As such, he was entitled to be known as Prince of Condé, but he used the title Duke of Bourbon instead and was known at court as Monsieur le Duc.

He was the great-grandson of Louis de Bourbon, le Grand Condé, and ranked as a prince du sang.

He was described in a contemporary description of him as: moderately good looking as a young man, but being over-tall he afterwards began to stoop, and became 'as thin and dry as a chip of wood.

'[2]Satirical pamphlets directed against royalty were a common form of literature and the chronicles left by courtiers were influenced by rivalries or prejudice, so he may not have looked so bad.

In 1718, he replaced Louis-Auguste de Bourbon, duc du Maine as superintendent of the king's education.

[3][4][5][6][7] The actual instruction of the young king was not much disturbed however, since it was mostly done by his old and trusted tutor, André-Hercule de Fleury, Bishop of Fréjus, who remained in place.

Cardinal de Fleury, who was present at the meeting, recommended acceptance, and Louis XV indicated his assent by a silent nod.

To assess why the king — or Fréjus — chose, or allowed, Bourbon to become premier ministre, says the French lawyer and writer d'Angerville, writing in 1781: In making the choice, which no doubt was not the best he might have made, because he lacked the necessary experience not only of men but of himself, he nevertheless acted in strict accordance with the rules of etiquette.

The manner in which His Royal Highness [the Duc de Bourbon] had managed his own revenues, and had added to them, despite his youth (that being a period when a man's thoughts are wont to be exclusively centred upon pleasure) was a strong presumption that he would prove a capable public administrator, and the fact that he was already rich led people to imagine that he would not trouble his head about adding to his fortune.

What France needed was a government which would pursue a policy of peace, conciliation and retrenchment, and avail itself of the tranquil condition of Europe in order to bring about by trade, industry and the gradual restoration of the metal reserve, a recovery from the state of exhaustion into which the country had fallen.

[18] The persecution of the Huguenots under the reign of Louis XIV was stopped by the regent, despite those who continued to advocate rigour in the treatment of the Protestants.

When Bourbon came to be prime minister, however, the bishop found in him a more receptive audience, and he was given the go-ahead to draw up a general law against heresy.

This was especially so because, if Louis XV died without an heir, it was feared that, armed with a hereditary right he had renounced when he became king of Spain, Philip V de Bourbon, who had recently abdicated the Spanish throne, would ignore the Treaty of Utrecht and claim the French throne, thus plunging France and Spain into conflict with the other European powers.

It appears that by the summer of 1724,[19] the marquise de Prie, and possibly also Monsieur le Duc, were considering breaking Louis XV's engagement with the infanta, despite the great offence this would cause Spain, and finding him a wife who might provide the country with an heir at an earlier date.

[25] A new candidate was sought urgently because, should Louis die with no heir, and assuming Philippe V of Spain did not seize the throne, then it would pass to the new duc d'Orléans, son of the deceased regent; the House of Orléans and the House of Condé were rivals, so this would cast Monsieur le Duc into the political wastelands.

[28] However that would have caused great difficulties for her father, as he was occupying the British throne mainly because he was Protestant, whereas his rival, James Stuart, was Catholic; he had to politely decline the offer of France to his daughter.

Her name was Marie Leszczyńska; her father, Stanislaus, had occupied the Polish throne from 1704 with the backing of Charles XII of Sweden.

Stanislaus had found refuge, first in Germany, then in France, where the regent had given him a house at Wissembourg in Alsace, a pension of fifty thousand livres, irregularly paid, and, as a sign of respect, a few regiments of soldiers as an honour guard; they, along with a handful of retainers who had followed the forsaken king in his wanderings, comprised his bare little court.

Bourbon remained prime minister until his dismissal in 1726 in favour of the young king's tutor, Cardinal Fleury.

Saint-Simon, the memoir writer known for his acid portraits of grandees, described the Duke of Bourbon as a man with "an almost stupid foolishness, an indomitable obstinacy, an insatiable self-interest".

After his spell in the government, Bourbon was exiled to his country estate, the Château de Chantilly, 40 kilometers northeast of Paris.

After the Système went under, "the government compelled some humbler speculators to disgorge their gains, but no one ventured to disturb the head of the house of Condé.