respect either from the world or from her husband, who, having married
her merely as the niece of Cardinal Richelieu, was ashamed of her
humble origin and his own condescension. She now however displayed a
heroism and an attachment worthy of the spouse of the Great Condé. The
princess escaped with her young son, the duke d’Enghien, from Chantilly,
and after some delay in a fortified place, joined the dukes de la
Rochefoucauld and de Bouillon in the south. But the noblesse was not
then the predominant order in the state, and she was obliged to seek
more powerful protection in the parliament of Bordeaux. This provincial
court of justice was highly incensed against the duke d’Épernon, governor
of Languedoc; and consequently ill-disposed towards the queen and the
cardinal, who seconded him. They of course embraced with ardour the new
laws established by the parliament of Paris, which gave to the courts
of magistracy power to control the measures of government, and which
forbade arrests without bringing the accused to speedy trial. They could
little comprehend the manœuvres by which De Retz and his violent party
induced the parliament of Paris to overlook the imprisonment of Condé.
They were eager to take his part and to admit the princess within their
walls; but at the same time had considerable distrust of the nobles who
supported her, and who were negotiating with Spain. To satisfy these
scruples, the princess entered Bordeaux alone; but the popular clamour
drowning the voice of the magistrates, she soon had the city at her
command, and the dukes de Bouillon and de la Rochefoucauld entered with
their troops and took the command.
The queen and Mazarin led the young king and an army commanded by the
marshal De la Meilleraie to reduce Bordeaux. Its first feat was to raze
Verteuil, the famous château of the La Rochefoucauld family, a barbarous
act, and inconceivable in Mazarin, who loved the arts. Bordeaux was then
invested, and its suburb was carried after a valiant defence, in which
La Rochefoucauld displayed remarkable gallantry. To gain footing in the
town itself was soon found impossible, such was the obstinacy of the
armed citizens. Whilst Mazarin and the court thus lay encamped before
Bordeaux, Turenne had entered the north of France, and was marching
without opposition towards the capital, intending to liberate the princes
from Vincennes. Condé, confined in the donjon of that castle, whiled away
his captivity by cultivating the few flowers that the terrace of his
window could contain. “Who would have thought,” exclaimed he, in learning
the resistance of Bordeaux, “that my wife should be fighting whilst I was
gardening!” The princes were removed from Vincennes to the safer retreat
of Marcoussis, and Turenne, who, fearing to indispose the parliament of
Paris by appearing at the head of foreign troops, retired again towards
the frontier.
DISGRACE AND EXILE OF MAZARIN (1650-1651 A.D.)
[Illustration: MAZARIN]
[Sidenote: [1650-1651 A.D.]]
The coadjutor and the violent frondeurs grew weary of their alliance with
Mazarin, into which their fear and hatred of Condé had alone induced
them to enter. They not only found Mazarin ungrateful and insincere,
refusing even to De Retz the cardinal’s hat that he demanded, but their
popularity, which was their chief force, and their influence over the
parliament, were rapidly diminishing from their union with the court.
Mazarin, suspecting the intention of the frondeurs, and alarmed by the
march of Turenne, granted peace to Bordeaux, concluding more a truce
than a treaty with the princess of Condé, La Rochefoucauld, and Bouillon.
The minister then returned to Paris, where he found the parliament no
longer silent as to the arrest of Condé, but prepared to expostulate,
and demand his release. Mazarin caused the princes to be instantly
conveyed from Marcoussis to La Havre, where they were still more in
his individual power. La Rochefoucauld and Bouillon also returned to
Paris; and a series of intrigues took place; these partisans of Condé
negotiating at the same time both with the coadjutor and with Mazarin
for his release. An alliance with either would effect this, and La
Rochefoucauld was in doubt. The coadjutor, in the habit of a cavalier,
came by night to the rendezvous at the house of the princess palatine. La
Rochefoucauld went in equal secrecy to the Palais Royal. The over-caution
of the cardinal lost his cause. La Rochefoucauld pressed him at once
to conclude the alliance, and give orders that Condé should be set at
liberty. Mazarin hesitated. Unprincipled as he was himself, he could not
believe it possible that the friends of Condé could unite with De Retz.
La Rochefoucauld warned the cardinal in parting that the morrow would
be too late. Mazarin smiled incredulity and irresolution; and the duke,
hurrying to the other place of rendezvous, concluded the agreement with
the coadjutor. The effects of this alliance were immediately manifest.
The majority of the parliament clamoured for the release of Condé, and
addressed the queen on the subject. It was necessary to yield; and
Mazarin saw that, deserted by all parties, he would infallibly be the
victim.
In his rage he anathematised the parliament before the whole court,
called it an English house of commons, compared the coadjutor De Retz
to Cromwell and himself to Strafford, and declared that, in sacrificing
its minister to popular clamour, the crown would, as in the case of
Strafford, sacrifice itself. This conversation, being reported to the
parliament by De Retz, raised a storm indescribable, and terminated in
an address to the queen, desiring that Mazarin should be banished from
her councils, and that the prince should be liberated. Nought was left
the cardinal but flight. He took his departure immediately. It was agreed
that the queen and young king were to follow him, and that, possessed
of La Havre and the persons of the princes, they would be able either
by open war or negotiation to bring the parliament and the frondeurs to
more reasonable terms. This project however failed, through the cunning
and activity of the coadjutor, who, learning the queen’s intention of
departing, raised a mob round the palace, and made her virtually a
prisoner there. Cardinal Mazarin alone found himself without authority.
He could not even gain entrance into Havre unless unattended. He entered,
nevertheless, saw the captive princes of Condé, Conti, and Longueville,
endeavoured to cajole them, and set them at liberty, without receiving in
return a single mark of gratitude or regard. Thus every way disappointed,
Mazarin resigned himself to his disgrace, and left the kingdom.[103]
CONDÉ IN POWER (1651 A.D.)
The prince of Condé was now all-powerful--the parliament, the Fronde,
the noblesse, the populace, had all rallied to him; the minister was in
exile, the queen a prisoner. Many blamed him for not setting aside Anne
of Austria, and assuming the regency; but he was totally without the
qualities requisite for taking advantage of his position; he was too
lazy, too confident, too generous, too rash: and, making not a single
exertion, the several parties that had united to compel at once his
release and the exile of the minister were allowed again to fall asunder,
and abandon to the court the recovery of its ancient influence. The
noblesse at this period were animated with a strong desire to imitate
the magistracy, and, by remaining united, to restore or re-establish the
influence of the aristocracy, in opposition both to crown and judicature.
They assembled in the convent of the Cordeliers (afterwards doomed to
hold a club of a very different kind, that of Danton), and formed a house
of peers, discussing state affairs, and fixing the privileges of the
nobles. The parliament took fire at this, and forbade the assemblies. The
noblesse looked to Condé to head them; but he, without principle or aim,
and deeming his interests, as prince of the blood, distinct from those
of the aristocracy, held back at this crisis. The noblesse called the
assembly of the church, then sitting, to their aid, who protested, and
complained that the parliament had altered the ancient constitution of
the kingdom, by adding themselves as a fourth and spurious estate to the
three established ones of king, lords, and commons. Despite of this, the
parliament had force and the popular feeling on its side. The noblesse
were obliged to succumb, and dissolved their assembly; not, however,
before they had recourse to the queen and the royal authority, who issued
a declaration, promising to convoke the states-general for the following
September.
Here the queen recovered consideration and authority sufficient to enable
her to aim at and grasp more, by allying with the prince of Condé. One of
the stipulations betwixt them was that the marriage should be broken off
betwixt the prince of Conti and Mademoiselle de Chevreuse. The coadjutor,
connected by gallantry and friendship with the family of Chevreuse, was
indignant at this, and a quarrel ensued betwixt Condé and the old party
of the Fronde. Hence another scene in the drama, which represents Condé
insulted by those very men who had been so instrumental in releasing him.
De Retz and the prince nearly came to blows in the Palais de Justice; and
the former had almost fallen a victim to the passion of La Rochefoucauld,
who jammed the coadjutor betwixt two folding doors till he was almost
suffocated: the duke at the same time called to one of his friends to
stab De Retz, an injunction that was not obeyed, and perhaps not intended
to be obeyed. It is, nevertheless, startling to the modern reader to find
the courtly author of the _Maximes_ engaged personally in the office and
using the language of the assassin.
The consequence of these dissensions was the recovery of her authority
by Anne of Austria, who, in affecting to ally with Condé, was merely
enticing him to disgust and desert the Fronde. This achieved, she flung
off the mask, and Condé found himself as much detested by all parties
as a few months back he was their favourite and their rallying word.
The prince, thus deserted, endeavoured to make common cause with the
noblesse, and clamoured for the states-general; but it was too late: the
parliament united with the court in opposing their convocation, and Condé
in despair retired from Paris, obliged to seek support in civil war and
an alliance with Spain.
RETURN OF MAZARIN (1651 A.D.)
In September, 1651, Louis XIV, then approaching fourteen years of age,
was declared to have completed his minority. The day was celebrated with
great magnificence. The royal authority remained, however, as before,
in the hands of the queen: her only thought was the recall of Mazarin.
The attachment borne by Anne to this prelate-minister is inexplicable.
She might have reigned supreme, and been the arbiter betwixt contending
parties, could she have consented to leave Mazarin in exile. De Retz
endeavoured to impress this necessity upon her; but power appeared to
her worthless without the cardinal; and no sooner had Condé broken with
the parliament, and burst into war against the court, than the minister
prepared to return. He levied an army, made an attempt on Brissac, and
soon after joined the court at Poitiers, taking as usual the chief seat
in the council.[g]
At the first news of his return, Gaston of Orleans, brother of Louis
XIII, who had demanded the removal of the cardinal, levied troops in
Paris without knowing for what they would be employed. Parliament renewed
its decrees; it proscribed Mazarin and put a price on his head. This
proscription tempted no one to earn the 50,000 crowns, which, after all,
would never have been paid. With another nation and in another age,
such a decree would have found executors; but here it served simply to
incite fresh pleasantries. The Blots and the Marignys, wits, who carried
gaiety into the tumult of these troubles, caused to be placarded all over
Paris a distribution of the 50,000 crowns--so much for whoever should
cut off the cardinal’s nose, and so much for an ear, so much for an eye,
so much to make him a eunuch. This ridicule was all the effect of the
proscription against the minister’s person, but his furniture and library
were sold by a second decree. This money was destined for the assassin’s
pay, but it was dissipated by the depositaries, like all funds that had
been raised hitherto. The cardinal on his side used against his enemies
neither poison nor steel and, in spite of the bitterness and madness of
so much partisanship and hatred, no great crimes were committed. The
party leaders were less cruel and the people less furious than in the
days of the league--this was not a war of religion.
[Illustration: CANNON OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY]
The spirit of madness which reigned at this time so possessed the
whole body of the parliament that, after having solemnly ordered an
assassination which everyone ridiculed, it passed a decree by which
several councillors should betake themselves to the frontier for
information against the army of Cardinal Mazarin: that is to say, the
royal army. Meanwhile the king interdicted the parliament of Paris and
transferred it to Pontoise. Fourteen members attached to the court
obeyed; the others resisted. There were now two parliaments, which,
to cap the confusion, thundered against each other with reciprocating
decrees, as in the days of Henry IV and Charles VI.
It was precisely at the time when this company was going to extremities
with the king’s minister that it declared the prince of Condé, who had
only armed himself against this minister, guilty of _lèse majesté_; and
by a turn of mind which its preceding steps could alone make credible,
it ordered the new troops of Gaston, duke of Orleans, to march against
Mazarin and forbade at the same time any money from the public receipts
to be used in maintaining them. We can expect nought else from a company
of magistrates, thrown out of their proper sphere, knowing not their
rights, their real power, political affairs, or war, assembling and
deciding amid tumult, making decisions of which they had no thought the
day before, and at which they themselves were afterwards astonished. The
parliament of Bordeaux was then serving the prince of Condé, but it kept
to a little more rational conduct, because being further removed from the
court it was less agitated by opposing factions. More important matters
were interesting the whole of France.
THE LAST PHASE OF THE FRONDE
[Sidenote: [1651-1652 A.D.]]
Condé, leagued with the Spaniards, was on a campaign against the king;
and Turenne, having quitted these same Spaniards, with whom he had been
beaten at Rethel, had just made his peace with the court and was in
command of the royal army. The exhausted finances did not permit either
of the two parties to maintain great armies, but small ones did not the
less decide the fate of the state. Louis XIV, brought up in adversity,
went with his mother, his brother, and Cardinal Mazarin from province
to province, without having as many troops about his person, by a great
deal, as he had afterwards for a single guard in times of peace. Five to
six thousand men, some sent from Spain, others raised by the prince of
Condé’s partisans, pursued him into the very heart of his kingdom.
Meanwhile the prince of Condé hastened from Bordeaux to Montauban, taking
towns and everywhere increasing his party. All the hope of the court lay
in Marshal Turenne. The royal army found itself near Gien on the Loire.
The opposing force of Condé was some leagues away, under the orders of
the dukes de Nemours and de Beaufort. The duke de Beaufort was incapable
of commanding anything. The duke de Nemours was braver and more amiable
than he was skilful. Both together had demoralised their army. The
soldiers of Condé knew that their leader was a hundred leagues away and
believed themselves lost, when, in the middle of the night, a courier
presented himself at the outposts in the forest of Orleans. The sentinels
recognised in this courier the prince of Condé himself, who had come
all the way across France from Agen, with many adventures and always in
disguise, to place himself at the head of his army.
His presence did much and his unexpected arrival still more. The royal
army was divided into two corps. April 7th, 1652, Condé fell upon that
which was at Bléneau, commanded by Marshal d’Hocquincourt, and his corps
was dissipated as quickly as it had been attacked. Turenne could not
even be warned. The terrified Mazarin hastened to Gien in the middle of
the night to awaken the sleeping king and himself tell him the news.
The little court was in consternation; they proposed to save the king by
flight and to conduct him secretly to Bourges. The victorious Condé drew
near to Gien; the desolation and the fear increased. Turenne reassured
their spirits by his firmness and saved the court by his skill. With
the few troops that remained to him he made such fortunate movements
that he prevented Condé from following up his advantage. It is difficult
to decide which won the more honours, the victorious Condé or Turenne
who had robbed him of the fruits of victory.[104] It is true that in
this fight at Bléneau not four hundred men were killed; but the prince
of Condé was none the less on the point of making himself master of
the entire royal family, and of having in his hands his enemy Cardinal
Mazarin. It would be hard to find in history any smaller battle with
greater interest and more pressing danger.
Condé, who did not flatter himself that he could surprise Turenne, as he
had done Hocquincourt, marched his army towards Paris. He hastened to
that city to enjoy his glory and the favourable disposition of a blind
populace. The admiration they had for his last fight,--all of whose
details had exaggerated the hate that was borne for Mazarin,--the name
and the presence of the Great Condé, seemed at first to make him absolute
master of the capital; but at the bottom all minds were divided. The
coadjutor--now become Cardinal de Retz, reconciled in appearance with the
court which feared him and which he defied--was no longer the master of
the people and no longer played the principal rôle. He ruled the duke of
Orleans and was opposed by Condé. Parliament wavered between the court,
the duke of Orleans, and the prince. Although all were in accord in
crying down Mazarin, each one was nursing his own particular interests in
secret; the people were a stormy sea whose waves were driven at chance by
many contrary winds.[i]
Condé hoped to find the parliament his ally against Mazarin: but the
stern magistrates, though firm in their abhorrence of that minister, were
not more favourable to Condé, and openly reproached him with his Spanish
alliance. From the parliament he did not scruple to appeal to the people,
whose lowest class rose in tumult, and threatened the magistrates. The
very courts proved no refuge: councillors and judges were insulted and
even beaten as “Mazarins.”
Condé, thus disappointed in the support of the parliament, and of the
respectable citizens, could not cope unaided with the royal army. The
Parisian rabble, very forward in a riot, could not be made to stand the
fire of regular troops. The prince had recourse to the Spaniards, who,
themselves busied in the sieges of Gravelines and Dunkirk, induced the
duke of Lorraine to march into France and support Condé. The skilful
strategy of Turenne, however, compelled this new auxiliary to retreat;
and the prince, after a fresh attempt to raise sedition in the capital
and control the parliament, was reduced to fight Turenne with far
inferior forces. The latter drove him from St. Cloud, and Condé marched
to take post at Charenton, when, his rival pressing him closely, as he
defiled round the walls of Paris, the prince was obliged to throw himself
into the faubourg St. Antoine, behind the entrenchments formerly raised
for their defence by the inhabitants.
_Battle of St. Antoine (July 2nd, 1652)_
The gate of Paris called St. Antoine was then immediately under the
Bastille, the cannon of which swept the three roads diverging from it.
Condé, denied entrance into the city, was still secure from attack on
this side; and, posted in the central position of the gate St. Antoine,
he determined to make head against the royalists, who approached to
attack him by the three roads. Mazarin and Louis XIV were on the heights,
now covered with the cemetery of Père Lachaise, spectators of the ensuing
action, the young monarch being most anxious to witness the destruction
of this rebellious prince.
The triple attack commenced: that on the prince’s left, commanded by
three sworn and personal enemies to him, was defeated by his valour, the
chiefs all perishing. The hero then rushed to defend the central street:
he met Turenne in person, and there the conflict was more doubtful. “Did
you see Condé during the action?” asked someone of Turenne when the
affair was over. “I must have seen a dozen Condés,” was the reply: “he
multiplied himself.” On the right the action was most bloody: the nobles
of the prince’s party were almost all slain or wounded there, amongst the
rest La Rochefoucauld, who, struck on the head, was carried off by his
wounded son. Turenne was the most powerful; and no chance appeared of
Condé’s saving himself and the relics of his army, when the gate of St.
Antoine unexpectedly opened to receive him, the cannon of the Bastille at
the same time sending their fire up the three attacked streets, and thus
effectually checking the progress of the royalists.
This well-timed succour came from Mademoiselle de Montpensier, daughter
of the duke of Orleans, whose sympathy for the heroic Condé, now in
distress, was aided by the clamours of the populace, enraged at beholding
a rash and imprudent but still generous prince sacrificed to the detested
Mazarin. She wrung from the municipal officers the orders for opening the
gates; herself directed the firing of the guns of the Bastille; nay, her
hand is said to have applied the match. Mademoiselle had aspired to the
hand of Condé, to that of the king, and might hope at least to espouse
a sovereign prince. But Mazarin observed, on seeing the fire of the
Bastille, and knowing who commanded it, “That shot has killed the husband
of Mademoiselle.”[g]
SECOND EXILE OF MAZARIN
After this bloody and useless combat of St. Antoine the king could not
return to Paris; and the prince did not remain there long. Popular
feeling and the murder of several citizens, for which he was believed
to be responsible, made him odious to the people. [He fled from Paris
and joined the Spanish army, October, 1652.] However, he still had his
faction in the parliament. This body, now intimidated by a wandering
court, and driven after a fashion from the capital to Pontoise, pressed
by the cabals of the duke of Orleans and the prince, declared, by a
decree, the duke of Orleans lieutenant-general of the realm, although the
king was an adult. The two parliaments of Paris and Pontoise, contesting
the authority one with the other and issuing contradictory decrees,
agreed in demanding the expulsion of Mazarin--so much did the hatred
of this minister seem the essential duty of every Frenchman. The court
saw itself obliged once more to sacrifice Mazarin whom everyone believed
the author of the troubles, but who was but their pretext. For a second
time he left the country, and to increase his shame the king must needs
make a public declaration dismissing his minister, the while praising his
services and deploring his exile.
[Illustration: LOUIS XIV AS A YOUNG MAN]
Charles I, king of England, who had just lost his head on the scaffold,
had in the beginning of his troubles abandoned the blood of Strafford,
his friend, to his parliament. Louis XIV on the contrary became the
peaceful master of his realm by permitting his minister’s exile. Thus the
same weakness bore different results. The king of England, in abandoning
his favourite, emboldened a people that breathed war and hated kings;
and Louis XIV, or rather the queen-mother, by dismissing the cardinal,
removed all pretext for revolt from a people tired of war and who loved
royalty.
While the state was thus torn at home it had been attacked and weakened
abroad; all the benefits of the battles of Rocroi, Lens, and Nördlingen
were lost; the important place of Dunkirk was retaken by the Spaniards
(September, 1652); they drove the French from Barcelona, they retook
Casale in Italy (October, 1652).
Scarcely had the cardinal left for Bouillon, place of his new retreat,
when the citizens of Paris, of their own accord, sent to the king and
asked him to return to his capital. Louis entered Paris October 21st,
1652, and all was so peaceful that it would have been difficult to
imagine that a few days before all was in confusion. Gaston of Orleans,
unfortunate in his undertakings, which he never knew how to carry
out, was relegated to Blois, where he passed the rest of his life in
repentance; and he was the second son of Henry the Great to die without
much glory. Cardinal de Retz, as imprudent as he was audacious, was
arrested in the Louvre, and after having been sent from prison to prison
long led a wandering life which he finished in retreat, where he acquired
virtues which his great courage had not known in the agitations of his
fortune.
Several councillors who had most abused their ministry paid for their
actions with exile; the others withdrew into the limits of the magistracy
and others attached themselves the closer to their duties with an annual
gratuity of five hundred crowns which Fouquet, attorney-general and
superintendent of the finances, gave them surreptitiously. The prince
of Condé meanwhile, abandoned in France by nearly all his partisans,
and badly assisted by the Spaniards, continued a disastrous war on the
frontiers of Champagne. There still remained factions in Bordeaux, but
they were soon pacified.[i]
[Sidenote: [1652-1653 A.D.]]
Thus ended the Fronde. Voltaire dismisses it in a few pages, satisfied
with recording its _bon mots_. He seems to have looked upon this civil
war as merely a pastime, entered into by a few froward youths and their
mistresses. He did not see in it the serious, the sanguinary and unhappy
struggle of a nation for its liberty. Even later writers, more profound
than Voltaire, have designated the Fronde as “the last campaign of the
noblesse.” It was indeed so. But the noblesse formed not the prominent
body. It was the parliament, the magistracy, that put itself forward
to represent the commons, of which they claimed and established the
privileges for themselves. This was, no doubt, an audacious and hopeless
enterprise. The states-general, the ancient representative assembly of
the nation, was the form to which they should have rallied. But the
extravagance of the English parliament deterred them; and they fixed
upon their own body, as a less democratic and dangerous assembly, to
participate in legislative power. The scheme was new: it was conceived
with boldness, and supported with courage; and if the legists failed
in arriving at settled liberty by its means, they may plead that
representative assemblies have frequently failed in the same endeavour.[g]
MAZARIN AGAIN IN POWER (1653 A.D.)
The calm in the kingdom was the result of Cardinal Mazarin’s banishment;
however, scarcely had he been driven away by the general cry of the
French people and the king’s decree, when the king made him come back.
He was astonished to see himself re-enter Paris all powerful. Louis XIV
received him like a father and the people like a master. He held a great
reception at the Hôtel-de-Ville amid the acclamations of the citizens; he
threw money to the populace, but it is said that in his joy for so happy
a change he showed his scorn for the inconstancy or rather the folly of
the Parisians. The officers of parliament, after having placed a price on
his head like a public robber, sued, almost all of them, for the honour
of asking his protection; and this same parliament a short time after
condemned by contumacy the prince of Condé to lose his life. They saw the
cardinal, who urged this condemnation of Condé, marry to the prince of
Conti his brother, one of his own nieces--a proof that the power of the
minister was going to be boundless.
The king reunited the parliaments of Paris and of Pontoise; he forbade
the assembling of the chambers. Parliament wished to remonstrate, one
councillor was sent to prison; several others were exiled: parliament
kept quiet; the change had already come.[i]
[Sidenote: [1653-1655 A.D.]]
The events of Louis XIV’s youth were such as to inspire him not only
with high ideas of his kingly rights, but to prove to him the necessity
of absolute power in the monarch.[105] In the great English rebellion,
and in the Fronde, he had seen freedom under its most hideous aspect,
and followed by the vainest of results. We can scarcely then blame him
personally for his despotic propensities, which, moreover, his manly and
ambitious character tended to increase. The young king and his brother
Philip, then called the duke of Anjou, were educated in the privacy of
the palace. The nieces of the cardinal were their playmates; and Louis
formed successive attachments for two of these young ladies, especially
for Maria Mancini, afterwards the wife of the constable Colonna. So
intimate was the connection betwixt Mazarin and Anne of Austria that many
were persuaded of their marriage.[106] Certainly her attachment to him
was personal and tender. Louis XIV always preserved for the cardinal a
sort of filial reverence: he may be said to have learned in the school of
implicit obedience how to be himself despotic.
At intervals, however, the imperious temper of the young monarch burst
forth, and betrayed itself. In 1655, the parliament, after registering
certain fiscal edicts, thought proper to re-examine them, to complain,
and show symptoms of their ancient independence. Louis was at Vincennes,
engaged in the chase, when he heard of their conduct. Instantly, without
consulting the cardinal, or even tarrying to change his dress, the
young monarch galloped to Paris, entered the Palais de Justice and
the Hall of Parliament in his hunting habit, booted, and with whip in
hand. “Gentlemen,” said Louis to the astonished legists, “everyone is
acquainted with the ill consequences of your former assemblies. Their
recurrence must be prevented. I command you instantly to cease busying
yourself with my edicts. And you, Mr. President, I forbid either to call
or suffer such assemblies.” This bold assertion of the royal will from
the mouth of a stripling proved sufficient to crush the reviving spirit
of the magistracy. It was silent, and obeyed.[g]
WAR WITH SPAIN CONTINUES
Condé, who had become general in the Spanish armies, was unable to revive
what he had himself weakened at Rocroi and Lens. He was fighting with raw
troops against the veteran French regiments that had learned to conquer
under him, and that were now commanded by Turenne. The fate of Turenne
and of Condé was to be uniformly victorious when they were fighting
together at the head of the French and to be defeated when they were
commanding the Spanish.
Turenne had with difficulty saved the wreck of the Spanish army at Rethel
when, instead of a general of the king of France, he had been made the
lieutenant of a Spanish general; the prince of Condé had the same fate
before Arras (August 25th, 1654). He and the archduke besieging this
city, Turenne attacked them in their camp and forced their lines; the
troops of the archduke were put to flight; Condé, with two regiments of
French and Lorrainers, sustained alone the attack of Turenne’s army; and,
while the archduke was in flight, he defeated Marshal d’Hocquincourt,
repulsed Marshal de la Ferté, and retired victorious, covering the
retreat of the defeated Spaniards.
The relief of Arras, the forcing of the lines, and the rout of the
archduke covered Turenne with glory; and it is to be observed that in the
letter concerning this victory written in the name of the king to the
parliament the success of the entire campaign is ascribed to Cardinal
Mazarin and that Turenne’s name is not even mentioned. The cardinal had
been in fact a few leagues from Arras with the king. He had even been in
the camp at the siege of Stenay, which Turenne had taken before relieving
Arras. Councils of war had been held in the presence of the cardinal.
On this basis he ascribed to himself the honour of the events; and this
vanity brought upon him a ridicule that all the authority of his ministry
could not suppress. The king was not present at the battle of Arras. He
had gone into the trenches at the siege of Stenay, but Cardinal Mazarin
was unwilling that he should further expose his person, upon which the
tranquillity of the state and the power of the minister seemed to depend.
Thus on the one side, Mazarin, absolute master of France and of the young
king, and on the other, Don Luis de Haro, who governed Spain and Philip
IV, continued in the name of their masters to carry on the war, but with
little vigour.
These two men vied with each other in directing their policies towards
forming an alliance with Cromwell, the English Protector, who for some
time enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing himself courted by the two most
powerful kingdoms of Christendom. The Spanish minister offered to help
him take Calais; Mazarin proposed to besiege Dunkirk and restore that
city to him. Cromwell had to choose between the key of France and that
of Flanders. He was also much solicited by Condé, but he did not wish to
negotiate with a prince who had nothing left but his name and who was
without a party in France and without power in Spain.
ALLIANCE WITH CROMWELL (1655 A.D.); WAR IN FLANDERS (1656-1658 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [1655-1657 A.D.]]
In May, 1655, the Protector decided in favour of France, but without
making any special treaty or a division of conquests in advance. He
wished to shed lustre on his usurpation by greater enterprises. His
design was to wrest Mexico from the Spaniards, but the latter were warned
in time. Cromwell’s admirals, however, took Jamaica from them. It was
not until after the Jamaican expedition that Cromwell signed his treaty
with the king of France, but without making any mention of Dunkirk. The
Protector treated as equal with equal; he forced the king to give him the
title of brother in his letters. In the copy of the treaty that remained
in England his secretary signed before the French ambassador; but he
negotiated really as a superior by forcing the king to drive out of his
dominions Charles II and the duke of York, the grandsons of Henry IV,
to whom France owed an asylum. A greater sacrifice of honour to fortune
could not have been made.
While Mazarin was making this treaty Charles II asked for one of his
nieces in marriage. The bad condition of his affairs that drove the
prince to this step also brought upon him a refusal. It has even been
suspected that the cardinal wished to marry to the son of Cromwell the
niece whom he refused to the king of England. This much is certain--that
when he afterwards saw the way to the throne more open to Charles II he
wished to renew this marriage; but was refused in his turn.
The war continued in Flanders with varying success. Turenne, having
besieged Valenciennes along with Marshal de la Ferté, suffered the same
kind of reverse that Condé had sustained at Arras. The prince, assisted
this time by Don John of Austria, who was more worthy to fight at his
side than the archduke had been, forced La Ferté’s lines, took him
prisoner, and relieved Valenciennes (July 17th, 1656). Turenne did what
Condé had done in a similar rout. He saved the defeated army and opposed
the enemy everywhere; a little later he even besieged and took the little
town of La Capelle (September 27th). This was perhaps the first time that
a defeated army had dared to make a siege.
This famous march of Turenne, which was followed by the taking of La
Capelle, was eclipsed by an even finer march of the prince of Condé.
Turenne had laid siege to Cambray when Condé, at the head of two
thousand cavalry, forced a passage through the besieging army, and having
driven back all who tried to stop him threw himself into the town (May
31st, 1657). The citizens received their deliverer on bended knees. Thus
these two men, opposed to each other, exhibited the resources of their
genius. We admire them in their retreats as well as in their victories,
in their good conduct and even in their faults, which they were always
able to retrieve. Their talents alternately arrested the progress of each
monarchy; but the financial disorder in Spain and in France was a still
greater obstacle to their success.
[Sidenote: [1657-1658 A.D.]]
The alliance with Cromwell finally gave France a more marked superiority.
On the one hand, Admiral Blake was about to burn the Spanish galleons
and cause the loss of the sole treasure with which the war could be
maintained. On the other hand, twenty English vessels had just blockaded
the port of Dunkirk and six thousand veterans of the English Revolution
reinforced Turenne’s army. Then Dunkirk, the most important place in
Flanders, was besieged by sea and land. Condé and Don John of Austria,
having united all their forces, came forward to relieve it. The eyes of
Europe were upon this event. Cardinal Mazarin brought Louis XIV near the
scene of war without allowing him to get to it, although he was nearly
twenty years old. The prince stopped at Calais, and hither Cromwell sent
to him a pompous embassy, at the head of which was his son-in-law, Lord
Falconberg. The king sent to him the duke de Créqui, and Mancini, duke
de Nevers, a nephew of the cardinal, followed by two hundred noblemen.
Mancini presented the Protector a remarkable letter from Cardinal Mazarin
in which he said that he was sorry not to be able to pay him in person
the respect due to the greatest man in the world.
Meanwhile the prince-marshal Turenne attacked the Spanish army, or rather
the army of Flanders, near the Dunes. The latter was commanded by Don
John of Austria, son of Philip IV and an actress, who two years later
became the brother-in-law of Louis XIV. The prince of Condé was with
this army but not in command; hence it was not difficult for Turenne to
gain the victory (June 14th, 1658). The six thousand English soldiers
contributed to the victory, which was complete.
The genius of the Great Condé was of no avail against the best troops of
France and England. The Spanish army was destroyed. Dunkirk surrendered
soon afterwards (June 23rd). The king came up with his minister in order
to see the garrison pass out. The cardinal did not allow Louis XIV to
appear either as warrior or as king. He had no money to distribute to the
soldiers, and was poorly attended. When he was with the army he dined
with Mazarin or with Marshal Turenne. This neglect of royal dignity was
not in Louis XIV the effect of contempt for pomp, but of the confusion
in his affairs and of the pains the cardinal took to unite splendour
and authority in himself. Louis entered Dunkirk only to turn it over to
Cromwell’s ambassador, Lord Lockhart. Mazarin tried whether by finesse
he could not evade the treaty and not give up the place; but Lockhart
threatened, and English firmness got the better of Italian subtlety.
Several persons have asserted that the cardinal, who had attributed to
himself the victory of Arras, tried to induce Turenne to yield to him
again the honour of the battle of Dunes. Du Bec-Crépin, count de Moret,
it is said, came on behalf of the minister and proposed to the general
to write a letter in which it would appear that the cardinal had himself
arranged the entire plan of operation. Turenne received these hints with
contempt and would not make a statement that would have brought disgrace
upon a general of the army and ridicule upon a man of the church.
Mazarin, who had been so foolish, now had the misfortune of remaining on
ill terms with Turenne until his death.
[Sidenote: [1658-1659 A.D.]]
In the midst of this first triumph the king fell ill at Calais and for
several days was near death. Immediately all the courtiers turned towards
his brother, Monsieur. Mazarin lavished deference and flattery upon
Marshal du Plessis-Praslin, the former tutor of this young prince, and
upon count de Guiche, his favourite. A cabal was formed in Paris that was
bold enough to write to Calais against the cardinal. He made preparations
to leave the kingdom and to conceal his immense riches. An empiric of
Abbeville cured the king with emetic wine that the court physicians
called poison. This good man seated himself upon the king’s bed and said,
“This is a very sick boy, but he is not going to die.” When the king
became convalescent the cardinal banished all who had intrigued against
him.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE GATE TO THE CHÂTEAU DE VINCENNES]
A few months later Cromwell died (September 13th, 1658) at the age of
fifty-five, in the midst of his projects for the strengthening of his
power and the glory of his nation. Richard Cromwell succeeded peaceably
and without opposition to the protectorate of his father, as a prince
of Wales would have succeeded a king of England. The emperor Ferdinand
III had died in 1657. His son Leopold, who was seventeen years old and
already king of Hungary and Bohemia, had not been elected king of the
Romans during the lifetime of his father. Mazarin wished to attempt to
make Louis XIV emperor. This was a chimerical idea; it would have been
necessary either to coerce or to bribe the electors. France was neither
strong enough to seize the empire nor rich enough to buy it; so the first
overtures made at Frankfort by Marshal de Grammont and by Lionne were
abandoned almost as soon as they were proposed. Leopold was elected. All
that Mazarin’s politics accomplished was to form an alliance, known as
the League of the Rhine, with certain German princes,[107] to observe
the Treaty of Westphalia, and to furnish a check to the authority of the
emperor over the empire (August, 1658). France, after the battle of the
Dunes, was powerful in her foreign relations through her glory and her
arms as well as through the condition to which the other nations were
reduced. But the country itself was suffering; it was stripped of money,
and there was need of peace.
THE TREATY OF THE PYRENEES (1659 A.D.)
The cardinal had to do two things in order to bring his ministry to a
happy close--make peace and insure the tranquillity of the state by the
marriage of the king. The intrigues during the latter’s illness made
Mazarin feel how necessary an heir to the throne was to the splendour of
the minister. All these considerations determined him to marry Louis XIV
promptly. Two princesses were proposed--the daughter of the king of Spain
and the princess of Savoy. The king’s heart had made another choice: he
was desperately in love with Mademoiselle Mancini, one of the cardinal’s
nieces. Born with a tender heart and a firm will, full of passion and
without experience, he would have been capable of resolving to marry the
lady of his choice.
Madame de Motteville, the favourite of the queen-mother, whose _Mémoires_
have a great air of truth, claims that Mazarin was tempted to let the
king’s love have its way and to place his niece on the throne. He had
already married another niece to the prince de Conti, and one to the duke
de Mercœur. The one whom Louis XIV loved had been asked in marriage by
the king of England. These were titles enough to justify his ambitions.
He adroitly sounded the queen-mother. “I fear,” he said, “that the king
has too great a desire to marry my niece.” The queen, who knew the
minister, understood that he desired what he feigned to fear. She replied
to him with all the haughtiness of a princess of the blood of Austria,
daughter, wife, and mother of kings, and with the bitterness which she
had felt for some time towards a minister who affected to be independent
of her. She said to him, “If the king were capable of this indignity I
would place myself with my second son at the head of the whole nation
against the king and yourself.”
Mazarin, it is said, never forgave the queen this reply; but he took
the wiser course of thinking as she did. He made it a point of honour
and merit to oppose the passion of Louis XIV. His power did not need a
queen of his own blood to support him. He even feared the character of
his niece; and he believed he would further strengthen the power of his
ministry by avoiding the dangerous glory of elevating his own house too
high.
In the year 1656 he had sent Lionne to Spain to negotiate peace and to
ask the hand of the infanta; but Don Luis de Haro, convinced that, feeble
as Spain was, France was not less so, rejected the cardinal’s offer. The
infanta, daughter of Philip IV by his first wife, was intended for the
young Leopold. By his second marriage Philip had at that time only a son
whose sickly infancy caused fears for his life. It was desired that the
infanta, who might be the heir to many states, should transfer her rights
to the house of Austria and not to a hostile dynasty; but finally, Philip
IV having had another son, Don Philip Prosper, and his wife being again
_enceinte_, the danger involved in giving the infanta to the king of
France seemed to him less great, and the battle of the Dunes made peace
necessary to him.
The Spaniards promised the infanta and asked for a suspension of
hostilities (1659). Mazarin and Don Luis de Haro repaired to the isle
of Pheasants on the frontier of France and Spain. Although general
peace and the marriage of the king of France were the objects of their
conference, more than a month passed in regulating ceremonies and
settling difficulties of precedence. The cardinals called themselves the
equals of the kings and the superiors of other sovereigns. France, with
greater justice, claimed pre-eminence over the other powers. Don Luis de
Haro, however, assumed perfect equality between France and Spain.
The conferences lasted four months. Mazarin and Don Luis employed all
the resources of their respective policies; that of the cardinal was
strategy, that of Don Luis delay. The latter never gave promises: the
former only equivocal ones. The genius of the Italian was to try to
surprise; that of the Spaniard, to keep from being surprised.
Such are the vicissitudes of human affairs that of this famous Peace of
the Pyrenees, signed November 7th, 1659, not two articles have endured.
The king of France retained Roussillon which he would have kept anyway,
without this peace, also Artois and Cerdagne; but the Spanish monarchy
has no more possessions in Flanders.
But if Don Luis de Haro said that Cardinal Mazarin could deceive, it has
been said since that he could foresee. He long meditated the alliance
of the houses of France and Spain. This famous letter of his, written
during the negotiations at Münster, is cited: “If the most Christian king
could have the Netherlands and Franche-Comté as dower upon espousing the
infanta, then we might aspire to the Spanish succession, whatever we
might have to relinquish to the infanta; and it would not be a very long
wait, since there is only the life of the prince her brother that could
exclude her from it.” This prince was Balthazar, who died in 1649.
The cardinal was evidently deceived in thinking that the Netherlands and
Franche-Comté could be given to the infanta as her marriage portion.
Not a single city was stipulated for her dower. On the other hand,
important cities that had been conquered, like St. Omer, Ypres, Menin,
Oudenarde, and other places, were restored to the Spanish monarchy. Some
were retained. The cardinal was not mistaken in believing that this
relinquishment would be useless some day. But those who gave him the
honour of this prediction make him also foresee that Prince Don Balthazar
would die in 1649; that later the three children of the second marriage
would be cut off in the cradle; that Charles, the fifth of the male
children, would die without issue; and that this Austrian king would one
day make a will in favour of a grandson of Louis XIV. But at any rate
Cardinal Mazarin foresaw what value this relinquishment would have in
case the male line of Philip should become extinct: and after more than
fifty years strange events justified him.
Maria Theresa, the infanta, able to have as dower the cities that France
restored, brought by her marriage contract nothing else than 500,000
gold crowns; it cost the king more than that to go to receive her at
the frontier. These 500,000 crowns, equivalent to 2,500,000 livres,
were the subject of a great deal of dispute between the two ministers.
In the end France never received but 100,000 francs. Instead of this
marriage bringing any other real and immediate advantage than that of
peace, the infanta renounced all rights she might ever have to any of her
father’s lands. Louis XIV ratified this renunciation in the most solemn
manner.[108]
[Sidenote: [1659-1661 A.D.]]
The duke of Lorraine, Charles IV, against whom France and Spain had much
cause to complain, or rather who had much to complain of against them,
was included in the treaty; but only as an unfortunate prince who was
punished, because he could not make himself feared. France restored his
states to him, demolishing Nancy, however, and forbade him to maintain
troops. Don Luis de Haro forced Cardinal Mazarin to receive Condé into
favour again, by threatening to leave in the sovereignty of the prince
Rocroi, Le Catelet, and other places of which he was in possession. So
France gained both these towns and the Great Condé. He lost his dignity
of grand-master of the royal household, which was afterwards given to his
son, and returned with scarcely anything but his glory.
Finally (August, 1660) Cardinal Mazarin brought the king with his new
queen to Paris.[109] Mazarin acted exactly like a father who would marry
his son without giving him charge of his own property. He returned
more powerful and more jealous of his power, and even of honours, than
ever. He required parliament to address him through deputies. This was
something unparalleled in the monarchy, but it was not too great a
reparation for the wrong that parliament had done him. He no longer gave
his hand to the princes of the blood as formerly. He who had treated Don
Luis de Haro as an equal tried to treat the Great Condé as an inferior.
He went about with royal pomp, having besides his guards a company of
musketeers, which was ever afterwards the second company of king’s
musketeers. There was no more freedom of access to him. If anyone was
a poor enough courtier to ask a favour of the king, he was lost. The
queen-mother, so long the stubborn protectress of Mazarin against France,
was without credit as soon as he had no more need of her. Her son, the
king, brought up in blind submission to this minister, could not shake
off the yoke that she had imposed upon him as well as upon herself; Louis
XIV could not reign during the lifetime of Mazarin.
LAST YEARS AND DEATH OF MAZARIN (1659-1661 A.D.)
A minister is excusable for the evil he does when the helm of state is
forced into his hands by tempests; but during a calm he is answerable
for the good that he fails to do. Mazarin did good only to himself and
his family. Eight years of absolute and undisturbed power, from his
final return until his death, were marked by no glorious or useful
establishment; for the college of the Four Nations was only created by
his will.[110]
He controlled the finances like the steward of a lord involved in debt.
The king sometimes asked money of Fouquet, who replied, “Sire, there is
nothing in your majesty’s coffers, but the cardinal will lend you some.”
Mazarin was worth about two hundred millions, reckoning in the money
values of to-day (_i.e._, the middle of the eighteenth century). Several
memoirs say that he amassed part of it by means far beneath the grandeur
of his position. They relate that he shared with privateer captains the
profits of their voyages. This has never been proved; but the Dutch
suspected him of it, and they never would have suspected Cardinal
Richelieu.[i]
In high spirits was Mazarin at the moment of signing the great treaty
at Bidassoa (Treaty of the Pyrenees). He wrote to Paris: “All will soon
be over. I shall not stay long in the Basque country, unless I find
amusement in watching them hunt whales, in learning their language and
their dances.”
However, the dancer was soon smitten by gout. His lungs became affected.
The bed of the moribund, covered with cards, was a gaming table over
which offices were sold. Cards and the sacrament went pell-mell.[b]
It is said that on his death-bed he felt remorse, but outwardly he
displayed courage. At least, he feared for his property, and he made the
king a complete donation of it believing that the king would return it
to him. He was not mistaken; the king returned the gift in three days.
Finally he died at Vincennes, March 9th, 1661, and no one but the king
seemed to mourn him, for this prince already knew how to dissemble.
The yoke was beginning to weigh heavily upon him; he was impatient to
reign. Nevertheless he wished to seem affected by a death that put him
in possession of his throne. Louis XIV and the court wore mourning for
Cardinal Mazarin, an unusual honour, and one which Henry IV had paid to
the memory of Gabrielle d’Estrées.
We will not undertake [says Voltaire] to decide whether Mazarin was a
great minister or not; his actions must speak for themselves. There is
often a popular idea of a vast breadth of mind and an almost divine
genius in those who have governed empires with some success. It is
not a superior power of penetration that makes statesmen; it is their
character. Men, if they have ever so little good sense, nearly all
perceive their own interests. In this respect a citizen of Amsterdam
or of Bern is as wise as Sejanus, Ximenes, Buckingham, Richelieu, or
Mazarin; but our conduct and our enterprises depend solely upon the
temper of our soul, and our successes depend upon fortune. For example,
if such a genius as Pope Alexander VI or his son Borgia had had to
take La Rochelle, he would have invited the principal leaders to his
camp under a solemn oath and would have made away with them. Mazarin
would have entered the city two or three years later by winning over
and dividing the citizens. Don Luis de Haro would not have risked the
enterprise. Richelieu built a dyke along the sea, after the example of
Alexander, entered and took La Rochelle; but a less strong tide or a
little greater promptness on the part of the English would have saved La
Rochelle and made Richelieu seem foolhardy.
The character of men can be judged by their enterprises. It may well
be said that the soul of Richelieu breathed pride and vengeance, that
Mazarin was wise, pliant, and avaricious. But in order to tell in how far
a minister has genius one must either have frequently heard him talk, or
one must read what he has written. What is seen every day among courtiers
often happens among statesmen: he who has most genius fails, while he who
has in his character more of patience, force, pliancy, and persistence
succeeds. On reading the letters of Cardinal Mazarin and the _Mémoires_
of Cardinal de Retz[j] one easily sees that De Retz was the superior
genius. Nevertheless Mazarin was all-powerful and De Retz was overthrown.
Finally, it is quite true that to make a powerful minister often nothing
is needed but a mediocre mind, good sense, and luck; but to be a good
minister a man must have love for the public welfare as his dominant
passion. The great statesman is he who leaves to his country great and
useful memorials.
The memorial that immortalises Cardinal Mazarin is the acquisition
of Alsace. He gave this province to France at a time when France was
enraged at him; and by a singular fatality he did more good for the
kingdom when he was persecuted than in the tranquillity of absolute
power.[i]
Mazarin’s end [says Michelet] was at least consistent with his life--he
lived and died a cheat. He believed he had cheated the future. Fortunate
player, he had all his plans well laid. The prophecies of his youth were
fulfilled. He had appeared, at the age of twenty-five, upon a field of
battle crying, “Peace! Peace!” From the noble and serious workers who had
died painfully in preparing his opportunities, he filched the glory of
the triumphant Peace of Westphalia and that of the Pyrenees. Richelieu
sowed, Mazarin harvested. The one created the administration, the army,
the navy, and died on the eve of Rocroi. The other spoiled everything
and succeeded in everything. Great through the greatness of Condé, and
greater through that of Turenne, his position was strengthened by even
the futile tempest of the Fronde; he retains at least the honour of that
forced and fatal peace into which France fell through sheer lassitude.
This pedestal is still left him; his features even after death wear the
mask of the Angel of Peace.
Was it really peace? Too late it had arrived: Germany, agonising in ruin,
found no peace in the Treaty of Westphalia; Spain, dead and done with,
was in no condition to reap benefit from the Peace of the Pyrenees. And
France herself, entering by this door into a fifty years’ struggle for
the Spanish succession, was to find in this peace fiscal war at home and
bloody strife abroad.[b]
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES
[96] [Michelet[b] believes that the love affair of Mazarin and the
queen began even earlier than their contemporaries think. He says: “It
has been said that Louis XIV was the son of Mazarin--this is certainly
wrong. He was of France, ballasted by Austria. But his brother, the
second duke of Orleans (born September 22nd, 1640), like the first,
Gaston, was thoroughly Italian in spirit and in manner. He was as much
Mazarin as Gaston was Concini. I fully appreciate the difficulties. Their
contemporaries believe that she did not give herself to him until later.
There was at least one entr’acte in her favour.” To a court tradition,
related, among others, by the Princess Palatine,[n] mother of the regent,
is due a belief that Mazarin’s continued hold over the queen-mother is
explained by the fact that they had been secretly married. Kitchin[o]
says “there is no reason to doubt that they were actually married.” But
Martin assures us that “there is not the slightest indication of this,
either in their correspondence or in what we know of the _Carnets_[p] of
Mazarin.”]
[97] [He was, however, a deacon, and so in lesser orders.]
[98] [This statement is not substantiated, and is not to be found in any
contemporary writing. The first book that speaks of it bears the date
1694.]
[99] [The aged prince of Condé (Henry II de Bourbon) died December
26th, 1646, when the duke d’Enghien (Louis II de Bourbon) assumed his
father’s title. He came to be known as “The Great Condé,” and we shall
see much of him in the ensuing pages. He was born at Paris, September
8th, 1621; died, December 11th, 1686. The first prince of Condé (Louis I
de Bourbon), whose death at the battle of Jarnac in 1569 will be recalled
(see p. 363), was his great-grand-father. This first prince of Condé was
the younger brother of Anthony, king of Navarre, the father of King Henry
IV. So the Great Condé came honestly by his fighting propensities.]
[100] [Some historians refuse to credit Condé with these words. Indeed,
Madame de Motteville reports a much less stirring harangue: “My friends,
have good courage; we must of necessity fight to-day. It will be useless
to back out. For I promise you that all the brave and the cowardly will
fight; the ones of good will, the others through compulsion!” “This
was perhaps,” adds Duruy,[h] “the only kind of language to impress the
soldiers at that time.”]
[101] [Cardinal de Retz was the descendant of a Florentine family that
came to the court of France in the suite of Catherine de’ Medici; it
was his grand-uncle who figured so prominently in the massacre of St.
Bartholomew. See above, pp. 369, 399.]
[102] [According to Voltaire,[i] so low were the royal resources that
almost the entire court had to sleep, while at St. Germain, on straw.
They were obliged to leave the crown jewels as security with the usurers.
The young king often lacked necessities. The pages of his chamber were
dismissed because there were no means to keep them. At the same time
Louis’ aunt, Henrietta Maria of England, in refuge at Paris, was reduced
to the extremes of poverty; her daughter, afterwards married to Louis’
brother, had to stay in bed to keep warm.]
[103] [He went first to Liège and afterwards to Cologne.]
[104] [In comparing these great rivals, Kitchin[q] says: “It has been
well said of these two masters in war, that as Condé grew older he lost
his early fire and military insight, without becoming wiser or more
prudent, while each campaign made Turenne more daring as well as more
skilful. The careers of the two great soldiers form a striking contrast:
it is genius without industry pitted against high talent combined with
infinite painstaking, and a belief in the scientific treatment of the art
of war. The more brilliant Condé was sure to fail when pitted against
Turenne.” Vicomte de Turenne (Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne) was a grandson
of William the Silent. He was born in 1611 (September 11th, at Sedan),
and was therefore now just over forty. Condé was ten years younger (born
September 8th, 1621). The span of life of each of the great generals was
destined to compass almost exactly the same period; Turenne being just
under sixty-four, Condé just over sixty-five, at death.]
[105] [“Joan of Arc made France a nation against the English; Louis XIV
made France a state against all Europe. The Fronde had none of these
creative ideas--whence its incertitude and its weakness. Louis XIV had
the idea of state--whence his firmness, his decision, and that famous
phrase, ‘_L’État, c’est moi_,’ which has been taken for an expression of
pride but was an expression of policy.”--SAINT-MARC GIRARDIN.]
[106] [See note, page 488.]
[107] [The three ecclesiastical electors, the duke of Bavaria, the
princes of Brunswick and of Hesse, the kings of Sweden and Denmark.]
[108] [It has been suggested that Mazarin purposely made the dowry such
as Spain could not well pay, so that the treaty must be broken. That
clause once broken, the renunciation of the succession was also void,
with the rest of the treaty. If such was really Mazarin’s plan, it was an
extraordinary one.]
[109] [The marriage had taken place in June, 1660, at Fuenterrabia in the
Pyrenees.]
[110] [We may add that he pensioned several writers--among them Descartes
and the historian Mézeray--and that he provided for the splendid Mazarin
library, opened later to the public. “Mazarin,” says Duruy,[h] “had the
liveliest if not the best taste for art. He brought from Italy a number
of paintings, statues, and curiosities--even actors and machinists who
introduced the opera into France. In 1655 he founded the Academy of
Painting and Sculpture.”]
[Illustration]