Louis, Duke of Joyeuse

Portrait of Louis, Duke of Joyeuse, 17th century

Louis de Lorraine, Duke of Joyeuse (11 January 1622 – 27 September 1654, Paris) was a younger son of Charles, Duke of Guise and Henriette Catherine de Joyeuse.

Life

He was appointed Grand Chamberlain of France in 1644, shortly after the Guises were permitted to return from their exile in Florence. Louis XIV having returned the confiscated lands of Joyeuse, and the title "Joyeuse", to the once disgraced Guises, upon his majority in 1647 Louis de Lorraine was granted the title Duke of Joyeuse, the duchy of his maternal ancestors.

As Colonel General of the light cavalry, he served as a volunteer at the siege of Gravelines in 1644, and in two other campaigns. ("His company of mounted guards and their trappings were the finest possible", commented a newsletter of the time.) He died in Paris from a wound in his right arm, received on 22 April 1654, while charging the enemy near Arras. He was buried at Joinville near his paternal ancestors.

He married on 3 November 1649, in Toulon, Marie Françoise de Valois (d. 1696), daughter of Louis Emmanuel, Duke of Angoulême, who succeeded her father in 1653. Mentally unstable (imbécile), she was confined to the abbey of Essey only a few years after their marriage. He was also created Duc de la Guiche in 1653, but the title became extinct upon his death. He had two children:

• Louis Joseph, Duke of Guise (1650–1671)
• Catherine Henriette (1651–1655/56). Rumour had it that she did not die circa 1655 but was confined at Issey with her mother so that Louis Joseph would be an "only" son, thereby inheriting his parents' entire estate.

References

• Jules Fériel,Notes historiques sur la ville et les seigneurs de Joinville (Paris: Ladrange, 1835), pp. 137, 144-146
• Bibliothèque nationale de France, mss. Dossiers bleus, "Lorraine", 403, fol. 25