The first-born son of the Grand Hetman Jan Sobieski and Marie Casimire de la Grange d’Arquien was born in Paris on 2 November 1667. The healthy and plump baby was christened Jakub (after his grandfather, Castellan of Cracow) and Ludwik (in honour of Louis XIV, who in fact was the baby’s godfather). Little Jakub stirred in Jan Sobieski strong paternal emotions, but equally Marie Casimire doted on her first-born, mindful of her past traumatic experience with maternity. Despite the promising beginnings and multiple successive honours, the Sobieskis’ eldest son was to suffer a terrible fate, as it later turned out. Everything that Jakub Ludwik attained in his life (the duchy of Oława [Ohlau] and his relation with Emperor Leopold I Habsburg by marriage to his relative) never compensated him for his “hetman’s” and “marshal’s” descent, which was constantly pointed out by his political opponents. The opposition was eager to spread libellous rumours about his suspicious friendships with boys, how he was pampered by royal ladies-in-waiting, and his inclination to everything French. The prince’s appearance and traits of character were also torn to pieces. It seems that the critical judgements, though suspiciously unanimous, were nevertheless somewhat exaggerated. Unquestionably Jakub Ludwik was not easy to get along with (he was domineering, mistrustful, suspicious, jealous, hard-faced and bitter), his character formed in the atmosphere of let-downs and disenchantments. His contemporaries saw in him initially a humiliated protagonist of the failed marriage to Ludwika Karolina née Radziwiłł, then an undeserving son, displaying scandalous conduct after his king-father’s death, involved in unseemly disputes with is mother, later a defeated elect and finally an outcast shamefully driven out of Oława. Other disgraceful episodes included his abduction and imprisonment in the Königstein stronghold on the order of Augustus II, his attempted poisoning and the death of his hopelessly ill wife. Jakub Ludwik spent the last bitter years of his life alone in his ancestors’ castle in Żółkiew, doing alchemy and fortune-telling. Paralyzed, he died in the said castle on 19 December 1737, as the last member of the Sobieski lineage.
Portraits of Jakub Ludwik Sobieski confirm the prince’s resemblance to his famously beautiful mother and decidedly deny the legends about his ugly facial features and his allegedly repugnant figure. The legends are proven wrong among other by the oil painting of an unidentified authorship from Silesia dating back to the end of the seventeenth century, part of the Wilanów collection. It was reproduced as a woodcut by Julian Schübeler as a full-plate illustration of Józef Łoski’s album entitled Jan Sobieski, jego rodzina, towarzysze broni i współczesne zabytki [Jan Sobieski, his family, comrades-in-arms, and contemporary monuments] published in Warsaw in 1883.
Julian Schübeler, based on a painting by an anonymous Silesian painter from the end of the seventeenth century: Portrait of Jakub Ludwik Sobieski, Duke of Oława, woodcut, publ. 1883.
