Condé, Henri I de Bourbon, 2e prince de

▪ French prince

born December 29, 1552, La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, France

died March 5, 1588, Saint-Jean-d'Angély

      prince of Condé who continued the leadership of the Huguenots (Huguenot) begun by his father, Louis I de Bourbon, 1st prince of Condé.

      His father's death left him and his cousin Henry of Navarre (the future Henry IV) as titular leaders of the Huguenots. After the Peace of Saint-Germain (1570) Condé retired to Béarn and married Marie de Clèves. She died after giving birth to his daughter Catherine (1574–93). Condé, meanwhile, caught in Paris during the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day (1572), had been forced to profess Catholicism. Nominally governor of Picardy, he was kept under surveillance until, in 1574, he escaped to Alsace and began raising troops for the Huguenots. Invading France with a horde of mercenaries to collaborate with the Duc d'Alençon, he was disappointed at the terms which Alençon made with the government (1576). In the next civil wars he became rather an embarrassment to Henry of Navarre, set himself up as chief of the most fanatical Huguenots, and failed conspicuously in his travels abroad in search of foreign help (1580) and in his campaign of 1585 in western France—when he was driven to take refuge in Guernsey. Returning to France, he married, in 1586, Charlotte de La Trémoille (1565–1629), who renounced Catholicism for him and bore him a daughter, Éléonore (1587–1619). Wounded at the Battle of Coutras (October 1587), Condé died within a few months.

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