“Monseigneur,—I will do myself the honour to tell you that I have placed my prisoner, who is generally in bad health, in one of the new prisons which I have had built according to your instructions. They are large, lofty, and light, and considering their excellence, I do not think that there are any stronger or more secure in Europe, and in like manner for everything that can concern the giving of intelligence by word of mouth from near and far, which was not the case in the places where I have had the care of the late Monsieur Fouquet from the moment that he was arrested. With a little precaution one might even allow the prisoners to walk about the whole of the island, without any fear of their escaping or of their giving or receiving news. I take the liberty, monseigneur, to point out to you in detail the excellence of this place in case you may at any time have prisoners whom you wish to put in perfect security with a fair amount of liberty.
“Throughout this province people say that mine is Monsieur de Beaufort and others the son of the late Cromwell.”
[581] The greater portion of the despatches relating to the Protestants confined in the islands have been given by Depping in his Correspondance Administrative sous Louis XIV..
[582] Unpublished despatch from Barbézieux to Saint-Mars, June 29, 1692:—Archives of the Ministry of War.
[583] The following words are here erased:—“beat them severely, and.”
[584] Unpublished despatch from Louvois to Saint-Mars:—Archives of the Ministry of War.
[585] Ibid.:—Ibid.
[586] Manuscripts of the Imperial Library, Papiers d’Estrades. This letter and several others in the same collection are a proof of the friendship which subsisted between Saint-Mars and the Abbé d’Estrades.
“On the first of next month, Monsieur de Catinat,” we read in a letter from Saint-Mars to the Abbé d’Estrades, September 27, 1681, “will be the governor of the citadel which you have brought into the King’s possession.” He refers to Casale, and these words would suffice to prove, what is already attested by the active part played by Saint-Mars with Catinat in 1679, viz., that Saint-Mars had been kept informed of all the details of the two negotiations. Consequently, as we have already shown in the preceding chapter, the famous sentence of Louvois’ despatch to Saint-Mars, August 13, 1681—“The King having ordered Monsieur de Catinat to proceed as soon as possible to Pignerol on the same business which took him there at the commencement of the year 1679”—has and can have only one meaning, that is to say, the taking possession of Casale, and not the arrest of a new prisoner.
But M. Loiseleur brings forward another argument in order to attempt to prove that an obscure spy was arrested by Catinat in 1681. This is the following letter from Louvois to Saint-Mars, September 20, 1681:—“The King does not disapprove of your going from time to time to see the last prisoner whom you have in charge, when he is settled in his new prison, and has left that in which you are keeping him. His Majesty desires that you shall execute the order which he has sent you,” &c. And the same critic concludes, from a despatch from Saint-Mars to Louvois, March 11, 1682, which again mentions two prisoners, that, between September 20, 1681, and March 11, 1682, a new prisoner was confided to Saint-Mars.