In the spring trouble arose with Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, who was disputing the claim of Ferdinando di Gonzaga to the throne of Mantua, and had invaded Montferrato. The French Government, judging it dangerous to allow the Duke of Savoy, an uncertain friend and a possible enemy, to get possession of Casale, one of the strongest places in Italy, announced its intention of supporting Ferdinando, and Concini, on the pretext that it was desirable that France should present a united front in the event of hostilities breaking out, persuaded Marie de’ Medici to summon the Princes to Court. Spain, however, in order to prevent French intervention in Italy, hastened to send orders to the Governor of the Milanese to compel Charles Emmanuel to abandon his prey, and that prince, recognising the impossibility of resistance, evacuated Montferrato.

It was believed, for a moment, that the affair of Montferrato would bring about the ruin of the Concini. The Duke of Savoy, to assure the neutrality of France, had succeeded in corrupting the Italian favourites of the Queen and several other prominent persons, and had kept up an active correspondence with Concini, the agent employed by the latter being a priest named Maignan. An intercepted letter caused the arrest of this man, who, in the admissions that were extorted from him, comprised Concini, his creature the advocate Dolet, and the Marquis de Coeuvres.

On the day Maignan was arrested, Bassompierre, who was with the Court at Fontainebleau, happened to sup with Zamet, where he met LomÉnie, the Secretary of State. It had been LomÉnie’s duty to be present at the first examination of the prisoner, and he told Bassompierre of the serious admissions that the man had made and the names he had mentioned. He added that he was to be examined further on the following morning, when doubtless still more interesting revelations would be forthcoming.

Now, Bassompierre was on intimate terms with Concini, for, though he would appear to have despised him heartily, the Italian’s influence with the Queen made him a valuable friend, besides which he was in the habit of winning large sums from him at play. He accordingly decided to warn him of the danger which threatened him, and went that same night to his house, but was told that he was in bed and could not be disturbed. He had therefore to wait until the following day, when he stopped him as he was about to enter the chapel to hear the Whit-Sunday sermon, invited him to take a turn in the cloisters, and, so soon as they were alone, inquired bluntly: “Who is Maignay?”

That afternoon the Queen went for a drive in the park, and Bassompierre accompanied her, occupying a seat in the Grand Equerry’s coach. As they were driving by the side of the canal, one of Concini’s gentlemen came galloping up and informed Bassompierre that his master wished to see him immediately, and he sprang from his horse and offered it him. “Ah! he wants to win my money,” remarked Bassompierre, as he prepared to mount; and when the Queen inquired where he was going, he replied that he was going to play cards with the Marquis d’Ancre. He rode back to the palace, and found Concini awaiting him in the Cour Ovale.

Bassompierre told him that he had many remedies against the enmity of the Ministers, of which the most efficacious were the good graces of the Queen, which he would undoubtedly possess when he returned to his duty and abandoned all practices which were not agreeable to her Majesty. He had also, he continued, his innocence to plead for him, and, if that were not as complete as might be desired, it would be advisable to interview, and come to some arrangement with, the commissioners who had the examination of Maignan in hand (for he did not doubt that that was his present difficulty), and “to have recourse to the kindness and compassion of the Queen, who would receive him, he felt assured, with open arms, provided he spoke to her with sincerity of heart and an entire resignation to her will.”

Concini followed his advice and proceeded to throw himself upon the clemency of the Queen, “in whom he found all kinds of gentleness and kindness.” Marie de’ Medici, indeed, was unable to dispense with either the husband or the wife. “The one,” observes Henri Martin, “dominated her by habit and by the superiority of an active and restless mind over a mind indolent and dull; the other probably by a warmer feeling.”[98] She accepted all their excuses; the two commissioners by whom Maignan was tried suppressed everything which might compromise Concini and his accomplices;[99] and while the unfortunate agent was condemned to death and broken on the wheel, the man who had employed him—this precious rascal who had sought to betray the country upon which he had so long been battening—was raised to new honours. The Queen only exacted from him that he should be reconciled with the Ministers and definitely abandon the party of the Princes. And, as the price of his obedience, she gave him, in the following November, the bÂton of a marshal of France![100]

Towards the end of May, Bassompierre went to Rouen to make arrangements for the conduct of his case in the action which the d’Entragues were bringing against him, and which, on various pretexts, he had succeeded in delaying until now. He found, to his disgust, however, that the plaintiff had stolen a march upon him, for, though he applied in turn to all the chief advocates of the Parlement of Rouen, not one of them would undertake the case, the reason being that they had all been consulted by the other side, which, of course, rendered it impossible for them to hold a brief for the defence.

He returned to Paris and complained bitterly to Marie de’ Medici of the sharp practice of which the d’Entragues had been guilty. Upon which she said: “Mon Dieu! Bassompierre, the Procurator of the Estates of Nantes, who is so eloquent, is eligible to plead your cause, for he was formerly an advocate of Rouen. He is here now.” And she sent for him and ordered him to undertake the case, which he did very ably.

At the beginning of June, Bassompierre returned to Rouen, “accompanied or followed by over 200 gentlemen,” and accompanied, too, by the good wishes of the Queen, who did not confine her good offices to providing him with an advocate. She wrote to the MarÉchal de Fervacques, the Governor of Rouen, “to assist him in all that he might demand of him”; she ordered her own company of light horse, which was in garrison at Évreux, to come to meet him and escort him to Rouen; she sent one of her gentlemen with letters recommending his cause to all the presidents and counsellors of the Parlement; and every other day she despatched a courier to ascertain how the case was proceeding.

All Normandy appears to have flocked to Rouen to attend this cause cÉlÈbre, and seldom had the old city been so gay.

There can be little doubt that, in this breach of promise, popular sympathy was with the faithless gallant rather than the injured lady. But Bassompierre’s friends were denied the pleasure of applauding his victory at the Palais de Justice, for, after the case had been in progress for some time, the d’Entragues, seeing that the day was likely to go against them, succeeded in obtaining an adjournment for six months, to enable the King’s Council to decide whether the Court was impartially constituted; their contention being that some of the judges were related to the defendant on his mother’s side.

Not long after Bassompierre’s return to Court, the post of lieutenant-governor of Poitou became vacant, and, as he was anxious to secure this office for his brother-in-law Saint-Luc, he solicited Concini’s good offices with the Queen, thinking, not unnaturally, that, after the service he had lately rendered him, the Italian would be only too ready to oblige him. Concini assured both Bassompierre and his brother-in-law that he would do everything in his power for them, and appeared delighted at the opportunity of discharging the obligation under which the former had placed him. Nevertheless, the post was given to CondÉ’s favourite, the Baron de Rochefort, at Concini’s earnest entreaty, the Queen told Bassompierre, as she herself preferred Saint-Luc.

So much for the favourite’s sense of gratitude! But this was not all:

After this, Saint-Luc, as was only to be expected, was somewhat cold in his manner towards Concini, whereupon that worthy, persuaded that this was due to his brother-in-law’s influence, determined to be avenged and, says Bassompierre, “assisted by his wife, began to instill into the Queen’s mind the belief that I boasted of the kindness which she showed me, and that people were talking about it; and they told her that I was estranging her servants from her, and that I was turning everyone against her.”

This intrigue was only too successful, and on Bassompierre’s return to Fontainebleau from a visit to Paris, whither he had been sent by the Queen to settle a quarrel between the Duc de Montbazon and the MarÉchal de Brissac, he perceived a change in her Majesty’s manner towards him, which seemed rather less cordial than usual. This continued for some days and was succeeded by an “entire coldness.”[101]

Bassompierre remained in this state of semi-disgrace for about a month, when, his patience exhausted, he “resolved to quit the Court of France and the service of the King and Queen, although several beautiful ladies performed the impossible to turn him from this design.” He accordingly asked Sauveterre, the usher of the Queen’s cabinet, to obtain for him an audience of her Majesty, in order that he might request her permission to retire from the Court and France, which Sauveterre did. But, no sooner was he in the royal presence than, to his astonishment and relief, the Queen, addressing him with all her old cordiality, said: “Bassompierre, I am going to-morrow to Paris. [She was going to visit her younger son, the Duc d’OrlÉans—Monsieur, as he was called—who was lying ill at the Louvre.] I have ordered everyone to remain here; but, as for you, if you wish to come, I give you permission. But do not go by the same road, so that they may not say that I have made an exception to the general rule.”

Next day, Bassompierre went to Paris, accompanied by CrÉquy and Saint-Luc, and awaited the Queen’s arrival at the Louvre, where he assisted her to alight from her coach and escorted her to Monsieur’s apartments. “The others then retired,” says he, “and I remained until she was in her cabinet, when I had full leisure to speak to her, and left her with the assurance that she did not believe any of the things which they had tried to persuade her to believe against me, concerning which I gave her a complete explanation.”

Early in 1614, CondÉ and the other Princes who, in the preceding year, had been allied with Concini, indignant at the latter’s reconciliation with the Ministers and jealous of his increasing favour, retired from Court and assumed so threatening an attitude that Marie de’ Medici decided to raise an army without delay, and applied to the Swiss Cantons for a levy of 6,000 men, who were intended to form the nucleus of this force. Now, the Colonel-General of the Swiss in the French service, who would, of course, take command of the new levy, was the Duc de Rohan, a nobleman of whose loyalty the Regent was exceedingly suspicious, and with good reason, since, when hostilities broke out, he entered into an alliance with the Princes. She therefore resolved to purchase this post from him and to appoint in his place someone in whom she had absolute confidence.

At a meeting of the Council called to decide the question of Rohan’s successor, Villeroy suggested that the post should be given to the Duc de Longueville, by which means, he assured the Queen, she would certainly draw him away from the party of the Princes, which he seemed more than half-inclined to join. Her Majesty, however, very sensibly preferred to bestow it on someone who would not regard his appointment as in the nature of a bribe to do his duty, and proposed that Bassompierre should be the new Colonel-General, “both on account of the German tongue, which he had in common with the Swiss, and because he was their neighbour.” Upon this, Villeroy pointed out that, by the ancient conventions of the Kings of France with the Swiss Cantons, it was expressly provided that the Colonel-General should be a prince of the Blood Royal of France or, at any rate, a prince of some other royal house.[102] The Queen then proposed the Chevalier de Guise, who was a prince of the House of Lorraine; but to this Villeroy objected, on the ground that the Guises had already been overwhelmed with benefits and that to add to them would be bound to create a great deal of jealousy. And the Council rose without any decision having been arrived at.

Bassompierre saluted her Majesty and withdrew, anathematizing the wretched convention which stood between him and one of the highest offices under the Crown, and wondering whether by any possibility the obstacle could be overcome. Of that there seemed but little chance, as time pressed, and perhaps by the morrow the post would have been filled. Fortune favoured him, however, for, as he was on his way to dinner, he happened to meet Colonel Gaspard Gallaty, a veteran Swiss officer in the service of France,[103] with whom he was on very friendly terms. To him he related what the Queen had just told him, when Gallaty said that he believed he possessed sufficient influence with his countrymen to persuade them to accept him as their Colonel-General, notwithstanding the convention. And he offered to set out at once for Switzerland to obtain their consent, and begged Bassompierre to return to the Queen and tell her that, if she wished to give him the post, the Swiss would consent.

By the Queen’s orders, Bassompierre then communicated with Rohan, who was in Poitou, and, as he feared that it might be some little time before the Treasury saw its way to pay the large sum demanded by that nobleman for the surrender of his post, he himself offered to advance it; and on March 12, 1614, he took the oath as Colonel-General of the Swiss.

Two days later, news arrived that the Princes had surprised MÉziÈres, from which place CondÉ despatched a lengthy memorial to the Queen, setting forth the grievances of himself and his party, protesting against the Spanish marriage and demanding the convocation of the States-General. The seizure of MÉziÈres was followed by that of Sainte-Menehould, but the arrival of the Swiss, in two regiments, each 3,000 strong, of whom Bassompierre at once went to take the command, greatly perturbed the rebels, and there can be no doubt that at the cost of a little bloodshed the Regent could easily have crushed the insurrection. Instead of doing so, she preferred to treat, and the result of the negotiations which ensued was the Peace of Sainte-Menehould (May 15, 1614), which stipulated that the States-General should be convoked; that CondÉ should hold Amboise, as a place of surety, until the meeting of the States, and receive a sum of 450,000 livres; that Mayenne, who was already Governor of the Île-de-France, should have the reversion of the government of Paris, together with 300,000 livres; Longueville 100,000 livres, and Bouillon “the doubling of his gendarmes.” It was a direct incentive to the Princes to take up arms again on the first convenient opportunity.

As the Duc de VendÔme, who had retired into his government of Brittany, showed himself discontented with the peace and had, not only refused to dismantle the fortifications of Lamballe and Quimper, as he was required to do by the treaty, but had even seized upon Vannes, Marie de’ Medici, on the advice of Villeroy, decided to show the young King to his people, and to “go in person to pacify the western provinces.” Bassompierre accompanied her, with one of the two regiments of Swiss, the other having been disbanded on the signing of peace, and was employed in superintending the razing of the fortifications which VendÔme had erected. The appearance of the young King aroused great enthusiasm in the West, and VendÔme soon decided to make his submission.

Louis XIII returned to Paris, and on October 2 proceeded in great state to the Parlement to declare his majority. He thanked his mother “for having taken so many pains on his behalf, and begged her to continue to govern and command as heretofore.” “I desire and I order,” he added, “that you be obeyed in everything and everywhere, and that you be after me the chief of my Council.”