Duc D Enghien

Enghien, Duc D’ 

(Louis Antoine Henri de Bourbon Condé). Born Aug. 2, 1772, in Chantilly; died Mar. 21, 1804, in Vincennes. French prince. Last member of the house of Conde, a lateral branch of the Bourbons.

Enghien emigrated with his father and grandfather at the beginning of the French Revolution. In 1792 he began fighting against revolutionary France in the royalist army led by his grandfather (Conde’s Army). After the signing of the Treaty of Lunéville in 1801, he moved to Ettenheim in the duchy of Baden; he lived on a pension that he received from the British government.

After G. Cadoudal, the organizer of a plot against Napoleon Bonaparte, was arrested in early March 1804 and testified that the plotters had been awaiting the arrival of a French prince in France, Enghien was seized on Bonaparte’s orders. The seizure took place on Mar. 15, 1804, in Enghien’s home in Ettenheim; Enghien was taken to France by a detachment of French dragoons and was put on trial in the castle of Vincennes. Charged with receiving subsidies from Great Britain and with taking part in the plot against Napoleon (of which he was not guilty), he was convicted and shot. By having him executed, Napoleon hoped to intimidate the royalist supporters of the Bourbons.

Enghien’s execution hastened the creation of the third anti-French coalition in 1805.