The coadjutor left the Palais-Royal “in what is called a rage;” and he was in a greater one in the evening, when his friends came and told him that he was being made fun of at the queen’s supper-table; that she was convinced that he had done all he could to increase the tumult; that he would be the first to be made a great example of; and that the Parliament was about to be interdicted. Paul de Gondi had not waited for their information to think of revolt. “I did not reflect as to what I could do,” says he, “for I was quite certain of that; I reflected only as to what I ought to do, and I was perplexed.” The jests and the threats of the court appeared to him to be sufficient justification. “What effectually stopped my scruples was the advantage I imagined I had in distinguishing myself from those of my profession by a state of life in which there was something of all professions. In disorderly times, things lead to a confusion of species, and the vices of an archbishop may, in an infinity of conjunctures, be the virtues of a party leader.” The coadjutor recalled his friends. “We are not in such bad case as you supposed, gentlemen,” he said to them; “there is an intention of crushing the public; it is for me to defend it from oppression; to-morrow before midday I shall be master of Paris.”
For some time past the coadjutor had been laboring to make himself popular in Paris; the general excitement was only waiting to break out, and when the chancellor’s carriage appeared in the streets in the morning, on the way to the Palace of Justice, the people, secretly worked upon during the night, all at once took up arms again. The chancellor had scarcely time to seek refuge in the Hotel de Luynes; the mob rushed in after him, pillaging and destroying the furniture, whilst the chancellor, flying for refuge into a small chamber, and believing his last hour had come, was confessing to his brother, the Bishop of Meaux. He was not discovered, and the crowd moved off in another direction. “It was like a sudden and violent conflagration lighted up from the Pont Neuf over the whole city. Everybody without exception took up arms. Children of five and six years of age were seen dagger in hand; and the mothers themselves carried them. In less than two hours there were in Paris more than two hundred barricades, bordered with flags and all the arms that the League had left entire. Everybody cried, ‘Hurrah! for the king!’ but echo answered, ‘None of your Mazarin!’”
The coadjutor kept himself shut up at home, protesting his powerlessness; the Parliament had met at an early hour; the Palace of Justice was surrounded by an immense crowd, shouting, “Broussel! Broussel!” The Parliament resolved to go in a body and demand of the queen the release of their members arrested the day before. “We set out in full court,” says the premier president Mole, “without sending, as the custom is, to ask the queen to appoint a time, the ushers in front, with their square caps and a-foot: from this spot as far as the Trahoir cross we found the people in arms and barricades thrown up at every hundred paces.” [Memoires de Matthieu Mole, iii. p. 255.]
“If it were not blasphemy to say that there was any one in our age more intrepid than the great Gustavus and the Prince, I should say it was M. Mole, premier president,” writes Cardinal de Retz. Sincerely devoted to the public weal, and a magistrate to the very bottom of his soul, Mole, nevertheless, inclined towards the side of power, and understood better than his brethren the danger of factions. He represented to the queen the extreme danger the sedition was causing to Paris and to France. “She, who feared nothing because she knew but little, flew into a passion and answered, furiously, ‘I am quite aware that there is disturbance in the city, but you shall answer to me for it, gentlemen of the Parliament, you, your wives, and your children.’” “The queen was pleased,” says Mole, in his dignified language, “to signify in terms of wrath that the magisterial body should be answerable for the evils which might ensue, and which the king on reaching his majority would remember.”
The queen had retired to her room, slamming the door violently; the Parliament turned back to the Palace of Justice; the angry mob thronged about the magistrates; when they arrived at Rue St. Honore, just as they were about to turn on to the Pont Neuf, a band of armed men fell upon them, “and a cookshop-lad, advancing at the head of two hundred men, thrust his halbert against the premier president’s stomach, saying, ‘Turn, traitor, and, if thou wouldst not thyself be slain, give up to us Broussel, or Mazarin and the chancellor as hostages.’” Matthew Mole quietly put the weapon aside, and, “You forget yourself,” he said, “and are oblivious of the respect you owe to my office.” “Thrice an effort was made to thrust me into a private house,” says his account in his Memoires, “but I still kept my place; and, attempts having been made with swords and pistols on all sides of me to make an end of me, God would not permit it, some of the members (Messieurs) and some true friends having placed themselves in front of me. I told President de Mesmes that there was no other plan but to return to the Palais-Royal and thither take back the body, which was much diminished in numbers, five of the presidents having dropped away, and also many of the members on whom the people had inflicted unworthy treatment.” “Thus having given himself time to rally as many as he could of the body, and still preserving the dignity of the magistracy both in his words and in his movements, the premier president returned at a slow pace to the Palais-Royal, amidst a running fire of insults, threats, execrations, and blasphemies.” [Memoires de Retz.]
The whole court had assembled in the gallery: Mole spoke first. “This man,” says Retz, “had a sort of eloquence peculiar to himself. He knew nothing of apostrophes, he was not correct in his language, but he spoke with a force which made up for all that, and he was naturally so bold that he never spoke so well as in the midst of peril. Monsieur made as if he would throw himself on his knees before the queen, who remained inflexible; four or five princesses, who were trembling with fear, did throw themselves at her feet; the Queen of England, who had come that day from St. Germain, represented that the troubles had never been so serious at their commencement in England, nor the feelings so heated or united.” [Histoire du Temps, 1647-48. (Archives curieuses, vi. p. 162.)] At last the cardinal made up his mind; he “had been roughly handled in the queen’s presence by the presidents and councillors in their speeches, some of them telling him, in mockery, that he had only to give himself the trouble of going as far as the Pont Neuf to see for himself the state in which things were,” and he joined with all those present in entreating Anne of Austria; finally, the release of Broussel was extorted from her, “not without a deep sigh, which showed what violence she did her feelings in the struggle.”
“We returned in full court by the same road,” says Matthew Mole, “and the people demanding, with confused clamor of voices, whether M. Broussel were at liberty, we gave them assurances thereof, and entered by the back-door of my lodging; before crossing the threshold, I took leave of Presidents De Mesmes and Le Coigneux, and waited until the members had passed, testifying my sentiments of gratitude for that they had been unwilling to separate until they had seen to the security of my person, which I had not at all deserved, but such was their good pleasure. After this business, which had lasted from six in the morning until seven o’clock, there was need of rest, seeing that the mind had been agitated amidst so many incidents, and not a morsel had been tasted.” [Memoires de Matthieu Mole, t. iii. p. 265.]
Broussel had taken his seat in the Parliament again. The Prince of Conde had just arrived in Paris; he did not like the cardinal, but he was angry with the Parliament, which he considered imprudent and insolent. “They are going ahead,” said he:—“if I were to go ahead with them, I should perhaps do better for my own interests, but my name is Louis de Bourbon, and I do not wish to shake the throne; these devils of squarecaps, are they mad about bringing me either to commence a civil war before long, or to put a rope round their own necks, and place over their heads and over my own an adventurer from Sicily, who will be the ruin of us all in the end? I will let the Parliament plainly see that they are not where they suppose, and that it would not be a hard matter to bring them to reason.” The coadjutor, to whom he thus expressed himself, answered that “the cardinal might possibly be mistaken in his measures, and that Paris would be a hard nut to crack.” Whereupon the prince rejoined, angrily, “It will not be taken, like Dunkerque, by mining and assaults, but if the bread of Gonesse were to fail them for a week . . .” The coadjutor took the rest as said. Some days afterwards, during the night between the 5th and 6th of January, 1649, the queen, with the little king and the whole court, set out at four A. M. from Paris for the castle of St. Germain, empty, unfurnished, as was then the custom in the king’s absence, where the courtiers had great difficulty in finding a bundle of straw. “The queen had scarcely a bed to lie upon,” says Mdlle. de Montpensier, “but never did I see any creature so gay as she was that day; had she won a battle, taken Paris, and had all who had displeased her hanged, she could not have been more so, and nevertheless she was very far from all that.”