1624-1625
Richelieu’s aims--The English alliance--The affair of the
Valtelline--The Huguenot revolt--The marriage of Madame Henriette--The
Duke of Buckingham.
In the brilliant first chapter of Richelieu’s _Testament Politique_,
“Succincte Narration de toutes les grandes Actions du Roi,” written
not long before his death, he reminds Louis XIII. of the circumstances
under which he took office in 1624; when “the Huguenots shared the
State with your Majesty, the great nobles behaved as if they were not
your subjects, and the powerful governors of provinces as if they were
independent sovereigns.... Foreign alliances were despised, private
interests preferred to the public good; in a word, the dignity of the
Royal Majesty was lowered to such a degree, through the fault of those
who had then the chief management of your affairs, that it had almost
ceased to exist.”
“I promised your Majesty,” he continues, “to use all my endeavours and
all the authority that you might be pleased to give me, to ruin the
Huguenot party, to abase the pride of the nobles, to bring all your
subjects back to their duty, and to exalt your name to its proper place
among Foreign Nations. I represented that for the attainment of these
happy ends, your entire confidence was necessary to me.”
The Cardinal had that confidence, without which indeed he could have
done nothing. Experience had taught him that however low “the Royal
Majesty” might have fallen, it was and would remain the centre of
power, the incarnation of France. He was therefore resolved that his
influence with the King should be personal, as well as political. He
had long and thoroughly studied the strange, shy, gloomy, conscientious
young man of four-and-twenty, on whom his own fate and that of the
nation depended. He knew that Louis was quite capable of thinking and
judging for himself, and he made full use not only of his personal
magnetism, but of all the clever political argument which his genius
suggested. Louis was convinced--and the conviction went on deepening
with years--that his own honour and the well-being of his kingdom were
safe in the hands of the new Minister, so frail, keen, brilliant, and
superbly sure of himself. That the King ever came to love Richelieu is
hard to believe, considering all the past, in spite of affectionate
letters; but he certainly admired and trusted him.
The acceptance of the English marriage for Madame Henriette Marie
of France was Richelieu’s first step in the way of return to Henry
IV.’s foreign policy. The idea of an English alliance, of course,
was not originally his. Long before Henry’s youngest child was born,
a marriage had been suggested between one of her elder sisters and
Henry, Prince of Wales. At the same time, Louis the Dauphin was to
have been betrothed to Princess Elizabeth, James the First’s eldest
daughter--a strange destiny for the Protestant heroine, the “Queen
of Hearts,” “th’Eclipse and Glory of her kind!” But Henry’s liking
for England seems to have cooled considerably as time went on, and
his latest political turn, doubtfully and unwillingly made, was in
the direction of the Spanish marriages brought about by Marie de
Médicis. As for Henriette Marie, only six months old when her father
died, he had carelessly promised her hand to the young son of his
cousin the Comte de Soissons. He would probably have broken this
promise. The Queen-Regent had no scruples in doing so, to the rage and
disappointment of Monsieur le Comte.
The present negotiations in their earlier stages were not Richelieu’s
work. He was not in power in 1620, when Luynes, a poor diplomatist,
tried to turn the mind of the English King towards an alliance with
France rather than with Spain; nor in 1623, when the Prince of Wales
and the Duke of Buckingham, those two “venturous knights” lingering
incognito in Paris on their way to Madrid, witnessed a ballet at
the Louvre in which Princess Henriette, now thirteen years old, was
dancing. It was afterwards said that Charles fell in love with the
graceful little lady on that occasion, so that his failure to capture
the Infanta of Spain troubled him little personally. As to Buckingham,
who with all his faults and frivolities had some of the ideas of a
statesman, he was already inclined to the French alliance, seeing in
it the one means of defending the foreign Protestants and balancing
the power of Spain. Through the winter of 1623-4, envoys of more or
less dignity were passing between London and Paris, and the marriage
was talked of openly. All this time, no doubt, Richelieu was in favour
of it, and his influence, as the Queen-mother’s chief adviser, set
that way; but long delays dragged out the affair, even after the
coming of the English Ambassadors Extraordinary, Lord Holland and
Lord Carlisle. The chief difficulty, as with Spain, was the religious
question. La Vieuville’s weakness as to this, in Richelieu’s opinion,
nearly wrecked the negotiations. After he himself became a Minister
in April, there was no more danger that France would, in Carlisle’s
words, “be ridden with a discreet high hand.” The delays were of
Richelieu’s causing, and the “high hand” was that of France. He meant
to oppose Spain and the Empire and to assist--with discretion--the
German and Dutch Protestants; but he also meant the Catholic Church
to be honoured and protected in England and triumphant in France. In
August, when he had arrived at supreme power, the English ambassadors
found that there was no more dallying and giving way. If they wanted
the alliance, they must accept the conditions, and very stringent
these were. By the treaty of November 1624, subject to the Pope’s
most unwillingly granted dispensation, Madame Henriette was to go to
England with an establishment of French Catholics, including a bishop
and twenty-eight priests, and was to have a “large chapel” in every one
of her residences; while all imprisoned English Catholics were to be
released, all confiscations of their property reversed, and safety and
toleration assured them for the future. Louis XIII. and Richelieu had
to consent that these last articles should be secret, since the King of
England declared it impossible to present them to his Parliament.
Another difficult affair that called for Richelieu’s management was
that of the Valtelline.
The Val Tellina, rich in vineyards, through which the river Adda,
descending from its mountain source near Bormio, runs down its stony
bed to fall into the Lake of Como, had long been a bone of contention
for the Powers. It belonged to the Grison Leagues, old allies of
France, and the first difficulties arose when its Catholic inhabitants
rebelled against the oppressions of their Protestant masters. This was
in 1620. On a Sunday long remembered the Protestants of the valley
were massacred. Then a Spanish army came up from Milan to stand by the
Catholics in their struggle with the enraged Grisons. The Thirty Years
War was already two years old, and the Val Tellina was of European
importance as the best and almost the only passage for armies between
the Milanese and the Tyrol. Here the Emperor and the King of Spain
could join hands, much to the disadvantage of the Protestant powers and
of France. Naturally therefore the Spaniards took possession of the
valley and its strongholds, and the Grison Leagues resisted them in
vain.
France interfered, but only in the way of diplomacy. By the Treaty of
Madrid, in 1621, the new Spanish forts were to be razed and the valley
restored to the Grisons, who promised amnesty and toleration. But this
treaty was not carried into effect. Louis XIII. was too deeply engaged
in fighting his own Protestants to undertake the defence of Protestants
in Switzerland, and France held aloof under her weak Ministers while
the Archduke Leopold swooped down upon the Grisons and once more
deprived them of the Val Tellina, besides forcing them to surrender to
Austria the Engadine and other districts.
Still France hesitated, and it was only the strong remonstrances
of the Duke of Savoy, the Venetian ambassador, and the Constable de
Lesdiguières--himself a converted Huguenot--who saw the valley made
an armed highway for the enemies of France, Venice, and Savoy, that
brought Louis to insist on the carrying out of the Treaty of Madrid.
In the winter of 1622-3--Richelieu being in the background, and
advising the King through Marie de Médicis, to the displeasure of the
Brûlarts--the three Powers made a league to this end, agreeing to raise
an army of forty thousand men.
The valley was too precious to be easily renounced by Spain, and
yet she did not wish to fight France and Savoy. Philip IV. and his
Ministers found a way out by calling Pope Gregory XV. to the rescue,
and the warlike ardour of France was easily cooled. The Treaty of
Madrid was laid aside, and Louis XIII. consented that the fortresses of
the Valtelline should be placed in the hands of the Pope, pending their
demolition and a new arrangement of the whole affair. It was understood
that the Spaniards and Austrians would no longer pretend to any rights
over the valley, and that all foreign occupation would cease in three
months’ time.
Nothing of the sort happened. Gregory XV. was succeeded by Urban VIII.
in the summer of 1623. When, after a long delay, the new Pope invited
Spain to fulfil her engagements, she declined absolutely. The free
passage of the Valtelline for her troops was a military advantage not
to be given up. The Pope did not insist: the action of surrendering the
Valtelline, with its Catholic population, to the tender mercies of the
Protestant Grisons, seemed to him wicked and impious.
This was the state of things in the autumn of 1624, when Cardinal de
Richelieu came into his own. There were surprises in store both for the
Pope and for Spain. Philip IV. and his Ministers had little fear of
France; the policy of his royal brother-in-law had as yet been anything
but energetic. Urban VIII. and the rest of the Catholic world found it
hard to believe that a Cardinal would fight against Rome.
The Pope was asked, in a polite but peremptory fashion, either to
destroy the fortresses or to deliver them back to Spain, with whom
France would then deal direct; and in any case to withdraw his troops
at once from the valley. He temporised and negotiated in Spain’s
favour. Richelieu’s patience was soon exhausted. The early winter saw
Switzerland overrun by French troops under the Marquis de Cœuvres, who
drove the Austrians back into the Tyrol, swooped down by Poschiavo on
Tirano, and in a few weeks’ time had taken all the forts and driven the
papal troops out of the Valtelline.
In the course of the same winter Richelieu took advantage of a quarrel
between the Duke of Savoy and the Republic of Genoa to support the Duke
with an army under Lesdiguières, aided by a Dutch fleet, in an attack
on Genoese territory. Richelieu had indeed no intention of conquering
Genoa or of strengthening Savoy; but the Republic was Spain’s richest
and most useful ally, and such an attack could not fail to harass her
terribly while she was losing her position in the Valtelline, and to
weaken her power in Italy.
At this crisis in foreign affairs discontent at home rose furious, and
might have wrecked a smaller man. Richelieu found himself suddenly
beset with a swarm of enemies, private and public. The campaign in
favour of the Swiss Protestants, the strong opposition to Rome and to
Spain, enraged society and the Church; and while this storm was only
beginning to grumble, the French Huguenots broke out into sudden, most
untimely rebellion.
The Treaty of Montpellier had left them discontented. Their last war
had ended, in the autumn of 1622, with submissions and renunciations
hard to be borne by so proud and independent a party. If the King was
bound to observe the Edict of Nantes, which assured them toleration,
they, on their side, were forced to dismantle their fortifications,
and to cease from all assemblies not strictly religious. Two strong
places only, La Rochelle and Montauban, were left in their hands. The
Duc de Rohan, now their chief leader--the old Duc de Bouillon died in
1623--was deprived of his provincial governments, though indemnified
by smaller posts and large sums of money. Also the King promised the
destruction of Fort Louis, built by him to command the entrance to the
harbour of La Rochelle. This last article of the treaty was not carried
out: hence great displeasure in the Protestant camp.
In the eyes of some politicians, notably the Pope’s Nuncio, the Peace
of Montpellier, with its concessions to rebel subjects, was somewhat
disgraceful to the King of France. Richelieu was of the same opinion,
to judge by his own words. But he was too wise not to let the sleeping
dogs of the kingdom lie. Civil war was at all times the last thing
he desired; and at this moment, with two foreign campaigns on his
hands,--campaigns against the great enemies of Protestantism--the
active disloyalty of the Duc de Rohan moved him to high indignation.
Writing on January 12, 1625, to M. de la Ville-aux-Clercs, Ambassador
Extraordinary in London--employed, with the Marquis d’Effiat, in the
final arrangements for the royal marriage--Richelieu says:
“You know how the Huguenots have cut out work for us, sending ships
to sea and seizing the Isle of Ré.... Never was so bad an action as
this of the Antichrist brothers, who, seeing the King at war for the
interests and dignity of the Crown, take up arms to trouble the feast.”
To the French ambassador at Rome--M. de Marquemont, Archbishop of Lyons
and afterwards Cardinal--Richelieu writes on January 27:
“The news you have heard of the Huguenots is only too true: incited by
the devil or others equally bad, they have shown their evil will by a
surprise entry into the Port of Blavet, landing with cannon, with which
they battered the fort for two days.... The King has news that, the
whole province hurrying against them, they have already re-embarked
in order to escape, and are carrying off two or three ships of M. de
Nevers, which were in the harbour.”
The “_frères antichristi_” were Henry Duc de Rohan and his brother
Benjamin, Duc de Soubise. They were the two actively distinguished
leaders who remained to the Huguenot party: Le Plessis-Mornay was
dead; the Duc de Lesdiguières had changed his religion and become
Constable of France; the Marquis de la Force, a brave and very
provincial old soldier, and Gaspard de Coligny, Duc de Châtillon, held
loyally to the Peace of Montpellier, and each accepted a Marshal’s
bâton from the King; the new Duc de Bouillon was content to watch
events from his north-eastern citadel of Sedan.
Thus the interior peace of France was largely in the hands of the
brothers Rohan, of whom the younger was a firebrand, an adventurer,
never happy unless employed in some foolhardy enterprise, though
capable, on occasion, of running away; one of those restless spirits to
whom religion meant opposition to law and authority; the very type of
the fighting Huguenot, robber on land and pirate by sea. Such men, to
whom nothing was sacred, were indeed to be found under both religious
banners, one and all the opponents of royalty and of Richelieu.
Henry, first Duc de Rohan, was a different kind of person. A sincere
Protestant, he carried out in his life the stern morality of his
creed. He had a genius for war, wrote brilliantly on tactics, but
was a diplomat as well as a soldier, and those who knew him best saw
in that thoughtful character as much personal ambition as religious
conscience. Both brothers were influenced by their ancestry. They were
descended from the old Kings of Navarre through Isabeau, daughter of
Jean d’Albret; and if the sons of Henry IV. died childless, which
seemed not unlikely, Henry de Rohan was the next heir to the kingdom of
Navarre. He had been acknowledged as such, in his youth, by Henry IV.
What the Spaniards had left of that kingdom was now united to the crown
of France. Thus the Duke may very well have seen in himself a possible
pretender, a rival to Condé and the Bourbons, at a dreamed-of moment
when the strongest would win.
And his mother, Catherine de Parthenay-Soubise, was not the woman to
discourage such lifelong fancies in her sons. Fairy blood, that of the
Lusignans, ran in her veins; “grande rêveuse,” her absence of mind and
many oddities were the talk of Paris; her favourite vision was that of
the Duc de Nevers and Père Joseph, a crusade against the Turks. We are
told that she was not pleased when Henry IV., whom she disliked, made
her eldest son a Duke, her husband being the eleventh Viscount of his
name. According to the proud old family motto, that name alone made its
bearer a King’s equal.
Madame de Rohan had more reason to be discontented at her son’s
marriage, arranged by Henry, with Marguerite de Béthune, daughter
of the Duc de Sully, then a mere child. They were married in the
Protestant temple at Charenton, and the story goes that the famous
and waggish minister Du Moulin asked aloud, when the little girl
in her white frock was led up to him--“Do you present this child
to be baptised?” The white robe of innocence did not long suit the
Duchesse de Rohan, and never had a good man a worse wife. Very pretty,
attractive and clever, she led a life worthier of the Valois Court
than of the fine old Huguenot houses of Sully and Rohan. Not even
Madame de Chevreuse, herself a Rohan by birth, was more free of moral
restraint. The Duc de Rohan, concerned with greater matters, seemed
superbly unconscious of his wife’s love-affairs, and turned away coolly
from the shocked pastors who tried to enlighten him. In a political
sense, they were one. Whenever her husband needed her help, Madame de
Rohan sent her lovers to the right-about, plotted for him, followed
him in his campaigns. In the winter of 1625, when the Duc de Rohan was
trying to support his brother’s naval raid by a revolt in Languedoc,
Aubery describes how “the Duchesse de Rohan his wife acted with no
less vigour, and, as if it were her design to throw terror into vulgar
minds, travelled often by night with torches, in a mourning coach drawn
by eight black horses.”
“Suscités par le diable ou quelques autres qui ne valent pas mieux.” No
doubt the Cardinal had accurate knowledge of the influences, diabolical
or other, which had brought about the Huguenot rising at this awkward
moment. It was partly the work of the angry people of La Rochelle, who
saw their town perpetually threatened by royal forts on land and their
harbour watched by royal ships at sea. They counted on the help of the
Protestant powers, England and Holland, to make a favourable bargain
with the King’s government, already entangled in the Swiss and Genoese
campaigns. And they were backed up in a quarter which might well have
been unexpected. The money that provided Soubise with ships came from
Spain. Rohan and he, more than once treating secretly with the enemies
of France, may not have deserved Richelieu’s epithet of “Antichristi,”
but were certainly anti-patriotic.
As the Cardinal wrote to the ambassadors, the Duc de Soubise, not
content with seizing the Isle of Ré and thus commanding La Rochelle,
had sailed north and pounced on the harbour of Blavet, on the Brittany
coast, at the mouth of the river below Hennebon. The harbour had been
fortified by Louis XIII. in the former civil wars, and was known as
Port Louis. Six battleships were now lying there, five of which did not
belong to the King, but had been lent him by the Duc de Nevers. Soubise
took the town and the ships--including the famous great _Vierge_,
of eighty guns--and attacked the castle, which held out long enough
for the Duc de Vendôme, governor of Brittany, to come to the rescue.
Soubise then escaped to sea, but with difficulty, carrying four of
his prizes with him; and sailing like a bold pirate southward, taking
the island of Oléron as a base for his operations, became a terror to
vessels of war or merchandise all along the coast. Later on he stormed
up the Gironde in support of the Duc de Rohan, who had already set
Guienne and Languedoc in a blaze.
All this trouble, arising at such an unwelcome moment, caused terrible
agitation among the King’s councillors. Most of them, says Richelieu,
were “si éperdus,” that they saw no choice but between immediate peace
with Spain and submission to all the Huguenot demands. He himself would
have no such craven yielding to the storm. With little slackening of
energy in the Swiss and Genoese campaigns, he set to work to crush the
revolt at home, acting on the medical maxim that a small internal
injury is more to be feared than one greater and more painful, but
external only.
His understanding with England and Holland now bore some fruit.
Their statesmen, less consistent than their populations, did not
refuse to support him against his rebels, in spite of their religion.
England, already on the edge of war with Spain, sent eight ships to
the help of the French Government; the Dutch fleet was diverted from
the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, and twenty French ships made up
a fleet of fifty or sixty sail, commanded in chief by Duke Henry de
Montmorency, High Admiral of France. Richelieu had not much faith
in this young man, the late Constable’s only son and the Princesse
de Condé’s brother--one of the handsomest and boldest of the fierce
order that the Cardinal meant to subdue. But as far as Montmorency was
concerned the time of vengeance was not yet. He and the Dutch Admiral,
after a long fight with Soubise on the sea, scattered his fleet, took
the islands of Ré and Oléron, and came very near to capture La Rochelle
itself.
Here Richelieu held his hand. He was not yet ready for that great
siege, or for the final crushing of the Protestant power in France.
On May 11, when the Huguenot revolt was in full swing, Princess
Henriette, low of stature, with lovely black eyes and obstinate mouth,
was married by proxy at Notre Dame to the new King of England. A high
stage was set up outside the west doors of the cathedral, and on this
the ceremony was performed, after the pattern of the wedding of Henry
IV. and Marguerite de Valois: a Protestant prince could not be married
within the walls. Here may have lain some foretaste of sadness for her
who was to be known as _la Reine Malheureuse_, though she was ready,
with strong religious faith, to accept the almost missionary character
of Queen of a heretic country, an Esther for her own people. But the
tones of warning were silent that day. She had not even received the
letter in which Marie de Médicis, inspired by the Père de Bérulle--not
by Richelieu, though he claims that credit in his _Memoirs_--laid down
in eloquent sentences the duties of her new life. For the bride of
fifteen all was joy and festival. King Charles’s proxy was Claude, Duc
de Chevreuse, of royal blood, a younger son of Henry le Balafré and
brother of Charles, Duc de Guise. He was one of the handsomest and most
splendid of Louis XIII.’s courtiers, and his famous wife, the widow
of Luynes, Queen Anne’s favourite lady, possessed all the magnificent
confiscated jewellery of the unlucky Maréchale d’Ancre. This gorgeous
pair were to escort the young Queen to England.
After the ceremony, at which the Duc de Chevreuse acted his part of a
Protestant prince to admiration, a royal banquet was held in the hall
of the Archbishop’s palace, then close to the cathedral.
“There were bonfires in all the streets of Paris,” writes Richelieu,
“and lights in the windows, which turned night into brilliant day. The
Cardinal, who with such pains and prudence had brought this alliance to
a happy end, feeling obliged to show his contentment, which exceeded
that of all others, presented their Majesties and the Court with a
supper and fireworks which were worthy of the magnificence of France.”
The Cardinal’s high contentment did not last long. At the moment there
were reasons for it: slight hopes, which soon faded, of a swift end
to the revolt; the arrival of the Pope’s nephew and legate, Cardinal
Barberini, to negotiate a peaceful settlement of the Valtelline affair.
Then all was upset, in Richelieu’s view, by the descent on Paris of the
Duke of Buckingham.
Ostensibly, that great personage came as his master’s special
representative, to fetch home Charles’s Queen. In Paris “his Person and
Presence was wonderfully admired and esteemed” ... “he out-shined,”
as Lord Clarendon tells us, “all the bravery that Court could dress
itself in, and over-acted the whole Nation in their own most peculiar
Vanities.”
Cardinal de Richelieu’s “pains and prudence” had not been in order to
the satisfying of this gentleman, who unluckily ruled both fashion and
politics in England, and he was by no means disposed to make peace or
war at Buckingham’s bidding. For the Duke’s visit was far from being
one of mere courtesy. He had two political ends in view: first, to
defeat the Pope’s legate and to keep France at war with Spain; second,
to make so close an alliance with France that she would be bound to
fight for the restoration of the Elector Palatine to his dominions.
Richelieu would have none of this state of bondage. Louis XIII., led by
him, stood firm and independent. He would accept peace with Spain when
he judged it advisable, and he would not throw himself into the war in
Germany, except by allowing Count Mansfeldt, on the Protestant side, to
be reinforced by a couple of thousand French horse at the expense of
those who employed them. This concession, which does not sound great,
was made with the view of keeping England in a good temper, at least so
long as the King of France had his Huguenot rebels to contend with.
Buckingham pressed for peace in that direction, but was answered, with
sufficient haughtiness, that in the interest of the King his master he
ought to be silent. “For no prince,” said Richelieu, “should assist,
even by words, the rebellious subjects of another.”
Buckingham promised, swaggered, threatened a little. He would send a
hundred ships to ravage the coast of Spain, and would land an army of
15,000 men in Flanders, if King Louis would supply 6000 cavalry. He
would conquer Artois and make a present of it to France. But if the
French received these offers coldly, England would seek the friendship
of Spain and recover the Palatinate by treaty.
To which Richelieu replied that it was for the English to consider
whether it would be for their advantage to send a fleet to Spain and an
army to Flanders; that his King advised them to think well beforehand
whether these would be the best means of recovering the Palatinate. If
the same result could be gained by treaty, he advised them to prefer
the latter course. As to the polite offer of Artois, the King of France
had no wish for conquests, and in marrying his sister to the King of
England desired no acquisition but his friendship.
Between the lines of the _Memoirs_ it is easy to read Richelieu’s
scornful dislike of the splendid upstart who ruled England and tried
to play the game of politics with him; a dislike which deepened into
distrust and uneasiness later, when Buckingham’s cause for quarrel with
the French government had become that of a passionate, disappointed man
rather than that of a politician, however foolhardy.
The story of Henrietta’s progress to Calais has often been told;
a story in which the interest quite leaves Charles’s little bride
to centre itself round the beautiful young Queen of France and the
love-affair in which Buckingham, at least, was desperately in earnest.
Her husband’s unkind neglect might have given the Queen every excuse,
even if her dearest friend, Madame de Chevreuse, had not been a
standing example of the morals favoured by society. It is certain
that Anne was strongly attracted by the great charmer of his age; but
religion and Spanish dignity, not to mention the care of her elder
ladies and the watchfulness of the Court, were a sufficient protection.
Only the most notorious scandal-mongers dared to hint otherwise.
Lord Clarendon’s very discreet account of the affair sets forth plainly
the political result of Buckingham’s anger.
“In his Embassy in France ... he had the Ambition to fix his Eyes
upon, and to dedicate his most violent Affection to, a Lady of a very
sublime Quality; Insomuch as when the King had brought the Queen his
Sister as far as he meant to do, and delivered her into the hands of
the Duke to be by him conducted into England; the Duke, in his Journey,
after the departure of that Court, took a resolution once more to make
a visit to that great Lady, which he believ’d he might do with much
privacy. But it was so easily discover’d, that provision was made for
his Reception; and if he had pursued his Attempt, he had been without
doubt Assassinated; of which he had only so much notice, as serv’d him
to decline the Danger. But he swore, in the instant, ‘that he would
See and Speak with that Lady, in Spight of the Strength and Power of
France.’ And from the time that the Queen arriv’d in England, he took
all the ways he could to Undervalue and Exasperate that Court and
Nation, by causing all those who fled into England from the justice
and displeasure of that King, to be receiv’d and entertain’d here, not
only with ceremony and security, but with bounty and magnificence; and
the more extraordinary the Persons were, and the more notorious their
King’s displeasure was towards them (as at that time there were very
many Lords and Ladies in those circumstances) the more respectfully
they were receiv’d, and esteem’d. He omitted no opportunity to Incense
the King against France, and to dispose him to assist the Hugonots,
whom he likewise encourag’d to give their King some trouble....”
Among these “extraordinary Persons” was the Duc de Soubise, who fled
to the English coast after his defeat at sea and remained in England,
welcome alike to lords and commons; doing his best the while to shake
down the already tottering friendship between Charles I. and his royal
French brother-in-law.