Reign of Louis XIV.—Regency of Anne of Austria—Inauspicious
circumstances under which she assumed the regency—George
de Casselny—The count de Montresor—The marquis de
Fontrailles—Marshal de Rantzau—The count de Rieux—Bernard
Guyard—Broussel, governor of the Bastile—The duchess of
Montpensier orders the cannon of the Bastile to be fired on
the king’s army—Conclusion of the war of the Fronde—Surrender
of the Bastile—Despotism of Louis XIV.—Slavishness of the
nobles—John Herauld Gourville—The count de Guiche—Nicholas
Fouquet—Paul Pellisson-Fontainier—Charles St. Evremond—Simon
Morin—The Marquis de Vardes—Count Bussy Rabutin—Saci le
Maistre—The duke of Lauzun—Marquis of Cavoie—The chevalier
de Rohan—A nameless prisoner—Charles D’Assoucy—Miscellaneous
prisoners.
The regency of Anne of Austria commenced under auspices which were not
of the most favourable kind. For a long series of years she had been
persecuted by a tyrant minister, and discredited and humiliated, in every
possible manner, by an unfeeling husband. It would be a tedious task
to enumerate all the slights and injuries to which she was exposed; a
specimen may suffice. To avoid the disgrace of being sent back to Spain,
she had been compelled to confess before the Council a fault which she
everywhere else disavowed, and of which it is improbable that she was
guilty; on her bringing Louis XIV. into the world, she had suffered a
stinging insult from her consort, who had pertinaciously refused to give
her the embrace which was customary on such occasions—an insult which
affected her so deeply that her life was endangered; when he was on the
brink of the grave, and she earnestly sought to remove his prejudices
against her, he coldly replied to Chavigni, who was pleading her cause,
“In my situation I must forgive, but I am not obliged to believe her;”
and, in settling the regency, he would fain have excluded from it the
object of his hatred, but, that being impracticable, he took care to
shackle her authority in such a way as would have left her scarcely more
than the mere title of regent. Her having been childless for twenty-two
years, and been treated in child-bed with such marked aversion by him,
were also circumstances which were well calculated to throw dangerous
doubts on the legitimacy of the infant sovereign. Yet Anne of Austria
triumphed over all this, procured the setting aside of her deceased
husband’s arrangements, obtained unlimited power, and for five years
governed France without opposition, and with a considerable enhancement
of its military fame. It was not till the troubles of the Fronde broke
out that she encountered unpopularity and resistance.
During the peaceable period of the queen mother’s government, the
Bastile seems to have had but few inmates, at least few whom history has
deemed worthy of being recorded; and during the war of the Fronde, and
even before, the castle of Vincennes was the prison which received the
captives of the highest class, such as the duke of Beaufort, the prince
of Condé, and cardinal de Retz.
The first prisoner in the Bastile, of whom any notice occurs during
the regency, was a Spanish agent, named George de Casselny. Philip
IV. of Spain had recently lost his consort Elizabeth, and it appears
that Casselny was commissioned to make overtures for the monarch’s
marriage with that singular female the duchess of Montpensier, a woman
who had more manly qualities than her vacillating father, the duke of
Orleans. “There was a certain Spaniard, named George de Casselny (says
the duchess, in her memoirs), who had been made prisoner in Catalonia,
and was on his parole, he went to M. de Surgis, at Orleans, to request
that he would procure for him an interview with Monsieur (the duke of
Orleans), who put him off till he could see him at Paris. In consequence
of this delay, the Spaniard’s intention got wind, and he was put into
the Bastile, and the cardinal (Mazarin), told Monsieur that it was a man
who wanted to divert him from the service of the king by this proposal
of marriage; which Monsieur believed and still believes. Many persons,
however, affirm, that it was not a pretext, and that this gentleman had
orders to make solid and sincere propositions for the marriage of his
king with me, which he had thought it proper to communicate to Monsieur,
before he made them known to the court. Nevertheless, this poor creature
was kept a prisoner for several years, and when he was set at liberty, he
was sent out of the kingdom under a guard.”
The next prisoner was one who, for a long period, was closely connected
with Monsieur, the father of the duchess. Claude de Bourdeille, count de
Montresor, was born about 1608, and was a grand-nephew of that pleasant
but unscrupulous writer Brantome, who bequeathed to him his mansion of
Richemont. Montresor was early admitted into the train of the duke of
Orleans, and at length became his confidential friend, whom he consulted
on all occasions. He availed himself of his influence to keep at a
distance from the duke all the friends of Richelieu, to incite him still
more against that minister, and to link him in confederacy with the count
of Soissons. In 1636, he went much further. In conjunction with Saint
Ibal and others, he formed a plan for assassinating the cardinal, and to
this plan the duke and the count gave their assent. The murder was to
be perpetrated as the minister was leaving the council chamber; Saint
Ibal was behind him, ready to strike the blow, and waited only for an
affirmative sign from the duke; but at this critical moment, either the
courage of Orleans gave way, or his conscience smote him, for he turned
away his head, and hurried from the spot. The cardinal consequently
escaped.
While Montresor was subsequently busy in Guyenne, labouring to induce the
duke of Epernon and his son to take up arms for Monsieur, he was suddenly
abandoned by his employer, who made his own peace with Richelieu.
Montresor now retired to his estate, where, for more than five years,
he lived in the utmost privacy. He had, however, secret interviews with
Monsieur, and, at his solicitation, he engaged in the conspiracy of Cinq
Mars. Again he was deserted by him, and more disgracefully than in the
first instance; for the dishonourable prince did not scruple to disavow
the proceedings of his agent, and to aver that Cinq Mars and Montresor
were the persons who had misled him. Montresor would have ascended the
scaffold with Cinq Mars and de Thou, had he not prudently taken refuge in
England, whence he did not return till the cardinal was no more.
When the government devolved on Anne of Austria, the enemies of Richelieu
had reason to hope that they would become the dominant party. The
haughty bearing which this hope led them to assume, obtained for them
the appellation of “The Cabal of the Importants.” They soon, however,
contrived to disgust the queen-regent; and before twelve months had
elapsed, Montresor, Chateauneuf, the duchess of Chevreuse, and several
others of the faction, were ordered to quit the court. Montresor retired
for a while to Holland. Late in 1645, he visited Paris, and, soon after,
two letters to him, from the exiled duchess de Chevreuse, having been
intercepted, Mazarin sent him to the Bastile. The prisoner was removed
to Vincennes, where he was rigorously treated for fourteen months. At
length, moved by the solicitations of Montresor’s relatives, the cardinal
set him at liberty, and even offered him his friendship. Montresor,
however, chose rather to league himself with Mazarin’s bitterest foe,
the celebrated Coadjutor, afterwards the cardinal de Retz, and he took
an active part in the war of the Fronde. In 1653 he was reconciled to
the court, and from that time till his decease, which occurred in 1663,
he led a peaceable life. Though ambition and a propensity to political
intrigue could lead him to dip his hands in blood, Montresor is said to
have had many social qualities, to have been generous, sincere, and a
firm and ardent friend. His “Memoirs” form a valuable contribution to the
history of his times.
Among the agents of the duke of Orleans was Louis d’Astarac, marquis
of Fontrailles, a descendant from an ancient Armagnac family. When
the conspiracy of Cinq Mars was formed, Fontrailles was dispatched to
Spain, to negociate with the Spanish cabinet a treaty, for assistance
to the conspirators. By this treaty, Spain engaged to furnish the duke
of Orleans with 12,000 infantry, 5,000 cavalry, 400,000 crowns to
raise levies in France; and a monthly allowance of 12,000 crowns for
his private expenses. But, before any step could be taken to carry the
treaty into effect, the conspiracy was rendered abortive. Fontrailles,
against whom an order of arrest had been issued, was fortunate enough to
escape to England. The death of the cardinal and of his vassal sovereign,
which took place soon after, enabled the proscribed fugitive to return
to France. He became one of the Cabal of the Importants, and shared in
the downfall of that faction. In the summer of 1647, he was sent to
the Bastile; for what fault he was imprisoned I know not, or when he
was released. Guy Patin intimates that the charge was not of a capital
nature. Fontrailles died in 1677.
The next who passes before us is a brave and injured soldier. Count
Josias de Rantzau was descended from an ancient family of Holstein,
thirty-two members of which are said to have greatly distinguished
themselves. The fidelity of this family to its sovereigns was so
remarkable, that the expression “As faithful as a Rantzau to his king,”
passed into a proverb. Josias was born in 1610, and seems first to have
borne arms in the Swedish service; he commanded a body of Swedes at
the siege of Andernach, headed the Swedish left wing at the combat of
Pakenau, and was present at the siege of Brisac. In 1635, he accompanied
the celebrated Oxenstiern into France, where Louis XIII. appointed him
a major-general, and colonel of two regiments. The subsequent career of
Rantzau was often successful, and was never stained with disgrace. He
effectually covered the retreat of the French after the raising of the
siege of Dole, victoriously defended St. Jean de Lône against Galas, bore
a conspicuous part in the subsequent campaigns in Flanders and Germany,
and was twice maimed at the siege of Arras, and displayed signal valour
at the siege of Aire. Fortune deserted him at the combat of Honnecourt
and the battle of Dutlingen, in 1642 and 1643, and in both instances he
was taken prisoner. She, however, soon became favourable to him. Between
1645 and 1649, he made himself master of Gravelines, Dixmude, Lens, and
all the maritime towns of Flanders. To reward his services he received
the government of Gravelines and Dunkirk, and was raised to the rank of
marshal. Mazarin, nevertheless, suspected him of being connected with his
enemies, and in February, 1649, the marshal was conveyed to the Bastile,
where he remained for eleven months. His innocence being at length
ascertained, he was set at liberty; but a dropsy, which he had contracted
in his confinement, proved fatal to him in the course of a few months.
He died in September 1650. Rantzau was possessed of brilliant valour,
much talent and military skill, and spoke all the principal languages of
Europe; his only defect was an inordinate love of wine. Like our Nelson,
but even in a greater degree, his person had been severely mutilated; he
had lost an ear, an eye, a leg, and an arm. To this fact the following
epitaph alludes:
“But half of great Rantzau this tomb contains,
The other half in battle fields remains;
His limbs and fame he widely spread around,
And still, though mangled, conqueror was he found:
His blood a hundred victories did acquire,
And nothing but his heart by Mars was left entire!”
A brawl brought to the Bastile, in 1652, the count de Rieux, a son of the
duke of Elbœuf. A dispute with the prince of Tarentum, as to precedence,
gave rise to it. The prince of Condé, the great Condé, was the other
actor. “The prince of Condé,” says the duchess of Montpensier, “took the
part of the prince of Tarentum, who is nearly related to him, against the
count de Rieux, and one day he got heated in the dispute; he imagined
that the count de Rieux had pushed him, which obliged him to return it by
a box on the ear; the count de Rieux then gave him a blow. The prince,
who had no sword, made a dart at that of the baron de Migenne, who was
present. M. de Rohan, who was also there, put himself between them, and
got out the count de Rieux, whom his royal highness (the duke of Orleans)
sent to the Bastile, for having dared to fail in respect. Many persons
say, that the prince struck first; if he did so, he must have taken some
gesture of the count for an insult, for though he is very passionate,
he is not so much so as to do an action of this kind. I saw him after
dinner, and he said, ‘You see a man who has been beaten for the first
time in his life.’ The count de Rieux remained in the Bastile till the
arrival of M. de Lorraine, who set him free, and blamed him very much.”
It must have been a ludicrous sight, to see a prince of the blood, the
victor of Rocroi, Fribourg, Nordlingen, and Lens, at fisticuffs amidst a
ring of courtiers, in the palace of the duke of Orleans! “This was not
the way,” remarks Voltaire, “to regain the hearts of the Parisians.”
The leaders of the Frondeur faction were by no means tolerant of censure,
even when it came from clerical lips. Bernard Guyard, a dominican, had
reason to repent his having too honestly indulged in it. Guyard, who
was born in 1601, at Craon, in Anjou, took the religious habit, and was
admitted, in 1645, a doctor of the Sorbonne, and became popular for
his pulpit eloquence, so much so that Anne of Austria appointed him
her preacher, and the duchess of Orleans chose him as her confessor.
While the war of the Fronde was being carried on—a war of which it has
wittily and truly been said, that it ought to be recorded in burlesque
verse—Guyard ventured to reprobate, in the pulpit, the conduct of those
ambitious and unprincipled personages by whom its flames had been lighted
up. The punishment of his offence followed close upon the commission of
it. As he was leaving the church, he was arrested, and conveyed to the
Bastile, where he continued for some months. He died in 1674, at which
period he was theological professor in the convent of St. James. All
his works have long since ceased to attract notice, with the exception,
perhaps, of “The Fatality of St. Cloud,” which is a paradoxical attempt
to prove that not Clement, nor a Dominican, but a leaguer, disguised as a
monk, was the murderer of Henry III.
During the war of the Fronde, the Bastile, for a short time, and for
the last, was again a fortress as well as a prison; but in the latter
character its services were only once required. When, in 1649, the
queen-regent suddenly quitted Paris with the young king, she imprudently
neglected to throw into the Bastile a garrison. It was guarded by only
twenty-two soldiers, who had neither ammunition nor provisions. Du
Tremblai, the governor, was therefore obliged to yield. The custody of
the fortress was committed to Peter Broussel, for whose deliverance
the Parisians had risen in arms on the day of the Barricades, and from
whom he had received the flattering appellations of the father and
the protector of the people. As Broussel was an aged man, his son, La
Louvière, was joined with him in the government. In 1652, Broussel was
appointed provost of the merchants, and the keeping of the Bastile
remained with La Louvière alone.
The two pieces of cannon which, in 1649, the Parisians fired at the
Bastile to hasten its submission, would have been the only artillery
employed, either against it or by it, had not the daring of a woman
brought its guns into action. The duchess of Montpensier, who was called
Mademoiselle, had recently distinguished herself by her spirited conduct
at Orleans. Being sent by her father to that city, to encourage his
partisans, she was at first refused admittance, but she forced her way
in, through a hole in a gate, roused the people in her favour, and
succeeded in preventing the king’s troops from occupying that important
post. She was now at Paris, and soon found a fresh opportunity to display
her courage and presence of mind. On the second of July, 1652, the
sanguinary battle of the suburb of St. Anthony was raging; the army of
the prince of Condé, overborne by the far superior numbers which Turenne
led against him, could barely hold its ground; the prince had in vain
entreated for its admission at various gates; the enemy, reinforced,
was preparing for a new attack on its front and flanks; and, pent in
between the king’s troops and the city walls, its destruction seemed
to be inevitable. At this perilous moment it was saved by the duchess
of Montpensier. First from her father, and next from the municipal
authorities sitting at the Town Hall, she in a manner extorted an order
for opening the gate of St. Anthony to the nearly overwhelmed battalions
of Condé. She then ascended to the summit of the Bastile, and directed
the cannon to be charged, removed from the city side, and pointed to the
opposite quarter. They were opened upon the royalists, who pressed on the
retreating Condéans, and their commanding fire compelled the pursuers to
fall back beyond their range. Mademoiselle was at that time cherishing
a hope that she should be united to her cousin the king, or at least to
some crowned head; and it was with allusion to this circumstance that,
when he heard she had ordered the firing, Mazarin coolly remarked, “Those
cannon shots have killed her husband.”
Four months did not pass away before, tired of wasting their lives and
properties in a contest which could benefit only the privileged classes,
the Parisians invited the king to return to his capital. The monarch
entered it on the 21st of October, 1652. The faction of the Fronde was
annihilated, and its leaders were scattered in all directions; their
vanity, selfishness, and utter want of principle and patriotism,
deserved such a fate. Had they been animated by noble motives, had they
possessed even a moderate share of wisdom and virtue, they might have
laid the groundwork of a stable and beneficent government, and thereby
saved their country from innumerable immediate and remote evils. But
“The sensual and the base rebel in vain,
Slaves by their own compulsion!”
As soon as the king had entered Paris, the Bastile was summoned, and La
Louvière was informed that, if he were rash enough to stand a siege, the
gibbet would be his portion. Too prudent to run so useless and formidable
a risk, he readily gave up his charge. From the moment when Mademoiselle
directed its fire upon the king’s troops, a hundred and thirty-seven
years elapsed before the Bastile again heard the roar of artillery fired
in anger.
One of the first acts of Louis XIV. was to hold a bed of justice, in
which he ordered the registration of an edict to abridge the power of
the parliament. By this edict, the parliament was strictly prohibited
from deliberating on state and financial affairs, and instituting any
proceedings whatever against the ministers whom he might be pleased
to employ. Louis was then only a boy of fourteen, and this act was of
course the work of Mazarin; but, young as he was, the monarch was already
thoroughly imbued with the principles on which it was framed. Three
years afterwards he gave a striking proof of this. The parliament having
ventured to manifest a faint opposition to some of his many oppressive
fiscal edicts, he took a step which showed how deeply despotism was
ingrained into his character. He was engaged in the chase, at Vincennes,
when information was brought to him that his will was disputed. Hurrying
back to Paris, he entered the parliament chamber, the sanctuary of
justice, booted, spurred, whip in hand, and thus addressed the assembly
of venerable magistrates: “Sirs, everybody knows the calamities which
the meetings of the parliament have produced. I will henceforth prevent
those meetings. I order you, therefore, to desist from those which you
have begun, with respect to the edicts which, in my late bed of justice,
I directed to be registered. You, Mr. First President, I forbid to allow
of these assemblies; and I forbid every one of you to demand them.”
Having thus spoken he departed, leaving his hearers in astonishment. He
was then a beardless youth, who had not reached his seventeenth year. The
members of the parliament might well have called to mind the words of
Scripture—“If these things are done in the green tree, what will be done
in a dry?” Six years afterwards Mazarin died, and thenceforth Louis had
no prime minister; he became, in every sense of the word, the head of the
government, the autocrat of France.
A new era, that of abject submission to the monarch, and almost
idolatrous worship of his person and greatness, commenced when the war
of the Fronde was over. The slaves had had their Saturnalia, and they
sank back—we may almost say rushed back—into a slavery more degrading
than that from which they had for a moment emerged. There were no longer
any Epernons, ruling their provinces as they pleased, and bearding the
sovereign; the feudal pride was extinct. This would have been a happy
circumstance for France, had the nobles, in losing their pride, preserved
their dignity. But from one extreme they passed to the other. The power
which they had lost, which was, in fact, but the power of doing mischief,
they might have replaced by a power more honourable and durable, that
which would have arisen from promoting the welfare and happiness of those
whom they called their vassals. But their extensive domains were looked
on only as mines, from which the last grain of gold was to be extracted,
that they might squander it in the capital. It seemed as though it were
impossible for them to exist out of the king’s presence; and when they
were excluded from it, they lamented and whined in a manner which excites
at once wonder and contempt. The consequences of this general prostration
were slowly, but surely and fatally, unfolded.
Let us revert to the captives of the Bastile. The destiny of John Herauld
Gourville, who was born in 1625, was a singular one; he not only raised
himself from a humble state to be the companion and friend of princes,
but was appointed to be one of the representatives of his sovereign
while in exile, and while a Parisian court of justice was hanging him in
effigy as a convicted runaway peculator. After having received a scanty
education, he was placed in an attorney’s office by his widowed mother.
Having by his cleverness fortunately attracted the notice of the duke
de la Rochefaucault, the author of the “Maxims,” that nobleman made
him his secretary. During the war of the Fronde, Gourville displayed
such talent and activity, that he acquired the warm friendship of his
employer and the prince of Condé. His gratitude engaged him in many
desperate adventures for their service, and the mode in which he raised
the supplies for them was sometimes not much unlike that of a bandit; the
moral code of the Frondeurs was not remarkable for its strictness. When
Rochefaucault became weary of the inglorious contest in which he was an
actor, Gourville negotiated the duke’s peace with the court; and in doing
this he manifested so much ability and prudence, that Mazarin despatched
him to Bordeaux, to treat with the prince of Conti. In this mission he
was successful; and he was rewarded by being appointed commissary-general
of the French army in Catalonia. At the close of the campaign of 1655, he
returned to Paris, and Mazarin, who suspected that he came to intrigue
for the prince of Conti, shut him up in the Bastile. In his Memoirs,
Gourville candidly confesses that his six months’ imprisonment was
insufferably wearisome, and that he could think of little else than how
he should put an end to it. He was maturing a plan of escape, in concert
with six other prisoners, when the cardinal relented, took him again into
favour, and even prevailed on Fouquet to give him the lucrative place of
receiver-general of the province of Guienne. In this office Gourville
amassed an immense fortune, which he increased by his extraordinary
good luck at play. When Fouquet fell, the whole of his subalterns were
involved in his fall; but, far from deserting him in his calamity,
Gourville nobly furnished 100,000 livres to assist in gaining over some
of his enemies, and a still larger sum for the establishment of his
son, the count de Vaux. He soon, however, became himself an object of
impeachment, on a charge of peculation, and he deemed it prudent to quit
France. At that moment there was certainly no chance of his obtaining
a fair trial. After having visited England and Holland, he settled at
Brussels. Though he was compelled to live in a foreign country, Gourville
still preserved a strong affection for his native land, and he proved it,
by influencing the princes of Brunswick and Hanover in favour of France.
For this patriotic conduct Louis XIV. nominated him his plenipotentiary
at the court of Brunswick; while at the same moment his enemies at Paris
obtained against him a degrading sentence from his judges! That not a
love of justice, but a desire to extort money from him, gave rise to his
being prosecuted, is made evident by Colbert having offered a pardon,
at the price of 800,000 livres, which he afterwards reduced to 600,000.
Gourville, however, either could not or would not purchase this costly
commodity. He was subsequently employed as a diplomatist in Spain, and
again in Germany; and at length in 1681, a free pardon was granted to
him. From that time he led a tranquil life in the French capital, in
habits of friendship with, and much beloved by, the most eminent men of
genius and rank. At one period there was an intention of making him the
successor of Colbert, as comptroller-general of the finances, an office
for which he was well qualified; but he had ceased to be ambitious of
dangerous honours, and was happy to avoid them. The length of time which
his servants continued in his service, and the cordial manner in which he
speaks of them, afford strong proofs of his kind-heartedness: never did a
selfish or harsh master long retain a domestic. Haughtiness to inferiors
is the miserable make-shift of a man who has no true dignity to support
his pretensions. Gourville mentions four persons who had been with him
for fifteen, seventeen, twenty-five, and thirty-two years. He died in
1703, at the age of seventy-eight. His Memoirs, which he composed in four
months, to amuse himself while he was confined by a disease in the leg,
are deservedly praised by Madame de Sévigné and Voltaire.
The next who appears on the scene was a noble, whom Madame de Sévigné
characterizes as “a hero of romance, who does not resemble the rest of
mankind.” This is somewhat exaggerated, but not wholly untrue. Armand
de Grammont, Count de Guiche, who was born in 1638, was a proficient in
all manly exercises, splendid in dress and equipage, spirited, witty,
well educated, handsome in person, and cultivated in mind. His valour
was early proved, at the sieges of Landrecy, Valenciennes, and Dunkirk.
In a voluptuous court, and with his attractive qualities, it is not
wonderful that Guiche was engaged in amorous intrigues. His desire of
conquest aimed so high—Henrietta Stuart, Duchess of Orleans, was its
great object—that Louis XIV. thrice exiled him; and it was probably on
this account that he became an inmate of the Bastile, from which prison
he was released in the autumn of 1660. Having a third time offended, he
was sent to Poland, where he distinguished himself in the war against
the Turks. At the end of two years, he was recalled; but it was not long
before he again fell into disgrace, by participating in the despicable
conduct of the Marquis de Vardes, which will be described in the sketch
of that courtier’s career. Guiche was banished to Holland. Too active
to remain unemployed, he served in the campaign against the Bishop of
Munster, and on board the Dutch squadron, in the sea-fight with the
English, off the Texel. He was allowed to return to France in 1669,
but was not re-admitted at court till two years afterwards. It was he
who, in 1672, led the way at the celebrated passage of the Rhine, near
Tollhuis; an exploit which is extravagantly lauded by Boileau. He died
at Creutznach, in Germany, in 1673; excessive chagrin, occasioned by
Montecuculi having defeated him, was the cause of his death. Guiche is
the author of a volume of Memoirs concerning the United Provinces.
The first important act of Louis XIV., after his taking the
administration of public affairs into his own hands, was the disgracing
and ruining Fouquet, the superintendant of the finances. Nicholas
Fouquet, a son of Viscount de Vaux, was born at Paris, in 1615, and
was educated for the legal profession. At twenty he was master of
requests, and at thirty-five he filled the very considerable office of
attorney-general to the parliament of Paris. It would have been happy
for him had he steadily pursued his career in the magistracy, instead
of deviating into a path that was beset with dangers. During the
troubles of the Fronde he was unalterably faithful to the queen-mother,
and in gratitude for this she raised him, in 1652, to the post of
superintendant. It was a fatal boon.
By all who were connected with it, the French treasury seems, in those
days, to have been considered as a mine which they were privileged
to work for their own benefit. Mazarin had recently been a wholesale
plunderer of it; and there can be little doubt that Fouquet was a
peculator to a vast extent. Yet the superintendant had one merit, which
was wanting in other depredators—though he took, he likewise gave; for
at one period, when money ran short, he mortgaged his property and his
wife’s, and borrowed on his own bills, to supply the necessities of the
state.
The fatal failing of Fouquet was his magnificent extravagance. He had a
taste for splendour and lavish expenditure, which might have qualified
him for an oriental sovereign. On his estate at Vaux he built a mansion,
or rather a palace, which threw into the shade the country residences
of the French monarch—for Versailles was not then in existence. Whole
hamlets were levelled to the ground to afford space for its gardens. The
building was sumptuously decorated, and in every part of it was painted
his device, a squirrel, with the ambitious motto “_Quo non ascendam?_”
Whither shall I not rise? It is a curious circumstance, that the squirrel
was represented as being pursued by a snake, which was the arms of
Colbert, the bitter enemy of Fouquet. The edifice cost eighteen millions
of livres; a sum equivalent to three times as much at the present day.
The largesses of the superintendant, which in many cases deserve the name
of bribes, were immense. Great numbers of the courtiers did not blush
to become his pensioners. On extraordinary occasions they also received
presents from him. Each of the nobles, who was invited with Louis XIV. to
the grand entertainment at Vaux, found in his bed-chamber a purse filled
with gold; which, says a sarcastic writer, “the nobles did not forget to
take away.” There was another abundant source of expense, which arose
out of his licentious passions; he lavished immense sums in purchasing
the venal charms of the French ladies of distinction, and was eminently
successful in finding sellers. “There were few at court,” says Madame de
Motteville, “who did not sacrifice to the golden calf.” Policy, no doubt,
had a share in prompting his liberality to the courtiers; and, perhaps,
it sometimes was mingled with lust and vanity in his gifts to frail
females of rank; but we may attribute to a purer motive the kindness and
courtesy which he manifested to persons of talent. The result was quite
natural; the great deserted him in his hour of danger and disgrace, the
people of talent clung with more tenacity than ever to their fallen
benefactor and friend.
Mazarin, when on his death-bed, is said to have awakened the fears and
suspicions of Louis against Fouquet; and, to deepen the impression which
he had made, he left behind him two deadly foes of the superintendant.
These foes were Le Tellier and Colbert, of whom the latter was the most
inveterate and the most dangerous. When Louis formed the resolution of
being his own prime minister, Fouquet, who evidently wished to succeed to
the power of Richelieu and Mazarin, essayed to turn the monarch from his
purpose, by daily heaping on him a mass of dry, intricate, and erroneous
financial statements. He failed in his attempt. These papers the king
every evening examined, with the secret assistance of Colbert, whose
acuteness and practised skill instantly unravelled their artful tangles,
and exposed their errors.
It was not alone the squandering of the royal treasure that irritated
Louis; though that would have been a sufficiently exciting cause to a
man whose own lavish habits required large supplies. He asserted, and
might perhaps believe, that the offender aspired to sovereignty. In a
long conversation with the president Lamoignon, he said, “Fouquet wished
to make himself duke of Britanny, and king of the neighbouring isles;
he won over every body by his profusion: there was not a single soul in
whom I could put confidence.” So much was he impressed with this idea,
that he repeated it over and over to the president. For this absurd fear
there was no other ground than that the superintendant had purchased and
fortified Belleisle; a measure which was prompted by patriotic motives,
it being his design to make that island an emporium of commerce. There is
said to have been another and a not less powerful cause for the monarch’s
hatred of Fouquet; the superintendant had been imprudent enough to
attempt to include La Vallière in the long catalogue of his mistresses,
and this was an offence not to be pardoned by the proudest and vainest of
kings.
As soon as the ruin of Fouquet was determined upon, the most profound
dissimulation was used by the king and Colbert, to prevent him from
suspecting their purpose. All his measures seemed to give perfect
satisfaction; unlimited trust was apparently placed in him; and hints
were thrown out, that the coveted post of prime minister was within
his reach. The hints had a further purpose than that of blinding him
to the peril in which he stood; they were meant to rob him of a shield
against injustice. By virtue of his office, as attorney-general to the
parliament, he had the privilege of being tried only by the assembled
chambers; but, as it was intended that his trial should take place before
a packed tribunal, it was necessary to divest him of the privilege. For
this reason it was insinuated, that the post of attorney-general stood in
the way of his being raised to the premiership, and also of his obtaining
the blue riband. Fouquet fell into the snare, and sold his office for
1,400,000 livres, which sum, with a blind generosity, he instantly lent
to the Exchequer. To confirm Fouquet’s delusion, Louis graced with his
presence a gorgeous festival which was held at Vaux. But the splendour
of the place, the excessive magnificence of the entertainment, and the
presumptuousness of the superintendant’s motto, roused his anger to such
a pitch, that, had not the queen-mother remonstrated, he would have
committed the unkingly act of arresting Fouquet on the spot.
When the courage inspired by passion had evaporated, Louis delayed yet
awhile to effect his purpose, till he had guarded in all possible ways
against the danger which was to be apprehended from the formidable
conspirator. Had Fouquet been capable of calling up legions from the
earth by the stamp of his foot, more precautions could not have been
taken. The blow was struck at last. Louis was at Nantes, to which city
he had removed under the idea that it would be easier to accomplish the
arrest there than at Paris. Thither he was followed by Fouquet. Some of
the superintendant’s friends warned him of the peril which hung over him,
but he gave no credence to their tidings. On the 5th of September, 1661,
as he was leaving the council, he was arrested, and was conveyed without
delay to the castle of Angers. Messengers were immediately despatched
to Paris, to seize his papers, and to order the arrest of many of his
partisans.
Fouquet was bandied about from prison to prison, from Angers to Amboise,
Moret, and Vincennes, till he was finally lodged in the Bastile. He
bore his misfortune with an unshaken mind. His enemies, meanwhile,
were proceeding with the most malignant activity, and with a perfect
contempt of justice and decorum. It was the common talk of Paris, that
Colbert would be satisfied with nothing less than the execution of the
superintendant. He was even plainly charged by Fouquet with having
fraudulently made in his papers a multitude of alterations. Le Tellier,
though less openly violent than Colbert, was equally hostile. For the
trial of the prisoner twenty-two commissioners were picked out from
the French parliaments; nearly all—if not all—of them were notoriously
inimical to him, or connected with persons who were known to be so, and
at their head was the chancellor Seguier, one of his most deadly enemies.
One benefit the fallen minister derived from this injustice, and from
the protracted trial which ensued; public opinion, which at first had
been adverse to him, gradually grew more and more favourable. Fouquet the
peculator, brought to judgment before an honest and impartial tribunal,
would have excited no sympathy; Fouquet, persecuted by his rivals for
power, and destined to be legally assassinated, could not fail to excite
a warm interest in the mind of every one who was not destitute of
honourable feelings.
Those who were in habits of intimacy with Fouquet needed no other
stimulus than the benefits or the winning courtesies, which they had
experienced from him. He had on his side all who loved or practised
literature, all who could be captivated by prepossessing manners and
boundless generosity. “Never,” says Voltaire, “did a placeman have
more personal friends, never was a persecuted man better served in his
misfortunes.” Many men of letters wielded the pen in his behalf, with a
courage which deserves no small praise, when we consider that the Bastile
was staring them in the face. Pelisson in his dungeon tasked all his
powers to defend his ruined master; La Fontaine, in a touching elegy,
vainly strove to awake the clemency of Louis; Loret eulogized Fouquet in
his “Mercure Burlesque,” and was punished by the loss of his pension;
Hesnault, the translator of Lucretius, attacked Colbert in the bitterest
and boldest of sonnets; and a crowd of other assailants showered epigrams
and lampoons on the vindictive minister. The authors were, in general,
lucky enough to find impunity; but numbers of newswriters, printers, and
hawkers, were seized, all of whom were imprisoned, and some were sent
from prison to the galleys.
Fouquet began by denying the competency of the tribunal before which
he was summoned. He was, however, compelled to appear; but, though
he answered interrogatories, he persisted in protesting against the
authority of his judges. He defended himself with admirable skill,
eloquence, and moderation. There were, indeed, moments when he was roused
to retaliate. A single example of the pungency with which he could
reply, will show that his persecutors were not wise in provoking him.
Behind a mirror, at his country house of St. Mandé, was found a sketch
of a paper, drawn up by him fifteen years before, and evidently long
forgotten by him. It contained instructions to his friends how they were
to proceed, in case of an attempt being made to subvert his power. This
was construed into a proof of conspiracy. Seguier having pertinaciously
called on him to own that the drawing up of such a paper was a crime
against the state, Fouquet said, “I confess that it is a foolish and wild
act, but not a state crime. A crime against the state is when, holding
a principal office, and being entrusted with the secrets of the prince,
the individual all at once deserts to the enemy, engages the whole of his
family in the same interest, causes governors to open the gates of cities
to the enemy’s army, and to close them against their rightful master, and
betrays to the hostile party the secrets of the government—this, sir, is
what is called a crime against the state.” This was a stunning blow to
the chancellor, for it was the past conduct of that magistrate himself
that was thus forcibly described by the prisoner.
The trial lasted three years. It was not the fault of some of his
judges that it was not brought to a speedier issue. They listened with
reluctance to his eloquent defence, and would fain have cut it short.
Possort, one of them, who was an uncle of Colbert, once exclaimed, on
Fouquet closing his speech, “Thank Heaven! he cannot complain that he
has been prevented from talking his fill!” Others, still more insensible
to shame, made a motion, that he should be restricted to the mere
answering of questions; they were, however, overruled. It was not till
the middle of December, 1664, that Talon, the advocate-general, summed
up the evidence, and demanded that the culprit should be hanged on a
gallows, purposely erected in the Palace Court. But the time for this
excessive severity was gone by. Some of the judges had become accessible
to feelings of pity; others had been won over by the potent influence
of gold, of which the superintendant’s friends undoubtedly availed
themselves to a considerable extent. Among the most conspicuous of those
who leaned to the side of mercy were MM. d’Ormesson and Roquesante, men
of unquestionable integrity. Only nine voted for death; a majority of the
commissioners, thirteen in number, gave their suffrage for confiscation
of property and perpetual banishment.
The king is said to have been grievously disappointed by this sentence.
Colbert was furious. In one of her letters, written at the moment, Madame
de Sévigné, who had a warm esteem for Fouquet, says, “Colbert is so
exceedingly enraged, that we may expect from him something unjust and
atrocious enough to drive us all to despair again.” In another letter,
she hints her fears that poison may be employed; Guy Patin was also of
the same opinion. Neither poison nor steel was, however, resorted to; it
was probably thought that to render the life of Fouquet a burthen to him,
would be a more exquisite gratification than taking of it away. To grant
mercy has always been regarded as the noblest prerogative of a monarch;
to refuse it was more to the taste of Louis. He altered the sentence of
Fouquet from banishment to endless imprisonment in a remote fortress,
and this was in mockery called a commutation of the penalty. Fouquet was
immediately sent off to Pignerol, and the members of his family, who were
doomed to suffer for his errors, were scattered in various directions.
His judges did not wholly escape without marks of the king’s anger. M. de
Roquesante, a native of the sunny Provence, who had spoken in favour of
the prisoner, was banished, in the depth of winter, to the distant and
imperfectly civilised province of Lower Britanny.
On his way to Pignerol, and during his captivity there, Fouquet was
treated with great harshness. About six months after his arrival, he was
placed in imminent danger. The lightning fell on the citadel where he was
confined, and blew up the powder magazine. Numbers of persons were buried
under the ruins, but he stood in the recess of a window and remained
unhurt. There is a singular veil of mystery hanging over his last days.
He is generally said to have died at Pignerol, in 1680; yet Gourville,
his friend, positively states him to have been set at liberty before his
decease, and he adds, that he received a letter from him. Voltaire, too,
declares that the fact of the liberation was confirmed to him by the
Countess de Vaux, the daughter-in-law of Fouquet; but here all clue to
the subject is lost. It has recently been suggested that Fouquet may have
again been arrested, and that he was the individual who is known by the
appellation of the Man in the Iron Mask.
While fidelity in friendship, inviolably preserved under the most trying
circumstances, shall continue to be admired by mankind, the name of Paul
Pelisson will always be mentioned with respect. He had talents, too,
which were of no mean order. Pelisson, who from affection to his mother
assumed also her maiden name of Fontanier, was born in 1624, at Bezières,
and was brought up in the Protestant faith. He attained an early and
rapid proficiency in literature and languages; nor were severer studies
neglected—for at the age of only nineteen he produced an excellent Latin
paraphrase of the first book of Justinian’s Institutes. He was beginning
to shine at the bar when he was attacked by small-pox. The disease so
excessively disfigured his countenance, and impaired his constitution,
that he was under the necessity of relinquishing his profession, and
retiring into the country to recruit his health.
As soon as Pelisson was again able to take a part in active life, he
settled in Paris. It was not long before he acquired a multitude of
friends; and the French Academy, in return for a history which he wrote
of its early labours, made him a supernumerary member, and destined
for him the first vacancy which should occur. Fouquet, who knew his
abilities, appointed him his chief clerk, and reposed in him an implicit
confidence, which was well deserved. Had Fouquet followed the advice
of his assistant, who counselled him never to part with his office of
attorney-general, he would have done wisely. When this advice came to the
knowledge of Louis, he said “the clerk is more sharp-sighted than the
master.”
Pelisson shared the fate of Fouquet; he was sent to the Concièrgerie,
whence he was removed to the Bastile. All attempts to elicit from him the
secrets of the superintendant were made in vain. Once only, to answer a
purpose, he seemed to make a disclosure. Fearing that, from not knowing
whether the documents were in existence, Fouquet might commit himself
in his answers to certain questions, Pelisson feigned to divulge some
unimportant particulars which related to the subject. Fouquet, who was
astonished at this seeming defection of his friend, was confronted with
him, and denied the correctness of what had been stated: “Sir,” said
Pelisson, in an emphatic tone, “You would not deny so boldly if you did
not know that all the papers concerning that affair are destroyed.”
Fouquet instantly comprehended the stratagem, and acted accordingly.
In the early part of his confinement, Pelisson found means to compose
three memorials in defence of Fouquet. For eloquence and argument they
may be considered as his masterpieces; they were published, and produced
a strong impression. As a punishment, he was still more closely immured,
and pen and paper were withheld from him; but he contrived to foil his
persecutors, by writing, with ink made of burnt crust and wine, on the
blank leaves and margins of the religious works which he was allowed to
read. They were equally unsuccessful when, hoping that he might drop some
unguarded words, they gave him, as an attendant, a spy, who concealed
cunning under the mask of coarse simplicity. Pelisson saw through the
deception, and adroitly converted the spy into an instrument of his own.
The imprisonment of Pelisson lasted four years and a half. Among the
means which he employed to beguile his lonely hours is said to have been
that of taming a spider; a task which he effected so completely, that at
a signal, it would fetch its prey from the further end of the room, or
even take it out of his hand. It is, however, doubtful whether Pelisson
was the person who performed this. De Renneville, who is good authority
on this subject, ascribes the taming of the spider to the Count de
Lauzun, and adds, that the jailer, St. Mars, brutally crushed the insect,
and exclaimed that criminals like Lauzun did not deserve to enjoy the
slightest amusement.
The solicitations of Pelisson’s friends at length procured his release;
in memory of which he ever after yearly liberated some unfortunate
prisoner. After some lapse of time, he was even received into the good
graces of Louis, who probably thought that the man who had been faithful
to a ruined minister would not be wanting in fidelity to his sovereign.
It was, besides, no small merit in the king’s eyes, that Pelisson had
become a Catholic. Louis first appointed him his historiographer, with a
pension; then gave him several valuable benefices; and, lastly, entrusted
him with the management of the fund which was employed in purchasing
proselytes. Pelisson died in 1693.
Pelisson was not the only literary character who was drawn into
the vortex by the sinking of Fouquet. The gay and witty Epicurean
philosopher, St. Evremond, was punished for the crime of being a friend
of the fallen superintendant. Charles St. Evremond was born in 1613, at
St. Denis le Guast, near Coutances. From the study of the law, and the
prospect of a high station in the magistracy, he was seduced by his love
of arms, and, at the age of sixteen, he obtained an ensigncy. He still,
however, retained his taste for philosophy and literature. By his bravery
he acquired the esteem of his superiors; and that esteem was heightened
by his varied acquirements and the charm of his conversation. That he
might always enjoy the pleasure of his society, the Duke of Enghien
appointed him lieutenant of his guards. In this post St. Evremond fought
gallantly at Rocroi, Fribourg, and Nordlingen, in the last of which
battles he was dangerously wounded. His familiar intercourse with the
prince was not of long duration; Enghien delighted to see others exposed
to the wit and raillery of his lieutenant, but he could not endure to be
himself their object; St. Evremond ventured to aim some pleasantries
at his princely protector, and the great Condé had the littleness to
take offence, and to insist on the offender resigning his commission
in the guards. In the war of the Fronde, St. Evremond served the royal
cause with pen and sword, and he was rewarded with a pension and the
rank of major-general. Some satirical remarks on Mazarin, which he soon
after made at a dinner party, were the cause of his being thrown into
the Bastile. Mazarin, however, was not of an implacable nature, like
his predecessor Richelieu. At the expiration of three months he set the
prisoner free, took him into favour, and afterwards, from among a crowd
of rivals, selected him as his companion, when he went to negociate the
peace of the Pyrenees. Dissatisfied with the terms of that peace, St.
Evremond gave vent to his dissatisfaction, in a private letter to the
Marshal de Créqui. In writing it he unconsciously wrote his own sentence
of banishment. A copy of it was found among the papers of Fouquet; and
Colbert, who rejoiced to have an opportunity of injuring a friend of
Fouquet, malignantly represented it in such a light to Louis XIV. that
an order was issued to convey the author to the Bastile. St. Evremond
was riding in the forest of Orleans when he received intelligence from
his friends of the danger that hung over him. As he did not wish to
pay a second visit to a state prison, he provided for his safety by an
immediate and rapid flight. In England he was welcomed with open arms,
and was idolized by the wits and courtiers. In 1664 he visited Holland,
where he met with an equally cordial reception, and gained the friendship
of the Prince of Orange. Charles II. invited him to return to England, in
1670, and settled on him a pension. Henceforth, till his decease, which
took place in 1703, he continued to reside in London. His friends in
France made repeated efforts to obtain his recall; but they could not
succeed till 1689, when Louis XIV. was pleased to grant their request.
St. Evremond refused to accept the tardy boon. Living at his ease in a
free country, and in the highest society, and admired and esteemed by
the fair, the witty, and the noble, he was too wise to put himself into
“circumscription and confine,” and purchase the privilege of bending
before a despotic monarch, at the risk of being condemned to solitary
meditation in one of the towers of the Bastile. St. Evremond was ninety
when he died, but he preserved his faculties to the last. He was interred
in Westminster Abbey. His poetry never rises above mediocrity, and does
not always reach it; but his prose is often excellent. Justice has
scarcely been done to him either by La Harpe or Voltaire.
A harder fate than that of voluntary exile was the lot of Simon Morin,
an insane visionary, a man of humble birth, who was born about 1623,
at Richemont, in Normandy. His horrible death, which was in fact a
judicial murder, perpetrated by a fanaticism far worse than his own,
leaves an indelible stain on the character of the judges by whom it was
directed. Morin was originally a clerk in the war-office, but lost his
situation by neglecting his duties; and he subsequently gained a scanty
subsistence as a copyist, for which he was well qualified by the beauty
of his handwriting. His reason appears to have been early affected,
as he must have been under twenty when he was first put into prison
for his extravagant ideas in religious matters. After his release, he
seems to have gradually become more and more deranged. Like all madmen
of his class, however, he gained numerous proselytes, who listened to
his harangues, and read his printed reveries, with implicit belief.
His success drew on him the attention of the government, and, in July
1644, he was sent to the Bastile. At the expiration of twenty months he
was set at liberty. Imprisonment had only heightened his malady, and
he consequently laboured with more vigour than ever to disseminate his
opinions. Those opinions he embodied in a work intituled, “Thoughts of
Morin, with his Canticles and Spiritual Quatrains,” dedicated to the
king. He called himself the Son of Man, and maintained that Christ was
incorporated in him; that in his person was to take place the second
advent of the Saviour in a state of glory; and that the result would be
a general reformation of the Church, and the conversion of all people to
the true faith. There was much more of the same kind; he was in France
what Brothers, long afterwards, was in England. Of his tenets, several
bear a resemblance to those which, later in the 17th century, were held
by the Quietists. The publication of this volume again brought the police
upon him. For some time he eluded them, but he was at last discovered,
and re-committed to the Bastile. In 1649, he retracted his errors, and
was released, and he repeated his retractation four months after his
being set free. It was not long, however, before he relapsed, and for
this he was sent to the Concièrgerie, whence he was transferred to the
Petites Maisons, as an incurable lunatic. The last was the only sensible
measure which was adopted with respect to him. By another abjuration, he
once more recovered his liberty; and, as soon as he was let loose, he
once more asserted his claim to be an incarnation of the Deity. There can
be little doubt that he had short lucid intervals, and that it was during
these intervals that he renounced his errors.
Thus, alternately raving and recanting, Morin went on till 1661, when,
in an evil hour, he contracted an intimacy with a man who was no less a
visionary than he himself was, and whose nature was deeply tinctured with
malignity and deceit. This man, John Desmarets de St. Sorlin, a member
of the French Academy, was the author of several works, now sunk into
oblivion, among which are a ponderous epic, called Clovis, and several
theatrical pieces. From his own showing, he appears to have been in youth
a monster of immorality; and though in advanced life he affected piety,
his conduct did not prove his heart to be much ameliorated; he became
fanatical instead of becoming virtuous. A brief specimen, from some of
his rhapsodies, will show how completely his wits were “turned the seamy
side without.” He asserted, that God in his infinite goodness had given
him the key of the treasure of the Apocalypse; that he was Eliachim
Michael, a Prophet; that he had the Divine command to raise an army of
144,000 men, bearing the seal of God on their foreheads, which army was
to be headed by the king, to exterminate the impious and the Jansenists;
and that Louis XIV. was indicated by the prophets as the person who was
destined to drive out the Turks, and extend throughout the whole earth
the kingdom of Christ. Had not Desmarets been a hater of the Jansenists,
and a flatterer of the monarch, he would undoubtedly have been sent to
study the Apocalypse in the solitude of a prison.
The trite proverb, that “two of a trade cannot agree,” was verified by
Desmarets; he resolved to destroy the man who dared to make pretensions
that eclipsed his own. To effect his purpose, he acted with the cunning
of a lunatic, and the dark-heartedness of a fiend. By paying assiduous
court to Morin, by pretending to be one of his most submissive disciples,
and even by going so far as to write him a letter, unequivocally
recognising him as the Son of Man, he contrived to insinuate himself into
the confidence of his unfortunate victim, and to draw from him his most
secret thoughts. In the course of their conversations, Morin is said to
have declared, among other things, that unless the king acknowledged
his mission he would die. Having thus furnished himself with evidence
against the man whom he had deluded, Desmarets hastened to denounce him
as a heretic and traitor. Orders were issued for arresting Morin, who
was found engaged in copying out a “Discourse to the King,” which began
with “the Son of Man to the King of France.” He was brought to trial, and
was sentenced to be burned alive. Some of his followers were condemned
to whipping and the galleys. The iniquitous judgment passed on Morin was
executed on the 14th of March, 1663. At the stake his reason seems to
have returned; he repeatedly called on the Saviour and the Virgin, and
humbly prayed for mercy to the Creator of all things.
Little commiseration is due to him whose imprisonment is next recorded;
his baseness met with deserved punishment. Francis René Crispin du Bec,
Marquis of Vardes, was of a good family, and served with reputation in
Flanders, France, Italy, and Spain. During the war of the Fronde, he was
constant to the royal party; and it was doubtless his zeal and fidelity
on this occasion which acquired for him the friendship of Louis XIV. He
rose to high rank in the army; was made captain-colonel of the Hundred
Swiss in 1655; and, next year, succeeded the Duke of Orleans in the
government of Aigues-Mortes, and was invested with the various orders of
knighthood. He was on the point of being created a duke and peer, when
the discovery of a dishonourable act of which he had been guilty, stopped
his promotion, and deprived him of his liberty. Louis had chosen Vardes
as his friend, and had confided to him his passion for the celebrated
Mlle. de la Vallière, who was one of the maids of honour to the Duchess
of Orleans. It appears that the duchess and her friend, the Countess of
Soissons, and their lovers, the Count de Guiche and Vardes, had hoped,
by means of La Vallière, to obtain a predominant influence over Louis.
But the royal mistress loved Louis with a sincere and disinterested
affection, and was not disposed to become the instrument of court
intriguers. It was resolved, therefore, to oust her, and substitute in
her stead Mlle. de la Mothe Houdancourt, who, it was imagined, would
be more subservient. To effect this object, Vardes wrote a letter,
purporting to be from the Spanish monarch, to his daughter the French
queen, informing her of her consort’s connection with la Vallière; it
was translated into Spanish by Guiche. The letter, however, fell into
the hands of Louis. While endeavouring to discover the author, the king
consulted Vardes, and Vardes was so ineffably base as to lead him to
believe that the offender was the Duchess of Noailles. The duchess, a
woman of strict virtue, had the superintendence of the queen’s maids of
honour, and had already dissatisfied Louis by her vigilant care of her
charge. He therefore readily believed the suggestion of Vardes, and,
without farther inquiry, deprived the duchess and her husband of all
the places which they held, and ordered them to retire to their estate.
For three years the perfidy of Vardes remained a secret, and it would
perhaps always have remained so, had he not caused a disclosure of it, by
conduct which was at once a flagrant breach of confidence to his friend,
the Count de Guiche, and a gross insult to the Duchess of Orleans. He
obtained possession of the letters written by the count to the duchess,
and refused to give them up; and he incited the Chevalier de Lorraine to
make offensive advances to her. This proceeding brought on a quarrel, the
result of which was that the king became acquainted with the treachery of
the man whom he had trusted. Vardes was sent to the Bastile in December,
1664, from whence he was removed to the citadel of Montpellier, where he
was closely confined for eighteen months. He was at length allowed to
reside in his government of Aigues-Mortes; but eighteen years passed away
before he was recalled to the court. He is said to have employed in study
the period of his exile, and to have made himself generally esteemed in
Languedoc. When, after his long banishment, he was graciously received
by the king, Vardes was dressed in the fashion of his early days, and,
when Louis laughed at the antique cut of his coat, the supple courtier
replied, “Sire, when one is so wretched as to be banished from you, one
is not only unfortunate, but ridiculous!” Vardes did not long enjoy his
re-establishment in the royal favour; he died in 1688.
To Vardes succeeds another noble, Count Roger Bussy de Rabutin, who,
though he is not accused of such baseness as that of which Vardes was
guilty, was by no means a model of delicacy and virtue. He seems, indeed,
to have been of opinion, that honour and honesty were not necessary
qualities in the persons whom he had about him; for, in his Memoirs,
he coolly describes one gentleman, who was of his train, as having all
his life been a cutpurse; and another, on whom he bestows praise for
some things, as being addicted to every vice, and no less familiar
with robbery and murder than with eating and drinking. Such being his
laxity of principles, it is no wonder that he sometimes participated in
disgusting orgies, and was even suspected of feeling a more than parental
love for Madame de la Rivière, his daughter. Bussy de Rabutin was born
in 1618, entered the army when he was only twelve years of age, served
in all the campaigns between 1634 and 1663, and attained the rank of
lieutenant-general. His bravery was undoubted, but his vanity, arrogance,
and satirical spirit, made him numerous enemies among his brother
officers. On one occasion he lampooned Turenne, and that great general,
deviating from his usual magnanimity, avenged himself by writing to the
king, that “M de Bussy was the best officer in the army—for songs.” In
1641, Bussy was an inmate of the Bastile for five months. The defective
discipline of his regiment, and its having engaged in smuggling salt,
was the ostensible cause of his imprisonment; he himself assigned as
the reason, that his father was hated by Desnoyers the minister. The
same faults by which his companions in arms had been converted into
foes, proved his ruin at court. He wrote a libellous work, called “The
Amorous History of the Gauls,” which was published in 1665, and excited
a general outcry among the personages whom it describes. Bussy affirms,
that it was sent to the press without his consent, and even with
malignant alterations and additions, by an unfaithful mistress, to whom
he entrusted the manuscript. This production was made the pretext for
committing him to the Bastile; but it is said that his real offence was
a song, in which he ridiculed the king’s passion for the Duchess of la
Vallière. His imprisonment lasted twenty months, and he candidly owns, in
his Memoirs and Letters, that it was not very patiently endured. By dint
of importunity, seconded by an illness with which he was attacked, he at
length recovered his liberty. During his captivity, he was compelled to
resign, for a much less sum than it cost him, the major-generalship of
the light cavalry. But though Bussy was released, he was not pardoned;
he was banished to his estate. Notwithstanding his abject supplications,
which were incessantly renewed, he remained an exile for sixteen years.
At last, in 1682, he was graciously permitted to re-appear at court.
His happiness was, however, still incomplete; for the courtiers soon
began to cabal against him, and the monarch to treat him coldly; and,
though he succeeded in procuring a pension for himself, and pensions and
preferments for his children, he failed to obtain the blue riband and a
marshal’s staff, which were the great objects of his ambition. He died in
1693.
A longer term of imprisonment than was undergone by Bussy Rabutin fell to
the lot of the next prisoner. Among the victims of the persecution which
was carried on against the Jansenists, was Louis Isaac le Maistre, better
known by the name of Saci, which is an anagram formed by him from one of
his christian names. He was born in 1613, and was educated at the college
of Beauvais, along with his uncle, the celebrated Anthony Arnauld. Though
he was early destined to the clerical profession, he did not take orders
till he was in his thirty-fifth year; a praiseworthy humility having
long induced him to doubt his being competent to fulfill properly the
duties of a gospel minister. He was soon after appointed director of the
Port Royal nuns, on which occasion he took up his abode in the convent,
resigning to it all his property, except a small annuity, and of that he
distributed the largest portion to the poor. His time was spent in study,
prayer, and pious exercises. But a blameless life was not sufficient to
shield him from theological hatred. In 1661, he was compelled to fly
from the convent, and he remained in concealment till 1666, when he was
discovered and conveyed to the Bastile. In that prison he was immured for
three years and a half, and he solaced his lonely hours by undertaking a
translation of the Bible, a considerable part of which he accomplished
while he was held in durance. He, however, did not live to complete it.
In the autumn of 1669 he was set at liberty. The minister, to whom he was
presented on leaving the Bastile, seems to have been willing to grant him
some favour, as a compensation for his unmerited sufferings; but all that
Saci asked was, that the prisoners might be more leniently treated. After
the destruction of Port Royal, he found an asylum in the house of his
cousin, the Marquis of Pomponne, and there he ended his days, in 1684.
Saci was such an enemy to controversy that, though often attacked, he is
said never to have replied except in one instance. Voltaire speaks of him
as “one of the good writers of Port Royal.” In the poetical compositions
of Saci, which were his earliest literary attempts, there are passages
that rise above mediocrity. Among his principal works, besides his
version of the Bible, are translations of the Psalms, St. Thomas à
Kempis, two books of the Eneid, the Fables of Phædrus, and three of the
Comedies of Terence.
From the pious and humble pastor we must turn to a very different sort
of personage, to one of the courtier species, a man more remarkable for
his sudden rise, and for the vicissitudes which he experienced, than for
genius or virtue. Three of his eminent contemporaries have left on record
their opinion of Antoninus de Caumont, Count, and afterwards, Duke of
Lauzun. The witty Bussy Rabutin pithily describes him as being “one of
the least men, in mind as well as body, that God ever created.” The more
phlegmatic Duke of Berwick says of him, “he had a sort of talent, which,
however, consisted only in turning every thing into ridicule, insinuating
himself into every body’s confidence, worming out their secrets, and
playing upon their foibles. He was noble in his carriage, generous,
and lived in a splendid style. He loved high play, and played like a
gentleman. His figure was very diminutive, and it is incomprehensible how
he could ever have become a favourite with the ladies.” The satirical St.
Simon has drawn, in his best manner, a full-length portrait of Lauzun,
which has scarcely a single redeeming feature. He does, indeed, allow,
that he was a good friend, “when he chanced to be a friend, which was
rarely,” and a good relation; that he had noble manners, and was brave
to excess. This is the sole speck of light in the picture; the rest is
all shade. In the likeness drawn by St. Simon, we see Lauzun, “full
of ambition, caprices, and whimsies, jealous of every one, striving
always to go beyond the mark, never satisfied, illiterate, unadorned and
unattractive in mind, morose, solitary, and unsociable in disposition,
mischievous and spiteful by nature, and still more so from ambition and
jealousy, prompt to become an enemy, even to those who were not his
rivals, cruel in exposing defects, and in finding and making subjects for
ridicule, scattering his ill-natured wit about him without sparing any
one, and, to crown the whole, a courtier equally insolent, scoffing, and
base even to servility, and replete with arts, intrigues, and meannesses,
to accomplish his designs.” Such was the man whom the king long delighted
to honour.
Lauzun, who at his outset bore the title of Marquis de Puyguilhem, was
the youngest son of a noble Gascon family, and was introduced at court
by the Marshal de Grammont, his relation. He soon became the favourite
of Louis, who heaped riches and places upon him: some of the latter
were expressly created for him. When the Duke of Mazarin resigned the
mastership of the ordnance, the king promised it to Lauzun, but bound
him to keep the matter secret for a short time. The folly and vanity of
the favourite, who could not refrain from boasting of his good fortune,
were the cause of his disappointment. Louvois thus obtained a knowledge
of the nomination, and remonstrated against it so strongly, and with such
sound reasons, that it was revoked by the monarch. On this occasion a
scene took place such as has seldom occurred between monarch and subject.
After having vainly tried to persuade the king to carry into effect his
original intention, Lauzun burst into a furious passion, turned his
back on him, broke his own sword under his foot, and vowed that he would
never again serve a prince who had violated his word so shamefully.
Louis acted in this instance with true dignity. Opening the window, he
threw out his cane, and, as he was quitting the room, he coolly said, “I
should be sorry to have struck a man of rank.” The next morning, however,
Lauzun was conveyed to the Bastile. But Louis was soon induced to forgive
the offender, and even to offer him, as an indemnity for his loss, the
post of captain of the royal guards. It strongly marks the insolence of
Lauzun, that he at first refused the proffered grace, and that entreaties
were required to induce him to accept it.
Lauzun had scarcely been twelve months out of the Bastile, before
he had an opportunity of becoming the richest subject in Europe. A
grand-daughter of Henry IV., the celebrated Duchess of Montpensier,
usually known by the appellation of Mademoiselle, who had reached her
forty-second year, fell violently in love with him. In her Memoirs she
gives a curious and amusing account of her wooing, for the courtship
was all on the side of the lady. So completely had Lauzun recovered his
influence, that the king gave his consent to their union. The marriage
contract secured to him three duchies and twenty millions of livres. A
second time his fortune was marred by his vanity. His friends urged him
to hasten the nuptials, but he delayed, that they might be celebrated
with royal splendour. Of this delay his enemies availed themselves to
work upon the pride of the monarch, and they succeeded in breaking off
the match. The duchess was rendered inconsolable by this event; Lauzun
seems to have borne it with sufficient philosophy. A secret marriage
between them is believed to have subsequently taken place.
Lauzun was supposed to be now more firmly fixed than ever in the
king’s good graces. He was placed at the head of the army which, in
1670, escorted the king and the court to Flanders, and he displayed
extraordinary magnificence in this command. But, flattering as
appearances were, he was on the eve of his fall. He had two active and
powerful enemies; Louvois, whom he constantly thwarted and provoked in
various ways, and Madame de Montespan, the king’s mistress, whom he
had more than once grossly insulted. Political rivalry and hatred and
female revenge were finally triumphant. The minister and the mistress
so incessantly laboured to blacken Lauzun, whose private marriage with
Mademoiselle is said to have aided their efforts, that, in November 1671,
he was sent to the Bastile, whence he was soon after removed to the
fortress of Pignerol. In that fortress he was closely confined in a cell
for nearly five years. His situation was at length somewhat ameliorated,
but his imprisonment was continued for five years more. It is probable
that he would have spent the rest of his days at Pignerol, had not the
Duchess of Montpensier purchased his freedom, by sacrificing the duchy
of Aumale, the earldom of Eu, and the principality of Dombes, to form an
appanage for the illegitimate son of Louis by Madame de Montespan. It is
an additional stain on the character of Lauzun, that he proved ungrateful
to his deliverer.
Though Lauzun was released, he was not suffered to approach the court.
Tired of his exile from Versailles, he passed over to England. On the
revolution of 1688 breaking out, James placed the queen and the infant
prince under his care, to be conveyed to France. This trust opened the
way to his re-admission into the royal presence, and to his being created
a duke; but he never regained the confidence of the monarch. He led a
reinforcement of the French troops to James in Ireland; and displayed, as
the Duke of Berwick states, none of the qualities of a general. He died
in 1723, at the age of more than ninety. The closing scene of his life
was perhaps the only one for which he deserves praise. His disease was
cancer in the mouth, the protracted and horrible torture of which he bore
with astonishing temper and fortitude.
The severe example which was made of de Bouteville, in the reign of Louis
XIII., though it gave a temporary check to the practice of duelling,
was far from putting an end to it. Nor did better success attend the
ordinances issued in 1634 by Louis XIII., and in 1643, 1651, and 1670,
by Louis XIV. The feebleness of the royal authority, during a disturbed
regency, and the war of the Fronde, with the quarrels arising out of it,
doubtless tended to neutralize the laws. But, even when Louis XIV. was
in uncontested possession of despotic power, we find that the murderous
custom of fighting in parties was still existing. In 1663, a famous duel
took place between the two La Frettes, Saint Aignan, and Argenlieu,
on the one side, and Chalais, Noirmoutier, d’Antin, and Flamarens, on
the other. The axe was at length laid to the root of the evil, by the
edict of August 1679, which constituted the marshals of France, and the
governors of provinces, supreme judges in all cases where individuals
supposed their honour to have been wounded. This edict prohibited,
under the heaviest penalties, all private combats and rencounters, both
within and without the kingdom. One clause seems excellently calculated
to produce its intended effect, no less by the insinuation with which
it opens, than by the denunciations with which it concludes. “Those,”
it says, “who, doubting of their own courage, shall have called in the
aid of seconds, thirds, or a greater number of persons, shall, besides
the punishment of death and confiscation, be degraded from their
nobility, and have their coat of arms publicly blackened and broken by
the hangman; their successors shall be obliged to adopt new arms; and
the seconds, thirds, and other accomplices, shall be punished in the
same manner.” This salutary edict appears to have nearly accomplished
the purpose for which it was framed. The slavish fear of incurring the
displeasure of the sovereign, a feeling which was so prevalent among the
courtiers of Louis XIV., perhaps aided materially in producing obedience
to the law. It would have been well if a worse effect had never resulted
from that kind of fear.
Among the fashionable gladiators of those days was Philip d’Oger, Marquis
of Cavoie, a man whom nature had liberally endowed with the means of
shining in a nobler sphere. Cavoie, born in 1640, and descended from an
ancient Picard family, was the son of a woman of talent, who gained the
good graces of Anne of Austria, and availed herself of her influence
to forward the fortune of her offspring. His personal appearance was
greatly in his favour; he was one of the handsomest and best made men in
France, and he dressed with singular elegance. His courage, too, was no
less conspicuous than his corporeal qualities. In 1666, he served as a
volunteer on board of the Dutch fleet, under De Ruyter; and in the battle
with the Duke of Albemarle he distinguished himself by the perilous
exploit of proceeding in a boat to cut the cable with which some English
sloops were towing down a fire-ship on the Dutch admiral. He succeeded
in his daring attempt, and escaped unhurt. By this gallant action he
acquired the friendship of the celebrated Turenne. Long before this he
had become known as “the brave Cavoie,” in consequence of his gallant
bearing in the single combats which were still too common in France.
It was for having acted as second in one of these combats, that he was
immured in the Bastile. His imprisonment would, perhaps, have been
protracted, but for a curious circumstance, of which a pleasant account
is given by the Duke de St. Simon. Mlle. de Coetlogon, one of the
maids of honour to the consort of Louis XIV., had fallen madly in love
with Cavoie. St. Simon describes her as being “ugly, prudent, naïve,
much-liked, and a very good creature.” It is no slight proof of her
amiability, that, in a frivolous and satirical court, her sorrows were a
subject of pity instead of laughter. Cavoie was anything but delighted
with her idolatrous fondness, which she seemed to glory in manifesting;
and he strove to rid himself of it by being obdurate, and even downright
harsh. In spite of his repulsive conduct, however, she became every day
fonder. When he went to the army, her tears and cries were incessant, and
during the whole of the campaign she obstinately abstained from adorning
her person in the smallest degree. It was not till he came back that she
resumed her customary style of dress. His being committed to the Bastile
renewed her grief. “She spoke to the king in behalf of Cavoie,” says St.
Simon, “and not being able to obtain his deliverance, she scolded his
majesty so violently as to abuse him. The king laughed heartily, at which
she was so much incensed that she threatened him with her nails, and he
thought it prudent not to run the risk of them. He every day dined and
supped publicly with the queen; at dinner it was usual for the Duchess
of Richelieu and the queen’s maids of honour to wait upon them. On these
occasions, Coetlogon never would hand any thing to the king; either she
avoided him, or she flatly refused, and told him that he did not deserve
to be waited upon by her. Next, she was ill of jaundice, and had violent
hysterics, and fits of despair. This went so far, that the king and
queen seriously desired the Duchess of Richelieu to accompany her to the
Bastile, to see Cavoie; and this was twice or thrice repeated. At last
he was released, and Coetlogon, in raptures, again took to dressing; but
it was not without much difficulty that she could be reconciled to the
king.”
It is delightful to know that the devoted love of this warm-hearted
female was rewarded; and it is honourable to Louis XIV. that, instead
of meanly resenting her bursts of passion, he kindly and successfully
exerted himself to render her happy. In conjunction with the queen, he
more than once pleaded for the enamoured lady, but he found Cavoie averse
from a marriage. At length, the death of his grand maréchal-de-logis
enabled the king to attack Cavoie with advantage. This time, however, he
spoke in the tone of an absolute monarch; for he insisted that Cavoie
should wed Mlle. de Coetlogon; but, in return, he promised to put him in
the road to fortune, and, as a dowry to the portionless maid, he gave
him the splendid office which had just become vacant. Despotism thus
exercised may be forgiven, if only for its rarity. Cavoie yielded to the
command of his sovereign, and the desired union took place. The result
was more satisfactory than might have been expected. Cavoie proved to be
an indulgent husband, and she, on her part, never ceased to look up to
him as a sort of superior being. Neither in her maiden nor in her married
state, was her virtue for a moment doubted.
Cavoie accompanied Louis XIV. in all his campaigns. At the passage of
the Rhine, his intrepidity called forth praise from the king himself. A
report having soon after been spread, that Cavoie was among the slain,
Louis exclaimed, “O, how grieved M. de Turenne will be!” The courtiers
who surrounded him were joining in a general chorus of eulogium upon the
supposed dead man, when a horseman was seen plunging into the river on
the opposite side, and swimming over. It was Cavoie, whom the Prince de
Condé had sent to the monarch, to announce to him the complete success
of his army.
For many years Cavoie was held in high esteem at court, and enjoyed the
confidence of his master. A circumstance at length occurred to disturb
his peace. He had hoped to be included in the number of those on whom the
order of the Holy Ghost was conferred in 1688, but he was disappointed.
This disappointment was the work of Louvois, who hated him, because he
was the old and firm friend of the Marquis de Seignalai. Wounded by this
slight, the grand maréchal wrote a letter to Louis, informing him that he
intended to retire. But the vows of chagrined courtiers are as brittle
as those of lovers. The king called him into his cabinet, and, with that
graciousness which he well knew how to assume, he said to him, “We have
lived too long together to part now; I cannot let you quit me; I will see
that you shall be satisfied.” Cavoie abandoned his design of withdrawing
from court; but the promised blue riband was never bestowed on him.
At a later period, about twenty years before his decease, he resumed and
carried into execution his purpose of seceding from public life. He was
a patron of literary characters in general, and was in habits of close
intimacy with Racine, Boileau, and other eminent authors. Cavoie died in
1716, at the age of 76, leaving behind him the enviable reputation of
having been a man on whose sincerity and probity an implicit reliance
might with safety be placed.
From Cavoie we pass to an individual of a less estimable character.
Louis, Prince of Rohan, commonly known by the title of the Chevalier
Rohan, a degenerate descendant from illustrious ancestors, was born
about 1635. Rohan was endowed by nature with a handsome and graceful
person, and many intellectual qualities; but all these advantages were
nullified by his follies and vices. The Marquis de la Fare describes
him as being made up of contradictions; sometimes witty, at others the
contrary; sometimes dignified and brave, at others mean and dastardly.
In the annals of gallantry he seems to have been ambitious of holding a
conspicuous place. The most celebrated of his amorous adventures was his
carrying off, aided by her brother, the Duke of Nevers, the beautiful
and frail Hortensia Mancini, who was united to the contemptible Duke
of Mazarin. That he gamed high, and was careless of his gold, we learn
from an anecdote which is related of him. He had lost to the king, at
the gaming-table, a large sum, which was to be paid in louis-d’or. Rohan
counted out seven or eight hundred, but, not having enough of them, he
added two hundred Spanish pistoles. Louis objected to the latter, upon
which the chevalier snatched them up, and threw them out of the window,
saying at the same time, “Since your majesty will not have them, they
are good for nothing.” The king complained of this to Cardinal Mazarin,
who replied, “Sire, the Chevalier de Rohan played like a king, and you
played like a Chevalier de Rohan.” This action of Rohan has been praised
as a “piquant lesson” to Louis; it seems, however, to have been rather an
absurd mode of rebuking the monarch’s unprincely conduct.
Rohan continued in favour at court for several years, and in 1656 was
appointed grand huntsman of France, an office equivalent to our master
of the buck-hounds; he was afterwards made colonel of the guards. He
served in 1654, 1655, 1672, and 1677, and displayed great valour.
The commencement of his decline seems to have been his being obliged
to give up the office of grand huntsman, in consequence of his amour
with the Duchess of Mazarin. His extravagance and profligacy at length
ruined his fortune and reputation. To repair his shattered finances,
he engaged in a plot, at once treasonable and absurd, which completed
the destruction of his character, and brought him to the scaffold. Into
this scheme he was seduced by Latruaumont, a Norman officer, a man as
impoverished and licentious as himself. Their accomplices were Preault,
a young officer, the Marchioness of Villiers-Bourdeville, his mistress,
and a schoolmaster, named Van den Enden; all of whom are said to have
disbelieved that the soul is immortal. Their plan was, to put into the
hands of the Dutch the town of Quillebœuf, in Normandy, and to excite
the province to revolt, for which service they were to be liberally
rewarded. The magnitude of their project forms a striking contrast with
the scantiness of their means. The conspiracy was discovered by the
government, before the conspirators could begin their operations. Rohan
was committed to the Bastile, and M. de Brissac was sent into Normandy to
arrest Latruaumont. The latter defended himself, was mortally wounded,
and died in a few hours. He had at least some honourable feelings, for,
in order to save his confederates, he persisted to the last moment that
he was the sole criminal. The friends of Rohan nightly made the circuit
of the Bastile, and vociferated, through a speaking-trumpet, “Latruaumont
is dead, and has confessed nothing.” They were, however, unheard by the
chevalier. He, meanwhile, was perseveringly pressed to acknowledge his
guilt, but he refused; and, as his participation in the plot was known
only to the deceased, and no written proof existed against him, he
might have saved his life, had he not been circumvented by one of those
stratagems which were employed against prisoners. De Bezons, one of the
counsellors of state who interrogated the captive, had the baseness to
assure him that the king meant to pardon him if he would declare the
truth, although every thing was already known from the dying avowal
of Latruaumont. Trusting to the assurances of his treacherous adviser,
Rohan acknowledged his treason. He soon learned the deceit which had been
practised on him; and he burst into such violent paroxysms of rage, that
his keepers were compelled to manacle him that he might not lay violent
hands on himself. Rohan and his accomplices were soon after sentenced
to death; they were executed in front of the Bastile, on the 27th of
November, 1674. In spite of her erroneous principles, the sufferer most
worthy of pity was, perhaps, Madame de Villiers, who displayed a noble
fortitude and forgiving spirit. The only evidence against her was some of
her letters to Preault, which he had unwisely preserved. At first, she
uttered a few words of mild reproof for his fatal imprudence; but she
quickly changed her tone, and said with a smile, “We must not think on
what is passed, but only how to die.”
The same year that consigned Rohan to the scaffold, saw his place in the
Bastile filled by a youthful victim, who was doomed to waste a large part
of his life in captivity, for having offended a vindictive and powerful
religious body. His name is not recorded, but it is evident that he was
of a good family.
Louis XIV. was requested, by the Jesuits of Clermont College, to be
present at the representation of a tragedy by their pupils. He complied,
and was highly gratified by the piece; the more so, perhaps, as it was
thickly strewn with passages in praise of him. A nobleman in attendance
having spoken to him in terms of admiration, as to the manner in which
the drama had been played, the king replied, “Where’s the wonder? is it
not my college?” These words were not lost upon the principal of the
college, who was standing by. As soon as the king was gone, the old
inscription, “_Collegium Claromontanum Societati Jesus_,” which was on
the front of the building, was taken down, and workmen were all night
employed to inscribe the words, “_Collegium Ludovici Magni_,” in gold
letters, on a tablet of black marble.
In the morning the new inscription was seen conspicuously displayed on
the edifice. A youth of sixteen, a pupil in the college, had the good
sense and the good taste to be disgusted with this worse than indecorous
adulation, and he gave vent to his feelings in a Latin distich, which,
during the night, he fastened on the gate. The meaning of his lines may
be thus given:
“Christ’s name expunged, the king’s now fills the stone!
O impious race! by this is plainly shown
That Louis is the only god you own!”
The pungent lines excited a violent clamour among the Jesuits, and
no pains were spared to trace the writer. The juvenile offender was
discovered, and was shut up in the Bastile. After having been confined
there for a long while, he was transferred to the citadel of St.
Marguerite, on the coast of Provence. There he continued for several
years; after which he was taken back to the Bastile. One-and-thirty years
he passed in this manner, and the remainder of his life would doubtless
have been consumed in the same way, had he not, in 1705, become sole
heir to the estates of his family. The confessor of the Bastile, who was
a jesuit, now remonstrated with his brethren on the impolicy of keeping
in prison an individual from whom, by procuring his release, they might
reap such a golden harvest. His advice was taken, and the captive was set
free at their intercession. There can be no doubt that their tardy and
interested mercy received a liberal reward.
Among the fellow prisoners of the nameless satirist of the jesuits
was, for a short time, another writer of verses, but verses of a very
different kind. The person in question was Charles Dassouci, who
ludicrously designated himself as “Emperor of the Burlesque, the first
of that name.” He was born at Paris, about 1604, and was the son of a
barrister. His bringing up, and his early habits, were not calculated to
make him an estimable member of society. His parents were separated, and
the tyranny of a female, who was at once the servant and the concubine
of his father, drove him from his home. When he was only nine years
old, he wandered to Calais, where he passed himself off as an adept in
astrology, the son of Cesar, that dealer in magic whose fate has been
narrated in the preceding chapter. The boy having, by the power of
imagination, worked a cure upon a hypochondriacal individual, the wise
people of Calais considered this fact to be a decisive proof of his
intercourse with the devil, and were about to throw him into the sea, but
he was saved by some of his friends, who conveyed him privately out of
the place. After having led a roving life for some time, he became player
on the lute and singer to Christina, Duchess of Savoy, the daughter of
Henry IV. In 1640, he was introduced to Louis XIII., who gave him the
same situation that he had filled in the household of the duchess, and
he was continued in it during the minority of Louis XIV. Resolving to
return to Turin, he quitted Paris in 1655; but, before his departure
from the kingdom, he visited various parts in the south of France. He
was accompanied every where by two handsome youths, called his musical
pages; his connexion with whom afforded to his enemies a reason, or a
pretext, for fixing a deep stain on his moral character. Failing to
obtain patronage at Turin, he went to Rome, and there he was put into the
prison of the Inquisition, for having satirized some powerful prelates.
On being liberated he went back to Paris, where he was not more fortunate
than he had been in Italy, for he was committed to the Bastile, in 1675,
whence he was transferred to the Châtelet. To his licentious conduct and
writings he is said to have been indebted for his imprisonment, which
lasted six months. He died about 1679. His principal works are, “Ovid
in good humour,” which is a travestie upon part of the Metamorphoses;
Claudian’s Rape of Proserpine burlesqued; and many poems in a similar
style. Dassouci, who was sometimes called “the ape of Scarron,” received
a lash from the satirical scourge of Boileau, and he complained heavily
of the injury. In his Art of Poetry, Boileau thus alludes to the
popularity which Dassouci had once enjoyed:
“The scurviest joker charmed some kindred mind,
And even Dassouci could readers find.”
It must be owned, however, that in the works of “the emperor of the
Burlesque,” there are some passages which prove that, though his taste
and his morals were defective, he was not destitute of talent.
The reader has seen that, with very few exceptions, the prisoners who
have been mentioned in this chapter belonged to the courtier-class; that
they were men who seemed to feel a difficulty of breathing whenever they
did not inhale the vapours of a frivolous and voluptuous court. We ought
always to abhor injustice, and therefore we must hate the power which was
unjust to them; but they have no title to that liberal share of our pity
which is the right of humbler victims, for it was an implied condition of
their artificial existence that they should bend to a despot’s will; they
purchased the smiles of their master, the pleasures, such as they were,
of the Louvre and Versailles, and a portion of the public spoils, by the
renunciation of their free agency, and by encountering the risk of being
capriciously transferred from a palace to a dungeon. If, relying on his
good luck, a man will venture to play with a gambler whom he knows to
assert the privilege of now and then cogging the dice, his folly perhaps
deserves more compassion than his misfortune.
Let us now see in what manner other classes were affected by the
working of an arbitrary government; whether its tyranny was impartially
distributed among them. A few examples, taken between the years 1660
and 1670, will enable us to form a tolerably correct judgment upon this
subject. Before we proceed to give these examples, it may, however, be
well to apprise the reader, that committals to the Bastile were not
things of rare occurrence, but the contrary. In 1663, fifty-four persons
were sent to that dreary pile; in some years the number was fewer; in
others it rose to nearly a hundred and fifty. The Bastile was so crowded
in 1665, that a part of the prisoners were obliged to be removed to other
places of confinement. It must, indeed, have been full to overflowing,
before this removal could have been thought necessary. Such being the
case with the Bastile, it is probable that Vincennes, and many other
state prisons, were in a similar situation.
Though, as far as can be judged from imperfect registers, it appears
that a large majority of the persons incarcerated in the Bastile were
the victims of caprice, malice, or religious and political persecution,
there can be no doubt that many were really criminal. Some instances of
the latter class occur in the years between 1660 and 1670. The crime of
coining, which we have seen so common at an earlier period, was still
prevalent, and was still committed by men who held a respectable rank in
society. In 1666 twelve coiners were hanged within a fortnight, and they
accused several others, among whom was a M. Delcampe, who is described
as “the celebrated master of an academy in the suburb of St. Germain.”
He was escorted in a carriage to the Bastile, by three companies of the
guards, and little more than a week elapsed before he was beheaded. The
crowd to witness his execution was so great, that many persons were
killed or wounded by being pressed or trampled on.
The Bastile was often employed as an engine of extortion. To contribute
to the wants of the state, or, rather, to the prodigalities of the
court, immense sums were levied upon individuals holding offices, and
upon contractors, and all who had had any concern with the finances.
It must, of course, have been taken for granted that they had robbed
the public; and it could hardly have been expected that they would not
indemnify themselves, by future peculation, for their present loss.
Messat, a registrar of the council, was Bastiled for remonstrating
against a demand of six hundred thousand livres from himself and three
of his colleagues. Catalan, a contractor, shared the same fate, and was
threatened with death to boot; but after a confinement of several months,
he ransomed himself for six millions of livres. From another individual
nine hundred thousand livres, and from three of the treasurers of the
exchequer several millions, were squeezed by this powerful instrument. M.
Deschiens, one of M. Colbert’s head clerks, was also frightened into the
payment of a good round sum, by a visit to the Bastile.
Other equally honourable means of raising money were resorted to; all of
which helped to fill the prisons as well as the coffers of the monarch.
Among them were “free gifts,” once known in England under the name of
“benevolences.” From the city of Sens, for instance, twelve thousand
livres were demanded as a free gift, besides nearly thrice as much for
the pay of the gendarmerie. The citizens replied that they had no money,
but would give a thousand hogsheads of excellent wine. Whether the wine
was accepted, or whether any of the citizens were imprisoned for the
misdemeanour of being pennyless, I cannot say.
Immense sums were raised by the sale of offices. For the title of
counsellor of the court, 75,000 crowns were paid, and 90,000 for a place
at the board of exchequer. Numerous purchasers were found at far higher
prices. There is perhaps much truth in Patin’s sarcastic remark on this
occasion: “They must have robbed at a great rate,” says he, “or they
would not have so much money to squander.” Monopolies likewise lent
their aid to replenish the royal store. Niceron, a grocer, who appears
to have been an agent, or spokesman, of the Parisian companies of
tradesmen, was lodged in the Bastile for having ventured to remonstrate
against a projected monopoly of whale oil. Another article of supply
was the stopping of the annuities payable at the town hall; a measure
for which we have seen a precedent in the reign of Henry IV. Poignant,
a respectable citizen of Paris, was sent to the Bastile for having
spoken on this subject; and a female, named Madame de la Trousse, was,
for the same cause, prohibited from going to the town hall, or to any
other meeting, under pain of corporal punishment! On another occasion,
the President le Lievre was banished from Paris, for having made some
observations which were unfavourable to the taxes.
The money thus obtained was lavishly spent on the pomps and amusements of
the court. A part was dissipated at the gaming-table; Louis being then
a constant and an unlucky gamester. Theatrical entertainments absorbed
another portion. The getting up of a single grand ballet is said to
have cost no less than forty thousand pounds. Guy Patin had reason to
exclaim, “they talk much at the Louvre of balls, ballets, and rejoicings,
but nothing is said of relieving the people, who are dying of such
unexampled want, after so great and solemn a general peace has been
concluded. O pudor! ô mores! ô tempora!”
But though, in his private letters, Patin could venture to censure
profusion and exaction, he would soon have been fitted with what he
somewhere calls “a stone doublet,” had he dared to breathe a word
against them in public. It was dangerous even for a barrister to perform
faithfully his duty to a client. M. Burai, an eminent advocate, was
committed to the Bastile, in 1655, for having undertaken the defence of
Guenegaut, one of the treasurers, who was prosecuted by the government.
The press was completely muzzled. We find De Prez, a printer, sent to
the Bastile, for having printed a letter by the Bishop of Aleth, which
displeased the jesuits; a second unlucky typographer, for offending the
Archbishop of Paris; and a third, named Coquier, for privately printing
an answer to a work of the Chevalier Talon, who had attacked Coquier’s
former master, the superintendant Fouquet. It was a perilous task for
a man to defend himself against the minions of favour. The Journal des
Sçavans having abused Charles Patin, he was about to reply, when it was
intimated to him that if he did not desist, the Bastile would receive
him: the journal happened to be protected by M. Colbert, the minister.
Such protection gave a decisive advantage over a less fortunate rival.
The conduct of Renaudot, the printer of the Gazette, affords a strong
proof of the tyrannical use which was made of it. There appears to have
been at this period a sort of partnership, the members of which gained a
livelihood by compiling and vending a manuscript gazette. As the sale of
this paper diminished that of his own, Renaudot made a bold attempt to
get rid of his competitors. He is said to have been extremely desirous
that they should be hanged; but his benevolent wish was not gratified.
He had, however, the satisfaction of procuring seven of them to be sent
to the Bastile, one of whom was publicly whipped through the streets.
Yet these measures, harsh as they were, did not succeed in putting down
the manuscript gazetteers; for, five years afterwards, six more of them
were committed to prison. From its long continuance, and the risks which
the traders were willing to encounter, we may infer that the trade was
productive.
To have a different opinion from the sovereign, as to the merit of any
one whom he placed in office, was a heavy offence. M. de Montespan
expiated, by imprisonment in Fort-l’Evêque, his having doubted the
wisdom of choosing M. Montausier as governor to the dauphin. Some were
thrown into the Bastile for impossible crimes; such was the case of St.
Severin, a priest, who was accused of sorcery. Of others, the fault and
the meaning of their punishment are now undiscoverable. With respect to
L’Epine, a priest, for example, we are only told that he was discharged
from the Bastile, on condition of quitting Paris within twenty-four
hours, and going to Egypt. The reason of this singular species of
banishment must remain an enigma.
One of the instances in which despair prompted an inmate of the Bastile
to commit suicide, occurred in 1669, and is recorded by Patin. “A state
prisoner,” says he, “has poisoned himself in the Bastile, terrified by
the punishment which could not fail to be inflicted on him, for having
spoken very badly _de Domino Priore_.”