The Life of Marie de Medicis Volume I Part 16

[243] Saint-Edme, vol. ii. p. 223.

[244] In order to convey some idea of the effect produced by the ostensible devotion of Madame de Verneuil upon those who gave her credit for sincerity, we need only quote a pa.s.sage in the dedication of D'Hemery d'Amboise to his translation of the works of Gregoire de Tours, in which, addressing himself to the Marquise, he gravely says "that she had deduced from the inspired writings of the fathers their salutary doctrine; and that she practised it so faithfully, that her firmness had triumphed over her adversities, and her merit exceeded her happiness."

"Your life," he adds, with the same unblus.h.i.+ng sycophancy, "serves as a mirror for the most pious, and compels the admiration of all who see so holy and resolute a determination exerted at an age that has scarcely attained its prime; and at which, despising mere personal beauty, and the other precious advantages with which you have been richly endowed by Heaven, you have devoted the course of your best years to the contemplation of the marvels of G.o.d, joining spiritual meditation to good works."--Dreux du Radier, vol. vi. pp. 94, 95.

[245] Richelieu, _Hist. de la Mere et du Fils_, vol. i. pp. 8-11.

[246] MSS. Dupuy, vol. 407.

[247] Andre Hurault, Seigneur de Maisse, had been amba.s.sador to Venice under both Henri III and Henri IV, and in his official capacity had frequent disputes with the nuncios of Sixtus V and Clement VIII, in consequence of which those prelates exerted all their influence to injure his interests at the Court of Rome. Andre Morosin mentions M. de Maisse as an able and far-seeing man, _sagaci admodum ingenio_. In 1595 Henri IV again sent him to Venice to offer his thanks to the Senate for the extraordinary emba.s.sy which they had forwarded to him during the previous year; and as M. de Maisse travelled on this occasion with Cardinal Duperron, who was instructed to pa.s.s by that city on his way to Rome, great alarm was created in the mind of the Pope that the French amba.s.sador was about to visit the Papal Court in his company, an event which he deprecated from the distrust which he felt of the designs of an individual who had already frustrated the measures of his accredited agents. His Holiness was, however, _quitte pour la peur_, the instructions of M. de Maisse having restricted him to his Venetian mission.

[248] Louis Potier de Gevres, Secretary of State. It is from him that the branch of his family still bearing the name of Gevres is descended, while that of Novion owes its origin to his elder brother, Nicolas Potier de Blancmenil.

[249] Mezeray, vol. x. p. 261.

[250] _Le Laboureur sur Castelnau_.

[251] Jacqueline de Bueil, subsequently Comtesse de Moret, was the daughter of Claude de Bueil, Seigneur de Courcillon and La Machere, and of Catherine de Monteclu, who both died in 1596. The family of Bueil traced their descent from Jean, the first of the name, Sieur de Bueil in Touraine, who was equerry of honour to Charles-le-Bel in 1321.

[252] Dreux du Radier, vol. vi. p. 97.

[253] Wraxall, vol. v. pp. 356, 357.

[254] Abraham-Nicolas Amelot de la Houssaye, was born at Orleans in the year 1634, and pa.s.sed nearly all his life in composing works of history and in translating the historians by whom he had been preceded. His princ.i.p.al productions are _A History of the Government of Venice; Historical, Political, Critical, and Literary Memoirs_; and translations of the _History of the Council of Trent_, by Fra Paolo; of the _Prince_ by Machiavelli; and of the _Annals of Tacitus_. He died in 1706.

[255] Mezeray, vol. x. pp. 261, 262.

[256] Sully, _Mem_. vol. iv. p. 125.

[257] Pierre Fougeuse, Sieur d'Escures.

[258] Daniel, vol. vii. pp. 453, 454.

[259] Treasurer of the war department, and lieutenant-general at Riom.

[260] Philibert de Nerestan, knight of Malta, and captain of the bodyguard of Henri IV, was as celebrated for his admirable qualities of mind and heart as for the antiquity of his birth. He was grand master of the Orders of St. Lazarus and Notre-Dame du Mont Carmel, the latter of which was inst.i.tuted by the sovereign at his intercession.

[261] Matthieu, _Hist, des Derniers Troubles_, book ii. p. 438.

Perefixe, vol. ii. pp. 406, 407.

[262] L'Etoile, vol. iii. p. 242.

[263] _Memoires,_ vol. v. p. 185.

[264] L'Etoile, vol. iii. p. 243.

[265] Charlotte, eldest daughter of Henri, Duc de Montmorency, High Constable of France.

[266] L'Etoile, vol. iii. pp. 247-249.

[267] Jean Defunctis, Lieutenant criminal of the Provost of Paris.--_Hist. Chron. de la Chancell. de France_, p. 316.

[268] Wraxall, Note quoted from _Le Laboureur sur Castelnau_, vol. v. p.

356.

[269] Pedro Henriques Azevedo, Conde de Fuentes, succeeded to the command of the Spanish army on the demise of the Archduke Ernest.

[270] Ambroise Spinola, Marques de los Balbazez, one of the most distinguished generals of the seventeenth century, was the descendant of an ill.u.s.trious family of Geneva, whose branches spread alike over Italy and Spain. He was born in 1569, and first bore arms in Flanders. In 1604, being in command of the army, he took Ostend, and in consequence of his important services was appointed General of the Spanish troops in the Low Countries. When opposed to Prince Maurice of Na.s.sau, he counterbalanced alike his renown and his success; and in 1629, when serving in Piedmont, he took the town of Casal, but died in the following year of vexation at having failed to reduce the fortress of that city.

[271] Marie Touchet, Comtesse d'Entragues, was the daughter of an apothecary at Orleans; who, on the occasion of a visit of Charles IX to that city, obtained permission to see his Majesty dine in public, where her extreme beauty so impressed the Monarch that he inquired her name, and at the close of the repast despatched M. de Latour, the master of his wardrobe, to desire her attendance in his closet. The negotiation did not prove a difficult one; as the lady, although at the moment strongly attached to M. de Monluc, the brother of the Bishop of Valence, could not resist the prestige of royalty. Charles, anxious to retain her near him, requested Madame Marguerite, his sister, to receive her into her household as a waiting-woman; but as she shortly afterwards became pregnant, he removed her from the Court and established her in Paris, where she gave birth to Charles, Comte d'Auvergne. Although tenderly beloved by the King, Marie Touchet still retained her attachment to Monluc, with whom she carried on an active correspondence, which was at length discovered by Charles; who, having on one occasion been apprised that she had at the moment a letter from her former lover in her pocket, instantly caused a number of the Court ladies to be invited to supper; and they were no sooner a.s.sembled than he sent to desire a man named Chambre, the chief of a band of gipsies, to disperse a dozen of his most expert followers about the apartment, with orders to cut away the pockets of all the guests and to bring them carefully to his closet when he retired for the night. He then caused the faithless favourite to be seated beside himself, in order that she might not have an opportunity of disposing of the letter elsewhere; and the Bohemians having adroitly obeyed his instructions, the King found himself a few hours afterwards in possession of the booty. In the pocket of Marie Touchet he discovered, as he had antic.i.p.ated, the letter of M. de Monluc; which, on the following morning, he placed, with the most bitter reproaches, in the hands of its owner; who, on finding herself detected, declared that the pocket in which the King had discovered it was not hers, a subterfuge by which, as the letter bore no address, she hoped to escape the anger and indignation of her royal lover. Unfortunately, however, Charles recognized several of the trinkets by which it had been accompanied; and she had, consequently, no alternative save to acknowledge her fault and to entreat for pardon. Charles, who could not resist her tears, was soon induced to promise this, provided she pledged herself to relinquish all intercourse with Monluc; and in order to render her performance of this pledge more sure, he shortly afterwards married her to the Comte d'Entragues, whose complaisance he rewarded by the government of Orleans.--L'Etoile, _Hist, de Henri IV,_ vol. iii.

pp. 247-249.

[272] Dreux du Radier, vol. vi. p. 98. Saint-Edme, vol. ii. p. 227.

L'Etoile, vol. iii. p. 247.

[273] Antoine Eugene Chevillard, general treasurer of the gendarmerie of France.

[274] Sully, _Mem_. vol. v. p. 161, quoted from Amelot de la Houssaye.

[275] Dreux du Radier, vol. vi. p. 99.

[276] Mademoiselle de Bueil became Comtesse de Chesy on the 5th of October 1604, and two months later she obtained a divorce. M. de Chesy died in 1652.

[277] Perefixe, vol. ii. p. 401.

[278] Sully, _Mem_. vol. v. pp. 193-197.

[279] Guillaume Fouquet, Sieur de la Varenne, was one of those singularly-gifted individuals who by the unaided power of intellect are raised from obscurity to fortune. On his first introduction to the Court of France, his position was merely that of cloak-bearer to the King; but his excessive acuteness and his genius for intrigue soon drew upon him the attention of the Cabinet. The event that originally procured for him the favour by which he so largely profited in the sequel was a voyage to Spain, voluntarily undertaken under unusual difficulties. The courier who was conveying to Philip the despatches of the Duc de Mayenne and the other chiefs of the League, having been taken by the emissaries of Henri IV, and the despatches opened by his ministers, it was decided that copies should be made, and the originals resealed and forwarded to their destination by some confidential person who might bring back the replies, in order that a more perfect judgment might be formed by the Council of their probable result. For such an undertaking as this, however, it was obvious that a messenger must be found at once faithful, expert, and courageous; and such an one offered himself in the person of La Varenne, who without a moment's hesitation offered his services to the King, and acquitted himself so dexterously of his self-imposed task that he succeeded, not only in procuring two interviews with the Spanish Council, but even an audience of Philip, without once exciting suspicion; and his arrival at Madrid had been so well timed that although a second courier was despatched in all haste by the League, to announce the capture of his predecessor, he was enabled to effect his return to France with the reply of the Spanish monarch, by which Henry and his ministers were apprised of the plans and pretensions of that potentate (Amelot de la Houssaye, _Lettres du Cardinal d'Ossat_, vol.

ii. p. 17 _note_.) La Varenne was subsequently Master-General of the Post Office.

[280] Philippe de Mornay, Seigneur de Plessis-Marly, Governor of Saumur, was born in the year 1549, at Bussy, in the department of the Oise, of a Catholic father and a Protestant mother (Francoise du Bec), the latter of whom educated him in the reformed faith. Having escaped the ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew, he visited Germany, Italy, and England, and finally entered the service of Henri IV, while he was still King of Navarre, who sent him on a mission to Queen Elizabeth. His science, his valour, and his high sense of honour, rendered him after the abjuration of the monarch the chief of the Protestant party, and caused him to be called _the Huguenot Pope_. He sustained against Duperron, Bishop of Evreux, the famous conference of Fontainebleau, at whose close each of the two parties claimed the victory. Louis XIII deprived him of his government of Saumur; and he died in 1623. He had issue by his wife, Charlotte de l'Arbalete, widow of the Marquis de Feuquieres, one son (Plessis-Mornay, Sieur de Bauves), who was killed in 1605 while serving under Prince Maurice in the Low Countries, and three daughters, the younger of whom married the Duc de la Force.

[281] Mezeray, vol. x. pp. 254, 255.

[282] Bonnechose, _Hist. de France_, vol. i. p. 438, seventh edition.

[283] Bonnechose, vol. i. p. 438.

CHAPTER V

1605

Trial of the conspirators--Pusillanimity of the Comte d'Auvergne--Arrogant att.i.tude a.s.sumed by Madame de Verneuil--She refuses to offer any defence--Defence of the Comte d'Entragues--The two n.o.bles are condemned to death--Madame de Verneuil is sentenced to imprisonment for life in a convent--A mother's intercession--The King commutes the sentence of death pa.s.sed on the two n.o.bles to exile from the Court and imprisonment for life--Expostulations of the Privy Council--Madame de Verneuil is permitted to retire to her estate--Disappointment of the Queen--Marriage of the Due de Rohan--Singular ceremony--A tilt at the Louvre--Ba.s.sompierre is dangerously wounded--His convalescence--Death of Clement VIII--Election of Leo XI--His sudden death--Election of Paul V--The Comte d'Entragues is authorised to return to Marcoussis--Madame de Verneuil is pardoned and recalled--Marriage of the Prince de Conti--Mademoiselle de Guise--Marriage of the Prince of Orange--The ex-Queen Marguerite--She arrives in Paris--Grat.i.tude of the King--Her reception--Murder at the Hotel de Sens--Execution of the criminal--Marguerite removes to the Faubourg St. Germain--The King condoles with her on the loss of her favourite--Her dissolute career--Her able policy--Death of M. de la Riviere--Execution of M. de Merargues--Attempt to a.s.sa.s.sinate Henri IV--Magnanimity of the monarch--Henry seeks to initiate the Queen into the mysteries of government--_Madame la Regente_--A timely warning.

The year 1605 commenced, as had been the case each year since the peace, with a succession of Court-festivals; tilts and tournaments, b.a.l.l.s and masquerades, occupied the attention of the privileged; presents of value were exchanged by the sovereigns and princes; and during all this incessant dissipation the Parliament was diligently employed upon the trial of the conspirators.

On Sat.u.r.day, the 29th of January, the Comte d'Auvergne was placed out the sellette,[284] where L'Etoile[285] a.s.serts that he communicated much more than was required of him; while the Queen, anxious to secure the condemnation of Madame de Verneuil, and at the same time to intimidate the favourites by whom she might be succeeded, appeared in person as one of the accusing witnesses. Nor did Henry, who had already decided upon the pardon of the Marquise, attempt to dissuade her from this extraordinary measure; and it is even probable that as the design of the King was merely to humble the pride of the haughty Marquise, in order to render her more submissive to his authority, he was by no means disinclined to suffer Marie to give free vent to her indignation and contempt.