Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15)

C >> Charles Morris >> Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15)

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Her malignity defeated itself. Richelieu was too skilful an adept in the
game of politics to be so easily beaten. He brought the affair before
the council, seemingly utterly indifferent what might be done; the
trouble might be ended, he suggested, by his own retirement or that of
the queen-mother, whichever in their wisdom they might deem best.

The implied threat settled the matter. The king, alarmed at the idea of
having the government of France left on his weak hands, at once gave the
offending lady to understand that she had better retire for a time to
one of his provincial palaces, recommending Moulins. Mary de' Medici
heard this order with fiery indignation. She shut herself up in the
castle of Compiegne, where she then was, and declared that she would not
leave unless dragged out by main force. In the end, however, she changed
her mind, fled by night from the castle, and made her way to Brussels,
where she took refuge from her powerful foe. Richelieu's game was won.
Mary de' Medici had lost all influence with her son. She was never to
see him again.

A number of years passed before a new plot was hatched against the
cardinal. Then a conspiracy was organized which threatened not only his
power but his life. It was in 1636. The king's headquarters were then
at the castle of Demuin. The Duke of Orleans, who had been recently in
armed rebellion against the king, and had been pardoned for his treason,
determined, in common with the Count of Soissons, that their enemy, the
cardinal, should die. There were others in this plot of assassination,
two of the duke's gentlemen, Montresor and Saint Ibal, being chosen to
deal the fatal blow. They were to station themselves at the foot of the
grand stairway, meet Richelieu at his exit from the council, and strike
him dead. The duke was to give the signal for the murderous assault.

The door of the council chamber opened. The king and the cardinal came
out together and descended the stairs in company, Richelieu attending
Louis until he had reached the foot of the stairway, and gone into an
adjoining room. The cardinal turned to ascend again, without a moment's
suspicion that the two gentlemen at the stair-foot clutched hidden
daggers in their hands, ready, at a signal from the duke, who stood near
by, to plunge them in his breast.

The signal did not come. At the last moment the courage of Gaston of
Orleans failed him. Whether from something in Richelieu's earnest and
dignified aspect, or some sudden fear of serious consequences to
himself, the chief conspirator turned hastily away, without speaking the
fatal word agreed upon. What the duke feared to do, the count dared not
do. The two chosen assassins stood expectant, greeting the cardinal as
he passed, and waiting in nervous impatience for the promised signal.
It failed to come. Their daggers remained undrawn. Richelieu calmly
ascended the stairs to his rooms, without a dream of the deadly peril he
had run.

The conspiracy against the cardinal which has attained the greatest
historical notoriety is that associated with the name of Cinq-Mars, the
famous favorite of Louis XIII. Brilliant and witty, a true type of the
courtiers of the time, this handsome youth so amused and interested the
king that, when he was only nineteen years of age, Louis made him master
of the wardrobe and grand equerry of France. M. Le Grand he was called,
and grand enough he seemed, in his independent and capricious dealings
with the king. Louis went so far as to complain to Richelieu of the
humors of his youthful favorite.

"I am very sorry," he wrote, under date of January 4, 1641, "to trouble
you about the ill-tempers of M. Le Grand. I upbraided him with his
heedlessness; he answered that for that matter he could not change, and
that he should do no better than he had done. I said that, considering
his obligations to me, he ought not to address me in that manner. He
answered in his usual way; that he didn't want my kindness, that he
could do very well without it, and that he would be quite as well
content to be Cinq-Mars as M. Le Grand, but as for changing his ways and
his life, he couldn't do it. And so, he continually nagging at me and I
at him, we came as far as the court-yard, where I said to him that,
being in the temper he was in, he would do me the pleasure of not coming
to see me. I have not seen him since."

This letter yields a curious revelation of the secret history of a royal
court. There have been few kings with whom such impudent independence
would have served. Louis XIII. was one of them. Cinq-Mars seems to have
known his man. The quarrel was not of long continuance. Richelieu, who
had first placed the youth near the king, easily reconciled them, a
service which the foolish boy soon repaid by lending an ear to the
enemies of the cardinal. For this Richelieu was in a way responsible. He
had begun to find the constant attendance of the favorite upon the king
troublesome to himself, and gave him plainly to understand so. "One day
he sent word to him not to be for the future so continually at his
heels, and treated him even to his face with as much tartness and
imperiousnesss as if he had been the lowest of his valets." Such
treatment was not likely to be well received by one of the independent
disposition of Cinq-Mars. He joined in a plot against the cardinal.

The king was ill; the cardinal more so. Gaston, Duke of Orleans, was
again in Paris, and full of his old intriguing spirit. The Duke of
Bouillon was there also, having been sent for by the king to take
command of the army of Italy. He, too, was drawn into the plot which was
being woven against Richelieu. The queen, Anne of Austria, was another
of the conspirators. The plot thus organized was the deepest and most
far-reaching which had yet been laid against the all-powerful minister.

Bouillon was prince-sovereign of the town of Sedan. This place was to
serve the conspirators as an asylum in case of reverse. But a town was
not enough; an army was needed; whence should it come? Spain might
furnish it.

The affair was growing to the dimensions of a conspiracy against the
crown as well as the minister. Viscount de Fontrailles, a man who
detested the cardinal, and would not have hesitated to murder him as a
simpler way of disposing of the difficulty, was named by Cinq-Mars as a
proper person to deal with the Spaniards. He set out for Madrid, and
soon succeeded in negotiating a secret treaty, in the name of the Duke
of Orleans, by whose terms Spain was to furnish the conspirators with
twelve thousand foot, five thousand horse, and the necessary funds for
the enterprise. The town of Sedan, and the names of Cinq-Mars and
Bouillon, were not mentioned in this treaty, but were given in a
separate document.

While this dangerous work was going on the cardinal was dangerously ill,
a prey to violent fever, and with an abscess on his arm which prevented
him from writing. The king was with the army, which was besieging
Perpignan. With him was Cinq-Mars, who was doing his best to insinuate
suspicions of the minister into the mind of the king. All seemed
promising for the conspirators, the illness of the cardinal, in their
opinion, being likely to carry him off in no long period, and meanwhile
preventing him from discovering the plot and setting himself right with
the king.

Evidently these hopeful people did not know the resources of Cardinal
Richelieu. In all his severe illness his eyes had not been blind, his
intellect not at rest. Keen as they thought themselves, they had a man
with double their resources to deal with. Though Richelieu was by no
means surrounded by the intricate web of spies and intrigues with which
fiction and the drama have credited him, he was not without his secret
agents, and his means of tracing the most hidden movements of his
enemies. Cinq-Mars lacked the caution necessary for a conspirator. His
purposes became evident to the king, who had no thought of exchanging
his great minister for a frivolous boy who was only fitted to amuse his
hours of relaxation. The outcome of the affair appears in a piece of
news published in the _Gazette de France_ on June 21, 1642.

"The cardinal-duke," it said, "after remaining two days at Arles,
embarked on the 11th of this month for Tarascon, his health becoming
better and better. The king has ordered under arrest Marquis de
Cinq-Mars, grand equerry of France."

Had a thunderbolt fallen in their midst, the enemies of Richelieu could
not have been in greater consternation than at this simple item of news.
How came it about? The fox was not asleep. Nor had his illness robbed
his hand and his brain of their cunning. The king, overladen with
affairs of state from which his minister when well had usually relieved
him, sent a message of confidence to Richelieu, indicating that his
enemies would seek in vain to separate them. In reply the cardinal sent
the king a document which filled the monarch with an astonishment that
was only equalled by his wrath. It was a copy of the secret treaty of
Orleans with Spain!

The king could hardly believe his eyes. So this was what lay behind the
insinuations of Cinq-Mars? An insurrection was projected against the
state! The cardinal, mayhap the king himself, was to be overthrown by
force of arms! Only the sleepless vigilance of Richelieu could have
discovered and exposed this perilous plot. It remained for the king to
second the work of his minister by decisive action. An order was at once
issued for the arrest of Cinq-Mars and his intimate friend, M. de Thou;
while a messenger was sent off in all haste to the army of Italy,
bearing orders for the arrest of the Duke of Bouillon at the head of his
troops.

Fontrailles, just arrived from his mission to Spain, returned to that
kingdom with all haste, having first said to Cinq-Mars, "Sir, you are a
fine figure; if you were shorter by the whole head you would not cease
to be very tall. As for me, who am already very short, nothing could be
taken off me without inconveniencing me and making me cut the poorest
figure in the world. You will be good enough, if you please, to let me
get out of the way of edge tools."

The minor parties to the conspiracy, with the exception of the prudent
Fontrailles, were in custody. The most guilty of all, the king's
brother, was at large. What part was he to play in the drama of
retribution? Flight, or treachery to his accomplices, alone remained to
him. He chose the latter, sending an agent to the king, who had just
joined the cardinal at Tarascon, with directions to confess everything
and implore for him the pardon of his royal brother. The cardinal
questioned this agent, the Abbe de la Riviere, with unrelenting
severity, made him write and sign everything, and was inclined to make
the prince-duke appear as a witness at the trial, and yield up his
accomplices in the face of the world. This final disgrace, however, was
omitted at the wish of Louis, and an order of exile was sent from the
king to his brother, which bore this note in the cardinal's hand,--

"Monsieur will have in his place of exile twelve thousand crowns a
month, the same sum that the king of Spain had promised to give him."

The dying cardinal had triumphed over all his foes. He had, from his bed
at Tarascon, dictated to the king the course to be pursued, entailing
dishonor to the Duke of Orleans and death to the grand equerry of
France. The king then took his way back to Fontainebleau in the litter
of the cardinal, which the latter had lent him. Richelieu did not
remain long behind him. He was conveyed to his house in Lyons in a
litter shaped like a square chamber, covered with red damask, and borne
on the shoulders of eighteen guards. Within, beside his couch, was a
table covered with papers, at which he worked with his ordinary
diligence, chatting pleasantly at intervals with such of his servants as
accompanied him. In the same equipage he left Lyons for the Loire, on
his return to Paris. On the way it was necessary to pull down walls and
bridge ditches that this great litter, in which the greatest man in
France lay in mortal illness, might pass.

What followed needs few words. The Duke of Bouillon confessed
everything, and was pardoned on condition of his delivering up Sedan to
the king. He was kept in prison, however, till after the death of his
accomplices, Cinq-Mars and De Thou, who were tried and sentenced to
execution.

Bouillon had not long to wait. The execution took place on the very day
on which sentence had been pronounced. The two culprits met death
firmly. Cinq-Mars was but twenty-two years of age. He had rapidly run
his course. "Now that I make not a single step which does not lead me to
death, I am more capable than anybody else of estimating the value of
the things of the world," he wrote. "Enough of this world; away to
Paradise!" said De Thou, as he walked to the scaffold.

There were no more conspiracies against Richelieu. There was no time for
them, for in less than three months afterwards he was dead. The
greatest, or at least the most dramatic, minister known to the pages of
history had departed from this world. His royal master did not long
survive him. In five months afterwards, Louis XIII. had followed his
minister to the grave.

_THE PARLIAMENT OF PARIS._

In the streets of Paris all was tumult and fiery indignation. Never had
there been a more sudden or violent outbreak. The whole city seemed to
have turned into the streets. Not until the era of the Revolution, a
century and a half later, was the capital of France again to see such an
uprising of the people against the court. Broussel had been arrested,
Councillor Broussel, a favorite of the populace, who sustained him in
his opposition to the court party, and at once the city was ablaze; for
the first time in the history of France had the people risen in support
of their representatives.

It was by no means the first time that royalty had ended its disputes
with the Parliament in this summary manner. Four years previously, Anne
of Austria, the queen-regent, had done the same thing, and scarce a
voice had been raised in protest. But in the ensuing four years public
opinion had changed. The king, Louis XIV., was but ten years old; his
mother, aided by her favorite minister, Cardinal Mazarin, ruled the
kingdom,--misruled it, as the people thought; the country was crushed
under its weight of taxes; the finances were in utter disorder; France
was successful abroad, but her successes had been dearly bought, and the
people groaned under the burden of their victories. Parliament made
itself the mouth-piece of the public discontent. It no longer felt upon
it the iron hand of Richelieu. Mazarin was able, but he was not a
master, and the Parliament began once more to claim that authority in
affairs of state from which it had been deposed by the great cardinal. A
conflict arose between the members and the court which soon led to acts
of open hostility.

An edict laying a tax upon all provisions which entered Paris irritated
the citizens, and the Parliament refused to register it. Other steps
towards independence were taken by the members. Gradually they resumed
their old rights, and the court party was forced to yield. But courage
returned to the queen-regent with the news that the army of France had
gained a great victory. No sooner had the tidings reached Paris than the
city was electrified by hearing that President Brancmesnil and
Councillor Broussel had been arrested.

It was the arrest of Broussel that stirred the popular heart. Mazarin
and the queen had made the dangerous mistake of not taking into account
the state of the public mind. "There was a blaze at once, a sensation, a
rush, an outcry, and a shutting up of shops." The excitement of the
people was intense. Moment by moment the tumult grew greater. "Broussel!
Broussel!" they shouted. That perilous populace had arisen which was
afterwards to show what frightful deeds it could do under the impulse of
oppression and misgovernment.

Paul de Gondi, afterwards known as Cardinal de Retz, then coadjutor of
the Archbishop of Paris, and the leading spirit with the populace,
hurried to the palace, accompanied by Marshal de la Meilleraie.

"The city is in a frightful state," they told the queen. "The people are
furious and may soon grow unmanageable. The air is full of revolt."

Anne of Austria listened to them with set lips and angry eyes.

"There is revolt in imagining there can be revolt," she sternly replied.
"These are the ridiculous stories of those who favor trouble; the king's
authority will soon restore order."

M. de Guitant, an old courtier, who entered as she was speaking,
declared that the coadjutor had barely represented the facts, and said
that he did not see how anybody could sleep with things in such a state.

"Well, M. de Guitant, and what is your advice?" asked De Retz.

"My advice is to give up that old rascal of a Broussel, dead or alive."

"To give him up dead," said the coadjutor, "would not accord with either
the piety or the prudence of the queen; to yield him alive might quiet
the people."

The queen turned to him a face hot with anger, and exclaimed,--

"I understand you, Mr. Coadjutor; you would have me set Broussel at
liberty. I would strangle him with these hands first!" As she finished
these words she put her hands close to the coadjutor's face, and added,
in a threatening tone, "And those who--" Her voice ceased; he was left
to infer the rest.

Yet, despite this infatuation of the queen, it was evident that
something must be done, if Paris was to be saved. The people grew more
tumultuous. Fresh tidings continued to come in, each more threatening
than the last. The queen at length yielded so far as to promise that
Broussel should be set free if the people would first disperse and cease
their tumultuous behavior.

The coadjutor was bidden to proclaim this in the streets. He asked for
an order to sustain him, but the queen refused to give it, and withdrew
"to her little gray room," angry at herself for yielding so far as she
had.

De Retz did not find the situation a very pleasant one for himself.
Mazarin pushed him gently towards the door, saying, "Restore the peace
of the realm." Marshal Meilleraie drew him onward. He went into the
street, wearing his robe of office, and bestowing benedictions right and
left, though while doing so his mind was busy in considering how he was
going to get out of the difficulty which lay before him.

It grew worse instead of better. Marshal Meilleraie, losing his head
through excitement, advanced waving his sword in the air, and shouting
at the top of his voice,--

"Hurrah for the king! Liberation for Broussel!"

This did very well for those within hearing; but his sword provoked far
more than his voice quieted; those at a distance looked on his action as
a menace, and their fury was augmented. On all sides there was a rush
for arms. Stones were flung by the rioters, one of which struck De Retz
and felled him to the earth. As he picked himself up an excited youth
rushed at him and put a musket to his head. Only the wit and readiness
of the coadjutor saved him from imminent peril.

"Though I did not know him a bit," says De Retz, in his "Memoirs," "I
thought it would not be well to let him suppose so at such a moment; on
the contrary, I said to him, 'Ah, wretch, if thy father saw thee!' He
thought I was the best friend of his father, on whom, however, I had
never set eyes."

The fellow withdrew, ashamed of his violence, and before any further
attack could be made upon De Retz he was recognized by the people and
dragged to the market-place, constantly crying out as he went, "The
queen has promised to restore Broussel."

The good news by this time had spread through the multitude, whose cries
of anger were giving place to shouts of joy. Their arms were hastily
disposed of, and a great throng, thirty or forty thousand in number,
followed the coadjutor to the Palais-Royal. When he entered, Marshal
Meilleraie turned to the queen and said,--

"Madame, here is he to whom I owe my life, and your Majesty the safety
of the Palais-Royal."

The queen's answer was an incredulous smile. On seeing it, the hasty
temper of the marshal broke out in an oath.

"Madame," he said, hotly, "no proper man can venture to flatter you in
the state in which things are; and if you do not this very day set
Broussel at liberty, to-morrow there will not be left one stone upon
another in Paris."

Anne of Austria, carried away by her pride and superciliousness, could
not be brought to believe that the populace would dare attempt an actual
revolt against the king. De Retz would have spoken in support of the
marshal's words, but she cut him short, saying in a tone of mockery,--

"Go and rest yourself, sir; you have worked very hard."

He left the palace in a rage. It was increased when word was brought to
him that he had been ridiculed at the supper-table of the queen. She had
gone so far as to blame him for increasing the tumult, and threatened to
make an example of him and to interdict the Parliament. In short, the
exercise of power had made the woman mad. De Retz reflected. If the
queen designed to punish him, she should have something to punish him
for. He was not the man to be made a cat's-paw of.

"We are not in such bad case as you suppose, gentlemen," he said to his
friends. "There is an intention of crushing the public; it is for me to
defend it from oppression; to-morrow before mid-day I shall be master of
Paris."

Anne of Austria had made an enemy of one who had been her strong friend,
a bold and restless man, capable of great deeds. He had long taken pains
to make himself popular in Paris. During that night he and his
emissaries worked in secret upon the people. Early the next day the mob
was out again, arms in hand, and ripe for mischief. The chancellor, on
his way to the Palace of Justice, suddenly found his carriage surrounded
by these rioters. He hastily sought refuge in the Hotel de Luynes. The
mob followed him, pillaging as they went, destroying the furniture,
seeking the fugitive. He had taken refuge in a small chamber, where,
thinking that his last hour had come, he knelt in confession before his
brother, the Bishop of Meaux. Fortunately for him the rioters failed to
discover him, and were led away by another fancy.

"It was like a sudden and violent conflagration lighted up from the Pont
Neuf over the whole city," says De Retz. "Everybody without exception
took up arms. Children of five and six years of age were seen dagger in
hand, and the mothers themselves carried them. In less than two hours
there were in Paris more than two hundred barricades, bordered with
flags and all the arms that the League had left entire. Everybody cried
'Hurrah, for the king!' but echo answered, 'None of your Mazarin!'"

It was an incipient revolution, but it was the minister and the regent,
not the king, against whom the people had risen, its object being the
support of the Parliament of Paris, not the States General of the
kingdom. France was not yet ready for the radical work reserved for a
later day. The turbulent Parisians were in the street, arms in hand, but
they had not yet lost the sentiment of loyalty to the king. A century
and a half more of misrule were needed to complete this transformation
in the national idea.

While all this was going on, the coadjutor, the soul of the outbreak,
kept at home, vowing that he was powerless to control the people. At an
early hour the Parliament assembled at the Palace of Justice, but its
deliberations were interrupted by shouts of "Broussel! Broussel!" from
the immense multitude which filled every adjoining avenue. Only the
release of the arrested members could appease the mob. The Parliament
determined to go in a body and demand this of the queen.

Their journey was an eventful one. Paris was in insurrection. Everywhere
they found the people in arms, while barricades were thrown up at every
hundred paces. Through the shouting and howling mob they made their way
to the queen's palace, the ushers in front, with their square caps, the
members following in their robes, at their head M. Mole, their premier
president.

The conference with the queen was a passionate one. M. Mole spoke for
the Parliament, representing to the queen the extreme danger Paris was
in, the peril to all France, unless the prisoners were released and the
sedition allayed. He spoke to a woman "who feared nothing because she
knew but little," and who was just then controlled by pride and passion
instead of reason.

"I am quite aware that there is a disturbance in the city," she
answered, furiously; "but you shall answer to me for it, gentlemen of
the Parliament, you, your wives, and your children."

With further threats that the king would remember the cause of these
evils, when he reached his majority, the incensed woman flouted from the
chamber of audience, slamming the door violently behind her. To deal
with her, in her present mood, was evidently impracticable. The members
left the palace to return. They quickly found themselves surrounded by
an angry mob, furious at their non-success, disposed to hold them
responsible for the failure. On their arrival at the Rue St. Honore,
just as they were about to turn on to the Pont Neuf, a band of about two
hundred men advanced threateningly upon them, headed by a cook-shop lad,
armed with a halberd, which he thrust against M. Mole's body, crying,--

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