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Title: The love-affairs of the Condés
Author: H. Noel Williams
Release date: November 28, 2023 [eBook #72253]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1912
Credits: Clarity, Karin Spence and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOVE-AFFAIRS OF THE CONDÉS ***
THE LOVE-AFFAIRS OF THE
CONDÉS
[Illustration:
Héliogr. Chauvet Imp. Eudes
_Agnès Berthelot de Pléneuf,
Marquise de Prie._
Plon-Nourrit & C^{ie} Edit.]
THE LOVE-AFFAIRS
OF THE CONDÉS
(1530–1740)
BY
H. NOEL WILLIAMS
AUTHOR OF
“A PRINCESS OF ADVENTURE”
WITH SEVENTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1912
TO
MY WIFE
PREFATORY NOTE
The principal authorities, both contemporary and modern, which I have
consulted in the preparation of this volume are mentioned either in the
text or the footnotes. I desire, however, to acknowledge my obligations
to the following works by modern writers: Duc d’Aumale, “Histoire des
Princes de Condé;” M. Édouard Barthélemy, “La Princesse de Condé:
Charlotte Catherine de la Trémoille;” M. Henri Bouchot, “Les Femmes de
Brantôme;” Victor Cousin, “La Jeunesse de Madame de Longueville;” Comte
Jules Delaborde, “Éléonore de Roye, Princesse de Condé (1535–1564);”
M. I. Henrard, “Henri IV. et la Princesse de Condé;” MM. Homberg and
Jousselin, “La Femme du Grand Condé;” Comte Hector de la Ferrière,
“Trois Amoureuses au XVI^{e} siècle;” and M. H. Thirion, “Madame de
Prie (1698–1727).”
H. NOEL WILLIAMS.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGES
Origin of the House of Condé--Louis de Bourbon, first
prince of the name--His modest _début_ at the Court--His
personal appearance and character--Enmity between the
Bourbons and the Guises--Condé attaches himself to the
party of the Connétable Anne de Montmorency, and marries
the latter’s niece, Éléonore de Roye--Noble character
of Éléonore--Gallantries of Condé--His early military
career--Death of Henry II.--Progress of the Reformation in
France--Condé embraces Protestantism and places himself at
the head of the opposition to the Guises--He is arrested at
Orléans, brought to trial for high treason and condemned to
death--But is saved by the opportune death of François II. 1–15
CHAPTER II
Critical condition of France at the accession of Charles
IX.--Character and policy of Catherine de’ Medici--The
Triumvirate--Catherine leans to the side of the
Reformers--The “Edict of January”--Massacre of Vassy--Condé
remains faithful to the Protestant cause--Beginning of
the civil war--The Protestants, at first successful, soon
in a desperate position--Condé turns to England for aid:
Treaty of Hampton Court--Fall of Rouen--Condé marches on
Paris--Battle of Dreux: the prince taken prisoner--Second
Captivity of Condé--Assassination of Guise--Conference
on the Île-aux-Bœufs--The maids-of-honour--Peace of
Amboise--Condé follows the Court 16–28
CHAPTER III
Catherine de’ Medici and her “_escadron
volant_”--Adroitness with which the Queen employs the
charms of her maids-of-honour to seduce the Huguenot
chief--The King of Navarre and _la belle_ Rouet--Policy
of Catherine after the Peace of Amboise--She determines
to compromise Condé with his foreign allies and the
French Protestants, by encouraging his taste for
sensual pleasures--And selects for his subjugation
her maid-of-honour and kinswoman Isabelle de
Limeuil--Description of this siren--Her admirers --Her
mercenary character--Beginning of her _liaison_ with the
prince--Condé and Elizabeth of England--Mlle. de Limeuil,
inspired by Catherine, seeks to persuade Condé to break
with Elizabeth--Mission of d’Alluye to England--Condé is
induced to take up arms against his late allies--Siege and
surrender of Le Havre 29–42
CHAPTER IV
Condé is disappointed in his hopes of obtaining the
post of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom--The prince
incurs the hatred of the extreme Catholics--Plot to
assassinate him on the Feast of Corpus Christi--Suspicion
with which he is regarded by the zealots of his own
party--Condé, deceived in his ambition and mortified by
the hostility of the extremists on both sides, turns
to pleasure for consolation--Violent passion of the
Maréchale de Saint-André for him--Indignation and alarm
aroused at Geneva by the rumours of Condé’s amorous
adventures--Calvin and Bèze address a joint letter of
remonstrance to the prince--Condé at Muret--Death of
two of his children--Failing health of the Princesse
de Condé--Her touching devotion to her husband--Her
dignified attitude in regard to his infidelities--Return
of Condé to the Court--Quarrel between him and Isabelle
de Limeuil--Temporary triumph of the Maréchale de
Saint-André--Refusal of the King to sanction the betrothal
of the Marquis de Conti to Mlle. de Saint-Andre--Condé
quits the Court in anger, but is reconciled to Isabelle and
returns--A second honeymoon 43–52
CHAPTER V
The fêtes of Fontainebleau--Charles IX. and Catherine set
out on a grand progress through the kingdom--Dangerous
illness of the Princesse de Condé--Her husband obliged
to remain with her--Scandalous _dénoûment_ of the
amours of Condé and Isabelle de Limeuil--Indignation
of the Queen-Mother--Isabelle and the Prince de la
Roche-sur-Yon--The Comte de Maulevrier accuses Isabelle
of having plotted to poison the prince--She is arrested
and conducted to the Franciscan convent at Auxonne--Tender
correspondence between her and Du Fresne--Passionate
letters of Condé to his mistress--Isabelle denies the
charges against her--Her letter to Catherine--She is
removed to Vienne--Her despair--Her pathetic letters to
Condé--She is examined by the Bishops of Orléans and
Limoges, and confronted by Maulevrier 53–69
CHAPTER VI
Death of the Princesse de Condé--Question of the prince’s
remarriage--The Maréchale de Saint-André’s bid for
his hand--Rumours of a matrimonial alliance with the
Guises--Catherine de’Medici, alarmed at such a prospect,
resolves to set Mlle. de Limeuil at liberty--Isabelle joins
Condé at Valery--Intense indignation of the Huguenots at
the scandalous conduct of the prince--Quarrel between
Condé and Coligny--The leaders of the party take counsel
together “to find a remedy for so great an evil”--The
deputation of Protestant pastors--Condé declines to
separate from his mistress, but eventually breaks with
her--His marriage with Mlle. de Longueville--Condé
persuaded by his wife to demand the return of the
presents he has given his mistress--Revenge of
Isabelle--Her marriage--Renewal of the civil war--Battle
of Saint-Denis--Peace of Longjumeau--Flight of Condé to
La Rochelle--Third War of Religion breaks out--Battle of
Jarnac--Death of Condé 70–91
CHAPTER VII
Henri I. de Bourbon, Prince de Condé--His personal
appearance and character--Jeanne d’Albret presents
Henri of Navarre and Condé to the army--The “Admiral’s
pages”--The “Journey of the Princes”--Battle of
Arnay-le-Duc--Condé at La Rochelle--Henri of Navarre is
betrothed to Marguerite de Valois, and Condé to Marie de
Clèves--An awkward lover--Marriage of Condé--Massacre
of Saint-Bartholomew--The King of Navarre and Condé
are ordered to abjure their religion--Firmness of the
latter, who, however, at length yields--Humiliating
position of Condé--Intrigue between his wife and the Duc
d’Anjou--Condé at the siege of La Rochelle--Anjou elected
King of Poland--He offers the hand of his discarded
mistress, Mlle. de Châteauneuf, to Nantouillet, provost of
Paris--Unpleasant consequences of the provost’s refusal of
this honour 92–107
CHAPTER VIII
Departure of Anjou for Poland--Condé, compromised in the
conspiracy of the “Politiques,” escapes to Strasbourg,
where he reverts to the Protestant faith--Death of Charles
IX., who is succeeded by the King of Poland--Flight of the
new King from Cracow--Death of the Princesse de Condé:
extravagant grief of Henry III.--Condé invades France at
the head of an army of German mercenaries--The “_Paix de
Monsieur_”--Condé endeavours to establish himself in the
West of France--Formation of the League and renewal of the
civil war--Condé refuses the hand of Mlle. de Vaudémont,
Henry III.’s sister-in-law--His second Odyssey--He commands
the Huguenot forces in Poitou and Saintonge--He proposes
for the hand of Charlotte Catherine de la Trémoille--Letter
of Mlle. de la Trémoille to the prince--He visits her at
the Château of Taillebourg--Disastrous expedition of Condé
against Angers--He is obliged to take refuge in Guernsey 108–124
CHAPTER IX
Loyalty of Mlle. de la Trémoille to Condé--She
prevents her mother, the Duchesse de Thouars,
from surrendering the Château of Taillebourg to a
Catholic force--And defends it gallantly until she
is relieved--She equips two ships-of-war to bring
Condé from Guernsey--Reunion of the lovers--Their
marriage--Condé takes the field again--Financial
embarrassments of the new _ménage_--Battle of Coutras:
encounter between Condé and Saint-Luc--Ill-health of
the prince--He returns to Saint-Jean-d’Angely--He is
suddenly taken ill, and dies in two days--Violent grief
of his wife--Suspicions of the doctors--An autopsy is
performed, and the prince is declared to have been
poisoned--Letter of the King of Navarre to the Comtesse
de Gramont--Flight of the princess’s page, Belcastel,
and her head _valet-de-chambre_, Corbais--Arrest of her
intendant, Brilland--The King of Navarre arrives at
Saint-Jean-d’Angely, and orders the Princesse de Condé to
be placed under arrest--Terrible situation of the princess 125–138
CHAPTER X
The King of Navarre appoints a special commission for the
trial of Brilland--Brilland is put to the question--His
confessions under torture implicate the Princesse de Condé,
but on the following day he disavows them--He is found
guilty and condemned to be dismembered by horses--The
princess denies the competency of the court and appeals
to the Parlement of Paris--But the King of Navarre and
the commissioners ignore the decrees of that body--The
commission directs that the princess shall be brought
to trial--She gives birth to a son--The prosecution is
dropped, but the princess remains in captivity--The
Président de Thou interests himself in her case--Means by
which he obtains from Henri IV. the recognition of her
son’s rights, and, with them, the acknowledgment of the
princess’s innocence 139–148
CHAPTER XI
Education of Henri II. de Bourbon, Prince de
Condé--Appearance and character of the young prince--He is
offered and accepts the hand of Charlotte de Montmorency,
unaware that Henry IV. is desperately enamoured of the
lady--Conversation of the King with Bassompierre--Marriage
of Condé and Mlle. de Montmorency--Infatuation of the
King for the young princess--Condé refuses to accept the
odious rôle assigned to him, and “plays the devil”--Violent
scenes between him and the King--He removes with his wife
to Picardy--Amorous escapade of Henri IV.--Condé, summoned
to Court for the accouchement of the Queen, leaves the
princess behind him--Indignation of Henri IV.--Condé
flies with his wife to Flanders---Fury of the King, who
sends troops in pursuit of the fugitives--Refusal of the
Archdukes to deliver them up--Condé goes to Cologne, while
the princess proceeds to Brussels 149–162
CHAPTER XII
Condé summoned by the Archdukes to Brussels--He
places himself under the protection of Philip III. of
Spain--Mission of the Marquis de Cœuvres to Brussels--His
attempted abduction of the Princesse de Condé--Condé
declared guilty of high treason--He leaves Brussels for
Milan--Henri IV. and his Ministers threaten the Archdukes
with war if the princess is not given up--Despatches
of the Spanish Ambassador to his Court--Condé at
Milan--Assassination of Henri IV.--Embarrassing position
of Condé in regard to Spain--He returns to Brussels,
but declines to see his wife--His return to France--He
contemplates the dissolution of his marriage, but
ultimately consents to a formal reconciliation with the
princess--His turbulent conduct during the regency of Marie
de’ Medici--His arrest and imprisonment--The princess
magnanimously shares her husband’s captivity--Dangerous
illness of the prince--Birth of Anne Geneviève de
Bourbon--Release of the Condés 163–178
CHAPTER XIII
Birth of Louis de Bourbon, Duc d’Enghien (the Great
Condé)--His early years at the Château of Montrond--His
education--His personal appearance and character--Wealth of
the Condés--Life at Chantilly--Isabelle de Boutteville and
Marthe du Vigean--Tender attachment of the Duc d’Enghien
and Mlle. du Vigean--Subserviency of the Prince de Condé
towards Richelieu--He solicits for Enghien the hand of the
Cardinal’s niece, Claire-Clémence de Maillé-Brézé--The
young prince protests against the sacrifice demanded of
him, but eventually consents--He is presented to Mlle. de
Maillé-Brézé--First campaign of the Great Condé--He denies
the rumour that he has “no taste for his _fiancée_”--Fête
at the Palais-Cardinal: a ludicrous incident--Marriage of
the Duc d’Enghien 179–195
CHAPTER XIV
Serious illness of the Duc d’Enghien--Tyranny exercised
over him by Richelieu--An amusing anecdote--Death of the
Cardinal--His will--Lawsuit between the Prince de Condé
and the Duchesse d’Aiguillon--Enghien contemplates the
dissolution of his marriage, neglects his wife, and devotes
himself to Marthe du Vigean--He receives the command of the
Army of Flanders, gains the brilliant victory of Rocroi,
and takes Thionville--The Duchesse d’Enghien gives birth to
a son--Indifference of the duke--He returns to Paris and
endeavours to procure the dissolution of his marriage--But
this project is frustrated by the interference of the
Prince de Condé--Enghien is wounded at the battle of
Nördlingen, and has a dangerous attack of fever--To the
astonishment of his friends, he suddenly breaks off his
tender relations with Mlle. du Vigean--Despair of the lady,
who, in spite of the opposition of her family, enters the
Carmelites of the Faubourg Saint-Jacques 196–206
CHAPTER XV
Notwithstanding his rupture with Mlle. du Vigean,
the Duc d’Enghien continues to treat his wife with
coldness--The heart of the prince is fiercely disputed
by the ladies of the Court--Dissipated life of Enghien:
paternal remonstrances--_Liaison_ between the duke
and Ninon de l’Enclos--Death of Henri II. de Bourbon,
Prince de Condé--Failure of the new Prince de Condé
before Lerida--His brilliant victory at Lens--Beginning
of the Fronde--Condé remains faithful to the Court,
and takes command of the royal troops--The Duchesse de
Châtillon becomes his mistress--Peace of Rueil--The
arrogance and ambition of Condé causes the Court and
the Frondeurs to join forces against him--The arrest of
the Princes--The Princesse de Condé at Bordeaux--Death
of the dowager-princess--Equivocal conduct of Madame de
Châtillon--Episode of an unaddressed letter--Exile of
Mazarin and release of the Princes--Continued indifference
of Condé towards his wife, notwithstanding her courageous
efforts on his behalf--Negotiations between him and the
Regent--His rupture with the Frondeurs, who draw towards
the Court--Condé retires to Saint-Maur--Alliance between
the Court and the Frondeurs--Proceedings against Condé--The
prince retires to Montrond and “draws the sword” 207–224
CHAPTER XVI
Condé proceeds to Bordeaux, where he is rejoined
by his relatives--He opens the campaign with
success, but is soon obliged to remain on the
defensive--Return of Mazarin--Condé on the Loire--Battle
of Bléneau--He leaves his army and proceeds to
Paris--His futile negotiations--Battle of the Faubourg
Saint-Antoine--Massacre of the Hôtel de Ville--The Fronde
grows daily more discredited--Condé quits Paris and joins
the Spaniards on the Flemish frontier--The Fronde at
Bordeaux--Sanguinary affrays between the _Ormée_ and the
_Chapeau Rouge_--Courage and presence of mind displayed
by the Princesse de Condé and Madame de Longueville in
separating the combatants--Surrender of Bordeaux--The
princess sails for Flanders to rejoin her husband--Her
reception at Valenciennes--She is cruelly neglected by
Condé--She removes from Valenciennes to Malines--Her
miserable existence--Condé applies to the Spanish Court
for financial assistance--Brilliant military qualities
displayed by him in the service of his country’s
enemies--The princess gives birth to a daughter--Peace of
the Pyrenees--Return of Condé and his wife to France 225–234
CHAPTER XVII
Arrival of Condé at the Court--His reception--He returns
to Paris--His ingratitude towards his wife--Dignified
behaviour of _Madame la Princesse_--Affectionate relations
between Condé and his son--Indifference of the young prince
towards his mother--Marriage of the Duc d’Enghien and Anne
of Bavaria--The affair of Poland--Condé’s conquest of
Franche-Comté--The mind of the Princesse de Condé becomes
affected--The footman Duval--Mysterious affair at the
Hôtel de Condé: the princess is wounded in a brawl between
Duval and the Comte de Bussy-Rabutin--Singular attitude of
_Monsieur le Prince_--Trial of Duval--Calumnies against
the Princesse de Condé: letter of Madame de Sevigné--The
princess is exiled to the Château of Châteauroux, in
Berry--Her departure: a touching scene--Her captivity--Her
hallucinations--Visit of Père Tixier 235–250
CHAPTER XVIII
Termination of Condé’s military career--His retirement at
Chantilly--His improvements of the château and estate--His
son, the Duc d’Enghien (_Monsieur le Duc_)--Portrait of
this prince by Saint-Simon--His tyrannical treatment of
his wife--His singular habits--Malicious practical joke
which he perpetrates on the Duc de Luxembourg--His amours
with the Duchesse de Nevers, the Marquise de Richelieu,
and the Comtesse de Marans--His natural daughter by Madame
de Marans legitimated and married to the Marquis de
Lassay--His lack of military capacity--His children--The
education of his only son, the Duc de Bourbon,
superintended by Condé--Marriage of the young prince to
Mlle. de Nantes, elder daughter of Louis XIV. and Madame de
Montespan--The wedding-night--Conversion of Condé--His last
illness--His death--His funeral oration by Bossuet--The
Princesse de Condé remains in captivity--Her death 251–268
CHAPTER XIX
Henri-Jules de Bourbon, fifth Prince de Condé--His
affection for Chantilly--Improvements which he executes
there--The “_Galerie des Batailles_”--His business
capacity--His relations with his son, the Duc de Bourbon
(_Monsieur le Duc_)--Character of this prince--His
ungovernable temper and vindictiveness--His intrigue with
Madame de Mussy--She betrays him for the Comte d’Albert--A
violent scene--Madame de Mussy follows her new lover
to Spain--Her sad fate--Other amours of _Monsieur le
Duc_--Character of _Madame la Duchesse_--Her intrigue with
the Prince de Conti--Her grief at his premature death--Last
years of the Prince de Condé--His eccentricity becomes
hardly distinguishable from madness--Anecdotes concerning
him--His death--His last instructions to his son--The Duc
de Bourbon retains his title, instead of assuming that of
Prince de Condé--His sudden death, eleven months after that
of his father 269–280
CHAPTER XX
Louis Henri de Bourbon-Condé--He assumes the title of Duc
de Bourbon, instead of that of Prince de Condé, and is
known as _Monsieur le Duc_--His personal appearance--He
loses an eye by a shooting accident--His military
career--He becomes President of the Council of Regency
on the death of Louis XIV.--His protection of John
Law--His wealth--His character--His marriage with Marie
Anne de Bourbon-Conti--Singular intrigue which precedes
it--His indifference to his wife--His amours--The
financier Berthelot de Pléneuf--Gallantries of Madame de
Pléneuf--Saint-Simon’s portrait of her--Her daughter,
Agnès de Pléneuf--Singular beauty and intelligence of this
young girl--Violent jealousy which her mother conceives
for her--Marriage of Agnès to the Marquis de Prie, who
is soon afterwards appointed Ambassador at Turin--Her
life at Turin--Disgrace and bankruptcy of Berthelot de
Pléneuf--Financial straits of the de Pries--Madame de Prie
comes to Paris to intercede with the Government on her
husband’s behalf--Calumnies concerning her spread by her
mother and her partisans--Her relations with the Regent 281–295
CHAPTER XXI
Origin of the _liaison_ between _Monsieur le Duc_ and
Madame de Prie considered--Extraordinary ascendency which
the latter acquires over her lover--For a while, the
favourite leads a life of pleasure, but is soon obliged
to give her attention to politics--Exasperation of Madame
de Pléneuf’s coterie against her--Insecurity of _Monsieur
le Duc’s_ position--The Orléans faction--Intrigues of
the War Minister Le Blanc and the Belle-Isles--Hatred
of Madame de Prie for Le Blanc--She resolves to crush
the common enemies of herself and _Monsieur le Duc_--Her
skilful conduct--Murder of Sandrier de Mitry, chief
cashier of La Jonchère, treasurer of the Emergency War
Fund--Sinister suspicions concerning La Jonchère and Le
Blanc--Madame de Prie determines to get to the bottom
of the mystery--Her alliance with the Pâris brothers
against the War Minister--Dubois persuades the Regent
to withdraw his protection from Le Blanc--Arrest of La
Jonchère and examination of his accounts--Disgrace and
exile of Le Blanc--The death of Dubois puts a stop to the
proceedings--Death of Philippe d’Orléans--_Monsieur le Duc_
becomes Prime Minister 296–313
CHAPTER XXII
Beginning of the Ministry of _Monsieur le Duc_--His early
popularity--Difficulties of the situation--Philippe
d’Orléans replaced by three new powers: Louis XV.,
Fleury, and Philip V. of Spain--Futile negotiations
between _Monsieur le Duc_ and the Orléans
faction--Madame de Prie advises the prince to take the
offensive--Resumption of the proceedings against La
Jonchère and his accomplices--Indignation and alarm of the
Orléanists--Attempted assassination of La Guillonière, in
mistake for Pâris-Duverney---Conspiracy against the lives
of _Monsieur le Duc_ and his mistress--Madame de Prie
insists on prompt and energetic action, and Le Blanc and
the Belle-Isles are thrown into the Bastille--Arrest of
Lempereur and other persons--The Government is determined
on the total ruin of Le Blanc--Murder of Gazan de la
Combe--La Blanc claims the privilege of being tried by the
assembled chambers of the Parlement--Efforts of _Monsieur
le Duc_ and Madame de Prie to counteract the influence
of Fleury over Louis XV.--Recall of Villeroy--Visit of
the King to Chantilly--Trial of Le Blanc--Extraordinary
proceedings--Acquittal of the accused 314–331
CHAPTER XXIII
_Monsieur le Duc_ and Madame de Prie determine to break
off the marriage of Louis XV. and the Infanta, and to
marry the young King to a princess capable of at once
giving him an heir--Double interest of the favourite in the
accomplishment of this design--Question of the remarriage
of _Monsieur le Duc_--Madame de Prie, unable to oppose
this, selects Marie Leczinska--Rupture of the Spanish
marriage--Exasperation of the Court of Madrid--Difficulty
of finding a suitable consort for Louis XV.--Madame de Prie
accused of having barred the way of Mlle. de Vermandois to
the crown matrimonial--The favourite advocates the claims
of Marie Leczinska, who is eventually chosen--Triumph
of Madame de Prie--Arrival of the new Queen--A model
husband--Growing unpopularity of the Government and
increasing influence of Fleury--An unsuccessful
intrigue--Madame de Prie retires from Court, but _Monsieur
le Duc_ insists on her return--Disgrace of _Monsieur
le Duc_--His mother and his mistress follow him to
Chantilly--Madame de Prie is exiled to Normandy--A touching
farewell--Chivalrous behaviour of the prince--Death of
Madame de Prie--Remarriage of _Monsieur le Duc_--His death 332–350
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
AGNÈS BERTHELOT DE PLÉNEUF, MARQUISE DE PRIE _Frontispiece_
From a Painting by an unknown artist, in the
collection of M. de Quatrebarbes
_By permission of MM. Plon Nourrit_
FACING
PAGE
LOUIS I. DE BOURBON, PRINCE DE CONDÉ 26
From an Engraving after a Drawing by JANET
ÉLÉONORE DE ROYE, PRINCESSE DE CONDÉ 72
From a Drawing by an unknown artist
HENRI I. DE BOURBON, PRINCE DE CONDÉ 102
From an Engraving by DELPECH, after the Painting
by MAUZAISSE
CHARLOTTE CATHERINE DE LA TRÉMOILLE, PRINCESSE DE CONDÉ 134
From an Engraving by MIGER, after the Painting by
LE MONNIER
HENRI II. DE BOURBON, PRINCE DE CONDÉ 164
From an Engraving by MATHONIER
LOUIS II. DE BOURBON, PRINCE DE CONDÉ (THE GREAT CONDÉ) 182
From an Engraving by JACQUES LUBIN
CLAIRE CLÉMENCE DE MAILLÉ-BRÉZÉ, PRINCESSE DE CONDÉ 198
From an Engraving by MONCORNET
NINON DE L’ENCLOS 210
From a Miniature in the South Kensington Museum
ANNE OF BAVARIA, DUCHESSE D’ENGHIEN (AFTERWARDS PRINCESSE DE
CONDÉ) 238
From an Engraving by MONCORNET
HENRI JULES DE BOURBON, DUC D’ENGHIEN (AFTERWARDS PRINCE DE
CONDÉ) 252
From an Engraving by POILLY, after the Painting by
MIGNARD
DIANE GABRIELLE DE THIANGES, DUCHESSE DE NEVERS 254
From a Contemporary Print
LOUIS III., DUC DE BOURBON, PRINCE DE CONDÉ (CALLED MONSIEUR
LE DUC) 264
From a Contemporary Print
LOUISE FRANÇOISE, DUCHESSE DE BOURBON (CALLED MADAME LA
DUCHESSE) 276
From a Contemporary Print
LOUIS HENRI, DUC DE BOURBON, PRINCE DE CONDÉ (CALLED
MONSIEUR LE DUC) 300
From an Engraving by P. DREVET, after the Painting
by GOBERT
ANDRÉ HERCULE, CARDINAL DE FLEURY 316
From an Engraving by DREVET, after the Painting by
HYACINTHE RIGAUD
CLAUDE LE BLANC 330
From an Engraving by DREVET, after the Painting by
LE PRIEUR
THE
LOVE-AFFAIRS OF THE CONDÉS
CHAPTER I
Origin of the House of Condé--Louis de Bourbon, first prince
of the name--His modest _début_ at the Court--His personal
appearance and character--Enmity between the Bourbons and the
Guises--Condé attaches himself to the party of the Connétable
Anne de Montmorency, and marries the latter’s niece, Éléonore
de Roye--Noble character of Éléonore--Gallantries of Condé--His
early military career--Death of Henry II.--Progress of the
Reformation in France--Condé embraces Protestantism and places
himself at the head of the opposition to the Guises--He is
arrested at Orléans, brought to trial for high treason and
condemned to death--But is saved by the opportune death of
François II.
The Condés and the Bourbons have a common origin. Both families descend
from Robert de France, Comte de Clermont, youngest son of St. Louis. An
ancient barony, the inheritance of that prince’s wife, was erected into
a dukedom in favour of Louis, his son, and gave to his descendants the
name which they have retained, that of France being reserved for the
royal branch.
After the death, without issue, of the Connétable de Bourbon at the
assault of Rome in May 1527, his brother, Charles, Duc de Vendôme,
became first Prince of the Blood, though, owing to the profound
mistrust with which François I. now regarded the Bourbons, he never
acquired either the authority or influence that so high a position
ought to have given him. Nor did he succeed in recovering any of the
vast possessions of the Constable, which were definitely alienated from
his House, and, on his death in 1538, he left but a scanty fortune.
This was the more regrettable, since his wife, Françoise d’Alençon,
had borne him no less than thirteen children: seven sons and six
daughters. Of the daughters, four entered religion; one died unmarried,
and the last became the wife of François de Clèves, Duc de Nevers. Of
the sons, five lived to attain their majority, though only one survived
middle-age and died a natural death, and he was in holy orders. They
were:
1. Antoine, Duc de Vendôme, born 22 April, 1518; became, through his
marriage with Jeanne d’Albret, King of Navarre; died 17 November, 1562,
from the effects of a wound received at the siege of Rouen.
2. François, Comte d’Enghien, born 23 September, 1519; commanded the
French army in the great victory of Ceresole, 14 April, 1544; died 23
February, 1546, from the result of what was probably an accident, but
was by many attributed to deliberate intent.[1]
3. Charles, Cardinal de Bourbon (“_le cardinal des bouteilles_”),
who was proclaimed King of France by the League after the death of
Henri III.); born 22 December, 1523; died 9 May, 1590.
4. Jean, Comte de Soissons, and, after the death of his brother
François, Comte d’Enghien; born 6 July, 1526; killed at the battle of
Saint-Quentin, 15 August, 1557.
5. Louis, Prince de Condé, born at the Château of Vendôme, 7 May, 1530;
killed at the battle of Jarnac, 13 March, 1569.
Two of these princes married and founded families: Antoine, who was the
father of Henri IV., and the ancestor of all the Bourbons now living,
and Louis, who was the root of the House of Condé and all its branches.
Louis, the youngest brother, was only in his eighth year at the time of
his father’s death. Of his boyhood nothing whatever is known, though,
as his widowed mother, who lived in strict retirement, was scarcely
the person best fitted to superintend that chivalrous education which
was deemed indispensable for a lad of high birth, it is probable that
he was brought up by his brother-in-law, the Duc de Nevers, or some
other male relative. The earliest recorded mention of him occurs in the
Domestic Roll of Henri II. for the year 1549, where he appears under
the name of “Louis M^r de Vendôme, gentleman of the chamber to the
King, at a salary of 1200 livres.”
The precise time and occasion of his assuming the title which he and
his descendants were to render so illustrious are likewise involved in
obscurity. The Duc d’Aumale asserts that the earliest official document
in which it is given, is in the _procès-verbal_ of the Bed of
Justice held on 15 January, 1557;[2] but since the duke wrote it has
been discovered that he is thus qualified in at least half-a-dozen
other deeds previous to that date, the earliest being an _acte
seigneurial_ of 30 March, 1553; while Henri II., in a letter to the
Duc de Nevers written on 12 June, 1554, refers to the duke’s youngest
brother-in-law as “My cousin, the Prince de Condé.”[3]
Equal uncertainty prevails as to whether he derived the title from
Condé-sur-l’Escaut or Condé-en-Brie, both of which lordships seem to
have been owned by his father, Charles, Duc de Vendôme. “The best
known of the chroniclers of the family, Désormeaux,” observes the Duc
d’Aumale, “declares it to be beyond all doubt that the first prince
derived his name from Condé-en-Brie.” Indeed, in the marriage-contract
of Louis I., the lordship of Condé-en-Brie appears in the list of the
prince’s possessions. He owned a château there, at which he often
resided, and executed various deeds, whereas there is no official
document relating to him known to exist in which any mention is made
of Condé-sur-l’Escaut. But another historian of the family, l’Hullier,
who, though a tedious and very dull writer, has left in MS. many
historical and genealogical memoirs, of which Désormeaux has often
made use, declares himself in favour of Condé-sur-l’Escaut; and the
Convention appeared to be of the same opinion, by its naming that place
“Nord-libre.” The illustrious author modestly “leaves to more learned
historians the task of solving the question,” but the majority of
modern writers are inclined to favour the claims of Condé-sur-l’Escaut,
though, apparently, for no better reason than because it is the more
important of the two places.
Few Princes of the Blood have made a more modest _début_ at the
Court of France than the first of the Condés. Since the treason of the
Connétable de Bourbon his family had fallen into a sort of discredit,
and, though, in the last years of the previous reign, the partiality
shown by François I. for the young Comte d’Enghien had seemed a promise
of returning favour, the untimely death of the count, followed by
that of the King, soon dissipated their hopes. When the head of the
house, Antoine, Duc de Vendôme, was hard put to maintain a position
in accordance with his rank, there was little enough for his younger
brothers; and Louis de Bourbon made his appearance at Court so quietly
dressed and with so modest a suite as to provoke no small merriment at
his expense among the gorgeous butterflies of both sexes who adorned
the salons of the Louvre and the gallery of the Tournelles.
Nor was there anything in the personal appearance of this youth of
nineteen to suggest the great part that he was to play in after years.
Unlike his ancestors, who had been tall men of imposing presence,
he was short and slightly built, and some anecdote-mongers even
represent him as hump-backed. Admitting however, that he may have been
round-shouldered, the imputation of actual deformity is scarcely
reconcilable with the well-known popular song concerning him:
“Ce petit homme tant jolly,
Qui toujours cause et toujours ry
Et toujours baise sa mignonne,
Dieu gard’ de mal le petit homme.”
Moreover, if somewhat diminutive in stature, he was “nimble and
vigorous, and as adroit at martial exercises, both on foot and on
horseback, as any man in France.”[4] His features, too, were pleasing
without being regular, and illuminated by a pair of very bright eyes;
he had excellent natural abilities, and had not neglected to cultivate
them, being exceptionally well-informed and a good conversationalist,
with a touch of sarcasm, which, however, his good-humour deprived of
its sting, and “agreeable, accessible, and amiable.”[5]
The young prince was, therefore, not without qualifications to ensure
advancement at Court, but in the two most essential--wealth and
influence--he was conspicuously lacking. The absence of the first might
have mattered little had he possessed the second, but the cloud under
which the Bourbons had lain for a quarter of a century showed no sign
of lifting. Henri II., who had ascended the throne two years before
Condé’s arrival at Court, was a well-meaning man, who sincerely desired
to do his duty and promote the interests of his subjects, but he was
“born to be governed, rather than to govern,”[6] and was surrounded by
ambitious and greedy favourites, who thought only of exploiting him for
their own selfish ends. In the early days of the new reign, the favour
of the King had been divided between his mature mistress, Diane de
Poitiers, Duchesse de Valentinois, and his old friend, the Connétable
Anne de Montmorency, who, disgraced by François I. in 1543, had, on
the death of that monarch, been recalled to Court and entrusted with
the direction of affairs. Diane, however, jealous of the influence
of the Constable, formed an alliance with the Guises, those able and
ambitious Lorraine princes who were to play so conspicuous a part in
all the troubles of the latter half of the sixteenth century; François
de Lorraine, who succeeded his father as Duc de Guise in the spring
of 1550, and his brother, Charles, the second Cardinal de Lorraine,
became two of the King’s most trusted advisers; and they and their
younger brothers were loaded with honours and benefits. Henri II.’s
favourites stood like a bodyguard around the throne to prevent any one
else approaching it; their greed was insatiable; “estates, dignities,
bishoprics, abbeys, offices, no more escaped them than do the flies the
swallow; there was not a choice morsel that was not snapped up in a
moment.”[7]
For the Bourbons to have attempted to break through this bodyguard and
insinuate themselves into the good graces of their Sovereign would have
been a hopeless task; and they soon recognized that their only chance
of bettering their fallen fortunes was to follow the example of the
other courtiers and attach themselves to one or other of the favourites
who governed the King, in the hope that some scraps of the royal bounty
might be passed on to them. From the party of Diane de Poitiers and the
Guises they had nothing to expect, for, though the two families were
closely connected,[8] their relations were exceedingly strained. In
both Court and camp their paths crossed; and the sinister rumours to
which the death of the young victor of Ceresole had given rise is an
eloquent testimony to the jealousy which existed between them. Since
the death of François I., who had regarded the Guises with profound
mistrust, and in his last hours had warned his son to be on his guard
against them, since “their aim was to strip him to his doublet, and
his people to their shirts,”[9] the Lorraines had plainly shown their
determination to keep the Bourbons in the background, and not content
with enjoying the privileges of foreign princes, had profited by the
impotence of their kinsmen to usurp those of the Princes of the Blood.
Policy and inclination therefore both prompted the Bourbons to attach
themselves to the opposition, or Montmorency faction. This party,
though it attracted to its ranks fewer of the Court nobility than did
that of the Duchesse de Valentinois and the Guises, was supported by
the bulk of the provincial noblesse, and Montmorency’s great wealth
and official position--he was Grand Master of the King’s Household
as well as Constable of France--enabled him to dispense extensive
patronage. He had five sons and seven daughters, besides numerous
nephews and nieces, and he did his duty nobly by them all, and allowed
no opportunity to pass of advancing the importance of his family and
enriching his relatives and friends. Condé, more ambitious than his
brothers, determined to establish claims on the great man’s favour
which it would be difficult for him to overlook, and, towards the
end of the year 1550, demanded in marriage the hand of Éléonore de
Roye, eldest daughter and heiress of Charles, Seigneur de Roye and
de Muret, Comte de Roney, an alliance which would unite him with the
two great Houses of Montmorency and Châtillon. For Éléonore de Roye’s
mother, Madeleine de Mailly, was the daughter of Louise de Montmorency,
sister of the Constable;[10] and Louise de Montmorency, by her second
marriage with the Maréchal de Châtillon, was the mother of the future
Admiral, Gaspard de Coligny, and of his two brothers, Odet, Cardinal de
Châtillon, and François, Seigneur d’Andelot.
The consent of the young lady’s parents was readily given. They could
not, indeed, fail to be flattered by such a proposal from a Prince
of the Blood, besides which they felt that this young man, frank,
brave, chivalrous, and amiable, was a husband of whom any girl might
well be proud, and ought to have a brilliant future before him. It is
possible that the rumours of their prospective son-in-law’s addiction
to feminine society which had reached them may have occasioned them
some misgivings; but Gaspard de Coligny, who had negotiated the affair,
assured them that marriage would change all that, and that he had no
doubt that, once in possession of the prince’s affections, Éléonore
would be able to fix them permanently. This, in view of what we shall
presently relate, seems a decidedly bold assertion; but then Coligny,
the most faithful of husbands, was generously inclined to judge others
by himself; while the political advantages of a match which would unite
the Houses of Montmorency, Bourbon and Châtillon, and counterbalance
the exorbitant credit of the Guises, may well have disposed him to
regard the young prince’s gallantries with a lenient eye.
After being accepted by the Comte and Comtesse de Roye, the project was
submitted to the Constable, who was graciously pleased to approve of
it, and promised to obtain the sanction of the King. This proved far
from an easy task, as Diane de Poitiers and the Guises did everything
possible to persuade his Majesty to refuse his consent; but, in the
end, Montmorency triumphed over their opposition, and on June 22, 1551,
the marriage was celebrated at the Château of Plessis-lès-Roye, by the
Cardinal de Bourbon, the bridegroom’s uncle.
This marriage added little to Condé’s fortune, but it brought him “an
inexhaustible treasure of affection and devotion.” “If ever, in fact,”
writes an enthusiastic biographer, “a young girl, pure and loving,
entered married life with the energetic resolution to consecrate all
the living forces of her soul to the practice of the most holy duties,
and raised herself by her piety and her virtues, by the generosity of
her soul and the heroism of her character, to the rank of a _femme
d’élite_, it was this incomparable Éléonore de Roye, who, from the
day of her union with Louis de Bourbon, became for this prince, and
remained up to the day when she succumbed prematurely to the cruel
attacks of disease, a tender and submissive companion, a faithful
friend, an immovable support in time of trial.”[11]
Amidst that band of noble Huguenot ladies, who in the evil days
to come so bravely upheld their persecuted faith against the
overwhelming forces arrayed against it, and inspired their disheartened
co-religionists with fresh energy and enthusiasm to maintain the
unequal struggle, there is no nobler figure than that of Éléonore
de Roye. Less capable, less ambitious, than Jeanne d’Albret, she is
infinitely more attractive, for she possessed a boundless fund of
sympathy, an exquisite tact, and a charity which was but too seldom
found among the leaders of “the Religion.”
Catholic as well as Protestant writers bear homage to the charms and
virtues of this admirable woman. “She was a lady of much intelligence,
of heroic courage, and of an admirable chastity,” says De Thou; Le
Laboureur, while describing her as “a very obstinate Huguenot,” admits
that she was “beautiful and very virtuous”;[12] while Désormeaux
declares that she yielded to none of her sex in beauty, in grace, in
intelligence and in chastity, and that she “surpassed every one in
knowledge, in courage, and in magnanimity.”[13]
Condé could not be indifferent to the devotion of such a woman, and
there can be no doubt that, for a long time, he reciprocated her
affection and that he always entertained for her a sincere regard.
Nevertheless, his marriage did little to subdue his taste for
gallantry, and his attentions to the light beauties of the Court must
often have caused her the keenest pain. “The good prince,” observes
Brantôme, “was as worldly as his neighbour and loved other people’s
wives as much as his own, partaking largely of the nature of the
Bourbons, who have always been of a very amorous complexion.”
If, however, Condé shared his family’s weakness for the fair sex, he
shared also its taste for a military career, and, for some years after
his marriage, it was the camp rather than the Court which claimed the
greater part of his time. The long and bitter struggle between the
Houses of France and Austria, closed for a time by the Peace of Crépy,
broke out afresh in the early summer of 1551, in Italy, where Henry
II. and Charles V., though still nominally at peace, intervened in
the dispute between Pope Julius III. and his vassal Ottavio Farnese,
Duke of Parma. Condé, though only a few days married, at once demanded
and obtained permission to serve as a volunteer in the Army of Italy,
commanded by the Maréchal de Brissac, and set out for Piedmont.
When Louis Joseph de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, went to the wars, two
centuries later, he took with him an immense retinue of servants, and
a long procession of carts and carriages, to transport which over
two hundred horses were required;[14] while a whole regiment had to
be detached for the protection of his precious person. His ancestor
must have started on his first campaign in very different fashion;
indeed, there was probably little to distinguish him from the crowd of
gentlemen volunteers whom the prospect of some hard fighting had drawn
across the Alps; and he evidently did not disdain to perform the work
of the humblest soldier, since we hear of him toiling for two whole
nights at the task of dragging the guns up the steep heights which
commanded the Castle of Lantz. At the conclusion of the campaign, in
which he had given abundant proof that he possessed all the courage of
his race, although his general had found him “a little difficult to
manage,” he reappeared for a brief interval at Court, and then, in the
spring of 1552, took part in the “Austrasian expedition,” that military
promenade through the Rhine country which gave to France, almost
without striking a blow, Metz, Toul, and Verdun.
In the autumn of the same year, when Charles V., freed from his
Germanic embarrassments by the agreement of Passau, laid siege to Metz,
Condé and his brother, the second Comte d’Enghien, were among the young
nobles who received permission “to take their pleasure at the siege.”
The two Bourbon princes were entrusted with the defence of a part of
the ramparts, and acquitted themselves with courage and capacity.
The summer of 1553 found Condé in Picardy, sharing with the Duc de
Nemours the command of the light cavalry. In an engagement with the
Imperialist cavalry at Doullens, he brought up four squadrons at a
critical moment, and, by a brilliant charge on the enemy’s flank,
decided the day. In the following year, he commanded the light cavalry
on the Meuse and distinguished himself at the combat at Renty, and in
1555 he returned to the Army of Italy, in which he rendered excellent
service on several occasions, notably at the siege of Vulpiano.
But the enmity of the Guises barred the way to the royal favour, and
when, in 1556, the Truce of Vaucelles put an end to the war, the
only recompense he had been able to obtain was the captaincy of a
_compagnie d’ordonnance_, the nearest equivalent to a modern
regiment.[15]
The truce, which had been concluded for five years, was soon broken,
and at the beginning of 1557 the dogs of war were again slipped. In the
summer, the Spaniards invaded Picardy and laid siege to Saint-Quentin,
on the Somme, one of the bulwarks of Paris. Realizing the importance
of saving a town the fall of which would open the road to the capital,
the Constable hurried northwards with all the troops he could muster,
and Condé accompanied him. The overwhelming superiority of the enemy in
numbers, however, decided Montmorency not to risk an engagement, but
merely to make a feint against the besiegers’ lines, and, under cover
of this movement, to throw reinforcements and provisions into the town,
after which he intended to retire. But the non-arrival of the boats
required to transport the reliefs across the Somme caused a delay of
more than two hours; and, when Montmorency began to retire, he found
that the enemy had crossed the river by a ford of which he appears to
have been in ignorance, seized the only road by which he could retreat,
and cut his army right in two.
Surprised and hopelessly outnumbered, the French were routed with
terrible loss. Condé’s brother, the gallant Comte d’Enghien, was
among the slain, while the Constable and the Maréchal de Saint-André
were taken prisoners. Condé himself, who was stationed with part of
the light cavalry on the extreme right wing of the army, displayed
the most admirable courage and presence of mind amid the general
panic, and, keeping his men together, succeeded in cutting his way
through the victorious Spaniards and reaching La Fère. He lost no
time in taking the field again and kept it throughout the autumn,
continually harassing the enemy and attacking their foraging-parties
and convoys. So much activity and vigour on the morrow of a great
defeat undoubtedly merited some substantial recognition; but when,
at the beginning of the following year, he solicited the post of
colonel-general of the light cavalry which he had so gallantly led,
he was, to his intense mortification, passed over in favour of the
Duc de Nemours, the candidate of the Guises. It is true that, by way
of compensation, he was nominated colonel-general of the Cisalpine
infantry, that is to say, of the infantry stationed in Piedmont; but,
since France had lately withdrawn all her troops from Piedmont with
the exception of a few garrisons, the appointment was regarded as an
affront rather than an honour.
The Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, which was concluded in the following
spring, prevented Condé from acquiring any further military distinction
in the service of his country, and henceforth whatever laurels fell
to his share were gained on fields where Frenchmen were opposed to
Frenchmen. If, however, the life of Henri II. had been prolonged only a
little while, it is almost certain that the prince’s faithful services
would not have remained unrewarded; for both the King and Diane de
Poitiers were becoming seriously alarmed at the growing power and
arrogance of the Guises, and the latter had broken with them and formed
an alliance with Montmorency. But before the summer was over, Henri II.
slept with his fathers at Saint-Denis; Diane and the Constable had been
disgraced, and the Guises, thanks to the marriage of their niece, Mary
Stuart, to the new King, had become the masters of France.
* * * * *
Condé’s patience had been severely tried during the reign which had
just terminated; and it was scarcely to be expected that a young
prince of his ambitious and energetic character would resign himself
to the sight of the royal authority concentrated in the hands of those
whose aim it had always been to exclude his family from their rightful
share in the direction of affairs. Nor were the means for giving very
effective expression to his dissatisfaction wanting.
The Reformation in France, which had made immense strides during the
last years of Henri II., notwithstanding the fierce, if intermittent,
persecution to which it had been subjected, had ceased to be a purely
religious movement and was developing into a formidable political
combination with which it was the interest of discontented and
ambitious nobles to make common cause, without in any way partaking
of its spiritual aspirations. Condé, with his gay and pleasure-loving
nature, could have had but little sympathy with the austere tenets
of Calvinism, and it is probable that the mortifications he had
experienced, the hope of uniting his fortunes with the chances of
success which the Reformers were able to offer, and, above all, his
hatred of the Guises, contributed far more than religious convictions
to decide him to embrace their faith and their cause. His elder
brother, Antoine, who, on the death of his father-in-law Henri
d’Albret, in 1555, had succeeded to the throne of Navarre, had already
done so, but, though brave enough in war, he was irresolute and shifty
to the last degree, and now, when faced with the necessity for vigorous
action, he declined to compromise himself; and it was therefore to
the second Prince of the Blood that the Huguenots and the swarm of
disbanded soldiers and disappointed office-seekers whom the Guises had
driven into the ranks of the opposition looked for leadership. How
far Condé was implicated in the Conspiracy of Amboise, whether or no
he was the _chef muet_ who, in the event of a first success, was
to place himself at the head of the movement, is a question which is
never likely to be satisfactorily answered. It is sufficient that he
was almost universally identified with that mysterious personage at the
time, and that this belief came near to costing him his life.
Although permitted, after his indignant denial of the charge, to
withdraw from Court, he and the King of Navarre, notwithstanding the
entreaties of the Princesse de Condé, most imprudently resolved to obey
the summons of François II. to the States-General at Orléans. It was to
place his head in the lion’s mouth, for in the interval fresh evidence,
or what might pass for evidence, against him had been obtained, and
the Guises were resolved on his destruction. On 30 October, 1560,
the two princes arrived at Orléans. The King received them with
ominous coldness, and, as Condé was leaving the apartments of the
Queen-Mother, where the audience had taken place, he was arrested,
and conducted to a house near the convent of the Jacobins, which was
immediately barred up, surrounded by soldiers, and transformed into
a veritable Bastille. His wife, who, on learning of his arrest, had
hastened to Orléans, was refused permission to see him; his attendants
were withdrawn, and he was kept in the most absolute solitude.
Catherine de’ Medici, who at this time possessed little or no power,
and had been compelled, from the instinct of self-preservation, to
cling to the Guises, pretended to approve of what had been done, and
replied to all who besought her not to allow the prince to be brought
to trial. “It is my son’s will.” She confined her efforts to saving
the King of Navarre, who was merely kept under surveillance in his
apartments.
Although, as a Prince of the Blood, it was Condé’s undoubted privilege
to be tried by the Grande Chambre of the Parlement in Paris, in
which the princes and peers sat, the King entrusted his examination
to a commission of judges presided over by Christophe de Thou,
First President of the Parlement. Condé denied the competency of
this tribunal, and “appealed from the King ill-advised to the King
better-advised.” But his imprudence in accepting the services of two
advocates gave a semblance of legality to the proceedings, and his
appeals and protests having been overruled by the Privy Council, in
which such was the fear inspired by the Guises that no one dared to
utter a word in his defence, on 26 November, he was sentenced “to lose
his head on the scaffold.”
It was at first considered probable that the King’s clemency would be
extended to his condemned kinsman, “in consideration of his youth,” and
every effort was made by the Princesse de Condé, the Châtillons, and
other persons of high rank to secure a remission of the sentence. But
nothing less than the death of their rival would satisfy the Guises,
and, though the Chancellor de l’Hôpital, under the pretext of some
legal flaw in the decree, succeeded in delaying the execution, it was
finally fixed for 10 December, and the scaffold on which it was to take
place was erected before the royal lodging.
Condé, whose courage had never once failed him, was calmly awaiting his
fate, and actually playing cards with some of the officers who guarded
him, when one of his servants, who had been permitted to attend him,
approached as though to pick up a fallen card, and whispered: “_Notre
homme est croqué!_” Mastering his emotion, the prince finished his
game, and then, taking the man aside, learned from him that François
II. was dead. The sickly young King had been taken ill on 16 November,
and, though he so far recovered as to preside over the Council which
passed judgment against Condé, on the following day his malady assumed
a grave form, and on 5 December an abscess which had formed in the ear
suddenly broke, and he died in a few minutes.
Foreseeing her eldest son’s approaching end, Catherine de’ Medici, on
the advice of l’Hôpital, had determined to save the Bourbons, in order
to use them to counterbalance the Guises and assure the independence
of the royal power of which she was about to hold the reins. Scarcely
had François II. drawn his last breath, when the old Connétable de
Montmorency, hastily summoned by her, arrived at Orléans, at the head
of eight hundred gentlemen; and the despotism of the Lorraine princes
was at an end.
The death of François II. opened the doors of Condé’s prison, but the
prince, who attached more importance to his honour than his liberty,
refused to accept the latter until the former had been publicly
vindicated, and, in the meanwhile, announced his intention of remaining
where he was. In this decision he was supported by his wife, but, as
his health had suffered during his imprisonment, she persuaded him,
towards the end of December, to exchange the severe régime of his
detention at Orléans for a mitigated captivity, more apparent than
real, in the form of residence on an estate belonging to the King of
Navarre, near la Fère, in Picardy. Here he remained for some weeks,
when he returned to Court, where his innocence was acknowledged by
a declaration of the new King, Charles IX., which was subsequently
confirmed by the Parlement, and he was restored to his former position.
CHAPTER II
Critical condition of France at the accession of Charles
IX.--Character and policy of Catherine de’ Medici--The
Triumvirate--Catherine leans to the side of the Reformers--The
“Edict of January”--Massacre of Vassy--Condé remains
faithful to the Protestant cause--Beginning of the civil
war--The Protestants, at first successful, soon in a
desperate position--Condé turns to England for aid:
Treaty of Hampton Court--Fall of Rouen--Condé marches on
Paris--Battle of Dreux: the prince taken prisoner--Second
captivity of Condé--Assassination of Guise--Conference on the
Île-aux-Bœufs--The maids-of-honour--Peace of Amboise--Condé
follows the Court.
Never had the internal condition of France been more critical, never
had she stood more in need of a strong and wise government, than at the
moment when the imaginary majority of François II. was succeeded by the
real minority of Charles IX. The danger which threatened her was no
longer, as in the time of the last Sovereign of that name, a struggle
between individual ambitions; private ambitions had now identified
themselves with the living forces of the nation; the whole of the
nobility and gentry were already engaged in the quarrel of the great
factions which divided France, and the mass of the people only awaited
the signal to follow their example.
And the person who was called upon to deal with this critical situation
was Catherine de’ Medici, a woman, a foreigner. During the reign of
her husband, Catherine had perforce remained in the background, Henri
II. being completely under the influence of his mistress, Diane de
Poitiers; under François II., the government, as we have seen, had
fallen into the hands of the Guises, and she had been, politically
speaking, a mere cipher. But the early death of her eldest son had
given her the opportunity which she so ardently desired--for all her
life she had hungered for power and influence as a starving man
hungers for bread--and having persuaded the King of Navarre to resign
his claims to the Regency, in consideration of receiving the title of
Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, she at once assumed a quasi-absolute
authority. She brought to the task a remarkable knowledge of men and
affairs--the fruit of long years of quiet study and observation--a
boundless activity, an untiring vigilance, a charm of manner which few
who came into contact with her could resist, and a soul depraved by a
life of subjection and dissimulation. Her master-passion was to govern
through her sons, and she dreaded every influence which might weaken by
one iota her personal authority.
To a certain extent, she succeeded in preserving this, but, though
sincerely anxious to maintain peace, she was powerless to save France
from the anarchy which menaced her. For she was timid, shifty, and
irresolute, and incapable of any noble aim; while it is also probable
that she failed to recognize, at any rate until matters had gone too
far to be remedied, the gravity of the situation. “To divide in order
to reign” was the principle upon which she acted; to give a little
encouragement to the Huguenots, to instil a little apprehension
into the Catholics, and to accustom both parties to regard her as
the dominating factor in the situation. The result was that she was
distrusted by both alike, and hastened the very calamity she desired to
avert.
And this calamity was rapidly approaching. Calvinism was not, as
certain Protestant historians would have us believe, a sect which
demanded nothing but the liberty to worship God in its own way; it was
violent, intolerant, propagandist, and, under the influence of the
exiles who had tasted democracy in Switzerland, and of the discontented
nobles who exploited it for their own ends, was becoming as much a
political as a religious organisation. Thus, it deliberately provoked
persecution and played into the hands of its most implacable enemies.
The coalition which had been formed to check the ambition of the Guises
was dissolved; while Condé and Coligny turned openly to Protestantism,
the Constable, a rigid Catholic and a fervent absolutist, joined hands
with those who had formerly plotted his ruin, and formed with the Duc
de Guise and the Maréchal de Saint-André a new Catholic league, the
ill-omened Triumvirate. Shortly afterwards, the vain and fickle Antoine
de Bourbon, allured by what de Thou calls “the entertainment of hopes”
dangled before his eyes by Philip II. of Spain, renounced both his
family ties and his Protestant convictions and joined the Triumvirs.
Nevertheless, during the latter part of the year 1561 the Court was
certainly rallying to the side of the Reformers, for the King of
Navarre’s accession to the Triumvirate had given the latter such a
predominance that Catherine was obliged to seek a counterpoise. It was
with her warm approval that the Colloquy of Poissy took place, in the
hope of arriving at some settlement of the chief differences between
the two religions. The latitudinarian Prince de la Roche-sur-Yon
was appointed the young King’s _gouverneur_; Coligny’s brother
Andelot, most stalwart of Huguenots, was admitted to the Council.
The celebrated Théodore de Bèze was invited to Paris; the King and
Queen-Mother went to hear him preach, and he and other eminent divines
expounded Calvinistic doctrines daily in the lodgings of Condé and
Coligny to the ladies and gentlemen of the Court. The Huguenots in the
provinces as well as in the capital were accorded a covert toleration,
and the authorities recommended “to close their eyes to what only
concerned the practice of their religion.”
But a much stronger hand than Catherine’s was required to persuade the
two religions to dwell together in even a pretence of harmony. The
Huguenots were determined to be treated no longer as legal outcasts;
the High Catholic party, represented by the Triumvirate, was equally
resolute to allow of no equality. After three months of argument
and recrimination, and, at the last, of mere invective and abuse,
the Colloquy of Poissy was dissolved; daily disturbances broke out;
partisan feeling became more and more embittered; the Regent was
powerless to stem the fast rising tide of hatred.
One last despairing effort for peace Catherine made. In the middle of
January 1562, on the urgent advice of Condé, Coligny, and l’Hôpital,
she promulgated the celebrated edict, known as the “Edict of January,”
which recognized the legality of Protestant worship outside the walls
of towns. The Huguenots were exultant; the Catholics correspondingly
exasperated; disturbances, attended in several instances with
bloodshed, occurred in the capital and in other towns; and on March 1,
the Massacre of Vassy by Guise’s followers kindled the long-expected
conflagration.
No effort had been spared by the Triumvirate to detach Condé from
the Reformers; and the means which had proved so efficacious in the
case of the King of Navarre had not been omitted. But the prince was
made of sterner stuff than his brother; beneath a somewhat frivolous
exterior he concealed a haughty and resolute spirit, and this, joined
to the influence of his noble wife, kept him true to the cause which
he had espoused. When the news of the massacre reached him, he was
in Paris, where every Sunday he might have been seen, pistol in hand
and accompanied by several hundred gentlemen on horseback, escorting
Huguenot pastors through the howling mob to their meeting-place at
Charenton. Furious with indignation, he lost not a moment in sending
Bèze to the Court, which was then at Fontainebleau, to demand that the
_massacreur_ of Vassy should not be permitted to enter Paris.
“I speak,” cried the divine, when the King of Navarre endeavoured
to defend Guise, “for a Faith which is better in suffering than in
avenging wrong; but remember, Sire, that it is an anvil which has worn
out many a hammer.”
Catherine, without declaring her intentions, wrote to the duke ordering
him to join her “_peu accompagné_” at Monceaux, in Brie, whither
she proceeded with the young King, and, at the same time, sent orders
to the Maréchal de Saint-André, who was in Paris, to repair to his
government. Both declined to obey, and on March 16 Guise entered the
capital at the head of 2000 horse, and was hailed by the populace
“_comme envoyé de Dieu_.”
There were now in Paris two hostile camps, as in the time of the
Bourguignons and Armagnacs; and Catherine, fearing a collision, sent
orders to Condé to leave Paris. Recognizing the impossibility of
disputing the capital with the Catholics, he obeyed, and proceeded to
Meaux, where, after some hesitation, Coligny joined him. Catherine and
the young King had returned to Fontainebleau, and the former wrote
to Condé entreating him “to save the children, the mother and the
kingdom.” If he and Coligny had acted with energy and decision, they
might have secured the person of the young Sovereign; but they waited
for reinforcements, and when at length they advanced towards Paris,
they found that the Triumvirs had forestalled them, and that the King
was in the hands of the enemy.
Foiled in this attempt, Condé turned southwards, with the intention of
occupying Orléans, a place which, on account of its central position,
would serve as an admirable base for his operations, and, to some
extent, counterbalance the advantage which the Triumvirs derived from
the possession of the capital.
On reaching Artenay, six leagues from Orléans, on the morning of April
2, he learned that Andelot, with a handful of men, had seized one of
the gates of that town, and was holding it against the garrison and a
part of the citizens. “He had with him about two thousand gentlemen and
their valets, and, putting himself at their head, he set off at full
gallop for the gate, and the whole pack after him.” Baggage, horses,
and men fell and rolled over in the dust, without any one attempting
to draw rein, amid shouts of laughter from the reckless cavalcade,
and to the great astonishment of peaceable travellers, who, ignorant
that hostilities had broken out, asked one another if it were “an
assembly of all the madmen in France.” But the “madmen” swept along on
their headlong course, and before noon had sounded from the clocks of
Orléans, they were masters of the town and “of the taps of the most
delicious wines of France.”[16]
* * * * *
“Under these joyous auspices,” observed Henri Martin, “began the most
horrible civil war of modern times;” and unhappy France became the
scene of a frightful orgy of massacre, rape, and pillage. At first
Fortune smiled upon the Reformers, who, thanks to the organization
of their churches, were better prepared for hostilities than their
adversaries. The principal towns of Central France, Tours, Blois,
and Bourges, declared against the Triumvirate, and admitted Huguenot
garrisons; Rouen and Le Havre, in Normandy, Lyons and many cities in
the South, fell into their hands. For a few weeks the movement seemed
irresistible. But the Catholic party was by far the stronger. It had
secured the person of the young King and forced Catherine to side with
it, and thus had at its disposal the Treasury and most of the permanent
forces of the realm. It appealed, also, to the Catholic States for
assistance, and obtained from Phillip II. an auxiliary corps of 4000
Spaniards, which operated in Guienne and Gascony; while the Duke of
Savoy sent troops into the Rhône valley. By the middle of August, all
the towns seized at the outset by the Huguenots had been recovered, and
the Protestant cause seemed well-nigh hopeless.
Desperately pressed, Condé turned to England for aid. Emissaries
were dispatched to London, and on September 20, 1562, the Vidame
de Chartres, on behalf of the prince, signed the Treaty of Hampton
Court, which stipulated that Le Havre and Dieppe were to be placed
in Elizabeth’s hands, in return for a loan of 140,000 crowns and
a contingent of 6000 men. The vidame, however, went beyond his
instructions, and permitted Cecil to insert an article whereby it was
agreed that the English were to remain at Le Havre, not until the
termination of the war, but until Calais was restored to them.
The calling in of the hereditary enemy brought great odium upon the
Huguenot leaders, nor did they derive from it the advantages upon
which they had counted, since Elizabeth, desirous only of securing an
equivalent for Calais, declined to allow her troops to pass beyond the
lines of Le Havre and Dieppe. At the risk of incurring her anger, Sir
Adrian Poynings, who commanded temporarily at Le Havre, pending the
arrival of the Earl of Warwick, sent five hundred men to endeavour to
make their way into Rouen, which was now closely invested by the royal
troops. The majority succeeded in this desperate enterprise, but they
were powerless to save the town, which was taken by assault, after a
siege during which the King of Navarre received a wound from which he
died a month later, “still flattering himself with the hopes raised by
the King of Spain.” He left as his heir a boy nine years old, who was
one day to succeed to the throne of France through the common ruin of
the Valois and the Guises.
The intervention of the English, if it had served no other purpose,
had drawn off the Catholic army from its projected siege of Orléans,
and Condé, ever sanguine, did not allow himself to be cast down by
the reverses his cause had sustained. “We have lost our two castles
(Bourges and Rouen),” said he, employing a chess metaphor, “but we
shall take their knights”; and he was eager to stake the last chances
of his party in a great battle. At the beginning of November, the
news that a considerable force of German mercenaries, which Andelot
had raised in the Rhineland, was on the march to join him, determined
the prince to quit Orléans and advance upon Paris. At Pithiviers, on
November 11, he affected his junction with the foreign levies, and, at
the head of an army of some 15,000 men, more than one-third of whom
were cavalry, he moved slowly towards the capital, taking and pillaging
the towns on his line of march.
Paris was very weakly defended, most of its regular garrison being in
the field with the Triumvirs, and, had he acted with vigour, he might
have made himself master of at least a part of the city. But he allowed
himself to be drawn into negotiations by Catherine, and the delay which
these entailed enabled Guise to arrive with the advance-guard of the
army which had been besieging Rouen.
After a skirmish beneath the walls, and two unsuccessful attempts to
take the city by camisado, Condé drew off his troops and marched into
Normandy, with the intention of getting into touch with the English at
Le Havre. But, owing principally to the immense number of carts for the
conveyance of past and future plunder which the Germans insisted on
taking with them, his army made such slow progress that the Triumvirs
were able to outmarch it, and on December 19 the prince found them
barring his road near the town of Dreux.
The royal forces were superior in infantry and artillery to the
Huguenots, but the latter had a decided preponderance in cavalry,
and the battle which followed was long and obstinately contested.
Condé, who had distinguished himself more by his intrepidity than
his generalship, was unhorsed and taken prisoner; the Constable, who
commanded the royal army, experienced a like fate; while Saint-André
was killed.[17] The carnage on both sides was very great, but the
Catholics remained masters of the field, though Coligny was able to
draw off the beaten Huguenots in excellent order.
The Constable was dispatched, in charge of Andelot, to Orléans,
where he had the Princesse de Condé for hostess; Condé was conducted
by Montmorency’s second son, the Baron de Damville, to whom he had
surrendered, to the quarters of Guise. In these detestable wars,
prisoners were often treated with great harshness and cruelty, and
sometimes, as we have just seen, their lives were not even spared when
they happened to fall into the hands of some personal enemy. But Guise
received Condé with as much courtesy and deference as the Black Prince
had shown his royal captive at Poitiers. He placed at his disposal the
peasant’s cottage in which he was quartered, apologizing for being
compelled to give so poor a reception to so illustrious a visitor, and
it was only at the prince’s repeated request that he consented to share
with him this humble lodging. They supped together off the same coarse
fare, conversing amicably the while, and the same bundle of straw
served them for a bed. The duke, however, could well afford to show
magnanimity towards a fallen foe, for, now that the King of Navarre and
Saint-André were dead, and Condé and the Constable prisoners, he had
no rival but Coligny to fear, and the predominance of his ambitious
House seemed assured.
The day after the battle, Condé was again entrusted to the care of
Damville, who had only surrendered his prisoner to Guise as an act of
deference, and who was subsequently constituted his legal custodian by
a special authority from the King. Damville, who naturally regarded him
as a hostage for the safety of his father, the Constable, guarded him
very strictly, though his servants were allowed to remain with him, and
a Huguenot pastor named Pérussel, who had also been taken prisoner,
was authorized to minister to his spiritual needs and conducted a long
“_prêche_” in his chamber every day. After being successively
conducted to Chartres, Blois, and Amboise in the wake of the Court, he
was incarcerated by the Regent’s orders, in the Château of Onzain, an
old feudal fortress, about three leagues from the last-named town.[18]
Here he succeeded in bribing two of his gaolers, and arranged with
their assistance to escape in the disguise of a peasant. But one of
the men betrayed the plot to Damville, and Condé learned that all had
been discovered by seeing the other soldier dangling from a gibbet
erected beneath his window. After this, the prince was deprived of
his servants, placed in solitary confinement, and most rigorously
guarded; and a rumour began to spread, though it was probably without
foundation, that the Guises intended to compel Catherine to have him
again brought to trial for high treason.
Meanwhile, the Duc de Guise had laid siege to Orléans, the last
stronghold left to the Reformers. The town taken, it was his intention
to call out the _ban_ and _arrière-ban_, for which purpose
a tax had been levied on the revenues of the Church, overwhelm
Coligny, who with the Huguenot cavalry was overrunning Normandy,
drive the English from Le Havre and Dieppe, and convert his office
of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, which the King had been obliged
to confer upon him in recognition of his services at Dreux, into a
dictatorship.
The defenders of Orléans, decimated by famine and the plague, were
incapable of offering more than a feeble resistance; the outworks
were quickly captured, and the final assault was daily expected,
when, on the evening of February 15, 1563, while returning from a
reconnaissance, the duke was mortally wounded by a Huguenot fanatic,
Poltrot de Méré, who fired upon him from the shelter of a copse. He
expired six days later, to the undisguised joy of the Reformers and
to the secret relief of Catherine, who dreaded nothing so much as the
prospect of a second period of Guise ascendancy.
The death of the Duc de Guise paved the way for peace; and, through
the intervention of Catherine and the Princesse de Condé, it was
arranged that the prince and the Constable should meet and discuss
its conditions. On March 7, two barges, the first coming from
Orléans, the second from the opposite bank of the Loire, arrived at
the Île-aux-Bœufs, situated a little below the town. In one was the
Constable, under the care of his nephew, Andelot; in the other, Condé,
under that of Damville. “There was a handsome boat ready for them, laid
over with planks to make it broad and chamberlike, and covered with
tapestry from the sun, where they should have ‘parlemented’ together.”
But the uncle and nephew, unwilling to risk their conversation being
overheard, “liked better to walk, which they did for two hours,
d’Anville (sic), l’Aubespine and d’Aussy standing by, but not within
hearing.”[19]
Then they parted, without having arrived at any agreement, since
Condé insisted that the “Edict of January” should be re-established
in its entirety, to which Montmorency absolutely declined to consent,
declaring that the Catholics would refuse to observe it. The Constable
was escorted back to Orléans, and the prince to the Catholic camp at
Saint-Mesmin.
On the morrow, they returned to the Île-aux-Bœufs. This time the
prince’s barge was followed by another, in which sat Catherine de’
Medici, Condé’s only surviving brother, the Cardinal de Bourbon, and
the Duc d’Aumale, and two of the Queen-Mother’s maids of honour. It
was remarked that these two damsels were the most beautiful of the
bevy of young beauties whom Catherine had collected round her, and
there was a shrewd suspicion that it was for that very reason they had
been chosen to attend her Majesty upon this occasion. History has not
preserved the name of the elder, but that of the younger was Isabelle
de Latour-Limeuil, a lady who was destined to play a very prominent
part in Condé’s life.
Condé was a bad subject for prison life, and the rigorous detention
to which he had been subjected at the Château of Onzain had not been
without its effect upon him; he was anxious to safeguard the interests
of his co-religionists, but he was still more anxious to recover his
liberty. “The little man to whom I have spoken,” wrote the Prince de la
Roche-sur-Yon, who had had an interview with him some days before, to
Catherine, “is very desirous to see the end of these troubles; he will
accommodate himself to everything.” The writer had correctly judged the
situation.
The conference was renewed, this time in the presence of the
Queen-Mother. Catherine had always exercised a great influence over
Condé, and, only a few months before, in an interview between them
at Thoury, she had all but brought him to conclude peace on her own
conditions, when Coligny had interfered and caused the negotiations to
be broken off. Now, however, Coligny was far away, and Catherine did
not fail to press her advantage home. She made an eloquent appeal to
the prince’s patriotism; she flattered him; she “insinuated that, if he
were to conclude peace without being too obstinate over the conditions,
he should be elevated to the rank of the late King of Navarre, his
brother,[20] and might do, from that time, all that he wished for those
of the Religion.”
[Illustration: LOUIS I DE BOURBON, PRINCE DE CONDÉ
FROM AN ENGRAVING]
Condé was ambitious; he was far from unsusceptible to flattery, and
he ardently desired to recover his freedom. He looked at the subtle
diplomatist who was speaking him so fair, and forced himself to
believe that she was sincere in her protestations. He looked at
Damville and his guards, and thought with a shudder of the gloomy
fortress which he had lately left, and to which it would probably be
his fate to return, if the negotiations were broken off. And then his
glance wandered to the maids-of-honour, standing just out of earshot,
and rested on Isabelle de Limeuil; and he felt his heart beat a trifle
faster, as he noted her charming face and the graceful lines of her
figure. Did she not represent all the pleasures of the Court from which
he had been so long separated, but which it was now in his power to
enjoy again?
The prince was already won over, already prepared to accept important
modifications of the “Edict of January,” when, that same evening, with
the consent of the Queen, he entered Orléans to confer with the council
of the Protestant Association. He found the council divided into two
sharply defined parties; on the one side were all the ministers, to
the number of seventy-two, with Théodore de Bèze at their head; on the
other, the great majority of the Huguenot gentlemen.
“The men of war demanded only peace; the ministers of the Holy Gospel
called for the continuance of the war, at least until the “Edict of
January” was re-established in its entirety, and invited the prince
to require the King to mete out rigorous punishment to all ‘atheists,
freethinkers, Anabaptists, Servetists, and other heretics and
schismatics.’ Barely escaped from the stake themselves, they demanded
the right to drag other victims to it.”[21]
With ill-concealed impatience, Condé listened to the demands of these
intractable theologians; then, turning from them, he invited his old
companions-in-arms to express their opinion. With one voice these
gentlemen, who were heartily weary of the war and asked only to be
allowed to return to their homes, declared themselves willing to accept
peace on the conditions which the Court was prepared to offer. Strong
in their support, the prince felt that he could afford to defy the
ministers and the democratic section of the party; and when, on March
23, Coligny, fresh from his victorious campaign in Normandy, arrived
at Orléans to take part in the negotiations, he found that he was too
late. The Edict, or Peace, of Amboise had been promulgated in that town
on the 19th, and published in the royal camp on the 22nd.
The Admiral was deeply mortified at Condé’s surrender, in which he
suspected that personal considerations had counted for not a little,
and declared, with pardonable exaggeration, that “by a stroke of the
pen more churches had been ruined than the enemy could have razed in
ten years.” As for the Huguenot ministers, they were exasperated to
the last degree against the prince, stigmatized the treaty as “that of
a man who had left half his manhood in captivity,” and accused him of
having yielded to the seductions of Catherine’s Court, and of having
_halené_ her maids-of-honour.[22]
Somewhat conscience-stricken, Condé joined the Admiral in a belated
attempt to get the articles modified in a Protestant sense, but, though
Catherine agreed to some concessions, she firmly refused to allow
them to be inserted in the edict. On April 1 she made her entry into
Orléans, having the Cardinal de Bourbon on her right hand, and Condé on
her left. A few days later, Coligny set out for Châtillon, to seek in
the bosom of his family the repose which he had so well earned. Condé
would have done well to follow his example. Unfortunately, he preferred
to follow the Court to Amboise.
CHAPTER III
Catherine de’ Medici and her “_escadron volant_”--Adroitness
with which the Queen employs the charms of her maids-of-honour
to seduce the Huguenot chiefs--The King of Navarre and
_la belle_ Rouet--Policy of Catherine after the Peace of
Amboise--She determines to compromise Condé with his foreign
allies and the French Protestants, by encouraging his taste
for sensual pleasures--And selects for his subjugation her
maid-of-honour and kinswoman Isabelle de Limeuil--Description
of this siren--Her admirers--Her mercenary character--Beginning
of her _liaison_ with the prince--Condé and Elizabeth of
England--Mlle. de Limeuil, inspired by Catherine, seeks to
persuade Condé to break with Elizabeth--Mission of d’Alluye
to England--Condé is induced to take up arms against his late
allies--Siege and surrender of Le Havre.
The life of the Court, which naturally possessed a great attraction
for a man of Condé’s temperament, was full of snares and pitfalls. It
was not for the mere pleasure of beholding their pretty faces that
Catherine recruited her _entourage_ from the most beautiful young
girls in France. During the lifetime of her husband, in the days before
she had been called upon to play a political rôle, Catherine had been
the most austere of queens, guarding the reputation of her ladies as
jealously as she did her own, and visiting with her severe displeasure
the slightest breach of decorum on their part. But when she found
herself a widow, struggling in an endless web of plot and falsehood to
protect her children’s heritage; beset on one side by the Catholics, on
the other, by the Huguenots; often driven to her wits’ end to devise
means to prevent the royal authority being submerged amid the strife of
contending parties, her austerity gave way before political exigencies,
and, recognizing how formidable a weapon she possessed in the charms
of her “_escadron volant_,” she exploited them without scruple.
“These maids-of-honour,” writes Brantôme, “were sufficient to set fire
to the whole world; indeed, they burned up a good part of it, as many
of us gentlemen of the Court as of others who approached their flames.”
Catherine received not a few remonstrances concerning the havoc
wrought by the _beaux yeux_ of these damsels. “You ought,
Madame,” runs one of them, “to content yourself with a small train of
maids-of-honour, and to look to it that they do not pass and repass
through the hands of men, and that they are more modestly clothed.”
But Catherine’s squadron had demonstrated its peculiar value on too
many occasions for her to dream of disbanding it, or even of placing
it on a peace-footing; and so its members continued to illuminate the
Court ball-rooms, “like stars shining in a serene heaven.”[23] For
the rest, her Majesty pretended to ignore the vices of her _filles
d’honneur_, the better to make use of them when occasion for
their services arose. No one could have shown more adroitness in
throwing some isolated and often unconscious combatant in the path
of the politicians and party-leaders whom she had reason to fear, to
captivate their senses and surprise their secrets. It was against the
Huguenot chiefs that this insidious mode of warfare was most frequently
employed. “However austere they may wish to appear, these men are of
their time, and share the weaknesses of their contemporaries. Women
had, in many cases, launched them into adventures, women will check
them in full career. Those who succeed without provoking scandal are
highly praised and rewarded; the maladroit will be the less supported
in their difficulties in that they are never able to invoke the excuse
of a definite mission.”[24]
Knowing what we do of Catherine’s little ways, it is not difficult to
imagine the tactics adopted. The destined victim, on some pretext or
other, is lured to the Court. He comes, not ill-pleased to be afforded
an opportunity of airing his grievances in the royal presence, but very
resolved not to allow the Queen to penetrate the secrets of his party
or to obtain from him the least concession. He is very coldly received,
informed that his demands are unreasonable, and that the Queen fears
that it will be impossible to accede to them. However, she has not the
leisure to go further into the matter at that moment; let him return at
the same hour on the following day, when she will hope to find him less
exigent. And the audience is at end almost as soon as it has begun.
Somewhat piqued at the abruptness of his dismissal, he takes his
departure, without the faintest suspicion that the most accomplished
actress of the sixteenth century has been playing one of her many
parts. Passing through the ante-chamber, he perceives, apparently
awaiting her royal mistress’s summons, a demure damsel of disturbing
beauty--it is always the freshest and most innocent-looking of the
squadron who is detailed for this kind of service--who modestly lowers
her eyes as they meet his, but not before he has had time to remark
that they are in keeping with her other perfections. Our Huguenot, who,
though he yawns through a long sermon each Sunday and conducts family
worship every day of the week, that is to say, when he does not happen
to be engaged in burning his Catholic neighbours’ chateaux over their
heads, is none the less a courtier of beauty, finds himself wondering
who the lady can be, and goes on his way not without a lingering hope
that he may see her again.
On the morrow, he returns. This time, he is informed that the Queen is
giving audience to one of the foreign ambassadors, and that he will
have to wait for a few minutes. A quarter of an hour passes, and he is
beginning to grow impatient, when the damsel whom he has seen on the
previous day enters and advances to the door of the Queen’s cabinet,
with something for her royal mistress in her hand. Here, however, she
is stopped by the usher; Mademoiselle cannot be allowed to enter; her
Majesty has given orders that she is on no account to be disturbed.
And she, too, must wait. In the circumstances, Monsieur, who is, of
course, a great noble, and may therefore be permitted what in others
might be considered a liberty, ventures to address her. She answers
with a modesty which charms him, and they converse very agreeably until
presently he is summoned to the royal presence.
Here, some further pretext is invented for detaining him some days
longer at the Court, but he resigns himself to the delay with a good
grace, for those few minutes’ conversation in the ante-chamber have
not been barren of result. A few hours later, he receives a courteous
note from Catherine, greatly regretting the inconvenience to which
he is being subjected and inviting him to a ball which she is giving
the following evening. “The Religion” looks with scant favour on such
worldly pleasures, but he tells himself that it would be churlish,
perhaps impolitic, to refuse. Naturally, he meets Mademoiselle, arrayed
in a ravishing toilette--very probably a present from the Queen--and
looking more alluring than ever. He requests to be presented to her;
they dance together, and he finds her as charming as she is beautiful.
Opportunities for further meetings will not be wanting, for by this
time the girl has received her instructions from headquarters; and soon
there will be no further need for Catherine to devise pretexts for
keeping the gentleman at Court.
When our Huguenot’s partisans learn what is going on, they will write
letter upon letter, warning him that an ambush is being laid for him,
and reproaching him with bringing discredit upon the Faith. But he is
now fairly in the toils, and their warnings and reproaches will serve
no purpose save to irritate him against them and loosen the ties which
bind him to them. Perhaps, lured by the blandishments of his inamorata
and incensed by the suspicions of his party, he will end by abandoning
it altogether; at the least, a breach will be created between them
which will not be easy to heal, and some very useful information, which
has escaped his lips in unguarded moments, will find its way into
Catherine’s cabinet.
It was thus that Condé’s elder brother, Antoine de Bourbon, King
of Navarre, had met Louise de la Beraudière,[25] Demoiselle de
Rouet--_la belle_ Rouet, as the Court called her--in whom he found
so refreshing a contrast to his sharp-featured and austere consort
that he permitted her to lead him whither she, or rather Catherine,
willed.[26] She was the cause of his death. Wounded at the siege of
Rouen and scarcely convalescent, he called her to him, and “behaved as
though he considered that kings were immortal,” with the result that
might be expected.
“Cy-gist le corps au vers en proye
Du roy qui mourut pour la Roye [Rouet].
Cy-gist qui quitta Jésus-Christ
Pour un royaume par escript,[27]
Et sa femme très vertueuse
Pour une puante morveuse.”
So ran a Huguenot epitaph on the ill-fated Antoine. But her connexion
with the King of Navarre did not prevent _la belle_ Rouet from
making an advantageous marriage with Robert de Gombault, Sieur
d’Arcis-sur-l’Aube, _maître d’hôtel_ to Charles IX., whom she
presented with two daughters.
* * * * *
The events of the civil war had profoundly altered Catherine’s views in
regard to the two parties which divided the kingdom. At the opening of
hostilities, she had believed that the Huguenots possessed the better
chance of success, and, though constrained to lend her name to the
Catholic leaders, she was careful not to allow herself to be identified
too closely with their objects. But, as time went on, it became evident
that, although the Huguenots were undoubtedly formidable, they were
very inferior in numbers, and that the mass of the people were faithful
to the Old Religion. She was compelled, therefore, to recognize that
she had been mistaken, and that it would be very inadvisable for her
to alienate the Catholic party. On the other hand, it would be easy
to seize the direction of that party, for the King of Navarre and
François de Guise were dead, the sons of Guise mere boys, the Cardinal
de Bourbon absolutely incapable, the Montmorencies divided among
themselves, and the Cardinal de Lorraine, deprived of the support of
his brother, as humble as he had once been arrogant. She, therefore,
decided to place herself and her son at the head of the Catholics and
to re-establish unity in the kingdom by the ruin of Protestantism. But
she had no intention of resorting to force; “she wished to undermine
the ramparts of Calvinism, not to carry them by assault;”[28] to take
back little by little, by restrictive interpretations of the Edict of
Amboise, the concessions granted the Reformers; to disarm and dissolve
their religious and military associations; and to dishearten them by
withholding the protection of the Law and assuring impunity to the
violence of the Catholics. But, aware that her task would be immensely
facilitated if she could begin by depriving them of their protectors in
high places, she was determined to leave no means untried to seduce or
discredit the Huguenot chiefs, and particularly Condé--the first Prince
of the Blood, the link between the noble and democratic sections of the
party, the man whom she half-suspected of aspiring to the throne.
From the time of the Peace of Amboise, it was easy for Catherine
to perceive that Condé, who had just consented to such important
modifications of the “Edict of January,” was unlikely henceforth to
show himself a very zealous champion of Protestantism, and that a
considerable section of the Huguenots was disposed to question the
seriousness of his conversion and the sincerity of his devotion to
their cause. She knew, too, that if, on the one hand, Condé aspired, as
a Prince of the Blood, to play a prominent part in affairs of State,
and was ambitious to secure the title of Lieutenant-General of the
Kingdom, he would be, as a man, eager to compensate himself for the
ennui of his recent captivity by a round of pleasure and dissipation.
At first, Catherine’s attitude towards Condé was everything that he
could possibly desire; she overwhelmed him with attentions; consulted
him constantly on public affairs, and showed for his opinion a
deference which delighted him. But all this was merely intended to
put him off his guard and foster the pleasing illusions which he had
entertained since the conference on the Île-aux-Bœufs. For, so far
from having any intention of sharing the direction of affairs with
the prince, she had determined to detach him from his alliances with
the foreign Protestants, compromise him with his own party, and reduce
him to political impotence. And, to accomplish this she proposed to
deal with him as she had dealt with his unfortunate brother, the King
of Navarre, by encouraging his taste for those sensual pleasures which
the most dissolute Court in Europe offered so many opportunities of
gratifying.
To dominate Condé, Catherine had in reserve an auxiliary not less
redoubtable than _la belle_ Rouet. It was Isabelle de Limeuil, one
of the two maids-of-honour whom she had brought to the Île-aux-Bœufs,
and who had already made a very favourable impression upon the
inflammable prince.
Isabelle was a member of a branch of the House of La Tour d’Auvergne,
to which Madeleine de la Tour, the mother of Catherine de’ Medici,
had belonged, and was therefore a kinswoman of the Queen-Mother.[29]
She was a blond, with beautiful blue eyes and a dazzling complexion,
in figure somewhat thin, but exquisitely formed. She had been
well-educated, was extremely intelligent and possessed of a mordant
wit, which she used freely at the expense of those admirers who did not
suit her fancy, not sparing even the most exalted personages. Brantôme
relates how, one day during the siege of Rouen, she rebuffed the old
Connétable de Montmorency, whose bitter tongue was dreaded by all the
Court. The Constable, who, in spite of his age and gravity, did not
disdain an occasional _amourette_ attempted to make love to her
and addressed her, in anticipation, as “his mistress.” She replied
tartly that, if he supposed he would ever have the right to address
her thus, he was greatly mistaken, and promptly turned her back on
him. Little accustomed to such a rebuff, the old gentleman took his
departure, decidedly crestfallen. “My mistress,” said he, “I leave you;
you snub me cruelly.” “Which is quite fitting,” she retorted, “since
you are accustomed to snub everybody else.”
Her _soupirants_ were legion, and included the Duc d’Aumale;
Florimond Robertet, Sieur du Fresne, one of his Majesty’s Secretaries
of State;[30] Charles de la Marck, Comte de Maulevrier; Claude de la
Châtre, afterwards _maréchal de France_; Brantôme and Ronsard, one
of whose most charming _chansons_ she inspired:
“Quand ce beau printemps je voy,
J’apercoy
Rajeunir la terre et l’onde,
Et me semble que le jour
Et l’amour
Comme enfans naissent au monde.
Quand le soleil tout riant
D’Orient
Nous monstre sa blonde tresse,
Il me semble que je voy
Devant moy
Lever ma belle maistresse.
Quand je sens, parmi les prez
Diaprez,
Les fleurs dont la terre est pleine,
Lors je fais croire à mes sens
Que je sens
La douceur de son haleine.
Je voudrois, au bruit de l’eau
D’un ruisseau,
Desplier ses tresses blondes,
Frizant en autant de nœus
Ses cheveux
Que je verrois frizer d’ondes.
Je voudrois, pour la tenir,
Devenir
Dieu des ces forests désertes
La baisant autant de fois
Qu’en un bois
Il y a de feuilles vertes.”
With the exception of Du Fresne, who passed for her _amant de
cœur_, it is doubtful if any of the gentlemen we have named ever
saw his hopes materialize, for the fair Isabelle was exceedingly
fastidious. Moreover, she appears to have been one of those sirens
who have a nice appreciation of the commercial value of their charms,
and who not only set an exalted price upon their favours, but do not
scruple to discount it in advance and subsequently decline to meet
their obligations. “Monseigneur,” writes she to the Duc d’Aumale, in a
letter appealing to his benevolence, “if you have not discovered how
much I desired to do the thing which was agreeable to you, it was not
because you had not the means, but the will.”[31]
Isabelle lent herself the more readily to Catherine’s plans, since
the mission confided to her was one in which her inclination happened
to harmonize with her interests. For she seems to have been attracted
from the first by this good-humoured little man, with his pleasant
face and his laughing eyes, who danced so gracefully, paid such pretty
compliments to the ladies, and, notwithstanding his lack of inches,
could hold his own in manly exercises with any gentleman at the Court.
And, besides, he was a Prince of the Blood and one of the bravest
captains in France; and his narrow escape from the scaffold three
years before, his exploits in the field, and his recent captivity,
all of which naturally made a powerful appeal to ladies of a romantic
disposition, had greatly enhanced the favour with which he had always
been regarded by the opposite sex, many of whom would have been only
too willing to accept him as a “_serviteur_.”
As for Condé, flattered by the preference of a young beauty for whom
some of the most fascinating gallants of the Court had sighed in vain,
he never paused to consider how far this _bonne fortune_ was due
to his own attractions, but plunged into it with the same impetuosity
with which on the battlefield he threw himself into the thick of the
enemy’s squadrons. He promised himself merely an agreeable adventure;
he found one of those entanglements from which it is a difficult matter
to escape.
* * * * *
Isabelle de Limeuil was very soon afforded an opportunity of putting
the devotion which her royal admirer professed for her to the test.
Coligny and the Huguenot stalwarts had not been the only allies whom
Condé had offended in accepting the conditions imposed by the Court
in the Peace of Amboise. It will be remembered that an article in the
Treaty of Hampton Court had stipulated that the English were to retain
possession of Le Havre and Dieppe until Calais had been restored to
them. Now, Condé had never officially ratified the engagements that the
Vidame de Chartres had undertaken in his name; indeed, he pretended to
be unaware of their full import; and had he ever been so desirous of
it, it would have been impossible for him to have made the immediate
restoration of Calais, or the continued retention of Le Havre by the
English as a lien upon that town, a condition of peace. As an English
historian very justly remarks, such a proposal would have “enlisted
the pride of France against himself and his cause and have identified
religious freedom with national degradation.”[32] When, therefore, on
his return to Orléans after the conference on the Île-aux-Bœufs, he
wrote to inform Elizabeth of what was taking place, he said not a word
about Calais, but boldly assumed that her Majesty’s motives in coming
to the assistance of the Huguenots had been entirely disinterested, and
that, since liberty of conscience was on the point of being secured,
there was no longer any occasion for continuing the war. “Now, Madame,”
he wrote, “you will let it be known that none other reason than simply
your zeal for the protection of the faithful who desire the preaching
of the pure Gospel induced you to favour our cause.”[33]
Elizabeth, however, cared very little for the protection of the
faithful in comparison with Calais, and she wrote the prince a very
angry letter, in which she called upon him to fulfil his promise and
bade him beware “how he set an example of perfidy to the world.” Her
remonstrances, however, produced no effect, and immediately after the
signing of the Peace, in accordance with an article which stipulated
that the foreign auxiliaries on both sides should be sent home, the
Earl of Warwick received notice that he was expected to withdraw from
Le Havre.
This, however, Elizabeth firmly declined to allow him to do. In vain,
Condé wrote, offering her, in the name of himself, the Regent, and the
entire nobility of France, to renew formally and solemnly the clause in
the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis for the restoration of Calais in 1567,
to repay the money which she had advanced the Huguenots, and to remove
all restrictions upon English trade with France. In vain, he despatched
envoys to explain his position and to reason with her. In vain, the
young King wrote himself, offering the ratification of the treaty, with
“hostages at her choice” for its fulfilment from the noblest families
in France. Bitterly mortified at having been outwitted in a transaction
from which she had intended to reap all the advantage, she would listen
to no terms. The Prince de Condé, she declared, was “a treacherous,
inconstant, perjured villain,” with whom she desired to have no
dealings; she required Calais delivered over to her and her money paid
down, and until she had obtained both, Le Havre should remain in her
hands.
Catherine de’ Medici had viewed with complacency the obstinacy of the
English Queen. Although the reduction of Le Havre, a place which could
easily be revictualled from the sea and which had been furnished during
the English occupation with new defences, might prove a formidable
undertaking, she had no doubt of success; and she preferred recovering
it by conquest to seeing it amicably restored, since she would then be
at liberty to retain Calais. Moreover, if Condé could be brought to
turn against Elizabeth the army which her own money had assisted him to
raise, and to take part in the war in person, an irremediable breach
would be created between them, and she would have nothing more to fear
from English intervention.
Inspired by Catherine, Isabelle de Limeuil employed all her
persuasions to induce the prince to break with England; but, great
as was the empire which she already exercised over Condé, and deeply
incensed as the latter was by the tone of Elizabeth’s letters, and
still more by the contemptuous manner in which she had spoken of him,
he still remained undecided. There was no blinking the fact that,
however great the difference between her promises and her performances,
and however selfish her motives, the Queen had rendered the Huguenots
material assistance in the late war; and Coligny and Andelot had so
well recognized this that, while warmly approving of the refusal to
surrender Calais, they had declined to bear arms against her. Condé
was unwilling to show himself less scrupulous than they; and, besides,
he had, while at Orléans, solemnly assured the English envoy that “his
sword should never cut against the Queen’s Majesty.”[34]
He, therefore, urged Catherine to make a final endeavour to effect a
peaceful settlement. Very reluctantly, she consented, and, towards the
end of May, the Sieur d’Alluye was despatched to London with fresh
propositions. D’Alluye was a young man of thirty, ignorant, conceited,
and presumptuous; in fact, if it had been Catherine’s intention--which
it probably was--to wound the pride of Elizabeth and provoke a new
and humiliating refusal, she could not have made a better choice.
Condé having requested that his confidant La Haye should be joined
to d’Alluye, the Regent readily consented, well aware that a refusal
transmitted through him would only have the more weight. Everything
fell out precisely as might have been foreseen. After several
acrimonious conferences with the English Ministers, in which d’Alluye
“showed nothing but pride and ignorance,”[35] that gentleman haughtily
informed the Queen, that “he had no commission to treat of Calais; his
charge was only to demand Newhaven [Le Havre].”[36] Elizabeth lost her
temper, and, red with anger, replied that, in occupying Le Havre, she
had had no other purpose than to avenge the honour of England, which
had been compromised by the loss of Calais.
This frank avowal stung the national pride of the French to the quick;
from the Channel to the Pyrenees the universal cry was “_Vive la
France_,” and Catholics and Huguenots, moved by a common impulse,
pressed into the army which was being mobilized to wrest Le Havre
from the grip of the English. Catherine adroitly seized the occasion
to renew, through Isabelle de Limeuil, her importunities; the last
scruples of Condé were overcome, and on 19 June the English envoy
Middlemore, who, on the pretext of facilitating communications between
Condé and Elizabeth, had been charged by the latter to attend the
prince everywhere, writes to Cecil: “The inconstancy and miserableness
of this Prince of Condé is so great, having both forgotten God and his
own honour, as that he hath suffered himself to be won by the Q.[ueen]
mother to go against her Majesty at Newhaven [Le Havre], and for the
present is the person that, above all others, doth most solicit them
of the Religion to serve in these wars against her Majesty.” And he
adds that the prince, “specially desiring now to have every man to show
himself as wicked as he, hath sent for the Admiral and M. Andelot, his
brother, to come to the Court out of hand, where, being once arrived,
they think to prevail with them as to win them to like and take in hand
the said enterprise.”[37] Isabelle de Limeuil had served Catherine
well.
A few days later, Condé having courteously desired Middlemore, who
continued to stick to him like a burr, “to retire himself,” joined the
army before Le Havre, where operations had already begun. The garrison
had promised Elizabeth that “the Lord Warwick and all his people would
spend the last drop of their blood before the French should fasten a
foot in the town”; but, unhappily, they had an enemy to contend with
within the walls infinitely more formidable than the one without--an
enemy whom no skill could outwit and no courage repel. In the first
days of June, the plague broke out among them, and, pent up in the
narrow, fetid streets, the soldiers died like flies. By the end of the
month, out of seven thousand men who had formed the original garrison,
but three thousand were fit for duty; and by 11 July only fifteen
hundred were left. Reinforcements were hurried across the Channel,
only to sicken and die in their turn; a south-westerly gale drove the
English ships from the coast, and the French succeeded in closing the
harbour, so that soon famine was added to pestilence.
Elizabeth, alarmed by the disastrous news from Le Havre, began to
repent of her obstinacy, and offered to accept the terms which she
had so indignantly rejected. But it was now too late; the French,
well aware of the condition of the garrison, refused to reopen the
negotiations, and on 27 July, just as the besiegers, who had already
made two breaches in the defences, were preparing for a general attack,
Warwick, who, the previous evening, had received permission from the
Queen to surrender at the last extremity, offered to capitulate. Terms
were soon arranged, and on the 29th the town was restored to France,
and the remnant of its brave defenders sailed for England, carrying
with them the plague, which they spread far and wide through the land.
After long negotiations, peace was finally concluded at Troyes, in
April 1564. Elizabeth lost all her rights over Calais, and had to
content herself with a sum of 120,000 crowns, as the price of the
freedom of the French hostages. Although she on more than one occasion
pressed Condé and Coligny for the repayment of the money she had
advanced the Huguenots, she does not appear to have succeeded in
recovering any part of it.
CHAPTER IV
Condé is disappointed in his hopes of obtaining the post of
Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom--The prince incurs the hatred
of the extreme Catholics--Plot to assassinate him on the Feast
of Corpus Christi--Suspicion with which he is regarded by the
zealots of his own party--Condé, deceived in his ambition and
mortified by the hostility of the extremists on both sides,
turns to pleasure for consolation--Violent passion of the
Maréchale de Saint-André for him--Indignation and alarm aroused
at Geneva by the rumours of Condé’s amorous adventures--Calvin
and Bèze address a joint letter of remonstrance to the
prince--Condé at Muret--Death of two of his children--Failing
health of the Princesse de Condé--Her touching devotion
to her husband--Her dignified attitude in regard to his
infidelities--Return of Condé to the Court--Quarrel between him
and Isabelle de Limeuil--Temporary triumph of the Maréchale de
Saint-André--Refusal of the King to sanction the betrothal of
the Marquis de Conti to Mlle. de Saint-André--Condé quits the
Court in anger, but is reconciled to Isabelle and returns--A
second honeymoon.
After having broken definitely with his former allies, and even borne
arms against them in person, Condé looked to receive from the hands
of the Queen-Mother the post of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom,
which Catherine appears to have given him to understand would be the
reward of his compliance with her wishes. But her Majesty, though she
complimented him warmly on the courage he had displayed during the
siege, had not the smallest intention of sharing with the prince the
power of which she was so jealous; and, by causing the Parlement of
Rouen to proclaim the majority of Charles IX., who had just entered
his fourteenth year, she adroitly contrived to reduce to nothing all
pretension on his part to the coveted title and to retain the sovereign
authority in her own hands.
The discovery that he had been the dupe of his ambition was not the
only mortification which Condé had to endure. If he were at bottom but
a lukewarm adherent of the Reformed Faith, if in the negotiations
which had preceded the Peace of Amboise he had been not unmindful of
his own interests, he was none the less sincerely anxious that the
rights guaranteed to the Protestants by that treaty should be observed;
and his persistence in defending them drew upon him the hatred of the
extreme Catholics. So exasperated, indeed, were the fanatical Parisians
against him that for some months his friends considered it unsafe
for him to appear in the capital, even in the suite of the King, and
on one occasion when he did venture there, he narrowly escaped being
assassinated.
In one of his despatches to Cecil, Middlemore gives the following
account of the affair:--
“On the 9th inst., the King went from Bois de Vincennes to Paris, as
well to keep the people from sedition as to assist at the Feast of
Corpus Christi, which was the next day. Condé (who had refused to go
thither) was won to accompany him, and on the morrow brought him to Our
Lady Church,[38] where he left him at the door, without entering. These
ceremonies passed, the King, about 7 p.m., came back to bed to Bois de
Vincennes, accompanied by his mother and the Prince. As they passed
the town-gates,[39] they found 600 horsemen, well-armed and mounted,
who were assembled to slay the Prince and all his, if they could have
taken him out of the presence of the King; but perceiving the King,
they divided themselves on both sides of the way, and suffered him to
pass quietly, on whose right hand at that time the Prince was, and the
Queen-Mother on his left. The Princess, his wife, coming in her coach
a little after, was assailed by them, and would have been murdered had
not the cochier bestirred himself; and such gentlemen as were about her
cried to them that it was not the Princess of Condé, but the Queen’s
maids, which kept them from shooting their pistols at her, having them
ready bent, until they overtook the King, in whose presence (when they
saw that they had failed of the Prince and Princess) they killed a
captain of the Prince[40] at the side of his wife’s coach, and took
five or six of his gentlemen prisoners, and retired. This outrage is
greatly stomached by the Prince, who has since been assured that some
of the House of Guise did ‘dress’ him this party; and therefore he told
the Queen, before the whole Council, that he will not tarry in the
Court unless the whole House of Guise retire from thence; and so has
desired her to consider which of them shall do the King better service,
and that the others may be commanded forthwith to dislodge.”[41]
On the other hand, the zealots of Condé’s own party, who had so
bitterly denounced the Peace, could not forgive his want of enthusiasm,
nor the very plain language in which he rebuked their insulting
behaviour towards the Catholics in those districts in which the latter
happened to be in a minority. They accused him of “swimming betwixt
two waters,” “of playing the Machiavelli,” and of seeking to use
both parties for his own ends.[42] “In their eyes,” observes the Duc
d’Aumale, “his desire for the maintenance of peace was nothing but the
indifference of gratified ambition, or the forgetfulness of duty amidst
the intoxication of pleasure.”[43]
If Condé’s efforts on behalf of his co-religionists should have
sheltered him from such accusations, his private life, it must be
admitted, was very far from being in accordance with the austere
religion which he professed, and was calculated to arouse grave
apprehensions among the Protestants. Deceived in his ambition,
mortified by the hostility which his well-intentioned efforts had been
received by the extremists of both parties, he had turned to pleasure
for consolation and surrendered himself unreservedly to all the
temptations of that gay and dissolute Court. His days were passed in
the hunting-field, the tennis-court, and the tilt-yard; his nights at
the ball, the play, or the card-table, and often in more questionable
amusements. Grave Huguenots who came to lay their grievances before
him were indignant to find the chief of their party, who should have
been occupying himself with the interests of religion and setting an
example of godly living to those about him, mingling in all the profane
diversions of the Court, as though he had not a care in the world, and
inexpressibly shocked to learn that he was forgetting his devoted wife
in the embraces of “Midianitish women.”
For Isabelle de Limeuil, if she occupied the premier place in Condé’s
affections, could not claim a monopoly of them. His Highness, in point
of fact, disdained few _bonnes fortunes_, and the complaisant
beauties of Catherine’s Court were generally ready to meet the advances
of the first Prince of the Blood a good deal more than halfway.
Among those who entered the lists against Isabelle, the most
redoubtable was Marguerite de Lustrac, the widow of the unfortunate
Maréchal de Saint-André, so foully slain at Dreux. Although no longer
in her first youth, Madame la Maréchale was still one of the most
beautiful and fascinating women at the Court--“_la Marguerite de
douceur_,”[44] a contemporary writer calls her. She was also
extremely wealthy and gave herself the airs of a queen, being always
attended by an immense retinue, which included cadets of the noblest
families in France.
Feeling the need of consolation in her bereavement, the lady cast
a favourable eye in the direction of Condé, and, piqued by his
indifference--he was just then in the middle of his honeymoon with
Isabelle--soon conceived for him the most violent passion. Since
sighs and languishing glances did not suffice to bring him to her
side, she resolved to have recourse to other means. By the Maréchal
de Saint-André she had had a daughter, who was one of the greatest
heiresses in France. This daughter had for some time past been destined
for the young Henri de Lorraine, who, by the tragic death of his
father, had now become Duc de Guise, and she had even been confided to
the care of the widowed duchess. But the maréchale, having decided that
the surest means of subjugating Condé was to appeal to his interests,
suddenly demanded that her daughter should be sent back to her,
repudiated her engagements with the Guises, and offered the girl to the
prince, for his eldest son, Henri, Marquis de Conti, now twelve years
old.
The prospect of an alliance which would not only bring great wealth
into his family, but inflict a cruel humiliation on the hated Guises
was naturally very favourably received by Condé, and the enamoured
maréchale did not fail to take full advantage of the frequent
interviews between her and the object of her passion which the affair,
of course, necessitated. Nevertheless, she did not succeed in weaning
the Prince from Isabelle, and had to rest content with the few crumbs
of affection which he condescended to bestow upon her.
Rumours of his Highness’s amorous adventures were not long in reaching
Geneva, where they aroused both indignation and alarm. Had the
delinquent been a less exalted personage, he would probably have been
straightway excommunicated; but Calvin and Bèze, though exasperated by
the carelessness with which he was compromising their common cause,
knew very well that the first Prince of the Blood was an asset with
which the party could not possibly dispense. They knew, too, that his
_amour-propre_ had already been deeply wounded by the reproaches
that had been addressed to him at the time of the Peace of Amboise, and
that it was necessary to spare his feelings as much as possible; and,
accordingly, contented themselves by addressing to him, in the name of
their afflicted Church, a letter of remonstrance, couched in studiously
moderate terms:
MONSEIGNEUR,
We cannot forbear to beseech you not only to use your endeavours
in the cause of Our Lord Jesus Christ, for the advancement of
the Gospel and for the security and repose of the poor faithful,
but also to show in your whole life that you have profited by
the doctrines of salvation, and to let your example be such as
to edify the good and to close the mouths of all slanderers. For
in proportion as you are conspicuous from afar in so exalted
a position, ought you to be on your guard lest they should
find any fault in you. You cannot doubt, Monseigneur, that we
love your honour as we desire your salvation; and we should be
traitors were we to conceal from you the rumours that are in
circulation concerning you. We do not suppose that there is
any direct offence to God; but when it is reported to us that
you make love to ladies, your authority and reputation are
seriously prejudiced. Good people will be scandalized thereby;
the evil-disposed will make it a subject of mockery. It involves
a distraction which hinders and retards you from attending to
your duty. There must even be some mundane vanity in it; and
it becomes you, above all else, to take heed lest the light
which God has placed in you be quenched or grow dim. We trust,
Monseigneur, that this warning will be taken in good part, when
you reflect how much it is for your service. From Geneva, this
thirteenth day of September 1563.
Your very humble brethren,
JEAN CALVIN
THÉODORE DE BESZE
Condé received this letter at the Château of Muret, in Picardy, whither
he had just arrived on a visit to his wife and family, accompanied by
his brother-in-law, the Comte de la Rochefoucauld,[45] and his nephew,
the Prince de Porcien. It would not appear to have been altogether
without effect, for, on 2 October, Condé’s mother-in-law, the Comtesse
de Roye, wrote to the Duke of Würtemberg: “The prince, my son-in-law,
intends to devote himself more and more to everything which can further
the reign of Jesus Christ.”[46]
In the course of that same month, a domestic calamity came to add
weight to the counsels of Calvin and Bèze. Two of his younger children,
Madeleine, aged three, and Louis, a child of eighteen months, fell ill
and died within a few days of one another, to the inexpressible grief
of the Princesse de Condé, who was one of the most devoted of mothers.
The princess’s relatives and friends, who probably regarded the death
of the children as a direct judgment from Heaven upon the father’s
sins, did not fail to improve the occasion, and represented to Condé
that it was his duty to withdraw, for some time at least, from the
Court and remain with his bereaved wife. The poor lady, indeed, needed
all the care and attention which were in his power to bestow, since she
was a prey to bodily suffering as well as to anguish of mind. Always a
delicate woman, the dangers and agitations of the past two years had
tried her cruelly. In the spring of 1562, when on her way from Meaux to
Muret with her eldest boy and a small retinue, she had been attacked
by a mob of fanatical peasants, who were marching in a Catholic
procession, “without any cause, unless it were that they had been
incited by a malignant priest, out of hatred for the Religion.”[47]
The litter in which the princess was being carried was smashed to
pieces by volleys of stones, and she herself narrowly escaped serious
injury. She was then in an advanced stage of pregnancy, and had barely
time to reach the nearest village when she gave birth to twin sons.
Nevertheless, as soon as she was able to leave her bed, she insisted on
setting out for Orléans to join her husband, and, during the siege of
that town in the following winter, she remained there, amid all the
horrors of war, pestilence, and famine, to encourage its defenders by
her heroic example.
Although her health had been profoundly affected by all that she had
gone through during the civil war, the princess considered it her
duty, so long as any physical strength remained to her, to reside at
the Court with her husband, and to follow him in his journeys. Thus,
when, in the early summer of 1563, Condé decided to take part in the
expedition against Le Havre, she set out for Normandy, accompanied by
her mother, the Comtesse de Roye. But, on reaching Gaillon, she was
attacked by small-pox of so severe a type that, for some time, she was
in grave danger. Scarcely was she convalescent, than Madame de Roye
fell ill, in her turn; and the princess, in attending to her mother,
neglected her own health, which from that moment declined steadily.
Although the dissolute life which Condé was leading had caused her
the greatest grief, she had refrained from reproaching him. “For
her,” says her biographer, “the true remedy for the irregularities
of the unfaithful husband and for the anguish of the outraged wife
was to be found in earnest and continual prayer. She implored God to
save the soul led astray, and strove, by patient efforts, discreetly
directed, and loving instances, to bring back this soul into the path
of duty, and to revive in it family affections.”[48] She now joined
her entreaties to those of her friends and relatives to persuade her
husband to remain with her. But Condé’s career of dissipation had
stifled his better nature; the impressions produced on his mind by
the death of his children were soon effaced, and, oblivious of the
duty which he owed his ailing wife, and of the many obligations under
which she had placed him, in the first days of November, he quitted
her abruptly and returned to the Court, which was now in residence at
Fontainebleau.
A most unwelcome piece of intelligence greeted him on his arrival. He
was informed that, during his absence in Picardy, Mlle. de Limeuil
had shown herself so unworthy of the signal honour he had done her
as to find consolation in the homage of M. du Fresne, a gentleman
for whom she had shown a decided preference in the days before Condé
appeared upon the scene. The prince, who entertained a very high
opinion both of the lady and of his own powers of fascination, was at
first incredulous; but the evidence laid before him was sufficiently
circumstantial to disturb his peace of mind very seriously. In
consequence, the reunion to which he had looked forward with so much
impatience was shorn of all its rapture, and, instead of smiles,
endearing words, and embraces, there were reproaches, indignant
denials, sarcastic rejoinders, tears, and sulks.
The Maréchale de Saint-André did not fail to profit by the
indiscretions of her rival, and delivered so vigorous and well-timed
an assault upon the prince’s heart that she succeeded in temporarily
establishing herself there, and “audaciously flaunted her conquest
before the eyes of the whole Court.” The maréchale had now recovered
her daughter from the Duchesse de Guise, though not without an appeal
to the law courts, and the little girl was on the point of being
formally betrothed to the Marquis de Conti, when the Queen-Mother, who
had got wind of the project, and had no mind to see the House of Condé
thus aggrandized, suddenly intervened and persuaded the King to inform
the parents that he should refuse his sanction to the match.
Condé could not contain his indignation. “The Prince de Condé has left
the Court in anger,” runs a letter from Fontainebleau, “because they
(Charles IX. and Catherine) would not give the daughter of the late
Maréchal de Saint-André to his son. He believes that they intend to
give her to Guise. The Constable has gone to fetch him back. Others
have gone to fan the flame.”[49] But it appears to have been Mlle. de
Limeuil, and not the Constable, who persuaded the prince to stomach the
affront he had received and to return to the Court. Acting doubtless
by Catherine’s orders, the damsel addressed to him eloquent and
persuasive letters, assuring him that he alone possessed her heart, and
that the affair with M. du Fresne had been no more than a harmless
flirtation, which malicious persons of both sexes--woman who envied
her her happiness, and gallants who could not forgive her for having
preferred the prince to them--had magnified into an intrigue. As for
the matter which had caused his departure from the Court, was it worth
while to sacrifice his pleasures to his _amour-propre_? The little
Mlle. de Saint-André was a sickly child, who would probably never live
to a marriageable age. Let him return, and he would find his Isabelle
impatiently awaiting him.
Condé did return, forgetting for the nonce his grievances against
Catherine and anxious only for a reconciliation with his mistress. The
Maréchale de Saint-André was compelled, to her intense mortification,
to resign her conquest and retire temporarily from the field; and
the prince and Isabelle embarked upon a second honeymoon, which was
conducted with so little pretence at concealment that people were
astonished that Catherine, who still insisted on the observance of
some outward decorum at her Court, should permit such “goings on.” Her
Majesty, however, who was fully alive to the political advantages of a
passion which was, so to speak, binding her adversary hand and foot,
found it convenient to be a little blind.
In the course of the month of November, Coligny and Andelot arrived at
the Court, and, on learning of the manner in which Condé was parading
his profligacy, expostulated with him in no measured terms. Their
remonstrances, however, had very little effect, and it was not until
the following February, when the Princesse de Condé paid a brief visit
to Fontainebleau, that his Highness condescended to show some respect
for _les convenances_.
CHAPTER V
The fêtes of Fontainebleau--Charles IX. and Catherine set
out on a grand progress through the kingdom--Dangerous
illness of the Princesse de Condé--Her husband obliged
to remain with her--Scandalous _dénoûment_ of the
amours of Condé and Isabelle de Limeuil--Indignation of the
Queen-Mother--Isabelle and the Prince de la Roche-sur-Yon--The
Comte de Maulevrier accuses Isabelle of having plotted to poison
the prince--She is arrested and conducted to the Franciscan
convent at Auxonne--Tender correspondence between her and Du
Fresne--Passionate letters of Condé to his mistress--Isabelle
denies the charges against her--Her letter to Catherine--She
is removed to Vienne--Her despair--Her pathetic letters to
Condé--She is examined by the Bishops of Orléans and Limoges,
and confronted by Maulevrier.
The Court was very gay that winter. At the beginning of the spring,
Charles IX. and Catherine were to set out on a grand progress through
the kingdom, which was expected to occupy the better part of two years;
and, before their departure, Catherine wished to revive the magnificent
fêtes of which Fontainebleau had been the theatre in the days of
“_le Roi chevalier_.” In the vast galleries where Primaticcio has
immortalized the beauty of her rival Diane de Poitiers, she entertained
the _élite_ of the nobility of France, Catholics and Protestants
being invited without distinction. Hunting-parties, tilting-matches,
mimic combats on foot and on horseback, balls, banquets and theatrical
representations filled the days and nights; the princes and great
nobles vied with one another in the sumptuousness of the entertainments
which they, in return, offered to their young Sovereign and his mother;
and a stranger who had been suddenly transported into the midst of all
this gaiety and extravagant splendour would have found it difficult to
believe that he was in a country where the ashes of a desolating civil
war had scarcely had time to grow cold.
One of the features of the fêtes was a grand banquet, followed by a
“_ballet-comédie_,” which Catherine gave at the Vacherie. Isabelle
de Limeuil figured in it, in the character of Hebe, and “attired in a
tunic of transparent gauze, which permitted one to catch a glimpse of
limbs which the goddess might have envied,” was the cynosure of all
eyes. Condé was no doubt not a little flattered by the admiration which
his lady-love was arousing, and it is to be hoped that the charms which
she so freely displayed sufficed to preserve him from the manœuvres
of her fair colleagues in the Queen’s service, who, we are told, were
indefatigable in their efforts to detach him from her. At the Court of
Charles IX., it was something even to be faithful in infidelity!
On 13 March, 1564, their Majesties quitted Fontainebleau, and set
out on their progress through the realm. This journey had been long
meditated by Catherine, who expected from it important results. In the
first place, respect for the central authority had almost disappeared
amid the anarchy of the civil war, and the Queen desired, by making
the young King known to the nation, to re-establish the monarchical
power in the interior. In the second, the crisis through which France
had just passed had lowered the country immeasurably in the eyes of
other States, and she flattered herself that, by means of interviews
with foreign sovereigns on the frontiers, she might do much to restore
the prestige of the French name. Moreover, by establishing a good
understanding with them, and particularly with Philip II. of Spain, she
hoped to free herself from the tutelage of the grandees of the kingdom.
The _cortège_ was a most imposing one, for Catherine wished to
impress the people and the sovereigns whom she was to meet by the
magnificence of the royal retinue. The whole of the Court followed
the King--princes, ministers, gentlemen, and ladies--and there was a
veritable cohort of pages and lackeys, wearing his Majesty’s livery
of blue, red, and white, all the pages being dressed in velvet. The
military escort was a very large one, and comprised not only all the
Household troops, but several companies of men-at-arms. The Constable
marshalled the procession, and directed its movements as he would have
done that of an army on the march.[50]
Champagne was first visited. The Court stopped for a few days at Sens,
where the young King was given a magnificent reception, and then moved
on to Troyes, which was reached on 27 March. In this town, where the
negotiations for peace with England were finally concluded, Condé
“fell sick of the palsy or apoplexy, which took him at tennis, and
a fever upon it,”[51] and his condition appeared sufficiently grave
for his wife, who was then at the Château of Condé-en-Brie, to be
summoned to nurse him. The devoted woman, although suffering herself,
lost not a moment in hastening to her faithless husband’s side, and in
lavishing upon him the tenderest care. Thanks in a great measure to
her solicitude, the prince’s health was soon re-established--for his
illness would appear to have been much less grave than was at first
supposed--and she was able to return to her children. But the hurried
journey to Troyes, and the anxiety she had suffered on her husband’s
account, had exhausted her slender reserve of strength, and scarcely
had she reached Condé-en-Brie, than she was taken dangerously ill.
A courier, dispatched in all haste, found Condé at Vitry-le-François,
whither he had followed the Court, and, though, for reasons which will
presently be understood, he was extremely loath to part from Isabelle
at this juncture, he felt obliged to take leave of their Majesties and
return to his neglected wife. On his arrival, he found her somewhat
better, but the doctors did not disguise from him that her recovery
was hopeless, and that, in all probability, she had but a few weeks to
live. The prince, however, an incurable optimist, declined to believe
that the case was as serious as they represented, and, though he
decided to remain with her, it is evident, from the following letter,
written by him to his nephew, the Prince de Porcien, that he was
determined to get as much amusement out of his enforced sojourn by the
domestic hearth as circumstances would permit:
“MY NEPHEW--My desire to have news of you prompts me
to write you this letter, and, at the same time, to entreat
that, if your convenience permits, you will come to see and
console your good friend and relative, who is very wearied
[_ennuyé_] by his wife’s serious illness. Come with your
greyhounds and your horses and arms, if that be possible, and I
will promise to show you as fine hunting as you could know how
to find. My horse and arms will arrive here to-day, and I hope
that, if you come, we shall find means, please God, to enjoy
ourselves.”[52]
Meanwhile, the Court was continuing its progress. From Troyes, it
proceeded to Bar-le-Duc, where Charles IX. stood sponsor to the infant
son of his sister Claude and the Duke of Lorraine, and on 22 May
arrived at Dijon, where it remained until the 30th, their Majesties
being lodged in the palace of the old Dukes of Burgundy.
It was during the sojourn of the Court in this town that the liaison of
Condé and Isabelle de Limeuil had the most scandalous _dénoûment_.
At the Queen-Mother’s _coucher_, according to some writers, at an
audience given by their Majesties to a deputation which had come to
present them with an address of welcome, according to others, Isabelle
was suddenly taken ill, and carried into Catherine’s wardrobe, where
she gave birth to a fine boy, of whom she at once declared Condé to be
the father.[53]
It was not the first casualty of its kind which had occurred in the
ranks of the “_escadron volant_.” Only a little while before, a
like misfortune had befallen another maid-of-honour, Mlle. de Vitry
by name; but, in this case, an open scandal had been avoided. Brought
to bed in the morning, Mlle. de Vitry had had the fortitude to drag
herself to a ball given at the Louvre that same evening, and thus had
contrived to preserve what shreds of reputation may have been left to
her.[54] For a young woman who ordinarily showed so much astuteness,
Isabelle, as Mézeray expresses it, had certainly “taken her measures
badly.”[55]
Catherine, who still piqued herself on the outward decorum of
her _entourage_, was beside herself with indignation. Her
maids-of-honour might commit all the sins in the Decalogue with
impunity, so long as they did not add to them the unforgivable one of
being found out; but, once they were so maladroit as to be detected,
they must expect no consideration at her hands.
However, since Isabelle was, after all, a soldier wounded in her
Majesty’s service, and had done her duty nobly until she had been
placed _hors de combat_, it is probable that no worse fate would
have befallen her than dismissal from the “squadron” and the Court, had
not her enemies profited by her misfortune to launch against her a most
formidable accusation.
Isabelle, as we have mentioned elsewhere, possessed a biting wit,
which she was accustomed to exercise freely at the expense of those
who were so unfortunate as to displease her, not sparing even the most
exalted personages. The sharpness of her tongue, indeed, made her as
many enemies as the charms of her person gained her admirers, and often
those who approached her with words of devotion on their lips were so
cruelly rebuffed that they retired with vengeance in their hearts.
Among those whom she had thus contrived to offend, was Charles IX.’s
former _gouverneur_, the Prince de la Roche-sur-Yon,[56] an
extremely dangerous person for a maid-of-honour to have as an enemy,
since not only was he a Prince of the Blood, and a gentleman of a
peculiarly vindictive character, but his wife[57] held the post of
Grand Mistress of Catherine’s Household, a position which enabled her
to make things extremely unpleasant for any of the Queen’s damsels
of whose conduct she happened to disapprove. Nor was it long before
Isabelle had good reason to regret her treatment of the prince, for the
latter took an early opportunity of representing to the Grand Mistress
that it was high time to introduce “a little reformation” into the
Queen’s Household, and hinted that it might not be a bad plan were she
to make a few inquiries as to the way in which Mlle. de Limeuil passed
her time when off duty. The lady was of her husband’s opinion, and,
from that moment, the maids-of-honour, and Isabelle in particular,
found their opportunities for clandestine meetings with their admirers
seriously curtailed; while, as time went on, the Grand Mistress began
to evince an interest in Mlle. de Limeuil’s health which occasioned the
object of her solicitude infinite embarrassment.
The girl, who well knew whom she had to thank for these annoyances,
was furious against La Roche-sur-Yon, and made no secret of the hatred
which she entertained for him. One of those to whom she expressed
her opinion of the prince was the Comte de Maulevrier,[58] a great
admirer of hers, who had himself no cause to love his Highness. In the
summer of 1560, it had happened that Maulevrier was hunting with the
prince’s only son, the Marquis de Beaupréau, a boy of thirteen. The
marquis’s horse stumbled and fell; Maulevrier, who was close behind,
was unable to stop his, and the animal came down with all its weight
upon the unfortunate lad, who was so badly crushed that he died shortly
afterwards. Although this calamity was obviously due to pure accident,
La Roche-sur-Yon, who had been passionately attached to his son,
conceived the most violent resentment against Maulevrier, and swore
that he should answer for the boy’s life with his own. So threatening
an attitude did he assume, that the count deemed it prudent to go
into hiding for some time, and though, thanks to the intervention of
Catherine, the bereaved father was eventually persuaded to forego his
vengeance, it was only on the understanding that Maulevrier should
never again venture to appear before him.
Maulevrier had no desire to do so, and carefully avoided the prince,
until one day, in the previous summer, they happened to meet by
accident. No sooner did La Roche-sur-Yon catch sight of the involuntary
murderer, than he drew his sword and rushed upon him like a madman, and
the count only saved himself from being spitted like a fowl by promptly
taking to his heels.
Such being the relations between La Roche-sur-Yon and Maulevrier, it is
not surprising that Isabelle should have expected to find in the latter
a sympathetic listener, when she inveighed against the prince as the
instigator of all the annoyances to which she and her colleagues were
being subjected by the Grand Mistress, or that, when in his company,
she should have occasionally indulged in that extravagant language in
which angry and excitable women are accustomed to find an outlet for
their wounded feelings, but to which, fortunately for them, sensible
people seldom attach any importance. For how could she have imagined
that Maulevrier, who had always expressed so much admiration for her,
and who had himself been subjected to such unmerited persecution at the
hands of La Roche-sur-Yon, would betray her confidences to their common
enemy?
But Maulevrier, whether because he had some secret grudge against
the girl, or, more probably, because he hoped that, by pretending to
render a great service to La Roche-sur-Yon, he might persuade that
personage to be reconciled to him, gave a most sinister interpretation
to the expressions which the exasperated Isabelle permitted to escape
her, and communicated them to the prince, with no doubt a good many
exaggerations.
No steps, however, seem to have been taken by La Roche-sur-Yon in the
matter until the occurrence of the scandal which we have just related,
when, having decided that the moment for action had arrived, he
persuaded Maulevrier to draw up and sign a formal information against
Isabelle, which he lost no time in laying before the King and the
Queen-Mother.
In this document, Maulevrier declared that Isabelle had on several
occasions said to him: “If I were in your place, I should poison the
prince”; that during the journey of the Court she had indulged in
the most violent language against his Highness, whom she accused of
inspiring all the annoyances which his wife had inflicted upon the
Queen’s “maids,” and of having sought to injure her in a matter which
closely concerned her honour; that, one evening, she had sent for
him, and told him that La Roche-sur-Yon was giving a supper-party the
following night, and that it would be the last that he would ever give,
warning him, at the same time, not to repeat a word of what she had
said, or “he would be found dead in the corner of some ditch”; that,
notwithstanding this threat, he had sent warning to the prince, who
had begged him to entice Mlle. de Limeuil into further confidences;
that, a few days later, the Court being at Vitry, the lady had said to
him: “The coup failed; the prince postponed his supper-party, but the
opportunity will recur”; with which she drew from an envelope a white
powder and gave him part of it, telling him to make his dog take it
and he would see that in a short time the animal would be dead; and,
finally, that on the morning of a state dinner given at Bar-le-Duc,
Mlle. de Limeuil had remarked to him: “It is truly astonishing that the
Queen-Mother has not been ill!”[59]
It was, of course, impossible for Charles IX. and Catherine to ignore
so grave an accusation as that of having planned the poisoning of a
Prince of the Blood, backed by evidence drawn up with such minuteness
and precision of detail as to give it an air of probability. At the
same time, Catherine would perhaps, in ordinary circumstances, have
hesitated to accept the unsupported testimony of Maulevrier, who was
not a person on whose word much reliance was usually placed. But, as La
Roche-sur-Yon had, of course, foreseen, the scandal of which Isabelle
had just been the cause was scarcely calculated to incline her to view
the matter from a judicial standpoint; and, at her instigation, the
King at once signed an order for Isabelle to be arrested and conducted
to the Franciscan convent at Auxonne. Her child was taken away from her
and given into the charge of a poor woman at Dijon.
On arriving at Auxonne, Isabelle was received by M. de Ventoux,
governor of the town, who conducted her to the convent. Here, she was
incarcerated in a little, bare, low-ceilinged room, like a prison
cell, and very strictly guarded. The unfortunate girl, though still
in ignorance of the charge against her, was in despair, and, we are
assured, for three days and nights did nothing but groan and weep. M.
de Ventoux, a kindly man, who visited her several times, was touched
with compassion, and, after vainly endeavouring to console her,
despatched the most alarming reports of her condition to the Court, in
one of which he declared that, if it were possible for a woman to die
of melancholy, then assuredly she had not long to live.
With such rapidity and secrecy had Isabelle been carried off from
Dijon, that none of her relatives or friends at the Court had the least
idea what had become of her. But, on receiving Ventoux’s reports, the
Queen-Mother so far relented as to authorize him to transmit to the
prisoner all the letters which were addressed to her, and to forward to
their destination those which she wrote herself, having first taken the
precaution to open and copy them, since in this way some very useful
information might be obtained. Singularly enough, neither Isabelle
nor her friends seemed to have had the least suspicion that their
correspondence was being tampered with.
Catherine must have been disappointed if she expected to secure from
these epistles any evidence in regard to the charge which had been
brought against Isabelle, but, _en revanche_, they contained some
interesting information concerning other matters. The first letters,
for instance, which passed between the fair captive and M. du Fresne
were peculiarly enlightening, and established beyond all possibility of
doubt the character of their relations.
The enamoured Secretary of State begins by deploring that he had
been unable to take farewell of the lady before the Court left
Dijon; but the mere suspicion that he had done so had so enraged the
Queen-Mother that to have defied her would have probably entailed his
prompt disgrace. On the other hand, the Prince de Condé, whom he had
taken upon himself to inform of the interesting event which had taken
place at Dijon and of the subsequent disappearance of its heroine, had
expressed much annoyance, because he had happened to mention that he
had lent Isabelle a dressing-gown, being evidently of opinion that it
was a piece of presumption for any one but himself to assist the lady.
“It is very strange,” he writes, “that, being abandoned, as I was able
to tell him you had been by every one, the prince should take it ill
that you have been visited and succoured by those who were incurring
risks in order to serve you.” However, he should not cease to employ
his life and his property for her, “the person whom he loved and
esteemed the most in the world.” But, at the same time, he thinks it
would be perhaps advisable for her to return the dressing-gown, “since
he saw clearly that it was not agreeable to the prince [Condé] that
she should make use of it.” And he concludes by reminding her of the
happy days they had spent together when the Court was in Normandy the
previous summer, when he had received “_tant de contentement_.” In
a postscript, he bids her burn his letter, which, in view of the fact
that a copy was already in the hands of M. de Ventoux, seems a rather
unnecessary precaution.
Isabelle’s reply was calculated to satisfy the most exacting of lovers.
It was impossible to tell him what pleasure his letter had given her;
words quite failed her to describe it. She did nothing all day but
think of him, and he might rest assured that, whatever Fortune might
have in store for her, she would never cease to love him. [The minx
will write much the same to Condé a little later.] She sends him a
scarf woven with her own fair hands, two pictures of saints which she
has painted, a heart, and a book, the “Patience of Job,” which, is
“_fort à propos_.” She concludes by kissing his hands “thousands
and millions of times.”[60]
It was, as we have seen, through the medium of Du Fresne that Condé,
retained by the bedside of his dying wife, was informed of the
misfortunes of Isabelle. To receive such news of his mistress through
the courtesy of a rival occasioned him, as may be supposed, the keenest
mortification; and his jealousy reveals itself very plainly in the
first letter which he addressed to the lady:
“Alas! my heart, what can I say to you, save that I am more dead
than alive, seeing that I am deprived of the means of serving
you, and seeing you depart[61] without knowing how I may be
able to aid you? M. du Fresne often informs me that you send
him news of yourself, but I, I cannot know whither you have
been conducted, and I am greatly astonished, since you have the
means of writing to some persons, that I may not receive your
letters also. For you know that there is not a man in the world
who would be so much grieved at your distress as myself, nor
who, with greater gaiety of heart, would be more determined to
hazard his life to do you a useful service. I am sending you one
of my dressing-gowns, which has served me and you also when we
were together, begging you to believe that I should prefer you
to your gown, since I should be of more service to you than a
sable. Let me know that you are as anxious to retain me in your
good graces, now that you are a captive as when you were at
liberty; for you know that, being accustomed not to share them
with any one, but to be the first and the only one, I feel sure
that you have not lost the good opinion that you have of me,
but, on the contrary, that it is rather increased. It remains to
make use of me and to give me the opportunity of coming to free
you from the trouble in which you are, for you must acquaint me
with the means of doing so. I have eyes which do nothing but
weep, and strength which is inanimate, since it is not commanded
by you.”
If Condé had been unable at first to discover the place where his
Isabelle had been incarcerated, he had succeeded in getting her son
into his possession; and, having received two letters from Isabelle
recommending the child to his care, he hastens to relieve her maternal
anxiety:
“I shall content myself by telling you that I have our son in
my hands, safe, and merry and certain to live.... It is true
that they had left him at the house of a poor woman, who made
him lie on straw for six nights, like a hound, which I thought
very strange. But if, at the beginning, those to whom he did not
belong treated him like a little dog, I have taken him like a
father to bring him up _en prince_. He deserves it, for he
is the most beautiful creature that ever man saw.”
And the lovelorn prince concludes:
“If I do not see you soon, I would as lief die as live. I desire
it as much or more than my salvation.” And, at the end of the
monogram which replaces the signature, he writes: “Let us die
together!”
On receiving this epistle, which confirmed the warning which Du Fresne
had given her concerning the suspicions of Condé, Isabelle hastened to
assure the prince that her heart was wholly his, and that henceforth
she would communicate with him alone. Meantime, however, Condé had
learned that gossip was far from unanimous in attributing the paternity
of the child to him, and that the general opinion at the Court was that
M. du Fresne’s claims to the honour were at least equal to his own.[62]
All aflame with jealousy, he writes to his mistress:
“I assure you, my heart, that I am very greatly annoyed that
people are able to find in your conduct reason to ask: ‘Whose
is this child?’ which is as much as to say that you admit two
persons to a like degree of favour. I do not tell you this
because I believe it, as I will show you; for I will give you
a proof whether I love you or no in a few days. My heart, since
we have gone so far, we must raise the mask, for every one knows
what has passed between us. You will be honoured and esteemed by
all, since you show them, as much in small things as in great,
that you do not wish to address or to receive news save from him
whom you have loved more than that which you prize more dearly
than yourself [_i.e._ her honour].... You have heard that
they speak at the Court of a certain person [Du Fresne]. You
must take care to silence these false reports. You need not
resort to oaths to make me believe that your son is mine, for I
have no more doubt of him than of those of my wife. But act in
such a way that others may be able to entertain no doubt of it,
and reflect that whoever sees him will say with reason that he
is my son and yours, for our two faces are to be recognized in
his. I implore you, my heart, to love me and never to abandon
me, as you have promised; and when you remind yourself of the
occasion on which it was made, I am sure that you will keep your
promise to me. I send you a fur-lined dressing-gown. I should
like to be near you in its place, for I cannot be so useless as
not to be of as much service to you as it will be.
“Our son is very well, and is being well taken care of, and is
in my hands, which is my only consolation, since I am separated
from you, and is a pledge to render me for ever assured of
remaining in your good graces, which is the thing which I prize
the most, and more so than I have ever done.”
In a third letter, couched in equally passionate terms, the prince
informs his lady-love that he has entrusted her son to a gentleman who
will bring him up as one of his own children, advises her to write to
the Queen-Mother to implore her clemency, and impresses upon her the
importance of receiving only the servants whom he may send to her,
“by which she will make it known that she loves no one save him.” He
concludes by assuring her that he intends to live and die with her.
On 9 June, the bishop of the diocese, Du Puy, and the Sieur Sarlan, one
of Catherine’s _maîtres d’hôtel_, who had received a commission
from the King to investigate the charges against Isabelle, arrived
at Auxonne. The prisoner was brought before them and very closely
interrogated. She admitted that she had bitter cause to complain of La
Roche-sur-Yon, who had not only egged on his wife to pester her with
questions concerning her health, but had told Condé that he was “very
blind and very credulous if he believed that Limeuil was with child by
him.” At the same time, she denied absolutely that she had ever made,
or even contemplated, an attempt upon the life of the prince. Nor had
she ever suggested to Maulevrier that he should poison his Highness,
although, on one occasion, when she and the count were in the company
of a number of other persons, she had heard some one, whom she did not
name, advise Maulevrier to make away with him, “in the interests of his
repose.” Mlle. de Bourdeille,[63] who was one of those present, would
confirm her statement.
The commissioners departed for Lyons, where the Court had just arrived,
taking with them a very dignified and pathetic letter from Isabelle to
the Queen-Mother:
“MADAME--After having heard from the Sieurs Sarlan and
Du Puy the reasons which have induced your Majesty to send them
to me, it has afflicted me to such a degree that, but for the
aid of God and the hope that I repose in your kindness, I should
have fallen into the greatest despair that a poor creature could
be in, not being so forgetful of God as to have conceived or
meditated such wickedness. When it shall have pleased God to
make known to you my innocence, I implore you, for the honour of
those to whom I am related, to do such justice upon the false
accuser as I should have deserved, had I committed such a crime.”
Meanwhile Condé had not been idle. He had sent to Auxonne one of his
confidential servants, who had put himself into communication with the
leading Huguenots of the town, with a view to an attempt to liberate
Isabelle _vi et armis_, and, at the beginning of July, Ventoux,
getting wind of this, wrote, in great alarm, to Catherine, declaring
that he could no longer be responsible for the safety of the prisoner,
and urging her removal to some place where she would be in greater
security. Her Majesty thereupon despatched her first _valet de
chambre_, Gentil, with six of her guards to Auxonne, with orders to
conduct Isabelle to Vienne.
The lady was in despair when informed that she was to leave the
convent, and with good reason, since it would appear that Condé’s
supporters had arranged to make an attempt to carry her off a night
or two later. At first, she refused to budge and threatened to kill
herself; but eventually she thought better of it, and allowed herself
to be conducted to the river, where she and her escort embarked in a
boat to proceed to Maçon, the first stage of their journey. Scarcely,
however, had they got her on board, when she was seized with a violent
attack of hysteria and gave vent to the most heartrending cries. Then,
for a whole day and a night she refused either to eat or drink, until
Gentil began to fear that she would never reach her destination alive.
At length, however, she became more tractable, partook of some food,
and, asking for writing materials, indited an appealing letter to
Condé, which was intercepted by Gentil and, in due course, transmitted
to Catherine. It was as follows:
“Alas! my heart, have pity upon a poor creature who suffers all
things for having loved you more than herself.[64] My affliction
will be only pleasure, provided, that you remember me, and that
I am so happy as to be the only one to possess your love. I am
so afraid that my absence has the misfortune to banish me from
your good graces, which tortures me more than I can describe. My
heart, help me and free me from the position in which I have no
more to suffer for the rest of my life. Write to the Queen in
my favour and make the Maréchal de Bourdillon write.”
On reaching Maçon, Gentil decided that it was inadvisable to proceed
further with so weak an escort, for the Huguenots were very strong
in that part of the country, and he accordingly wrote to Catherine
begging her to send reinforcements, as he was in hourly dread of being
attacked and his prisoner carried off. On her side, Isabelle, more and
more alarmed as to the fate in store for her, profited by the delay to
write another despairing letter to Condé, which, like the first, was
intercepted by the vigilant Gentil and forwarded to his mistress:
“The Queen is sending me to Lyons; if you have not compassion on
me, I see myself the most miserable creature in the world, in
such manner do they drag me about, with soldiers for my guards,
as though I were a person who had merited death. I have no hope
save in God and you. It would be well for you to write to Madame
de Savoie,[65] to persuade her to obtain my pardon from the
Queen. I am a more faithful, a more affectionate, slave to you
than ever I was, and the greater my tortures, the more I adore
you. Send to this Lyonnais country to ascertain where I may be.
I believe that I shall not be far away from it. Alas! my heart,
remember that you have promised to be faithful to me. Place me
in such a position that, at least ere I die, I may be able to
see you. Have no other heart than mine, or make me die first. I
kiss your hands and feet a thousand times.”
On the arrival of the soldiers demanded by Gentil, Isabelle was
conducted to Lyons and thence to Vienne, where she arrived on 18
July, and was incarcerated in the Château des Canoux. Here she was
again examined, this time by two members of the Council, the Bishops
of Orléans and Limoges, who were frequently employed in important
negotiations. The two bishops brought Maulevrier with them and
confronted him with the prisoner, who gave him, as may be supposed, an
exceedingly warm reception, “liar,” “evil liver,” and “drunkard” being
among the epithets which she hurled at his head. Maulevrier persisted
in his charges, but could call no evidence to support them; Isabelle
reiterated her denials. Their lordships, though they pretended to look
very wise, could make nothing of the affair at all; but, since a man is
not less a man because he happens to be a bishop, and Isabelle’s beauty
and distress had not been without its effect upon them, they left her
with a promise to intercede for her with the Queen.
Their intercession, however, does not appear to have had any effect,
for the months passed, and the lady still remained under lock and key.
CHAPTER VI
Death of the Princesse de Condé--Question of the prince’s
remarriage--The Maréchale de Saint-André’s bid for
his hand--Rumours of a matrimonial alliance with the
Guises--Catherine de’ Medici, alarmed at such a prospect,
resolves to set Mlle. de Limeuil at liberty--Isabelle joins
Condé at Valery--Intense indignation of the Huguenots at the
scandalous conduct of the prince--Quarrel between Condé and
Coligny--The leaders of the party take counsel together “to find
a remedy for so great an evil”--The deputation of Protestant
pastors--Condé declines to separate from his mistress, but
eventually breaks with her--His marriage with Mlle. de
Longueville--Condé persuaded by his wife to demand the return of
the presents he has given his mistress--Revenge of Isabelle--Her
marriage--Renewal of the civil war--Battle of Saint-Denis--Peace
of Longjumeau--Flight of Condé to La Rochelle--Third war of
Religion breaks out--Battle of Jarnac--Death of Condé.
Meanwhile, an event had occurred which had occasioned a great stir in
both political camps. The gloomy prognostications of the Princesse de
Condé’s physicians, which her husband had at first ridiculed, proved
only too correct; all through the remainder of the spring and the first
weeks of summer the poor lady was gradually becoming weaker, and by
the middle of July it was plain that she had but a few days to live.
To the last she was full of consideration for the husband who had
shown so little consideration for her. “Fearing to distress him too
much, if she told him herself that she felt death approaching,” writes
her biographer, “the princess charged two grave personages, friends
of her family, to go to Condé’s apartments, to acquaint him with what
she foresaw must soon happen, and to ask to be allowed to entrust him
with her last wishes in an authentic form. ‘Tell the prince’ said she
to these two friends, ‘that, since God is pleased so soon to separate
our bodies, I trust that at least our souls may continue to be bound
inseparably together in the love that we ought to bear to our common
Saviour Jesus Christ, who has delivered us so miraculously, in the
eyes of all Europe, from so many enemies and dangers. Tell him also
that,--to begin my will,--I constitute him the universal heir to the
mass of love I have vowed to my children, and I conjure him, in loving
them doubly henceforth both for himself and for me, to keep vigil in
my place, so that they may be brought up in the fear of God, which I
am convinced is the surest estate and patrimony that I can bequeath to
them’”[66]
Condé appeared to be profoundly affected. He declared that he had
received from the princess a lesson in courage which he should strive
to follow out of love for her and her children; adding that the latter
would always find him faithful to the last recommendations of their
mother. “God, who joined us now divides us, since it pleases Him,” he
exclaimed. “Oh! blessed will be the moment when He ordains that we
shall be reunited in Heaven in an eternal bond!”
These pious expressions, which, though they may appear so out of place
on the lips of the lover of Isabelle de Limeuil, were probably uttered
in all sincerity, seem to have greatly comforted the poor princess, who
then sent for two notaries and dictated to them her will.
Afterwards, she summoned her chaplain Pérussel, who, it will be
remembered, had shared Condé’s captivity after Dreux, and another
minister, and conversed with them on spiritual matters. On their
departure, Condé returned to her bedside, and spoke to her some
affectionate words. “Four things,” replied the dying princess, taking
his hands in hers, “render me happy: the first is the assurance of my
salvation, the second, the reputation of being a good wife, which,
by God’s grace, I have always had; the third, the certainty that you
are satisfied with me, because I have always as faithfully served,
loved, and honoured you as it was possible for a wife, in this world,
to serve, honour, and love her husband; the fourth, my joy that God
leaves to my children a father and a grandmother who will bring them up
in the fear of God, in accordance with my principal desire.” And, after
a moment’s silence, she added: “And now I must finish my course to gain
the prize which I see prepared for me at the end of the lists of this
laborious career.”
Condé then withdrew, and the princess’s children entered to take
farewell of her and receive her last recommendations.
Towards midnight, fearing that she would soon be too weak to make
herself understood, she expressed a wish to have a final conversation
with her husband. “I am sure,” said she, “that the prince will not mind
being awakened for this occasion, and it would not be well to wait
until I could no longer declare to him the things that God has put into
my heart.”
On the arrival of Condé, every one present withdrew out of hearing, and
husband and wife conversed together for nearly an hour.
[Illustration: ÉLÉONORE DE ROYE, PRINCESSE DE CONDÉ
FROM A DRAWING BY AN UNKNOWN ARTIST]
The end came at eight o’clock the following morning (23 July, 1564).
Condé, who had quite broken down, had retired to his own room, and one
of the Huguenot ministers, who had been with the princess in her last
moments, came to break the sad news to him. Dissolute as his life had
been of late years, his heart was not quite corrupted, and the grief
which he experienced was accentuated by remorse for the pain which his
infidelities had so often caused the devoted companion who had just
been taken from him. Now, probably for the first time, he seemed to
realize her worth, and nothing could have been more touching than the
terms in which he spoke of her to his weeping children. “Strive, my
darling,” said he to his little daughter, “to resemble your mother,
that God may help you as He helped her, that every one may esteem
you, and that I may love you more and more, as I shall surely do if you
are as she was.” Then, laying his hand on the head of the Marquis de
Conti, he added: “My son, you are the first pledge of the blessing and
favour of marriage which God gave to your mother and myself. See that
you always give me joy and consolation, which you will do if you follow
in the footsteps of your mother in the way of virtue. Recognize the
traces, for fear lest you go astray along the paths of the dangerous
labyrinth of this world. Sons are usually like their fathers, but you
must strive to copy the virtues of your mother. For you will be told
things about your father and his life that you ought not to imitate,
though there are other things in him that you must follow. But in your
mother ... you will find nothing which is not worthy to be a treasured
example, as she was worthy of a place in the foremost ranks of virtuous
women.”[67]
Condé’s grief had, for the moment, exalted him, but his impressions
were always more violent than lasting, and scandal was soon to be busy
again with his name.
* * * * *
Scarcely had the grave closed upon Éléonore de Roye than all kinds of
rumours were in circulation as to her probable successor, for no one
doubted that a prince in the very prime of manhood and of so “amorous a
complexion” would take unto himself a second wife with as little delay
as need be.
It was said that the Maréchale de Saint-André was determined to have
him; and the death of the little Mlle. de Saint-André, which had
occurred at the Convent of Longchamps three weeks before that of
Condé’s wife, whereby the little girl’s immense fortune passed to
her mother, was freely ascribed to a diabolical crime on the part of
the maréchale, in order to facilitate her union with the prospective
widower.
There would not appear to have been any foundation for so terrible a
charge, though the maréchale, who, besides being desperately enamoured
of Condé, was a very ambitious woman, was certainly prepared to move
heaven and earth to secure her elevation to the rank of Princess of the
Blood. No sooner did she learn that poor Éléonore de Roye’s recovery
had been pronounced hopeless than, with the object of establishing
claims to the expected vacancy which it would be difficult to ignore,
she made the prince a present of the estate and magnificent château
of Valery, near Sens, which her luxurious husband had rebuilt and
furnished with the most costly magnificence. At the time when it was
made, the singularity of this donation was somewhat modified by the
fact that the Queen-Mother had withdrawn her objections to the marriage
of the Marquis de Conti and Mlle. de Saint-André. But when, after the
death of the latter had put an end to this project, the maréchale not
only confirmed the gift of Valery, but added to it a considerable part
of the fortune left by her daughter, it was no longer possible to
disguise the motive of such unexampled generosity; and people said very
unkind things, both about the giver and the prince, who had accepted,
apparently without a blush, an almost regal present from one of his
avowed mistresses.
Other rumours espoused Condé to Catherine de Lorraine, daughter of the
late Duc de Guise, or to her widowed mother, Anne d’Este, still very
beautiful; while others again united him to Mary, Queen of Scots.
The prince had no intention of gratifying the ambitions of the
Maréchale de Saint-André, being of opinion that to become her husband
would be to pay altogether too high a price for Valery. But he was
not indisposed to a union with the Guises, for, though they had done
him much injury in the past, the death of their illustrious head had
deprived them of their influence, and he was of too generous a nature
to cherish rancour against a fallen foe.
The Guises on their side, hated by the Huguenots, disliked by the
Montmorencies, and distrusted by the Queen, were sincerely anxious
for a union with Condé. At the end of December 1564, the Cardinal de
Lorraine, returning from the Council of Trent, passed through Soissons,
to which town the prince had come, on a visit to his sister, Catherine
de Bourbon, abbess of the Convent of Notre-Dame. A very cordial
interview took place between them, in which his Eminence suggested to
Condé a marriage between him and Mary Stuart. The cardinal had already
approached his niece on the subject, excusing the inconsistency of a
Prince of the Church recommending a heretic as a husband on the ground
that the Huguenots were so determined to compass his ruin that the
marriage was absolutely necessary for his political salvation. It is
true that he had received scant encouragement from that quarter, since
the young queen strongly resented the idea that she should sacrifice
her own inclinations for his Eminence’s advantage. “Truly I am beholden
to my uncle,” she exclaimed, ironically. “So that it be well with him,
he careth not what becometh of me.”[68] Nevertheless, the cardinal did
not despair of ultimately obtaining her consent.
On leaving Soissons, the Cardinal de Lorraine proceeded to Paris,
followed by “fifty arquebusiers and some hundreds of his friends and
servants, with arms, pistols, and arquebuses.” On reaching Saint-Denis,
he was met by a gentleman of the Maréchal de Montmorency, governor of
the Île-de-France and his personal enemy, who warned him that he could
not be permitted to enter the city with an armed retinue, since the
edicts forbade it. The prelate, however, thought proper to ignore this
warning, and, on 8 January, 1565, he and his whole company entered
Paris by the Porte Saint-Denis. Near the Church of the Innocents
they were met by Montmorency, at the head of a considerable force.
The marshal called upon them to lay down their arms; one man refused
and was immediately killed; the rest obeyed, and the cardinal, never
remarkable for his personal courage, took refuge in the house of a
merchant, where he remained until nightfall.[69]
This affair caused a great commotion. The partisans of the Guises
assembled at Meudon, under the leadership of the Duc d’Aumale, and
assumed a most threatening attitude; the Maréchal de Montmorency
summoned his friends to his assistance, and, since he was known to
favour the Huguenots, Coligny and a number of Protestant gentlemen
hastened to Paris to offer him their services. To the general
astonishment, however, Condé took the cardinal’s part and openly blamed
Montmorency. “If,” said he, referring to the fracas by the Innocents,
“this was intended for a jest, it was too much; if it was in earnest,
too little.”
With the object of showing his sympathy with the cardinal in a more
practical form, at the end of January, he, in his turn, had the
pretension to enter Paris with three hundred horse. On reaching the
Bastille, however, he received a message from Montmorency summoning
him to retire immediately, which he did, though not without addressing
a letter of protest to the King, which was the cause of violent
dissensions in the Council, where the Cardinal de Bourbon took the part
of his brother, and the Constable energetically defended the action
of his son. On a second visit to the capital, which the prince paid a
few weeks later, he assured the Bishop of Paris that he would protect
the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and that he deplored the affront which
had been offered the Cardinal de Lorraine; and when the Parlement
complained that, in contravention of the edict, _prêches_ had
been held at his house, he answered that he had neither authorized nor
attended them.
The conduct of the prince, which seemed to foreshadow a complete
change of policy on his part, and to confirm the rumours already in
circulation as to a matrimonial alliance with the Guises, naturally
gave the greatest umbrage to the Huguenots, and the extreme section
of the party, already, as we have seen, very dissatisfied with their
leader, vented their annoyance in a stream of lampoons and satires. The
Duc d’Aumale, in his “Histoire des Princes de Condé,” stigmatizes the
Protestants as “unjust and ungrateful,” and declares that “there is no
proof that Condé ever contemplated a union by marriage with the House
of Lorraine.” “In any case,” continues the royal historian, “if he did
‘bind himself afresh’ to his former rivals; if he refused to take part
in all the quarrels and to share all the passions which were raging
around him, it was because he was sincerely desirous to obliterate the
traces, and prevent the renewal, of the civil war.”
The Duc d’Aumale could not, however, have been aware, at the time when
this was published, of a letter written by Mary Stuart to her aunt the
Duchesse d’Arschot, from which it would appear that the project of a
marriage between Condé and the beautiful young widow of François II.
had not only been very favourably received by the prince, but that
he had actually taken some active steps in the matter. “I hear,”
writes Mary, “that the Prince de Condé has demanded my hand of my
grandmother[70] and of the Cardinal de Lorraine, my uncle, and that
he has made the most splendid offers imaginable, both in regard to
religion and other matters.”[71]
Whatever offers Condé may have made, they had no effect upon Mary, who
was now firmly resolved to marry Darnley, and was, besides, thoroughly
disgusted with the unabashed selfishness of the Cardinal de Lorraine.
But the Queen of Scotland was not the only card in his Eminence’s
hand, and, though a match with the widowed Duchesse de Guise--whose
infatuation for the fascinating Duc de Nemours was common knowledge--or
with her daughter, a girl of thirteen, was not likely to prove so
attractive to Condé, there was still a possibility that it might be
arranged, and for months the Protestants were in a state of trepidation.
Their alarm was shared by Catherine de’ Medici, to whom the prospect
of so intimate a _rapprochement_ between the Houses of Bourbon
and Lorraine was anything but pleasing. Fully sensible though her
Majesty was of the importance of detaching the first Prince of the
Blood from the Protestant cause, she judged that this advantage would
be too dearly purchased by the subordination of the Crown to two
ambitious families, which would be the inevitable consequence of their
alliance; and she was determined to use every means in her power to
avert such a calamity. It was, of course, the King’s prerogative to
refuse to sanction a marriage of which he might happen to disapprove,
but arbitrary measures seldom commended themselves to Catherine, who
always preferred to gain her ends by indirect means, and shift the
odium which she would otherwise incur upon the shoulders of her agents.
She therefore bethought herself of Isabelle de Limeuil, who had lately
been transferred from Vienne to the Château of Tournon. Here, ready to
her hand, was a woman, who, as their intercepted correspondence had
shown her, had contrived, notwithstanding the infidelities of Condé,
to preserve all her power over him--a woman who knew better than any
other how to govern that emotional and fickle heart, by associating the
most incredible expressions of tenderness with the most exaggerated
flatteries. If Isabelle and her prince were brought together again, if
matters could be so arranged that the latter should be compelled to
offer his mistress the shelter of one of his own residences, was it not
probable that, in the joy of this reunion, the question of his second
marriage would be relegated, for a time at least, to the background?
And was it not probable, too, that the open scandal would provoke
remonstrances from his co-religionists which would irritate Condé and
widen the breach which existed between him and his party?
Interesting indeed must have been the letters which passed at this time
between the captive of Tournon and the enamoured prince, as the result
of which Isabelle was not only rescued from her prison, but conducted
to her lover at Valery, the château presented to Condé by her rival--a
piquant revenge, in good truth, upon the Maréchale de Saint-André for
the advantage which she had taken of Isabelle’s enforced absence from
the field! Unfortunately, the correspondence has not been preserved,
and the only light cast upon the situation is a passage in a despatch
from Smith to Cecil, dated 10 April, 1565: “The Prince de Condé has by
a certain gentleman stolen Mademoiselle de Lymoel (_sic_) from
Tournon, where she was kept, and has her with him.”[72]
And has her with him! Yes, under the same roof! “_Grand Dieu!_ it
was enough to make Calvin rise from his grave!”[73] cried the Huguenot
pastors, holding up their hands in righteous horror. “Had the prince
taken leave of his senses that he should choose to create a public
scandal and make ‘the Religion’ a by-word in the mouths of the forward,
at the very moment when Catherine and Philip of Spain were believed to
be plotting its destruction? Had not the way of salvation been made
sufficiently plain to him? Had not Bèze and Pérussel and l’Espine and
Laboissière spread the choicest flowers of their eloquence before him,
and in sermons two hours long insisted on the necessity of the leaders
of the faithful leading lives that should be beyond reproach. And this
was the result! Out upon him for an evil-liver and an apostate!”
The politicians of the party were scarcely less indignant than the
divines, and the reappearance of Isabelle upon the scene was the
signal for a very pretty quarrel between them and the prince, of which
a piquant account is given in an anonymous letter in Italian in the
Simancas Collection:
“I have seen a letter of Madame de Chelles,[74] from which she appears
to entertain great hopes of friendship between her brother and the
cardinal [de Lorraine]. My friend and I think that nothing can be
founded upon the words or the acts of so frivolous a man as Condé
shows himself to be, who is at present more than ever enamoured of his
Limeuil. Paroceli[75] has been here four or five days, and has preached
in private to his Huguenots. Languet learned from him that dissension
has arisen, on the subject of la Limeuil, between Condé and Châtillon
[Coligny], and subsequently between the aforesaid Condé and his
followers, in such manner that Châtillon has parted from him, has come
to Paris, and has withdrawn, some say to Châtillon, others to an abbey
belonging to him, and that Condé’s followers have almost all abandoned
him.
“The occasion of this was that a certain letter was written to Condé
from Paris, at the close of which was written: ‘The young lady has
come.’ Châtillon, who was standing over Condé as he read the letter,
saw these words, and, guessing what they meant, said to Condé: ‘I can
tell what young lady it is that has come to Paris.’ To which Condé
replied in certain words which showed that Châtillon’s speech was not
agreeable to him; but the matter did not go any further for the time
being.
“After la Limeuil had arrived at the place to which Condé had ordered
her to be conducted, and they had been seen together, certain
Huguenot gentlemen went and found Condé, and began to admonish him,
and, so to speak, to reprove him on the subject of his mistress. Upon
which, Condé, supposing that his secret had been revealed to them by
Châtillon, and that it was at his instigation that they had come to
reprove him, grew angry and said many things against them, designating
them spies, and then adding that it was Châtillon who had told them
this, and had sent them to talk to him; and with such indignation
that he went on to say much evil of Châtillon and his whole House ...
accusing them of arrogance, of presumption, and of not only wishing
to put themselves on a level with princes, when they were naught but
gentlemen of humble rank, but even of daring to insult him; and that
it was not in his nature to suffer this any longer. Through these and
such-like words, and even worse, it came about that Châtillon separated
himself from Condé. The greater part of the Huguenots have done
likewise, so that he finds himself now almost alone.”
However, a little reflection sufficed to convince the Huguenot leaders
that the discredit which it was bringing upon their Faith was not
the most serious aspect of Condé’s infatuation for Isabelle; in
other words, that Catherine was at the bottom of the affair, and had
deliberately thrown the two together again, “with a view to the prince
becoming what his brother had already become by means of la Rouet.”
“Suspecting which,” continues the writer of the letter already cited,
“the gentlemen of Condé’s party took counsel together to find a remedy
for so great an evil, and resolved upon three courses: first, that the
ministers should speak out roundly to him, representing the personal
danger and disgrace of the affair, and the scandal common to the whole
Religion, since he was its chief, and persuade him, if he could not
keep continent, to take a wife. The second remedy, if the first did
not succeed, was for the principal gentleman of the Religion, acting
in common accord, and his own intimate friends, to wait upon him and
address to him the same remonstrances, making him understand that, if
he did not separate himself from la Limeuil, they would leave him
alone; and, in effect, if he declined to do so, they would leave him.
The third remedy, in the event of the first two not succeeding, was
that la Limeuil should be excommunicated, anathematized, and delivered
into the power of Satan.”
In accordance with these resolutions, a deputation selected from the
most prominent Huguenot divines waited upon the backsliding prince
at Valery and endeavoured to awaken him to a sense of the error of
his ways. Condé received his reverend friends courteously enough, but
declared that he “could not keep continent and could not take a wife,
since it was difficult to find a person of his own rank belonging to
the same religion, and impossible to find one of another religion.”
Sadly the ministers withdrew, and the lay deputation advanced to the
attack. It met with anything but a cordial reception: indeed, his
Highness expressed his opinion of its interference with his private
affairs in such exceedingly plain language that it was obliged to beat
a precipitate retreat. Whence, we are told, “the Religion found itself
in great trouble and knew not what further to do, since it feared to
make matters worse by excommunicating la Limeuil, Condé being of a
nature so inclined to women that there was great danger lest la Limeuil
should have more power over him than the Religion.”
The counsel of the more prudent members of the party was to leave
things alone, and to trust to time. It proved a wise decision. Passions
of this kind are more frequently nourished than overcome by opposition;
while, on the other hand, the greater the facilities for enjoying
the society of the enchantress, the more speedily do disillusion
and lassitude arrive. After the first rapture of the reunion, Condé
began to ask himself whether, after all, he was not acting very
unwisely in quarrelling with his personal friends and jeopardizing
his political future for the sake of a girl who had been the cause of
so much scandal, and who, he had good reason to believe, had not even
troubled to remain faithful to him. Isabelle, perceiving that the
prince had not the least intention of regularizing their connexion,
and mortified by the manner in which her name was being bandied about,
began to regard Condé as the author of her misfortunes. Hence arose
quarrels, tears, recriminations. Condé reproached Isabelle with her
intimacy with Du Fresne and others. Isabelle retorted by accusing
the prince of neglecting her for the Maréchale de Saint-André, to
whom, in recognition of the gift of Valery, he had felt obliged to
pay some fugitive attentions, and did not fail to take advantage of
the opportunity which his acceptance of the maréchale’s calculating
generosity afforded her for the exercise of her powers of sarcasm.
Wit is a dangerous weapon for lovers to play with, and Isabelle’s was
sharper than a two-edged sword.
At length, the situation became so unpleasant that Condé determined to
put an end to it; and, towards the close of the spring, he broke of
his own free will with Isabelle and was reconciled to the Protestants.
They, needless to say, received the repentant prodigal with open arms
and lost no time in setting to work to procure him a second wife. They
found her in Mlle. de Longueville,[76] a young lady who joined to high
rank and the profession of the Reformed faith considerable personal
attractions, and, in September, Condé set off for Niort to obtain the
King’s sanction to his marriage, “leaving the Maréchale de Saint-André
dissolved in tears and regrets for having been so foolish as to consume
her substance in vain expenses to acquire the quality of the wife of a
Prince of the Blood.”
Catherine, though disappointed at the reconciliation between Condé
and his party, was greatly relieved that the prospect of an alliance
with the Guises had come to nothing; and Charles IX., on her advice,
not only expressed his approval of the marriage, but authorized its
celebration at the Court, according to the rites of the Protestant
religion, where it took place on 5 November 1565.
The new Princesse de Condé was in many ways an estimable young woman,
and the marriage, which was to be cut short by the prince’s tragic
death three years later, appears to have been a happy one. She had,
however, been very strictly brought up and was, moreover, of a
decidedly jealous disposition, and she was determined not to permit
the souvenirs of her husband to be dragged about France by his former
mistresses. No sooner married, than, following the example of the
Duchesse d’Étampes when she had supplanted Madame de Châteaubriand in
the affections of François I., she imperiously demanded of the prince
that he should require Isabelle to restore all the presents that he had
made her; and Condé, who was one of those men who are quite incapable
of resisting the caprices of the preferred of the moment, was mean
enough to obey.
When the messenger sent by the prince informed Isabelle of the object
of his visit, she flew into the most violent passion and made so
terrible a scene that, had he not happened to be a Huguenot of a
particularly inflexible type, he would doubtless have returned to Condé
and reported the failure of his mission. As it was, he waited patiently
until her fury had expended itself, and then repeated his request. The
lady left the room and presently returned with a packet, in which she
had placed all the jewels she had received from Condé and a portrait of
the prince by a celebrated painter, the first token of his love that
he had given her. Sitting down at the table, she placed the portrait
before her and decorated it with an enormous pair of horns; and then
contemptuously tossed it and the packet of jewels to the astonished
messenger. “Take them, my friend,” said she, “and carry them to your
master; I send him everything that he gave me. I have neither added
nor taken away anything. Tell that beautiful princess, his wife, who
has importuned him so much to demand from me what he gave me, that, if
a certain nobleman--mentioning him by name--had treated her mother
in the same way, and had claimed and taken away all that he had given
her, she would be as poor in trinkets and jewels as any demoiselle of
the Court. Well, let her make use of the paste and the baubles; I leave
them to her.”[77]
It is to be hoped that Condé had the grace to feel ashamed of himself
when his messenger returned; but since, in common with the majority of
his contemporaries, he possessed a pretty thick skin, we are inclined
to doubt whether such a reproof would have occasioned him more than a
momentary vexation. Public opinion, we are told, however, judged him
very severely, and declared that he had acted most ungenerously “in
having despoiled this poor lady, who had honestly earned such presents
_par la sueur de son corps_.”[78]
In one of his despatches, written soon after the rupture between the
prince and Isabelle, Sir Thomas Smith announced that “the Prince
de Condé had married la Limoel (_sic_) to a gentleman of his
and given them 15,000 livres a year.”[79] The Ambassador had been
misinformed, for Isabelle was still single at the time, nor was this
project, if it really existed, ever realized. The lady, however,
notwithstanding the notoriety of her relations with Condé and the
criminal charge which had been brought against her, was not long in
finding a husband.
There was at this time in Paris an Italian banker named Scipion
Sardini, who, by the favour of Catherine de’ Medici, who appears
to have dipped pretty frequently into his purse, had contrived to
amass an immense fortune, and “from a little sardine had grown into
a big whale.” He had recently acquired the estate and the beautiful
château of Chaumont-sur-Loire and the title of baron to go with it,
and desired to find a high-born damsel who would be willing to share
his prosperity. Since however, high-born damsels were, for the most
part, inclined to look askance at a suitor whose origin was shrouded
in impenetrable obscurity, he cast his eyes in the direction of
Isabelle, who, he judged, could not afford to be so fastidious; and
laid his heart, his fortune, and his brand-new title at her feet.
She condescended to accept them, and went to live at the sumptuous
Hôtel Sardini, situated in the Quartier Saint-Marcel, at the corner
of the Rue de la Barre. The union was not an unqualified success, for
Isabelle’s misfortunes had soured her temper, and the pretentious
_parvenu_ whom she had married had good reason to regret that he
had not contented himself with a more amiable, if less aristocratic,
consort. A great lady still, despite her lost reputation, she never
forgave her husband his lowly origin, and permitted no opportunity to
pass of allowing him to see how much she despised him; and, whenever
he had been so unfortunate as to displease her, which appears to have
happened pretty frequently, she would remind the poor man of the honour
which she, a woman of such noble birth, had done him in giving him
her hand. To which Sardini would reply, not without reason: “I have
done more for you; I have dishonoured myself in order to restore you
your honour!” Then Isabelle would hurl at him a perfect volley of
invective, until, fearing that it might be followed by missiles of a
more substantial kind, he would fly from her presence and take refuge
in his own apartments.
These perpetual quarrels, however, did not prevent this ill-assorted
couple from having three children: two sons and a daughter, of whom
the latter, Madeleine Sardini, is said to have inherited not a little
of her mother’s beauty. Unfortunately, she appears to have inherited
her quarrelsome disposition as well, as did her brothers, for, after
their parents’ death, they went to law over the division of the Sardini
fortune and provided the gentlemen of the long robe with some very
pretty pickings.
* * * * *
We shall pass briefly over the last three years of Condé’s eventful
life.
In September 1567, civil war broke out again. The Protestants, alarmed
and exasperated by the refusal of the Government to disband a force of
6000 Swiss mercenaries, which had been raised to protect the eastern
frontier from any aggression on the part of the Spanish troops marching
from Italy to the Netherlands, and by the rumour that this force was to
be used against them, rose in arms. An attempt was made by Condé and
Coligny, at the head of a body of cavalry, to seize the person of the
King, as he was on his way from Monceaux, where he had intended to pass
the autumn, to Paris. But Charles IX. had had time to summon the Swiss
to his aid, and, the Huguenots not being in sufficient force to risk an
engagement with these valiant mercenaries, who, “lowering their pikes,
ran at them like mad dogs, at full speed,” he reached his capital in
safety.
Condé followed, and, having been reinforced, occupied Saint-Denis and
proceeded, with astonishing daring, to blockade Paris, although his
army does not seem to have exceeded 6000 men and he was without a
single piece of artillery; while the Constable, with a vastly superior
force, lay within the city. Montmorency, however, who always carried
caution to excess, was disinclined to take the offensive, and it
was not until the Huguenots had committed the mistake of detaching
a considerable part of their slender forces, under Andelot and
Montgomery, to occupy Poissy and Pontoise that he ventured to offer
battle. The royal army was 19,000 strong, that of Condé certainly did
not exceed 3000 men; but the prince had no thought of declining an
engagement, and ranged his little force in the plain near Saint-Denis.
The Catholic attack was repulsed all along the line, and then, while
Coligny fell upon the Parisian militia, who, arrayed in all their
martial finery--“gilded like chalices,” as a Huguenot historian puts
it[80]--formed the left wing of the Royalists, and drove them in
headlong rout towards the city, Condé, with the bulk of the Huguenot
horse, burst suddenly upon the centre, where the Constable commanded in
person. So furious was his charge that the Catholic cavalry were broken
and hurled back, and the Constable himself fell mortally wounded. “If
the Grand Signior,” exclaimed the Turkish Ambassador, who, from the
heights of Montmartre, had witnessed the prince’s onslaught, “if the
Grand Signior had only two thousand men like those in white”--the
Huguenots wore white surcoats--“to place at the head of each of his
armies, in two years the world would be his!”
But a complete victory against such overwhelming odds would have
been in the nature of a miracle. The main body of the Catholics was
unbroken; the Maréchal de Montmorency, the Constable’s eldest son,
assumed the command and rallied the shattered squadrons; and the
Huguenots were being hard pressed on all sides, when the failing light
came to their assistance and enabled them to fall back in tolerable
order on Saint-Denis. The Royalists, disheartened by the fall of their
leader, did not attempt to pursue, and, after occupying the field of
battle for a few hours, in sign of victory, re-entered Paris.
Condé’s position being no longer tenable, he decided to lead his
little army towards Lorraine, to join John Casimir, son of the Elector
Palatine, who was advancing to his assistance with a strong force of
German mercenaries. After a hazardous march, he crossed the Meuse in
safety, and at Pont-à-Mousson effected his junction with the Germans.
Having now once more a considerable army at his disposal, he turned
again towards Paris, and, at the end of February 1658, laid siege to
Chartres. Negotiations for peace had, however, already begun; and a
month later (23 March) the Peace of Longjumeau, which reaffirmed the
Amboise Edict, put an end to the second war.
It was merely a respite, for the Court had determined on the ruin
of the Huguenots, and, at the end of August, orders were issued for
the arrest of Condé and Coligny, who were at the former’s château of
Noyers, in Burgundy. Warned in time, they succeeded in effecting their
escape with their families, traversed the whole breadth of France, and
gained the sheltering walls of La Rochelle, where they were joined by
Jeanne d’Albret, and her young son, Henri of Navarre.[81]
The third War of Religion began forthwith, and was conducted with
pitiless cruelty on both sides. The results of the autumn campaign
of 1568 were favourable to the Protestants, who mastered almost all
the South and West. But, with the new year, their fortunes changed.
In February, Condé and Coligny with the main Huguenot army marched
eastwards to meet their German allies, who were advancing from the
Rhine. Finding, however, that Tavannes, who directed the Catholics,
under the name of the Duc d’Anjou (afterwards Henri III.), had divined
this movement and was preparing to oppose it, they turned to the
South-West, with the intention of effecting their junction with the
Huguenot forces from Quercy. Tavannes, however, outmarched them and
barred their way, upon which they decided to turn to the North, seize
one of the passages of the Loire, and join hands with the Germans.
But Tavannes followed close on their heels, crossed the Charente by a
stratagem, and fell upon the rearguard of the Huguenots, under Coligny,
near Jarnac (13 March).
On learning that the Admiral was attacked, Condé, who had left Jarnac
with the main body of the army that morning, turned back at once, and,
after sending orders to the rest of his troops to follow him with all
speed, hastened to his assistance, at the head of three hundred horse.
“For,” says Le Noue, “he had the heart of a lion, and, whenever he
heard that there was fighting, he longed to be in the thick of it.”
On the way, he was met by a messenger from Coligny, who had sent to
beg him not to make a useless effort, and to retreat. “God forbid,” he
replied, “that Louis de Bourbon should turn his back to the enemy!” And
he hastened on.
On his arrival on the field, he found Coligny struggling against
almost the entire Catholic army, and in danger of being surrounded.
An immediate retreat would have been the wisest course, but to this
the prince refused to consent, and drawing up the cavalry in a long
line, with himself and his little band in the centre, he prepared to
charge the dense columns of the enemy. A day or two before, his left
arm had been badly crushed by a fall from his horse, and, now, as his
helmet was being adjusted, his right leg was broken by a kick from
the charger of his brother-in-law, the Comte de la Rochefoucauld. “You
see,” said he, mastering the pain, “that mettlesome horses are of more
harm than use in an army.”
Those about him urged him to dismount, but he refused to leave the
saddle, and, pointing first to his injured limbs and then to his
standard, which bore the device: “_Pro Christo et patriâ dulce
periculum_,” he cried: “Nobles of France, behold the moment so long
desired! Remember in what plight Louis de Bourbon goes into battle for
Christ and country!”[82]
Then, with his three hundred horse, he threw himself on the Catholic
cavalry and drove them back in confusion on the “_bataille_,”
which the Duc d’Anjou led in person. But the charges of Coligny on the
right, and Montgommery on the left, failed completely, and the prince’s
little troop was soon assailed on all sides by overwhelming numbers.
Condé’s horse was killed under him, and, impeded by his injuries, he
was unable to mount another. His followers gathered around him and
fought on heroically, but one by one they were cut down. Among these
devoted men, d’Aubigné tells us, was an aged gentleman named La Vergne,
who had joined Condé accompanied by twenty-five of his sons, grandsons,
and nephews. “He and fifteen of his relatives were left dead on the
field, all in a heap.”
Soon Condé found himself almost alone, but, with his back to a tree and
kneeling on one knee, he continued to defend himself. His strength,
however, was failing fast, and perceiving two Catholic gentlemen,
d’Argence and Saint-Jean, to whom he had once been of service, he
called out to them, raised the vizor of his helmet, and handed them his
gauntlets, in token of surrender. The two gentlemen sprang from their
horses, and with several others formed a circle round Condé, promising
to protect his life with their own. Scarcely, however, had they done
so, when Anjou’s guards passed by, and their captain, “a very brave
and honourable gentleman, called Montesquiou,”[83] learning the name
of the prisoner, wheeled his horse round, galloped up to the group,
and shouting: “Kill! _Mordieu!_ Kill!” drew a pistol from his
holster, and shot the prince through the head from behind, killing him
instantly.[84]
Thus died--“on the true bed of honour,” as Jeanne d’Albret expresses
it--Louis I. de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, a man typical of his age and
of his country, alike in his faults and his good qualities. If the
former were, as we have seen, many and glaring, the latter were no less
conspicuous. “In courage and in courtesy,” writes La Noue, “no one
surpassed him. His conversation was eloquent, rather from nature than
from cultivation; he was generous and affable towards all; he was an
excellent leader in war, yet, at the same time, a lover of peace. In
adversity he bore himself even better than in prosperity.”
The battle of Jarnac was little more than a skirmish, for the greater
part of the Protestant army had not been engaged at all, and its
losses, except among the cavalry, were inconsiderable. The death of
Condé, however, created a profound impression. The Catholic chiefs
fondly imagined that, with his fall, the Huguenots would cease to
be formidable, and their joy, in consequence, was extreme. A solemn
_Te Deum_ was chanted at the Court and in every church in France;
thanksgiving processions took place at Brussels and Venice, and the
captured standards were sent to Rome, to be hung in St. Peter’s as a
perpetual memorial.
By the orders of the detestable Anjou, the body of the murdered prince
was treated with the most shameful indignity. “The same night that the
battle was fought, the Duc d’Anjou, pursuing the enemy, victoriously
entered into Jarnac, whither the body of the prince was carried in
triumph on the back of a miserable ass, to the infinite joy and
diversion of the whole army, which made a joke of this spectacle,
though, while he lived, they were terrified at the name of so great a
man.”[85] For two whole days it lay exposed to the effects of the air
and the vulgar insults of Anjou and his creatures, and was then handed
over to Condé’s brother-in-law, the Duc de Longueville, who caused it
to be interred in the ancestral vault at Vendôme.[86]
CHAPTER VII
Henri I. de Bourbon, Prince de Condé--His personal appearance
and character--Jeanne d’Albret presents Henri of Navarre and
Condé to the army--The “Admiral’s pages”--The “Journey of the
Princes”--Battle of Arnay-le-Duc--Condé at La Rochelle--Henri
of Navarre is betrothed to Marguerite de Valois, and Condé to
Marie de Clèves--An awkward lover--Marriage of Condé--Massacre
of Saint-Bartholomew--The King of Navarre and Condé are ordered
to abjure their religion--Firmness of the latter, who, however,
at length yields--Humiliating position of Condé--Intrigue
between his wife and the Duc d’Anjou--Condé at the siege of La
Rochelle--Anjou elected King of Poland--He offers the hand of
his discarded mistress, Mlle. de Châteauneuf, to Nantouillet,
provost of Paris--Unpleasant consequences of the provost’s
refusal of this honour.
By his two marriages, Louis I., Prince de Condé, had had eleven
children, of whom seven--six sons and a daughter--survived him.[87] The
eldest son, Henri de Bourbon, was at this time in his seventeenth year.
In appearance, he was very short, like his father, and very slightly
built, with a countenance which betokened an extremely sensitive
nature, a nervous and delicate constitution: a high forehead, large,
expressive blue eyes, a long face, a long, straight nose, and thin
lips. In character, save in the matter of physical courage, the new
head of the House of Condé had little in common with his predecessor.
Nor is this surprising, since few princes have passed a more gloomy
boyhood. The constant companion of his mother during the last sad years
of her life, he had shared with her the hardships and dangers of the
civil war, and had been shut up in Orléans, amid the horrors of that
terrible siege. Returning home, he had seen the poor princess, “to
whom he had plighted his boundless reverence and love,”[88] slowly
languish away before his eyes, worn out by sickness and sorrow. Then
had come Condé’s second marriage, and the lad had been left to the care
of bigoted divines, who had brought him up in the strictest tenets
of the Calvinistic faith. Finally, scarcely had he been summoned to
take his place by his father’s side, than that father had been foully
slain. Thus, at the age of sixteen, Henri de Bourbon had experienced
little of life but its sorrows, and was a thoughtful, grave, and almost
melancholy youth, without any of those social qualities which had made
his father so popular, but very superior to him in the earnestness of
his religious convictions, and ready, as we shall see hereafter, to
suffer for the truth in circumstances which overcame the courage and
constancy of some even of the boldest.
On the day of Jarnac, the young prince and his cousin, Henri of
Navarre, had been with the Protestant army. But they had not been
permitted to take any part in the engagement, and had been ordered to
retire to Saintes, where they were joined by Jeanne d’Albret, who at
the first news of the defeat had left La Rochelle. Taking the two lads
with her, the indomitable Queen of Navarre hastened to the Huguenot
camp at Tonnay-Charente, and, in an eloquent speech, presented them to
the troops, and made each of them swear “on his honour, soul, and life”
never to abandon the cause. The army received them with acclamations,
and the young Prince of Béarn was forthwith chosen as its leader;
while, as a mark of its respect and gratitude for the hero whom it had
lost, the new Prince de Condé was associated with him in command.
For more than two years the double signature, “Henry, Henry de
Bourbon,” appeared at the foot of the official documents of the
Reformed party.[89] But, though always accompanied by the two young
princes, and nominally acting as their lieutenant and counsellor,
Coligny had henceforward the undivided command of the Huguenot army,
as well as the principal voice in determining the policy of his party;
and, by the camp-fire, the lads were commonly referred to as “the
Admiral’s pages.”
The young Béarnais, with his good-humoured, sunburned face, his
broad shoulders, and his wiry frame strengthened and developed by
the manly, out-door life which he had led amid the keen and bracing
air of the Pyrenees, presented a singular contrast to his slight,
delicate-looking, grave cousin. The Queen of Navarre had charged him to
love Condé as a brother and “cultivate with him an affection cemented
by the ties of blood and religion which should never be severed.”
But, though the prince, ever a dutiful son, seems to have made some
effort to follow her instructions, and though, during the remainder
of the Queen’s life, an appearance of close intimacy was strictly
maintained between the cousins, their characters and tastes were far
too dissimilar for much sympathy to have existed between them, and, in
later years, their relations became at times very strained indeed.
The summer and autumn of 1569 were disastrous to the Protestant cause.
Although, owing to the jealousy between the Court generals, in May,
the Duke of Zweibrücken’s German mercenaries were able to cross the
Loire and join the main Huguenot army, the combined forces effected
comparatively little, and at the beginning of October they experienced
a crushing defeat in the bloody battle of Moncontour.
If the Royalists had followed up their success, this might have proved
a fatal blow to the Protestants; but Charles IX., jealous of the
success of Anjou, the nominal commander at Moncontour, himself took
command of the army, and frittered its strength away in besieging
Saint-Jean-d’Angely, thus giving the Huguenots time to reorganize their
forces. Always greatest in adversity, Coligny, taking with him Henry
of Navarre and the young Condé, started southwards from Parthenay (6
October), on that wonderful march afterwards known as the “Journey
of the Princes.” A month later saw him at Montauban, where he stayed
for a while to rest his troops, and then, crossing the Garonne, he
mercilessly ravaged the country south of that river. Recrossing to the
north bank, where he was joined by Montgommery with reinforcements, he
swept down on Toulouse, burned the country houses of the members of
the Parlement in revenge for the judicial murder of one of the late
Prince de Condé’s gentlemen two years before, passed by the walls of
Carcassonne and Montpellier, and entered Nîmes. Here he turned to the
North, and marched through Dauphiné and the Lyonnais to the very heart
of France, carrying terror and devastation wherever he went.
Meanwhile, a Catholic force under the Maréchal de Cossé had gathered
in the Orléannais and marched eastwards to intercept his advance.
At Arnay-le-Duc, on 26 June 1570, the two armies met. The Royalists
outnumbered their adversaries by more than two to one, and were well
provided with artillery, whereas the Huguenots had not a single gun.
But Coligny took up a masterly position, which prevented the enemy
either from employing their cannon or from outflanking him, and drove
them back with heavy loss.
It was in this engagement that the two young princes received their
“baptism of fire.” Hitherto, notwithstanding their urgent entreaties,
Coligny had refused to allow them to expose themselves. Thus, though
they had been with the army at Moncontour, they had been ordered to
the rear before the battle actually began, accompanied by so large an
escort that, according to d’Aubigné, the Huguenot forces were thereby
seriously weakened. On the present occasion, however, Coligny’s
position was too critical for him to spare an escort, and Henri of
Navarre was accordingly given the nominal command of the first line of
cavalry, while Condé was at the head of the second. Both took part in
several charges, and gave abundant proof that they had inherited the
bravery of their warlike ancestors.
The victory of Arnay-le-Duc, following closely as it did on a series of
Huguenot successes in the West of France, had important consequences.
The miserable condition of the country, the exhausted finances, the
enmity between the Montmorency and Lorraine factions of the Catholic
party, the jealousy between Charles IX. and Anjou, and the fear of
active intervention by England, had all combined to persuade Catherine
that it was impossible to carry on the war much longer; and she now
decided that peace must be made with as little delay as possible.
Pius V. and Philip II. made every effort to dissuade her, the former
warning her that “there could be no communion between Satan and the
sons of light;” but their remonstrances were unheeded, and on 8 August,
the Peace of Saint-Germain put an end to the war, and accorded the
Protestants infinitely greater concessions than any which they had yet
obtained.[90]
The two years which followed “_la paix boiteuse et malassise_,”[91] as
the Peace of Saint-Germain was wittily called, were passed by Condé
chiefly at La Rochelle, which had now become the headquarters of the
Huguenots, and was one of the four towns which they were permitted to
hold as security for the strict observance of the edict. The religious
earnestness and gravity so far beyond his years which the young prince
showed had gained him the entire confidence of Coligny, who had decided
to delegate to him the direction of the Protestants of the West; and it
was Condé who, in the Admiral’s absence, executed his orders in Poitou
and Saintonge and kept him informed of all that was passing there.
During the greater part of the year 1571, Jeanne d’Albret and Henri
of Navarre were also at La Rochelle. If Condé had little affection
for his cousin, to his aunt he was warmly attached, while she, on her
side, seems to have looked upon him almost as a second son. As for his
step-mother, the dowager-princess, his feelings towards her were the
reverse of cordial. Not only had she never shown him any sympathy or
affection, but, having recently abandoned the Reformed faith herself,
she had surrendered her sons and stepsons to their uncle, the Cardinal
de Bourbon, to be brought up in the Catholic religion. Her conduct,
which was denounced by the Huguenots as an act of infamous treachery
to her dead husband, had naturally occasioned Condé the most intense
indignation, but, since it had occurred during the war, he had, of
course, been powerless to interfere.
In order to flatter the Huguenots and allay their suspicions, while,
at the same time, weakening their power of offence, by bringing their
nominal chief directly under her own influence, Catherine de’ Medici
was now anxious to arrange a marriage between her only unmarried
daughter, Marguerite de Valois, and Henri of Navarre; and from the
beginning of 1571 active negotiations were carried on between the
Court and La Rochelle, and Biron, Cossé, and Castelnau were in turn
despatched thither to confer with Jeanne d’Albret and the Protestant
leaders. Jeanne received the overtures of the Court with mixed
feelings. She was intensely ambitious for her idolized son and desirous
of doing everything in her power to promote the interests of her
party. But she hated Catherine and all the Valois, and entertained
the most profound distrust of their professions of friendship; and,
had the decision rested with her alone, the proffered alliance would
most certainly have been rejected. However, the Huguenot leaders were
practically unanimous in urging her to consent; the nobility of her
own little kingdom likewise pronounced for the marriage; and Henri
himself added his persuasions to theirs. And so, with a very bad grace,
the Queen yielded, and early in January, 1572, left Pau for Blois, to
settle the preliminaries with Catherine.
The negotiations for the marriage of Henri of Navarre had been preceded
by the arrangement by Jeanne d’Albret of a very advantageous match for
the young Prince de Condé. The wife selected for him was his cousin,
Marie de Clèves, Marquise d’Isles, the youngest of the three daughters
of François de Clèves, Duc de Nevers, and Marguerite de Bourbon.[92]
Marie de Clèves was not only a great heiress, but an extremely
beautiful girl, and Condé considered himself a very fortunate young
man. He had reason to think differently, however, before he had been
married many weeks.
Condé and his bride-elect were both at Blois when the Queen of Navarre
arrived there. It was some years since Jeanne had passed any time at
the Court, and it had changed very much for the worse in the interval.
In a letter to her son, she stigmatizes it, with good reason, as “the
most vicious and corrupt society that ever existed.” “No one that
I see here,” she writes, “is exempt from its evil influences. Your
cousin, the marchioness,[93] is so greatly changed that she gives no
sign of belonging to the Religion, if it be not that she abstains
from attending Mass; for, in all else, save that she abstains from
this idolatry, she conducts herself like other Papists, and my sister
_Madame la Princesse_[94] sets an even worse example. This I
write to you in confidence. The bearer of this letter will tell you
how the King emancipates himself; it is a pity. I would not for any
consideration that you should abide here. For this reason, I desire
to see you married, that you and your wife may withdraw yourselves
from this corruption; for, although I believed it to be very great,
it surpasses my anticipation. Here, it is not the men who solicit the
women, but the women the men. If you were here, you would never escape,
save by some remarkable mercy of God.”
Although Jeanne strenuously resisted all attempts of the King and
Catherine to draw her son to Blois, she felt perfectly at ease in
regard to Condé’s presence there, for the young prince’s Calvinism was
of that rigid type which made no distinction between pleasure and vice,
and, unlike his cousin, he had never shown any inclination for feminine
society. He had, nevertheless, quickly succumbed to the charms of his
beautiful _fiancée_, though his awkward attempts at love-making
must have aroused no small amount of amusement; for the Queen of
Navarre wrote to her son that “if he could not make love with better
grace than his cousin, she counselled him to leave the matter alone.”
The marriage of Condé and Marie de Clèves took place on 10 August,
1572, at the Château of Blandy, near Melun, the seat of the Marquise
de Rothelin, mother of the Dowager-Princesse de Condé, in the presence
of Charles IX., Henri of Navarre, his _fiancée_ Marguerite de
Valois, the two queens, Catherine de’ Medici and Elizabeth of Austria,
and a great number of noblemen of both religions; and was celebrated
“_tout-à-fait à la Huguenote_.” For the Reformers, however, it
seemed to take place under somewhat mournful auspices, since she who
had planned it was no more. Jeanne d’Albret had arrived in Paris in the
last week in May; on 4 June she was taken ill, and on the 9th she died,
at the age of forty-four. Sinister rumour were circulated concerning
her death, and it was asserted that the Queen-Mother had caused her to
be poisoned. But, as we have pointed out in a previous work, there can
be no question that Jeanne’s health had been gradually failing for some
time past, and the most trustworthy evidence goes to indicate that she
died a natural death.[95]
Immediately after the marriage, Condé and his bride came to Paris
for the marriage of the young King of Navarre, which was celebrated
with the utmost magnificence on Monday, 18 August. But the wedding
festivities were of very brief duration; for on the Friday came the
attempted assassination of Coligny, and on the Sunday the terrible
Massacre of St. Bartholomew, to which Catherine had been driven by the
failure of the lesser crime.
Very early in the morning--the massacre had begun about two hours
after midnight by the murder of Coligny at his lodging in the Rue des
Fossés-Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois--the King of Navarre and Condé, who
were both lodged with their brides in the Louvre, were arrested and
conducted to Charles IX.’s cabinet. “Take that _canaille_ away!”
cried Charles, pointing to the attendants of Navarre, who had been
apprehended with their master; and the hapless gentlemen were led
out and mercilessly butchered in the courtyard of the palace. Then
the half-mad King, who was beside himself with passion, informed the
princes that all that was being done was by his orders; that they had
allowed themselves to be made the leaders of his enemies, and that
their lives were justly forfeited. As, however, they were his kinsmen
and connections, he would pardon them, if they conformed to the
religion of their ancestors, the only one he would henceforth tolerate
in his realm. If not, they must prepare to share the fate of their
friends.
Navarre, of a more politic and wary disposition than his cousin, and,
besides, somewhat indifferent on the subject of religion, assumed a
conciliatory tone, begging the King not to compel him to outrage his
conscience, and to consider that he was now not only his kinsman, but
closely connected with him by marriage. Condé, on the other hand,
courageously replied that he refused to believe the King capable of
violating his most sacred pledges, but that he was accountable for his
religion to God alone, and would remain faithful to it, even if it cost
him his life. “Madman! conspirator! rebel! son of a rebel!” cried the
infuriated monarch. “If in three days you do not change your tone, I
will have you strangled!” And he dismissed them from his presence, with
directions that they should be most strictly guarded.
The conversion of the two princes greatly occupied the Court. The young
Queen of Navarre, a fervent Catholic, spared no effort to persuade
her husband to return to the fold of the Church, and found zealous
auxiliaries in the Cardinal de Bourbon, the Queen’s confessor the
Jesuit Maldonato, and Sureau des Roziers, an ex-Huguenot pastor, who
had been converted to Catholicism by the sound of arquebuses. The
astute Béarnais, who already seems to have had some presentiment of
the part he was one day to play, was not the man to sacrifice a great
future to his attachment to the Reformed doctrines, and accordingly
feigned to lend an attentive ear to the arguments of his teachers.
Condé was the object of like solicitation, to which, however, he
replied with anger and contempt. His obstinacy so enraged the King
that one day, when he learned that the prince had proved more than
usually contumacious, he called for his arms, swearing that he would
proceed to his cousin’s apartments, at the head of his guards, and
slay him with his own hand. Probably, he only intended to intimidate
him into submission; but his queen, the gentle and pious Elizabeth of
Austria, believing that he was in earnest, threw herself at his feet,
and besought him not to stain his hands with his kinsman’s blood. His
Majesty yielded to her entreaties and contented himself with summoning
Condé to his presence, and, when he appeared, shouting in a voice of
thunder: “Mass, death, or Bastille! Choose!” “God allows me not, my
lord and king,” replied the prince quietly, “to choose the first. Of
the others, be it at your pleasure, whichever God may in His providence
direct!”
Despite this bold answer, he shortly afterwards consented to abjure,
“laying upon the head of Des Roziers the risk of his damnation”; the
King of Navarre did likewise; and on 3 October, the “converted” princes
addressed to the Pope a very humble letter, begging him to accept their
submission and admit them into the fold. Condé and Marie de Clèves
also expressed their regret for having allowed themselves to be united
in wedlock without the rites of Holy Church.
Gregory XIII., who had just caused a medal to be struck with his own
portrait on one side, and, on the other, a destroying angel immolating
the Huguenots, was graciously pleased to accord the petition of the
young couple, and granted them absolution and dispensation, in virtue
of which they were married again, this time according to the Catholic
ritual, in the Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés (December, 1572).
Notwithstanding their abjuration, the King of Navarre and Condé
were still regarded with suspicion and remained in a sort of
quasi-captivity. Their position was a difficult one, and it must have
needed all their self-control to prevent them from openly resenting the
sneers and taunts which the nobles of the Court felt themselves safe in
levelling at them. “On All Hallows’ Eve,” writes L’Estoile, “the King
of Navarre was playing tennis with the Duc de Guise, when the scant
consideration which was shown this little prisoner of a kinglet, at
whom he threw all kinds of jests and taunts, deeply pained a number of
honest people who were watching them play.”[96]
The “kinglet,” however, knew how to accommodate himself to
circumstances, and was often able to turn the laugh on his own side by
some lively repartée. After a while, too, Charles IX., who had always
entertained a strong liking for Henri, began to treat him with kindness
and even affection, in consequence of which even the Guises felt
obliged to show him a certain degree of deference.
[Illustration: HENRI I DE BOURBON, PRINCE DE CONDÉ
FROM A LITHOGRAPH BY DELPECH, AFTER THE PAINTING BY MAUZAISSE]
With Condé, however, it was very different. To one of his austere
nature, this Court, which had degenerated to such an appalling extent,
owing to the corruption of morals produced by the civil wars, that vice
had become the mode, and virtue, even ordinary decency, was mocked at
and derided, must have seemed the very anti-chamber of hell; and he was
at no pains to conceal the disgust with which it inspired him. The King
of Navarre might drink and gamble with the murderers of his faithful
followers, and make love to the high-born courtesans who had passed
obscene jests on the stripped corpses of the Huguenot nobles as they
lay in the courtyard of the Louvre on that terrible morning. Policy
required, he said, that he and his cousin should dissimulate their
feelings. Well, let him do it! For himself, he would have no dealings
with them, beyond that which ordinary courtesy demanded. And so he
stood aloof, a gloomy, silent figure--an object of suspicion, dislike
and derision to King and courtiers alike--with none to sympathize or
condole with him in his loneliness and humiliation.
For even his wife had failed him. She was but a giddy butterfly,
who, though educated in the Reformed Faith, had never professed any
attachment for it, and had forsaken it without a regret. As for her
husband, she appears to have married him merely because he happened
to be the best match which offered itself, and because her relatives
desired it. His sombre nature, embittered by the new trials to which he
was being subjected, was but little to her taste, and she infinitely
preferred the society of the Duc d’Anjou, who had conceived for her a
most violent passion.
If we are to believe Brantôme, this affair had begun some few months
before the lady’s marriage to Condé, and Anjou had not been permitted
to sigh in vain. “This same prince [Anjou],” he writes, “aware that
she [Marie de Clèves] was about to marry a prince [Condé] who had
displeased him and very much troubled the State of his brother [Charles
IX.], debauched her ... and then, in two months’ time, she was given to
the aforesaid prince [Condé] to wife, as a pretended virgin, which was
a very sweet revenge.”
We can well believe that the seduction of the promised wife of an
enemy would have been just the kind of exploit to appeal to the future
Henri III.; but Brantôme is too incorrigible a scandalmonger for much
reliance to be placed on his unsupported testimony. However, that
may be, Anjou’s admiration for Marie de Clèves was now the talk of
the Court, and the poet Philippe Desportes, who prostituted his muse
to the services of the last Valois, as we shall see Malherbe, at a
later date, minister to the amorous fancies of Henri IV., hastened
to immortalize the affair in verse, and composed an elegy, in which
the lovers figured under the names of Eurylas and Olympias, and the
jealousy of the husband was unmercifully ridiculed.
Anjou was already provided with a mistress in the person of one
of Catherine’s maids-of-honour, Renée de Rieux, demoiselle de
Châteauneuf--called _la belle_ Châteauneuf--a ravishing blonde of
twenty summers, with wonderful blue eyes, a complexion of lilies and
roses, and “hair which looked like a crown of gold.” She passed for the
most perfect beauty of the Court, and one could pay a lady no higher
compliment than to say that she resembled her.[97]
Mlle. de Châteauneuf was so proud of the distinction which his Royal
Highness had conferred upon her that she was prepared to make any
sacrifice rather than lose him. Anjou already showed a marked taste
for the ornaments and dress proper to the other sex--a caprice which
he carried to the most extravagant lengths when he became King of
France[98]--and wore habitually “a double row of rings on his fingers
and pendants in his ears.” In the hope of retaining his wayward
affections, the poor lady ruined herself in jewellery, and covered her
royal lover with gold chains and costly trinkets of every description.
He accepted them all with alacrity; nevertheless, the star of _la
belle_ Châteauneuf paled before that of the Princesse de Condé and
she suffered the fate which had befallen Isabelle de Limeuil. She was
not called upon to restore the presents which Anjou had made her--she
had given far more than she had ever received--but, on the other hand,
she had the mortification of seeing those which she had made the prince
decorating the person of her triumphant rival. “In order to show,”
writes Brantôme, “that he had abandoned his former mistress for her
[the Princesse de Condé], and that he desired to honour and serve her
entirely, without bestowing a thought on the other, he gave her all
the favours, jewels, rings, portraits, bracelets, and pretty conceits
of every kind which his former mistress had given him, which being
perceived by her, she was like to die with mortification, and was
unable to keep silence about it, but was contented to compromise the
reputation of the other by compromising her own.”
The amours of Anjou and Marie de Clèves were interrupted by the
outbreak of the fourth civil war. For a moment, Catherine had deluded
herself into the belief that the Huguenot party was expiring at her
feet, but she soon learned that religions do not die beneath the knives
of assassins. Coligny, La Rochefoucauld, Soubise, Pilles, and other
aristocratic leaders had perished in the St. Bartholomew; Navarre and
Condé had been constrained to renounce their faith; Montgommery and
La Noue were in exile; the Protestant noblesse was disheartened and
disorganized by the loss of its chiefs. But the popular element in the
Reform party saved it, and raised the banner which was falling from
the hands of the nobility. The citizens of La Rochelle, Montauban and
Sancerre continued the struggle which the Bourbons and Châtillons had
begun, demanding not only religious toleration, but the redress of
political grievances; and other towns in the South and West followed
their example.
The Government determined on the reduction of La Rochelle, and a
formidable army was despatched thither, under the command of Anjou;
and the “converted” Bourbons were ordered to accompany it. The unhappy
Condé must have felt that his cup of humiliation was indeed filled to
overflowing when he found himself marching against the stronghold of
Protestantism--against those brave citizens amongst whom he counted so
many personal friends--beneath the banner of the man who, after causing
his father to be murdered, had robbed him of the affection of his wife.
When the siege began, he courted danger with the eagerness of a man
weary of life; but, as not infrequently happens in such circumstances,
the balls passed him by, and, though men fell fast around him, he
himself remained unscathed.
La Rochelle offered an heroic resistance, and at the end of four months
the royal army had lost nearly 20,000 men, including the Duc d’Aumale,
and was no nearer success than when the trenches were opened. In the
meanwhile, Anjou, thanks to the dexterity of his mother’s diplomatic
agents, had been elected King of Poland; and, on the pretext that it
was undesirable that the Polish Ambassadors should find him engaged
in besieging a Protestant town, acceptable terms were offered to the
Rochellois, and the siege was raised. A month later (July, 1573), the
Edict of Boulogne granted the Huguenots even better terms than had been
promised them by the Peace of Saint-Germain.
The new King of Poland seemed in no hurry to take possession of his
throne, and manifested very little enthusiasm for what he regarded
as a kind of exile, far removed from the Court of the Valois and the
pleasures which he held so dear. He had become so desperately enamoured
of the Princesse de Condé that the prospect of parting from her was
extremely distasteful to him, and he also feared, that, in the event
of the death of Charles IX.--the unhappy King, who had been a changed
man since the St. Bartholomew, was now in consumption, and it was
obvious that he had not long to live--his absence might result in his
younger brother, François, Duc d’Alençon, seizing the throne. These
considerations led him to linger in Paris until the end of September;
and it was only when the King informed him that, “if he did not go of
his own free will, he would make him go by force,” that he took his
departure.
Before leaving Paris, his Polish Majesty, smitten perhaps by
compunction for the shabby way in which he had treated Mlle. de
Châteauneuf, sought to make amends by providing her with a husband. In
this intention, he cast his eyes upon a very wealthy citizen, Duprat
de Nantouillet, provost of Paris. The provost, however, showed himself
very little flattered by the rôle proposed to him and peremptorily
declined the lady’s hand. Transported with rage, the prince determined
to be revenged, and, having taken counsel with Charles IX. and the King
of Navarre, sent word to Nantouillet that they were all three coming
to sup with him, and proceeded to his house, accompanied by a band of
courtiers. Their visit occurred at a most inconvenient moment for the
worthy provost, who happened to have selected that very day to pay off
a little score of his own against some rival in love or politics, for
which purpose he had concealed four bravos in his house. However, he
put the best face on the matter he could, and provided his uninvited
guests with a most sumptuous repast, which had such an exhilarating
effect upon some of the company, that they finished up the evening by
breaking open their host’s coffers, and carrying off all his silver
plate and about 50,000 livres in money.
Next morning, Christophe de Thou, First President of the Parlement of
Paris, requested an audience of Charles IX. and told him that this
nocturnal escapade had excited the greatest indignation in the city.
His Majesty swore that he had had nothing whatever to do with it, and
that it was a gross calumny to assert that he was responsible. “I am
delighted to hear it,” replied the magistrate, “and I am going to order
an enquiry and punish the guilty.” “No, no!” cried the King, “don’t
trouble yourself about this matter; simply tell Nantouillet that, if
he demands satisfaction for the loss he has suffered, he will get the
worst of it.”
The unfortunate Nantouillet thereupon decided to put up with the loss
of his plate and money, lest a worse fate should befall him. But his
troubles were not yet over, for one day, while walking in the street,
he happened to meet Mlle. de Châteauneuf, on horseback. No sooner did
the indignant beauty perceive the man who had dared to refuse her hand,
than she rode up to him, and proceeded to belabour him soundly with her
riding-whip, to the great amusement of the onlookers.
CHAPTER VIII
Departure of Anjou for Poland--Condé, compromised in the
conspiracy of the “Politiques,” escapes to Strasbourg, where he
reverts to the Protestant faith--Death of Charles IX., who is
succeeded by the King of Poland--Flight of the new King from
Cracow--Death of the Princesse de Condé: extravagant grief
of Henry III.--Condé invades France at the head of an army
of German mercenaries--The “_Paix de Monsieur_”--Condé
endeavours to establish himself in the West of France--Formation
of the League and renewal of the civil war--Condé refuses the
hand of Mlle. de Vaudémont, Henry III.’s sister-in-law--His
second Odyssey--He commands the Huguenot forces in Poitou and
Saintonge--He proposes for the hand of Charlotte Catherine de
la Trémoille--Letter of Mlle. de la Trémoille to the prince--He
visits her at the Château of Taillebourg--Disastrous expedition
of Condé against Angers--He is obliged to take refuge in
Guernsey.
The Court escorted the King of Poland as far as La Fère, Condé
accompanying it. On taking leave of the Prince, his Majesty informed
him that he had obtained for him the restoration of his government of
Picardy and permission to proceed thither whenever he wished. This
pretended favour was really a precautionary measure, for fresh troubles
were brewing, and Catherine desired to separate Condé and the King of
Navarre, and deprive the latter, who was erroneously believed to be as
vacillating as his father, of the support and advice of his kinsman.
However, Condé was well-pleased to turn his back on the Court, where he
had suffered so many humiliations, and at the end of the autumn he set
out for Amiens.
The Massacre of St. Bartholomew had been not only a crime, but a
blunder of the most fatal kind. It had shocked and horrified the
moderate Catholic party--the “Politiques” as they had now begun to
be called--and convinced their leaders, the Montmorencies, that the
Queen-Mother intended their ruin after that of the Bourbons and
the Châtillons. The result was a _rapprochement_ between the
“Politiques” and the Huguenots, which, by the beginning of 1574,
had developed into a vast conspiracy enveloping nearly the whole of
France. Its secret head was Catherine’s youngest son, the ambitious
and treacherous François, Duc d’Alençon, who had long chafed under the
subjection to which his brother’s dislike and his mother’s indifference
had relegated him, and was determined to assert himself at all hazards.
The plans of the conspirators were carefully laid. At the end of
February, risings were to take place simultaneously in Normandy,
Picardy, Champagne, Poitou, Dauphiné, Guienne, and Languedoc; while
a bold Huguenot chief, the Sieur de Guitry-Bertichères, with several
hundred men, was to force the gates of the Château of Saint-Germain,
where the Court was then residing, and carry off Alençon and the King
of Navarre, who would at once put themselves at the head of the rebels.
Unfortunately for them, Guitry’s enterprise, on which the success of
the whole movement hinged, failed through his own precipitation. Owing
to some misunderstanding, he anticipated the day, and appeared with his
men in the environs of Saint-Germain some time before he was expected.
Catherine’s suspicions were at once aroused, and her remarkable skill
in unravelling the tangled threads of even the most complicated
intrigues soon placed her in possession of the whole plot. In the early
hours of the following morning (23–24 February), she hurried the Court
off to Paris. Charles IX., travelling in a litter, surrounded by the
Swiss in battle-array, as during the retreat from Meaux, while she
herself followed in her coach with Navarre and Alençon, whom she was
determined not to allow out of her sight.
Meanwhile, the rebels had risen in arms and issued a manifesto
demanding various reforms, though it was obvious that these were only
a cloak for their real intentions, and that, should the rising prove
successful, its effect would be to deprive the King of Poland of the
succession to the throne, which must speedily become vacant, in favour
of the more accommodating Alençon. Catherine, however, invested with
full powers by the illness of the King, took prompt and energetic
measures to meet the danger. Three armies were despatched against the
rebels of Normandy, the South, and Central France; Navarre and Alençon,
who were found to be planning an attempt at escape, with the connivance
of two of the latter’s favourites, La Môle and Coconnas, were shut up
in the keep of the Château of Vincennes, and a commission appointed to
examine them; while the two gentlemen were brought to trial on a charge
of high treason, condemned and executed; the Maréchaux de Montmorency
and de Cossé, who had had the temerity to come to Court to endeavour to
justify their conduct, were seized and thrown into the Bastille, and
orders were sent to Amiens for the arrest of Condé.
Condé had not yet been guilty of any overt act of rebellion; but he
had been compromised by the avowals of the pusillanimous Alençon, who
had made a full confession, and also by those wrung from Coconnas in
the anguish of torture.[99] Warned in time, however, he succeeded in
affecting his escape, and fled to Strasburg, where he lost no time in
returning publicly to the faith from which in his heart he had never
wavered. His wife, to whom he had been reconciled, and who was three
months pregnant, he left behind him. They were never to meet again.
On 31 May of that year, the unhappy Charles IX. expired, “rejoicing
that he left no heir in such an age, since he knew of his own sad
experience how wretched was the state of a child-king, and how wretched
the kingdom over which a child ruled.” On the previous day, he had
publicly declared the King of Poland his lawful heir and successor,
and his mother Regent until his return to France; and Catherine wrote,
urging her favourite son to return without delay and take possession of
his birthright.
The latter needed no pressing. Although he had only occupied the throne
of Poland a few months, he was already heartily tired of his kingdom,
both the people and the customs of which were utterly distasteful to
one of his indolent and luxurious temperament; and he was impatiently
awaiting the event which should recall him to France--and the Princesse
de Condé. Absence, so far from diminishing, had only served to increase
his devotion to that lady. “I love her so greatly, as you know,” he
wrote to one of his confidants at the Court, “that you must certainly
inform me of everything that befalls her, for the sake of the tears
that I shed for her. But I will speak no more of her, for love is
intoxicated.” And he employed a good part of his time in inditing to
her passionate letters, written in his own royal blood!
So soon as the news of his brother’s death reached him, he quitted
his sombre palace at Cracow, secretly, in the middle of the night,
accompanied by some of his French attendants, and rode without drawing
rein until he reached the Moravian frontier, hotly pursued by his
indignant subjects, who, singularly enough, had conceived for him a
great affection, and wished to compel him to remain their ruler. The
explanation he subsequently condescended to give of this escapade, was
that the condition of France was so disturbed that even a week’s delay
might imperil his succession. Nevertheless, having once shaken the dust
of his adopted country off his feet, he seemed in no hurry to return
to his own; he preferred to travel by way of Vienna and Turin, where
he extravagantly rewarded the hospitality of the Duke of Savoy by the
restoration of Pinerolo, the gate of Italy; and it was not until the
beginning of September that he turned his steps towards France.
At Bourgoin, he was met by Catherine and the greater part of the Court.
The Queen-Mother brought with her the King of Navarre and Alençon, whom
she had set at liberty, having first extracted an oath from them that
they would “neither attempt nor originate anything to the detriment of
his Majesty the King and the state of his realm.” They were still,
however, kept under very close observation by her Majesty, and treated
very much like naughty schoolboys.
After a short stay at Bourgoin, the Court proceeded to Lyons, where
it remained for several weeks, its sojourn being marked by splendid
festivities. In the middle of October, a sad event came to interrupt
these rejoicings: news arrived that, on the 13th, the Princesse de
Condé had died in Paris, in giving birth to a daughter.[100]
Brantôme assures us that Henri III. had fully resolved to petition the
Pope to annul the marriage of Marie de Clèves and Condé--“which he
would not have refused, since he was so great a king, and for divers
other reasons that one wots of”--and to make the lady his queen; and it
would seem that the princess was not indisposed to such an arrangement.
However that may be, his Majesty exhibited the most extravagant grief
at the death of his inamorata. On opening the letter which contained
the fatal news, he instantly fell down in a dead faint, and was carried
to his apartments, which he caused to be draped in black velvet, and
where he remained shut up for several days, for the first two of which
he persistently refused to touch either food or wine. When he, at
length, reappeared, he was clad in the deepest mourning, and the points
of his doublet and even the ribbons of his shoes were garnished with
little death’s-heads. From that moment little death’s-heads in gold,
coral, or crystal became the trinket _à la mode_.
From being the life and soul of every fête and pleasure-party, the
grief-stricken King now plunged into the most extravagant devotion,
and at Avignon, to which the Court had removed, with the idea of
affording him some distraction from his sorrow, nothing would content
him but to join the Flagellants, a sect very strong in the Papal city,
who, dressed in sackcloth, nightly paraded the streets by torchlight,
chanting the _Miserere_ and scourging one another with whips.
The Court and the Royal Family were compelled to follow suit; and the
Cardinal de Lorraine, unaccustomed to such mortification of the flesh,
caught a chill which caused his death.
Theatrical as was Henri III.’s grief it was, nevertheless, of a more
durable nature than such exhibitions usually are; and, some months
later, the Cardinal de Bourbon was obliged to have the body of the
Princesse de Condé removed from the vaults of Saint-Germain-des-Prés,
in which it had been temporarily deposited, the King refusing to
enter the abbey, as long as those precious remains were there. Even
his marriage to the sweet and charming Louise de Lorraine,[101] which
took place at Rheims, in February, 1575,[102] three days after his
_Sacre_, seems to have been a tribute to the memory of his lost
love, for the young lady, whom he had met at Nancy, on his way to
Poland in the autumn of 1573, had first attracted his attention by the
resemblance she bore to the Princesse de Condé.
Condé was still a fugitive in Germany when the news of his bereavement
reached him. It can scarcely have failed to cause him pain, for,
notwithstanding her relations with Henri III., he had remained attached
to his wife; but the reflection that now that her royal admirer had
reappeared upon the scene, she would, had she lived, most certainly
have brought fresh scandal upon his name, must have served to temper
his grief. In the previous July, he had been proclaimed chief of the
confederates by a Huguenot-Politique assembly which had met at Milhaud;
but he made no attempt to return to France, but wandered about Germany
and Switzerland, negotiating with the Protestant princes and enlisting
soldiers. With the aid of English gold, he finally succeeded in raising
a small army, and, in the early autumn of 1575, he despatched part
of it, under the command of Montmorency-Thoré, to the assistance of
Alençon, who had just succeeded in effecting his escape from the Court
and had placed himself at the head of the confederates.[103] But this
force was too weak to effect anything, and was defeated by the Duc de
Guise at Dormans.[104]
Having levied fresh troops to replace those he had lost, in the
following April, Condé himself re-entered France, after an absence of
two years, crossed the Loire, near La Charité, and effected a junction
with the troops of Alençon in the Bourbonnais. Henri III. and Catherine
were obliged to negotiate, and on 6 May another hollow peace--the
“_Paix de Monsieur_”--was signed at Beaulieu. The Protestants
obtained greater concessions than any which they had yet enjoyed; the
Massacre of St. Bartholomew was formally disavowed and the property
of Coligny and other prominent victims restored to their heirs; and
eight fortresses were handed over to the Reformers, as security for
the due observance of the treaty. Alençon received the addition to his
appanage of Anjou, Berry, Touraine and Maine, and assumed the title of
Duc d’Anjou, which had been that of Henri III. before his accession to
the throne; while the King of Navarre was confirmed in his government
of Guienne and Condé in that of Picardy. The last-named prince was also
guaranteed Péronne as a place of surety and a _gratification_.
But, so far as he was concerned, the treaty remained a dead-letter: he
never saw a sol of the money, nor was his authority ever acknowledged
in Picardy, where Jacques d’Humières, governor of Péronne, a friend of
the Guises, refused to deliver that fortress into his hands and formed
a confederacy between the partisans of the Guises and the bigoted
Catholics to oppose him.
Deeply irritated by this breach of faith, Condé determined to seek
compensation in the west, and proceeded to take possession of Cognac
and Saint-Jean-d’Angely, and to purchase, from the Sieur de Pons, the
government of the important fortress of Brouage. Then he went to La
Rochelle, where, “by a succession of very able orations,” he succeeded
in convincing the citizens, who were at first inclined to regard his
pretensions with suspicion, that their mayor and bailiffs were quite
unworthy of their confidence, and that they could not do better than
entrust themselves to his protection, with the result that in a few
weeks he was virtually master of the town.
But the concession granted the Huguenots at the “_Paix de
Monsieur_” had aroused, as had been the case after the Peace of
Saint-Germain, the most violent resentment among the more zealous
Catholics, who regarded them in the light of a betrayal of their faith;
and the efforts of Condé to consolidate his position in the West
stimulated the growth of that confederacy which had already been formed
against him in Picardy. The movement spread with astonishing rapidity,
especially among the fanatical population of Paris, and soon grew into
a general “Holy League,” or association of the extreme Catholic party
throughout the kingdom.
The formation of the League, whose members were binding themselves to
regard as enemies all who refused to join it, greatly alarmed Henri
III., and, after an unsuccessful attempt to obtain a promise from the
Guises that they would do nothing calculated to lead to a breach of the
recent peace, he decided that the only course open to him was to place
himself at its head. This decision rendered a new war inevitable, and
early in 1577 it duly broke out.
In the South, the Huguenots contrived to hold their own, but Condé,
who commanded in Poitou and Saintonge, with the title of the King of
Navarre’s Lieutenant-General, fared badly, largely, it would seem,
through his own want of military capacity, and was soon obliged to take
refuge in La Rochelle, and look on helplessly while the enemy conquered
the whole of the surrounding country. Finally, he made his way into
Guienne and joined his cousin, upon whom he, very unfairly, endeavoured
to throw the blame of his ill-success in the West. In September, the
Peace of Bergerac, another ineffectual treaty, which granted in the
main what that of the previous year had already promised, nominally put
an end to the war, though private hostilities--storming of châteaux,
assassinations, and pillage--still continued.
At the end of the following year, Marguerite de Valois joined her
husband at Nérac. Catherine, whom the King left free to intrigue as she
pleased, accompanied her daughter, bringing with her her “squadron,”
whose charms wrought much havoc among the gentlemen of Henri’s little
Court. She remained there several months, but the results of her visit
fell very far short of her expectations, and, on her return to Paris,
she made overtures to Condé, who, since the last war, had been on far
from cordial terms with the King of Navarre. With a view to separating
him entirely from his cousin, she offered him the hand of the Queen’s
sister, Mlle. de Vaudémont, together with a considerable pension and
the restoration of his government of Picardy. Condé declined the
marriage, on the plea of difference in religion, and the next thing
Catherine heard about him was that he had made his way in disguise
into Picardy, and seized the town of La Fère, by means of a stratagem
(November, 1579).
The prince was left in peaceable possession of La Fère for some months,
though his efforts to extend his influence through the rest of the
province were unsuccessful. But when, in the spring of 1580, the
“Lovers’ War” broke out, he was compelled to abandon his conquest and
take refuge in the Netherlands. From there he crossed to England and
endeavoured to obtain assistance from Elizabeth; but, failing in this,
returned to the Netherlands, and, after taking part in the defence
of Ghent, in which he exhibited great courage, made his way into
Germany and concluded a treaty with the Elector Palatine, but on such
disadvantageous terms that the French Protestants promptly repudiated
it. He then began a little war on his own account in the Cevennes; but
in November the King of Navarre made peace with the Court at Fleix, and
obliged him to suspend his somewhat futile operations.
The Treaty of Fleix was followed by four years of anarchic peace,
which were passed by Condé chiefly at Saint-Jean-d’Angely. He had been
reconciled to the King of Navarre, and the two cousins visited one
another on several occasions; but this reconciliation was never really
sincere, for Condé was not a little jealous of the military reputation
which Henri had acquired in the last war, and he and the more fanatical
section of the Protestants disapproved of the moderation shown by the
young king, and sometimes endeavoured to compel him to adopt measures
which his good sense condemned.
On 11 June, 1584, the Duc d’Anjou died of consumption at
Château-Thierry. His death made the King of Navarre heir-presumptive to
the French crown, and, as Henri III. had, for some time past, abandoned
all hope of leaving children behind him, the question of the succession
at once became of paramount importance. But the accession of a heretic
to the throne was repugnant to the whole Catholic population, and was
certain to be violently opposed by a considerable section of it. For
the intimate connexion of the State and the orthodox Church was held to
be a fundamental law of the monarchy; and even men of moderate views,
who were willing enough that the Huguenots should be tolerated, were
alarmed at the prospect of their domination.
Very intelligent, whenever he could contrive to free himself for a time
from his idle and voluptuous habits, Henri III. had foreseen this,
and, about the middle of May--that is to say, about three weeks before
Anjou’s death--had despatched one of his favourites, the Duc d’Épernon,
to the King of Navarre, “bearing him letters in which he admonished,
exhorted, and entreated him, seeing that the life of the Duc d’Anjou,
his brother, was despaired of, to come to Court and go to Mass, because
he desired to recognize him as his true heir and successor, and to
give him such rank and dignity near his person as his qualification
of brother-in-law and heir to the throne deserved.” The Protestants
testified the greatest uneasiness at these overtures, and began to
approach Condé, with a view to his adoption as the leader of the party,
in the event of the King of Navarre again renouncing their faith. But
their alarm was groundless, for, though Henri held but lightly by his
creed, and all the Catholics about him besought him to remove the one
obstacle to his succession, he felt that the time had not come when he
could afford to offend the Huguenots. And so, with many protestations
of gratitude and loyalty, he declared himself unable to accede to his
Majesty’s wishes.
The fact that the legitimate heir to the throne was a heretic made
the renewal of the civil war inevitable, and, on the death of Anjou,
the Guises and the League at once began to organize their forces for
the coming struggle. The wretched, vacillating King was intimidated
into giving them his countenance and support; and, on 15 July, 1585,
signed the Treaty of Nemours, which promised the revocation of all
the edicts in favour of toleration, and placed at the disposal of the
League all the resources of the Crown. Having secured the assistance of
the temporal power, they next summoned the spiritual to their aid, and
persuaded the new Pope, Sixtus V., to launch against the two princes a
Bull of Excommunication, wherein he declared them “degraded from their
fiefs and baronies, and incapacitated from succession to the Crown of
France.” The cousins issued a scornful response, a copy of which was
posted up even in Rome itself, and war began.
Condé again received the command of the Huguenot forces in Poitou
and Saintonge, and found himself opposed by the Duc de Mercœur. The
prince’s army was inferior in numbers to that of the Catholics, but he
contrived to surprise the enemy in their camp near Fontenay, and drove
them in confusion across the Loire; after which, strengthened by the
arrival of reinforcements for La Rochelle, he laid siege to Brouage.
Condé’s attention was not, however, entirely absorbed by military
matters at this juncture. Notwithstanding the rather unfortunate
outcome of his first matrimonial venture, he had for some time past
been desirous of marrying again; and, shortly before the renewal of
hostilities, he had decided to propose for the hand of Charlotte
Catherine de la Trémoille, only daughter of Louis III., Duc de Thouars,
Prince de Tarente and de Talmont, and Jeanne de Montmorency.
Charlotte de la Trémoille’s father, who, by the way, had been a
fanatical Catholic and a determined opponent of Condé in Poitou,
of which province he was lieutenant-general, had died some years
before, since which the girl had lived with her mother at the Château
of Thouars, in Anjou. She was now seventeen, very pretty, very
intelligent, and of a highly romantic disposition, for the Duchesse de
Thouars, who appears to have had little affection for her daughter,
had left her very much to her own devices, and she was accustomed to
spend a good deal of her time in the perusal of the “Amadis” and other
fashionable works of imagination.
Condé despatched one of his officers to the Duchesse de Thouars
to make the first overtures on his behalf. They were favourably
received, and the duchess hastened to send her daughter to the Château
of Taillebourg, a fortress of some importance on the banks of the
Charente, whither she intended to follow her, so that his Highness
might have an opportunity of paying his addresses to the young lady,
and she of discussing with him the financial side of the affair. The
alliance of the first Prince of the Blood, one of the leaders of the
Huguenots, was very flattering to the pride of the La Trémoilles, who
did not share the prejudices of the late head of the family; indeed,
the young Duc de Thouars, although a Catholic, had taken up arms for
Condé.
As for Charlotte, to her romantic imagination, the prospect of sharing
the fortunes of a prince who had experienced enough adventures to
satisfy the most gluttonous of knight-errants, and who, if he had not
yet achieved any very brilliant success, had supported his reverses
with a fortitude which had gained him the admiration of even his
enemies, could not fail to make a powerful appeal, and she looked
forward with impatience to the conclusion of the negotiations.
On learning of the favourable reception of his overtures, Condé, who
was besieging Brouage, lost no time in addressing to the Duchesse de
Thouars a formal request for her daughter’s hand. The duchess informed
Charlotte, who wrote to the prince the following letter:
“MADAME,[105]
“I am not able, it seems to me, to thank you as I
should wish for the honour that it pleases you to do me by your
letter, and for the good-will which it appears you entertain
for me, which oblige me to serve you in such fashion that I
shall esteem myself very happy all my life if I am favoured by
your commands, which I shall execute with as much fidelity as
any creature in the world. And, since I know that Madame de la
Trémoille, my mother, is replying to what you have been so good
as to write to her, I shall say nothing on this subject, save
that my intention has ever been to conform to her will, and that
it will remain so eternally, and to assure you again Mons^r
(_sic_) that my little merit must prevent me from believing
what it pleases you to express for me.... I thank you very
humbly for the honour which I receive from your suit, although
I know that I am in no way worthy of it, which places me under
a very great obligation to you. I shall leave to Madame de la
Trémoille, my mother, to reply on the subject of the journeys of
the bearer of this, for all that I have desired my whole life,
is to follow these commands, in which I shall never fail, and,
in token of this, I shall kiss your hands.
“Your very humble servant, etc., etc.”[106]
On learning that Mlle. de Trémoille had arrived at Taillebourg, Condé
quitted his camp at Brouage and proceeded thither. He took with him
the greater part of the Huguenot cavalry, and we may imagine with what
a thrill of pleasure the romantic Charlotte must have beheld this
valiant prince coming to woo her accompanied by so splendid an array of
mail-clad horsemen. Nor was she less pleased when, at the gateway of
the château, her suitor dismissed his imposing escort, and, to show his
confidence, entered with three or four of his officers only.
All smiles and blushes the young châtelaine came forward to greet him,
and, though Condé was usually very reserved with women, Mademoiselle
was so pretty and so sympathetic that soon he found himself discoursing
of his wars and his wanderings as though he had known her for years.
Before the evening was over, Charlotte had decided that the hero of
her dreams had indeed materialized; while the prince was completely
charmed. “The two betrothed,” writes a contemporary biographer of
the latter, “promised henceforth to live and die together, provided
that they obtained the consent of Madame de la Trémoille, of which
Mademoiselle her daughter was sufficiently assured;”[107] and Condé
might have said with Othello:
“She loved me for the dangers I had passed,
And I lov’d her that she did pity them.”
Mlle. de la Trémoille gave that very night a proof of her devotion to
her future husband. As the garrison of Taillebourg contained several
men who, she had reason to suspect, were by no means well-disposed
towards the Huguenot leader, “she did not take any repose all night,
but watched with extreme care over his safety until the morning,
placing the sentinels herself and making hourly inquiries of the rounds
if they had discovered anything which might trouble the repose of our
amorous prince.”[108]
Early on the morrow, Condé left Taillebourg, but, before his departure,
he gave Mlle. de la Trémoille, “two lines in his own handwriting and
signed by him, containing the assurance of his good faith touching
their future marriage.” Then, “after a thousand reiterated promises
that death alone should be the separation of their union,” he took
leave of his betrothed and returned to Brouage.
The siege of this town was progressing rapidly; Condé’s forces closely
invested it on the land side, while the little Huguenot fleet blockaded
the port; a portion of the outworks had already been captured, and its
fall seemed assured, when the prince thoughtlessly engaged in a most
disastrous enterprise.
It happened that a Huguenot captain named Rochemorte, attached to a
small force which Condé had sent across the Loire to make an incursion
into Anjou and Normandy, had succeeded, with a mere handful of men,
in taking by surprise the citadel of Angers. The town, however,
remained in the hands of the Catholics; the daring Rochemorte and his
little band were being closely besieged, and, unless reinforcements
speedily arrived, he would be obliged to capitulate. This news
caused great excitement in the Protestant camp, and the prince,
instead of contenting himself by the despatch of a force sufficient
to enable Rochemorte to hold the captured citadel, was persuaded by
his flatterers to go in person and attempt the capture of the town.
So brilliant a success, they assured him, would entirely eclipse the
military reputation of the King of Navarre, change the whole course of
events, and strike such consternation into the enemy that very soon he
might be able to carry the war to the very gates of Paris.
It was a most rash undertaking, for not only was Angers a
strongly-fortified town, but the neighbourhood was the point of
concentration for the Catholic armies destined to operate in the South,
and was swarming with the enemy. However, his jealousy of his cousin,
and his anxiety to distinguish himself in the eyes of his lady-love,
rendered him deaf to the voice of reason; and, after wasting a good
deal of precious time in preparations for his expedition, he set off
for Angers, at the head of some 2000 horse, three-fourths of whom were
mounted arquebusiers.
On the way, he had an interview with the Duchesse de Thouars, who was
journeying to Taillebourg to join her daughter. Henri III., it appears,
had lately brought pressure to bear upon the duchess to persuade her
to break off the negotiations for the marriage, and, as the latter was
beginning to feel seriously uneasy as to the future of her prospective
son-in-law, she received him very coldly and endeavoured to evade
giving the consent which he demanded. Perceiving how the land lay,
Condé refrained from pressing the matter; and, after overwhelming her
with protestations of friendship, took his departure, and despatched in
all haste a courier to Taillebourg, with the following message, written
on a leaf of his tablets:
“I have found Madame, your mother, whether from fear or otherwise,
very much opposed to my happiness. I hope to conquer her severity
by my perseverance and my conduct, swearing that you alone possess
my heart, and that neither her prejudice nor any accident shall
be able to prevent me from remaining until death your unchanging
_serviteur_.”[109]
On 21 October, the prince arrived beneath the walls of Angers. He
came too late, for, two days before, Rochemorte had been killed, and
the citadel had capitulated. His wisest course would have been to
retreat at once, for, although he had received reinforcements after
crossing the Loire, his army did not exceed 3000 men, and hostile
columns were already gathering in his rear. However, he determined to
endeavour to carry the town by storm, and made two assaults, both of
which were repulsed with considerable loss. Then, very reluctantly,
he gave the order to retire; but there was some delay in carrying it
out, and scarcely had his vanguard crossed the Loire, than the enemy’s
cavalry appeared on both banks of the river. For a moment, he thought
of endeavouring to make his way along the right bank of the Loire to
the Huguenot stronghold of Sancerre, but, learning that the Catholics
were in force in that direction, he abandoned it, and decided that the
only course to adopt was for his followers to disperse and endeavour
to creep through the meshes of the net which was closing round them.
He himself, with a few officers, turned northwards, and succeeded in
reaching Saint-Malo, where he embarked for Guernsey.
In that little island the unfortunate prince remained for more than
two months. He was almost in despair, for he well knew that his folly,
which had deprived the Huguenot forces of the West of their chief, many
of their principal officers, and the greater part of their cavalry,
must have ruined their operations in that part of the country, and
compelled them to remain wholly on the defensive. Moreover, he saw no
immediate prospect of being able to return to France, for, though he
had applied for assistance to Elizabeth, that princess was unwilling
at this juncture to offend the French Court, and he got nothing from
her but expressions of sympathy. One day, however, in January, 1586, he
perceived two ships-of-war flying the Rochellois ensign, approaching
the island. They cast anchor; an officer landed, handed the delighted
prince a letter from Mlle. de la Trémoille, and informed him that they
had been sent to convey him to La Rochelle.
But let us see how Mlle. de la Trémoille had been faring during her
lover’s enforced absence from France.
CHAPTER IX
Loyalty of Mlle. de Trémoille to Condé--She prevents her
mother, the Duchesse de Thouars, from surrendering the
Château of Taillebourg to a Catholic force--And defends it
gallantly until she is relieved--She equips two ships-of-war
to bring Condé from Guernsey--Reunion of the lovers--Their
marriage--Condé takes the field again--Financial embarrassments
of the new _ménage_--Battle of Coutras: encounter between
Condé and Saint-Luc--Ill-health of the prince--He returns to
Saint-Jean-d’Angely--He is suddenly taken ill, and dies in two
days--Violent grief of his wife--Suspicions of the doctors--An
autopsy is performed, and the prince is declared to have been
poisoned--Letter of the King of Navarre to the Comtesse de
Gramont--Flight of the princess’s page, Belcastel, and her head
_valet-de-chambre_, Corbais--Arrest of her intendant,
Brilland--The King of Navarre arrives at Saint-Jean-d’Angely,
and orders the Princesse de Condé to be placed under
arrest--Terrible situation of the princess.
After the disastrous expedition to Angers and the flight of Condé,
the Duchesse de Thouars resolved to side definitely with the Catholic
party, and to do everything in her power to prevent the marriage of
which she had at first so warmly approved. She had now joined Charlotte
at Taillebourg, “where mother and daughter did not get on too well
together,”[110] for, as is generally the case with young ladies of
a romantic turn of mind, obstacles only served to fire Charlotte’s
imagination, and the more opposed did the duchess become to the
marriage, the more firmly did the girl resolve to remain true to her
lover.
At length, matters reached a climax. At the outbreak of hostilities,
the young Duc de Thouars, who, as we have mentioned, had joined
Condé’s army, had installed a Huguenot garrison in the château. This
garrison the duchess resolved to get rid of, and to replace it by a
Catholic one; and, one fine day, four companies of soldiers marched
into the town, under the command of a certain M. de Beaumont, who was
entrusted with a letter for the Duchesse de Thouars from the Maréchal
de Matignon, general-in-chief of the royal forces in the West, in which
he called upon her, in the King’s name, to surrender the château,
promising to restore it at the conclusion of the war. The duchess was
joyfully preparing to obey, when her daughter intervened and informed
her, very respectfully, but very firmly, that she should refuse to
consent to the surrender, and that “she intended to keep inviolable
the pledge which she had given Mgr. le Prince de Condé to preserve the
château for him until her death.”[111]
Madame de Thouars expostulated, coaxed, threatened; all to no purpose.
Charlotte was immovable as the rock upon which the château stood,
and eventually the mortified lady ordered her coach and set out for
Thouars, abandoning her rebellious daughter to the dangers of a siege.
The Château of Taillebourg was an old fortress of the thirteenth
century,[112] situated on a steep rock, which rendered it perfectly
safe from attack on three sides. On the one on which it was accessible,
Charlotte ordered two culverins to be placed, so as completely to
command the approach, perceiving which, Beaumont, who does not appear
to have had any artillery with him, prudently refrained from any
attempt to take the château by storm, and contented himself by very
closely investing it. Aware that it was not provisioned for a siege, he
felt confident that want of provisions must soon oblige the garrison to
capitulate.
The days went slowly by. Every morning Beaumont formally summoned the
defenders to surrender, only to receive a scornful defiance. But, in
the meantime, famine was beginning to stare them in the face, and
Charlotte recognized that, unless help arrived, it would be impossible
to hold out much longer. Just, however, when her situation seemed
almost desperate, she learned that a body of Huguenot cavalry under the
Sieur de la Boullaye, which had succeeded in escaping from the Angers
fiasco, was in the neighbourhood; and she at once determined to make an
attempt to communicate with it. This, at first sight, seemed a hopeless
undertaking, for the place, as we have said, had been very closely
invested; but she perceived that at the rear of the château, where the
rock was a sheer precipice, Beaumont had placed only a very few men,
deeming it impossible for any one to descend on that side. Accordingly,
when darkness fell, she caused one of her servants to be lowered by a
rope down the face of the cliff; and the man, unperceived by the enemy,
succeeded in making his way to La Boullaye’s camp.
The besiegers, to guard against any attempt to relieve the château,
had taken the precaution to fortify a large house which commanded the
entrance to the town of Taillebourg. But, as soon as morning dawned,
Charlotte “said good-day to the enemy with her culverins,” and, turning
them upon this house, kept up so persistent and well-directed a fire,
that it was soon almost in ruins; and when the Huguenots arrived, they
had no difficulty in making their way into the town.
Fighting continued all day, with no decisive result; but, during the
night, the Catholics, who had lost some sixty men and whose commander
had been taken prisoner, evacuated the town and retreated behind
the Charente. La Boullaye did not pursue them; but, after placing a
strong garrison in the château, escorted its brave defender to La
Rochelle, where she promptly caused two ships to be fitted out, at her
own expense, and despatched to Guernsey, to convey her lover and his
fellow-exiles back to France.
Within an hour or two of the arrival of Charlotte’s ships, Condé was
on his way to La Rochelle, where he landed a few days later. “I was
there,” writes Fiefbrun, “and had the honour of accompanying this
princess (Mlle. de la Trémoille) to the port, where she received his
Excellency with so many expressions of joy, that never was seen
anything in the world to surpass in mutual affection their caresses and
welcomes, followed by public rejoicings on the part of the nobility and
the people which it would be impossible to describe.”[113]
The prince and his lady-love looked forward with impatience to their
marriage, to which, however, the Duchesse de Thouars continued to show
herself extremely hostile. At length, however, she was persuaded to
give a grudging consent, though she absolutely refused to grace the
ceremony with her presence. It took place very quietly at the Château
of Taillebourg, on 16 March, 1586. A little while before, Charlotte had
become a Protestant, her example being followed by her brother, the Duc
de Thouars.
Almost immediately after his marriage, Condé took the field again.
He was burning to distinguish himself and efface the memory of the
disaster of the previous year, which had furnished the King of Navarre
and his little Court of Nérac with material for many biting jests at
his expense.[114] Glory, however, continued to evade his pursuit, and
his solitary success was gained in a cavalry skirmish before Saintes,
which, however, cost him so dear that he is said to have been “more
afflicted by his losses than elated by his victory.”[115]
In August, an armistice was concluded, and the remainder of the year
was spent in negotiations, which led to nothing. They enabled Condé,
however, to spend a few weeks with his bride at Saint-Jean-d’Angely,
where, as most of the prince’s property had been sequestrated by the
Crown, while it was not until nearly two years after the marriage that
the Duchesse de Thouars condescended to pay her daughter’s dowry, they
were obliged to content themselves with a very modest establishment.
Indeed, to judge from the following letter from the princess to
Longuespée, her agent at Taillebourg, there must have been times when
they found themselves greatly embarrassed for even comparatively small
sums of money:
“Longuespée, my knowledge of the good-will which you have long
shown in our service has caused me to write you, to beg you to
do me the favour of handing to the bearer of this the sum of one
hundred écus, on account of larger sums which are due to her for
bread that she has supplied while my husband and I have been
here. And, if just now you have not the sum mentioned, I beg you
to make arrangements to obtain it, so that I may satisfy her,
assuring you that the favour which you will be doing me will be
very agreeable to me, and hoping to remember it on the first
occasion which presents itself as willingly as I shall remain
your good mistress,
“X. DE LA TREMOILLE”
“At Saint-Jean-d’Angely, this 21 September 1586.
“I beg you again not to refuse me.”[116]
On 30 April, 1587, the Princesse de Condé gave birth to “a daughter
worthy of such a mother,” who received the name of Éléonore, in memory
of the prince’s mother, and became in 1606 the wife of Philip William
of Nassau, Prince of Orange.
Early in the new year hostilities were resumed, and Condé gained
several successes in Poitou and Saintonge. In October, the King of
Navarre and Condé marched from La Rochelle to the Loire to meet the
latter’s younger brothers, the Marquis de Conti and the Comte de
Soissons, who, although Catholics, had been persuaded to cast in
their lot with their relatives. Then they turned southwards, with the
intention of concentrating all their troops in Gascony, and afterwards
marching towards Berry, to effect their junction with a German force
which was advancing to their assistance.[117] They were closely
followed by a royal army under the Duc de Joyeuse, while another
Catholic force under Matignon advanced against them from Guienne. To
prevent the junction of Joyeuse and Matignon, the King of Navarre
decided to give battle to the former in the plain before Coutras, on
the borders of Saintonge and Périgord. The Catholics had a considerable
advantage in point of numbers; but Henri’s army was almost entirely
composed of veterans, and he was confident of success. As his officers
were hastening to their posts, he stopped his cousins and exclaimed:
“Gentlemen, I have only one thing to say to you: remember that you
are of the House of Bourbon. _Vive Dieu!_ I will show you that I
am its head!” “And we will show you that we are good cadets,” replied
Condé.
Henri’s confidence was justified; in less than an hour the Catholic
army was completely routed, Joyeuse killed, and all the artillery,
standards and baggage taken. It was the first victory in the open field
which the Protestants had gained in twenty-five years of civil war, and
stamped the King of Navarre as a bold and successful general.
Condé greatly distinguished himself, and, though his armour was hacked
almost to pieces, he escaped unwounded from the battle itself. But
in the pursuit he was not so fortunate. One of the bravest captains
of the royal army, d’Espinay Saint-Luc, who had gallantly defended
Brouage against the Huguenots in the preceding year, finding that his
horse was too exhausted to carry him out of the field, resolved to do
something to distinguish himself ere he surrendered. Having descried
Condé almost isolated in the middle of the plain, he laid his lance in
rest and charged him so furiously that both horse and man went down.
Saint-Luc immediately dismounted, extricated the prince from his fallen
steed, and tendered him his gauntlet, saying: “Monseigneur, Saint-Luc
surrenders to you; do not refuse him.”
Although the lance had not penetrated the prince’s armour, which
happened to be intact at the spot where he had been struck, he
was badly bruised and shaken and scarcely able to stand. However,
he embraced and pardoned the prisoner who had adopted this highly
disagreeable mode of surrender, and was then carried to the King of
Navarre’s quarters.
The victory of Coutras although so complete, had no important results.
D’Aubigné accuses the King of Navarre of having sacrificed his duty to
love--to his eagerness to lay at the feet of his mistress, the Comtesse
de Gramont (_la belle_ Corisande), the standards which he had
captured. But his inaction was more probably due to the fact that it
was impossible for him to keep his army together, so eager were the
soldiers to return to their homes with their booty. Anyway, he made
no attempt to join the Germans, who were defeated by the Duc de Guise
at Vimory, near Orléans, and again at Anneau, and driven across the
frontier, with terrible loss.
Condé, who had in vain endeavoured to persuade his cousin to continue
the operations, decided to lead the contingents of Poitou and Saintonge
against Saumur, but so many of his men deserted that he was compelled
to abandon this enterprise. He was, besides, far too unwell for
further service, for, since his encounter with Saint-Luc, he had been
suffering from severe pains in the side; and on reaching Saintes, these
were complicated by an attack of fever. The princess rejoined him
there,[118] and early in January, 1588 he was sufficiently recovered
to return to Saint-Jean-d’Angely. Shortly afterwards, the pains in
the side returned; but, passionately devoted as he was to all martial
exercises, he no sooner felt better than he was in the saddle again;
and on Thursday, 3 March, spent some hours in tilting at the ring, on
which occasion he rode a restive horse, which reared repeatedly.[119]
About an hour after supper that evening, the prince was seized with
violent pains in the stomach, followed by repeated vomiting. He was
attended by his chief surgeon, Nicolas Poget, and a physician named
Bonaventure de Médicis, “who aided the movements of nature. The malady
notwithstanding continued all night ... and so great was his difficulty
in breathing that he was unable to stay in his bed, and was compelled
to sit in a chair.
“Whereupon, on the morrow, Maîtres Louis Bontemps and Jean Pallet,
also doctors of medicine, were called into consultation; and they
all of them succoured his Excellency with all diligence and fidelity,
by all the means that they judged suitable, according to the symptoms
of the malady. But on the Saturday, the fifth day of the month, and
the second of the malady, at three o’clock in the afternoon, all
things took a turn for the worse, and an entire suffocation of all the
faculties supervened, in which he rendered his soul to God half an hour
afterwards.”[120]
“I was one of those,” writes Fiefbrun, “who were chosen to report this
piteous calamity to Madame his wife, whom I found descending the steps
of her hôtel to come and visit him in his little lodging, where she
expected to find him alive, since she had as yet no idea that he was so
near his last day. As soon as she caught sight of me, she suspected her
misfortune, and pressing me to tell her in a few words, she fell down
in a swoon, and was carried immediately to her bed, where she broke
forth into the most terrible lamentations, accompanied by so many sobs
and sighs that they could not be imagined save by those who saw and
heard them. They were so violent that I am often astonished that they
did not occasion a miscarriage.”[121]
In view of what we are about to relate, Fiefbrun’s account of the
manner in which the Princesse de Condé received the news of her
husband’s death is of extreme importance.
The rapidity of the malady, and the fact that decomposition set in
within two hours after death, “gave cause to the doctors and surgeons
to suspect that there had been some extraordinary and violent cause.”
By order of the prince’s council, two other surgeons were called in,
and an autopsy performed. This served to confirm their suspicions. “We
have found,” runs their report, “all the stomach, particularly towards
the right part, black, burned, gangreened, and ulcerated, which, in
our opinion, can only have been caused by a quantity of burning,
ulcerating, and caustic poison, which poison has left evident traces
of its passage in the esophagus. The liver, in the part adjoining
the aforesaid channel, was altered and burned, and all the rest of
the organ livid, as were also the lungs. There was not a single part
of his Excellency’s body which was not very sound and very healthy,
if the violent poison had not destroyed and corrupted the parts
mentioned.”[122]
Meanwhile, orders had been given that all the late prince’s servants
were to be placed under arrest, and a courier had been despatched to
the King of Navarre, who was at Nérac. Under date 10 March, 1588, we
find Henri writing to the Comtesse de Gramont as follows:
“To finish describing myself, there has happened to me one of the
greatest calamities that I could possibly fear, which is the sudden
death of _Monsieur le Prince_. I mourn for him as he ought to have
been to me, not as he was. I am assured of being the only target at
which the perfidies of the Mass are aimed. They have poisoned him, the
traitors!
“On Thursday, this poor prince, after tilting at the ring, supped,
feeling well. At midnight, he was seized with a very violent vomiting,
which lasted till morning. All Friday he kept his bed. In the evening,
he supped, and having slept well, he rose on Saturday morning, dined
at table, and then played at chess. He rose from his chair, and walked
up and down his chamber, chatting with one and the other. All at once,
he said: ‘Give me my chair; I feel a great weakness.’ Scarcely was he
seated when he lost the power of speech, and immediately expired. The
effects of poison at once became apparent.
“It is incredible the consternation which this has caused in that part
of the country. I am starting at daybreak to travel thither with all
speed. I see myself on the way to encounter much danger. Pray to God
for me earnestly. If I escape it, it must be because it is He who had
protected me. Up to the grave, to which I am perhaps nearer than I
think, I shall remain your faithful slave. Good-night, my soul; I kiss
your hands a thousand times.”[123]
Next morning, the King of Navarre set out for Saint-Jean-d’Angely,
“to console my cousin, _Madame la Princesse_, and to prevent
our enemies from profiting by our losses and misfortunes and by my
absence.”[124] On the second day of his journey, however, he was met
by a courier, with intelligence which convinced him that the bereaved
princess was an object of something very different from sympathy.
“There arrived yesterday,” he writes to his Corisande, “the one at
midday, the other in the evening, two couriers. The first reported that
Belcastel, the page of _Madame la Princesse_,[125] and her first
_valet de chambre_[126] had fled, immediately after seeing their
master dead. They found two horses worth two hundred écus at an inn
in the faubourg, where they had been kept for a fortnight, and each
had a wallet full of money. On being questioned, the innkeeper stated
that it was a person named Brilland who had given him the horses, and
that he came every day to tell him to treat them well; that if he gave
four measures of oats to the other horses, he was to give them eight,
and that he would pay double. This Brilland is a man whom _Madame
la Princesse_ had placed in her Household and given the charge of
everything. He was immediately arrested. He confesses to have given
one thousand écus to the page and to have purchased the horses, by his
mistress’s order, to go to Italy.
[Illustration: CHARLOTTE CATHERINE DE LA TRÉMOILLE, PRINCESSE DE
CONDÉ
FROM AN ENGRAVING BY MIGER, AFTER THE PAINTING BY LE MONNIER]
“The second courier confirms all this, and says further that Brilland
was compelled to write a letter to the _valet de chambre_, who was
known to be at Poitiers, in which he requested him to come two hundred
paces from the gate, as he wished to speak to him.[127] Immediately,
the ambuscade which was there seized him, and he was brought to
Saint-Jean. He has not yet been interrogated, but he said to those
who were bringing him: ‘Ah! what a wicked woman Madame [the Princesse
de Condé] is! Let them arrest her treasurer; I will tell everything
frankly.’ This was done. That is all that is known up to the present.
Remember what I have told you at other times. I am seldom deceived
in my judgments. A bad woman is a dangerous animal (_une dangereuse
beste_). All these poisoners are Papists. It was from them that
the lady received her instructions. I have discovered an assassin for
myself. God will protect me, and I will tell you more about it soon....
My soul, I am very well in body, but very afflicted in mind. Love
me, and let me see that you do; that will be a great consolation for
me.”[128]
The King of Navarre did not carry out his original intention of
proceeding straight to Saint-Jean-d’Angely, for, on reaching Pons, he
turned aside to La Rochelle, and it was not until the evening of 29
March that he reached the scene of the tragedy. The probable reason for
this delay was his wish to avoid committing himself until further light
had been thrown upon the affair.
The princess, although, of course, under close supervision, was still
nominally at liberty, for Fiefbrun, to whom, in his capacity of bailiff
of Saint-Jean-d’Angely, Henri had entrusted the conduct of the inquiry,
was a devoted servant of the Condés and was naturally very reluctant
to take any definite steps against her. But, on his arrival, he found
public opinion in the town so hostile to the lady that he felt obliged
to order her arrest.
Personal considerations would appear to have been no stranger to this
decision, and to the vigour with which he subsequently pushed on
proceedings against the princess. The very strained relations which had
existed for some time past between him and the late prince were common
knowledge, and his enemies had not hesitated to circulate the report
that he was privy to the death of his cousin. Théodore de Bèze had just
written, warning him of this atrocious calumny, and urging him to take
immediate steps to refute it:
“On this point I am constrained to add, knowing what might be the
consequence of sinister counsels and your own clemency and good-nature,
that your enemies have even dared, with that imprudence and wickedness
which is the result of despair, to spread the report that this
detestable crime was instigated by you. You neither can nor ought to
hesitate about this action, without making an irreparable breach in
your reputation; but, on the contrary, you ought to pursue the matter
to judgment and execution, so as to stop the mouths of these detestable
calumniators in the sight of God and man.”[129]
After ordering the arrest of the Princesse de Condé, Henri despatched
one of his gentlemen, the Sieur de Veau Limery, to the Court, with
a letter for “the Queen, mother of the King, my lord,” in which he
informed her that the page Belcastel, “the principal instrument of the
crime,” had taken refuge in Poitiers, and begged her to give orders
that search should be made for him, and that, when apprehended, he
should be conducted to Saint-Jean-d’Angely, to be confronted with
his accomplices. Instructions to that effect were sent to Poitiers;
but nothing was ever heard of the fugitive page, who seemed to have
vanished off the face of the earth.
The position of the Princesse de Condé was a terrible one. It was not
only at Saint-Jean-d’Angely that public opinion had pronounced against
her. The more zealous Huguenots, furious at the supposed crime which
had deprived them of the prince who had shared all their passions and
prejudices, were loud in their demands that she should be brought to
justice; while the Catholics were very hostile to the princess, on
account of her abjuration and her conduct in recent events, in which
she had rendered such good service to the Protestant cause. To her
relatives she looked in vain for help or sympathy. The Duchesse de
Thouars, who, since the affair of Taillebourg, had been on the worst
possible terms with her daughter, never seems to have even thought
of coming to Saint-Jean-d’Angely to inquire if she were innocent or
guilty; and her absence still further prejudiced the princess’s case
in the eyes of the public. The young Duc de Thouars, who, one would
naturally suppose, would have been eager to champion his sister, does
not appear to have moved in the matter at all. As for her husband’s
relatives, the Prince de Conti and the Comte de Soissons seem to
have at once made up their minds that she was guilty and did all
in their power to hasten the prosecution; while the attitude of the
Dowager-Princesse de Condé may be gauged from the following remarkable
letter:
“Great as was the pleasure it gave me to address you as
_Madame la Princesse_, I shall have reason to regret
this name so long as you are not justified of the atrocious
accusation which will cause you to lose honour and life
together, if your innocence is not proved. That is what I desire
intensely, since I am unable to believe that the heart of a
woman so well-born and so well brought up could cherish such
wickedness against the prince who had done you so much honour
in wooing and espousing you. This loss is so great for all the
family that the peculiar honour which I received from his father
invites me to deplore it for the rest of my life. I have been
among the first to demand justice of our King (Henri III.), who
is neither able nor willing to refuse it. Their Majesties have
declined to receive your letters, and the cardinals[130] to
reply to them. I have also spoken of your story to the Queen,
mother of the King, who replied that she is so much the friend
of honour and virtue, and is so overwhelmed with horror at the
deed of which you are accused, that she does not intend to
intervene.... It is, therefore, your duty to endeavour to secure
the arrest of your page, to whom, it is said, you caused a great
deal of money to be given by your treasurer, and to whom one of
your _valets de chambre_ has confessed to have given the
poison. This evidence makes matters very serious for you.
“It is further said that you love your page so passionately
that he used to occupy your husband’s place, with so many other
dreadful things that the Court is horrified; and there is no
conversation now except at the expense of your reputation,
which, I think, is very unfortunate for you.
“Those who have counselled you (if such is the case) have done
you more harm than if they had given you the same poison. Who
would ever wish to see you, holding you to be without honour
and without heart? Believe that God, who threatens poisoners
with having no share in the Kingdom of Heaven, will permit the
truth to be known and justice to be executed. I have very humbly
entreated the King, on your behalf, that the page should be
arrested. His Majesty desires it and has written about it; but
it is not believed that you are anxious for it. I pray God that
the contrary may be the case; but, however that may be, you are
at present the fable and the malediction of France, and, as I
believe, of all the world, even to the barbarians, if they hear
of it. But can it really be possible that you have deprived of
life a prince who has so much honoured and loved you? If it is,
you have no worse enemy than yourself, and have consented to
the damnation of your soul. Time, which is the father of truth,
will speedily enlighten us on the matter of your conduct, which,
I trust, is altogether contrary to the belief which everywhere
prevails.
“When I knew that you were living as an honourable princess, and
were respecting such a husband, a member of so great a family,
I desired to do you service, and I esteemed myself happy. But
now that I see you thus accused, if your justification does not
appease this widespread rumour of so iniquitous a deed, I have
received too much honour from the late Monseigneur my husband to
be willing that any one should surpass me in the desire to be
the most cruel enemy that you have ever had, although I shall
nevertheless weep for your disgrace.... And if you have been
instigated to this crime, as is reported, hasten to denounce
those who have given you this pernicious counsel, for the sake
of your life and honour; and I shall implore God to punish the
guilty and protect the innocent.
“From Paris this IX. April 1588.
“She who was formerly your mother-in-law to do you service.
“FRANÇOISE D’ORLÉANS”[131]
CHAPTER X
The King of Navarre appoints a special commission for the trial
of Brilland--Brilland is put to the question--His confessions
under torture implicate the Princesse de Condé, but on the
following day he disavows them--He is found guilty and condemned
to be dismembered by horses--The princess denies the competency
of the court and appeals to the Parlement of Paris--But the King
of Navarre and the commissioners ignore the decrees of that
body--The commission directs that the princess shall be brought
to trial--She gives birth to a son--The prosecution is dropped,
but the princess remains in captivity--The Président de Thou
interests himself in her case--Means by which he obtains from
Henri IV. the recognition of her son’s rights, and, with them,
the acknowledgment of the princess’s innocence.
After ordering the arrest of the Princesse de Condé, the King of
Navarre appointed a special commission, composed of twelve judges, for
the trial of Brilland; while, as the accused had protested against
his examination being conducted by Fiefbrun, who appears to have been
a personal enemy, Henri replaced him by Valette, Grand Provost of
Navarre, the more willingly since he was aware that Fiefbrun was a
devoted partisan of the princess.
The commissioners decided that Brilland should be put to the question.
“On entering the torture-chamber, he protested, in the first place,
that everything that he might say would be owing to the violence of
the pain, and that he knew nothing about the poison, and that he was
innocent. Nevertheless, when the torture was applied, he accused Madame
in this sense, that she and he had plotted the poisoning of the late
prince from the time that he [Condé] was aware of her behaviour, and
that, on leaving this town, his Excellency had recommended him to keep
watch over her actions, and to take care of her, declaring that, after
she was brought to bed, he should chastise her for her misconduct; and
that when he [Brilland] informed her of this, the said project was
resolved upon ...; that the said poison had been sent to the ...; that
it had come from M. d’Épernon. He further said that La Doussinière,
_maître d’hôtel_ of his aforesaid lord, had administered the
aforesaid poison in a chicken stuffed with eggs.”[132]
After this so-called confession had been extracted from him, the
wretched man was released from the rack and taken back to prison.
There, on the following day, he was visited by the commissioners,
who ordered his confession to be read over to him. “He disavowed it;
protested that what he had said was false; declared that what he had
done was to escape the violence of the pain: exonerated those whom he
had accused; and maintained his innocence and that he was ignorant
of the poison. At the same time, he confirmed the truth of all the
aforesaid confessions that he had made and signed in the course of the
trial, with the exception of that made under torture ... and declared
that he believed _Madame la Princesse_ and those whom he had
accused to be innocent, and that he knew nothing about the poison.”
Brilland was found guilty and condemned to the most barbarous of all
forms of punishment--to be dismembered by horses. Against this sentence
he appealed.
In the meanwhile, the Princesse de Condé had been formally charged
with complicity in the murder of her husband and summoned before
the commission. She refused to appear, denying the competency of
the tribunal and claiming the privileges of the peerage. The judges
overruled the princess’s objections, whereupon she petitioned Henri
III. that her case should be tried by the Grande Chambre of the
Parlement of Paris. His Majesty having returned a favourable answer,
she appealed to the Parlement, and obtained from that body a degree
calling the affair before it, prohibiting “all judges and others whom
it may concern from taking any further proceedings,” and ordering that
all the documents relating to the case should be immediately forwarded
to the registrar of the court, on the ground that the wives of the
Princes of the Blood were no more able than their husbands to be tried
save by the Parlement of Paris. At the same time, it appointed two
celebrated advocates, François de Montholon and Simon Marion, to act as
counsel for the princess.
The commissioners at Saint-Jean-d’Angely appear to have paid no
attention to these injunctions. The princess again appealed to the
Parlement, which issued a second decree, confirming the first and
ordering the commissioners to appear themselves before it, to answer
for their disobedience. The King of Navarre, who had no intention of
surrendering the conduct of an affair of such great consequence to
himself to the royal judges, from whom he had everything to fear,
replied by issuing a counter-decree, which rejected the pretensions
of the princess, maintained the competency of the tribunal he had
appointed, and ordered the commissioners to prosecute the affair, “in
conformity with the procedure which they had followed hitherto.”
In consequence, the sentence passed upon Brilland was confirmed, and
on 11 July, 1588, the condemned man suffered his terrible fate. “He
gave on this occasion,” writes de Thou, “several proofs of madness,
although he confessed that he was guilty of several other crimes, and
that he recognized the justice of the sentence that the commissioners
chosen to try him had pronounced. He began, however, to blaspheme in
a scandalous fashion, so that those who assisted at the execution
had great difficulty in making him return to his right senses, which
caused people to think that his mind was not very sound, and that, in
consequence, much reliance ought not to be placed on his evidence.”
On the same day, the fugitive page, Belcastel, was executed in effigy.
As for Corbais, the _valet de chambre_, who had fled with the page
and had been trapped so neatly outside the gates of Poitiers, we are
not told what was decided upon in regard to him. He is not mentioned
again in the proceedings.
After the execution of Brilland, the proceedings against the
Princesse de Condé were continued. The Prince de Condé and the Comte
de Soissons demanded to be received as parties to the prosecution,
and their request was granted by the commissioners. The princess once
more appealed to the Parlement of Paris, which issued a third decree,
forbidding Conti and Soissons to pursue the affair except before the
Parlement, and ordering the arrest of the commissioners and the seizure
and sequestration of their property.
This decree, like the two which had preceded it, was treated with
contempt, since the Parlement was, of course, powerless to enforce
it, and on 19 July the commissioners directed that the princess
should be brought to trial, but that, on account of her pregnancy,
the trial should not begin until forty days after her confinement.
In the meanwhile, she was very strictly guarded in the house of the
Sieur de Saint-Mesme, governor of Saint-Jean-d’Angely, in which she
had been shut up ever since her arrest, and only permitted to see a
very few persons. “During the six months that she was enceinte,” writes
Fiefbrun, “she was retained in her lodging, subjected to a thousand
slanders, and interrogated frequently by the chosen and incompetent
judges, not as a great princess, but as a simple demoiselle, without
any regard to her rank or her privileges. I leave all those who have
heard it spoken about to imagine how many anguishes, how much despair,
assailed her soul during that long time, in which she was not permitted
to speak or to confer with any one save two or three of her intimates,
without any other counsel or assistance.”
On 1 September, 1588, six months after the death of her husband, the
captive princess gave birth to a son, Henri de Bourbon, second of that
name, and third Prince de Condé. Fiefbrun gravely assures us that, at
the moment of the boy’s birth, “an extraordinary light was observed in
the heavens, and that, on the day of his baptism, the sky being serene
and cloudless, a clap of thunder was heard, which several persons who
understood meteors regarded as of good augury.”
Less importance, however, was attached to these happy prognostications
than to a circumstance which appeared to remove the suspicion on which
the charge against the princess had been principally based, namely,
that she was with child by the page Belcastel, and had poisoned her
husband to escape his just vengeance. This was the striking resemblance
which the infant prince bore to the late Prince de Condé, which was
admitted even by some who had until then been inclined to believe in
the guilt of the princess. “To-day, at noon precisely,” wrote the
governor of Saint-Jean-d’Angely to the Duc de Thouars, “_Madame la
Princesse_, your sister, has been delivered of the most beautiful
prince imaginable, and with more resemblance (so far as one can judge
at his age) to the late Monseigneur, his father, than one can describe.
For which I praise God, as do an infinite number of honourable people,
your servants.”
And Gilbert, the mayor of the town, wrote that “he had seen to-day the
dead father born again in a child so like him in every respect that
there was not a man living but was of opinion that never had son so
closely resembled his father.”
Desmoustiers, the pastor of the Protestant Church of
Saint-Jean-d’Angely, and Delacroix, the late prince’s chaplain, bore
similar testimony, the former declaring that the boy resembled his
father “_en tout et partout_”; while the latter concluded his
letter by observing: “Thus does Our Lord (just Judge) cause the truth
concerning the poisoning to be known.”[133]
Whether it was that the birth of a son had given the Princesse de
Condé a certain prestige with the Protestants, disposed to see in
this child a hope for the future, or that the want of proofs rendered
the prosecution difficult to continue, or that the King of Navarre’s
attention was occupied by weightier matters, the investigation was not
resumed, and the members of the commission which had been appointed
to conduct it dispersed. The princess, nevertheless, remained in
captivity, although she now enjoyed a certain amount of liberty,
since she went twice a week to see her little son, who had been put
out to nurse at Mazeroy, near Saint-Jean-d’Angely; and a path across
the fields between Beaufief and the road leading to that town, which
she generally followed, bears to this day the name of “_le chemin
de la princesse_.”[134] She was unable to obtain either the trial
before the Parlement of Paris which she had repeatedly demanded or her
liberty, and she appealed in vain to her relatives, to the neighbouring
nobility, and to every person of importance whom chance happened to
bring to Saint-Jean-d’Angely, to use their influence on her behalf. But
neither her relatives nor the different nobles to whom she addressed
herself seemed disposed to take any active steps in her favour, and it
was left to a magistrate, the Président de Thou, to be the first to
interest himself in the forsaken woman.
In the summer of 1589, de Thou, charged with a mission from Henri IV.,
passed through Saint-Jean-d’Angely, and the princess, since she was
unable either to receive or to visit him herself, had the happy idea
of sending to him her daughter Éléonore and the little Henri, with a
request that he would accord them his protection. The kind heart of the
worthy president was touched, and he promised to do everything in his
power on behalf of the princess and her children. Several years passed,
however, before circumstances permitted him to render any material
assistance to his illustrious clients.
Henri IV., as the King of Navarre had now become, did not appear
to cast any doubt upon the legitimacy of the little prince, since
he consented to stand godfather to him, and conferred upon him
indirectly the government of Guienne, which he himself had held
before his accession to the throne. But this informal acknowledgment
carried little weight, and, so long as the Princesse de Condé was
not exonerated from the terrible charge which was still hanging over
her, the boy’s position remained doubtful and precarious. Moreover,
when, after the conversion of Henri IV. and the submission of Paris,
tranquillity was to some degree restored, and the new King’s authority
better established, the late prince’s brothers wished to recommence
the proceedings against their sister-in-law, and urged his Majesty to
declare her child incapable of succeeding to the throne. For some time
their animosity frustrated all the efforts of de Thou on behalf of the
princess and her son, but at length he succeeded in outmanœuvring them.
In January, 1595, the King signed a new decree extending the provisions
of an article of the Edict of Peace of 1577, which admitted Protestants
to public office. The Parlement, however, refused to register it,
except on the condition that no member of the Reformed Faith should be
eligible for the post of governor or lieutenant-general of a province,
and persisted in its refusal, notwithstanding all the efforts of the
King to induce it to give way. The attitude of the Parlement placed
Henri IV. in a very embarrassing position, and de Thou, adroitly
seizing his opportunity, offered to secure the passing of the Edict,
provided that the King would guarantee that the young Prince de Condé,
the heir-presumptive to the throne, should be brought up in the
Catholic Faith. His Majesty, at first received this proposition very
ungraciously, but, seeing no other way out of the _impasse_, he
eventually accepted it, and directed the attorney-general to announce
to the Parlement that the Prince de Condé “would forthwith be taken out
of the hands of persons of the Protestant religion to be brought up in
that of Rome.”
This announcement not only secured the registration of the Edict,
but brought about the liberation of the Princesse de Condé, since to
recognize the rights of the son was to acknowledge the innocence of
the mother; and now that the favour of the King appeared to be gained,
the prisoner of Saint-Jean-d’Angely had no lack of supporters. A few
weeks later (June, 1595), Henri, Duc de Montmorency,[135] after having
taken at Dijon his oath as Constable of France, presented to Henri
IV. a petition signed by Diane de France,[136] widow of François,
Maréchal de Montmorency, Charles de Valois, Comte d’Auvergne,[137] the
Duc de Thouars, the Duc de Bouillon, the Baron de Montmorency-Damville,
and other relatives of the princess, praying him to direct that
the accusations brought against her should be adjudicated upon.
The King, by letters-patent, ordered the affair to be submitted to
the Parlement of Paris, and that the minutes of the proceedings at
Saint-Jean-d’Angely should be sent to the registrar of that body.
At the same time, he ordered the princess to be set at liberty, on
condition that the signatories to the petition should make themselves
responsible for her appearance when called upon.
In November, 1595, the princess and her son quitted
Saint-Jean-d’Angely, in charge of Jean de Vivonne, Marquis de Pisani,
whom the King had appointed the boy’s _gouverneur_. In the first
days of December, they arrived at the Château of Saint-Germain, which
had been provisionally assigned the little prince as a residence, and
where, by Henri IV.’s desire, the Parlement of France came to salute
him as first Prince of the Blood and heir-presumptive to the throne.
In the following May, the trial of the princess--if such a name
could be applied to an affair, the issue of which was a foregone
conclusion--came on for hearing. The Prince de Conti and the Comte
de Soissons had protested against everything that might be decided
as illegal, on the ground that the judgment of the case belonged to
the King alone, “holding his court garnished with peers, legitimately
assembled.” The Parlement summoned the two princes to appear before
it, and show cause why their sister-in-law should not be pronounced
innocent of the death of her husband. They refused, whereupon the
court declared all the proceedings in Saintonge null and void and
of no effect, “as contrary to the authority of the King, and to the
decrees of his Court of Parlement, and useful in no way whatsoever to
the furtherance of justice.” Finally, on 24 July, it issued a decree
declaring the princess “pure and innocent,” which, in accordance with
letters-patent issued by the King, was registered by all the provincial
Parlements.
Thus terminated the mysterious affair of Charlotte Catherine de la
Trémoille, Princesse de Condé.
But, as an eighteenth-century historian very rightly points out,
a case gained before the Parlement was not necessarily a victory
at the tribunal of public opinion; while over and over again that
body had quashed the decrees of the lesser courts only to have its
own verdict reversed by the judgment of history. The proceedings at
Saint-Jean-d’Angely were declared null and of no effect, but the affair
was not sent back for trial to the place where the supposed crime had
been committed, nor submitted to a new examination. Thus, the Princesse
de Condé, though pronounced innocent by the Law, was not exonerated
by a large section of the public; nor has time altogether effaced the
suspicions which remained in so many minds.[138]
Since all the documents connected with the investigation at
Saint-Jean-d’Angely were, by order of the Parlement, solemnly burned
by the registrar of the Court, in the presence of the First President,
Achille de Harlay, and the _rapporteur_, Édouard Molé, until some
fresh evidence shall be forthcoming, historians must renounce the hope
of discovering the truth of this _cause célèbre_, and content
themselves with more or less hazardous conjectures.
That the prince died from the effects of poison was undoubtedly the
firm belief of practically all his contemporaries. One writer of the
time alone, so far as we are aware, Joseph Texeira,[139] takes a
different view. In 1598, Texeira published an historical treatise, in
Latin, dealing with the principal events of Henri IV.’s reign,[140]
in the course of which he denied that the Prince de Condé had been
poisoned, and attributed his death to the injuries he had received at
Coutras, from which, as we have mentioned, he had suffered a great
deal of pain. Texeira pretends that the doctors who performed the
autopsy were divided as to the cause of death, and that the opinion of
those who held that it was due to natural causes was adopted, after
a solemn discussion, by the Faculty of Montpellier. But Désormeaux,
so devoted to the Condé family, confesses that, despite his active
researches, he was unable to find the proof of the two facts advanced
by Texeira in the documents of the time, whether published or in
manuscript, and if, after this avowal, he inclines to the same opinion,
it is because he cannot bring himself to believe that Texeira, Almoner
to the King and Councillor of State, was capable of a lie.[141]
But, admitting that the unfortunate prince was poisoned, what evidence
is there to connect his wife with the crime? Nothing whatever save the
confessions of Brilland, made under torture, and which he subsequently
denied, and the rumour of her undue intimacy with the page Belcastel,
about which, singularly enough, nothing seems to have been heard
until after her husband’s death. On the other hand, there are the
strongest possible reasons for believing her to be entirely innocent.
She was, undoubtedly, deeply in love with her husband at the time of
her marriage, and had given him, as we have seen, signal proofs of her
devotion; and it is, indeed, difficult to believe that in less than
two years her affection could have been transformed into a murderous
hatred. Moreover, she had apparently nothing to gain and much to lose
by his death, for in the line of succession he stood next to the King
of Navarre, a childless man, whose life was spent in the midst of
perils. In conniving at the murder of the Prince de Condé, quite apart
from the danger of detection and punishment, she would have deprived
herself of the prospect of becoming Queen of France.
CHAPTER XI
Education of Henri II. de Bourbon, Prince de Condé--Appearance
and character of the young prince--He is offered and accepts
the hand of Charlotte de Montmorency, unaware that Henry
IV. is desperately enamoured of the lady--Conversation of
the King with Bassompierre--Marriage of Condé and Mlle.
de Montmorency--Infatuation of the King for the young
princess--Condé refuses to accept the odious rôle assigned
him, and “plays the devil”--Violent scenes between him and the
King--He removes with his wife to Picardy--Amorous escapade of
Henri IV.--Condé, summoned to Court for the accouchement of the
Queen, leaves the princess behind him--Indignation of Henri
IV.--Condé flies with his wife to Flanders--Fury of the King,
who sends troops in pursuit of the fugitives--Refusal of the
Archdukes to deliver them up--Condé goes to Cologne, while the
princess proceeds to Brussels.
Henri IV. charged himself with all the expenses of the little Prince
de Condé’s education; the Cardinal de Gondi, Bishop of Paris, was
entrusted with the task of instructing him in the Catholic faith, and
on 24 January, 1596, the boy attended Mass for the first time.
To assist the _gouverneur_, the Marquis de Pisani, in his
important duties, the King decided to appoint a _sous-gouverneur_,
and selected for that post Nicolas d’Aumale, Sieur d’Harcourt.
D’Harcourt was a Protestant, and his appointment was probably due to
Henri IV.’s desire to conciliate the Huguenots and to prove to them
that, though the heir presumptive to the throne was to be brought
up as a Catholic, there was no intention of separating him entirely
from those of his father’s faith. For preceptor, the prince was given
Nicolas Lefebvre, Counsellor to the Departments of Waters and Forests,
who was a devout, though a by no means intolerant, Catholic, and one of
the most learned men of his time.
The education of the boy would have progressed smoothly enough, but
for the interference of the Dowager-Princesse de Condé, who aspired to
direct everything herself, and continually countermanded the orders of
Pisani, who was obliged to appeal to Henri IV. to uphold his authority.
He complained that the princess refused to admit that anything was
right that came from the King; and there can be no doubt that the lady,
who was aware that none but political motives had induced Henri IV. to
put an end to her imprisonment, was but little disposed to respect his
Majesty’s wishes.
Not content with quarrelling with Pisani, the princess endeavoured to
create dissension between him and d’Harcourt, by insinuating to the
latter that he was distrusted by his superior, on account of his being
a Huguenot. Then she tried to persuade the King to allow Texeira to be
associated with d’Harcourt and Lefebvre in the education of her son--a
proposal which was greatly resented by the _sous-gouverneur_ and
the preceptor.
The disputes to which his mother’s meddlesome activity gave rise were
very unfortunate for the young prince. And Pisani declared that it was
“pitiable to see him thus guided, served, and treated,” and expressed
his fear “lest he should be found wanting, and that those who had been
charged with his education should be blamed and despised for it.”[142]
In October, 1599, Pisani died suddenly, at the Abbey of
Saint-Maur-des-Fossés,[143] to which he had removed with his charge to
escape a terrible epidemic--probably typhus--which was then ravaging
Paris. The choice of his successor was not an easy one, for now that
Queen Marguerite had given her consent to the dissolution of her union
with the King, and negotiations had been set on foot for Henri’s
marriage with Marie de’ Medici, the post was diminishing in importance.
General astonishment, however, was expressed when it was known that the
King had conferred it upon the Comte de Belin. The count was a former
Leaguer, Governor of Paris under the Duc de Mayenne, and had been one
of the first of that party to attach himself to the cause of Henri
IV. He had since testified great devotion to the monarch, but he was
but little esteemed by the public, and had lost any military prestige
he ever possessed by the promptitude with which he had capitulated at
Arques, in 1596. Some privileged courtiers ventured to remonstrate with
his Majesty on this appointment, to whom he drily replied: “When I
wanted to make a King of my nephew, I gave him Pisani; when I wanted to
make a subject of him, I gave him Belin.”
The new _gouverneur_ showed himself infinitely more complaisant
towards the Princesse de Condé than had his predecessor; indeed,
Tallemant des Réaux declares that they “made _belles galanteries_
together,” though no attention need be paid to the unsupported
statement of this incorrigible scandalmonger. He was also far more
indulgent with his pupil than Pisani had ever been--a change which
is generally believed to have had a very injurious effect upon the
character of the young prince, who was one of those lads who require
a strong hand over them. Thanks, however, to the perseverance of
Lefebvre, his studies were not permitted to suffer, and he received an
education both sound and varied. He became a tolerable Latin scholar,
spoke Italian fluently, understood Spanish, wrote his own language
correctly--a rare accomplishment in those days--and had some knowledge
of theology and mathematics. In appearance, he was rather below the
middle height, with a slight, well-knit figure, and “the strongly
marked features which generally distinguished the Bourbons.”[144] He
was passionately devoted to the chase and an excellent horseman; nor
does he seem to have lacked the courage of his race, since in February,
1607, when the prince was in his nineteenth year, Henri IV. was obliged
to exercise his authority to prevent a duel to which he had challenged
the Duc de Nevers.
With the exception of this incident, his early youth appears to
have been very uneventful, for, since France was now at peace, no
opportunity occurred for his initiation into the art of war. The King
kept him constantly about his person, less through any affection for
his kinsman than from a desire to protect him against the influence
of ambitious and scheming persons who might seek to use him for the
furtherance of their own ends. But the young prince did not possess
the qualities which would have fitted him to shine in the gay and
licentious society of the time, being shy and awkward, particularly in
the presence of ladies, while his revenues were not at all commensurate
with his rank; and after the birth of sons to Henri IV. had deprived
him of all hope of the throne, he seems to have occupied a very
inconspicuous position at Court.
Condé’s comparative lack of fortune made a wealthy marriage a
necessity, and when, at the beginning of the year 1609, the King
announced his intention of bestowing upon him the hand of Charlotte
de Montmorency, daughter of the Connétable Henri de Montmorency,[145]
and one of the richest heiresses in France, he accepted the offer
with a gratitude which was not diminished by the fact that Mlle. de
Montmorency united to the advantages of wealth remarkable personal
attractions.
There was, indeed, no more lovely girl at Court than the daughter of
the Constable. Cardinal Bentivoglio, the Papal Nuncio at Brussels, who
saw her towards the close of the same year, has left us the following
description of her:
“She was then sixteen years old, and her loveliness was adjudged by all
men to accord with the fame thereof. She was very fair; her eyes and
all her features full of charm; an ingenuous grace in all her gestures
and in her manner of speaking. Her beauty owed its power to itself
alone, since she did not bring to its aid any of the artifices of which
women are wont to make use.”[146]
It is certain, however, that Condé would have received the proposition
in a very different spirit if he had been aware of the reasons which
had prompted the King to make it; for it was not the young prince’s
interests, but his own convenience, that his Majesty had in mind.
One day in January, 1609, it happened that Henri IV. was passing
through the great gallery of the Louvre, when he came upon a bevy of
young ladies of the Court practising for a ballet, nymphs of Diana,
armed for the chase. Among them was Mlle. de Montmorency, whose charms,
enhanced by the classical costume she was wearing, made so profound an
impression upon the susceptible monarch that he was quite unable to
take his eyes off her.
Shortly after this encounter, his Majesty was laid up with an attack of
gout. Several of the ladies of the Court came to visit him, and among
those who were most assiduous in their attentions was the Duchesse
d’Angoulême, who was invariably accompanied by Mlle. de Montmorency,
her niece. Henri IV. was fifty-five, and his hair and beard, whitened
by a life of peril and hardship, made him look considerably older.
But his heart was still young, and he was as amorous as he had been
at twenty. From the first, he took the keenest pleasure in Mlle. de
Montmorency’s society; soon he was hopelessly in love, although for
some time he appears to have deluded himself with the belief that his
interest in the damsel was of a paternal nature only.
The fair Charlotte was already betrothed, with the King’s approval, to
François de Bassompierre, a handsome young noble of Lorraine, high in
favour with his Majesty, and one of the most redoubtable lady-killers
of the Court. Henri, however, having himself become a candidate for the
lady’s affections, had no mind to endure a rival so formidable as the
fascinating Bassompierre, and, accordingly, decided that the projected
marriage must be broken off.
One night, when Bassompierre was on duty in the King’s chamber,
endeavouring to soothe his master’s pain by reading to him M. d’Urfé’s
sentimental romance “l’Astrée,” then at the height of its vogue,
Henri informed him, after some preamble, that he intended to marry
him to Mlle. d’Aumale, and to revive the duchy of that name in his
favour. “You wish then, Sire, to give me two wives!” exclaimed the
astonished courtier. “Baron,” rejoined the King, “I wish to speak to
you as a friend. I am not only in love, but distracted about Mlle. de
Montmorency. If you marry her and she loves you, I shall hate you. If
she loves me, you will hate me. It were better that the marriage were
broken off, lest it should mar the good understanding between us, and
destroy the affection I entertain for you. I have decided to marry her
to my nephew, the Prince de Condé, and to keep her near the person of
my wife. She will be the solace and support of the old age upon which I
am about to enter. I shall give her to my nephew, who is only twenty,
and prefers hunting a thousand times to ladies’ society; and I desire
no other favour from her than her affection, without pretending to
anything further.”
Bassompierre, who was above all things a courtier, seeing that the
King was determined, and that, unless he submitted with a good grace,
he would lose both his bride and the royal favour, protested his
willingness to obey, adding the hope that “this new affection would
bring his Majesty as much joy as it would occasion him pain, but for
his consideration for his Majesty.”[147] His chagrin was, nevertheless,
intense, and when, next morning, the young lady having been acquainted
with the change that had been made in the disposition of her hand,
greeted her too facile lover with an expressive shrug of her pretty
shoulders and a glance of the most withering disdain, his grief and
mortification were such that he fled precipitately to his lodging,
where, he assures us, he spent three days without food or sleep.
The betrothal of Condé and Charlotte de Montmorency took place shortly
afterwards (2 March, 1609), in the great gallery of the Louvre. The
Constable gave his prospective son-in-law 100,000 écus; while the King
granted him an increase of his pension and a present of 150,000 livres.
The bride received 18,000 livres from his Majesty, for the purchase of
jewellery, as well as a magnificent trousseau. Owing to the necessity
of obtaining the Papal dispensation for the union of cousins,[148] the
marriage-ceremony was postponed until 16 May, when it was celebrated at
Chantilly, “very inexpensively, but very gaily.”
This gaiety was not of long duration. Scarcely had the young couple
rejoined the Court, which was then at Fontainebleau, than the King
began to lay the closest siege to the princess’s heart and strove by
every means in his power to gain her affection. The girl, flattered
by the homage of her Sovereign, of which she perhaps did not divine
the end, was far from discouraging his attentions, and, if we are
to believe Tallemant des Réaux, appeared one evening on the balcony
of her apartments in a _peignoir_, with her hair falling over
her shoulders, in order to please the King, who was transported with
admiration. “_Dieu!_” cried she, “how foolish he is!” And she
laughed heartily.
Her husband, however, did not laugh. The affair had become a public
scandal. Even in the streets, people laughed and jested about the
infatuation of the King, and “talked with the utmost freedom of his
Majesty and of the corruption and debaucheries of his Court.”[149] If
Condé had little love for his wife, he was exceedingly jealous of his
honour, and, to Henri’s intense chagrin, absolutely declined to accept
the odious rôle he had intended for him, and began, in his Majesty’s
phrase, “to play the devil.”[150]
In vain, the King endeavoured to reassure him as to the innocence of
his intentions; in vain, the Constable, at his Majesty’s request, made
the strongest representations to his son-in-law. Condé was deaf to
all appeals, and, towards the middle of June, carried off his wife to
Valery, in the hope that, during his absence, the King’s passion might
cool or be diverted to some fresh object.
Henri IV. was in despair. In obedience to his orders, the poet
Malherbe consented “to degrade his muse to the office of pander,”[151]
and composed stanzas wherein the King, under the name of Alcandre,
cries:
Il faut que je cesse de vivre
Si je veux cesser de souffrir;
and the princess, under the name of Orante, replies:
La cœur outrée du même ennui,
Jurait que s’il mourait pour elle,
Elle mourait aussi pour lui.[152]
Condé and his wife remained at Valery until the first week in July,
when they were compelled to return to Court, in order to attend the
marriage of César de Vendôme, Henri IV.’s eldest son by Gabrielle
d’Estrées, and Mlle. de Mercœur. The King’s passion became more violent
than ever, and his conduct would have been ludicrous to the last degree
had it been less culpable. Not only did he continue to commission
Malherbe to bombard the princess with elegies and sonnets, but “one
saw him alter in less than no time his hair, his beard, and his
countenance.” He who had hitherto been distinguished from the nobles of
his Court by the simplicity and even negligence of his attire, might
now be seen dressing and adorning himself with as much care as the
youngest and most dandified of his courtiers, and, on one occasion, he
appeared at a tilting-match wearing “a scented ruff, a doublet with
sleeves of Chinese satin, and the colours of the Princesse de Condé,
who called him ‘her knight.’”[153] “The King is well and grows younger
every day,” wrote Malherbe to his friend Peiresc.
The unfortunate husband began to “play the devil” again, and, though
Henri, in the hope of bending him to his will, had the meanness to give
orders to Sully that the instalment of his pension due at Midsummer
should not be paid him, and to threaten him with even more severe
measures unless he mended his ways, his complaints grew louder than
ever. Violent scenes took place between him and the King, in one of
which Condé allowed the word “tyranny” to escape him, and his Majesty,
losing all control of himself, replied that the only occasion on which
he had merited such a reproach was when he had recognized the prince
for what he was not--that is to say, a legitimate son.
Finally, Condé took his wife back to Valery, and, though Henri employed
every means in his power to induce him to return, it was to no purpose.
“Beaumont,” writes the King to the Constable, on 23 September,
“returned yesterday, and says that he found our friend (Condé) more
unmanageable than ever. He leaves Valery this morning for Muret.”[154]
Muret was a château belonging to Condé in Picardy, not far from the
Flemish frontier, and the prince’s pretext for removing thither was the
excellent hunting which the neighbourhood afforded. Early in November,
he and his wife went to join a hunting-party at the Abbey of Verteuil,
and, while they were there, M. de Traigny, governor of Amiens, invited
the Princesse de Condé and the dowager-princess, who was with her, to
dine at his country-house, situated some three leagues from the abbey.
We will allow Lenet, the faithful servant of the Condés, who had the
story from the princess’s own lips, to relate what followed:
“It would seem very much as though this party had been concerted
with the King, but he was, at any rate, informed of it by the Sieur
de Traigny, who always abetted him in his pleasures, so that the
princesses, while on their way thither, saw a carriage pass with the
King’s liveries and a great number of hounds. The princess-mother, who
was passionately attached to her son, and watched the actions of the
young princess very narrowly, feared that, under the pretext of some
hunting excursion, the King had prepared for them a rendezvous. She
summoned the huntsmen, whom she saw at a distance; but one of them,
advancing before the others, came to the door of the coach to answer
the princess’s questions, and disarmed her fears, by telling her that
a captain of the hunt, who was in the neighbourhood to celebrate
the feast of St. Hubert, had placed the relays where she saw them,
because he was hunting a stag with some of his friends. Whilst the
princess-dowager was speaking to the huntsman, the young princess, who
was at the coach-door, glanced at the others, who stood some little
distance off, and perceived that one of them was the King, who, the
better to disguise himself under the livery he wore, had put a large
black patch over his left eye and held two greyhounds in a leash.
The princess told us that she had never been more astonished in her
life, and that she did not dare to mention what she had seen to her
mother-in-law, from fear lest she should inform her husband. At the
same time, she confessed to us that this gallantry had not displeased
her, and, continuing her story, she told us that, having arrived at
Traigny and entered the salon, she remarked upon the extreme beauty of
the view, whereupon Madame de Traigny said to her that, if she cared to
put her head out of a window which she would show her, she would see
one still more agreeable. Advancing to it, she perceived that the King
was placed at the window of a pavilion opposite, he having preceded her
after having had the pleasure of seeing her on the road, and that he
held all the time one hand to his lips, as though to send her a kiss,
and the other to his heart, to show her that he had been wounded.
“The surprise of this _rencontre_ did not allow the princess
time to reflect what she should do, and she retired abruptly from
the window, exclaiming, ‘_Ciel!_ what is this? Madame, the
King is here!’ On which the princess-dowager, greatly incensed,
divided her words between giving directions for the horses to be
immediately harnessed to her coach and loading Traigny and his wife
with reproaches. Even the King, who hastened to the spot on hearing
the commotion, did not escape her anger. The enamoured prince employed
all the entreaties which his passion could dictate, and all the
promises possible, to induce her to remain, but to no purpose; for the
princesses re-entered their coach and returned forthwith to Verteuil,
where that same night the princess-mother broke the promise which the
King had extracted from her, and related the whole story to her son.”
A few days later, Condé received a letter from the King, written in
a strain half-coaxing and half-menacing, summoning him to Court, to
be present at the approaching accouchement of the Queen. Etiquette
required that the first Prince of the Blood should be in attendance on
these auspicious occasions, and it was impossible for him to refuse.
But he came alone. Henri was furious, and his anger and disappointment
rendered him so insupportable to all about him, that Marie de’ Medici
herself begged Condé to send for his wife, promising to keep the
strictest watch over her. Such was the King’s wrath that he apparently
could not trust himself to interview his cousin personally, but sent
for the prince’s secretary Virey,[155] and told him that, if Condé
desired a divorce from his wife, he would not oppose it, and would
even undertake to obtain the parents’ consent. The prince, it should
be explained, had no such wish, but, a few months before, after a
stormy interview with the King, he had chanced to observe to the Duc de
Villeroy, whom he had met on leaving the royal presence, and who had
inquired the cause of his agitation, that, rather than consent to his
own dishonour, or expose himself any longer to his Majesty’s anger,
he would get himself “dismarried”; and these hasty words, which had
been duly reported to the King, had been wrested into a request for a
divorce.[156]
Virey withdrew, and the next day returned and handed the King a very
skilfully-worded memorial from Condé, which had been drafted for him by
the Président de Thou, wherein he begged his Majesty to appoint such
persons as he might think fit to assist him with their counsel in this
delicate affair; adding that, until the matter was decided, he did not
doubt that the King would think it necessary that the princess should
remain at Muret.
This answer completely disconcerted the amorous monarch’s plans,
and made him more angry than ever. Ignoring the memorial, he turned
furiously upon Virey, to whose influence he attributed the firm tone
which Condé maintained, reproached him bitterly with the counsels he
had given the prince, threatened him with his severe displeasure,
and, finally, dismissed him, bidding him tell his master that, if he
declined to yield to his will or attempted the slightest violence
against the princess, he would give him cause to rue it. He added
that, had he been still only King of Navarre, he would at once have
challenged the prince to a duel.
After receiving the King’s message, Condé decided to feign submission,
and accordingly begged his Majesty’s leave to return to Muret to fetch
his wife. His request, as we may suppose, was readily granted, and on
25 November, the day on which the ill-fated Henriette-Marie was born,
he set out for Picardy.
On the evening of the 29th, while Henri was at the card-table, word was
brought him that a messenger had arrived from Picardy with intelligence
that _Monsieur le Prince_ had early that morning left Muret, in
a coach with his wife, accompanied by his chamberlain, the Baron de
Rochefort, Virey, and two of the princess’s ladies. Condé had given out
that they were bound on a hunting-expedition; but the messenger--an
archer of the Guard named Laperrière--had learned from his father,
who was in the prince’s service, that the party had taken the road to
Flanders.
The consternation of the King knew no bounds. The moment he learned
the news, he at once summoned his most trusted counsellors, who
found him pacing up and down the room, with downcast eyes and hands
clasped behind his back. As each arrived, he informed him of what had
occurred and demanded his advice, refusing to give him even a moment
for reflection. The prudent Sully advised his master to let the matter
rest, pointing out that, in that case, the fugitive prince, being
unable to draw his pension, would soon be reduced to sue for terms;
whereas, if Henri showed anxiety to get him back, the enemies of
France would be only too ready to assist him, in order to spite the
King.
The infatuated monarch, however, was in no mood to follow such counsel,
and that very night, without pausing to reflect on the probable effect
of such a step, wrote to the governors of Marle and Guise, directing
them to send the whole strength of their garrisons to capture Condé,
“wherever he might be;” and despatched La Chaussée, an officer of the
Guards, with orders to pursue the prince even over the frontier, “and
if he should discover him in any town beyond his dominions to address
himself to the governor and magistrates of that city, and to inform
them that his Majesty had given him authority to require and entreat
them to have the prince and his suite arrested and well guarded,
assuring them that, in acting thus, they would be doing great service
to the Archdukes.”[157]
La Chaussée came up with the fugitives at Landrecies, the first Spanish
fortress in Flanders, which they had reached in the early morning
of the 30th. Since leaving Muret, they had only rested for a few
minutes at a village inn; the almost impassable state of the roads had
compelled them to abandon their coach before crossing the Somme, and
the unfortunate princess had passed fifteen hours on the crupper of
Rochefort’s saddle, under a continuous downpour of rain.
La Chaussée produced the royal warrant for the arrest of Condé, but the
authorities of Landrecies refused to allow it to be executed until they
had referred the matter to the Archdukes. Rochefort, at the prince’s
request, was permitted to proceed to Brussels to beg the Archdukes to
grant his master a safe-conduct through their dominions, in order that
he might visit his sister, the Princess of Orange,[158] at Breda. An
envoy from Henri IV. arrived almost simultaneously to denounce the
prince as a traitor and an enemy to the public peace, and to request
their Highnesses to permit his arrest, or, at least, not to grant him
an asylum in Flanders.
The Archdukes found themselves in a very embarrassing position, and
took refuge in a compromise. They declined to allow the rights of
nations to be violated by the arrest of Condé, and granted his wife
permission to continue her journey, but gave orders that the prince
should quit the Netherlands within three days.
Rochefort returned to Landrecies with this answer on the night of 2–3
December, and, without waiting for the day, Condé quitted the town and
set out for Cologne, a city whose ancient liberties protected him from
any attempt at molestation by his enraged Sovereign. On the following
morning, the princess, under the charge of the faithful Virey, started
for Brussels, where she arrived the same night, and was lodged at the
Hôtel de Nassau, the residence of the Prince of Orange.
The Prince and Princess of Orange were at Breda, and their palace
was only occupied by a few servants. Virey was very uneasy at the
situation in which he found himself, since _Madame la Princesse_
had for the moment no protector at hand but himself, and he feared lest
Praslain, the envoy whom Henri IV. had despatched to Brussels, should
take advantage of his helplessness and carry her off. Such, indeed,
was Praslain’s intention, but, before resorting to this extreme step,
he wished to endeavour to obtain the consent of the Prince of Orange,
for which purpose he set off for Breda. There he was received by the
princess, who told him what she thought of his proposal in such very
forcible language, that he was glad to beat a retreat. He hastened back
to Brussels, but, on arriving there, found a guard, which Virey had
contrived to obtain, posted before the Hôtel de Nassau, and was obliged
to abandon all idea of a _coup de main_.
CHAPTER XII
Condé summoned by the Archdukes to Brussels--He places himself
under the protection of Philip III. of Spain--Mission of the
Marquis de Cœuvres to Brussels--His attempted abduction of the
Princesse de Condé--Condé declared guilty of high treason--He
leaves Brussels for Milan--Henri IV. and his Ministers
threaten the Archdukes with war if the princess is not given
up--Despatches of the Spanish Ambassador to his Court--Condé
at Milan--Assassination of Henri IV.--Embarrassing position
of Condé in regard to Spain--He returns to Brussels, but
declines to see his wife--His return to France--He contemplates
the dissolution of his marriage, but ultimately consents to
a formal reconciliation with the princess--His turbulent
conduct during the regency of Marie de’ Medici--His arrest and
imprisonment--The princess magnanimously shares her husband’s
captivity--Dangerous illness of the prince--Birth of Anne
Geneviève de Bourbon--Release of the Condés.
Towards the end of December, the Archdukes summoned Condé to Brussels,
under the pretext that an interview with the French representative
might induce him to return to France. But the real reason was that it
had been suggested to them by Spinola[159] that, if the prince could be
persuaded to place himself under the protection of Spain, he might be
utilized as a very valuable instrument against France.
On his arrival in Brussels, Condé expressed himself willing to return,
if guaranteed a place of surety in his government of Guienne; but
Henri IV. refused even to consider such a proposal, and insisted on an
immediate and unconditional return, promising him only a free pardon.
At the instance of Spinola, who had rapidly acquired considerable
influence over him, Condé thereupon decided to appeal to the King of
Spain for protection. The Council of State at Madrid was unanimously
of opinion that the request should be acceded to; and Philip III.
accordingly charged his ambassador at the French Court, Don Inigo de
Cardenas, to inform Henri IV. that he had taken the Prince de Condé
under his protection, “with the object of acting as a mediator in the
matter and contributing everything in his power towards the repose and
happiness of the Very Christian King.” The remainder of the despatch,
however, leaves no doubt that his Catholic Majesty was animated by very
different sentiments towards Henri IV. from those which Don Inigo was
instructed to express.[160] At the same time, Philip wrote to Condé
to assure him of his sympathy, and despatched one of his Council,
the Count Anôvar, to Brussels, with instructions to watch over the
interests of the prince, who, on his side, engaged to make no terms
with Henri IV. without the consent of Spain.
[Illustration: HENRY II DE BOURBON, PRINCE DE CONDÉ
FROM AN ENGRAVING BY MATHONIER]
Meanwhile, the Connétable de Montmorency, either because he really
believed the reports which were being industriously circulated by
French agents in Brussels that Condé was ill-treating his wife,
or, more probably, out of dishonourable servility to the King, had
intervened in the affair, and despatched to Flanders one of his
relatives, Louis de Montmorency-Boutteville, father of the unfortunate
gentleman whose execution for duelling caused such a painful sensation
seventeen years later. Boutteville was the bearer of a letter to
the Archdukes, in which the Constable complained bitterly of the
alleged sufferings of his daughter, and besought their Highnesses
to restore his beloved child to him. His request was refused, and
the reports as to Condé’s ill-treatment of his wife would appear to
have been altogether devoid of foundation. Nevertheless, the young
princess, who had little love for her husband and naturally resented
the strict surveillance to which she was subjected, was becoming more
and more dissatisfied with her life at Brussels. If she had done
nothing to encourage the advances of Henri IV., she had certainly
not been insensible to the homage of so great a monarch, and many
years later was wont to recall it with pride and emotion. Moreover,
intrigues of all kinds were at work to further the King’s odious
designs. The wife of the French Ambassador at Brussels, Brulart de
Berny, visited _Madame la Princesse_ constantly and enlarged on
the glories of which she was deprived by her husband’s jealousy; two
of her waiting-women had been bribed and added their persuasions to
those of the Ambassadress; while Girard, a secretary of the Constable,
was continually travelling to and fro between Paris, Chantilly, and
Brussels, bearing letters and instructions.
Towards the end of January, Henry IV. despatched an envoy extraordinary
to Brussels, in the person of Annibal d’Estrées, Marquis de Cœuvres,
brother of the beautiful and ill-fated Gabrielle. Cœuvres very speedily
perceived that there was small likelihood of being able to persuade the
Archdukes to surrender the princess to her relatives, or rather to the
King, and, on 9 February, wrote to his Majesty to obtain his consent to
a plan which he had formed for the abduction of the young lady. Henri
immediately sent the required authorization, but, unfortunately for the
success of the enterprise, the mere prospect of once more beholding
the object of his passion transported him to such a degree that he
was quite unable to conceal his joyous anticipations, either from his
_entourage_ or even from his long-suffering consort. The jealous
Queen took advantage of this indiscretion to acquaint the Nuncio
Ubaldini, a devoted friend of the Medici family, with what was in the
wind; the Nuncio, in his turn, communicated the news to the Spanish
Ambassador, who lost no time in sending a courier to Brussels to put
Spinola on his guard.
Spinola, fearing lest Condé, if informed of the proposed abduction of
his wife, might create a scandal, contented himself with arousing his
suspicions sufficiently to induce him to beg the Archdukes to receive
the princess into their own palace. To this their Highnesses readily
consented, and 14 February was fixed for the departure of _Madame la
Princesse_ and her attendants from the Hôtel de Nassau.
Cœuvres was naturally much disconcerted on learning of this change of
residence, and recognizing that, were the lady once within the walls of
the archducal palace, any such measures as he was contemplating would
be foredoomed to failure, determined to make his attempt on the night
of the 13th.
His plan was a bold one. The Princesse de Condé’s apartments abutted
on the garden of the Hôtel de Nassau, which was separated from the
ramparts only by a narrow street. Under cover of the confusion and
bustle which the preparations for her removal on the morrow would be
sure to entail, she was to descend, or be carried into the garden, pass
through it, and gain the street. A breach sufficient to admit of her
egress was to be made in the ramparts, and on the far side of the moat,
which was empty at this time, a body of horse, under the command of
Longueval de Manicamp, governor of La Fère, would be waiting to escort
her to the frontier, while another troop would cover their flight. Some
difference of opinion seems to exist as to whether the lady herself
was privy to this scheme; but the fact that one of her waiting-women
had carried that afternoon to the French Embassy a quantity of her
mistress’s clothes would certainly seem to point to her complicity.
It was only a few hours before the moment fixed for the execution of
Cœuvres’s design that Spinola learned of his intention, through the
treachery of a French adventurer in the marquis’s pay. This time he
felt obliged to inform Condé, who hastened to the Archdukes to demand
a guard, after which, beside himself with anger and excitement, he
hurried hither and thither, calling upon every one he met to assist
him to protect his wife. Soon the Hôtel de Nassau was surrounded by
soldiers, reinforced by five hundred armed citizens, whom the Prince
of Orange had procured from the Burgomaster, while cavalry, preceded
by torch-bearers, patrolled the neighbouring streets. These warlike
preparations brought almost the whole city to the spot, and “bred one
of the greatest tumults ever known in Brussels; and it was commonly
reported and believed that the King of France was himself in person at
the gates to carry away the princess by force.”[161]
The same day, about three o’clock in the afternoon, Henri IV. had
quitted Paris, “very jovial and much bedecked, contrary to his usual
custom,” accompanied by four coaches, “to go to meet his nymph,”[162]
and proceeded to Saint-Germain-en-Laye. But the nymph did not arrive,
and, in her stead, came a mud-bespattered courier with the news of the
failure of the attempt. The discomfited monarch returned to Paris in
a very ill-humour, and wrote a most unkind letter to Cœuvres, whom he
stigmatized as “a blockhead and a fool.”
That enterprising nobleman had, it would appear, very narrowly escaped
capture, having actually entered the Hôtel de Nassau before he learned
that he had been betrayed. However, being possessed of a large fund of
assurance, he resolved to brave the matter out, and early next morning
presented himself at the palace of the Archdukes, to complain of the
insult put upon the King, his master, by the precautionary measures
adopted the previous evening, and of the caluminous reports that were
being circulated concerning himself. The Archduke Albert replied that
he himself had given no credit to these reports, but that, as the
Prince de Condé had insisted on the necessity for a guard, he had felt
obliged to accede to his request.
On leaving the palace, Cœuvres, accompanied by the French Ambassador,
Brulart de Berny, the Sieur de Préaulx, counsellor to the Parlement of
Paris, and Manicamp, governor of La Fère, proceeded to the Hôtel de
Nassau, where, with much solemnity, he handed Condé a formal indictment
declaring him guilty of high treason, unless he forthwith made his
submission to the King. To this indictment the prince at once drew up
a reply, wherein he affirmed that “he had left France to save his life
and his honour; that he was prepared to return if any offer should be
made him which would enable him to reside there in security; that he
would live and die faithful to the King; but that, when the King should
stray from the ways of justice and should proceed against him by the
ways of violence, he held all such acts as should be done against him
null and invalid.”[163]
After this, Condé, fearing or feigning to fear, that it was now no
longer safe for him to remain in the Netherlands, determined, on the
advice of Spinola and the Spanish Ambassador at Brussels, to seek an
asylum at Milan. Accordingly, having exacted a solemn promise from
the Archdukes that his wife should not quit their palace without his
consent, on 21 February, he left Brussels secretly, in disguise,
accompanied by Rochefort, Virey, and one of Spinola’s officers named
Fritima, who was to act as guide and interpreter. The season was an
unusually severe one, and the travellers suffered many hardships, but
on the last day in March they reached Milan in safety.
The Spaniards attached great importance to the possession of Condé’s
person, for, as first Prince of the Blood and next in succession to
the King’s children, he might prove of the highest value to them in
exciting troubles in France, should Henri IV. persist in his hostile
projects against Spain, while, in the event of negotiations, his
extradition might be dearly sold. In accordance with instructions from
Madrid, the prince was received by the Spanish governor, Fuentes, with
every possible honour, lodged in the ducal palace, and a numerous
household appointed to wait upon him.
Henri IV. and his Ministers, finding persuasion of no avail with the
Archdukes, had recourse to threats, and represented to them that,
unless the fair Charlotte were surrendered, war would follow. “The
repose of Europe rests in your master’s hands,” said the Président
Jeannin to Pecquius, the Ambassador of the Archdukes in Paris; “peace
and war depend on whether the princess is or is not given up.” And the
King himself reminded the Ambassador that Troy fell because Priam would
not surrender Helen.
The gravity of these speeches was enhanced by the warlike preparations
which were in progress all over France for the execution of the “Great
Enterprise”: the scheme of liberating Europe from the domination of
the House of Austria and giving France her rightful place in the world,
which Henri IV. had cherished ever since his accession to the throne.
It was, however, believed by many that these formidable preparations
had no other object than the forcible recovery of the Princesse de
Condé, and Malherbe wrote--
“Deux beaux yeux sont l’empire
Pour qui je soupire.”
Such, undoubtedly, was the opinion of the Spanish Ambassador. “The King
is so blinded and infatuated by his passion,” he writes to Philip III.,
“that I know not what to say to your Majesty concerning it, and, if I
find many reasons for holding peace to be secure, in regarding affairs
from a political standpoint, I find many more for holding war to be
certain on the ground of love.” He goes on to say that he is informed
that the King’s infatuation has reached such a point that he is ready
to sacrifice everything to it. His health is much affected by it; he
has lost his sleep, and some persons believe that he is losing his
reason. And he adds that he is in daily expectation of seeing Henri IV.
marching on Brussels at the head of a large force of cavalry.
A fortnight later, the Ambassador writes again--
“Within the last three days, the King has endeavoured to persuade the
Queen to request her Highness the Infanta to send the princess (de
Condé) for her coronation. The Queen, through the King’s confessor
(Père Cotton), has begged to be excused, observing that it did not seem
to her to be becoming to appear as a third party and risk the indignity
of a refusal from the Infanta. The King fell into a violent rage, and
declared that the Queen should not be crowned, and that he would have
nothing done to displease him. The Queen wept and was much distressed,
both at this and at the ardour with which the King is pursuing one of
her ladies.”
Henri himself pretended to be entirely engrossed by his passion. “I am
so worn out by these pangs,” he wrote to Préaulx, “that I am nothing
but skin and bone. Everything disgusts me. I avoid company, and if, to
observe the usages of society, I allow myself to be drawn into some
assemblies, my wretchedness is completed.”
Fortunately for the fame of Henri IV., greatly as his mind was
disturbed and his judgment distracted by this miserable infatuation,
it is now generally admitted that the affair had little influence
on the course of events. The war upon which he was about to enter
was the outcome of twelve long years of persevering negotiations and
carefully-prepared alliances, and if he had never set eyes upon the
Princesse de Condé, the final result would have been the same. “The
King and his Ministers,” remarks Henri’s latest English biographer, Mr.
P. F. Willert, “used the large forces assembled for quite a different
purpose as a bugbear to frighten the Archdukes. But, when they refused
to purchase security by a compliance inconsistent with their honour, it
was not on Brussels that the French armies prepared to march. On the
contrary, four days before his death (10 May, 1610), the King in the
most friendly terms asked the Archduke Albert’s permission to lead his
army across his territory to the assistance of his German allies: a
permission granted by the Archduke, notwithstanding the opposition of
Spinola and of the Spanish party in his Council.”[164]
Nevertheless, almost up to the very last, there were many who still
believed that, if the Princesse de Condé were given up, war might be
averted. Among these was Henri IV.’s Jesuit confessor, Père Cotton,
who, in an interview with Pecquius, informed him that, at the previous
Easter, “the King was so sincerely desirous of securing his salvation
that he had readily forgotten his affection for the princess; but that
all his passion had been rekindled by the perusal of the letters which
she addressed to him.”[165]
Although she was treated with extreme kindness by the Infanta, the
young princess had grown heartily weary of the dull little Court of
Brussels, and not only stimulated the passion of her royal adorer by
the tenderness of her replies to his letters, but complained bitterly
of the restraints to which she was subjected, and which, she declared,
would have a most serious effect upon her health, unless his Majesty
procured her speedy liberation.
Meanwhile, Condé, at Milan, was becoming as bored with the
imperturbable gravity and solemn pomp which surrounded him as was his
young wife at Brussels, and, in order to find some distraction from
the monotony of his existence, had been driven to the study of the
antiquities of the neighbourhood and to beginning a translation of
Tacitus, under the guidance of his learned secretary, Virey. Fearing
that the prince might be persuaded to cast in his lot definitely with
the Spaniards, the French Government despatched agents to represent to
him that it would be more consonant with his dignity as a Prince of the
Blood were he to remove to Rome and place himself under the protection
of the common father of the faithful, rather than under that of the
common enemy of his race and country. Condé seemed disposed to adopt
this suggestion, but the arguments of Fuentes, and the news of the
invasion of Lombardy by the Duke of Savoy and Lesdiguières, caused him
to abandon all idea of leaving Milan, and to place himself entirely
under the guidance of Spain.
Had Henri IV. lived, two things are tolerably certain to have happened:
the first, that the Archdukes would sooner or later have been compelled
to surrender the princess; the second, that Condé would have been
found in arms against his country. But, on 14 May, 1610, the knife
of Ravaillac settled the question both of love and war, and Henri
de Bourbon, with all his greatness and his littleness, his splendid
schemes and his shameful passions, was but lifeless clay.
A letter from the governor of Alessandria informed Condé of the
tragedy. He received the news with somewhat mixed feelings, in which,
however, to his honour be it said, regret seems to have predominated.
His position was a very embarrassing one, as it was difficult for him
to cast off the ties which bound him to Spain. Virey, in the account in
Latin verse which he wrote of his master’s adventures, part of which he
subsequently translated into French, under the title of “l’Enlèvement
innocent, ou la retraite clandestine de Monseigneur le Prince (de
Condé) avec Madame la Princesse,” affirms that Fuentes came to the
prince to congratulate him as the “legal heir” of the murdered monarch;
and there can be no doubt that the Ministers of Philip III. approached
the Pope, with the view of ascertaining whether he would be prepared to
annul the marriage of Henry IV. and Marie de’ Medici, in which event it
was their intention to put Condé forward as a candidate for the throne.
As they received no encouragement from Paul V., they were forced to
abandon the idea, but they still cherished the hope that the prince
would, on his return to France, dispute the Queen-Mother’s title to the
regency, and, consequently, no objection was raised to his departure
from Milan.
Condé left Milan on 9 June, and deeming it unsafe to cross France in
the then unsettled state of the kingdom, and while still under the ban
of high treason, proceeded to Brussels, where he arrived nine days
later. In spite of the remonstrances of the Spanish members of the
Archdukes’ Council, he lost no time in despatching the faithful Virey
to Paris, with letters for Louis XIII. and the Queen-Mother, wherein
he protested his devotion to the new King. His overtures were very
graciously received, and Virey returned to Brussels with an assurance
that a cordial welcome awaited his master. The secretary brought also
a letter from the Dowager-Princesse de Condé, in which she endeavoured
to incite her son against his wife, informing him that up to the last
moment she had continued to encourage the late King’s passion, and
begging him to refuse to see her and to leave her with the Archdukes.
Condé did not see his way to comply with the latter injunction, and
accordingly consented to the Constable “sending for his daughter;” but
he firmly refused to meet her. “_Monsieur le Prince_ has been
some days in Brussels,” writes Malherbe to his friend Peiresc, under
date 24 June, 1610. “The Infant (the Archduke) told him that he had
a request to make to him. The latter, who did not doubt that it was
that he should consent to see his wife, replied that he besought him
very humbly not to lay any command upon him in which he should be
reduced to the extremity of disobeying him. Thus matters remain in
this affair. It is believed that he will take her back, but that he
wishes to be requested to do so by the Constable and her relatives. All
the letters which the King had exhibited, in which he was addressed
(by the Princess) as ‘_mon tout_’ and ‘_mon chevalier_’ are
disavowed.”
On 8 July, Condé set out for France, and on the afternoon of the 16th
he entered Paris by the Porte Saint-Martin, escorted by the Grand
Equerry (the Duc de Bellegarde), the Ducs d’Épernon and de Sully, and a
number of the nobility, who, by their Majesties’ orders, had met him at
Bourget. As he rode through the streets to the Louvre, he was obviously
preoccupied and ill at ease, “now playing with the collar of his shirt,
now biting his gloves, anon fingering his beard and chin; and one saw
clearly that he heard little of what was said to him, and that his
thoughts were elsewhere.”[166]
The cordiality of his reception by the young King and the Regent
somewhat reassured him, and it was with a more confident air that
he left the palace and rode to the Hôtel de Lyon, near the Porte
de Bussy, where he was visited by the Comte de Soissons and other
nobles. At nine o’clock that evening, he returned to the Louvre, and
assisted at the _coucher_ of the King, “_lequel il desguiletta,
tira ses chausses, et ne partit qu’il ne l’eut mis au lit_,” thus
demonstrating publicly that he repudiated the ambitious views which
some attributed to him, and had no other desire than to be the first of
his Majesty’s subjects.
For some little time, Condé persisted in his refusal to be reconciled
to his wife. He was much incensed, not only against the lady herself,
but also against her father, on account of the request he had addressed
to the Archdukes, and the accusation of cruelty to the princess which
he had not hesitated to bring against his son-in-law, though the
Constable pleaded, in extenuation of his conduct, that he had acted
under constraint, and that his letters to the Archdukes had been
drafted by the Président Jeannin, by order of the King. Urged on by the
princess-dowager and his sister, the Princess of Orange, Condé actually
appears to have contemplated taking steps towards getting his marriage
annulled, in the hope that, if this could be effected, the Regent
might offer him one of her daughters, or, failing a royal princess, he
might espouse the wealthy widow of the Duc de Montpensier. Finally,
however, recognizing the difficulties of the undertaking and the danger
of incurring the enmity of so numerous and powerful a family as the
Montmorencies, he yielded to the solicitations of the Constable and the
Duchesse d’Angoulême, and, at the beginning of August 1610, he and his
wife were formally reconciled at Chantilly.
We shall not attempt here more than a very brief account of the
career of Condé during the troublous minority of Louis XIII. For a
moment it seemed as though the prince were well disposed towards the
new government, and Marie de’ Medici certainly did everything in her
power to confirm him in his pacific intentions. She purchased, for
400,000 écus, the Hôtel de Gondi, in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the
finest residence in Paris after the Louvre, and presented it to him;
she confirmed him in all his offices and appointments, increased his
pension to 200,000 écus, and gave him a large sum to pay his debts.
But Condé was ambitious and meddlesome; he could not forget that he
had once been heir to the throne, and that ill-fortune had in all
probability alone deprived him of the regency.[167] Scarcely had he
returned, than he became the principal factor in fomenting opposition
to the Government, with the design of diminishing the Queen-Mother’s
authority to the advantage of the great nobles of the realm, and for a
time found the _métier_ of rebel a highly profitable one. At the
peace of Sainte-Ménéhould (May, 1614), he received Amboise as a place
of surety, and the sum of 450,000 livres in cash; and at the Peace of
Loudon (February, 1616), so enormously had the wages of rebellion risen
in the interval, the government of Berry and 1,500,000 livres were
required to purchase his neutrality. But, at length, he went too far,
and a rumour having spread that his principal adherents, the Ducs de
Bouillon, de Longueville, de Mayenne and de Vendôme, were about to make
an attempt to place him on the throne, on 1 September, 1616--which, by
a singular coincidence, happened to be his birthday,--the Regent, on
the advice of Richelieu and Sully, caused him to be arrested at the
Louvre, whither he had come to attend a meeting of the Council.
For three weeks Condé remained a close prisoner in an upper apartment
of the palace, none of his Household being permitted to have access
to him, with the exception of his apothecary, “whose attentions were
necessary after two months of a somewhat dissolute life.” But in the
night of 24–25 September, he was transferred to the Bastille, where
he was treated as a State criminal, and subjected to a most rigorous
confinement in a gloomy chamber, the windows of which were so closely
grated that scarcely a ray of light was permitted to enter.
Ever since their formal reconciliation six years before, the relations
between Condé and his wife had been very cool; indeed, it would
appear that the tie which bound them had become merely a nominal one.
Nevertheless, on learning of the arrest of her husband, the princess,
who was at Valery, showed real magnanimity. Without a moment’s delay,
she set out for Paris, sent the prince messages assuring him of her
sympathy and devotion, and begged the Regent to allow her to share his
captivity. Her request, however, was refused, and she received orders
to leave Paris at once and return to Valery.
After the assassination of Concini and the departure of the
Queen-Mother for Blois, Condé’s principal adherents were restored to
favour, but he himself still remained in the Bastille. However, Louis
XIII.’s favourite, the Duc de Luynes, sent his uncle, the Comte de
Modène, to visit the prince and report upon his state of health. Condé
begged him to convey to the King his hope that, if reasons of State
required that he should remain a prisoner, his Majesty would at least
consent to ameliorate his captivity, and, particularly, to permit his
wife to join him. _Madame la Princesse_, it should be mentioned,
had recently obtained permission to leave Valery, and had taken up her
residence at Saint-Maur.
The immediate result of this interview was to procure the captive a
little more air and light; but the unfortunate man’s health had been so
much affected by the rigour of his confinement that, when the windows
of his room were opened he fainted away. Some days later, the favour
which he had so earnestly requested, was also granted. We read in a
journal of the time:
“26 May, 1617. The Princesse de Condé went to salute the King, and
to entreat him to permit her to share her husband’s captivity. The
King accorded her permission, and to take with her one demoiselle.
Upon which, her little dwarf, having begged him to consent to his not
abandoning his mistress, his Majesty permitted him also to accompany
her. The same afternoon, _Madame la Princesse_ entered the
Bastille, where she was received by _Monsieur le Prince_ with
every demonstration of affection, nor did he leave her in repose until
she had said that she forgave him.”[168]
The prince and princess remained in the Bastille until 15 September,
when they were transferred to the Château of Vincennes. Here Condé was
allowed a good deal more liberty than had been permitted him in the
Bastille, and took exercise daily “on the top of a thick wall, which
was in the form of a gallery.” In the last days of December, _Madame
la Princesse_ gave birth to a still-born son, “and was more than
forty-eight hours without movement or feeling. Never was a person in
greater extremity without dying. The prince desired that the child
should receive ecclesiastical burial; but the Archbishop of Paris
assembled the theologians, who decided that, since it had not received
baptism, it had not entered the Church, and that no funeral ceremony
was permissible.”[169]
Ill-fortune seemed to pursue both husband and wife. On 5 September,
1618, the princess gave birth to twin sons, neither of whom survived,
and, in the following March, Condé fell dangerously ill, and for
some days his life was despaired of. The physicians who attended him
attributed his illness to the state of profound melancholy into which
his captivity and the death of his children had thrown him, and, when
this was known, the prince became the object of universal sympathy, and
Louis XIII. was strongly urged to consent to his release. His Majesty
promised to set the prisoner at liberty, “so soon as he had placed his
(Condé’s) affairs in order,” but several months passed, and Condé still
remained at Vincennes, though granted every indulgence consistent with
a due regard to his security. However, at the end of August, another
domestic event, which, happily, had a different termination from the
others, came to relieve the monotony of his captivity, _Madame la
Princesse_ giving birth to a daughter, Anne Geneviève de Bourbon,
the future Duchesse de Longueville, the heroine of the Fronde.
The birth of this little girl was the turning-point of her parents’
fortunes, for on 20 October Condé was at length set at liberty, and
five weeks later the Parlement of Paris solemnly registered “the
declaration of innocence of _Monsieur le Prince_,[170] who was
restored to all his honours and offices.”
His three years’ captivity, which cannot be said to have been
altogether undeserved, had worked a great change in the character of
Condé. Like so many others, he had learned wisdom from adversity. Until
then he had struggled against the royal authority with almost as much
zeal as his father and grandfather, though, since the death of Henri
IV., without their justification. But the lesson he had received had
been a severe one, and henceforth the King had no more loyal servant,
his Ministers no stauncher supporter, than the first Prince of the
Blood. His enemies have accused him, and with only too much reason, of
servility towards those in power and of an excessive regard for his own
interests; but, on the whole, the line of conduct he pursued seems to
have been patriotic as well as prudent.
Two years after Condé’s release from Vincennes, on 8 September, 1621,
his wife bore him a son, Louis, Duc d’Enghien, who was to confer so
much lustre on the name of Condé; and in 1629 a second son was born to
them, Armand, Prince de Conti.
CHAPTER XIII
Birth of Louis de Bourbon, Duc d’Enghien (the Great
Condé)--His early years at the Château of Montrond--His
education--His personal appearance and character--Wealth of
the Condés--Life at Chantilly--Isabelle de Boutteville and
Marthe du Vigean--Tender attachment of the Duc d’Enghien and
Mlle. du Vigean--Subserviency of the Prince de Condé towards
Richelieu--He solicits for Enghien the hand of the Cardinal’s
niece, Claire-Clémence de Maillé-Brézé--The young prince
protests against the sacrifice demanded of him, but eventually
consents--He is presented to Mlle. de Maillé-Brézé--First
campaign of the Great Condé--He denies the rumour that he has
“no taste for his _fiancée_”--Fête at the Palais-Cardinal:
a ludicrous incident--Marriage of the Duc d’Enghien.
Voltaire has observed that the sole claim of the third Prince de Condé
to remembrance is that he begat one of France’s most famous generals.
To be just, he should have added that the claim is a twofold one,
inasmuch as not only was he the father of the Great Condé, but gave him
one of the most thorough military educations that prince ever received,
and but for which, though his fiery valour would doubtless have gained
him some distinction in the field, it is scarcely probable that he
would ever have earned the title of “_le Grand_.”
The birth of this shoot of the royal race was an event of importance,
for, after five years, the union of Louis XIII. with Anne of Austria
still remained without result, and the Duc d’Orléans, the King’s
younger brother, did not seem inclined to take a wife; but, at the
moment when it occurred, the attention of the Parisians was occupied by
the arrival of a Carmelite monk, Père Dominique de Jésus-Maria, to whom
miraculous powers were ascribed, and it passed almost unnoticed.
Condé was in his government of Berry when the news that he had a son
reached him, and, as soon as she was able to travel, _Madame la
Princesse_ set out for Bourges, to take the boy to his father. The
latter had already made up his mind as to the way in which his heir
was to be brought up. As the little prince was fragile and sickly, and
he dreaded for him the air of Paris, the cares of an over-indulgent
mother, and the influence of the fashionable ladies by whom the
princess was always surrounded, he had decided to break with tradition
and to establish him at the Château of Montrond, a fortified castle
belonging to him, situated at the confluence of the Marmande and the
Cher, overlooking the little town of Saint-Amand, where he would be
placed under the care of some intelligent women of the middle class,
who could be trusted to carry out his instructions with unquestioning
obedience.
Such an arrangement was naturally but little to the taste of _Madame
la Princesse_, who was indignant at being thus separated from her
son, but it was amply justified by the results. In the pure country air
the boy’s health steadily improved, while his intelligence was quickly
perceived to be far in advance of his age. No sooner did he begin to
speak than he displayed a remarkable strength of will, which resisted,
as far as a child can resist, the orders of his nurses; and they found
it no easy task to persuade him to rise, take his meals, or go to bed
at the hours which they considered good for him. He feared no one but
his father, and, when the latter was not at hand to correct him, it was
difficult to restrain him in anything.
On 2 May, 1626, the little prince, who assumed from that day the
title of Duc d’Enghien,[171] was taken to Bourges to be baptized,
the ceremony being performed, in solemn state, by the archbishop of
the diocese, Roland Hébert. But, save on this occasion, he was never
permitted to leave Montrond, where he led a healthy out-door life,
the lessons he received being frequently imparted under the guise of
games, so as to tax the mind as little as possible, while leaving the
most pleasant impression. He made astonishing progress, particularly in
Latin, and quickly began to evince the keenest interest in military
matters, the result of conversations with a distinguished engineer
named Sarrasin, who was then engaged in repairing the defences of
Montrond, and who superintended the boy’s amusements. “When, towards
the end of the year 1629,” writes the Duc d’Aumale, “the Prince de
Condé, returning from Languedoc, stopped at his Berry fortress, his
suite beheld with some surprise a young captain of seven, who ranged in
order of battle, in the trenches of the château, the children of the
neighbouring town of Saint-Amand, evoked the heroes of ancient Rome,
and harangued them in Latin.”
At the close of the following year, Condé removed his son from
Montrond to Bourges, to continue his studies at the Jesuit College
of Sainte-Marie, one of the most celebrated of the schools which the
Fathers had established in France. Wishing to avoid the complications
which might arise from the presence near his son of a man of quality,
he selected as his _gouverneur_, a simple gentleman of Dauphiné,
La Buffetière by name, “a good man, faithful, and well-intentioned,
who knew how to follow to the letter _Monsieur le Prince’s_
instructions for the conduct of his son.”[172] Associated with him,
as tutor to the prince, was a learned Jesuit, Père Pelletier; while a
doctor named Montreuil watched over his health, which was still such as
to occasion his father some anxiety.
For six years the Duc d’Enghien attended the Jesuit College at Bourges.
The only distinction which was made between him and the other pupils
was a little gilded balustrade which encircled his chair, and, by
_Monsieur le Prince’s_ orders, his schoolfellows were strictly
forbidden to give way to him, either in class or at play. Condé
himself, who, as governor of Berry, resided part of each year at
Bourges, watched over and directed the education of his son, examined
his compositions and the notes which he took at lectures, and made him
dance and play tennis before him. When absent at the Court or with the
Army, he corresponded regularly with the boy, and, the better to judge
of his progress, he directed him, after he was eight years old, always
to write to him in Latin. _Gouverneur_, tutor, and doctor were
kept busy replying to the letters full of questions, instructions, and
recommendations with which the anxious father bombarded them; whilst
the rector of the Jesuit College was perpetually being enjoined “to pay
attention to the studies and conduct of my son.”
The pains bestowed upon the Duc d’Enghien’s education were well repaid;
his progress delighted his instructors, and must have satisfied even
_Monsieur le Prince_. At twelve years of age, when he finished his
course of rhetoric, such was his proficiency in Latin that he wrote and
spoke it, we are told, as though it were his mother-tongue. The next
two years were devoted to the study of philosophy and the sciences,
which latter term included logic, ethics, mathematics, and physics,
after which Condé, notwithstanding that his son had already received an
education far in advance of that which was then considered sufficient
for the son of a _grand seigneur_, arranged that he should go
through a course of law under the direction of Merille, Professor of
Jurisprudence in the University of Bourges.
The vacations were passed at Montrond, to which the young prince
was permitted to invite some of his schoolfellows. But his tutors
and certain masters came also, and his studies were by no means
suspended, though physical training--lessons in dancing, fencing, and
riding--received the larger share of attention.
At the end of the year 1635, Condé judged that the time had come for
his son to lay aside the scholar’s gown, and accordingly the Duc
d’Enghien bade farewell to the Jesuits of Bourges and set out for
Paris, where he was presented to Louis XIII. After a short visit to his
mother at Saint-Maur, he set out for Dijon to join his father, who had
lately added the government of Burgundy to that of Berry, and remained
there until the beginning of the following year. He then returned to
Paris and entered the famous “Académie royale pour la jeune noblesse,”
established some years previously by a retired officer of the army,
named Benjamin, and recently transformed into a kind of military school
under the protection of Louis XIII. and Richelieu. Here he was
taught everything which concerned the profession of arms: geography,
mathematics, fortification, drawing, fencing, horsemanship, being
treated, by his father’s wishes, in every respect as the other young
noblemen, several of whom became his close friends, and in after years
shared his labours and his fame.
[Illustration: LOUIS I DE BOURBON, PRINCE DE CONDÉ, (THE GREAT
CONDÉ)
FROM AN ENGRAVING BY JACQUES LUBIN]
After twelve months of earnest work, varied by short visits to
Saint-Maur, and a few appearances at the Court and in Society, the duke
quitted Benjamin’s academy, and in the spring of 1638, the Prince de
Condé having been called to the command of the army in Guienne, Louis
XIII. entrusted him with the government of Burgundy during his father’s
absence.
It was a very striking-looking, as well as a very learned, young man
who, one fine April morning, took his seat in the Parlement of Dijon,
“with every honour and testimony of affection possible.” “His eyes,”
writes a contemporary, “were blue and full of vivacity, his nose was
aquiline, his mouth very disagreeable, from being very large, and
his teeth too prominent. But in his countenance generally there was
something great and haughty, somewhat resembling an eagle. He was
not very tall, but his figure was admirably well-proportioned. He
danced well, had a pleasant expression, a noble air, and a very fine
head.”[173]
Unhappily for the Duc d’Enghien and for France, his father and his
teachers, while sparing no pains to develop his talents and to
strengthen his body, had not succeeded in correcting certain grave
defects of character, which, as he grew older, were to become more
pronounced and to end by tarnishing his fame. The lad was fearlessly
brave, open-handed, quick-witted, and full of energy and determination.
But he was haughty and overbearing, thoroughly selfish, and supremely
indifferent to the sufferings or susceptibilities of others, when he
had ends of his own to serve.
When the Prince de Condé had married Charlotte de Montmorency, he was,
for his rank, a poor man; but during the last few years the family had
become one of the wealthiest in France. The prince himself held the
rich governments of Berry and Burgundy, and several other offices, and
had received, at different times, immense sums from the Crown; while,
after the execution of the unfortunate Henri II., Duc de Montmorency,
for high treason, in 1632, the princess and her two elder sisters, the
Duchesses d’Angoulême and de Ventadour, had divided between them the
vast fortune of the Montmorencies.[174] To _Madame la Princesse_
fell the largest share of the landed property, including the estates
of Écouen, Mello, Châteauroux, Méru, and La Versine; while, some time
afterwards, Chantilly and Dammartin were also bestowed upon her, though
she appears to have been granted merely the enjoyment of them for life;
and it was not until the autumn of 1643 that they became the absolute
property of the Condés, in recognition of the military services of the
Duc d’Enghien.
Although the Princesse de Condé paid occasional visits to her country
seats of Mello, Méru, and La Versine, the greater part of the summer
was always passed by her at Chantilly, whither she came with a little
party composed of the most intimate friends of her children, and a
sprinkling of wits and men of letters. _Monsieur le Prince_, who
did not care for country pleasures, usually remained in Paris, and,
in his absence, etiquette was laid aside, and the guests permitted to
amuse themselves as they pleased. Lenet, in his “Mémoires,” has left
us an interesting account of how the company at Chantilly passed their
time:
“The excursions were the most agreeable possible to imagine. The
evenings were not less amusing. After the usual prayers had been
read in the chapel, which were attended by every one, all the ladies
retired to the apartments of the princess, where they played at various
games and sang. There were often fine voices and very agreeable
conversations, stories of Court intrigue and gallantry, which made life
pass as pleasantly as possible.... Rhymes and riddles were composed,
which occupied the time in spare hours. Some were to be seen walking on
the edge of the ponds, and some in the alleys of the park or gardens,
on the terrace or on the lawn, alone or in parties, according to the
state of mind in which they were; while others sang airs, or recited
verses, or read romances on a balcony, or as they walked or reposed
on the grass. Never was there seen so beautiful a place in such a
beautiful season.”[175]
Lenet wrote of the spring of 1650, when the Princes (Condé, Conti and
Longueville) were in prison, and Madame de Longueville an exile, and
when, as he admits, the amusements of the young people were often
disturbed by bad news. But before the Fronde, which divided all French
society, Chantilly was an even more delightful resort. The young Duc
d’Enghien came there, bringing with him many of the young nobles who
had been his friends at Benjamin’s Academy, and who were to fight
by his side on many a fiercely-contested field; the two sons of the
Maréchal Duc de Châtillon, Maurice, Comte de Coligny, and Gaspard,
Marquis d’Andelot; Guy de Laval, son of the Marquis de Sablé; Léon
d’Angennes, Marquis de Pisani; Louis and Charles Amédée de Savoie, who
successively bore the title of Duc de Nemours; La Moussaye, the hero
of the battle of La Marfée; the two du Vigeans, Nangis, Tavannes, and
others, amongst whom grew up a little hump-backed boy, who was one day
to be known to fame as the Maréchal de Luxembourg.
And there also was Enghien’s lovely sister, Anne Geneviève de Bourbon,
who, in 1642, was to marry the Duc de Longueville, and with her a bevy
of young beauties, light-hearted, laughter-loving damsels, bandying
jests with the wits, rallying the more serious, and exercising, under
the indulgent eyes of _Madame la Princesse_, their precocious
coquetry upon the Duc d’Enghien and his comrades. Among them may
be mentioned Marie Antoinette de Brienne, daughter of the Minister
of that name, afterwards the Marquise de Gamaches; the two sisters
of the future Maréchal de Luxembourg, Marie Louise and Isabelle de
Boutteville; the celebrated Julie d’Angennes, afterwards Duchesse de
Montausier; and Anne and Marthe du Vigean, the former of whom married
the Marquis de Pons, and _en secondes noces_ the young Duc de
Richelieu, the Cardinal’s heir.
Of these nymphs, two--Isabelle de Boutteville and Marthe du
Vigean--were destined to figure very prominently in the life of
the Great Condé. They presented a singular contrast. Isabelle de
Boutteville, who, under the name of the Duchesse de Châtillon, was to
achieve celebrity as the most finished coquette of her time, was an
imperious young beauty, who already appreciated to the full the power
of her own attractions. Insatiable for admiration, she disdained no
conquests, encouraging and rebuffing by turns the troop of adorers who
gathered about her, and rehearsing thus early with the Duc d’Enghien
and the younger of the two boys who were to bear the title of Duc de
Nemours the part she was one day to play with them on another stage.
None of the young beauties of Chantilly, with the exception of Mlle.
de Bourbon, inspired the poets who foregathered there to celebrate
their charms and deplore their coldness more often than she. Among a
multitude of verses of more or less merit, composed in her honour, may
be mentioned those of the poet Charpy, wherein he draws an ingenious
comparison between the destruction wrought by the sword of his father,
the notorious duellist, and the havoc created by the _beaux yeux_
of Isabelle:
“Quand je vois de rapport de votre père à vous,
Divinité mortelle, adorable Sylvie!
Il tenait dans ses mains et la mort et la vie:
Vos yeux se sont acquis les mêmes sur nous.”
Marthe du Vigean was a very different kind of girl. Modest and gentle,
she hardly seemed to be aware of the admiration which she aroused:
“Sans savoir ce que c’est qu’amour
Ses beaux yeux le mettent au jour,
Et partout elle le fait naître
Sans le connoître,”
wrote Voiture. Unfortunately, no portrait of her, either painted or
engraved, has been preserved, nor have we any detailed description
of her among the writings of her contemporaries which can supply
its place. But her beauty would appear to have been of a peculiarly
appealing type, the reflection of a character gentle, pure and
unselfish.
In love, it is said, people are most frequently attracted by those
who least resemble them. However that may be, the haughty, vain,
egotistical young Duc d’Enghien, for a moment subjugated by the more
dazzling charms of Isabelle de Boutteville, to whose yoke he will
return in years to come, speedily transferred his affections to this
gentle, retiring maiden, for whom he conceived the one great and pure
passion of his stormy life. The girl reciprocated his affections, and
loved him with an intensity of devotion which never wavered for a
moment to her life’s end. To her, this young prince, with his eagle
glance and his fiery courage, was a veritable hero of romance, a
seventeenth-century Bayard, “_sans peur et sans reproche_.”
Although not in the first rank of the French nobility, the Du Vigeans
were high in favour at Court, and Madame du Vigean was one of _Madame
la Princesse’s_ most intimate friends. She was very rich and gave
magnificent fêtes at her country-seat of La Barre, and Marthe was a
considerable heiress. In ordinary circumstances, therefore, the Duc
d’Enghien might not have despaired of obtaining his father’s and the
King’s--that is to say, Richelieu’s--consent to the match, for the
princes of the House of Bourbon had often sought their wives among the
daughters of noble and wealthy French families. But, unhappily for the
lovers, _Monsieur le Prince_ had other views for his son, and had
long since selected a wife for him.
Among the courtiers who so eagerly sought the favour of Richelieu no
one was more obsequious than the Prince de Condé, who had not only
willingly consented, contrary to all ancient usage, that the Princes
of the Blood should yield precedence to cardinals, but had even, it
is asserted, carried his servility to such a point as to raise the
tapestry and hold it when the all-powerful Minister passed through a
door. Omnipotent though Richelieu was, he could hardly have flattered
himself with the hope of an alliance with the Princes of the Blood; and
it must therefore have been with feelings of astonishment and contempt
mingling with gratification that “he beheld M. de Condé ask of him
almost on his knees the hand of his niece, and plead for this object
as eagerly as though he had in view for his son the sovereignty of the
world.”[176]
The niece in question was Claire-Clémence de Maillé-Brézé, daughter of
the Maréchal Duc de Brézé, who had married “solely for her beauty,”
as he was never tired of reminding the Cardinal, Richelieu’s pretty
but eccentric sister, Nicole du Plessis. Born on 28 February, 1628,
Claire-Clémence’s infancy was passed with her parents at the Château of
Milly, in Anjou. But when the unfortunate Nicole’s eccentricity turned
to madness,[177] and the marshal began to console himself openly with
the widow of one of his _valets de chambre_, the Cardinal decided
that it was time to remove his niece; and, in 1633, took advantage of
an epidemic which was then ravaging Anjou to send her to the Château
des Caves, near Nogent-sur-Seine, to the Bouthilliers, whose fortune he
had made, and who were entirely devoted to him.
It is probable that Richelieu would not have shown himself so
solicitous for the welfare of the little girl had he not already
foreseen that she would become an instrument of his policy. In point
of fact, most flattering proposals for her hand had already been made
him. The first was from the Duc de la Trémoille, on behalf of his
eldest son, afterwards the Prince de Tarente; and the Cardinal appears
to have been on the point of returning a favourable answer, when the
Prince de Condé intervened and solicited the hand of this child of four
for the Duc d’Enghien, then twelve years of age.
So anxious was _Monsieur le Prince_ to be reconciled with the
Minister whom he had failed to conquer, and to convert his former
adversary into a complaisant ally--or rather a beneficent patron, that
he had already taken the precaution to assure himself of the consent
of Louis XIII. The Cardinal, on his side, who saw in this union the
most dazzling proof of his influence and of the triumph of his policy,
received his Highness’s overtures very graciously, and, early in 1633,
gave him the promise he desired.
The joy of _Monsieur le Prince_ was such that Richelieu had
all the difficulty in the world to prevent him from confirming the
rumours of the Court and publicly announcing his good fortune; but the
Cardinal insisted that it should remain a secret between them until the
bride-elect had reached a marriageable age, and, very reluctantly, the
other consented. As for the Maréchal de Brézé, Richelieu did not even
think it worth while to mention the arrangement to him, deeming that
the right of disposing of his niece’s hand belonged to himself alone.
Thus matters remained until the end of the year 1640, when Condé,
having gone through the form of obtaining the consent of the Maréchal
de Brézé, acquainted his son with the honour in store for him. The
Duc d’Enghien, as might be supposed, protested strongly against the
sacrifice that was demanded of him, but _Monsieur le Prince_,
always terribly in earnest when it was a question of pleasing those
in power, was inexorable; and eventually the duke gave a reluctant
consent, somewhat consoled by the reflection that, as the Cardinal’s
nephew by marriage, advancement in his profession must be both sure and
speedy.
Under date 11 February, 1640, we find Condé writing to Richelieu from
Dijon:
“My son, who burns with the same desire as myself to be allied to you,
will write to you on the instant, and will set out with me to-morrow
for Paris, to offer his services to his mistress. I have spoken to
him about it, and have received from him not only the proofs of the
obedience that he owes me, but also those of very great joy on this
subject.”[178]
The Duchesse d’Aiguillon, the Cardinal’s beloved niece, conducted
Mlle. de Brézé to Paris, where the Duc d’Enghien and his father
arrived shortly afterwards. The young duke was “presented to his
mistress,” as was said then, and authorized to visit and to write to
her, while awaiting their marriage, which, much to the disappointment
of _Monsieur le Prince_, Richelieu had decided to postpone until
the following year, on account of the extreme youthfulness of the
bride-elect.
The Prince de Condé overwhelmed Claire-Clémence with attentions and
declared that he was all impatience to call her his daughter-in-law. On
presenting her _fiancé_ to her, he assured her “it would never be
possible for her to espouse a person who would show her more respect or
more affection;” and when Enghien was about to take the armchair that
was offered him, he stopped him, saying sharply: “That is not the place
for a _serviteur_; go and sit down on a little _placet_ with
your mistress.”[179]
Nothing less than the paternal exhortations were required to persuade
the young duke to pay his court to his betrothed, and, in point of
fact, he limited his visits to those which the exigencies of etiquette
required. Claire-Clémence was “far from plain; she had beautiful eyes,
a fine complexion, and a pretty figure.”[180] But she was barely twelve
years old, and very small even for her years, and, besides, so childish
in her ways that _la Grande Mademoiselle_ declares that two years
after her marriage she still amused herself with dolls. Very young men
are more often attracted by ripe than by immature charms, and it was
therefore scarcely to be expected that Enghien should have shown any
inclination for the society of his betrothed--even if his affections
had not been already engaged elsewhere.
Little time, however, was given the young people for becoming better
acquainted with one another, as other matters than courtship and
marriage were demanding Enghien’s attention. Since 1635 war had been
declared against Spain, and France had come openly into that field
in which her secret influence had long been exercised. The clash of
arms which resounded throughout Europe had strongly affected the young
prince, and he had long sighed for an opportunity of displaying his
courage. So early as 1636 he had written to his father: “I read with
pleasure the heroic actions of our kings in history.... I feel a holy
ambition to imitate them and follow in their track, when my age and
capabilities shall have made me what you wish.”[181] Condé, however,
thinking that his son’s strength was not yet equal to the hardships of
active service, had hitherto refused to gratify his ambition; but, in
the spring of 1640, he at length gave his consent, and, at the end of
April, the lad set out for Picardy to make his first campaign with the
army operating against the Spaniards on the North-Eastern frontier.
He was greatly disappointed that he was not to receive his baptism of
fire under the eyes of his father, who commanded the French forces
in Roussillon. But Richelieu had chosen the Army of Picardy, because
its commander, the Maréchal de la Meilleraie, was the sworn enemy of
_Monsieur le Prince_, and might, consequently, be trusted neither
to allow the young soldier to shirk his duties nor to exaggerate his
services. To mitigate his disappointment, the Cardinal overwhelmed his
future nephew with compliments, and presented him with two splendid
chargers.
This first campaign of the Great Condé was short and easy, terminating
on 9 August with the taking of Arras. The young soldier earned golden
opinions from all his superiors by the promptitude and intelligence
with which he executed everything entrusted to him, and gave abundant
proofs of the courage for which he was soon to become so celebrated in
a cavalry skirmish before the beleaguered town.
The campaign over, the duke, by his father’s instructions, returned to
Dijon without passing through Paris, to the great chagrin of his sister
and her friends, who were naturally anxious to celebrate his exploits.
But _Monsieur le Prince_, like a prudent father, had decided
that, until his son was safely married, it would be as well for him
to shun the society of those dangerously fascinating damsels, and of
one of them in particular. The Cardinal, unaware that Enghien had been
merely following the paternal orders, saw in this avoidance of Paris a
confirmation of the persistent rumour that was going about the Court
that the young prince “had no taste for his _fiancée_.” In high
indignation, he despatched Chavigny to Dijon, to invite him to explain
his conduct and to say candidly whether or no he desired the alliance
which his father had solicited for him. There can be very little doubt
what answer Enghien would have returned had circumstances permitted him
to express his real sentiments; but, with the fear of both the Cardinal
and _Monsieur le Prince_ before his eyes, he indignantly denied
the truth of the report that was in circulation, and begged Chavigny to
assure his Eminence that his heart was entirely set upon the marriage.
“I feel myself obliged to inform you,” he writes to his father, “that
M. de Chavigny came yesterday to see me and told me that he had
something of importance to say to me. It is that a gentleman had told
him that a rumour ran that I had no inclination for Mlle. de Brézé;
that I regarded this marriage with aversion, and that people remarked
that my countenance was very melancholy, and, finally, that he begged
me to be on my guard. I replied that the person who had told him this
was a wicked man, as were those who circulated these false reports;
that I looked upon this marriage as a great honour and favour; that it
was the thing in the world that you and I desired the most, and that
all those who spread these reports were his enemies and mine, and that,
far from being melancholy, I had never been so gay.”[182]
Notwithstanding these indignant protestations, the Cardinal, who, while
naturally very anxious for a marriage which would connect him with
the Royal House itself and serve to consolidate his power, was anxious
also to assure the happiness of his niece, was still somewhat uneasy.
In consequence, he showed himself a trifle cold when the marriage was
mentioned, to the profound alarm of _Monsieur le Prince_, who
redoubled his attentions both to his Eminence and his niece, and was as
impatient for the conclusion of the affair “as if his son were about to
espouse the queen of all the world.”
The marriage was finally fixed for 11 February, 1641. Early in January,
the Duc d’Enghien arrived in Paris with his father, who accompanied
him everywhere he went, apparently from fear lest he should fail to
manifest sufficient enthusiasm for the fate in store for him. Mlle.
de Brézé had already arrived and was lodged at the Hôtel d’Aiguillon,
in charge of Madame Bouthillier; and, on 14 January, Richelieu gave a
magnificent fête in honour of the young couple at the Palais-Cardinal.
The principal attraction of this entertainment was the representation
of “Mirame,” a “_tragi-comédie_” which his Eminence had written
in collaboration with Desmarets. Richelieu had spared no expense to
give his work--which was probably neither better nor worse than the
mediocre pieces of the time--a setting in every way worthy of it. The
theatre, constructed expressly for it, had cost 200,000 écus; the
scenery had been brought from Italy, and the costumes had been designed
by the Cardinal himself. All the effective passages in the play were
rapturously applauded by the spectators, which is scarcely surprising,
since the celebrated author, carried away by admiration for his own
genius, invariably gave them the signal; and if the fall of the curtain
did not leave his Eminence under the pleasing illusion that he was not
only a great statesman, but a great poet as well, it was certainly not
the fault of his guests.
The play was followed by a grand ball, in which the little Mlle. de
Brézé appeared in a marvellous toilette and decorated with a part of
the Queen’s jewels, which her Majesty had lent her for the occasion.
_Monsieur le Prince_, who, with some of his intimates, watched the
scene from the gallery, pretended to be in raptures of admiration, and
every time that his future daughter-in-law danced, kept repeating: “Ah!
how pretty she is! Ah! how pretty she is!” It is to be hoped that the
report of these praises served to console their object for a trifling
but ludicrous mishap of which she was the victim, and which must have
occasioned her profound mortification.
She had come to the fête furnished with a pair of enormously
high-heeled shoes, which she had been made to don in order to increase
her stature, which, as we have said, was very short, even for her
years. It was only with the greatest difficulty that she was able to
preserve her equilibrium, and, while dancing a _courante_, she
slipped and fell sprawling on the floor. _La Grande Mademoiselle_,
who recounts this misadventure, declares that “no considerations
of respect could hinder all the company from giving vent to their
merriment, not even excepting the Duc d’Enghien.”[183]
On 7 February, the marriage-contract was signed in the King’s cabinet
at the Louvre, as was the custom when Princes of the Blood were wed.
The Prince and Princesse de Condé promised the young couple settlements
to the value of 80,000 livres a year and an annual pension of 40,000
livres. His Eminence gave his niece the seigneuries of Ansac, Moy,
Cambronne, and Plessis-Billebault, together with the sum of 300,000
livres, but under the express condition that she should renounce all
claim to the rest of his property in the event of his death.
“It was impossible,” observe Claire-Clémence’s biographers, MM. Homberg
and Jousselin, “to manifest more clearly, in the eyes of all, that
the niece of Richelieu had been sought by the House of Condé, less
for wealth, which was by no means out of the ordinary, than for the
advantages of a connexion with him whom the courtiers called “the
All-powerful.”[184]
The stipulation regarding Richelieu’s property greatly disgusted
_Monsieur le Prince_, who was as greedy as he was ambitious; and,
though he had not ventured to contest the matter with the Cardinal, he
made, together with his son, a formal protest, in the presence of a
notary, against the renunciation exacted by his Eminence.
After the signing of the contract, Richelieu gave a magnificent ballet
at the Palais-Cardinal, entitled “La Prospérité des armes de France.”
This ballet, we are told, delighted every one save the King, who
appeared to be displeased at the sight of the Duc d’Enghien descending
from heaven, surrounded by dazzling sunbeams, to make his entry.
On 11 February, the marriage was celebrated in the chapel of
Palais-Cardinal, by the Archbishop of Paris. After the ceremony,
the bridal pair and their relatives were entertained to a sumptuous
banquet, and in the evening a play, followed by a supper, was given by
Richelieu at the Palais-Cardinal. “Never had his Eminence been seen in
a better temper,”[185] writes a witness of the marriage fêtes, on which
the Cardinal is said to have expended upwards of a million livres.
Supper over, the company adjourned to the Hôtel de Condé, to put the
bridal pair to bed, according to custom.
CHAPTER XIV
Serious illness of the Duc d’Enghien--Tyranny exercised over him
by Richelieu--An amusing anecdote--Death of the Cardinal--His
will--Lawsuit between the Prince de Condé and the Duchesse
d’Aiguillon--Enghien contemplates the dissolution of his
marriage, neglects his wife, and devotes himself to Marthe du
Vigean--He receives the command of the Army of Flanders, gains
the brilliant victory of Rocroi, and takes Thionville--The
Duchesse d’Enghien gives birth to a son--Indifference of
the duke--He returns to Paris and endeavours to procure the
dissolution of his marriage--But this project is frustrated by
the interference of the Prince de Condé--Enghien is wounded
at the battle of Nördlingen, and has a dangerous attack of
fever--To the astonishment of his friends, he suddenly breaks
off his tender relations with Mlle. du Vigean--Despair of the
lady, who, in spite of the opposition of her family, enters the
Carmelites of the Faubourg Saint-Jacques.
A few days after his marriage, the Duc d’Enghien fell dangerously ill,
an event which was attributed by the Court to his despair at having
been forced into an alliance so distasteful to him. Certainly, he
behaved like a man who had little desire to live, and it was only with
great difficulty that he could be persuaded to see the doctors whom
_Monsieur le Prince_ called in. At one time, his condition was
so serious that hope was almost abandoned, but these apprehensions
were fortunately unfounded, and in six weeks he was convalescent. His
spirits, however, did not return with his strength, and he remained
for some time in a state of profound melancholy, refusing to go into
Society, or to receive his friends, and spending “the entire day and a
part of the night” reading romances. At length, he succeeded in shaking
off his lethargy, and on 13 May celebrated his return to health by
giving a grand fête at Charonne to his sister and her fair friends,
including, needless to say, Mlle. du Vigean.
The Cardinal, already irritated by the coldness with which Enghien
had from the first treated his child-wife, in spite of the affection
which she lavished upon him, was much displeased on learning of this
entertainment, for, in his opinion, no society was more calculated to
wean his nephew from the domestic hearth than that of these charming
young ladies. He had another, and more serious cause for resentment
against the young prince, in the fate which had befallen one Maigrin,
a creature of his own, whom Condé, at his suggestion, had appointed
comptroller of his son’s Household. Incensed by the surveillance
which he suspected Maigrin of exercising over his actions, Enghien
had inveighed against him in such violent terms before some of his
confidential servants, that two of them, with the idea of pleasing
their master, picked a quarrel with the unfortunate comptroller, and
wounded him so severely that he died a few hours later.
The Cardinal, furious at the death of his _protégé_, wrote a
very angry letter to the Prince de Condé, complaining bitterly of
“the disorders and the want of dignity in M. d’Enghien’s Household,”
and demanding that “his conduct should be aided and guided by a
single mind.” The obsequious prince hastened to reply: “He is _your
creature_: do with him what you will.” And the luckless Enghien
found that he had escaped from the paternal control only to fall under
the tyranny of Richelieu, who reorganized his Household, which he
filled with persons devoted to his own interests, fixed the number of
days which he was to spend in any one place, and regulated everything
which concerned him down to the smallest details. No wonder that the
young duke was glad when the time arrived for him to rejoin the army of
Picardy, with which he took part in the sieges of Aire, La Bassée, and
Bapaume!
Although Enghien’s manner towards his wife continued very cold, in
other respects his conduct, during the remainder of the Cardinal’s
life, gave his Eminence little cause for complaint. On one occasion
only does he appear to have offended the great man, when, thanks to
the diplomacy of _Monsieur le Prince_, he was enabled to make
atonement. This was in the autumn of 1642, when, on his return from
the campaign of Roussillon, he was so ill-advised as to pass by Lyons
without visiting the Cardinal Alphonse de Richelieu, Archbishop of
Lyons, and brother of the Minister. At the first interview which he had
with the latter on his arrival in Paris, the Cardinal inquired after
the health of his brother, and it became necessary to acknowledge that
he had not been visited. The Cardinal made no remark, but, when the
prince had departed, he gave full vent to his feelings, and vowed that
he would make him regret the slight he had offered him. The Prince
de Condé, informed of what had occurred, was terribly alarmed, and
hastened to intercede for his son with the angry Minister, promising
that he should make the fullest atonement; and when Enghien joined him
at Dijon, he ordered him to return immediately to Lyons, and repair
his fault. And so the delinquent found himself obliged to make a long
journey in very bad weather, not to Lyons, but to Orange, whither the
Cardinal Alphonse had gone, on purpose, it was said, to give the prince
the trouble of going further in search of him.
A few weeks later (4 December, 1642), Richelieu succumbed to the one
enemy whom he was unable to subjugate, in full possession of all the
power and splendour for which he had laboured so unceasingly. Save
to his family and his immediate followers, his death brought little
regret, for all classes had felt his iron hand; and Enghien, who, since
his marriage, had been subjected to such galling restraints, must have
felt very much like a boy emancipated from the control of some stern
and unbending preceptor. Now, at last, he was free to order his life
as he pleased, to follow his taste for pleasure, and to indulge his
passion for Mlle. du Vigean.
When the will which the Cardinal had executed some months before
at Narbonne was opened, it was found that the Duchesse d’Enghien’s
brother, Armand de Maillé-Brézé, had been left the duchies of Fronsac
and Caumont, but that the duchess’s hopes--or rather the Condés’--were
extinguished by the following clause:
“I make no mention in this will of my niece, the Duchesse d’Enghien,
inasmuch as, by her marriage-contract, she has renounced her claim to
my property, in consideration of the dowry I have bestowed upon her,
and with which I desire her to be content.”
[Illustration: _Tres-haulte & Tres puissante princesse
CLAIRE-Clemence de Maillé femme de Mouseigneur Louis de
Bourbon Prince De Condé & Danguien par son tres humble serviteur
Moncornet._
CLAIRE CLÉMENCE DE MAILLÉ-BRÉZÉ, PRINCESSE DE CONDÉ
FROM AN ENGRAVING BY MONCORNET]
Great was the indignation of the haughty and greedy family into which
poor little Claire-Clémence had entered on discovering that the
Cardinal had strictly adhered to the conditions which he had imposed
at the time of her marriage; and the Prince de Condé lost no time in
embarking on a lawsuit against the Duchesse d’Aiguillon, in whose
presence the will had been drawn up, and who had benefited largely
under it, while her nephew, Armand de Vignerot, was the principal
legatee. He pretended that the will had been dictated by the duchess
and executed by the Cardinal under the influence of an incestuous
passion, and ought, therefore, to be declared void; and counsel on both
sides fairly surpassed themselves in the violence of their harangues.
A first decision of the Court condemned the Duchesse d’Aiguillon to
restore 400,000 livres; but there were so many points to be debated,
and the gentlemen of the long robe found the business so very
profitable, that it was not until the case had dragged its weary length
along for more than thirty years, and _Monsieur le Prince_ had
been more than a quarter of a century in his grave, that the parties,
weary of the interminable litigation, arrived at a settlement (May,
1674).
The Duc d’Enghien, if he eventually showed himself willing enough
to profit by it, did not at first take any part in this scandalous
lawsuit, and it was his father who directed all the proceedings.
His abstention was probably due to the fact that now that the
“All-powerful” was no more, he was seriously contemplating an attempt
to get his marriage dissolved, on the ground that his consent had
been obtained by force while he was still only a boy, after which he
intended to marry Marthe du Vigean, and, in view of this, he felt that
it would be as well for him not to appear in the case. While awaiting
a favourable opportunity for getting rid of the matrimonial fetters,
he neglected his poor little wife entirely, notwithstanding that she
was now enceinte, and paid such assiduous attentions to the lady of
his heart that they were soon the talk of the Court. Learning that
the Maréchal de Guiche was about to demand Mlle. du Vigean’s hand for
his son, the Marquis de Saint-Mesgrin, great-nephew of Henri III.’s
_mignon_, he hastened to put a stop to this project, and showed
himself so violently jealous of all the damsel’s admirers that they
scarcely dared to approach her.
As for the duchess, she attempted no remonstrance, but went into
retreat at the Carmelite convent in the Faubourg Saint-Jacques, where
she remained until the departure of her husband for the wars.
Enghien had just received the command of the Army of Flanders, which
had been promised him by Richelieu, in recognition of his fidelity to
the Cardinal during the conspiracy of Cinq-Mars and of the submission
to which ambition had lately prompted him. The Spaniards were laying
siege to Rocroi, a town at the head of the Forest of Ardennes, poorly
fortified and garrisoned, and of considerable strategic importance,
since its fall would leave France open to invasion. Contrary to the
advice of the Maréchal de l’Hôpital, who had been sent to restrain
the fiery ardour of the youthful commander, and counselled him to be
content with throwing reinforcements into the beleaguered town, he
determined to give them battle without delay. The armies met in the
plain before Rocroi in the early morning of 19 May, the same day and
almost at the same hour as Louis XIII., who had died on the 16th, was
laid to rest at Saint-Denis, and, mainly owing to a brilliant cavalry
charge delivered by Enghien at a critical moment, the French gained a
complete victory. The loss of the Spaniards was very great, while the
whole of their baggage and artillery fell into the hands of the victors.
The news of the victory of Rocroi was received with frantic delight in
Paris. On all sides nothing was heard but praises of the Duc d’Enghien:
of his bravery, his military genius, his humanity towards the wounded,
both victors and vanquished, and his magnanimity in demanding for
his lieutenants all the rewards of victory, since he himself desired
nothing but the glory. In a single day, he had become a popular hero.
The enthusiasm abated only to burst forth again three months later,
when intelligence arrived that Thionville had surrendered to the young
general, and that the entrance to Germany, by way of the Moselle, lay
open to the French.
A few days before Thionville fell, on the evening of 30 July, the
little Duchesse d’Enghien gave birth to a very fine boy. “The size of
this child is a marvel, in view of the smallness of the mother,” writes
Perrault to Girard, secretary to the Duc d’Enghien, “and the doctors
who have assisted her wonder at it, and are not less astonished at
the facility of the accouchement, which has been such that one would
suppose that this little one has never done anything else.”[186]
_Monsieur le Prince_ at once sent off one of his gentlemen, named
La Roussière, to announce the glad tidings to the duke; but Enghien
showed no eagerness to express his paternal joy, and, instead of
sending the messenger back, kept him to assist at the reduction of
Thionville. Nor was it until after the town had capitulated, and Condé
had despatched another messenger, informing him that the boy “resembled
him and was the most beautiful in the world,” that he finally
condescended to write a few lines to the young mother.
About the middle of November, the duke returned to Paris to receive
the felicitations of his family and friends, and to resume his “chaste
amours” with Mlle. du Vigean. His eulogistic historian Désormeaux
declares that, on arriving at the Hôtel de Condé and perceiving his
son, “his tender and magnanimous soul enjoyed a pleasure more dear and
more pure than that of victory”; while the _Gazette_ asserts that
“to express the pleasure which his [Enghien’s] presence had occasioned
the Prince de Condé and all his family would be as difficult as to
represent the joy which the duke experienced at the sight of the son
born to him in the midst of so many laurels and popular acclamations.”
It is, however, unnecessary to see in such testimony anything except
the blind respect of a _protégé_ of the Condés and the optimism
of the editor of an official publication. For the family correspondence
proves that, at this time, Enghien certainly gave no indication of
the intense affection which he was to bestow upon his son in later
years, and he took advantage of the fact that the Court was still in
mourning for the late king to have him baptized without the customary
rejoicings. The child, to whom Mazarin and _Madame la Princesse_
stood sponsors, received the name of Henri Jules and took the title of
Duc d’Albret.
If the poor Duchesse d’Enghien had anticipated that the birth of her
son would prove a link between herself and her husband, she was doomed
to disappointment, for she found herself more neglected than ever. Soon
after her confinement, she had fallen so seriously ill that the duke
had been able for a moment to count upon her death and to look forward
to a honeymoon with Mlle. du Vigean; and it is to be feared that he
received the news of her convalescence with very mixed feelings.
Disappointed in the hope of receiving any assistance from Nature, he
appealed to his mother to use her influence with the Regent to obtain
the dissolution of his marriage, and found in her a willing ally.
_Madame la Princesse_, although she had never forgiven Richelieu
the execution of her brother, Henri de Montmorency, whom all her
prayers and tears had not sufficed to save, had raised no objection
to her son’s marriage with his niece, and had, so long as the
Cardinal lived, shown the girl every consideration. But, since the
death of Richelieu, she seemed to have transferred to her innocent
daughter-in-law the hatred she had vowed against the Minister, and
sought to atone for the hypocritical attitude she had been forced
to assume by treating her with the coldest disdain. The prospect
of humiliating the family of the man whom she had regarded as her
brother’s murderer naturally appealed to her, and she lost no time in
approaching Anne of Austria on the subject.
The prestige of Enghien was just then so great that it was difficult
for the Regent and Mazarin to refuse him anything, and, though Anne
expressed her disapproval of the project in unmistakable terms, and
Mazarin was anxious to protect the niece of his benefactor, it is quite
probable that they would eventually have yielded to pressure, and
that the young duchess would have been repudiated by her unscrupulous
husband, if the Prince de Condé had not intervened in her favour.
To his honour, be it said, _Monsieur le Prince_ had never wavered
in his loyalty to the compact which he had made with Richelieu over
the Cardinal’s niece. If it were not in his nature to show the girl
much affection, he understood, at least, how to constitute himself
her protector, and had not ceased to employ every means to bring back
his son to a wife who was so worthy of his affection. Informed by his
daughter, the Duchesse de Longueville--who, though she had hitherto
been the sympathetic confidante of her brother and Mlle. du Vigean,
had declined to be a party to so discreditable an intrigue--of the
projects which were being discussed in his family, he showed the
utmost indignation. Sending for Enghien and Mlle. du Vigean, “he said
a thousand cruel things to both lover and mistress,” after which he
advised the duke to return to his military duties as speedily as
possible. The latter obeyed, and, shortly afterwards, bade a touching
farewell to his lady-love[187] and set out for the army.
In August 1544, Enghien added to the laurels he had gained at Rocroi
in three days’ sanguinary fighting before Freiburg, and a year later
gained the victory of Nördlingen over the Imperialists. In the latter
engagement he was wounded, and an attack of fever which supervened
nearly cost him his life. In the autumn he returned to Paris, in a very
weak state of health, when, as a general rule, man is particularly
susceptible to feminine blandishments. The astonishment of his friends
and the despair of poor Mlle. du Vigean may, therefore, be imagined,
when it was perceived that he seemed to regard the girl whom he had
once so passionately loved with as much indifference “as if he had
never heard her voice.”
To what are we to attribute so sudden a revulsion of feeling? The
ingenuous Désormeaux ascribes it to the fact that “his love had
vanished with the prodigious quantity of blood that had been taken
from him”; others to the effect of the paternal remonstrances. But the
most probable reason is that, with increasing years and experience of
life, common-sense had at last asserted itself, and that, in despair
either of obtaining the dissolution of his marriage or of overcoming
the virtuous scruples of his inamorata, he had decided no longer to
abandon himself to a passion which could have no other result than that
of troubling his peace of mind.
It is possible, however, that he may have been prompted by a more
worthy motive. Finding that his equivocal attentions had somewhat
compromised the lady, while, on the other hand, her devotion to himself
had caused her to reject the honourable advances of more than one
highly eligible suitor, he may at length have awakened to a sense of
the selfishness of his conduct and have determined to yield his place
to some one with a better right.
If such were the reason of his withdrawal, the sacrifice was a vain
one. Marthe du Vigean, though she permitted no complaint to escape
her, remained inconsolable. She turned a deaf ear to Saint-Mesgrin and
other suitors, who crowded round her as soon as the brusque retreat
of Enghien was known, and resolved to become the bride of the Church.
Lest, however, the resolution which she meditated should be deemed
by the world the “outcome of grief or of mortification,” she took
no immediate steps to carry it out, and for some time continued to
receive the visits of her friends, even of those who had been the
witnesses of her passion. But, at length, in the summer of 1647,
ignoring the counsels and entreaties of her relatives, she quitted
her father’s house and took refuge with the Carmelites of the Rue
Saint-Jacques, whither the poor little Duchesse d’Enghien had been
accustomed to repair, on account of her, to appease her jealousy and
find resignation. Anne du Vigean, the future Duchesse de Richelieu,
in a letter to her brother, the Marquis de Fors, gives an interesting
picture of her sister’s last days in the world:
“... We went to Rueil, where we spoke every day of the affair [Marthe
du Vigean’s resolution to become a nun], and where many tears were
shed; and the conclusion arrived at was that, at any rate, nothing
should be done for six months, my mother hoping, in asking this delay
of her, that she might be able to induce her to alter her mind.
Finally, we returned here, because I was very ill; I had fever so badly
that I did not move from my bed. One fine day, she said to me: ‘Sister,
I shall not give them all the time I promised, for I shall go before
another week has passed!’ I begged her to give me time to write to my
mother, in order that she might come and speak to her, since I was not
strong enough to retain or to counsel her. I wrote, accordingly, ill
though I was. In the meanwhile, I had sent to the Hôtel de Longueville
to learn your news [the news from the army], because I had been told
that a courier had arrived, and Madame de Longueville wrote to me to
send for it; and at the end of her letter she asked my sister to go
and see her. She went out, therefore, to go thither, and when she had
gone half the distance, told her people that she must turn aside to the
‘_Grandes Carmélites_,’[188] but that she had only a word to say
to them. She made them turn her carriage and went thither, where she
is still and does not intend to come out. My mother arrived an hour
later.... My father wished to kill every one, all the Missionaries and
Carmelites in the world, but he is beginning to be somewhat appeased.
I go to see her every day; she is merry and resolute, and watches me
weeping without shedding a tear.”[189]
Marthe du Vigean seems to have been very happy in her new life, and
declared that she would not change her condition to be empress of
the whole world.[190] She made profession in 1649, and took the name
of Sœur Marthe de Jésus. She held the office of sub-prioress from
1659–1662, and died three years later, at the age of forty-four.
The peace of the cloister had descended upon her, but the memory of her
grace and beauty lingered long in the world she had quitted:
“Lorsque Vigean quitta la Cour,
Les Jeux, les Grâces, les Amours
Entrèrent dans le monastère.
Laire la laire, lon lère
Laire la laire, lon la.
Les Jeux pleurèrent ce jour-là;
Ce jour-là la beauté se voilà
Et fit vœu d’être solitaire
* * * * *[191]”
The man whom she had loved with such devotion did not seek to see
her again, but always preserved for her “a recollection full of
respect.”[192]
CHAPTER XV
Notwithstanding his rupture with Mlle. du Vigean, the Duc
d’Enghien continues to treat his wife with coldness--The
heart of the prince is fiercely disputed by the ladies
of the Court--Dissipated life of Enghien: paternal
remonstrances--_Liaison_ between the duke and Ninon
de l’Enclos--Death of Henri II. de Bourbon, Prince de
Condé--Failure of the new Prince de Condé before Lerida--His
brilliant victory at Lens--Beginning of the Fronde--Condé
remains faithful to the Court, and takes command of the royal
troops--The Duchesse de Châtillon becomes his mistress--Peace
of Rueil--The arrogance and ambition of Condé causes the Court
and the Frondeurs to join forces against him--The arrest
of the Princes--The Princesse de Condé at Bordeaux--Death
of the dowager-princess--Equivocal conduct of Madame de
Châtillon--Episode of an unaddressed letter--Exile of Mazarin
and release of the Princes--Continued indifference of Condé
towards his wife, notwithstanding her courageous efforts on
his behalf--Negotiations between him and the Regent--His
rupture with the Frondeurs, who draw towards the Court--Condé
retires to Saint-Maur--Alliance between the Court and the
Frondeurs--Proceedings against Condé--The prince retires to
Montrond and “draws the sword.”
The brusque and unexpected rupture of the Duc d’Enghien with Marthe
du Vigean for a moment encouraged the hope of a better understanding
between the prince and the legitimate object of his affections.
Although she could not, of course, compare in outward attractions
with Mlle. du Vigean, the little duchess, now in her eighteenth year,
had improved greatly in appearance since her marriage, and, if not
regularly pretty, she was, with her open countenance, her fine dark
eyes, her beautiful complexion, and her trim figure, a decidedly
pleasing personality. Moreover, she was highly intelligent, conversing
well and agreeably on a number of subjects, and showing a good sense
and a keenness of observation beyond her years, possessed a singularly
sweet disposition, and was, notwithstanding the indifference with
which her husband had treated her, sincerely attached to him.
Unhappily, this hope proved illusive, for Enghien did not depart from
that studiously courteous but cold and distant attitude which he had
adopted towards his wife from the first day of his marriage. The poor
little duchess was bitterly disappointed, but she had schooled herself
to suffer in silence, and courageously refused to allow the world to
perceive how keenly she felt her husband’s neglect. Fresh trials,
however, awaited her. Hitherto, she had, at least, had the consolation
of believing that Enghien was still faithful to his marriage-vows, in
deed, if not in thought, for the virtue of Mlle. du Vigean had proved
a more impregnable fortress than Thionville, and his passion for her
seems to have preserved him from the wiles of more facile beauties. But
now even this was to be denied her. The moment it became known that
Enghien had broken definitely with Mlle. du Vigean, the heart over
which the latter had so long reigned supreme was fiercely disputed
by the ladies of the Court, and the young hero became the object of
the most singular advances. The majestic Duchesse de Montbazon,[193]
the fire of whose splendid eyes “penetrated even the most insensible
hearts,”[194] charged their common friend, the Duc de Rohan, to
acquaint the prince with the sentiments which she entertained for
him. Mlle. de Neuillant, afterwards Duchesse de Navailles, one of the
Queen-Mother’s _filles d’honneur_, made similar overtures, with
more diplomacy, but with equal ardour, and left no means untried to
engage the affections of his Highness. But neither of these ladies
appear to have made much impression upon their quarry, and it was a
colleague of Mlle. de Neuillant, the charming Louise de Prie, Mlle.
de Toussy, who came nearest to success. For some little time Enghien
paid her the most assiduous attentions, and negotiations of a very
equivocal nature were carried on between the prince and the damsel’s
relatives, through the medium of the Chevalier de la Rivière. But,
either because Mlle. de Toussy’s family was inclined to be too
exorbitant in its demands upon Enghien’s generosity, or, more probably,
because she herself was only willing to be a mistress in the poetic
acceptation of the term, the ducal ardour soon cooled, and the young
lady consoled herself for her admirer’s defection by marrying the Duc
de la Mothe-Houdancourt.
But, if no woman were permitted to succeed to the place which Marthe du
Vigean had occupied in Enghien’s affections, the ardent nature which
he had inherited together with the courage of his ancestors soon found
satisfaction in amours of a less sentimental character, and his life
became so dissipated that, during the summer of 1646, the Prince de
Condé felt obliged to remonstrate with him in the strongest terms. “My
son,” he writes, “God bless you. Cure yourself, or, it is better to
poniard yourself than lead the life that you are doing.... I pray God
to console me. I write to you in despair, and am, Monsieur, your good
father and friend....”[195]
The Duc d’Enghien did not poniard himself, but neither did he amend
his ways to any appreciable extent. His conquests in the _pays de
tendre_ far outnumbered those beyond the Rhine, but the very ease
with which they were achieved deprived them of all value in his eyes
and speedily quenched the flame of passion: indeed, the only woman to
whose charms he seems to have been really sensible was the celebrated
Ninon de l’Enclos, to whom his attention seems first to have been drawn
by the enthusiastic praises of their common friend Saint-Évremond. For
a year or two the prince was a frequent visitor at Ninon’s hôtel in the
Rue des Tournelles, and the lady, whose vanity was flattered by the
admiration of the hero of the hour, was very kind to him indeed. But
it was not in Ninon’s nature to be faithful to any one for long--“I
shall love you for three months,” she once wrote to a new admirer, “and
three months is an eternity!”--and, besides, the victor of Rocroi made
war a great deal better than he made love, and preferred to receive
homage rather than to offer it. So gradually her affection cooled, and
when the prince, on his return from the campaign of 1648, reproached
her for having encouraged the intrigue between his sister Madame
Longueville and La Rochefoucauld, and for permitting the lovers to meet
at her house, she dismissed him and consoled herself with the Marquis
de Villarceaux, who had long sued for her favours.
At the beginning of December, the Prince de Condé, who had been in
failing health for the last eighteen months, was taken seriously ill,
and at midnight on the 26th he died, in his fifty-seventh year. He
made, we are assured, a very Christian end, in the presence of his wife
and his two sons--Madame de Longueville had followed her husband to the
Congress of Münster--and “parted from _Madame la Princesse_ as
though he had loved her all his life.”[196] In his will, he left large
sums to the poor, “deeming it incumbent upon him to restore the profits
of the benefices that he had wrongly enjoyed,” and even the humblest
of his servants was not forgotten. His body was interred in the parish
church of Valery; his heart he bequeathed to the Jesuits of the Rue
Saint-Antoine, an example which was followed by his descendants.
Morose and bigoted, self-seeking and avaricious, the third Prince de
Condé is far from an attractive personality. Nevertheless, his death
was a sensible loss both to his family and to France. Selfish and
turbulent though his conduct had been during the regency of Marie de’
Medici, when once he had decided that his own interests would be better
served by loyalty than by opposition to the Crown, he certainly spared
no effort to deserve the important offices and immense pensions which
were the reward of his fidelity; and the steady support he gave to Anne
of Austria and Mazarin since the beginning of the new reign had been of
the highest value to the Government. “As sparing of the King’s money as
his own,” writes the Duc d’Aumale, “his ideas on financial matters were
sound; he desired that the public debts should be regularly discharged,
and opposed extravagance and the constant augmentation of expenses, as
well as increased taxation. He inspired confidence in serious men of
affairs, who never wished to conclude a treaty when he did not assist
at the Council. The quack financiers, the d’Émeris and the rest, feared
him and rejoiced at his death. They played a fine game after he was
gone.”[197]
[Illustration: NINON DE L’ENCLOS
FROM A MINIATURE IN THE SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM]
His authority over his family was absolute. His children, if they did
not love him, both feared and respected him, and to the last Enghien,
so impatient of all control, showed towards his father the greatest
deference. Had Henri de Bourbon lived a few years longer, his sound
common-sense would certainly have saved them from the disasters they
brought upon themselves and France; and the Fronde might have been,
after all, merely “a blaze of straw.”
Charlotte de Montmorency had the enjoyment for her life of the whole
of her deceased husband’s property, subject only to an annual charge
of 80,000 livres in favour of her elder son, and 10,000 in favour of
the younger. This arrangement was no doubt a just one, seeing that the
large fortune which his wife brought him had been the basis of Henri
de Bourbon’s great wealth. But it, nevertheless, weighed very hardly
on his successor, who had received comparatively little with Mlle. de
Brézé, and, being as liberal as his father was the reverse, soon found
himself seriously embarrassed to maintain his position as first Prince
of the Blood, notwithstanding the revenues he derived from his offices
and governments.
* * * * *
In the spring of 1647, the new Prince de Condé was despatched to
Catalonia to endeavour to retrieve the reverses sustained in that
province, which had of late years earned an unenviable notoriety as the
grave of French military reputations. He determined to lay siege to
the fortress of Lerida, and, on 18 May, the trenches were opened gaily
to the sound of violins. It was a fashion of the time, which made of a
war a fête; but it was the hitherto invincible general who had, on this
occasion, to pay the expenses of the music; for Lerida was resolutely
defended, while the supplies and siege-artillery promised him by the
Government did not arrive, and, after severe losses, he decided to
raise the siege. Condé deserved credit for having placed the safety of
his army before his pride; but it was his first reverse, and, though he
was aware that he had done everything possible to ensure success, his
mortification was none the less keen.
The memory of the Catalonian fiasco was brilliantly effaced in the
following year, when, in command of the Army of Flanders, he gained,
with comparatively trifling loss, the splendid victory of Lens, over
an enemy much superior in numbers, whom, by a feigned retreat, he
had succeeded in drawing from an almost unassailable position into
a battle on level ground (20 August). This success hastened the
conclusion of peace with the Emperor, and, on 24 October, 1648, the
Treaty of Westphalia terminated thirty years of war and twelve years of
negotiations, and extended the frontiers of France to the coveted line
of the Rhine.
Left with Spain alone to face, there seemed every reason to hope that
a great future awaited France, and that, as the result of two or
three successful campaigns, she would be enabled to secure the same
advantages in the North-East and South-West as she had already secured
in the East. That this hope was only very partially realized, and that
not until after more than ten years of further warfare, was due to
that miserable internecine strife which, under the name of the Fronde,
checked the victorious career of Condé at the age of twenty-seven,
plunged France into a welter of anarchy, and sapped the very vitals of
the nation.
This sanguinary and farcical struggle began with a contest between the
Court and the Parlement of Paris, which, encouraged by the weakness
of the Government and backed by popular feeling, was neglecting its
judicial duties to encroach upon the political rights of the Crown
and to claim an authority which even the States-General had never
possessed. The “Importants”--the aristocratic cabal, headed by the two
great turbulent Houses of Vendôme and Guise, which from the beginning
of the regency had bitterly opposed the ascendency of Mazarin--and
a number of discontented and ambitious princes, prelates, nobles
and great ladies: Paul de Gondi, afterwards the Cardinal de Retz,
La Rochefoucauld, the Duc and Duchesse de Longueville, the Prince de
Conti, Turenne, and the Duc and Duchesse de Bouillon, threw in their
lot with the popular cause.
Although Condé detested Mazarin and sympathized to a large extent with
the opposition to the Minister, and though Madame de Longueville, who
exercised great influence over both her brothers, made every effort to
win him over to her cause, the sentiment of duty, which was not yet
obscured, kept him faithful to the Court, and to the solicitations of
the rebels he replied simply: “My name is Louis de Bourbon, and I do
not wish to weaken the Crown.” An admirable maxim, which, however, he
was very soon to abandon.
In the early morning of 6 January, the Court quitted Paris for
Saint-Germain, a picturesque exodus of which the pen of _la Grande
Mademoiselle_ has traced an inimitable picture, and the rebellious
capital was forthwith invested by the royal troops, under the
command of Condé. The forces at the prince’s disposal were, however,
insufficient to invest the city completely, and, though some roads
were effectually closed, others remained open. Occasional skirmishes
took place, but the only serious fighting occurred at Charenton on
8 February. In this affair, the Duc de Châtillon, husband of the
beautiful Isabelle de Montmorency-Boutteville, was mortally wounded and
expired the following day at Vincennes, whither he had been carried.
With his death, the male line of the illustrious Admiral became extinct.
The widowed duchess received the sad news with comparative
indifference, but, according to Madame de Motteville, “counterfeited
grief, after the manner of ladies who love themselves too well to
care for any one else.” She had not, indeed, waited for the death of
her husband to establish tender relations with the fascinating Duc de
Nemours, and was already aspiring to resume over the heart of Condé the
empire which she had for a brief while exercised in former years.[198]
Hitherto, the prince would appear to have given the lady but scant
encouragement, for, though very far from indifferent to her charms,
Châtillon was one of his closest friends, and the idea of engaging in
a _liaison_ with his wife was repugnant to his sense of honour.
But, with the death of the duke, his scruples vanished, and not long
afterwards Isabelle became his mistress, without, however, renouncing
the Duc de Nemours, her relations with whom she was, of course, very
careful to conceal from her titular lover.
On 12 March, 1649, the Peace of Rueil put an end to the war, though
it was not until 18 August that the Court returned to Paris, after an
absence of seven and a half months.
To the Parliamentary Fronde succeeded, at a short interval, the Fronde
of the Princes, more difficult to characterize, since it was composed
of little save disappointed ambitions and interested calculations,
but also more difficult to conquer. The good understanding between
_Monsieur le Prince_ and Mazarin had been merely of a temporary
nature, called into being by the danger to which the royal authority
had found itself exposed, and it did not long survive the restoration
of order. Condé’s natural pride and arrogance had been enormously
increased by the events of the last few months, and he believed his
support absolutely indispensable to the Government. The Regent and her
Minister were willing to go to great lengths to secure a continuance
of it, but no ordinary concessions were likely to satisfy a man who
regarded himself as the saviour of the Crown, and believed that
he held its fate in the hollow of his hand, and whose jealous and
suspicious mind, skilfully played upon by his sister, seemed to see in
every action of Mazarin a carefully calculated move to strengthen the
Cardinal’s position or to diminish his own prestige. His increasing
pretensions rendered him more of a rebel than the Frondeurs themselves;
his arrogance disgusted every one. He exacted from Mazarin a written
agreement whereby he undertook not to make any appointment of
importance in Church or State unless he had first been consulted, or to
arrange any marriage for his nephews and nieces without his consent.
“In his ordinary life he had such mocking airs that no one was able to
endure him. However high their rank, people were obliged to wait an
interminable time in _Monsieur le Prince’s_ ante-chamber. In the
visits which were paid him he manifested so disdainful an ennui, that
he showed plainly that they were wearying him.”[199] Finally, having
exasperated the Regent and Mazarin beyond endurance, while, at the same
time, he had contrived to alienate the Frondeurs, who had been eager
for his alliance, the latter and the Court joined forces against him,
and, on 18 January, 1650, he, with his brother, the Prince de Conti,
and the Duc de Longueville, were arrested at the Palais-Royal, whither
they had come to attend a meeting of the Council, and conducted to the
Château of Vincennes. Madame de Longueville, whose arrest had also
been determined upon, succeeded in making her escape to her husband’s
government of Normandy.
Anne of Austria and Mazarin appear to have been in some doubt whether
to arrest the two Princesses de Condé, with the little Duc d’Enghien,
then between six and seven years old.[200] “But considering,” says
Lenet, “that the dowager was a princess of a timid and indolent
disposition, and that the young princess was without friends, without
money, and without experience, and not very well satisfied with the
conduct of the prince, her husband, they had decided merely to order
them to retire to Chantilly.”
In sparing the young princess, they committed a grave error, for
Claire-Clémence concealed beneath her gentle and retiring nature great
courage and energy of character, which only awaited the occasion to
manifest themselves. While all her _entourage_ were bewailing the
misfortune which had befallen them, she thought only of effecting her
husband’s liberation. The Duc de la Rochefoucauld had formed a plan
of resistance in the South, always ready to rise in insurrection on
the smallest provocation, and had united his fortunes to those of his
powerful neighbour, the Duc de Bouillon. The two dukes determined
to link to the cause of the imprisoned princes that of the citizens
of Bordeaux, who had been for months past in a state of semi-revolt
against the tyranny of their detested governor, the Duc d’Épernon; and
La Rochefoucauld despatched his confidant, Gourville, to Chantilly,
to inform the Princesse de Condé of their intentions. The courageous
princess at once determined to join them, and, with the aid of Lenet,
on the night of 11–12 April, 1650, she and the little Duc d’Enghien
escaped from Chantilly and made their way to Montrond, and thence to
Bouillon’s château of Turenne, in the Limousin.
The gentry of the South flocked to offer their services to the
princess, who soon found herself at the head of a considerable force;
and at the end of May she appeared before Bordeaux. The Parlement and
the municipal authorities hesitated to receive her, in the face of the
formal prohibition of the King; but the populace, incited by the agents
of Bouillon and La Rochefoucauld, took the matter out of their hands,
flung open the gates and welcomed her with frantic enthusiasm. The
following day, leading her son by the hand, she presented herself at
the Palais de Justice, to implore the protection of the Parlement. “Act
as a father to me, Messieurs, since the Cardinal Mazarin has taken my
own father from me,” cried the little duke, falling upon his knees; and
the magistrates, partly out of compassion for this touching spectacle,
and partly out of fear of the mob which was clamouring at the doors,
voted that “the dame Princesse de Condé and the seigneur Duc d’Enghien
might reside in that town in safety under the protection of the laws.”
Next day, notwithstanding the protests of the Parlement, Bouillon and
La Rochefoucauld entered the city, borne, so to speak, on the shoulders
of the mob. Soon appeared a Spanish envoy, with promises of prompt and
powerful assistance from Philip IV.; and Bordeaux and the greater part
of Guienne were in open rebellion.
The revolt in Guienne quickly assumed such alarming proportions
that Mazarin decided that the presence of the King and the Regent
in that province was indispensable, and having left the Maréchal
du Plessis-Praslin to hold in check the insurrection in the North,
on 4 July, the Court quitted Paris to join the royal army of the
South, commanded by the Maréchal de la Meilleraie. La Meilleraie soon
succeeded in confining the revolt within the walls of Bordeaux, but all
attempts to induce the city to open its gates proved unavailing, and on
5 September the siege was begun.
While the novelty of the affair lasted, the Bordelais displayed the
most desperate resolution. Encouraged by the example of the Princesse
de Condé, even the wives of the wealthiest citizens took part in the
defence of the town, and carried baskets of earth decorated with
bows of ribbon to the trenches. The little Duc d’Enghien rode to the
ramparts and cried to his attendants to give him a sword, “that he
might go and kill Mazarin.” Bouillon and La Rochefoucauld directed the
defence-works, and, as if the siege had been a pleasure-party, “regaled
the ladies with fruit and sweetmeats and the workmen with wine.”
Every evening there was dancing under the ramparts, and the Princesse
de Condé held a court in a brilliantly-illuminated gallery. The
festivities, indeed, were continuous, notwithstanding that skirmishes,
often very sanguinary, took place almost daily.
However, the assistance promised by Spain did not arrive; the
better-class citizens soon grew tired of a struggle into which they had
been forced against their better judgment; while the bellicose ardour
of the populace was cooled by the scarcity of provisions. Moreover,
the season of the vintage was approaching, and to lose the chief
crop of the year would be nothing short of disaster. Perceiving how
matters were tending, the Princesse de Condé resolved to anticipate
the surrender which she felt was imminent, and, on 11 September,
proceeded to the Hôtel de Ville, where the city fathers were assembled
in conclave, and informed them that, “since she sought only their
satisfaction and tranquillity, she would do nothing to hinder the peace
which they might be able to conclude with the Cardinal.”
The authorities took her at her word; and, on 1 October, articles of
peace were signed between the Regent and the insurgents, whereby a
full and complete amnesty was granted the Bordelais, on condition that
the King and his troops were admitted to the town; while the Princesse
de Condé, Bouillon, and La Rochefoucauld were permitted to retire to
their estates in the full enjoyment of all their dignities, on the
promise that they would lay down their arms and “continue henceforth
in fidelity and obedience.” It was also agreed that the Duc d’Épernon
should be temporarily suspended from his duties as governor of the
province. The treaty contained no mention of the Princes, although the
revolt had been made in their name and for their deliverance.
On 3 October, the Princesse de Condé and her son sailed from Bordeaux,
“amid a rain of flowers,” and proceeded to Bourg-sur-Mer, where the
Court had taken up its residence. Claire-Clémence went to salute Anne
of Austria, and, throwing herself at the Queen’s feet, demanded pardon
for her husband. Her Majesty received her very kindly and made her
sit by her side, but her answer to the princess’s petition was not
very encouraging. “I am well pleased, my cousin,” said she, “that you
acknowledge your fault; you have taken a bad way to obtain what you ask
for; now that you intend to take a different one, I will see when and
how I can give you the satisfaction you desire.”
While Condé’s neglected wife was promoting insurrections and
confronting the perils and hardships of war in her husband’s interests,
his mistress was very differently employed. The Dowager-Princesse de
Condé, although she was still only in her fifty-fourth year and had
hitherto enjoyed excellent health, had not been able to survive the
misfortunes of her House. As sensible to the present disgrace of the
children whom she so fondly loved as she had been to their former
triumphs, she had grieved over it to such a degree that she fell
seriously ill, and died on 2 December, 1650, at Châtillon-sur-Loing,
the residence of the Duchesse de Châtillon, to which she had obtained
permission to retire.
During her last days, the old princess had fallen very much under
the influence of Madame de Châtillon, who, as avaricious as she was
unprincipled, had determined to obtain a share of her property. In
this she was but too successful. “The Duchesse de Châtillon, who was
the most astute woman in the world,” observes Lenet, “had so well
understood how to employ her adroit and subtle mind and her agreeable
and insinuating manners as to make herself so completely mistress of
the princess-dowager, that she saw only with her eyes and spoke only
with her mouth.”
It was with the idea of separating the old princess from all the
friends and servants who might endeavour to frustrate her designs
that the duchess had persuaded her to take up her residence at
Châtillon-sur-Loing, where she was careful not to permit any one to
approach her, except Madame de Bourgneuf, the _gouvernante_ of
Madame de Longueville’s children, and _Madame la Princesse’s_
confessor, a worldly and intriguing abbé named Cambriac, both of whom
she had succeeded in gaining over to her cause. The outcome of these
manœuvres was that the dowager bequeathed to Madame de Châtillon nearly
the whole of her jewellery--in itself a respectable fortune--and the
revenues for life of several of her estates, including that of Merlou,
near Pontoise.
The young Princesse de Condé was at the Château of Montrond, whither
she had proceeded on leaving Guienne, when she learned of the death of
her mother-in-law. Well aware of the rapacity of the fair Isabelle,
she at once despatched Lenet to Châtillon to watch over her husband’s
interests; and this intervention obliged the impatient legatee to
make a journey to Montrond to ask the princess’s permission to take
possession of the jewellery bequeathed to her. The interview between
the two ladies was rendered the more piquant by an incident which
afforded Claire-Clémence an opportunity for enjoying a malicious
triumph over the too-coquettish mistress of her husband.
Before the arrival of Madame de Châtillon at Montrond, a courier
arrived from Paris, bearing a packet without any superscription, which
was brought to the Princesse de Condé and opened by her. It contained
a tender letter for the duchess from her _amant de cœur_, the
Duc de Nemours, in which he assured her that, since her departure from
Paris, he was changed to the point of being no longer recognizable, and
was gradually pining away. To these lamentations the lovelorn nobleman
joined some very practical counsels, advising his inamorata to take
possession of the estate of Merlou--which, as we have mentioned, the
late princess had left her for life--before Condé was set at liberty.
Claire-Clémence had the satisfaction of handing this missive to her
rival, when the latter arrived at Montrond a day or two afterwards. But
Madame de Châtillon, so far from exhibiting the confusion which she
had anticipated, declared, with superb audacity, that the letter was
a forgery, since M. de Nemours was nothing but a mere acquaintance.
Notwithstanding these denials, the story of the letter had a great
success, and circulated through all the _ruelles_, where Madame
de Châtillon was unmercifully bantered about it. However, she could
well afford to disregard these railleries, since Condé, too much
enamoured not to forgive the equivocal part she had played towards the
dowager-princess, showed no intention of disputing the will, and sent
instructions to his wife to authorize her to take possession of Merlou.
Notwithstanding the suppression of the revolt in Guienne and
the crushing defeat inflicted on the rebels and Spaniards by Du
Plessis-Praslin at Rethel (9 December, 1650), the party of the Princes
gained adherents every day, while the unpopularity of Mazarin steadily
increased. The Old Fronde, which he had alienated by his refusal to
accede to their exorbitant demands, made common cause with the friends
of Condé, and persuaded the fickle Gaston d’Orléans, the King’s uncle,
to side with them. Encouraged by them, the Parlement loudly demanded
the liberation of the Princes and the dismissal of the Cardinal, and
the Regent in vain endeavoured to defend her Minister. By the middle of
February, 1651, Mazarin was on his way into exile, and Condé was a free
man once more.
As soon as she was informed of the approaching liberation of her
husband, the princess had made preparations to set out for Paris and
bid him welcome at the Hôtel de Condé, but she was suddenly taken ill
and obliged to remain at Montrond. Such, however, was her impatience
to rejoin him that, while still barely convalescent, she insisted
on starting on her journey, travelling the first part of the way in
a litter. After having given her husband so many proofs of love and
devotion, after having supported with so much courage so many trials
and dangers for his sake, it was but natural that she should have
expected some return on his part; and, for the moment, it indeed seemed
as though Condé was by no means insensible to the noble conduct of the
princess. He came to meet her as far as Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois,
near Montchéry, assured her that henceforth he should devote himself
entirely to her, and desired that she should make a sort of triumphal
entry into Paris in his own carriage, and sitting by his side. But,
though he was probably sincere enough at the time, the supreme
selfishness of his character rendered him incapable of any lasting
gratitude, and very soon the astute Madame de Châtillon had resumed her
former empire over him, and the poor princess found herself almost as
neglected as ever.
Unlike his father, Condé did not learn wisdom from adversity. The
turbulence of the third Prince de Condé had, as we have seen, been
effectually cooled by the three years’ imprisonment he had suffered in
the early part of the previous reign; but Louis de Bourbon was entirely
destitute of the prudence which had tempered his father’s greed and
ambition. His year of confinement seemed only to have accentuated
that impatience of all control, that haughtiness of manner, and that
contemptuous disregard for the feelings and opinions of others which he
had always shown. Restored to liberty, in circumstances which seemed
to promise him an almost undisputed ascendency, he returned to Paris
more than ever determined to carry matters with a high hand. But, to
exercise the power which he desired, the maintenance of the alliance
between the Old Fronde and the party of the Princes, which had opened
his prison doors and procured the exile of Mazarin, was essential, and
Condé, though possessed of the highest military gifts, had none of the
qualities necessary for successful political leadership.
Anne of Austria, on the advice of her exiled Minister, with whom she
was in constant communication, sought to break up the combination
between the two Frondes by a _rapprochement_ with Condé, and
secret negotiations were accordingly opened with the prince. The
latter, who cared nothing for his new allies, professed himself
ready to give or rather to sell his support to the Court, and even
to consent to the return of Mazarin; but the price he demanded would
have rendered him the virtual sovereign of the South of France. Acting
always on Mazarin’s instructions, Anne encouraged the belief that
these preposterous terms would eventually be accorded, until Condé
had completely alienated the Old Fronde, by breaking off the marriage
arranged between his brother Conti and Mlle. de Chevreuse, which had
been one of the conditions of their alliance. The Old Fronde, indignant
at the prince’s bad faith, drew towards the Court, and, on the night of
5–6 July, 1651, Condé, in the belief that his liberty, if not his life,
was threatened, fled to Saunt-Maur. _Madame la Princesse_ and
her son, Conti, Madame de Longueville, and a number of his partisans
followed him, and he had soon “a Court which was not less imposing than
that of the King.”
His more prudent supporters urged him to be reconciled to the Regent,
who had sent to assure him that his retreat had been due to an entire
misapprehension. But Madame de Longueville and others were in favour
of an open rupture with the Court, and the prince’s impetuosity
of character and ambitious views inclined him to the same course.
However, he was not yet prepared for an armed struggle against the
royal authority, and, having despatched his wife and son and Madame
de Longueville to Montrond, he returned to Paris and entered into
negotiations with the Queen. But his demands were so outrageous and his
conduct so insolent that the exasperated Queen decided to transform
without delay the understanding which she had had for some weeks past
with the Frondeurs into a definite alliance, and towards the middle of
August articles of agreement between the two parties were drawn up and
signed.
Being now assured of the co-operation of the Frondeurs, Anne felt
strong enough for an open struggle with Condé, and, having engaged
Retz to maintain her cause in the Parlement, she, on 17 August,
launched against the Prince a declaration, in which she charged him
with ingratitude, contempt for the royal authority, criminal alliances
with the enemies of the realm, and a desire to subvert the State.
These charges led to violent scenes at the Palais de Justice, in one
of which Retz narrowly escaped being assassinated by some of Condé’s
friends. They were not, however, pressed; indeed, on 5 September, the
Queen, on the mediation of Gaston d’Orléans, sent to the Parlement
a letter formally exonerating the prince. But, under the pretext of
giving more solemnity to the decree, she requested that it should not
be promulgated until after the majority of Louis XIV., which he would
attain on the following day, on completing his thirteenth year, the age
fixed by the laws of France for the majority of her kings.
Condé excused himself, by letter, from assisting at the proclamation of
his Sovereign’s majority, on the ground that his enemies had rendered
him so odious in his Majesty’s eyes that he could not be present
without danger; and while the King, in the midst of a magnificent
_cortège_, was wending his way through the cheering crowds to the
Palais de Justice, the first Prince of the Blood, whose place should
have been by his side, was hastening to his brother-in-law’s château of
Trie in Normandy, with the object of persuading the Duc de Longueville
to join him in resistance to the royal authority. He came, however, on
a bootless errand, for Longueville, unlike his consort, had had enough
of civil war, and declared that he was not in a position to render him
any effective support.
From Trie, Condé proceeded to Chantilly, whence he sent an envoy to
Louis XIV., offering to return to the capital, if the changes in the
Ministry which he understood that it was his Majesty’s intention to
make were deferred for three days. But the young King haughtily refused
even to consider this proposition. The prince thereupon summoned a
meeting of his partisans at Chantilly; but, now that he had actually
come to the very verge of the abyss, he found many reasons to deter
him from taking the final step: his reluctance to plunge his country
into the miseries of another civil strife; the many defections in his
party, for to make war on the King of France was a very different
matter from resisting the will of a Spanish regent and an Italian
minister; the danger of placing any reliance on the promises of help
he had received from Spain; and, finally, the knowledge that war would
mean an indefinite separation from Madame de Châtillon, of whom he was
more than ever enamoured, and who, having been gained by the Court, had
been using all her influence to bring her lover to a more pacific frame
of mind.
At length, fearing that, if he remained longer at Chantilly, he might
be arrested, he decided to withdraw to his government of Berry, and
on 13 September arrived at Montrond. Here, two days later, a final
conference was held, and the bellicose Madame de Longueville succeeded
in triumphing over her brother’s last scruples. It was then that Condé
uttered the prediction so often quoted, and which was to prove so true:
“You compel me to draw the sword. Well, let it be so. Remember that I
shall be the last to replace it in its scabbard.”
CHAPTER XVI
Condé proceeds to Bordeaux, where he is rejoined by his
relatives--He opens the campaign with success, but is soon
obliged to remain on the defensive--Return of Mazarin--Condé
on the Loire--Battle of Bléneau--He leaves his army and
proceeds to Paris--His futile negotiations--Battle of the
Faubourg Saint-Antoine--Massacre of the Hôtel de Ville--The
Fronde grows daily more discredited--Condé quits Paris and
joins the Spaniards on the Flemish frontier--The Fronde at
Bordeaux--Sanguinary affrays between the _Ormée_ and the
_Chapeau Rouge_--Courage and presence of mind displayed
by the Princesse de Condé and Madame de Longueville in
separating the combatants--Surrender of Bordeaux--The princess
sails for Flanders to rejoin her husband--Her reception at
Valenciennes--She is cruelly neglected by Condé--She removes
from Valenciennes to Malines--Her miserable existence--Condé
applies to the Spanish Court for financial assistance--Brilliant
military qualities displayed by him in the service of his
country’s enemies--The princess gives birth to a daughter--Peace
of the Pyrenees--Return of Condé and his wife to France.
The fatal resolution once taken, Condé acted with his customary vigour
and decision. He despatched Lenet to Madrid to conclude a treaty
with Spain; wrote to his staunch adherent, the Comte de Marsin, who
commanded in Catalonia, begging him to join him in Guienne with all
the troops he could induce to follow him, and directed his brother and
sister and the Duc de Nemours to proceed to Bourges and endeavour to
incite that town and the whole of Berry to revolt. Then, accompanied
by La Rochefoucauld, he set out for Bordeaux, which he had resolved to
make his headquarters.
Condé was received at Bordeaux with transports of joy, and the town
and the greater part of the province at once rose in revolt. But
Madame de Longueville and Conti failed entirely in the task entrusted
to them, and, on the approach of the royal army, were obliged to
retire to Montrond, where _Madame la Princesse_ and her son had
remained, and subsequently to Bordeaux. A much more severe blow to the
prince’s cause was the defection of Turenne, upon whose support he had
confidently counted, but who, together with his brother, the Duc de
Bouillon, had decided to throw in his lot with the Court. Nevertheless,
he resolved to take the offensive, and for a while carried all before
him in the South-West. But his forces were much inferior in number to
the Royalists, and by the end of the year he was obliged to fall back
to the Garonne.
The sudden reappearance of Mazarin upon the scene in the following
January reanimated the hopes of the prince, and appeared to give
new strength to his party. The Parlement, which, on 4 December,
had issued a decree proclaiming _Monsieur le Prince_ and his
principal adherents “attainted and convicted of high treason and
_lèse-majesté_,” now voted that this sentence should be suspended
and renewed its old decrees against the Cardinal. Gaston d’Orléans,
with whom the prince had been for some time past negotiating, believing
that he had been the dupe of the Queen, concluded an alliance with him,
and, shortly afterwards, most of the Frondeurs also declared for Condé.
Towards the end of March, Condé, having entrusted the government of
Guienne to his brother, Conti, assisted by a council composed of
_Madame la Princesse_, Madame de Longueville, Lenet, Marsin, and
the Président Viole, set out to take command of the Frondeurs on the
Loire. After an adventurous journey, in which he only escaped capture
by a miracle, he reached the army in safety, and falling upon the
division of the royal forces commanded by Hocquincourt, completely
routed it. But his attack on Turenne’s position failed, and, shortly
afterwards, he quitted his army and set out for Paris, with the
object of inducing the capital to espouse his cause. Here, he found
his beloved Madame de Châtillon, and, largely through her influence,
“allowed himself to be drawn into an abyss of negotiations of which
one never saw the bottom.”[201] These negotiations led to no result,
and, in the absence of their chief, the Frondeur army suffered a severe
reverse at Étampes, where it was suddenly attacked by Turenne. Nor
did he secure the adhesion of the capital, for, though the populace
espoused his cause, the better-class citizens stood aloof.
At length, at the end of June, Condé, comprehending the fatal error
he had committed in leaving the field to engage in futile intrigues,
and of having preferred the counsels of an avaricious mistress[202]
to those of his best friends, left Paris to resume the command of
his weakened and disheartened forces. It was too late. Forced back
upon Paris by superior numbers, he was obliged to fight the bloody
combat of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, which would probably have ended
in the total destruction of the rebel army, had not _la Grande
Mademoiselle_, by dint of tears and supplications, wrested an order
from her irresolute father to open the gates to the hard-pressed
Frondeurs and for the cannon of the Bastille to cover their retreat (2
July).
Two days later, a ferocious mob, among which are said to have been
many of Condé’s soldiers, disguised as artisans, attacked the Hôtel de
Ville, where some three hundred delegates from the clergy, magistracy,
and the various parishes were assembled in conclave, murdered several
of them, and set the building on fire. This atrocious act, worthy of
the worst days of the League, had the effect of terrifying the city
into submission to Condé, but, at the same time, proved the death-blow
of the Fronde, since all save the refuse of the people were filled with
horror and loathing for a party which sought to compass its ends by
such means. Every day saw the prince’s followers falling away from him
and the desire for peace growing stronger; and the skilful effacement
of Mazarin, who, on 19 August, left Pontoise and retired into a second
and voluntary exile at Bouillon, and afterwards at Sedan, removed the
only pretext for continuing the war. Condé attempted to negotiate, but
was informed that no proposal from him would be considered until he had
laid down his arms, disbanded his troops, and renounced his alliance
with Spain; and, at length, on 13 October, disdaining to accept the
general amnesty which had been proclaimed, but finding his position in
the capital no longer tenable, he left Paris with the few troops which
still remained faithful to him and joined the Spaniards on the Flemish
frontier. A week later, Louis XIV. and Anne of Austria made their entry
into the city amid general rejoicings, and in the following February
Mazarin returned in triumph, to remain until the hour of his death the
absolute ruler of France.
The Fronde of Bordeaux survived the Fronde in Paris by nearly ten
months. Its chief feature was the bitter struggle between the advanced
and moderate parties among the citizens. The former, recruited from
the lower middle-class and the populace, desired to carry on the war
_à outrance_, and was quite ready for an alliance with Spain,
England, or half Europe for that matter. Its most violent spirits
held republican views, which had been fostered by recent events in
England, and, imitating the League or anticipating the Jacobins, formed
themselves into a regular society, called, from its favourite place
of assembly--a little terrace bordered by elms in the environs of the
town--the _Ormée_, and persecuted with the utmost virulence all
whom they suspected of hostility to the popular cause. The latter,
which comprised the great majority of the better-class citizens,
though hostile in general to the Court and Mazarin, were desirous of
keeping the insurrectionary movement within bounds, and looked with
marked disapproval on Condé’s negotiations with Spain. To resist the
tyranny of the _Ormée_, they organized themselves into a kind of
aristocratic league, which was called, from the fashionable quarter of
the town, the _Chapeau Rouge_. Sanguinary encounters between the
two factions were of frequent occurrence, and, but for the courage and
presence of mind of the Princesse de Condé and Madame de Longueville,
who, at great personal risk, repeatedly intervened to separate the
infuriated combatants, Bordeaux would have become a shambles.
On one occasion, we read that _Madame la Princesse_, “_fort
allumée de colère_,” vowed that the next time there was a breach of
the peace, she would, notwithstanding that she was with child,[203]
place herself at the head of those who obeyed her, and cause the
offenders to be cut to pieces.[204] Scarcely, however, had she and
Madame de Longueville withdrawn, than the _Ormistes_, undismayed
by this terrible threat, stormed the Hôtel de Ville and held it
throughout the night. In the morning, flushed with success, they
marched in great force upon the Quartier du Chapeau Rouge, and attacked
the house of a certain M. Pichon, a president of the Parlement, who
appears to have been the object of their peculiar animosity. Unhappily
for them, M. Pichon had received warning of their intentions, and had
taken the precaution to convert his residence into a kind of fortress,
from which a withering fire of musketry was opened on the besiegers.
Exasperated by their losses, the _Ormistes_ proceeded to storm
and set fire to the neighbouring houses; reinforcements came up
rapidly on both sides, and it seemed as though the whole town would
be delivered up to fire and blood. So fierce was the fighting that it
appeared hopeless for the princesses to intervene; but, at length, they
bethought themselves of a happy expedient. Hastening to the curé of
the Church of Saint-Messan, they ordered him to accompany them to the
scene of the fray, bearing the Holy Sacrament, preceded by the cross
and candles. The _cortège_ advanced into the very midst of the
combatants, who desisted, vanquished by the courage and presence of
mind of these young women.
On 23 July, 1653, Bordeaux surrendered on honourable terms, the troops
which Marsin had brought from Catalonia being permitted to join Condé,
and a full pardon being granted to the inhabitants, with the exception
of the leaders of the _Ormée_, one of whom was executed.
The most generous offers were made by Mazarin to _Madame la
Princesse_, on condition that she should remain in France and
separate her interests from those of her husband. But, ever constant to
her duty, Claire-Clémence declined them, and announced her intention
of rejoining Condé. On 3 August, accompanied by the Duc d’Enghien
and the faithful Lenet, she sailed for Flanders on board a Spanish
ship-of-war. Her health had been so much affected by the trials and
anxieties of the last few months that her physicians assured her
that she would not survive the voyage; but, happily, these gloomy
prognostications were not realized, and on 26 August she landed safely
at Dunkerque. Thence she journeyed slowly, by way of Nieuport, Bruges,
Ghent, and Oudenarde, to Valenciennes, where, by her husband’s orders,
she took up her residence.
By order of the Viceroy of the Netherlands, she was received everywhere
with royal honours and the most splendid hospitality. At Valenciennes,
the governor, the municipal authorities, and all the nobility of the
surrounding country, came to pay her homage, and to compliment her
on her heroic Odyssey from Bordeaux. The Viceroy did everything in
his power to amuse her, and sent from Brussels a company of actors,
who gave before the illustrious exile a series of performances, in a
theatre constructed specially for the occasion.
The consideration and sympathy with which strangers were so eager to
surround the princess presented a striking contrast to the coldness and
indifference of her husband. After all that she had done and suffered
for his sake, she might well have expected to receive from him some
proof of affection, or at least, of respect. But for eight months after
her arrival he never once condescended to visit her, and, to add to the
mortification which she must have felt, he deprived her of her son, who
had never yet left her, whom he sent to the Jesuit College at Namur.
At last, at the end of June, 1654, he sent orders to her to meet him
at Mons. They passed one night together at an inn in the town, and on
the morrow separated again, the husband proceeding to Brussels and the
army, the wife returning to Valenciennes.
At the beginning of September, the approach of the French obliged
_Madame la Princesse_ to quit Valenciennes and seek another
asylum. She chose Malines, where she installed herself at the Hôtel
Hoogstratin. In spite of the fine promises which had been made by
the Viceroy, she did not receive any assistance from the Government
and soon found herself in terrible straits. The meagre sums sent her
at rare intervals by Condé, who was himself in scarcely better case,
were quite insufficient to defray the expenses of her Household, and
she was obliged to dismiss the greater number of her attendants and to
dispose successively of the few jewels she had kept, less for their
value than for the associations connected with them, of her horses and
carriages, and, finally, of part of her wardrobe. Sometimes she and her
servants were even in need of food, for her _maître d’hôtel_ had
the greatest difficulty in obtaining credit from the humble tradesmen
of the town.
The princess continued this wretched existence for several years. She
rarely saw her son, but received occasional visits from her husband,
an honour for which she seems to have been indebted to the fact that
Condé was no longer able to spend his leisure at Brussels, where he
was in debt to every one. “I am in such disrepute with the tradesmen,”
he writes, under date 28 October, 1655, to the Comte de Fiesque, his
envoy at Madrid, “that they look upon me as a bankrupt. I borrow in
every direction, and I pay no one back.” And, a month later: “I doubt
if I shall dare to return to Brussels, on account of the multitude of
creditors of all kinds whom I have there.... My wife and my son are
accustoming themselves to live on air.”
When, on 2 January, 1656, Condé arrived at Malines, he found his
unfortunate wife without a fire in her room, and learned that the
exasperated landlady of the inn had just caused the princess’s
_maître d’hôtel_ to be thrown into prison. Moved with pity,
despite his egoism, by the wretched condition to which his conduct
had reduced this courageous and devoted woman, he humbled his pride
sufficiently to write to Don Luis de Haro, Prime Minister of Spain,
to demand assistance. “Finally, Monsieur,” he writes, “I beg your
Excellency to consider that without prompt pecuniary assistance it will
be impossible for me to continue my services to the King with honour
and usefulness.... I beg you to inform me what his Catholic Majesty
wishes me to become; for, so long as I have no money, as my troops
are without recruits and without remounts, as my general-officers are
without a sol, as my fortresses are dismantled, as all my friends
are in poverty, as I myself, my wife, and my son are in a continual
beggary, I cannot be capable of rendering service to his Majesty in
such a condition.”[205]
Condé certainly had every claim upon the gratitude of the Spanish
Court, for in the service of the enemies of his country he displayed
the most rare qualities. As a general, he compelled the admiration
of all by his courage, energy, and foresight. His masterly retreat
on Mons, after the raising of the siege of Arras, whereby he saved
the routed Spaniards from complete destruction, must rank as one of
his finest feats of arms, and scarcely less brilliant were his relief
of Cambrai and the manner in which he forced Turenne’s lines before
Valenciennes. Badly seconded by the Spanish Government, who furnished
him neither with subsidies nor capable generals, he was obliged to give
his personal attention to everything. He superintended the recruiting
of his armies, their provisioning, their encampments, descended even to
the most trifling details, and led the life of the soldier, sharing his
privations that he might communicate to him his energy.
As the result of the visit paid by Condé to Malines at the beginning of
1656, in the following spring _Madame la Princesse_ found herself
again in an interesting condition. The approach of this event added to
the poor woman’s anxieties, for she could not but feel many misgivings
as to the fate reserved for a child to be born in exile, the offspring
of a rebel prince, who had been deprived, by a decree of the Parlement,
even of the name of Bourbon. She was, besides, much disquieted by
the prospect of the privations which it might be required to face at
Malines, in that inn where she was reduced to live so miserably. She
accordingly took counsel with the faithful Lenet, and, on his advice,
decided to petition Louis XIV. and Mazarin for permission to return to
France, and, at the same time, to appeal to the Parlement of Paris and
her relatives to make intercession on her behalf. But the touching
letters which she addressed to the King and the Minister were without
result; she was merely informed that circumstances did not lend
themselves to her return to France, and her only recource was to have
a protest drawn up by Flemish lawyers, “in order that her accouchement
out of France might not be laid to her charge, nor prejudice the child
which would be born of her pregnancy.”
In November, 1656, the Princesse de Condé gave birth, contrary to all
her hopes, to a daughter, who was baptized Louise. While this little
girl was still only a few months old, Jeanne Baptiste de Bourbon,
Abbess of Fontevrault, wrote to Condé, offering her the succession to
her abbey. The prince thanked the abbess for her good intentions, but
suggested that it would be preferable to wait for better times, and
that it was, besides, rather early to make his daughter a nun. The
little princess did not assume the cross and mitre, since she died
before she was three years old.
The campaign of 1657, which opened with Condé’s brilliant relief of
Cambrai, closed with the loss of Mardyke and other places, for the
incurable indolence of the Spanish generals hampered the prince at
every turn. England had now formed an alliance with France, and, in the
following year, the Spaniards, having, against the advice of Condé,
marched against the allies, who were besieging Dunkerque, sustained a
crushing defeat in the battle of the Dunes. This disaster, followed by
the capitulation of Dunkerque and the invasion of Flanders by Turenne,
decided Philip IV. to make peace; and, on 24 November, 1657, the Treaty
of the Pyrenees brought the long war to a close.
It closed also the exile and disgrace of Condé, who, thanks to the
firmness of Spain, was not only permitted to return to France,
but re-established in possession of all his property, honours and
dignities, with the exception of the governments of Guienne and Berry,
and the charge of Grand Master of the King’s Household, which he was to
surrender to the Duc d’Enghien, retaining, however, the reversion of
the post. In return for Philip IV.’s cession of Jülich to the Duke of
Neuburg and of the fortress of Avesnes to France, Louis XIV. conferred
upon Condé the government of Burgundy and Bresse, of the château of
Dijon, and of Saint-Jean-de-Losne; and, as compensation for the duchy
of Albret, which he had given to the Duc de Bouillon, he invested him
with that of the Bourbonnais. This last arrangement restored to this
branch of the Royal House of France the title of Duc de Bourbon, by
which three of the later Princes de Condé preferred to be known.
In return, nothing was demanded of the rebellious prince, except
that he should disband his forces within two months, and declare his
intention “to make reparation for the past by an entire obedience to
all the commands of his Sovereign” in a letter which he was to write
to his Majesty. Early in December, this missive reached Toulouse,
where the Court then was, and, on the 29th of the same month, Condé,
accompanied by the Duc d’Enghien, quitted Brussels and set out for
France. _Madame la Princesse_ followed, after a short interval,
with the little Mlle. de Bourbon. She, at least, was able to return to
her native land without bitterness and without remorse, since she had
only acted in accordance with what she believed to be her duty to her
husband.
CHAPTER XVII
Arrival of Condé at the Court--His reception--He returns to
Paris--His ingratitude towards his wife--Dignified behaviour
of _Madame la Princesse_--Affectionate relations
between Condé and his son--Indifference of the young prince
towards his mother--Marriage of the Duc d’Enghien and Anne
of Bavaria--The affair of Poland--Condé’s conquest of
Franche-Comté--The mind of the Princesse de Condé becomes
affected--The footman Duval--Mysterious affair at the Hôtel de
Condé: the princess is wounded in a brawl between Duval and the
Comte de Bussy-Rabutin--Singular attitude of _Monsieur le
Prince_--Trial of Duval--Calumnies against the Princesse de
Condé: letter of Madame de Sevigné--The princess is exiled to
the Château of Châteauroux, in Berry--Her departure: a touching
scene--Her captivity--Her hallucinations--Visit of Père Tixier.
On 4 January, 1660, Condé arrived at Coulommiers, whither the Duc and
Duchesse de Longueville had come to welcome him. After remaining there
a week, the princess and her little daughter, who had joined her the
day after her arrival, set out for Trie; the Duc d’Enghien was sent
to Augerville, to the house of the Président Perrault, a partisan of
_Monsieur le Prince_, who had himself recently returned from
exile; while Condé, accompanied by his brother-in-law, continued his
journey to Aix, in Provence, where the Court then was, to salute the
King. At Lambesc, they were met by the Prince de Conti, who, after
the surrender of Bordeaux, had made his peace with the Court and
espoused one of Mazarin’s nieces, the beautiful and virtuous Anne Marie
Martinozzi. Conti must have felt a little uneasy as to the reception he
was likely to meet with from the brother whose cause he had abandoned.
However, Condé greeted him affectionately, and, though the intimacy
which had once existed between them was never renewed, they remained on
friendly terms.
On 27 January, _Monsieur le Prince_ reached Aix and went at once
to visit Mazarin, to whom, since the Peace of the Pyrenees, he had
written several “rather civil” letters. The interview between the
two old enemies, though necessarily somewhat constrained, passed off
satisfactorily enough. Condé recognized that the Cardinal was now far
too firmly seated in the saddle ever to be dislodged, while Mazarin
felt that he could afford to be magnanimous. At its conclusion the
prince was “introduced into the Queen’s chamber, where he presented his
respects to their Majesties.”[206] The memoirs of the time,--even those
of _la Grande Mademoiselle_, who does not conceal her chagrin
at not having been able to learn anything--are silent regarding this
interview, which lasted more than an hour. No one seems to know what
passed, but all are agreed that, when it was over, the Prince de Condé
appeared to be as much at his ease at Court as if he had never left it.
The following evening the prince supped with Mazarin, who entertained
him magnificently, and who, a few days later, in writing to Lenet,
spoke in the warmest terms of their “friendship and cordial relations.”
But, if the past were forgiven, it could not be forgotten, at least
until time had enabled the prince to show that he was sincere in his
professions of fidelity to his Sovereign. Condé, recognizing this,
did not prolong his stay at the Court, and on 4 February he set out
for Paris, where he was soon rejoined by his wife. In the capital he
met with a most cordial reception; the Parlement and the other Courts
presented him with an address of welcome; all Paris hastened to follow
their example; and the Hôtel de Condé, so long deserted, was for some
weeks the centre of animation.
It was in this splendid residence which she had not entered since the
death of her mother-in-law, ten years before, that a fresh and final
disillusion awaited the long-suffering wife of the Great Condé. On her
return from exile, Claire-Clémence might well have believed that a new
life was about to begin for her--a life in which she would be restored
both to her place in Society and in her husband’s house, and receive
abundant compensation for all the hardships and humiliations which she
had experienced. Under what immense obligations had she not placed her
husband! Twice within two years she had brilliantly played the rôle of
a party leader. At the peril of her life she had traversed the seas to
bring him his son and to take her place by his side, and for long years
had uncomplainingly endured all the bitterness of poverty and exile.
Was it conceivable that a man could fail to be touched by so much
courage, so much devotion? Was it conceivable that, now that it was in
his power to show his appreciation of all that she had suffered for his
sake, he should not hasten to take advantage of the opportunity?
And the changes which had taken place since their departure from France
seemed to favour a better understanding between husband and wife. To
“_le temps de la bonne régence_,”[207] that era of facile and
romantic gallantry, had succeeded one of regularity, order, and outward
decorum, revealing a profound change in taste and morals. Of the salons
which had been so much frequented before the Fronde, some were already
nothing but a memory; others retained the merest shade of their former
reputation. Condé’s old _entourage_ no longer existed; the band of
pretty women whom his sister had gathered round her, and among whom he
had moved as a kind of demi-god, was dispersed. Madame de Longueville
herself had turned _dévote_, and divided her time between her
husband and children and her religious duties. Madame de Châtillon had
found a second husband in the Duke of Mecklenburg, and, though she
was still residing in France, she seemed more anxious to secure his
intervention in her lawsuits and her conjugal difficulties than to pick
up the thread of their interrupted intrigue.
Besides, Condé himself was no longer the dashing cavalier of former
times. Never very robust, his health had been severely tried by the
fatigues of so many years of active service; and already he was
beginning to suffer from those attacks of gout which were to be the
torment of his old age. Now, on the threshold of his fortieth year,
weary and disillusioned, it seemed but natural that he should seek
solace for his hardships and his thwarted ambition in the society of
his wife and children.
Condé had too much family pride to neglect his duties towards his
son, but, notwithstanding all the claims which she had upon his
consideration, his behaviour towards his wife showed no improvement.
It was, indeed, more cold and distant than ever. In the winter, which
he generally passed in Paris, he and the princess each had their
apartments under the same roof; they were seen together at State
ceremonies; on great occasions, it was the latter who did the honours
of the Hôtel de Condé. But in the summer, Claire-Clémence never
appeared at Chantilly, where _Monsieur le Prince_ was accustomed
to gather round him all the celebrities of the time, save on the rare
occasions when her presence was formally requested; soon she ceased
to come there at all. Apart from attendance at official ceremonies
and occasional visits to Saint-Maur, accompanied by a few persons
of her suite, she seldom left the Hôtel de Condé, and led almost as
retired a life as she had formerly passed among the Carmelites of the
Faubourg Saint-Jacques. For the last and cruel disillusion which she
had experienced had deprived her of all desire to mingle with the gay
world around her. Too proud and too generous to complain, she gave as
an explanation of her retirement the cares which her delicate health
imposed, and the dignity of her behaviour gained for her the admiration
and sympathy of all who penetrated the secret of this princely
_ménage_.
[Illustration: ANNE OF BAVARIA, DUCHESSE D’ENGHIEN
FROM AN ENGRAVING BY MONCORNET]
But Condé’s neglect was not the only trial which the poor princess
had to endure. In the early years of her married life, she had been
able to find some consolation for her husband’s indifference in the
affection of her son, the Duc d’Enghien, whom she had kept constantly
with her and to whom she was passionately devoted. But the boy, as we
have mentioned, had been separated from his mother soon after their
arrival in Flanders, and sent to the Jesuit College at Antwerp, since
which time she had only seen him at long intervals. _Monsieur le
Prince_, on the other hand, had superintended his son’s education,
and, as the lad grew older, he spent more and more of his time with
his father, for whom he soon conceived the warmest admiration and
affection; while Condé, on his side, was tenderly attached to his son.
Unhappily, these pleasant relations were established at the cost of the
princess; for the little consideration which his father, who could do
no wrong in his eyes, showed for his mother was naturally not without
its effect upon Enghien, and gradually the affection which as a boy
he had entertained for the latter was replaced by the most complete
indifference.
Almost as soon as he re-entered France, Condé began to occupy himself
with matrimonial projects on behalf of his son. If we are to believe
_la Grand Mademoiselle_, overtures were made to her, and the Duc
d’Enghien was “ardently desirous for this marriage, and very assiduous
in his attentions to her.” The princess, however, excused herself, “on
the ground of the great disparity of age between herself and the duke,”
though she informs us, in her “Mémoires,” that it was her suitor’s
“want of merit,” and his “base mind,” to which she objected.
No difficulty would, however, have presented itself had Condé been
willing for his son to marry _Mademoiselle’s_ half-sister, Mlle.
d’Alençon. _Madame la Princesse_ was very anxious for this
alliance, as were several of the prince’s counsellors; but Condé had
other views for his heir, and had determined to marry him to Anne of
Bavaria, second daughter of Edward of Bavaria, Prince Palatine, and of
Anne de Gonzague, sister of the Queen of Poland.[208]
His reason for preferring an alliance with a foreign princess of the
second rank and of little fortune to one which would have strengthened
the position of the Condés, by uniting them to the younger branch of
the Royal Family with its great possessions, was the belief that his
son’s marriage with a niece of the King and Queen of Poland would be of
material assistance to him in the realization of an ambition which he
had for some time cherished.
This ambition was nothing less than Enghien’s succession to the
elective crown of Poland, which the reigning sovereign, the childless
John Casimir, was prepared to abdicate so soon as a candidate likely
to be acceptable to the great majority of his subjects could be found.
This idea seems to have originated with the Queen of Poland, one of
Condé’s most intimate friends, who was using all her influence to
secure the support of her husband and the Polish nobles, who in that
State were masters of the throne, for the Duc d’Enghien.
Louis XIV. was not ill-disposed towards the Polish project, and, on 10
December, 1663, the marriage of the Duc d’Enghien and Anne of Bavaria
was celebrated in the King’s chapel at the Louvre. A clause in the
marriage contract stated that the King and Queen of Poland adopted the
bride “as their only daughter.” Meanwhile, however, it was becoming
apparent that Condé himself was likely to be far more acceptable to
the Poles than his son, and the French Court seemed to approve of this
solution. At the beginning of 1665, John Casimir decided to abdicate,
and Condé was preparing to start for Warsaw with Enghien--whether
it was his intention to get himself or his son elected is a moot
point--when Louis XIV., fearing to offend the Duke of Neuburg, a rival
competitor, whose possessions of Berg and Jülich commanded the passages
of the Rhine and covered the Spanish Netherlands on the North-East,
ordered him to renounce his candidature. “My cousin,” said he, “think
no more of the Crown of Poland; the interest of my State is concerned
in it.” Condé reluctantly obeyed, and when, in June 1669, John Casimir,
who had been persuaded by the prince’s friends in Poland to retain the
crown until then, in the hope that circumstances might permit him to
renew his candidature, Michael Wisnowiecki was elected.
Condé received some compensation for the mortification which the
Polish affair must have occasioned him in a brilliantly successful
reappearance in command of a French army. On the outbreak of the
Devolution War in 1667, the command of the forces which invaded the
Spanish Netherlands was given to Turenne, and his great rival was left
to languish in inaction at Chantilly. Without allowing himself to be
discouraged, Condé secretly applied himself to drawing up a plan for
the conquest of Franche-Comté. This plan he submitted to Louvois, the
Minister for War, who persuaded the King to approve it, and to entrust
its execution to the prince himself. On 4 February, 1668, Condé crossed
the frontier, and so skilfully had his measures been taken and so rapid
were his movements, that in little more than a fortnight the whole
province was at his feet. Louis XIV. immediately gave to the prince
the government of the conquered territory; but the Triple Alliance
between England, Sweden and Holland was already forming, and the King
was soon obliged to consent to peace, retaining his conquests in the
Netherlands, but restoring Franche-Comté to Spain.
The Princesse de Condé had figured at the marriage of her son and at
the subsequent festivities, but, after the young couple had established
themselves at Chantilly, where a portion of the château had been
placed at their disposal, she gradually disappeared from the Court and
Society, and was never seen except at great official functions, where
her rank necessitated her presence. Often she was ill and invisible
for months at a time, and Condé and Enghien appeared very embarrassed
when people inquired after the princess’s health, and hastened to
change the subject. A few notes preserved in the archives of Chantilly
serve to explain what seems to have remained an enigma, even to the
best-informed of contemporary chroniclers. In the autumn of 1664, we
find Condé writing to his secretary Caillet as follows:
“Make yourself acquainted with everything that my wife does at
Saint-Maur; inform me of everything that she does or says, and whether
she still persists in her transports (_emportements_).... M.
Perrault writes me that she spoke to him with moderation. I am a
little dubious about that, for I hear from others that she is anything
but moderate.... Endeavour, at any rate, to discover what has become of
Duval, and if my wife has not seen him at Saint-Maur.... I will inform
you of what will have to be done in this matter. Show my letter to the
Abbé Roquette and to Père Bergier (the two spiritual directors of the
family).”[209]
From these letters, it is very evident that _Madame la Princesse’s_
mind was affected, a fact which is not surprising, when we consider
that her mother, Nicole du Plessis, had always been eccentric, and,
in her later years, quite insane; that her father had been noted for
his morose disposition and violent temper, and that she herself had
passed through so many agitations, hardships, and deceptions. It is,
indeed, sad to reflect that the reason of this truly noble woman, who
in war and exile had shown such admirable courage and fortitude, should
have given way at the very moment when she should have been enjoying
the repose and happiness which she had so well earned. For this
calamity the neglect and indifference of her ungrateful husband and her
unnatural son were undoubtedly largely responsible.
Abandoned by those who should have lavished upon her the most tender
care, the unhappy Claire-Clémence became the prey of greedy and
unscrupulous attendants. The man Duval mentioned by Condé in one of
his letters to Caillet was a footman of the princess, a person of some
education and “_de bonne conversation_,” to whom the lonely woman
had attached herself. She gave him expensive presents and promised him
a pension; and Condé, warned of the influence which he was beginning to
exercise over his wife, insisted on her dismissing him from her service.
The dismissal of the only person who appeared to feel for her any
sympathy aggravated for a time the malady of Claire-Clémence, and was
no doubt the cause of the “_emportements_” of which her husband
speaks. But they do not appear to have lasted long, and by Holy Week
1665, she was sufficiently recovered to assist at the ceremonies of
the Lord’s Supper, when the Queen, in accordance with ancient custom,
served at table twelve poor women, whose feet she washed. The Princesse
de Condé, aided by Mlle. d’Alençon and the Princess of Baden, carried
the dishes to her Majesty.
During the next six years, Claire-Clémence continued to lead the
same secluded life, emerging now and again from her retirement to
assist at some Court ceremony, such as the baptism of the Dauphin
at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, on which occasion she was one of the
princesses to whom fell the duty of dressing the infant prince. After
this brilliant ceremony, however, the appearances of the princess in
public became so rare that people appear to have almost forgotten her
existence, when, at the beginning of 1671, a mysterious affair, which
was to complete the ruin of her life, came to make her, for a moment,
the talk of both Court and town.
About two o’clock in the afternoon of 13 January, Claire-Clémence,
having just dined, was alone in her apartments at the Hôtel de Condé,
when the door opened, and her former favourite, the dismissed footman,
Duval, entered the room unannounced. The ease with which he had
succeeded in making his way to the princess’s apartments is explained
by the fact that at this hour of the day all the servants were at
dinner, and that there was no one at hand to inquire his business.
Duval had come to demand money--the arrears of the pension which the
princess had promised him, but which, owing to the unsatisfactory state
of her finances, had only been paid very irregularly. On being told
that it was impossible to comply with his request at once, he became
very insolent and spoke in so loud a tone that a young musketeer, the
Comte Jean Louis de Bussy-Rabutin, formerly page to the Princesse
de Condé, who had just entered the ante-chamber, opened the door to
see what was the matter. Rabutin, after asking the impudent rascal
how he dared to address her Highness in such a manner, ordered him
to leave the house immediately; Duval angrily refused, and both drew
their swords and rushed upon each other. The princess endeavoured to
separate them, and received a wound “above the right breast,”[210]
which, though not dangerous, bled profusely. She fell to the ground in
a swoon; the servants, attracted by the noise, came rushing in, and the
combatants, profiting by the confusion, succeeded in effecting their
escape, though not before they had both been recognized.
Such was the version which spread in Paris and was generally accepted,
until the singular attitude of Condé piqued the curiosity of the public
and invested the affair with an atmosphere of mystery and scandal. The
prince, who had long sought an occasion for disembarrassing himself of
a wife whom he had never loved, and who was no longer able to be of use
to him, did not hesitate a moment to place the very worst construction
upon what had occurred. Although suffering cruelly from the gout, he
at once ordered his coach and set out for Paris, and, refusing even
to see his wife, demanded of the King the punishment of a crime of
_lèse-majesté_ and a _lettre de cachet_ against the princess.
Louis XIV., who had been himself so far from conceiving any suspicions
that he had already paid a personal visit to the injured lady, refused
at first to accede to the latter request, and Condé returned to
Chantilly in a very bad temper.
However, he was not the kind of person to be easily discouraged, and
on 15 January, in the presence of the captain of his guards and the
curé of Chantilly, he drew up and signed a document authorizing the
Princesse de Condé to make a donation of her property to her son,
the Duc d’Enghien. At the same time, he caused a deed to be prepared
which stated that the princess, “on account of the tenderness and
affection which she had always had for the person of the very high,
very excellent and puissant prince Monseigneur Henri Jules de Bourbon,
Duc d’Enghien, her son, Prince of the Blood, peer and Grand Master of
France, etc., etc., and to recognize the great respect and obedience
which he had always had for her, made a donation to him of all her
movable property, furniture, titles, actions, immovables, pretensions,
in whatsoever place they might be situated, reserving, nevertheless,
the enjoyment by usufruct of all her said goods, during her lifetime,
to dispose of them as might seem good to her.”[211]
The same day, the Duc d’Enghien, accompanied by two notaries,
proceeded to the Hôtel de Condé, informed his mother of the wishes of
_Monsieur le Prince_, and presented the deed for her signature.
The unfortunate princess signed without demur this kind of anticipated
will, in which it seemed that her husband desired to cut her off from
the world of the living. She was no doubt under the impression that her
compliance might suffice to appease the conjugal wrath, and did not
appear to understand that it was tantamount to a confession that she
was no longer responsible for her actions.
As the Duc d’Aumale observes, this deed had not the character of a
spoliation, since the usufruct was respected and the free disposition
of the princess’s jewels and plate assured. Yet, when viewed in the
light of what followed, it had an odious appearance, and nothing in
this sad affair has more disposed public opinion against Condé and his
son.
Meanwhile, an active search had been made for the culprits. Duval was
discovered at the house of a canon of the Sainte-Chapelle, whom he
had persuaded to give him shelter, and conducted, with his hands tied
behind his back, to the prison of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. Rabutin
was more fortunate. After lying hidden for a week at the Hôtel des
Mousquetaires, he succeeded in effecting his escape to Germany, where
he married a lady of royal blood, the Princess Dorothea of Holstein,
and rose to high rank in the Imperial service.
As the crime with which Duval was charged was that of having attempted
the life of a Princess of the Blood, he was tried by the Grande Chambre
and the Tournelle, sitting together. The evidence of Claire-Clémence,
taken on commission on 17 January, proved most unfortunate for her,
since, from a generous but mistaken desire to shield two men who had
been in her service--Rabutin had not yet succeeded in effecting his
escape from Paris, and the police were hunting for him high and
low--she professed entire ignorance of the cause of the affray. Duval,
she declared, had come to ask for money, of which he explained that he
was in great need, and she had promised to give it to him in two or
three days. (It will be observed that she said nothing about the loud
and insolent tone in which he had demanded it, and which had been the
cause of Rabutin’s appearance upon the scene.) _After he had left
her_, she had heard a commotion in the ante-chamber adjoining her
salon, and, going out to see what was the matter, had received a wound
in the breast, from which she immediately lost consciousness, without
having recognized the persons who were fighting.
Duval was three times interrogated. On the first two occasions he
stoutly denied that he was in any way culpable, but on the third he
confessed, and admitted that it was he who had wounded the princess.
In view of the latter’s reticence, however, the Court regarded these
admissions with considerable suspicion, and, being of opinion that the
charge was not fully proved, instead of condemning him to death, merely
sentenced him to the galleys.
The result of the proceedings against Duval, joined to the singular
attitude of _Monsieur le Prince_, gave to the affair, in the
opinion of a considerable section of the public, a new complexion; and
it was now freely asserted that the two men who had drawn upon each
other in the princess’s presence had been rivals in her affections.
Such was the view taken by Madame de Sévigné, who, in a letter to her
cousin Bussy,[212] thus expresses herself:
“I have just been told of an extraordinary adventure which occurred at
the Hôtel de Condé, and which deserves to be related to you. Here it
is: _Madame la Princesse_ having conceived an affection for one
of her footmen named Duval, the latter was foolish enough to suffer
impatiently the good-will which she likewise testified for the young
Rabutin, who had been her page. One day, when they both happened to be
in her chamber, Duval having said something that was wanting in respect
to the princess, Rabutin drew his sword to chastise him. Duval drew his
also, and the princess, throwing herself between them to separate them,
was wounded in the breast. Duval has been arrested, and Rabutin has
taken to flight. However honourable the subject of the quarrel may be,
I like not the name of a footman coupled with that of Rabutin.”[213]
To which her scandal-loving correspondent replies:
“Our cousin’s adventure is neither beautiful nor ugly; the mistress
does him honour, and the rival shame.”
At the same time, most of her contemporaries refused to believe that
the sweet and unfortunate Claire-Clémence had been seriously culpable,
and, though several of Condé’s biographers, to efface a stain on the
escutcheon of their hero, have not hesitated to reproduce this calumny,
others, such as Louis Joseph de Bourbon and Earl Stanhope, are of a
different opinion, and blame severely the conduct of the prince.[214]
“How is it possible,” asks the latter, “to think that the suspicion
of the prince was well founded? How can we believe that a princess
married nearly thirty years, and, up to this time, entirely free from
the slightest imputation--always held sacred by calumny, which spares
so few, ever irreproachable in the midst of a most corrupt Court--could
have waited till the age when passions have subsided to indulge them?
How reconcile such irregularities with that exalted piety which she had
practised from her youth upwards? How can we, without any proof, admit
such accusations against the woman who had always devoted herself so
courageously and constantly to the service of a husband who slighted
her? Against the heroine of Montrond and Bordeaux; against Clémence de
Maillé? And again, what accusations? Not only of an illicit attachment,
but the shameless sharing of her favours between two of her own
domestics!”[215]
Condé, who had never scrupled to jeer at the conjugal misfortunes of
others, now, in his turn, became an object of ridicule. Chansons and
epigrams at his expense began to circulate in Paris, and served to
exasperate him still further against his wife. In the first days of
February, he again demanded of the King a _lettre de cachet_, and
this time Louis XIV. did not refuse, and signed an order which exiled
the princess to the Château of Châteauroux, in Berry. No time was lost
in executing it, and as soon as the doctors pronounced her able to
stand the fatigue of the journey, she left Paris.
On the day of her departure, she sent for the curé of Saint-Sulpice,
with whom she had a long conversation. “Monsieur,” said she, as she
bade him farewell, “this is the last time that you will speak to me,
since I shall never return from the place to which the King is sending
me. But the confession which I now make to you will proclaim my
innocence for ever.” Her parting from her son was heartrending, and,
after embracing him again and again, she swooned away in his arms. As
soon as she recovered, the carriage started for Châteauroux.
The château which Condé had selected as his wife’s prison, and where
she was destined to remain for the rest of her days, stands upon a
hill on the left bank of the Indre, and commands a magnificent view
of the surrounding country. It was built by Raoul _le Large_,
seigneur de Déols, about the middle of the tenth century,[216] an age
when security was naturally the primary consideration, and, though its
sombre appearance had been a good deal modified from time to time, it
was still far from a cheerful habitation.
The princess was followed thither by her whole Household: _dame
d’honneur_, _chevalier d’honneur_, equerry, almoner, physician,
apothecary, comptroller, waiting-women, chef, scullions, coachmen and
footmen; and an allowance of 50,000 livres a year was made her for
the maintenance of this establishment. She was permitted to walk in
the grounds of the château, and even to take carriage exercise in the
vicinity, but always very carefully watched and guarded; while no
stranger was under any pretext allowed to approach her. Apart from
these restrictions, she was treated, at any rate at first, with all the
consideration and respect due to her exalted rank, and her captivity
was not of the harsh and brutal character with which some writers have
invested it.
Nevertheless, the isolation to which she was subjected, the deadly
monotony of her existence in this gloomy fortress, soon began to
have its effect upon her already tottering reason. Her disorder took
the form of terror. From incessant brooding over her wrongs, the
husband who had repaid her unselfish devotion with such harshness
and ingratitude became, in moments of hallucination, a monster who,
not content with burying her alive, was resolved to rid himself of
her altogether, and frequently she refused to touch dishes that were
offered her, from fear lest they should contain poison.
In 1675, in consequence of some rumours which had reached her that her
sister-in-law was being ill-treated by those to whose care she had
been entrusted, Madame de Longueville, more compassionate than the
rest of her family, requested Père Tixier, a Benedictine monk in whom
she had every confidence, to proceed to Châteauroux and ascertain if
there were any justification for these reports. The monk, however,
before undertaking this mission, considered it advisable to inquire if
it would be agreeable to _Monsieur le Prince_, who was likewise
a valued patron of his. Condé raised no objection. “You will go to
Châteauroux,” said he, “since my sister wishes it, and will see whether
_Madame la Princesse_ has everything she requires; for, such as
she is, she is my wife, and I do not wish her to want for anything. But
do not speak of me to her at all, you understand.”
On his arrival at Châteauroux, Père Tixier was presented to the
princess, who was about to sit down to dinner. “Father,” said she, “you
belong to _Monsieur le Prince_, who sends you to see me.” “No,
Madame,” replied the good man, “I am a monk, and the monks belong to
God.” “Oh!” rejoined the princess, “I understand;” and she declared her
conviction that Condé had sent him to confess her, because he intended
to have her made away with. Tixier endeavoured to reassure her, and
the officer whom Condé had placed in charge of his wife, and “who I
saw clearly,” says the monk, “treated her very roughly,” exclaimed:
“_Morbleu!_ Madame, at your usual fables again! Will you never be
sensible?”
Dinner was served, and, after the soup, a dish of cod was brought
in. The princess partook of it with relish, and asked for a second
helping. The dish, however, had just been removed, and, when it was
brought back, she declined to touch it, saying that it had been to
the kitchen and that there had been sufficient time to mix with it
some fatal ingredient. The officer remonstrated. “But,” said he, “does
not everything that is served you, Madame, come from the kitchen?”
Nevertheless, the unfortunate woman refused to listen to reason.
The princess, having at length been persuaded by Père Tixier that he
had merely come, at Madame de Longueville’s request, to inquire as
to her welfare, begged him to convey her most grateful thanks to her
sister-in-law. For her husband, she had no message and spoke of him
with aversion. “_Monsieur le Prince_,” said she, “greatly despised
me, but I greatly despised him also.”[217]
CHAPTER XVIII
Termination of Condé’s military career--His retirement at
Chantilly--His improvements of the château and estate--His
son, the Duc d’Enghien (_Monsieur le Duc_)--Portrait of
this prince by Saint-Simon--His tyrannical treatment of his
wife--His singular habits--Malicious practical joke which he
perpetrates on the Duc de Luxembourg--His amours with the
Duchesse de Nevers, the Marquise de Richelieu, and the Comtesse
de Marans--His natural daughter by Madame de Marans legitimated
and married to the Marquis de Lassay--His lack of military
capacity--His children--The education of his only son, the
Duc de Bourbon, superintended by Condé--Marriage of the young
prince to Mlle. de Nantes, elder daughter of Louis XIV. and
Madame de Montespan--The wedding-night--Conversion of Condé--His
last illness--His death--His funeral oration by Bossuet--The
Princesse de Condé remains in captivity--Her death.
_Monsieur le Prince_ probably troubled himself very little about
his unhappy wife’s feelings towards him. Having brought his military
career to a triumphant close by restoring the fortunes of France in
Alsace and driving the Imperialists across the Rhine, he had retired
definitely to Chantilly, to spend the remaining years of his life in as
much peace as his implacable enemy, gout, would permit.
In this delightful spot, his leisure was cheered by the society of all
the celebrities of his time. There were to be met warriors, statesmen
and ambassadors, divines and philosophers, poets, painters, scientists
and wits. No general set out to join his army without coming to take
leave of the great captain and discuss with him his plan of campaign;
no distinguished foreigner visited Paris without paying homage at
Chantilly; no author of repute published a book without sending a copy
to the prince who was “thought the best judge in France both of wit and
learning.”[218]
And so he grew old, honoured and adulated by all:
“Tranquille et glorieux
Il vit à Chantilly comme on vit dans les cieux.”[219]
Condé had a natural taste for gardening--even during his imprisonment
at Vincennes he had amused himself by cultivating carnations--and his
greatest pleasure in his declining years was to embellish the retreat
which he had chosen for himself. In 1662, he had begun the enlargement
of the park, and, under the direction of the celebrated gardener Le
Nôtre, parterres were traced around the château, long alleys, bordered
by trim hedges, stretching away into the forest began to make their
appearance, and trees, shrubs, and rare plants were gathered from all
quarters. But want of money imposed prudence, and it was not until some
years later, when _Monsieur le Prince’s_ finances were once more
in a satisfactory condition, that the work took a wide scope. Then it
was that Gitard constructed the grand staircase; that Mansart built the
Orangerie, and commenced the Ménagerie; that the aqueduct which brought
to Chantilly the water of the fountain of the Hôtel-Dieu-des-Marais
was made; that the parterres were completed and new avenues pierced
in all directions; that the fountains which “were silent neither day
nor night”[220] were erected, and that Chantilly began to assume the
appearance which it was to retain until the Revolution.
Condé, however, had another and more important occupation in his
retirement than the embellishment of Chantilly.
One of the greatest disappointments of the prince’s life was his only
son, the Duc d’Enghien, to whom, as we have mentioned, he was most
tenderly attached. As a child, _Monsieur le Duc_--to give him his
official designation--had been charming, but this early promise had
unhappily not been fulfilled, either in appearance or in character;
while, though he undoubtedly possessed great abilities, he was quite
incapable of employing them to any useful purpose. Saint-Simon has
drawn of him one of his most arresting portraits:
[Illustration: HENRI JULES DE BOURBON, DUC D’ENGHIEN (AFTERWARDS
PRINCE DE CONDÉ)
FROM AN ENGRAVING BY N. POILLY, AFTER THE PAINTING BY MIGNARD]
“He was a little man, very thin and slenderly made, whose
countenance, though somewhat mean, was still imposing from the fire
and intelligence of his eyes; while his nature was a compound as rare
as could be met with. No man was ever endowed with a keener or more
varied intelligence, which extended even to the arts and mechanics,
and was joined to an exquisite taste. No man had a more frank or more
natural courage, or a greater desire to shine; and, when he wished to
please, he did so with so much tact, grace, and charm that it seemed
spontaneous. Neither was any man more accomplished in invention and
execution, in the pleasures of life, in the magnificence of fêtes, by
which he often astonished and delighted in every conceivable way. But,
then, no man had ever before so many useless talents, so much futile
genius, or so lively and active an imagination, solely employed to be
his own curse and the scourge of others. Abjectly and basely servile,
even to lackeys, he scrupled not to use the lowest and paltriest means
to gain his ends. Unnatural son (to his mother), cruel father, terrible
husband, detestable master, pernicious neighbour; without friendship,
without friends--incapable of having any--jealous, suspicious, ever
restless, full of artifices to discover everything and to scrutinize
all (in which he was unceasingly occupied, aided by an extreme
vivacity and a surprising penetration); choleric and headstrong to
excess, even over trifles, never in accord with himself and keeping
all about him in a tremble, he caused the unhappiness of every one
who had any connection with him. To conclude, impetuosity and avarice
were his masters, which monopolized him always. With all this, he was
a difficult man to resist, when he brought into play the pleasing
qualities he possessed.”
To his unfortunate wife, Anne of Bavaria, he was a veritable tyrant.
She was ugly, virtuous, and stupid, a little deformed, and not very
clean in her person; but this did not hinder him from being furiously
jealous till the end of his life. Nor were her piety, the unwearying
attentions she lavished upon him, her gentleness, and her novice-like
submission able to protect her from frequent insults, and even from
blows and kicks. The poor woman was hardly allowed to call her soul
her own. “She was not mistress even of the most trifling things; she
did not dare to propose or to ask anything. He would make her start
on a journey the moment the fancy took him, and often, as soon as she
was seated in the carriage, he would make her descend again, or return
from the end of the street, and recommence the journey after dinner or
the next day. Once this kind of thing lasted for fifteen days running,
before a journey to Fontainebleau. At other times, he would summon her
from church, and make her leave High Mass, and sometimes would even
send for her when she was on the point of receiving the Communion; and
she would be obliged to return on the instant and defer her Communion
until another occasion. This he did, not because he wanted her, but
merely to gratify his whim.”
He was always uncertain in his movements, and had four dinners prepared
for him every day: one in Paris, a second at Écouen, a third at
Chantilly, and a fourth wherever the Court might be at the moment. But
the expense of this arrangement was not so great as might be supposed,
for the _menu_ consisted merely of soup and half a chicken
roasted upon a _croûton_ of bread, the other half serving for the
following day. He rarely invited any one to dine with him, but, when he
did, no one could be more courteous or more attentive to his guests.
He delighted in practical jokes, generally of an extremely malicious
kind, of which the following will serve as an example:
[Illustration: DIANE GABRIELLE DE THIANGES, DUCHESSE DE NEVERS]
The Duc de Luxembourg,[221] son of the celebrated marshal, had a young
and pretty wife,[222] who suffered, like a good many other ladies
about the Court, from excessive sensibility, a fact which was “known
to everybody in France except her husband.” On the occasion of a
visit of the Court to Marly, both M. de Luxembourg and his consort
were invited to take part in a masquerade. _Monsieur le Duc_
undertook to provide the former with what he declared to be a highly
original costume, and, since he enjoyed the reputation of being a
great authority on such matters, his offer was gladly accepted.
Thereupon the malicious prince proceeded to array his unconscious
victim in various fantastic garments, which he crowned with a gigantic
pair of antlers, which almost touched the candelabra. Thus attired, he
was conducted into the ballroom, where, by a sudden shifting of his
mask, his identity was quickly revealed. When the company perceived
who it was who was thus parading the emblem of a deceived husband, a
great shout of laughter rang through the room, which redoubled when
the luckless Luxembourg, mistaking the hilarity which his appearance
aroused for a tribute to the originality of his costume, bowed
repeatedly.
In his youth, _Monsieur le Duc_, like most of his family, was very
much addicted to gallantry. When his affections were engaged, nothing
cost too much, and “he made some amends for a shape which resembled a
gnome rather than a man.”[223] “He was grace, magnificence, gallantry
personified--a Jupiter transformed into a shower of gold. Now, he
disguised himself as a lackey; another time, as a female vendor of
articles for the toilette; anon, in some other fashion. He was the most
ingenious man in the world.”[224]
Among the great ladies who smiled upon him was the lovely and
fascinating Gabrielle de Thianges, who became, in 1670, the wife of the
Duc de Nevers, the brother of the famous Mancini sisters.[225] “Few
women,” says Saint-Simon, “have surpassed her in beauty. Hers was of
every kind, with a singularity which charmed.” And he declares that
when she died, at the age of sixty, she was “still perfectly beautiful.”
If we are to believe Madame de Caylus, the duchess, after the fall of
her aunt, Madame de Montespan, had, at that lady’s suggestion, made an
attempt to capture the affections of the King, “in order to keep the
royal favour in the family,” and that it was only upon the failure of
this intrigue that she resolved to content herself with _Monsieur
le Duc_. But, whatever may have been the lady’s feelings towards
him, _Monsieur le Duc_ was desperately enamoured of her, and the
fertility of resource which he displayed and the sums he appears to
have expended in order to enjoy her society were really astonishing.
Voltaire asserts, in a note to the first edition of the _Souvenirs_
of Madame de Caylus, that, for the purpose of entering secretly into
the apartment of the duchess, he had bought the two houses on either
side of the Hôtel de Nevers. Saint-Simon goes much further and says
that, to conceal their rendezvous, “he rented all the houses on one
side of a street near Saint-Sulpice, furnished them, and pierced the
connecting walls.” If we are to believe this anecdote, the Maréchal
de Richelieu must have been but a feeble plagiarist when, many years
later, he adopted a similar means of entrance into the Palais-Royal
and the Hôtel de la Popelinière.[226] But since Saint-Sulpice, though
close to the Hôtel de Condé, was a long way from the Hôtel de Nevers,
we must confess that we do not quite see how such operations were to
bring _Monsieur le Duc_ to the side of his beloved. Perhaps, however,
Saint-Simon intends us to understand that, in order not to excite the
least suspicion, the prince was in the habit of entering a house at
one end of the street, and the lady one at the other extremity, and of
meeting in the middle. Any way, it seems rather a tall story, even for
Saint-Simon.
Despite so many precautions, the Duc de Nevers scented treason, and
resolved to escape it by the procedure which he usually adopted in such
circumstances, namely, by carrying his wife off to Rome.[227] “M. de
Nevers,” writes Madame de Caylus, “was in the habit of setting off for
Rome in the same way as any one else would go out to supper; and Madame
de Nevers had been known to enter her carriage in the persuasion that
she was only going for a drive, and then to hear her husband say to
the coachman: “To Rome.” In time, however, the lady began to know her
husband better and to be more on her guard against him, and happening
to discover his intention of taking her upon another of these sudden
journeys, she promptly warned her lover and begged him to devise some
means of averting, or, at any rate, of postponing, their threatened
separation.
Now, the Duc de Nevers, like all the Mancini, had a very pretty turn
for verse-making, of which he was inordinately vain, and nothing
delighted him more than to hear his poetical effusions recited before
an appreciative audience. Aware of this little weakness, _Monsieur le
Duc_ resolved to lay a trap for him, into which he felt convinced he
could not fail to fall. But let us listen to Madame de Caylus:
“_Monsieur le Prince_,[228] equally fertile of invention as
reckless of expense whenever his tastes or passions were concerned,
judged, from the knowledge he possessed of the character of M. de
Nevers, that he might easily divert him from his intended expedition,
by affording him an opportunity of employing his talent and exercising
his passion for making verses. He proposed, therefore, to give a fête
to _Monseigneur_[229] at Chantilly. The invitation was given
and accepted, when he hastened to M. de Nevers, informed him of the
entertainment, and, pretending that he was in a great difficulty about
the choice of a poet to write the words of the _divertissement_,
begged him, as a favour, to find him one. Upon which M. de Nevers
offered himself, just as _Monsieur le Duc_ had foreseen. To
conclude, the fête took place--it cost more than one hundred thousand
crowns--and Madame de Nevers did not go to Rome.”
Thus Madame de Caylus. But Saint-Simon gives another version of this
story, according to which the laugh, at the last, was on the side of M.
de Nevers:
“The Duc de Nevers, all jealous, all Italian, all full of intelligence
that he was, had never conceived the least suspicion of this fête,
although he was not ignorant of the love of _Monsieur le Prince_
for his wife. However, five days before it took place, he ascertained
the reason why it was being given. He said not a word about it,
but started for Rome the very next day with his wife, and remained
there for a long time; and, in his turn, scoffed at _Monsieur le
Prince_.”
Another _grande dame_ whom the duke honoured by his attentions
was the Marquise de Richelieu,[230] a lady whom Saint-Simon mentions,
“because she is not worth the trouble of being silent about.” According
to the same chronicler, he fell madly in love with this siren,
and “spent millions upon her, and to keep himself informed of her
movements.” One fine day, he discovered, to his profound indignation,
that he had a successful rival in the person of the Comte de Roucy. He
reproached the marchioness bitterly with her treachery, and, though
she assured him that she had been cruelly maligned, he had her so
closely watched that very soon the charge was brought home to her
beyond any possibility of denial. In vain, did the culprit entreat his
forgiveness; in vain, did she swear by all that she held sacred that
Roucy’s love was as nothing to her in comparison with his, and that
she would never see him again. The infuriated prince refused to be
placated and turned to leave her. Then the fear of losing so prodigal a
lover “suggested to the marchioness an excellent expedient for setting
his mind at rest.” She proposed to give Roucy a rendezvous at her
house, and that some of _Monsieur le Duc’s_ people should lie in
wait; and, when the count appeared, make away with him. But, instead
of the success she appears to have expected from this very Italian
proposal,[231] the prince was so horrified that he immediately sent to
warn Roucy, and never saw Madame de Richelieu again.
A third inamorata of _Monsieur le Duc_, of whom we should have
perhaps spoken before, since she was one of the loves of his youth,
whereas his _liaisons_ with the Duchesse de Nevers and the
Marquise de Richelieu belong to his riper years, was the widowed
Comtesse de Marans, often mentioned in the letters of Madame de
Sévigné, who speaks of her with unusual bitterness, owing, it is
believed, to some disparaging remark which she had once let fall
concerning the writer’s beloved daughter, Madame de Grignan. The
countess was an extremely pretty woman, but the most inconsequent and
extravagant creature in the world. According to Madame de Sévigné, she
had been heard to declare that she would rather die than surrender
herself to a man whom she loved; but, if a man loved her and she did
not find him altogether odious, she would be willing to yield. Whether
or no she loved _Monsieur le Duc_, she surrendered herself to
him, and, in 1668, presented him with a daughter. The girl was at
first known as Mlle. de Guenani, which is the anagram of her father’s
duchy of Anguien (the old orthography of Enghien). But, in 1692,
she was legitimated, and took the name of Julie de Condé, Mlle. de
Châteaubriant. Brought up at first at Maubuisson, she was later sent
to the Abbaye-aux-Bois, from which retreat, however, she occasionally
emerged to pay visits to her relatives at Chantilly or Saint-Maur.
At this time, there seems to have been some idea of her taking the
veil, but she was so pretty, intelligent, and amusing, that it was
eventually decided that she should remain in the world, and, in 1696,
she married the Marquis de Lassay, a middle-aged widower, celebrated
for his amorous adventures, who had been for some time past desperately
in love with her. The bride received a dowry of 100,000 livres, as
well as 20,000 livres for the expenses of her trousseau; while Lassay
was appointed the King’s lieutenant in the Bresse. It is to be feared,
however, that the amorous marquis had reason to regret his bargain,
for, if gossip does not lie, before she had been married a week, the
lady had provided herself with a lover.
Many and grave as were the faults of _Monsieur le Duc_, it
is probable that Condé would have suffered them with comparative
equanimity if his son had inherited in any degree his own genius for
war. But, singularly enough, with all the intelligence and quickness
of perception which he displayed in other directions, Enghien never
showed the smallest aptitude for his father’s profession. “So great a
warrior as _Monsieur le Prince_,” writes Saint-Simon, “was never
able to make his son understand the first principles of the art of war.
He made this teaching for a long time the principal object of his care
and study. His son tried to do the same, but was never able to acquire
the slightest aptitude for any portion of the art, although his father
concealed nothing from him, and was constantly explaining all that
relates to it at the head of his army. He always took him with him, and
endeavoured to give him a command near himself, of course, in order
to counsel him. This plan of instruction succeeded no better than the
others. Finally, he despaired of his son, gifted though he was with
such great talents, and ceased his endeavours, with what grief may be
imagined.”
In fairness to _Monsieur le Duc_, however, it should be mentioned
that, if he had inherited none of his father’s military genius, he
had at least inherited his valour, and, on more than one occasion,
he displayed conspicuous courage. Thus, at the sanguinary battle of
Seneffe (11 August, 1674), when Condé’s horse had been killed under
him, and the prince had been thrown with great violence to the ground,
Enghien threw himself before him, and was himself wounded in assisting
him to rise.
Of nine children whom Anne of Bavaria had borne the Duc d’Enghien, four
daughters and a son had survived.[232] The boy, Louis, Duc de Bourbon,
was in his eighth year when Condé retired definitely to Chantilly, and
_Monsieur le Prince_, in the hope of developing in the son the
qualities which he had not found in the father, and of perhaps living
to see him rise up and continue the glorious traditions of the family,
desired to direct his education himself. _Monsieur le Duc_,
whose time was fully occupied by his duties at the Court, and who
still retained his former habits of submission to his father’s will,
consented; and Condé decided to have his grandson educated on the same
system which had proved so successful in his own case. Established at
the Petit-Luxembourg, with his _gouverneur_ Deschamps,[233] his
tutors the Jesuit Fathers Alleaume et du Rosel, and one of _Monsieur
le Prince’s_ equerries, Le Bouchet, who directed his physical
exercises, the young duke attended the courses of the Collège de
Clermont, passing his vacations at Chantilly, whither his tutors always
accompanied him.
All the masters and professors under whom the boy studied were
vigorously seconded by Condé, who maintained with them an almost daily
correspondence, while he was continually exhorting his grandson to
apply himself to his studies. The Duc de Bourbon, however, though
he was not without ability, was incurably indolent, and, despite
all the efforts of his teachers and the reprimands of _Monsieur
le Prince_, his progress both at the Collège de Clermont and at
Louis-le-Grand, to which he was transferred when he was fourteen,
was most disappointing. It was evident that Condé had not taken into
sufficient consideration the great difference in temperament between
himself and his grandson, and that a system which had produced such
splendid results in his own case was quite unsuited to this idle,
pleasure-loving lad.
The duke was accordingly removed from college, and, on the advice of
Bossuet, Condé decided to keep him under his own eye at Chantilly,
and to entrust the rest of his education to La Bruyère and the
distinguished mathematician Sauveur. This plan worked excellently for
some months, and _Monsieur le Prince_ was full of hope; but,
unfortunately, the Duc d’Enghien, to whom the possession of the royal
favour was of infinitely more importance than anything else in the
world, considered that the time had now arrived to bring his son to
the notice of the King and initiate him into his duties as a courtier,
and desired that he should pay occasional visits to Versailles. These
visits, which, on some pretext or other, were frequently prolonged far
beyond the limit which Condé had fixed, naturally did not make for
the young gentleman’s progress in his studies, for, though his tutors
always accompanied him, he soon became so absorbed in the pleasures of
the Court that they thought themselves fortunate if they could obtain
from him an occasional hour of distracted attention. La Bruyère was in
despair and appealed to _Monsieur le Prince_, who remonstrated
vigorously with Enghien. “Your son,” he writes, “will become a very
good huntsman, but ignorant of everything that he ought to know. It is
for you to remedy it, and to think of his life, his health, and his
good education. I beg you to consider it, and not to wait to remedy it
until it is too late.”
Condé and Enghien were, however, at cross-purposes; the one wished to
form a man, a prince, a captain; the other thought only of making his
son an accomplished courtier. That the hope of the Condés should be an
invariable guest at Marly was in the latter’s eyes a more desirable
thing than that he should command armies; that he should secure the
reversion of the governments and offices which had been bestowed upon
his father was of more importance than that he should inherit his
grandsire’s fame.
It must be admitted that Enghien was indefatigable in his endeavours
to further what he conceived to be the interests of his son. “With
the prudence and calculation of an officer experienced in sieges,
he pursued his plan, seeking to take possession of all the avenues
which could conduct him to the heart of the King; hunting and
shooting-parties, masquerades, ballets, fêtes at Marly, served him as
approach-works; a direct attack that he was preparing could not fail to
assure for his son the royal favour.”[234]
This “direct attack,” which was delivered in June, 1684, on the
occasion of the visit which Louis XIV. paid to Chantilly, on his return
from the siege of Luxembourg, took the form of demanding for the
Duc de Bourbon the hand of Mlle. de Nantes, the elder of the King’s
two surviving daughters by Madame de Montespan, who had celebrated
her eleventh birthday a few days previously. To the intense joy of
_Monsieur le Duc_, it was completely successful, and his Majesty
graciously consented to bestow the hand of his legitimated daughter on
the heir of the Condés. Owing, however, to the tender age of the young
lady, the arrangement remained a secret for some months, and it was not
until the following April that it was made public.
This was not the first alliance between the fruit of _le Grand
Monarques_ amours and the Princes of the Blood. In January, 1684,
Condé’s nephew and ward the young Prince de Conti[235] had espoused
Louise de la Vallière’s daughter, Mlle. de Blois, on which occasion,
we learn from Madame de Sévigné that _Monsieur le Prince_, who
had always clung to the bygone fashion of moustaches and a chin-tuft,
astonished the Court by appearing clean-shaven, with his hair
curled and powdered, and a _justaucorps_ adorned with diamond
buttons.[236] But, although Condé approved of the marriage arranged for
his grandson, he was far from approving of the latter interrupting his
studies to take upon himself conjugal responsibilities. However, such
was the _Monsieur le Duc’s_ impatience to see the young prince
become the son-in-law of the King that he ultimately withdrew his
objections, and Louis XIV. having also proved complaisant, the marriage
was celebrated, in the chapel at Versailles, on 24 July, 1685.
So far as people were able to judge from features which were hardly yet
formed, the twelve-year-old bride gave promise of being very pretty;
and this promise was duly fulfilled. As much could not be said for the
bridegroom. Both the Duc and Duchesse d’Enghien were short, though of
no unusual diminutiveness, but their son was almost a dwarf,[237] and
a very ugly one to boot, with an abnormally large head, an unwholesome
complexion, and a surly expression.
The union of these two marionettes, as the Marquis de Sourches calls
them, was celebrated with extreme magnificence, and “the Great Condé
and his son left nothing undone to testify their joy, just as they had
left nothing undone to bring about the marriage.”[238] The King secured
to the duke the reversion of all the offices held by his father and
gave him a pension of 90,000 livres, and to his daughter one of 100,000
livres.
In the evening, the happy pair proceeded to the pretended consummation
of their marriage, without which the ceremony through which they had
just passed would not have been considered binding. In the presence
of the King and all their relatives, they entered a state bed, where
they remained for half an hour, the Duchesse d’Enghien standing by the
bridegroom’s side, and Madame de Montespan by that of the bride. This
solemn farce terminated, they separated, not to meet again for several
months, except in the presence of witnesses; and the Duc de Bourbon
went back to his interrupted studies, which _Monsieur le Prince_
had insisted on his continuing.
[Illustration: LOUIS III, DUC DE BOURBON, PRINCE DE CONDÉ (CALLED
MONSIEUR LE DUC)
FROM A CONTEMPORARY PRINT]
The year which saw the marriage of the Duc de Bourbon marks a very
important event in the life of his grandfather. The religious
instruction of Condé had been as thorough as the other branches of his
education, and, in early youth, he appears to have been as orthodox
a Catholic as any one could desire, and even to have shown some
degree of fervour. However, his life of war and pleasures soon brought
indifference, and the society of fashionable freethinkers, like
Saint-Évremond and the celebrated Princess Palatine, combined with
the difficulty he experienced in reconciling the doctrines of the
philosophers whose works he was fond of studying with the theological
teaching of the time, raised doubts in his mind which eventually led
to a very pronounced form of unbelief. At the same time, he declared
himself to be always open to conviction of his errors, and one of his
favourite occupations in his later years was to engage in theological
discussions with Bossuet, the Oratorian Malbranche, and other eminent
divines.
The death of his beloved sister, Madame de Longueville, who, in April,
1679, crowned twenty-seven years of penitence and good works by a truly
Christian death, at which Condé was himself present, made a profound
impression upon him, and he was even more impressed by that of his old
friend, the Princess Palatine, who, after declaring that the greatest
of all miracles would be her conversion to Christianity, had for
the last twelve years been leading a life of almost equal devotion.
From that time, the discussions between Condé and Bossuet became
more frequent, and little by little the prince began to surmount the
obstacles which barred his return to the fold.
It was, however, a Jesuit, Père des Champs, formerly a fellow-pupil of
Condé at Bourges, who was to finish the work which the great bishop
had begun. At the beginning of Holy Week, 1685, the prince summoned
him to Chantilly; for several days they remained closeted together,
after which Condé descended to the chapel and received the Sacrament,
in the presence of all his Household. Some weeks later, he communicated
publicly at the Church of Saint-Sulpice, in which parish the Hôtel de
Condé was situated.
For some time past Condé’s health had been such as to occasion grave
anxiety; his attacks of gout were becoming more frequent and more
severe, and he was often so feeble that he was unable to walk without
assistance. When, at the end of May, 1686, although in great pain, he
insisted on coming to Versailles to attend a Chapter of the Ordre
du Saint-Esprit, at which the _cordon bleu_ was to be bestowed
on the Duc de Bourbon and the Prince de Conti, the fatigue which the
journey and the ceremony entailed exhausted him to such a degree that,
according to Sourches, those present “expected every moment to see him
die.”
Towards the middle of the following November, news reached Chantilly
that the little Duchesse de Bourbon had been taken seriously ill with
small-pox at Fontainebleau, where the Court was then in residence.
Notwithstanding that he was again suffering from the gout, _Monsieur
le Prince_ at once ordered his coach and set off for Fontainebleau.
On the road he met the Duc de Bourbon and his eldest sister, Mlle. de
Condé, whom the King had sent to Paris, so that they should not be
exposed to the contagion. Alarmed at their grandfather’s appearance,
they endeavoured to persuade him to turn back, but he insisted on
continuing the journey. Arrived at Fontainebleau, he shut himself up
with the Duchesse de Bourbon and “rendered her all the cares not only
of a tender father, but of a zealous guardian.”[239] The girl, however,
grew worse, and Louis XIV., on learning of his daughter’s danger,
wished to come and see her. “_Monsieur le Prince_,” writes Madame
de Caylus, “placed himself at the door to prevent him entering, and
there ensued a great struggle between parental love and the zeal of a
courtier, very glorious for _Madame la Duchesse_.” The writer adds
that the King, being the stronger, went in, notwithstanding Condé’s
resistance, but, according to other chroniclers, his Majesty was so
touched by his cousin’s zeal for his safety that he ended by allowing
him to have his way.
Soon after this incident, the Duchesse de Bourbon’s illness took a
turn for the better, and at the end of a fortnight she was pronounced
convalescent. Condé’s presence was no longer necessary; but the
change in his manner of life, the sleepless nights, the fatigue and
the anxiety he had endured, had been too much for an old man whose
constitution was already so shattered, and it was evident that his days
were numbered. He had expressed a wish to die at Chantilly, and it
was hoped that it might be possible to gratify it. But, on the morning
of 10 December he became much weaker, and was warned that it was time
to think of the Sacraments. He desired that Père des Champs should be
summoned from Paris, and, turning to Gourville, observed: “Ah well!
my friend, I believe my journey will be a longer one than we thought.
But I wish to write to the King.” And, after a vain attempt to write
himself, he dictated to his confessor, Père Bergier, a letter to Louis
XIV., to implore his pardon for the Prince de Conti, who had been for
some time in disgrace and seemed likely to remain there.
In the middle of the night, feeling worse, he made his confession and
received absolution from Père Bergier, Père des Champs not having yet
arrived, and at daybreak the curé of Fontainebleau brought him the
Viaticum. Shortly afterwards, _Monsieur le Duc_ arrived with the
news that the King had, on his own initiative, pardoned the Prince de
Conti, for the letter which _Monsieur le Prince_ had dictated the
previous day had not yet been despatched. This intelligence was a great
relief to Condé, who caused a few lines to be added to the letter,
thanking his Majesty for his kindness and assuring him that he should
now die content.
Conti and Père des Champs arrived a little later, and, with the Duc
and Duchesse d’Enghien, remained with him to the end, which came very
peacefully between seven and eight o’clock in the evening. “No one,”
wrote the British Ambassador, the Earl of Arran, to his Government,
“ever died with less concern, and he preserved his senses to the last
minute.”
After lying for some days in the mortuary chapel at Fontainebleau,
which had been transformed into a _chapelle ardente_, the body
of Condé was conveyed to Valery and interred in the family vault. His
heart was deposited in the Jesuit church in the Rue Saint-Antoine.
“In carrying to the same place the heart of my uncle, the Comte de
Clermont,” writes his great-grandson, “I had an opportunity of seeing
all the hearts of our ancestors, which were deposited there, enclosed
in silver-gilt cases; and I remarked (as did also those who accompanied
me) that the heart of the Great Condé was nearly double the size of
all the others.”[240]
On 10 March, 1687, a solemn service was held at Notre-Dame. The funeral
oration, pronounced by Bossuet, is generally considered the masterpiece
of that famous preacher, and is the greatest of all the tributes
rendered to the memory of Condé.
“At that moment” (during his last hours), exclaimed the orator, “he
(Condé) extended his consideration to the most humble of his servants.
With a liberality worthy of his birth and of their services, he left
them overwhelmed with gifts, but still more honoured by the proofs of
his remembrance.” But for the woman who had so gloriously borne his
name, who had so uncomplainingly shared his misfortunes, Condé, on his
death-bed, had not a word of tenderness, of gratitude, or of pardon.
Nay, if we are to believe _la Grande Mademoiselle_, on the morrow
of his masters death, Gourville carried to Louis XIV. a letter written
some time before, to be given him after that event, in which Condé
entreated the King never to allow the princess to leave her prison at
Châteauroux.[241]
However that may be, Claire-Clémence never quitted that gloomy
fortress, either living or dead; for, when she died, after surviving
her husband more than seven years (18 April, 1694), she was interred
in the Church of Saint-Martin, which lay within the precincts of the
château. “No member of her illustrious family appears to have attended
her obsequies, and doubtless the twelve poor people whom she had
had the charity to maintain out of her meagre allowance, with some
Capuchins from the neighbouring convent, were the only persons who came
to pray over the grave of her who, for her misfortune, had become “the
very high, very excellent and puissant Princesse de Condé.”[242]
CHAPTER XIX
Henri-Jules de Bourbon, fifth Prince de Condé--His affection for
Chantilly--Improvements which he executes there--The “_Galerie
des Batailles_”--His business capacity--His relations with
his son, the Duc de Bourbon (_Monsieur le Duc_)--Character of
this prince--His ungovernable temper and vindictiveness--His
intrigue with Madame de Mussy--She betrays him for the Comte
d’Albert--A violent scene--Madame de Mussy follows her new
lover to Spain--Her sad fate--Other amours of _Monsieur le
Duc_--Character of _Madame la Duchesse_--Her intrigue with
the Prince de Conti--Her grief at his premature death--Last
years of the Prince de Condé--His eccentricity becomes hardly
distinguishable from madness--Anecdotes concerning him--His
death--His last instructions to his son--The Duc de Bourbon
retains his title, instead of assuming that of Prince de
Condé--His sudden death, eleven months after that of his father.
The son and grandson of the Great Condé have left but few traces in
history, and the little which is recorded of them does not, as a rule,
redound to their credit.
Succeeding to the offices as well as to the titles of his father,
Henri-Jules de Bourbon was appointed colonel of the infantry Regiment
of Condé and _mestre de camp_ of the cavalry corps of the same
name, and took part in several campaigns, being present at the capture
of Mons in 1691, and of Namur in the following year. During the latter
part of the campaign of 1692, he was nominally second in command of
the Army of Flanders, but no opportunity for distinction seems to have
come his way, and soon afterwards ill-health obliged him to retire from
active service. Henceforth, he divided his time between the Court,
Paris, and Chantilly, though, as he grew older, the Court appears to
have lost the attraction it had once had for him, and, when there, he
remained most of the day in his apartments, only emerging to attend the
King at his _lever_ and _coucher_, or to visit the Ministers,
whom, when he happened to want anything from them, it was his habit to
importune to the verge of distraction.
Chantilly was “his delight.” When he walked in the gardens, he was
followed by four secretaries, to whom he dictated any ideas which
occurred to him for the improvement of the château or the estate. He
spent immense sums upon them, and with the happiest results, for he
possessed the most exquisite taste. It was he who finished the parish
church, erected upon land which had been given by his father to the
inhabitants of the town, completed the Ménagerie, and built the gallery
in the _Petit Château_, the _Galerie des Batailles_. In the
pictures representing the history of the Great Condé which by his
orders were painted for it, he was very reluctant to omit the actions
which Condé had performed when in command of the armies of Spain. At
the same time, he felt that he could not venture to expose to the eyes
of Frenchmen the exploits which had been directed against themselves.
The painter professed himself unable to suggest any means of
reconciling his patron’s wishes with his scruples, but, at length, the
prince bethought himself of a most ingenious way out of the difficulty.
He caused a picture to be painted in which the Muse of History was
represented tearing with indignation, and flinging far away from her,
the pages of a book which she held in her hands. On these pages were
inscribed: “The Relief of Cambrai”; “The Relief of Valenciennes”; “The
Retreat from before Arras”; while in the centre of the picture stood
the Great Condé, endeavouring to impose silence on Fame, who, with
trumpet in hand, was proclaiming his exploits against France.[243]
The prince could well afford to indulge his taste for the embellishment
of Chantilly, since he had inherited the business acumen of his
grandfather and amassed a great fortune, though, according to
Saint-Simon, he was “a beggar in comparison with those who came after
him.” He does not appear to have been over scrupulous in his methods
of acquiring wealth, and made a practice of lending large sums to the
members of the Parlement of Paris, in order to ensure their support in
the lawsuits in which he was perpetually engaged, in view of which it
is not surprising to learn that it was very rarely that a verdict was
given against him.
With his son, who, on the death of the Great Condé, had retained the
title of Duc de Bourbon, instead of assuming that of Enghien, which
both his grandfather and father had borne, but was now officially
styled _Monsieur le Duc_, he appears to have been on anything but
cordial terms, though the harshness with which he sometimes treated him
was tempered by a wholesome fear of the King, whose son-in-law he was.
It must be admitted, however, that the Duc de Bourbon was scarcely the
kind of son to inspire affection, even in a parent with an infinitely
greater capacity for it than _Monsieur le Prince_ possessed. Not
only was he almost repulsive in appearance, but he was cursed with so
violent a temper that it was positively dangerous to contradict him.
One evening, when entertaining some friends at Saint-Maur, he had an
argument with the Comte de Fiesque over some historical incident. When
the count refused to admit that he was wrong, _Monsieur le Duc_
sprang to his feet in a violent rage, and, snatching up a plate, hurled
it at his guest’s head, and then turned him out of the house, although,
having been invited to stay the night, he had sent away his coach. The
unfortunate Fiesque was obliged to make his way to the house of the
curé of the parish and beg a bed from him.
He was, moreover, exceedingly vindictive, and any one whom he even
suspected of doing him an ill turn speedily had cause to rue it. Thus,
on one occasion, having reason to believe that a certain escapade of
his in Paris, which had earned him a severe reprimand from his royal
father-in-law, had been brought to the King’s notice by the Marquis
de Termes, one of his Majesty’s _premiers valets de chambre_, he
despatched several of his servants, armed with stout canes, to lie in
wait for the supposed informer. They ambushed him successfully and
administered so unmerciful a castigation that he was obliged to keep
his bed for several days.
Saint-Simon accuses him of a love of brutal practical jokes, and
asserts that the death of the Latin poet Santeuil, at Dijon, in 1694,
was due to his having given him a glass of champagne into which he had
emptied the contents of his snuff-box. But we can find no confirmation
of this story, and probably there is no more truth in it than in a good
many other of Saint-Simon’s anecdotes.
Notwithstanding the indolence which in his youth had been the despair
of his tutors, the pains bestowed upon his education had been by no
means wasted, and even his enemy Saint-Simon is fain to admit that
he was a well-read and intelligent man. In war his abilities were
infinitely superior to those of his father, and had he enjoyed, like
him, the advantage of the Great Condé’s training, it is quite probable
that he would have made a name for himself, that is to say, if Louis
XIV., who had little liking for his son-in-law, could ever have been
persuaded to entrust him with an independent command. Between 1688 and
the Peace of Ryswick he served in several campaigns, and proved himself
a very capable officer, as well as displaying brilliant courage,
notably at the siege of Namur and in the battles of Steenkirke and
Neerwinden. In the campaigns of the War of the Spanish Succession he
took no part, and it would seem that, in spite of his military talents,
or perhaps because of them, Louis XIV. did not desire to employ him.
With his wife _Monsieur le Duc_ lived on good terms, though, in
common with most aristocratic husbands of the time, he unfortunately
found it impossible to concentrate his affections upon their lawful
object. Of his mistresses the most noted was the beautiful Madame de
Mussy. She was a little woman, but exquisitely shaped, “with a dazzling
complexion and ravishing arms and bosom.” The wife of a counsellor
to the Parlement of Dijon, “who was too much in love with the wine
of Beaune to guard a treasure so difficult to defend,” _Monsieur
le Duc_ had met her when he was presiding over the Estates of
Burgundy in place of his father, and, profiting by her husband’s
addiction to the bottle, had paid her a court which was soon crowned
with success. When, at length, the bibulous counsellor learned what
had been going on under his very nose, he was furious, and “carried
his resentment even so far as to give his wife several blows.” His
violence furnished the lady with a pretext for leaving him which she
was not slow to seize, and, while M. de Mussy was petitioning the
Parlement of Dijon for a decree empowering him to have her shut up in
a convent, she effected her escape, followed her lover to Paris, and
threw herself upon his protection. This the prince readily promised,
and, shortly afterwards, Madame de Mussy found herself the occupant of
a luxuriously-furnished house in the precincts of the Temple, where
she was soon surrounded by a little Court, which was composed not only
of the Marquis de la Fare, the Abbé Chaulieu, the Comte de Fiesque and
other friends of _Monsieur le Duc_, but also of several ladies
of the Court, such as the Duchesse de Bouillon and the Marquise de
Bellefonds, who were not too particular what company they kept, so long
as it was sufficiently amusing.
_La petite_ Mussy, if she had been prudent, might have continued
to live a life of luxury and pleasure for many years, for the passion
which she had inspired in the heart of _Monsieur le Duc_ was no
ephemeral one. But, unfortunately for her, she happened to meet, one
night at the Opera, that notorious lady-killer, the Comte d’Albert,
who, after being banished from France, on account of his intrigue
with Madame de Luxembourg, had recently been expelled from Brussels,
for making himself too agreeable to the Mlle. Maupin--the heroine of
Théophile Gauthier’s romance--then mistress of the Elector of Bavaria.
The count, having no other amorous engagement on hand just then,
decided to make a conquest of Madame de Mussy. The task was, of course,
easy enough for a gentleman who, we are assured, had only to show
himself to ensure an immediate capitulation, and soon Madame de Mussy
had become as indifferent to her titular lover as she had formerly
been to her husband. _Monsieur le Duc_, “finding that she no
longer responded to his caresses with her accustomed ardour,” had her
watched, and ere long discovered the truth. His wrath was terrible,
though, happily, he contented himself by venting it upon the furniture,
mirrors, and porcelain of his perfidious mistress, among which he raged
with such fury that in a few moments the apartment was strewn with the
wreckage of what had represented a comfortable little fortune.
Madame de Mussy, whom love for her fascinating count had inspired with
a courage of which she might not have otherwise been capable, boldly
faced the storm, and informed the infuriated prince that “she was not
his wife, that he had nothing wherewith to reproach her, and that she
was in love with the Comte d’Albert, who was far more amiable than his
Highness, as he might judge for himself by taking the trouble to look
in a mirror.”
_Monsieur le Duc_, beside himself with passion, swore that he
would hand her over to her husband, who would take good care to have
her shut up in a convent for the rest of her days, and took his
departure, vowing vengeance.
Knowing enough of the vindictive character of the prince to be aware
that this threat was no idle one, Madame de Mussy recognized that
she ought not to lose a moment in placing herself beyond his reach.
The Comte d’Albert, now reinstated in the good graces of the Elector
of Bavaria, had recently set out for Madrid, where he had been
appointed that prince’s envoy, and she at once resolved to follow him
thither. That same night, accompanied by her confidential _femme de
chambre_ and subsequent historian, Mlle. Valdory, she left Paris,
disguised in masculine attire, and, after many adventures, for the War
of the Succession was then raging in Spain, reached Madrid in safety.
She had expected to find there the Comte d’Albert and consolation
for her hardships and misfortunes in his arms; but not only was she
deceived in this hope, but she learned that her lover was false to
her, and that he had recently consented, doubtless for a substantial
consideration, to make an honest woman of Mlle. de Montigny, a cast-off
mistress of the Elector of Bavaria. Worn out by the fatigues and
privations she had suffered during her journey from Paris, devoured by
jealousy, and tortured by remorse, the unhappy Madame de Mussy fell
into a decline and died six months later.[244]
As for _Monsieur le Duc_, he consoled himself for his mistress’s
perfidy by a _liaison_ with Madame de Rupelmonde--the wife of a
Flemish gentleman in the Spanish service--whom Saint-Simon describes
as “brown as a cow and possessed of unparalleled impudence.” To this
lady succeeded a certain Madame Locmaria, who was soon replaced, in
her turn, by the pretty daughter of an upholsterer in the Rue des
Fossés-Monsieur-le-Prince.[245]
_Madame la Duchesse_, however, had certainly no right to take
exception to her husband’s little affairs, for, though Madame de Caylus
assures us that she “lived with him like an angel,” it would seem that
her marriage vows sat very lightly upon her. This daughter of Madame de
Montespan was an exceedingly pretty, accomplished, and charming young
woman; but, if she had inherited her mother’s beauty, intelligence, and
fascination, she had also her full share of that too celebrated lady’s
less agreeable qualities, being selfish, extravagant, and deceitful,
while her mordant wit made her universally dreaded. “Her wit shines
in her eyes,” writes _Madame_; “but there is some malignity in
them also. I always say that she reminds me of a pretty cat which,
while you play with it, lets you feel its claws.” “Although she was
slightly deformed,” says Saint-Simon, “her face was formed by the most
tender loves and her nature made to dally with them.... She possessed
the art of placing every one at their ease; there was nothing about
her which did not tend naturally to please, with a grace unparalleled,
even in her slightest actions. She made captive even those who had
the most cause to fear her, and those who had the best of reasons to
hate her required often to recall the fact to resist her charms....
Sportive, gay, and merry, she passed her youth in frivolity and in
pleasures of all kinds,[246] and, whenever the opportunity presented
itself, they extended even to debauchery. With these qualities, she
possessed much intelligence and much capacity for intrigue and affairs,
with a suppleness which cost her nothing. She was scornful, mocking,
bitterly sarcastic, incapable of friendship and very capable of hatred;
mischievous, haughty, implacable, prolific in base artifices and in the
most cruel _chansons_, with which she gaily assailed persons whom
she pretended to love and who passed their lives with her.[247] She was
the siren of the poets; she had all their charms and all their perils.”
The charms of the young princess naturally drew around her many
adorers; but, though she had neither affection nor esteem for her
husband, and was far from insensible to the homage which was paid her,
her conduct would not appear to have merited any very severe censure
until some years after her marriage, when a _soupirant_ presented
himself whom it would have been difficult for any woman to resist.
This was Louis François de Bourbon, Prince de Conti, the young man for
whose pardon, it will be remembered, the Great Condé had petitioned
Louis XIV. on his death-bed. This pardon had unfortunately been a
merely formal one, for the prince had far too much of his famous
uncle’s temperament, that is to say, the temperament of the Condé of
the Regency and the Fronde, ever to secure the favour of _le Grand
Monarque_, who always regarded with suspicion those who showed any
independence of character, particularly if they happened to belong to
the Royal House. In consequence, though he possessed a natural instinct
for war, combined with the most superb courage, and appeared destined
for a brilliant military career, nothing would induce the King to
allow him to hold high command, and he had the mortification of seeing
himself passed over in favour of generals who were manifestly his
inferiors.
[Illustration: LOUISE FRANÇOISE, DUCHESSE DE BOURBON (CALLED
MADAME LA DUCHESSE)
FROM A CONTEMPORARY PRINT]
Conti was a tall and rather awkward-looking man, with irregular but
pleasing features, and the most charming manners which made him a
universal favourite. He was married to Marie Thérèse de Bourbon, the
eldest daughter of _Monsieur le Prince_, who adored him and of
whom he appears to have been fond; but this did not prevent him from
falling in love with _Madame la Duchesse_, who returned his
passion with equal fervour. _Monsieur le Duc_ was furious, but he
did not dare to quarrel openly with his brother-in-law, and, besides,
thanks to the complaisance of the Dauphin, who was much attached both
to his half-sister and to Conti, and gave the lovers many opportunities
of meeting at his country-house at Meudon, “the affair was conducted
with such admirable discretion that they never gave any one any hold
over them.”[248]
It has sometimes been asserted that the prince’s infatuation for
_Madame la Duchesse_ lost him the throne of Poland, to which,
through the skilful intrigues of the Abbé de Polignac, the French envoy
at Warsaw, he had been elected, by a majority in the Diet, on the
death of John Sobieski, in 1697. But, although it is true that he was
exceedingly loth to leave France and his mistress, and employed every
possible pretext to delay his departure for Poland, it is very doubtful
whether, without far stronger support than Louis XIV. was prepared to
give him, an earlier arrival upon the scene would have enabled him to
triumph over so formidable a competitor as Augustus of Saxony.
At the beginning of 1709, Louis XIV.’s dislike of Conti at length
yielded to the danger of the country, and the prince was informed
that he had been selected to command the Army of the North in the
approaching campaign. This tardy recognition of his undoubted merits
came, however, too late. For some time past he had been in very bad
health, and on 21 February he died, at the early age of forty-five.
His death, which was regarded as a public calamity, so great had been
his popularity and so high the opinion formed of his military talents,
was a terrible blow to _Madame la Duchesse_. “He was the only
one to whom she had been faithful,” writes Saint-Simon; “she was the
only one to whom he had not been fickle; his greatness would have done
homage to her, and she would have shone with his lustre.” “She had need
of all the command which she had naturally over herself,” observes
Madame de Caylus, “to conceal her grief from _Monsieur le Duc_.
She succeeded, the more easily, I believe, because he was so relieved
at no longer having such a rival that he cared neither to investigate
the past nor the depths of the heart.”
* * * * *
The untimely death of the Prince de Conti was followed, at an interval
of a few weeks, by that of _Monsieur le Prince_, who had long been
in failing health.
During the latter years of his life the eccentricity for which he
had always been noted had become more and more pronounced, until at
last, if Saint-Simon is to be believed, it was hardly distinguishable
from madness. Calling one morning on the Maréchale de Noailles, at
the moment when her bed was being made, and there only remained the
counterpane to be put on, he paused for a moment at the door, and then,
crying out in a transport of delight: “_Oh! le beau lit, le beau
lit, qu’il est appétisant!_” he took a flying leap on to the bed
and rolled over several times. Then he got down and made his excuses
to the astonished old lady, saying that her bed looked so clean and so
beautifully made that he had been unable to resist the temptation to
roll in it.
It was whispered that there were times when he imagined himself a dog
or some other animal, and Saint-Simon declares that “people very worthy
of belief had assured him that they had seen the prince at the King’s
_coucher_ suddenly throw his head into the air several times
running and open his mouth quite wide, like a dog while barking, yet
without making a noise.”
He also began attending in a ridiculously minute manner to his diet,
and insisted that everything he ate should first be carefully weighed.
In the course of his last illness, which was a very protracted one,
he suddenly announced that he was dead, and refused all nourishment,
on the ground that dead men did not eat. The doctors were in despair,
but, at length, they decided to humour him in his delusion that he had
ceased to exist, but to maintain that dead men did occasionally eat.
They offered to produce examples of their contention, and several men
unknown to their illustrious patient were accordingly brought in, who
pretended to be dead, but ate nevertheless. This trick succeeded, and
for the remaining weeks of his life the prince consented to take food,
but only in the presence of the doctors and his fellow-corpses.
As _Monsieur le Prince_ grew worse, his wife summoned up
sufficient courage to beg him to think of his conscience and to
see a confessor. He angrily refused, and persisted in his refusal,
notwithstanding her tears and supplications. As a matter of fact, he
had been seeing Père de la Tour of the Oratory for some months past,
though in the strictest secrecy. He had at first demanded that the
reverend father should come to him by night, and in disguise. Père de
la Tour replied that he would be quite willing to visit _Monsieur le
Prince_ under cover of darkness, but that the respect he owed to the
cloth would not permit him to masquerade in the attire of a layman.
After some hesitation, the penitent consented to waive this condition;
but he caused the most elaborate precautions to be taken to prevent
his visitor being recognized. He was admitted, at dead of night, by a
little back door, where a confidential servant of the prince, with a
lantern in one hand and a bunch of keys in the other, was waiting to
receive him, and conducted to the sick-room along dark passages and
through many doors, which were unlocked and locked again after him
as he passed. Having at length reached his destination, he confessed
_Monsieur le Prince_, and was then conducted out of the house
by the same way and in the same manner as he had entered it. Similar
precautions were observed on each of his subsequent visits.
Henri Jules de Bourbon, fifth Prince de Condé, died on 1 April, 1709,
at the age of sixty-six. His last instructions to his son were to carry
out all the improvements which he had projected at Chantilly, and to
take care that none of the honours due to his rank were omitted at his
funeral.
And so he passed away, “regretted by no one, neither by servants nor
friends, neither by child nor wife. Indeed, _Madame la Princesse_
was so ashamed of her tears that she made excuses for them.”[249]
The Duc de Bourbon, for he preferred to retain his old title, instead
of assuming that which his grandfather had rendered so illustrious--an
example which was followed by his son, and, a century later, by
the last head of his House--did not live to carry out his father’s
projects at Chantilly, since he survived him less than a year. He had
been suffering for some time from continual pains in the head, “which
tempered the joy he felt at being delivered from his troublesome father
and brother-in-law.”[250] His mother, much alarmed, had besought him
to think of his soul, and this he had promised to do, as soon as the
Carnival and its pleasures were over and the fashionable season for
penitence had arrived. On the evening of Shrove Monday (3 March, 1710),
as he was driving home over the Pont-Royal from the Hôtel de Coislin,
he was seized with a fit and carried in an unconscious condition to the
Hôtel de Condé. Priests and doctors were speedily in attendance, but
he never recovered consciousness, and died about four o’clock in the
morning.
“_Madame la Duchesse_,” writes Madame de Caylus, “appeared
infinitely afflicted by his death, and I believe she was sincere.”
But the chronicler is careful to explain that this affliction was
not caused by any love for the departed prince, but “because, since
the death of the Prince de Conti, her mind and heart were occupied
by nothing but ambition,[251] and _Monsieur le Duc_ possessed
all the qualities necessary to make her conceive great hopes in that
direction.”
CHAPTER XX
Louis Henri de Bourbon-Condé--He assumes the title of Duc de
Bourbon, instead of that of Prince de Condé, and is known
as _Monsieur le Duc_--His personal appearance--He loses an
eye by a shooting-accident--His military career--He becomes
President of the Council of Regency on the death of Louis
XIV.--His protection of John Law--His wealth--His character--His
marriage with Marie Anne de Bourbon-Conti--Singular intrigue
which precedes it--His indifference to his wife--His
amours--The financier Berthelot de Pléneuf--Gallantries
of Madame de Pléneuf--Saint-Simon’s portrait of her--Her
daughter, Agnès de Pléneuf--Singular beauty and intelligence
of this young girl--Violent jealousy which her mother
conceives for her--Marriage of Agnès to the Marquis de Prie,
who is soon afterwards appointed Ambassador at Turin--Her
life at Turin--Disgrace and bankruptcy of Berthelot de
Pléneuf--Financial straits of the de Pries--Madame de Prie comes
to Paris to intercede with the Government on her husband’s
behalf--Calumnies concerning her spread by her mother and her
partisans--Her relations with the Regent.
By his marriage with Mlle. de Nantes, Louis III., Duc de Bourbon, had
had nine children--three sons and six daughters--all of whom survived
him.[252] The eldest son, Louis Henri, hitherto known as the Duc
d’Enghien, was, at the time of his father’s death, in his eighteenth
year. Like the latter, he preferred the title of Duc de Bourbon to that
of Prince de Condé, and, like him, was henceforth styled _Monsieur
le Duc_. In contrast to his father, who had been very short and
rather thick-set, Louis Henri de Bourbon-Condé was tall and thin, with
a long face and prominent cheek-bones. At this period, however, he was
not considered an ill-looking young man, but two years later he had the
misfortune to meet with an accident which disfigured him.
In the winter of 1712--that fatal winter which witnessed the successive
deaths of the charming Duchesse de Bourgogne, her husband, and their
eldest son, the little Duc de Bretagne--he took part in a battue at
Marly with the Dauphin and that prince’s younger brother, the Duc de
Berry. _Monsieur le Duc_ and the Duc de Berry were standing facing
one another, on opposite sides of a frozen pool. The latter fired at a
bird, which was flying very low, and missed it; and part of the charge,
rebounding from the ice, struck _Monsieur le Duc_ in the left eye,
the sight of which was destroyed.
The young prince succeeded to his father’s post of Grand Master of the
King’s Household, to his government of Burgundy, and to the command
of the cavalry and infantry regiments of Condé. In 1711 he took part
in the Flemish campaign under Villars, and in the assault on Hordain
showed that he had inherited the courage of his race. In the following
year, he was in nominal command of the cavalry of the Army of Flanders,
and assisted at the sieges of Douai, Le Quesnoy, and Bouchain; while
in 1713 he followed Villars to the Rhine, was present at the sieges of
Landau and Freiburg, and was made _maréchal de camp_.
In his will, Louis XIV. had named the Duc de Bourbon a member of the
Council of Regency, as soon as he should reach the age of twenty-four;
but on the death of _le Grand Monarque_, his wishes were
immediately set aside, and the Regent, the Duc d’Orléans, proceeded
to appoint the Council himself, with _Monsieur le Duc_ as its
president. Apart, however, from the share he took in the campaign
against the legitimated sons of the late King, the Duc du Maine and
the Comte de Toulouse, with the object of reducing them to the rank of
simple peers of the realm, the prince appears to have occupied himself
very little with politics during the first years of the Regency, and
confined his activities to the financial speculations in which half
Paris was then engaging. With so much ardour, indeed, did he espouse
the cause of the Scotch adventurer Law that he was accused of being
one of the authors of the “System” which involved the country in such
disaster. Any way, he had the courage to defend the fallen idol to the
very last, and when Law, his life being no longer safe in Paris, made
his escape to Flanders, it was one of the Duc de Bourbon’s carriages
which conveyed him to the frontier.
Very wealthy before the “System,” his great fortune was materially
increased by successful speculation. In 1720 it was computed at not
less than sixty million livres.
The character of the prince is very diversely estimated by his
contemporaries. Some writers, such as Marais, Barbier, and Duclos,
judge him severely, and describe him as hasty in temper, brusque in his
manners, debauched, dishonourable, rapacious, and entirely destitute of
political capacity. Others, like Saint-Simon and the Dowager-Duchess
d’Orléans, recognize in him a certain merit. The former acknowledges
that, with all his faults, he had “an indomitable obstinancy, an
inflexible firmness;” while the mother of the Regent, whose opinions at
least possess the advantage of being consistently sincere, writes of
him in 1719:
“_Monsieur le Duc_ has many good qualities and many friends. He is
polished and knows how to behave well, but his attainments are not very
extensive. Nor is he better informed, but there is a loftiness and a
nobility in his character, and he knows how to uphold his rank.”
Louis Henri de Bourbon-Condé, in fact, was neither the odious nor the
incapable person whom certain historians have depicted. His courage
was indisputable; if he was rapacious, he was also generous and
open-handed; if he was a bad enemy, he was also a faithful friend; he
possessed cultured tastes, and beneath his love of pleasure and his
apparent indifference to public affairs he concealed qualities which
only required to be stimulated into activity to make of him, if not a
statesman, at least a formidable party-leader.
In the summer of 1713, _Monsieur le Duc_ was married to his
cousin, Marie Anne de Bourbon-Conti, at the same time as his second
sister, Mlle. de Bourbon, became the wife of the young Prince de Conti.
This double marriage, which was regarded with more or less repugnance
by all four of the parties concerned, affords a curious illustration
of the despotism exercised by Louis XIV. over the members of the Royal
House.
The death of _Monsieur le Prince_, in 1709, had been followed by a
most acrimonious lawsuit over his will between the Condés and Contis,
which, suspended for a while by the sudden demise of his successor, had
been resumed with redoubled bitterness as soon as decency permitted.
Nothing was further from the thoughts of the Contis than an alliance
with their detested cousins, and, in point of fact, secret negotiations
had been for some time in progress between them and the Orléans family
for the marriage of the Prince de Conti to Mlle. de Chartres, second
daughter of the future Regent.
Now, _Madame la Princesse_, a pious and gentle soul, had been
terribly distressed by this family quarrel, and had made several futile
efforts to induce the litigants to come to an arrangement. By some
means, she got wind of the matrimonial negotiations just mentioned,
which opened her eyes to a very natural means of accommodation which
had not yet occurred to her, namely, a double marriage between her
grandchildren. Aware that she herself would never be able to bring this
about, she determined to appeal to Louis XIV., who had also endeavoured
to reconcile the parties, and had been more than once on the point of
employing his authority to put a stop to proceedings so prejudicial to
the dignity of the Royal House, and who, she knew, would be the more
ready to listen to her, since he could hardly fail to be extremely
irritated to learn, from an outside source, of the projected marriage
of the Prince de Conti and a daughter of the Duc d’Orléans.
She had not miscalculated. The King at once expressed his warm
approval of her proposal, and lost no time in sending for _Madame
la Duchesse_, whom he informed of his wishes. That lady began to
remonstrate vigorously, but his Majesty “spoke to her, not as a
father, but as a master who intends to be obeyed without hesitation,”
and she reluctantly yielded. Next came the turn of the Princesse de
Conti, who offered the same stubborn resistance, and only capitulated
when the King, losing all patience, informed her that, if she
refused to give her consent, he would cause the double marriage to
be celebrated without it. As for the parties most nearly concerned,
his Majesty did not even trouble to go through the form of consulting
them, and on 9 July the marriages were celebrated, in the chapel at
Versailles, by the Cardinal de Rohan.
The new Duchesse de Bourbon, who was nearly five years older than
her husband, was an extremely pretty young woman, and “possessed of
much intelligence, amiability, and charm of manner.”[253] Neither the
attractions of her mind nor of her person, however, appear to have
made any impression upon _Monsieur le Duc_, for which he was not
perhaps wholly to blame, having regard to the peculiar circumstances in
which the marriage had taken place, besides which it would seem that
his wife made very little attempt to understand him. Any way, he never
entertained for her the smallest affection, and the tie which bound
them was never more than a nominal one.
Such being the relations between _Monsieur le Duc_ and his
consort, it was but natural that the former should have become the
quarry of all the _dames galantes_ of the time. Madame de Sabran,
one time mistress of the Regent, Madame de Zurlauben, Madame de
Polignac, Madame de Nesle, mother of the too-celebrated sisters who
were to succeed one another in the affections of Louis XV., and other
facile beauties seem to have dipped their pretty fingers freely into
his coffers; but none of these _liaisons_ was of long duration,
and it was not until the prince was approaching his thirtieth year that
he found a woman capable of fixing his affections.
* * * * *
In the closing years of the reign of Louis XIV. there lived in a
magnificent hôtel at the corner of the Rues de Cléry and Poissonière a
family of the name of Berthelot de Pléneuf. The father of the family,
Étienne Berthelot de Pléneuf, was a wealthy Government official and
army-contractor, a younger son of François Berthelot, a person of
comparatively humble origin, who had amassed an enormous fortune,
partly by judicious land-speculation in Canada, where he owned “estates
of the value of a province,” which the King had transformed for him
into the county of Saint-Laurent, and partly as a revenue-farmer and
commissary. Old Berthelot had employed a considerable portion of his
wealth in the purchase of lucrative Government posts and estates in
France, which he distributed among his sons, to Étienne’s share falling
the office of Director-General of the Powders and Saltpetres of France
and the seigneurie of Pléneuf, which entitled him to style himself the
seigneur de Pléneuf.
In 1696, Pléneuf, who was then about thirty-five, had married, _en
secondes noces_, a Mlle. Agnès Riault d’Ouilly, a daughter of a rich
bourgeois family, which, like his own, had been recently ennobled.
The second Madame de Pléneuf, who, it may be mentioned, was nearly
twenty years her husband’s junior, had been one of the prettiest girls
in Paris, and in due course she became one of its most beautiful and
fascinating women. “Tall, perfectly shaped, with an extremely agreeable
countenance, intelligence, grace, tact, and _savoir-vivre_,”[254]
she triumphed like a queen, and as Pléneuf, proud of her success,
denied her nothing, the salons in the Rue de Cléry soon became the
rendezvous of all fashionable Paris.
If in beauty and intelligence Madame de Pléneuf left little to be
desired, the same, unfortunately, could not be said for her reputation.
The prolonged absences of her husband with the army provided her
with abundant opportunities for receiving the homage of her numerous
admirers, and she took advantage of them so freely that she earned for
herself the name of the Messalina of her time. To no lady in Paris did
gossip ascribe so many lovers, and, in most cases, it is to be feared,
with only too much justification. There was a Lorraine prince, the
Prince Charles d’Armagnac; the Cardinal de Rohan; the Ducs de Duras
and de la Vallière; the versatile Marquis de Dangeau, author of the
famous “Journal”; Canon Destouches, father of Néricault-Destouches,
the diplomatist and playwright; young La Baume, son of the Maréchal
de Tallard; the Marquis de Cany, son of the War Minister Chamillard;
the dashing Comte de Gacé, who, in February, 1716, fought the famous
midnight duel with the Duc de Richelieu in the middle of the Rue
Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre. And the list might be considerably extended.
But if Madame de Pléneuf were an immoral, she was also a very clever
woman, and displayed really remarkable address in managing her crowd
of _soupirants_ and avoiding anything approaching a scandal.
“Enamoured of herself to the last degree,” writes Saint-Simon, “she
desired that others should be so, but it was necessary to obtain
permission. She knew how to pick and choose among her admirers, and
so well did she understand how to establish her empire that complete
happiness never exceeded, in appearance, the bounds of respect and
propriety; and there was not one of the chosen band who dared to show
either jealousy or mortification. Each one hoped for his turn, and,
while waiting, the choice more than suspected was respected by all in
perfect silence, without the least altercation amongst them. It is
astonishing how this conduct gained her friends of importance, who
always remained attached to her, without there being any question of
anything more than friendship, and whom she found, in case of need,
the most eager to serve her in her affairs. She was at this time in
the best and the most aristocratic society, as much as the wife of
Pléneuf was able to be; and there she has remained since, among all the
vicissitudes which she has experienced.”
Saint-Simon does not exaggerate. Madame de Pléneuf never encountered
among her admirers any resistance to the regulations which she imposed
upon them. All submitted to them with a good grace; all passed without
protest from the rank of candidates for her favour to that of lover,
and from that of lover to that of friend, and of friends, in some
instances, ready to make considerable sacrifices for her sake.
Among several children, Madame de Pléneuf had a daughter, born in
1698, some two years after the marriage of her parents, to whom she had
given her own name of Agnès. Beautiful as was the mother, the daughter
promised to be more beautiful still, and with her physical perfections
she combined vivacity, intelligence, and the most charming manners.
“A figure supple and above the middle height, the air of a nymph, a
delicate face, pretty cheeks, a well-formed nose, blonde hair, eyes
a trifle small, but bright and expressive; in a word, a physiognomy
refined and distinguished, and a voice as charming as her face.” Such
is the description given of her, when she was fifteen, by the Président
Hénault, and his praises are echoed by practically all contemporary
writers. Saint-Simon declares that she was “beautiful, well-made, more
charming by reason of those indescribable things which captivate, and
with much intelligence carefully cultivated”; Marais admits that there
was “much that was agreeable in her countenance, in her mind, and in
all her manners”; d’Argenson proclaims her “_la fleur des pois_”;
while in the eyes of Duclos, she “possessed more than beauty,” and
“everything about her was seductive.”
Now, while Agnès remained a child, Madame de Pléneuf would appear
to have been quite a devoted mother, and “it was the passion and
occupation of her life to bring her up well.” But, as the little girl
advanced towards womanhood, and gained every day what she herself was
losing in attractions, with the result that the homage of some of the
gallants who frequented the Hôtel de Pléneuf began to be transferred
from the mother to the daughter, the affection which she had once
entertained for her gradually changed to dislike, and eventually to
the bitterest jealousy and hatred. “In proportion as the daughter
pleased by a hundred attractions,” writes Saint-Simon, “she displeased
her mother. Madame de Pléneuf could not endure the sight of homage
addressed to others than herself at her own house. The advantages of
youth irritated her. Her daughter, whom she was unable to prevent from
perceiving it, suffered her dependence, endured her murmurs, supported
the constraints imposed upon her, but she began to be annoyed by them.
Pleasantries concerning the jealousy of her mother escaped her, which
were reported to Madame de Pléneuf. The latter felt the ridicule of
them. She flew into a passion. The girl retorted, and Pléneuf, more
prudent than she was, dreading a scandal which might prejudice the
establishment of his daughter in life, decided to provide her with a
husband.”
It was certainly high time to separate mother and daughter, for the
enmity between them was increasing every day, and at the beginning of
1713 an incident occurred which brought matters to a crisis and made it
impossible for them to remain any longer under the same roof.
Among the admirers of Madame de Pléneuf was a certain Comte d’Angennes.
Young, handsome, and of charming manners, he had not been permitted to
sigh in vain; indeed, the lady appears to have conceived for him a most
violent passion. In a surprisingly short time, however, she perceived
that the ardour of her new lover was beginning to cool, for, though
frequenting the house as assiduously as ever, he no longer sought
opportunities of being alone with his hostess. Madame de Pléneuf, her
suspicions aroused, watched him closely, and more than once detected
him talking in low tones to Agnès, with an expression on his face which
there was no mistaking.
Thenceforth the jealous woman’s hatred of her too attractive daughter
knew no bounds. No longer did she trouble to dissimulate her feelings
from her friends, but actually incited the most devoted of them to
imitate the attitude she adopted towards the girl, with the result that
poor Agnès’s life became almost unendurable.
Unendurable, too, was the sight of her to her unnatural mother, and she
importuned her husband until he consented that the girl should leave
the house and be placed in a convent, while awaiting the appearance on
the scene of an eligible suitor. Several gentlemen who answered more or
less to this description speedily presented themselves, and, after some
hesitation, M. de Pléneuf decided in favour of the Marquis de Prie.
The marquis was twenty-five years older than Agnès and, though he was
the possessor of large estates, they were either so unproductive or
so heavily mortgaged that they brought him in next to nothing. But he
was a member of a very ancient House, connected with several of the
most illustrious families in France, was governor of Bourbon-Lancy,
colonel of the cavalry regiment which bore his name, held the rank of
brigadier-general in the Army, and, finally, was one of the godfathers
of the heir to the throne.
This last honour, which he owed to his good fortune in happening to
be with his aunt the Duchesse de Ventadour, _gouvernante_ to the
Duc d’Anjou, in Louis XIV.’s cabinet, at the moment when the infant
prince was brought thither for his Majesty’s inspection, seems to have
had great weight with M. de Pléneuf, who was intoxicated with the
idea of an alliance with the godfather of his future King. As for the
marquis, it is probable that M. de Pléneuf’s money-bags constituted a
far more potent attraction for him than the _beaux yeux_ of his
lovely daughter. He was not only poor, but ambitious, and, now that the
approach of peace threatened to put an end to his hopes of military
distinction, he had decided to embark upon a diplomatic career, and
aspired to an embassy, for which, of course, the possession of a long
purse was an indispensable qualification.
The preliminaries were soon concluded, and on 27 December, 1713, Agnès
Berthelot de Pléneuf became the Marquise de Prie. Taken to Versailles
by the Duchesse de Ventadour, to be presented to Louis XIV., she
astonished all the Court by her dazzling beauty and her precocious
airs of a woman of the world; and even those who had been inclined to
condemn M. de Prie for having contracted a _mésalliance_ were
obliged to admit that he had married a wife of whom any man might be
proud. Almost immediately after his marriage, the marquis was nominated
Ambassador to the King of Sardinia, and set out for Turin, whither,
after a short interval, his wife followed him.
At Turin Madame de Prie remained five years. For the first two or
three, during which a little daughter was born to her, everything
went smoothly. Her husband was kind and attentive, and, if she felt
for him no affection and some contempt--for he was a pompous and
self-opinionated person, with abilities as slender as his ambitions
were lofty--she, at least, tolerated him; while, as the Ambassadress of
the greatest King in the world, and one of the most beautiful women in
the Piedmontese capital, she was the object of universal homage, and no
social gathering was deemed complete which she did not grace with her
presence. But towards the end of 1716 an event occurred which was to
effect a great change in the fortunes of the Pries.
For some time past a very ugly cloud had been slowly gathering over the
head of M. de Pléneuf. At this period, and, indeed, until a very much
later date, most gentlemen connected with the commissariat department
of the Army were but indifferently honest; but long impunity had
rendered Pléneuf unusually audacious, and so outrageously did he rob
the Army of Italy, of which he had acted as chief commissary, that in
1706 Louis XIV. ordered an inquiry to be instituted.
Matters would probably have gone hardly with Pléneuf, if he had not
had the good fortune to possess powerful protectors. Thanks to their
efforts, not only were the charges against him not pressed, but, a
little while afterwards, he was actually appointed chief clerk at the
War Office.
Nevertheless, his peculations, and those of his colleagues, were not
forgotten, and in 1714 the Government decided upon a new revision of
the accounts of the Army of Italy. This investigation, temporarily
interrupted by the last illness and death of Louis XIV., was resumed
some months later, when Philippe d’Orléans, eager to court popularity,
determined to make the revenue-farmers and commissaries disgorge their
ill-gotten gains; and Pléneuf was the first to be summoned before the
Court instituted for that purpose. This time, there was no one to
intervene in his favour, and, warned that his arrest was imminent, he
fled to Switzerland, and thence made his way to his daughter at Turin.
In saving his person, however, he had not succeeded in saving his
property; and his hôtel in Paris and his country-estates were
sequestrated until such time as he should make restitution of the
immense sums of which he had defrauded the State.
The disgrace and bankruptcy of Pléneuf was a terrible blow to the
de Pries. They might have stomached the loss of the old gentleman’s
reputation, for the offence of which he had been guilty was of such
common occurrence in those days as to be regarded with a very lenient
eye, and, indeed, he appears to have received quite a warm welcome
at the Court of Turin; but the loss of his money was another matter
altogether.
With the laudable desire of upholding the honour of France, both the
Ambassador and his wife had incurred heavy expenditure during their
residence in Italy; de Prie’s small fortune was entirely exhausted, and
very little was left of Agnès’s dowry. It was to the purse of Pléneuf
that they had been looking to replenish their empty coffers, and here
he was quartered upon them, with a healthy appetite and extravagant
tastes, but without a crown in his pocket. In short, the ambassadorial
_ménage_ found itself reduced to the direst extremities, and it
was only by pawning his plate and borrowing money at usurious interest
that the unfortunate representative of the might and majesty of France
was able to continue at his post.
Towards the end of the year 1718, matters had reached such a pass that
no hope of escaping from his difficulties remained to him save by the
intervention of his Government. Again and again he had appealed to
Torcy, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, for assistance; but the answer
was always the same: the Royal Treasury was empty; it was impossible at
present even to pay his Excellency’s salary, much less to discharge his
debts.
In despair, the Ambassador determined to send his wife to Paris to
plead their cause with the Government, and at the beginning of December
Madame de Prie set out for France.
The young woman who returned to Paris was a very different person
from the girl who had quitted it five years before. Not only had
she gained in outward attractions, but she had gained enormously in
worldly knowledge. She had learned the ways of Courts, and had learned
them at one where falsehood and dissimulation were considered the
first essentials of every good politician. She had learned some of
the subtleties of diplomacy, for the Marquis de Prie, who had been
no match for Victor Amadeus and his Ministers, had been only too
thankful to avail himself of the advice and assistance of his clever
wife and father-in-law; indeed, for some months past it was they who
had conducted the real work of the embassy. She had learned too to
understand the power of her beauty, for, though there would appear to
be no reason to believe that she had ever surrendered to love, she had
certainly known how to inspire it, and a prince of the Royal House
of Savoy--the Prince di Carignano--the Baron Ferron, Prime Minister
of Victor Amadeus, the Chevalier de Lozilières, first secretary to
the embassy, and the Marquis d’Alincourt, son of the Maréchal de
Villeroy, who stayed for some time in Turin on his return from a
campaign against the Turks, had been all devoted admirers. “But, above
all,” observes her admiring biographer, M. Thirion, “she had learned
how to toil, to suffer, to defend herself against the ills of life,
to struggle and to combat, in order to satisfy the exigencies of an
uncertain hand-to-mouth existence, in such fashion that, beneath the
frail envelope of this adorable young body, there beat an almost virile
heart, there resided a soul matured before its time, disciplined and
for ever superior to cowardly weaknesses.”[255]
And it was a very different Paris to which she returned. The austere
and bigoted _régime_ of Louis XIV. and Madame de Maintenon,
where even the most profligate and reckless had been constrained to
some semblance of decorum, was no more, and the pent-up impatience
of a corrupt society was finding relief in a veritable saturnalia of
sensuality. Vice, which for so many years had scarcely dared to rear
its head, now stalked abroad, naked and unashamed; virtue, and even
ordinary decency, was mocked at and derided. The Regent himself set the
tone in moral depravity, and his example was followed by the Princes
and Princesses of the Blood, by the bulk of the nobility and by a
considerable proportion of the wealthy middle-class.
“The disorderly and foolish life in Paris,” writes the old Duchesse
d’Orléans, “becomes every day more detestable and more horrible. Every
time it thunders I tremble for this town.”[256]
To send a beautiful and unprotected young woman into the midst of so
licentious a Court was, to say the least of it, a very injudicious
action on de Prie’s part, and some contemporary writers are of opinion
that it was his deliberate intention to launch her upon some gallant
adventure. In this, as we shall presently see, they have probably done
him an injustice; but, however that may be, nothing in the conduct of
his wife during the first months after her arrival in Paris indicates
that she had the least idea of speculating in her charms.
Since it was, of course, out of the question for her to demand the
hospitality of her detestable mother, she installed herself with her
little daughter in a small house close to the Convent of La Conception,
belonging to one of her aunts, Madame de Séchelles, to whom she paid
an annual rent of 500 livres, for the use of a portion of it. She
lived very quietly, for she was almost entirely without resources, and
seldom went into Society, though, in accordance with her husband’s
instructions, she solicited audiences of the Regent, the Abbé Dubois,
Torcy, and, indeed, every one who might be able to be of assistance to
the impecunious Ambassador.
The interviews which took place between her detested daughter and these
distinguished persons did not escape Madame de Pléneuf, and, thanks to
the malevolent activity of her and her friends, a rumour soon began to
spread that the young Ambassadress, whose beauty never failed to cause
a sensation wherever she appeared, was employing her charms to mend
her broken fortunes. She was accused of prostituting herself to the
Maréchal de la Feuillade, to d’Alincourt and to Torcy, and of having
made an attempt to subjugate the heart of the Regent, who, it was
added, had repulsed her, either because she had not pleased him, or
because he regarded her as too dangerous a mistress.
There seems to have been no truth whatever in these allegations. La
Feuillade was in very bad health; d’Alincourt on the eve of espousing
a wealthy heiress, and Torcy approaching his sixtieth year. As for the
Regent, well, the post of chief sultana to his Highness was not just
then vacant, being occupied by Madame de Parabère; and Madame de Prie
was certainly not the kind of woman either to risk the humiliation of
a rebuff or to be content with a subordinate position. Moreover, no
trustworthy contemporary chronicler has charged the lady with any such
ambition as gossip ascribed to her.
If, however, the Regent did not fall in love with Madame de Prie, she
seems to have made a very favourable impression upon him, and she was
several times invited to assist at those too-celebrated _petits
soupers_ at which the ruler of France was accustomed to seek
relaxation from the cares of State. However, such orgies were but
little to her taste, and when she had at length succeeded in obtaining
from him a promise that her husband’s debts at Turin should be settled,
or that he should be permitted to resign his post, she ceased to appear
at the Palais-Royal.
Meanwhile, the favour with which Madame de Prie was regarded in high
places had begun to alarm Madame de Pléneuf and her coterie. Since
her daughter’s return to Paris that amiable lady had not ceased to
aim at her every kind of shaft that hatred and malice could forge
and to incite her docile admirers to do the same. When, however,
they saw her a welcome guest at the Palais-Royal, they began to ask
themselves if they had not carried their hostility a little too far;
and, though Madame de Pléneuf herself professed to be implacable,
some of her friends began to make overtures to her daughter, with a
view to bringing about a reconciliation. Nothing, however, came of
these negotiations, for, before they had proceeded very far, an event
occurred which was to fan the dying embers of the old feud into the
flame of a new and interminable war.
CHAPTER XXI
Origin of the _liaison_ between _Monsieur le Duc_ and Madame
de Prie considered--Extraordinary ascendency which the latter
acquires over her lover--For a while, the favourite leads a
life of pleasure, but is soon obliged to give her attention
to politics--Exasperation of Madame de Pléneuf’s coterie
against her--Insecurity of _Monsieur le Duc’s_ position--The
Orléans faction--Intrigues of the War Minister Le Blanc and
the Belle-Isles--Hatred of Madame de Prie for Le Blanc--She
resolves to crush the common enemies of herself and _Monsieur
le Duc_--Her skilful conduct--Murder of Sandrier de Mitry,
chief cashier of La Jonchère, treasurer of the Emergency
War Fund--Sinister suspicions concerning La Jonchère and Le
Blanc--Madame de Prie determines to get to the bottom of the
mystery--Her alliance with the Pâris brothers against the
War Minister--Dubois persuades the Regent to withdraw his
protection from Le Blanc--Arrest of La Jonchère and examination
of his accounts--Disgrace and exile of Le Blanc--The death
of Dubois puts a stop to the proceedings--Death of Philippe
d’Orléans--_Monsieur le Duc_ becomes Prime Minister.
One night, in the autumn of 1719, so the story goes, the Duc de Bourbon
attended a ball at the Opera, where his attention was attracted by
two masked ladies, who remained inseparable throughout the evening.
One of them in particular piqued his curiosity, as much as by her
liveliness and wit, as by the perfection of her shape and the grace of
her movements. He entreated her to unmask, but was met by a refusal,
and she and her companion took their departure, laughing merrily at
his mortification. At the next Opera-ball, the two ladies appeared
in the same costume. _Monsieur le Duc_, who was again present,
hastened to join them, but, though, on this occasion, he succeeded
in ascertaining that the elder was a Madame Auxy, he was unable to
discover the identity of the one who most interested him, for nothing
could persuade her to unmask. On leaving him, however, she hinted that,
if he cared to attend the next ball, he might find her less obdurate.
The prince was faithful to the rendezvous, but the fair _inconnue_
seemed disinclined to fulfil her promise; and it was only after many
refusals and many protestations that she at length consented to remove
her mask, and to reveal the adorable features of Madame de Prie, at
sight of which _Monsieur le Duc_ incontinently succumbed.
Such is the version of the affair which has found favour with the
majority of historians. It is doubtful, however, if it is the correct
one, and, any way, it is strangely inconsistent with the account given
by Caylus--no friend, by the way, of Madame de Prie--of the repulsion
with which the first solicitations of _Monsieur le Duc_ inspired
the object of his desires:
“However ambitious Madame de Prie may have been, when she saw herself
on the point of surrendering to a man whose face was extremely
repulsive, although he was rather well-made, she experienced a
frightful repugnance, and was a hundred times ready to renounce her
project.”
A more plausible explanation of the origin of this passion, which,
owing to its consequences, belongs to history, is that Madame de Prie’s
aunt, Madame de Séchelles, who was on friendly terms with Marie Anne
de Bourbon-Conti, the first wife of _Monsieur le Duc_, and a
frequent visitor at the Hôtel de Condé, brought her niece there; that
_Monsieur le Duc_ saw her and fell desperately in love with her,
and that certain partisans of the House of Condé, who were anxious to
find some intelligent woman capable of guiding the prince amidst the
bewildering chaos of passions and intrigues in which he found himself,
and of awakening in him those ambitions which they themselves had
vainly endeavoured to arouse, persuaded her, weary as she was of the
trials and humiliations of poverty and eager once again to possess the
good things of life, to become his mistress.
What, however, is incontestable, is the completeness of her triumph.
From the first hour until the time, six years later, when circumstances
over which neither of them had any control came to force them apart,
she dominated _Monsieur le Duc_ entirely, and he adored her with
an intensity of devotion of which no one had believed him capable.
The Sabrans, the Nesles, the Polignacs and the rest were as entirely
forgotten as if they had never existed; never was there so much as a
whisper of a rival in his affections. He consecrated himself to her
body and soul.
Nor is this a matter for surprise, since Madame de Prie was no ordinary
mistress. Not only did she possess in a superlative degree all that
could charm the senses, but she had intelligence, culture, and
exquisite tact, and, she understood to perfection the art of pleasing.
“She amused him, she distracted him, she showed a profound respect for
his decisions, which flattered him in confirming him in the idea that
he acted always on his own initiative. She never gave him advice except
after being asked for it, and in subordinating it, in appearance, to
the superior intelligence of her lover, although it was frequently her
counsel which prevailed.”[257] Thus, she insinuated herself into the
mind and heart of the prince and “disposed of him as a slave.”[258]
Never did he dream of rebelling against his fetters, since he was
barely conscious of them.
For a while, Madame de Prie gave herself up to the enjoyment of all the
luxury and splendour with which her princely lover hastened to surround
her with the zest which only a pretty young woman can feel who, after
once being in a position to indulge all her caprices, has for several
years been compelled to deny herself even the necessaries--or what the
feminine mind considers the necessaries--of existence. She passed long
delightful hours in the shops of fashionable _couturiers_ and made
extensive purchases, which, let us hope, _Monsieur le Duc_ paid
for in hard cash, and not in the notes of his _protégé_ Law’s
unfortunate bank. She visited the _ateliers_ of the artists, of
whom she had in former days been a generous patron, and commissioned
a portrait of herself from Van Loo, and another from Rosalba, whom
she had patronised at Turin, and who had just completed a pastel of
Madame de Parabère. Arrayed in ravishing toilettes and blazing with
diamonds, she did the honours of the Hôtel de Condé, of Chantilly
and of Saint-Maur, for, very opportunely for her, the unloved wife
of _Monsieur le Duc_ had, after a long and painful illness,
recently departed to another world, leaving the field quite free for
the sultana. And she profoundly troubled the salons by launching
an entirely novel method of arranging the hair, which became her
_à merveille_, but caused serious inconvenience to some of the
fashionable dames who felt constrained to adopt it.
But, after some weeks, she was obliged to give her mind to more serious
matters. The “elevation” of a _petite bourgeoise_, daughter of a
fraudulent financier and of a woman universally despised, to be the
favourite of a prince who stood so near the throne and might even one
day ascend it, had not taken place without exciting the most rancorous
jealousy and hatred. _Chansons_, venomous satires, slanders,
calumnies, rained upon her, until, if she had been a more sensitive
woman, she might well have been driven to the verge of despair. She was
charged with having led a life of debauchery from her earliest youth;
of having bewitched _Monsieur le Duc_ by initiating him into vices
imported by her from Italy and hitherto unknown in France; of having
ruined her husband by her scandalous extravagance; of having treated
an unselfish and devoted mother with the most outrageous cruelty and
ingratitude. She learned that in Madame de Pléneuf’s circle it was
predicted that her triumph would be of very brief duration; that they
would soon succeed in disgusting _Monsieur le Duc_ with his
choice, and that when she had fallen from her high estate and had been
abandoned by the prince, they would make her bitterly repent of her
victory.
She learned, too, that the position of _Monsieur le Duc_ was
far from secure, and that he had many powerful enemies, who were
continually intriguing against him and who would not scruple to employ
every possible means to reduce him to political impotence. This,
however, requires a word of explanation.
For some years past the bitterest antipathy had existed between the
Houses of Orléans and Condé. This feud had its origin in the aversion
which the two daughters of Louis XIV. and Madame de Montespan had
always entertained for each other, and which, in their younger days,
had so much disturbed the harmony of the royal circle that the King
was at length obliged to threaten them with banishment from the Court
if they could not live peaceably together. The hatred between the two
sisters had been communicated to their sons, the Duc de Chartres and
_Monsieur le Duc_, and intensified by the lawsuit over the will
of the late _Monsieur le Prince_ and by the prominence taken
by _Monsieur le Duc_ in the campaign against the legitimated
princes, whose cause the Duchesse d’Orléans had espoused with the most
passionate enthusiasm.
The Regent did not share the antipathy of his wife and son to the
Condés; indeed, he regarded the proceedings of them and the faction
which they had gathered about them with the gravest suspicion, which
is hardly surprising, having regard to the ambitions with which they
were generally credited. These included his own deposition and the
substitution of the Duchesse d’Orléans as Regent, the banishment of
_Monsieur le Duc_ and the Condés, the re-establishment of the
legitimated princes in their titles and dignities, the constitution of
a new Ministry, and a _rapprochement_ with Spain.
The party was numerically powerful, including as it did a number of
the _protégés_ of the House of Orléans, and many discontented and
ambitious persons. It also comprised some very distinguished names:
the Duc and Duchesse du Maine, the Comte de Toulouse, the Prince de
Condé, the Rohans, the Duc de Montemart, and the Maréchaux de Villeroy,
Berwick and Tallard. But its most active and formidable members were
three men of middle-class origin: the Secretary of State for War,
Le Blanc, the Comte, afterwards the Maréchal de Belle-Isle, and his
younger brother, the Chevalier de Belle-Isle.
[Illustration: LOUIS HENRI, DUC DE BOURBON, PRINCE DE CONDÉ
(CALLED MONSIEUR LE DUC)
FROM AN ENGRAVING BY P. DREVET, AFTER THE PAINTING BY GOBERT]
Claude Le Blanc was the son of Louis Le Blanc, who had been at one
time intendant of Normandy; his mother was a sister of the Maréchal de
Bezons. Born in 1669, he practised for some years at the Bar, but in
1704 was appointed intendant of Auvergne. He was an exceedingly able
man, “full of intelligence, capacity and resource,”[259] and in the
intendancy of Flanders, to which he was transferred towards the close
of the War of the Austrian Succession, he rendered such admirable
service that Louis XIV. summoned him to Court in order that he might
thank him personally.
On the old King’s death, the functions of Secretary of State for War
were suppressed and replaced by a council, of which Le Blanc was a
member, but, after trying this experiment for two years, the Regent
decided to revert to the old order of things, and the office was
conferred upon the ex-intendant.
Although Le Blanc possessed few of the qualities of a Louvois, and
during the war with Spain which followed the Cellamare conspiracy was
guilty of more than one grave error, he was, on the whole, far from an
incapable Minister, and the Army owed to him several useful reforms,
while he always enjoyed great popularity with the troops. But, on the
other hand, he was greedy, ambitious, unscrupulous, and an incorrigible
intriguer, with whom no consideration of gratitude or honour would be
permitted to weigh for a moment.
In the Comte de Belle-Isle, who, a quarter of a century later, during
the War of the Austrian Succession, was to earn undying renown by
his gallant defence of Prague and the masterly manner in which he
subsequently conducted the retreat of the garrison to Eger, through the
midst of an enemy’s country and in the depth of winter, he possessed a
most valuable ally.
Although Belle-Isle was the grandson of the Surintendant Fouquet, whose
ill-gotten wealth had brought upon him so terrible a punishment, he
had, nevertheless, entered the service of Louis XIV. and risen to the
rank of brigadier-general. He accompanied Villars to the negotiations
of Rastadt, and, after the conclusion of peace, was made governor of
Huningue. Appointed _maréchal de camp_ on the outbreak of the war
between France and Spain, he contributed to the capture of Fontarabia
and San Sebastian, and, without having done anything very notable,
contrived, thanks to the adroit manner in which his friend Le Blanc
represented his services, to acquire a considerable military reputation
and with it a footing at the Court, of which he did not fail to profit.
Ambitious, enterprising, and persuasive, he succeeded in insinuating
himself into the favour of the Regent, and soon began to be regarded
as a very important personage.
The third member of the triumvirate, the Chevalier de Belle-Isle,
was a young man of twenty-seven, noted for his dashing valour in the
field and his innumerable gallantries. His abilities were, however,
considerable, and his ambition perhaps even more excessive than that of
his elder brother, whose entire confidence he enjoyed.
Le Blanc and the Belle-Isles, while secretly the protagonists of
the opposition party, remained, in appearance, devoted adherents of
Philippe d’Orléans, and this made them doubly dangerous. Profiting
by the confidence which the Regent reposed in them, they had lately
attempted a master-stroke, by imputing to the Duc de Bourbon
machinations of their own cabal which were on the point of being
discovered. They accused him of conspiring to supplant the Regent, and
so cleverly did they manufacture evidence in support of this charge
that _Monsieur le Duc_ had all the difficulty imaginable to prove
his innocence. Eventually, the Duc d’Orléans accepted his indignant
protestations, but from that moment the chief of the House of Condé
began to be regarded by the public as a possible rival of his Royal
Highness.
Now, by a singular coincidence, the same three men who had so nearly
succeeded in bringing about the disgrace of _Monsieur le Duc_
were the most devoted of all the friends of Madame de Pléneuf, and,
in consequence, implacable enemies of Madame de Prie. Le Blanc had
rendered himself particularly odious to the Duc de Bourbon’s mistress.
For some years past the Minister had been completely infatuated with
Madame de Pléneuf and obedient to her slightest behest, and in the
miserable days which had followed the discovery of Agnès’s flirtation
with M. d’Angennes he had ably seconded her mother in making the
girl’s life a burden to her. Moreover, whether justly or no, she
strongly suspected him and the Belle-Isles of having been concerned
in the tragic end of the unfortunate d’Angennes, who, shortly after
the episode in question, had been found dead in the street, pierced
by three sword-thrusts, in circumstances which pointed to his being
the victim of some private vengeance. Again, Le Blanc had, at his own
special request, been appointed a member of the commission appointed to
investigate the accounts of M. de Pléneuf and his fellow-commissaries;
and the animus he had displayed against the principal delinquent on
this occasion--which, it was generally believed, had been prompted by
the desire to please Madame de Pléneuf, who had been for some years
past on very bad terms with her husband, and, at the same time, to
obtain greater facilities for enjoying that lady’s society--had largely
contributed to his ruin.
And, finally, he had committed an action which would alone have
sufficed to assure him the undying hatred of Madame de Prie.
We have mentioned that among the admirers of Madame de Prie at
Turin was the Marquis d’Alincourt, son of the Maréchal de Villeroy.
Whether there had ever been anything serious between them is very
doubtful, but, at any rate, the lady had been indiscreet enough to
write d’Alincourt several letters which were capable of such an
interpretation. Now, Le Blanc, who was a friend of d’Alincourt, knew
of the existence of these epistles, and, soon after Madame de Prie
became the mistress of _Monsieur le Duc_, he contrived, by some
means, to get possession of them, and handed them to Madame de Pléneuf,
who carried them straight to her daughter’s lover. The precious pair
doubtless hoped thereby to bring about a rupture between the prince
and his inamorata, but they had sadly underrated the strength of the
former’s infatuation; and the only result was to disgust him with
persons who could make war with such weapons and to intensify the
hatred with which Madame de Prie regarded her mother and the Minister
for War.
As soon as Madame de Prie understood the precarious situation of
_Monsieur le Duc_, and that her mother’s friends, Le Blanc and the
Belle-Isles, were his most redoubtable enemies, she recognized that her
interests were one with those of her lover, and that, by placing him in
a position in which he would be able to defy them, she would shelter
herself from their blows. From that moment, the line of action which
it behoved her to follow was clear, and she determined to devote all
her talents and all her energies to rallying the prince’s partisans
around him and thwarting the machinations of their common foes. Nor did
she intend to rest from her labours until she had crushed them utterly,
and raised _Monsieur le Duc_ so high that they would be powerless
to injure either him or herself.
But, to accomplish this, it was necessary to begin by freeing herself
from certain embarrassments: by appeasing her husband’s indignation
and preventing a scandal, which might prejudice her in the eyes of
those old-fashioned persons who consented to condone immorality only
so long as the conventionalities were duly observed; by rehabilitating
her father, whose delinquencies were a continual reproach to her; and
by persuading the Condés, and, in particular, the Dowager-Duchesse de
Bourbon to accept the situation and admit her to their intimacy.
All these matters were satisfactorily arranged. M. de Prie, who, at
the beginning of 1720, had resigned his post at Turin, returned to
Paris vowing vengeance against his erring wife, and, if gossip is to be
believed, did actually go so far as to give her several blows with his
cane. But he was a man of feeble character, and, besides, desperately
in need of money; and soon, perceiving in which direction his interests
lay, he calmed down, and eventually took himself off to Languedoc, with
the title of lieutenant-general of that province, which _Monsieur le
Duc_ had been instrumental in obtaining for him.
Thanks to the same influence, the Government consented to throw a veil
over the misdeeds of M. de Pléneuf, and to permit him to return to
Paris, though it refused to restore him his property. His daughter,
however, hastened to provide for his necessities, and soon afterwards
secured for him the post of secretary to Sennecterre, who had been
despatched to England to discuss with the British Government the
question of the restoration of Gibraltar to Spain.
The question of her relations with the Condé family presented some
difficulty. The Duc de Bourbon’s two brothers, the Comte de Charolais
and the Comte de Clermont, were disposed to be friendly enough. With
the elder, indeed, she happened to be already on amicable terms, as
some three years before, during a visit to Italy, he had stayed for a
time at the French Embassy at Turin, and had been much pleased by the
hospitality he had received while she had earned the gratitude of the
Comte de Clermont by assisting him in a love-affair with a cousin of
her own. But their sisters, with the exception of Mlle. de Clermont,
were less inclined to complaisance, while it was plain that _Madame
la Duchesse_ looked upon Madame de Prie’s subjugation of her son
with a very jaundiced eye. _Madame la Duchesse_ had very little
affection for the latter, but she aspired to control all his actions,
and she strongly resented the appearance upon the scene of a rival
influence. For some time she made no secret of her dislike of Madame
de Prie, and treated her with the coldest disdain; and the favourite
had need of all her suppleness to overcome her hostility. At length,
however, the princess decided to accept the situation, and, though she
continued to cherish for her son’s mistress a strong aversion, their
relations were, to all appearances, perfectly cordial.
Next, the astute young woman proceeded to ingratiate herself with the
Regent, Cardinal Dubois, and other members of the Government.
By Philippe d’Orléans she was, as we have seen, already very favourably
regarded, and very soon she was admitted to the circle of his intimate
friends.
Profiting by the knowledge that Dubois, although he had little liking
for _Monsieur le Duc_, cared still less for the adversaries of
the Condés, she sought eagerly for opportunities of rendering herself
useful to him, and succeeded so well that before long she was able
to reckon with confidence upon the support of his Eminence, who was
becoming more powerful every day.
Nor did she neglect persons who, although they did not occupy any
important ministerial office, were, nevertheless, possessed of
influence. Thus, she succeeded in detaching, temporarily at least,
the Cardinal de Rohan from the opposing faction--a distinct triumph,
since the cardinal was generally believed to have been one of the
lovers of Madame de Pléneuf--and in deciding the Maréchal de Villars,
d’Alincourt, Livry, first _maître d’hôtel_ to the King, her uncle
by marriage the Maréchal de Matignon, the Duc de Richelieu, of gallant
memory, for whom, when _Monsieur le Duc_ became Prime Minister,
she obtained the Embassy of Vienna, and several other nobles who had
been hesitating between the two parties, to throw in their lot with the
Condés.
She supported Law, too; and that adventurous financier was not
ungrateful, and repaid her protection by filling her purse so full that
she became quite independent of her lover’s bounty and was able to
maintain a whole company of spies, who brought her early information of
the movements of the enemy.
And so, shrewd, vigilant, resolute, and courageous, she pursued the
path she had marked out for herself, to all appearance satisfied to
remain on the defensive, but, in reality, carefully noting the weak
points in her adversaries’ position, and watching for the occasion to
deliver a crushing blow. Nor was the occasion long in presenting itself.
* * * * *
On 25 March, 1722, Sandrier de Mitry, receiver-general of the finances
of French Flanders, and secretary and principal cashier to La
Jonchère,[260] treasurer of the Emergency War Fund,[261] disappeared
from his home, and nothing more was heard of him until the 18th of the
following month, when his body, partially clothed and pierced by two
wounds, was discovered in the Seine, near Marly.
This mysterious crime created an immense sensation in Paris, and a
strong suspicion prevailed that La Jonchère, who did not bear too high
a character,[262] had been plundering the State; that the unfortunate
Sandrier had detected the defalcations, and that the treasurer had
caused him to be made away with in order to close the matter.
But rumour, in certain quarters, went further than this, and accused
the War Minister, Le Blanc, of being a party to the crime, or, at any
rate, to what was believed to be the cause of it. For Le Blanc was not
only La Jonchère’s official chief, but his patron and friend, and it
would have been almost impossible for the treasurer to have falsified
his accounts without the Minister being aware of it.
The authorities, however, declined to see the least connexion between
the murder of Sandrier and the position which he had occupied, and
nearly a year passed without any steps being taken against La Jonchère.
It is, indeed, highly improbable that they would ever have been stirred
to action had not Madame de Prie taken upon herself to intervene.
No sooner did that energetic lady hear of the crime that had been
committed and of the rumours that were in circulation concerning La
Jonchère and Le Blanc, than she resolved to employ every means in her
power to get to the bottom of the affair. Fortune favoured her quest,
in bringing her allies, wealthy, enterprising, and capable, and as
determined to compass the ruin of the Minister for War as she was
herself.
Quite apart from the Condé faction, Le Blanc possessed many enemies.
Of these the most powerful were the four brothers Pâris, the famous
bankers, who, after the Mississippi crash, had been entrusted by the
Regent with the task of restoring the public credit. In the days
before they had attained their present eminence, the Pâris had been
in business as army-contractors, and Le Blanc, at that time Intendant
of Flanders, had caused the third brother, Pâris-Le Montagne, to be
arrested on a charge of rendering fraudulent accounts. More recently
become Minister for War, he had accused the ablest of the four,
Pâris-Duverney, of infringing the edicts forbidding the export of gold,
and, though Duverney had succeeded in exculpating himself, both he and
his brothers were provisionally banished from the realm. Hence, the
bankers hated Le Blanc and had sworn to be avenged on him as soon as
they were able.
The task of re-establishing the finances which had been entrusted
to them, and which they conducted with undeniable skill, of course
included an examination of the accounts of the public services.
Scarcely had they begun to investigate those of the Ministry for War
than they discovered such flagrant irregularities as to leave little
room for doubt that a system of wholesale robbery prevailed. They
immediately drew up a report to that effect and despatched it to the
Regent, but, in their eagerness to bring their enemy to account, they
had not waited to substantiate the charges they made; and Philippe
d’Orléans, with whom Le Blanc was just then in high favour, excused
himself from moving in the matter, on the ground that the Minister for
War had rendered undoubted service to the State, and was extremely
popular with the Army, and that, in the present critical condition
of affairs, it would be better to watch his future conduct than to
criticize his past acts.
The bankers were greatly mortified by this repulse. Nevertheless, they
were too embittered against Le Blanc, and too apprehensive of reprisals
on his part, to abandon the struggle; and they accordingly began to
look about them for some powerful ally, whose assistance might enable
them to resume it with some prospect of success.
Naturally, their thoughts turned in the direction of the Duc de
Bourbon, but, since they had been the most strenuous opponents of his
_protégé_ Law, and they feared that the prince might harbour some
resentment against them on that account, they hesitated to approach
him. Great therefore was their satisfaction, when one day they received
a letter from Madame de Prie proposing an alliance between them and the
House of Condé against the common enemy.
The alliance was soon concluded, and, supported openly by the whole
weight of the Condé influence, and encouraged in secret by Dubois,
whose jealousy of Le Blanc Madame de Prie had artfully fanned, the
Pâris brothers again advanced to the attack, and demanded that a
commission should be appointed to investigate the accounts of the
Ministry for War.
Their demand was conceded, the commissioners had been already
nominated, and every one was expecting to hear that Le Blanc and La
Jonchère had been summoned to appear before them, when the faction
opposed to the Condés, with the Duc de Chartres, the Prince de Conti,
and the legitimated princes at its head, started a violent agitation
in favour of Le Blanc, and carried the war into the enemy’s camp by
accusing the Pâris brothers of having themselves despoiled the State.
This furnished the Regent with a pretext for intervening between the
accused and justice, and the meeting of the commission was postponed
_sine die_.
Madame de Prie, however, did not despair. She had made sure of the
support of Dubois, who in August, 1722, had been named _ministre
principal_--the same title which had been given the Cardinal de
Richelieu--and her several agents were everywhere at work. Daily the
evidence against Le Blanc was accumulating in her hands; towards the
end of the spring of 1723, it was so overwhelming that she felt that it
would be impossible for the Regent to ignore it.
She had ascertained that, apart from their official relations, Le Blanc
and La Jonchère were on terms of the closest intimacy; that the latter
had a pretty and coquettish wife, whom he had complacently surrendered
to his chief, being himself in love with the wife of the unfortunate
Sandrier; that he lived in almost princely style, and had, moreover,
advanced large sums of money to the Comte de Belle-Isle, to defray
the cost of a magnificent hôtel which he was building on the banks of
the Seine, opposite the Tuileries; that, on learning of the death of
Sandrier, Le Blanc had shown so much emotion that every one present was
astonished, and that a day or two later he fell ill and was obliged to
take to his bed. And finally, she discovered that it was practically
certain that, in robbing the State, Le Blanc and La Jonchère had been
acting with the connivance of the Palais-Royal, and that a considerable
portion of the spoil had found its way into the Regent’s coffers.
When she judged that the moment for action had arrived, Madame de Prie
communicated with Dubois, who, armed with the reports she had sent him,
went to the Regent, laid them before him, and told him very plainly
that he could no longer support Le Blanc without being immediately
compromised.
Philippe d’Orléans, after a perusal of the documents, was obliged to
acknowledge that the Minister was right, and authorized him to take
what steps he considered advisable in the matter. Dubois lost no time
in setting the Law in motion; the commission met at the house of the
Maréchal de Villars, who had been appointed president; and on 24 May La
Jonchère was arrested as he was returning from Versailles, in virtue
of a _lettre de cachet_ signed by the Cardinal, and conducted
to the Bastille, while the seals were placed on his hôtel in the Rue
Saint-Honoré, and all his registers and papers seized by the police. At
the Bastille, La Jonchère was subjected to two long interrogatories by
Ravot d’Ombreval, a relative of Dubois, who acted as attorney-general
to the commission. He appeared very agitated, contradicted himself
several times, and ended by admitting that he had acted dishonestly,
and that he was not the only one guilty, though he obstinately refused
to give the names of his accomplices.
A few days later, two of La Jonchère’s principal clerks were also
arrested, and on 18 June the treasurer was conducted to his house to be
present at the raising of the seals and the sorting of his papers. This
operation lasted from eleven o’clock in the morning until nine in the
evening, when he was escorted back to the Bastille, guarded by forty
archers and followed by two carts filled with his registers and papers.
The examination of these, which was carried out under the supervision
of the Lieutenant of Police, d’Argenson, revealed immense defalcations,
and, moreover, left no room for doubt as to the culpability of Le
Blanc. It also showed that La Jonchère had received a great number of
the discredited notes of Law’s Bank, for which he had presumably given
in exchange gold to the amount of their face value.
On 1 July, Le Blanc received orders from the King to send him his
resignation of the office of Secretary of State for War, and to retire
immediately to the Château of Doué, belonging to his son-in-law, the
Marquis de Traisnel. A few days later, he was replaced by the Marquis
de Breteuil,[263] a devoted adherent of _Monsieur le Duc_ and
Madame de Prie. On the 16th, the commission, which was now established
at the Arsenal, summoned the two Belle-Isles to appear before it,
together with the Marquis de Conches and the Comte de Mayières, two
lieutenant-generals attached to Le Blanc, and several other persons.
The Belle-Isles adopted a haughty tone, and protested their innocence
with such indignation that the commission were visibly impressed.
However, the discovery of a note concealed behind the grate in La
Jonchère’s bedroom, in the Rue Saint-Honoré, in which the elder brother
acknowledged the receipt of 1,800,000 livres from the treasurer, put a
different complexion upon the matter.
The utmost consternation now reigned among the Orléans faction, and it
seemed as though Madame de Prie had succeeded in reducing the enemies
of herself and her lover to complete impotence, when the death of
Dubois, which occurred on 10 August, 1723, intervened to save them, or,
at any rate, to procure them a respite of some months.
With the disappearance from the political scene of the ambitious
cardinal, whose will had so long dominated his own, Philippe d’Orléans
resumed his liberty of action. On the very day on which Dubois died,
he demanded and obtained from the King the post of Prime Minister,
cleverly forestalling _Monsieur le Duc_, who, on the advice of his
mistress, had decided to ask for it himself; and thus united in his own
person the titles of heir-presumptive to the Crown and Prime Minister.
The question as to which of the two parties the prince would incline
greatly agitated the public mind, and it was the opinion of most that
he would favour that of his wife and son. It is very probable that he
would have done so, had _Monsieur le Duc_ been so maladroit as to
display any mortification at his having stolen a march upon him, in
which case the work of so many months might have been undone in a few
hours. But Madame de Prie was far too astute to permit her lover to
commit a blunder of this kind; and, prompted by her, the Duc de Bourbon
hastened to repair to the Palais-Royal, to present his compliments to
the new Prime Minister and to assure him of his devotion to his person.
Thanks to this prudent conduct, although they were not allowed to
follow up their victory, they retained possession of the greater part
of the field. Le Blanc remained in exile, and his successor, Breteuil,
who, as we have mentioned, was devoted to their cause, was confirmed
in his office: La Jonchère remained under lock and key; while the
Belle-Isles and their creatures, though they remained at liberty, were
kept under observation. Finally--and this, we may be sure, was not
the least satisfaction to Madame de Prie--her mother found herself
neglected and reduced to poverty.
Such was the position of affairs when, on 2 December, 1723, the Duc
d’Orléans was suddenly attacked by apoplexy at Versailles, and expired
almost immediately, in the arms of his latest inamorata, Madame de
Phalaris. Of all the princes, _Monsieur le Duc_ happened to be
the only one on the spot, and he did not fail to profit by his good
fortune. Following the procedure adopted by the deceased prince on
the day of Dubois’s death, he hastened to the King, informed him of
the loss which he had just sustained, and, almost in the same breath,
demanded the vacant post of Prime Minister. His youthful Majesty,
“without being moved by the news,” conferred it upon him; the prince,
in accordance with custom, forthwith took the oath and received the
patent; and when, a few hours later, the Duc de Chartres, who had
received the news of his father’s death at the Opera in Paris, or,
according to another account, in the boudoir of an Opera-girl whose
society he affected, came galloping madly into Versailles, he found,
to his profound disgust, the place to which he himself aspired already
filled. _Monsieur le Duc_ was the master of the realm, and Madame
de Prie mistress of all that was his.
CHAPTER XXII
Beginning of the Ministry of _Monsieur le Duc_--His early
popularity--Difficulties of the situation--Philippe d’Orléans
replaced by three new powers: Louis XV., Fleury, and Philip
V. of Spain--Futile negotiations between _Monsieur le Duc_
and the Orléans faction--Madame de Prie advises the prince to
take the offensive--Resumption of the proceedings against La
Jonchère and his accomplices--Indignation and alarm of the
Orléanists--Attempted assassination of La Guillonière, in
mistake for Pâris-Duverney--Conspiracy against the lives of
_Monsieur le Duc_ and his mistress--Madame de Prie insists on
prompt and energetic action, and Le Blanc and the Belle-Isles
are thrown into the Bastille--Arrest of Lempereur and other
persons--The Government is determined on the total ruin of
Le Blanc--Murder of Gazan de la Combe--La Blanc claims the
privilege of being tried by the assembled chambers of the
Parlement--Efforts of _Monsieur le Duc_ and Madame de Prie
to counteract the influence of Fleury over Louis XV.--Recall
of Villeroy--Visit of the King of Chantilly--Trial of Le
Blanc--Extraordinary proceedings--Acquittal of the accused.
Outside the faction opposed to the Condés, the elevation of _Monsieur
le Duc_ was not ill received. With the bulk of the nation Philippe
d’Orléans had never been popular. The people had been unable to forget
the horrible suspicions concerning him which the successive deaths of
the Duc and Duchesse de Bourgogne, the little Duc de Bretagne and the
Duc de Berry had aroused, and many worthy persons steadfastly refused
to see in the really touching respect and affection which he had always
shown for the young King anything but a cloak for the most sinister
designs. The middle-classes blamed him for the financial disasters
which had involved so many of them in ruin, and credited him, very
absurdly, with the intention of recalling Law. The clergy and the
devout had been alienated by his debauched life and his contempt for
religion. Thus, the very real service which he had rendered France in
maintaining peace, with the exception of a brief interval, for eight
years, was forgotten, and the advent of his successor hailed with
almost a sigh of relief.
It is true that there were not a few, such as the advocate Barbier, who
regretted the change of rulers, and predicted that it was Madame de
Prie who would govern the kingdom, and “lay her hands on as much money
as she could”;[264] but, on the whole, the possibility of a term of
petticoat government does not appear to have aroused much uneasiness.
_Monsieur le Duc_, on his side, neglected nothing to make himself
popular. Though his manners were usually somewhat brusque, he could
be charming when he chose to take the trouble, and, during the first
few weeks of his Ministry, he was so affable and so courteous, so
considerate and so obliging, that he pleased everyone who approached
him. The good impression thus created was strengthened by the
diminution of several taxes which had weighed very hardly on the
Parisians, and by the magnanimity he displayed towards those whose
hostility to him was notorious; and soon the gazettes were chanting
in unison the praises of the new Prime Minister, and declaring that
France was indeed fortunate to have so admirable a prince at the head
of affairs.
But this popularity was only momentary, for the difficulties of the
situation were immense, the task before him one of the most ungrateful
that could well be imagined; and it would have needed a far more
experienced and subtle politician than _Monsieur le Duc_ to have
steered a safe course amid the shoals and quicksands that surrounded
him. The Treasury was empty and the follies of the “System” still
unpaid for; commerce was almost annihilated; the Church rent by the
Jansenist schism; the Court a battle-ground for contending factions,
one of which regarded the new Prime Minister with the bitterest
hostility. And, in place of the Regent and Dubois, three new powers had
arisen; two close at hand, the young King and his preceptor, Fleury,
Bishop of Fréjus; the other distant, Spain, represented by Philip V.
The young Louis XV., whose majority had been proclaimed six months
before, on completing his thirteenth year, was a most perplexing factor
in the situation. D’Argenson calls him “an impenetrable personage”;
Luynes “an indefinable being”; in a word, he was a mystery to the whole
Court. Ostensibly, he cared for nothing but the chase, gambling[265]
and the pleasures of the table; but many were of opinion that this
frivolity and indifference were but assumed; that very little that
took place escaped him; and that the time was not far distant when he
would begin to assert his authority in no uncertain manner. Morose,
uncommunicative, egotistical, he repulsed all the efforts of the
courtiers of both sexes to ingratiate themselves with him, and reserved
his confidence, and the little affection of which he seemed capable,
for one person--his preceptor, the Bishop of Fréjus.
The rise of André Hercule Fleury had been remarkable. Though without
great talents or high connexions--he was the son of a collector of
taxes at his native town of Lodève--he had understood so well the art
of insinuating himself into the good graces of every one who was in a
position to advance his fortunes, that obstacles disappeared before him
as snow melts in the sun. “He was what one might call a true wheedler,”
writes Saint-Simon, who allows us to perceive in the portrait which
he has drawn of him something of the jealousy which his extraordinary
good fortune had inspired. He wheedled himself into the favour of the
Cardinal de Bonzy, who brought him to Court and obtained for him the
post of almoner to Queen Maria Theresa; he wheedled himself into that
of his royal mistress, of the Duchesse de Bourgogne, of the Duc and
Duchesse du Maine, and, finally, into that of Louis XIV., who a few
months before his death nominated him preceptor to the Dauphin.
[Illustration: ANDRÉ HERCULE, CARDINAL DE FLEURY
FROM AN ENGRAVING BY P. DREVET, AFTER THE PAINTING BY HYACINTHE
RIGAUD]
If he failed to cultivate the good qualities which Louis XV. showed as
a child, and cannot therefore escape some of the responsibility for
the scandals and the disasters of that unfortunate reign, he succeeded
little by little in gaining the entire confidence of his pupil.
Jealous of his influence, Philippe d’Orléans endeavoured to separate
him from the boy by the offer of the archbishopric of Rheims, the
first episcopal dignity in the realm. But Fleury knew where his true
interests lay, and declined it. Nothing, he declared, should distract
him from the duty which he owed to his young Sovereign. When, in 1722,
Louis XV.’s _gouverneur_, the Maréchal de Villeroy, was banished
by the Regent from Court, Fleury, deeming that his honour obliged
him to share the disgrace of his superior and protector, followed
him into exile. But his departure occasioned the young King such
distress that he lost no time in recalling him, by a letter in his own
hand--an action upon which it is probable the astute old gentleman had
confidently counted.
At the time of the death of Philippe d’Orléans, Fleury was in his
seventy-first year, an age at which most men have renounced ambition
and are thinking only of repose. The Bishop of Fréjus, however,
felt that he had some years of activity yet before him, and he was
resolved to climb to the very pinnacle of fortune. He might easily have
persuaded Louis XV. to make him Prime Minister, but he counselled the
young King to entrust the direction of affairs to the Duc de Bourbon;
perhaps, because he hoped to govern through him; more probably, because
he foresaw that _Monsieur le Duc’s_ Ministry must be of brief
duration, and that his own elevation would be far better received after
the prince had been allowed his chance.
_Monsieur le Duc_ and Madame de Prie were not blind to the danger
which threatened from this quarter. In his quality of priest, Fleury
could not fail to disapprove of the relations existing between them,
and that he had communicated his sentiments to his royal pupil was
very evident from the coldness with which his Majesty treated the
marchioness. Nor could it be said that the King regarded _Monsieur
le Duc_ with any marked degree of favour; indeed, he appeared to
avoid him, and not infrequently when the Prime Minister had requested
an audience, he was informed that M. de Fréjus would receive any
communication that he might wish to make.
Encouraged by this, the Orléans party began to make overtures to Fleury
with a view to an alliance. But the preceptor preferred to retain his
liberty of action, and their advances met with no formal response. It
was, however, impossible to say how long he would continue to remain
neutral, and the possibility of so powerful a coalition being formed
against them occasioned the Duc de Bourbon and his mistress profound
uneasiness.
The third power was Philip V. of Spain.
After the conclusion of peace between France and Spain at the beginning
of 1720, the Regent and Dubois, anxious to re-establish friendly
relations between the two great branches of the House of Bourbon,
proposed a triple matrimonial alliance, to which Philip V. and Isabella
Farnese readily consented. In accordance with this arrangement, the
Infanta Isabella Luisa, then in her fifth year, was sent to the Court
of France, to be brought up until she had reached a marriageable
age, when she was to become the wife of Louis XV.; the fourth of the
Regent’s six daughters, Mlle. de Montpensier, was married to the Prince
of the Asturias, heir to the Crown of Spain; while the fifth of the
Orléans princesses, Mlle. de Beaujolais, who was only six years old,
was sent to Madrid, where it was proposed that, in due course, she
should wed Don Carlos, the eldest son of Philip V. and his second wife,
Isabella Farnese.
Connected thus closely with the Orléans, Philip V. had everything to
lose by events which excluded his allies from power. In January, 1724,
he had abdicated in favour of the Prince of the Asturias, though the
new king’s authority was merely nominal, and on the son’s death, some
months later, the father resumed the Crown. Some writers maintain that
this abdication was in fulfilment of a vow that he had made in 1720;
others believe that it was intended to facilitate his designs on the
French throne; and this is far from improbable. For it is certain that
Philip had not abandoned the hopes which he had cherished since the
death of his grandfather, and which the feeble health of Louis XV.,
the well-known incapacity of the new Duc d’Orléans, and the false
reports of his partisans concerning the popularity which he enjoyed in
Paris, served to sustain. But _Monsieur le Duc_ was determined
to resist to the uttermost any such pretensions, if only from jealousy
of the Orléans. Hence, Philip detested the new Prime Minister, who was
well aware that his Catholic Majesty would employ all the influence he
possessed at the Court of France to effect his overthrow.
In the face of these dangers and embarrassments, it was only natural
that _Monsieur le Duc_ should have proceeded at first with caution
and moderation, and have gone as far as he could reasonably be expected
to go to disarm the malice of his foes. Such a course, indeed, was
dictated by the most elementary prudence. It served, however, no useful
purpose beyond proving to him the futility of attempting to conciliate
those whom nothing but a virtual renunciation of his authority would be
likely to satisfy. The Duc d’Orléans, it is true, declared himself, in
his own name and that of his party, perfectly willing for an immediate
reconciliation, and offered to marry Mlle. de Sens, the youngest sister
of his rival. But the conditions he desired to impose--the recall of
Le Blanc and his restoration to the Ministry for War, and his own
admission to every audience which _Monsieur le Duc_ had with the
King--were quite impossible for the other to accept.
However, the Prime Minster, on the advice of his mistress, begged to
be excused from giving an immediate answer and demanded a few weeks
for reflection. A brief truce followed, during which _Monsieur le
Duc_ still further strengthened his reputation for impartiality by
including a number of combatants from the opposite camp in an important
promotion to the Ordre du Saint-Esprit. The new _cordons bleus_
also included the husband and personal friends of Madame de Prie, who,
at the same time, obtained for herself a lodging in the Château of
Versailles. This was a move of the first importance, since it enabled
_Monsieur le Duc_ to have close at hand in every emergency the
woman who was not only his mistress, but his most trusted counsellor.
In these early days of the new _régime_, the favourite appeared
to be taking little or no interest in politics and to be absorbed
wholly in pleasure. Never had Chantilly received so many visitors;
while, when _Monsieur le Duc_ was in Paris or at Versailles,
the Hôtel de Condé or the Hôtel of the Grand Master was always the
centre of animation. The latter hôtel, which the King had lately
purchased from the Dowager-Princess de Conti and presented to the
prince, was transformed by _Monsieur le Duc_ and his mistress,
whose good taste was indisputable, into the most charming residence
imaginable. The two Coypels, Jean François de Troy, Louis de Boulogne,
Lemoine, Verdier, Restout, Cazes--all the best painters and sculptors
of the day--were employed in the decoration of its salons; splendid
tapestries, exquisite porcelain, costly _objets d’art_ were to be
seen on every side.
The favourite possessed a beautiful voice and a wonderful talent of
interpretation. During her residence at Turin she had conceived a
passion for the works of the Italian composers, up to this time very
little known in France. With the aid of Crozat, a wealthy banker of
the Rue des Petits-Champs, who shared her enthusiasm, she proceeded
to organize a company of amateurs, who gave concerts at the houses of
several persons of distinction. These artistic reunions soon became
popular and undoubtedly contributed to form the taste of the nation.
But while Madame de Prie, all smiles and gaiety, seemed to have no
thought beyond the enjoyment of life, she was in secret carefully
maturing her plans. Since the hostile faction refused to be placated,
save at a price which would entail the virtual sacrifice of all that
the Condés had gained, she was determined to continue the struggle; and
she had persuaded _Monsieur le Duc_ that the wiser course was not
to wait to be attacked, but to take the offensive themselves.
Towards the middle of February, 1724, no small sensation was aroused
by the news that Ravot d’Ombreval had been appointed Lieutenant of
Police in place of d’Argenson, whom the Duc de Chartres had persuaded
to resign his office, and that Pâris-Duverney had become Guardian of
the Royal Treasure. These appointments were very significant, for
d’Ombreval, besides being a devoted adherent of _Monsieur le Duc_
and Madame de Prie, had acted as prosecuting counsel before the
Commission, while Duverney and his brothers were the most implacable
of all the enemies of Le Blanc; and little surprise was expressed at
the announcement, a few days later, that the proceedings against La
Jonchère were to be resumed forthwith.
The indignation and alarm of the Orléanists knew no bounds, for those
already summoned before the Commission were not the only persons who
had had interesting financial transactions with the treasurer of the
Emergency War Fund, and, now that the Condés were in power, there was
no saying how far the net might not be cast, added to which there
was the murder of Sandrier, which would without doubt be closely
investigated.
From several quarters warnings reached _Monsieur le Duc_ and
Madame de Prie that the lives of Duverney and d’Ombreval, if not their
own, were in danger. They refused to attach any importance to them,
for, though they were aware of the unscrupulous character of some of
their adversaries, they could not bring themselves to believe that they
would carry their enmity to such lengths. However, they had soon cause
to alter their opinion.
One evening, at the end of February, 1724, a M. de la Guillonière, a
cousin of the Pâris brothers, had just alighted from his coach at the
door of Duverney’s hôtel in the Rue Saint-Antoine, when he was set
upon by masked men, who stabbed him in several places, and then took
to flight, leaving him apparently dead upon the ground. Happily his
wounds, though dangerous, were not mortal, and eventually he recovered.
Now, La Guillonière, both in build and gait, bore a strong resemblance
to Duverney, and no reasonable doubt existed that the blows aimed
at him had been intended for his cousin, for the would-be assassins
had been observed loitering round the banker’s hôtel for some time
previously.
A warning which _Monsieur le Duc_ received a day or two later made
it equally clear that, Duverney disposed of, the scoundrels intended to
turn their attentions to more exalted personages.
The Cardinal de Noailles, Archbishop of Paris, demanded an audience
of the Prime Minister on a matter of the most urgent importance, and,
when admitted, told him, in great agitation, that he had just learned
from one of his priests that, in a confession which had been made to
him, the penitent had spoken of a plot to murder both _Monsieur le
Duc_ and Madame de Prie. The prelate had hesitated before violating
the secret of the confessional, but reasons of State had prevailed.
Almost at the same time, a letter which the Chevalier de Belle-Isle had
endeavoured to pass into the Bastille to La Jonchère was intercepted.
This letter, among other pressing recommendations to the prisoner,
contained that of maintaining silence in all circumstances in regard
to his relations with Le Blanc, and promised that, if he did this, the
friends of the latter would undertake to save him.
So astounded were _Monsieur le Duc_ and the majority of his
counsellors at such tactics on the part of their enemies that, for a
moment, they were at a loss how to proceed. Madame de Prie, however,
retained her presence of mind and insisted on prompt and energetic
action, pointing out that it was now a case of war to the knife in the
most literal sense of the expression, and that, if they did not hasten
to crush their adversaries, they would certainly be crushed themselves.
It was ultimately decided to follow her counsels. The Chevalier de
Belle-Isle was forthwith arrested and conveyed to the Château of
Vincennes. On 5 March, Du Val, commandant of the mounted police,
furnished with a _lettre de cachet_, proceeded to Doué, where
he arrested the late Minister for War and conducted him to Paris and
the Bastille. The same night, the police surrounded the hôtel of the
Comte de Belle-Isle, with orders to apprehend both the count and his
friend the Marquis de Conches, who was staying with him. They secured
Belle-Isle and escorted him to the Bastille, whither his younger
brother had been transferred a few hours previously; but Conches
disguised himself and succeeded in effecting his escape by a secret
door. He did not, however, remain long at large, for he was captured
the following day at a house in the Rue Tavannes, where he had taken
refuge, and sent to join his friends in misfortune. Numerous other
arrests followed, including that of Moreau de Séchelles, a high
official at the Ministry of War and an intimate friend of Le Blanc. But
what aroused the most sensation was the apprehension of a man named
Lempereur and his two sons and of two brothers called Mestre, sons of a
soldier in the Cent-Suisses.
This Lempereur, who lived in an isolated house near the wood of Rueil,
had formerly been a gardener at the Château of La Jonchère, and he
was suspected of having murdered Sandrier, with the assistance of his
sons and the Mestres. He was also suspected of being concerned in
another crime, which the police believed to be closely connected with
the first. One evening in September, 1722--that is to say, about five
months after the discovery of Sandrier’s body--a carter in the employ
of the tenant of La Malmaison, a farm upon the La Jonchère estate,
afterwards celebrated as the residence of the Empress Josephine,
had been murdered close to his master’s door. As nothing upon him
had been touched, and he was not known to have any private enemies,
the inference was that he had been in possession of certain facts
concerning the death of Sandrier which had made his removal necessary
to the safety of the assassins.
It was the intention of the new Government to concentrate all their
efforts to secure the total ruin of Le Blanc, the very life and soul
of the hostile faction. He was to be brought to trial on two charges:
the old one of embezzlement of public funds, the new one of homicide.
The first would be easy to prove; in fact, his culpability, if not the
exact extent of it, had been clearly revealed by the examination of La
Jonchère’s papers. The second presented much greater difficulties, but
it was obvious that a conviction on the charge of embezzlement would
greatly facilitate the task of the prosecution.
The Orléanists, on their side, made the most desperate efforts to
intimidate their adversaries into abandoning their designs against the
ex-Secretary of State. Insults and menaces rained upon _Monsieur
le Duc_, upon Madame de Prie, upon the Pâris brothers, upon
d’Ombreval, and upon all their most prominent supporters; the most
disgusting effusions concerning the Prime Minister and his favourite
were scattered about in the gallery and salons of Versailles and even
in the bedchamber of the young King; the most biting _chansons_
circulated in Paris; almost every day came warnings that their lives
were in danger; and a relative and staunch adherent of Madame de Prie
died suddenly, in circumstances which left little doubt that he had
been poisoned.
The Government, however, refused to be diverted from its course. The
proceedings against La Jonchère were continued, and on 15 April, 1724,
the Commission _censured_ him, declared him incapable of holding
any office under the Crown, and condemned him to restore to the King
2,100,000 livres--a very small part of the amount of which the State
had been defrauded.[266] The Comte de Belle-Isle was to be surety for
600,000 livres of this sum.
This mitigated condemnation was intended to convey the impression that
La Jonchère had only been acting under the orders of the late Minister
for War, and that the latter was the real culprit.
In the meanwhile, the Government had decided to endeavour to bring home
to Le Blanc yet another mysterious crime. In the spring of 1718, a
certain Gazan de la Combe, of whom very little is known, had been found
dead, strangled by a cord attached to the foot of his bed, at the house
of La Barre, lieutenant of the constabulary, in the Rue Notre-Dame de
Bonne-Nouvelle. Le Blanc and other Ministers had, it appeared, been in
the habit of consigning to the care of La Barre certain persons who had
incurred their displeasure, and it was given out that the dead man had
been confined there on account of intrigues on behalf of the Spanish
Ambassador, the Duc and Duchesse du Maine, and their accomplices, and
that, knowing that it was the intention of the Government to bring him
to trial, he had, in his despair, committed suicide. Now, however, an
officer in the Army came forward who informed the police that, at the
time of the death of La Combe, he happened to be detained in the same
house, by orders of Le Blanc; that one morning, attracted by cries of
terror from the wife of La Barre, he had hurried to La Combe’s room,
where he found him lying dead, but that, from the position of the body,
he was of opinion that it was impossible for him to have taken his own
life. He added that, while he was in the room, Le Blanc had entered,
accompanied by La Barre; that the Minister, on perceiving him, had
appeared very agitated, and had demanded of La Barre why he had not set
him at liberty two days before, in accordance with his instructions,
and had then ordered him to leave the house. This evidence was
subsequently confirmed by one of La Barre’s servants.
In the opinion of the police, there was little doubt that the
unfortunate La Combe had, like Sandrier, been in possession of certain
facts concerning the Emergency War Fund which made his removal
advisable; and La Barre and his wife were promptly arrested and
conducted to the Bastille.
Matters now began to look very black indeed for Le Blanc, and there
were not a few who declared that he might consider himself very
fortunate if he did not terminate his career on the gibbet. But,
fortunately for the ex-Minister for War, he was, through his title
of honorary _maître des requêtes_, a member of the Parlement of
Paris, and had therefore the right to demand to be judged by all the
Chambers sitting together; and just as he was about to be brought to
trial, he presented to the Parlement a petition to that effect, which
was immediately granted.
This move on the part of the accused was a serious check to _Monsieur
le Duc_ and Madame de Prie, who for a moment had imagined that they
had their enemy in their power, and that they were on the point of
dealing, through his condemnation, an overwhelming blow to the hostile
faction. For the Parlement was not unnaturally inclined to indulgence
when the misdeeds of one of its own members was in question, and Le
Blanc had had the good fortune to ingratiate himself with it during
the Regency. Moreover, the Orléans counted many friends among the
magistracy, the Condés comparatively few.
However, as the trial was not to come on for several months, they
hoped, in the interval, so to strengthen their position that, even
if the issue were unfavourable to them, the consequences would be of
comparatively small importance. Their great object was to ingratiate
themselves with Louis XV. and to combat the increasing influence of
Fleury over the young monarch’s mind, in which they perceived an even
greater danger than the enmity of the Orléans.
“The Prime Minister governs certainly,” writes that shrewd observer,
the Venetian Ambassador, Morosini, “and directs the affairs of the
kingdom, as well as its foreign policy. The bishop appears to court
effacement and to be reluctant to meddle with anything. But nothing
is concluded without the King’s consent, and the King decides nothing
without the bishop’s approval. A few days ago, for example, _Monsieur
le Duc_ presented himself to beg him to name an hour which would be
convenient to him for work. The King was playing cards with the Duc
de Noailles, and, not seeing the Bishop of Fréjus, gave orders that
he should be summoned immediately. After which he continued to play
until the arrival of the bishop, whom he then caused to enter into his
cabinet with _Monsieur le Duc_. What passed on this occasion is
constantly happening.... I hear that the Prime Minister has never had a
conversation with the King alone, while the bishop speaks to him when
and where he pleases.
“Moreover, it is continually being said in public that, if an
ecclesiastic is to continue the traditions of the Dubois, the Mazarins,
and the Richelieus, it will be without doubt the Bishop of Fréjus....
“_Monsieur le Duc_ and his _entourage_ perceive with mortification the
continual encroachments of the bishop. They fear and detest him, but
they dare not attack him openly, finding his position too strong.”
However, if Fleury’s position were too strong to be carried by a
direct attack, it was not too strong to be undermined, and the idea
occurred to Madame de Prie to draw the aged Maréchal de Villeroy, Louis
XV.’s former _gouverneur_, from his retirement and oppose him
to the Bishop of Fréjus. The marshal, it will be remembered, had been
banished from Court by the Regent in 1722, since which time he had
been vegetating in his government of Lyons. The young King had been
attached to Villeroy and had shed bitter tears when he learned of his
disgrace, and if, in the interval, his sentiments had not changed, the
ex-_gouverneur_ might easily become a formidable rival to the
bishop.
Louis XV. seemed quite delighted at the prospect of seeing his old
friend again, and the hopes of the conspirators ran high. But they
were fated never to materialize, for, though his Majesty received the
marshal graciously enough, he subsequently took so little notice of
him, that the old man, deeply mortified, almost immediately quitted the
Court and never appeared there again. Thus, the influence of Fleury
remained as potent as ever, and, since he had not failed to penetrate
this little manœuvre, the antipathy which he had always felt for
_Monsieur le Duc_ and the favourite was not lessened.
But Madame de Prie was a young woman of infinite resource and she had
many cards in her hands. Every day _Monsieur le Duc_ relied more
on her counsels, not only because he had formed the highest opinion of
her intelligence, but because, as he explained after his disgrace, he
felt that she was devoted to his interests, “up to the annihilation of
every other sentiment.”
No longer did she make any pretence of being absorbed in pleasure, as
in the first weeks of her lover’s Ministry. She had become a politician
of the most ardent kind, and the greater part of her time was passed
in her cabinet, dictating to the two secretaries she employed for her
immense correspondence, discussing with the Ministers, who, by their
chief’s desire, invariably consulted her, the most difficult questions,
and making notes on the _placets_ presented to _Monsieur le
Duc_, every one of which was submitted to her. All who approached
her were astonished at her industry, at the shrewdness of her judgment,
and at her grasp of matters which are usually considered quite beyond
the comprehension of a young woman. “She was,” wrote the Abbé Legendre,
“a heroine capable of regulating the affairs of a vast empire.”
The immense patronage which _Monsieur le Duc_ exercised in both
his private and official capacities was almost entirely directed
by her, and, though she was, of course, guided chiefly by party
considerations, some of her selections showed sound judgment. Thus, her
choice of the Duc de Richelieu, in 1725, for the Embassy at Vienna,
though ridiculed at the time, was really a very happy one; and this
is admitted even by historians so little favourable to Madame de Prie
as Lemontey.[267] Without allowing herself to be discouraged by the
failure of the Villeroy affair, the marchioness promptly proceeded to
make another and more important move.
The surest way to gain the good graces of the young King was to exploit
his passion for the chase. Well, no one was better able to procure him
this diversion than _Monsieur le Duc_. His forests of Chantilly
and Halatte abounded in big game, already beginning to fail in those in
the vicinity of Versailles, owing to their being too constantly hunted.
The hunting establishment of the prince, moreover, enjoyed an almost
European reputation, while he himself was a famous man when hounds were
running.
At the suggestion of his mistress, _Monsieur le Duc_ proposed to
the King that he should honour him by hunting his forests and spend the
months of July and August at Chantilly, by which means not only would
they have every opportunity of gaining the young monarch’s favour by
gratifying his taste for sport and amusement, but he would be removed
for a time from the influence of Fleury, and also from that of the
Orléans’ faction, which was continually bombarding him with petitions
on behalf of Le Blanc and complaints as to the alleged ill-treatment to
which the ex-Minister and his fellow-prisoners were being subjected in
the Bastille.
Louis XV. received the proposal with delight, and on the last
day of June he set out for Chantilly, accompanied by a splendid
_entourage_, from which _Monsieur le Duc_ and Madame de Prie
had taken care that every one avowedly hostile to their cause should
be excluded, although they had decided to admit several of the more
moderate partisans of the Orléans, whom they hoped to win over. The
weather was magnificent, and Chantilly had never looked more beautiful.
The King “indulged every day in the amusement of the chase, either of
the stag or the boar, and appeared very satisfied with the cares which
_Monsieur le Duc_ took without ceasing to render his stay at this
superb château agreeable.” His Majesty dined daily with the princes
and nobles whom he did the honour to select, and in the evening supped
with _Madame la Duchesse_, Mlle. de Clermont, and a few ladies
and nobles, whom he named in rotation, his table being served with
extreme magnificence. After supper, the company adjourned to a gallery
adjoining the King’s apartments, where high play went on until a late
hour, to the accompaniment of _Monsieur le Duc’s_ private band.
Thus the days went by, and his Majesty was so delighted with the
splendid sport provided for him, and the unceasing efforts of
_Monsieur le Duc_ and Madame de Prie to keep him amused, that his
former prejudice against them seemed to have disappeared entirely. He
laughed and jested with his host, invited the marchioness to sup at his
own table and to ride in his carriage to the chase, and, indeed, was so
gracious to that lady that a rumour circulated in Paris that she and
her fair friends had designs upon the virtue of the young monarch. In
short, everything was proceeding as well as could possibly be desired,
and the King had even decided to prolong his visit beyond the time he
had originally fixed, when a most unexpected and unfortunate event
brought it to an abrupt conclusion, and with it all the calculations of
Madame de Prie.
On the afternoon of 31 August, the young Duc de Melun, one of the
few of his courtiers for whom Louis XV. had shown any partiality,
was charged by a stag which he was pursuing, and so badly gored that
he died in the early hours of the following morning. This tragedy
produced so painful an impression upon the young King that it was
only with great difficulty that he could be prevented from returning
to Versailles that very evening, and, though he consented to postpone
his departure until 3 September, he scarcely left his apartments and
refused to share in any amusement. He quitted the splendid residence of
_Monsieur le Duc_ with very different feelings from those which he
had shown a few days previously, and there could be little doubt that
the death of the Duc de Melun had effaced the good impression which the
prince and his mistress had been at such infinite pains to create, and
that it would be many a long day ere he consented to return to a spot
which possessed such dolorous associations.
And so, like the recall of Villeroy, the Chantilly visit had failed
to produce the desired effect, though through no fault of those who
had planned it; and at the beginning of 1725 the Condé party sustained
another check.
On 7 January, the late Minister for War, Le Blanc, was arraigned before
the assembled Chambers, charged with being an accomplice of the murders
of Gazan de la Combe, Sandrier, and the carter of La Malmaison, and
of the attempted assassination of La Guillonière. The trial, into the
details of which it is impossible to enter here, lasted a fortnight,
but almost from the first day it was evident that the result was a
foregone conclusion. The entry of the Duc d’Orléans, the Prince de
Conti and their suites into the Grande Chambre was greeted with loud
murmurs of approbation; that of the peers of the Condé party, the Ducs
de la Feuillade, de Brancas, and de Richelieu, with derisive laughter.
The Bishops of Sarlat and Avranches, Le Blanc’s brothers, the Maréchal
de Bézons, his brother-in-law, the Chevalier Le Blanc, his son, and
other relatives and intimate friends of the accused, sat together in a
body and displayed so much emotion that many of the judges could hardly
restrain their tears. And the line taken by the defence--that Le Blanc
was a victim of party rancour and that the charges against him had been
manufactured by the Government--was admirably calculated to appeal to
the prejudice of a magistracy which almost invariably found itself in
opposition to the Ministry of the day.
[Illustration: CLAUDE LE BLANC
FROM AN ENGRAVING BY P. DREVET, AFTER THE PAINTING BY A. LE
PRIEUR]
The proceedings, contrary to custom, were conducted with closed doors,
the public being rigorously excluded; a great part of the evidence
for the prosecution was ruled out, while everything that was likely to
tell in favour of the accused was at once admitted. On the third day,
the Ducs de la Feuillade, de Brancas, and de Richelieu withdrew, and
were followed by all the counsellors of the Condé party; but the Duc
d’Orléans and the Prince de Conti continued to encourage the defence
by their presence for some days longer. Finally, on 21 January, the
Parlement, by the unanimous vote of sixty-nine judges, acquitted Le
Blanc on all four changes--a verdict which was received with applause
by the public, with whom, owing to various reasons, of which we shall
speak hereafter, the Ministry of _Monsieur le Duc_ was fast
losing what popularity it had once possessed, and who, ignorant of the
strength of the evidence against Le Blanc, saw in him only a victim of
the hatred of the Pâris brothers and Madame de Prie. Notwithstanding
what certain historians, who were unacquainted with the facts as they
are known to-day, have asserted to the contrary, there can be very
little doubt that the ex-Minister for War had benefited by one of
those scandalous miscarriages of justice of which the records of the
Parlement of Paris afford only too many examples. Before an impartial
tribunal he would have been almost certainly found guilty on the
charges relating to Gazan de la Combe and La Guillonière, and probably
on the others also; and, whatever may be thought of the motives of
Madame de Prie, she had rendered a public service by her efforts to run
to earth this highly-placed criminal.
Le Blanc, although, as a wag remarked, “after being very black, he had
been made white (_blanc_) again,” was not immediately released,
but remained in the Bastille until the following 12 May, when he was
set at liberty and exiled to Lisieux. On the same day, the Comte de
Belle-Isle was also liberated, and exiled to Carcassonne. Two months
later, La Jonchère also found himself a free man.
The ex-Minister’s accomplices were brought to trial before the
Tournelle,[268] and were all acquitted, with the exception of La
Jonchère’s gardener Lempereur, who was found guilty of the La Malmaison
murder and broken on the wheel. He paid for all.
CHAPTER XXIII
_Monsieur le Duc_ and Madame de Prie determine to break off
the marriage of Louis XV. and the Infanta, and to marry the
young King to a princess capable of at once giving him an
heir--Double interest of the favourite in the accomplishment
of this design--Question of the remarriage of _Monsieur le
Duc_--Madame de Prie, unable to oppose this, selects Marie
Leczinska--Rupture of the Spanish marriage--Exasperation of
the Court of Madrid--Difficulty of finding a suitable consort
for Louis XV.--Madame de Prie accused of having barred the way
of Mlle. de Vermandois to the crown matrimonial--The favourite
advocates the claims of Marie Leczinska, who is eventually
chosen--Triumph of Madame de Prie--Arrival of the new Queen--A
model husband--Growing unpopularity of the Government and
increasing influence of Fleury--An unsuccessful intrigue--Madame
de Prie retires from Court, but _Monsieur le Duc_ insists on
her return--Disgrace of _Monsieur le Duc_--His mother and his
mistress follow him to Chantilly--Madame de Prie is exiled to
Normandy--A touching farewell--Chivalrous behaviour of the
prince--Death of Madame de Prie--Remarriage of _Monsieur le
Duc_--His death.
_Monsieur le Duc_ and Madame de Prie did not allow themselves to
be cast down by the reverse which they had sustained at the Palais de
Justice, since for some months they had been meditating a most daring
project, which, they believed, would render them absolute masters of
the field.
We have mentioned that in 1721 the Infanta Luisa Isabella, then in her
fifth year, had been sent to the French Court to be brought up there
until she had reached a marriageable age, when she was to become the
wife of Louis XV. Well, this arrangement had always been regarded with
the strongest disfavour by _Monsieur le Duc_ and his mistress.
In the first place, years must elapse before the “Infanta-Queen,” as
the little princess was called, would be able to bear an heir to the
throne, and should Louis XV. die without male issue, their enemy, the
Duc de Chartres, would become King. In the second, should the Infanta
succeed in gaining any influence over the young monarch’s mind, that
influence would certainly be exploited by Philip V. to bring about the
dismissal of _Monsieur le Duc_ and the elevation of the Orléans.
During the visit of the King to Chantilly in the previous summer they
had taken counsel with Pâris-Duverney and their principal advisers, and
had decided that the Infanta must be sent back to Spain, even at the
risk of an open breach with Philip V.; and Louis XV. married to some
princess who could at once make him a father.
Madame de Prie had personally a double interest in the accomplishment
of this design, for not only would it remove the greatest dangers
which _Monsieur le Duc_ had to fear and immensely strengthen
his position, but the marriage of the King and the birth of a prince
would serve to retard perhaps indefinitely the marriage of her lover.
For while only two lives stood between _Monsieur le Duc_ and the
throne, it was obviously his duty to take a second wife, and _Madame
la Duchesse_ was continually urging him to do so. Such a prospect
was naturally most distasteful to Madame de Prie, not because she had
much reason to fear a rival in the prince’s affections, but because
she had become so attached to him that she could not bear the thought
of surrendering him, even nominally, to another woman. Moreover, his
remarriage must interfere to some extent with that free intercourse
which had hitherto existed between them, and which, for political as
well as sentimental reasons, might occasion serious inconvenience.
However, since she did not see her way to offer any opposition to
the affair without the risk of an open quarrel with _Madame la
Duchesse_, she decided to accept the inevitable, and to occupy
herself in finding a wife for her lover who, while not possessing
sufficient personal attractions to cause her any jealousy, would be
sufficiently complaisant to reduce the inconveniences which she feared
to a minimum.
She accordingly lent _Madame la Duchesse_ her most devoted
adherents, the same whom she was presently to employ on behalf of
Louis XV.; and the Courts of Europe were ransacked to find a suitable
partner for the chief of the Condés. The search proved to be a
difficult one, for Madame de Prie’s requirements naturally caused not
a few otherwise eligible young ladies to be passed over by her agents;
but, at length, her old admirer Lozilières, formerly secretary to the
Embassy at Turin, who journeyed under the name of the Chevalier de Méré
and in the character of a wandering artist, reported the discovery of
one whom he thought might answer her purpose.
The princess in question was Marie Leczinska, daughter of Stanislaus
Leczinski, the dethroned and fugitive King of Poland, who was now
vegetating sadly at Weissembourg, in Alsace. She was described as
pleasing in appearance, though without any pretensions to beauty, very
amiable, very kind-hearted, and entirely devoid of ambition; in short,
exactly the kind of young woman to make _Monsieur le Duc_ a good
wife, without threatening any danger to his mistress. The favourite’s
suggestion of an alliance between the Duc de Bourbon and the Polish
princess was well received by _Madame la Duchesse_, for, though
the young lady’s father was at present in exile, it was far from
improbable that a turn of fortune might one day restore him to his
throne; _Monsieur le Duc_ offered no opposition; Stanislaus gave
thanks to Heaven that his daughter’s hand was sought by so powerful a
prince; Marie had no other wish than that of her father; and the affair
was almost concluded, when events occurred which decided the Government
that the marriage of the King to a princess capable of bearing him
children was a question which admitted of no delay.
On 30 August, 1724, the young King of Spain died, and Philip V. resumed
the crown which he had resigned a few months before. Early in 1725,
a despatch from Philip to his Ambassador at the Court of Versailles
was intercepted by the agents of _Monsieur le Duc_, which showed
that it was his intention to demand “the public declaration of the
nuptial arrangements” between Louis XV. and the Infanta. And, almost
immediately after this discovery, the young King fell so ill that for
several days he was believed to be in serious danger.
This last event precipitated matters, and the French Government
resolved not to wait until the new _fiancée_ was chosen, but to
inform the Court of Madrid at once of the resolution at which they had
arrived. The Maréchal de Tessé, the French Ambassador, little suitable
to undertake so disagreeable a commission, on account of his great
attachment to Philip V., was recalled, and it was the Abbé de Livry,
_chargé d’affaires_ at Lisbon, who presented to his Catholic
Majesty the letter in which Louis XV. endeavoured to justify the
affront which he was inflicting on his uncle. “Trembling from head to
foot, the abbé presented to the King his master’s letter. The Queen was
at the end of the cabinet, occupied with her correspondence. Suddenly,
she heard the King strike the table violently, and cry out: ‘Ah! the
traitor!’ She ran to him.... The King handed her the letter, saying:
‘Take it, Madame, read it!’ The Queen read it, and then, handing back
the letter, she replied with great composure: ‘Well! We must send to
receive the Infanta.’”[269]
When the news was known in Madrid, the indignation of the populace knew
no bounds; excited crowds paraded the streets; the King of France was
burned in effigy, and the French residents trembled for their safety.
Philip V. even talked of imprisoning his widowed daughter-in-law and
her sister, Mlle. de Beaujolais, in some remote corner of the kingdom,
where they should remain as hostages. But afterwards he changed his
mind, and at the end of March they were sent back to France, the want
of courtesy shown them being in striking contrast to the infinite
formalities which marked the journey of the Infanta from Versailles to
Bayonne. That little princess departed under the impression that she
was merely going to pay a visit to her family.
Meanwhile, the search for the future Queen of France was being busily
prosecuted. The claims of over one hundred princesses were discussed
by the Council, and one after another eliminated from the list, on the
score that they were too old or too young or too poor or too delicate,
until the number was reduced to three; the two youngest sisters of
_Monsieur le Duc_, Mlle. de Vermandois and Mlle. de Sens, and the
Princess Anne of England.
The idea of a marriage between Louis XV. and one of the Condés
displeased Fleury, while _Monsieur le Duc_ feared that it might
expose him to the charge of having sent away the Infanta in order to
elevate his own family; and it was therefore decided to demand the
hand of the English princess. It seems astonishing that _Monsieur le
Duc_ and his advisers should not have understood that the question
of religion would prove an insuperable obstacle to the proposed
alliance. They made it conditional on the Princess Anne’s conversion
to Catholicism, although the Hanoverian dynasty occupied the throne
of England in virtue of its Protestant professions. As every one but
themselves must have foreseen, George I.’s answer was a courteous but
firm refusal.
_Monsieur le Duc_ appeared to find himself thrown back upon his
sisters. Both possessed all the physical and mental qualifications that
could be desired in a queen; but the younger, Mlle. de Sens, was very
much under the domination of her mother, and Madame de Prie feared
that _Madame la Duchesse_ might exercise through her an influence
hostile to her own. The same objection did not apply to her elder
sister, and there is a tradition that the favourite went, under an
assumed name, to the Abbey of Fontevrault, of which Mlle. de Vermandois
was a _pensionnaire_, to inform her, on behalf of _Monsieur le
Duc_, of the honour in store for her; that, in the course of their
conversation, she inquired if she had ever heard of Madame de Prie,
to which the young princess replied, in a horrified tone, that the
said lady was a “_méchante créature_,” whom no one ever mentioned
in the convent without making the sign of the Cross; that it was
deplorable that her brother should have fallen under the influence of
a person who was detested by all France, and that he would be well
advised to get rid of her as soon as possible. Whereupon, we are told,
Madame de Prie abruptly quitted the room, exclaiming furiously: “_Va!
tu ne seras pas reine de France._”
In a monotonous age it seems a pity to spoil so striking a story,
but, in the interests of truth, we feel bound to mention that, some
three months after the date at which this incident is supposed to
have occurred, Mlle. de Vermandois wrote to the favourite a letter
couched in the most cordial terms, and concluding thus: “I cannot too
often repeat to you, Madame, what are the sentiments of confidence,
friendship, and consideration that I entertain for you.”[270]
The fact of the matter is that Mlle. de Vermandois did not become
the bride of Louis XV., because she preferred to become the bride of
Heaven, in which she perhaps showed a wise discretion.
The refusal of Mlle. de Vermandois was probably a relief to _Monsieur
le Duc_, who was aware that the bitterness and jealousy aroused by
the elevation of his sister would go far to outweigh the advantages
which he would gain from his close connexion with the King. At the same
time, it threatened to prolong a situation the dangers of which had
been brought home to him very forcibly by the recent serious illness of
his young Sovereign.
It was at this moment that he received, from the Empress Catherine
of Russia, an offer which contributed indirectly to give to the
great affair of the marriage of Louis XV. the most unexpected
_dénoûment_. Catherine proposed that her daughter Elizabeth
should wed the King of France, and that _Monsieur le Duc_ himself
should marry Marie Leczinska--with whom she was no doubt aware that he
had already opened matrimonial negotiations--and become the Russian
candidate for the throne of Poland, in succession to Augustus III.
This gave Madame de Prie an opening of which she was not slow to take
advantage. The Russian alliance, she declared, to _Monsieur le
Duc_, was quite out of the question, for the Princess Elizabeth
was reported to be a true child of her mother, and would be certain to
acquire a great influence over the young King, which would, of course,
be directed by Catherine. But let the prince resign his own pretensions
to the hand of Marie Leczinska in favour of his Sovereign, and not only
would he escape a marriage which only a sense of the duty he owed his
family was impelling him to contract, but he would secure a Queen who
would owe everything to him, who had no support either in France or
abroad, and whose character promised obedience and docility.
The name of Marie Leczinska had already been erased from the list of
marriageable princesses, on the ground that she belonged to a poor and
dispossessed family; but, urged on by his mistress and Pâris-Duverney,
_Monsieur le Duc_ immediately proceeded to advocate her claims.
His proposal met with the most violent opposition from the Duc
d’Orléans, who presented himself before Louis XV., with tears coursing
down his cheeks, and endeavoured to persuade him from a marriage
contrary, he declared, to the wishes of the nation; while the King
of Sardinia, his Majesty’s grandfather, indignant at not having been
consulted, addressed the most reproachful letters to the young monarch
concerning the _mésalliance_ which he was about to commit. But
Fleury, a word from whom would have had more weight with Louis XV. than
the expostulations of all the kings and princes in Europe, excused
himself from expressing an opinion, and on 27 May, 1725, his Majesty
announced publicly, after dinner, his approaching marriage with Marie
Leczinska.
It was a great triumph for _Monsieur le Duc_ and his mistress.
At one blow, so to speak, they had got rid of the Infanta and the
dreaded influence of Philip V.; affianced the King to a princess who
might before a year had elapsed bear him a son to stand between the
Duc d’Orléans and the throne, and secured a Queen of France from whose
influence they had nothing to fear and everything to hope.
The exiles of Weissembourg were not allowed to remain in doubt as to
whom they were indebted for their amazing good fortune, and they
displayed a gratitude proportioned to their joy. “In his correspondence
with the Maréchal de Bourg,” writes M. Thirion, “the dethroned King
returned constantly to the gratitude which he, his wife, and his
daughter had vowed to the Marquise de Prie, to the admiration which
she had inspired in them, to the affection which they all three bore
her, to the respectful gratitude which they professed for _Monsieur
le Duc_. It was to Madame de Prie that they addressed themselves,
when they desired to know what they were expected to do, of this or
that custom of the Court. And the day when, in a scene which has
remained celebrated, the ex-King of Poland threw himself on his knees
to return thanks to Heaven for having called his daughter to such high
destinies, he thought still of the favourite. He mentioned her in his
thanksgivings.”
But great triumphs, whether military or political, are seldom cheaply
obtained, and in the present instance the cost was very considerable.
Spain had been exasperated to the last degree by the almost brutal
repudiation of the Infanta and had thrown herself into the arms of
Austria; the Orléans were furious at being outwitted and at the
treatment to which _Monsieur le Duc’s_ action had exposed their
relatives in Spain, and were more than ever determined to compass his
disgrace; while a great part both of the Court and the nation was
indignant at the selection of a princess without alliance, without
fortune, and without credit.
However, when all things were taken into account, the Prime Minister
and his favourite felt that they had good cause for rejoicing, and
they awaited with impatience the coming of Marie Leczinska and the
consummation of their hopes.
On 15 August, 1725, the Duc d’Orléans, in the name of the King of
France, espoused Marie Leczinska, at Strasbourg. For obvious reasons,
the duty could not have been an altogether pleasant one for his Royal
Highness to perform, nor was it rendered any the more agreeable by the
fact that his enemy, Madame de Prie, in her capacity as one of the
twelve _dames du palais_ of the Queen of France, was a witness of
his discomfiture. The favourite might have aspired to the more exalted
post of _dame d’atours_ (mistress of the robes), but this she had
prudently decided to forgo, lest she should be accused of wishing to
dominate her Majesty too ostensibly. But the successful candidate, the
Comtesse de Mailly, mother-in-law of the future mistress of Louis XV.,
was her selection, as were all the ladies-in-waiting.
Two days later, Marie Leczinska set out to join the King, who had
just established himself at Fontainebleau. It was remarked that both
at Strasbourg and during the journey her Majesty showed an extreme
graciousness towards Madame de Prie, and conversed with her longer
and more frequently than with any of her colleagues. At Moret, the
Queen was met by Louis XV., accompanied by all the Princesses. Marie
descended from her coach, and was preparing to kneel on a cushion
hastily thrown, but the King prevented her, kissed her on both cheeks,
“with a vivacity which astonished those who were aware of his timidity
where women were concerned,” and did not conceal his pleasure. On 5
September, the marriage was celebrated, in the chapel at Fontainebleau,
with the utmost magnificence, and the next day _Monsieur le Duc_
wrote to Stanislaus Leczinski that his Majesty’s attitude towards his
wife “had surpassed his hopes, and, if possible, his desires,” adding
certain intimate details, upon which, however, we dare not venture.
The Court remained at Fontainebleau until the first days of December,
when it returned to Versailles, where the young Queen was installed
in the apartments formerly occupied by Marie Thérèse of Austria and
the Duchesse de Bourgogne. No cloud had as yet troubled the royal
honeymoon. The King was quite a devoted husband; he passed every
night with his wife; compared her to Queen Blanche, the mother of
Saint-Louis, and said to those who drew his attention to the beauty of
some lady of the Court: “I find the Queen still more beautiful.”
_Monsieur le Duc_ and Madame de Prie were delighted, believing
that from this passion would spring true friendship and confidence;
that gradually Marie Leczinska would acquire ascendency over the mind
of this young King, half-man, half-child, and that they would be able
to govern him through her.
And badly did they stand in need of a support near the throne, for
every day the Government of _Monsieur le Duc_ was becoming more
unpopular. The cruel edict of May, 1724, against the Protestants,
loudly condemned even by many staunch Catholics; the brutal manner in
which the laws against mendicity were enforced; the failure of the
prosecution of Le Blanc; the restriction of the privileges of the
magistracy, in which most people saw only an act of vengeance for the
acquittal of the ex-Minister for War; the favour shown to the Pâris
brothers, who were generally hated; the sudden alliance of Austria and
Spain and the fear that another war was on the point of breaking out;
the enormous rise in the price of bread, which, though mainly due to
the failure of the harvest of 1725, was attributed by the people to the
operations of Madame de Prie and the Pâris brothers; and the ceaseless
intrigues of the Orléans faction, had raised against it a perfect
tempest of indignation. Riots broke out in several towns, and were with
difficulty suppressed; satires and pamphlets against the Government
poured from the printing-presses of the capital; more than one Minister
talked of resigning his office. Unless _Monsieur le Duc_ could
secure the favour and confidence of the King, his Ministry was doomed.
But between _Monsieur le Duc_ and the King stood the figure of
Fleury. The prince had now been Prime Minister for two years, yet never
had he succeeded in obtaining a single hour’s private conversation with
Louis XV. on affairs of State. A score of times when he imagined that
he had found a favourable occasion to speak to him on business, the
King had immediately turned the conversation to the chase, the play
or some kindred subject, on which he continued to talk until Fleury,
whom he never failed to summon, entered his cabinet. The previous year,
when Louis XV. was at Chantilly and the Bishop of Fréjus had gone to
spend a week at the country-house of the Duc de Liancourt, _Monsieur
le Duc_ had endeavoured to take advantage of his absence; but the
King intimated to him that he would do nothing until the return of his
preceptor, and even refused to sign some papers of trifling importance
which were awaiting his signature. All his efforts to secure the
confidence of the young monarch remained without result; the Bishop of
Fréjus perpetually barred the way.
And he could not disguise from himself the fact that Fleury was no
longer content to remain neutral. He had become, if not the opponent of
_Monsieur le Duc_ himself, at least that of his chief advisers.
One day, in the spring of 1726, he drew the prince aside, denounced in
the strongest terms the conduct of Madame de Prie and Duverney, whom he
stigmatized as enemies of the State, and declared that “the reputation
of his Highness imperiously demanded that he should no longer submit
to the domination of such unworthy counsellors.” It was practically
an ultimatum, or, at any rate, _Monsieur le Duc_ regarded it in
that light. If he were willing to dismiss his mistress and Duverney
and govern on the advice of Fleury, the latter would graciously permit
him to retain the simulacrum of power. If not, the bishop intended to
procure the disgrace of all three.
The Prime Minister warmly defended his friends, asserting that they
were the victims of envy and prejudice, and ended by declaring that,
since he well knew that they were ready to hazard everything for him,
even their lives, if they were to fall, he would fall with them. Then,
after high words on both sides, the prince and the bishop parted.
When this conversation was reported to Madame de Prie, she at once
perceived that there could be no safety for the Ministry of _Monsieur
le Duc_ so long as Fleury remained at Court, and she represented
to her lover that all their efforts must henceforth be directed to
separating him from the King. It was, of course, too much to hope that
Louis XV. would ever consent to banish his former preceptor, but the
latter might be induced to believe that he had forfeited his Majesty’s
confidence and retire of his own accord.
But how was this to be accomplished? Obviously, by means of the Queen.
Marie Leczinska, thanks to the efforts of Madame de Prie and the ladies
whom the favourite had placed about her, who insinuated that Fleury was
jealous of the affection the King entertained for her, was already
prejudiced against the bishop; while she naturally felt herself under
great obligations to those who had placed the crown matrimonial upon
her head.
On 18 December, 1725, it was decided to make an attempt to accustom
the King to work with the Prime Minister without the presence of his
preceptor. The Queen, after a good deal of hesitation, had consented to
lend herself to this intrigue, certain indiscreet words which Fleury
had uttered in her presence having dissipated her last scruples.
In accordance with the plan agreed upon, when Louis XV. returned from
the chase, she sent to ask him to join her in her cabinet. It was then
about an hour before that which he invariably spent in conversation
with his preceptor.
On entering his wife’s apartments, the King found her with _Monsieur
le Duc_. With her most ingratiating smile, the Queen told him that
she had a favour to ask of him. Would he not consent to work in her
cabinet that evening with the Prime Minister only?
The King refused, though she continued to press him until the time
arrived for him to join Fleury. Before he left, however, she succeeded
in extracting a promise from him that he would return shortly.
Proceeding to his own apartments, where his preceptor was awaiting
him, the King gave him an exact account of all that had passed, at the
same time assuring him that, he was resolved never to work alone with
_Monsieur le Duc_ and not to return to the Queen. Fleury, however,
begged him to go back, as he had given his promise to the Queen, adding
that, if he were determined not to discuss affairs of State alone with
_Monsieur le Duc_, he had better send for him. “No, no!” replied
the King; “remain here; I shall return in a moment.”
Louis XV. went out, and did not return, the Queen and _Monsieur le
Duc_ having detained him on various pretexts. Fleury waited an hour,
and then, believing or, more probably, feigning to believe, that the
King had yielded to the persuasions of the Queen, retired, and on the
following morning wrote to the King, begging him, since his services
were no longer of any value to him, to permit him to spend the rest of
his days in retreat. After which, he quitted Versailles for a little
house which he owned in the village of Issy.
The King, who had started very early for the chase, did not receive
the letter until the afternoon. He appeared very much disturbed, and
retired at once to his apartments, where he threw himself into a chair
and remained for more than an hour in an attitude of the most profound
dejection. At length, one of his gentlemen of the Chamber, the Duc de
Mortemart, ventured to mention the cause of his sorrow. “What, Sire,”
said he, “are you not the master? Tell _Monsieur le Duc_ to send
at once for M. de Fréjus, and you will see him again.”
The King followed his advice; the Prime Minister was obliged to obey,
with what feelings may be imagined, and on the following morning Fleury
returned in triumph to Versailles.
From that hour it was clear that the Ministry was doomed, unless it
could come to terms with the bishop. The outcry against it redoubled
in intensity; its more lukewarm friends began to fall away and to pay
their court openly to Fleury; while the King’s manner towards his wife
plainly showed the irritation which he felt at her conduct.
It is probable that Fleury would have been prepared to leave the
nominal direction of affairs in the hands of _Monsieur le Duc_, at
any rate until the situation both at home and abroad had become less
embarrassing, if the prince had consented to the dismissal of Madame
de Prie and Duverney, the two particular objects of public hatred.
Several times he urged this step upon the prince, only to be met with
an assurance that both of them had practically ceased to exercise any
political influence. More wise than her lover, Madame de Prie sought to
conciliate the bishop by temporarily renouncing public life, and, when
her duties as _dame du palais_ did not require her presence at the
Court, passing the greater part of her time in Paris. At the beginning
of March, 1726, she withdrew to an estate which she had acquired near
Lisieux, whence she wrote begging the Queen to accord her permission
to remain there for some time and to allow one of her colleagues
to perform her official functions. _Monsieur le Duc_, however,
showed great irritation at the departure of his mistress, the more
so since it coincided with the absence of Duverney, who had decided
to efface himself for a while also, although the Prime Minister was
just then in particular need of his advice on some financial question;
and he accordingly sent the marchioness what was practically an order
to return to Versailles. She arrived, escorted by Duverney, who had
received a similar summons; and their unexpected appearance upon the
scene created a most unfortunate impression, and convinced Fleury that
all his remonstrances were useless, and that they had acquired such
ascendency over the Prime Minister that he would never consent to part
with them.
Henceforth, the only question with him was the choice of a convenient
moment for the disgrace of _Monsieur le Duc_. Both he and the
King, however, found it difficult to take the decisive step, and they
were still hesitating when, on 8 June, the Prime Minister, exasperated
by a fresh outburst against Madame de Prie, who had just returned to
Versailles from a visit to Paris, came to Louis XV. and tendered his
resignation. But it was not _Monsieur le Duc’s_ resignation that
the bishop required, but his dismissal, and, on his advice, Louis XV.,
with that dissimulation which was one of the least edifying traits in
his character, not only begged the Prime Minister to retain his office,
but gave him “marks of his friendship and satisfaction.”
_Monsieur le Duc_ had no choice but to withdraw his resignation,
and left the royal presence under the comforting impression that he
stood in no immediate danger. He was speedily undeceived.
On Tuesday, 11 June, at three o’clock in the afternoon, _Monsieur
le Duc_, Madame de Prie and Duverney being all three still at
Versailles, Louis XV. set out for Rambouillet. At dinner the King had
shown himself particularly gracious to the Prime Minister. He had given
him to taste some bread which had been kneaded specially for him at the
Ménagerie; had thrown a little loaf into his hat, and had said, as he
rose from table: “Monsieur, despatch your affairs and come early to
Rambouillet, because I shall sup at half-past eight,” a recommendation
which he repeated at the moment of entering his carriage.
After the King had driven away, _Monsieur le Duc_ went to his
cabinet, where he passed the rest of the afternoon working with the
Minister for War, Breteuil, and the Comptroller-General, Dodun. Shortly
before eight o’clock, the other Ministers left the château, and the
prince was about to follow them, when he was informed that the Duc de
Charost, Captain of the Guards, had been waiting for three-quarters of
an hour in order to speak to him.
But let us allow Mathieu Marais to relate what followed in his own
words:
“The prince went out and told the Duc de Charost that he was going to
join the King at Rambouillet, and was pressed for time, and asked him
to defer until the morrow what he had to say to him. The Captain of the
Guards answered in a low tone that what he had to say to him was from
the King; upon which they re-entered the cabinet. The Duc de Charost
handed him an order from the King, which was to the effect that, as he
wished to govern himself in the future, he was suppressing the office
of Prime Minister; that he thanked him for his services, and ordered
him to retire to Chantilly, until further orders. This order was in the
King’s own hand. The prince’s first movement was one of anger, after
which he said that he would obey. He asked: ‘And my papers?’ and was
told that there were no orders concerning them. He sorted them, burned
some, placed some in his pocket, and filled a despatch-box with others,
observing: ‘These are the King’s papers, and all the others that remain
are his.’ He wrote to _Madame la Duchesse_ almost, it is said,
in these terms: ‘Every day follows another, and does not resemble it.
Yesterday, I was Cæsar; to-day, I am Pompey. I am going to Chantilly.
I count, _belle maman_, on your still preserving for me your good
graces.’ He was asked for his parole, which he gave, and then entered
his carriage, which had been waiting for a long time to take him to
Rambouillet. He thanked all the courtiers who accompanied him to his
carriage, and when he was outside the gates, he was heard to say to
his postilion: ‘To Chantilly!’ M. de Saint-Pol, exempt of the Guards,
accompanied him as far as the château.”
While Charost was communicating the wishes of the King to the Prime
Minister, Fleury, who was about to replace him, proceeded to the
Queen’s apartments, armed with a letter which he had dictated that
morning to his former pupil. It was as follows: “I beg you, Madame,
and, if need be, I order you, to do everything that the former Bishop
of Fréjus will tell you on my behalf, as if it were myself.”[271] The
selection of Fleury to inform the Queen of the disgrace of her friends
and to signify to her his orders was a refinement of cruelty, and the
poor woman wept bitterly. After a while, however, she recovered her
composure and wrote to the King: “Gratitude towards _Monsieur le
Duc_ has made me shed tears, but your commands dry them.”
As soon as the bishop had departed, the Queen sent for Madame de Prie
and the fallen Minister’s favourite sister, Mlle. de Clermont, whom she
informed of what had occurred. Both ladies started that same night for
Chantilly, where they arrived at daybreak. In the evening, _Madame
la Duchesse_, who had received the news of her son’s disgrace at
the Château of Saint-Maur, appeared upon the scene, with the faithful
Lassay in her train.[272] _Madame la Duchesse_ had always detested
Madame de Prie, and regarding her, as she now did, as the cause of her
son’s disgrace, her indignation against her knew no bounds. “She was
very surprised to learn that Madame de Prie was there, and manifested
it in terms which marked her contempt and hatred. After having embraced
her son, she told him that she hoped that the lady would not be so
indiscreet as to present herself before her. _Monsieur le Duc_
replied that she should have reason to be satisfied, and begged her not
to be displeased if he did not sup with her, as he was very tired. He
supped alone with Madame de Prie; _Madame la Duchesse_ supped with
M. de Lassay.
“On the Thursday, on descending to dinner, _Madame la Duchesse_
perceived that a place had been laid for Madame de Prie next to her
own. She stopped and manifested her surprise. Madame de Prie approached
and said to her: ‘Is it your wish that I retire?’ She replied: ‘No, you
may sit down to table!’ But she called the Prince di Carignano to sit
by her, and Madame de Prie took the prince’s place.
“As this was done in a manner sufficiently humiliating, there were,
after dinner, a great many comings and goings, in order to persuade
_Madame la Duchesse_ to permit Madame de Prie to sup with her.
Finally, _Madame la Duchesse_ consented, out of complaisance for
_Monsieur le Duc_, in the state in which he was.”[273]
For nearly two days after the disgrace of _Monsieur le Duc_
no steps were taken against his mistress. But no one at Chantilly
doubted that her respite would be but a brief one. Duverney had been
exiled forty leagues from Paris; all the Ministers most attached to
_Monsieur le Duc_ had been relieved of their functions; Le Blanc
and the Belle-Isles had been recalled, and the man who, if he had
received his deserts, would have been decorating a gibbet had actually
been reinstated in his old post of Secretary of State for War, in
place of the honest Breteuil. In such a revolution of the palace, it
was impossible for her to escape, and on the Thursday evening the blow
fell, in the shape of a _lettre de cachet_ exiling her to her
husband’s estate of Courbépine, in Normandy.
Her parting with _Monsieur le Duc_ on the morrow was a most
touching one. “She kept up the comedy to the last,” writes the author
of the manuscript we have just cited. “Twice after entering her
carriage she returned, not being able, she said, to depart without
again embracing _Monsieur le Duc_. She appeared in despair at
leaving him, and gave him all the tokens of a passionate love. The
prince, on his side, was so afflicted that it is impossible to describe
it.”
For ourselves, we prefer to believe that the grief of Madame de Prie
was as genuine as that of _Monsieur le Duc_. It would have been,
indeed, strange if it had not been so, since, with all his faults, he
had been to her the most devoted and generous of lovers, the truest and
best of friends.
The Château of Courbépine, which Louis XV. had fixed as Madame de
Prie’s place of exile, was situated a little to the north of the
town of Bernay, in the midst of an immense wooded plain. It had been
purchased by the Marquis de Prie, not long after his marriage, from
Léonor de Matignon, Bishop of Lisieux. At first, she received but few
visitors, but when it became known that _Monsieur le Duc_ had
expressed a very ardent desire to see her, and had told the Maréchal de
Villars that “he himself was the cause of all her misfortunes and that
she did not deserve them; that she had always been disinterested, and
that the unsatisfactory condition of her affairs would in time prove
this,” people began to think that, in view of a possible return of the
prince to power, it would be imprudent to ignore the woman who still
retained his affections. From that time it became quite the fashion
to go and spend a day or two with the proscribed, and the latter
never had any cause to complain of lack of company. Nevertheless, she
felt bitterly the change in her position, and could not disguise from
herself the fact that, notwithstanding the chivalrous endeavours of
_Monsieur le Duc_ to saddle himself with the responsibility for
their common misfortune, she had largely contributed to it. She saw,
too, her relatives and _protégés_ deprived of their charges and
reduced in some instances to poverty; and this troubled her sorely.
There can be no doubt that, in time, she would have been permitted to
return, if not to the Court, at least to Paris and Chantilly; but her
health, always delicate, had begun to give way beneath the stress of so
many agitations. She demanded and obtained authorization to visit the
waters of Forges, but the relief they afforded her was only temporary.
In the early autumn of 1727 she met with a carriage accident, and
though the injuries she received were not in themselves very serious,
they hastened her death, which took place on 7 October, 1727, in her
thirtieth year.
Her enemies attributed her death to poison administered by her own
hand, and the Marquis d’Argenson has published, in his “Mémoires,” a
highly-coloured version of this hypothesis, upon which we need not
dwell here, since its absurdity has now been clearly established.
* * * * *
_Monsieur le Duc_ survived his mistress nearly fourteen years. In
1730, he was pardoned and returned to Court, but he never reappeared
again on the political stage, and consecrated the last years of his
life to the study of chemistry and natural history. In 1728, he took
unto himself a second wife, in the person of the Princess Charlotte
of Hesse-Rheinfels, who is described as “_blonde et d’un embonpoint
agréable_,” with whom he seems to have lived very contentedly,
notwithstanding the fact that she is said to have been erased from the
list of eligible princesses at the time of the marriage of Louis XV.
on account of her bad temper. By her he left one son, Louis Joseph
de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, the organizer and leader of the “Army
of Condé,” which played so gallant a part in the Wars of the French
Revolution. _Monsieur le Duc_ died on the 27 January, 1740, in his
forty-ninth year.
PRINTED BY
WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BECCLES
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The Court was staying at the Château of la Roche-Guyon, not far
from Mantes. As there had been a heavy fall of snow, François I.
suggested that the younger members of the Court should organize a
snowball-fight. Sides were accordingly formed; one led by the Dauphin
and François de Lorraine, afterwards Duc de Guise, defending a house;
the other, led by Enghien, besieging it. “During the combat,” says
Martin du Bellay, “some ill-advised person threw a linen-chest out of
the window, which fell on the Sieur d’Enghien’s head, and inflicted
such injuries that he died a few days later.” Du Bellay does not
give the name of the “ill-advised person,” but certain writers, less
reticent, name François de Guise, and have even gone so far as to
assert that he acted by orders of the Dauphin, who was jealous of
Enghien’s military fame, while others say that he was a certain Conte
di Bentivoglio, an Italian noble in the service of the Guises, whom
they accuse of having instigated the deed. It is probable, however,
that the death of Enghien was due merely to one of those acts of brutal
horse-play so common at this epoch, and that the culprit, whoever he
may have been, was innocent of any homicidal intention. See on this
matter the author’s “Henri II.: his Court and Times” (London, Methuen;
New York, Scribner, 1910).
[2] “Histoire des Princes de Condé.”
[3] Comte Jules Delaborde, “Éléonore de Roye, Princesse de Condé,
1535–1564.”
[4] Brantôme.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Beaucaire.
[7] Vincent Carloix, “Mémoires sur le maréchal de Vieilleville.”
[8] Antoinette de Bourbon, sister to Charles de Bourbon, Duc de
Vendôme, Condé’s father, had married Claude de Lorraine, Duc de Guise,
and was the mother of Duc François de Guise and his brothers.
[9] De Thou.
[10] By her marriage with Fery II. de Mailly, Baron de Conty.
[11] Comte Jules Delaborde, “Éléonore de Roye, Princesse de Condé.”
[12] “Additions aux Mémoires de Castelnau.”
[13] “Histoire de la Maison de Bourbon.”
[14] “Mémoires du Duc de Luynes.”
[15] A _compagnie d’ordonnance_ was composed of from seventy-five
to three hundred men, one third being men-at-arms, or heavy cavalry,
the rest foot-soldiers.
[16] La Noue, “Mémoires.”
[17] Saint-André had also been taken prisoner, but among his captors
was a Huguenot gentleman named Bobigny whom he had deeply injured,
and who proceeded to revenge himself by blowing out the unfortunate
marshal’s brains with a pistol.
[18] It was here that Lord Grey de Wilton had been incarcerated after
being made prisoner at Guines, in 1558. His captor, the Comte de la
Rochefoucauld, treated him most harshly, and he only recovered his
liberty by the sacrifice of practically the whole of his fortune.
[19] Smith to Cecil, March 12, 1563, State Papers (Elizabeth), Foreign
Series.
[20] The post of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom.
[21] Henri Martin, “Histoire de France jusqu’en 1789.”
[22] D’Aubigné, “Histoire Universelle.”
[23] Brantôme.
[24] M. Henri Bouchot, “les Femmes de Brantôme.”
[25] She was the daughter of Louis de la Beraudière, Sieur del’ Île
Rouet, in Poitou.
[26] By the King of Navarre she had had a son, Charles de Bourbon, who
became Archbishop of Rouen.
[27] “Un royaume par escript,” means the illusory kingdom in the South
promised Antoine by Philip II. of Spain.
[28] Henri Martin, “Histoire de France jusqu’en 1789.”
[29] Isabelle’s father, Gilles de la Tour, Sieur de Limeuil, was the
second son of Antoine de la Tour, Vicomte de Turenne. From Gilles’s
elder brother, François, sprang, in the fifth generation, the
celebrated Maréchal de Turenne.
[30] He must not be confused with his cousin, Florimond Robertet, Sieur
d’Alluye, who was also a Secretary of State.
[31] La Ferrière, “Trois amoureuses au xvi^e siècle.”
[32] J. A. Froude, “History of England,” vol. vii.
[33] Condé to Elizabeth, 8 March, 1563, in the Duc d’Aumale, “Histoire
des Princes de Condé.”
[34] Middlemore to Cecil, 30 March, 1563.
[35] Cecil to Smith, 4 June, 1563.
[36] _Ibid._
[37] J. A. Froude, “History of England.”
[38] Notre-Dame.
[39] The Porte Saint-Antoine.
[40] The name of the unfortunate gentleman was Couppé.
[41] Middlemore to Cecil, 17 June, 1563, State Papers (Elizabeth),
Foreign Series. The _dé noûment_ of this affair is a singular
illustration of the impotence or unwillingness of the Law to punish
crimes committed against the Protestants by the ferocious rabble of the
capital.
On the day following the outrage, the King sent for the Provost of
the Merchants and ordered him to bring the murderers to justice,
under pain of answering for them himself, adding that “if any more of
such insolences were done in Paris, he would send the four marshals
of France there to see better order kept.” The provost, trembling
in his shoes, returned home, and, next day, the authorities caused
one Garnier, a captain of the city militia, and another person to be
arrested, on suspicion of being concerned in the crime. Whereupon “the
rest of the captains and lieutenants of Paris gathered themselves
together to 4000 or 5000, and made such ado that they were glad to let
them go.” No further attempt to execute justice was made, nor could the
authorities even secure decent burial for the murdered gentleman. By
a decree of the Châtelet, the body was ordered to be interred in the
cemetery of the Innocents, together with that of an unknown Huguenot,
“whom also on the Thursday, in the worship of that holy day, the
Parisians had sacrificed and, after their manner, thrown into the water
(the Seine). But certain women and boys (for they are now the judges
and executioners of Paris) digged them up again; which being known, to
avoid danger they were buried there again by the watch, and were again
unburied, and no man knows what is done with them.”--“Journal of Sir
Thomas Smith,” State Papers (Elizabeth), Foreign Series.
[42] Smith to Cecil, 22 May, 1563.
[43] “Histoire des Princes de Condé.”
[44] François Billon, “le Fort inexpugnable de l’honneur féminin.”
Paris, 1555.
[45] La Rochefoucauld had married Catherine de Roye, younger sister of
the Princesse de Condé.
[46] Comte Jules Delaborde, “Éléonore de Roye, Princesse de Condé.”
[47] Bèze. But other writers assert that the princess’s attendants had
provoked the attack by insulting the priests.
[48] Comte Jules Delaborde, “Éléonore de Roye, Princesse de Condé.”
[49] Letter of Almerigo Bor Fadino to Pierre du Bois, merchant of
Antwerp, 13 November, 1563, State Papers (Elizabeth), Foreign Series.
[50] F. Decrue, “Anne, duc de Montmorency, connétable et pair de
France.”
[51] Smith to Cecil, 14 April, 1563, State Papers (Elizabeth), Foreign
Series.
[52] Letter of 6 May, 1564, published by the Comte Jules Delaborde.
[53] “Which was a great infamy for the so-called Reformed
Religion.”--“Journal de Bruslard.”
[54] La Ferrière, “Trois amoureuses au XVI^e siècle.”
[55] “Abrégé chronologique de l’histoire de France.”
[56] Charles de Bourbon. He and his elder brother, Louis, Duc de
Montpensier, represented the younger branch of the Bourbons.
[57] Philippe de Montespidon. She had been previously married to the
Maréchal de Montjean.
[58] Charles de la Marck (1538–1622). He was the second son of Robert
de la Marck, Duc de Bouillon. It is singular, in view of what we
are about to relate, that he afterwards married as his second wife
Antoinette de la Tour, younger sister of Isabelle.
[59] “Information contre Isabelle de Limeuil,” cited by La Ferrièrè.
[60] “Information contre Isabelle de Limeuil.”
[61] The word, almost illegible, may be either _partir_ or
_pâtir_ (to be in distress).
[62] A Latin satire of the time ran:
“At multi dicunt quod pater
Non est princeps, sed est alter
Qui Regi est a secretis
Omnibus est notus satis.”
[63] The sister of Brantôme.
[64] From this it is evident that Isabelle had refrained from informing
Condé of the charge that had been brought against her, and allowed
him to suppose that the Dijon scandal was the sole cause of her
imprisonment.
[65] Marguerite de Valois, youngest daughter of Francois I., who had
married, in 1559, Emmanuel Philibert X., Duke of Savoy.
[66] Comte Jules Delaborde, “Éléonore de Roye, Princesse de Condé.”
[67] Comte Jules Delaborde, “Éléonore de Roye, Princesse de Condé.”
[68] Martin Hume, “The Courtships of Mary Stuart.”
[69] Castelnau, “Mémoires.”
[70] Antoinette de Bourbon, widow of Claude de Lorraine.
[71] Labanoff, “Lettres de Marie Stuart.”
[72] State Papers (Elizabeth), Foreign Series.
[73] Calvin had died on 27 May, 1564.
[74] Renée de Bourbon, Abbess of Chelles, sister of Condé.
[75] Presumably Condé’s chaplain, Pérssel, whose name is sometimes
written Pérocel.
[76] Françoise Marie d’Orléans, posthumous daughter of François
d’Orléans, Marquis de Rothelin, a cadet of the House of Longueville,
and Jacqueline de Rohan. The House of Longueville was a branch of
the Royal House of France, descended from the celebrated Comte de
Dunois--the “Bastard of Orleans”--son of Louis I., Duc d’Orléans. His
nephew, Charles VII., gave him, in 1463, the county of Longueville, in
the district of Caux, which had been ceded to Charles VI. by Bertrand
du Guesclin, half a century earlier. Dunois’s grandson, François, was
created a duke in 1505, and, in 1571, his successor, Léonor, brother to
the second Princesse de Condé, received from Charles IX., for himself
and his descendants, the title of Princes of the Blood.
[77] Brantôme.
[78] Ibid.
[79] Smith to the Earl of Leicester, 5 May, 1565. State Papers
(Elizabeth), Foreign Series.
[80] D’Aubigné.
[81] It was a perilous journey, for they were hotly pursued, and had
not the Loire risen in sudden flood just after they had forded it near
Sancerre, and arrested the pursuit, they would certainly have been
captured. The fugitives saw in this event the direct interposition of
Providence in their favour, and falling on their knees, sang the Psalm:
_In exitu Israel_.
[82] D’Aubigné, “Histoire universelle.”
[83] Brantôme.
[84] By the orders of his master, it was generally believed. “He
(Condé),” writes Brantôme, “had been very earnestly _recommended_
to several of the favourites of the said _Monseigneur_ (Anjou)
whom I knew.”
[85] Davila, cited by Mr. A. W. Whitehead, “Gaspard de Coligny.”
[86] Duc d’Aumale, “Histoire des Princes de Condé.”
[87] The surviving children by his marriage with Éléonore de Roye were:
(1) Henri de Bourbon, Prince de Condé; born 27 December, 1552;
died 5 March, 1588.
(2) François de Bourbon, Prince de Conti, born 18 August, 1558.
(3) Catherine de Bourbon.
(4) Charles de Bourbon, afterwards the third Cardinal de
Bourbon, born 30 March, 1562.
Those by his marriage with Françoise d’Orléans were:
(1) Charles de Bourbon, Comte de Soissons, born 3 November, 1566.
(2) Louis de Bourbon.
(3) Benjamin de Bourbon.
Both of the two last children died young.
[88] Comte Jules Delaborde, “Éléonore de Roye, Princesse de Condé.”
[89] Duc d’Aumale, “Histoire des Princes de Condé.”
[90] They received a general amnesty and the restoration of their
confiscated estates. They were admitted upon equal terms with
their Roman Catholic fellow-subjects to the benefit of all public
institutions, and declared eligible to fill every post in the State.
They were permitted to appeal from the judgment of the notoriously
hostile Parlement of Toulouse to the Cour des Requêtes, in Paris.
Finally, they were permitted to retain possession of four towns which
they had conquered: La Rochelle, Cognac, La Charité, and Montauban,
as a guarantee of the King’s good faith, on condition that Henri of
Navarre and Condé bound themselves to restore them to the Crown two
years after the faithful execution of the Peace.
[91] From the two royal plenipotentiaries who concluded it, the
Maréchal de Biron, who was lame, and Henri de Mesmes, Sieur de
Malassise.
[92] The three girls were co-heiresses to the great wealth of the Duc
de Nevers, as he had left no son. The eldest, Henriette, Duchesse de
Nivernais, married Ludovico di Gonzaga, brother of the Duke of Mantua;
the second, Catherine, married Antoine de Croy, Prince de Porcien, who
died in 1564; and, six years after her husband’s death, became the
wife of Henri de Lorraine, Duc de Guise. The Prince de Porcien had
been one of the leaders of the Huguenots and had entertained the most
violent hatred of the Guises. On his death-bed, he is said to have thus
addressed his wife: “You are young, beautiful, and wealthy; you will
have many suitors when I am gone. I have no objection to your marrying
again, if only it be not the Duc de Guise. Let not my worst enemy
inherit what of all my possessions I have cherished the most.”
[93] Marie de Clèves, Marquise d’Isles, Condé’s betrothed.
[94] Françoise d’Orléans, Princesse de Condé.
[95] See the author’s “Queen Margot” (London, Harpers; New York,
Scribner, 1906).
[96] “Journal du règne de Charles IX.”
[97] It is to her that Baïf dedicated his “Hymne de Vénus”:
“Noble sang des Rieux, si mes vers ne desdaigne....”
[98] After he succeeded his brother on the throne, he appeared, on one
occasion at a Court ball, his face rouged and powdered, the body of
his doublet cut low, like a woman’s, with long sleeves falling to the
ground, and a string of pearls round his neck.
“Si qu’au premier abord, chacun étoit en peine
S’il voyoit un roi femme ou bien un homme reine.”
[99] The Duc d’Aumale (“Histoire des Princes de Condé”) asserts that he
was also compromised by the confessions of La Môle, but, in justice to
that unfortunate gentleman, we must observe that such was not the case.
La Môle, though most horribly tortured, exhibited remarkable fortitude,
and compromised no one, with the exception of Guillaume de Montmorency,
who had already compromised himself by taking to flight.
[100] Catherine de Bourbon, Marquise d’Isles. She died unmarried in
1592.
[101] Daughter of Nicolas, Comte de Vaudémont, and Marguerite d’Egmont.
[102] It was on the occasion of his marriage that his Majesty made
another attempt to provide Mlle. de Châteauneuf with a husband. This
time, however, he flew at much higher game than a provost of Paris,
his vassal, François de Luxembourg, being his quarry. Luxembourg had
been a suitor for the hand of Louise de Lorraine, and his addresses
had been very favourably received by the lady, until the appearance
of the King of France in the field had put an end to his hopes. The
prince had attended the _Sacre_ and the marriage, and, a day or
two after the latter ceremony, his suzerain drew him aside and said:
“Cousin, I have married your mistress; but I desire that, in exchange,
you should marry mine.” And he offered him the hand of Mlle. de
Châteauneuf. Luxembourg, making, very naturally, a distinction between
the two senses attached to the word “mistress,” thanked the King for
his thoughtfulness, but begged him to give him time to think the matter
over. “I desire,” replied his Majesty, “that you should espouse her
immediately.” The unfortunate prince then “begged very humbly that the
King would grant him a week’s respite.” To which the King answered that
he would give him three days only, at the expiration of which, if he
were not prepared to marry the damsel, something exceedingly unpleasant
would probably befall him. Before another day had dawned, Luxembourg
was riding for the frontier as hard as his horse could gallop.
Soon after this episode, Mlle. de Châteauneuf was expelled both from
Catherine’s squadron and the Court, for impertinence towards the
young Queen. Having thus fallen into disgrace, she condescended to
espouse a Florentine named Antinoti, who was intendant of the galleys
at Marseilles. The marriage, however, had a tragic termination,
for, “having detected him in a compromising situation with another
demoiselle, she stabbed him bravely and manfully with her own hand.”
Shortly afterwards, she married another Florentine, Alloviti by name,
who called himself the Baron de Castellane; but, a few months later,
the baron was killed in a brawl by Henri d’Angoulême, Grand Prior of
France, a natural son of Henri II., by Mary Stuart’s governess, Lady
Fleming, though not before he had succeeded in mortally wounding his
antagonist.
[103] In February, 1576, the King of Navarre also made his escape, and
promptly reverted to the Protestant faith, but he took no active part
in the remainder of the war.
[104] It was in this engagement that the duke received the wound in the
face which earned him, like his celebrated father, the name of “_le
Balafré_.”
[105] The young lady, of course, intended to write “Monsieur.”
[106] Published by Édouard Barthélemy, “la Princesse de Condé:
Charlotte Catherine de la Trémoille.”
[107] “Véritable discours de la naissance et de la vie de Monseigneur
le prince de Condé jusqu’à présent, à lui desdié par le sieur de
Fiefbrun,” publié par Eugène Halphen (Paris, 1861).
[108] Fiefbrun.
[109] Édouard de Barthélemy, “la Princesse de Condé: Charlotte
Catherine de la Trémoille, d’après les lettres inédites conservées dans
les archives de Thouars” (Paris, 1872).
[110] De Thou.
[111] Fiefbrun.
[112] It had had an eventful history during the Hundred Years’ War,
when it was more than once taken and re-taken. In 1562, a daring
Huguenot adventurer named Romegoux escaladed it, by means of poniards
fixed in the interstices of the walls, and for some years used it as
a base for his operations against the Catholics of the surrounding
country.
[113] “Veritable discours de la naissance et de la vie de Mgr. le
prince de Condé.”
[114] So incensed was the poor prince at these pleasantries that when
his cousin summoned him to attend a Protestant conference at Bergerac,
he declined to obey.
[115] De Thou.
[116] Édouard de Barthélemy, “La Princesse de Condé: Charlotte
Catherine de La Trémoille.”
[117] The Marquis de Conti had gone to Strasbourg to take the nominal
command of the Germans.
[118] The Duc d’Aumale (“Histoire des Princes de Condé”) says that the
princess remained at Saint-Jean-d’Angely, but this is incorrect.
[119] Duc d’Aumale, “Histoire des Princes de Condé.”
[120] “Rapport des médecins et chirurgiens sur la mort de Monseigneur
le Prince de Condé,” published by Édouard Barthélemy, “La Princesse de
Condé: Charlotte Catherine de la Trémoille.”
[121] She was three months pregnant.
[122] “Rapport des médecins et chirurgiens sur la mort de Monseigneur
le Prince de Condé.”
[123] “Lettres missives de Henri IV.”
[124] The King of Navarre to M. de Scorbiac, 11 March, 1588.
[125] He was a lad of about sixteen, a Périgourdin.
[126] His name was Antoine Corbais, and he was a native of La Fère.
[127] They could not, of course, arrest the man within the town, since
it was in the hands of the Catholics.
[128] “Lettres missives de Henri IV.”
[129] Published by the Duc d’Aumale, “Histoire des Princes de Condé.”
[130] Presumably, the Cardinals de Bourbon and de Guise.
[131] “Bibliothèque Nationale,” Brienne Collection, published by Eugène
Halphen in his introduction to Fiefbrun.
[132] Memoir published by Édouard de Barthélemy, “la Princesse de
Condé: Charlotte Catherine de la Trémoille.”
[133] Édouard de Barthélemy, “Charlotte Catherine de la Trémoille,
Princesse de Condé.”
[134] E. Halphen, “Introduction to Fiefbrun.”
[135] Until the death of his eldest brother François, Maréchal Duc de
Montmorency, in 1577, Henri de Montmorency had borne the title of Baron
de Damville, which was now assumed by the third of the Montmorency
brothers, until then known as the Seigneur de Méru.
[136] Natural daughter of Henri II. by Filippa le Duc, a Piedmontese
girl of humble origin, and not of Diane de Poitiers, as several
historians have wrongly stated. She married, first, Orazio Farnese,
Duke of Castro, and, _en secondes noces_, François de Montmorency,
elder brother of the Constable.
[137] Afterwards Duc d’Angoulême. He was a natural son of Charles IX.
by Marie Touché, and had married Charlotte de Montmorency, daughter of
the Connétable Henri de Montmorency.
[138] Désormeaux.
[139] He was a Portuguese Dominican monk, who settled in France, and
became Almoner to Henri IV. and confessor to the Dowager-Princesse de
Condé.
[140] “Rerum ab Henrici Borbonis Franciae protoprincipis majoribus
gestarum Epitome.”
[141] “Recueil de l’Academie des inscriptions et belles-lettres.”
Halphen.
[142] Letter of Pisani to Villeroy, 5 March, 1598, cited by the Duc
d’Aumale.
[143] The Abbey of Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, situated a little beyond the
Bois de Vincennes, had been secularized in 1533, and afterwards sold
to Catherine de’ Medici, from whose executors the Dowager-Princesse
de Condé had recently purchased it. It afterwards became one of the
favourite country-seats of the Condés.
[144] Cardinal Bentiviglio, “Relazioni.”
[145] By his second wife, Louise de Budos, a woman of middling birth,
but of such extraordinary beauty that some persons attributed it to
supernatural agency.
[146] “Relazioni.”
[147] Maréchal de Bassompierre, “Mémoires.”
[148] The Dowager-Princesse de Condé was, through her mother, a niece
of the Constable.
[149] L’Estoile.
[150] “Mon ami--_M. le Prince_ (Condé) est icy qui faict le
diable; vous seriez en colère et auriez honte des choses qu’il dit de
moi; enfin, la patience m’échappera et je me resous de bien parler à
lui” (Henri IV. to Sully, 9 June, 1609).
[151] André Chénier, “les Poésies de Malherbe.”
[152] Henrard, “Henri IV. et la Princesse de Condé.”
[153] Tallemant des Réaux, “Historiettes.”
[154] Cited by the Duc d’Aumale, “Histoire des Princes de Condé.”
[155] Claude Enoch Virey (1566–1636). He was a Doctor of Laws, had
fought as a Catholic volunteer in Henri IV.’s army at the battles of
Arques and Ivry and at the sieges of Paris and Rouen, and was a poet
of some distinction. The Président de Harlay, whose life he had saved
on the Day of the Barricades, procured him a post on the educational
staff of the young Condé, and he was subsequently appointed his private
secretary.
[156] Duc d’Aumale, “Histoire des Princes de Condé.”
[157] In May, 1598, Philip II. had ceded the Netherlands, the
Franche-Comté, and the Charolais to his daughter Isabelle. The Archduke
Albert, brother of the Emperor Rudolph, at that time governor of the
Netherlands, renounced Holy Orders in order to marry the princess;
and the pair had since exercised a sort of vice-regal authority, with
very extensive powers. Their contemporaries always called them “the
Archdukes.”
[158] Éléonore de Bourbon had married Philip William, of Nassau, Prince
of Orange, eldest son of William the Silent, in 1606.
[159] Spinola, who had come to the Netherlands in 1602, at the head
of a force maintained, like the old _condottieri_, at his own
expense, had, after the reduction of Ostend, been given the command of
all the Spanish and Italian troops in Flanders.
[160] Simancas Collection, cited by the Duc d’Aumale, “Histoire des
Princes de Condé.”
[161] Cardinal Bentivoglio, “Relazioni.”
[162] Letter of Jehan Simon, secretary to the Flemish Ambassador in
Paris, to Pretorius, Secretary of State at Brussels, cited by Henrard,
“Henri IV. et la Princesse de Condé.”
[163] Duc d’Aumale, “Histoire des Princes de Condé.” Cardinal
Bentivoglio, “Relazioni.”
[164] “Henry of Navarre and the Huguenots in France.”
[165] Pecquius to the Archduke Albert, 28 April, 1610. It appears
to have been on this occasion that Père Cotton begged the Flemish
Ambassador to intimate to the Archdukes that, though the solemn promise
which they had given Condé might prevent them from surrendering his
wife, they might, without any undue strain to their consciences,
connive at her escape, since it was undoubtedly their duty to do
everything in their power to avert so terrible a calamity as war. But
this insidious suggestion their Highnesses very honourably declined to
entertain.
[166] “L’Estoile.”
[167] The regency in France belonged, in theory, to the first Prince of
the Blood. As, however, Catherine de’ Medici had created a precedent in
the Queen-Mother’s favour, and, as Henri IV. had as good as named her
Regent, Marie de’ Medici had seized the office immediately on the late
King’s death. But for the circumstance that Condé was in exile at the
time, it is open to question whether she would have been permitted to
do this.
[168] “Journal historique et anecdote de la Cour et de Paris,”
MSS. of Conrart, cited by Victor Cousin, “la Jeunesse de Madame
de Longueville.” The chronicler speaks frequently of the prince’s
ill-treatment of his wife, for which he appears to think there was no
justification.
[169] “Journal historique et anecdote de la Cour et de Paris.”
[170] In the preamble of this document, Louis XIII. strove to throw the
responsibility for his cousin’s long detention upon Marie de’ Medici
and her adherents, although the real cause seems to have been the fears
of Luynes lest Condé should attempt to dispute his ascendency over the
young King. “Being informed,” said his Majesty, “of the reasons by
which his detention has been excused, I have found that there was no
cause save the machinations and evil designs of his enemies.”
[171] Enghien is the modern spelling; in the seventeenth century it was
written Anguien.
[172] Lenet, “Mémoires.”
[173] Madame de Motteville, “Mémoires.”
[174] By a will made shortly before his death, the Duc de Montmorency,
who left no children, had designated as heir to the greater part of
his immense estates the little François de Montmorency-Boutteville,
afterwards the celebrated Maréchal de Luxembourg, the posthumous son of
the Comte de Montmorency-Boutteville, executed for duelling in 1627.
But the duke’s condemnation rendered this document of no effect, and
the whole of his property reverted to the Crown. Louis XIII., however,
contented himself with retaining possession of Chantilly and Dammartin,
for the sake of the hunting, without, however, uniting them to his
demesne, and caused the rest of the property to be divided between the
Princesse de Condé and her two sisters, Richelieu, we may presume, not
being minded to set up another great feudal noble in the place of the
deceased duke.
[175] Lenet, “Mémoires.”
[176] Mlle. de Montpensier, “Mémoires.”
[177] According to Tallemant des Réaux, at one time, the poor woman
imagined that she was made of glass, and never sat down except with
infinite precautions; at another, she thought that her hands and feet
had turned to ice, and was continually warming them, even in the
hottest weather.
[178] Duc d’Aumale, “Histoire des Princes de Condé.”
[179] Letter of Henri Arnauld to Barillon, April 11, 1640, cited by
Homberg and Jousselin, “la Femme du Grand Condé.”
[180] Mademoiselle de Montpensier, “Mémoires.”
[181] Earl Stanhope, “Life of Louis, Prince de Condé, surnamed the
Great.”
[182] “Archives de Chantilly,” cited by the Duc d’Aumale.
[183] Mademoiselle de Montpensier, “Mémoires.”
[184] “La Femme du Grand Condé.”
[185] Letter of Henri Arnauld to the President Barillon, cited by MM.
Homberg and Jousselin, “la Femme du Grand Condé.”
[186] Letter of 30 July, 1643, published by the Duc d’Aumale.
[187] According to some chroniclers, such was his emotion at parting
from his inamorata, that he fell down in a swoon at her feet.
[188] There were two convents of Carmelite nuns in Paris at this
period, one in the Faubourg Saint-Jacques, the other in the Rue Chapon.
The first, which was the parent-house of the order in France, was known
as the “_Grandes Carmélites_.”
[189] Published by MM. Homberg et Jousselin, “la Femme du Grand Condé.”
[190] Letter of Mère Agnes de Jésus, Prioress of the Carmelites of the
Faubourg Saint-Jacques, to Mlle. d’Épernon, cited by Victor Cousin, “la
Jeunesse de Madame de Longueville.”
[191] Voiture.
[192] Lenet, “Mémoires.”
[193] Marie de Bretagne, daughter of the Comte de Vertus, and wife of
Hercule de Rohan, Duc de Montbazon.
[194] Madame de Motteville, “Mémoires.”
[195] Letter of 18 August, 1646, Archives de Chantilly, cited by MM.
Homberg and Jousselin, “la Femme du Grand Condé.”
[196] Madame de Motteville, “Mémoires.”
[197] “Histoire des Princes de Condé.”
[198] It must be admitted that she had some excuse for her conduct, as
the deceased duke had been far from a faithful husband, and had gone
into his last fight with a garter of his lady-love, Mlle. de Guerchy,
bound round his arm.
[199] Duchesse de Nemours, “Mémoires.”
[200] On his father becoming Prince de Condé, the little Duc d’Albret
had assumed the title of Duc d’Enghien.
[201] La Rochefoucauld, “Mémoires.”
[202] In his negotiations with the Court, Madame de Châtillon had
persuaded Condé to stipulate that her services in the cause of peace
and concord should be recognized by a _gratification_ of 100,000
écus.
[203] In the night of 19–20 September, 1652, the Princesse de Condé
gave birth to a son. The little prince, who was baptized Louis de
Bordeaux and received the title of Duc de Bourbon, only lived a few
weeks.
[204] Lenet, “Mémoires.”
[205] Archives de Chantilly, cited by the Duc d’Aumale.
[206] “Gazette de France,” January, 1660.
[207]
“J’ai vu le temps de la bonne régence,
Temps où régnait une heureuse abondance,
Temps où la ville aussi bien que la cour
Ne respirait que les jeux et l’amour.”
Saint-Évremond, “Stances à Ninon.”
[208] Louise Marie de Gonzague. She had married in 1645 Ladislas IV.
King of Poland, and, after his death, she became wife of his brother,
John Casimir.
[209] Letters of 28 September, 7 and 8 October, published by the Duc
d’Aumale.
[210] “Gazette de France,” 17 January, 1671.
[211] By a separate deed, the princess was permitted to dispose as she
wished of her jewels and plate.
[212] Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy (1618–1693), the celebrated
letter-writer and author of the scandalous “Histoire amoureuse des
Gaules,” which procured him a year in the Bastille and a sixteen years’
exile from the Court.
[213] Letter of 23 January, 1671.
[214] The best informed of all, the Duc d’Aumale, adopts a neutral
attitude, being of opinion that there is not sufficient evidence to
condemn either Condé or his wife.
[215] “Life of Louis, Prince of Condé, surnamed the Great.” It should
be mentioned that the distinguished historian declines to believe that
the princess had as yet exhibited any signs of insanity, but in this he
is quite mistaken.
[216] The seigneurie of Châteauroux was in 1497 erected into a county
in favour of André de Chauvigny. In 1613 it was acquired by Henri
II., Prince de Condé, who, three years later, obtained letters-patent
evicting it into a duchy-peerage.
[217] “Père Tixier,” by MM. Lemoine and Lichtenberger, “Revue de
Paris,” 15 November, 1903.
[218] Bishop Burnet, “History of his own Time.”
[219] Saint-Évremond, “Stances irrégulières.”
[220] Bossuet, “Oraison funèbre du Grand Condé.”
[221] Charles François Frédéric de Montmorency-Boutteville.
[222] Marie de Clérambault.
[223] Madame de Caylus.
[224] Saint-Simon.
[225] Philippi Mancini. Mazarin had bequeathed to him the duchy-peerage
of Nivernois and Donzois, which he had purchased from the Duke of
Mantua, in 1659.
[226] See the author’s “The Fascinating Duc de Richelieu” (London,
Methuen; New York, Scribner, 1910).
[227] The Duc de Nevers had inherited under his uncle’s will the
Palazzo Mazarini, at the foot of the Quirinal, and frequently spent the
winter there.
[228] This episode occurred in 1688, nearly two years after the death
of the Great Condé, when _Monsieur le Duc_ had become _Monsieur
le Prince_.
[229] The Grand Dauphin, only son of Louis XIV.
[230] Marie Charlotte de la Meilleraye-Mazarin. She was a daughter
of Armand de la Porte-Meilleraye-Mazarin, Duc de Mazarin, and the
beautiful Hortense Mancini, Mazarin’s favourite niece. On his marriage,
the former added the cardinal’s name to his patronymic, and was created
Duc de Mazarin.
[231] Madame de Richelieu was, of course, an Italian on her mother’s
side.
[232] 1. Marie Thérèse de Bourbon, born 1 February, 1666; married in
1688 Louis François, Prince de Conti; died in 1732.
2. Louis de Bourbon, born 11 October, 1668; became Louis III., Prince
de Condé in 1709; died the following year.
3. Anne Marie Victoire de Bourbon, Mlle. de Condé, born 11 August,
1675; died unmarried 23 October, 1700.
4. Anne Louise Bénédicte de Bourbon, Mlle. de Charolais, born 8
November, 1676; married in 1692 the Duc de Maine, son of Louis XIV. and
Madame de Montespan.
5. Marie Anne de Bourbon, called Mlle. de Montmorency, and later Mlle.
d’Enghien, born 24 February, 1678; married in 1710 the Duc de Vendôme;
died in 1718.
[233] Jean Auguste Deschamps, Sieur de Cotecoste.
[234] Duc d’Aumale, “Histoire des Princes de Condé.”
[235] Louis Armand de Bourbon (1661–1685). He must not be confused with
his younger, and far more celebrated brother, François Louis de Bourbon
(1664–1709) who succeeded him in the title, up to which time he was
known as the Prince de la Roche-sur-Yon.
[236] “I will tell you a great piece of news; it is that _Monsieur le
Prince_ was shaved yesterday. This is no mere rumour or gossip; it
is a fact; all the Court witnessed it; and Madame de Langeron, choosing
the time when he had his paws folded like a lion, made him put on a
_justaucorps_ with diamond buttons. A _valet de chambre_
also, taking advantage of his patience, curled his hair, powdered it,
and at last reduced him into being only the best-looking man at Court,
and with a head of hair that puts all wigs out of competition. This was
the prodigy of the wedding.”--Letter of 17 January, 1680.
[237] The Great Condé, who was tall, used to say, laughing, that, if
his race thus continued to dwindle, it would at last come to nothing.
[238] “Souvenirs et Correspondance de Madame de Caylus.”
[239] “Souvenirs et Correspondance de Madame de Caylus.”
[240] Louis Joseph de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, “Histoire de la Maison
de Bourbon.”
[241] Mademoiselle de Montpensier, “Mémoires.”
[242] MM. Homberg & Jousselin, “la Femme du Grand Condé.” During the
Revolution, some ruffians forced open the chapel in which was the
tomb of the unfortunate princess, carried off the leaden coffin and
scattered its contents.
[243] Désormeaux, “Histoire de la Maison de Bourbon”; Stanhope, “Life
of Louis, Prince de Condé, surnamed the Great.”
[244] “Histoire de Madame de Muci,” par Mlle. B---- (Valdory),
Amsterdam, 1731; “le Nouveau Siècle de Louis XIV.”; Desnoiresterres,
“les Cours galantes.”
[245] “Mémoires du Comte de Maurepas.”
[246] Her chief pleasure appears to have been gambling, which is
scarcely surprising, when we consider that she was the daughter of a
woman who had been accustomed to win and lose several hundred thousand
francs at a single sitting, and had on one memorable occasion lost
over two million. In May, 1700, Dangeau informs us that _Madame la
Duchesse_ wrote to Madame de Maintenon to tell her that she had
lost “from 10,000 to 12,000 pistoles [from 100,000 to 120,000 livres],
which it was impossible for her to pay just then.” Madame de Maintenon
showed the letter to the King and begged him to come to his daughter’s
assistance. His Majesty consented, and, after requesting that a
detailed statement of the whole of the lady’s liabilities should be
drawn up and submitted to him, paid them in full, without saying a word
to her husband, which was distinctly kind of him.
[247] In the _chansons_ attributed to her, some of which are
undeniably clever, she exercised her satirical wit at the expense of
the Duc and Duchesse de Bourgogne, Madame de Maintenon, her husband,
and even her royal father.
[248] Saint-Simon.
[249] Saint-Simon.
[250] Ibid.
[251] But, if we are to believe Saint-Simon, her heart was partially
occupied by the Comte de Léon, a son of the amorous Lassay by his first
marriage, who, “although he had the face of a monkey, was perfectly
well-made.”
[252] Here is the list:
1. Marie Gabrielle Éléonore (1690–1760), Abbess of
Saint-Antoine-lez-Paris.
2. Louis Henri, Duc de Bourbon, Prince de Condé (1692–1740).
3. Louise Elisabeth, Mlle. de Bourbon (1693–1775).
4. Louise Anne, Mlle. de Charolais (1697–1741).
5. Marie Anne, Mlle. de Clermont (1697–1741).
6. Charles, Comte de Charolais (1700–1760).
7. Henriette Louise Marie Françoise Gabrielle, Mlle. de
Vermandois (born in 1703).
8. Elisabeth Alexandre, Mlle. de Sens (1705–1765).
9. Louis, Comte de Clermont (1709–1771).
[253] Saint-Simon.
[254] Saint-Simon.
[255] “Madame de Prie (1698–1727),” Paris, 1905.
[256] “Correspondance complète de Madame, duchesse d’Orléans,” Letter
of 27 Septembre, 1720.
[257] H. Thirion, “Madame de Prie.”
[258] Henri Martin, “Histoire de France jusqu’en 1789.”
[259] Saint-Simon.
[260] Gérard Michel, Seigneur de la Jonchère.
[261] The Emergency War Fund had been instituted by Louis XIV.’s
celebrated War Minister, Louvois, who wished to have large sums of
money always at hand for his great projects, without being obliged to
take the Minister of Finance into his confidence, and was maintained,
in time of war, by contributions levied on conquered territory, and,
in time of peace, by a variety of means. The treasurers were not bound
to render accounts annually, as in other Government offices, but were
permitted to retain the money and employ it in their own affairs. This
system had its advantages, but, on the other hand, it lent itself
readily to malversation on the part of those who had the management of
the Fund.
[262] In 1717, he had been summoned before the tribunal appointed to
investigate the accounts of the commissaries and revenue-farmers, and
ordered to make restitution to the amount of 600,000 livres to the
State.
[263] The letter in which Breteuil received his nomination stated that
Le Blanc had begged the King to permit him to retire. This was to
soften his disgrace, which was none the less real.
[264] “Journal de Barbier,” December, 1723.
[265] Louis XV.’s love of play first revealed itself towards the end
of 1722. In July, 1724, Marais writes that “the King is a terrible
gambler.”
[266] The total amount of the defalcations was estimated at 12,000,000
livres at the very least.
[267] See his “Histoire de la Régence,” and the author’s “The
Fascinating Duc de Richelieu” (London, Methuen: New York, Scribner,
1910).
[268] The Tournelle was the court of criminal jurisdiction of the
Parlement.
[269] Président Hénault, “Mémoires.” But, according to Coxe (“History
of the House of Austria”), Isabella Farnese was anything but composed:
“In the first paroxysms of rage, the Queen tore off a bracelet
ornamented with a portrait of the King of France and trampled it under
her foot; and Philip declared that Spain could never shed enough blood
to avenge the indignity offered to his family.”
[270] This letter has been published in full by M. Thirion, in his
interesting monograph on Madame de Prie.
[271] Maréchal de Villars, “Mémoires.” These orders were not to
receive _Monsieur le Duc_, in case he should present himself at
her apartments, and, on no consideration, to make any allusion in the
presence of the King to that prince, Madame de Prie, or Pâris-Duverney.
[272] See page 280, supra.
[273] “MS. of the Bastille,” published in “la Nouvelle Revue
rétrospective.”
Transcriber’s Notes:
1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been
corrected silently.
2. Where hyphenation is in doubt, it has been retained as in the
original.
3. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have
been retained as in the original.
4. Italics are shown as _xxx_.
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