RINCE OF (162'— 1686), called the great Conde, son of Henry, prince of Conde, and Charlotte de Montmorency, was born in Paris on Sept. 8, 1621, and educated by the Jesuits at Bourges. The duc d'Enghien, as he was styled during his father's lifetime, served in the campaigns of 164o and 1641 in northern France, and at twenty-two, was com pelled, for political reasons, to marry Richelieu's niece, Claire Clemence de Maille-Breze, a child of thirteen. He was passion ately attached to Marthe du Vigean, and resented his forced marriage. He was present with Richelieu during the dangerous plot of Cinq Mars, and afterwards fought in the siege of Perpig nan (1642).
In 1643 Enghien was appointed to command against the Span iards in northern France and at the battle of Rocroy (May 18) at the age of 22 won his place amongst the great captains of modern times. Enghien returned to Paris in triumph, and in gallantry and intrigues strove to forget his hated marriage. In 1644 he was sent to Germany with reinforcements for Turenne, who was hard pressed, and took command of the whole army. The battle of Freiburg (Aug.) was desperately contested, but in the end the French army won a great victory over the Bavarians and Imperial ists under Count Mercy. The summer campaign of 1645 opened with the defeat of Turenne by Mercy, but this was retrieved in the brilliant victory of Nordlingen, in which Mercy was killed, and Enghien himself received several serious wounds. The capture of Philipsburg was the most important of his other achievements during this campaign. In 1646 Enghien served under the duke of Orleans in Flanders, and when, after the capture of Mardyck, Orleans returned to Paris, Enghien, left in command, raptured Dunkirk (Oct. IIth). (See THIRTY YEARS' WAR.) It was in this year that the old prince of Conde died. The enormous power that fell into the hands of his successor, together with his own military renown, alarmed the court. Conde himself held Burgundy, Berry, the marches of Lorraine, and other impor tant territories ; his brother Conti held Champagne, his brother in-law, Longueville, Normandy. The government, therefore, deter mined to permit no increase of his already overgrown authority, and Mazarin determined at once to find him employment and to tarnish his fame as a general. He was sent to lead the revolted Catalans. Ill-supported, he was forced to raise the siege of Lerida, and returned home in bitter indignation. In 1648, how ever, he received the command in the Low Countries; and at Lens (Aug. 19) a battle took place, which ended in a victory that fully restored his prestige.
In September of the same year Conde was recalled to court, for the regent Anne of Austria required his support. Influenced by the fact of his royal birth and by his arrogant scorn for the bourgeois, Conde lent himself to the court party, and finally, after much hesitation, he consented to lead the army which was to reduce Paris (Jan. 5649).
On his side, insufficient as were his forces, the war was carried on with vigour, but the political situation inclined both parties to peace, which was made at Rueil on March 20 (see FRONDE, THE). But Conde soon became estranged from the court. His own pride and ambition, and the personal resentment of Anne caused the sudden arrest of Conde, Conti and Longueville on Jan. 18, 165o. Others, including Turenne and his brother the duke of Bouillon, made their escape. Vigorous efforts for the release of the princes were made. The women of the family were now its heroes. The young princess of Conde, having collected an army, obtained entrance into Bordeaux. But the delivery of the princes was brought about in the end by the junction of the old Fronde (the party of the parlement and of Cardinal de Retz) and the new Fronde (the party of the Condos); and Anne was at last, in February 165r, forced to liberate them from their prison at Havre. A later shifting of parties left Conde and the new Fronde isolated. With the court and the old Fronde in alliance against him, Conde made common cause with the Spaniards, who were at war with France. At the battle of the Faubourg St. Antoine (Sept. 165r) Conde and Turenne, two of the foremost captains of the age, measured their strength (July 2, 1652), and the army of the prince was only saved when La Grande Mademoiselle, daughter of the duke of Orleans, persuaded the Parisians to admit him within their gates and to turn the cannon of the Bastille on Turenne's army. Paris underwent a new investment, which ended in the flight of Conde to the Spanish army (Sept. 1652), and thenceforward, up to the peace, he was in open arms against France, and held high command in the army of Spain. But his genius found little scope in the cumbrous and antiquated system of war practised by the Spaniards, and his disastrous defeat at the Dunes near Dunkirk (June 14, 16581, in which an English contingent of Cromwell's veterans took part on the side of Turenne, led Spain to open negotiations for peace. After the peace of the Pyrenees in 1659, Conde obtained his pardon (January 166o) from Louis XIV., who thought him less dangerous as a subject than as possessor of the independent sovereignty of Luxemburg, which had been offered him by Spain as a reward for his services.
Conde now accepted, and loyally maintained henceforth, the position of a chief subordinate, even subservient, to a masterful sovereign. At Chantilly he gathered round him a brilliant com pany, which included many men of genius—Moliere, Racine. Boileau, La Fontaine, Nicole, Bourdaloue and Bossuet. Proposals for the election, at first of Conde's son Enghien, and afterwards of Conde himself, to the throne of Poland, were eventually vetoed (1674) by Louis XIV., and John Sobieski was elected. In 1668 Conde proposed to Louvois, the minister of war, a plan for seizing Franche-Comte, tl1e execution of which was entrusted to him, and successfully carried out. With Turenne he was the principal French commander in the campaign of 1672 against the Dutch. At the forcing of the Rhine passage at Tollhuis (June 52) he received a severe wound, after which he commanded in Alsace against the Imperialists. In 1673 he was again engaged in the Low Countries, and in 1674 he fought his last great battle at Seneff against the prince of Orange (Aug. I I ). 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 Montecucculi. He spent the last eleven years of his life in re tirement at Chantilly, where he specially sought the companion ship of Bourdaloue, Nicole and Bossuet, and devoted himself to religious exercises. He died on Nov. II, 1686.
His fame rests on his military genius. Unlike his great rival Turenne, Conde 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. In private life he was harsh and unamiable, seeking only the gratification of his own pleasures and desires. Conde's unhappy wife had some years before her husband's death been banished to Château roux on a trumped-up charge of infidelity. Conde placed her in confinement, and in his last letter to the king requested him never to allow her to be released.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. See, besides the numerous Memoires of the time, Bibliography. See, besides the numerous Memoires of the time, Fitzpatrick, The Great Conde and the period of the Fronde (2nd ed., 1874), and Lord Mahon, Life of Louis, prince of Conde (London, 1845) . Also Gen. L. de Piepape, Histoire des princes de Conde au r8e siecle (2 vols., ; H. M. Williams, The Love Affairs of the Condos, 1530-1740 (1912) ; Viscount A.M.R.A. de Noailles, La Mere du Grand Conde, Charlotte-Marguerite de Montmorency, Prin cesse de Conde.