While Chalais lay in prison through those summer days, his fate, if ever doubtful, was decided by the poltroonery of the prince for whom he had conspired. To assure his own safety and to gain some of his ends, if not all, Monsieur made a full confession to the Cardinal first, then to the King in Council. In his long and confused declarations, preserved in the French Archives, a few points stand out clearly: that he described all his plans against the State, especially against the Cardinal; treason, revolt, murder, and civil war: that he denounced all his friends, not only d’Ornano and Chalais, but his Vendôme half-brothers, the Comte de Soissons and many more. He did not quite spare Madame de Chevreuse or even the Queen. On the other hand, he once again promised obedience to the King and consented to marry Mademoiselle de Montpensier; but the reward he asked for his submission was not, as it might well have been, the pardon of his friends, but the great appanage that he had long demanded. Richelieu found it politic to satisfy him so far, and Gaston became Duke of Orléans and of Chartres and Count of Blois; but his actual income, in the form of pensions, still depended largely on the pleasure of the King.
“After which,” says Richelieu, “the marriage was made without further difficulty on Monsieur’s side. The Cardinal married them on August 5, in the Chapel of the Fathers of the Oratory at Nantes, in whose house the Queen-mother was lodged.”
In the last days, when the formalities of the trial of Chalais were already begun, Monsieur made some weak attempt to save him; but the victim was marked for death. His own prayers, entreaties, and despairing confessions, his mother’s agonised letter to the King, the efforts of some of his friends—more courageous than Madame de Chevreuse, who dared not even answer his last adoring letters—were all of no avail. He was condemned to the frightful death of a traitor.
The King commuted its worst horrors. Chalais was beheaded at Nantes on August 19. At the end he bore his fate like a soldier; and if his agony was unusually long and terrible, the cause lay in the mistaken kindness of his friends, who had managed to kidnap the public executioner. His place was taken by a condemned wretch from the prison who thus earned his own pardon. They say that at the twentieth blow from that unskilful arm young Chalais still groaned—“Jésus Maria!” and a shudder of pity ran through the staring crowd.
CHAPTER IV
1627-1628
Two famous edicts—The tragedy of Bouteville and Des Chapelles—The death of Madame and its consequences—War with England—The Siege of La Rochelle.
Richelieu had triumphed. Monsieur was safely married; for the moment contented and rangé. The restless, foolish, unhappy Chalais was dead; the Maréchal d’Ornano had died in prison, not without a suspicion of poison which seems unjustified; the Vendôme brothers were securely bolted into the damp dungeons of Vincennes; the Comte de Soissons had fled to Savoy; Madame de Chevreuse, banished from the Court, had taken refuge with Duke Charles of Lorraine; Queen Anne was in disgrace. Conspiracy was scotched, if not killed; the storm had blown over, and the highest in France, it seemed, lay at the Cardinal’s mercy.
By two popular edicts he pursued his plan of crushing the nobles and making the King supreme. One destroyed, first in Brittany, then all over France, every feudal stronghold that was not needed for the defence of province or kingdom. Such a measure was something of a revolution, for it struck sharply at the local strength and independent authority of the nobles, great and small. Peasants and townspeople were delighted to help the royal officials in smashing gates and tearing down tall watch-towers and walls six feet thick, which had threatened their liberty for so many centuries. As is usual in revolutions, a good deal of injustice was done; many proprietors suffered for the sins of a few; promised indemnities were not paid. And after all, Richelieu or no Richelieu, civilisation was in fact advancing. Manners were changing. Every year widened the difference between the centuries, left Henry IV. farther behind and brought Louis XIV. nearer. Richelieu, in his dealing with the great men, their fortresses and their governments, only hurried the inevitable march. But he also gained his own immediate ends.
The other famous edict forbade duels. They had long been forbidden, under the severest penalties; but the passions of men and the usages of society had been too strong for the law, which had become almost a dead letter. The nobles of France fought each other “by day and night, by moonlight, by torchlight, in the public streets and squares,” and on the slightest quarrel. The Church protested, the law threatened, without avail. Richelieu once more brought forward the royal authority, forbidding duels on pain of death, with the firm intention of making an example of any man who should dare to disobey.
The occasion was not long in coming. François de Montmorency, Comte de Bouteville, was one of the best-known duellists in France—or in Europe, for that matter. At twenty-seven he had already fought twenty-two duels. Fighting was his passion. “If you want to fight,” said the Président de Chevry to a punctilious gentleman, “go and pull a hair out of Bouteville’s beard; il vous fera passer votre envie.”