A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times Volume V Part 16

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 embarra.s.sed. 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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sembly 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sume the government, hoping of G.o.d'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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 Roch.e.l.le, which he took from the revolters under the very beard of the prince, who had come from Bordeaux to the a.s.sistance 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 a.s.sistance. 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 a.s.sembled 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sa.s.sins. Re-entering France with six thousand men, he forced the pa.s.sage 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 grat.i.tude 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 pa.s.sed 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Great Mademoiselle----373]

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 Bldneau; 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 a.s.sist 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 maneeuvres he had covered the march of the court, which established itself at St. Germain.

Conde a.s.sembled 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 pa.s.sage. Conde threw himself back upon Faubourg St. Antoine, and there intrenched himself, at the outlet of the three princ.i.p.al streets which ab.u.t.ted 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 a.s.sume 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, a.s.suring 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 a.s.sembly 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 a.s.sembly to the tender mercies of the crowd a.s.sembled 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 ma.s.sacred; 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-a.s.sembly 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 pa.s.sions of men, under the control of G.o.d, 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 pa.s.sage 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 Srguier made his escape, in order to go and rejoin the court. n.o.body really believed in the cardinal's withdrawal; men are fond of yielding to appear ances 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 a.s.ses;" 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 a.s.sembly, and Hotel de Ville, that he would often declare that his grandfather had never been more fatigued by the parsons of La Roch.e.l.le." The great Conde was athirst for the thrilling emotions of war; and the crime he committed was to indulge at any price that boundless pa.s.sion. 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 a.s.sure you by these lines that I do not propose to remain in Paris longer than tillto-morrow; and that I will go my way to my house at Limours, having no more pa.s.sionate 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 a.s.signed 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 succ.u.mbed 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 n.o.body 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 n.o.body 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 a.s.sure 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 a.s.sume the same loftiness of spirit in respect of the prison's ent.i.ty (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 pa.s.sed 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 princ.i.p.ality 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 G.o.d. 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 t.i.tle 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, G.o.d 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 a.s.sembling, 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 a.s.signing 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 princ.i.p.ally 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 a.s.sociated 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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, a.s.sa.s.sinated 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 impa.s.sioned 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 Mercceur, 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 G.o.d 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin----394]

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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 Bida.s.soa, 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.