Léopold Clément, Hereditary Prince of Lorraine (Léopold Clément Charles; 25 April 1707 – 4 June 1723) was heir apparent to the throne of the sovereign Duchy of Lorraine.
Léopold was the third son born to his parents. His eldest brother, also Léopold (1699–1700), died aged eight months. Three other older siblings died in an outbreak of smallpox at Lunéville: Élisabeth Charlotte (1700–1711), Marie Gabrièle 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 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.[3]
Soon afterward the prince caught smallpox at Lunéville and quickly died at the Château there. He was buried in the Ducal Crypt at the Church of Saint-François-des-Cordeliers, Nancy. His younger brother Francis Stephen became the Hereditary Prince and later married Maria Theresa, Habsburg heiress and future Queen regnant of Hungary and Bohemia.
Ancestry
Ancestors of Léopold Clément, Hereditary Prince of Lorraine
^Ingrao, Charles W. (1979). In quest and crisis: emperor Joseph I and the Habsburg monarchy. West Lafayette, Ind: Purdue Univ. Press. ISBN978-0-911198-53-9.
^Bashor, Will (2020). Marie Antoinette's World: intrigue, infidelity, and adultery in Versailles. Lanham (Md.): Rowman & Littlefield. p. 45. ISBN978-1-5381-3824-3.