Louis forgot his former affection for his brilliant favourite in his fear of the minister who sought his destruction; while the heartless and ungrateful Gaston, wilfully overlooking the fact that it was in his service that the miserable young man had become compromised, actually appeared as one of his accusers; his relatives were forbidden to intercede in his behalf; and finally, when some zealous friends succeeded in hiding away not only the royal executioner, but also the city functionary, in the hope of delaying his execution, the emissaries of the Cardinal secured the services of a condemned felon, who, on a promise of unconditional pardon, consented to fill the office of headsman; and who, between his inexperience and his horror at his unwonted task, performed his hideous functions so imperfectly that it was only on the thirty-fourth stroke that the head of the martyred young man was severed from his body.[98]
During the progress of this iniquitous trial (which took place in the city of Nantes, whither Louis had proceeded to convoke the States of that province) both Marie de Medicis and Richelieu were assiduously labouring to accomplish the marriage of Gaston with Mademoiselle de Montpensier; nor does there remain the slightest doubt that it was to the splendid promises held out by his mother and her minister on this occasion, that the cowardly and treacherous conduct of the Prince towards his unfortunate adherent must be ascribed. A brilliant appanage was allotted to him; he was to assume the title of Duc d'Orléans; to occupy a post in the Government; and to enjoy a revenue of a million of francs.
Prospects far less flattering than these would have sufficed to purchase Gaston, whose besetting sin throughout his whole life was the most disgusting and inordinate selfishness; but when his consent had been obtained, a new difficulty supervened on the part of the King, whose distrustful character would not permit him to perceive the eagerness with which the Cardinal urged forward the alliance without misgivings which were fostered by his immediate friends. Richelieu, however, soon succeeded by his representations in convincing the suspicious monarch of the policy of thus compelling his brother to a thorough subjection to his own authority, which could not have been enforced had Monsieur allied himself to a Princess of Austria or Spain; an argument which was instantly appreciated, and a royal command was accordingly despatched to the elected bride to join the Court at Nantes, under the escort of the Duc de Bellegarde, the Maréchal de Bassompierre, and the Marquis d'Effiat.
In accordance with this invitation, Mademoiselle de Montpensier arrived at Nantes on the 1st of August; and on the 5th of the same month, while the wretched and deserted Chalais was exposed to the most frightful torture, the marriage took place. "There was little pomp or display," says Mézeray, "either at the betrothal or at the nuptial ceremony." Feux de joie and salvos of artillery alone announced its completion. The mass was, however, performed by Richelieu himself; and so thoroughly had he succeeded in convincing Louis of the expediency of the measure, that the delight of the young King was infinitely more conspicuous than that of the bridegroom. The satisfaction of Marie de Medicis, although sufficiently evident, was calm and dignified; but the King embraced the bride on three several occasions; and no one could have imagined from his deportment that he had for a single instant opposed a marriage which now appeared to have fulfilled his most sanguine wishes.[99]
The reign of blood had nevertheless commenced. The head of Chalais fell on the 19th of August; and on the 2nd of September the Maréchal d'Ornano expired in his prison; a fate which was shared on the 28th of February 1629 by the Grand Prieur de Vendôme, both of these deaths being attributed to poison. Be the fact as it may, thus much is at least, certain, that the Cardinal, not daring to drag two legitimated Princes of the Blood to the scaffold, had gradually rendered their captivity more and more rigorous, as if to prove to the nation over which he had stretched his iron arm that no rank, however elevated, and no name, however ancient, could protect its possessor.
Having accomplished the marriage of the Duc d'Orléans, Richelieu and the Queen-mother next laboured to widen the breach between Louis XIII and his wife; for which purpose they represented that she had taken an active part in the lately detected conspiracy, and was secretly intriguing with Spain against the interests of her royal husband; an attempt in which she had been aided and abetted by her confidential friends.
The first consequence of this accusation was the arrest of Madame de Chevreuse, who, after having undergone a formal examination, was exiled from the Court; and this order had no sooner been obeyed than Anne of Austria was summoned to the presence of the King, whom she found seated between the Queen-mother and the Cardinal, and there solemnly accused, on the pretended revelations of Chalais while under torture, of having intrigued to procure the death of her husband, and her own marriage with his brother.
To this accusation the Spanish Princess disdainfully replied that "she should have gained so little by the exchange, that the absurdity of the charge must suffice for its refutation;" but her haughty and indignant retort produced no effect upon her judges. She was commanded thenceforward to reside exclusively at the palaces of the Louvre and St. Germain; without the privilege of receiving a single guest, not even excepting the ambassador of the King her brother, or the Spanish attendants who had accompanied her to France, and, moreover, forbidden all correspondence beyond the limits of the kingdom; while, at the same time, as if to complete her humiliation, she was strictly prohibited from receiving any male visitor in her apartments during the absence of the King.[100]
Although, as we have stated, Richelieu was present at this degrading scene, he nevertheless professed to be perfectly independent of what he thought proper to designate as mere family dissensions, entirely beyond the functions of a minister; and thus the whole odium of the proceedings fell upon Louis XIII and the Queen-mother, while the Cardinal himself remained ostensibly absorbed in public business. Neither the great nobles nor the people were, however, deceived by this assumed disinterestedness; but all felt alike convinced that the total alienation which supervened between the royal couple was simply a part of the system by which Richelieu sought one day exclusively to govern France.
Henriette Marie had left Paris after her betrothal, accompanied by a numerous retinue of French attendants of both sexes, and by several of the priests of the Oratory, attired in their black gowns; and on her arrival at Whitehall she had been permitted to have the services of her religion performed in one of the apartments of that palace; but this concession did not, unhappily, serve to satisfy the exactions of the girl-Queen, who, even during the first days of her residence in England, suffered herself to betray all her antipathy to the heretical country which was hereafter to be her home. At the public ceremonial of her marriage, when the venerable Abbey of Westminster was crowded with princes, bishops, and barons, she refused to receive her crown from the hands of a Protestant prelate, or to bend her knee before the Lord Primate; while at the same time, relying on her youth and the effect which her extreme beauty had produced upon her royal consort, she endeavoured to obtain an ascendency over him that excited the jealousy and distrust of the English Court; a feeling which was not lessened by the fact that she succeeded in extorting from the King his sanction to erect a chapel for the more solemn observance of the rites and ceremonies of her faith. Acting under the influence of Richelieu, who at frequent intervals despatched missionaries to London upon futile errands, with instructions that she should retain them about her person, she moreover soon taught herself to believe that she had a great mission to accomplish; and under this impression she carried her imprudence so far as to authorize a public procession through the streets of London, in which she herself appeared mounted upon a mule, surrounded and followed by all her household, and a crowd of Roman Catholic ecclesiastics.