Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Emanuela Piasentini and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
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|Transcriber's note. |
| |
|The original punctuation, language and spelling have been |
|retained, except where noted at the end of the text. |
|The [oe] ligature has been rendered as oe. |
| |
|Alternative spellings: |
|Chateau: Chateau |
|Chateauneuf: Chateauneuf |
|Chatillon: Chatillon |
|Claire Clemence de Maille: Claire Clemence de Maille |
|Gondi: Gondy |
|Guemene: Guemenee, Guymene |
|heyday: heydey |
|Hotel, hotel: Hotel, hotel |
|Meilleraye: Meilleraie |
|Montresor: Montresor |
|Muenster: Munster |
|Orleans: Orleans |
|Scudery: Scuderi |
|Seguier: Seguier |
|Sevigne: Sevigne |
|strenuously: strenously |
|Tallemant des Reaux: Tallement des Reaux, Tallemant de Reaux|
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POLITICAL WOMEN.
BY
SUTHERLAND MENZIES,
AUTHOR OF "ROYAL FAVOURITES," ETC.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
HENRY S. KING & CO.,
65, CORNHILL, AND 12, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.
1873.
[_All rights reserved._]
CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.
PART I. PAGE
INTRODUCTION vii
BOOK I.
CHAP. I.--Anne de Bourbon (sister of the Great Conde) 3
II.--The Duchess de Longueville 12
III. & IV.--The Duchess de Chevreuse 17, 35
BOOK II.
CHAP. I.--Anne of Austria's Prime Minister and his policy 43
II.--The Duchess de Montbazon--Affair of the dropped
letters--The Quarrel of the rival Duchesses 66
III.--The _Importants_ 77
IV.--Conspiracy of the Duchess de Chevreuse and the Duke
de Beaufort to get rid of Mazarin 82
V.--Failure of the plot to assassinate Mazarin--Arrest
of Beaufort--Banishment of Madame de Chevreuse and
dispersion of the _Importants_ 99
VI.--Results of the quarrel between the Duchesses--Fatal
duel between the Duke de Guise and Count Maurice de
Coligny 110
BOOK III.
CHAP. I.--The Duchess de Longueville and the Duke de la
Rochefoucauld 121
II.--La Rochefoucauld draws Madame de Longueville into
the vortex of politics and civil war 131
III.--The Duchess de Chevreuse driven into exile for the
third time 143
IV.--Fatal influence of Madame de Longueville's passion
for La Rochefoucauld--The Fronde 149
V.--Madame de Longueville wins over her brother Conde
to the Fronde 161
VI.--The causes which led to the _coup d'etat_--The
arrest of the Princes 168
VII.--Madame de Longueville's adventures in Normandy--The
_Women's War_ 178
BOOK IV.
CHAP. I.--The Princess Palatine 187
II.--The young Princess de Conde conducts the war in
the south 203
III.--State of Parties on the liberation of the Princes 214
IV.--The Duchesses de Longueville and de Chevreuse and
the Princess Palatine in the last Fronde--Results
of the rupture of the marriage projected between
the Prince de Conti and Mademoiselle de Chevreuse 221
V.--Conde, urged by his sister, goes unwillingly into
rebellion 257
VI.--Madame de Longueville coquets with the Duke de
Nemours 262
BOOK V.
CHAP. I.--Conde's adventurous expedition 275
II.--Political and gallant intrigues--The Duchess de
Chatillon's sway over Conde--Shameful conspiracy
against Madame de Longueville 290
INTRODUCTION.
IN selecting the careers of certain celebrated women who have flung
themselves with ardour into the vortex of politics, the author's choice
has not been so much an arbitrary one as it might seem, but rather
guided by instances in which the adventurous game has not been
restricted to the commonplace contentions of the public platform, or the
private salon, but played on the grandest scale and on the most
conspicuous arena; when Peace and War, crowns and dynasties, have
trembled in the balance, and even the fate of a nation has been at
stake.
The untoward results of the lives thus devoted--dazzling and heroic as
some passages in their dramatic vicissitudes may appear--point the moral
of the futility of such pursuit on the part of the gentler sex, and
indicate the certainty of the penalty to be paid by those who by
venturing into the fervid, exhausting struggle, and rashly courting
exposure to the rough blows of the battle of political life, with its
coarse and noisy passions, have discovered too late that the strife has
done them irreparable injury. In the cases of those selected it will be
seen that the fierce contention has commonly involved the sacrifice of
conjugal happiness, the welfare of children, domestic peace, reputation,
and all the amenities of the gentle life.
That clever women abound in the present day we have undeniable
proof--many as clever, no doubt, as that famous philosopheress Madame du
Chatelet, who managed at one and the same moment the thread of an
intrigue, her cards at piquet, and a calculation in algebra, but who may
still lack the qualifications indispensably necessary to make clever
politicians. Perhaps, therefore, we might be allowed to suggest that it
would be well for ladies who are ambitious of figuring in either or both
spheres that politics and diplomacy are special and laborious pursuits,
involving a great deal of knowledge as difficult, and in the first
instance as repulsive, to acquire as Greek or chemistry. Yet, fully
admitting their capacity to qualify themselves intellectually, and
supposing them to attain the summit of their ambition of figuring
successfully in public life, a grave question still arises--would they
thereby increase or diminish their present great social influence? They
have now more influence of a certain kind than men have; but if they
obtain the influence of men, they cannot expect to retain the influence
of women. Nature, it may be thought, has established a fair distribution
of power between the two sexes. Women are potent in one sphere, and men
in another; and, if they are conscious of the domestic sway they already
exercise, they will not imperil it by challenging dominion in a field in
which they would be less secure.
Root and bond of the family, woman is no less a stranger by her natural
aptitudes than by her domestic ministrations to the general interests of
society; the conduct of the latter demands, in fact, a disengagement of
heart and mind to which she can only attain by transforming herself, to
the detriment of her duties and of her true influence. Ever to
subordinate persons to things, never to overstep in her efforts the
strict measure of the possible--those two conditions of the political
life are repugnant to her ardent and devoted nature. Even amongst women
in whom those gifts are met with in the highest degree, clearness of
perception has been almost always obscured by the ardour of pursuit or
that of patronage--by the irresistible desire of pushing to the
extremity of success her own ideas, and especially those of her friends.
Again, let us imagine political life to resemble a great game at cards,
the rules of which have been settled beforehand, and the winnings
devoted to the use of the greatest number; well, a woman ought never to
take a hand in it. Her place should be at the player's elbow, to warn
and advise him, to point out an unperceived chance, to share in his
success, more than all to console him, should luck run against him.
Thus, whilst all her better qualities would be brought into play, all
her weaker would not in any wise be at stake.
We would put it, therefore, to the womanly conscience--Is it not a
hundred times more honourable to exercise, so to speak, rights that are
legitimately recognised, though wisely limited, than to suffer in
consideration, and often in reputation, from an usurpation always
certain of being disputed?
It has been the author's endeavour to show the truth of these
conclusions by tracing the political career of certain well-born and
singularly-gifted women--women whose lofty courage, strength of mind,
keen introspection, political zeal, and genius for intrigue enabled them
to baffle and make head against some of the greatest political male
celebrities of modern history, without, however, winning us over to
their opinions or their cause; women who, in some instances, after
passing the best period of their lives in political strife, in
fostering civil war, in hatching perilous plots, and who, having cast
fortune and all the "gentle life" to the winds, preferred exile to
submission, or to wage a struggle as fruitless as it was unceasing;
until having arrived at the tardy conviction of its futility, and that
they had devoted their existence to the pursuit of the illusory and the
chimerical, they found at length repose and tranquillity only in
solitude and repentance.
In the stirring careers of certain among these remarkable personages, it
will be seen that the mainspring of their political zeal was either the
fierce excitement of an overmastering passion, an irresistible
proclivity to gallantry, or an absorbing ambition, rather than any
patriotic motive. This may go far to explain the singular sagacity,
finesse, and energy displayed in their devotion to what otherwise
appears alike mischievous and chimerical by those three high-born and
splendidly-gifted women who figured so conspicuously in the civil war of
the Fronde; and, though so much self-abnegation, courage, constancy, and
heroism, well or ill displayed, may obtain some share of pardon for
errors it would be wrong to palliate or condone, their example, it is to
be hoped, will prove deterrent rather than contagious. La
Rochefoucauld--a moralist, though by no means a moral man--who well knew
the sex, had seen at work these political women of the time of the
Fronde. That opportunity does not appear to have inspired him with an
unbounded admiration for them from that point of view.
Of the peril and mischief that fair trio inflicted upon Anne of
Austria's great Prime Minister and the State he governed we have an
interesting personal record. When, in 1660, Mazarin's policy, triumphant
on every side, had added the treaty of the Pyrenees to that of
Westphalia, the honour of the conclusion of the protracted conference
held at the _Isle of Pheasants_ was reserved for the chief Ministers of
the two Crowns--the Cardinal and Don Louis de Haro. The latter
congratulated his brother premier on the well-earned repose he was about
to enjoy, after such a long and arduous struggle. The Cardinal replied
that he could not promise himself any repose in France, for there, he
said, the _female_ politicians were more to be dreaded than the _male_;
and he complained bitterly of the torments he had undergone at the hands
of certain political women of the Fronde--notably the Duchess de
Longueville, the Duchess de Chevreuse, and the Princess Palatine, each
of whom, he asserted, was capable of upsetting three kingdoms.
"You are very lucky here in Spain," he added. "You have, as everywhere
else, two kinds of women--coquettes in abundance, and a very few
simple-minded domestic women. The former care only to please their
lovers, the latter their husbands. Neither the one nor the other,
however, have any ambition beyond indulging themselves in vanities and
luxuries. They only employ their pens in scribbling billet-doux or
love-confessions, neither one nor other bother their brains as to how
the grain grows, whilst talking about business makes their heads ache.
Our women, on the contrary, whether prudes or flirts, old or young,
stupid or clever, will intermeddle with everything. No honest woman," to
use the Cardinal's own words, "would permit her spouse to go to sleep,
no coquette allow her lover any favour, ere she had heard all the
political news of the day. They will see all that goes on, will know
everything, and--what is worse--have a finger in everything, and set
everything in confusion. We have a trio, among others"--and he again
named the three fair factionists above mentioned--"who threw us all
daily into more confusion than was ever known in Babel."
"Thank heaven!" replied Don Louis, somewhat ungallantly, "our women
_are_ of the disposition seemingly so well known to you. Provided that
they can finger the cash, whether of their husbands or their lovers,
they are satisfied; and I am very glad to say that they do not meddle
with politics, for if they did they would assuredly embroil everything
in Spain as they do in France."
It was during the minority of Louis XIV. that Mazarin had but too good
cause to complain of the three clever and fascinating women he thus
named to Don Louis de Haro, who through their political factions,
intrigues, and gallantries gave Anne of Austria's Minister no rest, and
for a long period not only thwarted and opposed him, but at intervals
placed the State, and even his life, in imminent jeopardy.
Fortunately, in our political history the instances are rare of women
who have quitted the sphere of domesticity and private life to take an
active part in the affairs of State. We say "fortunately;" for in our
opinion such abstention has tended to the happiness of both sexes in
England.
In French memoirs, politics and scandal, the jokes of the _salons_ and
the councils of the Cabinet are inextricably mixed up together, and
reveal a political system in which the authority exercised under free
institutions by men had been transferred to the art, the tact, and the
accomplishments of the female sex. We therein see how much women have
done by those subtle agencies. If France was a despotism tempered by
epigrams, it was the life of the _salons_ which brought those epigrams
to perfection; and the _salons_ thus constituted a sort of social
parliament, which, though unable to stop the supplies or withhold the
Mutiny Act, still possessed a formidable weapon of offence in the power
of making the Government ridiculous. Such was the difference existing
between two quite distinct modes of government; between Parliamentary
government and closet government; between the mace of the House of
Commons and the fan of the Duchess de Longueville. England, as we need
hardly say, has never had a government of this description. The nearest
approach to it which she has ever seen was under the sway of Charles the
Second, and, accordingly, the nearest approach to French memoirs which
our literature possesses is in the volumes of Pepys and Hamilton. To the
almost universal exemption of Englishwomen from taking an overt part in
political affairs a striking exception must be made in Sarah, Duchess of
Marlborough. She is the strongest example, perhaps, in the history of
the world--certainly in the history of this empire--of the abuse of
female favouritism, and the most flagrant instance of household
familiarity on the destinies of mankind. Sarah Jennings, the political
heroine of her age, and Viceroy, as she was called, in England, had,
however, for contemporaries two other remarkable women, who touched the
springs of political machinery quite as powerfully as--if not more
powerfully than, save herself, any to be found within the limits of
Europe--Madame de Maintenon and the Princess des Ursins. In the
respective careers of that other formidable trio of female politicians
may be traced the important, the overwhelming, influence, which female
Ministers, under the title of Court ladies, had obtained over the
destinies of England, France, and Spain. At that momentous period--the
commencement of the eighteenth century--the memoirs of a _bed-chamber
lady_ constitute the history of Europe. The bed-chamber woman soon
became the pivot of the political world. The influence of Mrs. Masham
first endangered and finally overthrew the power of the great Duke of
Marlborough. Some of the characteristics of the reign of Charles the
Second reappeared partially and in a very unattractive form under the
two first Georges, and have served to impart a tinge of French colour to
the memoirs which describe their Courts. But, fortunately for England,
neither Walpole nor his royal master were men of refined taste. It would
have been hard for a monarch like Charles the Second, or a minister like
Lord Bolingbroke, to resist the charms of those beautiful and sprightly
girls who sparkle like diamonds in all the memoirs of that time. Their
political influence was but small. George the First and his successor
pursued their unwieldy loves and enjoyed their boorish romps in a style
not seductive to English gentlemen. Politics were surrendered to
Walpole; and the consequence was that, although there was plenty of
immorality under those gracious Sovereigns, yet the feminine element of
Court life had no longer that connection with _public policy_ which once
for a brief space it had possessed; and the resemblance to French
manners in this respect grew less and less, till it disappeared
altogether with the accession of George the Third.
During the reign of that domesticated paterfamilias a slight exception,
it is true, occurred in the instance of Georgina Spencer, Duchess of
Devonshire. Young, beautiful, amiable, and witty, and not altogether
free from coquetry, she reckoned amongst her admirers some of the most
distinguished men of that day. She fascinated them all without
encouraging the pretensions of any; and notwithstanding the jealousy
which so great a superiority necessarily excited among her own sex, and
despite the rancour to which the inutility of their efforts to please
her gave birth in the bosoms of certain of the men, she preserved a
reputation for discretion beyond all suspicion. One circumstance of her
life might indeed have cast a slur upon her fair fame if her
irreproachable conduct, added to her natural graces, had not condoned a
species of notoriety which opinion in England very generally reproves.
The Duchess of Devonshire had friendly relations with the celebrated
Charles James Fox, and that friendship had taken the tinge of party
spirit. Fox presented himself as a candidate to represent Westminster in
Parliament. He had two very formidable opponents, and it was thought
that he would have succumbed in the struggle had not several amiable and
energetic women made extraordinary efforts to procure him votes. At the
head of these fair solicitors was the Duchess of Devonshire. A butcher
whose vote she requested promised it to her on the condition that he
might give her a kiss. To this she cheerfully consented, and that kiss
added one more vote to her friend's poll. Such familiarity was far less
shocking to our English manners than the too active and public part
taken by a lady of distinction in politics. Very few of her countrywomen
before her time had given occasion for a like scandal.[1]
[1] An anecdote of her has been preserved which proves how very
general was the impression the grace and beauty of the Duchess of
Devonshire made upon men in every station of society. On one
occasion of her being present on the racecourse at Newmarket, a
burly farmer who stood near her carriage, after having for some time
gazed at her in a species of ecstasy, exclaimed aloud, "Ah! why am I
not God Almighty?--she should then be Queen of Heaven!" The Duchess
preserved her personal charms far beyond the period of life when
they commonly disappear among women, though she lost one of her eyes
a few years before her death in 1806.
The existence of those literary assemblies in France during the
eighteenth century, the most important of which were those presided
over by Madame du Deffand, Mdlle. de Lespinasse, and Madame Geoffrin,
were a characteristic feature of the time. It is a notable fact that the
abstention from politics in those assemblies indirectly tended to
increase the power and importance of the women who frequented them.
Alluding to their influence, Montesquieu caustically remarked that a
nation where women give the prevailing tone must necessarily be
talkative. Then, however, it was the men who talked and the women who
listened. The men talked because they could do little else; women gave
the prevailing tone because men of all classes were partly compelled,
and partly willing, to gather around them. The nobles being excluded
from politics--in which none but the Ministers and their creatures could
interfere--exercising no control either as individuals or as a body,
naturally gave themselves up to the pleasures of society. Their
political insignificance thus increased the power and importance of
women.
To a far greater degree was their power and importance increased, on the
contrary, during the first decade of the French Revolution, when, from
the exceptional position they held, the _salons_ of Madame Roland,
Madame Necker, Madame de Suard, and others were essentially
political--that of Madame Roland being almost an echo of the Legislative
Assembly. But women who love freedom abstractedly for its own sake, and
are ready to suffer and die for a political principle, like Madame
Roland, are very rarely met with.
Towards the close of the century the female leaders of the hitherto
literary and social _salons_ were so irresistibly swept into the
whirlpool of public questions and events that they for the most part
involuntarily became mere political partisans. Among others, but with a
considerable modification on the score of the literary element, may be
instanced Madame de Stael, who by descent, education, and natural bias
was inevitably destined to aim at political power. The extent and
prominence of that exercised by her must have been considerable, though
certainly overrated by Napoleon, in whom, however, it excited such
unreasonable apprehension as led him to inflict ten years' banishment
from France upon the talented daughter of Necker.
It must not be inferred that we desire to reduce women to the condition
of a humiliating inaction. Far from it. In the position we would place
them they could never feel, think, or act with greater interest or
vivacity. Whilst it is desirable that every kind of artifice or intrigue
should be interdicted from the interior of their domesticity, it is
quite permissible for them to watch attentively important matters that
may be occurring in public life. To that function they may bring their
care and their solicitude, in order to follow and second continually the
companion of their existence. "Les hommes meme," says Fenelon, "qui ont
toute l'autorite en public, ne peuvent par leurs deliberations etablir
aucun bien effectif, si les femmes ne leur aident a l'executer." Such
was the legitimate influence exercised by the Princess Esterhazy, Ladies
Holland, Palmerston, and Beaconsfield, in our day. It is no secret that
the late lamented Viscountess Beaconsfield took the deepest interest in
every great movement in which her illustrious husband was engaged. Such,
too, was the case with Lady Palmerston, in reference to the great
statesman whose name she bore. The influence of women in the politics of
recent days is something peculiar and new. Our time has seen many women
whose share in the politics of men was frank, unconcealed, and
legitimate, while yet it never pretended or sought to be anything more
than an influence--never attempted to be a ruling spirit. By following
these examples, the women of England may make their power felt, without
demanding to be put upon the same footing as their husbands.
Woman's reign, it has been truly said, "is almost absolute within the
four walls of a drawing-room." It is undisputed in family direction and
in the management of children; but the cases are rare indeed where it
extends to _public questions_ of any kind. The Frenchwoman of the
present day is essentially a woman. Her objects are almost always
feminine; she does not seek to go beyond her sphere; she understands her
mission as one of duty in her house and of attraction towards the world;
she is generally very ignorant of politics and all dry subjects, and
shrinks from any active part in their discussion. Of course there are
exceptions by the thousand; but the rule is that she voluntarily
abstains from interference in outside topics, whatever be their gravity
or their importance. She may have a vague opinion on such matters,
picked up from hearing men talk around her, but the bent of her nature
leads her in other ways--her tendency is towards things which satisfy
her as a woman. It naturally follows that men do not give her what she
does not seem to want. They consult her on matters of mutual interest,
they ask for and often follow her advice in business; but in nine cases
out of ten no husband would allow his wife to tell him how to vote at an
election, or what form of government to support. This distinction is
infinitely more remarkable in France than any analogous condition would
be in England, because of the existence there of several rivals to the
throne, and the consequent splitting up of the entire nation into
adherents of each pretender. Yet even this exceptional position does not
induce Frenchwomen to become politicians. Some few of them, of course,
are so, and fling themselves with ardour into the cause they have
adopted; but, fortunately for the tranquillity of their homes, the
greater part of them have wisdom enough to comprehend that their real
functions on the earth are of another kind.
The majority of the champions of the enfranchisement of the sex have
loudly protested against the hackneyed truisms, formerly so rife, which
impute to women every imaginable form of silliness and frivolity; that
they, like Alphonse Karr's typical woman, have nothing to do but
"_s'habiller, babiller et se deshabiller_." But it will be well to
remember the existence of another class of maxims of even greater
weight, which dwell on the subtle influence of women, and of its
illimitable consequences. "If the nose of Cleopatra," remarks the most
famous of these aphorists--Pascal--"had been a hair's-breadth longer,
the fortunes of the world would have been altered." Has the influence of
the sex decreased since the days of the dusky beauty whose irresistible
fascinations
"----lost a world, and bade a hero fly?"
Rather, is it not infinitely more subtle, wider, and more prevailing
than ever? No one who recognises the skill with which that immense
influence may be exercised can listen without astonishment to the flimsy
arguments which are usually advanced in support of the question of the
political enfranchisement of the sex. That the results of giving this
particular form of ability--a power which is irresistible to the highest
intellectual refinement--the political arena for its field have not only
proved widely injurious to women who have so exercised it, but to those
most closely connected with them, it has been the author's object to
show.
"And what hope of permanent success," it has been cogently asked, "could
women have if they were to enter into competition with men in callings
considered peculiarly masculine, many of which are already overstocked?"
We are also brought here again face to face with that evil--the
lessening or the complete loss of womanly grace and purity. Take away
that reverential regard which men now feel for them, leave them to win
their way by sheer strength of body or mind, and the result is not
difficult to conjecture. Let the condition of women in savage life tell.
Towards something like this, although in civilised society not so
coarsely and roughly exposed to view, matters would tend if these
agitators for women's rights were successful. Husbands, brothers, sons,
have too keen a sense of what they owe of good to their female relatives
to risk its loss; or to exchange the gentleness, purity, and refinement
of their homes for boldness, flippancy, hardness and knowledge of evil.
Nature, herself, then, has disqualified women from fighting and from
entering into the fierce contentions of the prickly and crooked ways of
politics. There is a silent and beautiful education which Heaven
intended that all alike should learn from mothers, sisters, and wives.
Each home was meant to have in their gentler presence a softening and
refining element, so that strength should train itself to be submissive,
rudeness should become abashed, and coarse passions held in check by the
natural influence of women. High or low, educated or uneducated, there
is the proper work of the weaker sex. And, finally, we venture to
address her in the words of Lord Lyttelton:--
"Seek to be good, but aim not to be great;
A woman's noblest station is retreat;
Her fairest virtues fly from public sight;
Domestic worth--that shuns too strong a light."
BOOK I.
PART I.
POLITICAL WOMEN.
CHAPTER I.
ANNE DE BOURBON,
SISTER OF THE GREAT CONDE, AFTERWARDS DUCHESS DE LONGUEVILLE.
THE brilliant heroine of the Fronde, of whose grace, beauty, and
influence Anne of Austria was so jealous--not to speak of the mortal
rivalry of the gay Duchesses de Montbazon and de Chatillon--although the
youngest of that famous trio whom Mazarin found so formidable in the
arena of politics, obviously claims alike from her exalted rank and the
memorable part she played in the tragi-comedy of the Fronde, priority of
notice among the bevy of the Cardinal's fair political opponents.
Some time in the month of August, 1619, Anne Genevieve de Bourbon-Conde
first saw the light in the donjon of Vincennes, where her parents had
been kept State prisoners for three years previously. She was the eldest
of the three children of Henry (II.) de Bourbon-Conde, first prince of
the blood, and of that Charlotte Marguerite de Montmorency, "the beauty,
perfect grace and majesty of her time."[1] The lovely Montmorency on
coming to Court in her fifteenth year had sorely troubled the heart of
the amorous soldier-king, Henry of Navarre, who had married her in 1609
to his nephew of Conde with the covert hope of finding him an
accommodating husband; but the latter, alike defiant and uxorious, made
the jovial Bearnois plainly understand that he had wedded the blooming
Charlotte exclusively for himself. The _gaillard_ monarch, however, at
length grew so deeply enamoured that the prince, perceiving there was
too much cause to fear the result of the constant assiduities of his
royal uncle, fled precipitately with his young wife from France, only to
return thither after tidings reached him of the great Henry's
assassination. To the fair Montmorency's very decided proclivity to
gallantry was to be attributed--if we may believe the scandal-loving
Tallemant des Reaux--her long confinement, by the Regent Marie de'
Medici's consent, within the gloomy fortress of Vincennes, rather than
any reason of State for her sharing her husband's imprisonment. In fact,
it was believed that the jealous prince procured her incarceration
simply to keep her out of harm's way.
[1] Lenet.
Deriving from her mother the threefold gifts of grace, beauty, and
majesty, the fair Bourbon inherited also, it must be owned, a share of
that princess's inclination to _l'honnete galanterie_. The restriction
to a _share_ should be noted; for at no period of her heydey, not even
during the licence of the Fronde, could Anne Genevieve be accused of
having--as Madame de Motteville tells us the Princess de Conde
had,--adorers "in every rank and condition of life, from popes, kings,
princes, cardinals, dukes, and marshals of France, down to simple
gentlemen."
The mind and heart, however, of Anne de Bourbon, although predestined,
alas! eventually to culpable passion, seemed at first but little
inclined to the gay world--with all its blandishments and seductions,
or even to its innocent pleasures. When quite a child she was in the
habit of accompanying her mother in her visits to the convent of the
Carmelites at Paris. For though still possessing great personal
attractions, Madame de Conde had become serious and of a somewhat
demonstrative piety. Those visits, which were frequent, strengthened
Anne's gentle and susceptible mind in its tendency to devotion. The
impression, too, which somewhat later the tragic fate of her uncle, the
unfortunate Duke de Montmorency,[2] left on her memory, inspired her
with the resolution to quit the outer world at the earliest possible
moment, and, renouncing all its pomps and grandeurs, hide beneath the
veil her budding attractions. Although her mother opposed an inflexible
resistance to her embracing that holy vocation, and strove to combat by
forcible arguments the cold and disdainful demeanour exhibited by her
daughter when mixing in gay society, the fair girl persevered from the
age of thirteen to seventeen in her longing to embrace the life of the
cloister. Futile for a time were the parental arguments, unfruitful
every effort! Anne Genevieve would not consort with worldlings,
persisted in her distaste for mundane pleasures, and continued to
cherish persistently her desire for conventual seclusion. At length the
princess, in 1636, having resolved upon the adoption of more energetic
measures, suddenly ordered her daughter to make preparations for
appearing at a Court ball, and that, too, in three days. With what
despair did the young princess hear the cruel sentence! What affliction,
too, befell the Carmelite nuns when they heard of the fatal mandate.
What a flood of sighs and tears and prayers! The good sisters gathered
themselves together to take counsel one with another, and decided that,
since Mdlle. de Bourbon could not avoid the wretched fate that awaited
her, before going through the trying ordeal she should indue her lovely
form with an undergarment of hair-cloth (commonly called a _cilice_),
and, protected by such armour of proof, she might then fearlessly submit
herself to all the temptations lurking beneath the ensnaring vanities of
her Court attire. The _cilice_, however, did not, it seems, prove
invulnerable as the aegis of Minerva, for the subtle shafts winged by
homage and admiration pierced through that slight breast-plate to a
heart which in truth was by nature framed to inspire and welcome both.
The Princess de Conde rejoiced greatly at her daughter's conversion to
more reasonable views of mundane existence. The commencement of her
noviciate was no longer thought of, and her visits to the Carmelites
became sufficiently rare. But it was only a deferment of that calm
vocation, it being Anne de Bourbon's destiny to embrace it at the close
of her feverish political career.
[2] Brought to the scaffold by Richelieu in 1632.
This era of her entrance into the great world was probably the happiest,
the most joyous of the fair Bourbon's life. Lofty distinction of birth,
great personal beauty, and rare mental fascination, contributed to place
her in the very foremost rank of the Court circle--in the "height of
company"--conspicuous amongst lovely dames and distinguished men of the
time. Her peerless loveliness at once meeting with universal
recognition, "la belle Conde" was toasted with acclamation by courtiers,
young and old--at Chantilly, at Liancourt, at the Louvre, and at the
Hotel de Rambouillet. Contemporaries of either sex have rendered
unanimous testimony to the varied and exceptional character of her
attractions, and we will let a woman's pen add to Petitot's pencilling
some of those delicate traits which neither the burin nor even the vivid
tints of the enamel have the power to convey.
"Her beauty," says Mdme. de Motteville, "consisted more in the
brilliance of her complexion"--("it had the blush of the pearl," writes
another contemporary)--"than in perfection of feature. Her eyes were not
large, but bright, and finely cut, and of a blue so lovely it resembled
that of the turquoise. The poets could only apply the trite comparison
of lilies and roses to the carnation which mantled on her cheek, whilst
her fair, silken, luxuriant tresses, and the peculiar limpidity of her
glance, added to many other charms, made her more like an angel--so far
as our imperfect nature allows of our imagining such a being--than a
mere woman." Somewhat later, the smallpox, in robbing her of the bloom
of her beauty, still left her all its brilliancy, to repeat the remark
of that eminent connoisseur of female loveliness, Cardinal de Retz.
To sum up the general opinion of her contemporaries: Mdlle. de Bourbon
rather charmed by the very peculiar style of her countenance than by its
linear regularity. One of her greatest fascinations lay in an
indescribable languor, both of mind and manner--"a languor interrupted
at intervals," says De Retz, "by a sort of luminous awakenings, as
surprising as they were delightful. This physical and intellectual
indolence presented later in life a piquant contrast to her
then"--according to Mdme. de Motteville--"somewhat too passionate
temperament." She was of good height, and altogether of an admirable
form. It is evident also, from the authentic portraits of her still
extant, that she had that kind of attraction so much prized during the
seventeenth century, and which, with beautiful hands, had made the
reputation of Anne of Austria. In speech, we are told, she was very
gentle. Her gestures, with the expression of her countenance, and the
sound of her voice, produced the most perfect music. But her peculiar
charm consisted in a graceful ease--a languor, as all her contemporaries
expressed it--which would quickly change to the highest degree of
animation when stirred by emotion, but which usually gave her an air of
indolence and aristocratic _nonchalance_, sometimes mistaken for
_ennui_, sometimes for disdain.
Crediting the unvarying testimony of these and other of her
contemporaries, the daughter of Bourbon-Conde must have been at least as
beautiful as her mother--endowed, indeed, with almost every attribute
and feature of female loveliness.
"Beauty," remarks a philosophic panegyrist of physical perfection,
"extends its prestige to posterity itself, and attaches a charm for
centuries to the name alone of the privileged creatures upon whom it has
pleased heaven to bestow it." Beauty has also its epochs. It does not
belong to all men and to all ages to enjoy it in its exquisite
perfection. As there are fashions which spoil it, so there are periods
which affect its sentiment. For instance, it belonged to the eighteenth
century to invent _pretty_ women--charming dolls--all powder, patches,
and perfume, affecting the attractions which they did not possess under
their vast hoops and great furbelows. Let us venture to say that the
foundation of true beauty, as of true virtue, as of true genius, is
strength. Shed over this strength the vivifying rays of elegance, grace,
delicacy, and you have beauty. Its perfect type is the Venus of
Milo,[3] or again, that pure and mysterious apparition, goddess or
mortal, which is called Psyche, or the Venus of Naples.[4] Beauty is
certainly to be seen in the Venus de' Medici, but in that type we feel
that it is declining, or about to decline. Look at, not the women of
Titian, but the virgins of Raphael and Leonardo: the face is of infinite
delicacy, but the body evinces strength. These forms ought to disgust
one for ever with the shadows and monkeys _a la Pompadour_. Let us adore
grace, but not separate it in everything too much from strength, for
without strength grace soon shares the fate of the flower that is
separated from the stem which vitalizes and sustains it.
[3] Quatremere de Quincy, Dissertation upon the Antique Statue of
Venus Discovered in the Island of Milo. 1836.
[4] Millingen: Ancient Inedited Monuments. Fol. 1826.
What a train of accomplished women this seventeenth century presents to
us! They were not all politicians. Women who were loaded with
admiration, drawing after them all hearts, and spreading from rank to
rank that worship of beauty which throughout Europe received the name of
French gallantry. In France they accompany this great century in its too
rapid course; they mark its principal epochs, beginning with Charlotte
de Montmorency and ending with Mdme. de Montespan. The Duchess de
Longueville has perhaps the most prominent place in that dazzling
gallery of lovely women, having all the characteristics of true beauty,
and joining to it a charm exclusively her own.
In early girlhood she had been taken, along with her elder brother, the
Duke d'Enghien, to the Hotel de Rambouillet; and the _salons_ of the Rue
St. Thomas du Louvre were probably the most fitting school for such a
mind as hers, in which grandeur and finesse were almost equally
blended--a grandeur allied to the romantic, and associated with a
finesse frequently merging into subtilty, as indeed may be discerned in
Corneille himself, the most perfect mental representative of that
period.
To follow step by step the course of Anne de Bourbon's life at this
period of it through all its earliest rivalries, would involve the task
of recording the manifold caprices of a tender, yet ambitious nature, in
which the mind and heart were unceasingly dupes of each other. It would
be like an attempt to follow the devious path of the light foam and
laughing sparkle of the billow--
"In vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua."
Our purpose lies mainly with her political life, but ere entering upon
it we will give a short but comprehensive view of her character in the
words of one who, more than anybody else, had the means of judging her
correctly--La Rochefoucauld. "This Princess," writes the Duke,
"possessed all the charms of mind, united to personal beauty, to so high
a degree, that it seemed as though nature had taken pleasure in forming
in her person a perfectly finished work. But those fine qualities were
rendered less brilliant through a blemish rarely seen in one so highly
endowed, which was that, far from giving the law to those who had a
particular admiration for her, she transfused herself so thoroughly into
their sentiments that she no longer recognised her own."
Now La Rochefoucauld should have been the last person to complain of
that defect, since he was the first to foster it in the Duchess. In her
bosom love awoke ambition, but the awakening was so sudden, in fact,
that any difference in the two passions was never perceptible.
Singular contradiction! The more we contemplate the political bias of
Madame de Longueville the more it becomes mingled with her amorous
caprice; but when we analyse her love more narrowly (and later on in
life she herself made the avowal), it appears nothing else than ambition
travestied--a desire to shine only the more magnificently brilliant.
Her character, then, was entirely wanting in consistency, in self-will;
and her mind, be it observed, however brilliant and acute, had nothing
that was calculated to counterbalance that defect of character. One may
possess the faculty of right perception without strength of mind to do
that which is right. One may be rational in mind and the contrary in
conduct--character being at fault between the two. But here the case was
different. Madame de Longueville's mind was not, above all else,
rational; it was acute, prompt, subtle, witty by turns, and readily
responsive to the varying humour of the moment. It shone voluntarily in
contradiction and subterfuge, ere exhausting itself finally in scruples.
There was much of the Hotel de Rambouillet in such a mind as hers.
"The mind in the majority of women serves rather to confirm their folly
than their reason." So says the author of the "Maxims;" and Madame de
Longueville, with all her metamorphoses, was undoubtedly present before
him when he penned the sentence. For she, the most feminine of her sex,
would offer to him the completest epitome of all the rest. In short,
evidently as he has made his observations upon her, she also seems to
have drawn her conclusions from him. So the agreement is perfect.
CHAPTER II.
MADAME DE LONGUEVILLE.
A YOUNG Princess of the Blood so lovely, fascinating, and witty as Anne
de Bourbon, was surely destined, it might be thought, to contract an
early and altogether suitable matrimonial alliance. It was therefore
somewhat surprising to find how much difficulty there was in mating her.
Foremost among those who sought her hand was that hair-brained,
handsome, coarse-mannered Duke de Beaufort, younger son of Caesar de
Vendome, himself the bastard of the jovial Bearnois by the _Fair
Gabrielle_.[1] Beaufort inherited his unfortunate grand-dame's
beauty--had a Phoebus-Apollo style of head, set off with a profusion
of long, curly, golden locks; was a young, brave, and flourishing
gallant, and somewhat later (during the Fronde), from his blunt speech
and familiar manners with the Parisian mob, became the idol of the
market-women, and was therefore dubbed _Roi des Halles_. But this
scapegrace suitor withdrew his pretensions in order to gratify, it is
said, the handsome though decried Duchess de Montbazon, who had
enthralled him in her flowery chains as a led-captain. On entering her
nineteenth year Mdlle. de Bourbon was promised in marriage to the Prince
de Joinville, son of Charles of Lorraine (Duke de Guise), but that young
nobleman having died prematurely in Italy, no other serious matrimonial
project seems to have been entertained until the Princess had reached
her twenty-third year. The fortunate suitor was one of Beaufort's
rivals--or, rather, colleagues--for that would be the more correct term
when designating their mutual relations to the unscrupulous Duchess de
Montbazon. The widower, Henry of Orleans (Duke de Longueville), by
birth, dignity, and wealth was looked upon as the first match in France.
Unfortunately, in his case, those dazzling attributes were materially
abated through disparity of age, for he had reached the ripe maturity of
forty-seven, whilst the bride of his choice had not yet seen half that
cycle of summers. To be twenty-four years her senior was, for the
husband of a youthful princess so excelling in wit and beauty, certainly
a formidable inequality, and so Mdlle. de Bourbon seems to have thought.
At the command, however, of her father, who intimated that his
determination was inflexible in thus disposing of his daughter's hand,
Anne Genevieve meekly complied, and was espoused in June, 1642, to Henri
de Bourbon, Duke de Longueville.[2]
[1] Created Duchess de Beaufort by Henry IV.
[2] The Duke was descended from the "brave Dunois," bastard of
Orleans.
The young Duchess found herself speedily surrounded by a swarm of
courtiers, attracted by her sprightly and refined intelligence, her
majestic beauty, her nonchalant and languishing grace. What more
adorable mistress could an audacious aspirant dream of? Bold adventurers
for such a lady's love there was no lack of; and would not many be
encouraged with the thought that such a prize could only be defended by
a husband already verging towards the decline of life, and whose heart,
moreover, was believed to be in the keeping of another? The sighs of the
suitors, however, all adventurous and calculating as they might be, were
wasted, their hopes altogether fallacious. For six long years there was
nothing more accorded to that crowd of often-renewed adorers save the
smiles of an innocent coquetry. He who, during that period of honest
gallantry, coming near to La Rochefoucauld, seems to have made the
liveliest impression, was Coligny; and it was only slanderers who
whispered that the young Count was happier than became the adorer of a
heroine of the De Rambouillet school.
Madame de Longueville, nevertheless, possessed the characteristics of
her sex; she had alike its lovable qualities and its well-known
imperfections. In a sphere where gallantry was the order of the day,
that young and fascinating creature, married to a man already in the
decline of life, and, moreover, with his affections engaged elsewhere,
merely followed the universal example. Tender by nature, the senses, she
herself says in her confessions--the humblest ever made--played no minor
part in the affairs of the heart. But, surrounded unceasingly by homage,
she found pleasure in receiving it. Very lovable, she centred her
happiness in being loved. Sister of the Great Conde, she was not
insensible to the idea of playing a part which should occupy public
attention; but, far from pretending to domination, there was so much of
the woman in her that she allowed herself to be led by him whom she
loved. Whilst, around her, interest and ambition assumed so frequently
the hues of love, she listened to the dictates of her heart alone, and
devoted herself to the interest and ambition of another. All
contemporary writers are unanimous on that point. Her enemies sharply
reproach her alike for not having a fitting object in her political
intrigues, and for being unmindful of her own interests. But they appear
not to be aware that, in thinking to overwhelm her memory by such
accusation, they rather elevate it, and they are assiduous to cover her
faults and misconduct--faults which, after all, are centred in one
alone. In short, some writers cast the greater part of the blame the
young Duchess's conduct merits upon her husband, who, according to them,
knew not how to make amends for his own disadvantage, on the score of
disparity of age, by an anxious and indulgent tenderness.
Before their marriage was solemnised it was stipulated that the Duke de
Longueville should break off his _liaison_ with the Duchess de
Montbazon--then notorious as one of the most unrestrained among the
women of fashion at the Court of the Regent. This, however, the Duke
unhappily failed to do.
In declaring its adhesion to Mazarin at the commencement of the Regency,
the House of Conde had drawn upon itself the hatred of the party of the
_Importants_, though that enmity scarcely rebounded upon Madame de
Longueville. Her amiableness in everything where her heart was not
seriously concerned, her perfect indifference to politics at this period
of her life, together with the graces of her mind and person, rendered
her universally popular, and shielded her against the injustice of
partisan malice. But outside the pale of politics she had an enemy, and
a formidable one, in the Duchess de Montbazon. That bold and dangerous
woman having by her fascinations enslaved Beaufort, the quondam admirer
of Madame de Longueville, the young Duke through her intrigues became a
favourite chief of the _Importants_. Amongst the earliest to swell the
ranks of that faction were two other personages who had played a very
conspicuous part during the reign of Louis XIII. The first of these,
Madame de Montbazon's step-daughter, was the witty, beautiful, and
errant Duchess de Chevreuse, whom Louis had judged so dangerous that he
had expressly forbidden by his will, when on the point of death, that
she should ever be recalled from exile to Court. By the same prohibition
was affected the former Keeper of the Seals, the Marquis de Chateauneuf,
who had displayed considerable talent under Richelieu, but had
ultimately made himself obnoxious to that great Minister, after having
given many a sanguinary proof of his devotion to him. A glance at the
antecedents of that remarkable woman, Madame de Chevreuse, the early
favourite of Anne of Austria, will now be necessary in order to
understand clearly her relative position to the Queen and Mazarin at the
commencement of the Regency, as well as to those incipient _Frondeurs_,
the _Importants_, at the moment of her dragging the Prince de Marsillac
(afterwards Duke de Rochefoucauld) into that party.
CHAPTER III.
THE DUCHESS DE CHEVREUSE.
FROM the long-sustained, vigorous, and very eminent part played by Marie
de Rohan in opposing the repressive system of the two great Cardinal
Ministers, her name belongs equally to the political history as to that
of the society and manners of the first half of the sixteenth century.
She came of that old and illustrious race the issue of the first princes
of Brittany, and was the daughter of Hercule de Rohan, Duke de
Montbazon, a zealous servant of Henry IV., by his first wife Madeleine
de Lenoncourt, sister of Urbain de Laval, Marshal de Bois-Dauphin. Born
in December, 1600, she lost her mother at a very early age, and in 1617
was married to that audacious favourite of Louis XIII., De Luynes, who
from the humble office of "bird-catcher" to the young King, rose to the
proud dignity of Constable of France, and who, upon the faith of a
king's capricious friendship, dared to undertake the reversal of the
Queen-mother, Marie de' Medici's authority; hurl to destruction her
great favourite, the Marshal d'Ancre; combat simultaneously princes and
Protestants, and commence against Richelieu the system of Richelieu.
Early becoming a widow, Marie next, in 1622, entered the house of
Lorraine by espousing Claude, Duke de Chevreuse, one of the sons of
Henry de Guise, great Chamberlain of France, whose highest merit was the
name he bore, accompanied by good looks and that bravery which was
never wanting to a prince of Lorraine; otherwise disorderly in the
conduct of his affairs, of not very edifying manner of life, which may
go far to explain and extenuate the errors of his young wife. The new
Duchess de Chevreuse had been appointed during the sway of her first
husband, _surintendante_ (controller) of the Queen's household, and soon
became as great a favourite of Anne of Austria as the Constable de
Luynes was of Louis _the Just_. The French Court was then very
brilliant, and gallantry the order of the day. Marie de Rohan was
naturally vivacious and dashing, and, yielding herself up to the
seductions of youth and pleasure, she had lovers, and her adorers drew
her into politics. Her beauty and captivating manners were such as to
fascinate and enthral the least impressible who crossed her path, and
their dangerous power was extensively employed in influencing the
politics of Europe, and consequently had a large share in framing her
own destiny. A portrait in the possession of the late Duke de Luynes[1]
represents her as having an admirable figure, a charming expression of
countenance, large and well-opened blue eyes, chesnut-tinted fair hair
in great abundance, a well-formed neck, with the loveliest bust
possible, and throughout her entire person a piquant blending of
delicacy, grace, vivacity, and passion. The following summary of her
character by the clever, caustic, but little scrupulous De Retz, graphic
as it is, and based on a certain amount of truth, must not be
unhesitatingly accepted, it being over-coloured by wilful
exaggeration:--"I have never seen anyone else," says he, "in whom
vivacity so far usurped the place of judgment. It very often inspired
her with such brilliant sallies that they flashed like lightning, and so
sensible withal, that they might not have been disowned by the greatest
men of any age. The manifestation of this faculty was not confined to
particular occasions. Had she lived in times when politics were
non-existent, she would not have rested content with the idea only that
they ought to have been rife. If the Prior of the Carthusians had
pleased her, she would have become a sincere recluse. M. de Luynes
initiated her into politics, the Duke of Buckingham and the Earl of
Holland corresponded with her upon them, and Chateauneuf amused her with
them. She gave herself up to their pursuit because she abandoned
herself, without reserve, to everything which pleased the individual
whom she loved, and simply because it was indispensable that she should
love somebody. It was not even difficult to give her a lover by setting
an eligible suitor to pay her court with an ostensible political motive;
but as soon as she accepted him, she loved him solely and faithfully,
and she owned to Mdme. de Rhodes and myself that, through caprice, she
said, she had never really loved those whom she esteemed the most, with
the exception of the unfortunate George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.
Devotion to the passion which in her might be called eternal, although
she might change the object of it, did not prevent even a fly from
causing her mental abstraction; but she always recovered from it with a
renewed exuberance which made such phases rather agreeable than
otherwise. No one ever took less heed about danger, and never woman had
more contempt for scruples and duties: she never recognised other than
that of pleasing her lover."
[1] This nobleman died at Rome in December, 1867, at the age of
sixty-five, having gone thither to aid the Pope against the
Garibaldians.
This epigrammatic sketch is almost worthy of the exaggerated author of
the _Historiettes_,[2] and the reader is advised to accept only its more
salient and truthful traits--the keen and accurate glance of Mdme. de
Chevreuse in scanning the prevailing aspect of the political horizon,
her dauntless courage, the fidelity and devotion of her love. Retz,
moreover, mistakes entirely the order of her adventures; he forgets and
then invents. In striving after epigrammatic point, he sacrifices truth
to smartness of style, and writes as though he looked upon events in
which the passions of the Duchess made her take part as mere trifles,
whereas among them there were some than which none were ever of graver
or even more tragic moment.
[2] Tallement des Reaux.
Mdme. de Chevreuse, in fact, possessed almost all the qualities
befitting a great politician. One alone was wanting, and precisely that
without which all the others tended to her ruin. She failed to select
for pursuit a legitimate object, or rather she did not choose one for
herself, but left it to another to choose for her. Mdme. de Chevreuse
was womanly in the highest possible degree; that quality was alike her
strength and her weakness. Her secret mainspring was love, or rather
gallantry,[3] and the interest of him whom she loved became her
paramount object. It is this which explains the wonderful sagacity,
finesse, and energy she displayed in the vain pursuit of a chimerical
aim, which ever receded before her, and seemed to draw her on by the
very prestige of difficulty and danger. La Rochefoucauld accuses her of
having brought misfortune upon all those whom she loved;[4] it is
equally the truth to add that all those whom she loved hurried her in
the sequel into insensate enterprises. It was not she evidently who
made of Buckingham a species of paladin without genius; a brilliant
adventurer of Charles IV. of Lorraine; of Chalais a hair-brained
blunderer, rash enough to commit himself in a conspiracy against
Richelieu, on the faith of the faithless Duke d'Orleans; of Chateauneuf,
an ambitious statesman, impatient of holding second rank in the
Government, without being capable of taking the first. Let no one
imagine that he is acquainted with Mdme. de Chevreuse from having merely
studied the foregoing portrait traced by De Retz, for that sketch is an
exaggeration and over-charged like all those from the same pen, and was
destined to amuse the malignant curiosity of Mdme. de Caumartin--for
without being altogether false, it is of a severity pushed to the verge
of injustice. Was it becoming, one might ask, of the restless and
licentious Coadjutor to constitute himself the remorseless censor of a
woman whose errors he shared? Did he not deceive himself as much and for
a far longer period than she? Did he show more address in political
strategy or courage in the dangerous strife, more intrepidity and
constancy in defeat? But Mdme. de Chevreuse has not written memoirs in
that free-and-easy and piquant style the constant aim of which is
self-elevation, obtained at the expense of everybody else. There are two
judges of her character the testimony of whose acts must be held to be
above suspicion--Richelieu and Mazarin. Richelieu did all in his power
to win her over, and not being able to succeed, he treated her as an
enemy worthy of himself.
[3] Mdme. de Motteville.
[4] Memoires, Petitot's Collection, 2nd series, vol. li. p. 339.
To revert briefly to her long-continued struggle with Richelieu, it must
not be forgotten that for twenty years she had been the personal friend
and favourite of Anne of Austria, and for ten years she had suffered
persecution and privation on that account. Exiled, proscribed, and
threatened with imprisonment, she had narrowly escaped Richelieu's grasp
by disguising herself in male attire, and in that garb traversing France
and Spain on horseback, had succeeded in eluding his pursuit, and after
many adventures in safely reaching Madrid. Philip IV. not only heaped
every kind of honour upon his sister's courageous favourite, but even,
it is said, swelled the number of her conquests. Whilst in the Spanish
capital she had allied herself politically with the Minister Olivarez,
and obtained great ascendancy over the Cabinet of Madrid. The war
between France and Spain necessarily rendering her position in the
latter country delicate and embarrassing, she had, early in 1638, sought
refuge in England. Charles I. and Henrietta Maria gave her the warmest
possible reception at St. James's; and the latter, on seeing again the
distinguished countrywoman who had some years back conducted her as a
bride from Paris to the English shores to the arms of Prince Charles,
embraced her warmly, entered into all her troubles, and both the English
King and Queen wrote letters pleading in her behalf, to Louis XIII.,
Anne of Austria, and Richelieu with regard to the restoration of her
property and permission to rejoin her children at Dampierre. She herself
resumed the links of a negotiation with the Cardinal which had never
been entirely broken off, and the success of which seemed quite
practicable, since it was almost equally desired by both. That
negotiation was being carried on for more than a year, and when link
after link had been frequently snapped and re-soldered, only to be once
more broken, Richelieu at length gave his solemn word that she might
return with perfect safety to Dampierre.
On the eve of her departure from the English Court, a vessel being in
readiness to convey her to Dieppe, where a carriage awaited her landing,
the Duchess received an anonymous letter warning her that certain ruin
awaited her if she set foot on the soil of France, followed by another,
still more explicit with regard to Richelieu's designs to effect her
destruction, from no less a person than Charles of Lorraine. This second
warning from so reliable a source, followed shortly afterwards by other
advice--held by her in the light of a command--enchained her to a
foreign land. She for whom during ten long years the Duchess had
suffered all things, braved all things, her august friend Anne of
Austria cautioned her not to trust to appearances. Thus vanished the
last hope of a sincere reconciliation between two persons who knew each
other too well to discard distrust and to confide in words, of which
neither were sparing, without requiring solemn guarantees that they
could not or would not give.
Choosing stoically, therefore, to still undergo the pangs of absence, to
consume the noontide of the days of her attractive womanhood in
privation and turmoil rather than risk her liberty, Mdme. de Chevreuse
on her part did not remain idle. From the moment she felt convinced that
Richelieu was deceiving her, attracting her back to France only to hold
her in a state of dependence, and if need were, to incarcerate
her--having broken with him, she considered herself as free from all
scruple, and thought of nothing further than paying him back blow for
blow. Her old duel with the Cardinal thus once more renewed, she formed
in London, with the aid of the Duke de Vendome, La Vieuville, and La
Valette, a faction of active and adroit emigrants, who, leaning on the
Earl of Holland, then one of the chiefs of the Royalist party and a
general in the army of Charles of England; upon Lord Montagu, an ardent
Papist and intimate adviser of Queen Henrietta Maria; upon Digby and
other men of influence at Court, maintained likewise the closest
intelligence with the Court of Rome through its envoy in England,
Rosetti, and especially with the Cabinet of Madrid; encouraging and
kindling the hopes of all the proscribed and discontented, strewing
obstacles at all points in the path of Richelieu, and accumulating
formidable perils around his head.
On the breaking out of the Civil War in England, Mdme. de Chevreuse
repaired to Brussels, where in 1641 we find her acting as the connecting
link between England, Spain, and Lorraine. Without attributing to the
Duchess any especial motive beyond seconding an enterprise directed
against the common enemy, she did not the less play an important part in
the affair of the Count de Soissons--the most formidable conspiracy that
had hitherto been hatched against Richelieu. Anne of Austria was
certainly privy to the plot and lent it her aid. She might have been
ignorant of the secret treaty with Spain; but for all the rest, and so
far as it menaced the Cardinal, she had a perfect understanding with the
conspirators. That high-handed Minister, by overstraining the springs of
government, by prolonging the war, by increasing the public expenditure,
and by oppressing all classes whilst he crushed some in particular, had
excited a hatred so bitter and widespread that at length he governed the
State almost entirely through terror. Whilst the grandeur of his designs
commanded respect and veneration from a select few, his genius towered
above the bulk of his countrymen. But that harsh rule, continuing
unrelaxed, and so many sacrifices being perpetually renewed, at length
wearied out the greater number, the King himself not excepted. Louis's
reigning favourite, the Grand-Ecuyer, Cinq Mars, undermined and
blackened the Cardinal as much as possible in his royal master's
estimation. He knew of the conspiracy of the Count de Soissons, and
without taking a share in it, he favoured it. He might therefore be
reckoned upon to figure in the next. The Queen, still in disgrace in
spite of the two heirs she had given to the crown, naturally breathed
vows for the termination of a rule which so oppressed her. Gaston, the
King's brother, had pledged his word, however little the reliance that
might be placed upon it; but the Duke de Bouillon, an experienced
soldier and an eminent politician, had openly declared himself; and his
stronghold of Sedan, situated on the frontiers of France and Belgium,
offered an asylum whence could be braved for a long while all the power
of the Cardinal. A widespread understanding had been established
throughout every part of the kingdom, amongst the clergy, and in the
Parliament. There were conspirators in the very Bastille itself, where
Marshal de Vitry and the Count de Cramail, prisoners as they were, had
prepared a _coup de main_ with an admirably-kept secrecy. The Abbe de
Retz, then twenty-five, preluded his adventurous career by this attempt
at civil war. The Duke de Guise, having effected his escape from Rheims,
and taken refuge in the Low Countries, was about to share the dangers of
the conspiracy at Sedan. But the greatest--the firmest--hope of the
Count de Soissons rested upon Spain: that power alone could enable him
to take the field from Sedan, to march upon Paris, and crush the power
of Richelieu. He therefore despatched Alexandre de Campion, one of his
bravest and most intelligent gentlemen, to Brussels to negotiate with
the Spanish Ministers and obtain from them troops and money. There he
addressed himself to Mdme. de Chevreuse, and confided to her the mission
with which he was charged, which she hastened to second with all her
influence. Having prevailed upon Olivarez to strenuously support those
requirements which the Count de Soissons and the Duke de Bouillon sought
at his hands, she despatched letters by a secret agent in the service of
Spain to the Duke de Lorraine, entreating him not to fail her in this
supreme opportunity of repairing her past misfortunes and of dealing a
mortal blow to their remorseless enemy. The Duke Charles, thus solicited
at once by Mdme. de Chevreuse, by his kinsman the Duke de Guise, by the
Spanish Minister, and, more than all, by his own restless and
adventurous ambition, broke the solemn compact he had so recently made
with France, entered into an alliance with Spain and the Count de
Soissons, and prepared with all diligence to march to the aid of Sedan.
And whilst Mdme. de Chevreuse and the emigrants brought into play every
engine they could lay hands on, Lamboy and Metternich set out for
Flanders at the head of six thousand Imperialists. France--all the
nationalities of Europe, were on the tiptoe of expectation. Richelieu
had never been menaced with a greater danger, and the loss of the battle
of Marfee would have proved a fatal event had not the Count de Soissons
met his death simultaneously with his triumph.
If Mdme. de Chevreuse were a stranger in 1642 to the fresh conspiracy of
Gaston, Duke d'Orleans, Cinq Mars, and the Duke de Bouillon against her
relentless foe, it would have been the only one in which she had not
taken a leading part. It is indeed more than probable that she was in
the secret as well as Queen Anne, whose understanding with Gaston and
Cinq Mars cannot be contested. La Rochefoucauld repeatedly remarks
touching a matter in which he seems to have been implicated, "The
dazzling reputation of M. le Grand (Cinq Mars) rekindled the hopes of
the discontented; the Queen and the Duke d'Orleans united with him; the
Duke de Bouillon and several persons of quality did the same." De
Bouillon also declares that the Queen was closely allied with Gaston and
the Grand-Ecuyer, and that she herself had invited his concurrence. "The
Queen, whom the Cardinal had persecuted in such a variety of ways, did
not doubt that, if the King should chance to die, that minister would
seek to deprive her of her children, in order to assume the Regency
himself. She secretly instigated De Thou to seek the Duke de Bouillon
with persevering entreaties. She asked the latter whether, in the event
of the King's death, he would promise to receive her and her two
children in his stronghold of Sedan, believing--so firmly persuaded was
she of the evil designs of the Cardinal, and of his power--that there
was no other place of safety for them throughout the realm of France."
De Thou further told the Duke de Bouillon that since the King's illness
the Queen and the Duke d'Orleans were very closely allied, and that it
was through Cinq Mars that their alliance had been brought about. Now,
where the Queen was so deeply implicated it was not likely that Mdme. de
Chevreuse would stand aloof. A friend of Richelieu, whose name has not
come down to us, but who must have been perfectly well informed, does
not hesitate to place Mdme. de Chevreuse as well as the Queen amongst
those who then endeavoured to overthrow Richelieu. "M. le Grand," he
writes to the Cardinal,[5] "has been urged to his wicked designs by the
Queen-mother, by her daughter (Henrietta Maria), by the Queen of France,
by Mdme. de Chevreuse, by Montagu, and other English Papists." At length
the Cardinal, on an early day in June, 1642, retired to Tarascon,
ostensibly for the sake of his health, but doubtless for safety also,
accompanied by his two bosom friends, Mazarin and Chavigny, and the
faithful regiments of his guards. Finding himself surrounded by peril on
all sides, and representing to Louis XIII. the gravity of the situation,
he cited that which had been alleged of Mdme. de Chevreuse as amongst
the most striking indications of the truth of what he stated.[6]
[5] Archives des Affaires Etrangeres; FRANCE, tom. CI.
[6] Archives des Affaires Etrangeres; FRANCE, tom. cii. Inedited
Memoir of Richelieu.
But what _was_ the party in fact then conspiring against Richelieu? Was
it not the party of former coalitions--of the League, of Austria, and of
Spain? And Mdme. Chevreuse at Brussels, through her connection with the
Duke de Lorraine, the Queen of England, the Chevalier de Jars at Rome,
the Minister Olivarez at Madrid--was she not one of the great motive
powers of that party? When, therefore, such machinery was found to be
again in activity, it was quite reasonable to suspect the hand of Mdme.
de Chevreuse in all its movements.
The gathering cloud that now lowered so thick and threatening above the
head of Richelieu seemed pregnant with inevitable destruction to his
power and life. But ere long his eagle glance pierced through the
overshadowing gloom, and the aim of Cinq Mars' dark intrigue became
clearly revealed to his far-seeing introspection. A treachery, the
secret of which has remained impenetrable to every research made during
the last two centuries, caused the treaty concluded with Spain through
the intervention of Fontrailles, and bearing the signatures of Gaston,
Cinq Mars, and the Duke de Bouillon, to fall into his hands. From that
instant the Cardinal felt certain of victory. He knew Louis XIII.
thoroughly; he conjectured that he might in some access of his morbid
and changeful humour have uttered reproachful words against his Minister
in the favourite's ear--even expressed a wish to be rid of him, as did
our first Plantagenet when tired of the despotism of Thomas a
Becket--and had perhaps listened to strange proposals for effecting such
object. But the Cardinal knew right well also to what extent Louis was a
king and a Frenchman, and devoted by self-interest to their common
system. He despatched, therefore, Chavigny in all haste from Narbonne
with irrefragable evidence of the treaty made with Spain. Louis,
thunderstricken, could scarcely believe his own eyes. He sank into a
gloomy reverie, out of which he emerged only to give way to bursts of
indignation against the favourite who could thus abuse his confidence
and conspire with the foreigner. It was needless to inflame his anger,
he was the first to call for an exemplary punishment. Not for a day, not
for an hour, did his heart soften towards the youthful culprit who had
been so dear to him. He thought only of his crime, and signed without an
instant's hesitation his death-warrant. If Louis the Just spared the
Duke de Bouillon, it was merely to acquire Sedan. If he pardoned his
brother Gaston, he at the same time dishonoured him by depriving him of
all authority in the State. Upon a report spread by a servant of
Fontrailles, and which Fontrailles' memoirs fully confirm, his
suspicions were directed towards the Queen; and no one afterwards could
divest his mind of the conviction that in this instance, as in the
affair of Chalais, Anne of Austria had an understanding with his
brother, the Duke d'Orleans. What would he have done had he perused the
statement of Fontrailles, the Duke de Bouillon's memoirs, a letter of
Turenne, and the declaration of La Rochefoucauld? Their united testimony
is so concordant that it is altogether irresistible. The Queen racked
her brains to exorcise this fresh storm, and to persuade the King and
Richelieu of her innocence. Anne went much farther; she did not confine
herself to falsehood and dissimulation. Menaced by imminent danger, she
went so far as to repudiate that courageous friend who had been so long
and steadfastly devoted to her. Had fortune declared in her favour she
would have embraced the Duchess as a deliverer. Vanquished and disarmed,
she abandoned her. As she had protested in terms of horror against the
conspiracy that had failed, her two young, imprudent, and ill-starred
accomplices, Cinq Mars and De Thou, mounted the scaffold without
breathing her name. Finding also both the King and Richelieu violently
exasperated against Mdme. de Chevreuse, and firmly resolved to reject
the renewed entreaties of her family to obtain her recall, Anne of
Austria, far from interceding for her faithful adherent, warmly sided
with her enemies; and further, to indicate the change in her own
sentiments, and seem to applaud that which she could not prevent, she
asked as an especial favour that the Duchess might be estranged from her
person, and even from France. "The Queen," wrote Chavigny, Richelieu's
Minister for Foreign Affairs, "has pointedly asked me if it were true
that Mdme. de Chevreuse would return; and, without waiting for a reply,
she signified to me that she should be vexed to find her presently in
France; that she now saw the Duchess in her proper light; and she
commanded me to pray His Eminence on her part, if he had any mind to
favour Mdme. de Chevreuse, that it might be done without granting her
permission to return to France. I assured her Majesty that she should
have satisfaction on that point."[7]
[7] Archives des Affaires Etrangeres, FRANCE, tom. CI.
Poor Marie de Rohan! Her heart already bled from many wounds, but this
last was the "unkindest cut of all." Her position had indeed become
frightful, and calculated to sink her to the lowest depth of despair. No
hope of seeing her native land again, her princely chateau, her
children, her favourite daughter Charlotte! Deriving scarcely anything
from France, deeply in debt, and with credit exhausted, she found
herself entirely at the end of her resources. How thoroughly did the
banished woman then realise the woes of exile--how hard it is to climb
and descend the stranger's stair, experience the hollowness of his
promise, and the arrogance of his commiseration. And, finally, as though
fated to drain her cup of bitterness to the last drop, to learn that
she, her long-loved bosom friend and royal mistress, who owed her, at
the very least, a silent fidelity, had openly ranged herself on the side
of fortune and Richelieu!
In a condition of mental torture the most acute, resulting from such
accumulated misfortune, Madame de Chevreuse remained for several months
with no other support than that of her innate high-souled courage. At
length, towards the close of that eventful year, the golden grooves of
change rung out a joyous paean to gladden the heart of the much-enduring
exile. Suddenly Marie--all Europe--heard with a throb that the
inscrutable, iron-handed man of all the human race most dreaded alike by
States as by individuals, had yielded to a stronger power than his own,
and had closed his eyes in death (December 4, 1642). Within a few short
months afterwards the King also, whose regal power he had consolidated
at such a cost in blood and suffering, followed the great statesman to
the tomb; having entrusted the Regency, very much against his will, to
the Queen, but controlled by a Council, over which presided as Prime
Minister the man most devoted to Richelieu's system--his closest friend,
confidant, and creature--Jules Mazarin.
A passage in the funeral oration on Louis XIII. summed up briefly but
significantly the result of Richelieu's gigantic efforts to consolidate
the regal power. "Sixty-three kings," it said, "had preceded him in rule
of the realm, but he alone had rendered it absolute, and what all
collectively had been impotent to achieve in the course of twelve
centuries for the grandeur of France, he had accomplished in the short
space of thirty-three years." It was against that absolute power
incarnate in Richelieu, which from the steps of the throne hurled men to
the earth with its bolts rather than governed them, that Mazarin was
destined later to encounter the reaction of the Fronde.
Distrustful of leaving Anne of Austria in uncontrolled possession of
regal authority, Louis by his last will and testament had placed
royalty, including his brother Gaston as lieutenant-general of the
realm, in a manner under a commission. And further, Louis did not
believe that he could ensure quiet to the State after his death without
confirming and perpetuating, so far as in him lay, the perpetual exile
of Madame de Chevreuse.
As the pupil and confidential friend of Richelieu, Mazarin had imbibed
both that statesman's and the late king's opinions and sentiments
touching the influence of that eminently dangerous woman. Though he had
never seen her hitherto, he was not the less well acquainted with her by
repute: dreading her mortally, and cherishing a like antipathy to her
friend Chateauneuf. He knew the Duchess to be as seductive as she was
talented, experienced and courageous in party strife--an instance of
which was that she could sway entirely a man of such ambition and
capacity as the former Keeper of the Seals. Attached, moreover, in
secret to Lorraine, to Austria, and to Spain, all this was as absolutely
incompatible with the exclusive favour to which he aspired at the hands
of his royal mistress as it was with all his diplomatic and military
designs. The solemn injunctions of the late king's will, while
denouncing Madame de Chevreuse and Chateauneuf as the two most
illustrious victims of the close of his reign, embodied also the heads
of the policy which it was that monarch's wish should be continued by
Richelieu's successor. "Forasmuch," ran the will, "that for weighty
reasons, important to the welfare of our State, we found ourselves
compelled to deprive the Sieur de Chateauneuf of the post of Keeper of
the Seals of France, and have him sent to the Castle of Angouleme, in
which he has remained by our command up to the present time, we will and
intend that the said Sieur de Chateauneuf remain in the same state in
which he is at present, in the said Castle of Angouleme, until after the
peace be concluded and executed; under charge, nevertheless, that he
shall not then be set at liberty save by the order of the Queen-Regent,
under the advice of her Council, which shall appoint a place to which he
shall retire, within the realm or without the realm, as may be judged
best. And as our design is to take foresight of all such subjects as may
possibly in some way or other disturb the precautionary arrangements
which we have made to preserve the repose and safety of our realm, the
knowledge that we have of the bad conduct of the Lady Duchess de
Chevreuse, of the artifices which she has employed up to this moment
without the kingdom with our enemies, made us judge it fitting to forbid
her, as we do, entrance into our kingdom during the war: desiring even
that after the peace be concluded and executed she may not return into
our kingdom, save only under the orders of the said Lady Queen-Regent,
with the advice of the said Council, under charge, nevertheless, that
she shall not either take up her abode or be in any place near to the
Court or to the said Queen-Regent."
Within a few days only after the decease of Louis XIII. that same
Parliament which had enrolled his will reformed it. The Queen-Regent was
freed from every fetter and restriction, and invested with almost
absolute sovereignty; the ban was removed from the proscribed couple so
solemnly denounced, Chateauneuf's prison doors were thrown open, and
Madame de Chevreuse quitted Brussels triumphantly, with a cortege of
twenty carriages, filled with lords and ladies of the highest rank in
that Court, to return once more to France and to the side of her royal
friend and mistress.
CHAPTER IV.
RETURN OF MADAME DE CHEVREUSE TO COURT.
AFTER ten years' absence from the scene of her former triumphs, social
and political, did the brilliant Duchess then once more find herself
safe and free in France. The _Gazette de Renaudot_--the _Moniteur_ of
that day--recording the return of Madame de Chevreuse, on the 14th of
June, 1643, remarks[1]:--"During such long exile, this princess has
manifested what an elevated mind like hers can do, in spite of all those
vicissitudes of fortune which her constancy has surmounted. The Duchess
went to pay homage to their Majesties, during which visit she received
so many tokens of affection from the Queen-Regent, and gave her in
return such proofs of her zeal in everything relating to her service,
and so much resignation to her will, that it indeed appears that length
of time, distance, or thorny asperities can only prevail over common
minds. Hence the great train of visitors from this Court to her daily,
and for which her spacious hotel scarcely affords room, does not excite
so much wonder as the fact which has been the subject of remark, that
the fatigue consequent upon long journeys and the rigour of adverse
fortune have worked no change in her magnanimity, nor--which is the more
extraordinary--in her beauty."
[1] No. lxxvii. p. 579.
Making due allowance for the inflated diction of the complaisant Court
newswriter, let us endeavour to approach somewhat nearer to the truth.
Madame de Chevreuse had then entered upon her forty-third year. Though
still surprisingly well-preserved, her beauty, tried by adversity, was
visibly on the decline. The inclination to gallantry still existed, but
subdued, politics having gained the supremacy. She had formed the
acquaintance of, and held political relations with, the most celebrated
statesmen in Europe. She had figured at almost all its Courts, the
strength and weakness of its several Governments were known to her, and
in her wanderings, having seen "men and cities," she had acquired a
large experience. The tried favourite hoped to find Anne of Austria the
same as she had left her--averse to business, and very willing to allow
herself to be led by those for whom she had a particular affection; and
as Madame de Chevreuse had been in her youthful days paramount in the
Queen's affection, she fully expected to exercise over her that twofold
ascendancy which love and capacity would jointly give. More ambitious
for her friends than for herself, she saw them already rewarded for
their long sacrifices, replacing everywhere the creatures of Richelieu,
and at their head, in the highest post, as first minister, him who for
her sake had broken with the triumphant Cardinal, and had endured an
imprisonment of ten tedious years. She did not care much about Mazarin,
with whom she had no acquaintance, whom she had never seen, and who
appeared to her unsupported either by the Court or the French nation,
whilst she felt herself sustained by all that was illustrious, powerful,
and accredited therein. She believed that she could make sure of the
Duke d'Orleans through his wife, the beautiful Margaret, sister of
Charles of Lorraine. She could dispose almost at will of the Houses of
Rohan and Lorraine, particularly of the Duke de Guise and the Duke
d'Elbeuf, like herself just returned from Flanders. She reckoned upon
the Vendomes, upon the Duke d'Epernon, upon La Vieuville, her old
companions in exile in England; upon the ill-treated Bouillons, upon La
Rochefoucauld, whose disposition and pretensions were so well known to
her; upon Lord Montagu, who had been her slave, and at that moment
possessed the entire confidence of Anne of Austria; upon La Chatre, the
friend of the Vendomes, and Colonel-General of the Swiss Guards; upon
Treville, upon Beringhen, upon Jars, upon La Porte, who were all
emerging from exile, prison, and disgrace. Among the women, her young
stepmother and her sister-in-law seemed secure--Madame de Montbazon and
Madame de Guemene, the two greatest beauties of the time, who drew after
them a numerous crowd of old and young adorers. She knew also that among
the first acts of the Regent had been the recall to her side of the two
noble victims of Richelieu--Madame de Senece and Madame de Hautefort,
whose virtue and piety had conspired so beneficially with other
influences, and had given them an inestimable weight in the household of
Anne of Austria. All those calculations seemed accurate, all those hopes
well-founded; and Madame de Chevreuse left Brussels firmly persuaded
that she was about to re-enter the Louvre as a conqueress. She deceived
herself: the Queen was already changed, or very nearly so.
To show due honour to her former favourite, however, Anne of Austria
despatched La Rochefoucauld to greet and escort her homewards; but
before he set out she charged him to inform the Duchess of the altered
disposition in which she would find her royal mistress. During that
audience Rochefoucauld did his utmost to reinstate his charming friend
and close ally in the Queen's good graces. "I spoke to her," says he,
"with more freedom perhaps than was becoming. I set before her Madame de
Chevreuse's fidelity, her long-continued services, and the severity of
the misfortunes which they had entailed upon her. I entreated her to
consider of what fickleness she would be thought capable, and what
interpretation might be placed upon such inconsiderateness if she should
prefer Cardinal Mazarin to Madame de Chevreuse. Our conversation was
long and stormy, and I saw clearly that I had exasperated her." He then
started to meet the Duchess on the road from Brussels, and found her at
Roye, whither Montagu had already preceded him. Montagu had travelled to
Roye to place Mazarin's homage at the feet of Madame de Chevreuse, with
the view of bringing about at any cost an union and identity of policy
between the old and the new favourite. He was no longer the gay and
sprightly Walter Montagu, the friend of Holland and Buckingham, the
enamoured knight ever ready to break a lance against all comers for a
glance of the bright eyes of Madame de Chevreuse. Time had changed him
as well as others: he had become a bigot and a devotee, and already
contemplated taking orders in the Church of Rome. He still remained,
however, attached to the object of his former adoration, but above all
he belonged to the Queen, and consequently resigned to Mazarin. La
Rochefoucauld--ever ready to ascribe to himself the chief share in any
undertaking in which he figured, as well as the character of a great
politician--asserts that he entreated Madame de Chevreuse not to
attempt at first to govern the Queen, but to endeavour solely to regain
in Anne's mind and heart that place of which it had been sought to
deprive her, and to put herself in a position in which she would be able
to protect or ruin the Cardinal, according to conduct or circumstances
emanating from himself.
The Duchess listened attentively to the advice of both her old friends,
promised to follow it, and did so in fact, but in her own peculiar way,
and in that of the interest of the party she had so long served, and
which she would not abandon. As Anne of Austria seemed much pleased at
seeing the noble wanderer again, and gave her a warm reception, Marie
did not perceive any difference in the Queen's sentiments, and flattered
herself that by constant assiduousness she would ere long resume that
sway over the Regent's mind she had formerly exercised.
Operating against this not unreasonable expectation of Madame de
Chevreuse, Mazarin had a silent but potent ally in the newly-awakened
inclination of Anne for repose and a tranquil life. The first draughts
of almost supreme power tasted by the long-oppressed Queen were not yet
embittered by faction and anarchy. In bygone days, insult, neglect, and
persecution had stirred her at intervals into mental activity, and urged
her upon dangerous courses; but now, having obtained all she aimed at,
happy, and beginning to form attachments, she entertained a dread of
troublesome adventures and hazardous enterprises. She therefore feared
Madame de Chevreuse quite as much as she loved her. The astute Cardinal
anxiously strove to foster such distrust. He looked for support from the
Princess de Conde, then high in the Queen's favour, both through her own
merit as well as that of the Prince her husband, but more than all
through the brilliant exploits of her son, the Duke d'Enghien; through
the services also of her son-in-law the Duke de Longueville, who had,
with honourable distinction, commanded the armies of Italy and Germany,
and by her recently-married daughter, Madame de Longueville, already the
darling of the _salons_ and the Court. The Princess, like Queen Anne,
had in the heyday of her beauty been fond of homage and gallantry, but
had now grown serious, and displayed a somewhat lively piety. She held
Madame de Chevreuse in aversion, and detested Chateauneuf, who, in 1632,
at Toulouse, had presided at the trial and condemnation of her brother,
Henri de Montmorency. She therefore had striven, in concert with
Mazarin, to destroy or at least weaken Madame de Chevreuse's hold upon
the Queen. Armed with the last will of Louis XIII., they had made it
appear something like a fault in the Queen's eyes to disregard it so
soon and so entirely. They had given her to understand that former days
and associations could never return; that the amusements and passions of
early youth were but "evil accompaniments"[2] of a later period of life;
that now she was before all things a mother and a Queen; that Madame de
Chevreuse, dissipated and carried away by passion, and cherishing the
same inclination for gallantry and idle vanity as hitherto, was no
longer worthy of her confidence; that she had brought good fortune to no
one; and that in lavishing wealth and honour upon the Duchess the debt
of gratitude she owed her would be sufficiently discharged.
[2] Madame de Motteville, tom. i. p. 162.--"Mauvais
accompagnements."
BOOK II.
CHAPTER I.
ANNE OF AUSTRIA'S PRIME MINISTER AND HIS POLICY.
AND now what was the actual position of Mazarin on succeeding to power
in 1643?
Richelieu had died admired and abhorred. The people, glad to be
delivered from so heavy a yoke, obeyed with joy the incipient rule of
the Queen-Regent. The courtiers were at first enchanted with a
Government that refused nothing asked of it. It appeared, as one of the
number said, that there were no more than five little words in the
French language: "_La reine est si bonne!_"[1] The State prisons threw
open their gates; the rights of parliaments were respected; the princes
of the blood and the great nobles were restored to their governorships.
There was for a season one unanimous concert of praise and thanksgiving.
But when the princes and parliaments were desirous, as before
Richelieu's rule, of participating in the general direction of the
State, and especially in the distribution of place and patronage, great
was the surprise of both at finding a steady resistance on the part of
the Queen-Regent. To see her manifest a disposition to govern without
them was looked upon as something scandalous. Every attempt she made
thenceforward to retain a power which they evaded, or to repossess
herself of that which she had imprudently suffered to escape from her
grasp, seemed to them nothing less than a continuation of the odious
system of Richelieu. Their exasperation was increased to the highest
degree, therefore, when they beheld her give her entire confidence to a
foreigner, to a Cardinal, to a creature of Richelieu. By that triple
title Mazarin was equally hateful to the great nobles, the members of
parliament, and the middle class. The tyranny of Richelieu had in the
end attained to something noble by the high-handed heedlessness of all
his acts. If the people were to be trampled on, it was a species of
consolation that their oppressor was feared by others as well as
themselves. But that the oppression of the doomed French nation was to
be continued by a more ignoble hand was altogether intolerable.
Frenchmen had begun to ask one another, who _was_ this Mazarin who had
come to rule over them? He could not--like Richelieu--boast of his high
birth, of descent from a long line of noble ancestors--Frenchmen. Poets
and romancers, ye whose imaginations delight to dwell upon sudden
downfalls and rapid rises, mark well that little lad at play upon the
Sicilian shore near the town of Mazzara! Springing from the lowest of
the plebeian class, his family have not even a surname. He is the son of
one Pierre, a fisherman, whose humble hut stands yonder beneath the
cliff. But a day will come when that lowly-born lad, joining his
baptismal name to that of the town which sheltered his cradle, will
become Jules de Mazarin, robed in the Roman purple, quartering his
shield with the consular fasces of Julius Caesar, governing France, and
through her preparing and influencing the destinies of entire Europe.
[1] De Retz Memoirs, Petitot Collection.
It was not, however, by easy steps that Richelieu's disciple and
successor obtained a firm grasp of that plenary power which the master
mind of the former had consolidated and long wielded so grandly and
terribly. The Queen herself at the commencement of the Regency had not
yet renounced her former friendships. During a considerable portion of
her married life Anne had impatiently endured the slights and
disparagements to which she was so long subjected, both by her husband
and his Minister. Through engaging in divers dangerous and unsuccessful
enterprises, she had been deprived of all influence, and was a queen
only in name. But, a woman and a Spaniard, she had descended to
dissimulation, and in that "ugly but necessary virtue"[2] made rapid
progress. Up to the time of Richelieu's death she had played a double
game--made partisans in secret, with the object of subverting the
Cardinal's power, whilst feigning the semblance of friendship towards
him, and did not scruple to humiliate herself on occasions, in order to
carry her point. After that great man's decease, through rare patience,
great caution, and a persistent line of conduct, she ultimately attained
that for which she had been willing to make any and every sacrifice--the
Regency. During the King's last illness, the mistrusted Queen and wife
had profited by Mazarin's unhoped-for service, as Prime Minister, in
prevailing over the unwillingness of the dying King to appoint her
custodian of his son, and Regent during his minority. She regarded this,
therefore, as a first and most important service on the part of Mazarin
towards her, and for which she felt proportionately grateful. Such was
the Cardinal's first stepping-stone to the good graces of Anne of
Austria, and his twofold talent both as a laborious and indefatigable
statesman and a consummate courtier, speedily helped to secure for him
her entire confidence. The singular personal resemblance he bore to that
desperate _enamorado_ of her early womanhood, the brilliant Buckingham,
may probably also have served him as a favourable prestige. On her
accession to power Anne did not manifest much firmness of character.
Naturally indolent, she disliked the drudgery attendant upon business
details, and hence continued through convenience the services of a man
who, by taking off her hands the wearisome routine of State affairs,
allowed her to reign at her ease.
[2] Madame de Motteville.
Mazarin, moreover, had never been displeasing to her. He had begun to
ingratiate himself during the month preceding the death of Louis
XIII.,[3] and she named him Prime Minister about the middle of
May--partly through personal liking, but more through political
necessity. Far from appearing to resemble the impassive and imperious
Richelieu, Anne perhaps might have recalled with agreeable emotion the
words of her deceased consort when he first presented Mazarin to her (in
1639 or 1640)--"He will please you, madame, because he bears a striking
resemblance to Buckingham." By degrees the liking increased, and grew
sufficiently strong to resist every assault from his enemies. At the
same time the Minister to whom the Queen owed so much, instead of
dictating to and presuming to govern her, was ever at her feet, and
prodigal of that attention, respect, and tenderness to which she had
been hitherto a stranger.
[3] Louis died May 14th, 1643.
It is a delicate matter to investigate with exactitude the means by
which Mazarin obtained entire sway over the Queen-Regent, and one which
La Rochefoucauld scarcely touches upon; but it is too interesting a
point in history to be left in the dark, and thereby to altogether
disregard that which first constituted the minister's strength, and
soon afterwards became the centre and key of the situation. After a long
season of oppression, regal powers and splendour gilded the hours of
Anne of Austria, and her Spanish pride exacted the tribute of respect
and homage. Mazarin was prodigal of both. He cast himself at her feet in
order to reach her heart. In her heart of hearts she was not the less
touched by the grave accusation brought against him that he was a
foreigner, for was not she also a foreigner? Perhaps that of itself
proved the source of a mysterious attraction to her, and she may have
found it a singular pleasure to converse with her Prime Minister in her
mother tongue as a compatriot and friend. To all this must be added the
mind and manners of Mazarin--supple and insinuating, always master of
himself, of an unchangeable serenity amidst the gravest circumstances,
full of confidence in his good star, and diffusing that confidence
around him. It must also be remembered that Cardinal although he was,
Mazarin was not a priest; that imbued with the maxims which formed the
code of gallantry of her native land, Anne of Austria had always loved
to please the other sex; that she was then forty-one and still
beautiful, that her Prime Minister was of the same age, that he was
exceedingly well-made and of a most pleasing countenance, in which
_finesse_, was blended with a certain air of greatness. He had readily
recognised that without ancestry, establishment, or support in France,
and surrounded by rivals and enemies, all his strength centred in the
Queen. He applied himself therefore above all things to gain her heart,
as Richelieu had tried before him; and as he happily possessed far other
means for attaining success in that respect, the handsome and
gentle-mannered Cardinal eventually succeeded. Once master of her heart,
he easily directed the mind of Anne of Austria, and taught her the
difficult art of pursuing ever the same end by the aid of conduct the
most diverse, according to the difference of circumstances.
But favourable and indeed gracious as his royal mistress had shown
herself towards him personally, and apart from any particular line of
policy, at the outset of his premiership Mazarin had nevertheless to
contend against a formidable host of enemies; and not the least
redoubtable among them might be reckoned that intrepid political heroine
the lately-banished Duchess de Chevreuse. No sooner did she again find
herself at the side of Anne of Austria than the indefatigable Marie set
to work with all her characteristic dash, spirit, and energy to attack
Richelieu's system and its adherents, now directed by Mazarin.
The first point she sought to carry was the return of Chateauneuf to
office. "The good sense and long experience of M. de Chateauneuf," says
La Rochefoucauld, "were known to the Queen. He had undergone a rigorous
imprisonment for his adhesion to her cause; he was firm, decisive, loved
the State, and more capable than anyone else of re-establishing the old
form of government which Richelieu had first begun to destroy. Firmly
attached to Mdme. de Chevreuse, she knew sufficiently-well how to govern
him. She therefore urged his return with much warmth." Chateauneuf had
already obtained as a royal boon that the "rude and miserable condition"
of close incarceration under which he had groaned for ten years should
be changed for a compulsory residence at one of his country houses.
Mdme. de Chevreuse demanded the termination of this mitigated exile,
that she might once more behold him free who had endured such
extremities for the Queen's sake and her own. Mazarin saw that he must
yield, but only did so tardily, never appearing himself to repulse
Chateauneuf, but always alleging the paramount necessity of conciliating
the Conde family, and especially the Princess, who, as already said,
bore bitter enmity towards him as the judge of her brother, Henri de
Montmorency. Chateauneuf was therefore recalled, but with that
reservation accorded to the last clause of the King's will, that he
should not appear at Court, but reside at his own house of Montrouge,
near Paris, where his friends might visit him.
The next step was to transfer him thence to some ministerial office.
Chateauneuf was no longer a young man, but neither his energy nor his
ambition had deserted him, and Mdme. de Chevreuse made it a point of
honour to reinstate him in the post of Keeper of the Seals, which he had
formerly held and lost through her, and which all Queen Anne's old
friends now saw with indignation occupied by one of the most detested of
Richelieu's creatures, Pierre Seguier. This last, however, was a man of
capacity--laborious, well-informed and full of resources. To these
qualifications he added a remarkable suppleness, which made him very
useful and accommodating to a Prime Minister. He moreover had the
support of friends who stood high in the Queen's favour, and was further
strengthened by the opposition of the Condes and the Bishop of Beauvais
to Chateauneuf. The Duchess perceiving that it was almost impossible to
surmount so powerful an opposition, took another way of arriving at the
same end. She contented herself with asking for the lowest seat in the
cabinet for her friend; well knowing that once installed therein,
Chateauneuf would soon manage all the rest and aggrandise his position.
At the same time that she strove to extricate from disgrace the man upon
whom rested all her political hopes, Madame de Chevreuse, not daring to
attack Mazarin overtly, insensibly undermined the ground beneath his
feet, and step by step prepared his ruin. Her experienced eye enabled
her promptly to perceive the most favourable point of attack whence to
assail the Queen, and the watchword she passed was to fan and keep alive
to the utmost the general feeling of reprobation which all the
proscribed, on returning to France, had aroused and disseminated against
the memory of Richelieu. This feeling was universal--among the great
families he had decimated or despoiled;--in the Church, too firmly
repressed not to be unmindful of its abasement;--in the Parliament,
strictly confined to its judicial functions, and aspiring to break
through such narrow limits. The same feeling was still alive in the
Queen's bosom, who could not have forgotten the deep humiliation to
which Richelieu had subjected her, and the fate for which he had
probably reserved her. These tactics succeeded, and on every side there
arose against the late violence and tyranny, and, by a rebound, against
the creatures of Richelieu, a storm so furious that Mazarin's utmost
ability was taxed to allay it.
Madame de Chevreuse likewise supplicated Anne of Austria to repair the
long-endured misfortunes of the Vendome princes, by bestowing upon them
either the Admiralty, to which an immense power was attached, or the
government of Brittany, which the head of the family, Caesar de Vendome,
had formerly held--deriving it alike from the hand of his father, Henry
IV., and as the heritage of his father-in-law, the Duke de Mercoeur.
This was nothing less than demanding the aggrandisement of an unfriendly
house, and at the same time the ruin of two families that had served
Richelieu with the utmost devotion, and were best capable of supporting
Mazarin. The Minister parried the blow aimed at him by the Duchess by
dint of address and patience, never refusing, always eluding, and
summoning to his aid his grand ally, as he termed it--Time. Before the
return of Madame de Chevreuse he had found himself forced to win over
the Vendomes, and to secure them in his interest. On Richelieu's death
he had strenuously contributed to obtain their recall, and had since
made them every kind of advance; but he soon perceived that he could not
satisfy them without bringing about his own destruction. The Duke Caesar
de Vendome, son of Henry IV. and _The Fair Gabrielle_, had early carried
his pretensions to a great height, and had shown himself restless and
factious as a legitimate prince. He had passed his life in revolts and
conspiracies, and in 1641 had been compelled to flee to England through
suspicion of being implicated in an attempt to assassinate Richelieu. He
did not dare return to France until after the Cardinal's death; and, as
may well be imagined, he came back breathing the direst vengeance.
Against the ambition of the Vendomes Mazarin skilfully opposed that of
the Condes, who were inimical to the aggrandisement of a house too
nearly rivalling their own. But it was very difficult to retain Brittany
in the hands of its newly-appointed governor, the Marshal La Meilleraie,
in face of the claim of a son of Henry the Great, who had formerly held
it, and demanded it back as a sort of heirloom. Mazarin therefore
resigned himself to the sacrifice of La Meilleraie, but he lightened it
as much as possible. He persuaded the Queen to assume to herself the
government of Brittany, and have only a lieutenant-general over it--a
post, of course, beneath the dignity of the Vendomes, and which would,
therefore, remain in La Meilleraie's hands. The latter could not take
offence at being second in power therein to the Queen; and to arrange
everything to the entire satisfaction of a person of such importance,
Mazarin solicited for him soon afterwards the title of duke, which the
deceased King had, in fact, promised the Marshal, and the reversion of
the post of Grand Master of the Artillery for his son--that same son on
whom subsequently Mazarin bestowed, with his own name, the hand of his
niece, the beautiful Hortense.
Mazarin was so much the less inclined to favour the house of Vendome
from having encountered a dangerous rival in the Queen's good graces, in
Vendome's youngest son, Beaufort, a young, bold, and flourishing
gallant, who displayed ostentatiously all the exterior signs of loyalty
and chivalry, and affected for Anne of Austria a passionate devotion not
likely to be displeasing. "He was tall, well-made, dexterous, and
indefatigable in all warlike exercises," says La Rochefoucauld, "but
artificial withal, and wanting in truthfulness of character. Mentally he
was heavy and badly cultivated; nevertheless he attained his objects
cleverly enough through the blunt coarseness of his manners. He was of
high but unsteady courage, and was not a little envious and
malignant."[4] De Retz does not, like La Rochefoucauld, accuse Beaufort
of artificiality, but represents him as presumptuous and of thorough
incapacity. His portrait of him, though over-coloured, like most others
from the coadjutor's pen, is sufficiently faithful, but at the
commencement of the Regency, the defects of the Duke de Beaufort had not
fully declared themselves, and were less conspicuous than his good
qualities. Some few days before her husband's death, Anne of Austria had
placed her children under his charge--a mark of confidence that so
elated him that the young Duke conceived hopes which his impetuosity
hindered him from sufficiently disguising. Indeed, these were presumed
upon so far as to give offence to the Queen; and, as the height of
inconsistency, he committed at the same time the egregious folly of
publicly enacting the led-captain in the rosy chains of the handsome but
decried Duchess de Montbazon. It was only, however, by slow degrees that
the Queen's liking for him abated. At first, she had proposed to confer
upon him the post of Grand-Ecuyer, vacant since the death of the
unfortunate Cinq-Mars, which would have kept him in close attendance
upon her, and was altogether a fitting appointment--for Beaufort had
nothing of the statesman in him; with little intellect and no reticence,
he was also averse to steady application to business, and capable only
of some bold and violent course of action. The Duke had the folly to
refuse this post of Grand-Ecuyer, hoping for a better; and then,
altering his mind when it was too late, he solicited it only to incur
disappointment.[5] The more his favour diminished, the more his
irritation increased, and it was not long ere he placed himself at the
head of the Cardinal's bitterest enemies.
[4] La Rochefoucauld.
[5] Mazarin himself has furnished this fact, otherwise unknown, in
one of his diaries (_Carnet_, pp. 72, 73). The Cardinal-Minister was
in the habit of jotting down the chief events of each day in these
small memorandum books (_Carnets_), which he kept in the pocket of
his cassock.
Madame de Chevreuse hoped to be more fortunate in securing the
governorship of Havre for a very different sort of person--for a man of
tried devotedness and of a rare and subtle intellect--La Rochefoucauld.
She would thereby recompense the services rendered to the Queen and
herself, strengthen and aggrandize one of the chiefs of the
_Importants_, and weaken Mazarin by depriving of an important government
a person upon whom he had entire reliance--Richelieu's niece, the
Duchess d'Aiguillon. The Cardinal succeeded in rendering this
manoeuvre abortive, without appearing to have any hand in it. And
herein, as in many other matters, the art of Mazarin was to wear the
semblance of merely confirming the Queen in the resolves with which he
inspired her.
In thus attributing these various designs, this connected and consistent
line of conduct, to Madame de Chevreuse, we do not advance it as our own
opinion, but as that of La Rochefoucauld, who must have been perfectly
well informed. He attributes it to her both in his own affairs and in
those of the Vendomes. Neither was Mazarin blind to the fact, for more
than once in his private notes we read these words:--"My greatest
enemies are the Vendomes and Madame de Chevreuse, who urges them on." He
tells us also that she had formed the project of marrying her charming
daughter Charlotte, then sixteen, to the Vendome's eldest son, the Duke
de Mercoeur, whilst his brother Beaufort should espouse the wealthy
Mademoiselle d'Epernon, who foiled these designs, and even greater
still, by throwing herself at four-and-twenty into a convent of
Carmelites. These marriages, which would have reconciled, united, and
strengthened so many great houses, moderately attached to the Queen and
her minister, terrified Richelieu's successor. He therefore sought to
foil them by every means in his power, and succeeded in prevailing upon
the Queen to frustrate them in an underhand way; having found that the
union of Mademoiselle de Vendome with the brilliant but restless Duke de
Nemours had caused him more than ordinary anxiety.
If the intricate details of those counter intrigues of Mazarin and
Madame de Chevreuse be followed attentively, we are at a loss to say to
which of the two antagonists the palm for skill, sagacity, and address
should be given. Whilst Mazarin was astute enough to make a certain
amount of sacrifice in order to reserve to himself the right of not
making greater--treating everyone with apparent consideration, rendering
no one desperate, promising much, holding back the least possible
_proprio motu_ of himself, and surrounding Madame de Chevreuse herself
with attention and homage without suffering any illusion to beguile him
as to the nature of her sentiments--she, on her part, paid him back in
the same coin. La Rochefoucauld says that during these _mollia tempora_,
Madame de Chevreuse and Mazarin actually flirted with each other. The
Duchess, who had always intermingled gallantry with politics, tried, as
it appears, the power of her charms upon the Cardinal. The latter, on
his side, failed not to lavish honeyed words, and "essayoit meme quelque
fois de lui faire croire qu'elle lui donnoit de l'amour."[6] There were
other ladies also, it seems, who would not have been sorry to please the
handsome First Minister a little. Amongst these might be numbered the
Princess de Guemene,[7] one of the greatest beauties of the French
Court, who, certainly, if only one half the stories related of her be
true, was by no means of a ferocious disposition in affairs of
gallantry. This lady, as well as her husband, were both favourable to
Mazarin, in spite of all the efforts of Madame de Montbazon, and Madame
de Chevreuse, her sister-in-law. It may be readily imagined that Mazarin
devoted great attention to Madame de Guemene, and did not fail to pay
her a host of compliments, as he did to Madame de Chevreuse; but as he
went no further, the two gay ladies were at a loss to conceive what so
many compliments coupled with so much reserve meant. They sometimes
asked which of the two was really the object of his admiration; and as
he still made no further advances at the same time that he continued his
gallant protestations, "these ladies," says Mazarin, "si esamina la mia
vita e si conclude che io sia impotente."[8]
[6] La Rochefoucauld, Memoirs, p. 383.
[7] Anne de Rohan, wife of M. de Guemene, eldest son of the Duke de
Montbazon, and brother of Madame de Chevreuse.
[8] Carnet, iii. p. 39.
Political intrigue had become such an affair of fashion among the Court
dames of that day, that those of the highest rank made no scruple of
bringing into play all the artillery of their wit and beauty whenever
they could contribute to the success of their enterprises. Still endowed
with those two potent gifts to an eminent degree, Madame de Chevreuse
brought all her various influences into perfect combination, and had
grown so passionately fond of the fierce excitement of conspiring, that
love was to her now merely a means and political victory the end. She
devoted literally her entire existence to it, living in the confidence
and intimacy of the Vendomes and other noble perturbators of the hour.
Her activity, her penetration, her energy obtained for her among the
party of the _Importants_ the importance she coveted. It was not long,
therefore, ere she begun to give Mazarin cause for grave anxiety. During
the encounters resulting from this strenuous antagonism, reconciliations
occasionally took place, in which even the Cardinal's coldness,
caution, and his laborious occupation, could not, it is said, place him
beyond reach of the Duchess's irresistible fascinations. But the latter,
well aware that the _role_ of Mazarin's mistress would not give to her
grasp the helm of the State, which he reserved exclusively to himself,
preferred, therefore, rather to remain his enemy, and figure at the head
and front of the faction antagonistic to his government.
This flirting and skirmishing had gone on for some time, but at last
natural feeling prevailed over political reticence. Madame de Chevreuse
grew impatient at obtaining words only, and scarcely anything serious or
effective. She had, it is true, received some money for her own use,
either in repayment of that which she had formerly lent the Queen, or
for the discharge of debts contracted during exile and in the interest
of Anne of Austria. On returning to Court, one of her earliest steps was
to withdraw her friend and _protege_, Alexandre de Campion, from the
service of the Vendomes, and place him in a suitable position in the
Queen's household. Chateauneuf had been reinstated in his former post of
Chancellor (_des Ordres du Roi_), and later his governorship of Touraine
was restored to him on the death of the Marquis de Gevres, who fell at
the siege of Thionville; but the Duchess considered that that was doing
very little for a man of Chateauneuf's merit--for him who had staked
fortune and life, and undergone ten years' imprisonment. She readily
perceived, therefore, that the perpetual delay of favours ever promised,
ever deferred in the instances of the Vendomes and La Rochefoucauld,
were so many artifices of the Cardinal, and that she was his dupe. This
conviction put the spirited partisan upon her mettle. She began to
titter, to mock, and to expostulate by turns, and sometimes twitted the
minister in pert and derisive terms. This, however, betrayed a want of
her ordinary precaution, and only served to fill Mazarin's quiver with
shafts to be used against herself. He made the Queen believe that Madame
de Chevreuse sought to rule her with a rod of iron; that she had changed
her mask, but not her character; that she was ever the same impulsive
and restless person, who, with all her talent and devotedness, had never
worked aught but mischief around her, and was only instrumental in
ruining others as well as herself. By degrees, underhand and hidden as
it might be, war between the Duchess and the Cardinal declared itself
unmistakably. The commencement and progress of this curious struggle for
supremacy has been admirably depicted by La Rochefoucauld; and, while
the autograph memoranda of Mazarin cast a fresh flood of light upon it,
they enhance infinitely Madame de Chevreuse's ability by revealing to
what an extent that Minister dreaded her.
In every page of these invaluable _carnets_ he indicates her as being
the head and mainspring of the _Importants_. "It is Madame de
Chevreuse," he writes repeatedly, "who stirs them all up. She endeavours
to strengthen the hands of the Vendomes; she tries to win over every
member of the house of Lorraine; she has already gained the Duke de
Guise, and through him she strives to carry away from me the Duke
d'Elbeuf." "She sees clearly through everything; she has guessed very
accurately that it is I who have secretly persuaded the Queen to hinder
the restoration of the government of Brittany to the Duke de Vendome.
She has said so to her father, the Duke de Montbazon, and to Montagu.
She has quarrelled with Montagu, in fact, because he raises an obstacle
to Chateauneuf by supporting Seguier." "Nothing discourages Madame de
Chevreuse; she entreats the Vendomes to have patience, and sustains them
by promising a speedy change of scene." "Madame de Chevreuse never
relinquishes the hope of displacing me. The reason she gives for this
is, that when the Queen refused to put Chateauneuf at the head of the
government, she stated that she could not do it immediately, as she must
have some consideration for me, whence Madame de Chevreuse concludes
that the Queen has much esteem and liking for Chateauneuf, and that when
I shall be no longer where I am, the post is secured for her friend.
Hence the hopes and illusions with which they are buoyed up." "The
Duchess and her friends assert that the Queen will shortly send for
Chateauneuf; and by so doing they abuse the minds of all, and prompt
those who are looking to their future interests to pay court to her and
seek her friendship. They make an excuse for the Queen's delay in giving
him my place, by saying that she has still need of me for some short
time." "I am told that Madame de Chevreuse secretly directs Madame de
Vendome (a pious person who has great influence over the bishops and
convents), and gives her instructions, in order that she may not fall
into error, and that all the machinery used against me may thoroughly
answer its purpose." From this last entry it is clear that Madame de
Chevreuse, without being in the smallest degree possible a _devote_,
knew right well how to make use of the _parti devot_, which then
exercised great influence over Anne of Austria's mind, and gave serious
uneasiness to Mazarin.
The Prime Minister's chief difficulty was to make Queen Anne--the sister
of the King of Spain, and herself of a piety thoroughly
Spanish--understand that it was necessary, notwithstanding the
engagements which she had so often contracted, notwithstanding the
instances of the Court of Rome and those of the heads of the episcopate,
to continue the alliance with the Protestants of Germany and Holland,
and to persist in only consenting to a _general_ peace in which the
allies of France should equally find their account as well as that
country itself. On the other side, it was continually dinned into the
Queen's ear that it was practicable to make a separate treaty of peace,
and negotiate singly with Spain on very fitting conditions, that by such
means the scandal of an impious war between "the very Christian" and
"the very Catholic" King would cease, and a relief be afforded to France
very much needed. Such was the policy of the Queen's old friends. It was
at least specious, and reckoned numerous partisans among men the most
intelligent and attached to the interests of their country. Mazarin, the
disciple and successor of Richelieu, had higher views, but which it was
not easy at first to make Anne of Austria comprehend. By degrees,
however, he succeeded, thanks to his judicious efforts, renewed
incessantly and with infinite art; thanks especially to the victories of
the Duke d'Enghien--for in all worldly affairs success is a very
eloquent and right persuasive advocate. The Queen, however, remained for
a considerable interval undecided, and it may be seen by Mazarin's own
memoranda that during the latter part of May, as well as through the
whole of June and July, the Cardinal's greatest effort was to induce the
Regent not to abandon her allies, but to firmly carry on the war. Madame
de Chevreuse, with Chateauneuf, defended the old party policy, and
strove to bring over Anne of Austria to it. "Madame de Chevreuse," wrote
Mazarin, "causes the Queen to be told from all quarters that I do not
wish for peace, that I hold the same maxims as Cardinal Richelieu on the
point--that it is both easy and necessary to make a separate treaty of
peace." On several occasions he made indignant protestation against such
arrangement, pointing out the danger with which it was fraught, and that
it would render ineffectual those sacrifices which France had for so
many years made. "Madame de Chevreuse," he exclaimed, "would ruin
France!" He knew well that, intimately associated with Gaston, her old
accomplice in all the plots framed against Richelieu, she had won him
over to the idea of a separate peace by holding out the hope of a
marriage between his daughter Mademoiselle de Montpensier and the
Arch-duke, which would have brought him the government of the Low
Countries. He knew that she had preserved all her influence with the
Duke de Lorraine; he knew, in fine, that she boasted of having the power
of promptly negotiating a peace through the mediation of the Queen of
Spain, who was at her disposal. Thus informed, he entreated his royal
mistress to reject all Madame de Chevreuse's propositions, and to tell
her plainly that she would not listen to anything relating to a separate
treaty, that she was decided upon not separating herself from her
allies, that she desired a general peace, that with such view she had
sent her ministers to Munster, who were then negotiating that important
matter, and that it was superfluous to speak to her any more upon the
subject.
Though baffled on these different points, Madame de Chevreuse did not
consider herself vanquished. She rallied and emboldened her adherents by
her lofty spirit and firm resolution. The party feud went on--intrigues
were multiplied--but up to the close of August, 1643, no change had
taken place, though the acrimony of party feeling had become largely
increased. Finding that she had fruitlessly employed insinuation,
flattery, artifice, and every species of Court manoeuvre, her daring
mind did not shrink from the idea of having recourse to other means of
success. She kept up a brisk agitation amongst the bishops and devotees,
she continued to weave her political plots with the chiefs of the
_Importants_, and at the same time she formed a closer intimacy with
that small cabal which formed in some sort the advance-guard of that
party, composed of men reared amongst the old conspiracies, accustomed
to and always ready for _coups de main_, who had of old embarked in more
than one desperate enterprise against Richelieu, and who, in an
extremity, might be likewise launched against Mazarin. The memoirs of
the time, and especially those of De Retz and La Rochefoucauld, make us
sufficiently well acquainted with their names and characters. The former
mistress of Chalais found little difficulty in acquiring sole sway over
a faction composed of second-rate talents. She caressed it skilfully;
and, with the art of an experienced conspirator, she fomented every germ
of false honour, of quintessential devotedness, and extravagant
rashness. Mazarin, who, like Richelieu, had an admirable police,
forewarned of Madame de Chevreuse's machinations, fully comprehended the
danger with which he was menaced. No one could have been better informed
as to his exact position than the Cardinal: and the plans of the Duchess
and the chiefs of the _Importants_ developed themselves clearly under
Mazarin's sharp-sightedness--either by their incessant and
elaborately-concerted intrigues with the Queen, to force her to abandon
a minister to whose policy she had not yet openly declared her adhesion,
or, should it prove necessary, treat that minister as De Luynes had done
the last Queen-mother's favourite d'Ancre, and as Montresor, Barriere,
and Saint-Ybar would have served Richelieu. The first plan not having
succeeded, they began to think seriously about carrying out the second,
and Madame de Chevreuse, the strongest mind of the party, proposed with
some show of reason to act before the return of the young hero of
Rocroy, the Duke d'Enghien; for that victorious soldier once in Paris
would unquestionably shield Mazarin. It became necessary, therefore, to
profit by his absence in order to strike a decisive blow. Success seemed
certain, and even easy. They were sure of having the people with them,
who, exhausted by a long war and groaning under taxation, would
naturally welcome with delight the hope of peace and repose. They might
reckon on the declared support of the parliament, burning to recover
that importance in the State of which it had been deprived by Richelieu,
and which was then a matter of dispute with Mazarin. They had all the
secret, even overt sympathy of the episcopate, which, with Rome,
detested the Protestant alliance, and demanded the restoration of that
of Spain. The eager concurrence of the aristocracy could not be doubted
for a moment; which ever regretted its old and turbulent independence,
and whose most illustrious representatives, the Vendomes, the Guises,
the Bouillons, and the La Rochefoucaulds were strenously opposed to the
domination of a foreign favourite, without fortune, of no birth, and as
yet without fame. The princes of the blood resigned themselves to
Mazarin rather than to liking him. The Duke d'Orleans was not remarkable
for great fidelity to his friends, and the politic Prince de Conde
looked twice ere he quarrelled with the successful. He coaxed all
parties, whilst he clung to his own interests. His son, doubtless, would
follow in his father's footsteps, and he would be won over by being
overwhelmed with honours. The day following that on which the blow
should be struck there would be no resistance to their ascendancy, and
on the very day itself scarcely any obstacle. The Italian regiments of
Mazarin were with the army; there were scarcely any other troops in
Paris save the regiments of the guards, the colonels of which were
nearly all devoted to the _Importants_. The Queen herself had not yet
renounced her former friendships. Her prudent reserve even was wrongly
interpreted. As it was her desire to appease and deal gently on all
hands, she gave kind words to everybody, and those kind words were taken
as tacit encouragement. Anne had not hitherto shown much firmness of
character; a certain amount of liking for the Cardinal was not unjustly
imputed to her, and undue significance already attributed to the
steadily increasing attachment of a few short months.
Mazarin, on his own part, indulged in no illusions. He was decidedly not
yet master of Anne of Austria's heart; since at that moment--that is to
say, during the month of July, 1643--in his most secret notes he
displays a deep inquietude and despondency. The dissimulation of which
everybody accused the Queen obviously terrified him, and we see him
passing through all the alternations of hope and fear. It is very
curious to trace and follow out the varied fluctuations of his mind. In
his official letters to ambassadors and generals he affects a security
which he does not feel. With his own intimate friends he permits some
hint of his perplexities to escape him, but in his private memoranda
they are all laid bare. We therein read his inmost carks and cares, and
his passionate entreaties that the Queen-Regent would open her mind to
him. He feigns the utmost disinterestedness towards her; he simply asks
to make way for Chateauneuf, if she has any secret preference for that
minister. The ambiguous conduct of the Regent harasses and distresses
him, and he conjures her either to permit him to retire or to declare
herself in favour of his policy.
This exciting contest continued with the keenest activity, but no change
had occurred up to the end of July, and even the first days of August,
1643, though this critical state of affairs had become greatly
aggravated. The violence of the _Importants_ increased daily; the Queen
defended her minister, but she also showed consideration for his
enemies. She hesitated to take the decided attitude which Mazarin
required at her hands, not only in his individual interest, but in that
of his government. Suddenly an incident, very insignificant apparently,
but which by assuming larger proportions brought about the inevitable
crisis--forced the Queen to declare herself, and Madame de Chevreuse to
plunge deeper into a baleful enterprise, the idea of which had already
forced itself upon her imagination. A great scandal occurred. We allude
to a quarrel between the two duchesses, de Longueville and de
Montbazon.
CHAPTER II.
THE DUCHESS DE MONTBAZON.--THE AFFAIR OF THE DROPPED LETTERS.--THE
QUARREL OF THE TWO DUCHESSES.
ON declaring itself of the party of Mazarin, the house of Conde had
drawn down the hatred of the _Importants_, though their hostility
scarcely fell upon Madame de Longueville. Her gentleness in everything
in which her heart was not seriously engaged, her entire indifference to
politics at this period of her life, with the graces of her mind and
person, rendered her pleasing to every one, and shielded her from party
spite. But apart from affairs of State, she had an enemy, and a
formidable enemy, in the Duchess de Montbazon. We have said that Madame
de Montbazon had been the mistress of the Duke de Longueville, and as
one of the principal personages of the drama we are about to relate, she
requires to be somewhat better known.
We shall pass over in silence many of her foibles, without attempting to
excuse any. Before sketching her life, or at least a portion of it, it
will be necessary, in order to protect her memory against an excess of
severity, to recall certain traditions and examples for which unhappily
her family was notorious.
Daughter of Claude de Bretagne, Baron d'Avangour, she was on her
mother's side granddaughter of that very complaisant Marquis de La
Varenne Fouquet, who, successively scullion, cook, and maitre d'hotel of
Henry the Fourth, "gained more by carrying the amorous King's _poulets_
than basting those in his kitchen." Catherine Fouquet, Countess de
Vertus, his daughter, Madame de Montbazon's mother, was beautiful,
witty, somewhat giddy, and very gallant. Impatient of all hindrance, she
had authorised one of her lovers to assassinate her husband; but it was
the husband who assassinated the lover. The tragical termination of this
rencontre does not seem to have cast a gloom over the life of the
Countess de Vertus, for at seventy she began to learn to dance, and when
seventy-three, married a young man over head and ears in debt.
In 1628, Marie d'Avangour quitted her convent to espouse Hercule de
Rohan, Duke de Montbazon, who was the father, by his first marriage, of
Madame de Chevreuse and of the Prince de Guemene. She was sixteen, and
he sixty-one. Thorough fool as he was, the Duke did not conceal from
himself, it is said, the conviction that such an union was fraught with
some danger to him; but we may venture to affirm that he could not have
foreseen all its dangers. Full of respect for the virtues of Marie de'
Medicis, he recommended her example to his wife; then, with every
confidence in the future, he conducted her to Court.
In beauty the daughter was worthy of the mother, but in vices she left
her far behind. Tallemant says she was one of the loveliest women
imaginable. Her mind was not her most brilliant side, and the little
that she had was turned to intrigue and perfidy. "Her mind," says the
indulgent Madame de Motteville, "was not so fine as her person; her
brilliancy was limited to her eyes, which commanded love. She claimed
universal admiration." In regard to her character, all are unanimous. De
Retz, who knew her well, speaks of her in these terms: "Madame de
Montbazon was a very great beauty. Modesty was wanting in her air. Her
jargon might, during a dull hour, have supplied the defects of her mind.
She showed but little faith in gallantry, none in business. She loved
her own pleasure alone, and above her pleasure her interest. I never saw
a person who, in vice, preserved so little respect for virtue."
Supremely vain and passionately fond of money, it was by the aid of her
beauty that she sought influence and fortune. She, therefore, took
infinite care of it, as of her idol, as of her resources, her treasure.
She kept it in repair, heightened it by all sorts of artifices, and
preserved it almost uninjured till her death. Madame de Motteville
asserts that, during the latter part of her life, she was as full of
vanity as if she were but twenty-five years of age; that she had the
same desire to please, and that she wore her mourning garb in so
charming a manner, that "the order of nature seemed changed, since age
and beauty could be found united." Ten years before, in 1647, at the age
of thirty-five, when Mazarin gave a comedy in the Italian style, that
is, an opera, there was in the evening a grand ball, and the Duchess de
Montbazon was present, adorned with pearls, with a red feather on her
head, and so dazzling in her appearance that the whole company was
completely charmed. We can imagine what she was in 1643, at the age of
thirty-one.
Of the two conditions of perfect beauty--strength and grace, Madame
de Montbazon possessed the first in the highest degree. She was tall
and majestic, and she had all the charms of embonpoint. Her throat
reminded one of the fulness, in this particular, of the antique
statues--exceeding them, perhaps, somewhat. What struck the beholder
most were her eyes and hair of intense blackness, upon a skin of the
most dazzling white. Her defect was a nose somewhat too prominent, with
a mouth so large as to give her face an appearance of severity. It will
be seen that she was the very opposite of Madame de Longueville. The
latter was tall, but not to excess. The richness of her form did not
diminish its delicacy. A moderate embonpoint exhibited, in full and
exquisite measure, the beauty of the female form. Her eyes were of the
softest blue; her hair of the most beautiful blonde. She had the most
majestic air, and yet her peculiar characteristic was grace. To these
were added the great difference of manners and tone. Madame de
Longueville was, in her deportment, dignity, politeness, modesty,
sweetness itself, with a languor and nonchalance which formed not her
least charm. Her words were few, as well as her gestures; the inflexions
of her voice were a perfect music.[1] The excess, into which she never
fell, might have been a sort of fastidiousness. Everything in her was
wit, sentiment, charm. Madame de Montbazon, on the contrary, was free of
speech, bold and easy in her tone, full of stateliness and pride.
[1] Villefore, p. 32.
The Duchess was, nevertheless, a very attractive creature when she
desired to be so, and such we must conceive her to have been if we would
take account of the admiration she excited, and not exactly like the
person which Cousin represents her when, at the age of nearly forty, she
had become "a Colossus"--to use Tallemant's phrase. At the same time it
is true that, even in youth, she had less grace than strength, less
delicacy than majesty. It is also true that she was free of speech, and
in tone was bold and offhand; but those very defects for which she was
remarkable only the better assured her empire over what, in modern
parlance, would be termed the "fast" portion of the Court, and the
sentiments to which she gave utterance revealed the most singular
extravagance. But not a single voice protested when the Duke
d'Hocquincourt proclaimed her _la belle des belles_. In the eyes of the
foreigner she was the marvel which the generals who dreamed of the
capture of Paris coveted; in other words, she was _par excellence_ "the
booty" most desirable, on the subject of which the Duke of Weimar
perpetrated a thoroughly German joke, which we must be pardoned for not
repeating: Anne of Austria might have smiled at it without blushing, but
it is too gross to risk raising a laugh by its repetition in our days.
She had a great number of adorers, and of happy adorers, from Gaston
Duke of Orleans, and the Count de Soissons, slain at Marfee, to Rance,
the young and gallant editor of Anacreon, and the future founder of La
Trappe. M. de Longueville had been for some time her lover by title, and
he afforded her considerable advantages. When he married Mademoiselle de
Bourbon, Madame the Princess exacted--without, however, being very
faithfully obeyed--the discontinuance of all intercourse with his old
mistress. Hence, in that interested soul, an irritation, which wounded
vanity redoubled, when she saw this young bride, with her great name,
her marvellous mind, her indefinable charms, advance into the world of
gallantry, without the least effort draw after her all hearts, and take
possession of, or at least share that empire of beauty of which she was
so proud, and which was to her so precious. On the other hand, the Duke
de Beaufort had not been able to restrain a passionate admiration for
Madame de Longueville, which had been very coldly received. He was
wounded by it, and his wound bled for a long time, as his friend, La
Chatre, informs us,[2] even after he had transferred his homage to
Madame de Montbazon. The latter, as may be easily imagined, was again
exasperated. Finally, the Duke de Guise, recently arrived in Paris,
placed himself in the party of the _Importants_ and at the service of
Madame de Montbazon, who received him very favourably, at the same time
she was striving to keep or recall the Duke de Longueville, and that she
was ruling Beaufort, whose office near her was somewhat that of a
_cavalier servente_. Thus it will be seen that Madame de Montbazon
disposed through Beaufort and through Guise, as through her
daughter-in-law Madame de Chevreuse, of the house of Vendome and that of
Lorraine, and she employed all this influence to the profit of her
hatred against Madame de Longueville. She burned to injure her, and was
not long in finding an opportunity of doing it.
[2] Memoires of La Chatre. Petitot Collection, vol. li. p. 230.
One day when a numerous company was assembled in her salon, one of her
young lady friends picked up a couple of letters which had been dropped
on the floor, bearing no signatures, but in a feminine handwriting, and
of a somewhat equivocal style. They were read, and a thousand jokes
perpetrated concerning them, and some effort made to discover the
author. They were from a woman who wrote tenderly to some one whom she
did not hate. Madame de Montbazon pretended that they had fallen from
the pocket of Maurice de Coligny, who had just gone out, and that they
were in the handwriting of Madame de Longueville. The word of command
thus once given, the Duke de Beaufort was amongst the first to spread
the insinuation which was a calumny, all the echoes of the party of the
_Importants_ took it up, and Madame de Montbazon herself found pleasure
in repeating it during several following days, so that the incident
became the entertainment of the Court. A frivolous curiosity has very
faithfully preserved the text of the two letters thus found at the
Duchess's house.[3]
[3] Memoires of Madlle. de Montpensier, vol. i. pp. 62, 63.
I.
"I should much more regret the change in your conduct if I
thought myself less worthy of a continuation of your
affection. I confess to you that so long as I believed it to
be true and warm, mine gave you all the advantages which you
could desire. Now, hope nothing more from me than the esteem
which I owe to your discretion. I have too much pride to
share the passion which you have so often sworn to me, and I
desire to punish your negligence in seeing me, in no other
way than by depriving you entirely of my society. I request
that you will visit me no more, since I have no longer the
power of commanding your presence."
II.
"To what conclusion have you come after so long a silence?
Do you not know that the same pride which rendered me
sensible to your past affection forbids me to endure the
false appearances of its continuation! You say that my
suspicions and my inequalities render you the most unhappy
person in the world. I assure you that I believe no such
thing, although I cannot deny that you have perfectly loved
me, as you must confess that my esteem has worthily
recompensed you. So far we have done each other justice, and
I am determined not to have in the end less goodness, if
your conduct responds to my intentions. You would find them
less unreasonable if you had more passion, and the
difficulties of seeing me would only augment instead of
diminishing it. I suffer for loving too much, and you for
not loving enough. If I must believe you, let us exchange
humours. I shall find repose in doing my duty, and you in
doing yours, and you must fail in doing yours, in order to
obtain liberty. I do not perceive that I forget the manner
in which I passed the winter with you, and that I speak to
you as frankly as I have heretofore done. I hope that you
will make as good use of it, and that I shall not regret
being overcome in the resolution which I have made to return
to it no more. I shall remain at home for three or four days
in succession, and will be seen only in the evening: you
know the reason."
These letters were not forgeries. They had been really written by
Madame de Fouquerolles to the handsome and elegant Marquis de
Maulevrier, who had been silly enough to drop them in Madame de
Montbazon's _salon_. Maulevrier, trembling at being discovered, and at
having compromised Madame de Fouquerolles, ran to La Rochefoucauld, who
was his friend, confided to him his secret, and begged him to undertake
to hush up the affair. La Rochefoucauld made Madame de Montbazon
understand that it was for her interest to be generous on this occasion,
for the error or fraud would be easily recognised as soon as the writing
should be compared with that of Madame de Longueville. Madame de
Montbazon placed the original letters in the hands of La Rochefoucauld,
who showed them to M. the Prince and to Madame the Princess, to Madame
de Rambouillet, and to Madame Sable, particular friends of Madame de
Longueville, and, the truth being well established, burned them in the
presence of the Queen, delivering Maulevrier and Madame de Fouquerolles
from the terrible anxiety into which they had been for some time thrown.
The house of Conde felt a lively resentment at the insult offered to it.
The Duke and Duchess de Longueville desired, it is true, the one by a
sentiment of interested prudence, the other by a just feeling of
dignity, to take no further notice of the matter. But the Princess,
impelled by her high spirit, and still intoxicated by her son's success,
exacted a reparation equal to the offence, and declared loudly that, if
the Queen and the government did not defend the honour of her house, she
and all her family would withdraw from the Court. She was indignant at
the mere idea of placing her daughter in the scales with the
granddaughter of a cook. In vain did the whole party of the
_Importants_, with Beaufort and Guise at their head, agitate and
threaten; in vain did Madame de Chevreuse, who had not yet lost all her
influence with the Queen, strive earnestly in behalf of her
mother-in-law. It did not suffice for the resentment of the Princess and
the Duke d'Enghien that Madame de Longueville's innocence was fully
recognised; they demanded a public reparation. Madame de Motteville has
left us an amusing recital of the "mummeries," as she terms them, of
which she was a witness.
The Queen was in her state cabinet and the Princess beside her, in great
emotion and looking very fierce, declaring the affair to be nothing less
than the crime of high treason. Madame de Chevreuse, interested for a
thousand reasons in the quarrel of her mother-in-law, was busy with
Cardinal Mazarin arranging the composition of the apology to be made. At
every word there was a _pour-parler_ of half an hour. The Cardinal went
from one side to the other to accommodate the difference, as if such a
peace was necessary for the welfare of France, and his own in
particular. It was arranged that the criminal should present herself at
the Princess's hotel on the morrow.
The apology was written upon a small piece of paper and attached to her
fan, in order that she might repeat it word for word to the Princess.
She did it in the most haughty manner possible, assuming an air which
seemed to say, "I jest in every word I utter."
Mademoiselle de Montpensier gives us the two speeches made upon the
occasion. "Madame, I come here to protest to you that I am innocent of
the wickedness of which I have been accused: no person of honour could
utter a calumny such as this. If I had committed a like fault, I should
have submitted to any punishment which it might have pleased the Queen
to inflict upon me; I should never have shown myself again in the
world, and would have asked your pardon. I beg you to believe that I
shall never fail in the respect which I owe to you and in the opinion
which I have of the virtue and of the merit of Madame de
Longueville."[4] That lady was not present at the ceremony, and her
mother, to whom the Duchess addressed herself, made a very short and dry
reply. This reconciliation did not deceive any one of those present; it
was, in fact, only a fresh declaration of war.
[4] Memoires, vol. i. p. 65.
Besides the satisfaction which she had just obtained, the Princess had
asked and had been permitted the privilege of never associating with the
Duchess de Montbazon. Some time after, Madame de Chevreuse invited the
Queen to a collation in the public garden of Renard. This was then the
rendezvous of the best society. It was at the termination of the
Tuileries, near the Porte de la Conference, which abutted on the _Cours
de la Reine_. In the summer, on returning from the _Cours_, which was
the "Rotten Row" of the day, and the spot where the beauties of the time
exercised their powers, it was customary to stop at the garden Renard
for the purpose of taking refreshments, and to listen to serenades
performed after the Spanish fashion. The Queen took pleasure in visiting
this place during fine summer evenings. She desired Madame the Princess
to partake with her the collation offered by Madame de Chevreuse,
assuring her at the same time that Madame de Montbazon would not be
present; but the latter person was really there, and even pretended to
do the honours of the collation as mother-in-law of the lady who gave
it. The Princess wished to withdraw, in order that the entertainment
might not be disturbed: the Queen had no right whatever to detain her.
She, therefore, begged Madame de Montbazon to pretend sickness, and by
leaving the party, to relieve her from embarrassment. The haughty
Duchess would not consent to fly before her enemy, and kept her place.
The Queen, offended, refused the collation and quitted the promenade. On
the morrow an order from the King enjoined upon Madame de Montbazon to
leave Paris. This disgrace irritated the _Importants_. They thought
themselves humiliated and enfeebled, and there were no violent or
extreme measures which they did not contemplate. The Duke de Beaufort,
smitten at once in his influence and his love, uttered loud
denunciations, and it was reported that a plot had been formed against
the life of Mazarin.
CHAPTER III.
THE IMPORTANTS.
IT is necessary, at this juncture, to have a just idea of the general
position of political affairs in France, as well as of the attitude of
the faction known as the _Importants_, who were then most active in
opposing the government of Mazarin, in order to understand clearly the
gravity of an incident which otherwise in itself might seem to be of
little consequence.
La Rochefoucauld, the historian of that party, has made us tolerably
familiar with the men who composed it. They were a band of eccentric and
mischievous spirits, bold of heart, ready of hand, and of boundless
fidelity to one another. Professing to hold the most outrageous maxims,
incessantly invoking Brutus and old Rome, and intermingling gallant with
political intrigues, they suffered themselves to be hurried beyond the
bounds of reason through a Quixotic idea of always pleasing the ladies.
They had all been more or less fellow-sufferers with Anne of Austria
during the period of her affliction and persecution by Richelieu, and
from the commencement of her Regency, these returning exiles and
liberated prisoners had been gathering round her until at last, formed
into a faction, they gave themselves out as the Queen's party, and by
adopting a high-flown, turgid, and mysterious style of phraseology, and
assuming bombastic and braggart airs of authority, coupled with an
affectation of capacity and profundity, obtained for themselves from the
wits of the Court and city the nickname of _The Importants_, under which
they figured until absorbed a few years later in the more general and
popular designation of _Frondeurs_. Their favourite chief was the Duke
de Beaufort, of whom we have already spoken as possessing very nearly
the same characteristics as the rest--at once artificial and
extravagant, with great pretensions to loyalty and patriotism,
professing to be a man of independent action, but in fact wholly ruled
by Madame de Montbazon, who, in her turn, was swayed by the Duchess de
Chevreuse.
On the sudden disappearance from Paris of one of the most distinguished
of the lady leaders of the _Importants_--like a star of the first
magnitude fallen from their system--the entire party was thrown into
commotion, whilst the more intimate friends and admirers of the banished
beauty raised a fierce outcry. Such an open disgrace of the young and
beautiful Duchess sorely irritated her restless partisans. They
considered themselves humiliated and weakened by it, and there was no
violence or extremity to which they were not prepared to resort. Her
slave and adorer, the Duke de Beaufort, assailed at once on the score of
his political interest and personal gallantry, vapoured and stormed
furiously. Thoughts of vengeance, which, like the mutterings of an
approaching tempest, had begun to brood beneath the roof of the Hotel de
Vendome, now became concentrated in a plot to get rid of Mazarin by fair
means or foul, divers modes of its execution being earnestly discussed.
In such conjunctures, the Cardinal rose to the level of Richelieu. At
the same time he had to secure safety and success mainly through his own
courage and patience. But he knew right well how to play his part. The
wily minister already stood well with the Queen--had begun to seem
necessary, or at least very useful to her, though Anne of Austria had
not yet formally declared her approval of his policy. Mazarin
represented to her what she owed alike to the State and the royal
authority now seriously threatened. That she must prefer the interest of
her son and his crown to friendships--satisfactory enough at other
times, but which had now become dangerous. He brought before her eyes
most indubitable proofs of a conspiracy to take his life, and entreated
her to choose between his enemies and himself. Anne of Austria did not
hesitate, and the ruin of the _Importants_ was decided upon.
More dangerous ground could scarcely have been found whereon to post the
_Importants_. The Duchess de Montbazon, as disreputable in morals and
character as she was remarkable for her beauty, had attacked a young
wife, who, having just made her appearance at the Regent's court, had
already become the object of universal admiration. To a loveliness at
once so graceful and dazzling that it was pronounced to be angelic,
Madame de Longueville added great intelligence, a most noble heart, and
was a person of all others whom it behoved the _Importants_ to
conciliate; for her natural generosity of character had disinclined her
to side with the party of repression, and thereby had even given some
umbrage to the Prime Minister. At that moment, she was merely occupied
with intellectual pursuits, innocent gallantry, and above all with the
fame of her brother, the Duke d'Enghien; but there were, it must be
owned, already perceptible in her mind, some germs of an _Important_,
which, later, Rochefoucauld knew only too well how to develop. But the
slanderous attack that had been made upon her, the disgraceful motive of
which was sufficiently clear, revolted every honest heart. The
ungovernable impetuosity of Beaufort on this occasion was--as it
deserved to be--strongly stigmatised. Having formerly paid his addresses
to Mademoiselle de Bourbon, and been rejected, his conduct assumed the
aspect of an obvious revenge. Moreover, Madame de Chevreuse's every
effort being directed towards depriving Mazarin of supporters, she
incited the devotees of either sex who were about the Queen to act
against him, and Madame de Longueville was no less the idol of the
Carmelites and the party of the _Saints_ than that of the Hotel de
Rambouillet. Again, the Duke d'Enghien, already covered with the laurels
of Rocroy, and about to entwine therewith those of Thionville, was so
evidently the arbiter of the situation, that Madame de Chevreuse
insisted, with much force, that Mazarin should be got rid of whilst the
young Duke was occupied with the distant enemy, and before he should
return from the army. To wound him through so susceptible a medium as
that of an adored sister, to turn him against herself without any
necessity, and hasten his return, would be a silly extravagance.
Therefore, all who had any sense among the _Importants_--La
Rochefoucauld, La Chatre, and Campion--anxiously sought to hush up and
terminate this deplorable affair; and Madame de Chevreuse, sedulous to
pay court to the Queen at the same time that she was weaving a subtle
plot against her minister, had prepared the little fete for her at
Renard's garden with the design of dispersing the last remaining
cloudlets of the lately-spent tempest. But the Duchess's politic purpose
was, as we have seen, destined to fail through the insane pride of a
woman who was as senseless as she was heartless.[1]
[1] Alexandre de Campion, in the _Recueil_ before cited, writes to
Madame de Montbazon:--"Si mon avis eut ete suivi chez Renard, vous
seriez sortie, pour obeir a la Reine, vous n'habiteriez pas la maison
de Rochefort, et nous ne serions pas dans le peril dont nous sommes
menaces."
Under these critical circumstances how did it behove Madame de Chevreuse
to act? She was compelled to restrain Madame de Montbazon, but she could
neither abandon her nor be false to herself. She resolved therefore to
follow up energetically the formidable project which had become the last
hope and supreme resource of her party. Through Madame de Montbazon,
Beaufort had been dragged into it. The latter had mustered the men of
action already mentioned, and who were wholly devoted to him. A plot had
been devised and every measure concerted for surprising and perhaps
killing the Cardinal.
CHAPTER IV.
THE CONSPIRACY OF THE DUCHESS DE CHEVREUSE AND THE DUKE DE BEAUFORT TO
GET RID OF MAZARIN.
ONE need not be greatly astonished at such an enterprise on the part of
two women of high rank and a grandson of Henry the Great. At that
stirring epoch of French history--the interval between the League and
the Fronde--energy and strength were the distinctive traits of the
French aristocracy. Neither court life nor a corrupting opulence had yet
enervated it. Everything was then in extremes, in vice as in virtue. Men
attacked and defended one another with the same weapons. The Marshal
d'Ancre had been massacred; more than one attempt had been made to
assassinate Richelieu; whilst he, on his side, had not been backward in
having recourse to the sword and block. Corneille paints faithfully the
spirit of the epoch. His Emilie is also involved in an assassination,
and she is not the less represented as a perfect heroine. Madame de
Chevreuse had long been accustomed to conspiracies; she was bold and
unscrupulous. She did not gather round her such men as Beaupuis,
Saint-Ybar, De Varicarville, and de Campion merely to pass the time in
idle conversation. She had not remained a stranger to the designs they
had formerly concocted against Richelieu, for in 1643 she fomented, as
we have seen, their exaltation and their devotedness; and it was not
unreasonable, certainly, that Mazarin should attribute to her the first
idea of the project which Beaufort was to accomplish.
At the same time it must be remembered that the _Importants_ and their
successors the _Frondeurs_ denied this project and declared it the
invention of the Cardinal. It is a point of the highest historical
importance and deserves serious examination, as upon this conspiracy,
real or imaginary, as may be determined after careful investigation,
rests the fact whether Mazarin owed in reality all his career and the
great future which then opened before him to a falsehood cunningly
invented and audaciously sustained; or whether Madame de Chevreuse and
the _Importants_, after having tried their utmost against him, now
resolving to destroy him with the armed hand, were themselves destroyed
and became the instruments of his triumph. The evidence available
irresistibly leads to the latter conclusion, and we think that we shall
be able to show that the plot attributed to the _Importants_, far from
being a chimaera, was the almost inevitable solution of the violent
crisis just described.
La Rochefoucauld, without having indulged in the insane hopes of his
friends and lent his hand to their rash enterprise, made it a point of
honour to defend them after their discomfiture, and set himself to cover
the retreat. He affects to doubt whether the plot which then made so
much noise was real or supposititious. In his eyes, the greater
probability was that the Duke de Beaufort, by a false _finesse_,
endeavoured to excite alarm in the Cardinal, believing that it was
sufficient to strike terror into his mind to force him to quit France,
and that it was with this view that he held secret meetings and gave
them the appearance of conspiracy. La Rochefoucauld constitutes himself
especially the champion of Madame de Chevreuse's innocence, and
declares himself thoroughly persuaded that she was ignorant of
Beaufort's designs.
After the historian of the _Importants_, that of the _Frondeurs_ holds
very nearly the same arguments. Like La Rochefoucauld, De Retz has only
one object in his Memoirs--that of investing himself with a semblance of
capacity and making a great figure in every way, in evil as well as
good. He is often more truthful, because he cares less about other
people, and that he is disposed to sacrifice all the world except
himself. In this matter it is hard to conceive the motive for his
reserve and incredulity. He knew right well that the majority of the
persons accused of having taken part in the plot had already been
implicated in more than one such business. He himself tells us that he
had conspired with the Count de Soissons, that he had blamed him for not
having struck down Richelieu at Amiens, and that with La Rochepot, he,
the Abbe de Retz, had formed the design of assassinating him at the
Tuileries during the ceremony of the baptism of Mademoiselle (de
Montpensier). The Co-adjutorship of the Archbishopric of Paris, which
the Regent had just granted him, in consideration of his own services
and the virtues of his father, had mollified him, it is true; but his
old accomplices, who had not been so well treated as he, had remained
faithful to their cause, to their designs, to their habitudes. Was De
Retz then sincere when he refused to believe that they had attempted
against Mazarin that which he had seen them undertake, and which he had
himself undertaken against Richelieu? In his blind hatred he throws
everything upon Mazarin: he pretends that he was terrified, or that he
feigned terror. It was the Abbe de la Riviere, he tells us, who, in
order to rid himself of the rivalry of the Count de Montresor in the
Duke d'Orleans' favour, must have persuaded Mazarin that there was a
plot set on foot against him, in which Montresor was mixed up. It was
the Prince de Conde also who must have tried to destroy Beaufort through
fear lest his son, the Duke d'Enghien, might engage with him in some
duel, as he wished to do, to avenge his sister, during the short visit
he made to Paris after taking Thionville.
To the suspicious opinions of de Retz and La Rochefoucauld let us oppose
testimony more disinterested, and before all other the silence of
Montresor,[1] who, whilst protesting that neither he nor his friend the
Count de Bethune had meddled with the conspiracy imputed to the Duke de
Beaufort, says not a single word against the reality of that conspiracy,
which he would not have failed to ridicule had he believed it imaginary.
Madame de Motteville, who was not in the habit of overwhelming the
unfortunate, after having reported with impartiality the different
rumours circulated at Court, relates certain facts which appear to her
authentic, and which are decisive.[2] One of the best informed and most
truthful of contemporary historians expresses not the slightest doubt on
this head. "The _Importants_," says Monglat, "seeing that they could not
drive the Cardinal out of France, resolved to despatch him with their
daggers, and held several councils on this subject at the Hotel de
Vendome." That opinion is confirmed by new and numerous particulars with
which Mazarin's _carnets_ and confidential letters furnish us.
[1] Memoires, Petitot Collection, t. lix.
[2] Memoires, t. i., p. 184.
The person whom Mazarin signalizes in his _carnets_ and letters as the
trusted friend of Beaufort and after him the principal accused, the
Count de Beaupuis, son of the Count de Maille, had found means of
sheltering himself from the minister's first searches; he had succeeded
in escaping from France and sought an asylum at Rome under the avowed
protection of Spain. Mazarin left no stone unturned to obtain from the
Court of Rome the extradition of Beaupuis, in order that he might be
legally tried. The Pope at first could not refuse, at least for form's
sake, to have Beaupuis committed to the Castle of St. Angelo. But he was
soon liberated, and provided with a State lodging wherein he was allowed
to see nearly every one who came. Mazarin complained loudly of such
indulgence. "It is all arranged," said he, "that when necessary he may
escape, or at any rate the Duke de Vendome is furnished with every
facility for poisoning him, in order that with Beaupuis may perish the
principal proof of his son's treason. If all this happened in Barbary,
people would be highly indignant. And this is suffered to take place in
Rome, in the capital of Christianity, under the eyes and by the orders
of a Pope!"
Failing Beaupuis, Mazarin would have liked to put his hand upon one of
the brothers Campion, intimately connected as they were with Beaufort
and Madame de Chevreuse, and too closely in the confidence of both not
to know all their secrets. He himself complains, as we have seen, of
being very badly seconded. And then he had to do with emerited
conspirators, consummate in the art of concealing themselves and of
leaving no trace of their whereabouts--with the active and indefatigable
Duchess de Chevreuse, and with the Duke de Vendome, who, in order to
save his son, set about forwarding the escape of all those whose
depositions might help to convict him, or kept them somehow in his own
hands, hidden and shut up close at Anet. Mazarin was thus only able to
arrest a few obscure individuals who were ignorant of the plot, and
could throw no light upon it.
But it is needless to exhaust existing proofs in demonstration of the
fact that Mazarin did not enact a farce by instituting proceedings
against the conspirators, that he pursued them with sincerity and
vigour, and that he was perfectly convinced that a project of
assassination had been formed against him, when the existence of that
project is elsewhere averred, when, in default of a sentence of the
parliament, which could not have been given in the teeth of insufficient
evidence, neither Beaupuis, nor the Campions, nor Lie, nor Brillet
having been arrested, better proof being extant in the full and entire
confession of one of the principal conspirators, with the plan and all
the details of the affair set forth in Memoirs of comparatively recent
publication, but the authenticity of which cannot be contested. We
allude to the precious Memoirs of Henri de Campion,[3] brother of Madame
de Chevreuse's friend, whom that lady had introduced also to the service
of the Duke de Vendome, and more particularly to that of the Duke de
Beaufort. Henri had accompanied the Duke in his flight to England after
the conspiracy of Cinq Mars, and he had returned with him; he possessed
his entire confidence, and he relates nothing in which he himself had
not taken a considerable part. Henri's character was very different to
that of his brother Alexandre. He was a well-educated man, full of
honour and courage, not in the least given to boasting, averse to all
intrigue, and born to make his way through life by the straightest paths
in the career of arms. He wrote these Memoirs in solitude, to which
after the loss of his daughter and his wife he had retired to await
death amidst the exercise of a genuine piety. It is not in such a frame
of mind that a man is disposed to invent fables, and there is no middle
way. What he says is that which we must believe absolutely, or if we
have any doubt that he speaks the truth, he must be considered as the
worst of villains. No interested feeling could have directed his pen,
for he compiled his Memoirs, or at least he finished them, a short time
after Mazarin's death, without thought, therefore, of paying court to
him by making very tardy revelations, and scarcely two years before he
himself died in 1663. Thus it may be fairly inferred that Henri de
Campion wrote strictly under the inspiration of his conscience. One has
only to open his Memoirs to see confirmed, point by point, all the
particulars with which Mazarin's _carnets_ are filled. Nothing is there
wanting, everything coincides, all marvellously corresponds. It appears,
indeed, as though Mazarin in making his notes had had before his eyes de
Campion's Memoirs, or that the latter whilst penning them had Mazarin's
_carnets_ before him: he at once so thoroughly takes up the thread and
completes them.
[3] "Memoires de Henri de Campion, &c.," 1807. Treuttel and Wuertz.
Paris.
His brother Alexandre, in his letters of the month of August, 1643, had
already let slip more than one mysterious sentence. He wrote to Madame
de Montbazon in banishment:--"You must not despair, madam, there are
still some half-a-dozen honest folks who do not give up.... Your
illustrious friend will not abandon you. If to be prudent it were
necessary to renounce your acquaintance, there are those who would
prefer rather to pass for fools all their days." Like Montresor, he does
not once say that there was no plot framed against Mazarin, which is a
kind of tacit avowal; and when the storm burst, he took care to conceal
himself, advised Beaupuis to do the same, and ends with these
significant words:--"In embarking in Court affairs one cannot be certain
of being master of events, and whilst we profit by the lucky ones, we
must resolve to put up with the unlucky." Henri de Campion raises this
already very transparent veil.
He declares plainly that there was a project on foot to get rid of
Mazarin, and that that project was conceived, not by Beaufort, but by
Madame de Chevreuse in concert with Madame de Montbazon. "I think," says
he, "that the Duke's design did not spring from his own particular
sentiment, but from the persuasion of the duchesses de Chevreuse and de
Montbazon, who exercised entire sway over his mind and had an
irreconcilable hatred to the Cardinal. What makes me say so, is that,
whilst he was under that resolution, I always observed that he had an
internal repugnance which, if I mistake not, was overcome by some pledge
which he may have given to those ladies." There _was_, therefore, a
plot, and its real author, as Mazarin truly said, and Campion repeats,
was Madame de Chevreuse; if so, Madame de Montbazon was only an
instrument in her hands.
Beaufort, once inveigled, drew in also his intimate friend, Count de
Maille's son, the Count de Beaupuis, cornet in the Queen's horse-guards.
To them Madame de Chevreuse adjoined Alexandre de Campion, the elder
brother of Henri. "She loved him much," remarks the latter, and in a way
which, added to certain ambiguous words of Alexandre, excites suspicion
whether the elder Campion were not in fact one of the numerous
successors of Chalais. He was then thirty-three, and his brother
confesses that he had caught from the Count de Soissons the taste for
and the habitudes of faction. Beaupuis and Alexandre de Campion
approved of the plot when communicated to them, "the former," says
Henri, "believing that it would be a means for him of attaining to a
position of greater importance, and my brother seeing therein Madame de
Chevreuse's advantage and by consequence his own."
Such were the two first accomplices of Beaufort. A little later he
opened his mind on the subject to Henri de Campion, one of his principal
gentlemen; to Lie, captain of his guards; and to Brillet, his equerry.
There the secret rested. Many other gentlemen and domestics of the house
of Vendome were destined to take action in the affair, but were admitted
to no confidence. The project was well conceived and worthy of Madame de
Chevreuse. There were at most five or six conspirators--three capable of
keeping the secret, and who did keep it. Below them, the men of action,
who did not know what they would be called on to do; and in the
background, the men of the morrow, who might be reckoned upon to applaud
the blow, when it had been struck, without it being judged fitting to
admit them to the conspiracy. At least Henri de Campion does not even
name Montresor, Bethune, Fontraille, Varicarville, Saint-Ybar, which
explains wherefore Mazarin, whilst keeping his eye upon them, did not
have them arrested. Neither does Campion speak of Chandenier, La Chatre,
de Treville, the Duke de Bouillon, the Duke de Guise, De Retz, nor La
Rochefoucauld, whose sentiments were not doubtful, but who were not
inclined to go so far as to sully their hands with an assassination. And
that further explains the silence of Mazarin with regard to them in all
that relates to Beaufort's conspiracy, although he did not cherish the
slightest illusion as to their dispositions, and as to the part they
would have taken if the plot had succeeded, or even if a serious
struggle had taken place.
The conspiracy rested for some time between Madame de Chevreuse, Madame
de Montbazon, Beaufort, Beaupuis, and Alexandre de Campion. The final
resolution was only taken at the end of July or in the first days of
August, that is to say, precisely during the height of the quarrel
between Madame de Montbazon and Madame de Longueville, which ushered in
the crisis and opened the door to all the events which followed. It was
then only that Beaufort spoke of it to Henri de Campion, in presence of
Beaupuis. Mazarin's crime was the continuation of Richelieu's system.
"The Duke de Beaufort told me that he thought I had remarked that the
Cardinal Mazarin was re-establishing at court and throughout the kingdom
the tyranny of Cardinal de Richelieu, with even more of authority and
violence than had been shown under the government of the latter; that
having entirely gained the Queen's mind and made all the ministers
devoted to him, it was impossible to arrest his evil designs save by
depriving him of life; that the public weal having made him resolve to
take that step, he informed me of it in order that I might aid him with
my advice and personally assist in its execution. Beaupuis next 'took up
his parable,' and warmly represented the evils which the too great
authority of Richelieu had caused France, and concluded by saying that
we must prevent the like inconvenience before his successor had rendered
matters remediless." Such conclusion embodied as nearly as possible the
views and language of _Importants_ and _Frondeurs_, of La Rochefoucauld
and De Retz. Henri de Campion represents himself as having at first
combatted the Duke's project with so much force that more than once he
was shaken; but the two duchesses wound him up again very quickly, and
Beaupuis and Alexandre de Campion, instead of holding him back,
encouraged him. Shortly afterwards, Beaufort having declared that he had
made up his mind, Henri de Campion gave in on two conditions: "The one,"
he tells us, "of not laying his hand on the Cardinal, since I would
rather take my own life than do a deed of such nature. The other, that
if the Duke should arrange that the project should be put into execution
during his absence, I would never mix myself up in it; whereas if he
were himself to be present, I should without scruple keep myself near
his person, in order to defend him against any mischance that might
happen, my duty and affection towards him equally obliging me thereto.
He granted me those two conditions, testifying at the same time that he
esteemed me more for having made them, and added that he would be
present at the execution of the project, so that he might authorise it
by his presence."
The plan was to attack the Cardinal in the street, whilst paying visits
in his carriage, commonly having with him only a few ecclesiastics,
besides five or six lackeys. It would be necessary to present themselves
in force and unexpectedly, stop the vehicle and strike Mazarin. To do
that, it was necessary that a certain number of the Vendome domestics,
who were not in the secret, should post themselves daily, from early
morning, in the _cabarets_ around the Cardinal's abode, which was then
at the Hotel de Cleves, near the Louvre. Among the domestics let into
the secret, Henri de Campion names positively Gauseville. Over them were
placed "the Sieurs d'Avancourt and De Brassy, Picardians, very resolute
men and intimate friends of Lie." The pretext given out was that the
Condes proposing to put an affront upon Madame de Montbazon, the Duke
de Beaufort, in order to oppose it, desired to have in hand a troop of
gentlemen well mounted and armed. Their parts were allotted beforehand.
A certain number were to pounce upon the Cardinal's coachman, at the
same moment that others were to open the two doors and strike him,
whilst the Duke would be at hand on horseback, with Beaupuis, Henri de
Campion, and others, to cut down or drive off those who should be
disposed to resist. Alexandre de Campion was to keep near the Duchess de
Chevreuse and at her orders; and she herself ought more than ever to be
assiduous in her attentions to the Queen, in order to smooth the way for
her friends, and, in case of success, draw the Regent to the side of the
victorious.
Several occasions favourable to the execution of this plan presented
themselves. In the first instance, Henri de Campion being with his band
in the Rue du Champ-Fleuri--one end of which joins the Rue Saint-Honore
and the other approaches the Louvre--saw the Cardinal leave the Hotel de
Cleves in his carriage with the Abbe de Bentivoglio, the nephew of the
celebrated cardinal of that name, with a few ecclesiastics and valets.
Campion inquired of one of them whither the Cardinal was going, and was
answered--to visit the Marshal d'Estrees. "I saw," says Campion, "that
if I had made use of the information, his death would have been
inevitable. But I thought that I should be so guilty in the eyes of God
and man that I resisted the temptation to do so."
The next day it was known that the Cardinal would be present at a
collation to be given by Madame du Vigean at her charming residence of
La Barre, at the entrance of the valley of Montmorency, where Madame de
Longueville was staying, and which the Queen had promised to honour
with a visit, and who had already set out. The Cardinal was repairing
thither, having with him in his coach only the Count d'Harcourt.
Beaufort ordered Campion to assemble his troop and to ride after him,
but Campion represented to the Duke that if they attacked the Cardinal
in the company of the Count d'Harcourt, they must decide upon killing
both, Harcourt being too generous to see Mazarin stabbed before his eyes
without defending him, and that the murder of Harcourt would raise
against them the entire house of Lorraine.
Some days afterwards information was given that the Cardinal was engaged
to dine at Maisons, with the Marshal d'Estrees, to meet the Duke
d'Orleans. "I made the Duke consent," says Campion, "that should the
minister be in the same carriage with his Royal Highness, the design
should not be executed; but he said, that if he were alone, he must be
killed. Early in the morning he had the horses out and kept himself in
readiness at the Capucins with Beaupuis, near the Hotel de Vendome,
posting a valet on foot in the street to tell him when the Cardinal
should pass, and enjoining me to keep with those whom I was accustomed
to muster at the Cabaret l'Ange, in the Rue Saint-Honore, very near the
Hotel de Vendome, and if the Cardinal journeyed without the Duke
d'Orleans, I should mount instantly with all my men, and intercept him
when passing the Capucins. I was," adds Campion, "in a state of anxiety
which may readily be imagined, until I saw the carriage of the Duke
d'Orleans pass, and perceived the Cardinal inside with him."
At length, Beaufort's irritation being carried to the highest pitch by
the banishment from court of Madame de Montbazon (which was certainly
on the 22nd of August), goaded by Madame de Chevreuse, by passion, and
by a false sense of honour, he became himself impatient to act. Seeing
that, during the day, he encountered incessant difficulties of which he
was far from divining the cause, he resolved to strike the blow at
night, and prepared an ambuscade, the success of which seemed certain,
and the details of which we have from Campion. The Cardinal went every
evening to visit the Queen, and returned sufficiently late. It was
arranged to attack him between the Louvre and the Hotel de Cleves.
Horses were to be in readiness in some neighbouring inn. The Duke
himself should keep watch with Beaupuis and Campion, during the time the
minister should be with the Queen, and so soon as he came forth, all
three should advance and make a signal to the rest, who, in the
meanwhile, should remain on horseback on the quay, by the river side,
close to the Louvre. All which could be very well done at night without
awakening any suspicion.
It must be remembered that the person who furnishes these very precise
details was one of the principal conspirators, that he wrote at
sufficiently considerable distance from the event, in safety, and, to
repeat it once again, with no interest, fearing nothing more from
Mazarin, who had recently died, and expecting nothing from him. It must
be also remembered that speaking as he has done, he accuses his own
brother; that, without doubt, he attributes to himself laudable
intentions and even some good actions, but that he confesses having
entered into the plot, and that, if its execution had taken place he
would have taken part in it, in fighting by the side of Beaufort. The
process submitted to the parliament not having led to anything, through
failure of evidence, Campion did not imagine that Mazarin had ever
known "the circumstances of the plot, nor those acquainted with it to
the very bottom, and who were engaged in it." He adds also, "that now
the Cardinal is dead there is no longer any reason to fear injuring any
one in stating matters as they are." He therefore does not defend
himself; he believes himself to be sheltered from all quest, he writes
only to relieve his conscience.
From these curious revelations we further learn what importance Mazarin
attached to the arrest of Henri Campion; and that writer's statements
are not only substantially confirmed by various entries in the
_carnets_, but read like a translation into French of those pages from
the Cardinal's Italian. "They threw," he says, "into the Bastille,
Avancourt and Brassy, where they deposed that I had mustered them on
several occasions, on the part of the Duke de Beaufort, for the
interests of Madame de Montbazon, as I had told them. This did not
afford any motive for interrogating the Duke, since they owned that he
had not spoken to them; thus he would not have failed to deny having
given the orders which I carried to them on his part. It was then seen
that the process against him could not be carried on before I had been
arrested, in order to find matter whereon to interrogate him after my
own depositions, and so thoroughly to embarrass us both that every trace
of the affair might be discovered. The proof of this conspiracy was of
most essential importance to the Cardinal, who directing all his efforts
to the establishment of his government, and affecting to do so by gentle
means, had been unfortunate enough to be constrained, in the outset, to
use violence against one of the greatest men in the realm, for his own
individual interest, without a conviction to prove that he was
compelled to treat the Duke with rigour. The Cardinal, despairing of
being able to persuade others of that of which he was entirely assured,
had a great desire to get me into his hands. He was nevertheless of
opinion that he must give me time to reassure myself of safety in order
to take me with the greater facility."
We may add to all this that Henri de Campion, sought after sharply, and
closely shut up in his retreat at Anet, under the protection of the Duke
de Vendome, having fled from France and joined his friend the Count de
Beaupuis at Rome, gives an account of the obstinate efforts made by
Mazarin to obtain the extradition of the latter, the resistance of Pope
Innocent X., the regard shown to Beaupuis when they were compelled to
confine him in the Castle of Saint-Angelo; all of which being equally to
be met with in the _carnets_ and letters of Mazarin and the memoirs of
Henri de Campion, places beyond doubt the perfect sincerity of the
Cardinal's proceedings and the accuracy of his information.
Are not these, we may ask, proofs sufficient to reduce to naught the
interested doubts of La Rochefoucauld and the passionate denials of the
chief of the Fronde, the very clever but very little truthful Cardinal
de Retz, the most ardent and most obstinate of Mazarin's enemies? It
would seem, indeed, either that there is no certitude whatever in
history, or that it must be considered henceforth as a point absolutely
demonstrated that there was a project determined upon to kill Mazarin;
that that project had been conceived by Madame de Chevreuse, and in some
sort imposed by her upon Beaufort with the aid of Madame de Montbazon;
that Beaufort had for principal accomplices the Count de Beaupuis and
Alexandre de Campion; that Henri de Campion had entered later into the
affair, at the pressing solicitation of the Duke, as well as two other
officers of secondary rank; that during the month of August there were
divers serious attempts to put it into execution, particularly the last
one after the banishment of Madame de Montbazon, at the very end of
August or rather on the 1st of September; and that such attempt only
failed through circumstances altogether independent of the will of the
conspirators.
CHAPTER V.
FAILURE OF THE PLOT TO ASSASSINATE MAZARIN. ARREST OF BEAUFORT,
BANISHMENT OF MADAME DE CHEVREUSE, AND DISPERSION OF THE "IMPORTANTS."
LET us now inquire how the last attempt against Mazarin's life--that
nocturnal ambuscade so well planned and so deliberately set about on the
1st of September, 1643--chanced to fail, and what was the result of such
failure. Without stopping to discuss the conjectures of Campion on this
point, it may suffice to state that Mazarin, who was on his guard,
evaded the blow destined for him by not visiting the Queen during the
evening on which it was resolved to kill him as he should return from
the Louvre. Next day the scene was changed. A rumour spread rapidly that
the Prime Minister had expected to have been murdered by Beaufort and
his friends, that he had escaped, fortune having declared in his favour.
A plot to assassinate, more especially when it fails, invariably excites
the strongest indignation, and the man who has extricated himself from a
great peril and seems destined to sweep all such from his path, readily
finds adherents and defenders. A host of people who would probably have
supported Beaufort victorious, now flocked to offer their swords and
services to the Cardinal, and on that morning he went to the Louvre
escorted by three hundred gentlemen.
For several days previously, Mazarin had seen clearly that, cost what
it might, he must cut his way through the knotted intricacy of the
situation, and that the moment had arrived for forcing Anne of Austria
to choose her part. The occasion was decisive. If the peril which he had
just undergone, and which was only suspended over his head, did not
suffice to draw the Queen from her incertitude, it would prove that she
did not love him; and Mazarin knew well that, amidst the many dangers
surrounding him, his entire strength lay in the Queen's affection, and
that thereon depended his present safety and future fate. Whether,
therefore, through policy or sincere affection, it was always to Anne of
Austria's heart that he addressed himself, and at the outset of the
crisis he had said to himself: "If I believed that the Queen was merely
making use of me through necessity, without having any personal
inclination for me, I would not stay here three days longer."[1] But
enough has been said to show plainly that Anne of Austria _loved_
Mazarin. Comparing him with his rivals, she appreciated him daily more
and more. She admired the precision and clearness of his intellect, his
finesse and penetration, and that extraordinary energy which enabled him
to bear the weight of government with marvellous ease--his quick and
accurate introspection, his profound prudence, and at the same time the
judicious vigour of his resolves. She saw the affairs of France
prospering on all sides under his firm and skilful hand. The Cardinal,
it is true, was not quite a nullity, in the fierce war which had
inaugurated the new reign so dazzlingly; but a power of no slight weight
was manifest in the success which had followed his advent to office,
and which proved to startled Europe that the victory of Rocroy was not a
lucky stroke of chance. When every member of the Council was opposed to
the siege of Thionville, and when Turenne himself, on being consulted,
did not venture to declare his opinion on the subject, it was Mazarin
who had insisted with an unflinching persistence that the victory of
Rocroy should be profited by, and that France should extend her frontier
to the Rhine. That proposition, doubtless, emanated from the youthful
conqueror, but Mazarin had the merit of comprehending, sustaining, and
causing it to triumph. If no first minister had ever before been so
served by such a general, neither had general ever been so supported by
such a minister; and thanks to both, on the 11th of August, whilst the
chivalrous _Importants_ were exhausting their combined talents in
putting a shameful affront upon the noble sister of the hero who had
just served France so gloriously, and who was about to aggrandize it
further--whilst they were displaying their vapid and turgid eloquence in
the salons, or sharpening their poniards in gloomy council chambers,
Thionville, then one of the chief strongholds of the Empire, surrendered
after an obstinate defence. Thus, the Regency of Anne of Austria had
opened under the most brilliant auspices.
[1] Entry in Carnet, iii. p. 10, in Spanish:--"Sy yo creyera lo que
dicen que S.M. se sierve di mi per necessidad, sin tener alguna
inclination, no pararia aqui tres dias."
But in the height of this national glory and signal triumph, Queen Anne
must indeed have shuddered when Mazarin placed before her all the proofs
of the odious conspiracy formed against him. Explanations the most
minute and confidential thereupon ensued between them. It was now more
than ever compulsory for her to "raise the mask,"[2] to sacrifice to a
manifest necessity the circumspection she was studious of preserving--to
brave somewhat further the tittle-tattle of a few devotees of either
sex, and at all events to permit her Prime Minister to defend his life.
Up to this moment Anne of Austria had hesitated, for reasons which may
be readily comprehended. But Madame de Montbazon's insolence had greatly
irritated her; the conviction she acquired that numerous attempts to
assassinate Mazarin had only by chance failed, and might be renewed,
decided her; and it was, therefore, towards the close of August, 1643,
when the date of that declared ascendancy, open and unrivalled, must be
certainly fixed, of the Minister of the Queen Regent. These
conspirators, by proceeding to the last extremities, and thereby making
her tremble for Mazarin's life, hastened the triumph of the happy
Cardinal; and on the morrow of the last nocturnal ambush in which he was
marked for destruction, Jules Mazarin became absolute master of the
Queen's heart, and more powerful than Richelieu had ever been after the
_Day of Dupes_.
[2] "Quitarse la maschera." Carnet, ii. p. 65.
The minister's _carnets_ will be searched in vain for any traces of the
explanations which Mazarin must have had with the Queen during this
grave conjuncture. Such explanations are not of a nature likely to be
forgotten, and of which there is any need to take notes. An obscure
passage, however, is to be met with, written in Spanish, of which the
following words have a meaning clear enough to be understood: "I ought
no longer to have any doubt, since the Queen, in an excess of goodness,
has told me that nothing could deprive me of the post which she has done
me the honour of giving me near her; nevertheless, as fear is the
inseparable companion of affection, &c."[3] At this anxious moment,
Mazarin was attacked with a slight illness, brought on by incessant
labour and wearing anxieties, and an attack of jaundice having
supervened, the Cardinal jotted down the following brief but highly
suggestive memorandum:--"_La giallezza cagionata da soverchio
amore_."[4]
[3] Carnet, iii. p. 45.--"Mas contodo esto siendo el temor un
compagnero inseparabile dell'affection," &c.
[4] Carnet, iv. p. 3.
Madame de Motteville was in attendance on Anne of Austria when the
rumour of the abortive attempt at assassination brought a crowd of
courtiers to the Louvre in hot haste to protest their devotedness to the
Crown. The Queen, with great emotion, whispered to her trusty
lady-in-waiting: "Ere eight and forty hours elapse you shall see how I
will avenge myself for the evil tricks these false friends have played
me." "Never," adds Madame de Motteville, "can the remembrance of those
few brief words be effaced from my mind. I saw at that moment, by the
fire that flashed in the Queen's eyes, and in fact by what happened on
that very evening and next day, what it is to be a female sovereign when
enraged, and with the power of doing what she pleases."[5] Had the
cautious lady-in-waiting been less discreet, she might have added,
"especially when that sovereign lady is a woman in love."
[5] Memoires, vol. i. p. 185.
The break-up and dispersion of the _Importants_ once decided upon, the
first step was to arrest Beaufort, and bring him to trial. To this the
Queen gave her consent. Of the authority Mazarin had acquired, such
proceeding was a striking indication, and showed how far Anne of Austria
might one day go in defence of a minister who was dear to her. The Duke
de Beaufort had been, before her husband's death, the man in whom the
Queen placed most confidence, and for some time he was thought destined
to play the brilliant part of a royal favourite. In a brief space he had
effectually thrown away his chance by his presumptuous conduct, his
evident incapacity, and yet more by his public _liaison_ with Madame de
Montbazon. Still the Queen had shown a somewhat singular weakness in his
favour, and at the expiration of three short months to sign an order for
his arrest was a great step--necessary, it is true, but extreme, and
which was the manifest sign of an entire change in the heart and
intimate relations of Anne of Austria. The dissimulation even with which
she acted in that affair marks the deliberative firmness of her
resolution.
The 2nd of September, 1643, was truly a memorable day in the career of
Mazarin, and we may say, in the annals of France; for it witnessed the
confirming of the royal power, shaken to its base by the deaths of
Richelieu and Louis XIII., and the ruin of the party of the
_Importants_.
On the morning of the 2nd, all Paris and its Court rang with the report
of the ambuscade laid for Mazarin the night previous, between the Louvre
and the Hotel de Cleves. The five conspirators who had joined hands with
Beaufort in it had taken flight and placed themselves in safety.
Beaufort and Madame de Chevreuse could not imitate them: flight for them
would have been a self-denunciation. The intrepid Duchess therefore had
not hesitated to appear at Court, and she was at the Regent's side
during the evening of the 2nd together with another person, a stranger
to these dark plots and even incapable of putting faith in them--a very
different enemy of Mazarin--the pious and noble Madame de Hautefort. As
for the Duke, careless and courageous, he had gone to the chase in the
morning, and at his return he went, according to his custom, to present
his homage to the Queen. On entering the Louvre he met his mother,
Madame de Vendome, and his sister the Duchess de Nemours, who had
accompanied the Queen all day and remarked her emotion. They did all
they could to prevent him going up stairs, and entreated him to absent
himself for a while. He, without troubling himself in the slightest
degree, answered them in the words of the doomed Duke de Guise--"They
dare not!"--and entered the Queen's great cabinet, who received him with
the best grace possible, and asked him all sorts of questions about his
hunting, "as though," says Madame de Motteville, "she had no other
thought in her mind." The Cardinal having come in in the midst of this
gentle chat, the Queen rose and bade him follow her. It appeared as if
she wished to take counsel with him in her chamber. She entered it,
followed by her Minister. At the same time the Duke de Beaufort, about
to leave, met Guitant, captain of the guard, who arrested him, and
commanded the Duke to follow him in the names of the King and Queen. The
Prince, without showing any surprise, after having looked fixedly at
him, said, "Yes, I will; but this, I must own, is strange enough." Then
turning towards Mesdames de Chevreuse and de Hautefort, who were talking
together, he said to them, "Ladies, you see that the Queen has caused me
to be arrested." The young nobleman then submitted to the royal mandate
without offering the slightest resistance; slept that night at the
Louvre, and the next morning was taken to the donjon of Vincennes, while
a general decree of banishment was pronounced against all the principal
members of the faction.
The Vendomes were ordered to retire to Anet; and the Chateau d'Anet
having soon become what the Hotel de Vendome at Paris had been, a haunt
of the conspirators, Mazarin demanded them from the Duke Caesar, who took
good care not to give them up. The Cardinal was almost reduced to the
necessity of laying siege to the chateau in regular form. He threatened
to enter the place by main force and lay hands on Beaufort's
accomplices; unable to endure the scandal that a prince even of the
blood should brave law and justice with impunity, he had determined to
push matters to the uttermost, and was about to take energetic measures,
when the Duke de Vendome himself decided on quitting France, and went to
Italy to await the fall of Mazarin, as formerly he had awaited in
England that of Richelieu.
The arrest of Beaufort, the dispersion of his accomplices, his friends
and his family, was the first indispensable measure forced upon Mazarin
to enable him to face a danger that seemed most imminent. But what would
it have availed him to lop off an arm had he left the head
untouched--had Madame de Chevreuse remained at Court, ever ready to
surround the Queen with attention and homage, assiduous to retain and
husband the last remnant of her old favour, in order to sustain and
secretly encourage the malcontents, inspire them with her audacity, and
stir them up to fresh conspiracies? She still held in her grasp the
scarcely-severed threads of the plot; and at her right hand there was a
man too wary to allow himself to be again compromised by such dark
doings, but quite ready to profit by them, and whom Madame de Chevreuse
had sedulously exhibited not only to Anne of Austria, but to France and
all Europe, as a man singularly capable of conducting State affairs.
Mazarin, therefore, did not hesitate; but on the day following
Beaufort's arrest, Chateauneuf, Montresor, and St. Ybar were banished.
The first-named was invited to present himself at Court, kiss the
Queen's hand, and then betake himself to his government in Touraine.
Richelieu's late Keeper of the Seals deemed it something to have
escaped an open disgrace, to have resumed the eminent post he had
formerly occupied under the Crown, and the government of a large
province. Yet did his ambition soar far higher still: but he kept it in
check, and merely postponed its flight for a less stormy hour--obeyed
the Queen, skilfully remained friends with her, and likewise kept on
very good terms with her Prime Minister--biding his time until he might
displace him. He had to wait a long time, however; but eventually did
not quit life without once more grasping, for a moment at least, that
power which the indulgence of an insensate passion had lost him, but
which an inviolable and unswerving friendship in the end restored to
him.[6]
[6] Chateauneuf held the seals from March, 1650, when Mazarin went
into voluntary exile, until April, 1651. He died in 1653, at the age
of seventy-three.
Madame de Chevreuse unhappily lacked the wisdom displayed throughout
this fiery ordeal by Chateauneuf. She forgot for once to look with a
smiling face upon the passing storm, in which she was too suddenly
caught to escape altogether scatheless. La Chatre--one of her friends,
and who saw her almost every day--relates that during the very same
evening on which Beaufort was arrested at the Louvre, "Her Majesty told
the Duchess that she believed her to be innocent of the prisoner's
designs, but that nevertheless to avoid scandal she deemed it fitting
that Madame de Chevreuse should quietly withdraw to Dampierre, and that
after making some short sojourn there she should retire into
Touraine."[7] The Duchess, therefore, saw plainly that she had nothing
for it but to go at once to Dampierre; but no sooner did she arrive at
her favourite chateau than, instead of remaining quiet, she began to
move heaven and earth to save those who had compromised themselves for
her sake. She began, indeed, to knot the meshes of a new web of
intrigue, and even found means of placing a letter in the Queen's own
hand. Message after message was, however, sent to hasten her
departure--Montagu being despatched to her on the same errand, as was
also La Porte. She received them haughtily, and deferred her journey
under divers pretexts. It will be remembered that on going to meet the
Duchess when on her road from Brussels, Montagu had offered her, on the
Queen's part as well as that of Mazarin, to discharge in her name the
debts she had contracted during so many years of exile. The Duchess had
already received heavy sums, but was unwilling to set forth for Touraine
until after the Queen should have performed all her promises. Marie de
Rohan had left the Louvre and Paris, her bosom swelling with grief and
rage, as Hannibal had quitted Italy. She felt that the Court and capital
and the Queen's inner circle formed the true field of battle, and that
to remove herself from it was to abandon the victory to the enemy. Her
retreat, indeed, was an occasion of mourning to the entire Catholic
party, as well as to the friends of peace and the Spanish alliance, but,
on the contrary, of public rejoicing for the friends of the Protestant
alliance. The Count d'Estrade actually went to the Louvre on the part of
the Prince of Orange, from whom he was accredited, to thank the Regent
officially for it.
[7] "Allontanar Cheverosa che fa mille cabelle." Mazarin's Carnet,
iii. 81, 82.
Madame de Chevreuse made her way, therefore, to her estate of Duverger,
between Tours and Angiers. The deep solitude that there reigned
around her embittered all the more the feeling of defeat. She kept up,
however, a brisk correspondence with her stepmother, Madame de
Montbazon--banished to Rochefort; and the two exiled Duchesses mutually
exhorted each other to leave no stone unturned towards effecting the
overthrow of their common enemy. Vanquished at home, Madame de Chevreuse
centred all her hopes in foreign lands. She revived the friendly
relations which she had never ceased to cherish with England, Spain, and
the Low Countries. Her chief prop, the centre and interposer of her
intrigues, was Lord Goring, our ambassador at the French Court; who,
like his ill-starred master, and more especially his royal mistress,
belonged to the Spanish party. Croft, an English gentleman who had
figured in the train of the Duchess some years previously, bestirred
himself actively and openly in her behalf, whilst the Chevalier de Jars
intrigued warily and in secret for Chateauneuf. Beneath the mantle of
the English embassy a vast correspondence was carried on between Madame
de Chevreuse, Vendome, Bouillon, and the rest of the _Malcontents_.
CHAPTER VI.
CONSEQUENCES OF THE QUARREL BETWEEN THE DUCHESSES DE LONGUEVILLE AND
DE MONTBAZON.--FATAL DUEL BETWEEN THE DUKE DE GUISE AND COUNT MAURICE
DE COLIGNY.
AS has been said, the 2nd of September, 1643, had been truly a memorable
day in the career of Mazarin, and, indeed, in the annals of France; for
it witnessed the confirming of the royal power, shaken to its base by
the deaths of Richelieu and Louis XIII., and the ruin of that dangerous
faction the _Importants_. The intestine discords which threatened the
new reign were thus forced to await a more favourable opportunity for
development. They did not raise their heads again until five years
afterwards--on the breaking out of the Fronde, in which they showed
themselves just the same men as ever, with the same designs, the same
politics, foreign and domestic; and after raising sanguinary and sterile
commotions, re-appeared only to break themselves to pieces once more
against the genius of Mazarin and the invincible firmness of Anne of
Austria.
Mazarin, therefore, who soon found himself without a rival in the
Queen's good graces, continued steadily to carry on within and without
the realm the system of his predecessor, and royalty, as well as France,
reckoned upon a succession of halcyon years, thanks to the re-union of
the Princes of the blood with the Crown, to the tactics and personal
conduct of the Prime Minister, and to his political sagacity, seconded
by the military genius of the Duke d'Enghien. The imprudence of Madame
de Montbazon and her lover Beaufort in the affair of the dropped letters
had the effect of increasing Mazarin's power incalculably, and that at
the very moment that a splendid victory gained by the young Duke
d'Enghien had made him and his sister paramount at Court--paramount by a
popularity so universal that it almost made the Queen and her minister
their _proteges_ rather than their patrons.
The Duke d'Enghien had returned to Paris after Rocroy, and at the end of
a campaign in which he had taken a very important stronghold, passed the
Rhine with the French army, and carried the war into Germany. The Queen
had received him as the liberator of France. Mazarin, who looked more to
the reality than the semblance of power, intimated to the young
conqueror that his sole ambition was to be his chaplain and man of
business with the Queen. At a distance, the Duke d'Enghien had praised
everything that had been done, and came from the camp over head and ears
in love with Madlle. du Vigean, and furious that any one should have
dared to insult a member of his house. He adored his sister, and he had
a warm friendship for Coligny.[1] He was aware of and had favoured his
passion for that sister. Engaged himself in a suit as ardent as it was
chaste, he readily comprehended that his beautiful sister might well
have been not insensible to the fervent assiduities of the brave
Maurice, but he revolted at the thought of the amatory effusions of a
Madame de Fouquerolles being attributed to her, and he assumed a tone in
the matter which effectually arrested any further insinuation from even
the most insolent and daring.
[1] Grandson of the famous Admiral de Coligny, who perished in the
massacre of St. Bartholomew.
Amongst the especial friends of Beaufort and Madame de Montbazon,
foremost of all stood the Duke de Guise.[2] They had manoeuvred to
secure him as well as the rest of his family to their party, through
Gaston, Duke d'Orleans, who had espoused as his second wife a princess
of the house of Lorraine--the lovely Marguerite, sister of Charles IV.
and second daughter of Duke Francis. The Duke de Guise had already
played many strange pranks and committed more than one folly, but he had
not as yet signally failed in any serious enterprise. His incapacity was
not patent. He had the prestige of his name, youth, good looks, and a
courage carried even to temerity. The avowed slave of Madame de
Montbazon, he had espoused her quarrel, and to gratify her had joined in
propagating those calumnious reports, but without exhibiting the
violence of Beaufort, and had remained erect, confronting and defying
the victorious Condes.
[2] Henry, son of Charles de Guise, and grandson of the _Balafre_.
Coligny had had the good sense to keep aloof during the storm, for fear
of still further compromising Madame de Longueville by exhibiting
himself openly as her champion: but a few months having elapsed, he
thought that he might at last show himself, and, as a certain
authority[3] tells us, "the imprisonment of the Duke de Beaufort having
deprived that noble of the chance of measuring swords with him, he
addressed himself to the Duke de Guise." La Rochefoucauld says, "the
Duke d'Enghien, unable to testify to the Duke de Beaufort, who was in
prison, the resentment he felt at what had passed between Madame de
Longueville and Madame de Montbazon, left Coligny at liberty to fight
with the Duke de Guise, who had mixed himself up in this affair." The
Duke d'Enghien, therefore, knew and approved of what Coligny did. In
fact, he found himself without an adversary in the affair of sufficient
rank to justify a prince of the blood in drawing his sword against him.
So far as regards Madame de Longueville, it is absurd to suppose that,
desirous of vengeance, she it was who had urged on Coligny, for
everybody ascribed to her a line of conduct characterised by great
moderation, as contrasted with that of the Princess de Conde. Far from
envenoming the quarrel, she wished to hush it up, and Madame de
Motteville thus significantly alludes to that fact: "The enmity she bore
Madame de Montbazon being proportionate to the love she bore her
husband, it did not carry her so far but that she found it more a propos
to dissimulate that outrage than otherwise."
[3] An inedited Memoir upon the Regency.
La Rochefoucauld gives some particulars which explain what follows.
Coligny, just risen out of a long illness, was still very much
enfeebled, and, moreover, not very "skilful of fence." Such was his
condition when, as the champion of Madame de Longueville, he confronted
the Duke de Guise in mortal duel, whilst the latter, like most heroes of
the parade-ground, possessed rare cunning at carte and tierce. With
regard to the seconds chosen, they are in every respect worthy of
notice. In those days, seconds were witnesses of the duel in which they
themselves fought. Coligny selected as his second, and to give the
challenge, as was then the custom, Godefroi, Count d'Estrades, a man of
cool and tried courage. The Duke de Guise's second was his equerry, the
Marquis de Bridieu, a Limousin gentleman and brave officer, faithfully
attached to the house of Lorraine, who, in 1650, admirably defended
Guise against the Spanish army and against Turenne, and for that brave
defence, during which there were twenty-four days of open trenches, he
was made lieutenant-general.
It was arranged that the affair should come off at the Place Royale--the
usual arena for those sort of encounters, and which had been a hundred
times stained with the best blood of France. The mansions around the
Place Royale were then tenanted by ladies of the highest rank and
fashion, amongst the rest, Marguerite, Duchess de Rohan, Madame de
Guemene, Madame de Chaulnes, Madame de St. Geran, Madame de Sable, the
Countess de St. Maure, and many others, under the influence of whose
bright eyes those volatile and valiant French gentlemen delighted to
cross swords. And there many a noble form had been struck down never to
rise again, and many a noble heart had throbbed its last. During the
first quarter of the seventeenth century, the duel was a custom at once
useful and disastrous, inasmuch as it kept up the warlike spirit of the
nobles, but which mowed them down as fast as war itself, and but too
frequently for frivolous causes. To draw swords for trifles had become
the obligatory accompaniment of good manners; and as gallantry had its
finished fops, so the duel had its refined rufflers. In the
comparatively short period of a few years, nine hundred gentlemen
perished in these combats. To stop this scourge, Richelieu issued a
royal edict, which punished death by death, and sent the offenders from
the Place Royale to the Place de Greve. On this head Richelieu showed
himself inflexible, and the examples of Montmorency-Bouteville, beheaded
with his second, the Count Deschappelles, for having challenged Beuvron
and fought with him on the Place Royale at mid-day, impressed a
salutary terror, and rendered infraction of the edict very rare.
Coligny, however, braved everything; he challenged Guise, and on the
appointed day the two noble adversaries, accompanied by their seconds,
D'Estrades and Bridieu, met upon the Place Royale.
Of this memorable duel, thanks to contemporary memoirs as well as
various kinds of MSS., the minutest details have been preserved.
On the 12th of December, 1643, D'Estrades went in the morning to call
out the Duke de Guise on the part of Coligny. The rendezvous was fixed
for the same day, at three o'clock in the afternoon, at the Place
Royale. The two adversaries did not appear abroad during the whole
morning, and at three o'clock they were on the ground. A sentence is
ascribed to Guise which invests the scene with an unwonted grandeur, and
arrays for the last time in bitterest animosity and deadly antagonism
the two most illustrious representatives of the League wars in the
persons of their descendants. On unsheathing his sword Guise said to
Coligny: "We are about to decide the old feud of our two houses, and to
see what a difference there is between the blood of Guise and that of
Coligny."
Coligny's only reply was to deal his adversary a long lunge; but, weak
as he was, his rearward foot failed him, and he sank upon his knee.
Guise advanced upon him and set his foot upon his sword, in such manner
as though he would have said, "I do not desire to kill you, but to treat
you as you deserve, for having presumed to address yourself to a prince
of such birth as mine, without his having given you just cause,"--and he
struck him with the flat of his sword-blade. Coligny, furious, collected
his strength, threw himself backwards, disengaged his sword, and
recommenced the strife. In this second bout, Guise was slightly wounded
in the shoulder, and Coligny in the hand. At length, Guise, in making
another thrust at his adversary, grasped his sword-blade, by which his
hand was slightly cut, but, wresting it from Coligny's grasp, dealt him
a desperate thrust in the arm which put him _hors de combat_. Meanwhile
D'Estrades and Bridieu had grievously wounded each other.
Such was the issue of that memorable duel--the last, it appears, of the
famous encounters on the Place Royale. We thus see that, though cowed,
the French noblesse had not been tamed by Richelieu's solemn edict. This
last duel did very little honour to Coligny, and almost everybody took
part with the Duke de Guise. The Queen manifested very lively
displeasure at the violation of the edict, and the Duke d'Orleans, urged
thereto by his wife and the Lorraine family, made a loud outcry. The
Prince and Princess de Conde also found themselves compelled to declare
against Coligny--doubly in the wrong, both because he had been the
challenger and been unfortunate in the result. Proof that there was an
understanding between Coligny and the Duke d'Enghien is evident from the
latter not deserting the unlucky champion of his sister, that he
received the wounded man into his house at Paris, afterwards at Saint
Maur, and that he did not cease from surrounding him with his protection
and care in spite of his father, the Prince de Conde. When the matter
was referred to the Parliament, conformably to the edict, and the two
adversaries were summoned to appear, the Duke de Guise announced his
intention of repairing to the chamber with a retinue of princes and
great nobles; whilst, on his side, the Duke d'Enghien threatened to
escort his friend after the same fashion. But the initiative
proceedings were stayed through the deplorable condition into which poor
Coligny was known to have fallen.
That unfortunate young man languished for some months, and died in the
latter part of May, 1644, alike in consequence of his wounds and of
despair for having so badly sustained the cause of his own house, as
well as that of Madame de Longueville.
This affair, with all its dramatic features and tragical termination,
created an immense and painful impression not only in Paris, but
throughout France. It momentarily awakened party feelings which had for
some time slumbered, and suspended the festivals of the winter of 1644.
It not only occupied the families more closely concerned and the Court,
but forcibly affected the whole of the highest class of society, and
long remained the absorbing topic of every saloon. It may be readily
conceived that the story in spreading thus widely became enlarged with
imaginary incidents one after another. At first, it was supposed that
Madame de Longueville was in love with Coligny. That was necessary to
give the greater interest to the narrative. From thence came the next
invention, that she herself had armed Coligny's hand, and that
D'Estrades, charged to challenge the Duke de Guise, having remarked to
Coligny that the Duke might probably repudiate the injurious words
attributed to him, and that honour would thus be satisfied, Coligny had
thereupon replied: "That is not the question. I pledged my word to
Madame de Longueville to fight him on the Place Royale, and I cannot
fail in that promise."[4] There was no stopping a cavalier in such a
chivalrous course as that, and Madame de Longueville would not have been
the sister of the victor of Rocroy--a heroine worthy of sustaining
comparison with those of Spain, who beheld their lovers die at their
feet in the tournament--had she not been present at the duel between
Guise and Coligny. It is asserted, therefore, that on the 12th of
December she was stationed in an hotel on the Place Royale belonging to
the Duchess de Rohan, and that there, concealed behind a window-curtain,
she had witnessed the discomfiture of her _preux chevalier_.
[4] Mad. de Motteville.
Then, as now, it was verse--that is to say, the ballad--which set its
seal on the popular incident of the moment. When the event was an
unlucky one, the song was a burlesquely pathetic complaint, and always
with a vein of raillery running through it. Such was the effusion with
which every _ruelle_ rang, and it was really set to music, for the
notation is still to be found in the _Recueil de Chansons notees_,
preserved at the Arsenal at Paris. It ran thus:--
"Essuyez vos beaux yeux,
Madame de Longueville,
Coligny se porte mieux.
S'il a demande la vie,
Ne l'en blamez nullement;
Car c'est pour etre votre amant
Qu'il veut vivre eternellement."
BOOK III.
CHAPTER I.
THE DUCHESS DE LONGUEVILLE AND THE DUKE DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
THAT Madame de Longueville witnessed the duel on the Place Royale seems
to rest on no reliable authority. Such a trait is so utterly at variance
with her character that its attribution would impute to her the manners
of a semi-Italianised princess of the Valois race. There are besides no
sufficient grounds for believing that her affections had for a moment
been given to Coligny, though doubtless her innate tenderness must have
been touched by his chivalrous love and devotion. Miossens, afterwards
better known as Marshal d'Albret, next tried in vain to win a heart
which had hitherto appeared insensible to the master-passion, but after
an obstinate persistence was ultimately constrained to relinquish all
hope. When, in 1645, M. de Longueville went as minister-plenipotentiary
to the Congress of Muenster, the young Duchess remained in Paris, her
element being still the social sphere of the Court solely--a taste for
political life not having yet been developed through the impulse of her
affections. Let us here add that, notwithstanding the almost unanimous
assertion of contemporaries at this period that even women could not
behold Madame de Longueville without admiration, the heart of this
preeminently gifted creature seems amidst the universal homage to have
been proof against all and every repeated assault. Anne of Austria
loved her but little, partly through a jealous feeling created by her
singular beauty, partly from her great reputation for wit, and also from
her perpetual wranglings for precedence with other princesses of the
blood. In fact, in order to lose no tittle of the prerogatives derived
from her birth, Madame de Longueville had obtained a royal brevet from
the king which maintained her in the rank which she would have otherwise
lost by her marriage. A pride so exacting does not appear to agree with
the peculiar nonchalance that was one of her striking characteristics;
but, later in life, when she had become devout and penitent, she took
care to explain that seeming contradiction. "I have been defined," said
she, "as having, as it were, two individualities of opposite nature in
me, and that I could interchange them at any moment; but that arose from
the different situations in which I was placed, for I was dead, like
unto the dead, to aught which slightly affected me, and keenly alive to
the smallest things which interested me." Reading and study were never
among the things which stirred her into animation. Entirely occupied
with her fascinations and individual sentiments, at no period of her
life did she ever think of repairing the early neglect of her education.
In this respect she was inferior, on the authority even of her
apologists, to many ladies of the Court and city. Intoxicated as she had
been by the fumes of the incense which flattery had wafted around her in
the circle of the Hotel de Rambouillet, she probably had no perception
of her failings on that essential point. The spontaneity of her wit, her
natural aptitude to comprehend and decide upon all sorts of questions,
made up for her deficiency in that kind of information which is acquired
from books and other modes of study, and often stood her in good stead,
both on the part of her detractors and of her partisans, of the lofty
characteristics of "great genius." M. Cousin, who is by no means severe
as regards the errors or demerits of the Duchess, says that "she did not
know how to write." Mademoiselle de Montpensier and Madame de
Motteville, however, both express the very opposite opinion. The first
remarks, speaking of the Countess de Maure:--"The precision and the
polish of her style would be incomparable if Madame de Longueville had
never written." The second declares that "this lady has ever written as
well as any one living." The fact is, so far as may be judged from those
of her letters which have come down to us, that Madame de Longueville's
style bore the reflex of her conversation: there are some passages very
remarkable in their force, some phrases altogether trite and
insignificant. This opinion is quite beside the consideration of her
diction in a grammatical point of view. In her written as in her spoken
language, she seems to have been impassive or to have kindled into
animation according as her thoughts were "dead or living," to use her
own phrase. Speaking and writing, however, are two very different
things, both requiring an especial cultivation; and as Madame de
Longueville was defective in anything like what is termed "regular
education" or "sound instruction," that fact became apparent so soon as
she took her pen in hand. Her great natural endowments shone on paper
with difficulty, through faults of every kind which escaped her notice.
It is really no small gift to be able to express one's sentiments and
ideas in their natural order, and with all their true and various
shades, in terms neither too homely nor far-fetched, or which neither
enfeeble nor exaggerate them. It is by no means rare to meet with men in
society remarkable for intelligence, nerve, and grace when they speak,
but who become unintelligible when they commit their thoughts to
writing. The fact is, that writing is an art--a very difficult art, and
one which must be carefully learned. Madame de Longueville was ignorant
of this, as were some of the most eminent women of her time. There
exists unquestionable evidence to prove that the Princess Palatine was a
person of large intelligence, who was able to hold her own with men of
the greatest capacity. De Retz and Bossuet tell us so. Some letters of
the Palatine, however, are extant in which, whilst there is no lack of
solidity, refinement, and ingenuity of thought, it will be seen that
they often abound with errors, obscure phraseology, and not unfrequently
outrageously violate even the commonest rules of orthography. It must
not, however, by any means be inferred from this that the Palatine had
not a mind of the first order, but only that she had not been trained to
render clearly and fittingly her ideas and sentiments in writing. Madame
de Longueville had been no better taught. Therefore all that has been
said about her on this score must be restricted, alike as to the defects
of her education and the brilliancy of her genius. With those
Frenchwomen who have written at once largely and loosely, it is pleasant
to contrast their contemporaries, Madame de Sevigne and Madame la
Fayette, both of whom always wrote well.
In the first place, these two admirable ladies had received quite
another sort of education to that of Madame de Longueville. They had had
the advantage of being instructed by men of letters skilled in the art
of teaching. Menage was the chief instructor both of Mademoiselle de
Rabutin and Mademoiselle de Lavergne--to call those accomplished
letter-writers by their maiden names. Menage trained them carefully in
composition, correcting rigidly their themes, pointing out their errors,
cultivating their happy instincts, and modelling and polishing their
vein and style. That talented tutor appears also to have been their
platonic adorer--more platonic indeed than he desired. In his verses he
celebrated by turns _la formosissima Laverna_ and _la bellissima
Marchesa di Sevigni_, and his lessons were doubtless given _con amore_.
Nature had been lavish indeed in all her gifts to the latter, giving her
a precision and solidity allied to an inexhaustible playfulness and
sparkling vivacity. Art, in her, wedded to genius, resulted in that
incomparable epistolary style which left Balzac and Voiture far away
behind her, and which Voltaire himself even has not surpassed.
We must now speak of him who was destined to bias, sway, and finally
determine the future course of Madame de Longueville's life through the
conquest of her heart and mind--La Rochefoucauld--the man who induced
her to embark with him on the stormy sea of politics, whose irresistible
tide swept her past the landmarks of loyalty and reputability to make
shipwreck, amongst the rocks and shoals of civil war, of fame, fortune,
and domestic happiness.
Up to the moment of her appearance on the scene of party strife in
connection with La Rochefoucauld, Madame de Longueville had not achieved
much _political_ notoriety. Neither had her fair fame been compromised
by the very insignificant gallantry of a long train of court danglers,
nor through her involuntary participation in the affair of the letters
with Madame de Montbazon. She could scarcely fail to be touched by the
devotion of Coligny, who had shed his blood to avenge her of the outrage
of that vindictive woman. For a moment, it is true, she had listened
carelessly and harmlessly to the attention of the brave and intellectual
Miossens. Still later she compromised herself somewhat with the Duke de
Nemours; but the only man she truly loved with heart and soul was La
Rochefoucauld. To him she devoted herself wholly; for him she sacrificed
everything--duty, interest, repose, reputation. For him she staked her
fortune and her life. Through him she exhibited the most equivocal and
most contradictory conduct. It was La Rochefoucauld who caused her to
take part in the Fronde; who, as he willed, made her advance or recede;
who united her to, or separated her from, her family; who governed her
absolutely. In a word, she consented to be in his hand merely an heroic
instrument. Pride and passion had doubtless something to do with this
life of adventure and that contempt of peril. But of what stamp must
have been that soul which could find consolation in all this? And, as
often happens, the man to whom she thus devoted herself was not wholly
worthy of her. He had infinite spirit; but he was coldly calculating,
profoundly selfish, meanly ambitious. He measured others by himself. He
was naturally as subtle in evil, as she was disposed spontaneously to
virtue. Full of finesse in his self-love and in the pursuit of his own
interest, he was, in reality, the least chivalrous of his sex, although
he affected all the appearance of the loftiest chivalry. In his
_liaison_ with Madame de Longueville he made love the slave of ambition.
It will be necessary to touch only slightly upon his career antecedent
to this period. Francis, the sixth seigneur and second Duke de la
Rochefoucauld, was born 15th December 1613. Little is recorded of his
early years, he himself having given no details about them. We only know
that he was very imperfectly educated, his father being desirous that
he should early adopt the profession of arms. Himself enjoying royal
favour in the highest degree, his eldest son, the young Prince de
Marsillac, profitably felt its influence; for, as early as 1626, he
commanded as _mestre-de-camp_ the Auvergne regiment of cavalry at the
siege of Casal. He took an active part in the _Day of Dupes_, the period
at which his memoirs commence. Two years previously, in 1628, he had
married at Mirebeau a rich and beautiful heiress of Burgundy, Andree de
Vivonne, only daughter of Andre de Vivonne, Baron of Berandiere and
Chasteigneraye, Grand Falconer of France, Captain in the Guards of the
Queen-Mother, Marie de' Medici, Councillor of State, and one of the most
trusty followers of Henry IV. The Prince de Marsillac was at first in
great favour at Court, notwithstanding his father's misconduct, but he
suddenly compromised himself in a very imprudent way. Closely intimate
with that virtuous maid-of-honour, Marie de Hautefort, whom the
saturnine Louis XIII. loved as passionately as his peculiar temperament
permitted, and also with Mademoiselle de Chemerault, as lovely as she
was witty, he was by them hurried into a blind devotion to the cause of
their unhappy mistress and queen, Anne of Austria, "the only party,"
says he, with unusual candour, "that I ever honestly followed." And very
soon his confidential relations with the persecuted princess became so
marked as necessarily to excite Richelieu's suspicions, the more so that
he ventured to speak of the Cardinal's administration in the boldest
terms. His friends advised him to retire from Court, at least
temporarily; but, as he wished to employ his time usefully, he joined as
a volunteer the army of Marshal de Chastillon, who, with Marshal de la
Meilleraye, beat Prince Thomas of Savoy at Avein. After behaving with
distinction there, he returned, when the campaign was over, to Court,
exhibiting a conduct still more independent, and which resulted in
forcing him to rejoin his father at Blois.
It was through the proximity of his father's chateau of Verteuil to
Poitiers, where the Duchess de Chevreuse was then living in banishment
from Court, that the Prince de Marsillac first came to ally himself with
the illustrious political adventuress. At the time when La Rochefoucauld
obtained political notoriety, a crisis occurred in France in national
manners, sentiments, and feelings. The nobles, long kept under by the
strong hand of Richelieu, were again rising into faction, and a spirit
of intrigue had seized upon everyone.
Although still young, Rochefoucauld had renounced enterprises in which
the heart is alone concerned. No longer engrossed with love, he was
wholly given up to ambition; and in order to avenge himself of the Queen
and Mazarin, who had not in his opinion evinced sufficient generosity
towards him to satisfy this later passion, he did not hesitate to fling
himself headlong into partisan intrigue and strife which ended in civil
war. To render himself the more formidable, he was above all desirous of
securing to his party the master-mind of Conde; and as Madame de
Longueville enjoyed the entire confidence of her favourite brother, and
had great influence with him, the natural result was that in due course
La Rochefoucauld made persistent love to the lovely Duchess. Seduced by
the chivalrous manners and romantic antecedents of his youth, and
yielding partly to the occasion, partly to the obstinate persistence of
the suit, and some little perhaps to the maternal blood in her veins,
Madame de Longueville at length surrendered her heart to the daring
aspirant. She could no longer plead early youth as an excuse, for she
had already numbered twenty-nine summers, and was only distant by a very
small span from that formidable epoch in woman's life which a
discriminating writer of the present day has happily termed the
_crisis_. That turning point in the Duchess's career was destined to
prove fatal to her, and the crisis was exactly such as that of which, in
the case of another celebrated woman, M. Feillet has given a lucid
analysis--the crisis brought about by an irresistible passion. Let us
beware of hastily applying to Madame de Longueville that maxim of her
cynical lover: "Women often think they still love him whom they no
longer really love. The opportunity of an intrigue, the mental emotion
to which gallantry gives birth, natural inclination to the pleasure of
being beloved, and the pain of refusing the lover, together persuade
them that they cherish a genuine passion when it is nothing more than
mere coquetry." Better had it been both for herself and for us to
believe that she had only so loved.
The beauty and intelligence of the Duchess de Longueville formed
certainly, at the commencement, a large share in the calculating lover's
determination to seek a _liaison_ with the Duke d'Enghien's sister. The
crowd of admirers was great around her, and that spectacle of itself
served to inflame the ambition of M. de Marsillac: subsequent
reflection, doubtless, must have redoubled his ardour to achieve the
twofold conquest, in love and party. The Count de Miossens was then
paying the most assiduous court to Madame de Longueville; he was very
intimately connected with Marsillac, to whom indeed he was nearly
related, and whom he kept well acquainted with the course of his amours.
His suit to the lovely Duchess proving, as has been said, entirely
unsuccessful, Miossens eventually left the field clear to Marsillac, the
brave and simple soldier giving place to the self-seeking man of the
world.