CHARACTER OF CONDE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLV, Issue 3980, 13 July 1915, Page 3

CHARACTER OF CONDE.

Reviewing a recent life of Condo (by the Hon. Eveline Godley), Tighe Hopkins writes, in an English contemporary:—The greatest military leader of the day was also one of the besthated men in France. A prince ol the blood, a cousin of Louis XIV., the vanity and arrogance of Conde made enemies for him everywhere. He bullied the- Parliament, was insolent to Anne of Austria, kept all manner of grandees waiting in his ante-cliamber, and yawned in tlieir faces when they were admitted. His pride was equal to Louis XlV.’s, and seldom was he willing to put on himself the restraint which made Louis the most polished and polite sovereign in Europe. A contemporary critic sums up his character “as a type of that of the French noble of his day. To he regarded as a brilliant conqueror in love and war, to hold the first place at Court, swaying the councils of his sovereign at his will, and receiving universal homage—these were tho selfish and only objects of his ambition.”

He was said, by one who knew him well, to he the hardest-hearted man in France. “Ruthless and savage (adds the same, authority), he was also an intriguer not less upserupulous, though incomparably less adroit, than his victorious enemy, the subtle Italian Cardinal. Thus ho had all the faults of the French noble on a colossal scale - he had also his virtues in a more extraordinary degree. Where all- were brave, he was conspicuous above all for a thoughtless courage which nothing could dismay, and to which, combined with tho intense enthusiasm and rapidity of thought that inspired him on the battlefioj .1, he owed the most brilliant of. his victories.”

■ Condo’s life of sixty-five years takes in the latter part of the Thirty Years’ War, the civil wars of Fronde, the Franco-Spanish war, and tho early part of the Dutch war; a life of battle, intrigue, rebellion, exile, and all manner of social activities, together with the customary affairs of gallantry.