On reaching Marmande, he felt so much worse that he decided to remain there for the night, instead of continuing his journey to La Réole, and therefore had himself carried to an inn in the suburb, and sent for a doctor. But the only one who could be found was a country-practitioner, to whose tender mercies Bassompierre did not feel inclined to entrust himself. However, shortly afterwards, a quack doctor named Duboure, whom the Baron d’Estissac had sent after him, arrived on the scene. Duboure was none too sober, but he possessed remedies which afforded the patient some temporary relief, and about nine o’clock in the evening one of the King’s own physicians, named Le Mire, whom his Majesty had sent, made his appearance. The great man, after consulting, for form’s sake, with his humble colleagues, “proceeded to scarify him and apply leeches to his shoulders, in order to remove the furious tingling which he had in the head.”
“This was about eleven o’clock, and, at the same time, we heard many pistol-shots in the street of the faubourg, which is on the bank of the Garonne. They were fired by the Constable’s gensdarmes, who were being pursued by the enemy, who had attacked them at Gontaud the same evening they arrived there. At this news, my servants hurriedly placed a napkin on my shoulders, which were covered with blood, put on my dressing-gown, and, in this state, had me carried away by four of my Swiss halberdiers and five or six other persons whom they had contrived to pick up. They accompanied me nearly to the gate of the town, and then ran back to barricade themselves in my lodging, to try and save themselves and my horses, plate and equipage. They believed that I had entered the town, and there only remained with me the four Swiss, the two doctors, Le Mire and Duboure, and two valets de chambre. But, as I approached the gate, the people of Marmande saluted me with several musket-shots, believing (as they told me afterwards) that I was the petard which the enemy were bringing to fasten to their gate. My people cried out that it was the general who commanded the army, whom they had come to welcome as he disembarked from his boat, and that, if they did not open, they would repent it. But, for all that, they could get nothing out of them, except permission for me to be placed in a little open guard-house which was within the barrier. A man came to open the door and let me in, and at once closed it upon me, after which he threw himself upon a little drawbridge, which was forthwith raised. Thus, I found myself confined within this barrier, without being able to send any message to my servants, who, believing that I had entered the town, confined themselves to guarding my lodging; and the people of the town refused to open the gate until seven o’clock the next morning. I was stretched on a table, all covered with blood from my scarification, which congealed and clung to the napkin which had been placed over it, so that it galled me from time to time, while my head ached intolerably, for I was in a high fever; and I was covered only with a rather thin dressing-gown, in very cold weather, for it was the 26th of November. I can say that I was in the greatest torment and the most evil plight that I ever suffered in my life, which made me wish for death a hundred times.”
When morning dawned, the good citizens of Marmande, having satisfied themselves that there were no Huguenots lurking in the vicinity, at length summoned up courage to open their gates, and the unfortunate Bassompierre was carried to an inn and put to bed. Here he lay for a fortnight between life and death, “stricken with a purple fever,” and it was only his iron constitution which eventually turned the scale in his favour. The crisis once passed, however, he mended rapidly, and in a few days was sufficiently recovered to continue his journey to La Réole, and thence to Bordeaux, where he arrived on December 15, to await the King.
Louis XIII and the Constable had arrived at Monheurt on November 28, and had taken up their quarters at a village called Longuetille, about a league from the town. The place was taken on December 12; the lives of the inhabitants were spared, but the garrison was put to the sword, and the place pillaged and burned to the ground. Luynes, however, was not present to witness this sorry triumph. While the flames were devouring the conquered town, he lay at Longuetille, in the grip of the same pestilential fever from which Bassompierre so narrowly escaped, and which was now ravaging the Royal army. The disasters of the campaign, and the unceasing anxiety as to the future to which he had been for some time a prey, had told upon his strength, and three days later he died, in his forty-fourth year. “He was little regretted by the King,” says Bassompierre; “while his death was hailed with joy by the bulk of the nation, with whom he had long been intensely unpopular. Even the Ultramontane party, whose cause he had so well served, received the news with satisfaction.” They had been infuriated by the belief that he intended to make peace with the Huguenots, and ascribed the Montauban fiasco to the fact that the Almighty refused to make use of so unworthy an instrument for the destruction of the heretics.
CHAPTER XXVI
Who will govern the King and France?—The pretenders to the royal favour—Position of Bassompierre—The Cardinal de Retz and Schomberg join forces and secure for their ally De Vic the office of Keeper of the Seals—They propose to remove Bassompierre from the path of their ambition by separating him from the King—Bassompierre is offered the lieutenancy-general of Guienne and subsequently the government of Béarn, but declines both offices—He inflicts a sharp reverse upon Retz and Schomberg—Condé joins the Court—His designs—The rival parties: the party of the Ministers and the party of the marshals—Monsieur le Prince decides to ally himself with that of the Ministers—Mortifying rebuff administered by the King to the Ministers at the instance of Bassompierre—Failure of an attempt of the Ministers to injure Bassompierre and Créquy with Louis XIII—Arrival of the King in Paris—Affectionate meeting between him and his mother—Accident to the Queen.
Luynes dead, who would govern the King and France? Such was the question which everyone was asking himself, for that Louis XIII, so jealous of his royal authority, yet too indolent to exercise it himself, would require someone to lean on was a foregone conclusion. There were many pretenders. There was Marie de’ Medici, who, now that the man who had estranged her son from her was no more, might hope to recover in time much of the influence she had once exercised over the King. And Marie’s triumph would mean that of Richelieu, who had now acquired so great an ascendancy over her that scandal asserted that he was her lover. There was the greedy and ambitious Condé, who had learned prudence from adversity, but was in other respects but little changed. Luynes, in the last months of his “reign,” had separated Condé from the King, and tricked Richelieu out of the cardinal’s hat which had been the secret condition of the prelate’s reconciliation with the favourite, addressing a formal demand for it to Gregory XV, accompanied by a private request to his Holiness not to accord it. But now the lists were again open to them. Then there were the Ministers: the Cardinal de Retz, whom Luynes had made the nominal chief of the Council, and his ally Schomberg, Superintendent of Finance; the Chancellor Brulart de Sillery and his son Puisieux, the Minister for Foreign Affairs; and old Jeannin. And all these persons felt that they might have to reckon seriously with Bassompierre, in whose society the King undoubtedly took more pleasure than in that of any of them, and whom, they knew, the late Constable had regarded as his only dangerous rival.
It is certain that, had Bassompierre been so minded, he would have stood an excellent chance of succeeding to Luynes’s place as favourite, and that his elevation would have been well received, as he was exceedingly popular both at the Court and in the Army. But his epicurean wisdom rejected the idea of a life of gilded slavery; to be obliged to forgo the society of his “beautiful mistresses,” in order to dance attendance upon his youthful sovereign and make up his mind for him a dozen times a day, was not at all an attractive prospect to one who infinitely preferred pleasure to grandeur; the royal favour, without the responsibilities of power, was sufficient for him.
The Cardinal de Retz, Schomberg and Puisieux had the advantage of being near the King at the time of the Constable’s death. The first two at once joined forces against Puisieux and “aspired to become all-powerful and to restrain the King from doing anything except on their advice.” They secured a decided success by persuading Louis XIII to bestow the vacant office of Keeper of the Seals upon De Vic, a counsellor of State, who was devoted to their interests, and then put their heads together to find a means of separating the King from Bassompierre, whom they regarded as a serious obstacle in the path of their ambition. Louis XIII arrived at Bordeaux on December 21, and shortly afterwards the two Ministers proposed to him to leave Bassompierre in Guienne as lieutenant-general of that province, in place of the Maréchal de Roquelaure, who was to be compensated for the loss of his post by a present of 200,000 livres and the government of Lectoure. Having obtained his Majesty’s consent to this arrangement, they sent Roucellaï to sound Bassompierre on the matter and “even offered to add to this charge that of marshal of France.” But Bassompierre preferred to wait upon events and to see into whose hands the management of affairs would fall, foreseeing that whoever might secure it would not be strong enough to maintain his position without support, and “being assured that he would be very pleased to have him for a friend, and to give him a larger share of the cake than they [Retz and Schomberg] were offering him.”
“When the King spoke to me of the lieutenancy-general [of Guienne], I answered that I should esteem myself more happy to occupy the post of Colonel-General of the Swiss near his person than any other away from it; that I was only just recovering from a severe illness which demanded three months’ repose, and that during that time I desired no other employment than that of my first office of Colonel-General. And to this his Majesty agreed.”