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Louis René Édouard, cardinal de Rohan (1734–1803), prince de Rohan-Guemenée, was a French archbishop of Strasbourg (then Strassburg), politician, cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, and cadet of the Rohan family (which traced its origin to the kings of Brittany). He was born in Paris on September 25, 1734, and died on February 17, 1803.
Members of the Rohan family had filled the office of archbishop of Strassburg since 1704, an office which made them princes of the Holy Roman Empire and the compeers rather of the German prince-bishops than of the French ecclesiastics. Louis de Rohan was destined for this high office from birth, and soon after taking orders, in 1760, he was nominated coadjutor to his uncle, Constantine de Rohan-Rochefort, who then held the archbishopric, and he was also consecrated bishop of Canopus. But he preferred the elegant life and the gaiety of Paris to his clerical duties, and had also an ambition to make a figure in politics.
Édouard was a member of the political party opposed to the Austrian alliance. This party was headed by the duc d'Aiguillon, who, in 1771, sent Prince Louis on a special embassy to Vienna to find out what was being done there with regard to the partition of Poland. Rohan arrived at Vienna in January 1772, and made a great noise with his lavish charitable festivals. But the empress Maria Theresa was hostile to him; not only did he attempt to thwart her policy, but he also spread scandals about her daughter, Marie Antoinette.
On the death of Louis XV in 1774, Rohan was recalled from Vienna, and coldly received in Paris; but the influence of his family was too great for him to be neglected, and in 1777 he was made grand almoner, and in 1778, abbot of St. Vaast. In 1778 he was made a cardinal on the nomination of Stanislaus Poniatowski (the king of Poland). In 1779, Édouard succeeded his uncle, Constantine de Rohan-Rochefort, as archbishop of Strasbourg, though he spent much of his career working in Paris, as he preferred an elegant lifestyle to his clerical duties; also in 1779, Édouard became abbot of Noirmoutiers and Chaise-Dieu. Even with his favourable status, the cardinal was restless and unhappy, seeking to appease the animosity which Marie Antoinette felt against him.
In pursuit of this object he fell into the hands of a gang of intriguers, the comtesse de Lamotte, the notorious Cagliostro and others, whose actions form part of the "affair of the diamond necklace". Rohan was certainly led to believe that his attentions to the queen were welcomed, and that his arrangement by which she received the famous necklace was approved. He was the dupe of others, however, and at the trial in 1786 before the parlement his acquittal was received with universal enthusiasm, and regarded as a victory over the court and the unpopular queen. He was deprived, however, of his office as grand almoner and exiled to his abbey of Chaise-Dieu.
He was soon allowed to return to Strassburg, and his popularity was shown by his election in 1789 to the Estates-General by the clergy of the bailliages of Haguenau and Weissenburg. He at first declined to sit, but the Estates-General, when it became the National Assembly, insisted on validating his election. However, as a prince of the church in January 1791, he refused to take the oath to the constitution, and went to Ettenheim, in the German part of his diocese. In exile his character improved, and he spent what wealth remained to him in providing for the poor clergy of his diocese who had been obliged to leave France; and in 1801 he resigned his nominal rank as archbishop of Strassburg.
References
- The Britannica gives as references the Mémoires of his secretary, the abbé Georgel, of the baroness d'Oberkirch, of Beugnot, and of Madame Campan.