H. Noel Williams

Bassompierre goes to Prague, where the Imperial Court is in residence—He is presented by Rossworm to the lords of the Council—He dines at the house of Prestowitz, Burgrave of Karlstein, and falls in love with his widowed daughter, “Madame Esther”—Bassompierre and Rossworm engage in an amorous adventure, from which they narrowly escape with their lives—Bassompierre plays tennis with Wallenstein, with the Emperor Maximilian an interested spectator—He is presented to the Emperor, who receives him very graciously and commissions him to raise troops in Lorraine for service against the Turks. Bassompierre, Rossworm and other nobles parade the streets masked and have an affray with the police—Singular sequel to this affair—Bassompierre spends the Carnival with the Prestowitz family at Karlstein—Amorous escapade with “Madame Esther”—Bassompierre sets out for Lorraine—He engages in a drinking-bout with the canons of Saverne, which very nearly has a fatal termination—Death of his brother Jean, Seigneur de Removille, at the siege of Ostend—Grievances of Bassompierre against the French Government—Henri IV promises that “justice shall be done him” and invites him to return to his Court—Bassompierre renounces his intention of entering the Imperial service and sets out for France.

In Vienna, Bassompierre remained for six weeks, where he “passed his time extremely well,” and about the middle of January, 1604, set out for Prague, where the Imperial Court was then in residence.

“At Prague,” he writes, “I found Rossworm, who since our reconciliation had been on terms of the closest friendship with me. He came, the following morning, to my lodging in his coach to take me to the hall of the Palace of Prague,[42] where we walked up and down until the Council rose, when the lords of the Council came to salute Rossworm, whom they held in great respect, on account of his being commander-in-chief of the Army. He then presented me to them, begging them to honour me with their friendship and saying many kind things concerning me.”

On leaving the Palace, Rossworm took Bassompierre to dine with an old Bohemian noble named Prestowitz, who occupied the post of burgrave of Karlstein, the fortress in which the Imperial regalia and all the charters of Bohemia were preserved. The burgrave had two sons, the elder of whom was Grand Falconer of the Empire, while the younger, Wolf von Prestowitz, had served with Bassompierre in the recent campaign, and aspired to the command of the cavalry regiment which Bohemia was to send to Hungary that year. For which reason the family were exceedingly civil to the great Rossworm, who could do much to obtain this post for the young man. The burgrave also possessed four young and pretty daughters. Rossworm, it appeared, was in love with the youngest girl, Sibylla; while Bassompierre promptly lost his heart to the third daughter, named Esther, “a young lady of excellent beauty, eighteen years of age, widow since six months of a gentleman called Briczner, to whom she had been married a year.”

“We were nobly received and entertained at Prestowitz’s house,” he continues, “and after dinner there was dancing, when I began to fall in love with Madame Esther, who made me understand that she was not displeased with my design, which I revealed to her as I was leaving the house. For she responded in such a way as to afford me the means to write to her, and to tell me the places which she visited, so that I might go there. I went also to see her sometimes at her house, under cover of the friendship which had sprung up between her younger brother and myself, when we were in Hungary.”

His new-born passion for “Madame Esther” did not, however, prevent our gentleman from indulging in other amorous adventures of a much less excusable character:

“On our return from dining with the Prestowitz family, Rossworm, thinking to oblige me, engaged me in a rather unfortunate affair. He had bargained with an innkeeper of the New Town that, for two hundred ducats, he should surrender to him his two daughters, who were very beautiful. I am of opinion, as will appear from the sequel, that he had taken advantage of this poor man when he was drunk to obtain such a promise from him. When we had arrived within some two hundred paces of this inn, we alighted from our coach, which we ordered to turn round and await our return; and Rossworm and I, with a page of his, who was to act as interpreter, went the rest of the way on foot.

“We found the father in the room where the stove stood, and with him his two daughters, who were going about their work. He was very astonished to see us, and still more so when Rossworm made him understand that each of us had brought him a hundred ducats for what the innkeeper had promised him. Thereupon the man cried out that he had never promised any such thing, and, opening the window, shouted twice: ‘Mortriau! Mortriau!’ that is to say, ‘Murder!’ Then Rossworm held his poniard to the innkeeper’s throat, and directed the page to tell him that if he spoke to the neighbours or did not order his daughters to do our will, he was a dead man, and told me to take away one of the girls.... But I, who had been at first under the impression that I was engaged in an affair in which all the parties were in accord, answered that I did not intend to touch the girls. Rossworm then said that, if I did not wish to do so, I must come and hold my poniard to the father’s throat, and that he would take one of the girls away.... This I did very reluctantly; and the poor girls wept.”

The odious Rossworm had already seized upon one of the unfortunate girls to drag her away, when a great shouting reached their ears, and looking out of the window, he saw a large and threatening crowd, which had come in response to the innkeeper’s cries for help, gathered before the house. Thereupon he let his intended victim go, and told Bassompierre that they were in grave danger, and would need all their courage and presence of mind if they wanted to leave that house alive. Then, turning to the innkeeper, he told him—or rather made the page do so—that he would kill him, if he did not contrive their escape from the mob. Now, the innkeeper was wearing a long smock, under which Rossworm placed his poniard, pressing the point against the man’s flesh, and told Bassompierre to give his dagger to the page, that he might do likewise. In this fashion they went out of the room and along the passage to the door of the inn, where the trembling Boniface gave some apparently satisfactory explanation to his neighbours, for the latter, who, of course, could not see the poniards pressed against his back, began to disperse.

Then Rossworm and the page, imagining that the danger was over, sheathed their poniards, and they and Bassompierre began to walk away in the direction of their coach. But they had gone but a few paces, when the innkeeper, recovering from his alarm, began to shout: “Murder! Murder!” again with all the strength of his lungs. They took to their heels and ran for their lives, pursued by an infuriated mob, who pelted them with volleys of stones, which they had apparently collected at the first alarm.

“Then Rossworm cried out to me: ‘Brother, sauve qui peut! If you fall, do not expect me to pick you up, for each of us must look to his own safety.’ We ran pretty fast, but the rain of stones incommoded us greatly, and one of them, striking Rossworm in the back, brought him to the ground. I, who did not wish to treat him in the manner in which he had just announced his intention of treating me, raised him up and helped him along for some twenty paces, when, happily, we reached our coach. Into this we threw ourselves, and were soon in safety in the Old Town, having escaped from the paws of more than four hundred people.”

Next day, Rossworm, presumably out of gratitude to Bassompierre for having saved his life at the risk of his own, secured for him the high privilege of admission to the Emperor’s ante-chamber, which was usually only accorded to princes and very great nobles. Here he appears to have met the Count von Wallenstein, the great captain of the Thirty Years’ War, then a youth of twenty, who, a few days later, challenged him to a match at tennis. During the game the Emperor appeared at a window of the palace which overlooked the tennis-court, and remained there for some time, an interested spectator. The following morning his Majesty gave orders that Bassompierre should be presented to him, and received him very graciously indeed, observing that his family had always been faithful servants of the Imperial House, and that he had heard that he had conducted himself very well in Hungary. He added that, if he wished to enter his service and would inform him of what post he desired, he would be very pleased to appoint him to it. Maximilian spoke in Spanish and requested Bassompierre to reply in the same language.

Shortly after this, the Emperor sent the Count von FÜrstenberg to inform Bassompierre that he proposed making certain changes in the cavalry of the Imperial Army, and that if he were willing to go to Lorraine and raise three new companies of light horse and three of musketeers for service in Hungary, he would appoint him colonel of a thousand horse. This offer Bassompierre accepted, “foreseeing,” says he, “that France would remain at peace for a long while, and urged thereto by the intense love with which Madame Esther had inspired me.”

His attachment to this young lady, however, made him far from anxious to hasten his departure for Lorraine, and he therefore decided to postpone it until after the Carnival, which “Madame Esther,” who had returned to Karlstein, intended to pass at Prague. But, to his great disappointment, her father, the burgrave, fell ill and she was obliged to remain at Karlstein. However, notwithstanding the absence of his inamorata, he contrived to spend a very pleasant time, “with continual feasts and festivities and very high play at prime between five or six of us, to wit, Count von Stahrenberg, President of the Kingdom of Bohemia, Adam Galpopel, Grand Prior of Bohemia, Kinsky, Rossworm and myself. And there was not an evening in which I did not win or lose two or three thousand thalers.”

On the occasion of the marriage of the Emperor’s Grand Equerry, which took place during the Carnival, and the festivities in connection with which lasted several days, Bassompierre arranged with Rossworm and six other nobles to parade the town on horseback, masked and splendidly dressed. As they were passing the Town Hall, some constables came up to Bassompierre and Rossworm, who, preceded by their pages bearing their swords aloft, were riding at the head of the party, and informed them that the Emperor had forbidden anyone to pass through the town masked. They, however, pretended that they did not understand Sclavonic, and rode on. No attempt was made to stop them, but, on their return, they found chains stretched across all the streets leading to the square in which the Town Hall stood, except the one by which they entered, and, so soon as they had passed, chains were stretched across that also. Then a whole company of constables appeared upon the scene, and, beginning with the hindmost of the party, seized their companions, who, not having brought their swords with them, were unable to offer any resistance, and haled them off to prison. Meanwhile, Bassompierre and Rossworm had taken their swords from their pages, but they did not draw them. However, when one of the constables attempted to seize the bridle of Bassompierre’s horse, Rossworm struck him on the hand with his sheathed sword, and, the blade, breaking through the scabbard, wounded the man somewhat severely. They were immediately surrounded by more than two hundred police, but, drawing their swords, they contrived to prevent them from closing with them and dragging them off their horses, though not without receiving a volley of blows on their backs and arms.

“This went on for some time,” continues Bassompierre, “until a chief justice came out of the Town Hall and raised his bÂton (which they call regimentstock). Upon this, all the constables laid their halberds on the ground; and Rossworm (who knew the custom) threw down his sword and called out to me to do the same instantly. I did so, otherwise I should have been declared a rebel to the Emperor and punished as such. Rossworm asked me to answer when the judge began to question us, as he did not wish to be recognised. The judge inquired who I was, and I told him without disguising anything. He then asked the name of my companion, and I answered that it was Rossworm, whereupon he offered us the most profuse apologies. Rossworm, annoyed that I had given his name, when he saw that it was useless to deny it, fell into a rage and threatened the judge and the constables that he would complain to the Emperor and the Chancellor and have them severely punished. They tried every means to appease him, but he, as well as myself, had been too well beaten to be satisfied with words. They delivered up to us our six companions, who were more fortunate than ourselves, since they had suffered nothing worse than a fright, and we rode away. In the evening we attended the wedding festivities as though nothing had happened. But, next morning, Rossworm went to the Chancellor, to whom he spoke very arrogantly, and the Chancellor, to satisfy us, threw more than 150 constables into prison. Their wives were every day at my door to obtain a pardon for them, and I solicited Rossworm very earnestly to grant it. But he was inexorable, and made them lie a fortnight in prison during the rigour of winter, from the effects of which two of them died. Finally, with great difficulty, I contrived to get the rest set at liberty.”

The imprisonment of these unfortunate constables, who had only done their duty, was indeed a singular way for a Government to encourage the faithful execution of its orders!

In the town of Prague the New Calendar was in use, but among the Hussites, in the country districts of Bohemia, it was not observed. In consequence, after the Carnival was over at Prague, it lasted another ten days in the country, and the Burgrave Prestowitz invited Bassompierre, Rossworm, and two Bohemian nobles named Stavata and Colwrat to come and spend a second Carnival at Karlstein, at which a large party of nobles and ladies were to assemble. Colwrat was a great admirer of the Countess Millessimo, the eldest sister of Bassompierre’s inamorata, while Stavata was just embarking in a romance with her second sister, the not-too-devoted wife of a gentleman named Colowitz; and “on Ash Wednesday the four lovers of the four daughters of the burgrave travelled to Karlstein in the same coach.”

At Karlstein Bassompierre appears to have spent an even more agreeable time than during the Carnival at Prague:

“We found there more than twenty ladies, including several who were very beautiful, and it is needless to say we were made welcome by the daughters of the house, but principally by my lady, who was enraptured to see me, as I was to see her. For I was desperately in love with her, and I can say that never in my life did I pass ten days more agreeably or better employed than those I passed there, being always at table, at the ball, in the sleigh, or engaged in another and better occupation. At length, the Carnival being over, we returned to Prague, with great regret on their part and ours, but very satisfied with our little journey.”

Before leaving Karlstein, Bassompierre had extracted a promise from “Madame Esther” that she would take an early opportunity of coming to Prague; but, as the worthy burgrave fell ill again, very probably in consequence of the quantity of rich food and strong wine which he had consumed during the Carnival, she was unable to do this. However, she hastened to atone to her lover for his disappointment, for “she made him come in disguise to Karlstein, where he spent five days and six nights concealed in a chamber near her own.”

On his return from this amorous escapade, Bassompierre prepared to set out for Lorraine, and, having received his despatches and an order on the Lorraine treasury for the payment of the troops which he had undertaken to raise in the duchy,[43] he left Prague on Palm Sunday, accompanied alone by Cominges-Guitaut, Seigneur de FlÉac, a French gentleman who had served with him in Hungary, and a German valet de chambre.

He spent the first night of his journey at Karlstein, ostensibly to bid adieu to the burgrave and his family, but, in reality, to take farewell of “Madame Esther,” who was, of course, very disconsolate at the departure of her lover, though Bassompierre promised that, so soon as he had raised his levy, he would return to her side for a little while, before leading his horsemen into Hungary. As he was still “Éperdument amoureux,” and to such a degree that he assures us that the charms of some very beautiful ladies whom he met at a country-house at which he stopped on the following day, and where, sad to relate, both he and his friend Guitaut got very drunk, were powerless to make the smallest impression upon him, he no doubt fully intended to keep his word; but, as events turned out, poor “Madame Esther” was never to see him again.

Travelling by way of Pilsen and Ratisbon, he arrived at Munich, where his friend William II. of Bavaria entertained him very hospitably and “offered him the command of the regiment of foot which Bavaria maintained in Hungary, in any year that he cared to accept it, provided he would notify him before Easter.” The Duke also lent him one of his own coaches, which brought him to Augsburg, where he took horse to Strasbourg, and a few days after Easter reached Saverne, and put up at an inn, with the intention of continuing his journey early on the morrow.

At Saverne an adventure befell him which might very well have had a fatal termination:—

So perhaps, after all, this very painful experience may have proved to be a blessing in disguise.

On his recovery, Bassompierre proceeded to Harouel, but learning that his mother was at Toul, set out thither, stopping for a few days on his way at the Abbey of Épinal, of which an aunt of his, Yolande de Bassompierre, was the Superior. Here he met again his cousin Yolande de Livron, with whom he had fallen in love two years before, and who happened also to be a guest of the abbess. This damsel had lately married the Comte des Cars, but this did not prevent her from being exceedingly agreeable to her handsome kinsman, and “the fires of their old passion blazed up again.” However, perhaps fortunately for the young countess, Bassompierre was soon obliged to continue his journey to Toul, whence he returned with his mother to Harouel.

Their home-coming was a sad one, for, while at Toul, Madame de Bassompierre had learned that her second son, Jean, Seigneur de Removille, who towards the end of the previous year had quitted the service of France for that of Spain, had died from the effects of a wound which he had received at the siege of Ostend, and, the day after their arrival at Harouel, the poor young man’s body was brought there for burial. Bassompierre was genuinely grieved at the death of his brother, to whom he had been much attached, and whom he describes as “a man of high courage and good sense, which, joined to a handsome presence, would have assured his fortune”; and he was greatly incensed against Henri IV, or, rather, against Sully, whom he regarded as indirectly responsible for the sad event.

This requires some explanation.

It appears that, during the Wars of Religion, the French Government had become indebted to Christophe de Bassompierre for various large sums, amounting in all to about 140,000 crowns, which Christophe had paid the troops whom he had raised for their service. As it was not convenient for the Treasury to discharge the debt, it was decided that certain estates belonging to the Crown in Normandy—Saint Sauveur-le-Vicomte, Saint-Sauveur-Landelin, and the barony of Nehou, should be mortgaged to Christophe, the estates to be administered by persons appointed by him. It was anticipated that the revenues of these lands would be sufficient to pay the interest on the money which he had advanced; but this did not prove to be the case, and the arrears of interest continued to mount up, until at the time of his death they had reached a very large sum. However, being on the whole satisfied with the arrangement which had been made, Christophe does not appear to have taken any steps to press his claims upon the French Government, nor did his family do so after his death. But, in the autumn of 1601, Sully, seeing an opportunity of mortgaging these lands on more favourable terms, persuaded Henri IV to issue a decree which provided that the money advanced by Christophe should be refunded to his heirs, with the addition of a sum which represented less than half of the accumulated interest due to them. The King—or rather his Minister—defended this decision on the ground that of late years the Saint-Sauveur lands had become much more valuable, and had—or ought to have—produced a revenue in excess of the interest due.

Bassompierre protested warmly to the King against the injustice of this decree, and asked that it should be annulled; and Henri IV, a little ashamed of the shabby manner in which he had allowed his favourite to be treated, promised him, shortly before Bassompierre’s departure for Hungary, that “within two months he should be satisfied.”

However, as time went on, without anything being done, Removille, with whom his brother had left full authority to settle the matter with the Government, took upon himself to remind the King of his promise. Henri IV returned an evasive answer, upon which Removille, who was far less tactful than his elder brother, spoke to his Majesty “without that respect or restraint that he ought to have employed.” This brought upon him a severe reprimand from the King, and, burning with resentment, the young man promptly quitted Henri IV’s service and entered that of Spain, in which he met an untimely death.

Nor was this all, for, shortly before Removille’s death, Henri IV, learning that he had been raising a regiment of foot in Lorraine to serve in Flanders, and that Bassompierre was raising a body of horse, concluded, not unnaturally, that the troops which the latter was recruiting were also destined for Flanders, and that he too had quitted his service for that of Philip III. Thereupon he seized the ChÂteau of Saint-Sauveur and ejected Bassompierre’s servants.

This news, which reached him almost simultaneously with that of his brother’s death, served to incense Bassompierre still further against Henri IV and his advisers, and it is very probable that the Court of France would have seen him no more, had not the King, ascertaining that the elder brother’s levy was intended for service against the Turks in Hungary and that the younger was dead, hastened to make amends for his high-handed action, and directed Zamet to write Bassompierre a letter of explanation. In this letter Bassompierre was informed that his Majesty was greatly surprised and pained that he should desire to quit his service without cause; that he had not yet allowed the decree of the Council to be executed, and had only taken possession of the ChÂteau of Saint-Sauveur because Removille had become a Spanish subject and the chÂteau was Crown property; and that he fully intended to make an arrangement which would be satisfactory to him.

Bassompierre replied that nothing was further from his desire than to leave the King’s service, but, unless the decree were annulled, he would be so impoverished that it would be no longer possible to live as befitted his rank at his Majesty’s Court. This letter had the desired effect, for Henri IV was really much attached to the gay and lively Lorrainer, who was a man after his own heart; and, shortly afterwards, Bassompierre received a letter in the King’s own hand inviting him to return to the Court, when “he would soon see how good a master he was.”

Bassompierre, feeling sure that the King would keep his word, however much Sully might protest, decided to return to France forthwith, and accordingly sent a messenger to Vienna to inform the Emperor that he was summoned to France by private affairs of the highest importance, and that it would therefore be impossible for him to raise the troops which he had intended to recruit for his Imperial Majesty’s service. At the same time, he returned in full the money which he had received for that purpose, although he had already disbursed a portion of it. This very honourable action served to mollify any resentment which the Emperor might otherwise have felt; and he replied, through Rossworm, that he should not appoint a colonel of his foreign cavalry for the present, but would keep the post open for Bassompierre, in case he desired to return to Hungary the following year.