In January, 1615, Bassompierre set out for Lorraine, to visit his mother, who was lying dangerously ill at Nancy. “The joy of seeing me,” says he, “restored her to some degree of health,” and, after remaining with her a fortnight, he went to visit some of his friends in Germany. About Easter he returned to Nancy, and was about to set out for France when he received a most astonishing piece of intelligence.

It appears that the d’Entragues, aware that their plea that the court at Rouen was improperly constituted was certain to be overruled by the King’s Council and the case sent back to Rouen for trial, in which event their chance of obtaining a verdict would be a very remote one, had decided to appeal to Rome, and proceeded to petition the Pope to direct that the affair should be adjudicated upon by ecclesiastical commissioners appointed by his Holiness. The petition was granted, though it would appear to have been very unusual for the Vatican to do so, unless it had first been ascertained whether the other party were willing for the case to be submitted to a Papal tribunal; and one of the commissioners appointed was the Bishop of Dax. But, by some error, due no doubt to the similarity of names, the Papal authority to try the case was sent, not to this prelate, but to the Archbishop of Aix. Now, the Archbishop of Aix, if we are to believe Bassompierre, was “a needy rogue, and generally regarded as mad”; and when the Bishop of Beauvais, at whose suggestion the appeal to Rome had been made, and whom the writer accuses of being in love with Marie d’Entragues, offered him a bribe of 1,200 crowns to defeat the ends of justice, he promptly accepted it. Thereupon, without condescending to consult his fellow-commissioners he sent a citation to Bassompierre’s house, summoning him to appear before him; and, after waiting three days, without troubling to ascertain whether that gentleman had ever received the citation, and without hearing any evidence, pronounced, on his own authority, the promise of marriage—which he had not even seen, as it was, with the other documents connected with the case, at Rome—good and valid, and condemned Bassompierre to execute it within fifteen days after Easter, on pain of excommunication.

On learning of these extraordinary proceedings, Bassompierre returned to Paris in all haste, and appealed to the Parlement; and that body, always very jealous of Papal interference with matters which it considered within its own jurisdiction, promptly quashed the archbishop’s decision. He then went to the Queen-Mother, who, “indignant, like everyone else, at the infamy of this man,” issued an order for the prelate’s arrest, which Bassompierre set out to execute, at the head of 200 stalwart Swiss. The archbishop, however, had prudently gone into hiding, where he remained until the Nuncio and the other bishops, fearing a scandal, succeeded in pacifying the infuriated Bassompierre, “the Nuncio giving him his word that within three months at latest his Holiness would quash, as the Parlement had already done, all the proceedings of this fool. And this he did.”

This new development of the d’Entragues affair was only one of many difficulties which beset Bassompierre on his return to Paris:—

However, his fortunate star prevailed over these complicated effects of his extravagant and amorous propensities:—

Towards the end of March, CondÉ, who for weeks past had been secretly fomenting opposition to the Court, left Paris, followed, at intervals, by his chief adherents, and issued a manifesto protesting against the Ultramontane tendencies of the Government and the Spanish marriage. Marie de’ Medici, who intended shortly to set out for the Spanish frontier to make the exchange of the princesses and conclude the marriage of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, and naturally feared to leave CondÉ behind her, sent him a letter from the King commanding the prince to accompany him. But CondÉ excused himself from following his Majesty until he had remedied the evils of the State, of which he designed the MarÉchal d’Ancre as the principal author.

The Queen-Mother, in consequence, was obliged to raise two armies: one to escort the King and herself to Bordeaux, the other to watch the princes. The latter force was placed under the command of the MarÉchal de Bois-Dauphin, with Praslin as his chief of staff; and to this Bassompierre and the Swiss were attached.

The King and his mother left Paris on August 17, Bassompierre and the Swiss accompanying them so far as Bernis, not far from Sceaux, where they received orders to return and join Bois-Dauphin’s army. Before doing so, however, Bassompierre went to Rouen, where on September 4 the Parlement pronounced judgment in his favour; and this unedifying affair, which had dragged on for nearly four years and must have involved both sides in enormous expense, finally terminated. He then returned in triumph to Paris, whence he proceeded to Meaux, where Bois-Dauphin had established his headquarters.

Bassompierre gives a long and detailed account of the operations which ensued, through which, however, we do not propose to follow him, since they are of little interest, consisting mainly of unimportant skirmishes and the reduction of such places as had declared for the Princes or had been seized by them. In what fighting took place he appears to have displayed both courage and activity; while he endeavoured, though without success, to impart some of his own energy to the old MarÉchal de Bois-Dauphin, who, in his youth, had been one of the most dashing officers in the armies of the League, but with age had grown slow and cautious. Happily for the marshal, CondÉ was equally incapable; otherwise, he would no doubt have taken advantage of his opponent’s inaction to march upon Paris.

Meanwhile, the Court had reached Bordeaux in safety, from which town the greater part of the Royal army was despatched to the frontier to fetch the Infanta Anne of Austria, whom Philip III, undisturbed on his side by war’s alarms, had brought from Madrid. The exchange of the princesses took place at Andaye, on the Bidassoa, after which Anne of Austria, escorted by the Royal troops, set out for Bordeaux, where her marriage with Louis XIII was celebrated on November 28.

Her object accomplished, Marie de’ Medici became anxious for peace at any price, while CondÉ and his friends, now deprived of their chief pretext for rebellion and aware that the Queen would be prepared to pay them handsomely to return to their allegiance, had no desire to prolong the war. A suspension of arms having been agreed upon, a congress met at Loudun to negotiate peace, which was signed on May 3, 1616.

Its terms were another triumph for the party of the Princes, and particularly for their leader, who, in exchange for his government of Guienne, received that of Berry and of the citadel and town of Bourges, the right of signing all the decrees of the Council, and 1,500,000 livres, to compensate him for the inconvenience and expense to which he had been put in being obliged to take up arms against his sovereign. He was certainly finding rebellion a most profitable occupation. The other grandees, his accomplices, received altogether 6,000,000 livres.

The Peace of Loudun brought about the downfall of the Ministers of Henri IV. In both peace and war they had shown only weakness, which is scarcely surprising, considering that the Chancellor, the youngest of the three, was seventy-two. He was obliged to surrender the Seals to Du Vair, First President of the Parlement of Toulouse; while Villeroy and Jeannin were also dismissed, and replaced by Mangot, First President of the Parlement of Bordeaux, and the Queen-Mother’s intendant Barbin, an intelligent and energetic man, who was devoted to Concini and Marie de’ Medici.

As for Concini, he was more in favour at Court than ever; nevertheless, his position was not altogether an enviable one, since, though he was temporarily reconciled with CondÉ, Mayenne and Bouillon were breathing fire and slaughter against him and were quite capable of putting their threats into execution should a favourable occasion present itself; while he had rendered himself odious to the Parisians by an act of intolerable insolence.

It happened that, one night during the war, Concini had wished to leave Paris by the Porte de Bussy, in order to go to Saint-Germain. But, as he had neglected to provide himself with the necessary passport—such trifles being, of course, beneath the notice of so great a man—the officer of the citizen militia in charge of the gate, who, when not girded with a sword, followed the peaceful occupation of a shoemaker, had refused to let him out. The shoemaker was only doing his duty, but Concini was furious, and, so soon as peace was signed, determined to be revenged, and accordingly sent two of his lackeys to chastise the impertinent fellow who had dared to put such an affront upon a marshal of France. The sequel was a tragedy, for the shoemaker shouted for help with all the strength of his lungs; the people came running from all directions to his assistance, seized the unfortunate lackeys, and, after keeping them locked up for some days, hanged them in front of the shoemaker’s shop, vowing that they would serve their master in the same way when they could lay their hands on him.

All things considered, it is not surprising that the marshal should have decided that the air of Paris was just then unsuited to his health and remained at his country seat at Lesigny, though even there he appears to have been far from safe from his enemies, since Bassompierre tells us that “MM. de Mayenne and de Bouillon made an attempt to blow him up with a petard, but did not succeed.”

However, on July 20 CondÉ returned to Paris, to be received with enthusiasm by the people, though surely no one was ever less deserving of popular acclamations than this vain, greedy, and meddlesome young man, who had not scrupled to plunge his country into the miseries of civil war to serve his own selfish ends! Unwilling to offend the prince by failing to pay him his respects, Concini thereupon decided to go to Paris, even at the risk of his life, and wrote to Bassompierre, who had apparently quite forgiven him for the shabby way he had behaved two years before, asking him to meet him at the Porte Saint-Antoine at three o’clock on the following afternoon, with as many friends as he could muster.

At the appointed hour Bassompierre proceeded to the Porte Saint-Antoine, accompanied by thirty horse, passing on the way the HÔtel de Mayenne, which stood at the corner of the Rue Saint-Antoine and the Rue du Petit-Musc. Presently, Concini appeared, riding in his gilded coach, which was surrounded by forty mounted retainers, all, of course, armed to the teeth. The marshal alighted, and mounted a horse which Bassompierre had brought for him, and the two cavalcades joined forces and proceeded through the streets to the Louvre. Here they waited while Concini entered to salute the Queen, and then made their way to the HÔtel de CondÉ, in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. By this time the marshal’s escort, swollen by the accession of friends of his own and Bassompierre’s, amounted to over one hundred horse; but it seemed as though even this force might be insufficient to protect him, as the first person whom they saw on entering the courtyard of the HÔtel de CondÉ was Concini’s enemy the shoemaker. His presence in that aristocratic mansion was no doubt accounted for by the fact that it was part of Monsieur le Prince’s policy to court the leaders of the populace, as the Guises had done so effectively in days gone by.

No sooner did the shoemaker catch sight of Concini, than he hurried away, shouting out that he was going to raise the people of his quarter against the Italian. The latter, greatly alarmed, paid his respects to CondÉ as briefly as etiquette would permit, and then he and his escort turned their horses’ heads towards the river. On this occasion, Bassompierre and his followers rode some two hundred paces ahead of Concini, as it had been decided that if, as was fully expected, they found the Pont-Neuf occupied by an armed mob too numerous to allow of them cutting their way through, the vanguard should hold the enemy in check, while the marshal, under the protection of the rest, retreated to the shelter of the HÔtel de CondÉ. To their relief, however, the bridge was unoccupied—apparently the shoemaker had not had sufficient time to mobilise his quarter—and they reached the Porte Saint-Antoine in safety, where Concini reentered his coach and returned to Lesigny.

After CondÉ’s return to Paris, the management of affairs fell almost entirely into his hands, and his hÔtel was besieged at all hours by petitioners and sycophants. “Almost all the grandees,” says Bassompierre, “were of his party and his cabal, and even MM. de Guise[104] joined him, under pretext of dissatisfaction with the MarÉchal d’Ancre and his wife.”

At the beginning of August, Concini returned to his

house in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, emboldened apparently by a promise of his protection which CondÉ had given him. A few days later, having some business with the prince, he had the hardihood to go to the HÔtel de CondÉ, attended by a suite of thirty gentlemen, at a time when CondÉ was giving a sumptuous fÊte in honour of Lord Hay, the British Ambassador Extraordinary, to which all the princes and great nobles had been invited. The company were at table when he arrived, but he went into the banquet-hall, in which he found Bouillon, Mayenne and other sworn enemies of his, spoke with CondÉ for some time, and then took his departure, “all these gentlemen glaring at him and he at them.”

Next morning, the prince sent for Concini and told him that he had had great difficulty on the previous day in restraining his friends from falling upon him and killing him as he was leaving his hÔtel, and that they all threatened to abandon him if he did not withdraw his protection from the marshal. In consequence, he was unable to protect him any longer, and he counselled him strongly to retire to Normandy, of which province he had recently been appointed lieutenant-general, in exchange for the surrender of a similar office in Picardy. Concini followed the prince’s advice—or rather his orders—went to the Louvre to take leave of the King and the Queen-Mother, and left Paris the next day (August 15). “It is impossible to say,” adds Bassompierre, “how much his departure discredited the Queen-Mother, when it was seen that a servant of hers could not live in safety in Paris, save so long as Monsieur le Prince pleased; while it augmented the reputation and authority of Monsieur le Prince.”

Chief of the grandees and also chief of the King’s counsellors, CondÉ might perhaps have been content to live on good terms with the Queen-Mother and to use with moderation the large share of power which she had abandoned to him. “But his partisans were unable to suffer their reunion.” Longueville surprised PÉronne; Bouillon, the “demon of rebellion,” the turbulent Mayenne, the restless VendÔme, urged him to seize the supreme power, on pain of abandoning him. He is said to have avowed to Barbin that “it was plain that nothing more remained for him but to remove the King from his throne and put himself in his place.” If he had really entertained any such intention, he would hardly have made a confidant of one of the most devoted of the Queen-Mother’s adherents; but, any way, the Court believed that he was secretly stirring up the people and the clergy and tampering with the officers of the Guards and the captains of the citizen militia, and was plotting to change the form of government. On the advice probably of the new Ministers Barbin and Mangot, and of Concini’s wife, Marie de’ Medici resolved to forestall CondÉ by arresting him, together with Bouillon, Mayenne, and VendÔme. Fearing that the officers of the Guards might refuse to lay hands on the first Prince of the Blood, she decided to dispense with their services and to entrust the task to the Marquis de ThÉmines, a brave old Gascon noble who had served with distinction in the Wars of Religion, assisted by d’ElbÈne, a captain of light cavalry.

So soon as the arrest of CondÉ had been effected, Saint-GÉran and La CurÉe, with detachments of the Gensdarmes and Light Cavalry of the Guard, were sent to apprehend Bouillon, Mayenne, and VendÔme; but all three princes had prudently taken to flight.

Much to the relief of Marie de’ Medici, the bulk of the populace remained unmoved, though the Dowager-Princesse de CondÉ drove about the streets, crying out: “To arms, good people! The MarÉchal d’Ancre has caused Monsieur le Prince to be assassinated!” A crowd, however, collected before Concini’s house in the Faubourg-Saint-Germain, broke in the door and sacked it from basement to attic, after which they were proceeding to demolish it, when the French Guards arrived and dispersed them.

The same day that CondÉ was arrested, the King, at his mother’s request, created ThÉmines a marshal of France. His appointment, Bassompierre tells us, aroused great indignation amongst a number of gentlemen who considered that their own military services gave them a better claim to that dignity, and they complained loudly, the loudest of all being M. de Montigny, formerly Governor of Paris, who, while travelling to the capital that morning, had met VendÔme flying for his life, and had obligingly lent him his own post-horses, which were fresh, as the prince’s were exhausted. To pacify Montigny, the King created him a marshal likewise. Then Saint-GÉran, “perceiving that it was only necessary to complain to get what one wanted,” extorted from his Majesty a written promise that he too should be made a marshal, while CrÉquy obtained a brevet of duke and peer. The Queen-Mother said to Bassompierre that evening: “Bassompierre, you have not asked for anything like the others.” “Madame,” was the diplomatic answer, “an occasion on which we have only performed our simple duty is not one on which to ask for recompense. But I hope that when, by great services, I shall have merited them, the King will bestow upon me honours and emoluments without my asking him.”

On September 5, Marie de’ Medici instituted a Council of War, to which she summoned the MarÉchal de Brissac, Praslin, Saint-Luc, Saint-GÉran, and Bassompierre, and also the recently dismissed Ministers Villeroy and Jeannin, to discuss the means of raising an army to combat the fugitive princes, who had established themselves at Soissons, where their adherents were gathering round them. This Council, however, had only held one or two meetings, under the presidency of the MarÉchal de Brissac, when a most embarrassing incident caused its sittings to be suspended.

It will be remembered that, in 1605, the Comte d’Auvergne, Charles IX’s son by Marie Touchet, now Madame d’Entragues, had been condemned to death for high treason, a sentence subsequently commuted by Henri IV to perpetual imprisonment in the Bastille. This commutation, however, had not been a formal one, so that the death-sentence remained nominally suspended over the captive’s head. At the end of the previous June, the Queen-Mother had set Auvergne at liberty, with the object of opposing him to the cabal of the Princes; and when, a few weeks later, the news arrived that Longueville had seized PÉronne, she sent him, at the head of two companies of the French Guards and a detachment of cavalry, to invest the place. But, by some extraordinary oversight, she had omitted to furnish Auvergne with the usual letters of abolition, and, in the absence of his sovereign’s formal pardon for his offences, he occupied a position somewhat analogous to that of a convict on ticket-of-leave.

A day or two after the Council of War had been appointed, Auvergne returned from PÉronne, and asked Barbin whether he were expected to attend its sessions. Barbin gave him to understand that he was; and at the next meeting of the Council the prince entered the room and coolly took his seat at the head of the table. Brissac was so overcome with astonishment and indignation that he was quite unable to utter any protest; but Bassompierre, boiling with rage at the sight of a man who had twice conspired against the life of his beloved master, and was still technically a traitor under sentence of death, presuming to attend, much less to preside, over their counsels, rose at once and moved to one of the windows, beckoning Saint-GÉran and CrÉquy to follow him. His friends shared his indignation, and, having consulted together, they called Brissac and told him that it would be “a reproach and a shame to him” if he suffered the Comte d’Auvergne to take his place. The marshal thereupon declared that, provided that they and La CurÉe would support him—for these four with their troops were masters of the Louvre—he would kill the count with his own hand, if he returned for the afternoon session and again took his place at the head of the council-board. The others applauded this decision, but, happily, Praslin joined them, and, on learning of what was intended, pointed out that the wisest course would be to request the Queen-Mother to order the Comte d’Auvergne not to attend the Council or to suspend its sessions, whereby they would escape the “inconvenience” which might arise were a marshal of France to kill a Prince of the Blood at the council-board.

It was decided to follow his advice, and to delegate to him the duty of informing the Queen-Mother that they would not permit the count to preside over the Council or even attend it. Marie de’ Medici, we are told, took their remonstrances in very good part, and, since she did not care to offend Auvergne by excluding him from the Council, decided that that body should not meet again.

On September 25, Guise and his brother Joinville, who had followed the other princes to Soissons, with the apparent intention of throwing in their lot with them, returned to Paris and came to the Louvre to pay their respects to the Queen-Mother and assure her of their unalterable fidelity. Her Majesty received them very graciously; nevertheless, she appears to have entertained a strong suspicion that they had other motives in returning to the capital. For that evening, when the courtiers were retiring from her apartments, she desired Bassompierre to remain, as she wished to speak to him, and said: “Bassompierre, I have resolved to transfer Monsieur le Prince from here, and intend to entrust his removal to you. Here is the MarÉchal de ThÉmines, who arrested him, and who has guarded him in the Louvre with difficulty. But it is to be feared that, if I keep him here any longer, some attempt may be made to rescue him, which could easily be done.... Besides, if he remains here, the King and I are prevented from leaving, should we desire to go to Saint-Germain or some other place, since, in that event, he would no longer be in security. In consequence, I have resolved to place him in the Bastille, and desire that you should take charge of his removal.”

“She then told me,” says Bassompierre, “that it was the King’s intention that I should not wait for li honori, li bieni, li carichi. These were her words.”

Bassompierre replied that the honour of her Majesty’s confidence was in itself sufficient recompense for the slight service which she was demanding of him, and that he would readily undertake to conduct the prince safely to the Bastille. About this she need have no fear, since, even if CondÉ’s adherents were to get wind of what was intended, long before they had had time to gather in sufficient numbers to attempt a rescue, he would have the prisoner under lock and key again.

He then inquired if the Queen-Mother had any orders to give as to the manner of the prince’s removal, and, on being told that she left all the arrangements entirely to his discretion, proceeded to form the escort, which was composed of 200 of the French Guards and 100 Swiss, chosen from those who were posted before and behind the Louvre—for the palace was guarded night and day, like a beleaguered fortress upon which an assault might at any moment be delivered—another body of 50 Swiss, whom he summoned from their quarters in the Faubourg Saint-HonorÉ, a few of his own and the Queen’s gentlemen, on horseback, a dozen men of the Gardes du Corps, and six of the Swiss of the Guard (the Cent-Suisses). The French Guards were posted opposite the gate of the Louvre; the rest were drawn up in the courtyard, where a coach was in waiting to convey the prisoner and ThÉmines, who was to ride with him, to the Bastille.

His preparations completed, Bassompierre, accompanied by ThÉmines, ascended to the room where CondÉ was confined, and awakened the prince, “who was in great apprehension,” being evidently under the impression that they had come to conduct him to execution. ThÉmines having reassured him on this score, he went with the marshal down to the courtyard and entered the coach; Bassompierre mounted his horse, and the cortÈge moved off. Bassompierre, with the mounted gentlemen and fifty of the Swiss, led the way; then came the coach, guarded on either side by the Gardes du Corps and the Swiss of the Guard, with their partizans and halberds; while the French Guards and the rest of the Swiss brought up the rear. Thus they wended their way through the dark, silent streets towards the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, no one being encountered on their march save a few belated pedestrians, and, in less than an hour after they left the Louvre, the gates of the Bastille had closed upon the first Prince of the Blood.

Before setting out for the Bastille, Bassompierre had judged it advisable to send a messenger to assure the Duc de Guise, whose hÔtel lay on their way[111] and who, he thought, might take alarm if he learned that soldiers were approaching, that nothing was intended against him. The messenger was only just in time, for Guise, warned by a friend living near the Louvre that troops were assembling at the palace, and persuaded that his arrest was their objective, had promptly decided on flight; and he and some of his attendants were already dressed and preparing to get to horse.