Chapter 30

POLITICAL AND GALLANT INTRIGUES--THE DUCHESS DE CHATILLON'S SWAY OVER CONDE--SHAMEFUL CONSPIRACY AGAINST MADAME DE LONGUEVILLE.

CONDE arrived in Paris on the 11th of April, and found everything in the utmost confusion. It would be impossible to follow all the petty intrigues, or even make allusion to all the events which affected the relative situations of the parties in the capital; but it may be observed that the tendency of both parties was to hold themselves in the neighbourhood of Paris. The chiefs of the Fronde hurried into the city, to receive the congratulations due to their exploits from the fair politicians who had won them to their cause. The Queen also established her head-quarters near the capital, to be ready for any turn of popular sentiment in her favour, and to hear the reports of her spies on the proceedings of her enemies. She knew what dances were to be given, and who were to attend the assemblies of the duchesses of the Fronde. On one occasion when Turenne knew that half the officers of Conde's army were engaged to a brilliant fete at the Duchess de Montbazon's, he made an attack on the enemy's camp, and was only repulsed by the steadiness of some old soldiers, who gave time for reinforcements to arrive. But the crisis was at hand; for each party began to be suspicious of the other gaining over its supporters--Mazarin lavishing promises of place and money, and the Duchess de Chatillon, invested with full powers by Conde, appearing in the opposite camp as the most irresistible ambassadress that ever was seen.

Thus matters stood in the early summer of 1652, and "all that was most subtle and serious in politics," La Rochefoucauld tells us, "was brought under the attention of Conde to induce him to take one of two courses--to make peace or to continue the war; when Madame de Chatillon imbued him with a design for peace by means the most agreeable. She thought that so great a boon might be the work of her beauty, and mingling ambition with the design of making a new conquest, she desired at the same time to triumph over the Prince de Conde's heart and to derive pecuniary advantages from her political negotiations."

We have already cursorily mentioned the Duchess de Chatillon: it is now indispensable, in order to thoroughly understand what is about to follow, to know something more of that celebrated personage.

Isabella Angelique de Montmorency was one of the two daughters of that brave and unfortunate Count de Montmorency Bouteville, who, the victim of a false point of honour and of an outrageous passion for duelling, was decapitated on the Place de Greve, on the 21st of June, 1627. She was sister of Francois de Montmorency, Count de Bouteville, better known as the illustrious Marshal de Luxembourg. Born in 1626, she had been married in 1645 to the last of the Colignys, the Duke de Chatillon, one of the heroes of Lens, killed in the action of Charenton in 1649. Left a widow at twenty-three, her rare loveliness won for her a thousand adorers. She was one of the queens of politics and gallantry during the Fronde; and even, after manifold amours, at thirty-eight could boast of captivating the Duke de Mecklenbourg, who espoused her in 1664. To beauty, Madame de Chatillon added great intelligence, but an intelligence wholly devoted to intrigue. She was vain and ambitious, and at the same time profoundly selfish, moderately scrupulous, and somewhat of the school of Madame de Montbazon. While both were young, she had smitten Conde; but he had thought no more of her after becoming absorbed with his love for Mademoiselle de Vigean. After that elevated passion, so sorrowfully terminated,[1] and after the fugitive emotion with which the lovely and virtuous Mademoiselle de Toussy could still inspire him, Conde stifled his chevalaresque instincts and bade adieu to the _haute galanterie_ of his youth and of the Hotel de Rambouillet. A few insignificant and commonplace attachments, of which no record has survived, alone excepted, Madame de Chatillon only is known to have captivated his heart for the last time; and that _liaison_ exercised upon Conde and his affairs, at the epoch at which we have arrived, an influence sufficiently great for history to occupy itself therewith, if it would not be content with retracing consequences and as it were the outline of events which pass across the stage of the world without being understood, without penetrating to the true causes which are to be discovered in the characters and passions of mankind. And, of all passions, there is none at once more energetic and wide-grasping than love. It occupies an immense place in human life, and in the loftiest as well as the lowliest conditions. In our own times, we have seen it make and mar kings. In an earlier epoch, by detaining Antony too long in Cleopatra's arms at Alexandria, the formidable tempest gathered above his head which nearly overwhelmed him at Munda. It played a great part in the war which Henry IV. was about to undertake, when a sudden death arrested him. One can scarcely resist a smile on seeing historians for the most part taking no account of it, as a thing too frivolous, and consigning it altogether to private life, as though that which agitates the soul so powerfully were not the principle of that which blazes forth exteriorly! No, the empire of beauty knows no limitation, and in no instance did it show itself more potent than over those great hearts of which Alexander the Great, Caesar, Charlemagne, and Henry IV. of France were the owners. We may well place Conde amongst such illustrious company.

[1] Mademoiselle de Vigean took the veil on the prince being forced to marry the niece of Cardinal Richelieu.

One graceful memento of Madame de Chatillon's power over Conde has descended to our own day. At Chatillon-sur-Loing, in what remains of the ancient chateau of the Colignys, which Isabelle de Montmorency derived from her husband and left to her brother, in that salon of the noble heir of the Luxembourgs, as precious for history as for art, wherein may be seen collected together, by the side of the sword of the Constable Anne, the likeness of Luxembourg on horseback, with his proud and piercing glance, as well as the full-length portrait of Charlotte Marguerite de Montmorency, Princess de Conde, in widow's weeds, there is also a large and magnificent picture, representing a young woman of ravishing beauty, with perfectly regular features, with the loveliest bright chestnut hair, grey eyes of the softest expression, a swan-like neck, of a slight and graceful figure, painted with a natural grandeur, and embellished with all the attractions of youth, enhanced by an exquisite air of coquetry. She is seated in an easy attitude. One of her hands, carelessly extended, holds a bouquet of flowers; the other rests upon the mane of a lion, whose head is drawn full-face, and whose flaming eyes are unmistakably the terrible eyes of Conde when seen with his sword drawn. Here we behold the beautiful Duchess de Chatillon at twenty-five or twenty-six, and very nearly such as she has taken care to describe herself in the _Divers Portraits_ of Mademoiselle de Montpensier. The head stands out wonderfully. It would be impossible to instance a more charming countenance, but it is somewhat deficient in character and grandeur, and quite different from that of Madame de Longueville. The latter's face was not so regularly symmetrical, but it wore a far loftier expression, and an air of supreme distinction characterised her entire person.

Madame de Chatillon and Madame de Longueville had been brought up together, and very much attached during the whole of their early youth. By degrees there sprung up a rivalry of beauty between them, and they quarrelled thoroughly when Madame de Longueville perceived after the death of Chatillon, that the young and beautiful widow, at the same time that she was welcoming very decidedly the homage of the Duke de Nemours, had also evident designs upon Conde. Madame de Longueville had her own reasons for not being then very severe upon others, but she knew the self-seeking heart of the fair Duchess, and she was alarmed for her brother's sake. She feared lest Madame de Chatillon, having great need of Court favour, might retain Conde in the engagements which he had with Mazarin, while she herself was forced to drag him into the Fronde. The quarrel was renewed in 1651, as we have seen, and it was in full force in 1652. Madame de Chatillon and Madame de Longueville were then disputing for Conde's heart: the one drew him towards the Court, fully hoping that the Court would not be ungrateful to her; the other urged him more and more upon the path of war. We have related how Madame de Longueville, well knowing the strength of Conde's friendship for the Duke de Nemours, who was in the chains of the Duchess, very inopportunely mingled politics and coquetry in Berri, and tried the power of her charms upon Nemours, in order to carry him off from Madame de Chatillon and from the party of peace. No one ever knew how far Madame de Longueville committed herself on that occasion; but, as we have remarked, the slightest appearance was enough for La Rochefoucauld. As he had only sought his own advantage in the Fronde, not finding it therein, he began to grow tired, and asked for nothing better than to put an end to the wandering and adventurous life he had been for some years leading by a favourable reconciliation. Madame de Longueville's conduct in cutting him to the quick in what remained of his tender feelings for her, and especially in the most sensitive portion of his heart--its vanity and self-love--gave him an opportunity or a pretext, which he seized upon with eagerness, to break off a _liaison_ become contrary to his interests. Thus, in April, 1652, when he returned to Paris with Conde, and there found Madame de Chatillon, he entered at once into all her prejudices and all her designs, as he afterwards owned to Madame de Motteville:[2] he placed at her service all that was in him of skill and ability, and descended to the indulgence of a revenge against Madame de Longueville wholly unworthy of an honourable man, and which after the lapse of two centuries is as revolting to every right-minded person as it was to his contemporaries.

[2] Mad. de Motteville, tom. v. p. 132. "M. de la Rochefoucauld m'a dit que la jalousie et la vengeance le firent agir soigneusement, et qu'il fit tout ce que Mad. de Chatillon voulut."

Madame de Chatillon was not contented with carrying off the giddy and inconstant Duke de Nemours from his new love, then absent; she exacted at his hands the public and outrageous sacrifice of her rival. The reprisals of feminine vanity did not stop there: the ambitious and intriguing Duchess went further, she undertook to ruin Madame de Longueville in her brother's estimation. With that object she set herself, with the assistance of La Rochefoucauld, to decry her in every way to him, and sought even to persuade him that his sister was not attached to him as she made it appear, and that she had promised the Duke de Nemours to serve him at his expense; whilst Madame de Longueville had never dreamed in any way of separating Nemours from Conde, but only from her, Madame de Chatillon, purposely to engage him more deeply in Conde's interests, in the light that she understood them.

Madame de Longueville's policy was very simple, and it was the true one, the Fronde once admitted. Assuredly, it would have been better alike for Madame de Longueville, for Conde, and for France not to have entered upon that fatal path by which the national greatness was for ten years arrested, and through which the house of Conde very nearly perished; but, after having embraced that sinister step, no other alternative remained to a firm and logical mind than to resolutely pursue its triumph. And that triumph, in Madame de Longueville's eyes, was the overthrow of Mazarin, a necessary condition of the domination of Conde. Such was the end pointed out to her by La Rochefoucauld when engaging her in the Fronde at the beginning of 1648, and she had never lost sight of it. It was to attain it that she had flung herself into the Civil War, and that she had ended by dragging therein her brother; that, worsted at Paris in 1649, she had striven in 1650 to raise Normandy; that she had risked her life, braved exile, made alliance with a foreign enemy, and unfurled at Stenay the banner of the Princes. In 1651, she had advised the resumption of arms, and now she maintained the impossibility of laying them down, and that, instead of losing himself in useless negotiations with the subtle and skilful Cardinal, it was upon his sword alone that Conde should rely. She thought him incapable of extricating himself advantageously from the intrigues by which he was surrounded, and therefore urged him towards the field of battle. She had always exercised a great sway over him, because he knew that her heart was of like temper to his own; and if passion had not blinded him, he would have rejected with disdain the odious accusations they had dared to raise against her, as he had done in 1643, in the affair of the letters attributed to her by Madame de Montbazon: he would have easily recognised that Madame de Chatillon, Nemours, and La Rochefoucauld would not have joined to blacken her in his eyes, as a vulgar creature ever ready to betray him for the latest lover, save in the manifest design of embroiling them both, of securing him, and of making him subserve their particular views. Nemours alone knew what had taken place during that journey from Montrond to Bordeaux, and the man who is base enough to constitute himself the denouncer of a woman to whom he has paid the warmest homage, is not very worthy of being believed on his word. Besides Nemours has not himself spoken, but Madame de Chatillon and Rochefoucauld, who have attributed to him certain sentiments, and we know with what motive.

It would be difficult to imagine a conspiracy more disgraceful than that formed at this juncture against Madame de Longueville; and that feature in it the more shameful perhaps was that La Rochefoucauld himself boasts of having invented and worked this machinery, as he terms it. The three conspirators were dumb, but through different but equally despicable reasons. Madame de Chatillon desired singly to govern Conde, and alone to represent him at Court, in order to reap the profits of the negotiation. Nemours was desirous of pleasing Madame de Chatillon, and looked forward also to have his share in the great advantages promised him; and, lastly, La Rochefoucauld was actuated by a pitiless spirit of revenge, and in the hope of a reconciliation necessary to his own immediate fortunes.

But here arose a delicate point, if we may speak of delicacy in such a matter: in the whole cabal, the least odious was, after all, the Duke de Nemours, more frivolous than perfidious, and who was deeply smitten with Madame de Chatillon. He loved her, and was beloved. The return of the Prince de Conde, with his well-declared pretensions, caused him cruel suffering, and his rage threatened to upset the well-concerted scheme. The lovely lady herself could not sometimes help being embarrassed between an imperious prince and a jealous lover. Happily the future author of the _Maxims_ was at hand. La Rochefoucauld took upon himself to arrange everything in the best way possible. It was not very difficult for him to direct Madame de Chatillon how to manage Conde and Nemours both at once, and to contrive in such a way that she might secure them both. He made the moody Nemours comprehend that, in truth, he had no reason to complain of an inevitable _liaison_, "qui ne lui devoit pas etre suspecte, puisqu'on voulait lui en rendre compte, et ne s'en servir que pour lui donner la principale part aux affaires." At the same time, "he urged M. le Prince to occupy himself with Madame de Chatillon, and to give her in freehold the estate of Merlon." In such a fashion, thanks to the honest intervention of La Rochefoucauld, a good understanding was kept up, and the conspiracy went quietly forwards. Conde had no mistrust whatever. A veil had been cast over his eyes; his martial disposition lulled asleep in the lap of pleasure and in a labyrinth of negotiations, and cradled in the hope of an approaching peace.

INDEX.

AIGUILLON, Duchess d', her resentment against Conde for forcing her young nephew Richelieu into a clandestine marriage, i. 174.

ANCRE, Marshal d', assassinated, i. 17.

ANET, Chateau d', a haunt of conspirators against Mazarin, i. 105.

ANNE OF AUSTRIA, Queen of Louis XIII. of France, her reception of Mad. de Chevreuse on her return from exile, i. 39; her dread of adventures and enterprises, 39; Mazarin's entire ascendancy over her, 47; hesitates to take a decided attitude between Mazarin and his enemies, 65; evidence of her love for Mazarin, 100; her Regency opens under most brilliant auspices, 101; the conspiracy to take Mazarin's life determines her to adopt his policy, 102; orders the arrest of Beaufort, 104; her lively displeasure at the duel between Guise and Coligny, 116; her jealous feeling against Madame de Longueville, 122; retires before the Fronde to St. Germain, 155; her endeavour to mortify the ladies of the Fronde by giving a day-light ball, 170; her delight at seeing Conde and the Frondeurs at daggers drawn, 174; secretly confers with De Retz relative to the arrest of Conde, Conti and Longueville; gives the fatal order for that _coup d'etat_,176; orders the arrest of the Duchesses de Longueville and de Bouillon, 178; quits Paris for Rouen to confront Madame de Longueville, 180; the affirmation of the Duchess d'Orleans that the Queen had secretly married Mazarin, 201; evidence of such marriage, 202; finds herself in some sort a prisoner on the proscription of Mazarin, 216; seriously prepares to make head against Conde, 257; her fervour, constancy, and marvellous skill manifested towards weakening Conde, 258; the great danger of herself, the King, and Mazarin at Gien, 287.

ANNE-GENEVIEVE DE BOURBON-CONDE, Duchess de Longueville, her birth and parentage, i. 1; her desire for conventual seclusion, 5; her great personal beauty, 7; her character, 10; suitors for her hand, 12; married to the Duke de Longueville, 13; her conduct towards a crowd of adorers, 14; has a formidable enemy in the Duchess of Montbazon, 66; the quarrel between the rival Duchesses in the affair of the dropped letter, 71; public apology made her by Madame de Montbazon, 74; unoccupied with politics at this juncture, 79; error of the _Importants_ in not conciliating her, 79; scandalised by Coligny's championship of her in the duel with Guise, 117; said to have witnessed the duel from behind a window-curtain, 118; verses on the occasion, 118; Miossens (afterwards Marshal d'Albret) tries in vain to win her heart, 121; her two individualities of opposite natures, 122; her defective education, 122; character of her epistolary style, 123; the different kind of education given by Menage to Madame de Sevigne and Madame de la Fayette, 124; the conquest of her heart and mind by La Rochefoucauld, 125; _resume_ of her life (up to 1648), 131; queen of the Congress of Munster, 133; acquires a taste for political discussions and speculations, 134; Madame de Motteville's portrait of her at this period (1647), 135; she sacrifices everything for La Rochefoucauld, 140; exercises a somewhat ridiculous empire over her brother Conti, 142; fatal influence of her passion for La Rochefoucauld, 149; throws herself into the first Fronde, 149; ultimately involves in it every member of her family, 150; arrayed against her brother Conde in civil war, 154; she shares all the fatigues of the siege of Paris, 157; her energy and intrepidity, 158; is given up as a hostage to the Parliament by her husband, 159; gives birth to Charles de Paris, _the Child of the Fronde_, in the Hotel de Ville, 159; is reconciled to Conde, resumes her ascendancy over him, and detaches him from Mazarin, 162; her embarrassment on reappearing at Court, 163; the perilous path she is led into by her infatuation for La Rochefoucauld, 166; undertakes to mislead Conde and give him over to Spain, 167; the Queen orders her to be arrested; she escapes to Normandy with La Rochefoucauld, 179; her adventures in Normandy. She raises the standard of revolt at Dieppe, 180; pursued by the Queen, she assumes male attire and reaches Rotterdam and Stenay, 181; becomes the motive power of "_the Women's War_" or _Second_ Fronde, 182; the message from her dying mother, 183; her gracious reception by their Majesties on her return from Stenay, 222; the most brilliant period of her career, 223; the idol of Spain, the terror of the Court, and one of the grandeurs of her family, 223; her motives for opposing the marriage of her brother with Mademoiselle de Chevreuse, 228; urges Conde to cut the knot, and make war upon the Crown, 246; her conduct, feelings and motives examined at this juncture, 247; was she the cause of the rupture of Conti's projected marriage, 248; peremptorily commanded to join her husband in Normandy, 253; she perceives a change in La Rochefoucauld's feelings, 254; follows the Princess de Conde into Berri, 254; the Duke de Nemours pays court to her, 262; certain obscure relations between them drives La Rochefoucauld to a violent rupture, 264; a rivalry of beauty leads her to humiliate Madame de Chatillon, 265; how Madame de Longueville fell into "the scandalous chronicle," 266; her grave cause of complaint against La Rochefoucauld, 266; Madame de Chatillon attempts to ruin her in Conde's estimation, 296; her fatal policy in the Fronde arrests the national greatness for ten years, and nearly ruins the House of Conde, 296; the disgraceful conspiracy formed against her, 298.

ARISTOCRACY in France, its constitution in the reign of Louis XIV., i. 217.

BEAUFORT, Francis de Vendome, Duke de (called the "King of the Markets"), a suitor for the hand of Anne de Bourbon, 12; a leader of the _Importants_, 15; a rival of Mazarin in the Queen's good graces, 52; his character as sketched by La Rochefoucauld, 52; becomes the led-captain of Madame de Montbazon, and the bitterest enemy of Mazarin, 53; his spite against Madame de Longueville, 71; his conduct in the affair of the dropped letters, 73; insinuates that they were from Coligny, 71; irritated at the banishment of Madame de Montbazon, he enters into a plot against Mazarin, 76; the ungovernable impetuosity of his vengeance against Madame de Longueville strongly stigmatised, 80; prepares an ambuscade to slay Mazarin, 95; the plot fails, 99; is arrested and imprisoned at Vincennes, 105; released by the Fronde and becomes master of Paris, 154; Madame de Montbazon exercises plenary power over him, 208; becomes one of the most conspicuous leaders of the Fronde, 215.

BEAUPUIS, Count de, detected plotting against Mazarin, escapes to Rome, 86; his denunciation of the evils of Richelieu's inordinate authority, 91.

BEAUTY IN WOMAN, true definition of, 8.

BOUILLON, de la Tour d'Auvergne, Duke de, conspires against Richelieu, 25; one of the party of the _Malcontents_, 109; joins Conde at Saint-Maur, 245.

BOUILLON, Duchess de, given up as a hostage to the Fronde, 159; quite as ardent in politics as Madame de Longueville, 206; arrested by the Queen's order at her daughter's bedside, and thrown into the Bastille, 206.

BRIDIEU, Marquis de, acts as second to Guise in duel with Coligny, 113.

BUCKINGHAM, George Villiers, Duke of, his political correspondence with Madame de Chevreuse, 19.

BURNET, Bishop, his assertion of Conde's offer to Cromwell to turn Protestant, 280.

BUSSY-RABUTIN, Count de, value of his satire of Madame de Longueville, 265.

CAMPION, Alexandre de, his mission to Madame de Chevreuse, 28; his censure of Madame de Montbazon's conduct, 80.

CAMPION, Henri de, attributes the conception of the plot to destroy Mazarin to Madame de Chevreuse in concert with Madame de Montbazon, 89; he stipulates with Beaufort that he should not strike Mazarin, 92; sought for by Mazarin, he takes refuge at Anet, and afterwards at Rome, 97.

CANTECROIX, Beatrice de Cusance, Princess de, Charles, Duke de Lorraine madly enamoured of, 147.

CAUMARTIN, Madame de, a portrait of Madame de Chevreuse sketched by De Retz to please the malignant curiosity of, 21.

CHATEAUNEUF, Charles de l'Aubepine, Marquis de, released from an imprisonment of ten years, 34; why detested by the Princess de Conde, 40; restored to office through Madame de Chevreuse, 57; banished to Touraine, 106; bides his time for displacing Mazarin, and holds the seals on the Cardinal going into exile, 107; deprived of them by the Queen, 230; restored to office to serve Mazarin in secret, 257; nobly inaugurates his ministry by marching with the Queen and young King into Berri, 263; Mazarin learns with inquietude his ever-increasing success, 278; again displaced by Mazarin, 279.

CHATILLON, Isabelle Angelique de Montmorency, Duchess de (sister of the illustrious Marshal de Luxembourg), the Great Conde's passion for her, 259; she urges Conde to an understanding with the Court, 259; manages her lofty lover with infinite tact, 259; is deeply enamoured of the young Duke de Nemours, 259; invested with full powers as an ambassadress by Conde, 291; her desire to triumph over Conde's heart, 291; her antecedents and character, 292; the important consequences of her liaison with Conde, 292; a portrait of her at twenty-five described, 293; causes of her quarrel with Madame de Longueville, 294; she exacts from Nemours the public and outrageous sacrifice of her rival, 296; attempts to ruin Madame de Longueville in Conde's estimation, 296; her embarrassment between an imperious Prince and a jealous lover, 298.

CHAVIGNY, Count de, his career, 231.

CHEVREUSE, Marie de Rohan, Duchess de, her illustrious lineage, 17; marries, first, Charles de Luynes, and afterwards Claude de Chevreuse, 17; as great favourite of Anne of Austria her extensive influence over the politics of Europe, 18; her personal characteristics, 18; summary of her character by Cardinal de Retz, 19; cause of her failure as a great politician, 20; her adventures in exile, 22; her great ascendancy over the cabinet of Madrid, 22; seeks refuge in England, 22; Richelieu's designs to effect her destruction, 23; acts as the connecting link between England, Spain and Lorraine during the Civil War in England, 24; negotiates with Olivarez for the destruction of Richelieu, 26; was she a stranger to the conspiracy of 1642? 26; abandoned by the Queen on its discovery, 30; her frightful position, 31; her perpetual exile decreed by the will of Louis XIII., 32; is dreaded by Mazarin, 33; her triumphant return to Court, 34; her position and political influence, 36; the new relations between her and the Queen, 39; she attacks Richelieu's system as adopted by Mazarin, 48; procures the return of Chateauneuf to office, 49; pleads for the Vendome princes, 50; manoeuvres to secure the governorship of Havre for La Rochefoucauld, 53; the skill, sagacity, and address of her counter-intrigues, 55; tries the power of her charms on Mazarin, 55; devotes her whole existence to political intrigue and conspiracy, 56; want of precaution in her attacks upon Mazarin, 58; her curious struggle for supremacy with the Prime Minister, 58; the head and mainspring of the _Importants_, 58; her tactics to displace Mazarin in favour of Chateauneuf, 59; she organises a _coup-de-main_ to destroy Mazarin, 62; arranges with the Cardinal the composition of Madame de Montbazon's apology, 74; her politic purpose of a fete to the Queen foiled by the insane pride of Madame de Montbazon, 76; her efforts to deprive Mazarin of supporters, 80; her share in Beaufort's plot, 82; Madame de Montbazon only an instrument in her hands, 89; her behaviour on the failure of the plot, 106; recommended by the Queen to withdraw from Court, 107; carries on a vast correspondence under the mantle of the English embassy with Lord Goring, Croft, Vendome, and Bouillon, and the rest of the _Malcontents_, 109; her irritation at being prohibited from visiting the Queen of England, 143; Mazarin watches her every movement, 144; ordered to retire to Angouleme, she goes for a third time into exile, 144; her bark is captured by the English Parliamentarians and she is carried into the Isle of Wight, 146; Mazarin has Montresor arrested in hopes of possessing himself of her costly jewels, 146; applies herself to maintain an alliance between Spain, Austria and Lorraine--the last basis of her own political reputation, 147; preserves her sway over the Duke de Lorraine, 148; frustrates Mazarin's projects to win over the Duke, 148; becomes once more the soul of every intrigue planned against the government, 148; constitutes herself the mediatress between the Queen and the Frondeurs, 206; partially restored to the Queen's confidence, 210; assisted in her political intrigues by the Marquis de Laigues, 210; a splendid supper given to her by Madame de Sevigne, 211; forms a plan with the Princess Palatine of a grand aristocratic league against Mazarin, 224; the Fronde in 1651 was Madame de Chevreuse, 225; she procures Conde's release from prison, 225; her resentment at the rupture of her daughter's marriage, 232; she raises the entire Fronde against Conde, 242; opposes the schemes to assassinate Conde, 243; Chateauneuf, her friend and instrument, is made Prime Minister, 257; remains staunch to the Queen and Mazarin through the last Fronde, 280.

CHEVREUSE, Charlotte Marie de Lorraine, Mademoiselle de, her projected marriage with the Prince de Conti, 224; supreme importance of such marriage, 225; disastrous results of its rupture, 232; impetuously proposes to turn the key upon Conde, Conti and Beaufort at the Palais d'Orleans, 233; her suspected and almost public _liaison_ with De Retz, 249; dies suddenly of a fever, unmarried, 224.

CINQ MARS, Henri de, undermines Richelieu with Louis XIII., 25; his death-warrant, 29.

COLIGNY, Count Maurice de (grandson of the famous Admiral de Coligny), an adorer of Madame de Longueville, 14; the dropped letters falsely attributed to him, 71; as champion of Madame de Longueville, he challenges the Duke de Guise, 113; fatal result of the duel, 117; dies of his wounds and of despair, 117; scandalous verses on the occasion, 118.

COETQUEN, Marquis de, hospitably receives Madame de Chevreuse when exiled, 146.

CONDE, Louis de Bourbon, Prince de, arbiter of the political situation after Rocroy, 80; his furious anger at Madame de Montbazon's insult to his sister, 111; hailed by the Queen as the liberator of France, 111; receives into his house Coligny wounded in duel with Guise, 116; the state in which he found Paris after his victory of Lens: he offers his sword to the Queen, 154; applies himself to giving the new _Importants_ a harsh lesson, 155; marches upon Paris and places it under siege, 156; the climax of his fame and fortune as defender and saviour of the throne, 164; he tyrannises over the Court and government, 168; he insults Mazarin and embarrasses the Queen, 169; his want of capacity for business, 172; his train of _petits-maitres_, 172; on the murder of one of his servants he tries to crush the Fronde leaders, 173; forces the young Duke de Richelieu to marry clandestinely Mademoiselle de Pons, 174; wounds the Queen's pride by compelling her to receive Jarze whom she had banished for fatuously believing that she had loved him, 175; arrested on the authority of his own signature and imprisoned at Vincennes, 177; what constituted the strength of the Princes' party in the Second Fronde, 188; the majority of the women who meddled with politics were, through sympathy, of his party, 203; his aged mother supplicates in vain for his release, and returns home to die, 204; his liberation effected by no other power than that of female influence, 206; he treats Mazarin with contempt at Havre, and on his release becomes master of the situation, 215; is courted by both the Fronde and Queen's party, 215; eight hundred princes and nobles partisans of Conde, 217; his sole error not having a fixed and unalterable object, 230; applies himself to form a new Fronde, 234; resumes the imperious tone which had previously embroiled him with the Queen and Mazarin, 237; Hocquincourt proposes to assassinate Conde, 243; he retreats to St. Maur and holds a Court there, 245; reappears in Parliament, 245; Chateauneuf and Mazarin labour to destroy him, 257; he narrowly escapes an ambuscade at Pontoise, 258; motives which rendered him averse to civil war, 259; his final determination to unsheath the sword, 260; raises the standard of revolt in Guienne, 262; his adventurous expedition, 275; to what did Conde aspire? 277; his inconstancy--offers himself to Cromwell and to become Protestant to have an English army, 278-280; the income and possessions of his family, 278; he escapes for the tenth time being taken and slain, 282; takes command of the Fronde forces and throws himself upon the royal army, 283; routs Hocquincourt and attacks Turenne unsuccessfully, 285; unjust accusation of Napoleon I. that Conde wanted boldness at Bleneau, 286; he leaves the army and hastens to Paris, 287; in abandoning the Loire he commits an immense and irreparable error, 289; invests Madame de Chatillon with full powers as an ambassadress, 291; imbued by her with a design for peace by means the most agreeable, 291; a graceful memento of her power over him still existing in the ancient Chateau of the Colignys, 293; Madame de Chatillon and Madame de Longueville dispute for Conde's heart, 294; the overthrow of Mazarin a necessary condition of the domination of Conde, 296; is advised by his sister to rely upon his sword alone, 297.

CONDE, Charlotte Marguerite de Montmorency, Princess de Bourbon (mother of the Great Conde and Madame de Longueville), her influence with Anne of Austria, 39; her detestation of Madame de Chevreuse, 40; tries to destroy her hold upon the Queen, 40; her lively resentment at the insult to her daughter in the affair of the dropped letters, 73; demands a public reparation from Madame de Montbazon, 74; her demeanour during the "mummeries" of the apology, 74; obtains the privilege of never associating with Madame de Montbazon, 75; supplicates in vain for Conde's release, and returns home to die, 204.

CONDE, Claire Clemence de Maille, Princess de Bourbon (daughter of the Duke de Breze, and wife of the Great Conde), shut up in Bordeaux with the Dukes de Bouillon and de Rochefoucauld during "the Women's War," 200, 204; only maintains herself in Bordeaux through the aid of the rabble _va-nu-pieds_, 205; forced to take refuge hastily in the citadel of Montrond, 263.

CONTI, Armand de Bourbon, Prince de (brother of the Great Conde), his extravagant adoration of his sister, Madame de Longueville, 141; marries Anne Marie Martinozzi, niece of Mazarin, 142; declared _generalissimo_ of the army of the king, 159; the problem as to who was the author of the rupture of his marriage with Madame de Chevreuse, 227; his ardent passion for her, 231; is made lieutenant-general in Guienne by Conde, 276; finishes, where he begun life, with theology, 142.

CORNEILLE, Pierre, his _Emilie_ painted as a perfect heroine, 82.

FIESQUE, Gillona d'Harcourt, Countess de, 195.

FOUQUEROLLES, Madame de, her terrible anxiety lest she should be compromised by the dropped letters, 73; confides the secret to La Rochefoucauld, 73; the letters are burnt in the Queen's presence, 73.

FRONDE, the, what gave it birth and sustained it, 149; _Day of the Barricades_, 153; the royal power attacked by three parties simultaneously, 153; the adherents of the Fronde, 156; initiation of the Civil War, 159; sordid selfishness of the Frondeurs, 161; carries everything before it in 1651, 223; brief retrospect of the two Fronde wars, 267; one of the most interesting as well as diverting periods in French history, 269; contrast between its main features and the contemporary civil war in England, 270; the wide-spread misery it entailed on France, 270.

GUISE, Henri, Duke de Guise (grandson of the _Balafre_), espouses the cause of Madame de Montbazon in the affair of the dropped letters, 73; confronts and defies the victorious Condes, 112; fights a duel with Coligny, the champion of Madame de Longueville, 115; his insulting words on unsheathing his sword, 115; result of the duel on party feeling in France, 117; his _liaison_ with Anne de Gonzagua, 193; becomes unfaithful to her and elopes with the Countess de Bossuet, 194.

GUYMENE, Anne de Rohan, Princess de (sister-in-law of Madame de Chevreuse, and daughter-in-law of Madame Montbazon), her numerous crowd of old and young adorers, 37; her flirtation with Mazarin, 56; furious at having been abandoned by De Retz, offers the Queen to get him confined in a cellar, 209.

HACQUEVILLE, Monsieur de, refuses to be a go-between of De Retz and Madame de Chevreuse, 211.

HAUTEFORT, Marie de (afterwards Duchess de Schomberg), influence of her piety and virtue, 37; witnesses the arrest of Beaufort, 105.

HENRIETTA MARIA, Queen of Charles I. of England, her warm reception of Madame de Chevreuse, 22; seeks an Asylum in France from the Parliamentarians, 143; asserted to have secretly married her equerry, Jermyn, 202.

HOCQUINCOURT, Charles de Monchy, Marshal d', proclaims Madame de Montbazon "la belle des belles," 70; is beaten by Conde at Bleneau, 284.

HOLLAND, Henry Rich, Earl of, his political correspondence with Madame de Chevreuse, 19; encourages the faction of Vendome, Vieuville, and La Valette, 23.

IMPORTANTS, the--Rochefoucauld's account of that faction, 77; irritated by the banishment of their fascinating lady-leader, Madame de Montbazon, they plot to murder Mazarin, 78; their ruin decided upon by the Queen and Mazarin, 79; their error in not conciliating Madame de Longueville, 79; was the plot real or imaginary--a point of the highest historical importance, 83; failure of the plot and ruin of the faction, 104.

JOINVILLE, Prince de (son of Charles de Lorraine), suitor for the hand of Anne de Bourbon, 12.

LAIGUES, Marquis de, declares himself a lover of Madame de Chevreuse to gain political importance, 210.

LONGUEVILLE, Duchess de, see ANNE DE BOURBON.

LONGUEVILLE, Marie d'Orleans, see Duchess de NEMOURS.

LONGUEVILLE, Henry de Bourbon, Duke de, marries Anne de Bourbon, 13; titular lover of Madame de Montbazon, 70; plenipotentiary at the Congress of Munster in 1645, 132; gives up the Duchess as a hostage to the Fronde, 159; raises Normandy against Mazarin, 158; he imperatively commands the Duchess to join him in Normandy, 253.

LORET, his rhyming description of the supper given by Madame de Sevigne to Madame to Chevreuse, 212.

LORRAINE, Charles IV., Duke of, involved in the conspiracy of Soissons through Madame de Chevreuse, 26; prefers amusing himself with civil war to the quiet enjoyment of his throne, 271.

LOUIS _the Just_ (XIII. of France), signs the death warrant of his favourite, Cinq Mars, 29; his decree of exile against Madame de Chevreuse, 33.

LOUIS XIV., his majority declared, 256.

LUYNES, Charles de, Favourite of Louis XIII., marries Marie de Rohan (afterwards Duchess de Chevreuse), 17

LUYNES, the (late) Duke de, aided the Pope against the Garibaldians, 18.

MAULEVRIER, the Marquis de, writer of the dropped letters addressed to Madame de Fouquerolles, 13.

MAZARIN, Jules, Cardinal, succeeds Richelieu as Prime Minister, 32; his origin, 44; is hated by the nobles, parliament, and middle classes, 44; installed in office, 45; his first service to Anne of Austria, 45; his striking personal resemblance to Buckingham, 46; how he obtained entire sway over the Queen-Regent, 47; applies himself to gain her heart, 47; finds a formidable opponent to his policy in Madame de Chevreuse, 48, 54; is terrified by her matrimonial projects, 54; flirts with Madame de Chevreuse, 55; his attentions to Madame de Guymene, 56; his difficulty to make the Queen comprehend his policy towards Spain, 60; declares that Madame de Chevreuse would ruin France, 61; forewarned of a conspiracy to destroy him, 62; the great families opposed to him, 63; his anxieties and perplexities, 64; the relations between him and the Queen, 64; his intervention in the quarrel of the rival Duchesses, 74; his resolution in confronting the plot of the _Importants_, 79; did Mazarin owe all his great career to a falsehood cunningly invented and audaciously sustained? 83; the plan of the attack upon him, 92; escapes assassination from Beaufort's nocturnal ambuscade, 99; compels the Queen to choose her part by addressing himself to her heart, 102; becomes absolute master of the Queen's heart, 102; banishes the conspirators and arrests Beaufort, 106; his tactics and political sagacity, 111; first introduces Italian Opera at the French Court, 135; concludes a peace with the Fronde parliament, 161; insulted by Conde, 169; what constitutes the strength of his party in the _Second_ Fronde, 187; goes into Guienne with the royal army, 205; banished by the Fronde, 215; treated with contempt by Conde at Havre, 215; with difficulty finds a refuge at Bruhl, 216; in his exile governs the Queen as absolutely as ever, 217; his immense blunder (in 1650), 225; rebanished and his possessions confiscated, 234; governs France from Bruhl, 236; foments quarrels between Conde and the Fronde, 236; composes with the Queen a political comedy of which De Retz became the dupe and Conde very nearly the victim, 238; the draught of his treaty with the Fronde, the masterpiece of his political skill, falls into Conde's hands, 256; alarmed at the success of Chateauneuf, he breaks his ban, and returns to France, 279; Conde and the Fronde united against him, 280; to gain supporters lavishly promises place and money, 290.

MEDICI, Marie de (Queen of Henry IV. and mother of Louis XIII.), her imprisonment of Charlotte de Montmorency, 2; conspires against Richelieu, 28.

MIOSSENS, Count de (afterwards Marshal d'Albret), tries unsuccessfully to win the heart of Madame de Longueville, 122; gives place to La Rochefoucauld, 130.

MONTAGU, Lord, the intimate adviser of Queen Henrietta Maria, and slave of Madame de Chevreuse, 24; Anne of Austria's confidence in him, 37; his mission to Madame de Chevreuse, 38; becomes a bigot and a devotee, 38.

MONTBAZON, Hercule de Rohan, Duke de (father of Madame de Chevreuse and the Prince de Guymene), marries at sixty-one Marie d'Avangour aged sixteen, 67; recommends the example of Marie de Medici to his young wife and takes her to Court, 67.

MONTBAZON, Marie d'Avangour, Duchess de, called by d'Hocquincourt "la belle des belles," the youthful stepmother of Madame de Chevreuse, her parentage and antecedents, 67; married at sixteen to a husband of sixty-one, 67; her personal and mental characteristics, 68; contrast in manners between her and Madame de Longueville, 69; her numerous adorers; the Duke de Beaufort her titular lover, 70; her malignant hatred of Madame de Longueville, 71; employs her influence over the houses of Vendome and Lorraine to the injury of her rival, 71; the affair of the dropped letters, 71; the party of the _Importants_ espouse her cause, 73; she is compelled to make a public apology before the Queen and Court, 74; the pretended reconciliation only a fresh declaration of war, 75; her conduct at the collation given the Queen by Madame de Chevreuse, 76; is banished by the King's order, 76; she inveigles Beaufort into a plot to destroy Mazarin, 89.

MONTESPAN, Francoise-Athenais de Rochechouart Mortemart, Duchess de, her fame as a beauty, 9; relations to her of the Dukes de Longueville and Beaufort, 14.

MONTPENSIER, Anne Marie Louise d'Orleans (known as _La Grande Mademoiselle_), daughter of Gaston, Duke d'Orleans and cousin of Louis XIV., preserves the text of the dropped letters, 72; gives the two speeches made on the occasion of Madame de Montbazon's reparation, 74.

MOTTEVILLE, Frances Bertaut, Madame de, her amusing recital of the "mummeries" in the affair of the dropped letters, 74; her account of the Queen's reception of the news of the abortive attempt to kill Mazarin, 103; her portrait of Madame de Longueville, 135; the principal motive which urged La Rochefoucauld to woo the Duchess, 140.

NEMOURS, Marie d'Orleans, Duchess de (daughter of Henri, Duke de Longueville), her harsh censure of the pride and impracticability of the Condes, 165; quits Madame de Longueville to take refuge in a convent, 180; moves heaven and earth for the release of Conde that he might keep watch over the Duchess de Chatillon, 208; her character, 212; the enemy of the Fronde and the Condes, 227; her detestation of Madame de Longueville, 252.

NEMOURS, Charles Amadeus, of Savoy, Duke de, prompted by the Duchess de Chatillon, his mistress, embraces the cause of Conde, 208; pays court to Madame de Longueville instead of making active war in Berri, 262; the obscure relations between them at this juncture, drives La Rochefoucauld to a violent rupture with Madame de Longueville, 264.

ORLEANS, Gaston, Duke d' (brother of Louis XIII.), conspires against Richelieu, 25; his incapacity to govern, 171; his jealousy of the influence of Conde and of Mazarin, 171; makes De Retz his confidant, who obtains his assent to the arrest of the Princes, 176; becomes the head of a fifth party in the Second Fronde, 200; consents to the liberation of the Princes on promise that his daughter should marry Conde's son, 207; governed by De Retz and Madame de Chevreuse, 258.

PETITS-MAITRES, the train of Conde called, their character, 288.

PALATINE, Anne de Gonzagua, Princess (widow of Edward Prince Palatine), peculiarities of her epistolary style, 124; her large intelligence, solidity, refinement and ingenuity of thought, 124; becomes the head and mainspring of the Princes' party, or Second Fronde, 179; the formidable political opponent of Mazarin, 179; her extraordinary political and diplomatical ability, 189; her antecedents, 190; her _liaison_ with Henri de Guise under a promise of marriage, 193; disguised in male attire she joins her lover at Besancon, 193; abandoned by the volatile de Guise, who elopes with the Countess de Bossuet, she returns to Paris, 194; is married to Prince Edward, Count Palatine of the Rhine, 194; by her conciliatory tact she obtains the esteem of all parties in the Fronde, 196; De Retz's eulogium and Madame de Motteville's opinion of her, 196; she operates on behalf of the imprisoned Princes, and negotiates four different treaties for their deliverance, 198; an alliance with the two camps concluded by her with De Retz, 224; she conducts with consummate skill the negotiation between Madame de Chevreuse and Madame de Longueville, 227.

PHALZBOURG, Princess de (sister of Charles IV. of Lorraine), acts as a spy over Madame de Chevreuse in the interest of Mazarin, 147.

POLITICAL INTRIGUE, an affair of fashion among the ladies of Anne of Austria's Court, 56.

RAMBOUILLET, Hotel de, 9.

RETZ, John Francis Paul Gondi, Cardinal de, the evil genius of the Fronde, 151; his influence over the Parisians as Coadjutor, 151; his character--ladies of gallantry his chief political agents, 152; his conspicuous merits and faults, 172; his master-stroke of address, 201; his best concerted measures abortive through his inclination for the fair sex, 208; fails to acquire the confidence of anyone--is threatened with assassination, 209; lends an ear to Cromwell and contracts a close friendship with Montrose, 209; has the same interests with Madame de Chevreuse in securing the union of her daughter with Conti, 210; an analysis of his character, antecedents, and aspirations, 293; admitted unwillingly into the secret councils of the Queen, 240; his midnight interview with Anne of Austria, 241; holds the key of Paris, 275; he trims and follows the Duke d'Orleans, 280.

RICHELIEU, Cardinal de, his government through terror, 24; conspiracy to destroy him, 26-30; result of his efforts to consolidate the regal power, 32.

RICHELIEU, Duke de, engaged to Mademoiselle de Chevreuse, but forced by Conde to marry clandestinely when under age, Mademoiselle de Pons, 174.

ROCHEFOUCAULD, Francis, second Duke de la--his career as Prince de Marsillac, 127; his character of the Duchess de Longueville, 10; his advice to Madame de Chevreuse, 39; Madame de Fouquerolles confides to him the secret of the dropped letters, 73; he delivers her and her lover from their terrible anxiety, 73; seeks to hush up and terminate the quarrel of the rival Duchesses, 80; constitutes himself the champion of Madame de Chevreuse's innocence of Beaufort's plot, 83; allies himself with that illustrious political adventuress, 128; desirous of securing to his party the master-mind of Conde to avenge himself of the Queen and Mazarin, 128; makes persistent love to Madame de Longueville and wins her heart, 129; his cynical maxim on the love of certain women, 129; his personal and mental characteristics, 137; the way in which he superseded Miossens as the lover of Madame de Longueville, 139; his sordid motive as her wooer, 140; his restless spirit and ever discontented vanity, 167; effects the escape from Paris of Madame de Longueville, 178; gives proof of a rare fidelity through the whole of "the Women's War," 183; his ancestral chateau of Verteuil razed to the ground by Mazarin's orders, 183; his conduct at this time contradicts the assertion that he never loved the woman he seduced and dragged into the vortex of politics, 184; his version of the true cause of the rupture of the marriage between Mademoiselle de Chevreuse and Conti, 229: grows weary of a wandering and adventurous life, 255; the report of certain obscure relations existing between Nemours and Madame de Longueville drives him to a violent rupture with the Duchess, 264; his accusation more absurd than odious, 264; to indulge his revenge against Madame de Longueville, he enters into all Madame de Chatillon's designs, 295; directs her how to manage Conde and Nemours both at once, 298.

SCUDERY, Mademoiselle de, and the prudes of the Hotel de Rambouillet protest strongly against the marriage of Conti with Mademoiselle de Chevreuse, 249.

SEGUIER, Pierre, Keeper of the Seals, his character, 49.

SEVIGNE, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de, gives a splendid supper to the Duchess de Chevreuse, 211.

SOISSONS, Count de, his conspiracy to destroy Cardinal de Richelieu, 25.

ST. MAURE, Countess of, the polish and precision of her epistolary style, 123.

TAVANNES, Count de, a valiant _petit-maitre_ to whom Conde gives command of the army after Bleneau, 257.

TURENNE, Marshal de, raises the standard of revolt in behalf of the Fronde, 156; is won over to make a treaty with Spain by Madame de Longueville, 182; thanked by the Queen after Bleneau, for having placed the crown a second time on her son's head, 287; achieves the importance of being a rival of Conde, 289; attacks the enemy's camp when half the officers of Conde's army were at Madame de Montbazon's fete, 290.

VIGEAN, Mademoiselle de, Conde's love for, 292.

VENDOME, Duke Caesar de, the faction of, with La Vieuville and La Valette, when emigrants in England, 23; his pretensions and agitated life, 51; decides to exile himself in Italy and await the fall of Mazarin, 106.

VITRY, Marshal de, prepares with Count de Cramail a _coup-de-main_ against Richelieu, 25.

END OF VOL. I.

BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

+------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Transcriber's Note | | | | | |The following changes were made to the original text [correction | |in brackets]: | | | |Page 16: (afterwards Duke de Rochefoucald [Rochefoucauld]) | |Page 33: Angoulesme [Angouleme], until after the peace be | |Page 43: French language: ["]_La reine est si bonne!_" | |Page 79: royal authority now seriously theatened [threatened]. | |Page 85: oppose testimony more distinterested [disinterested], | |Page 85: confidental [confidential] letters furnish us. | |Page 146: _varures_ [parures], valued at two hundred thousand | |Page 157: troops, at the parades of the citizen soldiery.[,] | |Page 165: exposed to one of those _coups d'etat_ [d'etat], | |Page 179: the Secretary of State, La Veilliere [Vrilliere], | |Page 184: firmness,["] says Lenet, "that he seemed as though | |Page 202: Footnote 6: Leomeni[Lomenie] de Brienne, Memoirs, 1828.| |Page 231: to look upon her with horror. "[removed]He even blamed | |Page 232: From that moment means of of[removed] breaking off | |Page 232: and obscurities resting upon this deli- [delicate] | |Page 234: missing anchor for Footnote 4 | |Page 269: La Rouchefoucauld [Rochefoucauld], getting Gondy | |Page 269: Rouchefoucauld [Rochefoucauld], he determined to set | |Page 279: his ban, quitted his retreat at Dinan, and and[removed]| |Page 282: went out to forage. He suceeded[succeeded] in procuring| |Page 303: her personal characteristics, 18:[;] | |Page 310: attack's[attacks] the enemy's camp when half | +------------------------------------------------------------------+