Prince étranger (English: "foreign prince") was a high, though somewhat ambiguous, rank at the French royal court of theAncien Régime.
Inmedieval Europe, anobleman bore the title ofprince as an indication ofsovereignty, either actual or potential. Aside from those who were or claimed to bemonarchs, it belonged to those who were in line to succeed to aroyal or independent throne.[1] France had several categories of prince in theearly modern period. They frequently quarrelled, and sometimes sued each other and members of the nobility, overprecedence anddistinctions.
The foreign princes ranked in France above "titular princes" (princes de titre, holders of a legal but foreign title of prince which carried noright of succession to any sovereignrealm), and above most titled nobles, including the highest among these,dukes. They ranked below acknowledged members of theHouse of Capet, France's rulingdynasty since the tenth century. Included in that royal category (in descending order) were:
Thishierarchy in France evolved slowly at the king'scourt, barely taking into account any more exalted status a foreign prince might enjoy in his own dynasty's realm. It was not clear, outside the halls of theParlement of Paris, whether foreign princes ranked above, below, or with the holder of aFrench peerage.
Deposed rulers and their consorts (e.g. KingJames II of England,QueenChristina of Sweden, DuchessSuzanne-Henriette of Mantua, etc.) ranked above the foreign princes, and were usually accorded fullprotocolar courtesies at court, for as long as they remained welcome in France.
Foreign princes were of three kinds:[2]
Likeknights-errant ofchivalricfolklore, whether inexile or in search of royalpatronage, to win renown at arms, international influence, or a private fortune, foreign princelings often migrated to the French court, regarded as both the most magnificent andmunificent in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Some ruled small border realms (e.g., the principalities ofDombes,Orange,Neuchâtel,Sedan), while others inherited or were granted large properties in France (e.g., Guise, Rohan, La Tour d'Auvergne). Still others came to France as relatively destituterefugees (e.g.Queen Henrietta Maria of England, thePrince Palatine Eduard).
Most found that, with assiduity and patience, they were well received by France's king as living adornments to hismajesty and, if they remained in attendance at court, were often gifted with high office (theprincesse de Lamballe, theprincesse des Ursins), military command (Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne),estates, governorships, embassies, churchsinecures (theRohans in theArchbishopric of Strasbourg), titles and, sometimes, splendiddowries as the consorts of royal princesses (e.g.Louis Joseph de Lorraine, Duke of Guise).
But they were often also disruptive at court and occasionally proved threatening to the king. Their high birth not only attracted the king's attention, but sometimes drew the allegiance of frustrated noble courtiers,soldiers-of-fortune andhenchmen, ambitiousbourgeoisie, malcontents and even provinces in search of a protector (e.g., theNeapolitan Republic) -- often against or in rivalry with theFrench Crown itself.[2] Deeming themselves to belong to the same class as the king, they tended to be proud, and some schemed for ever-higher rank and power, or challenged the king's or parliament's authority. Sometimes they defied the royal will and barricaded themselves in their provincial castles (e.g.,Philippe Emmanuel of Lorraine, duc de Mercœur), occasionally waging open war on the king (e.g., theLa Tour d'Auvergne dukes of Bouillon), or intriguing against him with other French princes (e.g., during theFrondes) or with foreign powers (e.g.,Marie de Rohan-Montbazon, duchesse de Chevreuse).
Although during the king's formal receptions (theHonneurs de la Cour) their sovereign origins were acknowledged in deferential prose, foreign princes were not members by hereditary right of the nation's mainjudicial anddeliberative body, theParlement of Paris, unless they also held apeerage; in which case, their legal precedence derived from its date of registration in that body. Their notorious disputes with ducalpeers of the realm, remembered thanks to the memoirs of theduc de Saint-Simon, were due to the princes' lack of rankper se in theParlement, where peers (the highest tier of French nobility, mostly dukes) held precedence immediately after theprinces du sang (or, from 4 May 1610, after the legitimised princes).[2] Whereas at the king's table and insociety generally, the prestige of theprinces étrangers exceeded that of the ordinary peer, the dukes denied this pre-eminence, both in theMontmorency-Luxembourg lawsuit and in theParlement, despite the king's commands.[2]
They also clashed with the upstarts at court favored byHenry III, who raised to peerage, fortune, and singular honor a number offashionable young men of the minor nobility. These so-calledmignons were disdained and resisted by France's princes initially. Later, endowed with hereditary wealth and honors, their families were absorbed into the peerage, and their daughters' dowries were sought by the princely class (e.g., the ducal heiress ofJoyeuse married, in sequence, aduc de Montpensier and aduc de Guise).
More frequently, they vied for place and prestige with each other, with theprinces légitimés, and sometimes even with theprinces du sang of theHouse of Bourbon.
Source:[2]
During the reign ofLouis XIV, the families which held the status ofprince étranger were:
Most renowned among the foreign princes was the militantly Roman CatholicHouse of Guise which,[2] as theValois kings approached extinction and theHuguenots aggrandized in defense ofProtestantism, cast ambitious eyes upon the throne itself, hoping to occupy it but determined to dominate it. So great was their pride thatHenry I, Duke of Guise, although merely a subject, dared to openly courtMargaret of Valois, the daughter ofHenry II. He was obliged to hastily wed aprincesse étrangère,Catherine of Cleves, to avoid bodily harm from Margaret's offended brothers (three of whom eventually succeeded to the crown as, respectively,Francis II,Charles IX andHenry III).[4] After theSt. Bartholomew's Day Massacre the Guises, triumphant in a kingdom purged of Protestant rivals, proved overbearing toward the king, driving Henry III to have the duke assassinated in his presence.
Most foreign princes did not initially use "prince" as a personal title. Since the families which held that rank were famous and few in theancien régime of France, a title carried less distinction than the family surname. Thus noble titles, evenchevalier, were commonly and indifferently borne by foreign princes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries without any implication that their precedence was limited to the rank normally associated with that title. For instance, the titlevicomte de Turenne, made famous by the renownedmarshal,Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, was asubsidiary title traditionally borne by a junior member of the family. But he ranked as aprince étranger rather than as aviscount, being a cadet of the dynasty which reigned over the mini-duchy ofBouillon until theFrench Revolution.
In France, some importantseigneuries (lordships) were styled principalities since the late Middle Ages. Their lords had no specific rank, and were always officially subordinate to dukes and to foreign princes. Beginning in the late sixteenth century, some of France's leading families, denied therank of prince at court, assumed thetitle of prince. Often it was claimed on behalf of their eldest sons, subtly reminding the court that the princely title was subordinate — at least in the law — to that ofduke-peer, while minimising the risk that the princely style, used as a merecourtesy title, would be challenged or forbidden. Typical were theducs de La Rochefoucauld: Their claim to descend from the independent dukeGuillaume IV of Guyenne, and their inter-marriages with the sovereigndukes of Mirandola, failed to secure for them royal recognition as foreign princes.[2][5] Yet the ducal heir is still known as the "prince de Marcillac", although no such principality ever existed, within or without France.
In the eighteenth century, as dukes and lesser noblemen arrogated to themselves the title "prince de X", more of the foreign princes began to do the same. Like theprinces du sang (e.g.Condé,La Roche-sur-Yon), it became one of theirde facto prerogatives to unilaterally attach a princelytitre de courtoisie to aseigneurie which not only lacked any independence as a principality but might not even belong to the titleholder, having merely been owned at some point by his family (e.g.,prince d'Harcourt andprince de Lambesc in the House of Lorraine-Guise;prince d'Auvergne andprince de Turenne in the House of La Tour d'Auvergne;prince de Montauban andprince de Rochefort in the House of Rohan;prince de Talmond in the House of La Trémoïlle). Nonetheless, these titles were then passed down within families as if they were hereditary peerages.[1]
Moreover, some noble titles of prince conferred on Frenchmen by theHoly Roman Empire, thePapacy or Spain were eventually accepted at the French court (e.g.,Prince de Broglie,Prince de Beauvau-Craon,Prince de Bauffremont) and became more common in the eighteenth century. But they carried no official rank, and their social status was not equal to that of either peers or foreign princes.[1]
Unsurprisingly, foreign princes began adopting a custom increasingly common outside France; prefixing their Christian names with "le prince". The genealogistpar excellence of the French nobility,Père Anselme, initially deprecated suchneologistic practice with insertion of a "dit" ("styled" or "so-called") in his biographical entries, but after the reign of Louis XIV he records the usage amongprinces étrangers without qualification.
Foreign princes were entitled to the style "haut et puissant prince" ("high and mighty Prince") in French etiquette, were called "cousin" by the king, and claimed the right to be addressed asvotre altesse (Your Highness).
Although Saint-Simon and other peers were loath to concede these prerogatives to theprinces étrangers, they were even more jealous of two other privileges, the so-calledpour ("for") and thetabouret ("stool"). The former referred to the rooms assigned at thepalace of Versailles to allow foreign princes, along with members of the royal dynasty, high-ranking officers of the royal household, senior peers and favored courtiers, the honor of living under the same roof as the king. These rooms were neither well-appointed nor well-situated relative to those of the royal family, usually being small and remote. Nonetheless,les pours distinguished the court's inner circle from its hangers-on.
Thetabouret was even more highly valued. It consisted of the right for a woman or girl to sit on astool orployant (folding seat), in the presence of the king or queen. Whereas the queen had her throne, thefilles de France andpetite-filles their armchairs, andprincesses du sang were entitled to cushioned seats with hard backs, duchesses whose husbands werepeers sat, gowned and bejewelled, in a semicircle around the queen and lesser royalties on low, unsteady stools without any back support — and reckoned themselves fortunate among the women of France.
Whereas the wife of a duke-and-peer could use aployant, other duchesses, domestic or foreign, lacked the prerogative. Yet not only could the wife of anyprince étranger claim atabouret, but so could his daughters and sisters. This distinction was based on the fact that a peer's rank derived, legally, from his position as an officer of the Parlement of Paris, whereas the rank held by a prince derived from a dignity rooted in his sovereign blood line rather than in his function. Thus a duchess-peeress shares in her husband'sde jure rank as anofficial, but that privilege is extended to no other of his family. Yet all daughters and sisters in the legitimate male line of a prince share his blood, and thus his status, as do his wife and the wives of hispatrilineage.[2]
The prerogatives of the foreign prince were not automatic. The king's acknowledgement and authorization for each of the associated privileges was required. Some individuals and families claimed entitlement to the rank but never received it. Most notable among these wasPrince Eugene of Savoy, whose cold reception at the court of hismother's family drove him into the arms of theHoly Roman Emperor, where he became themartial scourge of France for a generation.[2][6]
Likewise denied princely precedence was Frédéric Maurice, comte d'Auvergne (1642–1707), the nephew and protégé ofMarshal Turenne, who founded a Netherlands branch of the La Tour family through his 1662 marriage to Henrietta ofHohenzollern-Hechingen (1642–1698),Margravine of Bergen-op-Zoom. Although hiselder brother ruled Bouillon, hisyounger brother becameGrand Almoner and a cardinal, and Auvergne himself held as sinecures the governorship ofLimousin andcolonel generalship of the French Light Cavalry, when neither his birth rank nor his wife'sBrabantine domain persuaded Louis XIV to allow him precedence before knights of theOrder of the Saint Esprit, let alone to share in Bouillon's rank above ducal peers, Auvergne refused to attend the Order's presentations at court.[2]
| Name | Title of chief | Date of recognition | Extinction | Arms | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| House of Lorraine | Duke of Mercœur | 1569 | 1602 |  | |
| House of Lorraine | Duke of Guise | 1528 | 1675(main line of Guise) 1825(junior line of Elbeuf) | .svg) | Cadet branches:Dukes of Mayenne (1544),Dukes of Aumale (1547),Dukes of Elbeuf (1581) |
| House of Savoy | Duke of Nemours | 1528 | 1659 |  | |
| House of Savoy | Prince of Carignan | 1642 | extant |  | |
| House of La Marck | Duke of Nevers | 1538 | 1565 |  | |
| House of Gonzaga | Duke of Nevers | 1566 | 1627 | .png) | The Duke of Nevers inherited theDuchy of Mantua and left the French Court in 1627 |
| House of Grimaldi | Prince of Monaco | 1641 | 1731 |  | The Princes of Monaco were alsoDukes of Valentinois in the French Peerage |
| House of La Tour d'Auvergne | Duke of Bouillon | 1651 | 1802 |  | The Dukes of Bouillon were alsoDukes of Albret and Château-Thierry in the French Peerage |
| House of Rohan | Duke of Montbazon | 1651 | extant |  | The House of Rohan-Chabot, female-line heirs of the body of the elder branch of the House of Rohan, is extant, bearing the titleDuke of Rohan, but was never acknowledged to be of princely rank. |
| House of La Trémoille | Duke of Thouars | 1651 | 1933 |  | Female-line heirs-in-exile of the Kings of Naples of theHouse of Trastámara. |
TheAga Khan family, though ofPersian andIndian origins, are nowBritish citizens. Their princely titles have been recognized by theBritish Crown since the 1930s.
Their leader,The Aga Khan V, has also been granted the personal style ofHighness byKing Charles III.[7]
The family's claim to princely privileges in France was urged without success in the mid-17th century...