THE PRINCESS QUITS MADRID BY COMMAND OF LOUIS XIV.—AFTER A SHORT EXILE SHE RECEIVES PERMISSION TO VISIT VERSAILLES.

Madame des Ursins had received Louis XIV.’s command to withdraw into Italy. Quitting Madrid as a State criminal (en criminelle d’État), the Princess directed her steps towards the land indicated for her exile. We must refer, however, to “The Memoirs of Saint Simon” those of our readers who are desirous of admiring the presence of mind with which Madame des Ursins, recalled thus unexpectedly and struck by the Olympian bolt, suffered herself to be in nowise disconcerted, but skilfully managed to retreat slowly and in good order, yielding ground only step by step,[32] without appearing to disobey, she found time to arouse her friends at Versailles into action, “who representing the severity of such a fall for a dictatress of her quality, urged that the King, having been obeyed, and having glutted his vengeance, a feeling of commiseration ought to be shown thereafter, and that it was not advisable to push the Queen to extremity.” These reasons commented upon by the Duke d’Harcourt, a man of great weight in the affairs of the Peninsula, by Marshal de Villeroy and the Noailles, prevailed with Louis XIV., who granted the Princess his permission, ardently solicited, to stop at Toulouse and there take up her abode. That was but the first step to a rehabilitation towards which laboured with equal ardour, though by very different ways, the youthful spouse of Philip V. and the grave companion of Louis XIV. Madame de Maintenon, accepting willingly the part of missionary of Divine justice, held it as a point of honour not to deceive the hope of the illustrious accused, who had attributed those functions to her at a juncture so À propos. And whether that she felt a real affection for Madame des Ursins, whether that she wished to mitigate the Duchess of Burgundy’s regret for her sister’s vexation, whether, in short, she feared to see Louis XIV. lose by so abrupt a change all authority over the affairs of Spain, she was disposed in every event to serve the exile. The Princess, to give time for the storm to expend its fury, well knowing that acts hastily determined upon are ordinarily the least durable, did not seek to hurry matters herself with the French King, but wrote to Madame de Noailles, hoping that her letter might be shown: “You are not ignorant of my attachment and respect for Madame de Maintenon; the obligations that I owe her are ever present to me, and the reliance that I place in the generosity of her heart.”[33] All the correspondence from Toulouse is in that vein, and, still further, she adroitly represents herself as a victim, as a woman disabused of worldly grandeur, and afflicted solely at having displeased Louis XIV.

This conduct allayed the mutterings of the spent tempest. The court grew accustomed to behold in her an unfortunate noblewoman resigned to her exile with an antique patience.

At the end of four months passed in the capital of Languedoc, in the depth of a retreat enlivened by an assiduous correspondence with the two courts, Madame des Ursins received permission to appear at Versailles and there to justify herself. The intervention of Madame de Maintenon had nothing more in it than was perfectly natural under the circumstances; not that she had the desire to govern Spain, as Saint Simon affirms, nor even France, however entirely she might govern Louis XIV. What she desired to establish on either side of the Pyrenees was a species of moral control of the house of Bourbon. And, by keeping her informed of the most minute particulars touching the King and Queen, by inspiring the Duchess of Burgundy’s sister with the duteous affection of the elder for her aunt, Madame des Ursins rendered the Marquise de Maintenon the only service the latter cared for, and the only one, to speak the truth, which could add anything to her importance.

The motives of Louis XIV. were of a very different kind, and his politic mind did not hesitate to sacrifice to them his grievances, however legitimate they might be. Far from pacifying the Court of Spain, the departure of the Princess des Ursins had been the signal for an outburst of the most complete anarchy. To the rule exercised by the Queen had succeeded an entire absence of direction, and matters were conducted with an incoherence so shocking, that M. de Torcy having exhausted both his advice and his patience, opened with perfect terror the despatches drawn from that Pandora’s box. The accord—at least apparent, which the preponderance of Madame des Ursins had maintained among the members of the despacho by the intervention of the Duke de Montellano, her creature, was abruptly broken up, and the Austrian party gathered strength from the effect of that disorder and that universal dissolution. The Archduke, proclaimed King of Spain by the Emperor under the name of Charles III. and recognised in that quality by England and Holland, had just landed at Lisbon; the campaign opened against the Portuguese had ended, after some ephemeral successes, by a sort of disbanding of the Spanish army, through want of clothing, pay, and provisions, in the supply of which nothing was done after Orry’s departure, recalled to France from the same motives as the Princess. Gibraltar, the defence of which had been confided by an inexplicable negligence to fifty men, was torn away for ever by a handful of British seamen from the crown of the Catholic kings; Catalonia, Arragon, the kingdom of Valentia, made ripe for insurrection by the Prince of Darmstadt, were on the eve of escaping from their allegiance. At the beginning of 1705, the armies of Philip V. were composed of five or six thousand men in rags, their tottering fidelity daily tampered with, and the little band of French auxiliaries exhausted itself in fruitless efforts to retake Gibraltar, which, covered as it was by the English fleet, remained mistress of the Straits, after the first disaster inflicted on the French marine in that war which was destined to cost it its last vessel.

To the government of prime ministers, and still more that of women, Louis XIV. had an insuperable antipathy. It must therefore have cost him much to renounce the flattering hope of seeing his grandson make practical application of the lofty instructions in which his personal royalty reflected itself with so much splendour; but such a prince as he knew but too well that a political idea is valueless when it remains inapplicable. Impressed with the sorrowful conviction, he was compelled to recognise that Philip’s ailing temperament rendered all equilibrium between intelligence and will impossible, so far so that that unhappy Prince could not elude his fate save by escaping from himself. In the approaching perils which the disasters of the French armies foreboded, the hope of preserving Spain even under the dictation of Madame des Ursins was better, after all, than the certainty of losing that crown by estranging the camarera-mayor. After the battle of Blenheim, the defection of the Duke of Savoy and the disastrous Italian campaign, the restoration of the Princess to her charge was, on the part of Louis XIV., a first concession to evil fortune, a determination for which his sagacity triumphed over his repugnance. And so Saint Simon ought to have seen, instead of representing the triumph obtained by Madame des Ursins at Versailles as the inexplicable effect of a species of sudden fascination.

That victory suddenly transformed her who was but a short time previously an accused person into “a court divinity.” The Spanish ambassador, followed by a swarm of courtiers, went forth to meet her outside the gates of Paris, and offered her his mansion during her stay in the capital. There she received “all France” we are told.[34] Her every look was interpreted, and the words she addressed to ladies of the highest consideration impressed them with a rapturous sense of her condescension. Nothing could exceed the King’s attentions in every way that could contribute to her honour and distinction, and from the majestic fashion with which it was all received, with such a rare admixture of grace and politeness it reminded the beholders of the early days of the Queen-Mother. Whether the particular determination of the King shone through this marked graciousness, or that the well-known dexterity of the Princess did not allow of any doubt of her success, she was welcomed on all hands, not with those timid precautions and that ambiguous reserve which characterise the incertitude of courts, but with that lively, prompt and decided enthusiasm which only greets unclouded favour and assured fortune. At the balls which were given at the royal residences, Louis XIV., the Duchess of Burgundy, and all the princes treated her with the most affable condescension. If Louis XIV. showed great tact in appearing to attribute to his conversations with Madame des Ursins a preconceived resolution which had really been the simple result of events, and if the easy grace of the gentleman covered in some sort the retreat of the politician, it will be readily imagined that the Princess did not suffer herself to be beaten in address. When the desire to see her return to the side of the young Queen of Spain was intimated to her, she spoke of the disgust with which the condition of that miserable country filled her, and which made it impossible to do any good there. To the King’s impatience she opposed the impaired state of her health, and placed herself under medical treatment, having at that identical moment a real interest in being pronounced out of health. She delayed from day to day a departure that was more and more pressed for, cautiously making it understood that in order to avoid the mishaps and the mistakes of the past, the safety of Spain must be sought in a complete unity of direction, and that the inevitable preponderance of the Queen would constrain the placing of that political direction, not in the embassy, but in the Palace. This was to demand nothing less than a carte blanche to govern the kingdom; but however audacious in itself such exigence might be, it offended no one, so glad were all concerned, after so many mistakes, to find one head which could courageously confront the responsibility of a situation that had become so perilous. She was the only Frenchwoman who could govern Spain, and the cabinet of Versailles, satisfied with having shown its strength, exhibited henceforth that majestic condescendence towards her which is the flattery made use of by monarchs in their relations with indispensable agents.

She was not in a hurry, therefore, to return to Madrid. Probably she was anxious to enjoy her triumph, and by it to crush for a long while the trembling jealousy of her enemies; perhaps, sure of setting out when she chose, it was her aim to make her presence in Spain felt. Be that as it may, we do not believe, as it has been supposed, that she herself was tired of her political rÔle whatever may have been the mask with which her prudence sought to cover her ambition during her disgrace, the existence of that ambition is clear enough as a matter of history. We admit nothing more, in answer to the insinuations of Saint Simon, that dazzled with the royal favour she had dreamed of supplanting Madame de Maintenon in the great King’s confidence. Of a judgment eminently sound and precise, she had too much of the practical in her character to cradle her imagination with such chimÆras. Madame des Ursins’ quick-sightedness fathomed all the advantages she might derive from the general discouragement, and promised herself to let nothing be lost by it either for herself or her dependents, however equivocal their position might be towards her. She procured the admission of D’Aubigny into the cabinet of Louis XIV., and, a thing more difficult still, into that of Madame de Maintenon. She caused Orry to be reinstated in his former functions, at the same time that one of her most dangerous enemies, the father Daubenton, received an order to quit Madrid, where his restless nullity had lost itself in a maze of intrigues. Authorised in a manner to form her ministry, she nominated the President Amelot as Ambassador for Spain, a diplomatist although very high minded, yet of somewhat subaltern ability, one of the lights of that magistracy from which Louis XIV. loved to recruit the staff of his government, and whence Madame des Ursins herself sprung on her mother’s side. The Marshal de TessÉ was appointed to the command of the army, and Orry, a pupil of Colbert and a distinguished financier, was one of those clever and hard-working citizens who were amongst the best of French ministers of that epoch. This selection, equally excellent for both monarchs, was better still for the Princess, to whom it guaranteed a valuable concurrence without leaving her to apprehend any resistance. Those three men, from the very moment of their arrival in Madrid, found themselves face to face with two grave difficulties. The first was the opposition of the grandees; the second, a foreign invasion. Aristocratic conspiracies were hatching in the capital. The Archduke Charles had landed in Catalonia, and several noblemen were endeavouring to clear the road for him as far as Madrid. The Marquis de Leganez was the soul of this plot. Ever since the accession of Philip V. he had eluded taking the oath of allegiance: and later, summoned to take up arms against the Archduke, he had refused. From that moment he became a suspected person. His sole refuge was a conspiracy: and that was his destruction. Arrested by order of the new administration, he was conducted to the fortress of Pampeluna, afterwards to Bordeaux, whence his vain and tardy protestations in favour of Philip V. failed to extricate him. This energetic blow struck terror into the hearts of the grandees and prepared the triumphal return of the Princess.