“The King,” continues Bassompierre, “approved of this expedient, but he did not wish to decide until he had heard what M. de Sully had to say about the matter. The latter entered some time after the others, in a rough,
abrupt manner. The King went up to him and said: ‘M. de Sully, Monsieur le Prince has fled and has taken his wife with him.’ ‘Sire,’ answered he, ‘I am not surprised; and, if you had followed the counsel I gave you a fortnight since, when he left to go to Muret, you would have put him in the Bastille, and I should have kept him safe for you.’ ‘Well,’ said the King, ‘the thing is done; it is useless to say more about it; but tell me what I ought to do now.’ ‘By God, Sire! I know not,’ he replied; ‘but let me go back to the Arsenal, where I shall sup and sleep, and in the night I shall think of some good counsel, which I will bring you in the morning.’ ‘No,’ said the King, ‘I wish you to give it me at once.’ ‘I must think,’ said he, and with that he turned to the window which looked into the courtyard, and for a little time drummed upon it with his fingers. Then he came back to the King, who said: ‘Well, have you thought of something?’ ‘Yes, Sire,’ said he. ‘And what ought I to do?’ ‘Nothing, Sire.’ ‘What! Nothing?’ cried the King. ‘Yes, nothing,’ said M. de Sully. ‘If you do nothing at all, and show that you do not care about him, people will despise him; no one will assist him, not even the friends and servants whom he has here; and in three months, urged by necessity,[75] and by the little account that one takes of him, you will get him back on whatever conditions you please. But if you show that you are uneasy and are anxious to have him back, they will regard him as a personage of importance; he will be assisted with money by those without the realm; and divers persons, thinking to do you a despite, will protect him, although they would have left him alone if you had not troubled about him.’ ”
The King, however, was in no mood to follow this sage counsel, and preferred the strong measures proposed by Jeannin. He accordingly launched the Captain of the Watch in pursuit of the fugitives, and, when that officer returned empty-handed, sent Praslin to Brussels, where, as was generally expected, Condé had taken refuge, to demand his surrender from the Archduke Albert. The Archduke felt that he could not without shame deliver up a prince who came to seek an asylum against an all-powerful monarch who was endeavouring to dishonour his wife. On the other hand, he did not wish to offend Henri IV and afford him a pretext, which he might be only too ready to seize, for breaking the peace. He therefore tendered his good offices and made every effort to bring about an accommodation. But the King insisted on Condé’s unconditional submission and immediate return; while the prince demanded a place of surety on the frontier, with a convenient back-door, to enable him, at the first alarm, to leave the kingdom again.
The attitude assumed by Henri IV was so threatening, that Condé, judging it to be unsafe to remain in Flanders, confided his wife to the care of the Archduchess and took refuge at Milan, the governor of which, the Count de Fuentes, was a declared enemy of Henri IV and France. He had already appealed to Spain for protection; and Philip III instructed 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 by all means in his power to the repose and happiness of the Very Christian King.” The remainder of the despatch, however, shows that Philip was actuated by very different motives.
Condé’s departure from Brussels did not leave the Archduke in a less difficult position. It was not the prince, but the princess, whose return Henri IV most eagerly desired. He endeavoured to have her carried off, but the attempt failed.[76] He obliged the Constable to demand that she should be sent back to the paternal roof. The Archduke replied that he could not do so, except by her husband’s desire.
The King was the more exasperated by the resistance of the Archduke, as he had reason to believe that his ridiculous passion was returned. The princess, this child of sixteen, who had no affection for her husband and resented the inconvenience to which he had subjected her in order to save her honour, weary of her exile, far from her relatives and the Court of France, did not refuse the letters and presents of the King. Her entourage and Madame de Berny, the wife of the French Ambassador at Brussels, chanted continually the praises of her crowned adorer. She received verses in which Malherbe depicted in touching terms the grief of the great Alcandre. But Henri IV himself, in a letter to one of his agents, is not less pathetic:—
“I am writing to my beautiful angel: I am so worn out by these pangs that I am nothing but skin and bone. Everything disgusts me. I avoid company, and if, to observe the usage of society, I allow myself to be drawn into some assemblies, my wretchedness is complete.”
The princess, in her turn, appealed to “his heart,” and besought him, as “her knight,” to effect her deliverance.
For his “pangs” Henri IV regarded the Archduke and the Spaniards as responsible. Already on December 9, 1609, he had caused the Pope to be informed that “if the Spaniards contemplated employing the person of Monsieur le Prince to stir up trouble in his realm, he had the means and the courage to resent it, and to avenge the injuries and the offences which they might be able to do him.” The conduct of the Archduke was irreproachable; he had merely safeguarded his own dignity, and it was certainly not his fault that Condé was not reconciled to the King. But Philip III and his Government, although they had neither foreseen nor aided the prince’s flight, were now asking themselves what advantage they might derive from it. In the event of war with France, the first Prince of the Blood would be a valuable ally, and it is not improbable that a most imprudent manifesto which Condé issued at Milan, wherein, after detailing his grievances against Henri IV, he claimed to be the rightful heir to the throne of France, on the ground that the King’s first marriage had not been truly annulled, was inspired by Spain, with the idea of still further widening the breach between him and his sovereign.
Henri IV and his Ministers, finding persuasion of no avail with the Court of Brussels, had recourse to threats, representing that, unless the fair Charlotte were surrendered, war would follow. “Peace and war depend on whether the princess is or is not given up,” said Jeannin to Pecquius, the Archduke’s Ambassador in Paris; and the King himself reminded him that Troy fell because Priam would not surrender Helen.
The gravity of the situation was enhanced by the warlike preparations which were going on all over France for the execution of the “Great Design”: the scheme of liberating Europe from the domination of the House of Austria and of 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 that the forcible recovery of the Princesse de Condé, and Malherbe wrote:—
Pour que je soupire.”
The question of how far the course of events was influenced by Henri IV’s infatuation for the Princesse de Condé has been much discussed. The probability is that the affair did little more than determine the King to hasten by a few weeks the war so long resolved upon, and that this was due rather to his irritation against the Spaniards for their support of Condé than to the refusal of the Court of Brussels to surrender the princess. Henri had not scrupled to use the large forces assembled for quite a different purpose as a bugbear to frighten the Archduke. But when the latter refused to purchase security by a compliance inconsistent with his honour, it was not on Brussels that the French armies prepared to march. On the contrary, a few days before his death, the King in the most friendly terms requested the Archduke’s permission to lead his troops across his territory to the assistance of his German allies, a permission granted by the Archduke, notwithstanding the opposition of the Spanish party in his Council.
By the end of April France was ready to strike. Châlons, Mezières and Metz were the chief rendezvous. The King hoped to have 30,000 men on foot, to join them on May 15, and to march at their head into the duchies. A second army under Lesdiguières was to enter Piedmont, where it would effect a junction with the forces of the Duke of Savoy, and then proceed to invade the Milanese. A third army was to observe the Pyrenees. Maurice of Nassau, with 30,000 Dutch, was to join Henri IV in Clèves.
Never had Bassompierre stood higher in the royal favour than on the eve of the outbreak of war. Henri, anxious to make amends to him for the loss of Charlotte de Montmorency and her dowry, and to recompense him for the zeal and ability which he had shown in his mission to Lorraine and Germany in the previous year, overwhelmed him with benefits. He appointed him, quite unsolicited, Colonel of the Light Cavalry, made him a Counsellor of State, gave him 50 guards, and a pension of 4,000 crowns, and again proposed to marry him to the heiress of Beaupréau and revive in her favour the duchy of that name. “But,” says Bassompierre ingenuously, “I was then in the high follies of my youth, in love in so many quarters, and well received in most, that I had not the leisure to think of my advancement.”
But the sun which shone upon him with such warmth and splendour was now about to be clouded for ever. The tragic end of the first Bourbon King has been so often told that we have no intention of narrating it; but there are circumstances recorded by Bassompierre which are not to be found in the memoirs and correspondence of his contemporaries, and which afford a curious insight into the state of Henri IV’s mind just before his assassination:—
“We now entered that unhappy month of May, fatal to France, by the loss sustained therein of our good King.
“I shall relate many things touching the presentiment which the King had before his death, and which gave warning of that event. A little while before, he said to me: ‘I know not how it is, Bassompierre, but I cannot persuade myself that I am going into Germany; neither does my heart tell me that you are going into Italy.’ Several times he said to me, and to others also: ‘I believe that I shall die soon.’ And on the first day of May he returned from the Tuileries by way of the grand gallery, leaning upon M. de Guise on one side, and upon me on the other (for he always leaned on someone), and, on leaving us to enter the Queen’s cabinet, said: ‘Don’t go away; I am going to tell my wife to dress, that she may not keep me waiting for dinner.’ For he usually dined with her. While we waited, leaning on the iron balustrade overlooking the courtyard of the Louvre, the maypole which had been planted in the middle of the courtyard fell down, without being disturbed by the wind or for any apparent cause, and tumbled in the direction of the little staircase leading to the King’s chamber. Upon which I said to M. de Guise: ‘I would have given a great deal rather than this should have happened. It is a very bad omen. May God preserve the King, who is the May of the Louvre!’ ‘How can you be so foolish as to think seriously of such a thing?’ he replied. ‘In Italy and Germany,’ I rejoined, ‘they would take much more account of such an omen than we do here. May God preserve the King and all belonging to him!’
“The King, who had but stepped into the Queen’s cabinet and out again, here came up very softly to listen to us, for he imagined that we spoke of some woman; and, hearing all that I said, broke in upon our talk, saying: ‘You are fools to amuse yourselves with such prognostications. For the last thirty years all the astrologers and charlatans who pretend to be wise have predicted to me every year that I was fated to die; and in that year wherein I shall actually die, all the omens which have occurred in the course of it will be remarked and thought a great deal of, while nothing will be said of those which happened in preceding years.’
“The Queen had a peculiar and ardent desire to be crowned before the King’s departure for Germany. The King did not wish it, both by reason of the expense and because he did not like these grand festivals. Yet, since he was the kindest husband in the world, he consented and delayed his departure until she should make her entry into Paris.[77] He commanded me to stay also, which I did because of his desire, and also because the Princesse de Conti had asked me to be her cavalier at the ceremony of the Sacre and the entry.[78]
“The Court went on May 12 to stay at Saint-Denis, to be in readiness for the morrow, the day of the Queen’s Sacre, which was celebrated with the greatest possible magnificence. The King, on this occasion, was extraordinarily gay.[79] In the evening everyone returned to Paris.
“The following morning, the 14th of the said month, M. de Guise passed by my lodging and took me to go and meet the King, who had gone to hear Mass at the Feuillants. On the way we were told that he was returning by the Tuileries, upon which we went to intercept him and found him talking to M. de Villeroy. He left him, and taking M. de Guise and myself, one on either side of him, said: ‘I come from the Feuillants, where I saw the chapel which Bassompierre is having built there, and on the door he has had placed this inscription: Quid retribuam. Domino pro omnibus que retribuit mihi? And I said that, since he was German, he should have put: Calicem salutaris accipiam.’ M. de Guise laughed heartily and said to him: ‘You are, to my mind, one of the most agreeable men in the world, and our destiny created us for one another. For, had you been a man of middling station, I would have had you in my service, cost what it might; but, since God has made you a great king, it could not be otherwise than that I must belong to you.’ The King embraced him, and me also, and said: ‘You don’t know me now; but I shall die one of these days; and, when you have lost me, you will know my worth and the difference there is between me and other men.’ Upon this I said to him: ‘Mon Dieu, Sire, why do you never cease afflicting us by saying that you will soon die? These are not good words to utter; you will live, if it please God, long and happy years. There is no felicity in the world equal to yours; you are but in the flower of your age, in perfect strength and health of body, full of honours beyond any other mortal, in the tranquil enjoyment of the most flourishing country in the world; loved and adored by your subjects; possessed of property, of money, of beautiful residences, a beautiful wife, beautiful mistresses and beautiful children, who are growing up. What more could you have or desire to have?’ Then he sighed and said: ‘My friend, all this I must leave.’ ”
Before parting from the King, Bassompierre informed him that he had received a complaint from the captains of the Light Cavalry, of which he had recently been appointed Colonel, that their companies were insufficiently armed and that they were unable to obtain the weapons which they required, and begged his Majesty to give orders that these should be supplied to them. Henri IV told him to come to him that afternoon at the Arsenal, where he proposed to go to visit Sully, who was ill, and he would direct the Minister to let him have the arms he wanted. And, upon Bassompierre observing that he would very willingly give Sully at the same time the money which they were worth, to enable him to replace them, he laughingly replied by quoting two verses from a well-known song, which ran:
Mais à vous je les donne.”
Bassompierre thanked his Majesty, kissed his hand and withdrew, little imagining that he was never to see him alive again.
“After dinner,” he says, “I went to visit Descures[80] in the Place-Royale, to inquire about the routes which the different companies [of the Light Horse] were to follow; and then I proceeded to the Arsenal, to await the King, as he had told me to do. But alas! it was in vain, for, shortly afterwards, came people crying out that the King had been wounded, and that he was being carried back to the Louvre. I ran like a madman, seized the first horse I could find, and rode full gallop towards the Louvre. Opposite the Hôtel de Longueville I met M. de Blérencourt,[81] who was returning from the Louvre, and he whispered to me: ‘He is dead!’ I ran up to the barriers which the French Guards and the Swiss had occupied, with lowered pikes, and Monsieur le Grand and I passed under the barriers and ran to the King’s cabinet, where we saw him stretched on his bed, and M. de Vic,[82] Counsellor of State, seated on the same bed. He had put his cross of the Order to the King’s lips, and was bidding him think of God. Melon, his chief physician, was in the ruelle, and some surgeons, who wanted to dress his wounds; but he was already gone.... Then the chief physician cried: ‘Ah! it is all over; he has gone!’ Monsieur le Grand, on arriving, went down on his knees in the ruelle of the bed, and took one of the King’s hands and kissed it. As for myself, I had thrown myself at his feet, which I embraced, weeping bitterly....”
CHAPTER XIII
Incidents at the Court and in Paris after the assassination of Henri IV—Meeting between Bassompierre and Sully—Marie de’ Medici declared Regent—Her difficult position—Return of Condé—Greed and arrogance of the grandees—Quarrel between the Comte de Soissons and the Duc de Guise—Grievance of Monsieur le Comte against Bassompierre—He persuades Madame d’Entragues to endeavour to compel Bassompierre to marry her daughter, Marie—Proceedings instituted against that gentleman—Announcement of the “Spanish marriages”—Magnificent fêtes in the Place-Royale—Intrigues at the Court—The Princes and Concini in power—Assassination of the Baron de Luz by the Chevalier de Guise—Marie de’ Medici and the Princes—Conversation of the Regent with Bassompierre—Bassompierre reconciles the Guises with the Queen-Mother—The Chevalier de Guise kills the son of the Baron de Luz in a duel—The Princes, on the advice of Concini, return from Court.
On that fatal day, when the knife of Ravaillac changed the destinies of France and of Europe, Louis XIII, the successor of the murdered King, was not yet nine years old. The fear of troubles within the realm and of complications without exacted the immediate institution of a regency, and Villeroy and the Chancellor, Brulart de Sillery, exhorted Marie de’ Medici, who was lying upon her bed prostrated with grief, to act “as man and as King.”
The great nobles, out of pity or the desire to assert their own importance, were zealous in the Queen’s cause; and some who had scarcely been on bowing terms with each other for years were seen to embrace and vow to die together sword in hand if the necessity should arise.
D’Épernon, Colonel-General of the French infantry, caused the approaches to the Louvre and the Pont-Neuf to be occupied by the French Guards; Guise, with part of a force of some 300 horse which he and Bassompierre had mustered, proceeded to the Hôtel de Ville to obtain from the Corporation a formal recognition of the new King and Regent; while Bassompierre, with the remainder, paraded the streets “to appease tumults and seditions.” Sully alone showed himself undecided, feeble and timorous. At the news of the King’s assassination, ill though he was, he had mounted his horse and set out for the Louvre, accompanied by some forty of his guards and attendants. Near the Place Saint-Jean he met Bassompierre and his cavalcade, the sight of whom appears to have filled him with misgivings.
“He began,” writes Bassompierre, “to say to us in lachrymose tones: ‘Gentlemen, if the service which you have vowed to the King, whom, to our great misfortune, we have just lost, is also imprinted in your souls, as it ought to be in those of all good Frenchmen, swear now at once to preserve the same fidelity to the King his son and successor, and that you will employ your blood and your life to avenge his death.’
“ ‘Monsieur,’ I replied, ‘it is we who are making others take this oath, and we have no need of anyone to exhort us to do a thing to which we are already so committed.’
“I know not whether my answer surprised him, or whether he repented of having come so far from his fortress; but he turned back forthwith, and went to shut himself up in the Bastille, sending at the same time to seize all the bread that could be found in the markets and the bakers’ shops. He sent orders also to M. de Rohan, his son-in-law, to face about with 6,000 Swiss who were in Champagne, and of whom he was Colonel General, and to march straight on Paris.... MM. de Praslin and de Créquy went to invite him to present himself before the King, like all the other grandees; but he did not come until the morrow, when M. de Guise brought him with difficulty, after which he countermanded his orders to his son-in-law and the Swiss, who had already advanced a day’s march towards Paris.”
Of the Princes of the Blood who might have been able to aspire to the regency, one, Condé, was a voluntary exile in the dominions of the King of Spain; the other, the Comte de Soissons, had left Paris in high dudgeon before the coronation of the Queen, because Henri IV had refused to permit Madame la Comtesse to wear on her ceremonial mantle a row of fleurs de lys more than the wife of his legitimated son the Duc de Vendôme. As for the Prince de Conti, he was deaf, afflicted with an impediment in his speech, and almost imbecile. Outside the Princes of the Blood, and in the absence of the States-General, there was only one power recognised by all—the Parlement of Paris. And to this body Marie de’ Medici at once addressed herself.
In her name, the Procurator-General demanded that “now and without adjourning, the Parliament should provide, as it had been accustomed to do, for the regency and the government of the realm.” The Parlement was too convinced of its right and too flattered by the part it was asked to play to hesitate. But, as a matter of form, it was proceeding to deliberate upon the matter, when d’Épernon, in his doublet, with his drawn sword in his hand, swaggered into the chamber, and, having begged the assembly to excuse his discourtesy, invited it to hasten. As he left, Guise entered in the same costume, took his seat and protested his devotion to the Crown. The First President, Achille de Harlay, solemnly ordered the duke’s words to be recorded; and the Court unanimously declared the Queen Mother Regent, “to have the administration of the affairs of the realm during the minority of the said lord her son, together with all power and authority.” It was quick work: Henri IV had not been dead two hours.
It was much, without doubt, to have settled so expeditiously the future government of France. But what a task for a woman, for a foreigner, for one, too, who bore a name little calculated to reassure the bulk of the nation, which remembered only too well the troubles in which the rule of another Medici had involved it, to be called upon to exercise supreme power in circumstances so difficult! Without, a war on the point of breaking out; within, princes affecting an entire independence and even negotiating with the foreigner; a turbulent nobility whom even the strong hand of Henri IV had not always been able to keep in check; the Protestant party entrenched in the West and South of France, with its own organisation, its privileges, its places of surety; finally, the governors of the different provinces, possessed of the most extensive powers and strong enough to renounce practically all obedience to the Crown. Marie de’ Medici has often been reproached with weakness, and weak in many ways she certainly was; but it would have required the energy and the resolution of an Elizabeth or a Catherine the Great to have steered the ship of State uninjured through the shoals and quicksands which beset its course.
The Regent retained the Ministers of the late King, Villeroy, Jeannin, Sillery, and Sully, and, to calm the apprehensions of the Protestants, lost no time in confirming the Edict of Nantes. But the war so long meditated against the House of Austria was promptly abandoned, though a small army under Le Châtre and Rohan was sent to co-operate with Maurice of Nassau in recovering Juliers, which was handed over to the Electors of Brandenburg and Neuburg, on their undertaking not to interfere with the exercise of the Catholic religion in that duchy.
It was a wise decision, since there were embarrassments enough within half-a-mile of the Louvre. The Princes of the Blood had returned; Soissons, three days after the death of Henri IV; Condé, in the middle of July. The former complained that the regency had been settled in his absence, and demanded the post of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom. To appease him, Marie de’ Medici gave him the post of governor of Normandy and a gratification of 200,000 crowns. Condé, to the Regent’s great relief, was apparently well-disposed towards the new government, and, to confirm him in his peaceable intentions, she purchased for 400,000 crowns the Hôtel de Gondi, in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and presented it to him, together with furniture to the value of 40,000 crowns; confirmed him in all his offices and appointments; increased his pension to 200,000 crowns, and gave him a large sum to pay his debts. The Regent hoped, by setting a price upon them, to keep within bounds all the ambitions of the grandees; it was her system of government. She paid Guise’s debts, and authorised him to marry the immensely wealthy widow of the Duc de Montpensier, a union to which, for political reasons, Henri IV would never have consented; she promised to pay the debts of the Duc de Nevers; she accorded to all the governors the right of appointing their successors.
“The grandees did not weary of receiving, and said to one another: ‘The time of kings has passed, and that of great nobles and princes has come; we must take every advantage of it.’ ” Their arrogance and ostentation knew no bounds. They seldom left their houses unless accompanied by numerous and brilliant escorts. Fifteen hundred cavaliers went to meet Condé on the day of his arrival in Paris; the Duc de Guise had a suite of five or six hundred horse. The young King remained almost alone in the Louvre, and Marie de’ Medici was obliged to reconstitute the two hundred gentlemen halberdiers, disbanded by Henri IV, from motives of economy.
Happily for the Crown, the grandees were divided, and such parties as did exist were merely associations of a few covetous nobles, animated by no common motive except that of filling their pockets. The Guises, flattered and lavishly paid, boasted of their loyalty to the Regent. Bouillon was at enmity with Sully, like himself a chief of the Protestants. The Prince de Conti had for some years been on bad terms with his brother, the Comte de Soissons, and at the beginning of 1611 their antipathy to one another found vent in a violent quarrel, in which Guise, whose sister, it will be remembered, Conti had married, found himself involved, and which threatened for a moment to develop into a sort of civil war.
“It happened,” writes Bassompierre, “that, three days after these nuptials [the marriage of Guise to the Duchesse de Montpensier], the Prince de Conti quarrelled with the Comte de Soissons, his brother, because their coaches had collided in passing one another, and their coachmen had fought. M. de Guise, whom the Queen had desired, that same evening, to go to M. de Conti to compose this quarrel, set out the following morning from the Hôtel de Montpensier, where he had passed the night, to go to the Abbey of Saint-Germain, where the Prince de Conti was lodging, and was accompanied by twenty-five or thirty horse. He happened to pass the Hôtel de Soissons, which was on his way, and this gave offence to Monsieur le Comte, who summoned his friends and told them that M. de Guise had come to defy him. Thereupon M. de Guise’s friends flocked to the Hôtel de Guise in such numbers that there were more than a thousand gentlemen assembled there. Monsieur le Comte sent to beg Monsieur le Prince to come to him, and together they proceeded to the Louvre to demand of the Queen that she should call M. de Guise to account for his insolence. Nevertheless, Monsieur le Prince was playing in this affair the part of the friendly arbitrator, and said that he should take neither side, and only desired to reconcile the parties and to prevent disorder.
“This tumult lasted all that day and the following one, upon which the Queen, apprehending graver disturbances, gave directions that the chains should be made ready to be put up at the first order, and that, in every quarter, the citizens should be prepared to take up arms on the instant that the command to do so was sent them.
“However, all the day following was employed in seeking means to accommodate the affair, each of the Princes having a captain of the Gardes du Corps near his person to protect him. In the evening, Monsieur le Prince sent to ask M. de Guise to send him one of his confidential friends; and M. de Guise, having taken counsel with the princes and nobles who supported him, as to whom they should choose to act as envoy, finally, on their advice, asked me to go.”
Bassompierre then goes on to relate at great length his interview with Condé, to whom he pointed out that Guise could have had no intention of “defying” Monsieur le Comte, since, if such had been his object, he would have sallied forth with a much more imposing retinue than a mere score or so of attendants, and would have passed before the front entrance of the Hôtel de Soissons, whereas he had only passed the corner of the house. The prince appears to have been greatly impressed by this argument, and, after Bassompierre had been backwards and forwards several times between Condé’s house and the Hôtel de Guise, the momentous affair was satisfactorily settled.
But it did not end here, so far as he himself was concerned. For “Monsieur le Comte was mortally offended with those who had assisted M. de Guise in his quarrel, and particularly with me, who had formerly professed to be his servant; and, to revenge himself upon me, he determined that I should see Antragues no more.”
The prince accordingly sought an interview with Madame d’Entragues, whom he reproached with allowing her family to be dishonoured by the notorious intimacy between Bassompierre and her younger daughter, adding that, as he was distantly related to the d’Entragues, he felt that his own honour was concerned in the matter.
Now, it had happened that, in the previous August, Marie d’Entragues had given birth to a son, of whom Bassompierre did not deny the paternity; indeed, on the lady informing him that she proposed to present him with a pledge of her affection, he had, following the famous example of Henri IV with her elder sister, given his inamorata a letter containing a promise of marriage in the event of her bearing him a son. But this letter was written merely for the purpose of appeasing the wrath of Madame d’Entragues, who was threatening to turn her erring daughter out of the house. For Bassompierre had not the least intention of regularising his connection with this too-celebrated beauty, of whom, if he were the most favoured, he was far from being the only successful admirer; indeed, to do so would mean the loss of a considerable fortune, since his mother had threatened to disinherit him if he married the lady.[83] He had, therefore, at the same time, demanded and obtained from Marie d’Entragues a letter which purported to be an answer to his own, in which she expressly disclaimed any intention of taking advantage of his offer. This, in the opinion of “three famous advocates” whom he had taken the precaution to consult, effectually discharged him from his obligation.
Well, Bassompierre’s letter was in the possession of Madame d’Entragues, who, however, of course, knew nothing of the one which her daughter had given that gentleman; and when the Comte de Soissons reproached her with her indifference to Mlle. Marie’s indiscretions, she informed him that she was not so careless a mother as he appeared to imagine, and could easily prove it. The prince pressed her to do so, upon which she triumphantly showed him the promise of marriage.
“Monsieur le Comte,” says Bassompierre, “very pleased to have found an opportunity of injuring me, assured her of his protection and begged her to follow his counsel in this affair, in which he promised to secure for her a favourable result. This foolish woman, to satisfy the malignity of Monsieur le Comte, placed herself entirely in his hands, and he counselled her to press me to execute this promise, and, in case of my refusal, to cause me to be summoned before the diocesan court.”
Madame d’Entragues did not fail to follow this advice and, on meeting with a flat refusal from Bassompierre, promptly instituted proceedings against him.
“I soon recognised the hand which had cast this stone at me, and Monsieur le Comte boasted publicly that he was in a position to ruin me in fortune or honour. I assembled a council of my advocates to learn how I was to comport myself in this situation. They were unanimously of opinion that, in strict justice, I had nothing to fear, but that Monsieur le Comte was a redoubtable enemy, and advised me to drag the affair out until a favourable time arrived.”
Bassompierre endeavoured to persuade the Regent to intervene in his behalf, but, though Marie de’ Medici, with whom he was a favourite, since he was one of the few nobles whose loyalty to the Crown admitted of no question, was very sympathetic and promised him every assistance in her power, her position was far too precarious just then to admit of her offending a Prince of the Blood. All he could do, therefore, was to act upon the advice of the legal luminaries whom he had consulted; and, on various pretexts, he succeeded in deferring his appearance before the diocesan court for some months, at the end of which he appealed to the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Sens, who was the metropolitan of the Bishop of Paris. This insured him a further respite, and, before the case came on for trial, he appealed to the Parlement of Paris, and was beginning to plume himself on his astuteness, when the Comte de Soissons interposed and got the affair transferred to the Parlement of Rouen, to the great consternation of Bassompierre, who knew that Soissons would not scruple to use all his influence as Governor of Normandy to prejudice that body against him.
The annoyance and expense which this affair was occasioning him, and for which, it must be admitted, he is hardly entitled to much sympathy, did not prevent Bassompierre from continuing his life of pleasure, and he took a prominent part in the splendid fêtes in honour of the double betrothal of Louis XIII to Anne of Austria, and of the Infant Philip, afterwards Philip IV of Spain, to Élisabeth of France, eldest daughter of Henri IV. For Marie de’ Medici had completely reversed the foreign policy of her husband, and Spanish influence was once more in the ascendant at the Court of France.
These fêtes, originally fixed to begin on March 25, 1612, the day on which the formal announcement of the approaching marriage was made at the Louvre, in the presence of the Spanish Ambassador and the officers of the Crown of France, had been postponed until April 5, owing to the death of the Queen’s brother, Vincenzo I, Duke of Mantua. Their principal feature was a carousal in the Place-Royale on a scale of unprecedented magnificence, in which Bassompierre appeared as one of the challengers.
“At three o’clock in the afternoon, the Queens, princesses and ladies took their places on the stands which had been prepared for them, besides which there were all round the Place-Royale, rising from the pavement to the level of the first floor of the houses, other stands holding 200,000 people. Then the cannon placed on the bastion fired a salvo, after which the thousand Musketeers who lined the barriers fired another, a very beautiful one. This finished, M. de Praslin, marshal of the camp of the challengers, emerged from the Palace of Felicity, from which came the sound of all kinds of musical instruments. He was splendidly mounted and attired, and was followed by twelve lackeys habited in black velvet bordered with gold lace. He came, on our behalf, to demand from the Constable (who occupied a private stand with the Maréchal de Bouillon, de la Châtre, de Brissac, and de Souvré) the camp which he had promised us. The Constable and the marshal descended from their stand and advanced to that of the King and Queen; and the Constable said: ‘Madame, the challengers demand the camp which I have promised them by your Majesty’s order.’ The Queen answered: ‘Monsieur, grant it them.’ Upon which the Constable said to M. de Praslin: ‘Take it; the King and the Queen accord it you.’ Then he returned to us, and the great door of the palace, which was opposite that of the Minims, was flung open, and we entered the camp, preceded by all our retinue, war-chariots, giants,[84] and other things so beautiful that it is impossible to describe them in writing; and I shall only say that nearly five hundred persons and two hundred horses took part in our entry alone, all habited and caparisoned in crimson velvet and white cloth-of-silver, and our costumes were so richly embroidered that nothing could exceed them in magnificence. Our entry cost the five challengers 50,000 écus.[85] The troupe of the Prince de Conti entered after ours, followed by that of M. de Vendôme, who danced a very beautiful ballet on horseback.[86] Then came M. de Montmorency, who entered alone, and the Comte d’Ayen[87] and the Baron d’Ucelles,[88] under the names of Amadis and Galaor.
“We [the challengers] kept the lists against all these opponents, and when the night drew near, the fête was concluded by a new salvo of cannon, followed by that of the thousand Musketeers; and, when darkness fell, there was the most beautiful display of fireworks over the Château of Felicity that was ever seen in France.
“On the morrow, at two o’clock in the afternoon, we returned to the camp in the same order as on the first day, together with the troupe of M. de Longueville,[89] who made his entry alone,[90] of the Nymphs,[91] of the Knights of Felicity, that of d’Effiat and Arnaut,[92] and, the last, that of the twelve Roman emperors,[93] all of whom ran against us, and the fête was terminated by the same salvoes and another display of fireworks.”
On the following day, “because all the innumerable people of Paris had not been able to witness this fête,” the various troupes passed in procession through the town, that of the challengers, resplendent in their crimson velvet and cloth-of-silver, bringing up the rear.
The fête concluded with a grand tilting-match in the Place-Royale, the prize being a ring of great value given by Madame Royale, the future Queen of Spain, which was won by the Marquis de Rouillac, a nephew of d’Épernon.
At night there was another display of fireworks, a salvo fired by two hundred cannon, a bonfire at the Hôtel de Ville, and an illumination of Paris with “lanterns made of coloured paper, in such great profusion in every window that the whole town seemed on fire.”
In November the old Connétable de Montmorency took leave of the Regent and the young King and retired from Court to spend his last days in retirement on his estates of Languedoc. “We escorted him to Moret,” writes Bassompierre, “where he feasted us, and afterwards bade farewell to his chief friends, with so many tears that we thought that he would die in that place. He was a good and noble lord, who loved me as though I were his own son; I am under a great obligation to honour his memory.”
The fêtes in honour of the betrothal of the young King and his eldest sister were but a brief interlude in the sordid struggle for place and power between the ambitious and greedy princes and nobles which had begun before Henri IV was in his grave. Marie de’ Medici distributed honours and emoluments with a lavish hand, increased the pensions of the grandees and made serious inroads into the millions accumulated in the coffers of the Bastille by the prudent Sully, who in January, 1611, had resigned his post of Comptroller of the Finances, on finding that he was no longer listened to, and that he could not maintain his position “without offending the Princes.” But the appetites she strove to satisfy were insatiable, and the more she gave, the more she was expected to give.
After the death of the Comte de Soissons, the most restless of the Bourbons, at the beginning of November, 1612, the Regent forsook Guise and d’Épernon, who had until then enjoyed a large measure of her favour, and, at the instigation of Concini, that singular Italian adventurer who governed her through his wife Leonora Galigaï, the Queen’s dame d’atours and confidante, and for whom she had purchased the marquisate of Ancre, allied herself with Condé and his friends Bouillon, Nevers, and Mayenne.[1]
“At this time,” says Bassompierre, “the aspect of the Court entirely changed; for a close alliance was formed by Monsieur le Prince, MM. de Nevers, Mayenne,[94] Bouillon, and the Marquis d’Ancre; and the Queen threw herself entirely on that side. The Ministers were discredited, and no longer had any power, and everything was done according to the desire of these five persons ... MM. de Guise, d’Épernon, de Joinville, and the Grand Equerry were very much out of favour.”
In December, Guise and d’Épernon sent for Bellegarde, who was in his government of Burgundy, to come to Court, “in order to strengthen their tottering party”; but on his way thither he was met by a messenger from Marie de’ Medici, with orders forbidding him to come to Paris, and he was obliged to return to his government.
The chief agent in Concini’s intrigues was the old Baron de Luz, who had formerly been an adherent of the Guises, but had been persuaded by the favourite to enter the service of the Queen, or rather his own. The Guises avenged themselves for what they were pleased to call his treason in characteristic fashion. About midday on January 5, 1613, the Chevalier de Guise, the youngest of the brothers, stopped Luz as he was driving in his coach along the Rue Saint-Honoré, challenged him to fight him there and then, and, without giving the old man time to draw his sword, ran him through the body and killed him.
This affair created an immense sensation.