Louis François de Bourbon, or Louis François I, Prince of Conti (13 August 1717 – 2 August 1776), was a French nobleman who became the Prince of Conti from 1727 to his death, succeeding his father, Louis Armand II de Bourbon. His mother was Louise Élisabeth de Bourbon, the daughter of Louis III, Prince of Condé and Louise Françoise de Bourbon, a legitimised daughter of King Louis XIV. His younger sister, Louise Henriette de Bourbon, was the mother of Philippe Égalité. As a member of the reigning House of Bourbon, he was a Prince du Sang.
Biography
Louis François I de Bourbon was born in Paris.
In 1731, he married Louise Diane d'Orléans, Mademoiselle de Chartres (the first-cousin of his mother Louise Élisabeth, through her mother), who was the youngest daughter of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans (the Régent of France during the minority of King Louis XV) and his wife, Françoise-Marie de Bourbon, the daughter of King Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan.
His mother, the Dowager Princess of Conti, and future mother-in-law, the Dowager Duchess of Orléans, organized his marriage. However, the short marriage ended when Louis François's wife died giving birth to a stillborn child at the Château d'Issy in 1736. He then stayed at the Château de L'Isle-Adam near Paris. In 1740, he proposed a marriage with the king's second daughter, Henriette of France (1727–1752), to the king, who turned down Louis François' request.
Military career
Louis François also pursued a military career and he accompanied the Duke of Belle-Isle to Bohemia when the War of the Austrian Succession broke out in 1741. His services there led to his command of the army in Italy, where he distinguished himself by forcing the pass of Villafranca and winning the battle of Coni in 1744.
In 1745, he was sent to check the Austrians in Germany. In 1746, he was transferred to the Netherlands and led the successful siege of Mons, but conflicts with the Maréchal de Saxe led to his retirement in 1747 to the Château de L'Isle-Adam.
Candidate for the Polish throne and court influence
In that same year, a faction of Polish nobles offered Conti the throne of Poland, where King Augustus III was expected to die soon. Conti was able to win the personal support of Louis XV for his candidacy. However, the policy of the king's ministers was to establish the ruling house of Saxony upon the throne in Poland, as Louis XV's daughter-in-law, Marie-Josèphe of Saxony, was a daughter of the ailing Augustus. As a result of this conflict, Louis XV began secret communications with his ambassadors at certain influential foreign courts that opposed the official communications being sent to those same ambassadors by his ministers. The system of couriers used to relay the king's secret messages developed later into a spy-network known as the Secret du Roi.
Although Conti did not secure the Polish throne, he did remain in the confidence of the king until 1755, when Madame de Pompadour destroyed his influence through her intrigues at court. His relationship with Louis XV deteriorated enough that when the Seven Years' War broke out in 1756, Conti was refused the command of the army of the Rhine. Angry, he began opposing the royal government, which caused Louis to refer to him as, "my cousin, the advocate".
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|| 26 September 1736
|| Born at the Château d'Issy, the child was a stillbirth, whose mother died after the birth.
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