Born at Chantilly, 1736; died in Paris, 1818.
The son of that Duke de Bourbon (afterwards Prince de Condé) who
succeeded the Regent Duke of Orleans as Prime Minister to Louis XV.
This Prince died in 1739, when his only son was three years of age.
From his earliest childhood the young Prince de Condé was devoted to
military studies. His guardian, the Count de Charolais, gave him an
excellent general education. The Prince made a good classical scholar,
and through life was fond of making quotations of Greek and Latin
authors. He wrote an admirable history of the life of his ancestor, the
great Condé.
During the Seven Years War he showed military genius and personal
courage, and the victory of Johannesburg was principally due to his
efforts (1762). He married at the age of seventeen Mlle. de Soubise,
by whom he had a son and a daughter. She died when her husband was
twenty-seven and she but twenty-five years old.
His disposition was noble and generous, and his political views
distinctly liberal. He violently opposed the suggestions of Count
St. Germain (the War Minister) that Russian discipline, including
the caning of soldiers, should be introduced into the French army.
Deserving officers, not of noble birth, found in him a friend and
protector, as he used his influence to assist their promotion.
The Prince de Condé spent twenty years of his life in embellishing and
improving his magnificent residence at Chantilly and the surrounding
domain. Here he entertained the German Emperor, Joseph II., the Emperor
Paul, when Grand Duke Cesarovitch, Gustavus, King of Sweden, the Duke
of Brunswick, and many other potentates. He was a generous landlord and
a public benefactor during the famine (1775); he bought up, at any and
every price, all the grain he could possibly obtain, this corn being
re-sold to the people at the usual price given in prosperous years for
wheat.
Governor of Burgundy, that province owed to his efforts new roads
and bridges, the encouragement of local art, and the foundation of
useful and literary institutions. In 1787, as President of the Assembly
of Notables, his discourses were in favour of order, economy and
reform. Nevertheless, he was one of the first objects of attack by the
Revolutionary party, and menaced on every side. Very shortly after the
destruction of the Bastille he departed with his family from France. He
went first to Austrian Flanders, and later to Turin, where he helped
to combine the movement which brought about the counter revolution
in Lyons and Southern France. He was chosen to command the body of
French noblemen and gentlemen known as _L’armée du Rhin_ or _Des
Emigrés_.
A decree of the Assembly, 1791, deprived him of an annuity of £24,000
a year (granted by the State to the House of Condé in exchange for the
territory of Clemontain). His property at Chantilly was confiscated,
and, as he was without resources, he sold all his plate, diamonds and
jewels.
When the civil war began he commanded a body of five thousand men. At
the close of the first campaign he possessed no funds beyond a sum of
money the Empress Catherine sent him as a present. Shortly after this
he entered regularly into the service of the Emperor of Austria and
received the pay of an ordinary general.
In the campaign of 1793 the Prince de Condé performed many brilliant
feats of strategy, entering Alsace and occupying Berstein; the enemy
drove his troops to Hagenau, and he marched on foot at the head of
his regiment and retook Berstein by a bayonet charge. During the two
following campaigns, Condé’s army was occupied only in guarding the
Rhine. He suffered from the jealousy and malevolence of the Austrian
commanders, and was supplied with bad provisions and spoilt flour; but
the Prince ordered his table to be served with similar bread to that of
the soldiers.
During the whole of this time (in 1795) Condé was negotiating with
Pichegru, who commanded the Republican army on the opposite bank of
the Rhine. They agreed that Condé should pass over the Rhine with
his army and join Pichegru; they were to march jointly on Paris and
restore the monarchy. The Prince, being subordinate to the Austrian
Commander-in-Chief, Werhmer, considered it a point of honour to
communicate this scheme to his superior officer. The Cabinet of Vienna
refused to assent to Condé’s arrangement with the Republican general,
unless Strasburg and the other Alsatian fortresses were occupied by
the Imperial troops. The Prince refused his consent, and Pichegru,
whose first condition had been “no Austrian soldier shall set his foot
on French soil,” naturally refused to entertain the proposal for an
instant. The project was, therefore, abandoned.
The forces of Condé, consisting of 10,000 men, were now an integral
part of the regular Austrian army. The passage of Moreau over the Rhine
caused the retreat of the Austrians, and although Condé and his troops
invariably distinguished themselves, and at the battle of Biberach
saved the Austrian army from a crushing defeat, the advance of Moreau
was never seriously checked.
After the peace of Campo-Formio in the following year, Condé and his
remaining followers took service under Paul I. of Russia. In 1799 Paul
abandoned the Austrian alliance, and made peace with France; the army
of the _Emigrés_ then passed over to the English. Condé fought in
Bavaria and defended the passage of the Inn. But after the battle of
Hohenlinden the whole of his remaining forces were disbanded. In 1801
the Prince joined his son, the Duke de Bourbon, in England, the British
Government providing them with a small allowance.
Condé settled in the ancient abbey of Malmesbury, where he found a
devoted companion in his second wife, the Dowager Princess of Monaco.
In 1804 the news reached him of the assassination of his grandson, the
Duke d’Enghien, the last male heir of his race. In 1813 he lost his
wife, at the very moment when his long and cruel exile was about to
terminate.
He landed at Calais with Louis XVIII. in May 1814. Notwithstanding his
great age (he was nearly eighty) he was the only member of the royal
family who did not instantly attempt flight from Paris on the return of
Napoleon from Elba.
“We should fight,” he cried, as the carriage in which he had been
forcibly seated was bearing him away towards the frontier.
On his return after Waterloo he spent the remaining five years of his
life at the Palais Bourbon (now the Chamber of the French Legislature)
and at a small château at Chantilly, the last relic of its ancient
splendour.
He died in Paris, aged eighty two, and was, by order of Louis XVIII.,
buried at St. Denis, in the vault of the Kings of France.