This intrigue was only too successful, and on Bassompierre’s return to Fontainebleau from a visit to Paris, whither he had been sent by the Queen to settle a quarrel between the Duc de Montbazon and the Maréchal de Brissac, he perceived a change in her Majesty’s manner towards him, which seemed rather less cordial than usual. This continued for some days and was succeeded by an “entire coldness.”[101]
Bassompierre remained in this state of semi-disgrace for about a month, when, his patience exhausted, he “resolved to quit the Court of France and the service of the King and Queen, although several beautiful ladies performed the impossible to turn him from this design.” He accordingly asked Sauveterre, the usher of the Queen’s cabinet, to obtain for him an audience of her Majesty, in order that he might request her permission to retire from the Court and France, which Sauveterre did. But, no sooner was he in the royal presence than, to his astonishment and relief, the Queen, addressing him with all her old cordiality, said: “Bassompierre, I am going to-morrow to Paris. [She was going to visit her younger son, the Duc d’Orléans—Monsieur, as he was called—who was lying ill at the Louvre.] I have ordered everyone to remain here; but, as for you, if you wish to come, I give you permission. But do not go by the same road, so that they may not say that I have made an exception to the general rule.”
Next day, Bassompierre went to Paris, accompanied by Créquy and Saint-Luc, and awaited the Queen’s arrival at the Louvre, where he assisted her to alight from her coach and escorted her to Monsieur’s apartments. “The others then retired,” says he, “and I remained until she was in her cabinet, when I had full leisure to speak to her, and left her with the assurance that she did not believe any of the things which they had tried to persuade her to believe against me, concerning which I gave her a complete explanation.”
Early in 1614, Condé and the other Princes who, in the preceding year, had been allied with Concini, indignant at the latter’s reconciliation with the Ministers and jealous of his increasing favour, retired from Court and assumed so threatening an attitude that Marie de’ Medici decided to raise an army without delay, and applied to the Swiss Cantons for a levy of 6,000 men, who were intended to form the nucleus of this force. Now, the Colonel-General of the Swiss in the French service, who would, of course, take command of the new levy, was the Duc de Rohan, a nobleman of whose loyalty the Regent was exceedingly suspicious, and with good reason, since, when hostilities broke out, he entered into an alliance with the Princes. She therefore resolved to purchase this post from him and to appoint in his place someone in whom she had absolute confidence.
At a meeting of the Council called to decide the question of Rohan’s successor, Villeroy suggested that the post should be given to the Duc de Longueville, by which means, he assured the Queen, she would certainly draw him away from the party of the Princes, which he seemed more than half-inclined to join. Her Majesty, however, very sensibly preferred to bestow it on someone who would not regard his appointment as in the nature of a bribe to do his duty, and proposed that Bassompierre should be the new Colonel-General, “both on account of the German tongue, which he had in common with the Swiss, and because he was their neighbour.” Upon this, Villeroy pointed out that, by the ancient conventions of the Kings of France with the Swiss Cantons, it was expressly provided that the Colonel-General should be a prince of the Blood Royal of France or, at any rate, a prince of some other royal house.[102] The Queen then proposed the Chevalier de Guise, who was a prince of the House of Lorraine; but to this Villeroy objected, on the ground that the Guises had already been overwhelmed with benefits and that to add to them would be bound to create a great deal of jealousy. And the Council rose without any decision having been arrived at.
“As she returned to her cabinet,” writes Bassompierre, “she said to me: ‘Bassompierre, if you had been a prince, I would have given you to-day a fine appointment.’ ‘Madame,’ I replied, ‘if I am not a prince, it is not because I should not have been very glad to be one. Nevertheless, I can assure you that there are princes who are greater fools than myself.’ ‘I should have been very pleased if you had been one,’ said she, ‘because that would have saved me from seeking for a suitable person for the post I speak of.’ ‘Madame, may I ask what it is?’ ‘To appoint a Colonel-General of the Swiss,’ said she. ‘And why, Madame, can I not be Colonel-General, if it is your wish?’ On which she told me that the Swiss had a convention with the King according to which no one but a prince could be their Colonel-General.”
Bassompierre saluted her Majesty and withdrew, anathematizing the wretched convention which stood between him and one of the highest offices under the Crown, and wondering whether by any possibility the obstacle could be overcome. Of that there seemed but little chance, as time pressed, and perhaps by the morrow the post would have been filled. Fortune favoured him, however, for, as he was on his way to dinner, he happened to meet Colonel Gaspard Gallaty, a veteran Swiss officer in the service of France,[103] with whom he was on very friendly terms. To him he related what the Queen had just told him, when Gallaty said that he believed he possessed sufficient influence with his countrymen to persuade them to accept him as their Colonel-General, notwithstanding the convention. And he offered to set out at once for Switzerland to obtain their consent, and begged Bassompierre to return to the Queen and tell her that, if she wished to give him the post, the Swiss would consent.
“She [the Queen] said to me, ‘I give you a fortnight; nay, I will give you three weeks, for this; and if you can obtain the consent of the Swiss, I will give you the post. Then I spoke to Gallaty, who asked me to obtain permission for him to go to his own country, saying that he would set out in two days’ time. And this he did, and, within the time that he had promised me he sent me a letter from the Cantons, who were assembled at Soleure, to authorise the levy which the King was demanding from them, by which they informed the King that, if it pleased him to honour me with this charge, they would accept me as willingly as any prince whom he might give them.”
By the Queen’s orders, Bassompierre then communicated with Rohan, who was in Poitou, and, as he feared that it might be some little time before the Treasury saw its way to pay the large sum demanded by that nobleman for the surrender of his post, he himself offered to advance it; and on March 12, 1614, he took the oath as Colonel-General of the Swiss.
Two days later, news arrived that the Princes had surprised Mézières, from which place Condé despatched a lengthy memorial to the Queen, setting forth the grievances of himself and his party, protesting against the Spanish marriage and demanding the convocation of the States-General. The seizure of Mézières was followed by that of Sainte-Menehould, but the arrival of the Swiss, in two regiments, each 3,000 strong, of whom Bassompierre at once went to take the command, greatly perturbed the rebels, and there can be no doubt that at the cost of a little bloodshed the Regent could easily have crushed the insurrection. Instead of doing so, she preferred to treat, and the result of the negotiations which ensued was the Peace of Sainte-Menehould (May 15, 1614), which stipulated that the States-General should be convoked; that Condé should hold Amboise, as a place of surety, until the meeting of the States, and receive a sum of 450,000 livres; that Mayenne, who was already Governor of the Île-de-France, should have the reversion of the government of Paris, together with 300,000 livres; Longueville 100,000 livres, and Bouillon “the doubling of his gendarmes.” It was a direct incentive to the Princes to take up arms again on the first convenient opportunity.