Political Women Volume I Part 11

Let us remember:--Anne de Bourbon exhibited extraordinary contrasts in her character, entirely opposite qualities which, developing themselves in turn according to circ.u.mstances, gave a particular impress to different periods of her life. She derived from nature and the Christian education she had received a delicate and susceptible conscience, a humility in her own eyes and before G.o.d that would have made her an accomplished Carmelite; and at the same time she was born with that ardour of soul which is termed ambition, the instinct of glory and of grandeur. This instinct, which was also that of her house and her age, soon obtained the mastery on emerging from her pious adolescence, and when she despaired of overcoming her father's resistance to the serious desire she had manifested of burying herself, at fifteen, in the convent of the Rue St. Jacques, with her already formidable beauty and the nascent desire to s.h.i.+ne and to please. That desire was at once Madame de Longueville's strength and weakness, the principle of her coquetry amid the amus.e.m.e.nts of peace, as of her intrepidity in the midst of war and danger. Once condemned to live in the world, she transferred the dreams of glory which she dared not realise for herself, to gild her brother's wreath of laurel,--that Louis de Bourbon, almost of the same age as herself, the cherished companion of her infancy, so witty, so generous, so bold, that he was at once a friend and a master, and the idol of her heart, before another object had usurped the place or after he had abandoned it. In the first and the last portion of her life, which are incomparably the best, she referred everything to Conde, and Conde had a confidence in her altogether boundless. The suspicious and penetrating Mazarin had very early formed that opinion of her, and in the _carnets_, to which he has confided his very inmost feelings, he depicts her with the pen of an enemy, but of an enemy who knew her well. "Madame de Longueville," says he, "has entire power over her brother. She desires to see Conde dominate and dispose of all favours. If she is p.r.o.ne to gallantry, it is by no means that she thinks of doing wrong, but in order to make friends and servitors for her brother. She insinuates ambitious ideas into his mind to which he is already only too much inclined." If, in 1648, she became violently enraged against her brother, it was that, fascinated and misled by La Rochefoucauld, she thought that Conde, by serving the Court and Mazarin, was false to his own fame. In 1649, she had only too far contributed to make him enter by degrees upon that fatal path into which La Rochefoucauld had lured herself. Here, pride nourished the hope of one day seeing the Condes replace the D'Orleans. When, in 1850, a son was born to Gaston, the little Duke de Valois, who did not live, she fretted at an event which threatened to strengthen and perpetuate a house for which she had no affection, and in a letter which has remained inedited up to the present day, she allows the thoughts that had insinuated themselves into her heart to appear. "I think," she writes to Lenet on the 22nd August, 1650, "that the news of the birth of M. d'Orleans' son will no more rejoice my sister-in-law than it has delighted me. It is to my nephew that we must offer our condolence." In 1651, that ambition was carried to its highest pitch. Madame de Longueville experienced the natural intoxication that the power and prosperity of her house was calculated to give her; and when we think of what perils she had just surmounted, by what homage she was surrounded on all sides, that she was then thirty-two, that she was in all the splendour of her beauty, and also under all the strength of her pa.s.sions, we might well be disposed to pardon her that fugitive intoxication, if it had not likewise drawn down disastrous consequences upon herself, upon Conde, and upon her country.

And here again occurs the question we have just raised. Was it Madame de Longueville who caused the rupture of the projected marriage between the Prince de Conti and Mademoiselle de Chevreuse? If hers was the chief fault, we look upon it with regret, that in the eye of posterity she should bear the blame of such a fault. If she only yielded to the advice of La Rochefoucauld, we have the more excuse for her, and a.s.sert that the fault comes home to him. As we have seen, that affair is still involved in much obscurity, and since De Retz himself hesitates, we ought to feel well justified to hesitate in our turn. But it must be confessed, the suspicions of the Frondeurs and the accusations of the Queen's friends have such great weight that it is scarcely possible to avoid attributing to Madame de Longueville a sufficiently large share in the deplorable rupture whence so many evils sprang. Her complaisant biographer, Villefore, is on this point in accordance with Madame de Motteville. Without doubt the marriage of the Prince de Conti with Mademoiselle de Chevreuse was far from meeting with universal approval.

The prudes of the Hotel de Rambouillet, and Mademoiselle de Scuderi in particular, protested strongly against such an alliance. The old outrage was remembered which, in 1643, Madame de Montbazon, aided by Madame de Chevreuse, had dared to perpetrate upon Madame de Longueville; the audacious manners of the mother also, which seemed to have been inherited by the daughter; the equivocal reputation of the latter, the suspected and almost public _liaison_ which she carried on with De Retz.

Vain objections!--which Madame de Longueville could not allege, for she perfectly well knew all that when at Stenay she had authorised the Palatine to pledge her word for hers. Other reasons for her conduct must therefore be sought, and the reasons can only be those which her enemies have given, and in the foremost place the jealousy of influence, the desire of retaining over her younger brother, the Prince de Conti, an empire that Charlotte de Lorraine would, infallibly, have deprived her.

That irreparable error, in bringing about the perilous position in which Conde speedily found himself, necessarily led Madame de Longueville to the commission of another error, in some sort compulsory, and which was the complement of the first; it is certain that more than anyone else she incited her brother to take the resolution he ultimately determined upon adopting. La Rochefoucauld says so, and all contemporary writers repeat the same. We will merely make this essential remark: Madame de Longueville had at first very readily entered into the reconciliatory plans of Conde and La Rochefoucauld, and into their negotiations with the Court; it was only when those designs had failed, when towards the month of June negotiation had given place to violence, when she saw her brother surrounded by a.s.sa.s.sins, liable at any moment to fall under the blows of Hocquincourt, or to be flung again into the dungeons of Vincennes, it was then that trembling with fear and indignation, and ill as she was in health, she rushed to Saint-Maur; and that, finding there the flower of the aristocracy and the army a.s.sembled, she felt her warlike ardour of 1649 and 1650 rekindle. She thought that nothing could resist on the field of battle the victor of Rocroy and Lens, seconded by Turenne, who at Stenay had shown such a lively and tender attachment for her, and the sentiment of which she had never ceased to treat with all the exquisite tact of which she was capable. She had also great confidence in Spain, which was at her feet, and lavished upon her every kind of deference. She urged, therefore, Conde to fling further perfidious and useless negotiations to the winds, and to appeal to the fortune of arms.

But to these different motives, the force of which Madame de Longueville summed up the value with the authority of her intelligence and experience, was joined another still more potent over her heart, and which had been the original mainspring of her resolutions and conduct.

La Rochefoucauld alone has no right to impute it to her as a crime. For ourselves, we do not hesitate to make it known upon the evidence of irrefragable testimony; for we are not composing a panegyric of Madame de Longueville, but narrating certain pa.s.sages of her life, in which that of the seventeenth century, with its grandeurs and its miseries, is so completely identified; and if we feel a sincere admiration for the sister of the great Conde, that admiration does not close our eyes to her errors. It is not unseemly to admire a heroine whose lofty qualities are mingled with weaknesses which remind us of her s.e.x. It is, moreover, the first duty of history, such as we understand it, and desire to have it understood, not to stop at the surface of events, but to seek for their causes in the depths of the soul, in human pa.s.sions and their inevitable consequences.

As has been already said, Madame de Longueville did not love her husband. Not only was he greatly her senior, but there was nothing about him that responded to the ideal which that ill.u.s.trious disciple of the Hotel de Rambouillet had formed for herself, and which she pursued in vain through guilty illusions, until that which she sought and found at its very source--no longer in the school of Corneille and of Mademoiselle de Scuderi, but in that of her Saviour, in the Carmelite convent and at Port Royal. Never was woman less p.r.o.ne to gallantry by nature than Anne de Bourbon; but, as we have just remarked, her heart and her imagination created in her the necessity of pleasing and of being beloved; and it was that want, early cultivated by poetry, romances, and the theatre, and somewhat later corrupted by the example of the society in which she lived, which lured her far from the domestic hearth, and hurried her into the brilliant and adventurous career amidst which we find her in 1651. Then her greatest fear was to fall again into her husband's hands. M. de Longueville had very willingly followed his wife in the Fronde; his own discontentments of themselves drove him into it, as well as his uncertain and mobile character which led him to embark in novel enterprises with as much facility as it urged him to abandon them. In 1649 he had figured as one of the generals of Paris, and had raised Normandy against Mazarin. One year of imprisonment had cooled him, and in 1651, having recovered his government of Normandy and tasted some few months of that peaceful grandeur, he found it so much to his liking as to be not readily tempted to re-embark upon a stormy course of life at the age of nearly fifty-seven. Reports, only too true, had informed him of what until then he had only surmised imperfectly--the declared _liaison_ of his wife with La Rochefoucauld.

He had been greatly irritated at it, and Conde's enemies, with De Retz at their head, carefully fostered his ill humour, and his daughter, Marie d'Orleans, afterwards d.u.c.h.ess de Nemours, seconded them to the utmost of her power.

She detested her stepmother, whose faults her strong common-sense led her easily to scan, without her own vulgar and commonplace mind being capable of comprehending the d.u.c.h.ess's great qualities. It was impossible less to resemble each other. The one adored grandeur even to the romantic and the chimerical, the other was entirely positive and matter-of-fact, and absorbed with her own interest, especially in those relating to her property. Alienated from the Fronde through the jealous hatred she bore towards her stepmother, who in turn liked her almost as little, and probably also did not take pains enough to manage her, Mademoiselle turned towards the Queen, and strove to gain over her father to the same party. Therein she succeeded by degrees. The Duke de Longueville could not overtly separate himself from Conde, and at first promised him all he required; then he shut himself up in Normandy, and there followed a dubious line of conduct which neither compromised him with the Court party nor that of Conde. But he recalled his wife peremptorily, and sent her a mandate to rejoin him. That mandate was pressing and threatening, and it terrified Madame de Longueville. She knew that her husband had been informed of everything, and that he was wholly given up to the influence of his daughter. She feared ill-treatment; she felt certain at least that once in Normandy she would no more quit it, and that her time would be pa.s.sed between an aged, irritated husband, and an overruling step-daughter, who would apply themselves in concert to retain her in the solitude of a province, and perhaps to make her expiate in confinement her bygone triumphs. The idea of the sorrowful life which awaited her in Normandy produced very nearly the same effect upon her as the thought of a second imprisonment upon the mind of Conde. She sought for a means of avoiding that which was to her the worst of all evils; there was an a.s.sured though dangerous one--war, which would prevent her from repairing to Normandy, under the pretext more or less specious that she could not abandon her brother.

Such was the design she formed within herself and very soon resolved upon adopting, and the fresh negotiations which La Rochefoucauld proposed thwarted her doubly. Should those negotiations prove successful they would deprive her of the only pretext she had for not rejoining her husband in Normandy, and she thought it strange that it was La Rochefoucauld who would expose her to that peril. From that moment doubtless angry explanations took place between them. She perceived that La Rochefoucauld was wearied of his sacrifices, that he wished to reconcile himself with the Court, repair his fortunes, and taste the sweets of peace; whilst in the eyes of the superb princess the paramount consideration with him, for whom she had done so much, ought to have been never to forsake her, should they both together rush to certain ruin. But La Rochefoucauld was no longer wound up to a tone so lofty, worthy of the Great Cyrus and of their chivalrous love of 1648, and the haughty Madame[8] was deeply wounded at the discovery. Nevertheless, she was not insensible to what there was of reasonable in La Rochefoucauld's advice, and not to incur the entire responsibility of the part which her brother might take, she consented to follow her sister-in-law, the Princess de Conde, and her nephew, the Duke d'Enghien, into Berri, one of Conde's governments:--a journey which moreover had the advantage of separating her from her husband. She set out, therefore, on the 18th of July for Bourges, taking with her the elder of her two sons, the younger, Charles de Paris, born in 1649, not being able to bear the fatigue of the journey. M. de Longueville recalled her from Berri as he had from the capital, and he insisted on the return of his son in terms so forcible that she was compelled to comply, so far as the boy was concerned. Thenceforward, being alone and exposing only herself, without breaking with M. de Longueville, and by using all her wit to colour her disobedience, she eluded his orders, remained in Berri, forming in the depth of her heart the most ardent desire for war, but calm in appearance; sometimes accompanying the Princess de Conde to Montrond, at others making somewhat lengthened visits to the Carmelite convent at Bourges. And thus she awaited the issue of the negotiations, counselled and carried on by La Rochefoucauld, which should decide her destiny.

[8] The name she figures under in the _Grand Cyrus_.

La Rochefoucauld must indeed have very earnestly longed to bring to a close the life of fatigue and danger which he had for three years led, to have been able to cherish any illusion as to the success of the steps he was about again to take. Where was the hope of regaining the Fronde which had just been outrageously deceived, after it had given itself to the Prince de Conde in his misfortune, and had extricated him from it?

If La Rochefoucauld thought that the alliance of the Fronde was necessary, he ought to have set about it sooner and at the proper time, persuaded Conde and his sister to keep their word, and sealed the alliance agreed upon between the Prince de Conti and Mademoiselle de Chevreuse. He had not done so; and now that he had allowed a treacherous war to spring up between Conde and the Fronde, by what charm did he think he could suspend it? With the Queen also all negotiation was exhausted and superfluous. An understanding should have been come to with her when she was so disposed, when Conde was all-powerful, when he could either have more readily abased or exalted the Crown: _Tum decuit c.u.m sceptra dabas_. But at the end of August, Conde, embroiled with the Court and with the Fronde, had nothing left save his sword. That was sufficient, doubtless, to make everybody tremble, but was it enough to inspire confidence in anyone? La Rochefoucauld obtained, therefore, on all sides to his advances only very vague responses. The time for negotiation was pa.s.sed irrevocably, and whilst La Rochefoucauld exhausted himself in useless efforts, the Queen and the Fronde concluded a treaty together, with the common design of overwhelming Conde.

This treaty was the work of Mazarin, the masterpiece of his political skill. It authorised the Frondeurs to speak against the Cardinal in parliament for some time forward in order to cover their secret understanding. The hat was a.s.sured to the Coadjutor, high posts and great advantages to the princ.i.p.al friends of Madame de Chevreuse, the first rank in the cabinet given to Chateauneuf, and a solid peace established between Mazarin and the powerful d.u.c.h.ess, under the condition that his nephew Mancini, provided for with the duchy of Nevers or that of Rethelois, should marry Mademoiselle de Chevreuse. The draft of this projected treaty fell into the hands of Conde through the bearer of the paquet in which it was enclosed being in the service of the Marquis de Noirmoutier, and the Prince caused it to be printed in order to ventilate and bring to light the alliance between the Frondeurs, the Queen, and Mazarin. Madame de Motteville, so well informed of everything relating to the Queen and the Cardinal, considers that treaty as perfectly authentic, and she gives the different articles of it, "as the best means for understanding the changes which were made by the Queen immediately after the King's majority."

That majority had been declared on the 7th of September in a _Bed of Justice_, with all the customary pomp. As the first Prince of the blood did not think it possible to be present at it in safety, during that evening the Queen in her indignation had whispered these significant words to De Retz: "Either M. le Prince or I must perish."[9]

[9] Retz, tom. ii. p. 291.

CHAPTER V.

CONDe, URGED BY HIS SISTER, GOES UNWILLINGLY INTO REBELLION.

ANNE OF AUSTRIA now seriously prepared to make head against Conde, and with that intent she rallied round her all the forces of the Fronde united with those of the royal army. In fine, with the firm design of inspiring the Fronde with perfect confidence, at the same time that the nomination of France to the Cardinalate had devolved upon the Coadjutor, the Queen again brought into the cabinet, as a sort of Prime Minister, the statesman of the party, the friend and instrument of Madame de Chevreuse, the aged but ambitious Chateauneuf, with the two-fold engagement to serve Mazarin in secret and to contribute to the utmost of his power to destroy Conde. In such arrangements, let it be thoroughly understood, no one was acting with good faith: De Retz and Chateauneuf in nowise proposed to re-establish Mazarin; Chateauneuf did not dream of making another man's bed, but, once having attained power, he intended to keep it for himself, and Mazarin was firmly resolved to dismiss Chateauneuf as soon as he could. But if these crafty politicians were ready to betray one another in everything else, there was one point on which they were sincerely united--the destruction of Conde. At that they laboured in concert, or rather vied with each other. Queen Anne manifested therein a fervour, a constancy, a marvellous skill, and succeeded in carrying off from Conde the chief supports of his great strength. He saw that war was inevitable, and yet, says Sismondi, he only yielded to it with repugnance. "You will have it so," said Conde at last; "but understand that if I do draw the sword, I shall be the last to return it to the scabbard." It was the women especially who hurried their admirers into the _melee_.

Considering the nomination of the New Cabinet, with Chateauneuf at its head, as a veritable declaration of war, Conde went to Chantilly, and, it is said, had a very narrow escape from falling into an ambuscade which the Court had prepared for him at Pontoise.

He remained for some few days at Chantilly, pensive and agitated in presence of the great resolution he was on the eve of taking. The mediation of the Duke d'Orleans, the only one he could accept, offered no security, the Duke instead of governing the Coadjutor and Madame de Chevreuse, was then governed by them. His individual inclination was to come to an understanding with the Queen and even with Mazarin, as he had very clearly shown. He had continually returned to it; but after so many lying words and odious plots, the execution of which alone was wanting, he thought he would be in a better position to treat solidly with the Court at the head of a powerful and victorious army, than in the midst of wretched intrigues, unworthy of his character, in which he momentarily staked his honour and his life. He never permitted the idea of raising himself above royalty to enter into his mind; he merely thought that to obtain better conditions from it it was necessary to render himself imposing to it, and to make himself feared. That is what was then pa.s.sing in his mind. Civil war inspired him with horror, and we may learn from La Rochefoucauld,[1] who was then in his most intimate confidence, that he long weighed "the consequences of so grave a determination." Let us be chary, therefore, of accusing Conde of levity; let us recognise that insensibly his position had become such that he could neither remain in it nor quit it, in one way or another, save with equal danger.

[1] La Rochefoucauld, p. 76.

Among the different motives which rendered Conde averse to civil war, the pa.s.sion that he had just begun to feel for the d.u.c.h.ess de Chatillon must not be forgotten. We shall return a little further on to this episode in Conde's life. It is sufficient to remark here that it was grievous to him to quit the lovely d.u.c.h.ess, who then was residing very close to Chantilly, in the charming chateau of Merlon or Mello, near Pontoise, the enjoyment of which had been granted to her for life by the old Princess de Conde, Charlotte Marguerite de Montmorency, who expired in her arms at Chatillon-sur-Loing, in December, 1650--a gracious grant, which the Prince, her son, had hastened to ratify with a somewhat interested generosity. Madame de Chatillon had her reasons of more than one kind for being opposed to the war, and in the intimate counsels of the Prince she urged him to an understanding with the Court. In that she made common cause with La Rochefoucauld, and was in open quarrel with Madame de Longueville. Sensible of Conde's pa.s.sion without sharing it, she managed that lofty lover with infinite tact, at the same time that she was deeply enamoured of the young, handsome, and brave Duke Charles Amadeus of Savoy, Nemours,[2] who from his youth and adventurous instincts would have longed for war, and whom she alone, seconded by La Rochefoucauld, retained in the party of peace.

[2] Charles Amadeus had succeeded to the t.i.tle and rank of his elder brother, the Duke de Nemours, one of Conde's intimate friends in youth, who had been killed early in action, even before Rocroy.

Conde had transferred to Charles Amadeus the affection which he bore his brother. The young duke had married the beautiful Madlle. de Vendome, daughter of Duke Caesar, and sister of the Dukes de Mercoeur and Beaufort, and by her he had two daughters who became, one the Queen of Portugal, the other the d.u.c.h.ess of Savoy. At the death of the Duke de Nemours, in 1652, his t.i.tle pa.s.sed to his younger brother Henri de Nemours, Archbishop of Rheims, who then quitted the church, and espoused Madlle. de Longueville, the auth.o.r.ess of the Memoirs.

Everything, however, tended to precipitate Conde towards the fatal resolution. Prudence did not permit him to remain any longer at Chantilly,[3] and it behoved him to place himself beyond the risk of a _coup-de-main_ by withdrawing to his government of Berri, whither he had already sent his son, his wife, and his sister. It was, it is true, the road to Guienne, but he might stop there. All the population was devoted to him, and the tower of Bourges and the strong fortalice of Montrond offered him a safe asylum.

[3] La Rochefoucauld, p. 96.

Conde, even after reaching Berri, still hesitated, not wis.h.i.+ng to take any step before again conferring with his sister, who was then at Montrond with the Princess. There he held a final council, a supreme deliberation, at which Madame de Longueville, Conti, and La Rochefoucauld were present. More than one grave motive urged him to war: the well-founded dread of a.s.sa.s.sination or of a fresh incarceration, the ardent hatred of his enemies, of the Queen and the Fronde, the power of Chateauneuf which certainly had not been given him in vain, the inutility of negotiations with people who seemed decidedly to have taken their choice, the necessity of avoiding the fate of Henri de Guise, the consciousness of his strength so soon as his foot should tread the field of battle, the promises seemingly so sure of the Bouillons and many others. At the same time, his good sense, his loyalty, the scarcely stifled instincts of duty, and his innate aversion for anything which resembled anarchy, restrained him; and in that prolonged and dubious struggle between conflicting feelings, there were others which hurried him onward. Madame de Longueville, the Prince de Conti, La Rochefoucauld also urged him to declare himself against the Court, and Madame de Longueville with more vivacity than anyone else.[4] Conde still resisted, explaining to them all the strength of royalty, the ascendancy of the King's name, the weakness and treachery of factions, the bad faith of Spain. Then concluding by yielding, he addressed them in these memorable words: "You commit me to a strange line of action, of which you will tire sooner than I, and in which you will abandon me." He spoke truly as regarded Conti, and perhaps also La Rochefoucauld; but it remains to be seen whether Madame de Longueville, after having helped to drive her heroic brother into civil war, did not follow him with an inviolable constancy, whether she did not share, even to extremity, the dangers and adversities of the Prince, and whether, during his long exile, she reappeared for a single moment at Court or in those _salons_ of the Louvre and the Palais Royal, which had witnessed her early successes, and in which her wit and beauty still promised her fresh triumphs.

[4] Mad. de Motteville.

CHAPTER VI.

MADAME DE LONGUEVILLE COQUETS WITH THE DUKE DE NEMOURS.

HIS determination to unsheath the sword once taken, Conde put his plans into execution without throwing one glance behind him. Having collected together in Berri his family and chief supporters, he distributed amongst them the several parts they had to play in their common enterprise. After this, accompanied by La Rochefoucauld, he went to take possession of his new government of Guienne, and there raise the standard of insurrection, leaving in Berri his wife and son, his sister, the Prince de Conti, the Duke de Nemours, with the President Viole and others whom he nominated to important functions. He had placed his brother at the head of affairs there, and given the military command to the Duke de Nemours. But the result of these arrangements was disappointing to him. The Duke de Nemours undoubtedly possessed the most brilliant courage, but he had neither the talents nor the steadiness of a general. Still absorbed with his pa.s.sion for Madame de Chatillon, who, as has been said, had long retained him in the party of peace, he found in Berri a counter-attraction in Madame de Longueville who drew him towards that of war; and it would seem that he occupied himself more with paying court to the lovely lady than of raising and arming soldiers and making Berri a focus of resistance, both political and military; for very speedily the Prince de Conti and he were reduced to defend themselves in Bourges instead of being able to operate in the open and make any advance. The new Minister Chateauneuf showed himself worthy of the confidence of Madame de Chevreuse and the Fronde. He made the Queen understand that it was necessary to combat the revolt foot to foot from its very first step, and he persuaded her to march herself with the young King into Berri at the head of a strong army. He n.o.bly inaugurated the new ministry by that measure, which had two objects: the one direct and immediate, to strangle the insurrection at its birth; the other still more important, to set royalty at liberty far from Duke Gaston and the Parliament. The city of Bourges, which had shown so much enthusiasm on Conde's arrival, opened its gates to the King and Chateauneuf. The strong tower which defended the city, offering no resistance, was taken without a blow being struck, and instantly demolished. The Princess de Conde, her son, Madame de Longueville, Conti, and Nemours were forced to take refuge hastily in the citadel of Montrond. On learning that Palluan was advancing on that fortress, Conti and Nemours not wis.h.i.+ng that the precious pledges confided to their charge should incur any risk, left the Marquis de Persan in Montrond, and with what remained to them of their faithful troops escorted the Princess, her son, and Madame de Longueville as far as Guienne, which they reached by the end of the month of October.

It was during that rapid journey and their very brief sojourn in Berri that certain obscure relations, it would appear, were formed between the Duke de Nemours and Madame de Longueville, the report of which reaching Bordeaux, exaggerated probably by interested and malevolent underlings, wounded La Rochefoucauld and drove him to a violent rupture. A loyal and confiding explanation might have sufficed to disperse a cloud, such as at times will obscure the most settled friends.h.i.+ps. La Rochefoucauld brewed a storm out of it which, thanks to his Memoirs, has sent its echoes down to posterity. His separation from Madame de Longueville was marked by an eagerness which excites the suspicion that he had longed for it.[1] He ought at least to have stopped there, but hurried away by an implacable resentment, he accused her, or caused her to be accused by Conde, of having wished to betray his interests to serve those of the Duke de Nemours, giving her even to understand that "if a like prepossession took her for another, she was capable of going to the same extremities if that person desired it."[2] The accusation is yet more absurd than odious. The Duke de Nemours was not the least in the world a party chief; he was a friend of Conde, whose fidelity could only be shaken through his love for Madame de Chatillon. To detach him from Madame de Chatillon was therefore to give him wholly to Conde. Moreover, Madame de Chatillon, like La Rochefoucauld, was for peace, she had won over the Duke de Nemours to it, and both together urged Conde thereto.

To carry off the Duke de Nemours from such conspiracy and to seduce him to the war party, was to serve the interests of Conde like as his sister intended. Thus the princ.i.p.al and the dominant motive of Madame de Longueville's conduct was just the opposite of that which La Rochefoucauld imputed to her. Let us add further that she had always had a rivalry of beauty with Madame de Chatillon, and that her vanity was not sorry to humiliate a rival whom she did not tolerate by depriving her for a few days of a lover of whose attachment the latter fancied herself perfectly secure. Love and the senses had nothing to do with it in this matter. The gratification of the senses, it has already been remarked, did not ensnare her; she was proof against their surprises.

Previously the Duke de Nemours had addressed his ardent homage to her, but all the attractions of his handsome person and his lofty bearing had made no impression upon her, and she only bestowed a thought on the amiable Duke when she had some interest to forward by reviving such conquest. And this is not an opinion hazarded at a venture; it is furnished us by a person thoroughly well informed, and who had no affection for Madame de Longueville; the testimony therefore is the more valuable: "M. de Nemours[3] previously had not much pleased her, and notwithstanding the attachment he appeared to entertain for her, as well as all the good qualities and grand airs of which he could boast, she had found nothing charming about him save the pleasure he showed himself desirous of giving her by abandoning Madame de Chatillon for herself, and that which she had of depriving a woman whom she did not like of a friend of so much consequence." Now how far had this _liaison_ of a few days gone? Bussy is the only contemporary who offers any reply to this question in the cynical light of his _Histoire amoreuse des Gaules_. But who would accept that satire literally? It proves only one thing, the unfortunate notoriety which the imprudence of Madame de Longueville derived from the Memoirs of La Rochefoucauld published in 1662. Before those Memoirs saw the light, not a word is anywhere to be found on a point as obscure as it is delicate. After, Bussy was delighted to repeat La Rochefoucauld, and Madame de Longueville has thus fallen into the scandalous chronicle.

[1] "La Rochefoucauld, depuis a.s.sez longtemps ayant envie de la quitter, prit cette occasion avec joie."--Mad. de Nemours, p. 150.

[2] La Rochefoucauld, edition 1662, p. 198.

[3] Mad. de Nemours, pp. 149, 150.

Let us abstain from defending her; although even we should be convinced that she knew where to stop in that dangerous game of coquetry, she is not the less culpable in our eyes both towards La Rochefoucauld and herself, and we do not hesitate to say that she went so far as to deserve the calumny. Doubtless she was justly hurt by the incert.i.tude of La Rochefoucauld, who, after having plunged her into civil war in 1648 with no other motive than that of his own interest, would have made her abandon it in 1651 through the same motive still; which at one moment impelled her towards the Fronde, at another brought her back to the Court, at the will of his fickle hopes, and linked her with Madame de Chatillon for the purpose of engaging Conde in negotiations the success of which involved their separation and procured her a prison in Normandy. Yes--she had grave cause of complaint against La Rochefoucauld. She might have quitted him, it is true, but not for another. She had only one means of covering, of almost condoning the single error of her life, which was to maintain faithful to it, or to renounce it for virtue and Heaven. And it is just that which Madame de Longueville appears to have done, if that sad and rapid episode had remained unknown; but there is no favourable shade for those personages who appear in the glaring front of the stage of this world; their slightest actions do not escape the formidable light of history: the weakness of a moment is recorded as an irredeemable error against them.

That of Madame de Longueville, fugitive as it may have been, dubious even as it was, sufficed to tarnish a fidelity until then victorious over so many trials; it needed to be atoned for by the sincere conversion which was speedily about to follow it, and by five-and-twenty years of the severest penitence; and still further it forces us to place Anne de Bourbon, in the record of great sentiments and exalted loves, above Heloise and Mademoiselle de la Valliere.

At any rate the a.s.surance is consoling that this error, which we have attempted neither to conceal nor extenuate, is the single one perceptible in the private life of Madame de Longueville. But let us turn aside from these wretched instances of feminine fragility in one of the loftiest minds, in order to follow Conde and the march of events in Guienne.

We will first, however, by a brief retrospect, endeavour to render the s.h.i.+fting phases of the two Fronde wars more capable of being easily followed.

Dating from the arrest of Broussel, nothing could exceed the rapidity of events; the wheel of fortune had turned with such terrific mobility for those of her favourites who sought to attach themselves to it. The revolt had, in fact, broken out on the 26th of August, 1648; in January, 1649, the Court withdrew to Saint Germain, at the risk of never re-entering Paris; in April, the sword of Conde imposed the treaty of Saint Germain, and the King returned in October. Mazarin shortly afterwards believed himself strong enough to arrest, in January, 1650, Conde, Conti, and Longueville. A year after that bold _coup d'etat_ he was himself obliged to flee (February, 1651) from his enemies, and quit France. At the end of eight months, Mazarin returned with an army to the aid of royalty; but it required two years of negotiations, intrigues, and patient waiting, it needed the errors which the indecision of the Duke d'Orleans brought about, the rash violence of Conde, urged onwards by his sister, it required, indeed, the entire ruin of France ere the Cardinal could, after having led the young King by the hand to the very gates of his capital, resume that place in the Louvre which he had sagaciously abandoned.

It is difficult to narrate occurrences in their proper order during this period: intrigues, broken promises, pledges given to two different parties at the same time, such were the smallest misdeeds of all these princes and prelates. As one step further in wrong-doing, they entered into negotiations with the foreigner, and invited armies across the frontier which devastated the provinces. And through what motives? Gondy wished to avenge his former mistress, whom Conti had rejected, and whom an agent of Conde, Maillard the shoemaker, had publicly insulted.

Conde's pretensions were nothing less than dragging at his heels a squad of governors of towns and provinces who, at his summons, would be ever ready to raise the standard of revolt and to impose the will of their leader upon the head of the state, whether Minister, Queen, or King.

Orleans would not yield one jot to his young cousin of the blood-royal, Conde; Madame de Longueville feared the severity of an outraged husband.

The civil war, in forcing her to flee from one end of France to the other, or abroad, could alone delay her return to Normandy, her re-establishment beneath the conjugal roof, towards which she had conceived such an aversion.

Conde accused Gondy in the Parliament chamber of being author of a _factum_ condemning severely the Prince's conduct. La Rochefoucauld, getting Gondy between two doors, treacherously seized, and was about to strangle him, had not the son of the first President, M. de Champlatreux, come to the rescue, at the very moment that one of the bullies in Conde's pay had drawn his dagger to despatch him.

Two days afterwards (17th of September) the King had attained his thirteenth year, and one day beyond; and by the ordonnance of Charles V.

became of age and capable of governing for himself.

A change of ministry--Chateauneuf being recalled to head the Council and Mole to the Seals--deprived Conde of all hope of imposing the conditions of a reconciliation; therefore, as has been said, at a Council held at Chantilly with his chief adherents, Conti, and the Dukes de Nemours and La Rochefoucauld, he determined to set out for Berri. The impartial student who examines the conduct of the Prince de Conde is at this juncture compelled to draw an indictment against him, under pain of belying his conscience and the truth; he must concede that Conde rashly engaged in civil war, and exerted himself to drag France into it, solely because he could not endure any authority above his own. He was desirous of being first in the State, of disposing at will among his creatures of honours, dignities, strongholds, and governments. On such conditions, he would have consented to let Mazarin, Orleans, De Retz, or any other, govern the realm, for the administration of which he felt himself that he had neither the slightest inclination nor the smallest capacity (October, 1651).

The Fronde is reputed, not without reason, to have been one of the most interesting as well as _diverting_ periods in French history; that in which the volatile and frivolous vivacity of the national character shone with irresistible comicality. How striking was the contrast between it in its main features and the great Civil War waged at the same time in our own country! Yet the Fronde had its serious--terrible aspect, too, in the wide-spread misery it entailed upon France, as may be seen from the valuable statistical researches of M. Feillet. That writer cites the following pa.s.sage from the record of an eye-witness of what he describes:[4]--"No tongue can tell, no pen describe, no ear may hear that which we have seen (at Rheims, Chalons, Rethel, &c). Famine and death on all sides, and bodies unburied. Those remaining alive pick up from the fields the rotten oat-straw, and make bread of it by mixing it with mud. Their faces are quite black; they have no longer the semblance of human beings, but that of phantoms.... War has placed every one on an equality; n.o.bility lies upon straw, dares not beg, and dies.... Even lizards are eaten, and dogs which have been dead perhaps some eight days.... Moreover, in Picardy, a band of five hundred children, orphans, and under seven years of age, was met with. In Lorraine, the famished nuns quitted their convents and became mendicants: the poor creatures gave themselves up to be dishonoured for the sake of a morsel of bread. No pity, no remorse. An execrable and sanguinary war upon the weak. In the heart of the city of Rheims, a beautiful girl was chased from street to street for ten days by the licentious soldiery; and as they could not catch her, they killed her by shooting her down. In the vicinity of Angers, Alais, and Condom, upon all the highways of Lorraine, women and children were indiscriminately outraged, and left to die drenched in their blood."