Political Women Volume I Part 5

[1] Entry in Carnet, iii. p. 10, in Spanish:--"Sy yo creyera lo que dicen que S.M. se sierve di mi per necessidad, sin tener alguna inclination, no pararia aqui tres dias."

But in the height of this national glory and signal triumph, Queen Anne must indeed have shuddered when Mazarin placed before her all the proofs of the odious conspiracy formed against him. Explanations the most minute and confidential thereupon ensued between them. It was now more than ever compulsory for her to "raise the mask,"[2] to sacrifice to a manifest necessity the circ.u.mspection she was studious of preserving--to brave somewhat further the t.i.ttle-tattle of a few devotees of either s.e.x, and at all events to permit her Prime Minister to defend his life.

Up to this moment Anne of Austria had hesitated, for reasons which may be readily comprehended. But Madame de Montbazon's insolence had greatly irritated her; the conviction she acquired that numerous attempts to a.s.sa.s.sinate Mazarin had only by chance failed, and might be renewed, decided her; and it was, therefore, towards the close of August, 1643, when the date of that declared ascendancy, open and unrivalled, must be certainly fixed, of the Minister of the Queen Regent. These conspirators, by proceeding to the last extremities, and thereby making her tremble for Mazarin's life, hastened the triumph of the happy Cardinal; and on the morrow of the last nocturnal ambush in which he was marked for destruction, Jules Mazarin became absolute master of the Queen's heart, and more powerful than Richelieu had ever been after the _Day of Dupes_.

[2] "Quita.r.s.e la maschera." Carnet, ii. p. 65.

The minister's _carnets_ will be searched in vain for any traces of the explanations which Mazarin must have had with the Queen during this grave conjuncture. Such explanations are not of a nature likely to be forgotten, and of which there is any need to take notes. An obscure pa.s.sage, however, is to be met with, written in Spanish, of which the following words have a meaning clear enough to be understood: "I ought no longer to have any doubt, since the Queen, in an excess of goodness, has told me that nothing could deprive me of the post which she has done me the honour of giving me near her; nevertheless, as fear is the inseparable companion of affection, &c."[3] At this anxious moment, Mazarin was attacked with a slight illness, brought on by incessant labour and wearing anxieties, and an attack of jaundice having supervened, the Cardinal jotted down the following brief but highly suggestive memorandum:--"_La giallezza cagionata da soverchio amore_."[4]

[3] Carnet, iii. p. 45.--"Mas contodo esto siendo el temor un compagnero inseparabile dell'affection," &c.

[4] Carnet, iv. p. 3.

Madame de Motteville was in attendance on Anne of Austria when the rumour of the abortive attempt at a.s.sa.s.sination brought a crowd of courtiers to the Louvre in hot haste to protest their devotedness to the Crown. The Queen, with great emotion, whispered to her trusty lady-in-waiting: "Ere eight and forty hours elapse you shall see how I will avenge myself for the evil tricks these false friends have played me." "Never," adds Madame de Motteville, "can the remembrance of those few brief words be effaced from my mind. I saw at that moment, by the fire that flashed in the Queen's eyes, and in fact by what happened on that very evening and next day, what it is to be a female sovereign when enraged, and with the power of doing what she pleases."[5] Had the cautious lady-in-waiting been less discreet, she might have added, "especially when that sovereign lady is a woman in love."

[5] Memoires, vol. i. p. 185.

The break-up and dispersion of the _Importants_ once decided upon, the first step was to arrest Beaufort, and bring him to trial. To this the Queen gave her consent. Of the authority Mazarin had acquired, such proceeding was a striking indication, and showed how far Anne of Austria might one day go in defence of a minister who was dear to her. The Duke de Beaufort had been, before her husband's death, the man in whom the Queen placed most confidence, and for some time he was thought destined to play the brilliant part of a royal favourite. In a brief s.p.a.ce he had effectually thrown away his chance by his presumptuous conduct, his evident incapacity, and yet more by his public _liaison_ with Madame de Montbazon. Still the Queen had shown a somewhat singular weakness in his favour, and at the expiration of three short months to sign an order for his arrest was a great step--necessary, it is true, but extreme, and which was the manifest sign of an entire change in the heart and intimate relations of Anne of Austria. The dissimulation even with which she acted in that affair marks the deliberative firmness of her resolution.

The 2nd of September, 1643, was truly a memorable day in the career of Mazarin, and we may say, in the annals of France; for it witnessed the confirming of the royal power, shaken to its base by the deaths of Richelieu and Louis XIII., and the ruin of the party of the _Importants_.

On the morning of the 2nd, all Paris and its Court rang with the report of the ambuscade laid for Mazarin the night previous, between the Louvre and the Hotel de Cleves. The five conspirators who had joined hands with Beaufort in it had taken flight and placed themselves in safety.

Beaufort and Madame de Chevreuse could not imitate them: flight for them would have been a self-denunciation. The intrepid d.u.c.h.ess therefore had not hesitated to appear at Court, and she was at the Regent's side during the evening of the 2nd together with another person, a stranger to these dark plots and even incapable of putting faith in them--a very different enemy of Mazarin--the pious and n.o.ble Madame de Hautefort. As for the Duke, careless and courageous, he had gone to the chase in the morning, and at his return he went, according to his custom, to present his homage to the Queen. On entering the Louvre he met his mother, Madame de Vendome, and his sister the d.u.c.h.ess de Nemours, who had accompanied the Queen all day and remarked her emotion. They did all they could to prevent him going up stairs, and entreated him to absent himself for a while. He, without troubling himself in the slightest degree, answered them in the words of the doomed Duke de Guise--"They dare not!"--and entered the Queen's great cabinet, who received him with the best grace possible, and asked him all sorts of questions about his hunting, "as though," says Madame de Motteville, "she had no other thought in her mind." The Cardinal having come in in the midst of this gentle chat, the Queen rose and bade him follow her. It appeared as if she wished to take counsel with him in her chamber. She entered it, followed by her Minister. At the same time the Duke de Beaufort, about to leave, met Guitant, captain of the guard, who arrested him, and commanded the Duke to follow him in the names of the King and Queen. The Prince, without showing any surprise, after having looked fixedly at him, said, "Yes, I will; but this, I must own, is strange enough." Then turning towards Mesdames de Chevreuse and de Hautefort, who were talking together, he said to them, "Ladies, you see that the Queen has caused me to be arrested." The young n.o.bleman then submitted to the royal mandate without offering the slightest resistance; slept that night at the Louvre, and the next morning was taken to the donjon of Vincennes, while a general decree of banishment was p.r.o.nounced against all the princ.i.p.al members of the faction.

The Vendomes were ordered to retire to Anet; and the Chateau d'Anet having soon become what the Hotel de Vendome at Paris had been, a haunt of the conspirators, Mazarin demanded them from the Duke Caesar, who took good care not to give them up. The Cardinal was almost reduced to the necessity of laying siege to the chateau in regular form. He threatened to enter the place by main force and lay hands on Beaufort's accomplices; unable to endure the scandal that a prince even of the blood should brave law and justice with impunity, he had determined to push matters to the uttermost, and was about to take energetic measures, when the Duke de Vendome himself decided on quitting France, and went to Italy to await the fall of Mazarin, as formerly he had awaited in England that of Richelieu.

The arrest of Beaufort, the dispersion of his accomplices, his friends and his family, was the first indispensable measure forced upon Mazarin to enable him to face a danger that seemed most imminent. But what would it have availed him to lop off an arm had he left the head untouched--had Madame de Chevreuse remained at Court, ever ready to surround the Queen with attention and homage, a.s.siduous to retain and husband the last remnant of her old favour, in order to sustain and secretly encourage the malcontents, inspire them with her audacity, and stir them up to fresh conspiracies? She still held in her grasp the scarcely-severed threads of the plot; and at her right hand there was a man too wary to allow himself to be again compromised by such dark doings, but quite ready to profit by them, and whom Madame de Chevreuse had sedulously exhibited not only to Anne of Austria, but to France and all Europe, as a man singularly capable of conducting State affairs.

Mazarin, therefore, did not hesitate; but on the day following Beaufort's arrest, Chateauneuf, Montresor, and St. Ybar were banished.

The first-named was invited to present himself at Court, kiss the Queen's hand, and then betake himself to his government in Touraine.

Richelieu's late Keeper of the Seals deemed it something to have escaped an open disgrace, to have resumed the eminent post he had formerly occupied under the Crown, and the government of a large province. Yet did his ambition soar far higher still: but he kept it in check, and merely postponed its flight for a less stormy hour--obeyed the Queen, skilfully remained friends with her, and likewise kept on very good terms with her Prime Minister--biding his time until he might displace him. He had to wait a long time, however; but eventually did not quit life without once more grasping, for a moment at least, that power which the indulgence of an insensate pa.s.sion had lost him, but which an inviolable and unswerving friendship in the end restored to him.[6]

[6] Chateauneuf held the seals from March, 1650, when Mazarin went into voluntary exile, until April, 1651. He died in 1653, at the age of seventy-three.

Madame de Chevreuse unhappily lacked the wisdom displayed throughout this fiery ordeal by Chateauneuf. She forgot for once to look with a smiling face upon the pa.s.sing storm, in which she was too suddenly caught to escape altogether scatheless. La Chatre--one of her friends, and who saw her almost every day--relates that during the very same evening on which Beaufort was arrested at the Louvre, "Her Majesty told the d.u.c.h.ess that she believed her to be innocent of the prisoner's designs, but that nevertheless to avoid scandal she deemed it fitting that Madame de Chevreuse should quietly withdraw to Dampierre, and that after making some short sojourn there she should retire into Touraine."[7] The d.u.c.h.ess, therefore, saw plainly that she had nothing for it but to go at once to Dampierre; but no sooner did she arrive at her favourite chateau than, instead of remaining quiet, she began to move heaven and earth to save those who had compromised themselves for her sake. She began, indeed, to knot the meshes of a new web of intrigue, and even found means of placing a letter in the Queen's own hand. Message after message was, however, sent to hasten her departure--Montagu being despatched to her on the same errand, as was also La Porte. She received them haughtily, and deferred her journey under divers pretexts. It will be remembered that on going to meet the d.u.c.h.ess when on her road from Brussels, Montagu had offered her, on the Queen's part as well as that of Mazarin, to discharge in her name the debts she had contracted during so many years of exile. The d.u.c.h.ess had already received heavy sums, but was unwilling to set forth for Touraine until after the Queen should have performed all her promises. Marie de Rohan had left the Louvre and Paris, her bosom swelling with grief and rage, as Hannibal had quitted Italy. She felt that the Court and capital and the Queen's inner circle formed the true field of battle, and that to remove herself from it was to abandon the victory to the enemy. Her retreat, indeed, was an occasion of mourning to the entire Catholic party, as well as to the friends of peace and the Spanish alliance, but, on the contrary, of public rejoicing for the friends of the Protestant alliance. The Count d'Estrade actually went to the Louvre on the part of the Prince of Orange, from whom he was accredited, to thank the Regent officially for it.

[7] "Allontanar Cheverosa che fa mille cabelle." Mazarin's Carnet, iii. 81, 82.

Madame de Chevreuse made her way, therefore, to her estate of Duverger, between Tours and Angiers. The deep solitude that there reigned around her embittered all the more the feeling of defeat. She kept up, however, a brisk correspondence with her stepmother, Madame de Montbazon--banished to Rochefort; and the two exiled d.u.c.h.esses mutually exhorted each other to leave no stone unturned towards effecting the overthrow of their common enemy. Vanquished at home, Madame de Chevreuse centred all her hopes in foreign lands. She revived the friendly relations which she had never ceased to cherish with England, Spain, and the Low Countries. Her chief prop, the centre and interposer of her intrigues, was Lord Goring, our amba.s.sador at the French Court; who, like his ill-starred master, and more especially his royal mistress, belonged to the Spanish party. Croft, an English gentleman who had figured in the train of the d.u.c.h.ess some years previously, bestirred himself actively and openly in her behalf, whilst the Chevalier de Jars intrigued warily and in secret for Chateauneuf. Beneath the mantle of the English emba.s.sy a vast correspondence was carried on between Madame de Chevreuse, Vendome, Bouillon, and the rest of the _Malcontents_.

CHAPTER VI.

CONSEQUENCES OF THE QUARREL BETWEEN THE d.u.c.h.eSSES DE LONGUEVILLE AND DE MONTBAZON.--FATAL DUEL BETWEEN THE DUKE DE GUISE AND COUNT MAURICE DE COLIGNY.

AS has been said, the 2nd of September, 1643, had been truly a memorable day in the career of Mazarin, and, indeed, in the annals of France; for it witnessed the confirming of the royal power, shaken to its base by the deaths of Richelieu and Louis XIII., and the ruin of that dangerous faction the _Importants_. The intestine discords which threatened the new reign were thus forced to await a more favourable opportunity for development. They did not raise their heads again until five years afterwards--on the breaking out of the Fronde, in which they showed themselves just the same men as ever, with the same designs, the same politics, foreign and domestic; and after raising sanguinary and sterile commotions, re-appeared only to break themselves to pieces once more against the genius of Mazarin and the invincible firmness of Anne of Austria.

Mazarin, therefore, who soon found himself without a rival in the Queen's good graces, continued steadily to carry on within and without the realm the system of his predecessor, and royalty, as well as France, reckoned upon a succession of halcyon years, thanks to the re-union of the Princes of the blood with the Crown, to the tactics and personal conduct of the Prime Minister, and to his political sagacity, seconded by the military genius of the Duke d'Enghien. The imprudence of Madame de Montbazon and her lover Beaufort in the affair of the dropped letters had the effect of increasing Mazarin's power incalculably, and that at the very moment that a splendid victory gained by the young Duke d'Enghien had made him and his sister paramount at Court--paramount by a popularity so universal that it almost made the Queen and her minister their _proteges_ rather than their patrons.

The Duke d'Enghien had returned to Paris after Rocroy, and at the end of a campaign in which he had taken a very important stronghold, pa.s.sed the Rhine with the French army, and carried the war into Germany. The Queen had received him as the liberator of France. Mazarin, who looked more to the reality than the semblance of power, intimated to the young conqueror that his sole ambition was to be his chaplain and man of business with the Queen. At a distance, the Duke d'Enghien had praised everything that had been done, and came from the camp over head and ears in love with Madlle. du Vigean, and furious that any one should have dared to insult a member of his house. He adored his sister, and he had a warm friendship for Coligny.[1] He was aware of and had favoured his pa.s.sion for that sister. Engaged himself in a suit as ardent as it was chaste, he readily comprehended that his beautiful sister might well have been not insensible to the fervent a.s.siduities of the brave Maurice, but he revolted at the thought of the amatory effusions of a Madame de Fouquerolles being attributed to her, and he a.s.sumed a tone in the matter which effectually arrested any further insinuation from even the most insolent and daring.

[1] Grandson of the famous Admiral de Coligny, who perished in the ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew.

Amongst the especial friends of Beaufort and Madame de Montbazon, foremost of all stood the Duke de Guise.[2] They had manoeuvred to secure him as well as the rest of his family to their party, through Gaston, Duke d'Orleans, who had espoused as his second wife a princess of the house of Lorraine--the lovely Marguerite, sister of Charles IV.

and second daughter of Duke Francis. The Duke de Guise had already played many strange pranks and committed more than one folly, but he had not as yet signally failed in any serious enterprise. His incapacity was not patent. He had the prestige of his name, youth, good looks, and a courage carried even to temerity. The avowed slave of Madame de Montbazon, he had espoused her quarrel, and to gratify her had joined in propagating those calumnious reports, but without exhibiting the violence of Beaufort, and had remained erect, confronting and defying the victorious Condes.

[2] Henry, son of Charles de Guise, and grandson of the _Balafre_.

Coligny had had the good sense to keep aloof during the storm, for fear of still further compromising Madame de Longueville by exhibiting himself openly as her champion: but a few months having elapsed, he thought that he might at last show himself, and, as a certain authority[3] tells us, "the imprisonment of the Duke de Beaufort having deprived that n.o.ble of the chance of measuring swords with him, he addressed himself to the Duke de Guise." La Rochefoucauld says, "the Duke d'Enghien, unable to testify to the Duke de Beaufort, who was in prison, the resentment he felt at what had pa.s.sed between Madame de Longueville and Madame de Montbazon, left Coligny at liberty to fight with the Duke de Guise, who had mixed himself up in this affair." The Duke d'Enghien, therefore, knew and approved of what Coligny did. In fact, he found himself without an adversary in the affair of sufficient rank to justify a prince of the blood in drawing his sword against him.

So far as regards Madame de Longueville, it is absurd to suppose that, desirous of vengeance, she it was who had urged on Coligny, for everybody ascribed to her a line of conduct characterised by great moderation, as contrasted with that of the Princess de Conde. Far from envenoming the quarrel, she wished to hush it up, and Madame de Motteville thus significantly alludes to that fact: "The enmity she bore Madame de Montbazon being proportionate to the love she bore her husband, it did not carry her so far but that she found it more a propos to dissimulate that outrage than otherwise."

[3] An inedited Memoir upon the Regency.

La Rochefoucauld gives some particulars which explain what follows.

Coligny, just risen out of a long illness, was still very much enfeebled, and, moreover, not very "skilful of fence." Such was his condition when, as the champion of Madame de Longueville, he confronted the Duke de Guise in mortal duel, whilst the latter, like most heroes of the parade-ground, possessed rare cunning at carte and tierce. With regard to the seconds chosen, they are in every respect worthy of notice. In those days, seconds were witnesses of the duel in which they themselves fought. Coligny selected as his second, and to give the challenge, as was then the custom, G.o.defroi, Count d'Estrades, a man of cool and tried courage. The Duke de Guise's second was his equerry, the Marquis de Bridieu, a Limousin gentleman and brave officer, faithfully attached to the house of Lorraine, who, in 1650, admirably defended Guise against the Spanish army and against Turenne, and for that brave defence, during which there were twenty-four days of open trenches, he was made lieutenant-general.

It was arranged that the affair should come off at the Place Royale--the usual arena for those sort of encounters, and which had been a hundred times stained with the best blood of France. The mansions around the Place Royale were then tenanted by ladies of the highest rank and fashion, amongst the rest, Marguerite, d.u.c.h.ess de Rohan, Madame de Guemene, Madame de Chaulnes, Madame de St. Geran, Madame de Sable, the Countess de St. Maure, and many others, under the influence of whose bright eyes those volatile and valiant French gentlemen delighted to cross swords. And there many a n.o.ble form had been struck down never to rise again, and many a n.o.ble heart had throbbed its last. During the first quarter of the seventeenth century, the duel was a custom at once useful and disastrous, inasmuch as it kept up the warlike spirit of the n.o.bles, but which mowed them down as fast as war itself, and but too frequently for frivolous causes. To draw swords for trifles had become the obligatory accompaniment of good manners; and as gallantry had its finished fops, so the duel had its refined rufflers. In the comparatively short period of a few years, nine hundred gentlemen perished in these combats. To stop this scourge, Richelieu issued a royal edict, which punished death by death, and sent the offenders from the Place Royale to the Place de Greve. On this head Richelieu showed himself inflexible, and the examples of Montmorency-Bouteville, beheaded with his second, the Count Deschappelles, for having challenged Beuvron and fought with him on the Place Royale at mid-day, impressed a salutary terror, and rendered infraction of the edict very rare.

Coligny, however, braved everything; he challenged Guise, and on the appointed day the two n.o.ble adversaries, accompanied by their seconds, D'Estrades and Bridieu, met upon the Place Royale.

Of this memorable duel, thanks to contemporary memoirs as well as various kinds of MSS., the minutest details have been preserved.

On the 12th of December, 1643, D'Estrades went in the morning to call out the Duke de Guise on the part of Coligny. The rendezvous was fixed for the same day, at three o'clock in the afternoon, at the Place Royale. The two adversaries did not appear abroad during the whole morning, and at three o'clock they were on the ground. A sentence is ascribed to Guise which invests the scene with an unwonted grandeur, and arrays for the last time in bitterest animosity and deadly antagonism the two most ill.u.s.trious representatives of the League wars in the persons of their descendants. On unsheathing his sword Guise said to Coligny: "We are about to decide the old feud of our two houses, and to see what a difference there is between the blood of Guise and that of Coligny."

Coligny's only reply was to deal his adversary a long lunge; but, weak as he was, his rearward foot failed him, and he sank upon his knee.

Guise advanced upon him and set his foot upon his sword, in such manner as though he would have said, "I do not desire to kill you, but to treat you as you deserve, for having presumed to address yourself to a prince of such birth as mine, without his having given you just cause,"--and he struck him with the flat of his sword-blade. Coligny, furious, collected his strength, threw himself backwards, disengaged his sword, and recommenced the strife. In this second bout, Guise was slightly wounded in the shoulder, and Coligny in the hand. At length, Guise, in making another thrust at his adversary, grasped his sword-blade, by which his hand was slightly cut, but, wresting it from Coligny's grasp, dealt him a desperate thrust in the arm which put him _hors de combat_. Meanwhile D'Estrades and Bridieu had grievously wounded each other.

Such was the issue of that memorable duel--the last, it appears, of the famous encounters on the Place Royale. We thus see that, though cowed, the French n.o.blesse had not been tamed by Richelieu's solemn edict. This last duel did very little honour to Coligny, and almost everybody took part with the Duke de Guise. The Queen manifested very lively displeasure at the violation of the edict, and the Duke d'Orleans, urged thereto by his wife and the Lorraine family, made a loud outcry. The Prince and Princess de Conde also found themselves compelled to declare against Coligny--doubly in the wrong, both because he had been the challenger and been unfortunate in the result. Proof that there was an understanding between Coligny and the Duke d'Enghien is evident from the latter not deserting the unlucky champion of his sister, that he received the wounded man into his house at Paris, afterwards at Saint Maur, and that he did not cease from surrounding him with his protection and care in spite of his father, the Prince de Conde. When the matter was referred to the Parliament, conformably to the edict, and the two adversaries were summoned to appear, the Duke de Guise announced his intention of repairing to the chamber with a retinue of princes and great n.o.bles; whilst, on his side, the Duke d'Enghien threatened to escort his friend after the same fashion. But the initiative proceedings were stayed through the deplorable condition into which poor Coligny was known to have fallen.

That unfortunate young man languished for some months, and died in the latter part of May, 1644, alike in consequence of his wounds and of despair for having so badly sustained the cause of his own house, as well as that of Madame de Longueville.

This affair, with all its dramatic features and tragical termination, created an immense and painful impression not only in Paris, but throughout France. It momentarily awakened party feelings which had for some time slumbered, and suspended the festivals of the winter of 1644.

It not only occupied the families more closely concerned and the Court, but forcibly affected the whole of the highest cla.s.s of society, and long remained the absorbing topic of every saloon. It may be readily conceived that the story in spreading thus widely became enlarged with imaginary incidents one after another. At first, it was supposed that Madame de Longueville was in love with Coligny. That was necessary to give the greater interest to the narrative. From thence came the next invention, that she herself had armed Coligny's hand, and that D'Estrades, charged to challenge the Duke de Guise, having remarked to Coligny that the Duke might probably repudiate the injurious words attributed to him, and that honour would thus be satisfied, Coligny had thereupon replied: "That is not the question. I pledged my word to Madame de Longueville to fight him on the Place Royale, and I cannot fail in that promise."[4] There was no stopping a cavalier in such a chivalrous course as that, and Madame de Longueville would not have been the sister of the victor of Rocroy--a heroine worthy of sustaining comparison with those of Spain, who beheld their lovers die at their feet in the tournament--had she not been present at the duel between Guise and Coligny. It is a.s.serted, therefore, that on the 12th of December she was stationed in an hotel on the Place Royale belonging to the d.u.c.h.ess de Rohan, and that there, concealed behind a window-curtain, she had witnessed the discomfiture of her _preux chevalier_.

[4] Mad. de Motteville.

Then, as now, it was verse--that is to say, the ballad--which set its seal on the popular incident of the moment. When the event was an unlucky one, the song was a burlesquely pathetic complaint, and always with a vein of raillery running through it. Such was the effusion with which every _ruelle_ rang, and it was really set to music, for the notation is still to be found in the _Recueil de Chansons notees_, preserved at the a.r.s.enal at Paris. It ran thus:--

"Essuyez vos beaux yeux, Madame de Longueville, Coligny se porte mieux.

S'il a demande la vie, Ne l'en blamez nullement; Car c'est pour etre votre amant Qu'il veut vivre eternellement."

BOOK III.