The Prince de Condé spent twenty years of his life in embellishing and improving his magnificent residence at Chantilly and the surrounding domain. Here he entertained the German Emperor, Joseph II., the Emperor Paul, when Grand Duke Cesarovitch, Gustavus, King of Sweden, the Duke of Brunswick, and many other potentates. He was a generous landlord and a public benefactor during the famine (1775); he bought up, at any and every price, all the grain he could possibly obtain, this corn being re-sold to the people at the usual price given in prosperous years for wheat. Governor of Burgundy, that province owed to his efforts new roads and bridges, the encouragement of local art, and the foundation of useful and literary institutions. In 1787, as President of the Assembly of Notables, his discourses were in favour of order, economy and reform. Nevertheless, he was one of the first objects of attack by the Revolutionary party, and menaced on every side. Very shortly after the destruction of the Bastille he departed with his family from France. He went first to Austrian Flanders, and later to Turin, where he helped to combine the movement which brought about the counter revolution in Lyons and Southern France. He was chosen to command the body of French noblemen and gentlemen known as _L’armée du Rhin_ or _Des Emigrés_. A decree of the Assembly, 1791, deprived him of an annuity of £24,000 a year (granted by the State to the House of Condé in exchange for the territory of Clemontain). His property at Chantilly was confiscated, and, as he was without resources, he sold all his plate, diamonds and jewels. When the civil war began he commanded a body of five thousand men. At the close of the first campaign he possessed no funds beyond a sum of money the Empress Catherine sent him as a present. Shortly after this he entered regularly into the service of the Emperor of Austria and received the pay of an ordinary general. In the campaign of 1793 the Prince de Condé performed many brilliant feats of strategy, entering Alsace and occupying Berstein; the enemy drove his troops to Hagenau, and he marched on foot at the head of his regiment and retook Berstein by a bayonet charge. During the two following campaigns, Condé’s army was occupied only in guarding the Rhine. He suffered from the jealousy and malevolence of the Austrian commanders, and was supplied with bad provisions and spoilt flour; but the Prince ordered his table to be served with similar bread to that of the soldiers.