Conti, Louis-François de Bourbon, prince de

▪ French prince

born Aug. 13, 1717, Paris

died Aug. 2, 1776, Paris

      Louis-Armand II's second son.

      He adopted a military career and, when the War of the Austrian Succession broke out in 1741, accompanied Charles Louis, duc de Belle-Isle, to Bohemia. His services there led to his appointment to command 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 Imperialists in Germany and in 1746 was transferred to the Netherlands, where some jealousy between Marshal Saxe and himself led to his retirement in 1747.

      In 1747 a faction among the Polish nobels offered Conti the crown of that country, where owing to the feeble health of King Augustus III a vacancy was expected. He won the personal support of Louis XV for his candidature, although the policy of the French ministers was to establish the House of Saxony in Poland, because the French dauphiness was a daughter of Augustus. Louis therefore began secret personal relations with his ambassadors in eastern Europe, who were thus receiving contradictory instructions—a policy known later as the secret du roi. Although Conti did not secure the Polish throne he remained in the confidence of Louis until 1755, when his influence was destroyed by the intrigues of Mme de Pompadour, so that when the Seven Years' War broke out in 1756 he was refused the command of the Army of the Rhine and began the opposition to the administration which caused Louis to refer to him as “my cousin the advocate.” In 1771 he was prominent in opposition to the chancellor Maupeou. He supported the Parlements against the ministry, was especially active in his hostility to Turgot, and was suspected of aiding a rising at Dijon in 1775.

      Conti inherited literary tastes from his father, was a brave and skillful general, and a diligent student of military history. His house, over which the Comtesse de Boufflers presided, was the resort of many men of letters, and he was a patron of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Beaumarchais.

* * *