The King and the Cardinal visited Nîmes, Uzès and Montpellier, where they were well received; but Montauban refused to accept the peace, except on condition of preserving its fortifications. Richelieu despatched the Sieur de Guron, a gentleman with a very persuasive tongue, to try and induce the inhabitants to reconsider their determination, and Bassompierre, with the greater part of the Royal army, after him, with orders to resort to force and lay siege to the town should persuasion fail.
The marshal arrived before Montauban on August 10, and, learning that Guron’s eloquence had so far been without effect, began to make preparations to invest the place. But, on the following morning, Guron came to inform him that, as the result of a great oration which he had delivered before the council of the town the previous day, it had been decided to ratify the peace.
A few days later all was satisfactorily arranged; and on the 20th the Cardinal—for Louis XIII was now on his way back to Paris—made a triumphal entry into Montauban, escorted by 600 gentlemen, with Bassompierre riding before him, as he would have done before the King.
And so long as he was able to retain the uncertain favour of Louis XIII, Richelieu was king, in all but the name, and the greatest nobles in France trembled at his frown. A singular illustration of this is the way in which the once haughty and all-powerful d’Épernon was obliged to humble himself before him.
“M. d’Épernon,” says Bassompierre, “who had arrived at Montech,[127] sent the Comte de Maillé[128] to me to request me to ask the Cardinal at what place he might meet him on the road to pay his respects to him, having heard that he was leaving on the morrow to return to the Court. He explained that, for a man of his age, the journey which he had performed that day was fatiguing, so that it had prevented him coming so far as Montauban, besides which it would have been difficult to find suitable accommodation there for himself and his suite. I executed this embassy to the Cardinal, who took it extremely ill and imagined that M. d’Épernon refused to humble his pride to the point of coming to visit him in his government of Guienne, in which the King had given the Cardinal absolute power. He was exceedingly angry, and told me to send him word that he declined to see him in the country or outside Guienne, and that, although it had been his intention to travel by way of Auvergne, he would travel by Bordeaux, for the express purpose of making himself recognised and obeyed in accordance with the power which had been conferred upon him, and that he would put matters on such a footing that the authority which M. d’Épernon exercised there would be curtailed. I softened these expressions in the answer I made to the Comte de Maillé, and wrote to M. d’Épernon begging him to come to Montauban, to avoid drawing upon himself the enmity of this all-powerful man. The Comte de Maillé took his departure, and in three hours’ time returned with an answer to the effect that M. d’Épernon would come to Montauban on the morrow to pay his respects to the Cardinal, since he had been assured that the Cardinal was not leaving until after dinner.... I went that evening to acquaint the Cardinal with M. d’Épernon’s approaching arrival, which appeased his anger, and he consented that I should go to meet him and that the infantry should be under arms when he arrived.”
Bassompierre, from the above, would appear to have formed a pretty correct idea of the danger of offending the great Minister; he lived to know its full extent.
On August 22, Richelieu, accompanied by Bassompierre, left Montauban, to the sound of mine and sap, which were destroying the redoubtable fortifications of the last stronghold of French Protestantism, and travelled by easy stages towards Fontainebleau, the Cardinal being received in every town through which he passed with the highest honours; in fact, his journey resembled a royal progress. At Nemours, where he arrived on September 12, nearly all the most important personages of the Court were awaiting him, and escorted him in triumph to Fontainebleau.
Here, however, his Eminence received an abrupt check, for when he went to pay his respects to Marie de’ Medici, with whom were Anne of Austria and the Princesses of the Blood, the Queen-Mother, whom the Cardinal’s triumphs had only served to incense still more bitterly against him, received him with studied coldness and refused to say so much as a word to either Bassompierre or Schomberg, whom she now apparently regarded as Richelieu’s creatures; though she spoke to Louis de Marillac, upon whom the marshal’s bâton had recently been conferred. The King, however, came in immediately afterwards and welcomed the Cardinal most warmly. He then drew him into his mother’s cabinet, where Richelieu immediately requested permission to retire from office and from the Court, on the ground that his presence was distasteful to the Queen-Mother, and that he did not wish to be the cause of friction between her and the King. The King told him that he would reconcile them, and returning to Marie’s chamber, spoke most graciously to Bassompierre, evidently with the intention of atoning for her Majesty’s rudeness to the marshal, of which Richelieu had, of course, informed him.
“On Friday, the 14th, the quarrel continued, and the Cardinal sent for Madame de Combalet,[129] La Meilleraye[130] and other persons belonging to the Queen-Mother’s Household who were his creatures, and told them that they must prepare to retire from her service, as it was his intention to retire from affairs and from the Court. However, that evening there were so many comings and goings, and the King testified so earnest a desire for an accommodation, that it was effected on the Saturday, to the universal satisfaction of the whole Court.”