Volume III Part 9 (1/2)
The tears and entreaties of the two Queens at length produced their effect; and with some reluctance Louis consented that his brother should be appointed to the command of the army, desiring at the same time that he should receive fifty thousand crowns to defray the expenses of his equipment; and, although the spendthrift Prince lost the whole sum at the gaming-table during the course of a single evening, Richelieu did not venture upon further expostulation, the union of the two Queens, and the undisguised satisfaction of the great n.o.bles, rendering a more sustained opposition alike doubtful and dangerous. Affecting, therefore, to withdraw from the struggle, he retired to Chaillot, while he left to his friends the task of reawakening the jealousy which Louis had long evinced of the military talents of his brother.[111] This project could not, as Richelieu was well aware, fail to prove successful; and, accordingly, the King ere long manifested great uneasiness and irritation; refused to join in the amus.e.m.e.nts which Marie de Medicis was careful to provide for him; lost his rest; and, finally, set forth for Chaillot in order to have an interview with the minister.
When the Cardinal saw the moody King arrive, he at once felt that he had triumphed; the brow of Louis was as black as night, and he clutched the hilt of his sword with so tight a grasp that his fingers became bloodless.
”You are ill, Sire; you are suffering,” said the wily churchman, with well-acted anxiety. ”Can my poor services avail to restore you to peace of mind?” ”I cannot allow my brother,” was the abrupt reply, ”to command my army beyond the Alps. You must enable me to retract my promise.”
”I know only one method of doing so,” said Richelieu, after appearing to reflect, ”and that is that your Majesty should repair thither in person.
But should you adopt this resolution, you must carry it into effect within eight days; there is no time to be lost.”
”Be it so,” exclaimed Louis; ”I will leave the capital and place myself at the head of my troops;” and beckoning to Ba.s.sompierre, by whom he had been accompanied, and who stood near the door of the Apartment, he added, with something approaching to a smile: ”Here is a man who will willingly bear me company, and who will serve me zealously.”
”Whither does your Majesty purpose to proceed?” inquired the Marechal, as he bowed his acknowledgments.
”To Italy,” said the King, ”and that not later than a week hence, in order to raise the siege of Casal. Make your preparations and follow me without delay. I shall appoint you my lieutenant-general under my brother, should he consent to share in the campaign; and I shall also take the Marechal de Crequy with me; he knows the country; and I trust that we shall cause ourselves to be talked of throughout Europe.” [112]
Thus in a single hour were all the projects of Marie de Medicis overthrown; and the King had no sooner, on his return to Paris, informed her of his change of purpose than she felt that Richelieu had at length thrown down the gauntlet, and that thenceforward there must be war between them. Nor was the Duc d'Orleans less mortified and alarmed than the Queen-mother; but neither the one nor the other ventured to expostulate; and, although with less precipitation than the King, Monsieur commenced his preparations. Louis XIII left Paris on the 4th of January; but it was not until the 29th that his brother took leave of the Court, and reluctantly proceeded to rejoin him. The Cardinal had already set forth, although the extreme severity of the weather, and the deep fall of snow by which the roads were obstructed, might have sufficed to furnish him with a pretext for delay; but it was no part of Richelieu's policy to suffer the two brothers to remain together beyond his surveillance; and accordingly, as was his usual habit on such emergencies, he threw off his indisposition, and boldly defied alike wintry weather and fatigue.
He might, however, as the event proved, have been more deliberate in his movements; for Monsieur, already annoyed by the disappointment to which he had been subjected, evinced no disposition to profit by the brief opportunity thus afforded to him, but proceeded leisurely to Dauphiny; where he had no sooner arrived than he received information that the most strenuous efforts had been made immediately after he had left Paris to hasten the departure of Marie de Gonzaga. Delighted at any pretext for abandoning the journey to which he had been compelled, he forthwith retraced his steps; but great as was the haste which he displayed to reach the capital, the first news by which he was greeted was that the Queen-mother had caused the Princess of Mantua to be imprisoned in the fortress of Vincennes.
This extraordinary intelligence was communicated to him by the Marechal de Marillac, who had succeeded Richelieu in the confidence of Marie de Medicis; and who endeavoured to palliate the outrage by explaining the motives which induced her Majesty to take so singular a step. She had been as M. de Marillac a.s.serted, a.s.sured that his Highness had resolved to carry off Mademoiselle de Gonzaga, and then to leave the kingdom; a determination by which she was so much alarmed that she had adopted the only measure which had appeared to her to offer a certain preventive to so dangerous and unprecedented a proceeding; but Monsieur would listen to no arguments upon the subject, and withdrew in violent displeasure to Orleans, whence he despatched one of the officers of his household to protest against the imprisonment of the Princess, and to demand not only that she should immediately be set at liberty, but also that she should not be permitted to leave the country.
The Queen-mother, who was aware that she could not justify a proceeding which violated all the rights of hospitality, and who was, moreover, alarmed lest she should incur the lasting animosity of her favourite son, and thus render herself still more helpless than she had already become through the defection of Richelieu, found herself compelled to accede to a request which had in fact a.s.sumed the character of a command; but she, nevertheless, only accorded her consent to the release of the captive on condition that Monsieur should desist, for a time at least, in pressing his marriage either with Marie de Gonzaga or any other Princess until he had received the consent of the King to that effect; and Gaston having, after some hesitation, agreed to the proposed terms, the unfortunate girl was removed from Vincennes to the Louvre, whither the Prince immediately hastened to congratulate her on her liberation, and to express to the Queen-mother his indignation at what had occurred.[113]
Before the departure of the King for Italy he had, at the instigation of Richelieu, declared Marie de Medicis Regent of all the provinces on the west bank of the Loire; a concession to which, extraordinary as it must appear, the Cardinal had been compelled, in order to appease the Queen-mother, whose exasperation at this renewed separation from the King had exceeded any which she had previously exhibited; and who had been supported in her complaints and expostulations by Anne of Austria, with whom she had begun to make common cause. That Richelieu, however, did so with great and anxious reluctance there can be little doubt, as he was well aware that he had excited her suspicion and dislike, and that he should, moreover, leave her surrounded by individuals who would not fail to embitter her animosity against him.
Moreover, the haughty minister could not disguise from himself that he was labouring to build up his own fortunes upon the ruin of those of his benefactress--of the confiding and generous mistress to whom he was indebted for all the honours which he then enjoyed--nor could he fail to feel that reprisals on her part would be at once legitimate and justifiable; and accordingly he caused the commission of her regency to be prefaced by the most elaborate encomiums. Not content with a.s.serting that her ”able government and her wise measures had proved her to be alike the mother of the sovereign and of the state.” Louis, acting under the advice of the wily minister, lavished upon her every epithet of honour and respect; apparently forgetting that he had previously exiled her from the Court, taken up arms against her, and that he even then believed her to be in secret correspondence with his enemies; while at the same period Richelieu records in his Memoirs that the Pope had declared to his nuncio, during his audience of leavetaking on his departure for the French Court: ”You will see the Queen-mother. She is favourable to Spain; and her attachment to the King her son does not extend beyond her own interests. She is, moreover, one of the most obstinate persons in the world.” [114]
And yet, even while dwelling with complacency on the Papal strictures, the Cardinal did not hesitate to put into the mouth of the King the most unmeasured panegyrics of the same Princess, in order to shelter himself from her vengeance. This concession was the result of an able calculation, for Richelieu could not remain blind to his personal unpopularity; and was, moreover, conscious that both Marie de Medicis and Monsieur were beloved by the populace. It was not perhaps that either the one or the other was individually the object of popular affection, but each represented the interests of an irritated opposition; and both sought to undermine the existing Government, or rather the authority of Richelieu, who was rapidly absorbing all power, and striving to bend the necks of n.o.bles, citizens, and people under his iron yoke.[115]
The campaign having terminated favourably for the royal cause, and the taking of La Roch.e.l.le, coupled with the deliverance of Casal, having greatly increased the influence of Richelieu over the mind of the King, the former began more openly to defy the power of the Queen-mother; and anxious, if possible, to regain the favour of Gaston, he no longer scrupled to declare that she had been actuated solely by her own interests in the violent repugnance which she had evinced to the union of the Prince with Marie de Gonzaga; and to impress upon the weak monarch the danger of irritating his brother by further opposition to a union which would meet with the approval of the whole kingdom. Louis, however, as we have already shown, was himself averse to the marriage of Monsieur, who had refused to see him until he consented to his wishes; but, angered by this apparent defiance, he nevertheless bitterly reproached his mother for her harshness towards both parties, and refused to listen to her proffered justification.
Marie de Medicis at once perceived whence the fact.i.tious strength of her son was derived; and all her previous affection for the Cardinal became changed into a hatred which was destined to continue undiminished to the close of her existence.
Nor was Richelieu, on his side, less ill at ease. He was aware that his ingrat.i.tude to his benefactress was the theme of general remark and reproach; and he apprehended, should the King fall a victim to one of those attacks of indisposition to which he was continually subject--an event which had been foretold by the astrologers, and which was antic.i.p.ated by his physicians--that he should be unable to contend against the animosity of the irritated Princess, and the undisguised aversion of the Duc d'Orleans, who made no effort to conceal his dislike to the haughty minister, against whom he published during his sojourn at Nancy a manifesto, in which he accused him of having usurped the authority of the sovereign.
Louis, however, who felt his own utter inability to dispense with so able and fearless a counsellor, paid no regard to the discontent of the Prince; and increased his indignation by issuing letters patent, in which, after eulogizing the Cardinal, and expressing his sense of the services which he had rendered alike to himself and to his kingdom, he officially appointed him Prime Minister. It is true that from his first admission to the Council Richelieu had performed all the functions appertaining to that rank, but he had nevertheless. .h.i.therto been preceded by the other ministers, whereas this public declaration enabled him to take his place immediately below the Princes of the Blood;[116]
while, in addition to this new dignity, he found himself _de facto_ generalissimo of the King's armies in Piedmont.
Ba.s.sompierre had meanwhile greatly distinguished himself at the Pa.s.s of Susa, which had been forced by the French troops; and his vigour, activity, and courage had rendered him the idol of the soldiers, who justly attributed to his able exertions no small portion of the success which had attended the royal arms. The military renown of the brilliant courtier, whom he had hitherto affected to regard merely as a spoilt child of fortune, was, however, highly distasteful to the Cardinal, whose flatterers did not fail to persuade him that the victory was due to his own admirable arrangements, rather than to the valour of any of the generals who had braved the dangers of the hazardous expedition; and he consequently sought to excite the jealousy and suspicion of Louis against the zealous Marechal, who little imagined that his prowess in the field was fated to involve his personal safety.
The sojourn at Susa, a wretched locality in which, while awaiting the ratification of the treaties consequent upon its capture, Louis could not even enjoy the diversion of hunting, soon exhausted the patience of the monarch, who declared his intention of returning to France previous to the conclusion of the necessary arrangements; and although he was earnestly entreated by Soranzo, the Venetian Amba.s.sador, to forego his purpose, he resolutely refused to listen to his representations; and on the 28th of April he accordingly commenced his homeward journey, simply taking the precaution, in order to satisfy his several allies, of leaving Richelieu with a strong body of troops, and full authority to terminate as he should see fit the pending negotiations. The Cardinal, however, felt as little inclination as his royal master to waste his time and to exhaust his energies at such a distance from the Court; and thus to enable his enemies to gain the unoccupied ear of the King, who was, as he had already experienced, easily swayed by those about him.
During his absence from the capital his emissaries had been careful to report to him every movement of the Queen-mother and the Duc d'Orleans; and he felt that he was lost should they again succeed in acquiring the confidence of the weak and wavering Louis. Within a fortnight after the departure of the monarch, he consequently made his own hasty preparations for a similar retreat; and having placed six thousand infantry and five hundred horse under the command of the Marechal de Crequy, with orders that he should vigilantly guard the several pa.s.ses and rigidly enforce the orders of the King, he set forth in his turn for Paris, in order to counteract the designs of the rival faction.
Meanwhile Marie de Medicis and Gaston d'Orleans had been consistent in their policy; and on the arrival of Louis in Paris he was a.s.sured that time had only tended to embitter their misunderstanding on the subject of the Princesse de Gonzaga; a fact which was no sooner ascertained by Richelieu than he resolved to profit by so promising an opportunity of regaining the good graces of the royal Duke. This was precisely the result which both the mother and son had desired; for while the former sought to secure a pretext for complaint against the ingrat.i.tude and treachery of the individual whose fortunes had been her own work, and who now evinced a disposition to build up his prosperity upon the disobedience of her best-beloved child, the latter had many and forcible reasons for being equally delighted to see the ordinarily-astute Cardinal taken in his own toils, and readily consented to second the irritated Queen-mother in her attempt to effect his overthrow. During the first few days which succeeded the arrival of the King in Paris, every circ.u.mstance tended to increase the hopes of Marie de Medicis.
Louis made no secret of his satisfaction at the firmness which she had evinced, and displayed towards her a confidence and respect by which she was a.s.sured that his prejudices were shaken;[117] but the sudden apparition of the Cardinal reawakened all her anxiety.
His advent was no sooner announced than a swarm of velvet-clad and bejewelled n.o.bles hastened to Nemours to bid him welcome; and thence they served as his escort to Fontainebleau, where the Court was then sojourning, and whither he travelled in a covered litter, followed by the Marechaux de Ba.s.sompierre, de Schomberg, and de Marillac. On reaching the palace Richelieu at once proceeded to the apartments of the Queen-mother, accompanied by the Cardinals de La Valette and de Berulle, and the other n.o.bles who had joined him on the road; where he found himself in the presence not only of Marie de Medicis, but also in that of the young Queen, the Princesses, and all the great ladies of the Court, by the whole of whom he was very coldly received; and the blood mounted to his brow as Marie de Medicis replied to his lowly salutation by a slight curtsey, and a formal inquiry after his health.
”I am well, Madame,” he answered petulantly; ”better than many of those whom I see in your company may have desired.”
The Tuscan Princess turned haughtily away; but as her eyes fell upon the Cardinal de Berulle, her confessor, her features relaxed into a smile, which was not un.o.bserved by the irritated minister.