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A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times
Louis XIV., The Fronde, And The Government Of Cardinal Mazarin. (1643-1661.)
by Guizot, M.
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Louis XIII. had never felt confidence in the queen his wife; and Cardinal
Richelieu had fostered that sentiment which promoted his views. When M.
de Chavigny came, on Anne of Austria's behalf, to assure the dying king
that she had never had any part in the conspiracy of Chalais, or dreamt
of espousing Monsieur in case she was left a widow, Louis XIII.
answered, "Considering the state I am in, I am bound to forgive her, but
not to believe her." He did not believe her, he never had believed her,
and his declaration touching the Regency was entirely directed towards
counteracting by anticipation the power intrusted to his wife and his
brother. The queen's regency and the Duke of Orleans' lieutenant-
generalship were in some sort subordinated to a council composed of the
Prince of Conde, Cardinal Mazarin, Chancellor Seguier, Superintendent
Bouthillier, and Secretary of State Chavigny, "with a prohibition against
introducing any change therein, for any cause or on any occasion
whatsoever." The queen and the Duke of Orleans had signed and sworn the
declaration.
King Louis XIII. was not yet in his grave when his last wishes were
violated; before his death the queen had made terms with the ministers;
the course to be followed had been decided. On the 18th of May, 1643,
the queen, having brought back the little king to Paris, conducted him in
great state to the Parliament of Paris to hold his bed of justice there.
The boy sat down and said with a good grace that he had come to the
Parliament to testify his good will to it, and that his chancellor would
say the rest. The Duke of Orleans then addressed the queen. "The honor
of the regency is the due altogether of your Majesty," said he, "not only
in your capacity of mother, but also for your merits and virtues; the
regency having been confined to you by the deceased king, and by the
consent of all the grandees of the realm, I desire no other part in
affairs than that which it may please your Majesty to give me, and I do
not claim to take any advantage from the special clauses contained in the
declaration." The Prince of Condo said much the same thing, but with
less earnestness, and on the evening of the same day the queen regent,
having sole charge of the administration of affairs, and modifying the
council at her pleasure, announced to the astounded court that she should
retain by her Cardinal Mazarin. Not a word had been said about him at
the Parliament; the courtiers believed that he was on the point of
leaving France; but the able Italian, attractive as he was subtle, had
already found a way to please the queen. She retained as chief of her
council the heir to the traditions of Richelieu, and deceived the hopes
of the party of Importants, those meddlers of the court at whose head
marched the Duke of Beaufort, all puffed up with the confidence lately
shown to him by her Majesty. Potier, Bishop of Beauvais, the queen's
confidant during her troubles, "expected to be all-powerful in the state;
he sought out the Duke of Orleans and the Prince of Conde, promising
them governorships of places, and, generally, anything they might desire.
He thought he could set the affairs of state going as easily as he could
his parish-priests; but the poor prelate came down from his high hopes
when he saw that the cardinal was advancing more and more in the queen's
confidence, and that, for him, too much was already thought to have been
done in according him admittance to the council, whilst flattering him
with a hope of the purple." [Memoires de Brienne, ii. 37.]
Cardinal Mazarin soon sent him off to his diocese. Continuing to humor
all parties, and displaying foresight and prudence, the new minister was
even now master. Louis XIII., without any personal liking, had been
faithful to Richelieu to the death; with different feelings, Anne of
Austria was to testify the same constancy towards Mazarin.
A stroke of fortune came at the very first to strengthen the regent's
position. Since the death of Cardinal Richelieu, the Spaniards, but
recently overwhelmed at the close of 1642, had recovered courage and
boldness; new counsels prevailed at the court of Philip IV., who had
dismissed Olivarez; the house of Austria vigorously resumed the
offensive; at the moment of Louis XIII.'s death, Don Francisco de Mello,
governor of the Low Countries, had just invaded French territory by way
of the Ardennes, and laid siege to Rocroi, on the 12th of May. The
French army was commanded by the young Duke of Enghien, the Prince of
Conde's son, scarcely twenty-two years old; Louis XIII. had given him as
his lieutenant and director the veteran Marshal de l'Hopital; and the
latter feared to give battle. The Duke of Enghien, who "was dying with
impatience to enter the enemy's country, resolved to accomplish by
address what he could not carry by authority. He opened his heart to
Gassion alone. As he was a man who saw nothing but what was easy even in
the most dangerous deeds, he had very soon brought matters to the point
that the prince desired. Marshal de l'Hopital found himself
imperceptibly so near the Spaniards that it was impossible for him any
longer to hinder an engagement." [Relation de 31 de la Houssaye.] The
army was in front of Rocroi, and out of the dangerous defile which led to
the place, without any idea on the part of the marshal and the army that
Louis XIII. was dead. The Duke of Enghien, who had received the news,
had kept it secret. He had merely said in the tone of a master "that he
meant to fight, and would answer for the issue. His orders given, he
passed along the ranks of his army with an air which communicated to it
the same impatience that he himself felt to see the night over, in order
to begin the battle. He passed the whole of it at the camp-fire of the
officers of Picardy." In the morning "it was necessary to rouse from
deep slumber this second Alexander. Mark him as he flies to victory or
death! As soon as he had kindled from rank to rank the ardor with which
he was animated, he was seen, in almost the same moment, driving in the
enemy's right, supporting ours that wavered, rallying the half-beaten
French, putting to flight the victorious Spaniards, striking terror
everywhere, and dumbfounding with his flashing looks those who escaped
from his blows. There remained that dread infantry of the army of Spain,
whose huge battalions, in close order, like so many towers, but towers
that could repair their breaches, remained unshaken amidst all the rest
of the rout, and delivered their fire on all sides. Thrice the young
conqueror tried to break these fearless warriors; thrice he was driven
knack by the valiant Count of Fuentes, who was seen carried about in his
chair, and, in spite of his infirmities, showing that a warrior's soul is
mistress of the body it animates. But yield they must: in vain through
the woods, with his cavalry all fresh, does Beck rush down to fall upon
our exhausted men the prince has been beforehand with him; the broken
battalions cry for quarter, but the victory is to be more terrible than
the fight for the Duke of Enghien. Whilst with easy mien he advances to
receive the parole of these brave fellows, they, watchful still,
apprehend the surprise of a fresh attack; their terrible volley drives
our men mad; there is nothing to be seen but slaughter; the soldier is
drunk with blood, till that great prince, who could not bear to see such
lions butchered like so many sheep, calmed excited passions, and to the
pleasure of victory joined that of mercy. He would willingly have saved
the life of the brave Count of Fuentes, but found him lying amidst
thousands of the dead whose loss is still felt by Spain. The prince
bends the knee, and, on the field of battle, renders thanks to the God of
armies for the victory he hath given him. Then were there rejoicings
over Rocroi delivered, the threats of a dread enemy converted to their
shame, the regency strengthened, France at rest, and a reign, which was
to be so noble, commenced with such happy augury." [Bossuet, Oraison
funebre de Louis de Bourbon, Prince de Conde.] Victory or death, below
the cross of Burgundy, was borne upon most of the standards taken from
the Imperialists; and "indeed," says the Gazette de France, "the most
part were found dead in the ranks where they had been posted." Which was
nobly brought home by one of the prisoners to our captains when, being
asked how many there had been of them, he replied, "Count the dead."
Conde was worthy to fight such enemies, and Bossuet to recount their
defeat. "The prince was a born captain," said Cardinal de Retz. And all
France said so with him, on hearing of the victory of Rocroi.
The delight was all the keener in the queen's circle, because the house
of Conde openly supported Cardinal Mazarin, bitterly attacked as he was
by the Importants, who accused him of reviving the tyranny of Richelieu.
A ditty on the subject was current in the streets of Paris:—
"He is not dead, he is but changed of age,
The cardinal, at whom men gird with rage,
But all his household make thereat great cheer;
It pleaseth not full many a chevalier
They fain had brought him to the lowest stage.
Beneath his wing came all his lineage,
By the same art whereof he made usage
And, by my faith, 'tis still their day, I fear.
He is not dead.
"Hush! we are mum, because we dread the cage
For he's at court—this eminent personage
There to remain of years to come a score.
Ask those Importants, would you fain know more
And they will say in dolorous language,
'He is not dead.'"
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And indeed, on pretext offered by a feminine quarrel between the young
Duchess of Longueville, daughter of the Prince of Conde, and the Duchess
of Montbazon, the Duke of Beaufort and some of his friends resolved to
assassinate the cardinal. The attempt was a failure, but the Duke of
Beaufort, who was arrested on the 2d of September, was taken to the
castle of Vincennes. Madame de Chevreuse, recently returned to court,
where she would fain have exacted from the queen the reward for her
services and her past sufferings, was sent into exile, as well as the
Duke of Vendome. Madame d'Hautefort, but lately summoned by Anne of
Austria to be near her, was soon involved in the same disgrace. Proud
and compassionate, without any liking for Mazarin, she was daring enough,
during a trip to Vincennes, to ask pardon for the Duke of Beaufort.
"The queen made no answer, and, the collation being served, Madame
d'Hautefort, whose heart was full, ate nothing; when she was asked why,
she declared that she could not enjoy anything in such close proximity to
that poor boy." The queen could not put up with reproaches; and she
behaved with extreme coldness to Madame d'Hautefort. One day, at
bedtime, her ill temper showed itself so plainly, that the old favorite
could no longer be in doubt about the queen's sentiments. As she softly
closed the curtains, "I do assure you, Madame," she said, "that if I had
served God with as much attachment and devotion as I have your Majesty
all my life, I should be a great saint." And, raising her eyes to the
crucifix, she added, "Thou knowest, Lord, what I have done for her." The
queen let her go to the convent where Mademoiselle de la Fayette had
taken refuge ten years before. Madame d'Hautefort left it ere long to
become the wife of Marshal Schomberg; but the party of the Importants was
dead, and the power of Cardinal Mazarin seemed to be firmly established.
"It was not the thing just then for any decent man to be on bad terms
with the court," says Cardinal de Retz.
Negotiations for a general peace, the preliminaries whereof had been
signed by King Louis XIII. in 1641, had been going on since 1644 at
Munster and at Osnabruck, without having produced any result; the Duke
of Enghien, who became Prince of Conde in 1646, was keeping up the war
in Flanders and Germany, with the co-operation of Viscount Turenne,
younger brother of the Duke of Bouillon, and, since Rocroi, a marshal of
France. The capture of Thionville and of Dunkerque, the victories of
Friburg and Nordlingen, the skilful opening effected in Germany as far as
Augsburg by the French and the Swedes, had raised so high the reputation
of the two generals, that the Prince of Conde, who was haughty and
ambitious, began to cause great umbrage to Mazarin. Fear of having him
unoccupied deterred the cardinal from peace, and made all the harder the
conditions he presumed to impose upon the Spaniards. Meanwhile the
United Provinces, weary of a war which fettered their commerce, and
skilfully courted by their old masters, had just concluded a private
treaty with Spain; the emperor was trying, but to no purpose, to detach
the Swedes likewise from the French alliance, when the victory of Lens,
gained on the 20th of August, 1648, over Archduke Leopold and General
Beck, came to throw into the balance the weight of a success as splendid
as it was unexpected; one more campaign, and Turenne might be threatening
Vienna whilst Conde entered Brussels; the emperor saw there was no help
for it, and bent his head. The house of Austria split in two; Spain
still refused to treat with France, but the whole of Germany clamored for
peace; the conditions of it were at last drawn up at Munster by MM.
Servien and de Lionne; M. d'Avaux, the most able diplomatist that France
possessed, had been recalled to Paris at the beginning of the year. On
the 24th of October, 1648, after four years of negotiation, France at
last had secured to her Elsass and the three bishoprics of Metz, Toul,
and Verdun; Sweden gained Western Pomerania, including Stettin, the Isle
of Rugen, the three mouths of the Oder, and the bishoprics of Bremen and
Werden, thus becoming a German power: as for Germany, she had won liberty
of conscience and political liberty; the rights of the Lutheran or
reformed Protestants were equalized with those of Catholics; henceforth
the consent of a free assembly of all the Estates of the empire was
necessary to make laws, raise soldiers, impose taxes, and decide peace or
war. The peace of Westphalia put an end at one and the same time to the
Thirty Years' War and to the supremacy of the house of Austria in
Germany.
So much glory and so many military or diplomatic successes cost dear;
France was crushed by imposts, and the finances were discovered to be in
utter disorder; the superintendent, D'Emery, an able and experienced man,
was so justly discredited that his measures were, as a foregone
conclusion, unpopular; an edict laying octroi or tariff on the entry of
provisions into the city of Paris irritated the burgesses, and Parliament
refused to enregister it. For some time past the Parliament, which had
been kept down by the iron hand of Richelieu, had perceived that it had
to do with nothing more than an able man, and not a master; it began to
hold up its head again; a union was proposed between the four sovereign
courts of Paris, to wit, the Parliament, the grand council, the chamber
of exchequer, and the court of aids or indirect taxes; the queen quashed
the deed of union; the magistrates set her at nought; the queen yielded,
authorizing the delegates to deliberate in the chamber of St. Louis at
the Palace of Justice; the pretensions of the Parliament were exorbitant,
and aimed at nothing short of resuming, in the affairs of the state, the
position from which Richelieu had deposed it; the concessions which
Cardinal Mazarin with difficulty wrung from the queen augmented the
Parliament's demands. Anne of Austria was beginning to lose patience,
when the news of the victory of Lens restored courage to the court.
"Parliament will be very sorry," said the little king, on hearing of the
Prince of Conde's success. The grave assemblage, on the 26th of August,
was issuing from Notre Dame, where a Te Deum had just been sung, when
Councillor Broussel and President Blancmesnil were arrested in their
houses, and taken one to St. Germain and the other to Vincennes. This
was a familiar proceeding on the part of royal authority in its
disagreements with the Parliament. Anne of Austria herself had practised
it four years before.
It was a mistake on the part of Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin
not to have considered the different condition of the public mind.
A suppressed excitement had for some months been hatching in Paris and in
the provinces. "The Parliament growled over the tariff-edict," says
Cardinal de Retz; "and no sooner had it muttered than everybody awoke.
People went groping as it were after the laws; they were no longer to be
found. Under the influence of this agitation the people entered the
sanctuary and lifted the veil that ought always to conceal whatever can
be said about the right of peoples and that of kings, which never accord
so well as in silence." The arrest of Broussel, an old man in high
esteem, very keen in his opposition to the court, was like fire to flax.
"There was a blaze at once, a sensation, a rush, an outcry, and a
shutting up of shops." Paul de Gondi, known afterwards as Cardinal de
Retz, was at that time coadjutor of the Archbishop of Paris, his uncle
witty, debauched, bold, and restless, lately compromised in the plots of
the Count of Soissons against Cardinal Richelieu, he owed his office to
the queen, and "did not hesitate," he says, "to repair to her, that he
might stick to his duty above all things."
There was already a great tumult in the streets when he arrived at the
Palais-Royal: the people were shouting, "Broussel! Broussel!" The
coadjutor was accompanied by Marshal la Meilleraye; and both of them
reported the excitement amongst the people. The queen grew angry.
"There is revolt in imagining that there can be revolt," she said: "these
are the ridiculous stories of those who desire it; the king's authority
will soon restore order." Then, as old M. de Guitaut, who had just come
in, supported the coadjutor, and said that he did not understand how
anybody could sleep in the state in which things were, the cardinal asked
him, with some slight irony, "Well, M. de Guitaut, and what is your
advice?" "My advice," said Guitaut, "is to give up that old rascal of a
Broussel, dead or alive." "The former," replied the coadjutor, "would
not accord with either the queen's piety or her prudence; the latter
might stop the tumult." At this word the queen blushed, and exclaimed,
"I understand you, Mr. Coadjutor; you would have me set Broussel at
liberty. I would strangle him with these hands first!" "And, as she
finished the last syllable, she put them close to my face," says De Retz,
"adding, 'And those who . . . ' The cardinal advanced and whispered in
her ear." Advices of a more and more threatening character continued to
arrive; and, at last, it was resolved to promise that Broussel should be
set at liberty, provided that the people dispersed and ceased to demand
it tumultuously. The coadjutor was charged to proclaim this concession
throughout Paris; he asked for a regular order, but was not listened to.
"The queen had retired to her little gray room. Monsignor pushed me very
gently with his two hands, saying, 'Restore the peace of the realm.'
Marshal Meilleraye drew me along, and so I went out with my rochet and
camail, bestowing benedictions right and left; but this occupation did
not prevent me from making all the reflections suitable to the difficulty
in which I found myself. The impetuosity of Marshal Meilleraye did not
give me opportunity to weigh my expressions; he advanced sword in hand,
shouting with all his might, 'Hurrah for the king! Liberation for
Broussel!' As he was seen by many more folks than heard him, he provoked
with his sword far more people than he appeased with his voice." The
tumult increased; there was a rush to arms on all sides; the coadjutor
was felled to the ground by a blow from a stone. He had just picked
himself up, when a burgess put his musket to his head. "Though I did not
know him a bit," says Retz, "I thought it would not be well to let him
suppose so at such a moment; on the contrary, I said to him, 'Ah!
wretch, if thy father saw thee!' He thought I was the best friend of his
father, on whom, however, I had never set eyes."
The coadjutor was recognized, and the crowd pressed round him, dragging
him to the market-place. He kept repeating everywhere that "the queen
promised to restore Broussel." The flippers laid down their arms, and
thirty or forty thousand men accompanied him to the Palais-Royal.
"Madame," said Marshal Meilleraye as he entered, "here is he to whom I
owe my life, and your Majesty the safety of the Palais-Royal." The queen
began to smile. "The marshal flew into a passion, and said with an oath,
'Madame, no proper man can venture to flatter you in the state in which
things are; and if you do not this very day set Broussel at liberty,
to-morrow there will not be left one stone upon another in Paris.' I
wished to speak in support of what the marshal said, but the queen cut
me short, saying, with an air of raillery, 'Go and rest yourself, sir;
you have worked very hard.'"
The coadjutor left the Palais-Royal "in what is called a rage;" and he
was in a greater one in the evening, when his friends came and told him
that he was being made fun of at the queen's supper-table; that she was
convinced that he had done all he could to increase the tumult; that he
would be the first to be made a great example of; and that the Parliament
was about to be interdicted. Paul de Gondi had not waited for their
information to think of revolt. "I did not reflect as to what I could
do," says he, "for I was quite certain of that; I reflected only as to
what I ought to do, and I was perplexed." The jests and the threats of
the court appeared to him to be sufficient justification. "What
effectually stopped my scruples was the advantage I imagined I had in
distinguishing myself from those of my profession by a state of life in
which there was something of all professions. In disorderly times,
things lead to a confusion of species, and the vices of an archbishop
may, in an infinity of conjunctures, be the virtues of a party leader."
The coadjutor recalled his friends. "We are not in such bad case as you
supposed, gentlemen," he said to them; "there is an intention of crushing
the public; it is for me to defend it from oppression; to-morrow before
midday I shall be master of Paris."
For some time past the coadjutor had been laboring to make himself
popular in Paris; the general excitement was only waiting to break out,
and when the chancellor's carriage appeared in the streets in the
morning, on the way to the Palace of Justice, the people, secretly worked
upon during the night, all at once took up arms again. The chancellor
had scarcely time to seek refuge in the Hotel de Luynes; the mob rushed
in after him, pillaging and destroying the furniture, whilst the
chancellor, flying for refuge into a small chamber, and believing his
last hour had come, was confessing to his brother, the Bishop of Meaux.
He was not discovered, and the crowd moved off in another direction. "It
was like a sudden and violent conflagration lighted up from the Pont Neuf
over the whole city. Everybody without exception took up arms. Children
of five and six years of age were seen dagger in hand; and the mothers
themselves carried them. In less than two hours there were in Paris more
than two hundred barricades, bordered with flags and all the arms that
the League had left entire. Everybody cried, 'Hurrah! for the king!' but
echo answered, 'None of your Mazarin!'"
The coadjutor kept himself shut up at home, protesting his powerlessness;
the Parliament had met at an early hour; the Palace of Justice was
surrounded by an immense crowd, shouting, "Broussel! Broussel!" The
Parliament resolved to go in a body and demand of the queen the release
of their members arrested the day before. "We set out in full court,"
says the premier president Mole, "without sending, as the custom is, to
ask the queen to appoint a time, the ushers in front, with their square
caps and a-foot: from this spot as far as the Trahoir cross we found the
people in arms and barricades thrown up at every hundred paces."
[Memoires de Matthieu Mole, iii. p. 255.]
"If it were not blasphemy to say that there was any one in our age more
intrepid than the great Gustavus and the Prince, I should say it was M.
Mole, premier president," writes Cardinal de Retz. Sincerely devoted to
the public weal, and a magistrate to the very bottom of his soul, Mole,
nevertheless, inclined towards the side of power, and understood better
than his brethren the danger of factions. He represented to the queen
the extreme danger the sedition was causing to Paris and to France.
"She, who feared nothing because she knew but little, flew into a passion
and answered, furiously, 'I am quite aware that there is disturbance in
the city, but you shall answer to me for it, gentlemen of the Parliament,
you, your wives, and your children.'" "The queen was pleased," says
Mole, in his dignified language, "to signify in terms of wrath that the
magisterial body should be answerable for the evils which might ensue,
and which the king on reaching his majority would remember."
The queen had retired to her room, slamming the door violently; the
Parliament turned back to the Palace of Justice; the angry mob thronged
about the magistrates; when they arrived at Rue St. Honore, just as they
were about to turn on to the Pont Neuf, a band of armed men fell upon
them, "and a cookshop-lad, advancing at the head of two hundred men,
thrust his halbert against the premier president's stomach, saying,
'Turn, traitor, and, if thou wouldst not thyself be slain, give up to us
Broussel, or Mazarin and the chancellor as hostages.'" Matthew Mole
quietly put the weapon aside, and, "You forget yourself," he said, "and
are oblivious of the respect you owe to my office." "Thrice an effort
was made to thrust me into a private house," says his account in his
Memoires, "but I still kept my place; and, attempts having been made with
swords and pistols on all sides of me to make an end of me, God would not
permit it, some of the members (Messieurs) and some true friends having
placed themselves in front of me. I told President de Mesmes that there
was no other plan but to return to the Palais-Royal and thither take back
the body, which was much diminished in numbers, five of the presidents
having dropped away, and also many of the members on whom the people had
inflicted unworthy treatment." "Thus having given himself time to rally
as many as he could of the body, and still preserving the dignity of the
magistracy both in his words and in his movements, the premier president
returned at a slow pace to the Palais-Royal, amidst a running fire of
insults, threats, execrations, and blasphemies." [Memoires de Retz.]
The whole court had assembled in the gallery: Mole spoke first. "This
man," says Retz, "had a sort of eloquence peculiar to himself. He knew
nothing of apostrophes, he was not correct in his language, but he spoke
with a force which made up for all that, and he was naturally so bold
that he never spoke so well as in the midst of peril. Monsieur made as
if he would throw himself on his knees before the queen, who remained
inflexible; four or five princesses, who were trembling with fear, did
throw themselves at her feet; the Queen of England, who had come that day
from St. Germain, represented that the troubles had never been so serious
at their commencement in England, nor the feelings so heated or united."
[Histoire du Temps, 1647-48. (Archives curieuses, vi. p. 162.)] At
last the cardinal made up his mind; he "had been roughly handled in the
queen's presence by the presidents and councillors in their speeches,
some of them telling him, in mockery, that he had only to give himself
the trouble of going as far as the Pont Neuf to see for himself the state
in which things were," and he joined with all those present in entreating
Anne of Austria; finally, the release of Broussel was extorted from her,
"not without a deep sigh, which showed what violence she did her feelings
in the struggle."
"We returned in full court by the same road," says Matthew Mole, "and the
people demanding, with confused clamor of voices, whether M. Broussel
were at liberty, we gave them assurances thereof, and entered by the
back-door of my lodging; before crossing the threshold, I took leave of
Presidents De Mesmes and Le Coigneux, and waited until the members had
passed, testifying my sentiments of gratitude for that they had been
unwilling to separate until they had seen to the security of my person,
which I had not at all deserved, but such was their good pleasure. After
this business, which had lasted from six in the morning until seven
o'clock, there was need of rest, seeing that the mind had been agitated
amidst so many incidents, and not a morsel had been tasted." [Memoires
de Matthieu Mole, t. iii. p. 265.]
Broussel had taken his seat in the Parliament again. The Prince of Conde
had just arrived in Paris; he did not like the cardinal, but he was angry
with the Parliament, which he considered imprudent and insolent. "They
are going ahead," said he:—"if I were to go ahead with them, I should
perhaps do better for my own interests, but my name is Louis de Bourbon,
and I do not wish to shake the throne; these devils of squarecaps, are
they mad about bringing me either to commence a civil war before long, or
to put a rope round their own necks, and place over their heads and over
my own an adventurer from Sicily, who will be the ruin of us all in the
end? I will let the Parliament plainly see that they are not where they
suppose, and that it would not be a hard matter to bring them to reason."
The coadjutor, to whom he thus expressed himself, answered that "the
cardinal might possibly be mistaken in his measures, and that Paris would
be a hard nut to crack." Whereupon the prince rejoined, angrily, "It
will not be taken, like Dunkerque, by mining and assaults, but if the
bread of Gonesse were to fail them for a week . . ." The coadjutor
took the rest as said. Some days afterwards, during the night between
the 5th and 6th of January, 1649, the queen, with the little king and the
whole court, set out at four A. M. from Paris for the castle of St.
Germain, empty, unfurnished, as was then the custom in the king's
absence, where the courtiers had great difficulty in finding a bundle of
straw. "The queen had scarcely a bed to lie upon," says Mdlle. de
Montpensier, "but never did I see any creature so gay as she was that
day; had she won a battle, taken Paris, and had all who had displeased
her hanged, she could not have been more so, and nevertheless she was
very far from all that."
Paris was left to the malcontents; everybody was singing,
"A Fronde-ly wind
Got up to-day,
'Gainst Mazarin
It howls, they say."
|
On the 8th of January the Parliament of Paris, all the chambers in
assembly, issued a decree whereby Cardinal Mazarin was declared an enemy
to the king and the state, and a disturber of the public peace, and
injunctions were laid upon all subjects of the king to hunt him down; war
was declared.
Scarcely had it begun, when the greatest lords came flocking to the
popular side. On the departure of the court for St. Germain, the Duchess
of Longueville had remained in Paris; her husband and her brother the
Prince of Conti were not slow in coming to look after her; and already
the Duke of Elbeuf, of the house of Lorraine, had offered his services to
the Parliament. Levies of troops were beginning in the city, and the
command of the forces was offered to the Prince of Conti; the Dukes of
Bouillon and Beaufort and Marshal de la Mothe likewise embraced the party
of revolt; the Duchesses of Longueville and Bouillon established
themselves with their children at the Hotel de Ville as hostages given by
the Fronde of princes to the Fronde of the people; the Parliaments of Aix
and Rouen made common cause with that of Paris; a decree ordered the
seizure, in all the exchequers of the kingdom, of the royal moneys, in
order that they might be employed for the general defence. Every evening
Paris wore a festive air; there was dancing at the Hotel de Ville, and
the gentlemen who had been skirmishing during the day around the walls
came for recreation in the society of the princesses. "This commingling
of blue scarfs, of ladies, of cuirasses, of violins in the hall, and of
trumpets in the square, offered a spectacle which is oftener seen in
romances than elsewhere." [Memoires du Cardinal de Retz, t. i.]
Affairs of gallantry were mixed up with the most serious resolves; Madame
de Longueville was of the Fronde because she was in love with M. de
Marsillac (afterwards Duke of La Rochefoucauld), and he was on bad terms
with Cardinal Mazarin.
Meanwhile war was rumbling round Paris; the post of Charenton, fortified
by the Frondeurs, had been carried by the Prince of Conde at the head of
the king's troops; the Parliament was beginning to perceive its mistake,
and desired to have peace again, but the great lords engaged in the
contest aspired to turn it to account; they had already caused the gates
of Paris to be closed against a herald sent by the queen to recall her
subjects to their duty; they were awaiting the army of Germany, commanded
by M. de Turenne, whom his brother, the Duke of Bouillon, had drawn into
his culpable enterprise; nay, more, they had begun to negotiate with
Spain, and they brought up to the Parliament a pretended envoy from
Archduke Leopold, but the court refused to receive him. "What! sir,"
said President de Mesmes, turning to the Prince of Conti, "is it possible
that a prince of the blood of France should propose to give a seat upon
the fleurs-de-lis to a deputy from the most cruel enemy of the
fleurs-de-lis?"
The Parliament sent a deputation to the queen, and conferences were
opened at Ruel on the 4th of March; the great lords of the Fronde took
no part in it; "they contented themselves with having at St. Germain
low-voiced (a basses notes)—secret agents," says Madame de Motteville,
"commissioned to negotiate in their favor." Paris was beginning to lack
bread; it was festival-time, and want began to make itself felt; a
"complaint of the Carnival" was current amongst the people:—
"In my extreme affliction, yet
I can this consolation get,
That, at his hands, my enemy,
Old Lent, will fare the same as I:
That, at the times when people eat,
We both shall equal worship meet.
Thus, joining with the whole of France
In war against him a outrance,
Grim Lent and festive Carnival,
Will fight against the cardinal."
|
It was against the cardinal, in fact, that all attacks were directed, but
the queen remained immovable in her fidelity. "I should be afraid," she
said to Madame de Motteville, "that, if I were to let him fall, the same
thing would happen to me that happened to the King of England (Charles I.
had just been executed), and that, after he had been driven out, my turn
would come." Grain had found its way into Paris during the truce; and
when, on the 13th of March, the premier president, Molt, and the other
negotiators, returned to Paris, bringing the peace which they had signed
at Ruel, they were greeted with furious shouts: "None of your peace!
None of your Mazarin! We must go to St. Germain to seek our good king!
We must fling into the river all the Mazarins!" A rioter had just laid
his hand on the premier president's arm. "When you have killed me," said
the latter, calmly, "I shall only want six feet of earth;" and, when he
was advised to get back into his house by way of the record-offices, "The
court never hides itself," he said; "if I were certain to perish, I would
not commit this poltroonery, which, moreover, would but serve to give
courage to the rioters. They would, of course, come after me to my house
if they thought that I shrank from them here." The deputies of the
Parliament were sent back to Ruel, taking a statement of the claims of
the great lords: "according to their memorials, they demanded the whole
of France." [Memoires de Madame de Motteville, t. iii. p. 247.]
Whilst Paris was in disorder, and the agitation, through its example, was
spreading over almost the whole of France, M. de Turenne, obliged to fly
from his army, was taking refuge, he and five others, with the landgrave
of Hesse; his troops had refused to follow him in revolt; the last hope
of the Frondeurs was slipping from them.
They found themselves obliged to accept peace, not without obtaining some
favors from the court.
There was a general amnesty; and the Parliament preserved all its rights.
"The king will have the honor of it, and we the profit," said Guy-Patin.
The great lords reappeared one after another at St. Germain. "It is the
way of our nation to return to their duty with the same airiness with
which they depart from it, and to pass in a single instant from rebellion
to obedience." [La Rochefoucauld.] The return to rebellion was not to
be long delayed. The queen had gone back to Paris, and the Prince of
Conde with her; he, proud of having beaten the parliamentary Fronde,
affected the conqueror's airs, and the throng of his courtiers, the
"petits maitres," as they were called, spoke very slightingly of the
cardinal. Conde, reconciled with the Duchess of Longueville, his
sister, and his brother, the Prince of Conti, assumed to have the lion's
share in the government, and claimed all the favors for himself or his
friends; the Fondeurs made skilful use of the ill-humor which this
conduct excited in Cardinal Mazarin; the minister responded to their
advances; the coadjutor was secretly summoned to the Louvre; the dowager
Princess of Conde felt some apprehensions; but, "What have I to fear?"
her son said to her; "the cardinal is my friend." "I doubt it," she
answered. "You are wrong; I rely upon him as much as upon you." "Please
God you may not be mistaken!" replied the princess, who was setting out
for the Palais-Royal to see the queen, said to be indisposed that day.
Anne of Austria was upon her bed; word was brought to her that the
council was waiting; this was the moment agreed upon; she dismissed the
princess, shut herself up in her oratory with the little king, to whom
she gave an account of what was going to be done for his service; then,
making him kneel down, she joined him in praying to God for the success
of this great enterprise. As the Prince of Conde arrived in the grand
gallery, he saw Guitaut, captain of the guards, coming towards him; at
the same instant, through a door at the bottom, out went the cardinal,
taking with him Abbe de la Riviere, who was the usual confidant of the
Duke of Orleans, but from whom his master had concealed the great secret.
The prince suppposed that Guitaut was coming to ask him some favor; the
captain of the guards said in his ear, "My lord, what I want to say is,
that I have orders to arrest you, you, the Prince of Conti your brother,
and M. de Longueville." "Me, M. Guitaut, arrest me?" Then, reflecting
for a moment, "In God's name," he said, "go back to the queen and tell
her that I entreat her to let me have speech of her!" Guitaut went to
her, whilst the prince, returning to those who were waiting for him,
said, "Gentlemen, the queen orders my arrest, and yours too, brother, and
yours too, M. de Longueville; I confess that I am astonished, I who have
always served the king so well, and believed myself secure of the
cardinal's friendship." The chancellor, who was not in the secret,
declared that it was Guitaut's pleasantry. "Go and seek the queen then,"
said the prince, "and tell her of the pleasantry that is going on; as for
me, I hold it to be very certain that I am arrested." The chancellor
went out, and did not return. M. Servien, who had gone to speak to the
cardinal, likewise did not appear again. M. de Guitaut entered alone.
"The queen cannot see you, my lord," he said. "Very well; I am content;
let us obey," answered the prince: "but whither are you going to take us?
I pray you let it be to a warm place." "We are going to the wood of
Vincennes, my lord," said Guitaut. The prince turned to the company and
took his leave without uneasiness and with the calmest countenance: as he
was embracing M. de Brienne, secretary of state, he said to him, "Sir, as
I have often received from you marks of your friendship and generosity, I
flatter myself that you will some day tell the king the services I have
rendered him." The princes went out; and, as they descended the
staircase, Conde leaned towards Comminges, who commanded the detachment
of guards, saying, "Comminges, you are a man of honor and a gentleman;
have I anything to fear?" Comminges assured him he had not, and that the
orders were merely to escort him to the wood of Vincennes. The carriage
upset on the way; as soon as it was righted, Comminges ordered the driver
to urge on his horses. The prince burst out laughing. "Don't be afraid,
Comminges," he said; "there is nobody to come to my assistance; I swear
to you that I had not taken any precautions against this trip." On
arriving at the castle of Vincennes, there were no beds to be found, and
the three princes passed the night playing at cards; the Princess of
Conde and the dowager princess received orders to retire to their
estates; the Duchess of Longueville, fearing with good cause that she
would be arrested, had taken with all speed the road to Normandy, whither
she went and took refuge at Dieppe, in her husband's government.
The state-stroke had succeeded; Mazarin's skill and prudence once more
check-mated all the intrigues concocted against him; when the news was
told to Chavigny, in spite of all his reasons for bearing malice against
the cardinal, who had driven him from the council and kept him for some
time in prison, he exclaimed, "That is a great misfortune for the prince
and his friends; but the truth must be told: the cardinal has done quite
right; without it he would have been ruined." The contest was begun
between Mazarin and the great Conde, and it was not with the prince that
the victory was to remain.
Already hostilities were commencing; Mazarin had done everything for the
Frondeurs who remained faithful to him, but the house of Conde was
rallying all its partisans; the Dukes of Bouillon and La Rochefoucauld
had thrown themselves into Bordeaux, which was in revolt against the
royal authority, represented by the Duke of Epernon. The Princess of
Conde and her young son left Chantilly to join them; Madame de
Longueville occupied Stenay, a strong place belonging to the Prince of
Conde: she had there found Turenne; on the other hand, the queen had just
been through Normandy; all the towns had opened their gates to her; it
was just the same in Burgundy; the Princess of Conde's able agent, Lenet,
could not obtain a declaration from the Parliament of Dijon in her favor.
Bordeaux was the focus of the insurrection; the people, passionately
devoted to "the dukes," as the saying was, were forcing the hand of the
Parliament; riots were frequent in the town; the little king, with the
queen and the cardinal, marched in person upon Bordeaux; one of the
faubourgs was attacked, the dukes negotiated and obtained a general
amnesty, but no mention was made of the princes' release.
The Parliament of Paris took the matter up. The premier president spoke
in so bitter a tone of the unhappy policy of the minister, that the
little king, feeling hurt, told his mother that, if he had thought it
would not displease her, he would have made the premier president hold
his tongue, and would have dismissed him. On the 30th of January, Anne
of Austria sent word to the Parliament that she would consent to grant
the release of the princes, "provided that the armaments of Stenay and of
M. de Turenne might be discontinued." But it was too late; the Duke of
Orleans had made a treaty with the princes. England served as pretext.
Mazarin compared the Parliament to the House of Commons, and the
coadjutor to Cromwell. Monsieur took the matter up for his friends, and
was angry. He openly declared that he would not set foot again in the
Palais-Royal as long as he was liable to meet the cardinal there, and
joined the Parliament in demanding the removal of Mazarin. The queen
replied that nobody had a right to interfere in the choice of ministers.
By way of answer, the Parliament laid injunctions upon all the officers
of the crown to obey none but the Duke of Orleans, lieutenant general of
the kingdom. A meeting of the noblesse, at a tumultuous assembly in the
house of the Duke of Nemours, expressed themselves in the same sense. It
was the 6th of February, 1651: during the night, Cardinal Mazarin set out
for St. Germain; a rumor spread in Paris that the queen was preparing to
follow him with the king; a rush was made to the Palais-Royal: the king
was in his bed. Next day, Anne of Austria complained to the Parliament.
"The prince is at liberty," said the premier president, "and the king,
the king our master, is a prisoner." "Monsieur, who felt no fear," says
Retz, "because he had been more cheered in the streets and the hall of
the palace than he had ever been," answered with vivacity, "The king was
a prisoner in the hands of Mazarin; but, thank God, he is not any
longer." The premier president was right; the king was a prisoner to
the Parisians; patrols of burgesses were moving incessantly round the
Palais-Royal; one night the queen was obliged to let the people into her
chamber; the king was asleep; and two officers of the town-guard watched
for some hours at his pillow. The yoke of Richelieu and the omnipotence
of Mazarin were less hard for royalty to bear than the capricious and
jealous tyranny of the populace.
The cardinal saw that he was beaten; he made up his mind, and,
anticipating the queen's officers, he hurried to Le Havre to release the
prisoners himself; he entered the castle alone, the governor having
refused entrance to the guards who attended him. "The prince told me,"
says Mdlle. de Montpensier, "that, when they were dining together,
Cardinal Mazarin was not so much in the humor to laugh as he himself was,
and that he was very much embarrassed. Liberty to be gone had more
charms for the prince than the cardinal's company. He said that he felt
marvellous delight at finding himself outside Le Havre, with his sword at
his side; and he might well be pleased to wear it; he is a pretty good
hand at using it. As he went out he turned to the cardinal and said,
'Farewell, Cardinal Mazarin,' who kissed 'the tip of sleeve' to him."
The cardinal had slowly taken the road to exile, summoning to him his
nieces, Mdlles. Mancini and Martinozzi, whom he had, a short time since,
sent for to court; he crossed from Normandy into Picardy, made some stay
at Doullens, and, impelled by his enemies' hatred, he finally crossed the
frontier on the 12th of March. The Parliament had just issued orders for
his arrest in any part of France. On the 6th of April, he fixed his
quarters at Bruhl, a little town belonging to the electorate of Cologne,
in the same territory which had but lately sheltered the last days of
Mary de' Medici.
The Frondeurs, old and new, had gained the day; but even now there was
disorder in their camp. Conde had returned to the court "like a raging
lion, seeking to devour everybody, and, in revenge for his imprisonment,
to set fire to the four corners of the realm." [Memoires de Montglat.]
After a moment's reconciliation with the queen, be began to show himself
more and more haughty towards her in his demands every day; he required
the dismissal of the ministers Le Tellier, Servien, and Lionne, all three
creatures of the cardinal and in correspondence with him at Bruhl; as
Anne of Austria refused, the prince retired to St. Maur; he was already
in negotiation with Spain, being inveigled into treason by the influence
of his sister, Madame de Longueville, who would not leave the Duke of
La Rochefoucauld or return into Normandy to her husband. Fatal results
of a guilty passion which enlisted against his country the arms of the
hero of Rocroi! When he returned to Paris, the queen had, in fact,
dismissed her ministers, but she had formed a fresh alliance with the
coadjutor, and, on the 17th of August, in the presence of an assembly
convoked for that purpose at the Palais-Royal, she openly denounced the
intrigues of the prince with Spain, accusing him of being in
correspondence with the archduke. Next day Conde brought the matter
before the Parliament. The coadjutor quite expected the struggle, and
had brought supporters; the queen had sent some soldiers; the prince
arrived with a numerous attendance. On entering, he said to the company,
that he could not sufficiently express his astonishment at the condition
in which he found the palace, which seemed to him more like a camp than a
temple of justice, and that it was not merely that there could be found
in the kingdom people insolent enough to presume to dispute (superiority)
the pavement (disputer le pave) with him. "I made him a deep obeisance,"
says Retz, "and said that, I very humbly begged his Highness to pardon me
if I told him that I did not believe that there was anybody in the
kingdom insolent enough to dispute the wall (le haut du pave) with him,
but I was persuaded that there were some who could not and ought not, for
their dignity's sake, to yield the pavement (quitter le pave) to any but
the king. The prince replied that he would make me yield it. I said
that that would not be easy." The dispute grew warm; the presidents
flung themselves between the disputants; Conde yielded to their
entreaties, and begged the Duke of La Rochefoucauld to go and tell his
friends to withdraw. The coadjutor went out to make the same request to
his friends. "When he would have returned into the usher's little
court," writes Mdlle. de Montpensier, "he met at the door the Duke of La
Rochefoucauld, who shut it in his face, just keeping it ajar to see who
accompanied the coadjutor; he, seeing the door ajar, gave it a good push,
but he could not pass quite through, and remained as it were jammed
between the two folds, unable to get in or out. The Duke of La
Rochefoucauld had fastened the door with an iron catch, keeping it so to
prevent its opening any wider. The coadjutor was 'in an ugly position,
for he could not help fearing lest a dagger should pop out and take his
life from behind. A complaint was made to the grand chamber, and
Champlatreux, son of the premier president, went out, and, by his
authority, had the door opened, in spite of the Duke of La
Rochefoucauld." The coadjutor protested, and the Duke of Brissac, his
relative, threatened the Duke of La Rochefoucauld; whereupon the latter
said that, if he had them outside, he would strangle them both; to which
the coadjutor replied, "My dear La Franchise (the duke's nickname), do
not act the bully; you are a poltroon and I am a priest; we shall not do
one another much harm." There was no fighting, and the Parliament,
supported by the Duke of Orleans, obtained from the queen a declaration
of the innocence of the Prince of Conde, and at the same time a formal
disavowal of Mazarin's policy, and a promise never to recall him. Anne
of Austria yielded everything; the king's majority was approaching, and
she flattered herself that under cover of his name she would be able to
withdraw the concessions which she felt obliged to make as regent. Her
declaration, nevertheless, deeply wounded Mazarin, who was still taking
refuge at Bruhl, whence he wrote incessantly to the queen, who did not
neglect his counsels. "Ten times I have taken up my pen to write to
you," he said on the 26th of September, 1651 [Lettres du Cardinal
Mazarin a la Reine, pp. 292, 293], "but could not, and I am so beside
myself at the mortal wound I have just received, that I am not sure
whether anything I could say to you would have rhyme or reason. The king
and the queen, by an authentic deed, have declared me a traitor, a public
robber, an incapable, and an enemy to the repose of Christendom, after I
had served them with so many signs of my devotion to the advancement of
peace: it is no longer a question of property, repose, or whatever else
there may be of the sort. I demand the honor which has been taken from
me, and that I be let alone, renouncing very heartily the cardinalate and
the benefices, whereof I send in my resignation joyfully, consenting
willingly to have given up to France twenty-three years of the best of my
life, all my pains and my little of wealth, and merely to withdraw with
the honor which I had when I began to serve her." The persistent hopes
of the adroit Italian appeared once more in the postscript of the letter:
"I had forgotten to tell you that it was not the way to set me right in
the eyes of the people to impress upon their mind that I am the cause of
all the evils they suffer, and of all the disorders of the realm, in such
sort that my ministry will be held in horror forever."
Conde did not permit himself to be caught by the queen's declarations:
of all the princes he alone was missing at the ceremony of the bed of
justice whereat the youthful Louis XIV., when entering his fourteenth
year, announced, on the 7th of September, to his people that, according
the laws of his realm, he "intended himself to assume the government,
hoping of God's goodness that it would be with piety and justice." The
prince had retired to Chantilly, on the pretext that the new minister,
the president of the council, Chateauneuf, and the keeper of the seals,
Matthew Mole, were not friends of his. The Duchess of Longueville at
last carried the day; Conde was resolved upon civil war. "You would have
it," he said to his sister on repelling the envoy, who had followed him
to Bourges, from the queen and the Duke of Orleans; "remember that I draw
the sword in spite of myself, but I will be the last to sheathe it." And
he kept his word.
A great disappointment awaited the rebels; they had counted upon the Duke
of Bouillon and M. de Turenne, but neither of them would join the
faction. The relations between the two great generals had not been
without rubs; Turenne had, moreover, felt some remorse because he, being
a general in the king's army, had but lately declared against the court,
"doing thereby a deed at which Le Balafro and Admiral de Coligny would
have hesitated," says Cardinal de Retz. The two brothers went, before
long, and offered their services to the queen.
Meanwhile Conde had arrived at Bordeaux: a part of Guienne, Saintonge,
and Porigord had declared in his favor; Count d'Harcourt, at the head of
the royal troops, marched against La Rochelle, which he took from the
revolters under the very beard of the prince, who had come from Bordeaux
to the assistance of the place, whilst the king and the queen, resolutely
quitting Paris, advanced from town to town as far as Poitiers, keeping
the centre of France to its allegiance by their mere presence. The
treaty of the Prince of Conde with Spain was concluded: eight Spanish
vessels, having money and troops on board, entered the Gironde. Conde
delivered over to them the castle and harbor of Talmont. The queen had
commissioned the cardinal to raise levies in Germany, and he had already
entered the country of Liege, embodying troops and forming alliances. On
the 17th of November, Anne of Austria finally wrote to Mazarin to return
to the king's assistance. In the presence of Conde's rebellion she had
no more appearances to keep up with anybody; and it was already in the
master's tone that Mazarin wrote to the queen, on the 30th of October, to
put her on her guard against the Duke of Orleans: "The power committed to
his Royal Highness and the neutrality permitted to him, being as he is
wholly devoted to the prince, surrounded by his partisans, and adhering
blindly to their counsels, are matters highly prejudicial to the king's
service, and, for my part, I do not see how one can be a servant of the
king's, with ever so little judgment and knowledge of affairs, and yet
dispute these truths. The queen, then, must bide her time to remedy all
this."
The cardinal's penetration had not deceived him; the Duke of Orleans was
working away in Paris, where the queen had been obliged to leave him, on
the Prince of Conde's side. The Parliament had assembled to enregister
against the princes the proclamation of high treason despatched from
Bourges by the court; Gaston demanded that it should be sent back,
threatened as they were, he said, with a still greater danger than the
rebellion of the princes in the return of Mazarin, who was even now
advancing to the frontier; but the premier president took no notice, and
put the proclamation to the vote in these words "It is a great misfortune
when princes of the blood give occasion for such proclamations, but this
is a common and ordinary misfortune in the kingdom, and, for five or six
centuries past, it may be said that they have been the scourges of the
people and the enemies of the monarchy." The decree passed by a hundred
votes to forty.
On the 24th of December, the cardinal crossed the frontier with a large
body of troops, and was received at Sedan by Lieutenant General Fabert,
faithful to his fortunes even in exile. The Parliament was furious,
and voted, almost unanimously, that the cardinal and his adherents were
guilty of high treason; ordering the communes to hound him down, and
promising, from the proceeds of his furniture and library which were
about to be sold, a sum of five hundred thousand livres to whoever should
take him dead or alive. At once began the sale of the magnificent
library which the cardinal had liberally opened to the public. The
dispersion of the books was happily stopped in time to still leave a
nucleus for the Mazarin Library.
Meanwhile Mazarin had not allowed himself to be frightened by
parliamentary decrees or by dread of assassins. Re-entering France with
six thousand men, he forced the passage of Pontsur-Yonne, in spite of the
two councillors of the Parliaments who were commissioned to have him
arrested; the Duke of Beaufort, at the head of Monsieur's troops, did not
even attempt to impede his march; and, on the 28th of January, the
cardinal entered Poitiers, at once resuming his place beside the king,
who had come to meet him a league from the town. The court took
leisurely the road to Paris.
The coadjutor had received the price of his services in the royal cause;
he was a cardinal "sooner," said he, "than Mazarias would have had him;"
and so the new prince of the church considered himself released from any
gratitude to the court, and sought to form a third party, at the head of
which was to be placed the Duke of Orleans as nominal head. Monsieur,
harried by intrigues in all directions, remained in a state of inaction,
and made a pretension of keeping Paris neutral; his daughter, Mdlle. de
Montpensier, who detested Anne of Austria and Mazarin, and would have
liked to marry the king, had boldly taken the side of the princes; the
court had just arrived at Blois, on the 27th of March, 1652; the keeper
of the seals, Mole, presented himself in front of Orleans to summon the
town to open its gates to the king; at that very moment arrived Mdlle.,
the great Mdlle., as she was then called; and she claimed possession of
Orleans in her father's name. "It was the appanage of Monsieur; but the
gates were shut and barricaded. After they had been told that it was I,"
writes Mdlle., "they did not open; and I was there three hours. The
governor sent me some sweetmeats, and what appeared to me rather funny
was that he gave me to understand that he had no influence. At the
window of the sentry-box was the Marquis d'Halluys, who watched me
walking up and down by the fosse. The rampart was fringed with people
who shouted incessantly, 'Hurrah for the king! hurrah for the princes!
None of your Mazarin!' I could not help calling out to them, 'Go to the
Hotel de Ville and get the gate opened to me!' The captain made signs
that he had not the keys. I said to him, 'It must be burst open, and you
owe me more allegiance than to the gentlemen of the town, seeing that I
am your master's daughter.' The boatmen offered to break open for me a
gate which was close by there. I told them to make haste, and I mounted
upon a pretty high mound of earth overlooking that gate. I thought but
little about any nice way of getting thither; I climbed like a cat; I
held on to briers and thorns, and I leapt all the hedges without hurting
myself at all; two boats were brought up to serve me for a bridge, and in
the second was placed a ladder by which I mounted. The gate was burst at
last. Two planks had been forced out of the middle; signs were made to
me to advance; and as there was a great deal of mud, a footman took me
up, carried me along, and put me through this hole, through which I had
no sooner passed my head than the drums began beating. I gave my hand to
the captain, and said to him, 'You will be very glad that you can boast
of having managed to get me in.'"
The keeper of the seals was obliged to return to Blois, and Mdlle. kept
Orleans, but without being able to effect an entrance for the troops of
the Dukes of Nemours and Beaufort, who had just tried a surprise against
the court. Had it not been for the aid of Turenne, who had defended the
bridge of Jargeau, the king might have fallen into the hands of his
revolted subjects. The queen rested at Gien whilst the princes went on
as far as Montargis, thus cutting off the communications of the court
with Paris. Turenne was preparing to fall upon his incapable adversaries
when the situation suddenly changed: the, Prince of Conde, weary of the
bad state of his affairs in Guienne, where the veteran soldiers of the
Count of Harcourt had the advantage everywhere over the new levies, had
traversed France in disguise, and forming a junction, on the 1st of
April, with the Dukes of Nemours and Beaufort, threw himself upon the
quarters of Marshal d'Hocquincourt, defeated him, burned his camp, and
drove him back to Bleneau; a rapid march on the part of Turenne, coming
to the aid of his colleague, forced Conde to fall back upon Chatillon;
on the 11th of April he was in Paris.
The princes had relied upon the irritation caused by the return of
Mazarin to draw Paris into the revolt, but they were only half
successful; the Parliament would scarcely give Conde admittance;
President de Bailleul, who occupied the chair in the absence of Mole,
declared that the body always considered it an honor to see the prince in
their midst, but that they would have preferred not to see him there in
the state in which he was at the time, with his hands still bloody from
the defeat of the king's troops. Amelot, premier president of the Court
of Aids, said to the prince's face, "that it was a matter of
astonishment, after many battles delivered or sustained against his
Majesty's troops, to see him not only returning to Paris without having
obtained letters of amnesty, but still appearing amongst the sovereign
bodies as if he gloried in the spoils of his Majesty's subjects, and
causing the drum to be beaten for levying troops, to be paid by money
coming from Spain, in the capital of the realm, the most loyal city
possessed by the king." The city of Paris resolved not to make "common
cause or furnish money to assist the princes against the king under
pretext of its being against Mazarin." The populace alone were favorable
to the princes' party.
Meanwhile Turenne had easy work with the secondary generals remaining at
the head of the factious army; by his able manoeuvres he had covered the
march of the court, which established itself at St. Germain.
Conde assembled his forces encamped around Paris: he intended to fortify
himself at the confluence of the Seine and the Marne, hoping to be
supported by the little army which had just been brought up by Duke
Charles of Lorraine, as capricious and adventurous as ever. Turenne and
the main body of his troops barred the passage. Conde threw himself back
upon Faubourg St. Antoine, and there intrenched himself, at the outlet of
the three principal streets which abutted upon Porte St. Antoine (now
Place do la Bastille). Turenne had meant to wait for re-enforcements and
artillery, but the whole court had flocked upon the heights of Charonne
to see the fight; pressure was put upon him, and the marshal gave the
word to attack. The army of the Fronde fought with fury. "I did not see
a Prince of Conde," Turenne used to say; "I saw more than a dozen." The
king's soldiers had entered the houses, thus turning the barricades;
Marshal Ferte had just arrived with the artillery, and was sweeping Rue
St. Antoine. The princes' army was about to be driven back to the foot
of the walls of Paris, when the cannon of the Bastille, replying all on a
sudden to the volleys of the royal troops, came like a thunderbolt on M.
de Turenne; the Porte St. Antoine opened, and the Parisians, under arms,
fringing the streets, protected the return of the rebel army. Mdlle. de
Montpensier had taken the command of the city of Paris.
For a week past the Duke of Orleans had been ill, or pretended to be; he
refused to give any order. When the prince began his movement, on the 2d
of July, early, he sent to beg Mdlle. not to desert him. "I ran to the
Luxembourg," she says, "and I found Monsieur at the top of the stairs.
'I thought I should find you in bed,' said I; 'Count Fiesque told me that
you didn't feel well.' He answered, 'I am not ill enough for that, but
enough not to go out.' I begged him to ride out to the aid of the
prince, or, at any rate, to go to bed and assume to be ill; but I could
get nothing from him. I went so far as to say, 'Short of having a treaty
with the court in your pocket, I cannot understand how you can take
things so easily; but can you really have one to sacrifice the prince to
Cardinal Mazarin?' He made no reply: all I said lasted quite an hour,
during which every friend we had might have been killed, and the prince
as well as another, without anybody's caring; nay, there were people of
Monsieur's in high spirits, hoping that the prince would perish; they
were friends of Cardinal de Retz. At last Monsieur gave me a letter for
the gentlemen of the Hotel, leaving it to me to tell them his intention.
I was there in a moment, assuring those present that, if ill luck would
have it that the enemy should beat the prince, no more quarter would be
shown to Paris than to the men who bore arms. Marshal de l'Hopital,
governor of Paris for the king, said to me, 'You are aware, Mdlle., that
if your troops had not approached this city, those of the king would not
have come thither, and that they only came to drive them away.' Madame
de Nemours did not like this, and began to argue the point. I broke off
their altercation. 'Consider, sir, that, whilst time is being wasted in
discussing useless matters, the prince is in danger in your faubourgs.'"
She carried with her the aid of the Duke of Orleans' troops, and
immediately moved forwards, meeting everywhere on her road her friends
wounded or dying. "When I was near the gate, I went into the house of an
exchequer-master (maitre des comptes). As soon as I was there, the
prince came thither to see me; he was in a pitiable state; he had two
fingers' breadth of dust on his face, and his hair all matted; his collar
and his shirt were covered with blood, although he was not wounded; his
breastplate was riddled all over; and he held his sword bare in his hand,
having lost the scabbard. He said to me, 'You see a man in despair; I
have lost all my friends; MM. de Nemours, de la Rochefoucauld, and
Clinchamps are wounded to death.' I consoled him a little by telling him
that they were in better case than he supposed. Then I went off to the
Bastille, where I made them load the cannon which was trained right upon
the city; and I gave orders to fire as soon as I had gone. I went thence
to the Porte St. Antoine. The soldiers shouted, 'Let us do something
that will astonish them; our retreat is secure; here is Mdlle. at the
gate, and she will have it opened for us, if we are hard pressed.' The
prince gave orders to march back into the city; he seemed to me quite
different from what he had been early in the day, though he had not
changed at all; he paid me a thousand compliments and thanks for the
great service he considered that I had rendered him. I said to him,
'I have a favor to ask of you: that is, not to say anything to Monsieur
about the laches he has displayed towards you.' At this very moment up
came Monsieur, who embraced the prince with as gay an air as if he had
not left him at all in the lurch. The prince confessed that he had never
been in so dangerous a position."
The fight at Porte St. Antoine had not sufficiently compromised the
Parisians, who began to demand peace at any price. The mob, devoted to
the princes, set themselves to insult in the street all those who did not
wear in their hats a tuft of straw, the rallying sign of the faction. On
the 4th of July, at the general assembly of the city, when the king's
attorney-general proposed to conjure his Majesty to return to Paris
without Cardinal Mazarin, the princes, who demanded the union of the
Parisians with themselves, rose up and went out, leaving the assembly to
the tender mercies of the crowd assembled on the Place de Greve. "Down
on the Mazarins!" was the cry; "there are none but Mazarins any longer at
the Hotel de Ville!" Fire was applied to the doors defended by the
archers; all the outlets were guarded by men beside themselves; more than
thirty burgesses of note were massacred; many died of their wounds, the
Hotel de Ville was pillaged, Marshal de l'Hopital escaped with great
difficulty, and the provost of tradesmen yielded up his office to
Councillor Broussel. Terror reigned in Paris: it was necessary to drag
the magistrates to the Palace of Justice to decree, on the 19th of July,
by seventy-four votes against sixty-nine, that the Duke of Orleans should
be appointed "lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and the Prince of Conde
commandant of all the armies." The usurpation of the royal authority was
flagrant, the city-assembly voted subsidies, and Paris wrote to all the
good towns of France to announce to them her resolution. Chancellor
Seguier had the poltroonery to accept the presidency of the council,
offered him by the Duke of Orleans; he thus avenged himself for the
preference the, queen had but lately shown for Mole by confiding the
seals to him. At the same time the Spaniards were entering France; for
all the strong places were dismantled or disgarrisoned. The king,
obliged to confront civil war, had abandoned his frontiers; Gravelines
had fallen on the 18th of May, and the arch-duke had undertaken the siege
of Dunkerque. At Conde's instance, he detached a body of troops, which
he sent, under the orders of Count Fuendalsagna, to join the Duke of
Lorraine, who had again approached Paris. Everywhere the fortune of arms
appeared to be against the king. "This year we lost Barcelona,
Catalonia, and Casale, the key of Italy," says Cardinal de Retz. "We saw
Brisach in revolt, on the point of falling once more into the hands of
the house of Austria. We saw the flags and standards of Spain fluttering
on the Pont Neuf, the yellow scarfs of Lorraine appeared in Paris as
freely as the isabels and the blues." Dissension, ambition, and
poltroonery were delivering France over to the foreigner.
The evil passions of men, under the control of God, help sometimes to
destroy and sometimes to preserve them. The interests of the Spaniards
and of the Prince of Conde were not identical. He desired to become the
master of France, and to command in the king's name; the enemy were
laboring to humiliate France and to prolong the war indefinitely: The
arch-duke recalled Count Fuendalsagna to Dunkerque; and Turenne,
withstanding the terrors of the court, which would fain have fled first
into Normandy and then to Lyons, prevailed upon the queen to establish
herself at Pontoise, whilst the army occupied Compiegne. At every point
cutting off the passage of the Duke of Lorraine, who had been re-enforced
by a body of Spaniards, Turenne held the enemy in check for three weeks,
and prevented them from marching on Paris. All parties began to tire of
hostilities.
Cardinal Mazarin took his line, and loudly demanded of the king
permission to withdraw, in order, by his departure, to restore peace to
the kingdom. The queen refused. "There is no consideration shown," she
said, "for my son's honor and my own; we will not suffer him to go away."
But the cardinal insisted. Prudent and far-sighted as he was, he knew
that to depart was the only way of remaining. He departed on the 19th of
August, but without leaving the frontier: he took up his quarters at
Bouillon. The queen had summoned the Parliament to her at Pontoise. A
small number of magistrates responded to her summons, enough, however, to
give the queen the right to proclaim rebellious the Parliament remaining
at Paris. Chancellor Seguier made his escape, in order to go and rejoin
the court. Nobody really believed in the cardinal's withdrawal; men are
fond of yielding to appearances in order to excuse in their own eyes a
change in their own purposes. Disorder went on increasing in Paris; the
great lords, in their discontent, were quarrelling one with another; the
Prince of Conde struck M. de Rieux, who returned the blow; the Duke of
Nemours was killed in a duel by M. de Beaufort; the burgesses were
growing weary of so much anarchy; a public display of feeling in favor
of peace took place on the 24th of September in the garden of the
Palais-Royal; those present stuck in their hats pieces of white paper in
opposition to the Frondeurs' tufts of straw. People fought in the
streets on behalf of these tokens. For some weeks past Cardinal de Retz
had remained inactive, and his friends pressed him to move. "You see
quite well," they said, "that Mazarin is but a sort of jack-in-the-box,
out of sight to-day and popping up to-morrow; but you also see that,
whether he be in or out, the spring that sends him up or down is that of
the royal authority, the which will not, apparently, be so very soon
broken by the means taken to break it. The obligation you are under
towards Monsieur, and even towards the public, as regards Mazarin, does
not allow you to work for his restoration; he is no longer here, and,
though his absence may be nothing but a mockery and a delusion, it
nevertheless gives you an opportunity for taking certain steps which
naturally lead to that which is for your good." Retz lost no time in
going to Compiegne, where the king had installed himself after Mazarin's
departure; he took with him a deputation of the clergy, and received in
due form the cardinal's hat. He was the bearer of proposals for an
accommodation from the Duke of Orleans, but the queen cut him short. The
court perceived its strength, and the instructions of Cardinal Mazarin
were precise. The ruin of De Retz was from that moment resolved upon.
The Prince of Conde was ill; he had left the command of his troops to M.
do Tavannes; during the night between the 5th and 6th of October, Turenne
struck his camp at Villeneuve St. Georges, crossed the Seine at Corbeil,
the Marne at Meaux, without its being in the enemy's power to stop him,
and established himself in the neighborhood of Dammartin. Conde was
furious. "Tavannes and Vallon ought to wear bridles," he said; "they are
asses;" he left his house, and placed himself once more at the head of
his army, at first following after Turenne, and soon to sever himself
completely from that Paris which was slipping away from him. "He would
find himself more at home at the head of four squadrons in the Ardennes
than commanding a dozen millions of such fellows as we have here, without
excepting President Charton," said the Duke of Orleans. "The prince was
wasting away with sheer disgust; he was so weary of hearing all the talk
about Parliament, court of aids, chambers in assembly, and Hotel de
Ville, that he would often declare that his grandfather had never been
more fatigued by the parsons of La Rochelle." The great Conde was
athirst for the thrilling emotions of war; and the crime he committed was
to indulge at any price that boundless passion. Ever victorious at the
head of French armies, he was about to make experience of defeat in the
service of the foreigner.
The king had proclaimed a general amnesty on the 18th of October; and on
the 21st he set out in state for Paris. The Duke of Orleans still
wavered. "You wanted peace," said Madame, "when it depended but on you
to make war; you now want war when you can make neither war nor peace.
It is of no use to think any longer of anything but going with a good
grace to meet the king." At these words he exclaimed aloud, as if it had
been proposed to him to go and throw himself in the river. "And where
the devil should I go?" he answered. He remained at the Luxembourg. On
drawing near Paris, the king sent word to his uncle that he would have to
leave the city. Gaston replied in the following letter:—
"MONSEIGNEUR: Having understood from my cousin the Duke of Danville
and from Sieur d'Aligre, the respect that your Majesty would have me
pay you, I most humbly beseech your Majesty to allow me to assure
you by these lines that I do not propose to remain in Paris longer
than till to-morrow; and that I will go my way to my house at
Limours, having no more passionate desire than to testify by my
perfect obedience that I am, with submission,
"Monseigneur,
"Your most humble and most obedient servant and subject,
"GASTON."
|
The Duke of Orleans retired before long to his castle at Blois, where he
died in 1660; deserted, towards the end of his life, by all the friends
he had successively abandoned and betrayed. "He had, with the exception
of courage, all that was necessary to make an honorable man," says
Cardinal de Retz, "but weakness was predominant in his heart through
fear, and in his mind through irresolution; it disfigured the whole
course of his life. He engaged in everything because he had not strength
to resist those who drew him on, and he always came out disgracefully,
because he had not the courage to support them." He was a prey to fear,
fear of his friends as well as of his enemies.
The Fronde was all over, that of the gentry of the long robe as well as
that of the gentry of the sword. The Parliament of Paris was once more
falling in the state to the rank which had been assigned to it by
Richelieu, and from which it had wanted to emerge by a supreme effort.
The attempt had been the same in France as in England, however different
had been the success. It was the same yearnings of patriotism and
freedom, the same desire on the part of the country to take an active
part in its own government, which had inspired the opposition of the
Parliament of England to the despotism of Charles I., and the opposition
of the French Parliaments to Richelieu as well as to Mazarin. It was
England's good fortune to have but one Parliament of politicians, instead
of ten Parliaments of magistrates, the latter more fit for the theory
than the practice of public affairs; and the Reformation had, beforehand,
accustomed its people to discussion as well as to liberty. Its great
lords and its gentlemen placed themselves from the first at the head of
the national movement, demanding nothing and expecting nothing for
themselves from the advantages they claimed for their country. The
remnant of the feudal system had succumbed with the Duke of Montmorency
under Richelieu; France knew not the way to profit by the elements of
courage, disinterestedness, and patriotism offered her by her magistracy;
she had the misfortune to be delivered over to noisy factions of princes
and great lords, ambitious or envious, greedy of honors and riches, as
ready to fight the court as to be on terms with it, and thinking far more
of their own personal interests than of the public service. Without any
unity of action or aim, and by turns excited and dismayed by the examples
that came to them from England, the Frondeurs had to guide them no
Hampden or Cromwell; they had at their backs neither people nor army; the
English had been able to accomplish a revolution; the Fronde failed
before the dexterous prudence of Mazarin and the queen's fidelity to her
minister. In vain did the coadjutor aspire to take his place; Anne of
Austria had not forgotten the Earl of Strafford.—Cardinal de Retz
learned before long the hollowness of his hopes. On the 19th of
December, 1652, as he was repairing to the Louvre, he was arrested by M.
de Villequier, captain of the guards on duty, and taken the same evening
to the Bois de Vincennes; there was a great display of force in the
street and around the carriage; but nobody moved, "whether it were," says
Retz, "that the dejection of the people was too great, or that those who
were well-inclined towards me lost courage on seeing nobody at their
head." People were tired of raising barricades and hounding down the
king's soldiers.
"I was taken into a large room where there were neither hangings nor bed;
that which was brought in about eleven o'clock at night was of Chinese
taffeta, not at all the thing for winter furniture. I slept very well,
which must not be attributed to stout-heartedness, because misfortune has
naturally that effect upon me. I have on more than one occasion
discovered that it wakes me in the morning and sends me to sleep at
night. I was obliged to get up the next day without a fire, because
there was no wood to make one, and the three exons who had been posted
near me had the kindness to assure me that I should not be without it the
next day. He who remained alone on guard over me took it for himself,
and I was a whole fortnight, at Christmas, in a room as big as a church,
without warming myself. I do not believe that there could be found under
heaven another man like this exon. He stole my linen, my clothes, my
boots, and I was sometimes obliged to stay in bed eight or ten days for
lack of anything to put on. I could not believe that I was subjected to
such treatment without orders from some superior, and without some mad
notion of making me die of vexation. I fortified myself against that
notion, and I resolved at any rate not to die that kind of death. At
last I got him into the habit of not tormenting me any more, by dint of
letting him see that I did not torment myself at all. In point of fact I
had risen pretty nearly superior to all these ruses, for which I had a
supreme contempt; but I could not assume the same loftiness of spirit in
respect of the prison's entity (substance), if one may use the term, and
the sight of myself, every morning when I awoke, in the hands of my
enemies made me perceive that I was anything rather than a stoic."
The Archbishop of Paris had just died, and the dignity passed to his
coadjutor; as the price of his release, Mazarin demanded his resignation.
The clergy of Paris were highly indignant; Cardinal de Retz was removed
to the castle of Nantes, whence he managed to make his escape in August,
1653; for nine years he lived abroad, in Spain, Italy, and Germany,
everywhere mingling in the affairs of Europe, engaged in intrigue, and
not without influence; when at last he returned to France, in 1662, he
resigned the archbishopric of Paris, and established himself in the
principality of Commercy, which belonged to him, occupied up to the day
of his death in paying his debts, doing good to his friends and servants,
writing his memoirs, and making his peace with God. This was in those
days a solicitude which never left the most worldly: the Prince of Conti
had died very devout, and Madame de Longueville had just expired at the
Carmelites', after twenty-five years' penance, when Cardinal de Retz died
on the 24th of August, 1679. At the time of his arrest, it was a common
saying of the people in the street that together with "Cardinal de Retz
it would have been a very good thing to imprison Cardinal Mazarin as
well, in order to teach them of the clergy not to meddle for the future
in the things of this world." Language which was unjust to the grand
government of Cardinal Richelieu, unjust even to Cardinal Mazarin. The
latter was returning with greater power than ever at the moment when
Cardinal de Retz, losing forever the hope of supplanting him in power,
was beginning that life of imprisonment and exile which was ultimately to
give him time to put retirement and repentance between himself and death.
Cardinal Mazarin had once more entered France, but he had not returned to
Paris. The Prince of Conde, soured by the ill-success of the Fronde and
demented by illimitable pride, had not been ashamed to accept the title
of generalissimo of the Spanish armies; Turenne had succeeded in hurling
him back into Luxembourg, and it was in front of Bar, besieged, that
Mazarin, with a body of four thousand men, joined the French army; Bar
was taken, and the campaign of 1652, disastrous at nearly every point,
had just finished with this success, when the cardinal re-entered Paris
at the end of January, 1653. Six months later, at the end of July, the
insurrection in Guienne was becoming extinguished by a series of private
conventions; the king's armies were entering Bordeaux; the revolted
princes received their pardon, waiting, meanwhile, for the Prince of
Conti to marry, as he did next year, Mdlle. Martinozzi, one of Mazarin's
nieces; Madame de Longueville retired to Moulin's into the convent where
her aunt, Madame de Montmorency, had for the last twenty years been
mourning for her husband; Conde was the only rebel left, more dangerous,
for France, than all the hostile armies he commanded. Cardinal Mazarin
was henceforth all-powerful; whatever may have been the nature of the
ties which united him to the queen, he had proved their fidelity and
strength too fully to always avoid the temptation of adopting the tone of
a master; the young king's confidence in his minister, who had brought
him up, equalled that of his mother; the merits as well as the faults of
Mazarin were accordingly free to crop out: he was neither vindictive nor
cruel towards even his most inveterate enemies, whom he could not manage,
as Richelieu did, to confound with those of the state; the excesses of
the factions had sufficed to destroy them. "Time is an able fellow," the
cardinal would frequently say; if people often complained of being badly
compensated for their services, Mazarin could excuse himself on the
ground of the deplorable, condition of the finances. He nevertheless
feathered his own nest inordinately, taking care, however, not to rob the
people, it was said. He confined himself to selling everything at a
profit to himself, even the offices of the royal household, without
making, as Richelieu had made, any "advance out of his own money to the
state, when there was none in the treasury." The power had been honestly
won, if the fortune were of a doubtful kind. M. Mignet has said with his
manly precision of language, "Amidst those unreasonable disturbances
which upset for a while the judgment of the great Turenne, which, in the
case of the great Conde, turned the sword of Rocroi against France, and
which led Cardinal Retz to make so poor a use of his talent, there was
but one firm will, and that was Anne of Austria's; but one man of good
sense, and that was Mazarin." [Introduction aux Negotiations pour la
Succession d'Espagne.]
From 1653 to 1657, Turenne, seconded by Marshal La Ferte and sometimes by
Cardinal Mazarin in person, constantly kept the Spaniards and the Prince
of Conde in check, recovering the places but lately taken from France and
relieving the besieged towns; without ever engaging in pitched battles,
he almost always had the advantage. Mazarin resolved to strike a
decisive blow. It was now three years since, after long negotiations,
the cardinal had concluded with Cromwell, Protector of the Commonwealth
of England, a treaty of peace and commerce, the prelude and first fruits
of a closer alliance which the able minister of Anne of Austria had not
ceased to wish for and pave the way for. On the 23d of March, 1657, the
parleys ended at last in a treaty of alliance offensive and defensive;
it was concluded at Paris between France and England. Cromwell promised
that a body of six thousand English, supported by a fleet prepared to
victual and aid them along the coasts, should go and join the French
army, twenty thousand strong, to make war on the Spanish Low Countries,
and especially to besiege the three forts of Gravelines, Mardyk, and
Dunkerque, the last of which was to be placed in the hands of the English
and remain in their possession. Six weeks after the conclusion of the
treaty, the English troops disembarked at Boulogne; they were regiments
formed and trained in the long struggles of the civil war, drilled to the
most perfect discipline, of austere manners, and of resolute and stern
courage; the king came in person to receive them on their arrival; Mardyk
was soon taken and placed as pledge in the hands of the English.
Cromwell sent two fresh regiments for the siege of Dunkerque. In the
spring of 1658, Turenne invested the place. Louis XIV. and Mazarin went
to Calais to be present at this great enterprise.
"At Brussels," says M. Guizot in his Histoire de la Republique
d'Angleterre et de Cromwell, "neither Don Juan nor the Marquis of
Carracena would believe that Dunkerque was in danger; being at the same
time indolent and proud, they disdained the counsel, at one time of
vigilant activity and at another of prudent reserve, which was constantly
given them by Conde; they would not have anybody come and rouse them
during their siesta if any unforeseen incident occurred, nor allow any
doubt of their success when once they were up and on horseback. They
hurried away to the defence of Dunkerque, leaving behind them their
artillery and a portion of their cavalry. Conde, conjured them to
intrench themselves whilst awaiting them; Don Juan, on the contrary,
was for advancing on to the dunes and marching to meet the French army.
'You don't reflect,' said Conde 'that ground is fit only for infantry,
and that of the French is more numerous and has seen more service.'
'I am persuaded,' replied Don Juan, 'that they will not ever dare to look
His Most Catholic Majesty's army in the face.' 'Ah! you don't know M. de
Turenne; no mistake is made with impunity in the presence of such a man
as that.' Don Juan persisted, and, in fact, made his way on to the
'dunes.' Next day, the 13th of June, Conde, more and more convinced of
the danger, made fresh efforts to make him retire. 'Retire!' cried Don
Juan: 'if the French dare fight, this will be the finest day that ever
shone on the arms of His Most Catholic Majesty.' 'Very fine, certainly,'
answered Conde, 'if you give orders to retire.' Turenne put an end to
this disagreement in the enemy's camp. Having made up his mind to give
battle on the 14th, at daybreak, he sent word to the English general,
Lockhart, by one of his officers who wanted at the same time to explain
the commander-in-chief's plan and his grounds for it. 'All right,'
answered Lockhart: 'I leave it to M. de Turenne; he shall tell me his
reasons after the battle, if he likes.' A striking contrast between the
manly discipline of English good sense and the silly blindness of Spanish
pride. Conde was not mistaken: the issue of a battle begun under such
auspices could not be doubtful. 'My lord,' said he to the young Duke of
Gloucester, who was serving in the Spanish army by the side of his
brother, the Duke of York, 'did you ever see a battle?' 'No, prince.'
'Well, then, you are going to see one lost.' The battle of the Dunes
was, in fact, totally lost by the Spaniards, after four hours' very hard
fighting, during which the English regiments carried bravely, and with
heavy losses, the most difficult and the best defended position; all the
officers of Lockhart's regiment, except two, were killed or wounded
before the end of the day; the Spanish army retired in disorder, leaving
four thousand prisoners in the hands of the conqueror. 'The enemy came
to meet us,' wrote Turenne, in the evening, to his wife; 'they were
beaten, God be praised! I have worked rather hard all day; I wish you
good night, and am going to bed.' Ten days afterwards, on the 23d of
June, 1658, the garrison of Dunkerque was exhausted; the aged governor,
the Marquis of Leyden, had been mortally wounded in a sortie; the place
surrendered, and, the next day but one, Louis XIV. entered it, but merely
to hand it over at once to the English. 'Though the court and the army
are in despair at the notion of letting go what he calls a rather nice
morsel,' wrote Lockhart, the day before, to Secretary Thurloe,
'nevertheless the cardinal is staunch to his promises, and seems as well
satisfied at giving up this place to his Highness as I am to take it.
The king, also, is extremely polite and obliging, and he has in his soul
more honesty than I had supposed.'"
The surrender of Dunkerque was soon followed by that of Gravelines and
several other towns; the great blow against the Spanish arms had been
struck; negotiations were beginning; tranquillity reigned everywhere in
France; the Parliament had caused no talk since the 20th of March, 1655,
when, they having refused to enregister certain financial edicts, for
want of liberty of suffrage, the king, setting out from the castle of
Vincennes, "had arrived early at the Palace of Justice, in scarlet jacket
and gray hat, attended by all his court in the same costume, as if he
were going to hunt the stag, which was unwonted up to that day. When he
was in his bed of justice, he prohibited the Parliament from assembling,
and, after having said a word or two, he rose and went out, without
listening to any address." [Memoires de Montglat, t. ii.] The
sovereign courts had learned to improve upon the old maxim of Matthew
Mole: "I am going to court; I shall tell the truth; after which the king
must be obeyed." Not a tongue wagged, and obedience at length was
rendered to Cardinal Mazarin as it had but lately been to Cardinal
Richelieu.
The court was taking its diversion. "There were plenty of fine comedies
and ballets going on. The king, who danced very well, liked them
extremely," says Mdlle. de Montpensier, at that time exiled from Paris;
"all this did not affect me at all; I thought that I should see enough of
it on my return; but my ladies were different, and nothing could equal
their vexation at not being in all these gayeties." It was still worse
when announcement was made of the arrival of Queen Christina of Sweden,
that celebrated princess, who had reigned from the time she was six years
old, and had lately abdicated, in 1654, in favor of her cousin, Charles
Gustavus, in order to regain her liberty, she said, but perhaps, also,
because she found herself confronted by the ever-increasing opposition of
the grandees of her kingdom, hostile to the foreign fashions favored by
the queen, as well as to the design that was attributed to her of
becoming converted to Catholicism. When Christina arrived at Paris, in
1656, she had already accomplished her abjuration at Brussels, without
assigning her motives for it to anybody. "Those who talk of them know
nothing about them," she would say; "and she who knows something about
them has never talked of them." There was great curiosity at Paris to
see this queen. The king sent the Duke of Guise to meet her, and he
wrote to one of his friends as follows:
"She is not tall, she has a good arm, a hand white and well made, but
rather a man's than a woman's, a high shoulder,—a defect which she
so well conceals by the singularity of her dress, her walk, and her
gestures, that you might make a bet about it. Her face is large without
being defective, all her features are the same and strongly marked, a
pretty tolerable turn of countenance, set off by a very singular
head-dress; that is, a man's wig, very big, and very much raised in
front; the top of the head is a tissue of hair, and the back has
something of a woman's style of head-dress. Sometimes she also wears a
hat; her bodice, laced behind, crosswise, is made something like our
doublets, her chemise bulging out all round her petticoat, which she
wears rather badly fastened and not over straight. She is always very
much powdered, with a good deal of pomade, and almost never puts on
gloves. She has, at the very least, as much swagger and haughtiness as
the great Gustavus, her father, can have had; she is mighty civil and
coaxing, speaks eight languages, and principally French, as if she had
been born in Paris. She knows as much about it as all our Academy and
the Sorbonne put together, has an admirable knowledge of painting as well
as of everything else, and knows all the intrigues of our court better
than I. In fact, she is quite an extraordinary person." "The king,
though very timid at that time," says Madame de Motteville, "and not at
all well informed, got on so well with this bold, well-informed, and
haughty princess, that, from the first moment, they associated together
with much freedom and pleasure on both sides. It was difficult, when you
had once had a good opportunity of seeing her, and above all of listening
to her, not to forgive all her irregularities, though some of them were
highly blamable." All the court and all Paris made a great fuss about
this queen, who insisted upon going everywhere, even to the French
Academy, where no woman had ever been admitted. Patru thus relates to
one of his friends the story of her visit: "No notice was given until
about eight or nine in the morning of this princess's purpose, so that
some of our body could not receive information in time. M. de Gombault
came without having been advertised; but, as soon as he knew of the
queen's purpose, he went away again, for thou must know that he is wroth
with her because, he having written some verses in which he praised the
great Gustavus, she did not write to him, she who, as thou knowest, has
written to a hundred impertinent apes. I might complain, with far more
reason; but, so long as kings, queens, princes, and princesses do me only
that sort of harm, I shall never complain. The chancellor [Seguier, at
whose house the Academy met] had forgotten to have the portrait of this
princess, which she had given to the society, placed in the room; which,
in my opinion, ought not to have been forgotten. Word was brought that
the carriage was entering the court-yard. The chancellor, followed by
the whole body, went to receive the princess. . . . As soon as she
entered the room, she went off-hand, according to her habit, and sat down
in her chair; and, at the same moment, without any order given us, we
also sat down. The princess, seeing that we were at some little distance
from the table, told us that we could draw up close to it. There was
some little drawing up, but not as if it were a dinner-party. . . .
Several pieces were read; and then the director, who was M. de la
Chambre, told the queen that the ordinary exercise of the society was to
work at the Dictionary, and that, if it were agreeable to her Majesty, a
sheet should be read. 'By all means,' said she. M. de Mezeray,
accordingly, read the word Jeux, under which, amongst other proverbial
expressions, there was, 'Jeux de princes, qui ne plaisent qu'a ceux qui
les font.' (Princes' jokes, which amuse only those who make them.) She
burst out laughing. The word, which was in fair copy, was finished. It
would have been better to read a word which had to be weeded, because
then we should all have spoken; but people were taken by surprise—the
French always are. . . . After about an hour, the princess rose, made
a courtesy to the company, and went away as she had come. Here is really
what passed at this famous interview, which, no doubt, does great honor
to the Academy.—The Duke of Anjou talks of coming to it, and the zealous
are quite transported with this bit of glory." [OEuvres diverses de
Patru, t. ii. p. 512.]
Queen Christina returned the next year and passed some time at
Fontainebleau. It was there, in a gallery that King Louis Philippe
caused to be turned into apartments, which M. Guizot at one time
occupied, that she had her first equerry, Monaldeschi, whom she accused
of having betrayed her, assassinated almost before her own eyes; and she
considered it astonishing, and very bad taste, that the court of France
should be shocked at such an execution. "This barbarous princess," says
Madame de Motteville, "after so cruel an action as that, remained in her
room laughing and chatting as easily as if she had done something of no
consequence or very praiseworthy. The queen-mother, a perfect Christian,
who had met with so many enemies whom she might have punished, but who
had received from her nothing but marks of kindness, was scandalized by
it. The king and Monsieur blamed her, and the minister, who was not a
cruel man, was astounded."
The queen-mother had other reasons for being less satisfied than she had
been at the first trip of Queen Christina of Sweden. The young king
testified much inclination for Mary de Mancini, Cardinal Mazarin's niece,
a bold and impassioned creature, whose sister Olympia had already found
favor in his eyes before her marriage with the Count of Soissons. The
eldest of all had married the Duke of Mercoeur, son of the Duke of
Vendome; the other two were destined to be united, at a later period, to
the Dukes of Bouillon and La Meilleraye; the hopes of Mary went still
higher; relying on the love of young Louis XIV., she dared to dream of
the throne; and the Queen of Sweden encouraged her. "The right thing is
to marry one's love," she told the king. No time was lost in letting
Christina understand that she could not remain long in France: the
cardinal, "with a moderation for which he cannot be sufficiently
commended," says Madame de Motteville, "himself put obstacles in the way
of his niece's ambitious designs; he sent her to the convent of Brouage,
threatening, if that exile were not sufficient, to leave France and take
his niece with him."
"No power," he said to the king, "can wrest from me the free authority of
disposal which God and the laws give me over my family." "You are king;
you weep; and yet I am going away!" said the young girl to her royal
lover, who let her go. Mary de Mancini was mistaken; he was not yet
King.
Cardinal Mazarin and the queen had other views regarding the marriage of
Louis XIV.; for a long time past the object of their labors had been to
terminate the war by an alliance with Spain. The Infanta, Maria Theresa,
was no longer heiress to the crown, for King Philip at last had a son;
Spain was exhausted by long-continued efforts, and dismayed by the checks
received in the, campaign of 1658; the alliance of the Rhine, recently
concluded at Frankfurt between the two leagues, Catholic and Protestant,
confirmed immutably the advantages which the treaty of Westphalia had
secured to France. The electors had just raised to the head of the
empire young Leopold I., on the death of his father, Ferdinand III., and
they proposed their mediation between France and Spain. Whilst King
Philip IV. was still hesitating, Mazarin took a step in another
direction; the king set out for Lyons, accompanied by his mother and his
minister, to go and see Princess Margaret of Savoy, who had been proposed
to him a long time ago as his wife. He was pleased with her, and
negotiations were already pretty far advanced, to the great displeasure
of the queen-mother, when the cardinal, on the 29th of November, 1659, in
the evening, entered Anne of Austria's room. "He found her pensive and
melancholy, but he was all smiles. 'Good news, madam,' said he. 'Ah!'
cried the queen, 'is it to be peace?' 'More than that, Madame; I bring
your Majesty both peace and the Infanta.'" The Spaniards had become
uneasy; and Don Antonio de Pimentel had arrived at Lyons at the same time
with the court of Savoy, bearing a letter from Philip IV. for the queen
his sister. The Duchess of Savoy had to depart and take her daughter
with her, disappointed of her hopes; all the consolation she obtained was
a written promise that the king would marry Princess Margaret, if the
marriage with the Infanta were not accomplished within a year.
The year had not yet rolled away, and the Duchess of Savoy had already
lost every atom of illusion. Since the 13th of August, Cardinal Mazarin
had been officially negotiating with Don Louis de Haro, representing
Philip IV. The ministers had held a meeting in the middle of the
Bidassoa, on the Island of Pheasants, where a pavilion had been erected
on the boundary-line between the two states. On the 7th of November the
peace of the Pyrenees was signed at last; it put an end to a war which
had continued for twenty-three years, often internecine, always
burdensome, and which had ruined the finances of the two countries.
France was the gainer of Artois and Roussillon, and of several places in
Flanders, Hainault, and Luxembourg; and the peace of Westphalia was
recognized by Spain, to whom France restored all that she held in
Catalonia and in Franche-Comte. Philip IV. had refused to include
Portugal in the treaty. The Infanta received as dowry five hundred
thousand gold crowns, and renounced all her rights to the throne of
Spain; the Prince of Conde was taken back to favor by the king, and
declared that he would fain redeem with his blood all the hostilities he
had committed in and out of France. The king restored him to all his
honors and dignities, gave him the government of Burgundy, and bestowed
on his son, the Duke of Enghien, the office of Grand Master of France.
The honor of the King of Spain was saved, he did not abandon his allies,
and he made a great match for his daughter. But the eyes of Europe were
not blinded; it was France that triumphed; the policy of Cardinal
Richelieu and of Cardinal Mazarin was everywhere successful. The work of
Henry IV. was completed, the house of Austria was humiliated and
vanquished in both its branches; the man who had concluded the peace of
Westphalia and the peace of the Pyrenees had a right to say, "I am more
French in heart than in speech."
The Prince of Conde returned to court, "as if he had never gone away,"
says Mdlle. de Montpensier. [Memoires, t. iii. p. 451.] "The king
talked familiarly with him of all that he had done both in France and in
Flanders, and that with as much gusto as if all those things had taken
place for his service." "The prince discovered him to be so great in
every point that, from the first moment at which he could approach him,
he comprehended, as it appeared, that the time had come to humble
himself. That genius for sovereignty and command which God had implanted
in the king, and which was beginning to show itself, persuaded the Prince
of Conde that all which remained of the previous reign was about to be
annihilated." [Memoires de Madame de Motteville, t. v. p. 39.] From
that day King Louis XIV. had no more submissive subject than the great
Conde.
The court was in the South, travelling from town to town, pending the
arrival of the dispensations from Rome. On the 3d of June, 1660, Don
Louis de Haro, in the name of the King of France, espoused the Infanta in
the church of Fontfrabia. Mdlle. de Montpensier made up her mind to be
present, unknown to anybody, at the ceremony. When it was over, the new
queen, knowing that the king's cousin was there, went up to her, saying,
"I should like to embrace this fair unknown," and led her away to her
room, chatting about everything, but pretending not to know her. The
queen-mother and King Philip IV. met next day, on the Island of
Pheasants, after forty-five years' separation. The king had come
privately to have a view of the Infanta, and he watched her, through a
door ajar, towering a whole head above the courtiers. "May I, ask my
niece what she thinks of this unknown?" said Anne of Austria to her
brother. "It will be time when she has passed that door," replied the
king. Young Monsieur, the king's brother, leaned forward towards his
sister-in-law, and, "What does your Majesty think of this door?" he
whispered. "I think it very nice and handsome," answered the young
queen. The king had thought her handsome, "despite the ugliness of her
head-dress and of her clothes, which had at first taken him by surprise."
King Philip IV. kept looking at M. de Turenne, who had accompanied the
king. "That man has given me dreadful times," he repeated twice or
thrice. "You can judge whether M. de Turenne felt himself offended,"
says Mdlle. de Montpensier. The definitive marriage took place at
Saint-Jean-de-Luz on the 9th of June, and the court took the road
leisurely back to Vincennes. Scarcely had the arrival taken place, when
all the sovereign bodies sent a solemn deputation to pay their respects
to Cardinal Mazarin and thank him for the peace he had just concluded.
It was an unprecedented honor, paid to a minister upon whose head the
Parliament had but lately set a price. The cardinal's triumph was as
complete at home as abroad; all foes had been reduced to submission or
silence, Paris and France rejoicing over the peace and the king's
marriage; but, like Cardinal Richelieu, Mazarin succumbed at the very
pinnacle of his glory and power; the gout, to which he was subject, flew
to his stomach, and he suffered excruciating agonies. One day, when the
king came to get his advice upon a certain matter, "Sir," said the
cardinal, "you are asking counsel of a man who no longer has his reason
and who raves." He saw the approach of death calmly, but not
unregretfully. Concealed, one day, behind a curtain in the new
apartments of the Mazarin Palace (now the National Library), young
Brienne heard the cardinal coming. "He dragged his slippers along like a
man very languid and just recovering from some serious illness. He
paused at every step, for he was very feeble; he fixed his gaze first on
one side and then on the other, and letting his eyes wander over the
magnificent objects of art he had been all his life collecting, he said,
'All that must be left behind!' And, turning round, he added, 'And that
too! What trouble I have had to obtain all these things! I shall never
see them more where I am going.'" He had himself removed to Vincennes,
of which he was governor. There he continued to regulate all the affairs
of state, striving to initiate the young king in the government.
"Nobody," Turenne used to say, "works so much as the cardinal, or
discovers so many expedients with great clearness of mind for the
terminating of much business of different sorts." The dying minister
recommended to the king MM. Le Tellier and de Lionne, and he added, "Sir,
to you I owe everything; but I consider that I to some extent acquit
myself of my obligation to your Majesty by giving you M. Colbert." The
cardinal, uneasy about the large possessions he left, had found a way of
securing them to his heirs by making, during his lifetime, a gift of the
whole of them to the king. Louis XIV. at once returned it. The minister
had lately placed his two nieces, the Princess of Conti and the Countess
of Soissons, at the head of the household of two queens; he had married
his niece, Hortensia Mancini, to the Duke of La Meilleraye, who took the
title of Duke of Mazarin. The father of this duke was the relative and
protege of Cardinal Richelieu, for whom Mazarin had always preserved a
feeling of great gratitude. It was to him and his wife that he left the
remainder of his vast possessions, after having distributed amongst all
his relatives liberal bequests to an enormous amount. The pictures and
jewels went to the king, to Monsieur, and to the queens. A considerable
sum was employed for the foundation and endowment of the College des
Quatre Nations (now the Palais de l'Institut), intended for the
education of sixty children of the four provinces re-united to France by
the treaties of Westphalia and the Pyrenees, Alsace, Roussillon, Artois,
and Pignerol. The cardinal's fortune was estimated at fifty millions.
Mazarin had scarcely finished making his final dispositions when his
malady increased to a violent pitch. "On the 5th of March, forty hours'
public prayers were ordered in all the churches of Paris, which is not
generally done except in the case of kings," says Madame de Motteville.
The cardinal had sent for M. Jolt, parish-priest of St. Nicholas des
Champs, a man of great reputation for piety, and begged him not to leave
him. "I have misgivings about not being sufficiently afraid of death,"
he said to his confessor. He felt his own pulse himself, muttering quite
low, "I shall have a great deal more to suffer." The king had left him
on the 7th of March, in the evening. He did not see him again and sent
to summon the ministers. Already the living was taking the place of the
dying, with a commencement of pomp and circumstance which excited wonder
at the changes of the world. "On the 9th, between two and three in the
morning, Mazarin raised himself slightly in his bed, praying to God and
suffering greatly; then he said aloud, 'Ah holy Virgin, have pity upon
me; receive my soul,' and so he expired, showing a fair front to death up
to the last moment." The queen-mother had left her room for the last
two, days, because it was too near that of the dying man. "She wept less
than the king," says Madame de Motteville, "being more disgusted with the
creatures of his making by reason of the knowledge she had of their
imperfections, insomuch that it was soon easy to see that the defects of
the dead man would before long appear to her greater than they had yet
been in her eyes, for he did not content himself with exercising
sovereign power over the whole realm, but he exercised it over the
sovereigns themselves who had given it him, not leaving them liberty to
dispose of anything of any consequence." [Memoires de Madame de
Motteville, t. v. p. 103.]
Louis XIV. was about to reign with a splendor and puissance without
precedent; his subjects were submissive and Europe at peace; he was
reaping the fruits of the labors of his grandfather Henry IV., of
Cardinal Richelieu, and of Cardinal Mazarin. Whilst continuing the work
of Henry IV. Richelieu had rendered possible the government of Mazarin;
he had set the kingly authority on foundations so strong that the princes
of the blood themselves could not shake it. Mazarin had destroyed party
and secured to France a glorious peace. Great minister had succeeded
great king, and able man great minister; Italian prudence, dexterity, and
finesse had replaced the indomitable will, the incomparable judgment, and
the grandeur of view of the French priest and nobleman. Richelieu and
Mazarin had accomplished their patriotic work: the king's turn had come.
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