The easy triumph of the Court party over the rebel elements in the nation had not lasted long. When the Parliament of Paris saw that the States-General and all their talk had ended in nothing—no reform of abuses, no strengthening of the law, while Concini, the foreign favourite, now a Marshal of France and Lieutenant-General of Picardy, was fast becoming the most powerful person in the kingdom—it raised its voice in angry remonstrance. And the men of law did not stand alone. “Derrière le parlement,” says M. Henri Martin, “il y avait les princes, et à côté des princes, les huguenots.” In fact, a strong party was making a new and final struggle against the Spanish marriages. The voice of the English ambassador, Sir Thomas Edmunds, chimed in with those of Condé, Bouillon and the Parliament, begging at least for delay: in the present state of Europe, James I. found these marriages “inopportune.” His eldest daughter, Elizabeth, had lately married the Protestant Elector Palatine, nephew of the Duc de Bouillon and brought up by him. England was thus strongly linked with the Protestant cause, both in France and Germany.
But neither foreign opinion, Parliament, princes, nor cowardly counsels in her own household—for her favourite Leonora, Concini’s wife, was against her in this matter—could turn Marie de Médicis from her intention. The King and the Ministers, under her orders, haughtily denied that the Parliament had any right to interfere in affairs of State. She tried, but in vain, to win over Condé and his friends. When her failure was plain—Condé retiring into the country, publishing a manifesto which demanded the delay of the marriages and the disgrace of Concini and the old Ministers, and following up his words by raising an armed force—she replied by arresting his friend Nicolas Le Jay, a president of the Parliament and leader of the opposition there. The guards seized him at five o’clock in the morning of August 17 and hurried him into a coach. On that same morning the whole Court, conducted by the Ducs de Guise and d’Épernon with a strong body of troops, set out on the long journey to the south. President Le Jay, sorely against his will, followed the King as far as Amboise, where he was left behind as a prisoner.
Concini—formerly Marquis, now also Maréchal d’Ancre—remained to oppose the princes in Picardy, of which the young Duc de Longueville was governor. The Maréchal de Bois-Dauphin (Montmorency-Laval, Marquis de Sablé) was left with a royal army of 12,000 men to protect and overawe Paris, already commanded by the guns of the Château de Vincennes, and to keep a check on the Prince de Condé.
The royal progress to the south was slow and dangerous, with many delays and annoyances. Travelling was not easy even in summer weather. The long train of coaches, baggage-waggons and pack-mules, horsemen, running footmen, with the large military escort, took three days to travel the good road between Paris and Orléans, and then for some unknown reason, perhaps the uncertainty of Condé’s movements, did not arrive at Tours for ten days more. Here the Court was met by three deputies from the Huguenot assembly at Grenoble, who had just missed His Majesty at Paris, and who, “with more insolence than formerly,” says Richelieu, pressed again upon him the demands of the Tiers État and requested him to proceed no further on his journey, “in which they were interested, not only as being of la Religion prétendue réformée, but as good Frenchmen.”
In consequence of this and other disloyal proceedings, the King publicly declared the Prince de Condé and all his adherents guilty of high treason unless they laid down their arms within a month, and sent his declaration to be registered by the Parliament of Paris.
The Court arrived at Poitiers on September 4, and was detained there, to the Queen-mother’s great vexation, till the 27th. The little Madame of thirteen, on her way to be married to the Prince of Spain, had an attack of small-pox, and Marie herself suffered from an inflamed arm. As Condé was already fighting his way across country with the object of blocking the road to Spain, while the Duc de Rohan, with a small Huguenot army, was preparing to second him by occupying Guienne and the Bordelais, it appeared at one moment as if the royal marriages might be effectually stopped.
Two persons profited by the delay. One was the Maréchale d’Ancre. That mysterious Leonora, accused, probably falsely, of witchcraft and so many other crimes, seized this opportunity to creep back into the favour of her royal mistress and foster-sister, whom she, in concert with the Minister Villeroy and others, had seriously annoyed by advising her against pressing on the marriages. By devoted nursing of the royal invalids, and by the help of her Jewish doctor, Montalto, Leonora soon regained Marie’s selfish affection, to lose it once more, and finally, before the end of her tragic life.
The other person who profited by the royal visit to Poitiers was the Bishop of Luçon. On returning from Paris in the spring, feverish and irritable, he had plunged deep in theological studies at his favourite Coussay. It seems to have been a grievance that even his friends should disturb him at his books. But when the Court arrived at Poitiers and was detained there, all loyal persons of any distinction in the province were bound to wait upon their Majesties. The Bishop of Luçon was among the foremost in paying his duty. Certain vague talk of the chaplaincy to Queen Anne now took solid shape, and he received the promise of his appointment, which was definitely made in November, when the Court was at Bordeaux. During the interval, it is evident that Richelieu considered himself bound to the Queen-mother’s service. He made it his business to send a report of the health of Madame, who was left behind at Poitiers for a few days when the Court hurried forward; and his letters to Marie de Médicis are full of grateful devotion.
The little French princess was conveyed to the Spanish frontier, and the little Spanish princess was received in exchange. Under the escort of the Duc de Guise and six thousand men—for the Huguenots, under Rohan, made the journey perilous—she was brought to Bordeaux, where the King and his mother awaited her. There the marriage was finally blessed—it had already, in the case of both princesses, been celebrated by proxy—and there the Court lingered on till the middle of December, when it began its slow northward journey, not reaching Tours till January 25, 1616.
The country through which the Court travelled was in a terrible state, trampled and devastated by armies—“chose pitoyable et horrible,” says Pontchartrain. In spite of the Maréchal de Bois-Dauphin, Condé had crossed the Loire at Neuvy and was storming westward through Berry, Touraine and Poitou, “pillant et saccageant,” says Richelieu, “tous les lieux où il passoit.” Again Madame de Richelieu had her share in the sufferings of the poor province, which seemed to her even worse off than in the Wars of the League. Forty years she had lived at Richelieu, and never had she seen such men or such ravages. “If these armies believe in God,” she said, “it is as the devils do.” The army of Bois-Dauphin was also marching south-westward, to protect the progress of the Court. Friend or foe, royalist or rebel, it made no difference in the wholesale robbery and cruelty which desolated the villages, utterly destroying any lingering peaceful fruit of Henry’s administration. Even Sully had now taken sides with Condé; and the Ducs de Soubise and de la Trémoïlle had raised a fresh army of Huguenots in Poitou. The wintry weather made everything worse. If the armies caused the wretched peasants to suffer, they suffered themselves. An icy rain was followed by hard frosts, snow, and “a great furious wind”; thousands of men, on both sides, died of the wet and the bitter cold. In Paris, boats and bridges were wrecked by the masses of broken ice in the Seine.