The religious wars ended, the King sent an army into Italy to support the Duke of Mantua against the Austrians. Richelieu had the command, and rather than not serve, Montmorency went as volunteer. The King bestowed on him, shortly after, the command of his army at Pignerol; then sent him to head the troops which entered Piedmont, where he obtained a signal victory. His army had received orders to join that of Marshal Laforce, but the Duke of Savoy lay between. The latter commenced the attack in an unexpected quarter, and the Marquis of Effiat and others advised rather to sacrifice the one regiment in peril than to risk the army. Montmorency exclaimed, “Who love me, follow!” and rushed forward at the head of the King’s gens-d’armes. Prince Doria was approaching; and the duke, to meet him with less delay, and well mounted, leaped a broad ditch which lay between them, and, though unfollowed, forced his way before a regiment of infantry, whose fire did not stop him, and through the ranks of a squadron commanded by Prince Doria, whom he wounded; and had arrived fighting and unharmed in the sixth rank of these horsemen before he was joined by any of those who had made a detour instead of leaping after him, and who, having believed him dead, found that he alone had half routed a squadron. By this and other exploits, continued throughout the day, the battle of Veillane was won; and the generous duke, who among his prisoners had taken almost all the officers of the Piedmontese army, sent them back to the Duchess of Savoy, who was King Louis’s sister. He had received no wound, but came from the field, the gold ornaments hacked from his splendid armour, and himself so bruised that he was hardly to be recognised. His horse, which was called “Le Remberge,” was wounded in twenty places, though slightly; and as it was a strong and beautiful animal, one of Montmorency’s officers wished for and received him from his general.
His troops were attacked at Rivoli by the plague, and to aid sick friends and soldiers he sold luxuries and comforts, and his head-quarters, far from being kept free from infection, rather resembled an hospital. Spite of his successes and the love of his army, or rather on account of them (for Richelieu envied his popularity, and already meditated his ruin), he was recalled. The soldiers mourned over him. “Who,” they said, “will lead us to victory when we lose Montmorency?” And yet, when the duke arrived at Lyons, and found there the King to all appearance dying, and Richelieu torn by anxiety, he took pity on the latter and frankly offered him protection in the province he commanded: relays were held in readiness to bear the Cardinal thither in case of the fatal termination of Louis’s malady; he vowed eternal gratitude, but forgot it as the King recovered. Montmorency had yielded his assent to the suppression of the States of Languedoc,—a loss of privilege which the province deplored, and he too repented. The King at his request promised their re-establishment, but avoided keeping his word; and the duke, whose ambition was to hold, like so many of his ancestors, the office of constable of France, being only created marshal, and otherwise coldly treated at court, retired to Languedoc. The Duke of Angoulême, his brother-in-law, said, when he bade him farewell, “that the king could never forget his services, and that his friends would always have sufficient influence to efface the false impressions made by the Cardinal;” but the duke shook his head sadly. “I do not flatter myself,” he said; “I shall not return to court, if affairs there continue as at present; my welfare is in the hands of God.”
Retired to the seat of his government, the duke’s heart was set on recovering the privileges of the province. By the King’s command the subject occupied the states-general assembled at Pézenas, but the King’s commissaries, Miron and Hemery, had the Cardinal’s private instructions to yield in nothing, for he hoped to wear out the patience of the governor by oppression of the province. He knew by his spies that the King’s brother Gaston intended striving to win over Montmorency; and as it was his maxim to treat as guilty those who possibly might become so, he dispatched an order to Hemery to arrest the duke. The latter just then making a journey to Montpellier, Hemery and the Marquis des Fossés followed, intending to make him prisoner there; but they judged the people’s love for him would render it impossible. Des Fossés altered his opinion when he found he was to attend the representation of a drama acted in his honour by the Jesuits’ pupils. He placed soldiers at the college gates to seize him, and issued an order to the garrison of the citadel, which joined it, to remain under arms. The duke, warned of what was passing, at first would not believe it possible, but the report spreading, persons of rank and condition flocked round him, offering to seize Hemery and Des Fossés, and to take possession of the citadel, which would have been easy, as it was feebly garrisoned, but the duke refused; a proof he did not then contemplate the treason to which Richelieu’s injustice was urging him. He went, contrary to advice, to the college, and returned, none having dared molest him, and two days after returned to Pézenas, where he told what had happened to the duchess, and his uncle, and other private counsellors there; they were loud in their cry for vengeance. The bishop of Alby, who was with Montmorency, had a nephew, partizan of Gaston and the queen-mother, with whom he corresponded. Just about this time a new commission arrived from court empowered to tax the province, and Alby and his nephew, who had come in disguise to treat with the governor, took advantage of it to influence him. They reminded him of reward denied and services forgotten; of the death of his cousin De Bouteville; the refusal to restore the privileges of Languedoc; the execution of the innocent Marshal of Marillac; yet all would have failed, had not the duchess joined to persuade, for she was niece of the queen-mother. A young girl who served her overheard a conversation between them. The duchess spoke low, in sentences broken by sobs; and the duke at last answered: “I will do so; you need persuade me no longer, your ambition shall be satisfied: but remember it will cost me my life.” Soud’heilles, the captain of his guard, was then in Paris; and the cardinal, alarmed when the duke had declared himself, dispatched him to Languedoc to try his influence with his master. Montmorency wavered, but the duchess and his confidants persuaded him, that to desert Gaston would be dishonour. He had a final conference with them, and returned from it straight to Soud’heilles. “My dear friend,” he said, “the stone is thrown, I cannot call it back again.”
The weak Gaston, then, as afterwards, incapable of opposing a foe as of protecting a friend long, was ill advised at this juncture, and arrived before the time agreed on with Montmorency, and before his measures could be taken. He had fifteen hundred half-armed men, the sympathy of the people, but neither Narbonne nor Montpellier. Lodeve received him, and from thence he sent a messenger to the duke.
“He has advisers who betray him,” he said, “and his over haste impairs his cause: but be it so, we must face the storm; and I feel it will fall on me.”
On the way to Beaucaire, which opposed Gaston, the duke passed Montpellier, and the people came out, weeping as they understood his danger. Beaucaire would have been taken; but when the army was before it, the Duke of Elbeuf claimed the chief command, which had been promised Montmorency; and Gaston being undecided, as usual, the delay of the attack gave time for the king’s troops to come up. He soon after, through the treason of some of his advisers, lost St. Felix de Carmain, and when the news of its surrender reached the prince, there came with it that of the advance of the royal troops to take Castelnaudary; near which lay his forces. The duke disposed his army in order of battle, near a brick bridge, which crossed the road, half a league from the town. “The time of your triumph is come,” he said to Gaston; “but this sword,” touching his own, “must be red to the hilt first.” The prince coldly answered, “Your rodomontades are never ending, Monsieur de Montmorency, but as yet, when you have promised me success, I have only been indebted to you for hope.” “I am not sorry to say to you now, that it will always be easy for me to make my peace with the King, and with two or three more to retire.” In consequence of this, high words ensued between the duke and Gaston, and they parted hardly reconciled.
It was a subject of emulation between the Comte de Moret and Montmorency to strike the first blow in the battle; and the latter, to make sure of himself doing so, asserted, as he advanced precipitately, that he went only to reconnoitre a post, and with some impatience commanded the noblemen who followed him to keep back! The Comte de Rieux, who rode close, reminded him, that it was his duty to be prudent, as on the general’s fate hung the army’s. Montmorency knew him for a brave man, yet he said what was far from his thoughts, “It would seem you are afraid;” and to shorten remonstrance as well as distance, he leaped his horse, as at Viellane, across a broad fence, and found himself at the other side with the Comte de la Feuillade, the Vicomte du Pujol Villeneuve, and a few more, in the midst of the enemy’s infantry. At the first fire, all with him fell, except Pujol, who fought by his side till a shot in the leg disabled him. His company of gens-d’armes came up, but the infantry, posted to advantage, kept up a fire which few escaped; yet the duke was unshaken; he opened a way wherever he turned, and might have retired with ease, and gloriously, to bring up the army; but being within their sight, he believed the troops would advance to support him; and a corps of cavalry, commanded by Baron de Laurières, coming up, he spurred so impetuously to meet him, that horse and man, as he encountered them, went down; and discharged on the head-piece of the leader’s son, Baron de Bourdet, so violent a blow, that the casque, examined after the battle, seemed indented by a battle-axe rather than a sword. His father rose from the ground at the moment, and seeing his son stagger, he wounded mortally the duke’s charger, and Montmorency fell with and under his dying horse. If Gaston had then brought up the army, this misfortune might have been repaired. The Duke of Elbeuf and Puy Laurens, and La Ferté Imbaut, (the two last suspected of having been bought over,) persuaded him to hold back, though his peril was visible from where they stood. A report next reached the prince, that his general had fallen, whereupon, flinging down his arms, and panic-struck, he exclaimed, “Sound the retreat, I will play this game no further.”
During this time Guiltaut and St. Preuil, captains of the royal guard, had come up with the duke, and mourned over him as he was drawn with difficulty from under his dead horse, covered with its gore and his own, for he was desperately wounded; and the blood which gushed from his mouth, as he lay with the weight pressing on him, had almost stifled him. “I sacrificed myself to ungrateful cowards,” he said, as soon as he could speak, “though it was told me, even before Beaucaire, that I was betrayed in the prince’s army.” Four soldiers raised him gently, and carried him to Marshal Schomberg, who received him with the esteem and tenderness which were his due. It is told that he wore on his arm, when taken prisoner, a portrait enriched with diamonds; this was perceived by his friend, De Bellièvre, who was afterwards President of the Parliament. Recognizing the female head, he pretended to question the duke, and taking his arm as he spoke to him, adroitly drew forth the miniature; but dexterously as it was done, it could not be hidden from a spy of the cardinal, present at the scene, and it was reported to Richelieu, who made use of it as a means to render Louis the Thirteenth implacable, as the picture was that of his queen, Anne of Austria!
The Count de Moret, natural son of Henry the Fourth, received his death-wound not thirty paces from his companion in arms. The latter, in consequence of the refinement on cruelty practised by the cardinal, and while all the people, loud as they dared, murmured shame, was borne in a litter to Toulouse, notwithstanding the insupportable heat and his uncured wounds. The inhabitants of Toulouse vowed to save him at any cost, but the cardinal received intimation of their resolves, and the prisoner was carried through without stopping to Leitoure. Arrived, he was conducted to the castle, and here a chance of escape presented itself again, for the Marchioness of Castelnaud bribed one of the guards, and provided him with ropes, by which the duke might be lowered to a place whence a passage led out into the country; and the marchioness, who was a determined woman, advanced with twenty horsemen as near to the citadel as they dared; but the guard was discovered with the ropes in his possession, by the lieutenant of the citadel, and killed by him on the spot, in the first burst of passion.
Notwithstanding the prayers of the army and the people, those of his brothers-in-law, the Prince of Condé and Duke of Angoulême, the agony of the duchess—the proceedings against Montmorency went on, and to a fatal termination. He expressed penitence for his conduct, and showed as much firmness as in his best days. He was persuaded by De Launay and his confessor to ask his pardon of the king: “Tell the cardinal,” he added to Launay, charged with the message, “that if he saves my life, he will have no reason to repent of it: but also that I do not ask the king’s council to act against conviction, if they believe my death more useful to the state than might be the rest of the years I have to live.”