Enghien, LOUIS ANTOINE HENRI DE BOURBON, DUC D'

Enghien, LOUIS ANTOINE HENRI DE BOURBON, DUC D', only son of the Duc de Bourbon, was born at Chantilly, 2d August 1772. In 1792 he entered the corps of émigrés assembled by his grandfather, the Prince of Condé, on the Rhine, and commanded the vanguard from 1796 until 1799. At the peace of Lunéville, in 1801, he went to reside at Ettenheim in Baden. When the Bourbon conspiracy, headed by Cadoudal, Pichegru, &c., against the life and authority of Bonaparte, was discovered at Paris, the latter chose to believe that the Duc d'Enghien was privy to it, and unscrupulously resolved to seize the person of the duke. On the night of the 14-15th March 1804 the neutral territory of Baden was violated, and the duke, with two attendants, was captured, and carried prisoner to Strasburg, and thence to Paris and Vincennes. On the early morning of 20th March he was tried before a military commission, consisting of eight officers, and after a five hours' examination was condemned to death. Half-an-hour later, between four and five, he was shot in the castle moat, and buried in the grave already dug for him. So cruel and audaciously criminal an act has fixed a deep stigma on the character of Bonaparte. M. Dupin published the records of the trial, and showed the illegality of the proceedings of the military commission. This illegality was publicly acknowledged by General Hullin, the president of the court. Thiers as far as possible exculpates Bonaparte, while Lanfrey adopts the most adverse verdict, and Welschinger lays much of the guilt on Talleyrand. Fouché said that it was worse than a crime—it was a blunder. After the Restoration, the bones of the judicially murdered duke were re-interred in the chapel of the castle of Vincennes. See Le Duc d'Enghien, by Henri Welschinger (Paris, 1888).