Volume II Part 3 (1/2)
Meanwhile, it having been considered advisable that the King should make a declaration on the Edicts of Pacification, it became previously necessary to form a council, under whose advice the Queen-Regent might proceed to act. When preparing to quit France, Henri IV had drawn up a list of fifteen persons whom he had selected for this purpose, and had decided that every question should be determined by a majority of votes, the Queen herself commanding only one vote; the death of the King had, however, unfortunately tended to render the execution of his purpose impossible, all the Princes and great officers of the Crown a.s.serting their right to admission, and resolutely maintaining their claim.
The Comte de Soissons urged his privilege of birth, and haughtily declined to advance any other plea; while the Connetable de Montmorency loudly declared that no council could legally be formed from which he was excluded; and the Cardinal de Joyeuse maintained the same argument.
As regarded the Guises, who affected at this juncture a perfect equality with the house of Bourbon, their eagerness to hold office defeated its own object, the Duc de Mayenne and the Duc de Guise equally declaring their right to a.s.sist in the government of the kingdom; while it was considered as incompatible with the interests of the Crown that two members of the same family should be admitted into so important an a.s.sembly. The Duc de Nevers, who disputed precedency with the Guises, also came forward as a candidate; while the Ducs de Bouillon and d'Epernon, who were at open feud, and each ambitious of power, heightened the difficulty by arrogantly a.s.serting their personal claims.
To receive both was impossible, as from their known enmity nothing but opposition could be antic.i.p.ated; and thus, upon the threshold of her reign, Marie de Medicis found herself trammelled by the very individuals from whom she had hoped for a.s.sistance and support.
To select between the two last-mentioned n.o.bles was difficult as well as dangerous; the position of M. d'Epernon as colonel-general of the infantry, and his immense possessions, rendering him a formidable adversary; while the Duc de Bouillon was still more powerful from his occupation of Sedan, his intelligence with foreign states, and his influence over his co-religionists. Moreover, Marie was no longer in a position to oppose the pretensions of the Duc d'Epernon, even had she felt it expedient to do so; the unlimited confidence which she had reposed in him since the death of her royal consort having invested him with a fact.i.tious importance, by which he was enabled to secure a strong party in his favour upon every question in which he was personally interested. She had a.s.signed to his use a suite of apartments in the Louvre, declaring that his continual presence and advice were essential to her; and, in addition to this signal favour, she communicated to him the contents of all the despatches which she received, and followed his advice upon all matters of state as implicitly as though she considered it to be unanswerable.
His credit at Court was also greatly increased by the Comte de Soissons, who, having ascertained the extent of his favour with the Regent, spared no pains to secure his friends.h.i.+p before the arrival of the Prince de Conde, believing that the support of one who was all-powerful for the moment might be of essential service in counteracting the ambitious views of so formidable a rival; and, moreover, advantageous in a.s.sisting him to accomplish the marriage of his son Louis de Bourbon with Mademoiselle de Montpensier, an alliance which was the great object of his ambition.[48]
Thus the Duc d'Epernon was not only powerful in himself, but found his pretensions recognized and sanctioned by a Prince of the Blood, an advantage of which he was not slow to appreciate the value; and he consequently listened to the expostulations which were addressed to him by those who dreaded the effects of his interference in state affairs with a quiet indifference that satisfied them of their utter inutility.
But while the Queen was bewildered by these conflicting claims, her ministers, who were anxious to retain the power in their own hands, were not displeased to see the number of candidates for place daily increase.
They were aware that on the arrival of the Prince de Conde he must necessarily take his seat in the council, while it would be equally impossible to exclude the Comte de Soissons, the Duc de Montmorency, or the Cardinal de Joyeuse; and they felt that nothing could more effectually limit the power of these great dignitaries than the admission of so large a number as must tend to diminish their influence over the Queen, and to create a confusion in the management of public affairs which would necessarily render her more dependent upon their own wisdom and experience. Under this persuasion they consequently impressed upon her the absolute necessity of satisfying every claimant; and a council was accordingly formed which was more noisy than efficient; and where, although each was free to deliver his opinion, the ministers were careful, in their secret audiences of the Queen, during which they exposed their own views and sentiments, to carry out their preconceived measures.[49]
The struggle which the late King had foretold between the Regent and her son had, meanwhile, already commenced. The character of Louis XIII was, from his earliest boyhood, at once saturnine and obstinate; and thus, aware of the importance which the Queen attached to the exercises of religion, he commenced his predetermined opposition to her will by refusing to observe them. Remonstrances and arguments were alike unavailing; the boy-King declined to listen to either; and Marie ultimately commanded that he should undergo the chastis.e.m.e.nt of the rod. The order was given, but no one volunteered obedience; the vengeance of the man might hereafter compensate for the mortification of the child; and the son of Marie de Medicis, stolid and gloomy though he was, had already imbibed a full sense of the respect due to his sovereign rank.
”How now, M. de Souvre!” [50] exclaimed the Queen; ”is the frown of a wayward boy more dangerous than the displeasure of a mother? I insist that the King shall undergo the chastis.e.m.e.nt which he has so richly merited.”
Thus urged, the unwilling governor was compelled not only to lay his hands upon the sacred person of royalty, but also to prepare to execute the peremptory command of his irritated mistress; and the young Louis no sooner perceived the impossibility of escape than he coldly submitted to the infliction, merely saying, ”I suppose it must be so, M. de Souvre, since it is the will of the Queen; but be careful not to strike too hard.”
An hour or two afterwards, when he paid his usual visit to the Regent, her Majesty rose on his entrance, according to the established etiquette, and made him a profound curtsey. ”I should prefer, Madame,”
said the young Prince, ”fewer curtseys and fewer floggings.” [51]
At the commencement of June intelligence reached the Court of the death of the Archbishop of Rouen, the natural brother of the late King, and it was no sooner authenticated than the Regent hastened to bestow his abbey of St. Florent upon M. de Souvre, and that of Marmoutier, one of the most wealthy and beautiful in France, upon the brother of her favourite Leonora,[52] an unhappy being who was not only deformed in person, but so wholly deficient in intellect that every effort even to teach him to read had proved ineffectual. So abject was he, indeed, that Concini had been careful never to allow him to come into contact with Henri IV lest he should be banished from the Court; and this ill-advised donation consequently excited great disapprobation, and elicited fresh murmurs against the Italian followers of the Queen.
These were, moreover, augmented by another circ.u.mstance which immediately supervened. A report was spread of the decease of M. de Boece, the Governor of Bourg-en-Bresse, a brave and faithful soldier, who had rendered good service to his country; and the Queen, urged by her favourite, was imprudent enough, without awaiting proper confirmation of the rumour, to confer the government upon Concini, whose arrogance, fostered as it was by the indulgence of his royal mistress, was already becoming intolerable to the native n.o.bility. This fact was, however, no sooner made known to M. de Boece, who had not, as it subsequently appeared, even laboured under indisposition, than he addressed a letter of respectful expostulation to the Regent, in which he expressed his concern at the necessity of interfering with the pleasure of her Majesty in the rapid disposal of his government, and a.s.sured her that he was still able and anxious to discharge the duties of the trust confided to him by the late King; informing her, moreover, that he had in his possession a grant from her royal husband, bestowing the survivors.h.i.+p of his appointment upon his son, of which he solicited the confirmation by herself, feeling convinced that she could never be served by a more zealous or able subject.[53]
Concini was accordingly divested of his government as abruptly as he had acquired it; reluctantly resigning the coveted dignity amid the laughter and epigrams of the whole Court.
In addition to these extraordinary instances of imprudence, Marie de Medicis had also compromised herself with the people by the reluctance which she evinced to investigate the circ.u.mstances connected with the murder of her husband. Ravaillac had suffered, as we have shown, and that too in the most frightful manner, the consequences of his crime; persisting to the last in his a.s.sertion that he had acted independently and had no accomplices; but his testimony, although signed in blood and torture, had failed to convince the nation which had been so suddenly and cruelly bereft of its monarch; and among all cla.s.ses sullen rumours were rife which involved some of the highest and proudest in the land.[54] Among these the Duc d'Epernon, as already stated, stood out so prominently that he had been compelled to justify himself, while the favour which he had so suddenly acquired turned the public attention towards the Queen herself.
Suspicions of her complicity, however ill-founded, had, indeed, existed even previously to this period, for Rambure, when speaking of the visit of Sully to the Louvre on the day after the a.s.sa.s.sination, a visit in which he professes to have accompanied him, says without any attempt at disguise, ”The Queen received us with great affability, and even mingled her tears and sobs with ours, although we were both aware of the satisfaction that she felt in being thus delivered from the King, _of whose death she was not considered to be wholly guiltless_, and of becoming her own absolute mistress.... She then addressed several other observations to the Duke, during which time he wept bitterly, while she occasionally shed a few tears of a very different description.” [55]
These a.s.sertions, vague as they are, and utterly baseless as they must be considered by all unprejudiced minds, nevertheless suffice to prove that the finger of blame had already been pointed towards the unfortunate Marie; an unhappy circ.u.mstance which doubled the difficulties of her position, and should have tended to arouse her caution; but the haughty and impetuous nature of the Tuscan Princess could not bend to any compromise, and thus she recklessly augmented the amount of dislike which was growing up against her.
On the 8th of July the ex-Queen Marguerite gave a magnificent entertainment to the Court at her beautiful estate of Issy; on her return from whence to the capital, the Regent mounted a Spanish jennet, and, surrounded by her guards, galloped at full speed to the faubourg, where she dismounted and entered her coach, still environed by armed men. As she had her foot upon the step of the carriage, a poor woman who stood among the crowd exclaimed with an earnestness which elicited general attention, ”Would to G.o.d, Madame, that as much care had been taken of our poor King; we should not then be where we are!”
The Queen paused for a moment, and turned pale; but immediately recovering her self-possession, she took her seat, and bowed affably to the people. The greeting on their part was, however, cold and reluctant.
They were still weeping over the bier of their murdered sovereign, and they could not brook the apparent levity with which his widow had already entered into the idle gaieties of the Court.[56]
”Only five months after Henry's a.s.sa.s.sination,” says Rambure, ”such of the n.o.bles as were devoted to his memory expressed among themselves their indignation at the bearing of the Queen; who, although compelled at intervals to a.s.sume some semblance of grief, was more frequently to be seen with a smiling countenance, and constantly followed the hunt on horseback, attended by a suite of four or five hundred princes and n.o.bles.” [57]
In order to avert all discontent among the people, the ministers had induced the Regent not only to diminish the duty upon salt, a boon for which they were always grateful, but also to delay the enforcement of several obnoxious commissions, and to revoke no less than fifty-four edicts which had been issued for the imposition of new taxes; while presents in money were made to the most influential of the Protestant party, and the Edict of Nantes was confirmed.
Such was the state of the French Court on the return of the Prince de Conde, whose arrival had been anxiously antic.i.p.ated by his personal friends and adherents, and strongly urged by the Regent herself; but when she ascertained that a large body of n.o.bles had gone as far as Senlis to receive him, and that among these were all the Princes of Lorraine, the Marechal de Bouillon, and the Duc de Sully, she became apprehensive that a cabal was about to be formed against her authority; a suspicion which was augmented by the regal state in which he entered the capital, attended and followed by more than fifteen hundred individuals of rank.
Her fears were, moreover, eagerly fostered by the Comte de Soissons, the Duc d'Epernon, and the Cardinal de Joyeuse, who, desirous of retaining the influence which they had already acquired, neglected no method of arousing her jealousy against the first Prince of the Blood. In pursuance of this purpose M. d'Epernon, to whom the safety of the city had been confided during the first alarm created by the murder of the King, no sooner learnt the approach of the Prince than he doubled the guards at the different gates, and even proposed to form garrisons in the avenues leading to them; a circ.u.mstance which was immediately made known to M. de Conde, who expressed great indignation at such an imputation upon his loyalty. This affront was, however, remedied by the able courtier, who, being anxious to conciliate both parties, had no sooner convinced the Queen of his zeal for her interests than he proceeded, accompanied by a hundred mounted followers, to welcome the Prince before he could reach the city.
M. de Conde dined at Le Bourget, where he expressed his acknowledgments to the several n.o.bles by whom he was surrounded, and declared his intention of upholding by every means in his power the dignity and authority of the Regent. At the close of the repast he once more ordered his horses, and retraced his steps as far as St. Denis, where he caused a ma.s.s to be said for the soul of the deceased King, and aspersed the royal coffin; after which he proceeded direct to Paris, receiving upon his way perpetual warnings not to trust himself within the gates of the capital. He, however, destroyed these anonymous communications one after the other, and was rewarded by a note hastily written by the President de Thou,[58] in which he was entreated to disregard the efforts which were made to dissuade him from entering Paris, where the Queen was prepared to receive him with all possible honour and welcome.