The King’s illness disinclined him to linger in the south, either for the conquest of Roussillon or for the trial of traitors. On the very day of his favourite’s arrest he left Narbonne for Fontainebleau, and stopped at Tarascon for an interview with the Cardinal. Both were so ill that Louis was carried on a bed into his Minister’s room, and there, side by side, the rulers of France, neither of whom had a year to live, discussed the Spanish treaty and its authors. Louis gave them up, without conditions, to the vengeance of Richelieu. He, assured of the King’s eternal faith and affection, forgot bodily pain in mental triumph, and was ready to take up, with all his old energy, the full regal power and authority with which he found himself suddenly invested. This extended not only to the punishment of State criminals, but to the Spanish campaign and the whole government of the south.
It seems that Bouillon and Cinq-Mars had a legal loophole of escape. They appeared in the actual treaty only as “deux seigneurs de qualité,” their names, with that of Sedan, being added in a secret memorandum; Monsieur and His Catholic Majesty of Spain were the only two persons openly mentioned. The fate of his fellow-conspirators therefore depended largely on Monsieur; and they, knowing this, may well have despaired.
He was at Blois, “faisant le malade,” when the news of the arrest of Cinq-Mars reached him. As a first precaution, he burned the original treaty. Then, finding that all was known, he sent the Abbé de la Rivière to Richelieu with letters of confession and grovelling entreaties for pardon. Richelieu told the messenger that his master deserved death, and might think himself fortunate if he escaped with confiscation and banishment. He had no longer the saving quality of being heir to the throne of France. He was terribly frightened. The Cardinal, with great show of severity, insisted that he should renounce for ever all “charges and administrations” in the kingdom, and should retire for the present, on a pension, to Annecy in Savoy, after being confronted at Lyons with his captive confederates. This trial the King spared him; but he had to save himself by signing a declaration that Messieurs de Bouillon and de Cinq-Mars were in fact the two “seigneurs de qualité” to whom the Spanish treaty referred.
Cinq-Mars and de Thou were brought to their trial at Lyons. Rumour and gossip seem to have coloured too highly the dramatic situation so often painted and described. According to the story believed by Madame de Motteville, M. de Montglat, and society generally, both prisoners were conveyed by river, the boat in which they travelled being towed by the great barge on which the Cardinal had embarked in his gorgeous litter. As a fact, it was de Thou alone who made part of this spectacle of vindictive triumph, Cinq-Mars being fetched by a troop of horse from Montpellier. The voyage against the swift waters of the Rhone was long and slow. On each bank a squadron of the Cardinal’s guards kept pace with the boats. They left Tarascon on August 17, and did not reach Lyons till September 3, when de Thou, with Cinq-Mars, joined the Duc de Bouillon in the castle of Pierre-Encise.
Their trial began immediately; and for Cinq-Mars the verdict was certain, even had not the jury been partly composed of Richelieu’s own commissioners, notably that Laubardemont who had for years been a name of terror to his enemies. Chancellor Séguier, with a touch of humanity, tried to save François de Thou: this gallant gentleman was plainly guiltless of any active conspiracy. But there were old private grudges in his case, and Richelieu’s state of mind and body made any hope of mercy vain. Laubardemont, acting for him, brought up an old law of Louis XI. which punished with death those who knew of a plot without revealing it. This law had seldom been carried out in full severity, but its existence was enough to condemn the man who had been a too faithful friend, and de Thou shared Cinq-Mars’ sentence. The Duc de Bouillon saved his head by resigning his strong fortress of Sedan to the King—“who much desired it,” says Montglat, “because it was situated on the river Meuse, and served as a retreat for all the malcontent.”
The sentence, pronounced on September 12, was carried out that same day in the square of the Hôtel de Ville at Lyons. Many writers have described the heroic calmness with which the two young men met their death and the universal pity and mourning throughout society. M. de Montglat expresses the feeling of his order. “Thus died M. le Grand, aged twenty-two years, handsome, well-made, generous, liberal, and having all the parts of an honnête homme, had he not been ungrateful to his benefactor, and had he shown more judgment in his conduct. As to M. de Thou, he was beloved of every one: he was indeed a man of great merit, regretted by the whole Court, where many believed that he was condemned without reason.”
Three days before the execution Perpignan opened its gates to the French, and Cardinal de Richelieu, who left Lyons for Paris as soon as the trial was over, wrote from his first stage to M. de Chavigny: “These three words are to tell you that Perpignan is in the King’s hands and that M. le Grand and M. de Thou are in the other world, where I pray God they may be happy.”
Louis XIII., we are told, received the news of his old favourite’s death with equal heartlessness—“remembering no more the friendship he had borne him and without any feeling of compassion.”
Travelling in his great “machine,” the Cardinal made his slow journey chiefly by canals and rivers. October was advanced when he slept the last night at Fontainebleau, embarked on the Seine, landed in Paris, and was borne on to his retreat at Rueil, the Court being at Saint-Germain.
It was a triumphal return; his enemies were fallen; and from every side news of fresh victories came to greet the dying Minister who had given France her new place among the nations.