In his will, Louis XIV. had named the Duc de Bourbon a member of the Council of Regency, as soon as he should reach the age of twenty-four; but on the death of _le Grand Monarque_, his wishes were immediately set aside, and the Regent, the Duc d’Orléans, proceeded to appoint the Council himself, with _Monsieur le Duc_ as its president. Apart, however, from the share he took in the campaign against the legitimated sons of the late King, the Duc du Maine and the Comte de Toulouse, with the object of reducing them to the rank of simple peers of the realm, the prince appears to have occupied himself very little with politics during the first years of the Regency, and confined his activities to the financial speculations in which half Paris was then engaging. With so much ardour, indeed, did he espouse the cause of the Scotch adventurer Law that he was accused of being one of the authors of the “System” which involved the country in such disaster. Any way, he had the courage to defend the fallen idol to the very last, and when Law, his life being no longer safe in Paris, made his escape to Flanders, it was one of the Duc de Bourbon’s carriages which conveyed him to the frontier. Very wealthy before the “System,” his great fortune was materially increased by successful speculation. In 1720 it was computed at not less than sixty million livres. The character of the prince is very diversely estimated by his contemporaries. Some writers, such as Marais, Barbier, and Duclos, judge him severely, and describe him as hasty in temper, brusque in his manners, debauched, dishonourable, rapacious, and entirely destitute of political capacity. Others, like Saint-Simon and the Dowager-Duchess d’Orléans, recognize in him a certain merit. The former acknowledges that, with all his faults, he had “an indomitable obstinancy, an inflexible firmness;” while the mother of the Regent, whose opinions at least possess the advantage of being consistently sincere, writes of him in 1719: “_Monsieur le Duc_ has many good qualities and many friends. He is polished and knows how to behave well, but his attainments are not very extensive. Nor is he better informed, but there is a loftiness and a nobility in his character, and he knows how to uphold his rank.” Louis Henri de Bourbon-Condé, in fact, was neither the odious nor the incapable person whom certain historians have depicted. His courage was indisputable; if he was rapacious, he was also generous and open-handed; if he was a bad enemy, he was also a faithful friend; he possessed cultured tastes, and beneath his love of pleasure and his apparent indifference to public affairs he concealed qualities which only required to be stimulated into activity to make of him, if not a statesman, at least a formidable party-leader.