Henri de Bourbon, Prince of Condé (* 29 December 1552; † 5 March 1588) was the eldest son of Louis de Bourbon, a brother of Antoine de Bourbon and thus a direct cousin of Henri de Navarre, behind whom he was on the list of pretenders to the throne as a prince du sang. Condé accompanied Henri to the wedding in Paris. He survived the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre because he converted. In 1574 he managed to escape and raised an army with which he repeatedly fought against the Catholics. His first marriage was to Marie de Clèves, a sister-in-law of Guise. After her death, he married Charlotte Catherine de La Trémoille. Condé was wounded in the battle of Coutras (20 October 1587). The following year he succumbed to his injuries or – as rumours claimed – was poisoned by his wife.
The Massacre at Paris
Condé is in [Scene 1] as a guest at the wedding. In [Scene 3] he witnesses the assassination of Coligny and in [Scene 9] he accompanies Henri de Navarre first to Anjou and then to Charles IX. It may well be that Condé stayed with Henri de Navarre on the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre. Marguerite de Valois wrote in her memoirs that Navarre consulted all night with Huguenot noblemen in his room at the Louvre. He wanted to talk to his brother-in-law in the morning because of the assassination attempt on Coligny, so he decided in the morning hours that it was no longer worth sleeping and left for the ball game instead. On the way there, he might have learned about the outbreak of the massacre.1
- Knecht (2000)↩︎
