[close] Louis-Antoine-Henri de Bourbon-Condé, duc d'Enghien (pronounced /dɑ̃ɡɛ̃/; the i is silent) (2 August 1772 – 21 March 1804) was a relative of the Bourbon monarchs of France. More famous for his death than for his life, he was executed on trumped-up charges during the French Consulate.
The Duke was the only son of Louis Henry II, Prince of Condé, and of Bathilde d'Orléans. As a member of the reigning House of Bourbon, he was a Prince du Sang
Early in 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul of France, heard news which seemed to connect the young duke with the Cadoudal-Pichegru conspiracy then being tracked by the French police. The news ran that the duke was in company with Charles François Dumouriez and had made secret journeys into France. This was false; the acquaintance was Thumry, a harmless old man, and the duke had no dealings with either Cadoudal or Pichegru. Napoleon gave orders for the seizure of the duke. French dragoons crossed the Rhine secretly, surrounded his house and brought him to Strasbourg (15 March 1804), and thence to the Château de Vincennes, near Paris. There a military commission of French colonels presided by General Hulin was hastily convened to try him.

Meanwhile, Bonaparte had found out the true facts of the case, and the accusations were hastily changed. The duke was now charged chiefly with bearing arms against France in the late war, and with intending to take part in the new coalition then proposed against France — these latter charges were more accurate than the original ones; the argument is whether or not his actions were sufficiently severe to merit execution. Claims that he presented a threat to the life of the First Consul are probably exaggerated. The military commission hastily and most informally drew up the act of condemnation, being incited thereto by orders from Anne Jean Marie René Savary, who had come charged with instructions. Savary intervened to prevent any chance of an interview between the condemned and the First Consul, and, on 21 March, the duke was shot in the moat of the castle, near a grave which had already been prepared.
The duc d'Enghien was the last descendent of the House of Condé; his grandfather and father died after him, but without producing further heirs. In 1816, his bones were exhumed and placed in the chapel of the castle. It is now known that Joséphine and Madame de Rémusat had begged Bonaparte for mercy towards the duke; but nothing would bend his will. The blame which the apologists of the emperor have thrown on Talleyrand or Savary is undeserved.[citation needed] On his way to St. Helena and at Longwood, he asserted that, in the same circumstances, he would do the same again; he inserted a similar declaration in his will.

The judicial murder of Enghien shocked the aristocrats of Europe, who still remembered the bloodletting of the Revolution and who lost whatever conditional respect they may have entertained for Napoleon. Either Antoine Boulay de la Meurthe (deputy from Meurthe in the Corps législatif) or Napoleon's chief of police, Joseph Fouché, said about his execution "C'est pire qu'un crime, c'est une faute.", a statement often rendered in English as "It was worse than a crime; it was a mistake." The statement is also sometimes attributed to French diplomat Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord. Sometimes the quote is given as, "It was worse than a crime; it was a blunder." [close]