MADAME DES URSINS ASSUMES THE FUNCTIONS OF CAMERARA-MAYOR TO THE YOUNG
QUEEN OF SPAIN--AN UNPROPITIOUS ROYAL WEDDING.
IT was, therefore, with a paraphernalia almost regal that Madame des
Ursins set forth to conduct the Princess of Savoy to her husband. Our
heroine was then in her fifty-ninth year (1701), according to most
authorities, in her sixty-second, according to others; and either age
would have been for any one else the period for retreat. But by the rare
privilege of a singular energy, physical and moral, still beautiful, and
having as yet only prepared herself for playing the grand part of her
life's drama, she was about to make that advanced age a point of
departure in her militant career, the outset of a new existence. She had
not committed the error of remaining attached to old customs or old
styles of dress, she had, as the present phrase runs, advanced with the
age. She had sympathised with it with a juvenile ardour, she had noted,
at a distance, its deviations. She was desirous, by opposing it on many
points, to take advantage of its decreptitude. She could not shut her
eyes to the dazzling aspect of Madame de Maintenon's laurels.
We have shown what the Princess was as a young woman, and also at the
mature age of forty; but it is during the twenty-four years of her green
old age (1698-1722) when having become a great political personage, we
have to behold her exercising a powerful influence over the destinies of
two great kingdoms, and aspiring to soar to a greater height than ever
her painstaking ambition enabled her to attain. It was then that
ambition began to take entire possession of her soul, and displaced in
her heart every other sentiment that her previous sixty-two years had
not extinguished. There can be no doubt of that fact when we discover in
her letters such a glow of youthful feeling, such scarcely repressible
delight, and finally that air of triumph with which she proposes to
welcome and profit by her first elevation.
Her ambition, moreover, could not have had a more brilliant and
legitimate aim than that of associating herself in the glorious task of
France become the instructress of Spain; and Madame des Ursins, who
joined to her own the aspirations of the other sex, entered upon her new
mission with a zeal, an ardour, and an activity more than virile.
Into what profound decadence Spain had then fallen is well known to any
reader of modern history, and the history of modern Europe contains no
more terrible lesson. The Austrian dynasty, insatiable and jealous, had
sought to impose at once upon Spain, Europe, and the world, her
political and religious despotism. Charles V. had confiscated Spanish
liberties and conquered the Commons. Philip II., his son, constituting
himself the representative of Catholicism, had persecuted on all sides,
whether by open violence or intrigue, by the aid of corruption or
torture, the new principle of Protestantism. He had failed in every
quarter. The sanguinary executions of the Duke of Alva had been answered
by the creation of a new free State--Protestant and Republican Holland.
With the _Invincible Armada_ was engulfed the last menace of the Spanish
navy, which had been answered by the triumph of Protestant England under
the glorious reign of Elizabeth. The Spanish nation itself had
conspired, it must be confessed, to that decadence. It had shown no
reaction either against the enervating despotism of royalty, or even the
nature of the climate and soil, unequal and excessive in every way. The
epoch of heroic deeds once elapsed upon the glowing arena of the Middle
Ages, the Spanish people had despised labour, commerce, and industry.
The soil, neglected, had returned to its primitive sterility, and almost
entire provinces had become solitary deserts. Indolence and poverty are
evil counsellors. The Spanish people, the nation of the Cid, had
transformed her noble and fervent religion of the Middle Ages into a
degrading, and too often cruel superstition. It was unhappily the
popular sentiment of which Philip III. was the exponent when he expelled
the Moors in 1603, thus depriving Spain--poor and already
depopulated--of one hundred thousand rich and industrious families; and
it was national opinion also which had accepted and maintained the
domination of the monks and the hateful empire of the Inquisition.
France, on the contrary, had proceeded rapidly along the path of an
admirable progress. After having put an end to the sanguinary period of
the religious wars, after having repressed the formidable ambition of
the House of Austria, she had proclaimed the principles of tolerance and
justice, destined to become common to all modern communities, and she
had afforded the example of a centralisation which it was thought would
prove an element of prosperity and power. Would the establishment of
such a centralisation consort with the native energy of Spain, which
the peculiar genius of her great provinces still retained? Was it
necessary, in order to rouse that generous country from its languor,
merely to appeal to its recollections of the past, to the sentiment of
its dignity, to what remained of its antique virtues, or was it indeed
necessary to inoculate it with an infusion of some better blood?
Finally, had it not become a question whether Spain should be governed
for itself, or rather as an annexation of France, by considering it as a
simple instrument of the policy of Louis XIV.
Such were the grave questions which the accession of Philip V. had
raised. Louis XIV. had solved them in the sense most favourable to his
ambition, and if he recommended his grandson not to surround himself
with Frenchmen and to respect the national feeling, it was only to bend
the more gently the genius of Spain to his own designs. The
correspondence of Madame de Maintenon--eloquent echoes from Marly and
Versailles--openly reveals that policy. No wonder that it should do so.
The interests involved in the preservation of the balance of power in
Europe were not those which affected the great King: those of the
cabinet of Versailles, he considered ought to be the sole rule, not only
for France, but for Europe entire. So thought everybody also who
surrounded the pompous Louis. Those even who pretended to hold
themselves aloof from his moral domination--the Duke de Beauvilliers,
the Duke de Chevreuse, and the Archbishop of Cambrai--divided their
hopes between the Duke of Burgundy and the new King of Spain, the
brother of their well-beloved disciple; and, surrounding Philip V. with
creatures of their own, would not admit that they could govern otherwise
than by Frenchmen and French ideas. Even for that party which arrogated
to itself the title of "honest folks," animated by noble sentiments and
generous illusions, it was difficult sufficiently to enlarge the narrow
patriotism of the time, and to admit within it a sympathetic alliance
with the ideas of any foreign nationality.
Madame des Ursins was less exclusively and more truly devoted to Spain,
without failing in her devotion to France. She was a Frenchwoman at
Madrid in sustaining the alliance between the two countries in view of
their common interests, and in attacking by reforms the deep-seated
abuses which had prepared the complete ruin of Spain; she was so
especially likewise in waging a determined fight against an institution
the most repugnant to the character and intelligence of France--the
Inquisition. But she became Spanish also when needful, whether she had
to humour warily the national susceptibilities, or to confide the
principal posts to Spaniards rather than to Frenchmen, or, finally,
whether in 1709, when the guardianship of Philip V. had become a very
heavy burden to the declining Louis, she manifested her indignation at
the very idea, too readily accepted at Versailles, of abandoning Spain,
and was stubbornly resolved, on her own part, to struggle by the side of
Louis XIV.'s grandson to the last extremity.
The whole period which extends up to the moment of her first disgrace
was solely employed by her in establishing her power by masking it. She
still remained without a very precise mission; the indirect
encouragement of Torcy and Madame de Maintenon, it is true, soon came to
sustain her, and her entire study centered in meriting at their hands,
and especially at those of Louis XIV., a more effective confidence.
She had first to make herself acceptable to the Queen of Spain.
Marie-Louise of Savoy, whom her _Camerara-mayor_ met for the first time
on board her galley in the harbour of Villefranche, at the moment when
the tearful eyes of the young princess were casting a last glance at the
lovely Italian land, was that admirable queen whose life in default of
mental courage became worn out by the corroding of adversity, and whose
popular name has remained as a symbol in Spain of every royal and
domestic virtue. Not quite fourteen at the period of that meeting, the
princess was already as tall as the Duchess of Burgundy, whose perfect
shape she also possessed, with a more regular cast of features and an
incomparable charm in her graceful and affable manners. Smiling through
her tears, and in the midst of her grief ever displaying gentleness
blended with majesty, she played the queen on all occasions in a
marvellous way for one so youthful, that everybody who had the honour of
approaching her during the journey was struck with astonishment.
Marie-Louise was a gentle and affectionate girl, of an intelligence and
will in advance of her years, and which happily did not injure her
natural gracefulness. For this young creature, for this child, suddenly
become a wife and a queen, the presence of Madame des Ursins, still
handsome even at sixty-six, sprightly and as skilful as she was eager to
please, was the sole refuge beside the indolent love of a boy-king of
eighteen, who gave her no protection. These two women, whom nature had
created so dissimilar, were about to be united for ever in one common
destiny. The young Queen appeared to be immediately struck with the
value of the support which a mind so supple and vigorous offered her,
and when the departure of her Piedmontese waiting-maids had torn from
the poor girl-queen the last trace of family and country, she clung to
her grand _camerara_ as the ivy to the tree which supports it. On the
other hand, Madame des Ursins did not fail to hold herself out as
representing the respected authority of Louis XIV. and Madame de
Maintenon; on the other, she knew well how to initiate herself, by means
of the domestic duties, of which she designedly exaggerated the
importance, into the innermost prejudices of the royal wife. She made
herself useful to Marie-Louise, became indispensable amidst an
intercourse so privileged and private; at the same time she afforded
pleasure in so doing, and that proved during the whole period of her
sojourn in Spain the most solid foundation of her favour and power.
Through the Queen the _camerara-mayor_ was certain of governing the
King. Proportionately as the absolute monarchy, in spite of the severest
warnings, set up pretensions even more and more excessive and insensate,
it became also more manifest that its old traditions had rendered the
princes degenerate, and that the blood was equally menaced with
impoverishment in the family of Louis XIV. as in that of Charles V. The
new King of Spain was deficient in moral force and determination. He had
generous proclivities, without the least doubt. He was gloriously born,
as the phrase then ran. Like all his race, he showed bravery on the
field of battle; but energetic persistence in long-continued designs
firmly conceived, he was ever wanting in. Wearied to excess by the
weight of a crown, he ended by resigning its functions; compelled to
resume them, he succumbed beneath their weight, conceived scruples
touching the legitimacy of his royalty, and sunk into a crazy
melancholy, which degenerated later into downright insanity.[20]
[20] The singing of Farinelli had at first the effect of charming
away his dark moods, but he speedily gave way to such hallucinations
that he quite neglected his personal appearance, pretended to go
fishing in the middle of the night, and to mount the horses which
figured on the tapestry of his chamber.
The Princess des Ursins in directing her steps towards Villefranche, the
little Piedmontese port, which had been fixed upon as the place of
Marie-Louise's embarkation, had merely wished to present herself to the
Queen, her mistress, at the moment when the latter would be ready to
enter her galley and set sail for Spain. By that means, she would avoid
the necessity of putting all the royal train in mourning. For, as she
had already suggested with remarkable foresight to the Maréchale de
Noailles--the Court of Turin was then in mourning, and there would have
been a necessity to conform to the French custom, followed by the Dukes
of Savoy: on the contrary, by stopping at Villefranche and meeting the
Queen at the moment of her embarkation, she would merely have to observe
the usage of Spain, which only enjoined mourning upon the master and
mistress of a house.
Authorised to do what seemed fit to her on that score, she had awaited
therefore the arrival of the young princess at Villefranche, and with so
much the more satisfaction, that at Turin she would have been exposed to
a thousand annoyances. There she would have encountered the Princess de
Carignan--the great lady who had taken care of her niece, Marie-Louise
of Savoy, and like many other Piedmontese ladies, she wished very much
to follow her into Spain, and perhaps remain there. There were many
little projects, it appears, formed at Turin with the view of governing
the young Queen.[21] For a long while it was thought that they would be
realised, because the report ran that the Princess de Carignan would in
fact accompany her niece to Madrid. But Louis XIV., foreseeing that
source of embarrassment, had given an order to dismiss all the
Piedmontese ladies at the frontier, so soon as the Queen should meet her
Spanish household. Those ladies were aware of this; but their discontent
was only the greater, and it was much to be feared lest if Madame des
Ursins should herself repair to Turin, to present herself to the young
Queen, she might be exposed to some insult on their part. Who could tell
whether, at that court, before the departure of Marie-Louise had removed
all hope, her "position might not be menaced"? In that, then, there
arose an additional motive, and the principal one, to stop at
Villefranche, in order not to see the Queen before the moment of
embarking with her, and of entering immediately and irrevocably upon the
exercise of her duties.
[21] Memoirs of Louville, tom. i., and those of De Noailles, tom.
ii., pp. 164, 165.
When Marie-Louise arrived there in the month of October, 1701, the
anchor of her galley was instantly weighed and sail set for Nice, where
a last farewell was taken of Piedmont and the soil of Italy; and next,
her foot touched the French shore to make slight halts at Toulon, at
Marseilles, and at Montpellier, and despatch thence, by way of thanks
for the splendid fêtes given by the local authorities, a salvo of homage
to the Great King at Versailles. Madame des Ursins was seated in the
royal litter, at the Queen's side, and everywhere had her share of the
honours rendered to that princess in the various cities of France and
Italy. At length the Spanish frontier was reached, and there the
Piedmontese ladies, to the great regret of Marie-Louise and their own,
were compelled to stop and retrace their steps to Turin. The Spanish
dames, appointed by Philip V., replaced them. The young Queen thereupon
lost much of her characteristic amenity, and Madame des Ursins gained
nothing on the score of benevolence of intention; but the jealousy of
the Spanish ladies was less formidable to her.
The marriage by procuration had been performed at Turin. The definitive
espousals, it was settled, should be accomplished at Figuieras, on
Spanish soil, in order that Marie-Louise might not enter into the
country, where she was destined to reign, save with the irrevocable
titles of wife and queen. Thither was to come, on an appointed day, King
Philip V. He did not keep his bride waiting for him, for, impatient to
behold her to whom, by procuration, he had already given his hand, and
whose charms had been highly extolled to him, he passed beyond the place
fixed upon for the official reception, and went forwards disguised,
without pomp or noise, to meet her. He was followed by a very small
number of cavaliers, and so soon as he perceived the queen's retinue
approaching the town of Hostalnovo, he quitted his attendants, and
"pricked forward like a courier" towards the royal litter. Desirous of
preserving his incognito, he presented himself as a king's messenger,
sent to get the earliest tidings of the Queen, and he addressed himself
in Spanish to the Princess des Ursins, to receive the information which
he asserted he was ordered to obtain. The Queen immediately guessed that
the messenger was no other than the King himself. She was, therefore,
anxious to answer him herself, and so their conversation commenced,
touching her health and that of King Philip V., the incidents of her
journey, and it was continued for about a quarter of an hour. For some
time the Queen pretended not to recognise him; but, at last, her emotion
getting the better of her, she broke through the assumed incognito in
which the King had shrouded himself, and was anxious to alight from her
litter. Philip, without further revealing himself, stayed her with his
hand. Whereupon, she grasped hold instantly of that royal hand, which by
an attention, divined by her heart, was rendered so dear to her; "she
took it in both of her own, kissed it, and held it for some moments,
after which the king rode off to rejoin his suite, and returned
satisfied to Figuieras."[22]
[22] MS. Hist. de l'élévation de Philip V., p. 372.
There was celebrated the marriage of Philip V. with Marie-Louise of
Savoy. But oh, unforeseen mischance! Several days were destined to
elapse ere he could really possess her the sight of whom had only had
the effect of redoubling the ardour of his desires. His happiness was
retarded by an incident of a very extraordinary nature, one which caused
him personally much unpleasantness, and moreover, gave his young bride a
bad impression of the character of a nation she was about to rule over.
For the supper, which was prepared for her after the marriage ceremony,
the viands had been cooked partly in the Spanish, partly in the French
fashion, because at Turin the art of the celebrated _Chef_ Vatel had
been adopted. But the Spanish ladies whose duty it was, under the
direction of Madame des Ursins, to serve the dishes, did not expect such
a strange commencement of their functions. All their national
susceptibilities were aroused at the sight, and determined to wean
abruptly their new Queen from the customs of her own country, and to
impose upon her, from the moment of her very first repast, the diet of
Spain, they did not hesitate to upset all the French dishes, without a
single exception, in order to serve up nothing but Spanish cookery. The
King said nothing; and the Princess des Ursins, notwithstanding her
stupefaction and secret wrath, was unwilling to commence her career in
Spain by scenes of reproach and severity. The Queen also, whose natural
vivacity and tender age could not be expected to observe the same
restraint, had, nevertheless, sufficient control over herself at first
to keep silence. But when she found herself with the King and Madame des
Ursins in the apartment allotted to their privacy, her displeasure burst
forth, and with so much the greater force that it had been so long
restrained and that no foreign eye hindered its manifestation. She shed
tears plentifully, sobbed, regretted the absence of her Piedmontese
ladies, waxed indignant at the audacity and rudeness of the Spanish
dames, and even declared that she would proceed no further, but would
return to Piedmont. Night came on, the king left her to undress, and
waited to be summoned to his bride's apartment; but the young Queen,
"_entêtée, comme une enfant qu'elle était_," says Saint Simon, "for she
was scarcely fourteen," appeared disposed to attribute to the King
himself, the rude conduct of his subjects; and in spite of all reasoning
on the subject, and the remonstrances of Madame des Ursins, replied that
she would sleep alone and go back as quickly as possible to Turin. It
may easily be guessed how untoward and disagreeable such an affair
proved to Philip V.; he was greatly discomfited by it, and when the
second night came, as the Queen had not recovered her good humour, it
was he, who acting upon the advice of the Duke of Medina Sidonia and
Count San Estevan de Gormas, anticipated a fresh refusal, by causing her
to be told that he would not now share her couch. That spontaneous
determination was adroit, and produced its effect. Marie-Louise was
exceedingly piqued at it in the depth of her girlish _amour-propre_, and
ended by making an honourable _amende_ to the King, blaming and
condemning her own childishness. She promised to conduct herself for the
future like a woman and a queen, and on the arrival of the third night,
the nuptial bed at length reunited the hitherto dissevered husband and
wife. The next day they left Figuieras, touched at Barcelona, and thence
hastened on to Madrid, wherein they made their triumphal entry by the
Alcala Gate, towards the end of October, 1701, amidst a great concourse
of nobles and populace. There also the Princess des Ursins was installed
definitively in her functions of _camerara-mayor_. These she was
destined to fulfil during a period of thirteen years, from 1701 to 1714,
and by favour of that influential position, to exercise a virtual
sovereignty, the acts of which it will now be our task to duly
appreciate.