1630.

INTRIGUES OF THE QUEEN-MOTHER.

35

resources of his address to avert and conciliate the resentment of the queen-mother. She dissembled, and did not forgive. Leagued with the Marillacs, and favored by many of the nobility, Mary labored to overturn the minister, who defended himself with firmness and adroitness. Louis XIII. was of a feeble mind, still more enfeebled by a weak temperament and languid constitution. Resolution was a state above his powers; it was to him an unnatural tension, menacing at each instant a relapse. Despite of this, he was clear-sighted. He loved France, was alive to its glory and prosperity, and saw that it required the strong hand of Richelieu to govern and to guide. He did not love the minister, indeed; and it was thus the more to his credit that he upheld him from a sense of his talents and utility. When Mary poured into his ear complaints against the cardinal's insolence, against his tyranny and domineering ambition, Louis allowed that she was right. He acquiesced; and the queen-mother argued from this passive assent, that the king shared her aversion and her views against the minister. She would hurry home to her palace of the Luxembourg after such interviews, and confidently assure her followers that her ascendency was complete, that the fall of Richelieu was near. By that hour, however, Richelieu was closeted with the monarch, was unfolding to him his high and masterly views of policy, was exposing the selfish manœuvres of Mary of Medicis; and had at length gained in his turn such complete ascendency, that the feeble Louis would not only assent, but kindle up for the moment with warmth and friendship towards his minister, and then, in confidence, betray the very secrets of his mother's converse with him. Richelieu thus drew from a certain source the hopes, the plans, and the names of his enemies.

.

This is the story of the famous Day of Dupes, the 11th of November, 1630. In an interview with his mother, Louis, assenting to the justice of all her complaints against the car dinal, had proposed that his niece first, and then Richelieu himself, should come publicly and ask pardon of Mary at the Luxembourg. The king intended this as a measure of cohciliation. The queen accepted it for the sake of seeing her enemy humbled. Accordingly, on the appointed day, Madame de Combalet, the cardinal's niece, entered, and flung herself at the feet of Mary, imploring her forgiveness. The latter, instead of preserving the disdain that suited her purpose, or of assuming the air of forgiveness that the king desired, was unable to contain her temper, and burst forth in invectives against the suppliant lady. Madame de Combalet retreated

terrified and in tears. The cardinal himself succeeded, equally suppliant, and was received by the same volley of coarse vituperation. Louis XIII. scrupulous in his ideas of dignity and delicacy, shocked at the conduct of his mother, took the part of his minister, and reproved her; but at the same time bade Richelieu, in the same tone of anger, to retire. The court remained uncertain as to the issue of this scene. Richelieu felt himself, or affected to feel himself, disgraced. He made preparations for leaving the kingdom whilst Mary of Medicis at the Luxembourg gave full scope to her exultations, and was surrounded by crowds of courtiers who welcomed her return to influence. Louis in the mean time had retired to Versailles,* wearied and sick of these squabbles. He held to his mother by filial affection, to the cardinal by a sense of the absolute necessity of his services. Still he was in doubt; when a word of one of his attendants, St. Simon, in behalf of the minister, turned the scale in favor of the latter. Richelieu's brother, the cardinal Lavalette, was summoned to the royal presence. Richelieu himself was commanded to repair thither, when Louis assured him of his support against every enemy. The news of the cardinal's being with the king at Versailles, fell like a thunderbolt on the Luxembourg. Exultation ceased. The crowd of courtiers slunk away, and hurried with servile speed to reiterate their assurances of devotion to Richelieu. Mary remained mortified. She and her friends were the dupes. Marillac the chancellor was arrested. His brother, the mareschal, suffered at the head of his army the same disgrace. The duke of Orleans was obliged to humble himself before the cardinal; and even the young queen, Anne of Austria, was punished by the exile of several of her companions.

The popular feeling was nevertheless against Richelieu and in favor of Mary of Medicis, whose munificence and fête-loving habits had won the good-will of the Parisians. This had no small weight in detaining the king at St. Germain, where he held his court, and where the two queens appeared, although Louis scarcely spoke to them. Mary bore disgrace and contempt with impatience; but she could now find no one hardy enough to brave the cardinal and espouse her quarrel, except Gaston, her second son, the rash and weak duke of Orleans. The prince imagined a singular mode of

* It was Louis XIII. who commenced the château of Versailles. He had not the magnificent taste of Francis I. or of Henry IV. in building, and ieft nothing of this kind behind, except what Bassompierre describes as "the miserable château of Versailles, of which a simple gentleman could scarcely be proud."

1632.

ARREST OF THE QUEEN-MOTHER.

37

vengeance. Accompanied by a body of young and armed companions, he entered the cardinal's palace, came rudely into his presence, and apostrophized him in a rough and menacing speech. After this bootless outrage, Gaston retired, left the capital, and proceeded to levy troops in the provinces Louis, on learning this sally of his brother, whom he peculiarly disliked, took up the cause of his minister more warmly; and attributing, not unjustly, the turbulence of Gaston to their mother, he openly reproached her, and warned her to become reconciled to Richelieu. Mary would not abandon her hate; and monarch and minister were obliged to proceed to extremities. It required much address to bring the king to this point, and Richelieu was only enabled to reconcile Louis to use harsh measures towards his parent by means of the confessors whom he himself had provided for his master. These smoothed away the difficulties presented by the king's conscience, or rather by his filial habits; and the queen-mother was arrested at Compiegne. After this decisive step, some months passed in vain attempts at accommodation: but the ultimate result was the flight of Gaston and of Mary of Medicis out of the kingdom. The latter retired to Brussels. Thus Richelieu came triumphant from the second struggle. Bassompierre was sent to the Bastile the duke of Guise was deprived of his office of admiral, and went on a pilgrimage to Rome. Even the proud and veteran Epernon was obliged to crave for pardon. The parliament objected to an ordinance of the king, declaring the partisans of Gaston guilty of high treason. They rightly argued, that such a condemnation could not be issued without trial, or by other than a judge. But even from this just position they were compelled to recede. They were summoned to the Louvre; their edict of objection cancelled in the presence of Louis and his minister, and the obnoxious ordinance registered in its stead. Richelieu showed a still more culpable contempt for the forms of justice, in the trial of the marescna. de Marillac. He was brought before a commission, which sat in the cardinal's country-house at Ruel, accused of a long list of crimes, of all save his true fault of conspiring with Mary of Medicis. Being convicted, he was beheaded in the Place de Grève.

Marillac was the second victim sacrificed to the supremacy of the minister. The desire of vengeance and of blood grows, like other criminal tastes, upon those who indulge and gratify it; and Richelieu stained deeply his high reputation. Hitherto the nobility bore the tyrannic ascendency of the cardinal with jealousy and impatience. They saw plainly that his design.

were directed against their power and independence. Still, from want of union, and from the absence of a spirit amongst them capable of coping with their great enemy, they held back in trembling, though indignant submission, looked on while their chains were preparing, and even aided to forge them. Thus they had helped to put down the Huguenots, ever the main stay of rebellion. They then, when too late, sought to intrigue with Mary of Medicis against the cardinal. The trial of Marillac, not by his peers but by a mock commission, and the execution of that marshal on no grounds save enmity to the minister, filled all the noblesse with fresh indignation and alarm. And one who, from birth and position, might well take the lead of the high-born of France in this its cause, declared himself unhesitatingly on this occasion.

The duke de Montmorency was governor of Provence. He had distinguished himself in the Italian war; had never been foremost to complain or to intrigue; but, like his family, had been remarked for moderate and independent principles; tolerant though orthodox in religion; a loyal subject, though no fawning courtier. In the king's extreme illness, he had given his word to protect the minister, and Richelieu had other causes of gratitude. But Montmorency was now indignant at the insult offered to his rank in the person of Marillac. He felt it equally a shame that the king's brother, the son of Henri Quatre, should be driven into exile by the enmity of an upstart minister. Gaston had fled to Lorraine, and there passed his time in the wooing and espousal of the duke's daughter. Richelieu advanced to Lorraine, and Gaston was obliged to fly. He applied to Montmorency for protection and support, and the duke was both imprudent and generous enough to grant it. This could be done with arms alone. The dukes of Orleans and Montmorency therefore raised a little army, cantoned themselves in Languedoc, and resolved to fight the royal forces, which under Schomberg advanced against them. It appears that the population of the south looked with disfavor on the enterprise of the dukes, either in dread of Richelieu's power and vengeance, or in dislike of the aristocratic cause. The issue of the rebellion was decided in a skirmish at Castlenaudari, where Montmorency, at the head of 500 followers, charged the royalists, and was unhorsed and taken prisoner, owing to his imprudent valor. The news of his capture dispersed his army, and left Gaston no resource but to join his mother at Brussels.

It was now in the power of Richelieu to give an example of his moderation. In pa doning Montmorency, he would have gained many hearts or would his power have been

1633.

MONTMORENCY EXECUTED.

39

less formidable. Gaston even promised to submit, if his generous protector was spared: but Richelieu was inexorable; he knew what would be his own fate if overthrown. He recollected the fall of Ancre, of every favorite and minister, whom the nobles had overthrown; and private reasons of vindictiveness concurred with the wish of making a striking example and by the death of Montmorency giving the same salutary warning to his order as the execution of Biron had proved in the last reign. Richelieu had the power of communicating his own firmness to the king. Louis resisted the supplications of all the nobles of his court, of the princess of Condé, Montmorency's sister, and even the clamors of the mob, who cried under the windows of the Louvre for mercy. The mareschal de Chatillon begged the king to show himself to the people, and to grant to their prayers the life of the first noble of the land. "Should I obey the suggestions of the rabble, I should not act as a king," replied Louis, displaying that extreme of monarchic arrogance which his posterity so deeply cherished and so dearly expiated: The kingdom's safety might have been an excuse for cruelty,-the pride of the monarch none.

Montmorency owned his crime, and promised to redeem the disloyalty of a moment by devoting his after-life to the king; but he made no mean submissions. In passing to the place of execution, he regarded the statue of Henry IV. with emotion. He was the godson of that monarch, who knew how to unite clemency with firmness. But shaking off thoughts of the past, he pointed onward to the scaffold, which he said was the surest road to heaven. In him perished the last of the lineal descendants of the great constable, the most illustrious of which were still said to be only the younger branch of that noble family.

Whilst Richelieu was thus reducing the party of the noblesse, and the princes of the blood, of old so formidable to the crown, his negotiations excited fresh enemies to the house of Austria. The imprudent bigotry of the emperor Ferdinand, in attempting to restore to the Catholics the church property appropriated at the Reformation by the Protestants, roused the whole body of the latter in a league against him. Richelieu supported the Protestants, as Francis I. had done before, and at length found out and raised a potent leader and auxiliary for them in the celebrated Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden. Whilst Louis XIII. was on the borders of Lorraine, in pur suit of his fugitive brother, Gustavus was quartered not far from the Rhine, after his victory of Leipsic. Richelieu invited the Swedish monarch to an interview with himself. Gustavus, nowever, was too proud to meet any personage less than a