CONDÉ’S ADVENTUROUS EXPEDITION.

CondÉ passed several months in Guienne, occupied with strengthening and extending the insurrection at the head of which he had placed himself, and in repulsing as far as possible in the south the royal army, commanded by the skilful and experienced Count d’Harcourt. Amidst very varied successes, he learned from different quarters the bad turn which the Fronde’s affairs was taking in the heart of the kingdom, the intrigues of De Retz who held the key of Paris, and the deplorable state of the army on the banks of the Loire.

On receiving these tidings at Bordeaux in the month of March, 1652, CondÉ saw clearly the double danger which menaced him, and immediately faced it in his wonted manner. Instead of awaiting events which were on the eve of taking place at a distance, he determined on anticipating them, and formed an extraordinary resolution, of a character very much resembling his great military manoeuvres, which at first sight appears extravagant, but which the gravest reason justifies, and the temerity of which even is only another form of high prudence. He formed the design of slipping out of Bordeaux, traversing the lines of Count d’Harcourt, to get over in the best way he might the hundred and fifty leagues which separated him from the Loire and Paris, to appear there suddenly, and to place himself at the head of his affairs.

He left behind him in Guienne a force sufficiently imposing to allow of it there awaiting in security the successful results he was about to seek. In possessing himself of Agen, Bergerac, Perigueux, Cognac, and even for a moment of Saintes, and by pushing his conquests into Haute Guienne, on the side of Mont-de-Marsan, Dax, and Pau, he had made Bordeaux the capital of a small but rich and populous kingdom, surrounded on all sides by a belt of strongholds, communicating with the sea by the Gironde, and admirably placed for attack or defence. This kingdom, backed as it was by Spain, was capable of receiving continuous succour from Santander and St. Sebastian, and a Spanish fleet could approach by the Tour de Corduan, bringing subsidies and troops, whilst Count de Dognon’s fleet, sailing from the islands of RÉ and OlÉron to join it, might easily surround and even beat the royal fleet, then forming at Brouage under the Duke de VendÔme. In 1650, during the imprisonment of the princes, Bordeaux had defended itself for more than six months against a considerable army with the young king at its head, and which was directed by Mazarin in person. CondÉ, and all his family were adored there, by reason of the hatred felt for his predecessor, the imperious Duke d’Epernon. The Bordeaux parliament was also equally involved in the Fronde as was that of Paris, with which it had allied itself by a solemn declaration. Under the parliament was a brave and ardent people, which furnished a numerous militia.

CondÉ had named the Prince de Conti his lieutenant-general—a prince of the blood giving lustre to authority, dominating all rivalries, an appointment calculated to render obedience more easy. He was aware of Conti’s levity, but he knew also that he was wanting neither in intelligence nor courage. He believed in the ascendency which Madame de Longueville had always exercised over her brother, and he hoped she would guide him still. He had confidence in that high-souled sister whom formerly he had so warmly loved; and although intrigues and a sinister influence, to which we shall shortly further allude, had diminished the high admiration he had had for her, and to which he later returned, he reckoned upon her intelligence, upon her pride, upon that lofty courage of which she had given so many proofs at Stenay. At his sister’s side he left his wife Claire ClÉmence de MaillÉ-BrÉzÉ, who had behaved so admirably in the first Guienne war. He left her enceinte with their second child, and with her he gave to Bordeaux and placed as it were in pledge in its hands, to hold the place of himself, the Duke d’Enghien, the hope and stay of his house, the peculiar object of his tenderness. So that there, he left behind him a government, he thought, which would look well alike in the eyes of France and of Europe.

In reality, to what did CondÉ aspire? To constitute himself the head of the nobility against the Court? The nobles thought it harsh to be so treated. To commence another Fronde? To do that, it was necessary to have the parliaments under his thumb; and he had already been compelled to threaten the deputies of that of Aix with the bastinado. Did he look forward to an independent principality, as he later on desired to obtain from the Spaniards? Or rather did he think of snatching from the Duke d’Orleans the lieutenant-generalship? It is difficult to divine what may have passed through his capricious brain. He was constant in nothing. It was seen later still that he would very willingly have changed his religion, offering himself on the one side to Cromwell, and to become a protestant in order to have an English army; on the other to the Pope, if he would help to get him elected King of Poland.

The income of the CondÉs in 1609 amounted to ten thousand livres, and in 1649, besides the Montmorency estates, they held an enormous portion of France. First, by the Great CondÉ, they had Burgundy, Berri, the marshes of Lorraine, a dominant fortress in the Bourbonnais that held in check four provinces. Secondly, by Conti, Champagne. Thirdly, by Longueville, their sister’s husband, Normandy. Fourthly, the Admiralty, and Saumur, the chief fortress of Anjou, were in the hands of the brother of CondÉ’s wife; they fell in through his death, and were sold again by them as though they were a family birthright. Later still, they negotiated for the possession of Guienne and Provence.

Amidst the cares of administration and of war, CondÉ carried on an assiduous correspondence with Chavigny, then fallen into disgrace, who kept him well informed of the state of affairs at Court and in Paris. They had assumed quite a new face during the last few months. Mazarin in his exile had not learned without inquietude the ever-increasing success of ChÂteauneuf. He saw him active and determined, accepted as a chief by all colleagues, skilfully seconded by the keeper of the seals, MolÉ, and by Marshal de Villeroi, the king’s governor, an ambiguous personage, very ambitious at bottom, and jealous of the Cardinal’s favour with the Queen. ChÂteauneuf, it is true, had only entered the Cabinet under the agreement of shortly recalling Mazarin; but he incessantly asked for fresh delay; he tried to make the Queen comprehend the danger of a precipitate return,—the Fronde ready to arouse itself anew, the Duke d’Orleans and the Coadjutor resuming their ancient opposition, and royalty finding itself once more without any solid support. Anne of Austria gradually acquiescing in these wise counsels, Mazarin, who at first had with difficulty restrained the impatient disposition of the Queen, finding her grown less eager, became alarmed: he saw that he was lost should he allow such a rival to establish himself.[81] Therefore, passing suddenly from an apparent resignation to an extraordinary audacity, he had, towards the end of November 1651, broken his ban, quitted his retreat at Dinan, and had resolutely entered France with a small force collected together by his two faithful friends, the Marquis de Navailles and the Count de Broglie, and led by Marshal Hocquincourt. He had by main strength surmounted every obstacle, braved the decrees and the deputies of the parliament, reached Poitiers where the Queen and young Louis the Fourteenth had eagerly welcomed him; and there, in January 1652, after speedily ridding himself of ChÂteauneuf, too proud and too able to be resigned to hold the second rank, he had again taken in hand the reins of government.

This bold conduct, which probably saved Mazarin, came also to the succour of CondÉ. The second and irreparable disgrace of the minister of the old Fronde had exasperated him as well as had the umbrage given him by the Duke d’Orleans. He thought himself tricked by the Queen, and had loudly complained of it. CondÉ’s friends had not failed to seize that occasion to reconcile him with the Duke, and to negotiate a fresh alliance between them; and as previously the Fronde and the Queen had been united against CondÉ, so also at the end of January 1652, that Prince and the Fronde in almost its entirety were united against Mazarin.

Madame de Chevreuse alone, with her most intimate friends, remained faithful to her hatred and the Queen, dreading far less Mazarin than CondÉ, and choosing between them both for once and for all with her well-known firmness and resolution. De Retz trimmed, followed the Duke d’Orleans, using tact with the Queen, so that he might not lose the hat, and without engaging himself personally with CondÉ.

If Burnet is to be believed, it was at this conjunction that CondÉ made an offer to Cromwell to turn Huguenot, and embrace the faith of his ancestors, in order to secure the aid of the English Puritans.

However that might be, it was not illusory to think that with such a government and the continual assistance of Spain, Bordeaux might hold out for at least a year, and give CondÉ time to strike some decisive blows. The resolution that he took was therefore as rational as it was great. It would have been a sovereign imprudence to remain in Guienne merely to engage Harcourt in a series of trifling skirmishes, and after much time and trouble take a few little paltry towns, when in the heart of the kingdom a treason or a defeat might irreparably involve the loss of everything, and condemn Bordeaux to share the common fate, after a more or less prolonged existence. Taking one thing with another, Guienne was doubtless a considerable accessory; but the grand struggle was not to be made there; it was at Paris and upon the banks of the Loire that the destiny of the Fronde and that of CondÉ too must be decided; it was thither, therefore, that he must hasten. Every day brought him tidings that jealousies, divisions, quarrels were increasing in the army, and he trembled to receive, some morning, news that Turenne and Hocquincourt had beaten Nemours and Beaufort, and were marching on Paris. Desirous of preventing at any price a disaster so irreparable, he resolved to rush to the point where the danger was supreme, where his unexpected presence would strike terror into the souls of his enemies, revive the courage of his partisans and turn fortune to his side. When CÆsar, on arriving in Greece, learned that the fleet which was following him with his army on board, had been dispersed and destroyed by that of Pompey, he flung himself alone into a fisherman’s bark under cover of night to cross the sea into Asia to seek for the legions of Antony, and return with them to gain the battle of Pharsalia. When Napoleon learned in Egypt the state of France, from the shameful doings of the Directory, the agitation of parties, and that already more than one general was meditating another 18th of Brumaire, he did not hesitate, and however rash it might appear to attempt to pass through the English fleet in a small craft, at the risk of being taken, or sent to the bottom, he dared every peril, and by dint of address and audacity succeeded in gaining the shores of France. CondÉ did the same, and at the end of March 1652, he undertook to make his way from the banks of the Gironde to the banks of the Loire, without other escort than that of a small number of intrepid friends, and sustained solely by the vivid consciousness of the necessity of that bold step, his familiarity with and secret liking for danger, his incomparable presence of mind and his customary gaiety.

On Palm Sunday, 1652, CondÉ set forth upon his adventurous expedition. He was accompanied by six persons, La Rochefoucauld and his youthful son, the Prince de Marcillac, the Count de Guitaut, the Count de Chavagnac, a valet named Rochefort, and the indefatigable Gourville, under whose directions all the arrangements of the journey seem to have been contrived. The whole party were disguised as common troopers, and each took a false name, even amongst themselves. For some time they followed the Bordeaux road, and using many precautions proceeded until they reached Cahusac, where they encountered some troops belonging to La Rochefoucauld; but being anxious almost as much to avoid their own partizans as the enemy, CondÉ and his companions hid themselves in a barn, while Gourville went out to forage. He succeeded in procuring some scanty fare; and they rode on till some hours had passed after nightfall, when they reached a little wayside inn, where CondÉ volunteered to cook an omelet for the whole party. The hand, however, which could wield a truncheon with such effect, proved somewhat too violent for the frying-pan, and in the attempt to turn the omelet, he threw the whole hissing mass into the fire.

The little band having reached a certain spot, quitted the main road, and began to traverse the enemy’s lines. For eight days they encountered many perilous incidents and underwent incredible fatigue, riding throughout the same horses, never stopping more than two hours to eat or sleep, avoiding towns and crossing rivers as they best could; threading at first the gorges of the Auvergne mountains, then descending by the Bec d’Allier, and making their way to the Loire. The memoirs of La Rochefoucauld and Gourville must be consulted for the details of that extraordinary journey, and all the dangers it presented. No less than ten times did they escape being taken and slain. Their wearied horses at last could carry them no longer. La Rochefoucauld was tormented by the gout, and his son was so worn out with fatigue that he fell asleep as he went. CondÉ, whose iron frame resisted to the last, was alone indefatigable, sleeping and working at will, and always cheerful and good humoured.

Upon approaching Gien, at which place the Court then was, CondÉ had twice very nearly fallen into the hands of parties sent out to take him alive or dead. Having escaped almost by a miracle, on the last occasion, soon after reaching ChÂtillon, he gained information that the army of Beaufort and Nemours lay at about eight leagues from that place, and hastened with all speed to join it. At length, to his great joy, he saw the advanced guard before him, and several of the troopers came galloping up with a loud “Qui vive!” Some of them, however, almost instantly recognised CondÉ, and shouts of joy and surprise soon made known through the whole army what had occurred.

He found the forces of the Fronde as divided as were its chiefs. He took the command of it immediately; thus doing away with the principal cause of the jealousy existing between Nemours and Beaufort. He reviewed and reunited it, gave it one day’s rest, seized, without striking a blow, on Montargis and ChÂteau-Renard, and threw himself with the utmost rapidity on the royal army. It was scattered in quarters distant from each other for the convenience of foraging, and on account of the little dread with which Beaufort and Nemours had inspired it. Marshal d’Hocquincourt was encamped at Bleneau, and Turenne a little farther off, at Briare; the two Marshals were to unite their forces on the morrow. CondÉ did not give them time for that: that same evening, and during the nights of the 6th and 7th of April, 1652, he fell upon the head-quarters of Hocquincourt, overwhelmed them, and succeeded in routing the rest, thanks to one of those charges in flank which he in person ever led so energetically. Hocquincourt, after fighting like a gallant soldier, was forced to fall back for some leagues in the direction of Auxerre, having lost all his baggage and three thousand horse. No sooner did Turenne hear of the fact, than he sprang into the saddle, and marched with some infantry both to the assistance of his brother officer and to the defence of the King, who, resting secure at Gien, might have fallen into the hands of the rebels. As he advanced through the darkness of the night, the Marshal saw the quarters of Hocquincourt in one blaze of fire, and exclaiming, with the appreciation which genius has of genius, “The Prince de CondÉ is arrived!” he hurried on with the utmost speed. Having neither cavalry nor artillery, and having sent word to Hocquincourt to rally to him as soon as possible, he marched on in good order throughout that long and dark night to join the bulk of his troops which Navailles and Palluan were bringing up. For an instant he halted in a plain where there stood a rather dense wood on his left, with a marsh on his right. Those around CondÉ thought it an advantageous post; CondÉ judged very differently. “If M. de Turenne makes a stand there,” said he, “I shall soon cut him to pieces; but he will take good care not to do so.”[82] He had not left off speaking when he saw that Turenne was already retiring, too skilful to await CondÉ in the plain and expose himself to the Prince’s formidable manoeuvres. A little further off, he found a position much more favourable; there he firmly posted his force, determined to give battle. In vain did his officers urge him not to hazard an action, not to risk the last army which remained to the monarchy, and to confine himself to covering Gien whilst awaiting the coming of Hocquincourt. “No,” replied he, “we must conquer or perish here.”

Turenne, it is true, was very inferior in cavalry to CondÉ, but he had a powerful and well-served artillery. Having encouraged his troops to do their duty, he posted himself upon an eminence which he covered with infantry and artillery, drew up his cavalry below in a plain too narrow to permit of CondÉ deploying his own, and which could only be reached by traversing a thick wood and a causeway intersected by ditches and boggy ground. From such strong position, CondÉ could, in his turn, recognise his illustrious disciple. No great manoeuvres were then practicable, and as time did not permit of an attempt to turn Turenne, it was necessary to crush him out of hand, if that were possible, before he could effect a junction with Hocquincourt. The defile was the key of the position; and both sides fought therein with equal fierceness. Turenne defended himself sword in hand, and upon the six squadrons which CondÉ hurled against him he opened a battery, as they passed, with terrible execution, showing a courage equal to that of his heroic adversary. CondÉ, judging from what he now saw, believed the position in the hands of Turenne to be impregnable; and it being too late to execute any other manoeuvres with success during that day, he continued to cannonade the royalist army till the evening, without any other attempt to bring it to a battle.

Napoleon has not spared CondÉ in this affair any more than other critics. He sums all their opinions up in one piquant phrase, which it appears he was unable to resist, and which made him smile in uttering it. “CondÉ,” said he, “for that once, was wanting in boldness.” The dictum is both brief and incisive, but there was no foundation for it, in a military point of view. There was, in truth, no want of boldness on CondÉ’s part throughout that campaign: far from it, his whole line of conduct was a succession of audacious actions and combinations. What could be bolder than that forced journey of nearly ten days for more than one hundred and fifty miles with half-a-dozen followers to go and take the command of an army? What bolder than the resolution taken out of hand to throw himself between Turenne and Hocquincourt, to cut in two the royal army and to disperse one half of it before attacking the other? Did CondÉ lose a moment in marching against Turenne and pursuing him sword in hand? Was it his fault that he had to cope with a great captain, who knew how to select an excellent position, and to maintain himself in it with immovable firmness? In the attack of that position, did Napoleon mean to reproach CondÉ with want of boldness? Turenne, it is true, covered himself with glory, for he successfully resisted CondÉ; but CondÉ, in not having been victorious, was not in the slightest degree beaten. The strategy, therefore, on that occasion was irreproachable. As will be seen, it was in his policy only that he failed. CondÉ quitted the army at a very ill-timed moment, in our opinion, but that step was taken through considerations which had nothing to do with the science of war.

To revert for a moment to this much-criticised action of Bleneau. Towards night, Hocquincourt appeared upon the field, having rallied a considerable part of his cavalry. CondÉ then retired, finding that his attempt was frustrated, and took the way to Montargis; while Turenne rejoined the Court, and was received by the Queen with all the gratitude which such great services merited. Her first words went to thank him for having placed the crown a second time upon her son’s head.

The terror and confusion which had reigned in Gien during the whole of the preceding night and that day may very well be conceived when it is remembered that the safety of the King himself, as well as the Queen, was at stake, and that the life of the favourite Minister might at any moment be placed at the mercy of his bitterest enemy, justified in putting him to death immediately by the highest legal authority in the realm. Neither were the ill-disciplined and irregular forces of CondÉ at all desirable neighbours to the troop of ladies who had followed the Court; and, as soon as it was known that CondÉ had fallen upon Hocquincourt, the whole of the little town was one scene of dismay and confusion.

The royal army and that of CondÉ now both marched towards Paris, nearly upon two parallel lines. But the great distress which the Court suffered from want of money caused almost as much insubordination to be apparent amongst the troops of the King as amongst those of the rebels. Little respect was shown to Mazarin himself; and the young King was often treated with but scanty ceremony, and provided for but barely.

After quitting the neighbourhood of Gien, CondÉ, urged by the desire of directing in person the negotiations and intrigues which were going on in Paris, left his army under the command of the celebrated Tavannes, and hastened to the capital. The Count de Tavannes, whom he had selected to fill his own place, was without doubt an excellent officer, one of the valiant Petits-maÎtres[83] who, upon the field of battle, served as wings to the great soldier’s thoughts, carried his orders everywhere, executed the most dangerous manoeuvres, sometimes charging with an irresistible impetuosity, at others sustaining the most terrible onsets with a firmness and solidity beyond all proof. But though the intrepid Tavannes was quite capable of leading the division of a great army, he was not able enough to be its commander-in-chief, and he had not authority over the foreign troops which the Duke de Nemours had brought from Flanders, and which he made over, on accompanying CondÉ to Paris, to the command of the Count de Clinchamp. The army, thus divided, was capable of nothing great. CondÉ alone could finish what he had begun. Once engaged in the formidable enterprise that he had undertaken against the Queen and Mazarin, there was no safety for him but in carrying it out even to the end. He ought, therefore, to have waged war to the knife, if the expression be allowable, against Turenne, conquered or perished, and to have constrained Mazarin to flee for good and all to Germany or Italy, and the Queen to place in his hands the young King. To do that, CondÉ should have had a definite ambition, an object clearly determined; he ought to have plainly proposed to himself to assume the Regency, or at least the lieutenant-generalship of the kingdom in the place of Gaston, by will or by force, in order to concentrate all power in his own hands; that he might become, in short, a Cromwell or a William III.: and CondÉ was neither the one or the other. His mind had been perturbed by sinister dreams; but, as has been remarked, he had at heart an invincible fund of loyalty. Ambition was rather hovering round him than within himself. But whatsoever it was he desired, and in every hypothesis—for his secret has remained between Heaven and himself—he did wrong in abandoning the Loire and leaving Turenne in force there. That was the true error he committed, and not in wanting audacity, as Napoleon supposed. It was not a military but a political error—immense and irreparable. He might have crushed Turenne, and ought to have attempted it, but he let him slip from his grasp. The opportunity once lost did not return. Turenne until then was only second in rank; by a glorious resistance he acquired from that moment, and it was forced upon him to maintain, the importance of a rival of CondÉ. Mazarin grew from day to day more emboldened; royalty, which had been on the very brink of ruin, again rose erect, and the Court drew towards Paris; whilst, prompted by his evil genius, quitting the field of battle wherein lay his veritable strength, CondÉ went away to waste his precious time in a labyrinth of intrigues for which he was not fitted, and in which he lost himself and the Fronde.

[81] Mad. de Motteville, tom. v. p. 96.