Not satisfied with this precaution, moreover, M. de Montmorency also demanded an audience of the King, in which he laid before him the apprehensions that he entertained; and finally he entreated his Majesty's permission to compel his daughter to return to France, and to take up her residence with the Duchesse d'Angoulême, her aunt. Henry made a ready and gracious reply to this request, and before he finally retired from the royal closet, the Connétable asked and obtained the royal sanction to authorize the Marquis de Coeuvres to concert with him some scheme for carrying off the Princess.
M. de Coeuvres had no sooner received these instructions than he admitted to his confidence Madame de Berny, the wife of the French Ambassador at the Flemish Court (who from political reasons was himself kept in ignorance of the plot), and M. de Châteauneuf,[413] who was at that period residing in Brussels on a special mission from his Government; and the quasi-conspirators were not long ere they flattered themselves that their success was certain.
Near the palace of the Prince of Orange, in which Madame de Condé had taken up her residence, was a breach in the city wall by which it was easy to descend into the moat; and it was decided that the Princess should effect her escape from this point during the night. Saddled horses were to be prepared for herself and her retinue near the outer bank of the ditch, and nothing remained undecided save the moment of her evasion. She was to proceed at all speed to Pontarmé, where a relay of fresh horses and an armed escort were to await her arrival, and similar arrangements were to be made throughout the whole of the route to Rocroy. Finally, the precise night of her flight was decided on; and this had no sooner been determined than M. de Coeuvres despatched a courier to the Connétable, informing him that there now remained no doubt of the immediate return of the Princess to his protection.
This intelligence reached Paris on the Wednesday, and the following Saturday was the period fixed for the projected evasion, a fact which M. de Montmorency had no sooner ascertained than he hastened to communicate the success of M. de Coeuvres to the King. Henry was overjoyed, and in the fulness of his satisfaction was guilty of an indiscretion which was fated to overthrow his hopes; for, believing that in so short a time no effectual measures could be taken to frustrate the plot, he was incautious enough to confide the whole conspiracy to the Queen, who was still an invalid, not having yet recovered from the birth of her third daughter.[414] Agitated and alarmed, Marie listened to the narrative with an earnest attention, which only tended to render her royal consort more communicative than he might otherwise have been; and, in the excess of his self-gratulation, he moreover exhibited such unequivocal proofs of the interest which he personally felt in the result of the evasion, that she at once resolved to prevent the reappearance of the Princess in France. The King had accordingly no sooner quitted her apartment than she desired Madame Concini to bring her kinsman the Nuncio Ubaldini to her private closet without losing an instant, a command which was so zealously obeyed by her favourite that she was enabled, after a prolonged conference with this ecclesiastic, to despatch a courier secretly to Spinola the same night to acquaint him with the projected design, and to entreat him to frustrate it should there yet be time.
The royal messenger travelled so rapidly that he reached Brussels at eleven o'clock on the morning of Saturday, and Spinola had no sooner read the despatch than he hastened to communicate its contents to the Archduke and the Infanta, who instantly sent a company of the light horse of the bodyguard to possess themselves of all the approaches to the palace of the Prince of Orange. This done, their Imperial Highnesses next caused several state carriages to be prepared, which were placed under the charge of one of the principal officers of their household, who received directions to invite Madame de Condé in their joint names to take immediate possession of a suite of rooms in the Archducal palace which they desired to appropriate to her use and that of her suite, as better suited to the dignity of her high rank than those which she then inhabited. He was, moreover, instructed to accept no denial, but to insist upon the compliance of the Princess; and thus armed the courtier proceeded to the Hôtel d'Orange, where he communicated the subject of his mission to Madame de Condé in the presence of her two confidants. The consternation of the whole party may be imagined when, just as they conceived themselves secure of success, they thus discovered that their design had been betrayed; nor was it until the Princess had exhausted every subterfuge she could invent that she found herself compelled to accompany the Archducal envoy. It was in vain that she represented the greater propriety of her residence under the roof of her husband's sister during that husband's absence; she was assured that she would find the palace equally eligible and far more worthy of her occupation. She then pleaded her reluctance to intrude further upon the splendid hospitality of her princely hosts; her objection was met by an assurance that so eager were the sovereigns to receive her as a guest that they were even at that moment waiting in the greatest anxiety to bid her welcome, an intimation which served to convince Madame de Condé that she had no alternative save to submit to this polite tyranny, and that upon the instant. She accordingly summoned her attendants, and without having been permitted to hold any private communication with her equally discomfited friends, she entered the carriage assigned to her, and was rapidly driven-to the palace.[415]
The indignation of the Prince de Condé equalled the mortification of the King when he learnt the failure of the projected evasion; while the Marquis de Coeuvres and M. de Berny demanded an audience of the Archduke, at which they loudly complained of the insults to which the Princess had been subjected, and which were, as they alleged, calculated to strengthen the odious suspicions that had already been generated against the King their master. M. de Berny, who was entirely ignorant of the plot, was naturally the loudest in his denunciations of the violence offered to Madame de Condé, and the species of captivity to which she was condemned, when she had been led to expect nothing but consideration for her rank and sympathy for her misfortunes. He, moreover, assured the Archduke that nothing could be more wild and absurd than the idea of her flight, warmly demanding wherefore she was likely to leave a capital wherein she had hitherto been so well and so generously received.
The genuine indignation of the Ambassador produced as little effect upon the Archduke as the laboured arguments of M. de Coeuvres, and he contented himself by courteously regretting that an attention, intended to convey to the Princess the extent of the respect and friendship with which she had inspired him, should have been so ill-interpreted, adding, moreover, that far from disapproving the step which he had taken, he felt convinced that the French King would recognize in it only his earnest desire to do honour to the first Princess of the Blood. Further argument was useless, the imperturbable composure of the Archduke totally overpowering the wordy violence of his interlocutors, who were eventually compelled to withdraw without having effected the restoration of Madame de Condé. On the return of the Marquis de Coeuvres to Paris, Henry, still believing that the Archduke would not venture to brave his displeasure by any further opposition to his will, accredited M. de Preau[416] to the Court of Brussels, with instructions to demand the immediate return of the Princess in the joint names of the Duke her father and Madame d'Angoulême her aunt; but this new procuration was met by the Austrian Prince with the announcement that he had pledged himself to M. de Condé not to permit the Princess to leave Brussels without his consent, and that he consequently could not without dishonour forfeit his plighted word.
Exasperated by a firmness for which he was unprepared, and satisfied that the support of the Spanish Cabinet could alone have induced the Archduke thus to drive him to extremities, Henry at once resolved no longer to delay the hostilities which he had long meditated against Spain, and to which he was now urged as much by private feeling as by state policy. A sufficient pretext offered itself, moreover, in the efforts which had been made by several of the German Princes to possess themselves of the duchies of Clèves and Juliers; the death of Jean Guillaume, Duc de Clèves, Juliers, and Bergh, Comte de la Mark, and Lord of Ravenstein, which had occurred on the 25th of March, and the numerous claims made upon his succession, having rendered the ultimate disposition of his duchy a matter of extreme importance to Henry, who was reluctant to strengthen the power of Austria by permitting this increase of territory to pass definitely into her hands,[417] as it had already partially done, the Emperor having hastened to place the duchy under sequestration.
The petty sovereigns thus despoiled protested energetically against such an usurpation, and several among them had even entreated the protection of France, to the great gratification of Henri IV, who thus found himself doubly armed, as his interference on behalf of the aggrieved Princes assured their cooperation in his own project of recovering from the Emperor the provinces of Franche-Comté and Flanders, which had been in the possession of Spain since the time of Charles V, and which had formed, as we have elsewhere stated, the dowry of the Infanta on her marriage with the Archduke Albert. Thus in the eyes of Europe the French King was about to engage in this new war simply to enforce justice to himself and his allies; but it was so evident to all who considered the subject that these pretensions might have been put down at once by the slightest show of resistance on his own part, and that so comparatively unimportant a campaign might prudently have been entrusted to one of his many able generals, that when it became known that an army of forty thousand infantry, six thousand Swiss, the bodyguard, and a corps of four thousand mounted nobles, together with a strong park of artillery, were about to take the field under the command of the King in person, there were few individuals acquainted with the circumstances which we have just narrated who did not feel convinced that the monarch was rather about to undertake a crusade for the deliverance of the Princesse de Condé than a war for the preservation of his territories.
This opinion was, moreover, strengthened by the fact that throughout all these hostile preparations Henry did not discontinue his negotiations for the return of Madame de Condé to France. He pleaded the authority of her father, the anxiety of her more than mother the Duchesse d'Angoulême, his own authority over his subjects, the inclination of the Princess herself to be once more under the protection of her family; but all these pretexts signally failed. Yet neither Henry nor his agent M. de Preau would yield to discouragement; passion on the one hand, and ambition on the other, lent them strength to persevere; and having exhausted their first scheme of attack, they next represented the necessity of her presence at the approaching coronation of the Queen, where it was important that she should occupy the position suited to her rank as first Princess of the Blood; and next they alleged the impossibility of furthering her views in the separation from her husband which she was about to demand, unless she were enabled personally to expose her reasons to the Parliament. Moreover, Madame de Condé had written to the French ministers to complain of violence and imprisonment, and the King insisted upon the necessity of her liberation.