VI.
I return to my Béarnais; they were the most active and circumspect of the band. The counts of Bearn fought and treated with all the world; they hover between the patronage of France, Spain and England, and are subject to no one; they pass from one to the other and always to their own advantage, “drawn,” says Matthew Paris, “by pounds sterling, or crowns, of which they had both great need and great abundance.” They are always first where fighting is to be done or money to be gained; they go to be killed in Spain or to demand gold at Poitiers. They are calculators and adventurers; from imagination and courage lovers of warfare,—lovers of necessity and reflection.
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And in this manner their Henry won the crown of France, thinking much of his interests and little of his life, and always poor. After the camp at La Fère, when he was already recognized as king, he wrote: “I have only a pretence of a horse on which to fight, and no entire armor that I can put on; my shirts are in tatters, my pourpoints out at the elbows. My saucepan is many a time upset, and now these two days I have dined and supped with one and another, for my purveyors say that they see no way of furnishing my table any longer, especially since they have received no money for six months.”
A month later, at Fontaine-Française, he charged an army at the head of eight hundred cavaliers, and fired off his pistol by way of sport, like a soldier. But at the same time this father of his people treated the people in the following manner: “The prisons of Normandy were full of prisoners for the payment of the duty on salt. They languished there in such wise that as many as six-score of their corpses were brought forth at one time. The parliament of Rouen besought His Majesty to have pity on his people; but the king had been told that a great revenue was coming from that tax, and said that he was willing that it should be raised, and seemed that he would wish to turn the rest into mockery.”
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A good fellow, no doubt, but a devil of a good fellow; we French are fond of such; they are likable, but sometimes deserve hanging. These had prudence into the bargain, and were made to be officers of fortune. "Gassion,” says Tallemant des Reaux, “was the fourth of five sons. When he had finished his studies, he was sent to the war; but otherwise he was but poorly furnished. For his sole horse his father gave him a docked pony, that might have been thirty years old; its like was not in all Bearn, and it was called, as a rarity, Gassion’s Bob-tail. Apparently the young man was scarcely better provided with money than with horses. This pretty courser left him four or five leagues from Pau, but that did not prevent him from going into Savoy, where he entered the troops of the duke, for there was then no war in France. But the late king having broken with this prince, all Frenchmen had orders to quit his service; this forced our adventurer to return to the service of the king.
“At the taking of the pass of Suze, he did so well, although only a simple cavalier, that he was made cornet; but the company in which he was cornet was broken, and he came to Paris and asked for the mantle of a musketeer. He was refused on account of his religion. Out of spite, with several other Frenchmen he went over to Germany, and, although in his troop there were men of higher position than he, knowing how to talk in Latin, he was everywhere received for the chief of the band. One of these made the advances for a company of light-horse that they were going to raise in France for the king of Sweden; he was lieutenant of it; his captain was killed, and now he is himself a captain. He soon made himself known as a man of spirit, so that he obtained from the king of Sweden the privilege of receiving orders only from His Majesty in person; this was on condition of marching always at the head of the army and of filling in a measure the position of forlorn hope. While thus employed, he received a frightful pistol-shot in the right side, the wound of which has since opened several times, now to the peril of his life, and now the opening answering as a crisis in other illnesses.”
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He was a thorough soldier, and above all a lover of valor. A rebel peasant, at Avranches, fought admirably before a barricade, and killed the Marquis de Courtaumer, whom he took for Gassion. Gassion had search made everywhere for this gallant man, in order that he might be pardoned and to put him in his regiment. The Chancellor Séguier took the affair like a lawyer; some time after, having seized the peasant, he had him broken on the wheel. He treated civil affairs just as he did military ones. He sent word to a merchant in Paris who had become bankrupt, owing him ten thousand livres, “that it would not be possible for him to let remain in the world a man who was carrying away his property.” He was paid.
“He led men into war admirably. I have heard related an action of his, very bold and at the same time very sensible; before he was major-general, he asked several noblemen if they wished to join his party. They went with him. After having gone about the whole morning without finding anything, he said to them: ‘We are too strong; the parties all fly before us. Let us leave here our horsemen, and go away alone.’ The volunteers followed him; they went on until they were near to Saint-Omer. Just then two squadrons of cavalry suddenly appeared and cut off their way; for Saint-Omer was behind our people.
“‘Messieurs,’ said he to them, ‘we must pass or die. Put yourselves all abreast; ride full speed at them and don’t fire. The first squadron will be afraid, when they see that you mean to fire only into their teeth; they will rein back and overthrow the others.’” It happened just as he had said: our noblemen, well mounted, forced the two squadrons and saved themselves, almost to a man.
“Another, also very daring; which, however, seems to me a little rash. Having received notice that the Croats were leading away the horses of the Prince d’Enrichemont, he wanted to charge upon them, accompanied by only a few of his horsemen, and, as there happened to be a great ditch between him and the enemy, he swam across it on his horse, without looking to see if any one followed him, so that he encountered the enemy alone, killed five of them, put the rest to flight, and returned with three of our men whom they had taken, and who perhaps helped him in the struggle. He led back all the horses.”
The quondam light-horseman reappeared beneath the general’s uniform. Thus he always remained the comrade of his soldiers. When any one had offended the least of his cavalrymen, he took the man with him and had satisfaction given in one way or another.
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“La Vieuxville, since superintendent, intrusted to him his eldest son to learn the trade of war. The young man treated Gassion magnificently at the army. 'You are trifling with yourself, Monsieur le Marquis,’ said he: ‘of what use are all these dainties? ‘S death! we only want good bread, good wine and good forage.’ He thought of his horse as much as of himself.”
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He was a poor courtier and troubled himself little about ceremonies. One day he went to the communion before the prince palatine, and the following Sunday, having found his place taken, he would never allow that a nobleman should give it up, and went to seek a place somewhere else. Nevertheless he was scarcely courtly towards ladies, and on this point not at all worthy of Henry IV.
“At court, many young ladies who were pleased with him, were wheedling him, and said: ‘Of a truth, monsieur, you have performed the finest possible deeds.’—‘That’s a matter of course,’ said he. When one said: ‘I should be glad to have a husband like M. de Gassion.’—‘I don’t doubt it,’ answered he.
“He said of Mlle, de Ségur, who was old and ugly, ‘I like that young woman; she looks like a Croat.’
“When Bougis, his lieutenant de gendarmes, stayed too long in Paris in the winter-time, he wrote to him: ‘You are amusing yourself with those women, and you will die like a dog; here you would find fine chances. What the devil do you find in the way of pleasure in going to court and making love! That is pretty business in comparison with the pleasure of taking a quarter!’”
His brother, Bergerê, seems to have had little taste for this pleasure. Gassion, then a colonel, on one occasion ordered him to charge at the head of fifty cavaliers, and declared that if he gave way he would run him through the body with his sword. An admirable method for forming men! Bergerê found his account in it, and afterwards went into action like any other man.
The two adventurers had a thoroughly military ending. Their brother the president, for economy’s sake, had Bergerê embalmed by a valet de chambre who mangled him shockingly. As for Gassion, he awaited burial during three months. "The president, tired of paying for the funeral hangings, had them returned, and others put up which cost him ten sols less a day. At last he had a small vault constructed between two gates in the old cemetery; he had them interred one day when there was a sermon without any solemnity whatever, and so that no one could say that he had gone there on their account.” Three out of four heroes have been similarly buried, like dogs.
The last of the d’Artagnans, those heroic hunters after paying adventures, was (according to an inscription, said to be false) born at Pau, rue du Tran, No. 6. A drummer in 1792, he was in 1810 prince royal of Sweden. He had made his way, and along it he had lost his prejudices. Like Henry IV., he found that a kingdom was worth quite as much as a mass; he too made the perilous leap, but in a contrary direction, and laid aside his religion like an old cassock; a question of old clothes: a brand-new royal mantle was worth far more.
