Henri Jules de Bourbon
Henri Jules de Bourbon
Henri Jules de Bourbon Manuscript Document Signed
Florid Manuscript Document Signed, in French, untranslated, on fine laid paper with a beautiful royal crest watermark, 1p, 7-3/4″ x 11-3/4″. Date unknown.
Henri Jules de Bourbon, Prince of Condé (1643-1709) was prince de Condé, from 1686 to his death. Henri Jules was born to Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé and his wife in 1643. He was five years younger than King Louis XIV. An only child, he became the sole heir to the enormous Condé fortune and property. His mother was a niece of Cardinal Richelieu. Throughout much of his life, Henri Jules was mentally unstable. It was said that his mental illness was inherited through his mother’s family. He was a debauched and brutal man not only “repulsive in appearance”, but “cursed with so violent a temper that it was positively dangerous to contradict him”.
Trained as a soldier, in 1673, he was put in charge of the Rhine front. This high-ranking military position was just in name only though, because Henri Jules lacked the military skills of his father. He eventually married Anne Henriette of Bavaria in the chapel of the Palais du Louvre, in Paris, in December 1663. At the end of his life Henri Jules suffered from clinical lycanthropy, a rare psychiatric syndrome that involves a delusion that the affected person can or has transformed into a wolf—with correspondingly altered behavior.