THE DUCHESS DE CHEVREUSE.

Side by side with the two great statesmen, Richelieu and Mazarin, the clever, daring, vivacious, charming Marie de Rohan occupied a more elevated position, and certainly played a more extended part, than any other of the political women who were her contemporaries during the stirring times of the first half of the seventeenth century.

Seductive, with irresistible fascination of manner, singular grace and animation; of pregnant wit, though quite uneducated; devoted to gallantry, and too high-spirited to heed propriety; obeying no control save that of honour; despising, for those she loved, danger, fortune, and opinion; rather restless than ambitious; risking willingly her own life as well as that of others; and after having passed the best part of her existence in intrigue of every kind—thwarted more than one plot—left more than one victim on her path—traversed nearly the whole of Europe, by turns an exile and a conqueress who not unfrequently dazzled even crowned heads; after having seen Chalais lay his head on the block, ChÂteauneuf turned out of the ministry and imprisoned, the Duke de Lorraine well-nigh despoiled of his territories, Buckingham assassinated, the King of Spain embroiled in a war of ever-recurring disasters, Anne of Austria humiliated and overcome, and Richelieu triumphant; sustaining the struggle, nevertheless, even to its bitter end; ever ready, in that desperate game of politics—become to her a craving and a passion—to descend to the darkest cabals or adopt the rashest resolves; with an incomparable faculty of discerning the actual state of affairs or the predominant evil of the moment, and of strength of mind and boldness of heart enough to grapple with and destroy it at any cost; a devoted friend and an implacable enemy; and, finally, the most formidable foe that Richelieu and Mazarin, in their turn, encountered:—such was the celebrated Duchess de Chevreuse whom we have seen alternately courted and dreaded by the two great political master-spirits of her time, the founders of monarchical unity in France.

When the Fronde broke out, that ardent factionist rushed once more to Brussels, and there brought over to her party the support of Spain, together with her own long experience. She was then nearly fifty years old. Age and sorrow, it is true, had dimmed the lustre of her beauty; but she was still abounding in attraction, and her firm glance, her decision, her quick and accurate perception, her dauntless courage and genius, were yet entire. She had there also found a last friend in the Marquis de Laigues, captain of the Duke d’Orleans’ guards, a man of sense and resolution, whom she loved to the end, and whom, after the decease of the Duke de Chevreuse in 1657, she linked probably with her own destiny by one of those “marriages of conscience”[4] then somewhat fashionable. It was not our purpose to follow her step by step through the last civil war, and so plunge the reader into the labyrinth of the Fronde intrigues. Suffice it to say, therefore, that she played therein one of the most prominent parts. Attached, heart and soul, to that faction and its essential interests, she steered it through all the shoals and quicksands which encircled it with incomparable skill and vigour. After having so long enlisted the support of Spain, she knew the proper moment to effect a timely separation from it. She always preserved her great influence over the Duke de Lorraine, and it is not difficult to recognize her hidden hand behind the different and often contrary movements of Charles IV. She had a principal share in the three great movements which mark and link together the entire history of the Fronde between the war in Paris and the peace of Ruel. In 1650 she was inclined to prefer Mazarin to CondÉ, and she ventured to advise laying hands on the victor of Rocroy and Lens. In 1651—an interval of incertitude for Mazarin, who very nearly ensnared himself in the meshes of his own craftiness and a too-complicated line of conduct—a great interest, the well-founded hope of marrying her daughter Charlotte to the Prince de Conti, brought her back once more to the CondÉ party, and hence the deliverance of the imprisoned Princes. In 1652, the accumulated blunders of CondÉ brought her back again and for ever to Anne of Austria and Mazarin. She did not endorse De Retz’s foolish idea of constructing a third party during the revolt, nor dream of a government shared between CondÉ and Mazarin, with a worn-out parliament and the fickle Duke d’OrlÉans. Her politic instinct told her that, after an intestine struggle so long sustained, a solid and durable power was the greatest necessity of France. Mazarin, who, like Richelieu, had never opposed her but with regret, sought for, and was very glad to follow her advice. She passed over, therefore, with flying colours to the side of royalty, served it, and in return received its services. After Mazarin, she predicted the talent in Colbert, before he was appointed to office; she laboured at his elevation and the ruin of Fouquet: and the proud but judicious Marie de Rohan gave her grandson, the Duke de Chevreuse, the friend of Beauvilliers and Fenelon, to the daughter of a talented burgess—the greatest financial administrator France ever had. Thenceforward she readily obtained all she could desire for herself and for her family; and thus having reached the summit of renown and consideration, like her two illustrious sister-politicians, Madame de Longueville and the Princess Palatine, she finished in profound peace one of the most agitated careers of that stormiest of epochs—the seventeenth century.

It is said that the Duchess also, towards the close of her earthly pilgrimage, felt the influence of divine grace, and turned heavenwards her gaze, wearied with the changefulness of all sublunary things. She had seen successively fall around her all whom she had either loved or hated—Richelieu and Mazarin, Louis XIII. and Anne of Austria, the Queen of England, Henrietta Maria, and her amiable daughter the Duchess d’OrlÉans, ChÂteauneuf, and the Duke of Lorraine. Her fondly loved daughter had expired in her arms, of fever, during the miserable war of the Fronde. He who had been the first to lure her from the path of duty—the handsome but frivolous Holland—had ascended the scaffold with Charles I.; and her last friend, much younger than herself, the Marquis de Laigues, had preceded her to the tomb.

Arrived at length but too clearly at the conviction that she had given up her mind to chimeras and illusions, and seeking self-mortification through the same sentiment which had brought about her ruin, the once-haughty Duchess became the humblest of women. Renouncing all worldly grandeur, she quitted her splendid mansion in the Faubourg St. Germain, built by Le Muet, and retired into the country—not to Dampierre, which would have only too vividly recalled to her remembrance the brilliant days of her past existence—but to a modest dwelling at Gagny, near Chelles. There she awaited her last hour, far from the world’s observation, and ere long expired in tranquillity at the age of seventy-nine, the same year as Cardinal de Retz and Madame de Longueville. She desired to have neither solemn obsequies nor funeral oration, and forbade that any of those lofty titles which she had borne through life and had learned to despise should accompany her to the grave. It was her wish to be buried obscurely in the small and ancient church of Gagny; and there, in the southern aisle, near the chapel of the Virgin, some faithful but unknown hand has placed upon a slab of black marble the following epitaph:—