History, says a French historian, shews itself never at the Bastille but with manacles in one hand and headsman's axe in the other. At Vincennes, ever and anon, it appears in the rustling silks of a king's favourite, who finds within the circle of those cruel walls soft bosky nooks and bowers, for feasting and for love. Sometimes from the bosom of those perfumed solitudes, a death-cry escapes, and the flowers are spotted with blood: Messalina has dispensed with a lettre de cachet. At one epoch it is Isabeau de Bavière, it is Catherine de Médicis at another; what need to exhaust or to extend the list? Catherine made no sparing use of the towers of Vincennes. It was a spectacle of royal splendours on this side and of royal tyrannies on that; banquets and executions; the songs of her troubadours mingling with the sighs of her captives. Often some enemy of Catherine, quitting the dance at her pavilion of Vincennes, fell straightway into a cell of the dungeon, to die that night by stiletto, or twenty years later as nature willed. Yes, indeed, Vincennes and the Bastille were worthy of each other.
Two mysterious echoes of history still reach the ear from what were once the vaulted dungeons of Vincennes. The note of the first is gay and mocking, a cry with more of victory in it than of defeat, and one remembers the captivity of the Prince de Condé. The other is like the sudden detonation of musketry, and one recalls the bloody death of the young Duc d'Enghien, the last notable representative of the house of Condé.
The Prince de Condé's affair is of the seventeenth century. It was Anne of Austria, inspired by Mazarin, who had him arrested, along with his brother the Prince de Conti and their brother-in-law the Duc de Longueville. A lighter-hearted gallant than Condé never set foot on the drawbridge of Vincennes. On the night of his arrival with De Conti and the duke, no room had been prepared for his reception. He called for new-laid eggs for supper, and slept on a bundle of straw. De Conti cried, and De Longueville asked for a work on theology. The next day, and every day, Condé played tennis and shuttle-cock with his keepers; sang and began to learn music. He quizzed the governor perpetually, and laid out a garden in the grounds of the prison which became the talk of Paris. "He fasted three times a week and planted pinks," says a chronicler. "He studied strategy and sang the psalms," says another. When the governor threatened him for breaches of the rules, the Prince offered to strangle him. But not even Vincennes could hold a Condé for long, and he was liberated.
Briefer still was the sojourn of the Duc d'Enghien—one of the strangest, darkest, and most tragical events of history. In 1790, at the age of nineteen, he had quitted France with the chiefs of the royalist party. Twelve years later, in 1802, he was living quietly at the little town of Ettenheim, not far from Strasbourg; in touch with the forces of Condé, but not, as it seems, taking active part in the movement which was preparing against Napoleon. A mere police report lost him with the First Consul. He was denounced as having an understanding with the officers of Condé's army, and as holding himself in readiness to unite with them on the receipt of instructions from England. Napoleon issued orders for his arrest, and he was seized in his little German retreat on March 15, 1804. Five days later he was lodged in the dungeon of Vincennes.
Here the prison drama, one of the saddest enacted on the stage of history, commences. "Tout est mystérieux dans cette tragédie, dont le prologue même commence par un secret." (Everything is mysterious in this tragedy, the very prologue of which begins with a secret.)
The Duke had married secretly the Princess Charlotte de Rohan, who, by her husband's wish, continued to occupy her own house. The daily visits of the constant husband were a cause of suspicion to the agents of Napoleon. They said that he was framing plots; he was simply enjoying the society of his wife. He was engaged, they said, in a conspiracy with Georges and others against the life of Napoleon; he was but turning love phrases in the boudoir of the Princess.
The mystery accompanied the unfortunate prisoner from Ettenheim to Strasbourg, from Strasbourg to Paris, and went before him to Vincennes. Governor Harel was instructed to receive "an individual whose name is on no account to be disclosed. The orders of the Government are that the strictest secrecy is to be preserved respecting him. He is not to be questioned either as to his name or as to the cause of his detention. You yourself will remain ignorant of his identity."
As he was driven into Paris at five o'clock on the evening of March 20th, the Duke said with a fine assurance:
"If I may be permitted to see the First Consul, it will be settled in a moment."