Louis I, Prince of Monaco

by Susan Flantzer
© Unofficial Royalty 2022

Louis I, Prince of Monaco; Credit – Wikipedia

Born at the Prince’s Palace in Monaco on July 25, 1642, Louis I, Prince of Monaco was the eldest of the four children and the only son of Hercule Grimaldi, Marquis of Baux and Maria Aurelia Spinola. Louis’ paternal grandparents were Honoré II, Prince of Monaco and Ippolita Trivulzio who came from a noble Italian family. His maternal grandparents were Luca Spinola, Prince of Molfetta and Pellina Spinola who were both members of the House of Spinola, a powerful and influential family from the Republic of Genoa. Louis’ godparents were King Louis XIII of France, after whom he was named, and Louis XIII’s wife Anne of Austria.

Louis had three younger sisters:

  • Maria Ippolita Grimaldi (1644 – 1694), married Carlo Emaneule Filiberto de Simiane, 3rd Marchese di Pianezzo, Prince de Montafia, had one daughter
  • Giovanna Maria Grimaldi (1645 – ?), married Andrea Imperiali, 2nd Principe di Francavilla, had three children
  • Teresa Maria Grimaldi (1648 – 1723), married Sigismondo III d’Este, 4th Marchese di San Martino, had seven children

On August 1, 1651, Louis’ father, twenty-seven-year-old Hercule Grimaldi, Marquis of Baux, the only child and the heir of Honoré II, Prince of Monaco, went on a visit to the Convent of Carnoles in Mentone, then in Monaco but now in France. After the visit, he engaged in recreational shooting with some guards in the garden of the convent. Hercule was interested in how the gun worked and asked one of the guards to show him. The guard mishandled the gun and accidentally shot it towards Hercule and two other guards. All three were wounded. Fatally wounded in the spine, Hercule died the next day, and nine-year-old Louis became heir apparent to the throne of Monaco and would succeed his grandfather Honoré II in 1662.

Louis’ grandfather Honoré II, Prince of Monaco; Credit – Wikipedia

In 1641, during the reign of Louis’ grandfather Honoré II, Monaco had become a French protectorate, and the Princes of Monaco became vassals of the Kings of France while remaining sovereign princes. Many successive Princes of Monaco and their families spent most of their lives in France and intermarried with French and Italian noble families, including Louis. King Louis XIV of France was four years older than Louis and was his contemporary.

When Louis reached a marriageable age, his grandfather Honoré II set out to find him a wife who was the daughter of a high noble at the French court. Via a marriage to a member of the French nobility, Louis’ grandfather hoped to strengthen the alliance between Monaco and France against Spain and obtain valuable connections to the French court. However, such a marriage would also benefit the family of Louis’ bride. Seven foreign princes, of which the Prince of Monaco was one, were recognized by the French Crown to owe a special loyalty to France. Called ducs et pairs étrangers (foreign dukes and peers), they were given extra privileges and took precedence over the French ducs et pairs. These foreign princes walked behind the princes of the blood royal in processions. Their wives also had privileges such as sitting on tabourets (stools) in the presence of the Queen. By marrying Louis, a future Prince of Monaco, the daughter of French noble would be assured of social, economic, and court preeminence.

Honoré II and his advisers went through a list of French nobles with marriageable daughters, and Catherine-Charlotte de Gramont was chosen. Catherine-Charlotte was the daughter of Antoine III de Gramont, Duke of Gramont, a French military commander, diplomat, and a Marshal of France, and Françoise Marguerite du Plessis, a niece of the late powerful Cardinal Richelieu (Armand Jean du Plessis, Duke of Richelieu), who served as the First Minister of State to King Louis XIII of France from 1624 until his death in 1642. Catherine-Charlotte and her cousin Antonin Nompar de Caumont, Marquis de Puyguilhem,  later Duke of Lauzun, fell in love, and her father refused his permission for them to marry, they became lovers. Catherine-Charlotte was twenty, three years older than her prospective groom, but it was understood that she was unmarried because her father had refused to allow her to marry her cousin. Honoré II was assured that the affair between the cousins was over and that Catherine-Charlotte’s father would agree to the marriage. Only one of those statements turned out to be true.

Catherine-Charlotte de Gramont; Credit – Wikipedia

On March 30, 1660, 18-year-old Louis married 21-year-old Catherine-Charlotte de Gramont at the Gramont family’s Chateau de Pau located in the Pyrenees Mountains in Pau, France. The newlyweds spent the month of April at the Chateau de Pau. They then traveled to Paris where they lived on the second floor of the Gramonts’ townhouse on the Rue de l’Autriche and regularly attended the French court. Despite being married and Honoré II being assured the affair was over, Catherine-Charlotte continued her affair with her cousin Antoine Nompar de Caumont. Louis had difficulty adjusting to the change in his social position and life at the French court.

Louis and Catherine-Charlotte had six children. In 1663, they founded a convent of the Order of the Visitation of the Holy Mary (also known as the Visitandines) in Monaco. Their twin daughters became nuns at the convent.

  • Antonio I, Prince of Monaco (1661 – 1731), married Marie of Lorraine, had six daughters including his successor Louise Hippolyte, Princess of Monaco
  • Maria Teresa Carlotta Grimaldi (1662 – 1738), twin of Jeanne Maria, a Visitandine nun in Monaco, later Abbess of the Visitandine convent in Monaco
  • Jeanne Maria Grimaldi (1662 – 1741) twin of Maria Teresa, a Visitandine nun in Monaco, later Abbess of the Abbey of Royallieu near Compiègne, France
  • Teresa Maria Aurelia Grimaldi (1663 – 1675), died in childhood
  • Anna Hippolyte Grimaldi (1664 – 1700), married Jacques de Crussol, Duc d’Uzès, no children
  • François Honoré Grimaldi, Archbishop of Besançon (1669 – 1748 – link in French)

After a reign of fifty-eight years, Honoré II, Prince of Monaco, Louis’ grandfather, died in 1662, and 20-year-old Louis became Prince of Monaco. Louis needed to return to Monaco and Catherine-Charlotte was forced to accompany him against her will. In 1665, Catherine-Charlotte left her husband and children in Monaco and returned to the French court because she found life at the Monaco court boring.

Upon returning to the French court, Catherine-Charlotte was appointed a lady-in-waiting to Henrietta of England, Duchess of Orléans, the first wife of Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, the only sibling of King Louis XIV. Catherine-Charlotte resumed her affair with her cousin and had affairs with many others including a brief affair with King Louis XIV. Because of all the rumors swirling around his wife regarding her affairs, Louis I decided to join his brother-in-law Armand de Gramont, Count of Guiche in the Anglo-Dutch Wars fighting for the Dutch. Louis distinguished himself at the 1666 Four Days’ Battle between the English and Dutch fleets.

In 1672, Louis and Catherine-Charlotte separated. Catherine-Charlotte obtained a position as a lady-in-waiting to Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart, mistress of King Louis XIV, but the position lasted for only one year. In the following years, she became seriously ill, probably with cancer. Catherine-Charlotte died at the Palais Royal in Paris, France on June 4, 1678, at the age of 39. She was buried at the now destroyed Convent of the Capuchins in Paris, France. Catherine-Charlotte had not seen her husband Louis during the last six years of her life and Louis showed no grief over her death.

In 1674, Louis commanded the military campaign that led to the reconquest from Spain of the Franche-Comté, a cultural and historical region of eastern France. Following the example of King Louis XIV’s legal codification efforts in France, Louis I issued the Principality of Monaco’s first legal code, known as the Code Louis, in 1678. In 1699, King Louis XIV of France named Louis the ambassador of the King of France to the Holy See in Rome.

Entrance to the common vault where the Grimaldi family members originally buried at the Church of St. Nicholas are buried; Credit – www.findagrave.com

Louis I, Prince of Monaco, aged 58, died on January 3, 1701, in Rome, then part of the Papal States, from apoplexy, the term formerly referred to what is now called a stroke. He was buried at the Church of Saint Nicholas in Monaco. During the late 19th century, a new and larger church, the Cathedral of Monaco, was built on the site of the Church of Saint Nicholas. The original church was demolished in 1874 but the current cathedral was built over the areas of the previous church and the old burial site so that the sovereign princes and consorts originally buried at the Church of Saint Nicholas are now buried in the Cathedral of Monaco.

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Works Cited

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  • Historyandwomen.com. 2011. Catherine Charlotte de Gramont. [online] Available at: <https://www.historyandwomen.com/2011/11/catherine-charlotte-de-gramont.html> [Accessed 15 January 2022].
  • It.wikipedia.org. 2022. Luigi I di Monaco – Wikipedia. [online] Available at: <https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_I_di_Monaco> [Accessed 15 January 2022].