Louis de Bourbon, comte de Soissons

Louis de Bourbon, comte de Soissons (born 1604, Paris, France—died July 6, 1641, La Marfée, near Sedan) was a courtier and soldier in the intrigues between Marie de Médicis, Louis XIII, and Cardinal Richelieu.

The only son of Charles de Bourbon, he inherited his father’s Soissons title in 1612. After taking the side of Marie de Médicis, the queen mother, in 1620, he served Louis XIII against the Huguenots in 1622. Later involved in intrigues against Richelieu, Soissons is alleged to have plotted to assassinate him at Amiens in 1636, after a campaign against the Spanish Habsburgs in Picardy. In 1637 Soissons fled to Sedan, a principality just across France’s eastern frontier; other malcontents joined him; and in 1641 he published a manifesto against Richelieu and invaded France with a Habsburg army. He defeated the marshal de Chatillon (Gaspard III de Coligny) at La Marfée on July 6, 1641, but was killed by a mysterious shot at the moment of his victory.

He had one child, a natural son, Louis-Henry, known as the chevalier de Soissons (1646–1703). The count’s surviving sister, Marie, had married Thomas of Savoy, prince of Carignano, in 1625, and their youngest son, Eugène-Maurice de Savoie-Carignan (1633–73), assumed the title comte de Soissons.