“Finally,” says Bassompierre, “after having wasted the whole day up to six o’clock in the evening, and kept 600 gentlemen and a great number of people of note under arms all day, without doing or attempting to do anything, unless it were to kill a good many people of the town who showed themselves, they sent to tell the King that they had freshly reconnoitred the place where the attack must be delivered, and that truly it was not practicable. And upon that everyone went home.”
Next day, Louis XIII sent a message to Ville-Nouvelle requesting one of the two marshals or Bassompierre to come to Picqueos; and it was decided that Bassompierre should go. He found the King in his cabinet with the Constable, the Cardinal de Retz, and Roucellaï, and it was plain that his Majesty was in a very ill-humour. “Bassompierre,” said he, “you have long been of opinion that nothing of any use would be accomplished on the side of Le Moustier.” “Your Majesty will pardon me,” answered Bassompierre, “but I never believed that everything that was proposed would succeed. Nevertheless, one must judge things by the results.” The King then told him that Schomberg and his colleagues had assured him that in five days they would be able to establish a battery of their heaviest guns on a knoll within a very short distance of the walls, and open a breach which would enable them to storm the town; and inquired what he thought about it. Bassompierre replied that, if they did succeed in establishing a battery there, the town must fall; but he very much doubted whether the enemy would allow them to do it. “And I,” exclaimed the King angrily, “refuse to wait for what they wish to do. For they are deceivers; and I will never believe anything they say again.” The Constable here interposed, and begged his Majesty to remember that the generals at Le Moustier were as much mortified as he was at the fiasco of the previous day. And he asked that they might be given another chance of redeeming their promise to take the town. To this the King agreed, and Bassompierre was told to arrange another diversion when the time for the assault to be delivered should arrive.
However, it never did arrive. During the next few days the knoll was fortified without any interference from the enemy, and nothing remained but to get the guns into position. But, on the early morning of the 25th, the garrison exploded a mine under the knoll which blew it up with its defences, and followed this up by a murderous sally against the Picardy Regiment, who were driven out of their trenches with heavy loss. Three nights later, they made another sortie, this time at the expense of the Champagne Regiment, and, breaking right through it, penetrated to the besiegers’ battery-positions and destroyed one of their largest guns.
After this it was obviously impossible to continue the siege with the smallest hope of success; the winter was coming on; the army, badly paid and badly fed, with no confidence in its leaders, and harassed incessantly by a bold and resolute enemy, was becoming demoralised and was dwindling every day from death, sickness and desertion. Of 30,000 men who had encamped before Montauban at the end of August, only 12,000 effective combatants remained; and the division before Ville-Bourbon was now so weak that its leaders were obliged to ask the Guards for assistance to enable them to hold their trenches against the perpetual attacks to which they were exposed.
On the morrow, the Constable came to Le Moustier and summoned a council of war to decide what was to be done. “Everyone saw plainly,” says Bassompierre, “that we had no longer the means of continuing the siege; but no one wished to propose that it should be abandoned.” At length, Bassompierre took upon himself to do so and urged that they should “reserve the King, themselves and this army for a better future and a more convenient season.” To this the other leaders offered no opposition, and the Constable proceeded to communicate their decision to the King. Louis XIII, with tears in his eyes, directed Bassompierre to supervise the raising of the siege, and afterwards to march, with the greater part of the army, on Monheurt, a little town on the Garonne which had just revolted, as he and the Constable desired to terminate the campaign with a success, however unimportant it might be.
To raise the siege without the risk of incurring further losses was far from an easy task, as, unless every precaution were taken, there was grave danger that the garrison, flushed with success, might sally out and fall upon the rear of the army while it was crossing the Tarn. However, Bassompierre appears to have made his arrangements with considerable skill, and on November 10 the last of the troops were withdrawn, with no more serious interference than a little skirmishing.
The disastrous result of the siege of Montauban caused general exasperation against Luynes, who met with a very bad reception from the people of Toulouse—numbers of whose relatives and friends had fallen during the siege—when he accompanied the King thither about the middle of November. The High Catholic party was particularly furious, and accused the Constable, not only of incapacity, but of treason. What was a more serious matter for him, was the fact that the King was growing weary of his favourite.
This change in Louis XIII’s attitude towards the man whom he had raised so high, and who had so long exercised such an absolute dominion over him, seems to have begun some months before; but it was at first carefully concealed from all but two or three of his intimates.
“One morning, after the siege of Saint-Jean-d’Angély,” says Bassompierre, “as the Constable was returning from dinner, and was about to enter the King’s lodging, with his Swiss and his guards marching before him, and the whole Court and the chief officers of the army following him, the King, perceiving his approach from a window, said to me: ‘See, Bassompierre, it is the King who enters.’ ‘You will pardon me, Sire,’ said I to him, ‘it is a Constable favoured by his master, who is showing your grandeur and displaying the honours you have conferred upon him to the eyes of everyone.’ ‘You do not know him,’ said he. ‘He believes that I ought to give him the rest, and wants to play the King. But I will certainly prevent him doing that, so long as I am alive.’ Upon that I said to him: ‘You are very unfortunate to have taken such fancies into your head; he is also unfortunate, because you have conceived these suspicions against him; and I still more so, because you have revealed them to me. For, one of these days, you and he will shed a few tears, and then you will be appeased; and afterwards you will act as do husbands and wives who, when they have made up their quarrels, dismiss from their service the servants to whom they had confided their ill-will towards each other. Besides, you will tell him that you have not confided your dissatisfaction with him to any save to myself and to certain others; and we shall be the sufferers. And you have seen that, last year, the mere suspicion that he entertained that you might be inclined to favour me determined him to ruin me.’
“He [the King] swore to me with great oaths that he would never speak of it, whatever reconciliation there might be between them, and that he did not intend to open his mind to anyone on this matter, save Père Arnoux and myself, and that on my life I must engage never to open mine to anyone, save Père Arnoux, and only after he [the King] shall have spoken to him, and should command me to do it. I told him that he had but to command me, and that I had already given this command to myself, as it was of importance to my future and to my life.”
A few days after this conversation, Bassompierre was sent to Paris, at which he was much relieved, “since he found that confidences of the King were very dangerous”; and when, some weeks later, he rejoined the army at the beginning of the siege of Montauban, he took care never to approach his Majesty unless he were sent for.
“The resentment of the King against the Constable increased hourly, and the latter, whether it was that he felt assured of the King’s affection, or that the important affairs which he had upon his hands prevented him thinking about it, or that his grandeur blinded him, took less care to entertain the King than he had done formerly. In consequence, the displeasure of the King augmented greatly, and every time that he was able to speak to me in private, he expressed to me the most violent resentment.
“On one occasion when I had come to see him, the Milord de Hay, Ambassador Extraordinary of the King of Great Britain, who had been sent to intervene in favour of peace between the King and the Huguenots, had his first audience of the King, at the conclusion of which he went to visit the Constable. Puisieux, according to custom, came to know from the King what the milord had said at the audience. Upon which the King called me to make a third in their conversation and said to me: ‘He [the Ambassador] is going to have audience of King Luynes!’ I was very astonished at him speaking to me before M. de Puisieux and pretended to misunderstand him; but he said to me: ‘There is no danger before Puisieux, for he is in our secret.’ ‘There is no danger, Sire!’ I exclaimed. ‘Now I am assuredly undone, for he is a timorous and cowardly man, like his father the Chancellor, who at the first lash of the whip will confess everything, and will, in consequence, ruin all his adherents and accomplices.’”
The King began to laugh, and told Bassompierre that he would answer for Puisieux’s discretion. Then he began a long tirade against his favourite, and appeared particularly indignant that the latter should, on the death of Du Vair, the Keeper of the Seals, which had occurred at the beginning of August, have persuaded him to give him the vacant post, notwithstanding that it was as contrary to usage as to common sense for a man to hold the Seals and the Constable’s sword.[1]
Bassompierre left the royal presence, feeling very uneasy. He saw clearly that Luynes was losing his hold over the King; but he knew that it might be some time before the young monarch would be able to summon up sufficient resolution to shake it off entirely; and, meanwhile, if Puisieux, whom he thoroughly distrusted, were to abuse the King’s confidence, and lead the Constable to believe that he was endeavouring to influence his Majesty against him, he would find himself in an even more difficult situation than he had the previous year. He therefore decided that his safest course was “to make some representations to him [Luynes] on the subject, for his good,” without, however, allowing the Constable to suspect that the King had spoken to him. They would probably be well received, for, since his return from Spain, the favourite’s manner towards him had been very cordial, and he appeared most anxious that Bassompierre should identify his interests with his own by marrying his niece.
“Some days after this, happening to be in his cabinet with him, I told him that, as his very humble servant, devoted to his interests, I felt myself obliged to point out to him that he did not cultivate sufficiently the good graces of the King, and that he was not so assiduous in doing this as heretofore; that, as the King was increasing in age and in knowledge of things, and he in charges, honours and benefits, he ought also to increase in submission towards his King, his master, and his benefactor, and that, in God’s name, I begged him to take care and to pardon the liberty I had taken in speaking to him concerning it, since it proceeded from my zeal and passion for his very humble service.”
The favourite took Bassompierre’s warning in very good part, but made light of it:
“He answered that he thanked me and felt obliged for the solicitude which I had for the preservation of his favour, which would assuredly be very useful and profitable to me, and that I had begun to speak to him as a nephew, which he hoped I should be in a little while; that he wished also to answer me as an uncle, and to tell me that I might rest assured that he knew the King to the bottom of his soul; that he understood the means necessary to keep him, as he had known those to win him, and that he purposely gave him on occasion little causes for complaint, which served only to increase the warmth of the affection which he entertained for him. I saw clearly that he was of the same stamp as all other favourites, who believe that, once they have established their fortune, it will endure for ever, and do not recognise the approach of their disgrace until they have no longer the means to prevent it.”
During the closing weeks of the siege of Montauban, whenever the King had an opportunity of speaking to Bassompierre privately, he “complained incessantly of the Constable.” The love—it was of a very innocent kind—which Louis had hitherto entertained for Luynes’s beautiful wife, Marie de Rohan, no longer protected her husband. This love had, in fact, changed into hatred, since his Majesty had perceived that the lady was accepting other attentions, without doubt less platonic than his.
And he took a particularly mean way of avenging himself.
“What made me think worse of him [the King],” writes Bassompierre, “was that all of a sudden the extreme passion that he entertained for Madame la Connétable was converted into such hatred, that he warned her husband that the Duc de Chevreuse was in love with her. He told me that he had said this, upon which I said to him that he had done very ill, and that to make mischief between a husband and wife was to commit sin. ‘God will pardon me for it, if it pleases Him,’ he answered; ‘but I have felt great pleasure in avenging myself on her and of inflicting this mortification upon him.’ And he went on to say several things against him, and, amongst others, that before six months had passed, he would make him disgorge all that he had taken from him.”
A few days after the siege of Montauban had been raised, the King’s other two confidants, the Jesuit Père Arnoux and Puisieux, the former of whom suspected Luynes of desiring to make peace with the Protestants on their own terms, joined forces to procure the downfall of the favourite. But they had underrated the power which habit and the fear of change exercised over the cold heart and indolent mind of Louis XIII. He betrayed them to Luynes, or, perhaps, the pusillanimous Puisieux may have betrayed his fellow-conspirator. Anyway, Luynes learned of the intrigue and insisted on the Jesuit’s disgrace; and “the first news that I had from him [the King],” says Bassompierre, “was that he had been constrained to abandon Père Arnoux to the hatred of the Constable.” The King added that Bassompierre “might be assured that there was nothing against him.” Nevertheless, says that gentleman, “I did not fail to be in great apprehension, although I could say that every time that the King had spoken to me on the subject I had warded off his blows, and that I had been infinitely distressed that he had ever made me the recipient of his confidence.”
However, Bassompierre need not have been alarmed, as it was very soon to be beyond the power of Luynes to injure anyone.
On November 16 Bassompierre and his army encamped before Monheurt, and on the 18th the trenches were opened. A day or two later he had an exceedingly narrow escape of his life.
He was riding, followed by two aides-de-camp, from the trenches of the Piedmont Regiment, to those of the Normandy Regiment, a journey which he had made several times already without interference from the garrison, although it was well within musket-shot of the town, and “dressed in scarlet, with the cross on his cloak, and mounted on a white pony, he was easily recognisable.” Suddenly, the advanced bastion and counterscarp bristled with musketeers, who began firing at him and “with such fury that he heard nothing but balls whistling about him.” One ball struck the pommel of his saddle and another pierced his cloak, but he managed to reach a large tree without being hit, and took shelter behind it. Here he was in safety, though the enemy fired more than a hundred shots at it. At length, the firing ceased and, thinking that they had exhausted their ammunition, he mounted and galloped towards the trenches of the Normandy Regiment. However, they had only been waiting for him to show himself, and, so soon as he did so, they began firing at him again as fiercely as ever. “But,” says he, “as my hour was not yet come, God preserved me against the attempt; though I believe I was never nearer death than I was on that occasion.”
The weather was very bad, rain falling incessantly, and the soldiers were nearly up to their knees in mud. Nevertheless, they worked well, and by the 22nd, on which day the siege-artillery arrived, they had pushed their trenches close to the walls.
Meanwhile, Bassompierre had received a secret communication from the Marquis de Mirambeau, the commander of the garrison, who offered to surrender Monheurt, in consideration of receiving a sum of 4,000 crowns and a formal pardon for his offence of having taken up arms against the King. The Maréchal de Roquelaure, lieutenant-general of Guienne, had lately arrived to take the nominal command of the siege operations. But he left their direction entirely in Bassompierre’s hands, and, as Mirambeau had requested that he should not be informed of his offer, it was communicated to Louis XIII, who was still at Toulouse. This decided the King and the Constable to come to Monheurt, “in order to have the honour of taking it.”
On the 23rd, Bassompierre, after inspecting one of his batteries, advanced a few paces in front of it to survey some point in the defences. “The gunners,” he says, “not thinking that I was there, discharged their pieces, the wind of which threw me very rudely to the ground, and left me with a singing in my right ear, accompanied by insupportable twinges.” Two hours later he was taken ill with fever, but he remained on duty all that day, during which the trenches were pushed up to the border of the moat. Next morning, however, he was so much worse that he wrote to the King and the Constable asking to be relieved of his command, and saying that he proposed to go to La Réole, where he could secure skilled medical attention, for he was too prudent to trust himself to the care of the army surgeons. He also begged them to send him a doctor.
Next morning he received a very kind letter from the King, granting his request and informing him that he was sending a doctor, upon which he embarked in a boat, accompanied by his personal attendants and a guard of Swiss halberdiers, and set off down the Garonne towards La Réole.
On arriving at Tonneins, about midway between Monheurt and Marmande, he learned that a small force of cavalry was crossing the river to the right bank, and that they were the Constable’s own company of gensdarmes.
He sent for the officers in command to inquire where they were going, and was told that they had received orders from the Maréchal de Roquelaure to take up their quarters in a little town called Gontaud, about half-a-league from Marmande. He expressed his surprise that Roquelaure should send a small body of cavalry, unaccompanied by infantry, to an open town in the midst of the enemy’s country, where there was a great danger of their being surprised; and, aware that the King and the Constable would certainly cancel the order if they were informed of it, begged the officers to return, while he sent a message to the King requesting that they should be quartered at Marmande, which was a walled town. But the officers pointed out that the baggage had already been sent on to Gontaud; and, on their assuring him that they would keep a sharp look-out that night, and on the morrow ask to be transferred to safer quarters, he allowed them to proceed, although he felt very uneasy.
On reaching Marmande, he felt so much worse that he decided to remain there for the night, instead of continuing his journey to La Réole, and therefore had himself carried to an inn in the suburb, and sent for a doctor. But the only one who could be found was a country-practitioner, to whose tender mercies Bassompierre did not feel inclined to entrust himself. However, shortly afterwards, a quack doctor named Duboure, whom the Baron d’Estissac had sent after him, arrived on the scene. Duboure was none too sober, but he possessed remedies which afforded the patient some temporary relief, and about nine o’clock in the evening one of the King’s own physicians, named Le Mire, whom his Majesty had sent, made his appearance. The great man, after consulting, for form’s sake, with his humble colleagues, “proceeded to scarify him and apply leeches to his shoulders, in order to remove the furious tingling which he had in the head.”
“This was about eleven o’clock, and, at the same time, we heard many pistol-shots in the street of the faubourg, which is on the bank of the Garonne. They were fired by the Constable’s gensdarmes, who were being pursued by the enemy, who had attacked them at Gontaud the same evening they arrived there. At this news, my servants hurriedly placed a napkin on my shoulders, which were covered with blood, put on my dressing-gown, and, in this state, had me carried away by four of my Swiss halberdiers and five or six other persons whom they had contrived to pick up. They accompanied me nearly to the gate of the town, and then ran back to barricade themselves in my lodging, to try and save themselves and my horses, plate and equipage. They believed that I had entered the town, and there only remained with me the four Swiss, the two doctors, Le Mire and Duboure, and two valets de chambre. But, as I approached the gate, the people of Marmande saluted me with several musket-shots, believing (as they told me afterwards) that I was the petard which the enemy were bringing to fasten to their gate. My people cried out that it was the general who commanded the army, whom they had come to welcome as he disembarked from his boat, and that, if they did not open, they would repent it. But, for all that, they could get nothing out of them, except permission for me to be placed in a little open guard-house which was within the barrier. A man came to open the door and let me in, and at once closed it upon me, after which he threw himself upon a little drawbridge, which was forthwith raised. Thus, I found myself confined within this barrier, without being able to send any message to my servants, who, believing that I had entered the town, confined themselves to guarding my lodging; and the people of the town refused to open the gate until seven o’clock the next morning. I was stretched on a table, all covered with blood from my scarification, which congealed and clung to the napkin which had been placed over it, so that it galled me from time to time, while my head ached intolerably, for I was in a high fever; and I was covered only with a rather thin dressing-gown, in very cold weather, for it was the 26th of November. I can say that I was in the greatest torment and the most evil plight that I ever suffered in my life, which made me wish for death a hundred times.”
When morning dawned, the good citizens of Marmande, having satisfied themselves that there were no Huguenots lurking in the vicinity, at length summoned up courage to open their gates, and the unfortunate Bassompierre was carried to an inn and put to bed. Here he lay for a fortnight between life and death, “stricken with a purple fever,” and it was only his iron constitution which eventually turned the scale in his favour. The crisis once passed, however, he mended rapidly, and in a few days was sufficiently recovered to continue his journey to La Réole, and thence to Bordeaux, where he arrived on December 15, to await the King.
Louis XIII and the Constable had arrived at Monheurt on November 28, and had taken up their quarters at a village called Longuetille, about a league from the town. The place was taken on December 12; the lives of the inhabitants were spared, but the garrison was put to the sword, and the place pillaged and burned to the ground. Luynes, however, was not present to witness this sorry triumph. While the flames were devouring the conquered town, he lay at Longuetille, in the grip of the same pestilential fever from which Bassompierre so narrowly escaped, and which was now ravaging the Royal army. The disasters of the campaign, and the unceasing anxiety as to the future to which he had been for some time a prey, had told upon his strength, and three days later he died, in his forty-fourth year. “He was little regretted by the King,” says Bassompierre; “while his death was hailed with joy by the bulk of the nation, with whom he had long been intensely unpopular. Even the Ultramontane party, whose cause he had so well served, received the news with satisfaction.” They had been infuriated by the belief that he intended to make peace with the Huguenots, and ascribed the Montauban fiasco to the fact that the Almighty refused to make use of so unworthy an instrument for the destruction of the heretics.
CHAPTER XXVI
Who will govern the King and France?—The pretenders to the royal favour—Position of Bassompierre—The Cardinal de Retz and Schomberg join forces and secure for their ally De Vic the office of Keeper of the Seals—They propose to remove Bassompierre from the path of their ambition by separating him from the King—Bassompierre is offered the lieutenancy-general of Guienne and subsequently the government of Béarn, but declines both offices—He inflicts a sharp reverse upon Retz and Schomberg—Condé joins the Court—His designs—The rival parties: the party of the Ministers and the party of the marshals—Monsieur le Prince decides to ally himself with that of the Ministers—Mortifying rebuff administered by the King to the Ministers at the instance of Bassompierre—Failure of an attempt of the Ministers to injure Bassompierre and Créquy with Louis XIII—Arrival of the King in Paris—Affectionate meeting between him and his mother—Accident to the Queen.
Luynes dead, who would govern the King and France? Such was the question which everyone was asking himself, for that Louis XIII, so jealous of his royal authority, yet too indolent to exercise it himself, would require someone to lean on was a foregone conclusion. There were many pretenders. There was Marie de’ Medici, who, now that the man who had estranged her son from her was no more, might hope to recover in time much of the influence she had once exercised over the King. And Marie’s triumph would mean that of Richelieu, who had now acquired so great an ascendancy over her that scandal asserted that he was her lover. There was the greedy and ambitious Condé, who had learned prudence from adversity, but was in other respects but little changed. Luynes, in the last months of his “reign,” had separated Condé from the King, and tricked Richelieu out of the cardinal’s hat which had been the secret condition of the prelate’s reconciliation with the favourite, addressing a formal demand for it to Gregory XV, accompanied by a private request to his Holiness not to accord it. But now the lists were again open to them. Then there were the Ministers: the Cardinal de Retz, whom Luynes had made the nominal chief of the Council, and his ally Schomberg, Superintendent of Finance; the Chancellor Brulart de Sillery and his son Puisieux, the Minister for Foreign Affairs; and old Jeannin. And all these persons felt that they might have to reckon seriously with Bassompierre, in whose society the King undoubtedly took more pleasure than in that of any of them, and whom, they knew, the late Constable had regarded as his only dangerous rival.
It is certain that, had Bassompierre been so minded, he would have stood an excellent chance of succeeding to Luynes’s place as favourite, and that his elevation would have been well received, as he was exceedingly popular both at the Court and in the Army. But his epicurean wisdom rejected the idea of a life of gilded slavery; to be obliged to forgo the society of his “beautiful mistresses,” in order to dance attendance upon his youthful sovereign and make up his mind for him a dozen times a day, was not at all an attractive prospect to one who infinitely preferred pleasure to grandeur; the royal favour, without the responsibilities of power, was sufficient for him.
The Cardinal de Retz, Schomberg and Puisieux had the advantage of being near the King at the time of the Constable’s death. The first two at once joined forces against Puisieux and “aspired to become all-powerful and to restrain the King from doing anything except on their advice.” They secured a decided success by persuading Louis XIII to bestow the vacant office of Keeper of the Seals upon De Vic, a counsellor of State, who was devoted to their interests, and then put their heads together to find a means of separating the King from Bassompierre, whom they regarded as a serious obstacle in the path of their ambition. Louis XIII arrived at Bordeaux on December 21, and shortly afterwards the two Ministers proposed to him to leave Bassompierre in Guienne as lieutenant-general of that province, in place of the Maréchal de Roquelaure, who was to be compensated for the loss of his post by a present of 200,000 livres and the government of Lectoure. Having obtained his Majesty’s consent to this arrangement, they sent Roucellaï to sound Bassompierre on the matter and “even offered to add to this charge that of marshal of France.” But Bassompierre preferred to wait upon events and to see into whose hands the management of affairs would fall, foreseeing that whoever might secure it would not be strong enough to maintain his position without support, and “being assured that he would be very pleased to have him for a friend, and to give him a larger share of the cake than they [Retz and Schomberg] were offering him.”
“When the King spoke to me of the lieutenancy-general [of Guienne], I answered that I should esteem myself more happy to occupy the post of Colonel-General of the Swiss near his person than any other away from it; that I was only just recovering from a severe illness which demanded three months’ repose, and that during that time I desired no other employment than that of my first office of Colonel-General. And to this his Majesty agreed.”
Although foiled in this attempt to get Bassompierre out of the way, Retz and Schomberg presently returned to the charge, and having persuaded the Maréchal de Thémines to surrender the government of Béarn, in exchange for the lieutenancy-general of Guienne, offered it to Bassompierre. The government of Béarn, though, in the present circumstances, it could scarcely be regarded as a bed of roses, was a very honourable and lucrative post. But its acceptance would, of course, entail an almost complete separation from the King, and from—what was more important in Bassompierre’s estimation—the Court and Paris; and he therefore returned the same answer as he had in the case of Guienne.
A day or two later, Bassompierre had the satisfaction of inflicting a sharp reverse upon the two Ministers.
The Cardinal and Schomberg had urged the King to follow up the capture of Monheurt by the surprise of Castillon, on the Dordogne, which, they declared, could very easily be carried out and would have an excellent effect. Now, Castillon belonged to the Duc de Bouillon, who, at the outbreak of hostilities, had entered into a compact with Louis XIII, which stipulated that this and other towns within his jurisdiction should “remain in the service of the King, but without making war on those of the Religion”; while the King, on his side, promised that they should in no way be interfered with. To seize Castillon therefore would be a direct breach of this agreement, and could only be defended on the ground that the townsfolk had sent assistance to the Huguenots, of which there was no evidence of any value. Nevertheless, Louis XIII allowed himself to be persuaded by the two Ministers to consent to this being done, provided that the rest of the Council did not oppose it. When, however, the project was laid before the Council, Bassompierre rose and denounced it in a vigorous speech, in which he declared that, if executed, it would be a “great stain on the King’s honour and reputation,” after which he proceeded to give his Majesty some very wholesome advice on the danger of breaking his royal word.
“Sire,” said he, “it is easy for a man to deceive a person who trusts him, but it is not easy to deceive a second time. A promise badly observed only once deprives him who breaks it of the trust of the whole world.” And he stigmatized the counsel which had been given the King, of the source of which he pretended ignorance, as “interested, evil-intentioned and rash,” which, if followed, would probably result in driving Bouillon into rebellion, and with him numbers of Protestants who had hitherto remained neutral, since they would feel that it was impossible to trust the word of the King.
One or two other members of the Council signified their agreement with the views expressed by Bassompierre, upon which the King announced that he had come to the same conclusion, to the great discomfiture of Retz and Schomberg, who were forced to recognise that their design of governing the young monarch was likely to prove a much more difficult task than they had bargained for.
Louis XIII left Bordeaux on the last day of the year, and travelled by easy stages towards Paris. At Château-neuf-sur-Charente, where he arrived on January 6, 1622, another pretender to Luynes’s shoes appeared upon the scene, in the person of Condé.
“Monsieur le Prince,” says Bassompierre, “who was extremely cunning and supple, was equally courteous to everyone, without inclining to any side, until he had perceived the tendency of the market. His design was to persuade the King to continue the Huguenot war, for three reasons, in my opinion: first, because of the ardent affection which he had for his religion and his hatred against the Huguenot party; secondly, because he thought that he could govern the King better in time of war than in time of peace, since he would undoubtedly be lieutenant-general of his army; and, lastly, in order to separate him from the Queen his mother, the Chancellor and the old Ministers, who were his antipathy.”
In order to ascertain the state of the Court, Condé addressed himself to the Abbé Roucellaï, an adroit and insinuating personage, who had been in turn the protégé of Concini, the Queen-Mother and Luynes, and who, now that the Constable was dead, had decided to seek a new patron in Monsieur le Prince. The abbé told him that there were two parties at the Court. On one side, were the three Ministers, Retz, Schomberg and the new Keeper of the Seals, De Vic, “who desired to possess the King’s mind to the exclusion of everyone else”; on the other, the three marshals of France, Praslin, Chaulnes, and Créquy[2] and some others, who were resolved not to submit to this. He added that the King conversed frequently with Bassompierre and appeared to have a rather high opinion of him, and that, if the latter had any ambition to succeed to the favour of the late Constable, it might very well be realised. That, however, did not seem to be his desire, “although he was disposed to accept the share in the King’s good graces which his services might merit.” Bassompierre and the Ministers, he told the prince, were “not always of the same opinion,” and only a few days before he had spoken very bitterly against them before his Majesty in a council. Condé then inquired if Bassompierre were in favour of continuing the war against the Huguenots, and Roucellaï answered that he had pressed Luynes to enter into negotiations with Rohan, from fear that the Royal army would be obliged to raise the siege of Montauban. As a result of this conversation, the prince sent Roucellaï to Bassompierre to inform him that he wished to speak to him and ascertain his views in regard to the war.
Before seeing Bassompierre, however, Condé had an interview with the Ministers, whom he found in warlike mood, not because they believed that any useful purpose could be served by a continuance of this fratricidal strife, but for the same selfish reasons as he himself desired it, namely, “to keep the King so far as possible from Paris, in order the better to govern him.” He then approached Créquy, who answered that he was in favour of peace, provided that it could be obtained on advantageous and honourable terms. Bassompierre gave him a similar reply, when he spoke to him on the matter, and added that he would find Praslin and all other good servants of the King of the same opinion. “It is singular,” said the prince; “all you men of war, who ought to desire it, and can only make your way by means of it, want peace; and the lawyers and statesmen demand war.” “I answered,” says Bassompierre, “that I desired war, and that it ought to bring me fortune and advancement, but only on condition that it was for the service of the King and the good of the State; and that otherwise I should esteem myself a bad servant of the King and a bad Frenchman, if, for my own private advantage, I were to desire a thing which must cause both so much evil and prejudice.”
After this sharp, if indirect, rebuke, Condé left him and told Roucellaï that, after sounding Créquy and Bassompierre, he found that he was likely to have more in common with the Ministers than with them.
During the remainder of the journey to Paris, skirmishes between the rival parties were of frequent occurrence, each doing everything possible to prejudice the King against the other. At Sauzé, where the Court arrived on the 10th, Bassompierre again scored at the expense of the Ministers.
Louis XIII was about to sit down to cards with Bassompierre and Praslin, when the three Ministers were announced.
“The King said to us as he saw them enter: ‘Mon Dieu, how tiresome these people are! When one is thinking of amusing oneself, they come to torment me, and most often they have nothing to tell me.’ I, who was very pleased to have the chance of giving them a rebuff in revenge for the ill turns they were doing me every day, said to the King: ‘What, Sire! Do these gentlemen come without being sent for by you, or without having first informed your Majesty that there is something of importance to deliberate upon, and then ask for your time?’ ‘No,’ said he, ‘they never inform me, and come when it pleases them, and most often when it does not please me, as they do now.’ ‘Jesus, Sire! is it possible?’ I replied. ‘That is to treat you like a scholar,
and make themselves your tutors, who come to give you a lesson when it pleases them. You ought, Sire, to conduct your affairs like a King, and every day, on your arrival at the place where you purpose to spend the night, one of your Secretaries of State should come to tell you if there be any news of importance which requires the assembling of your Council, and then you should send for them to come to you, either at that same hour, or at one which will be most convenient to you. And, if they have anything to tell you, let them inform you of it first, and then send them word when they are to come to you. It was thus that the late King your father conducted his affairs, and your Majesty ought to do likewise; and if they [the Ministers] should come to you otherwise [i.e., without being sent for], to send them away, and to tell them of your intention firmly, once for all.’
“The King took the representations I had made him in very good part, and said that, from that moment, he would put my counsel into practice; and he went on talking to the Maréchal de Praslin and myself. When our conversation had continued for some little time, Monsieur le Prince approached the King and said: ‘Sire, these gentlemen [the Ministers] await you to hold the council.’ The King turned to Monsieur le Prince with an angry countenance and exclaimed: ‘What council, Monsieur? I have not sent for them. I shall end by being their valet; they come when they please, and when it does not please me. Let them go away, if they wish to, and let them come only when I shall send for them; it is for them to consult my convenience and to send to inquire when that may be, and not for me to consult theirs. I desire that, at the end of each day’s journey, a Secretary of State should present himself at my lodging to inform me what news there is, and, if it be of importance, I will name a time to deliberate upon it; but I will never allow them to name it; for I am their master.’
“Monsieur le Prince was a little surprised at this response and was very curious to know from what shop it came. He went back to tell them [the Ministers], who requested him to inform the King that they were come merely to receive the honour of his commands, as courtiers, and not otherwise, and that if only his Majesty would speak a word to them, they would go away. The King did so, but very brusquely, and it was:—
“‘Messieurs, I am going to play cards with this company.’ Upon which they made him a profound reverence and withdrew, very astonished.”
The Ministers soon ascertained whom they had to thank for the very mortifying rebuff which they had received from the King, and were more incensed than ever against Bassompierre. The latter, who had been on very friendly terms with the Cardinal de Retz until his Eminence’s designs upon the King had brought their interests into collision, went to see him the next day and assured him that, so far as he himself was concerned, he was still his very humble servant. But he told him that he had no love for his colleagues, Schomberg and De Vic, and wished them to know it. The Cardinal begged him to be reconciled with them, but within forty-eight hours two incidents occurred which removed all hope of this.
It happened that, the following evening, news arrived that the Maréchal de Roquelaure was dangerously ill and that his recovery was considered hopeless. “Upon which,” says Bassompierre, “these gentlemen [the three Ministers] and Monsieur le Prince went in a body to the King to demand the charge of marshal of France, which he [Roquelaure] had, for M. de Schomberg. The only answer which the King made them was to say: “And Bassompierre—what shall he become?” This crude reply deeply affected M. de Schomberg, and from that day we ceased to speak to one another.”[3]
The second incident, which followed closely upon the first, served to embitter still further the relations between these two gentlemen.
“It happened on the morrow that the King only travelled one stage,[4] at which we [Créquy and himself] were annoyed, because we saw that these gentlemen [the Ministers] were purposely delaying the King’s arrival, thinking, if time were allowed them, to usurp the authority before he had seen the Queen his mother and the old Ministers. The Maréchal de Créquy and I, while warming ourselves in the King’s wardrobe, complained of these short journeys, upon which the Comte de la Roche-guyon told us that they were made out of consideration for the French and Swiss Guards, who otherwise would be unable to follow us. We said then that this consideration ought not to occasion such a long delay; that we, who were respectively in command of the two regiments of Guards, did not complain, that the Guards would march so far as the King pleased, and that we could make them do what we wished. Out of these last words, which were reported to the Ministers, they proceeded to compound three dishes for the King, saying that we boasted of making the two regiments of Guards do what we wished, and that we could turn them in whatever direction we pleased. They attacked the King on his weak side, and he was angry at seeing that we were compromising his authority.
“The evening before he arrived at Poitiers, he told me that he desired to speak to me on the following morning, and said to me: ‘I promised to tell you all that might be said to me concerning you. That is why, since it has been reported to me that you were boasting of being able to persuade the Swiss to do all that you wished, and even against my service, I desired to make you understand that I do not approve of such discourse being held, and less by you than by another, seeing that I have always had entire confidence in you.’
“‘God be praised, Sire,’ I answered, ‘that my enemies, seeking every means to injure me, are unable to find anything save what is easy for me to avert and bring to naught. This accusation is of that quality, and you can learn the truth from their own mouths, although it is but little accustomed to issue from them. Ask them, Sire, on what subject I said that I would make the Swiss do what I wished, and if they do not tell you that it was on that of their making long or short marches, about which M. de Créquy and I were complaining to one another, since they make arrangements for your Majesty to travel a shorter distance each day to return to Paris than a parish procession would cover, I am willing to lose my life. And your Majesty can judge whether that touches you or not, and whether you ought to regard this discourse as a boast of being able to employ the Swiss against your service.’”
The King did not accept Bassompierre’s proposal to confront him with his accusers; but he sent for two valets of his wardrobe, who had been present during the conversation between him and Créquy, and questioned them in his presence. They confirmed what Bassompierre had just told him, and his Majesty expressed himself satisfied that he had spoken the truth.
This clumsy attempt to injure Bassompierre recoiled upon its authors in a manner that was distinctly embarrassing for them. A few days later, when the King was at Châtellerault, the Ministers proposed that he should travel on the following day only so far as La Haye-Descartes, on the right bank of the Creuse, a very short day’s journey. Louis, however, announced his intention of going on to Sainte-Maure, adding significantly that it seemed to him that, if they could have their way, he would not reach Paris for three months.
These squabbles between the jealous and spiteful courtiers and Ministers who surrounded Louis XIII, to all appearance so trifling, were in reality of great political importance. For they were all manœuvres in the struggle to dominate the indolent and fickle mind, and, with it, the policy, of this young monarch, who, while so punctilious in exacting all the respect which he considered due to his royal dignity, was ready to surrender the sovereign authority to the favourite of the moment. And upon the result of that struggle hung the destinies, not only of France, but of Europe.
On January 27, Louis XIII arrived in Paris, where Marie de’ Medici was awaiting him. The meeting between them was most affectionate. Marie expressed the greatest joy at seeing her son return to his capital so well in health and now indeed the master; and the King replied that he intended to prove to everyone that never did son love or honour his mother more. Marie believed him too easily. Louis XIII was twenty-one and not nearly so manageable as he had been as a lad; and he feared the authoritative temper of Richelieu, of whom the Nuncio Corsini wrote to Gregory XV that he was “of a character to tyrannise over both the King and his mother.” Besides, to re-establish her influence over her son it was necessary for the Queen-Mother to keep him near her, and circumstances were to render this impossible.
Notwithstanding that the country was rent by civil war, and that so many distinguished families were in mourning for relatives fallen before Montauban, the winter in Paris seems to have been as gay as ever. “The Court was very beautiful, and the ladies also,” says Bassompierre, “and during the Carnival several fine comedies and grand ballets were performed.” In the middle of March, however, a most unfortunate incident occurred, which cast a gloom over both Court and capital.
Early in 1622, to the great joy of the nation, the Queen had been declared pregnant. Prayers were offered up in all the churches in France for her safe delivery, and all those about her Majesty’s person were strictly enjoined not to allow her to exert herself, to which instructions, however, they unfortunately appear to have paid but little heed. One evening, Anne of Austria and a party of courtiers, amongst whom were the widowed Duchesse de Luynes and Mlle. de Verneuil, went to spend the evening with the Princesse de Condé, who was ill and confined to her bed. On their way back to the Queen’s apartments, they were passing through the grande salle of the Louvre, when Madame de Luynes and Mlle. de Verneuil seized their royal mistress by the arms and began to run. They had not, however, gone many paces when the Queen tripped and fell on her face. A few hours later, to the general dismay, it was known that her Majesty had had a miscarriage.
Louis XIII was furiously indignant, as well he might be, and wrote to the two delinquents with his own hand, ordering them to retire from Court. It is probable that the disgrace of Madame la Connétable, against whom, as we know, his Majesty already had a grievance, might have lasted some considerable time, had not her marriage with the Duc de Chevreuse, who stood high in the King’s favour, paved the way for her return.