If this ever seemed probable, it was in the early days of 1642. The King and the Cardinal were both ill when they left Paris for Roussillon, the Spanish campaign being in full swing. They travelled separately, the royal party a day in advance; the Cardinal’s suite was so large that the same night’s lodging was seldom enough for both, and the progress was slow. Leaving Paris in January, they reached Narbonne in the second week of March.
Cinq-Mars had not wasted his time. He had gone so far, they say, with the bored, discontented King, as to suggest not only the Cardinal’s disgrace, but his murder. Louis listened, says Aubery, with horror; yet he neither warned the Cardinal nor took any steps to defend him. He wrote to him indeed in the first days of March, when the weary journey was nearly over, “songés seulement à vostre persone”; but this might naturally refer to Richelieu’s health, which was growing worse every day. The King saw no real danger, probably, in the irresponsible chatter of M. le Grand. He was half amused; he was often very impatient of his Minister’s domineering temper, and not unwilling to use his favourite as a safety-valve. In that there was nothing new; but all the history shows that the King leaned on the Cardinal’s genius, trusted him, if he did not love him, and had too much good sense ever seriously to think of depriving the kingdom of his services.
Cinq-Mars was discouraged, at least as to the violent death he proposed for the Cardinal. Not only was the King a little cold, for his favour was beginning to wane, but Monsieur and the Duc de Bouillon, on whose presence and help he had counted, were prudently careful to keep at a distance. He placed all his hopes, therefore, on the secret treaty with Spain, which was actually brought to him at Narbonne. Fontrailles, disguised as a Capuchin friar, had carried it to Madrid for the signature of Olivarez. In it the King of Spain promised an army of 17,000 men and a large sum of money to Monsieur, the Duc de Bouillon, and Cinq-Mars, who were to command this force under the Emperor and to hold Sedan in his name while Spain invaded France. All the French conquests of the last four years were to be restored, and the work of Richelieu entirely undone. The precious document was sent to Monsieur for his signature, which he, with newly developed caution, was in no hurry to give. Richelieu had offered the command in North Italy to the third chief conspirator, Bouillon. His brother, the Vicomte de Turenne, always of stainless loyalty, was fighting in Roussillon with the Maréchal de la Meilleraye and the young Duc d’Enghien.
The King passed on to the siege of Perpignan, leaving the Cardinal seriously ill at Narbonne. His sufferings at this time, both of mind and body, were very great, and may be traced through the letters which, day by day, he dictated and sent to M. de Noyers, his Secretary for War, in attendance on the King. Louis was himself far from well, but the Cardinal’s constant, eager inquiries, during this enforced separation, betray anxieties beyond the matter of health; for Cinq-Mars was always at his post, and if Richelieu knew nothing yet of the Spanish treaty, he suspected everything as to his enemy’s personal designs. The thought of these, and the agony of clinging to that power which, in the last resort, depended on the favour of the King, were worse to the strong spirit than days and nights of pain caused by cruel sores and barbarous remedies.
Early in May he writes from Narbonne: “Unluckily, though the surgeons say I am better, they cannot lift me from one bed to another without extraordinary pain”; and three days later: “As I thought to be entering the haven, a new tempest has driven me far away.” A fresh abscess had appeared on his already crippled right arm. “To console me, they talk of playing with knives again, on which I shall find it hard to resolve, having neither strength nor courage enough. I pray God to grant me these, that I may conform to His will.” Two days later: “I suffered extraordinary pain last night.... They have decided to make an opening in the bend of the arm. But they fear they may cut the vein. I am in the hand of God. I would I had finished my testament, but I cannot do it without you, and you cannot move till Perpignan is taken.”
The slight ease given by the operation lasted only a few days, more abscesses forming; and it seems that the Cardinal thought himself a dying man. M. de Noyers having arrived at his pressing summons, Pierre Falconis, notary-royal of the town of Narbonne, was employed to write out that remarkable will of seventeen sheets which shows his mind at its clearest and strongest. Madame d’Aiguillon and M. de Noyers were his executors, and among the witnesses were Cardinal Mazarin and Hardouin de Péréfixe, his chamberlain, afterwards Archbishop of Paris. Falconis attested that “mondit seigneur le Cardinal-Duc” was unable, owing to the state of his right arm, himself to sign his testament.
The end was not yet. The doctors advised a move from the marshes and stagnant lakes of Narbonne to the healthier air of Provence and the Rhône. Any ordinary conveyance was impossible for the Cardinal’s pain-racked body. He travelled in his bed, carried by eighteen men in an immense litter hung with crimson and gold. So large, we are told, was the “machine,” that gateways had to be widened, doors and windows taken out, walls pulled down, at the many stopping-places on His Eminence’s journey. He was overtaken by bad news: the Maréchal de Guiche had been defeated by the Spaniards near Cambray, and for a few days there was great alarm in the north of France, with new outcries against the Cardinal; his enemies were even mad enough to accuse him of having arranged the defeat in order to prove himself still necessary to France. If this absurd report reached him, his already troubled mind was soothed by a letter from the King, brought to him at Arles by M. de Chavigny: “Je finiroy en vous asseurant que quelque faux bruit qu’on fasse courre je vous ayme plus que jamais et qu’il y a trop longtemps que nous sommes ensemble pour nous jamais séparer ce que je veux bien que tout le monde sache.”
Richelieu’s reply to that letter was to send the King, by the hand of Chavigny, a copy or rough sketch of his brother’s secret treaty with Spain.
By what means that copy reached him has been one of the secrets of history. Among many guesses, Michelet favours the story that Queen Anne, aware of the treaty, took this means of making her peace with the Cardinal. But it seems more likely, on the whole, that Richelieu’s own spies at the Court of Madrid had made the discovery. In any case it meant for him a final triumph.
At first the King was irresolute. Ill from the heat, he had returned to Narbonne from the camp at Perpignan, leaving the siege to his officers. Though he knew Cinq-Mars to be a traitor, he did not at once arrest him, half hoping, perhaps, that the “pauvre diable” might save his life by escaping over the frontier. Fontrailles had already done so, but Cinq-Mars, proud, foolhardy, confident in his master’s affection, followed him to Narbonne. Urgent letters to the King from the Cardinal decided his fate. When too late he hid himself in a house at Narbonne; the mistress had pity on his curly head, but her hard-hearted husband denounced him; the royal guards seized him and conveyed him to the castle of Montpellier. De Thou, the least guilty of all and the first to be taken, was sent to Tarascon, where Richelieu had already arrived. The Duc de Bouillon, arrested at Casale, was brought back to France and imprisoned at Lyons in the old castle of Pierre-Encise, which in those days still dominated the city.