At the end of October, Louis XIII fell ill, and on All-Hallows’ Eve “had a convulsion, which it was apprehended would develop into apoplexy.” His physicians were of opinion that if he had a second attack it would probably prove fatal; and Marie de’ Medici, on learning of this, sent for Bassompierre and kept him at the Louvre all night, so as to be in readiness to summon the Swiss to her support, in the event of the King’s death. However, the young monarch passed a good night, and by the morning all danger was over.

On the following day, Bassompierre set out for Burgundy, at the head of 300 cavalry, to meet and take command of a new levy of two regiments of Swiss, raised to assist the Government in dealing with the rebellious Princes. He left Paris with no little reluctance, since he had just embarked in a new love-affair with Mlle. d’UrfÉ, who is described by Tallemant des RÉaux as the flower of the Queen’s maids-of-honour; and it was naturally most provoking to have to go campaigning at such a moment. However, love had to give place to duty.

Bassompierre’s orders were to hold the Swiss and his little force of cavalry at the disposal of Bellegarde, Governor of Burgundy, who had been sent into the Bresse to the assistance of Charles Emmanuel’s heir, the Prince of Piedmont, who was defending Savoy against an army commanded by his kinsman, the Duc de Nemours. This army had originally been raised by Nemours to co-operate with the forces of Charles Emmanuel in the war which had broken out between him and Spain; but the duke had been persuaded, by the specious promises of the Governor of Milan, to turn it against his relatives. However, on reaching Provins, Bassompierre learned that, through the intervention of Bellegarde, a treaty had been signed between the Prince of Piedmont and Nemours, and that the latter had disbanded his army.

At Saint-Jean de Losne, near Beaune, he met the Swiss, and, having administered to them the usual oath of fidelity, led them to ChÂtillon-sur-Seine, where he received orders to send one regiment into the Nivernais and the other into Champagne, to be distributed amongst different garrisons in those provinces.

At the beginning of December, he returned to Paris, eager to sun himself once more in the smiles of Mlle. d’UrfÉ; and his disgust may therefore be imagined when, scarcely had he arrived, than he received a visit from his kinsman, the wealthy Duc de CrÖy,[112] who informed him that the same lady’s charms had made so deep an impression upon him that he proposed to lay, not only his heart, but his ancient title and all his possessions at her feet. And, all unconscious that his relative had a prior claim to Mlle. d’UrfÉ’s affections, he begged him to make, on his behalf, a formal proposal for her hand to her parents.

Dissimulating his mortification, Bassompierre accepted this commission; but, as he is not ashamed to confess, with the intention of preventing the marriage, if by any means that could be effected. However, “his efforts were in vain, for the duke surmounted all the difficulties that he put in his way,” and at the beginning of 1617 Mlle. d’UrfÉ became Duchesse de CrÖy.

Bassompierre did not, as we may suppose, waste much time in regrets for the loss of his inamorata, since, notwithstanding that a civil war was in progress and that almost every day brought such cheerful intelligence as that one gentleman’s chÂteau had been sacked or another’s unfortunate tenants rendered homeless, the winter of 1617 in Paris was a very gay one, and what with dancing, gambling and love-making, his days and nights must have been pretty well occupied:—

To turn, however, from trivial to important matters.

At the end of 1616 Bassompierre writes in his journal:

Now, the “M. de Lusson” of whom Bassompierre speaks was none other than Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, Bishop of LuÇon, afterwards Cardinal de Richelieu, who on November 30, 1616, had entered the Ministry as Secretary of State for War.

Scarcely had this great man touched public affairs than it was recognised that a firmer and surer hand was guiding the helm; a new spirit seemed to be infused into the Government. The tone of Henri IV suddenly reappeared in French diplomacy, and the ambassadors at Courts opposed to the pretensions of the House of Austria, justly alarmed by the Spanish marriages, were instructed to inform the sovereigns to whom they were accredited that these marriages were by no means to be regarded as portending any intention on the part of the Very Christian King to embrace the interests of Spain or the Holy See, to the detriment of the old alliances of France or to the principle of religious toleration in his realm.

And, at the same time as he reassured the old allies of France, Richelieu took energetic measures to put down rebellion at home. He appealed to public opinion by the issue of pamphlets and proclamations, in which he effectively combated the arguments advanced by the Princes to justify their revolt, and pointed out that these same men who complained of the disorder of the finances had themselves bled the State to the tune of over fourteen million livres—he gave a schedule showing the sums paid to each of them—not counting the emoluments of the charges bestowed upon them and the pensions and gratifications accorded to their friends and servants.

Nor did he confine himself to words. This time, the Government, inspired by him, showed none of its accustomed pusillanimity. A royal declaration was launched against Nevers, who, now that CondÉ was in prison, had assumed the leadership of his party; a second against Mayenne, VendÔme, and Bouillon; three armies were raised to take the field against them, which one by one reduced their strongholds to submission; the estates of many of their supporters were sequestrated; soldiers who had taken up arms to join them were, if captured, hanged without mercy; and, finally, a decree, duly registered by the Parlement, notwithstanding that it struck at at least one of that body, provided for the confiscation of the property of all the rebels.

It was the misfortune of Richelieu and his colleagues that they passed for the creatures of a foreign favourite detested by everyone. At the beginning of December, 1616, Concini, who had remained in Normandy since the scene at the HÔtel de CondÉ which had led to his compulsory withdrawal from the capital, returned to Paris, more arrogant and more presumptuous than ever, and burning to avenge the humiliations he had suffered. To strike terror into the partisans of the Princes, he caused gibbets to be erected in different parts of the town; he “caused everyone to be watched and spied upon, even in the houses, to see who entered or left Paris,” and “imprisoned those who gave him the smallest umbrage, without any form of trial.” Already in possession of the citadel of Caen, he occupied the Pont-de-l’Arche, the strongest fortress in Normandy; proposed to rebuild the fort of Sainte-Catherine, above Rouen, which had been destroyed during the Wars of Religion; acquired by purchase the governments of Meulan, Pontoise, and Corbeil; offered Bassompierre 600,000 livres for his post of Colonel-General of the Swiss, and was credited with the intention of getting himself named Constable of France. It was evident that he contemplated making himself a sort of king in Normandy, and that, when the Princes were crushed, there would be no limits to his ambition. He had, however, at the beginning of 1617, a moment of alarm and despondency. The death of his only daughter, Marie Concini, to whom he was tenderly attached and for whom he had dreamed of some alliance which would unite his fortunes to those of one of the great families of France, struck him with a superstitious fear, as the precursor of the ruin of himself and his wife.

Concini’s despondency passed as quickly as it had come, and scarcely was his daughter in her grave, than he was once more flaunting his wealth and his power in the faces of Court and town. No Prince of the Blood had ever gone abroad attended by a more numerous or more gorgeous retinue; his pride was so great that he scarcely deigned to notice the existence of any but the great nobles; while, as for the Ministers, he regarded them as his servants, and not finding them sufficiently docile, planned to replace them by creatures of his own. Marie de’ Medici herself began to grow weary of the presumption of the husband and the ill-humour of the wife, who appears to have been a martyr to neuralgia, and often treated her mistress in a manner against which even the Queen-Mother’s sluggish nature rebelled. At length, she suggested the advisability of the precious pair returning to Florence with the spoil which they had amassed; but Concini wished to tempt Fortune to the end.

Fortune, however, might have smiled on him for some time longer, if only he had possessed sufficient foresight to assure himself of the affection of the young King. Unhappily for him, he had done just the contrary. On his advice, the Queen-Mother had pursued towards Louis XIII much the same policy which Catherine de’ Medici had adopted in the case of Charles IX, and carefully kept at a distance from her son all those whom she considered might attempt to inspire him with a thought of ambition. But, less astute than Catherine, Marie had seen no reason to distrust a ProvenÇal gentleman, Charles Albert, Seigneur de Luynes, twenty-three years older than the King, who excelled in the training of hawks and falcons. Falconry was a sport in which Louis XIII delighted above all others, and he soon became so much attached to Luynes that his gouverneur SouvrÉ grew jealous and forbade the latter to enter the King’s chamber. HÉroard, Louis XIII’s first physician, relates in his curious Journal that the lad was overcome by grief and indignation on learning of this; begged his mother to dismiss SouvrÉ, and “from excess of anger, had five days of fever.” From “Master of the birds of the Cabinet” the young King made his favourite chief of his gentlemen-in-ordinary, and in 1615 gave him the government of Amboise.

Notwithstanding that her son had now, according to the laws of France, attained his majority, Marie de’ Medici excluded him from Councils and all discussion of State affairs, and forbade the Ministers and Counsellors of State even to speak to him, on the ground that his Majesty’s health was too delicate for him to be troubled with the cares of his realm. As he grew older, the Queen-Mother and Concini watched him more closely, and, fearing lest he might escape from them, no longer allowed him to visit Saint-Germain or Fontainebleau, on the pretext that, in the disturbed condition of the country, it was unsafe for the King to leave Paris. For some months past, therefore, the unfortunate youth, who was passionately fond of hunting, had been deprived of his favourite amusement, and had found himself reduced to a walk in the Tuileries, where he might often be seen watching the gardeners at their work and sometimes helping them.

Often the MarÉchal d’Ancre, escorted by two or three hundred gentlemen, passed through the courtyard of the Louvre, on his way to or from the Queen-Mother’s apartments, before the eyes of his sovereign, who was generally accompanied only by Luynes and a few valets; and the young monarch, who was not without a sense of his kingly dignity, was shocked that a subject should venture to parade his ill-gotten wealth in this fashion in his own palace. For, thanks to Luynes, he was by this time perfectly well-informed as to the source of Concini’s riches. He himself was habitually kept short of money, and, on one occasion, was unable to obtain a sum of 2,000 crowns from the Treasury, the Queen-Mother having given orders that it was to be refused him. And, to complete his humiliation, Concini offered to advance him the money. The parvenu boasted of having raised at his own expense a force of 6,000 LiÉgeois for service against the Princes, and wrote to the King begging him not to trouble about the expense which he had incurred for his Majesty’s service—as though his vast fortune was not entirely composed of the money of him he was pretending to oblige.[117]

It seems strange that Marie de’ Medici and Concini, so careful to keep away from the King everyone whom they considered might encourage him to assert his independence of his mother’s tutelage, should have for so long entertained no suspicion of Luynes. At length, however, their eyes began to be opened, and one day towards the end of January, 1617, Luynes sent one of his servants to Bassompierre to inform him that the Queen-Mother purposed to exile him (Luynes) from the Court, on the ground that “he wished to carry off the King and take him out of Paris,” and to ask for his good offices to disabuse her Majesty’s mind. These were unnecessary, as it proved to be merely a rumour; but “Luynes made the King believe that it was the MarÉchal d’Ancre who had spread this report, to see how the King would take it; whereby the King became more and more incensed against the MarÉchal d’Ancre, and high words passed between Luynes and the said marshal.”