The Life of Marie de Medicis Volume III Part 23

Like his successor Louis XIV, the son of Marie de Medicis was one of the most "unamusable" of monarchs; and like Cinq-Mars himself, he was weary of the unvaried routine of pleasures which made up the sum of his existence while confined to his own capital; and thus he welcomed every prospect of change without caring to investigate the motives of those by whom it was proposed. He did not, therefore, for an instant suspect that the motive of his ambitious minister in urging him to undertake upon the instant, and in a state of excessive bodily suffering, an expedition which might with safety have been deferred until a more genial season, was in reality to remove him to a distance from the Parliament and the citizens of Paris, and to place him between two armies, both of which were commanded by Richelieu's own near relatives and devoted friends, in order that should the already exhausted strength of the invalid sovereign fail him under the fatigue and privation of so severe an exertion, the Cardinal might cause himself to be declared Regent of the kingdom after his death.

Others were, however, less blind to the real views of the Cardinal, which were freely canva.s.sed by the courtiers, who looked upon the expedition with distrust as they studied the plan of the campaign, and reflected on the measures which were to be adopted for the government of the country during the absence of the monarch. These were, indeed, undeniably calculated to awaken their apprehensions; as, acting under the advice of his minister, Louis had determined that he would be accompanied on his journey by the Queen and the Duc d'Orleans; that the Dauphin and the Duc d'Anjou should take up their abode until his return in the Castle of Vincennes, of which the governor was devoted to the interests of Richelieu; while the Prince de Conde, who was also his sworn friend, was appointed to the command of Paris, and authorized, in conjunction with the Council, whose members were the mere creatures of his will, to regulate the internal administration of the kingdom.

All these circ.u.mstances, amplified, moreover, by ingenious conjectures and envenomed deductions, Cinq-Mars poured into the willing ear of Monsieur; and while agents were despatched to Spain and Flanders to invite the co-operation of those sovereigns, the Grand Equerry continued his secret visits to the Luxembourg with an impunity that augured well for the success of the perilous undertaking in which he was embarked; and which at length emboldened Monsieur to receive in like manner the emissaries of Ferdinand and Philip. These nocturnal movements were not, however, so un.o.bserved as the conspirators had believed; and the result of the suspicions which they engendered is so quaintly narrated by Rambure that we shall give it in the identical words of the garrulous old chronicler himself:

"One evening," he says, "when I was in the b.u.t.tery of the Cardinal, where I was eating some sweetmeats, his Eminence entered and asked for a draught of strawberry syrup. While he was drinking it the Comte de Rochefort arrived in his turn, and informed him that during the preceding night, as he was pa.s.sing the Palace of the Luxembourg, he saw a man come out whom he instantly recognized as a certain Florent Radbod whom he had formerly met at Brussels, and whom he knew to have been frequently employed in secret matters of state. The lateness of the hour, which was, as he further stated, two in the morning, led him to believe that an individual of this description would not be there save for some important reason.

"'You were very wrong not to follow him,' said his Eminence.

"'I did so,' replied M. de Rochefort; 'but he was on his guard, and soon perceived that he was dogged. Therefore, thinking it better not to excite his suspicions, I turned aside and left him.'

"'You did well,' said Richelieu; 'but what description of person is this Radbod? What is his age? his complexion? his height? Tell me every particular by which he may be recognized. M. de Rambure, have you your pencil about you?'

"'I have my tablets, Monseigneur.'

"'Write down then without loss of time,' said the Cardinal, 'the portrait of this man.'

"I immediately obeyed, and my task was no sooner completed than his Eminence gave orders that at every post-house where carriages could be hired notice should be instantly given to himself if a person answering the description should endeavour to secure the means of leaving Paris.

He also stationed men at every avenue leading from the city, who were to watch night and day, lest he might escape in the coach of an acquaintance. On the following morning his Eminence sent to summon me an hour before dawn, and I was surprised on my arrival to find him pacing his chamber in his dressing-gown.

"'Rambure,' he said as I entered, 'I confess to you that I suspect some conspiracy is on foot against the King, the state, and myself; and, moreover, if I am not deceived, it is organizing at the Luxembourg with the consent and connivance of the Duc d'Orleans; but as this is mere suspicion, I am anxious, in order to see my way more clearly, to place some confidential person as a sentinel near the palace to watch who goes in and out.'

"After having hesitated for a time, I told his Eminence that I was willing to undertake the adventure, and quite ready to obey his commands.

"'I have faith in you, M. de Rambure,' said the Cardinal; 'I am perfectly convinced of the affection which you bear, not only towards the King and the state, but also towards myself; but I have determined to desire M. de Rochefort to disguise himself as a cripple, and to take up his position in front of the Luxembourg, where he must remain day and night until he has discovered whether it were really the Fleming that he saw.'

"Then, summoning a page who was waiting in the antechamber, his Eminence sent for M. de Rochefort, who was not long in coming; and told him what he proposed. Rochefort, who was always ready to comply with every wish of the Cardinal, immediately declared his willingness to play the part a.s.signed to him; and a trusty person who had attended him to the apartment of Monseigneur was instructed to procure without loss of time, and with the greatest secrecy, a pair of crutches, a suit of rags, and all the articles necessary to complete the metamorphosis.

"His Eminence having, on the return of the lackey, expressed his desire to witness the effect of the disguise, M. de Rochefort retired to another chamber, where, with the a.s.sistance of his servant, he exchanged his velvet vest and satin haut-de-chausses for the foul garb of a mendicant; this done, he smeared his face with dirt, and crouching down in a corner, he requested me to announce to Monseigneur that he was ready to receive him. His Eminence was astonished at his appearance, as well as to see him act the character he had a.s.sumed as if he had studied and practised it all his life. He told him to set forth, and that if he succeeded in his attempt he would render him the greatest service which he had ever received.

"As soon as the Cardinal had taken leave of Rochefort, he said to me: 'In the disguise the Count has on, and when he is crouched upon his dunghill like a miserable cripple, it will be easy for him to look every one in the face; and I hope he will make some discovery of that which troubles me.' His Eminence then told me that he wanted my valet, to place him in disguise in another direction. I therefore called him. He was a very sharp fellow at everything that was required of him; and the Cardinal made him put on a shabby ca.s.sock, with a false beard of grizzled hair and eyebrows to match, which were all fastened on with a certain liquid so firmly to the skin that it was necessary to apply vinegar in which the ashes of vine-twigs had been steeped, when they instantly fell off. My Basque was at length dressed in a torn, threadbare ca.s.sock, masked by his false beard, with an old hat upon his head, a breviary under his arm, and a tolerably thick stick in his hand, and received an order to post himself near the little gate of the Luxembourg stables. The Cardinal then desired me not to leave him, as he had certain orders to give me which he could not entrust to every one on such an occasion.

"M. de Rochefort took up his station at the corner of the Rue de Tournon, laid himself down on a heap of manure, and began, with his face covered with mud and filth, to cry out continually and dolefully as if he had been in agony and want; and he played his part so naturally that several charitable folks were touched by his misery and gave him alms.

From his dunghill he saw numbers of carriages pa.s.s and repa.s.s, and he began to be afraid that his prey would escape him. He consequently resolved to approach nearer to the gates of the palace, where his intolerable groans so hara.s.sed the Swiss guards of Monsieur that they threatened to drive him away, but upon his promise to be more quiet they permitted him to remain. He continued patiently at his post for three days and three nights without seeing anything to justify the suspicions of the Cardinal, and I was careful to visit him at intervals in order to receive his report; but when I found that so much time had been lost, I began to think that the Fleming would not, in all probability, enter the palace by the gate facing the Carmelite Convent, and Rochefort agreeing with me on this point, he resolved to change his station. The very same night he saw him arrive, and let himself in with a key that he carried about him; and an hour afterwards he observed another man stop at the same door, and enter by the same means. He was wrapped in a cloak so that the Count could not recognize him; but he desired my valet, who was not far off at the time, to follow him when he came out, by which means we ascertained that the individual who was thus tracked to his own residence was the Grand Equerry of France, M. de Cinq-Mars; while before the end of another week we discovered Radbod in the same manner." [236]

Were not this incident recorded by one of the actors in the adventure, it would have been impossible to have related it with any faith in its veracity; as, a.s.suredly, never was the meaning of "secret service"

defined more broadly or more unblushingly than in the instance of the sycophantic courtier who divested himself of his brilliant attire to don the tatters of a beggar, and exchanged his velvet-covered couch for the manure-heap of a city street; while as little would it be credited that any man in power would venture to suggest so revolting an expedient to an individual of high birth and position, the companion of princes, and the a.s.sociate of Court ladies. Nor is it the least singular feature of the tale that the chronicler by whom it is told indulges in no expression of disgust, either at the indelicate selfishness of Richelieu, or the undignified complaisance of his adherent; although he evidently seeks to infer that the Cardinal did not venture to request so monstrous a concession from himself; and dwells with such palpable enjoyment upon all the details of Rochefort's overweening condescension, that it is easy to detect his dread of being suspected by his readers of an equal amount of disgraceful self-abnegation.

The arrest and subsequent execution of the ill-fated Cinq-Mars and his friend M. de Thou, together with the cowardly policy of Monsieur, who no sooner found his treason discovered than he once more wrote to demand his pardon from the King, and to renew his promises of future loyalty and devotion,[237] are circ.u.mstances of such universal notoriety that we shall not permit ourselves to enlarge upon them. It must suffice, therefore, to say that this new peril had merely served to increase alike the bodily suffering and the irascibility of Richelieu, who, even on the very brink of the grave, was indulging in schemes of vengeance.

He saw on all sides only enemies armed against his life; and by a supreme effort, to which a less vigorous intellect than his own must have proved unequal, he rallied all the failing energies of nature to pay back the universal debt of hatred which he was conscious that he had incurred.

Such was the temper of his mind while the unfortunate Queen-mother was yet dreaming of a reconciliation with her son, and an old age of honour in her adopted country, through the agency of Rubens; but her still sanguine spirit had betrayed her into forgetting the fact that the dying tiger tears and rends its victim the most pitilessly in its death-agony; and this was the case with the rapidly sinking minister, who was no sooner apprised of the arrival of the painter-prince in the capital than he despatched a letter to Philip of Spain to urge him to demand the presence of Rubens on the instant at Madrid, and to detain him in that city until he should hear further from himself. The request of so dangerous an adversary as Richelieu was a command to Philip, who hastened to invite the ill.u.s.trious Fleming to his Court with all speed, upon an affair of the most pressing nature; and when Rubens would have lingered in order to fulfil a mission which he considered as sacred, he was met by the declaration that Louis desired to defer the audience which he had already conceded until after the return of the Maestro from the Spanish capital. With a heavy heart Rubens accordingly left Paris, aware that this temporary banishment was the work of the vindictive Cardinal, who was thus depriving his unhappy benefactress of the last friend on earth who had the courage to defend her cause; but as he drove through the city gates he was far from antic.i.p.ating that his freedom of action was to be trammelled for an indefinite period, and that he was in fact about to become the temporary prisoner of Philip IV.

Nor was the persevering cruelty of Richelieu yet satiated; he knew by his emissaries that the end of Marie de Medicis was rapidly approaching, but he was also aware that through the generous sympathy of Charles of England and the King of Spain she was still in the receipt of a sufficient income to ensure her comparative comfort; and even this was too much for him to concede to the mistress whom he had betrayed; thus, only a few months elapsed ere the pensions. .h.i.therto accorded to the persecuted Princess were withheld by both monarchs[238]; who, in their terror of the formidable Cardinal, suffered themselves to overlook their duty and their loyalty to a woman and a Queen, and their affection towards the mother of their respective consorts.

Overwhelmed by this new misfortune, Marie de Medicis found herself reduced to the greatest extremity. Unable to liquidate the salaries of those members of her household who had accompanied her into exile, she was abandoned by many among them; while the few jewels which she had hitherto retained were gradually disposed of in order to support those who still clung with fidelity to her fallen fortunes; but even this resource at length failed; and during the winter months, unable any longer to purchase fuel, she was compelled to permit her attendants to break up all such articles of furniture as could be made available for that purpose.[239]

This extreme of wretchedness, however, which would have sufficed to exhaust the most robust health and the most vigorous youth, was rapidly sapping the toil-worn and tortured existence of Marie de Medicis; and, aware that she had nearly reached the term of her sufferings, on the 2nd of July 1642 she executed a will which is still preserved in the royal library of Paris,[240] wherein she expressed her confidence that Louis XIII would cause the mortuary ceremonies consequent upon her decease to be solemnized in a manner befitting her dignity as Queen of France; and bequeathed certain legacies to her servants, and to the several charitable inst.i.tutions of Cologne. This duty performed, she consented at the entreaty of her attendants to undergo a painful operation, and to submit to such remedies as were likely to prove most efficient, although she herself expressed a conviction of their utter uselessness. She then received the last sacraments of the church; tenderly embraced those who stood about her; and after a violent accession of fever, expired at mid-day on the morrow, with the breath of prayer upon her lips.[241]

Once or twice, blent with the pious outpourings of her departing spirit, her attendants had distinguished the name of her son--of that son by whom she had been abandoned to penury; and on each occasion a shade of pain pa.s.sed across her wasted features. Her maternal love did not yield even to bodily agony; but the struggle was brief. Her eyes closed, her breath suddenly failed: and all was over.

Thus perished, in a squalid chamber, between four bare walls--her utter dest.i.tution having, as we have already stated, driven her to the frightful alternative of denuding the very apartment which was destined to witness her death-agony of every combustible article that it contained, in order by such means to prepare the scanty meal that she could still command--and on a wretched bed which one of her own lackeys would, in her period of power, have disdained to occupy; childless, or worse than childless; homeless, hopeless, and heart-wrung, the haughty daughter of the Medici--the brilliant Regent of France; the patroness of art; the dispenser of honours; and the mother of a long line of princes.

Surely history presents but few such catastrophes as this. The soul sickens as it traces to its close the career of this unhappy and persecuted Princess. Whatever were her faults, they were indeed bitterly expiated. As a wife she was outraged and neglected; as a Queen she was subjected to the insults of the arrogant favourites of a dissolute Court; as a Regent she was trammelled and betrayed; the whole of her public life was one long chain of disappointment, heart-burning, and unrest; while as a woman, she was fated to endure such misery as can fall to the lot of few in this world.

The remains of the ill-fated Marie de Medicis were, in a few hours after her decease, transported to the Cathedral of Cologne, where they lay in state an entire week, during which period Rosetti, the Papal Nuncio, whose dread of Richelieu had caused him to absent himself from the dying bed, as he had previously done from the wretched home, of the persecuted Princess, each day performed a funeral service for the repose of her soul. Her heart was, by her express desire, conveyed to the Convent of La Fleche; while her body was ultimately transported to France and deposited in the royal vaults of St. Denis.

The widow of Henri IV had at last found peace in the bosom of her G.o.d; and she had been so long an exile from her adopted country that the circ.u.mstances of her death were matter rather of curiosity than of regret throughout the kingdom.

The King was apprised of her demise as he was returning from Tarascon, where he had been visiting the Cardinal, who was then labouring under the severe indisposition which, five months subsequently, terminated in his own dissolution. For the s.p.a.ce of four days Louis XIII abandoned himself to the most violent grief, but at the expiration of that period he suffered himself to be consoled; while Richelieu, who, even when persecuting the Queen-mother to the death, had always a.s.serted his reverence for, and grat.i.tude towards, his benefactress, caused a magnificent service to be performed in her behalf in the collegiate church.

Tardy were the lamentations, and tardy the orisons, which reached not the dull ear of the dead in the gloomy depths of the regal Abbey.

FOOTNOTES:

[225] MSS. de Colbert, Bibliotheque du Roi.

[226] Le Va.s.sor, vol. ix. pp. 121-125. Le Clerc, vol. ii. pp. 352-357, Mezeray, vol. xi. pp. 500, 501.

[227] Hume, vol. v. p. 25.

[228] Rushworth, vol. v. p. 267.

[229] Le Va.s.sor, vol. x. pp. 591, 592. Sismondi, vol. xxiii. pp. 457, 458. Le Clerc, vol. ii. pp. 495, 496. Rambure, MS. _Mem_. vol. xix.

p. 518.

[230] In 1634, after the demise of the Marquis d'Ayetona, Philip of Spain conferred upon his brother Ferdinand, Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, the appointment of Governor-General of the Netherlands, which he held until his death, which took place at Brussels on the 9th of November 1641, when he was succeeded by Don Francisco de Mello, a n.o.bleman who had rendered himself conspicuous by defeating the Marechal de Guiche at Hannecourt. Subsequently, however, De Mello tarnished his military reputation at the famous battle of Rocroy, where he was utterly worsted by the young Duc d'Enghien, who had only just attained his twenty-first year, and who was afterwards known as the Great Conde.

[231] Mezeray, vol. xi. p. 540.

[232] Mezeray, vol. xi. pp. 541, 542. Le Clerc, vol. ii. pp. 496-519.

Aubery, vol. ii. p. 736. Siri, _Mem. Rec_. vol. ii. p. 15.

[233] Claude de Rouvroy, Sieur de Saint-Simon, was the descendant of a family of Vermandois in Picardy. His relative Isaac de Rouvroy resigned in his favour (in 1635) the paternal estate, which, when he became the favourite of Louis XIII, that monarch erected into a duchy in his favour.

[234] Henri Coiffier Ruze-d'Effiat, Marquis de Cinq-Mars, was the second son of Antoine Coiffier, Marquis d'Effiat, Marechal de France.

[235] Siri, _Mem. Rec_. vol. ii. p. 571.

[236] Rambure, Unpublished MS. vol. xx. pp. 6-13.

[237] Montresor, _Mem_. p. 162. Le Clerc, vol. ii. pp. 543-562. Mezeray, vol. xi. pp. 544-552. Capefigue, vol. ii. pp. 99-125.

[238] Sismondi, vol. xxiii. p. 510.

[239] Dreux du Radier, vol. v. pp. 258, 259.

[240] MS. Dupuy, vol. 590.