40: 



CONDE 



CONDENSER 



struggling for legal recognition. To destroy the 

 power of the Guises, and further the interests 

 of the Huguenots, Conde was induced to join 

 the Conspiracy of Amboise (1560). The plot mis- 

 carried, and Cond escaped execution only by 

 the death of the king, which by necessitating the 

 regency of the queen-mother, Catharine de Medicis, 

 the bitter enemy of the Guises, changed the policy 

 of the country. Concessions were now granted to 

 the Huguenots, and Conde was made governor 1 of 

 Picardy. The massacre of Huguenots at Vassy by 

 Guise (1562), however, led to the first civil war, 

 and Conde and Coligny gathered an army of 

 Huguenots. At the battle of Dreux, Conde was 

 defeated and taken prisoner, but the assassination 

 of Guise soon afterwards made possible the Pacifi- 

 cation of Amboise (1563), by which Cond6 was 

 released, and the Huguenots were granted liberty 

 of worship. This concession being gradually with- 

 drawn by Catharine de Medicis, the second 

 Huguenot war broke out in 1567. In the south 

 of France Conde had coins struck with the inscrip- 

 tion : ' Louis XIII. , first Christian king of France.' 

 But at the battle of Jarnac (1569) Conde was 

 defeated and taken prisoner, and immediately after 

 his surrender, shot dead by his bitterest enemy, the 

 Baron de Montesquiou. Conde Avas a brave leader, 

 and exceedingly popular with his soldiers, but he 

 had neither the lofty character nor the genius of 

 Coligny. His great-grandson : 



Louis II. DE BOURBON, PRINCE DE COND*!, 

 known as ' the Great Conde,' was born September 

 8, 1621. Carefully educated by the Jesuits in their 

 college at Bourges, Conde acquired a taste for litera- 

 ture, which he retained all through his life. In his 

 seventeenth year he was introduced at court, and 

 the year following was intrusted by his father with 

 his government of Burgundy. By his marriage, 

 much against his will, to the niece of Richelieu, he 

 gained the support of that minister, and for a time 

 of Richelieu's successor, Mazarin. At this period 

 the Thirty Years' War was still raging, and since 

 1635 France had been engaged in a protracted 

 struggle with Spain. In 1643, when he was only 

 twenty-two, Conde was appointed to the chief com- 

 mand of the French forces, and in his first cam- 

 paign defeated the Spaniards at Rocroi in the most 

 brilliant of all his victories. As for more than a 

 century the Spanish armies had been deemed all 

 but invincible, this victory placed Conde at once in 

 the first rank of commanders. In 1644, with his 

 great rival Turenne as his subordinate, in a series 

 of engagements he inflicted at Freibourg a .severe 

 check on the Bavarian general, Mercy ; and in the 

 following year again defeated the same general at 

 Nordlingen. These successes were gained at an 

 immense cost of life, and in the matter of strategical 

 skill have been disapproved by subsequent military 

 authorities. By the death of his father in 1646, 

 Conde, who had hitherto been known as the Due 

 d'Enghien, became the head of the house, and was 

 thenceforth addressed as Monsieur le Prince. The 

 capture of Dunkirk in 1646, and a great victory at 

 Lens in 1648, in which the famous Spanish infantry 

 were again completely beaten, were the other 

 achievements of Conde during this the first period 

 of his career. The war of the Fronde, occasioned 

 by the quarrels of the court and the parliament, 

 had now broken out, and Conde was required to 

 support the power of the queen and Mazarin. With 

 the aid of Conde the court party came to terms 

 with the Fronde ; but Conde himself, who after 

 this service expected to be chief in the state, gave 

 such offence to the queen and Mazarin by his 

 arrogant conduct, that they had himself and his 

 brothers arrested and imprisoned for a year at 

 Vincennes, a proceeding approved alike by the 

 Fronde and the people of Paris. Popular feeling, 



however, soon changed in his favour, and grew so 

 strong against Mazarin that he was forced to leave 

 Paris and set Conde at liberty. But Mazarin's 

 power over the queen was still absolute, and Conde,. 

 disappointed once more in his ambition, and finding 

 the queen, Fronde, and people once more all against 

 him, retired to Guienne, and raised an army on the 

 plea of rescuing the young king, Louis XIV., from 

 bad advisers. Thus began what is known as the 

 third war of the Fronde. At Bleneau he defeated the 

 royal troops, but was at length forced by Turenne 

 to make for Paris. Here in the Faubourg St 

 Antoine he sustained a defeat which deprived him 

 of all hope of ultimate success, and a peace was 

 concluded in 1653. The terms of this peace, 

 however, were such as Conde would not accept, 

 and deprived of all support in France, he went 

 over to Spain, and for six years served in all 

 the campaigns against his country. Hampered 

 in his action by the Spanish generals, he could 

 effect little against the strategy of Turenne. The 

 battle of the Dunes, near Dunkirk, where Turenne, 

 aided by 6000 of Cromwell's Ironsides, inflicted 

 a severe defeat on the Spaniards, put an end to 

 the war. At the peace of the Pyrenees (1659) 

 which followed, it was said that the affairs of Conde 

 were more difficult to settle than those of Europe. 

 So formidable was he deemed, that the young king 

 found it advisable to restore him to all his honour* 

 and estates, and even to his government of Bur- 

 gundy. Retiring to his estate at Chantilly, Conde- 

 remained here till his services were required in 

 another war between France and Spain, when at his 

 suggestion and by his action, Franche Comte was. 

 overrun and conquered (1668). The next year, on 

 the resignation of Casimir, king of Poland, Conde 

 would probably have been chosen his successor but- 

 for the jealousy of Louis. In 1674 he fought his 

 last battle. This was at Seneffe in Belgium, where 

 he had for his opponent William, Prince of Orange. 

 The battle lasted seventeen hours, and both sides 

 claimed the victory. On the death of Turenne in 

 1675, Conde succeeded him in the command of the 

 army on the Rhine, but his health was now such as. 

 to render him unfit for active service. Retiring 

 again to Chantilly, he lived there till his death on 

 1 1th December 1686, associating much with the great 

 men of letters of the period, Moliere, Racine, Boileau, 

 and La Bruyere. Conde had all his life been noted 

 as a scoffer at religion, but the year before his death 

 he publicly announced his conversion. He took 

 especial pleasure in the society of Bossuet, whose 

 oration on his death, regarded as one of the master- 

 pieces of French literature, has served ever since to 

 throw a deceptive lustre round the name of Conde. 

 He had no political genius, and even as a- 

 commander he owed his successes more to the fiery 

 energy of his character than to sheer military 

 talent. There is no ground to suppose that in his 

 public career he was influenced by any other 

 motive than selfish ambition ; and in his private 

 character, though he could on occasion display a 

 certain magnanimity, he was in intense degree 

 self-willed and overbearing. When all deductions 

 have been made, however, Conde still remains in 

 the first rank of the Frenchmen of his century. 



See Mahon's Life of Conde, Fitzpatrick's The Great 

 fonde and the Period of the Fronde ; Histoire des Princes- 

 de Conde, by the Due d'Aumale (7 vols. 1862-95); also 

 the various Memo-ires of the period, such as those of 

 Cardinal de Retz, Madame de Motteville, &c. 



Condenser is an apparatus in which aqueous 

 or other water is condensed into a liquid form 

 either by the introduction of cold water, as in the 

 condensing Steam-engine (q.v.), or as in distilla- 

 tion, by placing the condenser in another vessel, 

 through which a current of cold water passes. 

 When the water-supply is deficient at sea or on the 



