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Title: Political Women, Vol. 2

Author: active 1840-1883 Sutherland Menzies

Release date: December 12, 2008 [eBook #27506]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POLITICAL
WOMEN, VOL. 2 ***

POLITICAL WOMEN.

POLITICAL WOMEN.

BY

SUTHERLAND MENZIES,
AUTHOR OF “ROYAL FAVOURITES,” ETC.

IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.

Henry S. King & Co.,
65, Cornhill, and 12, Paternoster Row, London.
1873.

[All rights reserved.]

CONTENTS OF VOLUME II.

BOOK V.—continued.

PAGE
CHAP. III. —The
struggle
between
Condé and
Turenne—
Noble
conduct of
Mademoiselle
de
Montpensier
—Fall of the
Fronde 3

IV. —The Duke
de Nemours
slain in a duel
by his
brother-in-
law Beaufort 12

V. —Triumph of
Mazarin 16

BOOK VI.

CHAP. I. —Closing
scenes—
Madame de
Longueville 35

II. —Madame
de Chevreuse 49

III. —The
Princess
Palatine 54

IV. —Madame
de
Montbazon 61

V. —
Mademoiselle
de
Montpensier 69

VI. —The Wife
of the Great
Condé 80

PART II.

The Duchess of
Portsmouth 93

PART III.

BOOK I.

PRINCESS DES URSINS.

CHAP. I. —Two ladies 127
of the
Bedchamber
during the
war of the
Spanish
Succession—
Lady
Churchill and
the Princess
des Ursins—
Political
motives for
their
elevation in

England and
Spain
II. —The
Princess des
Ursins—The
married life
of Anne de la
Tremouille—
She becomes
the centre of
contemporary
politics in
Rome 131

III. —Madame
des Ursins
aspires to
govern Spain
—Her
manœuvres to
secure the
post of
Camerara-
Mayor 141

IV. —The
Princess
assumes the
functions of
Camerara-
Mayor to the
young Queen
of Spain—An
unpropitious
royal
wedding 148

V. —Onerous 161
and
incongruous
duties of the
Camerara-
Mayor—She
renders Marie
Louise
popular with
the Spaniards
—The policy
adopted by
the Princess
for the
regeneration
of Spain—
Character of
Philip and
Marie Louise
—Two
political
systems
combated by
Madame des
Ursins—She
effects the
ruin of her
political

rivals and
reigns
absolutely in
the Councils
of the Crown
VI. —The
Princess
makes a false
step in her
Statecraft—A
blunder and
an imbroglio 175

VII. —The
Princess quits
Madrid by
command of
Louis XIV.—
After> a short
exile, she
receives
permission to
visit
Versailles 184

VIII. —The
Princess
triumphs at
Versailles 192

BOOK II.

CHAP. I. —Sarah
Jennings and
John
Churchill 207

II. —State of
parties in
action on the
accession of
Queen Anne
—Harley and
Bolingbroke
aim at
overthrowing
the sway of
the female
“Viceroy”—
Abigail Hill
becomes the
instrument of
the Duchess’s
downfall—
Squabbles
between the
Queen and
her Mistress
of the Robes 215

III. —Success of
the Cabal—
The Queen
emancipates
herself from
all
obligations to
the Duke and
Duchess of
Marlborough
—The
downfall of
the Duchess
and the
Whigs
resolved upon
—The
Duchess’s
stormy and
final
interview
with the
Queen 233

IV. —The
disgrace of
the Duchess
involves the
fall of the
Whigs—
Anne
demands
back the
Duchess’s
gold keys of
office—
Extraordinary
influence of
Sarah and
Abigail on
the fortunes
of Europe—
The
illustrious
soldier and
his disgraced
wife driven
from England 242

BOOK III.

CHAP. I. —Delicate 251
and perilous
position of
the Princess
des Ursins
after the
Battle of
Almanza—
She effects an
important
reform by the
centralisation
of the
different
kingdoms of
Spain—The
Duke of
Orleans heads
a faction
inimical to
the Princess
—She
demands and
obtains his
recall—Her
bold

resolution to
act in
opposition to
the timid
policy of
Versailles—
The loftiness
of her past
conduct and
character—
The victory
of
Villaviciosa
definitely
seats the
House of
Bourbon on
the throne of
Spain
II. —The 264
Princess’s
share in the
Treaty of
Utrecht—At
the
culminating
point of her
greatness, a

humiliating
catastrophe is
impending—
Philip
negotiates for
the erection
of a territory
into a
sovereignty
for Madame
des Ursins—
The sudden
death of
Queen Marie
Louise causes
a serious
conjunction
for the
Princess—
Her power
begins to
totter
III. —The 272
Princess finds
herself
friendless in
Spain—
Suspicions

and slanders
rife with
regard to the
relations
existing
between her
and the King
—The
projected
creation of a
sovereignty
fails, through
the
abandonment
of England—
Philip, in
consequence,
refuses to
sign the
Treaty of
Utrecht, but
Louis XIV.
compels the
King and
Princess to
yield—Their
têtes-à-têtes
causing great

scandal, the
King
suddenly
orders the
Princess to
find him a
wife
IV. —Among the 287
Princesses
eligible to
become
Philip’s
consort, he
chooses the
Princess of
Parma—
Alberoni
deceives
Madame des
Ursins as to
the character
of Elizabeth
Farnese—The
Camerara-
Mayor’s
prompt and
cruel disgrace
at the hands

of the new
Queen—She
is arrested
and carried to
St. Jean de
Luz—Her
courage
under
adversity—
She returns to
Rome, and
dies there

BOOK IV.

I. —Closing
Scenes—The
Princess des
Ursins 301

II. —Sarah,
Duchess of
Marlborough 307

BOOK V.
(Continued.)

POLITICAL WOMEN.

CHAPTER III.

THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN CONDÉ AND TURENNE AT PARIS—
NOBLE CONDUCT OF MADEMOISELLE DE MONTPENSIER—FALL
OF THE FRONDE.

The second-rate actors in this shifting drama presented no less diversity
in the motives of their actions. Beaufort, who commanded the troops of
Gaston, and Nemours those of Condé, although brothers-in-law, weakened
by their dissentions an army which their concord would have rendered
formidable. The necessity of military operations required their absence from
Paris; but they preferred rather to there exhibit themselves to their
mistresses, decked out in a general’s uniform, and grasping the truncheon of
command. No greater harmony existed between the Prince de Conti and
Madame de Longueville than when La Rochefoucauld severed them. At
Bordeaux they favoured opposite parties, and contributed to augment the
discord prevailing, and to weaken the party of the Princes by dividing it.
The Duchess de Longueville, when no longer guided by La Rochefoucauld,
did not fail to lose herself in aimless projects, and to compromise herself in
intrigues without result. On Nemours being wounded, his wife repaired to
the army to tend him, and the Duchess de Châtillon, under pretext of
visiting one of her châteaux, accompanied her as far as Montargis; thence
she went to the convent of Filles de Sainte-Marie, where, believing herself
quite incognita, she went, under various disguises, to see him whom she had

never ceased to love. These mysterious visits soon became no longer a
secret to any one; and then Condé and his sister could convince themselves
how different are the sentiments which love inspires and those which self-
interest and vanity simulate. The great Condé, by his intelligence and
bearing, had all the means of pleasing women; but obtained small success
notwithstanding. Mademoiselle Vigean excepted, he appears to have been
incapable of inspiring the tender passion, in the truest acceptation of the
phrase. He went further than his sister, it seems, in the neglect of his person.
It was his habit of life to be almost always badly dressed, and only appeared
radiant on the field of battle. So that the Duke de Nemours was not the only
rival with whom Condé had to contend for the favours of that beauty for
whom Louis XIV. in his boyish amusements had shown a preference, and
which has furnished a theme for some agreeable trifling to the sparkling
muse of Benserade. An abbé, named Cambiac, in the service of the house of
Condé, balanced for some time the passion to which Nemours had given
birth in the bosom of the Duchess de Châtillon, and the jealousy of
Nemours failed to expel Cambiac. The Duchess kept fair with him as the
man who had obtained the greatest sway over her relation, the Princess-
dowager de Condé. The condescension of the Duchess de Châtillon towards
this intriguing and licentious priest procured her, on the part of the Princess-
dowager, a legacy of more than a hundred thousand crowns in Bavaria, and
the usufruct of an estate worth twenty thousand livres in rent per annum.
Cambiac, however, retired, when he knew that Condé was his rival. But the
victor of Rocroy had more address in winning battles than in conducting a
love intrigue. He was clumsy enough to employ as a go-between in his
courtship of his new mistress a certain gentleman named Vineuil, who was,
it is true, one of his most skilful and attached followers, but whose good
looks, agreeable and satirical wit, and enterprising character rendered him a
very dangerous emissary among women. He had even acquired some
celebrity through his successes in that way. Madame de Montbazon,

Madame de Mouy, and the Princess of Wurtemberg had successively
experienced the effects of his seductions. Vineuil made himself very
agreeable to Madame de Châtillon, and if Condé were wronged by him in
that quarter, he never knew of it; for Vineuil was always in great favour
with him. Nemours excited his jealousy, and Nemours only dreaded Condé.
However, shortly before, in the month of March, 1652, the Marquis de la
Boulay and Count de Choisy, both enamoured of this Queen of Hearts, were
bent on fighting a duel about her. A rumour of their intention got wind. The
Duchess de Châtillon heard of it, and appeared unexpectedly on the spot
fixed by the two adversaries for a rendezvous; and at the very instant they
were about to unsheath their swords, she flung herself between them, seized
each by the hand, and led them into the presence of the Duke d’Orleans,
who charged Marshals l’Hospital, Schomberg, and d’Etampes, then in
Paris, to arrange that affair and prevent a duel. In this they succeeded, but
these rivalries and gallant intrigues very sensibly weakened Condé’s party,
and hindered there being anything secret or combined in the execution of
projects determined upon in the councils of its chief.

In the meantime, the siege of Etampes had been raised; and the army of
Condé had issued forth, probably with the intention of attacking Turenne if
he were found engaged with the Duke de Lorraine. On its approaching
Paris, Condé took the command of it, and fixed his head-quarters at Saint-
Cloud, in order to manœuvre on both banks of the Seine. The proximity of
his camp to Paris did him far greater harm than even a defeat would have
done. With but a scanty commissariat, Condé was of course obliged to
permit every sort of licence. All the crops were ruined in the neighbouring
fields; the peasantry were plundered, injured, and their domestic peace
destroyed; and the country-houses of the rich Parisians were pillaged and
burned in all directions. The evils of civil war now came home to the hearts
of the people of the capital, and, forgetting how great a part they themselves

had taken in producing the results they lamented, they cast the whole blame
upon Condé, and regarded him thenceforth with a malevolent eye.

That prince was distracted with different passions and different feelings.
He was himself desirous of peace, and willing to make sacrifices to obtain
it. His fair mistress, the Duchess de Châtillon, linked with La
Rochefoucauld and the Duke de Nemours, confirmed him in seeking it; but,
on the other hand, his sister, who sought to break off his connection with
Madame de Châtillon, joined with the Spaniards, to whom he had bound
himself by so many ties, to lead him away from Paris, and to protract the
war. Gaston’s daughter, too, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, mingled in all
these intrigues, and took the same unwise means to force herself as a bride
upon the young King, which De Retz took to force himself as minister upon
his mother. But while these separate interests tore the capital, the peril of
the army of Condé became imminent. Turenne having brought the Court to
St. Denis, caused a number of boats to be drawn up from Pontoise, and
commenced the construction of a bridge opposite Epinay.

Condé, betrayed on all sides, could at length perceive what an error he
had committed in quitting the army only to lose himself amidst a series of
impotent intrigues, and in having preferred the counsels of such a fickle
mistress as Madame de Châtillon to those of a courageous and devoted
sister such as Madame de Longueville. Towards the end of June, he got on
horseback with a small number of intrepid friends, and rode forth to try for
the last time the fate of arms.

It was too late. Marshal de la Ferté-Senneterre had brought from Lorraine
powerful reinforcements to the royal army, which thereby amounted to
twelve thousand men. That of the Fronde had scarcely the half of that
number, and it was discouraged, divided, incapable of giving battle, and
could only carry on a few days’ campaign around Paris, thanks to the

manœuvres and energy everywhere exhibited by its chief. It was evident
that no other alternative remained to Condé but to treat with the Court at
any price, or to throw himself into the arms of Spain, and the famous
combat of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, seriously considered, was only an
act of despair, an heroic but vain protest of courage against fortune. Success
would have remedied nothing, and a defeat might have been expected, in
which Condé might have lost his glory and his life. It was no slight error of
Turenne to risk a combat against such an adversary without a disposition of
his entire force, for at that moment La Ferté-Senneterre was still with the
artillery before the barrier Saint-Denis. Reunited, the Queen’s two generals
might overwhelm Condé; separated, La Ferté-Senneterre remained useless,
and Turenne left alone might purchase his victory very dearly. The latter
therefore required that La Ferté should hasten to join him by forced
marches, and that the attack should not be commenced before he arrived.
But the orders of the Court admitted of no delay, and the Duke de Bouillon
himself advised an immediate attack, in order to avoid having the
appearance of manœuvring with Condé. Hence the fatal combat of the 2nd
of July, 1652, in which so many valiant officers, of whom the army was
proud, perished uselessly.

Historians in relating the details of that deplorable day have dwelt upon
the courage and talent displayed by Condé within that narrow arena, that
small space of ground which extended from the barrier du Trône, by the
main street of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, in front of the Bastille. As usual,
he had formed a picked squadron which he led on all points, himself
leading the most desperate charges. He had posted himself in front of
Turenne, disputing foot to foot with him the Grande Rue Saint Antoine, and
during the intervals of relaxation of the enemy’s attacks, he rode off
towards Picpus to encourage Tavannes, who was repelling with his
customary vigour every attack made by Saint-Mégrin, or to hold in check,
on the side of the Seine and Charenton Navailles, one of Turenne’s best

lieutenants. It was in the Grande Rue where the rudest shocks were
delivered. Turenne and Condé there rivalled each other in boldness and
obstinacy, both charging at the head of their troops, both covered with
blood, and unceasingly exposed to the fire of musketry. Turenne, far
superior in numbers, was rapidly gaining ground, when Condé suddenly,
sword in hand, at the head of his squadron of fifty brave gentlemen, forced
him to fall back, and the affair remained undecided until Navailles, who had
just received a reinforcement with artillery, overthrew all the barricades in
his path, and in advancing, threatened to surround Condé. The latter,
throwing himself quickly in that direction, saw on reaching the last
barricade his two friends, Nemours and La Rochefoucauld, the one
wounded in several places and unable to stand, the other blinded by a ball
which had passed through his face just below the eyes, and both in
immediate danger of being made prisoners. All exhausted as he was—for
the fighting lasted from morning till evening,—Condé had still heart and
energy to make a last charge for their rescue, and to place them in safety
within the city. He felt the old flame of Rocroy and Nordlingen firing his
blood, and he fought like the boldest of his dragoons. The citizens on the
ramparts beheld with emotion the Prince, covered with blood and dust,
enter a garden, throw off his casque and cuirass, and roll himself half-naked
upon the grass to wipe off the sweat in which he was bathed. Meanwhile,
La Ferté-Senneterre had come up. From that moment all gave way, and the
Prince, feebly seconded by his disheartened soldiers, with the greatest
difficulty reached the Place de la Bastille. There he found the gates of Paris
shut. In vain did Beaufort urge the city militia to go to the assistance of that
handful of brave men on the point of succumbing: wearied with three years
of discord and manipulated by Mazarin, it no longer responded to the
summons of its old chief. Splendidly dressed ladies waved signals to their
champions and lovers below, and the streets became alive with the shouting
of armed citizens, who desired to be let out to the aid of their defenders, and

could not see with cold blood the slaughter of their friends. Thousands went
to the Luxembourg to beseech Gaston to open the gates of the city for the
reception of the wounded and the protection of the over-matched. Long
trains of wounded and dying young men began to be carried in; the groans
and blood were horrible to hear and see; and the women of all ranks and
ages were frantic with sympathy and grief. De Retz and terror had so
chilled the Duke d’Orleans into inaction that he would have let Condé
perish, had not Mademoiselle de Montpensier, who was at that time smitten
with Condé, wrung indignantly from her father, by dint of tears and
entreaties, an order to open the gates to the outnumbered Prince.

Mazarin, from the heights of Charonne, where he had stationed himself
with the young King, might well have thought that it was all over with his
worst enemy; and, when startled to hear that Mademoiselle herself had even
ordered the cannon of the Bastille to be fired upon the royal army,
exclaimed, “With that cannon-shot she has slain her husband,” making
allusion to the ambition which the Princess d’Orleans always had to
espouse the youthful Louis XIV. True, on that same day, Mademoiselle
destroyed with her own hand her dearest hopes; but that trait of generosity
and greatness of soul has for ever honoured her memory, and shields it from
many errors and much ridicule. After having solemnly pledged itself to
Condé, it would have been the height of opprobrium for the House of
Orleans to let Condé fall before their eyes: better to have perished with him,
and at least saved its honour.

Mademoiselle has related in what condition she found Condé, when
having placed herself at the window of a little dwelling near the Bastille, in
order to see the troops pass as they entered the city, the Prince hurried for a
moment from the gate to speak to her. He neither thought of himself, all
covered with blood as he was, nor even of his cause, very nearly hopeless:
he thought only of the friends he had lost. It did not occur to him that they

were those who had embarked him in negotiations the results of which had
proved so fatal: he thought only that they had died for him, and his anguish
grew insupportable. “He was,” says Mademoiselle, “in a most pitiable state;
he was not wounded himself, yet he was covered from head to foot with
dust and blood, his hair all disordered, his face flushed with exertion, his
cuirass battered with blows, and having lost the scabbard of his sword in the
fight, he held the blade naked in his hand.” As he entered, the memory of all
those he had seen fall around him seemed to rush suddenly upon Condé,
and casting himself upon a seat, he burst into tears. “Forgive me,” said the
great soldier, “I have lost all my friends—the gallant young hearts that
loved me.” “No, they are only wounded,” said his cousin, “and many of
them not dangerously; they will recover and love you still.” Condé sprang
up at the good news, and rushed back into the fight. At the head of all his
effective cavalry, he made one desperate, long-continued charge, and drove
the enemy backward for a mile. In the meantime, the gates were opened
wide, and, file after file, the weary soldiers marched into the city; and
dashing homeward after his brilliant assault, Condé and his squadron
galloped in the last: but when the ponderous bars were once more drawn
across the portals, it was felt that the combatants indeed were saved, but
that the Fronde was destroyed.

CHAPTER IV.

THE DUKE DE NEMOURS SLAIN IN A DUEL BY HIS BROTHER-IN-
LAW, BEAUFORT.

Some few days after the fierce fight of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine,
Condé had an interview with the Duke d’Orleans, “who embraced him with
an air as gay as though he had failed him in nothing.”[1] Condé uttered no
word of reproach out of respect to his daughter. He did not behave exactly
in the same way towards Madame de Châtillon. She had addressed a note to
him begging him to visit her. She showed this effusion to Mademoiselle,
saying, “He will at least see from that the uneasiness which is felt for him.”
But Condé’s mind was disabused, and when he met her who had been his
ruin, “he cast upon her, we are told, the most terrible glances conceivable,
showing by the expression of his countenance how much he despised
her.”[2] Well would it have been if soon afterwards the grand-nephew of
Henry IV. had not lent anew his ear to the song of the syren and resumed
the slavery of her dishonouring fetters!

It is not to our purpose to retrace the melancholy scenes of which, after
the combat of Saint Antoine, and during the remainder of the month of July,
1652, Paris was the theatre. It would be only to dwell upon the sad
spectacle of the agony and supreme convulsions of a beaten party,

struggling in vain to escape its fate, and seeking safety in excesses which
only served to precipitate its destruction.

Condé left no violent extreme untried to determine Paris to make further
sacrifices for his cause. Dissatisfied with the deliberations of the Hôtel de
Ville, he caused it to be carried by assault by the populace, who killed
several of the échevins. The Fronde, however, was approaching its last
agony. Divided amongst themselves by selfish interests, and outwearied
with endless intrigues, the majority of the Frondeurs only awaited a fitting
opportunity of treating with Mazarin. An amnesty soon made its
appearance, and the Cardinal took the step of quitting France once more in
order to facilitate a reconciliation. But Condé, on his side, was very little
disposed thereto, for he had gone very far indeed to retrace his steps.
Furious at having failed to reach the object which he had thought to attain,
exasperated by the abandonment of his partisans, by the sarcasms of
pamphleteers, he demanded securities and large indemnifications; and
proposed such hard conditions that all accord with him became impossible.
Thereupon he collected some troops around his standard, a tolerably large
number of gentlemen, and rejoined the Duke de Lorraine, who was
advancing upon Paris. Their united forces amounted to eighty squadrons
and eight thousand infantry. Turenne had scarcely half that strength; but he
manœuvred so skilfully round Paris, that they failed to get any advantage
over him. Condé withdrew; and when the King, on his return to the Louvre,
published a second amnesty (October, 1652), the Prince had crossed the
frontier, after having taken several strongholds in his line of march. Shortly
afterwards, he became generalissimo of the Spanish armies, whilst a decree
of the parliament declared him guilty of high treason and a traitor to the
State.

Previous to Condé’s departure from Paris, intense indignation had been
excited in every well-balanced mind by a shocking event—the Duke de

Nemours having been slain by the hand of his brother-in-law, the Duke de
Beaufort, in an abominable duel. From De Nemours the provocation had
come, and all the wrong was on his part; but as the victim, he was deplored
by all those who were ignorant of what had contributed to bring about the
affair, and for some time the new governor of Paris (Beaufort) could not
show himself in public.

In the Dukes de Nemours and La Rochefoucauld, Condé had lost his two
pacific advisers. In vain had he offered to La Rochefoucauld the post of
Nemours, the command under him, and thus to be the second authority in
his army. La Rochefoucauld had excused himself on account of his wound,
and Condé gave the vacant command to the Prince de Tarente.
Henceforward, Madame de Châtillon quite alone was unable to
counterbalance the counsels and influence of Madame de Longueville, and
Condé plunged deeper than ever into the Spanish alliance and the war
waged by that nation against France.

Whilst all these events were happening, Bordeaux had become the theatre
of continued troubles. Madame de Longueville no longer agreed with her
younger brother; the inhabitants of the city, who had only entered half-
heartedly and been almost forced into rebellion, became impatient to
extricate themselves from the constrained position in which they were held.
As the sequel to negotiations which the city carried on with the Duke de
Vendôme, who blockaded it, there was a general amnesty.

When Condé retired to the Netherlands, it was not long before it became
known, to the national humiliation, that the best soldier of France, a prince
of the blood and protector of the people, had followed the recent example of
his conqueror, and sold his services to Spain. The young King made his
triumphal entry into Paris, accompanied by his mother and Turenne. He
convoked the Courts, and received them into favour, “provided they

returned within the limits of their duties, and abstained from interfering
with the government.” Gaston was sent into honourable exile, to his castle
in the beautiful town of Blois, and the Cardinal-Archbishop, the evil spirit
of the Fronde, was received with apparent cordiality, and began to entertain
hopes of supplanting his rival; but when he had fallen into disrepute with
the citizens, he was quietly carried off to Vincennes, and left to meditate on
his plots and schemings within the bars of his solitary apartment. The
Parisians were now so changed from what they had been, that they received
their old enemy, the Cardinal Mazarin, with demonstrations of delight,
when he made his solemn entry into the repentant city with young Louis as
an attendant at his side.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Mademoiselle de Montpensier, tom. ii. p. 148.

[2] The same.

CHAPTER V.

THE TRIUMPH OF MAZARIN.

Mazarin might well have claimed the right of accompanying to Paris, on
the 21st October, 1652, Louis the Fourteenth and Anne of Austria, and to
share the joy of their victory over the Fronde, for he was the true achiever
of it. It was he who, by retiring so opportunely, by leaving the Fronde to
itself, had allowed it to exhibit at its entire ease its fury and impotence; it
was he who, from the depth of his exile, disquieted by the success of
Châteauneuf, had collected troops, rallied round him experienced generals,
raised the banner of the monarchy, and from one vantage ground to another
had carried it forwards even to Paris. But by reappearing there prematurely,
Mazarin might have risked the rekindling of animosities scarcely yet
extinguished. It was his own advice he followed—to second the effect of
the amnesty, by a momentary absence, in order to leave no pretext to those
who had so often promised to yield if he quitted the kingdom. Sure of the
young King, surer still of his mother, leaving with them his instructions and
approved advisers, Mazarin had disappeared, withdrawing at first to
Bouillon, across the frontier; then, as by degrees the King’s government
became consolidated at Paris, he drew nearer and moved to Sedan; next, he
went openly to join the royal army, taking with him powerful
reinforcements, munitions, provisions, and money. Admirably commanded
by Turenne and La Ferté-Senneterre, it had forced the little army of Condé

and the Duke de Lorraine to slowly beat a retreat in the direction of the
Netherlands. Active, resolute, indefatigable, he did not hesitate to prolong
the campaign beyond its ordinary limits, until the end of December, and
even up to January, 1653. He had only quitted the army on beholding the
enemy abandon French territory, and after having made the frontier of
Champagne and Picardy secure from any chance of a return of offensive
operations. It was then that he put his troops into winter quarters, and that
he himself, heralded and sustained by these solid successes, had taken the
road to Paris.

On the 3rd of February, 1653, he therein made a truly triumphal entry.
The young King, accompanied by his brother the Duke d’Anjou, went out
for more than a league to meet him, received him with the greatest apparent
affection, took him into his carriage, and two hours afterwards they entered
by the Porte Saint-Denis, in great pomp, amidst the joyous shouts of that
same populace which, two years previously, had pursued him with
imprecations. The Cardinal was thus enthusiastically conducted to the
Louvre, where Anne of Austria awaited him.

He there beheld once more that courageous Queen, whom history, misled
by the impostors of the Fronde, has too much misconceived, that stanch
friend, an example among all queens, and almost among all women, of a
constancy equal to either fortune; who, in the early days of 1643, had
discerned the great abilities of Mazarin, and seen in him the only man
capable of properly conducting the affairs of France; who, after having
owed to him five long years of glory, had in 1648 and 1649 defended him
against the aristocracy, the parliament, and the people united; who later had
only consented to his retirement because he himself had judged it
necessary; who during his absence had alike resisted every species of
seduction, every kind of menace, and had never ceased to be governed by
his counsels; who, at Gien, learning the rout of her troops at Bleneau whilst

at her toilet, went on with it calmly, when everyone else spoke of flight,
rivalling Mazarin himself in courage and coolness. On finding themselves
once more together under the roof of royalty after so many long and
sorrowful separations, after seeing each other so often on the very verge of
ruin, they might well be proud of their mutual constancy, which had
deserved and brought about the halo of prosperity surrounding that
auspicious day, and together look forward for the rest of their lives with the
solid hope of sharing a glorious repose.

Around the Queen, the Cardinal was welcomed by a brilliant array of
great nobles and fair ladies, formerly the bitter enemies Of Richelieu’s
successor, but who were there assembled to compliment him upon his
happy return.

Amongst those ladies foremost in their congratulations was the Princess
Palatine, with whom we have already made some acquaintance—Anne de
Gonzagua, one of the most eminent personages of the seventeenth century.
Of an admirable beauty, which served in some sort as a setting to an
intellect the most solid, she was as capable of taking part in the
deliberations of statesmen as in the assemblies of wits or in gallant
intrigues, seeking, it is true, her advantages, but not by the betrayal of any
one; who, without treason to royalty, had given advice the most judicious to
the Fronde, and would have saved it, if the Fronde could have been saved.
As she had never ceased to keep up the best understanding with Mazarin,
she could very well associate herself with his triumph.

She was there also, that other famous female politician, of a grade still
higher, as beautiful and as gallant, of a less gracious, perhaps, but yet
stronger disposition, more capable still of grand enterprises, and never
suffering herself to be stayed by any danger or any scruple—the widow of
the Constable de Luynes, Marie de Rohan, Duchess de Chevreuse, who

formerly had lent a hand to every plot concocted against Mazarin, and in
concert with the Palatine had proposed, as we have seen, the sole measure
which could bring together all the Cardinal’s enemies, and form a great
aristocratical party strong enough to make head against royalty:—the
marriage of Condé’s son with a daughter of the Duke d’Orleans, and that of
her own daughter with the Prince de Conti. This latter match having been
broken off in a manner the most outrageous to her feelings, Madame de
Chevreuse had separated from Condé with éclat; and, too experienced to
ally herself with the sort of tiers-parti which Retz had proposed, but
allowing herself to be gently and skilfully guided by the Marquis de
Laignes, whom Mazarin with his usual adroitness had known how to win
over, she had returned to the side of her early friend, Anne of Austria, and
became resigned to the power of a man who at any rate knew his own mind,
and whose robust ambition never wavered at the breath of vanity or the gust
of momentary passion. The fame and honour that she might expect from the
Fronde had been offered to her by Mazarin, and in return Madame de
Chevreuse had brought to royalty the declared support of the three
illustrious families, the Rohans, De Luynes, and the Lorraines. It was she
who, ever puissant over the Duke de Lorraine, had negotiated a secret treaty
between him and the Cardinal, and who by turns had made him act in such
contrary directions. Restored entirely to the Queen’s favour, Madame de
Chevreuse was at her side in the Louvre, to welcome warmly the return of
the prosperous Cardinal.

After Madame de Chevreuse, Mazarin had had no adversaries more
dangerous than the Vendômes and Bouillons. And yet on that memorable
day of February 3rd, 1653, he could consider the heads of those two
powerful families as the firmest supporters of his greatness.

Cæsar, Duke de Vendôme, natural son of Henry the Fourth, was much
more formidable by his intelligence, his valour, and his craft than by his

birth. There was nothing—even to the virtues of his wife, a reputed saint,—
which was not put to the profit of his ambition. His daughter, the beautiful
Mademoiselle de Vendôme, had married that brilliant Duke de Nemours,
who had come to such a miserable end. His eldest son, the Duke de
Mercœur, was a sagacious and estimable prince, and the Duke de Beaufort,
his youngest, was the idol of the populace of Paris. It was Beaufort who, in
1643, urged by the two duchesses De Montbazon and De Chevreuse, had
formed the design of assassinating Mazarin. The Duke de Vendôme had
been suspected of being implicated in that affair; he had at least given
shelter in his château at Anet to all the accomplices of his son; and, forced
to quit France to avoid the arrest with which he was threatened, he had
wandered for several years through Italy and England, everywhere stirring
up enemies against the Cardinal. The latter saw clearly that it was better to
acquire a son of Henry the Fourth at a given price, than to prosecute him
without the slightest advantage. After all, what did the Duke desire, and
what were his demands when Mazarin became prime minister? Either that
the government of Brittany, which his father, Henry the Fourth, had
destined for him, and that his father-in-law, Philibert Emmanuel of
Lorraine, held; or that the Admiralty, one of the highest posts in the state,
should be given him. Mazarin had repulsed these pretensions in 1643, but
looked upon them favourably in 1652; he therefore made the Duke High-
Admiral, even conferred upon him the title of State Minister, with a seat at
the council-board, after being assured that Vendôme, having secured that
which he had always sought to attain, would serve him as firmly as he had
formerly opposed him. He had an infallible pledge for his fidelity. The
Duke’s eldest son, the loyal and pious Duke de Mer[co]eur, had married one
of the Cardinal’s nieces, the amiable and virtuous Laura Mancini, so that
the house of Vendôme was interested in and inseparably united to Mazarin’s
fortunes. Therefore, on the 3rd of February, 1653, the High-Admiral Cæsar
de Vendôme, engaged in pursuing the Spanish fleet in the sea of Gascony,

entered the Gironde, and threatened the relics of the Fronde at Bordeaux.
On his part, the Duke de Mercœur, named governor of Provence, watched
over that important province for the King and Mazarin, whilst the Duke de
Beaufort, who earlier had been desirous of laying violent hands on the
Cardinal, and who yet quite recently had shown himself as his implacable
enemy, covered and protected by the services of his father and brother,
retired to Anet, without being the least in the world disquieted; satisfied
with beholding Madame de Montbazon satisfied because plenty of money
had been given her, and awaited quietly the moment at which he should
succeed his father in the command of the fleet, and shed his blood in the
service of his King.

The Bouillons were of little less importance than the Vendômes. The
Duke was a politician and a soldier of the first class, capable of conducting
a government or leading an army, and who had only one sentiment or
thought in heart and head—the aggrandisement of his house. Already
sovereign prince of Sedan, urged by his wife, still more ambitious than
himself, he had in 1641, in the hope of securing fresh territorial
acquisitions, treated with Spain, taken part in the revolt of the Count de
Soissons, and won the battle of La Marfée against the royal army. In 1642,
he had entered into the conspiracy of the Duke d’Orleans and Cinq Mars,
and, arrested, thrown into chains at Pierre-Encise, he had only saved his
head from the scaffold by abandoning his principality. Ever since, he had
not ceased to agitate for the recovery of that which by treason he had lost.
He had again demanded Sedan from Mazarin in 1643, and not being able to
obtain it at the hands of that great servant of the Crown, that, in order to
satisfy a private interest, France should renounce one of its best strongholds
on the frontier of the Netherlands, he had ranked himself among the
Cardinal’s enemies, and forced at first to flee, like the Duke de Vendôme,
had scarcely returned to France ere he embraced with ardour the Fronde,
though without the slightest conviction, be it understood, and in the sole

hope of easily obtaining from it what he could not snatch from royalty. He
had enlisted with him in the Fronde his brother Turenne, of whom he
disposed absolutely, and who was equally ambitious, and equally covetous
of the grandeur of their family, but after his own fashion, and the mould of
his frigid, reflective, and profoundly dissembling character. At the peace of
Ruel, in 1649, the Duke de Bouillon had demanded “his re-establishment in
Sedan, or if the Queen preferred to reimburse him for it at an estimated
price, with the possessions promised and due to his house; for himself, the
government of Auvergne; for his brother that of Haute and Basse Alsace,
with that of Philipsbourg and the command of all the armies of Germany.”
Mazarin had then committed the error of not satisfying this ambitious and
powerful house; hence, in 1650, the conduct of the Duke in Guienne and
that of Turenne at Stenay and in Flanders. In 1651, the Queen treated
seriously with the Duke, and on his return Mazarin succeeded in entirely
gaining him over. Not desiring at any price to restore Sedan to him, he
granted the equivalent demanded—a great domain at Château-Thierry,
much richer than that of Sedan, and, without effective sovereignty, that title
of Prince, so dear to the vanity of the Bouillons, which the head of the
family could not only transmit to his children, but which could descend also
to his brother Turenne. The Duke de Bouillon having once taken the part of
abandoning Condé, in spite of all his engagements, and of serving royalty,
did it with the same energy which he had displayed at Paris and Bordeaux.
He never afterwards forsook Mazarin, but assisted him with his advice, and
suffered even more than once in person, by acting with his customary
vigour, and the obstinate ardour of his country and race. It was he who, on
the night of the battle of Bleneau, brought reinforcements to Turenne, and
enabled him to stop Condé. It was he, again, who, on the 2nd of July, 1652,
to let Mazarin see that he had gained him for good and all, joined with the
Cardinal in pressing Turenne, against all the rules of war, not to wait the
coming up of the troops of La Ferte-Senneterre. A truthful witness, and one

of the principal actors in that sanguinary drama, Navailles, even affirms that
the Duke de Bouillon took part in the affair, and that he was at the attack in
which Saint-Megrin perished. If Bouillon had lived, with his immeasurable
ambition and his capacity equalling his ambition, would he have been
contented with the second rank, and would he always have remained the
devoted servant of the Cardinal?

None can say: for the Duke de Bouillon was cut short in his ambitious
career; he died on the 9th of August, 1652, without having enjoyed those
possessions and those honours which he had so greatly coveted; but ere
closing his eyes he saw them pass to his children. Turenne, carefully
conciliated and caressed, was made, on his brother’s death, governor of
Auvergne, and the viscounty of Turenne erected into a principalty. Very
shortly afterwards he also received the post of minister of state. Mazarin
went even still further: desirous of heaping up benefits upon the illustrious
soldier whose honesty and ambition he had so long known, desirous at the
same time to attach in his person all the Protestant party by decisive acts,
which would show in a conspicuous manner that whosoever should serve
him well would be faithfully recompensed, without distinction of religion,
the skilful and politic Cardinal made the Duke de la Force, a Protestant and
the father-in-law of Turenne, Marshal of France, as his father had been.
Thus, on the 3rd of February, 1653, Turenne was likewise at the Louvre at
Mazarin’s side, as the representative of all his family, and already occupied
with preparation for the campaign that was about to open in the spring in
the Netherlands, and where he was to take command of the French army.

But if Mazarin had taken care to win over successively those chiefs of the
Importants and the Frondeurs in whom his experienced eye had recognised
as sincerely disposed to a loyal submission, he had this time taken care not
to allow himself to be betrayed by false appearances, and did not fail to
strike at, or at least banish from Paris, those whom he despaired of

acquiring. He had lent himself with good grace to the reconciliation sought
by the Duke d’Orleans; as it was not his wish to give to France and Europe
the appearance of ill-treating the King’s uncle, and constrain him perhaps
once more to go in search of a foreign asylum; but by conciliating him in
the most suitable way, he had taken surety of him, and being convinced that
too much lenity would only embolden him to mix himself up in fresh
intrigues, he did not permit him to remain in Paris, when the King returned
thither, for fear lest in his palace of the Luxembourg, surrounded by
perfidious advisers, whilst lavishing great marks of deference upon the
Queen and the young King, he might cherish and rekindle on occasion the
hopes of the Fronde. Therefore, it was arranged that the Duke d’Orleans
should quit Paris on the day previous to that of the King’s entry, and
consequently he retired at first to Limours, then to Blois, the ordinary
refuge of his treason and faint-heartedness, where, in nowise persecuted,
but watched and kept within bounds, he passed amidst general indifference
the remainder of his contemptible career. Mademoiselle remained also for
some time in disgrace at St. Fargeau, and consoled herself by degrees for
the ruin of her divers pretensions with her large fortune and small court.
The Cardinal de Retz putting a good face upon a losing game, and
especially desirous of receiving from the King’s own hand the cardinal’s hat
granted him by the Pope, in order to claim the right of wearing the dress
and of enjoying the honours and privileges attached to that high dignity, had
been among the first to meet the King at Compiègne at the head of the
clergy of Paris, and had addressed him in a bold and artful speech, in the
style of that of Cæsar in the affair of Cataline, skilfully covering the defeat
of his party, recommending the policy of moderation, referring more than
once to the conduct of Henry the Great towards the Leaguers, and through
fear lest it should not be sufficiently understood that he was speaking about
himself, citing the pacific words of Henry to his great uncle, the Cardinal de
Gondi. In that oration he had also insinuated some high compliments to the

Queen, as though he had resumed his former hopes. The next day, at mass,
the King placed the red hat upon his head, and henceforward De Retz
assumed and wore the dress of cardinal. After the King’s return, he had
carried his audacity so far as to present himself at the Louvre to pay, as a
faithful subject, his homage to their Majesties. On the 1st of December, he
preached with great effect at Notre Dame, and recommenced his old course
of life of 1648, making pious sermons in the intervals of his gallant
rendezvous, devoting the morning to preaching at church, the evening to
bonnes fortunes, and reknitting in the dark the meshes of his old intrigues.
But Mazarin knew him thoroughly: he was persuaded that De Retz was
incapable of confining himself to his ecclesiastical functions, incompatible
as they were with his dissipated and licentious habits, with his restless and
factious disposition, and so under his minister’s advice on some slight
suspicion arising, the King had him arrested even in the very Louvre, on the
19th of December, 1652, and conducted to the donjon of Vincennes.

Mazarin was too cautious to treat La Rochefoucauld after the same
fashion. He knew marvellously well that, separated from Condé and
Madame de Longueville, who constituted all his importance, La
Rochefoucauld was no longer to be dreaded, and that he was not of a
humour to make himself the champion and martyr of a vanquished party.
The serious wound which he had received in the combat of Saint Antoine
turned him, so to speak, to advantage. Struck by a ball which had traversed
both cheeks and temporarily deprived him of sight, it was impossible for
him to continue in active service and to follow the army. He did not
therefore play false to Condé in not accepting the command of such troops
as remained to the Fronde—a command which, on his retirement, was
offered to the Prince de Tarent. It was absolutely essential that he should be
speedily cured of his wound; and that real motive covering his weariness
and long-felt disgust, he did not, like Persan, Bouteville, and Vauban, join
the Prince in Flanders. On the other hand, he had not objected to the

amnesty, and therefore could not be included in the royal declaration issued
on the 13th of November against Condé, Conti, Madame de Longueville,
and their chief adherents. But Mazarin took good care not to pursue him,
and La Rochefoucauld, after allowing the first outburst of the storm to pass
over, retired to his estates to bury himself in obscurity for a few years, and
to taste that repose of which he had so great need. Then he quitted his
retreat and reappeared at Paris. It must have been necessary for him to go
very far in conciliation to be received again into favour. He succeeded in it,
however, by saving appearances, to use a modern phrase, and in skilfully
managing the transition. He made his peace with the politic and gracious
Cardinal, rode in his carriage, saying with as much reason as wit,
“Everything happens in France!” He managed to get his son into intimacy
with the young King, and, wonderful to relate, he obtained from Mazarin, in
indemnification for the losses he had experienced in carrying on war against
him, a thumping pension of eight thousand livres.

If space permitted us thus to run over successively the list of all the great
nobles who had previously had a hand in the Fronde, it would be easy to
show that on the 3rd of February, 1653, the most ardent and the most
illustrious of those we have cited, and many others, such as the Duke
d’Elbeuf and Marshal Houdancourt, both generals of the Fronde at Paris in
1648 and 1649, the Duke de Guise, so strongly bound to Condé, almost all,
in short, were ranged round Mazarin, and fought with him and for him, and
that for one sole but very sufficient reason—which was that the clever
Cardinal knew how to make them understand wherein lay their true
interests.

Self-interest, self-interest, such was, with very few exceptions, the unique
mainspring of the aristocracy in the Fronde, and La Rochefoucauld has only
erected into a maxim and even generalised into excess the principle which
he had seen practised everywhere around him.

It may thus be judged whether, as some writers have asserted without the
slightest knowledge of the facts, the Fronde was a great and generous cause
which failed of obtaining success. On the contrary, it was simply a powerful
coalition of individual interests, and if considered under the aspect of an
abortive anticipation of the French revolution, and some general design
sought for therein in one way or another, it would be rather that of stifling
in its cradle the principles of that revolution.

Is it true that the Fronde, as has been asserted, was a counterpart, a sort of
miserable imitation, of the revolution which was then convulsing England?
Not the least in the world. That other error, still stranger than the preceding,
rests upon a false and deceitful analogy—that common shoal of historical
considerations and comparisons. At bottom, the earlier part of the English
revolution was almost entirely of a religious character, whilst in the Fronde
the religious element did not intervene at all, thanks to the enlightened
protection enjoyed by the Protestants. It seemed, indeed, like a demoniacal
caricature of our British troubles at that moment. No sternness, no reality;
love-letters and witty verses supplying the place of the Biblical language
and awful earnestness of the words and deeds of the Covenanters and
Independents; the gentlemen of France utterly debased and frivolised;
religion ridiculed; nothing left of the old landmarks; and no Cromwell
possible. All sense of honour disappears when conduct is regulated by the
shifting motives of party politics. The dissensions of the Fronde accordingly
produced no champion to whom either side could look with unmingled
respect. The great Condé and the famous Turenne showed military talent of
the highest order, but a want of principle and a flighty frivolity of character
counterbalanced all their virtues. The scenes of those five or six years are
like a series of dissolving views, or the changing combinations of a
kaleidoscope; Condé and Turenne always on opposite sides—for each
changed his party as often as the other; battles prepared for by masquerades
and theatricals, and celebrated on both sides with epigrams and songs; the

wildest excesses of debauchery and vice practised by both sexes and all
ranks in the State; archbishops fighting like gladiators, and intriguing like
the vulgarest conspirators; princes imprisoned with a jest, and executions
attended with cheers and laughter; the highest in the land caballing,
cheating, and lying, but keeping a firm grasp of power:—no country was
ever so split into faction, or so denuded of great men.

But, while all these elements of confusion were heaving and tumbling in
what seemed an inextricable chaos, the monarchical principle, strange to
say, still burned brightly in the hearts of all the French. Even in their fights
and quarrelings there was a deep reverence entertained for the ideal of the
throne. The King’s name was a tower of strength; and when the nation, in
the course of the miserable years from 1610 to 1661, saw the extinction of
nobility, religion, law, and almost of civilised society, it caught the first
sound that told it it still had a King, as an echo from the past assuring it of
its future. It forgot Louis the Thirteenth, the Regency, and the Fronde, and
only remembered that its monarch was the grandson of Henry the Fourth,
when it witnessed in his reign the culmination of the French monarchy, and
the splendid intellectual development with which it was simultaneous.

And that brilliant day of Mazarin’s triumph was shadowed by no eclipse.
It was not one of those lucky freaks of fate often followed by long disgrace:
no, that Minister’s triumph rested on solid foundations. Not only he saw at
his feet, in the Louvre, all his former enemies vanquished, but not one of
them able to rise again in enmity, for all their strength was exhausted. The
wearied citizens wanted repose, and placed all their hopes in royalty. The
parliaments, ashamed of having allowed their ancient loyalty to be surprised
by the deceitful caresses of the discontented nobles, returned voluntarily
within the prudent limits of their institution, satisfied with having seen the
government recognise all their legitimate complaints, and bind itself to
respect their just and necessary independence. The aristocracy thought itself

still more fortunate at having thus been extricated from this last defeat. It
left, it is true, upon the field of battle some few of its feudal pretensions, but
in exchange, titles, honours, and wealth were lavished upon it, and its
vanity could at any rate console its ambition. The good fortune of Mazarin
opened the eyes of everyone to his merit. No one could refrain from
applauding his firmness and his capacity. Had he proved unsuccessful, he
would only have been looked upon as a second Concini; victorious, he was
another Richelieu to whom it was necessary to succumb, but who might be
served without loss of honour, because, after having shown that he was as
firm in his principle of government as his imperious predecessor, he did not
play the tyrant; and, far from making the weight of his power felt, he forced
himself rather to disguise it under flattering words, did not show the least
resentment for former injuries, extended a hand to everyone who came to
him, listened to every complaint that had anything legitimate in it,
entertained every pretension that was at all reasonable, and seemed
disposed to base his government upon skilful concessions and not upon
useless rigour. His star was believed in, his moderation inspired confidence,
and people grew eager to participate in his triumph. Already at Vendôme, a
grandson of Henry the Great had espoused one of his nieces; the proudest
among the French nobility were soon about to contend for the hands of the
others; and the man whom the Fronde had so persecuted was about to place
his family upon the steps of the throne. The solemn reception which the
King and Queen gave Mazarin at the Louvre on the 3rd February, 1653, was
not therefore an idle pageant or empty ceremony. That same day, Mazarin
could understand that a new era had arisen for him, more brilliant and more
secure than that of 1643, after the defeat of the Importants, and that that
sterile and sanguinary halt upon the road of reform and the civilising march
of monarchy known in history under the name of the Fronde was at last and
for ever terminated.

BOOK VI.

CLOSING SCENES.

CHAPTER I.

THE DUCHESS DE LONGUEVILLE.

Having rapidly summarised the fate and fortunes of the leading male
actors who figured in the Fronde, we will now glance briefly at the closing
scenes in the careers of the fair politicians whom we have seen playing such
brilliant and prominent parts in that curious tragi-comedy.

To high-born French women—princesses and duchesses—the revolt of
the Fronde especially belonged. They were at once its main-springs, its
chief instruments, its most interested agents; and among them Madame de
Longueville, who enacted the most conspicuous part, was by its events the
most ill-treated of all.

We have seen her the heroine—or, perhaps the adventuress—of the civil
war, rushing into dangers and mixing herself up in intrigues of every kind,
in order to serve the interests of another. She was not a consummate
politician like the Palatine, for she had no real business tact. Her true
character and the unity of her life should be sought where they were really
shown—in her devotion to him whom she loved. It is there—in that
devotion wholly and always the same, at once consistent, yet absurd, and
very touching even in its downright follies.

All her eccentric movements were attributable to the restless and fickle
spirit of La Rochefoucauld. Solely occupied with his own interests, it was
he who drew her into the vortex of party politics and civil war, with a view
to his own self-aggrandisement. It was for love of him that she sacrificed
domestic peace, repose, and reputation.

At Bordeaux Madame de Longueville had at first enjoyed the same
popularity as that which she had acquired in Paris at the commencement of
the first Fronde. Upon that section of the second Fronde which had its head-
quarters in the South, the Duchess, after its chief, the Prince de Conti, was
the most likely person to exercise a decisive influence alike by the clearness
of her intellect, the firmness of her character, and the great confidence with
which she had inspired the entire party. In 1650 she had covered herself
with glory at Stenay, and the eyes of not only France, but the whole of
Europe, were fixed upon her. She was unable to play the same part at
Bordeaux. Invested at Stenay with supreme authority, she had been
compelled, as it were, to display all the intelligence and energy she
possessed: at Bordeaux she was only an adviser indifferently well listened
to. And moreover, in 1650, her frame of mind was widely different. With a
sincere attachment to the interests of her party and her house, another and
more intimate sentiment animated and sustained her: she loved and was
beloved. A reciprocal devotedness justified in some measure that passion
which had already passed through three long and trying years, and found its
aliment and its strength in common sacrifices. In fact, if Madame de
Longueville had braved in Normandy all kinds of danger and even death to
cross the sea in order to reach the Netherlands and unfurl at Stenay the
banner of the Princes, La Rochefoucauld, too, it must be remembered, had
been continually in arms. That interval was the golden era of their lives.
They suffered and combated for each other. They had the same cause, the
same faith, the same hopes. Their hearts were never more united than
during that cruel year when, separated by civil war, they could scarcely,

from the furthest extremities of France, address each other, amid risks
innumerable, in a few apparently insignificant lines, but through which,
nevertheless, there breathed a tenderness and confidence proof against
everything. Now all was changed. As we have said, La Rochefoucauld had
grown wearied of the Fronde, into which he had hopefully flung himself in
1648. In 1651 he became desirous of reconciling himself with the Court,
and making a pact which would have infallibly separated them, since M. de
Longueville, irritated with all that had at length reached his ears, had
summoned his wife in a menacing tone to join him in Normandy. It was she
who then, in her turn, was compelled to draw over La Rochefoucauld. He
continued to follow in her footsteps through the sentiment of devotedness
that still lingered in his heart, but without conviction, and with a
lukewarmness which deeply wounded Condé’s high-souled sister. She felt
that she was no longer loved commensurately with the heroic and tender
ideal of which she had dreamed, and that a struggle with fortune, too long
continued, had cast down his inconstant and wavering spirit. Hence also
arose that momentary error which we have neither disguised nor excused.
Love enfeebled and discouraged had delivered her up once more to her
natural coquetry, and coquetry stimulated by politics had made her brave
the semblance of an infidelity towards La Rochefoucauld and herself.
Without being hurried away in the slightest degree by the senses or the
heart, in her endeavour to carry off the Duke de Nemours from Madame de
Châtillon and the peace party, and engage him more deeply in that of the
war and Condé, she had slightly compromised herself; and La
Rochefoucauld, influenced by an implacable resentment, instead of
breaking with her openly, had, at Paris, entered into a shameful league with
Madame de Châtillon and his pretended rival, the Duke de Nemours, in
order that they might rob the poor Duchess of her last consolation, the
esteem and affection of Condé. Left in Guienne, without any great or
engrossing occupation, with a vacant mind, discontented both with others

and herself, Madame de Longueville was no longer the brilliant Bellona of
Stenay, but her pride and dignity, which she could not lose, never failed to
sustain her. She therefore resolved to remain even unto the end faithful to
that brother whose heart was sought to be steeled against her by the
whispers of calumny: to remain in Bordeaux as long as possible, without
recoiling from any means which necessity might prescribe. Not for a single
day, not for an hour, did she dream of separating her fate from that of
Condé, and of bending the knee before his victorious enemies.

At length, however, it was her inevitable fate to yield to the star of
Mazarin and Louis XIV., who having obtained the mastery over the South
as elsewhere, she was compelled to quit the factious city, and repair, by
command of the Court, to Montreuil-Bellay, a domain belonging to her
husband in Anjou. Shortly afterwards she obtained permission to go to
Moulins, where her aunt, the inconsolable widow De Montmorency, was
superior of the convent (Filles de Sainte-Marie). From that visit to Moulins
may be dated the conversion of the beautiful and adventurous princess. On
emerging from such a chaos of turmoil and commotion, in that calm and
holy retreat, her thoughts reverted to the pure and innocent period of her
youth, to the brilliant and tumultuous past, to the sorrowful and
disenchanted present. Embroiled with the Court and her brothers,
abandoned by La Rochefoucauld, in the decline of her beauty, upon the eve
of maturity, she saw in Heaven alone a refuge against others and herself.
But the Divine grace had to be awaited as well as prayed for, the prickings
of conscience were succeeded by relapses—the ties to be broken were still
so strong! At length, one day when engaged in reading, “a veil, as it were,
was drawn from before the eyes of my mind,” she wrote, in that somewhat
hyperbolical style of which she was fond; “all the charms of truth,
concentrated upon one sole object, presented themselves before me. Faith,
which had remained dead and buried beneath my passions, became
renewed. I felt like a person who, after a long sleep in which he has

dreamed of being great, happy, esteemed, and honoured by everybody,
awakens all on a sudden to find himself loaded with chains, pierced with
wounds, weighed down with heaviness, and pent up in some dark prison.”
To that conviction she remained faithful until death, and expiated her six
years of deviation by a penitence which lasted for five-and-twenty, and
continued ever on the increase.

The first act of the Duchess, after her conversion, was to implore pardon
of her husband. M. de Longueville behaved generously, and went to meet
her at Moulins, and took her back with him to Rouen with every mark of
delicacy and distinction. Reverting to the aspirations of her youth, Madame
de Longueville placed herself in active communication with the good
Carmelites, whom she had never entirely forgotten. She was constantly
writing to Mademoiselle du Vigean, the sous-prieure, for guidance in her
new way of life; for she had need of spiritual advice, and cried out for help,
and help came through the good offices of the Marquise de Sablé, who had
herself withdrawn from the world to Port-Royal, and supplied the want felt
by her illustrious friend by placing her in the hands of one of the great
spiritual guides of that day, M. Singlin. Between the ghostly adviser and the
fair penitent there ensued frequent conversations curiously flavoured with a
spice of romance. Persecution had already attacked Port-Royal, and M.
Singlin, in order not to be recognised, went to the Hôtel de Longueville
disguised as a doctor, his features being concealed by an ample wig. M.
Singlin strove to fix limits to the ardour by which Madame de Longueville
was carried away, he counselled her to remain in the outer world, to which
her husband and children bound her, and in which her salvation, he said,
might be as surely accomplished by exacting more vigilance than it would
be found necessary to exercise in the retirement of the cloister.

Madame de Longueville’s piety had been generally subordinated to the
vicissitudes of a very agitated existence. Her primitive tendency to devotion

was rekindled on every occasion that she experienced a trouble, a
disenchantment, or any failure of courage. In 1651, when she had been
somewhat compromised by the homage of the Duke de Nemours, she had
retired to the Carmelite convent at Bourges; then towards the end of her
sojourn in Guienne she had sought refuge among the Benedictines at
Bordeaux. But all these gleams of repentance vanished so soon as some
caprice of fortune came to reawaken, by the hope of fresh success, her
natural inclination for political intrigue and pleasure. On accompanying her
husband to Normandy she appeared wholly resolved not to allow herself to
be engrossed by anything save her eternal welfare. However, it appears that
her desire to abstain henceforward from all political intrigue was looked
upon incredulously for several years; since, in 1659, at the time of the
Treaty of the Pyrenees being signed, Mazarin, replying to Don Louis de
Haro, who required that the French Minister should restore Condé “to all
his birthrights,” still placed, as we have noticed, Madame de Longueville
among the feminine trio, who, said he, “would be capable of governing or
of overturning three great kingdoms.” Yet Mazarin yielded, and Condé
returned to France.

The long and rigid penitence which she imposed upon herself, and which
Madame de Motteville characterised by the expressive term—“very
august,” restored to her somewhat of that importance which she was
desirous of renouncing through humility. But the world is ever distrustful
on the score of a repentance which has some tinge of ostentation about it.
One historian remarks that “the Duchess de Longueville being unable to
dispense with intrigues, after she had renounced those of love and politics,
found sufficient to satisfy her in devotion.” This sentence, read aright,
would mean that the schisms of Catholicism gave her an opportunity of
playing a considerable part in taking under her protection the persecuted
party of the Jansenists. Madame de Longueville, on whom was bestowed
the designation of “Mother of the Church,” and who in that quality

recovered some reputation at the Court of France, and acquired a very great
one at the Court of Rome, rendered an eminent service to the Jansenists by
obtaining for them from the Pope, in 1668, that theological transaction
which was called “The Peace of Clement the Ninth.” It would, however, be
unjust to tax her with hypocrisy. All that was extreme in the pious practices
to which she devoted herself must be attributed to her exalted nature, which
mingled passion with every sentiment of her soul.

When the Duke de Longueville died in 1663, the Duchess availed herself
of the state of independence in which her widowhood placed her to give
herself up wholly to exercises of piety and penitence, and the education and
care of her children. The latter occupation caused her much grief—the
Count de Dunois, by his bad conduct and imbecility, and the Count de Saint
Paul himself, the son so dearly beloved, by his precocious debaucheries and
fiery impatience of character. Then, as by degrees they had less need of her
care, she devoted herself deeper and deeper to expiation, lavishing her
fortune to repair in the provinces ruined by civil war the evils she had
helped to inflict, weeping and humbling herself in her efforts to subdue that
pride which was the characteristic of her race, receiving outrages and
insults uncomplainingly, accepting them as the just chastisement of her sins,
and forgiving those who dealt her the most cruel wounds. And so, in
austerities and self-mortification she ended her days, sharing them between
the Carmelites, in whose convent she had an apartment, and Port-Royal des
Champs, where she had built a wing—having a preference for Port-Royal.
She was always naturally disposed to favour the rebellious, and these
rebels, it must be remembered, were the persecuted for conscience’ sake.
Madame de Longueville’s protection was extended to the principal
Jansenists, whom she sheltered in her chateau, and her influence at length
brought about that peace in the Church, which, so long as she lived, gave
calm and security to the sacred community. Notwithstanding her
predilection for Port-Royal, she continued to inhabit her hôtel, which she

did not quit until after the death of the Count de Saint-Paul (1672), killed so
unfortunately by the side of the Great Condé at the passage of the Rhine.

That blow was the last of Madame de Longueville’s earthly troubles—it
overwhelmed her. Madame de Sevigné has depicted in a few touching
sentences the scene which was witnessed when the fatal tidings reached the
wretched mother: “Mademoiselle des Vertus returned two days since to
Port-Royal, where she is constantly staying. They sent M. Arnauld to fetch
her, that she might break the terrible news. Mademoiselle des Vertus had
only to show herself; her hurried return was the certain signal that
something sad had happened. In fact, as soon as she appeared, she was
greeted with: ‘Ah! mademoiselle, how is my brother?’ Her thoughts dare
not venture further question. ‘Madame, his wound is going on favourably.’
‘There has been a battle! and my son?’ No answer. ‘Ah! mademoiselle, my
son, my dear boy, answer me, is he dead?’ ‘Madame, I cannot find words to
reply to you.’ ‘Ah! my dear son! did he die upon the spot? Was not one
single moment given him? Ah! Mon Dieu! what a sacrifice!’ And thereupon
she sank down in bed, and of all that the most poignant anguish could
exhibit in convulsions and swooning, and in dead silence and stifled groans,
by bitter tears and appeals to Heaven, and by tender and pitiful plaints, she
went through them all. She sees certain persons, she takes broths, because it
is the will of God; but she gets no rest; and her health, already very bad, is
visibly shaken. For myself, I wish she may die, not believing that she can
survive such a loss.” Some few days afterwards Madame de Sevigné writes:
“There exists in the world one man not less touched by this blow: it has
occurred to me that if they had both met each other in the first burst of grief
and no one else had been present, all other feelings would have given place
to tears and moans re-echoed from the depths of both their hearts.”

With this young Duke de Longueville disappeared the last witness to
bygone errors. The last link was broken, and, from that day, Madame de

Longueville belonged no more to this world. She died on the 15th April,
1679, at the Carmelites, where her remains were interred; her heart being
taken to Port-Royal. A year afterwards, in the same convent of Carmelites,
the Bishop of Autun, Roquette, whom Molière had in view when drawing
the character of Tartuffe, pronounced her funeral oration. Madame de
Sevigné, who was present at the ceremony, says of the orator: “It was not a
Tartuffe, it was not a Pantaloon: it was a prelate of distinction, preaching
with dignity, and going over the entire life of that Princess with an
incredible address; passing by all the delicate passages, mentioning, or
leaving unmentioned, all the points that he ought to speak or be silent upon.
His text was “Fallax pulchritudo, mulier timens Deum laudabitur.”
Assuredly many delicate points must have presented themselves in the life
of a princess who had been a politician and a Frondeuse, a gallant woman,
and a Jansenist. Yet Father Talon, a Jesuit, who was present at her death,
was fond of repeating on fitting occasions: “Jansenist as much as you will,
she died the death of a saint.”

There were three well-defined periods in the agitated life of the Duchess
de Longueville—and happily the end was conformable to the beginning, to
neutralise, as it were, the censurable middle part. But admitting such
condonation, does not that same mezza camin constitute the seduction
which that brilliant period exercises over almost every writer who seeks to
portray it, over those even who indulge in ecstacies on the score of her
penitence? So the prestige of beauty and the charms of mind traverse
centuries to win unceasingly posthumous admiration! These are the
qualities which give a more undying interest to the career of Madame de
Longueville even than the grandeur of her soul; for that is an incontestable
feature which all must recognise, whether partisans or adversaries:—in
spite of her errors and deviations, she certainly possessed greatness of soul.
If a terse judgment then were summed up of her character, it might be said

without flattery that, take her all in all, she was not unworthy of being the
sister of the great Condé.

With the opinions of such astute statesmen as Cardinal Mazarin and Don
Louis de Haro upon the mischievous tendencies of political women, it may
be well, in the instance of Madame de Longueville to couple the sentiments
of an acute and highly intellectual writer of our own day, who showed
herself a subtle analyst of character. Mrs. Jameson, discoursing upon the
characteristics of Shakespere’s women (in the form of a dialogue between
Alda and Medon) calls them “affectionate, thinking beings, and moral
agents; and then witty, as if by accident, or as the Duchess de Chaulnes said
of herself ‘Par la grace de Dieu.’

“Or,” retorts Medon, the male interlocutor, “politicians to vary the
excitement! How I hate political women!

“Alda. Why do you hate them?

“Medon. Because they are mischievous.

“Alda. But why are they mischievous?

“Medon. Why?—why are they mischievous? Nay, ask them, or ask the
father of all mischief, who has not a more efficient instrument to further his
designs in this world than a woman run mad with politics. The number of
political, intriguing women of this time, whose boudoirs and drawing-
rooms are the foyers of party spirit, is another trait of resemblance between
the state of society now and that which existed at Paris before the
Revolution.”

In another place, however, the same judicious and usually discriminating
writer is betrayed into giving—more from conjecture, it would seem, than

close acquaintance with the facts of her life—an historically false and
singularly unjust estimate of Madame de Longueville’s character.

“Alda. Women are illustrious in history, not from what they have been in
themselves, but generally in proportion to the mischief they have done or
caused. * * * Of those which have been handed down to us by many
different authorities under different aspects, we cannot judge without
prejudice; in others there occur certain chasms which it is difficult to
supply; and hence inconsistencies we have no means of reconciling, though
doubtless they might be reconciled if we knew the whole, instead of a part.

“Medon. But instance—instance!

“Alda. Do you remember that Duchess de Longueville, whose beautiful
picture we were looking at yesterday?—the heroine of the Fronde?—think
of that woman—bold, intriguing, profligate, vain, ambitious, factious!—
who made rebels with a smile; or if that were not enough, the lady was not
scrupulous,—apparently without principle as without shame, nothing was
too much! And then think of the same woman protecting the virtuous
philosopher Arnauld,[3] when he was denounced and condemned, and from
motives which her worst enemies could not malign, secreting him in her
house, unknown even to her servants—preparing his food herself, watching
for his safety, and at length saving him. Her tenderness, her patience, her
discretion, her disinterested benevolence not only defied danger (that were
little to a woman of her temper), but endured a lengthened trial, all the
ennui caused by the necessity of keeping her house, continued self-control,
and the thousand small daily sacrifices which, to a vain, dissipated, proud,
impatient woman, must have been hard to bear. Now, if Shakespere had
drawn the character of the Duchess de Longueville, he would have shown
us the same individual woman in both situations:—for the same being, with
the same faculties and passions and powers, it surely was: whereas in

history, we see in one case a fury of discord, a woman without modesty or
pity; and in the other an angel of benevolence, and a worshipper of
goodness; and nothing to connect the two extremes in our fancy.

“Medon. But these are contradictions which we meet on every page of
history, which make us giddy with doubt or sick with belief; and are the
proper objects of inquiry for the moralist and the philosopher.”

With a true eye for the refined and the beautiful, and that honestly
sympathetic nature without which it is impossible to discriminate between
what is noble and what is mediocre, still Mrs. Jameson, in the above
reflections upon the character of Madame de Longueville, was obviously
led to draw hasty and erroneous conclusions either from a superficial glance
at detached passages in the Duchess’s extraordinary career with regard to
the dates of which she is widely in error, or others during which her conduct
and actions were but too easily susceptible of misrepresention and
distortion at the hands of partisan writers. Such unjust judgment would
most probably be formed by accepting anecdotes, like those contained in
Tallemant’s scandalous chronicle or Bussy Rabutin’s “Letters,” as historic
truths; or by placing implicit faith in every statement made by De Retz or
La Rochefoucauld, given as both were to exaggeration and over-colouring,
and whose object, moreover, was not so much to tell the truth as always to
exalt themselves, sometimes by its suppression, at others by downright
falsification.

Without attempting to extenuate the errors of Madame de Longueville,
moral or political, it has been the author’s endeavour to reconcile the
apparent contradictions in her character, imputed in the passage above cited,
by assigning the different incidents, which have doubtless caused an
intelligent woman to falter in her judgment, to their proper place in the

order of time. For as, during the Olympian contests, swift-footed Spartan
boys, to typify the transmission of Truth, ran with a lighted torch, and, as
each fell breathless, another took up the flambeau and bore it on, bright and
rapid, to the goal, so should the light of History be passed steadily and
carefully from hand to hand, and its sacred flame—the Truth—be kept ever
burning clearly onward in the course of time.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] The Jansenist.

CHAPTER II.

THE DUCHESS DE CHEVREUSE.

Side by side with the two great statesmen, Richelieu and Mazarin, the
clever, daring, vivacious, charming Marie de Rohan occupied a more
elevated position, and certainly played a more extended part, than any other
of the political women who were her contemporaries during the stirring
times of the first half of the seventeenth century.

Seductive, with irresistible fascination of manner, singular grace and
animation; of pregnant wit, though quite uneducated; devoted to gallantry,
and too high-spirited to heed propriety; obeying no control save that of
honour; despising, for those she loved, danger, fortune, and opinion; rather
restless than ambitious; risking willingly her own life as well as that of
others; and after having passed the best part of her existence in intrigue of
every kind—thwarted more than one plot—left more than one victim on her
path—traversed nearly the whole of Europe, by turns an exile and a
conqueress who not unfrequently dazzled even crowned heads; after having
seen Chalais lay his head on the block, Châteauneuf turned out of the
ministry and imprisoned, the Duke de Lorraine well-nigh despoiled of his
territories, Buckingham assassinated, the King of Spain embroiled in a war
of ever-recurring disasters, Anne of Austria humiliated and overcome, and
Richelieu triumphant; sustaining the struggle, nevertheless, even to its bitter

end; ever ready, in that desperate game of politics—become to her a craving
and a passion—to descend to the darkest cabals or adopt the rashest
resolves; with an incomparable faculty of discerning the actual state of
affairs or the predominant evil of the moment, and of strength of mind and
boldness of heart enough to grapple with and destroy it at any cost; a
devoted friend and an implacable enemy; and, finally, the most formidable
foe that Richelieu and Mazarin, in their turn, encountered:—such was the
celebrated Duchess de Chevreuse whom we have seen alternately courted
and dreaded by the two great political master-spirits of her time, the
founders of monarchical unity in France.

When the Fronde broke out, that ardent factionist rushed once more to
Brussels, and there brought over to her party the support of Spain, together
with her own long experience. She was then nearly fifty years old. Age and
sorrow, it is true, had dimmed the lustre of her beauty; but she was still
abounding in attraction, and her firm glance, her decision, her quick and
accurate perception, her dauntless courage and genius, were yet entire. She
had there also found a last friend in the Marquis de Laigues, captain of the
Duke d’Orleans’ guards, a man of sense and resolution, whom she loved to
the end, and whom, after the decease of the Duke de Chevreuse in 1657, she
linked probably with her own destiny by one of those “marriages of
conscience”[4] then somewhat fashionable. It was not our purpose to follow
her step by step through the last civil war, and so plunge the reader into the
labyrinth of the Fronde intrigues. Suffice it to say, therefore, that she played
therein one of the most prominent parts. Attached, heart and soul, to that
faction and its essential interests, she steered it through all the shoals and
quicksands which encircled it with incomparable skill and vigour. After
having so long enlisted the support of Spain, she knew the proper moment
to effect a timely separation from it. She always preserved her great
influence over the Duke de Lorraine, and it is not difficult to recognize her

hidden hand behind the different and often contrary movements of Charles
IV. She had a principal share in the three great movements which mark and
link together the entire history of the Fronde between the war in Paris and
the peace of Ruel. In 1650 she was inclined to prefer Mazarin to Condé, and
she ventured to advise laying hands on the victor of Rocroy and Lens. In
1651—an interval of incertitude for Mazarin, who very nearly ensnared
himself in the meshes of his own craftiness and a too-complicated line of
conduct—a great interest, the well-founded hope of marrying her daughter
Charlotte to the Prince de Conti, brought her back once more to the Condé
party, and hence the deliverance of the imprisoned Princes. In 1652, the
accumulated blunders of Condé brought her back again and for ever to
Anne of Austria and Mazarin. She did not endorse De Retz’s foolish idea of
constructing a third party during the revolt, nor dream of a government
shared between Condé and Mazarin, with a worn-out parliament and the
fickle Duke d’Orléans. Her politic instinct told her that, after an intestine
struggle so long sustained, a solid and durable power was the greatest
necessity of France. Mazarin, who, like Richelieu, had never opposed her
but with regret, sought for, and was very glad to follow her advice. She
passed over, therefore, with flying colours to the side of royalty, served it,
and in return received its services. After Mazarin, she predicted the talent in
Colbert, before he was appointed to office; she laboured at his elevation and
the ruin of Fouquet: and the proud but judicious Marie de Rohan gave her
grandson, the Duke de Chevreuse, the friend of Beauvilliers and Fenelon, to
the daughter of a talented burgess—the greatest financial administrator
France ever had. Thenceforward she readily obtained all she could desire
for herself and for her family; and thus having reached the summit of
renown and consideration, like her two illustrious sister-politicians,
Madame de Longueville and the Princess Palatine, she finished in profound
peace one of the most agitated careers of that stormiest of epochs—the
seventeenth century.

It is said that the Duchess also, towards the close of her earthly
pilgrimage, felt the influence of divine grace, and turned heavenwards her
gaze, wearied with the changefulness of all sublunary things. She had seen
successively fall around her all whom she had either loved or hated—
Richelieu and Mazarin, Louis XIII. and Anne of Austria, the Queen of
England, Henrietta Maria, and her amiable daughter the Duchess d’Orléans,
Châteauneuf, and the Duke of Lorraine. Her fondly loved daughter had
expired in her arms, of fever, during the miserable war of the Fronde. He
who had been the first to lure her from the path of duty—the handsome but
frivolous Holland—had ascended the scaffold with Charles I.; and her last
friend, much younger than herself, the Marquis de Laigues, had preceded
her to the tomb.

Arrived at length but too clearly at the conviction that she had given up
her mind to chimeras and illusions, and seeking self-mortification through
the same sentiment which had brought about her ruin, the once-haughty
Duchess became the humblest of women. Renouncing all worldly grandeur,
she quitted her splendid mansion in the Faubourg St. Germain, built by Le
Muet, and retired into the country—not to Dampierre, which would have
only too vividly recalled to her remembrance the brilliant days of her past
existence—but to a modest dwelling at Gagny, near Chelles. There she
awaited her last hour, far from the world’s observation, and ere long expired
in tranquillity at the age of seventy-nine, the same year as Cardinal de Retz
and Madame de Longueville. She desired to have neither solemn obsequies
nor funeral oration, and forbade that any of those lofty titles which she had
borne through life and had learned to despise should accompany her to the
grave. It was her wish to be buried obscurely in the small and ancient
church of Gagny; and there, in the southern aisle, near the chapel of the
Virgin, some faithful but unknown hand has placed upon a slab of black
marble the following epitaph:—

“Here lies Marie de Rohan, Duchess de Chevreuse, daughter of Hercule de Rohan, Duke
de Montbazon. She espoused, first, Charles d’Albert, Duke de Luynes, peer and constable
of France, and secondly, Claude de Lorraine, Duke de Chevreuse.”

FOOTNOTES:

[4] See “Memoirs of Brienne the Younger,” tom. ii. chap. xix., p. 178. “Le
Marquis de Laigues qui certainement étoit mari de conscience de la Duchesse.”

CHAPTER III.

THE PRINCESS PALATINE.

The political importance of the Princess Palatine dates from 1650, when
the arrest of Condé, Conti, and the Duke de Longueville urged her, as we
have seen, to take part in the struggles of the Fronde. The Duchesses de
Chevreuse, De Montbazon, De Guéméné, and other famous feminine
factionists of that time, became, in the hands of Anne de Gonzagua, as so
many wires with which she moved at her will the men whom these women
governed; for the Princess exercised alike over all those men and women
that superiority which disinterestedness, good faith, and firmness of
decision confer. De Retz, when he discovered her characteristics, was
immediately struck with the above-named qualities, especially the two
latter. “To have stability of purpose,” said he, when speaking of his first
interview with Anne, “is a rare quality, which indicates an enlightened mind
far above the ordinary class.” And further on, “I do not think,” he remarks,
“that Queen Elizabeth had more capacity to govern a state.” Mazarin, too,
somewhat later, in alluding to the dread in which he held the famous trio of
political women for their capacity to work mischief, remarked to Don Louis
de Haro:—“The most turbulent of the male politicians do not give us half so
much trouble to keep them within bounds as the intrigues of a Duchess de
Chevreuse or a Princess Palatine.”

Anne de Gonzagua, the Princess Palatine, lived long after the Fronde in
the midst of all sorts of political troubles and diplomatic intrigues:
conferences innumerable were held beneath her roof, and in that tortuous
labyrinth she wandered and manœuvred to her heart’s delight. Sometimes
she laboured to reconcile Condé with Anne of Austria, sometimes to reunite
Gaston and Condé, or perhaps the Queen and Madame de Longueville. She
often failed, it is true, in these attempts, and meanwhile Mazarin, with more
address, setting in motion in his retreat beyond the frontier the most
powerful machinery, and making magnificent promises, again appeared
above the political horizon—winning over his enemies one after another
through his secret agents; at one time it was Châteauneuf, at another Gondi,
whom he made for good and all a cardinal; at another it was Madame de
Chevreuse. He had passed his word to the Princess Palatine that he would
some day give her the post of superintendent of the young Queen’s
household: he did so, in fact, but on condition that she should relinquish it
two months later to the Countess de Soissons, which she did in all good
faith. Then she withdrew from court, somewhat undeceived no doubt
touching men and things therein, if it really were the case that she ever had
indulged in great illusions concerning court life.

Years rolled away, however: Mazarin died. Court intrigue with her was at
an end. The personages who had been mixed up in the Fronde hurly-burly,
so menacing in reality, so puerile in aspect, so insignificant as an isolated
fact, and so formidable as a symptom, appeared affected by that decay
which change of circumstances more than lapse of time imposes upon men
and ideas. All that sort of thing was out of fashion. The reign of the Grand
Monarque was in all its heyday. Besides, the Palatine was no longer young;
she had married her daughters, and dwelt in seclusion. And it was when
living thus tranquilly that a rapid, unforeseen, enthusiastic conversion came
upon her like a surprise. For all relating thereto, we must listen to Bossuet,
who dwells upon it in his funeral oration upon the Princess. His eloquence

revels in relating the miracles suddenly wrought in such a soul as hers. He
expatiates on that sudden change with an apostolic joy and an incomparable
majesty: it was a subject worthy of him, the brilliant narrator of solemn
events. It was exoteric to that life upon which it was so difficult to
pronounce an eulogium; he was not trammelled in the flow of his diction by
those oratorical precautions which are so distressingly hampering to an
impetuous genius like his. He celebrated a victory of grace, and that in
accents the most touching and expressions the most powerful. It was the
hymn of an illustrious conversion, chanted by the noblest mortal voice ever
heard.

Bossuet relates with inimitable art the Princess’s two dreams; the simple
anecdotes are dramatised, poetised—one might almost say sanctified—in
proceeding from his lips. But, in short, whether Anne de Gonzagua saw or
thought that she saw that mystical mendicant, and those symbolical
animals, in her slumbers, the truth is that in soul she was touched, agitated,
shaken, overcome. An ardent faith, an invincible longing for prayer and
penitence, had obtained the mastery over that rebellious soul. She felt once
more the enthusiasm of her early youth; she felt beating once more, at the
Divine Master’s name, that heart which had too often throbbed for His
creatures only. Her scepticism vanished; she had no other ambition left save
that of gaining heaven, and holy tears were seen to dim those eyes wherein
it once seemed as though the source of such emotion was dried up for ever.
It was done. A great thing was accomplished, whatsoever had been the
cause. A soul which incredulity had frozen into apathy became fervent
before its Creator. Anne de Gonzagua did not fear to let her repentance be
seen; she desired that the publicity of her penitence might obliterate, if it
were possible, the scandal of her past life. Her conscience became tender,
even scrupulous. “Plus elle était clairvoyante,” says Bossuet; “plus elle
était tourmentée.” Henceforward she devoted herself wholly to charity and
prayer. She became as humble as she had hitherto been proud. She

cherished a life of seclusion as much as she had once loved mundane
notoriety. She became as sincerely a Christian as she had formerly been an
infidel. During the lapse of twelve years this startling confession of faith did
not belie itself for a single day. “Everything became poor about her house
and person,” says her illustrious panegyrist. “She saw with sensible delight
the relics of the pomps of this world disappear one after another, and alms-
giving taught her to retrench daily something fresh.... A person so delicate
and sensible had suffered for twelve entire years, and almost without an
interval, either the most vivid anguish or languor exhausting alike to mind
and body; and notwithstanding, during the whole of that time, and in the
unheard-of torments of her last illness, in which her sufferings were
increased to the utmost excess, she had not to repent of having once wished
for an easier death. Again and again did she suppress that weak wish by
uttering, so soon as she felt it arising, with the Saviour, the prayer of the
Sacred Mystery of the Garden, ‘Father, thy will, not mine, be done!’”

Such a sight must have moved the least susceptible—to have beheld the
Palatine thus redeem her past errors. She was anxious to write with her own
hand the account of her conversion, and addressed it to the celebrated
Rancé, the Abbé of La Trappe. It was from that narrative that Bossuet drew
the source of his own. Some few years previously, with that polished and
elegant vein which intercourse with so many superior minds tends to create,
she had written, as though she had foreseen that she would not despair of
her spiritual future, a short but charming panegyric upon Hope. Bussy-
Rabutin has preserved this relic in one of his letters. “I have never in my
life,” he says, with no doubt a little too much enthusiasm, “seen anything
better or more delicately written.” There is to be found in it, it is true, a
happy inspiration and a passage capable of pleasing minds struggling with
difficulties. “It is permitted to us,” she says, “to measure our hope by our
courage, it is noble to sustain it amidst trials; but it is not less glorious to
suffer the entire ruin of it with the same high-heartedness which had dared

to conceive it.” Those are noble sentiments, and revealing a vigorous
mental power. The end of the Princess Palatine (1681) showed clearly that
she had not, for the mere pleasure of expressing herself elegantly, vaunted
the delights of a saint-like hope. “Ready to render up her soul,” says
Bossuet, “she was heard to utter in dying accents, ‘I am about to see how
God will treat me, but I hope for His mercy.’” Such was the close of that
life, the piety of which illuminated its latter years; such was the death of
that Princess who, after having been remarkable among the women of her
time for her beauty, her errors, and, at last, by her penitence, had the rare
good fortune to be praised by the most illustrious of historians, priests, and
authors of the great century.

Our notice of this celebrated woman would be incomplete without a
passing glance at the singular fortunes of Henri de Guise, subsequent to his
desertion of his first love, Anne de Gonzagua.

The Duke de Guise, after playing a conspicuous part in the first
dissensions of the Regency, and after having killed Coligny, had married at
Brussels the widow of the Count de Bossut, with whom he became quickly
disgusted, and whose fortune he squandered. A violent passion next
possessed him for the charming and witty Mademoiselle de Pons, maid of
honour to the Queen. He took it into his head to espouse her, and “the
marriage was spoken of as though he had never been married before.” That
phantasy, however, did not hinder him from taking part, as a volunteer, in
the campaigns of 1644 and 1645. Whilst at Rome in 1647, endeavouring to
obtain a dispensation to enable him to secure the hand of Mademoiselle de
Pons, the Neapolitans, having revolted against the Spaniards under
Masaniello, elected him as their leader, and gave him the title of
generalissimo of their army. Brave, enterprising, and born for adventure,
able, moreover, to render available ancient pretensions to that kingdom,
through René d’Anjou, who in 1420 had espoused Isabelle de Lorraine,

encouraged in short, if not supported, by the French Court, where it was
deemed politic to keep at a distance from it a man bearing the great name of
Guise, so formidable some sixty years before, the young prince embarked in
a simple felucca, sailed boldly through the naval armament of Don Juan,
seized the reins of government, defeated the Spanish troops, and made
himself master of the country. He won all hearts by his address, his
gentleness, and his affability. But want of circumspection in his gallantries,
the objects of which were not always of a rank equal to his own, caused
jealousies and discontent among the nobles. His enemies, profiting by a
sortie which he made for the purpose of getting a convoy into Naples,
delivered up the city to the Spaniards. His repeated efforts to re-enter the
place proved futile. After having defended himself like a lion, he was
nevertheless carried prisoner to Madrid. The great Condé, who was then
serving the enemies of his country, demanded that Guise should be set at
liberty, in the hope that he might foment troubles in France. But the ill-
treatment which the Duke had experienced at the hands of the Spaniards left
impressions upon his mind which made him regardless of a promise that
had been extorted from him. He attempted again in 1654 to reconquer the
kingdom of Naples, with the aid of a French fleet, but failed of success. He
then went back to Paris to seek indemnity for the loss of his crown. In 1655
he was appointed to the post of grand-chamberlain of France. He figured in
the famous carrousel of 1663, at the head of a quadrille of American
savages, whilst the great Condé appeared as chief of the Turks. On seeing
those two personages so pitted, some wit observed, “There go the heroes of
history and fable.” The Duke de Guise might indeed be very aptly
compared to a mythological entity, or to a knight errant of the age of
chivalry. His duels, his romantic amours, his profusion, the varied
adventures of his life, rendered him exceptionable in everything. He died in
1664, leaving no issue.

CHAPTER IV.

MADAME DE MONTBAZON.

Amongst the celebrated women of the first half of the seventeenth
century, many were, says Bussy Rabutin, “pitiable,” whilst some were
“brazen.” We must assert unhesitatingly that Madame de Montbazon
belonged to the latter class. She was “one of those personages, however,
who made the most noise” at the courts of Louis the Thirteenth and Anne of
Austria, as we are told by Madame de Motteville, and as we have already
seen by the prominent political part she played in the factions of the
Importants and the Fronde. In summing up her character, we shall be silent
upon the subject of many of her faults, though it is not our wish to excuse
one of them.

“She was not wanting in wit,” remarks Tallemant; “for she had been
acquainted with so many witty people!” There is a spice of flattery in this,
for we must agree with Madame de Motteville and M. Cousin that the wit
of the dazzling rival of Madame de Longueville was far from being as
delicate and attractive as was her handsome person, though we cannot at the
same time look upon Tallemant’s phrase as a calumny. Both space and
courage would alike fail us, should we attempt to produce a list of all the
lovers, titled and untitled, who had peculiar opportunities of sharpening the
wit of Madame de Montbazon.

Among the first of her adorers, beside the name of Gaston d’Orléans,
must be cited that of the Duke de Chevreuse, her husband’s kinsman. Their
liaison furnished matter for a ballad, and was very nearly the cause of a
duel at the door of the king’s apartments, between the Duke de
Montmorency and the Duke de Chevreuse; but that did not hinder Madame
de Montbazon from becoming the friend of her step-daughter, who, older
and more experienced in the political world than she was, often used her as
an instrument. The young Duchess was a more dangerous rival to Madame
de Guéméné, her other step-daughter, from whom she carried off, not her
husband, but the Count de Soissons. And it was not enough that she
obtained an easy conquest over her, for she instigated the Count to add
outrage to desertion, and he docilely compromised his forsaken mistress by
a gross and shameful perfidy.

But, passing rapidly over the errors of her youth, it is the close of
Madame de Montbazon’s political career with which we are now
concerned. The influence which the gay and gallant Duchess long exercised
over the Duke de Beaufort had sometimes proved useful to the interests of
the Court, and during the early troubles of the Fronde the Queen and
Mazarin took care to keep her favourably disposed towards them. But the
importance which Beaufort’s infatuated passion gave or seemed to give her,
speedily made the Duchess one of the heroines of the Fronde—though, it
must be owned, one of the secondary heroines. Her allies were careful not
to allow her to take upon herself a part she was unable to sustain. Violent,
unreflecting, accessible to the most contradictory suggestions, ready for any
turn, and the sport of every caprice, she was wanting in all the better
qualities of a political woman. Her indiscretion became formidable on all
occasions when secresy was necessary, and more than once the Duke de
Beaufort was obliged to be excluded from the assemblages at which the
chiefs of the Fronde took counsel together. It was well known that he dare
not keep anything from his mistress, and it might chance that a royalist

might turn to account the confidence which she wormed out of her lover,
for conformity in political sentiments was not one of the conditions which
she imposed upon the adorers whose homage she welcomed. Her
correspondence with Marshal d’Albret exposed her moreover to be subject
to, without being aware of it, the influences of the Court, and her intimacy
with Vineuil tended to make her an ally, in spite of herself, of the Prince de
Condé. Hence it is easy to explain the mistrust with which she inspired the
Coadjutor of Paris, the future Cardinal de Retz. She herself did not fail to
perceive the surveillance which he exercised around her; and she was
irritated to see with what facility he modified in his own fashion the line of
conduct which she had just previously dictated to the Duke de Beaufort.
She was forced to confess that his authority prevailed over her own. One
evening, disheartened by the incapacity of the grandson of the great Henry,
and terrified by the dangers to which their imprudence exposed the
Frondeurs, and esteeming the political talent of Gondi to be more truly
worthy of her own, she opened her heart to him, and proposed that they
should enter into a treaty of alliance. The gallant Coadjutor would only
consent to accept one portion of the treaty, and, happily for the Duke de
Beaufort, who was busily occupied with a game at chess during that strange
conversation, he stipulated to eliminate from the proposed association
everything that related to politics. But the Duchess would not consent to
those terms.

In love, Madame de Montbazon was very mercenary; we say it once for
all, and beg to be excused from citing proof of the assertion. In politics, she
also surrendered herself very willingly to any representation the eloquence
of which was aided by crowns or pistoles. It was thus that in the month of
August, 1649, she promised that the Duke de Beaufort should not oppose
the return of the Court, at the same moment that she opened her hand to
receive a considerable sum. It was thus that, the same year, she accepted
two thousand pistoles from the Spanish envoys, who, desirous of rendering

her favourable, promised besides that the sum of twenty thousand crowns
and a pension of six thousand livres if she would secure to them the
concurrence of the Duke de Beaufort. But she did not always meet with
debtors so honest as Mazarin and the Spanish ambassadors. In 1650, whilst
the treaty was preparing which sought to unite the Frondeurs with the
Princes, then prisoners at Havre, a negotiation was entered into with
Madame de Montbazon in which the Prince de Conti was offered to her as a
husband for her daughter. The proposition was not accepted. The proposers
were not discouraged, and a sum of a hundred thousand crowns was offered
to her. This time the Duchess could not resist, and the treaty was signed in
all due form. Unfortunately, when the Princes were liberated, she was
imprudent enough to confide her voucher to the Princess Palatine, who,
with perfidious haste, had promised to take care of her interests. She never
saw the precious contract again, and the Prince de Condé only answered her
demands by cruel and cutting jeers. In that adventure, it was not Madame de
Montbazon who played the shabbiest part.

The aid which the Duchess had often lent the Court amidst intrigues the
most contradictory, did not preserve her from exile when the King made his
entry into Paris, on its definite pacification in October, 1652. She did not
return thither till 1657. “She was still beautiful, and as much carried away
by vanity as though she had been only in her twenty-fifth year,” says
Madame de Motteville, when noting her reappearance. “She relied all the
same upon her charms,” she adds with a somewhat malicious finesse, “for
she returned with the same desire of pleasing; and those who saw her
assured me that the mourning garb which she wore as a widow, and to
which she added everything in the shape of ornament that self-love could
suggest, rendered her so charming, that in her case it might be said that the
course of nature was changed, since so many years and so much beauty
could meet together.”[5] Thus, by dint of care and art, did Madame de

Montbazon succeed in preserving her beauty much longer than she could
have hoped for, since, in the pride of her eighteen summers, she declared
that old age commenced at thirty, and requested it as a favour that she might
be flung into the river and drowned so soon as she reached the dreaded
period. Who would have dared to remind her of that imprudent proposal in
1640? And who could have refused her a respite even in the latter moments
of her existence?

Permission had scarcely been given her to appear at Court, when she was
attacked by an illness which seemed nothing more than a common cold, but
which turned out to be the measles. In the course of a few days the malady
proved fatal. Three hours only were accorded to this earthly-minded woman
to prepare for death. She made confession and received the sacrament with
every indication of the most lively piety and the most sincere repentance,
saying to her daughter, the Abbess of Caen, “that she regretted not having
always lived in a cloister as she had, and that she looked with horror upon
her past life.” Up to those last three hours, she had refused to believe that
there were degrees in the morality of women, and to admit that they were
not all equally virtuous.

“She was little regretted by the Queen,” Madame de Motteville tells us,
“as she had frequently forsaken her interests to follow her own caprices.
The minister heard of her death with the feeling one entertains for one’s
deceased enemy. Her former lovers looked upon her with contempt; and
those who admired her still, were but little touched at her loss, because
each, jealous of his rival, left tears and grief as the share of the Duke de
Beaufort, who was at that moment the most beloved.”

On that point Madame de Motteville was in error. Which of the two—M.
de Beaufort or M. de Rancé—was most beloved it would be difficult to
determine. But this is so far certain, that M. de Rancé, the future founder of

La Trappe, was the lover who regretted her the most sincerely. He had
hastened to her sick couch so soon as he heard of her illness; and he had
arrived, not too late, and only to find himself the spectator of a most
horrible sight, as has frequently been related with much romantic and
dramatic detail, but soon enough to pass within her chamber the last hours
left to her of life. “Already balancing and wrestling between heaven and
this world,” says Saint Simon, who was in his confidence, “the sight of that
so sudden death achieved in him the determination of withdrawing from the
world which he had for some time meditated.”

Among the different versions of this catastrophe, Laroque asserts that,
after an absence on a long journey, on De Rancé’s return, he called at the
Hôtel Montbazon, and then learned, for the first time, the death of the
Duchess; that he was shown into her room, where, to his horror, the
headless body lay in its coffin. The head had been cut off, either because the
lead coffin was not made long enough or for the purpose of an anatomical
study. Some assert that De Rancé took the head, and that the skull of the
woman he loved so well was found in his cell at La Trappe. History,
however, will not accept this romantic incident.

Touching the fate of De Rancé’s rival—when Louis XIV. returned to
Paris in 1652, the Duke de Beaufort submitted to the royal authority, and
took no further part in the civil war, which the Prince de Condé carried on
for several years longer. Later, the Duke obtained the command of the royal
fleet. In 1664 and 1665, he was at the head of several expeditions against
the African corsairs. In 1666 he commanded the French men-of-war ordered
to join those of Holland against England. Finally, in 1669, he went to the
aid of the Venetians, attacked by the Turks in the island of Candia. The
galleys and vessels, newly constructed in the port of Toulon, disembarked
seven thousand men under Beaufort—a contingent too weak for such a
dangerous undertaking. That aid only served to retard the taking of Candia

for a few days, and was the means of useless bloodshed. In a sortie, the rash
and impetuous grandson of Henry the Great was cut to pieces in the most
merciless way; and as his body could not be found after the fight, his death
gave rise to fables sought to be rendered probable by the remembrance of
the eccentric part he had previously played.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] The same sentiments were thus versified by Loret, when announcing that
the Duchess had obtained permission to return to Court:

“Montbazon, la belle douairière,
Dont les appas et la lumière
Sous de lugubres vêtements
Paraissent encore plus charmants....”

CHAPTER V.

MADEMOISELLE DE MONTPENSIER.

Anne Marie Louise d’Orléans, Duchess de Montpensier, whom history
distinguishes by the epithet of La Grande Mademoiselle, after telling us in
her memoirs, at least twenty times, in order to make herself better known,
that she was fond of glory, adds—“The Bourbons are folks very much
addicted to trifles, with very little solidity about them; perhaps I myself as
well as the rest may inherit the same qualities from father and mother.”[6]
With this hint, whoever scans her portrait may readily read the character her
features reveal:—a mind false to the service of a noble and generous heart;
an honest but frivolous mind, too often swayed, by a bombastic heroism; a
précieuse of the Hôtel Rambouillet, whom Nicolas Poilly very happily
painted as Pallas, with her helmet proudly perched upon the summit of her
fair tresses; an amazon, who bordered upon the adventuress, and,
notwithstanding, remained the princess; in short, a personage at whom one
cannot help laughing heartily, nor at the same time help admiring.

Passing by the subject of her numerous matrimonial projects, we hasten
on to the commencement of her political—and perhaps we may add her
military[7]—career, when, in January, 1652, a treaty had been concluded
between Monsieur her father, Condé, and the Duke de Lorraine, the
Duchess d’Orléans had signed in her brother’s name, and the Count de

Fiesque in the name of Condé. On her part, Mademoiselle, somewhat
fantastic but loyal and courageous, had joined her mother-in-law, and
declared for the Fronde, partly through her liking for éclat and the notoriety
of parading at the head of the troops, with her two ladies of honour, the
Countesses of Fiesque and Frontenac, transformed into aides-de-camp;
partly by the secret hope that by Mazarin’s defeat and her father’s triumph
she might succeed in espousing the young King, and so exchange the
helmet of the Fronde for the crown of France.

It would be a great mistake to attribute to this fair Frondeuse a liberalism
of ideas to which she was most assuredly a stranger. “It must be,” she
somewhere remarks, “that the intentions of the great are like the mysteries
of the Faith: it does not belong to mankind to penetrate within them; men
ought to revere them, and to believe that they are never otherwise than for
the welfare and salvation of their country.” But, however that may be, it did
not prevent the civil war from being a very amusing thing for
Mademoiselle. To hear the drums beating to arms one fine morning, to see
men running through the streets to defend the barricades as well as their
untrained hands could wield musket and sabre, to lie upon the floor in a
large chamber at Saint-Germain, and to find on awaking that chamber filled
with soldiers in great buff jerkins,—those were pleasures not to be always
found at will, and were to be made the most of when met with. Such
pleasures, moreover, savouring of the unforeseen, the adventurous, and the
grotesque, solely determined Mademoiselle’s conduct in the outset. But on
the second Fronde breaking out, when the struggle of the Parliament with
royalty had become a quarrel between princes and ministers, Mademoiselle
felt that the honour of her house was at stake. Gaston, after having pledged
himself to the Prince de Condé, so far as a man who does not know his own
mind can give a pledge, contented himself with whistling, as he was wont to
do, or to dissertating cleverly without acting. But his daughter wrested from
him an authority to go herself and defend Orleans against the troops of

Louis XIV.; his daughter, on seeing the unfortunate adherents of Condé
engaged with her in rebellion overpowered at the Faubourg Saint-Antoine,
secured their retreat by ordering the guns of the Bastille to cannonade the
royal forces, although that cannonade should slay the husband of whom she
still dreamed; that daughter, too, when she heard of the disgraceful scenes
of the 4th of July, 1652, boldly did what no one else dare do,—she flew to
the assistance of the victims of the Hôtel de Ville, without bestowing a
thought of the imminent danger she thereby ran.

But it is in the Princess’s own Memoirs that the curious epopee must be
read; and to which a dry abridgment does injustice. Whether she hold
council of war with her fair Maréchales de Camp, without allowing the men
folks to give her their ready cut-and-dried advice,—whether she be thrust
into Orleans through the gap of an old gateway, and, covered with mud, be
seen carried along its streets in an old arm-chair, laughing heartily,—or
when hastening to arrest the massacre at the Hôtel de Ville, she stops to
look at Madame Riche, the ribbon-vendor, talking in her chemise to her
gossip, the beadle of St. Jacques, who has nothing on but his drawers,—the
reader is always reminded that he sees and hears the granddaughter of
Henry IV.—a Parisian with a touch of the princess in all she says and does,
and he cannot help asking himself momentarily whether it be all
incorrigible frivolity, or some quaint species of natural heroism which
speaks and acts thus strangely.

Heroic or frivolous, Mademoiselle expiated her pranks by an exile of
four years in her manor of Saint-Fargeau. The rupture with her father, who
drove her out of doors, and denied her permission to take refuge under any
other roof he owned, her consequent wanderings, at times not a little
affecting, and at others comical, when directing her steps towards her place
of banishment, her arrival at the ruinous château which has neither doors
nor windows, and which is haunted by ghosts, and the attempts to embellish

the tumble-down place, and people it with gaiety, animation, and life, are so
many scenes to which the piquant style of Mademoiselle gives singular
attractiveness. Whilst avenues were being planted and a theatre built,
matrimonial negotiations went on as briskly as ever, and pretenders to her
hand abounded—the Elector of Bavaria, the Duke of Savoy, the nephew of
the Duke of Lorraine, the Duke de Neuborg. The reception of M. de
Neuborg’s envoy, an honest Jesuit, who draws out of his pocket victoriously
two portraits of his good lord, ogles Mademoiselle as long as he could, and
talks “goguette” to her for a whole hour, is one of the most amusing farces
anywhere to be met with. Unluckily, the farce was not worth the candle in
the opinion of certain judges, and all the diversions of Saint-Fargeau did not
prevent our princess from regretting with all her heart that pompous Court
of Versailles in which the young Louis was giving such graceful ballets,
brilliant carousals, and piquant masquerades. The masquerades of 1657
carried the day over the political aims of 1652, and the fair exile
experienced a vivid longing to be once more received into favour at the
court of her royal cousin.

To take up sword or pen and fall foul of the government was almost
always an easy thing to do in France; the difficulty lay in proposing peace
after the war, to hit upon profitable reconciliations or lucrative treaties.
Mademoiselle did her best; and at length, in that same year of 1657, she
made her appearance in the royal camp near Sedan, having at her carriage-
door the silly and complaisant Mazarin, who believed all she wished him to
believe, and who presented the princess with a little Boulogne bitch, in
token of good friendship; she made her excuses to the King for having been
naughty, and promised to be wise in future. Louis behaved more graciously
towards the fair rebel than did his mother, and said that everything should
be buried in oblivion; but he did not forget the cannonade of the Bastille.
After five years’ seclusion, she again looked forward to resume her position
at Court, to keep one of her own, to enthrone herself at the Luxembourg,

and doubtless contract some sovereign alliance. Vain illusions! Conflicts of
the heart were about to succeed to those political storms from whose effects
she had just recovered. The most vainglorious of the daughters of France
was destined to extinguish with the wet blanket of vile prose the brilliancy
of a long and romantic career.

History, justly severe upon the Fronde, ought not, we think, to treat too
harshly the Frondeuse of the blood-royal. Upon one delicate point of her
private life the biographer cannot, unfortunately, show the same indulgence.
The supreme criterion for the appreciation of certain women, and the
irresistible argument, is the man whom they have loved. Assuredly we may
pardon many things recorded of the Grande Mademoiselle, even her
shrewish relations with her step-mother, even her haughty contempt for her
half-sisters, but we cannot pardon her M. de Lauzun. We are all well
acquainted with that individual, with his cunning and supercilious cast of
countenance, servile or arrogant, according to circumstances and interests,
adroit in concealing a merciless egotism, a revolting brutality, under the
guise of a theatrical liberality; brave so far as was necessary to be insolent
with impunity, intelligent no further than to the extent at which selfishness
blinds the judgment, and delighting in mischief when there was nothing to
dread from it. To all this may be added an incisive tone of voice, and
language keenly sarcastic or servilely obsequious, an insatiable and
inordinate sensuality, innumerable conquests among the fair sex, and
extraordinary adventures. At first sight, at a Court masquerade, in 1659, the
bully made an impression upon the précieuse, and she noticed him for his
exquisite elegance during the marriage fêtes of Louis XIV. When she met
him in the Queen’s apartments, she remarked that he had more wit than
anyone else, and found a particular pleasure in talking with him. The charm
operated so effectually that the princess of forty-three was at length fain to
own that she passionately loved the Gascon cadet, who was then in his
thirty-eighth year. Determined as she was naturally, that discovery

overwhelmed her. “I resolved,” she says, “never to speak to M. Lauzun
again save in hearing of a third person, and I was anxious to avoid
opportunities of seeing him in order to drive him out of my head. I entered
upon such a line of conduct; I only exchanged a few trivial words with him.
I found that I did not know what I was saying, that I could not put three
words of good sense together; and the more I sought to shun him, the more
desirous I was of seeing him.” At her wits’ end, the poor Princess cast
herself at the foot of the altar, on one occasion when she took the
sacrament, and ardently besought Heaven to enlighten her as to the course
she ought to pursue. The inspiration is by no means difficult to anticipate.
“Heaven’s grace determined me not to struggle longer to drive out of my
mind that which was so strongly established in it, but to marry M. de
Lauzun.”

Two things, however, were necessary to accomplish this: firstly, that M.
de Lauzun should thoroughly understand that he was beloved, and that he
would deign to espouse Mademoiselle’s twenty-two millions; and next that
King Louis should consent to a marriage, the strangest certainly ever
resolved upon. Strange, indeed, that she, the grand-daughter of Henry the
Great, Mademoiselle d’Eu, Mademoiselle de Dombes, Mademoiselle
d’Orléans, Mademoiselle the King’s first cousin, the Mademoiselle destined
to the throne, should ask the King’s permission to marry a Gascon cadet.
Louis, as the sequel to an overture made to him by several nobles
collectively, friends of Lauzun, with M. de Montausier at their head,
granted his permission. But when the question arose, thanks to the blind
vanity of Lauzun, of their union being celebrated at the Louvre and in the
face of all France, like an alliance “of crown to crown;” when a feeling
which was shared by every member of the royal house was on the point of
communicating itself to all the sovereign families of Europe, Louis, with
great reason, began to take account of the political interests which this
whim of the Princess brought into play, and retracted, as King, the authority

which he had given as head of a family. Contemporary writers seem never
tired of dwelling upon the manifestations of Mademoiselle’s grief, at times
as laughable as at others it was touching; receiving the condolence of all the
Court as though she had been a lone widow, Madame de Sévigné tells us,
and exclaiming excitedly in her despair to every fresh visitor, as she pointed
to the vacant place in her bed, “He should be there! he should be there!”

This took place on the 18th of December, 1670. On the 25th of
November, 1671, M. de Lauzun was arrested, thrown into the Bastille, and
taken thence to Pignerol, where he was subjected to a captivity of ten years.
What passed in that interval has proved a great subject of controversy
amongst ingenious writers. The most probable explanation seems to be that,
notwithstanding the King’s refusal, the marriage between Lauzun and
Mademoiselle had been accomplished. The evidence of twenty different
persons might be cited in support of the fact, but one may suffice. An
historian of the last century, M. Anquetil, relates that at the Château d’Eu, in
1774, an apartment was still pointed out which had been occupied by
Lauzun, situated above that of the princess, and communicating by a secret
staircase with her alcove. At the same period, Anquetil saw at Treport a tall
person resembling Mademoiselle not only in her figure, but strikingly like
her portraits. She seemed to be about seventy or seventy-five. She was
called, throughout that part of the country, the Princess’s daughter. She
seemed to believe so herself, and was in receipt of a pension of fifteen
hundred francs paid punctually, without knowing from what quarter they
came. She occupied a handsome house for which she paid no rent, although
for it she held no proprietary deed. All this, coupled with the age of the
lady, who stated that she was born in 1671, would seem decisive as to the
clandestine marriage which probably occasioned the arrest of Lauzun.

Ten years of anguish and poignant regrets passed over poor
Mademoiselle’s head—ten years employed in imploring and bargaining for

the restoration of her dearly beloved captive. “Consider what you have it in
your power to do to please the King, in order that he may grant you that
which you have so much at heart,” was the artful suggestion daily repeated
in her ear by Madame de Montespan. And to render the discovery more
easy, she took care to bring with her, and to send to her very frequently, that
charming little Duke du Maine to whom the county of Eu, the duchy of
Aumale, and the principality of Dombes would have been a fitting
appanage. To despoil herself for the deliverance of the man she loved with
such an infatuated affection, the Princess would not have hesitated a
moment. The difficulty was to despoil the man himself, already in
possession of a portion of what was required, and very keen-witted indeed
to keep what he had acquired. The negotiation, for a long while brought to a
dead-lock by the resistance of Lauzun, was at length concluded. M. de
Lauzun, emerged from Pignerol, but restricted at first to a residence in
Touraine or Anjou, received at length permission to revisit Paris and behold
once more the benefactress who could still secure to him the enjoyment of
an income of forty thousand livres. “I did not know him,” exclaimed the
woebegone Princess, shortly after his release, “and my sole consolation is
that the King, who is more clear-sighted than I am, did not know him
either.” Tardy clear-sightedness! M. de Lauzun had then made himself
known unmistakably—by beating her. But, if the truth must be told, she had
first scratched his face.

Thus ended, in vulgar squabbles, more and more stormy, a connection so
romantically begun. Lauzun, disappointed in his hope of a magnificent
alliance, considered himself despoiled by the Princess’s donation, and,
finding himself after ten years’ captivity the husband of a woman of fifty-
four, showed her neither tenderness nor respect. It was, therefore, a relief to
her when he took his departure for England in 1685. The ill-assorted couple
never met again. Lauzun more than once endeavoured to obtain an
interview with the Princess, but she would not forgive him, and died

without consenting to his urgent appeals. It was in her latter years only, and
under the perceptibly increasing sway of religious influences, that her
miserably tormented mind recovered peace and repose. Mademoiselle, who
had only given up dancing in 1674, withdrew gradually from Court when
she found that she had become an object of pity, if not of mockery, therein.
The Grande Mademoiselle expired on the 5th of April, 1693, in her palace
of the Luxembourg, aged sixty-six. That singularity, which had so
remarkably characterised her life, pursued her even beyond it. At her
obsequies, celebrated with much magnificence, her entrails, imperfectly
embalmed, fermented, and the urn which contained them burst with a loud
explosion during the ceremonies. All present fled in the extremity of terror.

Was it from the singularity of her existence, from the essentially French
tone of her character, from the grandeur of an epoch during which no one
passed unnoticed, that the species of popularity half-indulgent, half-
sportive, which attached to her name must be attributed? To all these
doubtless, but likewise to another cause more decisive still. Mademoiselle
does not take her place only in the sufficiently extensive catalogue of
princely eccentricities; she holds a creditable position upon the list of
French writers. Nor should it be forgotten that the gates of the Luxembourg
were by her thrown open to all the beaux esprits of her time, “qui y
trouvaient leur place comme chez Mécænas;” and that she fostered both by
encouragement and example La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère, and that it
is no slight claim to remembrance that she led France to appreciate the
Maxims of the one and the Characters of the other. May such
considerations serve as extenuating circumstances when we bring her up for
judgment for the flagrant crime of—M. de Lauzun.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] The daughter of Gaston d’Orléans and the charming Marie de Bourbon,
she was born in 1627, the same year as Bossuet and Mad. de Sévigné. Her
mother died five days after her birth.

[7] Her father, writing to her companions in arms the Countesses of Fiesque
and Frontenac shortly after their entrance into Orleans, complimented them upon
their courage, and addressed his letter to the Countesses Adjutant-Generals in the
Army of my Daughter against Mazarin.

CHAPTER VI.

THE WIFE OF THE GREAT CONDÉ.

Among so many heroines of beauty, glory, and gallantry, who achieved
celebrity at this stirring epoch of French history, there is one whose name
ought not to be effaced from, nor placed lowest on the list, although a
humble—we were going to say, a humiliated, disdained, and sacrificed
wife; a martyr to conjugal faith, but who, perhaps, can scarcely be called a
“political” woman.

Mademoiselle de Brézé, as already intimated, had entered into the Condé
family through the detestable influence of authority and politics. The Duke
d’Enghien, therefore, unhappily held his wife in aversion; her mother-in-
law, Charlotte de Montmorency, despised her; Madame de Longueville, her
sister-in-law, did not esteem her; Mademoiselle de Montpensier declares
that “she felt pity for her,” and that was the gentlest phrase she could find to
apply to a person who had so signally crossed her views and inclination.

Married at thirteen to the future hero of Rocroy and Lens, both before
marriage and again more strongly after, the young Duke had protested by a
formal act that he yielded only to compulsion and his respect for paternal
authority in giving her his hand. Henry (II.), Prince de Condé, who thus
exacted his son’s compliance, merely followed his usual instincts as a
greedy and ambitious courtier in seeking an alliance with Cardinal

Richelieu, whose niece Mademoiselle de Brézé was, through her mother,
Nicole du Plessis. Mademoiselle de Montpensier, who thought that she had
more reason than any one else to be indignant at the match, tells us plainly
that the Prince threw himself at the feet of his eminence to solicit from him
both Mademoiselle de Brézé for the Duke d’Enghien, and M. de Brézé, her
brother, for Mademoiselle de Bourbon, and that he only escaped from the
disgrace of a double mésalliance through the Cardinal’s clemency, who, in
reply, told him that “he was quite willing to give untitled young ladies to
princes, but not princesses to untitled young gentlemen.”

Did the young Duchess personally merit that aversion and contempt?
Mademoiselle has told us, indeed, that she was awkward, and that, “on the
score of wit and beauty, she had nothing above the common run.” But
Madame de Motteville, less passionate and more disinterested in her
judgments, recognises certain advantages possessed by her. “She was not
plain,” she tells us, “but had fine eyes, a good complexion, and a pretty
figure. She spoke well when she was in the humour to talk.” The discerning
court lady adds that, “if Madame de Condé did not always display a talent
for pleasing in the ball-room or in conversation, the fidelity with which she
clung to her husband during adversity, and the zeal she showed for his
interests and for those of her son during the Guienne campaign, ought to
compensate for the misfortune of not having been able to merit, by more
eminent virtues, a more brilliant and widely celebrated reputation.”

Here, then, it seems incumbent upon us to divine, from the façon de
parler of that day, what were the eminent virtues which the Princess de
Condé needed to deserve the esteem of her husband; or to ask whether tried
fidelity, courage, devotedness, were not then ranked among the eminent
virtues. They were so, no doubt; and it is probable that what Madame de
Motteville understands by those words, was the eminence of qualities
peculiar to the women, who more than ever in her day derived from them a

species of celebrity which closely resembled glory—the éclat of beauty,
wit, grace, intrepidity, and power of charming; in a word, that which was
possessed in so high a degree by a Madame de Longueville, a Madame de
Chevreuse, a Marie de Hautefort, and a Mademoiselle du Vigean.

Whatever might have been the personal merit of the wife of the great
Condé, did the little she had justify the wretchedness of her destiny? No:
some beauty, wit, virtue, courage, a timid disposition perhaps, an
unpretending virtue, a courage even mediocre, easily overthrown, and
which needed the pressure of circumstances and danger for its development,
—in all this there was nothing to invoke the ire of the implacable sisters.

In contemplating her truly deplorable existence, afflicted from its
beginning to its end by every kind of grief and humiliation, one can
scarcely resist the idea of the ascendency of an invincible fatality, making
her a victim of the irresistible force of events and destiny. The woes of
Claire de Brézé commenced in her earliest childhood. At the time of her
marriage to the Duke d’Enghien she had lost her mother some six years,
that parent having died in 1635. What befell her infancy, abandoned to the
neglect of a fantastic and libertine father, ruled even before his widowhood
by a mistress, the wife of one of his lacqueys, whom he killed one day
during a hunting match in order to get him out of the way; of a father who,
Tallemant tells us, carelessly remarked, when his daughter’s marriage was
agreed upon—as though she belonged to some one else—“They are going
to make a princess of that little girl!”

She was destined, nevertheless, to have her hour of fame and distinction,
and that hour dawned amidst disasters of every sort, and upon the captivity
of her husband. At the moment of the arrest of the Prince, whilst the
Princess-dowager was conferring with her adherents upon the best measures
to be adopted for the deliverance of the Princes and for the safety of her

little grandson, the young Princess, overcoming her timidity, interrupted
Lenet, who was proposing a plan for their flight, and another for a
campaign, and, after the humblest tokens of respect and deference for her
mother-in-law, entreated her not to separate her from her son, protesting
that she would follow him everywhere joyfully, whatsoever might be the
peril, and that she would expose herself to any risk to aid her husband.[8]

From that moment, we trace, almost from day to day as it were, in the
Mémoires of Lenet proofs of the zeal and constancy of the Princess de
Condé. She escapes from Chantilly on foot, with her son and a small band
of faithful followers, traverses Paris, whence she reaches, in three days and
by devious roads, Montrond, the place pointed out by Lenet as the safest
retreat and the most advantageous to defend. Her letters to the Queen and
ministers, to the magistrates, to her relatives, are stamped with nobility and
firmness. Threatened in Montrond by La Meilleraye, who was advancing in
force, she again made her escape under cover of a hunting party, after
having provided for the safety of the place and others which depended on it,
and went in search of, amid a host of difficulties, sometimes on horseback,
at others in a litter or by boat, the Dukes de Bouillon and La
Rochefoucauld, who escorted her to Bordeaux. One must turn to Lenet for
all the details of that toilsome journey and of the insurrection at Bordeaux,
which he has related with all the minutiæ and animation of an eye-witness
and an actor who more than once figured in the front rank. No longer timid,
no longer awkward, in presence of danger the daughter of Marshal de Brézé
became the amazon and almost the heroine. She held reviews, councils of
war, negotiated, and issued orders. Scarcely had she reached Bordeaux, her
entry into which was quite an ovation, than she besieged the Parliament
chamber to procure the registration of her requests and protestations against
the unjust detention of her husband. “She solicited the judges on their way
out of court, representing to them with tears in her eyes the unhappy

condition of all her oppressed house.... The young Duke, whom a gentleman
(Vialas) carried in his arms, caught the counsellors round the neck as they
passed, and weepingly besought at their hands the liberation of his father, in
so tender a manner that those gentlemen wept also as bitterly as he and his
mother, and gave them both good hopes.” She harangued the magistrates,
supplicated them, urged them; she even protected them, on one occasion
that the populace of Bordeaux, finding them not so bold as they could have
wished, endeavoured by clamour to obtain a decree contrary to the views of
the party of the Princes. She repaired to the palace, and from the top of the
steps conjured the furious rabble and made them lay down their arms. “And
it must be owned,” says Lenet, “that she had a particular talent for speaking
in public, and that nothing could be better, more appropriate, nor more
conformable to her position than what she said.” On that day, the Princess
de Condé, upon the steps of the Hôtel de Ville of Bordeaux, appeared no
longer unworthy of being ranked with Madame de Longueville at the town-
hall at Paris, or with Mademoiselle d’Orléans at the Porte St. Antoine.
Brienne adds that she worked, with her own hands, with the ladies of the
city, at the fortifications, and that she was anxious herself to embroider,
upon the banners of her army, the emblem and device of the revolt—a
grenade exploding, with the word coacta!

We have already seen the result of that three months’ resistance—the
peace concluded at Bordeaux, the amnesty accorded to all those who had
taken up arms in Guienne, in a word, all the conditions proposed by the
Princess and the Dukes conceded, with the exception of one only—the
principal, that which had been the prime cause of all that insurrection—the
deliverance of the Prince de Condé, whom Mazarin persisted in retaining
prisoner, whilst at the same time promising to do everything towards
abridging his captivity.

The Princess was sent back to Montrond with her son, vexed no doubt at
not having conquered, but proud of having dared so much, and satisfied at
having deserved for that once to share his imprisonment. That day came,
however,—the day of gratitude and justice. On one occasion already, whilst
yet at Vincennes, the Prince, as he watered the tulips celebrated by
Mademoiselle de Scudéry in song, remarked to some one, “Who would have
thought that I should be watering tulips whilst Madame la Princesse was
making war in the south!”

But later, when the campaign at Bordeaux had ended, the Prince still a
prisoner at Havre, forwarding a communication in cypher to Lenet, added
thereto a short note for the Princess, couched in terms so tender that Lenet,
fearing lest in the exuberance of her delight the Princess might betray the
secret of that correspondence, hesitated for some moments to communicate
it to her. That note, the first and sole recompense of her devotion, courage,
and constancy, we must here transcribe, as the tardy and begrudging
compensation for such long-continued ingratitude, such long-continued
disdain, for so many cruel and unmerited outrages.
“Il me tard, Madame, que je sois en état de vous embrasser mil fois pour toute l’amitié
que vous m’avez temoigné, qui m’est d’autant plus sensible que ma conduite envers vous
l’avoit peu méritée; mais je sçauray si bien vivre avec vous à l’advenir, que vous ne vous
repentirés pas de tout ce que vous avés faict to me pour moy, qui fera que je seray toute ma
vie tout à vous et de tout mon cœur.”

Poor Clémence de Maillé! how, at that first testimony of an affection
which she had despaired of ever gaining, did her heart, so long pent up,
burst forth with ecstatic delight! And how must Lenet, on witnessing that
touching effusion of irrepressible rapture, have congratulated himself at not
having persevered in his diplomatic prudence! She took the letter, shed tears
over it, kissed it, read it over and over again, and tried to get it by heart—
for she might lose it. Then she selected from her toilette her finest ribbon (a

bright flame-coloured one), and sewed that precious missive to it, in order
to carry it always upon her person, beneath her dress—upon her chemise,
Lenet bluntly tells us, and who adds that that gush of delirious delight lasted
until the morrow.

Alas! that warm ray was the only one that Condé, in his glory, let fall
upon her, and it was but evanescent. The danger over, the prison opened,
Condé restored to his honours and his power, she became once more the
despised, alienated, humiliated wife. Mademoiselle, on meeting her again,
asked whether it were true that she had taken part in that which was done in
her name? On her return from Montrond (after the letter), she found her, it
is true, plus habile; but she was shocked at the delight manifested by the
Princess on seeing all the great world flock to visit her, so wholly forsaken
as she had previously been, and she concluded that, being carried out of her
normal condition, she thought too much of herself.

Then came humiliations the most cutting, and the deepest grief. Twice
was she attacked by dangerous illness, from which it was asserted she could
not recover. And each time that report was welcomed at Court as the joyous
announcement of a marriage or a succession. Everybody busied themselves
with finding another wife for the Prince; and some thought once more of
Mademoiselle: “that rumour reached my ears,” says she, “and I mused upon
it.” Unfortunately for her, the poor Princess recovered, and Mademoiselle
had to wait for Lauzun. In another place she remarks somewhat spitefully,
“Madame la Princesse arrived in better health than could have been
anticipated; no one could have imagined that she would so soon recover.”

At length a tragic event, the consequences of which exhibit in a sinister
light the perseverance of ill-feeling that had always been shown towards her
in the family of which she had become a member, came to add itself to that
almost unbroken chain of tribulations, outrages, and troubles amid which no

sort of calamity seemed wanting. Two officers of her household took it into
their heads to quarrel and draw swords upon each other. The Princess (she
was then in her forty-third year—1671) placed herself between the angry
combatants with the intention of separating them, and by so doing received
a stab in her side. The individual who inflicted the wound was brought to
trial. As for her,
“When she was cured, the Prince had her conducted to Châteauroux, one of his country-
houses. She has been there kept for a long time imprisoned, and at present permission is
only given her to walk in the court-yard, always strictly watched by the people whom the
Prince always keeps about her. The Duke is accused of having suggested to the Prince the
treatment to which his mother is subjected: he was very glad, it is said, to find a pretext for
putting her in a place where she would spend less than in society.”[9]

Was it the hereditary avarice of the house of Condé which thus revealed
itself in the odious sentiment of that unworthy son? Poor woman! Her only
crime was that of being too liberal. She had, it is true, foolishly placed her
diamonds in pledge at Bordeaux to support the cost of the war. But had she
not, as a set-off to her prodigality, brought to the Duke d’Enghien and his
father her share of Richelieu’s wealth? That prudent advice of the excellent
son was followed: the Princess was still a prisoner at Châteauroux, when
the Prince her husband died, in 1686; and by way of a precaution—which
cannot be thought of without a shudder, giving as it does the measure of an
implacable hatred—he recommended that she should be so kept after his
decease. This once, Mademoiselle did find a word of pity for the persecuted
wife and mother. “I could have wished,” says she, when speaking of the last
moments of the Prince, “that he had not prayed the King to let his wife
always be kept at Châteauroux, and I was very sorry for it....”

And it was there, doubtless, that she died in 1694, at the age of sixty-six.
The collections of funeral orations and sermons of celebrated preachers of
that day will be searched in vain for any funeral tribute to her memory. And

a feeling of disappointment arises that Bossuet, in his panegyric of the hero,
could not find a word of praise, of consolation, or even of pity for the ill-
fated shadow he left sorrowful and abandoned by all, to bear his name in
pitiless obscurity to the grave.

Mysterious destiny! strange fatality! which neither personal demerits,
wrongs, nor faults justified, which neither love, devotedness, nor unfailing
virtue, approved and respected even by the calumnious, could avert.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] Lenet.

[9] Mémoires of Mademoiselle de Montpensier, 4th part.

PART II.

THE DUCHESS OF PORTSMOUTH.

Very little is known for certain concerning the antecedents of Louise
Querouaille before she figured at the Court of France as one of the maids of
honour to the unfortunate Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, sister of Charles
the Second of England. The contemporaries of the merry monarch,
witnesses and censors of his political errors, in tracing them to their source,
have attributed them primarily to the foreign favourite, who was, more than
any other of the many mistresses of that Prince, odious in the eyes of the
English people.

At the commencement of 1670, the splendour and corruption of the
French Court had reached their acme. The seraglio of the great King
recalled to mind that of Solomon, whilst his brother, enslaved by
effeminacy and debauchery, had only to hold up his finger and the most
important personages of the state were suitably provided with mistresses to
such an extent that at length it became necessary to transfer occasionally to
foreign courts those attractive creatures who, by antiphrasis doubtless, were
always called “maids of honour.” It was in the household of his sister-in-
law, Henrietta of England, that Louis had first met the two mistresses of his
predilection; and when he wished to assure himself by a new tie of his royal
vassal on the other side of the channel, it was still the domestic circle of the
Duchess of Orleans which supplied him with the diplomatist in petticoats he
wanted.

When Mademoiselle Querouaille’s mission to the Court of St. James’s
became thoroughly understood, and her position as Duchess of Portsmouth
assured in it, her previous history was hunted up, the details of which no
one knew—not even the royal family of France, who had used her as an
instrument without caring to trouble itself about her origin. Madame de
Sévigné, in her letters to her daughter, speaks of the Duchess of Portsmouth
in a very disrespectful fashion, so much so as to reveal, if not the certainty,
at least the belief that the antecedents of the maid of honour, as she says,
were not the most honourable. In 1690, five years after Charles’s death, a
pamphlet was published in London in which the Duchess figures under the
fictitious name of Francelie; Louis XIV. designated as Tirannides, and our
English king as Prince des Iles. In the preface to the French translation of
this pamphlet, which bears the title of Histoire secrète de la Duchesse de
Portsmouth, it is stated that the author desired to give, by these changes of
name, some additional piquancy to the revelations contained in his book.
According to such chronicle, the father of Louise Querouaille was a wool
merchant of Paris. After having realised a moderate fortune in trade, he
retired into Brittany, his native country, with his two daughters; the
youngest, Louise, being amiable and pretty; the eldest, plain and
ungraceful. The dissimilarity of the two sisters, the one universally
pleasing, the other displeasing everybody, created such misunderstanding
between them that their father was obliged to separate them. He kept the
plain daughter at home, and placed the younger and pretty one as a boarder
in a neighbouring town to that in which he lived. Louise thereby acquired
accomplishments which enhanced her natural charms. She was sharp,
cunning, insinuating, and having gained the confidence and goodwill of the
lady to whose care her father had entrusted her, the former introduced her
amongst her relations and general society. In that circle Mademoiselle
Querouaille ere long inspired passions, rumours of which reached the ears
of the old wool-merchant. Fearing lest his daughter might but too

thoughtlessly respond to the attentions of which she was the object, he
withdrew her from the boarding-house, and took her to Paris, where he left
her under the care of his sister-in-law, then a widow. Her husband had been
a dependent of the Duke de Beaufort, and she herself lived, for the most
part, upon the bounty of that nobleman, who, on reconciling himself with
the Court after the Fronde, had obtained the post of high-admiral of France.
Shortly after the arrival of Louise in Paris, in 1669, the Duke seeing her
walking in the Tuileries gardens with her relative, and being struck with the
young girl’s beauty, and moreover it is said with the effect which she
produced upon the public, became suddenly enamoured of her. The author
of the Histoire secrète relates the manœuvres resorted to by Beaufort and
Louise to deceive the vigilance, more affected than real, as it would seem,
of her old aunt. In short, the Duke’s passion made rapid progress; and the
young girl, yielding to the wishes of a lover who adored her and heaped
magnificent presents upon her, allowed herself to be carried off by him at
the moment that he was about to enter upon his naval command. That
expedition had for its object the succour of the Venetians, who for some
twenty-four years had been blockaded by the Turks in Candia.
Mademoiselle Querouaille, disguised as a page, embarked with the Duke,
who, shortly after landing, was cut to pieces in action. An officer of the
French force, whom the before-cited chronicle merely designates as a
marquis, and to whom Beaufort had confided the secret of his love, offered
to conduct Louise back to France. It appears that Mademoiselle Querouaille
would have preferred to have been accompanied on her return by a certain
smart page who had been in the Duke’s service, but the marquis did not
give her the option of such a choice. Yet, though Louise could not withdraw
herself from the protection of the latter, there is no reason to believe that he
forced his love upon her. The anonymous chronicler concedes that much;
but, in his opinion, the Marquis might have hoped that Louise would have
acknowledged his care and respect by the same favours which she had

accorded to “Beaufort, and,” he adds, “one may presume that a girl who
previously, urged by love, had allowed the Duke to carry her off to Candia,
could do no less for a man who showed her so much attention on the
voyage back to France.” More or less just as these inductions may be, it
appears quite certain that this same prank of Mademoiselle Querouaille was
the foundation of her fortunes. In giving his friends an account of the
expedition in which he had taken part, the Marquis did not omit the episode
of the Duke de Beaufort’s pretended page. Henrietta of England, to whom
this romantic tale was carried, became desirous of seeing the heroine of it,
and Louise Querouaille was therefore duly introduced to the Duchess. The
fictitious Cherubino was cunning enough to represent herself as being the
victim of a forcible abduction. Henrietta listened to her story with the
liveliest interest, took her into her household, and soon afterwards admitting
her amongst the number of her maids of honour. Louise, at the age of
nineteen, was thus at once introduced to all the pleasures and temptations of
a magnificent and dissipated court. Her introduction took place at a critical
moment (1669), and, in deciding her future, fate has made her destiny and
character matter of history.

The conquest or the ruin of Holland had long been one of the favourite
projects of Louis the Fourteenth. The Dutch, however, resisted his
overgrown power, as their ancestors had formerly defied that of Philip the
Second of Spain. In order to carry his plans into execution, Louis found it
necessary to detach England from the interests of Holland. This was matter
of some difficulty, for an alliance with France against Holland was so
odious to all parties in England, so contrary to the national prejudices and
interests, that though Louis did not despair of cajoling or bribing Charles
into such a treaty, the utmost caution and secresy were necessary in
conducting it.

The only person who was at first trusted with this negotiation was the
Duchess of Orleans. She was at this time about five-and-twenty, “a singular
mixture of discretion, or rather dissimulation, with rashness and petulance;
of exceeding haughtiness, with a winning sweetness of manner and
disposition which gained all hearts.” She was not, however, exactly pretty
or well made, but had the dazzlingly fair complexion of an Englishwoman,
“un teint de rose et de jasmin,” a profusion of light hair, with eyes blue and
bright as those of Pallas. She had inherited some of the nobler qualities of
her grandfather, Henri Quatre, and all the graces and intriguing spirit of her
mother, Henrietta Maria. Early banished from England by the misfortunes
of her family, she regarded the country of her birth with indifference, if not
abhorrence, and was a Frenchwoman in education, manners, mind, and
heart. She possessed unbounded power over the mind of Charles the
Second, whose affection for her was said to exceed that of a brother for a
sister; he had never been known to refuse her anything she had asked for
herself or others, and Louis trusted that her fascinations would gain from
the king of England what reason and principle and patriotism would have
denied.

The shrewdness of mind and inclination for intrigue which characterised
his sister-in-law’s maid-of-honour did not escape the observation of Louis.
In her he found an apt as well as willing instrument in the secret negotiation
of which he had constituted her mistress the plenipotentiary. For such
compliance the manners of the time may, to a certain extent, furnish La
Querouaille with an excuse. At Versailles, ideas of honour and morality had
lost their ordinary signification: the men envied generally the lot of
Amphitryon, and the women lost every instinct of modesty when it became
a question about satisfying a caprice of Jupiter. Breathing such a vitiated
atmosphere, and having so many lamentable examples before her eyes,
Mademoiselle Querouaille saw only the dazzling side of the proposition
made to her—the hope of reigning despotically over the heart of a great

prince, and of becoming the equal of that La Vallière whose elevation was
the object of so much envy and feminine ambition.

It was arranged, therefore, that the piquant Bas-Bretonne should be
brought under the notice of the amorous Charles II. during a visit to him,
arranged to take place at Dover. In order to give the interview between the
royal brother and sister the appearance of an accidental or family meeting,
the pretext of a progress to his recently acquired Flemish territories was
resorted to by Louis, who set out with his queen, his two mistresses De
Montespan and La Vallière, the Duchess of Orleans and Mademoiselle de
Montpensier, with their respective retinues, and attended by the most
beautiful women of the Court. The splendour exhibited on this occasion
exceeded all that had been witnessed, even during the reign of this pomp-
loving monarch. Thirty thousand men marched in the van and rear of the
royal party; some of them destined to reinforce the garrisons of the
conquered country, others to work upon the fortifications, and others again
to level the roads. It was a continued series of fêtes, banquets, and triumphs,
the ostensible honours being chiefly for Madame de Montespan; the real
object of this famous journey, well-nigh unparalleled for its lavish and
luxurious ostentation, was known only to Henrietta of England, who
enjoyed in secret her own importance, and this gave a new zest to the
pleasures with which she was surrounded.

On reaching Dunkirk, the Duchess of Orleans embarked for England with
her maid-of-honour and a small but chosen retinue, and met Charles at
Dover, where this secret negotiation was initiated. The result anticipated
came to pass, and proved that Louis had not miscalculated the power of his
sister-in-law over her easy-going and unscrupulous brother. Charles fell into
the snare laid for him, and Henrietta carried most of the points of that
disgraceful treaty, which rendered the King of England the pensioned tool
of France, and his reign the most abject in the annals of her native country.

Aiming rather to stimulate than gratify the languid desires of her brother
for fresh feminine novelty, the Duchess of Orleans, with finished finesse,
appeared not to perceive the attention which the piquant charms and almost
childish grace of her young maid-of-honour won from the captivated King.
Nor did she, at her departure, leave Louise in England, as some historians
have erroneously supposed. In order to render the impression which her fair
attendant had made upon Charles more deep and lasting, it was sought by
her absence to incite the desire felt by her royal brother to retain her in his
Court. The secret negotiation with which Louis had entrusted his sister-in-
law had not been, in fact, yet completed. To conduct it to a prosperous
termination, to preserve perfect harmony between France and England, it
was still needful to make use of another kind of female influence. It was
necessary, moreover, that such influence should become permanent—a
thing hitherto very difficult at courts wherein the fair sex disputed
strenuously and shamelessly for the royal favour. But thus much seemed
certain—that the key to the will of the sovereign of Great Britain had been
found in Mademoiselle Louise Querouaille.

Charles had indeed written in reply to his sister, on the 8th July of the
preceding year (1668), that “in every negotiation she shall have a share,
which will prove how much I love her.” In August he told the French
ambassador—“The Duchess of Orleans passionately desires an alliance
between me and France; and as I love her tenderly, I shall be happy to let
her see what power her entreaties have over me.” Henrietta, probably, did
not consider that by thus bringing her brother into alliance with France she
was betraying her native country. She no doubt thought rather of
augmenting the greatness of Charles than of benefiting England. The sea
should be given up to England; the territory of Continental Europe to
France. Louis XIV. expressly declared, in opposition to the views of
Colbert, “that he would leave commerce to the English—three-fourths of it
at least—that all he cared for was conquest.” But that would have involved,

as a first step, the conquest of England herself, and have cost torrents of
blood. The fascinating Henrietta, doubtless, did not perceive this when she
trod so far in the fatal footsteps of her ancestress, Mary Stuart. She had
none of her rash violence, but not a little of her spirit of romantic intrigue,
and that feminine delight of having in hand a tangled skein, of which she
held securely the end of the thread.

The secret negotiation of the treaty, however, went on between the two
kings. Louis had submitted to exorbitant conditions on the score of money,
and to another, moreover, sufficiently weighty. It was that Charles,
converted to the Romish faith, should share with him in the conquest of
Holland, should send a considerable military force thither, and should keep
for himself the Dutch islands opposite to England—an advantage so
enormous to the latter power that it would have rendered national the
odious alliance, and glorified the treason.

Two points still remained unsettled: first, to persuade Charles to
commence the war before his conversion—a step considered easy to obtain;
but that conversion terrified him when the moment came for carrying it out.
Secondly—and which proved the most difficult—was to induce him to
despatch very few troops—too few to take and afterwards hold the territory
promised him. Louis XIV. stipulated to send 120,000 men there; Charles II.
engaged to furnish 6000, which number his sister prevailed upon him to
reduce to 4000.

Such was the sad, disgraceful, deplorable negotiation imposed by the
great King upon his sister-in-law. She had always obeyed him (as she
herself said), and she obeyed him in this matter, rendering her brother
doubly a traitor by his abandonment of the latter condition, which lessened
his treason.

Everybody had envied the Duchess her visit to England, none knew the
bitterness it entailed. The King confided in her, and yet distrusted her.
Otherwise he would not have had her accompanied by the pretty doll, with
her baby face, whose office it was to ensnare the licentious Charles.
Henrietta was compelled to take her over to England, and, in fact, to
chaperone her. For such self-abasement the King had handsomely rewarded
the compliant maid-of-honour, promising to give her an estate, and so much
per head for each bastard she might have by Charles of England.

Henrietta endured all this shameful bargaining, hoping that her royal
brother would obtain from the Pope the dissolution of her marriage with the
worthless, stupid, profligate Duke of Orleans, on whom her wit and charms
were equally thrown away. She might then remain at his court and be the
virtual Queen of England, by governing him through female influence. Her
brilliant hopes, however, were destined to be speedily dissipated, and her
career cut short by a painful and treacherous death.

On her return from England, two surprises awaited her: not only did she
find the Duke, her husband, exasperated against her, but what she had least
of all expected, the King very cold in his demeanour towards her. Louis had
got from her all he desired. His changed attitude emboldened a cabal in her
own household to effect her destruction. Those who formed it were
creatures of her husband’s detestable favourite, the Chevalier de Lorraine,
whom they believed had been banished by the King through her entreaties.
The poor Duchess wept bitterly on finding that she had now no support
from any one about her. The Duke, in the exercise of his marital authority,
took her from Court, not permitting her any longer to visit Versailles. The
King might have insisted upon her attendance there but did not. In tears, she
suffered herself to be carried off to St. Cloud. There she felt herself alone,
with every hand against her.

The weather was excessively hot. On her arrival at St. Cloud, she took a
bath, which made her ill, but she soon recovered from it, and during two
days was tolerably well—eating and sleeping. On the 28th of June she
asked for a cup of chicory, drank it, and at the same moment became red,
then pale, and shrieked aloud. The poor Duchess, commonly so patient
under pain, gave way under the excess of her anguish, her eyes filled with
tears, and she exclaimed that she was dying.

Inquiries were made about the water the Duchess had drunk, and her
waiting-woman said that she had not prepared it herself, but had ordered it
to be made, and then asked that some of it might be given her, drank of it;
but there is no evidence to show that the water had not been changed in the
interval.

Was it an attack of cholera, as was said? The symptoms in no wise
indicated that species of disorder. The Duchess’s health was very much
shattered, and she was doubtless liable to be rapidly carried off. But the
event had very plainly been hastened (as in the case of Don Carlos); nature
had been assisted. The Duke’s valets—who were, as to fidelity, much more
the servants of his banished favourite, the Chevalier de Lorraine—
comprehended that, in the approaching alliance of the two kings, and the
need they would have of each other’s confidence, the Duchess might in
some moment of tenderness recover her absolute power over the King, who
would in such event sweep his brother’s household clear of them all. They
well knew the Court, and surmised that, if she were to die, the alliance
would nevertheless be maintained, and the matter hushed up; that she would
be lamented, but not avenged; that facts accomplished would be respected.

Good care was taken not to confide the secret to the wretched Duke, her
husband; it was even thought that it might be possible to get him out of the
way—to keep him in Paris, where by chance, indeed, he was detained.

Philip of Orleans was really astonished when he beheld his agonised wife,
and ordered an antidote to be given her; but time was lost in administering
the poudre de vipère. The Duchess asked only for an emetic, and the
doctors obstinately refused her one. Strange, too, the King, who, on his
arrival, remonstrated with them, was equally unsuccessful in obtaining for
the sufferer that which she craved. The medicos held steadily to their
opinion: they had pronounced it to be cholera, and they would not swallow
their own words.

Were they in the plot? That did not follow. For, besides the professional
pride which forbade them to belie themselves, they might fear to discover
more than they wished—to act in a very uncourtier-like manner by
discovering traces but too evident of poisoning. In such case the alliance,
perhaps, might have been broken off, and the projects of both King and
clergy for the Dutch and English crusade have come to nothing. Such
blundering fellows would never have been forgiven. So the physicians were
prudent and politic. It was altogether a grievous spectacle. Here was a
woman universally beloved, yet who inspired no one with any strong
feeling. Everybody was interested—went and came; but no one would
assume any responsibility, no one obeyed her last and constant prayer. She
wanted to eject the poison by the aid of an emetic. No one dared to give it
her. “Look,” she exclaimed, “my nose is gone—shrunk to nothing.” It was
observed, in fact, that it was already like that of an eight days’ corpse. For
all that, they stuck to the doctors’ opinion: “It is nothing.” With only one
exception, nobody seemed uneasy about her; some even laughed.
Mademoiselle de Montpensier alone showed indignation at all this heartless
indifference, and had the courage to remark that “At any rate they should
endeavour to save her soul,” and went in search of a confessor.

The people belonging to the household, one and all, recommended that
the curé of St. Cloud should be sent for, certain that, as he was unknown to

the Duchess, their mistress would confess nothing of moment to him.
Mademoiselle, however, would not hear of him as confessor. “Fetch
Bossuet,” she said, “and meanwhile call in the Canon Feuillet.”

Feuillet was a very wary ecclesiastic, and quite as prudent as the
physicians. He persuaded Madame to offer herself up as a sacrifice to
Heaven without accusing anyone. The Duchess said, in fact, to Marshal de
Grammont, “They have poisoned me—but by mistake.” She exhibited
throughout an admirable discretion and perfect gentleness. She embraced
the Duke, her husband, whispering to him—in allusion to the outrageous
arrest of the Chevalier de Lorraine—that she had “never been unfaithful to
him.”

The English Ambassador having arrived, she spoke to him in English,
telling him to conceal from her brother that she had been poisoned. The
Abbé Feuillet, who had not quitted her, overhearing the word “poison,”
stopped her, saying, “Madame, think only of God now!” Bossuet, who next
came in, continues Feuillet, confirmed her in those thoughts of self-
abnegation and discretion. For a long time back, she had looked to Bossuet
to console her in that supreme moment. She desired that after her decease
an emerald ring should be given to him which she had reserved for that
purpose.

By degrees, however, the unfortunate Duchess found herself left almost
alone. The King had taken his departure, after manifesting great emotion,
and the Duke also in tears. All the Court had disappeared. Mademoiselle de
Montpensier was too much affected to bid her farewell. She was sinking
fast, felt an inclination to sleep, woke up suddenly, inquired for Bossuet,
who placed a crucifix in her hand, and, whilst in the act of embracing it, she
expired. The clock at that moment struck three, and the first faint light of
dawn was visible (June 29th, 1670).

The English Ambassador expressed a desire to be present at the post-
mortem examination, and the doctors did not fail to pronounce the cause of
her death to be an attack of cholera morbus (so Mademoiselle de
Montpensier states), and that mortification had for some time past set in. He
was not the dupe of such opinion; neither was Charles II., who, at first,
indignantly refused to receive the letter addressed to him by the Duke of
Orleans. But to persevere in such a line of conduct would have been to
bring about a rupture of the pending negotiation and the loss of the French
subsidy. He calmed down, therefore, and pretended to believe the
explanations that were offered him. It was, however, remembered that the
Chevalier de Lorraine, the Duke’s unworthy favourite, had openly accused
Madame as the instigator of his banishment; and Saint-Simon asserts that
the King, before consenting to his brother marrying again, was resolved to
know whether he had really had the Duchess poisoned, and with that view
summoned Furnon, Henrietta’s master of the household. From him he
learned that the poison had been sent from Italy by the Chevalier de
Lorraine to Beauveau, equerry to the Duchess, and to D’Effiat, her captain
of the guard, but without the knowledge of the Duke. “It was that maître-
d’hôtel who himself related it,” says Saint-Simon, “to M. Joly de Fleury,
from whom I had it.”

A story but too probable. But that which appears incredible, and which
nevertheless is quite certain, was that the poisoners were perfectly
successful, that shortly after the crime the King permitted the Chevalier de
Lorraine to serve in the army, appointed him marshal-de-camp, and allowed
him to return to Court. What explanation, what palliation, can there be for
such an enormous outrage to our common humanity? It has truly been said
that “the intrigues which led to the murder of the unfortunate Henrietta of
England present such a scene of accumulated horrors and iniquity, that, for
the honour of human nature, one could wish that the curtain had never been
raised which hid them from our knowledge.”

The last political act of the Duchess of Orleans was one of decisive
import, and calculated to secure for a long time the subjection of the
English nation. Although seriously afflicted by the death of his sister, the
thoughtless Charles seemed especially occupied with the design of bringing
over to England the attractive maid-of-honour who had made such a lively
impression upon him, as had been intended, during the short visit to Dover
already mentioned. On the melancholy tidings of Henrietta’s death reaching
England, the profligate Duke of Buckingham was despatched to Paris as
envoy extraordinary, ostensibly to inquire into the particulars of that
catastrophe but in reality, as Burnet says, to conclude the treaty. This he
accomplished; France agreeing to give two millions of livres (£150,000) for
Charles’s conversion to popery, and three millions a year for the Dutch war.
Large sums of money were also distributed to Buckingham, Arlington, and
Clifford.

Buckingham, that complaisant companion of “the merry monarch,” who,
“everything by turns and nothing long,” having been the first to observe the
impression the mignonne maid-of-honour had made on the King’s
susceptible fancy, had little hesitation in attaching to his diplomatic office
the very undignified one of Sir Pandarus, and therefore with a brave
defiance of decorum bent all his efforts to overcome the scruples, if any
there might be, lingering in the mind of Louise with regard to transferring
herself to the service of the Queen of England, poor Catherine of Braganza.
As she was then placed through the death of the Duchess of Orleans, a
convent was the only retreat Mademoiselle Querouaille could look forward
to in France; and as religious seclusion was not at all congenial to the lively
nymph, she was not found impracticable to Buckingham’s overtures. Nor
were the latter’s efforts entirely disinterested in the matter. He had lately
had a fierce quarrel with “old Rowley’s” imperious mistress, the Duchess of
Cleveland, and having sworn hatred and revenge against that profligate
beauty, sought to turn the French maid-of-honour to his own advantage by

raising up a rival in the King’s affections, who should be wholly governed
by himself. He therefore represented seriously to Louis that the only way to
secure Charles to French interests was to give him a French mistress; and he
told Charles jestingly that he ought to take charge of his sister’s favourite
attendant, if only out of “decent tenderness for her memory.”

The delicate affair, in short, was soon arranged; an invitation, so formally
worded as to wear the semblance of propriety, was sent from the English
Court, and Louise immediately departed for Dieppe, escorted by part of the
Duke of Buckingham’s suite, and his grace’s promise to join her with all
convenient speed. But, as usual with the man whose “ambition was
frequently nothing more than a frolic, and whose best designs were for the
foolishest ends,” who “could keep no secret nor execute any design without
spoiling it,” he totally forgot both the lady and his promise, and, leaving the
forsaken demoiselle at Dieppe to cross the Straits as she best might, sailed
to England by way of Calais. Lord Montagu, then our Ambassador at Paris,
hearing of the Duke’s escapade, immediately sent over for a yacht, and
ordered some of his own attendants to convey her, with all honour, to
Whitehall, where she was received by Lord Arlington with all respect, and
forthwith appointed maid-of-honour to the Queen.

The intoxication of Charles was complete, and the man who had
supported patiently the furious outbreaks of Barbara Palmer[10] and the
saucy petulence of Nell Gwynne, was the more able to appreciate “les
grâces décentes” of the foreign maid-of-honour, who, in the profaned walls
of Whitehall, diffused the delicate odour of Versailles.

The purpose of her receiving an appointment at the Court of St. James’s
was apparently foretold, for Madame de Sévigné thus writes to her
daughter:—“Ne trouvez-vous pas bon de savoir que Querouaille dont
l’étoile avait été devineé avant qu’elle partit, l’a suivie très-fidèlement? Le

roi d’Angleterre l’a aimée, elle s’est trouvée avec une légère disposition à
ne le pas haïr.”[11]

It is doubtful, however, whether Charles did immediately enjoy his
conquest. If it be noted that the Duke of Richmond only came into the
world in 1672, we may be led to suppose that Mademoiselle Querouaille
did not yield without hesitation to the desires of her royal lover; and that
supposition becomes almost a certitude, when one reads this passage of a
letter which Saint-Evremond addressed to his fair countrywoman:—
“Suffer yourself rather to follow the bent of your temptation, instead of listening to your
pride. Your pride would soon cause you to be sent back to France, and France would fling
you, as has been the lot of many others, into some convent. But allowing that you should
choose of your own free will that dismal kind of retreat, still it would be necessary
beforehand to render yourself worthy of entering therein. What a figure you would cut
there, if you had not the character of a penitent! True penitence is that which afflicts and
mortifies us at the recollection of our faults. Of what has a good girl to be penitent who has
done nothing wrong? You would appear ridiculous in the eyes of the other nuns, who,
repenting from just motives, should discover that your repentance was only grimace.”

Louise committed the error of not only approving the advice of that
equivocal monitor, but the greater error of following it. Experience came
very soon to open her eyes.

In 1672, as has been said, the Querouaille having presented the King with
a son, her favour increased considerably. In 1673 she was created Duchess
of Portsmouth, and at the close of the same year Louis XIV., alike to flatter
the King of England, and to confirm him in his alliance with himself against
Holland, as to reward the good offices of Louise Querouaille, conferred
upon the latter the domain of D’Aubigny, in Berry. This domain given, in
1422, by Charles VII. to John Stuart, “as a token of the great services which
he had rendered in war to that King,” had reverted to the crown of France.
In the letter of donation which Louis sent to Charles, it stated that “after the

death of the Duchess of Portsmouth, the demesne of Aubigny shall pass to
such of the natural children of the King of Great Britain as he shall
nominate.” Charles II. nominated Charles Lennox (his son by Querouaille),
and created him Duke of Richmond on the 19th of August, 1675.

Although maîtresse-en-titre, and favourite mistress as she became, she
could not, however, prevent the unworthy and frequent resort of the
debauched prince to rivals of a lower grade, and Madame de Sévigné
penned some amusing lines on the subject of those duplicate amours:
—“Querouaille has been in no way deceived; she had a mind to be the
King’s mistress, she has her wish. He passes almost every evening in her
company, in presence of the whole Court. She has a child which has just
been acknowledged, and on whom two duchies have been bestowed. She
amasses wealth, and makes herself feared and respected wherever she can;
but she could not foresee finding a young actress in her path by whom the
King is bewitched.... He shares his attentions, his time, and his health
between them both. The actress is quite as proud as the Duchess of
Portsmouth: she spites her, makes wry faces at her, assails her, and often
carries the King off from her. She boasts of those points in which she is
preferable—that she is young, silly, bold, debauched, and agreeable; that
she can sing, dance, and play the part de bonne foi. She has a son by the
King, and is determined that he shall be acknowledged. Here are her
reasons:—‘This Duchess,’ she says, ‘acts the person of quality; she pretends
that she is related to everybody in France. No sooner does any grandee die,
than she puts on mourning. Ah well! if she is such a great lady, why did she
condescend to become a catin? She ought to expire with shame: for myself,
it is my profession; I don’t pique myself on anything else. The King keeps
me; I am at present his solely. I have brought him a son, whom I intend he
shall acknowledge, and I am assured that he will, for he loves me quite as
well as he does his Portsmouth.’ This creature takes the top of the walk, and

embarrasses and puts the Duchess out of countenance in a most
extraordinary manner.”

In Mrs. Nelly, with all her good qualities, Charles had not found exactly a
rose without thorns to stick in his button-hole. In her too wild fun, or spirit
of mockery, she was apt, as most others, to give demonstration of all the
variety of her woman’s nature and her woman’s wit, and to make her
baffled and humbled sovereign wish in his inmost heart that he had never
had anything to do with her.

Such were the annoyances—doubtless unforeseen by Mademoiselle
Querouaille on quitting France, and to which La Vallière and Montespan
were not exposed in the Court of the Grand Monarque, where vice itself put
on airs of grandeur and majesty. It must be owned, however, that Madame
de Sévigné exaggerates when she pretends to establish a sort of equilibrium
between the position of the actress and that of the Duchess. The triumphs of
Nell Gwynne were triumphs of the alcove; whilst her Grace of Portsmouth
reigned without a rival over the realm of diplomacy. Charles II. was in the
habit of passing a great portion of his time in her apartments, where often,
in the midst of a joyous circle, he met Barillon, the French Ambassador,
who, from his agreeable manners, was freely admitted to all the
amusements of the indolent monarch. It was by means of these frequent
conversations that, seizing the favourable moment, the Duchess and the
Ambassador succeeded in obtaining an order which suddenly changed the
face of Europe, by bringing about the signature of the Treaty of Niméguen,
and more than once it fell to her lot to obtain a success of the same kind, to
which neither her arrogant Grace of Cleveland nor the piquant Nelly could
ever pretend. In political affairs the Querouaille held her own triumphantly
over all her rivals, and obtained a dominion that ended only with the life of
Charles. Too sensible to exact a strict fidelity from the King, the Duchess of
Portsmouth was content to sigh in silence so long as her womanly feelings

alone were sported with; but when it seemed likely that the influence which
she strove to utilise to the profit of France might be trenched upon, her
resentment broke forth in sudden and sweeping ebullitions which even the
dread of a public scandal was impotent to repress. The correspondence of
Bussy-Rabutin furnishes us with a scene of that description:—
“It is rumoured that Querouaille has been sermonising the King, crucifix in hand, as well
both to wean him from other women as to bring him back to Christianity: in fact, it appears
that she herself has been very near the point of death. However, three or four days
afterwards, finding herself better, she rose from her bed, and dragged herself into the box
where the King was seeing a play in company with Madame de Mazarin, and there she
overwhelmed him with endless reproaches for his infidelity. Love and jealousy are strong
passions.”

Hortensia Mancini, Duchess de Mazarin, who was commonly thought to
be the finest woman in Europe, and more than that—a very great lady, aunt
of the Duchess of York, might have easily supplanted the “baby-faced”
Querouaille in the inconstant heart of Charles Stuart, but that the haughty
Italian paid small attention to the predilections of that prince, whom she cut
to the quick by receiving before his face the advances of the Prince de
Monaco, and so Charles returned “à ses premières amours.” That phrase,
somewhat vague in so far as it applies to the sensual instincts of a man who
did not even believe in friendship, describes at least accurately that
passionate feeling with which the Duchess of Portsmouth had inspired him.
Under certain circumstances—very rare, it is true—she went so far as to
sacrifice to him entirely her political rôle, and when the question of the
famous “bill of exclusion” arose, she was seen to throw herself at the
King’s feet, and implore her royal lover not to rush headlong to destruction;
[12]
entreating him to abandon, if it must be so, the interests of his brother
and those of Catholicism, rather than compromise his crown and life. Such
proceeding appears still more generous, if we reflect that, in spite of the
irregular position which she had accepted, the Duchess had remained

deeply attached to her religion and her native country, and that at that
juncture no one was ignorant that an era of persecution was about to
commence for the reformed Churches of France. Two years later, on the eve
of the Niméguen treaty, the decline of the great reign was already
foreshadowed; the influence of incapable though right-thinking men
became daily more marked, and the star of the austere Frances d’Aubigny
(Maintenon) arose slowly above the horizon. Conversions at any price were
clamoured for, and no extent of sacrifice deterred the proselytisers from
bringing back within the fold souls of quality, save leaving one day to
Louvois’ dragoons the charge of enlightening the Protestant vulgar. The
Duchess of Portsmouth was, together with the Duchess of York, at the head
of the English propagandists, and, curious enough, a regular exchange of
edifying letters took place between the future foundress of Saint-Cyr and
the joyous sinner of the Court of St. James’s. Louis XIV., desirous of duly
recompensing the services of the royal favourite, conferred upon her by
letters-patent dated January, 1684, the French title of Duchess d’Aubigny.

Thus had Louise Querouaille reached the summit of her rapid prosperity;
but a great turn of chance was at hand, and in a moment she was about to be
hurled from that dizzy height.

Lord Macaulay has graphically sketched the memorable scene in which
she figured so creditably when Charles was struck with his fatal seizure. On
the 2nd of February, 1685, “scarcely had Charles risen from his bed when
his attendants perceived that his utterance was indistinct, and that his
thoughts seemed to be wandering. Several men of rank had, as usual,
assembled to see their sovereign shaved and dressed. He made an effort to
converse with them in his usual gay style; but his ghastly look surprised and
alarmed them. Soon his face grew black; his eyes turned in his head; he
uttered a cry, staggered, and fell into the arms of one of his lords. A
physician, who had charge of the royal retorts and crucibles, happened to be

present. He had no lancet; but he opened a vein with a penknife. The blood
flowed freely; but the King was still insensible.

“He was laid on his bed, where, during a short time, the Duchess of
Portsmouth hung over him with the familiarity of a wife. But the alarm had
been given. The Queen and the Duchess of York were hastening to the
room. The favourite concubine was forced to retire to her own apartments.
Those apartments had been thrice pulled down and thrice rebuilt by her
lover to gratify her caprice. The very furniture of the chimney was massive
silver. Several fine paintings, which properly belonged to the Queen, had
been transferred to the dwelling of the mistress. The sideboards were piled
with richly wrought plate. In the niches stood cabinets, masterpieces of
Japanese art. On the hangings, fresh from the looms of Paris, were depicted,
in tints which no English tapestry could rival, birds of gorgeous plumage,
landscapes, hunting matches, the lordly terrace of Saint-Germain’s, the
statues and fountains of Versailles.[13] In the midst of this splendour,
purchased by guilt and shame, the unhappy woman gave herself up to an
agony of grief, which, to do her justice, was not wholly selfish.”

On the morning on which the King was taken ill, the Duchess of York
had, at the request of the Queen, suggested the propriety of procuring
spiritual assistance. “For such assistance,” continues Macaulay, “Charles
was at last indebted to an agency very different from that of his pious wife
and sister-in-law.” A life of frivolity and vice had not extinguished in the
Duchess of Portsmouth all sentiments of religion, or all that kindness which
is the glory of her sex. The French Ambassador, Barillon, who had come to
the palace to inquire after the King, paid her a visit. He found her in an
agony of sorrow. She took him into a secret room, and poured out her whole
heart to him. “I have,” she said, “a thing of great moment to tell you. If it
were known, my head would be in danger. The King is really and truly a
Catholic; but he will die without being reconciled to the Church. His

bedchamber is full of Protestant clergymen. I cannot enter it without giving
scandal. The Duke is thinking only of himself. Speak to him. Remind him
that there is a soul at stake. He is master now. He can clear the room. Go
this instant, or it will be too late.”

Barillon hastened to the bedchamber, took the Duke aside, and delivered
the message of the mistress. The conscience of James smote him. He started
as if roused from sleep, and declared that nothing should prevent him
discharging the sacred duty which had been so long delayed. Several
schemes were discussed and rejected. At last the Duke commanded the
crowd to stand aloof, went to the bed, stooped down, and whispered
something which none of the spectators could hear, but which they
supposed to be some question about affairs of state. Charles answered in an
audible voice, “Yes, yes, with all my heart.” None of the bystanders, except
the French Ambassador, guessed that the King was declaring his wish to be
admitted into the bosom of the Church of Rome.

The difficulty was to find a priest at a moment’s notice; for, as the law
then stood, the person who admitted a proselyte into the Roman Catholic
Church was guilty of a capital crime. John Huddleston, a Benedictine
monk, however, who had, with great risk to himself, saved the King’s life
after the battle of Worcester, readily consented to put his life a second time
in peril for his prince. Father Huddleston was admitted by the back door. A
cloak had been thrown over his sacred vestments; and his shaven crown
was concealed by a flowing wig. “Sir,” said the Duke, “this good man once
saved your life. He now comes to save your soul.” Charles faintly
answered, “He is welcome.” Huddleston went through his part better than
had been expected, for he was so illiterate that he did not know what he
ought to say on an occasion of so much importance, and had to be
instructed on the spot by a Portuguese ecclesiastic, one Castel Melhor. The
whole ceremony occupied about three-quarters of an hour; and, during that

time, the courtiers who filled the outer room had communicated their
suspicions to each other by whispers and significant glances. The door was
at length thrown open, and the crowd again filled the chamber of death.

It was now late in the evening. The King seemed much relieved by what
had passed. His natural children were brought to his bedside—the Dukes of
Grafton, Southampton, and Northumberland, sons of the Duchess of
Cleveland; the Duke of St. Albans, son of Eleanor Gwynne; and the Duke
of Richmond, son of the Duchess of Portsmouth. Charles blessed them all,
but spoke with peculiar tenderness to Richmond. One face, which should
have been there, was wanting. The eldest and best beloved child was an
exile and a wanderer. His name was not once mentioned by his father.

During the night Charles earnestly recommended the Duchess of
Portsmouth and her boy to the care of James; “And do not,” he good-
naturedly added, “let poor Nelly starve.” The Queen sent excuses for her
absence by Halifax. She said she was too much disordered to resume her
post by the couch, and implored pardon for any offence which she might
unwittingly have given. “She asks my pardon, poor woman!” cried Charles;
“I ask hers with all my heart.”

At noon of the next day (Friday, February 6th) he passed away without a
struggle.

As it commonly happens in the sequel of such sudden and mournful
events, the most absurd rumours did not fail to be circulated on the subject
of Charles’s death. According to one, the Duchess of Portsmouth had
poisoned the King with a cup of chocolate; another asserted that the Queen
had poisoned him with a jar of preserved pears. Time has done justice to
these ridiculous suspicions; but that which will probably never be
discovered is the exact nature of the unfortunate monarch’s malady, whom a
deplorable fatality caused to fall into the hands of ignorant physicians who,

not being able to agree amongst themselves, tortured the patient haphazard
for many hours together.

Hume, at the end of his dissertation upon the hypothesis of the poisoning
of Charles, relates the following anecdote:—“Mr. Henley, of Hampshire,
told me that the Duchess of Portsmouth having come to England in 1699,
he learned that she had caused it to be understood that Charles II. had been
poisoned, and that, being desirous of ascertaining the fact from the
Duchess’s own mouth, she told him that she continually urged the King to
place himself at his ease as well as his people, and to live in perfect
understanding with his Parliament; that he had taken the resolution of
sending his brother out of the kingdom, and to convoke a Parliament, which
was to have been put in execution on the day after that upon which he was
seized with his first access; that, above everything, the King recommended
her to keep it secret, and that she had only revealed it to her confessor; but
she believed that her confessor had revealed the secret to persons who made
use of that evil means of preventing the coup d’état.”

If such, indeed, was the political attitude of the Duchess during the last
months of Charles’s life, it may be conceived that the supreme
recommendations of the dying monarch may have exercised little influence
over the predetermined resolves of his ignoble successor, and it explains the
sudden step she took to regain her native country. On her return to France
she carried with her a large treasure in money and jewels. She had come to
England poor, had lived there in splendour, but without much care for the
future, and having proudly enjoyed a full-blown prosperity, was now about
to endure adversity with courageous resolution. Having quarrelled with
James II., the Duchess could not think of taking up her abode at Versailles,
where her position would not have been tenable; she determined therefore
to settle herself in Paris, where her house and surroundings became the
object of a rigorous surveillance.

“It reached the King’s ears,” says Saint-Simon, “that great freedom of
speech prevailed in her circle, and that she herself spoke very freely of him
and Madame de Maintenon, upon which M. de Louvois was directed to
prepare immediately a lettre de cachet to exile her far away. Courtin was an
intimate friend of Louvois, who had a small house at Meudon, where the
former was accustomed to enter his cabinet unceremoniously at all hours.
On his entrance one evening, he found Louvois alone writing, and whilst
the minister was absorbed in that occupation, Courtin perceived the lettre de
cachet lying upon the bureau. When Louvois had finished writing, Courtin,
with some emotion, asked him what that lettre de cachet was? Louvois told
him its purpose. Courtin remarked that it was surely an ungracious act, for
that, even if the report were true, the King might be content to go no further
than advising her to be more circumspect. He begged and entreated him to
tell the King so on his part before acting upon the lettre de cachet; and that,
if the King would not believe his words, he should get him, before going
further, to look at the despatches of his negotiations with England,
especially those relating to the important results he had obtained through
the Duchess of Portsmouth at the time of the Dutch war, and during the
whole of his embassy; and that after such services rendered by her, it would
be dishonour to himself to forget them. Louvois, who remembered it all
very well, after Courtin had reminded him of several important facts,
suspended the execution of the lettre de cachet, and gave the King an
account of the interview, and of what Courtin had said; and upon such
testimony, which recalled several facts to the King’s mind, he ordered the
lettre de cachet to be thrown into the fire, and had the Duchess of
Portsmouth admonished to be more reserved in future. She defended herself
stoutly from what had been imputed to her, and, true or false, she took heed
in future of the nature of the conversation which was held at her house.

Louis XIV., become a bigot and a persecutor, suffered none but silent and
submissive slaves to surround him. The Duchess showed herself docile to

Courtin’s advice, and passed in profound obscurity the many long years
which, remained to her of existence. Saint-Simon and Dangeau say nothing
more about her, save to enregister the meagre favours which the Court
measured out with an avaricious hand, and that woman, to whom was
owing the signature of the Treaty of Niméguen, was reduced in 1689 to
solicit a pension of 20,000 livres, which was considerably diminished when
the disasters soon afterwards happened which impoverished the French
nation.

Such was the parsimony exercised by the great Monarch towards a
woman who had laboured strenuously for French interests so long as her
sway over Charles of England lasted, and which sway only ceased with his
life. “Therein she employed unceasingly all her talent for politics, all her
fascinations, all her wit,” says the English chronicler already cited, and
whose object has been, according to his translator, anonymous like himself,
to demonstrate that if Charles II. acted in a way so little conformable to the
interests not only of several foreign states, but still more of his own
kingdom, it was the Duchess of Portsmouth who urged him to it, through
the passion with which she had inspired him, by her cunning, and the power
she possessed over his mind. The same translator afterwards remarks, that
“this lady obtained more easily from the King in a moment and with a coup
de langue things the most unreasonable and the most contrary to true policy,
than all the most judicious, the most voluble, the most insinuating persons
could obtain from him in matters infinitely reasonable and just.” Without
attributing to the Duchess of Portsmouth a power of action so prejudicial to
the interests of the British nation as her anonymous biographer has done,
who wrote under the excitement of discontent caused, says Lyttleton, by
“the strengthening of the alliance with France, the secret enemy of England
and the Protestant religion, as well as by a costly war with Holland, her
natural ally,” Hume states that “during the rest of his life Charles II. was
extremely attached to Querouaille, and that this favourite contributed

greatly to the close alliance between her own country and England.”
Voltaire, without particularising the effects of the ascendancy of the
Duchess of Portsmouth over Charles II., says that that monarch “was
governed by her to the very last moment of his life.” He adds that “her
beauty equalled that of Madame de Montespan, and that she was in England
what the other beauty had been in France, but with more influence.” This
assertion, accurate as it is so far as concerns political influence—for
Madame de Montespan never exercised any over the government of Louis
XIV.—is not equally so with regard to the question of beauty. On that head,
indeed, the Duchess had her detractors. “I have seen that famous beauty,
Mademoiselle Querouaille,” wrote Evelyn in his Diary, about a month after
her arrival in England; “but, in my opinion, she is of a childish, simple, and
baby face.”

FOOTNOTES:

[10] Duchess of Cleveland.

[11] Letter 190.

[12] Macaulay.

[13] Evelyn’s Diary, Jan. 24, 1681-2. Oct. 4, 1683.

PART III.

BOOK I.

CHAPTER I.

TWO LADIES OF THE BEDCHAMBER DURING THE WAR OF THE
SPANISH SUCCESSION, LADY CHURCHILL AND THE PRINCESS
DES URSINS—POLITICAL MOTIVES FOR THEIR ELEVATION IN
ENGLAND AND SPAIN.

At the outset of that historic period known as the War of the Spanish
Succession a remarkable feature presents itself in the fact that two women
were chosen to be, as it were, its advanced sentinels—the one of the
Austrian party in England, the other of the French party in Spain. These
were Lady Churchill (wife of the famous soldier, Marlborough), first lady
of the bedchamber to our Queen Anne, and the Princess des Ursins,
fulfilling, under the title of Camerara-Mayor, the same functions for the
new Queen of Spain, Marie-Louise of Savoy, first wife of Philip V.

The perpetual struggle previously waged between France and Spain for
two centuries constitutes a theme of no ordinary interest. True, that in
modern times armed interventions and dynastic and family tendencies have
attested the political predominance of the former power, but it was not so in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the bigoted Philip II. looked
upon himself as the head of all Catholicism and the vicegerent of God on
earth. The general character of the struggle, the events, the men, the results,
are all worthy of consideration, and replete with illustrations of historical

and political adventure. Every effort made by the two great adversaries
shook Europe to its centre, and the ultimate result of each has always been
in favour of the great cause of religious and political freedom. Two
centuries of warfare between two absolute governments and two states so
profoundly Catholic gave birth to the first European republic—Holland; and
served to confirm the power of the great Protestant state—England; and to
establish religious liberty in Germany.

A brief glance at the more immediate circumstances which brought about
this War of Succession may here be necessary. The Treaty of the Pyrenees
had terminated the long struggle above alluded to; peace being cemented by
the marriage of the Infanta Maria Theresa, daughter of Philip IV. of Spain,
to the young Louis XIV. of France, on the 3rd of June, 1660. The royal
husband renounced for himself and his heirs all right of succession to the
Spanish throne, but was promised in return a moderate dowry, which,
however, was only partially paid. Forty years after this marriage, Charles II.
of Spain, widowed, childless, and broken in health, selected as his successor
Prince Leopold of Bavaria, but he died when five years old. In this
difficulty Charles consulted Pope Innocent XII., who decreed that the
children of the Dauphin of France were the true, only, and legitimate heirs.
But this negotiation was conducted with such profound secresy that it was
only after the accession of Philip V., grandson of Louis XIV., that the Pope’s
interference became public.

The Holy Father’s reply, however, was so positive, that all the scruples of
Charles II. were removed. His previous will was immediately burnt in the
presence of his confessor; and a new one drawn up wherein Philip d’Anjou
was declared absolute heir to the crown and kingdom of Spain; which, in
the event of his demise, were to devolve to the Duke de Berri, third son of
the Dauphin; and, he failing, to the Archduke Charles; with the reservation,
as regarded the two first, that they should not unite in their own persons the

sovereignties of France and Spain; and in that of the third that he should
renounce all claim to the empire of Germany if he ever became heir to the
Spanish throne; while it was, moreover, finally decreed that, if by any
extraordinary concatenation of events, neither of those three princes should
be enabled to claim the bequest of Charles II., it should devolve upon the
Duke of Savoy without any restriction whatever.

The precaution was well-timed; for shortly afterwards, Charles, losing
the use of his faculties, descended into the vaults of the Escurial, where he
had commanded the tombs of his father, mother, and first wife to be opened
in order that he might consult their tenants upon the sacred obligations of
the will he had just signed. Wildly interrogating the mouldering relics, upon
which he imprinted impassioned kisses, the unfortunate monarch fell
senseless upon an adjacent tomb, destined shortly to receive his own
remains, and was carried from those gloomy sepulchres back to his couch
only to be borne back again in a few short days a corpse.

The royal will—the subject of so much gloomy meditation, of
discussions the most anxious in the councils of the Escurial, and of intrigues
the most active on the part of the foreigner, had been accepted by Louis
XIV. in the name of his grandson, the Duke d’Anjou. The cabinet of
Versailles, hoping to ally the Duke of Savoy to its policy, had brought about
a marriage between Philip V. and the daughter of Victor Amadeus II., Marie
Louise, sister of the young Duchess of Burgundy. The House of Hapsburg,
during a period of almost hopeless anarchy, had exhausted its efforts in the
attempt to establish a political duality in Spain. “If the government of that
monarchy be closely scrutinised,” wrote Count de Rébenac,[14] “it will be
found that disorder everywhere prevails to an excessive degree; but that, in
the condition in which matters stand, scarcely any change can be ventured
upon without risk of incurring dangers more to be dreaded than the existing
evils, and a complete revolution would be necessary before perfect order in

the state could be re-established.” Rébenac added that it was not the
elements of strength that were wanting to Spain, but that they were
scattered as in a chaos, and that no master-mind existed capable of reducing
them to order and unity. The dynasty, in fact, which reigned at Madrid at
that juncture had passed from incapacity to impotence, and henceforward
there only remained to Spain her law of succession to rescue her from her
abasement. The miserable Charles II. was then making and unmaking his
will continually—sometimes indicating a prince of Bavaria as his successor,
at others a prince of the house of Austria. At last he chose, as has been said,
a grandson of Louis XIV., in the hope of interesting France in the
preservation of the duality of the monarchy. Two years afterwards one half
of Europe was in arms to hurl the youthful Philip from his throne.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Memoirs of Count de Rébenac’s Embassy to Spain in 1689, MS. No. 63,
fol. 224, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.

CHAPTER II.

THE PRINCESS DES URSINS.

THE MARRIED LIFE OF MARIE ANNE DE LA TRÉMOUILLE—SHE
BECOMES THE CENTRE OF CONTEMPORARY POLITICS IN ROME.

Among the heroines of the Fronde there were certainly lofty minds and
strongly tempered souls to be found; but, when the French nation remitted
to those Erminias and Hermengildas the care of its destiny upon some grave
emergency or decisive occasion, those very women so conspicuous for their
generous impulses, delicate tastes, and unsparing self-abnegation, only
profited by their possession of power to inaugurate a policy the record of
which has remained branded with opprobrium in history as a treason to
their country. The bare remembrance, indeed, of those sterile agitations
proves the first rock upon which the memory of the Princess des Ursins
suffered shipwreck. In the brilliant daughter of the Duke de Noirmoutier,
heiress of a name mixed up with all the struggles of that epoch, we behold a
last survivor of the Regency, and the dramatic vicissitudes of a life devoted
to the pursuit of political power, have blinded the mental vision of posterity
to the grandeur of a work of which that eminent woman was the principal
instrument. Proud and restless, as largely dominated as any other of her sex
by the vivacity of her preferences and her dislikes, but full of sound sense in

her views and in the firmness of her designs, the skilful adviser of a King
and Queen of Spain has not received at the hands of posterity the merit due
to an idea pursued with a wonderful perseverance amidst obstacles which
would have daunted men even of the strongest resolution. Because her
public career ended in a catastrophe, popular opinion, which readily follows
success, considers as merely abortive that long career during which her
hand sustained upon the brow of a French prince the tottering crown against
which the arms of Europe, the distrust of Spain, and the discouragement of
France vied in conspiring.

Yet in her girlhood, during the last days of the Fronde, Marie Anne de la
Trémouille must early have observed how greatly beauty can aid ambition,
and how, by tact, endowments the most frivolous may be brought to the
service of interests the most serious and complicated. Married in 1650 to
the Prince de Chalais, of the house of Talleyrand, she conceived for her
young husband the sole passion to be noted throughout a life in which,
especially during its later period, love figured only in the dullest of hues.
This marriage took place during the wars of the second Fronde, and at an
epoch when a rage for duelling, the anarchical and ruthless effect of
Frenchmen’s ideas touching the “point of honour,” had infused a new
element into the spirit of party, and had become a veritable mania. It
chanced on the occasion of one of those duels in 1663—that of the two
brothers Frette—wherein four fought on either side, and in which the Duke
de Beauvilliers was slain, that the Prince de Chalais figured as one of the
champions. The law against duelling, enforced by Henri Quatre, and
revived with so much rigour by Richelieu against the father of the famous
Marshal de Luxembourg, and from which practice the blood of Bouteville
had not completely delivered France, was still in full vigour. The
consequences being so terrible, that the Prince de Chalais, to place himself
beyond reach of them, was compelled to seek safety in flight. He succeeded
in escaping to Spain, whither his wife followed him.

During this brief period of her union with the Prince de Chalais, whom
she adored, Marie Anne de la Trémouille had shone as conspicuously by her
wit as by her beauty in the famous circle of the Hôtel d’Albret, where she
first met Madame Scarron, whose destiny it was later on in life—as
Madame de Maintenon—to be so closely allied with the Princess. Thus
united by ties of the tenderest affection, scarcely had the young couple
quitted Madrid, after a three years’ sojourn, to establish themselves at
Rome, when the death of M. de Chalais left her a childless widow, without
protection, and almost destitute—a prey to grief apparently the most
profound, and to anxieties concerning the future readily conceivable.

Madame de Chalais was then in the plenitude of that attractive beauty so
closely observed and described in all its most delicate shades by the graphic
pen of the Duke de Saint-Simon when at a more advanced period of her life,
but on which beauty, by a miracle of art and nature, the wasting hand of
time had as yet scarcely brought a blemish.

The first years of her widowhood, passed in a convent, were marked by
the liveliest sorrow. By degrees, however, love of society resumed its sway
over her, and she reappeared therein with all her wonted attractiveness,
markedly patronised in the highest circles of Roman society by Cardinal
d’Estrées, the French ambassador—assuredly not without design, since at
the same time that high functionary so distinguished her, he directed the
attention of Louis XIV. to the wit and capacity of the charming widow. It
was, therefore, in great measure with a political purpose, and by the
diplomatic tact of the two brothers d’Estrées, that the second marriage of
the Princess de Chalais with Flavio Orsini, Duke di Bracciano, himself a
widower, was arranged (1675). Thenceforward the Palazzo Orsini became
the focus of French influence, which was further increased by a marriage
promoted between her sister Louise Angélique de la Trémouille and her
brother-in-law, the Duke de Lanti.

She thus, therefore, became definitively an inhabitant of Rome and quasi
Roman. What did she do there? How did she consort with an Italian
husband? With what ambition was she soon inspired in the more elevated
position in which her second marriage placed her at Rome? What talents,
what political aptitude were manifested by her, and developed at a court
which at that time bore the highest repute for skill in politics and
diplomacy? How did Italian finesse and cunning blend and harmonize with
the quick penetration and delicate tact of the Frenchwoman? What
advantage did the French government, which, after the death of the Prince
de Chalais, could no longer treat her as a proscribed subject, seek to draw
immediately from her position and disposition? What were her relations
with the first personages at the court of France, with the Roman cardinals,
with the French ambassadors at Rome, with the representatives or the
principal personages of other nations, and what splendour did her palace
display, whether through the influence of natural taste or a calculating
ambition? In a word, what was the mode of life, and what was the career of
the Duchess di Bracciano, at Rome, before she proceeded to make
application of the science she must there have acquired upon another and a
wider stage? These are the curious and interesting points, upon which the
recent discovery in the public library at Stockholm, of copies of nearly one
hundred inedited letters addressed by the Princess des Ursins to Madame la
Maréchale de Noailles and Madame de Maintenon, in addition to five long
letters published by the Abbé Millot,[15] enable us to furnish very nearly
complete details, ranging from 1675 to 1701.

Owning as its mistress a woman so abundantly charming, the Palazzo
Orsini became more than ever the rendezvous of the best society. The
Duchess di Bracciano held therein an actual Court, as numerous also as it
was distinguished. Each visitor delighted to frequent it, in order to witness
with his own eyes to what a degree of perfection and gracefulness a French

lady could attain. The men especially sought her society; for although
womanly, and more so than many around her, the habitual subject of their
conversations pleased her better than those of persons of her own sex, and
she therein exhibited a solidity of understanding, a correctness of view,
together with a perfect lucidity of expression which captivated the Roman
nobles, and made them feel it a satisfaction to submit their ideas to her, and
hear her discuss them. The Duke di Bracciano was not mentally up to her
mark, nevertheless in the first season which followed their union, a season
of complaisant affection, when susceptibility was held in check by a more
spontaneous admiration, he felt himself flattered by the homage she
received, and which wore the semblance of an eulogium upon his choice
and good taste. But, eventually, too mediocre, or too much kept in the
background, not having wit enough himself to appreciate that of his brilliant
partner without blushing at his own defect, or, it might be, sufficient
consideration not being given to the inevitable arousing of his masculine
amour propre, he sought to attribute to himself the popularity which she
obtained, and that which might have constituted his pride became his
torment. It would have been wanting in dignity to himself, he felt, ever to
have owned or even in the least degree betrayed the secret motive of his
wounded self-love; but the excessive extravagance of his wife, and the
enormous expenses in which she involved him afforded ample pretext for
his complaints: such was the ground, therefore, upon which he fell back.
The Princess unhappily comprehended all this, and went to greater lengths
than ever: hence untoward misunderstandings ere long arose between them.

Nevertheless, through the effect of her irresistible attractions, the
Duchess di Bracciano became the centre of a cosmopolitan society which,
in the midst of the noisiest diversions, debated daily in the capital of the
papal dominions the weightiest problems of contemporary politics. Whilst
externally her palace on the Piazza Navone blazed broadly with illuminated
devices and coloured fires, and made all the echoes of Rome resound in

pealing harmonies with the name of Louis the Great, in the interior of her
magnificent saloons the vicissitudes of the long struggle waged between
that monarch and the Holy Father were watched with inquietude, whether
as concerning regal claims or the question of religious freedom—a
portentous strife which seemed to increase in energy at each fresh act of
violence on the part of Louis XIV. against his Protestant subjects. To the
arduous questions in which theology ran so closely parallel with State
interests, to the burning rivalries of doctrines and persons which then set by
the ears the most illustrious among Christian prelates, were added the daily
accidents of a policy to which fell the burden of maintaining in all corners
of the universe a constant equilibrium between the Houses of France and
Austria—a permanent problem which soon helped to complicate the
perspective opened by the next succession to the Crown of Spain.

In such a school—borne along the brimming tide of pleasure by the soft
breeze of homage—did Madame di Bracciano’s political intelligence
rapidly ripen: and if by a glittering gaiety, ease of manner, and a species of
decorous gallantry, her life appeared to continue the traditions of Anne of
Austria’s time, the restrained firmness of her opinions, her reverence for
absolute authority, her settled resolve to owe nothing to any one save to her
own Great King, combined to link her fast to the new school of power and
respect founded by Louis XIV. in the plenitude of his sway. Thus the
passion for politics and power was not slow to obtain the mastery over the
mind of a woman constituted like Marie Anne de la Trémouille, who had
failed to find in her second marriage any community of taste or intellect.

The disputes between Louis and Innocent XI. proved, perhaps, another
source of disunion between the ducal pair. The Orsini were in some sort a
sacerdotal family, at the same time that they stood at the head of the Roman
aristocracy: it had always furnished Pontiffs and Cardinals to the Church. It
was not, therefore, probable that the Duke di Bracciano, who was its chief,

should hold, in those famous quarrels, an opinion contrary to that of the
Holy Father, more especially if, as it was rumoured, having no child, he had
by an adoption long kept secret, sought for a son in the family of Innocent
XI. himself. The same induction cannot be drawn from acts which were
comprised in the life of the Duchess di Bracciano. Whether at Rome or at
Madrid, the ideas held by the Court of Versailles upon dogmatic questions,
or upon the relations of the Church with the State, were hers also; and in
Italy, in the halls of the Vatican, she openly evinced her detestation of the
Jesuits, in whom the Ultramontane doctrines were personified. Therein, in
all probability, lay a new stumbling block against which the conjugal
harmony jarred, already shaken as it was by all the dissemblances of habit,
appreciation, and of taste, which difference of nationality engendered. “Ce
ménage ne fut pas concordant,” says Saint-Simon; “quoique sans
brouillerie ouverte, et les époux furent quelquefois bien aises de se séparer.”

To escape from these different causes of domestic ennui, the Duchess di
Bracciano varied her sojourn in Italy by long and frequent visits to France,
going thither to present, by clever and well-timed calculation, the spectacle
of a Roman princess whom no one even within the grandiose precincts of
Versailles surpassed either in true French esprit or steady devotion to the
Sovereign. The Duchess formed a close intimacy with the Maréchale de
Noailles, to whom she was related; she made the acquaintance of the
minister Torcy, who was capable of appreciating all the varied resources of
her woman’s nature and her woman’s wit; and she was presented to
Madame de Maintenon, who had become the goddess of the Court. Her
second visit took place shortly after the period of the Treaty of Ryswick—
that is to say, near upon that fatal conjuncture at which Louis XIV. saw
England escape him for ever, supported as she was by the Dutch alliance,
and had hope only from the Court of Spain to counterbalance the
formidable union of his enemies. This was the reason that each of those
personages, at Versailles or Paris, had for retaining the Duchess di

Bracciano in the interests of France in the future succession of Spain, and
recommended them to her at the Papal Court, to the Spanish Ambassador at
Rome, the Duke d’Uzeda, or indeed to any other Spaniard of distinction
whom she might meet with in that capital.

The letters addressed to the Duchess Lanti, her sister, which are, as it
were, a last echo of the conversations of the Hôtel d’Albret,[16] were for the
most part written from Paris between the years 1685 and 1698, the latter
being the date of the demise of the Duke di Bracciano. The advanced age
and failing health of her second husband had, in that year, summoned her
back to Rome, and a kind of reconciliation, brought about chiefly through
the good offices of Cardinal Porto-Carrero—soon afterwards destined to
play a great part in the political affairs of his native country—had preceded
that demise, which placed the Duchess in possession of estates and property
reputed to be considerable, but upon which heavy incumbrances, increased
by lawsuits, brought down upon her endless anxiety and almost ruin.

The obligation of discharging an immense amount of debt compelled
Madame di Bracciano to part with the property of the duchy bearing that
name. She was, therefore, forced to relinquish that title and adopt that of
Princess des Ursins (Orsini), under which she has taken her place in history.
The beneficence of the French King was assured beforehand to a noble
widow married under his auspices, ruined, so to speak, in his service, and
whose palace had become the residence of his ambassador from the
moment that the Prince de Monaco had superseded the disgraced Cardinal
de Bouillon in that high post. The Princess obtained, therefore, one of those
Court pensions, the ordinary patrimony of all great families, and of which
the good offices of the Maréchale de Noailles, the staunch patroness of her
kinswoman, had ere long succeeded in doubling the amount, when the death
of Cardinal Maidalchini had left the considerable subsidy disposable by
which that member of the Sacred College was secretly secured to the policy

of Louis XIV. She had, indeed, herself solicited an increase of her pension
in a charmingly witty letter, in which she undertook to prove how useful it
would be for the King’s service that she should be richer. “My house,” says
she, “is the only French abode open to the public. It is in my assemblages
there that one can speak to people whom it would be difficult to meet with
elsewhere.” And thus she rose sufficiently high in the esteem of the cabinet
of Versailles to obtain even the recall of the French Ambassador from
Rome.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] Among the pièces justificatives appended to the Mémoires du Maréchal
de Noailles.

[16] Collection of M. Geffroy, pp. 1-25.

CHAPTER III.

MADAME DES URSINS ASPIRES TO GOVERN SPAIN—SHE
MANŒUVRES TO SECURE THE POST OF CAMERARA-MAYOR.

At the moment when the Court of Versailles very earnestly sought the
support of the Princess des Ursins, the important business of the Spanish
succession engrossed the attention of all the politicians of Europe. The
question, however, still presented that undecided aspect which left the field
open to every species of ambition and manœuvre. The influence of the
Court of Rome and that of the Spaniards there located was necessary to the
success of the House of Bourbon. Among these latter was to be numbered
the Cardinal Porto-Carrero, Archbishop of Toledo, who dreamed of being,
in his own day, it is said, the Ximenes of Spain. Madame des Ursins, as
already stated, had formed a close friendship with that prelate, who, as a
member of the Council of Castille, exercised a powerful influence alike
over the mind of Pope Innocent XI. and of King Charles II. of Spain. She
led him to perceive in the choice of the Duke d’Anjou a sure means of
reaching the goal of his ambition. She dazzled his mental vision with “the
advantages which he might derive from the just gratitude of Louis XIV.”
Porto-Carrero allowed himself to be seduced. At the same moment, Charles
II., disquieted, tormented, and worn out with an endless train of doubts,
consulted Pope Innocent XI. The latter, whom the management of Madame
des Ursins and the credit of Porto-Carrero had brought to look with favour

upon the pretensions of France, sent a friendly communication to the Duke
d’Anjou. These counsels determined the irresolution of the Spanish King,
and the Bourbons reaped the benefit of the succession of Charles V.

Thus matters stood between France and the Princess when it became
necessary to choose a Camerara-Mayor for the young Queen. Madame des
Ursins had given Louis XIV. ample proof of her devotion; she had in some
sort enchained him: she could, therefore, with so much the more security
invoke the gratitude of his court, which feeling, under existing
circumstances, it was advisable for the cabinet of Versailles to make
manifest. Thoroughly secure in that quarter, she wrote direct to the Duke of
Savoy,—Philip V. making his father-in-law comprehend that it was the wish
of France to see her installed in such post—and the Duke of Savoy referred
the matter to Louis XIV. From that moment her elevation was certain. Such
choice was the consummation of French policy.

There is something very striking indeed in that indomitable resolution
one day to govern Spain, conceived and adopted so far from the theatre of
events—to exercise the functions of Camerara-mayor to a queen of thirteen
years of age, when to obtain that exalted guardianship in Court and State,
every ambitious heart was throbbing from the Alps to the Pyrenees. Yet
Madame des Ursins importuned no one, for no one had thought of her,
Louis XIV. no more than his ministers, the Duke of Savoy no more than the
King of Spain; but that remarkable woman had mentally aimed at that as the
supreme object and end of her aspirations. For its realisation she combined
her measures, therefore, with an activity so ardent, with an accuracy of
perception so marvellous through the mesh of intrigues which spread from
Versailles to Turin and to Madrid, that she succeeded in getting herself
accepted simultaneously by the three courts, through letting them think that
the choice of her individuality had been for each of them the effect of a
spontaneous inspiration.

The principal instrument in this affair ought to have been, and was in
fact, the Maréchale de Noailles. No woman had a better footing at court or
exercised a more incessant activity among the ministers. The young Count
d’Ayen, her son, a personal friend of the Duke d’Anjou, and who derived a
precocious importance from the gravity of his life, was, moreover, disposed
to second at Madrid the secret negotiation first broached in the cabinet of
Madame de Maintenon, the barriers of which sanctum scarcely gave way
even before the Maréchale. The progress of the negotiation may be
followed from day to day in the letters addressed to Madame de Noailles,
conducted by that lady as her indefatigable correspondent pointed out. The
first idea of Madame des Ursins may be therein detected, developed as it is
with equal art and caution, and strengthened by addressing itself to the
mother of a numerous family in arguments which could not fail of their
effect. “I conjecture from all this,” wrote the Princess, “that the Duchess of
Burgundy will have the satisfaction of seeing her sister queen of that great
monarchy, and as there must be some lady of rank to direct that young
princess, I entreat of you, madame, that you will offer my services, before
the King can cast his eyes upon some one else. I venture to say that I am
better fitted than any other person whomsoever for such office from the
numerous friends I have in that country, and the advantage I have in being a
grandee of Spain, which would lighten the difficulties another might
encounter in the matter of ceremonial customs. I speak, moreover, Spanish,
and further, I am certain that such choice would be agreeable to the whole
nation, by whom I can boast of having always been loved and esteemed.
My design, madame, would be to go to Madrid, to remain there so long as it
should please the King, and afterwards to return to Court and render an
account to his Majesty of my sojourn. If it were only a question of
accompanying the Queen as far as the frontier, I would not think further of
the matter, for that which makes me chiefly desire it, after the King’s
service, which with me goes before everything, is the wish that I have to

prosecute personally at the Court of Madrid certain business of importance
connected with the kingdom of Naples. I should be very glad also to see my
friends there, and amongst others the Cardinal Porto-Carrero, with whose
aid I would find means of marrying a round dozen of your daughters in that
country. You must know, madame, that I reckon upon him almost as firmly
in Spain as I do upon you in France. Judge after this whether I could not
bring rain or sunshine upon that Court, and whether it is with too much
vanity that I offer you my services therein. I did not believe that I could
persuade you to enter into this matter, madame, save in making you take a
weighty interest in it, for I apprehend that you may be very weary of
employing longer the Cardinal de Noailles in my behalf, to whom I have
communicated my views, but you can rouse him up again, if necessary.
Thus you will be the only person upon whom I shall rely for the entire
conduct of this affair.” Rome, 27th December, 1700.[17]

Each difficulty is seen to vanish, one after another, under the combined
efforts of secret influence and patient and persistent suppleness. Then when
the moment had arrived at which it was necessary for the Duke of Savoy to
decide upon a matter that affected so closely the personal expedience of his
daughter, and to set M. de Torcy in motion, promptly rallied to the support
of the candidate favoured by Madame de Maintenon, we find the Princess
des Ursins tracing for the use of that minister a programme which a
diplomatist already grown grey under the toils and anxieties of office would
not have disowned.

“Rome, January, 1701.

“I dare not, Madame, allow two couriers to depart one after another,
without writing to you about my business, but as I have nothing new to tell
you, I shall only do myself the honour to communicate to you some
reflections I have made. It is certain that the success of all this depends

upon His Highness the Duke of Savoy; you have written to me clearly
enough upon the subject to enable me to see that, and besides the thing
speaks for itself. I am seeking, therefore, the means of gaining the
confidence of that Prince, who, au fond, ought not to feel the slightest
repugnance in preferring me to anybody else. However, as I can promise
myself nothing certain from his letter, which I have the honour to forward
to you, I wish to propose one thing to you which would in no way commit
the King, and which not the less would assuredly determine His Royal
Highness. That is, Madame, that M. de Torcy, acting for himself, and
without mixing up the King’s name in any way, should in course of
conversation, ask the ambassador, who is at Paris, the name of the lady
whom his master destines for this post, and that he would be good enough
to mention me as thoroughly adapted for it, in his estimation. Ambassadors
keep journals of everything that goes on, and inform their sovereigns of the
most trifling matters they hear discussed in ministerial circles. What I have
suggested might be taken as an insinuation which would certainly
determine the Duke of Savoy to do what we desire, whilst leaving him
nevertheless at full liberty to act agreeably to his fancy. I submit this idea to
your prudent judgment, and should it appear to you right, you can turn it to
what account you like, for you are more clever than I am.”[18]

The trenches thus cleverly opened, the fair besiegers were not likely to
fail of ultimate success. The Princess’s letters to the Maréchale, so nicely
calculating in the force of every phrase throughout the course of the siege,
are, after her victory, the natural and almost naïve expression of delight at a
success which both sides promised themselves to render fruitful. It is an
instance of poor, naked human nature caught in the fact. But, as in other
instances, she cannot play the woman with impunity. Madame des Ursins
dwells with complacency upon her description of the fabulous cortége
which he has in preparation. Lackeys innumerable, a legion of pages and

gentlemen, fiocches and carriages, emblazoned with gold, a suite with
which in the present day a sovereign would not encumber himself, and
which ate up the remainder of her fortune, all these marvels by means of
which it was proposed to win over the admiration of the Spaniards to the
new dynasty, were not unserviceable also in gaining over the young
Duchess of Burgundy, and the details of them were welcomed by an
approving smile in the sanctuary of Madame de Maintenon. The Princess
des Ursins being, moreover, too knowing to exact anything in the shape of
money from the King in addition to the high favour and all-powerful
protection she had just received at his hands; she showed herself, to use her
own words, aussi fière que gueuse.[19] But there is a time for all things;
when we have gained possession of the tree itself, we need not be in such a
hurry to strip it of its fruits.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] Collection of M. Geffroy, p. 88.

[18] Collection of M. Geffroy, p. 90.

[19] Letter to the Maréchale de Noailles of 21st June, 1701.

CHAPTER IV.

MADAME DES URSINS ASSUMES THE FUNCTIONS OF
CAMERARA-MAYOR TO THE YOUNG QUEEN OF SPAIN—AN
UNPROPITIOUS ROYAL WEDDING.

It was, therefore, with a paraphernalia almost regal that Madame des
Ursins set forth to conduct the Princess of Savoy to her husband. Our
heroine was then in her fifty-ninth year (1701), according to most
authorities, in her sixty-second, according to others; and either age would
have been for any one else the period for retreat. But by the rare privilege of
a singular energy, physical and moral, still beautiful, and having as yet only
prepared herself for playing the grand part of her life’s drama, she was
about to make that advanced age a point of departure in her militant career,
the outset of a new existence. She had not committed the error of remaining
attached to old customs or old styles of dress, she had, as the present phrase
runs, advanced with the age. She had sympathised with it with a juvenile
ardour, she had noted, at a distance, its deviations. She was desirous, by
opposing it on many points, to take advantage of its decreptitude. She could
not shut her eyes to the dazzling aspect of Madame de Maintenon’s laurels.

We have shown what the Princess was as a young woman, and also at the
mature age of forty; but it is during the twenty-four years of her green old
age (1698-1722) when having become a great political personage, we have

to behold her exercising a powerful influence over the destinies of two great
kingdoms, and aspiring to soar to a greater height than ever her painstaking
ambition enabled her to attain. It was then that ambition began to take entire
possession of her soul, and displaced in her heart every other sentiment that
her previous sixty-two years had not extinguished. There can be no doubt of
that fact when we discover in her letters such a glow of youthful feeling,
such scarcely repressible delight, and finally that air of triumph with which
she proposes to welcome and profit by her first elevation.

Her ambition, moreover, could not have had a more brilliant and
legitimate aim than that of associating herself in the glorious task of France
become the instructress of Spain; and Madame des Ursins, who joined to
her own the aspirations of the other sex, entered upon her new mission with
a zeal, an ardour, and an activity more than virile.

Into what profound decadence Spain had then fallen is well known to any
reader of modern history, and the history of modern Europe contains no
more terrible lesson. The Austrian dynasty, insatiable and jealous, had
sought to impose at once upon Spain, Europe, and the world, her political
and religious despotism. Charles V. had confiscated Spanish liberties and
conquered the Commons. Philip II., his son, constituting himself the
representative of Catholicism, had persecuted on all sides, whether by open
violence or intrigue, by the aid of corruption or torture, the new principle of
Protestantism. He had failed in every quarter. The sanguinary executions of
the Duke of Alva had been answered by the creation of a new free State—
Protestant and Republican Holland. With the Invincible Armada was
engulfed the last menace of the Spanish navy, which had been answered by
the triumph of Protestant England under the glorious reign of Elizabeth. The
Spanish nation itself had conspired, it must be confessed, to that decadence.
It had shown no reaction either against the enervating despotism of royalty,
or even the nature of the climate and soil, unequal and excessive in every

way. The epoch of heroic deeds once elapsed upon the glowing arena of the
Middle Ages, the Spanish people had despised labour, commerce, and
industry. The soil, neglected, had returned to its primitive sterility, and
almost entire provinces had become solitary deserts. Indolence and poverty
are evil counsellors. The Spanish people, the nation of the Cid, had
transformed her noble and fervent religion of the Middle Ages into a
degrading, and too often cruel superstition. It was unhappily the popular
sentiment of which Philip III. was the exponent when he expelled the
Moors in 1603, thus depriving Spain—poor and already depopulated—of
one hundred thousand rich and industrious families; and it was national
opinion also which had accepted and maintained the domination of the
monks and the hateful empire of the Inquisition.

France, on the contrary, had proceeded rapidly along the path of an
admirable progress. After having put an end to the sanguinary period of the
religious wars, after having repressed the formidable ambition of the House
of Austria, she had proclaimed the principles of tolerance and justice,
destined to become common to all modern communities, and she had
afforded the example of a centralisation which it was thought would prove
an element of prosperity and power. Would the establishment of such a
centralisation consort with the native energy of Spain, which the peculiar
genius of her great provinces still retained? Was it necessary, in order to
rouse that generous country from its languor, merely to appeal to its
recollections of the past, to the sentiment of its dignity, to what remained of
its antique virtues, or was it indeed necessary to inoculate it with an
infusion of some better blood? Finally, had it not become a question
whether Spain should be governed for itself, or rather as an annexation of
France, by considering it as a simple instrument of the policy of Louis XIV.

Such were the grave questions which the accession of Philip V. had
raised. Louis XIV. had solved them in the sense most favourable to his

ambition, and if he recommended his grandson not to surround himself with
Frenchmen and to respect the national feeling, it was only to bend the more
gently the genius of Spain to his own designs. The correspondence of
Madame de Maintenon—eloquent echoes from Marly and Versailles—
openly reveals that policy. No wonder that it should do so. The interests
involved in the preservation of the balance of power in Europe were not
those which affected the great King: those of the cabinet of Versailles, he
considered ought to be the sole rule, not only for France, but for Europe
entire. So thought everybody also who surrounded the pompous Louis.
Those even who pretended to hold themselves aloof from his moral
domination—the Duke de Beauvilliers, the Duke de Chevreuse, and the
Archbishop of Cambrai—divided their hopes between the Duke of
Burgundy and the new King of Spain, the brother of their well-beloved
disciple; and, surrounding Philip V. with creatures of their own, would not
admit that they could govern otherwise than by Frenchmen and French
ideas. Even for that party which arrogated to itself the title of “honest
folks,” animated by noble sentiments and generous illusions, it was difficult
sufficiently to enlarge the narrow patriotism of the time, and to admit within
it a sympathetic alliance with the ideas of any foreign nationality.

Madame des Ursins was less exclusively and more truly devoted to
Spain, without failing in her devotion to France. She was a Frenchwoman at
Madrid in sustaining the alliance between the two countries in view of their
common interests, and in attacking by reforms the deep-seated abuses
which had prepared the complete ruin of Spain; she was so especially
likewise in waging a determined fight against an institution the most
repugnant to the character and intelligence of France—the Inquisition. But
she became Spanish also when needful, whether she had to humour warily
the national susceptibilities, or to confide the principal posts to Spaniards
rather than to Frenchmen, or, finally, whether in 1709, when the
guardianship of Philip V. had become a very heavy burden to the declining

Louis, she manifested her indignation at the very idea, too readily accepted
at Versailles, of abandoning Spain, and was stubbornly resolved, on her own
part, to struggle by the side of Louis XIV.’s grandson to the last extremity.

The whole period which extends up to the moment of her first disgrace
was solely employed by her in establishing her power by masking it. She
still remained without a very precise mission; the indirect encouragement of
Torcy and Madame de Maintenon, it is true, soon came to sustain her, and
her entire study centered in meriting at their hands, and especially at those
of Louis XIV., a more effective confidence.

She had first to make herself acceptable to the Queen of Spain. Marie-
Louise of Savoy, whom her Camerara-mayor met for the first time on
board her galley in the harbour of Villefranche, at the moment when the
tearful eyes of the young princess were casting a last glance at the lovely
Italian land, was that admirable queen whose life in default of mental
courage became worn out by the corroding of adversity, and whose popular
name has remained as a symbol in Spain of every royal and domestic virtue.
Not quite fourteen at the period of that meeting, the princess was already as
tall as the Duchess of Burgundy, whose perfect shape she also possessed,
with a more regular cast of features and an incomparable charm in her
graceful and affable manners. Smiling through her tears, and in the midst of
her grief ever displaying gentleness blended with majesty, she played the
queen on all occasions in a marvellous way for one so youthful, that
everybody who had the honour of approaching her during the journey was
struck with astonishment. Marie-Louise was a gentle and affectionate girl,
of an intelligence and will in advance of her years, and which happily did
not injure her natural gracefulness. For this young creature, for this child,
suddenly become a wife and a queen, the presence of Madame des Ursins,
still handsome even at sixty-six, sprightly and as skilful as she was eager to
please, was the sole refuge beside the indolent love of a boy-king of

eighteen, who gave her no protection. These two women, whom nature had
created so dissimilar, were about to be united for ever in one common
destiny. The young Queen appeared to be immediately struck with the value
of the support which a mind so supple and vigorous offered her, and when
the departure of her Piedmontese waiting-maids had torn from the poor girl-
queen the last trace of family and country, she clung to her grand camerara
as the ivy to the tree which supports it. On the other hand, Madame des
Ursins did not fail to hold herself out as representing the respected authority
of Louis XIV. and Madame de Maintenon; on the other, she knew well how
to initiate herself, by means of the domestic duties, of which she designedly
exaggerated the importance, into the innermost prejudices of the royal wife.
She made herself useful to Marie-Louise, became indispensable amidst an
intercourse so privileged and private; at the same time she afforded pleasure
in so doing, and that proved during the whole period of her sojourn in Spain
the most solid foundation of her favour and power.

Through the Queen the camerara-mayor was certain of governing the
King. Proportionately as the absolute monarchy, in spite of the severest
warnings, set up pretensions even more and more excessive and insensate, it
became also more manifest that its old traditions had rendered the princes
degenerate, and that the blood was equally menaced with impoverishment
in the family of Louis XIV. as in that of Charles V. The new King of Spain
was deficient in moral force and determination. He had generous
proclivities, without the least doubt. He was gloriously born, as the phrase
then ran. Like all his race, he showed bravery on the field of battle; but
energetic persistence in long-continued designs firmly conceived, he was
ever wanting in. Wearied to excess by the weight of a crown, he ended by
resigning its functions; compelled to resume them, he succumbed beneath
their weight, conceived scruples touching the legitimacy of his royalty, and

sunk into a crazy melancholy, which degenerated later into downright
insanity.[20]

The Princess des Ursins in directing her steps towards Villefranche, the
little Piedmontese port, which had been fixed upon as the place of Marie-
Louise’s embarkation, had merely wished to present herself to the Queen,
her mistress, at the moment when the latter would be ready to enter her
galley and set sail for Spain. By that means, she would avoid the necessity
of putting all the royal train in mourning. For, as she had already suggested
with remarkable foresight to the Maréchale de Noailles—the Court of Turin
was then in mourning, and there would have been a necessity to conform to
the French custom, followed by the Dukes of Savoy: on the contrary, by
stopping at Villefranche and meeting the Queen at the moment of her
embarkation, she would merely have to observe the usage of Spain, which
only enjoined mourning upon the master and mistress of a house.

Authorised to do what seemed fit to her on that score, she had awaited
therefore the arrival of the young princess at Villefranche, and with so much
the more satisfaction, that at Turin she would have been exposed to a
thousand annoyances. There she would have encountered the Princess de
Carignan—the great lady who had taken care of her niece, Marie-Louise of
Savoy, and like many other Piedmontese ladies, she wished very much to
follow her into Spain, and perhaps remain there. There were many little
projects, it appears, formed at Turin with the view of governing the young
Queen.[21] For a long while it was thought that they would be realised,
because the report ran that the Princess de Carignan would in fact
accompany her niece to Madrid. But Louis XIV., foreseeing that source of
embarrassment, had given an order to dismiss all the Piedmontese ladies at
the frontier, so soon as the Queen should meet her Spanish household.
Those ladies were aware of this; but their discontent was only the greater,
and it was much to be feared lest if Madame des Ursins should herself

repair to Turin, to present herself to the young Queen, she might be exposed
to some insult on their part. Who could tell whether, at that court, before the
departure of Marie-Louise had removed all hope, her “position might not be
menaced”? In that, then, there arose an additional motive, and the principal
one, to stop at Villefranche, in order not to see the Queen before the
moment of embarking with her, and of entering immediately and
irrevocably upon the exercise of her duties.

When Marie-Louise arrived there in the month of October, 1701, the
anchor of her galley was instantly weighed and sail set for Nice, where a
last farewell was taken of Piedmont and the soil of Italy; and next, her foot
touched the French shore to make slight halts at Toulon, at Marseilles, and
at Montpellier, and despatch thence, by way of thanks for the splendid fêtes
given by the local authorities, a salvo of homage to the Great King at
Versailles. Madame des Ursins was seated in the royal litter, at the Queen’s
side, and everywhere had her share of the honours rendered to that princess
in the various cities of France and Italy. At length the Spanish frontier was
reached, and there the Piedmontese ladies, to the great regret of Marie-
Louise and their own, were compelled to stop and retrace their steps to
Turin. The Spanish dames, appointed by Philip V., replaced them. The
young Queen thereupon lost much of her characteristic amenity, and
Madame des Ursins gained nothing on the score of benevolence of
intention; but the jealousy of the Spanish ladies was less formidable to her.

The marriage by procuration had been performed at Turin. The definitive
espousals, it was settled, should be accomplished at Figuieras, on Spanish
soil, in order that Marie-Louise might not enter into the country, where she
was destined to reign, save with the irrevocable titles of wife and queen.
Thither was to come, on an appointed day, King Philip V. He did not keep
his bride waiting for him, for, impatient to behold her to whom, by
procuration, he had already given his hand, and whose charms had been

highly extolled to him, he passed beyond the place fixed upon for the
official reception, and went forwards disguised, without pomp or noise, to
meet her. He was followed by a very small number of cavaliers, and so soon
as he perceived the queen’s retinue approaching the town of Hostalnovo, he
quitted his attendants, and “pricked forward like a courier” towards the
royal litter. Desirous of preserving his incognito, he presented himself as a
king’s messenger, sent to get the earliest tidings of the Queen, and he
addressed himself in Spanish to the Princess des Ursins, to receive the
information which he asserted he was ordered to obtain. The Queen
immediately guessed that the messenger was no other than the King
himself. She was, therefore, anxious to answer him herself, and so their
conversation commenced, touching her health and that of King Philip V.,
the incidents of her journey, and it was continued for about a quarter of an
hour. For some time the Queen pretended not to recognise him; but, at last,
her emotion getting the better of her, she broke through the assumed
incognito in which the King had shrouded himself, and was anxious to
alight from her litter. Philip, without further revealing himself, stayed her
with his hand. Whereupon, she grasped hold instantly of that royal hand,
which by an attention, divined by her heart, was rendered so dear to her;
“she took it in both of her own, kissed it, and held it for some moments,
after which the king rode off to rejoin his suite, and returned satisfied to
Figuieras.”[22]

There was celebrated the marriage of Philip V. with Marie-Louise of
Savoy. But oh, unforeseen mischance! Several days were destined to elapse
ere he could really possess her the sight of whom had only had the effect of
redoubling the ardour of his desires. His happiness was retarded by an
incident of a very extraordinary nature, one which caused him personally
much unpleasantness, and moreover, gave his young bride a bad impression
of the character of a nation she was about to rule over. For the supper,

which was prepared for her after the marriage ceremony, the viands had
been cooked partly in the Spanish, partly in the French fashion, because at
Turin the art of the celebrated Chef Vatel had been adopted. But the Spanish
ladies whose duty it was, under the direction of Madame des Ursins, to
serve the dishes, did not expect such a strange commencement of their
functions. All their national susceptibilities were aroused at the sight, and
determined to wean abruptly their new Queen from the customs of her own
country, and to impose upon her, from the moment of her very first repast,
the diet of Spain, they did not hesitate to upset all the French dishes,
without a single exception, in order to serve up nothing but Spanish
cookery. The King said nothing; and the Princess des Ursins,
notwithstanding her stupefaction and secret wrath, was unwilling to
commence her career in Spain by scenes of reproach and severity. The
Queen also, whose natural vivacity and tender age could not be expected to
observe the same restraint, had, nevertheless, sufficient control over herself
at first to keep silence. But when she found herself with the King and
Madame des Ursins in the apartment allotted to their privacy, her
displeasure burst forth, and with so much the greater force that it had been
so long restrained and that no foreign eye hindered its manifestation. She
shed tears plentifully, sobbed, regretted the absence of her Piedmontese
ladies, waxed indignant at the audacity and rudeness of the Spanish dames,
and even declared that she would proceed no further, but would return to
Piedmont. Night came on, the king left her to undress, and waited to be
summoned to his bride’s apartment; but the young Queen, “entêtée, comme
une enfant qu’elle était,” says Saint Simon, “for she was scarcely fourteen,”
appeared disposed to attribute to the King himself, the rude conduct of his
subjects; and in spite of all reasoning on the subject, and the remonstrances
of Madame des Ursins, replied that she would sleep alone and go back as
quickly as possible to Turin. It may easily be guessed how untoward and
disagreeable such an affair proved to Philip V.; he was greatly discomfited

by it, and when the second night came, as the Queen had not recovered her
good humour, it was he, who acting upon the advice of the Duke of Medina
Sidonia and Count San Estevan de Gormas, anticipated a fresh refusal, by
causing her to be told that he would not now share her couch. That
spontaneous determination was adroit, and produced its effect. Marie-
Louise was exceedingly piqued at it in the depth of her girlish amour-
propre, and ended by making an honourable amende to the King, blaming
and condemning her own childishness. She promised to conduct herself for
the future like a woman and a queen, and on the arrival of the third night,
the nuptial bed at length reunited the hitherto dissevered husband and wife.
The next day they left Figuieras, touched at Barcelona, and thence hastened
on to Madrid, wherein they made their triumphal entry by the Alcala Gate,
towards the end of October, 1701, amidst a great concourse of nobles and
populace. There also the Princess des Ursins was installed definitively in
her functions of camerara-mayor. These she was destined to fulfil during a
period of thirteen years, from 1701 to 1714, and by favour of that influential
position, to exercise a virtual sovereignty, the acts of which it will now be
our task to duly appreciate.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] The singing of Farinelli had at first the effect of charming away his dark
moods, but he speedily gave way to such hallucinations that he quite neglected
his personal appearance, pretended to go fishing in the middle of the night, and
to mount the horses which figured on the tapestry of his chamber.

[21] Memoirs of Louville, tom. i., and those of De Noailles, tom. ii., pp. 164,
165.

[22] MS. Hist. de l’élévation de Philip V., p. 372.

CHAPTER V.

ONEROUS AND INCONGRUOUS DUTIES OF THE CAMERARA
MAYOR—SHE RENDERS THE YOUNG QUEEN POPULAR WITH THE
SPANIARDS—POLICY ADOPTED BY THE PRINCESS FOR THE
REGENERATION OF SPAIN—CHARACTER OF PHILIP V. AND
MARIE-LOUISE—TWO POLITICAL SYSTEMS COMBATED BY
MADAME DES URSINS—SHE EFFECTS THE RUIN OF HER
POLITICAL RIVALS, AND REIGNS ABSOLUTELY IN THE
COUNCILS OF THE CROWN.

The sudden departure of all her Italian waiting-women had, as we have
seen, on first setting her foot in Spain, for a moment thrown the young
Queen into a condition bordering on despair. By advice, however, the
respectful devotedness of which served to soften its austerity, and by an
absolute abnegation of herself, Madame des Ursins drew closely towards
her the broken-hearted princess by discreetly assuaging all her first girlish
sorrows. She became a friend, a sister, almost a mother to the exiled-one,
and her influence profited no less by the first embarrassments of the
conjugal union than by the unbridled passion which ere long placed under
the yoke of his wife a husband of eighteen, chaste as St. Louis, with the
amorous temperament of Henry IV. In order to strengthen that ascendency
and to remain exclusive mistress of a confidence of which power was the
price, the Princess des Ursins flinched neither under fatigue calculated to

exhaust the sturdiest frame, nor before services the nature of which would
have outraged her pride, had it not been to her, as Saint-Simon says, une
même chose d’être et de gouverner. That gilded servitude is described with
a charmingly punctilious complaisance in her letters to the Maréchale de
Noailles and the Marquis de Torcy, and notwithstanding the commiseration
which she claims for it, it may be clearly seen that Madame des Ursins
enters into the details of her domestic service far less for the purpose of
carrying a complaint to Versailles, than to have it there set down to her
credit.

“Gracious Heaven! to what sort of occupation, madame, have you
destined me? I have not a moment’s repose, and cannot find time even to
speak to my secretary. There is no longer any question about resting after
dinner, nor of eating when I am hungry. I am but too glad to be able to make
a bad dinner standing, and moreover it is very rare that I am not summoned
away before swallowing the first mouthful. In truth, Madame de Maintenon
would laugh heartily if she knew all the details of my office. Tell her, I
beseech you, that it is I who have the honour of receiving the King of
Spain’s dressing-gown when he gets into bed, and of handing it to him
along with his slippers when he rises. So far as that goes I don’t lose my
patience; but every night when the King enters the Queen’s chamber to go
to bed, the Count de Benavente confides to my care the King’s sword, a
certain utensil, and a lamp, the contents of which I generally manage to spill
over my dress,—rather too good a joke. The King would never rise were I
not to go and draw aside the bed-curtains, and it would be a sacrilege if
anybody but myself were to enter the Queen’s chamber whilst they were
abed. Very lately, the lamp went out because I had spilled half the oil. I
could not find where the windows were, and thought that I should have
broken my neck against the wall, and we were—the King of Spain and I—
near a quarter of an hour stumbling against each other in trying to find
them. Her Majesty has got so used to me that sometimes she is good enough

to call me up two hours earlier than I should otherwise care to rise.... The
Queen delights in this sort of pleasantry; still, however, she has not yet
regained the confidence she placed in her Piedmontese women. I am
astonished at this, for I serve her better than they did, and I am certain that
they would not wash her feet or pull off her shoes as readily as I do.”[23]

How unlike a contemporary mistress of the robes in England, the haughty
Duchess of Marlborough!

Such a state of slavery weighed very lightly upon the Princess, for,
although it was conformable to the custom of a palace, in which a solitary
royalty seemed to exist without keeping up any relations with the human
race, nothing could have been more easy than for the camerara mayor to
have provided substitutes for the performance of her unbecoming duties.
One of the recommendations of Louis XIV. to his grandson had been, in
fact, that whilst scrupulously respecting all popular customs, to wage an
implacable war in his court against the monstrous etiquette which, under the
last Austrian princes, had palsied Spanish royalty. This was one of the
labours to which the camerara mayor devoted herself; but she took good
care not to reform anything appertaining to her own functions,
comprehending clearly enough the policy of keeping to herself sole access
to the royal personages, and sacrificing without grudge her dignity to her
power and influence. A contrary policy, as will be seen, caused the downfall
of Queen Anne’s potent favourite.

But we must pass over these domestic duties to speak of state affairs and
the gradual initiation therein by the Princess of this young couple. During
the campaign of Italy in which Philip V. was anxious to take part, Madame
des Ursins, suitably to the duties and prerogatives of her charge, did not quit
the Queen for a single moment. She was present with her on every occasion
at the sittings of the Junta, and, under pretext of familiarising her with

politics, she herself penetrated every state secret. The Princess well knew
how to make etiquette subserve her purpose, to maintain it to the utmost,
modify or slacken it according to her interests. She understood what kind of
concessions the genius of the Spanish nation demanded, and also what
reforms it permitted. She judged at a glance of the disposition of the
grandees, and yielded to no illusion relative to the degree of support she
might expect from them. “With these sort of folks,” she wrote to the
Marquis de Torcy, “the surest way is to show firmness. The closer I observe
them, the less do I find that they merit the esteem which I thought it would
have been impossible not to accord them.” According to the Princess, the
Spanish nation in the persons of its grandees, had yielded obedience to a
son of France only, under the idea that France alone could defend and
protect it. France remaining powerful and victorious, Spain would be safe:
but, at each defeat that occurred in Flanders or Germany from the
irresistible sword of Marlborough, the eyes of the grandees were turned
towards the Archduke, and their fidelity was shaken. The skill and merit of
Madame des Ursins was to perceive how, in so short a time, to derive so
much advantage from the grace and affability of the Queen, whom she
made really popular among the faithful people of central Spain, and it was
wonderful to see the roots of that new royalty strike so quickly in the hearts
of the old Castilians, as to render it able later during the stormy times to
weather every rude attack. With an intuitive foresightedness not a little
remarkable, the Princess des Ursins had from the first proposed to herself a
twofold object. She sought to become the intermedium of the close alliance
formed between the grandsire and the grandson, in order to regenerate
Spain by causing French measures to prevail in the government of that
misruled country; but to the extent only that their application should appear
possible without wounding the national sentiment. That policy was the
wisest and assuredly the most useful for the Peninsula in the extremity to
which the inept power it had just escaped from had brought it. Among the

princes who were neither vicious nor cruel, there are none who had done
more harm to mankind than the last descendants of Charles V. At the end of
the seventeenth century, the immense empire of Philip IV. and Charles II.,
reduced to a feebleness which the Ottoman empire in our own days has
scarcely felt, was nothing more than the phantom of a nation. The House of
Austria had triumphed over feudality and municipal resistance as
completely as the House of Bourbon; but the successes of monarchical
power had been as sterile on one side of the Pyrenees as they had been
profitable to it on the other, for in Spain the impotence of the vanquisher
had still surpassed that of the vanquished.

So much blood shed by axe and sword, so many lives sacrificed under
torture, had scarcely tended further to strengthen royal authority or cement
the union of the Spanish kingdoms; and those princes whose domains still
spread widely across the globe, had no longer to oppose to Europe, during
the long agony in which their race was perishing, either an army, a fleet, a
general, or even a statesman.

The first of the sovereigns summoned to assist in restoring this unhappy
country to its ancient grandeur was assuredly the least fitting to accomplish
such a task. But seventeen years old, when Charles II. chose him for his
successor, the Duke d’Anjou was indebted both to nature and education for
a mind rather constituted to serve than reign. Brother of the heir to the
French throne, he had been reared in studied subordination towards the
latter, and the discipline of Beauvilliers and Fénelon, which had curbed the
violence of character in the Duke of Burgundy, had produced less beneficial
effects in the melancholy temperament of his younger brother. With a
natural rectitude of thought and a pride which at times revealed the
hereditary haughtiness of his race, Philip V. had in the same degree as his
nephew Louis XV., whom he resembled in many ways, that morbid
weariness of life, that contempt for mankind and distaste for business. He

was afflicted, moreover, with that fatal impotence of will which makes a
libertine king the slave of his mistresses, and, a faithful husband the passive
instrument of a charming queen who may happen to be prompted by the
most skilful of councillors.

But nothing had as yet indicated the melancholy condition of mind which
later drove the young King to the confines of despair and insanity. On his
first entrance into his kingdom, escorted by a crowd of brilliant nobles,
Philip was radiant with youth and hope. He strode forwards sustained by the
strong arm of a people who thought to escape, by the intervention of the
most powerful sovereign in Europe, from the evils of war, and more
especially from that severance of the Spanish monarchy more dreaded by
the nation than all its other woes together. In a capital which he was forced
to quit on two several occasions, in a court soon afterwards prostrated
before his rival, and even in those provinces of Arragon and Catalonia, the
burning centres of civil war, nothing at first was heard save shouts of joy
and protestations of fidelity. Nevertheless it did not need great sagacity to
foresee the perils reserved for the new establishment. The French regime
disquieted interests too numerous and prejudices too powerful throughout
the Peninsula not to explode at the first difficulty which it might encounter
on its path.

Thunderstruck by the unforeseen will of Charles II., Europe, which at the
first moment had seemed indisposed to contest its dispositions, had not long
deferred their reconsideration. Persuaded that the aggrandisement of his
family was equivalent in the eyes of Louis XIV. to an aggrandisement of
territory, England, Holland, and Portugal, taking in hand the successorial
pretentions of the house of Austria, out of which those cabinets had made
such a good bargain in two treaties of partition, sent fleets into every sea,
whilst awaiting the moment to carry into the heart of Spain, hostilities
which the emperor had already commenced in Italy. An implacable

coalition, of which the Peace of Ryswick had suspended the effects without
modifying the causes of it, was formed to snatch the two peninsulas from
the domination of France. The latter power resolutely accepted the struggle
this time for a just and honest cause; but the war was scarcely begun ere the
certitude was acquired that in doubling the dangers of France, Spain would
add nothing to its resources. With what contemptuous bitterness did Spain,
in fact, watch the long train of disasters which from the pinnacle of power
brought Louis XIV. to the brink of an abyss by one of those vicissitudes the
effect of which is never more rapid upon the popular mind than when
fortune deserts men who have been long powerful and flourishing!

Such was the theatre upon which Providence had placed a timid and
ailing prince, but which event threatened to endanger even the very
existence of the French monarchy itself. Louis XIV. seemed to have
attained his object in the guidance of his grandson, who followed the great
monarch’s injunctions with filial docility. The Queen governed Philip V.,
and Madame des Ursins governed the Queen. Saint Simon thus explains
this ascendancy:—“She guided the Queen,” says he, “who had placed in her
all the affection and all the confidence of a young person who knew no
other adviser, who depended wholly upon her for her particular daily
conduct, and for her amusements, and who found in her graciousness,
gentleness, and complaisance, combined with every possible resource. For
the rest, such empire was not that which weakness and incapacity yields to
genius and strength.” Marie-Louise had not been less carefully brought up
than her sister, the Duchess of Burgundy, nor less well instructed. She had
innate talent, and, in her early youth showed intelligence, good sense,
firmness, and was capable of being advised and restrained, and who later,
when her character became more developed and formed, manifested a
constancy and courage which the natural graces of that same intelligence
infinitely enhanced. A lively sympathy between the two women alone
determined the authority of the older over the younger, and if the King’s

confidence in the camerara-mayor was a homage rendered to the real
superiority of her intelligence, it might be said that a happy conformity of
tastes, views, and dispositions, attached his Queen to the Princess des
Ursins.

Two political systems confronted each other at Madrid. The one ultra-
French, the other purely Spanish, represented by the grandees and inclining
towards the Archduke of Austria, the competitor of Philip V. The first-
named had for champions, Cardinal Porto-Carrero, “virtually the actual
prime minister,” the Archbishop of Seville, Arias, the provisional president
of the Council of Castille, the Marquis de Louville, and all the King’s
French household; subsequently it was directed by the Cardinal and the
Abbé d’Estrées, Ambassadors of France. The second party re-united the
most illustrious names of the monarchy. It had for its chiefs, successively,
the Count de Melgar, Admiral of Castile, the Marquis de Léganez, and the
Duke de Medina-Cœli. The first-named policy tended to destroy, by its
exclusive ideas, the popularity of Philip V., the second prepared to betray
him. They were both reduced to impotence, and became fatal to those who
ventured to defend them. Madame des Ursins combated the one and the
other, and aimed at inaugurating in Spain a mixed policy, heeding the
cabinet of Versailles without annihilating the cabinet of Madrid, satisfying
the just desires of Spain and the susceptibilities of the nation, without
disdaining the sometimes useful advice and the ever requisite resources of
France. Such was, therefore, the plan adopted by the young Queen. But, in
order to realise it, it was necessary to have the field open, it was necessary
that Madame des Ursins should be delivered from her rivals, and should
reign as absolutely in the councils of the Crown as in the minds of the King
and Queen.

The principal chief of the Austrian party, the Admiral of Castile, was the
first to become dangerous. “He loved the house of Austria, for which he had

fought, under the preceding reign, by sea and land, and from which he had
received the highest honours.” On the contrary he detested the house of
Bourbon, against which he had strongly “pronounced” at the time when the
last will of Charles II. was in preparation.[24] But he had confronting him
the vigilance of Madame des Ursins. She fathomed his intrigues and baffled
his early manœuvres; though she had not always to struggle openly against
him. He rendered himself justice; he comprehended his own impotence, and
had recourse to treason. He had frequent conferences with a Dutch spy,
plotted with him the downfall of Philip V., and the elevation of the
Archduke, and finally handed him a correct topographic plan of Andalusia
and Estremadura. The cabinets of Vienna and London assured of such an
aid, declared war against Philip V. Nevertheless, although the Spanish
government was duly apprised of these proceedings, it still wanted that
boldness which the continuous use of power and long-indulged prosperity
give. It only determined upon dispatching the admiral abroad, and
appointed him ambassador to the French Court; a dubious favour which at
once revealed its fears and its weakness, but which at least postponed a
peril it dared not yet face. The admiral saw plainly that he was suspected in
Spain, and that in France he would be a cipher; nevertheless, he pretended
to take his departure thither; but halted when half-way, and went to join the
Portuguese troops banded with those of the allies. The cabinet of Madrid
had from that time forward acquired the right of punishing him. The Count
de Melgar was condemned par contumace; his friends were forced to blame
his conduct openly; and his melancholy death which happened shortly
afterwards, the result of an insult reserved sooner or later for all traitors,
deprived a formidable faction of its leader.

The ultra-French party did not find a less rude adversary in Madame des
Ursins. Of this, Louville, even before the arrival of the Princess, had a
presentiment. “I would much rather have Madame de Ventadour,” he wrote

Torcy. So early as the month of January, 1703, he saw his influence
destroyed, foresaw his coming defeat and meditated a coup d’éclat—the
getting rid of the camerara-mayor. He declares to the Duke de Beauvilliers,
—“If prompt measures are not taken to extricate the Catholic King from his
slavery, he is lost. In the first place, Madame des Ursins must be got rid of,
there need be no hesitation about that.” In the month following, he insists
that they should “keep firm, and get rid of her;” and, in July, 1703, to bring
Torcy to a decision, he adds,—“She is now detested by the Spaniards.”
Madame des Ursins repaid him hate for hate, and never spoke of him save
with a lofty contempt befitting an offended great lady. “He has cut a greater
figure,” she wrote to Cardinal de Noailles, “by the insolent things he has
written about me, than by any merit of his own. I think that I can never
forgive him if he does not first retract everything which he has advanced
against me. In truth, it ought not to be permitted that so insignificant a
person should outrage a woman of my rank.” Matters having reached this
pass, it was clear that one or the other must succumb. It was the lot of the
Marquis de Louville. Two couriers reaching Versailles from Spain,
determined his fall. On the 22nd of October, a despatch from the Duke de
Beauvilliers announced it to him. “It is done,” wrote the duke, “we are lost.
The step is taken. You are to be instantly recalled.”[25]

The Archbishop of Seville, Arias, who was of the same politics, was
shortly afterwards sent back to his diocese. The Duke de Montellano
replaced him in the presidency of Castile, and a Papal brief, obtained some
months after his disgrace, enjoined him not to quit Seville again. There
remained Porto-Carrero and the Cardinal d’Estrées, recently nominated
ambassador of France. They were the firmest supporters of their cause and
the most formidable adversaries of the Princess: Porto-Carrero, by his high
position, by the recollection of services rendered at the period of the will;
Cardinal d’Estrées, by his influence at the Court of Versailles, by the

protection of Noailles, by the energetic support of the entire French party.
The strife was fierce; but the resources of Madame des Ursins were equal to
the emergency. The Duke de Montellano, president of the Council of
Castille, counterbalanced the authority, until then unlimited, of Porto-
Carrero; the auditorship of finance, which had always appertained to the
prime minister, being taken from him. Weakened by this check and rivalry,
the Cardinal abruptly changed his policy and placed himself at the head of
the anti-French party; he refused to act with Cardinal d’Estrées, and
tendered his resignation. Had he remained firm in that course, probably he
might have re-enacted his political part in the ranks of his new friends, and
have caused the government great embarrassment. On receiving a letter
from Louis XIV., he had the weakness to give way, withdrew his
resignation, and resumed his seat at the council board. But factions hate and
despise more intensely those who abandon their ranks than those who fight
against them: that manœuvre irritated alike the French and the Spaniards;
both, in their turn, abjured. Porto-Carrero was the turn-coat from every
cause: as a politician he was annihilated.

In this affair, Cardinal d’Estrées had been, without knowing it, the tool of
Madame des Ursins. “He was,” according to Saint Simon, “a hot, hasty,
impetuous, high-handed man, who could tolerate neither superior nor
equal.” It will readily be imagined that the camerara-mayor could not
brook the ascendency which he aimed at ursurping. She resolutely resisted
him in all things and on every occasion. She opposed, with might and main,
the success of his policy; she set her face against his imperious manners and
tedious formalities. Philip and his Queen grew tired of the strife. They took
part with Madame des Ursins and wrote to Louis XIV. After that letter “the
Cardinal d’Estrées was looked upon as the great stirrer-up of strife. His
arrival at the Court of Madrid had interrupted the perfect harmony about to
be re-established. Not a day passed without some one suffering from his
intractable and arrogant temper.” Madame des Ursins worked in the same

groove with Torcy. The Cardinal’s cabal, by way of revenge, “raked into the
private life of the camerara-mayor,” hoping to destroy by scandalous tales
her reputation in the eyes of Louis XIV. and Madame de Maintenon. Those
tactics failed of success; Louis XIV., it is true, recalled Madame des Ursins;
but the Queen of Spain defended her favourite with such earnest
importunity, that the severity of the Court of Versailles was disarmed. An
endeavour was made to reconcile the two adversaries; but that
reconciliation, if sincere, was not lasting. Supreme authority admits of no
equal partition: difficulties multiplied themselves. Philip V. at length
declared to Louis XIV., “that if, to keep his crown, he must resign himself
to have Cardinal Porto-Carrero always as his minister, he knew what he
should prefer to choose.” In the month of September, 1704, therefore, all
the French household, with Cardinal Porto-Carrero, quitted Madrid.

FOOTNOTES:

[23] Letter to the Maréchale de Noailles, Dec. 1701. Recueil de M. Geffroy.

[24] Combes, p. 109.

[25] Collection of M. Geffroy, p. 457.

CHAPTER VI.

THE PRINCESS MAKES A FALSE STEP IN HER STATECRAFT—A
BLUNDER AND AN IMBROGLIO.

To recall Madame des Ursins at the earliest possible moment and inflict
upon her a well-merited disgrace was the earnest desire of Louis XIV.; but,
omnipotent as that Prince was, he found his hand arrested by a very serious
difficulty, the camerara-mayor, in fact, screened herself behind the Queen,
and the King of France was well aware that in recalling her he would deal a
blow alike against the affection and self-love of his grand-daughter which
she would never forgive—an extremity which was not less repugnant to his
policy than to his good feeling. Moreover the departure of Madame des
Ursins would not render the Cardinal d’Estrées’ position less insupportable
in a court, all the approaches to which were barred to him, and in which his
isolation was a constant insult to France. There was nothing left, therefore,
but to grant the latter a recall which, smarting with a humiliation so
unforeseen to his overweening arrogance, he demanded in accents of rage
and despair. However, in order to salve his amour-propre, the Abbé
d’Estrées continued to discharge the functions of the embassy, as though his
uncle’s absence were only temporary; but that state of things did not suit
either of the two factions which for more than twelve months past divided
the French household of the King of Spain, surpassing each other in
vituperation and calumny. Despite a sort of truce stipulated between the

embassy and the palace, the Abbé d’Estrées soon found himself in the same
position in which the Cardinal had been placed; for Madame des Ursins did
not like the arrangement of the Abbé being left behind, but as Madame de
Maintenon insisted upon it, she was obliged to accept it with as good a
grace as possible.[26] The Abbé, vain of his family and his position, was not
a man much to be feared as it seemed. Madame des Ursins accordingly
laughed at and despised him. He was admitted to the council, but was quite
without influence there, and when he attempted to make any representations
to Madame des Ursins or Orry, they listened to him without attending in the
least to what he said. The Princess reigned supreme, and thought of nothing
but getting rid of all who attempted to divide her authority. At last she
obtained such a command over the poor Abbé d’Estrées, so teased and
hampered him, that he consented to the hitherto unheard-of arrangement,
that the Ambassador of France should not write to the King without first
concerting his letter with her, and afterwards show her its contents before he
despatched it. But such restraint as this became, in a short time, so fettering,
that the Abbé determined to break away from it. He wrote a letter to the
King without showing it to Madame des Ursins. She soon had scent of what
he had done; seized the letter as it passed through the post, opened it, and,
as she expected, found its contents were not of a kind to give her much
satisfaction. In fact, in her emotion of anger and indignation she made a
false step in her state-craft of a nature one can hardly imagine a person so
astute as the Princess making. This blunder led to a great imbroglio.

The question has been raised—Did Madame des Ursins always use the
intimate and uncontrolled influence she had obtained over the young Queen
of fourteen in a purely devoted and disinterested way? It would be difficult,
certainly, to answer in the affirmative. Louville, her rival and enemy, a man
of talent and ardour, but passionate, represents her as the wickedest woman
on earth, to be got rid of at the earliest possible moment and at any cost,

“sordid and thievish to a marvellous degree.” He raises the same accusation
against Orry, a clever man whom Louis XIV. had sent to Spain to put some
order into her finances. These accusations seem to have been unjustifiable.
The Marshal Duke of Berwick, who kept himself aloof from all these
odious bickerings, does more justice to Orry, and everything leads the
impartial student to think that Madame des Ursins on that score comes out
of the scrutiny with still cleaner hands. “Je suis gueuse, il est vrai,” she
writes to Madame de Noailles on first going to Spain, “mais je suis encore
plus fière.” Detailing to Madame de Maintenon somewhat later the
indignities they both had to put up with from accusations of a like nature,
she speaks of them in a tone of lofty irony and sovereign contempt which
appears to exclude anything like falsehood.

But what seems more certain—if the truth must be told—is, although a
little singular at first sight, that at the age of sixty and upwards, Madame
des Ursins still had lovers. “She is hair-brained in her conduct,”[27] wrote
Louville to the Duke and Duchess de Beauvilliers. One Sieur d’Aubigny, a
kind of household steward whom she had promoted to be her equerry, was
lodged in the Retiro palace near the apartments of her women, where he
was seen one day brushing his teeth very unconcernedly at the window.
C’était un beau et grand drôle très-bien fait et très-découplé de corps et
d’esprit,[28] and not a bête brute, as Louville calls him. But he was bold and
somewhat insolent, as one who conceived that he had a right to be so. On
another occasion, Louville and the Duke de Medina-Cœli entering the
apartments of Madame des Ursins, into which she ushered them in order
that they might talk more unrestrainedly, D’Aubigny who was installed at
the other end, seeing only the Princess and believing her to be alone, began
to apostrophise her in terms of very rude and coarse familiarity, which
threw all present into confusion. The feminine failing of Madame des
Ursins, was, we are told, this; “gallantry and l’entêtement de sa personne

was in her the dominant and overweening weakness above all else, even to
the latest period of her life.” So Saint Simon says, and he renders her full
justice moreover for her spirited and elevated qualities.

But to return to the matter of the intercepted despatch. What piqued the
Princess most was, to find details in it exaggerating the authority of
D’Aubigny, and a statement to the effect that it was generally believed that
she had married him. On reading this passage the pride of the great lady
was more outraged even than her modesty. Beside herself with rage and
vexation, she wrote with her own hand upon the margin of the letter, “Pour
mariée, non” (“At any rate, not married”), showed it in this state to the King
and Queen of Spain, to a number of other people, always with strange
clamouring, and finally crowned her folly by sending it to Louis XIV., with
furious complaints against the Abbé for writing it without her knowledge,
and for inflicting upon her such an atrocious injury as to mention such a
thing as this pretended marriage. Her letter and its enclosure reached the
King at a very inopportune moment. Just before he had received a letter,
which, taken in connection with this of the Princess des Ursins, struck a
blow at her power of the most decisive kind. At the same time that the
original thus annotated was despatched to the Marquis de Torcy, a copy of it
was addressed by the Princess to the Duke de Noirmoutier, her brother, and
the latter caused it to be circulated throughout Paris, to the great scandal of
a society which had still some little respect left for morals and royal power.

Louis XIV. owed it to himself not to allow such excessive audacity to go
unpunished. At the same time the affairs of Spain were then in such a state
of confusion, the danger of exasperating the young Queen appeared so
great, that it was necessary to defer severe measures, however justifiable
they might be. It was only some months afterwards, when Philip V. had
quitted Madrid for the frontiers of Portugal, to take command of his army,
reinforced by a French corps under the command of the Duke of Berwick,

that Louis thought it possible to make himself obeyed and to strike what he
himself called a decisive blow.

“The complaints against the Princess des Ursins,” wrote the King to the
Abbé d’Estrées,[29] “have reached such a point that at length it is necessary
to take notice of them. I should have used less delay if I had only consulted
the welfare of the State; but I was compelled to wait until the King quitted
Madrid. I had reason to foresee that he would be only too much influenced
by the Queen’s tears, that they might hinder him from deferring with
sufficient promptitude to my advice.... If the King offers resistance, let him
see how onerous is the war which I am waging for his interests. Do not tell
him that I will abandon him, for he would not believe you; but let him
understand that whatever may be my affection for him, I can, if he does not
respond thereto, make peace at the expense of Spain, and grow tired of
supporting a monarchy wherein I only see disorders and contradictions in
matters the most reasonable that I may urge in his own interest. In fine, after
such an éclat, nothing short of success will do; my honour, the interest of
the King, my grandson, and that of the monarchy are concerned therein....
The directions that I give you are absolutely necessary for my service, but
the consequences will be disagreeable for you. They have not ceased to
make mischief between my grandson and yourself; matters have made such
an impression that he has already on several occasions requested me to
recall you.”

Louis XIV. gave the Abbé, therefore, an order to leave forthwith, adding
to the expression of his lively regret the assurance that this disgrace, wholly
involuntary as it was, should not damage his future fortunes. Such was the
extremity to which a subject had brought the most absolute prince in
Europe. It may thus be seen what extensive roots the woman had already
thrown out in Spain who balanced so nicely the power of the French King
in his grandson’s court. It will shortly afterwards be more clearly apparent;

but if the éclat of such a part enhances the importance of Madame des
Ursins, her character remains singularly compromised by it. However
indulgently we may be disposed to look upon it, we cannot dissever from a
system of policy the unworthy hostility waged by a Frenchwoman against
two ambassadors of her sovereign with so cruel a perseverance. The
Cardinal d’Estrées was desirous of carrying the same measures in Spain as
Madame des Ursins; he there represented their common master with a
loftier title and a more legitimate authority. His errors of conduct, which
were numerous, had in some sort been forced upon him, and if he had the
misfortune to fall into ambushes, to another person must be attributed the
fault of preparing them. In that period of two years, the least honourable of
her political life, the Princess had solely as a stimulant her egotistic and
impatient ambition. In subordinating to her interests those of two
monarchies, in alleging as an excuse for the violence of her attacks the right
of her own superiority, she confirmed in the minds of her adversaries by her
example the truth, that for ardent natures it is less perilous to exercise than
to pursue power.

Philip, reduced by the Queen’s absence to his natural indolence, opposed
no resistance to the injunctions of his grandfather. Assailed in her tenderest
affections, wounded in her dignity as a sovereign, and resenting at fifteen
years of age that twofold outrage in as lively a degree as in the maturity of
life, Marie-Louise restricted herself at first to a disdainful silence which,
nevertheless, revealed the hope either of a terrible vengeance or a speedy
retaliation. Madame des Ursins submitted to the commands of her sovereign
with the stately haughtiness, the expression of which is conveyed in one of
her very best letters to Madame de Noailles. The consciousness of the great
services rendered by her to both monarchies with an inviolable fidelity, the
bitter astonishment at finding her relative, until then so devoted, “prefer to
herself persons who were merely her allies, and whose wickedness ought to
have inspired her with horror,” her adroit flattery of Madame de Maintenon,

“to whom Providence had reserved, as by an assured privilege for her
virtue, the sacred mission of causing truth and justice in the end to
triumph;” “Heaven wishing to avail itself of her services for that purpose in
spite of herself;” such are the chief features of that clever defence, in which
calculation tempers rage and resentment, and which ought to be read in its
entirety in the interesting letters of the Princess.[30]

But the letters likewise of the great King which have come down to us,
show that there was no need of the foolish insult conveyed by her own
epistle, to make him angry with Madame des Ursins. The complaints raised
against her were then universal, at least at Versailles, and at a distance it
was difficult to separate those which were founded on false reports. With
the well-known temper which characterised Louis XIV., it must have
seemed a thing inconceivable that such importance should be conceded to a
woman whom he had placed there to do his bidding. Finding that his
grandson and the young queen were disposed to resist his recall of the
camerara-mayor, he addressed them as a father and as a king:—

“You ask for my advice,” he says to Philip V. (20th August, 1704), “and I
write you what I think; but the best advice becomes useless when it is only
asked for and followed after the mischief has happened.... You have hitherto
given your confidence to incapable or interested persons.... (And speaking
of the recall of Orry and of another agent) it seems, however, that the
interest of those particular persons wholly engages your attention, and at a
time when you ought only to have elevated views you dwarf them down to
the cabals of the Princess des Ursins, with which I am unceasingly
wearied.”

And to the Queen, Louis XIV. writes still more explicitly (20th
September, 1704,):—

“You know how much I have desired that you should give your
confidence to the Princess des Ursins, and that I forgot nothing that might
induce you to do so. However, unmindful of our common interest, she has
given herself up to an enmity which I do not comprehend, and has only
thought of baffling those who have been charged with our affairs. If she had
had a sincere attachment for you, she would have sacrificed all her
resentments, well or ill-founded, against the Cardinal d’Estrées, instead of
dragging you into them. Persons of your rank ought to keep themselves
aloof from private quarrels and conduct themselves with regard to their
own interests and those of their subjects, which are always identical. I must
therefore recall my ambassador, abandon you to the Princess des Ursins,
and leave her solely to govern your realms, or recall that lady herself. That
is what I think I ought to do.”

In these truthful and kingly words, the true cause of Louis’ dissatisfaction
may be seen, and the marginal note, true or false, in the despatch, appears
nothing more than a secondary accident.[31]

The politic monarch, moreover, thought it well to take extreme
precaution in timing his blow aright. The moment of the young King being
with the army and separated from the Queen was expressly chosen, for fear
lest the latter in her despair, might oppose some obstacle, to its execution.

FOOTNOTES:

[26] Saint Simon.

[27] “Elle a des mœurs à l’escarpolette.”

[28] Saint Simon.

[29] 19th March, 1704. Memoirs of Noailles, tom. ii., p. 297.

[30] Letter of May, 23rd, 1704. Geffroy’s Recueil, p. 169.

[31] The affirmation of Madame des Ursins was no doubt true, since in a letter
of hers to Orry, dated in 1718, she begs him to present her friendly
remembrances to M. d’Aubigny’s wife.

CHAPTER VII.

THE PRINCESS QUITS MADRID BY COMMAND OF LOUIS XIV.—
AFTER A SHORT EXILE SHE RECEIVES PERMISSION TO VISIT
VERSAILLES.

Madame des Ursins had received Louis XIV.’s command to withdraw
into Italy. Quitting Madrid as a State criminal (en criminelle d’état), the
Princess directed her steps towards the land indicated for her exile. We must
refer, however, to “The Memoirs of Saint Simon” those of our readers who
are desirous of admiring the presence of mind with which Madame des
Ursins, recalled thus unexpectedly and struck by the Olympian bolt,
suffered herself to be in nowise disconcerted, but skilfully managed to
retreat slowly and in good order, yielding ground only step by step,[32]
without appearing to disobey, she found time to arouse her friends at
Versailles into action, “who representing the severity of such a fall for a
dictatress of her quality, urged that the King, having been obeyed, and
having glutted his vengeance, a feeling of commiseration ought to be shown
thereafter, and that it was not advisable to push the Queen to extremity.”
These reasons commented upon by the Duke d’Harcourt, a man of great
weight in the affairs of the Peninsula, by Marshal de Villeroy and the
Noailles, prevailed with Louis XIV., who granted the Princess his
permission, ardently solicited, to stop at Toulouse and there take up her
abode. That was but the first step to a rehabilitation towards which laboured

with equal ardour, though by very different ways, the youthful spouse of
Philip V. and the grave companion of Louis XIV. Madame de Maintenon,
accepting willingly the part of missionary of Divine justice, held it as a
point of honour not to deceive the hope of the illustrious accused, who had
attributed those functions to her at a juncture so à propos. And whether that
she felt a real affection for Madame des Ursins, whether that she wished to
mitigate the Duchess of Burgundy’s regret for her sister’s vexation,
whether, in short, she feared to see Louis XIV. lose by so abrupt a change
all authority over the affairs of Spain, she was disposed in every event to
serve the exile. The Princess, to give time for the storm to expend its fury,
well knowing that acts hastily determined upon are ordinarily the least
durable, did not seek to hurry matters herself with the French King, but
wrote to Madame de Noailles, hoping that her letter might be shown: “You
are not ignorant of my attachment and respect for Madame de Maintenon;
the obligations that I owe her are ever present to me, and the reliance that I
place in the generosity of her heart.”[33] All the correspondence from
Toulouse is in that vein, and, still further, she adroitly represents herself as a
victim, as a woman disabused of worldly grandeur, and afflicted solely at
having displeased Louis XIV.

This conduct allayed the mutterings of the spent tempest. The court grew
accustomed to behold in her an unfortunate noblewoman resigned to her
exile with an antique patience.

At the end of four months passed in the capital of Languedoc, in the
depth of a retreat enlivened by an assiduous correspondence with the two
courts, Madame des Ursins received permission to appear at Versailles and
there to justify herself. The intervention of Madame de Maintenon had
nothing more in it than was perfectly natural under the circumstances; not
that she had the desire to govern Spain, as Saint Simon affirms, nor even
France, however entirely she might govern Louis XIV. What she desired to

establish on either side of the Pyrenees was a species of moral control of the
house of Bourbon. And, by keeping her informed of the most minute
particulars touching the King and Queen, by inspiring the Duchess of
Burgundy’s sister with the duteous affection of the elder for her aunt,
Madame des Ursins rendered the Marquise de Maintenon the only service
the latter cared for, and the only one, to speak the truth, which could add
anything to her importance.

The motives of Louis XIV. were of a very different kind, and his politic
mind did not hesitate to sacrifice to them his grievances, however legitimate
they might be. Far from pacifying the Court of Spain, the departure of the
Princess des Ursins had been the signal for an outburst of the most complete
anarchy. To the rule exercised by the Queen had succeeded an entire
absence of direction, and matters were conducted with an incoherence so
shocking, that M. de Torcy having exhausted both his advice and his
patience, opened with perfect terror the despatches drawn from that
Pandora’s box. The accord—at least apparent, which the preponderance of
Madame des Ursins had maintained among the members of the despacho by
the intervention of the Duke de Montellano, her creature, was abruptly
broken up, and the Austrian party gathered strength from the effect of that
disorder and that universal dissolution. The Archduke, proclaimed King of
Spain by the Emperor under the name of Charles III. and recognised in that
quality by England and Holland, had just landed at Lisbon; the campaign
opened against the Portuguese had ended, after some ephemeral successes,
by a sort of disbanding of the Spanish army, through want of clothing, pay,
and provisions, in the supply of which nothing was done after Orry’s
departure, recalled to France from the same motives as the Princess.
Gibraltar, the defence of which had been confided by an inexplicable
negligence to fifty men, was torn away for ever by a handful of British
seamen from the crown of the Catholic kings; Catalonia, Arragon, the
kingdom of Valentia, made ripe for insurrection by the Prince of Darmstadt,

were on the eve of escaping from their allegiance. At the beginning of 1705,
the armies of Philip V. were composed of five or six thousand men in rags,
their tottering fidelity daily tampered with, and the little band of French
auxiliaries exhausted itself in fruitless efforts to retake Gibraltar, which,
covered as it was by the English fleet, remained mistress of the Straits, after
the first disaster inflicted on the French marine in that war which was
destined to cost it its last vessel.

To the government of prime ministers, and still more that of women,
Louis XIV. had an insuperable antipathy. It must therefore have cost him
much to renounce the flattering hope of seeing his grandson make practical
application of the lofty instructions in which his personal royalty reflected
itself with so much splendour; but such a prince as he knew but too well
that a political idea is valueless when it remains inapplicable. Impressed
with the sorrowful conviction, he was compelled to recognise that Philip’s
ailing temperament rendered all equilibrium between intelligence and will
impossible, so far so that that unhappy Prince could not elude his fate save
by escaping from himself. In the approaching perils which the disasters of
the French armies foreboded, the hope of preserving Spain even under the
dictation of Madame des Ursins was better, after all, than the certainty of
losing that crown by estranging the camarera-mayor. After the battle of
Blenheim, the defection of the Duke of Savoy and the disastrous Italian
campaign, the restoration of the Princess to her charge was, on the part of
Louis XIV., a first concession to evil fortune, a determination for which his
sagacity triumphed over his repugnance. And so Saint Simon ought to have
seen, instead of representing the triumph obtained by Madame des Ursins at
Versailles as the inexplicable effect of a species of sudden fascination.

That victory suddenly transformed her who was but a short time
previously an accused person into “a court divinity.” The Spanish
ambassador, followed by a swarm of courtiers, went forth to meet her

outside the gates of Paris, and offered her his mansion during her stay in the
capital. There she received “all France” we are told.[34] Her every look was
interpreted, and the words she addressed to ladies of the highest
consideration impressed them with a rapturous sense of her condescension.
Nothing could exceed the King’s attentions in every way that could
contribute to her honour and distinction, and from the majestic fashion with
which it was all received, with such a rare admixture of grace and
politeness it reminded the beholders of the early days of the Queen-Mother.
Whether the particular determination of the King shone through this marked
graciousness, or that the well-known dexterity of the Princess did not allow
of any doubt of her success, she was welcomed on all hands, not with those
timid precautions and that ambiguous reserve which characterise the
incertitude of courts, but with that lively, prompt and decided enthusiasm
which only greets unclouded favour and assured fortune. At the balls which
were given at the royal residences, Louis XIV., the Duchess of Burgundy,
and all the princes treated her with the most affable condescension. If Louis
XIV. showed great tact in appearing to attribute to his conversations with
Madame des Ursins a preconceived resolution which had really been the
simple result of events, and if the easy grace of the gentleman covered in
some sort the retreat of the politician, it will be readily imagined that the
Princess did not suffer herself to be beaten in address. When the desire to
see her return to the side of the young Queen of Spain was intimated to her,
she spoke of the disgust with which the condition of that miserable country
filled her, and which made it impossible to do any good there. To the King’s
impatience she opposed the impaired state of her health, and placed herself
under medical treatment, having at that identical moment a real interest in
being pronounced out of health. She delayed from day to day a departure
that was more and more pressed for, cautiously making it understood that in
order to avoid the mishaps and the mistakes of the past, the safety of Spain
must be sought in a complete unity of direction, and that the inevitable

preponderance of the Queen would constrain the placing of that political
direction, not in the embassy, but in the Palace. This was to demand nothing
less than a carte blanche to govern the kingdom; but however audacious in
itself such exigence might be, it offended no one, so glad were all
concerned, after so many mistakes, to find one head which could
courageously confront the responsibility of a situation that had become so
perilous. She was the only Frenchwoman who could govern Spain, and the
cabinet of Versailles, satisfied with having shown its strength, exhibited
henceforth that majestic condescendence towards her which is the flattery
made use of by monarchs in their relations with indispensable agents.

She was not in a hurry, therefore, to return to Madrid. Probably she was
anxious to enjoy her triumph, and by it to crush for a long while the
trembling jealousy of her enemies; perhaps, sure of setting out when she
chose, it was her aim to make her presence in Spain felt. Be that as it may,
we do not believe, as it has been supposed, that she herself was tired of her
political rôle whatever may have been the mask with which her prudence
sought to cover her ambition during her disgrace, the existence of that
ambition is clear enough as a matter of history. We admit nothing more, in
answer to the insinuations of Saint Simon, that dazzled with the royal
favour she had dreamed of supplanting Madame de Maintenon in the great
King’s confidence. Of a judgment eminently sound and precise, she had too
much of the practical in her character to cradle her imagination with such
chimæras. Madame des Ursins’ quick-sightedness fathomed all the
advantages she might derive from the general discouragement, and
promised herself to let nothing be lost by it either for herself or her
dependents, however equivocal their position might be towards her. She
procured the admission of D’Aubigny into the cabinet of Louis XIV., and, a
thing more difficult still, into that of Madame de Maintenon. She caused
Orry to be reinstated in his former functions, at the same time that one of
her most dangerous enemies, the father Daubenton, received an order to

quit Madrid, where his restless nullity had lost itself in a maze of intrigues.
Authorised in a manner to form her ministry, she nominated the President
Amelot as Ambassador for Spain, a diplomatist although very high minded,
yet of somewhat subaltern ability, one of the lights of that magistracy from
which Louis XIV. loved to recruit the staff of his government, and whence
Madame des Ursins herself sprung on her mother’s side. The Marshal de
Tessé was appointed to the command of the army, and Orry, a pupil of
Colbert and a distinguished financier, was one of those clever and hard-
working citizens who were amongst the best of French ministers of that
epoch. This selection, equally excellent for both monarchs, was better still
for the Princess, to whom it guaranteed a valuable concurrence without
leaving her to apprehend any resistance. Those three men, from the very
moment of their arrival in Madrid, found themselves face to face with two
grave difficulties. The first was the opposition of the grandees; the second, a
foreign invasion. Aristocratic conspiracies were hatching in the capital. The
Archduke Charles had landed in Catalonia, and several noblemen were
endeavouring to clear the road for him as far as Madrid. The Marquis de
Leganez was the soul of this plot. Ever since the accession of Philip V. he
had eluded taking the oath of allegiance: and later, summoned to take up
arms against the Archduke, he had refused. From that moment he became a
suspected person. His sole refuge was a conspiracy: and that was his
destruction. Arrested by order of the new administration, he was conducted
to the fortress of Pampeluna, afterwards to Bordeaux, whence his vain and
tardy protestations in favour of Philip V. failed to extricate him. This
energetic blow struck terror into the hearts of the grandees and prepared the
triumphal return of the Princess.

FOOTNOTES:

[32] “A lents tours de roue.” St. Simon, tom. vii.

[33] Recueil of M. Geffroy, Letter lvi.

[34] Saint Simon.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE PRINCESS TRIUMPHS AT VERSAILLES.

In the balls given at Marly, she appeared loftily self-possessed, easy and
familiar by turns, ogling people one after another with her eye-glass; and at
one of these balls she made her appearance with a tiny spaniel under her
arm, as though she had been in her own house, and (which was more
remarked than anything else) the King caressed the little dog on several
different occasions, when he went up to converse with her, and he did so
nearly throughout the evening. “She had never before been seen to take so
grand a flight.”

Madame des Ursins, who, though a woman of imagination, was, as we
have said, but little liable to be dazzled, might still have been pardoned
giving way during these months of royal favour to an excess of
intoxication; but above all, and at the same time that she displayed the
treasures of her continual and inexhaustible conversation, she evinced a
lively appreciation of the King’s mental qualities. She returns to the subject
afterwards too frequently, and enters too minutely into detail of what she
discovered in him, not to show on her part a truthfulness stronger than
flattery. She never speaks of the King otherwise than as l’homme du monde
le plus aimable, as the meilleur ami, and le plus honnête homme du monde.

“If I had further, Madam, as you observe to me (she writes to Madam de Maintenon) the
happiness of his being more accustomed to me, I ingenuously confess to you that it only
depends upon his Majesty to perceive that I find him very good company. Really, although
I can boast of having, in my time, entertained in France, Italy, and Spain, all the wittiest
and most agreeable persons therein, I have never been so much pleased with them as with
his Majesty. You must own that this is a very frank avowal.”

There were not wanting those who even went so far as to suppose that the
views of Madame des Ursins went much further—“the age and health of
Madame de Maintenon tempting her.” The question must have occurred to
the Princess, it was hinted, whether the prospect of replacing her in France
was not more alluring than any she was likely to meet with in Spain. Such
conjectures, however, touching the inmost secrets of a woman’s heart, are
more easily formed than verified.

That which appears far more certain is, that independently even of
politics there was a mental triumph achieved by her in this close contact
with the great King. Madame de Maintenon, Madame des Ursins, and Louis
XIV. were all three for some time under the same spell: “I often recall to
mind your ideas and that amiable countenance which so charmed me at
Marly,” Madame de Maintenon writes to her a year later; “do you still
preserve that equanimity which allowed you to pass from the most
important topics of conversation with the King to indulge in badinage with
Madame d’Heudicourt in my cabinet?” Madame des Ursins, who was only
at that moment a bird of passage, was of those in whom the delight of
pleasing and the feeling of success doubly enhanced every innate grace.
That slight fascination which she probably underwent, she repaid with a
shower of sparkling phrases.

Louis XIV. himself was seduced both by her grace and her talent. He had
expected, according to all accounts, to find in Madame des Ursins a woman
of the Fronde, somewhat post-dated: instead of that he discovered a person

whom it cost little to be naturally a person of authority, with a capacity for
governing, and whose social powers never failed of their charm, so elevated
were their characteristics. She, even as a third party, from her intercourse
with Madame de Maintenon, felt herself grow quite young again. Of these
three potential persons, the assertion may be hazarded that Madame des
Ursins was still that one who best maintained her position, possessed the
happy knack of turning all things to advantage through her lucid common
sense: of the three she played her part the most unrestrictedly, and therefore
so much the better, through an energetic will in carrying out what an acute
judgment told her was best.

Her brow encircled with the halo of victory, Madame des Ursins, after a
year’s absence, re-entered that Spain which she had quitted humiliated: she
returned to it amid the acclamations of its populace, welcomed in all its
cities as a sovereign. The citadels fired salutes as she passed; the Spanish
Court went out to meet her as far as Burgos; the King and Queen received
her at some two leagues from Madrid. She returned strengthened by
disgrace, so much the stronger that her absence had proved injurious,
treating henceforward as between Power and Power with the Court of
Versailles, which, yielding to a political necessity, recognized and
graciously accepted, had restored her with its own hand to the summit of
power, and seemed, by that signal preference, to menace beforehand all
those who should pretend to struggle against her sovereign mission.

Once re-established in Spain, Madame des Ursins, thus acting in
harmony once more with Louis XIV., set herself to pursue a more measured
course, more regular and thoroughly irreproachable with relation to those
whose envoy she was. She took no step save in concert with the sagacious
ambassador M. Amelot. If the letters she addressed to Madame de
Maintenon, and which commence immediately after her departure from
Paris, do not reveal her genius in all its vigour and brilliancy, they at any

rate allow us to divine it in certain passages, and give us clearly the chief
outlines of her character. The natural tone of her mind was serious, positive,
somewhat dry at bottom, but frank, deliberate, and bold. Unlike Madame de
Maintenon, she had political ideas which she dared not only avow, but put
into execution. Before all else she decided upon the complete restoration of
the King’s authority. With reference to a claim advanced by the grandees
against the captain of the guards, she was anxious to break up effectually
that cabal of the grandees who profited by the weakness of the new régime
in order to create titles and prerogatives for themselves: otherwise it would
be the means of throwing Spain again into the same embarrassments as
those in which France found herself during the Fronde, “when Frenchmen
only busied themselves with provoking one another.” She was of opinion
that the chiefs of that party should feel the effects of the King’s displeasure
before there was time to receive replies from France, in order that it might
clearly appear that it was a determination taken by the King of Spain
himself, and not a suggestion of others:
“Do not be frightened, Madame, I entreat you, at these resolutions. It is fortunate that the
grandees have given us such a lucky opportunity of mortifying them. Lacking strength and
courage, these haughty nobles are ceaseless in their attempts to overthrow the authority of
their king, and against whom I am incensed beyond measure for all which they did so long
as they had the uppermost in the Despacho (Privy Council).”

The virile tone of that paragraph carries us far beyond Madame de
Maintenon. There was one thing, however, of more importance to Madame
des Ursins than appeasing the grandees, and that was to procure troops and
find the means of paying them. That done, she might laugh at every other
difficulty. “Would to heaven,” she exclaimed, “that it were as easy to get the
uppermost over the priests and monks, who are the cause of all the revolts
you hear of!”

The first portion of the Princess’s labours was accomplished. Her most
dangerous enemies had fallen: she reigned. But there yet remained a few
hostile nobles, and she resolved to strike at them. One of them, formerly her
ally, the Duke de Montellano, president of Castile, excited the suspicion of
this mistrustful woman. She manifested towards him, from the moment of
her return, a haughty coldness. She dreaded to see in a post of such
eminence a man placed by his birth amongst her worst enemies.
Montellano, offended at her attitude towards him, tendered his resignation.
The King hesitated, but the Princess made him accept it, and the corregidor
of Madrid, Ronquillo, a man of obscure origin, was nominated to the
presidentship. Amelot was equally mistrustful of certain grandees in the
Privy Council, as was the Princess; and, whether they tendered their
resignation or that it was required of them, the Duke de Montalto and the
Count de Monterei were replaced by devoted partisans of the Princess. The
high aristocracy, indignant at this manœuvre, worked against her in an
underhanded opposition, in which the double character of the Duke de
Medina-Cœli was more and more developed. Their plans were foiled in the
very outset, but we shall see them again make their appearance upon the
political arena at a moment when it required nothing less than all the power
and skill of Madame des Ursins to triumph over them.

The Princess was, in fact, triumphing on the very brink of a volcano.
Spain was in a blaze, and every day seemed to call in question the existence
of that throne under the shadow of which she had come to reign. Lord
Peterborough had torn Barcelona from Philip V., and the greater part of its
garrison had recognised the Archduke, who, acting henceforward as King of
Spain, had just made his entrance into that city amidst the acclamations of
the Catalan people. The principal fortresses of the province had shared the
fate of the chief city; and on one side the insurrection spread to Saragossa,
whilst on the other, the important city of Valencia proclaimed Charles III.
The situation was little better in the west of the kingdom, for an Anglo-

Portuguese army had penetrated into Estramadura, commanded by a French
refugee who had been made an English peer,[35] and whose hatred pursued
Louis XIV. on every field of battle. Constrained to carry on the struggle
simultaneously in Flanders, Italy, and beyond the Pyrenees, in order to
defend the integrity of a monarchy which more and more hesitated in its
obedience, the French King had just sent to Spain thirty battalions and
twenty squadrons, which it became necessary to supplement by despatching
a new army. Unhappily, the time was approaching when the French soldiery
had more cause to dread their own generals than those of the enemy; and
these forces, besides being insufficient, were placed under the command of
Marshal de Tessé, a cunning courtier but mediocre general, incapable of any
initiative strategy, and whose sole study was to carry out to the letter the
personal instructions of Louis XIV. and Chamillard. However, either from
want of sufficient resources or want of skill, Tessé failed this once in the
execution of his master’s formal orders, which directed him to suspend all
his operations in order to retake Barcelona at any cost. A siege languidly
conducted in presence of a fleet mistress of the seas, on which the French
flag dared no longer show itself, was followed by a disaster aggravated by
the presence of the King of Spain and by bitter recriminations between the
two nations together engaged in that fatal enterprise. Alike indifferent to
misfortune and success, still it might be seen in Philip, since the presence of
his rival in Spain, that there was an indomitable resolution to die sword in
hand in defence of the sole right which touched his pride and his
conscience. Before Barcelona he had displayed a useless courage, and when
de Tessé rendered it necessary to raise the siege by his refusal to continue it,
the insurrection had closed to the King every road which gave access to his
capital. To rejoin the Queen Regent in the heart of the two Castiles, Philip
was compelled to take, in mortal agony, the road to France, in order to
direct his steps by way of Rousillon towards Navarre, thus giving his

enemies a plausible pretext for turning his going out of the kingdom into a
desertion of the crown.

Trials not less formidable awaited the young Queen at the hands of
fortune. Excited by the greatness of the danger, but finding a succour in the
sang-froid of Madame des Ursins, which her youth and ardour denied her,
adored by the inhabitants of Madrid, to whom in the hour of crisis she
confided herself with a touching helplessness, the Savoiana, by the spell of
her gentle and steady virtues, alone maintained the royal authority in a
country where “it was necessary to have almost an army in each
province.”[36]

At length the day came when despair reigned everywhere save at the
Retiro Palace. The square d’Alcantara, defended by ten battalions, the last
remains of the Spanish army, had surrendered without fighting. Whether
through folly or treason, Salamanca had also just fallen into the enemy’s
hands, and the Anglo-Portuguese troops advanced by forced marches upon
Madrid, in order there to proclaim Charles III. There was nothing left but
flight—but to quit a city of proved devotion and confide in others of
doubtful fidelity. The King had rejoined the French army; the Queen,
accompanied by her camerara mayor and a few female attendants, was
compelled to repair to Burgos, in order there to keep up at least some
shadow of legitimate government. The little party was without resources,
money, almost without victuals. The silver plate belonging to the palace
was hastily flung into the melting-pot; the sovereign of so many realms,
after having borrowed by pawning so many thousand pistoles, packed up
with her own hands those jewels which were a tribute to her from the new
world, the pride and recreation of her sorrowful youth, previous to pledging
them to the Jew brokers. Her court, lately so numerous, had been dispersed
by the wind of adversity, not with the intent of influencing events, but,
shameful to record, only to await them; and Marie Louise enceinte with the

first child of her marriage, shaped her course towards the land of the Cid,
resolved to go thither and defend the monarchy even among those rugged
mountains which had been its cradle. Destitution prevailed throughout the
solitudes of Castile as well as in those poor posadas, bare as an Asiatic
caravanserai. If in the central provinces the populace showed itself faithful,
it was not without extreme suffering and the most cruel perplexity that the
journey could be accomplished by almost impracticable ways, through
detachments of the enemy, launched in pursuit of the royal retinue. Nothing
certainly is more honourable to the memory of the Princess des Ursins than
the letters in which she relates with charming naturalness the daily
accidents of that adventurous life, which she supported at the age of sixty-
five with all the gaiety of a youthful tourist.[37]

In the midst of these disasters, therefore, Philip V. found a firm support in
the devotion of the people and in the indefatigable zeal of Madame des
Ursins. At Madrid and in all the provinces, except Catalonia, the allies were
received with that repugnance which presages a disastrous future and belies
the most brilliant promises of victory. Madame des Ursins multiplied
herself: speeches, letters, overtures—she spared nothing to obtain from the
people the money indispensable for carrying on the war. She thus arrested
desertion, consolidated in Old Castile, and even in Andalusia the King’s
authority; she propagated, in short (if we may so express it) the feeling of
devotedness. She knew how to surround Philip V. with the austere majesty
of royal misfortune endured with courage and consoled by the watchful
love of the nation. At the same time her cheerful and confident spirit
restored to its serenity the little court of Burgos. She locked within her own
bosom her discouragements and inquietudes: she clung to hope, and that
successfully. She sought and found in her own firm will consolation
justified by events. All her correspondence at this epoch, at times amiable,
witty, affectionate, at others grave, precise, and altogether politic, full of

facts, plans, exact details, worthy of a minister, and of a great minister too,
shows the extraordinary genius of the woman. It was not she alone,
certainly, who saved the dynasty, for it was necessary to fight and conquer
to do that, but she was unquestionably one of the most vigorous instruments
ever made use of by Providence to work out its own purposes in defence of
a nation.

She had some ideas about war too—we do not say they were of the best,
but she had some—and about plans of defence and the choice of generals.
She anticipated coming dangers, which she laid bare and exposed without
allowing herself to be discouraged by them. She described the native troops
in their true colours, the places of importance entirely unprovided for,
according to Spanish custom; she energetically claimed help from France,
and after asking for strong battalions in the body of her letter, adds in a
postscript that she has advised the King of Spain to have prayers offered up.
She did not forget to send appropriate flatteries also to Madame de
Maintenon.

A few days after the arrival of the Duke of Berwick, in order to thank
Madame de Maintenon for such aid, she spoke to her about Saint-Cyr, well
aware that nothing could be more agreeable, and knowing the weakness of
mothers.
“The Queen has highly approved of all your Saint-Cyr rules; our ladies are anxious to
have them, and I am working hard at translating them into Spanish to afford them that
satisfaction. If her Majesty were not under engagements very different to those of the
young ladies of Saint-Cyr, I really believe that she would like to be one of your pupils.”

Her flattery knew well in what language to couch itself; but there were
moments at which, discontented at feeling Spain abandoned and lost sight
of by Versailles, she became plain spoken even to rudeness. Great
allowance, however, ought to be made for the Princess’s occasional

bluntness when it is remembered that she was then in her sixty-fourth year,
suffering from rheumatism and a painful affection of one of her eyes, a
condition altogether very unpropitious in which to commence the career of
arms in the capacity of field-marshal to a youthful Queen. Notwithstanding
all this, however, she exerted herself to enliven everybody, to console, to
inspire fortitude and a spirit of joyousness around her, never to see things
on their darkest side or through her ailing eye, but to obey rather the
buoyant spirit and an inclination to hope for the best, which was natural to
her.
“It often happens, Madame,” she writes to Madame de Maintenon, “that when one
thinks all is lost some fortunate circumstance occurs unexpectedly which entirely changes
the face of things.” “I think,” she says in another letter, “that fortune may again become
favourable to us; that it is with its favours as with too much health; I mean that one is never
so near falling sick as when one feels oneself so remarkably well, nor so near being
unfortunate as when our measure of happiness is full to the brim. I reverse the medal, and I
await some consolation which may effectually alleviate my sorrows. I wish, Madame, that
you would do the same, and that your temperament were your best friend, as mine is that
on which I can surest reckon; for I think, to speak frankly, that I have more obligation to it
than to my reason, and that there is no great merit in possessing that tranquillity of mind, of
which you are disposed, in your extreme kindness, to think me possessed, and on which
you bestow so much praise.”

Madame de Maintenon, in fact, who, strong-minded as she might be, was
nevertheless perpetually tormenting herself and wailing about something or
other, continually eulogised that natural equanimity which she envied, that
courage allied with good temper, that amiability, and that beau sang qui ne
laissait rien d’âpre et de chagrin en elle.

Her letters to Madame de Maintenon from Burgos, admirably paint this
characteristic tranquillity of mind. “To enliven you,” she writes, “I must
give you a description of my quarters. They consist of a single room, which
may measure twelve or thirteen feet at most. One large window which will
not shut, facing the south, occupies almost entirely one side. A somewhat

low door gives me admittance to the Queen’s chamber, and another still
smaller opens into a winding passage, into which I dare not go, although it
always has two or three lamps lighted in it, because it is so badly paved that
I should break my neck there. I cannot say that the walls are whitewashed,
for they are so dirty. My travelling bedstead is the sole piece of furniture I
have in it, besides a folding stool and a deal table, which latter serves me
alternately for a toilette, to write upon, or to hold the Queen’s dessert—
there being no receptacle in the kitchen or elsewhere wherein to put it. I
laugh at all this ... and amidst all the sombre occurrences which have
befallen us, I console myself with my own reflections. I imagine that
fortune may take a good turn, and I calmly and trustfully wait for those
consolations which are powerful to assuage all my trouble.”[38] “Action
becomes you,” Madame de Maintenon might remark with great truth. It
was, in fact, an original and most distinctive feature in the Princess des
Ursins’ character, that of having been known to be a person so thoroughly
calm in the main during a career so active and a destiny so agitated; and it
was to this very characteristic equanimity that she was indebted, after so
abrupt a downfall at sixty-two, for the lot reserved for her of dying in peace
and of old age at eighty. But there are many other traits worthy of study in
her composition, and which place her in perfect contrast with her friend
Madame de Maintenon.

FOOTNOTES:

[35] The Duke of Berwick.

[36] Despatch of Marshal de Tessé to Chamillard, 4th Feb., 1706.—Mémoires
de Noailles, tom. ii., p. 380.

[37] Letters of the Princess to Mad. de Maintenon, from the 24th of June to
26th October, 1706.—Tom. iii., pp. 305 to 367.

[38] Mém. de Noailles, tom. iii., p. 375, and Letters to Mad. de Maintenon,
tom. iv., p. 163.

BOOK II.

CHAPTER I.

SARAH JENNINGS AND JOHN CHURCHILL.

The succession of the Duke d’Anjou to the Spanish crown had, in fact,
destroyed the balance of power in Europe; and our William the Third, then
recently dead, but even beyond the grave the most resolute enemy of Louis
the Fourteenth, had bequeathed to him the new league which bore the name
of the Great Alliance, and which had for its aim to place the Spanish crown
upon the head of the Archduke Charles, the son of the Emperor of
Germany; or in default of dispossessing Philip the Fifth of his kingdom, to
trace round the two nations of France and Spain a limit which should never
be overpassed by the ambition of either. All hope of success for the
Archduke Charles—the legitimate successor to the last four effete kings of
Spain—all the means which he might have of preserving in Europe two
houses of Austria, and of continuing that grand Austrian duality which the
sceptre of Charles the Fifth had produced, but which was then broken in
twain, rested chiefly upon the English alliance. There, for the adversaries of
Louis the Fourteenth, was the knot of the question. With the treasures of
England, with her navy, with her troops also, together with the advantage of
her situation, which allowed of her doing so much mischief to France, the
Imperialists might effect much; without her they could scarcely do
anything. Hence with them the necessity of keeping in power a party
favourable to them—the Whigs, a party which preferred that ancient duality

to the new duality—in other words, the ambition of Louis the Fourteenth to
therewith augment the House of Bourbon, and in effect more dangerous
than the other to the English nation. But that necessity created another: it
was requisite to have near Queen Anne some one who, at Court, should be,
as it were, the advanced sentinel of the Whigs, attached to the interests of
Austria, and who would hinder from penetrating, or at any rate prevailing
therein any other interest than theirs. This precaution was so much the more
indispensable that Queen Anne’s feeling towards the Whigs was purely
official, and not a genuine sympathy. To these zealous partizans of
Parliament and liberty, to these avowed heirs of those who had made the
revolution of 1640, she secretly preferred the Tories. Amongst them she
found admirers of the absolute order of government that Louis XIV., lord of
France instead of being legislator of it, had for too long a time substituted
for the too much contemned troubles of the Fronde. And the rather as they
might be termed, under that relation, a veritable French party, did she lean
towards them, because they were the defenders of the royal prerogative.
The exactions, the delays, the innumerable formalities of constitutional
monarchy, wearied her to such an extent, that more than once the rumour
ran that she was willing to treat for the recall of her brother, the ex-King
James the Third. These reports were not without foundation, as the Duke of
Berwick tells us in his “Memoirs”; the desire alone of preventing civil war,
to which fresh endeavours on the part of that prince would give rise, was
alleged as the generous motive for relinquishing a design which the disgust
of a too-limited power had inspired. The Whigs well knew how to conjure
that peril. But they had always to dread that whilst continuing to wear the
crown, Anne might not so much consider the welfare of England as that of
her own pleasure, where such welfare interfered with her peculiar
sympathies; and lest in turning to the side of the Tories she might carry
away from the Archduke Charles the support of England, in other words his
chief reliance. The question was how to guarantee themselves from that

untoward eventuality? One means devised—and it was not the less
available in this case of royalty exercised by a woman—was to secure to
Queen Anne the adhesion of the Mistress of the Robes, Lady Churchill, the
clever wife of the brilliant soldier, afterwards Duke of Marlborough.

This remarkable woman, who, without possessing great talents, and with
the disadvantage of an imperious and capricious temper, exercised for so
long a period such exceptional influence over public affairs, was the second
of the three daughters of Richard Jennings, a country gentleman of good
family but moderate fortune, her mother being Frances Thornhurst,
daughter of Sir Gifford Thornhurst, of Agnes Court, in Kent, and his
heiress. She was born at Holywell, near St. Alban’s, 29th May, 1660, the
very day of the restoration of Charles the Second. In recompense for the
services rendered by their father during the civil wars, the two elder sisters
were received when very young into the household of the Duchess of York.

When only twelve years old, Sarah Jennings had the good fortune to
become the inseparable companion of the Princess Anne, who was about
the same age. Her beauty was not characterised by regularity of feature, but
she possessed an animated countenance, with eyes full of fire. She was
small of stature, more piquante than imposing, and her chief charms were
centered in her magnificent tresses, the delicacy of her features, and certain
peculiar graces of mind and person. These attractions were enhanced by a
conversation full of vivacity and intelligence. Prudent and virtuous—for
even Swift, who was otherwise the remorseless enemy of the Duke and
Duchess of Marlborough, renders homage to the virtue of the latter—in the
midst of a corrupt Court, and enjoying the highest favour of the Royal
Family, she had for admirers some men of the highest rank in England.
Amongst those who aspired to her hand may be cited the admired Earl of
Lindsay, afterwards Marquis of Ancaster, “the star and ornament of the
Court,” whose suit she rejected for that of the young and handsome Colonel

Churchill. A single trait suffices to prove the lady’s attractiveness—the
avaricious John Churchill wooed and wedded her although all along he
knew Sarah to be altogether portionless.

This successful wooer—afterwards Lord Churchill and Duke of
Marlborough—who had entered the army at sixteen, was the son of a poor
cavalier knight who had come to London after the Restoration. Love, not
War, was the first stepping-stone to his subsequent high fortune. The Duke
of York, heir to the Crown, “young and ardent in the pursuit of pleasure,”
became enamoured of Arabella Churchill one of the maids-of-honour to his
first wife, and afterwards his avowed mistress. Through this lady’s interest,
her elder brother John obtained a pair of colours in the Guards. In his
twenty-third year he made his first campaign in the Low Countries when
Charles and Louis united their forces against Holland. Distinguished by his
commanding stature and handsome face, he was known to the French
soldiery as the “handsome Englishman.” Turenne complimented him on his
gallantry and “serene intrepidity” before the allied armies. The Marshal had
been attracted to him by his courage, and is said to have laid a wager, which
he won, on the subject of Churchill’s gallantry, on the occasion of a post of
importance having been abandoned by one of his own officers. “I will bet a
supper and a dozen of claret,” said he, “that my handsome Englishman will
recover the post with half the number of men commanded by the officer
who lost it.” The event justified the Marshal’s opinion. Emboldened by the
praise of such a general, Churchill solicited but did not obtain the command
of a regiment from Louis XIV.,[39] the great King refusing his services, as
he declined those of Prince Eugene a few years later. He was esteemed one
of the handsomest and most attractive gentlemen of the day. Lord
Chesterfield, the arbiter elegantiarum, declared that the grace and
fascination of young Churchill was such, that he was “irresistible either by
man or woman.”

On his return to London at the close of the war, the young soldier became
attached to the household of the Duke of York, and rose rapidly in that
witty, gallant, and corrupt Court, where shone the Grammonts, Rochesters,
and Hamiltons, and where Churchill sought the society of the sultanas who
shared with Charles the government of England. The handsome Churchill
became, for a short time, the object of the violent but fickle fondness of the
head sultana, the Duchess of Cleveland. On one occasion the audacious
gallant was very nearly caught in the frail beauty’s apartments by “old
Rowley,” and only escaped by leaping from the window at the risk of his
life. For this exploit the grateful Duchess presented her daring lover with
five thousand pounds. Churchill made no scruple of receiving the money, so
early had the sordid propensity for gain taken hold of him, and with it he at
once bought an annuity of five hundred a year, well secured on the estate of
Lord Chesterfield’s grandfather, Halifax.[40]

After some disputes and obstacles on the part of the Churchill family,
which the Duchess of York herself took the trouble to obviate, the two
lovers were united in the month of April, 1678: and whilst the husband
advanced in the confidence and favour of James, his wife made still more
rapid progress in the affections of the young Princess, his daughter.

During many years of married happiness, Churchill testified the greatest
affection for his wife, and always kept her minutely informed—even amidst
councils and battle-fields—upon the state of public affairs, and showed the
most entire deference and the liveliest affection for her. Most of his letters
end with these words: “I am yours, heart and soul.” Lady Churchill
governed this great man, in fact, like a child—who himself governed kings.
Like the Princess des Ursins, she possessed incontestably certain qualities, a
liking and capacity for public business, a knowledge of men, the
shrewdness of her sex, the obstinacy of her race, an inconceivable love of

domination; but she was hard, vindictive, insatiable of honours and wealth,
and united to the pride of a queen the rage of a fury.

Aided by his sister, by the King’s imperious mistress and his own
incontestable merit, Churchill climbed fast up the ladder of preferment. He
obtained successively the command of the only dragoon regiment in the
service, a Scotch peerage, and the post of Ambassador to the Court of
France. Lord Churchill, however, was destined to be advanced still higher
in court favour through the influence of his wife and his own genius as a
general.

At the Revolution of 1688, he coldly foorsook James II., his benefactor,
and carried over his formidable sword to the House of Orange. The
Revolution augmented his fortune. Created Earl and General by William
III.; Duke, Knight of the Garter and Commander of the British Armies by
Queen Anne. Marlborough was one of those men whom conviction
astonishes, devotedness confounds; who acknowledge no other law than
that of their own interest, no other deity than success, and which the
uncontrollable current of human affairs not unfrequently brings rapidly to
the surface. Cradled in revolutions, he had seen the Commonwealth pass
away, the Stuarts fall, the House of Orange proclaimed. He had taken part
in intrigues, plots, apostacies, defections: doubt alone survived every other
political instinct of his heart. Faithful to the very brink of misfortune, he
ever adhered unswervingly until the dawning of the evil days. Well aware
how quickly dynasties expire in a country convulsed by revolutions, he had
learnt to anticipate approaching catastrophes, and to secure to himself
beforehand an appui amongst the victorious survivors. Whilst he was
defending the cause of the House of Orange in Europe, he corresponded
secretly with the Stuarts, kept up assiduous relations with the little Court of
St. Germains, and made underhand preparations for marrying one of his
daughters with the Pretender, then ex-King (James III.), at St. Germains,

and, perhaps, on the morrow de facto King of England. But if
Marlborough’s soul was mean and sordid, his genius was vast and powerful.
In parliament, at St. James’s, in foreign councils, in foreign courts, on the
field of battle, everywhere he dominated men. His education had been so
very much neglected that he could scarcely write correctly his native
English, and yet, when he rose to speak in the House of Lords, the entire
assembly hung upon his words, and the most consummate orators, the heads
of the British forum, were envious of that natural eloquence which without
effort went straight to the heart; and he exercised that charm even upon his
foes, to such a degree that Bolingbroke once remarked to Voltaire, when
speaking of him: “He was such a great man that I have forgotten his
vices.”[41]

At the period of which we are now treating, Marlborough was the most
powerful personage in England: by his wife, the Queen’s favourite, he ruled
the household; by the Whigs, become his friends, parliament and the
ministry; by his rank and his military popularity, the army; by Prince
Eugene, his comrade in arms, the councils of Austria; by his old friend
Heinsius, the States-General; by the weight of his name, his conduct and
address, the suppleness of his character, Prussia and the princes of the
Empire. It was he who raised their regiments, who regulated their
subventions, who appeased their quarrels. He was the head and arm of the
coalition. As potent as Cromwell, more of a king than William III.; without
affection or hatred, he justified the saying of Machiavelli: “The universe
belongs to the phlegmatic.”

We will now revert to his no less celebrated wife, who, as Lady Churchill
and Duchess of Marlborough, so long and wholly swayed the mind and
ruled the court of Queen Anne. Brought up in such close intimacy with the
Princess, Lady Churchill had assumed from childhood an absolute
ascendancy over her mind. Anne was indolent and taciturn; she delighted in

the lively talk of her companion and bosom friend, and loved her in spite of
her haughty temperament, to which her own easy disposition yielded
without offering the slightest resistance. Married to a sullen and
insignificant husband, whose sole delight was centred in a crapulous love of
the bottle; she had lost her only son during his minority—had seen her
father, James II. dethroned, her brother, the Chevalier St. George,
proscribed, and, to the exclusion of that well-beloved brother, she was
compelled to leave her crown to a stranger—the Elector George of
Hanover, for whom she felt an invincible aversion. Anne confided all her
griefs to her favourite Mistress of the Robes, and by degrees an ardent
affection for her inseparable companion, which had in it all the delicate
tenderness of feminine friendship, sprung up in the Princess’s bosom. Such
was the strength of the attachment that it was the desire of the Princess that
all distinction prescribed by etiquette should be waived. She required that in
their epistolary correspondence they should treat each other as equals, under
the assumed names of Mrs. Morley and Mrs. Freeman. Lady Churchill
chose the latter, which would be, she said, the emblem of her “frank, open
temper.” Under these assumed names they wrote frequently to each other to
communicate their sentiments of joy, anguish, hope or fear, according to the
events of the day, and gave themselves up unrestrictedly to the momentary
impulse of their hearts.

“I both obtained and held the place in her service,” the favourite goes on
to relate, “without the assistance of flattery—a charm which, in truth, her
(the Princess’s) inclination for me, together with my unwearied application
to serve and amuse her rendered needless; but which, had it been otherwise,
my temper and turn of mind would never have suffered me to employ.
Young as I was when I first became this high favourite, I laid it down as a
maxim, that flattery was falsehood to my trust, and ingratitude to my
dearest friend.... From this rule I never swerved: and though my temper and
my notions in most things were widely different from those of the Princess,

yet, during a long course of years, she was so far from being displeased
with me for openly speaking my sentiments, that she sometimes professed a
desire, and even added her command, that it should be always continued,
promising never to be offended at it, but to love me the better for my
frankness.”

FOOTNOTES:

[39] This curious fact was lately ascertained by M. Moret, through the
discovery of an inedited, but authentic document, in the Archives de la Guerre in
Paris. It appears in a letter of Lord Lockhart, the English Ambassador at Paris,
who asks that the colonelcy of a regiment might be given to Churchill. It is dated
27th of May, 1674.—Archives de la Guerre, vol. 411, No. 193.

[40] Chesterfield’s Letters, November 18th, 1748.

[41] Voltaire, Beuchot’s edition, tom. xxxvii. Lettre xii., p. 172.

CHAPTER II.

STATE OF PARTIES IN ACTION ON THE ACCESSION OF ANNE—
HARLEY AND BOLINGBROKE AIM AT OVERTHROWING THE
SWAY OF THE DUCHESS—ABIGAIL HILL BECOMES THE
INSTRUMENT OF THE DUCHESS’S DOWNFALL.

The year following that in which the Duke d’Anjou succeeded to the
throne of Spain saw Anne Queen of England.

On her accession Queen Anne had found three parties in action—the
Tories, the Whigs, and the Jacobites. The first asserting the sovereignty of
the royal prerogative; the second the extension of public liberty; the last
demanding the exclusion of the Protestant George of Hanover, designated
by the Commons as the Queen’s heir, and the recall of the Chevalier St.
George, the Romanist son of James II., then an exile in France, where Louis
XIV. had welcomed him under the title of James III.

Of these three parties, the last, who were desirous of a revolution with a
change of dynasty, naturally found themselves excluded from public affairs;
the Queen, facile and conciliating, divided the power of the State between
the two others, and chose a ministry comprising the most eminent men
among both Whigs and Tories.

Those statesmen jointly carried on the government for four years, after
which the opposition of their sentiments and interests became so violent
that it divided them. The Tories, representing the landed interest, which had
suffered during the war, clamoured for peace with all their might; the
Whigs, on the contrary, representing the monied interest, had lent their
funds to the State, and desired the continuance of hostilities, as it enhanced
the value of their capital. The Whigs triumphed in this first struggle. They
ejected, in the first instance, three Tories from the Ministry, and afterwards
obtained the dismissal of all the rest—Mansel, Harley, and Bolingbroke,
and then ruled without division. They reckoned amongst their ranks the
most illustrious men of the day: Marlborough, the great soldier; the skilful
financier, Godolphin; the formidable speaker, Robert Walpole; the army,
public opinion, parliament, and even the very heart of the Queen, through
the Duchess of Marlborough, who, intoxicated with her almost unlimited
sway, no longer deigned to ask, but commanded.

The influence of the Duchess of Marlborough at the court of Queen Anne
was now well understood by the continental powers of Europe. When
England, in 1703, received a foreign potentate as her guest, the Duchess,
was, of all her subjects, the object peculiarly selected for distinction.
Charles, the second son of the Emperor of Austria, having recently been
proclaimed, at Vienna, King of Spain, in opposition to the Duke of Anjou,
completed his visits to sundry courts in Germany, whither he had repaired
to seek a wife, by paying his respects to Anne of England. Anne received
her royal ally with great courtesy at Windsor, whither he was conducted by
Marlborough, and there entertained with a truly royal magnificence. All
ranks of people crowded to see the young monarch dine with the Queen in
public, and his deportment and appearance were greatly admired by the
multitude, more especially by the fair sex, whose national beauty was, on
the other hand, highly extolled by Charles. The Duchess of Marlborough,
though no longer young, still graced the court which she controlled. It was

her office to hold the basin of water after dinner to the Queen, for the royal
hands to be dipped, after the ancient fashion of the laver and ewer. Charles
took the basin from the fair Duchess’s hand, and, with the gallantry of a
young and well-bred man, held it to the Queen; and in returning it to the
Duchess, he drew from his own finger a valuable ring and placed it on that
of the stately Sarah.

It was two years after this visit that Charles sent a letter of thanks for the
assistance granted him by the Queen against the French, which he
addressed to the Duchess of Marlborough, “as the person most agreeable to
her Majesty.” The King might have added, as a partisan most favourable to
the aid afforded him, and most inimical to the sway of France, which, by
the will of the late King of Spain, Charles the Second, had been unjustly
extended over the Spanish monarchy.

At the time of the overthrow of the Tories, she had pushed obsession of
her royal mistress even as far as constraint. To the Whigs, who had
proscribed her brother, Anne preferred the Tories; but, in spite of these
sympathies the favourite had demanded the dismissal of the Ministry, and
the Queen had yielded, though not without the deepest grief, to her
imperious Mistress of the Robes.

Thus got rid of by an intrigue, the Tories, and at their head the two
celebrated statesmen, Harley and Bolingbroke, worked steadfastly in the
dark to regain power. Harley was a skilful and eloquent orator. He had
quitted the bar to enter parliament, and his suppleness as well as his talents
had rapidly carried him on to the Speakership and the Ministry. He had
specially directed his attention to finance, and passed for the most skilful
financier of his day. A man of wit and taste, he loved books and
manuscripts, and patronised the most illustrious writers of the reign: Swift,
the English Rabelais, Pope, Boileau, and Prior, the Regnier of Great Britain.

But he was not unjustly reproached for his obstinacy of character, the
changeableness of his opinions, his proneness to descend to little means,
and an unfortunate passion for drink.[42]

The other chief of the Tory party was Henry St. John, so well-known
under the name of Bolingbroke.[43] He descended from an old Norman
family allied to the royal house of Tudor. His grandfather, as though he had
foreseen the future, had bequeathed him the greater part of his property, and
Bolingbroke began the world under the happiest auspices of birth and
fortune. At twenty-six, after a career of youthful licentiousness, he married
and entered parliament. He had all the necessary qualifications for playing a
distinguished part therein: a noble countenance, ready eloquence, an
incredible capacity for work, a mind which later astonished Voltaire, a
memory so retentive that he avoided reading mediocre books from the fear
of retaining their contents. At thirty, his lofty and copious oratory,
unceasingly fed by study of the ancient models, captivated both Lords and
Commons. His powerful and versatile genius embraced at once poetry and
jurisprudence, history and the belles lettres. He was associated, like Harley,
with the first writers in England—Pope, Prior, Swift, Dryden, even with
Addison himself, the Whig poet and essayist. He was one of those
consummate orators who, joining grace to eloquence, was the foremost
alike in pleasure or business. He was in the habit of saying that only fools
were unable to find or enjoy leisure. He possessed, in short, the peculiar
talents and vices which were destined later to immortalise as well as
disgrace Mirabeau.

Uniting their talents and their rancour against the imperious and
uncompromising woman who had compassed their disgrace, Harley and
Bolingbroke, in their turn, had set about overthrowing the sway of the
Duchess. They craftily endeavoured to undermine, therefore, that friendship
which constituted her strength, and sought for a rival who might supplant

her in the Queen’s heart. There was then at court a young lady named
Abigail Hill, the daughter of a bankrupt merchant of London, who, when in
poverty, had been taken by the hand by the Duchess of Marlborough, to
whom she was cousin, and through her influence appointed bedchamber-
woman to the Queen. By a singular chance, Abigail Hill was also a cousin
of Harley, who during his administration married her to Masham, a
dangling official of the royal household, who had been indebted for his post
rather to his birth and connections than any personal merit.

Up to the period of Marlborough’s brilliant victory of Ramilies (May,
1706), the influence of the Duchess over the mind of her sovereign was not
visibly lessened by her own indiscretion, or by the arts of her opponents.
From the moment of Anne’s accession, she had flung herself with ardour
into politics. To dominate was her favourite passion. And she imagined that
she could decide affairs of State as easily as she directed a petty intrigue, or
suppressed a squabble within the interior of the royal household. Instead of
using the absolute sway she had over the Queen with tact and moderation,
she exercised it with an imprudent audacity. Her party predilections were
diametrically opposed to those of Anne, who was sincerely attached to the
principles of the Tories, and who ardently desired to bring them into power.
The Duchess did not allow her a moment’s repose until she had, by
concession after concession, surrounded herself by the chiefs of the Whig
party, whom she at heart detested. Hence an endless succession of piques,
misunderstandings, and jars between the royal Lady and her imperious
Mistress of the Robes. The glory and the important services of the Duke
had, however, long deferred the explosion of these secret resentments; but it
was when Harley found it impossible by any means to establish himself in
the favour of the Duchess, and gain her over to his interest, that he hit upon
a plan which succeeded to the utmost, as trifles often do when more
important engines fail. The one he used was ready to his hand in the person
of the bedchamber-woman, who had been placed about the Queen by the

Duchess herself. In a letter, supposed to have been addressed to Bishop
Burnet, the Duchess gives a brief account of this person, who was her
kinswoman, in explanation to his inquiry as to the first cause of her
disagreement with the Queen.

Abigail Hill—a name rendered famous from the momentous changes
which succeeded its introduction to the political world—was the
appropriate designation of the lowly, supple, and artful being on whose
secret offices Harley relied for the accomplishment of his plans. Mistress
Hill at this time held the post of dresser and chamber-woman to her
Majesty. The world assigned certain causes for the pains which the proud
favourite (the Duchess) had manifested to place her cousin in a post where
she might have easy access to the Queen’s ear, and obtain her confidence.
The Duchess, it was said, was weary of her arduous attendance upon a
mistress whom she secretly despised. She had become too proud to perform
the subordinate duties of her office, and proposed to relieve herself of some
of them, by placing one on whom she could entirely depend, as an
occasional substitute in the performance of those duties which even habit
had not taught her to endure with patience. Since after the elevation of the
Duke, in consequence of the battle of Blenheim, she had become a princess
of the empire,[44] she was supposed to consider herself too elevated to
continue those services to which she had been enured, first in the court of
the amiable Anne Hyde, then in that of the unhappy Mary of Modena, and
since, near her too gracious sovereign, the meek, but dissembling Anne.

The ungrateful kinswoman had been early acquainted with adversity,
which was the remote cause of her ultimate greatness. “Mrs. Masham,” the
Duchess tells us, in her succinct narrative, “was the daughter of one Hill, a
merchant in the city, by a sister of my father. Our grandfather, Sir John
Jenyns, had two-and-twenty children, by which means the estate of the
family, which was reputed to be about four thousand pounds a year, came to

be divided into small parcels. Mrs. Hill had only £500 to her fortune. Her
husband lived very well for many years, as I have been told, until turning
projector, he brought ruin on himself and family. But as this was long
before I was born, I never knew there were such people in the world till
after the Princess Anne was married, and when she lived at the Cockpit; at
which time an acquaintance of mine came to me and said, she believed I did
not know that I had relations who were in want, and she gave me an account
of them. When she had finished her story, I answered, that indeed I had
never heard before of any such relations, and immediately gave her out of
my purse ten guineas for their present relief, saying I would do what I could
for them.”

Not contented with conferring important benefits on Abigail’s brothers
and sister, the Duchess tells us that even the husband of Mrs. Masham had
several obligations to her. “It was at my instance,” says the indignant
benefactress, “that he was first made a page, then an equerry, and
afterwards groom of the bedchamber to the Prince; for all which he himself
thanked me, as for favours procured by my means.”

Towards the Queen, Mrs. Hill displayed a servile, humble, gentle, and
pliant manner, in singular contrast with that of the commanding and
haughty Duchess. Anne, accustomed to opposition and remonstrance, nay,
sometimes rebukes, upon certain points she had at heart, was delighted to
find that as regarded both religious opinions and politics, her lowly
attendant coincided with her. Mrs. Hill was, or pretended to be to serve her
purpose, an enemy to the Hanoverian succession, if not a partizan of the
exiled Stuarts—subjects on which the Queen and the Duchess were known
to have frequent controversies, which sometimes degenerated into angry
disputes. Such was the woman whom the Tories set up to oppose and
undermine the influence of the redoubtable Sarah. Mrs. Masham was able
to give them, by means of her court-appointment, continual access to the

Queen. She had neither the wit nor the intelligence of her rival, but she
pleased Anne by the simplicity of her manners and the amenity of her
temper. Moreover, two powerful ties, political and religious, though
strangely contradictory in their sympathies, attached her to her royal
mistress. An ardent Jacobite, she, equally with the Queen, desired the return
of the Pretender; like her, too, she was a zealous Protestant.

Carrying out Harley’s injunctions, Mrs. Masham strove secretly to sap
the power and credit of the Whigs at Court, by daily representing to Queen
Anne the disquieting influence of their chief, Marlborough—master, as he
was, of the parliament, the army, the ministry, the court,—more sovereign,
in fact, than the Queen herself; and she recalled to mind that last dismissal
of the Tories, so rudely and imperiously dictated by the Duchess. The
Queen, moved even to terror by such advice, drew closer by degrees to her
new confidante, and shortly manifested towards her a favour which the
Duchess of Marlborough was the first to perceive. But instead of seeking to
revive a friendship still endeared to the Queen, the Duchess complained
sharply of it being shared. At the same time she heaped every species of
contempt, sarcasm, and insult upon Mrs. Masham, spread the vilest
calumnies about her, and then, perceiving the inutility of her efforts,
directed the current of her wrath against the throne. In the month of August,
1708, during a thanksgiving service at St. Paul’s on the occasion of the
battle of Oudenarde, Anne found that she had not put on her diamonds, and
blamed the Duchess for the omission, it belonging to her duty as Mistress of
the Robes. The quondam favourite made her Majesty a haughty reply; and
Anne, hurt at it, repeated her reproaches with greater warmth. The Duchess,
furious, imposed silence upon her royal mistress. “I don’t ask you for an
answer,” she exclaimed loud enough to be heard by the court and
congregation, “don’t answer me.” The Queen remained silent, dreading
further scandal, but she did not forget that day’s incident.[45]

A year afterwards, during the autumn of 1709, another altercation took
place still more deplorable. Anne was in the habit of allowing a bottle of
wine to be daily carried to one of her laundrymaids who was ailing, without
previously asking leave of the Mistress of the Robes. This coming to the
knowledge of the Duchess, she ran after the Queen one day as Anne was
proceeding on her charitable errand, reproached her for having usurped her
functions, and behaved with such violence that the lackeys at the bottom of
the stairs could overhear what she said. Indignant at this, Anne rose to leave
the room, but the Duchess prevented her by placing her back against the
door, and, during an hour, exhausted herself by launching invectives against
her sovereign. Having sufficiently vented her rage, the angry woman ended
by saying that doubtless she should never see her again, but she cared very
little about that. “I think,” calmly replied Anne, “the seldomer the better.”
The Duchess at length quitted the room, but from that day the links of their
hitherto close friendship were rudely broken, their correspondence
interrupted, and the Queen gave her entire confidence to Mrs. Masham.

The subtle Abigail was ever on the watch to closely observe the frequent
disagreements between her Majesty and the Mistress of the Robes, and did
not fail to turn them to skilful account. When the storm had subsided, and
the Queen poured into her friendly ear confidential complaints of the absent
Duchess, Abigail’s sympathy, acquiescence, and responsive condolences,
were ever ready, and effected their purpose. The lady-dresser thus gradually
wormed herself into the Queen’s affections, and as gradually undermined
what remained of friendly feeling between her powerful kinswoman and
their royal mistress. Every one at court had become aware of the influence
of the new favourite before the Duchess herself perceived it; but it was not
in the power of the artful relative, nor of her tool, the Queen, much longer
to blind the woman whom they had, with true vulgarity of mind, gloried in
deceiving.[46]

From the time of Mrs. Masham’s admittance to close attendance on the
Queen, the Duchess seemed in a constant state of irritation and annoyance.
Her letters to Anne showed the mortification and vexation she endured, and
prove the petty and ungrateful conduct of the bedchamber-woman, whose
hold on the Queen’s regard was sustained by a thousand mean and paltry
instances of treachery to her benefactress. That Queen Anne, who had once
been really attached to a woman like the Duchess of Marlborough, could
condescend to replace her by such a rival is not a little surprising, and
shows the true bent of her character to have been such as to render her
unworthy of the friendship of an honest and high-minded woman. That the
Duchess herself entered into details of petty injuries, and descends to justify
herself, cannot be wondered at; for such subjects were forced upon her, and
much as it galled her feelings to be obliged to notice what she held in
contempt, still she had no other course to pursue.

At length, the Duchess perceived clearly enough that she had been
hoodwinked in certain matters by the Queen and Mrs. Masham, and that
without any reasonable cause for resorting to mystery or deception. Having
discovered that not only was Mrs. Hill’s marriage known to the Queen,
though she had denied any knowledge of the event, but that her Majesty had
been herself at the wedding, and given a large dower to the bride, the
Duchess immediately wrote to Mrs. Masham, to desire an explanation of
her reasons for concealing so important an occurrence from one whom she
had every reason to consider her only friend. The cautious answer which
she received to her question was dictated, as she easily perceived, by no
other than Harley, whose tool she now saw, too late, her unworthy cousin
was; and it became sufficiently plain that her empire over the mind of the
weak Queen was gone.

The Duchess was, whatever her faults, upright, honest, truthtelling, and
fearless; and she was long before she could suspect the treachery and

meanness of a dependent; and still longer in believing that the woman who
had for so many years been her pupil, and had been accustomed to her
frankness, could condescend to a low cabal, and, displacing her from her
councils, solace herself with the society of a person so immeasurably her
inferior.

The betrayed Mistress of the Robes could now trace the whole system of
deception which had been carried on to her injury for a considerable time;
her relative and former dependent being the chief agent—her sovereign the
accomplice. She could account for the interest which Harley had now
acquired at court by means of this new instrument. She could explain to her
astonished and irritated mind certain incidents, which had seemed of little
moment when they occurred, but which afforded an unquestionable
confirmation of all that she had learned.

When the Duchess could no longer doubt the mortifying truth, she
communicated the fact to her friend, Lord Godolphin, and to her husband,
then abroad. Marlborough wearied with these, as he considered them, petty
dissensions, wrote a somewhat stern letter to his wife. The great soldier was
annoyed and distressed at the details of paltry wrongs which he was obliged
to hear, and grown impatient, forgot that sometimes,—
“Dire events from little causes spring;”

he did not contemplate his own, his wife’s, and his friend’s disgrace, from
the contemptible quarrels among the women about the court.

“If you have good reasons,” he writes, “for what you write of the
kindness and esteem the Queen has for Mrs. Masham and Mr. Harley, my
opinion should be, that my Lord Treasurer and I should tell her Majesty
what is good for herself; and if that will not prevail, to be quiet, and to let
Mr. Harley and Mrs. Masham do what they please; for I own I am quite

tired, and if the Queen can be safe I shall be glad. I hope the Lord Treasurer
will be of my mind; and then we shall be much happier than by being in a
perpetual struggle.”

At length the mask of affected humility assumed by Mrs. Masham was
thrown off entirely; and, confident in the support of her royal mistress, the
upstart favourite exhibited all the scorn and insolence which was in her
nature. The Duchess expatiates with feminine pertinacity upon the stinging
impertinences and insulting condescensions she had to endure from her
lately exalted cousin. One instance she dwells on with bitter recollection,
for it was the first time the minion of the Queen had dared to show her how
little she regarded her.

When having with difficulty obtained an interview with Mrs. Masham,
the Duchess upbraided her with her treachery, and observed, that she was
certain no good intentions towards herself could have influenced her
actions, Abigail replied:—

“... very gravely, that she was sure the Queen, who had always loved me
extremely, would always be very kind to me. I was some minutes before I
could recover from the surprise with which so extraordinary an answer
struck me. To see a woman whom I had raised out of the dust put on such a
superior air, and to hear her assure me, by way of consolation, that the
Queen would always be very kind to me!—I was stunned to hear her say so
strange a thing!”

The Duchess of Marlborough was now, therefore, at open variance with
her cousin. Towards her Majesty she stood in a predicament the most
curious and unprecedented that perhaps ever existed between sovereign and
subject. The amused and astonished court beheld Anne cautiously creeping
out of that subjection in which the Duchess had, according to her enemies,
long held the timid sovereign.

A confidential friend of the Duchess, Mr. Mainwaring, remarks of her, in
one of his letters, that she was totally deficient in that “part of craft which
Mr. Hobbes very prettily calls crooked wisdom.”[47] Apt, as she herself
expresses it, “to tumble out her mind,” her openness and honesty were
appreciated, when at an advanced age, and after she had run the career of
five courts—by that experienced judge, the Lady Mary Wortley Montagu,
who often presumed upon the venerable Duchess’s candour in telling her
unpalatable truths, which none but the honest could have borne to hear. It
was this uprightness and singleness of mind which rendered the Duchess
unwilling to believe in the duplicity and the influence of her cousin. Warned
of it by Mr. Mainwaring, it was not until she found in the Queen a defender
of Mrs. Masham’s secret marriage, that the Duchess was roused into
suspicion. It was then that she communicated her conviction to Lord
Godolphin and to Marlborough, and besought their advice and assistance.

The Duke had just then prepared measures for carrying on the war, and
had completed every arrangement for his voyage into Holland; the only
thing which detained him in England was, says Cunningham, “the quarrel
among the women about the court.” He desired his often-offended Duchess
“to put an end to those controversies, and to avoid all occasions of
suspicion and disgust; and not to suffer herself to grow insolent upon the
favour of fortune; “otherwise,” said he, “I shall hardly be able hereafter to
excuse your fault, or to justify my own actions, however meritorious.” To
which the Duchess replied, “I will take care of those things, so that you
need not be in any fear about me; but whoever shall think to remove me out
of the Queen’s favour, let them take care lest they remove themselves.”

It was not long before Marlborough perceived that the Duchess was not
mistaken in her apprehensions; nor before he became painfully aware of the
fact, that services of the greatest magnitude are often not to be weighed
against slights and petty provocations.

Queen Anne, however, had some pangs of conscience, in spite of her joy
at being emancipated from the thraldom of her haughty Mistress of the
Robes, in ill-treating the great general who had filled her reign with glory;
but the uninterrupted gossip which she delighted now to indulge in with her
waiting-woman compensated for all.

Soon after Marlborough had won the sanguinary battle of Malplaquet, the
celebrated trial of the noted Doctor Sacheverell took place; on which
occasion an incident occurred which completed the downfall of the
Duchess. The prosecution of Sacheverell had been advised by the Duke, lest
he should preach him and his party out of the kingdom.

FOOTNOTES:

[42] This habit of drinking had then invaded even the highest ranks of English
society, the Queen herself not being exempt. Walpole, Harley’s enemy, has traced
a curious and tolerably accurate portrait of him in his “Letters.”

[43] He was only created Viscount Bolingbroke in 1712, but we give him the
name by which he is best known in history.

[44] Lediard, vol. ii., p. 2.

[45] The extent of her insolence towards the Queen on this occasion is
scarcely conceivable. “The Duchess gave her her gloves to hold,” relates
Walpole; “and, on taking them back, suddenly turned away her head, as though
the breath of her royal mistress had imparted a disagreeable odour.”

[46] MSS. Brit. Mus., Coxe Papers, vol. xliv.

[47] Private Correspondence, vol. i., p. 105.

CHAPTER III.

SUCCESS OF THE CABAL, ETC.

The result of the trial of Sacheverell made Harley and the favourite sure
of the temper of the nation, and they resolved to hesitate no longer. The
cabal had succeeded, and the Queen, a tool in the hands of others, by
degrees gave up every appearance of regard for the Duchess, or of gratitude
to the Duke. Though still fighting his country’s battles and gaining immortal
honours, the cabal sought to overwhelm him with unkindness and
mortification at home. On the death of Lord Essex, the Queen was urged to
give the Duke’s regiment to Major Hill, Mrs. Masham’s brother.
Marlborough, highly indignant, insisted on Abigail being dismissed, or else
he would resign; but the efforts of Godolphin and other friends
accommodated the matter, and he was contented with the disposal of the
regiment being left with him. To prove, as it were, the influence of the
favourite, the Queen soon after gave Hill a pension of £1,000 a year; and
she made the Duke consent to raise him to the rank of brigadier.

It was Harley’s plan to overthrow the Ministry by degrees; and when
Lord Godolphin was dismissed from office, the triumph of the adverse party
was complete. Thus fell the most able, and perhaps the most patriotic
administration that England had possessed since the days of Elizabeth. It
fell by disunion in itself, by the imprudent impeachment of a contemptible

divine, and by the intrigues of the bedchamber, where a weak woman,
whom the constitution had invested with power, was domineered over by
one attendant and wheedled and flattered by another.

It was thus that, after seven-and-twenty years’ service and professed
friendship, Anne emancipated herself from all obligations, and shook off the
yoke which pressed too heavily on her mind, regardless of the confusion
into which her weak compliance with interested persons cast the country.

It was now that all the malice which had been long repressed burst out,
and poured forth its vengeance on the disgraced favourite. Among other
libellers in the service of the new Ministry Swift employed his great talents
to cover her with ridicule and obloquy. In the celebrated journal called “The
Examiner,” his unjust insinuations must have been even more galling than
his abuse. He represents the Duke and Duchess as extortioners and
dissipators of the public money, insatiable in their avarice, and greedily
swallowing all that they could get into their power, disposing of places, and
seizing on rewards in a manner the most odious. “Even the Duke’s
courage,” says Smollet, “was called in question, and this consummate
general was represented as the lowest of mankind.” Yet he did not resign;
for Godolphin and the Whigs, the Emperor, and all the allies implored him
to retain the command of the army, as otherwise all their hopes would be
gone.

The clamour raised by Dr. Sacheverell’s affair, not less than the
acrimonious temper of the Duchess, contributed to ruin the Whigs in the
Queen’s favour, who was present incognita during every debate. During the
course of Sacheverell’s trial, the government advocate, in order to establish
the true Whig doctrine, calumniated by the Doctor, uttered words which
seemed revolutionary to the royal ears. It will be readily understood that the
theory of absolute obedience, preached by Sacheverell and adopted by

certain Tories, was more consonant with the Queen’s taste than the maxims
of the Whigs, who asserted the dogma of the sovereignty of nations and
recognised their right of insurrection against royalty. Anne was a zealous
Protestant, and sincerely attached to the Anglican Church, of which she was
the head. She blamed the tolerance of the Whigs, and thought with
Sacheverell that it was necessary to defend the Church both against Popery
and indifferentism.

The Tories fomented these dissensions in an underhand way, turning
them dexterously against their enemies. The negotiations then set on foot in
Holland occurred still more favourably to advance their projects. Anne had
a horror of bloodshed: since her accession she had not permitted a single
political execution. She sighed deeply on hearing of the continual levies for
the war, and shed tears on receiving the long lists of dead and wounded
from the Low Countries. One day, having to sign certain papers relative to
the army, her tears were seen to blot the paper, as she exclaimed, “Great
God! when will this horrible effusion of blood cease?” The Tories, who, like
herself, wished for peace with all their hearts, adroitly fostered her grief.
With her, they deplored the butchery of Malplaquet, the increase of
taxation, the misery entailed by the interminable campaigns, and repeated
that it was time to put an end to the sufferings of the people. Such hideous
carnage seemed at last to cry aloud to Heaven for cessation. Pity and
conscience, so long stifled and tyrannised over, claimed at length to be
heard. Weighing well also a consideration no less potent over the Queen’s
heart, they represented that the Whigs were her brother’s most implacable
enemies—that they had set a price upon his head—that they (the Whigs)
would never recognise, as her successor, any other king than the Elector of
Hanover; that they (the Tories), on the contrary, felt neither repulsion nor
hatred for the Pretender, and that if the good of the country demanded it,
they would willingly favour his return. Finally they dwelt upon the odious

tyranny of the Duchess of Marlborough,[48] especially in the scenes enacted
at St. Paul’s and Windsor, and promised the Queen to deliver her from a
woman whom she had ceased to love, and who had begun to terrify her.

Lending a willing ear to such arguments, Anne gave herself up entirely to
Mrs. Masham, and the misunderstanding between the Queen and the
Duchess had become public, when a fresh outbreak of violence on the part
of the latter precipitated her disgrace.

On the occasion of a christening, at which Marlborough was to stand
godfather, the Duchess vowed that she would never consent to it if the child
were to bear the name of Anne, and she made use of an epithet which
neither a queen nor a woman could ever pardon. The word was duly
reported at St. James’s. Anne heard it with the deepest indignation, and so
gross an outrage extinguished any latent spark of tenderness left in her
heart. The downfall of the Duchess and the Whigs was resolved upon.

Recognising her error when too late, the Duchess requested an audience
of the Queen, in the hope of exculpating herself. Anne, who dreaded her
furious violence, replied that she could justify herself by letter, and to avoid
the chance of an interview, left London for Kensington Palace.

Explicit, however, as was this step, it did not stop the Duchess. She
despatched a letter to the Queen, in which she excused herself, on the score
of the impossibility of writing such a justification, and requested an
interview—a proposition the most alarming conceivable to the poor Queen,
on account of the advantage which her antagonist possessed in powers of
tongue. She therefore parried it as long as possible, and would evidently
have not assented at all, had not the Duchess extorted the permission by
stratagem. Unfortunately, however, for her success, she had told the Queen,
in a letter which preceded it, that she only desired to be seen and be heard

by her Majesty. There was no necessity, she said, for the Queen to answer.
The Queen, in fact, had answered so many of her tormentor’s letters in the
negative, that the Duchess, not foreseeing what would be the consequence
of this general preclusion of response in her Majesty’s favour, was resolved
to prevent further epistolary acknowledgment by following up her last letter
in person. She says, in the foolish “Account” which she gave to the world
of her “Conduct,” and which had the reverse effect of what she intended
(which is the usual case with violent relaters of their own story):—

“I followed this letter to Kensington, and by that means prevented the
Queen’s writing again to me, as she was preparing to do. The page who
went in to acquaint the Queen that I was come to wait upon her stayed
longer than usual; long enough, it is to be supposed, to give time to
deliberate whether the favour of admission should be granted, and to settle
the measure of behaviour if I were admitted. But, at last, he came out and
told me I might go in.”

The Queen was alone, engaged in writing. “I did not open your letter till
just now,” she said, “and I was going to write to you.”

“Was there anything in it, Madam, that you had a mind to answer?”

“I think,” continued poor Anne, who even now endeavoured to stop the
coming torrent of words, “I think there is nothing you can have to say but
you may write it.”

But as this was the very thing over which the Duchess thought she had
triumphed, she must have heard the proposal with contemptuous delight;
and she proceeded accordingly to pour forth her complaints.

“I cannot write such things,” exclaimed the haughty Sarah, alluding to
the grossness of the language attributed to her, adding, “Won’t your Majesty

give me leave to tell it you?”

“Whatever you have to say, you may write it,” was the royal answer.

“I believe your Majesty never did so hard a thing to anybody as to refuse
to hear them speak—even the meanest person that ever desired it.”

“Yes,” said the Queen, “I do bid people put what they have to say in
writing, when I have a mind to it.”

“I have nothing to say, Madam,” replied the Duchess, “upon the subject
that is so uneasy to you. That person (Lady Masham) is not, that I know of,
at all concerned in the account that I would give you.”

“You can put it into writing,” reiterated the Queen, who, desirous at any
cost of avoiding a quarrel, which, from the temper of her quondam
favourite, seemed inevitable, repeated the same words several times,
purposely interrupting the Duchess, who was already beginning to defend
herself.

In spite of the Queen’s injunctions, Sarah continued to affirm that she
was no more capable of making such disrespectful mention of her Majesty
than she was of killing her own children, to which Anne coolly remarked,
“There are, doubtless, many lies told on ‘both sides.’”

During a whole hour, nevertheless, the Duchess strove to establish her
innocence by protestations or prayers. But the Queen’s heart was
irrevocably closed. Desirous of terminating an interview that grew more
and more embarrassing, and remembering the scene in St. Paul’s, when her
Mistress of the Robes had told her to be silent and make no answer, and that
lately, in writing to her, the Duchess had said that she required no answer,
or that she would not trouble the Queen to give her one, Anne said, “You

did not require an answer from me, and I will give you none.” This frigid
resistance exasperated the Duchess, who, astounded to find herself caught
in her own trap, and taken at her word, declared, of course, that the phrase
was not intended to imply what it did; but the Queen, she says, repeated it
again and again, “without ever receding.”

The Duchess protesting that her only design was to clear herself, the
Queen repeated over and over again, “You desired no answer, and shall
have none.”

The angry but still politic Sarah next passed from prayers to reproaches.
“I will leave the room,” said Anne, with dignity.

“I then begged to know if her Majesty would tell me some other time.”

“You desired no answer, and you shall have none.”

On hearing these words, which left no further hope, the Duchess burst
into tears; then, as though ashamed of her weakness, she withdrew into the
gallery to suppress her passionate fit of weeping. Returning after the lapse
of a few minutes, she tried a last and decisive application:

“I have been thinking,” said the Duchess, “whilst I sat there, that if your
Majesty came to the Castle at Windsor, where I heard you were soon
expected, it would not be easy to see me in public now, I am afraid. I will
therefore take care to avoid being at the Lodge at the same time, to prevent
any unreasonable clamour or stories that might originate in my being so
near your Majesty without waiting on you.”

“Oh,” said the Queen, promptly, “you may come to me at the Castle: it
will not make me uneasy.”

The Duchess, however, still persevered. “I then appealed to her Majesty
again, if she did not herself know, &c. And whether she did not know me to
be of a temper incapable of, &c.”

“You desired no answer, and you shall have none.”

Finding Anne thus inflexible, the Duchess rose up in a towering rage at
having vainly humiliated herself, and gave vent to her passion in a storm of
recrimination.

“This usage,” concludes the Duchess, “was so severe, and these words,
so often repeated, were so shocking, &c., that I could not conquer myself,
but said the most disrespectful thing I ever spoke to the Queen in my life;
and that was, that I was confident her Majesty would suffer for such an
instance of inhumanity.”

She quitted the presence, in fact, exclaiming, “God will punish you,
Madam, for your inhumanity.”

“That only concerns myself,” drily answered the Queen.

“And thus ended,” says the Duchess, “this remarkable conversation, the
last I ever had with her Majesty.” (April 6th, 1710.)

Such, too, was the end of a thirty years’ friendship, and the last interview
between Anne and her once-cherished favourite.[49] The Duchess remained
in the household for a short time afterwards, but never saw her royal
mistress save on public occasions; and from that day the Queen never spoke
to her again.

FOOTNOTES:

[48] Bolingbroke says so in express terms: “The true cause (of the change of
Ministry) was her discontent,” &c.—Secret Memoirs of Lord Bolingbroke, p. 18.

[49] Private Correspondence of the Duchess of Marlborough, vol. 1, p. 301.

CHAPTER IV.

THE DISGRACE OF THE DUCHESS.

The disgrace of the Duchess involved the fall of the Whigs. A few days
after the scene at Kensington, Anne named two Tories to court
appointments, and next dismissed successively all the Whigs from the
Ministry—Boyle, Russell, Godolphin, and Walpole. They were replaced by
Bolingbroke, Harley, the Earl of Jersey, and the Dukes of Ormonde and
Shrewsbury. Anne spared only the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough—not
from compassion but through fear. The irate Mistress of the Robes drove
about London daily in her splendid equipage, and repeated at every visit she
made that she would publish the Queen’s letters, and that some day the
infamous motives which had brought about her disgrace would be
disclosed. Whilst the timid Anne grew terrified at these menaces, the
formidable Sarah remained at St. James’s, holding her head aloft and
dealing out bitter denunciations against her enemies the victorious Tories.

When the Duke of Marlborough came back from Flanders, during the
Christmas holidays, he met with the coldest reception possible. The usual
motion of thanks to him had been dropped by his friends for fear of its
being negatived by the Tory majority. The new ministers, however, waited
upon him, promising that he should have all his present military commands,
and also the nomination of the generals who were to serve under him. His

wife had never ceased making efforts at court, by means of “one person”
there, who happened to be in good favour with the Queen, and to whom the
Duchess wrote long accounts of the past, justifying herself, and exposing
the ingratitude, as well as malice, of her enemies. All these accounts that
gentleman read to Anne; but he might as well have read them to a stock or
stone. According to her Grace, the Queen never offered a word, good or ill,
except on one particular point. Lady Masham and Harley had employed
Swift and other writers to accuse the Duchess of having grossly cheated her
royal mistress of vast sums of money; and on that occasion her Majesty was
pleased to say, “Everybody knows cheating is not the Duchess of
Marlborough’s crime.” Where there was so much received in what was
deemed an honourable as well as regular way,[50] there was no great
temptation to embezzle and cheat; and the Duchess was in all respects a
higher-minded person than her husband, in whom love of money became at
last the ruling passion to such a degree as to make him stoop to all kinds of
mean and paltry actions. The Duchess, as Mistress of the Robes, boasts that
she had dressed the Queen for nine years for thirty-two thousand and some
odd hundred pounds; and she asks if ever Queen of England had spent so
little in robes! “It evidently appears,” says her Grace, “that, by my economy
in the nine years I served her Majesty, I saved her near ninety thousand
pounds[51] in clothes alone. Notwithstanding this,” continues the Duchess,
“my Lord-Treasurer (Harley) has thought fit to order the Examiner (Swift)
to represent me in print as a pick-pocket all over England; and for that
honest service, and some others, her Majesty has lately made him a Dean.”

Just at this moment, the Duchess thought herself obliged to appear at
Court “on account of some new clothes which, as Groom of the Stole, she
had by her mistress’s orders bought for her;” but the Queen charged the
only friend her Grace had there to advise her, as from himself, not to come.
It was scarcely possible, after this to think of retaining her office; and it

appears that the Duchess, of her own accord, sent in her resignation. Lord
Dartmouth, however, gives another version of the matter, as follows:—

Emboldened and urged by her Ministers, Anne requested Marlborough to
demand the return of the golden Keys which were the symbols of her office.
The Duke, who dreaded the consequences of such a step, entreated the
Queen to wait till the end of the campaign, promising that he would then
retire with his wife. But Anne was driven to extremity by calumnies that
reddened her cheek with shame, and she demanded the immediate return of
the Keys. Marlborough threw himself on his knees, and entreated her to
give him at least ten days’ respite. Anne consented to three days, and that
interval having expired, renewed her commands. The Duke hastened to the
palace, and demanded to be ushered into the presence. But Anne refused to
receive him until she received back her gold Keys from the Duchess, and
Marlborough at length resigned himself to encounter his wife’s anger. On
reaching home, he told the Mistress of the Robes that she must give up the
golden insignia of office, which she at first refused; but on his persistently
intimating the necessity of her resignation, she threw her gold Key on the
floor, and told him to do what he liked with it; and that then Marlborough
caught it up and carried it to the Queen.[52]

About one point there is no doubt—Anne accepted the resignation with
eagerness and joyfulness, and divided the Duchess’s Court places between
Lady Masham and the Duchess of Somerset. It astonished most people to
see the Duke consent to serve when his wife was dismissed—to see him
continue to hold command of the troops under the Ministry which had
sprung out of a bed-chamber squabble, and which was sure to thwart him in
all his measures. His enemies have generally accounted for this by
assuming that the Duke’s avarice was at the bottom of it; but his lady
assigns very different reasons. “The Duke of Marlborough,” she says,
“notwithstanding an infinite variety of mortifications, by which it was

endeavoured to make him resign his commission, that there might be a
pretence to raise an outcry against him, as having quitted his Queen’s and
his country’s service merely because he could not govern in the cabinet as
well as in the field, continued to serve yet another campaign. All his friends
here, moved by a true concern for the public welfare, pressed him to it, the
confederates called him with the utmost importunity, and Prince Eugene
entreated him to come with all the earnestness and passion that could be
expressed.” These were certainly powerful inducements, and they may have
mingled (together with that passionate fondness for a fine army which every
good general must contract) with Marlborough’s love of money.

Mr. Hallam says, with strong and proper feeling, “It seems rather a
humiliating proof of the sway which the feeblest prince enjoys even in a
limited monarchy, that the fortunes of Europe should have been changed by
nothing more noble than the insolence of one waiting woman and the
cunning of another. It is true that this was effected by throwing the weight
of the crown into the scale of a powerful faction; yet the House of Bourbon
would probably not have reigned beyond the Pyrenees but for Sarah and
Abigail at Queen Anne’s toilette.”[53]

The Queen, altogether unmindful of her former warm attachment to her
Mistress of the Robes, overjoyed to find herself free, wrote, with her own
hand, the dismissal of the Duchess, and gave herself up to her enemies.

The Duchess, quite beside herself with chagrin and fury, only thought of
some means or other of revenge. As a first step she demanded payment of
the arrears of her pension—a boon she had with great high-mindedness
refused on Anne’s accession. But that was not all. When she was about to
quit the sphere of her palace triumphs, she gave directions for the removal
of the locks from the doors and the marble chimney-pieces she had put up
at her own cost in her apartments. “It is all very well,” remarked the Queen

to her Secretary of State, “but tell the Duchess if she demolishes the
fittings-up of my palace, she may depend upon it that I will not build hers at
Woodstock.” The Duchess consented to abandon the chimney-pieces, and
withdrew at once to her country seat, near St. Alban’s, where she lived in a
style of great magnificence.

In the retirement of private life, Marlborough, worn out with the harass
attendant upon such a lengthened succession of arduous campaigns, and
wearied with political intrigue, now hoped to enjoy that which he had for
years longed for—the society of those so dear to him, from whom he had
been so many years separated. But it was not to be. Quiet happiness in the
evening of his eventful life was not destined to be his lot. His wife, for
whom he had ever shown such strong and unalterable affection, was a
woman thwarted in all her designs—outraged, injured, mortified, and
disgusted with the court and with the world. She was no longer young, nor
possessed of the great attractions which had formerly thrown a veil over the
deformities of her temper, which, always violent, had now become soured
by adversity. She had no indulgence left for others. Dissatisfied with her
friends, her children, and everything about her, she was disposed to wrangle
and dispute on the slightest provocation.

Next came a great affliction—more deeply felt by both, perhaps, than
either the fickleness of the Queen or the virulence of their political enemies
—the death under their own roof at St. Alban’s of their long-tried, attached,
and amiable friend, Lord Godolphin. This sad event determined
Marlborough to reside abroad until happier days dawned—their ungrateful
country no longer offering any charms for them. His long-cherished desire
for rural leisure, retirement, and the quiet enjoyments of private life had
ended in disappointment. The master of wealth and great possessions,
palatial edifices rising around him, and rank, glory, and well-earned honour
his own; yet was he the mark of envy, hatred, and jealousy. Not even could

he and the Duchess enjoy and return the ordinary courtesies of society
without incurring observation and provoking suspicion. His enemies had
triumphed, his Queen was cold and unjust, and now his dearly-loved friend,
his adviser and confidant, the sharer of his sorrows, his consoler and
encourager, was no more. A blight had fallen upon his existence.

Marlborough sailed from Dover to Ostend in October, 1712, and his wife
followed him in a few months afterwards, she having remained behind to
arrange his or her own affairs. The Duke was furnished with a passport, it is
said, by the instrumentality of his early favourite and secret friend
Bolingbroke. His request to see the Queen before his departure from her
dominions was refused; and the apathetic Anne never again saw her great
general, or the woman for whom she once professed so strong an
attachment. When it was told her that both he and the Duchess had left
England, she coolly remarked to the Duchess of Hamilton—“the Duke of
Marlborough has done wisely to go abroad.”

Thus was the illustrious soldier, then sixty-two years of age, and the
Duchess in her fifty-second year, driven from their country by the
machinations of a party too strong for them to resist without the especial
favour of the Queen.

FOOTNOTES:

[50] The Marlborough family were said to be in the receipt of £90,000 a year,
including all their places and pensions.

[51] Anne’s sister, Queen Mary, had been charged £12,600 for her dresses one
year, and £11,000 another year.

[52] The Duchess herself says, “When, after a very successful campaign, the
Duke of Marlborough was returned to London, the Queen most readily accepted
the resignation that he carried from me of my offices.”—Account.

[53] Hallam—Constitutional History.

BOOK III.

CHAPTER I.

THE PRINCESS DES URSINS—HER DELICATE AND PERILOUS
POSITION.

Madame des Ursins had long continued fearlessly to face the storm that
growled all around her, and by degrees the horizon showed signs of
clearing. As it often happens in the course of human affairs, the occupation
of the capital by the enemy had an effect contrary to that which it was very
natural to expect. The allies, who had entered Madrid as conquerors, found
within that city none of the elements necessary for the definitive
establishment of the Archduke who was proclaimed amidst a chilling
silence. If the grandees almost to a man evinced their sympathy for the
House of Austria, if the staff of the administration and the personal
machinery of all the public departments, remained at their posts at the price
of an oath which did not seem to cost more in those days than at present, the
populace of Madrid showed an aversion to the foreigners which soon
manifested itself in numerous assassinations. How could it be otherwise
than that the ancient soil of Castile should heave on finding itself trampled
on by the partisans of a loyalty hailed with acclamation at Saragossa and
Barcelona; on witnessing those outbursts of insolent triumph on the part of
the Portuguese, who, in the eyes of every Spaniard, were still rebels; and
the contemptuous phlegm of Lord Galloway’s army, commanded, as it was,
by a heretic condottiere? Outside the official spheres, the isolation was

therefore complete, and during that three months’ crisis the errant royalty of
Philip V., represented by his courageous consort, struck indestructible roots
in the hearts of his subjects. The northern shores and the great province of
Andalusia, joining to those divers motives the hatred with which England
inspired the maritime population, resolutely declared for the House of
Bourbon, to such an extent that, beyond the territories of the ancient realm
of Arragon, the moral conquest of the kingdom was very nearly
consummated, despite the foreign occupation, and through the effect of that
very same occupation. The position of the foreigners at Madrid had never
been anything else than provisory; and it was with transports of joy that the
Anglo-Portuguese troops were seen to hastily evacuate the capital on the
approach of another French army, which advanced through Navarre under
the command of the Duke of Berwick.[54] Philip V. was soon able to re-
enter Madrid as a liberator, and a galleon from Mexico brought him most
opportunely a million of crowns. On the 25th of April, 1707, Berwick
completely defeated the allies near Almanza, and the Duke of Orleans
covered himself with glory by the capture of Lerida, which had previously
resisted the great Condé.

The influence of Madame des Ursins became greatly enhanced after
these unhoped-for successes, and both Philip V. and the cabinet of Versailles
equally testified their gratitude to her. She had manifested an inflexible
devotedness in the midst of reverses, and adversity had taken its full
measure of her. Never, throughout the course of her chequered career, had
Madame des Ursins shown more activity than during the six months which
intervened between the return of the Court to Madrid and the battle of
Almanza. Her position was as delicate as it was perilous. It was necessary
to stigmatise flagrant defections, but without driving anyone altogether to
desperation. She profited by the confidence she had won to bring about
happily an important reform. Spain, composed of divers kingdoms

successively annexed, had not yet attained unity. More than ever, after the
experiences of 1706, was seen the necessity of a centralisation which
should re-unite in the hands of the new dynasty the entire strength of the
government, which should extinguish injurious rivalries between province
and province, which should facilitate administrative relations, and allow of
an equal action in the different parts of the monarchy. Each kingdom
hitherto had had its laws, its customs, its constitution (fueros). Already in
1705 certain restrictions had been imposed by Castile upon Arragon: no
more dared be attempted. The battle of Almanza and the successes of 1707
inspired still further energy. In the council, the party of Madame des Ursins,
leaning on the assent of Berwick, overcame the opposition of Montellano
and the friends of the old system; and the pragmatic sanction, or
constitution of Castile, became the sole law of Spain.

The victory of Almanza was, in fact, the last service rendered to Philip V.
by his native country. From that day forward, France, menaced upon its
frontiers, constrained to appropriate all its resources to its own safety,
became an obstacle and a permanent peril to Spain. The former
compromised the Spanish monarchy by its military operations, and far more
gravely still by its diplomatic negotiations. In this new phase, signalised by
the almost constant antagonism of the two courts, the position of Madame
des Ursins was one of the most critical nature; but we are about to see her,
with her habitual rectitude of judgment, take unhesitatingly the part alike
dictated by honour as by sound policy.

It was at this juncture that the gravity of events determined Louis XIV.
upon being represented in Spain by his nephew, the Duke of Orleans. That
prince, in two campaigns, had subdued the kingdom of Valentia and the
greatest part of Arragon, after taking fortresses in Catalonia hitherto deemed
impregnable. Inspired by the ambition of the chief of his race, he had made
his military services subservient to the extension of monarchical authority,

and had solemnly abolished, in the name of Philip V. in Arragon, the
anarchical privileges which weakened the royal power without efficaciously
strengthening the liberties of Spain. Distrusted by those he came ostensibly
to defend, and, from the first, an object of suspicion to Madame des Ursins,
still the correspondence of the Princess with Madame de Maintenon and the
Maréchale de Noailles from April, 1707, to November, 1708, the date of the
duke’s departure, shows that the relations of the latter with the camerara-
mayor were for a long time maintained on the best footing, the dissolute
habits of the Duke of Orleans proving less disgusting to Madame des Ursins
than the accuracy of his insight into public affairs appears to have charmed
her. The rupture of this good understanding, which, however, took place
silently, was one among other results greatly to be regretted of the dark
intrigue into which certain obscure agents momentarily led astray the
ambition of Anne of Austria’s grandson—a machination the more disastrous
to the prince, whose honour it impugned, than to the King of Spain, who
received no injury from it during the Duke of Orleans’ sojourn within his
territories; the movements of Flotte and Renault, his emissaries, having
only assumed some small degree of importance after his departure.

It is a knotty point of history altogether; but the fact is clear that the Duke
was the centre of the faction opposed to the Princess, and that around him
were banded those with whom she had either clashed or whom she had
overcome. The moment was badly chosen for intriguing; to save the state
should have been the sole aim of the Duke of Orleans. The allies, for an
instant discouraged after Almanza, had not lost all hope. Their successes in
Italy and in Germany soon consoled them for that reverse, and their armies
became once more menacing. It was then that the Duke of Orleans, it is
said, conceived the hope, if not of governing all Spain, at least of obtaining
the kingdoms of Murcia, Valentia, and Navarre. He himself avowed later to
the Duke de Saint-Simon that, seeing Philip V. tottering, “he had allowed
himself to indulge the hope of being put in his place;” hence his double-

faced conduct and strange manœuvres. He might not have been willing,
doubtless, to pull down the King of Spain with his own hand, but he did
not, of course, steadfastly desire a triumph which marred his own fortunes.
That which, however, may be affirmed with certainty is, that he maintained
with different foreign generals, among others with the Earl of Stanhope,
very suspicious negotiations; that he designedly did all he could to impede
the progress of the Spanish Government, and seemed, in all he did, solely
concerned in not overstepping that loosely-defined line at which treason
begins. However that might be, Madame des Ursins, strenuously opposed to
the policy which the Duke of Orleans desired to see prevail, and moreover
scarcely able to endure the hostile attitude of that Prince, demanded his
recall and obtained it.

After his departure she pursued him in the persons of his two agents,
Renault and Flotte, whom she had arrested. As for his friend, Marshal de
Bezons, whose hasty retreat upon the banks of the Segra excited the
indignation of the Spanish court, he lost his command. She even denounced
the Duke of Orleans to his royal uncle, and the erring nephew had very
great difficulty in escaping a scandalous trial. He was forced, therefore, to
renounce his ambitious hopes with regard to Spain, if ever he had seriously
nourished them. Such an exposure, rendered his return to the Peninsula
impossible. His faction was speedily dispersed. One of the noblemen with
whom he had had very intimate relations, the Duke of Medina-Cœli,
minister for foreign affairs and head of the grandee party, was suddenly
arrested and taken to the Castle of Segovia. Whether, as Saint Simon
intimates, it was that “weary of the yoke of Madame des Ursins, he desired
pointer de son chef,” whether that, favourable to the Duke of Orleans,
perhaps even to the allies, he had voluntarily caused the failure of the
expedition which the Spanish government meditated against Sardinia, or
whether he had dreamed of an anti-French reaction, he ended his days in a
state prison.

Whilst the government of Philip V., was working its way very laboriously
through that maze of conspiracies and intrigues, the allies regained the
ground which Almanza had lost them. “Despite all the efforts of Madame
des Ursins,” wrote the Chevalier du Bourk, her agent, at Versailles, “matters
are going badly at Madrid.” France, discouraged and weighed down,
moreover by its own reverses, seemed no longer able to defend Philip V.;
Louis XIV., whatever might have been his secret intentions, was not willing
to appear to support his grandson; the Austrians thoroughly defeated Philip
at Saragossa. The severe winter of 1709 had brought the general distress to
a climax; and the Archduke Charles made his entrance into Madrid. The
court of Versailles became terror-stricken. Madame de Maintenon,
outwearied with this everlasting strife, changed the tone of her letters to a
cold and sometimes ironic vein. She went so far as to say to the Princess, “It
is not agreeable to us here that women should busy themselves with state
affairs.”[55] Louis XIV., himself, advised his grandson to abandon Spain in
order to keep Italy.

Madame des Ursins had thus to choose between the French policy,
imposed upon Louis XIV. by cruel necessity, and the Spanish policy, for
which Philip V. was resolved to die. On one hand, the young mother, who
had just confided to her care an infant son she had conceived in anguish,
appealed most touchingly to her attachment and courage; on the other,
Madame de Maintenon, whose sole solicitude was to insure repose to Louis
XIV., by plucking out one after another all the thorns from his crown,
reminded her that she was born a Frenchwoman, and that she owed too
much to the Great King to arrogate to herself the right of contradicting him.
A subject of Louis XIV., did she dare combat at Madrid the plans decided
upon at Versailles? The governess of the heir to the crown of Spain, could
she concur by her advice in despoiling the infant whose first caresses she
was receiving? Madame des Ursins could only escape by a prompt

departure from the difficulties of such an alternative. Incontestable facts
prove that she so understood her position, and that she was fully determined
to quit Spain towards the close of 1709; but the despair of the Queen, the
state of whose health at that time gave but too serious grounds for alarm,
alone hindered her from following out a project which promised more
flattering results than any other in the deep depression into which the
resolves of France had plunged her.

Madame des Ursins had no sooner taken the resolution of remaining
upon the theatre of events, and of sustaining the King of Spain in the noble
career to which his conscience and the national will alike bound him, than
she threw herself headlong into the mêlée, caring nothing more for the
Versailles policy, and burning her ships with a boldness of which her
gentleness of character seemed to have rendered her incapable. Her
epistolary style undergoes also a marked change, and rises with the loftiness
of her part and character. In reproaching Madame de Maintenon for
preferring the King’s ease to that of his honour, she launches shafts against
her which, though tipped with elegance, are none the less sharp-pointed,
sometimes in the shape of studied reproaches, but more frequently still with
the spontaneous overflowings of a towering wrath. The writer then reveals
herself from beneath the guise of the woman of the world, and it is clearly
seen that in that encompassed life the heart has for a moment triumphed
over the intelligence.

Madame des Ursins alone, however, remained unshaken. She might well
have, it is true, some moments of misgiving; such as when she wrote to
Madame de Noailles, “I have foreseen, for a long time, the precipice over
which they would hurl us, and to the brink of which we ourselves are
hurrying, and I know not, by Heaven, who can save us from it.” With
admirable eloquence she encouraged Madame de Maintenon, who appeared
to despair of the divine protection; and she inspired Philip V. with an energy

truly worthy of the throne, shown in that noble letter in which the King of
Spain declared to his grandfather “that, in spite of the misfortune which
confronted him, he would never abandon his subjects.” Madame des Ursins
in all probability dictated the phraseology, and all the glory of it resulted
from her firmness.

She thoroughly comprehended that it became sovereigns worthy of their
position to speak loftily, were it from the depth of an abyss, and that that
supreme courage is itself the first indication of a return of good fortune. She
soon found that it was so; for from the moment that the King’s cause
seemed to be lost, the animosities of the grandees gave way before their
patriotism. Whether they were at length inspired by so much energy,
whether the expulsion of the French from every post throughout the state,
decreed by Philip V. under the advice of Madame des Ursins, had well
disposed their minds, “almost all, by a sudden awakening of chivalrous
fidelity,” submitted to the House of Bourbon. The Archduke awaited in vain
their homage and their oaths. At the moment of his entrance into the capital,
curiosity itself failed to attract any one to cross his path; a solitude and
sullen gloom pervaded all the public places. He did not even proceed so far
as the royal palace, but went out by the Alcala gate, muttering, “It is a
deserted city.”

Without hesitation, therefore, Madame des Ursins placed herself at the
head of the national movement, seeking to pluck the safety of Spain from
the very abandonment in which France had left that monarchy. Without
breaking off confidential relations with her usual correspondents at
Versailles, she enveloped them in the thickest possible veil, her sole idea
being to stimulate Castilian patriotism, appearing to adopt everything
Spanish from its popular costumes, even to its hatreds and its prejudices. By
the aid of a sombrero and a gollil[56] Don Luis d’Aubigny had become a
perfect caballero; the like transformation being effected throughout the

entire staff of the palace household, and shortly afterwards a very decided
step characterised the novel attitude assumed by Philip and his court.
Madame des Ursins, who reckoned her chief enemies amongst the
monarch’s French household, decided that prince upon the dismissal in
mass of all his non-Spanish domestics—an unexpected resolve which
produced an immense sensation on both sides of the Pyrenees; because,
whilst subserving a personal vengeance skilfully dissimulated, it gave
sanction to a policy the harshness of which was pushed even to ingratitude.

To throw Philip V. into the arms of the Spaniards, was to flatter alike the
democracy and the grandees. To the populace Madame des Ursins
presented, amidst the most fervent benediction, the Prince of Asturias; to
the grandees, of whom she had long been the declared enemy, she caused to
be given a striking proof of the royal confidence. The Duke de Bedmar,
appointed to the ministry of war, was charged with the organization of the
new levies, and the direction of the troops in all parts of the kingdom. To
transform the grandson of Louis XIV. into a peninsula king was to furnish
the best argument to the partisans of peace, already numerous in the British
parliament. On the other hand, that same policy could not very seriously
disquiet the cabinet of Versailles. The King knew that he might count upon
every sacrifice from the respectful attachment of his grandson, save that of
the throne; and although he had adhered officially to the principle of the
dispossessing of Philip V., he could not regret, either as sovereign or as
grandsire, the obstacles which the more resolute attitude of Spain then
opposed to the enemies of the two crowns. Louis XIV. therefore continued,
notwithstanding his diplomatic engagements, to secretly assist in the
Peninsula what might be called the party of fara da se. Madame des Ursins
had recovered her influence at Versailles from the moment at which it was
found necessary to depend, in order to prolong the struggle, rather upon the
military resources of Spain than upon those of France at bay. To impart
more gravity to the national movement, to which she gave the impulse in

order to remain the moderatrix, she had required the recall of Amelot, who
had long assumed at Madrid the attitude of a prime minister rather than that
of an ambassador; and Louis XIV., deferring to that wish, had replaced that
experienced agent by a simple chargé d’affaires. Orry was in like manner
sacrificed, despite his invaluable services; but, at the same time that she
gave satisfaction by the withdrawal of her friends in deference to the
popular susceptibilities, the Princess earnestly implored that the Duke de
Vendôme might be sent to take command of the Spanish forces; and Louis
XIV., on his part, at the moment that he was compelled to withdraw from
Spain the last French soldier, despatched thither the general who was
destined to save his grandson’s crown.

Arriving in Spain sometime during the summer of 1710, Vendôme
displayed an activity which did not seem to comport with his habits, in
order to reunite and arm the volunteers, who, from the summit of the
Sierras, descended in swarms upon the plains of the two Castiles at the
summons of a monarch become the personification of a patriot. He speedily
transformed into a powerful and well-trained army the undisciplined
guerillas whose bravery had hitherto been useless; in a few months, the
Anglo-Austrian army, at the head of which the prince who called himself
Charles III. had been able to show himself for a few hours in the deserted
capital, was confronted by disciplined troops prepared to retake territories
which until then had not been seriously disputed. Under the irresistible
impulse of a noble patriotism which had at last recovered itself, the English
force of Lord Stanhope capitulated at Brihuega after a terrible carnage, and
Stahrenberg, crushed in his turn at Villaviciosa, carried away by his flight
the last hopes of the House of Austria.

By the victory of Villaviciosa the House of Bourbon was definitively
seated on the throne of Charles the Fifth. Philip V. slept that night (10th
December, 1710) upon a couch of standards taken from the enemy: the

Austrian cause was lost; and Madame des Ursins, who, in spite of Europe
coalesced, in spite of Louis XIV. hesitating and disquieted, in spite of so
many disasters, had never trembled, received the title of Highness, and saw
her steadfast policy at length crowned by accomplished facts.

Spain had thus solved by her own efforts solely the great question which
had kept Europe so long in arms. At the commencement of 1711, Philip V.
had acquired for his throne a security that Louis XIV. had not yet obtained
for the integrity of his own frontiers, and without mistaking the influence of
the victory of Denain, so wonderfully opportune, it is just, we think, to
allow a far larger share than is customary to the thoroughly Spanish victory
of Villaviciosa in the unhoped-for conditions obtained by France at the
peace of Utrecht.

FOOTNOTES:

[54] Natural son of James II. of England, by Arabella Churchill, sister of the
Duke of Marlborough.

[55] Recueil de M. Geffroy, p. 395.

[56] A sort of collar.

CHAPTER II.

THE PRINCESS’S SHARE IN THE TREATY OF UTRECHT.

If the new ministry of Queen Anne succeeded in inducing the English
nation to support the treaty of Utrecht, that was nothing less than to prove
undeniably, without fear of contradiction, that the establishment of the
French dynasty in the Peninsula had there acquired the authority of a fact
irrevocably accomplished. The resuscitation of the Spanish nation had,
therefore, a decisive effect upon European affairs; and whilst, by leaving
France almost intact, the treaties of Utrecht had parcelled out the monarchy
of the catholic kings, the authors of the great popular movement crowned
by the victory of Villaviciosa might consider without prejudice their country
as sacrificed, notwithstanding the weight which it had flung into the scales.

In this work Madame des Ursins had had certainly a very considerable
share, and it was with a very legitimate pride that through it she was
enabled to prevail at Versailles as at Madrid. A perseverance unexampled
both in idea and conduct, a rare suppleness in the means, had made her the
principal instrument of an enterprise in which a virile ambition, united to a
deep devotedness, sustained her. Undismayed by reverses, never intoxicated
by success, she tempered by her equanimity the at times imprudent ardour
of the young Queen, and reanimated by her firmness the frequent
retrocessions of her morose consort. She rejoiced, therefore, with a scarcely

veiled pride in that security for the future which Spain had conquered
before France, and in her correspondence with Madame de Maintenon her
letters began to assume a somewhat protective tone. It was at this
culminating point of her greatness that fate was preparing to inflict upon her
the humiliating catastrophe which again obscured the remembrance of her
services and even the honour of her name.

It is unnecessary to recapitulate the means by which peace was re-
established, how the fall of the Whig ministry and the elevation of the
Archduke to the imperial throne after the death of Joseph I. brought
England and the other allied powers into the treaties which confirmed Philip
V. in the peaceable possession of the Spanish monarchy. We will not dwell
upon these details, nor upon divers acts of interior policy which followed
upon the victory of Villaviciosa. Let us confine our attention solely to those
in which the Princess des Ursins took an active part. The first was the
pursuance of the administrative centralisation of which we have spoken; the
abolition of the council exclusively called the Council of Castile, for which
she caused to be substituted a council of state, the members of which should
be chosen from every part of Spain, and which became the centre of the
government. The second was a reform in the finance department; Orry
being in these measures the Princess’s instrument, and he justified the long-
continued esteem with which she had honoured his talents. It was thus that
after having successively saved the monarchy from a policy exclusively
French, and from the factious pretensions of the grandees, after having
contributed to the defeat of Austria, Madame des Ursins sought to
consolidate on firm bases the power of Philip V. and prepare a happier
future for Spain.

She was not destined, however, to long enjoy the fruits of her triumph. It
was a symptomatic sign of this new phase of her life, the universally
unfavourable interpretation given to an affair which should rather be looked

upon in the light of a check than of a fault. It is well known that Philip,
desirous of recognising the devotedness of his son’s governess, and of
assuring to that noble lady an independent position which should not be
below her birth, had stipulated, at the time of the preliminaries of peace, for
the reservation of a territory in the Spanish low countries ceded to Austria,
which he destined to form into a sovereignty for Marie Anne de la
Trémouille. This negotiation, which bore successively upon the county of
Limbourg and the small seigniory of La Roche-en-Ardennes, had been
received at first at Versailles with the most entire approbation, for the
reproach of “playing the queen” only occurred as an after-thought. The
gratitude of their Catholic Majesties was found to be quite natural, and was
warmly praised, especially by Madame de Maintenon. It is not at all to be
wondered at, consequently, if Madame des Ursins should blandly
contemplate such a prospect, especially in anticipation of the approaching
demise of her well-beloved protectress, who could not fail to be soon
replaced in the confidence and couch of her consort. The Court of France
did not change its opinion until that affair of La Roche, very annoyingly
taken by the Dutch, had become the occasion of a delay in the signing of
the general peace. Then Madame des Ursins was overwhelmed by
reproaches on all sides, and those which came from Saint Cyr were of a
peculiarly acrimonious character, which we must not join the Duke de Saint
Simon in attributing to a jealousy of which there exists no trace, but which
is explained by Madame de Maintenon’s desire to secure repose to Louis
XIV. at any cost. These reproaches, moreover, were without foundation, for
the accusers of the Princess should have considered that, if France had the
right to await with lively impatience the signature of a treaty which secured
to her almost all her conquests, it was quite otherwise with Spain, called
upon by that same treaty to pay alone the costs of the pacification. The
measures of 1713, the conclusion of which was in fact retarded for a few
months by the interest and intervention of Madame des Ursins, had been

received with a very natural indignation in the monarchy of Charles V.,
from which they tore away the Milanese, the Two Sicilies, Sardinia, the
Low Countries, Port Mahon, and Gibraltar. So France can now easily
decide whether it had been in 1815 an unpardonable crime in her eyes to
cause by a dilatory question the adjournment of the signing of the treaties of
Vienna.

That check was the first in a series of misfortunes which death alone was
henceforward destined to bring to a close. Early in 1714 died very suddenly,
at the age of twenty-six, Marie Louise of Savoy, her delicate frame worn
out by an ardent temperament, which had sustained it whilst the storm
raged, and which declined when the breath of the hurricane had ceased to
kindle it further. The remains of the young Queen had scarcely descended
into the vaults of the Escurial ere the nation demanded to know who was to
be the new queen-consort; and the same question was addressed to Madame
des Ursins by the Court of Versailles, so well were known there both the
requirements and the austerity of the King of Spain. What passed during the
eight months of that widowhood so painfully borne? What mysteries did the
Medina Cœli palace witness, in which Madame des Ursins shut up closely
Philip V. from the gaze of every prying eye? Such questions can never now
be answered with certainty, for the reports put into circulation in France by
Saint Simon and Duclos, in Italy by Poggiali, and in England by Fitz-
Maurice, had their common source in the conversations of Alberoni, one of
the least scrupulous actors in the drama of the Quadruple Alliance. Did the
elderly camerara mayor, already three-score and ten, dare to spread alluring
snares wherein to entrap an amorous prince of thirty? And did such
tentative, more strange than audacious, succeed to the extent of binding
Philip’s conscience in some way? History will never answer the question.
Instead, therefore, of hazarding conjectures, it will be well to confine our
attention to the well-authenticated political acts of the Princess at this, to
her, serious conjuncture.

In losing her royal mistress, the powerful favourite lost along with her the
greatest portion of her strength. It was the remote signal which heralded her
fall. At the same time it did not appear that her energy had become
diminished, or her intelligence clouded, but that her ordinary prudence had
abandoned her. Perhaps, having attained such an elevation, she dreaded no
further reverse, and believed herself secure enough, in the universal esteem
and admiration in which she was held, to venture upon anything. However
that might be, as though her brain had grown dizzy, she destroyed with her
own hands, not her skilfully raised political edifice, but the structure of her
individual fortunes.

Her first imprudence was to attack the Spanish Inquisition. Spain was not
then ripe for that reform accomplished only a century later. Much less, as it
appears to us, should Madame des Ursins, under the influence of a
preconceived religious opinion, with the object of strengthening the royal
authority, have attempted its sudden suppression. Far be it from us,
certainly, to think of defending the Spanish Inquisition. But it cannot be
denied that that institution had vigorously defended Philip V., and in the
eyes of the people was part and parcel, as it were, of Spain itself. It seemed
as though French ideas alone demanded such a reform, and hence popular
suspicion was excited. The Princess failed in her attempt; but she had
voluntarily created for herself a host of enemies, who from that moment
laboured to effect her ruin.

We have already said that, cherishing the hope of obtaining for herself an
independent sovereignty, the difficulties arising from her pretensions had
delayed the conclusion of the treaty of peace. Louis XIV. was indignant at
finding his negotiations fettered and himself involved in an unavoidable
opposition to the wishes of his grandson. As for Madame de Maintenon,
whether the interests of France, compromised by these delays, had alone
provoked her resistance, or whether, as Saint Simon declares, that that

independent sovereignty which she herself felt was so little beyond her
reach offended her pride by making her feel the distance between their
several ranks and births, she opposed the desire of her old friend, and peace
was concluded by the authority of Louis XIV. But the King had a grudge
against the Princess for having driven him to such extremity. Besides, just
then his own dynasty had been fatally stricken. The Duke of Burgundy and
his eldest son, the Duke of Brittany, had died. The heir to the throne was an
infant only three years old. The Court foresaw the Regency of the Duke of
Orleans, a personal enemy of Madame des Ursins, and it was dangerous, by
leaving her at the head of affairs in Spain, to prepare, probably, for the
future a disastrous rivalry.

The storm thus darkened thickly over the head of this imperious woman,
who, supported against her enemies so long as she had been useful, was
subject to the common law of favourites, and began to totter when she
appeared no longer so. One resource remained to her—to remarry Philip V.
She was anxious to find a consort who could replace in her interests Marie
Louise, and restore her waning influence. Her incertitude was great: she felt
truly that in spite of past services her future fate depended upon her choice.
At length she cast her eyes upon Elizabeth Farnese, daughter of the last
Duke of Parma, and niece of the then existent Duke, and thought that
gratitude for such an extraordinary turn of fortune would for ever secure the
attachment of a princess who, without her influence, could never have had
pretensions to such an union. But she was anxious to ascertain whether
Elizabeth Farnese was one of those who would submit to be ruled, and she
opened her mind upon the subject to a man then obscure but afterwards
celebrated—Alberoni, who had been sent as consular agent from Parma to
Madrid. He had frequent conversations with the great favourite, and readily
succeeded in insinuating himself into her good graces. He described the
Princess of Parma as simple minded, religious, ignorant of the world from
which she had always lived secluded—in short, perfectly fitting to forward

the design of the Princess. In making such statements he reckoned at the
same time upon pleasing his own Court, and bringing about the fall of
Madame des Ursins; for he knew well that Elizabeth, whose character was
very different from that which he had represented, would not submit to be
governed by any one. Dazzled, therefore, with the smiling vista which
chance had so unexpectedly opened to him, and understanding all the
importance which he might derive from the negotiation of such marriage,
and finding, moreover, Madame des Ursins well disposed beforehand
towards him, and, by a singular blindness, inclined to put implicit
confidence in one whose interest it was to conceal the truth, he secretly set
off for Parma on his delicate mission. By this first move the Princess’s
game was lost.

CHAPTER III.

THE PRINCESS FRIENDLESS IN SPAIN.

It was the peculiar misfortune of Madame des Ursins to scarcely meet
with a single sincere friend in Spain: she was submitted to there, rather than
accepted. She had been sought after through interest or fear rather than
through sympathy; but especially since the Queen’s decease, since no one
save herself was seen by the King’s side, and that the strokes of her power
were dealt without any apparent intermediator, she was no longer tolerated,
save with infinite difficulty. Neither can it be concealed that, at this period,
she had not acted in a way to diminish the number of her enemies, or to
conciliate them. She was of opinion that the Duke of Berwick had not
sufficiently defended her at Versailles against their machinations: she broke
with him in 1714, before he returned from Catalonia. She did her utmost to
have Tessé chosen to replace him, whom she pronounced quite capable of
taking Barcelona; and, on learning that Berwick was nevertheless
appointed, she hastened to banish Ronquillo, for something he had uttered
against the Government, but in reality because he was the intimate friend of
that general.[57] Two nobles were also imprisoned at this time—Don
Manuel de Sylva, commandant of the galleys of Sicily, already temporarily
exiled in 1709 for having (so said the sentence) “spoken ill of her,” and Don
Valerio d’Aspetia, Lieutenant-General. Both were declared enemies of
Madame des Ursins, and the first had moreover the fault of being closely

connected with the Duke d’Uzeda. Valerio d’Aspetia died in prison, at the
age of seventy, and after fifty years of service, a lamentable loss, and which
involved that of his still young and lovely wife, whose days were cut short
through grief and poverty. Besides all this, must be noticed a suspicious
jealousy of domination over Philip V., which was fearfully developed when
that prince found himself a widower, and which betrayed itself in very
disagreeable actions.

Saint Simon tells us that, after the death of Marie Louise of Savoy,
Madame des Ursins usually supped with the King, and had him transferred
from the palace of the Buen-Retiro, in which the Queen had died, to that of
Medina Cœli. There she caused a corridor to be constructed, leading from
the King’s cabinet to the apartments of the young princes, wherein she was
lodged; and it was not, as may be imagined, to facilitate communications
between a bereaved father and his children, who had become doubly dear to
him, but, according to our authority, in order that it might never be known
whether the King was alone or with her. She was in such haste to see this
secret passage completed, that, to the great scandal of Catholic Spain, she
had the work carried on during Sundays and saints’ days as well as upon
ordinary days. This was pushed to such an extent, that a great number of
pious persons no less than thrice asked Father Robinet, the most exemplary
of the confessors Philip V. ever had, if he were not aware of such unlawful
labour, and when it was that he intended it should cease. To which the
subtle Jesuit, who was unwilling to be accused of laxity in morals, replied
that the King had not spoken to him upon the subject, alluding to his
relations with Philip as his Confessor, in which relation alone he wished it
to be understood that he was to be considered—always adding, for their
satisfaction, that if he had been consulted in the matter, he would not have
failed to say that, to complete that criminal corridor, work should never

have been so permitted, but that to effect its destruction, the labourers might
have worked at it even on Easter Day.[58]

This statement of Saint Simon, quite insupportable as it is, would
nevertheless leave subsisting, in the melancholy position of the children and
their father, a means of justification to Madame des Ursins, did not Duclos
deprive her of it; and who, less charitable than the authority whom he
generally cites when treating of this celebrated woman, tells us purely and
simply that she desired to facilitate the communication of her own
apartments with those of the King, which leaves ample room for slander
and suspicion. He goes still further. Improving upon Saint Simon, and
showing himself better acquainted with the particulars than the Duke, he
mentions a very aggravating fact, which was, that, in order to construct that
very suspicious means of communication, it was necessary to demolish a
monastery of Capuchins, and that in consequence “dead bodies were
disinterred, the Holy Sacrament dislodged from the church, the monks
quitting it in procession, amidst exclamations of “Oh, sacrilege! Oh,
profanation!” from all Madrid.[59]

Happily, Duclos is merely in this the servile copyist of a Spanish author,
whose contradictions and bad feeling it would be very easy to expose. He
has reproduced word for word the version to be found in the Mémoires sur
l’Espagne, printed as a sequel to the letters of Fitz-Maurice. What! to make
a simple corridor from one apartment to another, nothing less was required
than to demolish an entire monastery, large as they were, in Spain
especially, with its church and everything devoted to its religious purposes,
and the dwellings of the monks? And Saint Simon knew nothing of all this?
For, had he known it, most assuredly he would not have failed to fling it in
the face of Madame des Ursins. That the Marquis de Saint Philippe, who
was upon the spot, a man so religious, and who could not endure Madame
des Ursins, should say not one word, without fear of derogating from his

customary gravity, of that impious scandal, of such a Vandalism as had
revolted all Madrid! We think that if M. Duclos had better informed himself
upon the point and of the source whence he derived it, he, too, would have
complained of exaggeration, and would not have given it out as a fact.

The part played by Madame des Ursins would assuredly have been
grander if she had herself renounced the regal boon proffered by Philip V.,
as soon as it promised to be an obstacle to the pacification of Europe; if she
had preferred the general good to her own particular advantage, and
sustained her lofty character to the end, she would have preserved by so
doing the prestige of grandeur and disinterestedness which had constantly
surrounded her. A love of power would have been pardoned in her, always
foreign to considerations of personal advantage; and, as ambition, like other
human passions, may become a source of crime, though it is not itself a
crime, in her case it would have been praised, because she would have
unceasingly shunned the vanity which lessens it, the self-interest which
debases it, and that continual recurrence to egotism which travesties it in
intrigue. But she failed to crown her career by that true glory. Seeing the
King and Queen of Spain very much offended at the retrograde step of
Louis XIV., she further irritated them by her peevish attitude and marked
discontent. The Marquis de Brancas, sent by Louis into Spain, proceeded to
represent the articles of the Treaty of Utrecht to Philip V. in such wise as the
Emperor and his allies wished them to stand; Philip replied that he would
not sign them, unless there was a special clause added in favour of Madame
des Ursins. That ambassador returned furious, crying out against the
Spanish Government, and especially against Madame des Ursins, who
directed everything, he said, and who had played at cross-purposes in order
to cause his mission to miscarry. He succeeded in drawing down upon the
Court of Madrid the heavy rebuke of Louis XIV. This, however, proved
altogether useless; for Philip persisted in his resolution, and contented
himself with sending the Cardinal del Guidice to his grandfather, whilst

Madame des Ursins employed with the same monarch the customary
influence of Madame de Maintenon. The latter, in fact, so the Marquis de
Saint Philippe tells us, made excuses for Madame des Ursins to Louis XIV.,
and the other advocate of the Court of Madrid obtained the order for the
march of the troops destined for the siege of Barcelona, whose success,
looked upon as certain, ought likewise to render the Austrians more
disposed to treat upon the question of her principality.

But that was not the only expedient employed by Madame des Ursins.
The English ambassador, Lord Lexington, besides Gibraltar and Port
Mahon, relied upon obtaining for the English a free trade in the brandies of
Tarragon; this the Princess conceded to him. He desired also that they might
be allowed to construct, upon the River de la Plata, a fort for their
protection, and as a depôt for negroes, in order that in future they might
alone supply the Spanish colonies with slaves: this monopoly was also
accorded. In return, Lord Lexington signed a convention with her, in which
Queen Anne “engaged to secure her a sovereignty.”[60] At such price the
adhesion of England seemed secured. She reckoned also on obtaining that
of Holland by analogous commercial advantages, and, in fact, she obtained
them. But how to win back Louis XIV. was the question! For that she had a
secret project, which, as she thought, ought to rehabilitate her in that
monarch’s eyes, in representing her as guided by a love of France more than
by vanity. Louis XIV. was not to derive any territorial advantage from the
Treaty of Utrecht. But Madame des Ursins was desirous so soon as the
cession was made of the said principality of giving it up immediately to that
King, in exchange for an equivalent life-interest in Touraine, within French
territory. With that view she had a clause inserted in the letters-patent of
Philip V., empowering her to alienate during her lifetime that principality in
whatever way she chose. Such was her design; and that it had evidently
been divined by the sagacious Madame de Maintenon would appear from

the following passage in a letter of about that date addressed to the Princess:
“Side by side with all your merits, you have a concealed project, which, if I
guess aright, has got the uppermost of all those qualities.”[61]

But that was just what the allies most feared. The faculty given to
Madame des Ursins in Philip’s deed of gift had made them suspect that
intention of a surrender or an exchange, and they were on the watch for
everything which might arise to support their suppositions. In such
conjuncture, Madame des Ursins was wanting, as it appears to us, in
prudence and address. Instead of postponing, until the cession had become
an accomplished fact, the question of the exchange, she pursued the two
objects simultaneously. To negotiate the second with Torcy, she sent
D’Aubigny secretly to France, and the latter, after some overtures, gave her
hopes of entire success. Transported with delight, she gave herself up to all
the illusions of what the future had in store for her of happiness. She was
not, therefore, destined to descend either in rank or honours after quitting
the Court of Madrid. Here she had ruled beneath the shadow of a phantom
King; there she would command directly and in person. In Spain, she had
only been a subordinate; in France she would have no superior, and would
be more mistress of herself. All these satisfactions were increased a
hundredfold by the proud feeling of returning to her native country as a
sovereign princess, in a state so strictly levelled by royalty, wherein no one
would have a condition equal to her own, and in which she would display
with jesting haughtiness the pomp inseparable from her title before her
abashed enemies. She had so much faith in the hopes with which d’Aubigny
inspired her, and by which that cunning favourite thought perhaps already
to profit, that she instructed him to go into Touraine and to purchase land in
the neighbourhood of Amboise whereon to erect a chateau, which should be
called the manor of Chanteloup.[62] It was something like selling the skin of
the bear before slaying her bruin; but with the formal and written

engagement of England, with the support of Holland, which she also had,
with Louis XIV., whom she sought to win back through the influence of
Madame de Maintenon, and by the calculated nobleness of her intentions,
she would overcome the resistance of Austria, and her victory was certain.

Unfortunately, that which she ought to have anticipated actually came to
pass. England first discovered the occult negotiations of d’Aubigny at
Versailles, and, unwilling that the Princess des Ursins should bestow
anything upon France, she changed her tone, and became almost a defaulter
to her. A Valentian gentleman, Clemente Generoso, says Duclos, still
copying textually from Fitz-Maurice, blamed Lord Lexington, whose agent
and interpreter he had been from the beginning of the war, for having
committed the Queen of England so far to Madame des Ursins, and advised
him to tear up the convention.[63] By the intervention of that lady, England
had obtained all it required, and the written consent of Philip V. rendered
the concessions irrevocable; there was no danger, therefore, of want of good
faith on the part of Madame des Ursins.

The towering rage of the latter may be imagined when she heard this
news. She made the most earnest entreaties to Queen Anne not to abandon
her. All that she could obtain was that that Princess “would use her good
offices” to procure her the object of her desires. An elastic and somewhat
embarrassing promise of protection was substituted for a formal and signed
engagement, which bound Queen Anne to the interests of Madame des
Ursins as to those of a contracting power. The English had tricked her; they
had surpassed her in cunning. A short time afterwards, if we may believe
Fitz-Maurice and his Spanish interlocutors, she made Clemente Generoso
pay dearly for his evil counsel. One day when he was returning from
London to Madrid, with instructions for Lord Lexington, some Irishmen, in
the service of Philip V., attacked him, and, as he was endeavouring to take

refuge in a church, they killed him, conformably to the orders which they
had received, it is said, from the Princess des Ursins and Orry.

We only give this statement, be it well understood, under reservation,
because nowhere else have we found any confirmation or even indication of
it. But thus much is certain, that the chances which Madame des Ursins had
on the part of the Queen of England were greatly diminished, and that it
was necessary to look elsewhere for more reliable aid. She quickly
despatched, therefore, her favourite d’Aubigny to Utrecht. “But,” says Saint
Simon, “c’était un trop petit Sire; he was not admitted beyond the
antechambers.” But Saint Simon often falls into error through excessive
contempt for those below his own level. By certain documents recently
discovered at the Hague and communicated to M. Geffroy, it may be seen
that the members of the congress of Utrecht deliberated with d’Aubigny,
and that they designated him the plenipotentiary of Madame des Ursins.
However that may be, d’Aubigny did not obtain much; in fact, he spoilt
everything by offering the Dutch greater advantages than had been accorded
to the English. So the latter at least pretended, in order, no doubt, to have a
pretext for wholly abandoning Madame des Ursins and for resuming their
haughty attitude towards her, after having courted her for awhile. Queen
Anne feigned, in fact, to be hurt that the Dutch had been more favoured
than her own subjects, and exclaimed, with a readiness that betrayed an
inward satisfaction: “Since the Princess des Ursins has recourse to others, I
abandon her.”[64] D’Aubigny, as the sole result, obtained only vague hopes
on the part of the Dutch, who were as inimical as the English as to any
exchange with France.

Without being angry with her “man of business,” whom she allowed even
to return to Amboise to complete the erections already begun, Madame des
Ursins selected, to continue the negotiations, a more important personage—
a young nephew of Madame de Noailles, named de Bournonville, Baron de

Capres. But he covered himself with ridicule at this game of private intrigue
rather than real diplomatic negotiation; and, notwithstanding all the trouble
he took, he obtained nothing by it, “the gratitude of Madame des Ursins
excepted, who made Philip V. give him the Golden Fleece, the rank of
grandee, the Walloon company of the bodyguard—everything, in fact, he
could desire.”[65]

The successive check of her two diplomatists was not, however, a
sufficient warning to Madame des Ursins. Ever in pursuit of a position,
which had become nothing more than a chimera after having served as a
lure on the part of the English, she relied for success upon the persistent and
obstinate will of Philip V., who made it a question of amour propre for
himself as much as a just recompense for Madame des Ursins. It was under
these circumstances that this Prince refused to sign the treaty of Utrecht,
that treaty which Louis XIV. had signed and sealed with his own royal
hand, and engaged to make him accept it, even though the allied powers
should not grant him what he desired to bequeath to Madame des Ursins.[66]
Such a firm attitude proved plainly enough that there was good reason for
reliance upon him.

But this affair “hung up” the peace, to use Saint Simon’s phrase—the
peace that Louis XIV. could now sign, because it was honourable. His
displeasure was extreme. It was all very well for Madame des Ursins to say
that she had nothing to do with the matter, that the King of Spain was only
following his own inclination, and that after all she despised the malevolent
designs of his enemies; still the delay experienced in the conclusion of the
general peace was imputed to her. She was accused of occupying herself too
exclusively with her own interests, and of placing in the scales the repose of
Europe entire: it was said that she abused Philip’s good-nature, and that she
ought not to have availed herself of her ascendancy over that conscientious

prince save to release him from his promise, to free him from all trammel,
and incline him towards the wishes of his grandfather.

It was from the French ministry that these complaints came, and Torcy,
so greatly humiliated in 1704, at length had his revenge. Madame de
Maintenon herself made remarks upon her, based upon the same motives;
only that she threw more form into them, contenting herself with giving the
Princess to infer that of which the others did not spare her the harshest
expression. “You have good reason to let folks chatter;” she wrote,
“provided that you have nothing to reproach yourself with.... for, you must
know, we here look upon the treaty of Spain with Holland, such as it is, as
equally necessary, as you think it shameful at Madrid.... Make up your
mind, therefore, Madam, and do not allow it to be said that you are the sole
cause of the prolongation of the war. I cannot believe it, and think it very
scandalous that others should.”[67]

But these warnings and exhortations, imparted with such delicate tact,
had no more effect at Madrid than the harsh severity of the ministerial
reprimands. Louis XIV. then made his solemn voice heard. “Sign,” said he,
tartly, to his grandson, “or no aid from me. Berwick is on his march for
Barcelona—I will recall him; then I will make peace privately with the
Dutch and with the Emperor; I will leave Spain at war with those two
powers, and I will not mix myself up further in any of your affairs, because
I do not choose, for the private interest of Madame des Ursins, to defer
securing the repose of my people, and perhaps plunge them into fresh
sufferings.”[68]

When Louis XIV. had thus proffered his last word, Philip V. even yet
urged some objections, and the Princess des Ursins on her part, moved her
friends into action; but there was no means of converting Louis XIV. to
what the Court of Madrid demanded, since not one of the allies was willing

either; and, as for the acquisition of those few manors in Luxembourg, in
exchange for an equivalent in Touraine, he preferred personally to have
nothing upon any frontier, than to gain so little, and owe such feeble legacy
to an intrigue, unworthy of his character, unworthy of a great nation, and
only fit to serve as a text for the biting irony of foreigners or that of his own
subjects.

Madame des Ursins is indeed no longer comprehensible throughout this
affair. She, hitherto so noble-minded, so devoted to high-class politics, so
prudent, so full of tact. Oh! how far off are we from realising that lofty
sentiment of hers:—
“Sans peine je passerais de la dictature à la charrue!”

There was nothing left, however, but to give way. The treaty of Utrecht
was signed by Philip V., and unconditionally. The net gain in the business
fell to d’Aubigny; he received for his trouble as a negotiator, and for his
constancy in another way, the manor of Chanteloup, revealed the motive of
its construction—yet an enigma to everybody in France, says Saint
Simon[69]—installed himself therein, and, for the rest, made himself loved
and esteemed there. To Madame des Ursins there only remained the
mortification of having failed, a mortification the greater that her
pretensions had been so lofty and tenacious. It was further increased, also,
by having turned the Court of France against her, and engendered a
coolness towards her on the part of Madame de Maintenon herself, who up
to that juncture had always approved of her manner of acting and her
system of government, but who now, seizing the occasion of Orry having
established some imposts upon the Catalans, did not hesitate to say very
harshly and laconically: “We do not think Orry fit for his post, for Spain is
very badly governed.”[70]

Those were accents which must have deeply grieved the heart of the
Princess. Next came Berwick, who was by no means, as we have seen, to be
ranked amongst her friends—Berwick, whom Louis XIV. had sent in spite
of her, in spite of what she had said of Tessé, who, by his own account, had
failed the first time before Barcelona only because he had been prevented
from commencing the siege soon enough. Her influence, it was impossible
to longer doubt, had been greatly lessened at Versailles, if it had not
perished altogether.

Trembling for herself, she continued naturally to lean upon the King of
Spain, who was devoted to her. In order that this plank of safety should not
escape her grasp, she permitted only those she liked to have access to him;
she regulated all his proceedings; she kept him from all private audience;
she seemed jealous of it, whilst she was only so as regarded her own
preservation. Scandal, as may be imagined, was again busy with her name.
It was again whispered that she was in hopes that the King, scarcely yet
thirty-two, would not be repelled by the faded charms of a septuagenarian;
that he would marry her, that was certain; and in every saloon throughout
the world of fashion in France, circulated the following anecdote, which
Saint Simon duly registered in his Memoirs, and in which further figured, to
render it more piquante and authentic, the Reverend Father Robinet. The
King certainly had one evening withdrawn with his confessor into the
embrasure of a window. The latter appearing reserved and mysterious, the
curiosity of Philip V. was excited, and the King questioned his confessor as
to the meaning of the unwonted mood in which he found him. Upon which
Father Robinet replied, that since the King forced him to it, he would
confess that nobody either in France or Spain doubted but that he would do
Madame des Ursins the honour of espousing her. “I marry her!” hastily
rejoined the King. “Oh! as to that, certainly not!” and he turned upon his
heel as he uttered the sentence. It was the pendant of “Oh! pour mariée,
non!” of the famous letter of the Abbé d’Estrées, related by the same

historian. Saint Simon’s two pictures are delightful; in either of the two, the
priest, whether cunning or malignant, figures conspicuously, attracts
attention, and keeps up one’s curiosity.

For some time, Philip V. treated these reports as mere inventions and
calumnies, “the offspring of envy, hatred, and ambition.” All that was said
concerning the omnipotence of Madame des Ursins, of her empire over
him, of her hopes, her designs, of that same corridor, of their private
interviews, left him unmoved and indifferent. The Count de Bergueick, until
then a stanch adherent of the Princess des Ursins, himself declared that that
omnipotence had become insupportable, and he asked permission to return
to Flanders, whence he had been summoned. Philip V. allowed him to
depart, and Madame des Ursins lost not one jot of her authority. But the
complaints, the murmurs, the idle talk continued, the incessant repetition of
which could not fail at last to make an impression upon a weak mind. In the
end the King grew wearied, and vexed, especially at the reports relating to
such a ridiculous marriage, to a matrimonial project which wounded his
self-love as a man as well as his royal dignity, and tormented besides by the
exigencies of a temperament, in which the flesh was far too predominant
over the spirit—“Find me a wife,” said he, one day to Madame des Ursins,
“our tête-à-têtes scandalise the people.”[71]

FOOTNOTES:

[57] Memoirs of Saint Philippe, tom. iii., p. 88.

[58] Mémoires de Saint Simon, tom. xx., p. 171, 172.

[59] Memoirs of Duclos (Petitot’s Collection), tom. i., p. 230.

[60] So runs the textual engagement of Queen Anne, taken from the Royal
Archives of the Hague, and communicated to M. Geffroy.

[61] Lettres de Madame de Maintenon et de Madame des Ursins, tom. ii., pp.
7, 8.