Odd Bits of History: Being Short Chapters Intended to Fill Some Blanks

by Henry W. Wolff

Of course Charles's "Petite Paix" lasted only a few weeks. Instead of leading his troops into the French camp as supports, as he had agreed, he took them straight to the Spanish headquarters, with the inevitable result of being once more turned out of his country, and finding himself an exile at large. These misfortunes, however, sat lightly upon the gay-hearted monarch, while he had the lovely Beatrix by his side, starring it with her at the Courts of Worms, Luxemburg, and Brussels, and insisting everywhere upon Beatrix being treated as duchess. He had given her her own body-guard, her own establishment of maids of honour, allowed her to hold her courts and drawing-rooms, just like a reigning princess.

Meanwhile, concurrently with the Pope's judgment, another matter was slowly ripening. All this marrying and re-marrying had, as a matter of course, led to litigation. Prince Cantecroix had left a goodly fortune, for the possession of which his mother, the Marquise d'Autriche, and his cousin, M. de Saint Amour, were then fighting fiercely.

While Charles and Beatrix were attending at Malines, as important witnesses in this case, what should unexpectedly arrive but a brief from the Pope, directing the archbishop to proclaim the judgment pronounced on that half-forgotten application of Le Moleur's and Cheminot's! It had taken His Holiness some years to come to a decision even on the preliminary point, that of the marriage with Beatrix; on the main question, the validity of Charles's marriage with Nicole, the judgment was still silent. But Charles's marriage with Beatrix the document declared entirely illegal and invalid, formally threatening both parties concerned with major excommunication if they did not at once separate and thereafter continue apart, and, moreover, within a given time, purge themselves by a public and humiliating penance. To Beatrix this judgment came as a crushing blow. However, she yielded prompt obedience, removing at once to the distant Hombourg Haut, near Saint-Avold.

Charles evidently cared very much less about the separation, however little he might relish the idea of a penance. It looks very much as if he had already grown a little tired of the lovely Beatrix. She was still very beautiful, and had any amount of love-making left in her. Her little amour with Charles II. was still to come; and that portrait to be seen at Windsor, which so much enamoured Flecknoe, actually shows her as she was a little later. However, the toujours perdrix of one particular beauty had evidently begun to pall upon Charles's exacting taste. He managed very soon to find some cheering consolation for his loss, to the infinite entertainment of the gay Court of Brussels—which delighted in scandal, and was constantly on the look out for some fresh amusement. Charles provided such, very opportunely, by a quite unexpected new amour, which was certainly not wanting in originality. Charles suddenly fell over head and ears in love with the very bourgeoise daughter of the Burgomaster of Brussels. He pressed his heart and hand upon her again and again. No effort was too great for him to make in prosecution of his suit, no expense too lavish. The girl found herself serenaded, fêted, asked to all sorts of festivities—tournaments, concerts, balls—all arranged specifically in her honour. She found jewellery showered upon her. And, to secure her good will, the proud Carlovingian Duke even condescended to compete with the humble burghers at the popular kermesse, in the cross-bow shooting at the "papegay," which, crack marksman that he was, he brought down in brilliant style, thereby constituting himself "papegay-king" for the year. That dignity imposed upon him the obligation of treating all the burghers and their young women to a flow of liquor—which liquor he did not stint—and, moreover, of holding a triumphal progress through the town—which he magnified into a sort of Lord Mayor's procession, himself appearing in the character of his own ancestor, Godfrey de Bouillon, encased in costly armour, with all his rich jewellery hung upon his person, and seated, high and lofty, upon a magnificent car. The buxom Flamande found all this mightily pretty, but scarcely knew what to make of it so long as her mother strictly forbade her to give the devoted Charles any encouragement, nor dare so much as to meet him in private. Once only was the mother prevailed upon to permit a tête-à-tête for just as long as Charles could manage to hold a live coal in his palm. To extend the time, Charles extinguished the fire by heroically crushing the coal with his fingers. All this tomfoolery amused the Court intensely. But people were just a little astounded when Charles carried his devotion so far as to refuse to treat with the Spanish plenipotentiaries for a renewal of his treaty, unless their Excellencies would first secure the approval and advocacy of his Flemish Dulcinea. The Spaniards needed the Lorrain troops badly, and so submitted for the time—but they had their revenge.

Of course the news of all this love-making brought Beatrix back pretty promptly to the Low Countries. As an excuse she alleged a burning desire to be reconciled to the Church, whose censure her sensitive conscience could no longer endure. Charles was by no means equally impatient. However, late in 1645, he too at length consented, and, accordingly, the two attended together to hear the Church's commination, prostrate themselves at full length before the altar, play the abject penitents throughout, confess their guilt, and receive episcopal absolution—all in the presence of a very large assemblage, which made the proceeding none the more pleasant for the principal actors.

That done, Beatrix settled down again, perhaps all the better pleased at finding that by his new treaty obligations Charles had bound himself to proceed immediately to the battle-fields in France. Whether she had a right to be severe upon Charles's little amatory escapades may appear a trifle doubtful by the light of her own conduct now that he was away. At Ghent she took a leaf out of his own book. The duke soon heard of her being in a close liaison with a Polish magnate, Prince Radzivill, jeune et bien fait, poli et galant. And not long after arrived the further intelligence that one of her most conspicuous and most successful admirers was our own "gay monarch," Charles Stuart, subsequently Charles II., who was then a refugee in the Netherlands. There is no reason to believe that these misfeasances were in any way belittled to Charles's ear, seeing that it was Princess Marguerite, the Duchess of Orleans, his sister, who played the principal tale-bearer, a lady who, like all the Lorrain princesses, had a direct interest in bringing Charles's connection with Beatrix to a close. Charles took the bait. He was furious with the Princess de Cantecroix. He would repudiate her for good. He would be reconciled on the spot with Nicole. All seemed to herald a happy and creditable ending to the misunderstanding of years, when, all of a sudden, Beatrix announced herself enceinte, and by that announcement upset the whole carefully reared-up house of cards. Nicole had borne the duke no son. Here was the prospect of one. Throwing the Pope's warning to the winds, forgetting and forgiving all about Beatrix's wrong-doings, Charles rushed to join her, and was overjoyed to be able to be present at the birth of what was destined to be his only son, Charles, subsequently the gifted and distinguished Prince de Vaudémont, our William III.'s confidant and adviser, and the elder Pretender's potent patron and ally. The Papal Nuncio and the Archbishop of Malines were horrorstruck at this barefaced breaking of a solemn oath. But no serious harm came of it after all. Only, it was a little provoking to find that when the confinement was over, and Charles's back was once more turned, Beatrix calmly resumed her illicit flirtations, of which the Lorrain princesses, more particularly the Princess Marguerite, were not slow to advise the duke.

Charles's patience was now completely worn out. As soon as he could manage it, he posted back to the Low Countries, resolved, as he declared, to "mettre deux folles à la raison." One folle, of course, was Beatrix—whom Charles protested that nothing would induce him ever to take into favour again; and the other was his sister Henriette, who had distinguished herself by a very unconventional match indeed, her third, between herself, aged fifty, and the youthful Italian banker, Grimaldi, aged twenty-seven. There were some utilitarian arguments to plead in excuse of the marriage. Henriette had spent her last écu, had sold every bit of property of hers that was at all saleable, and was deep in debt to boot; and Grimaldi had money. But nothing would justify the extraordinary proceeding which these two lovers, driven into a corner, resorted to, of, so to speak, "springing themselves" upon the unsuspecting Archbishop of Malines, and simultaneously declaring their intention to be man and wife, before he could so much as utter a word of protest. That constituted, the archbishop had himself previously explained, a legal marriage according to canon law.

Charles found Beatrix at Antwerp. He at once seized her house in all legal form, fretting and fuming with rage, and refusing to listen to a word which she might say in explanation. He had everything put under lock and key, sentries placed before the door, and, overhauling all the furniture with his own hands, he claimed back all the property which the lady held from him; above all, that very valuable collection of jewellery for which the Lorrain Court was noted. To his dismay he found that a portion of it was gone. That made matters ten times worse. The missing pieces must necessarily have been given to Beatrix's galants.

The Lorrain princes and princesses were delighted to observe a fresh rupture, and spared no pains to fan the flame. As it happened, at this very time, in 1654, the Papal Tribunal of the "Rota" had at last made up its mind how to adjudicate upon that old plea first raised in 1637, and formally laid before the Pope in 1642—the question of the validity of Charles's marriage with Nicole. The "Rota" ruled the whole suit to be frivolous. The marriage had been "freely contracted," was therefore binding, and, not to be troubled again with anything of the sort, the Court imposed upon Beatrix "perpetual silence." Charles accepted the judgment readily; indeed, he was so earnestly bent upon reconciliation with Nicole, that he seriously talked of having her excommunicated, should she withhold her consent. All seemed once more coming right, in spite of itself, when Europe was surprised by a gross outrage against law and good faith, namely, the high-handed seizure by the Spanish governor, Fuensaldana, of the Duke of Lorraine, and his removal, as a prisoner, to the distant Castle of Toledo. Six long years was the duke destined to pine in that unwholesome, dark, barred tower, a prey to vermin and to all discomforts, and a victim to ever freshly-raised, ever sorely-disappointed hopes. The very Spaniards around him pitied him. The ladies of Toledo conspired to liberate the interesting captive, who, in spite of his fifty years, was still handsome, nimble, full of courtesy and full of life. His own subjects braved tortures, galleys, death—everything, to effect his rescue. Never was ruler more beloved; rarely did he less deserve it. Nicole loyally forgot all past grievances, appealed to Mazarin, appealed to King Louis, appealed to the Pope. Beatrix likewise did her best—more especially after Nicole's death, in 1657—though roughly rated all the time by her wrathful and impatient late lover, who never for a day together knew his own mind. At one time he asked indignantly: Why did she not come to share his prison? At another he bade her stay where she was, since there she could be of greater use. A third time he would have nothing whatever to say to her. When she sent her intendant, Pelletier, to Spain, to exert himself in the cause of the duke's liberation, Charles brought up the old charges of infidelity and misappropriation of his jewellery. But he was delighted to receive at Pelletier's hands the newly-painted portraits of his two children, Anne and Charles, to whom, as a partially redeeming feature in his character, he continued devoted to his dying day.

In 1660 Spain found that she could carry on war no longer. The result was the Treaty of the Pyrenees, which was rather dictated by Mazarin than negotiated between France and Spain, and which, among other things, provided that Charles should be set free. Purchasing the glory of a princely escort from the needy noblemen of Spain by a distribution of the full sum of compensation just received at Madrid, the duke hurried to Saint Jean de Luz in state, and there, with his habitual impetuosity, nearly got himself back into prison. The Spanish Ambassador, Don Louis de Haro, badgered beyond endurance by Charles, full of his complaints, seriously threatened to have the duke carried back to Toledo. This brought our rather romantic Stuart exile to the front, whom nobody then supposed to be so near becoming Charles II. of England. Indeed, Mazarin held him in such small estimation, that he would not even admit him to his presence. But on Don Louis, if he ever seriously intended fresh violence, this bold manœuvre had the desired effect. He promptly desisted from further threats. The Lorrain Charles, touched by the chivalrous conduct of his namesake, in a burst of gratitude generously offered the latter the free use of his purse—an offer which must have been peculiarly welcome to the ever-impecunious Stuart—and frankly forgave him his rivalry in the matter of Beatrix, which looks, indeed, as if between him and her he now intended all to be over.