Victor Amadeus I, Prince of Carignano


Victor Amadeus of Savoy, 3rd Prince of Carignano was an Italian nobleman who was Prince of Carignano from 1709 to 1741. He was the son of Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, Prince of Carignano and his wife, the Maria Angela Caterina d'Este.

Biography

Born in Turin, he was the third child of four and the eldest son.
Made a Knight of the Annunciation in 1696, he married, at Moncalieri on 7 November 1714, Marie Victoire Françoise of Savoy, legitimised daughter of Victor Amadeus II of Sardinia, King of Sardinia and of Jeanne Baptiste d'Albert de Luynes, Countess of Verrue.
His father-in-law showed affection for him but ended up depriving him, in 1717, of his 400,000 livres of annual income because of excessive spending. It was then that he ran away to France, at the end of 1718, in order to take possession of his inheritance.
Since he had lost the Château de Condé to Jean-François Leriget de La Faye when it was confiscated from his family by Louis XIV) on 6 March 1719, he established himself in the hôtel de Soissons, which he transformed, with his wife who had followed him there, into a "sumptuous gaming house" which for a time sheltered the economist John Law. He died, ruined, and his hôtel was razed to construct in its place a grain-trading hall, now the site of the Bourse de commerce de Paris.
He had a passion for the Paris Opéra, and was named intendant of the Menus-Plaisirs by Louis XV. He brought about the disgrace of the tax farmer Alexandre Le Riche de La Poupelinière after he caught him in the company of his mistress, the actress Marie Antier.

Family

Victor Amadeus' children were: