The Duke d’Enghien had returned to Paris after Rocroy, and at the end of a campaign in which he had taken a very important stronghold, passed the Rhine with the French army, and carried the war into Germany. The Queen had received him as the liberator of France. Mazarin, who looked more to the reality than the semblance of power, intimated to the young conqueror that his sole ambition was to be his chaplain and man of business with the Queen. At a distance, the Duke d’Enghien had praised everything that had been done, and came from the camp over head and ears in love with Madlle. du Vigean, and furious that any one should have dared to insult a member of his house. He adored his sister, and he had a warm friendship for Coligny.[40] He was aware of and had favoured his passion for that sister. Engaged himself in a suit as ardent as it was chaste, he readily comprehended that his beautiful sister might well have been not insensible to the fervent assiduities of the brave Maurice, but he revolted at the thought of the amatory effusions of a Madame de Fouquerolles being attributed to her, and he assumed a tone in the matter which effectually arrested any further insinuation from even the most insolent and daring.
Amongst the especial friends of Beaufort and Madame de Montbazon, foremost of all stood the Duke de Guise.[41] They had manœuvred to secure him as well as the rest of his family to their party, through Gaston, Duke d’Orleans, who had espoused as his second wife a princess of the house of Lorraine—the lovely Marguerite, sister of Charles IV. and second daughter of Duke Francis. The Duke de Guise had already played many strange pranks and committed more than one folly, but he had not as yet signally failed in any serious enterprise. His incapacity was not patent. He had the prestige of his name, youth, good looks, and a courage carried even to temerity. The avowed slave of Madame de Montbazon, he had espoused her quarrel, and to gratify her had joined in propagating those calumnious reports, but without exhibiting the violence of Beaufort, and had remained erect, confronting and defying the victorious Condés.
Coligny had had the good sense to keep aloof during the storm, for fear of still further compromising Madame de Longueville by exhibiting himself openly as her champion: but a few months having elapsed, he thought that he might at last show himself, and, as a certain authority[42] tells us, “the imprisonment of the Duke de Beaufort having deprived that noble of the chance of measuring swords with him, he addressed himself to the Duke de Guise.” La Rochefoucauld says, “the Duke d’Enghien, unable to testify to the Duke de Beaufort, who was in prison, the resentment he felt at what had passed between Madame de Longueville and Madame de Montbazon, left Coligny at liberty to fight with the Duke de Guise, who had mixed himself up in this affair.” The Duke d’Enghien, therefore, knew and approved of what Coligny did. In fact, he found himself without an adversary in the affair of sufficient rank to justify a prince of the blood in drawing his sword against him. So far as regards Madame de Longueville, it is absurd to suppose that, desirous of vengeance, she it was who had urged on Coligny, for everybody ascribed to her a line of conduct characterised by great moderation, as contrasted with that of the Princess de Condé. Far from envenoming the quarrel, she wished to hush it up, and Madame de Motteville thus significantly alludes to that fact: “The enmity she bore Madame de Montbazon being proportionate to the love she bore her husband, it did not carry her so far but that she found it more à propos to dissimulate that outrage than otherwise.”
La Rochefoucauld gives some particulars which explain what follows. Coligny, just risen out of a long illness, was still very much enfeebled, and, moreover, not very “skilful of fence.” Such was his condition when, as the champion of Madame de Longueville, he confronted the Duke de Guise in mortal duel, whilst the latter, like most heroes of the parade-ground, possessed rare cunning at carte and tierce. With regard to the seconds chosen, they are in every respect worthy of notice. In those days, seconds were witnesses of the duel in which they themselves fought. Coligny selected as his second, and to give the challenge, as was then the custom, Godefroi, Count d’Estrades, a man of cool and tried courage. The Duke de Guise’s second was his equerry, the Marquis de Bridieu, a Limousin gentleman and brave officer, faithfully attached to the house of Lorraine, who, in 1650, admirably defended Guise against the Spanish army and against Turenne, and for that brave defence, during which there were twenty-four days of open trenches, he was made lieutenant-general.
It was arranged that the affair should come off at the Place Royale—the usual arena for those sort of encounters, and which had been a hundred times stained with the best blood of France. The mansions around the Place Royale were then tenanted by ladies of the highest rank and fashion, amongst the rest, Marguerite, Duchess de Rohan, Madame de Guéméné, Madame de Chaulnes, Madame de St. Geran, Madame de Sablé, the Countess de St. Maure, and many others, under the influence of whose bright eyes those volatile and valiant French gentlemen delighted to cross swords. And there many a noble form had been struck down never to rise again, and many a noble heart had throbbed its last. During the first quarter of the seventeenth century, the duel was a custom at once useful and disastrous, inasmuch as it kept up the warlike spirit of the nobles, but which mowed them down as fast as war itself, and but too frequently for frivolous causes. To draw swords for trifles had become the obligatory accompaniment of good manners; and as gallantry had its finished fops, so the duel had its refined rufflers. In the comparatively short period of a few years, nine hundred gentlemen perished in these combats. To stop this scourge, Richelieu issued a royal edict, which punished death by death, and sent the offenders from the Place Royale to the Place de Grève. On this head Richelieu showed himself inflexible, and the examples of Montmorency-Bouteville, beheaded with his second, the Count Deschappelles, for having challenged Beuvron and fought with him on the Place Royale at mid-day, impressed a salutary terror, and rendered infraction of the edict very rare. Coligny, however, braved everything; he challenged Guise, and on the appointed day the two noble adversaries, accompanied by their seconds, D’Estrades and Bridieu, met upon the Place Royale.
Of this memorable duel, thanks to contemporary memoirs as well as various kinds of MSS., the minutest details have been preserved.
On the 12th of December, 1643, D’Estrades went in the morning to call out the Duke de Guise on the part of Coligny. The rendezvous was fixed for the same day, at three o’clock in the afternoon, at the Place Royale. The two adversaries did not appear abroad during the whole morning, and at three o’clock they were on the ground. A sentence is ascribed to Guise which invests the scene with an unwonted grandeur, and arrays for the last time in bitterest animosity and deadly antagonism the two most illustrious representatives of the League wars in the persons of their descendants. On unsheathing his sword Guise said to Coligny: “We are about to decide the old feud of our two houses, and to see what a difference there is between the blood of Guise and that of Coligny.”
Coligny’s only reply was to deal his adversary a long lunge; but, weak as he was, his rearward foot failed him, and he sank upon his knee. Guise advanced upon him and set his foot upon his sword, in such manner as though he would have said, “I do not desire to kill you, but to treat you as you deserve, for having presumed to address yourself to a prince of such birth as mine, without his having given you just cause,”—and he struck him with the flat of his sword-blade. Coligny, furious, collected his strength, threw himself backwards, disengaged his sword, and recommenced the strife. In this second bout, Guise was slightly wounded in the shoulder, and Coligny in the hand. At length, Guise, in making another thrust at his adversary, grasped his sword-blade, by which his hand was slightly cut, but, wresting it from Coligny’s grasp, dealt him a desperate thrust in the arm which put him hors de combat. Meanwhile D’Estrades and Bridieu had grievously wounded each other.
Such was the issue of that memorable duel—the last, it appears, of the famous encounters on the Place Royale. We thus see that, though cowed, the French noblesse had not been tamed by Richelieu’s solemn edict. This last duel did very little honour to Coligny, and almost everybody took part with the Duke de Guise. The Queen manifested very lively displeasure at the violation of the edict, and the Duke d’Orleans, urged thereto by his wife and the Lorraine family, made a loud outcry. The Prince and Princess de Condé also found themselves compelled to declare against Coligny—doubly in the wrong, both because he had been the challenger and been unfortunate in the result. Proof that there was an understanding between Coligny and the Duke d’Enghien is evident from the latter not deserting the unlucky champion of his sister, that he received the wounded man into his house at Paris, afterwards at Saint Maur, and that he did not cease from surrounding him with his protection and care in spite of his father, the Prince de Condé. When the matter was referred to the Parliament, conformably to the edict, and the two adversaries were summoned to appear, the Duke de Guise announced his intention of repairing to the chamber with a retinue of princes and great nobles; whilst, on his side, the Duke d’Enghien threatened to escort his friend after the same fashion. But the initiative proceedings were stayed through the deplorable condition into which poor Coligny was known to have fallen.
That unfortunate young man languished for some months, and died in the latter part of May, 1644, alike in consequence of his wounds and of despair for having so badly sustained the cause of his own house, as well as that of Madame de Longueville.