A fortnight later, the Ambassador writes again—
“Within the last three days, the King has endeavoured to persuade the Queen to request her Highness the Infanta to send the princess (de Condé) for her coronation. The Queen, through the King’s confessor (Père Cotton), has begged to be excused, observing that it did not seem to her to be becoming to appear as a third party and risk the indignity of a refusal from the Infanta. The King fell into a violent rage, and declared that the Queen should not be crowned, and that he would have nothing done to displease him. The Queen wept and was much distressed, both at this and at the ardour with which the King is pursuing one of her ladies.”
Henri himself pretended to be entirely engrossed by his passion. “I am so worn out by these pangs,” he wrote to Préaulx, “that I am nothing but skin and bone. Everything disgusts me. I avoid company, and if, to observe the usages of society, I allow myself to be drawn into some assemblies, my wretchedness is completed.”
Fortunately for the fame of Henri IV., greatly as his mind was disturbed and his judgment distracted by this miserable infatuation, it is now generally admitted that the affair had little influence on the course of events. The war upon which he was about to enter was the outcome of twelve long years of persevering negotiations and carefully-prepared alliances, and if he had never set eyes upon the Princesse de Condé, the final result would have been the same. “The King and his Ministers,” remarks Henri’s latest English biographer, Mr. P. F. Willert, “used the large forces assembled for quite a different purpose as a bugbear to frighten the Archdukes. But, when they refused to purchase security by a compliance inconsistent with their honour, it was not on Brussels that the French armies prepared to march. On the contrary, four days before his death (10 May, 1610), the King in the most friendly terms asked the Archduke Albert’s permission to lead his army across his territory to the assistance of his German allies: a permission granted by the Archduke, notwithstanding the opposition of Spinola and of the Spanish party in his Council.”[164]
Nevertheless, almost up to the very last, there were many who still believed that, if the Princesse de Condé were given up, war might be averted. Among these was Henri IV.’s Jesuit confessor, Père Cotton, who, in an interview with Pecquius, informed him that, at the previous Easter, “the King was so sincerely desirous of securing his salvation that he had readily forgotten his affection for the princess; but that all his passion had been rekindled by the perusal of the letters which she addressed to him.”[165]
Although she was treated with extreme kindness by the Infanta, the young princess had grown heartily weary of the dull little Court of Brussels, and not only stimulated the passion of her royal adorer by the tenderness of her replies to his letters, but complained bitterly of the restraints to which she was subjected, and which, she declared, would have a most serious effect upon her health, unless his Majesty procured her speedy liberation.
Meanwhile, Condé, at Milan, was becoming as bored with the imperturbable gravity and solemn pomp which surrounded him as was his young wife at Brussels, and, in order to find some distraction from the monotony of his existence, had been driven to the study of the antiquities of the neighbourhood and to beginning a translation of Tacitus, under the guidance of his learned secretary, Virey. Fearing that the prince might be persuaded to cast in his lot definitely with the Spaniards, the French Government despatched agents to represent to him that it would be more consonant with his dignity as a Prince of the Blood were he to remove to Rome and place himself under the protection of the common father of the faithful, rather than under that of the common enemy of his race and country. Condé seemed disposed to adopt this suggestion, but the arguments of Fuentes, and the news of the invasion of Lombardy by the Duke of Savoy and Lesdiguières, caused him to abandon all idea of leaving Milan, and to place himself entirely under the guidance of Spain.
Had Henri IV. lived, two things are tolerably certain to have happened: the first, that the Archdukes would sooner or later have been compelled to surrender the princess; the second, that Condé would have been found in arms against his country. But, on 14 May, 1610, the knife of Ravaillac settled the question both of love and war, and Henri de Bourbon, with all his greatness and his littleness, his splendid schemes and his shameful passions, was but lifeless clay.
A letter from the governor of Alessandria informed Condé of the tragedy. He received the news with somewhat mixed feelings, in which, however, to his honour be it said, regret seems to have predominated. His position was a very embarrassing one, as it was difficult for him to cast off the ties which bound him to Spain. Virey, in the account in Latin verse which he wrote of his master’s adventures, part of which he subsequently translated into French, under the title of “l’Enlèvement innocent, ou la retraite clandestine de Monseigneur le Prince (de Condé) avec Madame la Princesse,” affirms that Fuentes came to the prince to congratulate him as the “legal heir” of the murdered monarch; and there can be no doubt that the Ministers of Philip III. approached the Pope, with the view of ascertaining whether he would be prepared to annul the marriage of Henry IV. and Marie de’ Medici, in which event it was their intention to put Condé forward as a candidate for the throne. As they received no encouragement from Paul V., they were forced to abandon the idea, but they still cherished the hope that the prince would, on his return to France, dispute the Queen-Mother’s title to the regency, and, consequently, no objection was raised to his departure from Milan.
Condé left Milan on 9 June, and deeming it unsafe to cross France in the then unsettled state of the kingdom, and while still under the ban of high treason, proceeded to Brussels, where he arrived nine days later. In spite of the remonstrances of the Spanish members of the Archdukes’ Council, he lost no time in despatching the faithful Virey to Paris, with letters for Louis XIII. and the Queen-Mother, wherein he protested his devotion to the new King. His overtures were very graciously received, and Virey returned to Brussels with an assurance that a cordial welcome awaited his master. The secretary brought also a letter from the Dowager-Princesse de Condé, in which she endeavoured to incite her son against his wife, informing him that up to the last moment she had continued to encourage the late King’s passion, and begging him to refuse to see her and to leave her with the Archdukes. Condé did not see his way to comply with the latter injunction, and accordingly consented to the Constable “sending for his daughter;” but he firmly refused to meet her. “Monsieur le Prince has been some days in Brussels,” writes Malherbe to his friend Peiresc, under date 24 June, 1610. “The Infant (the Archduke) told him that he had a request to make to him. The latter, who did not doubt that it was that he should consent to see his wife, replied that he besought him very humbly not to lay any command upon him in which he should be reduced to the extremity of disobeying him. Thus matters remain in this affair. It is believed that he will take her back, but that he wishes to be requested to do so by the Constable and her relatives. All the letters which the King had exhibited, in which he was addressed (by the Princess) as ‘mon tout’ and ‘mon chevalier’ are disavowed.”