CHAPTER III

1602

Court festivities--The Queen's ballet--A gallant prelate--A poetical

almoner--Insolence of the royal favourite--Unhappiness of the

Queen--Weakness of Henry--Intrigue of Madame de Villars--The King

quarrels with the favourite--They are reconciled--Madame de Villars is

exiled, and the Prince de Joinville sent to join the army in

Hungary--Mortification of the Queen--Her want of judgment--New

dissension in the royal ménage--Sully endeavours to restore

peace--Mademoiselle de Sourdis--The Court removes to Blois--Royal

rupture--A bewildered minister--Marie and her foster-sister--Conspiracy

of the Dues de Bouillon and de Biron--Parallel between the two

nobles--The Comte d'Auvergne--Ingratitude of Biron--He is betrayed--His

arrogance--He is summoned to the capital to justify himself--He refuses

to obey the royal summons--Henry sends a messenger to command his

presence at Court--Precautionary measures of Sully--The President

Jeannin prevails over the obstinacy of Biron--Double treachery of La

Fin--The King endeavours to induce Biron to confess his crime--Arrest of

the Duc de Biron and the Comte d'Auvergne--The royal soirée--A timely

caution--Biron is made prisoner by Vitry, and the Comte d'Auvergne by

Praslin--They are conveyed separately to the Bastille--Exultation of the

citizens--Firmness of the King--Violence of Biron--Tardy

repentance--Trial of Biron--A scene in the Bastille--Condemnation of

the Duke--He is beheaded--The subordinate conspirators are pardoned--The

Duc de Bouillon retires to Turenne--Refuses to appear at

Court--Execution of the Baron de Fontenelles--A salutary lesson--The

Comte d'Auvergne is restored to liberty--Revolt of the Prince de

Joinville--He is treated with contempt by the King--He is imprisoned by

the Duc de Guise--Removal of the Court to Fontainebleau--Legitimation of

the son of Madame de Verneuil--Unhappiness of the Queen--She is consoled

by Sully--Birth of the Princesse Elisabeth de France--Disappointment of

the Queen--Soeur Ange.

The convalescence of the Queen was the signal for a succession of

festivities, and the whole winter was spent in gaiety and dissipation;

banquets, ballets, and hunting-parties succeeded each other with

bewildering rapidity; and so magnificent were several of the Court

festivals that even some of the gravest historians of the time did not

disdain to record them. The most brilliant of the whole, however, and

that which will best serve to exemplify the taste of the period, was the

ballet to which allusion has already been made as given in honour of the

King by his royal consort, and in which Marie de Medicis herself

appeared. In order to heighten its effect she had selected fifteen of

the most beautiful women of the Court, Madame de Verneuil being,

according to the royal promise, one of the number; and the first part of

the exhibition took place at the Louvre. The entertainment commenced

with the entrance of Apollo and the nine Muses into the great hall of

the palace, which was thronged with native and foreign princes,

ambassadors, and ministers, in the midst of whom sat the King with the

Papal Nuncio on his right hand. The god and his attendants sang the

glory of the monarch, the pacificator of Europe; and each stanza

terminated with the somewhat fulsome and ungraceful words:

"Il faut que tout vous rende hommage,

Grand Roi, miracle de notre âge."

Thence the whole gay and gallant company proceeded to the Hôtel de

Guise, where the eight maids of honour of the Queen performed the second

act; and this was no sooner concluded than the brilliant revellers

removed to the archiepiscopal palace, where the Queen appeared in person

upon the scene, with her suite divided into four quadrilles. Marie

herself represented Venus, and led by the hand César de Vendôme[158]

attired as Cupid; when the splendour of her jewels produced so startling

an effect that murmurs of astonishment and admiration ran through the

hall. Gratified at the sensation caused by the unexampled magnificence

and grace of his royal consort, Henry smilingly inquired of the Nuncio

"if he had ever before seen so fine a squadron?"

"_Bellissimo e pericolosissimo_!" was the reply of the gallant prelate.

Each of the ladies composing the party of the Queen represented a

_virtue_,\ an arrangement which, when it is remembered that Madame de

Verneuil was one of the chosen, rendered their attributes at least

equivocal. This royal ballet was nevertheless considered worthy of a

poetical immortality by Berthault,[159] a popular bard of the day, who

left little behind him worthy of preservation, but who enjoyed great

vogue among the fashionables of the Court at that period. Its most

important result was, however, the marriage of Concini and Leonora; to

which, in consideration of the honour done to the favourite by the

Queen, Henry withdrew his opposition; even authorizing his royal consort

to bestow rich presents upon the bride, and to celebrate the nuptials

with considerable ceremony.[160]

All these royal diversions were suddenly and disagreeably terminated

some months afterwards by an intrigue which once more threw the King and

his courtiers into a state of agitation and discomfort.

As regards Marie de Medicis herself, she had long ceased to derive any

gratification from the splendid festivities of which she was one of the

brightest ornaments; her ill-judged indulgence, far from exciting the

gratitude of Madame de Verneuil, having rendered the insolent favourite

still more arrogant and overbearing. To such an extent, indeed, did the

Marquise carry her presumption, that she affected to believe herself

indebted for the forbearance of the Queen to the conviction of the

latter that she had a superior claim upon the monarch to her own; and

while she permitted herself to comment upon the words, actions, and

tastes, and even upon the personal peculiarities of her royal mistress,

she declared her conviction of the legality of the written promise

obtained by her from the King; and announced her determination, now that

she had become the mother of a son, to enforce its observance.

These monstrous pretensions, which were soon made known to the Queen,

at once wounded and exasperated her feelings; and she anxiously awaited

the moment when some new imprudence of the favourite should open the

eyes of the monarch to her delinquency, as she had already become aware

that mere argument on her own part would avail nothing.

Several writers, and among them even female ones, yielding to the

prestige attached to the name of Henri IV, have sought the solution of

all his domestic discomfort in the "Italian jealousy" of Marie de

Medicis; but surely it is not difficult to excuse it under circumstances

of such extraordinary trial. Marie was a wife, a mother, and a queen;

and in each of these characters she was insulted and outraged. As a

wife, she saw her rights invaded--as a mother, the legitimacy of her son

questioned--and as a queen her dignity compromised. What very inferior

causes have produced disastrous effects even in private life! The only

subject of astonishment which can be rationally entertained is the

comparative patience with which at this period of her career she

submitted to the humiliations that were heaped upon her.

In vain did she complain to her royal consort of the insulting calumnies

of Madame de Verneuil; he either affected to disbelieve that she had

been guilty of such absurd assumption, or reproached Marie with a want

of self-respect in listening to the idle tattle of eavesdroppers and

sycophants; alleging that her foreign followers, spoiled by her

indulgence, and encouraged by her credulity, were the scourge of his

Court; and that she would do well to dismiss them before they

accomplished her own unhappiness. A hint to this effect always sufficed

to silence the Queen, to whom the society and support of Leonora and her

husband were becoming each day more necessary; and thus she devoured her

tears and stifled her wretchedness, trusting that the arrogance and

presumption of the Marquise would ultimately serve her better than her

own remonstrances.

Such was the position of affairs when the intrigue to which allusion has

been already made promised to produce the desired result; and it can

create no surprise that Marie should eagerly indulge the hope of

delivering herself from an obnoxious and formidable rival, when the

opportunity presented itself of accomplishing so desirable an end

without betraying her own agency.

During the lifetime of _la belle Gabrielle_, her sister, Juliette

Hippolyte d'Estrées, Marquise de Cérisay, who in 1597 became the wife of

Georges de Brancas, Duc de Villars, had attracted the attention of the

King, whose dissipated tastes were always flattered by novelty; although

if we are to credit the statements of the Princesse de Conti, this lady,

so far from rivalling the beauty of her younger sister, had no personal

charms to recommend her beyond _her youth and her hair_.[161] Being as

unscrupulous as the Duchesse de Beaufort herself, Juliette exulted in

the idea of captivating the King, and left no effort untried to secure

her supposed conquest; but this caprice on the part of Henry was only

momentary, and in his passion for Henriette d'Entragues, he soon forgot

his passing fancy for Madame de Villars. The Duchess herself, however,

was far from being equally oblivious; and listening to the dictates of

her ambition and self-love, she became persuaded that she was indebted

to the Marquise alone for the sudden coldness of the King; and

accordingly she vowed an eternal hatred to the woman whom she considered

in the light of a successful rival. Up to the present period, anxious as

she was to avenge her wounded vanity, she had been unable to secure an

opportunity of revenge; but having at this particular moment won the

affection of the Prince de Joinville,[162] who had been a former lover

of Madame de Verneuil, and with whom, as she was well aware, he had

maintained an active correspondence, she made his surrender of the

letters of that lady the price of her own honour. For a time the Prince

hesitated; he felt all the disloyalty of such a concession; but those

were not times in which principles waged an equal war against passion;

and the letters were ultimately placed in the possession of Madame

de Villars.

The Duchess was fully cognizant of the fact that it was from an impulse

of self-preservation alone that M. de Joinville had been induced to

forego his suit to the favourite, and to absent himself from the Court,

a consideration which should have aroused her delicacy as a woman; but

she was by no means disposed to yield to so inconvenient a weakness; and

she had consequently no sooner secured the coveted documents than she

prepared to profit by her good fortune.

Henriette d'Entragues had really loved the Prince--if indeed so venal

and vicious a woman can be supposed capable of loving anything save

herself--and thus the letters which were transferred to Madame de

Villars, many of them having been written immediately after the

separation of the lovers, were filled with regrets at his absence,

professions of unalterable affection, and disrespectful expressions

concerning the King and Queen; the latter of whom was ridiculed and

slandered without pity. It is easy to imagine the triumphant joy of the

Duchess. She held her enemy at her mercy, and she had no inclination to

be merciful. She read and re-read the precious letters; and finally,

after deep reflection, her plans were matured.

The Princesse de Conti was her personal friend, and was, moreover,

attached to the household of the Queen, to whom Madame de Villars, from

circumstances which require no comment, had hitherto been comparatively

a stranger. Marie de Medicis, who had experienced little sympathy from

the great ladies of the Court, having thrown herself principally upon

her Italian followers for society, had in consequence been cold and

distant in her deportment to the French members of her circle; who, on

their side, trammelled by the rigorous propriety of her conduct, were

quite satisfied to be partially overlooked, in order that their own less

scrupulous bearing might pass unnoticed by so rigid a censor; and thus,

when, upon the earnest request of Madame de Villars to be introduced to

the more intimate acquaintance of the Queen, the Princess succeeded in

obtaining for her the privilege of the _petites entrées_ (unaware of the

powerful passport to favour which she possessed), she found it difficult

to account for the eagerness with which the ordinarily unapproachable

Marie greeted the appearance and courted the society of the astute

Duchess; nor did she for an instant dream that by facilitating the

intercourse between them, she was undermining the fortunes of a brother

whom she loved.

It appears extraordinary that of all the ladies about the Queen, Madame

de Villars should have selected the sister of the Prince de Joinville to

enable her to effect her purpose; but let her have acted from whatever

motive she might, it is certain that day by day her favour became more

marked; and the circumstance which most excited the surprise of Madame

de Conti, was the fact that her _protégée_ was often closeted with the

Queen when, for reasons sufficiently obvious, she herself and even

Leonora Galigaï were excluded. In encouraging the vengeance of her new

friend, Marie was well aware that she was committing an imprudence from

which the more far-seeing Florentine would have dissuaded her; and thus,

with that impetuosity which was destined through life to be her scourge,

she resolved only to consult her own feelings. The secret of this new

discovery was consequently not divulged to her favourite; and as her

cheek burned and her eye flashed, while lingering over the insults to

which she had been subjected by the unscrupulous mistress of the

monarch, she urged Madame de Villars to lose no time in communicating

the contents of the obnoxious letters to her sovereign.

The undertaking was difficult as well as dangerous; and in the case of

the Duchess it required more than usual tact and caution. She had not

only to encounter the risk of arousing the anger of Henry by accusing

the woman whom he loved, but also to combat his wounded vanity when he

should see his somewhat mature passion made a subject of ridicule, and,

at the same time, to conceal her own motive for the treachery of which

she was guilty. This threefold trial, even daring as she was, the

Duchess feared to hazard. In communicating the fatal letters to the

Queen, she had calculated that the indignation and jealousy of the

Italian Princess would instigate her to take instant possession of so

formidable a weapon against her most dangerous enemy, and to work out

her own vengeance; but Marie had learnt prudence from past experience,

and she was anxious to conceal her own agency in the cabal until she

could avow it with a certainty of triumph. Perceiving the reluctance of

Madame de Villars to take the initiative, she hastened to explain to

her the suspicion which would naturally be engendered in the mind of the

King, should he imagine that the affair had been preconcerted to satisfy

her private animosity; and moreover suggested that the Duchess should,

in her interview with the monarch, carefully avoid even the mention of

her name. Encouragement and entreaties followed this caution; while a

few rich presents sufficed to convince her auditor--and ultimately,

Madame de Villars (who had too long waited patiently for such an

opportunity of revenge to shrink from her purpose when it was secured to

her), having gained the favour and confidence of the Queen at the

expense of her rival, resolved to terminate her task.

The pretext of urgent business easily procured for her a private

interview with the King, for the name of D'Estrées still acted like a

spell upon the mind and heart of Henry, and the Duchess was a consummate

tactician. Notice was given to her of the day on which the sovereign

would visit St. Denis; and as she presented herself in the lateral

chapel where he had just concluded his devotions, Henry made a sign for

his attendant nobles to withdraw, when the Duchess found herself in a

position to explain her errand, and to assure him that she had only been

induced to make the present disclosure from her affection for his

person, and the gratitude which she owed to him for the many benefits

that she had experienced from his condescension. Having briefly dwelt on

the contents of the letters which she delivered into his keeping, she

did not even seek an excuse for the means by which they had come into

her own possession, but concluded by observing: "I could not reconcile

it to my conscience, Sire, to conceal so great an outrage; I should have

felt like a criminal myself, had I been capable of suffering in silence

such treason against the greatest king, the best master, and the most

gallant gentleman on earth." [163]

Henry was not proof against this compliment. He believed himself to be

all that the Duchess had asserted, but he liked to hear his own opinion

confirmed by the lips of others; and, although smarting under the

mortification of wounded vanity occasioned by the contents of the

letters of his perfidious mistress, he smiled complacently upon Madame

de Villars, thanking her for her zeal and attachment to his person, and

assuring her that both were fully appreciated.

She had no sooner retired than, as the Queen had previously done, he

repeatedly read over each letter in turn until his patience gave way

under the task; when hastily summoning the Duc de Lude, he desired him

to forthwith proceed to the apartments of the Marquise, and inform her

in his name that "she was a perfidious woman, a monster, and the most

wicked of her sex; and that he was resolved never to see her

again." [164]

At this period Madame de Verneuil had quitted the palace, and was

residing in an hôtel in the city, which had been presented to her by the

King: a fortunate circumstance for the envoy, who required time and

consideration to enable him to execute his onerous mission in a manner

that might not tend to his own subsequent discomfiture; but on the

delivery of the royal message, which even the courtly De Lude could not

divest of its offensive character, Madame de Verneuil (who was well

aware that the King, however he might yield to his momentary anger, was

even less able to dispense with her society than she herself was to lose

the favour which alone preserved her from the ignominy her conduct had

justly merited) did not for an instant lose her self-possession. "Tell

his Majesty," she replied, as calmly as though a sense of innocence had

given her strength, "that being perfectly assured that I have never been

guilty of word or deed which could justly incur his anger, I cannot

imagine what can have induced him to treat me with so little

consideration. That some one has traduced me, I cannot doubt; but I

shall be revenged by a discovery of the truth." [165]

She then rose from her seat, and retired to her private room, much more

alarmed and agitated than she was willing to betray. De Lude had, during

the interview, suffered a few remarks to escape him from which she was

enabled to guess whence the blow had come; and conscious of the enormity

of her imprudence, she lost no time in confiding to her most

confidential friends the difficulty of her position, and entreated them

to discover some method by which she might escape its consequences.

As had been previously arranged with the Queen, Madame de Villars, at

her audience of the King, had carefully abstained from betraying the

share which his consort had taken in the intrigue, and had assumed to

herself the very equivocal honour of the whole proceeding; and it was,

consequently, against the Duchess alone that the anger of the favourite

was excited. Even the Prince de Joinville was forgiven, when with

protestations of repentance he threw himself at the feet of the

Marquise, and implored her pardon--he could scarcely fail to be

understood by such a woman, when he pleaded the extremes to which

passion and disappointment could urge an ardent nature--while the Duc de

Bellegarde was no sooner informed by the Princesse de Conti that the

fortune, and perhaps even the life, of her brother were involved in the

affair, than he devoted himself to her cause.

We have already stated that the time was not one of unnecessary scruple,

and the peril of the Marquise was imminent. The letters not only

existed, but were in the hands of the King: no honest or simple remedy

could be suggested for such a disaster; and thus, as it was imperative

to clear Madame de Verneuil from blame in order to save the Prince, it

was ultimately determined to deny the authenticity of the documents, and

to attribute the forgery to a secretary of the Duc de Guise, who was

celebrated for his aptitude in imitating every species of handwriting.

The attempt was hazardous; but the infatuation of Henry for the

fascinating favourite was so well known, that the conspirators were

assured of the eagerness with which he would welcome any explanation,

however doubtful; and they accordingly instructed the Marquise boldly to

disavow the authorship of the obnoxious packet. The advice was,

unfortunately, somewhat tardy; as, in her first terror, Madame de

Verneuil had declared her inability to deny that she had written the

letters which had aroused the anger of the King; but she modified the

admission, by declaring that her hand had betrayed her heart, and that

she had never felt what, in a moment of pique and annoyance, she had

permitted herself to express. These were, however, mere words; and she

had no sooner become cognizant of the expedients suggested by her

advisers than she resolved to gainsay them; and accordingly, without a

moment's hesitation, she despatched a message to the monarch to entreat

that he would allow her to justify herself.

For a few days Henry remained inexorable, but at length his passion

triumphed over his pride; and instead of summoning the Marquise to his

presence as a criminal he proceeded to her residence, listened blindly

to her explanations, became, or feigned to become, convinced by her

arguments, and ultimately confessing himself to have been sufficiently

credulous to be the culprit rather than the judge, he made a peace with

his exulting mistress, which was cemented by a donation of six

thousand livres.

As is usual in such cases, all the blame was now visited upon her

accusers. Madame de Villars was exiled from the Court--a sentence to her

almost as terrible as that of death, wedded as she was to a court-life,

and by this unexpected result, separated from the Prince de Joinville,

whose pardon she had hoped to secure by her apparent zeal for the honour

of the monarch. The Prince himself was directed to proceed forthwith to

Hungary to serve against the Turks; and the unfortunate secretary, who

had been an unconscious instrument in the hands of the able

conspirators, and whom it was necessary to consider guilty of a crime

absolutely profitless to himself whatever might be its result, was

committed to a prison; there to moralize at his leisure upon the vices

of the great.

No mortification could, however, equal that of the Queen; who, having

felt assured of the ruin of her rival, had incautiously betrayed her

exultation in a manner better suited to a jealous wife than to an

indignant sovereign; and who, when she became apprised of the

reconciliation of the King with his wily mistress, expressed herself

with so much warmth upon his wilful blindness, that a fortnight elapsed

before they met again.

Nothing could be more ill-judged upon the part of Marie than this

violence, as by estranging the King from herself she gave ample

opportunity to the Marquise to resume her empire over his mind. It

nevertheless appears certain that although he resented the sarcasms of

the Queen, he was less the dupe of Madame de Verneuil than those about

him imagined; he was fascinated, but not convinced; and it is probable

that had Marie de Medicis at this moment sufficiently controlled her

feelings to remain neuter, she might, for a time at least, have retained

her truant husband under the spell of her own attractions. Such,

however, was not the case; and between his suspicion of being deceived

by his mistress, and his irritation at being openly taunted by his wife,

the King, who shrank with morbid terror from domestic discomfort,

instead of finding repose in the privacy of his own hearth, even while

he was anxious to shake off the trammels by which he had been so long

fettered, and to abandon a _liaison_ which had ceased to inspire him

with confidence, only sought to escape by transferring his somewhat

exhausted affections to a new object. The struggle was, however, a

formidable one; for although the Marquise had forfeited his good

opinion, she had not lost her powers of fascination; and she so well

knew how to use them, that, despite his better reason, the sensual

monarch still remained her slave.

Thus his life became at this period one of perpetual worry and

annoyance. Marie, irritated by what she justly considered as a culpable

weakness and want of dignity on the part of her royal consort, persisted

in exhibiting her resentment, and in loading the favourite with every

mark of contempt and obloquy; while Madame de Verneuil, in her turn,

renewed her assertions of the illegality of the Queen's marriage, and

the consequent illegitimacy of the Dauphin. The effect of such a feud

may be readily imagined: the Court soon became divided into two distinct

factions; and those among the great ladies and nobles who frequented the

circle of the Marquise were forbidden the entrance of the Queen's

apartments. One intrigue succeeded another; and while Marie, with

jealous vindictiveness, endeavoured to mar the fortunes of those who

attached themselves to the party of Madame de Verneuil, the Marquise

left no effort untried to injure the partisans of the Queen. This last

rupture was an irrevocable one.[166]

In vain did Sully endeavour to restore peace. He could control the

finances, and regulate the defences of a great nation; but he was as

powerless as the King himself when he sought to fuse such jarring

elements as these in the social crucible; and while he was still

striving against hope to weaken, even if he could not wholly destroy, an

animosity which endangered the dignity of the crown, and the respect due

to one of the most powerful monarchs of Christendom, that monarch

himself, wearied of a strife which he had not the moral courage either

to terminate or to sustain, sought consolation for his trials in the

smiles of Mademoiselle de Sourdis,[167] whose favour he purchased by

giving her in marriage to the Comte d'Estanges. This caprice, engendered

rather by _ennui_ than affection, was, however, soon terminated, as the

new favourite could not, either personally or mentally, sustain a

comparison with Madame de Verneuil; and great coldness still existed

between the royal couple when the Court removed to Blois.

During the sojourn of their Majesties in that city, a misunderstanding

infinitely more serious than any by which it had been preceded took

place between them; and at length became so threatening, that although

the night was far advanced, the King despatched D'Armagnac, his first

valet-de-chambre, to desire the immediate presence of M. de Sully at the

castle. Singularly enough, the Duke in his Memoirs affects a morbid

reluctance even to allude to this outbreak, and professes his

determination, in accordance with his promise to that effect made to

both parties, not to reveal the subject of dispute; while at the same

time he admits that, after a long interview with Henry, he spent the

remainder of the night in passing from one chamber to the other,

endeavouring to restore harmony between the royal pair, during which

attempt many of the attendants of the Court were enabled at intervals to

hear all parties mention the names of the Grand Duke and Duchess of

Florence, the Duchess of Mantua, Virgilio Ursino, Don Juan de Medicis,

the Duc de Bellegarde, Joannini, Concini, Leonora, Trainel, Vinti,

Caterina Selvaggio,[168] Gondy, and more frequently still, of Madame de

Verneuil;[169] a circumstance which was quite sufficient to dispel all

mystery, as it at once became evident to those who mentally combined

these significant names, that the royal quarrel was a recriminatory one,

and that while the Queen was indulging in invectives against the

Marquise, and her champion M. le Grand, the King retorted by reproaching

her with the insolence of her Italian favourites, and her own weak

submission to their thrall.[170]

Capefigue, in his history, has shown less desire than Sully to envelop

this royal quarrel in mystery; and plainly asserts, although without

quoting his authority for such a declaration, that after mutual

reproaches had passed between Henry and his wife, the Queen became so

enraged that she sprang out of bed, and throwing herself upon the

monarch, severely scratched him in the face; a violence which he

immediately repaid with interest, and which induced him to summon the

minister to the palace, whose first care was to prevail upon the King to

retire to another apartment.[171]

Marie, exasperated by the persevering infidelity of her husband,

considered herself, with some reason, as the aggrieved party: she had

given a Dauphin to France; her fair fame was untainted; and she

persisted in enforcing her right to retain and protect her Tuscan

attendants. Henry, on his part, was equally unyielding; and it was, as

we have already shown, several hours before the bewildered minister of

finance could succeed in restoring even a semblance of peace. To every

argument which he advanced the Queen replied by enumerating the

libertine adventures of her husband (with the whole of which she proved

herself to be unhappily only too familiar), and by declaring that she

would one day take ample vengeance on his mistresses; strong in the

conviction that to whatever acts of violence she might be induced by the

insults heaped upon her, no rightly thinking person would be found to

condemn so just a revenge.[172]

This declaration, let Sully modify it as he might, could but aggravate

the anger of the King; and accordingly, he replied by a threat of

banishing his wife to one of his distant palaces, and even of sending

her back to Florence, with the whole of her foreign attendants.

From this project, if he really ever seriously entertained it, Henry

was, however, at once dissuaded by his minister; who, less blinded by

passion than himself, instantly recognised its enormity when

proportioned to the offence which it was intended to punish; and

consequently he did not hesitate to represent the odium which so unjust

a measure must call down upon the head of the King.[173] The Queen,

whose irritation had reached its climax, was less easily persuaded; or

the astute Concini, who was ever daring where his personal fortunes

might be benefited, sacrificed his royal mistress to his own interests;

for we find it recorded that some time subsequently, when Madame de

Verneuil was residing at her hôtel in Paris, the Florentine favourite

privately informed the monarch that Marie had engaged some persons on

whom she could rely, to insult the Marquise; upon which Henry, after

expressing his thanks for the communication, caused the favourite to

leave the city under a strong escort.[174]

Had the King been less unscrupulously inconstant, there is, however, no

doubt that Marie de Medicis, from the strict propriety of her conduct to

the last, and under every provocation, would ultimately have become an

attached and devoted wife. Her ambition was satisfied, and her heart

interested, in her maternal duties; but the open and unblushing

licentiousness with which Henry pursued his numerous and frequently

ignoble intrigues, irritated her naturally excitable temper, and

consequently tended to throw her more completely into the power of the

ambitious Italians by whom she was surrounded; among whom the most

influential was Madame de Concini, a woman of firm mind, engaging

manners, and strong national prejudices, who, in following the fortunes

of her illustrious foster-sister, had deceived herself into the belief

that they would be almost without a cloud; and it is therefore probable

that a disappointment in this expectation, which, moreover, involved her

own personal interests, rendered her bitter in her judgment of the

_débonnaire_ and reckless monarch who showed himself so indifferent to

the attractions of her idolized mistress.

The subsequent ingratitude of Marie, indeed, only tends to increase the

admiration of a dispassionate critic for the ill-requited Leonora; to

whom it would appear, after a close analysis of her character, that

ample justice has never yet been done; for ambitious as she was, it is

certain that this unfortunate woman ever sought the welfare of the

Queen, to whom she owed her advancement in life, even when the more

short-sighted selfishness of her husband would have induced him to

sacrifice all other considerations to his own insatiable thirst

for power.

Unfortunately, however, the very excess of her affection rendered her a

dangerous adviser to the indignant and neglected Princess, from whose

private circle Henry at this period almost wholly absented himself.

Nor were these domestic anxieties the only ones against which the French

King had to contend at this particular crisis; for while the Court

circle had been absorbed in banquets and festivals, the seeds of civil

war, sown by a few of the still discontented nobles, began to germinate;

and Henry constantly received intelligence of seditious movements in the

provinces. On the banks of the Loire and the Garonne the symptoms of

disaffection had already ceased to be problematical; while at La

Rochelle and Limoges the inhabitants had assaulted the government

officers who sought to levy an obnoxious tax.

Little doubt existed in the minds of the monarch and his ministers that

these hostile demonstrations were encouraged, if not suggested, by the

secret agents of Philip III of Spain, and the Duke of Savoy, who had

been busily engaged some time previously in dissuading the Swiss and

Grisons from renewing the alliance which they had formed with Henri III,

and which became void at his death. This attempt was, however,

frustrated by an offer made to them by Sillery of a million in gold, as

payment of the debt still due to them from the French government for

their past services; which enormous sum reached them through the hands

of the Duc de Biron, to whom, as well as to the memory of his father,

the old Maréchal, many of the Switzers were strongly and

personally attached.

Day by day, also, the King had still more serious cause of apprehension,

having ascertained almost beyond a doubt that the Duc de Bouillon, the

head of the Huguenot party, who were incensed against Henry for having

deserted their faith, was secretly engaged in a treaty with Spain,

Savoy, and England, a circumstance rendered doubly dangerous from the

fact that the Protestants still held several fortified places in

Guienne, Languedoc, and other provinces, which would necessarily, should

the negotiation prove successful, be delivered into his hands. There

can be no doubt, moreover, that the monarch keenly felt the ingratitude

of this noble, whom he had himself raised to the independent sovereignty

of the duchy whence he derived his title; but his mortification was

increased upon ascertaining that the Maréchal de Biron, who had been one

of his most familiar friends, and in whose good-faith and loyalty he had

ever placed implicit trust, was also numbered among his enemies, and

endeavouring to secure his own personal advancement by betraying

his master.

No two men could probably have been selected throughout the whole nation

more fitted to endanger the stability of the royal authority. Both were

marshals of France, and alike celebrated for their talent as military

leaders, as well as for their insatiable ambition. Of the two, perhaps,

however, the Duc de Bouillon was likely to prove the most formidable

enemy to the sovereign; from the fact of his being by far the more able

and the more subtle politician, and, moreover, gifted with a caution and

judgment which were entirely wanting in the impetuous and

reckless Biron.

Bouillon, who possessed great influence in the counsels of the

Huguenots, was supported by the Duc de la Trémouille,[175] his

co-religionist, another leader of the reformed party; and secretly also

by the Duc d'Epernon,[176] whose fortunes having greatly deteriorated

since the death of Henri III, considered himself harshly treated, and

was ready to join every cabal which was formed against that King's

successor, although he always avoided any open demonstration of

hostility which might tend to compromise his personal safety.

A third individual pointed out to the King as one of his most active

enemies was Charles de Valois, Comte d'Auvergne, the step-brother of

Madame de Verneuil; to whom not only in consideration of his royal

blood, but also as the relative of the Marquise, Henry had ever shown a

favour which he little merited. Such an adversary the monarch could,

however, afford to despise, for he well knew the Count to be more

dangerous as a friend than as an enemy; his cowardly dread of danger

constantly impelling him, at the merest prospect of peril, to betray

others in order to save himself; while his cunning, his gratuitous and

unmanly cruelty, and the unblushing perfidy which recalled with only too

much vividness the character of his father, Charles IX, rendered him at

once unsafe and unpleasant as an associate. Despite all these drawbacks,

Biron with his usual recklessness had nevertheless accepted him as a

partner in his meditated revolt, D'Auvergne having declared that he

would run all risks in order to revenge the dishonour brought upon his

family by the King; but in reality the Comte only sought to benefit

himself in a struggle where he had little to lose, and might, as he

believed, become a gainer.

The madness of the Duc de Biron in betraying the interests of a

sovereign who had constantly treated him with honour and distinction,

can only find its solution in his overweening vanity, as he was already

wealthy, powerful, and popular; and had, moreover, acquired the

reputation of being one of the first soldiers in France. He had been

appointed admiral, and subsequently marshal; and had even been entrusted

with the command of the King's armies at the siege of Amiens, where he

bore the title of marshal-general, although several Princes of the Blood

and the Connétable himself were present. He was decorated with all the

Royal Orders; was a duke and peer of the realm, and Governor of

Bordeaux; and, in fine, every attainable dignity had been lavished upon

him; while he yielded precedence only to royalty, and to the Duc de

Montmorency, to whose office it was vain to aspire during his

lifetime.[177]

Such was the Maréchal de Biron, when, in the vainglorious hope of one

day becoming the sovereign of certain of the French provinces, he

voluntarily trampled under foot every obligation of loyalty and

gratitude, and leagued himself with the enemies of his royal master, to

wrest from him the sceptre which he so firmly wielded. The first

intelligence of the Duke's defection which reached the monarch--to whom,

however, his conduct had long appeared problematical--was obtained

through the treachery of the Maréchal's most trusted agent; a man whom

Biron had constantly employed in all his intrigues, and from whom he had

no secrets. This individual, who from certain circumstances saw reason

to believe that the plans of the Duke must ultimately fail from their

very immensity, and who feared for his own safety in the event of his

patron's disgrace, resolved to save himself by communicating the whole

conspiracy to the King; for which purpose he solicited an audience,

declaring that he had important matters to reveal, which involved not

only the throne of the sovereign, but even his life; and he so

confidently insisted upon this fact, that an interview was at length

accorded to him at Fontainebleau; where, in the presence of Henry and

the Duc de Sully, he confessed that conceiving himself to have been

ill-used by the Court, he had from mortified vanity adopted the

interests of M. de Biron, and even participated in the conspiracy of

which he was now anxious to anticipate the effects, and from which he

had instantly retired when he discovered that it involved the lives of

his Majesty and the Dauphin.

He then solemnly asserted that when the Maréchal de Biron proceeded to

Flanders to receive the oath of peace from the Archduke Albert, the

Spaniards, who at once detected the extent of his vanity and ambition,

had flattered his weakness and encouraged his hopes; and that they had

ultimately despatched to him an individual named Picoté, who for some

crime had been exiled from Orleans, and who was authorized to give him

the assurance that it only depended upon the Duke himself to secure a

brilliant position through their agency, should he see fit to become

their ally. The Maréchal, his associate went on to say, listened eagerly

to the proposition, and expressed his willingness to treat with Spain

whenever it might be deemed expedient to confide to him the real meaning

of the message; a reply which satisfied the Spaniards that with proper

caution they should find it no difficult undertaking to attach him

entirely to their interests, or, failing in this attempt, to rid

themselves of a dangerous adversary by rendering him the victim of his

own treason.

Elated by the brilliant prospect which thus opened upon him, Biron

gradually became less energetic in the service of his legitimate master;

and after the peace of Vervins, finding his influence necessarily

diminished, he began to murmur, affecting to believe that the services

which he had rendered to the sovereign had not been duly recognized; and

it was at this period, according to his betrayer, that their

acquaintance had commenced, an acquaintance which so rapidly ripened

into friendship that ere long he became the depository of his patron's

most cherished secrets.

After many and anxious consultations, principally caused by the

uncertainty of the Duke as to the nature of the honours which were to be

conferred upon him, it had been at length resolved between the two

conspirators that they should despatch a priest to the Duke of Savoy, a

monk of Cîteaux to Milan, and Picoté himself to Spain, to treat with the

several Princes in the name of the Maréchal; and what was even more

essential to the monarch to ascertain, was the fact that a short time

subsequently, and before he visited Paris, the Duke of Savoy had entered

into a secret negotiation with Biron, and even led him to believe that

he would bestow upon him the hand of one of his daughters, by which

marriage the Maréchal would have become the cousin of the Emperor of

Germany, and the nephew of the King of Spain, an alliance which, to so

ambitious a spirit, opened up an opportunity of self-aggrandizement

never to be realized in his own country and under his own sovereign.

In return for this concession, Biron had pledged himself to his wily

ally that he would provide so much occupation for Henry in the interior

of his kingdom, that he should have no leisure to attempt the invasion

of the marquisate of Saluzzo, a pledge which more than any other

gratified M. de Savoie, who lived in constant dread of being driven from

his territories. During the war the Maréchal nevertheless took several

of the Duke's fortresses in Brescia; but a perfect understanding had

been established between them which rendered this circumstance

comparatively unimportant; and on the refusal of Henry to permit the

appointment of a governor of his own selection for the citadel of Bourg,

Biron became so incensed by what he designated as the ingratitude of his

sovereign--though he was fully aware that by countenancing such an

arrangement the King must necessarily leave the fortress entirely in his

power--that he no longer restrained himself, but declared that the death

of the French sovereign was essential to the accomplishment of his

projects; and meanwhile he gave the Duke of Savoy, whom he thenceforward

regarded as his firmest friend, constant information of the state and

movements of the hostile army.

A short time afterwards it was definitely arranged between the

conspirators that the Duke of Savoy should give his third daughter in

marriage to the Maréchal, with a dowry of five hundred thousand golden

crowns; that the Spanish monarch should cede to him all his claims of

sovereignty upon the duchy of Burgundy; and that the Condé de

Fuentes[178] and the Duke of Savoy should march their combined forces

into France, thus disabling Henry from pursuing his design of

reconquering the long-coveted duchy.

This treasonable design, owing to circumstances upon which the impetuous

Biron had failed to calculate, proved, however, abortive; and he had no

sooner convinced himself of the fact, and comprehended the perilous

position in which he had been placed by his imprudence, than he hastened

to Lyons, where the King was then sojourning; and having obtained an

audience, he confessed with a seeming frankness irresistible to so

generous and unsuspicious a nature as that of Henry, that he had been

sufficiently misled by his ambition secretly to demand from the Duke of

Savoy the hand of his younger daughter; and that, moreover, in the

excess of his mortification at the refusal of his Majesty to appoint a

governor of his own selection at Bourg, he had even been induced to plot

against the state, for both which crimes he humbly solicited the

royal pardon.

Full well did Henry and his minister remember this occurrence; nor could

the King forget that although he had urged the Maréchal to reveal to him

the whole extent of the intrigue, he had dexterously evaded his most

searching inquiries, and constantly recurred to his contrition. Henry

owed much to Biron, whom he had long loved; and with a magnanimity

worthy of his noble nature, after a few expostulations and reproaches,

he not only pardoned him for what he believed to have been a mere

temporary abandonment of his duties, but even assured him of his future

favour, and bade him return in all security to his post.

Unhappily, however, the demon of ambition by which the Duke was

possessed proved too powerful for the generous clemency of the King, and

he resumed his treasonable practices; but a misunderstanding having

ensued between himself and the false friend by whom he was now betrayed,

all the private documents which had been exchanged between himself and

the foreign princes through whose aid he trusted to obtain the honours

of sovereignty, were communicated on this occasion to the monarch whose

dignity and whose confidence he had alike outraged.

A free pardon was accorded to the traitor through whose means Henry was

made acquainted with the extent of the intrigue, on condition that he

should reside within the precincts of the Court and lend his assistance

to convict the Duke of his crime, terms to which the perfidious

confidant readily consented; while with a tact worthy of his falsehood,

he soon succeeded in reinstating himself in the good graces of the Duke,

by professing to be earnestly engaged in France in furthering his

interests, and by giving him reason to believe that he was still devoted

to his cause.

To this deception, and to his own obstinacy, Biron owed his fate.[179]

The alarming facts which had thus been revealed to them were

communicated by Henry and his minister to certain members of the privy

council, by whom a report was drawn up and placed in the hands of the

Chancellor; and, this preliminary arrangement completed, it was

determined to recall the Maréchal to Court either to justify himself, or

to undergo the penalty of his treason. In order to effect this object,

however, it was necessary to exercise the greatest caution, as Biron was

then in Burgundy; and his alarm having already been excited by the

evasion of his most confidential agent, they felt that he might, should

his suspicions be increased, place himself at the head of the troops

under his command, by whom he was idolized, and thus become doubly

dangerous. It was, consequently, only by a subterfuge that there was any

prospect of inducing him to approach the capital; and the King, by the

advice of Sully, and not without a latent hope that he might be enabled

to clear himself of blame, openly asserted that he put no faith in the

disclosures which had been made to him, and that he would advise the

Maréchal to be careful of those about him, whose envy or enmity led them

to put a misconstruction upon his motives as well as upon his actions.

The Baron de Luz,[180] the confidential friend of Biron, for whose ear

these declarations were especially designed, did not fail to communicate

them on the instant to the accused party; while La Fin,[181] by whom he

had been betrayed, likewise wrote to assure him that in revealing the

conspiracy to the King and the ministers he had been cautious not to

utter a word by which he could be personally implicated. It is certain,

however, that the Duke placed little reliance either upon the assertions

of Henry, or the assurances of his treacherous agent; as on the receipt

of a letter from the sovereign, announcing his own instant departure for

Poitou, where he invited Biron to join him, in order that he might

afford him his advice upon certain affairs of moment, the latter wrote

to excuse himself, alleging, as a pretext for his disobedience to the

royal command, the rumour of a reported aggression of the Spaniards, and

the necessity of his presence at a meeting of the States of Burgundy

which had been convoked for the 22d of May, where it would be essential

that he should watch over the interests of his Majesty.[182]

The King did not further insist at that moment; but having ascertained

on his return from Poitou that fresh movements had been made in

Burgundy, in Saintonge, in Périgord, and in Guienne, which threatened to

prove inimical to his authority, and that couriers were constantly

passing from one of these provinces to the other, he sent to desire the

presence of the Sieur Descures,[183] an intimate friend and follower of

the Maréchal, whom he commanded to proceed with all speed to Burgundy,

and to inform his lord that if he did not forthwith obey the royal

summons, the sovereign would go in person to bring him thence. This

threat was sufficiently appalling; and the rather as Sully, by his

authority as grand-master of artillery, had taken the precaution, on

pretext of recasting the cannon and improving the quality of the powder

in the principal cities of Burgundy, to cripple Biron's resources, and

to render it impossible for him to attempt any rational resistance to

the royal will. The Maréchal soon perceived that he had been duped, but,

nevertheless, he would not yield; and Descures left him, firm in his

determination not to trust himself within the precincts of the Court.

The King, who, from his old attachment to Biron, had hitherto hoped that

he had been calumniated, and that, in lieu of crimes, he had only been

guilty of follies, offended by so resolute an opposition to his will,

began, like his ministers, to apprehend that he must in truth

thenceforward number the Duke among his enemies; and he consequently

suffered himself, shortly after the return of his last messenger, to be

persuaded to despatch the President Jeannin[184] as the bearer of a

third summons to the Maréchal, and to represent to him how greatly he

was increasing the displeasure of the sovereign by his disobedience, as

well as strengthening the suspicions which were already entertained

against him. Finally, the president was instructed to assure the haughty

and imperious rebel that the King had not forgotten the good service

which he had rendered to the nation; and that he ascribed the

accusations which had reached him rather to the exaggerations of those

who in making such reports sought to increase their own favour at Court

than to any breach of trust on the part of the Maréchal himself.[185]

Somewhat reassured by these declarations, and unconscious of the extent

of La Fin's treachery, Biron allowed himself to be persuaded by the

eloquence of Jeannin, and reluctantly left Dijon for Fontainebleau,

where he arrived on the 13th of June. As he was about to dismount, La

Fin approached to welcome him; and while holding his stirrup whispered

in his ear: "Courage, my master; speak out boldly, for they know

nothing." The Duke silently nodded his reply, and at once proceeded to

the royal chamber, where Henry received him with a gay countenance and

open arms, declaring that he had done well to accept his invitation, or

he should assuredly have gone to fetch him in person as he had

threatened. Biron excused himself, but with a coldness extremely

displeasing to the King, who, however, forebore to exhibit any symptom

of annoyance; and after a short conversation in which no further

allusion was made to the position of the Maréchal, Henry, as he had

often previously done, proposed to show him the progress of the new

buildings upon which he was then actively engaged; and, leading the way

to the gardens, he did in fact for a time point out to him every object

of interest. This done, he suddenly turned the discourse upon the

numerous reasons for displeasure which the recent acts of Biron had

given him (being careful, nevertheless, not to betray the extent of his

knowledge), and earnestly urged him to confess the real amount of the

imprudence of which he had been guilty, pledging his royal word, that

should he do so with frankness and sincerity, the avowal would ensure

his pardon.

But this the infatuated Duke had no intention of conceding. The

whispered assurance of La Fin still vibrated on his ear, and he also

calculated largely on his intimacy with D'Auvergne, which secured to him

the influence of Madame de Verneuil. He consequently replied, with an

arrogance as unbecoming as it was misplaced, that he had not come to

Court to justify himself, but in order to ascertain who were his

accusers; and, moreover, added that, having committed no crime, he did

not require any pardon; nor could either Henry himself or the Duc de

Sully, with whom he had subsequently a lengthened interview, succeed in

inducing him to make the slightest confession.

The noonday repast was no sooner over than the King sent to summon the

Maréchal to his closet, where he once more exerted every effort to

soften the obduracy of the man to whose valour he was well aware that

he had been greatly indebted for his crown, and whom he was consequently

anxious to save from dishonour and ignominy; but, unfortunately for his

own interests, Biron retained as vivid a recollection of the fact as

Henry himself; and he so highly estimated the value of his services,

that he resolved to maintain the haughty position which he had assumed,

and to persist in a denial that was fated to cost him his life. Instead,

therefore, of throwing himself upon the clemency of the King by an

undisguised avowal of his treason, he merely replied to the appeal by

again demanding to know who were his accusers; upon which Henry rose

from his seat, and exclaiming: "Come, we will play a match at tennis,"

hastily left the room, followed by the culprit.

The King having selected the Comte de Soissons[186] as his second

against the Duc d'Epernon and the Maréchal, this ill-assorted party

continued for some time apparently absorbed in the game; and so

thoroughly did it recall past scenes and times to the mind of the

monarch, that he resolved, before he abandoned his once faithful subject

to his fate, to make one last endeavour to overcome his obstinacy. He

accordingly authorized M. de Soissons to exert whatever influence he

possessed with the rash man who was so blindly working out his own ruin,

and to represent to him the madness of persisting in a line of conduct

which could not fail to provoke the wrath of his royal master.

"Remember, Monsieur," said the Prince, who was as anxious as the monarch

himself that the scandal of a public trial, and the certainty of an

ignominious death, should be spared to so brave a soldier--"remember

that a sovereign's anger is the messenger of destruction." [187]

Biron, however, persisted in declaring that he had no reason to fear the

displeasure of Henry, and had consequently no confession to make; and

with this fatal answer the Count was fain to content himself.

The King rose early on the following morning, full of anxiety and

apprehension. He could not look back upon the many gallant acts of the

unfortunate Maréchal without feeling a bitter pang at the idea that an

old and formerly zealous servant was about to become a victim to

expediency, for the spirit of revolt, which he had hitherto endeavoured

to suppress by clemency, had now risen hydra-headed, threatening to

dispute his right of reprisal, and to involve the nation once more in

civil war. He painfully felt, that under circumstances like these,

lenity would become, not only a weakness, but a crime, and possessing,

as he did, the most indubitable proofs of Biron's guilt, he saw himself

compelled to forget the friend in the sovereign, and to deliver up the

attainted noble to the justice of his betrayed country.

A privy council was consequently assembled, at which Henry declared his

determination to arrest the Duke, and to put him upon his trial, if,

after mature deliberation, it was decided that he deserved death, as

otherwise he was resolved not to injure his reputation by any

accusations which might tarnish his renown or embitter his existence. To

this last indication of relenting he received in reply an assurance that

no further deliberation was requisite, as the treason of the Maréchal

was so fully proved, and the facts so amply authenticated, that he would

be condemned to the axe by every tribunal in the world.

On finding that his councillors were unanimous in this opinion, the King

summoned MM. de Vitry[188] and de Praslin,[189] and gave them orders to

arrest both the Duc de Biron and the Comte d'Auvergne, desiring them at

the same time to act with the greatest caution, and carefully to avoid

all noise and disorder.

When their Majesties had supped they retired to the private apartments,

where, among other courtiers, they were joined by the two conspirators,

both of whom were peculiarly obnoxious to the Queen--D'Auvergne from his

general character, as well as his relationship to Madame de Verneuil,

and Biron from his intimacy with the brother of the favourite, who had

renewed her pretended claim to the hand of Henry, a subject which always

tortured the heart of Marie, involving, as it did, the legitimacy of her

son, and her own honour. It was not, therefore, without a great exertion

of self-command that she replied to the ceremonious compliments of the

Duke by courtesies equally lip-deep, and, at the express desire of the

King, was induced to accept him as her companion at the card-table.

During the progress of the game, a Burgundian nobleman named Mergé

approached the Maréchal and murmured in a low voice, as he affected to

examine his cards, that he was about to be arrested, but Biron being at

that moment deeply absorbed in his occupation, did not hear or heed the

warning, and he continued to play on in the greatest security until

D'Auvergne, to whom Mergé had communicated the ill-success of his own

attempt, in his turn drew near the royal table, and whispered as he

bowed profoundly to the Queen, by which means he brought his lips to a

level with the Duke's ear: "We are not safe here."

Biron did not for an instant lose his presence of mind; but without the

movement of a muscle again gathered up his cards, and pursued his game,

which was only terminated at midnight by an intimation from the King

that it was time for her Majesty to retire. Henry then withdrew in his

turn; but before he left the room he turned towards the Maréchal and

said with marked emphasis: "Adieu, _Baron de Biron_, you know what I

have told you." [190]

As the Duke, considerably startled by this extraordinary address, was

about to leave the antechamber, Vitry seized his right arm with one

hand, and with the other laid a firm grasp upon his sword, exclaiming:

"Monsieur, the King has confided the care of your person to me. Deliver

up your sword." A few of the gentlemen of the Duke's household who were

awaiting him made a show of resistance, but they were instantly seized

by the guard; upon which the Maréchal demanded an interview with

the monarch.

"His Majesty has retired," replied Vitry. "Give me your sword."

"Ha! my sword," said Biron with a deep sigh of indignant mortification,

"that sword which has rendered him so much good service;" and without

further comment or expostulation he placed the weapon in the hands of

the captain of the guard, and followed him to the chamber in which he

was to pass the night.

The Comte d'Auvergne had meanwhile also been arrested at the gate of the

palace by M. de Praslin, and conducted to another apartment.

The criminals were no sooner secured than the King despatched a

messenger to Sully to inform him of the fact, and to desire his

immediate attendance at the palace; and on his arrival, after narrating

to him the mode of their capture, Henry desired him to mount his horse,

and to repair without delay to the Bastille, in order to prepare

apartments for them in that fortress. "I will forward them in boats to

the water-gate of the Arsenal," he pursued; "let them land there, but be

careful that they are seen by no one; and convey them thence to their

lodgings as quietly as possible across your own courts and gardens. So

soon as you have arranged everything for their landing, hasten to the

Parliament and to the Hôtel-de-Ville; there explain all that has passed,

and say that on my arrival in the capital I will communicate my reasons

for what I have done, of which the justice will be at once

apparent." [191]

This arrangement was made upon the instant, and on the morrow the

prisoners were embarked in separate boats upon the Seine, under a strong

escort of the King's bodyguard; and on their arrival at the Bastille

they were delivered into the express keeping of the Duc de Sully; while

upon his subsequent entrance into Paris on the afternoon of the same

day, Henry was received with acclamation by the citizens, who were aware

of the fruitless efforts made by the monarch to induce the Maréchal to

return to his allegiance, and whose joy was of the most enthusiastic

description at the escape of their beloved sovereign from a foul

conspiracy.[192] The Maréchal de Biron, like all men who have attained

to a high station, and whose ambition prompts them to conciliate the

goodwill of those by whom they are approached, possessed many friends;

but the accusation of _lèse-majesté_ under which he laboured was one of

so formidable a nature that they remained totally passive; and it was

only his near relatives who ventured to peril their own favour by making

an appeal in his behalf. Their supplications, earnest and humble though

they were, failed, however, to shake the resolution of Henry, whose

pride had, in this instance, been doubly wounded alike as a monarch and

as a man. He felt that not only had the King of France to deal with a

rebel, but that the confiding friend, who had been ready upon the

slightest appearance of regret or repentance once more to forgive, had

been treated with distrust and recompensed by falsehood.

While those closely connected with him were endeavouring, by every means

in their power, to appease the just indignation of the sovereign, and to

intercede in his behalf, Biron himself, as though his past services must

necessarily suffice to secure his impunity, was indulging, even within

the formidable walls of the Bastille, in the grossest and most

ill-judged vituperations against the King; and boasting of his own

exploits, rather like a maniac than a brave and gallant soldier who had

led armies into the field, and there done his duty unflinchingly.[193]

He partook sparingly of the food which was presented to him; and instead

of taking rest, spent the greater portion of the night in pacing to and

fro the narrow apartment. It was evident that he had firm faith either

in the royal pardon, or in the means of escape being provided for him by

his friends; but as day by day went by, and he received no intelligence

from without, while he remarked that every individual who entered his

chamber was fully armed, and that the knives upon his table were not

pointed, in order that he should be unable to convert them into

defensive weapons, he became somewhat less violent; and he no sooner

ascertained that Henry had refused to comply with the petition of his

family than he said, with a bitter laugh: "Ha! I see that they wish me

to take the road to the scaffold." Thenceforward he ceased to demand

justice on his accusers, became less imperious, and even admitted that

he had no rational hope save in the mercy of the monarch.[194]

On the 27th of July, the preliminary arrangements having been completed,

the Maréchal was conducted to the Palais de Justice by the Sieur de

Montigny,[195] the Governor of Paris, in a covered barge escorted by

twelve or fifteen armed men. Previously, however, to his being put upon

his trial, he was privately interrogated by the commissioners chosen for

that purpose; but this last judicial effort to save him only tended to

secure his ruin. When confronted with his judges, Biron appeared to have

lost all consistency of character; the soldier was sunk in the sophist;

he argued vaguely and inconsistently; and compromised his own cause by

the very clumsiness of the efforts which he made to clear himself.

Unaware of the revelations of La Fin, when he was confronted with him he

declared him to be a man of honour, his relative, and his very good

friend; but the depositions of the Burgundian noble were no sooner made

known to him than he retracted his former assertion, branding him as a

sorcerer, a traitor, an assassin, and the vilest of men, with other

epithets too coarse for repetition.[196] These terrible accusations,

however, came too late to serve his cause; he had already committed

himself by his previous panegyric; and, perceiving that such was the

case, he hastened to support his testimony against his former accomplice

by asserting that were Renazé alive and in France, he should be able to

prove the truth of what he advanced, and to justify himself.

Unfortunately for the success of this assurance, Renazé in his turn made

his appearance in court; having, by a strange chance, recently escaped

from Savoy, where the Duke had held him a prisoner; and Biron had the

mortification of finding that this, another of his ancient allies, had

not been more faithful to him in his adversity than La Fin. These two

witnesses, indeed, decided his fate; as the letters which were produced

against him were proved to have been written before the previous pardon

granted to him by Henry at Lyons, and they were consequently of no avail

as regarded the present accusation.

The Parliament was presided over by Messire Pomponne de Bellièvre,

Chancellor of France, beside whom the Maréchal was requested to take his

place upon a low wooden stool. Matthieu asserts that, although neither

duke nor peer had obeyed the summons of the Chambers, the number of

Biron's judges nevertheless amounted to one hundred and twelve;[197]

and it is probable that this very fact gave him confidence, as during

the two long hours occupied by his trial he never once lost his

self-possession, but argued as closely and as sagaciously as though he

had yielded to no previous intemperance of language. He urged the pardon

previously accorded to him by the King; earnestly protested that he had

never entered into any cabal against the throne or dignity of his

sovereign; and denied that any man could be proved a traitor, whatever

might be his wishes, so long as he made no effort to realize them. He

admitted that he might have talked rashly, but appealed to his judges

whether he had not proved himself equally reckless in the field; and

required them to declare if so venial a fault had not, by that fact,

already been sufficiently expiated. He then recapitulated the events of

his career as a military leader; but he did so temperately and modestly,

without a trace of the arrogant bombast for which he had throughout his

life been celebrated. So great was the effect of this unexpected and

manly dignity, that many members of the court were seen to shed tears;

and had his fate been decided upon the instant, it is probable that his

calm and touching eloquence might have saved his life; but so much time

had already been exhausted that enough did not remain for collecting the

votes, and the result of the trial was consequently deferred; the

Maréchal meanwhile returning to the Bastille under the same escort

which had conveyed him to the capital.[198]

On the 29th, the Chambers having again assembled, they remained in

deliberation from six o'clock in the morning until two hours after

mid-day, when sentence of death was unanimously pronounced against the

prisoner; and he was condemned to lose his head in the Place de Grève,

"as attainted and convicted of having outraged the person of the King,

and conspired against his kingdom; all his property to be confiscated,

his peerage reunited to the Crown; and himself shorn of all his honours

and dignities."

On the following day, the decision of the Parliament having been made

public, immense crowds collected in the Place de Grève in order to

witness the execution; scaffoldings were erected on every side for the

accommodation of the spectators; and the tumult at length became so

great that it reached the ears of the Maréchal in his prison-chamber.

Rushing to the window, whence he could command a view of some portion of

the open fields leading to the Rue St. Antoine, along which numerous

groups were still making their eager way, he exclaimed, in violent

emotion: "I have been judged, and I am a dead man." One of his guards

hastened to assure him that the outcry was occasioned by a quarrel

between two nobles, which was about to terminate in a duel; and the

unhappy prisoner thus remained for a short time in uncertainty as to his

ultimate fate. Yet still, as he sat in his dreary prison, he heard the

continued murmur of the excited citizens, who, believing that he was to

be put to death by torchlight, persisted in holding their weary watch

until an hour before midnight.[199]

The King had, however, determined to postpone the execution until the

morrow; when, apparently yielding to the solicitations of the Duke's

family, but, as many surmised, anxious to avoid a tumult which the great

popularity of Biron with the troops, and the numerous friends and

followers whom he possessed about the Court, led him to apprehend might

prove the result of so public a disgrace to his surviving relatives,

Henry consented to change the place of execution to the court of the

Bastille, where the Maréchal accordingly was beheaded at five o'clock in

the evening. The circumstances attending his decapitation are too

painful for detail; suffice it that his last struggles for life

displayed a cowardice which ill accorded with his previous gallantry,

and that it was only by a feint that the executioner at length succeeded

in performing his ghastly office; while so great had been the violence

of the victim, that his head bounded three times upon the scaffold, and

emitted more blood than the trunk from which it had been severed.

It was said that the father of the culprit, the former Maréchal, had on

one occasion, during an exhibition of the violence in which Biron so

continually indulged, bitterly exclaimed: "I would advise you, Baron,

as soon as peace is signed, to go and plant cabbages on your estate, or

you will one day bring your head to the scaffold." [200] A fearful

prophecy fearfully fulfilled.

The corpse was conveyed to the church of St. Paul, where it was interred

without any ceremony, but surrounded by a dense mass of the populace,

many of whom openly pitied his fate, and lamented over his fall.[201]

La Fin and Renazé were pardoned; but Hubert, the secretary of the

Maréchal, suffered "the question," both ordinary and extraordinary, and

was condemned to perpetual imprisonment, having refused to make any

confession. He was, however, a short time subsequently, restored to

liberty; but the remembrance of all that he had undergone rankled in his

heart, and he no sooner found himself once more free than he abandoned

his country, and withdrew to Spain, where he passed the remainder of

his life.

The Baron de Luz, who had revealed all he knew of the conspiracy on the

promise of a free pardon, was not only forgiven for the share which he

had taken in the plot, but had, moreover, all his appointments

confirmed; and was made governor of the castle of Dijon and the town of

Beaune. The governorship of Burgundy, vacant by the death of Biron, was

given to the Dauphin; and the lieutenancy of the province was conferred

upon the Duc de Bellegarde, by whom the young Prince was ultimately

succeeded in the higher dignity.

A Breton nobleman, named Montbarot,[202] was committed to the Bastille

on suspicion of being involved in the cabal; but no proof of his

participation having transpired, he was shortly afterwards liberated.

The Duc de Bouillon, who was conscious that he had not been altogether

guiltless of participation in the crime for which the less cautious

Biron had just suffered death, deeming it expedient to provide for his

own safety, took refuge in his viscounty of Turenne, where, however, he

did not long remain inactive; and reports of his continued disaffection

having reached the ears of the King, he was, in his turn, summoned to

the royal presence in order to justify himself; but the example of his

decapitated friend was still too recent to encourage him to such a

concession; and instead of presenting himself at Court he despatched

thither a very eloquent letter, in which he informed the monarch that,

being aware of the falsehood and artifice of his accusers, he entreated

him to dispense with his appearance in the capital; and to approve

instead, that, for the satisfaction of his Majesty, the French nation,

and his own honour, he should present himself before the Chamber of

Castres; that assembly forming an integral portion of the Parliament of

Toulouse, which held jurisdiction over his own viscounty of Turenne.

Having forwarded this missive to the sovereign, he hastened to Castres,

where he appeared as he had suggested, and caused his presence to be

registered. The determination of Henry to compel his attendance at Paris

was, however, only strengthened by this act of defiance; and having

ascertained that the King was about to despatch a messenger to compel

his obedience, M. de Bouillon left Castres in haste for Orange, whence

he proceeded, by way of Geneva, to Heidelberg, and placed himself under

the protection of the Prince Palatine, after having declared his

innocence to Elizabeth of England and the other Protestant sovereigns,

and entreated their support and mediation.

Thus far, with the exception of Biron himself, all the members of this

famous conspiracy had escaped with their lives, and some among them

without loss, either of freedom or of property; one of their number,

however, was fated to be less fortunate, and this one was the Baron de

Fontenelles,[203] a man of high family, who had for several years

rendered himself peculiarly obnoxious to the King and his ministers, and

whose atrocious barbarities caused him to fall unpitied. This wretched

man, after having been put to the torture, was, by the sentence

pronounced against him by the council, broken alive upon the wheel,

where he suffered the greatest agony during an hour and a half. His

lieutenant was condemned to the gallows for having been the medium of

his communication with the Spanish Government; although, even as he was

ascending the fatal ladder, he continued to declare that he had always

been ignorant of the contents of the packets which he was charged to

deliver, and could neither read nor write.[204]

With the life of Biron, the conspiracy had terminated; while his fate

had not failed to produce universal consternation. His devotion to the

early fortunes of the King had been at once so great and so efficient,

his military renown was so universally acknowledged, and his favour with

the monarch was so apparently beyond the reach of chance or change, that

his unhappy end pointed a moral even to the proudest, and so paralysed

the spirit of those who might otherwise have felt inclined to question

the royal authority, that even the nearest and dearest of his friends

uttered no murmur; while those individuals who had dreaded to find

themselves compromised by his ruin, and who, to their equal surprise and

satisfaction, discovered that, while he had unguardedly preserved all

the papers which could tend to his own destruction, he had destroyed

every vestige of their criminality, rejoiced at their escape, and

flattered themselves that their participation in his treachery would for

ever remain undiscovered; a circumstance which rendered them at once

patient and silent.

That the necessity for taking the life of the Maréchal had been bitterly

felt by the King himself, we have already shown; and it was further

evinced when he declared to those who interceded for the doomed man,

that had his personal interests alone been threatened by the treason of

the criminal, he should have found it easy to pardon the wrong that had

been done him; but that, when he looked into the future, and remembered

that the safety of the kingdom which had been confided to him, and of

the son who was to succeed him upon the throne, must both be compromised

by sparing one who had already proved that his loyalty could not be

purchased by mercy, he held himself bound to secure both against an evil

for which there was no other safeguard than the infliction of the utmost

penalty of the law.

Many argued that, having spared the lives of the Ducs d'Epernon, de

Bouillon, and de Mayenne,[205] all of whom had at different times been

in arms against him, Henry might equally have shown mercy to Biron; but

while they urged this argument, they omitted to remember that the

political crime of these three nobles had not been aggravated, like that

of the Maréchal, by private wrong; and that they had not, by an

unyielding obstinacy, and an ungrateful pertinacity in rebellion,

exhausted the forbearance of an indulgent monarch. Moreover, Biron, in

grasping at sovereignty, had not hesitated to invite the intrusion of

foreign and hostile troops into French territory, or to betray the

exigencies and difficulties of the army under his own command to his

dangerous allies; thus weakening for the moment, and imperilling for the

future, the resources of a frank and trusting master; two formidable

facts, which justified the severity alike of his King and of his judges.

The lesson was a salutary one for the French nobility, who had, from

long impunity, learnt to regard their personal relations with foreign

princes as matters beyond the authority of the sovereign, and which

could involve neither their safety nor their honour; for it taught them

that the highest head in the realm might fall under an accusation of

treason; and that, powerful as each might be in his own province or his

own government, he was still responsible to the monarch for the manner

in which he used that power, and answerable to the laws of his country

should he be rash enough to abuse it.

That Henry felt and understood that such must necessarily be the effect

produced by the fate of the Maréchal there can be little doubt, as well

as that he was still further induced to impress so wholesome a

conviction upon the minds of his haughty aristocracy by the probability

of a minority, during which the disorders incident to so many

conflicting and imaginary claims could not fail to convulse the kingdom

and to endanger the stability of the throne; while it is no less evident

that, once having forced upon their reason a conviction of his own

ability to compel obedience where his authority was resisted, and to

assert his sovereign privilege where he felt it to be essential to the

preservation of the realm, he evinced no desire to extend his severity

beyond its just limits. Thus, as we have seen, with the exception of

the Baron de Fontenelles, who had drawn down upon himself the terrible

expiation of a cruel death, rather by a long succession of crime than by

his association in the conspiracy of Biron, all the other criminals

already judged had escaped the due punishment of their treason; while

the Comte d'Auvergne, after having been detained during a couple of

months in the Bastille, was restored to liberty at the intercession of

his sister, Madame de Verneuil, who pledged herself to the monarch that

he was guilty only in so far as he had been faithful to the trust

reposed in him by the Maréchal, and had forborne to betray his secret,

while he had never actively participated in the conspiracy. She moreover

assured Henry, who was only anxious to find an opportunity of pardoning

the Count--an anxiety which the tears and supplications of the Marquise,

as well as his own respect for the blood of the Valois inherited by

D'Auvergne from his royal father, tended naturally to increase--that the

prisoner was prepared, since the death of Biron had freed him from all

further necessity for silence, to communicate to his Majesty every

particular of which he was cognizant. The concession was accepted; the

Count made the promised revelations; and his liberation was promptly

followed by a renewal of the King's favour.

Towards the close of the year, intelligence having reached Henry that

the Prince de Joinville, who was serving in the army of the Archduke,

had, in his turn, suffered himself to be seduced from his allegiance by

the Spaniards, he gave instant orders for his arrest; but the Prince no

sooner found himself a prisoner than he declared his readiness to

confess everything, provided he were permitted to do so to the King in

person and in the presence of Sully. His terms were complied with; and,

as both Henry and his minister had anticipated from the frivolous and

inconsequent character of their new captive, it at once became apparent

that no idea of treason had been blent with the follies of which he had

been guilty, but that they had merely owed their origin to his idle love

of notoriety. A correspondence with Spain had become, as we have shown,

the fashion at the French Court; and Joinville had accordingly, in order

to increase his importance, resolved to effect in his turn an

understanding with that country. During his audience of the King he so

thoroughly betrayed the utter puerility of his proceedings that the

monarch at once resolved to treat him as a silly and headstrong youth,

towards whom any extreme measure of severity would be alike unnecessary

and undignified; and he had consequently no sooner heard Joinville's

narration to an end than he desired the presence of his mother the

Duchesse de Guise and his brother the Duke,[206] and as they entered

the royal closet, somewhat startled by so sudden a summons, he said,

directing their attention to the delinquent: "There stands the prodigal

son in person; he has filled his head with follies; but I shall treat

him as a child and forgive him for your sakes, although only on

condition that you reprimand him seriously; and that you, my nephew,"

addressing himself particularly to the Duke, "become his guarantee for

the future. I place him in your charge, in order that you may teach him

wisdom if it be possible."

In obedience to this command M. de Guise, who was well aware with how

rash and intemperate a spirit he was called upon to contend, at once,

with the royal sanction, reconducted Joinville to his prison, where

during several months the young Prince exhausted himself in threats,

murmurs, and every species of verbal extravagance, until wearied by the

monotony of confinement he finally subsided into repentance, and was,

upon his earnest promise of amendment, permitted to exchange his chamber

in the Bastille for a less stringent captivity in the Château de

Dampierre.[207] Such was the lenient punishment of the last of the

conspirators; and it was assuredly a clever stroke of policy in the

monarch thus to cast a shade of ridicule over the close of the cabal,

which, having commenced with a tragedy, had by his contemptuous

forbearance almost terminated in an epigram.

The Court, after having passed a portion of the summer at St. Germain,

removed in the commencement of August to Fontainebleau, the advanced

pregnancy of the Queen having rendered her anxious to return to that

palace. But any gratification which she might have promised herself, in

this her favourite place of residence, was cruelly blighted by the

legitimation of the son of Madame de Verneuil, which was formally

registered at this period. Nor was this the only vexation to which she

was exposed, the notoriety of the King's intrigues becoming every day

more trying alike to her temper and to her health; while the new

concession which had been made to the vanity--or, as the Marquise

herself deemed it, to the honour--of the favourite, induced the latter

to commit the most indecent excesses, and to increase, if possible, the

almost regal magnificence of her attire and her establishment, at the

same time that her deportment towards the Queen was marked by an

insolent disrespect which involved the whole Court in perpetual

misunderstandings.

As it had already become only too evident that the unfortunate Marie de

Medicis possessed but little influence over the affections of her

husband, however he might be compelled to respect the perfect propriety

and dignity of her character, the cabal of the favourite daily increased

in importance; and the measure of the Queen's mortification overflowed,

when, soon after the royal visit to Fontainebleau, Henry took leave of

her in order to visit Calais, and she ascertained that he had on his way

stopped at the Château de Verneuil, whither he had been accompanied by

the Marquise. It was in vain that M. de Sully--to whom the King had

given strict charge to endeavour by every method in his power to

reconcile the Queen to his absence, and to provide for her amusement

every diversion of which she was in a condition to partake--exerted

himself to obey the command of the monarch; Marie was too deeply wounded

to derive any consolation from such puerile sources, nor was it until

the return of her royal consort, when his evident anxiety and increased

tenderness once more led her to believe that she might finally wean him

from his excesses and attach him to herself, that she once more

became calm.

On the 11th of November the anticipated event took place, and the Queen

gave birth to her eldest daughter[208] in the same oval chamber in which

the Dauphin first saw the light.[209] The advent of Elisabeth de France

was not, however, hailed with the same delight by Marie as had been

that of her first-born; on the contrary, her disappointment was extreme

on ascertaining the sex of the infant, from the fact of her having

placed the most entire confidence in the assurances of a devotee named

Soeur Ange, who had been recommended to her notice and protection by the

Sovereign-Pontiff, and who had, before she herself became cognizant of

the negotiations for her marriage, foretold that she would one day be

Queen of France. This woman, who still remained in her service, had

repeatedly assured her that she need be under no apprehension of bearing

daughters, as she was predestined by Heaven to become the mother of

three princes only; and after having, with her usual superstition,

placed implicit faith in the flattering prophecy, Marie no sooner

discovered its fallacy than she abandoned herself to the most violent

grief, refusing to listen to the consolations of her attendants, and

bewailing herself that she should have been so cruelly deceived, until

the King, although he in some measure participated in her annoyance,

succeeded in restoring her to composure by bidding her remember that had

she not been of the same sex as the child of which she had just made him

the father, she could not have herself realised the previous prediction

of Soeur Ange; an argument which, coupled with the probability that the

august infant beside her might in its turn ascend a European throne, was

in all likelihood the most efficacious one which could have been adopted

to reconcile her to its present comparative insignificance.

FOOTNOTES:

[158] César de Vendôme was the son of Henri IV and _la belle Gabrielle._

He became Governor of Brittany, and superintendent-in-chief of the

national navigation. Henry also bestowed on him as an appanage the duchy

of Vendôme. He married the daughter of Philip Emmanuel of Lorraine, Duc

de Mercoeur, by whom he had three children: Isabelle, who became the

wife of Charles Amédée, Duc de Nemours; Louis, who died single; and

François, Duc de Beaufort.

[159] Jean de Berthault (or Bertaut) was born at Caen in 1552. He was

first-almoner of Catherine de Medicis, Abbot of Aulnai, and subsequently

Bishop of Séez. He was a pupil of Ronsard, and a friend of Desportes. He

wrote a great number of sacred and profane poems, psalms, and sonnets.

He also produced a "Funeral Oration on Henri IV," and a "Translation of

St. Ambroise." He died in 1611.

[160] _Amours du Grand Alcandre_, p. 41.

[161] _Amours du Grand Alcandre_, p. 42.

[162] Claude de Lorraine, Prince de Joinville, was the fourth son of

Henri, Duc de Guise, surnamed the _Balafré_, brother of Charles, Duc de

Mayenne, and of Louis, Cardinal de Guise. He married Marie de Rohan,

Duchesse de Chevreuse, the daughter of Hercule de Rohan, Duc de

Montbazon, and peer of France, and was subsequently known as Duc de

Chevreuse. He died in 1657.

[163] _Amours du Grand Alcandre_, pp. 272, 273.

[164] Dreux du Radier, vol. vi. p. 85. Saint-Edmé, p. 218.

[165] _Amours du Grand Alcandre_, p. 274.

[166] _Amours du Grand Alcandre_, p. 276.

[167] Mademoiselle de Sourdis was the daughter of François d'Escoubleau,

Seigneur de Jouy, de Launay, Marquis de Sourdis, etc., and of Isabelle

Babou, Dame d'Alluie, daughter of Jean Babou, Seigneur de la

Bourdaisière, and aunt of Gabrielle d'Estrées. He was deprived of the

government of Chartres by the League; but was restored by Henri III at

the entreaty of Gabrielle.

[168] Caterina Selvaggio was one of the Queen's favourite Italian

waiting-women.

[169] Sully, _Mém_. vol. iv. pp. 93, 94.

[170] Rambure, _MS. Mém_. vol. i. p. 332.

[171] Capefigue, _Hist, de la Réforme, de la Ligue, et du Règne de Henri

IV_, vol. viii. pp. 147, 148.

[172] _Histoire de la Mère et du Fils_, a continuation of the _Memoirs

of Richelieu,_ incorrectly attributed to Mézeray, vol. i. p. 7.

[173] Sully, _Note to Memoirs_, vol. iv. pp. 95, 96.

[174] Richelieu, _La Mère et le Fils_, vol. i. p. 7.

[175] Claude, Seigneur de la Trémouille, second Duc de Thouars, peer of

France, Prince de Talmond, was born in the year 1566, and first bore

arms under François de Bourbon, Duc de Montpensier. He embraced the

reformed religion, and attached himself to the fortunes of Henri de

Navarre, subsequently King of France, whom he followed to the sieges of

Rouen and Poitiers, and the battle of Fontaine-Française; after which

the King conferred upon him the rank of peer of France. He was the

brother-in-law of the Duc de Bouillon. He died in the castle of Thouars,

to which he had retired, suspected of treason, after refusing to return

to Court to justify himself, on the 25th of October 1604, in his

thirty-eighth year.

[176] Jean Louis de Nogaret de la Valette, Duc d'Epernon, was the

younger son of an old Gascon family, who sought his fortunes at the

French Court under the name of Caumont. After the death of Charles IX,

he offered his services to Henri de Navarre, subsequently Henri IV; but

was ultimately admitted to the intimacy of Henri III, who caused him to

be instructed in politics and literature, and made him one of his

_mignons_. He was next created Duc d'Epernon, first peer and admiral of

France, colonel-general of infantry, and held several governments. On

the death of Henri III, this ennobled adventurer once more became a

partisan of his successor, and commanded the royal forces during the war

in Savoy; but throughout the whole of this reign he lived in constant

misunderstanding with the Court and the King, and was even suspected of

the act of regicide which deprived France of her idolised monarch. It

was the Duc d'Epernon who, immediately after that event, convoked the

Parliament, caused the recognition of Marie de Medicis as Regent, and

formed a privy council over which he presided. Banished by the Concini

during their period of power, he reappeared at Court after their fall,

but Richelieu would not permit him to hold any government office, and,

moreover, deprived him of all his governments save that of Guienne. He

died in 1642.

[177] Daniel, vol. vii. p. 408.

[178] Pedro Henriques Azevedo, Condé de Fuentes.

[179] Montfaucon, vol. v. pp. 405-407.

[180] Edmé de Malain, Baron de Luz, Lieutenant-Governor of Burgundy, was

the son of Joachim de Malain and Marguerite d'Epinac. He was deeply

involved in the conspiracy of the Maréchal de Biron, and would

infallibly have perished with him had he not been induced by the

President Jeannin to reveal all that he knew of the plot to Henri IV, on

condition of a free pardon. He survived his treachery for ten years, and

in 1613 was killed in a duel by the Chevalier de Guise. His son, Claude

de Malain, having sworn to avenge his death, in his turn challenged M.

de Guise, at whose hands he met with the same fate as his father.

[181] Jacques de Lanode, Sieur de la Fin, was a petty Burgundian

nobleman, whose spirit of intrigue was perpetually involving those to

whom he attached himself in cabals and factions. He had been actively

engaged at one time in the affairs of the Duc d'Alençon, and at another,

he was no less busily engaged in instigating Henri III to aggressive

measures against the Duc de Guise. Since that period he had negotiated

with the ministers of Spain and Savoy, and by these means he had

contracted a great intimacy with the Duc de Biron, to whom he affected

to be distantly related, and over whom he acquired such extraordinary

ascendancy by his subtle and unceasing flattery that the weak Maréchal

became a mere puppet in his hands, and, misled by his vanity, suffered

himself to be persuaded that his merit had been overlooked and his

services comparatively unrewarded, and that he was consequently fully

justified in aspiring even to regal honours, and in using every exertion

to attain them.

[182] Matthieu, _Histoire des Derniers Troubles arrivez en France_, book

ii. p. 411.

[183] Pierre Fougeuse, Sieur Descures.

[184] Pierre Jeannin was the architect of his own fortunes. He was born

at Autun in 1540, where his father followed the trade of a tanner, and

was universally respected alike for his probity and his sound judgment.

The future president, after receiving the rudiments of his education in

his native town, was removed to Bourges, where he became a pupil of the

celebrated Cujas. In 1569 he was entered as an advocate at the

Parliament of Burgundy, where he greatly distinguished himself during

the space of two years, at the expiration of which time he was appointed

provincial advocate and member of the Burgundian States; and in this

capacity he justified, by his extraordinary talents, the choice of his

fellow-citizens. On one occasion a wealthy individual, enchanted by his

eloquence, waited upon him at his house, and expressed a desire to have

him for a son-in-law, inquiring, however, at the same time, the amount

of his property. Jeannin, by no means disconcerted at the abruptness of

his visitor, pointed with a smile first to his head and then to his

books: "You see it before you," he said with honest pride; "I have not,

nor do I require, a greater fortune." Tradition is silent as regards the

termination of the interview. In the following year (1572) Jeannin was

present at the council which was held during the frightful massacre of

St. Bartholomew, where he secured the friendship of the Comte de Charny,

at that period Grand Equerry of France, Lieutenant-General of Burgundy,

and provisional governor of the province during the absence of the Duc

d'Aumale, then Governor of Paris; and in the same year he was deputed

from the _tiers-état_ of Burgundy to the States-General, convoked at

Blois by Henri III. It was on that occasion that he began to comprehend

the designs of the Guises, and made the celebrated speech in favour of

religious toleration which does so much honour to his memory. By Henri

III he was successively appointed governor of the chancelry of Burgundy,

councillor of the provincial Parliament, and subsequently

president.--_Petitot_.

[185] Daniel, vol. vii. pp. 414, 415. Péréfixe, vol. ii. p. 367.

Matthieu, _Hist. des Derniers Troubles_, book ii. p. 411.

[186] Charles de Bourbon-Conti, Comte de Soissons, espoused the cause of

the King of Navarre, whom he accompanied to the battle of Coutras in

1587. Henry promised to him the hand of his sister, Catherine de

Navarre, to whom he presented him immediately afterwards, when a

reciprocal affection was the result. M. de Soissons, however, abandoned

the reform party, and did not return to it until after the death of

Henri III. He served actively and zealously during the League; but

having discovered that the King did not intend to fulfil his promise of

marrying him to the Princess, he quitted him during the siege of Rouen

in 1592, on the pretext of illness, and hastened to Béarn, hoping to

induce Catherine to become his wife before the King could interfere to

prevent their union, and by engaging himself to support his brother, the

Cardinal de Bourbon, to make himself master of the possessions of the

house of Navarre beyond the Loire. On reaching Béarn, however, he found

Henry already there, and was obliged to withdraw without having

accomplished either object. A short time subsequently he renewed his

friendship with that monarch, and officiated as Duke of Normandy at his

coronation at Chartres in 1594.

[187] Péréfixe, vol. ii. p. 369.

[188] Louis de l'Hôpital de Vitry, knight of all the Royal Orders, and

Captain of the King's bodyguard, was descended from the illustrious and

ancient family of the Marquis de Sainte-Même and de Montpellier, Comtes

d'Entremons.

[189] Charles de Choiseul, Marquis de Praslin, the representative of one

of the most illustrious families of France, was a descendant of the

ancient Comtes de Langres. He distinguished himself at the siege of La

Fère in 1580, at that of Paris in 1589, and at the battle of Aumale in

1592. Henri IV made him a captain of his bodyguard, and Louis XIII, in

1619, bestowed upon him the _bâton_ of marshal of France. He died in

1626, in his sixty-third year.

[190] Mézeray asserts, and with greater probability, that Henry's

parting words were: "Since you will not speak out, adieu, Baron" (_Hist,

de France_, vol. x. p. 201); while Péréfixe gives a third version,

asserting that the King took leave of him by saying: "Well then, the

truth must be learnt elsewhere; adieu, Baron de Biron" (_Hist, de Henri

le Grand_, vol. ii. p. 371).

[191] Sully, _Mém_. vol. iv. pp. 108, 109.

[192] Daniel, vol. vii. pp. 415-417. Matthieu, _Hist, des Derniers

Troubles,_ book ii. pp. 413-415. Mézeray, vol. x. pp. 196-202. Péréfixe,

vol. ii. pp. 369-372.

[193] Mézeray, vol. x. p. 203.

[194] Matthieu, _Hist. des Troubles_, book ii. pp. 415, 416.

[195] François de la Grange d'Anquien, Seigneur de Montigny, Sery, etc.,

afterwards known as the Maréchal de Montigny, served with the Catholics

at Coutras, where he was taken prisoner. In 1601 Henri IV made him

Governor of Paris; in 1609, lieutenant of the King in the Three

Bishoprics; and subsequently, in 1616, Marie de Medicis procured for him

the _bâton_ of Marshal of France. He commanded the royal army against

the malcontents in Nivernais, and died in the same year (1617). He had

but one son, who left no male issue; but his brother had, among other

children, Henri, Marquis d'Anquien, whose daughter, Marie Casimire,

married Sobieski, King of Poland, and died in France, in 1716, two years

after her return to her native country.

[196] Mézeray, vol. x. p. 204.

[197] L'Etoile computes them at one hundred and twenty-seven.--_Journ.

de Henri IV_, vol. iii. p. 21.

[198] Mézeray, vol. x. p. 205.

[199] Matthieu, _Hist. des Troubles_, book ii. pp. 426, 427.

[200] Monttaucon, vol. v. p. 410.

[201] Péréfixe, vol. ii. p. 377. Mézeray, vol. x. p. 209.

[202] Réné de Marée-Montbarot, Governor of Rennes in 1602. Wrongly

suspected of complicity with Biron, he made no effort to evade the

consequences of the accusation, but suffered himself to be arrested in

the seat of his government, whence he was conveyed to the Bastille; and

although he succeeded in establishing his innocence, he found himself,

on his liberation, deprived of his office.

[203] Guy Eder de Beaumanoir de Lavardin, Baron de Fontenelles, was a

Breton noble, who, according to De Thou, had been a celebrated Leaguer

and brigand. From the year 1597 he had held, in the name of the Duc de

Mercoeur, the fort of Douarnenez in Brittany, and the island of Tristain

in which it is situated. Since that period he had continually been

guilty of acts of piracy upon the English, and had even extended his

system of theft and murder indiscriminately both on sea and land. He

might, had he been willing so to do, have profited by the benefit of the

edict accorded to the Duc de Mercoeur in 1598, but he affected to hold

it as a point of honour to obtain a distinct one for himself, and he

even appears to have continued in the enjoyment of his government

despite this obstinacy; but having been convicted, during a period of

profound peace, of maintaining an intelligence with the Spaniards, he

was made prisoner by a stratagem, by Nicolas Rapin, provost of the

connétablie (or constable's jurisdiction), as an accomplice of the Duc

de Biron, as he was on the point of delivering up both the fort and the

island to his dangerous allies.

[204] L'Etoile, vol. x. pp. 36, 37.

[205] Charles de Lorraine, Duc de Mayenne, was the second son of

François de Lorraine, Duc de Guise, and was born in 1554. He

distinguished himself at the sieges of Poitiers and La Rochelle, and at

the battle of Montcontour, and fought successfully against the

Calvinists in Guienne and Saintonge. His brothers having been killed at

the States of Blois in 1588, he declared himself chief of the League,

and assumed the title of lieutenant-general of the kingdom and crown of

France; and by virtue of this self-created authority, caused the

Cardinal de Bourbon to be declared King, under the name of Charles X.

Having inherited the hatred of his brothers for Henri III, and his

successor Henri IV, he marched eighty thousand men against the latter

Prince, but was defeated, both at Arques and Ivry. He annihilated the

faction of the Sixteen; and was ultimately compelled to effect a

reconciliation with the King in 1599, when Henri IV, with his usual

clemency, not only pardoned his past opposition, but bestowed upon him

the government of the Isle of France. The Duc de Mayenne died in 1611,

leaving by his wife, Henriette de Savoie, daughter of the Comte de

Tende, one son, Henri, who died without issue in 1621.

[206] Charles de Lorraine, Duc de Guise, born in 1571, was the son of

Henri, Duc de Guise, who was assassinated at the States of Blois in

1588. At the period of his father's death he was conveyed to the castle

of Tours, where he was retained a prisoner until August 1591, when he

effected his escape, a circumstance which materially changed the

fortunes of the League. The general impression in the capital had been

that he would become the husband of the Infanta Isabel, the daughter of

Philip II of Spain, who would cause him to be proclaimed King, an

arrangement which the Duque de Feria, the Spanish ambassador, proposed

to the League in 1593. The Legate, the Sixteen, and the doctors of the

Sorbonne, alike favoured this election, and the negotiations proceeded

so far that the Spaniards and Neapolitans in Paris rendered him regal

honours. The young Prince, who had at this period only attained his

twenty-second year, expressed great indignation at being made the puppet

of so absurd a comedy, feeling convinced that neither the Duc de Mayenne

nor the Duc de Nemours, both of whom coveted the crown, would finally

favour his accession; and there can be little doubt that the state of

extreme poverty to which he was reduced at the time caused him to

consider the project as still more extravagant than he might otherwise

have done, it being stated (_Mém. pour l'Hist. de France_) that his

servants were, on one occasion, compelled to pawn one of his cloaks and

his saddle-cloth in order to furnish him with a dinner.

[207] Sully, _Mém_. vol. iv. pp. 128, 129. Daniel, vol. vii. p. 423.

Mézeray, vol. x. p. 219.

[208] Elisabeth de France, who married in 1615 Philip IV of Spain.

[209] Bassompierre, _Mém_. p. 26.