In the midst, however, of all these unsolved problems Henri IV was suddenly struck down by the hand of Ravaillac, and as soon as the news reached Condé, who was already on his way to Spain, he immediately returned to France and made a temporary truce with the Regent, Marie de Medicis. But to his wife he seemed unforgiving, requesting her father, Henri de Montmorency, to keep her at Chantilly.
The family of Condé derived their origin from the French town Henegau, in Flanders, where a certain Godefroy de Condé owned part of the barony of Condé as early as 1200. In 1335 his great-granddaughter married Jacob de Bourbon, who in due course became the ancestor of the Royal branch of the Bourbons. His second son received for his inheritance the barony of Condé, and it was one of his descendants, Louis de Bourbon, who eventually took the title of "Prince de Condé." This Louis was one of the many sons of the Duc de Vendôme, only surviving brother of the famous Constable, Charles de Bourbon, who met a premature death at the Sack of Rome in 1527: a turbulent spirit who caused Henry VIII to say to Francis I, "_Mon frère de France a là un sujet dont je ne voudrais pas être le maître_."
The eldest brother Antoine de Bourbon, by his marriage with Jeanne d'Albret (daughter of Marguerite, sister of Francis I), became King of Navarre; and their son, Henri IV, succeeded to the throne of France on the death of Henri III de Valois. Louis de Bourbon, first Prince de Condé,[2] married Eleonore de Roye, granddaughter of Louise de Montmorency, a sister of the famous Constable Anne and mother of the Huguenot chief, Gaspard de Coligny. It was no doubt owing to the influence of his wife Eleonore--so named after the second wife of Francis I--that the Prince de Condé embraced the Protestant cause, and was thenceforward regarded by the Huguenots as one of their leaders. Eleonore was on terms of great intimacy with her sister-in-law, Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre, who had herself become a Protestant; and one may fairly assert that if Antoine de Bourbon, King of Navarre, and his brother Louis de Condé, had in any way equalled their noble wives in pious sentiment and religious fervour, the Protestant Faith in France would never have been nipped in the bud, but would have become as firmly established there as it did in England and Germany.