Henri II d'Orléans, Duke of Longueville

Who was Henri II d'Orléans, Duke of Longueville?

Henri II d'Orléans, duc de Longueville or Henri de Valois-Longueville, a legitimated prince of France and peer of France, was a major figure in the civil war of France, the Fronde, and served as governor of Picardy, then of Normandy.

He was the only son of Henri I d'Orléans, duc de Longueville and Catherine Gonzaga.

Longueville headed the French delegation in the talks that led to the Treaty of Westphalia which ended the Thirty Years War. In his role as sovereign prince of Neuchâtel, and acting as antagonist of the Habsburg power rather than as liberal benefactor, he succeeded in obtaining formal exemption from the Holy Roman Empire for all cantons and associates of the Swiss Confederacy.

In 1642 he married Anne Geneviève de Bourbon; his brother-in-law was Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, leader of the aristocratic party in the Fronde. After the Peace of Rueil had ended the first phase of the civil war, Mazarin's sudden arrest of the Grand Condé, his brother the prince de Conti and their brother-in-law the duc de Longueville, on January 14, 1650 precipitated the next phase of the Fronde, the Fronde des nobles.