Conti, François de Bourbon, prince de

▪ French prince

born 1558

died Aug. 13, 1614, Paris

      third son of Louis I de Bourbon, 1st prince of Condé; he was given the title of marquis de Conti and between 1581 and 1597 was elevated to the rank of a prince.

      Conti, who was a Roman Catholic, appears to have taken no part in the Wars of Religion until 1587, when his distrust of Henri, third duke of Guise, caused him to declare against the League and to support Henry of Navarre, afterward King Henry IV of France. In 1589, after the murder of Henry III, he was one of the two princes of the blood who signed the declaration recognizing Henry IV as king, and he continued to support Henry, although on the death of Charles, cardinal de Bourbon, in 1590, he himself was mentioned as a candidate for the throne. In 1605 Conti (whose first wife, Jeanne de Cöeme, heiress of Bonnétable, had died in 1601) married the beautiful and witty Louise-Marguerite de Lorraine (1574–1631), daughter of Henri, duke of Guise, and Catherine of Cleves, whom, but for the influence of his mistress Gabrielle d'Estrées, Henry IV would have made his queen. Conti died in 1614. His only child, Marie, having predeceased him in 1610, the title lapsed.

      His widow, the princess of Conti, followed the fortunes of Marie Médicis, from whom she received many marks of favour, and was secretly married to François de Bassompierre, who joined her in conspiring against Cardinal de Richelieu. Upon the exposure of the plot, the cardinal exiled her to her estate at Eu, near Amiens, where she died on April 30, 1631. The princess wrote Aventures de la cour de Perse, in which, under the veil of fictitious scenes and names, she told the history of her own time.

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