He left behind him in Guienne a force sufficiently imposing to allow of it there awaiting in security the successful results he was about to seek. In possessing himself of Agen, Bergerac, Perigueux, Cognac, and even for a moment of Saintes, and by pushing his conquests into Haute Guienne, on the side of Mont-de-Marsan, Dax, and Pau, he had made Bordeaux the capital of a small but rich and populous kingdom, surrounded on all sides by a belt of strongholds, communicating with the sea by the Gironde, and admirably placed for attack or defence. This kingdom, backed as it was by Spain, was capable of receiving continuous succour from Santander and St. Sebastian, and a Spanish fleet could approach by the Tour de Corduan, bringing subsidies and troops, whilst Count de Dognon’s fleet, sailing from the islands of Ré and Oléron to join it, might easily surround and even beat the royal fleet, then forming at Brouage under the Duke de Vendôme. In 1650, during the imprisonment of the princes, Bordeaux had defended itself for more than six months against a considerable army with the young king at its head, and which was directed by Mazarin in person. Condé, and all his family were adored there, by reason of the hatred felt for his predecessor, the imperious Duke d’Epernon. The Bordeaux parliament was also equally involved in the Fronde as was that of Paris, with which it had allied itself by a solemn declaration. Under the parliament was a brave and ardent people, which furnished a numerous militia.
Condé had named the Prince de Conti his lieutenant-general—a prince of the blood giving lustre to authority, dominating all rivalries, an appointment calculated to render obedience more easy. He was aware of Conti’s levity, but he knew also that he was wanting neither in intelligence nor courage. He believed in the ascendency which Madame de Longueville had always exercised over her brother, and he hoped she would guide him still. He had confidence in that high-souled sister whom formerly he had so warmly loved; and although intrigues and a sinister influence, to which we shall shortly further allude, had diminished the high admiration he had had for her, and to which he later returned, he reckoned upon her intelligence, upon her pride, upon that lofty courage of which she had given so many proofs at Stenay. At his sister’s side he left his wife Claire Clémence de Maillé-Brézé, who had behaved so admirably in the first Guienne war. He left her enceinte with their second child, and with her he gave to Bordeaux and placed as it were in pledge in its hands, to hold the place of himself, the Duke d’Enghien, the hope and stay of his house, the peculiar object of his tenderness. So that there, he left behind him a government, he thought, which would look well alike in the eyes of France and of Europe.
In reality, to what did Condé aspire? To constitute himself the head of the nobility against the Court? The nobles thought it harsh to be so treated. To commence another Fronde? To do that, it was necessary to have the parliaments under his thumb; and he had already been compelled to threaten the deputies of that of Aix with the bastinado. Did he look forward to an independent principality, as he later on desired to obtain from the Spaniards? Or rather did he think of snatching from the Duke d’Orleans the lieutenant-generalship? It is difficult to divine what may have passed through his capricious brain. He was constant in nothing. It was seen later still that he would very willingly have changed his religion, offering himself on the one side to Cromwell, and to become a protestant in order to have an English army; on the other to the Pope, if he would help to get him elected King of Poland.
The income of the Condés in 1609 amounted to ten thousand livres, and in 1649, besides the Montmorency estates, they held an enormous portion of France. First, by the Great Condé, they had Burgundy, Berri, the marshes of Lorraine, a dominant fortress in the Bourbonnais that held in check four provinces. Secondly, by Conti, Champagne. Thirdly, by Longueville, their sister’s husband, Normandy. Fourthly, the Admiralty, and Saumur, the chief fortress of Anjou, were in the hands of the brother of Condé’s wife; they fell in through his death, and were sold again by them as though they were a family birthright. Later still, they negotiated for the possession of Guienne and Provence.
Amidst the cares of administration and of war, Condé carried on an assiduous correspondence with Chavigny, then fallen into disgrace, who kept him well informed of the state of affairs at Court and in Paris. They had assumed quite a new face during the last few months. Mazarin in his exile had not learned without inquietude the ever-increasing success of Châteauneuf. He saw him active and determined, accepted as a chief by all colleagues, skilfully seconded by the keeper of the seals, Molé, and by Marshal de Villeroi, the king’s governor, an ambiguous personage, very ambitious at bottom, and jealous of the Cardinal’s favour with the Queen. Châteauneuf, it is true, had only entered the Cabinet under the agreement of shortly recalling Mazarin; but he incessantly asked for fresh delay; he tried to make the Queen comprehend the danger of a precipitate return,—the Fronde ready to arouse itself anew, the Duke d’Orleans and the Coadjutor resuming their ancient opposition, and royalty finding itself once more without any solid support. Anne of Austria gradually acquiescing in these wise counsels, Mazarin, who at first had with difficulty restrained the impatient disposition of the Queen, finding her grown less eager, became alarmed: he saw that he was lost should he allow such a rival to establish himself.[81] Therefore, passing suddenly from an apparent resignation to an extraordinary audacity, he had, towards the end of November 1651, broken his ban, quitted his retreat at Dinan, and had resolutely entered France with a small force collected together by his two faithful friends, the Marquis de Navailles and the Count de Broglie, and led by Marshal Hocquincourt. He had by main strength surmounted every obstacle, braved the decrees and the deputies of the parliament, reached Poitiers where the Queen and young Louis the Fourteenth had eagerly welcomed him; and there, in January 1652, after speedily ridding himself of Châteauneuf, too proud and too able to be resigned to hold the second rank, he had again taken in hand the reins of government.
This bold conduct, which probably saved Mazarin, came also to the succour of Condé. The second and irreparable disgrace of the minister of the old Fronde had exasperated him as well as had the umbrage given him by the Duke d’Orleans. He thought himself tricked by the Queen, and had loudly complained of it. Condé’s friends had not failed to seize that occasion to reconcile him with the Duke, and to negotiate a fresh alliance between them; and as previously the Fronde and the Queen had been united against Condé, so also at the end of January 1652, that Prince and the Fronde in almost its entirety were united against Mazarin.
Madame de Chevreuse alone, with her most intimate friends, remained faithful to her hatred and the Queen, dreading far less Mazarin than Condé, and choosing between them both for once and for all with her well-known firmness and resolution. De Retz trimmed, followed the Duke d’Orleans, using tact with the Queen, so that he might not lose the hat, and without engaging himself personally with Condé.
If Burnet is to be believed, it was at this conjunction that Condé made an offer to Cromwell to turn Huguenot, and embrace the faith of his ancestors, in order to secure the aid of the English Puritans.
However that might be, it was not illusory to think that with such a government and the continual assistance of Spain, Bordeaux might hold out for at least a year, and give Condé time to strike some decisive blows. The resolution that he took was therefore as rational as it was great. It would have been a sovereign imprudence to remain in Guienne merely to engage Harcourt in a series of trifling skirmishes, and after much time and trouble take a few little paltry towns, when in the heart of the kingdom a treason or a defeat might irreparably involve the loss of everything, and condemn Bordeaux to share the common fate, after a more or less prolonged existence. Taking one thing with another, Guienne was doubtless a considerable accessory; but the grand struggle was not to be made there; it was at Paris and upon the banks of the Loire that the destiny of the Fronde and that of Condé too must be decided; it was thither, therefore, that he must hasten. Every day brought him tidings that jealousies, divisions, quarrels were increasing in the army, and he trembled to receive, some morning, news that Turenne and Hocquincourt had beaten Nemours and Beaufort, and were marching on Paris. Desirous of preventing at any price a disaster so irreparable, he resolved to rush to the point where the danger was supreme, where his unexpected presence would strike terror into the souls of his enemies, revive the courage of his partisans and turn fortune to his side. When Cæsar, on arriving in Greece, learned that the fleet which was following him with his army on board, had been dispersed and destroyed by that of Pompey, he flung himself alone into a fisherman’s bark under cover of night to cross the sea into Asia to seek for the legions of Antony, and return with them to gain the battle of Pharsalia. When Napoleon learned in Egypt the state of France, from the shameful doings of the Directory, the agitation of parties, and that already more than one general was meditating another 18th of Brumaire, he did not hesitate, and however rash it might appear to attempt to pass through the English fleet in a small craft, at the risk of being taken, or sent to the bottom, he dared every peril, and by dint of address and audacity succeeded in gaining the shores of France. Condé did the same, and at the end of March 1652, he undertook to make his way from the banks of the Gironde to the banks of the Loire, without other escort than that of a small number of intrepid friends, and sustained solely by the vivid consciousness of the necessity of that bold step, his familiarity with and secret liking for danger, his incomparable presence of mind and his customary gaiety.
On Palm Sunday, 1652, Condé set forth upon his adventurous expedition. He was accompanied by six persons, La Rochefoucauld and his youthful son, the Prince de Marcillac, the Count de Guitaut, the Count de Chavagnac, a valet named Rochefort, and the indefatigable Gourville, under whose directions all the arrangements of the journey seem to have been contrived. The whole party were disguised as common troopers, and each took a false name, even amongst themselves. For some time they followed the Bordeaux road, and using many precautions proceeded until they reached Cahusac, where they encountered some troops belonging to La Rochefoucauld; but being anxious almost as much to avoid their own partizans as the enemy, Condé and his companions hid themselves in a barn, while Gourville went out to forage. He succeeded in procuring some scanty fare; and they rode on till some hours had passed after nightfall, when they reached a little wayside inn, where Condé volunteered to cook an omelet for the whole party. The hand, however, which could wield a truncheon with such effect, proved somewhat too violent for the frying-pan, and in the attempt to turn the omelet, he threw the whole hissing mass into the fire.