FATAL INFLUENCE OF MADAME DE LONGUEVILLE’S PASSION FOR LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.—THE FRONDE.

We do not propose to enter into the labyrinth of intrigues which preceded the outbreak of the Fronde, but confine ourselves to an endeavour to trace the motives which led Madame de Longueville to throw herself into the centre of the malcontents and to figure as the chief heroine in the varied scenes of that tragi-comedy of civil war.

The first Fronde was formed out of the dÉbris of the Importants. It was composed of all the malcontents who made common cause with those members of the parliament who were irritated by the frequent bursal edicts, notably that which, in 1648, created twelve new appointments of maÎtres de requÊtes.

And now what gave birth to the Fronde, or what sustained it? What roused up the old party of the Importants, stifled for some years, it would seem, under the laurels of Rocroy? What separated the princes of the blood from the Crown? What turned against the throne that illustrious house of CondÉ, which, until then, had been its sword and shield? There were doubtless many general causes for all this; but it is impossible for us to conceal one—private, it is true, but which exercised a powerful and deplorable influence—the unexpected love of Madame de Longueville for one of the chiefs of the Importants, who had become one of the chiefs of the Fronde. Yes—sad to say—it was Madame de Longueville, who, joining the party of the malcontents, attracted thereto, at first, a part of her family, then her entire family, and thus precipitated it from the pinnacle of honour and glory to which so many services had elevated it.

Scarcely had the treaty of MÜnster suspended the scourge of foreign war for France, than internal dissensions began to trouble the realm. The hatred which the Parliament bore to Mazarin, through his repression of its functions, primarily gave birth to civil war. The Duchess de Longueville became in the faction of the Fronde what the Duchess de Montpensier had been in that of the League. The former, however, did not at first attach so great an importance to the cause she espoused. Characteristically careless, she was by nature little inclined to agitation and intrigue. We have already shown that before her liaison with La Rochefoucauld, Madame de Longueville had been a stranger to politics. Occupied solely with innocent gallantry and the homage of the most refined society of the day, she allowed herself in all else to be led by her father and her elder brother. But no sooner was La Rochefoucauld master of her heart, than she gave herself wholly up to him, and became a mere instrument in his hands. Having been by him inspired with ambition, she made it a point of honour, and doubtless a secret happiness, to share his destiny.

It seems not improbable that the Duchess might have caught a liking for politics and negotiation during the conference of Munster. Certain it is that once plunged into the eddying tide of the Fronde, she loftily announced the project of remedying the general disorder of affairs. But she especially desired to employ therein the means which confer celebrity, and it is difficult to deny that ambition, although without determinate aim, and the desire of establishing a high opinion of her intellect, may have had some share in the reasons which induced her to embrace the party opposed to Mazarin. With herself she drew her husband into it, as well as the Prince de Conti, her younger brother. As for the elder, the victorious CondÉ, he at first declared for the King and the Queen-Regent, which greatly incensed his sister against him, and caused her to enter into close compact, amongst others, with the Coadjutor, afterwards Cardinal de Retz—that mischievous man who figured so conspicuously as the evil genius of the Fronde.

The Gondis, who were the chief advisers of the St. Bartholomew, owed to that terrible exploit the result of being very nearly the hereditary possessors of the Archbishopric of Paris. But this last Gondi—John Francis Paul—owed something more: to be at the same time governor of Paris, and to unite both powers. With such purpose, he artfully worked upon the city through the curates who, distributing bread, soup, and every other kind of alms, carried along with them the famished masses. This young ecclesiastic of the de Retz family had risen into great favour with the serious and religious sections of the Parisian community. He was nephew of the Archbishop of Paris, and was himself Archbishop of Corinth; but as his flock in that metropolitan city were schismatic (except those who had turned Turks), he had leisure to assist his uncle in his high office, and was appointed his Coadjutor and successor. He preached at all the churches, held visitations at the convents, catechised the young, and consulted with the senior clergy on the management of the diocese. When he rode through the streets he was saluted with cheers and blessings, and the orators of the Fronde held him up as the pattern of all the Christian virtues. At night he put off his episcopal robes, disguised himself as a trooper or tradesman, and attended the meetings of the discontented. In a short time he had distributed seven or eight thousand pounds in stirring up the passions of the people, and was daily in expectation of being summoned by his patroness the Queen to exert his influence in quelling them. The populace, with an Archbishop-governor of Paris at their head, imagined that they were going to rule there as in the time of the League. This made them both blind and deaf to the morals and manners of the little prelate. A braggart, a duellist, and more than a gallant—though having swarthy, ugly features, turned-up nose, and short, bandy legs—yet his expressive eyes carried off every fault, sparkling as they were with intelligence, audacity, and libertinage. Few withstood this subtle knave, for he was wont to waive all ceremonial and spare everybody prefatory speeches. The ladies of gallantry—especially those whose lover he was—were his most indefatigable political agents. The Queen, at length, suspecting that the worthy Archbishop was not quite the simple and self-denying individual he appeared, had him watched and followed. Whilst he flattered himself with the anticipation that his assistance would be solicited at the Palais Royal, the Queen was making a jest of him, and Mazarin determined to strike the blow.

On the 27th of August, 1648, a vast assemblage crowded the spacious precincts of Notre Dame, to celebrate a Te Deum for the great victory of Lens, of which the youthful CondÉ had just sent home the news. When the multitude were dispersing, a dash was made upon two or three of the obnoxious councillors who had inflamed the discussions of the Fronde—for that civil war was fairly on foot ere Anne of Austria and Mazarin knew of its existence. Two of the intended prisoners escaped, but a surly, burly demagogue, named Broussel, was tracked to his house in the mechanics’ quarter of Paris, and arrested by an armed force. Thereupon the populace rose and armed against the Court. They made an extraordinary stand in the streets, having raised twelve hundred barricades in the course of twelve hours. They had no further need of De Retz. It was, however, one of his mistresses, the sister of a president and wife of a city captain, who having in her house the drum belonging to the citizen guard of that quarter, gave the first impulse by causing it to be beaten. The train was thus fired and the flame of civil war kindled. This was called the Day of the Barricades.

Thus, the royal power which, as wielded by Richelieu, had come to be considered as absolute, was attacked by three parties simultaneously—the great nobles, the parliamentarians, and the bourgeoisie; but, notwithstanding the dread of the common enemy, which united them, those parties were of different origin and conditions of existence, and consequently had different interests also. The great nobles wished to exercise power by placing themselves above the law; the parliament to increase its own through the law; the citizens to establish theirs at the expense of the law: for in their eyes the law was full of abuses and the royal power cruelly oppressive. All three parties, in order to arrive at their several ends, had, therefore, recourse to violence, or derived aid from it.

On the return of Madame de Longueville from MÜnster, there was already a ferment in the minds of the Parisians, of which the Regent took little heed. The Fronde cabal was then brooding in the dark. When the rebellion, formed by Gondi, broke out at last under the circumstances just narrated, Madame de Longueville, alone of all the princesses of the blood, did not accompany Anne of Austria in her flight to Rueil. The Duchess strove her utmost to strengthen, by the concurrence of her entire family, the faction whose fortunes she had embraced through devotion to Marsillac. She did not, however, then succeed in detaching CondÉ from the Regent’s party. The battle of the barricades followed close upon that of Lens, CondÉ’s last victory. On his return, that victorious young soldier found royalty humiliated, the Parliament triumphing and dictating laws to the Crown; the Duke de Beaufort, with whom he once thought of measuring swords in defence of the honour of his sister, freed from his prison in Vincennes, and master of Paris by aid of the populace who idolized him; the vain and fickle AbbÉ de Retz transformed into a tribune of the people; the Prince de Conti into a generalissimo; M. de Longueville under the guidance of his wife and La Rochefoucauld; and the feeble Duke d’OrlÉans fancying himself almost a King, because he saw the Queen humiliated, and because the Frondeurs, cunningly flattering his self-love, were treating him like a sovereign. CondÉ, at a glance, saw the situation of affairs and his duty also; and without any hesitation he offered his sword to the Queen.

Brother and sister were, therefore, about to be arrayed against each other in the strife of civil war, and a stormy explanation took place between them. It is asserted that for some time back their reciprocal tenderness had suffered more than one interruption; that, in 1645, Madame de Longueville had crossed the loves of her brother and Mademoiselle du Vigean; that, in 1646, CondÉ, seeing her too intimate with La Rochefoucauld, had caused her to be summoned to MÜnster by her husband. But for this we have only the authority of the Duchess de Nemours, her step-daughter and unsparing censor, and nothing is less probable. The passion of CondÉ for Mademoiselle de Vigean extinguished itself, as all contemporaries affirm. The attentions of La Rochefoucauld to Madame de Longueville may have preceded the embassy of MÜnster, but they were not observed until 1647, and it is at the close of this year that Madame de Motteville places them, while attributing them especially to the desire of La Rochefoucauld to share the confidence of the sister with the brother. But it is very certain that as soon as the latter remarked this connection, he disapproved of it entirely; and not succeeding in his effort to rouse his sister from the intoxication of a first passion, he passed from the most ardent affection to a bitter discontent. In the autumn of 1648, on his return from Lens, this connection had acquired its greatest strength, and become almost notorious. Madame de Longueville, directed by La Rochefoucauld, did then everything possible to gain over her brother. She brought all her allurements to bear upon him, all her fondlings. She put into play everything which she thought might influence his fickle and passionate disposition—but failed. Neither did he succeed in gaining over her his accustomed ascendency. They quarrelled and separated openly. Madame de Longueville plunged more deeply into the Fronde, and CondÉ applied himself to giving the new Importants a harsh lesson.

The Queen had retired to Saint-Germain with the young King and all the government. Paris was under the absolute control of the Fronde. It stirred up the Parliament by the aid of a few ambitious councillors and by seditious and mischievous inquests. It disposed of a great part of the Parisian clergy through the Coadjutor of the Archbishop De Retz, who possessed and exercised all the authority of his uncle. It had continually at its head the two great houses of VendÔme and Lorraine, with two princes of the blood, the Prince de Conti and the Duke de Longueville, followed by a very great number of illustrious families, including the Dukes d’Elbeuf, de Bouillon, and de Beaufort, and other powerful nobles. It gave law in the salons, thanks to a brilliant bevy of pretty women, who drew after them the flower of the young nobility. In short, the army itself was divided. Turenne, with his troops, who were stationed near the Rhine until the perfect conclusion of the treaty of Westphalia, obedient to the suggestions of his elder brother, the Duke de Bouillon, who wished to recover his principality of Sedan, had just raised the standard of revolt, and was threatening to place the Court between his own army and that of Paris. The parliament of the capital had sent deputies to all the parliaments of the kingdom, and was thus forming a sort of formidable parliamentary league in the face of monarchy. CondÉ took command of all the troops that remained faithful, and everywhere opposed the insurrection. He wrote himself to the army of the Rhine, which well knew him, and which after the rout sustained by Turenne at Mariendal, had been led back by him to victory: these letters, supported by the proceedings of the government, succeeded in arresting the revolt; and Turenne, abandoned by his own soldiers, was obliged to fly to Holland.[50] At ease on this head, CondÉ marched upon Paris, and placed it under siege. Instead of disputing the ground, as he might have done, foot by foot, with the sedition, he allowed it the freest course, in the certainty that the spectacle of licentiousness which could not fail to appear would, little by little, restore to royalty those who had for a moment gone astray. He began by summoning, in the Queen’s name and through his mother, all his family to Saint-Germain. The Prince de Conti and M. de Longueville did not dare disobey; but La Rochefoucauld, seeing that the Fronde was in the greatest peril, hastened after these two princes. Having brought them back to Paris, he made the Prince de Conti generalissimo—placing under him the Dukes d’Elbeuf and de Bouillon—and who shared authority with the Marshal de la Mothe Houdancourt, governor of Paris. Madame de Longueville excused herself to the Queen and to her mother on the grounds of her delicate condition, which would not permit her to undertake the least fatigue. In fact, Madame de Longueville, it may be noted, was enceinte for the last time in 1648, when, it must be confessed, her connection with La Rochefoucauld was well known. It was in this condition that, willing to share the perils of her friends, proud also of playing a part and of filling all the trumpets of fame, she enacted Pallas as well as she was able. It is at least certain that she shared all the fatigues of the siege, that she was present at the reviews of the troops, at the parades of the citizen soldiery, and that all the civil and military plans were discussed before her. In this disorder and confusion, amidst the tumult of arms and vociferations of the insurrection, she appeared as if in her natural element. She encouraged, counselled, acted, and the most energetic resolutions emanated from her. The memoirs of the times are full, in regard to this, of the most curious details. The HÔtel de Longueville was continually filled with officers and generals; nothing was seen there but plumes, helmets, and swords.

Notwithstanding all this, the democratic spirit which had originated the Fronde was not satisfied. It beheld with displeasure all the forces of Paris in the hands of the brother, of the brother-in-law, and of the sister of him who commanded the siege. Believing very little, and with reason, in the patriotism of the princes, the citizens demanded some sureties from the chiefs who might at any time betray them, and make peace, at their expense, with Saint-Germain. No one seemed to know how to appease this clamorous multitude, without which nothing further could be done. It was then that Madame de Longueville showed that, if she had forgotten her true duties, she had retained the energy of her race and the intrepidity of the CondÉs. Under the advice of De Retz, she induced her husband to present himself to the Parliament and inform them that he had come to offer his services, as well as the towns of Rouen, Caen, Dieppe, and the whole of Normandy, of which he was governor; and he begged the Parliament to consent that his wife and two children should be lodged at the HÔtel de Ville as a guarantee for the execution of his word. His speech was received with acclamations; and while the deliberations were still going on, De Retz proceeded to seek the Duchess de Longueville and the Duchess de Bouillon, both prepared to act a part in the scene he proposed to display. He had already caused the proposal of the Duke de Longueville to be spread amongst the populace; and hurrying the two princesses into a carriage, dressed with studied and artful negligence, but surrounded by a splendid suite, and followed by an immense crowd to the principal quarter of the insurrection—the HÔtel de Ville—those lovely and interesting women were placed in the hands of the people as hostages with all that was most dear to them. “Imagine,” says De Retz, “these two beautiful persons upon the balcony of the HÔtel de Ville; more beautiful because they appeared neglected, although they were not. Each held in her arms one of her children, who were as beautiful as their mothers.” La GrÈve was full of people, even to the house tops; the men all raised cries of joy, and the women wept with emotion. De Retz, meanwhile, threw handfuls of money from the windows of the HÔtel de Ville amongst the populace, and then, leaving the princesses under the protection of the city, he returned to the Palais de Justice, followed by an immense multitude, whose acclamations rent the skies.

On the night of the 28th of January, 1649, Madame de Longueville gave birth to her last child, a son, who was baptized by De Retz, having for its godfather the Provost, for its godmother the Duchess de Bouillon, and who received the name of Charles de Paris; the child of the Fronde, handsome, talented, and brave; who during his life was the troublesome hope, the melancholy joy of his mother, and the cause of her greatest grief in 1672, when he perished, at the passage of the Rhine, by the side of his uncle, CondÉ.

The Prince de Conti being declared generalissimo of the army of the King, under the parliament, and the Dukes de Bouillon and Elbeuf, with the Marshal de la Mothe, generals under him, De Retz saw the full fruition of his intrigues. A civil war was now inevitable. The great and the little, the wise and the foolish, the rash and the prudent, the cowardly and the brave, were all engaged and jumbled up pell-mell on both sides; and the mixture was so strange, so heterogeneous, and so incomprehensible, that a sentiment of the ridiculous was irresistibly paramount, and the war began amongst fits of laughter on all sides. That same day CondÉ’s cavaliers came galloping into the faubourgs to fire their pistols at the Parisians, whilst the Marquis de Noirmoutier went forth with the cavalry of the Fronde to skirmish with them, and returning to the HÔtel de Ville, entered the circle of the Duchess de Longueville, followed by his officers, each wearing his cuirass, as he came from the field. The hall was filled with ladies preparing to dance, the troops were drawn up in the square, and this mixture of blue scarves and ladies, cuirasses and violins and trumpets, formed, says De Retz, a spectacle much more common in romances than anywhere else.

The serio-grotesque drama of the Fronde was thus initiated.