| Louis II
(1621-1686)
Duc of Enghien, Prince de Condé, Le Grand Condé His parents: Henri II and Charlotte de Montmorency. His sister and his brother: Anne-Geneviève et Armand. Against his will he was married to a niece of Cardinal de Richelieu, Claire-Clémence de Maillé-Brézé with whom he had one son, Henri-Jules. He tried but in vain to break this union. He wanted all his live to marry his long time mistress: Marthe de Vigean. |
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| He was the leader of the
last aristocratic uprising in France known as the Fronde (1648-53). He
later became one of King Louis XIV's greatest generals.
Louis II's father gave the Duke of Enghien, as the Great Condé was at first called, a complete and strict education: six years with the Jesuits at Bourges, as well as mathematics and horsemanship at the Royal Academy at Paris. His studies completed, he was presented to Louis XIII and then accompanied his father to the Duchy of Burgundy. |
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| Louis II was betrothed
to Claire-Clémence de Maillé-Brézé (Cardinal
de Richelieu's niece) This marriage would later have very unfortunate consequences
on the physical and mental conditions of the Condé family. The ancestors
of Claire Clémence had a long history of mental illnesses.
Louis first saw action at the age of fifteen before the siege of Arras. On his return, despite the passion that he had conceived for Marthe du Vigean, the marriage was celebrated. This caused much conjugal distrust and hatred. She was barely 13. |
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| The Duke of
Enghien won his first great victory over the Spaniards as head of the royal
army at Rocroi. It was the greatest French victory for a century and was
due, beyond doubt, to his personal effort. He followed his success at Rocroi
with successes in the area of the Rhine at Thionville and Sierck. With
the Marshall de Turenne, he was victorious at Freiburg, Philippsburg, Mainz,
and Nördlingen. He also conducted a brilliant campaign in Flanders
(1646). On his father's death he not only inherited the title
of Prince de Condé but he was also heir of an enormous fortune. He was sent by Cardinal Mazarin to Catalonia, where he was defeated at Lérida. On his recall to Flanders, however, he won another great victory at Lens. |
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A change in
his destiny came with the civil wars of the Fronde. During the first of
these wars, he conducted the siege of Paris for the government but because
of his legendary arrogance, Mazarin had him, his brother, and their brother-in-law
the Duc de Longueville, husband of their sister Anne-Geneviève arrested
on 18 Jan 1650, when they were in attendance at court.
After 13 months in prison, their friends launched the second war of the
Fronde, which ended with their release and Mazarin's first voluntary exile.
Louis, as usual, tried to extract too high a price for his goodwill toward
the Queen Regent. Having not received what he expected, he launched an
open rebellion in the southwest (1651), allied himself with Spain, and
made his way to Paris, where he was able for a time to defy the royal army
commanded by his former friend Turenne. His position, however, soon became
both politically and militarily untenable, and he left Paris (1652) to
take service in Spain where he became the generalissimo. In France however,
he was sentenced to death as a rebel in Nov 1654. With varying fortunes
he opposed the French royal army for four years but was finally defeated
at the Battle of the Dunes before Dunkerque (Dunkirk) (1658). After the
Peace
of the Pyrenees, he returned to Paris and, re-entered the King's good graces. After this period, he comported himself as a humble and loyal servant of the King, who, however, did not give him any military command. |
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| At one moment
he had the idea of having himself elected King of Poland, but, despite
his determined measures and the support of Louis XIV, he was unsuccessful.
This position was after him pursued by many other Condés and Contis. |
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 When
in 1668 the King at last entrusted to his command the attack of the Spanish-held
Franche-Comté, Condé took Artois, Besançon, Dôle,
and Gray in 15 days. Then, totally restored to Louis XIV's favour, Condé,
with Turenne, was placed by the King in command of the army that was going
to invade the Netherlands (1672). He was wounded
in the famous crossing of the Rhine near Arnhem where his nephew was killed.
Having completed the evacuation of the United Provinces,
he halted the Prince of Orange's army at Seneffe in Belgium (then a Spanish
territory) (1674), then raised the siege of Oudenarde. The following year,
again in the company of Louis XIV and of the army of Flanders, he had to
reach Alsace, which had been threatened by Turenne's death, hastily. There,
he once more confronted an old adversary, Montecuccoli, Austria's foremost
commander, whom he forced to raise the siege of Haguenau and to withdraw
across the Rhine. This was his last campaign and victory.
A Friday in 1671, Louis has invited the King for dinner, fearing that the proposed fish might be late for the service, the Maître d'Hôtel, François Vatel commited suicide. A victim to gout in later life and living quietly in his palace of Chantilly, he surrounded himself with his family, friends, and the writers and artists whom he loved. His deathbed conversion was not entirely convincing, for it came at the end of a life without religion. |
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| Portraits
and busts of Condé suggest rapacity: wide, protruding eyes and a
prominently down curving "Bourbon" nose dominate a thin and bony face in
which a wilful mouth overshadows a receding chin. Though he was without
doubt, with Turenne, the greatest captain of his day, he was also a man
of
unrestrained temper and limitless pride-in himself, his race, and his house. His will admitted no constraint, and his arrogance augured nothing for his equals but distrust. But he was also a man of wide intellectual interests, of unconventional habits, and possessed of an uncommonly sound independence of mind. His attitude both to religion and to politics was unorthodox, for he was as rebellious to ecclesiastical dogma as to the authority of the King. The moral temper and philosophy of this prince, so removed from the conventional standards of his day, were revealed by his libertine youth and by doctrinally questionable relationships-among them that with Pierre-Michon Bourdelot, a philosopher and sceptical doctor, and with the philosopher Spinoza, whom he tried to meet in Holland-by his non observance of all religious practices, and by his aggressive atheism-despite his honourable fidelity to the Jesuits who had instructed him. To these traits he added peerless courage-as may be seen by his help and protection of Protestants who were persecuted after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685). A cultivated man, according to Mlle de Scudéry, who depicted him in her novel Artamène, ou le Grand Cyrus (1649-53), he was also a patron of the arts. He maintained a troupe of comedians who toured the provinces; he protected La Fontaine, Boileau, and Molière; and he chose La Bruyère to tutor his son, Henri-Jules. Even on his military campaigns he read the novels of Gaultier de Coste de La Calprenède, the histories of Livy, and the tragedies of Pierre Corneille. André Le Nôtre landscaped his park at Chantilly; Pierre Mignard and Charles Le Brun decorated the walls of his palace with mythological paintings; Antoine Coysevox sculpted a famous bust of him (the one you see on this page) He also enjoyed the conversation of Bossuet, Fénelon, and Malebranche, all of whom were at Chantilly. |
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