans added to his residences a magnificent hôtel built atChaussée d'Antin, the new elegant quarter of Paris.
In 1780, Louis Philippe gave his son thePalais-Royal, a gift that was to mark their reconciliation after the rift provoked by the Duke's second marriage.[10]
In Sainte-Assise,du Raincy and Paris, the couple received nobles, intellectuals, playwrights, scientists, such as theDuchess of Lauzun, theCountess of Egmont, theMarquis of Lusignan, theMarquis of Osmond, the mathematiciand'Alembert, the German writerMelchior Grimm, the mathematician and astronomerPierre-Simon de Laplace, the chemistClaude Louis Berthollet, the composersPierre-Alexandre Monsigny,André Grétry,Chevalier de Saint-Georges,Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and playwrightLouis Carrogis Carmontelle. The couple also gave theatrical presentations, some of which were written by the Marquise of Montesson.
In February 1785, upon the insistence ofLouis XVI, and with some help fromMadame du Barry, the Duke of Orléans sold the magnificentChâteau de Saint-Cloud, which had been in the Orléans family's possession since 1658, to QueenMarie Antoinette, for six millionlivres, a much reduced price than the original cost. The beautiful château had been ignored after the death of his wife Louise Henriette.
Surrounded by all the members of his immediate family, even his three children by Etiennette Le Marquis, Louis-Philippe died on 18 November 1785, at Sainte-Assise at the age of sixty.[11]
He was buried at theVal-de-Grâce convent in Paris, built by his ancestorAnne of Austria to celebrate the birth of Louis XIV of France, Louis Philippe's great grandfather.
| Ancestors of Louis Philippe I, Duke of Orléans[12] |
|---|
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Orleans, Louis Philippe, Duke of".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 20 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.Louis Philippe I, Duke of Orléans Born: 12 May 1725 Died: 18 November 1785 | ||
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| Preceded by | Duke of Chartres 1725–1752 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Duke of Orléans 1752–1785 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Duke of Étampes 1752–1759 | Succeeded by |
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| Preceded by | First Prince of the Blood 1752–1785 | Succeeded by |
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^never styled Prince of Orléans | ||
Generations are numbered by descent fromCharles de Bourbon, Duke of Vendôme | ||
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*died without issue | ||
