Personally ambitious, impatient of opposition, bitter in his enmities, his action and policy were influenced chiefly by his own ambitions and his own susceptibilities, rather than by the thought of what effect his action might have on the destinies of France.
He was a born general, and yet but a poor leader of men, one of the greatest military geniuses that the world has ever seen, and yet so full of faults, foibles, and weaknesses that, except from a military point of view, the term "the Great Conde" that posterity has given him is but little merited.

He had much brain and little heart.

Forced by his father into a marriage with a niece of Richelieu's, he treated her badly and cruelly, although she was devoted to him, and was in all respects an estimable woman and a true wife, and that in a court where virtue was rare indeed.
At supper that evening Enghien introduced Hector first to the Marshal de l'Hopital and then to the young nobles of his company.
"Monsieur Campbell," he said, "is the youngest of our party, and yet he is, as the Viscount of Turenne writes to me, one in whom he has the greatest confidence, and who has so carefully studied the art of war, and so much profited by his opportunities, that he would not hesitate to commit to him any command requiring at once courage, discretion, and military knowledge.

No one, gentlemen, could wish for a higher eulogium from a greater authority.

Turenne has lent him to me for the campaign, and indeed I feel grateful to him for so doing.