FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[15]No. lxxvii. p. 579.[16]Madame de Motteville, tom. i. p. 162.—“Mauvais accompagnements.”

[15]No. lxxvii. p. 579.

[16]Madame de Motteville, tom. i. p. 162.—“Mauvais accompagnements.”

ANNE OF AUSTRIA’S PRIME MINISTER AND HIS POLICY.

Andnow what was the actual position of Mazarin on succeeding to power in 1643?

Richelieu had died admired and abhorred. The people, glad to be delivered from so heavy a yoke, obeyed with joy the incipient rule of the Queen-Regent. The courtiers were at first enchanted with a Government that refused nothing asked of it. It appeared, as one of the number said, that there were no more than five little words in the Frenchlanguage: “Lareine est si bonne!”[17]The State prisons threw open their gates; the rights of parliaments were respected; the princes of the blood and the great nobles were restored to their governorships. There was for a season one unanimous concert of praise and thanksgiving. But when the princes and parliaments were desirous, as before Richelieu’s rule, of participating in the general direction of the State, and especially in the distribution of place and patronage, great was the surprise of both at finding a steady resistance on the part of the Queen-Regent. To see her manifest a disposition to govern without them was looked upon as something scandalous. Every attempt she made thenceforward to retain a power whichthey evaded, or to repossess herself of that which she had imprudently suffered to escape from her grasp, seemed to them nothing less than a continuation of the odious system of Richelieu. Their exasperation was increased to the highest degree, therefore, when they beheld her give her entire confidence to a foreigner, to a Cardinal, to a creature of Richelieu. By that triple title Mazarin was equally hateful to the great nobles, the members of parliament, and the middle class. The tyranny of Richelieu had in the end attained to something noble by the high-handed heedlessness of all his acts. If the people were to be trampled on, it was a species of consolation that their oppressor was feared by others as well as themselves. But that the oppression of the doomed French nation was to be continued by a more ignoble hand was altogether intolerable. Frenchmen had begun to ask one another, whowasthis Mazarin who had come to rule over them? He could not—like Richelieu—boast of his high birth, of descent from a long line of noble ancestors—Frenchmen. Poets and romancers, ye whose imaginations delight to dwell upon sudden downfalls and rapid rises, mark well that little lad at play upon the Sicilian shore near the town of Mazzara! Springing from the lowest of the plebeian class, his family have not even a surname. He is the son of one Pierre, a fisherman, whose humble hut stands yonder beneath the cliff. But a day will come when that lowly-born lad, joining his baptismal name to that of the town which sheltered his cradle, will become Jules de Mazarin, robed in the Roman purple, quartering his shield with the consular fasces of Julius Cæsar, governing France, and through her preparing and influencing the destinies of entire Europe.

It was not, however, by easy steps that Richelieu’sdisciple and successor obtained a firm grasp of that plenary power which the master mind of the former had consolidated and long wielded so grandly and terribly. The Queen herself at the commencement of the Regency had not yet renounced her former friendships. During a considerable portion of her married life Anne had impatiently endured the slights and disparagements to which she was so long subjected, both by her husband and his Minister. Through engaging in divers dangerous and unsuccessful enterprises, she had been deprived of all influence, and was a queen only in name. But, a woman and a Spaniard, she had descended to dissimulation, and in that “ugly but necessary virtue”[18]made rapid progress. Up to the time of Richelieu’s death she had played a double game—made partisans in secret, with the object of subverting the Cardinal’s power, whilst feigning the semblance of friendship towards him, and did not scruple to humiliate herself on occasions, in order to carry her point. After that great man’s decease, through rare patience, great caution, and a persistent line of conduct, she ultimately attained that for which she had been willing to make any and every sacrifice—the Regency. During the King’s last illness, the mistrusted Queen and wife had profited by Mazarin’s unhoped-for service, as Prime Minister, in prevailing over the unwillingness of the dying King to appoint her custodian of his son, and Regent during his minority. She regarded this, therefore, as a first and most important service on the part of Mazarin towards her, and for which she felt proportionately grateful. Such was the Cardinal’s first stepping-stone to the good graces of Anne of Austria, and his twofold talent both as a laborious and indefatigable statesman and a consummate courtier, speedilyhelped to secure for him her entire confidence. The singular personal resemblance he bore to that desperateenamoradoof her early womanhood, the brilliant Buckingham, may probably also have served him as a favourable prestige. On her accession to power Anne did not manifest much firmness of character. Naturally indolent, she disliked the drudgery attendant upon business details, and hence continued through convenience the services of a man who, by taking off her hands the wearisome routine of State affairs, allowed her to reign at her ease.

Mazarin, moreover, had never been displeasing to her. He had begun to ingratiate himself during the month preceding the death of Louis XIII.,[19]and she named him Prime Minister about the middle of May—partly through personal liking, but more through political necessity. Far from appearing to resemble the impassive and imperious Richelieu, Anne perhaps might have recalled with agreeable emotion the words of her deceased consort when he first presented Mazarin to her (in 1639 or 1640)—“He will please you, madame, because he bears a striking resemblance to Buckingham.” By degrees the liking increased, and grew sufficiently strong to resist every assault from his enemies. At the same time the Minister to whom the Queen owed so much, instead of dictating to and presuming to govern her, was ever at her feet, and prodigal of that attention, respect, and tenderness to which she had been hitherto a stranger.

It is a delicate matter to investigate with exactitude the means by which Mazarin obtained entire sway over the Queen-Regent, and one which La Rochefoucauld scarcely touches upon; but it is too interesting a point in history to be left in the dark, and thereby to altogether disregard thatwhich first constituted the minister’s strength, and soon afterwards became the centre and key of the situation. After a long season of oppression, regal powers and splendour gilded the hours of Anne of Austria, and her Spanish pride exacted the tribute of respect and homage. Mazarin was prodigal of both. He cast himself at her feet in order to reach her heart. In her heart of hearts she was not the less touched by the grave accusation brought against him that he was a foreigner, for was not she also a foreigner? Perhaps that of itself proved the source of a mysterious attraction to her, and she may have found it a singular pleasure to converse with her Prime Minister in her mother tongue as a compatriot and friend. To all this must be added the mind and manners of Mazarin—supple and insinuating, always master of himself, of an unchangeable serenity amidst the gravest circumstances, full of confidence in his good star, and diffusing that confidence around him. It must also be remembered that Cardinal although he was, Mazarin was not a priest; that imbued with the maxims which formed the code of gallantry of her native land, Anne of Austria had always loved to please the other sex; that she was then forty-one and still beautiful, that her Prime Minister was of the same age, that he was exceedingly well-made and of a most pleasing countenance, in whichfinesse, was blended with a certain air of greatness. He had readily recognised that without ancestry, establishment, or support in France, and surrounded by rivals and enemies, all his strength centred in the Queen. He applied himself therefore above all things to gain her heart, as Richelieu had tried before him; and as he happily possessed far other means for attaining success in that respect, the handsome and gentle-mannered Cardinal eventually succeeded. Once master of her heart, he easilydirected the mind of Anne of Austria, and taught her the difficult art of pursuing ever the same end by the aid of conduct the most diverse, according to the difference of circumstances.

But favourable and indeed gracious as his royal mistress had shown herself towards him personally, and apart from any particular line of policy, at the outset of his premiership Mazarin had nevertheless to contend against a formidable host of enemies; and not the least redoubtable among them might be reckoned that intrepid political heroine the lately-banished Duchess de Chevreuse. No sooner did she again find herself at the side of Anne of Austria than the indefatigable Marie set to work with all her characteristic dash, spirit, and energy to attack Richelieu’s system and its adherents, now directed by Mazarin.

The first point she sought to carry was the return of Châteauneuf to office. “The good sense and long experience of M. de Châteauneuf,” says La Rochefoucauld, “were known to the Queen. He had undergone a rigorous imprisonment for his adhesion to her cause; he was firm, decisive, loved the State, and more capable than anyone else of re-establishing the old form of government which Richelieu had first begun to destroy. Firmly attached to Mdme. de Chevreuse, she knew sufficiently-well how to govern him. She therefore urged his return with much warmth.” Châteauneuf had already obtained as a royal boon that the “rude and miserable condition” of close incarceration under which he had groaned for ten years should be changed for a compulsory residence at one of his country houses. Mdme. de Chevreuse demanded the termination of this mitigated exile, that she might once more behold him free who had endured such extremities for the Queen’s sake and her own.Mazarin saw that he must yield, but only did so tardily, never appearing himself to repulse Châteauneuf, but always alleging the paramount necessity of conciliating the Condé family, and especially the Princess, who, as already said, bore bitter enmity towards him as the judge of her brother, Henri de Montmorency. Châteauneuf was therefore recalled, but with that reservation accorded to the last clause of the King’s will, that he should not appear at Court, but reside at his own house of Montrouge, near Paris, where his friends might visit him.

The next step was to transfer him thence to some ministerial office. Châteauneuf was no longer a young man, but neither his energy nor his ambition had deserted him, and Mdme. de Chevreuse made it a point of honour to reinstate him in the post of Keeper of the Seals, which he had formerly held and lost through her, and which all Queen Anne’s old friends now saw with indignation occupied by one of the most detested of Richelieu’s creatures, Pierre Séguier. This last, however, was a man of capacity—laborious, well-informed and full of resources. To these qualifications he added a remarkable suppleness, which made him very useful and accommodating to a Prime Minister. He moreover had the support of friends who stood high in the Queen’s favour, and was further strengthened by the opposition of the Condés and the Bishop of Beauvais to Châteauneuf. The Duchess perceiving that it was almost impossible to surmount so powerful an opposition, took another way of arriving at the same end. She contented herself with asking for the lowest seat in the cabinet for her friend; well knowing that once installed therein, Châteauneuf would soon manage all the rest and aggrandise his position.

At the same time that she strove to extricate from disgrace the man upon whom rested all her political hopes, Madame de Chevreuse, not daring to attack Mazarin overtly, insensibly undermined the ground beneath his feet, and step by step prepared his ruin. Her experienced eye enabled her promptly to perceive the most favourable point of attack whence to assail the Queen, and the watchword she passed was to fan and keep alive to the utmost the general feeling of reprobation which all the proscribed, on returning to France, had aroused and disseminated against the memory of Richelieu. This feeling was universal—among the great families he had decimated or despoiled;—in the Church, too firmly repressed not to be unmindful of its abasement;—in the Parliament, strictly confined to its judicial functions, and aspiring to break through such narrow limits. The same feeling was still alive in the Queen’s bosom, who could not have forgotten the deep humiliation to which Richelieu had subjected her, and the fate for which he had probably reserved her. These tactics succeeded, and on every side there arose against the late violence and tyranny, and, by a rebound, against the creatures of Richelieu, a storm so furious that Mazarin’s utmost ability was taxed to allay it.

Madame de Chevreuse likewise supplicated Anne of Austria to repair the long-endured misfortunes of the Vendôme princes, by bestowing upon them either the Admiralty, to which an immense power was attached, or the government of Brittany, which the head of the family, Cæsar de Vendôme, had formerly held—deriving it alike from the hand of his father, Henry IV., and as the heritage of his father-in-law, the Duke de Mercœur. This was nothing less than demanding the aggrandisement of an unfriendly house,and at the same time the ruin of two families that had served Richelieu with the utmost devotion, and were best capable of supporting Mazarin. The Minister parried the blow aimed at him by the Duchess by dint of address and patience, never refusing, always eluding, and summoning to his aid his grand ally, as he termed it—Time. Before the return of Madame de Chevreuse he had found himself forced to win over the Vendômes, and to secure them in his interest. On Richelieu’s death he had strenuously contributed to obtain their recall, and had since made them every kind of advance; but he soon perceived that he could not satisfy them without bringing about his own destruction. The Duke Cæsar de Vendôme, son of Henry IV. andThe Fair Gabrielle, had early carried his pretensions to a great height, and had shown himself restless and factious as a legitimate prince. He had passed his life in revolts and conspiracies, and in 1641 had been compelled to flee to England through suspicion of being implicated in an attempt to assassinate Richelieu. He did not dare return to France until after the Cardinal’s death; and, as may well be imagined, he came back breathing the direst vengeance. Against the ambition of the Vendômes Mazarin skilfully opposed that of the Condés, who were inimical to the aggrandisement of a house too nearly rivalling their own. But it was very difficult to retain Brittany in the hands of its newly-appointed governor, the Marshal La Meilleraie, in face of the claim of a son of Henry the Great, who had formerly held it, and demanded it back as a sort of heirloom. Mazarin therefore resigned himself to the sacrifice of La Meilleraie, but he lightened it as much as possible. He persuaded the Queen to assume to herself the government of Brittany, and have only a lieutenant-general over it—a post, of course, beneath the dignity of the Vendômes, and which would, therefore, remain in La Meilleraie’s hands. The latter could not take offence at being second in power therein to the Queen; and to arrange everything to the entire satisfaction of a person of such importance, Mazarin solicited for him soon afterwards the title of duke, which the deceased King had, in fact, promised the Marshal, and the reversion of the post of Grand Master of the Artillery for his son—that same son on whom subsequently Mazarin bestowed, with his own name, the hand of his niece, the beautiful Hortense.

Mazarin was so much the less inclined to favour the house of Vendôme from having encountered a dangerous rival in the Queen’s good graces, in Vendôme’s youngest son, Beaufort, a young, bold, and flourishing gallant, who displayed ostentatiously all the exterior signs of loyalty and chivalry, and affected for Anne of Austria a passionate devotion not likely to be displeasing. “He was tall, well-made, dexterous, and indefatigable in all warlike exercises,” says La Rochefoucauld, “but artificial withal, and wanting in truthfulness of character. Mentally he was heavy and badly cultivated; nevertheless he attained his objects cleverly enough through the blunt coarseness of his manners. He was of high but unsteady courage, and was not a little envious and malignant.”[20]De Retz does not, like La Rochefoucauld, accuse Beaufort of artificiality, but represents him as presumptuous and of thorough incapacity. His portrait of him, though over-coloured, like most others from the coadjutor’s pen, is sufficiently faithful, but at the commencement of the Regency, the defects of the Duke de Beaufort had not fully declared themselves, and were lessconspicuous than his good qualities. Some few days before her husband’s death, Anne of Austria had placed her children under his charge—a mark of confidence that so elated him that the young Duke conceived hopes which his impetuosity hindered him from sufficiently disguising. Indeed, these were presumed upon so far as to give offence to the Queen; and, as the height of inconsistency, he committed at the same time the egregious folly of publicly enacting the led-captain in the rosy chains of the handsome but decried Duchess de Montbazon. It was only, however, by slow degrees that the Queen’s liking for him abated. At first, she had proposed to confer upon him the post of Grand-Écuyer, vacant since the death of the unfortunate Cinq-Mars, which would have kept him in close attendance upon her, and was altogether a fitting appointment—for Beaufort had nothing of the statesman in him; with little intellect and no reticence, he was also averse to steady application to business, and capable only of some bold and violent course of action. The Duke had the folly to refuse this post of Grand-Écuyer, hoping for a better; and then, altering his mind when it was too late, he solicited it only to incur disappointment.[21]The more his favour diminished, the more his irritation increased, and it was not long ere he placed himself at the head of the Cardinal’s bitterest enemies.

Madame de Chevreuse hoped to be more fortunate in securing the governorship of Havre for a very different sort of person—for a man of tried devotedness and of arare and subtle intellect—La Rochefoucauld. She would thereby recompense the services rendered to the Queen and herself, strengthen and aggrandize one of the chiefs of theImportants, and weaken Mazarin by depriving of an important government a person upon whom he had entire reliance—Richelieu’s niece, the Duchess d’Aiguillon. The Cardinal succeeded in rendering this manœuvre abortive, without appearing to have any hand in it. And herein, as in many other matters, the art of Mazarin was to wear the semblance of merely confirming the Queen in the resolves with which he inspired her.

In thus attributing these various designs, this connected and consistent line of conduct, to Madame de Chevreuse, we do not advance it as our own opinion, but as that of La Rochefoucauld, who must have been perfectly well informed. He attributes it to her both in his own affairs and in those of the Vendômes. Neither was Mazarin blind to the fact, for more than once in his private notes we read these words:—“My greatest enemies are the Vendômes and Madame de Chevreuse, who urges them on.” He tells us also that she had formed the project of marrying her charming daughter Charlotte, then sixteen, to the Vendôme’s eldest son, the Duke de Mercœur, whilst his brother Beaufort should espouse the wealthy Mademoiselle d’Epernon, who foiled these designs, and even greater still, by throwing herself at four-and-twenty into a convent of Carmelites. These marriages, which would have reconciled, united, and strengthened so many great houses, moderately attached to the Queen and her minister, terrified Richelieu’s successor. He therefore sought to foil them by every means in his power, and succeeded in prevailing upon the Queen to frustrate them in an underhand way;having found that the union of Mademoiselle de Vendôme with the brilliant but restless Duke de Nemours had caused him more than ordinary anxiety.

If the intricate details of those counter intrigues of Mazarin and Madame de Chevreuse be followed attentively, we are at a loss to say to which of the two antagonists the palm for skill, sagacity, and address should be given. Whilst Mazarin was astute enough to make a certain amount of sacrifice in order to reserve to himself the right of not making greater—treating everyone with apparent consideration, rendering no one desperate, promising much, holding back the least possibleproprio motuof himself, and surrounding Madame de Chevreuse herself with attention and homage without suffering any illusion to beguile him as to the nature of her sentiments—she, on her part, paid him back in the same coin. La Rochefoucauld says that during thesemollia tempora, Madame de Chevreuse and Mazarin actually flirted with each other. The Duchess, who had always intermingled gallantry with politics, tried, as it appears, the power of her charms upon the Cardinal. The latter, on his side, failed not to lavish honeyed words, and “essayoit même quelque fois de lui faire croire qu’elle lui donnoit de l’amour.”[22]There were other ladies also, it seems, who would not have been sorry to please the handsome First Minister a little. Amongst these might be numbered the Princess de Guéméné,[23]one of the greatest beauties of the French Court, who, certainly, if only one half the stories related of her be true, was by no means of a ferocious disposition in affairs of gallantry. This lady,as well as her husband, were both favourable to Mazarin, in spite of all the efforts of Madame de Montbazon, and Madame de Chevreuse, her sister-in-law. It may be readily imagined that Mazarin devoted great attention to Madame de Guéméné, and did not fail to pay her a host of compliments, as he did to Madame de Chevreuse; but as he went no further, the two gay ladies were at a loss to conceive what so many compliments coupled with so much reserve meant. They sometimes asked which of the two was really the object of his admiration; and as he still made no further advances at the same time that he continued his gallant protestations, “these ladies,” says Mazarin, “si esamina la mia vita e si conclude che io sia impotente.”[24]

Political intrigue had become such an affair of fashion among the Court dames of that day, that those of the highest rank made no scruple of bringing into play all the artillery of their wit and beauty whenever they could contribute to the success of their enterprises. Still endowed with those two potent gifts to an eminent degree, Madame de Chevreuse brought all her various influences into perfect combination, and had grown so passionately fond of the fierce excitement of conspiring, that love was to her now merely a means and political victory the end. She devoted literally her entire existence to it, living in the confidence and intimacy of the Vendômes and other noble perturbators of the hour. Her activity, her penetration, her energy obtained for her among the party of theImportantsthe importance she coveted. It was not long, therefore, ere she begun to give Mazarin cause for grave anxiety. During the encounters resulting from this strenuous antagonism, reconciliations occasionally took place, in which even the Cardinal’s coldness, caution, and his laborious occupation, could not, it is said, place him beyond reach of the Duchess’s irresistible fascinations. But the latter, well aware that therôleof Mazarin’s mistress would not give to her grasp the helm of the State, which he reserved exclusively to himself, preferred, therefore, rather to remain his enemy, and figure at the head and front of the faction antagonistic to his government.

This flirting and skirmishing had gone on for some time, but at last natural feeling prevailed over political reticence. Madame de Chevreuse grew impatient at obtaining words only, and scarcely anything serious or effective. She had, it is true, received some money for her own use, either in repayment of that which she had formerly lent the Queen, or for the discharge of debts contracted during exile and in the interest of Anne of Austria. On returning to Court, one of her earliest steps was to withdraw her friend andprotégé, Alexandre de Campion, from the service of the Vendômes, and place him in a suitable position in the Queen’s household. Châteauneuf had been reinstated in his former post of Chancellor (des Ordres du Roi), and later his governorship of Touraine was restored to him on the death of the Marquis de Gèvres, who fell at the siege of Thionville; but the Duchess considered that that was doing very little for a man of Châteauneuf’s merit—for him who had staked fortune and life, and undergone ten years’ imprisonment. She readily perceived, therefore, that the perpetual delay of favours ever promised, ever deferred in the instances of the Vendômes and La Rochefoucauld, were so many artifices of the Cardinal, and that she was his dupe. This conviction put the spirited partisan upon her mettle. She began to titter, to mock, and to expostulate by turns, and sometimestwitted the minister in pert and derisive terms. This, however, betrayed a want of her ordinary precaution, and only served to fill Mazarin’s quiver with shafts to be used against herself. He made the Queen believe that Madame de Chevreuse sought to rule her with a rod of iron; that she had changed her mask, but not her character; that she was ever the same impulsive and restless person, who, with all her talent and devotedness, had never worked aught but mischief around her, and was only instrumental in ruining others as well as herself. By degrees, underhand and hidden as it might be, war between the Duchess and the Cardinal declared itself unmistakably. The commencement and progress of this curious struggle for supremacy has been admirably depicted by La Rochefoucauld; and, while the autograph memoranda of Mazarin cast a fresh flood of light upon it, they enhance infinitely Madame de Chevreuse’s ability by revealing to what an extent that Minister dreaded her.

In every page of these invaluablecarnetshe indicates her as being the head and mainspring of theImportants. “It is Madame de Chevreuse,” he writes repeatedly, “who stirs them all up. She endeavours to strengthen the hands of the Vendômes; she tries to win over every member of the house of Lorraine; she has already gained the Duke de Guise, and through him she strives to carry away from me the Duke d’Elbeuf.” “She sees clearly through everything; she has guessed very accurately that it is I who have secretly persuaded the Queen to hinder the restoration of the government of Brittany to the Duke de Vendôme. She has said so to her father, the Duke de Montbazon, and to Montagu. She has quarrelled with Montagu, in fact, because he raises an obstacle to Châteauneuf by supporting Séguier.” “Nothing discourages Madame de Chevreuse; she entreats the Vendômes to have patience, and sustains them by promising a speedy change of scene.” “Madame de Chevreuse never relinquishes the hope of displacing me. The reason she gives for this is, that when the Queen refused to put Châteauneuf at the head of the government, she stated that she could not do it immediately, as she must have some consideration for me, whence Madame de Chevreuse concludes that the Queen has much esteem and liking for Châteauneuf, and that when I shall be no longer where I am, the post is secured for her friend. Hence the hopes and illusions with which they are buoyed up.” “The Duchess and her friends assert that the Queen will shortly send for Châteauneuf; and by so doing they abuse the minds of all, and prompt those who are looking to their future interests to pay court to her and seek her friendship. They make an excuse for the Queen’s delay in giving him my place, by saying that she has still need of me for some short time.” “I am told that Madame de Chevreuse secretly directs Madame de Vendôme (a pious person who has great influence over the bishops and convents), and gives her instructions, in order that she may not fall into error, and that all the machinery used against me may thoroughly answer its purpose.” From this last entry it is clear that Madame de Chevreuse, without being in the smallest degree possible adévote, knew right well how to make use of theparti dévot, which then exercised great influence over Anne of Austria’s mind, and gave serious uneasiness to Mazarin.

The Prime Minister’s chief difficulty was to make Queen Anne—the sister of the King of Spain, and herself of a piety thoroughly Spanish—understand that it was necessary, notwithstanding the engagements which she had so oftencontracted, notwithstanding the instances of the Court of Rome and those of the heads of the episcopate, to continue the alliance with the Protestants of Germany and Holland, and to persist in only consenting to ageneralpeace in which the allies of France should equally find their account as well as that country itself. On the other side, it was continually dinned into the Queen’s ear that it was practicable to make a separate treaty of peace, and negotiate singly with Spain on very fitting conditions, that by such means the scandal of an impious war between “the very Christian” and “the very Catholic” King would cease, and a relief be afforded to France very much needed. Such was the policy of the Queen’s old friends. It was at least specious, and reckoned numerous partisans among men the most intelligent and attached to the interests of their country. Mazarin, the disciple and successor of Richelieu, had higher views, but which it was not easy at first to make Anne of Austria comprehend. By degrees, however, he succeeded, thanks to his judicious efforts, renewed incessantly and with infinite art; thanks especially to the victories of the Duke d’Enghien—for in all worldly affairs success is a very eloquent and right persuasive advocate. The Queen, however, remained for a considerable interval undecided, and it may be seen by Mazarin’s own memoranda that during the latter part of May, as well as through the whole of June and July, the Cardinal’s greatest effort was to induce the Regent not to abandon her allies, but to firmly carry on the war. Madame de Chevreuse, with Châteauneuf, defended the old party policy, and strove to bring over Anne of Austria to it. “Madame de Chevreuse,” wrote Mazarin, “causes the Queen to be told from all quarters that I do not wish for peace, that I hold the same maxims as Cardinal Richelieu on the point—thatit is both easy and necessary to make a separate treaty of peace.” On several occasions he made indignant protestation against such arrangement, pointing out the danger with which it was fraught, and that it would render ineffectual those sacrifices which France had for so many years made. “Madame de Chevreuse,” he exclaimed, “would ruin France!” He knew well that, intimately associated with Gaston, her old accomplice in all the plots framed against Richelieu, she had won him over to the idea of a separate peace by holding out the hope of a marriage between his daughter Mademoiselle de Montpensier and the Arch-duke, which would have brought him the government of the Low Countries. He knew that she had preserved all her influence with the Duke de Lorraine; he knew, in fine, that she boasted of having the power of promptly negotiating a peace through the mediation of the Queen of Spain, who was at her disposal. Thus informed, he entreated his royal mistress to reject all Madame de Chevreuse’s propositions, and to tell her plainly that she would not listen to anything relating to a separate treaty, that she was decided upon not separating herself from her allies, that she desired a general peace, that with such view she had sent her ministers to Munster, who were then negotiating that important matter, and that it was superfluous to speak to her any more upon the subject.

Though baffled on these different points, Madame de Chevreuse did not consider herself vanquished. She rallied and emboldened her adherents by her lofty spirit and firm resolution. The party feud went on—intrigues were multiplied—but up to the close of August, 1643, no change had taken place, though the acrimony of party feeling had become largely increased. Finding that she had fruitlesslyemployed insinuation, flattery, artifice, and every species of Court manœuvre, her daring mind did not shrink from the idea of having recourse to other means of success. She kept up a brisk agitation amongst the bishops and devotees, she continued to weave her political plots with the chiefs of theImportants, and at the same time she formed a closer intimacy with that small cabal which formed in some sort the advance-guard of that party, composed of men reared amongst the old conspiracies, accustomed to and always ready forcoups de main, who had of old embarked in more than one desperate enterprise against Richelieu, and who, in an extremity, might be likewise launched against Mazarin. The memoirs of the time, and especially those of De Retz and La Rochefoucauld, make us sufficiently well acquainted with their names and characters. The former mistress of Chalais found little difficulty in acquiring sole sway over a faction composed of second-rate talents. She caressed it skilfully; and, with the art of an experienced conspirator, she fomented every germ of false honour, of quintessential devotedness, and extravagant rashness. Mazarin, who, like Richelieu, had an admirable police, forewarned of Madame de Chevreuse’s machinations, fully comprehended the danger with which he was menaced. No one could have been better informed as to his exact position than the Cardinal: and the plans of the Duchess and the chiefs of theImportantsdeveloped themselves clearly under Mazarin’s sharp-sightedness—either by their incessant and elaborately-concerted intrigues with the Queen, to force her to abandon a minister to whose policy she had not yet openly declared her adhesion, or, should it prove necessary, treat that minister as De Luynes had done the last Queen-mother’s favourite d’Ancre, and as Montrésor, Barrière, and Saint-Ybar wouldhave served Richelieu. The first plan not having succeeded, they began to think seriously about carrying out the second, and Madame de Chevreuse, the strongest mind of the party, proposed with some show of reason to act before the return of the young hero of Rocroy, the Duke d’Enghien; for that victorious soldier once in Paris would unquestionably shield Mazarin. It became necessary, therefore, to profit by his absence in order to strike a decisive blow. Success seemed certain, and even easy. They were sure of having the people with them, who, exhausted by a long war and groaning under taxation, would naturally welcome with delight the hope of peace and repose. They might reckon on the declared support of the parliament, burning to recover that importance in the State of which it had been deprived by Richelieu, and which was then a matter of dispute with Mazarin. They had all the secret, even overt sympathy of the episcopate, which, with Rome, detested the Protestant alliance, and demanded the restoration of that of Spain. The eager concurrence of the aristocracy could not be doubted for a moment; which ever regretted its old and turbulent independence, and whose most illustrious representatives, the Vendômes, the Guises, the Bouillons, and the La Rochefoucaulds were strenously opposed to the domination of a foreign favourite, without fortune, of no birth, and as yet without fame. The princes of the blood resigned themselves to Mazarin rather than to liking him. The Duke d’Orleans was not remarkable for great fidelity to his friends, and the politic Prince de Condé looked twice ere he quarrelled with the successful. He coaxed all parties, whilst he clung to his own interests. His son, doubtless, would follow in his father’s footsteps, and he would be won over by being overwhelmed with honours. The day following that on which the blow should be struck there would be no resistance to their ascendancy, and on the very day itself scarcely any obstacle. The Italian regiments of Mazarin were with the army; there were scarcely any other troops in Paris save the regiments of the guards, the colonels of which were nearly all devoted to theImportants. The Queen herself had not yet renounced her former friendships. Her prudent reserve even was wrongly interpreted. As it was her desire to appease and deal gently on all hands, she gave kind words to everybody, and those kind words were taken as tacit encouragement. Anne had not hitherto shown much firmness of character; a certain amount of liking for the Cardinal was not unjustly imputed to her, and undue significance already attributed to the steadily increasing attachment of a few short months.

Mazarin, on his own part, indulged in no illusions. He was decidedly not yet master of Anne of Austria’s heart; since at that moment—that is to say, during the month of July, 1643—in his most secret notes he displays a deep inquietude and despondency. The dissimulation of which everybody accused the Queen obviously terrified him, and we see him passing through all the alternations of hope and fear. It is very curious to trace and follow out the varied fluctuations of his mind. In his official letters to ambassadors and generals he affects a security which he does not feel. With his own intimate friends he permits some hint of his perplexities to escape him, but in his private memoranda they are all laid bare. We therein read his inmost carks and cares, and his passionate entreaties that the Queen-Regent would open her mind to him. He feigns the utmost disinterestedness towards her; he simply asks to make way for Châteauneuf, if she has any secret preferencefor that minister. The ambiguous conduct of the Regent harasses and distresses him, and he conjures her either to permit him to retire or to declare herself in favour of his policy.

This exciting contest continued with the keenest activity, but no change had occurred up to the end of July, and even the first days of August, 1643, though this critical state of affairs had become greatly aggravated. The violence of theImportantsincreased daily; the Queen defended her minister, but she also showed consideration for his enemies. She hesitated to take the decided attitude which Mazarin required at her hands, not only in his individual interest, but in that of his government. Suddenly an incident, very insignificant apparently, but which by assuming larger proportions brought about the inevitable crisis—forced the Queen to declare herself, and Madame de Chevreuse to plunge deeper into a baleful enterprise, the idea of which had already forced itself upon her imagination. A great scandal occurred. We allude to a quarrel between the two duchesses, de Longueville and de Montbazon.

FOOTNOTES:[17]De Retz Memoirs, Petitot Collection.[18]Madame de Motteville.[19]Louis died May 14th, 1643.[20]La Rochefoucauld.[21]Mazarin himself has furnished this fact, otherwise unknown, in one of his diaries (Carnet, pp. 72, 73). The Cardinal-Minister was in the habit of jotting down the chief events of each day in these small memorandum books (Carnets), which he kept in the pocket of his cassock.[22]La Rochefoucauld, Memoirs, p. 383.[23]Anne de Rohan, wife of M. de Guéméné, eldest son of the Duke de Montbazon, and brother of Madame de Chevreuse.[24]Carnet, iii. p. 39.

[17]De Retz Memoirs, Petitot Collection.

[18]Madame de Motteville.

[19]Louis died May 14th, 1643.

[20]La Rochefoucauld.

[21]Mazarin himself has furnished this fact, otherwise unknown, in one of his diaries (Carnet, pp. 72, 73). The Cardinal-Minister was in the habit of jotting down the chief events of each day in these small memorandum books (Carnets), which he kept in the pocket of his cassock.

[22]La Rochefoucauld, Memoirs, p. 383.

[23]Anne de Rohan, wife of M. de Guéméné, eldest son of the Duke de Montbazon, and brother of Madame de Chevreuse.

[24]Carnet, iii. p. 39.

THE DUCHESS DE MONTBAZON.—THE AFFAIR OF THE DROPPED LETTERS.—THE QUARREL OF THE TWO DUCHESSES.

Ondeclaring itself of the party of Mazarin, the house of Condé had drawn down the hatred of theImportants, though their hostility scarcely fell upon Madame de Longueville. Her gentleness in everything in which her heart was not seriously engaged, her entire indifference to politics at this period of her life, with the graces of her mind and person, rendered her pleasing to every one, and shielded her from party spite. But apart from affairs of State, she had an enemy, and a formidable enemy, in the Duchess de Montbazon. We have said that Madame de Montbazon had been the mistress of the Duke de Longueville, and as one of the principal personages of the drama we are about to relate, she requires to be somewhat better known.

We shall pass over in silence many of her foibles, without attempting to excuse any. Before sketching her life, or at least a portion of it, it will be necessary, in order to protect her memory against an excess of severity, to recall certain traditions and examples for which unhappily her family was notorious.

Daughter of Claude de Bretagne, Baron d’Avangour, she was on her mother’s side granddaughter of that very complaisant Marquis de La Varenne Fouquet, who, successively scullion, cook, and maître d’hôtel of Henry the Fourth,“gained more by carrying the amorous King’spouletsthan basting those in his kitchen.” Catherine Fouquet, Countess de Vertus, his daughter, Madame de Montbazon’s mother, was beautiful, witty, somewhat giddy, and very gallant. Impatient of all hindrance, she had authorised one of her lovers to assassinate her husband; but it was the husband who assassinated the lover. The tragical termination of this rencontre does not seem to have cast a gloom over the life of the Countess de Vertus, for at seventy she began to learn to dance, and when seventy-three, married a young man over head and ears in debt.

In 1628, Marie d’Avangour quitted her convent to espouse Hercule de Rohan, Duke de Montbazon, who was the father, by his first marriage, of Madame de Chevreuse and of the Prince de Guéméné. She was sixteen, and he sixty-one. Thorough fool as he was, the Duke did not conceal from himself, it is said, the conviction that such an union was fraught with some danger to him; but we may venture to affirm that he could not have foreseen all its dangers. Full of respect for the virtues of Marie de’ Medicis, he recommended her example to his wife; then, with every confidence in the future, he conducted her to Court.

In beauty the daughter was worthy of the mother, but in vices she left her far behind. Tallemant says she was one of the loveliest women imaginable. Her mind was not her most brilliant side, and the little that she had was turned to intrigue and perfidy. “Her mind,” says the indulgent Madame de Motteville, “was not so fine as her person; her brilliancy was limited to her eyes, which commanded love. She claimed universal admiration.” In regard to her character, all are unanimous. De Retz, who knew her well, speaks of her in these terms: “Madame de Montbazon was a verygreat beauty. Modesty was wanting in her air. Her jargon might, during a dull hour, have supplied the defects of her mind. She showed but little faith in gallantry, none in business. She loved her own pleasure alone, and above her pleasure her interest. I never saw a person who, in vice, preserved so little respect for virtue.” Supremely vain and passionately fond of money, it was by the aid of her beauty that she sought influence and fortune. She, therefore, took infinite care of it, as of her idol, as of her resources, her treasure. She kept it in repair, heightened it by all sorts of artifices, and preserved it almost uninjured till her death. Madame de Motteville asserts that, during the latter part of her life, she was as full of vanity as if she were but twenty-five years of age; that she had the same desire to please, and that she wore her mourning garb in so charming a manner, that “the order of nature seemed changed, since age and beauty could be found united.” Ten years before, in 1647, at the age of thirty-five, when Mazarin gave a comedy in the Italian style, that is, an opera, there was in the evening a grand ball, and the Duchess de Montbazon was present, adorned with pearls, with a red feather on her head, and so dazzling in her appearance that the whole company was completely charmed. We can imagine what she was in 1643, at the age of thirty-one.

Of the two conditions of perfect beauty—strength and grace, Madame de Montbazon possessed the first in the highest degree. She was tall and majestic, and she had all the charms of embonpoint. Her throat reminded one of the fulness, in this particular, of the antique statues—exceeding them, perhaps, somewhat. What struck the beholder most were her eyes and hair of intense blackness, upon a skin of the most dazzling white. Her defect was anose somewhat too prominent, with a mouth so large as to give her face an appearance of severity. It will be seen that she was the very opposite of Madame de Longueville. The latter was tall, but not to excess. The richness of her form did not diminish its delicacy. A moderate embonpoint exhibited, in full and exquisite measure, the beauty of the female form. Her eyes were of the softest blue; her hair of the most beautiful blonde. She had the most majestic air, and yet her peculiar characteristic was grace. To these were added the great difference of manners and tone. Madame de Longueville was, in her deportment, dignity, politeness, modesty, sweetness itself, with a languor and nonchalance which formed not her least charm. Her words were few, as well as her gestures; the inflexions of her voice were a perfect music.[25]The excess, into which she never fell, might have been a sort of fastidiousness. Everything in her was wit, sentiment, charm. Madame de Montbazon, on the contrary, was free of speech, bold and easy in her tone, full of stateliness and pride.

The Duchess was, nevertheless, a very attractive creature when she desired to be so, and such we must conceive her to have been if we would take account of the admiration she excited, and not exactly like the person which Cousin represents her when, at the age of nearly forty, she had become “a Colossus”—to use Tallemant’s phrase. At the same time it is true that, even in youth, she had less grace than strength, less delicacy than majesty. It is also true that she was free of speech, and in tone was bold and offhand; but those very defects for which she was remarkable only the better assured her empire over what, in modern parlance, would be termed the “fast” portion of the Court, and thesentiments to which she gave utterance revealed the most singular extravagance. But not a single voice protested when the Duke d’Hocquincourt proclaimed herla belle des belles. In the eyes of the foreigner she was the marvel which the generals who dreamed of the capture of Paris coveted; in other words, she waspar excellence“the booty” most desirable, on the subject of which the Duke of Weimar perpetrated a thoroughly German joke, which we must be pardoned for not repeating: Anne of Austria might have smiled at it without blushing, but it is too gross to risk raising a laugh by its repetition in our days.

She had a great number of adorers, and of happy adorers, from Gaston Duke of Orleans, and the Count de Soissons, slain at Marfée, to Rancé, the young and gallant editor of Anacreon, and the future founder of La Trappe. M. de Longueville had been for some time her lover by title, and he afforded her considerable advantages. When he married Mademoiselle de Bourbon, Madame the Princess exacted—without, however, being very faithfully obeyed—the discontinuance of all intercourse with his old mistress. Hence, in that interested soul, an irritation, which wounded vanity redoubled, when she saw this young bride, with her great name, her marvellous mind, her indefinable charms, advance into the world of gallantry, without the least effort draw after her all hearts, and take possession of, or at least share that empire of beauty of which she was so proud, and which was to her so precious. On the other hand, the Duke de Beaufort had not been able to restrain a passionate admiration for Madame de Longueville, which had been very coldly received. He was wounded by it, and his wound bled for a long time, as his friend, La Châtre,informs us,[26]even after he had transferred his homage to Madame de Montbazon. The latter, as may be easily imagined, was again exasperated. Finally, the Duke de Guise, recently arrived in Paris, placed himself in the party of theImportantsand at the service of Madame de Montbazon, who received him very favourably, at the same time she was striving to keep or recall the Duke de Longueville, and that she was ruling Beaufort, whose office near her was somewhat that of acavalier servente. Thus it will be seen that Madame de Montbazon disposed through Beaufort and through Guise, as through her daughter-in-law Madame de Chevreuse, of the house of Vendôme and that of Lorraine, and she employed all this influence to the profit of her hatred against Madame de Longueville. She burned to injure her, and was not long in finding an opportunity of doing it.

One day when a numerous company was assembled in her salon, one of her young lady friends picked up a couple of letters which had been dropped on the floor, bearing no signatures, but in a feminine handwriting, and of a somewhat equivocal style. They were read, and a thousand jokes perpetrated concerning them, and some effort made to discover the author. They were from a woman who wrote tenderly to some one whom she did not hate. Madame de Montbazon pretended that they had fallen from the pocket of Maurice de Coligny, who had just gone out, and that they were in the handwriting of Madame de Longueville. The word of command thus once given, the Duke de Beaufort was amongst the first to spread the insinuation which was a calumny, all the echoes of the party of theImportantstook it up, and Madame de Montbazon herself found pleasure in repeating it during several following days, so that the incident became the entertainment of the Court. A frivolous curiosity has very faithfully preserved the text of the two letters thus found at the Duchess’s house.[27]

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