Louis Philippe of Orleans (1725-1785)

Louis-Philippe Ier of Orleans , known as “the Large one”, duke of Chartres (1725 - 1752) then Duke of Orleans (1752), from Valois, Nemours and Montpensier (1752-1785), First prince of blood, was born with Versailles the May 12th 1725 and died in the Château of Holy-Base to Seine-Port the November 18th 1785.

He was the son of Louis, duke of Orleans, known as “the Piles” (1703 - 1752), and of Augusta Marie Jeanne de Bade (1704 - 1726). To its birth, it carried the title of duke of Chartres. With died of his/her father in 1752, he became duke of Orleans, Valois, Nemours and Montpensier.

It had share in the military campaigns of 1742, 1743 and 1744. This last year, it was made lieutenant general, and named Gouverneur of the Dauphiné with died of his father. It was distinguished with the wars from Flanders and Germany.

Very young person, it was caught of a passion shared for one of the girls of Louis XV, Mrs Henriette and wanted to marry it. But the cardinal of Fleury saw in this project of marriage the possible source of any kind of serious diplomatic complications. Indeed, Louis XV had only one son. In the event of disappearance of this one, the throne of France would be asserted at the same time by the duke of Orleans and the king of Spain, Philippe V, which regarded as null the renunciation of its rights that the England had extorted to him from the Traité of Utrecht of 1713. To marry a girl of the King to the son of the duke of Orleans had been, in this possible quarrel, to give the advantage to this last, which had not failed to upset the Spain, that the cardinal sought on the contrary to spare. In 1740, the King thus refused with the duke of Chartres the hand of his/her daughter, who was to finish her single person days besides.

Louis the Piles thought then of a girl of the voter Charles-Albert of Bavaria. Officially, Louis XV and Fleury made mine support his step, but the voter, who claimed with the Empire and which was indeed a transitory emperor under the name of Charles VII, made trail the business and died in 1744 without she being concluded.

Ultimately, Louis the Piles had to fold back in 1743 on a cousin moved away, Louise Henriette of Bourbon-Conti (1726 - 1759), truly desperate choice which did not raise of anything prestige house of Orleans and which, on the contrary, made there enter even more of the blood of bastard of Louis XIV. The duke of Orleans thought at least that the young girl, high in a convent, would be a Christian paragon of virtue. It proved on the contrary a model of licentiousness and its misconduct caused a permanent scandal. Three legitimate children, of which two survived, were born from a badly matched union:

  1. NR… of Orleans, female sex (12 or July 13rd 1745 - December 14th, 1745);

  2. Louis Philippe Joseph of Orleans, duke of Valois (born on April 13rd 1747), future Philippe-Equality;
  3. Louise Marie Therese '' Bathilde '' of Orleans (born on July 9th 1750 - died in 1822), “Miss”, wife of Louis Henri de Bourbon-Cop, duke of Bourbon then prince de Condé.

Still Philippe-Equality did not hesitate it to publicly affirm under the Revolution which he was not the son of Louis the Large one but that of a coachman of the Palais Royal, which was moreover not very probable if one judges some by the resemblance striking between the father and the son.

To comfort itself, the duke of Chartres, on his side, put himself as a household with an actress, Miss the Marquis, who gave him five natural children who were high carefully by the family of Orleans: Louis-Etienne, count-abbot of Saint-Phar; Louis-Philippe, count-abbot of Saint-Albin; Marie-Etienne, who married in 1778 an officer of dragons of a regiment of the duke of Orleans, François-Constantin de Brossard; and two twin sisters, young ladies of Mérainville, in religion.

The duchess of Chartres died rather quickly, in 1759. Louis the Large one took then for Maîtresse in title Charlotte Jeanne Béraud of $the Hague of Riou (1738 - 1806), widow of the marquis de Montesson, who called it “Large-Father”. During years, it tried to obtain from Louis XV the permission to marry it. The king granted only in 1772 to it, and the condition express which the marriage was only morganatic and which Madam de Montesson did not become duchess of Orleans, which made say that fault of having been able to make of the marchioness of Montesson a duchess of Orleans, the duke of Orleans had been made marquis de Montesson. After the marriage, which took place in 1773, the duke of Orleans and his new wife had to flee the Palais Royal and Saint-Cloud, their situation being from now on incompatible with the obligations of the label. They lived discreetly between the house which the duke had with Bagnolet and the Château of Holy-Base, wedding gift offered to Madam de Montesson, located at Seine-Port (current Département of Seine-et-Marne), at the edge of the Seine, and where, in spite of several years of intrigue, it never had the honor of a royal visit.

It spent its last years in its house of Bagnolet, protecting the scientists and the men of letters, and often playing itself the comedy. This enlightened prince supported the discoveries. Man of good, it distributed important sums to the needy one. “Mr. the duke of Orleans, known as of him the Baron de Besenval, often revolted his friends by the weakness of his character, and the little of nobility which it sometimes put in his control; but it stuck them by the extreme kindness which was the bottom of its character, and by the services that it returned to them, as much as its timidity could allow him. ”

In 1769, it increased the properties of the family of Orleans by buying the Château of Raincy to the heirs to the marquis de Livry. But in 1784, it had agree to yield to the king the Château of Saint-Cloud, coveted by Marie-Antoinette.

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