ENGIIIEN, LOUIS-ANTOINE-HENRI-DE-BOURBON, DUC D', was born at Chantilly in August 1772. Ile wee the son of the Duke of Bourbon end grandson of the Prince of Cond6, being a lateral branch of the then reigning family of France. After the French revolution broke out, young d'Enghien served under his grandfather in the corp. of the French emigrants who fought on the Rhine. At the peace of Luneville in Austria in 1801 the corps was disbanded, and d'Enghien fixed his residence at Ettenheim, a clifttesu on the German side of the Rhine, a few miles from that river, and in the territories of the inargrave of Baden. An attachment between him and the Princess Charlotte of Itohan, who resided at Ettenheim with her relative the Cardinal de Bohan, induced the duke to remain there. After the war had broken out again between England and France, in 1803, the English government took the French emigrants again into its pay, and they were directed to go to the Gorman aide of the Rhine to act when required. The Duke of Enghien was looked upon as their head. Meantime the conspiracy of Georges and Pichegru against the person of the first consul, Bonaparte, was discovered at Paris. It has never boon proved that tho Duke of Enghien was privy to that conspiracy, but it appears that ho was led to expect au insur rectionary movement in France in favour of the Bourbons, of which he intended to avail himself by entering France at the head of the emigrants. Bonaparte, alarmed at the conspiracy and at the avowed intention of Georges to assassinate him, seems to hove persuaded himself that the Duke of Enghion was connected with the Paris oouspirators, and that the whole was a plan directed by the Bourbons in England and by the English government ; and he determined upon getting rid of his enemies by summary meaus. He accordingly
despatched a party of gendarmes, who crossed the Rhine, entered without ceremony the neutral territory of Baden, surrounded the chateau of Ettenhaim, and took the Duke of Enghien prisoner, the 15th of March 1804. (For the following part of the transaction, see BONAPARTE, NAPOLEON I., voL 1., cot 788.] The duke underweut the mockery of a trial before a secret court, which ovideutly acted merely as the instrument of the first consul; and its sentence was carried into exeoution with a most iudecent haste. The duke was found guilty of all the charges preferred against him, some of which ware never proved. Even the recommendation of the court for it respite to the prisoner was overruled by Savary, who was present at the sitting as a sort of extra judicial authority to watch over the proceedings, It was ono of the worst instances on record of a judicial murder, and has stamped an inenceable stain on the fame of Napoleon, who at the time openly avowed to the Council of State his firm purpose of making an example of the duke in order to deter the other Bourbon princes and their partisans from plotting against him in future.
And again, at St. Helena, almost at his dying hour, he took upon himself alone the whole responsibility of that deed. (' Testament de Napoleon?) After the Restoration, Hullin, president of the court, Savary, Caulincourt, and others who had a share in the arrest, trial, and execution of the duke, wrote each in justification or extenuation of their respective conduct. The fate of the Duke of Enghien excited interest and commiseration throughout Europe ; he was young, brave, amiable, and one of the most promising of the Bourbon princes.