The little band having reached a certain spot, quitted the main road, and began to traverse the enemy’s lines. For eight days they encountered many perilous incidents and underwent incredible fatigue, riding throughout the same horses, never stopping more than two hours to eat or sleep, avoiding towns and crossing rivers as they best could; threading at first the gorges of the Auvergne mountains, then descending by the Bec d’Allier, and making their way to the Loire. The memoirs of La Rochefoucauld and Gourville must be consulted for the details of that extraordinary journey, and all the dangers it presented. No less than ten times did they escape being taken and slain. Their wearied horses at last could carry them no longer. La Rochefoucauld was tormented by the gout, and his son was so worn out with fatigue that he fell asleep as he went. Condé, whose iron frame resisted to the last, was alone indefatigable, sleeping and working at will, and always cheerful and good humoured.
Upon approaching Gien, at which place the Court then was, Condé had twice very nearly fallen into the hands of parties sent out to take him alive or dead. Having escaped almost by a miracle, on the last occasion, soon after reaching Châtillon, he gained information that the army of Beaufort and Nemours lay at about eight leagues from that place, and hastened with all speed to join it. At length, to his great joy, he saw the advanced guard before him, and several of the troopers came galloping up with a loud “Qui vive!” Some of them, however, almost instantly recognised Condé, and shouts of joy and surprise soon made known through the whole army what had occurred.
He found the forces of the Fronde as divided as were its chiefs. He took the command of it immediately; thus doing away with the principal cause of the jealousy existing between Nemours and Beaufort. He reviewed and reunited it, gave it one day’s rest, seized, without striking a blow, on Montargis and Château-Renard, and threw himself with the utmost rapidity on the royal army. It was scattered in quarters distant from each other for the convenience of foraging, and on account of the little dread with which Beaufort and Nemours had inspired it. Marshal d’Hocquincourt was encamped at Bleneau, and Turenne a little farther off, at Briare; the two Marshals were to unite their forces on the morrow. Condé did not give them time for that: that same evening, and during the nights of the 6th and 7th of April, 1652, he fell upon the head-quarters of Hocquincourt, overwhelmed them, and succeeded in routing the rest, thanks to one of those charges in flank which he in person ever led so energetically. Hocquincourt, after fighting like a gallant soldier, was forced to fall back for some leagues in the direction of Auxerre, having lost all his baggage and three thousand horse. No sooner did Turenne hear of the fact, than he sprang into the saddle, and marched with some infantry both to the assistance of his brother officer and to the defence of the King, who, resting secure at Gien, might have fallen into the hands of the rebels. As he advanced through the darkness of the night, the Marshal saw the quarters of Hocquincourt in one blaze of fire, and exclaiming, with the appreciation which genius has of genius, “The Prince de Condé is arrived!” he hurried on with the utmost speed. Having neither cavalry nor artillery, and having sent word to Hocquincourt to rally to him as soon as possible, he marched on in good order throughout that long and dark night to join the bulk of his troops which Navailles and Palluan were bringing up. For an instant he halted in a plain where there stood a rather dense wood on his left, with a marsh on his right. Those around Condé thought it an advantageous post; Condé judged very differently. “If M. de Turenne makes a stand there,” said he, “I shall soon cut him to pieces; but he will take good care not to do so.”[82] He had not left off speaking when he saw that Turenne was already retiring, too skilful to await Condé in the plain and expose himself to the Prince’s formidable manœuvres. A little further off, he found a position much more favourable; there he firmly posted his force, determined to give battle. In vain did his officers urge him not to hazard an action, not to risk the last army which remained to the monarchy, and to confine himself to covering Gien whilst awaiting the coming of Hocquincourt. “No,” replied he, “we must conquer or perish here.”
Turenne, it is true, was very inferior in cavalry to Condé, but he had a powerful and well-served artillery. Having encouraged his troops to do their duty, he posted himself upon an eminence which he covered with infantry and artillery, drew up his cavalry below in a plain too narrow to permit of Condé deploying his own, and which could only be reached by traversing a thick wood and a causeway intersected by ditches and boggy ground. From such strong position, Condé could, in his turn, recognise his illustrious disciple. No great manœuvres were then practicable, and as time did not permit of an attempt to turn Turenne, it was necessary to crush him out of hand, if that were possible, before he could effect a junction with Hocquincourt. The defile was the key of the position; and both sides fought therein with equal fierceness. Turenne defended himself sword in hand, and upon the six squadrons which Condé hurled against him he opened a battery, as they passed, with terrible execution, showing a courage equal to that of his heroic adversary. Condé, judging from what he now saw, believed the position in the hands of Turenne to be impregnable; and it being too late to execute any other manœuvres with success during that day, he continued to cannonade the royalist army till the evening, without any other attempt to bring it to a battle.
Napoleon has not spared Condé in this affair any more than other critics. He sums all their opinions up in one piquant phrase, which it appears he was unable to resist, and which made him smile in uttering it. “Condé,” said he, “for that once, was wanting in boldness.” The dictum is both brief and incisive, but there was no foundation for it, in a military point of view. There was, in truth, no want of boldness on Condé’s part throughout that campaign: far from it, his whole line of conduct was a succession of audacious actions and combinations. What could be bolder than that forced journey of nearly ten days for more than one hundred and fifty miles with half-a-dozen followers to go and take the command of an army? What bolder than the resolution taken out of hand to throw himself between Turenne and Hocquincourt, to cut in two the royal army and to disperse one half of it before attacking the other? Did Condé lose a moment in marching against Turenne and pursuing him sword in hand? Was it his fault that he had to cope with a great captain, who knew how to select an excellent position, and to maintain himself in it with immovable firmness? In the attack of that position, did Napoleon mean to reproach Condé with want of boldness? Turenne, it is true, covered himself with glory, for he successfully resisted Condé; but Condé, in not having been victorious, was not in the slightest degree beaten. The strategy, therefore, on that occasion was irreproachable. As will be seen, it was in his policy only that he failed. Condé quitted the army at a very ill-timed moment, in our opinion, but that step was taken through considerations which had nothing to do with the science of war.
To revert for a moment to this much-criticised action of Bleneau. Towards night, Hocquincourt appeared upon the field, having rallied a considerable part of his cavalry. Condé then retired, finding that his attempt was frustrated, and took the way to Montargis; while Turenne rejoined the Court, and was received by the Queen with all the gratitude which such great services merited. Her first words went to thank him for having placed the crown a second time upon her son’s head.
The terror and confusion which had reigned in Gien during the whole of the preceding night and that day may very well be conceived when it is remembered that the safety of the King himself, as well as the Queen, was at stake, and that the life of the favourite Minister might at any moment be placed at the mercy of his bitterest enemy, justified in putting him to death immediately by the highest legal authority in the realm. Neither were the ill-disciplined and irregular forces of Condé at all desirable neighbours to the troop of ladies who had followed the Court; and, as soon as it was known that Condé had fallen upon Hocquincourt, the whole of the little town was one scene of dismay and confusion.
The royal army and that of Condé now both marched towards Paris, nearly upon two parallel lines. But the great distress which the Court suffered from want of money caused almost as much insubordination to be apparent amongst the troops of the King as amongst those of the rebels. Little respect was shown to Mazarin himself; and the young King was often treated with but scanty ceremony, and provided for but barely.
After quitting the neighbourhood of Gien, Condé, urged by the desire of directing in person the negotiations and intrigues which were going on in Paris, left his army under the command of the celebrated Tavannes, and hastened to the capital. The Count de Tavannes, whom he had selected to fill his own place, was without doubt an excellent officer, one of the valiant Petits-maîtres[83] who, upon the field of battle, served as wings to the great soldier’s thoughts, carried his orders everywhere, executed the most dangerous manœuvres, sometimes charging with an irresistible impetuosity, at others sustaining the most terrible onsets with a firmness and solidity beyond all proof. But though the intrepid Tavannes was quite capable of leading the division of a great army, he was not able enough to be its commander-in-chief, and he had not authority over the foreign troops which the Duke de Nemours had brought from Flanders, and which he made over, on accompanying Condé to Paris, to the command of the Count de Clinchamp. The army, thus divided, was capable of nothing great. Condé alone could finish what he had begun. Once engaged in the formidable enterprise that he had undertaken against the Queen and Mazarin, there was no safety for him but in carrying it out even to the end. He ought, therefore, to have waged war to the knife, if the expression be allowable, against Turenne, conquered or perished, and to have constrained Mazarin to flee for good and all to Germany or Italy, and the Queen to place in his hands the young King. To do that, Condé should have had a definite ambition, an object clearly determined; he ought to have plainly proposed to himself to assume the Regency, or at least the lieutenant-generalship of the kingdom in the place of Gaston, by will or by force, in order to concentrate all power in his own hands; that he might become, in short, a Cromwell or a William III.: and Condé was neither the one or the other. His mind had been perturbed by sinister dreams; but, as has been remarked, he had at heart an invincible fund of loyalty. Ambition was rather hovering round him than within himself. But whatsoever it was he desired, and in every hypothesis—for his secret has remained between Heaven and himself—he did wrong in abandoning the Loire and leaving Turenne in force there. That was the true error he committed, and not in wanting audacity, as Napoleon supposed. It was not a military but a political error—immense and irreparable. He might have crushed Turenne, and ought to have attempted it, but he let him slip from his grasp. The opportunity once lost did not return. Turenne until then was only second in rank; by a glorious resistance he acquired from that moment, and it was forced upon him to maintain, the importance of a rival of Condé. Mazarin grew from day to day more emboldened; royalty, which had been on the very brink of ruin, again rose erect, and the Court drew towards Paris; whilst, prompted by his evil genius, quitting the field of battle wherein lay his veritable strength, Condé went away to waste his precious time in a labyrinth of intrigues for which he was not fitted, and in which he lost himself and the Fronde.