Political Women, Vol. 1

by active 1840-1883 Sutherland Menzies

But De Retz was not the only politician who terrified himself with the idea of such a future looming thus darkly for France. Mazarin dreaded it as much as he. His authority was almost universally thought to be for ever annihilated; but a small number of courtiers who could read the Queen’s heart, judged otherwise, and owed to the skilful line of conduct to which they adhered under these circumstances the high fortune to which they attained in the sequel.

There is little doubt that, in the first instance, Condé might have carried off the Regency from the Queen, deprived as she was of her prime minister, and by her own acknowledgment incapable of governing by herself; but then the direction of affairs belonged by right to the Duke d’Orleans, of whom Condé was jealous. Condé, however, preferred to keep the Regency in the Queen’s hands, and by rendering himself formidable to the Government, forcing it to reckon with him. If that union of the Princes between themselves and the Fronde faction had subsisted, the re-establishment of the royal authority would have been impossible: and the commencement of the reign of Louis the Fourteenth, who, although he had only completed his thirteenth year, was about, by the force of an exceptional law, to be declared of age, would have offered the spectacle, so frequent in French annals,[68] of a state a prey to the divulsion of factions and the horrors of anarchy.

But for the happiness of France and the Queen-Regent, Condé was as unskilful in politics as he was great in war. He kept none of the promises he had made to the chiefs of the Fronde, the authors of his deliverance. The marriage of the Prince de Conti and Mademoiselle de Chevreuse, which had been the base of the treaty, and involved other engagements, was, as we have seen, remorselessly broken off. The Queen Regent, in order to succeed in bringing back her favourite minister to power, had the tact to conceal his advances, and therefore chose in the first instance to replace him by Chavigny, who was his personal enemy. Then she negotiated with all parties, and skilfully opposed the Fronde to the Prince de Condé, the latter to the Duke d’Orleans, the parliament to the assembly of the nobles, the aversion to Mazarin to the fear which the Coadjutor inspired. Her ministers, whom she abused, had only the semblance of power; all that was real was possessed by Mazarin. From Bruhl, his place of exile, he governed France; the Queen adopted no resolution without its having been inspired by him, or met with his approval. Thus hidden by the Regent’s mantle, the Cardinal followed with vigilant eye the quarrels of the Prince de Condé and the Frondeurs, fomenting them and inflaming them by every means at his disposal, prodigalising to Condé promises which must in the highest degree have alarmed the Fronde, and entangling him daily more and more in the meshes of intricate, tortuous negotiations, until he had seen the separation, for which he manœuvred, irremediably consummated. Then he stopped, and began insensibly even to fall back. The placing of Provence in the Prince de Conti’s hands was deferred; and in fact it was held in reserve for the Duke de Mercœur, the eldest son of the Duke de Vendôme, who was seeking the hand of one of Mazarin’s nieces; and it was also found inexpedient to deprive the Duke de Saint-Simon of Blaye to give it to La Rochefoucauld; and a thousand other difficulties of a like nature were raised, which both astonished and irritated Condé. Since he broke with the Fronde, it was apparently to unite himself with the Queen, and the higher his ambition soared, the more necessary it was to cover it with respect and deference, in order to hasten and secure the treaty on foot, and to enchain the monarchy with his own fate. But the fiery Condé was incapable of such a line of conduct. Finding unexpected obstacles where previously he had met with facilities and hopeful anticipations, he lost his temper, and resumed the imperious tone which already, in 1649, had embroiled him with the Queen and Mazarin.

It appears also that Madame de Longueville shared in the soaring illusions of her brother, and that she bore but indifferently well her newly blown prosperity. Madame de Motteville gives us to understand so with her usual moderation, and the Duchess de Nemours rejoices to say so with all the acrimony and doubtless also the exaggeration of hatred.[69] It must, indeed, be owned, with the heroic instincts of Condé, Madame de Longueville shared also his haughty spirit. All her contemporaries ascribe to her an innate majesty which did not show itself on ordinary occasions; far from it, she was simple, amiable, adding thereto, when desirous of pleasing, a caressing and irresistible gentleness; but, with people whom she disliked, she intrenched herself in a frigid dignity, and Anne of Austria and she had never loved one another. A misplaced haughtiness towards the Queen is attributed to her. One day, says Madame de Nemours, she kept her waiting for two or three hours. It is very doubtful whether Madame de Longueville could have so far forgotten herself; but it is not impossible that she may have imagined, as well as her brother, that the fortunes of their house, having emerged more brilliant than ever from so rude a tempest, had no longer to dread the recurrence of further ill-omened shocks.

They deceived themselves: an immense peril was hanging over their heads.

Immediately that Madame de Chevreuse had seen that the Queen was growing colder towards Condé, and did not seem disposed to keep the promises that had been made him, her keen-sighted animosity instantly determined her course of action, and being for ever separated from Condé, she again drew towards the Queen with an offer of her services and those of her entire party against the common enemy. Mazarin, recognising the error he had committed in giving himself two enemies at the same time, and that at that moment the redoubtable individual, the man who at any cost must be destroyed, was Condé, very quickly forgot his grudges against Madame de Chevreuse, and advised the acceptance of her propositions. The Queen, it appears, was very averse to receive De Retz, or avail herself of his services; she detested him almost as much as she did Condé, well knowing that they were the two most dangerous enemies of him without whom she did not believe that she could really reign. Mazarin exhorted her himself to flatter De Retz’s ambition, and, marvellously understanding each other at a distance—almost as well as when in each other’s presence,—they composed and played out in the most perfect manner a comedy of which De Retz himself seems to have been the dupe, and of which Condé was very nearly being the victim.

Madame de Chevreuse has already been depicted both in good and evil, in her natural intelligence, quickness, keen introspection, and political genius, in her indomitable courage and audacity, and all that she was capable of undertaking in order to attain her objects. It will now be necessary to thoroughly understand De Retz’s character, in order to perceive clearly the peril with which Condé was menaced.

By nature yet more restless than ambitious, a bad priest, impatient of his condition and having long struggled to emancipate himself from it, Paul de Gondi had prepared himself for cabals by composing or translating the life of a celebrated conspirator. Then, passing quickly from theory to practice, he had entered into one of the most sinister plots framed against Richelieu, and for his first experiment he had accepted the task, he, a young abbé, of assassinating the Cardinal at the altar during the ceremony of Mademoiselle de Montpensier’s baptism. In 1643, he had not hesitated to throw himself into the arms of the Importants; but the title of Coadjutor of Paris, which had just been conferred upon him as a recompense for the virtues and services of his father, arrested him. The Fronde seemed created altogether expressly for him. He shared the parentage of it along with La Rochefoucauld. In vain in his Memoirs does he studiedly put forward general considerations: like La Rochefoucauld, he was only working for himself, and at least had the candour to own it. Compelled to remain in the Church, De Retz desired to rise in it as high as possible. He aspired to a cardinal’s hat, and soon obtained it, thanks to his inscrutable manœuvring; but his supreme object was the post of prime minister, and to reach it, he played that double game which he so craftily concerted and so skilfully played out. Seeing that Mazarin and Condé were not heads of a government which would leave to others acting with them any great share of importance, he undertook to overthrow them, the one by the other, to carve out his way between them by them, and to raise upon their ruin the Duke d’Orleans, under whose name he would govern. To effect this he incessantly urged alike the Duke, the parliament, and the people, to demand, as the first condition of any reconciliation with the Court, the dismissal of Mazarin, and at the same time he, under a mask, exhibited himself as a benevolent conciliator between royalty and the Fronde, promising the Queen, the indispensable sacrifice accomplished, to smooth all difficulties, and to bring over to her the Duke d’Orleans by separating him from Condé. Such was the real mainspring of all De Retz’s movements—even those seemingly the most contrary: first the cardinalate, then the premiership under the auspices of the Duke d’Orleans, associated in some sort with royalty, without Mazarin or Condé. He was fain to hide his secret under the guise of the public weal, but that secret revealed itself by the very efforts he made to conceal it, and it did not escape the penetration of La Rochefoucauld, his accomplice at the outset of the Fronde, afterwards his adversary, who had a perfect knowledge of his character, and who had sketched it with a masterly hand, as De Retz also thoroughly comprehended and admirably depicted La Rochefoucauld. De Retz was indeed the evil genius of the Fronde. He always hindered it from progressing whether led by Mazarin or Condé, because he merely desired to have a weak government which he could dominate. To arrive at that end, he was capable of anything—tortuous intrigues, anonymous pamphlets, hypocritical sermons from the pulpit, studied orations in parliament, popular insurrections and desperate coups de main. Such was the man who, towards the end of May, 1651, was admitted, much against her will, into the secret councils of Anne of Austria.

Anything was to be tried, however, which might deliver her from the exactions of Condé. It was absolutely necessary that she should either grant his demands, or find some support to enable her to resist them. She accordingly despatched Marshal du Plessis to speak with De Retz, at the archbishopric, towards one o’clock in the morning, at which hour he generally returned from his nocturnal visits to Mademoiselle de Chevreuse. De Retz was willing to seize the opportunity of avenging himself upon Condé, and probably judged he might do so without bringing about the return of Mazarin. He accepted, then, at once the Queen’s invitation, and flung the letter of safe-conduct which she had sent him into the fire, in order to show his confidence in her promises. The following night, at twelve o’clock, he was brought into the Queen’s Oratory by a back staircase, and a long conversation ensued between them. Anne of Austria was very caressing in her manner towards the Coadjutor, and sought, after winning her way to his confidence, to embroil him with Châteauneuf, by informing him that it was that friend of Madame de Chevreuse who was the most opposed to his cardinalate, because he wanted the hat for himself. It must be remembered that France at that moment had the appointment of a cardinal at its disposition, and it had been long promised to the Prince de Conti. Anne of Austria now offered it to De Retz who, in reply, at the end of a long harangue, during which the Queen interrupted him impatiently more than once, assured her that he had not come there to receive favours, but to merit them.

“What will you do for me, then?” asked the Queen. “What will you do?”