# Secret History of the French Court under Richelieu and Mazarin/Chapter V

CHAPTER V.
September, 1643-1679.
Failure of the Conspiracy.—Arrest of Beaufort and exile of Madame de Chevreuse to Anjou.—New intrigues.—Madame de Chevreuse fears imprisonment, and quits France for the third time in 1647.—Her capture and subsequent release by the English Puritans.—She takes refuge at Liège.— Returns to Paris in 1649.—Her rôle in the Fronde.—Her reconciliation with the queen and with Mazarin.—She contributes to the downfall of Fouquet and the rise of Colbert.—Her death in 1679.
What of the last plan of assassination formed against Mazarin—the nocturnal ambuscade, so well arranged for the 1st of September, 1643, did it also fail? In answer, without stopping to discuss the conjectures of Henri de Campion, we will confine ourselves to saying that Mazarin, who was on his guard, avoided the destined blow by staying away from the queen's palace on the evening when he was to have been stabbed on his return from the Louvre. The next morning, the scene was changed. The rumor was spread that the prime minister had narrowly escaped being slain by Beaufort and his friends on the night before, but that fortune had declared itself in his favor. A project of assassination, especially when it has failed, always excites extreme indignation, and he who has escaped a great danger and seems destined to come off victorious, has no difficulty in finding supporters. A host of men who would, perhaps, have seconded Beaufort had he been successful, came now to offer their services and their swords to the cardinal, and in the morning he repaired to the Louvre escorted by three hundred noblemen.
For some days past, Mazarin had felt that it was necessary at ​all risks to clear up his position and to force the queen to declare herself openly. The moment was a decisive one. If the danger which he had just shunned and which was even now suspended over his head was not sufficient to draw the queen from her indecision, it was because she had no love for him; and Mazarin well knew that in the midst of the dangers that surrounded him, his whole power lay in the affections of the queen, and that on her depended both his present and his future safety. Thus, either through policy or through sincere passion, he always addressed himself to the heart of Anne of Austria, and he soliloquized thus at the outset of the contest: "If I thought the queen only made use of me through necessity, without having any personal regard for me, I would not stay here three days." But, as we have sufficiently proved, Anne of Austria loved Mazarin. Every day, on comparing him with his rivals, she appreciated him the more. She admired the precision and clearness of his intellect, his subtlety and his penetration, the capacity for labor which enabled him to bear the weight of the government with almost superhuman ease, his keen perception, his consummate prudence, and, at the same time, the judicious energy of his resolutions. She saw the affairs of France everywhere prospering in his firm and able hands. The cardinal had had no share, it is true, in the great battle which had just inaugurated the new reign with so much eclat; but he had had much to do with the success which followed it and which proved to astonished Europe that the day of Rocroy was not merely a happy accident. When every one in the council was opposed to the siege of Thionville, when M. the Prince himself was averse to it, when Turenne, being consulted, dared not declare himself in its favor, it was Mazarin who had insisted with more than usual vehemence ​that they should profit by the victory of Rocroy, and bring France to the banks of the Rhine. The first proposition, without doubt, came from the young conqueror, but to Mazarin belongs the credit of comprehending it, sustaining it, and securing its ultimate triumph. If never had prime minister been served by such a general, never either had general been served by such a prime minister; and thanks to both, on the 11th of August, while messieurs, the Importants, were employing their talents in offering a base affront to the noble sister of the hero who had just saved France and was now on the point of extending its territories—while they were displaying their eloquence in the salons or whetting their daggers in dark cabals, Thionville, then one of the chief strongholds of the Empire, surrendered after an obstinate defence, thus enabling our armies to march to the assistance of Guébriant, cover Alsatia, cross the Rhine, and go to cope with Mercy. The regency of Anne of Austria was opening under the most brilliant auspices. Yet, notwithstanding all this, the minister to whom the queen owed so much, instead of obtruding himself on her and pretending to a right to rule her, was at her feet, lavishing attentions, respect, and affection on her such as she never before had known. Far from perceiving any resemblance to the imperious and moody Richelieu, she could recall with pleasure the words of Louis XIII. when he presented Mazarin to her for the first time in 1639 or 1640, "He will please you, Madame, because he resembles Buckingham." But he was a Buckingham of a very different stamp. She could not but have shuddered when Mazarin placed before her eyes all the proofs of the odious conspiracy that had been formed against him. There must have been full explanations between them. More than ever he must have urged her to throw off the mask, to sacrifice the circumspection which she had studied to preserve to what was now become a manifest ​necessity, to brave the censures of a few devotees, and in short to give him permission to defend his life. Hitherto, Anne of Austria had hesitated for reasons which are self-evident. The insolence of Madame de Montbazon had already irritated her greatly; the conviction which she now acquired of the numerous attempts at assassination which had failed by chance, and which at any time might be renewed, at length decided her, and it is at the close of the month of August that we must fix the positive date of the declared, public, and unrivalled ascendency of Mazarin over Anne of Austria. He had never been displeasing to her; her partiality for him commenced in the month preceding the death of Louis XIII.; in the month of May she appointed him prime minister, partly from regard and more from policy; this regard increased by degrees until it grew strong enough to resist all attacks on it; these attacks, by proceeding to the utmost violence, and making her fear for his life, precipitated the victory of the happy cardinal, and on the day after the nocturnal ambuscade in which he was to perish, Mazarin became the absolute master of the heart of the queen, and more powerful than ever Richelieu had been after the day of Dupes.
We have sought in vain in the Carnets of Mazarin for some traces of the explanations which Mazarin must have had with the queen at this critical juncture. These explanations probably were not such as to be so easily forgotten as to require one to keep notes of them. However, we find an obscure passage written in Spanish, from which we glean the following words: "I ought no longer to have any doubts, since the queen, in an excess of goodness, has told me that nothing can deprive me of the post near her person which she has done me the favor to give me; notwithstanding, as fear is the inseparable companion of affection," etc. About this time, Mazarin being somewhat ​indisposed by reason of his labors and cares, and suffering from the jaundice, wrote this line which is very short, but which furnishes food enough for thought: "The jaundice, fruit of extreme love."
Madame de Motteville was on duty near Queen Anne, when, at the report of the abortive attempt at assassination, the courtiers hastened to the Louvre to protest their devotion. The queen, greatly excited, said to her, "You shall see before twice twenty-four hours have passed, how I will avenge myself for the tricks which these false friends have played on me." "Never," says Madame de Motteville, "will the memory of these few words be effaced from my mind; I saw at that moment from the fire which burned in the eyes of the queen, and from the things which happened in truth on the same evening and the next day, what a sovereign is when she is in anger, and how capable she is of doing all that she wills." If the faithful maid of honor had been less discreet, she might have added: especially when the sovereign is a woman, and in love.
Mazarin had said: "The plots against me will never cease so long as my enemies see near her Majesty a powerful party declared against me, and capable of gaining the mind of the queen if any defeat should happen to me." The overthrow of this party was demanded by Mazarin and granted by Anne of Austria, and the most energetic measures were immediately resolved on.
That which was of all others the most pressing, and which could not be deferred for a single day, was to screen himself from all new assassins, and to profit by the first burst of ​popular indignation against the author of this plot and those who had shared in it. Now the apparent author of the plot was the Duke de Beaufort, aided by his principal officers together with some gentlemen in the service of the Vendômes. It was necessary, therefore, to arrest Beaufort and to bring him to trial. One may judge from this of the authority which Mazarin had gained, and how far Anne of Austria might one day be induced to go to defend a minister who was so dear to her. Before the death of Louis XIII., the Duke de Beaufort had been the man in whom the queen had most confided, and for some time he had been thought destined to fill the rôle of favorite. Since then, he had greatly injured his cause by his presumption and his evident want of ability, and, most of all, by his public intrigue with Madame de Montbazon; but the queen still retained a great weakness for him, and to sign an order for his arrest at the end of three months, was a great step, necessary, it is true, but still extreme, and giving a manifest proof of an entire change in her heart and her intimate relations. Even the dissimulation which she uses in this affair, marks the deliberate firmness of her resolution.
The second day of September is truly memorable in the history of Mazarin, and we may also say in that of France, for it witnessed the consolidation of royalty, shaken by the death of Richelieu and of Louis XIII., and the defeat of the party of the Importants. They did not rise again until the period of the Fronde, five years after, when they reappeared still the same, with the same designs and the same policy, and, after raising fierce and withering storms, were broken anew against the genius of Mazarin and the invincible fidelity of Anne of Austria.
On the morning of the 2d of September, Paris and the court were filled with commotion at the report of the ambuscade which had been lying in wait for Mazarin the night before between the Louvre and the hôtel de Clèves. The five conspirators who had shared in it with Beaufort, namely, the ​Count de Beaupuis, Alexandre and Henri de Campion, Brillet and Lié, had fled and were in safety. Beaufort and Madame de Chevreuse could not follow their example; to fly for them would have been to denounce themselves. The intrepid duchess did not hesitate, therefore, to appear at court as usual; and at the soirée of the 2d of September, she was found at the side of the queen with another person, a very different enemy of Mazarin, a stranger to these dark intrigues and even incapable in her innocence of giving credence to them, the pious and noble Madame de Hautefort. As for the duke, with his usual unconcern and bravery, he went in the morning to the chase, and in the evening, as was his custom, to pay his homage to the queen. When entering the Louvre, he met his mother and his sister, Madame de Vendôme and the Duchess de Nemours, who had been with the queen the whole day and had perceived her agitation. They did all that they could to prevent him from entering, and begged him to conceal himself, at least for a time. Without discomposure, he replied to them as formerly to the Duke de Guise, "They dare not touch me," and entered the presence of the queen, who received him with the best possible grace, and asked him all sorts of questions concerning the chase, "as if," says Madame de Motteville, "she had nothing else on her mind." On the arrival of the cardinal, she rose and told him to follow her. It seemed as if she wished to hold a private council in her chamber. She proceeded thither, followed only by the cardinal. At the same time, the Duke de Beaufort, on attempting to depart, encountered Guitaut, the captain of the guards, who arrested him, and commanded him to follow him in the name of the king and queen. The prince, without seeming at all astonished, gazed at him fixedly, and said, "Yes, I will do so; but this, I confess, is somewhat curious." Then, turning to Madame de Chevreuse and Madame de Hautefort, who were there ​conversing together, he said to them, "Ladies, you see that the queen arrests me." "The next morning," continues Madame de Motteville, "while the queen was at her toilette, she did two of her maids and myself the honor to say to us that two or three days before, being at Vincennes, where M. de Chavigny had given her a magnificent collation, she had seen the Duke de Beaufort in a very merry mood, and that a thought of pity had suddenly crossed her mind, and she had said to herself involuntarily, 'Alas! in three days, perhaps, this poor boy will be here again, a prisoner, when he will not laugh.' And Filandre, the first waiting-maid, has assured me that the queen wept that evening on retiring." The good maid of honor, always careful to conceal or to deny all that might injure her mistress, and to point out every thing that may place her in a favorable light, delights here in displaying her gentleness and her humanity. We see above all a profound dissimulation in the conduct of Anne of Austria which even Madame de Motteville cannot fail to remark. It is evident that every thing was concerted in advance between the queen and Mazarin; and if the tears which she shed on this occasion showed how much it cost her to imprison an old friend, they also proved how dear the new friend must have been to have obtained such a sacrifice.
The next morning, the Duke de Beaufort was conducted a prisoner to that same château of Vincennes where he had been but a few days before to promenade and to partake of a collation with the queen. The people of Paris, always friends to bold enterprises when successful, were in nowise excited by the disgrace of him whom they would one day adore; and on seeing the future king of the faubourgs and the market places pass on the road to Vincennes, they applauded, much to Mazarin's satisfaction, and cried with exultation, "Here is the man who tried to disturb our peace." The most dangerous ​of the Importants received orders to withdraw from Paris. Montrésor, Béthune, Saint-Ybar, Varicarville, and some others, were confined in the country under strict surveillance, or even forced to quit France. The Vendômes were commanded to retire to Anet; and the château d'Anet soon becoming what the hôtel de Vendôme had been in Paris,—the asylum of the conspirators,—Mazarin demanded them of the Duke César, who took good care not to deliver them. The cardinal was compelled almost regularly to besiege the château. He threatened to enter it by force, to seize the accomplices of Beaufort, and no longer to endure the scandal of a prince who braved justice and the laws with impunity; he believed himself in the right, and was about to take energetic measures when the Duke de Vendôme decided to quit France himself, and repaired to Italy to await the fall of Mazarin, as he had formerly awaited that of Richelieu in England.
The arrest of Beaufort, the dispersion of his accomplices, his friends, and his family, was the first, the indispensable measure which Mazarin needed to take to face the most pressing danger. But what would it avail him to strike the arm if the head were permitted to remain,—if Madame de Chevreuse still remained assiduous in her attendance at court, lavishing attentions and homage on the queen, and thus retaining and making the most of the remains of her former favor to sustain and secretly encourage the malcontents, to inspire them with her confidence, and to raise up new conspiracies? She still held in her hand the scarce-broken thread of the plot, and by her side was a man too experienced to suffer himself to be compromised in such intrigues, but quite ready to turn them to his profit, and whom Madame de Chevreuse was ​studying to show to the queen, to France, and to Europe, as in every way capable of conducting the affairs of State. Mazarin, therefore, did not hesitate; and on the third of September, the same day of the arrest of Beaufort, Châteauneuf was invited to make his adieux to the queen, and then to retire to his government of Touraine. The ex-keeper of the seals of Richelieu found that it was at least something to have been honorably extricated from disgrace and to have regained the high rank which he had formerly occupied in the service of the king, together with the government of a large province. His ambition, it is true, soared much higher, but he postponed its accomplishment, obeyed the orders of the queen, adroitly remained friends with her, and kept on very good terms with her minister while waiting an occasion to supplant him. He waited a long time, but he did not die without having seen again, for a moment at least, the power which an insane love had caused him to lose, and which a faithful and unwearied friendship again restored to him.
Madame de Chevreuse had not the wisdom of Châteauneuf. She did not know how to put a good face on a bad play, or else she was too far pledged to quit the party so soon. La Châtre, who was one of her most intimate friends and who saw her every day, relates that the same evening on which Beaufort was arrested at the Louvre, "her Majesty said to her that she believed her innocent of the designs of the prisoner, ​but that notwithstanding she deemed it proper that she should quietly retire to Dampierre, and after a brief stay there, should withdraw to Touraine." Madame de Chevreuse was really forced to go to Dampierre, but instead of remaining tranquil there, she moved heaven and earth to save those who were compromised in her behalf. She received Alexandre de Campion at her house, and furnished him with money and every thing necessary to conceal him safely from the pursuit of the cardinal. Fearless for herself and accustomed to dangers, she troubled herself chiefly concerning the fate of her friends, and knowing that several of them were at Anet, she continually communicated with them. She even commenced to knot new intrigues, and found means of forwarding a letter to the queen. Message upon message was addressed to her to hasten her departure. Both Montagu and La Porte were sent to her. She received them haughtily, and delayed under various pretexts. We have seen that on going to meet her, on her return from Brussels, Montagu had offered, in behalf of the queen and of Mazarin, to pay the debts which she had contracted during so many years of exile; she had already received large sums for this purpose, and she would not depart until after the queen had performed all her promises. She ​quitted the court and Paris trembling, and with grief in her soul, like Hannibal quitting Italy. She felt that the court, Paris, and the heart of the queen, were the true battle-fields, and that to withdraw was to yield the victory to the enemy. Her retreat was a signal of mourning to all the Catholic party, to the friends of peace and of the Spanish alliance, and, on the contrary, of public rejoicing to the friends of the Protestant union. The Count d'Estrade even came to the Louvre in behalf of the Prince of Orange, by whom he was accredited, to thank the regent officially.
Madame de Chevreuse repaired to her estate of Verger, between Tours and Angers. The deep solitude around her rendered the feeling of her defeat still more bitter. She met Montrésor who had also retired to Touraine, and had several interviews with him. She wrote to Paris to the Duke de
​Guise to know if it were true that he disapproved of her conduct, and to try his chivalry. She corresponded with her mother-in-law, Madame de Montbazon, who was banished to Rochefort, and the two exiles incited each other to attempt every means in their power to overthrow their common enemy. Vanquished from within, Madame de Chevreuse placed all her hopes on the side of the foreign powers. She revived the correspondence which she had never ceased to maintain with England, Spain, and the Netherlands. Her principal support, the centre and medium of her intrigues, was Lord Goring, the English ambassador to the Court of France, who, like his master, and especially like his mistress, belonged to the Spanish party. Craft, the English gentleman whom we ​have almost always met in the suite of Madame de Chevreuse, agitated noisily for her, while the Chevalier de Jars intrigued secretly for Châteauneuf. Under the cloak of the English embassy, an extensive correspondence was established between Madame de Chevreuse, Vendôme, Bouillon, and the other malcontents.
When, in the summer of 1644, the Queen of England came to seek an asylum in France, and went to take the waters of Bourbon, Madame de Chevreuse passionately desired to behold again the one who had formerly received her so kindly; and the Queen Henrietta, who, like her mother, Marie de Medicis, and Madame de Chevreuse, was of the Catholic and Spanish party, would have been rejoiced to have poured out her heart into that of so old and so faithful a friend. But she did not think herself justified in yielding to her inclination without the permission of the queen who had accorded her so noble a hospitality. Anne of Austria replied courteously that her sister the queen was free in all her movements, but afterwards caused her to be privately informed through the Chevalier Jars that it was not proper for her to receive the visits of a person at variance with her Majesty. This fresh disgrace, added to so many others, urged the irritation of the duchess to its height. She redoubled her efforts to throw off the yoke that was oppressing her. Mazarin knew and watched all her manœuvres. He caused the arrest of the controller of her household at Paris, and also, a short time after, of her physician while in the same carriage with her daughter. The duchess complains loudly of this proceeding in a letter which ​she found means to forward to the queen. She asserts that Mademoiselle de Chevreuse was forced from her carriage, "two archers holding a pistol to her throat, and crying unceasingly, 'kill her, kill her, and the women who are with her!'" She did not fail to protest and to appeal from the ​enmity of Mazarin to the justice of Anne of Austria. But the physician who had been arrested and thrown into the Bastille made confessions which gave a clue to some very serious matters; and an officer of the king's guards was despatched to Madame de Chevreuse with an order for her retirement to Angoulême, together with the charge to conduct her there. In Angoulême was a strong château which served as a prison of state, in which her friend Châteauneuf had been confined ten years for her sake. This memory, which was always present to the mind of Madame de Chevreuse, filled her with alarm; she feared that this was the retreat to which they wished to convey her, and, preferring any extremity to a prison, she decided to re-engage in the adventures which she had confronted in 1637, and to take again, for the third time, the road to exile.
But how changed were all the circumstances about her, and how she herself was changed! Her first exile from France in 1626, had been one continuous triumph. Young, beautiful, and everywhere adored, she had quitted Nancy and the Duke of Lorraine, forever submissive to the sway of her charms, to return to Paris to trouble the heart of Richelieu. Her flight to Spain in 1637 had been a severer trial; she had been forced to travel through France in disguise, to brave more than one peril, and to endure many hardships, to find at the end of all this but five long years of impotent agitation. But she ​was still sustained by youth and by the consciousness of that irresistible beauty which won her servants everywhere, even on thrones. She had confidence too in the friendship of the queen, and she trusted that this friendship would one day reward her for all her devotion. Now age was beginning to make itself felt, and her declining beauty promised her but rare conquests. She knew that, in losing the heart of the queen, she had lost the greatest part of her prestige in France and in Europe. The flight of the Duke de Vendôme, soon followed by that of the Duke de Bouillon, had left the Importants without any considerable chief. She had learned to her cost that Mazarin was quite as adroit and quite as formidable as Richelieu. Victory seemed everywhere in league with him. Turenne, Bouillon's own brother, solicited the honor of serving him, and the Duke d'Enghien gained him battle after battle. She knew that the cardinal held proofs within his hands which could condemn and imprison her during her whole life. But when all abandoned her, this extraordinary woman did not abandon herself As soon as the officer Riquetti had signified to her the order of which he was the bearer, she took her resolution with her accustomed promptness, and accompanied by her daughter Charlotte, who had come to join her, and who would not quit her, she gained the thickets of the Vendée and the solitudes of Brittany by cross-roads, and asked an asylum of the Marquis de Coetquen, a few leagues from Saint-Malo. The noble and generous Breton accorded the hospitality which he owed to a woman and an unfortunate. She did not abuse it, and after having deposited her jewels in his hands, as formerly in those of La Rochefoucauld, she embarked with her ​daughter in the depths of winter, at Saint-Malo, in a small vessel which would take her to Dartmouth, in England, whence she intended to pass to Dunkirk and to Flanders. But the ships of war of the Parliament were cruising in those parts; they met and captured the miserable craft, and carried her to the Isle of Wight. There Madame de Chevreuse was recognized; and as she was known as the friend of the queen of England, the Parliamentarians were disposed to treat her harshly and to deliver her to Mazarin. Happily, she found that the governor of the Isle of Wight was the same Count Pembroke whom she had formerly known. She addressed herself to his courtesy, and, thanks to his intervention, though
​with great difficulty, she obtained passports which permitted her to reach Dunkirk, and thence to gain the Spanish Netherlands.
She resided some time at Liege, studying to maintain, and to rivet more closely between Lorraine, Austria, and Spain, an alliance which was the last resource of the Importants and the only foundation of her own credit. But Mazarin had resumed ​all the designs of Richelieu, and, like him, he strove to detach the Duke of Lorraine from his two allies. The duke was then madly enamored with the beautiful Beatrix de Cusance, Princess de Cantecroix. Mazarin endeavored to gain the lady, and he proposed to the ambitious and enterprising Charles IV., to break with Spain, and to enter into Franche-Comté with the aid of France, promising to leave to him all that he should acquire. He succeeded in bringing into his interest the Princess de Phalzbourg, the sister of Charles and the former mistress of Puylaurens, but then very much fallen in favor, who rendered him a secret and faithful account of all that passed about her brother. Mazarin especially demanded to be kept informed of the slightest movements of Madame de Chevreuse; he knew that she corresponded with the Duke de Bouillon, that she held the Imperial General Piccolomini at her disposal through her friend, Madame de Strozzi, and that she still preserved all her influence over the Duke of Lorraine, despite the charms of the beautiful Beatrix. With the aid of the Princess de Phalzbourg, he followed all her movements and disputed step by step the possession of the fickle Charles IV.,—sometimes victorious, but oftener vanquished in this uncertain struggle.
The victory remained with Madame de Chevreuse. Her ascendency over Charles IV., born of love but surviving it, and stronger than all the new amours of this inconstant prince, retained him in the service of Spain, and foiled all the projects of Mazarin. By degrees, she again became the soul of every intrigue plotted against the French Government. She not only combated it from without, but she continually excited new difficulties within. Surrounded by a few ardent and persevering refugees, among whom was the Count de ​Saint-Ybar, one of the most resolute men of the party, she encouraged the remnant of the Importants in France, and stirred up everywhere the fire of sedition. Passionate, yet always mistress of herself, she preserved a smooth brow in the midst of tempests, at the same time displaying an indefatigable activity in surprising the weak sides of the enemy. Availing herself equally of the Catholic and the Protestant parties, sometimes she meditated a revolt in Languedoc or an invasion in Brittany; sometimes, at the least symptom of discontent manifested by any important personage, she labored to detach him from Mazarin and to win him to her cause. In 1647, her piercing eye discerned in the heart of the Congress of Munster some signs of a misunderstanding between the French ambassador, the Duke de Longueville, and the prime minister, which in fact was with difficulty arranged, and to her belongs the mournful honor of having from that time founded too just hopes on the ill-regulated ambition and the variable temper of the Duke d'Enghien, quite recently become Prince de Condé.
Time advanced, the Fronde broke forth; and the ardent duchess rushed again from Brussels in 1649, and brought to her friends the support of Spain and of her experience. She was then nearly fifty years of age. Years and sorrows had ​triumphed over her beauty, but she was still graceful, and her keen penetration, her decision, her boldness, and her genius, remained entire. She had found a last friend in the Marquis de Laigues, captain of the guards of the Duke d'Orleans, a man of spirit and of resolution, whom she loved till the end, and with whom after the death of M. de Chevreuse in 1657, she probably united her destiny by one of those mariages de conscience then very much in fashion. We cannot be expected to follow her step by step, and to entangle ourselves in the mazes of the Fronde. It suffices to say that she enacted one of the principal roles in it. Attached to the heart of the party and to its essential interests, she guided it through every danger with incomparable address and energy. After relying so long upon Spain, she knew how to separate from it at the right time. She preserved a powerful influence over the Duke of Lorraine, and it is not difficult to recognize her hand concealed behind the ambiguous and often hostile movements ​of Charles IV. She took the principal part in the three great resolutions which express and recapitulate the whole history of the Fronde from the battle of Paris and the peace of Ruel; in 1650, she was of the opinion that they should prefer Mazarin to Condé, and dared to adviee them to lay hands on the victor of Rocroy and of Lens; in 1651, a moment of wavering on the part of Mazarin, who nearly lost sight of her in his own intrigues and in a too complicated policy, together with the pressure of a strong personal interest, the well-founded hope of marrying her daughter Charlotte to the Prince de Conti, brought her back to Condé and procured the deliverance of the princes; and in 1652, the manifold errors of Condé restored her forever to the queen and to Mazarin. She did not participate in the folly of Retz—that of thinking a third party possible in the midst of revolution, and dreaming of a government shared between Mazarin and Condé and supported by a worn-out parliament and the fickle Duke d'Orleans. Her political instinct taught her that, after so much agitation, a firm and steady rule was the greatest need of France. Mazarin, who, like Richelieu, had never combated her but with regret, sought and often gladly followed her counsels. She took her place loftily by the side of royalty; she served it, and it served her in its turn. After Mazarin, she spied out Colbert who was not yet in the ministry, and labored for his elevation and the downfall of Fouquet, and the proud but ​judicious Marie de Rohan gave her grandson, the Duke de Chevreuse, the friend of Beauvilliers and of Fenelon, to the daughter of a plebeian of genius, the greatest administrator that France ever possessed. She easily obtained all that she ​desired both for herself and her family; she attained the height of credit and of consideration, and, like her two illustrious competitors, Madame de Longueville and the Princess Palatine, she ended in profound tranquillity one of the most restless careers of the seventeenth century.
It is said that, towards the close of her days, she too felt the influence of grace, and turned her eyes, wearied with the mobility of earthly things, towards Heaven. She had seen all those whom she loved or hated fall successively around her—Richelieu and Mazarin, Louis XIII. and Anne of Austria, the Queen of England and her daughter, the amiable Henriette, Châteauneuf and the Duke of Lorraine. Her much loved daughter had expired in her arms in the midst of the Fronde. He who had first turned her aside from the path of duty, the handsome and frivolous Holland, had mounted the scaffold of Charles I., and her last lover, the Marquis de Laigues, though much younger than she, had preceded her to the tomb. She perceived that she had given her soul to vanity; and wishing to mortify the feeling that had proved her ruin, the haughty duchess became the humblest of women. She renounced all grandeur; she quitted her magnificent hotel in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, built by Muet, and retired to the country, not ​to Dampierre, which would have recalled too vividly the brilliant days of the past, but to a modest villa at Gagny near Chelles. There, far from the gaze of the world, she awaited her last hour, and died in obscurity at the age of seventy-nine, in the same year with the Cardinal de Retz and Madame de Longueville. She would have neither funeral solemnities nor funeral oration; she forbade that they should give her any of those titles which she had learned to despise; she wished to be interred obscurely in the little old parish church of Gagny. There, in the southern aisle near the chapel of the Virgin, some faithful but unknown hand has inscribed on a slab of black marble, the following epitaph: "Here lies Marie de Kohan, Duchess de Chevreuse, daughter of Hercule de Rohan, Duke de Montbazon. She espoused, in her first marriage, Charles d'Albert, Duke de Luynes, peer and constable of France; and in her second marriage, Claude de Lorraine, Duke de Chevreuse. Humility having deadened in her heart all the grandeur of the age, she forbade the revival at her death of the least mark of this grandeur, which she wished to end by burying beneath the simplicity of this tomb, having ordered that they should inter her in the parish church of Gagny, where she died at the age of seventy-nine, on the 12th of August, 1679."
THE END.
* ↑ III. Carnet, p. 10, in Spanish, "Sy yo creyera lo que dicen que S. M. se sierve di mi per necessidad, sin tener alguna inclination, no pararia aqui tres dias."
* ↑ II. Carnet, p. 65: "Quitarse la maschera."
* ↑ III. Carnet, p. 45: "——mas contodo esto siendo el temor un compagnero inseparabile dell'affection," etc.
* ↑ IV. Carnet, p. 3: "La giallezza cagionata dà soverchio amore."
* ↑ Memoires, vol. i., p. 185.
* ↑ III. Carnet, p. 93 and last: "Ogniuno mi dice che li disegni contra me non cesseranno, finche si vedrà che appresso di S. M. vi è un potente partito contro di me, e capace d'acquistar lo spirito di S. M. quando mi succeda una disgrazia."
* ↑ Vol. i., p. 185.
* ↑ III. Carnet, p. 88: "Tutto il popolo gode e diceva: eccolà quello che voleva turbar il nostro riposo!"
* ↑ Madame de Motteville, vol. i., p. 190: "Orders were sent to M. and Madame de Vendôme and to M. de Mercoeur to leave Paris instantly. The Duke de Vendôme at first excused himself on the plea of illness, but to hasten his departure and make his journey more convenient, the queen sent him a litter."
* ↑ III. Carnet, p. 40, "Permissione a Chatonof di veder la regina et ordine di andar in Turena." Olivier d'Ormesson, in his Journal, gives this order under date of September 3, 1643.
* ↑ Châteauneuf had the seals from March, 1650, when Mazarin exiled himself, until April, 1651. He died in 1653, aged sixty-three years. His tomb and that of his family might formerly have been seen in the cathedral of Bruges; nothing now remains but his statue in marble, with that of his father, Claude de l'Aubespine, and his mother, Marie de La Châtre, executed by Philippe de Buister.
* ↑ Memoires, vol. LI. of the Coll. Petitot, p. 244.
* ↑ Recueil, etc., p. 133: "I could not desire a greater consolation in my misfortunes than the permission which you give me to go to Dampierre; the fear which you express lest I should have been surprised on the road is very flattering, but I shall take such good care of myself that this will not happen to me. I shall not travel by day, and the nights are so dark that I shall not be seen by any one."
* ↑ IV. Carnet, p. 1: "Hebert, mestre d'hotel di Mma. di Cheverosa, tre volte in tre giorni a Aneto dà M. di Vendomo."
* ↑ IV. Carnet, p, 3: "Lettera per altra stada di Cheverosa alla regina."
* ↑ III. Carnet, pp. 81 and 82: "Allontanar Cheverosa che fà mill caballe."
* ↑ La Châtre, ibid. See also an inedited letter to La Porte, Bibliothèque Nationale, II., portfolios of Doctor Valant, p. 107.
* ↑ III. Carnet, p. 86: "Mma. di Cheverosa sortita havendo somme considerabili di denari contanti. S. M. sa ben li suoi disegni, e che se li da 200 mil lire, come pretende, vi havrà havute 400 mil lire." Journal of Olivier d'Ormesson: "September 19, I heard Monsieur ask at the council if the two hundred thousand livres which had been promised Madame de Chevreuse had been paid her." La Châtre, ibid.: "She persisted in not departing until she had received some money that had been promised her."
* ↑ Archives of foreign affairs, France, vol. cv., letter of Gaudin to Servien, October 31, 1643: "M. d'Estrade congratulated her Majesty in behalf of the Prince of Orange on the banishment of Madame de Chevreuse, saying that she had shown the good intention which she had towards the interest of her allies by this action, as since her arrival the said lady had been scheming an advantageous peace, well knowing that the Spaniards would willingly yield all which the French had taken, provided that one thing might be accorded them, namely, the abandonment of the Swedes and the Dutch."
* ↑ Montrésor, Memoires, ibid., p, 355: "The residence of Madame de Chevreuse, at Tours, gave me opportunity to see her at times, and although this was but rarely, I gained more knowledge of her disposition and the temperament of her mind than I had ever possessed in the time when she was more happy and of greater consideration. Her general desertion by all those whom she had obliged and who were bound in friendship and united in interests with her, caused me to feel how little faith can be placed in the men of the present century, as is shown by the state in which a person of this rank is found, thus universally forsaken in her disgrace; this increased my desire of rendering my services with greater assiduity and tenderness whenever opportunities might offer. I was not ignorant that the consequences which might follow the visits I had the honor to pay her might injure me and disturb my tranquillity, but the esteem and respect which I had for her person and her interests induced me to run the risk, always observing the precaution that they should not be too frequent, and that there should not be any dissimulation, either on her part, or on mine. The reverses with which her whole life had been agitated were not yet ended."
* ↑ IV. Carnet, p. 14.
* ↑ Ibid., pp. 48 and 49: "Più animate che mai et in speranza di far qualche cosa contra me con il tempo."
* ↑ Ibid., pp. 95 and 96: "26 febraio, 1643 (read 1644), l'imbasciator Gorino, lega strellissima con Cheverosa e Vandomo et altri della corte e fuori. Risolutione di unir questa caballa a Spagnuoli, e disfarsi del cardinale. Il suddetto spedisce di continuo a Cheverosa, Yandomo et altri. É stato sempre spagnolissimo, et hora più che mai. Dice che il cardinale una volta à basso, il detto partito trionfarà. Giar (Jars), confidentissimo di Gorino, è sempre in speranza del ritorno di Chatonof, Craft, più bruglione, più spagnolo, et più del partito del suddetto . . . Ha detto mille improperii della regina . . . S. M. faccià scriver una buona lettera al Re e Regina d'Inghiltera dolendosi del procedere de'suoi ministri e di quello scrisse Gorino, etc."
* ↑ Madame de Motteville, vol. i., p. 233, etc.
* ↑ Carnet, p. 105: "S. Maestà puol dire al commendatore di Giar e a madamigella di Fruges che, sebbenne S. M. per civiltà ha detto che per veder o no Mma. di Cheverosa non se ne curava, ad ogni modo la regina della gran Bretagna non dovrebbe admetter la visita d'una persona che per sua mala condotta ha perdute le grazie di S. M."
* ↑ Archives of foreign affairs, France, vol. cvii., letter of Gaudin to Servien, May 31; and Montrésor, ibid., p. 356.
* ↑ "Tours, November 20, 1644. Madame: Although the only happiness which I had hoped in the exile from your presence was that of meriting your remembrance by the continuance of my duties, I have deprived myself of both, since I have known that this forbearance would be to you the more pleasing token of that obedience which I have always endeavored to express to your Majesty, rather in that way which I believed most in conformity with her wishes than in that which would best have satisfied myself. But as your Majesty has assured me that the length of this absence would not diminish the goodness which she has manifested to the whole world in every thing relating to me, I trust, Madame, that, as you have been able to judge of my respect by the time during which I have denied myself the satisfaction of these duties, I may hope that your Majesty will permit me to have recourse to them on occasions important to my repose. I had self-control enough to restrain myself on the first which presented itself in the arrest of my controller, although you cannot doubt, Madame, in the conviction which I have of his innocence, how much I have been pained at feeling that his being my domestic has been the sole presumption of his crime. But I confess to you that what happened four or five days since in the imprisonment of an Italian physician who has been at my house for some time past, affects me so closely that I cannot believe myself so unhappy as to be refused by your Majesty this vent to my just resentment. This was accomplished with violence unheard of in such cases. Having taken an occasion when he was in the carriage with my daughter, she was forced to alight, two archers holding a pistol to her throat and crying unceasingly, 'Kill her, kill her, and the women who are with her!' This proceeding is so extraordinary that as I expect your justice to render me satisfaction in the person of my daughter, I dare promise myself that your goodness will secure me in future from such rencounters; and although I have sufficient reason to rely on my innocence for safety, I have had such sad experiences of misfortune that your Majesty will not think it strange if I ask it of her with more earnestness, as having ordered me to remain in this place where I am deprived of the sole happiness which I desire in this world, the only consolation which remains to me is to possess security for myself and my household, and to be able to pray to God in peace that he may crown you with as much prosperity as is desired for your Majesty, Madame, by your most humble and most obedient subject, Marie de Rohan."
* ↑ Montrésor, ibid. This affair (of the imprisonment of her physician) suffered by a man who was her servant, preceded but a few days that which happened to herself. Riquetti, officer of the king's body guard, was sent to Tours to carry her the order to retire to Angoulême, where he was to conduct her. The fear of being detained there and placed in the citadel under a sure guard, made such an impression on her mind that she resolved to expose herself to all other perils which might happen to her, to avoid that of imprisonment, which she believed inevitable if it were not promptly provided against.
* ↑ She afterwards begged the Marquis de Coetquen to remit her jewels to Montrésor, who restored them to a messenger whom she had commissioned to receive them. But Mazarin was informed of every thing; he knew of the correspondence of the duchess; and he attempted to lay hands on the famous jewels, arrested Montrésor, and held him more than a year in prison. See the Memoirs of Montrésor, ibid. Mazarin, so severe towards Montrésor, whom he knew as a dangerous conspirator, showed indulgence to the Marquis de Coetquen, whose designs had been honorable. In his Lettres Francaises preserved in the Bibliotheque Mazarine, is the following passage, which does him honor, and which Richelieu would not have written. Fol. 376; to M. the Marquis de Coetquen, May 7, 1645: "From what you have taken the trouble to write to me, I acknowledge the information which you give me concerning the entrance of Mme. the Duchess de Chevreuse into one of your houses. Having conversed upon this with the gentleman whom I send back to you, I esteem it superfluous to write here the particulars which I have told him. Relying, therefore, on his parole, I shall content myself with assuring you that I have received with favor the proofs which you give me of your affection for the service of the king in this adventure. I have not failed to represent all that I ought to the queen, excusing that which has passed by the reasons which you send me, and by those which the said gentleman has narrated, etc."
* ↑ Archives of foreign affairs, France, vol. cvi., p. 162. Letter of Madame de Chevreuse to Count Pembroke, governor of the Isle of Wight, April 29, 1645: "Monsieur, The continuation of my misfortunes obliging me to quit France in haste to preserve in a neutral country the liberty which the power of my enemies wished to take from me in my own, the only way by which I found it possible to avoid this disgrace was to embark at Saint-Malo to pass into England and thence into Flanders, in order to reach the country of Liege, where I might justify my innocence in safety if I could obtain a hearing, or at least shelter myself from the persecution to which the hatred and the artifice of the Cardinal Mazarin has subjected me for a year and a half past. Having taken passage with this design in a bark which I found ready to sail for Dartmouth, where I purposed, on arriving, to send for the passports which I should need to go to Dover and thence to embark for Dunkirk, it was captured by two captains of the ships of war which are under the authority of the Parliament, and brought to this Isle of Wight, of which I have learned with much joy that you are governor, assuring myself from your nobleness and your courtesy that you will not refuse the entreaty which I make you that you will demand of the gentlemen of the Parliament a passport to go hence to Dover and thence to embark for Dunkirk, where the unhappy state of my affairs urges me to repair without delay. I hope the favor from the justice of the gentlemen of the Parliament that they will have the goodness not to detain me, as the confidence which I have in their generosity, and the resolution which I have taken of never rendering myself unworthy of receiving its benefits, may justly cause me to hope for the boon which I shall impatiently expect on the return of the bearer, whom I send expressly for this purpose to London with the servant of your lieutenant in this island, from whom you will receive a more particular account of the accidents of my voyage. I abridge them as much as possible, so as not to weary you by too long a letter; and it suffices to show you my need of your aid in my present position in order promptly to receive the passport which I ask of the gentlemen of the Parliament, and to entreat you to believe that I shall never be fully satisfied until I shall have expressed to you by my services that you have obliged a person who will be through her whole life, monsieur, your very humble and very affectionate servant, Marie de Rohan, Duchess de Chevreuse."
* ↑ Archives of foreign affairs, vol. cix., Gaudin to Servien, May 20, 1645: "Advices from England say that Madame de Chevreuse is still at the Isle of Wight, and that the Parliament will neither give her vessel nor passport to go to Dunkirk, etc." Bibliothèque Mazarine. French Letters of Mazarin, folio 415, July 22, 1645: "One may judge," says Mazarin, "whether we have a great hatred towards Madame de Chevreuse, since, when she was in the power of the English Parliamentarians, they offered to surrender her into our hands, which we did not care for."
* ↑ IV. Carnet, pp. 81 and 82; Carnet, v. pp. 18, 68, and 115.
* ↑ Bibliothèque Mazarine, French Letters of Mazarin to the Princess de Phalzbourg; especially those of July 22, 1645; of September 30, of the same year; of November 11, of December 2, and 23, etc.
* ↑ Bibliothèque Mazarine, French Letters of Mazarin, letter of September 28, 1645, to the Abbé de La Rivière, folio 453, But the most important paper of all, which throws much light on all the intrigues of Madame de Chevreuse in 1646 and 1649, and also on the state of public sentiment in France on the eve of the Fronde, is a memoir of a Spanish agent, whom we have already met in the affair of the Count de Soissons, the Abbé de Mercy,—a memoir addressed to the Government of the Netherlands, in which he shows all that Saint-Ybar, and more especially Madame de Chevreuse, might do against Mazarin if they were better sustained. This piece is entitled: "Memoire sur ce qui s'est négocié et traité au voyage de l'abbé de Mercy en Hollande entre lui, le comte de Saint-Ybar et Madame la Duchesse de Chevreuse." The memoir is dated September 27, 1647, and is signed P. Ernest de Mercy. It forms a portion of the official papers of the Spanish Secretary of State which are to be found at Brussels, in the general archives of the kingdom of Belgium.
* ↑ Retz, who ends by detesting Madame de Chevreuse because she refused to follow him in his last extravagant project, pretends that, in 1649, she no longer possessed even a vestige of beauty. However, she still retained it in 1657, as may be seen from the portrait of Ferdinand Elle, engraved by Balechou, in the series of Odieuvre, in which she is represented as a widow, with a fine, expressive, and aristocratic face.
* ↑ The Marquis de Laigues, having gone to Brussels in 1649, to treat with Spain in the name of the Frondeurs, found Madame de Chevreuse there and formed an intimacy with her, as Alexandre de Campion had done in 1641. Retz pretends that when Laigues quitted Paris, Montrésor induced him to endeavor to please Madame de Chevreuse, who could do much with the Spanish Government, and to reach her head through her heart. Laigues was young and pleasing in his person; he succeeded, and both became so strongly attached that they never separated. Note the only fact, very uncertain however, since it rests on a single witness, whence Retz draws his admirable conclusion, which does as much honor to his logic as to his delicacy, "that it was not difficult to persuade Madame de Chevreuse to accept a handsome lover."
* ↑ Memoirs of the younger Brienne, published by M. Barrière, vol ii., chap, xix., p. 178: "The Marquis de Laigues, who was certainly the mari de conscience of the duchess."
* ↑ See in the Bibliothèque Nationale, fonds Gaigniere, No. 2,799, an inedited collection of the autograph and cypher letters of Mazarin to the Abbé Fouquet, brother of the future superintendent, in which he unceasingly entreats the advice and good offices of Madame de Chevreuse.
* ↑ Memoirs of the younger Brienne, vol. i., chap, vii., p. 218: "She formed an alliance with the Colberts, and married her grandson to the daughter of a man who would never have thought, ten years before, of making his daughters duchesses. For this, it was necessary to crush poor M. Fouquet, and she sacrificed him without scruple to the ambition of his competitor. I shall presently relate this intrigue with new details. Madame de Chevreuse conducted it with ardor; it was the last of her life." Vol. ii., chap, iv., p. 178: "The Duchess de Chevreuse was at Fontainebleu with the Marquis de Laigues concerning this affair, (that of Fouquet.) She had forced the latter to ally himself with M. Colbert, the minister, who was then only controller of the finances. Having preserved sufficient ascendency over the mind of the queen-mother, she caused her to consent to the overthrow of M. Fouquet, although her Majesty had a friendship for him, because he had always willingly paid her dowry, together with some considerable pensions which the king, her son, had bestowed on her after his majority." To support these facts, we find among the papers of Fouquet which were in the famous casket, and which are now preserved in the armory of Baluze at the Bibliothèque Nationale, various letters of a secret agent of the superintendent, warning him that Madame de Chevreuse is working against him, and is endeavoring to deprive him of the protection of the queen-mother. This agent, who must have been a nobleman of the court, had indirectly gained the confessor of Anne of Austria, and learned through him of the manœuvres of Madame de Chevreuse. Letter of June 28, 1661: "Madame de Chevreuse continues closely to question this good man, (the confessor,) but this will avail nothing, and you shall be precisely informed of every thing that she shall say to him." Letter of July 21: "I have not been able to learn any thing more particular of Madame de Chevreuse, but the good confessor came here a short time since to see the person of whom I have had the honor to speak to you already. He related to him all that he knew, and told him, among other things, that some time ago Madame de Chevreuse questioned him closely, that she sent Laigues to him several times, and that she talked in a very devout strain to him in order to gain him, but above all, Monseigneur, that she talked against you. I did not hear in what manner, for this good man said that he had related it to M. Pelisson. It will suffice, therefore, for me to warn you that this good cordelier complains a little because you cited him on making an explanation with the queen-mother, saying that you told her that she went to Dampierre among your enemies, who said things against you to her, and when she denied that she had ever been spoken to in this manner, you told her to ask the father-confessor; and that the queen said to him the next day that she could not comprehend how you knew every thing, and that you had spies everywhere." Letter of August 2: "Madame de Chevreuse has been here, and I have been promised information in respect to things which are of the greatest importance to you concerning this affair, the journey to Brittany, (the journey to Brittany and the arrest of Fouquet took place in the beginning of September,) certain secret resolutions of the king, and the measures taken against you." Letter of August 4: "Madame de Chevreuse saw the confessor of the queen-mother twice while she was here. Yet this simpleton conceals this from M. Pelisson, who, on visiting him, asked him if he had seen her, which he denied as he has since said. He has also told things under the seal of strict secrecy which are of the utmost importance. The person who knows them objects to telling them to me because Madame de Chevreuse is concerned in them, and being so closely related to her, she is reluctant to disclose them to me."
* ↑ Abbé Le Beuf, Histoire du diocèse de Paris, vol. vi., p. 133, etc. He cites an author of the times, who says: "In this epitaph, she is neither styled Princess nor even Most High and Mighty Lady; nor is her husband styled Most High and Mighty Prince. She died in this parish, at the priory of Saint Fiacre de la Maison Rouge."