Army of Condé

The Army of Condé was an army of émigrés raised by King Louis XVI of France's cousin, Louis Joseph de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, to fight against the French Revolution. He had fled from France to escape possible arrest or death almost immediately after the fall of the Bastille, and by 1791, he had established himself at Coblenz, Germany, where he raised the army that bore his name. Among its members were Condé's grandson, the Duc d'Enghien and the two sons of Louis XVI's younger brother, the Comte d'Artois, and so the army was sometimes also called the Princes' Army.

This army participated in the French Revolutionary Wars from 1792 to 1797 alongside Austria, initially sharing in the unsuccessful invasion of France by the Allies under Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick. Other than the princes, it also included many young aristocrats such as the Duc de Richelieu, the Duc de Blacas and Chateaubriand, the Duc de Choiseul, the Comte de Langéron, the Comte de Damas, the Comte de Montlosier and the Vicomte de Bonald.

The "Army of Condé" initially fought in conjunction with the Austrians. Later, due to differences with the Austrian plan of attack, however, the Prince de Condé entered with his corps into English pay in 1795. In 1796, the army fought in Swabia. In 1797, Austria signed the Treaty of Campo Formio with the First French Republic, formally ending its hostilities against the French. With the end of the First Coalition, the army transferred into the service of the Russian tsar, Paul I and was stationed in Poland, returning in 1799 to the Rhine under Alexander Suvorov. In 1800, when Russia left the Second Coalition, the army re-entered English service and fought in Bavaria.

The corps was disbanded in 1801 without having achieved much.

ee also

* House of Bourbon