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Matching family tree profiles for Louis Léon Félicité de Brancas, duc de Villars Brancas
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About Louis Léon Félicité de Brancas, duc de Villars Brancas
https://genealogics.org/getperson.php?personID=I00010093&tree=LEO
BIOGRAPHY Louis Léon Félicité was born in Paris on 3 July 1733, the son of Louis II de Brancas, duc de Lauraguais and Adelaide Geneviève d'O, marquise de Franconville. After a strict childhood he began a military career. A lieutenant in the Royal-Roussillon regiment of cavalry, he rose to colonel ('mestre-de-camp') on 1 February 1749. He fought with distinction in the campaigns of the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), particularly that of 1757. He left military life to live in Paris, and soon developed a reputation for his high spirits and wit. He showed considerable interest in and aptitude for both writing and the sciences, but was also known for his lively pursuit of pleasures. He was associated from a young age with famous scientists, in particular with Antoine-Laurent de Làvoisier, the father of modern chemistry, with whom he worked.
Louis became duc de Lauraguais on 5 January 1755. In Paris on 11 January that year he married Elisabeth Pauline de Gand-Vilain de Merode de Montmorency, princesse d'Isenghien et de Masmines, daughter of Alexandre de Gand-Vilain, comte de Middelburg, and Elisabeth de La Rochefoucauld. They had two daughters of whom Louise Antoinette would have progeny, marrying Louis Pierre, prince et 5.duc d'Arenberg.
In theatre, Louis became actively involved in efforts to have actors costumed in conformity with historical accuracy, and he paid 20,000 livres to the actors of the Théâtre-Français to agree to have the spectator benches removed from the stage, which in his view had spoilt the illusion of theatrical presentations.
He spent considerable sums on his scientific experiments, and his resulting debts led him to sell his library, one of the finest of the time. The Royal Academy of Sciences accepted him as an associate in 1771. By his mistress Madeleine Sophie Arnould, a singer and actress, he had four children of whom a son and a daughter would have progeny.
Under the Ancien Régime he remained famous for his enthusiasm for English customs, for the notoriety of his affairs, for his somewhat cynical philosophy and for the luxury which consumed his fortune. At the time of the War of American Independence, Louis XVI's foreign minister Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, saw Louis as useful to French diplomacy and took advantage of his frequent visits to London to make use of his close relations with Lord Shelburne and some members of the Opposition as well as the circle around Arthur Lee.
Louis' association with Antoine-Laurent de Làvoisier, who was executed in the Terror, may have been the cause of his own prosecution. His wife was killed on the guillotine in Paris on 16 February 1794. Having himself escaped from the Terror by extraordinary good fortune, he lived in retirement, devoting his time to chemistry and physics, also to poetry, which he pursued modestly though not without talent or originality. With the return of the Bourbons in 1814, the government of the Restoration named Louis a pair de France (peer of France) on 4 June that year. He had become duc de Brancas after the death of his father in 1796. He was also a grandee of Spain 1st class.
Increasingly handicapped by illness, he could not take part in the work of the parliament. For this reason, in December 1822 he obtained the king's permission to transfer his peerage to the marquis de Brancas, his nephew.
Louis wrote extensively (scientific memoirs, political tracts, and two tragedies, _Clytemnestre_ and _Jocaste_, which were never staged). He died in Paris from an attack of gout on 8 October 1824, and was buried in the cemetery of Père Lachaise in that city.
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Louis Léon Félicité de Brancas, duc de Villars Brancas's Timeline
| 1733 |
July 3, 1733
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Versailles, Yvelines, Île-de-France, France
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| 1755 |
November 23, 1755
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Paris, Île-de-France, France
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| 1758 |
October 24, 1758
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| 1759 |
1759
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| 1761 |
1761
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| 1764 |
October 16, 1764
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Paris, Paris, Île-de-France, France
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| 1767 |
1767
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| 1776 |
1776
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| 1824 |
October 9, 1824
Age 91
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Paris, Paris, Île-de-France, France
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