The Death of the Prince of Condé at the Battle of Jarnac

The Death of the Prince of Condé at the Battle of Jarnac

Émile Bayard · Public domain

This engraving by Émile Bayard, produced around 1870 for Henri Martin's _Histoire de France populaire_, depicts the death of Prince **Louis I of Condé** at the Battle of Jarnac on 13 March 1569. Unhorsed after his mount fell, the prince surrendered but was executed by a pistol shot to the back of the neck by Montesquiou, captain of the guards of the Duke of Anjou — the brother of King Charles IX and future Henry III — under circumstances contemporaries judged treacherous. This battle, one of the heaviest defeats of the third War of Religion for the Huguenots, deprived the Protestant party of its political leader, leaving admiral Coligny alone at the head of the movement. Produced three centuries after the events for a major nineteenth-century work of popular history, this engraving testifies to the lasting place this episode occupied in the national memory of the Wars of Religion.

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