MADAME DE LONGUEVILLE'S ADVENTURES IN NORMANDY. THE WOMEN'S WAR.
THE heroes having thus suddenly disappeared from the scene, the
political stage was left clear for the performance of the heroines. We
are now about to see the women, almost by themselves, carry on the civil
war, govern, intrigue, fight. A great experience for human nature, a
fine historical opportunity for observing that gallant transfer of all
power from the one sex to the other--the men lagging behind, led,
directed, in the second or third ranks. But those women of rank, young,
beautiful, brilliant, and for the most part gallant, were doubtless more
formidable to the minister at this juncture than the men. The two lovely
duchesses, De Longueville and De Bouillon, having shown during the
preceding year of what they were capable; the Queen therefore gave
orders for their arrest. The wary lover of the fascinating politician
who had lately begun to scatter her blandishments equally upon all--La
Rochefoucauld--having been apprised by the captain of his quarter that
some blow was meditated by Mazarin, had sent twice to warn the Princes
through the Marquis de la Moussaye, but who, as it appears, failed to
acquit himself of that important mission. But if La Rochefoucauld's
warning failed to reach the ears of the Princes, he was more fortunate
in effecting the escape of Madame de Longueville. Whilst they were
seeking to arrest him as well as La Moussaye, the Queen despatched a
note to the Duchess by the Secretary of State, La Vrilliere, begging her
to come to the Palais Royal. Instead of going thither she went direct to
the Hotel of the Princess Palatine--like herself beautiful, gallant, and
intriguing, but endowed with a superior intellect. This lady speedily
became the head and mainspring of the princes' party--or of the _second_
Fronde, and the Coadjutor, who directed the Old Fronde, was fain to
recognise in her a worthy rival, and his equal in political sagacity.
Fearing to be discovered if she remained under the roof of the princess,
a carriage was procured, and the duchess driven in it by La
Rochefoucauld himself to an obscure house in the Faubourg St. Germain,
where they remained until nightfall in a cellar. Thence the Duchess and
her lover set out for Normandy on horseback under the escort of forty
determined men provided by the Princess Palatine. Brave and resolute as
her brother, the sister of Conde rode northwards through that entire
winter's night and the following day, and sought no shelter until worn
out with excessive fatigue she reached Rouen. But the commandant, the
Marquis de Beuvron, although an old friend of the duke, declared he
could not serve her, and refused to raise the banner of revolt in that
stronghold of her husband's government. Her attempt at Rouen thus
receiving a complete check, she had some hope of being received into the
citadel of Havre, but the Duchess de Richelieu, though her friend, was
not so much mistress there as the Duchess d'Aiguillon, who, on the
contrary, was full of resentment against her. Discouraged and repulsed
on all hands, the fugitive Duchess next made her way to Dieppe, where
she thought herself in sufficient safety to part with La Rochefoucauld,
who left her to assist the Duke de Bouillon to raise troops in
Angoumois. In the fortress of Dieppe, commanded by a faithful officer of
her husband, Madame de Longueville found the rest she so much needed. In
a brief space, with spirits recruited, she resolved to make a stand to
the uttermost against the Queen and Mazarin, and having replaced the
royal standard by that of Conde set about putting the citadel in a state
of defence to resist a siege. The Queen, however, having resolved not to
give the Duchess time to raise her husband's government of Normandy into
revolt, on the 1st of February quitted Paris for Rouen. The band of
gentlemen who had gathered round the beautiful Frondeuse thereupon
melted away, and Mademoiselle de Longueville, her step-daughter,
afterwards Duchess de Nemours, quitted her to take refuge in a convent.
As Montigny, the commandant at Dieppe, declared that it was impossible
to hold the fortress, the Duchess left the place by a secret portal,
followed by her women and some few gentlemen. She held her way for two
leagues on foot along the coast to the little port of Tourville, in
order to reach a small vessel which she had prudently hired in case of
need. On reaching the point of embarkation the sea was breaking so
furiously in surf on shore, the tide being so strong and the wind so
high, that Madame de Longueville's followers entreated her not to
attempt to reach the vessel. But the Duchess, dreading less the angry
waves than the chance of falling into the Regent's power, persisted in
going to sea. As the state of the tide and weather rendered it
impossible for a boat to get near the shore, a sailor took her in his
arms to carry her on board, but had not waded above twenty paces when a
huge roller carried him off his feet, and he fell with his fair burden.
For an instant the poor lady believed that she was lost, as in falling
the sailor lost his hold of her and she sank into deep water. On being
rescued, however, she expressed her resolve to reach the vessel, but the
sailors refusing to make another attempt, she found herself compelled to
resort to some other means of escape. Horses being luckily procured, the
Duchess mounted _en croupe_ behind one of the gentlemen of her suite,
and riding all night and part of the following day, the fugitives met
with a hospitable reception from a nobleman of Caux, in whose little
manor-house they found rest, refection, and concealment for the space of
a week.
The Duchess's tumble into the sea, though a disagreeable, turned out to
have been a lucky accident, for she now learnt that the master of the
vessel she had been so anxious to reach was in the interest of Mazarin,
and had she gone on board she would have been arrested. At length Madame
de Longueville found herself once more in Havre, and having won over the
captain of an English ship to whom she introduced herself--like Madame
de Chevreuse--in male attire, as a nobleman who had just been engaged in
a duel, and was obliged to leave France, she succeeded in obtaining a
passage to Rotterdam. Thence, passing through Flanders, she reached the
stronghold of Stenay,[1] where the Viscomte de Turenne, already
compromised with the Court for having openly espoused the Conde party,
had shortly before the Duchess's arrival also taken refuge.
[1] Stenay, taken from the Spaniards in 1641, had been given to the
Prince de Conde in 1646.
It was then that the Duchess, who, under the sway of La Rochefoucauld,
had been one of the instruments of the first Fronde war, became the
motive power of the second and far more serious one--well named by the
witty Parisians "the women's war." From the citadel of Stenay, of which
she took the command, she directed the wills and actions of the men of
her party, into which she thoroughly won over Turenne. Her
importunities, aided by her charms, prevailed so powerfully over his
valiant though fallible heart, that the illustrious captain, after
having struggled painfully for some time with his conscience, allied
himself with the Spaniards by a treaty which placed him, as well as the
sister of the great Conde, in the pay of the enemies of his king and
country. The treaty effectively stipulated "that there should be a
junction of the two armies, and that the war should be carried on by the
assistance of the King of Spain until a peace should be concluded
between the two kings and the princes liberated. That the King of Spain
should engage to pay over to Madame de Longueville and to Monsieur de
Turenne two hundred thousand crowns wherewith to raise and equip troops;
that he should furnish them with forty thousand crowns per month for the
payment of such troops, and sixty thousand crowns per annum in three
payments for _the table and equipages_ of Madame de Longueville and
Monsieur de Turenne." This treaty duly signed, Madame de Longueville
issued, in the form of a letter to his Majesty the King of France, a
manifesto very skilfully drawn up and filled with artful complaints and
accusations against Mazarin, with the design of soliciting through the
one and the other an apology for her own conduct, as though it were
possible to justify herself for having entered into a compact with the
enemies of her country.
It was during her sojourn at Stenay that she lost her mother (2nd
December, 1650). "My dear friend," said the Princess de Conde to Madame
de Brienne, who was with her during her last moments, "tell that 'pauvre
miserable' who is now at Stenay the condition in which you have seen me,
that she may learn how to die."
During the whole of this period, the Duke de la Rochefoucauld gave
constant proof of a rare fidelity. M. Cousin speaks very precisely on
this head. "Whilst Madame de Longueville was pledging her diamonds in
Holland for the defence of Stenay, La Rochefoucauld expended his fortune
in Guienne. It was the most grievous and, at the same time, the most
touching moment of their lives and their adventures. They were far away
from each other, but they still fondly loved; they served with equal
ardour the same cause, they fought and suffered equally and at the same
time." Abundant proofs might be instanced of this love and devotion on
their part. La Rochefoucauld wrote unceasingly to Stenay, and gave an
account of everything he did. "The sole aim, then, of all the Duke's
exertions," says Lenet, "was to please that beautiful princess, and he
took endless care and pleasure to acquaint her with all he did for her,
and to deliver the princess her sister-in-law (Conde's wife), by
despatching couriers to her on the subject." He informs us moreover
that, "in every juncture, he forwarded expresses to render account to
the Duchess of all that respect for her made him undertake. At this
moment, in fact, having just succeeded to his patrimonial estates
through the death of his father, La Rochefoucauld recognised no obstacle
in his path, but bravely went forward in the cause he had espoused and
generously sacrificed his property in Angoumois and Saintonge. His
ancestral chateau of Verteuil was even razed to the ground by Mazarin's
orders, and when the tidings of it reached him, he received them with
such great firmness", says Lenet, "that he seemed as though he were
delighted, through a feeling that it would inspire confidence in the
minds of the Bordelais. It was further said that what gave him the
liveliest pleasure was to let the Duchess de Longueville see that he
hazarded everything in her service." It cannot be denied, in fine, that
the Duke at that time yielded himself up to a sentiment as deep as it
was sincere, and which contradicts very happily and without any possible
doubt the assertion so often hazarded that he had never loved the woman
whom he had seduced and dragged into the vortex of politics. Madame de
Longueville and he adored each other at this period, says M. Cousin, and
it is pleasant to be able to cite the opinion of that eminent historian
upon such fact; although separated by the entire length of France, they
suffered and struggled each for the other: they had the same aim, the
same faith, the same hope. They wrote incessantly to communicate their
thoughts and projects, and thus sought to diminish in imagination the
enormous distance which is between Stenay and Bordeaux.
BOOK IV.
CHAPTER I.
THE PRINCESS PALATINE.
THE arrest of the Princes had singularly complicated events on the
political stage. It had displaced all interests, and, instead of
re-uniting parties and consolidating them, it had the effect of
increasing their number. No fewer than five might be counted,
represented by as many principal leaders, around which were grouped
every species of interest and every shade of ambition.
In the first place there was the party of Mazarin, alone against all the
rest. This party had for support the ability of its chief, the
invincible predilection, the unshakeable firmness of Anne of Austria,
and the name of the King. Herein lay its whole strength, but that
strength was immense. It was that which ensured the obedience of the
enlightened and conscientious men who had great influence over the army
and the magistrature. These men adhered to the Prime Minister through a
sentiment of honour, and in consequence of their monarchical principles.
Amidst the disruption of parties, they recognised no other legitimate
authority than that of the Queen Regent; but they desired as strongly,
perhaps, as those of the opposite parties, that Mazarin should be got
rid of. That odious foreigner exposed them all to the public animosity
which pursued himself. Anne of Austria frequently employed the artifices
of her sex to avert their opposition in council, and calm their
discontent.
The party of the Princes, which the success of the enemies of France,
during their captivity, rendered from day to day more popular and
interesting, was composed of all the young nobility. Of its apparent
chiefs, the one alone capable of directing it was the Duke de Bouillon.
But to lead a party it is necessary to identify oneself with it, and
devote oneself to it wholly; and the Duke de Bouillon had views
peculiar, foreign, and even adverse to the interests of his party; and
before such interest he placed that of the maintenance, or rather
elevation, of his own house. The Duchess de Longueville, the Princess de
Conde, La Rochefoucauld, and Turenne had neither sufficient finesse nor
skill in intrigue to be able to direct that party and struggle
successfully against Mazarin; but they were seconded by three men who,
although obscure, displayed in these circumstances extraordinary talent.
Lenet,[1] who never quitted the Princess de Conde throughout these
troubles, but served her faithfully with his pen and advice. Montreuil,
who, although he had never published anything, was a member of the
French Academy and secretary to the Prince de Conde. He managed, with
infinite address, and incessantly devising new means, to correspond with
the Princes, and bring the vigilance of their keepers in default. And it
was Gourville especially, who, after having worn the livery of the Duke
de la Rochefoucauld as his valet, had become his man of business, his
confidant, and friend. It was Gourville who, under a heavy expression of
countenance, concealed a most subtle, most acute, and fertile
intelligence. Persuasive, energetic, prompt, reflective; knowing how to
gain an end by the direct road; or, under the eyes of those opposing,
attaining it unperceived, by covert and tortuous ways. A man who never
found himself in any situation, however desperate it might be, without
having the confidence that he could extricate himself from it. Did the
cleverest consider a position as lost? Gourville intervened, infused
hope, promised to lend a hand to it, and success was immediately certain
and defeat impossible.
[1] His memoirs give reliable details of all that relates to the
Condes at this period.
Still Gourville was not, even on the score of ability, the foremost
spirit of his party. The person who deserved that title was a woman--the
celebrated Anne de Gonzagua, widow of Edward Prince Palatine. Through
her proneness to gallantry, she did not escape the weakness of her sex;
but through her imperturbable calmness in the midst of the most violent
commotions, her elevated views, the depth of her designs, the accuracy
and rapidity of her resolutions, and her skill in making everything
conduce to a given end, she combined in its entire vigour the peculiar
character of the statesman with the soul of a conspirator. She had been
through life the intimate friend of the mother of Conde, and she now
laboured with skill, wisdom, and perseverance for the liberation of the
Princes. And such is the ascendency obtained by talent backed by an
energetic will, that it was to her advice all the partisans of the
Princes deferred; her hand that held the threads of their various
intrigues. With her De Retz treated directly, and in the whole course of
the negotiations she displayed a degree of penetration which baffled all
the subtlety of the Coadjutor; and while she foiled his devices against
herself, she directed them aright against their mutual opponents. By her
activity and energy five or six separate treaties were drawn up and
signed between the different personages whose interests were concerned,
each in general ignorant of his comrade's participation.
It would be presumptuous in any way to attempt, after Bossuet, a perfect
portraiture of this lady, but it may be interesting to glance at the
antecedents of her life up to this period.
Charles de Gonzagua-Cleves, Duke of Mantua and Nevers, had, by his
marriage with Catherine of Lorraine, three daughters: the oldest, Maria,
whom he preferred to the others, or rather that his pride sought to
elevate her alone to the highest destiny possible, was married
successively to two Kings of Poland, Ladislas Sigismond and Jean
Casimir. The second, Anne, who, as the Princess Palatine, became the
political opponent of Mazarin; and the third, Benedicte, who took the
veil and died whilst yet very young at the steps of the altar. It is the
romantic, agitated, and changeful existence of the second with which we
are concerned: passed in tumult and ended in silence. In it may be found
the invaluable lesson of that admirable antithesis afforded by error and
repentance. Bossuet, in his eloquent, fervent oration upon the life of
that princess, was enabled to derive from a contemplation of it the
highest instruction. He has therein retraced, with an imposing
authority, the errors of a woman exclusively engrossed, during many
years, with worldly interests and earthly vanities, and also made the
emphatic denial that, in their last hours, such awakened minds but
rarely give themselves up without profound anguish, fitful emotion, and
mortal struggle to the contemplation of imperishable joys. Anne de
Gonzagua experienced those extremes. She passed from incredulity and an
irregular life to the most lively faith and exemplary conduct.
Captivated in turn by earth and heaven, worldly and scorning the world,
sceptical and fervent, she had long centred her pride and happiness in
the political affairs of her epoch, until the day came when, wearied
with ephemeral pleasures and touched by grace, she finally renounced the
things of this life and gave herself wholly up to celestial meditation.
In her earliest youth she had been placed in the convent of
Faremoustier, where nothing was neglected that could tend to inspire her
with a desire for cloister life. Her father, the Duke of Mantua, had
determined that his two younger daughters, Anne and Benedicte, should
help, by taking the veil, to augment the fortune of their elder sister.
Benedicte submitted to her fate, but Anne soon perceived what her
father's plan was, and in her indignation she resolved to defeat it.
Unlike her younger sister, she had an adventurous spirit, an ardent
imagination, a strong desire to play an active part in life. Even to
withdraw from a mode of existence that was hateful to her, she made her
escape from Faremoustier, and went to confide to her sister's bosom, in
the convent of Avenai, her wrath, her _ennui_, and her hopes. For awhile
it seemed as though conventual life was about to exercise a strange
fascination over her. The discourse and example of her sister touched
deeply the youthful heart which had proved rebellious to a parent's
will. It seemed not improbable that she would yield to persuasion that
which she had refused to compulsion. But her destiny determined
otherwise. Events cast her upon another course; her imperfect vocation
yielded quickly to their influence. She had been worked upon, in the
solitude of the cloister, by that mysterious yearning for an encounter
with those struggles which human passions involve, the experience of
which can alone extinguish such yearning in certain souls. It was
necessary that she should see the world, undergo its deceptions, and be
wearied of it, in order to desire repose and be capable of appreciating
the inestimable blessings of peace and silence and tranquillity.
The Duke of Mantua dying in 1637, Anne was obliged to leave the cloister
on business connected with the paternal succession, and appeared at
Court with Marie, her elder sister. The turmoil of the world and its
sensuous enjoyments speedily engrossed the young and lovely princess,
involved her in their trammels, and only restored her to tranquillity
and solitude after a lapse of many years; for at this time she also lost
her sister, the youthful abbess of Avenai, and the last link which
attached Anne to cloister life was severed by that death. An absorbing
passion, too, was destined to confirm her relinquishment of such
vocation. The youthful Henri de Guise was then one of the most brilliant
gentlemen at the French Court. Grandson of the _Balafre_, his high birth
fixed the eyes of all upon him, at the same time that his impetuous
imagination, his profession, all the aristocratic follies of the
day--remarkable duels, romantic loves, eccentricities, the adventures
and elegant habits of the _grand seigneur_--had constituted him an
oracle of fashion and the hero of every festival. He was fascinated by
the grace and beauty of Anne de Gonzagua, and she herself, in the midst
of that gallant Court which masked a real depravation under the thin
varnish of an ingenious subtlety of expression,--she herself, a disciple
of the Hotel de Rambouillet, where questions of sentiment were
discussed, studied, and analysed incessantly, knew not how to resist the
gilded accents of a young, handsome, and impassioned lover. She let him
see that she loved him. He made her a promise of marriage, signed, it is
said, with his blood; and the affair seemed to promise a happy
conclusion. But their mutual inclination was thwarted by Madame de
Guise. The Duchess thought that the high dignities of the Church would
procure greater wealth, honour, and power for her son than he could
obtain in any other career: Henri was then Archbishop of Rheims.
Nevertheless, he persisted in his love for Mademoiselle de Gonzagua, and
in his design of espousing her. The overtures which he made to the
Vatican were not in vain. He received from the Pope, with the
authorisation to again become a layman, a dispensation which his kinship
to Anne rendered necessary for the celebration of their nuptials. But
the lovers did not hasten to avail themselves of such privilege,
apparently through dread of Richelieu, who was also opposed to their
union. Perhaps that minister, from whom nothing secret was hidden--not
even the unshaped designs of the ambitious,--already suspected Henri de
Guise of being favourably disposed to the interests of Spain, as well as
contrary to those of France. Anne and Henri, therefore, contented
themselves with the possibility which the complaisance of the Holy
Father had given them of contracting an indissoluble bond, and with the
oath by which they reciprocally pledged their faith. Confiding in the
honour of the Prince whom she so ardently loved, Anne consented to
follow him, when he quitted France in order to escape from the espionage
of Richelieu. Disguising herself in male attire, Anne rejoined her lover
at Besancon, according to Mademoiselle de Montpensier, at Cologne
according to other writers; where, as elsewhere, she caused herself to
be called "Madame de Guise"--writing and speaking of her husband, and
defying the assurances which were constantly advanced of the illegality
of a marriage secretly performed by a canon of Rheims in the private
chapel of the Hotel de Nevers. But what are promises, marriage vows, or
even bonds written in blood?
Henri not long after became unfaithful to the confiding Anne by eloping
with a fair widow, the Countess de Bossut, whom he carried off to
Brussels and ultimately married. Implicated in the conspiracy of the
Count de Soissons, the turbulent churchman was present at the battle of
Marfee, and consequently declared guilty of high treason. He therefore
took up his abode in the Low Countries, where he quietly awaited the
death of Louis XIII. and his minister, then both moribund, to resume his
career at the Court of France.
Thus abandoned by her volatile lover, and extremely compromised,
Mademoiselle de Gonzagua returned to Paris, where she reassumed the
appellation of the Princess Anne. Her grief for awhile at her
abandonment was great, but happily for Anne de Gonzagua, she was
possessed of youth, and, as Madame de Motteville tells us, "of beauty
and great mental attractions." She had moreover sufficient address to
obtain a great amount of esteem, in spite of her errors. In a few years'
time, during which she took care to avoid fresh scandal, whatever she
might have done "under the rose," she made a tolerably good marriage.
Her husband, her senior by two years only, was Prince Edward, Count
Palatine of the Rhine, son of a king without a kingdom,--the elector
Frederick,[2] chosen King of Bohemia in 1619, but who lost his crown in
1620, at the battle of Prague. Prince Edward, therefore, having no
sovereignty, lived at the French Court. In 1645, then, Anne de Gonzagua
found herself definitively settled at Paris, and it must be owned did
not give Henri de Guise much cause to regret his faithlessness. The
irregularities of the Princess Palatine became notorious, and assuredly
Bossuet, in the funeral oration which he pronounced many years later, in
the presence of one of her daughters and other relatives, whilst
displaying a prodigal eloquence, and a mastery over all oratorical
resource, made use of every artifice of speech, and all the elasticity
of vague terms, in speaking of that period of her life without a
violation of propriety, without disguising truths known to all, without
exceeding either in blame or praise the limits imposed by good taste
upon the reverend orator when he pronounces a panegyric upon those who
not unfrequently have very little merited it.
[2] This unfortunate Prince had married, in 1613, Elizabeth,
daughter of James I. of England. The celebrated Prince Rupert and
Sophia, Electress of Hanover, were among the other children.
During those stormy years of the civil wars, through her diplomatic
talents, Anne de Gonzagua shone conspicuously in the front rank of
female politicians. One can readily imagine what must have been, not in
the first Fronde, all parliamentary as it was, but in the second,
entirely aristocratic, in the Fronde of the Princes, the influence of a
woman's mind at once so subtle and brilliant. It was then that Madame de
Chevreuse, Madame de Montbazon, Madame de Longueville, and Mademoiselle
de Montpensier, displayed upon the political stage the resources of
their finesse, their dissimulation, or their courage. The Palatine did
not fall below the level of those adventurous heroines. In the midst of
those intrigues, of that puerile ambition, of those turnings and
windings, perfidy, seduction, manoeuvring promises, of those
negotiations in which Mazarin infused all his Italian cunning, the Queen
her feminine impatience and her Spanish dissimulation, De Retz his
genius of artist-conspirator, Conde his pride of the prince and the
conqueror, Anne de Gonzagua handled political matters with a rare
suppleness, humouring offended self-love, impatient ambition, haughty
rivalries, acting as mediatrix with a wonderful amount of conciliatory
tact, the friend of divers chiefs of parties, and meriting the
confidence of all.
It would be tedious to relate here her various negotiations, to go over
her discourses, conversations, and numerous letters: it would involve a
history of the Fronde, and that is not our subject. It will suffice to
say that she obtained the esteem of all parties at a time when parties
not only hated but strangely defied each other, and that she manifested
a skill, a tact which Cardinal de Retz--a good judge of such
matters--does not hesitate to praise with enthusiasm. "I do not think,"
says he, "that Queen Elizabeth of England had more capacity for
governing a state. I have seen her in faction, I have seen her in the
cabinet, and I have found her in every respect equally sincere." This
eulogium may be perhaps a little over-coloured. But Madame de
Motteville, who also greatly admired the Palatine, probably approaches
nearer to the truth. "This princess," she says, "like many other ladies,
did not despise the conquests of her eyes, which were in truth very
beautiful; but, besides that advantage, she had that which was of more
value, I mean wit, address, capacity for conducting an intrigue, and a
singular facility in finding expedients for succeeding in what she
undertook." Thus spoke the Coadjutor and the Court of her. The
parliamentary party, by the organ of the councillor Joly, confirms such
panegyric: "She had so much intelligence, and a talent so peculiar for
business, that no one in the world ever succeeded better than she did."
The Princess Palatine's political dexterity cannot therefore be
contested: the testimony of the most opposite camps are thereupon
agreed, and it is certain that, without the least exaggeration, it may
be said that no one at that epoch, save Mazarin, better understood the
resources of diplomacy.
It was especially after the arrest of the Princes that her zeal and
intelligence found occasion to manifest themselves. Madame de
Longueville, as has been said, instantly sought the aid of Anne de
Gonzagua when she learned that her two brothers and her husband were
prisoners. The news made her swoon, and her despair was afterwards
pitiable. The Princess Palatine was touched by it, and promised to
operate on behalf of the Princes. From that moment she became, without
entering into faction and especially without failing in her duties
towards a sovereign whom she loved, one of the most active friends of
the prisoners. Meetings were held under her roof to deliberate upon that
important affair, and, to compass her ends, she contrived to bring into
play the most varied resources. She began by interesting in the Princes'
destiny those even who might have been thought the most irreconcileable
enemies to them. However difficult this work was of accomplishment, she
reunited, as in a fasces, in a single will, personages widely separated
upon other points, and surprised to find that they were pursuing the
same object, for none of them knew the motives which influenced the
actions of the rest. On this head, Bossuet says, with somewhat excessive
laudation, she declared to the chiefs of parties how far she would bind
herself, and she was believed to be incapable of either deceiving or
being deceived. That is rather a hazardous assertion, for if she indeed
aided in the liberation of the Princes, none of the promises she
made--in all sincerity doubtless--became realised. But, says Bossuet
further, and this time with more precision, "her peculiar
characteristic was to conciliate opposite interests, and, in raising
herself above them, to discover the secret point of junction and knot,
as it were, by which they might be united." She had resolved to win over
the Duke d'Orleans, Madame de Chevreuse, De Retz, and the keeper of the
seals, Chateauneuf. She therefore signed with them four different
treaties. With the Duke d'Orleans she promised the hand of the young
Duke d'Enghien in marriage to one of the Prince's daughters; to Madame
de Chevreuse that of Mademoiselle de Chevreuse to the Prince de Conti;
to De Retz, the cardinal's hat; to Chateauneuf, the post of prime
minister. All consented to favour the princess's designs, and Mazarin,
whom she could not convince, found himself surrounded by enemies whose
union was formidable. That minister made allusion to the dread with
which he was inspired when he remarked some years afterwards to Don
Louis de Haro: "The most turbulent among the men does not give us so
much trouble to keep him in check as the intrigues of a Duchess de
Chevreuse or a Princess Palatine." In vain, according to his wont, did
he again attempt to temporise. Anne de Gonzagua, who was ready to open
fire with all her batteries, sought to terrify him by the perspective of
a menacing future. "She caused him to be informed that he was lost if he
did not determine upon giving the Princes their liberty, assuring him
that if he did not do it promptly he would see, in a few days, the whole
Court and every cabal banded against him, and that all aid would fail
him." Mazarin, obstinate in his determination, and unwilling to believe
that she had so thoroughly played her game as to hold in hand the
threads of so many intrigues, begged her to defer the matter, asked time
for reflection, and conducted himself in such a way in short that the
princess saw clearly that he only wanted to gain time. She therefore
hesitated no longer, but allowed those who were agitating impatiently
around her to commence action.
The party of the Princes had been dubbed by the name of the _New
Fronde_. The old, although it had lost its energy by its union with the
Court, preserved nevertheless its hatred to the prime minister. It was
not in De Retz's power to neutralise wholly these hostile dispositions;
but he could hinder them from being brought into dangerous activity. The
Coadjutor at first with that view acted in good faith, and remained
faithful in the first moments of the agreement which he had entered into
with the Queen. Probably it might then have been possible to attach him
finally to the Court party; but Mazarin could not believe that the
Coadjutor, so fertile in tricks, so full of finesse, was capable of
anything like frankness and generosity. In the practical experience of
life, mistrust has its perils as well as blind confidence, and failure
as often happens to us through our unwillingness to believe in virtue,
as through our inability to suspect vice. Mazarin judged after himself a
man who resembled him in many respects, but not in all. Moreover, he
feared lest he might seek to win the Queen's affection from him; and
that fear was not groundless. De Retz saw himself the object of the
suspicions and afterwards of the machinations of a power which laboured
at his destruction, whilst for that power he was compromising his
influence and his popularity. To reacquire it, he hastened, therefore,
to throw himself with all his adherents on the side of the Princes, and
saw no safety but in their deliverance. This alliance of the two camps,
so long enemies, was concluded between the Coadjutor and the Princess
Palatine, and rendered so firm and secret by the confidence with which
these two party chiefs inspired each other, that Mazarin, who
unceasingly dreaded such a union, and who always suspected it, did not
know it for certain until it revealed itself by its effects.[3]
[3] Motteville--Joly--Lenet.
The parliament formed a fourth party. Not that that body was unanimous;
but it had within itself an honourable majority which was alike inimical
to the Frondeurs, the seditious, and the minister. The parliament
therefore would have been disposed to unite itself to the Princes'
party, and to lend it support; but to do so it would have been necessary
that the chiefs of that party should renounce all alliance with the
foreigner. Turenne and Madame de Longueville had joined with the
Spaniards to fight against France. The young Princess de Conde, with the
Dukes de Bouillon and de la Rochefoucauld, who had shut themselves up in
Bordeaux, had entered into an alliance with them, and had received from
them succour in the shape of money. The Spanish envoys in Paris
conferred daily with the chiefs of the old as of the new Fronde.
Gaston, who might have been the moderator of all these parties, formed
by himself a fifth among them. His irresolution prevented him giving
strength to any other of the factions, but he constituted a formidable
obstacle to all the rest. His inclination, as well as his interest,
should never have made him deviate from the Court party; yet he was
always opposed to it. Impelled by his jealousy of Conde and of the prime
minister, he acted in a manner contrary to his own wishes. He was,
however, neither wanting in intelligence nor finesse, nor even a certain
kind of eloquence; and the master-stroke of De Retz's address was to
have contrived, in furtherance of the object of his designs, to set
Gaston with the Fronde against the Princes, and afterwards for the
Princes against Mazarin.
The complication and the multiplicity of parties was as nothing in
comparison to that of private interests, which so crossed each other and
in so many different ways, which turned with such mobility, that, in the
ignorance which prevailed of the secret motives of the principal actors
in that drama so vivid, motley, and turbulent, nothing could be
predicated of what they would do, and a looker-on might have been
disposed at times to have pronounced them as insensates, who were rather
their own enemies than those of their antagonists.
If the libels of those times are to be credited, and especially the
satire in verse for which the poet Marlet was sentenced to be hanged,
the obstinacy with which the Queen exposed to danger her son's crown, by
retaining a minister detested by all, would be naturally explained by a
reason other than that of a reason of state. The advocate-general Talon,
Madame de Motteville, and the Duchess de Nemours exculpate Anne of
Austria on this head. They are three respectable and trustworthy
witnesses; and, without any doubt, that which they said they thought.
But the Duchess d'Orleans, Elizabeth-Charlotte, affirms in her
correspondence[4] that Anne of Austria had secretly married Cardinal
Mazarin, who was not a priest. She says that all the details of the
marriage were known, and that, in her time, the back staircase in the
Palais Royal was pointed out by which at night Mazarin reached the
Queen's apartments. She observes that such clandestine marriages were
common at that period, and cites that of the widow of our Charles the
First, who secretly espoused her equerry, Jermyn. One might be disposed
to think that the Duchess Elizabeth-Charlotte could have only followed
some tradition, and that her assertions cannot counterbalance the
statements of the contemporary personages above mentioned. But certain
species of facts are often better known long after the death of the
persons to whom they relate, than during their lifetime, or at a time
close upon their decease; they are not entirely unveiled until there no
longer exists any motive to keep them secret. Of the Queen's sentiments
towards Mazarin there can be no doubt after reading a letter which she
addressed to him under date of June 30, 1660, which is extant in
autograph,[5] the avowal she made to Madame de Brienne in her
oratory,[6] the confidences of Madame de Chevreuse to Cardinal de
Retz.[7] Moreover, whatever may have been the motives of Anne of
Austria's attachment to Mazarin, it is certain that they were
all-powerful over her. She lent herself to every project formed by her
minister for the increase of his power and fortune. The war in Bordeaux
was kindled because Mazarin desired that one of his nieces should be
united to the Duke de Candale, son of the Duke d'Epernon; and, in order
not to let the Swiss soldiers march thither without their pay, when
their aid was most necessary, Anne of Austria put her diamonds in
pledge, and would not allow Mazarin to be answerable for the sum
required to be disbursed.
[4] Mem. sur la Cour de Louis XIV. et de la Regence,
d'Elizabeth-Charlotte Duchesse d'Orleans, Mere du Regent. 1823,
p. 319.
[5] MS. Bibliotheque Nationale.
[6] Lomenie de Brienne, Memoirs, 1828.
[7] Retz, Memoirs, edition 1836.
CHAPTER II
THE YOUNG PRINCESS DE CONDE CONDUCTS THE WAR IN THE SOUTH.
TO generous and feeling hearts, Conde's misfortune presented all the
characteristics of a real romance. The majority of the women therefore
who meddled with politics were, through sympathy, of his party. The
glory of France under lock and key! The young hero arrested for treason,
and prisoner to whom? The foreign Cardinal Mazarin. All the spoils of
the Condes distributed amongst the _sbires_ of the favourite,--Normandy
to Harcourt, Champagne to L'Hospital, &c. A monstrous alliance between
King and people. The Queen keeping the Bastille in the hands of
Broussel's son--the highest posts bestowed upon the magistrates--a
reversal, in fact, of everything. Did not the French nobility rise to a
man against such a state of things?
No, everything was at a standstill. Neither Conde's military clients,
nor his numerous seigniories, nor his governments took any active part
whatsoever. Far from it, Madame de Longueville, as we have seen, who
thought to raise Normandy, everywhere met with a repulse in that
province. Neither Turenne nor she could do anything save by accepting
aid from Spain, for which Madame de Bouillon was also doing her best in
Paris.
But whilst that lovely amazon, Conde's sister, was occupied in her
endeavours to lure the hero of Stenay into the party of revolt by
intoxicating him with love, and wasting time in negotiation and parade,
a succour more direct and much more energetic was given to Conde from a
quarter he had the least expected--from his own chateau of Chantilly. He
had there left his aged mother, his young wife, and a son seven years
old. Mazarin hesitated to have these ladies arrested, fearing the force
of public opinion. The mother went to hide herself in Paris, and one
morning appeared before the Parliament, suppliant, weeping sorely,
stooping so far as to kneel in prayer, to flattery, and even to
falsehood. All being unavailing, she went home to die.
But most astonishing was the unexpected courage of Conde's young wife,
Claire Clemence de Maille, that despised niece of Richelieu, whom the
victorious soldier had married under compulsion, and whose heir was the
son of the minister's absolute will. On the arrest of her husband she
had been confided to the care of a man of capacity--Lenet, from whose
"Memoirs" we have already cited. He at first conducted her and her son
in safety from Chantilly to Montrond, a stronghold of the Condes, but
fearing to be besieged in it, straightway to Bordeaux. The Parliament of
Guienne had had a deadly quarrel with Mazarin for imposing upon them
Epernon, a governor they detested, and whom the Cardinal was bent upon
allying by marriage with his own family. Great therefore was the emotion
of this city and parliament at seeing that young lady of two-and-twenty
in deep mourning, with her innocent boy, who caught the brave Bordelais
by their beards with his little hands, and besought their help towards
the liberation of his father. The Princess's retinue enhanced not a
little this favourable impression, formed as it was of high-born women,
for the most part young and charming.
The popular explosion was lively, as always happens among the people of
the south. But even the narrative of Lenet shows clearly the slender
foundation upon which this semblance of popular insurrection rested. The
lower orders, then living in great misery, hoped to obtain through the
Princess some opening for their foreign trade, which would better enable
them to dispose of their wines and help them to live. Mazarin kept down
the local Parliament, and carried everything through sheer terror.
Bouillon and La Rochefoucauld, the Princess's advisers, recommended that
a royal envoy should be cut to pieces. Lenet dreaded lest such an act,
somewhat over-energetic, might render his mistress less popular. Twice
or thrice the populace were very nearly putting the Parliament to the
sword, the majority of which was kept under through sheer terror of the
knife. Spain promised money, and they had the simplicity to believe her.
She hardly gave them a pitiful alms. Meanwhile, however, Mazarin, having
quietly occupied Normandy and Burgundy, made his way towards Guienne
with the royal army. The Bordelais showed an intrepid front, though
somewhat disquieted to see the soldiery about to gather the fruits of
the vintage instead of themselves. The Princess only maintained herself
in the place through the aid of the rabble _va-nu-pieds_, who feasted
and danced all night at her expense, and who shouted in her ears a
hundred ribald jests against Mazarin, compelling both herself and her
son to repeat them. This abasement into which she had fallen made her
desire peace for herself, and permission to leave the city, which was
granted to her, with vague promises of liberating Conde (3rd October,
1650).
The Duchess de Bouillon had been quite as ardent in politics during the
burlesque activity of the Fronde as Madame de Longueville; and although,
perhaps, equally beautiful, happily she was entirely devoted to her
domestic duties. Her husband on taking flight had been constrained to
leave her behind in Paris, she being near her accouchement, which
circumstance however did not prevent the Queen from giving an order for
her arrest. Although the royal guards were already in the house, the
Duchess contrived to effect the escape of her sons, and during that same
day gave birth to her babe. Shortly afterwards she found a means of
eluding the guard set over her, and would have rejoined her husband, had
her daughter not been attacked with small-pox, but having returned home
to nurse her, was arrested at her bedside and carried to the Bastille.
The Duchess de Chevreuse, always gallant, in spite of waning beauty,
constituted herself the mediatrix between the Queen and the _Frondeurs_;
and although her daughter had openly become the mistress of the
Coadjutor, it was already contemplated to make her the wife of the
Prince de Conti, as a condition of the arrangement by which he should be
set free. Beaufort still continued to be the obsequious lover of Madame
de Montbazon, and, through her, Mazarin was kept well acquainted with
all his secrets.
No other power than that of female influence could have attached the
French nobility to the Prince de Conde, and determined it to take up
arms for his release. In fact, his hauteur, his brusquerie, his
brutality even, had, in repeated instances, offended that body, and the
Queen imagined that the bulk of the French gentry would witness his
arrest with as much pleasure as the citizens. But the women had been
fascinated by the _eclat_ of his four victories; they agreed to call
him the champion, the hero of France, and it seemed to them that they
shared his heroism in devoting themselves to his cause. As for the
higher nobility, they were not bound by any political principle; they
were very indifferent to the grandeur of France; very ignorant of its
pretensions in foreign affairs, or to what it had been pledged with
other nations. They loved war in the first place for its dangers, and in
the second for the honours and wealth they got by fighting; but even in
the army, far from making fidelity and obedience a rule of conduct, they
cherished a spirit of independence and resistance to the Crown, and
would only allow themselves to be influenced by their chivalric usages.
They gloried in showing themselves reckless of the future, caring more
about the glitter of the present than steady progressive advancement;
equally prodigal of fortune as of life, they were prone to follow
impulse rather than calculation; so that what we should perhaps call a
reckless frivolity was looked upon by them as a sentiment invested with
all the charm of brilliant gallantry. Those even whom neither their
affection nor their interest summoned to the standards of the captive
Princes, rushed gaily from the midst of their ease and festivity into
civil war at the first prompting of their mistresses.
Gaston d'Orleans, after having consented to the imprisonment of the
Princes, only decided upon entering into the project for their
deliverance under promise of a marriage of his daughter, the Duchess
d'Alencon, with the boy-Duke d'Enghien, Conde's son. Turenne and La
Rochefoucauld, too, often thought less of their glory or the success of
their party, than of what might be agreeable to the Duchess de
Longueville, of whose love they were so envious. More obscure
_liaisons_, which have even escaped the anecdotic abundance of the
memoir-writers of those days, appear also to have exercised their
influence over the conduct of the highest personages. In a letter which
De Retz wrote to Turenne, and which he frankly characterises as being
remarkably silly, the Coadjutor does not disguise that amongst many
serious motives which he gives that great warrior for inducing him to
determine upon peace, he does not forget to hold out a hope of his
seeing once more a little grisette of the Rue des Petits-Champs, whom
Turenne loved with all his heart. The feeblest motives had influence
over such men, all young and ardent as they were--the followers of
different factions, though without prejudices, principles, convictions,
without hatred and without affection. The women therefore naturally
played important parts in all these events, to whom the species of
gallantry and worship of beauty held in honour by the Hotel de
Rambouillet was quite familiar. Thus nothing could be expected of the
Duke de Beaufort, even in that which concerned him closest, if not
assured previously of the consent of the Duchess de Montbazon, who
exercised plenary power over him. Nemours, enamoured of the Duchess de
Chatillon, loved likewise by the Prince de Conde, warmly embraced the
cause of that Prince, because his mistress prompted him thereto; and the
Duchess de Nemours had moved heaven and earth to obtain Conde's
deliverance, in the hope that he would keep sharp watch over the Duchess
de Chatillon, and put a stop to her husband's infidelity.
De Retz too, notwithstanding the superiority of his intellect, allowed
himself to give way, through his inclination for the fair sex, to the
commission of indiscretions and imprudences which often placed his life
in danger, and caused his best-concerted measures to prove abortive. To
appease the jealousy of Mademoiselle de Chevreuse he permitted himself
to make use of a contemptuous expression concerning the Queen, which was
repeated, and which became the cause of the violent hatred she ever
afterwards bore him. The Princess de Guemenee, furious at having been
abandoned, offered the Queen, if she would consent to it, to procure the
disappearance of the Coadjutor by sending him an invitation, and then
having him confined in a cellar of her hotel. De Retz learned that a
design to assassinate him had been formed, and whenever he repaired to
the Hotel de Chevreuse, by way of precaution placed sentinels outside
the gate of that mansion, and quite close to the Queen's sentries who
guarded the Palais-Royal, without heeding the effect such an excess of
insolence and scandal produced. With every kind of talent fitting to
dominate party spirit, he failed to acquire the confidence of anyone. He
regarded all alliance with the foreigner as odious and impolitic; and
notwithstanding, when his embarrassments increased, he lent an ear to
the Archduke's envoy, and even to that of Cromwell. At the same time,
full of admiration for the Marquis of Montrose, whom he called a hero
worthy of Plutarch, he contracted the closest friendship with the
Scottish royalist, and aided him to the utmost of his ability in the
efforts he was making to restore to the throne the legitimate King of
Great Britain. De Retz, in few words, appeared anxious to show himself
as taking pleasure in exhausting every kind of contrast. When the
intricate plot of the drama in which he was engaged had become so
complicated by his intrigues, that he no longer saw the possibility of
unravelling it, he sought means to retire from the situation with the
greatest advantage practicable for himself and friends, and to obtain
the Cardinal's hat. The marriage of Mademoiselle de Chevreuse with the
Prince de Conti became the essential condition of all the negotiations
which he carried on, whether with the Court or with the Duchess de
Chevreuse. The remembrance of an old and close friendship, the habit of
a familiarity contracted in youth, gave the Duchess de Chevreuse a means
of influence over that Queen, so fixed in her hatred, so inconstant in
her friendships. Anne of Austria, who then, moreover, found herself very
miserable through the obstacles which so many factions created, had
partially restored the Duchess to her confidence. Madame de Chevreuse
appeared also to have the same interests as De Retz, since, like him,
she desired intensely the union of her daughter with a Prince of the
blood. But she had large sums of money to recover from the Government,
and the success of her claims depended on the decision of the prime
minister. She therefore used her utmost tact with Mazarin, negotiating
at the same time with him, as well as with the Old and the New Fronde.
She turned to her own profit the influence that her connections at
Court, with the Coadjutor, and with the Princes gave her in all the
several factions. She was assisted in her intrigues by the Marquis de
Laignes, a man of courage but little intellect, who, from the time of
her exile at Brussels, had declared himself her lover in order to gain
importance in the faction of the Fronde, which he had embraced. As
little more of the attractions of her youth were left to Madame de
Chevreuse, save their pristine celebrity, she had not always to
congratulate herself upon the good humour and behaviour of De Laignes.
The latter had been until then wholly devoted to the Coadjutor; but De
Retz soon perceived that De Laignes entered into projects different from
his own. At length, to have some one who could be responsible to him
for Madame de Chevreuse, he endeavoured to substitute Hacqueville as a
go-between in the place of De Laignes. Hacqueville was the intimate
friend of De Retz and also of Madame de Sevigne; and seconded by Madame
de Chevreuse and Madame de Rhodes, De Retz might have succeeded in the
expulsion of Laignes, if Hacqueville would have consented to that
project. No man could be more obliging than Hacqueville; but,
notwithstanding the disposition he showed to be useful to his friends,
he shrank from such continual immolation of himself. Probably also he
was too honest a man to lend himself to such a procedure.
Madame de Sevigne,--in every way qualified to play a distinguished part
in the exciting game of politics,--was so entirely devoted to her
husband and children as to be a stranger to all these intrigues; but she
was more or less connected with the persons who seconded the Coadjutor's
projects, and consequently with the Duchess de Chevreuse. An article in
the "Muse Historique" of Loret shows how intimate was the connection of
Madame de Sevigne with that Duchess. In the month of July, 1850, on
returning from a promenade in the Cours, then the fashionable drive
among the highest society, the Marquis and Marchioness de Sevigne gave a
splendid supper to the Duchess de Chevreuse. The noisy manner in which
the Frondeurs expressed their delight made this nocturnal repast almost
assume the character of an orgie; and, for that reason, it became for
awhile the talk of the capital. The rhyming gazetteer thus expresses
himself on the subject:
On fait ici grand' mention
D'une belle collation
Qu'a la Duchesse de Chevreuse
Sevigne, de race frondeuse,
Donna depuis quatre ou cinq jours,
Quand on fut revenue du Cours.
On y vit briller aux chandelles
Des gorges passablement belles;
On y vit nombre de galants;
On y mangea des ortolans;
On chanta des chansons a boire;
On dit cent fois non--oui--non, voire.
La Fronde, dit-on, y claqua;
Un plat d'argent on escroqua;
On repandit quelque potage,
Et je n'en sais pas davantage.[1]
[1] Loret, Muse Historique, liv. i., p. 28, Letter 10.
It will be seen from these details, that already the manners and customs
of the great world reflected the licence of the civil wars, and that
they no longer resembled those of which the Hotel de Rambouillet still
presented a purer model. It may be possible also that there was some
exaggeration in Loret's description: he belonged to the Court party,
received a pension of two hundred crowns from Mazarin, and detested the
Fronde. His rhyming gazette was addressed to his protectress,
Mademoiselle de Longueville, so much the more opposed to the Fronde that
her stepmother was the heroine of that faction. Mademoiselle de
Longueville, whose harsh strictures upon the Conde family have been
cited, and who subsequently became the wife of the Duke de Nemours, is
often mentioned in the writings of her time, although she was never
mixed up in any political intrigue, nor took part in any event. Her
immense fortune, the clearness of her judgment, the elevation of her
sentiments, her grand airs, the severe dignity of her manners, and the
energy of her character, constituted her during the Regency and the
long reign of Louis XIV. a personage quite apart; who submitted herself
to no influence whatever, social or political, and who no more permitted
that absolute monarch to induce her to vary in her determinations, than
to change the fashion of her external habiliments.
CHAPTER III.
STATE OF PARTIES ON THE LIBERATION OF THE PRINCES--THE CARDS AGAIN
SHUFFLED, AND THE FACE OF THE SITUATION CHANGED.
AT the commencement of 1651 all France clamoured for Conde's liberation.
During the autumn Mazarin had led the Queen and the young King against
Bordeaux, then held by the Princess de Conde, carrying--as usual when
forced to use both means--a sword in one hand and a roll of parchment in
the other. Failing to carry the place with the first, the Cardinal began
to negotiate a treaty of peace, the principal item of which was full
pardon to the citizens, and by others an agreement that the Princess and
her son should retire to Montrond: on these terms the city yielded to
its sovereign. The Cardinal also obtained a victory in the field against
Turenne, who had entered the service of Spain and fired upon the
fleur-de-lis. But with this momentary success of Mazarin's cause rose
his pretensions and demands; and the Fronde, alarmed at his recovered
authority, changed its tactics as its Protean genius De Retz frequently
did his clothes--his cassock for a plumed hat and military cloak. It
demanded the trial or liberation of the prisoners it had helped to send
to Vincennes, without delay, and Mazarin removed them for safe custody
to Havre. It then pronounced sentence of banishment on the obnoxious
minister, and ordered him to quit the kingdom within fifteen days. The
town militia kept watch and ward over the Queen, by the command of the
Coadjutor, and hindered her flight to join the favourite. She could
offer no further resistance to those who now called themselves the
friends of Conde, but who were the very same persons who had fought him
in the field a few months before. Orders were given to set the captives
at liberty. Mazarin himself went to Havre to communicate the news of
their freedom, and was received by them with the contempt that he might
have expected. Conde took leave of the Cardinal with a ringing peal of
laughter, and with joyous acclamations, and bonfires, and firing of
guns, made his triumphal entry into Paris.
Conde was now master of the situation. He found himself equally courted
by the two other chief parties into which the State was divided--the
Queen's, supported by the Duke de Bouillon, and the now repentant and
pardoned Turenne--and the Fronde, which had fallen into the guidance of
the Duke d'Orleans, the Coadjutor, and the Duchess de Chevreuse. His own
was called "the Prince's," and comprised Rochefoucauld and other
personal friends and military admirers. The Duke d'Orleans had gone on
before to meet Conde as far as the plain of St. Denis, accompanied by
the two most conspicuous representatives of the Fronde, the Duke de
Beaufort and Retz, with the Coadjutor of Paris, and there they all
warmly embraced. The Duke, having taken the Prince into his carriage,
brought him in great pomp to the Palais Royal to salute the Queen Regent
and the young King, and thence to the Palais d'Orleans, where he was
feasted magnificently. Some days afterwards (February 25th) a royal
ordonnance recognised the innocence of the Princes Conde, Conti, and
the Duke de Longueville, and reinstated them in all their posts and
governments. On the 27th this ordonnance was confirmed in Parliament
amidst loud cheers. Conde thus found himself at the highest degree of
power to which a subject could reach. Misfortune had enhanced his
military glory; a long captivity, endured with an unalterable serenity
and high-hearted gaiety, had carried his popularity to the highest
pitch. He was the victor, and, as it were, the designated heir, of
Mazarin, who had fled before him, and with difficulty found a refuge
without the kingdom, on the banks of the Rhine.
Thus, Anne of Austria in some sort a prisoner, and Mazarin proscribed,
the nobility showed itself entirely devoted to the young hero whom it
recognized as its chief. Some among them at once proposed that the Queen
Mother should be confined in the Val-de-Grace, and that the Prince
should himself assume the Regency, others talked even of raising him to
the throne, but Conde did not fail to perceive that his newly acquired
power was not so solid as it was sought to make him believe.
Meanwhile, Mazarin having quitted Havre, and the inhabitants of
Abbeville refusing him passage through their town, he found an asylum
for a few days at Dourlens; but he was soon driven thence by the
proceedings of the Parliament against him. He then retired to Sedan,
where he took counsel with his friend Fabert, whom he had appointed
Commandant there. He next proceeded to Cologne, being treated with the
utmost distinction and hospitality in all the foreign towns through
which he passed.
Even in banishment, however, the old influence began to work. The
Cardinal from his place of retirement governed the Queen with as
absolute a sway as ever, and recommended her, as a keen stroke of
policy which would neutralize all parties, to take the young King to a
_Bed of Justice_, and cause him to declare his majority. Couriers were
going daily between Paris and Cologne; treaties between the Fronde and
Mazarin were intercepted or forged, and published in the capital; the
post of Prime Minister remained unfilled, and the Duke de Mercoeur,
notwithstanding all the thunders of Parliament, set out for Bruhl, with
the purpose of marrying Mazarin's niece. Everything announced that the
exile of that hated minister was but temporary, and Conde, perceiving
the object of all these moves, prepared for war, and silently took his
measures accordingly.
The nobility, who, from the beginning of February, had begun to assemble
in order to take part in the expulsion of Mazarin, now held their
meetings in the monastery hall of the Cordeliers, where might be seen
collected together as many as _eight hundred_ princes, dukes, and
noblemen, heads of the most considerable houses in France, all partisans
of Conde. As this numerical strength of the ennobled classes, together
with the multiplicity of titles among them, is somewhat startling to a
youthful English student, it may be well to remark that France had, in
fact, three aristocracies in the course of her annals from the Crusades
to the reign of Louis XIV. After the time of Louis XI., the
representatives of the _first_, or old feudal aristocracy, the
descendants of the men who were in reality the King's peers, and not his
actual subjects, were few and far between. These were the holders of
vast principalities, who maintained a kind of royal state in their own
possessions, and kept high courts of judicature over life and limb in
the whole extent of their hereditary fiefs. In the long English wars,
from Crecy to Agincourt, the great body of them disappeared, and only
here and there a great vassal was to be seen, distinguished in nothing
from the other nobles, except in the loftiness of his titles and the
reverence that still clung to the sound of his historic name. The
_second_ aristocracy arose among the descendants of the survivors of the
English and Italian wars. They claimed their rank, not as coming down to
them from the tenure of almost independent counties and dukedoms, but as
proprietors of ancestral lands, to which originally subordinate rights
and duties had been attached. Mixed with those, we saw the Noblesse of
the Robe, as the great law officers were called, who constituted a
parallel but not identical nobility with their lay competitors. The
_third_ aristocracy was now about to make its appearance, the creation
of Court favour, and badge of personal or official service--possessors
of a nominal rank without any corresponding duty--a body selected for
ornament, and not for use--and incorporating with itself, not only the
marquis and viscount, fresh from the mint of the minister or favourite,
but the highest names in France.
The aristocracy of the sword, and of ancient birth, had itself to blame
for this degradation. Great alterations in manners or government--such
as give a new character to human affairs--always seem brought about by
some strange relaxation of morals, or atrocity of conduct, which makes
society anxious for the change. The unfortunate custom in France which
gave every male member of a noble family a title equivalent to that of
its chief, so that a simple viscount with ten stalwart and penniless
sons gave ten stalwart and penniless viscounts to the aristocracy of his
country, had filled the whole land with a race of men proud of their
origin, filled with reckless courage, careless of life, and despising
all honest means of employment by which their fortunes might have been
improved. Mounted on a sorry steed and begirt with a sword of good
steel, the young cavalier took his way from the miserable castle on a
rock, where his noble father tried in vain to keep up the appearance of
daily dinners, and wondered how in the world all his remaining sons and
daughters were to be clothed and fed, and made his way to Paris. There
he pushed his fortune--fighting, bullying, gambling, and was probably
stabbed by some drunken companion and flung into the Seine. If he was
lucky or adroit enough, he stabbed his drunken friend and pushed _him_
into the stream; and, after a few months of suing and importunity,
obtained a saddle in the King's Guards, or a pair of boots in the
Musqueteers. At this time it came out that in twenty years of the reign
of Louis XIII. there had been eight thousand fatal duels in different
parts of the realm. Out of the duels which were daily carried on, four
hundred in each year had ended in the death of one of the combatants.
When the fiercest of English wars is shaking every heart in the kingdom,
there would be wailing and misery in every house if it were reported
that four hundred officers had been killed in a year. Yet these young
desperadoes were all of officer's rank, and the quarrel in which they
fell was probably either dishonourable or contemptible. Men fought and
killed each other for a word or a look, or a fashion of dress, or the
mere sake of killing. Where morality is loosened to the extent of a
disregard of life, we may be sure the general behaviour in other
respects is equally to be deplored. There was great and almost universal
depravity in the conduct of high and low. Vice and sensuality found
refuge and protection even in the presence of princesses and queens.
People residing in remote places heard only of the gorgeous licence in
which the great and powerful lived. They knew them only during their
visits to their ancestral homes as worn-out debauchees from the great
city, who brought the profligacy of the purlieus of the Louvre into the
peaceful cottages of the peasantry on their estates. It was, indeed, so
much the fashion to be wicked, that a gentleman was hindered from the
practice of his Christian or social duties by the fear of ridicule. The
life of man, therefore, and the honour of woman were held equally cheap;
and the blinded, rash, and self-indulgent nobility laid the foundation,
in contempt of the feelings of its inferiors and neglect of their
interests, for the terrible retribution which even now at intervals
might be seen ready to take its course.
CHAPTER 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.
WE must now revert to Conde's heroic sister. Having glanced somewhat
hastily at the brilliant part played by Madame de Longueville in the two
first epochs of the Fronde, the war of Paris and that which illuminated
the prison of Conde, we are now about to follow her through the third
and last period, which commences from the deliverance of the Princes, in
February, 1651, and only ends with the war of Guienne, in August,
1653;--the longest, the most disastrous, and at the same time most
obscure epoch of the civil war. It will be necessary to strip the mask
from more than one illustrious actor in it, exhibit the reverse of the
most showy medals, and the shadows which everywhere mingle with glory,
genius, and even virtue itself. The character of the Duchess de
Longueville has its charming, its sublime aspects; but, alas! it is far
from being irreproachable. In dwelling upon the least favourable portion
of her life, we shall often do well to remember that the errors of great
minds sometimes subserve their perfection, by the beneficent virtue of
the remorse to which they give rise, and that the sister of the Great
Conde must probably have felt in all its fulness the vanity of ambition
and of false grandeur, all the bitterness of guilty passions, in taking
an early farewell of them, to resume the austere path of duty, to
return, in fine, to Carmel and ascend to Port Royal.
Madame de Longueville had remained at Stenay with Turenne for some time
after her brother's and husband's liberation, both occupied in
disengaging themselves from the engagements which they had contracted
with Spain for the deliverance of the Princes, and with negotiating a
truce calculated to clear the way for the much-desired general peace.
Recalled by the pressing instances of her family, she had quitted Stenay
on the 7th of March, before the completion of her work. On arriving in
Paris "universal applause greeted her heroic deeds." Monsieur had
hastened to pay her a visit with Mademoiselle Montpensier, and a train
of ladies of the highest distinction. She went afterwards that same day
to present her homage to their Majesties, from whom she met with the
most gracious reception. That moment was, unquestionably, the most
brilliant of her whole career. In 1647, after the embassy to Munster,
her return to France and its Court had been also a veritable triumph, as
we have attempted to show; but the power of her house and the glory of
her brother constituted nearly all the merits of it. She only
contributed thereto the influence of her wit and beauty. After Stenay,
the _eclat_ which surrounded her was in some sort more personal. She had
just displayed eminent qualities which raised her almost to the level of
Conde. In Normandy she had exhibited herself as an intrepid adventuress,
and a skilful politician in the Low Countries. When, during the
imprisonment of her two brothers and her husband, her sister-in-law, the
Princess de Conde, had been forced at Bordeaux to recognize the royal
authority, she discovered that the destinies of her house had devolved
upon her. She had become the head of a great party. She had treated as
from power to power with Spain; her word had appeared a sufficient
guarantee to the Archduke Leopold and to the Count de Fuensaldagne. She
had held in hand such commanders as Turenne, La Moussaye, Bouteville;
and when, after the battle of Rethel, she seemed to be on the very verge
of destruction, she had succeeded in recovering the advantage, and in
contributing more than any one else to the deliverance of the Princes,
thanks to the profound negotiations carried on in her name by the
Princess Palatine. Whilst statesmen estimated her capacity, the
multitude admired her courage and constancy. She was, in short, in
possession of that political role with which La Rochefoucauld had
dazzled her gaze in order to conceal his own designs:--a glittering
chimera which, mingling itself with that of love, had seduced that
ardent and haughty soul of hers. She was then the idol of Spain, the
terror of the Court, one of the grandeurs of her family. We shall soon
see whether she can better sustain this new ordeal than she did the
first, at the close of the year 1647.
The Fronde gathered the fruit of its skilful conduct during the month of
January, 1651. It was that faction which, silencing its old animosities
and promptly extending its hand to the partisans of Conde, had
extricated him from prison, in order to acquire and place at its head,
together with the King's uncle, the lieutenant-general of the Kingdom,
the first prince of the blood, the victor of Rocroi and Lens, the hero
of the age. It carried everything before it--at Court, in parliament,
upon the public places; it had proscribed and put to flight Mazarin; it
held Anne of Austria a captive in her palace; already even it had
penetrated into the cabinet in the person of the aged Chateauneuf, in
whom ambition cherished beneath the snows of winter the vigour of youth,
and whose capacity was scarcely inferior to his ambition. The moment had
arrived for accomplishing the work already begun, and for putting into
execution the plan determined upon between the Princess Palatine and
Madame de Chevreuse.
Those two strong-minded women had conceived the idea of a grand
aristocratic league which should seat the Fronde upon an union of all
the interests which it comprised, close the avenues of France and the
Court to Mazarin, and under the auspices of the Duke d'Orleans and the
Prince de Conde form a government into which the friends of both should
enter, the most accredited representatives of every fraction of a party.
Further, the basis of this plan was that of a double marriage: on the
one side between the young Duke d'Enghien and one of the Duke d'Orleans'
daughters, on the other between the Prince de Conti and the daughter of
Madame de Chevreuse.[1] This latter marriage might be accomplished
immediately. Conde had accepted the proposition without any difficulty.
Madame de Longueville, far from opposing it at Stenay, had embraced the
idea of it with so much ardour that, in a letter to the Palatine of the
26th of November, 1650, after having weighed the different resolutions
to be taken, she stops at this latter, and concludes thus: "_this,
therefore, is what we must stick to_." That marriage was, in short, of a
supreme importance: it gave the house of Conde to the Fronde for ever,
and the Fronde to the house of Conde; for the Fronde was then Madame de
Chevreuse. She disposed, by her daughter, of the Coadjutor, who in his
turn disposed of the Duke d'Orleans, and by him of the parliament. It
was Madame de Chevreuse who, in 1650, had emboldened Mazarin to lay his
hand upon Conde, in making him see that he might strike that bold stroke
with impunity, since she answered to him for the secret connivance of
the Duke d'Orleans and the parliament, who were alone able to oppose it.
Here, Mazarin had committed an immense blunder: seeing himself delivered
from Conde, by the aid of the Fronde, having nothing more hostile to
cope with than the latter, he had imagined himself able to turn round
upon it, and had treated Madame de Chevreuse very cavalierly, who,
growing cold towards the Cardinal, and no longer finding it to her
account to serve him, had lent an ear to the propositions of Conde's
friends, and had procured his release from prison, reconciling to him
the Duke d'Orleans and the parliament, which at first she had stirred up
against him. She brought, moreover, to the house of Conde the most
politic mind of the Fronde, an audacity towering to the height of his
designs, a consummate experience, with the support of her three powerful
families, the houses of de Rohan, de Luynes, and Lorraine. She rendered
sure the alliance of the Duke d'Orleans and the Prince de Conde, and
completed the ruin of Mazarin by constructing a strong government which
probably might have succeeded ultimately in triumphing over the
affection of the Queen. She held in hand a statesman bred in the school
of Richelieu, and whom she judged capable of replacing Mazarin, the
former Keeper of the Seals--Chateauneuf, already a member of the
Cabinet. She believed herself certain of acquiring De Retz by means of
the Cardinal's hat. She had not the least objection to make to the
elevation of the friends of Conde, and she was ready to favour the
ambition of La Rochefoucauld, for whom formerly, in 1643, she had so
greatly importuned the Queen and Mazarin. Add to all this, that on
quitting the citadel of Havre, the young Prince de Conti had not beheld
the lovely Charlotte de Lorraine without being smitten with her charms,
and he himself strongly desired that marriage. Who, then, prevented it?
Who broke off the contracted engagement? Who struck at and wounded by
the self-same blow the Palatine and Madame de Chevreuse? Who restored
them both and for ever to the Queen and Mazarin? Who destroyed the
Fronde by dividing it? We shall find out by-and-by, but let us merely
say just now that it was the rupture of that marriage which again
shuffled the cards and changed the face of the situation. In pitting
against himself those who had so powerfully succoured him in his
misfortune, Conde ought at least to have drawn closer to the Court and
had a serious understanding with the Queen; but he tergiversated, and at
the end of some months of that wavering policy, he found himself
standing unmasked between the Court and the Fronde, both equally
discontented with him, repeating and exaggerating the blunder committed
by Mazarin. The greatest error during the course of a revolution is to
believe that the support of either of the parties who are in actual
collision may be dispensed with. At the close of a revolution the
attempt to dominate may be tried; during the crisis a choice must be
made. Mazarin had fallen through having tried to dominate the Fronde and
Conde at one and the same time; Conde lost himself in thinking to
dominate the Fronde and the Court.
[1] Retz himself has taken care to inform us of his sad _liaison_
with Mademoiselle de Chevreuse, throughout the whole of the second
volume and beginning of the third of his Memoirs. Amsterdam edition,
1731. That unfortunate lady died suddenly of a fever, unmarried, in
1652. She was born in 1627.
It is an historical problem very difficult to solve, as to who was the
author of the rupture of the marriage projected between the Prince de
Conti and Mademoiselle de Chevreuse. We are well inclined to believe
that that individual at any rate was the chief author of the rupture to
whom it was the most profitable. The Queen and Mazarin, who from his
place of retirement governed her with as absolute a sway as ever, saw
from the first the danger which threatened them from such an alliance,
entirely unexpected as it was by both. The negotiations between Madame
de Chevreuse, while Conde was prisoner, and Madame de Longueville at
Stenay, had been conducted by the Palatine with such consummate skill
and perfect secrecy that neither the Queen nor Mazarin had the slightest
suspicion of them. When the rumour reached the ears of the Cardinal in
his retreat at Bruhl, near Cologne, he broke out against Madame de
Chevreuse with a violence the coarseness of which even was an
involuntary homage rendered to the profound ability of Marie de Rohan.
The Queen showed herself warmly opposed to it, and the ministers were
ordered to thwart in every way the projected alliance. They began,
therefore, to negotiate with Conde. As a result of these negotiations he
obtained in exchange for his government of Burgundy that of Guienne, one
of far greater importance; he was even led to indulge a hope that
Provence would be given to the Prince de Conti instead of Champagne and
La Brie, and the port and fortress of Blaye to La Rochefoucauld in
augmentation of his government of Poitou, although there was not the
slightest intention of fulfilling that hope. So states the Duchess de
Nemours, the enemy of the Fronde and the Condes, and who, having given
herself to the Court party, must have well known its intentions. De Retz
likewise doubts not that the Queen combated an alliance so evidently
opposed to her interests. Madame de Motteville, the Queen's close
friend, avows it. In short, it is certain, and we have hereupon the
irrefragable testimony of Madame de Motteville, that when the Queen had
succeeded in gaining over Conde, she caused Madame de Chevreuse to be
informed "that she desired that such marriage should not take place,
because it had been concerted for objects inimical to the royal
interests. This command was the cause of all these propositions falling
through and that they were no more spoken of."
But how did the Queen gain over Conde, and what part did Madame de
Longueville play in the affair? That is certainly what neither De Retz
could know, who was only aware of what passed in parliament, in the
Palais d'Orleans, and the Hotel de Chevreuse; nor the Duchess de Nemours
and Madame de Motteville, who were not in the confidence of the Hotel de
Conde: they could only repeat hereupon what they had heard said in the
Court circle, and they must be considered solely as the echoes of
reports which it suited the Queen to spread. That is so probable that
the one and the other, differing so widely as they did both in intention
and feeling, tell exactly the same tale. Madame de Motteville states
positively that Madame de Longueville, as soon as she returned from
Stenay, advised Conde to break with the Chevreuses, and that La
Rochefoucauld supported her in such design; and these are the motives
which she attributes to her:--"Madame de Longueville, who had been long
jealous of the beauty and graces of Mademoiselle de Chevreuse, could
little bear to contemplate the probability of her being raised to a rank
even more elevated than her own, and still less, that she should obtain
the great influence which such a person was likely to acquire over both
her princely brothers. She had, therefore, exerted all her influence
over Conde, and with him had been quite successful. But Conti was still
in the height of his passion for the beautiful and fascinating girl who
had been promised to him during his imprisonment; he supped every
evening at the Hotel de Chevreuse, and his affections, as well as his
honour, were fully engaged." The Duchess de Nemours says the same thing
in the same terms.
Confidant and adviser of Madame de Longueville and of Conde, La
Rochefoucauld alone knew the whole truth, and could have told it to
posterity; but it was not to tell the truth that his memoirs were
penned, only too frequently to conceal it, to set in strong relief that
which had been well done, and slur over that which had been badly done,
or to cast the blame of it upon others. Attentive to the study of his
part, and to never accept a bad one, La Rochefoucauld says truly that
the Frondeurs, eagerly pressing forwards the marriage of the Prince de
Conti with Mademoiselle de Chevreuse, and seeing it retarded, "suspected
Madame de Longueville and the Duke de la Rochefoucauld of a design to
break it off, for fear that the Prince de Conti should escape from their
hands only to fall into those of Madame de Chevreuse and of the
Coadjutor;" but he endeavours to give a reason for these suspicions, and
to inform us whether they were well or ill founded. Instead of defending
himself, and Madame de Longueville, he accuses Conde of having "adroitly
increased the suspicions of the Frondeurs against his sister and La
Rochefoucauld, firmly believing that so long as they held that belief,
they would never discover the true cause of the postponement of the
marriage." And what was that true cause? Here it is, according to La
Rochefoucauld: it was that the Prince de Conde "not having as yet
either concluded or broken off his treaty with the Queen, and having
been informed that the keeper of the seals--Chateauneuf--was about to be
dismissed, wished to await that event to conclude the marriage, if
Cardinal Mazarin were ruined by M. de Chateauneuf, or to break it off
and make through that his court to the Queen, should M. de Chateauneuf
be driven away by the Cardinal."
This interpretation of Conde's conduct does not do him great honour, but
it is a very probable one. In the first place, if La Rochefoucauld knew
how to glide so cleverly over all the ticklish points in which he could
not appear to advantage, he did not, strictly speaking, tell lies; he
retires rather than attacks, unless hurried away by passion, and he was
never in a passion with Conde. And, further, the conduct which he
attributes to Conde springs quite naturally out of the false position in
which Conde had, by degrees, suffered himself to be placed.
Altogether, we are persuaded that Conde was then sincere. His sole
error, and it is that which marked his entire conduct during the Fronde,
was the not having had, either on this occasion or any other, a fixed
and unalterable object. On the 13th of April the Queen took the seals
from Madame de Chevreuse's friend, Chateauneuf, the representative of
the Fronde in the Cabinet, to give them to the gravest person of his
time, the first president, Mathieu Mole, a worthy servant of the State,
very little friendly to the Fronde, and who then was sufficiently
favourable towards the Prince de Conde. That same day she recalled to
the Council as Secretary of State the Count de Chavigny, who had been
formerly minister for Foreign Affairs under Richelieu. Formed in the
school of the great Cardinal, as well as Mazarin, ousted from place,
crafty and resolute, feeling himself capable of bearing the weight of a
ministry, Chavigny had beheld with a sufficiently ominous countenance,
after the death of their common master, the sudden elevation of a
colleague who had even begun by being his dependent. Since 1643, vanity
had turned him aside from the high road of ambition, and he had
entangled himself in the brakes of very complicated intrigues. In 1651,
he passed as the friend of Conde. It was then only, if we can believe La
Rochefoucauld, that Conde declared himself opposed to the marriage of
his youthful brother with Mademoiselle de Chevreuse; and it was time
that he opposed it, for that marriage was on the eve of accomplishment.
Conti gave proof of the most ardent passion for Mademoiselle de
Chevreuse; he paid her a thousand attentions which he hid from his
friends, and particularly from his sister, for whom he ever professed to
entertain an undivided adoration. He held long conferences with the
Marquis de Laigues and other intimate friends of Mademoiselle de
Chevreuse; it was even feared lest he should marry her without the
necessary dispensations and without the participation of the head of his
family. Conde, therefore, decided to act at once, and the reputation of
the fair lady afforded him a means of attack which he employed with
success upon his brother. He seems to have had no great difficulty in
attaining his object. The Prince de Conti soon received proof that she
was not by any means so immaculate as he had believed: her scarcely
doubtful connection with the Coadjutor was placed in its true light,
and, convinced that the object of his passion was unworthy the love of a
man of honour, he began to look upon her with horror. He even blamed
Madame de Longueville and the Duke de la Rochefoucauld for not having
warned him sooner of what was said of her in society. From that moment
means of breaking off the affair without acrimony were sought; but
the interests involved were too great, and the circumstances too piquant
not to renew and augment still more the old hatred of Madame de
Chevreuse and the Frondeurs against the Prince de Conde, and against
those whom they suspected of taking part in that which had just been
done.[2]
[2] La Rochefoucauld, p. 69. Retz, tom, ii., p. 223.
This testimony would justify Madame de Longueville and La Rochefoucauld
himself for having urged Conde upon that disloyal and impolitic rupture,
if one could believe it to be entirely sincere; but it is very difficult
to admit that Madame de Longueville and her all-powerful adviser could
have remained strangers to a determination so important, and there are
many doubts and obscurities resting upon this delicate point. De Retz,
whose introspect was so penetrating, and who does not pride himself on
any great reserve in his judgments, knew not what opinion to
form--Conde, Madame de Longueville, and La Rochefoucauld having
afterwards assured him that they had had nothing to do with the rupture
of the marriage.
But whose soever was the hand that broke off the projected alliance of
the Condes with Madame de Chevreuse, it is beyond doubt that that had
lost Conde and saved Mazarin. All the errors which followed were derived
from that cardinal one. In it must be discerned the first link of that
chain of disastrous events which ended by dragging Conde into civil war.
The resentment of Madame de Chevreuse may well be imagined, when she
discovered that she had been tricked, that she had separated herself
from Mazarin and the Queen, and had drawn Conde out of prison only to
receive in exchange such an unpardonable outrage! Already, even a short
time before, when the Queen ousted Chateauneuf without consulting the
Duke d'Orleans, the wrath of the Frondeurs had been such, that at a
council held at the Palais d'Orleans of the whole party, it was proposed
to go, on the part of the lieutenant-general, and demand back the seals
from Mathieu Mole. The most violent expedients were suggested, and some
among the more hot-headed spoke of seizing their arms and descending
into the streets. Conde, who had not yet entirely broken with the
Frondeurs, and was present at this council with a few of his friends,
threw cold water upon every proposal that was made, and energetically
opposed the appeal to arms, declaring that he did not understand waging
"a war of paving-stones and _pots de chambre_," and that he felt himself
too much of a coward for such a campaign as that.
After some time passed in sharp discussion, the Duke retired into the
apartments of his wife with De Retz, and there a brief consultation
ensued, in which the Duchess d'Orleans, Madame de Chevreuse, and the
Coadjutor endeavoured to persuade him to arrest the leaders of the
opposite party, and rouse the people to insurrection. The Duke d'Orleans
was in some degree moved; Conde, Conti, and the Duke de Beaufort and
others, had retired into the library, and Mademoiselle de Chevreuse,
springing towards the door, exclaimed, "Nothing is wanting but a turn of
the key! It would be a fine thing indeed for a girl to arrest a winner
of battles!"
The impetuosity of Mademoiselle de Chevreuse, however, alarmed the timid
Duke d'Orleans. Had he been brought to it by degrees, he might have
consented to the act; but her movement towards the door startled him,
and he began to whistle,--which, as De Retz observes, was never a good
sign. Then declaring that he would consider of the matter till the next
morning, he walked quietly into the library, and suffered the guests to
depart in peace whom he had been so sorely tempted to make prisoners.
At the same time in the parliament all the violent measures taken
against Mazarin were renewed: he was banished and rebanished, with
confiscation of his possessions, and even his books and pictures were
ordered to be sold. A decree had already been passed declaring all
foreign cardinals incapable of serving in France, and of entering into
the ministry. They did not stop there, and certain councillors who were
not in the secrets of the party, and obeying only their passion,
proposed to exclude from the ministry even the French cardinals as being
still too dependent upon Rome. This sweeping motion was carried amid
loud cheers, which resounded through all parts of the hall. Whereupon
Conde laughingly remarked: "There's a fine echo." That same echo was the
ruin of De Retz's hopes, who only so passionately desired to become a
cardinal in order to succeed to Mazarin. Shortly afterwards the division
between Conde and the Old Fronde was declared, and Conde applied himself
to form an intermediate party, a new Fronde, which became sufficiently
powerful to disquiet Madame de Chevreuse and the Coadjutor.[3]
"Imagine," says the latter, "what the royal authority purged of
Mazarinism would have been, and the party of the Prince de Conde purged
of faction! More than all, what surety was there in M. the Duke
d'Orleans!"
[3] De Retz, tom, ii., p. 205.
[4] The same, p. 214.
But De Retz was not the only politician who terrified himself with the
idea of such a future looming thus darkly for France. Mazarin dreaded
it as much as he. His authority was almost universally thought to be for
ever annihilated; but a small number of courtiers who could read the
Queen's heart, judged otherwise, and owed to the skilful line of conduct
to which they adhered under these circumstances the high fortune to
which they attained in the sequel.
There is little doubt that, in the first instance, Conde might have
carried off the Regency from the Queen, deprived as she was of her prime
minister, and by her own acknowledgment incapable of governing by
herself; but then the direction of affairs belonged by right to the Duke
d'Orleans, of whom Conde was jealous. Conde, however, preferred to keep
the Regency in the Queen's hands, and by rendering himself formidable to
the Government, forcing it to reckon with him. If that union of the
Princes between themselves and the Fronde faction had subsisted, the
re-establishment of the royal authority would have been impossible: and
the commencement of the reign of Louis the Fourteenth, who, although he
had only completed his thirteenth year, was about, by the force of an
exceptional law, to be declared of age, would have offered the
spectacle, so frequent in French annals,[5] of a state a prey to the
divulsion of factions and the horrors of anarchy.
[5] Retz--La Rochefoucauld--Joly.
But for the happiness of France and the Queen-Regent, Conde was as
unskilful in politics as he was great in war. He kept none of the
promises he had made to the chiefs of the Fronde, the authors of his
deliverance. The marriage of the Prince de Conti and Mademoiselle de
Chevreuse, which had been the base of the treaty, and involved other
engagements, was, as we have seen, remorselessly broken off. The Queen
Regent, in order to succeed in bringing back her favourite minister to
power, had the tact to conceal his advances, and therefore chose in the
first instance to replace him by Chavigny, who was his personal enemy.
Then she negotiated with all parties, and skilfully opposed the Fronde
to the Prince de Conde, the latter to the Duke d'Orleans, the parliament
to the assembly of the nobles, the aversion to Mazarin to the fear which
the Coadjutor inspired. Her ministers, whom she abused, had only the
semblance of power; all that was real was possessed by Mazarin. From
Bruhl, his place of exile, he governed France; the Queen adopted no
resolution without its having been inspired by him, or met with his
approval. Thus hidden by the Regent's mantle, the Cardinal followed with
vigilant eye the quarrels of the Prince de Conde and the Frondeurs,
fomenting them and inflaming them by every means at his disposal,
prodigalising to Conde promises which must in the highest degree have
alarmed the Fronde, and entangling him daily more and more in the meshes
of intricate, tortuous negotiations, until he had seen the separation,
for which he manoeuvred, irremediably consummated. Then he stopped,
and began insensibly even to fall back. The placing of Provence in the
Prince de Conti's hands was deferred; and in fact it was held in reserve
for the Duke de Mercoeur, the eldest son of the Duke de Vendome, who
was seeking the hand of one of Mazarin's nieces; and it was also found
inexpedient to deprive the Duke de Saint-Simon of Blaye to give it to La
Rochefoucauld; and a thousand other difficulties of a like nature were
raised, which both astonished and irritated Conde. Since he broke with
the Fronde, it was apparently to unite himself with the Queen, and the
higher his ambition soared, the more necessary it was to cover it with
respect and deference, in order to hasten and secure the treaty on
foot, and to enchain the monarchy with his own fate. But the fiery Conde
was incapable of such a line of conduct. Finding unexpected obstacles
where previously he had met with facilities and hopeful anticipations,
he lost his temper, and resumed the imperious tone which already, in
1649, had embroiled him with the Queen and Mazarin.
It appears also that Madame de Longueville shared in the soaring
illusions of her brother, and that she bore but indifferently well her
newly blown prosperity. Madame de Motteville gives us to understand so
with her usual moderation, and the Duchess de Nemours rejoices to say so
with all the acrimony and doubtless also the exaggeration of hatred.[6]
It must, indeed, be owned, with the heroic instincts of Conde, Madame de
Longueville shared also his haughty spirit. All her contemporaries
ascribe to her an innate majesty which did not show itself on ordinary
occasions; far from it, she was simple, amiable, adding thereto, when
desirous of pleasing, a caressing and irresistible gentleness; but, with
people whom she disliked, she intrenched herself in a frigid dignity,
and Anne of Austria and she had never loved one another. A misplaced
haughtiness towards the Queen is attributed to her. One day, says Madame
de Nemours, she kept her waiting for two or three hours. It is very
doubtful whether Madame de Longueville could have so far forgotten
herself; but it is not impossible that she may have imagined, as well as
her brother, that the fortunes of their house, having emerged more
brilliant than ever from so rude a tempest, had no longer to dread the
recurrence of further ill-omened shocks.
[6] Madame de Motteville, tom. iv., p. 346; Madame de Nemours,
p. 106.
They deceived themselves: an immense peril was hanging over their heads.
Immediately that Madame de Chevreuse had seen that the Queen was growing
colder towards Conde, and did not seem disposed to keep the promises
that had been made him, her keen-sighted animosity instantly determined
her course of action, and being for ever separated from Conde, she again
drew towards the Queen with an offer of her services and those of her
entire party against the common enemy. Mazarin, recognising the error he
had committed in giving himself two enemies at the same time, and that
at that moment the redoubtable individual, the man who at any cost must
be destroyed, was Conde, very quickly forgot his grudges against Madame
de Chevreuse, and advised the acceptance of her propositions. The Queen,
it appears, was very averse to receive De Retz, or avail herself of his
services; she detested him almost as much as she did Conde, well knowing
that they were the two most dangerous enemies of him without whom she
did not believe that she could really reign. Mazarin exhorted her
himself to flatter De Retz's ambition, and, marvellously understanding
each other at a distance--almost as well as when in each other's
presence,--they composed and played out in the most perfect manner a
comedy of which De Retz himself seems to have been the dupe, and of
which Conde was very nearly being the victim.
Madame de Chevreuse has already been depicted both in good and evil, in
her natural intelligence, quickness, keen introspection, and political
genius, in her indomitable courage and audacity, and all that she was
capable of undertaking in order to attain her objects. It will now be
necessary to thoroughly understand De Retz's character, in order to
perceive clearly the peril with which Conde was menaced.
By nature yet more restless than ambitious, a bad priest, impatient of
his condition and having long struggled to emancipate himself from it,
Paul de Gondi had prepared himself for cabals by composing or
translating the life of a celebrated conspirator. Then, passing quickly
from theory to practice, he had entered into one of the most sinister
plots framed against Richelieu, and for his first experiment he had
accepted the task, he, a young abbe, of assassinating the Cardinal at
the altar during the ceremony of Mademoiselle de Montpensier's baptism.
In 1643, he had not hesitated to throw himself into the arms of the
_Importants_; but the title of Coadjutor of Paris, which had just been
conferred upon him as a recompense for the virtues and services of his
father, arrested him. The Fronde seemed created altogether expressly for
him. He shared the parentage of it along with La Rochefoucauld. In vain
in his Memoirs does he studiedly put forward general considerations:
like La Rochefoucauld, he was only working for himself, and at least had
the candour to own it. Compelled to remain in the Church, De Retz
desired to rise in it as high as possible. He aspired to a cardinal's
hat, and soon obtained it, thanks to his inscrutable manoeuvring; but
his supreme object was the post of prime minister, and to reach it, he
played that double game which he so craftily concerted and so skilfully
played out. Seeing that Mazarin and Conde were not heads of a government
which would leave to others acting with them any great share of
importance, he undertook to overthrow them, the one by the other, to
carve out his way between them by them, and to raise upon their ruin the
Duke d'Orleans, under whose name he would govern. To effect this he
incessantly urged alike the Duke, the parliament, and the people, to
demand, as the first condition of any reconciliation with the Court,
the dismissal of Mazarin, and at the same time he, under a mask,
exhibited himself as a benevolent conciliator between royalty and the
Fronde, promising the Queen, the indispensable sacrifice accomplished,
to smooth all difficulties, and to bring over to her the Duke d'Orleans
by separating him from Conde. Such was the real mainspring of all De
Retz's movements--even those seemingly the most contrary: first the
cardinalate, then the premiership under the auspices of the Duke
d'Orleans, associated in some sort with royalty, without Mazarin or
Conde. He was fain to hide his secret under the guise of the public
weal, but that secret revealed itself by the very efforts he made to
conceal it, and it did not escape the penetration of La Rochefoucauld,
his accomplice at the outset of the Fronde, afterwards his adversary,
who had a perfect knowledge of his character, and who had sketched it
with a masterly hand, as De Retz also thoroughly comprehended and
admirably depicted La Rochefoucauld. De Retz was indeed the evil genius
of the Fronde. He always hindered it from progressing whether led by
Mazarin or Conde, because he merely desired to have a weak government
which he could dominate. To arrive at that end, he was capable of
anything--tortuous intrigues, anonymous pamphlets, hypocritical sermons
from the pulpit, studied orations in parliament, popular insurrections
and desperate _coups de main_. Such was the man who, towards the end of
May, 1651, was admitted, much against her will, into the secret councils
of Anne of Austria.
Anything was to be tried, however, which might deliver her from the
exactions of Conde. It was absolutely necessary that she should either
grant his demands, or find some support to enable her to resist them.
She accordingly despatched Marshal du Plessis to speak with De Retz, at
the archbishopric, towards one o'clock in the morning, at which hour he
generally returned from his nocturnal visits to Mademoiselle de
Chevreuse. De Retz was willing to seize the opportunity of avenging
himself upon Conde, and probably judged he might do so without bringing
about the return of Mazarin. He accepted, then, at once the Queen's
invitation, and flung the letter of safe-conduct which she had sent him
into the fire, in order to show his confidence in her promises. The
following night, at twelve o'clock, he was brought into the Queen's
Oratory by a back staircase, and a long conversation ensued between
them. Anne of Austria was very caressing in her manner towards the
Coadjutor, and sought, after winning her way to his confidence, to
embroil him with Chateauneuf, by informing him that it was that friend
of Madame de Chevreuse who was the most opposed to his cardinalate,
because he wanted the hat for himself. It must be remembered that France
at that moment had the appointment of a cardinal at its disposition, and
it had been long promised to the Prince de Conti. Anne of Austria now
offered it to De Retz who, in reply, at the end of a long harangue,
during which the Queen interrupted him impatiently more than once,
assured her that he had not come there to receive favours, but to merit
them.
"What will you do for me, then?" asked the Queen. "What will you do?"
"Madam," replied he, "I will oblige the Prince de Conde to quit Paris
ere eight days are over, and will carry off the Duke d'Orleans from him
before to-morrow night."
The Queen, transported with joy, extended her hand to him saying--"Give
me your hand on that, and the day after to-morrow you are a cardinal,
and moreover the second amongst my friends."
A few days afterwards, De Retz and Madame de Chevreuse had raised the
entire Fronde against the Prince de Conde. The worthy archbishop had
announced his approach to the enemy he was about to attack by a cloud of
the same kind of libels, satires, and epigrams, which he had always
found so efficacious in prejudicing the people of Paris against any one
whom he thought fit to hold forth to popular odium. At the same time a
multitude of criers and hawkers were sent through the town, spreading,
at the very lowest price, all the sarcasms which had been composed at
the archbishopric in the morning, to render the conduct of Conde
ridiculous, contemptible, and hateful in the eyes of the multitude.
At length, when the Coadjutor believed that everything had been
sufficiently prepared, he made the Palatine write to inform the Queen
that he was about to go to the parliament. Mademoiselle de Chevreuse was
with the Regent at the time she received this intimation; and the
delight which it occasioned was so great that the virtuous and pious
Anne of Austria caught the archbishop's mistress in her arms, and kissed
her more than once, exclaiming, with no very great regard for decorum,
"You rogue! you are now doing me as much good as you have hitherto done
me harm."
De Retz kept his word, and went to the parliament, but the progress
against Conde was so slow that Mazarin, the Queen, and De Retz, began to
revolve more summary measures, and, towards the latter part of June,
their deliberations ended in a sinister project of again arresting or of
assassinating Conde.
This obscure affair, as yet only partially unveiled, and which probably
will never be so entirely, is not so dark and impenetrable, however, as
to prevent us from seeing, within the shadow thereof, fearful and
criminal purposes, to which even the more open vices of the age are
comparatively light. We are told by De Retz that the Marshal de
Hocquincourt, with more frankness than the rest, proposed in direct
terms to assassinate Conde. The Coadjutor himself, however, Madame de
Chevreuse, and other leaders of the Fronde, but above all Senneterre,
who had about this time obtained a great share of the Queen's
confidence, opposed not only the bold crime proposed at first by
Hocquincourt, but also all the schemes which he and others afterwards
suggested, and which, though apparently more mild, were all likely to
end in the same event.
Rumours of what was meditated soon reached the Prince's ears, who then
saw clearly the nature of his position. He perceived that he had
quarrelled thoroughly and for ever with the Frondeurs and with the
Queen, and that henceforth he was placed between imprisonment and
assassination. He felt certain that this time, should he fall into the
hands of his enemies, he would be treated far more harshly than in 1650,
and that probably he might never see the light again. He despised death,
but the idea of perpetual incarceration was insupportable to him, and
that idea fastening itself by degrees on his mind caused projects to
enter into it which until then had only momentarily crossed it.
Too high-minded to quit Paris as though he were terrified, Conde
exhibited no change in his conduct; merely confining himself to no
longer visiting the Palais-Royal or the Palais d'Orleans, and never
going abroad without a numerous escort of officers and retainers.
Already for some time past foreseeing the storm that was gathering
against him, he had taken serious measures to confront it: he had
strengthened all the fortresses that were in his hands. He had
despatched to Flanders the Marquis de Sillery, La Rochefoucauld's
brother-in-law, under pretext of finally disengaging Madame de
Longueville and Turenne from the treaties they had made with the
Spaniards in 1650, with secret instructions to renew them, and to
ascertain how far he might reckon on the assistance of Spain if he were
compelled to draw the sword. The Count de Fuensaldagne did not fail,
agreeable to the policy of his court, to promise much more than was
asked of him, and he omitted nothing calculated to stir up Conde to have
recourse to arms.
Chance had a share in urging Conde to take a further and almost decisive
step in the dangerous path that was opening before him. One evening,
just as he had lain down on his bed and was chatting with Vineuil, one
of his trusty friends, the latter received a note which directed him to
warn the Prince that two companies of guards were advancing on the side
of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. It was thought that those troops were
about to invest the hotel. Conde jumped out of bed, dressed himself,
mounted his horse instantly, and, accompanied by a few attendants, took
his way through the faubourg Saint-Michel. On gaining the high road, he
heard the clatter of a somewhat strong body of horsemen approaching, and
thinking that it was the squadron in search of him, he fell back at
first in the direction of Meudon; then, instead of re-entering Paris,
when day broke he sought an asylum in his chateau of Saint-Maur. He
reached it on the morning of the 6th of July; and it may readily be
guessed what the effect, in Paris and throughout the kingdom, of such a
retreat was, and for such motives. The Princess de Conde, the Prince de
Conti, Madame de Longueville, La Rochefoucauld, the Duke de Nemours,
the Duke de Richelieu, the Prince's most intimate friends, and more than
one illustrious personage, such as the Duke de Bouillon and Turenne,
repaired immediately to Saint-Maur. In a day or two, Conde saw himself
surrounded by a court as brilliant and as numerous as that of the King,
and there he kept up a right royal festivity. After a while he sent a
considerable number of officers disguised into Paris, who bestirred
themselves in every quarter in his favour; and when he considered
himself in a position to hold his own against both the Queen and the
Frondeurs together, he quitted Saint-Maur and returned to his hotel near
the Palais d'Orleans, desiring to put a good complexion on the aspect of
his affairs and to impose upon his enemies by that bold and high-minded
conduct.[7] He appeared again also in the parliament, now once more
become the battle-field of parties. De Retz, full of his own individual
hatred, augmented by that of Madame de Chevreuse, seconded at once by
the friends of the Duke d'Orleans and by those of the Queen, burning to
tear from the Court and win, by serving it, the cardinal's hat, the
object of his ardent desires, the necessary stepping-stone to his
ambition, brought all his courage and vanity towards enacting the part
of the Prince's enemy. And there, during the months of July and August,
in that pretended sanctuary of law and justice, passed all those
deplorable scenes which De Retz and La Rochefoucauld have related, and
in which Mazarin, from his retreat on the banks of the Rhine, rejoiced
to see his two enemies waste their strength, and work unwittingly but
surely their common ruin and his approaching triumph.
[7] La Rochefoucauld, p. 83.
A crisis was clearly inevitable. Conde could no longer perceive any
sign of a pacific issue from the position in which he had been placed,
or rather in which he had placed himself, and at his right hand stood
Madame de Longueville and the Prince de Conti, who held no opinions
contrary to those of his sister, urging him to cut the knot which he
knew not how to untie. La Rochefoucauld stopped him for a moment on the
threshold of war, entreating Conde to allow him to undertake fresh
negotiations. The Prince consented willingly thereto. Madame de
Longueville was opposed to it. La Rochefoucauld, speaking to her with
that authority which his long devotion gave him, represented to her the
terrible responsibility which she took upon herself both towards Conde
and the State, and he obtained from her a promise that she would
withdraw for a time from the arena of strife, and accompany her
sister-in-law, the Princess de Conde, to Berri, and allow him to remain
in Paris by the side of Conde in order to make a last essay towards
conjuring the tempest.
The fitting moment has now arrived to examine the conduct of Madame de
Longueville in these grave conjunctures, the different feelings which
animated her, and the true and lamentable motive which determined her
thus to hurry her brother into civil war, and herself with him.
Let us remember:--Anne de Bourbon exhibited extraordinary contrasts in
her character, entirely opposite qualities which, developing themselves
in turn according to circumstances, gave a particular impress to
different periods of her life. She derived from nature and the Christian
education she had received a delicate and susceptible conscience, a
humility in her own eyes and before God that would have made her an
accomplished Carmelite; and at the same time she was born with that
ardour of soul which is termed ambition, the instinct of glory and of
grandeur. This instinct, which was also that of her house and her age,
soon obtained the mastery on emerging from her pious adolescence, and
when she despaired of overcoming her father's resistance to the serious
desire she had manifested of burying herself, at fifteen, in the convent
of the Rue St. Jacques, with her already formidable beauty and the
nascent desire to shine and to please. That desire was at once Madame de
Longueville's strength and weakness, the principle of her coquetry amid
the amusements of peace, as of her intrepidity in the midst of war and
danger. Once condemned to live in the world, she transferred the dreams
of glory which she dared not realise for herself, to gild her brother's
wreath of laurel,--that Louis de Bourbon, almost of the same age as
herself, the cherished companion of her infancy, so witty, so generous,
so bold, that he was at once a friend and a master, and the idol of her
heart, before another object had usurped the place or after he had
abandoned it. In the first and the last portion of her life, which are
incomparably the best, she referred everything to Conde, and Conde had a
confidence in her altogether boundless. The suspicious and penetrating
Mazarin had very early formed that opinion of her, and in the _carnets_,
to which he has confided his very inmost feelings, he depicts her with
the pen of an enemy, but of an enemy who knew her well. "Madame de
Longueville," says he, "has entire power over her brother. She desires
to see Conde dominate and dispose of all favours. If she is prone to
gallantry, it is by no means that she thinks of doing wrong, but in
order to make friends and servitors for her brother. She insinuates
ambitious ideas into his mind to which he is already only too much
inclined." If, in 1648, she became violently enraged against her
brother, it was that, fascinated and misled by La Rochefoucauld, she
thought that Conde, by serving the Court and Mazarin, was false to his
own fame. In 1649, she had only too far contributed to make him enter by
degrees upon that fatal path into which La Rochefoucauld had lured
herself. Here, pride nourished the hope of one day seeing the Condes
replace the D'Orleans. When, in 1850, a son was born to Gaston, the
little Duke de Valois, who did not live, she fretted at an event which
threatened to strengthen and perpetuate a house for which she had no
affection, and in a letter which has remained inedited up to the present
day, she allows the thoughts that had insinuated themselves into her
heart to appear. "I think," she writes to Lenet on the 22nd August,
1650, "that the news of the birth of M. d'Orleans' son will no more
rejoice my sister-in-law than it has delighted me. It is to my nephew
that we must offer our condolence." In 1651, that ambition was carried
to its highest pitch. Madame de Longueville experienced the natural
intoxication that the power and prosperity of her house was calculated
to give her; and when we think of what perils she had just surmounted,
by what homage she was surrounded on all sides, that she was then
thirty-two, that she was in all the splendour of her beauty, and also
under all the strength of her passions, we might well be disposed to
pardon her that fugitive intoxication, if it had not likewise drawn down
disastrous consequences upon herself, upon Conde, and upon her country.
And here again occurs the question we have just raised. Was it Madame de
Longueville who caused the rupture of the projected marriage between the
Prince de Conti and Mademoiselle de Chevreuse? If hers was the chief
fault, we look upon it with regret, that in the eye of posterity she
should bear the blame of such a fault. If she only yielded to the advice
of La Rochefoucauld, we have the more excuse for her, and assert that
the fault comes home to him. As we have seen, that affair is still
involved in much obscurity, and since De Retz himself hesitates, we
ought to feel well justified to hesitate in our turn. But it must be
confessed, the suspicions of the Frondeurs and the accusations of the
Queen's friends have such great weight that it is scarcely possible to
avoid attributing to Madame de Longueville a sufficiently large share in
the deplorable rupture whence so many evils sprang. Her complaisant
biographer, Villefore, is on this point in accordance with Madame de
Motteville. Without doubt the marriage of the Prince de Conti with
Mademoiselle de Chevreuse was far from meeting with universal approval.
The prudes of the Hotel de Rambouillet, and Mademoiselle de Scuderi in
particular, protested strongly against such an alliance. The old outrage
was remembered which, in 1643, Madame de Montbazon, aided by Madame de
Chevreuse, had dared to perpetrate upon Madame de Longueville; the
audacious manners of the mother also, which seemed to have been
inherited by the daughter; the equivocal reputation of the latter, the
suspected and almost public _liaison_ which she carried on with De Retz.
Vain objections!--which Madame de Longueville could not allege, for she
perfectly well knew all that when at Stenay she had authorised the
Palatine to pledge her word for hers. Other reasons for her conduct must
therefore be sought, and the reasons can only be those which her enemies
have given, and in the foremost place the jealousy of influence, the
desire of retaining over her younger brother, the Prince de Conti, an
empire that Charlotte de Lorraine would, infallibly, have deprived her.
That irreparable error, in bringing about the perilous position in which
Conde speedily found himself, necessarily led Madame de Longueville to
the commission of another error, in some sort compulsory, and which was
the complement of the first; it is certain that more than anyone else
she incited her brother to take the resolution he ultimately determined
upon adopting. La Rochefoucauld says so, and all contemporary writers
repeat the same. We will merely make this essential remark: Madame de
Longueville had at first very readily entered into the reconciliatory
plans of Conde and La Rochefoucauld, and into their negotiations with
the Court; it was only when those designs had failed, when towards the
month of June negotiation had given place to violence, when she saw her
brother surrounded by assassins, liable at any moment to fall under the
blows of Hocquincourt, or to be flung again into the dungeons of
Vincennes, it was then that trembling with fear and indignation, and ill
as she was in health, she rushed to Saint-Maur; and that, finding there
the flower of the aristocracy and the army assembled, she felt her
warlike ardour of 1649 and 1650 rekindle. She thought that nothing could
resist on the field of battle the victor of Rocroy and Lens, seconded by
Turenne, who at Stenay had shown such a lively and tender attachment for
her, and the sentiment of which she had never ceased to treat with all
the exquisite tact of which she was capable. She had also great
confidence in Spain, which was at her feet, and lavished upon her every
kind of deference. She urged, therefore, Conde to fling further
perfidious and useless negotiations to the winds, and to appeal to the
fortune of arms.
But to these different motives, the force of which Madame de Longueville
summed up the value with the authority of her intelligence and
experience, was joined another still more potent over her heart, and
which had been the original mainspring of her resolutions and conduct.
La Rochefoucauld alone has no right to impute it to her as a crime. For
ourselves, we do not hesitate to make it known upon the evidence of
irrefragable testimony; for we are not composing a panegyric of Madame
de Longueville, but narrating certain passages of her life, in which
that of the seventeenth century, with its grandeurs and its miseries, is
so completely identified; and if we feel a sincere admiration for the
sister of the great Conde, that admiration does not close our eyes to
her errors. It is not unseemly to admire a heroine whose lofty qualities
are mingled with weaknesses which remind us of her sex. It is, moreover,
the first duty of history, such as we understand it, and desire to have
it understood, not to stop at the surface of events, but to seek for
their causes in the depths of the soul, in human passions and their
inevitable consequences.
As has been already said, Madame de Longueville did not love her
husband. Not only was he greatly her senior, but there was nothing about
him that responded to the ideal which that illustrious disciple of the
Hotel de Rambouillet had formed for herself, and which she pursued in
vain through guilty illusions, until that which she sought and found at
its very source--no longer in the school of Corneille and of
Mademoiselle de Scuderi, but in that of her Saviour, in the Carmelite
convent and at Port Royal. Never was woman less prone to gallantry by
nature than Anne de Bourbon; but, as we have just remarked, her heart
and her imagination created in her the necessity of pleasing and of
being beloved; and it was that want, early cultivated by poetry,
romances, and the theatre, and somewhat later corrupted by the example
of the society in which she lived, which lured her far from the domestic
hearth, and hurried her into the brilliant and adventurous career amidst
which we find her in 1651. Then her greatest fear was to fall again into
her husband's hands. M. de Longueville had very willingly followed his
wife in the Fronde; his own discontentments of themselves drove him into
it, as well as his uncertain and mobile character which led him to
embark in novel enterprises with as much facility as it urged him to
abandon them. In 1649 he had figured as one of the generals of Paris,
and had raised Normandy against Mazarin. One year of imprisonment had
cooled him, and in 1651, having recovered his government of Normandy and
tasted some few months of that peaceful grandeur, he found it so much to
his liking as to be not readily tempted to re-embark upon a stormy
course of life at the age of nearly fifty-seven. Reports, only too true,
had informed him of what until then he had only surmised
imperfectly--the declared _liaison_ of his wife with La Rochefoucauld.
He had been greatly irritated at it, and Conde's enemies, with De Retz
at their head, carefully fostered his ill humour, and his daughter,
Marie d'Orleans, afterwards Duchess de Nemours, seconded them to the
utmost of her power.