On that fatal day, when the knife of Ravaillac changed the destinies of France and of Europe, Louis XIII, the successor of the murdered King, was not yet nine years old. The fear of troubles within the realm and of complications without exacted the immediate institution of a regency, and Villeroy and the Chancellor, Brulart de Sillery, exhorted Marie de’ Medici, who was lying upon her bed prostrated with grief, to act “as man and as King.”

The great nobles, out of pity or the desire to assert their own importance, were zealous in the Queen’s cause; and some who had scarcely been on bowing terms with each other for years were seen to embrace and vow to die together sword in hand if the necessity should arise.

D’Épernon, Colonel-General of the French infantry, caused the approaches to the Louvre and the Pont-Neuf to be occupied by the French Guards; Guise, with part of a force of some 300 horse which he and Bassompierre had mustered, proceeded to the HÔtel de Ville to obtain from the Corporation a formal recognition of the new King and Regent; while Bassompierre, with the remainder, paraded the streets “to appease tumults and seditions.” Sully alone showed himself undecided, feeble and timorous. At the news of the King’s assassination, ill though he was, he had mounted his horse and set out for the Louvre, accompanied by some forty of his guards and attendants. Near the Place Saint-Jean he met Bassompierre and his cavalcade, the sight of whom appears to have filled him with misgivings.

Of the Princes of the Blood who might have been able to aspire to the regency, one, CondÉ, was a voluntary exile in the dominions of the King of Spain; the other, the Comte de Soissons, had left Paris in high dudgeon before the coronation of the Queen, because Henri IV had refused to permit Madame la Comtesse to wear on her ceremonial mantle a row of fleurs de lys more than the wife of his legitimated son the Duc de VendÔme. As for the Prince de Conti, he was deaf, afflicted with an impediment in his speech, and almost imbecile. Outside the Princes of the Blood, and in the absence of the States-General, there was only one power recognised by all—the Parlement of Paris. And to this body Marie de’ Medici at once addressed herself.

In her name, the Procurator-General demanded that “now and without adjourning, the Parliament should provide, as it had been accustomed to do, for the regency and the government of the realm.” The Parlement was too convinced of its right and too flattered by the part it was asked to play to hesitate. But, as a matter of form, it was proceeding to deliberate upon the matter, when d’Épernon, in his doublet, with his drawn sword in his hand, swaggered into the chamber, and, having begged the assembly to excuse his discourtesy, invited it to hasten. As he left, Guise entered in the same costume, took his seat and protested his devotion to the Crown. The First President, Achille de Harlay, solemnly ordered the duke’s words to be recorded; and the Court unanimously declared the Queen Mother Regent, “to have the administration of the affairs of the realm during the minority of the said lord her son, together with all power and authority.” It was quick work: Henri IV had not been dead two hours.

It was much, without doubt, to have settled so expeditiously the future government of France. But what a task for a woman, for a foreigner, for one, too, who bore a name little calculated to reassure the bulk of the nation, which remembered only too well the troubles in which the rule of another Medici had involved it, to be called upon to exercise supreme power in circumstances so difficult! Without, a war on the point of breaking out; within, princes affecting an entire independence and even negotiating with the foreigner; a turbulent nobility whom even the strong hand of Henri IV had not always been able to keep in check; the Protestant party entrenched in the West and South of France, with its own organisation, its privileges, its places of surety; finally, the governors of the different provinces, possessed of the most extensive powers and strong enough to renounce practically all obedience to the Crown. Marie de’ Medici has often been reproached with weakness, and weak in many ways she certainly was; but it would have required the energy and the resolution of an Elizabeth or a Catherine the Great to have steered the ship of State uninjured through the shoals and quicksands which beset its course.

The Regent retained the Ministers of the late King, Villeroy, Jeannin, Sillery, and Sully, and, to calm the apprehensions of the Protestants, lost no time in confirming the Edict of Nantes. But the war so long meditated against the House of Austria was promptly abandoned, though a small army under Le ChÂtre and Rohan was sent to co-operate with Maurice of Nassau in recovering Juliers, which was handed over to the Electors of Brandenburg and Neuburg, on their undertaking not to interfere with the exercise of the Catholic religion in that duchy.

It was a wise decision, since there were embarrassments enough within half-a-mile of the Louvre. The Princes of the Blood had returned; Soissons, three days after the death of Henri IV; CondÉ, in the middle of July. The former complained that the regency had been settled in his absence, and demanded the post of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom. To appease him, Marie de’ Medici gave him the post of governor of Normandy and a gratification of 200,000 crowns. CondÉ, to the Regent’s great relief, was apparently well-disposed towards the new government, and, to confirm him in his peaceable intentions, she purchased for 400,000 crowns the HÔtel de Gondi, in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and presented it to him, together with furniture to the value of 40,000 crowns; confirmed him in all his offices and appointments; increased his pension to 200,000 crowns, and gave him a large sum to pay his debts. The Regent hoped, by setting a price upon them, to keep within bounds all the ambitions of the grandees; it was her system of government. She paid Guise’s debts, and authorised him to marry the immensely wealthy widow of the Duc de Montpensier, a union to which, for political reasons, Henri IV would never have consented; she promised to pay the debts of the Duc de Nevers; she accorded to all the governors the right of appointing their successors.

“The grandees did not weary of receiving, and said to one another: ‘The time of kings has passed, and that of great nobles and princes has come; we must take every advantage of it.’” Their arrogance and ostentation knew no bounds. They seldom left their houses unless accompanied by numerous and brilliant escorts. Fifteen hundred cavaliers went to meet CondÉ on the day of his arrival in Paris; the Duc de Guise had a suite of five or six hundred horse. The young King remained almost alone in the Louvre, and Marie de’ Medici was obliged to reconstitute the two hundred gentlemen halberdiers, disbanded by Henri IV, from motives of economy.

Happily for the Crown, the grandees were divided, and such parties as did exist were merely associations of a few covetous nobles, animated by no common motive except that of filling their pockets. The Guises, flattered and lavishly paid, boasted of their loyalty to the Regent. Bouillon was at enmity with Sully, like himself a chief of the Protestants. The Prince de Conti had for some years been on bad terms with his brother, the Comte de Soissons, and at the beginning of 1611 their antipathy to one another found vent in a violent quarrel, in which Guise, whose sister, it will be remembered, Conti had married, found himself involved, and which threatened for a moment to develop into a sort of civil war.

Bassompierre then goes on to relate at great length his interview with CondÉ, to whom he pointed out that Guise could have had no intention of “defying” Monsieur le Comte, since, if such had been his object, he would have sallied forth with a much more imposing retinue than a mere score or so of attendants, and would have passed before the front entrance of the HÔtel de Soissons, whereas he had only passed the corner of the house. The prince appears to have been greatly impressed by this argument, and, after Bassompierre had been backwards and forwards several times between CondÉ’s house and the HÔtel de Guise, the momentous affair was satisfactorily settled.

But it did not end here, so far as he himself was concerned. For “Monsieur le Comte was mortally offended with those who had assisted M. de Guise in his quarrel, and particularly with me, who had formerly professed to be his servant; and, to revenge himself upon me, he determined that I should see Antragues no more.”

The prince accordingly sought an interview with Madame d’Entragues, whom he reproached with allowing her family to be dishonoured by the notorious intimacy between Bassompierre and her younger daughter, adding that, as he was distantly related to the d’Entragues, he felt that his own honour was concerned in the matter.

Now, it had happened that, in the previous August, Marie d’Entragues had given birth to a son, of whom Bassompierre did not deny the paternity; indeed, on the lady informing him that she proposed to present him with a pledge of her affection, he had, following the famous example of Henri IV with her elder sister, given his inamorata a letter containing a promise of marriage in the event of her bearing him a son. But this letter was written merely for the purpose of appeasing the wrath of Madame d’Entragues, who was threatening to turn her erring daughter out of the house. For Bassompierre had not the least intention of regularising his connection with this too-celebrated beauty, of whom, if he were the most favoured, he was far from being the only successful admirer; indeed, to do so would mean the loss of a considerable fortune, since his mother had threatened to disinherit him if he married the lady.[83] He had, therefore, at the same time, demanded and obtained from Marie d’Entragues a letter which purported to be an answer to his own, in which she expressly disclaimed any intention of taking advantage of his offer. This, in the opinion of “three famous advocates” whom he had taken the precaution to consult, effectually discharged him from his obligation.

Well, Bassompierre’s letter was in the possession of Madame d’Entragues, who, however, of course, knew nothing of the one which her daughter had given that gentleman; and when the Comte de Soissons reproached her with her indifference to Mlle. Marie’s indiscretions, she informed him that she was not so careless a mother as he appeared to imagine, and could easily prove it. The prince pressed her to do so, upon which she triumphantly showed him the promise of marriage.

Madame d’Entragues did not fail to follow this advice and, on meeting with a flat refusal from Bassompierre, promptly instituted proceedings against him.

Bassompierre endeavoured to persuade the Regent to intervene in his behalf, but, though Marie de’ Medici, with whom he was a favourite, since he was one of the few nobles whose loyalty to the Crown admitted of no question, was very sympathetic and promised him every assistance in her power, her position was far too precarious just then to admit of her offending a Prince of the Blood. All he could do, therefore, was to act upon the advice of the legal luminaries whom he had consulted; and, on various pretexts, he succeeded in deferring his appearance before the diocesan court for some months, at the end of which he appealed to the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Sens, who was the metropolitan of the Bishop of Paris. This insured him a further respite, and, before the case came on for trial, he appealed to the Parlement of Paris, and was beginning to plume himself on his astuteness, when the Comte de Soissons interposed and got the affair transferred to the Parlement of Rouen, to the great consternation of Bassompierre, who knew that Soissons would not scruple to use all his influence as Governor of Normandy to prejudice that body against him.

The annoyance and expense which this affair was occasioning him, and for which, it must be admitted, he is hardly entitled to much sympathy, did not prevent Bassompierre from continuing his life of pleasure, and he took a prominent part in the splendid fÊtes in honour of the double betrothal of Louis XIII to Anne of Austria, and of the Infant Philip, afterwards Philip IV of Spain, to Élisabeth of France, eldest daughter of Henri IV. For Marie de’ Medici had completely reversed the foreign policy of her husband, and Spanish influence was once more in the ascendant at the Court of France.

These fÊtes, originally fixed to begin on March 25, 1612, the day on which the formal announcement of the approaching marriage was made at the Louvre, in the presence of the Spanish Ambassador and the officers of the Crown of France, had been postponed until April 5, owing to the death of the Queen’s brother, Vincenzo I, Duke of Mantua. Their principal feature was a carousal in the Place-Royale on a scale of unprecedented magnificence, in which Bassompierre appeared as one of the challengers.

On the following day, “because all the innumerable people of Paris had not been able to witness this fÊte,” the various troupes passed in procession through the town, that of the challengers, resplendent in their crimson velvet and cloth-of-silver, bringing up the rear.

The fÊte concluded with a grand tilting-match in the Place-Royale, the prize being a ring of great value given by Madame Royale, the future Queen of Spain, which was won by the Marquis de Rouillac, a nephew of d’Épernon.

At night there was another display of fireworks, a salvo fired by two hundred cannon, a bonfire at the HÔtel de Ville, and an illumination of Paris with “lanterns made of coloured paper, in such great profusion in every window that the whole town seemed on fire.”

In November the old ConnÉtable de Montmorency took leave of the Regent and the young King and retired from Court to spend his last days in retirement on his estates of Languedoc. “We escorted him to Moret,” writes Bassompierre, “where he feasted us, and afterwards bade farewell to his chief friends, with so many tears that we thought that he would die in that place. He was a good and noble lord, who loved me as though I were his own son; I am under a great obligation to honour his memory.”

The fÊtes in honour of the betrothal of the young King and his eldest sister were but a brief interlude in the sordid struggle for place and power between the ambitious and greedy princes and nobles which had begun before Henri IV was in his grave. Marie de’ Medici distributed honours and emoluments with a lavish hand, increased the pensions of the grandees and made serious inroads into the millions accumulated in the coffers of the Bastille by the prudent Sully, who in January, 1611, had resigned his post of Comptroller of the Finances, on finding that he was no longer listened to, and that he could not maintain his position “without offending the Princes.” But the appetites she strove to satisfy were insatiable, and the more she gave, the more she was expected to give.

After the death of the Comte de Soissons, the most restless of the Bourbons, at the beginning of November, 1612, the Regent forsook Guise and d’Épernon, who had until then enjoyed a large measure of her favour, and, at the instigation of Concini, that singular Italian adventurer who governed her through his wife Leonora GaligaÏ, the Queen’s dame d’atours and confidante, and for whom she had purchased the marquisate of Ancre, allied herself with CondÉ and his friends Bouillon, Nevers, and Mayenne.[1]

“At this time,” says Bassompierre, “the aspect of the Court entirely changed; for a close alliance was formed by Monsieur le Prince, MM. de Nevers, Mayenne,[94] Bouillon, and the Marquis d’Ancre; and the Queen threw herself entirely on that side. The Ministers were discredited, and no longer had any power, and everything was done according to the desire of these five persons ... MM. de Guise, d’Épernon, de Joinville, and the Grand Equerry were very much out of favour.”