Loyalty of Mlle. de Trémoille to Condé—She prevents her mother, the Duchesse de Thouars, from surrendering the Château of Taillebourg to a Catholic force—And defends it gallantly until she is relieved—She equips two ships-of-war to bring Condé from Guernsey—Reunion of the lovers—Their marriage—Condé takes the field again—Financial embarrassments of the new ménage—Battle of Coutras: encounter between Condé and Saint-Luc—Ill-health of the prince—He returns to Saint-Jean-d’Angely—He is suddenly taken ill, and dies in two days—Violent grief of his wife—Suspicions of the doctors—An autopsy is performed, and the prince is declared to have been poisoned—Letter of the King of Navarre to the Comtesse de Gramont—Flight of the princess’s page, Belcastel, and her head valet-de-chambre, Corbais—Arrest of her intendant, Brilland—The King of Navarre arrives at Saint-Jean-d’Angely, and orders the Princesse de Condé to be placed under arrest—Terrible situation of the princess.
After the disastrous expedition to Angers and the flight of Condé, the Duchesse de Thouars resolved to side definitely with the Catholic party, and to do everything in her power to prevent the marriage of which she had at first so warmly approved. She had now joined Charlotte at Taillebourg, “where mother and daughter did not get on too well together,”[110] for, as is generally the case with young ladies of a romantic turn of mind, obstacles only served to fire Charlotte’s imagination, and the more opposed did the duchess become to the marriage, the more firmly did the girl resolve to remain true to her lover.
At length, matters reached a climax. At the outbreak of hostilities, the young Duc de Thouars, who, as we have mentioned, had joined Condé’s army, had installed a Huguenot garrison in the château. This garrison the duchess resolved to get rid of, and to replace it by a Catholic one; and, one fine day, four companies of soldiers marched into the town, under the command of a certain M. de Beaumont, who was entrusted with a letter for the Duchesse de Thouars from the Maréchal de Matignon, general-in-chief of the royal forces in the West, in which he called upon her, in the King’s name, to surrender the château, promising to restore it at the conclusion of the war. The duchess was joyfully preparing to obey, when her daughter intervened and informed her, very respectfully, but very firmly, that she should refuse to consent to the surrender, and that “she intended to keep inviolable the pledge which she had given Mgr. le Prince de Condé to preserve the château for him until her death.”[111]
Madame de Thouars expostulated, coaxed, threatened; all to no purpose. Charlotte was immovable as the rock upon which the château stood, and eventually the mortified lady ordered her coach and set out for Thouars, abandoning her rebellious daughter to the dangers of a siege.
The Château of Taillebourg was an old fortress of the thirteenth century,[112] situated on a steep rock, which rendered it perfectly safe from attack on three sides. On the one on which it was accessible, Charlotte ordered two culverins to be placed, so as completely to command the approach, perceiving which, Beaumont, who does not appear to have had any artillery with him, prudently refrained from any attempt to take the château by storm, and contented himself by very closely investing it. Aware that it was not provisioned for a siege, he felt confident that want of provisions must soon oblige the garrison to capitulate.
The days went slowly by. Every morning Beaumont formally summoned the defenders to surrender, only to receive a scornful defiance. But, in the meantime, famine was beginning to stare them in the face, and Charlotte recognized that, unless help arrived, it would be impossible to hold out much longer. Just, however, when her situation seemed almost desperate, she learned that a body of Huguenot cavalry under the Sieur de la Boullaye, which had succeeded in escaping from the Angers fiasco, was in the neighbourhood; and she at once determined to make an attempt to communicate with it. This, at first sight, seemed a hopeless undertaking, for the place, as we have said, had been very closely invested; but she perceived that at the rear of the château, where the rock was a sheer precipice, Beaumont had placed only a very few men, deeming it impossible for any one to descend on that side. Accordingly, when darkness fell, she caused one of her servants to be lowered by a rope down the face of the cliff; and the man, unperceived by the enemy, succeeded in making his way to La Boullaye’s camp.
The besiegers, to guard against any attempt to relieve the château, had taken the precaution to fortify a large house which commanded the entrance to the town of Taillebourg. But, as soon as morning dawned, Charlotte “said good-day to the enemy with her culverins,” and, turning them upon this house, kept up so persistent and well-directed a fire, that it was soon almost in ruins; and when the Huguenots arrived, they had no difficulty in making their way into the town.
Fighting continued all day, with no decisive result; but, during the night, the Catholics, who had lost some sixty men and whose commander had been taken prisoner, evacuated the town and retreated behind the Charente. La Boullaye did not pursue them; but, after placing a strong garrison in the château, escorted its brave defender to La Rochelle, where she promptly caused two ships to be fitted out, at her own expense, and despatched to Guernsey, to convey her lover and his fellow-exiles back to France.
Within an hour or two of the arrival of Charlotte’s ships, Condé was on his way to La Rochelle, where he landed a few days later. “I was there,” writes Fiefbrun, “and had the honour of accompanying this princess (Mlle. de la Trémoille) to the port, where she received his Excellency with so many expressions of joy, that never was seen anything in the world to surpass in mutual affection their caresses and welcomes, followed by public rejoicings on the part of the nobility and the people which it would be impossible to describe.”[113]
The prince and his lady-love looked forward with impatience to their marriage, to which, however, the Duchesse de Thouars continued to show herself extremely hostile. At length, however, she was persuaded to give a grudging consent, though she absolutely refused to grace the ceremony with her presence. It took place very quietly at the Château of Taillebourg, on 16 March, 1586. A little while before, Charlotte had become a Protestant, her example being followed by her brother, the Duc de Thouars.