Louis, Prince of Condé (1621–1686)

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Louis
Prince of Condé
"le Grand Condé"

Louis by Joost van Egmont
Spouse Claire-Clémence de Maillé-Brézé
Issue
Henri Jules, Prince of Condé
Louis, Duke of Bourbon
Mademoiselle de Bourbon
Full name
Louis de Bourbon
Father Henri de Bourbon
Mother Charlotte Marguerite de Montmorency
Born 8 September 1621(1621-09-08)
Paris, France
Died 11 December 1686 (aged 65)
Palace of Fontainebleau, France
Burial Église at Valléry, France

Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Condé (8 September 1621 – 11 December 1686) was a French general and the most famous representative of the Condé branch of the House of Bourbon. Prior to his father's death in 1646, he was styled the duc d'Enghien. For his military prowess he was renowned as le Grand Condé.

Biography

Louis was born in Paris, the son of Henri de Bourbon, prince de Condé and Charlotte Marguerite de Montmorency. His father was a first cousin-once-removed of Henri IV, the King of France, and his mother was an heiress of one of France's leading ducal families.

Conde's father saw to it that his son received a thorough education – Louis studied history, law, and mathematics during six years at the Jesuits' school at Bourges. After that he entered the Royal Academy at Paris. At seventeen, in the absence of his father, he governed Burgundy.

His father betrothed him to Claire-Clémence de Maillé-Brézé, niece of the powerful Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister of the king, before he joined the army in 1640. Despite being barely twenty years of age and in love with Mlle du Vigean (Marthe Poussard, called mademoiselle du Vigean, daughter of the king's gentleman of the bedchamber François Poussard, marquis de Fors and baron du Vigean, by his wife Anne de Neubourg, daughter of Roland, sieur de Sercelles), he was compelled by his father to marry his fiancée, a child of thirteen.[1] Although she bore her husband three children, Enghien later claimed she committed adultery with different men in order to justify locking her away at Châteauroux, but the charge was widely disbelieved: Saint-Simon, while admitting that she was homely and dull, praised her virtue, piety and gentleness in the face of relentless abuse.[2]

Enghien took part with distinction in the siege of Arras. He also won Richelieu's favor when he was present with the Cardinal during the plot of Cinq Mars, and afterwards fought in the siege of Perpignan (1642).

Thirty Years' War

In 1643 Enghien was appointed to command against the Spanish in northern France. He was opposed by experienced generals, and the veterans of the Spanish army were held to be the toughest soldiers in Europe. The great Battle of Rocroi (19 May) put an end to the supremacy of the Spanish army and inaugurated the long period of French military predominance. Enghien himself conceived and directed the decisive attack, and at the age of twenty-two won his place amongst the great generals of modern times. The king he represented on the battlefield, Louis XIV of France, was only five years old at the time.

After a campaign of uninterrupted success, Enghien returned to Paris in triumph, and tried to forget his enforced and hateful marriage with a series of affairs (after Richelieu's death in 1642 he would unsuccessfully seek annulment of his marriage in hopes of marrying Mlle du Vigean, until she joined the order of the Carmelites in 1647).[2] In 1644 he was sent with reinforcements into Germany to the assistance of Turenne, who was hard pressed, and took command of the whole army.

The Battle of Freiburg (August) was desperately contested, but in the end the French army won a great victory over the Bavarians and Imperialists, commanded by Franz Baron von Mercy. As after Rocroi, numerous fortresses opened their gates to the duke.

Enghien spent the next winter, as every winter during the war, amid the gaieties of Paris. The summer campaign of 1645 opened with the defeat of Turenne by Mercy at Mergentheim, but this was retrieved in the brilliant victory of Nördlingen, in which Mercy was killed, and Enghien himself received several serious wounds. The capture of Philippsburg was the most important of his other achievements during this campaign. In 1646 Enghien served under Gaston, Duke of Orléans in Flanders, and when, after the capture of Mardyck, Orléans returned to Paris, Enghien, left in command, captured Dunkirk (11 October).

The Fronde

It was in this year that Enghien's father died, leaving him the fourth of his line and second of his name to bear the title Prince of Condé. He also now became premier prince du sang, addressed by everyone, from the king down, simply as Monsieur le prince. The enormous power that fell into his hands was naturally looked upon with serious alarm by the Regent and her minister. Condé's birth and military renown placed him at the head of the French nobility, but, added to that, the family of which he was now chief was both enormously rich and master of a large part of France. Condé himself held Burgundy, Berry and the marches of Lorraine, as well as other less important territory. His brother, the Prince de Conti held Champagne, and his brother-in-law, Longueville, Normandy.

The government, therefore, was determined to allow no increase of his already overgrown authority, and Mazarin made an attempt, which for the moment proved successful, both to find him employment and to tarnish his fame as a general. He was sent to lead the revolted Catalans. Ill supported, he was unable to achieve anything, and, being forced to raise the siege of Lleida, he returned home in bitter indignation. In 1648, however, he received the command in the important field of the Low Countries, and at Lens (19 August) a battle took place, which, beginning with a panic in his own regiment, was retrieved by Condé's coolness and bravery, and ended in a victory that fully restored his prestige.

In September of the same year Condé was recalled to court, for the Regent Anne of Austria required his support. Influenced by the fact of his royal birth and by his scorn for the bourgeoisie, Condé lent himself to the court party, and finally, after much hesitation, he consented to lead the army which was to reduce Paris.

On his side, although his forces were insufficient, the war was carried on with vigour. After several minor combats with substantial losses, and a threatening scarcity of food, the Parisians were weary of the war. The political situation inclined both parties to peace, which was made at Rueil on 20 March.

It was not long, however, before Condé became estranged from the court. His pride and ambition earned him universal distrust and dislike, and the personal resentment of Anne. She assented to the sudden arrest of Condé, Conti and Longueville on 18 January 1650. But others, including Turenne and his brother the Duke of Bouillon, made their escape.

Vigorous attempts for the release of the princes began to be made. The women of the family were now its heroes. The dowager princess demanded from the parlement of Paris fulfilment of the reformed law of arrest, which forbade imprisonment without trial. Condé's sister Anne Genevieve, duchesse de Longueville entered into negotiations with Spain; and the young Princess of Condé, having gathered an army around her, entered Bordeaux and gained the support of the parlement of that town. She, alone among the nobles who took part in the folly of the Fronde, earned respect and sympathy. Faithful to a faithless husband, she came forth from the retirement to which he had condemned her to fight for his freedom.

The delivery of the princes was brought about in the end by the coming together of the old Fronde (the party of the parlement and of Cardinal de Retz) and the new Fronde (the party of the Condés). Anne was at last, in February 1651, forced to liberate the princes from their prison at Le Havre. Soon afterwards, however, another shifting of parties left Condé and the new Fronde isolated. With the court and the old Fronde in alliance against him, Condé found no recourse but that of making common cause with the Spaniards who were at war with France.

The confused civil war which followed this step (September 1651) was memorable chiefly for the battle of the Faubourg St Antoine, in which Condé and Turenne, two of the leading generals of the age, measured their strength (2 July 1652). The army of the Prince was only saved by being admitted within the gates of Paris.

La Grande Mademoiselle, daughter of Gaston d'Orléans, persuaded the Parisians to act thus, and turned the cannon of the Bastille on Turenne's army. Thus Condé, who as usual had fought with the most desperate bravery, was saved, and Paris underwent a new siege. This ended in the flight of Condé to the Spanish army (September 1652), and thenceforward, up to the peace, he was in open arms against France, and held high command in the army of Spain. Nonetheless, even as an exile, he asserted the precedence of the royal house of France over the princes of Spain and Austria, with whom he was allied for the moment.

Condé's fully developed genius as a commander found little scope in the cumbrous and antiquated system of war practised by the Spanish, and though he gained a few successes, and manoeuvred with the highest possible skill against Turenne, his disastrous defeat at the Dunes near Dunkirk (14 June 1658) led Spain to open negotiations for peace. The Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, which ended the Franco-Spanish War, pardoned Condé and allowed him to return to France.

In 1664 he fought against the Ottomans in Hungary and took a stand in the Battle of Saint Gotthard.

Rehabilitation

Condé now realized that the period of agitation and party warfare was at an end, and he accepted, and loyally maintained henceforward, the position of a chief subordinate to Louis XIV. Even so, some years passed before he was recalled to active employment, and these years he spent on his estate, the Château de Chantilly. Here he gathered round him a brilliant company, which included many men of genius such as Molière, Racine, Boileau, La Fontaine, Nicole, Bourdaloue and Bossuet.