It seems strange that Marie de’ Medici and Concini, so careful to keep away from the King everyone whom they considered might encourage him to assert his independence of his mother’s tutelage, should have for so long entertained no suspicion of Luynes. At length, however, their eyes began to be opened, and one day towards the end of January, 1617, Luynes sent one of his servants to Bassompierre to inform him that the Queen-Mother purposed to exile him (Luynes) from the Court, on the ground that “he wished to carry off the King and take him out of Paris,” and to ask for his good offices to disabuse her Majesty’s mind. These were unnecessary, as it proved to be merely a rumour; but “Luynes made the King believe that it was the Maréchal d’Ancre who had spread this report, to see how the King would take it; whereby the King became more and more incensed against the Maréchal d’Ancre, and high words passed between Luynes and the said marshal.”
“The same evening,” continues Bassompierre, “as the Queen was speaking to me about this matter, I said to her: ‘Madame, it seems to me that you do not think enough of yourself, and that, one of these days, they will take away the King from under your wing. They are inciting him against your creatures first, and afterwards they will incite him against you. Your authority is only precarious, which will cease from the moment that the King no longer desires it, and they will harden him little by little until he does not desire it any more. And it is easy to persuade young people to emancipate themselves. If the King were to go, one of these days, to Saint-Germain, and were to order M. d’Épernon and myself to come there to him, and then told us that we were no longer to recognise your authority, we are your very obliged servants, but we should be unable to do any other thing than to come and bid you farewell, and to beg you very humbly to excuse us, if, during your administration of the State, we had not served you as well as we ought to have done. Judge, Madame,” I continued, “whether the other officers would be able to act otherwise, and whether you would not be left with empty hands after such an administration.”
CHAPTER XVII
Bassompierre joins the Royal army in Champagne as Grand Master of the Artillery by commission—Surrender of Château-Porcien—Bassompierre is wounded before Rethel—He sets out for Paris in order to negotiate the sale of his office of Colonel-General of the Swiss to Concini—He visits the Royal army which is besieging Soissons—A foolhardy act—Singular conduct of the garrison—The Président Chevret arrives in the Royal camp with the news that Concini has been assassinated—Details of this affair—Bassompierre continues his journey to Paris—His adventure with the Liégeois cavalry of Concini.
About the middle of March, Bassompierre was sent as Grand Master of the Artillery by commission to join the army of Champagne, commanded by the Duc de Guise, who had as his second in command the Maréchal de Thémines, while Praslin was also serving under him. He found the army laying siege to Château-Porcien, situated on the right bank of the Aisne, two leagues from Rethel. Nevers, who was Governor of Champagne and Brie and Duc de Rethelois, occupied, in virtue of this double title, several places in that part of the country, and their reduction was the chief object of the campaign.
Guise bombarded the citadel of Château-Porcien for some days with little effect; but when he turned his guns on the town, it speedily surrendered; and Bassompierre, with four companies of the French Guards and as many of the Swiss, marched in and took possession. In the course of the day the commandant of the citadel sent to ask for a parley, and was conducted by Bassompierre to Guise’s quarters, where, after a lively discussion as to whether or not the garrison were to be permitted to march out with the honours of war, terms were arranged, and next morning the citadel capitulated.
After Guise, with a part of his cavalry, had made an unsuccessful attempt to surprise an infantry regiment of the enemy quartered in a village near Laon, and the Château of Wassigny had been taken, Thémines was despatched to Rocroi to dismantle and bring up six of the guns from that fortress; and on April 8 the army advanced to Rethel and laid siege to it.
Here Bassompierre’s troubles began; and artillery officers who served during the late war in that part of France under similar climatic conditions will appreciate the difficulties with which he had to contend.
“Rain fell continuously,” he says, “and, as the soil in the Rethelois is clay, we encountered a thousand difficulties, chiefly in moving our cannon, which sunk in it over the axle-trees. At last we made ready a battery of eight pieces below the town, but when I came on Friday morning, the 14th of April, to see if Lesines[118] had kept his promise to have the eight pieces in position by daybreak, I found that there were only two. A third was at thirty paces from the battery, sunk so deeply in the ground that they had been unable to move it; while a fourth was a hundred paces distant. This last had been abandoned by the officers because, in bringing it up, a driver and some of the horses had been killed, upon which the other drivers had unyoked their horses and fled.”