Louis II de Bourbon (1621-86), known as Le Grand Conde, stood alongside Richelieu and Mazarin as one of the key figures who shaped the reign of Louis XIV In response to profound upheavals in their world, his contemporaries looked to him to satisfy their need for a hero. Originally the warrior-hero par excellence, Conde was redefined by sucessive generations as the ideal subject of the absolutist state, as the epitome of civilized behaviour, and finally, as the exemplar of the triumph of faith over reason. In this first detailed study in English of Le Grand Conde's significance for his...