Louis Joseph, Prince de Condé

Louis Joseph, Prince de Condé, had more than a few connections with the Grimaldi Princely Family during the tumultuous period of the French Revolution which saw the Kingdom of France destroyed and the Principality of Monaco annexed to the French Republic. He was born Louis Joseph de Bourbon on August 9, 1736 to Louis Henri Duc d’Bourbon and Landgravine Caroline of Hesse-Rotenburg. As a prince of the blood he was a member of the very highest echelon of French society. His grandmother, in fact, was the daughter of King Louis XIV by his famous mistress Madame de Montespan. His father died in 1740 and his mother the following year and Louis Joseph was raised by his uncle the Comte d’Clermont. By his mother he was related to the House of Savoy and to a whole horde of French royals and aristocrats on the side of his father. On May 3, 1753 he married Charlotte Elisabeth Godefride de Rohan, granddaughter of the Duc d’Bouillon at Versailles.

Soon the father of three (though one daughter did not long survive) the Prince de Condé busied himself with building projects, attending court and overseeing the upbringing and beneficial marriages of his children. His was a very familiar face at the courts of King Louis XV and King Louis XVI as well where he held the rank of Grand Maître de France in the King’s household. The military was also a long established duty and the Prince de Condé saw action in the Seven Years’ War (known in America as the French and Indian War) and rose to the rank of general, also serving for a time as Governor of Burgundy. However, life in France was soon to take a very dark turn with the growing discontent that eventually led to the outbreak of the French Revolution. Up to this point there was not much of a connection between the Prince de Condé and the House of Grimaldi. They would have met at court where the Prince of Monaco was well known and since the Princes of Monaco were also members of the French aristocracy. The Revolution, however, would bring the Grimaldi and the Condé together.

Sensing the trouble to come, when the Paris mob stormed the Bastille in 1789 the Prince de Condé went into exile, saving himself from what would surely have been certain death in the Reign of Terror that followed. To be a Bourbon in France at the height of the terror was almost as good as a death sentence. The King, the Queen and even the Duc d’Orleans were executed in 1793. That same year Prince Honore III of Monaco was deposed and later arrested, his country annexed to the French Republic and renamed Fort Hercules. His son and heir, Honore IV, was arrested in Paris with his father, but his second son, Prince Joseph of Monaco had fled with his wife into exile. While in exile Prince Joseph of Monaco made common cause with Prince Louis Joseph de Condé who was organizing a royalist army at Coblenz in 1791, made up mostly of French exiles, with the aim of returning to France to liberate their country from the forces of the revolution and the rule of Madame Guillotine.

The Army of Condé, as it came to be called, included a long list of famous names from the French aristocracy and Royal Family. Aside from the Prince de Condé and Prince Joseph of Monaco there was the Duc d’Enghien (grandson of the Prince de Condé), the Comte d’Artois (brother of the late King Louis XVI), the Duc d’Richelieu, the Duc d’Blacas and Chateaubriand and so on. Originally they fought alongside the imperial forces of Austria until squabbling between the two forces compelled the Prince de Condé to transfer his men to the British jurisdiction in 1795. However, that year was to see the last of Prince Joseph in the ranks, though his presence had already cost him dearly. Word that he had joined the counter-revolutionary forces of the Prince de Condé reached Paris and when his wife returned to France to see about their children she was discovered, arrested and sent to the guillotine in 1794. She was the last victim of the terror and the more moderate forces that took charge after allowed Prince Joseph to return to France to take charge of family affairs after the death of his father.

The Prince de Condé, however, continued onward with his mission, fighting in Swabia in 1796 before being forced to transfer to Poland and join with the Imperial Russian Army when Austria made peace with the republic in 1797. When Russia left the allied camp in 1800 the Prince returned his forces to the British camp, undoubtedly not an easy thing to do for a man who was a veteran of the Seven Years’ War. The Prince and his army fought in Bavaria but was disbanded in 1801 without ever seeing their dream of the liberation of France and the restoration of the monarchy come to fruition. The Prince de Condé went into exile in England where he lived with his second wife, none other than Marie Catherine de Brignole-Sale, the ex-wife of Prince Honore III of Monaco, whom he had married in 1798. In fact, it was the Prince de Condé, already the smitten kitten, who had helped obtain the final break between the then Princess of Monaco and her husband while she had taken refuge in a convent following after Honore III had been driven to fury by the affair his wife had been having with the Prince de Condé in Paris.

In any event, the former Princess of Monaco spent herself into poverty supporting French royalists and their cause, which was also the cause of her husband, until her death in 1813, so much so in fact that the British Royal Family had to step in to help with the funeral expenses. When Napoleon Bonaparte was finally defeated the Prince de Condé was able to return to Paris and take up his place again in the French court after the restoration of King Louis XVIII. He died in 1818 leaving two children; his son who succeeded to his title and his daughter who had taken vows and risen to become abbess of Remiremont Abbey. He was buried in St Denis Basilica.

H.S.H. Prince Joseph of Monaco

H.S.H. Prince Joseph Marie Jerome Grimaldi of Monaco was born on September 10, 1763 in Paris, France to Prince Honore III and Princess Marie-Catherine. By the time he was born his parents were already drifting a part and it set the stage for Prince Joseph having to depend on his own wits to survive. On April 6, 1782 he married Françoise-Thérèse de Choiseul-Stainville. In what was rather a change for the Grimaldis of Monaco the marriage was a happy one and seemed to be the perfect match. However, disaster was soon visited on the couple with the outbreak of the French Revolution. Seeing the old order threatened Prince Joseph joined with the royalist counterrevolutionaries rising up against the republicans. While away his wife was arrested and eventually sent to the guillotine where she met her death on July 26, 1794. Prince Joseph, a public enemy of the revolution, was forced to go into exile in England for a time when the royalist uprising failed.

When friendly faces came to power Prince Joseph was exonerated from all charges and returned to France at the end of 1795 when, upon the death of his father, he took charge of the family estates on behalf of his ailing brother Prince Honore IV. The new (nominal) Sovereign Prince upset his children by this measure but it was a time of crisis for the family and it fell to Prince Joseph to a large extent to see them through it. With Monaco already taken over by France and a regime change underway with the coming to power of the young army officer Napoleon Bonaparte, Prince Joseph had to see to it that the Princely Family of Monaco was able to stay in the good graces of the new government and powers-that-be. While Honore IV recovered and joined the French army, serving under the famous Joachim Murat, Joseph handled affairs on the homefront.

Whereas Honore IV could not fit in with the new empire society, Prince Joseph made it his business to do so. He had to make a number of tough decisions, such as selling the large family house in Paris to cover mounting debts and taxes (it is now a residence for the French government). The family estates in Valmont and Thorigny had to be put up for auction and the Grimaldis were preyed upon by dishonest speculators, making the struggle for survival almost constant. However, the Bonapartist empire finally came to an end and Prince Joseph used his royalist connections to see to it that the position of the family, the principality and the protectorate were restored by Talleyrand after the return of King Louis XVIII. With the health of Honore IV worse than ever, Prince Joseph went to see him and persuaded his brother to abdicate his French noble titles to his son while he took over the government of Monaco as regent.

This greatly upset Prince Honore-Gabriel (future Honore V) who felt that it was his right to be regent in Monaco rather than his uncle. In the meantime, however, Monaco was returned to the Grimaldi family, Italian became the official language (as it had been before the French takeover) when Prince Joseph arrived to oversee the transition. He had a monumental task on his hands as the French occupation and the disruption of the revolution had left the economy in shambles and the people began to refuse to pay their taxes. In January, 1815 Prince Joseph returned to Paris to try to raise money to stave off disaster and in his absence there was near chaos in Monaco with no prince, no regent and no French troops for the first time in many, many years. Perhaps fortunately for Prince Joseph his nephew took this opportunity to make his bid for the regency and using his mother's family connections tried to enlist the King on his side. Prince Joseph, possibly relieved to escape the post, wrote to his brother and advised him to hand power over to Prince Honore-Gabriel. Prince Joseph died a year later on June 28, 1816.

H.S.H. Princess Françoise-Thérèse of Monaco

(as a young girl with her mother)

Françoise-Thérèse de Choiseul-Stainville, Princesse Joséph de Monaco is one of those historical figures who seems to slip through the cracks. Her father was Jacques Philippe de Choiseul, Comte de Stainville of whom the general consensus could perhaps best be described as oafish and her mother was his very beautiful and popular wife Thérèse de Clermont d’Amboise who were married in Paris in 1761 when the groom was 40 and the bride barely 15. Jacques was the younger brother of the Duc de Choiseul who was one of the right hand men of the French King Louis XV. They had two daughters, Marie-Stephanie in 1763 and Françoise-Thérèse in 1766 despite the fact that it was not a happy marriage and both husband and wife had affairs.

This has led to some speculation as to whether or not Françoise-Thérèse was really the daughter of Jacques Philippe or perhaps his cousin the Duc d’Lauzun. Finally, after a particularly ugly scene Madame le Comtesse was sent to a convent by her husband. It also meant that Françoise-Thérèse was fairly well ignored by the family of her father for fear that she was not really his, the only exception being her aunt, by marriage, the Duchesse de Choiseul who was very fond of her. In convent school both Marie-Stephanie and Françoise-Thérèse had a reputation for being pranksters and troublemakers (putting ink in the holy water and such stuff) and were considered quite the handful. Of the two of them, Françoise-Thérèse was considered the most wild and unruly. The Princesse de Ligne described her as “rather pretty” but “very untamed” and thought to have been badly raised.

Her beauty seemed more than able to overcome her mischievous behavior and questioned parentage as she had no trouble attracting gentlemen callers and on April 6, 1782 she was very happily married to Prince Joseph of Monaco, son of Prince Honore III of Monaco and Marie Catherine Brignole-Sale. The two were, by most accounts, perfect for each other, very happy together and eventually had three daughters; Honorine in 1784, Athenais in 1786 and Delphine in 1788. Now Princess Françoise-Thérèse of Monaco she seemed to have everything anyone could ever want; security, healthy children and an adoring spouse. However, her wedded bliss was to come crashing down in the tidal wave of the French Revolution which was not to leave tiny Monaco untouched.

When the first violence broke out in 1789 Princess Françoise left for Italy with the Duchesse de Fleury while Prince Joseph joined the heroic counterrevolutionary uprising in the Vendée. She met the famous Lady Hamilton in Naples and was in Venice for the ceremonial marriage of the Doge to the sea. Her freedom of movement became much more difficult after February 14, 1794 when the Principality of Monaco was annexed to the French Republic, thus robbing Princess Françoise of her status as a foreign princess and making her subject to the multitudinous restrictions placed on citizens of the republic. She quickly came back to Paris to collect her children who were staying with the Duchesse de Choiseul and to avoid having her property confiscated as an émigré. Nonetheless, the revolutionary authorities arrested her anyway as she was trying to sort things out. She obtained forged papers and secured her release but then, just as freedom was within reach, it was learned that her husband, Prince Joseph of Monaco, had fought with the counterrevolutionaries against the republic in the Vendée.

Now, not only had she lost the protection of being a foreign princess but she was also wanted for being the wife of a royalist enemy of the revolution. Another warrant for her arrest was issued but she was thankfully hidden in a convent by a friend of the family Rollet d’Avaux. However, eventually she was arrested, without being found out, and in the Winter of 1793/4 held in horrible conditions at the prison Petit Force in Paris. She was later able to secure a transfer to somewhat better conditions at the Anglaises but a spy in the prison learned her true identity, informed her captors and she was quickly sentenced to death. However, Princess Françoise was able to buy herself a little more time by telling the authorities she was pregnant and thus her execution was postponed until after the birth of her child.

She was later inspected though and found not to be pregnant after all and she wrote her goodbye letters, signing her name “Choiseul-Stainville-Joseph-Grimaldi-Monaco, foreign princess, and dying from the injustice of French judges”. She took a pane of glass from the window and used it to cut her hair, saving the braid for her daughters so that they would have something to remember her by. The Duchesse de Choiseul was also a prisoner of the revolution but would soon be released and would take charge of the girls until their father returned from exile in England. She was not yet 27 when she was taken to the guillotine, the last to make the ride in a tumbrel. She was glad to have rouge for her face as she did not want to appear pale and frightened. Witnesses said she made the trip with a look of righteous indignation and the shine of youthful beauty. She turned to a condemned lady beside her and said, “Courage, my dear friend! Courage! Only crime can show weakness.” She was the last person to be guillotined that day.