Duke of Albret (Duc d'Albret) was a title in the French nobility.
The French nobility was a privileged social class in France during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period to the revolution in 1790. The nobility was revived in 1805 with limited rights as a titled elite class from the First Empire to the fall of the July Monarchy in 1848, when all privileges were abolished for good. Hereditary titles, without privileges, continued to be granted until the Second Empire fell in 1870. They survive among their descendants as a social convention and as part of the legal name of the corresponding individuals.
Contents
- List of dukes
- First creation
- Second creation
- Third creation
- Fourth creation
- References
- External links
It was created in 1550 for the King of Navarre, Henry II. He died in 1555 and was succeeded by his daughter, Jeanne III. The duchy was made into a peerage for her in 1556. On her death in 1572 the title was inherited by her son Henry; he became King of France as Henry IV in 1589 when the title merged in the Crown. He bestowed it on his sister, Catherine de Bourbon, the regent of Navarre.
Henry II, nicknamed Sangüesino because he was born at Sangüesa, was the King of Navarre from 1517, although his kingdom had been reduced to a small territory north of the Pyrenees by the Spanish conquest of 1512. Henry succeeded his mother, Queen Catherine, upon her death. His father was her husband and co-ruler, King John III, who died in 1516.
Jeanne d'Albret, also known as Jeanne III, was the queen regnant of Navarre from 1555 to 1572. She married Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of Vendôme, and was the mother of Henri de Bourbon, who became King Henry III of Navarre and IV of France, the first Bourbon king of France. She became the Duchess of Vendôme by marriage.
The Peerage of France was a hereditary distinction within the French nobility which appeared in 1180 in the Middle Ages, and only a small number of noble individuals were peers. It was abolished in 1789 during the French Revolution, but it reappeared in 1814 at the time of the Bourbon Restoration which followed the fall of the First French Empire, when the Chamber of Peers was given a constitutional function somewhat along British lines, which lasted until the Revolution of 1848. On 10 October 1831, by a vote of 324 against 26 of the Chamber of Deputies, hereditary peerages were abolished, but peerages for the life of the holder continued to exist until the chamber and rank were definitively abolished in 1848.
Between 1641 and 1651 the duchy-peerage was held by the Princes of Condé, Henri (died 1646) and his son Louis. In 1651 the duchy-peerage was granted to the Duke of Bouillon, Frédéric Maurice de La Tour d'Auvergne, and was held by subsequent Dukes of Bouillon until becoming extinct in 1802.
The Most Serene House of Condé was a French princely house and a cadet branch of the House of Bourbon. The name of the house was derived from the title of Prince of Condé that was originally assumed around 1557 by the French Protestant leader, Louis de Bourbon (1530–1569), uncle of King Henry IV of France, and borne by his male-line descendants.
Henri de Bourbon was Prince of Condé for nearly all his life. The head of the senior-most cadet branch of the House of Bourbon, he was heir presumptive to the king of France for the first few years of his life. Henri was the father of Louis, le Grand Condé, the celebrated French general.
Louis de Bourbon or Louis II, Prince of Condé was a French general and the most famous representative of the Condé branch of the House of Bourbon. Prior to his father's death in 1646, he was styled the Duc d'Enghien. For his military prowess he was known as le Grand Condé.
In the nineteenth century Duke of Albret was a courtesy title borne by Prince Henri d'Orléans, duc d'Aumale (1822–1897), the heir to the Condé estates. [1]
