THE PRINCESS MAKES A FALSE STEP IN HER STATECRAFT--A BLUNDER AND AN
IMBROGLIO.
TO recall Madame des Ursins at the earliest possible moment and inflict
upon her a well-merited disgrace was the earnest desire of Louis XIV.;
but, omnipotent as that Prince was, he found his hand arrested by a very
serious difficulty, the _camerara-mayor_, in fact, screened herself
behind the Queen, and the King of France was well aware that in
recalling her he would deal a blow alike against the affection and
self-love of his grand-daughter which she would never forgive--an
extremity which was not less repugnant to his policy than to his good
feeling. Moreover the departure of Madame des Ursins would not render
the Cardinal d'Estrées' position less insupportable in a court, all the
approaches to which were barred to him, and in which his isolation was a
constant insult to France. There was nothing left, therefore, but to
grant the latter a recall which, smarting with a humiliation so
unforeseen to his overweening arrogance, he demanded in accents of rage
and despair. However, in order to salve his _amour-propre_, the Abbé
d'Estrées continued to discharge the functions of the embassy, as though
his uncle's absence were only temporary; but that state of things did
not suit either of the two factions which for more than twelve months
past divided the French household of the King of Spain, surpassing each
other in vituperation and calumny. Despite a sort of truce stipulated
between the embassy and the palace, the Abbé d'Estrées soon found
himself in the same position in which the Cardinal had been placed; for
Madame des Ursins did not like the arrangement of the Abbé being left
behind, but as Madame de Maintenon insisted upon it, she was obliged to
accept it with as good a grace as possible.[26] The Abbé, vain of his
family and his position, was not a man much to be feared as it seemed.
Madame des Ursins accordingly laughed at and despised him. He was
admitted to the council, but was quite without influence there, and when
he attempted to make any representations to Madame des Ursins or Orry,
they listened to him without attending in the least to what he said. The
Princess reigned supreme, and thought of nothing but getting rid of all
who attempted to divide her authority. At last she obtained such a
command over the poor Abbé d'Estrées, so teased and hampered him, that
he consented to the hitherto unheard-of arrangement, that the Ambassador
of France should not write to the King without first concerting his
letter with her, and afterwards show her its contents before he
despatched it. But such restraint as this became, in a short time, so
fettering, that the Abbé determined to break away from it. He wrote a
letter to the King without showing it to Madame des Ursins. She soon had
scent of what he had done; seized the letter as it passed through the
post, opened it, and, as she expected, found its contents were not of a
kind to give her much satisfaction. In fact, in her emotion of anger and
indignation she made a false step in her state-craft of a nature one can
hardly imagine a person so astute as the Princess making. This blunder
led to a great _imbroglio_.
[26] Saint Simon.
The question has been raised--Did Madame des Ursins always use the
intimate and uncontrolled influence she had obtained over the young
Queen of fourteen in a purely devoted and disinterested way? It would be
difficult, certainly, to answer in the affirmative. Louville, her rival
and enemy, a man of talent and ardour, but passionate, represents her as
the wickedest woman on earth, to be got rid of at the earliest possible
moment and at any cost, "sordid and thievish to a marvellous degree." He
raises the same accusation against Orry, a clever man whom Louis XIV.
had sent to Spain to put some order into her finances. These accusations
seem to have been unjustifiable. The Marshal Duke of Berwick, who kept
himself aloof from all these odious bickerings, does more justice to
Orry, and everything leads the impartial student to think that Madame
des Ursins on that score comes out of the scrutiny with still cleaner
hands. "_Je suis gueuse, il est vrai_," she writes to Madame de Noailles
on first going to Spain, "_mais je suis encore plus fière_." Detailing
to Madame de Maintenon somewhat later the indignities they both had to
put up with from accusations of a like nature, she speaks of them in a
tone of lofty irony and sovereign contempt which appears to exclude
anything like falsehood.
But what seems more certain--if the truth must be told--is, although a
little singular at first sight, that at the age of sixty and upwards,
Madame des Ursins still had lovers. "She is hair-brained in her
conduct,"[27] wrote Louville to the Duke and Duchess de Beauvilliers.
One Sieur d'Aubigny, a kind of household steward whom she had promoted
to be her equerry, was lodged in the _Retiro_ palace near the apartments
of her women, where he was seen one day brushing his teeth very
unconcernedly at the window. _C'était un beau et grand drôle très-bien
fait et très-découplé de corps et d'esprit_,[28] and not a _bête brute_,
as Louville calls him. But he was bold and somewhat insolent, as one who
conceived that he had a right to be so. On another occasion, Louville
and the Duke de Medina-Coeli entering the apartments of Madame des
Ursins, into which she ushered them in order that they might talk more
unrestrainedly, D'Aubigny who was installed at the other end, seeing
only the Princess and believing her to be alone, began to apostrophise
her in terms of very rude and coarse familiarity, which threw all
present into confusion. The feminine failing of Madame des Ursins, was,
we are told, this; "gallantry and _l'entêtement de sa personne_ was in
her the dominant and overweening weakness above all else, even to the
latest period of her life." So Saint Simon says, and he renders her full
justice moreover for her spirited and elevated qualities.
[27] "Elle a des moeurs _à l'escarpolette_."
[28] Saint Simon.
But to return to the matter of the intercepted despatch. What piqued the
Princess most was, to find details in it exaggerating the authority of
D'Aubigny, and a statement to the effect that it was generally believed
that she had married him. On reading this passage the pride of the great
lady was more outraged even than her modesty. Beside herself with rage
and vexation, she wrote with her own hand upon the margin of the letter,
"_Pour mariée, non_" ("At any rate, not married"), showed it in this
state to the King and Queen of Spain, to a number of other people,
always with strange clamouring, and finally crowned her folly by
sending it to Louis XIV., with furious complaints against the Abbé for
writing it without her knowledge, and for inflicting upon her such an
atrocious injury as to mention such a thing as this pretended marriage.
Her letter and its enclosure reached the King at a very inopportune
moment. Just before he had received a letter, which, taken in connection
with this of the Princess des Ursins, struck a blow at her power of the
most decisive kind. At the same time that the original thus annotated
was despatched to the Marquis de Torcy, a copy of it was addressed by
the Princess to the Duke de Noirmoutier, her brother, and the latter
caused it to be circulated throughout Paris, to the great scandal of a
society which had still some little respect left for morals and royal
power.
Louis XIV. owed it to himself not to allow such excessive audacity to go
unpunished. At the same time the affairs of Spain were then in such a
state of confusion, the danger of exasperating the young Queen appeared
so great, that it was necessary to defer severe measures, however
justifiable they might be. It was only some months afterwards, when
Philip V. had quitted Madrid for the frontiers of Portugal, to take
command of his army, reinforced by a French corps under the command of
the Duke of Berwick, that Louis thought it possible to make himself
obeyed and to strike what he himself called a decisive blow.
"The complaints against the Princess des Ursins," wrote the King to the
Abbé d'Estrées,[29] "have reached such a point that at length it is
necessary to take notice of them. I should have used less delay if I had
only consulted the welfare of the State; but I was compelled to wait
until the King quitted Madrid. I had reason to foresee that he would be
only too much influenced by the Queen's tears, that they might hinder
him from deferring with sufficient promptitude to my advice.... If the
King offers resistance, let him see how onerous is the war which I am
waging for his interests. Do not tell him that I will abandon him, for
he would not believe you; but let him understand that whatever may be my
affection for him, I can, if he does not respond thereto, make peace at
the expense of Spain, and grow tired of supporting a monarchy wherein I
only see disorders and contradictions in matters the most reasonable
that I may urge in his own interest. In fine, after such an _éclat_,
nothing short of success will do; my honour, the interest of the King,
my grandson, and that of the monarchy are concerned therein.... The
directions that I give you are absolutely necessary for my service, but
the consequences will be disagreeable for you. They have not ceased to
make mischief between my grandson and yourself; matters have made such
an impression that he has already on several occasions requested me to
recall you."
[29] 19th March, 1704. Memoirs of Noailles, tom. ii., p. 297.
Louis XIV. gave the Abbé, therefore, an order to leave forthwith, adding
to the expression of his lively regret the assurance that this disgrace,
wholly involuntary as it was, should not damage his future fortunes.
Such was the extremity to which a subject had brought the most absolute
prince in Europe. It may thus be seen what extensive roots the woman had
already thrown out in Spain who balanced so nicely the power of the
French King in his grandson's court. It will shortly afterwards be more
clearly apparent; but if the _éclat_ of such a part enhances the
importance of Madame des Ursins, her character remains singularly
compromised by it. However indulgently we may be disposed to look upon
it, we cannot dissever from a system of policy the unworthy hostility
waged by a Frenchwoman against two ambassadors of her sovereign with so
cruel a perseverance. The Cardinal d'Estrées was desirous of carrying
the same measures in Spain as Madame des Ursins; he there represented
their common master with a loftier title and a more legitimate
authority. His errors of conduct, which were numerous, had in some sort
been forced upon him, and if he had the misfortune to fall into
ambushes, to another person must be attributed the fault of preparing
them. In that period of two years, the least honourable of her political
life, the Princess had solely as a stimulant her egotistic and impatient
ambition. In subordinating to her interests those of two monarchies, in
alleging as an excuse for the violence of her attacks the right of her
own superiority, she confirmed in the minds of her adversaries by her
example the truth, that for ardent natures it is less perilous to
exercise than to pursue power.
Philip, reduced by the Queen's absence to his natural indolence, opposed
no resistance to the injunctions of his grandfather. Assailed in her
tenderest affections, wounded in her dignity as a sovereign, and
resenting at fifteen years of age that twofold outrage in as lively a
degree as in the maturity of life, Marie-Louise restricted herself at
first to a disdainful silence which, nevertheless, revealed the hope
either of a terrible vengeance or a speedy retaliation. Madame des
Ursins submitted to the commands of her sovereign with the stately
haughtiness, the expression of which is conveyed in one of her very best
letters to Madame de Noailles. The consciousness of the great services
rendered by her to both monarchies with an inviolable fidelity, the
bitter astonishment at finding her relative, until then so devoted,
"prefer to herself persons who were merely her allies, and whose
wickedness ought to have inspired her with horror," her adroit flattery
of Madame de Maintenon, "to whom Providence had reserved, as by an
assured privilege for her virtue, the sacred mission of causing truth
and justice in the end to triumph;" "Heaven wishing to avail itself of
her services for that purpose in spite of herself;" such are the chief
features of that clever defence, in which calculation tempers rage and
resentment, and which ought to be read in its entirety in the
interesting letters of the Princess.[30]
[30] Letter of May, 23rd, 1704. Geffroy's Recueil, p. 169.
But the letters likewise of the great King which have come down to us,
show that there was no need of the foolish insult conveyed by her own
epistle, to make him angry with Madame des Ursins. The complaints raised
against her were then universal, at least at Versailles, and at a
distance it was difficult to separate those which were founded on false
reports. With the well-known temper which characterised Louis XIV., it
must have seemed a thing inconceivable that such importance should be
conceded to a woman whom he had placed there to do his bidding. Finding
that his grandson and the young queen were disposed to resist his recall
of the _camerara-mayor_, he addressed them as a father and as a king:--
"You ask for my advice," he says to Philip V. (20th August, 1704), "and
I write you what I think; but the best advice becomes useless when it is
only asked for and followed after the mischief has happened.... You have
hitherto given your confidence to incapable or interested persons....
(And speaking of the recall of Orry and of another agent) it seems,
however, that the interest of those particular persons wholly engages
your attention, and at a time when you ought only to have elevated
views _you dwarf them down to the cabals of the Princess des Ursins,
with which I am unceasingly wearied_."
And to the Queen, Louis XIV. writes still more explicitly (20th
September, 1704,):--
"You know how much I have desired that you should give your confidence
to the Princess des Ursins, and that I forgot nothing that might induce
you to do so. However, unmindful of our common interest, she has given
herself up to an enmity which I do not comprehend, and has only thought
of baffling those who have been charged with our affairs. If she had had
a sincere attachment for you, she would have sacrificed all her
resentments, well or ill-founded, against the Cardinal d'Estrées,
instead of dragging you into them. _Persons of your rank ought to keep
themselves aloof from private quarrels and conduct themselves with
regard to their own interests and those of their subjects, which are
always identical._ I must therefore recall my ambassador, abandon you to
the Princess des Ursins, and leave her solely to govern your realms, or
recall that lady herself. That is what I think I ought to do."
In these truthful and kingly words, the true cause of Louis'
dissatisfaction may be seen, and the marginal note, true or false, in
the despatch, appears nothing more than a secondary accident.[31]
[31] The affirmation of Madame des Ursins was no doubt true, since
in a letter of hers to Orry, dated in 1718, she begs him to present
her friendly remembrances to M. d'Aubigny's _wife_.
The politic monarch, moreover, thought it well to take extreme
precaution in timing his blow aright. The moment of the young King being
with the army and separated from the Queen was expressly chosen, for
fear lest the latter in her despair, might oppose some obstacle, to its
execution.