from her body by the guillotine, she still firmly repudiated all
knowledge of any such individual. Let us refer to the report in the
_Moniteur_ of the “_Procès de Marie-Antoinette_,” and see what transpired
in reference to the matter.
“_The president to the accused_: Was it not at the Little Trianon that
you first met with the woman La Motte?
“_The accused_: I never once saw her.
“_The president_: Was she not your victim in the business of the famous
Necklace?
“_The accused_: She could not have been, since she was unknown to me.
“_The president_: So then you persist in denying that you were acquainted
with her?
“_The accused_: Mine is not a system of denial; what I have said is the
truth, and that I will persist in.”
Of course it was the truth; had it not been, Fouquier Tinville had
abundant means of proving the contrary; all France in these days was
overrun with spies and informers. The public accuser had really no facts
to allege against the prisoner in regard to Madame de la Motte, and
confessed he had not when ordered to bring the queen to trial. Had there
been the least particle of evidence to prove Marie-Antoinette’s intimacy
with so abandoned a woman, the attorney-general of the Revolutionary
Tribunal would have been only too glad to have brought it forward. He
had not far to go, for among the witnesses actually produced were the
Count d’Estaing, formerly in command at Versailles, who knew both the
queen and the countess, and was a frequent dinner-guest of the latter in
the Rue Neuve-Saint-Gilles; and Renée Sévin, for six years under-_femme
de chambre_ to Marie-Antoinette, yet to neither of these did he put a
single question upon the subject. Again, there was Reine Millot, another
old servant at Versailles, “_bonne citoyenne, excellente patriote_,”
who did her best to sacrifice her unhappy mistress, deposing that the
Count de Coigny had told her that the queen had sent two hundred million
francs to her brother, the Emperor Joseph, to enable him to make war
upon the Turks, and that she would end by ruining France; and further,
that she knew from different people that the queen had conceived the
design of assassinating the Duke d’Orléans, which when the king heard
of, he ordered her to be immediately searched, and two pistols being
found upon her, he commanded her to remain in her own apartment for the
space of fifteen days.[73] A witness such as this would have been only
too eager to repeat all the scandal current at Versailles respecting the
Countess de la Motte and the queen. Moreover, Count de la Motte himself
was known to be living at Bar-sur-Aube at the time of the queen’s trial,
and could have been readily enough produced, only Fouquier Tinville was
perfectly well aware that he could depose to nothing in the slightest
degree incriminatory of her whose death, though already determined on,
the revolutionary party would have been glad enough to have justified on
such a poor pretence even as complicity in the Necklace fraud.
X.
1772–1774.
HIS EMINENCE CARDINAL, COMMENDATOR, GRAND ALMONER, PRINCE-BISHOP
LOUIS-RENÉ-ÉDOUARD DE ROHAN.
Among the tribe of solicitors who put faith in the report of Madame de la
Motte’s intimacy with Marie-Antoinette, and sought to turn it to their
own advantage, certainly by far the most sanguine of them all, was her
“friend” and benefactor, Louis-René-Édouard de Rohan, Cardinal of the
Holy Roman Church, Bishop and Prince of Strasbourg, Prince of Hildesheim,
Landgrave of Alsace, Grand Almoner of France, Commander of the Order of
the Holy Ghost, Commendator of St. Waast d’Arras, Superior-general of
the Royal Hospital of the Quinze-Vingts, Abbé of the Chaise-Dieu, Master
of the Sorbonne, Member of the French Academy, &c., &c. The very man who
had been wont to bestow alms upon a descendant of the house of Valois
was now almost ready to cringe to the former recipient of his bounty
for favour and support. This dissolute and intriguing prelate, who was
destined to attain such unenviable notoriety through his connection with
the Countess de la Motte, was born on the 27th of September, 1734, and
at this period was consequently verging on his fiftieth year. He was,
as we have already mentioned, a tall, stout, handsome-looking man, with
a fresh-coloured complexion, bald forehead, and whitish grey hair. His
manners were amiable; he was fluent in conversation, and though his
talents, as the upshot proves, were of a very inferior order, still
he was not deficient in that dexterity which goes a long way towards
fitting a man for the conduct of public business—he having, with the
help of his shrewd secretary, the Abbé Georgel, rather cleverly filled
the post of Ambassador at the court of Vienna for between two and three
years. He had been sent to that court in January, 1772, to supersede the
Baron de Breteuil, thereby making a mortal enemy of that minister, now
in high favour with the sovereign. But this was not all. He had also
incurred the dislike, and even hatred, of the Queen of France, partly
in consequence of having repeated to the Empress Maria Theresa certain
scandals current at the French court respecting the unbecoming levity
of her daughter, then dauphiness—who, by-the-way, by virtue of his
office of coadjutor at Strasbourg, he had had to receive on the occasion
of her first entry into France—and partly in consequence of a letter
written by him in an unguarded moment, wherein he reflected strongly
on the duplicity of the empress with respect to Poland. In this letter
he remarked that “Maria Theresa stands, indeed, with a handkerchief
in one hand, weeping for the woes of Poland, but with a sword in the
other, ready to cut Poland into sections, and take her share,”[74] an
observation in which there was not only point, but far too much truth
for it to pass unregarded. This letter was read and laughed over by
Louis XV., and by him repeated to the Countess Dubarry at one of her
_petits soupers_, and the countess, in her turn, gossiped about it, until
at length the affair became a court joke and reached the ears of the
dauphiness, who, whilst repressing her indignation at the time, did not
fail to treasure up the circumstance in her memory.
In spite of the queen’s aversion, which, by-the-way, was fully shared by
Louis XVI., the cardinal, whose ambition led him to covet the office of
prime minister, fondly hoped, sooner or later, to recover his ground.
When therefore he heard, as very good care was taken he very quickly
should hear, that a lady who stood in certain tender relations towards
himself, and was under certain pecuniary obligations to him, was in
favour with the queen, the credulous dotard suspected neither deception
nor exaggeration in the report; which perhaps was hardly surprising, for
Nature, we are told, had given the _soi-disant_ new favourite a frank and
honest face in spite of her proficiency in the arts of deceit. “Without
possessing the full splendour of beauty,” observes the Abbé Georgel,
“the Countess de la Motte was gifted with all the graces of youth, her
countenance was intelligent and attractive, and she expressed herself
with fluency; moreover, the _air of truth that pervaded her recitals
invariably carried conviction along with it_.” The cardinal, only too
ready to be blinded and deluded, counselled his _protégée_ how to proceed
in order to retain and improve the position which he imagined she had
already acquired, intending, without doubt, to avail himself of her
interest to recover the good opinion of the queen, whose deep-rooted
prejudice against him was the bane of his life.
Madame Campan speaks of the cardinal as a spendthrift, and a man of the
most immoral character, whose mission to Vienna opened under the most
unfavourable auspices, in consequence of the nature of the reputation
which preceded his arrival at that court. “In want of money, and the
house of Rohan being unable to make him any considerable advances, he
obtained a patent which authorised him to borrow the sum of six hundred
thousand livres (twenty-four thousand pounds) upon his benefices;
nevertheless he ran into debt for upwards of another million, and thought
to dazzle the city and court of Vienna by the most indecent, and, at
the same time, the most ill-judged extravagance. He formed a suite of
eight or ten gentlemen of names sufficiently high sounding, twelve pages
equally well-born, a crowd of officers and servants, together with a
company of chamber musicians, and various other retainers. But this idle
pomp did not last; embarrassment and distress soon showed themselves; his
people, no longer receiving pay, abused the ambassadorial privileges, and
smuggled with so much effrontery that Maria Theresa, to put a stop to
it without offending the court of France, was compelled to suppress the
privileges in this respect of the entire diplomatic corps.”[75]
In those days an ambassador was not only required to be an adept in
duplicity, but he was expected, by means of bribery, or other modes of
corruption more or less dishonourable, to make himself master of all the
secrets of the court to which he was accredited. The cardinal proved
himself in this respect equal to the mission with which he was intrusted.
At the commencement of the year 1774 he discovered that the Austrian
minister, Prince von Kaunitz, had succeeded in purchasing keys of the
ciphers in which the despatches that passed between the French king and
himself and the ambassadors at Constantinople, Stockholm, Dantzic,
and St. Petersburg were written. He also discovered that the court of
Vienna had obtained copies of and had deciphered all the despatches sent
by the Duke d’Aiguillon to the various representatives of the court of
Versailles throughout Northern Europe. He learnt, too, that the main work
of interception was done at Liege, Brussels, Frankfort, and Ratisbon. At
these places copies of despatches were taken and forwarded to what was
styled the “Cabinet of Decipherers,” a department of which Baron Peckler
was the head.[76]
How it was that the cardinal came to make this important discovery and to
profit largely by it, as he eventually managed to do, is quite a piece of
romance. The Abbé Georgel, at that time secretary to the French embassy
at Vienna, shall tell the story in his own words.
“Returning one evening to the hôtel, the porter gave me a note carefully
sealed up, and addressed to me. I read in it as follows:—‘Be to-night,
between eleven and twelve, at a particular place upon the ramparts, and
you will be informed of matters of the very highest importance.’ An
anonymous note of this tenor, sent so mysteriously, and the unseasonable
hour appointed, might have appeared to some persons altogether dangerous
and suspicious. But I was not aware that I had any enemies, and, desirous
not to have to reproach myself with having missed an opportunity that
might never occur again of promoting the king’s service, I determined to
attend at the appointed place. But I took some prudential precautions,
by placing within a certain distance, where they could not be seen, two
persons on whom I could rely, to come to my assistance upon a signal
agreed on. I found at the place of meeting a man wrapped in a cloak,
and masked. He put some papers into my hands, and said in a feigned
undertone: ‘You have my confidence; I will therefore contribute to the
success of M. the Prince de Rohan’s embassy. These papers will inform
you of the very essential services which it is in my power to render
you. If you approve of them, come again to-morrow to’ another place
which he mentioned, ‘and bring me a thousand ducats.’ On my return to
the Hôtel de France, I hastened to examine the papers confided to me.
Their contents gave me the most agreeable surprise. I saw that we had it
in our power to procure twice a week copies of all the discoveries made
by the secret cabinet of Vienna, which was the best served cabinet in
Europe. This secret cabinet possessed in the highest degree the art of
deciphering quickly the despatches of ambassadors and of the governments
with whom they corresponded. I was convinced by the deciphering of our
own despatches and the despatches of our court to us—even those written
in the most complicated and the newest ciphers—that this cabinet had
found means to intercept and obtain copies of the despatches of several
European courts, through the treachery and audacity of the frontier
directors and postmasters, bribed for that purpose.
“Furnished with these documents and armed with unquestionable proofs of
their authenticity, I instantly went post haste to communicate them to
the ambassador. I laid before him the samples of the political magazine,
from which we might supply ourselves. The Prince de Rohan felt the value
of it, especially to himself personally, inasmuch as this important
discovery must necessarily efface the unpleasant impressions which
the Duke d’Aiguillon had not failed to make upon the king’s mind, by
representing to him that Prince Louis, too frivolous, and too much taken
up with the pursuits of pleasure, was not so watchful at Vienna as the
service of the state required.
“I met the masked man the following night, and gave him the thousand
ducats: when he handed to me other papers of increasing interest, and
during my whole stay at Vienna he faithfully performed his promise.
Our meetings took place twice a week, and always about midnight. The
ambassador wisely decided that the occupation arising from this discovery
should be confined to him and to myself, with an old secretary whose
discretion we knew would stand any trial. The secretary was employed
in copying for our court the papers of the masked man, to whom we were
obliged to return them.
“A courier extraordinary was at once despatched to Versailles with the
first-fruits of our newly-discovered treasure. He was ordered not to
go to bed on his way, and to carry about his person the special packet
of secret despatches to the very end of his journey. A separate letter
communicated the manner in which this disclosure had been made to us.
Our courier returned promptly, the bearer of a despatch from the Duke
d’Aiguillon, which contained this acknowledgment of the cardinal’s
services: ‘I sincerely and feelingly share,’ said the minister, ‘both in
the satisfaction with which the king acknowledges your services, and the
credit which this discovery throws upon your mission.’ From the time of
this discovery an extraordinary courier was sent off to Versailles every
fortnight with new communications, and always with the same precautions
as before.”[77]
Soulavie tells us it was through the Austrian ambassador at Versailles,
who, like the rest of his fraternity, had a whole host of traitorous
officials in his pay, that the court of Vienna got scent of what was
going on. The Prince von Kaunitz, suspecting that the treachery was
perpetrated in his office, had the locks of his cabinet changed, and
made a point of intrusting all the most important despatches to no one
except his private secretary. He even went the length of having one of
his clerks, of whom he entertained some suspicion, drowned in the Danube;
but all was of no avail; the masked man, according to the Abbé Georgel,
redoubled his zeal at each succeeding interview.
Two months after the death of Louis XV. the cardinal was superseded
in his post. He had hurried off to pay his court to the new king at
Compiègne, where he was not long in becoming acquainted with the fact
that the queen was his avowed enemy. He obtained an audience of Louis
XVI., but it was brief, and by no means satisfactory. The king listened
for a few minutes to the cardinal’s explanations, and then abruptly
said, “I will let you know my pleasure.” As for Marie-Antoinette, she
positively declined to receive him, although he had a letter from her
mother the empress to deliver. The only notice she took of him was to
desire that this letter might be sent to her. As a last resource he
addressed a written communication to the king, which Louis XVI. did not
condescend to answer. The cardinal had now no longer any doubt that his
disgrace was determined upon.
Although his downfall was really to be ascribed to the joint animosity of
Maria Theresa and her daughter, the grounds publicly put forward for it
were these. “First, the public gallantries (at Vienna) of Prince Louis
with women of the court and others of less distinction; secondly, his
surliness and haughtiness towards other foreign ministers, which it was
stated would have been attended with more serious consequences if the
empress herself had not interfered; thirdly, his contempt for religion
in a country where it was particularly necessary to show respect for it
(he had been seen frequently to dress himself in clothes of different
colours, assuming the hunting uniforms of various noblemen whom he
visited, with so much publicity that one day in particular, during the
_Fête Dieu_, he and all his legation, in green uniforms laced with gold,
broke through a religious procession which impeded them, in order to make
their way to a hunting party at the Prince von Paar’s); and fourthly, the
immense debts contracted by him and his people, which were tardily and
only in part discharged.”[78]
After the cardinal’s return to Paris from his Viennese mission, although
his manners may have mended somewhat, his morals remained as loose as
ever. He is reported to have kept up in different quarters of the city
various small establishments to which, it is said, he was in the habit
of retiring to emulate in secret the vices of the Roman emperors. His
conduct in public appears to have been hardly more reputable, for one day
the king when hunting with the Count d’Artois in the neighbourhood of
Fontainebleau, came upon Cardinal Prince Louis de Rohan with a handsome
young abbé, his hair elegantly dressed and powdered, seated beside him
in his carriage. The king remarked to his brother that the abbé only
required a little rouge to pass for a woman, but the more quick-sighted
Count d’Artois had already discovered that the pretended abbé was a
woman in disguise—none other, in fact, than one of the cardinal’s
mistresses—the notorious Marquise de Marigny.[79]
XI.
1784.
PRETENDED MEDIATOR BETWEEN THE CARDINAL AND THE QUEEN.—A FORGER ON THE
PREMISES.—BILLETS-DOUX BORDERED WITH “VIGNETTES BLEUES.”
Before the close of spring in the year 1784, the Countess de la Motte
has effectually built up her grand fabrication. Although she neglects no
opportunity of giving out that the queen desires this pretended intimacy
to be kept a profound secret, yet, like most other profound secrets,
it becomes pretty generally known; the imposture is established as a
reality, and the Grand Almoner of France has been caught in the net. This
singularly credulous individual, weighed down with places and honours,
but ambitious of more, is led to believe, quite as much by his own folly
as the countess’s craft, that a channel has at length been opened for
his reinstatement in the queen’s favour, and his elevation to the office
of prime minister. All the machinery set in motion by the impostor and
her confederates to make money by the abuse of the queen’s name is now
directed with both energy and skill upon the Prince de Rohan, whose
paternal hand is employed to diffuse the charities of a kingdom upon
those suppliants who best understand how to represent their wants, and
whose own annual revenue exceeds a million of livres (£40,000).
Gradually, step by step, the vigilant schemer advances, her dupe’s
fancy and conceit outstepping the measured tread of the inventor, whose
falsehoods are not poured forth fast enough to fill the wide throat of
this insatiable gull. First she assures him that she has spoken and
interceded for him with the queen, who listened to her with attention
but evident suspicion; but that after having heard of several instances
of his benevolence to herself and other persons, the royal prejudice
had given way. The cardinal of course takes heart at this assurance,
and waits resignedly for the happy progress of a negotiation which
had opened so promisingly. The countess thus describes this pretended
interview with Marie-Antoinette in her Memoirs:
“In one of my interviews with her majesty, the queen inquired how I had
supported myself before I was introduced to her. This was the moment
for naming my benefactor, but it required some caution, lest the queen
should discover that I was deeper in his confidence and counsels than it
was proper for me to appear. I attempted, if possible, to avoid giving
the least cause for suspicion, and expatiated largely, in general terms,
on the cardinal’s beneficence, charity, and benevolence; enumerated the
services he had rendered to almost every one that applied; that from
his generosity he had acquired the esteem he merited; and spoke with a
grateful warmth of the favours he had heaped upon me.
“Her majesty regarded me with a curious and penetrating eye: she paused
for some minutes, and appeared buried in thought. This was the first
moment of my mentioning the cardinal’s name, and I had an opportunity of
reading in her majesty’s face such a degree of aversion that gave me a
very unfavourable omen of success: the strength of her antipathy I was
then first acquainted with. At length, awakening from her reverie, she
expressed her surprise at the information I had given her. She did not
think the cardinal capable of such actions.”[80]
In due time the grand almoner is informed that majesty has at last
relented, having been of course won over by the countess’s continuous
praises of him, and by her assurances that he was far less culpable than
he was represented to be by his enemies; that he was full of penitence
and remorse for any errors he might have committed; that her majesty’s
aversion to him was his constant affliction; and that his health was
yielding to this sorrow.
“I am authorised by the queen,” the countess one day calmly said to him,
“to request you to furnish her with a written explanation of the faults
imputed to you.”
In compliance with this demand, the cardinal delivered to Madame de la
Motte a lengthy exculpatory statement, the main purport of which was
to accuse his niece, the Princess de Guéménée, of having intrigued to
add to his disgrace at court while pretending to act as intercessor on
his behalf. From time to time the princess appears to have allured him
with specious promises of his ultimate restoration to royal favour, and
the kind of return she exacted for her pretended good offices may be
judged of from the following passage, which, as will presently appear,
Madame de la Motte did not fail to note and profit by: “The princess was
sensible of the excessive joy she gave me,[81] and availed herself of it
_to request of me the loan of a pretty considerable sum_. I would have
parted with my whole fortune, thinking myself too happy in being useful
to a woman to whom I was so greatly beholden. The easy compliance she had
met with enticed her to make further demands, which I could not refuse,
she always knowing how to accompany them with hopes, with soothing
promises, and at the same time with difficulties she would find ways to
overcome.”[82] It is inconceivable how, after feeling convinced that he
had been the dupe of one designing woman, the cardinal could have been
such a dotard as to have been again deluded by an _intrigante_ who used
precisely the same arts, and who exacted from him precisely the same kind
of return. Such, however, was the case.