CHAPTER V.
FAILURE OF THE PLOT TO ASSASSINATE MAZARIN. ARREST OF BEAUFORT, BANISHMENT OF MADAME DE CHEVREUSE, AND DISPERSION OF THE “IMPORTANTS.”
Let us now inquire how the last attempt against Mazarin’s life—that nocturnal ambuscade so well planned and so deliberately set about on the 1st of September, 1643—chanced to fail, and what was the result of such failure. Without stopping to discuss the conjectures of Campion on this point, it may suffice to state that Mazarin, who was on his guard, evaded the blow destined for him by not visiting the Queen during the evening on which it was resolved to kill him as he should return from the Louvre. Next day the scene was changed. A rumour spread rapidly that the Prime Minister had expected to have been murdered by Beaufort and his friends, that he had escaped, fortune having declared in his favour. A plot to assassinate, more especially when it fails, invariably excites the strongest indignation, and the man who has extricated himself from a great peril and seems destined to sweep all such from his path, readily finds adherents and defenders. A host of people who would probably have supported Beaufort victorious, now flocked to offer their swords and services to the Cardinal, and on that morning he went to the Louvre escorted by three hundred gentlemen.
For several days previously, Mazarin had seen clearly that, cost what it might, he must cut his way through the knotted intricacy of the situation, and that the moment had arrived for forcing Anne of Austria to choose her part. The occasion was decisive. If the peril which he had just undergone, and which was only suspended over his head, did not suffice to draw the Queen from her incertitude, it would prove that she did not love him; and Mazarin knew well that, amidst the many dangers surrounding him, his entire strength lay in the Queen’s affection, and that thereon depended his present safety and future fate. Whether, therefore, through policy or sincere affection, it was always to Anne of Austria’s heart that he addressed himself, and at the outset of the crisis he had said to himself: “If I believed that the Queen was merely making use of me through necessity, without having any personal inclination for me, I would not stay here three days longer.”[33] But enough has been said to show plainly that Anne of Austria loved Mazarin. Comparing him with his rivals, she appreciated him daily more and more. She admired the precision and clearness of his intellect, his finesse and penetration, and that extraordinary energy which enabled him to bear the weight of government with marvellous ease—his quick and accurate introspection, his profound prudence, and at the same time the judicious vigour of his resolves. She saw the affairs of France prospering on all sides under his firm and skilful hand. The Cardinal, it is true, was not quite a nullity, in the fierce war which had inaugurated the new reign so dazzlingly; but a power of no slight weight was manifest in the success which had followed his advent to office, and which proved to startled Europe that the victory of Rocroy was not a lucky stroke of chance. When every member of the Council was opposed to the siege of Thionville, and when Turenne himself, on being consulted, did not venture to declare his opinion on the subject, it was Mazarin who had insisted with an unflinching persistence that the victory of Rocroy should be profited by, and that France should extend her frontier to the Rhine. That proposition, doubtless, emanated from the youthful conqueror, but Mazarin had the merit of comprehending, sustaining, and causing it to triumph. If no first minister had ever before been so served by such a general, neither had general ever been so supported by such a minister; and thanks to both, on the 11th of August, whilst the chivalrous Importants were exhausting their combined talents in putting a shameful affront upon the noble sister of the hero who had just served France so gloriously, and who was about to aggrandize it further—whilst they were displaying their vapid and turgid eloquence in the salons, or sharpening their poniards in gloomy council chambers, Thionville, then one of the chief strongholds of the Empire, surrendered after an obstinate defence. Thus, the Regency of Anne of Austria had opened under the most brilliant auspices.
But in the height of this national glory and signal triumph, Queen Anne must indeed have shuddered when Mazarin placed before her all the proofs of the odious conspiracy formed against him. Explanations the most minute and confidential thereupon ensued between them. It was now more than ever compulsory for her to “raise the mask,”[34] to sacrifice to a manifest necessity the circumspection she was studious of preserving—to brave somewhat further the tittle-tattle of a few devotees of either sex, and at all events to permit her Prime Minister to defend his life. Up to this moment Anne of Austria had hesitated, for reasons which may be readily comprehended. But Madame de Montbazon’s insolence had greatly irritated her; the conviction she acquired that numerous attempts to assassinate Mazarin had only by chance failed, and might be renewed, decided her; and it was, therefore, towards the close of August, 1643, when the date of that declared ascendancy, open and unrivalled, must be certainly fixed, of the Minister of the Queen Regent. These conspirators, by proceeding to the last extremities, and thereby making her tremble for Mazarin’s life, hastened the triumph of the happy Cardinal; and on the morrow of the last nocturnal ambush in which he was marked for destruction, Jules Mazarin became absolute master of the Queen’s heart, and more powerful than Richelieu had ever been after the Day of Dupes.
The minister’s carnets will be searched in vain for any traces of the explanations which Mazarin must have had with the Queen during this grave conjuncture. Such explanations are not of a nature likely to be forgotten, and of which there is any need to take notes. An obscure passage, however, is to be met with, written in Spanish, of which the following words have a meaning clear enough to be understood: “I ought no longer to have any doubt, since the Queen, in an excess of goodness, has told me that nothing could deprive me of the post which she has done me the honour of giving me near her; nevertheless, as fear is the inseparable companion of affection, &c.”[35] At this anxious moment, Mazarin was attacked with a slight illness, brought on by incessant labour and wearing anxieties, and an attack of jaundice having supervened, the Cardinal jotted down the following brief but highly suggestive memorandum:—“La giallezza cagionata dà soverchio amore.”[36]
Madame de Motteville was in attendance on Anne of Austria when the rumour of the abortive attempt at assassination brought a crowd of courtiers to the Louvre in hot haste to protest their devotedness to the Crown. The Queen, with great emotion, whispered to her trusty lady-in-waiting: “Ere eight and forty hours elapse you shall see how I will avenge myself for the evil tricks these false friends have played me.” “Never,” adds Madame de Motteville, “can the remembrance of those few brief words be effaced from my mind. I saw at that moment, by the fire that flashed in the Queen’s eyes, and in fact by what happened on that very evening and next day, what it is to be a female sovereign when enraged, and with the power of doing what she pleases.”[37] Had the cautious lady-in-waiting been less discreet, she might have added, “especially when that sovereign lady is a woman in love.”
The break-up and dispersion of the Importants once decided upon, the first step was to arrest Beaufort, and bring him to trial. To this the Queen gave her consent. Of the authority Mazarin had acquired, such proceeding was a striking indication, and showed how far Anne of Austria might one day go in defence of a minister who was dear to her. The Duke de Beaufort had been, before her husband’s death, the man in whom the Queen placed most confidence, and for some time he was thought destined to play the brilliant part of a royal favourite. In a brief space he had effectually thrown away his chance by his presumptuous conduct, his evident incapacity, and yet more by his public liaison with Madame de Montbazon. Still the Queen had shown a somewhat singular weakness in his favour, and at the expiration of three short months to sign an order for his arrest was a great step—necessary, it is true, but extreme, and which was the manifest sign of an entire change in the heart and intimate relations of Anne of Austria. The dissimulation even with which she acted in that affair marks the deliberative firmness of her resolution.