Conti, Louis-François-Joseph de Bourbon, prince de

▪ French prince

born Sept. 1, 1734, Paris

died March 10, 1814, Barcelona

      last of the princes of Conti, the only legitimate son of Louis-François de Bourbon, the former prince.

      He possessed considerable talent as a soldier and distinguished himself during the Seven Years' War. He took the side of Maupeou in the struggle between the chancellor and the Parlements and in 1788 declared that the integrity of the constitution must be maintained. At the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789 he emigrated because of the weakness of Louis XVI but refused to share in the plans for the invasion of France and returned to his native country in 1790. Arrested as a monarchist by order of the National Convention in 1793, he was acquitted but was reduced to poverty by the confiscation of his possessions. He afterward received a pension, but the Directory banished him from France, and, because he refused to share in the plots of the royalists, he lived at Barcelona until his death in 1814, when the House of Conti became extinct.

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