III.
CAMPAIGN THE SECOND.
Mademoiselle went back to Paris. Half the population met her outside the walls; she kept up the heroine, by compulsion, and for a few weeks held her court as Queen of France. If the Fronde had held its position, she might very probably have held hers. Condé, being unable to marry her himself, on account of the continued existence of his invalid wife, (which he sincerely regretted,) had a fixed design of marrying her to the young King. Queen Henrietta Maria cordially greeted her, lamented more than ever her rejection of the "bashful" Charles II., and compared her to the original Maid of Orléans,—an ominous compliment from an English source.
The royal army drew near; on July 1, 1652, Mademoiselle heard their drums beating outside. "I shall not stay at home to-day," she said to her attendants, at two in the morning; "I feel convinced that I shall be called to do some unforeseen act, as I was at Orléans." And she was not far wrong. The battle of the Porte St. Antoine was at hand.
Condé and Turenne! The two greatest names in the history of European wars, until a greater eclipsed them both. Condé, a prophecy of Napoleon, a general by instinct, incapable of defeat, insatiable of glory, throwing his marshal's baton within the lines of the enemy, and following it; passionate, false, unscrupulous, mean. Turenne, the precursor of Wellington rather, simple, honest, truthful, humble, eating off his iron camp-equipage to the end of life. If it be true, as the ancients said, that an army of stags led by a lion is more formidable than an army of lions led by a stag, then the presence of two such heroes would have given lustre to the most trivial conflict. But that fight was not trivial upon which hung the possession of Paris and the fate of France; and between these two great soldiers it was our Mademoiselle who was again to hold the balance, and to decide the day.
The battle raged furiously outside the city. Frenchman fought against Frenchman, and nothing distinguished the two armies except a wisp of straw in the hat, on the one side, and a piece of paper on the other. The people of the metropolis, fearing equally the Prince and the King, had shut the gates against all but the wounded and the dying. The Parliament was awaiting the result of the battle, before taking sides. The Queen was on her knees in the Carmelite Chapel. De Retz was shut up in his palace, and Gaston of Orléans in his,—the latter, as usual, slightly indisposed; and Mademoiselle, passing anxiously through the streets, met nobleman after nobleman of her acquaintance, borne with ghastly wounds to his residence. She knew that the numbers were unequal; she knew that her friends must be losing ground. She rushed back to her father, and implored him to go forth in person, rally the citizens, and relieve Condé. It was quite impossible; he was so exceedingly feeble; he could not walk a hundred yards. "Then, Sir," said the indignant Princess, "I advise you to go immediately to bed. The world had better believe that you cannot do your duty, than that you will not."
Time passed on, each moment registered in blood. Mademoiselle went and came; still the same sad procession of dead and dying; still the same mad conflict, Frenchman against Frenchman, in the three great avenues of the Faubourg St. Antoine. She watched it from the city walls till she could bear it no longer. One final, desperate appeal, and her dastard father consented, not to act himself, but again to appoint her his substitute. Armed with the highest authority, she hastened to the Hôtel de Ville, where the Parliament was in irresolute session. The citizens thronged round her, as she went, imploring her to become their leader. She reached the scene, exhibited her credentials, and breathlessly issued demands which would have made Gaston's hair stand on end.
"I desire three things," announced Mademoiselle: "first, that the citizens shall be called to arms."
"It is done," answered the obsequious officials.
"Next," she resolutely went on, "that two thousand men shall be sent to relieve the troops of the Prince."
They pledged themselves to this also.
"Finally," said the daring lady, conscious of the mine she was springing, and reserving the one essential point till the last, "that the army of Condé shall be allowed free passage into the city."
The officials, headed by the Maréchal de l'Hôpital, at once exhibited the most extreme courtesy of demeanor, and begged leave to assure her Highness that under no conceivable circumstances could this request be granted.
She let loose upon them all the royal anger of the House of Bourbon. She remembered the sights she had just seen; she thought of Rochefoucauld, with his eye shot out and his white garments stained with blood,—of Guitant shot through the body,—of Roche-Giffard, whom she pitied, "though a Protestant." Condé might, at that moment, be sharing their fate; all depended on her; and so Conrart declares, in his Memoirs, that "Mademoiselle said some strange things to these gentlemen": as, for instance, that her attendants should throw them out of the window; that she would pluck off the Marshal's beard; that he should die by no hand but her's, and the like. When it came to this, the Maréchal de l'Hôpital stroked his chin with a sense of insecurity, and called the council away to deliberate; "during which time," says the softened Princess, "leaning on a window which looked on the St. Esprit, where they were saying mass, I offered up my prayers to God." At last they came back, and assented to every one of her propositions.
In a moment she was in the streets again. The first person she met was Vallon, terribly wounded. "We are lost!" he said. "You are saved!" she cried, proudly. "I command to-day in Paris, as I commanded in Orléans." "Vous me rendez la vie," said the reanimated soldier, who had been with her in her first campaign. On she went, meeting at every step men wounded in the head, in the body, in the limbs,—on horseback, on foot, on planks, on barrows,—besides the bodies of the slain. She reached the windows beside the Porte St. Antoine, and Condé met her there; he rode up, covered with blood and dust, his scabbard lost, his sword in hand. Before she could speak, that soul of fire uttered, for the only recorded time in his career, the word Despair: "Ma cousine, vous voyez un homme au désespoir,"—and burst into tears. But her news instantly revived him, and his army with him. "Mademoiselle is at the gate," the soldiers cried; and, with this certainty of a place of refuge, they could do all things. In this famous fight, five thousand men defended themselves against twelve thousand, for eight hours. "Did you see Condé himself?" they asked Turenne, after it was over. "I saw not one, but a dozen Condés," was the answer; "he was in every place at once."
But there was one danger more for Condé, one opportunity more for Mademoiselle, that day. Climbing the neighboring towers of the Bastille, she watched the royal party on the heights of Charonne, and saw fresh cavalry and artillery detached to aid the army of Turenne. The odds were already enormous, and there was but one course left for her. She was mistress of Paris, and therefore mistress of the Bastille. She sent for the governor of the fortress, and showed him the advancing troops. "Turn the cannon under your charge, Sir, upon the royal army." Without waiting to heed the consternation she left behind her, Mademoiselle returned to the gate. The troops had heard of the advancing reinforcements, and were drooping again; when, suddenly, the cannon of the Bastille, those Spanish cannon; flamed out their powerful succor, the royal army halted and retreated, and the day was won.
The Queen and the Cardinal, watching from Charonne, saw their victims escape them. But the cannon-shots bewildered them all. "It was probably a salute to Mademoiselle," suggested some comforting adviser. "No," said the experienced Maréchal de Villeroi, "if Mademoiselle had a hand in it, the salute was for us." At this, Mazarin comprehended the whole proceeding, and coldly consoled himself with a bon-mot that became historic. "Elle a tué son mari," he said,—meaning that her dreams of matrimony with the young king must now be ended. No matter; the battle of the Porte St. Antoine was ended also.
There have been many narratives of that battle, including Napoleon's; they are hard to reconcile, and our heroine's own is by no means the clearest; but all essentially agree in the part they ascribe to her. One brief appendix to the campaign, and her short career of heroism fades into the light of common day.
Yet a third time did Fortune, showering upon one maiden so many opportunities at once, summon her to arm herself with her father's authority, that she might go in his stead into that terrible riot which, two days after, tarnished the glories of Condé, and by its reaction overthrew the party of the Fronde ere long. None but Mademoiselle dared to take the part of that doomed minority in the city government, which, for resisting her own demands, were to be terribly punished on that fourth-of- July night. "A conspiracy so base," said the generous Talon, "never stained the soil of France." By deliberate premeditation, an assault was made by five hundred disguised soldiers on the Parliament assembled in the Hôtel de Ville; the tumult spread; the night rang with a civil conflict more terrible than that of the day. Condé and Gaston were vainly summoned; the one cared not, the other dared not. Mademoiselle again took her place in her carriage and drove forth amid the terrors of the night. The sudden conflict had passed its cruel climax, but she rode through streets slippery with blood; she was stopped at every corner. Once a man laid his arm on the window, and asked if Condé was within the carriage. She answered "No," and he retreated, the flambeaux gleaming on a weapon beneath his cloak. Through these interruptions, she did not reach the half-burned and smoking Hôtel de Ville till most of its inmates had left it; the few remaining she aided to conceal, and emerged again amid the lingering, yawning crowd, who cheered her with, "God bless Mademoiselle! all she does is well done."
At four o'clock that morning she went to rest, weary with these days and nights of responsibility. Sleep soundly, Mademoiselle, you will be troubled with such no longer. An ignominious peace is at hand; and though peace, too, has her victories, yours is not a nature grand enough to grasp them. Last to yield, last to be forgiven, there will yet be little in your future career to justify the distrust of despots, or to recall the young heroine of Orléans and St Antoine.