Châteauvieux returned and reported that Guise had advised his adherents to obey the Queen’s command, but that three or four of them, including the Comte de la Rochefoucauld, Master of the Wardrobe to the King, had shown marked reluctance to do so. It was thereupon resolved that La Rochefoucauld should be exiled to his estates, and that the Parlement should be directed to hold an inquiry into the affair and bring the Chevalier de Guise to trial.

The Parlement, however, seemed in no hurry to do what was required of it, for the Guises still retained much of their traditional popularity with all classes of the Parisians, and before many days had passed, an event occurred which obliged the Queen to abandon all idea of punishing the assassin.

For some little time Marie de’ Medici had been chafing beneath the domination of the Princes, who set altogether too high a price upon their loyalty. Condé, indeed, appeared to consider that, now that his brother Soissons was dead, he was entitled to receive double wages; and one fine morning Nevers, Mayenne, and Concini waited upon the Queen and demanded, on his behalf, the government of Château-Trompette, the citadel of Bordeaux, pointing out that, since Monsieur le Prince was Governor of Guienne, it was only fitting that the citadel of the chief town in his government should be entrusted to him also. Now, Marie had heard the late King say that if, in the time of Henri III, this fortress had been in his hands, he would have made himself Duke of Guienne, and she knew that its governor had always been one in whose loyalty to the Crown the most implicit confidence could be placed. She determined to resist and to be reconciled with the Guises and the Ministers.

Dissembling her indignation, she informed Nevers and his friends that she would think the matter over, upon which they pressed her for a speedy answer, saying that Monsieur le Prince was impatient to know her decision. This she promised, and then, changing the subject, informed them that she had just discovered a love-affair in which Bassompierre was engaged and which she knew he was very anxious should not be discovered. What ought she to do? “You should tell him about it, Madame,” answered Nevers. Upon which she turned to Bassompierre, and, beckoning him to follow her, moved to one of the windows.

Here, standing with her back to the room, so that none might see her face, she told him that the matter upon which she desired to speak to him was very different from the one she had mentioned. She then asked him if Guise had spoken to him about the exile of his friend La Rochefoucauld. Bassompierre answered that the duke had done so, and begged him to make intercession with the Queen for his recall, and that he had added that, if he were not successful, he must persuade Condé to use his influence, and make La Rochefoucauld’s recall the price of his reconciliation with that prince and his friends. The Queen was silent for a moment, while “four or five tears welled up in her eyes.” Then, recovering herself, she said: “These wicked men have made me leave those princes [the Guises] and despise them, and have made me also abandon and neglect the Ministers; and then, seeing me deprived of support, they wish to usurp my authority and ruin me. See how they have come to demand insolently for Monsieur le Prince the Château-Trompette, and they will not remain content with that. But, if I am able, I will surely prevent them obtaining it.”

“Madame,” answered Bassompierre, “do not distress yourself; when you will, I am sure that these princes and Ministers will be at your disposal; at least, we must find some way to bring them back.”

The Regent then told him to come to her when she had finished dinner, and that, meanwhile, she would think of some way to effect this.

At the hour when her Majesty usually rose from table Bassompierre returned, and followed her into her cabinet, pretending that he had some favour to ask of her.

Bassompierre assured her that, as she had empowered him to make the Guises such a generous bid for their support, he had no fear that he should return to her “without having completed the purchase.” And, in point of fact, on the following day he returned triumphant, pluming himself not a little on having succeeded without the necessity of promising the post of lieutenant-governor of Provence to the Chevalier de Guise, “having endeavoured,” said he to Marie de’ Medici, “to act like those prudent valets who bring back at the bottom of the purse a part of the money which their masters give them to settle their bills.”

The Queen, however, was so pleased at the success of his negotiations that she, nevertheless, determined to offer the post in question to the chevalier, in order that the reconciliation between her and his family might be the more complete, and directed Bassompierre to inform the Princesse de Conti of her gracious intentions.

A few days after these humiliating concessions to the rapacity of the House of Guise, the Chevalier killed the son of the Baron de Luz in a duel at Charenton, though it is only fair to the former to observe that the other had called him out, and that the combat had been conducted in strict accordance with the rules governing these “affairs of honour.”

On this occasion, Bassompierre, experienced courtier though he was, is unable to conceal his astonishment:—

Guise being thus reconciled with the Queen, no difficulty was experienced in persuading d’Épernon to follow his example, after which Bassompierre addressed himself to the Ministers, who, tired of being mere cyphers, were only too ready to forgive and forget; and, in an interview between Marie de’ Medici and Jeannin at the Luxembourg, an understanding was arrived at.

The Princes and Concini were outwitted. In any case, the latter pretended to be. Hearing the Queen give directions that seats were to be reserved for d’Épernon, and his friend Zamet also, at a play which was to be performed in her apartments, he remarked to Bassompierre in that strange mixture of Italian and bad French which he affected in moments of excitement: “Par Dio, Mousu, je me ride moy della chose deste monde. La roine a soin d’un siège pour Zamet, et n’en a point pour M. du Maine [Mayenne]; fiez-vous à l’amore dei principi.”

He advised Condé and his friends to accept the situation and withdraw from Court, predicting that the Regent would soon grow weary of the exigencies of the Guises, and promising to watch over their common interests. And this the Princes decided to do.

CHAPTER XIV

It was believed, for a moment, that the affair of Montferrato would bring about the ruin of the Concini. The Duke of Savoy, to assure the neutrality of France, had succeeded in corrupting the Italian favourites of the Queen and several other prominent persons, and had kept up an active correspondence with Concini, the agent employed by the latter being a priest named Maignan. An intercepted letter caused the arrest of this man, who, in the admissions that were extorted from him, comprised Concini, his creature the advocate Dolet, and the Marquis de Cœuvres.

On the day Maignan was arrested, Bassompierre, who was with the Court at Fontainebleau, happened to sup with Zamet, where he met Loménie, the Secretary of State. It had been Loménie’s duty to be present at the first examination of the prisoner, and he told Bassompierre of the serious admissions that the man had made and the names he had mentioned. He added that he was to be examined further on the following morning, when doubtless still more interesting revelations would be forthcoming.

Now, Bassompierre was on intimate terms with Concini, for, though he would appear to have despised him heartily, the Italian’s influence with the Queen made him a valuable friend, besides which he was in the habit of winning large sums from him at play. He accordingly decided to warn him of the danger which threatened him, and went that same night to his house, but was told that he was in bed and could not be disturbed. He had therefore to wait until the following day, when he stopped him as he was about to enter the chapel to hear the Whit-Sunday sermon, invited him to take a turn in the cloisters, and, so soon as they were alone, inquired bluntly: “Who is Maignay?”

That afternoon the Queen went for a drive in the park, and Bassompierre accompanied her, occupying a seat in the Grand Equerry’s coach. As they were driving by the side of the canal, one of Concini’s gentlemen came galloping up and informed Bassompierre that his master wished to see him immediately, and he sprang from his horse and offered it him. “Ah! he wants to win my money,” remarked Bassompierre, as he prepared to mount; and when the Queen inquired where he was going, he replied that he was going to play cards with the Marquis d’Ancre. He rode back to the palace, and found Concini awaiting him in the Cour Ovale.

Bassompierre told him that he had many remedies against the enmity of the Ministers, of which the most efficacious were the good graces of the Queen, which he would undoubtedly possess when he returned to his duty and abandoned all practices which were not agreeable to her Majesty. He had also, he continued, his innocence to plead for him, and, if that were not as complete as might be desired, it would be advisable to interview, and come to some arrangement with, the commissioners who had the examination of Maignan in hand (for he did not doubt that that was his present difficulty), and “to have recourse to the kindness and compassion of the Queen, who would receive him, he felt assured, with open arms, provided he spoke to her with sincerity of heart and an entire resignation to her will.”

Concini followed his advice and proceeded to throw himself upon the clemency of the Queen, “in whom he found all kinds of gentleness and kindness.” Marie de’ Medici, indeed, was unable to dispense with either the husband or the wife. “The one,” observes Henri Martin, “dominated her by habit and by the superiority of an active and restless mind over a mind indolent and dull; the other probably by a warmer feeling.”[98] She accepted all their excuses; the two commissioners by whom Maignan was tried suppressed everything which might compromise Concini and his accomplices;[99] and while the unfortunate agent was condemned to death and broken on the wheel, the man who had employed him—this precious rascal who had sought to betray the country upon which he had so long been battening—was raised to new honours. The Queen only exacted from him that he should be reconciled with the Ministers and definitely abandon the party of the Princes. And, as the price of his obedience, she gave him, in the following November, the bâton of a marshal of France![100]

Towards the end of May, Bassompierre went to Rouen to make arrangements for the conduct of his case in the action which the d’Entragues were bringing against him, and which, on various pretexts, he had succeeded in delaying until now. He found, to his disgust, however, that the plaintiff had stolen a march upon him, for, though he applied in turn to all the chief advocates of the Parlement of Rouen, not one of them would undertake the case, the reason being that they had all been consulted by the other side, which, of course, rendered it impossible for them to hold a brief for the defence.

He returned to Paris and complained bitterly to Marie de’ Medici of the sharp practice of which the d’Entragues had been guilty. Upon which she said: “Mon Dieu! Bassompierre, the Procurator of the Estates of Nantes, who is so eloquent, is eligible to plead your cause, for he was formerly an advocate of Rouen. He is here now.” And she sent for him and ordered him to undertake the case, which he did very ably.

At the beginning of June, Bassompierre returned to Rouen, “accompanied or followed by over 200 gentlemen,” and accompanied, too, by the good wishes of the Queen, who did not confine her good offices to providing him with an advocate. She wrote to the Maréchal de Fervacques, the Governor of Rouen, “to assist him in all that he might demand of him”; she ordered her own company of light horse, which was in garrison at Évreux, to come to meet him and escort him to Rouen; she sent one of her gentlemen with letters recommending his cause to all the presidents and counsellors of the Parlement; and every other day she despatched a courier to ascertain how the case was proceeding.

All Normandy appears to have flocked to Rouen to attend this cause célèbre, and seldom had the old city been so gay.

There can be little doubt that, in this breach of promise, popular sympathy was with the faithless gallant rather than the injured lady. But Bassompierre’s friends were denied the pleasure of applauding his victory at the Palais de Justice, for, after the case had been in progress for some time, the d’Entragues, seeing that the day was likely to go against them, succeeded in obtaining an adjournment for six months, to enable the King’s Council to decide whether the Court was impartially constituted; their contention being that some of the judges were related to the defendant on his mother’s side.

Not long after Bassompierre’s return to Court, the post of lieutenant-governor of Poitou became vacant, and, as he was anxious to secure this office for his brother-in-law Saint-Luc, he solicited Concini’s good offices with the Queen, thinking, not unnaturally, that, after the service he had lately rendered him, the Italian would be only too ready to oblige him. Concini assured both Bassompierre and his brother-in-law that he would do everything in his power for them, and appeared delighted at the opportunity of discharging the obligation under which the former had placed him. Nevertheless, the post was given to Condé’s favourite, the Baron de Rochefort, at Concini’s earnest entreaty, the Queen told Bassompierre, as she herself preferred Saint-Luc.

So much for the favourite’s sense of gratitude! But this was not all:

After this, Saint-Luc, as was only to be expected, was somewhat cold in his manner towards Concini, whereupon that worthy, persuaded that this was due to his brother-in-law’s influence, determined to be avenged and, says Bassompierre, “assisted by his wife, began to instill into the Queen’s mind the belief that I boasted of the kindness which she showed me, and that people were talking about it; and they told her that I was estranging her servants from her, and that I was turning everyone against her.”

This intrigue was only too successful, and on Bassompierre’s return to Fontainebleau from a visit to Paris, whither he had been sent by the Queen to settle a quarrel between the Duc de Montbazon and the Maréchal de Brissac, he perceived a change in her Majesty’s manner towards him, which seemed rather less cordial than usual. This continued for some days and was succeeded by an “entire coldness.”[101]

Bassompierre remained in this state of semi-disgrace for about a month, when, his patience exhausted, he “resolved to quit the Court of France and the service of the King and Queen, although several beautiful ladies performed the impossible to turn him from this design.” He accordingly asked Sauveterre, the usher of the Queen’s cabinet, to obtain for him an audience of her Majesty, in order that he might request her permission to retire from the Court and France, which Sauveterre did. But, no sooner was he in the royal presence than, to his astonishment and relief, the Queen, addressing him with all her old cordiality, said: “Bassompierre, I am going to-morrow to Paris. [She was going to visit her younger son, the Duc d’Orléans—Monsieur, as he was called—who was lying ill at the Louvre.] I have ordered everyone to remain here; but, as for you, if you wish to come, I give you permission. But do not go by the same road, so that they may not say that I have made an exception to the general rule.”

Next day, Bassompierre went to Paris, accompanied by Créquy and Saint-Luc, and awaited the Queen’s arrival at the Louvre, where he assisted her to alight from her coach and escorted her to Monsieur’s apartments. “The others then retired,” says he, “and I remained until she was in her cabinet, when I had full leisure to speak to her, and left her with the assurance that she did not believe any of the things which they had tried to persuade her to believe against me, concerning which I gave her a complete explanation.”

Early in 1614, Condé and the other Princes who, in the preceding year, had been allied with Concini, indignant at the latter’s reconciliation with the Ministers and jealous of his increasing favour, retired from Court and assumed so threatening an attitude that Marie de’ Medici decided to raise an army without delay, and applied to the Swiss Cantons for a levy of 6,000 men, who were intended to form the nucleus of this force. Now, the Colonel-General of the Swiss in the French service, who would, of course, take command of the new levy, was the Duc de Rohan, a nobleman of whose loyalty the Regent was exceedingly suspicious, and with good reason, since, when hostilities broke out, he entered into an alliance with the Princes. She therefore resolved to purchase this post from him and to appoint in his place someone in whom she had absolute confidence.

At a meeting of the Council called to decide the question of Rohan’s successor, Villeroy suggested that the post should be given to the Duc de Longueville, by which means, he assured the Queen, she would certainly draw him away from the party of the Princes, which he seemed more than half-inclined to join. Her Majesty, however, very sensibly preferred to bestow it on someone who would not regard his appointment as in the nature of a bribe to do his duty, and proposed that Bassompierre should be the new Colonel-General, “both on account of the German tongue, which he had in common with the Swiss, and because he was their neighbour.” Upon this, Villeroy pointed out that, by the ancient conventions of the Kings of France with the Swiss Cantons, it was expressly provided that the Colonel-General should be a prince of the Blood Royal of France or, at any rate, a prince of some other royal house.[102] The Queen then proposed the Chevalier de Guise, who was a prince of the House of Lorraine; but to this Villeroy objected, on the ground that the Guises had already been overwhelmed with benefits and that to add to them would be bound to create a great deal of jealousy. And the Council rose without any decision having been arrived at.

Bassompierre saluted her Majesty and withdrew, anathematizing the wretched convention which stood between him and one of the highest offices under the Crown, and wondering whether by any possibility the obstacle could be overcome. Of that there seemed but little chance, as time pressed, and perhaps by the morrow the post would have been filled. Fortune favoured him, however, for, as he was on his way to dinner, he happened to meet Colonel Gaspard Gallaty, a veteran Swiss officer in the service of France,[103] with whom he was on very friendly terms. To him he related what the Queen had just told him, when Gallaty said that he believed he possessed sufficient influence with his countrymen to persuade them to accept him as their Colonel-General, notwithstanding the convention. And he offered to set out at once for Switzerland to obtain their consent, and begged Bassompierre to return to the Queen and tell her that, if she wished to give him the post, the Swiss would consent.

By the Queen’s orders, Bassompierre then communicated with Rohan, who was in Poitou, and, as he feared that it might be some little time before the Treasury saw its way to pay the large sum demanded by that nobleman for the surrender of his post, he himself offered to advance it; and on March 12, 1614, he took the oath as Colonel-General of the Swiss.

Two days later, news arrived that the Princes had surprised Mézières, from which place Condé despatched a lengthy memorial to the Queen, setting forth the grievances of himself and his party, protesting against the Spanish marriage and demanding the convocation of the States-General. The seizure of Mézières was followed by that of Sainte-Menehould, but the arrival of the Swiss, in two regiments, each 3,000 strong, of whom Bassompierre at once went to take the command, greatly perturbed the rebels, and there can be no doubt that at the cost of a little bloodshed the Regent could easily have crushed the insurrection. Instead of doing so, she preferred to treat, and the result of the negotiations which ensued was the Peace of Sainte-Menehould (May 15, 1614), which stipulated that the States-General should be convoked; that Condé should hold Amboise, as a place of surety, until the meeting of the States, and receive a sum of 450,000 livres; that Mayenne, who was already Governor of the Île-de-France, should have the reversion of the government of Paris, together with 300,000 livres; Longueville 100,000 livres, and Bouillon “the doubling of his gendarmes.” It was a direct incentive to the Princes to take up arms again on the first convenient opportunity.

As the Duc de Vendôme, who had retired into his government of Brittany, showed himself discontented with the peace and had, not only refused to dismantle the fortifications of Lamballe and Quimper, as he was required to do by the treaty, but had even seized upon Vannes, Marie de’ Medici, on the advice of Villeroy, decided to show the young King to his people, and to “go in person to pacify the western provinces.” Bassompierre accompanied her, with one of the two regiments of Swiss, the other having been disbanded on the signing of peace, and was employed in superintending the razing of the fortifications which Vendôme had erected. The appearance of the young King aroused great enthusiasm in the West, and Vendôme soon decided to make his submission.

Louis XIII returned to Paris, and on October 2 proceeded in great state to the Parlement to declare his majority. He thanked his mother “for having taken so many pains on his behalf, and begged her to continue to govern and command as heretofore.” “I desire and I order,” he added, “that you be obeyed in everything and everywhere, and that you be after me the chief of my Council.”

CHAPTER XV

It appears that the d’Entragues, aware that their plea that the court at Rouen was improperly constituted was certain to be overruled by the King’s Council and the case sent back to Rouen for trial, in which event their chance of obtaining a verdict would be a very remote one, had decided to appeal to Rome, and proceeded to petition the Pope to direct that the affair should be adjudicated upon by ecclesiastical commissioners appointed by his Holiness. The petition was granted, though it would appear to have been very unusual for the Vatican to do so, unless it had first been ascertained whether the other party were willing for the case to be submitted to a Papal tribunal; and one of the commissioners appointed was the Bishop of Dax. But, by some error, due no doubt to the similarity of names, the Papal authority to try the case was sent, not to this prelate, but to the Archbishop of Aix. Now, the Archbishop of Aix, if we are to believe Bassompierre, was “a needy rogue, and generally regarded as mad”; and when the Bishop of Beauvais, at whose suggestion the appeal to Rome had been made, and whom the writer accuses of being in love with Marie d’Entragues, offered him a bribe of 1,200 crowns to defeat the ends of justice, he promptly accepted it. Thereupon, without condescending to consult his fellow-commissioners he sent a citation to Bassompierre’s house, summoning him to appear before him; and, after waiting three days, without troubling to ascertain whether that gentleman had ever received the citation, and without hearing any evidence, pronounced, on his own authority, the promise of marriage—which he had not even seen, as it was, with the other documents connected with the case, at Rome—good and valid, and condemned Bassompierre to execute it within fifteen days after Easter, on pain of excommunication.

On learning of these extraordinary proceedings, Bassompierre returned to Paris in all haste, and appealed to the Parlement; and that body, always very jealous of Papal interference with matters which it considered within its own jurisdiction, promptly quashed the archbishop’s decision. He then went to the Queen-Mother, who, “indignant, like everyone else, at the infamy of this man,” issued an order for the prelate’s arrest, which Bassompierre set out to execute, at the head of 200 stalwart Swiss. The archbishop, however, had prudently gone into hiding, where he remained until the Nuncio and the other bishops, fearing a scandal, succeeded in pacifying the infuriated Bassompierre, “the Nuncio giving him his word that within three months at latest his Holiness would quash, as the Parlement had already done, all the proceedings of this fool. And this he did.”

This new development of the d’Entragues affair was only one of many difficulties which beset Bassompierre on his return to Paris:—

However, his fortunate star prevailed over these complicated effects of his extravagant and amorous propensities:—

Towards the end of March, Condé, who for weeks past had been secretly fomenting opposition to the Court, left Paris, followed, at intervals, by his chief adherents, and issued a manifesto protesting against the Ultramontane tendencies of the Government and the Spanish marriage. Marie de’ Medici, who intended shortly to set out for the Spanish frontier to make the exchange of the princesses and conclude the marriage of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, and naturally feared to leave Condé behind her, sent him a letter from the King commanding the prince to accompany him. But Condé excused himself from following his Majesty until he had remedied the evils of the State, of which he designed the Maréchal d’Ancre as the principal author.

The Queen-Mother, in consequence, was obliged to raise two armies: one to escort the King and herself to Bordeaux, the other to watch the princes. The latter force was placed under the command of the Maréchal de Bois-Dauphin, with Praslin as his chief of staff; and to this Bassompierre and the Swiss were attached.

The King and his mother left Paris on August 17, Bassompierre and the Swiss accompanying them so far as Bernis, not far from Sceaux, where they received orders to return and join Bois-Dauphin’s army. Before doing so, however, Bassompierre went to Rouen, where on September 4 the Parlement pronounced judgment in his favour; and this unedifying affair, which had dragged on for nearly four years and must have involved both sides in enormous expense, finally terminated. He then returned in triumph to Paris, whence he proceeded to Meaux, where Bois-Dauphin had established his headquarters.

Bassompierre gives a long and detailed account of the operations which ensued, through which, however, we do not propose to follow him, since they are of little interest, consisting mainly of unimportant skirmishes and the reduction of such places as had declared for the Princes or had been seized by them. In what fighting took place he appears to have displayed both courage and activity; while he endeavoured, though without success, to impart some of his own energy to the old Maréchal de Bois-Dauphin, who, in his youth, had been one of the most dashing officers in the armies of the League, but with age had grown slow and cautious. Happily for the marshal, Condé was equally incapable; otherwise, he would no doubt have taken advantage of his opponent’s inaction to march upon Paris.

Meanwhile, the Court had reached Bordeaux in safety, from which town the greater part of the Royal army was despatched to the frontier to fetch the Infanta Anne of Austria, whom Philip III, undisturbed on his side by war’s alarms, had brought from Madrid. The exchange of the princesses took place at Andaye, on the Bidassoa, after which Anne of Austria, escorted by the Royal troops, set out for Bordeaux, where her marriage with Louis XIII was celebrated on November 28.

Her object accomplished, Marie de’ Medici became anxious for peace at any price, while Condé and his friends, now deprived of their chief pretext for rebellion and aware that the Queen would be prepared to pay them handsomely to return to their allegiance, had no desire to prolong the war. A suspension of arms having been agreed upon, a congress met at Loudun to negotiate peace, which was signed on May 3, 1616.

Its terms were another triumph for the party of the Princes, and particularly for their leader, who, in exchange for his government of Guienne, received that of Berry and of the citadel and town of Bourges, the right of signing all the decrees of the Council, and 1,500,000 livres, to compensate him for the inconvenience and expense to which he had been put in being obliged to take up arms against his sovereign. He was certainly finding rebellion a most profitable occupation. The other grandees, his accomplices, received altogether 6,000,000 livres.

The Peace of Loudun brought about the downfall of the Ministers of Henri IV. In both peace and war they had shown only weakness, which is scarcely surprising, considering that the Chancellor, the youngest of the three, was seventy-two. He was obliged to surrender the Seals to Du Vair, First President of the Parlement of Toulouse; while Villeroy and Jeannin were also dismissed, and replaced by Mangot, First President of the Parlement of Bordeaux, and the Queen-Mother’s intendant Barbin, an intelligent and energetic man, who was devoted to Concini and Marie de’ Medici.

As for Concini, he was more in favour at Court than ever; nevertheless, his position was not altogether an enviable one, since, though he was temporarily reconciled with Condé, Mayenne and Bouillon were breathing fire and slaughter against him and were quite capable of putting their threats into execution should a favourable occasion present itself; while he had rendered himself odious to the Parisians by an act of intolerable insolence.

It happened that, one night during the war, Concini had wished to leave Paris by the Porte de Bussy, in order to go to Saint-Germain. But, as he had neglected to provide himself with the necessary passport—such trifles being, of course, beneath the notice of so great a man—the officer of the citizen militia in charge of the gate, who, when not girded with a sword, followed the peaceful occupation of a shoemaker, had refused to let him out. The shoemaker was only doing his duty, but Concini was furious, and, so soon as peace was signed, determined to be revenged, and accordingly sent two of his lackeys to chastise the impertinent fellow who had dared to put such an affront upon a marshal of France. The sequel was a tragedy, for the shoemaker shouted for help with all the strength of his lungs; the people came running from all directions to his assistance, seized the unfortunate lackeys, and, after keeping them locked up for some days, hanged them in front of the shoemaker’s shop, vowing that they would serve their master in the same way when they could lay their hands on him.

All things considered, it is not surprising that the marshal should have decided that the air of Paris was just then unsuited to his health and remained at his country seat at Lesigny, though even there he appears to have been far from safe from his enemies, since Bassompierre tells us that “MM. de Mayenne and de Bouillon made an attempt to blow him up with a petard, but did not succeed.”

However, on July 20 Condé returned to Paris, to be received with enthusiasm by the people, though surely no one was ever less deserving of popular acclamations than this vain, greedy, and meddlesome young man, who had not scrupled to plunge his country into the miseries of civil war to serve his own selfish ends! Unwilling to offend the prince by failing to pay him his respects, Concini thereupon decided to go to Paris, even at the risk of his life, and wrote to Bassompierre, who had apparently quite forgiven him for the shabby way he had behaved two years before, asking him to meet him at the Porte Saint-Antoine at three o’clock on the following afternoon, with as many friends as he could muster.

At the appointed hour Bassompierre proceeded to the Porte Saint-Antoine, accompanied by thirty horse, passing on the way the Hôtel de Mayenne, which stood at the corner of the Rue Saint-Antoine and the Rue du Petit-Musc. Presently, Concini appeared, riding in his gilded coach, which was surrounded by forty mounted retainers, all, of course, armed to the teeth. The marshal alighted, and mounted a horse which Bassompierre had brought for him, and the two cavalcades joined forces and proceeded through the streets to the Louvre. Here they waited while Concini entered to salute the Queen, and then made their way to the Hôtel de Condé, in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. By this time the marshal’s escort, swollen by the accession of friends of his own and Bassompierre’s, amounted to over one hundred horse; but it seemed as though even this force might be insufficient to protect him, as the first person whom they saw on entering the courtyard of the Hôtel de Condé was Concini’s enemy the shoemaker. His presence in that aristocratic mansion was no doubt accounted for by the fact that it was part of Monsieur le Prince’s policy to court the leaders of the populace, as the Guises had done so effectively in days gone by.

No sooner did the shoemaker catch sight of Concini, than he hurried away, shouting out that he was going to raise the people of his quarter against the Italian. The latter, greatly alarmed, paid his respects to Condé as briefly as etiquette would permit, and then he and his escort turned their horses’ heads towards the river. On this occasion, Bassompierre and his followers rode some two hundred paces ahead of Concini, as it had been decided that if, as was fully expected, they found the Pont-Neuf occupied by an armed mob too numerous to allow of them cutting their way through, the vanguard should hold the enemy in check, while the marshal, under the protection of the rest, retreated to the shelter of the Hôtel de Condé. To their relief, however, the bridge was unoccupied—apparently the shoemaker had not had sufficient time to mobilise his quarter—and they reached the Porte Saint-Antoine in safety, where Concini reentered his coach and returned to Lesigny.

After Condé’s return to Paris, the management of affairs fell almost entirely into his hands, and his hôtel was besieged at all hours by petitioners and sycophants. “Almost all the grandees,” says Bassompierre, “were of his party and his cabal, and even MM. de Guise[104] joined him, under pretext of dissatisfaction with the Maréchal d’Ancre and his wife.”

At the beginning of August, Concini returned to his