[6] Archives des Affaires etrangeres; FRANCE, tom. cii. Inedited Memoir of Richelieu.

But what _was_ the party in fact then conspiring against Richelieu? Was it not the party of former coalitions--of the League, of Austria, and of Spain? And Mdme. Chevreuse at Brussels, through her connection with the Duke de Lorraine, the Queen of England, the Chevalier de Jars at Rome, the Minister Olivarez at Madrid--was she not one of the great motive powers of that party? When, therefore, such machinery was found to be again in activity, it was quite reasonable to suspect the hand of Mdme.

de Chevreuse in all its movements.

The gathering cloud that now lowered so thick and threatening above the head of Richelieu seemed pregnant with inevitable destruction to his power and life. But ere long his eagle glance pierced through the overshadowing gloom, and the aim of Cinq Mars' dark intrigue became clearly revealed to his far-seeing introspection. A treachery, the secret of which has remained impenetrable to every research made during the last two centuries, caused the treaty concluded with Spain through the intervention of Fontrailles, and bearing the signatures of Gaston, Cinq Mars, and the Duke de Bouillon, to fall into his hands. From that instant the Cardinal felt certain of victory. He knew Louis XIII.

thoroughly; he conjectured that he might in some access of his morbid and changeful humour have uttered reproachful words against his Minister in the favourite's ear--even expressed a wish to be rid of him, as did our first Plantagenet when tired of the despotism of Thomas a Becket--and had perhaps listened to strange proposals for effecting such object. But the Cardinal knew right well also to what extent Louis was a king and a Frenchman, and devoted by self-interest to their common system. He despatched, therefore, Chavigny in all haste from Narbonne with irrefragable evidence of the treaty made with Spain. Louis, thunderstricken, could scarcely believe his own eyes. He sank into a gloomy reverie, out of which he emerged only to give way to bursts of indignation against the favourite who could thus abuse his confidence and conspire with the foreigner. It was needless to inflame his anger, he was the first to call for an exemplary punishment. Not for a day, not for an hour, did his heart soften towards the youthful culprit who had been so dear to him. He thought only of his crime, and signed without an instant's hesitation his death-warrant. If Louis the Just spared the Duke de Bouillon, it was merely to acquire Sedan. If he pardoned his brother Gaston, he at the same time dishonoured him by depriving him of all authority in the State. Upon a report spread by a servant of Fontrailles, and which Fontrailles' memoirs fully confirm, his suspicions were directed towards the Queen; and no one afterwards could divest his mind of the conviction that in this instance, as in the affair of Chalais, Anne of Austria had an understanding with his brother, the Duke d'Orleans. What would he have done had he perused the statement of Fontrailles, the Duke de Bouillon's memoirs, a letter of Turenne, and the declaration of La Rochefoucauld? Their united testimony is so concordant that it is altogether irresistible. The Queen racked her brains to exorcise this fresh storm, and to persuade the King and Richelieu of her innocence. Anne went much farther; she did not confine herself to falsehood and dissimulation. Menaced by imminent danger, she went so far as to repudiate that courageous friend who had been so long and steadfastly devoted to her. Had fortune declared in her favour she would have embraced the d.u.c.h.ess as a deliverer. Vanquished and disarmed, she abandoned her. As she had protested in terms of horror against the conspiracy that had failed, her two young, imprudent, and ill-starred accomplices, Cinq Mars and De Thou, mounted the scaffold without breathing her name. Finding also both the King and Richelieu violently exasperated against Mdme. de Chevreuse, and firmly resolved to reject the renewed entreaties of her family to obtain her recall, Anne of Austria, far from interceding for her faithful adherent, warmly sided with her enemies; and further, to indicate the change in her own sentiments, and seem to applaud that which she could not prevent, she asked as an especial favour that the d.u.c.h.ess might be estranged from her person, and even from France. "The Queen," wrote Chavigny, Richelieu's Minister for Foreign Affairs, "has pointedly asked me if it were true that Mdme. de Chevreuse would return; and, without waiting for a reply, she signified to me that she should be vexed to find her presently in France; that she now saw the d.u.c.h.ess in her proper light; and she commanded me to pray His Eminence on her part, if he had any mind to favour Mdme. de Chevreuse, that it might be done without granting her permission to return to France. I a.s.sured her Majesty that she should have satisfaction on that point."[7]

[7] Archives des Affaires etrangeres, FRANCE, tom. CI.

Poor Marie de Rohan! Her heart already bled from many wounds, but this last was the "unkindest cut of all." Her position had indeed become frightful, and calculated to sink her to the lowest depth of despair. No hope of seeing her native land again, her princely chateau, her children, her favourite daughter Charlotte! Deriving scarcely anything from France, deeply in debt, and with credit exhausted, she found herself entirely at the end of her resources. How thoroughly did the banished woman then realise the woes of exile--how hard it is to climb and descend the stranger's stair, experience the hollowness of his promise, and the arrogance of his commiseration. And, finally, as though fated to drain her cup of bitterness to the last drop, to learn that she, her long-loved bosom friend and royal mistress, who owed her, at the very least, a silent fidelity, had openly ranged herself on the side of fortune and Richelieu!

In a condition of mental torture the most acute, resulting from such acc.u.mulated misfortune, Madame de Chevreuse remained for several months with no other support than that of her innate high-souled courage. At length, towards the close of that eventful year, the golden grooves of change rung out a joyous paean to gladden the heart of the much-enduring exile. Suddenly Marie--all Europe--heard with a throb that the inscrutable, iron-handed man of all the human race most dreaded alike by States as by individuals, had yielded to a stronger power than his own, and had closed his eyes in death (December 4, 1642). Within a few short months afterwards the King also, whose regal power he had consolidated at such a cost in blood and suffering, followed the great statesman to the tomb; having entrusted the Regency, very much against his will, to the Queen, but controlled by a Council, over which presided as Prime Minister the man most devoted to Richelieu's system--his closest friend, confidant, and creature--Jules Mazarin.

A pa.s.sage in the funeral oration on Louis XIII. summed up briefly but significantly the result of Richelieu's gigantic efforts to consolidate the regal power. "Sixty-three kings," it said, "had preceded him in rule of the realm, but he alone had rendered it absolute, and what all collectively had been impotent to achieve in the course of twelve centuries for the grandeur of France, he had accomplished in the short s.p.a.ce of thirty-three years." It was against that absolute power incarnate in Richelieu, which from the steps of the throne hurled men to the earth with its bolts rather than governed them, that Mazarin was destined later to encounter the reaction of the Fronde.

Distrustful of leaving Anne of Austria in uncontrolled possession of regal authority, Louis by his last will and testament had placed royalty, including his brother Gaston as lieutenant-general of the realm, in a manner under a commission. And further, Louis did not believe that he could ensure quiet to the State after his death without confirming and perpetuating, so far as in him lay, the perpetual exile of Madame de Chevreuse.

As the pupil and confidential friend of Richelieu, Mazarin had imbibed both that statesman's and the late king's opinions and sentiments touching the influence of that eminently dangerous woman. Though he had never seen her hitherto, he was not the less well acquainted with her by repute: dreading her mortally, and cherishing a like antipathy to her friend Chateauneuf. He knew the d.u.c.h.ess to be as seductive as she was talented, experienced and courageous in party strife--an instance of which was that she could sway entirely a man of such ambition and capacity as the former Keeper of the Seals. Attached, moreover, in secret to Lorraine, to Austria, and to Spain, all this was as absolutely incompatible with the exclusive favour to which he aspired at the hands of his royal mistress as it was with all his diplomatic and military designs. The solemn injunctions of the late king's will, while denouncing Madame de Chevreuse and Chateauneuf as the two most ill.u.s.trious victims of the close of his reign, embodied also the heads of the policy which it was that monarch's wish should be continued by Richelieu's successor. "Forasmuch," ran the will, "that for weighty reasons, important to the welfare of our State, we found ourselves compelled to deprive the Sieur de Chateauneuf of the post of Keeper of the Seals of France, and have him sent to the Castle of Angouleme, in which he has remained by our command up to the present time, we will and intend that the said Sieur de Chateauneuf remain in the same state in which he is at present, in the said Castle of Angouleme, until after the peace be concluded and executed; under charge, nevertheless, that he shall not then be set at liberty save by the order of the Queen-Regent, under the advice of her Council, which shall appoint a place to which he shall retire, within the realm or without the realm, as may be judged best. And as our design is to take foresight of all such subjects as may possibly in some way or other disturb the precautionary arrangements which we have made to preserve the repose and safety of our realm, the knowledge that we have of the bad conduct of the Lady d.u.c.h.ess de Chevreuse, of the artifices which she has employed up to this moment without the kingdom with our enemies, made us judge it fitting to forbid her, as we do, entrance into our kingdom during the war: desiring even that after the peace be concluded and executed she may not return into our kingdom, save only under the orders of the said Lady Queen-Regent, with the advice of the said Council, under charge, nevertheless, that she shall not either take up her abode or be in any place near to the Court or to the said Queen-Regent."

Within a few days only after the decease of Louis XIII. that same Parliament which had enrolled his will reformed it. The Queen-Regent was freed from every fetter and restriction, and invested with almost absolute sovereignty; the ban was removed from the proscribed couple so solemnly denounced, Chateauneuf's prison doors were thrown open, and Madame de Chevreuse quitted Brussels triumphantly, with a cortege of twenty carriages, filled with lords and ladies of the highest rank in that Court, to return once more to France and to the side of her royal friend and mistress.

CHAPTER IV.

RETURN OF MADAME DE CHEVREUSE TO COURT.

AFTER ten years' absence from the scene of her former triumphs, social and political, did the brilliant d.u.c.h.ess then once more find herself safe and free in France. The _Gazette de Renaudot_--the _Moniteur_ of that day--recording the return of Madame de Chevreuse, on the 14th of June, 1643, remarks[1]:--"During such long exile, this princess has manifested what an elevated mind like hers can do, in spite of all those vicissitudes of fortune which her constancy has surmounted. The d.u.c.h.ess went to pay homage to their Majesties, during which visit she received so many tokens of affection from the Queen-Regent, and gave her in return such proofs of her zeal in everything relating to her service, and so much resignation to her will, that it indeed appears that length of time, distance, or th.o.r.n.y asperities can only prevail over common minds. Hence the great train of visitors from this Court to her daily, and for which her s.p.a.cious hotel scarcely affords room, does not excite so much wonder as the fact which has been the subject of remark, that the fatigue consequent upon long journeys and the rigour of adverse fortune have worked no change in her magnanimity, nor--which is the more extraordinary--in her beauty."

[1] No. lxxvii. p. 579.

Making due allowance for the inflated diction of the complaisant Court newswriter, let us endeavour to approach somewhat nearer to the truth.

Madame de Chevreuse had then entered upon her forty-third year. Though still surprisingly well-preserved, her beauty, tried by adversity, was visibly on the decline. The inclination to gallantry still existed, but subdued, politics having gained the supremacy. She had formed the acquaintance of, and held political relations with, the most celebrated statesmen in Europe. She had figured at almost all its Courts, the strength and weakness of its several Governments were known to her, and in her wanderings, having seen "men and cities," she had acquired a large experience. The tried favourite hoped to find Anne of Austria the same as she had left her--averse to business, and very willing to allow herself to be led by those for whom she had a particular affection; and as Madame de Chevreuse had been in her youthful days paramount in the Queen's affection, she fully expected to exercise over her that twofold ascendancy which love and capacity would jointly give. More ambitious for her friends than for herself, she saw them already rewarded for their long sacrifices, replacing everywhere the creatures of Richelieu, and at their head, in the highest post, as first minister, him who for her sake had broken with the triumphant Cardinal, and had endured an imprisonment of ten tedious years. She did not care much about Mazarin, with whom she had no acquaintance, whom she had never seen, and who appeared to her unsupported either by the Court or the French nation, whilst she felt herself sustained by all that was ill.u.s.trious, powerful, and accredited therein. She believed that she could make sure of the Duke d'Orleans through his wife, the beautiful Margaret, sister of Charles of Lorraine. She could dispose almost at will of the Houses of Rohan and Lorraine, particularly of the Duke de Guise and the Duke d'Elbeuf, like herself just returned from Flanders. She reckoned upon the Vendomes, upon the Duke d'Epernon, upon La Vieuville, her old companions in exile in England; upon the ill-treated Bouillons, upon La Rochefoucauld, whose disposition and pretensions were so well known to her; upon Lord Montagu, who had been her slave, and at that moment possessed the entire confidence of Anne of Austria; upon La Chatre, the friend of the Vendomes, and Colonel-General of the Swiss Guards; upon Treville, upon Beringhen, upon Jars, upon La Porte, who were all emerging from exile, prison, and disgrace. Among the women, her young stepmother and her sister-in-law seemed secure--Madame de Montbazon and Madame de Guemene, the two greatest beauties of the time, who drew after them a numerous crowd of old and young adorers. She knew also that among the first acts of the Regent had been the recall to her side of the two n.o.ble victims of Richelieu--Madame de Senece and Madame de Hautefort, whose virtue and piety had conspired so beneficially with other influences, and had given them an inestimable weight in the household of Anne of Austria. All those calculations seemed accurate, all those hopes well-founded; and Madame de Chevreuse left Brussels firmly persuaded that she was about to re-enter the Louvre as a conqueress. She deceived herself: the Queen was already changed, or very nearly so.

To show due honour to her former favourite, however, Anne of Austria despatched La Rochefoucauld to greet and escort her homewards; but before he set out she charged him to inform the d.u.c.h.ess of the altered disposition in which she would find her royal mistress. During that audience Rochefoucauld did his utmost to reinstate his charming friend and close ally in the Queen's good graces. "I spoke to her," says he, "with more freedom perhaps than was becoming. I set before her Madame de Chevreuse's fidelity, her long-continued services, and the severity of the misfortunes which they had entailed upon her. I entreated her to consider of what fickleness she would be thought capable, and what interpretation might be placed upon such inconsiderateness if she should prefer Cardinal Mazarin to Madame de Chevreuse. Our conversation was long and stormy, and I saw clearly that I had exasperated her." He then started to meet the d.u.c.h.ess on the road from Brussels, and found her at Roye, whither Montagu had already preceded him. Montagu had travelled to Roye to place Mazarin's homage at the feet of Madame de Chevreuse, with the view of bringing about at any cost an union and ident.i.ty of policy between the old and the new favourite. He was no longer the gay and sprightly Walter Montagu, the friend of Holland and Buckingham, the enamoured knight ever ready to break a lance against all comers for a glance of the bright eyes of Madame de Chevreuse. Time had changed him as well as others: he had become a bigot and a devotee, and already contemplated taking orders in the Church of Rome. He still remained, however, attached to the object of his former adoration, but above all he belonged to the Queen, and consequently resigned to Mazarin. La Rochefoucauld--ever ready to ascribe to himself the chief share in any undertaking in which he figured, as well as the character of a great politician--a.s.serts that he entreated Madame de Chevreuse not to attempt at first to govern the Queen, but to endeavour solely to regain in Anne's mind and heart that place of which it had been sought to deprive her, and to put herself in a position in which she would be able to protect or ruin the Cardinal, according to conduct or circ.u.mstances emanating from himself.

The d.u.c.h.ess listened attentively to the advice of both her old friends, promised to follow it, and did so in fact, but in her own peculiar way, and in that of the interest of the party she had so long served, and which she would not abandon. As Anne of Austria seemed much pleased at seeing the n.o.ble wanderer again, and gave her a warm reception, Marie did not perceive any difference in the Queen's sentiments, and flattered herself that by constant a.s.siduousness she would ere long resume that sway over the Regent's mind she had formerly exercised.

Operating against this not unreasonable expectation of Madame de Chevreuse, Mazarin had a silent but potent ally in the newly-awakened inclination of Anne for repose and a tranquil life. The first draughts of almost supreme power tasted by the long-oppressed Queen were not yet embittered by faction and anarchy. In bygone days, insult, neglect, and persecution had stirred her at intervals into mental activity, and urged her upon dangerous courses; but now, having obtained all she aimed at, happy, and beginning to form attachments, she entertained a dread of troublesome adventures and hazardous enterprises. She therefore feared Madame de Chevreuse quite as much as she loved her. The astute Cardinal anxiously strove to foster such distrust. He looked for support from the Princess de Conde, then high in the Queen's favour, both through her own merit as well as that of the Prince her husband, but more than all through the brilliant exploits of her son, the Duke d'Enghien; through the services also of her son-in-law the Duke de Longueville, who had, with honourable distinction, commanded the armies of Italy and Germany, and by her recently-married daughter, Madame de Longueville, already the darling of the _salons_ and the Court. The Princess, like Queen Anne, had in the heyday of her beauty been fond of homage and gallantry, but had now grown serious, and displayed a somewhat lively piety. She held Madame de Chevreuse in aversion, and detested Chateauneuf, who, in 1632, at Toulouse, had presided at the trial and condemnation of her brother, Henri de Montmorency. She therefore had striven, in concert with Mazarin, to destroy or at least weaken Madame de Chevreuse's hold upon the Queen. Armed with the last will of Louis XIII., they had made it appear something like a fault in the Queen's eyes to disregard it so soon and so entirely. They had given her to understand that former days and a.s.sociations could never return; that the amus.e.m.e.nts and pa.s.sions of early youth were but "evil accompaniments"[2] of a later period of life; that now she was before all things a mother and a Queen; that Madame de Chevreuse, dissipated and carried away by pa.s.sion, and cherishing the same inclination for gallantry and idle vanity as. .h.i.therto, was no longer worthy of her confidence; that she had brought good fortune to no one; and that in lavishing wealth and honour upon the d.u.c.h.ess the debt of grat.i.tude she owed her would be sufficiently discharged.

[2] Madame de Motteville, tom. i. p. 162.--"Mauvais accompagnements."

BOOK II.

CHAPTER I.

ANNE OF AUSTRIA'S PRIME MINISTER AND HIS POLICY.

AND now what was the actual position of Mazarin on succeeding to power in 1643?

Richelieu had died admired and abhorred. The people, glad to be delivered from so heavy a yoke, obeyed with joy the incipient rule of the Queen-Regent. The courtiers were at first enchanted with a Government that refused nothing asked of it. It appeared, as one of the number said, that there were no more than five little words in the French language: "_La reine est si bonne!_"[1] The State prisons threw open their gates; the rights of parliaments were respected; the princes of the blood and the great n.o.bles were restored to their governorships.

There was for a season one unanimous concert of praise and thanksgiving.

But when the princes and parliaments were desirous, as before Richelieu's rule, of partic.i.p.ating in the general direction of the State, and especially in the distribution of place and patronage, great was the surprise of both at finding a steady resistance on the part of the Queen-Regent. To see her manifest a disposition to govern without them was looked upon as something scandalous. Every attempt she made thenceforward to retain a power which they evaded, or to repossess herself of that which she had imprudently suffered to escape from her grasp, seemed to them nothing less than a continuation of the odious system of Richelieu. Their exasperation was increased to the highest degree, therefore, when they beheld her give her entire confidence to a foreigner, to a Cardinal, to a creature of Richelieu. By that triple t.i.tle Mazarin was equally hateful to the great n.o.bles, the members of parliament, and the middle cla.s.s. The tyranny of Richelieu had in the end attained to something n.o.ble by the high-handed heedlessness of all his acts. If the people were to be trampled on, it was a species of consolation that their oppressor was feared by others as well as themselves. But that the oppression of the doomed French nation was to be continued by a more ign.o.ble hand was altogether intolerable.

Frenchmen had begun to ask one another, who _was_ this Mazarin who had come to rule over them? He could not--like Richelieu--boast of his high birth, of descent from a long line of n.o.ble ancestors--Frenchmen. Poets and romancers, ye whose imaginations delight to dwell upon sudden downfalls and rapid rises, mark well that little lad at play upon the Sicilian sh.o.r.e near the town of Mazzara! Springing from the lowest of the plebeian cla.s.s, his family have not even a surname. He is the son of one Pierre, a fisherman, whose humble hut stands yonder beneath the cliff. But a day will come when that lowly-born lad, joining his baptismal name to that of the town which sheltered his cradle, will become Jules de Mazarin, robed in the Roman purple, quartering his shield with the consular fasces of Julius Caesar, governing France, and through her preparing and influencing the destinies of entire Europe.

[1] De Retz Memoirs, Pet.i.tot Collection.

It was not, however, by easy steps that Richelieu's disciple and successor obtained a firm grasp of that plenary power which the master mind of the former had consolidated and long wielded so grandly and terribly. The Queen herself at the commencement of the Regency had not yet renounced her former friendships. During a considerable portion of her married life Anne had impatiently endured the slights and disparagements to which she was so long subjected, both by her husband and his Minister. Through engaging in divers dangerous and unsuccessful enterprises, she had been deprived of all influence, and was a queen only in name. But, a woman and a Spaniard, she had descended to dissimulation, and in that "ugly but necessary virtue"[2] made rapid progress. Up to the time of Richelieu's death she had played a double game--made partisans in secret, with the object of subverting the Cardinal's power, whilst feigning the semblance of friendship towards him, and did not scruple to humiliate herself on occasions, in order to carry her point. After that great man's decease, through rare patience, great caution, and a persistent line of conduct, she ultimately attained that for which she had been willing to make any and every sacrifice--the Regency. During the King's last illness, the mistrusted Queen and wife had profited by Mazarin's unhoped-for service, as Prime Minister, in prevailing over the unwillingness of the dying King to appoint her custodian of his son, and Regent during his minority. She regarded this, therefore, as a first and most important service on the part of Mazarin towards her, and for which she felt proportionately grateful. Such was the Cardinal's first stepping-stone to the good graces of Anne of Austria, and his twofold talent both as a laborious and indefatigable statesman and a consummate courtier, speedily helped to secure for him her entire confidence. The singular personal resemblance he bore to that desperate _enamorado_ of her early womanhood, the brilliant Buckingham, may probably also have served him as a favourable prestige. On her accession to power Anne did not manifest much firmness of character.

Naturally indolent, she disliked the drudgery attendant upon business details, and hence continued through convenience the services of a man who, by taking off her hands the wearisome routine of State affairs, allowed her to reign at her ease.

[2] Madame de Motteville.

Mazarin, moreover, had never been displeasing to her. He had begun to ingratiate himself during the month preceding the death of Louis XIII.,[3] and she named him Prime Minister about the middle of May--partly through personal liking, but more through political necessity. Far from appearing to resemble the impa.s.sive and imperious Richelieu, Anne perhaps might have recalled with agreeable emotion the words of her deceased consort when he first presented Mazarin to her (in 1639 or 1640)--"He will please you, madame, because he bears a striking resemblance to Buckingham." By degrees the liking increased, and grew sufficiently strong to resist every a.s.sault from his enemies. At the same time the Minister to whom the Queen owed so much, instead of dictating to and presuming to govern her, was ever at her feet, and prodigal of that attention, respect, and tenderness to which she had been hitherto a stranger.

[3] Louis died May 14th, 1643.

It is a delicate matter to investigate with exact.i.tude the means by which Mazarin obtained entire sway over the Queen-Regent, and one which La Rochefoucauld scarcely touches upon; but it is too interesting a point in history to be left in the dark, and thereby to altogether disregard that which first const.i.tuted the minister's strength, and soon afterwards became the centre and key of the situation. After a long season of oppression, regal powers and splendour gilded the hours of Anne of Austria, and her Spanish pride exacted the tribute of respect and homage. Mazarin was prodigal of both. He cast himself at her feet in order to reach her heart. In her heart of hearts she was not the less touched by the grave accusation brought against him that he was a foreigner, for was not she also a foreigner? Perhaps that of itself proved the source of a mysterious attraction to her, and she may have found it a singular pleasure to converse with her Prime Minister in her mother tongue as a compatriot and friend. To all this must be added the mind and manners of Mazarin--supple and insinuating, always master of himself, of an unchangeable serenity amidst the gravest circ.u.mstances, full of confidence in his good star, and diffusing that confidence around him. It must also be remembered that Cardinal although he was, Mazarin was not a priest; that imbued with the maxims which formed the code of gallantry of her native land, Anne of Austria had always loved to please the other s.e.x; that she was then forty-one and still beautiful, that her Prime Minister was of the same age, that he was exceedingly well-made and of a most pleasing countenance, in which _finesse_, was blended with a certain air of greatness. He had readily recognised that without ancestry, establishment, or support in France, and surrounded by rivals and enemies, all his strength centred in the Queen. He applied himself therefore above all things to gain her heart, as Richelieu had tried before him; and as he happily possessed far other means for attaining success in that respect, the handsome and gentle-mannered Cardinal eventually succeeded. Once master of her heart, he easily directed the mind of Anne of Austria, and taught her the difficult art of pursuing ever the same end by the aid of conduct the most diverse, according to the difference of circ.u.mstances.

But favourable and indeed gracious as his royal mistress had shown herself towards him personally, and apart from any particular line of policy, at the outset of his premiership Mazarin had nevertheless to contend against a formidable host of enemies; and not the least redoubtable among them might be reckoned that intrepid political heroine the lately-banished d.u.c.h.ess de Chevreuse. No sooner did she again find herself at the side of Anne of Austria than the indefatigable Marie set to work with all her characteristic dash, spirit, and energy to attack Richelieu's system and its adherents, now directed by Mazarin.

The first point she sought to carry was the return of Chateauneuf to office. "The good sense and long experience of M. de Chateauneuf," says La Rochefoucauld, "were known to the Queen. He had undergone a rigorous imprisonment for his adhesion to her cause; he was firm, decisive, loved the State, and more capable than anyone else of re-establishing the old form of government which Richelieu had first begun to destroy. Firmly attached to Mdme. de Chevreuse, she knew sufficiently-well how to govern him. She therefore urged his return with much warmth." Chateauneuf had already obtained as a royal boon that the "rude and miserable condition"

of close incarceration under which he had groaned for ten years should be changed for a compulsory residence at one of his country houses.

Mdme. de Chevreuse demanded the termination of this mitigated exile, that she might once more behold him free who had endured such extremities for the Queen's sake and her own. Mazarin saw that he must yield, but only did so tardily, never appearing himself to repulse Chateauneuf, but always alleging the paramount necessity of conciliating the Conde family, and especially the Princess, who, as already said, bore bitter enmity towards him as the judge of her brother, Henri de Montmorency. Chateauneuf was therefore recalled, but with that reservation accorded to the last clause of the King's will, that he should not appear at Court, but reside at his own house of Montrouge, near Paris, where his friends might visit him.

The next step was to transfer him thence to some ministerial office.

Chateauneuf was no longer a young man, but neither his energy nor his ambition had deserted him, and Mdme. de Chevreuse made it a point of honour to reinstate him in the post of Keeper of the Seals, which he had formerly held and lost through her, and which all Queen Anne's old friends now saw with indignation occupied by one of the most detested of Richelieu's creatures, Pierre Seguier. This last, however, was a man of capacity--laborious, well-informed and full of resources. To these qualifications he added a remarkable suppleness, which made him very useful and accommodating to a Prime Minister. He moreover had the support of friends who stood high in the Queen's favour, and was further strengthened by the opposition of the Condes and the Bishop of Beauvais to Chateauneuf. The d.u.c.h.ess perceiving that it was almost impossible to surmount so powerful an opposition, took another way of arriving at the same end. She contented herself with asking for the lowest seat in the cabinet for her friend; well knowing that once installed therein, Chateauneuf would soon manage all the rest and aggrandise his position.

At the same time that she strove to extricate from disgrace the man upon whom rested all her political hopes, Madame de Chevreuse, not daring to attack Mazarin overtly, insensibly undermined the ground beneath his feet, and step by step prepared his ruin. Her experienced eye enabled her promptly to perceive the most favourable point of attack whence to a.s.sail the Queen, and the watchword she pa.s.sed was to fan and keep alive to the utmost the general feeling of reprobation which all the proscribed, on returning to France, had aroused and disseminated against the memory of Richelieu. This feeling was universal--among the great families he had decimated or despoiled;--in the Church, too firmly repressed not to be unmindful of its abas.e.m.e.nt;--in the Parliament, strictly confined to its judicial functions, and aspiring to break through such narrow limits. The same feeling was still alive in the Queen's bosom, who could not have forgotten the deep humiliation to which Richelieu had subjected her, and the fate for which he had probably reserved her. These tactics succeeded, and on every side there arose against the late violence and tyranny, and, by a rebound, against the creatures of Richelieu, a storm so furious that Mazarin's utmost ability was taxed to allay it.

Madame de Chevreuse likewise supplicated Anne of Austria to repair the long-endured misfortunes of the Vendome princes, by bestowing upon them either the Admiralty, to which an immense power was attached, or the government of Brittany, which the head of the family, Caesar de Vendome, had formerly held--deriving it alike from the hand of his father, Henry IV., and as the heritage of his father-in-law, the Duke de Mercoeur.

This was nothing less than demanding the aggrandis.e.m.e.nt of an unfriendly house, and at the same time the ruin of two families that had served Richelieu with the utmost devotion, and were best capable of supporting Mazarin. The Minister parried the blow aimed at him by the d.u.c.h.ess by dint of address and patience, never refusing, always eluding, and summoning to his aid his grand ally, as he termed it--Time. Before the return of Madame de Chevreuse he had found himself forced to win over the Vendomes, and to secure them in his interest. On Richelieu's death he had strenuously contributed to obtain their recall, and had since made them every kind of advance; but he soon perceived that he could not satisfy them without bringing about his own destruction. The Duke Caesar de Vendome, son of Henry IV. and _The Fair Gabrielle_, had early carried his pretensions to a great height, and had shown himself restless and factious as a legitimate prince. He had pa.s.sed his life in revolts and conspiracies, and in 1641 had been compelled to flee to England through suspicion of being implicated in an attempt to a.s.sa.s.sinate Richelieu. He did not dare return to France until after the Cardinal's death; and, as may well be imagined, he came back breathing the direst vengeance.

Against the ambition of the Vendomes Mazarin skilfully opposed that of the Condes, who were inimical to the aggrandis.e.m.e.nt of a house too nearly rivalling their own. But it was very difficult to retain Brittany in the hands of its newly-appointed governor, the Marshal La Meilleraie, in face of the claim of a son of Henry the Great, who had formerly held it, and demanded it back as a sort of heirloom. Mazarin therefore resigned himself to the sacrifice of La Meilleraie, but he lightened it as much as possible. He persuaded the Queen to a.s.sume to herself the government of Brittany, and have only a lieutenant-general over it--a post, of course, beneath the dignity of the Vendomes, and which would, therefore, remain in La Meilleraie's hands. The latter could not take offence at being second in power therein to the Queen; and to arrange everything to the entire satisfaction of a person of such importance, Mazarin solicited for him soon afterwards the t.i.tle of duke, which the deceased King had, in fact, promised the Marshal, and the reversion of the post of Grand Master of the Artillery for his son--that same son on whom subsequently Mazarin bestowed, with his own name, the hand of his niece, the beautiful Hortense.

Mazarin was so much the less inclined to favour the house of Vendome from having encountered a dangerous rival in the Queen's good graces, in Vendome's youngest son, Beaufort, a young, bold, and flourishing gallant, who displayed ostentatiously all the exterior signs of loyalty and chivalry, and affected for Anne of Austria a pa.s.sionate devotion not likely to be displeasing. "He was tall, well-made, dexterous, and indefatigable in all warlike exercises," says La Rochefoucauld, "but artificial withal, and wanting in truthfulness of character. Mentally he was heavy and badly cultivated; nevertheless he attained his objects cleverly enough through the blunt coa.r.s.eness of his manners. He was of high but unsteady courage, and was not a little envious and malignant."[4] De Retz does not, like La Rochefoucauld, accuse Beaufort of artificiality, but represents him as presumptuous and of thorough incapacity. His portrait of him, though over-coloured, like most others from the coadjutor's pen, is sufficiently faithful, but at the commencement of the Regency, the defects of the Duke de Beaufort had not fully declared themselves, and were less conspicuous than his good qualities. Some few days before her husband's death, Anne of Austria had placed her children under his charge--a mark of confidence that so elated him that the young Duke conceived hopes which his impetuosity hindered him from sufficiently disguising. Indeed, these were presumed upon so far as to give offence to the Queen; and, as the height of inconsistency, he committed at the same time the egregious folly of publicly enacting the led-captain in the rosy chains of the handsome but decried d.u.c.h.ess de Montbazon. It was only, however, by slow degrees that the Queen's liking for him abated. At first, she had proposed to confer upon him the post of Grand-ecuyer, vacant since the death of the unfortunate Cinq-Mars, which would have kept him in close attendance upon her, and was altogether a fitting appointment--for Beaufort had nothing of the statesman in him; with little intellect and no reticence, he was also averse to steady application to business, and capable only of some bold and violent course of action. The Duke had the folly to refuse this post of Grand-ecuyer, hoping for a better; and then, altering his mind when it was too late, he solicited it only to incur disappointment.[5] The more his favour diminished, the more his irritation increased, and it was not long ere he placed himself at the head of the Cardinal's bitterest enemies.

[4] La Rochefoucauld.

[5] Mazarin himself has furnished this fact, otherwise unknown, in one of his diaries (_Carnet_, pp. 72, 73). The Cardinal-Minister was in the habit of jotting down the chief events of each day in these small memorandum books (_Carnets_), which he kept in the pocket of his ca.s.sock.