WE must now revert to Conde"s heroic sister. Having glanced somewhat hastily at the brilliant part played by Madame de Longueville in the two first epochs of the Fronde, the war of Paris and that which illuminated the prison of Conde, we are now about to follow her through the third and last period, which commences from the deliverance of the Princes, in February, 1651, and only ends with the war of Guienne, in August, 1653;--the longest, the most disastrous, and at the same time most obscure epoch of the civil war. It will be necessary to strip the mask from more than one ill.u.s.trious actor in it, exhibit the reverse of the most showy medals, and the shadows which everywhere mingle with glory, genius, and even virtue itself. The character of the d.u.c.h.ess de Longueville has its charming, its sublime aspects; but, alas! it is far from being irreproachable. In dwelling upon the least favourable portion of her life, we shall often do well to remember that the errors of great minds sometimes subserve their perfection, by the beneficent virtue of the remorse to which they give rise, and that the sister of the Great Conde must probably have felt in all its fulness the vanity of ambition and of false grandeur, all the bitterness of guilty pa.s.sions, in taking an early farewell of them, to resume the austere path of duty, to return, in fine, to Carmel and ascend to Port Royal.
Madame de Longueville had remained at Stenay with Turenne for some time after her brother"s and husband"s liberation, both occupied in disengaging themselves from the engagements which they had contracted with Spain for the deliverance of the Princes, and with negotiating a truce calculated to clear the way for the much-desired general peace.
Recalled by the pressing instances of her family, she had quitted Stenay on the 7th of March, before the completion of her work. On arriving in Paris "universal applause greeted her heroic deeds." Monsieur had hastened to pay her a visit with Mademoiselle Montpensier, and a train of ladies of the highest distinction. She went afterwards that same day to present her homage to their Majesties, from whom she met with the most gracious reception. That moment was, unquestionably, the most brilliant of her whole career. In 1647, after the emba.s.sy to Munster, her return to France and its Court had been also a veritable triumph, as we have attempted to show; but the power of her house and the glory of her brother const.i.tuted nearly all the merits of it. She only contributed thereto the influence of her wit and beauty. After Stenay, the _eclat_ which surrounded her was in some sort more personal. She had just displayed eminent qualities which raised her almost to the level of Conde. In Normandy she had exhibited herself as an intrepid adventuress, and a skilful politician in the Low Countries. When, during the imprisonment of her two brothers and her husband, her sister-in-law, the Princess de Conde, had been forced at Bordeaux to recognize the royal authority, she discovered that the destinies of her house had devolved upon her. She had become the head of a great party. She had treated as from power to power with Spain; her word had appeared a sufficient guarantee to the Archduke Leopold and to the Count de Fuensaldagne. She had held in hand such commanders as Turenne, La Moussaye, Bouteville; and when, after the battle of Rethel, she seemed to be on the very verge of destruction, she had succeeded in recovering the advantage, and in contributing more than any one else to the deliverance of the Princes, thanks to the profound negotiations carried on in her name by the Princess Palatine. Whilst statesmen estimated her capacity, the mult.i.tude admired her courage and constancy. She was, in short, in possession of that political role with which La Rochefoucauld had dazzled her gaze in order to conceal his own designs:--a glittering chimera which, mingling itself with that of love, had seduced that ardent and haughty soul of hers. She was then the idol of Spain, the terror of the Court, one of the grandeurs of her family. We shall soon see whether she can better sustain this new ordeal than she did the first, at the close of the year 1647.
The Fronde gathered the fruit of its skilful conduct during the month of January, 1651. It was that faction which, silencing its old animosities and promptly extending its hand to the partisans of Conde, had extricated him from prison, in order to acquire and place at its head, together with the King"s uncle, the lieutenant-general of the Kingdom, the first prince of the blood, the victor of Rocroi and Lens, the hero of the age. It carried everything before it--at Court, in parliament, upon the public places; it had proscribed and put to flight Mazarin; it held Anne of Austria a captive in her palace; already even it had penetrated into the cabinet in the person of the aged Chateauneuf, in whom ambition cherished beneath the snows of winter the vigour of youth, and whose capacity was scarcely inferior to his ambition. The moment had arrived for accomplishing the work already begun, and for putting into execution the plan determined upon between the Princess Palatine and Madame de Chevreuse.
Those two strong-minded women had conceived the idea of a grand aristocratic league which should seat the Fronde upon an union of all the interests which it comprised, close the avenues of France and the Court to Mazarin, and under the auspices of the Duke d"Orleans and the Prince de Conde form a government into which the friends of both should enter, the most accredited representatives of every fraction of a party.
Further, the basis of this plan was that of a double marriage: on the one side between the young Duke d"Enghien and one of the Duke d"Orleans"
daughters, on the other between the Prince de Conti and the daughter of Madame de Chevreuse.[1] This latter marriage might be accomplished immediately. Conde had accepted the proposition without any difficulty.
Madame de Longueville, far from opposing it at Stenay, had embraced the idea of it with so much ardour that, in a letter to the Palatine of the 26th of November, 1650, after having weighed the different resolutions to be taken, she stops at this latter, and concludes thus: "_this, therefore, is what we must stick to_." That marriage was, in short, of a supreme importance: it gave the house of Conde to the Fronde for ever, and the Fronde to the house of Conde; for the Fronde was then Madame de Chevreuse. She disposed, by her daughter, of the Coadjutor, who in his turn disposed of the Duke d"Orleans, and by him of the parliament. It was Madame de Chevreuse who, in 1650, had emboldened Mazarin to lay his hand upon Conde, in making him see that he might strike that bold stroke with impunity, since she answered to him for the secret connivance of the Duke d"Orleans and the parliament, who were alone able to oppose it.
Here, Mazarin had committed an immense blunder: seeing himself delivered from Conde, by the aid of the Fronde, having nothing more hostile to cope with than the latter, he had imagined himself able to turn round upon it, and had treated Madame de Chevreuse very cavalierly, who, growing cold towards the Cardinal, and no longer finding it to her account to serve him, had lent an ear to the propositions of Conde"s friends, and had procured his release from prison, reconciling to him the Duke d"Orleans and the parliament, which at first she had stirred up against him. She brought, moreover, to the house of Conde the most politic mind of the Fronde, an audacity towering to the height of his designs, a consummate experience, with the support of her three powerful families, the houses of de Rohan, de Luynes, and Lorraine. She rendered sure the alliance of the Duke d"Orleans and the Prince de Conde, and completed the ruin of Mazarin by constructing a strong government which probably might have succeeded ultimately in triumphing over the affection of the Queen. She held in hand a statesman bred in the school of Richelieu, and whom she judged capable of replacing Mazarin, the former Keeper of the Seals--Chateauneuf, already a member of the Cabinet. She believed herself certain of acquiring De Retz by means of the Cardinal"s hat. She had not the least objection to make to the elevation of the friends of Conde, and she was ready to favour the ambition of La Rochefoucauld, for whom formerly, in 1643, she had so greatly importuned the Queen and Mazarin. Add to all this, that on quitting the citadel of Havre, the young Prince de Conti had not beheld the lovely Charlotte de Lorraine without being smitten with her charms, and he himself strongly desired that marriage. Who, then, prevented it?
Who broke off the contracted engagement? Who struck at and wounded by the self-same blow the Palatine and Madame de Chevreuse? Who restored them both and for ever to the Queen and Mazarin? Who destroyed the Fronde by dividing it? We shall find out by-and-by, but let us merely say just now that it was the rupture of that marriage which again shuffled the cards and changed the face of the situation. In pitting against himself those who had so powerfully succoured him in his misfortune, Conde ought at least to have drawn closer to the Court and had a serious understanding with the Queen; but he tergiversated, and at the end of some months of that wavering policy, he found himself standing unmasked between the Court and the Fronde, both equally discontented with him, repeating and exaggerating the blunder committed by Mazarin. The greatest error during the course of a revolution is to believe that the support of either of the parties who are in actual collision may be dispensed with. At the close of a revolution the attempt to dominate may be tried; during the crisis a choice must be made. Mazarin had fallen through having tried to dominate the Fronde and Conde at one and the same time; Conde lost himself in thinking to dominate the Fronde and the Court.
[1] Retz himself has taken care to inform us of his sad _liaison_ with Mademoiselle de Chevreuse, throughout the whole of the second volume and beginning of the third of his Memoirs. Amsterdam edition, 1731. That unfortunate lady died suddenly of a fever, unmarried, in 1652. She was born in 1627.
It is an historical problem very difficult to solve, as to who was the author of the rupture of the marriage projected between the Prince de Conti and Mademoiselle de Chevreuse. We are well inclined to believe that that individual at any rate was the chief author of the rupture to whom it was the most profitable. The Queen and Mazarin, who from his place of retirement governed her with as absolute a sway as ever, saw from the first the danger which threatened them from such an alliance, entirely unexpected as it was by both. The negotiations between Madame de Chevreuse, while Conde was prisoner, and Madame de Longueville at Stenay, had been conducted by the Palatine with such consummate skill and perfect secrecy that neither the Queen nor Mazarin had the slightest suspicion of them. When the rumour reached the ears of the Cardinal in his retreat at Bruhl, near Cologne, he broke out against Madame de Chevreuse with a violence the coa.r.s.eness of which even was an involuntary homage rendered to the profound ability of Marie de Rohan.
The Queen showed herself warmly opposed to it, and the ministers were ordered to thwart in every way the projected alliance. They began, therefore, to negotiate with Conde. As a result of these negotiations he obtained in exchange for his government of Burgundy that of Guienne, one of far greater importance; he was even led to indulge a hope that Provence would be given to the Prince de Conti instead of Champagne and La Brie, and the port and fortress of Blaye to La Rochefoucauld in augmentation of his government of Poitou, although there was not the slightest intention of fulfilling that hope. So states the d.u.c.h.ess de Nemours, the enemy of the Fronde and the Condes, and who, having given herself to the Court party, must have well known its intentions. De Retz likewise doubts not that the Queen combated an alliance so evidently opposed to her interests. Madame de Motteville, the Queen"s close friend, avows it. In short, it is certain, and we have hereupon the irrefragable testimony of Madame de Motteville, that when the Queen had succeeded in gaining over Conde, she caused Madame de Chevreuse to be informed "that she desired that such marriage should not take place, because it had been concerted for objects inimical to the royal interests. This command was the cause of all these propositions falling through and that they were no more spoken of."
But how did the Queen gain over Conde, and what part did Madame de Longueville play in the affair? That is certainly what neither De Retz could know, who was only aware of what pa.s.sed in parliament, in the Palais d"Orleans, and the Hotel de Chevreuse; nor the d.u.c.h.ess de Nemours and Madame de Motteville, who were not in the confidence of the Hotel de Conde: they could only repeat hereupon what they had heard said in the Court circle, and they must be considered solely as the echoes of reports which it suited the Queen to spread. That is so probable that the one and the other, differing so widely as they did both in intention and feeling, tell exactly the same tale. Madame de Motteville states positively that Madame de Longueville, as soon as she returned from Stenay, advised Conde to break with the Chevreuses, and that La Rochefoucauld supported her in such design; and these are the motives which she attributes to her:--"Madame de Longueville, who had been long jealous of the beauty and graces of Mademoiselle de Chevreuse, could little bear to contemplate the probability of her being raised to a rank even more elevated than her own, and still less, that she should obtain the great influence which such a person was likely to acquire over both her princely brothers. She had, therefore, exerted all her influence over Conde, and with him had been quite successful. But Conti was still in the height of his pa.s.sion for the beautiful and fascinating girl who had been promised to him during his imprisonment; he supped every evening at the Hotel de Chevreuse, and his affections, as well as his honour, were fully engaged." The d.u.c.h.ess de Nemours says the same thing in the same terms.
Confidant and adviser of Madame de Longueville and of Conde, La Rochefoucauld alone knew the whole truth, and could have told it to posterity; but it was not to tell the truth that his memoirs were penned, only too frequently to conceal it, to set in strong relief that which had been well done, and slur over that which had been badly done, or to cast the blame of it upon others. Attentive to the study of his part, and to never accept a bad one, La Rochefoucauld says truly that the Frondeurs, eagerly pressing forwards the marriage of the Prince de Conti with Mademoiselle de Chevreuse, and seeing it r.e.t.a.r.ded, "suspected Madame de Longueville and the Duke de la Rochefoucauld of a design to break it off, for fear that the Prince de Conti should escape from their hands only to fall into those of Madame de Chevreuse and of the Coadjutor;" but he endeavours to give a reason for these suspicions, and to inform us whether they were well or ill founded. Instead of defending himself, and Madame de Longueville, he accuses Conde of having "adroitly increased the suspicions of the Frondeurs against his sister and La Rochefoucauld, firmly believing that so long as they held that belief, they would never discover the true cause of the postponement of the marriage." And what was that true cause? Here it is, according to La Rochefoucauld: it was that the Prince de Conde "not having as yet either concluded or broken off his treaty with the Queen, and having been informed that the keeper of the seals--Chateauneuf--was about to be dismissed, wished to await that event to conclude the marriage, if Cardinal Mazarin were ruined by M. de Chateauneuf, or to break it off and make through that his court to the Queen, should M. de Chateauneuf be driven away by the Cardinal."
This interpretation of Conde"s conduct does not do him great honour, but it is a very probable one. In the first place, if La Rochefoucauld knew how to glide so cleverly over all the ticklish points in which he could not appear to advantage, he did not, strictly speaking, tell lies; he retires rather than attacks, unless hurried away by pa.s.sion, and he was never in a pa.s.sion with Conde. And, further, the conduct which he attributes to Conde springs quite naturally out of the false position in which Conde had, by degrees, suffered himself to be placed.
Altogether, we are persuaded that Conde was then sincere. His sole error, and it is that which marked his entire conduct during the Fronde, was the not having had, either on this occasion or any other, a fixed and unalterable object. On the 13th of April the Queen took the seals from Madame de Chevreuse"s friend, Chateauneuf, the representative of the Fronde in the Cabinet, to give them to the gravest person of his time, the first president, Mathieu Mole, a worthy servant of the State, very little friendly to the Fronde, and who then was sufficiently favourable towards the Prince de Conde. That same day she recalled to the Council as Secretary of State the Count de Chavigny, who had been formerly minister for Foreign Affairs under Richelieu. Formed in the school of the great Cardinal, as well as Mazarin, ousted from place, crafty and resolute, feeling himself capable of bearing the weight of a ministry, Chavigny had beheld with a sufficiently ominous countenance, after the death of their common master, the sudden elevation of a colleague who had even begun by being his dependent. Since 1643, vanity had turned him aside from the high road of ambition, and he had entangled himself in the brakes of very complicated intrigues. In 1651, he pa.s.sed as the friend of Conde. It was then only, if we can believe La Rochefoucauld, that Conde declared himself opposed to the marriage of his youthful brother with Mademoiselle de Chevreuse; and it was time that he opposed it, for that marriage was on the eve of accomplishment.
Conti gave proof of the most ardent pa.s.sion for Mademoiselle de Chevreuse; he paid her a thousand attentions which he hid from his friends, and particularly from his sister, for whom he ever professed to entertain an undivided adoration. He held long conferences with the Marquis de Laigues and other intimate friends of Mademoiselle de Chevreuse; it was even feared lest he should marry her without the necessary dispensations and without the partic.i.p.ation of the head of his family. Conde, therefore, decided to act at once, and the reputation of the fair lady afforded him a means of attack which he employed with success upon his brother. He seems to have had no great difficulty in attaining his object. The Prince de Conti soon received proof that she was not by any means so immaculate as he had believed: her scarcely doubtful connection with the Coadjutor was placed in its true light, and, convinced that the object of his pa.s.sion was unworthy the love of a man of honour, he began to look upon her with horror. He even blamed Madame de Longueville and the Duke de la Rochefoucauld for not having warned him sooner of what was said of her in society. From that moment means of breaking off the affair without acrimony were sought; but the interests involved were too great, and the circ.u.mstances too piquant not to renew and augment still more the old hatred of Madame de Chevreuse and the Frondeurs against the Prince de Conde, and against those whom they suspected of taking part in that which had just been done.[2]
[2] La Rochefoucauld, p. 69. Retz, tom, ii., p. 223.
This testimony would justify Madame de Longueville and La Rochefoucauld himself for having urged Conde upon that disloyal and impolitic rupture, if one could believe it to be entirely sincere; but it is very difficult to admit that Madame de Longueville and her all-powerful adviser could have remained strangers to a determination so important, and there are many doubts and obscurities resting upon this delicate point. De Retz, whose introspect was so penetrating, and who does not pride himself on any great reserve in his judgments, knew not what opinion to form--Conde, Madame de Longueville, and La Rochefoucauld having afterwards a.s.sured him that they had had nothing to do with the rupture of the marriage.
But whose soever was the hand that broke off the projected alliance of the Condes with Madame de Chevreuse, it is beyond doubt that that had lost Conde and saved Mazarin. All the errors which followed were derived from that cardinal one. In it must be discerned the first link of that chain of disastrous events which ended by dragging Conde into civil war.
The resentment of Madame de Chevreuse may well be imagined, when she discovered that she had been tricked, that she had separated herself from Mazarin and the Queen, and had drawn Conde out of prison only to receive in exchange such an unpardonable outrage! Already, even a short time before, when the Queen ousted Chateauneuf without consulting the Duke d"Orleans, the wrath of the Frondeurs had been such, that at a council held at the Palais d"Orleans of the whole party, it was proposed to go, on the part of the lieutenant-general, and demand back the seals from Mathieu Mole. The most violent expedients were suggested, and some among the more hot-headed spoke of seizing their arms and descending into the streets. Conde, who had not yet entirely broken with the Frondeurs, and was present at this council with a few of his friends, threw cold water upon every proposal that was made, and energetically opposed the appeal to arms, declaring that he did not understand waging "a war of paving-stones and _pots de chambre_," and that he felt himself too much of a coward for such a campaign as that.
After some time pa.s.sed in sharp discussion, the Duke retired into the apartments of his wife with De Retz, and there a brief consultation ensued, in which the d.u.c.h.ess d"Orleans, Madame de Chevreuse, and the Coadjutor endeavoured to persuade him to arrest the leaders of the opposite party, and rouse the people to insurrection. The Duke d"Orleans was in some degree moved; Conde, Conti, and the Duke de Beaufort and others, had retired into the library, and Mademoiselle de Chevreuse, springing towards the door, exclaimed, "Nothing is wanting but a turn of the key! It would be a fine thing indeed for a girl to arrest a winner of battles!"
The impetuosity of Mademoiselle de Chevreuse, however, alarmed the timid Duke d"Orleans. Had he been brought to it by degrees, he might have consented to the act; but her movement towards the door startled him, and he began to whistle,--which, as De Retz observes, was never a good sign. Then declaring that he would consider of the matter till the next morning, he walked quietly into the library, and suffered the guests to depart in peace whom he had been so sorely tempted to make prisoners.
At the same time in the parliament all the violent measures taken against Mazarin were renewed: he was banished and rebanished, with confiscation of his possessions, and even his books and pictures were ordered to be sold. A decree had already been pa.s.sed declaring all foreign cardinals incapable of serving in France, and of entering into the ministry. They did not stop there, and certain councillors who were not in the secrets of the party, and obeying only their pa.s.sion, proposed to exclude from the ministry even the French cardinals as being still too dependent upon Rome. This sweeping motion was carried amid loud cheers, which resounded through all parts of the hall. Whereupon Conde laughingly remarked: "There"s a fine echo." That same echo was the ruin of De Retz"s hopes, who only so pa.s.sionately desired to become a cardinal in order to succeed to Mazarin. Shortly afterwards the division between Conde and the Old Fronde was declared, and Conde applied himself to form an intermediate party, a new Fronde, which became sufficiently powerful to disquiet Madame de Chevreuse and the Coadjutor.[3]
"Imagine," says the latter, "what the royal authority purged of Mazarinism would have been, and the party of the Prince de Conde purged of faction! More than all, what surety was there in M. the Duke d"Orleans!"
[3] De Retz, tom, ii., p. 205.
[4] The same, p. 214.
But De Retz was not the only politician who terrified himself with the idea of such a future looming thus darkly for France. Mazarin dreaded it as much as he. His authority was almost universally thought to be for ever annihilated; but a small number of courtiers who could read the Queen"s heart, judged otherwise, and owed to the skilful line of conduct to which they adhered under these circ.u.mstances the high fortune to which they attained in the sequel.
There is little doubt that, in the first instance, Conde might have carried off the Regency from the Queen, deprived as she was of her prime minister, and by her own acknowledgment incapable of governing by herself; but then the direction of affairs belonged by right to the Duke d"Orleans, of whom Conde was jealous. Conde, however, preferred to keep the Regency in the Queen"s hands, and by rendering himself formidable to the Government, forcing it to reckon with him. If that union of the Princes between themselves and the Fronde faction had subsisted, the re-establishment of the royal authority would have been impossible: and the commencement of the reign of Louis the Fourteenth, who, although he had only completed his thirteenth year, was about, by the force of an exceptional law, to be declared of age, would have offered the spectacle, so frequent in French annals,[5] of a state a prey to the divulsion of factions and the horrors of anarchy.
[5] Retz--La Rochefoucauld--Joly.
But for the happiness of France and the Queen-Regent, Conde was as unskilful in politics as he was great in war. He kept none of the promises he had made to the chiefs of the Fronde, the authors of his deliverance. The marriage of the Prince de Conti and Mademoiselle de Chevreuse, which had been the base of the treaty, and involved other engagements, was, as we have seen, remorselessly broken off. The Queen Regent, in order to succeed in bringing back her favourite minister to power, had the tact to conceal his advances, and therefore chose in the first instance to replace him by Chavigny, who was his personal enemy.
Then she negotiated with all parties, and skilfully opposed the Fronde to the Prince de Conde, the latter to the Duke d"Orleans, the parliament to the a.s.sembly of the n.o.bles, the aversion to Mazarin to the fear which the Coadjutor inspired. Her ministers, whom she abused, had only the semblance of power; all that was real was possessed by Mazarin. From Bruhl, his place of exile, he governed France; the Queen adopted no resolution without its having been inspired by him, or met with his approval. Thus hidden by the Regent"s mantle, the Cardinal followed with vigilant eye the quarrels of the Prince de Conde and the Frondeurs, fomenting them and inflaming them by every means at his disposal, prodigalising to Conde promises which must in the highest degree have alarmed the Fronde, and entangling him daily more and more in the meshes of intricate, tortuous negotiations, until he had seen the separation, for which he manoeuvred, irremediably consummated. Then he stopped, and began insensibly even to fall back. The placing of Provence in the Prince de Conti"s hands was deferred; and in fact it was held in reserve for the Duke de Mercoeur, the eldest son of the Duke de Vendome, who was seeking the hand of one of Mazarin"s nieces; and it was also found inexpedient to deprive the Duke de Saint-Simon of Blaye to give it to La Rochefoucauld; and a thousand other difficulties of a like nature were raised, which both astonished and irritated Conde. Since he broke with the Fronde, it was apparently to unite himself with the Queen, and the higher his ambition soared, the more necessary it was to cover it with respect and deference, in order to hasten and secure the treaty on foot, and to enchain the monarchy with his own fate. But the fiery Conde was incapable of such a line of conduct. Finding unexpected obstacles where previously he had met with facilities and hopeful antic.i.p.ations, he lost his temper, and resumed the imperious tone which already, in 1649, had embroiled him with the Queen and Mazarin.
It appears also that Madame de Longueville shared in the soaring illusions of her brother, and that she bore but indifferently well her newly blown prosperity. Madame de Motteville gives us to understand so with her usual moderation, and the d.u.c.h.ess de Nemours rejoices to say so with all the acrimony and doubtless also the exaggeration of hatred.[6]
It must, indeed, be owned, with the heroic instincts of Conde, Madame de Longueville shared also his haughty spirit. All her contemporaries ascribe to her an innate majesty which did not show itself on ordinary occasions; far from it, she was simple, amiable, adding thereto, when desirous of pleasing, a caressing and irresistible gentleness; but, with people whom she disliked, she intrenched herself in a frigid dignity, and Anne of Austria and she had never loved one another. A misplaced haughtiness towards the Queen is attributed to her. One day, says Madame de Nemours, she kept her waiting for two or three hours. It is very doubtful whether Madame de Longueville could have so far forgotten herself; but it is not impossible that she may have imagined, as well as her brother, that the fortunes of their house, having emerged more brilliant than ever from so rude a tempest, had no longer to dread the recurrence of further ill-omened shocks.
[6] Madame de Motteville, tom. iv., p. 346; Madame de Nemours, p. 106.
They deceived themselves: an immense peril was hanging over their heads.
Immediately that Madame de Chevreuse had seen that the Queen was growing colder towards Conde, and did not seem disposed to keep the promises that had been made him, her keen-sighted animosity instantly determined her course of action, and being for ever separated from Conde, she again drew towards the Queen with an offer of her services and those of her entire party against the common enemy. Mazarin, recognising the error he had committed in giving himself two enemies at the same time, and that at that moment the redoubtable individual, the man who at any cost must be destroyed, was Conde, very quickly forgot his grudges against Madame de Chevreuse, and advised the acceptance of her propositions. The Queen, it appears, was very averse to receive De Retz, or avail herself of his services; she detested him almost as much as she did Conde, well knowing that they were the two most dangerous enemies of him without whom she did not believe that she could really reign. Mazarin exhorted her himself to flatter De Retz"s ambition, and, marvellously understanding each other at a distance--almost as well as when in each other"s presence,--they composed and played out in the most perfect manner a comedy of which De Retz himself seems to have been the dupe, and of which Conde was very nearly being the victim.
Madame de Chevreuse has already been depicted both in good and evil, in her natural intelligence, quickness, keen introspection, and political genius, in her indomitable courage and audacity, and all that she was capable of undertaking in order to attain her objects. It will now be necessary to thoroughly understand De Retz"s character, in order to perceive clearly the peril with which Conde was menaced.
By nature yet more restless than ambitious, a bad priest, impatient of his condition and having long struggled to emanc.i.p.ate himself from it, Paul de Gondi had prepared himself for cabals by composing or translating the life of a celebrated conspirator. Then, pa.s.sing quickly from theory to practice, he had entered into one of the most sinister plots framed against Richelieu, and for his first experiment he had accepted the task, he, a young abbe, of a.s.sa.s.sinating the Cardinal at the altar during the ceremony of Mademoiselle de Montpensier"s baptism.
In 1643, he had not hesitated to throw himself into the arms of the _Importants_; but the t.i.tle of Coadjutor of Paris, which had just been conferred upon him as a recompense for the virtues and services of his father, arrested him. The Fronde seemed created altogether expressly for him. He shared the parentage of it along with La Rochefoucauld. In vain in his Memoirs does he studiedly put forward general considerations: like La Rochefoucauld, he was only working for himself, and at least had the candour to own it. Compelled to remain in the Church, De Retz desired to rise in it as high as possible. He aspired to a cardinal"s hat, and soon obtained it, thanks to his inscrutable manoeuvring; but his supreme object was the post of prime minister, and to reach it, he played that double game which he so craftily concerted and so skilfully played out. Seeing that Mazarin and Conde were not heads of a government which would leave to others acting with them any great share of importance, he undertook to overthrow them, the one by the other, to carve out his way between them by them, and to raise upon their ruin the Duke d"Orleans, under whose name he would govern. To effect this he incessantly urged alike the Duke, the parliament, and the people, to demand, as the first condition of any reconciliation with the Court, the dismissal of Mazarin, and at the same time he, under a mask, exhibited himself as a benevolent conciliator between royalty and the Fronde, promising the Queen, the indispensable sacrifice accomplished, to smooth all difficulties, and to bring over to her the Duke d"Orleans by separating him from Conde. Such was the real mainspring of all De Retz"s movements--even those seemingly the most contrary: first the cardinalate, then the premiership under the auspices of the Duke d"Orleans, a.s.sociated in some sort with royalty, without Mazarin or Conde. He was fain to hide his secret under the guise of the public weal, but that secret revealed itself by the very efforts he made to conceal it, and it did not escape the penetration of La Rochefoucauld, his accomplice at the outset of the Fronde, afterwards his adversary, who had a perfect knowledge of his character, and who had sketched it with a masterly hand, as De Retz also thoroughly comprehended and admirably depicted La Rochefoucauld. De Retz was indeed the evil genius of the Fronde. He always hindered it from progressing whether led by Mazarin or Conde, because he merely desired to have a weak government which he could dominate. To arrive at that end, he was capable of anything--tortuous intrigues, anonymous pamphlets, hypocritical sermons from the pulpit, studied orations in parliament, popular insurrections and desperate _coups de main_. Such was the man who, towards the end of May, 1651, was admitted, much against her will, into the secret councils of Anne of Austria.
Anything was to be tried, however, which might deliver her from the exactions of Conde. It was absolutely necessary that she should either grant his demands, or find some support to enable her to resist them.
She accordingly despatched Marshal du Plessis to speak with De Retz, at the archbishopric, towards one o"clock in the morning, at which hour he generally returned from his nocturnal visits to Mademoiselle de Chevreuse. De Retz was willing to seize the opportunity of avenging himself upon Conde, and probably judged he might do so without bringing about the return of Mazarin. He accepted, then, at once the Queen"s invitation, and flung the letter of safe-conduct which she had sent him into the fire, in order to show his confidence in her promises. The following night, at twelve o"clock, he was brought into the Queen"s Oratory by a back staircase, and a long conversation ensued between them. Anne of Austria was very caressing in her manner towards the Coadjutor, and sought, after winning her way to his confidence, to embroil him with Chateauneuf, by informing him that it was that friend of Madame de Chevreuse who was the most opposed to his cardinalate, because he wanted the hat for himself. It must be remembered that France at that moment had the appointment of a cardinal at its disposition, and it had been long promised to the Prince de Conti. Anne of Austria now offered it to De Retz who, in reply, at the end of a long harangue, during which the Queen interrupted him impatiently more than once, a.s.sured her that he had not come there to receive favours, but to merit them.
"What will you do for me, then?" asked the Queen. "What will you do?"
"Madam," replied he, "I will oblige the Prince de Conde to quit Paris ere eight days are over, and will carry off the Duke d"Orleans from him before to-morrow night."
The Queen, transported with joy, extended her hand to him saying--"Give me your hand on that, and the day after to-morrow you are a cardinal, and moreover the second amongst my friends."
A few days afterwards, De Retz and Madame de Chevreuse had raised the entire Fronde against the Prince de Conde. The worthy archbishop had announced his approach to the enemy he was about to attack by a cloud of the same kind of libels, satires, and epigrams, which he had always found so efficacious in prejudicing the people of Paris against any one whom he thought fit to hold forth to popular odium. At the same time a mult.i.tude of criers and hawkers were sent through the town, spreading, at the very lowest price, all the sarcasms which had been composed at the archbishopric in the morning, to render the conduct of Conde ridiculous, contemptible, and hateful in the eyes of the mult.i.tude.
At length, when the Coadjutor believed that everything had been sufficiently prepared, he made the Palatine write to inform the Queen that he was about to go to the parliament. Mademoiselle de Chevreuse was with the Regent at the time she received this intimation; and the delight which it occasioned was so great that the virtuous and pious Anne of Austria caught the archbishop"s mistress in her arms, and kissed her more than once, exclaiming, with no very great regard for decorum, "You rogue! you are now doing me as much good as you have hitherto done me harm."
De Retz kept his word, and went to the parliament, but the progress against Conde was so slow that Mazarin, the Queen, and De Retz, began to revolve more summary measures, and, towards the latter part of June, their deliberations ended in a sinister project of again arresting or of a.s.sa.s.sinating Conde.
This obscure affair, as yet only partially unveiled, and which probably will never be so entirely, is not so dark and impenetrable, however, as to prevent us from seeing, within the shadow thereof, fearful and criminal purposes, to which even the more open vices of the age are comparatively light. We are told by De Retz that the Marshal de Hocquincourt, with more frankness than the rest, proposed in direct terms to a.s.sa.s.sinate Conde. The Coadjutor himself, however, Madame de Chevreuse, and other leaders of the Fronde, but above all Senneterre, who had about this time obtained a great share of the Queen"s confidence, opposed not only the bold crime proposed at first by Hocquincourt, but also all the schemes which he and others afterwards suggested, and which, though apparently more mild, were all likely to end in the same event.
Rumours of what was meditated soon reached the Prince"s ears, who then saw clearly the nature of his position. He perceived that he had quarrelled thoroughly and for ever with the Frondeurs and with the Queen, and that henceforth he was placed between imprisonment and a.s.sa.s.sination. He felt certain that this time, should he fall into the hands of his enemies, he would be treated far more harshly than in 1650, and that probably he might never see the light again. He despised death, but the idea of perpetual incarceration was insupportable to him, and that idea fastening itself by degrees on his mind caused projects to enter into it which until then had only momentarily crossed it.
Too high-minded to quit Paris as though he were terrified, Conde exhibited no change in his conduct; merely confining himself to no longer visiting the Palais-Royal or the Palais d"Orleans, and never going abroad without a numerous escort of officers and retainers.
Already for some time past foreseeing the storm that was gathering against him, he had taken serious measures to confront it: he had strengthened all the fortresses that were in his hands. He had despatched to Flanders the Marquis de Sillery, La Rochefoucauld"s brother-in-law, under pretext of finally disengaging Madame de Longueville and Turenne from the treaties they had made with the Spaniards in 1650, with secret instructions to renew them, and to ascertain how far he might reckon on the a.s.sistance of Spain if he were compelled to draw the sword. The Count de Fuensaldagne did not fail, agreeable to the policy of his court, to promise much more than was asked of him, and he omitted nothing calculated to stir up Conde to have recourse to arms.
Chance had a share in urging Conde to take a further and almost decisive step in the dangerous path that was opening before him. One evening, just as he had lain down on his bed and was chatting with Vineuil, one of his trusty friends, the latter received a note which directed him to warn the Prince that two companies of guards were advancing on the side of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. It was thought that those troops were about to invest the hotel. Conde jumped out of bed, dressed himself, mounted his horse instantly, and, accompanied by a few attendants, took his way through the faubourg Saint-Michel. On gaining the high road, he heard the clatter of a somewhat strong body of hors.e.m.e.n approaching, and thinking that it was the squadron in search of him, he fell back at first in the direction of Meudon; then, instead of re-entering Paris, when day broke he sought an asylum in his chateau of Saint-Maur. He reached it on the morning of the 6th of July; and it may readily be guessed what the effect, in Paris and throughout the kingdom, of such a retreat was, and for such motives. The Princess de Conde, the Prince de Conti, Madame de Longueville, La Rochefoucauld, the Duke de Nemours, the Duke de Richelieu, the Prince"s most intimate friends, and more than one ill.u.s.trious personage, such as the Duke de Bouillon and Turenne, repaired immediately to Saint-Maur. In a day or two, Conde saw himself surrounded by a court as brilliant and as numerous as that of the King, and there he kept up a right royal festivity. After a while he sent a considerable number of officers disguised into Paris, who bestirred themselves in every quarter in his favour; and when he considered himself in a position to hold his own against both the Queen and the Frondeurs together, he quitted Saint-Maur and returned to his hotel near the Palais d"Orleans, desiring to put a good complexion on the aspect of his affairs and to impose upon his enemies by that bold and high-minded conduct.[7] He appeared again also in the parliament, now once more become the battle-field of parties. De Retz, full of his own individual hatred, augmented by that of Madame de Chevreuse, seconded at once by the friends of the Duke d"Orleans and by those of the Queen, burning to tear from the Court and win, by serving it, the cardinal"s hat, the object of his ardent desires, the necessary stepping-stone to his ambition, brought all his courage and vanity towards enacting the part of the Prince"s enemy. And there, during the months of July and August, in that pretended sanctuary of law and justice, pa.s.sed all those deplorable scenes which De Retz and La Rochefoucauld have related, and in which Mazarin, from his retreat on the banks of the Rhine, rejoiced to see his two enemies waste their strength, and work unwittingly but surely their common ruin and his approaching triumph.
[7] La Rochefoucauld, p. 83.
A crisis was clearly inevitable. Conde could no longer perceive any sign of a pacific issue from the position in which he had been placed, or rather in which he had placed himself, and at his right hand stood Madame de Longueville and the Prince de Conti, who held no opinions contrary to those of his sister, urging him to cut the knot which he knew not how to untie. La Rochefoucauld stopped him for a moment on the threshold of war, entreating Conde to allow him to undertake fresh negotiations. The Prince consented willingly thereto. Madame de Longueville was opposed to it. La Rochefoucauld, speaking to her with that authority which his long devotion gave him, represented to her the terrible responsibility which she took upon herself both towards Conde and the State, and he obtained from her a promise that she would withdraw for a time from the arena of strife, and accompany her sister-in-law, the Princess de Conde, to Berri, and allow him to remain in Paris by the side of Conde in order to make a last essay towards conjuring the tempest.
The fitting moment has now arrived to examine the conduct of Madame de Longueville in these grave conjunctures, the different feelings which animated her, and the true and lamentable motive which determined her thus to hurry her brother into civil war, and herself with him.