The fortress of Montmeillan was of extraordinary strength in 1535; it would have successfully resisted Francis the First but for the treachery of the Neapolitan governor. In the year 1600, besieged by Henry the Fourth, it was taken through Sully’s fair words and bribes, his wife being his ambassador to Madame de Brandis, wife of the commandant. Before its capitulation was agreed on, a battery had been with enormous labour posted on the rock which commands Montmeillan. Henry was standing there, in the midst of his generals, when their white plumes betraying them to the garrison, by a sudden discharge of artillery striking the rock above, they were covered with earth and splinters of stone. In the first moment of surprise, the king crossed himself, and Sully said with a smile, “Now I see your majesty is a good catholic.” During this time Madame de Sully, by her husband’s desire, had managed to become acquainted with Madame de Brandis, to whom she made various gifts, and passed much of her time in her society. At last, when intimacy had grown to friendship, she hinted at terms of surrender, to which De Brandis traitorously agreed, (though troops were at the time approaching to his aid by forced marches,) and bore his shame and his gold to France. Slighted there as a man marked by infamy, he repaired to Switzerland, where he carried off a nun from the convent of Bellon, whom he, nevertheless, soon deserted; and in sorrow and remorse wandered back to Italy, where he was imprisoned at Casale, and afterwards conducted to Turin. His end is unknown to me.
The Père Monod, confessor and favourite of Christina of Savoy, Henry the Fourth’s daughter, was prisoner in the fort of Montmeillan. Victor Amedée, duke of Savoy, and Christina’s husband, who had taken the title of Altesse Royale, despatched the jesuit to Louis the Thirteenth’s court, charged to enforce the rights of the house of Savoy on the throne of Cyprus; and in consequence to demand that at each audience granted to his envoy, the regiment of guards should be placed under arms as for one from royalty; and also, that through the king’s mediation, the same honours should be accorded by the pope to the ministers of Savoy, as to those of royal courts. Père Monod was, in the first instance, desired to come to an understanding with the Marquis of St. Maurice, Victor Amedée’s ambassador to France; but, neglecting to consult him, he acted alone; and, with his natural impetuosity, insisted on at once obtaining what might have been the result of time and persuasion. Richelieu opposed his demands, wearied by his importunity; and the angry jesuit strove in return to ruin him at court, intriguing for that purpose with Caussin, the king’s confessor, and Mademoiselle de la Fayette, one of the Queen’s ladies of honour. The cardinal, as usual, discovered and disconcerted the plot formed. Mademoiselle de la Fayette was enclosed in a monastery, Caussin exiled, and Monod obliged to retire from court, his conduct disavowed by Victor Amedée. After the latter’s decease, Richelieu determined, through Christina become regent, to be revenged on the rash jesuit; and Christina, who had refused to deliver him up, saw herself obliged to exile him to Coni. The Père Monod, irritated by her conduct, held secret communication with the Marquis of Leganez, governor of Milan for Spain. He agreed to carry him off by force and conduct him to Madrid, where his knowledge of the affairs of Savoy ensured him a cordial reception. The day before that on which their project would have been accomplished, it was discovered,—and Father Monod, the 8th January, 1639, imprisoned in the fort of Montmeillan. The jesuit intrigued once more, and was transferred to Miolans. Christina wrote to Richelieu, “That he had no longer reason to reproach her, for Father Monod’s tongue was tied and his person in custody.”
Pope Urban claimed him, through the bishop of Geneva, as one who could be judged by an ecclesiastical court only; but while this last dispute was in agitation, the priest died. He was a man of great talents and profound knowledge. It was said that Richelieu’s desire of revenge was most excited by his having written a Latin poem, satirizing the mighty cardinal, rendered by his self-love on all points vulnerable, who envied the cid, and was vain of being a dancer.
It was dark long before we reached Chambéry, where we arrived but just in time to escape an awful thunder-storm, having ridden twenty miles for our evening’s excursion.
Yesterday, turning off from the road to Turin, we rode to the Cascade du Bout du Monde; so is named the fall of the Doria into the river Leisse, where the latter rushes along its narrow bed, shut in by high mountains, which form the base of the Dent du Nivolet; and the crags, which enclose the clear stream, feathered to their feet. We passed on our way the old castle of Chaffardon, on a height to the right hand, and a picturesque village. The peasantry of this, almost the only fertile portion of Savoy, are fair and well-featured, and certainly more courteous than any we have met with as yet. We did not see the fall: for to do so it was necessary to pass through a paper-mill erected here, and up a dirty stair of broken planks, leaving our horses: not choosing to do so, we returned through the heat, which was tremendous, and swarms of wasps and flies, whose stings made the horses stream with blood.
This morning it was cooler, and we profited by the weather to visit the lake of Bourget,—mistaking, however, our road, and taking the steep stony one which continually mounts and descends the range of hills covered with chestnut-trees, which form a line from the town to the lake. Close to its shore are the ruins of the castle of Bourget, where Amedée the Fifth was born, and the village.
The lake itself, small and beautiful, lies buried between mountains, the Mont du Chat (the passage of Hannibal) on the left hand—a bare, stern mountain, except at its foot and at one spot, where a promontory, covered with old trees, advances as if to admire its solitary beauty in the clear water. The walls of the monastery of Hautecombe, founded in 1125, lie hidden among them. It can be approached only by the lake or by a steep path on the mountain side, dangerous except to the natives.
The church of Hautecombe, thus wrote an author in 1807, was destined for the sepulchre of the first counts and dukes of Savoy, who there raised two magnificent Gothic chapels. There were to be seen among its many monuments the white marble statue of Humbert the Third, who died in 1188; the bronze mausoleum of Boniface of Savoy, archbishop of Canterbury, and primate of England, who died in 1270; those of the fifth, sixth, and seventh Amedée, of whom the last, when he journeyed into France during the unhappy reign of Charles the Sixth, defied to single combat three English earls, and was each time conqueror; of the Earl of Huntingdon with the lance, the Earl of Arundel with the sword, the Earl of Pembroke with the battle-axe. All those curious to learn the history of Savoy visited this church, which was a chronicle in stone. In the times of devastation and delirium the abbey did not escape. A national agent came to open its tombs and rob them of whatever precious things had been interred with its skeletons: the bones were thrown back into the earth. A year or two after, weeds and ivy had already half concealed the shattered monuments and prostrate pillars, and drooped over the chapel’s broken arches. A porcelain manufactory was next raised on the very spot, to profit by the stream which rushes down the hill from the intermitting fountain to the lake, but the speculation proved a ruinous one; and this also went to decay, and the place was left desolate. It was at this time a popular story, that the men who, during the silent hours of night, guided their rafts laden with wood across the lake towards the Rhone, often saw, by the faint moonlight, colossal forms standing on the ruined roof of the abbey, holding shield and lance, and seeming to strike them in sign of vengeance. Since then all is changed once more. Carlo Felice, last sovereign of Piedmont and Savoy, has restored it to its primitive splendour—its walls rebuilt—its statues and mausoleums replaced in the taste of the old time. It was finished in 1826, and is now again one of the most interesting sights in Savoy. Issuing from the monastery, a narrow path leads through the vines to a forest of ancient chestnut trees; an ascent which conducts to a rock still under their shadow, from a cavern of which springs the fountain, called the Wonderful, because it intermits at uncertain times, and, at each period it flows, ejects the same quantity of water.