Most foreign princes did not initially use "prince" as a personal title. Since the families which held that rank were famous and few in the
ancien régime of France, a title carried less distinction than the family surname. Thus noble titles, even
chevalier, were commonly and indifferently borne by foreign princes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries without any implication that their precedence was limited to the rank normally associated with that title. For instance, the title
vicomte de Turenne, made famous by the renowned
marshal,
Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, was a
subsidiary title traditionally borne by a junior member of the family. But he ranked as a
prince étranger rather than as a
viscount, being a cadet of the dynasty which reigned over the mini-duchy of
Bouillon until the
French Revolution. In France, some important
seigneuries (lordships) were styled principalities since the late Middle Ages. Their lords had no specific rank, and were always officially subordinate to dukes and to foreign princes. Beginning in the late sixteenth century, some of France's leading families, denied the
rank of prince at court, assumed the
title of prince. Often it was claimed on behalf of their eldest sons, subtly reminding the court that the princely title was subordinate — at least in the law — to that of
duke-peer, while minimising the risk that the princely style, used as a mere
courtesy title, would be challenged or forbidden. Typical were the
ducs de La Rochefoucauld: Their claim to descend from the independent duke
Guillaume IV of Guyenne, and their inter-marriages with the sovereign
dukes of Mirandola, failed to secure for them royal recognition as foreign princes. Yet the ducal heir is still known as the "prince de Marcillac", although no such principality ever existed, within or without France. In the eighteenth century, as dukes and lesser noblemen arrogated to themselves the title "prince de X", more of the foreign princes began to do the same. Like the
princes du sang (e.g.
Condé,
La Roche-sur-Yon), it became one of their
de facto prerogatives to unilaterally attach a princely
titre de courtoisie to a
seigneurie which not only lacked any independence as a principality but might not even belong to the titleholder, having merely been owned at some point by his family (e.g., ''prince d'Harcourt
and prince de Lambesc
in the House of Lorraine-Guise; prince d'Auvergne
and prince de Turenne'' in the House of La Tour d'Auvergne;
prince de Montauban and
prince de Rochefort in the House of Rohan;
prince de Talmond in the House of La Trémoïlle). Nonetheless, these titles were then passed down within families as if they were hereditary peerages.. Moreover, some noble titles of prince conferred on Frenchmen by the
Holy Roman Empire, the
Papacy or Spain were eventually accepted at the French court (e.g.,
Prince de Broglie,
Prince de Beauvau-Craon,
Prince de Bauffremont) and became more common in the eighteenth century. But they carried no official rank, and their social status was not equal to that of either peers or foreign princes. Unsurprisingly, foreign princes began adopting a custom increasingly common outside France; prefixing their Christian names with "le prince". The genealogist
par excellence of the French nobility,
Père Anselme, initially deprecated such
neologistic practice with insertion of a "
dit" ("
styled" or "so-called") in his biographical entries, but after the reign of Louis XIV he records the usage among
princes étrangers without qualification. ==Privileges==