| Louis-Henri
II (1756-1830)
Prince de Condé, duc de Bourbon. His parents: Louis-Joseph
and Godefride de Rohan.
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He was the last of
the princes of Condé, whose unfortunate son and sole heir, the Duc
d'Enghien, was tried and shot for treason on Napoleon's orders in 1804,
ending the princely line. 
He married in 1770 Louise-Marie-Thérèse d'Orléans, who gave him a son, Louis-Antoine, duc d'Enghien, but they parted in 1780. Emigrating with his father and son in 1789 at the outbreak of the Revolution, he went in 1795 to England to prepare the abortive expedition of the Comte d'Artois (the future Charles X) to the Vendée. Returning to France in 1814, he tried to organize resistance in Anjou during the Hundred Days, then escaped to Spain until the Second Restoration. |
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| His mistress, Sophie Dawes [later Baroness de
Feuchère], the daughter of a drunken fisherman named Dawes, grew
up in the workhouse, went up to London
as a servant, and became Louis-Henri's mistress. She was ambitious, and the prince had her well educated not only in modern languages but in Greek and Latin. He took her to Paris and, to prevent scandal and to qualify her to be received at court, had her married in 1818 to Adrien-Victor de Feuchères, a major in the royal guards. |
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 The
prince provided her dowry and made her husband his aide-de-camp and a baron.
The baroness, pretty and clever, became a person of consequence at the
court of Louis XVIII. Her husband, finally discovered the relations between
his wife and Condé, who he had been assured was her father; he left
her and told the king, who thereupon forbade her appearance at court. Thanks to her influence, however, Condé was induced in 1829 to sign a will bequeathing about 10,000,000 francs to her, and the rest of his estate-more than 66,000,000 francs-to the Duke d'Aumale, fourth son of Louis-Philippe. Again she was in high favour. Charles X received her at court, Talleyrand visited her, her niece married a marquis, and her nephew was made a baron. |
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| Condé, wearied by his mistress's nagging and half-pleased by the advances made him by the government of July 1830, had made up his mind to leave France secretly. On his father's death in 1818 he had inherited but did not assume the Condé title. As he had no heirs, he left the residue of the Condé inheritance (after splendid bequests to his mistress, Sophia Dawes) to the duc d'Aumale. |
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| When on 27 Aug 1830, he was found hanging dead from his window, in his bedroom at Saint-Leu, the magnificent estate that he had bought six years earlier ; the baroness was suspected and an inquiry was held, but the evidence of death being the result of criminal means appearing insufficient, she was not prosecuted. Hated as she was alike by legitimists and republicans, she no longer found life in Paris agreeable and returned to London, where she died 10 years later. | |
