Failing Beaupuis, Mazarin would have liked to put his hand upon one of the brothers Campion, intimately connected as they were with Beaufort and Madame de Chevreuse, and too closely in the confidence of both not to know all their secrets. He himself complains, as we have seen, of being very badly seconded. And then he had to do with emerited conspirators, consummate in the art of concealing themselves and of leaving no trace of their whereabouts—with the active and indefatigable Duchess de Chevreuse, and with the Duke de Vendôme, who, in order to save his son, set about forwarding the escape of all those whose depositions might help to convict him, or kept them somehow in his own hands, hidden and shut up close at Anet. Mazarin was thus only able to arrest a few obscure individuals who were ignorant of the plot, and could throw no light upon it.
But it is needless to exhaust existing proofs in demonstration of the fact that Mazarin did not enact a farce by instituting proceedings against the conspirators, that he pursued them with sincerity and vigour, and that he was perfectly convinced that a project of assassination had been formed against him, when the existence of that project is elsewhere averred, when, in default of a sentence of the parliament, which could not have been given in the teeth of insufficient evidence, neither Beaupuis, nor the Campions, nor Lié, nor Brillet having been arrested, better proof being extant in the full and entire confession of one of the principal conspirators, with the plan and all the details of the affair set forth in Memoirs of comparatively recent publication, but the authenticity of which cannot be contested. We allude to the precious Memoirs of Henri de Campion,[32] brother of Madame de Chevreuse’s friend, whom that lady had introduced also to the service of the Duke de Vendôme, and more particularly to that of the Duke de Beaufort. Henri had accompanied the Duke in his flight to England after the conspiracy of Cinq Mars, and he had returned with him; he possessed his entire confidence, and he relates nothing in which he himself had not taken a considerable part. Henri’s character was very different to that of his brother Alexandre. He was a well-educated man, full of honour and courage, not in the least given to boasting, averse to all intrigue, and born to make his way through life by the straightest paths in the career of arms. He wrote these Memoirs in solitude, to which after the loss of his daughter and his wife he had retired to await death amidst the exercise of a genuine piety. It is not in such a frame of mind that a man is disposed to invent fables, and there is no middle way. What he says is that which we must believe absolutely, or if we have any doubt that he speaks the truth, he must be considered as the worst of villains. No interested feeling could have directed his pen, for he compiled his Memoirs, or at least he finished them, a short time after Mazarin’s death, without thought, therefore, of paying court to him by making very tardy revelations, and scarcely two years before he himself died in 1663. Thus it may be fairly inferred that Henri de Campion wrote strictly under the inspiration of his conscience. One has only to open his Memoirs to see confirmed, point by point, all the particulars with which Mazarin’s carnets are filled. Nothing is there wanting, everything coincides, all marvellously corresponds. It appears, indeed, as though Mazarin in making his notes had had before his eyes de Campion’s Memoirs, or that the latter whilst penning them had Mazarin’s carnets before him: he at once so thoroughly takes up the thread and completes them.
His brother Alexandre, in his letters of the month of August, 1643, had already let slip more than one mysterious sentence. He wrote to Madame de Montbazon in banishment:—“You must not despair, madam, there are still some half-a-dozen honest folks who do not give up.... Your illustrious friend will not abandon you. If to be prudent it were necessary to renounce your acquaintance, there are those who would prefer rather to pass for fools all their days.” Like Montrésor, he does not once say that there was no plot framed against Mazarin, which is a kind of tacit avowal; and when the storm burst, he took care to conceal himself, advised Beaupuis to do the same, and ends with these significant words:—“In embarking in Court affairs one cannot be certain of being master of events, and whilst we profit by the lucky ones, we must resolve to put up with the unlucky.” Henri de Campion raises this already very transparent veil.
He declares plainly that there was a project on foot to get rid of Mazarin, and that that project was conceived, not by Beaufort, but by Madame de Chevreuse in concert with Madame de Montbazon. “I think,” says he, “that the Duke’s design did not spring from his own particular sentiment, but from the persuasion of the duchesses de Chevreuse and de Montbazon, who exercised entire sway over his mind and had an irreconcilable hatred to the Cardinal. What makes me say so, is that, whilst he was under that resolution, I always observed that he had an internal repugnance which, if I mistake not, was overcome by some pledge which he may have given to those ladies.” There was, therefore, a plot, and its real author, as Mazarin truly said, and Campion repeats, was Madame de Chevreuse; if so, Madame de Montbazon was only an instrument in her hands.
Beaufort, once inveigled, drew in also his intimate friend, Count de Maillé’s son, the Count de Beaupuis, cornet in the Queen’s horse-guards. To them Madame de Chevreuse adjoined Alexandre de Campion, the elder brother of Henri. “She loved him much,” remarks the latter, and in a way which, added to certain ambiguous words of Alexandre, excites suspicion whether the elder Campion were not in fact one of the numerous successors of Chalais. He was then thirty-three, and his brother confesses that he had caught from the Count de Soissons the taste for and the habitudes of faction. Beaupuis and Alexandre de Campion approved of the plot when communicated to them, “the former,” says Henri, “believing that it would be a means for him of attaining to a position of greater importance, and my brother seeing therein Madame de Chevreuse’s advantage and by consequence his own.”
Such were the two first accomplices of Beaufort. A little later he opened his mind on the subject to Henri de Campion, one of his principal gentlemen; to Lié, captain of his guards; and to Brillet, his equerry. There the secret rested. Many other gentlemen and domestics of the house of Vendôme were destined to take action in the affair, but were admitted to no confidence. The project was well conceived and worthy of Madame de Chevreuse. There were at most five or six conspirators—three capable of keeping the secret, and who did keep it. Below them, the men of action, who did not know what they would be called on to do; and in the background, the men of the morrow, who might be reckoned upon to applaud the blow, when it had been struck, without it being judged fitting to admit them to the conspiracy. At least Henri de Campion does not even name Montrésor, Béthune, Fontraille, Varicarville, Saint-Ybar, which explains wherefore Mazarin, whilst keeping his eye upon them, did not have them arrested. Neither does Campion speak of Chandenier, La Châtre, de Treville, the Duke de Bouillon, the Duke de Guise, De Retz, nor La Rochefoucauld, whose sentiments were not doubtful, but who were not inclined to go so far as to sully their hands with an assassination. And that further explains the silence of Mazarin with regard to them in all that relates to Beaufort’s conspiracy, although he did not cherish the slightest illusion as to their dispositions, and as to the part they would have taken if the plot had succeeded, or even if a serious struggle had taken place.
The conspiracy rested for some time between Madame de Chevreuse, Madame de Montbazon, Beaufort, Beaupuis, and Alexandre de Campion. The final resolution was only taken at the end of July or in the first days of August, that is to say, precisely during the height of the quarrel between Madame de Montbazon and Madame de Longueville, which ushered in the crisis and opened the door to all the events which followed. It was then only that Beaufort spoke of it to Henri de Campion, in presence of Beaupuis. Mazarin’s crime was the continuation of Richelieu’s system. “The Duke de Beaufort told me that he thought I had remarked that the Cardinal Mazarin was re-establishing at court and throughout the kingdom the tyranny of Cardinal de Richelieu, with even more of authority and violence than had been shown under the government of the latter; that having entirely gained the Queen’s mind and made all the ministers devoted to him, it was impossible to arrest his evil designs save by depriving him of life; that the public weal having made him resolve to take that step, he informed me of it in order that I might aid him with my advice and personally assist in its execution. Beaupuis next ‘took up his parable,’ and warmly represented the evils which the too great authority of Richelieu had caused France, and concluded by saying that we must prevent the like inconvenience before his successor had rendered matters remediless.” Such conclusion embodied as nearly as possible the views and language of Importants and Frondeurs, of La Rochefoucauld and De Retz. Henri de Campion represents himself as having at first combatted the Duke’s project with so much force that more than once he was shaken; but the two duchesses wound him up again very quickly, and Beaupuis and Alexandre de Campion, instead of holding him back, encouraged him. Shortly afterwards, Beaufort having declared that he had made up his mind, Henri de Campion gave in on two conditions: “The one,” he tells us, “of not laying his hand on the Cardinal, since I would rather take my own life than do a deed of such nature. The other, that if the Duke should arrange that the project should be put into execution during his absence, I would never mix myself up in it; whereas if he were himself to be present, I should without scruple keep myself near his person, in order to defend him against any mischance that might happen, my duty and affection towards him equally obliging me thereto. He granted me those two conditions, testifying at the same time that he esteemed me more for having made them, and added that he would be present at the execution of the project, so that he might authorise it by his presence.”
The plan was to attack the Cardinal in the street, whilst paying visits in his carriage, commonly having with him only a few ecclesiastics, besides five or six lackeys. It would be necessary to present themselves in force and unexpectedly, stop the vehicle and strike Mazarin. To do that, it was necessary that a certain number of the Vendôme domestics, who were not in the secret, should post themselves daily, from early morning, in the cabarets around the Cardinal’s abode, which was then at the Hôtel de Cleves, near the Louvre. Among the domestics let into the secret, Henri de Campion names positively Gauseville. Over them were placed “the Sieurs d’Avancourt and De Brassy, Picardians, very resolute men and intimate friends of Lié.” The pretext given out was that the Condés proposing to put an affront upon Madame de Montbazon, the Duke de Beaufort, in order to oppose it, desired to have in hand a troop of gentlemen well mounted and armed. Their parts were allotted beforehand. A certain number were to pounce upon the Cardinal’s coachman, at the same moment that others were to open the two doors and strike him, whilst the Duke would be at hand on horseback, with Beaupuis, Henri de Campion, and others, to cut down or drive off those who should be disposed to resist. Alexandre de Campion was to keep near the Duchess de Chevreuse and at her orders; and she herself ought more than ever to be assiduous in her attentions to the Queen, in order to smooth the way for her friends, and, in case of success, draw the Regent to the side of the victorious.
Several occasions favourable to the execution of this plan presented themselves. In the first instance, Henri de Campion being with his band in the Rue du Champ-Fleuri—one end of which joins the Rue Saint-Honoré and the other approaches the Louvre—saw the Cardinal leave the Hôtel de Cleves in his carriage with the Abbé de Bentivoglio, the nephew of the celebrated cardinal of that name, with a few ecclesiastics and valets. Campion inquired of one of them whither the Cardinal was going, and was answered—to visit the Marshal d’Estrées. “I saw,” says Campion, “that if I had made use of the information, his death would have been inevitable. But I thought that I should be so guilty in the eyes of God and man that I resisted the temptation to do so.”
The next day it was known that the Cardinal would be present at a collation to be given by Madame du Vigean at her charming residence of La Barre, at the entrance of the valley of Montmorency, where Madame de Longueville was staying, and which the Queen had promised to honour with a visit, and who had already set out. The Cardinal was repairing thither, having with him in his coach only the Count d’Harcourt. Beaufort ordered Campion to assemble his troop and to ride after him, but Campion represented to the Duke that if they attacked the Cardinal in the company of the Count d’Harcourt, they must decide upon killing both, Harcourt being too generous to see Mazarin stabbed before his eyes without defending him, and that the murder of Harcourt would raise against them the entire house of Lorraine.