v11_1118 - LOUIS DE BOURBON, COMTE DE VERMANDOIS Jeton AR 28 1681

LOUIS DE BOURBON, COUNT OF VERMANDOIS

(1667-1683)

Louis de Bourbon, Comte de Vermandois was the illegitimate son of Louis XIV and Louise Françoise de La Baume Le Blanc, better known as the Duchess of La Vallière et de Vaujours. Born in 1667 in Saint Germain en Laye, legitimized by letters of February 1669, he was made Admiral of France in November, replacing the Duke of Beaufort. He made his first and only military campaign in 1683 and succumbed shortly after following, says Mademoiselle de Montpensier, an orgy where he had drunk too much brandy. This historical anecdote will be taken up by Alexandre Dumas in "A Year in Florence" published in 1840 for one of his nine possible explanations of the "Iron Mask". Earlier, Louis de Bourbon, much loved by his father, had given the dolphin a slap in the face, which would have earned him this trouble. For Dumas, the young prince could not have been dead but only asleep and that he perhaps woke up with an iron mask on his face..