FATAL INFLUENCE OF MADAME DE LONGUEVILLE'S PASSION FOR LA
ROCHEFOUCAULD.--THE FRONDE.
WE do not propose to enter into the labyrinth of intrigues which
preceded the outbreak of the Fronde, but confine ourselves to an
endeavour to trace the motives which led Madame de Longueville to throw
herself into the centre of the malcontents and to figure as the chief
heroine in the varied scenes of that tragi-comedy of civil war.
The first Fronde was formed out of the _debris_ of the _Importants_. It
was composed of all the malcontents who made common cause with those
members of the parliament who were irritated by the frequent bursal
edicts, notably that which, in 1648, created twelve new appointments of
_maitres de requetes_.
And now what gave birth to the Fronde, or what sustained it? What roused
up the old party of the _Importants_, stifled for some years, it would
seem, under the laurels of Rocroy? What separated the princes of the
blood from the Crown? What turned against the throne that illustrious
house of Conde, which, until then, had been its sword and shield? There
were doubtless many general causes for all this; but it is impossible
for us to conceal one--private, it is true, but which exercised a
powerful and deplorable influence--the unexpected love of Madame de
Longueville for one of the chiefs of the _Importants_, who had become
one of the chiefs of the Fronde. Yes--sad to say--it was Madame de
Longueville, who, joining the party of the malcontents, attracted
thereto, at first, a part of her family, then her entire family, and
thus precipitated it from the pinnacle of honour and glory to which so
many services had elevated it.
Scarcely had the treaty of Muenster suspended the scourge of foreign war
for France, than internal dissensions began to trouble the realm. The
hatred which the Parliament bore to Mazarin, through his repression of
its functions, primarily gave birth to civil war. The Duchess de
Longueville became in the faction of the Fronde what the Duchess de
Montpensier had been in that of the League. The former, however, did not
at first attach so great an importance to the cause she espoused.
Characteristically careless, she was by nature little inclined to
agitation and intrigue. We have already shown that before her _liaison_
with La Rochefoucauld, Madame de Longueville had been a stranger to
politics. Occupied solely with innocent gallantry and the homage of the
most refined society of the day, she allowed herself in all else to be
led by her father and her elder brother. But no sooner was La
Rochefoucauld master of her heart, than she gave herself wholly up to
him, and became a mere instrument in his hands. Having been by him
inspired with ambition, she made it a point of honour, and doubtless a
secret happiness, to share his destiny.
It seems not improbable that the Duchess might have caught a liking for
politics and negotiation during the conference of Munster. Certain it is
that once plunged into the eddying tide of the Fronde, she loftily
announced the project of remedying the general disorder of affairs. But
she especially desired to employ therein the means which confer
celebrity, and it is difficult to deny that ambition, although without
determinate aim, and the desire of establishing a high opinion of her
intellect, may have had some share in the reasons which induced her to
embrace the party opposed to Mazarin. With herself she drew her husband
into it, as well as the Prince de Conti, her younger brother. As for the
elder, the victorious Conde, he at first declared for the King and the
Queen-Regent, which greatly incensed his sister against him, and caused
her to enter into close compact, amongst others, with the Coadjutor,
afterwards Cardinal de Retz--that mischievous man who figured so
conspicuously as the evil genius of the Fronde.
The Gondis, who were the chief advisers of the St. Bartholomew, owed to
that terrible exploit the result of being very nearly the hereditary
possessors of the Archbishopric of Paris. But this last Gondi--John
Francis Paul--owed something more: to be at the same time governor of
Paris, and to unite both powers. With such purpose, he artfully worked
upon the city through the curates who, distributing bread, soup, and
every other kind of alms, carried along with them the famished masses.
This young ecclesiastic of the de Retz family had risen into great
favour with the serious and religious sections of the Parisian
community. He was nephew of the Archbishop of Paris, and was himself
Archbishop of Corinth; but as his flock in that metropolitan city were
schismatic (except those who had turned Turks), he had leisure to assist
his uncle in his high office, and was appointed his Coadjutor and
successor. He preached at all the churches, held visitations at the
convents, catechised the young, and consulted with the senior clergy on
the management of the diocese. When he rode through the streets he was
saluted with cheers and blessings, and the orators of the Fronde held
him up as the pattern of all the Christian virtues. At night he put off
his episcopal robes, disguised himself as a trooper or tradesman, and
attended the meetings of the discontented. In a short time he had
distributed seven or eight thousand pounds in stirring up the passions
of the people, and was daily in expectation of being summoned by his
patroness the Queen to exert his influence in quelling them. The
populace, with an Archbishop-governor of Paris at their head, imagined
that they were going to rule there as in the time of the League. This
made them both blind and deaf to the morals and manners of the little
prelate. A braggart, a duellist, and more than a gallant--though having
swarthy, ugly features, turned-up nose, and short, bandy legs--yet his
expressive eyes carried off every fault, sparkling as they were with
intelligence, audacity, and libertinage. Few withstood this subtle
knave, for he was wont to waive all ceremonial and spare everybody
prefatory speeches. The ladies of gallantry--especially those whose
lover he was--were his most indefatigable political agents. The Queen,
at length, suspecting that the worthy Archbishop was not quite the
simple and self-denying individual he appeared, had him watched and
followed. Whilst he flattered himself with the anticipation that his
assistance would be solicited at the Palais Royal, the Queen was making
a jest of him, and Mazarin determined to strike the blow.
On the 27th of August, 1648, a vast assemblage crowded the spacious
precincts of Notre Dame, to celebrate a _Te Deum_ for the great victory
of Lens, of which the youthful Conde had just sent home the news. When
the multitude were dispersing, a dash was made upon two or three of the
obnoxious councillors who had inflamed the discussions of the
Fronde--for that civil war was fairly on foot ere Anne of Austria and
Mazarin knew of its existence. Two of the intended prisoners escaped,
but a surly, burly demagogue, named Broussel, was tracked to his house
in the mechanics' quarter of Paris, and arrested by an armed force.
Thereupon the populace rose and armed against the Court. They made an
extraordinary stand in the streets, having raised _twelve hundred_
barricades in the course of twelve hours. They had no further need of De
Retz. It was, however, one of his mistresses, the sister of a president
and wife of a city captain, who having in her house the drum belonging
to the citizen guard of that quarter, gave the first impulse by causing
it to be beaten. The train was thus fired and the flame of civil war
kindled. This was called the _Day of the Barricades_.
Thus, the royal power which, as wielded by Richelieu, had come to
be considered as absolute, was attacked by three parties
simultaneously--the great nobles, the parliamentarians, and the
_bourgeoisie_; but, notwithstanding the dread of the common enemy, which
united them, those parties were of different origin and conditions of
existence, and consequently had different interests also. The great
nobles wished to exercise power by placing themselves above the law; the
parliament to increase its own through the law; the citizens to
establish theirs at the expense of the law: for in their eyes the law
was full of abuses and the royal power cruelly oppressive. All three
parties, in order to arrive at their several ends, had, therefore,
recourse to violence, or derived aid from it.
On the return of Madame de Longueville from Muenster, there was already a
ferment in the minds of the Parisians, of which the Regent took little
heed. The Fronde cabal was then brooding in the dark. When the
rebellion, formed by Gondi, broke out at last under the circumstances
just narrated, Madame de Longueville, alone of all the princesses of the
blood, did not accompany Anne of Austria in her flight to Rueil. The
Duchess strove her utmost to strengthen, by the concurrence of her
entire family, the faction whose fortunes she had embraced through
devotion to Marsillac. She did not, however, then succeed in detaching
Conde from the Regent's party. The battle of the barricades followed
close upon that of Lens, Conde's last victory. On his return, that
victorious young soldier found royalty humiliated, the Parliament
triumphing and dictating laws to the Crown; the Duke de Beaufort, with
whom he once thought of measuring swords in defence of the honour of his
sister, freed from his prison in Vincennes, and master of Paris by aid
of the populace who idolized him; the vain and fickle Abbe de Retz
transformed into a tribune of the people; the Prince de Conti into a
generalissimo; M. de Longueville under the guidance of his wife and La
Rochefoucauld; and the feeble Duke d'Orleans fancying himself almost a
King, because he saw the Queen humiliated, and because the Frondeurs,
cunningly flattering his self-love, were treating him like a sovereign.
Conde, at a glance, saw the situation of affairs and his duty also; and
without any hesitation he offered his sword to the Queen.
Brother and sister were, therefore, about to be arrayed against each
other in the strife of civil war, and a stormy explanation took place
between them. It is asserted that for some time back their reciprocal
tenderness had suffered more than one interruption; that, in 1645,
Madame de Longueville had crossed the loves of her brother and
Mademoiselle du Vigean; that, in 1646, Conde, seeing her too intimate
with La Rochefoucauld, had caused her to be summoned to Muenster by her
husband. But for this we have only the authority of the Duchess de
Nemours, her step-daughter and unsparing censor, and nothing is less
probable. The passion of Conde for Mademoiselle de Vigean extinguished
itself, as all contemporaries affirm. The attentions of La Rochefoucauld
to Madame de Longueville may have preceded the embassy of Muenster, but
they were not observed until 1647, and it is at the close of this year
that Madame de Motteville places them, while attributing them especially
to the desire of La Rochefoucauld to share the confidence of the sister
with the brother. But it is very certain that as soon as the latter
remarked this connection, he disapproved of it entirely; and not
succeeding in his effort to rouse his sister from the intoxication of a
first passion, he passed from the most ardent affection to a bitter
discontent. In the autumn of 1648, on his return from Lens, this
connection had acquired its greatest strength, and become almost
notorious. Madame de Longueville, directed by La Rochefoucauld, did then
everything possible to gain over her brother. She brought all her
allurements to bear upon him, all her fondlings. She put into play
everything which she thought might influence his fickle and passionate
disposition--but failed. Neither did he succeed in gaining over her his
accustomed ascendency. They quarrelled and separated openly. Madame de
Longueville plunged more deeply into the Fronde, and Conde applied
himself to giving the new _Importants_ a harsh lesson.
The Queen had retired to Saint-Germain with the young King and all the
government. Paris was under the absolute control of the Fronde. It
stirred up the Parliament by the aid of a few ambitious councillors and
by seditious and mischievous inquests. It disposed of a great part of
the Parisian clergy through the Coadjutor of the Archbishop De Retz, who
possessed and exercised all the authority of his uncle. It had
continually at its head the two great houses of Vendome and Lorraine,
with two princes of the blood, the Prince de Conti and the Duke de
Longueville, followed by a very great number of illustrious families,
including the Dukes d'Elbeuf, de Bouillon, and de Beaufort, and other
powerful nobles. It gave law in the _salons_, thanks to a brilliant bevy
of pretty women, who drew after them the flower of the young nobility.
In short, the army itself was divided. Turenne, with his troops, who
were stationed near the Rhine until the perfect conclusion of the treaty
of Westphalia, obedient to the suggestions of his elder brother, the
Duke de Bouillon, who wished to recover his principality of Sedan, had
just raised the standard of revolt, and was threatening to place the
Court between his own army and that of Paris. The parliament of the
capital had sent deputies to all the parliaments of the kingdom, and was
thus forming a sort of formidable parliamentary league in the face of
monarchy. Conde took command of all the troops that remained faithful,
and everywhere opposed the insurrection. He wrote himself to the army of
the Rhine, which well knew him, and which after the rout sustained by
Turenne at Mariendal, had been led back by him to victory: these
letters, supported by the proceedings of the government, succeeded in
arresting the revolt; and Turenne, abandoned by his own soldiers, was
obliged to fly to Holland.[1] At ease on this head, Conde marched upon
Paris, and placed it under siege. Instead of disputing the ground, as
he might have done, foot by foot, with the sedition, he allowed it the
freest course, in the certainty that the spectacle of licentiousness
which could not fail to appear would, little by little, restore to
royalty those who had for a moment gone astray. He began by summoning,
in the Queen's name and through his mother, all his family to
Saint-Germain. The Prince de Conti and M. de Longueville did not dare
disobey; but La Rochefoucauld, seeing that the Fronde was in the
greatest peril, hastened after these two princes. Having brought them
back to Paris, he made the Prince de Conti generalissimo--placing under
him the Dukes d'Elbeuf and de Bouillon--and who shared authority with
the Marshal de la Mothe Houdancourt, governor of Paris. Madame de
Longueville excused herself to the Queen and to her mother on the
grounds of her delicate condition, which would not permit her to
undertake the least fatigue. In fact, Madame de Longueville, it may be
noted, was _enceinte_ for the last time in 1648, when, it must be
confessed, her connection with La Rochefoucauld was well known. It was
in this condition that, willing to share the perils of her friends,
proud also of playing a part and of filling all the trumpets of fame,
she enacted Pallas as well as she was able. It is at least certain that
she shared all the fatigues of the siege, that she was present at the
reviews of the troops, at the parades of the citizen soldiery, and that
all the civil and military plans were discussed before her. In this
disorder and confusion, amidst the tumult of arms and vociferations of
the insurrection, she appeared as if in her natural element. She
encouraged, counselled, acted, and the most energetic resolutions
emanated from her. The memoirs of the times are full, in regard to this,
of the most curious details. The Hotel de Longueville was continually
filled with officers and generals; nothing was seen there but plumes,
helmets, and swords.
[1] "History of Turenne," by Ramsay, vol. ii.
Notwithstanding all this, the democratic spirit which had originated the
Fronde was not satisfied. It beheld with displeasure all the forces of
Paris in the hands of the brother, of the brother-in-law, and of the
sister of him who commanded the siege. Believing very little, and with
reason, in the patriotism of the princes, the citizens demanded some
sureties from the chiefs who might at any time betray them, and make
peace, at their expense, with Saint-Germain. No one seemed to know how
to appease this clamorous multitude, without which nothing further could
be done. It was then that Madame de Longueville showed that, if she had
forgotten her true duties, she had retained the energy of her race and
the intrepidity of the Condes. Under the advice of De Retz, she induced
her husband to present himself to the Parliament and inform them that he
had come to offer his services, as well as the towns of Rouen, Caen,
Dieppe, and the whole of Normandy, of which he was governor; and he
begged the Parliament to consent that his wife and two children should
be lodged at the Hotel de Ville as a guarantee for the execution of his
word. His speech was received with acclamations; and while the
deliberations were still going on, De Retz proceeded to seek the Duchess
de Longueville and the Duchess de Bouillon, both prepared to act a part
in the scene he proposed to display. He had already caused the proposal
of the Duke de Longueville to be spread amongst the populace; and
hurrying the two princesses into a carriage, dressed with studied and
artful negligence, but surrounded by a splendid suite, and followed by
an immense crowd to the principal quarter of the insurrection--the Hotel
de Ville--those lovely and interesting women were placed in the hands
of the people as hostages with all that was most dear to them.
"Imagine," says De Retz, "these two beautiful persons upon the balcony
of the Hotel de Ville; more beautiful because they appeared neglected,
although they were not. Each held in her arms one of her children, who
were as beautiful as their mothers." La Greve was full of people, even
to the house tops; the men all raised cries of joy, and the women wept
with emotion. De Retz, meanwhile, threw handfuls of money from the
windows of the Hotel de Ville amongst the populace, and then, leaving
the princesses under the protection of the city, he returned to the
Palais de Justice, followed by an immense multitude, whose acclamations
rent the skies.
On the night of the 28th of January, 1649, Madame de Longueville gave
birth to her last child, a son, who was baptized by De Retz, having for
its godfather the Provost, for its godmother the Duchess de Bouillon,
and who received the name of Charles de Paris; the child of the Fronde,
handsome, talented, and brave; who during his life was the troublesome
hope, the melancholy joy of his mother, and the cause of her greatest
grief in 1672, when he perished, at the passage of the Rhine, by the
side of his uncle, Conde.
The Prince de Conti being declared _generalissimo of the army of the
King, under the parliament_, and the Dukes de Bouillon and Elbeuf, with
the Marshal de la Mothe, generals under him, De Retz saw the full
fruition of his intrigues. A civil war was now inevitable. The great and
the little, the wise and the foolish, the rash and the prudent, the
cowardly and the brave, were all engaged and jumbled up pell-mell on
both sides; and the mixture was so strange, so heterogeneous, and so
incomprehensible, that a sentiment of the ridiculous was irresistibly
paramount, and the war began amongst fits of laughter on all sides. That
same day Conde's cavaliers came galloping into the faubourgs to fire
their pistols at the Parisians, whilst the Marquis de Noirmoutier went
forth with the cavalry of the Fronde to skirmish with them, and
returning to the Hotel de Ville, entered the circle of the Duchess de
Longueville, followed by his officers, each wearing his cuirass, as he
came from the field. The hall was filled with ladies preparing to dance,
the troops were drawn up in the square, and this mixture of blue scarves
and ladies, cuirasses and violins and trumpets, formed, says De Retz, a
spectacle much more common in romances than anywhere else.
The serio-grotesque drama of the Fronde was thus initiated.