Frederick the Great possessed several favourite horses, but he seems to have had a particular liking for a white gelding named Condé. In his last will the king ordered that Condé should be honourably tended until its death. Condé survived the king for 18 years and died in 1804. Its skeleton has been preserved up to the present day in the collections of the Veterinary Institute of the Free University of Berlin.

Why the horse was named Condé is a story of its own. Louis-Henri de Bourbon (1642-1740), 7th prince of the Condé family, was a firm believer in metempsychosis (transmigration of souls). He expected he would, after his death, be reborn as a horse. This is why he had magnificent Baroque stables built near his palace at Chantilly, 25 miles from Paris, by the architect, Jean Aubert. Constructing the stables started in 1719. Calling the horse Condé is obviously another proof of Frederick’s notorious irony.