Engraving by Pierre Drevet, 1703, of Louis-Auguste de Bourbon, duc du Maine and prince
des Dombes (1670–1736), based on the painting by François de Troy. Author's collection.

Maine, the eldest surviving illegitimate son of Louis XIV and the marquise de Montespan,
was the king's favourite bastard. Louis installed him as Colonel-General of the Swiss and
Grison forces in 1674, prince des Dombes in 1681, governor of Languedoc in 1682, General
of the Galleys (1688–94), colonel of the régiment des Carabiniers in 1693, and Grand Master
of the Artillery in 1694. With the exception of the Galleys, he held these titles almost without
interruption until his death.

The portrait sums up the way in which Maine believed the world should see him: as a
soldier and as a sovereign prince of the Dombes, an enclave of disputed status situated north-
east of Lyon. The closed crown and the sceptre make that explicit. The title of the engraving
(Ludovicus Augustus Dei gratia Dombarum Princeps) also reinforced his claim to sovereignty.
But within France there was deep reluctance to see him as anything other than a duke, in spite
of the king's steps to create a special legal position in society for Maine and his brother, the
comte de Toulouse, who in 1714 were even written into the line of succession to the throne.
In the aftermath of his father's death in 1715, Maine's pretensions were a danger to the
stability of the regency for the child-king Louis XV. In particular, Maine's claims to superior
status and a share in power within the kingdom, when coupled with the extensive role he
played in the army, threatened to undermine the authority of the regent, Philippe II, duc
d'Orléans. Because of the closed crown and sceptre, Orléans had the plate of the engraving
destroyed. Few examples of it survive, though there could be no better representation of
Louis XIV's dynastic approach to the state, nor of the link between politics, social status and
the administration of the army.