"childish, simple, and baby face," than the accumulation of plunder in
England was the feathering of a nest in France. Much as she valued her
English ducal title, in spite of the mockery heaped upon it, there was
an honour in her own country that she valued far more. To this
thoroughly patriotic Frenchwoman to be Duchess of Portsmouth was a small
thing in comparison with the right to a _tabouret_ at Versailles. This
was the supreme ambition of a Frenchwoman in the _ancien régime_.
Volumes could be written on the intrigues that the desire to obtain this
distinction caused. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that some of
the greatest events in European history have arisen in the quest of a
_tabouret_. "To think," said Sobieski, the hero-king of Poland, who had
married a Frenchwoman whose life was spent in the attempt to get this
supreme feminine honour--"to think how she longs for that miserable
stool on which nobody can sit at ease!"
The intrigues of the Duchess of Portsmouth to win her _tabouret_ at
Versailles might be likened to a game of bridge in which she and Charles
II.--whose hand she played--were opposed to Louis XIV. and his
Ambassador, Colbert de Croissy (a brother of the famous Colbert). In
this diplomatic bridge the cards were so evenly distributed that the odd
trick was only to be won by the most careful play. In any case, from the
start the honours, so to speak, were held by the Duchess and Charles. We
have stated that in recognition for her services at Euston, of which the
immediate effect was the declaration by England of war on Holland, Louis
XIV. had conferred on his spy the title of Duchesse d'Aubigny. The
history of this duchy is rather interesting, and the title was an ace in
her Grace's hand.
Aubigny was a French ducal fief that two hundred and fifty years before
had been conferred by a King of France upon a cadet of the House of
Stuart. It was to return to the French Crown on the demise of the last
male heir of the line, and this event had just taken place by the death
of La Belle Stuart's husband, who was the last Duke of Richmond as well
as of Aubigny. The latter title having been conferred on Louise de
Kéroual by Louis, and both having for so long been borne by the head of
the same family, she determined to secure the former for her son by
Charles, who would thus as her heir once more reunite the two. This, in
fact, was effected without the least trouble, and the Dukes of Richmond
are also Ducs d'Aubigny down to the present day. But the empty title of
Duchesse d'Aubigny by no means satisfied this cunning woman. She wished
the ducal _terres_ as well. To possess them was to possess the coveted
_tabouret_ at Versailles, to win the odd trick in this game of bridge.
For to be able to have the sublime distinction of sitting on a stool in
the presence of the King of France one must not only be a duchess in
name but own one's duchy in fact. This, then, was the manner in which
the Duchess of Portsmouth sought to provide against a rainy day at
Whitehall.
Considering that, in spite of inducing Charles to declare war on Holland
for the benefit of France, she had failed to convert him to Roman
Catholicism, and shown an independence, most unwelcome to the French
Court, in the Duke of York's marriage affair, Colbert de Croissy did his
best to defeat her. Clever diplomatist though he was, the contempt with
which she had treated him during the business of marrying the Duke of
York secretly rankled, and he could not resist the temptation to thwart
an enemy. To describe all the moves and counter-moves in this sordid
intrigue is impossible here. Suffice it to say the Duchess was too much
for the Ambassador. Louis was obliged to replace him by the more tactful
Ruvigny, an honest Huguenot, who found the work he was required to do
such a "filthy traffic" that he too was recalled and replaced by the sly
Courtin, at the time the Duchesse de Mazarin suddenly alighted at
Whitehall and in a trice all but ruined Louis' subtle schemes.
But the very eagerness the Duchess of Portsmouth displayed in regard to
the _tabouret_ gave Louis, who had begun to mistrust her independence,
an advantage. He promised to gratify her on the condition that she
obeyed him unquestioningly for the future, and gave proof of her loyalty
by completing some very delicate business he was now engaged in. The
business was indeed delicate, but nothing in comparison with the
difficulties the spy had to encounter in performing it. With the
_tabouret_ in sight, however, she set to work right bravely.
Louis XIV., having taken the opportunity while England and Holland were
at war to plunder Spain of Flanders, was now anxious to swallow the
Franche Comté and the Palatinate. Hereupon all Europe became terrified,
and England and Holland hastened to patch up their differences. All the
Ministers and Members of Parliament whom Louis had bought suddenly
turned against him. The patriotism of the whole nation was profoundly
stirred. Even Buckingham turned Puritan--for a time. With his broncho
bucking like this Charles was obliged to exert all his skill to save
himself from being thrown. He disbanded the regiments, to keep up which,
in case he should need them, Louis had paid him eight million livres.
Moreover, at this critical time, when the Duchess of Portsmouth was of
the utmost consequence to Louis, she fell seriously ill. The less said
of this illness the better, it was anything but creditable to her royal
lover. Misfortune seldom comes alone, and to discourage her Grace still
more a large sum of money and her jewels were stolen, while at the same
time the Duchesse de Mazarin arrived and fascinated Charles. Never had
Louise de Kéroual been so near utter ruin. Even Louis began to neglect
her now. "She who was so plucky and fertile in resources," says
Forneron, "began to lose courage. Courtin wrote to Louis to communicate
to him a scene that took place in her apartment. He went to visit her at
Whitehall and found her weeping. She opened her heart to him in the
presence of her two French maids, who stood with downcast eyes close to
the wall, as if glued to it. Tears flowed from their mistress's eyes;
sighs and sobs interrupted her speech. M. Courtin stayed with her until
midnight, trying to soothe her wounded spirit. Louvois made fun of her
troubles, and coarsely wrote that the scene of _la Signora adolorata_
had vastly amused his Majesty."
But perhaps to "little Kéroual," now so sunk in favour, hourly expecting
to be dismissed by the fickle Charles, and to be publicly disgraced like
Jane Shore, nothing seemed so hard to bear as the ridicule showered upon
her by Nell Gwynn.
Nell inspired her with fear as well as hate. In the bottom of her heart
Louise de Kéroual knew what she was; every time she looked into her
mirror it was not a duchess but a prostitute she saw reflected in it; in
many a moment of triumph shame leered at her suddenly from under the
flattery of Ambassadors and Ministers, Court ladies and serving-maids. A
prostitute and a prostitute's fate haunted her everywhere. It was to
escape the terror of this ghost that she tried to disguise herself as a
Duchess of Portsmouth and a Duchesse d'Aubigny. The same reason induced
her to make people in England believe she was closely related to the
illustrious family of Rohan by going into mourning when one of its
junior members died. It was also the underlying motive of her desire to
possess the right of a _tabouret_, whereby she hoped to strangle the
scorn of Versailles. And Nell Gwynn stripped her masks from her and
dragged her down to her own unspeakable level in a way that no art could
baffle. A specimen of Nell's method of torturing her rival would
scarcely be suffered in print nowadays, but some idea of it may be got
from the following style in which Madame de Sévigné describes it, taking
advantage herself of the occasion to sneer at "Kéroual":--
"This is how Gwynn argues: 'That hoity-toity French duchess sets up to
be of grand quality. Every one of rank in France is her cousin. The
moment some grand lord or lady over there dies, she orders a suit of
deep mourning. Well, if she's of such high station, why is she such an
(unprintable)? She ought to be ashamed of herself! If I were reared to
be a lady, I am sure I should blush for myself. But it's my trade to be
a (likewise unprintable), and I was never anything else. The King keeps
me; ever since he has done so I have been true to him. He has had a son
by me, and I'm going to make him own the brat, for he is as fond of me
as of his French miss.'"
She had to endure Nell Gwynn just as Queen Catherine had to endure
herself and the Duchess of Cleveland.
It is not likely that Courtin was touched by the sight of her dejection
when he paid her the visit mentioned above. Louis XIV.'s Ambassadors in
England never wasted sympathy on those who were falling from power. But
an event unexpectedly occurred at this critical juncture that proved
advantageous to the spy. The Duchesse de Mazarin, "that female
Buckingham," as Mrs. Jameson very aptly calls her, recklessly threw her
great opportunity away by falling madly in love with the Prince of
Monaco, "who came to England for two weeks and prolonged his visit for
two years." Hereupon the sly Courtin advised her Grace of Portsmouth to
dry her eyes and entertain. This advice was followed with considerable
success, and Charles's lukewarmness was once more turned to boiling heat
when Louise, who had gone away to Bath to take the waters, returned more
blooming than ever. With the restoration of her health all her energy
and cunning returned. Feeling the need of powerful English friends, and
perhaps, too, from the devotion she always showed to her family, she
sent to France for her sister Henriette, and married her to the Earl of
Pembroke, on which occasion Charles gave the bride away, and a handsome
dowry as well. Her power over her royal lover being once more
established, and as an incentive to her loyalty of which at such a
critical situation Louis had more need than ever, he now bestowed on her
the ducal estates of Aubigny, with the right of transmission to her son,
and the coveted _tabouret_. About the same time Charles created the
issue of this amour Duke of Richmond.
The cunning of the Duchess of Portsmouth was never better displayed than
on this occasion. For Charles, who was still afraid of her Grace of
Cleveland, in order to allay her jealousy, had created his eldest son by
this former mistress Duke of Grafton. But far from allaying the jealousy
of the Duchess of Cleveland, it aroused that of the Duchess of
Portsmouth as well. Each determined that her own son should take
precedence of the other's; this could only be settled by one woman
getting the letters patent signed before the other. The Duchess of
Portsmouth now gave evidence of the ingenuity she possessed, for
learning that the Minister whose duty it was to affix the seals to these
patents was starting for Bath, she went to him at night just as he was
stepping into his carriage, and thus "did" her rival, who arrived the
first thing the next morning to find him gone and her object defeated.
History does not relate her Grace of Cleveland's language on this
occasion.
Fortune once more smiling on "Madam Carwell," she worked for Louis with
a right good will. "It is to her," says Forneron very fittingly, "more
than to any statesman, that France is indebted for French Flanders, the
Franche Comté, her twice secular possession of Alsace, her old ownership
of the valley of the Mississippi and Canada, and her lately revived
claim on Madagascar." Louis thoroughly understood that if his dream of
empire was ever to be realised, it could only be by the aid of England.
But the English people were in a white rage with France, due to the
unblushing policy of Louis, which directly menaced the existence of
England. And political fear was kept alive by religious hate. "They will
vote anything against us in the House of Commons," reported Courtin,
"and they say they are ready to sell their shirts off their backs to
keep the Netherlands from being seized by us. These are the very words
they make use of." Active assistance, an alliance, was clearly out of
the question. And the temper of the English people being such, could
even their passive aid be counted on, would they be content merely to
look on angrily while Louis carved up the map of Europe to suit him?
To Courtin this seemed improbable. "Make haste to conquer what you can,"
he wrote to Louvois dejectedly. "Clearly not the man for the delicate
work he has to do," thought Louis. So Courtin was recalled, like Colbert
de Croissy and Ruvigny before him. All three were men of exceptional
ability--men trained in the school of Mazarin to specialise their
talents, and to each of them the Court of Whitehall proved a labyrinth
whose man-devouring Minotaur was the Imperial policy of Louis Quatorze.
Courtin was succeeded by Barillon, who, says Forneron, "was master in
the art of corrupting men, and of hiding his contempt for those whom he
corrupted. He resembled those Ambassadors of Phillip II. who showered
doubloons on the Catholic conspirators, affected interest in the
democracy of the League, saw their heads fall without a shudder, and
when the game was lost, prepared coolly for a new one." As if to render
the Machiavellian abilities of this man still more dangerous, nature had
gifted him with warm human affections and an exquisite sense of the
Beautiful! Barillon is probably the greatest Ambassador that ever
represented a foreign nation at the English Court.
He came to do what Courtin had considered improbable, and what would
have been impossible but for the help he received from the Duchess of
Portsmouth. Between Barillon and the spy there was the most perfect
understanding. Only a miracle could keep England passive while Louis
XIV. crossed the Rhine, but the two magicians performed it. With all his
cunning Charles II. had at last over-reached himself in his dealings
with the nation. He had squandered his Fortunatus' purse of power and,
like all spendthrifts, he was forced to go to the usurers. There were
only two in Europe able to advance Charles the sums he required. These
were his partner, England, and Louis Quatorze. The usury exacted by the
former became with each call higher and higher; by this fortuitous means
the English people were gradually recovering the liberties they had
allowed themselves to be swindled out of at the beginning of the reign.
At each session of Parliament Charles was obliged by his extravagance to
relinquish more and more power. He had so fallen into the hands of this
usurer that it was even proposed in the House of Lords to impeach the
Duchess of Portsmouth. Whereupon one peer cynically remarked "that they
ought rather to erect statues to the ladies who made their lover
dependent on Parliament for his subsistence."
Charles was faced with the humiliating prospect of sinking from the head
of the firm to the position of mere clerk, when Barillon and the Duchess
of Portsmouth offered to set him on his feet again. They stipulated for
one condition only: that he would calmly look on while Louis ate up
Spain, Holland, Germany, and even the Pope. To have escaped from the
hands of the Parliament Charles would willingly have consented if Louis
had proposed to make himself master of Asia, Africa, and America as
well. But the sum he required to clear him of his difficulties staggered
Louis; there was such a thing as paying too big a price even for Europe.
"The plea," says Mrs. Jameson, "used by Charles to persuade Louis to
come to his terms was, 'that it would render England for ever dependent
on him, and put it out of the power of the English to oppose him.'
_These were the King's own words._" France had already spent immense
sums in bribes without any satisfactory remuneration, but Louis now
exacted usury for the money he advanced. The English Parliament was to
be dissolved _sine die_, in order that Charles should do Louis' bidding
without the remonstrance of his subjects. In return for this
independence Charles was to receive four million pounds, the receipt of
which he was to acknowledge duly. In this way if Charles tried to be
slippery Louis could threaten him with exposure. Barillon admits that he
had orders to blackmail him the moment he attempted to be independent.
Charles's receipts are still to be seen in the French Archives. He had
fallen from the frying-pan into the fire with a vengeance. One had to
have one's wits about one to get the better of Louis XIV.
The rage of the English people at finding themselves "done" in this way
by their King was overmastering. Totally ignorant of Charles's compact
with Louis, they nevertheless beheld the result in the triumph of France
against coalesced Europe. Nor was England's rage at this triumph
lessened by the knowledge that it was due to her own neutrality. "The
English people," says Forneron, "were carried away against the Catholics
by one of those frenzies of contagious hatred which sometimes take hold
of a nation like an epidemic. When a nation is possessed by a fit of
such fury, there is always a statesman ready to pander to it."
It is not here that we can describe the character of Ashley Cooper,
Earl of Shaftesbury, and all the details of that tissue of iniquity
known as the Popish Plot. For this English Dreyfus Affair the reader
is recommended to any History of England. "Shiftsbury," or "the
most vicious dog in England," as Charles called him, was a
seventeenth-century opportunist with a truly marvellous faculty of
recognising psychological moments. He was also that exceedingly rare
individual, a genuinely bad man. He organised the Popish Plot, and
sprung it on the nation at the ripe moment to clear the road for his own
ambition. On the wave of terror it created he was carried to power. In
the intense excitement of the time the life of no Catholic in the
country was safe, and Shaftesbury's creature, Titus Oates, accused even
poor Queen Catherine. The Catholic Duke of York, like the coward he was,
fled from England; the King himself, for his own security, dismissed his
band of French musicians and was ready, if necessary at a moment's
notice, to abandon his favourites to the popular fury. Revolution was
shaking the throne. Among the strange phenomena that were witnessed in
this period of chaos not the least curious was that of Nell Gwynn,
posing as the head of the Protestants. It is, perhaps, not too much to
say that the part she played in this religious convulsion of the English
people explains the leniency, closely resembling popularity, with which
she alone of Charles's mistresses is regarded by posterity. Of all the
volumes that have been written on the Restoration no light has ever been
shed so clearly on the character of the times as the _fact_ that
Protestant England could hail with acclaim a king's mistress as its
champion. A while before it had been the Duchesse de Mazarin, now it was
Nell's turn. The atmosphere of the Restoration had contaminated even
morality itself.
In such a state of affairs the position of the Duchess of Portsmouth was
very grave. Both Houses of Parliament demanded her impeachment, and the
people clamoured that she should be executed in the Tower along with the
fallen minister, Danby, who was already there. She fell ill from sheer
fright. Barillon, however, alone of mortals, kept his head. He advised
her, if possible, to make friends with Shaftesbury, and this, as if to
make confusion still more confounded, she succeeded in doing. But in
this hour of unparalleled success Shaftesbury made the first blunder of
his political career. A severe attack of malignant fever threatening the
King's life, the question of the succession became acute. Shaftesbury
proposed the Protestant Duke of Monmouth, the King's eldest bastard, as
the heir to the throne in place of the Duke of York, and the Duchess of
Portsmouth got drawn into this Monmouth intrigue. Hereupon the Prince of
Orange, afterwards William III., as a Protestant and the next legitimate
_male_ heir after the Duke of York, appeared on the scene--the Prince of
Orange, a cold Northern Machiavelli, with an openly avowed and undying
hatred of Louis XIV. and France. Shaftesbury and the Popish Plot had
turned England into a pandemonium.
"I believe," wrote Barillon to Louis, "each now wishes to save himself
at the cost of the others."
A profound darkness seemed to have fallen on the frenzied nation, in
which for a time Barillon and the Duchess of Portsmouth became
separated. Monmouth was effaced by the lampoons which, owing to the
imprudence of her Grace's maid, Mrs. Wall, connected him with the hated
Duchess. Shaftesbury was dislodged from power by his rival Sunderland,
who maintained himself largely by the aid of the cunning Frenchwoman who
by her devotion, by the knowledge she had of Charles's shameful secret
understanding with Louis, and by her ability, with which she deeply
impressed her royal lover, still continued _maîtresse en titre_ and spy
of the Court of France at Whitehall.
But in the darkness in which all groped the adventures of none were more
curious than Louis'. He bribed lavishly every one he stumbled against,
so to speak, to show him the way towards the light. No price was too
great to pay, no abasement too shameless, that would keep the Prince of
Orange from succeeding Charles II. History has revealed the
extraordinary spectacle of the Presbyterians hobnobbing with his Most
Christian Majesty, the Republican party in England allied to the French
tyrant!
"Baber continues to work the Presbyterians," wrote Barillon. "It is
through him that I have gained two popular preachers who can insinuate
things that it would never do to say openly. I know that they have
spoken in the pulpit of a matter which would not count anywhere else,
unless here, but which in England is no trifle. _It is that the Prince
of Orange hunts on Sundays._"
Barillon had got into the skin of the nation to which he was accredited.
Whether Louis laughed at the depth of religious hypocrisy that took his
bribes and objected to hunting on Sundays, is not recorded; perhaps not,
the situation was too serious even for his sardonic humour.
The first to emerge from the labyrinth of the Popish Plot was the
Duchess of Portsmouth. On her heels came Louis and Barillon. Behind them
in the dark groped Shaftesbury and Sunderland, Monmouth and the Prince
of Orange, and a host of "faith and freedom" men who were taking French
money and salving their consciences by trying to cheat those who gave it
to them. The tide of revolution was ebbing fast; a calm succeeded the
tempest. Whitehall recovered its gaiety and levity; the Restoration its
license; King Charles his health and cynicism. By the help of Louis he
believed himself secure for the rest of his life, and he did not care in
the least what happened to England and the House of Stuart afterwards.
Reresby has given us the following account of a typical day in his life
at Newmarket about this time: "He walked in the morning till ten
o'clock, then he went to the cock-pit till dinner-time. About three he
went to the horse-races; at six he returned to the cock-pit for an hour
only. Then he went to the play, though the actors were but of a terrible
sort; from thence to supper, then to the Duchess of Portsmouth's till
bedtime, and so to his own apartment to take his rest."