It was especially after the arrest of the Princes that her zeal and intelligence found occasion to manifest themselves. Madame de Longueville, as has been said, instantly sought the aid of Anne de Gonzagua when she learned that her two brothers and her husband were prisoners. The news made her swoon, and her despair was afterwards pitiable. The Princess Palatine was touched by it, and promised to operate on behalf of the Princes. From that moment she became, without entering into faction and especially without failing in her duties towards a sovereign whom she loved, one of the most active friends of the prisoners. Meetings were held under her roof to deliberate upon that important affair, and, to compa.s.s her ends, she contrived to bring into play the most varied resources. She began by interesting in the Princes"
destiny those even who might have been thought the most irreconcileable enemies to them. However difficult this work was of accomplishment, she reunited, as in a fasces, in a single will, personages widely separated upon other points, and surprised to find that they were pursuing the same object, for none of them knew the motives which influenced the actions of the rest. On this head, Bossuet says, with somewhat excessive laudation, she declared to the chiefs of parties how far she would bind herself, and she was believed to be incapable of either deceiving or being deceived. That is rather a hazardous a.s.sertion, for if she indeed aided in the liberation of the Princes, none of the promises she made--in all sincerity doubtless--became realised. But, says Bossuet further, and this time with more precision, "her peculiar characteristic was to conciliate opposite interests, and, in raising herself above them, to discover the secret point of junction and knot, as it were, by which they might be united." She had resolved to win over the Duke d"Orleans, Madame de Chevreuse, De Retz, and the keeper of the seals, Chateauneuf. She therefore signed with them four different treaties. With the Duke d"Orleans she promised the hand of the young Duke d"Enghien in marriage to one of the Prince"s daughters; to Madame de Chevreuse that of Mademoiselle de Chevreuse to the Prince de Conti; to De Retz, the cardinal"s hat; to Chateauneuf, the post of prime minister. All consented to favour the princess"s designs, and Mazarin, whom she could not convince, found himself surrounded by enemies whose union was formidable. That minister made allusion to the dread with which he was inspired when he remarked some years afterwards to Don Louis de Haro: "The most turbulent among the men does not give us so much trouble to keep him in check as the intrigues of a d.u.c.h.ess de Chevreuse or a Princess Palatine." In vain, according to his wont, did he again attempt to temporise. Anne de Gonzagua, who was ready to open fire with all her batteries, sought to terrify him by the perspective of a menacing future. "She caused him to be informed that he was lost if he did not determine upon giving the Princes their liberty, a.s.suring him that if he did not do it promptly he would see, in a few days, the whole Court and every cabal banded against him, and that all aid would fail him." Mazarin, obstinate in his determination, and unwilling to believe that she had so thoroughly played her game as to hold in hand the threads of so many intrigues, begged her to defer the matter, asked time for reflection, and conducted himself in such a way in short that the princess saw clearly that he only wanted to gain time. She therefore hesitated no longer, but allowed those who were agitating impatiently around her to commence action.
The party of the Princes had been dubbed by the name of the _New Fronde_. The old, although it had lost its energy by its union with the Court, preserved nevertheless its hatred to the prime minister. It was not in De Retz"s power to neutralise wholly these hostile dispositions; but he could hinder them from being brought into dangerous activity. The Coadjutor at first with that view acted in good faith, and remained faithful in the first moments of the agreement which he had entered into with the Queen. Probably it might then have been possible to attach him finally to the Court party; but Mazarin could not believe that the Coadjutor, so fertile in tricks, so full of finesse, was capable of anything like frankness and generosity. In the practical experience of life, mistrust has its perils as well as blind confidence, and failure as often happens to us through our unwillingness to believe in virtue, as through our inability to suspect vice. Mazarin judged after himself a man who resembled him in many respects, but not in all. Moreover, he feared lest he might seek to win the Queen"s affection from him; and that fear was not groundless. De Retz saw himself the object of the suspicions and afterwards of the machinations of a power which laboured at his destruction, whilst for that power he was compromising his influence and his popularity. To reacquire it, he hastened, therefore, to throw himself with all his adherents on the side of the Princes, and saw no safety but in their deliverance. This alliance of the two camps, so long enemies, was concluded between the Coadjutor and the Princess Palatine, and rendered so firm and secret by the confidence with which these two party chiefs inspired each other, that Mazarin, who unceasingly dreaded such a union, and who always suspected it, did not know it for certain until it revealed itself by its effects.[3]
[3] Motteville--Joly--Lenet.
The parliament formed a fourth party. Not that that body was unanimous; but it had within itself an honourable majority which was alike inimical to the Frondeurs, the seditious, and the minister. The parliament therefore would have been disposed to unite itself to the Princes"
party, and to lend it support; but to do so it would have been necessary that the chiefs of that party should renounce all alliance with the foreigner. Turenne and Madame de Longueville had joined with the Spaniards to fight against France. The young Princess de Conde, with the Dukes de Bouillon and de la Rochefoucauld, who had shut themselves up in Bordeaux, had entered into an alliance with them, and had received from them succour in the shape of money. The Spanish envoys in Paris conferred daily with the chiefs of the old as of the new Fronde.
Gaston, who might have been the moderator of all these parties, formed by himself a fifth among them. His irresolution prevented him giving strength to any other of the factions, but he const.i.tuted a formidable obstacle to all the rest. His inclination, as well as his interest, should never have made him deviate from the Court party; yet he was always opposed to it. Impelled by his jealousy of Conde and of the prime minister, he acted in a manner contrary to his own wishes. He was, however, neither wanting in intelligence nor finesse, nor even a certain kind of eloquence; and the master-stroke of De Retz"s address was to have contrived, in furtherance of the object of his designs, to set Gaston with the Fronde against the Princes, and afterwards for the Princes against Mazarin.
The complication and the multiplicity of parties was as nothing in comparison to that of private interests, which so crossed each other and in so many different ways, which turned with such mobility, that, in the ignorance which prevailed of the secret motives of the princ.i.p.al actors in that drama so vivid, motley, and turbulent, nothing could be predicated of what they would do, and a looker-on might have been disposed at times to have p.r.o.nounced them as insensates, who were rather their own enemies than those of their antagonists.
If the libels of those times are to be credited, and especially the satire in verse for which the poet Marlet was sentenced to be hanged, the obstinacy with which the Queen exposed to danger her son"s crown, by retaining a minister detested by all, would be naturally explained by a reason other than that of a reason of state. The advocate-general Talon, Madame de Motteville, and the d.u.c.h.ess de Nemours exculpate Anne of Austria on this head. They are three respectable and trustworthy witnesses; and, without any doubt, that which they said they thought.
But the d.u.c.h.ess d"Orleans, Elizabeth-Charlotte, affirms in her correspondence[4] that Anne of Austria had secretly married Cardinal Mazarin, who was not a priest. She says that all the details of the marriage were known, and that, in her time, the back staircase in the Palais Royal was pointed out by which at night Mazarin reached the Queen"s apartments. She observes that such clandestine marriages were common at that period, and cites that of the widow of our Charles the First, who secretly espoused her equerry, Jermyn. One might be disposed to think that the d.u.c.h.ess Elizabeth-Charlotte could have only followed some tradition, and that her a.s.sertions cannot counterbalance the statements of the contemporary personages above mentioned. But certain species of facts are often better known long after the death of the persons to whom they relate, than during their lifetime, or at a time close upon their decease; they are not entirely unveiled until there no longer exists any motive to keep them secret. Of the Queen"s sentiments towards Mazarin there can be no doubt after reading a letter which she addressed to him under date of June 30, 1660, which is extant in autograph,[5] the avowal she made to Madame de Brienne in her oratory,[6] the confidences of Madame de Chevreuse to Cardinal de Retz.[7] Moreover, whatever may have been the motives of Anne of Austria"s attachment to Mazarin, it is certain that they were all-powerful over her. She lent herself to every project formed by her minister for the increase of his power and fortune. The war in Bordeaux was kindled because Mazarin desired that one of his nieces should be united to the Duke de Candale, son of the Duke d"Epernon; and, in order not to let the Swiss soldiers march thither without their pay, when their aid was most necessary, Anne of Austria put her diamonds in pledge, and would not allow Mazarin to be answerable for the sum required to be disbursed.
[4] Mem. sur la Cour de Louis XIV. et de la Regence, d"Elizabeth-Charlotte d.u.c.h.esse d"Orleans, Mere du Regent. 1823, p. 319.
[5] MS. Bibliotheque Nationale.
[6] Lomenie de Brienne, Memoirs, 1828.
[7] Retz, Memoirs, edition 1836.
CHAPTER II
THE YOUNG PRINCESS DE CONDe CONDUCTS THE WAR IN THE SOUTH.
TO generous and feeling hearts, Conde"s misfortune presented all the characteristics of a real romance. The majority of the women therefore who meddled with politics were, through sympathy, of his party. The glory of France under lock and key! The young hero arrested for treason, and prisoner to whom? The foreign Cardinal Mazarin. All the spoils of the Condes distributed amongst the _sbires_ of the favourite,--Normandy to Harcourt, Champagne to L"Hospital, &c. A monstrous alliance between King and people. The Queen keeping the Bastille in the hands of Broussel"s son--the highest posts bestowed upon the magistrates--a reversal, in fact, of everything. Did not the French n.o.bility rise to a man against such a state of things?
No, everything was at a standstill. Neither Conde"s military clients, nor his numerous seigniories, nor his governments took any active part whatsoever. Far from it, Madame de Longueville, as we have seen, who thought to raise Normandy, everywhere met with a repulse in that province. Neither Turenne nor she could do anything save by accepting aid from Spain, for which Madame de Bouillon was also doing her best in Paris.
But whilst that lovely amazon, Conde"s sister, was occupied in her endeavours to lure the hero of Stenay into the party of revolt by intoxicating him with love, and wasting time in negotiation and parade, a succour more direct and much more energetic was given to Conde from a quarter he had the least expected--from his own chateau of Chantilly. He had there left his aged mother, his young wife, and a son seven years old. Mazarin hesitated to have these ladies arrested, fearing the force of public opinion. The mother went to hide herself in Paris, and one morning appeared before the Parliament, suppliant, weeping sorely, stooping so far as to kneel in prayer, to flattery, and even to falsehood. All being unavailing, she went home to die.
But most astonishing was the unexpected courage of Conde"s young wife, Claire Clemence de Maille, that despised niece of Richelieu, whom the victorious soldier had married under compulsion, and whose heir was the son of the minister"s absolute will. On the arrest of her husband she had been confided to the care of a man of capacity--Lenet, from whose "Memoirs" we have already cited. He at first conducted her and her son in safety from Chantilly to Montrond, a stronghold of the Condes, but fearing to be besieged in it, straightway to Bordeaux. The Parliament of Guienne had had a deadly quarrel with Mazarin for imposing upon them Epernon, a governor they detested, and whom the Cardinal was bent upon allying by marriage with his own family. Great therefore was the emotion of this city and parliament at seeing that young lady of two-and-twenty in deep mourning, with her innocent boy, who caught the brave Bordelais by their beards with his little hands, and besought their help towards the liberation of his father. The Princess"s retinue enhanced not a little this favourable impression, formed as it was of high-born women, for the most part young and charming.
The popular explosion was lively, as always happens among the people of the south. But even the narrative of Lenet shows clearly the slender foundation upon which this semblance of popular insurrection rested. The lower orders, then living in great misery, hoped to obtain through the Princess some opening for their foreign trade, which would better enable them to dispose of their wines and help them to live. Mazarin kept down the local Parliament, and carried everything through sheer terror.
Bouillon and La Rochefoucauld, the Princess"s advisers, recommended that a royal envoy should be cut to pieces. Lenet dreaded lest such an act, somewhat over-energetic, might render his mistress less popular. Twice or thrice the populace were very nearly putting the Parliament to the sword, the majority of which was kept under through sheer terror of the knife. Spain promised money, and they had the simplicity to believe her.
She hardly gave them a pitiful alms. Meanwhile, however, Mazarin, having quietly occupied Normandy and Burgundy, made his way towards Guienne with the royal army. The Bordelais showed an intrepid front, though somewhat disquieted to see the soldiery about to gather the fruits of the vintage instead of themselves. The Princess only maintained herself in the place through the aid of the rabble _va-nu-pieds_, who feasted and danced all night at her expense, and who shouted in her ears a hundred ribald jests against Mazarin, compelling both herself and her son to repeat them. This abas.e.m.e.nt into which she had fallen made her desire peace for herself, and permission to leave the city, which was granted to her, with vague promises of liberating Conde (3rd October, 1650).
The d.u.c.h.ess de Bouillon had been quite as ardent in politics during the burlesque activity of the Fronde as Madame de Longueville; and although, perhaps, equally beautiful, happily she was entirely devoted to her domestic duties. Her husband on taking flight had been constrained to leave her behind in Paris, she being near her accouchement, which circ.u.mstance however did not prevent the Queen from giving an order for her arrest. Although the royal guards were already in the house, the d.u.c.h.ess contrived to effect the escape of her sons, and during that same day gave birth to her babe. Shortly afterwards she found a means of eluding the guard set over her, and would have rejoined her husband, had her daughter not been attacked with small-pox, but having returned home to nurse her, was arrested at her bedside and carried to the Bastille.
The d.u.c.h.ess de Chevreuse, always gallant, in spite of waning beauty, const.i.tuted herself the mediatrix between the Queen and the _Frondeurs_; and although her daughter had openly become the mistress of the Coadjutor, it was already contemplated to make her the wife of the Prince de Conti, as a condition of the arrangement by which he should be set free. Beaufort still continued to be the obsequious lover of Madame de Montbazon, and, through her, Mazarin was kept well acquainted with all his secrets.
No other power than that of female influence could have attached the French n.o.bility to the Prince de Conde, and determined it to take up arms for his release. In fact, his hauteur, his brusquerie, his brutality even, had, in repeated instances, offended that body, and the Queen imagined that the bulk of the French gentry would witness his arrest with as much pleasure as the citizens. But the women had been fascinated by the _eclat_ of his four victories; they agreed to call him the champion, the hero of France, and it seemed to them that they shared his heroism in devoting themselves to his cause. As for the higher n.o.bility, they were not bound by any political principle; they were very indifferent to the grandeur of France; very ignorant of its pretensions in foreign affairs, or to what it had been pledged with other nations. They loved war in the first place for its dangers, and in the second for the honours and wealth they got by fighting; but even in the army, far from making fidelity and obedience a rule of conduct, they cherished a spirit of independence and resistance to the Crown, and would only allow themselves to be influenced by their chivalric usages.
They gloried in showing themselves reckless of the future, caring more about the glitter of the present than steady progressive advancement; equally prodigal of fortune as of life, they were p.r.o.ne to follow impulse rather than calculation; so that what we should perhaps call a reckless frivolity was looked upon by them as a sentiment invested with all the charm of brilliant gallantry. Those even whom neither their affection nor their interest summoned to the standards of the captive Princes, rushed gaily from the midst of their ease and festivity into civil war at the first prompting of their mistresses.
Gaston d"Orleans, after having consented to the imprisonment of the Princes, only decided upon entering into the project for their deliverance under promise of a marriage of his daughter, the d.u.c.h.ess d"Alencon, with the boy-Duke d"Enghien, Conde"s son. Turenne and La Rochefoucauld, too, often thought less of their glory or the success of their party, than of what might be agreeable to the d.u.c.h.ess de Longueville, of whose love they were so envious. More obscure _liaisons_, which have even escaped the anecdotic abundance of the memoir-writers of those days, appear also to have exercised their influence over the conduct of the highest personages. In a letter which De Retz wrote to Turenne, and which he frankly characterises as being remarkably silly, the Coadjutor does not disguise that amongst many serious motives which he gives that great warrior for inducing him to determine upon peace, he does not forget to hold out a hope of his seeing once more a little grisette of the Rue des Pet.i.ts-Champs, whom Turenne loved with all his heart. The feeblest motives had influence over such men, all young and ardent as they were--the followers of different factions, though without prejudices, principles, convictions, without hatred and without affection. The women therefore naturally played important parts in all these events, to whom the species of gallantry and worship of beauty held in honour by the Hotel de Rambouillet was quite familiar. Thus nothing could be expected of the Duke de Beaufort, even in that which concerned him closest, if not a.s.sured previously of the consent of the d.u.c.h.ess de Montbazon, who exercised plenary power over him. Nemours, enamoured of the d.u.c.h.ess de Chatillon, loved likewise by the Prince de Conde, warmly embraced the cause of that Prince, because his mistress prompted him thereto; and the d.u.c.h.ess de Nemours had moved heaven and earth to obtain Conde"s deliverance, in the hope that he would keep sharp watch over the d.u.c.h.ess de Chatillon, and put a stop to her husband"s infidelity.
De Retz too, notwithstanding the superiority of his intellect, allowed himself to give way, through his inclination for the fair s.e.x, to the commission of indiscretions and imprudences which often placed his life in danger, and caused his best-concerted measures to prove abortive. To appease the jealousy of Mademoiselle de Chevreuse he permitted himself to make use of a contemptuous expression concerning the Queen, which was repeated, and which became the cause of the violent hatred she ever afterwards bore him. The Princess de Guemenee, furious at having been abandoned, offered the Queen, if she would consent to it, to procure the disappearance of the Coadjutor by sending him an invitation, and then having him confined in a cellar of her hotel. De Retz learned that a design to a.s.sa.s.sinate him had been formed, and whenever he repaired to the Hotel de Chevreuse, by way of precaution placed sentinels outside the gate of that mansion, and quite close to the Queen"s sentries who guarded the Palais-Royal, without heeding the effect such an excess of insolence and scandal produced. With every kind of talent fitting to dominate party spirit, he failed to acquire the confidence of anyone. He regarded all alliance with the foreigner as odious and impolitic; and notwithstanding, when his embarra.s.sments increased, he lent an ear to the Archduke"s envoy, and even to that of Cromwell. At the same time, full of admiration for the Marquis of Montrose, whom he called a hero worthy of Plutarch, he contracted the closest friendship with the Scottish royalist, and aided him to the utmost of his ability in the efforts he was making to restore to the throne the legitimate King of Great Britain. De Retz, in few words, appeared anxious to show himself as taking pleasure in exhausting every kind of contrast. When the intricate plot of the drama in which he was engaged had become so complicated by his intrigues, that he no longer saw the possibility of unravelling it, he sought means to retire from the situation with the greatest advantage practicable for himself and friends, and to obtain the Cardinal"s hat. The marriage of Mademoiselle de Chevreuse with the Prince de Conti became the essential condition of all the negotiations which he carried on, whether with the Court or with the d.u.c.h.ess de Chevreuse. The remembrance of an old and close friendship, the habit of a familiarity contracted in youth, gave the d.u.c.h.ess de Chevreuse a means of influence over that Queen, so fixed in her hatred, so inconstant in her friendships. Anne of Austria, who then, moreover, found herself very miserable through the obstacles which so many factions created, had partially restored the d.u.c.h.ess to her confidence. Madame de Chevreuse appeared also to have the same interests as De Retz, since, like him, she desired intensely the union of her daughter with a Prince of the blood. But she had large sums of money to recover from the Government, and the success of her claims depended on the decision of the prime minister. She therefore used her utmost tact with Mazarin, negotiating at the same time with him, as well as with the Old and the New Fronde.
She turned to her own profit the influence that her connections at Court, with the Coadjutor, and with the Princes gave her in all the several factions. She was a.s.sisted in her intrigues by the Marquis de Laignes, a man of courage but little intellect, who, from the time of her exile at Brussels, had declared himself her lover in order to gain importance in the faction of the Fronde, which he had embraced. As little more of the attractions of her youth were left to Madame de Chevreuse, save their pristine celebrity, she had not always to congratulate herself upon the good humour and behaviour of De Laignes.
The latter had been until then wholly devoted to the Coadjutor; but De Retz soon perceived that De Laignes entered into projects different from his own. At length, to have some one who could be responsible to him for Madame de Chevreuse, he endeavoured to subst.i.tute Hacqueville as a go-between in the place of De Laignes. Hacqueville was the intimate friend of De Retz and also of Madame de Sevigne; and seconded by Madame de Chevreuse and Madame de Rhodes, De Retz might have succeeded in the expulsion of Laignes, if Hacqueville would have consented to that project. No man could be more obliging than Hacqueville; but, notwithstanding the disposition he showed to be useful to his friends, he shrank from such continual immolation of himself. Probably also he was too honest a man to lend himself to such a procedure.
Madame de Sevigne,--in every way qualified to play a distinguished part in the exciting game of politics,--was so entirely devoted to her husband and children as to be a stranger to all these intrigues; but she was more or less connected with the persons who seconded the Coadjutor"s projects, and consequently with the d.u.c.h.ess de Chevreuse. An article in the "Muse Historique" of Loret shows how intimate was the connection of Madame de Sevigne with that d.u.c.h.ess. In the month of July, 1850, on returning from a promenade in the Cours, then the fashionable drive among the highest society, the Marquis and Marchioness de Sevigne gave a splendid supper to the d.u.c.h.ess de Chevreuse. The noisy manner in which the Frondeurs expressed their delight made this nocturnal repast almost a.s.sume the character of an orgie; and, for that reason, it became for awhile the talk of the capital. The rhyming gazetteer thus expresses himself on the subject:
On fait ici grand" mention D"une belle collation Qu"a la d.u.c.h.esse de Chevreuse Sevigne, de race frondeuse, Donna depuis quatre ou cinq jours, Quand on fut revenue du Cours.
On y vit briller aux chandelles Des gorges pa.s.sablement belles; On y vit nombre de galants; On y mangea des ortolans; On chanta des chansons a boire; On dit cent fois non--oui--non, voire.
La Fronde, dit-on, y claqua; Un plat d"argent on escroqua; On repandit quelque potage, Et je n"en sais pas davantage.[1]
[1] Loret, Muse Historique, liv. i., p. 28, Letter 10.
It will be seen from these details, that already the manners and customs of the great world reflected the licence of the civil wars, and that they no longer resembled those of which the Hotel de Rambouillet still presented a purer model. It may be possible also that there was some exaggeration in Loret"s description: he belonged to the Court party, received a pension of two hundred crowns from Mazarin, and detested the Fronde. His rhyming gazette was addressed to his protectress, Mademoiselle de Longueville, so much the more opposed to the Fronde that her stepmother was the heroine of that faction. Mademoiselle de Longueville, whose harsh strictures upon the Conde family have been cited, and who subsequently became the wife of the Duke de Nemours, is often mentioned in the writings of her time, although she was never mixed up in any political intrigue, nor took part in any event. Her immense fortune, the clearness of her judgment, the elevation of her sentiments, her grand airs, the severe dignity of her manners, and the energy of her character, const.i.tuted her during the Regency and the long reign of Louis XIV. a personage quite apart; who submitted herself to no influence whatever, social or political, and who no more permitted that absolute monarch to induce her to vary in her determinations, than to change the fashion of her external habiliments.
CHAPTER III.
STATE OF PARTIES ON THE LIBERATION OF THE PRINCES--THE CARDS AGAIN SHUFFLED, AND THE FACE OF THE SITUATION CHANGED.
AT the commencement of 1651 all France clamoured for Conde"s liberation.
During the autumn Mazarin had led the Queen and the young King against Bordeaux, then held by the Princess de Conde, carrying--as usual when forced to use both means--a sword in one hand and a roll of parchment in the other. Failing to carry the place with the first, the Cardinal began to negotiate a treaty of peace, the princ.i.p.al item of which was full pardon to the citizens, and by others an agreement that the Princess and her son should retire to Montrond: on these terms the city yielded to its sovereign. The Cardinal also obtained a victory in the field against Turenne, who had entered the service of Spain and fired upon the fleur-de-lis. But with this momentary success of Mazarin"s cause rose his pretensions and demands; and the Fronde, alarmed at his recovered authority, changed its tactics as its Protean genius De Retz frequently did his clothes--his ca.s.sock for a plumed hat and military cloak. It demanded the trial or liberation of the prisoners it had helped to send to Vincennes, without delay, and Mazarin removed them for safe custody to Havre. It then p.r.o.nounced sentence of banishment on the obnoxious minister, and ordered him to quit the kingdom within fifteen days. The town militia kept watch and ward over the Queen, by the command of the Coadjutor, and hindered her flight to join the favourite. She could offer no further resistance to those who now called themselves the friends of Conde, but who were the very same persons who had fought him in the field a few months before. Orders were given to set the captives at liberty. Mazarin himself went to Havre to communicate the news of their freedom, and was received by them with the contempt that he might have expected. Conde took leave of the Cardinal with a ringing peal of laughter, and with joyous acclamations, and bonfires, and firing of guns, made his triumphal entry into Paris.
Conde was now master of the situation. He found himself equally courted by the two other chief parties into which the State was divided--the Queen"s, supported by the Duke de Bouillon, and the now repentant and pardoned Turenne--and the Fronde, which had fallen into the guidance of the Duke d"Orleans, the Coadjutor, and the d.u.c.h.ess de Chevreuse. His own was called "the Prince"s," and comprised Rochefoucauld and other personal friends and military admirers. The Duke d"Orleans had gone on before to meet Conde as far as the plain of St. Denis, accompanied by the two most conspicuous representatives of the Fronde, the Duke de Beaufort and Retz, with the Coadjutor of Paris, and there they all warmly embraced. The Duke, having taken the Prince into his carriage, brought him in great pomp to the Palais Royal to salute the Queen Regent and the young King, and thence to the Palais d"Orleans, where he was feasted magnificently. Some days afterwards (February 25th) a royal ordonnance recognised the innocence of the Princes Conde, Conti, and the Duke de Longueville, and reinstated them in all their posts and governments. On the 27th this ordonnance was confirmed in Parliament amidst loud cheers. Conde thus found himself at the highest degree of power to which a subject could reach. Misfortune had enhanced his military glory; a long captivity, endured with an unalterable serenity and high-hearted gaiety, had carried his popularity to the highest pitch. He was the victor, and, as it were, the designated heir, of Mazarin, who had fled before him, and with difficulty found a refuge without the kingdom, on the banks of the Rhine.
Thus, Anne of Austria in some sort a prisoner, and Mazarin proscribed, the n.o.bility showed itself entirely devoted to the young hero whom it recognized as its chief. Some among them at once proposed that the Queen Mother should be confined in the Val-de-Grace, and that the Prince should himself a.s.sume the Regency, others talked even of raising him to the throne, but Conde did not fail to perceive that his newly acquired power was not so solid as it was sought to make him believe.
Meanwhile, Mazarin having quitted Havre, and the inhabitants of Abbeville refusing him pa.s.sage through their town, he found an asylum for a few days at Dourlens; but he was soon driven thence by the proceedings of the Parliament against him. He then retired to Sedan, where he took counsel with his friend Fabert, whom he had appointed Commandant there. He next proceeded to Cologne, being treated with the utmost distinction and hospitality in all the foreign towns through which he pa.s.sed.
Even in banishment, however, the old influence began to work. The Cardinal from his place of retirement governed the Queen with as absolute a sway as ever, and recommended her, as a keen stroke of policy which would neutralize all parties, to take the young King to a _Bed of Justice_, and cause him to declare his majority. Couriers were going daily between Paris and Cologne; treaties between the Fronde and Mazarin were intercepted or forged, and published in the capital; the post of Prime Minister remained unfilled, and the Duke de Mercoeur, notwithstanding all the thunders of Parliament, set out for Bruhl, with the purpose of marrying Mazarin"s niece. Everything announced that the exile of that hated minister was but temporary, and Conde, perceiving the object of all these moves, prepared for war, and silently took his measures accordingly.
The n.o.bility, who, from the beginning of February, had begun to a.s.semble in order to take part in the expulsion of Mazarin, now held their meetings in the monastery hall of the Cordeliers, where might be seen collected together as many as _eight hundred_ princes, dukes, and n.o.blemen, heads of the most considerable houses in France, all partisans of Conde. As this numerical strength of the enn.o.bled cla.s.ses, together with the multiplicity of t.i.tles among them, is somewhat startling to a youthful English student, it may be well to remark that France had, in fact, three aristocracies in the course of her annals from the Crusades to the reign of Louis XIV. After the time of Louis XI., the representatives of the _first_, or old feudal aristocracy, the descendants of the men who were in reality the King"s peers, and not his actual subjects, were few and far between. These were the holders of vast princ.i.p.alities, who maintained a kind of royal state in their own possessions, and kept high courts of judicature over life and limb in the whole extent of their hereditary fiefs. In the long English wars, from Crecy to Agincourt, the great body of them disappeared, and only here and there a great va.s.sal was to be seen, distinguished in nothing from the other n.o.bles, except in the loftiness of his t.i.tles and the reverence that still clung to the sound of his historic name. The _second_ aristocracy arose among the descendants of the survivors of the English and Italian wars. They claimed their rank, not as coming down to them from the tenure of almost independent counties and dukedoms, but as proprietors of ancestral lands, to which originally subordinate rights and duties had been attached. Mixed with those, we saw the n.o.blesse of the Robe, as the great law officers were called, who const.i.tuted a parallel but not identical n.o.bility with their lay compet.i.tors. The _third_ aristocracy was now about to make its appearance, the creation of Court favour, and badge of personal or official service--possessors of a nominal rank without any corresponding duty--a body selected for ornament, and not for use--and incorporating with itself, not only the marquis and viscount, fresh from the mint of the minister or favourite, but the highest names in France.
The aristocracy of the sword, and of ancient birth, had itself to blame for this degradation. Great alterations in manners or government--such as give a new character to human affairs--always seem brought about by some strange relaxation of morals, or atrocity of conduct, which makes society anxious for the change. The unfortunate custom in France which gave every male member of a n.o.ble family a t.i.tle equivalent to that of its chief, so that a simple viscount with ten stalwart and penniless sons gave ten stalwart and penniless viscounts to the aristocracy of his country, had filled the whole land with a race of men proud of their origin, filled with reckless courage, careless of life, and despising all honest means of employment by which their fortunes might have been improved. Mounted on a sorry steed and begirt with a sword of good steel, the young cavalier took his way from the miserable castle on a rock, where his n.o.ble father tried in vain to keep up the appearance of daily dinners, and wondered how in the world all his remaining sons and daughters were to be clothed and fed, and made his way to Paris. There he pushed his fortune--fighting, bullying, gambling, and was probably stabbed by some drunken companion and flung into the Seine. If he was lucky or adroit enough, he stabbed his drunken friend and pushed _him_ into the stream; and, after a few months of suing and importunity, obtained a saddle in the King"s Guards, or a pair of boots in the Musqueteers. At this time it came out that in twenty years of the reign of Louis XIII. there had been eight thousand fatal duels in different parts of the realm. Out of the duels which were daily carried on, four hundred in each year had ended in the death of one of the combatants.
When the fiercest of English wars is shaking every heart in the kingdom, there would be wailing and misery in every house if it were reported that four hundred officers had been killed in a year. Yet these young desperadoes were all of officer"s rank, and the quarrel in which they fell was probably either dishonourable or contemptible. Men fought and killed each other for a word or a look, or a fashion of dress, or the mere sake of killing. Where morality is loosened to the extent of a disregard of life, we may be sure the general behaviour in other respects is equally to be deplored. There was great and almost universal depravity in the conduct of high and low. Vice and sensuality found refuge and protection even in the presence of princesses and queens.
People residing in remote places heard only of the gorgeous licence in which the great and powerful lived. They knew them only during their visits to their ancestral homes as worn-out debauchees from the great city, who brought the profligacy of the purlieus of the Louvre into the peaceful cottages of the peasantry on their estates. It was, indeed, so much the fashion to be wicked, that a gentleman was hindered from the practice of his Christian or social duties by the fear of ridicule. The life of man, therefore, and the honour of woman were held equally cheap; and the blinded, rash, and self-indulgent n.o.bility laid the foundation, in contempt of the feelings of its inferiors and neglect of their interests, for the terrible retribution which even now at intervals might be seen ready to take its course.
CHAPTER IV.
THE d.u.c.h.eSSES DE LONGUEVILLE AND DE CHEVREUSE AND THE PRINCESS PALATINE IN THE LAST FRONDE.--RESULTS OF THE RUPTURE OF THE MARRIAGE PROJECTED BETWEEN THE PRINCE DE CONTI AND MADEMOISELLE DE CHEVREUSE.