THE GREAT CONDB.*
EirSTORY and biography can seldom work more harmoniously together than in the life of Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Conde. His career, to which the French seventeenth century largely owes its romantic character, was not only that of a dis- tinguished soldier, one of the most distinguished by personal daring and military genius that Europe has ever known, but also that of a more than typical French Prince and noble, a supremely picturesque figure in his own world, yet standing alone and independent of it, like some fine portrait little affected by background or surroundings. It is thus that Miss Godley has very successfully tried to represent him. Her book is compiled at first hand from the contemporary authorities to whom the great Conde tradition is due ; she has studied in the archives of Chantilly, and among the manuscripts of the Bibliotheque Nationale, collecting the witneas of all those who were at first dazzled by the young captain's heroic genius, enraged later by the unpatriotic!, disloyalties into which be was led by stormy ambition and discontent, the secret springs of the Fronde, and impressed by the stateliness of a dignified if disappointed old age.
Ambition and discontent, with considerable originality, a certain keenness of intellect and contradictoriness of temper, were hereditary characteristics of the Conde branch of the Bourbon family : a glance through the Lives of the Princes of that House, from the mid-sixteenth century downwards, will prove this sufficiently. The family also considered itself unfortunate, unjustly used, in its position so near the throne. It had a vein of eccentricity, sometimes more, resulting in the lack of mental balance and proportion shown so strikingly by the great Conde in his behaviour towards Mazarin and Louis XIV. The Fronde would have fallen to pieces very quickly had not Conde, too great for an unworthy cause, made himself its leader. "War was his element," writes Miss Godley ; "the moment he was withdrawn from active service abroad, his very existence became a danger to the State" This is a hard saying which might be applied to any active and passionate soldier; for Conde there wane mote personal touch in it than that, Hatred of Mazarin and jealousy of his power, quite as much as the love of fighting, turned Conde against the Regent and the young King, so that France had the spectacle of her finest commander directing the armies of her enemies. It was a striking change from the time, six years earlier, when Louis XIII., against the advice of his counsellors, had given the command of the Royal Army to a boy of twenty-two. As the story goes, the dying King was consoled by a vision in which he saw the young Duo d'Enghien driving the Spaniards before him at Rocroy,
• Tie Great Condi: a Life of Louis It de Bourbon. Prince of Cala By the Honourable Ewa. Godley. With Portraits and Maps. London: John Murray. [15a. net.]
the battle being actually fought and won a few days after his death.
With regard to the hereditary qualities and tendencies so marked in Conde, one must not consider his Bourbon descent alone. From this side came most of the peculiar traits mentioned above, though be had not the diplomatic cleverness, the strong instinct of self-preservation, or the personal meanness of his father. But Madame In Princesse trans- mitted to her son the blood of a proud and heroic race, whose passion was for arms and glory. "II tient," says M. Roca, "de son ascendance maternelle Yardeur, la fougue emportee, le courage, la fierte des Montmorency."
Henry do Bourbon, Prince of Conde, was a courtier for whom the opinion of his Sovereign and his fellow-countrymen had a high importance. He grovelled before the power of Richelieu:and the slavish attitude which brought about his son's marriage with the Cardinal's niece, Mlle. de Maille- Breed, resulted in lifelong unhappiness for both the young people. Louis de Bourbon, at all times of unmanageable temper, bitterly reeented from boyhood to old age the alliance thus forced upon him. It was a real misfortune for a man of his temperament. Women existed who might have softened and influenced even the great Conde; witness his adoration of Mlle. du Vigean, who attracted him by her charm of character quite as much as by her beauty. It is well known that after Richelieu's death the Due d'Engbien, as he was still, tried hard, with his mother's help, to have his marriage annulled that he might marry the only woman he ever loved; and these efforts lasted through several years, and were only brought to a close by the absolute commands of the Queen-Regent and Monsieur le Prince. Here they were undoubtedly in the right. The Duchesse d'Enghien had already a son, and per- sonally she was above reproach. Indeed, her husband's behaviour to this innocent lady from first to last remains a blot on his fame. The story of Claire-Clemence de Maille-Breze is in itself a touching and tragic romance; from the dull and awkward childhood of the little bride to whom her dolls were a consolation, to the unexpected courage and spirit she showed in her husband's cause at Bordeaux when he was 1dazarin's prisoner at Vincennes, and then in the gradual descent into obscurity and disgrace ending in the prison where she died, the victim of mysterious accusations almost certainly false, but probably explained by a strange- ness amounting to insanity. Her mother, Nicole de Richelieu, the Cardinal's sister, was known to have died mad.
Miss Godley tells in detail, and with careful adherence to her authorities, the whole story of these melancholy episodes. She may be trusted to make out the best case possible for Conde, her hero: but she has to own that if his conduct to his unhappy wife were not, as some of his contemporaries thought, wanton cruelty, it showed at least a vindictive hard- ness and severity. He never, in fact, forgave Claire-Clemence his enforced marriage. But his admirers cannot deny, mag- nificent as were many of his qualities, that this great Prince often proved himself in private life neither chivalrous nor generous.
The personal impression made by Conde on Court and society can be easily traced in the letters, the memoirs, and the general gossip of his time. He belonged to an unpopular family. His father was universally detested; his mother, in some ways admirable, was as stiff and haughty as she was handsome, and was considered prudish even by the Hotel de Rambouillet. Conde himself, his mother, and even his sister, Mme. de Longueville, the most amiable of the family, were far too conscious of their own superiority, far too severe in their comments on others, not to be disliked by the large section of society whom they chose to ridicule. This sort of thing was better endured in Conde's younger days, when he was the victorious hero carrying French arms to victory. After the first Fronde, when he had proved that it was possible to take up arms against his King and then to share triumph- antly in a general peace and reconciliation, his insolent arrogance, with that of his family and faction, appears to have known no bounds, and the House of Conde, as Miss Godley remarks, was "envied, feared, and hated." She quotes the Duchene de Nemours (step-daughter of Mme. de Longue- ville) writing of the Hotel de Conde at this time :— ..They held it ludicrous to make any effort to please. They put on such mocking aim, and made such insulting comments, that no one could endure them. If they received visitors, it was with a manner so openly bored and contemptuous as to make it plain that they only wished to be rid of them. Those who came loran audience of H. Is Prince, whatever their rank, were kept waiting, sometimes for hours, in his ante-room ; and often, in the end, he sent the whole company away, and saw no one. . . But if the hatred they inspired was great, the fear of them was still greater."
This period of triumph was very soon ended by the arrest of the Princes—Conde, Conti, and Longueville. In the new Fronde which followed his release, if Conde allowed himself still a great captain, other heroic virtues, such as patriotism and unselfishness, were certainly far to seek. At the same time, the general hatred of Mazarin seems to have been worth, for Conde, a considerable gain in personal popularity. This was a pausing phase, for few of his admirers could remain loyal when he had gone over definitely to the enemies of France and was leading the armies of Spain. But France forgave her erring hero after the Peace of the Pyrenees, and though Louis XIV. made him suffer some well-deserved humiliation, be had the chance, gladly seized, of fighting again for his country. The story of his campaigns, early and late, in North-Eastern France and Flanders has, of coarse, absorbing interest at the present time. Miss Godley tells it clearly and well.
Chantilly atilt exists to beer witness to another side of the great Conde's genius. Bossuet's famous oration preserves other characteristics, such as his faithfulness to his friends, and the honesty and sincerity of later years with which, his free-thinking intellect once convinced, he accepted the doctrines of Christianity. Finally, we may find proof of the personal fascination which frequently conquered dislike and changed it to friendship in the writings of that shrewd and plain-spoken Princess, Mlle. de fifontpensier.
is one of the chief figures in her wonderful Memoirs; but we may refer to a less familiar book, the Galerie des Portraits, many of which are her own work. The pages here devoted to M. Is Prince show Mademoiselle's later opinion of the great man she had come to know well and to admire heartily. In the opinion of K. Victor Cousin, no truer portrait of the great Conde was ever painted.
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