ONEROUS AND INCONGRUOUS DUTIES OF THE _CAMERARA MAYOR_--SHE RENDERS THE
YOUNG QUEEN POPULAR WITH THE SPANIARDS--POLICY ADOPTED BY THE PRINCESS
FOR THE REGENERATION OF SPAIN--CHARACTER OF PHILIP V. AND
MARIE-LOUISE--TWO POLITICAL SYSTEMS COMBATED BY MADAME DES URSINS--SHE
EFFECTS THE RUIN OF HER POLITICAL RIVALS, AND REIGNS ABSOLUTELY IN THE
COUNCILS OF THE CROWN.
THE sudden departure of all her Italian waiting-women had, as we have
seen, on first setting her foot in Spain, for a moment thrown the young
Queen into a condition bordering on despair. By advice, however, the
respectful devotedness of which served to soften its austerity, and by
an absolute abnegation of herself, Madame des Ursins drew closely
towards her the broken-hearted princess by discreetly assuaging all her
first girlish sorrows. She became a friend, a sister, almost a mother to
the exiled-one, and her influence profited no less by the first
embarrassments of the conjugal union than by the unbridled passion which
ere long placed under the yoke of his wife a husband of eighteen, chaste
as St. Louis, with the amorous temperament of Henry IV. In order to
strengthen that ascendency and to remain exclusive mistress of a
confidence of which power was the price, the Princess des Ursins
flinched neither under fatigue calculated to exhaust the sturdiest
frame, nor before services the nature of which would have outraged her
pride, had it not been to her, as Saint-Simon says, _une même chose
d'être et de gouverner_. That gilded servitude is described with a
charmingly punctilious complaisance in her letters to the Maréchale de
Noailles and the Marquis de Torcy, and notwithstanding the commiseration
which she claims for it, it may be clearly seen that Madame des Ursins
enters into the details of her domestic service far less for the purpose
of carrying a complaint to Versailles, than to have it there set down to
her credit.
"Gracious Heaven! to what sort of occupation, madame, have you destined
me? I have not a moment's repose, and cannot find time even to speak to
my secretary. There is no longer any question about resting after
dinner, nor of eating when I am hungry. I am but too glad to be able to
make a bad dinner standing, and moreover it is very rare that I am not
summoned away before swallowing the first mouthful. In truth, Madame de
Maintenon would laugh heartily if she knew all the details of my office.
Tell her, I beseech you, that it is I who have the honour of receiving
the King of Spain's dressing-gown when he gets into bed, and of handing
it to him along with his slippers when he rises. So far as that goes I
don't lose my patience; but every night when the King enters the Queen's
chamber to go to bed, the Count de Benavente confides to my care the
King's sword, a certain utensil, and a lamp, the contents of which I
generally manage to spill over my dress,--rather too good a joke. The
King would never rise were I not to go and draw aside the bed-curtains,
and it would be a sacrilege if anybody but myself were to enter the
Queen's chamber whilst they were abed. Very lately, the lamp went out
because I had spilled half the oil. I could not find where the windows
were, and thought that I should have broken my neck against the wall,
and we were--the King of Spain and I--near a quarter of an hour
stumbling against each other in trying to find them. Her Majesty has got
so used to me that sometimes she is good enough to call me up two hours
earlier than I should otherwise care to rise.... The Queen delights in
this sort of pleasantry; still, however, she has not yet regained the
confidence she placed in her Piedmontese women. I am astonished at this,
for I serve her better than they did, and I am certain that they would
not wash her feet or pull off her shoes as readily as I do."[23]
[23] Letter to the Maréchale de Noailles, Dec. 1701. Recueil de M.
Geffroy.
How unlike a contemporary mistress of the robes in England, the haughty
Duchess of Marlborough!
Such a state of slavery weighed very lightly upon the Princess, for,
although it was conformable to the custom of a palace, in which a
solitary royalty seemed to exist without keeping up any relations with
the human race, nothing could have been more easy than for the _camerara
mayor_ to have provided substitutes for the performance of her
unbecoming duties. One of the recommendations of Louis XIV. to his
grandson had been, in fact, that whilst scrupulously respecting all
popular customs, to wage an implacable war in his court against the
monstrous etiquette which, under the last Austrian princes, had palsied
Spanish royalty. This was one of the labours to which the _camerara
mayor_ devoted herself; but she took good care not to reform anything
appertaining to her own functions, comprehending clearly enough the
policy of keeping to herself sole access to the royal personages, and
sacrificing without grudge her dignity to her power and influence. A
contrary policy, as will be seen, caused the downfall of Queen Anne's
potent favourite.
But we must pass over these domestic duties to speak of state affairs
and the gradual initiation therein by the Princess of this young couple.
During the campaign of Italy in which Philip V. was anxious to take
part, Madame des Ursins, suitably to the duties and prerogatives of her
charge, did not quit the Queen for a single moment. She was present with
her on every occasion at the sittings of the Junta, and, under pretext
of familiarising her with politics, she herself penetrated every state
secret. The Princess well knew how to make etiquette subserve her
purpose, to maintain it to the utmost, modify or slacken it according to
her interests. She understood what kind of concessions the genius of the
Spanish nation demanded, and also what reforms it permitted. She judged
at a glance of the disposition of the grandees, and yielded to no
illusion relative to the degree of support she might expect from them.
"With these sort of folks," she wrote to the Marquis de Torcy, "the
surest way is to show firmness. The closer I observe them, the less do I
find that they merit the esteem which I thought it would have been
impossible not to accord them." According to the Princess, the Spanish
nation in the persons of its grandees, had yielded obedience to a son of
France only, under the idea that France alone could defend and protect
it. France remaining powerful and victorious, Spain would be safe: but,
at each defeat that occurred in Flanders or Germany from the
irresistible sword of Marlborough, the eyes of the grandees were turned
towards the Archduke, and their fidelity was shaken. The skill and merit
of Madame des Ursins was to perceive how, in so short a time, to derive
so much advantage from the grace and affability of the Queen, whom she
made really popular among the faithful people of central Spain, and it
was wonderful to see the roots of that new royalty strike so quickly in
the hearts of the old Castilians, as to render it able later during the
stormy times to weather every rude attack. With an intuitive
foresightedness not a little remarkable, the Princess des Ursins had
from the first proposed to herself a twofold object. She sought to
become the intermedium of the close alliance formed between the
grandsire and the grandson, in order to regenerate Spain by causing
French measures to prevail in the government of that misruled country;
but to the extent only that their application should appear possible
without wounding the national sentiment. That policy was the wisest and
assuredly the most useful for the Peninsula in the extremity to which
the inept power it had just escaped from had brought it. Among the
princes who were neither vicious nor cruel, there are none who had done
more harm to mankind than the last descendants of Charles V. At the end
of the seventeenth century, the immense empire of Philip IV. and Charles
II., reduced to a feebleness which the Ottoman empire in our own days
has scarcely felt, was nothing more than the phantom of a nation. The
House of Austria had triumphed over feudality and municipal resistance
as completely as the House of Bourbon; but the successes of monarchical
power had been as sterile on one side of the Pyrenees as they had been
profitable to it on the other, for in Spain the impotence of the
vanquisher had still surpassed that of the vanquished.
So much blood shed by axe and sword, so many lives sacrificed under
torture, had scarcely tended further to strengthen royal authority or
cement the union of the Spanish kingdoms; and those princes whose
domains still spread widely across the globe, had no longer to oppose
to Europe, during the long agony in which their race was perishing,
either an army, a fleet, a general, or even a statesman.
The first of the sovereigns summoned to assist in restoring this unhappy
country to its ancient grandeur was assuredly the least fitting to
accomplish such a task. But seventeen years old, when Charles II. chose
him for his successor, the Duke d'Anjou was indebted both to nature and
education for a mind rather constituted to serve than reign. Brother of
the heir to the French throne, he had been reared in studied
subordination towards the latter, and the discipline of Beauvilliers and
Fénelon, which had curbed the violence of character in the Duke of
Burgundy, had produced less beneficial effects in the melancholy
temperament of his younger brother. With a natural rectitude of thought
and a pride which at times revealed the hereditary haughtiness of his
race, Philip V. had in the same degree as his nephew Louis XV., whom he
resembled in many ways, that morbid weariness of life, that contempt for
mankind and distaste for business. He was afflicted, moreover, with that
fatal impotence of will which makes a libertine king the slave of his
mistresses, and, a faithful husband the passive instrument of a charming
queen who may happen to be prompted by the most skilful of councillors.
But nothing had as yet indicated the melancholy condition of mind which
later drove the young King to the confines of despair and insanity. On
his first entrance into his kingdom, escorted by a crowd of brilliant
nobles, Philip was radiant with youth and hope. He strode forwards
sustained by the strong arm of a people who thought to escape, by the
intervention of the most powerful sovereign in Europe, from the evils
of war, and more especially from that severance of the Spanish monarchy
more dreaded by the nation than all its other woes together. In a
capital which he was forced to quit on two several occasions, in a court
soon afterwards prostrated before his rival, and even in those provinces
of Arragon and Catalonia, the burning centres of civil war, nothing at
first was heard save shouts of joy and protestations of fidelity.
Nevertheless it did not need great sagacity to foresee the perils
reserved for the new establishment. The French regime disquieted
interests too numerous and prejudices too powerful throughout the
Peninsula not to explode at the first difficulty which it might
encounter on its path.
Thunderstruck by the unforeseen will of Charles II., Europe, which at
the first moment had seemed indisposed to contest its dispositions, had
not long deferred their reconsideration. Persuaded that the
aggrandisement of his family was equivalent in the eyes of Louis XIV. to
an aggrandisement of territory, England, Holland, and Portugal, taking
in hand the successorial pretentions of the house of Austria, out of
which those cabinets had made such a good bargain in two treaties of
partition, sent fleets into every sea, whilst awaiting the moment to
carry into the heart of Spain, hostilities which the emperor had already
commenced in Italy. An implacable coalition, of which the Peace of
Ryswick had suspended the effects without modifying the causes of it,
was formed to snatch the two peninsulas from the domination of France.
The latter power resolutely accepted the struggle this time for a just
and honest cause; but the war was scarcely begun ere the certitude was
acquired that in doubling the dangers of France, Spain would add nothing
to its resources. With what contemptuous bitterness did Spain, in fact,
watch the long train of disasters which from the pinnacle of power
brought Louis XIV. to the brink of an abyss by one of those vicissitudes
the effect of which is never more rapid upon the popular mind than when
fortune deserts men who have been long powerful and flourishing!
Such was the theatre upon which Providence had placed a timid and ailing
prince, but which event threatened to endanger even the very existence
of the French monarchy itself. Louis XIV. seemed to have attained his
object in the guidance of his grandson, who followed the great monarch's
injunctions with filial docility. The Queen governed Philip V., and
Madame des Ursins governed the Queen. Saint Simon thus explains this
ascendancy:--"She guided the Queen," says he, "who had placed in her all
the affection and all the confidence of a young person who knew no other
adviser, who depended wholly upon her for her particular daily conduct,
and for her amusements, and who found in her graciousness, gentleness,
and complaisance, combined with every possible resource. For the rest,
such empire was not that which weakness and incapacity yields to genius
and strength." Marie-Louise had not been less carefully brought up than
her sister, the Duchess of Burgundy, nor less well instructed. She had
innate talent, and, in her early youth showed intelligence, good sense,
firmness, and was capable of being advised and restrained, and who
later, when her character became more developed and formed, manifested a
constancy and courage which the natural graces of that same intelligence
infinitely enhanced. A lively sympathy between the two women alone
determined the authority of the older over the younger, and if the
King's confidence in the _camerara-mayor_ was a homage rendered to the
real superiority of her intelligence, it might be said that a happy
conformity of tastes, views, and dispositions, attached his Queen to the
Princess des Ursins.
Two political systems confronted each other at Madrid. The one
ultra-French, the other purely Spanish, represented by the grandees and
inclining towards the Archduke of Austria, the competitor of Philip V.
The first-named had for champions, Cardinal Porto-Carrero, "virtually
the actual prime minister," the Archbishop of Seville, Arias, the
provisional president of the Council of Castille, the Marquis de
Louville, and all the King's French household; subsequently it was
directed by the Cardinal and the Abbé d'Estrées, Ambassadors of France.
The second party re-united the most illustrious names of the monarchy.
It had for its chiefs, successively, the Count de Melgar, Admiral of
Castile, the Marquis de Léganez, and the Duke de Medina-Coeli. The
first-named policy tended to destroy, by its exclusive ideas, the
popularity of Philip V., the second prepared to betray him. They were
both reduced to impotence, and became fatal to those who ventured to
defend them. Madame des Ursins combated the one and the other, and aimed
at inaugurating in Spain a mixed policy, heeding the cabinet of
Versailles without annihilating the cabinet of Madrid, satisfying the
just desires of Spain and the susceptibilities of the nation, without
disdaining the sometimes useful advice and the ever requisite resources
of France. Such was, therefore, the plan adopted by the young Queen.
But, in order to realise it, it was necessary to have the field open, it
was necessary that Madame des Ursins should be delivered from her
rivals, and should reign as absolutely in the councils of the Crown as
in the minds of the King and Queen.
The principal chief of the Austrian party, the Admiral of Castile, was
the first to become dangerous. "He loved the house of Austria, for which
he had fought, under the preceding reign, by sea and land, and from
which he had received the highest honours." On the contrary he detested
the house of Bourbon, against which he had strongly "pronounced" at the
time when the last will of Charles II. was in preparation.[24] But he
had confronting him the vigilance of Madame des Ursins. She fathomed his
intrigues and baffled his early manoeuvres; though she had not always to
struggle openly against him. He rendered himself justice; he
comprehended his own impotence, and had recourse to treason. He had
frequent conferences with a Dutch spy, plotted with him the downfall of
Philip V., and the elevation of the Archduke, and finally handed him a
correct topographic plan of Andalusia and Estremadura. The cabinets of
Vienna and London assured of such an aid, declared war against Philip V.
Nevertheless, although the Spanish government was duly apprised of these
proceedings, it still wanted that boldness which the continuous use of
power and long-indulged prosperity give. It only determined upon
dispatching the admiral abroad, and appointed him ambassador to the
French Court; a dubious favour which at once revealed its fears and its
weakness, but which at least postponed a peril it dared not yet face.
The admiral saw plainly that he was suspected in Spain, and that in
France he would be a cipher; nevertheless, he pretended to take his
departure thither; but halted when half-way, and went to join the
Portuguese troops banded with those of the allies. The cabinet of Madrid
had from that time forward acquired the right of punishing him. The
Count de Melgar was condemned _par contumace_; his friends were forced
to blame his conduct openly; and his melancholy death which happened
shortly afterwards, the result of an insult reserved sooner or later for
all traitors, deprived a formidable faction of its leader.
[24] Combes, p. 109.
The ultra-French party did not find a less rude adversary in Madame des
Ursins. Of this, Louville, even before the arrival of the Princess, had
a presentiment. "I would much rather have Madame de Ventadour," he wrote
Torcy. So early as the month of January, 1703, he saw his influence
destroyed, foresaw his coming defeat and meditated a _coup d'éclat_--the
getting rid of the _camerara-mayor_. He declares to the Duke de
Beauvilliers,--"If prompt measures are not taken to extricate the
Catholic King from his slavery, he is lost. In the first place, Madame
des Ursins must be got rid of, there need be no hesitation about that."
In the month following, he insists that they should "keep firm, and get
rid of her;" and, in July, 1703, to bring Torcy to a decision, he
adds,--"She is now detested by the Spaniards." Madame des Ursins repaid
him hate for hate, and never spoke of him save with a lofty contempt
befitting an offended great lady. "He has cut a greater figure," she
wrote to Cardinal de Noailles, "by the insolent things he has written
about me, than by any merit of his own. I think that I can never forgive
him if he does not first retract everything which he has advanced
against me. In truth, it ought not to be permitted that so insignificant
a person should outrage a woman of my rank." Matters having reached this
pass, it was clear that one or the other must succumb. It was the lot of
the Marquis de Louville. Two couriers reaching Versailles from Spain,
determined his fall. On the 22nd of October, a despatch from the Duke de
Beauvilliers announced it to him. "It is done," wrote the duke, "we are
lost. The step is taken. You are to be instantly recalled."[25]
[25] Collection of M. Geffroy, p. 457.
The Archbishop of Seville, Arias, who was of the same politics, was
shortly afterwards sent back to his diocese. The Duke de Montellano
replaced him in the presidency of Castile, and a Papal brief, obtained
some months after his disgrace, enjoined him not to quit Seville again.
There remained Porto-Carrero and the Cardinal d'Estrées, recently
nominated ambassador of France. They were the firmest supporters of
their cause and the most formidable adversaries of the Princess:
Porto-Carrero, by his high position, by the recollection of services
rendered at the period of the will; Cardinal d'Estrées, by his influence
at the Court of Versailles, by the protection of Noailles, by the
energetic support of the entire French party. The strife was fierce; but
the resources of Madame des Ursins were equal to the emergency. The Duke
de Montellano, president of the Council of Castille, counterbalanced the
authority, until then unlimited, of Porto-Carrero; the auditorship of
finance, which had always appertained to the prime minister, being taken
from him. Weakened by this check and rivalry, the Cardinal abruptly
changed his policy and placed himself at the head of the anti-French
party; he refused to act with Cardinal d'Estrées, and tendered his
resignation. Had he remained firm in that course, probably he might have
re-enacted his political part in the ranks of his new friends, and have
caused the government great embarrassment. On receiving a letter from
Louis XIV., he had the weakness to give way, withdrew his resignation,
and resumed his seat at the council board. But factions hate and despise
more intensely those who abandon their ranks than those who fight
against them: that manoeuvre irritated alike the French and the
Spaniards; both, in their turn, abjured. Porto-Carrero was the turn-coat
from every cause: as a politician he was annihilated.
In this affair, Cardinal d'Estrées had been, without knowing it, the
tool of Madame des Ursins. "He was," according to Saint Simon, "a hot,
hasty, impetuous, high-handed man, who could tolerate neither superior
nor equal." It will readily be imagined that the _camerara-mayor_ could
not brook the ascendency which he aimed at ursurping. She resolutely
resisted him in all things and on every occasion. She opposed, with
might and main, the success of his policy; she set her face against his
imperious manners and tedious formalities. Philip and his Queen grew
tired of the strife. They took part with Madame des Ursins and wrote to
Louis XIV. After that letter "the Cardinal d'Estrées was looked upon as
the great stirrer-up of strife. His arrival at the Court of Madrid had
interrupted the perfect harmony about to be re-established. Not a day
passed without some one suffering from his intractable and arrogant
temper." Madame des Ursins worked in the same groove with Torcy. The
Cardinal's cabal, by way of revenge, "raked into the private life of the
_camerara-mayor_," hoping to destroy by scandalous tales her reputation
in the eyes of Louis XIV. and Madame de Maintenon. Those tactics failed
of success; Louis XIV., it is true, recalled Madame des Ursins; but the
Queen of Spain defended her favourite with such earnest importunity,
that the severity of the Court of Versailles was disarmed. An endeavour
was made to reconcile the two adversaries; but that reconciliation, if
sincere, was not lasting. Supreme authority admits of no equal
partition: difficulties multiplied themselves. Philip V. at length
declared to Louis XIV., "that if, to keep his crown, he must resign
himself to have Cardinal Porto-Carrero always as his minister, he knew
what he should prefer to choose." In the month of September, 1704,
therefore, all the French household, with Cardinal Porto-Carrero,
quitted Madrid.