THE POWER OF THE BASTILE
Louis XIV and the _lettre de cachet_--Society corrupt--Assassination
common--Cheating at cards--Shocking state of Paris--"The Court of
Miracles"--Prisons filled--Prisoners detained indefinitely--Revived
persecution of the Protestants--General exodus of industrious
artisans--Inside the Bastile--Sufferings of the prisoners--The
Comte Pagan--Imprisonment for blasphemy, riotous conduct in
the streets and all loose living--Kidnapping of the Armenian
Patriarch, Avedik--His sudden death--Many heinous crimes disgrace
the epoch--Plot of the Chevalier de Rohan--Its detection--De Rohan
executed.
The three notable cases of arrest and imprisonment given in the last
chapter are typical of the régime at last established in France under
the personal rule of a young monarch whom various causes had combined
to render absolute. The willing submission of a people sick of civil
war, the removal or complete subjection of the turbulent vassals,
his own imperious character,--that of a strong willed man with a
set resolve to be sovereign, irresponsible master,--all combined to
consolidate his powers. Louis was the incarnation of selfishness. To
have his own way with everyone and in everything, to gratify every whim
and passion was the keynote of his sensuous and indulgent nature. No
one dared oppose him; no one stood near him. His subjects were his
creatures; the greatest nobles accepted the most menial tasks about his
person. His abject and supple-backed courtiers offered him incense and
dosed him with the most fulsome flattery. He held France in the hollow
of his hand and French society was formed on his model, utterly corrupt
and profligate under a thin veneer of fine manners which influenced all
Europe and set its fashions.
The worst example set by Louis was in his interference with personal
liberty. The privilege of freedom from arrest had been won by the
Parliament, in the Fronde. They had decreed that any one taken into
custody one day must be produced for trial the next and his detention
justified. This safeguard was shortlived. The law was defied and
ignored by Louis XIV who invented the _lettres de cachet_, or sealed
warrants, which decreed arbitrary arrest without reason given or
the smallest excuse made for the committal. It came to be a common
thing that persons who were not even suspected of crimes, and who had
certainly never been guilty of crimes, were caught up and imprisoned
indefinitely. They might lie for years in the Bastile or Vincennes,
utterly uncared for and forgotten, kept in custody not because anybody
was set upon their remaining but because nobody was interested in their
release. In the absence of any statement of the offense no one could
say whether or not it was purged and no one was concerned as to whether
the necessity for punishment still survived. These _lettres de cachet_
were abundantly in evidence, for they were signed in blank by the King
himself and countersigned by one of his ministers whenever it was
desired to make use of one.
It may be well to explain here that it was customary for the King of
France to make his sovereign will known by addressing a communication
to the various State functionaries in the form of a letter which was
open or closed. If the former, it was a "patent," it bore the King's
signature, it was countersigned by a minister and the great Seal of
State was appended. This was the form in which all ordinances or grants
of privileges appeared. These "letters patent" were registered and
endorsed by the Parliament. But there was no check upon the closed
letter or _lettre de cachet_, famous in the history of tyranny, as the
secret method of making known the King's pleasure. This was folded
and sealed with the King's small seal, and although it was a private
communication it had all the weight of the royal authority. It became
the warrant for the arbitrary arrest, at any time and without any
reason given, of any person who, upon the strength of it, was forthwith
committed to a State prison. The chief ministers and the head of the
police had always _lettres de cachet_ in stock, signed in blank, but
all in due form, and they could be completed at any time, by order,
or of their own free will, by inserting the name of the unfortunate
individual whose liberty was to be forfeited. Arrest on a _lettre de
cachet_, as has been said, sometimes meant prolonged imprisonment
purposely or only because the identity of the individual or the cause
of the arrest was forgotten.
Society was horribly vicious and corrupt in the time of Louis XIV.
Evil practices prevailed throughout the nation. Profligacy was general
among the better classes and the lower ranks committed the most
atrocious crimes. While the courtiers openly followed the example set
by their self-indulgent young monarch, an ardent devotee of pleasure,
the country was over-run with thieves and desperadoes. Assassination
was common, by the open attack of hired bravos or secretly by the
infamous administration of poison. Security was undermined and numbers
in every condition of life were put out of the way. The epoch of the
poisoners presently to be described is one of the darkest pages in
the annals of the Bastile. Cheating at cards and in every form of
gambling was shamelessly prevalent, and defended on the specious excuse
that it was merely correcting fortune. Prominent persons of rank and
fashion such as the Chevalier de Gramont and the Marquis de Saissac
won enormous sums unfairly. The passion for play was so general and
so engrossing that no opportunity of yielding to it was lost; people
gambled wherever they met, in public places, in private houses, in
carriages when travelling on the road. Cheating at play was so common
that a special officer, the Grand Provost, was attached to the Court
to bring delinquents immediately to trial. Many dishonest practices
were called in to assist, false cards were manufactured on purpose and
cardmakers were a part of the great households. Strict laws imposed
heavy penalties upon those caught loading dice or marking packs. Fraud
was conspicuously frequent in the Italian and most popular game of
_hoca_ played with thirty balls on a board, each ball containing a
number on a paper inside.
[Illustration: _The Bastile_
The first stone of this historic fortress was laid in 1370. For the
first two centuries it was a military stronghold, and whoever held the
Bastile overawed Paris. The terrors of the Bastile as a state prison
were greatest during the ministry of Richelieu. From the beginning
of the revolution this prison was a special object of attack by the
populace. On July 14, 1789, it was stormed by the people and forced to
surrender.]
Later in the reign, the rage for play grew into a perfect madness.
_Hoca_, just mentioned, although it had been indicted by two popes in
Rome, and although, in Paris, the Parliament, the magistrates and the
six guilds of merchants had petitioned for its suppression, held the
lead. Other games of chance little less popular were _lansquenet_,
_hazard_, _portique_ and _trou-madame_. Colossal sums were lost and
won. A hundred thousand crowns changed hands at a sitting. Madame de
Montespan, the notorious favorite, lost, one Christmas Day, 700,000
crowns and got back 300,000 by a stake upon only three cards. It was
possible at _hoca_ to lose or win fifty or sixty times a stake in one
quarter of an hour. During a campaign, officers played incessantly and
leading generals of the army were among the favorite players with the
King, when invited to the palace. The police fulminated vainly against
the vice, and would have prohibited play among the people, but did not
dare to suggest that the court should set the example.
Extravagance and ostentation being the aim and fashion of all, every
means was tried to fill the purse. The Crown was assailed on all sides
by the needy, seeking places at court. Fathers sent their sons to Paris
from the provinces to ingratiate themselves with great people and to
pay court in particular to rich widows and dissolute old dowagers
eager to marry again. Heiresses were frequently waylaid and carried
off by force. Abduction was then as much the rule as are _mariages de
convenance_ in Paris nowadays. Friends and relations aided and abetted
the abductor, if the lady's servants made resistance.
The state of Paris was shocking. Disturbances in the street were
chronic, murders were frequent and robbery was usually accompanied with
violence, especially in the long winter nights. The chief offenders
were soldiers of the garrison and the pages and lackeys of the great
houses, who still carried arms. A police ordinance finally forbade them
to wear swords and it was enforced by exemplary punishment. A duke's
footman and a duchess's page, who attacked and wounded a student on
the Pont Neuf, were arrested, tried and forthwith hanged despite the
protests and petitions of their employers. Further ordinances regulated
the demeanor of servants who could not be employed without producing
their papers, and now in addition to their swords being taken away,
they were deprived of their canes and sticks on account of their
brutal treatment of inoffensive people. They were forbidden to gather
in crowds and they might not enter the gardens of the Tuileries or
Luxembourg.
It was not enough to repress the insolent valets and check the midnight
excesses of the worst characters. The importunity of the sturdy
vagabond, who lived by begging, called for stern repression. These
ruffians had long been tolerated. They enjoyed certain privileges and
immunities, they were organised in dangerous bands strong enough to
make terms with the police and they possessed a sanctuary in the heart
of Paris, where they defied authority. This "Court of Miracles," as
it was called, had three times withstood a siege by commissaries and
detachments of troops, who were repulsed with showers of stones. Then
the head of the police went at the head of a strong force and cleared
the place out, allowing all to escape; and when it had been thus
emptied, their last receptacle was swept entirely away. Other similar
refuges were suppressed,--the enclosures of the Temple and the Abbey
of St. Germain-des-Près, and the Hotel Soissons, property of the royal
family of Savoy, which had long claimed the right to give shelter to
malefactors.
The prisons of Paris were in a deplorable and disgraceful state at
this period, as appears from a picture drawn by a magistrate about
the middle of the seventeenth century. They were without light or
air, horribly overcrowded by the dregs of humanity and a prey to
foul diseases which prisoners freely communicated to one another.
For-l'Évêque was worse then than it had ever been; the whole building
was in ruins and must soon fall to the ground. The Greater and Lesser
Châtelets were equally unhealthy and of dimensions too limited for
their population, the walls too high, the dungeons too deep down in
the bowels of the earth. The only prison not absolutely lethal was the
Conciergerie, yet some of its cells and chambers possessed no sort of
drainage. The hopelessness of the future was the greatest infliction;
once committed, no one could count on release: to be thrown into prison
was to be abandoned and forgotten.
The records kept at the Bastile were in irremediable disorder. Even
the names of the inmates were in most cases unknown, from the custom
of giving new arrivals a false name. By the King's order, his Minister
once applied to M. de Besmaus, the governor, for information as to
the cause of detention of two prisoners, a priest called Gerard, who
had been confined for eight years, and a certain Pierre Rolland,
detained for three years. The inquiry elicited a report that no such
person as Rolland appeared upon the monthly pay lists for rations.
Gerard, the priest, was recognised by his numerous petitions for
release. The Minister called for a full nominal list of all prisoners
and the reasons for their confinement, but the particulars were not
forthcoming. This was on the conclusion of the Peace of Ryswick,
when the King desired to mark the general rejoicings by a great gaol
delivery.
Many causes contributed to fill the Bastile and other State prisons in
the reign of Louis XIV. Let us take these more in detail. The frauds
committed by dishonest agents dealing with public money, the small fry,
as guilty as Fouquet, but on a lesser scale, consigned many to prison.
Severe penalties were imposed upon defamatory writers and the whole of
the literary crew concerned in the publication of libellous attacks
upon the King,--printers, binders, distributors of this dangerous
literature,--found their way to the Bastile, to the galleys, even to
the scaffold. Presently when Louis, always a bigoted Catholic, became
more and more intolerant under the influence of the priests, the
revived persecution of the Protestants filled the gaols and galleys
with the sufferers for their faith. Colbert had long protected them,
but at the death of this talented minister who, as he wrote Madame de
Maintenon, "thought more of finance than religion," Le Tellier and
Louvois, who succeeded him, raged furiously against the Protestants
and many cruel edicts were published. A fierce fanatical desire to
proselytise, to procure an abjuration of creed by every violent and
oppressive means possessed all classes, high and low. The doors of sick
people were forced to admit the priests who came to administer the
sacraments, without being summoned.
On one occasion the pot-boy of a wine shop who, with his master,
professed the new faith, was mortally wounded in a street fight. A
priest visited him as he lay dying and besought him to make confession.
A low crowd forthwith collected before the house, to the number of
seven or eight hundred, and rose in stormy riot, attacked the door
with sticks and stones, broke it down, smashed all the windows and
forced their way in, crying, "Give us up the Huguenots or we will set
fire to the house." The police then came upon the scene and restored
quiet, but the man died, to the last refusing to confess. Outrages of
this kind were frequent. Again, the son of a new convert removed his
hat when the procession of the Host passed by, but remained standing
instead of falling on his knees. He was violently attacked and fled to
his home, pursued by the angry crowd who would have burned the house to
the ground. The public feeling was so strong that many called for the
quartering of troops in Paris to assist in the good work of conversion,
a suggestion which bore fruit presently in the infamous _dragonnades_,
when the soldiers pillaged and laid waste the provinces.
The passion for proselytising was carried to the extent of bribing the
poverty stricken to change their religion. Great pressure was brought
to bear upon Huguenot prisoners who were in the Bastile. A number of
priests came in to use their persuasive eloquence upon the recusants,
and many reports are preserved in the correspondence of M. de Besmaus,
the governor, of their energetic efforts. "I am doing my best," says
one priest, "and have great hopes of success." "I think," writes
another, "I have touched Mademoiselle de Lamon and the Mademoiselles de
la Fontaine. If I may have access to them I shall be able to satisfy
you." The governor was the most zealous of all in seeking to secure the
abjuration of the new religion.
It may be noted here that this constant persecution, emphasised by the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (which had conceded full liberty of
conscience), had the most disastrous consequences upon French industry.
The richest manufacturers and the most skillful and industrious
artisans were to be found among the French Protestants and there was
soon a steady drain outwards of these sources of commercial prosperity.
In this continuous exodus of capital and intelligent labor began the
material decadence of France and transferred the enterprise of these
people elsewhere, notably to England. A contemporary pamphlet paints
the situation in sombre colors;--"Nothing is to be seen but deserted
farms, impecunious landed proprietors, bankrupt traders, creditors in
despair, peasants dying of starvation, their dwellings in ruins." On
every side and in every commodity there was a terrible depreciation of
values,--land nearly worthless, revenues diminished, and besides a new
and protracted war had now to be faced.
Some idea of the condition of the interior of the Bastile in those
days may be best realised by a few extracts from the original archives
preserved from the sack of the hated castle when Paris rose in
revolution. Some documents are extant, written by a certain Comte de
Pagan, who was thrown into the State prison charged with sorcery. He
had boasted that he could, when he chose, destroy Louis XIV by magic.
His arrest was immediate and his detention indefinitely prolonged. His
letters contain the most piteous appeals for money.
"Monseigneur and most reverent patron," he writes to Colbert from the
Bastile under date of the 8th of November, 1661, "I supplicate you
most humbly to accord this poor, unfortunate being his liberty. Your
lordship will most undoubtedly be rewarded for so merciful a deed as
the release of a wretched creature who has languished here for nine
years devoid of hope." In a second petition, reiterating his prayer for
clemency, he adds, "It is now impossible for me to leave the room in
which I am lodged as I am almost naked. Do send me a little money so
that I may procure a coat and a few shirts." Again, "May I beseech you
to remember that I have been incarcerated for eleven years and eight
months and have endured the worst hardships ever inflicted on a man
for the want of covering against the bitter cold.... Monseigneur, I am
seventy-eight years of age, a prey to all manner of bodily infirmities;
I do not possess a single friend in the world, and worse still, I am
not worth one sou and am sunk in an abyss of wretchedness. I swear to
you, Monseigneur, that I am compelled to go to bed in the dark because
I cannot buy a farthing candle; I have worn the same shirt without
removing or changing it for seven whole months."
This appeal is endorsed with a brief minute signed by Colbert. "Let him
have clothes." The year following a new petition is rendered. "Your
Excellency will forgive me if I entreat him to remember that thirteen
months ago he granted me 400 francs to relieve my miseries. But I am
once more in the same or even worse condition and I again beg humbly
for help. I have been quite unable to pay the hire of the furniture
in my chamber and the upholsterer threatens to remove the goods and I
shall soon be compelled to lie on the bare floor. I have neither light
nor fuel and am almost without clothes. You, Monseigneur, are my only
refuge and I beseech your charitable help or I shall be found dead of
cold in my cell. For the love of God, entreat the King to give me my
liberty after the thirteen years spent here."
This last appeal is dated November 28th, 1665, but there is no record
of his ultimate disposal. It is stated in an earlier document that
Cardinal Mazarin had been willing to grant a pardon to this prisoner
if he would agree to be conveyed to the frontier under escort and sent
across it as a common criminal, but the Count had refused to accept
this dishonoring condition which he pleaded would cast a stigma upon
his family name. He offered, however, to leave France directly he was
released and seek any domicile suggested to him where he might be safe
from further oppression. Cardinal Mazarin seems to have been mercifully
inclined, but died before he could extend clemency to this unhappy
victim of arbitrary power.
The Bastile was used sometimes as a sanctuary to withdraw an offender
who had outraged the law and could not otherwise be saved from
reprisal. A notable case was that of René de l'Hopital, Marquis de
Choisy, who lived on his estates like a savage tyrant. In 1659 he was
denounced by a curé to the ecclesiastical authorities for his crimes.
The marquis with a couple of attendants waylaid the priest on the high
road and attacked the curé whom he grievously wounded. The priest
commended himself to God and was presently stunned by a murderous blow
on the jaw from the butt end of a musket. Then the Marquis, to make
sure his victim was really dead, rode his horse over the recumbent body
and then stabbed it several times with his sword. But help came and the
curé was rescued still alive, and strange to say, recovered, although
it was said he had received a hundred and twenty wounds.
The entire religious hierarchy in France espoused the priest's cause.
The Marquis was haled before several provincial courts of justice.
He would undoubtedly have been convicted of murder and sentenced to
death, for Louis XIV would seldom spare the murderer of a priest, but
the l'Hopital family had great influence at Court and won a pardon
for the criminal. The Parliament of Paris or High Court of Justice
boldly resisted the royal decree and the marquis would still have been
executed had he not been consigned for safety to the "King's Castle,"
the Bastile. He passed subsequently to the prison of For-l'Évêque, from
which he was released with others on the entry of the King to Paris, at
his marriage. Still the vindictive Parliament pursued him and he would
hardly have escaped the scaffold had he not fled the country.
In an age when so much respect was exacted for religious forms and
ceremonies, imprisonment in the Bastile was promptly inflicted upon all
guilty of blasphemous conduct or who openly ridiculed sacred things.
The records are full of cases in which prisoners have been committed to
gaol for impiety, profane swearing at their ill luck with the dice or
at _hoca_. A number of the Prince de Condé's officers were sent to the
Bastile for acting a disgraceful parody of the procession of the Host,
in which a besom was made to represent a cross, a bucket was filled at
a neighboring pump and called holy water, and the sham priests chanted
the _De Profundis_ as they went through the streets to administer the
last sacrament to a pretended moribund.
A very small offense gained the pain of imprisonment. One foolish
person was committed because he was dissatisfied with his name Cardon
(thistle), and changed it to _Cardone_, prefixing the particle "de"
which signifies nobility, claiming that he was a member of the
illustrious family of De Cardone. It appears from the record, however,
that he also spoke evil of M. de Maurepas, a minister of State.
Still another class found themselves committed to the Bastile. The
parental Louis, as he grew more sober and staid, insisted more and
more on external decorum and dealt sharply with immoral conduct among
his courtiers. The Bastile was used very much as a police station or a
reformatory. Young noblemen were sent there for riotous conduct in the
streets, for an affray with the watch and the maltreatment of peaceful
citizens. The Duc d'Estrées and the Duc de Mortemart were imprisoned as
wastrels who bet and gambled with sharpers. "The police officers cannot
help complaining that the education of these young dukes had been sadly
neglected," reads the report. So the Royal Castle was turned for the
nonce into a school, and a master of mathematics, a drawing master and
a Jesuit professor of history were admitted to instruct the neglected
youths. The same Duc d'Estrées paid a second visit for quarrelling with
the Comte d'Harcourt and protesting against the interference of the
marshals to prevent a duel.
The King nowadays set his face against all loose living. The Comte de
Montgomery, for leading a debauched and scandalous life on his estates,
was committed to the Bastile, where he presently died. He was a
Protestant and the question of his burial came up before the Ministry,
who wrote the governor that, "His Majesty is very indifferent whether
he (Montgomery) be buried in one place rather than another and still
more in what manner the ceremony is performed."
The report that the Prince de Léon, being a prince of the blood, a son
of the Duc de Rohan, was about to marry a ballet dancer, Mademoiselle
Florence, entailed committal to the Bastile, not on the Prince but
on the girl. "Florence was arrested this morning while the Prince
was at Versailles," writes the chief of the police. "Her papers were
seized.... She told the officer who arrested her she was not married,
that she long foresaw what would happen, that she would be only too
happy to retire into a convent and that she had a hundred times
implored the Prince to give his consent. I have informed the Prince's
father, the Duc de Rohan, of this." The Prince was furious upon hearing
of the arrest and refused to forgive his relations. The Duc de Rohan
was willing to supply Mademoiselle Florence with all necessaries to
make captivity more tolerable, but great difficulty was found in
getting him to pay the bill. The Duc de Rohan was so great a miser
that he allowed his wife and children to die of hunger. The Bastile
bill included charges for doctor and nurse as Mademoiselle de Florence
was brought to bed of a child in prison. What with the expenses of
capture and gaol fees it amounted to 5,000 francs. The end of this
incident was that the Prince de Léon, while his lady love was in the
Bastile, eloped with a supposed heiress, Mademoiselle de Roquelaure,
who was ugly, hunch-backed and no longer young. The Prince ran off
with her from a convent, moved to do so by his father's promise of an
allowance, which the miserly duke never paid. The bride was recaptured
and sent back to the cloister in which her mother had placed her to
avoid the necessity of giving her any dowry. The married couple, when
at last they came together, had a bad time of it, as neither of the
parents would help them with funds and they lived in great poverty.
A strange episode, forcibly illustrating the arbitrary character of
Louis XIV and his fine contempt for international rights, was the case
of the Armenian Patriarch, Avedik, who was an inmate of the Bastile
and also of Mont St. Michel. The Armenian Catholics, and especially
the Jesuits, had reason to complain of Avedik's high handed treatment,
and the French ambassador interfered by paying a large price for the
Patriarch's removal from his sacred office. Certain schismatics of the
French party secured his reinstatement by raising the bid; and now the
French ambassador seized the person of Avedik, who was put on board
a French ship and conveyed to Messina, then Spanish territory, where
he was cast into the prison of the Inquisition. This abduction evoked
loud protest in Constantinople, but the French disavowed it, although
it had certainly met with the approval of Louis XIV. Avedik would
have languished and died forgotten in Messina, but without waiting
instructions, the French consul had extracted him from the prison of
the Inquisition and passed him on to Marseilles.
Great precautions were taken to keep his arrival secret. If the poor,
kidnapped foreigner, who spoke no language but Turkish and Armenian,
should chance to be recognised, the report of his sudden death was
to be announced and no doubt it would soon be justified in fact.
Otherwise he was to be taken quietly across France from Marseilles,
on the Mediterranean, to Mont St. Michel on the Normandy coast, where
his kidnappers were willing to treat him well. The King expressly
ordered that he should have "a room with a fire place, linen and so
forth, as his Majesty had no desire that the prisoner should suffer,
provided economy is observed.... He is not to be subjected to perpetual
abstinence and may have meat when he asks for it." Of course an attempt
was made to convert the Patriarch, already a member of the Greek
Church, to Catholicism as preached in France, although the interchange
of ideas was not easy, and the monk sent to confess him could not do
so for want of a common language. Eventually Avedik was brought to
Paris and lodged in the Bastile, where an interpreter was found for him
in the person of the Abbé Renaudot, a learned Oriental scholar.
Meanwhile a hue and cry was raised for the missing Patriarch. One
of his servants was traced to Marseilles and was promptly arrested
and hidden away in the hospital of the galley slaves. Louis and his
ministers stoutly denied that Avedik was in France, and he was very
strictly guarded lest the fact of his kidnapping should leak out. No
one saw him but the person who took him his food, and they understood
each other only by signs. Avedik was worked up to make a written
statement that he owed his arrest to English intrigues, and this was
to be held as an explanation should the Porte become too pressing in
its inquiries. It is clear that the French Government would gladly
have seen the last of Avedik and hesitated what course to adopt with
him: whether to keep him by force, win him over, transfer him to the
hands of the Pope, send him to Persia or let him go straight home.
These questions were in a measure answered by a marginal note endorsed
on the paper submitting them. "Would it be a blessing or would it be
a misfortune if he were to die?" asks the Minister Pontchartrain; and
the rather suspicious answer was presently given by his death. But an
official report was drawn up, declaring that he had long enjoyed full
liberty, that he received every attention during his illness, that
his death was perfectly natural and that he died a zealous Catholic.
Pontchartrain went further and, after reiterating that death was
neither violent nor premature, added that it was entirely due to the
immoderate use of brandy and baleful drugs. Avedik had grown very
corpulent during his imprisonment, but there was no proof of the charge
of intemperance.
The most heinous crimes disgraced the epoch of Louis XIV, and in all,
the Bastile played a prominent part. There was first the gigantic
frauds and peculations of Fouquet as already described; then came the
conspiracy of the Chevalier de Rohan, who was willing to sell French
fortresses to foreign enemies; and on this followed the horrible affair
of the Marchioness de Brinvilliers, the secret poisoner of her own
people. The use of poison was for a time a wholesale practice, and
although the special court established for the trial of those suspected
held its sessions in private, the widespread diffusion of the crime was
presently revealed beyond all question. There were reasons of State why
silence should be preserved; the high rank of many of the criminals
and their enormous number threatened, if too openly divulged, to shake
society to its base. Some two hundred and thirty of the accused were
afterwards convicted and sent to prison and thirty-four more were
condemned to death.
Conspiracies against the life of the King had been frequent. We may
mention among them that of the Marquis de Bonnesson, of the Protestant
Roux de Marcilly, who would have killed Louis to avenge the wrongs
of his co-religionists, and another Protestant, Comte de Sardan, who
sought to stir up disaffection in four great provinces,--which were to
renounce allegiance to France and pass under the dominion of the Prince
of Orange and the King of Spain. The most dangerous and extensive
plot was that of Louis de Rohan, a dissolute young nobleman, who had
been a playmate of the King and the favorite of ladies of the highest
rank, but who had been ruined by gambling and a loose life until his
fortunes had sunk to the lowest ebb. He found an evil counsellor in a
certain retired military officer, the Sieur de Latréaumont, no less a
pauper than De Rohan, and hungry for money to retrieve his position.
Together they made overtures to the Dutch and Spaniards to open the
way for a descent upon the Normandy coast. Their price was a million
livres. Several disaffected Normandy nobles joined the plot, and as it
was unsafe to trust to the post, an emissary, Van den Ende, an ancient
Dutch professor, was sent in person to the Low Countries to deal with
the Spanish general. He obtained liberal promises of cash and pension,
and returned to Paris, where he was promptly arrested at the barrier.
The police had discovered the conspiracy and De Rohan was already in
custody. De Latréaumont was surprised in bed, had resisted capture,
had been mortally wounded and had died, leaving highly compromising
papers.
Louis XIV, bitterly incensed against the Chevalier, whom he had
so intimately known, determined to make an example of him and his
confederates. A special tribunal was appointed for their trial, some
sixty persons in all. Abundant evidence was forthcoming, for half
Normandy was eager to confess and escape the traitor's fate. Some
very great names were mentioned as implicated, the son of the Prince
de Condé among the rest. The King now wisely resolved to limit the
proceedings, lest too much importance should be given to a rather
contemptible plot. De Rohan's guilt was fully proved. He was reported
to have said: "If I can only draw my sword against the King in a
serious rebellion I shall die happy." When he saw there was no hope for
him, the Chevalier tried to soften the King by full confession. It did
not serve him, and he was sentenced to be beheaded and his creature,
Van den Ende, to be hanged in front of the Bastile. De Rohan was spared
torture before execution, but Van den Ende and another suffered the
"boot." The King was vainly solicited to grant pardon to De Rohan, but
was inflexible, declaring it was in the best interests of France that
traffic with a foreign enemy should be punished with the extreme rigor
of the law. It cannot be stated positively that there were no other
conspiracies against Louis XIV, but none were made public.