LOUIS DE BOURBON, PRINCE OF, was born at Paris on the 8th of September 1621. He was styled Duke d'Enghien, till in 1646 he succeeded to the title of Prince of Condé by his father's death. As he was of a tender and delicate constitution, the prince sent him to the castle of Montreond, in Berri, where he spent his infancy under the care of some experienced and trustworthy persons. But when sufficiently advanced in age, the prince took upon himself the task of governor, and appointed as his assistant a gentleman of the name of M. de la Boussière. Two Jesuits distinguished for their abilities and acquirements were also given him as preceptors.

With these attendants the Duke d'Enghien went to settle at Bourges, where he prosecuted his education at the college of Jesuits, and made such progress, that before the age of thirteen he defended in public some questions in philosophy with great eclat. On his return from Montreond he received as his tutor M. de Merille, a man deeply versed in ancient and modern jurisprudence, theology, and mathematics. Under his direction the duke went through a new course of study, and acquired a critical taste in the arts and sciences, which he ever afterwards cultivated. The bent of his mind, however, inclined him to the military art. Accordingly 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; and notwithstanding the misfortunes that attended this campaign through the marshal's imprudence, it was in it that the young duke laid the foundation of his subsequent renown.

On his return to Paris he waited upon Cardinal Richelieu at Ruel; and so pleased was that minister 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 Maillé Brézé, the cardinal's niece. The duke consented to this match only in obedience to his father; but so deeply was he wounded by the constraint, that he fell dangerously ill immediately after, 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, through Cardinal Mazarin, the command of the army destined to cover Champagne and Picardy; and the appointment was confirmed after the king's death by the queen regent, Anne of Austria, to whose interest he was strongly attached. In this situation he defeated the Spaniards, who threatened France with an invasion, and destroyed their hitherto invincible infantry, at Rocroi, May 19, 1643,—an exploit which made him from that time be considered as the guardian genius of his country. Having gained a reluctant consent from the regency to his project of besieging Thionville, the duke attacked it with such skill, activity, and courage, that in two months the fortress surrendered. At length, having covered Alsace and Lorraine from the Imperialists, he returned to Paris, where he obtained the government of Champagne and of Stenai.

The three following years were little more than a series of military operations. The battle of Fribourg, in which the Duke d'Enghien triumphed over Field Marshal Count de Mercy, the greatest general in all Germany; the capture of Philippsbourg, and other places, which rendered him master of the Palatinate, and of the whole course of the Rhine; the victory of Nordlingen, by which he revenged the Viscount de Turenne's defeat at Mariendal; the siege and conquest of Dunkirk; the success of his arms in Catalonia, where, though 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 popularity of the Duke d'Enghien, on account of these splendid victories, began now to give umbrage to Mazarin, who manifested his dislike to him on the death of the Duke de Brezé, admiral of France. The Prince of Condé earnestly demanded for his son the Duke de Brezé's places; but Mazarin, afraid of increasing the wealth and power of a prince already too formidable, evaded his request, by persuading the queen to take the admiralty to herself. On the death of his father, the minister attempted to ruin the popularity of the young Prince of Condé by appointing him to the command of the army in Catalonia; when, on his arrival at Barcelona, he found neither troops money, artillery, provisions, nor ammunition. Enraged at this deception, Condé vented his resentment in bitter complaints and severe reproaches; but his genius enabled him to triumph over every obstacle. In the campaign of 1648, Condé thwarted the projects of the Archduke Leopold by carrying the war into the Low Countries, and by the capture of Ypres 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 distempers, 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 and routed the Spaniards, near Lens. He afterwards besieged Furnes, and compelled the garrison, five hundred strong, to surrender. The prince, however, was wounded above the right hip by a musket-shot; and the contusion proved so great that he was forced to submit to several incisions.

At this time a general revolt broke out at Paris, in consequence of the imprisonment of Broussel and Blanchemil, two of the leaders of the country faction, who had rendered themselves peculiarly obnoxious to the court. To quell the disturbance it was found necessary to release them; but from that time the regal authority was annihilated, and Mazarin durst no longer venture out of the Palais Royal. In this embarrassment the queen recalled the Prince of Condé, who in the meantime had retired to Rueil with the young king and Mazarin; and proposed to him the reducing of Paris by force of arms. Calming her resentment, he directed all his efforts to pacify the kingdom; and at length brought about an accommodation between the contending parties. The treachery of Mazarin, and the artifices of the popular leaders, occasioned fresh cabals and fresh troubles; but Condé at last preferred the ingratitude of the court to the arrogance of the malcontents.

On the night of the 5th January 1646, the royal family, the Duke of Orleans, Condé, and Mazarin, left Paris privately, and went to St Germain, whither the parliament sent deputies to confer with the queen in regard to her departure. 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; and the court resolved to suppress the party of malcontents (who had been armed principally by the instrumentality of De Retz), by blockading the capital. Accordingly, with seven or eight thousand men—the broken relics of the last campaign—the Prince of Condé, though destitute both of money and magazines, succeeded in seducing the army under Turenne from their allegiance; stopped the progress of the Duke de Longueville; got the start of the Spaniards, who were advancing to give him battle; and ultimately reduced the refractory capital. Peace was at length signed at St Germain; but neither party carried its point, and scarcely any one but Condé acquired glory in the war. After the conclusion of the treaty, the prince repaired to the capital, and received from parliament the thanks of the nation for the peace to which he had so powerfully contributed.

The important service which Condé had just rendered the court entitled him to the acknowledgments of the queen, and especially of Mazarin; but the cardinal remembered him only as a too fortunate and too powerful protector, and privately vowed to render the prince obsequious, or procure his submission. However, not to excite public indignation, he still kept up appearances with the prince, and deceived him by the most flattering proposals, which he always found means to evade. On the other hand, the 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 infamous character, had obtained the confidence of the party by false appearances of hatred to the cardinal, with whom he secretly kept up a correspondence. 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 in which everything might concur to render the country party suspected of the 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 sent the coach away empty, in order to prove the reality of the attempt. Mazarin, counterfeiting a zeal for the prince's safety, declaimed furiously against the malcontents; 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. The affair was brought before the parliament; the accused defended themselves; and the coadjutor, who had discovered the cardinal's secret, unmasked the plot 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, had not Mazarin, some days afterwards, given him the choice of any recompense, in order to gain 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 been informed of the plot, and in order to discover if it were true, 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 at last found means, through the Duchess of Chevreuse, to inflame the jealousy of the Duke of Orleans, and to engage him to consent to the imprisonment of Condé. And having thus united all parties, the ungrateful and perfidious minister made preparations for privately arresting the prince; and signed an order to that effect, Jan. 18th, 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 three princes were immediately arrested and conveyed to the castle of Vincennes.

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 the humblest fare, and slept twelve hours without waking on a truss of straw. He still retained his cheerfulness; dedicating the greater part of his time to reading and conversation, and the remainder to playing at battle-door and shuttlecock, to bodily exercises, and the cultivation of flowers.

Meanwhile the prince's friends, though strictly watched, found means to keep up a regular correspondence with him, and made various attempts to release him. Troops were raised by the Dukes of Bouillon and Rochefoucauld, and the Viscount de Turenne; and the Princess of Condé engaged the province of Guienne to declare in his favour. But all those 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 wished to follow him; 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, and prostrating himself at his feet, entreated Condé's friendship. 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 him without making any promise, and returned to Paris, where he was received with demonstrations of a most sincere and general joy.

In the civil war which ensued, 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 at their head 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 Fontainebleau.

Condé, a town of France, situated at the confluence of the Haine with the Scheldt, department of Nord. It is a fortress of the first class, its defences having been constructed by Vauban; and possesses a handsome church, town-hall, military hospital, &c. The navigation of the river enables it to carry on an extensive trade in coals, cattle, and corn. Manufactures—starch, leather, and cordage. In the early history of France, Condé was subjected to frequent sieges. It surrendered to the Austrians in 1794, but was recaptured at the close of the same year. Pop. 3500.

Condé-sur-Noireau, an ancient town at the confluence of the Durance with the Noireau, department of Calvados. Manufactures—woolens, cotton goods, leather, and cutlery. It also trades in cattle, yarn, and honey. Pop. 5970. There are several other towns and villages of this name in France.