Marie de Bourbon, Countess of Soissons

Marie de Bourbon (3 May 1606 – 3 June 1692) was the wife of Thomas Francis, Prince of Carignano, and thus a Savoyard princess by marriage. At the death of her brother in 1641, she became Countess of Soissons in her own right, passing the title down three generations of the House of Savoy.

Marie de Bourbon
Princess of Carignano
Born(1606-05-03)3 May 1606
Hôtel de Soissons, Paris, France
Died3 June 1692(1692-06-03) (aged 86)
Hôtel de Soissons, Paris, France
SpouseThomas Francis, Prince of Carignano
Issue
Detail		Louise, Hereditary Princess of Baden-Baden
Joseph Emmanuel, Count of Soissons
Eugene Maurice, Count of Soissons
Emmanuel Philibert, Prince of Carignano
Full name
Marie de Bourbon
HouseBourbon-Condé
FatherCharles, Count of Soissons
MotherAnne de Montafié
ReligionRoman Catholicism
Signature

Biography

Marie de Bourbon was born at the Hôtel de Soissons in Paris, was the second daughter and youngest child of Charles de Bourbon, Count of Soissons, and his wife Anne de Montafié.[1] At the court of Louis XIII, Marie enjoyed the rank of princesse du sang. She was a sister of the Louise de Bourbon, Duchess of Longueville. Originally placed in the Abbey of Fontevraud in Anjou, she took the habit on 10 April 1610 aged just four.[2]

On 6 January 1625 Marie was married to Thomas Francis,[1] ninth child of Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy, and his wife Catherine Michelle of Austria. It was arranged that Thomas, as son of a reigning monarch, would hold the rank of first among the princes étrangers at the French court – taking precedence even before the formerly all-powerful House of Guise, whose kinship to the sovereign Duke of Lorraine was more remote.[3] He was appointed Grand Master of France of the king's household, briefly replacing the traitorous Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé. He engaged the services of the distinguished grammarian and courtier Claude Favre de Vaugelas as tutor for his children.

After Thomas, the senior branch of his descendants repatriated to Savoy, alternately marrying French, Italian and German princesses.

After the Bourbons obtained the French crown and the Princes de Condé and their heirs apparent became known (by right of their rank as First Prince of the Blood), respectively, as Monsieur le Prince and Monsieur le Duc, Charles came to be styled Monsieur le Comte at court. That honorific was borne also by his son Louis and, subsequently, by the Savoy-Carignano counts of Soissons, who inherited the countship from Charles's daughter, Marie, princesse de Carignano, even though they ranked as princes étrangers in France rather than as princes du sang.[4]

At the death of her older brother Louis de Bourbon (6 July 1641), Marie was named his heir and became the Countess of Soissons suo jure. She lived in her native France with her husband and resided at the Hôtel de Soissons where she was born. It was Marie who built the small Château de Bagnolet in Paris; at her death the building was acquired by the Ferme générale François Le Juge. In 1719 it became the property of Françoise Marie de Bourbon. Marie and her daughter helped to raise the famous Prince Eugene of Savoy, the famous soldier. She died in Paris.

Issue
  1. Princess Cristine Charlotte of Savoy (1626)
  2. Princess Louise of Savoy (1627–1689) in 1654 to Ferdinand Maximilian, Hereditary Prince of Baden-Baden.
  3. Emmanuel Philibert, Prince of Carignano (1628–1709) married Maria Angela Caterina d'Este.
  4. Prince Amedeo of Savoy (1629).
  5. Joseph Emmanuel, Count of Soissons (1631–1656).
  6. Prince Ferdinand of Savoy (1637)
  7. Eugene Maurice, Count of Soissons (1633–1673) married Olympia Mancini[1]

A controversial Canadian legend based on the reasonable doubt of a deathbed confession (in which it seems to name only the title, not even the name) attaches to her husband a son who would not have been born in any case by Marie de Bourbon.

  • Francois Joseph of Savoy (1621–1678); born out of wedlock, married Catherine Granger Lejeune in Acadia.

Ancestors

References
  1. Pitts 2000, p. 271.
  2. Alexandre, Jombert (1784). "L'Art de vérifier les dates des faits historiques". Googlebooks.org.
  3. Spanheim 1973, p. 107.
  4. Spanheim 1973, p. 323.

Sources
  • Pitts, Vincent Joseph (2000). La Grande Mademoiselle at the Court of France: 1627-1693. The Johns Hopkins University Press.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Spanheim, Ézéchiel (1973). Emile Bourgeois (ed.). Relation de la Cour de France. le Temps retrouvé (in French). Paris: Mercure de France. pp. 323, 107–108.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)


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