Volume II Part 17 (1/2)

Nevertheless, the Marechal d'Ancre and his adherents affected to treat the warlike demonstrations of the adverse party with contempt, and a.s.sured Marie de Medicis that all the efforts of the Prince must prove abortive while the King possessed a strong army and able generals to oppose the forces of the malcontents; and, in support of his a.s.sertion, the Ducs de Guise and d'Epernon alike offered their services to her Majesty. In the former, however, Marie dared not confide; his near relative, the Duc de Mayenne, being the ally of Conde, while De Guise himself was the avowed enemy of Concini. Of M. d'Epernon's sincerity she felt more a.s.sured; but she was aware that she could not bestow upon him the command of the royal army without exciting the jealousy of Guise, and thus opening up a newsource of difficulty. Desirous of proceeding to Guienne without further delay, the Queen consequently urged her advisers to suggest some other individual to whom so serious a responsibility might be entrusted; and after considerable deliberation the Duc d'Epernon, the Chancellor, and his son the Chevalier de Sillery proposed to the Marechal d'Ancre that he should become a candidate for the command, offering at the same time to exert all their influence with the Queen to ensure his success.[200]

Blinded by vanity, Concini, who was a soldier only in name, did not fail to listen with greedy ears to this unexpected proposition; and while his seeming friends were speculating upon his ruin, and calculating that during his absence they should have time to impress upon Marie de Medicis that, by the sacrifice of her favourite, she might reconcile the disaffected Princes. Concini himself foresaw that the increase of influence which so important a command could not fail to secure to him must tend to diminish that of the Duc d'Epernon, whose overthrow had been for some time his greatest wish. Moreover, by quartering his troops in the neighbourhood of M. de Conde, an opportunity would present itself of effecting his reconciliation with that Prince, which he ardently desired; and this end accomplished, he flattered himself with the hope that his vision of becoming first minister of France could not fail to be realized.

Unfortunately, however, for the ambitious Italian, it was not long ere D'Epernon and Sillery recognized the error into which they had been led by their eagerness to injure him. They suddenly remembered that Concini had already once joined the faction of the Princes, and they were aware that the Duc de Bouillon had made more than one subsequent effort to induce him to abandon the royal cause; and they were no sooner convinced of the fault which they had committed, than they hastened to represent to the Queen that the appointment of the Marechal d'Ancre to the command of the King's armies had caused great dissatisfaction throughout the capital; the citizens affirming that the troops of a sovereign of France ought not to be led against the enemy by a man who was ignorant of the art of war, and who was, moreover, a foreigner, detested by the people to an extent which rendered it probable that, should Concini be invested with the command, they would open the gates of Paris to M. de Conde, in the event of his marching upon the city. Marie de Medicis yielded to these reasons, and simply replied by reminding Sillery that if she had committed an error in accepting the proposal of the Marechal d'Ancre, she had done so at his own instigation; but that as he considered it desirable to appoint some other individual to the command, she would offer no opposition. Concini was accordingly superseded, and the veteran Marechal de Bois-Dauphin was selected as his successor, with the t.i.tle of lieutenant-general.[201] Indignant at the disappointment to which he had been subjected, Concini left Paris, and proceeded to his government at Amiens, vowing vengeance against the Duc d'Epernon and Sillery.

The impatience of the Queen to conclude the double alliance with Spain was so great that she disregarded the advice of Jeannin and Villeroy; who, in conjunction with Concini and his wife, had endeavoured to induce her to delay her departure for Guienne, and to proceed either to Laon or St. Quentin, in order to secure the Isle of France and Picardy, and to prevent the Prince de Conde and his adherents from concentrating their forces in the vicinity of the capital; while, on the contrary, she was urged by the Chancellor and his brother, the Commandeur de Sillery, who was her first-equerry and gentleman-usher, to carry out her original design. The 17th of August had been already fixed for the commencement of the royal journey; and Marie eagerly availed herself of their advice to persist in her purpose; contenting herself with giving orders to the Marechal de Bois-Dauphin to cover Paris, to impede the approach of the disaffected forces, and, at all risks, to avoid coming to an engagement.

She then withdrew from the Bastille eight hundred thousand crowns for the purpose of defraying the expenses of the Court during its progress.

Despite the absence of the Princes, the royal retinue was magnificent and numerous. The troops by whom the august travellers were attended consisted of a thousand hors.e.m.e.n, and the royal bodyguard amounted to three thousand men, who were placed under the command of the Duc de Guise, who was also to accompany Madame Elisabeth to the frontier of the kingdom, and to receive the Infanta, whom he was to conduct to the capital of Guienne, where their Majesties were to await her. The King left Paris soon after dawn; the Queen followed some hours subsequently, having previously caused the arrest of M. Le Jay,[202] in order to intimidate the Parliament; and finally, in the course of the afternoon, Madame took leave of the munic.i.p.al authorities, and departed in her turn. The Marquise d'Ancre having in vain endeavoured to dissuade her royal foster-sister from this journey, became so thoroughly dispirited by the disappointment of her husband, and the evident decline of her own influence, that she resolved to excuse herself from accompanying the Court, and to remain in the capital; a project from which she was, however, dissuaded by MM. de Villeroy and Jeannin, who represented to her the impolicy of incurring the displeasure of her Majesty, and thus insuring her own ruin. She was consequently induced to join the royal suite, but she did so with a heavy heart, and without one hope of resuming her original empire over the mind of Marie.

The Court reached Orleans on the 20th of August, and Tours on the 30th, whence their Majesties proceeded to Poitiers, at which city they arrived on the 9th of September; but the anxieties of Marie de Medicis were not yet to terminate. Madame was attacked a day or two subsequently with small-pox, while the Queen herself was confined to her bed by a severe illness, which compelled the constant attendance of Madame d'Ancre in her sick-room, where, by her affectionate a.s.siduity, she soon succeeded in recovering the good graces of her royal mistress. She had secured to her interests a Jewish physician, in whose astrological talent Marie de Medicis placed the most implicit confidence; and eager to revenge her husband upon Sillery, who, as she was well aware, had been the cause of his losing the coveted command, she instructed this man, whom the Queen had hastened to consult, to persuade the credulous invalid that she had been bewitched by the Chevalier de Sillery. Strange as it may appear, Leonora was perfectly successful; and believing herself to have been the victim of the Chancellor and his party, Marie entered earnestly into the views of her favourite, consenting to withdraw her confidence from Sillery, and to follow thenceforward the counsels of Villeroy and Jeannin.[203]

The delay consequent upon the recovery of the Queen and her daughter enabled the Prince de Conde to strengthen his party, and to advance towards Paris, with an army of five thousand infantry and two thousand horse. His troops were, however, badly armed, and might at once have been beaten or dispersed by the Marechal de Bois-Dauphin, had that general marched against them; but, fettered by the stringent orders which he had received not to give battle to the enemy, he remained inactive; and the Duc de Bouillon profited by his inertness to seize Chateau Thierry, whence he marched to Mere-sur-Seine.

Meanwhile M. de Conde ascertained that the King had issued on the 10th of September a proclamation of _lese-majeste_ against himself and his adherents; to which he replied by another, wherein he affirmed that he had taken up arms for the sole purpose of preventing a foreign invasion.

He then crossed the Seine, with the intention of possessing himself of the town of Sens; a project in which he, however, failed, Bois-Dauphin and his adjutant-general, the Marquis de Praslin, having already garrisoned the place.[204]

The two armies were at this period in such close juxtaposition that an engagement appeared inevitable; but whether it were that Bois-Dauphin was deficient in ability, or that he had resolved, whatever might be the result of his inaction, to obey implicitly the instructions of the Queen, he vacated Sens after a few slight skirmishes. Be the real cause of his supineness what it might, it excited the indignation of Ba.s.sompierre, Praslin, the Marquis de Coeuvres, and the other leaders of the royal army, who did not scruple to accuse him of incapacity; declaring, moreover, that he had hara.s.sed the troops far more than if he had led them into action.[205]

On the arrival of the Court at Angouleme the Queen was agreeably surprised by the appearance of the Comte de Saint-Pol,[206] who, she had been led to believe, had joined the faction of Conde with his nephew the Duc de Longueville; and her exultation was increased when, with a.s.surances of his fidelity to the Crown, he placed under her orders the two fortresses of Fronsac and Caumont.[207]

Profiting by the retreat of the Marechal de Bois-Dauphin, the Duc de Bouillon had made all haste to pa.s.s the Loire, and to reach the confines of Touraine and Poitou; nor would it have been possible for their Majesties to have reached Bordeaux in safety, had it not been for the secession of the Comte de Saint-Pol from the faction of the Princes, together with the impossibility of marching the rebel troops upon Poitou in so short a s.p.a.ce of time. Thanks to this combination of circ.u.mstances, however, the Court arrived without accident in the capital of Guienne on the 7th of October; where the King and his august mother were received with great magnificence, and enthusiastically welcomed by all cla.s.ses of the citizens, whom the Marechal de Roquelaure, lieutenant-general for the King in Guienne, and Mayor of Bordeaux, had adroitly gained, by his representations of the honour conferred upon them by the sovereign in selecting their city as the scene of his own marriage and that of his sister, the future Queen of Spain.[208]

It had been arranged that the royal marriages should be celebrated on the same day (the 18th of October), at Bordeaux and Burgos; and accordingly the Duc de Guise, as proxy for the Prince of Spain, espoused Madame Elisabeth, with whom, accompanied by the d.u.c.h.esse de Nevers and the ladies of her household, he immediately departed for the frontier, after a painful leave-taking between the young Princess and her family; while the Duque d'Usseda[209] performed the same ceremony for Louis XIII, with the Infanta Anna Maria of Austria. The exchange of the two Princesses took place on the 9th of November, in the middle of the Bida.s.soa, with a host of petty and futile observances which excite mirth rather than admiration; but at the same time with a magnificence surpa.s.sing all that had ever previously been exhibited on such an occasion; the two Courts of France and Spain vying with each other in splendour and profusion. De Luynes, to whom such a mission appeared peculiarly adapted, presented to the Infanta the letters of welcome with which he had been entrusted by Louis XIII and his mother, and which were received by the Princess with an undisguised delight that the favourite did not fail to report to his royal master.

The guard with which the Duc de Guise had conducted Madame Elisabeth to the frontier consisted of fifteen hundred horse, four thousand infantry, and four pieces of ordnance; and it was with the same troops that he escorted the newly made Queen of France to Bordeaux, who, previously to her departure from Burgos, had signed a formal renunciation, written entirely by her own hand, of all her claims to the Spanish succession.[210] On her arrival at Bordeaux on the 21st of November, the young Queen was received with all the splendour of which the circ.u.mstances were susceptible, and the marriage ceremony was immediately repeated by the Bishop of Saintes; after which, on the 17th of December, the Court, under the escort of a strong body of troops, left the capital of Guienne for Tours, which latter city they did not, however, reach for five weeks, owing to the long halts that they were compelled to make in the several towns through which they pa.s.sed, where every species of entertainment had been prepared for the reception of the august travellers. Meanwhile the army suffered fearfully from exposure to the cold, from sickness, and from want of provisions and forage; numbers of the men died, and the progress of the royal party consequently resembled a disastrous retreat rather than a triumphant procession.

In addition to this misfortune the Queen-mother had other and still more serious motives for anxiety. Although her personal ambition had been gratified by the accomplishment of that close alliance with Spain which she had so long and so earnestly desired, she could not conceal from herself that as regarded the nation over which she had been called to govern, the irretrievable step thus taken was one of extreme impolicy. On every side she was surrounded by difficulties. The first Prince of the Blood, and nearly the whole of the high n.o.bility, were not only disaffected, but actually in arms against the Crown. The Protestants, to whom she had repeatedly promised that she would observe the Edict of Nantes, incensed by her breach of faith, had revolted against her authority; her troops had failed to offer any effective resistance; and meanwhile foreign soldiers had traversed Champagne, and advanced into Berry to join Conde, without any impediment from the royal army. The intelligence that she received from Paris was equally alarming; scarcely a day pa.s.sed in which pamphlets and pasquinades of the grossest description were not published and circulated among the population, a.s.signing the most foul and degrading motives for her journey to Guienne under the protection of the Ducs d'Epernon and de Guise; while her anxiety for the Spanish alliance was represented as arising from her desire to conciliate those who were accused of being the a.s.sa.s.sins of her husband.

Angered as she was by these insults, Marie de Medicis still pined to return to the capital. She was wearied alike by the exacting and arrogant temper of M. d'Epernon, and by the monotony of the provincial cities, where she saw herself surrounded only by aldermen and citizens with whom she had no feeling or habit in common; and as the several individuals of her circle were equally ill at ease in so novel a position, far from allaying her impatience, they aggravated the _ennui_ which she did not attempt to disguise, until she eventually brought herself to attach all the blame of her own disappointment and mortification upon those who had advised her to leave the capital; and to evince the greatest eagerness to follow the counsels of their adversaries.[211]

The Court left Bordeaux at the close of the year 1615; and in the month of January following proceeded to take up its abode at Tours, there to await the close of a negotiation into which the Queen-mother had entered with the Princes; while at the same time her agents secretly exerted all their efforts to induce the allies of M. de Conde to abandon his cause. The command of the troops was taken from the Marechal de Bois-Dauphin and conferred upon the Duc de Guise, with the t.i.tle of lieutenant-general of the King's army; and an immediate attempt was made to gain over the Duc de Mayenne and the Marechal de Bouillon, as being the most influential of the revolted n.o.bles. James I offered to Marie de Medicis his services as a mediator on the occasion; they were gratefully accepted, and the English Amba.s.sador was forthwith despatched to the Prince de Conde at St. Jean-d'Angely, with instructions to avert, by every argument in his power, the horrors of a civil war. Convinced that no better opportunity could possibly occur for securing to himself and his party the advantageous conditions which he coveted, Conde received the royal envoy with great courtesy, declaring that he had acted throughout the whole affair solely in the interests of his country, and that he was ready to write respectfully to his Britannic Majesty, to offer to him the same a.s.surance.

His proposal was accepted; the letter was forthwith prepared; and the Baron de Thianges was entrusted with its delivery into the hands of the English monarch. A reply was returned by the same messenger; and finally a conference was decided on, which was to take place at Loudun on the 10th of February.[212]

While preparations were making for this important event, the Queen-mother, on the 29th of January, summoned the n.o.bles of her Court to her apartment, in order to discuss the necessary measures to be adopted for securing the allegiance of the disaffected Princes; and on this occasion she nearly lost her life by a singular accident. The young Comte de Soissons, the Ducs de Guise and d'Epernon, Ba.s.sompierre, Jeannin, and many others who held office about the Court or in the Government were scarcely a.s.sembled when the flooring of the room gave way, and twenty-eight persons were precipitated into the hall beneath.

The arm-chair of Marie herself had fortunately been placed above a beam which held firm, and to which the President Jeannin resolutely clung, thus breaking his fall; but MM. de Soissons, d'Epernon, de Ba.s.sompierre, de Villeroy, and several others were less fortunate, and all were more or less gravely injured. With great presence of mind the Queen retained her seat; and with the help of the Duc de Guise ultimately contrived to reach her bed, over which she pa.s.sed, and thus escaped into an adjoining apartment; and meanwhile the unfortunate victims of the accident were conveyed to their respective residences, where her Majesty caused them to be immediately visited by one of the officers of her household, who was commissioned to inquire into their condition, and to express her regret at the event.

There was one exception, however, to this royal act of sympathy and consideration, and that one was the Duc d'Epernon; who, although the greatest sufferer on the occasion, was entirely overlooked; a marked and threatening want of courtesy on the part of the Queen-mother, which convinced the arrogant courtier that his period of favour was past, and that his enemies had triumphed. This conviction at once determined him to retire voluntarily from the Court before he should be compelled to do so by an order which he felt satisfied would not be long delayed; and he was accordingly no sooner sufficiently recovered to leave his bed than he waited upon their Majesties to take leave, alleging that his shattered health having received so violent a shock, he felt it necessary to withdraw for a time from all partic.i.p.ation in public affairs, and to endeavour by perfect repose to overcome the effects of his accident.

His reasons were graciously accepted both by the King and Queen, who a.s.sured him of their deep sorrow at his sufferings, and expressed the most flattering wishes for his recovery; but the Queen-mother uttered no word either of regret or sympathy. With the most chilling indifference she returned his parting salutation; and M. d'Epernon quitted her apartment with a demeanour almost as haughty as her own.[213]

Marie de Medicis, who possessed the most implicit confidence in the so-called science of astrology, and who was always anxious to penetrate the mystery of the future, having been informed on her return to Paris that a certain Giorgio Luminelli, a native of Ragusa who was celebrated as a soothsayer, had recently arrived in the capital, and taken up his abode in the Place Royale, immediately expressed a wish to consult him; for which purpose she despatched a messenger to his residence, by whom he was invited to wait upon a person of high rank who, attracted by his renown, was desirous of testing his skill. To this somewhat imperious summons Luminelli, however, simply replied by declaring that he never quitted his own apartments for any one, whatever might be the station of the person who required his services; but that those, who sought his aid were at liberty to visit him whenever they saw fit to do so. This answer only increased the eagerness of the Queen-mother; nevertheless, previously to seeking him in person, she requested M. de Crequy, the Duc de la Force, Ba.s.sompierre, and Rambure to go to his house in disguise, in order to ascertain whether he were indeed worthy of the reputation by which he had been preceded.

While they were making the necessary arrangements, and deciding to exchange dresses with their confidential valets in the hope of being enabled to mystify the necromancer, to whom they were entirely unknown, the Marechal d'Ancre arrived to pay his respects to his royal mistress; and, upon being made acquainted with the project, he determined to join the party in the character of a Venetian n.o.ble, of whom there were at that moment several residing in Paris. On the completion of their preparations the merry masquers set forth, and soon reached the abode of Luminelli; where, on their arrival, they found a servant stationed at the door, as if awaiting the advent of expected guests, who no sooner saw them pause beside him than, addressing Concini and the disguised serving-men, he politely requested them to follow him; coupling the invitation with an a.s.surance that his master had desired him to watch for the arrival of five great n.o.bles who were about to consult his art.

Lavallee, the lackey of M. de Ba.s.sompierre, a.s.suming an air of importance, expressed both for himself and his companions their sense of this attention; and then, somewhat startled by the coincidence, for as such they simply considered it, the whole party followed their guide upstairs.

On reaching the apartment of the astrologer the four disguised courtiers remained respectfully upon the threshold, while their unliveried representatives advanced to the middle of the room; and courteously saluting their host, informed him that they had been induced by his great renown to solicit a display of his skill, and to claim from him a knowledge of their future fortunes. Lavallee was once more their spokesman; and the eyes of Luminelli remained fixed upon him until the conclusion of his address, when he turned away abruptly, without vouchsafing any reply, and drew back a curtain behind which was placed a large globe of polished steel. He looked earnestly upon this for a few moments; and then rising, he put on a cap of dark velvet which lay beside him, took Lavallee by the hand, and approaching Ba.s.sompierre placed his valet a few paces behind him, saying as he did so: