“The French noblesse,” says Péréfixe, “being at peace, could not be doing nothing; some spent their time in hunting; some in the company of ladies; some studied belles lettres and mathematics; others travelled in foreign lands; others kept up the exercise of war under Prince Maurice in Holland. But many, with itching hands, eager to show off their courage without leaving home, became punctilious, and at the least word, or at crossing glances, had their swords in their hands. Thus a mania for duels seized on the minds of gentlemen. And these encounters were so frequent that the nobles shed nearly as much blood between themselves as their enemies had made them lose in battle.”
Royal edicts, one after another, had little effect in cooling these hot spirits; especially as Henry usually forgave a crime which his laws threatened with forfeiture of life and goods. In the following reign such laws were less of a mockery, as the nobles found to their cost. Louis XIII. was made of harder stuff; and Richelieu had learnt by personal experience—his brother’s death in a duel with the Marquis de Thémines—the need of a strong hand.
There was not much personal distinction, at this time, among the grandees of France. Henry de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, nearest in blood to the throne, was a shy, gloomy youth, mean in looks and character, and though really clever and ambitious, eccentric to the verge of madness. “Monsieur le Prince,” says Brunet, “père du grand Condé, s’imaginoit être quelque fois oiseau et d’autres fois sanglier, et se cachoit sous les lits et sous les tables comme s’il avoit été dans les forêts.” It was not till 1609, after Richelieu had retired to his diocese, that King Henry, for his own ends, married this young man to the marvellously beautiful Mademoiselle de Montmorency. Then, to the King’s rage and disgust, Condé proved that he had some individuality, and ran away with his wife to Flanders. But for the dagger of Ravaillac, a European war might have followed on this elopement.
François de Bourbon, Prince de Conti, the King’s first cousin, uncle of Condé, brother of Henry’s old companion-in-arms and once himself a fighter, was elderly, deaf, and incapable. He appeared little at Court, but lived in Paris on the revenues of the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. His wife, Louise Marguerite de Lorraine, a brilliant mischief-maker, with her mother, the lively old Duchesse de Guise, widow of Henry le Balafré, was among the few really intimate friends of Queen Marie de Médicis. Henry IV., who had once thought of marrying her, ended by disliking her, resenting her influence over his wife. But she kept her place at Court, and after the Prince de Conti’s death she is said to have secretly married Bassompierre, first of courtiers and her lover of many years.
Charles de Bourbon, Comte de Soissons, usually known as Monsieur le Comte, was the Prince de Conti’s half-brother, his mother, Françoise d’Orléans-Longueville, having been the second wife of Louis I., Prince de Condé. Though outwardly loyal to Henry IV., he was perhaps the most dangerous enemy the King had in his own immediate circle. Ambitious, proud and violent, he never forgave Henry for breaking an early promise of marrying him to his sister, Catherine of Navarre. Jealous of his own position, he resented every mark of favour shown by the King, especially the honours showered on the young Duc de Vendôme, Henry’s eldest legitimised son. If a fit of the sulks had not kept Monsieur le Comte out of Paris at the time of Henry’s death, he would have disputed the regency with the Queen. Not being on the spot, he was neither clever, strong, nor popular enough to disturb the appointed order of things.
Henry de Bourbon, Duc de Montpensier—familiar to the Richelieu family as lord of Champigny—was of no account at all, in court or camp, during his later years. But he had been an heroic soldier. Son of that Montpensier, the leader and patron of “the Monk” Richelieu and his brother, who swept Poitou with fire and sword in the religious wars, and of his furious Duchess, the soul of the League, the sister of Henry le Balafré, who brought about the murder of Henry III., he, with so many other Catholic princes and nobles, fought his uncles and the League under the banner of Henry of Navarre. A terrible wound in the face received at Dreux, where he commanded a regiment of cavalry, brought Henry de Montpensier’s public career to an end at twenty-seven. His life, after this, was one of more or less suffering. He fell out of favour for some time with the King, being suspected of sympathy with the Biron conspiracy. He married, in middle life, his cousin Henriette Catherine de Joyeuse, another of the Queen’s intimate friends, and they had one daughter, born in 1605, the heiress of all the immense Montpensier possessions; by her marriage with Gaston of France the mother of the famous Anne Marie d’Orléans, Duchesse de Montpensier, commonly known as La Grande Mademoiselle.
M. de Montpensier appears to have lived a great deal at Champigny, a favourite among his many châteaux. Thirty years after his death, on her way to visit the new splendours of Richelieu, his granddaughter found that he was still beloved there, although the almighty Cardinal, levelling his house with the ground, would gladly have destroyed his memory.
The Duke died at his hôtel in Paris on the last day of February 1608, wasted by a long decline, and devotedly nursed to the end by his eccentric Capuchin father-in-law, Père Ange, in the world Duc de Joyeuse. “Bon prince,” l’Estoile says of Montpensier, “and as such regretted and mourned by the King, the nobility and all the people.” The usual amusements of the Carnival were stopped; even the little Dauphin was not allowed to dance his ballet before the King. Three weeks later a funeral service was held at Notre Dame, with an oration by the popular preacher M. Fenouillet, Bishop of Montpellier. The ceremony, which was simple, derived dignity from the presence of one hundred and twenty poor men in long robes, carrying torches. Another and grander service was held in April. Between these two occasions, the last male descendant of Robert, son of Saint Louis, was conveyed with an escort of three hundred horse to Champigny, and was buried in the chapel which still exists there.
The Duc de Montpensier’s widow married Charles, Duc de Guise, who, with his brothers, represented the princely House of Lorraine at the French Court. By birth and position, of course, he was one of the first men in France; personally he was of little account, and hardly a worthy descendant of the great Dukes of the sixteenth century. He had not even their looks, being short and snub-nosed. He was witty, agreeable and generous, very frivolous and a great flirt. Richelieu, in the first volume of his Memoirs, gives Henry IV.’s own estimate of this head of the Guise family: “Plus de montre que d’effet”; rather brilliant in company, and judged capable of great things by those who did not know him; but so slothful and lazy that he cared for nothing but pleasure, “et qu’en effet son esprit n’était pas plus grand que son nez.”
