But these are the only points of resemblance between Charles II.’s natural son and Henri IV.’s grandson. Their characters, their adventures, and their persons afford the most complete contrast, and these two idols of the English and French peoples have owed their equal popularity to entirely opposite qualities.
Brought up in the country, in the most absolute ignorance, and having devoted his early years exclusively to the rude exercises of the chase, Beaufort, during the whole of his life, retained from this education of nature a coarse impress which made him the most really original personage of the courts of Anne of Austria and of Louis XIV. When, at the close of Louis XIII.’s reign, he appeared at the Louvre, in that court which was as yet far from being the most polished of Europe, he was not long in shocking even the least squeamish, and in opposing himself to the most legitimate requirements. His athletic strength, of which he willingly made a display, his characteristic and expressive features, the intemperate animation of his gestures, his affected habit of always keeping his hand on his hip, the tone of his voice, everything to his moustaches even, curled up out of bravado, contributed to give him the most provoking appearance. The rusticity of his manners was equalled only by the coarseness of his speech. He had not even received the usual education of the middle classes; and wanting sufficient discernment to compensate by observation for his complete ignorance, he would, when speaking, mix up in the strangest manner possible hunting terms, which were very familiar to him, with court expressions, which he used without hardly understanding them.[174] Cynical by habit, affected through a desire of imitating others, he had formed for himself a language “which,” the Cardinal de Retz says, “would have spoilt even Cato’s good sense.”[175] This jargon ended by rendering ridiculous one whose appearance alone was already displeasing. But he took his revenge in the army, where these defects were less apparent, and where he had opportunities for displaying his manly qualities. Careless of every danger, and even of a reckless courage, capable of enduring the most excessive fatigue, familiar with all the exercises of the body, he ceased to make people laugh at him, excited their admiration at the sieges of Corbie, Hesdin, and Arras, and when he returned to the court, was preceded by a reputation for bravery which rallied around him a portion of his detractors. People shut their eyes to his eccentricities, and were better disposed to appreciate his manly frankness and probity. Accordingly, when, on the eve of Louis XIII.’s death, Anne of Austria was afraid lest the Duke d’Orléans or the Prince de Condé should have the Dauphin and the Duke d’Anjou carried off, it was to the custody of Beaufort, as “the most honest man in France,”[176] that she confided her two sons.
Although at first proud of this flattering mark of distinction, he was not long in forgetting it, and in throwing himself very thoughtlessly into the enterprises of the Fronde, in which he made a sad enough figure. Enticed by the Duchess de Montbazon to join the cabal of the Importants,[177] brutal in his behaviour towards Mazarin, next imprisoned at Vincennes,[178] allied with the Prince de Condé after having been the enemy of his sister, the Duchess de Longueville, a furious opponent of the court after having shown himself the guardian of the throne and the protector of the Regent, by turns at the service of the narrow passions and beggarly interests of the Dukes d’Elbœuf and de Bouillon, of the Marshal de la Motte, and of the Cardinal de Retz, without exactly knowing either for what cause he was fighting or what aim he was pursuing, Beaufort withdrew from the Fronde as carelessly as he had joined it, and became reconciled to the court with as little gain to himself as he had obtained from the Frondeurs by his alliance with them. To an incapacity for discerning what path he ought to pursue in the midst of contending parties, Beaufort joined a dangerous ignorance of his political nonentity, and like many persons who are wanting in judgment, he endeavoured to rule by the force of qualities in which he was most deficient. As vain as he was thoughtless, believing himself called upon to play a great part,[179] he imagined that he had an aptitude for public business, because he could talk its cant; he delighted in giving advice to those who were leading him as they chose; and, wronging his real qualities by those which he wished to affect, he ended by exercising influence only over the multitude; but with them he succeeded perfectly. If, in order to please one’s subjects, it is necessary to speak their language, share their tastes, adopt their manners, to be by turns abrupt and familiar, uncouth and haughty, nobody has deserved more than Beaufort to be the “King of the halles.” This title, which history has confirmed, his contemporaries decreed to him unanimously, and the people accepted with enthusiasm. In the streets they followed with love this good prince who had consented to come and live near them in the most populous quarter, whose light hair and martial bearing the women admired, and who did not disdain occasionally to descant to the populace from a post, and sometimes to display his strength in street quarrels.
But when Louis XIV. attained his majority, this king of the populace became the most submissive of his subjects. Lagrange-Chancel, in order to establish the theory which makes the Duke de Beaufort the Man with the Iron Mask, and explain his pretended detention at Pignerol, speaks “of his turbulent spirit, of the rôle he had played in all the party movements of the time of the Fronde.”[180] He adds that “his office of High Admiral placed him daily in a position to thwart the great designs of Colbert, charged with the department of the Marine.” Nothing can be less exact, and in 1663, when Beaufort became High Admiral, the passions, kindled during the Fronde, were extinguished, the ambitious satisfied or quelled. The most turbulent chiefs, such as Rochefoucauld, were plunged in an idleness which was scarcely menacing. Those who had been the most hostile then made a display of their submission and servility. Whilst the Cardinal de Retz, in retirement at Commercy, was making up for his inaction and want of power by writing his immortal Memoirs, the Prince de Conti was espousing the niece of Mazarin, and Condé was gratefully receiving the order of the Holy Ghost from the King.[181] The most indocile and most arrogant of the nobility, who had disturbed the Regent’s authority, constrained the court to leave Paris, sent away Mazarin, and agitated the whole kingdom, now crowded the ante-chambers of Louis XIV. and disputed the signal honour of being present when he retired to bed, and of holding a candlestick on the occasion.
Beaufort was not the least assiduous in giving satisfaction to the absolute monarch. Little formed for command, for which an extreme impetuosity rendered him unsuited, he received very humbly the severe reprimands of Louis XIV. and Colbert, and supported the yoke of the master as docilely as he was harsh and imperious to his own officers.[182] If he was always menacing the latter with ill-treatment and with having them thrown into the sea, he submitted, in his naval expeditions, to the control and almost to the rule of the Intendant placed at his side by Colbert.[183] Nothing in him, then, was dangerous to the court: neither his character, for his subordinates alone experienced its violence; nor his talents, which were almost nugatory; nor his pretensions, which had become very much reduced; nor his popularity, which scarcely extended beyond the boundaries of his kingdom of the halles. More than that, he had, in the eyes of the King, the merit of belonging, through his father,[184] to those illegitimate princes whom Louis XIV. was constantly to favour—at first from political interest, with the view of opposing them to the legitimate heirs of the great families; then from paternal affection, when his own amours had quickly increased their number—and to whom, from a pride more and more immoderate, he was to accord successively precedence over the peers, then the rank of royal princes, and, lastly, to the shame of the whole kingdom, rights to the throne of France. One cannot understand, then, for what motive Louis XIV. would have sought to have got rid of a prince too unimportant to excite his jealousy, too submissive for a revolt to be feared from him, and who, the son of a bastard, was preparing for and justifying by his example the early and more and more scandalous elevation of the illegitimate offspring of the great King.
Previous to the expedition to Candia, whither, according to Lagrange-Chancel, and those who share his opinion,[185] Beaufort was sent in order that he might be carried off and afterwards condemned to perpetual imprisonment, was there any act in the Admiral’s naval career, by which he had entered into a state of rebellion against the court? Was there anything of the kind in the expedition of 1664, when, in spite of the opinions of his lieutenants, some of whom wished to attack Bona first, others Boujeiah,[186] Beaufort, adhering too strictly to Louis XIV.’s detailed instructions, directed an attack on Gigery, of which he possessed himself prematurely, and compromised the results of the campaign by a scrupulous obedience to orders given at a distance, and which he ought to have been bold enough to have disregarded? Was there anything in 1666, when he was charged to command the escort of the new Queen of Portugal,[187] and when, in spite of his ardour and of a noble desire to hasten to an encounter with the English, he agreed, so as to obey orders, to remain immovable in the waters of the Tagus?
But let us admit that the cause of this imprisonment, sought for in vain, can never be known to us, or rather, that the humble deference displayed by Beaufort towards Louis XIV. had not destroyed in the mind of the latter the remembrance of the violent passion which made the Admiral so ungovernable in his behaviour towards his officers. Let us admit an imaginary crime in order to explain an abduction which there is nothing positive to justify. Then the precautions taken after the abduction would be explained to a certain extent, by the popularity which Beaufort enjoyed at Paris, and Saint-Foix, in refuting Lagrange-Chancel, has been too positive in affirming the contrary.
“The King’s authority was consolidated,” he says,[188] “and the imprisonment of the great Condé himself, if it had been considered necessary to have had him arrested, would not have caused the least disturbance.” Assuredly, but would things have been the same for the “King of the halles,” whom the people still thoroughly idolized?
This only of Lagrange’s numerous arguments being admitted, and the necessity of hiding Beaufort from the gaze of all being recognized, would his abduction have been possible at Candia, in the midst of the fleet and in the presence of the army? What were the causes of this expedition, and among them can we detect a desire on the part of the King to send Beaufort with it, in order to get rid of him afterwards? Lastly, was this individual, who all the accounts agree in saying had disappeared—was he in reality killed, and can we invoke perfectly conclusive proofs of his death? This is what it is essential to examine. Contemporary criticism has, up to the present, refuted the opinion which we are combating, by availing itself only of the correspondence of Louvois with Saint-Mars,[189] and by showing that not a line of these despatches permits us to believe that Beaufort was detained at Pignerol. Let us push the demonstration still further, and as we have attempted with regard to the hypothesis of a brother of Louis XIV., and with regard to Vermandois and Monmouth, do not let us content ourselves with this indirect proof; since, to the silence preserved by Saint-Mars and Louvois with reference to each of these individuals, sceptics could bring forward as objections the suppression of the despatches concerning them or the exclusive employment of verbal messages. This is why, instead of invoking the usual argument founded upon an examination of the despatches between the gaoler and the Minister, we have availed ourselves of it merely in a subsidiary manner, and only after having previously sought to establish that a mysterious brother of Louis XIV. never existed, that Vermandois succumbed before Courtray, and that Monmouth died on the scaffold. This double demonstration has appeared indispensable to us in a matter where every one, having held a favourite opinion for a long time, is little disposed to accept another tending to upset it: so let us try the method for Beaufort in his turn.