Charles Philippe d'Albert de Luynes

Charles-Philippe d’Albert Duc de Luynes (30 July 1695 – 2 November 1758) held the title Duke of Luynes from 1712 to 1758. He wrote an important memoir of life at the court of Louis XV.

Charles-Philippe was a grandson of Charles Honoré d'Albert, duc de Luynes the Duke of Chevreuse.

He was a great-great-grandson of the first Duke of Luynes, Charles d'Albert, and his wife Marie de Rohan, one of the leading members of the Fronde. His grandmother Jeanne-Marie Colbert was a daughter of the famous Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV's minister of finance.

His great aunt was Jeanne Baptiste d'Albert de Luynes, the mistress of Victor Amadeus II of Sardinia. A second cousin was Maria Vittoria Francesca of Savoy who lived in France and was the wife of Victor Amadeus I, Prince of Carignan.

Peer of France and cavalry officer, Charles-Philippe d’Albert de Luynes married Marie Brulart in 1732; she was the widow of the marquis de Charost, and became lady-in-waiting to the Queen Maria Leszczyńska. He was part of the intimate group that she called her "gentlefolk" (honnêtes gens). He wrote a journal of historic events and facts about the court, a work which has no pretension of literary merit, but is valuable as a document for the study of the aristocratic society of his time.

His first marriage, on 24 February 1710, was to Louise-Léontine de Bourbon (1696–1721), Princess of Neuchatel (a granddaughter of Louis de Bourbon, Count of Soissons). Their son Marie Charles Louis d'Albert de Luynes and grandson Louis Joseph Charles Amable d'Albert de Luynes had active military and political careers.

He died at the Château de Dampierre and was buried at the Église Saint-Sulpice, Paris.

Ancestry

Works

• Mémoires du duc de Luynes sur la Cour de Louis XV (1735–1758), Louis Dussieux and Eudoxe Soulié, eds., Paris, Firmin-Didot frères, 1860–1865.

Sources

• Gustave Vapereau, Dictionnaire universel des littératures, Paris, Hachette, 1876, p. 1286.