“It happened that, within a few days, I heard of the quashing of the proceedings of this precious Archbishop of Aix, and of the death of my mother, which brought me fifty thousand crowns in money and saleable property to the value of a hundred thousand, so that I paid seven hundred thousand livres of debts, which placed me greatly at my ease; the quarrel between the husband and wife was made up (August); the girl was happily brought to bed without anyone knowing of it (August 5); and I went to Rouen, where I gained my case against Antragues finally and completely. So that at the same, or within a little, time I was delivered from all these divers and distressing inconveniences.”
Towards the end of March, Condé, who for weeks past had been secretly fomenting opposition to the Court, left Paris, followed, at intervals, by his chief adherents, and issued a manifesto protesting against the Ultramontane tendencies of the Government and the Spanish marriage. Marie de’ Medici, who intended shortly to set out for the Spanish frontier to make the exchange of the princesses and conclude the marriage of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, and naturally feared to leave Condé behind her, sent him a letter from the King commanding the prince to accompany him. But Condé excused himself from following his Majesty until he had remedied the evils of the State, of which he designed the Maréchal d’Ancre as the principal author.
The Queen-Mother, in consequence, was obliged to raise two armies: one to escort the King and herself to Bordeaux, the other to watch the princes. The latter force was placed under the command of the Maréchal de Bois-Dauphin, with Praslin as his chief of staff; and to this Bassompierre and the Swiss were attached.
The King and his mother left Paris on August 17, Bassompierre and the Swiss accompanying them so far as Bernis, not far from Sceaux, where they received orders to return and join Bois-Dauphin’s army. Before doing so, however, Bassompierre went to Rouen, where on September 4 the Parlement pronounced judgment in his favour; and this unedifying affair, which had dragged on for nearly four years and must have involved both sides in enormous expense, finally terminated. He then returned in triumph to Paris, whence he proceeded to Meaux, where Bois-Dauphin had established his headquarters.
Bassompierre gives a long and detailed account of the operations which ensued, through which, however, we do not propose to follow him, since they are of little interest, consisting mainly of unimportant skirmishes and the reduction of such places as had declared for the Princes or had been seized by them. In what fighting took place he appears to have displayed both courage and activity; while he endeavoured, though without success, to impart some of his own energy to the old Maréchal de Bois-Dauphin, who, in his youth, had been one of the most dashing officers in the armies of the League, but with age had grown slow and cautious. Happily for the marshal, Condé was equally incapable; otherwise, he would no doubt have taken advantage of his opponent’s inaction to march upon Paris.
Meanwhile, the Court had reached Bordeaux in safety, from which town the greater part of the Royal army was despatched to the frontier to fetch the Infanta Anne of Austria, whom Philip III, undisturbed on his side by war’s alarms, had brought from Madrid. The exchange of the princesses took place at Andaye, on the Bidassoa, after which Anne of Austria, escorted by the Royal troops, set out for Bordeaux, where her marriage with Louis XIII was celebrated on November 28.
Her object accomplished, Marie de’ Medici became anxious for peace at any price, while Condé and his friends, now deprived of their chief pretext for rebellion and aware that the Queen would be prepared to pay them handsomely to return to their allegiance, had no desire to prolong the war. A suspension of arms having been agreed upon, a congress met at Loudun to negotiate peace, which was signed on May 3, 1616.
Its terms were another triumph for the party of the Princes, and particularly for their leader, who, in exchange for his government of Guienne, received that of Berry and of the citadel and town of Bourges, the right of signing all the decrees of the Council, and 1,500,000 livres, to compensate him for the inconvenience and expense to which he had been put in being obliged to take up arms against his sovereign. He was certainly finding rebellion a most profitable occupation. The other grandees, his accomplices, received altogether 6,000,000 livres.
The Peace of Loudun brought about the downfall of the Ministers of Henri IV. In both peace and war they had shown only weakness, which is scarcely surprising, considering that the Chancellor, the youngest of the three, was seventy-two. He was obliged to surrender the Seals to Du Vair, First President of the Parlement of Toulouse; while Villeroy and Jeannin were also dismissed, and replaced by Mangot, First President of the Parlement of Bordeaux, and the Queen-Mother’s intendant Barbin, an intelligent and energetic man, who was devoted to Concini and Marie de’ Medici.