“On the Saturday,” writes Bassompierre, “Monsieur le Comte sent me word that he had learned on very good authority that my liberty was resolved upon, and that in twenty-four hours I should be released without fail. But on the Monday I saw Du Bois, who made me understand that it was pure deceit; and, although the First President sent to tell me the same day that I should go out before the end of the week, I did not in the least believe that I should be set at liberty.”
However, assurances of his approaching liberty were not wanting. First, the younger Bouthillier told Madame de Beuvron that the delay in setting her uncle at liberty was due solely to the suspicious conduct of Monsieur, of whom apparently the marshal was regarded as so devoted an adherent that it would be imprudent to give him his freedom until the King could feel sure that his brother had no intention of causing further trouble. Then, towards the end of June, Du Tremblay came to inform Bassompierre that he was charged by the Bouthilliers, père et fils, that he might never regard them again as honest men if he were still a prisoner in a fortnight’s time. Finally, a week later the son wrote that the Cardinal had given him his word that the marshal was to be set at liberty, and had authorised him to tell him so.
And so the miserable game went on month after month, year after year, the Cardinal gratifying his malignity by wantonly sporting with the hopes of his hapless prisoner, who was continually receiving the most confident assurances that his freedom was at hand, only to discover that they were worthless. It is indeed astonishing that so great a man should have descended to such paltry exhibitions of spite, and have persuaded, not only his colleagues in the Ministry, but his sovereign as well, to lend themselves to them. But Richelieu was a strange character, and combined in a singular degree qualities worthy of the most profound admiration with others which can provoke nothing but contempt.
But the cruel disappointments inflicted upon him by the malice of the Cardinal were far from the only mortifications which Bassompierre had to endure. His financial affairs were not in a prosperous condition, and his sojourn in the Bastille brought him to the verge of ruin. His creditors, whose appetites appear only to have been whetted by the sops which the sale of his post of Colonel-General of the Swiss had enabled him to fling to them, grew more clamorous than ever; his men of affairs proved unworthy of the trust he reposed in them and pilfered the débris of his fortune, and an Italian bank, by means of a forged document, seized upon a magnificent tapestry which he would not have parted with upon any consideration. Nor was this all. With the entry of France as a principal into the Thirty Years’ War, Lorraine had become the battle-ground of the hostile armies, and Frenchmen, Imperialists, and Swedes vied with one another in pillaging the châteaux and estates of the marshal and his family:
“The last day of June [1635] Monsieur le Prince arrived in Paris, returning from his post of lieutenant-general of the King’s army in Lorraine. On his departure, he had left orders that my château of Bassompierre was to be demolished, and this was subsequently executed.”
The destruction of this château, which was situated near Briey, may, of course, have been an act of military necessity; but it was more probably one of pure spite, since, as we know, there was little love lost between the marshal and Condé.
“On the 12th January [1636], I received the sad news of the death of my niece, the nun of Remiremont;[143] and, a few days later, I learned that the King’s commissaries had carried off all the corn from my house of Harouel, and this, not only without payment, but without even giving a certificate that they had taken it.
“The month of February arrived, at the beginning of which I learned from Lorraine that a certain Sieur de Villarceaux[144] had a commission from the King to raze my house of Harouel to the ground. This I felt most cruelly, and I sent to entreat the Cardinal to avert this storm from me.”
Harouel was spared, though it is doubtful whether this was done out of any consideration for its unfortunate owner.
In the following May Bassompierre succeeded in obtaining an ordinance from the King for the restoration of his corn. But Gobelin, Intendant of Justice and Finance in Lorraine, who in the days of the marshal’s prosperity had been his intimate friend, protested against this; and it was finally decided that he should be allowed to keep it for the use of the army, nor was Bassompierre able to obtain any pecuniary compensation.