Departure of Anjou for Poland--Condé, compromised in the
conspiracy of the “Politiques,” escapes to Strasbourg, where he
reverts to the Protestant faith--Death of Charles IX., who is
succeeded by the King of Poland--Flight of the new King from
Cracow--Death of the Princesse de Condé: extravagant grief
of Henry III.--Condé invades France at the head of an army
of German mercenaries--The “_Paix de Monsieur_”--Condé
endeavours to establish himself in the West of France--Formation
of the League and renewal of the civil war--Condé refuses the
hand of Mlle. de Vaudémont, Henry III.’s sister-in-law--His
second Odyssey--He commands the Huguenot forces in Poitou and
Saintonge--He proposes for the hand of Charlotte Catherine de
la Trémoille--Letter of Mlle. de la Trémoille to the prince--He
visits her at the Château of Taillebourg--Disastrous expedition
of Condé against Angers--He is obliged to take refuge in
Guernsey.
The Court escorted the King of Poland as far as La Fère, Condé
accompanying it. On taking leave of the Prince, his Majesty informed
him that he had obtained for him the restoration of his government of
Picardy and permission to proceed thither whenever he wished. This
pretended favour was really a precautionary measure, for fresh troubles
were brewing, and Catherine desired to separate Condé and the King of
Navarre, and deprive the latter, who was erroneously believed to be as
vacillating as his father, of the support and advice of his kinsman.
However, Condé was well-pleased to turn his back on the Court, where he
had suffered so many humiliations, and at the end of the autumn he set
out for Amiens.
The Massacre of St. Bartholomew had been not only a crime, but a
blunder of the most fatal kind. It had shocked and horrified the
moderate Catholic party--the “Politiques” as they had now begun to
be called--and convinced their leaders, the Montmorencies, that the
Queen-Mother intended their ruin after that of the Bourbons and
the Châtillons. The result was a _rapprochement_ between the
“Politiques” and the Huguenots, which, by the beginning of 1574,
had developed into a vast conspiracy enveloping nearly the whole of
France. Its secret head was Catherine’s youngest son, the ambitious
and treacherous François, Duc d’Alençon, who had long chafed under the
subjection to which his brother’s dislike and his mother’s indifference
had relegated him, and was determined to assert himself at all hazards.
The plans of the conspirators were carefully laid. At the end of
February, risings were to take place simultaneously in Normandy,
Picardy, Champagne, Poitou, Dauphiné, Guienne, and Languedoc; while
a bold Huguenot chief, the Sieur de Guitry-Bertichères, with several
hundred men, was to force the gates of the Château of Saint-Germain,
where the Court was then residing, and carry off Alençon and the King
of Navarre, who would at once put themselves at the head of the rebels.
Unfortunately for them, Guitry’s enterprise, on which the success of
the whole movement hinged, failed through his own precipitation. Owing
to some misunderstanding, he anticipated the day, and appeared with his
men in the environs of Saint-Germain some time before he was expected.
Catherine’s suspicions were at once aroused, and her remarkable skill
in unravelling the tangled threads of even the most complicated
intrigues soon placed her in possession of the whole plot. In the early
hours of the following morning (23–24 February), she hurried the Court
off to Paris. Charles IX., travelling in a litter, surrounded by the
Swiss in battle-array, as during the retreat from Meaux, while she
herself followed in her coach with Navarre and Alençon, whom she was
determined not to allow out of her sight.
Meanwhile, the rebels had risen in arms and issued a manifesto
demanding various reforms, though it was obvious that these were only
a cloak for their real intentions, and that, should the rising prove
successful, its effect would be to deprive the King of Poland of the
succession to the throne, which must speedily become vacant, in favour
of the more accommodating Alençon. Catherine, however, invested with
full powers by the illness of the King, took prompt and energetic
measures to meet the danger. Three armies were despatched against the
rebels of Normandy, the South, and Central France; Navarre and Alençon,
who were found to be planning an attempt at escape, with the connivance
of two of the latter’s favourites, La Môle and Coconnas, were shut up
in the keep of the Château of Vincennes, and a commission appointed to
examine them; while the two gentlemen were brought to trial on a charge
of high treason, condemned and executed; the Maréchaux de Montmorency
and de Cossé, who had had the temerity to come to Court to endeavour to
justify their conduct, were seized and thrown into the Bastille, and
orders were sent to Amiens for the arrest of Condé.
Condé had not yet been guilty of any overt act of rebellion; but he
had been compromised by the avowals of the pusillanimous Alençon, who
had made a full confession, and also by those wrung from Coconnas in
the anguish of torture.[99] Warned in time, however, he succeeded in
affecting his escape, and fled to Strasburg, where he lost no time in
returning publicly to the faith from which in his heart he had never
wavered. His wife, to whom he had been reconciled, and who was three
months pregnant, he left behind him. They were never to meet again.
On 31 May of that year, the unhappy Charles IX. expired, “rejoicing
that he left no heir in such an age, since he knew of his own sad
experience how wretched was the state of a child-king, and how wretched
the kingdom over which a child ruled.” On the previous day, he had
publicly declared the King of Poland his lawful heir and successor,
and his mother Regent until his return to France; and Catherine wrote,
urging her favourite son to return without delay and take possession of
his birthright.
The latter needed no pressing. Although he had only occupied the throne
of Poland a few months, he was already heartily tired of his kingdom,
both the people and the customs of which were utterly distasteful to
one of his indolent and luxurious temperament; and he was impatiently
awaiting the event which should recall him to France--and the Princesse
de Condé. Absence, so far from diminishing, had only served to increase
his devotion to that lady. “I love her so greatly, as you know,” he
wrote to one of his confidants at the Court, “that you must certainly
inform me of everything that befalls her, for the sake of the tears
that I shed for her. But I will speak no more of her, for love is
intoxicated.” And he employed a good part of his time in inditing to
her passionate letters, written in his own royal blood!
So soon as the news of his brother’s death reached him, he quitted
his sombre palace at Cracow, secretly, in the middle of the night,
accompanied by some of his French attendants, and rode without drawing
rein until he reached the Moravian frontier, hotly pursued by his
indignant subjects, who, singularly enough, had conceived for him a
great affection, and wished to compel him to remain their ruler. The
explanation he subsequently condescended to give of this escapade, was
that the condition of France was so disturbed that even a week’s delay
might imperil his succession. Nevertheless, having once shaken the dust
of his adopted country off his feet, he seemed in no hurry to return
to his own; he preferred to travel by way of Vienna and Turin, where
he extravagantly rewarded the hospitality of the Duke of Savoy by the
restoration of Pinerolo, the gate of Italy; and it was not until the
beginning of September that he turned his steps towards France.
At Bourgoin, he was met by Catherine and the greater part of the Court.
The Queen-Mother brought with her the King of Navarre and Alençon, whom
she had set at liberty, having first extracted an oath from them that
they would “neither attempt nor originate anything to the detriment of
his Majesty the King and the state of his realm.” They were still,
however, kept under very close observation by her Majesty, and treated
very much like naughty schoolboys.
After a short stay at Bourgoin, the Court proceeded to Lyons, where
it remained for several weeks, its sojourn being marked by splendid
festivities. In the middle of October, a sad event came to interrupt
these rejoicings: news arrived that, on the 13th, the Princesse de
Condé had died in Paris, in giving birth to a daughter.[100]
Brantôme assures us that Henri III. had fully resolved to petition the
Pope to annul the marriage of Marie de Clèves and Condé--“which he
would not have refused, since he was so great a king, and for divers
other reasons that one wots of”--and to make the lady his queen; and it
would seem that the princess was not indisposed to such an arrangement.
However that may be, his Majesty exhibited the most extravagant grief
at the death of his inamorata. On opening the letter which contained
the fatal news, he instantly fell down in a dead faint, and was carried
to his apartments, which he caused to be draped in black velvet, and
where he remained shut up for several days, for the first two of which
he persistently refused to touch either food or wine. When he, at
length, reappeared, he was clad in the deepest mourning, and the points
of his doublet and even the ribbons of his shoes were garnished with
little death’s-heads. From that moment little death’s-heads in gold,
coral, or crystal became the trinket _à la mode_.
From being the life and soul of every fête and pleasure-party, the
grief-stricken King now plunged into the most extravagant devotion,
and at Avignon, to which the Court had removed, with the idea of
affording him some distraction from his sorrow, nothing would content
him but to join the Flagellants, a sect very strong in the Papal city,
who, dressed in sackcloth, nightly paraded the streets by torchlight,
chanting the _Miserere_ and scourging one another with whips.
The Court and the Royal Family were compelled to follow suit; and the
Cardinal de Lorraine, unaccustomed to such mortification of the flesh,
caught a chill which caused his death.
Theatrical as was Henri III.’s grief it was, nevertheless, of a more
durable nature than such exhibitions usually are; and, some months
later, the Cardinal de Bourbon was obliged to have the body of the
Princesse de Condé removed from the vaults of Saint-Germain-des-Prés,
in which it had been temporarily deposited, the King refusing to
enter the abbey, as long as those precious remains were there. Even
his marriage to the sweet and charming Louise de Lorraine,[101] which
took place at Rheims, in February, 1575,[102] three days after his
_Sacre_, seems to have been a tribute to the memory of his lost
love, for the young lady, whom he had met at Nancy, on his way to
Poland in the autumn of 1573, had first attracted his attention by the
resemblance she bore to the Princesse de Condé.
Condé was still a fugitive in Germany when the news of his bereavement
reached him. It can scarcely have failed to cause him pain, for,
notwithstanding her relations with Henri III., he had remained attached
to his wife; but the reflection that now that her royal admirer had
reappeared upon the scene, she would, had she lived, most certainly
have brought fresh scandal upon his name, must have served to temper
his grief. In the previous July, he had been proclaimed chief of the
confederates by a Huguenot-Politique assembly which had met at Milhaud;
but he made no attempt to return to France, but wandered about Germany
and Switzerland, negotiating with the Protestant princes and enlisting
soldiers. With the aid of English gold, he finally succeeded in raising
a small army, and, in the early autumn of 1575, he despatched part
of it, under the command of Montmorency-Thoré, to the assistance of
Alençon, who had just succeeded in effecting his escape from the Court
and had placed himself at the head of the confederates.[103] But this
force was too weak to effect anything, and was defeated by the Duc de
Guise at Dormans.[104]
Having levied fresh troops to replace those he had lost, in the
following April, Condé himself re-entered France, after an absence of
two years, crossed the Loire, near La Charité, and effected a junction
with the troops of Alençon in the Bourbonnais. Henri III. and Catherine
were obliged to negotiate, and on 6 May another hollow peace--the
“_Paix de Monsieur_”--was signed at Beaulieu. The Protestants
obtained greater concessions than any which they had yet enjoyed; the
Massacre of St. Bartholomew was formally disavowed and the property
of Coligny and other prominent victims restored to their heirs; and
eight fortresses were handed over to the Reformers, as security for
the due observance of the treaty. Alençon received the addition to his
appanage of Anjou, Berry, Touraine and Maine, and assumed the title of
Duc d’Anjou, which had been that of Henri III. before his accession to
the throne; while the King of Navarre was confirmed in his government
of Guienne and Condé in that of Picardy. The last-named prince was also
guaranteed Péronne as a place of surety and a _gratification_.
But, so far as he was concerned, the treaty remained a dead-letter: he
never saw a sol of the money, nor was his authority ever acknowledged
in Picardy, where Jacques d’Humières, governor of Péronne, a friend of
the Guises, refused to deliver that fortress into his hands and formed
a confederacy between the partisans of the Guises and the bigoted
Catholics to oppose him.
Deeply irritated by this breach of faith, Condé determined to seek
compensation in the west, and proceeded to take possession of Cognac
and Saint-Jean-d’Angely, and to purchase, from the Sieur de Pons, the
government of the important fortress of Brouage. Then he went to La
Rochelle, where, “by a succession of very able orations,” he succeeded
in convincing the citizens, who were at first inclined to regard his
pretensions with suspicion, that their mayor and bailiffs were quite
unworthy of their confidence, and that they could not do better than
entrust themselves to his protection, with the result that in a few
weeks he was virtually master of the town.
But the concession granted the Huguenots at the “_Paix de
Monsieur_” had aroused, as had been the case after the Peace of
Saint-Germain, the most violent resentment among the more zealous
Catholics, who regarded them in the light of a betrayal of their faith;
and the efforts of Condé to consolidate his position in the West
stimulated the growth of that confederacy which had already been formed
against him in Picardy. The movement spread with astonishing rapidity,
especially among the fanatical population of Paris, and soon grew into
a general “Holy League,” or association of the extreme Catholic party
throughout the kingdom.
The formation of the League, whose members were binding themselves to
regard as enemies all who refused to join it, greatly alarmed Henri
III., and, after an unsuccessful attempt to obtain a promise from the
Guises that they would do nothing calculated to lead to a breach of the
recent peace, he decided that the only course open to him was to place
himself at its head. This decision rendered a new war inevitable, and
early in 1577 it duly broke out.
In the South, the Huguenots contrived to hold their own, but Condé,
who commanded in Poitou and Saintonge, with the title of the King of
Navarre’s Lieutenant-General, fared badly, largely, it would seem,
through his own want of military capacity, and was soon obliged to take
refuge in La Rochelle, and look on helplessly while the enemy conquered
the whole of the surrounding country. Finally, he made his way into
Guienne and joined his cousin, upon whom he, very unfairly, endeavoured
to throw the blame of his ill-success in the West. In September, the
Peace of Bergerac, another ineffectual treaty, which granted in the
main what that of the previous year had already promised, nominally put
an end to the war, though private hostilities--storming of châteaux,
assassinations, and pillage--still continued.
At the end of the following year, Marguerite de Valois joined her
husband at Nérac. Catherine, whom the King left free to intrigue as she
pleased, accompanied her daughter, bringing with her her “squadron,”
whose charms wrought much havoc among the gentlemen of Henri’s little
Court. She remained there several months, but the results of her visit
fell very far short of her expectations, and, on her return to Paris,
she made overtures to Condé, who, since the last war, had been on far
from cordial terms with the King of Navarre. With a view to separating
him entirely from his cousin, she offered him the hand of the Queen’s
sister, Mlle. de Vaudémont, together with a considerable pension and
the restoration of his government of Picardy. Condé declined the
marriage, on the plea of difference in religion, and the next thing
Catherine heard about him was that he had made his way in disguise
into Picardy, and seized the town of La Fère, by means of a stratagem
(November, 1579).
The prince was left in peaceable possession of La Fère for some months,
though his efforts to extend his influence through the rest of the
province were unsuccessful. But when, in the spring of 1580, the
“Lovers’ War” broke out, he was compelled to abandon his conquest and
take refuge in the Netherlands. From there he crossed to England and
endeavoured to obtain assistance from Elizabeth; but, failing in this,
returned to the Netherlands, and, after taking part in the defence
of Ghent, in which he exhibited great courage, made his way into
Germany and concluded a treaty with the Elector Palatine, but on such
disadvantageous terms that the French Protestants promptly repudiated
it. He then began a little war on his own account in the Cevennes; but
in November the King of Navarre made peace with the Court at Fleix, and
obliged him to suspend his somewhat futile operations.
The Treaty of Fleix was followed by four years of anarchic peace,
which were passed by Condé chiefly at Saint-Jean-d’Angely. He had been
reconciled to the King of Navarre, and the two cousins visited one
another on several occasions; but this reconciliation was never really
sincere, for Condé was not a little jealous of the military reputation
which Henri had acquired in the last war, and he and the more fanatical
section of the Protestants disapproved of the moderation shown by the
young king, and sometimes endeavoured to compel him to adopt measures
which his good sense condemned.
On 11 June, 1584, the Duc d’Anjou died of consumption at
Château-Thierry. His death made the King of Navarre heir-presumptive to
the French crown, and, as Henri III. had, for some time past, abandoned
all hope of leaving children behind him, the question of the succession
at once became of paramount importance. But the accession of a heretic
to the throne was repugnant to the whole Catholic population, and was
certain to be violently opposed by a considerable section of it. For
the intimate connexion of the State and the orthodox Church was held to
be a fundamental law of the monarchy; and even men of moderate views,
who were willing enough that the Huguenots should be tolerated, were
alarmed at the prospect of their domination.
Very intelligent, whenever he could contrive to free himself for a time
from his idle and voluptuous habits, Henri III. had foreseen this,
and, about the middle of May--that is to say, about three weeks before
Anjou’s death--had despatched one of his favourites, the Duc d’Épernon,
to the King of Navarre, “bearing him letters in which he admonished,
exhorted, and entreated him, seeing that the life of the Duc d’Anjou,
his brother, was despaired of, to come to Court and go to Mass, because
he desired to recognize him as his true heir and successor, and to
give him such rank and dignity near his person as his qualification
of brother-in-law and heir to the throne deserved.” The Protestants
testified the greatest uneasiness at these overtures, and began to
approach Condé, with a view to his adoption as the leader of the party,
in the event of the King of Navarre again renouncing their faith. But
their alarm was groundless, for, though Henri held but lightly by his
creed, and all the Catholics about him besought him to remove the one
obstacle to his succession, he felt that the time had not come when he
could afford to offend the Huguenots. And so, with many protestations
of gratitude and loyalty, he declared himself unable to accede to his
Majesty’s wishes.
The fact that the legitimate heir to the throne was a heretic made
the renewal of the civil war inevitable, and, on the death of Anjou,
the Guises and the League at once began to organize their forces for
the coming struggle. The wretched, vacillating King was intimidated
into giving them his countenance and support; and, on 15 July, 1585,
signed the Treaty of Nemours, which promised the revocation of all
the edicts in favour of toleration, and placed at the disposal of the
League all the resources of the Crown. Having secured the assistance of
the temporal power, they next summoned the spiritual to their aid, and
persuaded the new Pope, Sixtus V., to launch against the two princes a
Bull of Excommunication, wherein he declared them “degraded from their
fiefs and baronies, and incapacitated from succession to the Crown of
France.” The cousins issued a scornful response, a copy of which was
posted up even in Rome itself, and war began.
Condé again received the command of the Huguenot forces in Poitou
and Saintonge, and found himself opposed by the Duc de Mercœur. The
prince’s army was inferior in numbers to that of the Catholics, but he
contrived to surprise the enemy in their camp near Fontenay, and drove
them in confusion across the Loire; after which, strengthened by the
arrival of reinforcements for La Rochelle, he laid siege to Brouage.
Condé’s attention was not, however, entirely absorbed by military
matters at this juncture. Notwithstanding the rather unfortunate
outcome of his first matrimonial venture, he had for some time past
been desirous of marrying again; and, shortly before the renewal of
hostilities, he had decided to propose for the hand of Charlotte
Catherine de la Trémoille, only daughter of Louis III., Duc de Thouars,
Prince de Tarente and de Talmont, and Jeanne de Montmorency.
Charlotte de la Trémoille’s father, who, by the way, had been a
fanatical Catholic and a determined opponent of Condé in Poitou,
of which province he was lieutenant-general, had died some years
before, since which the girl had lived with her mother at the Château
of Thouars, in Anjou. She was now seventeen, very pretty, very
intelligent, and of a highly romantic disposition, for the Duchesse de
Thouars, who appears to have had little affection for her daughter,
had left her very much to her own devices, and she was accustomed to
spend a good deal of her time in the perusal of the “Amadis” and other
fashionable works of imagination.
Condé despatched one of his officers to the Duchesse de Thouars
to make the first overtures on his behalf. They were favourably
received, and the duchess hastened to send her daughter to the Château
of Taillebourg, a fortress of some importance on the banks of the
Charente, whither she intended to follow her, so that his Highness
might have an opportunity of paying his addresses to the young lady,
and she of discussing with him the financial side of the affair. The
alliance of the first Prince of the Blood, one of the leaders of the
Huguenots, was very flattering to the pride of the La Trémoilles, who
did not share the prejudices of the late head of the family; indeed,
the young Duc de Thouars, although a Catholic, had taken up arms for
Condé.
As for Charlotte, to her romantic imagination, the prospect of sharing
the fortunes of a prince who had experienced enough adventures to
satisfy the most gluttonous of knight-errants, and who, if he had not
yet achieved any very brilliant success, had supported his reverses
with a fortitude which had gained him the admiration of even his
enemies, could not fail to make a powerful appeal, and she looked
forward with impatience to the conclusion of the negotiations.
On learning of the favourable reception of his overtures, Condé, who
was besieging Brouage, lost no time in addressing to the Duchesse de
Thouars a formal request for her daughter’s hand. The duchess informed
Charlotte, who wrote to the prince the following letter:
“MADAME,[105]
“I am not able, it seems to me, to thank you as I
should wish for the honour that it pleases you to do me by your
letter, and for the good-will which it appears you entertain
for me, which oblige me to serve you in such fashion that I
shall esteem myself very happy all my life if I am favoured by
your commands, which I shall execute with as much fidelity as
any creature in the world. And, since I know that Madame de la
Trémoille, my mother, is replying to what you have been so good
as to write to her, I shall say nothing on this subject, save
that my intention has ever been to conform to her will, and that
it will remain so eternally, and to assure you again Mons^r
(_sic_) that my little merit must prevent me from believing
what it pleases you to express for me.... I thank you very
humbly for the honour which I receive from your suit, although
I know that I am in no way worthy of it, which places me under
a very great obligation to you. I shall leave to Madame de la
Trémoille, my mother, to reply on the subject of the journeys of
the bearer of this, for all that I have desired my whole life,
is to follow these commands, in which I shall never fail, and,
in token of this, I shall kiss your hands.
“Your very humble servant, etc., etc.”[106]
On learning that Mlle. de Trémoille had arrived at Taillebourg, Condé
quitted his camp at Brouage and proceeded thither. He took with him
the greater part of the Huguenot cavalry, and we may imagine with what
a thrill of pleasure the romantic Charlotte must have beheld this
valiant prince coming to woo her accompanied by so splendid an array of
mail-clad horsemen. Nor was she less pleased when, at the gateway of
the château, her suitor dismissed his imposing escort, and, to show his
confidence, entered with three or four of his officers only.
All smiles and blushes the young châtelaine came forward to greet him,
and, though Condé was usually very reserved with women, Mademoiselle
was so pretty and so sympathetic that soon he found himself discoursing
of his wars and his wanderings as though he had known her for years.
Before the evening was over, Charlotte had decided that the hero of
her dreams had indeed materialized; while the prince was completely
charmed. “The two betrothed,” writes a contemporary biographer of
the latter, “promised henceforth to live and die together, provided
that they obtained the consent of Madame de la Trémoille, of which
Mademoiselle her daughter was sufficiently assured;”[107] and Condé
might have said with Othello:
“She loved me for the dangers I had passed,
And I lov’d her that she did pity them.”
Mlle. de la Trémoille gave that very night a proof of her devotion to
her future husband. As the garrison of Taillebourg contained several
men who, she had reason to suspect, were by no means well-disposed
towards the Huguenot leader, “she did not take any repose all night,
but watched with extreme care over his safety until the morning,
placing the sentinels herself and making hourly inquiries of the rounds
if they had discovered anything which might trouble the repose of our
amorous prince.”[108]
Early on the morrow, Condé left Taillebourg, but, before his departure,
he gave Mlle. de la Trémoille, “two lines in his own handwriting and
signed by him, containing the assurance of his good faith touching
their future marriage.” Then, “after a thousand reiterated promises
that death alone should be the separation of their union,” he took
leave of his betrothed and returned to Brouage.
The siege of this town was progressing rapidly; Condé’s forces closely
invested it on the land side, while the little Huguenot fleet blockaded
the port; a portion of the outworks had already been captured, and its
fall seemed assured, when the prince thoughtlessly engaged in a most
disastrous enterprise.
It happened that a Huguenot captain named Rochemorte, attached to a
small force which Condé had sent across the Loire to make an incursion
into Anjou and Normandy, had succeeded, with a mere handful of men,
in taking by surprise the citadel of Angers. The town, however,
remained in the hands of the Catholics; the daring Rochemorte and his
little band were being closely besieged, and, unless reinforcements
speedily arrived, he would be obliged to capitulate. This news
caused great excitement in the Protestant camp, and the prince,
instead of contenting himself by the despatch of a force sufficient
to enable Rochemorte to hold the captured citadel, was persuaded by
his flatterers to go in person and attempt the capture of the town.
So brilliant a success, they assured him, would entirely eclipse the
military reputation of the King of Navarre, change the whole course of
events, and strike such consternation into the enemy that very soon he
might be able to carry the war to the very gates of Paris.
It was a most rash undertaking, for not only was Angers a
strongly-fortified town, but the neighbourhood was the point of
concentration for the Catholic armies destined to operate in the South,
and was swarming with the enemy. However, his jealousy of his cousin,
and his anxiety to distinguish himself in the eyes of his lady-love,
rendered him deaf to the voice of reason; and, after wasting a good
deal of precious time in preparations for his expedition, he set off
for Angers, at the head of some 2000 horse, three-fourths of whom were
mounted arquebusiers.
On the way, he had an interview with the Duchesse de Thouars, who was
journeying to Taillebourg to join her daughter. Henri III., it appears,
had lately brought pressure to bear upon the duchess to persuade her
to break off the negotiations for the marriage, and, as the latter was
beginning to feel seriously uneasy as to the future of her prospective
son-in-law, she received him very coldly and endeavoured to evade
giving the consent which he demanded. Perceiving how the land lay,
Condé refrained from pressing the matter; and, after overwhelming her
with protestations of friendship, took his departure, and despatched in
all haste a courier to Taillebourg, with the following message, written
on a leaf of his tablets:
“I have found Madame, your mother, whether from fear or otherwise,
very much opposed to my happiness. I hope to conquer her severity
by my perseverance and my conduct, swearing that you alone possess
my heart, and that neither her prejudice nor any accident shall
be able to prevent me from remaining until death your unchanging
_serviteur_.”[109]
On 21 October, the prince arrived beneath the walls of Angers. He
came too late, for, two days before, Rochemorte had been killed, and
the citadel had capitulated. His wisest course would have been to
retreat at once, for, although he had received reinforcements after
crossing the Loire, his army did not exceed 3000 men, and hostile
columns were already gathering in his rear. However, he determined to
endeavour to carry the town by storm, and made two assaults, both of
which were repulsed with considerable loss. Then, very reluctantly,
he gave the order to retire; but there was some delay in carrying it
out, and scarcely had his vanguard crossed the Loire, than the enemy’s
cavalry appeared on both banks of the river. For a moment, he thought
of endeavouring to make his way along the right bank of the Loire to
the Huguenot stronghold of Sancerre, but, learning that the Catholics
were in force in that direction, he abandoned it, and decided that the
only course to adopt was for his followers to disperse and endeavour
to creep through the meshes of the net which was closing round them.
He himself, with a few officers, turned northwards, and succeeded in
reaching Saint-Malo, where he embarked for Guernsey.
In that little island the unfortunate prince remained for more than
two months. He was almost in despair, for he well knew that his folly,
which had deprived the Huguenot forces of the West of their chief, many
of their principal officers, and the greater part of their cavalry,
must have ruined their operations in that part of the country, and
compelled them to remain wholly on the defensive. Moreover, he saw no
immediate prospect of being able to return to France, for, though he
had applied for assistance to Elizabeth, that princess was unwilling
at this juncture to offend the French Court, and he got nothing from
her but expressions of sympathy. One day, however, in January, 1586, he
perceived two ships-of-war flying the Rochellois ensign, approaching
the island. They cast anchor; an officer landed, handed the delighted
prince a letter from Mlle. de la Trémoille, and informed him that they
had been sent to convey him to La Rochelle.
But let us see how Mlle. de la Trémoille had been faring during her
lover’s enforced absence from France.