Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé

Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé (September 8, 1621 - November 11, 1686). His military prowess won him the nickname "The Great Condé" (le Grand Condé).

Rehabilitation

Condé 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 a masterful sovereign. Even so, some years passed before he was recalled to active employment, and these years he spent on his estate at Chantilly. Here he gathered round him a brilliant company, which included many men of genius such as Molière, Racine, Boileau, La Fontaine, Nicole, Bourdaloue and Bossuet. About this time negotiations between the Poles, Condé and Louis were carried on with a view to the election, at first of Condé's son Enghien, and afterwards of Condé 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-Comté, 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 Imperialists. In 1673 he was again engaged in the Low Countries, and in 1674 he fought his last great 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 Condé, 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 Montecucculi. After this campaign, prematurely worn out by the toils and excesses of his life, and tortured by the gout, he returned to Chantilly, where he spent the eleven years that remained to him in quiet retirement. In the end of his life he specially sought the companionship of Bourdaloue, Nicole and Bossuet, and devoted himself to religious exercises. He died on November 11, 1686 at the age of sixty-five. Bourdaloue attended him at his death-bed, and Bossuet pronounced his elegy.

Related Topics:
Chantilly - Molière - Racine - Boileau - La Fontaine - Nicole - Bourdaloue - Bossuet - Louis XIV - John Sobieski - Fouquet - Louvois - Franche-Comté - Rhine - Tolhuis - June 12 - Alsace - Battle of Seneffe - William III of England - August 11 - Montecucculi

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