Duke Louis of Württemberg

Louis of Württemberg　1800

Duke Louis of Württemberg (Ludwig Friedrich Alexander Duke of Württemberg) (Treptow an der Rega, 30 August 1756 – Kirchheim unter Teck, 20 September 1817) was the second son of Friedrich II Eugen, Duke of Württemberg (1732-1797) and Margravine Sophia Dorothea of Brandenburg-Schwedt (1736-1798). His elder brother was Frederick I, the first king of Württemberg, his sister was the Russian Empress consort Maria Feodorovna. Louis retained the pre-royal title of Duke.

Biography

Life in military

Louis Frederick was a general in the cavalry. He was a high ranking commander in the Lithuanian army ^[1], but refused to fight against Russian troops throughout the Polish–Russian War of 1792, for which he was dismissed from his post.

Marriages and issue

He married on 28 October 1784 Maria Czartoryska (1768-1854), daughter of Prince Adam Czartoryski and Isabella, Countess Flemming.

They had one child before they divorced in 1793 (Maria initiated the divorce upon the news of his betrayal of Poland):

• Adam (January 16 1792 - July 27 1847).

On 28 January 1797 in Hermitage, near Bayreuth, Louis Frederick was married to Princess Henriette of Nassau-Weilburg, then of Nassau, daughter of Charles Christian, Duke of Nassau-Weilburg and Princess Carolina of Orange-Nassau.
They had 5 children:

• Maria Dorothea (1797-1855), married in 1819 Archduke Joseph, Palatine of Hungary (1776-1847)
• Amalie Therese (June 28, 1799 - November 28, 1848), married in 1817 Joseph, Duke of Saxe-Altenburg (1789-1868)
• Pauline Therese (1800-1873), married in 1820 her first cousin William I of Wurttemberg
• Elisabeth Alexandrine (1802-1864), married in 1830 Prince Wilhelm of Baden (1792-1859)
• Alexander (1804-1885), who founded the second branch of the House of Württemberg, known as the Dukes of Teck.

He is an ancestor of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, King Juan Carlos I of Spain and Charles Napoléon.

Between 1807 and 1810, Duke Louis employed the composer Carl Maria von Weber as his secretary with no musical duties. Weber and the duke's older brother Frederick mutually disliked each other, and the composer was banished from Württemberg after accusations of misappropriating some of the duke's money.

Ancestry

External links

1. ^ W.H. Zawadzki (1993). "A man of honour". Oxford University Press. http://books.google.de/books?id=hwZASJRHjLIC&pg=PA321&dq=Louis+von+W%C3%BCrttemberg+polen&lr=&as_brr=3#PPA18,M1. Retrieved 2009-06-07. 

• The peerage
• Ducal then Royal House of Württemberg
• Princely House of Nassau-Weilburg