Henri I de Bourbon, Prince of Condé (29 December 1552 – 5 March 1588) was a French
Prince du Sang and
Huguenot
The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Be ...
general like his more prominent father,
Louis I, Prince of Condé
Louis I de Bourbon, Prince of Condé (7 May 1530 – 13 March 1569) was a prominent Huguenot leader and general, the founder of the Condé branch of the House of Bourbon. Coming from a position of relative political unimportance during the r ...
.
Life
Henri was the eldest son of Louis I de Bourbon and
Eléanor de Roye, daughter and heiress of Charles de Roye, Count of Roucy. Of the eight children in his family, he and his brother
François, Prince of Conti, were the only ones to have children.

Following the death of his father, Louis, at the
Battle of Jarnac
The Battle of Jarnac on 13 March 1569 was an encounter during the French Wars of Religion between the Catholic forces of Marshal Gaspard de Saulx, sieur de Tavannes, and the Huguenots led by Louis I de Bourbon, prince de Condé The two forces met ...
,
Jeanne d'Albret
Jeanne d'Albret ( Basque: ''Joana Albretekoa''; Occitan: ''Joana de Labrit''; 16 November 1528 – 9 June 1572), also known as Jeanne III, was Queen of Navarre from 1555 to 1572.
Jeanne was the daughter of Henry II of Navarre and Margar ...
introduced Henri and her own son, Henry of Navarre, as pages to
Admiral Coligny
Gaspard de Coligny (16 February 1519 – 24 August 1572), Seigneur de Châtillon, was a French nobleman, Admiral of France, and Huguenot leader during the French Wars of Religion. He served under kings Francis I and Henry II during the Ita ...
. Since both were ''princes of the blood'', this act gave the Huguenot cause legitimacy.
At the
Battle of Moncontour on 3 October 1569, Henri was wounded in the face and was forced to retreat. Attending the wedding of Henry of Navarre and the subsequent
massacre of Protestants, Henri was forced to convert to Catholicism, face death or life imprisonment. In his escape from Paris, Henri was joined by Theodore Beza, who published his ''Du droit des magistrats sur leurs sujets'' in Germany.
By 1573 the Huguenot cause had made some political gains in the
Midi
MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and re ...
, consequently Henri was assigned "governor general and protector". Following the
Peace of Monsieur, he was restored to his governorship of Picardy. During the sixth war of religion, he commanded the forces that captured Brouage and allowed for English aid for the Huguenots. And, it would be Henri, angered by Catholic resistance to his governorship of Picardy, who started the seventh war of religion by seizing the town of
La Fère
La Fère () is a commune in the Aisne department in Hauts-de-France in France.
Population
See also
* Communes of the Aisne department
The following is a list of the 799 Communes of France, communes in the French Departments of France, de ...
in November 1579.
In 1588, Henri died at
Saint-Jean-d'Angély
Saint-Jean-d'Angély (; Saintongeais: ''Sént-Jhan-d'Anjhéli'') is a commune in the Charente-Maritime department in southwestern France.
The commune has its historical origins in the Abbey of Saint-Jean-d'Angély.
Royal abbey
Founded in the ...
after a brief illness.
Marriages
He married twice, first to his cousin,
Marie of Cleves
Marie may refer to:
People Name
* Marie (given name)
* Marie (Japanese given name)
* Marie (murder victim), girl who was killed in Florida after being pushed in front of a moving vehicle in 1973
* Marie (died 1759), an enslaved Cree person in T ...
. With Marie, Henri had one child:
* Catherine (1574–1595), Marquise d'Isles
Secondly, Henri married his
second cousin once removed
Most generally, in the lineal kinship system used in the English-speaking world, a cousin is a type of familial relationship in which two relatives are two or more familial generations away from their most recent common ancestor. Commonly, ...
,
Charlotte Catherine de La Tremoille
Charlotte ( ) is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Located in the Piedmont (United States), Piedmont region, it is the county seat of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, Meckl ...
(1568–1629), daughter of
Louis III de La Trémoille
Louis III de La Trémoille (1521 – 25 March 1577), 1st Duke of Thouars, was a sixteenth-century French nobleman of the La Tremoille family. He was the son of François II de La Trémoille and his wife, Anne de Laval.
Louis accompanied the d ...
. They had at least two children:
*
Éléonore de Bourbon
Éléonore de Bourbon-Condé (30 April 1587 – 20 January 1619) was the daughter of Henri I de Bourbon and his second wife Charlotte Catherine de la Tremoille. Éléonore's father was the first cousin of King Henry IV of France. She was a ...
(1587–1619), married in 1606 to
Philip William, Prince of Orange
Philip William, Prince of Orange (19 December 1554 in Buren, Gelderland – 20 February 1618) was the eldest son of William the Silent by his first wife Anna van Egmont. He became Prince of Orange in 1584 and Knight of the Golden Fleece in 1599.
...
.
*
Henri II, Prince of Condé (1588–1646)
References
Sources
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Henri 01 de Bourbon, Prince de Conde
1552 births
1588 deaths
People from La Ferté-sous-Jouarre
House of Bourbon-Condé
Huguenots
French people of the French Wars of Religion
Princes of Condé
16th-century peers of France