Charles de Rohan, prince de Soubise

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles,_Prince_of_Soubise

Charles de Rohan (16 July 1715 – 1 July 1787), duke of Rohan-Rohan, seigneur of Roberval, and marshal of France from 1758, was a military man, a minister to the kings Louis XV and Louis XVI, and a notorious libertine. The last male of his branch of the House of Rohan, he was also the great grandfather to the duc d'Enghien, executed by Napoleon in 1804. Styled prince d'Epinoy at birth, he became the Prince of Soubise after 1749.

Biography

The prince was born at Versailles on 16 January 1715, the son of Jules, Prince of Soubise, lieutenant captain of the gendarmes of the Royal Guard, and of Anne Julie Adélaïde de Melun. The eldest of five children, he was styled the Prince of Epinoy till his fathers death in 1724.

His parents died in Paris of smallpox in 1724, remaining his siblings, including Marie Louise, making them orphans. His sister lost her husband to smallpox in 1743.

He was entrusted to his grandfather Hercule Mériadec, Duke of Rohan-Rohan, who raised Soubise to the court, where he became the companion of Louis XV, who was the same age as he. One of his great grandmother's was Madame de Ventadour, via his paternal grandmother Anne Genevieve de Levis; Madame de Ventadour, who died in 1744, was close to her great grandson.

He accompanied Louis XV in the campaign of 1744-1748 and attained high military rank, which owed more to his courtiership than to his generalship.

Soon after the beginning of the Seven Years' War, through the influence of Madame de Pompadour, he was put in command of a corps of 24,000 men, and in November 1757 he sustained the crushing defeat of Rossbach. Along with the failure to hold Hanover following the Invasion of Hanover (1757) this marked a dramatic turnaround for French fortunes as just months before they have seemed on the brink of victory.

He was more fortunate, however, in his later military career, and continued in the service until the general peace of 1763, after which he lived the life of an ordinary courtier and man of fashion in Paris.

"Soubise" also refers to a culinary dish with a sauce made with a rice and onion purée, named to compliment Charles de Rohan, prince of Soubise: see sauce Soubise.

Marriages

Charles married three times:

Firstly in 1734 to Anne Marie Louise de La Tour d'Auvergne 1722 - 1739, daughter of Emmanuel Théodose de La Tour d'Auvergne and a grand daughter of the famous Marie Anne Mancini; Anne Marie Louise died in 1739 giving birth to a son who died in 1742. Their daughter was; Charlotte Élisabeth Godefride de Rohan 1737 - 1760 known as Charlotte. She married Louis Joseph de Bourbon, a Prince du Sang and descendant of Louis XIV of France and Madame de Montespan. Charlotte was the paternal grand mother of the murdered duc d'Enghien.

In 1741 he married again this time to a Savoyard Princess named Anna Teresa 1717 - 1745, a daughter of the Prince of Carignan and Maria Vittoria Francesca of Savoy who in turn was an illegitimate daughter of Victor Amadeus II of Sardinia. Anna Teresa (known as Anne Thérèse de Savoie) gave birth to another daughter Victoire Armande Josèphe de Rohan 1743 - 1807. She married Henri Louis Marie de Rohan, Prince of Guéménée who was a cousin. Victoire was later the governess to the daughter of Marie Antoinette. Anne Thérèse died in 1745.

The same year Charles married again to a German Princess, Landgravine Anne Victoire of Hesse-Rotenburg 1728 - 1792. Anna Viktoria was a niece of an old Princess of Condé, Landgravine Caroline of Hesse-Rotenburg. Anna Viktoria had no children.