Marie de Bourbon, born at the
Hôtel de Soissons in Paris, was the second daughter and youngest child of
Charles de Bourbon, Count of Soissons, and his wife
Anne de Montafié, Countess of Clermont. At the court of
Louis XIII, who was her second cousin, Marie enjoyed the rank of
princesse du sang. She was a sister of
Louise of Bourbon, Duchess of Longueville. Originally placed in the
Abbey of Fontevraud in Anjou, she took the habit on 10 April 1610 aged just four. On 6 January 1625, Marie was married to Thomas Francis, ninth child of
Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy, and his wife
Catherine Michaela of Austria. It was arranged that Thomas, as son of a reigning monarch, would hold the rank of first among the
princes étrangers at the French court – taking precedence even before the formerly all-powerful
House of Guise, whose kinship to the sovereign
Duke of Lorraine was more remote. He was appointed
Grand Master of France of the king's household, briefly replacing the traitorous
Louis II de Condé. He engaged the services of the distinguished grammarian and courtier
Claude Favre de Vaugelas as tutor for his children. After Thomas, the senior branch of his descendants
repatriated to Savoy, alternately marrying French, Italian and German princesses. After the
Bourbons obtained the French crown and the
Princes de Condé and their
heirs apparent became known (by right of their rank as
First Prince of the Blood), respectively, as
Monsieur le Prince and
Monsieur le Duc, Charles came to be
styled Monsieur le Comte at court. That
honorific was borne also by his son Louis and, subsequently, by the
Savoy-Carignano counts of Soissons, who inherited the countship from Charles's daughter, Marie, princesse de Carignano, even though they ranked as
princes étrangers in France rather than as
princes du sang. At the death of her older brother
Louis of Bourbon (6 July 1641), Marie was named his heir and became the
Countess of Soissons suo jure. She lived in her native France with her husband and resided at the Hôtel de Soissons where she was born. It was Marie who built the small
Château de Bagnolet in Paris; at her death the building was acquired by the
Ferme générale François Le Juge. In 1719 it became the property of
Françoise Marie de Bourbon. Marie and her daughter helped to raise the famous soldier
Prince Eugene of Savoy. She died in Paris. ==Issue==