PRINCES OF CONDé

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Original coat of arms of the House of Bourbon-Condé (until 1588).

New coat of arms of the House of Bourbon-Condé (from 1588).

'Prince of Condé' (named after Condé-en-Brie, now in the Aisne ''département'') is a historical French title, originally assumed in the mid-sixteenth century by the French Protestant leader, Louis of Bourbon (1530-1569), uncle of King Henry IV of France, and borne by his descendants. As a cadet branch of the French royal dynasty, the Princes of Condé played an important role in the politics and society of the kingdom until their extinction in 1830.
There was never a principality, sovereign or vassal, of Condé. The name merely served as the territorial source of a title adopted by Louis, who inherited from his father, Charles IV de Bourbon, Duke of Vendôme (1489-1537), the lordship of Condé-en-Brie in Champagne, consisting of the château of Condé and a dozen villages some fifty miles east of Paris. It had passed from the sires of Avesnes, to the Counts of St. Pol. When Marie de Luxembourg-St. Pol wed François, Count of Vendôme (1470-1495) in 1487, Condé-en-Brie became part of the Bourbon-Vendôme patrimony.
After the extinction in 1527 of the Dukes of Bourbon, François's son Charles (1489-1537) became head of the House of Bourbon, which traces its male-line descent from Robert, Count of Clermont (1256–1318), a younger son of France's Saint-King Louis IX. Of the sons of Charles of Vendôme, the eldest, Antoine, became King-consort of Navarre and fathered Henry IV. The youngest son, Louis inherited the lordships of Meaux, Nogent, Condé and Soissons as his appanage. Louis was titled Prince of Condé in a parliamentary document on 15 January 1557 and, without any legal authority beyond their dignity as princes of the Blood Royal, they continued to bear it for the next three centuries.
Louis, the first Prince, actually gave the Condé property to his youngest son, Charles (1566-1612), Count of Soissons. Charles's only son Louis (1604-1641) left Condé and Soissons to female heirs in 1624, who married into the Savoy and Orléans-Longueville dynasties.
Upon the accession to France's throne of Henry IV de Bourbon in 1589, his first cousin-once-removed Henry, Prince of Condé (1588–1646), was heir presumptive to the crown until 1601. Although Henry's own descendants thereafter held the senior positions within the royal family of Dauphin, Fils de France, and Petit-Fils de France, from 1589 to 1709 the Princes of Condé coincidentally held the rank at court of ''Premier Prince du Sang Royal'' (First Prince of the Blood Royal), to which was attached income, precedence, and ceremonial privilege (such as the exclusive right to be addressed as ''Monsieur le Prince'' at court). However, the position of ''Premier Prince'' devolved upon the Dukes of Orléans in 1710, so the seventh Prince, Louis III (1668–1710) declined to make use of the title, preferring instead to be known by his hereditary peerage of Duke of Bourbon, which still afforded him the right to be known as ''Monsieur le Duc''. Subsequent heirs likewise preferred the ducal to the princely title.
The eldest sons of the Princes of Condé used the title of Duke of Enghien, and were addressed as ''Monsieur le Duc'' until that style came to be pre-empted by their fathers, as Dukes of Bourbon, after 1709. The Princes of Condé were also the male-line ancestors of the branches of the Princes of Conti, which flourished 1629–1818, and of the Counts of Soissons, 1566–1641. Although both the sons and daughters of these branches of the House of Bourbon held the rank of prince/ss of the Blood Royal, it never became the custom in France for them to use prince or princess as a prefix to their Christian names. Rather, sons took a title of French nobility, count or duke, suffixed with their appanage (e.g. Count of Charolais), while unmarried daughters used one of their fathers' subsidiary properties to form a courtesy style, e.g. "Mademoiselle de Clermont".

Princes of Condé

Hotel de Condé