Louis, Grand Cond

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Louis

Prince of Cond "le Grand Cond"

Louis by Justus van Egmont

Spouse

Claire-Clmence de Maill-Brz

Detail

Issue

Henri Jules, Prince of Cond Louis, Duke of Bourbon Mademoiselle de Bourbon

Full name

Louis de Bourbon

Father

Henri, Prince of Cond

Mother

Charlotte Marguerite de Montmorency

Born

8 September 1621 Paris, France

Died

11 December 1686 (aged 65) Palace of Fontainebleau, France

Burial

glise at Vallry, France

Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Cond (8 September 1621 11 December 1686) was aFrench general and the most famous representative of the Cond 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 Cond.
Contents
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1 Biography 2 Thirty Years' War 3 The Fronde 4 Rehabilitation 5 Ancestry 6 Issue 7 Titles, styles, honours and arms

7.1 Titles and styles

8 Legacy 9 References 10 Sources

[edit]Biography
Louis was born in Paris, the son of Henri de Bourbon, Prince de Cond and Charlotte Marguerite de Montmorency. His father was a first cousin-once-removed of Henry 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-Clmence de Maill-Brz, 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, calledmademoiselle du Vigean, daughter of the king's gentleman of the bedchamber Franois 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 fiance, 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 Chteauroux, but the charge was widely disbelieved: SaintSimon, 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).

[edit]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 the 17th century. 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 Nrdlingen, 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 Orlans in Flanders, and when, after the capture of Mardyck, Orlans returned to Paris, Enghien, left in command, captured Dunkirk (11 October).

[edit]The

Fronde

Louis, Prince of Cond, by Robert Nanteuil, 1662. Yale University Art Gallery

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 Cond. 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 Regentand her minister. Cond'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. Cond himself held Burgundy, Berry and the marches of Lorraine, as well as other less important territory. His brother, the Prince de Conti heldChampagne, and his brother-inlaw, 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 Cond's coolness and bravery, and ended in a victory that fully restored his prestige. See also: Fronde

In September of the same year Cond was recalled to court, for the Regent Anne of Austriarequired his support. Influenced by the fact of his royal birth and by his scorn for the bourgeoisie, Cond 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 Cond 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 Cond, 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. Cond's sisterAnne Genevieve, duchesse de Longueville entered into negotiations with Spain; and the young Princess of Cond, 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 ofCardinal de Retz) and the new Fronde (the party of the Conds). 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 Cond and the new Fronde isolated. With the court and the old Fronde in alliance against him, Cond 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 Cond 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, Duke of Orlans, persuaded the Parisians to act thus, and turned the cannon of theBastille on Turenne's army. Thus Cond, who as usual had fought with the most desperate bravery, was saved, and Paris underwent a new siege. This ended in the flight of Cond 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.

Cond'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 Cond and allowed him to return to France.

[edit]Rehabilitation

Reception of Le Grand Cond at Versailles by Jean-Lon Grme(1878).

Cond 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 Chteau de Chantilly. Here he gathered round him a brilliant company, which included many men of genius such as Molire, Racine, Boileau, La Fontaine, Nicole, Bourdaloueand Bossuet. About this time negotiations between the Poles, Cond and Louis were carried on with a view to the election, at first of Cond's son Enghien, and afterwards of Cond himself, to the throne of Poland. These, after a long series of curious intrigues, were finally closed in 1674 by the veto of Louis XIV and the election of John Sobieski. The Prince's retirement, which was only broken by the Polish question and by his personal intercession on behalf of Fouquet in 1664, ended in 1668. In that year he proposed to Louvois, the minister of war, a plan for seizing Franche-Comt, the execution of which was entrusted to him and successfully carried out. He was now completely re-established in the favour of Louis, and with Turenne was the principal French commander in the celebrated campaign of 1672 against the Dutch. At the forcing of the Rhine passage at Tolhuis (June 12), he received a severe wound, after which he commanded in Alsace against the Imperials. In 1673 he was again engaged in the Low Countries, and in 1674 he fought his last great battle, the Battle of Seneffe, against the Prince of Orange (afterwards William III of England). This battle, fought on August 11, was one of the hardest of the century, and Cond, who displayed the reckless bravery of his youth, had three horses killed under him. His last campaign was that of 1675 on the Rhine, where the army had been deprived of its general by the death of Turenne; and where by his careful and methodical strategy he repelled the invasion of the Imperial army of Montecuccoli. After this campaign, prematurely worn out by the toils and excesses of his life, and tortured by gout, Cond returned to Chteau de Chantilly, where he spent the eleven years that remained to him in quiet retirement. At the end of his life, Cond specially sought the companionship of Bourdaloue, Pierre Nicole and Bossuet, and

devoted himself to religious exercises. He died on 11 November 1686 at the age of sixty-five. Bourdaloue attended him at his death-bed, and Bossuet pronounced his elegy. The Prince's lifelong resentment of his forced marriage to a social inferior persisted, [3] and found unchivalrous expression in a bitter letter, his last to the king, in which he begged that his wife never be released from her exile to the countryside. Nonetheless, Claire-Clmence de Maill had brought the Prince of Cond a dowry of 600,000 livres, the manors of Ansac, Mouy, Cambronne, Plessis-Billebault, Galissonnire and Brz, and, on one occasion, liberation from the King's dungeon. In 1685, his only surviving grandson, Louis de Bourbon, married Louise Franoise, Mademoiselle de Nantes eldest surviving daughter of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan. In mid 1686, Louise Franoise (later better known as Madame la Duchesse) caught smallpox while at Fontainebleau; it was the Prince himself who helped nurse the little Duchess back to health, to the point of staying up with her to help her eat. The Prince even forcibly stopped Louis XIV himself from seeing his daughter for his own safety. Despite Louise Franoise surviving and giving her husband ten children, the Prince himself became ill; most said it was from worry about her health. He himself died at the Palace of Fontainebleau. He was buried in the glise at Vallery, the traditional burial place of the Princes of Cond; Claire-Clmence, who outlived her husband, was buried at the glise Saint-Martin at the Chteau de Chteauroux, France in 1694. His son and grandson left little in history except they were afflicted by the madness which they had inherited from Claire-Clmence.

[edit]Ancestry

Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Cond

Henri de Bourbon, Prince of Cond

Eleonore de Roye

Henri de Bourbon, Prince of Cond

Louis III de La Trmoille

Charlotte Catherine de La Trmoille

Jeanne de Montmorency Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Cond

Anne de Montmorency

Henri de Montmorency

Madeleine of Savoy

Charlotte-Marguerite de Montmorency

Jacques de Budos, Viscount of Portes

Louise de Budos

Catherine de Clermont-en-Dauphine

[edit]Issue

Louis' wife, known asMadame la Princesse

Louis married Claire-Clmence de Maill-Brz, niece of Cardinal Richelieu at the Palais Royal in Paris February 1641 in the presence of Louis XIII, Anne of Austria and Gaston d'Orlans.

Henri Jules de Bourbon, Duke of Enghien, Prince of Cond (29 July 1643, Paris - 1 April 1709, Paris); married Anne Henriette of Bavaria and had issue;

Louis de Bourbon, Duke of Bourbon (20 September 1652, Bordeaux - 11 April 1653, Bordeaux); died in infancy;

X de Bourbon, Mademoiselle de Bourbon (1657, Breda - 28 September 1660, Paris); died in infancy;

[edit]Titles, [edit]Titles

styles, honours and arms

and styles

8 September 1621 26 December 1646 His Serene Highness the Duke of Enghien 26 December 1646 11 November 1686 His Serene Highness the Prince of Cond

[edit]Legacy
It is on his military character that the Grand Conds fame rests. Unlike his great rival, Turenne, Cond was equally brilliant in his first battle and in his last. The one failure of his generalship was in the Spanish Fronde, and, in this, everything united to thwart his genius; only on the battlefield itself was his personal leadership as conspicuous as ever. That he was capable of waging a methodical war of positions may be assumed from his campaigns against Turenne and Montecucculi, the greatest generals opposing him. But it was in his eagerness for battle, his quick decision in action, and the stern will which sent his regiments to face the heaviest losses, that Cond is exalted above all the generals of his time. Upon the Grand Conds death, Louis XIV pronounced that he had lost "the greatest man in my kingdom." In 1643 his success at the Battle of Rocroi, in which he led the French army to an unexpected and decisive victory over the Spanish, established him as a great general and popular hero in France. Together with the Marshal de Turenne he led the French to victory in theThirty Years' War. During the Fronde, he was courted by both sides, initially supporting Mazarin; he later became a leader of the princely opposition. After the defeat of the Fronde he entered Spanish service and led their armies against France. He returned to France only after the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, but soon received military commands again. Cond conquered the Franche-Comt during the War of Devolution and led the French armies in the FrancoDutch War together with Turenne. His last campaign was in 1675, taking command after Turenne had been killed, repelling an invasion of an imperial army. He is regarded as one of the premier generals in world history, whose masterpiece, the Battle of Rocroi, is still studied by students of military strategy. His descendants include the present-day pretenders to the throne of France and Italy and the kings of Spain and Belgium. He was portrayed in the film Vatel by Julian Glover.

[edit]References
Kingdom of France portal

1.

^ Ouvrard, Jean-Marie. "Poussard". Les Blasons de la Charente. language = French. Retrieved 2008-0413.

2.

a b

Spanheim, zchiel (1973). ed. Emile Bourgeois. ed (in French). Relation de la Cour de France. le

Temps retrouv. Paris: Mercure de France. pp. 319. 3. ^ Spanheim, zchiel (1973). ed. Emile Bourgeois. ed (in French). Relation de la Cour de France. le Temps retrouv. Paris: Mercure de France. pp. 9394.

[edit]Sources

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Louis, Grand Cond

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopdia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Katia Bguin, Les Princes de Cond (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1999)

Louis, Grand Cond House of Bourbon-Cond

Cadet branch of the House of Bourbon Born: 8 September 1621 Died: 11 November 1686

French nobility Preceded by Henri de Bourbon Prince of Cond 26 December 1646 11 November 1686 Succeeded by Henri Jules de Bourbon
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Princes of Cond

Louis (1546-1569)

Henri (15691588)

Henri (15881646)

Louis (16461686)

Henri Jules (16861709)

Louis (17091710)

Louis Henri (17101740) Louis Joseph (17401818)

Louis Henri (18181830)

Cond, Louis II de Bourbon, 4th prince de

known as the Great Cond (born Sept. 8, 1621, Paris, Francedied Dec. 11, 1686, Fontainebleau) French military leader. He distinguished himself in battles with Spain in the Thirty Years' War, and in 1649 he helped suppress the Fronde uprising. After being arrested by Mazarin in 1650, he rebelled and led the second Fronde, fighting from Spain until he was defeated at the Battle of the Dunes in 1658. Pardoned the next year, he again became one of Louis XIV's greatest generals, winning numerous battles in Spain, Germany, and Flanders. He was a man of great courage, unconventional habits, and sound independence of mind; broadly cultivated, he counted Molire and Jean Racine among his friends. See also Cond family.

The Great Cond, a life of Louis II de Bourbon, Prince of Cond (1915)

Author: Godley, Eveline Charlotte Subject: Cond, Louis, prince de, 1621-1686 Publisher: London, Murray Possible copyright status: NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT Language: English Call number: AEP-4159 Digitizing sponsor: MSN Book contributor: Robarts - University of Toronto Collection: robarts; toronto Full catalog record: MARCXML