“Françoise d’Orléans”[131]

CHAPTER X

The King of Navarre appoints a special commission for the trial of Brilland—Brilland is put to the question—His confessions under torture implicate the Princesse de Condé, but on the following day he disavows them—He is found guilty and condemned to be dismembered by horses—The princess denies the competency of the court and appeals to the Parlement of Paris—But the King of Navarre and the commissioners ignore the decrees of that body—The commission directs that the princess shall be brought to trial—She gives birth to a son—The prosecution is dropped, but the princess remains in captivity—The Président de Thou interests himself in her case—Means by which he obtains from Henri IV. the recognition of her son’s rights, and, with them, the acknowledgment of the princess’s innocence.

After ordering the arrest of the Princesse de Condé, the King of Navarre appointed a special commission, composed of twelve judges, for the trial of Brilland; while, as the accused had protested against his examination being conducted by Fiefbrun, who appears to have been a personal enemy, Henri replaced him by Valette, Grand Provost of Navarre, the more willingly since he was aware that Fiefbrun was a devoted partisan of the princess.

The commissioners decided that Brilland should be put to the question. “On entering the torture-chamber, he protested, in the first place, that everything that he might say would be owing to the violence of the pain, and that he knew nothing about the poison, and that he was innocent. Nevertheless, when the torture was applied, he accused Madame in this sense, that she and he had plotted the poisoning of the late prince from the time that he [Condé] was aware of her behaviour, and that, on leaving this town, his Excellency had recommended him to keep watch over her actions, and to take care of her, declaring that, after she was brought to bed, he should chastise her for her misconduct; and that when he [Brilland] informed her of this, the said project was resolved upon ...; that the said poison had been sent to the ...; that it had come from M. d’Épernon. He further said that La Doussinière, maître d’hôtel of his aforesaid lord, had administered the aforesaid poison in a chicken stuffed with eggs.”[132]

After this so-called confession had been extracted from him, the wretched man was released from the rack and taken back to prison. There, on the following day, he was visited by the commissioners, who ordered his confession to be read over to him. “He disavowed it; protested that what he had said was false; declared that what he had done was to escape the violence of the pain: exonerated those whom he had accused; and maintained his innocence and that he was ignorant of the poison. At the same time, he confirmed the truth of all the aforesaid confessions that he had made and signed in the course of the trial, with the exception of that made under torture ... and declared that he believed Madame la Princesse and those whom he had accused to be innocent, and that he knew nothing about the poison.”

Brilland was found guilty and condemned to the most barbarous of all forms of punishment—to be dismembered by horses. Against this sentence he appealed.

In the meanwhile, the Princesse de Condé had been formally charged with complicity in the murder of her husband and summoned before the commission. She refused to appear, denying the competency of the tribunal and claiming the privileges of the peerage. The judges overruled the princess’s objections, whereupon she petitioned Henri III. that her case should be tried by the Grande Chambre of the Parlement of Paris. His Majesty having returned a favourable answer, she appealed to the Parlement, and obtained from that body a degree calling the affair before it, prohibiting “all judges and others whom it may concern from taking any further proceedings,” and ordering that all the documents relating to the case should be immediately forwarded to the registrar of the court, on the ground that the wives of the Princes of the Blood were no more able than their husbands to be tried save by the Parlement of Paris. At the same time, it appointed two celebrated advocates, François de Montholon and Simon Marion, to act as counsel for the princess.

The commissioners at Saint-Jean-d’Angely appear to have paid no attention to these injunctions. The princess again appealed to the Parlement, which issued a second decree, confirming the first and ordering the commissioners to appear themselves before it, to answer for their disobedience. The King of Navarre, who had no intention of surrendering the conduct of an affair of such great consequence to himself to the royal judges, from whom he had everything to fear, replied by issuing a counter-decree, which rejected the pretensions of the princess, maintained the competency of the tribunal he had appointed, and ordered the commissioners to prosecute the affair, “in conformity with the procedure which they had followed hitherto.”

In consequence, the sentence passed upon Brilland was confirmed, and on 11 July, 1588, the condemned man suffered his terrible fate. “He gave on this occasion,” writes de Thou, “several proofs of madness, although he confessed that he was guilty of several other crimes, and that he recognized the justice of the sentence that the commissioners chosen to try him had pronounced. He began, however, to blaspheme in a scandalous fashion, so that those who assisted at the execution had great difficulty in making him return to his right senses, which caused people to think that his mind was not very sound, and that, in consequence, much reliance ought not to be placed on his evidence.”