Execution of the Duke of Enghien — 21 mars 1804

Seized on Baden territory in defiance of the law of nations, the Duke of Enghien, last of the Condés, was tried by night at Vincennes and shot at dawn. The royalist plot of which he was accused was never established; the execution was meant to end conspiracies by striking at the Bourbons. It scandalised the courts of Europe and left a stain that Napoleon was still defending at Saint Helena.

A kidnapping in neutral territory

At the beginning of 1804, the discovery of the Cadoudal and Pichegru plot, aimed at seizing or killing the First Consul, convinced Bonaparte that a Bourbon prince was waiting at the frontier. Police reports pointed to Louis-Antoine de Bourbon-Condé, Duke of Enghien, living at Ettenheim in Baden.

In the night of 14-15 March 1804, three hundred dragoons crossed the Rhine, surrounded the house and seized the duke on the territory of a neutral state — a breach of the law of nations that every court in Europe would note.

A trial by night

Taken to the château of Vincennes on 20 March, the prisoner appeared that same night before a hastily assembled military commission. He admitted having borne arms against France and sought a British command, but denied any part in Cadoudal's plot — which the investigation never established.

Condemned to death around two in the morning, he was shot in the castle ditch at daybreak on 21 March 1804 and buried on the spot. His request for an interview with the First Consul was not passed on.

"Worse than a crime"

The execution scandalised monarchical Europe and broke relations with Tsar Alexander, who went into mourning. In France, on the contrary, it reassured the purchasers of national lands and the regicides: power had shown it would not come to terms with the Bourbons.

The phrase that passed into posterity — it is worse than a crime, it is a blunder — has been attributed in turn to Fouché, Talleyrand and Boulay de la Meurthe, without its authorship ever being established. Six weeks later the Senate proclaimed the hereditary Empire.