Notes |
- BIOGRAPHY
Louise was born 15 August 1575, the daughter of Jacques de Budos, baron de Budos, de Portes et de Theyrargues, and Catherine de Clermont. On 7 February 1591 at the château de Theyrargues Louise married Jean de Grammont, seigneur de Vacheres, but he died 30 November 1592. As a childless widow, on 29 March 1593 she became the second wife of Henri I de Montmorency, duc de Montmorency et Damville, son of Anne, duc de Montmorency, and Madeleine de Savoie. Louise and Henri had three children, of whom only the eldest, Charlotte Marguerite, would have progeny. Marrying Henri II de Bourbon, prince de Condé, she had to flee the attentions of Henri IV. Their elder son Henri II would be beheaded at Toulouse in 1632, following his involvement in a revolt led by Gaston d'Orleans, younger brother of Louis XIII, against Cardinal Richelieu. Their younger son Charles died young.
Saint-Simon, in his _Memoires,_ recounts the story of the death of Louise and its bizarre aftermath. In 1598 Louise, left alone by her husband in Chantilly while he was absent in Languedoc, had several meetings with a mysterious figure. However, on 26 September 1598, the day after she was seen locking herself with a stranger into a cabinet of the castle, she was found dead, 'on the ground, her neck completely twisted about, her face turned to the back, without however being disfigured, and the cabinet (held) a very fetid odour of suffering'. At her funeral, her husband Henri became intensely excited by Louise's aunt Laurence de Clermont, madame de Dizimieu, who had discovered the body of her niece. He asked her to marry him, and this marriage took place on 19 June 1601 at Beaucaire. Saint Simon claimed that Henri was the victim of an enchanted ring, successively worn by Louise de Budos, to whom it was given by a beggar, then by her aunt, who had taken it from her body. This talisman was able to give rise, in someone desired by the ring's wearer, to a frantic love for that woman. As proof, when the aunt threw the ring away in the garden of Ecouen, the charm was broken.
Later the ghost of Louise was said to appear in the castle of Chantilly. An omen of disaster, it appeared each time to predict the death of the heir in a family. Shortly before the death of the 'l'aisné de la Maison de Condé' (presumably Louis Armand I, prince de Conti, the eldest surviving son of Armand de Bourbon, prince de Conti, on 9 November 1685), it appeared in the window of the hall of weapons at Chantilly. The prince's equerry, Vervillon, who witnessed the apparition, sought to clear up the mystery, but in vain. Shortly afterwards, the prince was struck down at Fontainebleau by smallpox, probably caught from his wife Marie Anne de Bourbon, mademoiselle de Blois, the natural daughter of Louis XIV and his mistress Louise Françoise de La Baume-le-Blanc, duchesse de La Vallière et de Vaujours.
|