Serious illness of the young King, who, however,
recovers--Bassompierre and Mlle. d’Urfé--Gay winter in
Paris--Richelieu enters the Ministry as Secretary of State for
War--His foreign policy--His energetic measures to put down the
rebellion of the Princes--Return of Concini--His arrogance and
presumption--Singular conversation between Bassompierre and
Concini, after the death of the latter’s daughter--Policy pursued
by Marie de’ Medici and Concini towards Louis XIII--Humiliating
position of the young King--His favourite, Charles d’Albert,
Seigneur de Luynes--Bassompierre warns the Queen-Mother that the
King may be persuaded to revolt against her authority.
At the end of October, Louis XIII fell ill, and on All-Hallows’ Eve “had
a convulsion, which it was apprehended would develop into apoplexy.” His
physicians were of opinion that if he had a second attack it would
probably prove fatal; and Marie de’ Medici, on learning of this, sent
for Bassompierre and kept him at the Louvre all night, so as to be in
readiness to summon the Swiss to her support, in the event of the King’s
death. However, the young monarch passed a good night, and by the
morning all danger was over.
On the following day, Bassompierre set out for Burgundy, at the head of
300 cavalry, to meet and take command of a new levy of two regiments of
Swiss, raised to assist the Government in dealing with the rebellious
Princes. He left Paris with no little reluctance, since he had just
embarked in a new love-affair with Mlle. d’Urfé, who is described by
Tallemant des Réaux as the flower of the Queen’s maids-of-honour; and it
was naturally most provoking to have to go campaigning at such a moment.
However, love had to give place to duty.
Bassompierre’s orders were to hold the Swiss and his little force of
cavalry at the disposal of Bellegarde, Governor of Burgundy, who had
been sent into the Bresse to the assistance of Charles Emmanuel’s heir,
the Prince of Piedmont, who was defending Savoy against an army
commanded by his kinsman, the Duc de Nemours. This army had originally
been raised by Nemours to co-operate with the forces of Charles Emmanuel
in the war which had broken out between him and Spain; but the duke had
been persuaded, by the specious promises of the Governor of Milan, to
turn it against his relatives. However, on reaching Provins,
Bassompierre learned that, through the intervention of Bellegarde, a
treaty had been signed between the Prince of Piedmont and Nemours, and
that the latter had disbanded his army.
At Saint-Jean de Losne, near Beaune, he met the Swiss, and, having
administered to them the usual oath of fidelity, led them to
Châtillon-sur-Seine, where he received orders to send one regiment into
the Nivernais and the other into Champagne, to be distributed amongst
different garrisons in those provinces.
At the beginning of December, he returned to Paris, eager to sun himself
once more in the smiles of Mlle. d’Urfé; and his disgust may therefore
be imagined when, scarcely had he arrived, than he received a visit from
his kinsman, the wealthy Duc de Cröy,[112] who informed him that the
same lady’s charms had made so deep an impression upon him that he
proposed to lay, not only his heart, but his ancient title and all his
possessions at her feet. And, all unconscious that his relative had a
prior claim to Mlle. d’Urfé’s affections, he begged him to make, on his
behalf, a formal proposal for her hand to her parents.
Dissimulating his mortification, Bassompierre accepted this commission;
but, as he is not ashamed to confess, with the intention of preventing
the marriage, if by any means that could be effected. However, “his
efforts were in vain, for the duke surmounted all the difficulties that
he put in his way,” and at the beginning of 1617 Mlle. d’Urfé became
Duchesse de Cröy.
Bassompierre did not, as we may suppose, waste much time in regrets for
the loss of his inamorata, since, notwithstanding that a civil war was
in progress and that almost every day brought such cheerful intelligence
as that one gentleman’s château had been sacked or another’s unfortunate
tenants rendered homeless, the winter of 1617 in Paris was a very gay
one, and what with dancing, gambling and love-making, his days and
nights must have been pretty well occupied:--
“I won that year at the game of trictrac, from M. de Guise, M. de
Joinville and the Maréchal d’Ancre, 100,000 crowns. I was not out
of favour at the Court, nor with the ladies, and had a number of
beautiful mistresses.”
To turn, however, from trivial to important matters.
* * * * *
At the end of 1616 Bassompierre writes in his journal:
“During my journey to Burgundy, the Seals had been taken away from
M. du Vair and given to Mangot, and Mangot’s charge of Secretary of
State to M. de Lusson.”
Now, the “M. de Lusson” of whom Bassompierre speaks was none other than
Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, Bishop of Luçon, afterwards
Cardinal de Richelieu, who on November 30, 1616, had entered the
Ministry as Secretary of State for War.
Scarcely had this great man touched public affairs than it was
recognised that a firmer and surer hand was guiding the helm; a new
spirit seemed to be infused into the Government. The tone of Henri IV
suddenly reappeared in French diplomacy, and the ambassadors at Courts
opposed to the pretensions of the House of Austria, justly alarmed by
the Spanish marriages, were instructed to inform the sovereigns to whom
they were accredited that these marriages were by no means to be
regarded as portending any intention on the part of the Very Christian
King to embrace the interests of Spain or the Holy See, to the detriment
of the old alliances of France or to the principle of religious
toleration in his realm.
And, at the same time as he reassured the old allies of France,
Richelieu took energetic measures to put down rebellion at home. He
appealed to public opinion by the issue of pamphlets and proclamations,
in which he effectively combated the arguments advanced by the Princes
to justify their revolt, and pointed out that these same men who
complained of the disorder of the finances had themselves bled the State
to the tune of over fourteen million livres--he gave a schedule showing
the sums paid to each of them--not counting the emoluments of the
charges bestowed upon them and the pensions and _gratifications_
accorded to their friends and servants.
Nor did he confine himself to words. This time, the Government, inspired
by him, showed none of its accustomed pusillanimity. A royal declaration
was launched against Nevers, who, now that Condé was in prison, had
assumed the leadership of his party; a second against Mayenne, Vendôme,
and Bouillon; three armies were raised to take the field against them,
which one by one reduced their strongholds to submission; the estates of
many of their supporters were sequestrated; soldiers who had taken up
arms to join them were, if captured, hanged without mercy; and, finally,
a decree, duly registered by the Parlement, notwithstanding that it
struck at at least one of that body, provided for the confiscation of
the property of all the rebels.
It was the misfortune of Richelieu and his colleagues that they passed
for the creatures of a foreign favourite detested by everyone. At the
beginning of December, 1616, Concini, who had remained in Normandy since
the scene at the Hôtel de Condé which had led to his compulsory
withdrawal from the capital, returned to Paris, more arrogant and more
presumptuous than ever, and burning to avenge the humiliations he had
suffered. To strike terror into the partisans of the Princes, he caused
gibbets to be erected in different parts of the town; he “caused
everyone to be watched and spied upon, even in the houses, to see who
entered or left Paris,” and “imprisoned those who gave him the smallest
umbrage, without any form of trial.” Already in possession of the
citadel of Caen, he occupied the Pont-de-l’Arche, the strongest fortress
in Normandy; proposed to rebuild the fort of Sainte-Catherine, above
Rouen, which had been destroyed during the Wars of Religion; acquired by
purchase the governments of Meulan, Pontoise, and Corbeil; offered
Bassompierre 600,000 livres for his post of Colonel-General of the
Swiss, and was credited with the intention of getting himself named
Constable of France. It was evident that he contemplated making himself
a sort of king in Normandy, and that, when the Princes were crushed,
there would be no limits to his ambition. He had, however, at the
beginning of 1617, a moment of alarm and despondency. The death of his
only daughter, Marie Concini, to whom he was tenderly attached and for
whom he had dreamed of some alliance which would unite his fortunes to
those of one of the great families of France, struck him with a
superstitious fear, as the precursor of the ruin of himself and his
wife.
“The marshal’s daughter fell ill and died,” writes Bassompierre,
“at which both he and his wife were cruelly afflicted. I shall
relate a conversation which passed between him and myself on the
day of her death, by which one may see that he had a prevision of
what afterwards happened to him.
“I went to visit him on the morning of that day, and again after
dinner, at that little house on the Quai du Louvre to which he and
his wife had retired. But he had given orders that I was to be
requested to defer our interview until some other time, and
afterwards he sent to ask me to come to see him at his house in the
evening. Finding him in sore distress, I endeavoured sometimes to
console, sometimes to divert, him; but his grief augmented the more
I spoke to him, and he answered nothing to all I said, save:
‘Signor, I am undone! Signor, I am ruined! Signor, I am miserable!’
At last, I bade him consider the character of a marshal of France,
which he represented, and which did not permit of him indulging in
lamentations, pardonable in his wife, but unworthy of him. And I
went on to say that assuredly he had lost a very amiable daughter
and one who would have been very useful to advance his fortunes,
but that he had four nieces to take his daughter’s place, who might
afford him as much consolation, if he brought them to live with
him, and much support to his fortunes, by means of alliances with
four of the great families of France, of which he would have the
choice. And I said several other things which God inspired me to
tell him. At length, after weeping for some time, he said to me:--
“‘Ah, Monsieur! I do truly regret my daughter, and shall regret her
so long as I live. Yet am I a man who could patiently endure such
an affliction; but the ruin of myself, my wife, my son,[113] and my
family which I see approaching before my eyes and which, owing to
the obstinacy of my wife, is inevitable, makes me lament and lose
all patience. I reveal this to you as to a true friend, from whom I
have all my life received assistance and friendship, and to whom, I
confess, I have not rendered the like, or acted as I should and
might have done. But, _basta!_ I will make amends, please God!
Know, Monsieur, that ever since I mingled with the world I have
learned to know it, and to see, not only the elevation of fortunes
but their decline and fall; and that a man attains to a certain
point of felicity, after which he descends or falls headlong,
according to the height which he has reached. If you did not know
the meanness of my origin, I should endeavour to disguise it from
you; but you saw me in Florence, debauched, dissolute; sometimes in
prison, sometimes banished, and always plunged in a disorderly and
evil course of life. I was born a gentleman and of good parentage;
but when I came to France, I had not a sou and owed 8,000 crowns.
My marriage and the favour of the Queen gave me great influence
during the lifetime of the late King, and brought me much wealth,
advancement, charges and honours during the regency of the Queen;
and I laboured to second and push on Fortune as much as any man
could have done, so long as I perceived that she was favourable.
But when I recognised that she was ceasing to favour me, and that
she was giving me warnings of her departure and her flight, I
resolved to make an honourable retreat and to enjoy in peace, with
my wife, the great riches which the liberality of the Queen had
bestowed upon us or our own industry had acquired. For which
reason, for some months past, I have importuned my wife in vain,
and at every blow I receive from Fortune I renew my entreaties.
When I saw that a powerful party had arisen in France which had
taken me for the pretext for its revolt, and had proclaimed me one
of the five tyrants whom it was seeking to destroy;[114] when M.
Dolet, who was my creature,[115] my counsellor, my trusted friend,
and, I may say, my servant, died; when an infamous shoemaker of
Paris put an affront upon me--upon me, a marshal of France!--when I
was forced to quit my establishments in Picardy and my citadel of
Amiens, and to leave Ancre as a prey to M. de Longueville, my
enemy; when I was compelled to retire, or rather to fly, into
Normandy, I represented to my wife that amongst the great
obligations we owed to God, that of warning us to retreat was not
the least. We have seen since then our house sacked, with the loss
of more than 200,000 crowns; and we have seen two of our people
hanged before our faces for having given, as we ordered them, a
beating to that scoundrel of a shoemaker. What had we to wait for
but the death of my daughter to warn us that our ruin is at hand,
but that there is yet the chance to escape, if we resolve promptly
to seek a retreat. For this I have provided by offering the Pope
600,000 crowns for the usufruct during our lives of the duchy of
Ferrara, where we might have passed the remainder of our days in
peace and have still left two millions in gold to our children. And
this I will make apparent to you. We have real property to the
value of at least a million livres in France: in the marquisate of
Ancre, Lesigny, my house in the Faubourg (Saint-Germain) and this
one. I have redeemed our estate at Florence, which was mortgaged,
and my share in it is worth 100,000 crowns. I have a million livres
besides, even after the pillage of our house, in furniture, jewels,
plate and money. My wife and I have also appointments which will
sell for a million livres at a fair valuation, in those of
Normandy, First Gentleman of the Chamber, Intendant of the Queen’s
Household, and _dame d’atours_, retaining my office of marshal of
France. I have 600,000 crowns invested with Fedeau,[116] and more
than 100,000 pistoles in other concerns. Might we not, Monsieur, be
content with this? Have we anything further to wish for, if we do
not desire to offend God, Who is warning us by such evident signs
of our entire ruin? I have been all the afternoon with my wife
imploring her to retire; I have been on my knees before her,
seeking to persuade her the more effectively. But she is more
determined than ever to remain, and reproaches me with wishing to
abandon the Queen, who has given us, or enabled us to acquire, so
many honours and so much wealth. Monsieur, I see myself so
irremediably ruined that, if I were not, as everyone knows, under
such great obligations to my wife, I would leave her and go where
neither the nobles nor the people of France would come to seek me.
Judge, Monsieur, whether I have not reason for my distress, and
whether, apart from the loss of my daughter, the approach of this
second disaster ought not to torment me doubly.’
“I said what I could to console him and divert him from these
thoughts,” concludes Bassompierre, “and withdrew. I wish to show
from this discourse how men, especially those whom Fortune has
elevated, have inspirations and forebodings of disaster, without
possessing the resolution to prevent or escape it.”
Concini’s despondency passed as quickly as it had come, and scarcely was
his daughter in her grave, than he was once more flaunting his wealth
and his power in the faces of Court and town. No Prince of the Blood had
ever gone abroad attended by a more numerous or more gorgeous retinue;
his pride was so great that he scarcely deigned to notice the existence
of any but the great nobles; while, as for the Ministers, he regarded
them as his servants, and not finding them sufficiently docile, planned
to replace them by creatures of his own. Marie de’ Medici herself began
to grow weary of the presumption of the husband and the ill-humour of
the wife, who appears to have been a martyr to neuralgia, and often
treated her mistress in a manner against which even the Queen-Mother’s
sluggish nature rebelled. At length, she suggested the advisability of
the precious pair returning to Florence with the spoil which they had
amassed; but Concini wished to tempt Fortune to the end.
Fortune, however, might have smiled on him for some time longer, if only
he had possessed sufficient foresight to assure himself of the affection
of the young King. Unhappily for him, he had done just the contrary. On
his advice, the Queen-Mother had pursued towards Louis XIII much the
same policy which Catherine de’ Medici had adopted in the case of
Charles IX, and carefully kept at a distance from her son all those whom
she considered might attempt to inspire him with a thought of ambition.
But, less astute than Catherine, Marie had seen no reason to distrust a
Provençal gentleman, Charles Albert, Seigneur de Luynes, twenty-three
years older than the King, who excelled in the training of hawks and
falcons. Falconry was a sport in which Louis XIII delighted above all
others, and he soon became so much attached to Luynes that his
_gouverneur_ Souvré grew jealous and forbade the latter to enter the
King’s chamber. Héroard, Louis XIII’s first physician, relates in his
curious _Journal_ that the lad was overcome by grief and indignation on
learning of this; begged his mother to dismiss Souvré, and “from excess
of anger, had five days of fever.” From “Master of the birds of the
Cabinet” the young King made his favourite chief of his
gentlemen-in-ordinary, and in 1615 gave him the government of Amboise.
Notwithstanding that her son had now, according to the laws of France,
attained his majority, Marie de’ Medici excluded him from Councils and
all discussion of State affairs, and forbade the Ministers and
Counsellors of State even to speak to him, on the ground that his
Majesty’s health was too delicate for him to be troubled with the cares
of his realm. As he grew older, the Queen-Mother and Concini watched him
more closely, and, fearing lest he might escape from them, no longer
allowed him to visit Saint-Germain or Fontainebleau, on the pretext
that, in the disturbed condition of the country, it was unsafe for the
King to leave Paris. For some months past, therefore, the unfortunate
youth, who was passionately fond of hunting, had been deprived of his
favourite amusement, and had found himself reduced to a walk in the
Tuileries, where he might often be seen watching the gardeners at their
work and sometimes helping them.
Often the Maréchal d’Ancre, escorted by two or three hundred gentlemen,
passed through the courtyard of the Louvre, on his way to or from the
Queen-Mother’s apartments, before the eyes of his sovereign, who was
generally accompanied only by Luynes and a few valets; and the young
monarch, who was not without a sense of his kingly dignity, was shocked
that a subject should venture to parade his ill-gotten wealth in this
fashion in his own palace. For, thanks to Luynes, he was by this time
perfectly well-informed as to the source of Concini’s riches. He himself
was habitually kept short of money, and, on one occasion, was unable to
obtain a sum of 2,000 crowns from the Treasury, the Queen-Mother having
given orders that it was to be refused him. And, to complete his
humiliation, Concini offered to advance him the money. The parvenu
boasted of having raised at his own expense a force of 6,000 Liégeois
for service against the Princes, and wrote to the King begging him not
to trouble about the expense which he had incurred for his Majesty’s
service--as though his vast fortune was not entirely composed of the
money of him he was pretending to oblige.[117]
It seems strange that Marie de’ Medici and Concini, so careful to keep
away from the King everyone whom they considered might encourage him to
assert his independence of his mother’s tutelage, should have for so
long entertained no suspicion of Luynes. At length, however, their eyes
began to be opened, and one day towards the end of January, 1617, Luynes
sent one of his servants to Bassompierre to inform him that the
Queen-Mother purposed to exile him (Luynes) from the Court, on the
ground that “he wished to carry off the King and take him out of Paris,”
and to ask for his good offices to disabuse her Majesty’s mind. These
were unnecessary, as it proved to be merely a rumour; but “Luynes made
the King believe that it was the Maréchal d’Ancre who had spread this
report, to see how the King would take it; whereby the King became more
and more incensed against the Maréchal d’Ancre, and high words passed
between Luynes and the said marshal.”
“The same evening,” continues Bassompierre, “as the Queen was
speaking to me about this matter, I said to her: ‘Madame, it seems
to me that you do not think enough of yourself, and that, one of
these days, they will take away the King from under your wing. They
are inciting him against your creatures first, and afterwards they
will incite him against you. Your authority is only precarious,
which will cease from the moment that the King no longer desires
it, and they will harden him little by little until he does not
desire it any more. And it is easy to persuade young people to
emancipate themselves. If the King were to go, one of these days,
to Saint-Germain, and were to order M. d’Épernon and myself to come
there to him, and then told us that we were no longer to recognise
your authority, we are your very obliged servants, but we should be
unable to do any other thing than to come and bid you farewell, and
to beg you very humbly to excuse us, if, during your administration
of the State, we had not served you as well as we ought to have
done. Judge, Madame,” I continued, “whether the other officers
would be able to act otherwise, and whether you would not be left
with empty hands after such an administration.”