“I experienced very little emotion and replied: ‘Sir, you will have no trouble, as I came here on purpose, having been warned. I have all my life submitted to the wishes of the King, who can dispose of me or my liberty as he thinks fit.’... Shortly afterwards one of the King’s carriages arrived in front of my lodging with an escort of mounted musketeers and thirty light horsemen. I entered the carriage alone with De Launay. Then we drove off, keeping two hundred paces in front of the escort, as far as the Porte St.-Martin, where we turned off to the left, and I was taken to the Bastile. I dined with the Governor, M. du Tremblay, whom I afterwards accompanied to the chamber which had been occupied by the Prince de Condé, and in this I was shut up with one servant.
“On the 26th, M. du Tremblay came to see me on the part of the King, saying that his Majesty had not caused me to be arrested for any fault that I had committed, holding me to be a good servant, but for fear I should be led into mischief, and he assured me that I should not remain long in prison, which was a great consolation. He also told me that the King had ordered him to allow me every liberty but that of leaving the Bastile. He added another chamber to my lodging for the accommodation of my domestics. I retained only two valets and a cook, and passed two months without leaving my room, and I should not have gone out at all had I not been ill.... The King, it seems, had gone on a voyage as far as Dijon, and on his return to Paris I implored my liberty, but all in vain. I fell ill in the Bastile of a very dangerous swelling, due to the want of fresh air and exercise and I began therefore to walk regularly on the terrace of the Bastion.”
Bassompierre was destined to see a good deal of that terrace, for the years slowly dragged themselves along with hope constantly deferred and no fulfilment of the promises of freedom so glibly extended to him. He was arrested in 1631 and in the following year heard he would in all probability be released at once; but, as he says, he was told this merely to redouble his sufferings. Next year he had great hope of regaining his liberty and Marshal Schomberg sent him word that on the return of the King to Paris he should leave the Bastile. This year they deprived him of a portion of his salary and he was greatly disheartened, feeling “that he was to be eternally detained and from that time forth he lost all hope except in God.” Two years later (1635) the Governor, Monsieur du Tremblay, congratulated him on his approaching release and the rumor was so strong that a number of friends came every day to the Bastile to see if he was still there. These encouraging stories were repeated from month to month without any good result, and at length Père Joseph, “his gray eminence,” Richelieu’s most confidential friend and brother of Monsieur du Tremblay, being at the Bastile, promised the Marshal to speak to the Cardinal on his behalf. “I put no faith in him,” writes Bassompierre, and indeed nothing more was heard for a couple of years, but we find in the Marshal’s journal an entry to the effect that the King had told the Cardinal it weighed on his conscience for having kept him in prison so long, seeing that there was nothing against him. “To which,” says Bassompierre, “the Cardinal replied that he had so many things on his mind he could not remember the reason for the imprisonment or why he (Richelieu) had advised it, but he would consult his papers and show them to the King.” The poor Marshal’s dejection increased, having been detained so long in the Bastile, “where he had nothing to do but pray God to speedily put an end to his long misery by liberty or death.”
The imprisonment outlasted the journal which ends in 1640, and it was not until the death of the Cardinal in 1642 that he at length obtained his release, just eleven years after his first committal to prison. He at once presented himself at Court and was graciously received by the King who asked him his age. “Fifty,” replied Bassompierre, “for I cannot count the years passed in the Bastile as they were not spent in your Majesty’s service.” He did not enjoy his freedom long, for he soon afterwards died from an apoplectic seizure.
[CHAPTER V]
THE PEOPLE AND THE BASTILE
Anne of Austria—Her servant Laporte—Clandestine communication in the Bastile—Birth of Dauphin, afterward Louis XIV—Cinq Mars—His conspiracy—Richelieu’s death—His character and achievements—Dubois the alchemist—Regency of Anne of Austria—Mazarin’s influence—The “Importants”—Imprisonment and escape of Duc de Beaufort—Growth of the Fronde—Attacks on Bastile—De Retz in Vincennes—Made Archbishop of Paris while in prison—Peace restored—Mazarin’s later rule benign.
Richelieu throughout his ministry was exposed to the bitter enmity of the Opposition; his enemies, princes and great nobles, were continually plotting to take his life. The King’s brother, Gaston, Duc d’Orleans, intrigued incessantly against him, supported by Anne of Austria, queen of Louis XIII, who was ever in treasonable correspondence with the King of Spain. Richelieu, whose power waned for a time, strongly urged the Queen’s arrest and trial, but no more was done than to commit her most confidential servant, Laporte, to the Bastile. The Queen herself was terrified into submission and made solemn confession of her misdeeds. She did not tell all, however, and it was hoped more might be extorted from Laporte by the customary pressure. It was essential to warn Laporte, but he was in a dungeon far beneath one of the towers and access to him seemed impossible. The story is preserved,—an almost incredible one, but vouched for in Laporte’s “Memoirs,”—that a letter was conveyed to Laporte by the assistance of another prisoner, the Chevalier de Jars. The letter was conveyed to De Jars by one of the Queen’s ladies disguised as a servant, and he managed by boring a hole in his floor to pass it to the room below. Here the occupants were friends, and in like manner they dug into the dungeon beneath them, with the result that Laporte was eventually reached in his subterranean cell. Fortified now by the fact of the Queen’s avowal, Laporte conducted himself so well that the most searching examination elicited no further proofs. The process followed was in due course detected and Richelieu was heard to lament that he did not possess so faithful a servant as Laporte.