Louise Henriette of Bourbon-Conti

Louise Henriette of Bourbon-Conti , “Miss de Conti”, by its marriage duchess of Chartres (1743 - 1752) then duchess of Orleans (1752 - 1759), was born in Paris the June 20th 1726 and died in Paris the February 9th 1759.

Girl of Louis Armand of Bourbon-Conti (1695-1727) and Louise Elisabeth de Bourbon-Cop, it married on December 17th 1743 the duke of Chartres, future duke of Orleans, Louis Philippe of Orleans, known as '' the Large ''. The very pious duke of Orleans, father of the groom, who had much evil to marry his son, was folded back on this party by believing that the young girl, raised in a convent, would be a Christian paragon of virtue.

She proved on the contrary a model of licentiousness and its misconduct caused a permanent scandal. Three legitimate children, of which two survived, were born from this badly matched union:

1. NR… of Orleans, female sex (12 or July 13rd 1745 - December 14th, 1745);

2. Louis Philippe Joseph of Orleans, duke of Valois (born on April 13rd 1747), future Philippe-Equality;
3. Louise Marie Therese Bathilde of Orleans (born on July 9th 1750 - died in 1822), “Miss”, wife of Louis Henri de Bourbon-Cop, duke of Bourbon then prince de Condé.

One reads in the Mémoires of the Marchioness of Créquy , that with died of the duchess of Orleans, " … one found in his cassette a collection of satires and horrible songs which it had composed. They could not be transcribed by the feather of another woman, and especially of a Christian woman. I could about it quote only this beginning of a verse which she addressed to her husband:

" Monseigneur d' Orléans, " Your alleged children, " Are the object of the contempt " From any Paris! "

Monseigneur d' Orléans did nothing but laugh at it, and all accustomed of the Palais Royal took copies of this same collection of poetry, that the princess had entitled: My Will… "

In fact, if the duchess of Orleans thus seemed to clearly say to her husband who he was not the father of his children, the latter themselves implied that they also thought it, thus the baroness of Oberkirch tells she in her Mémoires that the duchess of Bourbon entrusted to him: " I am very Condé and I do not have anything Orleans " …

And thus his/her brother Philippe-Equality did not hesitate it on his side to publicly affirm under the Revolution which he was not the son of Louis the Large one but that of a coachman of the Palais Royal, which was moreover not very probable if one judges some by the resemblance striking between the father and the son.

The duchess of Chartres died young person in 1759, worn, says one, by her vices.