Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/276

248 crowds of his followers, bitterly disappointed, and worn out, as was whispered at the time, by his excesses, Conde was seized with fever. Mazarin, going into exile, freed the court from the odium of his name ; and the Fronde melted away. On his recovery (October 1652) Condd fled from Paris and joined the Spanish army. The swift, bold tactics which had gained him glory were now impossible ; he was constantly hampered by the ancient and ponderous methods of the Spaniards, by their inflexible etiquette, and their lordly laziness. He gained some successes, as the entry into Cambray, which was invested by Turenne, and the raising of the siege of Valenciennes ; but fortune was in general on the side of France. At length in 1659, after the disastrous battle of the Dunes, Spain, tired of the war, consented to the disadvantageous peace of the Pyrenees, and at the same time Conde&quot; obtained his pardon from Louis, who thought him less dangerous as a subject than as possessor of the independent sovereignty of Luxembourg, which had been offered him by Spain as a reward for his services. Thenceforth he was excluded from court intrigues, and for several years he resided on his estate at Chantilly, where he gathered round him a brilliant company, which included many of the greatest men of genius that France has seen Moliere, Racine, Boileau, La Bruyere, La Fontaine, Nicole, Bourdaloue, and Bossuet. But the quarrel between Luvois the minister of war and Turenne again opened a field for his ambition. In 1668 he laid before the former a scheme for seizing Franche-Comte, the execution of which was intrusted to him, and successfully carried out. In the next year Condd was offered the crown of Poland, which, however, Louis would not allow him to accept. In 1672, he took part in the war with Holland, and forced the passage of the Rhine, at which engagement he was severely wounded in the wrist. In 1673, he met the Prince of Orange in the great but undecided battle of Seneffe. He served for the last time in 1675, as general of the army of the Rhine, which had been left without commander by the death of Turenne. After this campaign, prematurely worn out by the toils and excesses of his life, and tortured by the gout, he returned to Chantilly, where he spent the eleven years that remained to him in quiet retirement. In the end of his life he specially sought the companionship of Bourdaloue, Nicole, and Bossuet, declared himself a convert, and devoted himself to the ordinances of religion. He died on the llth December 1686, at the age of sixty-five. Bourdaloue attended him on his death-bed, and Bossuet pronounced a glowing funeral panegyric upon him. Conde s character is a type of that of the French noble of his day. To be regarded as a brilliant conqueror in love and war, to hold the first place at court, swaying the councils of his sovereign at his will, and receiving universal homage these were the selfish and only objects of his ambition. His vanity was such that he looked on no man as his equal ; Louis XIV. himself could not have shown an arrogance more insolent. He was said by one who knew him well to be the hardest-hearted man in France. Ruth- Jess and savage, he was also an intriguer not less unscrupulous, though incomparably less adroit, than his victorious enemy, the subtile Italian cardinal. Thus he had all the faults of the French noble on a colossal scale ; he had also his virtues in a more extraordinary degree. Where all were brave, he was conspicuous above all for a thoughtless courage which nothing could dismay, and to which, combined with the intense enthusiasm and rapidity of thought that inspired him on the field of battle, he owed the most brilliant of his victories. And the evening of his life., when, done with ambition, he gave himself to the de lights of literature, reveals a new and finer side of a character that would otherwise appear all harsh and without beauty. Comic s unhappy wife, Clemence de MaiHe&quot;, some years before had been banished to Chateauroux. An accident, seized upon by her husband with unseemly eagerness, brought about her ruin. A servant had entered her private room, and after threatening her loudly, stabbed her, and made his escape. Her contemporaries, greedy as they were of scandal, refused to believe any evil of one so pure and noble ; but the prince declared himself convinced of her unfaithfulness, placed her in confinement, and carried his resentment so far that his last letter to the king was to request him never to allow her to be released.

1em  CONDÉ, (1756-1830), duke of Bourbon, and last prince of Conde, was the son of Louis Joseph, prince of Conde. Several of the earlier events of his lif e,especially his marriage with the Princess Louise of Orleans, and the duel that the prince of Artois provoked by raising the veil of the princess at a masked ball, caused much scandal. At the Revolution he fought with the army of the emigre s in Liege. Between the return of Napoleon at Elba and the battle of Waterloo, he headed with no success a royalist rising in La Vendee. In 1829 he appointed the Due d Aumale his heir; and exactly a year after he was found strangled with a handkerchief round his neck. A famous trial was the consequence, in which no verdict was given.  CONDÉ, (1765-1820), a distinguished Spanish Orientalist, was bom at Paraleja, in the province of Cuenca, and was educated at the xiniversity of Alcala. Intended by his father for the law, he found means to learn not only Gieek, but even Hebrew and Arabic. A sub ordinate post in the royal library enabled him at an early age to abandon his legal studies, and to devote himself entirely to literature; and in 1796 he published a volume of paraphrases from the Greek idyllists. This was followed, in 1799, by an edition of the Arabic text of Edrisi s De scription of Spain, accompanied with notes and a transla tion. Though by no means free from inaccuracies, this pub lication greatly advanced the editor s reputation. He was made a member of several learned societies, and was one of the commission of three appointed to continue the biblio graphical labours of Sanchez; and hereceivedroyalaid in the studies requisite for the composition of his next work, the famous History of Moorish Ride in Spain. On Napoleon s appearance in Madrid (1808), Conde identified himself with the party of France. Joseph Bonaparte made him librarian in chief at the royal library; and he had to leave his native land with the retreating invaders. After a re sidence of some years in Paris, spent in arranging material* for his history, Conde was at last permitted to return to Spain in 1818 or 1819. His countrymen, however, would not forgive him for his apostasy ; he sunk into poverty, and died soon after his return. His history (Historia de la Domwacion de los Arabes en Espana} was published by subscription. Only the first volume received the aKthcr s final corrections, the other two being compilations from his MSS. This work, although confused and inexact, a chronicle rather than a history, may yet be read with advantage ; an English translation (1854) occupies three volumes of Bohn s Standard Library. Notwithstanding its imperfections, the book opened an era in Spanish literature, mid Conde himself must be regarded as the earliest labourer 