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Anne Louise Bénédicte de Bourbon, Duchess of Maine (8 November 1676 – Paris, 23 January 1753), was the daughter of Henri Jules de Bourbon, prince de Condé and Anne Henriette of Bavaria. As a member of the reigning House of Bourbon, she was a princesse du Sang. She was known as Louise-Bénédicte. She has no surviving descendants.
[edit] BiographyThe eighth child born to the then Duke and Duchess of Enghien. Louise-Bénédicte was born on 8 November, 1676 at the Hôtel de Condé[1] in Paris. The name Bénédicte was taken from her paternal aunt Benedicta Henrietta of Bavaria who was Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg and wife of Edward, Count Palatine of Simmern. Benedicta Henrietta was an ancestor of Louis XVI. She was brought up at the Hôtel de Condé with her many sisters and had to endure slave like conditions under the madness of her father. Her mother, pious and gentle was often beaten by Henri Jules as were their staff and her sister Marie Anne, Mademoiselle de Montmorency. When formally addressed, Louise-Bénédicte was known as Mademosielle d'Enghien. As a princess of the blood, this allowed Louise-Bénédicte the style of Serene Highness. When she was nine years old, her father was given the title of comte de Chalorais and its land, and Anne was then known as Mademoiselle de Charolais. The title would later pass to Louise-Bénédictes niece, the beautiful Louise Anne, Mademoiselle de Charolais. She was known to be very outspoken and witty, to have a terrible temper and to pay so much attention to her appearance that the French court called her Poupée du Sang (literally, "Doll of the Blood", a play on the honorific princesse du sang [royal], princess of the Blood).[2] She was close to her sister Marie Anne who she later helped to marry to the famous general the Duke of Vendôme (1654-1712). Although born with a lame arm, she was generally thought to be the most attractive of the Condé daughters, despite this the Duchess of Orléans called her a "Little Toad."[3] Some time after her marriage the duchesse d'Orléans also said:
She was very short like her older sister Anne Marie, Mademoiselle de Condé. Louise-Bénédicte and her oldest sister Marie Thérèse de Bourbon, known as Mademoiselle de Bourbon till her marriage to le Grand Conti in 1688, were considered the most attractive out of the daughters born to the Condé's. Mlle d'Enghien received the typical education given to girls of the nobility in France and was taught reading, writing, dancing, singing and other matters which were considered necessary for a young aristocrat. She spent most of her time in the company of her mother and two older sisters. [edit] Madame du MaineLouis XIV arranged many marriages into princely houses of France for his legitimised children by Louise de La Vallière and Françoise Athénaïs de Montespan. Prior to her marriage, she saw the marriage of Philippe d'Orléans to Mademoiselle de Blois, future duchesse d'Orléans. Louise-Bénédicte's own brother Louis de Bourbon had even had been forced to marry Mademoiselle de Nantes, eldest of Montespan and Louis XIV.. In 1692, the marriage of sixteen-year-old Louise-Bénédicte to the 22-year-old Louis Auguste de Bourbon, Légitimé de France, duc du Maine, Louis XIV's eldest son with Madame de Montespan, was arranged. The wedding ceremony took place on 19 May, 1692 in the chapel of the Palace of Versailles. Madame de Montespan was not invited but all of Maine's siblings attended. As both the groom and his wife were physically handicapped, the cruel members of the court whispered:
The marriage of the Duke and Duchess of Maine was not happy; the couple did not like each other. Louise-Bénédicte disliked her husband's weak mind and his lack of ambition; Louis Auguste could not stand his wife's terrible temper and her deliberate attempts to embarrass him as much as possible in and around the court. Louise-Bénédicte's infidelities were well known.[6] To her husband, she was once heard to have remarked:
In order to escape the dull court of Madame de Maintenon, Louis XIV's secret wife since October 1683, the enthusiastic duchesse du Maine created a little court at the Château de Sceaux, where she gave brilliant entertainments and immersed herself in political intrigues. The castle, the former residence of Jean-Baptiste Colbert and his family, was bought in 1700 by her husband for the sum of 900,000 livres. (It was abandoned by them at the time of their disgrace at court.) Louise-Bénédicte spent a further 80,000 livres on furnishings and decorations.  The castle was rebuilt and redesigned for her and she took up residence there in December 1700. It was there that she took her most famous nickname of La Reine des Abeilles or Queen of Bees. In 1703, she set up her own little order called the Order of the Honey Bee. This order held by thirty-nine people, though purely for Louise-Bénédicte's enjoyment, had a robe embroidered with silver thread; a wig in the shape of a beehive and even a medal with the profile of Louise-Bénédicte with the letters L. BAR. D. SC. D.P.D.L.O.D.L.M.A.M. This meant:[8]
Members of her court were the young Voltaire, the baron de Montesquieu, the cardinal de Bernis, the Count of Caylus, Charles-Jean-François Hénault and Rou amongst other literary figures of the day. In 1710, she helped to plot the marriage of her sister, Marie Anne, Mademoiselle de Monmorency to the famous general Louis Joseph de Bourbon, duc de Vendôme. Louise-Bénédicte had decided that the couple would have no children, Marie Anne being 32 and Vendôme a well known homosexual and 30 years older than she; at the death of Vendôme, Louise-Bénédicte had wanted to inherit the huge property that Vendôme owned being the grandson of Françoise de Lorraine. As it happened, Louise-Bénédicte got nothing; Marie Anne was created Duchess of Étampes in her own right and got the Parisian Hôtel de Vendôme where she died in 1718 from alcoholism. Thanks to the help of Madame de Maintenon, who had always loved Maine, Louis XIV had created Maine a prince of the blood and thus this put him in line of succession to the throne. He also appointed Maine the Regent of France for the future Louis XV. At the death of her father-in-law in 1715, the regency of the country was put in the hands Philippe d'Orléans, head of the House of Orléans and not Maine. The Parlement de Paris annulled Louis XIV's will and named the Duke of Orléans as Regent for the five-year old king Louis XV. As a result, and upset with the role played by the Duke of Orléans in reducing the status of the legitimised children of Louis XIV from the rank of Princes du Sang (which Louise-Bénédicte had enjoyed since birth) to mere peers of France, she induced her husband to join in the Cellamare Conspiracy in the hope of transferring the regency to King Philip V of Spain, the uncle of the small King. The plot was named after Antonio del Giudice, Duke of Giovinazzo, Prince of Cellamare, who was the Spanish ambassador to France. In order to gain more support for the new regent, Louise-Bénédicte started a correspondence with Giulio Alberoni, the Spanish Prime Minister. Members of this court also included the Duke of Richelieu and Melchior de Polignac. The plot, however, was discovered, and both the Duke and Duchess of Maine were arrested. The Duke was imprisoned in the Doullens fortress and the Duchess in Dijon in 1719. Their two sons were put in the care of their governor in Gien and their sister was sent back to her convent education at Maubuisson. Louise-Bénédicte was very close to children as was her husband; the pair doted on them all. Her daughter, who she would remain close with till her latters death, was baptised at Versailles on 9 April, 1714. Mademoiselle du Maine was given the name of name of her aunt Louise-Françoise de Bourbon, known as Madame la Duchesse. Madame la Duchesse had grown up with the Duke of Maine under the care of Madame de Maintenon. Present at her baptism were the Dauphin, Louis de France who was the guest of honour being helped by Mademoiselle du Maine's other paternal aunt, the Duchess of Orléans. It was the Cardinal de Rohan who baptised Mademoiselle du Maine. After her release, Louise-Bénédicte led a more peaceful life at Sceaux still surrounded by her little court. At the time of her imprisonment, she was trying to arrange the marriage of her eldest son, Louis Auguste de Bourbon, heir to the fortune of the House of Boubon du Maine, to his cousin Charlotte Aglaé, Mademoiselle de Valois. The rivalry between the princely houses of France was well known and the marriage proposal was not undertaken as the young Mademoiselle de Valois refused, much to the annoyance of the proud Louise-Bénédicte. Madame du Maine was not happy when she foud out that Charlotte Aglaé had considered the hand of another cousin, Charles de Bourbon, son of Monsieur le Duc, Louise-Bénédicte's brother and Madame la Duchesse, Maines sister. After their release from imprisonment in 1720, the Duke and Duchess du Maine seemed to have reconciled and led a more compatible life rather than being hostile to each other. In May 1736, the duke died at the age of sixty-six. Louis XV allowed Louise-Bénédicte to keep her apartments at Versailles next to that of her daughter's Mademoiselle du Maine; these overlooked the Orangérie. Her son's also had apartments at court but both preferred to stay in the country hunting. Once again Louise-Bénédicte tried to marry off one of her children; Madame du Maine tried to get Mademoiselle du Maine married twice; once to one Monsieur de Guise. That marriage never materialised. Again she tried to engage her to the widowed Prince consort of Monaco who was often at Versailles; despite offering a large dowry to both men Mademoiselle du Maine would never marry (she was also considered very unattractive) and died in 1743 35. She was buried at the Église at Sceaux. In 1736 Louise-Bénédicte received the Château de Montrond and then, in 1737, she gained the Hôtel Biron (today the musée Rodin), in Paris, where she died; at the time of her occupancy it was referred to as the Hôtel du Maine. She died at the Hôtel du Maine on 23 January, 1753. Dying at the age of seventy-six, she had outlived all of her siblings and was buried at the church at her beloved Sceaux. Her oldest son, Louis Auguste died less then two years after Louise-Bénédicte having been injured in a dual at Fontainebleau. Her youngest surviving son Louis Charles never married and died in 1775 having left his fortune to his first cousin, the already hugely wealthy Louis Jean Marie de Bourbon, duc de Penthièvre. [edit] Issue
[edit] Ancestry
[edit] Titles, styles, honours and arms[edit] Titles and styles
[edit] Notes
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