Let me here relate an incident which should have found a place earlier,
but which has been omitted in order that what has gone before might be
uninterrupted. On the 16th of the previous July the King made a journey
to Fontainebleau, where he remained until the 14th of September. I
should suppress the bagatelle which happened on the occasion of this
journey, if it did not serve more and more to characterize the King.
Madame la Duchesse de Berry was in the family way for the first time,
had been so for nearly three months, was much inconvenienced, and had a
pretty strong fever. M. Fagon, the doctor, thought it would be imprudent
for her not to put off travelling for a day or two. Neither she nor M,
d'Orleans dared to speak about it. M. le Duc de Berry timidly hazarded a
word, and was ill received. Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans more timid
still, addressed herself to Madame, and to Madame de Maintenon, who,
indifferent as they might be respecting Madame la Duchesse de Berry,
thought her departure so hazardous that, supported by Fagon, they spoke
of it to the King. It was useless. They were not daunted, however, and
this dispute lasted three or four days. The end of it was, that the King
grew thoroughly angry and agreed, by way of capitulation, that the
journey should be performed in a boat instead of a coach.
It was arranged that Madame la Duchesse de Berry should leave Marly,
where the King then was, on the 13th, sleep at the Palais Royal that
night and repose herself there all the next day and night, that on the
15th she should set out for Petit-Bourg, where the King was to halt for
the night, and arrive like him, on the 16th, at Fontainebleau, the whole
journey to be by the river. M. le Duc de Berry had permission to
accompany his wife; but during the two nights they were to rest in Paris
the King angrily forbade them to go anywhere, even to the Opera, although
that building joined the Palais Royal, and M. d'Orleans' box could be
reached without going out of the palace.
On the 14th the King, under pretence of inquiry after them, repeated this
prohibition to M. le Duc de Berry and Madame his wife, and also to M.
d'Orleans and Madame d'Orleans, who had been included in it. He carried
his caution so far as to enjoin Madame de Saint-Simon to see that Madame
la Duchesse de Berry obeyed the instructions she had received. As may be
believed, his orders were punctually obeyed. Madame de Saint-Simon could
not refuse to remain and sleep in the Palais Royal, where the apartment
of the queen-mother was given to her. All the while the party was shut
up there was a good deal of gaming in order to console M. le Duc de Berry
for his confinement.
The provost of the merchants had orders to prepare boats for the trip to
Fontainebleau. He had so little time that they were ill chosen. Madame
la Duchesse de Berry embarked, however, on the 15th, and arrived, with
fever, at ten o'clock at night at Petit-Bourg, where the King appeared
rejoiced by an obedience so exact.
On the morrow the journey recommenced. In passing Melun, the boat of
Madame la Duchesse de Berry struck against the bridge, was nearly
capsized, and almost swamped, so that they were all in great danger.
They got off, however, with fear and a delay. Disembarking in great
disorder at Valvin, where their equipages were waiting for there, they
arrived at Fontainebleau two hours after midnight. The King, pleased
beyond measure, went the next morning to see Madame la Duchesse de Berry
in the beautiful apartment of the queen-mother that had been given to
her. From the moment of her arrival she had been forced to keep her bed,
and at six o'clock in the morning of the 21st of July she miscarried and
was delivered of a daughter, still-born. Madame de Saint-Simon ran to
tell the King; he did not appear much moved; he had been obeyed! The
Duchesse de Beauvilliers and the Marquise de Chatillon were named by the
King to carry the embryo to Saint-Denis. As it was only a girl, and as
the miscarriage had no ill effect, consolation soon came.
It was some little time after this occurrence, that we heard of the
defeat of the Czar by the Grand Vizier upon the Pruth. The Czar, annoyed
by the protection the Porte had accorded to the King of Sweden (in
retirement at Bender), made an appeal to arms, and fell into the same
error as that which had occasioned the defeat of the King of Sweden by
him. The Turks drew him to the Pruth across deserts supplied with
nothing; if he did not risk all, by a very unequal battle, he must
perish. The Czar was at the head of sixty thousand men: he lost more
than thirty thousand on the Pruth, the rest were dying of hunger and
misery; and he, without any resources, could scarcely avoid surrendering
himself and his forces to the Turks. In this pressing extremity, a
common woman whom he had taken away from her husband, a drummer in the
army, and whom he had publicly espoused after having repudiated and
confined his own wife in a convent,--proposed that he should try by
bribery to induce the Grand Vizier to allow him and the wreck of his
forces to retreat The Czar approved of the proposition, without hoping
for success from it. He sent to the Grand Vizier and ordered him to be
spoken to in secret. The Vizier was dazzled by the gold, the precious
stones, and several valuable things that were offered to him. He
accepted and received them; and signed a treaty by which the Czar was
permitted to retire, with all who accompanied him, into his own states by
the shortest road, the Turks to furnish him with provisions, with which
he was entirely unprovided. The Czar, on his side, agreed to give up
Azof as soon as he returned; destroy all the forts and burn all the
vessels that he had upon the Black Sea; allow the King of Sweden to
return by Pomerania; and to pay the Turks and their Prince all the
expenses of the war.
The Grand Vizier found such an opposition in the Divan to this treaty,
and such boldness in the minister of the King of Sweden, who accompanied
him, in exciting against him all the chiefs of the army, that it was
within an ace of being broken; and the Czar, with every one left to him,
of being made prisoner. The latter was in no condition to make even the
least resistance. The Grand Vizier had only to will it, in order to
execute it on the spot. In addition to the glory of leading captive to
Constantinople the Czar, his Court, and his troops, there would have been
his ransom, which must have cost not a little. But if he had been thus
stripped of his riches, they would have been for the Sultan, and the
Grand Vizier preferred having them for himself. He braved it then with
authority and menaces, and hastened the Czar's departure and his own.
The Swedish minister, charged with protests from the principal Turkish
chiefs, hurried to Constantinople, where the Grand Vizier was strangled
upon arriving.
The Czar never forgot this service of his wife, by whose courage and
presence of mind he had been saved. The esteem he conceived for her,
joined to his friendship, induced him to crown her Czarina, and to
consult her upon all his affairs and all his schemes. Escaped from
danger, he was a long time without giving up Azof, or demolishing his
forts on the Black Sea. As for his vessels, he kept them nearly all, and
would not allow the King of Sweden to return into Germany, as he had
agreed, thus almost lighting up a fresh war with the Turk.
On the 6th of November, 1711, at about eight o'clock in the evening, the
shock of an earthquake was felt in Paris and at Versailles; but it was so
slight that few people perceived it. In several places towards Touraine
and Poitou, in Saxony, and in some of the German towns near, it was very
perceptible at the same day and hour. At this date a new tontine was
established in Paris.
I have so often spoken of Marshal Catinat, of his virtue, wisdom,
modesty, and disinterestedness; of the rare superiority of his
sentiments, and of his great qualities as captain, that nothing remains
for me to say except that he died at this time very advanced in years,
at his little house of Saint-Gratien, near Saint-Denis, where he had
retired, and which he seldom quitted, although receiving there but few
friends. By his simplicity and frugality, his contempt for worldly
distinction, and his uniformity of conduct, he recalled the memory of
those great men who, after the best-merited triumphs, peacefully returned
to the plough, still loving their country and but little offended by the
ingratitude of the Rome they had so well served. Catinat placed his
philosophy at the service of his piety. He had intelligence, good sense,
ripe reflection; and he never forgot his origin; his dress, his
equipages, his furniture, all were of the greatest simplicity. His air
and his deportment were so also. He was tall, dark, and thin; had an
aspect pensive, slow, and somewhat mean; with very fine and expressive
eyes. He deplored the signal faults that he saw succeed each other
unceasingly; the gradual extinction of all emulation; the luxury, the
emptiness, the ignorance, the confusion of ranks; the inquisition in the
place of the police: he saw all the signs of destruction, and he used to
say it was only a climax of dangerous disorder that could restore order
to the realm.
Vendome was one of the few to whom the death of the Dauphin and the
Dauphine brought hope and joy. He had deemed himself expatriated for the
rest of his life. He saw, now, good chances before him of returning to
our Court, and of playing a part there again. He had obtained some
honour in Spain; he aimed at others even higher, and hoped to return to
France with all the honours of a Prince of the Blood. His idleness, his
free living, his debauchery, had prolonged his stay upon the frontier,
where he had more facilities for gratifying his tastes than at Madrid.
In that city, it is true, he did not much constrain himself, but he was
forced to do so to some extent by courtly usages. He was, then, quite at
home on the frontier; there was nothing to do; for the Austrians,
weakened by the departure of the English, were quite unable to attack;
and Vendome, floating upon the delights of his new dignities, thought
only of enjoying himself in the midst of profound idleness, under pretext
that operations could not at once be commenced.
In order to be more at liberty he separated from the general officers,
and established himself with his valets and two or three of his most
familiar friends, cherished companions everywhere, at Vignarez, a little
isolated hamlet, almost deserted, on the sea-shore and in the kingdom of
Valencia. His object was to eat fish there to his heart's content. He
carried out that object, and filled himself to repletion for nearly a
month. He became unwell--his diet, as may be believed, was enough to
cause this--but his illness increased so rapidly, and in so strange a
manner, after having for a long time seemed nothing that the few around
him suspected poison, and sent on all sides for assistance. But the
malady would not wait; it augmented rapidly with strange symptoms.
Vendome could not sign a will that was presented to him; nor a letter to
the King, its which he asked that his brother might be permitted to
return to Court. Everybody near flew from him and abandoned him, so that
he remained in the hands of three or four of the meanest valets, whilst
the rest robbed him of everything and decamped. He passed thus the last
two or three days of his life, without a priest,--no mention even had
been made of one,--without other help than that of a single surgeon.
The three or four valets who remained near him, seeing him at his last
extremity, seized hold of the few things he still possessed, and for want
of better plunder, dragged off his bedclothes and the mattress from under
him. He piteously cried to them at least not to leave him to die naked
upon the bare bed. I know not whether they listened to him.
Thus died on Friday, the 10th of June, 1712, the haughtiest of men; and
the happiest, except in the later years of his life. After having been
obliged to speak of him so often, I get rid of him now, once and for
ever. He was fifty-eight years old; but in spite of the blind and
prodigious favour he had enjoyed, that favour had never been able to make
ought but a cabal hero out of a captain who was a very bad general, and a
man whose vices were the shame of humanity. His death restored life and
joy to all Spain.
Aguilar, a friend of the Duc de Noailles, was accused of having poisoned
him; but took little pains to defend himself, inasmuch as little pains
were taken to substantiate the accusation. The Princesse des Ursins, who
had so well profited by his life in order to increase her own greatness,
did not profit less by his death. She felt her deliverance from a new
Don Juan of Spain who had ceased to be supple in her hands, and who might
have revived, in the course of time, all the power and authority he had
formerly enjoyed in France. She was not shocked them by the joy which
burst out without constraint; nor by the free talk of the Court, the
city, the army, of all Spain. But in order to sustain what she had done,
and cheaply pay her court to M. du Maine, Madame de Maintenon, and even
to the King, she ordered that the corpse of this hideous monster of
greatness and of fortune should be carried to the Escurial. This was
crowning the glory of M. de Vendome in good earnest; for no private
persons are buried in the Escurial, although several are to be found in
Saint-Denis. But meanwhile, until I speak of the visit I made to the
Escurial--I shall do so if I live long enough to carry these memoirs up
to the death of M. d'Orleans,--let me say something of that illustrious
sepulchre.
The Pantheon is the place where only the bodies of kings and queens who
have had posterity are admitted. In a separate place, near, though not
on the same floor, and resembling a library, the bodies of children, and
of queens who have had no posterity, are ranged. A third place, a sort
of antechamber to the last named, is rightly called "the rotting room;"
whilst the other improperly bears the same name. In whilst third room,
there is nothing to be seen but four bare walls and a table in the
middle. The walls being very thick, openings are made in them in which
the bodies are placed. Each body has an opening to itself, which is
afterwards walled up, so that nothing is seen. When it is thought that
the corpse has been closed up sufficiently long to be free from odour the
wall is opened, the body taken out, and put in a coffin which allows a
portion of it to be seen towards the feet. This coffin is covered with a
rich stuff and carried into an adjoining room.
The body of the Duc de Vendome had been walled up nine years when I
entered the Escurial. I was shown the place it occupied, smooth like
every part of the four walls and without mark. I gently asked the monks
who did me the honours of the place, when the body would be removed to
the other chamber. They would not satisfy my curiosity, showed some
indignation, and plainly intimated that this removal was not dreamt of,
and that as M. de Vendome had been so carefully walled up he might remain
so!
Harlay, formerly chief-president, of whom I have so often had occasion to
speak, died a short time after M. de Vendome. I have already made him
known. I will simply add an account of the humiliation to which this
haughty cynic was reduced. He hired a house in the Rue de l'Universite
with a partition wall between his garden and that of the Jacobins of the
Faubourg Saint-Germain. The house did not belong to the Jacobins, like
the houses of the Rue Saint-Dominique, and the Rue du Bac, which, in
order that they might command higher rents, were put in connection with
the convent garden. These mendicant Jacobins thus derive fifty thousand
livres a-year. Harlay, accustomed to exercise authority, asked them for
a door into their garden. He was refused. He insisted, had them spoken
to, and succeeded no better. Nevertheless the Jacobins comprehended that
although this magistrate, recently so powerful, was now nothing by
himself, he had a son and a cousin, Councillors of State, whom they might
some day have to do with, and who for pride's sake might make themselves
very disagreeable. The argument of interest is the best of all with
monks. The Jacobins changed their mind. The Prior, accompanied by some
of the notabilities of the convent, went to Harlay with excuses, and said
he was at liberty, if he liked, to make the door. Harlay, true to his
character, looked at them askance, and replied, that he had changed his
mind and would do without it. The monks, much troubled by his refusal,
insisted; he interrupted them and said, "Look you, my fathers, I am
grandson of Achille du Harlay, Chief-President of the Parliament, who so
well served the State and the Kingdom, and who for his support of the
public cause was dragged to the Bastille, where he expected to be hanged
by those rascally Leaguers; it would ill become me, therefore, to enter
the house, or pray to God there, of folks of the same stamp as that
Jacques Clement." And he immediately turned his back upon them, leaving
them confounded. This was his last act of vigour. He took it into his
head afterwards to go out visiting a good deal, and as he preserved all
his old unpleasant manners, he afflicted all he visited; he went even to
persons who had often cooled their heels in his antechambers. By
degrees, slight but frequent attacks of apoplexy troubled his speech, so
that people had great difficulty in understanding him, and he in
speaking. In this state he did not cease his visits and could not
perceive that many doors were closed to him. He died in this misery, and
this neglect, to the great relief of the few who by relationship were
obliged to see him, above all of his son and his domestic.
On the 17th July, a truce between France and England was published in
Flanders, at the head of the troops of the two crowns. The Emperor,
however, was not yet inclined for peace and his forces under Prince
Eugene continued to oppose us in Flanders, where, however, the tide at
last turned in our favour. The King was so flattered by the overflow of
joy that took place at Fontainebleau on account of our successes, that he
thanked the country for it, for the first time in his life. Prince
Eugene, in want of bread and of everything, raised the siege of
Landrecies, which he had been conducting, and terrible desertion took
place among his troops.
About this time, there was an irruption of wolves, which caused great
disorders in the Orleannais; the King's wolf-hunters were sent there, and
the people were authorised to take arms and make a number of grand
battues.