The following Letters, relating to the trial of M. Fouquet, were
addressed to the Marquis de Pomponne, who was afterward Minister of
Foreign Affairs.
The trial of Fouquet was not the least curious and least interesting
event of the reign of Louis XIV. The plan of ruining him was laid with
such odious art, and the conduct of his enemies, many of whom were
his judges, was so inveterate, that it would have been impossible not
to have been interested for him, even had he been more criminal than
he really was. Accused and tried for financial peculations, he was
sentenced to banishment for a crime against the state. His crime was
a vague plan of resistance and flight into a foreign country, which
he had thrown upon paper five years before, when the factions of the
Fronde divided France, and when he thought he had reason to complain
of the ingratitude of Cardinal Mazarin. This plan, which he had wholly
forgotten, was found among the papers that were seized at his house.
It is well known that Louis XIV. was led to believe that Fouquet was a
dangerous man. A guard of fifty musketeers were appointed to conduct
him to the citadel of Pignerol, the king having changed the sentence of
banishment into perpetual imprisonment. It was still apprehended that
he had formidable friends. Among these were Pelisson and Lafontaine;
one defended him eloquently, and the other bewailed his misfortunes in
a very beautiful and pathetic elegy, in which he went so far as to ask
the king to pardon him.