About

A prince of the blood and lieutenant-general who had served during the Seven Years’ War, Louis-Joseph de Bourbon, prince de Condé, left France with his family on the night of 16 July 1789, among the first émigrés. He established himself at Worms in 1791 and raised a corps of émigré troops that fought alongside the coalition armies on the Rhine and in southern Germany. Dependent on foreign support, it passed successively into Austrian, British, Russian and again British service. In 1795, Condé authorised agents to negotiate with General Pichegru over his defection and plans for a royalist restoration. The corps was disbanded in 1801, and Condé retired to England. His grandson, the duc d’Enghien, who had served in the army, was seized by French troops in Baden and executed at Vincennes in 1804. Condé returned to France at the First Restoration in 1814 and died at the Palais Bourbon in 1818.