House House of Lorraine | Name Leopold Hereditary | |
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Born 25 April 1707
Chateau de Luneville, Lorraine ( 1707-04-25 ) Died 4 June 1723(1723-06-04) (aged 16)
Chateau de Luneville, Lorraine Burial Eglise Saint-Francois-des-Cordeliers, Nancy, Lorraine Father Leopold, Duke of Lorraine Mother Elisabeth Charlotte d'Orleans | ||
Leopold Clement, Hereditary Prince of Lorraine (Leopold Clement Charles; 25 April 1707 – 4 June 1723) was heir apparent to the throne of the sovereign Duchy of Lorraine.
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His father was the reigning Duke of Lorraine and his mother a member of the House of Bourbon, then ruling the Kingdom of France. He became the Hereditary Prince at the death of his older brother Louis in 1711, but died of smallpox in 1723 at the age of sixteen, unmarried and without descendants.
Biography
He was born at the Chateau de Luneville to Leopold, Duke of Lorraine and his wife Elisabeth Charlotte d'Orleans.
Leopold was the third son born to his parents. His eldest brother, also Leopold (1669–1700), died aged eight months. Three other older siblings died in an outbreak of smallpox at Luneville: Elisabeth Charlotte (1700–1711), Marie Gabriele Charlotte (1702–1711) and Louis (1704–1711). The smallpox epidemic had killed other royalty such as the Grand Dauphin and the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph I at the same time.
In 1722 Leopold also became the heir to the Duchy of Teschen which was given to his father in compensation for his father's maternal grandmother's rights to the Duchy of Montferrat in northern Italy, which Emperor Charles VI had taken and given to his allies, the Dukes of Savoy.
In 1723 he was sent to Vienna to carry out his education under the supervision of Charles VI, his father's first cousin. Another reason for his journey was to forge a Habsburg-Lorraine alliance through a marriage with the Archduchess Maria Theresa.
Soon afterward the prince caught smallpox at Luneville and quickly died at the Chateau there. He was buried in the Ducal Crypt at the Church of Saint-Francois-des-Cordeliers, Nancy. His younger brother Francis Stephen became the Hereditary Prince and later married Maria Theresa, Habsburg heiress and future Queen regnant of Hungry and Bohemia.