Volume I Part 9 (1/2)
No two men could probably have been selected throughout the whole nation more fitted to endanger the stability of the royal authority. Both were marshals of France, and alike celebrated for their talent as military leaders, as well as for their insatiable ambition. Of the two, perhaps, however, the Due de Bouillon was likely to prove the most formidable enemy to the sovereign; from the fact of his being by far the more able and the more subtle politician, and, moreover, gifted with a caution and judgment which were entirely wanting in the impetuous and reckless Biron.
Bouillon, who possessed great influence in the counsels of the Huguenots, was supported by the Due de la Tremouille,[175] his co-religionist, another leader of the reformed party; and secretly also by the Duc d'Epernon,[176] whose fortunes having greatly deteriorated since the death of Henri III, considered himself harshly treated, and was ready to join every cabal which was formed against that King's successor, although he always avoided any open demonstration of hostility which might tend to compromise his personal safety.
A third individual pointed out to the King as one of his most active enemies was Charles de Valois, Comte d'Auvergne, the step-brother of Madame de Verneuil; to whom not only in consideration of his royal blood, but also as the relative of the Marquise, Henry had ever shown a favour which he little merited. Such an adversary the monarch could, however, afford to despise, for he well knew the Count to be more dangerous as a friend than as an enemy; his cowardly dread of danger constantly impelling him, at the merest prospect of peril, to betray others in order to save himself; while his cunning, his gratuitous and unmanly cruelty, and the unblus.h.i.+ng perfidy which recalled with only too much vividness the character of his father, Charles IX, rendered him at once unsafe and unpleasant as an a.s.sociate. Despite all these drawbacks, Biron with his usual recklessness had nevertheless accepted him as a partner in his meditated revolt, D'Auvergne having declared that he would run all risks in order to revenge the dishonour brought upon his family by the King; but in reality the Comte only sought to benefit himself in a struggle where he had little to lose, and might, as he believed, become a gainer.
The madness of the Duc de Biron in betraying the interests of a sovereign who had constantly treated him with honour and distinction, can only find its solution in his overweening vanity, as he was already wealthy, powerful, and popular; and had, moreover, acquired the reputation of being one of the first soldiers in France. He had been appointed admiral, and subsequently marshal; and had even been entrusted with the command of the King's armies at the siege of Amiens, where he bore the t.i.tle of marshal-general, although several Princes of the Blood and the Connetable himself were present. He was decorated with all the Royal Orders; was a duke and peer of the realm, and Governor of Bordeaux; and, in fine, every attainable dignity had been lavished upon him; while he yielded precedence only to royalty, and to the Duc de Montmorency, to whose office it was vain to aspire during his lifetime.[177]
Such was the Marechal de Biron, when, in the vainglorious hope of one day becoming the sovereign of certain of the French provinces, he voluntarily trampled under foot every obligation of loyalty and grat.i.tude, and leagued himself with the enemies of his royal master, to wrest from him the sceptre which he so firmly wielded. The first intelligence of the Duke's defection which reached the monarch--to whom, however, his conduct had long appeared problematical--was obtained through the treachery of the Marechal's most trusted agent; a man whom Biron had constantly employed in all his intrigues, and from whom he had no secrets. This individual, who from certain circ.u.mstances saw reason to believe that the plans of the Duke must ultimately fail from their very immensity, and who feared for his own safety in the event of his patron's disgrace, resolved to save himself by communicating the whole conspiracy to the King; for which purpose he solicited an audience, declaring that he had important matters to reveal, which involved not only the throne of the sovereign, but even his life; and he so confidently insisted upon this fact, that an interview was at length accorded to him at Fontainebleau; where, in the presence of Henry and the Duc de Sully, he confessed that conceiving himself to have been ill-used by the Court, he had from mortified vanity adopted the interests of M. de Biron, and even partic.i.p.ated in the conspiracy of which he was now anxious to antic.i.p.ate the effects, and from which he had instantly retired when he discovered that it involved the lives of his Majesty and the Dauphin.
He then solemnly a.s.serted that when the Marechal de Biron proceeded to Flanders to receive the oath of peace from the Archduke Albert, the Spaniards, who at once detected the extent of his vanity and ambition, had flattered his weakness and encouraged his hopes; and that they had ultimately despatched to him an individual named Picote, who for some crime had been exiled from Orleans, and who was authorized to give him the a.s.surance that it only depended upon the Duke himself to secure a brilliant position through their agency, should he see fit to become their ally. The Marechal, his a.s.sociate went on to say, listened eagerly to the proposition, and expressed his willingness to treat with Spain whenever it might be deemed expedient to confide to him the real meaning of the message; a reply which satisfied the Spaniards that with proper caution they should find it no difficult undertaking to attach him entirely to their interests, or, failing in this attempt, to rid themselves of a dangerous adversary by rendering him the victim of his own treason.
Elated by the brilliant prospect which thus opened upon him, Biron gradually became less energetic in the service of his legitimate master; and after the peace of Vervins, finding his influence necessarily diminished, he began to murmur, affecting to believe that the services which he had rendered to the sovereign had not been duly recognized; and it was at this period, according to his betrayer, that their acquaintance had commenced, an acquaintance which so rapidly ripened into friends.h.i.+p that ere long he became the depository of his patron's most cherished secrets.
After many and anxious consultations, princ.i.p.ally caused by the uncertainty of the Duke as to the nature of the honours which were to be conferred upon him, it had been at length resolved between the two conspirators that they should despatch a priest to the Duke of Savoy, a monk of Citeaux to Milan, and Picote himself to Spain, to treat with the several Princes in the name of the Marechal; and what was even more essential to the monarch to ascertain, was the fact that a short time subsequently, and before he visited Paris, the Duke of Savoy had entered into a secret negotiation with Biron, and even led him to believe that he would bestow upon him the hand of one of his daughters, by which marriage the Marechal would have become the cousin of the Emperor of Germany, and the nephew of the King of Spain, an alliance which, to so ambitious a spirit, opened up an opportunity of self-aggrandizement never to be realized in his own country and under his own sovereign.
In return for this concession, Biron had pledged himself to his wily ally that he would provide so much occupation for Henry in the interior of his kingdom, that he should have no leisure to attempt the invasion of the marquisate of Saluzzo, a pledge which more than any other gratified M. de Savoie, who lived in constant dread of being driven from his territories. During the war the Marechal nevertheless took several of the Duke's fortresses in Brescia; but a perfect understanding had been established between them which rendered this circ.u.mstance comparatively unimportant; and on the refusal of Henry to permit the appointment of a governor of his own selection for the citadel of Bourg, Biron became so incensed by what he designated as the ingrat.i.tude of his sovereign--though he was fully aware that by countenancing such an arrangement the King must necessarily leave the fortress entirely in his power--that he no longer restrained himself, but declared that the death of the French sovereign was essential to the accomplishment of his projects; and meanwhile he gave the Duke of Savoy, whom he thenceforward regarded as his firmest friend, constant information of the state and movements of the hostile army.
A short time afterwards it was definitely arranged between the conspirators that the Duke of Savoy should give his third daughter in marriage to the Marechal, with a dowry of five hundred thousand golden crowns; that the Spanish monarch should cede to him all his claims of sovereignty upon the duchy of Burgundy; and that the Conde de Fuentes[178] and the Duke of Savoy should march their combined forces into France, thus disabling Henry from pursuing his design of reconquering the long-coveted duchy.
This treasonable design, owing to circ.u.mstances upon which the impetuous Biron had failed to calculate, proved, however, abortive; and he had no sooner convinced himself of the fact, and comprehended the perilous position in which he had been placed by his imprudence, than he hastened to Lyons, where the King was then sojourning; and having obtained an audience, he confessed with a seeming frankness irresistible to so generous and unsuspicious a nature as that of Henry, that he had been sufficiently misled by his ambition secretly to demand from the Duke of Savoy the hand of his younger daughter; and that, moreover, in the excess of his mortification at the refusal of his Majesty to appoint a governor of his own selection at Bourg, he had even been induced to plot against the state, for both which crimes he humbly solicited the royal pardon.
Full well did Henry and his minister remember this occurrence; nor could the King forget that although he had urged the Marechal to reveal to him the whole extent of the intrigue, he had dexterously evaded his most searching inquiries, and constantly recurred to his contrition. Henry owed much to Biron, whom he had long loved; and with a magnanimity worthy of his n.o.ble nature, after a few expostulations and reproaches, he not only pardoned him for what he believed to have been a mere temporary abandonment of his duties, but even a.s.sured him of his future favour, and bade him return in all security to his post.
Unhappily, however, the demon of ambition by which the Duke was possessed proved too powerful for the generous clemency of the King, and he resumed his treasonable practices; but a misunderstanding having ensued between himself and the false friend by whom he was now betrayed, all the private doc.u.ments which had been exchanged between himself and the foreign princes through whose aid he trusted to obtain the honours of sovereignty, were communicated on this occasion to the monarch whose dignity and whose confidence he had alike outraged.
A free pardon was accorded to the traitor through whose means Henry was made acquainted with the extent of the intrigue, on condition that he should reside within the precincts of the Court and lend his a.s.sistance to convict the Duke of his crime, terms to which the perfidious confidant readily consented; while with a tact worthy of his falsehood, he soon succeeded in reinstating himself in the good graces of the Duke, by professing to be earnestly engaged in France in furthering his interests, and by giving him reason to believe that he was still devoted to his cause.
To this deception, and to his own obstinacy, Biron owed his fate.[179]
The alarming facts which had thus been revealed to them were communicated by Henry and his minister to certain members of the privy council, by whom a report was drawn up and placed in the hands of the Chancellor; and, this preliminary arrangement completed, it was determined to recall the Marechal to Court either to justify himself, or to undergo the penalty of his treason. In order to effect this object, however, it was necessary to exercise the greatest caution, as Biron was then in Burgundy; and his alarm having already been excited by the evasion of his most confidential agent, they felt that he might, should his suspicions be increased, place himself at the head of the troops under his command, by whom he was idolized, and thus become doubly dangerous. It was, consequently, only by a subterfuge that there was any prospect of inducing him to approach the capital; and the King, by the advice of Sully, and not without a latent hope that he might be enabled to clear himself of blame, openly a.s.serted that he put no faith in the disclosures which had been made to him, and that he would advise the Marechal to be careful of those about him, whose envy or enmity led them to put a misconstruction upon his motives as well as upon his actions.
The Baron de Luz,[180] the confidential friend of Biron, for whose ear these declarations were especially designed, did not fail to communicate them on the instant to the accused party; while La Fin,[181] by whom he had been betrayed, likewise wrote to a.s.sure him that in revealing the conspiracy to the King and the ministers he had been cautious not to utter a word by which he could be personally implicated. It is certain, however, that the Duke placed little reliance either upon the a.s.sertions of Henry, or the a.s.surances of his treacherous agent; as on the receipt of a letter from the sovereign, announcing his own instant departure for Poitou, where he invited Biron to join him, in order that he might afford him his advice upon certain affairs of moment, the latter wrote to excuse himself, alleging, as a pretext for his disobedience to the royal command, the rumour of a reported aggression of the Spaniards, and the necessity of his presence at a meeting of the States of Burgundy which had been convoked for the 22d of May, where it would be essential that he should watch over the interests of his Majesty.[182]
The King did not further insist at that moment; but having ascertained on his return from Poitou that fresh movements had been made in Burgundy, in Saintonge, in Perigord, and in Guienne, which threatened to prove inimical to his authority, and that couriers were constantly pa.s.sing from one of these provinces to the other, he sent to desire the presence of the Sieur Descures,[183] an intimate friend and follower of the Marechal, whom he commanded to proceed with all speed to Burgundy, and to inform his lord that if he did not forthwith obey the royal summons, the sovereign would go in person to bring him thence. This threat was sufficiently appalling; and the rather as Sully, by his authority as grand-master of artillery, had taken the precaution, on pretext of recasting the cannon and improving the quality of the powder in the princ.i.p.al cities of Burgundy, to cripple Biron's resources, and to render it impossible for him to attempt any rational resistance to the royal will. The Marechal soon perceived that he had been duped, but, nevertheless, he would not yield; and Descures left him, firm in his determination not to trust himself within the precincts of the Court.
The King, who, from his old attachment to Biron, had hitherto hoped that he had been calumniated, and that, in lieu of crimes, he had only been guilty of follies, offended by so resolute an opposition to his will, began, like his ministers, to apprehend that he must in truth thenceforward number the Duke among his enemies; and he consequently suffered himself, shortly after the return of his last messenger, to be persuaded to despatch the President Jeannin[184] as the bearer of a third summons to the Marechal, and to represent to him how greatly he was increasing the displeasure of the sovereign by his disobedience, as well as strengthening the suspicions which were already entertained against him. Finally, the president was instructed to a.s.sure the haughty and imperious rebel that the King had not forgotten the good service which he had rendered to the nation; and that he ascribed the accusations which had reached him rather to the exaggerations of those who in making such reports sought to increase their own favour at Court than to any breach of trust on the part of the Marechal himself.[185]
Somewhat rea.s.sured by these declarations, and unconscious of the extent of La Fin's treachery, Biron allowed himself to be persuaded by the eloquence of Jeannin, and reluctantly left Dijon for Fontainebleau, where he arrived on the 13th of June. As he was about to dismount, La Fin approached to welcome him; and while holding his stirrup whispered in his ear: ”Courage, my master; speak out boldly, for they know nothing.” The Duke silently nodded his reply, and at once proceeded to the royal chamber, where Henry received him with a gay countenance and open arms, declaring that he had done well to accept his invitation, or he should a.s.suredly have gone to fetch him in person as he had threatened. Biron excused himself, but with a coldness extremely displeasing to the King, who, however, forebore to exhibit any symptom of annoyance; and after a short conversation in which no further allusion was made to the position of the Marechal, Henry, as he had often previously done, proposed to show him the progress of the new buildings upon which he was then actively engaged; and, leading the way to the gardens, he did in fact for a time point out to him every object of interest. This done, he suddenly turned the discourse upon the numerous reasons for displeasure which the recent acts of Biron had given him (being careful, nevertheless, not to betray the extent of his knowledge), and earnestly urged him to confess the real amount of the imprudence of which he had been guilty, pledging his royal word, that should he do so with frankness and sincerity, the avowal would ensure his pardon.
But this the infatuated Duke had no intention of conceding. The whispered a.s.surance of La Fin still vibrated on his ear, and he also calculated largely on his intimacy with D'Auvergne, which secured to him the influence of Madame de Verneuil. He consequently replied, with an arrogance as unbecoming as it was misplaced, that he had not come to Court to justify himself, but in order to ascertain who were his accusers; and, moreover, added that, having committed no crime, he did not require any pardon; nor could either Henry himself or the Duc de Sully, with whom he had subsequently a lengthened interview, succeed in inducing him to make the slightest confession.
The noonday repast was no sooner over than the King sent to summon the Marechal to his closet, where he once more exerted every effort to soften the obduracy of the man to whose valour he was well aware that he had been greatly indebted for his crown, and whom he was consequently anxious to save from dishonour and ignominy; but, unfortunately for his own interests, Biron retained as vivid a recollection of the fact as Henry himself; and he so highly estimated the value of his services, that he resolved to maintain the haughty position which he had a.s.sumed, and to persist in a denial that was fated to cost him his life. Instead, therefore, of throwing himself upon the clemency of the King by an undisguised avowal of his treason, he merely replied to the appeal by again demanding to know who were his accusers; upon which Henry rose from his seat, and exclaiming: ”Come, we will play a match at tennis,”
hastily left the room, followed by the culprit.
The King having selected the Comte de Soissons[186] as his second against the Duc d'Epernon and the Marechal, this ill-a.s.sorted party continued for some time apparently absorbed in the game; and so thoroughly did it recall past scenes and times to the mind of the monarch, that he resolved, before he abandoned his once faithful subject to his fate, to make one last endeavour to overcome his obstinacy. He accordingly authorized M. de Soissons to exert whatever influence he possessed with the rash man who was so blindly working out his own ruin, and to represent to him the madness of persisting in a line of conduct which could not fail to provoke the wrath of his royal master.
”Remember, Monsieur,” said the Prince, who was as anxious as the monarch himself that the scandal of a public trial, and the certainty of an ignominious death, should be spared to so brave a soldier--”remember that a sovereign's anger is the messenger of destruction.” [187]
Biron, however, persisted in declaring that he had no reason to fear the displeasure of Henry, and had consequently no confession to make; and with this fatal answer the Count was fain to content himself.
The King rose early on the following morning, full of anxiety and apprehension. He could not look back upon the many gallant acts of the unfortunate Marechal without feeling a bitter pang at the idea that an old and formerly zealous servant was about to become a victim to expediency, for the spirit of revolt, which he had hitherto endeavoured to suppress by clemency, had now risen hydra-headed, threatening to dispute his right of reprisal, and to involve the nation once more in civil war. He painfully felt, that under circ.u.mstances like these, lenity would become, not only a weakness, but a crime, and possessing, as he did, the most indubitable proofs of Biron's guilt, he saw himself compelled to forget the friend in the sovereign, and to deliver up the attainted n.o.ble to the justice of his betrayed country.
A privy council was consequently a.s.sembled, at which Henry declared his determination to arrest the Duke, and to put him upon his trial, if, after mature deliberation, it was decided that he deserved death, as otherwise he was resolved not to injure his reputation by any accusations which might tarnish his renown or embitter his existence. To this last indication of relenting he received in reply an a.s.surance that no further deliberation was requisite, as the treason of the Marechal was so fully proved, and the facts so amply authenticated, that he would be condemned to the axe by every tribunal in the world.