La Grande Mademoiselle

Richelieu was the real ruler of France. Ranke, who used his relations with ambassadors as a means for increasing his store of personal and political data, said:

Dating our observations from the year 1629, we see a crowd of soldiers and other attentive people thronging Richelieu's house and even standing in the doors of his apartments. When he passes in his litter he is saluted respectfully; one kneels, another presents a petition, a third tries to kiss his vestments; all are happy who succeed in obtaining a glance from him. It is as if all the business of the country were already in his hands; he has assumed the highest responsibilities ever borne by a subject…

As time went on his success augmented his power. He lived in absolute seclusion at Rueil. He was difficult of approach, and if an ambassador succeeded in gaining admission to his presence it was because he had been able to prove that he had something to communicate to Richelieu which it was of essential interest to the State, or to the Cardinal personally, to know. All the national business was in his hands. He was the centre of all State interests, the King frequently attended his councils. If Richelieu visited the King he was surrounded by a guard; he hired his guard himself, selecting his men with great care and paying them out of his own pocket, so that he might feel that he was safe from his enemies even in the King's presence.

The officers of his personal service were numerous, young and very exalted nobles. His stables were in keeping with his importance; and his house was more magnificent and his table better served than the King's. When in Paris he lived in the Palais Cardinal (now the Palais Royal) surrounded by princely objects, all treasures in themselves; his train was the train of an emperor. The Louvre, the King's residence, was a simple palace, but the Cardinal's palace, called in Court language the "Hôtel de Richelieu," was the symbol of the luxury and the art of France, toward which the eyes of the people of France and of all other lands were turned. In the Hôtel de Richelieu there were cabinets where the high officials sat in secret discussion, boudoirs for the fair ladies, ball-rooms, treasure galleries where works of art were lavishly displayed, a chapel, and two theatres. The basis of the Cardinal's library was the public library of Rochelle, which had been seized after the siege. The chapel was one of the chief sights of Paris. Everything used in the ceremonial of worship was of solid gold, ornamented with great diamonds. Among the precious objects in use were two church chandeliers,80 all of massive gold, enamelled and enriched with two thousand five hundred and sixteen diamonds. The vases used in the service of the Mass were of fine, richly enamelled gold, and in them were set two hundred and sixty-two diamonds. The cross, which was between twenty and twenty-one inches high, bore a figure of Christ of massive gold and the crown of thorns and the loin-cloth were studded with diamonds

The Book of Prayer used by the Cardinal was bound in fine morocco leather; each side of the cover was enwreathed with sprigs of gold. On one side of the cover was a golden medallion, on which the Cardinal was depicted, like an emperor, holding the globe of the world in his hand; from the four corners of the cover angels were descending to crown his head with flowers. Beneath the device ran the Latin inscription, "Cadat." The ceiling of the grand gallery of the palace (destroyed under Louis XIV.) bore one of Philip de Champagne's masterpieces – a picture representing the glorious exploits of the Cardinal. One of the picture galleries called the "Gallery of Illustrious Men" contained twenty-five full-length portraits of the great men of France, chosen according to the Cardinal's estimate of greatness. At the foot of each portrait was a little "key," or historical representation of the principal acts of the original of the portrait, arranged as Fra Angelico and Giotto arranged the portraits of Saint Dominick and Saint François d'Assisi. Richelieu, who was not afflicted with false modesty, had placed his own portrait among the portraits in his gallery of the great men of France. Although he had amassed so many monuments of pride, he had passed a large portion of his life in relative poverty. He had travelled from the humble Episcopate to the steps of the throne of France on an income of 25,000 livres. When he died his income was nearly three millions of livres per annum, – the civil list of a powerful monarch. He was not an expert hoarder of riches, like Mazarin; he scattered money with full hands, while his master, the King, netted game-bags in a corner, cooked, or did other useful work, or gave himself up to his frugal pleasures.

According to Mme. de Motteville:

The King found himself reduced to the most miserable of earthly lives, without a suite, without a Court, without power, and consequently without pleasure and without honour. Thus a part of his life passed at Saint Germain, where he lived like a private individual; and while his enemies captured cities and won battles, he amused himself by catching birds. That Prince was unhappy in all manners, for he had not even the comfort of domestic life; he did not love the Queen at all… He was jealous of the grandeur of his Minister … whom he began to hate as soon as he perceived the extreme authority which the Cardinal wielded in the kingdom … and as he was no happier without him than he was with him, he could not be happy at all.

Cinq-Mars entered the King's service under the auspices of the Cardinal. When the King saw the new face in his apartment he retired into his darkest humour.

Cinq-Mars was very patient; he was attentive and modest, but the sound of his voice and the sight of his face irritated the sickly monarch. Days passed before the King addressed his new Master of the Robes. One day he caught the long appealing look of the gentle eyes; he answered it with a stare, – frowned, and looked again. That night he could not sleep; he longed for the morning. When Cinq-Mars entered the bed-chamber the King drew him to his side "and suddenly he loved him violently and fatally, as in former times he loved young Baradas."

The courtiers were accustomed to the King's fancies, but his passion for Cinq-Mars astonished them; it surpassed all that had preceded it.

It was an appalling and jealous love; exacting, suspicious, bitter, stormy, and fruitful in tears and quarrels. Louis XIII. overwhelmed his favourite with tokens of his tenderness; had it been possible he would have chained the boy to his side. When Cinq-Mars was away from him he was miserable.

Cinq-Mars was obliged to assist him in his new trade (he was learning to be a carpenter), to stand at the bench holding tools and taking measurements; and to listen to long harangues on dogs and on bird-training. The King and his new favourite were seen together constantly, driving the foxes to their holes and running in the snowy fields catching blackbirds in the King's sweep-net; they hunted with a dozen sportsmen who were said to be "low people and very bad company."

When they returned to the palace the King supped; when he had finished his supper he went to bed, and then Cinq-Mars, "fatigued to exasperation by the puerile duties of the day, cared for nothing but to escape from his gloomy prison, and to forget the long, yellow face and the interminable torrent of hunting stories." Stealing from the château, he mounted his horse and hurried to Paris. He passed the night as he pleased and returned to the château early in the morning, worn out, haggard, and with nerves unstrung. Although he left the château after the King retired to his bed, and returned from Paris early in the morning, before the King awoke, Louis XIII. knew where he had been and what he had been doing. Louis employed spies who watched and listened. He was particularly jealous of Cinq-Mars's young friends; he "made scenes" and reproached Cinq-Mars and the tormented boy answered him hotly; then with cries, weeping bitterly, they quarrelled, and the King went to Richelieu to complain of "M. le Grand." Richelieu was State Confidant, and to him the King entrusted the reconciliations. In 1639 (27th November) Louis wrote to the Cardinal:

You will see by the certificate that I send you, in what condition is the reconciliation that you effected yesterday. When you put your hand to an affair it cannot but go well. I give you good-day.

The certificate read as follows:

We, the undersigned, certify to all to whom these presents may come, that we are very glad and well-satisfied with one another, and that we have never been in such perfect unison as at present. In faith of which we have signed the present certificate.

(signed) Louis; and by my order:(signed) Effiat de Cinq-Mars.

The laboured reconciliations were not durable; the months which followed the signing of the certificate were one long tempest. The objects of the King's bitterest jealousy were young men who formed a society called Les messieurs du Marais because they met every evening at Mme. de Rohan's in the Palais Royal (the King then lived at the Louvre). Louis could not be silent; he exposed his spite on all occasions. January 5, 1640, he wrote to the Cardinal:

I am sorry to have to tell you again of the ill-humour of M. le Grand. On his return from Rueil he gave me the packet which you sent to me. I opened it and read it. Then I said to him:

"Monsieur, the Cardinal informs me that you have manifested great desire to please me in all things; nevertheless you evince no wish to please me in regard to that which I begged the Cardinal to speak of: namely, your laziness." He answered that you did speak to him of it, but that he could not change his character, and that in that respect he should not do any better than he had been in the habit of doing. That discourse angered me. I said to him that a man of his condition ought to take some steps toward rendering himself worthy to command armies (since he had told me that it was his intention to lead armies). I told him that laziness was contrary to military action. He answered me brusquely that he had never had such an intention and that he had never pretended to have it. I answered, "Que si! You have!" I did not wish to go any deeper into the discourse (you know well what I mean). I then took up the discourse on laziness. I told him that vice renders a man incapable of doing anything good, and that he is good for nothing but the society of the people of the Marais where he was nourished, – people who have given themselves up to pleasure! I told him that if he wishes to continue the life that he is now living among his old friends, he may return to the place whence he came. He answered arrogantly that he should be quite ready to do so!

I answered him: "If I were not wiser than you I know what I should answer to that!" … After that I said to him that he ought not to speak to me in such fashion. He answered after the manner of his usual discourse that at present his only duty appeared to be to do good to me and to be agreeable to me and that as to such business he could get along very well without it! He said that he would as willingly be Cinq-Mars as to be M. le Grand; and that as to changing his ways and his manner of life, he could not do it! … And so it went! he pecking at me and I pecking at him until we reached the courtyard; when I said to him that as he was in such a humour he would do me pleasure if he would refrain from showing himself before me any more. He bore witness that he would do that same right willingly! I have not seen him since then.

Precisely as I have told you all that passed, in the presence of Gordes.

Louis.

Post-Scriptum:

I have shown Gordes this memorandum before sending it, and he has told me that there is nothing in it but the truth, exactly as he heard it and saw it pass.

Cinq-Mars sulked and the King sulked, and as the quarrel promised to endure indefinitely, Richelieu bestirred himself, left his quiet home in Rueil and travelled to the house of the King to make peace between the ill-assorted pair.

Peace restored, Louis became joyful; he could not refuse his favourite anything. Cinq-Mars made the most of his opportunity. But he could not go far; the Cardinal barred his way. Cinq-Mars aspired to the peerage; he aimed to be a duke, to marry a princess, and to sit among the King's counsellors. Richelieu checked him, gave him rude orders, scolded him as he scolded his valet, called him an "insolent little fellow," and threatened to put him in a place "still lower" than the place from which he had raised him.81 One day, when Richelieu was berating the favourite, he told him that he had appointed him to his office in the King's house so that he (Richelieu) might have a reliable spy, and that as he had been appointed for no other purpose, it would be advisable for him to begin to do the work that he was expected to do.

The revelation was a cruel blow to the proud and sensitive boy, and in the first moment of his anguish he conceived a ferocious hatred. It is probable that the knowledge that the Cardinal had placed him near the King's person against his will and in spite of his long and determined resistance solely to the end that he might be degraded to an ignoble office was the first cause of the Cinq-Mars conspiracy.

De Richelieu's ministry had never appeared more impregnable than it appeared at that time. Far and near its policy had been triumphant. Speaking of the position France had taken in Europe through the guidance of Richelieu, an impartial foreigner said:

What a difference between the French Government as it was when Richelieu received it from the kingdom and the state to which his efforts raised it! Before his day the Spaniards were in progress on all the frontiers; no longer advancing by impetuous attacks, but entering calmly and steadily by systematic invasion. Richelieu changed all that, and, led by him, France forced the Spaniards beyond the frontier.

Until the Cardinal assumed command the united forces of the Empire, the Catholic League and the Spanish armies, held not only the left bank of the Rhine but all the land divided by that great central artery of European life. By Richelieu's wise policy France regained dominion in Alsace and in the greater part of the Rhenish country, the armies of France took possession of central Germany, the Italian passes, which had been closed to the men of France, were opened to them, and large territories in upper Italy were seized and placed under French control; and the changes were wrought, not by a temporary invasion, but by orderly and skilfully planned campaigns.

The Cardinal's power had been made manifest everywhere. His rule had been to the glory of France. Among other important results were the triumphs of the French navies; the fleets, having proved their strength in the Ligurian Sea, had menaced the ports of Spain. The Ligurian Peninsula had been rent asunder by the revolt of two large provinces, one of which had arisen proclaiming its independent rights as a kingdom. There was, there had been, no end to Richelieu's diplomatic improvements; his victories had carried ruin to the enemy; the skirmishers of France had advanced to a point within two leagues of Madrid. The Croquemitaine of France, who held in terror both the Court and the canaille, had assured the Bourbons of an important place among the empires of the world. The day of Spain was past; the day of France was come.

Richelieu was a man of many ambitions, and he aspired to the admiration of all of the population; he had extended his protecting arms over literature and the lettered; he had founded the French Academy; but he was not content; he was a man of too much independence and of too enterprising a mind to leave all the literary honours to the doctors of the law or to his mediums, Corneille and Rotrou, whose lines of work he fixed to follow a plan outlined to suit his own ideas. Usually, Richelieu's intellectual ambitions were quiescent, but at times the pedant, dormant in his hard nature, awoke and impelled him to add a few personal touches to the work of his agents. When under the influence of his afflatus he collaborated with Desmarets, the author of a dramatic poem entitled Clovis, and by the united efforts of the unique literary team the tragedy Mirame was delivered to the world. Its first appearance was a Parisian event. None of the King's armies had been mounted with such solicitude and prodigality, The grand audience-room of the Palais Cardinal was built for Mirame; it was spaced to hold three thousand spectators; the stage material had been ordered from Italy by "Sieur Mazarini," ex-Papal Nuncio at Paris. Richelieu himself had chosen the costumes and the decorations; and he in person directed the rehearsals, and, as he supposed, superintended the listing of all the invitations. The play was ready for representation early in the year (1641).

First of all there was a general rehearsal for the critics, who were represented by the men of letters and the comedians. The rehearsal took place before the Court and the social world of all Paris. The invited guests were seated by the Bishop of Chartres and by a president of the Parliament of France. Though too new and too fresh in its magnificence, the Audience Hall pleased the people exceedingly; when the curtain rose they could hardly repress cries of admiration. The stage was lined on both sides by splendid palaces and in the open space between the abodes of luxury were most delicious gardens adorned with grottoes, statues, fountains, and grand parterres of flowers descending terrace upon terrace to the sea, which lifted its waves with an agitation as natural as the movements of the real tide of a real ocean; on the broad waters passed two great fleets; one of them appeared as if two leagues away. Both fleets moved calmly on, passing like living things before the spectators.

The same decorations and scenery served the five acts of the play; but the sky was changed in each act, when the light faded, when the sun set or rose, and when the moon and the stars appeared to mark the flight of the hours. The play was composed according to the accepted formulas of the day, and it was neither better nor worse than its fellows. In its course the actors fought, poisoned each other, died, came to life, and quarrelled over a handsome princess; and while the scene-shifters manipulated the somewhat crude inventions of the stage scenery, and while the actors did their utmost to develop the plot to the best advantage, the master of the palace acted as chief of the Claque and tried by every means in his power to arouse the enthusiasm of the audience. He stood in the front of his box and, leaning forward into space, manifested his pleasure by his looks; at times he called the attention of the people and imposed silence so that the finer passages might be heard.82

At the end of the play a curtain representing clouds fell upon the scene, and a golden bridge rolled like a tide to the feet of Anne of Austria. The Queen arose, crossed the bridge, and found herself in a magnificent ball-room; then, with the Prince and the Princess, she danced an impetuously ardent and swinging figure, and when that dance was over, the Bishop of Chartres, in Court dress, and baton in hand, like a maître d'hôtel, led the way to a fine collation. Later in the year the serviceable Bishop was made Archbishop of Rheims.

Politics interfered with Mirame. The play was assailed by difficulties similar to those which met Napoleon's Vie de César under the Second Empire. The Opposition eagerly seized the occasion to annoy "Croquemitaine"; open protestations were circulated to the effect that the play was not worth playing. Some, rising above the question of literary merit, said that the piece was morally objectionable because it contained allusions to Anne of Austria's episode with Buckingham. Richelieu became the scapegoat of the hour; even the King had something to say regarding his Minister's literary venture. Louis was not gifted with critical discrimination; he knew it, and his timid pride and his prudence restrained him from launching into observations upon subjects with which he was not fitted to cope; but guided by the cherub detailed to protect the mentally incompetent, he struck with instinctive subtlety at the one vulnerable point in the Cardinal's armour and declared that he had nothing to say regarding the preciosity of the play, but that he had been "shocked by the questionable composition of the audience." It relieved the King's consciousness of his own inferiority to "pinch the Cardinal." He told Monsieur that he had been "shocked" when he realised "what species of society" he had been invited to meet. Monsieur, seizing the occasion to strike his enemy, answered that, to speak "frankly," he also had "been shocked" when he perceived "little Saint Amour among the Cardinal's guests." The royal brothers turned the subject in every light, and the more they studied it the darker grew its aspect. They agreed in thinking that the King's delicacy had been grossly outraged; they worked upon the fact until it assumed the proportions of a personal insult. Richelieu, visited by the indignant pair, was galvanised by the double current of their wrath. He knew that Saint Amour had not been in any earthly locality by his will; tact, if not religious prejudice, would have forbidden the admission of a personage of the doubtful savour of Saint Amour to the presence of the King. But Monsieur and the King had seen with their own eyes, and as no one would have dared to enter the Palais Cardinal uninvited, it was an undisputable fact that some one had tampered with the invitations. Richelieu's detectives were put upon the scent and they discovered that an Abbé who "could not refuse a woman anything" had been entrusted with the invitations-list.

Richelieu could not punish the amiable lady who had unconsciously sealed the Abbé's doom; but justice was wrought, and absolute ignorance of facts permits us to hope that it fell short of the justice meted out to Puylaurens. It was said that the Abbé had been sent back to his village. Wherever he was "sent," Louis XIII. refused to be comforted, and to the end of his days he told the people who surrounded him that the Cardinal had invited him to his palace to meet Saint Amour.

Richelieu's life was embittered by the incident, and to the last he was tormented by a confused impression of the fête which he had believed was to be the coming glory of his career. But an isolated detail could not alter facts, and it was universally known that his importance was "of all the colours." Mirame had given the people an idea of the versatility of Richelieu's grandeur and of the composite quality of his power, and M. le Grand knew what he might expect should he anger the Cardinal. Cinq-Mars was always at the King's heels, and he knew the extent of Louis's docility.

The Cinq-Mars Conspiracy took shape in the months which immediately followed the presentation of Mirame. As the details of the conspiracy may be found in any history, I shall say only this: When an enterprise is based upon sentiments like the King's passion for his Grand Equerry83 and the general hatred of Richelieu, it is not necessary to search for reasonable causes.

When the first steps in the conspiracy were taken Louis XIII., in his tenderness for Cinq-Mars and his bitter jealousy of Richelieu, unconsciously played the part of instigator.

It soothed the wounded pride of the monarch to hear his tyrant ridiculed, and he incited his "dear friend," the Marquis d'Effiat, to scoff at the Cardinal. Cinq-Mars and all the others were taken red-handed; doubt was impossible. In the words of Mme. de Motteville: "It was one of the most formidable, and at the same time one of the most extraordinary plots found in history; for the King was, tacitly, the chief of the conspirators." Monsieur enthusiastically entered into the plot; he ran to the Queen with the whole story; he told her the names of the conspirators, and urged her to take part in the movement.

"It must be innocent," he insisted; "if it were not the King would not be engaged in it."84

Richelieu's peaceful days were over. He was restless and suspicious. Suddenly, in June, 1642, when Louis XIII. was sick in Narbonne (and when Richelieu was sick in Tarascon) M. le Grand was arrested and delivered to the Cardinal for the crime of high treason. He deserved his fate. He had led Monsieur to treat with Spain; but the real cause of his death – if not of his disgrace – lay in the fact that he had lost his hold upon the King's love.