Reign of Louis XIII.—The treasure of Henry IV.
dissipated—Prevalent belief in magic—Cesar and Ruggieri—Henry,
prince of Condé—The Marchioness d’Ancre—Marshal
Ornano—Prevalence of duelling—The count de Bouteville—The Day
of the Dupes—Vautier, the physician of Mary of Medicis—The
marshal de Bassompierre—The chevalier de Jars—Infamy of
Laffemas—Three citizens of Paris sent to the Bastile—Despotic
language of Louis XIII.—The count de Cramail—The Marquis of
Vitry—Peter de la Porte—Noel Pigard Dubois, an alchemical
impostor—The count de Grancé and the Marquis de Praslin—The
prince Palatine—Count Philip d’Aglie—Charles de Beys—Letter
from an unknown prisoner to Richelieu.
The treasure deposited in the Bastile, by Henry IV., did not remain long
undissipated after his death. It began to melt away, like snow in the
sun, as soon as the regency of Mary of Medicis was commenced. Swarms of
her favourites and dependants clamoured to obtain the reward of their
sycophancy. Like the horse-leech’s two daughters, they were perpetually
crying, “Give! Give!” and, had such personages existed in the days of
Solomon, he might have added a fifth thing to the four which he describes
as never saying “It is enough.” Most prominent among the group were
Concini and his wife; and, as they were exceedingly unpopular, they
endeavoured to silence the cry against them, by stopping, at the public
expense, the mouths of their most formidable censors. But it was not
only her friends, as they called themselves, that Mary of Medicis had
to satisfy; her enemies, and she had many, were to be bought off, and
they sold their forbearance dearly. Fraud and shameless rapacity became
universal. “Governors,” says Anquetil, “called for guards which they
never enlisted, for augmentations of their garrisons, that they might
gain something out of the pay, and fortifications, which often were
useless. They themselves made the bargains, and, at the king’s cost,
managed matters with the contractors. Reversions were granted down to
the third generation. Those who by this means were excluded, required
drafts on the royal treasury. Nothing was more common than the doubling
and trebling of salaries, from the highest office to the lowest. Some
obtained dowries for their daughters, others the payment of their debts:
so that it was a general pillage.” To all this must be added, the loss
sustained, and the injury done to every branch of industry, by the
creation or revival of obnoxious tolls, privileges, and monopolies.
Thus the money accumulated by Henry was speedily squandered. After all,
it was, perhaps, more innocently spent in this manner, than it would
have been in carrying on the wide-spreading war which he had planned, to
realise his chimerical projects. Some drops of the golden shower probably
descended among the multitude; and myriads were not led forth to spill
their blood in foreign lands. The real mischief in this case was, that,
when the hoard was gone, the spirit of spending remained; and to satisfy
that spirit new taxes and exactions were pitilessly imposed on a people
whose burthens were already oppressive.
Having wholly lost his influence, Sully resigned many of his offices, and
returned into private life. Among the places which he relinquished were
the superintendence of the finances, and the government of the Bastile.
He, however, did not make the sacrifice without taking especial care to
be well remunerated for it. A million of livres, and a yearly pension of
forty-eight thousand livres, was his price. It is quite clear that the
virtuous Sully did not think, like Pope, that “virtue _only_ makes our
bliss below.”
For the first four or five years of the regency of Mary of Medicis, the
Bastile seems to have contained no prisoner of note. At the end of that
time it received an individual who, though he had no rank to boast of,
professed to be in the service of a potent master. The belief in magic
was almost general at that period. We have seen that Biron attributed
his crimes to the influence of magic upon him. All the world was running
mad after charms, spells, and philtres; the boldest of the throng had
a violent curiosity to see the devil. Among those who preyed upon the
credulity of the crowd, history has preserved the names of two—one
was called Cesar, the other was Ruggieri, a Florentine. It is to the
extraordinary mode in which they are asserted to have quitted the world,
that we are indebted for our knowledge of them.
Cesar is gravely stated to have had the power of calling down hail
and thunder at his pleasure. He had a familiar spirit, and a dog, who
seems to have been a sort of minor fiend, acting as messenger, to carry
his letters, and bring back answers. Cesar was a manufacturer of love
potions, to make young girls enamoured of young men; and, on occasion,
could help a cowardly enemy to destroy without risk the man whom he
hated. It was charged against him, that he had formed a charmed image
for the purpose of making a gentleman waste away. This was a very common
practice when sorcery and witchcraft were in vogue. But it seems probable
that the crime which brought him to the Bastile was an indiscretion which
he committed with respect to one of the gentle sex. He was accustomed to
attend the witches’ sabbath; and he boasted that, at one of those unholy
meetings, a great lady of the court had granted him the last favour which
a female can bestow. Such a vaunt was well calculated to bring him into
durance. It did that, and more. On the eleventh of March, 1615, all Paris
was astonished, by learning that, in the dead of the night, the devil had
come, with a tremendous din, and strangled Cesar in his bed. Four days
afterwards, his satanic majesty, who appears to have wanted the services
of two magicians at once, snatched away, in the same manner, the soul of
the Florentine Ruggieri, who was then residing in the house of a French
marshal. It is not difficult to account for these supposed supernatural
events.
A curious description of the tricks which Cesar played upon his dupes
is given by a contemporary author, who speaks in the character of the
magician. The representation is probably correct. “You would hardly
believe,” says he, “how many young courtiers and young Parisians there
are, who teaze me to show them the devil. Finding this to be the case,
I hit upon one of the drollest inventions in the world to get money.
About a quarter of a league from this city, I found a very deep quarry,
which has long ditches on the right and left hand. When any body wants
to see the devil, I take him into that; but, before he enters, he must
pay me forty or fifty pistoles at least; swear never to say a word of the
matter; and promise not to be afraid, or call on the gods or demigods, or
pronounce any holy words.
“All this being done, I enter the cavern first; then, before going
further, I make circles, and involutions, and fulminations, and mutter
some speech composed of barbarous words, which I have no sooner uttered
than my curious fool and I hear the rattling of heavy chains, and the
growling of large mastiffs. Then I ask him if he is afraid; if he says
yes (and there are many who dare not proceed), I lead him out again, and,
having thus cured him of his impertinent curiosity, I pocket his money.
“If he is not afraid, I go forward, mumbling out some terrific words.
When I have reached a particular spot, I redouble my incantations, and
utter loud cries, as if I had gone frantically mad. Immediately six
men, whom I keep hidden in the cavern, throw out flashes of flame, to
the right and left of us, from burning rosin. Seen through these flames
I point out to my inquisitive companion a monstrous goat, loaded with
great heavy chains of iron, painted with vermilion, to look as though
they were red hot. On each side, there are two enormous mastiffs, with
their heads fastened into long wooden cases, which are wide at one end,
and very narrow at the other. While the men keep goading them, they howl
with all their might, and this howling echoes in such a manner, through
the instruments on their heads, that the cavern is filled with sounds so
terrific that, though I know the cause of the hurlyburly, even my own
hair stands on end. The goat, whom I have taught his lesson, plays his
part so well, rattling his chains, and brandishing his horns, that there
is nobody but what would believe him to be the devil in earnest. My six
men, whom I have also thoroughly trained, are likewise loaded with red
chains, and dressed like furies. There is no light in the cavern but what
they now and then make with powdered rosin.
“Two of them, after having played the devil to perfection, now come to
torment my poor curious gull, with long bags of cloth full of sand;
with these they so belabour him all over his body, that I am at last
obliged to drag him out of the cavern half dead. Then, when he has come
to himself a little, I tell him that it is a most perilous thing to wish
to see the devil, and I beg that he will never indulge it in future; and
I assure you that no one ever does after having been so double damnably
beaten.”
The year after the foul fiend had fetched away Cesar and Ruggieri,
the Bastile was tenanted by an occupant of high rank—Henry, prince of
Condé, the second who bore that Christian name. Condé was born in 1588,
and, till the birth of a dauphin, was presumptive heir to the throne of
France. The prince was well educated, witty and pleasant in conversation,
spoke several languages, and was better acquainted with literature and
the sciences than most contemporary men of high birth; but his person was
not attractive. It was probably the latter circumstance which induced
Henry the fourth to unite him to Henrietta de Montmorenci, the loveliest
and richest female of that time. Her inclinations leaned towards the
handsome, gallant, and accomplished Bassompierre; but Henry, who was
smitten with an extravagant passion for her, seems to have thought that
he could more easily seduce her if she were the wife of Condé. He was
mistaken. The prince, on whose “liking the chase a hundred thousand times
better than he liked women” Henry had rather erroneously calculated,
was not disposed to be dishonoured, even by a king who was his uncle.
Henry, previous to the marriage, had, indeed, pledged his word that,
on his account, the prince need have no fears; but Henry was not a man
to be trusted in such cases. The nuptial knot was scarcely tied before
the conduct of the monarch became such as to awake, and justify, all
the jealous fears of the husband; who was further aggrieved by being
compelled to endure the contempt and insolence of Sully. To avoid the
danger which hung over him, his sole resource was to fly the country with
his wife; and he accordingly contrived to make his escape, and to obtain
an asylum in the court of the archduke Albert, at Brussels.
When Henry found that his intended prey was beyond his reach, his
behaviour resembled rather that of a madman than of a sage monarch,
at the mature age of fifty-seven. He ran about asking advice of his
courtiers, the ministers were summoned, councils were held, parties of
troops were despatched to seize the fugitives, and war was threatened
against Spain, if she refused to give them up. When Sully was told of
what had happened, he replied in a surly tone, “I am not astonished at
it, sire; I foresaw it clearly and warned you of it; and had you taken
my advice a fortnight ago, when he was going to Moret, you would have
put him into the Bastile, where you would find him now, and where I
should have kept a good watch over him for you.” Such was the morality
of the austere Sully! This “well-seeming Angelo,” who has been praised,
at least as much as he deserves, could be indignant at the idea of the
monarch marrying Henrietta d’Entragues, his mistress; but he could see
no dishonour in that monarch breaking his plighted word, as well as all
moral obligations, by seducing the wife of his nephew; nor in he himself
volunteering his assistance to forward an adulterous intercourse, by
prompting the seizure of the injured husband, and becoming his gaoler!
It was not without reason that the prince dreaded to trust his wife
within the corrupted atmosphere of the French court. Had she remained
there, it appears certain that she must have fallen. As it was, her
fidelity was, for a moment, on the point of being shaken. Henrietta was
little more than sixteen, and the glory of the sovereign, his boundless
generosity to her, and his idolatrous fondness, dazzled her imagination
so far, that, while she was at Brussels, a correspondence was actually
carried on between them. An attempt was made by Henry’s emissaries to
carry her off, but it failed. When d’Estrées, marquis of Cœuvres, who
conducted this attempt, was reproached for his baseness by Condé, his
defence was, that he had acted upon orders from the king his master, and
that it was his duty to execute them, whether they were just or unjust.
Henrietta repaired her momentary error by her subsequent conduct.
Not believing himself to be safe, Condé removed to Milan, where he
published a manifesto to justify his having quitted France. From
policy he passed over in silence the main cause of his flight; but he
indemnified himself by pouring forth all the bitterness of his resentment
on Sully, whom he painted in the darkest colours. Some overtures were
made, to lure the prince back to France, but they were ineffectual.
But, while Henry was preparing to carry war into the territory of his
neighbours, he fell by the hand of an assassin, and the way was thus
opened for the return of the prince.
Condé aspired to the regency, but his ambitious hopes were disappointed.
Chagrined at the failure of some of his subsequent schemes, and the
refusal of favours which he sought, the prince, with many of the nobles,
took up arms against the court. For this, he and his adherents were
declared guilty of treason. A peace was, nevertheless, patched up between
the parties, and he returned to Paris in a sort of triumph.
Not more than a year elapsed before the obvious intention of Condé, to
monopolize all the power of the state, compelled Mary of Medicis to
venture upon decisive measures against him. Sully was active in prompting
her to this step. The strength of the prince’s party rendered the
attempt hazardous; but the business was kept so secret, and was so ably
managed, that he was arrested in the Louvre, and conveyed to the Bastile,
without opposition. Here, and at Vincennes, he remained for three years,
during part of which time he was harshly treated. It was not without
much difficulty, and till he had been long confined, that his wife, who
had become sincerely attached to him, was allowed to share his prison.
His liberation was brought about by the fall of Concini, and he was
reinstated in his honours. Thenceforth, he served Louis the thirteenth
faithfully in the cabinet and the field. He died in 1646. Voltaire truly
says, with respect to him, that his being the father of the great Condé,
was his greatest glory.
The downfall of Concini, marshal d’Ancre, which opened the gates of the
Bastile to let out Condé, opened them also to admit, for a short time,
the wife of the murdered marshal. After Concini had been assassinated by
Vitry and his accomplices, and his body had been dragged from the grave,
and torn into fragments, by an ignorant and savage populace, Leonora, his
widow, was hurried to prison. She was a daughter of the female by whom
Mary of Medicis was nursed, and had been the playmate of the princess.
When Mary became the consort of Henry IV., she took Leonora in her train
to Paris. So attached was Mary to her, that Leonora is said, by Mezeray,
“to have directed at her pleasure the desires, the affections, and the
hatreds of the queen.” Riches were, of course, heaped upon her. She is
charged with having fomented the disagreements of Mary and her inconstant
husband, by making false statements, to excite the jealousy of her
mistress. If she did so, which may be doubted, she was performing a work
of supererogation; for Henry rendered falsehood unnecessary, by affording
abundant and undisguised cause for complaint. The light of the sun was
not more obvious than his conjugal infidelity. It was also objected,
that she insolently shut her door against the princesses and nobles, who
came to pay court to her in the height of her power. If this be true,
it proves only that she had spirit and good sense enough to despise
the sycophancy of those by whom she knew herself to be detested. It is
much in favour of Leonora’s private character, that Mary of Medicis was
so firmly her friend; for, unlike the titled dames who surrounded her,
Mary was a modest and virtuous woman. That the marshal and his partner
fattened on the spoils of the state it would be folly to deny; but, mean
and criminal as such conduct undoubtedly is, we must bear in mind that
the crime was common to all the courtiers of that period. Every one
was eager, as the French phrase expresses it, “to carry off a leg or a
wing.” It was envy, not abhorrence of robbing the public, that caused the
destruction of Mary’s favourites.
In France, to live upon the imposts squeezed from the people was not
deemed an impeachable act, unless, perhaps, by those who had failed to
get a share of the pillage; and consequently there was no legal ground
for dragging the widow of Concini to the bar. But hatred is ingenious in
finding means to effect its purpose. Having first been so effectually
plundered by the police officers, that she had not even a change of linen
left, she was sent before a special commission, to be tried for Judaism
and sorcery. Other charges were brought forward, but it is obvious
that they were only meant to increase the odium under which she was
labouring. The trial was, throughout, a mockery of justice. Evidence the
most trivial in some instances, and absurd in others, was produced to
substantiate the charge of Judaism and sorcery. Some Hebrew books, which
were found in her apartment, were gravely supposed to be used by her
for necromantic purposes. “By what magic did you gain such an influence
over the mind of the queen-mother?” was one of the questions put by her
judges. “My only magic,” replied the prisoner, “was the power strong
minds have over weak ones”—a memorable reply, which goes far to prove
that she was a woman of superior talent.
Though the judges had, no doubt, been selected for the purpose of
ensuring her condemnation to death, it turned out that a mistake had
been made with respect to some of them, and that they were not of the
opinion of d’Estrées, who thought that the orders of a master ought to
be executed, whether they were just or unjust. Five of them absented
themselves, and a few others voted for banishment. The majority, however,
were faithful to their mission, and she was sentenced to be beheaded,
and her remains burnt, and scattered to the winds. By the same sentence,
her husband’s memory was branded with infamy, her son was declared
ignoble, and incapable of holding office or dignity; their mansion, near
the Louvre, was ordered to be levelled with the ground, and all their
property was confiscated.
On hearing this sentence, to which she was compelled to listen
bareheaded, in the midst of an insulting crowd, nature for a moment
prevailed in the bosom of Leonora, and she sobbed loudly. The disgrace of
her son seems to have been more painful to her than even her own fate.
She soon, however, recovered herself, and became resigned to her doom.
When she was led to execution, her deportment so won for her the respect
of the multitude, that not a syllable of reproach was heard. She looked
firmly, yet without any theatrical affectation of heroism, on the block
and the flaming pile; submitted to the blow without a murmur; and thus
triumphantly vindicated her claim to the possession of a strong mind.
Having passed over an interval of seven years, after the judicial murder
of the marchioness d’Ancre, we find the Bastile receiving John Baptist
Ornano, the son of a father who enjoyed and deserved the friendship of
Henry IV. Ornano was born in 1581, and was not more than fourteen when he
commanded a company of cavalry at the siege of la Fère. He subsequently
served with distinction in Savoy and other quarters.
In 1619, Louis the thirteenth appointed him governor of Gaston, duke
of Anjou, the king’s brother, who was presumptive heir to the throne.
Gaston had, for some time, been under the care of the count de Lude,
than whom it would have been difficult to find a man more unfit for his
office, unless he was chosen for the purpose of leading his pupil astray.
Ornano, by a proper mixture of firmness and kindness, soon succeeded in
perfectly acquiring the respect and affection of the prince. One part of
the system, by which he purposed to break the bad habits of his youthful
charge, is said to have consisted in awakening his ambition. With this
view he dwelt upon the strong probability of the prince succeeding to the
crown, and the necessity of making himself acquainted with affairs of
state; and he taught him to believe, that he could gain such knowledge
only by being admitted into the king’s council. It may be supposed that,
in thus acting, Ornano was not without an eye to his own advancement and
influence. La Vieville, however, who then ruled, did not wish to see
Gaston in the council, and still less Ornano. He, therefore, persuaded
Louis to remove the prince’s governor, and send him into Provence. Ornano
refused to resign, and he was punished by being sent to the Bastile,
whence he was transferred to the castle of Caen.
Gaston remonstrated strongly against being deprived of his friend and
preceptor; but his remonstrances would probably have been of little
avail, had not la Vieville been precipitated from power. Ornano was
then released by the king, and was placed at the head of the prince’s
household. In 1626, at the request of Gaston, seconded by the advice
of Richelieu, he was created marshal of France. This promotion was the
precursor of his fall. It was a part of the policy of Richelieu to grant,
in the first instance, more to suitors of rank than they were entitled to
expect, that, in case of their afterwards opposing him, he might treat
them without mercy. It appears he soon began to suspect that the new-made
marshal was not likely to be a submissive dependent, and this was enough
to induce him to work his ruin. Ornano himself aided his dangerous enemy,
by pertinaciously requiring admittance into the council, and by using
offensive language on his demand being refused. Various acts of the
marshal were now represented in the darkest colours to the suspicious
king, by Richelieu; and Louis, always open to suggestions of this kind,
imprisoned the supposed offender in the castle of Vincennes. Ornano died
there, in September, 1626. He death was attributed to poison, but the
report was certainly unfounded. Whether, if he had lived, he would have
saved his head, is doubtful; for when Richelieu had once resolved to have
a man’s head, it was not easy to disappoint him.
Among the few whom justice, not tyranny or caprice, immured within the
walls of the Bastile, may be reckoned Francis, count de Bouteville, of
the ancient and illustrious family of Montmorenci, whose father, Louis
de Montmorenci, was vice-admiral of France in the reign of Henry the
fourth. The example which was made of him was necessary, to vindicate
the insulted laws, and to check a murderous practice which had shed
some of the best blood in the kingdom. For a long series of years, in
defiance of the severe edicts issued against it by Henry IV. and Louis
XIII., duelling had been carried to an extent which it is frightful to
contemplate. War itself would scarcely have swept off more victims of the
privileged class, than were sacrificed in private and frivolous quarrels.
Paris, in particular, swarmed with professed duellists, who gloried in
their exploits, and counted up their slain with the same exultation that
a sportsman counts the game he has killed. Some, who prided themselves on
a peculiar delicacy of honour, were ever on the watch to find a pretext
for taking offence. Even to look at them, to touch any part of their
dress in passing by them, or to utter a word which could be misconstrued,
sufficed to draw from them a challenge to mortal combat.
Bouteville was one of the most conspicuous of these offenders. In
1624, M. Pontgibaud, in 1626, the count de Thorigny and the Marquis
Desportes, and in January, 1627, M. Lafrette, fell beneath his weapon.
In consequence of the last of these encounters, he, and his second,
the count des Chappelles, were compelled to take refuge at Brussels.
Thither he was followed by the marquis de Beuvron, a relation of the
count de Thorigny, who was eager to avenge his death. The archduchess
Isabella, who then governed the Netherlands, brought about a semblance
of reconciliation between them, but their rancour remained unabated;
for even at the moment when, in sign of forgiveness, they embraced each
other, Beuvron whispered to Bouteville, “I shall never be satisfied till
I have met you sword in hand.”
The archduchess also solicited Louis the thirteenth to grant the pardon
of Bouteville, but the monarch refused. On hearing this, the rash and
insolent culprit exclaimed, “Since a pardon is denied, I will fight in
Paris, aye, and in the Place Royale too!” He was as good as his word.
In May he returned to the French capital, and his first step was to
offer Beuvron the satisfaction which that nobleman had expressed a wish
to obtain. A combat of three against three was arranged, and the Place
Royale was chosen as the spot for deciding it. Beuvron was seconded by
Buquet, his equerry, and by Bussy d’Amboise, the latter of whom had been
ill of fever for several days, and was weakened by repeated bleedings.
Bouteville brought with him des Chappelles, his cousin, and constant
auxiliary on such occasions, and another gentleman. They fought with
sword and dagger.
Bussy being killed by des Chappelles, the five remaining combatants, who
began to dread the vengeance of the violated laws, sought for safety in
flight. Beuvron and Buquet succeeded in escaping to England. Bouteville
and his cousin fled towards Lorraine. Unfortunately for them, Louis the
thirteenth was then at the Louvre, and, as soon as he heard of the duel,
he ordered a vigorous pursuit of the offenders. At Vitry, in Champagne,
the officers of justice overtook Bouteville and his associate; the latter
wished to resist, but the former prevailed on him to surrender. On their
arrival at Paris, they were committed to the Bastile, and no time was
lost in bringing them to trial.
From all quarters the king was importuned by entreaties to pardon the
criminals. The countess de Bouteville threw herself at his feet, to beg
the life of her husband; but he passed on without replying. “I pity her,”
said he to his courtiers, “but I must and will maintain my authority.”
The nobility were not more successful in their supplications to the king
and the parliament. At the trial all that forensic talent could do for
the prisoners was done by Chastelet, their counsel. The plea which he
put in for them was written with so much eloquence and boldness, that
cardinal Richelieu sternly told him it seemed to impeach the justice
of the king. “Excuse me, sir,” replied Chastelet, “it is only meant to
justify his mercy, in case he should extend it to one of the bravest men
in his kingdom.” When the sentence of death was passed, another effort
was made to move the king. The princess of Condé, accompanied by three
duchesses, and the wife of Bouteville, requested an audience of his
Majesty. He at first refused to see them; but he subsequently admitted
them to a private interview in the queen’s apartments. They pleaded
in vain. “I regret their fate as much as you do,” said he; “but my
conscience forbids me to pardon them.”
Bouteville seems, from the beginning, to have made up his mind to die,
and to have been unfeignedly repentant. While he was in the Bastile, he
was attended by Cospean, the bishop of Nantes, one of the most highly
gifted preachers of the age. It was by the exhortations of this pious
prelate that Bouteville was awakened to a due sense of his crimes. So
moved was he by the fervid eloquence of his spiritual guide that, while
his trial was yet pending, he said to him, and doubtless with perfect
sincerity, “So resigned am I to the will of God, and so ready to do
every thing to save my soul, if to save it be possible, that, even more
pressingly than my wife now begs for my pardon, I will beg my judges to
condemn me to the gibbet, and to be drawn to it on a hurdle, in order to
render my death more ignominious and meritorious.” It was not without
difficulty that Cospean could dissuade him from seeking salvation by
means of this extraordinary self abasement. Contrition alone, and not an
act which would cast a stigma on his family, the prelate justly observed,
was required to appease the wrath of an offended Deity.
Bouteville and his cousin met death with much firmness; the former
refused to allow his eyes to be bandaged. On the scaffold a circumstance
occurred, which appears to prove that vanity, like hope, sometimes does
not leave us till we die. The mustachios of Bouteville were large and
handsome, and he put up his hands, as though to save them, when the
executioner came to cut off his hair. “What! my son,” exclaimed Cospean,
who attended him till the last, “are you still thinking on _this_ world!”
The plan which, under seemingly favourable auspices, was formed, by Mary
of Medicis and her partisans, to subvert the power of Richelieu, and
which was shattered to pieces on the day emphatically called the Day of
the Dupes (November 11, 1630), was disastrous to many who were concerned
in or suspected of favouring it. Of the Marillacs, one, a proved soldier,
was brought to the scaffold; the other, a magistrate of unimpeachable
conduct, was hurried from one prison to another, and closely confined,
and he died a captive. But we must restrict ourselves to those
individuals who were committed to the Bastile. One of these was Vautier,
born at Montpelier, in 1592, who was the queen mother’s principal
physician. If we were to give credit to Guy Patin, we must believe that
Vautier was a worse pest than a whole host of duellists, and richly
deserved to be the inmate of a dungeon. “He was,” says Patin, “a rascally
Jew of the Avignonese territory, very proud and very ignorant, who was
lucky in having escaped the gallows for coining, and who afterwards found
means to wriggle himself in at court.” But the evidence of Patin is
liable to more than suspicion in this instance; for Vautier was a friend
to antimony and chemical remedies, all of which his censurer held in
abhorrence: to prescribe them was worse in his eyes than being guilty of
all the deadly sins. Vautier, however, certainly appears to have been of
an obstinate disposition, and at times unjust.
Vautier was believed to have so much influence with the queen mother,
that he was one of the first to be arrested after the Day of the Dupes.
He was confined for a while at Senlis, whence he was removed to the
Bastile. In the Parisian fortress he remained for twelve years, during
which period no communication with him was permitted. It was in vain
that, after her flight, when she was so dangerously ill at Ghent, Mary
of Medicis intreated to have the services of her confidential physician.
Richelieu kept fast hold of his prey. In 1643, the captive was set at
liberty by Mazarin, who subsequently appointed him head physician to the
king. Patin flings his venom upon this appointment. It was, he says,
bought of the minister for twenty thousand crowns, and the purchaser was
to act as his spy. He adds an insinuation, which does no credit to his
heart. “See what policy is!” he exclaims; “this man was twelve years
imprisoned by the father, yet the health of the son is entrusted to him.”
M. Patin seems to have thought, that a man who has been injured by the
parent, must needs wish to poison the child. Vautier died in 1652.
The grave physician is succeeded by a very different personage; a
courtier of high birth, handsome, accomplished, full of gallantry in both
senses of the word, witty, and with his natural talents improved by early
study. Francis de Bassompierre, who was all this, was born in Lorraine,
in 1579, and was descended from the princely house of Cleves. On
returning from his travels, he visited the court of Henry IV., and soon
acquired the friendship of that sovereign. Among a crowd of courtiers,
each vying with the other in splendour and extravagance, he was one of
the foremost. At the baptism of the king’s children, he wore a dress of
cloth of gold, covered with pearls, the cost of which was nine hundred
pounds. Gaming, thanks to the bad example set by Henry, was scandalously
prevalent; and here, too, Bassompierre was prominent. He tells us, in his
memoirs, that not a day passed, while he was at Fontainebleau, in which
twenty thousand pistoles were not won and lost, and that he was a winner
of half a million of livres within twelve months.
Desirous of adding the reputation of a soldier to his other pretensions,
he served a campaign in Savoy, in 1602, and in Hungary the following
year. Having established his military character, he resumed his station
at the French court. The greatest part of the business of his life
seems now, and for many years, to have been amorous intrigues—to apply
the word love to them would be a profanation of it. However eager he
might be to swell the number of his conquests, there is the best reason
for believing, that those whom he attacked were willing enough to be
overcome. It at once proves his attractions, and speaks volumes as to the
low state of morals among the females at that period, that when, at a
later date, Bassompierre was about to be imprisoned, he burnt more than
six thousand letters, which contained the proofs of his amatory success.
One of the most notorious of his amours was that in which he involved
himself with Mdlle. Entragues, sister of the king’s mistress, the
marchioness of Verneuil. By this lady he had a son. She is said to have
obtained from him a promise of marriage, and for several years she sought
to enforce the performance of it, and persisted in bearing his name.
Meeting him one day at the Louvre, she told him publicly that he ought to
cause the customary honours to be paid to her there, as his wife. “Why,”
said he, “will you take a _nom de guerre_?” “You are the greatest fool in
all the court!” exclaimed the enraged lady. “What would you have said to
me, then, if I had married you?” retorted the provoking Bassompierre.
In 1605, the career of this gay deceiver was near being cut short by a
serious accident. At a tournament, in front of the Louvre, where the king
was present, Bassompierre was so severely wounded by the lance of the
duke of Guise, his antagonist, that his life was long in danger. This
tournament was the last which was exhibited in France; the dangerous
amusement was discontinued, in consequence of this misadventure. People
began to be of the same opinion as the Turkish sultan, that it was too
much for a jest and too little for earnest.
Bassompierre at last appears to have felt that it was time for him
“to live cleanly as a nobleman should do,” and he resolved to marry.
His choice fell on Charlotte de Montmorenci, one of the most rich and
beautiful women in France, and neither she nor her father, the constable,
was averse from the union. It has been seen, in the sketch of Condé’s
career, that Henry IV. became excessively enamoured of her. In some cases
her marriage would have made no difference; as Henry might have assented
to it, and bound down the husband not to exercise his conjugal rights,
as he had done with respect to Gabrielle d’Estrées and Jacqueline du
Beuil. To such a restriction he probably thought that Bassompierre would
not submit. Calling him therefore to his bed-side—for Henry was ill of
the gout—he told him that he meant to unite him to Mdlle. d’Aumale, and
revive for him the dukedom of Aumale. On Bassompierre asking with a
smile, whether his majesty meant him to have two wives, the king sighed
deeply, and said, “Bassompierre, I will speak to you as a friend. I am
become not only in love with Mdlle. de Montmorenci, but absolutely beside
myself for her. If you marry her, and she loves you, I shall hate you;
if she loves me, you will hate me. It is much better that this should
not occur, to disturb the good understanding between us; for I have the
most affectionate regard for you.” The result was that the courtier
resigned his mistress, and was rewarded for the sacrifice with the rank
of colonel-general of the Swiss regiments. Bassompierre would fain make
us believe that he was sorely grieved, at being thus deprived of the
beautiful Montmorenci; but we may be sceptical on this head, since we
have his confession, that, in order “not to be idle, and to console
himself for his loss, he immediately made up his quarrel with three
ladies, whom he had entirely quitted when he thought that he should be
wedded.”
For more than twenty years, Bassompierre continued to be a flourishing
courtier. Once only, in that long period, he was in danger; it was from
the hostility of la Vieville, the minister, who strove to cage him in
the Bastile. The time of Bassompierre was, however, not yet come, and he
had the satisfaction to witness the downfall of his enemy. In the course
of these twenty years, he acquired reputation, both in the field and the
cabinet; he was active at various sieges and battles, particularly at the
sieges of Rochelle and Montauban, and he was entrusted with embassies
to Spain, Switzerland, and England, which he executed in an able manner.
For a short time he had the custody of the Bastile; and, in 1623, he
rose to the rank of Marshal. His being employed as a negociator was the
work of the royal favourite, Luynes, who was jealous of the influence
which Bassompierre possessed with the monarch. Luynes was candid enough
to confess this. “I love you, and esteem you,” said he, “but the liking
which the king has for you gives me umbrage. I am, in truth, situated
like a husband who fears being deceived, and cannot see with pleasure
an amiable man frequenting his wife.” To remove from court the man whom
he dreaded, Luynes offered the choice of a command, a government, or an
embassy; Bassompierre chose the last.
Richelieu proved a far more formidable adversary than la Vieville. He
doubted not that Bassompierre had been engaged in the late plot against
him; he knew that he was a friend of the queen mother; and he suspected
him of having borne a part in the clandestine marriage of the duke of
Orleans with the princess Margaret of Lorraine. It is said, also, that
the cardinal imagined the marshal to have voted for imprisoning him, in
case of the malecontents being successful. This was more than enough to
bring down on him the vengeance of the triumphant minister. Bassompierre
was warned more than once of what would happen, and was advised to
escape, but he refused to follow this advice. He was taken to the
Bastile, in February, 1631. His arrest cost the death of the princess of
Conti, to whom he had long been secretly married; she died of grief in
little more than two months.
Bassompierre had reason to hope that his imprisonment would be but of
short duration. The evening before he was seized, he had mentioned to
the king the reports which were afloat, and Louis had declared them
to be false, and expressed much affection for him. The day after the
deed was done, the monarch sent him a message, that he considered him
to be a faithful servant, that he was not arrested for any fault, but
in the fear of his being led to commit one, and that he should soon be
released. Year after year elapsed, however, and the promised liberation
was still delayed. Hopes were often held out to him, apparently with no
other intention than that of making him feel the pain of disappointment.
There seems, indeed, to have been a malignant resolution formed to
torment him. The grain on his Lorrain estate was seized, the estate
itself was ravaged, his nephew’s mansion was destroyed, his pay was
stopped, cabals were excited against him in the Bastile, and he was
compelled to relinquish his commission of colonel-general for an
inadequate compensation. Yet, while Richelieu was acting thus, he could
ask Bassompierre to lend him his country-house! To add to the prisoner’s
vexations his property was going to ruin, some of his friends proved
faithless, and death was busy among his dearest relatives.
It was twelve years before the decease of Richelieu gave freedom to
Bassompierre. His post of colonel-general was restored to him by Mazarin;
and an intention was manifested of appointing him governor to the minor
king, but this intention was frustrated by a fit of apoplexy, which put
an end to his existence in October 1646.
Of the many individuals who were persecuted by the cardinal-king, none
were more estimable than Francis de Rochechouart, who was usually
denominated the chevalier de Jars. He was of an ancient and noble family,
which traced back its origin to the viscounts of Limoges, early in the
eleventh century. To great personal and mental graces, and prepossessing
manners, he added a mind of such firmness as is not of common
occurrence, especially among the courtier tribe. His eminent qualities
gained him the friendship of Anne of Austria, which alone was sufficient
to excite the suspicion and hatred of Richelieu—that ultra Turk, who
could bear “no rival near his throne,” nor even the friend of any one who
could possibly become a rival. In 1626, de Jars was, therefore, ordered
to quit the court. He retired to England, where he soon won the favour of
Charles I., his queen Henrietta Maria, the duke of Buckingham, and other
distinguished characters. Bassompierre, an acute observer, was at that
time in England as ambassador from Louis XIII., and from the manner in
which he mentions him, it is evident that de Jars was in high repute at
the court of Charles.
In 1631, de Jars was allowed to return, or was recalled, to his native
country. Whether he was lured over to France, that he might be within the
grasp of his potent enemy, cannot now be ascertained. It is probable that
he was, for he did not long remain at liberty. In February, 1632, he was
involved in the downfall of Chateauneuf, the keeper of the seals, who
had inexpiably offended the implacable minister. De Jars had sufficient
demerit to bring down this misfortune on him; he was the friend, and,
as Bassompierre affirms, the confidant of Chateauneuf, possessed the
queen’s esteem, and was, perhaps, suspected of being looked upon with a
favourable eye by the beautiful and fickle duchess of Chevreuse, of whom
Richelieu was enamoured. As, however, the first two of these offences
would hardly have justified his imprisonment and trial, and as the third
had the same defect in a greater degree, and, besides, could not have
been decorously urged against him by a high dignitary of the church,
the crime attributed to him was that of assisting Anne of Austria to
correspond with Spain, and of planning the removal to England of the
queen mother and the duke of Orleans.
It was the depth of winter when de Jars was thrown into one of the
dungeons of the Bastile, and there he was kept for eleven months, till
the clothes rotted off his back. The reader will remember what horrible
abodes these dungeons were. It being supposed, perhaps, that his spirit
was by this time enough broken, he was sent for trial to Tours, where
a tribunal of obedient judges had been formed, for the express purpose
of sitting in judgment upon him. At the head of this tribunal was one
Laffemas, or La Fymas; a man who was redeemed from the contempt of
mankind for his baseness, only by the hatred which was excited by his
power and will to do mischief. He was the ready tool, or, to use a more
emphatic and appropriate French phrase, the _âme damnée_ of Richelieu,
and was capable of diving to the lowest deep of degradation, in the
service of his master. He bore the well earned and significant nickname
of “the cardinal’s hangman.”
At the Bastile and at Troyes, de Jars underwent no fewer than eighty
examinations. In these, Laffemas strained every nerve to seduce, or
beguile, or terrify, the prisoner into avowals which would manifest or
imply guilt in himself or in his friends. But de Jars was proof alike
against feigned sympathy, intreaties, artful snares, and ferocious
threats. Not a word dropped from his lips by which any one could be
criminated. Laffemas had no sinecure office in conducting this iniquitous
affair; he was often lashed by de Jars with unsparing severity, as a
mendacious and deceitful coward; nor did the cardinal himself escape
without a full portion of stinging censure.
De Jars did not stop here. He determined to inflict a public disgrace
upon Laffemas. By dint of importunity, he obtained permission to hear
mass, on All Saints’ day, in the church of the Jacobins, where he knew
that Laffemas would be present. Thither he was taken, under a strong
guard. Watching the moment when, with downcast eyes and a Tartuffe
countenance, Laffemas was coming from the communion table, he broke from
his guards, and seized the judge by the throat. “Villain!” exclaimed he,
“this is the moment to confess the truth. Now; while your God is on your
lips, acknowledge my innocence, and your injustice in persecuting me. As
you pretend to be a Christian, act like one: if you do not, I renounce
you as my judge, and I call upon every one who hears me to bear witness
that I protest against your being so.”
This singular scene drew the wondering congregation round the parties.
But the people were by no means inclined to interfere in behalf of the
intendant, and some time elapsed before the soldiers could extricate
him from the gripe of the prisoner. Laffemas seems not to have been
deficient in courage. Undisconcerted by this sudden attack, he said, in a
conciliating tone, “Do not make yourself uneasy, sir; I assure you that
the cardinal loves you; you will get off with merely going to travel in
Italy: but you must first allow us to show you some billets, in your
own handwriting, which will convince you that you are more blameable
than you say you are.” “Such an insinuation,” remarks Anquetil, “was
not calculated to set him at ease. Richelieu, as Madame de Motteville
tells us, said that ‘with two lines of a man’s writing, however innocent
that man might be, he might be brought to trial; because, by proper
management, whatever was wanted could be found in them.’ Accordingly,
when de Jars heard talk of writing, he gave himself up for lost, but he
soon armed himself with renovated courage.”
The insinuation that written evidence existed was a falsehood. Fresh arts
were therefore employed, to obtain a confession. They were as fruitless
as all the former had been. Sentence of death was then passed; and, this
having been done, final efforts were made to move him, first by a promise
of pardon, next by the menace of torture. He treated both with contempt.
He was at last led to the scaffold; he ascended it with calm courage;
and, after once more asserting his innocence, he laid his head upon the
block. While he was waiting for the blow, and all earthly hopes must have
been dead in his bosom, he was suddenly raised up, and told that his life
was spared. As he was about to descend from the scaffold, the infamous
Laffemas approached, and besought him, in return for the king’s mercy, to
disclose whatever he knew respecting the misdeeds of Chateauneuf. But de
Jars disdainfully replied, “It is in vain that you seek to take advantage
of my disturbed state of mind; since the fear of death failed to extort
from me any thing that could injure my friend, you may be certain that
all your labour will be thrown away.[6]”
It is said that the whole of this scene—a disgraceful scene to all the
actors but one—was got up by Laffemas under the direction of Richelieu.
Packed as the judges were, it was supposed that, if they thought death
were to ensue, even they would shrink from pronouncing the guilt of a man
against whom there was not a shadow of proof. The pardon was, therefore,
shown to them, and they were told that the mockery of an execution was
only meant to intimidate the prisoner into the desired confession. But
of what stuff must judges have been made in those days, when they could
consent thus to violate the dignity of justice, and the feelings of
humanity, in order to gratify the malice of a minister.
From Troyes, de Jars was sent back to the Bastile. He remained there till
the spring of 1638, when he was liberated on condition of his immediate
departure, to travel in Italy. From Guy Patin’s letters, we learn that
the chevalier was indebted for his release to the intercession of Charles
I. of England and Henrietta Maria. He did not return to France till after
the decease of his persecutor.
De Jars was engaged in the early part of the political contest, which led
to the ridiculous war of the Fronde; but he seems to have been rather a
peacemaker than a firebrand, for he endeavoured to arrange matters, by
bringing about a reconciliation between Mazarin, with whom he had become
acquainted at Rome, and Chateauneuf, the keeper of the seals, of whom he
was a constant friend. He at length withdrew from the court, passed his
latter years in happy retirement, and died in 1670.
Nearly at the same time that de Jars was set free, the gates of the
Bastile were opened to admit three citizens of Paris, who had been guilty
of a crime which could not be overlooked; they had dared to remonstrate,
perhaps somewhat too roughly, against being robbed of the means of
subsistence. “They went,” says Guy Patin, “to M. Cornuel, and in some
degree threatened him, on a report being spread, that the payment of
the annuities receivable at the Town Hall was about to be suspended, and
the money to be applied _in usus bellicos_. The names of these three
annuitants are Bourges, Chenu, and Celoron, and they are all three _boni
viri optimeque mihi noti_. God grant, I pray, that no misfortune may
happen to them.” Whether the kind prayer of Patin was heard, we are not
told.
That such things should occur in a country governed as France was, is
quite natural. Richelieu brooked not even the shadow of opposition; and,
Louis, submissive slave though he was to an imperious minister, had all
the brutal pride of an Oriental despot. In two instances (out of many
which might be quoted), the one not long before, and the other shortly
after, this period, the monarch, to whom parasites prostituted the title
of “the just,” did not scruple to treat with contumelious insolence the
parliament of Paris, a body of magistrates, eminent for their learning
and other qualities. On the first occasion, having taken offence at a
request which they made, he told them that, “in future, whenever he came
to them, he should expect to be received outside the door of their hall,
by four presidents on their knees, as the custom had formerly been.”
The second time, when, with respect to the duke de Valette’s trial, the
president Bellièvre, in decorous but dignified language, remonstrated
with Louis on his gross violation of justice and proper feeling, in
wishing the judges to sit in his own palace, while he was present to
overawe them, he furiously replied, that he detested all those who
opposed his trying a duke and peer wherever he pleased. They were, he
told them, ignorant beings, unfit for their office, and he did not know
whether he should not put others in their place. “I will be obeyed,”
said he; “and I will soon make you see plainly that all privileges are
founded only on a bad custom, and that I will not hear them talked
about any more.” But from this—which, however, can scarcely be called a
digression—let us return to his captives in the Bastile.
During a part of the time that de Jars was in the Bastile, there was
within its walls a prisoner equally as brave, and of as honourable a
character, as himself. This was Adrian de Montluc, count de Cramail, born
in 1568, a grandson of that intrepid but cruel Montluc whose commentaries
were called by Henry IV. the Soldier’s Bible. In the second of Regnier’s
satires, which is addressed to Cramail, the poet winds up an animated
panegyric on him, by declaring that he proves “virtue not to be dead in
all courtiers.” There was more truth in this than is always to be found
in the eulogies lavished by a poet. It appears, from various authorities,
that he shone in conversation, was well informed, and was an honourable,
benevolent and judicious man. As a military officer, he earned reputation
in various battles. His conduct at the combat of Veillane, in 1630,
where Montmorenci utterly defeated a force five times as numerous as his
own, called forth a complimentary letter from cardinal Richelieu. “Fewer
lines than you have received blows,” says his eminence, “will suffice
to testify my joy that the enemy has cut out more work for your tailor
than your surgeon. I pray to God that, after such rencounters, you may
always have more to spend for clothes than plaisters; and that, for the
advantage of the king’s service, and the glory of those who have acquired
so much on this occasion, others of the same kind may often occur; among
which there will, I hope, be some that will enable me to convince you
that I am, &c. &c.”
The manner in which Richelieu proved his friendship for Cramail was by
sending him to the Bastile. It has been stated that Cramail was put into
confinement shortly after the Day of the Dupes, and his attachment to
the prince of Condé was the cause of it. This, however, appears to be a
mistake. Cramail was undoubtedly serving under Louis XIII. in Lorrain, as
late as 1635, at the period when the French arms were under a temporary
eclipse; and we learn from Laporte, and other writers, that, believing
the king’s person to be in jeopardy, the count advised him to return to
Paris. For this advice, reasonable as it was, he was incarcerated by
Richelieu. His imprisonment did not terminate till after the death of
the cardinal. He did not long survive his persecutor; his health was
broken by captivity and harsh treatment, and he died in 1646. Cramail
was the author of three works—“La Comédie des Proverbes;” “Les Jeux de
l’Inconnu;” and “Les Pensées du Solitaire.”
Among the contemporaries of Bassompierre, de Jars, and Cramail, within
the walls of the Bastile, there was another of equal rank, but not of
an equally noble mind. His hands were stained with blood; his earliest
promotion was bought by perpetrating a cowardly murder. This personage
was Nicholas de l’Hospital, marquis of Vitry, to whom I have slightly
alluded in my notice of the marchioness d’Ancre. He was the degenerate
son of a warrior, who was incapable of a dishonourable action. Vitry, who
was born in 1611, succeeded his father as captain of the royal guards,
and ingratiated himself with Luynes, the minion of Louis XIII. In concert
with Luynes, he formed the plan of assassinating marshal d’Ancre, who was
obnoxious to the king. Eager to win the marshal’s staff which was held by
Concini, Vitry let slip no opportunity of irritating the king against the
intended victim, and of pressing for permission to assassinate him. The
monarch hesitated for a while, not from virtue but from fear; he ended
by granting his sanction, and Vitry lost not a moment in acting upon it.
With his brother du Hallier, and an associate named Perray, he waited for
Concini at the entrance of the Louvre, and there the three confederates
despatched him with pistols, which they had kept concealed beneath their
cloaks. When Louis was informed that the deed was done, he had the
ineffable baseness to look out at the palace window, and exclaim, “Many
thanks to you, Vitry! I am now really king!” It must, however, be owned
that the baseness of the monarch was kept in countenance by that of his
courtiers and flatterers, who lauded the assassin as profusely as though
he had been the saviour of the state.
For this disgraceful service, Vitry was rewarded by the great object
of his ambition, the rank of marshal. On hearing of this, the duke of
Bouillon indignantly declared that he blushed at being a French marshal,
now that the marshal’s staff was made the recompense of one who traded in
murder.
Though, of the two favourites of the queen mother, Vitry had slain the
husband with his own hand, and thus been the cause of the wife’s public
execution, and though at that time he had treated her with disgusting
insolence, yet when, two years afterwards, a feigned reconcilement took
place between Mary of Medicis and her son, she allowed Vitry to be
presented to her. On this occasion a scene of dissimulation occurred,
which has not often been paralleled. Vitry bent to kiss the hem of her
garment, but she graciously stretched out her hand to raise him, saying,
at the same time, “I have always praised your affectionate zeal in the
king’s service.” To which, with equal sincerity, he replied, “it was that
consideration alone which induced me to do all that the king desired;
without, however, my having had the slightest idea of offending your
majesty.” If we cannot praise the parts which these actors played, we
must at least admit that they played them skilfully.
The military career of Vitry did not begin till the breaking out of
the war between the protestants and catholics, in 1621. Though he was
deficient in principle, he was not so in courage; in the course of the
war he distinguished himself upon many occasions, particularly in the
isle of Rhé and at the blockade of Rochelle. He obtained the government
of Provence in 1631, and he held it for six years. At the expiration of
that period, he was arrested, and sent to the Bastile. His having caned
an archbishop, and misused his authority in various cases, were among
the causes of his imprisonment. Richelieu said of him that, “though his
courage and fidelity rendered him worthy to govern Provence, yet it was
necessary to deprive him of office, because, being of a haughty and
insolent disposition, he was not fit to rule a people so jealous as the
Provençals were of their franchises and privileges.”
Vitry spent six years in the Bastile, from which prison he was not
released till after the death of cardinal Richelieu. During the latter
part of his imprisonment he participated in intrigues, which would have
brought him to the block had they been discovered. In conjunction with
Bassompierre, Cramail, and others, he entered into the plot of which
the gallant count de Soissons was the head. The state prisoners in the
Bastile were, at that period, allowed so much freedom of intercourse,
both with their friends and among themselves, that they had plenty of
opportunity to conspire. It was arranged, between Vitry, Bassompierre,
and their associates, that, as soon as Soissons had gained a victory,
they should seize the Bastile and the Arsenal, and call the citizens
of Paris to arms. De Retz is of opinion that the success of their
scheme would have been certain; but the death of Soissons, who fell
in the battle of Marfée, at the moment of his victory, prevented the
conspirators from carrying their design into effect. Fortunately for
those who were concerned, their secret practices were never disclosed
while cardinal Richelieu was alive.
Vitry was created a duke in 1644, but he died in a few months after he
obtained this title. He left a son, possessed of talent far superior to
his own, and who in character more resembled his grandfather than his
father.
The count de la Châtre, in his Memoirs, relates a circumstance respecting
the liberation of Vitry and his fellow prisoners. The anecdote shows,
among other things, to what an extent Louis XIII. was infected with what
Byron calls the “good old gentlemanly vice” of avarice. “The cardinal
(Mazarin) and M. de Chavigny,” says la Châtre, “solicited the king for
the deliverance of the marshals Vitry and Bassompierre, and the count
de Cramail. The means which they employed on this occasion deserve to
be recorded, as being rather pleasant; for, finding that the king was
not very willing to comply, they attacked him on his weak side, and
represented to him that these three prisoners cost him an enormous sum
to keep them in the Bastile, and that, as they were no longer able to
raise cabals in the kingdom, they might as well be at home, where they
would cost him nothing. This indirect mode succeeded, this prince being
possessed by such extraordinary avarice, that whoever asked him for money
was an insufferable burthen to him; so far did he carry this, that, after
the return of Treville, Beaupuy, and others, whom the violence of the
late cardinal (Richelieu) had, when he was dying, forced him to abandon,
he sought occasion to give a rebuff to each of them, that he might
prevent them from hoping to be rewarded for what they had suffered for
him.” Here we see a king beginning his reign by prompting his servants to
commit murder, and ending it by displaying cold-blooded ingratitude to
those who had been faithful to him—fit end for such a beginning!
From a noble, who stained his hands with blood, to win the favour of a
king, we gladly turn to a plebeian, who risked his life, rather than
violate his fidelity to the neglected and ill-used consort of that
monarch. Peter de la Porte was this plebeian, who, though his trials were
not carried to such a dreadful extent as those of the chevalier de Jars,
has a legitimate claim, as far as regards probity and firmness of mind,
to be placed in the same class with that distinguished character. La
Porte was born in 1603, and entered into the service of Anne of Austria
at the age of eighteen, as one of her cloak-bearers. It being suspected
that he was trusted by the queen, he was deprived of his office in 1626,
when a desperate attempt was made by the minister to implicate her in the
conspiracy of La Chalais. He then entered into her body guards. In 1631,
he was, however, allowed to resume his former situation.
Ever studying to abase the queen, Richelieu believed that he had at last
found an opportunity to accomplish his purpose effectually. This was in
1637[7]. That the queen should privately keep up some correspondence
with the king of Spain and the cardinal infant, who were her brothers,
and also with the persons whom she valued in the courts of Madrid and
Brussels, was natural, more especially in her discomfortable situation,
slighted as she was by her husband, and thwarted and misrepresented by
the minister and the minister’s satellites. But Anne of Austria had a
sincere attachment to France, and there is no reason to believe that her
letters contained anything which could prejudice her adopted country.
Yet, it was not advisable that they should come into the hands of a man,
who boasted that with only two lines of an innocent person’s writing he
could ruin him—a boast which could be made by no one that was not dead
to honour and shame. It was necessary, therefore, to provide a safe
place, where the correspondence might be deposited. The queen’s favourite
convent of Val de Grace, of which she was the foundress, was the place
which she chose. There Anne had an elegant apartment, or oratory, in
which, after her devotions were over, she could sometimes, free from the
constraint and heartlessness of the court, enjoy a few hours of social
intercourse with the inmates of the convent. One of the nuns received
the letters from Spain and the Netherlands, and placed them in a closet,
whence they were taken by the queen, whose answers were forwarded in the
same manner.
Richelieu, who had spies in all quarters, discovered the secret of the
correspondence which was carried on through the Val de Grace. He lost not
a moment in filling the mind of the weak Louis with phantoms of danger,
which was to arise from the queen’s unauthorised communications with her
relatives. The queen was hurried off by her husband to Chantilly, where
she was confined to her own room, scantily attended, and was obliged to
submit to being interrogated by the chancellor. Such was the baseness
of the courtiers that, believing her to be lost, not one of them would
venture even to look up at her window. Her confidential servants were
shut up in various prisons. The chancellor himself visited Val de Grace
to make a rigorous search for papers; but he found nothing. That he
failed in his search is not marvellous; for he is believed to have
previously contrived to give the queen notice of the intended visit. All
the papers had consequently been removed, and placed under the care of
the marchioness of Sourdis.
Foiled in this attempt to reach the secret, Richelieu tried whether it
might not be wrung from the servants of the queen. La Porte, as being
supposed to possess a large share of her confidence, was of course most
open to suspicion and persecution. There had, besides, been found upon
him a letter from the queen to the duchess of Chevreuse, who was then in
exile. In the month of August, 1637, he was committed to the Bastile.
Here he was repeatedly and severely questioned, but nothing to criminate
his royal mistress could be drawn from him. It was in vain that the
cardinal himself employed threats and promises, to obtain the information
which he so much desired. The obstinate fidelity of La Porte was not to
be shaken, even when the commissary showed him a paper, which he said
contained an order for applying to him the torture, and took him to the
room that he might see the instruments. He was equally proof to the fear
of death.
In May, 1638, it being then certain that, after being childless for
two-and-twenty years, Anne of Austria was in a situation to give an
heir to the throne, the liberation of La Porte was granted to her. He
was, however, exiled to Saumur, where he resided till the decease of
Louis XIII. When Anne became regent, she recalled him, and gave him a
hundred thousand francs, that he might purchase the place of principal
valet-de-chambre to the king. This office he held for several years.
But La Porte was too honest to prosper in a corrupt court. Sincerely
attached to the queen-regent, he thought it his duty to apprise her of
the degrading reports which were spread, on the subject of her long
interviews with Mazarin, and by this candour he cooled her friendship
and gratitude, while, at the same time, he incurred the enmity of the
cardinal himself, by communicating to her a circumstance, relative to
the young king, which Mazarin was desirous of keeping concealed. In
revenge, Mazarin deprived him of his place, and forbad him to appear at
court. It was not till after the death of the cardinal that La Porte was
again admitted to the king’s presence, and from him he met with a kind
reception. He died in 1680.
Alchemy, the rock on which the peace and fortune of numbers have been
wrecked, was still more fatal to Noel Pigard Dubois, a restless and
certainly unprincipled adventurer, whom it deprived of liberty and life.
He was a native of Coulomiers, adopted his father’s profession, that of
a surgeon, then abandoned it, and voyaged to the Levant, where he spent
four years. During his stay in the East, he studied the occult sciences.
Returning to Paris, he passed there four years of an obscure and often
intemperate existence, associating chiefly with pretenders to alchemical
knowledge. Caprice, or a sudden fit of devotion, next induced him to
enter a Capuchin convent, but he appears to have speedily become tired
of restraint, and accordingly he scaled the walls and escaped. At the
expiration of three years he re-embraced a monastic life, took the vows,
and was ordained a priest, in which character he was known by the name of
Father Simon. The quicksilver of his disposition seemed at length to be
fixed, for he continued to wear the monkish habit during ten years; but
he verified the proverb that the cowl does not make the monk, his unquiet
spirit was again roused into action, and he fled into Germany. There
he became a convert to the doctrines of Luther, and once more devoted
himself to seeking for the philosopher’s stone.
Hoping, perhaps, that there would be more believers, or fewer rivals,
in his own country than in Germany, he retraced his steps to Paris.
Probably he was himself half dupe, half knave, almost believing that he
had really found the great secret, but resolved at all events, to turn
his supposed skill to his own advantage. His first step was to abjure
protestantism; his next was to marry under a fictitious name. Rumours
of his wonderful hermetic discoveries were speedily bruited about. They
procured him the acquaintance of an Abbé Blondeau, an evidently credulous
man, who introduced him to Father Joseph, the favourite and confident
of Richelieu, as a person who might be useful to the state. For the
services which Dubois was to render, it was stipulated that his past
misdeeds should be buried in oblivion. France was at that time groaning
under a heavy load of taxation, money was raised by the most abominable
exactions; and, consequently, it was but just that an individual who
promised to procure supplies more innocently than by grinding the face
of the people, should be forgiven for offences which, though deserving
of punishment, were somewhat less iniquitous than systematic tyranny and
extortion.
It affords a striking proof to what an extent the delusions of alchemy
prevailed in that age, that the strong-minded Richelieu instantly grasped
at the bubble which floated before him. Had only the weak Louis done so,
there would have been no cause for wonder. But the minister was full
as eager as his nominal sovereign. It was arranged that Dubois should
perform the “great work” in the presence of the king, the queen, and a
throng of illustrious personages. The Louvre was the place at which the
new and never-failing gold mine was to be opened.
When the important day arrived, Dubois adroitly acted in a manner which
was calculated to inspire confidence. He requested that some one might
be charged to keep an eye on his proceedings. One of his body guards,
named Saint Amour, was chosen by the king for this purpose. Musket balls,
given by a soldier, together with a grain of the powder of projection,
were placed in a crucible, the whole was covered with cinders, and the
furnace fire was soon raised to a proper pitch. The transmutation was now
declared by Dubois to be accomplished, and he requested that Louis would
himself blow off the ashes from the precious contents of the crucible.
Eager to see the first specimen of the boundless riches which were about
to flow in upon him, the king plied the bellows with such violence, that
the eyes of the queen and many of the courtiers were nearly blinded with
the dust. At last a lump of gold emerged to view, and his transports
were boundless. He hugged Dubois with childish rapture, ennobled him,
and appointed him president of the treasury, nominated Blondeau a privy
counsellor, promised a cardinal’s hat to Father Joseph, and gave eight
thousand livres to Saint Amour. The master of perennial treasures could
afford to be generous.
The experiment is said to have been repeated, and with the same success
as in the first instance. Dubois must at least have been a clever knave,
an adept in legerdemain, to have deluded so many strongly interested
spectators, and that, too, in spite of the precautions which he had
himself daringly recommended, for the prevention of fraud.
But there was a rock on which the luckless adventurer was doomed to
split. Humbler patrons than he had found might for a long while have been
satisfied with the scanty portion of gold contained in the bottom of a
crucible; but the desires of his powerful friends were of a more greedy
and impatient kind, not to be fed with distant hopes, but demanding large
and immediate fruition. Richelieu loudly called upon the alchemist to
operate on an extensive scale; and he proved that it was necessary to do
so, by requiring that Dubois should furnish weekly a sum which should not
be less than six hundred thousand livres, about 25,000_l._ The startled
Dubois requested time to make the requisite preparations, and time
was granted. In truth, as the powder of projection was believed to be
procurable only by a protracted and laborious process, it was impossible
not to admit his claim for delay. The marvel is, that he did not avail
himself of the respite, to get beyond the reach of danger. When the day
arrived which he had named, he was of course compelled to own that he was
not yet prepared.
Suspicion being excited, he was imprisoned at Vincennes, whence he was
transferred to the Bastile. Offended pride and vanity and disappointed
cupidity are often cruel passions. To punish Dubois for his sins
against them, the cardinal appointed a commission to try him; but being
averse from coming forward in the character of a dupe, he ordered him
to be arraigned on a charge of dealing in magic. As the wretched man
obstinately persisted in denying his guilt, he was put to the torture.
To gain a brief reprieve from his sufferings, he offered to realise the
golden dreams which he had excited. Faith was not quite extinct in his
patrons, and he was allowed to make another experiment. It is needless to
say that he failed. Being thus driven from his last hold, he avowed his
imposture, was sentenced to death, and terminated his existence on the
scaffold, on the 23d of June 1637.
The battle of Thionville, which was fought in 1639, and terminated in
the defeat of the French, and the death of Feuquieres, their general,
gave two prisoners to the Bastile; not foreign enemies, or rebellious
Frenchmen, but officers who had combated for their country—the count de
Grancé and the marquis de Praslin. At Thionville, the troops under their
orders refused to advance, and finally ran away. It appears, from the
testimony of Bassompierre, that no blame was attributable to the count
or the marquis; they were nevertheless immured in the Bastile, though
it does not seem easy to discern how the cowardice of soldiers is to
be cured by imprisoning their officers. It was, however, in a similar
kind of spirit, only somewhat more barbarous, that in England, more
than a century afterwards, admiral Byng was sacrificed (murdered is the
proper word); not, as Voltaire sarcastically observes, “to encourage the
others,” but to divert public indignation from its proper objects. The
system was carried to a horrible length in France, during the reign of
terror. Less sanguinary, in this instance, than his imitators, Richelieu
contented himself with inflicting a short deprivation of liberty. The two
captives were restored to favour, and Grancé rose, in the next reign, to
the rank of marshal.
The next two cases which are on record, afford a striking proof of
the contempt in which Richelieu held justice and the law of nations,
whenever they chanced to stand in the way of his political schemes, and
the gratification of his vindictive spirit. On the death of the gallant
warrior, Bernard of Saxe Weimar, which took place in the summer of 1639,
the possession of his admirably trained army became an object which all
the belligerent powers were eager to obtain. Among those who sought the
prize was the Prince Palatine, a son of the unfortunate Frederic, who
lost the crown of Bohemia and his own hereditary states. The prince was
passing through France, from England, to enter on the negociation, when
he was arrested, and sent to the Bastile, under pretence of his being an
unknown and suspected person. Richelieu, meanwhile, pushed on his treaty
with the officers of the deceased duke, and succeeded in purchasing their
services for France. When this was accomplished, it was discovered that
the arrest of the Prince Palatine was a mistake, and he was consequently
set free.
The second case occurred in the following year, 1640, and was a still
more flagrant violation of international laws, and more fraught with
circumstances of baseness and malignity. Louis XIII. had a sister,
Christina, beautiful, accomplished, and of winning manners; in a word,
as worthy of being beloved as he was the contrary. This princess was the
widow of the duke of Savoy, who left to her the regency of his states,
during the minority of Emanuel Philibert, his son. On the decease of
her husband, the ambition of his brothers prompted them to grasp at the
reins of government, and, to effect their purpose, they called in the
aid of Spain. The duchess was sorely pressed by her enemies. In this
strait, nature and policy combined to make her apply to Louis for aid.
The appeals to him, in her letters, are often affecting. Richelieu was
willing enough to send succours, but he was determined that they should
be bought at an extravagant rate. His object, in truth, was to place
the dominions of the minor, and even the minor himself, at the mercy of
France. He not only required that certain fortresses should be delivered
up to him, but also that the young duke should be put into the hands of
the French king, that is to say, into his own. To bring this about, he
descended to the most unworthy intrigues and double dealing; alternately
calumniating the duchess to her brothers-in-law, and them to her, in
order to render impossible an accommodation between them. Borne down by
necessity, the duchess at length consented to admit French garrisons
into some of her fortresses, but she resolutely persisted in refusing to
surrender her son.
The firmness of the duchess was sustained by count Philip d’Aglie, one
of her principal ministers, a man of discernment and talent, who never
slackened in his hostility to the scheme of Richelieu. He feared that
the visit of the young duke to France would resemble the descent into
Avernus—“_Sed revocare gradum, hoc opus, hic labor est._” The cardinal
had hoped that, in an interview which the duchess had with Louis at
Grenoble, she might be cajoled or terrified into compliance. But on that
occasion her own firmness was backed by the presence of count d’Aglie,
and the expectations of the ungodly churchman were in consequence
frustrated. So irritated was he by his disappointment, that he proposed,
in council, to arrest the count; but, powerful and feared as he was, he
could not prevail upon the members to assent to this measure. It was
therefore postponed to a better opportunity. In the meanwhile, calumny
was set at work to blacken the character of the devoted individual, that
when the happy time arrived for pouncing upon him, he might excite no
sympathy. That the slander would wound the duchess also was a matter
of little concern to the personage by whom it was propagated. It was
roundly asserted, apparently without the shadow of a reason for it, that
an illicit intercourse subsisted between the duchess and the minister,
the latter of whom the cardinal, with an affectation of virtuous anger,
was pleased to designate as “the wretch who was ruining the reputation
of Christina.” It was not till the following year that he could succeed
in wreaking his malice on the count. As soon as the French troops
had recovered Turin from the Spaniards, Richelieu ordered d’Aglie to
be seized; and, in spite of the remonstrances of the duchess against
this gross violation of her sovereignty, he was hurried to France, and
confined in the Bastile. The date of the count’s deliverance, I am unable
to ascertain, but it is probable that his imprisonment was not protracted
beyond the life of the cardinal.
It appears to have been about this time that there was published a
bitter satire upon the cardinal, for which an unlucky author, who had
no concern with it, was conveyed to the Bastile. The satire bore the
title of “The Milliad,” from its consisting of a thousand lines. One
edition is intituled, “The Present Government, or the Eulogy of the
Cardinal.” It was attributed to Charles de Beys, a now-forgotten author,
who wrote three plays and some verses, and was lauded as a rival of
Malherbe, by a few of his ill-judging contemporaries. It must have been
some mischievous joker that ascribed “The Milliad” to him, for Beys was
not the sort of man to meddle with political satire, especially on such
a dangerous subject; he was of an indolent, convivial disposition, and
spent the largest portion of his time in enjoying the pleasures of the
table. He was, nevertheless, pent up in the Bastile, as the libeller of
the all-potent cardinal. Fortunately for him, he was able to prove his
innocence, was set at liberty, and continued to follow his former course
of life, till his constitution gave way, and he died, in 1659, at the age
of forty.
In the winter of 1642, Richelieu, who had so largely fed the prisons and
scaffolds of France, terminated his career of ambition and blood. There
is extant a letter which, while the cardinal was on his death bed, was
written to him by one of his victims, named Dussault. The letter bears
date on the first of December, three days previous to the decease of the
minister, and it seems never to have reached him. What was the offence of
Dussault is not known; from a broad hint which is given in his epistle,
it appears that he suffered for having refused to execute some sanguinary
order given to him by Richelieu. When he penned the following lines, he
had been more than eleven years an inmate of the Bastile.
“My Lord,—There is a time when man ceases to be barbarous and unjust;
it is when his approaching dissolution compels him to descend into the
gloom of his conscience, and to deplore the cares, griefs, pains, and
misfortunes, which he has caused to his fellow creatures: allow me to
say fellow creatures, for you must now see that of which you would never
before allow yourself to be convinced, or persuade yourself to know, that
the sovereign and excellent celestial workman has formed us all on the
same model, and that he designed men to be distinguished from each other
by their virtues alone. Now, then, my lord, you are aware that for eleven
years you have subjected me to sufferings, and to enduring a thousand
deaths in the Bastile, where the most disloyal and wicked subject of
the king would be still worthy of pity and compassion. How much more
then ought they to be shown to me, whom you have doomed to rot there,
for having disobeyed your order, which, had I performed it, would have
condemned my soul to eternal torment, and made me pass into eternity with
blood-stained hands. Ah! if you could but hear the sobs, the lamentations
and groans, which you extort from me, you would quickly set me at
liberty. In the name of the eternal God, who will judge you as well as
me, I implore you, my lord, to take pity on my sufferings and bewailings;
and, if you wish that He should show mercy to you, order my chains to be
broken before your death hour comes, for when that comes, you will no
longer be at leisure to do me that justice which I must require only from
you, and you will persecute me even after you are no more, from which
God keep us, if you will permit yourself to be moved by the most humble
prayer of a man who has ever been a loyal subject to the king.”
This application was made in vain. If the cardinal ever saw it, which
is doubtful, it failed to penetrate his iron heart; he “died, and made
no sign,” in favour of the wretched supplicant. From Dussault’s evident
despair of ever being freed except by Richelieu, it may be conjectured
that, as an agent of the minister, he had given inexpiable offence to
some one on whom power was now likely to devolve; and this supposition
is rendered more probable, by his captivity having been subsequently
protracted to an extraordinary length. It was not till the 20th of June,
1692, that he was dismissed, after having languished in the Bastile for
sixty one years! At his advanced age,—for he must at least have been
between eighty and ninety—he could scarcely have deemed the boon of
liberty a blessing. In the common course of nature, all his kindred and
friends must have been gone, and as his habits were wholly unfitted for
the turmoil of the world, and he was, perhaps, exposed to want, it is
not unnatural to conclude that he may have been a solitary and starving
wanderer for the brief remainder of his existence. A situation more
forlorn than this it would be difficult to imagine.