Louis Antoine de Bourbon-Condé, Duke of Enghien

Cross of Saint Louis

Louis-Antoine-Henri de Bourbon was born at Chantilly in 1772. He emigrated soon after the fall of the Bastille (July 14, 1789) and joined the army of emigrants organized by his grandfather the Prince of Condé and his father the Duke of Bourbon.

In 1792, he directed the Royal French Army who participated in the invasion of France. In 1793, he fought on the Rhine. He was awarded the Cross of Saint-Louis in 1794 for his courageous behavior.

The Duke of Enghien then passed successively to the service of England, Russia and again England.

In 1801, the army was disbanded. The Duke of Enghien moved to Ettenheim in Baden, near the French border.

In January 1804, the arrest and interrogation of the accomplices of royalist Georges Cadoudal revealed to the Minister of Police, Joseph Fouché, the existence of a conspiracy plan to kidnap First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte. Cadoudal, Pichegru and Moreau were supposed to take power and then wait for the arrival of a Prince of the House of Bourbon. Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand and Joseph Fouché convinced Napoleon that this Prince was the Duke of Enghien.

The First Consul decided to remove the Duke in the territory of the Duchy of Baden. More than a thousand men, commanded by General Michel Ordener, ensured the execution of this order during the night of 15 to 16 March 1804.

The Duke of Enghien was brought to the castle of Vincennes  , near Paris, where a military court presided by General Pierre-Augustin Hulin, a former winner of the Bastille, judged him summarily. He was sentenced to death and executed in the moat of the castle on March 21. With him extinguished the branch of Bourbon-Condé.

He was buried in the Holy Chapel   of the Castle of Vincennes.