Political Women, Vol. 2

by active 1840-1883 Sutherland Menzies

On the 3rd of February, 1653, he therein made a truly triumphal entry. The young King, accompanied by his brother the Duke d’Anjou, went out for more than a league to meet him, received him with the greatest apparent affection, took him into his carriage, and two hours afterwards they entered by the Porte Saint-Denis, in great pomp, amidst the joyous shouts of that same populace which, two years previously, had pursued him with imprecations. The Cardinal was thus enthusiastically conducted to the Louvre, where Anne of Austria awaited him.

He there beheld once more that courageous Queen, whom history, misled by the impostors of the Fronde, has too much misconceived, that stanch friend, an example among all queens, and almost among all women, of a constancy equal to either fortune; who, in the early days of 1643, had discerned the great abilities of Mazarin, and seen in him the only man capable of properly conducting the affairs of France; who, after having owed to him five long years of glory, had in 1648 and 1649 defended him against the aristocracy, the parliament, and the people united; who later had only consented to his retirement because he himself had judged it necessary; who during his absence had alike resisted every species of seduction, every kind of menace, and had never ceased to be governed by his counsels; who, at Gien, learning the rout of her troops at Bleneau whilst at her toilet, went on with it calmly, when everyone else spoke of flight, rivalling Mazarin himself in courage and coolness. On finding themselves once more together under the roof of royalty after so many long and sorrowful separations, after seeing each other so often on the very verge of ruin, they might well be proud of their mutual constancy, which had deserved and brought about the halo of prosperity surrounding that auspicious day, and together look forward for the rest of their lives with the solid hope of sharing a glorious repose.

Around the Queen, the Cardinal was welcomed by a brilliant array of great nobles and fair ladies, formerly the bitter enemies Of Richelieu’s successor, but who were there assembled to compliment him upon his happy return.

Amongst those ladies foremost in their congratulations was the Princess Palatine, with whom we have already made some acquaintance—Anne de Gonzagua, one of the most eminent personages of the seventeenth century. Of an admirable beauty, which served in some sort as a setting to an intellect the most solid, she was as capable of taking part in the deliberations of statesmen as in the assemblies of wits or in gallant intrigues, seeking, it is true, her advantages, but not by the betrayal of any one; who, without treason to royalty, had given advice the most judicious to the Fronde, and would have saved it, if the Fronde could have been saved. As she had never ceased to keep up the best understanding with Mazarin, she could very well associate herself with his triumph.

She was there also, that other famous female politician, of a grade still higher, as beautiful and as gallant, of a less gracious, perhaps, but yet stronger disposition, more capable still of grand enterprises, and never suffering herself to be stayed by any danger or any scruple—the widow of the Constable de Luynes, Marie de Rohan, Duchess de Chevreuse, who formerly had lent a hand to every plot concocted against Mazarin, and in concert with the Palatine had proposed, as we have seen, the sole measure which could bring together all the Cardinal’s enemies, and form a great aristocratical party strong enough to make head against royalty:—the marriage of Condé’s son with a daughter of the Duke d’Orleans, and that of her own daughter with the Prince de Conti. This latter match having been broken off in a manner the most outrageous to her feelings, Madame de Chevreuse had separated from Condé with éclat; and, too experienced to ally herself with the sort of tiers-parti which Retz had proposed, but allowing herself to be gently and skilfully guided by the Marquis de Laignes, whom Mazarin with his usual adroitness had known how to win over, she had returned to the side of her early friend, Anne of Austria, and became resigned to the power of a man who at any rate knew his own mind, and whose robust ambition never wavered at the breath of vanity or the gust of momentary passion. The fame and honour that she might expect from the Fronde had been offered to her by Mazarin, and in return Madame de Chevreuse had brought to royalty the declared support of the three illustrious families, the Rohans, De Luynes, and the Lorraines. It was she who, ever puissant over the Duke de Lorraine, had negotiated a secret treaty between him and the Cardinal, and who by turns had made him act in such contrary directions. Restored entirely to the Queen’s favour, Madame de Chevreuse was at her side in the Louvre, to welcome warmly the return of the prosperous Cardinal.

After Madame de Chevreuse, Mazarin had had no adversaries more dangerous than the Vendômes and Bouillons. And yet on that memorable day of February 3rd, 1653, he could consider the heads of those two powerful families as the firmest supporters of his greatness.

Cæsar, Duke de Vendôme, natural son of Henry the Fourth, was much more formidable by his intelligence, his valour, and his craft than by his birth. There was nothing—even to the virtues of his wife, a reputed saint,—which was not put to the profit of his ambition. His daughter, the beautiful Mademoiselle de Vendôme, had married that brilliant Duke de Nemours, who had come to such a miserable end. His eldest son, the Duke de Mercœur, was a sagacious and estimable prince, and the Duke de Beaufort, his youngest, was the idol of the populace of Paris. It was Beaufort who, in 1643, urged by the two duchesses De Montbazon and De Chevreuse, had formed the design of assassinating Mazarin. The Duke de Vendôme had been suspected of being implicated in that affair; he had at least given shelter in his château at Anet to all the accomplices of his son; and, forced to quit France to avoid the arrest with which he was threatened, he had wandered for several years through Italy and England, everywhere stirring up enemies against the Cardinal. The latter saw clearly that it was better to acquire a son of Henry the Fourth at a given price, than to prosecute him without the slightest advantage. After all, what did the Duke desire, and what were his demands when Mazarin became prime minister? Either that the government of Brittany, which his father, Henry the Fourth, had destined for him, and that his father-in-law, Philibert Emmanuel of Lorraine, held; or that the Admiralty, one of the highest posts in the state, should be given him. Mazarin had repulsed these pretensions in 1643, but looked upon them favourably in 1652; he therefore made the Duke High-Admiral, even conferred upon him the title of State Minister, with a seat at the council-board, after being assured that Vendôme, having secured that which he had always sought to attain, would serve him as firmly as he had formerly opposed him. He had an infallible pledge for his fidelity. The Duke’s eldest son, the loyal and pious Duke de Mer[co]eur, had married one of the Cardinal’s nieces, the amiable and virtuous Laura Mancini, so that the house of Vendôme was interested in and inseparably united to Mazarin’s fortunes. Therefore, on the 3rd of February, 1653, the High-Admiral Cæsar de Vendôme, engaged in pursuing the Spanish fleet in the sea of Gascony, entered the Gironde, and threatened the relics of the Fronde at Bordeaux. On his part, the Duke de Mercœur, named governor of Provence, watched over that important province for the King and Mazarin, whilst the Duke de Beaufort, who earlier had been desirous of laying violent hands on the Cardinal, and who yet quite recently had shown himself as his implacable enemy, covered and protected by the services of his father and brother, retired to Anet, without being the least in the world disquieted; satisfied with beholding Madame de Montbazon satisfied because plenty of money had been given her, and awaited quietly the moment at which he should succeed his father in the command of the fleet, and shed his blood in the service of his King.

The Bouillons were of little less importance than the Vendômes. The Duke was a politician and a soldier of the first class, capable of conducting a government or leading an army, and who had only one sentiment or thought in heart and head—the aggrandisement of his house. Already sovereign prince of Sedan, urged by his wife, still more ambitious than himself, he had in 1641, in the hope of securing fresh territorial acquisitions, treated with Spain, taken part in the revolt of the Count de Soissons, and won the battle of La Marfée against the royal army. In 1642, he had entered into the conspiracy of the Duke d’Orleans and Cinq Mars, and, arrested, thrown into chains at Pierre-Encise, he had only saved his head from the scaffold by abandoning his principality. Ever since, he had not ceased to agitate for the recovery of that which by treason he had lost. He had again demanded Sedan from Mazarin in 1643, and not being able to obtain it at the hands of that great servant of the Crown, that, in order to satisfy a private interest, France should renounce one of its best strongholds on the frontier of the Netherlands, he had ranked himself among the Cardinal’s enemies, and forced at first to flee, like the Duke de Vendôme, had scarcely returned to France ere he embraced with ardour the Fronde, though without the slightest conviction, be it understood, and in the sole hope of easily obtaining from it what he could not snatch from royalty. He had enlisted with him in the Fronde his brother Turenne, of whom he disposed absolutely, and who was equally ambitious, and equally covetous of the grandeur of their family, but after his own fashion, and the mould of his frigid, reflective, and profoundly dissembling character. At the peace of Ruel, in 1649, the Duke de Bouillon had demanded “his re-establishment in Sedan, or if the Queen preferred to reimburse him for it at an estimated price, with the possessions promised and due to his house; for himself, the government of Auvergne; for his brother that of Haute and Basse Alsace, with that of Philipsbourg and the command of all the armies of Germany.” Mazarin had then committed the error of not satisfying this ambitious and powerful house; hence, in 1650, the conduct of the Duke in Guienne and that of Turenne at Stenay and in Flanders. In 1651, the Queen treated seriously with the Duke, and on his return Mazarin succeeded in entirely gaining him over. Not desiring at any price to restore Sedan to him, he granted the equivalent demanded—a great domain at Château-Thierry, much richer than that of Sedan, and, without effective sovereignty, that title of Prince, so dear to the vanity of the Bouillons, which the head of the family could not only transmit to his children, but which could descend also to his brother Turenne. The Duke de Bouillon having once taken the part of abandoning Condé, in spite of all his engagements, and of serving royalty, did it with the same energy which he had displayed at Paris and Bordeaux. He never afterwards forsook Mazarin, but assisted him with his advice, and suffered even more than once in person, by acting with his customary vigour, and the obstinate ardour of his country and race. It was he who, on the night of the battle of Bleneau, brought reinforcements to Turenne, and enabled him to stop Condé. It was he, again, who, on the 2nd of July, 1652, to let Mazarin see that he had gained him for good and all, joined with the Cardinal in pressing Turenne, against all the rules of war, not to wait the coming up of the troops of La Ferte-Senneterre. A truthful witness, and one of the principal actors in that sanguinary drama, Navailles, even affirms that the Duke de Bouillon took part in the affair, and that he was at the attack in which Saint-Megrin perished. If Bouillon had lived, with his immeasurable ambition and his capacity equalling his ambition, would he have been contented with the second rank, and would he always have remained the devoted servant of the Cardinal?

None can say: for the Duke de Bouillon was cut short in his ambitious career; he died on the 9th of August, 1652, without having enjoyed those possessions and those honours which he had so greatly coveted; but ere closing his eyes he saw them pass to his children. Turenne, carefully conciliated and caressed, was made, on his brother’s death, governor of Auvergne, and the viscounty of Turenne erected into a principalty. Very shortly afterwards he also received the post of minister of state. Mazarin went even still further: desirous of heaping up benefits upon the illustrious soldier whose honesty and ambition he had so long known, desirous at the same time to attach in his person all the Protestant party by decisive acts, which would show in a conspicuous manner that whosoever should serve him well would be faithfully recompensed, without distinction of religion, the skilful and politic Cardinal made the Duke de la Force, a Protestant and the father-in-law of Turenne, Marshal of France, as his father had been. Thus, on the 3rd of February, 1653, Turenne was likewise at the Louvre at Mazarin’s side, as the representative of all his family, and already occupied with preparation for the campaign that was about to open in the spring in the Netherlands, and where he was to take command of the French army.

But if Mazarin had taken care to win over successively those chiefs of the Importants and the Frondeurs in whom his experienced eye had recognised as sincerely disposed to a loyal submission, he had this time taken care not to allow himself to be betrayed by false appearances, and did not fail to strike at, or at least banish from Paris, those whom he despaired of acquiring. He had lent himself with good grace to the reconciliation sought by the Duke d’Orleans; as it was not his wish to give to France and Europe the appearance of ill-treating the King’s uncle, and constrain him perhaps once more to go in search of a foreign asylum; but by conciliating him in the most suitable way, he had taken surety of him, and being convinced that too much lenity would only embolden him to mix himself up in fresh intrigues, he did not permit him to remain in Paris, when the King returned thither, for fear lest in his palace of the Luxembourg, surrounded by perfidious advisers, whilst lavishing great marks of deference upon the Queen and the young King, he might cherish and rekindle on occasion the hopes of the Fronde. Therefore, it was arranged that the Duke d’Orleans should quit Paris on the day previous to that of the King’s entry, and consequently he retired at first to Limours, then to Blois, the ordinary refuge of his treason and faint-heartedness, where, in nowise persecuted, but watched and kept within bounds, he passed amidst general indifference the remainder of his contemptible career. Mademoiselle remained also for some time in disgrace at St. Fargeau, and consoled herself by degrees for the ruin of her divers pretensions with her large fortune and small court. The Cardinal de Retz putting a good face upon a losing game, and especially desirous of receiving from the King’s own hand the cardinal’s hat granted him by the Pope, in order to claim the right of wearing the dress and of enjoying the honours and privileges attached to that high dignity, had been among the first to meet the King at Compiègne at the head of the clergy of Paris, and had addressed him in a bold and artful speech, in the style of that of Cæsar in the affair of Cataline, skilfully covering the defeat of his party, recommending the policy of moderation, referring more than once to the conduct of Henry the Great towards the Leaguers, and through fear lest it should not be sufficiently understood that he was speaking about himself, citing the pacific words of Henry to his great uncle, the Cardinal de Gondi. In that oration he had also insinuated some high compliments to the Queen, as though he had resumed his former hopes. The next day, at mass, the King placed the red hat upon his head, and henceforward De Retz assumed and wore the dress of cardinal. After the King’s return, he had carried his audacity so far as to present himself at the Louvre to pay, as a faithful subject, his homage to their Majesties. On the 1st of December, he preached with great effect at Notre Dame, and recommenced his old course of life of 1648, making pious sermons in the intervals of his gallant rendezvous, devoting the morning to preaching at church, the evening to bonnes fortunes, and reknitting in the dark the meshes of his old intrigues. But Mazarin knew him thoroughly: he was persuaded that De Retz was incapable of confining himself to his ecclesiastical functions, incompatible as they were with his dissipated and licentious habits, with his restless and factious disposition, and so under his minister’s advice on some slight suspicion arising, the King had him arrested even in the very Louvre, on the 19th of December, 1652, and conducted to the donjon of Vincennes.