LOUIS DE BOURBON, PRINCE OF, was born at Paris on the 8th of September 1621. He was styled Duke d'Enghien, till he succeeded to the title of Prince of Condé by his father's death in the year 1646. As he was of a tender and delicate constitution, the prince sent him to the castle of Montrond, in Berri, that he might breathe a purer and more salutary air. Here he was educated in his infancy by some experienced and prudent citizens' wives. But when he was of a proper age, the prince took upon himself the task of governor, and appointed as his assistant M. de la Boussière, a private gentleman, and a man of honour, fidelity, and good nature, who made it a rule to observe inviolably the orders that were given him. Two Jesuits distinguished for their genius and knowledge were also given him as preceptors.

With these attendants the Duke d'Enghien went to settle at Bourges, where he frequented the college of Jesuits and, besides the ordinary studies, was taught ancient and modern history, mathematics, geography, declamation, and also riding and dancing, in which last he soon excelled. He made so great progress in his studies, that before the age of thirteen he defended in public some questions in philosophy with infinite applause. On his return from Montrond, he received as his tutor M. de Merillé, a man deeply versed in the knowledge of ancient and modern laws, of the holy scriptures, and of the mathematics. Under the direction of this eminent person the duke went through a new course with prodigious success, acquiring a critical taste in the arts and sciences, which he retained during his whole life. His chief inclination, however, lay towards the military art; and at the age of eighteen he obtained permission to make his first campaign as a volunteer in the army commanded by M. de la Meilleraye. This campaign proved unfortunate; and the Duke d'Enghien was only a witness of the marshal's imprudence and disgrace. Nevertheless, in this campaign he laid the foundation of that renown which made him afterwards be considered as the greatest general of his age.

On his return to Paris, the duke waited upon Cardinal Richelieu at Rueil. The minister was so pleased with his conversation, that he soon afterwards made proposals of an alliance with the Prince of Condé, by marrying the Duke d'Enghien to Claire Clémence de Maille Brézé, the cardinal's niece. The duke consented to this match in obedience to his father; but the force he put upon himself by yielding to it was so great, that he fell dangerously ill, and it was long before he recovered.

The duke served two more campaigns as a volunteer; one under the Marshal de la Meilleraye, and the other in the army of Louis XIII., which conquered Roussillon. In 1643, at the age of twenty-two, he obtained from the king, at the persuasion of Cardinal Mazarin, the command of the army destined to cover Champagne and Picardy; which command was confirmed to him after the king's death by the queen regent, Anne of Austria, to whose interest he was strongly devoted. In this situation, although he had never been present at any battle, he soon gave such a specimen of his abilities as crowned him with glory. The Spaniards, who threatened France with an invasion, were defeated by him at Rocroi on 19th May 1643, and their hitherto invincible infantry destroyed; a signal victory, which made him from that time be considered as the guardian genius of his country. He next formed the project of besieging Thionville, and proposed it to the council of regency. The latter consented with fear and distrust; but the duke carried it into execution with such skill, activity, and courage, that he became the object of general admiration. In two months time Thionville surrendered. At length, having covered Alsace and Lorraine from the Imperialists, he returned to Paris, where he obtained the government of Champagne, and that of the city of Stenai.

The three following years were little more than a series of military operations. The battles of Fribourg, in which the Duke d'Enghien triumphed over Field Marshal Count de Mercy, the greatest general in all Germany; the taking of Philippsbourg, and a great number of other places, which rendered him master of the Palatinate, and of the whole course of the Rhine; the victory of Nordlingen, by which lie revenged the Viscount de Turenne's defeat at Marialdell; the siege and conquest of Dunkirk; the success of his arms in Catalonia, where, though he was forced to raise the siege of Lerida, he kept the Spaniards in awe, and cut to pieces their rear-guard; these are the principal events which distinguish the campaigns of 1644, 1645, and 1646.

The victories of the Duke d'Enghien, his great reputation, and the esteem with which the people regarded him, began now to give umbrage to Mazarin. The cardinal's dislike to him appeared on the death of the Duke de Brézé, admiral of France. The Prince of Condé earnestly demanded for his son the Duke de Brézé's places; but Mazarin, afraid of increasing the wealth and power of a prince whom his victories and the confidence of the people and the army had already rendered too formidable to him, evaded his request, by persuading the queen to take the admiralty to herself. On the death of his father, the minister's dislike to the young Prince of Condé became still more apparent. By the minister's persuasion he had accepted of the command of the army in Catalonia; but, on his arrival at Barcelona, he found neither troops, money, artillery, provisions, nor ammunition. Enraged at this deception, he vented his resentment in bitter complaints and severe animadversions; but by the resources which he found in his own genius, the prince added new lustre to his glory.

The campaign of 1648 was as glorious to Condé as those which preceded it had been. To disconcert the projects of the Archduke Leopold, the prince resolved to attack him even in the heart of the Low Countries; and, in spite of the difficulties which he had to surmount, he besieged the important city of Ypres, and took it in sight of the enemy's forces.

Notwithstanding this success, Condé saw himself on the point of experiencing the greatest reverse of fortune. His army was a prey to scarcity, to nakedness, contagious distemper, and desertion. For eight months it had received no supply from the minister except half a muster. Everything was furnished by the prince himself, who expended what money he had, and borrowed more, in order to supply his troops. When it was represented to him that he was in danger of ruining himself by such an enormous expense, he replied, that since he every day ventured his life for the service of his country, he could very well sacrifice his fortune to it. Let but the government exist, added he, and I shall want for nothing.

The French army having been reinforced by four thousand of the troops of Weimar, Condé attacked the Spaniards, who were advantageously encamped near Lens, and gained a complete victory over them. He afterwards besieged Furnes, the garrison of which, consisting of five hundred men, surrendered themselves prisoners of war. But the prince was wounded in the trenches there by a musket-shot, which struck him above the right hip; and the contusion proved so great that he was forced to submit to several incisions.

The French court, animated with the victory at Lens, thought this a proper time to take vengeance on the factions which for some time had violently agitated the kingdom; and accordingly imprisoned Broussel and Blancmenil, two of the principal leaders of the country party. This vigorous proceeding, however, occasioned a general revolt. Two hundred thousand men took arms in Paris, barricaded the streets, invested the Palais Royal, and demanded the liberation of the prisoners. It was necessary to release them; but from that time the regal authority was annihilated, the queen exposed to a thousand insults, and Mazarin durst no longer venture out of the Palais Royal. In this embarrassment the queen recalled the Prince of Condé, as the only person from whom she could hope for support. He had retired to Ruel, whither the regent had gone with the young king and Mazarin. Anne of Austria proposed to him the reducing of Paris by force of arms; but he calmed the resentments of that princess, and instead of becoming accessory to her vengeance, directed all his views to pacify the kingdom, and at length brought about an accommodation between the parties, who all desired it with equal ardour. But new incidents soon rekindled the combustion. The treachery of Mazarin, and the artifices of the leaders of the country party, occasioned fresh cabals and fresh troubles. Condé was caressed by the leaders of both parties; but at last, enraged at the arrogance of the malcontents, who every day formed new pretensions, he took part openly with the court, though he thought it ungrateful, and protected the minister, though he did not esteem him.

The royal family, the Duke of Orleans, Condé, and Mazarin, left Paris privately in the night between the 5th and 6th of January 1646, and went to St. Germain. The parliament sent deputies to learn from the queen herself the reasons of her departure, and to beg her to name the citizens whom she suspected, that they might be tried. Mazarin had the imprudence to dismiss the envoys without any answer. Exasperated at this, the people again took up arms in order to defend themselves against the court, which had determined to block up and to starve the capital, in order to suppress the party of malcontents. Accordingly, with seven or eight thousand men, the broken relics of the last campaign, the Prince of Condé formed a design of reducing above five hundred thousand intrenched behind walls. He had neither money nor magazines, and he had to operate in the depth of a most severe winter; nevertheless he constantly defeated the troops of the malcontents; prevailed on his army which marched to their assistance under Turenne to abandon that general; stopped the progress of the Duke de Longueville, who had caused an insurrection in Normandy; got the start of the Spaniards, who were advancing to give him battle; and ultimately reduced the refractory capital.

De Retz, coadjutor of Paris, and afterwards cardinal, was the life and soul of the revolters, and directed all their motions. He had taken Catiline as his model, and he was equally intrepid, and capable of the most daring actions, of an exalted genius, but governed by ambition. He signaled his hatred to Mazarin by arming the malcontents, and he himself raised at his own expense a regiment which he called the regiment of Corinth. Peace was at length signed at St. Germain; but neither party carried its point, and scarcely any one but Condé acquired glory in this war. After the conclusion of the treaty, the prince repaired to the capital, and traversed the streets in his coach, without attendants. All persons of any consequence paid their compliments to him, and the parliament sent a solemn deputation to thank him for the peace to which he had so powerfully contributed.

The important service which Condé had just rendered the court entitled him to the acknowledgements of the queen, and especially of Mazarin; but the dark soul of the cardinal only remembered it to punish a too fortunate and too powerful protector. He privately vowed the prince's destruction; at least resolved that he should give the whole kingdom a pattern of submission to and dependence on his will. However, not to excite public indignation, he still kept up appearances with the prince, and deceived him, by making the most flattering proposals, which he always found means to avoid fulfilling. On the other hand, the enraged prince despised the minister, and treated him with disdain. After this they were again reconciled only to be again at variance. Each in his turn courted the country party, in order to make it subservient to his designs. At length Mazarin thought of an expedient, which had but too frequently answered his purpose, of creating an irreconcilable quarrel between that party and the prince. Among the malcontents, the Marquis de la Boulaye, a man of an infamous character, had obtained the confidence of the party by false appearances of hatred to the cardinal, while he secretly kept up a correspondence with his eminence. It is pretended that he made him an offer of killing Condé privately. Mazarin was charmed with the proposal; but he only required Boulaye to exhibit all the proofs of an assassination, and to act in such a manner that everything might concur to render the country party suspected of that crime. He was punctually obeyed; the coach was stopped; some pistols were fired at it, by which two of the footmen were dangerously wounded; and after this shameful exploit, La Boulaye took refuge in the hotel of the Duke of Beaufort, who was the hero of the party, in order no doubt to countenance the prince's suspicion of the malcontents. Luckily Condé was not in his coach when it was stopped; the cardinal had spread the report of his intended assassination, and, in concert with the queen and the prince, he had prevailed to have the coach sent away empty, in order to prove the reality of the attempt. Mazarin counterfeited a zeal for the prince's safety; declaimed furiously against the malcontents, who, he pretended, had made an attempt on a life so precious to the state; and inflamed Condé's resentment against the Duke of Beaufort and the coadjutor, whom he supposed to be the authors of this heinous outrage. The prince was so strongly prejudiced that he refused to hear them when they appeared before him to justify themselves. He demanded justice against them of the king, formally accused them before the parliament, and remained inflexible in spite of the pains which the leaders of the party took to demonstrate to him that he had been imposed upon. The affair was brought before the parliament; the accused defended themselves; and the coadjutor, who had discovered the cardinal's secret, unmasked him so well, that the prince agreed to a private negotiation with the malcontents, requiring nothing more than the coadjutor's leaving Paris, but with the rank of ambassador to Rome or Vienna. That prelate would have consented to this to satisfy Condé, if Mazarin, some days afterwards, had not given him the choice of any recompense, in order to engage his concurrence in the prince's destruction. Master of the queen's mind, which he guided as he pleased, and sure of having inflamed against Condé the resentment of the malcontents, he sought and obtained, by means of the Duchess of Chevreuse, the support of that powerful faction, which connected itself the more readily with him, in the hope that the prince's fall would soon enable it without difficulty to crush the cardinal himself. The coadjutor had private conferences with the queen and the minister. Condé had notice of it, and in order to discover if it were true, he endeavoured to extort by surprise an admission from Mazarin's own mouth. "Cardinal," said he one day, "it is publicly reported that you have nightly meetings with the coadjutor, disguised like a trooper," accompanying this speech with a quick and penetrating look. But the cardinal, who was a perfect master of dissimulation, answered him in such a free and apparently artless manner, that he entirely removed Condé's apprehensions; and the latter slighted the information he had received of the plot forming against him. Mazarin wanted nothing but the support of the Duke of Orleans, and at last found means, through the Duchess of Chevreuse, to inflame the jealousy of that fickle and inconstant prince, and to engage him to consent to the imprisonment of Condé. And having thus united all parties, and fearing no other obstacle, this ungrateful and perfidious minister made preparations for privately arresting the prince; the order for which was signed on the 18th January 1650. Condé having that day repaired as usual to the Palais Royal, to assist at council with the Prince of Conti and the Duke of Longueville, the queen gave orders to arrest all the three, and to convey them without any noise to the castle of Vincennes. She was instantly obeyed, and the princes were strictly guarded in that prison.

In this unexpected reverse of fortune, the fortitude and greatness of Condé's mind were remarkable. Confined with the two other princes in the tower of Vincennes, where neither supper, furniture, nor beds were provided, he contented himself with two new laid eggs, and threw himself, in his clothes, on a truss of straw, where he slept twelve hours without waking. He still retained his cheerfulness, and dedicated the greater part of his time to reading, and the rest to conversation, playing at back-door and shuttlecock, to bodily exercises, and the cultivation of flowers.

Mazarin triumphed in the disgrace of the princes, proscribed all those who were attached to Condé, and behaved in the most insolent and arbitrary manner possible. The prince's friends, however, notwithstanding their being strictly watched, found means to keep up a regular correspondence with him, and made various attempts to release him. In particular, troops were raised by the Dukes of Bouillon and Rochefoucault, and the Viscount de Turenne; and the Princess of Condé engaged the province of Guienne to declare in his favour. But all these efforts would, perhaps, have been ineffectual, if other and more powerful resources had not been employed.

In that gallant and warlike age, everything was managed by the intrigues of five or six women, who possessed the confidence of the leaders of the state, and of the various parties. The Princess of Mantua, wife to one of the sons of the Elector Palatine, king of Bohemia, who principally directed the counsels in the party of the princes, found means to reconcile the Duke of Orleans, the coadjutor, and the malcontents, with the friends of the prince, and all united their efforts against the cardinal; while the parliament, on the other side, loudly demanded the release of the prisoners. The different orders of the state also united in soliciting it, insomuch that the queen was at last prevailed on to give her consent. At this news Mazarin was so confounded that he fled in the disguise of a trooper, and arrived at the gates of Richelieu, where a body of horse waited for him. The parliament, informed by the king of his flight, thundered forth an arrêt, by which he was obliged to leave the kingdom with his family and foreign servants, in the space of fifteen days, under the penalty of being exposed to a criminal prosecution. The queen desired to follow him with the king; but the nobles and burghers invested the Palais Royal, and prevented the execution of this project, which would have kindled a civil war. Mazarin, therefore, perceiving that it was impossible for the queen to join him, determined to go himself to restore the princes to their liberty, and to get the start of the deputies who were coming to acquaint them with their release. On his arrival at Havre, he informed the princes that they were free, entreated Condé's friendship, and was so obsequious as to prostrate himself at the feet of the man whom he had so basely oppressed. Condé gave him a polite reception, and spoke to him in a free and cheerful tone; but, tired with the mean submissions which the cardinal lavished upon him, left his eminence without making any promise, and set out on his return to Paris, which he entered as it were in triumph, amidst the acclamations of all orders of men, and the demonstrations of a most sincere and general joy.

After this a civil war ensued, in which the Prince of Condé sided with the malcontents. Being pressed by the king's army, he retired into the faubourg of St Antoine, where he behaved with the utmost bravery; upon which the citizens opened their gates and received him, and a peace soon afterwards ensued. His hatred of the cardinal, however, induced him to quit Paris, and take refuge among the Spaniards, who made him generalissimo of their forces; and he captured Rocroi. But the peace of the Pyrenees restored him to his country; and he again signalized himself at the head of the king's armies. Being afflicted with gout, he refused the command of the army in 1676, and retired to Chantilly, where he was as much esteemed for the virtues of peace as he had before been for his military talents. He died in 1686, at Fontainbleau.

CONDÉ SUR NOIREAU, a city of the department of Calvados, in France, in a valley on the river Noireau, which contains 733 houses, and 3925 inhabitants, chiefly employed in manufacturing fine woollen goods.