Memoirs Of Jean Francois Paul De Gondi, Cardinal De Retz, Volume II.

J >> Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz >> Memoirs Of Jean Francois Paul De Gondi, Cardinal De Retz, Volume II.


"Mazarin does not know what he is doing, and will ruin the State if care
be not taken; the Parliament really goes on too fast, as you said they
would; if they did but manage according to our scheme, we should be able
to settle our own business and that of the public, too; they act with
precipitation, and were I to do so, it is probable I should gain more by
it than they. But I am Louis de Bourbon, and will not endanger the
State. Are those devils in square caps mad to force me either to begin a
civil war tomorrow or to ruin every man of them, and set over our heads a
Sicilian vagabond who will destroy us all at last?"

In fine, the Prince proposed to set out immediately for Ruel to divert
the Court from their project of attacking Paris, and to propose to the
Queen that the Duc d'Orleans and himself should write to the Parliament
to send deputies to confer about means to relieve the necessities of the
State. The Prince saw that I was so overcome at this proposal that he
said to me with tenderness, "How different you are from the man you are
represented to be at Court! Would to God that all those rogues in the
Ministry were but as well inclined as you!"

I told the Prince that, considering how the minds of the Parliament were
embittered, I doubted whether they would care to confer with the
Cardinal; that his Highness would gain a considerable point if he could
prevail with the Court not to insist upon the necessity of the Cardinal's
presence, because then all the honour of the arrangement, in which the
Duc d'Orleans, as usual, would only be as a cipher, would redound to him,
and that such exclusion of the Cardinal would disgrace his Ministry to
the last degree, and be a very proper preface to the blow which the
Prince designed to give him in the Cabinet.

The Prince profited by the hint, so that the Parliament returned answer
that they would send deputies to confer with the Princes only, which last
words the Prince artfully laid hold of and advised Mazarin not to expose
himself by coming to the conference against the Parliament's consent, but
rather, like a wise man, to make a virtue of the present necessity. This
was a cruel blow to the Cardinal, who ever since the decease of the late
King had been recognised as Prime Minister of France; and the
consequences were equally disastrous.

The deputies being accordingly admitted to a conference with the Duc
d'Orleans, the Princes de Conde and Conti and M. de Longueville, the
First President, Viole, who had moved in Parliament that the decree might
be renewed for excluding foreigners from the Ministry, inveighed against
the imprisonment of M. de Chavigni; who was no member, yet the President
insisted upon his being set at liberty, because, according to the laws of
the realm, no person ought to be detained in custody above twenty-four
hours without examination. This occasioned a considerable debate, and
the Duc d'Orldans, provoked at this expression, said that the President's
aim was to cramp the royal authority. Nevertheless the latter vigorously
maintained his argument, and was unanimously seconded by all the
deputies, for which they were next day applauded in Parliament. In
short, the thing was pushed so far that the Queen was obliged to consent
to a declaration that for the future no man whatever should be detained
in prison above three days without being examined. By this means
Chavigni was set at liberty. Several other conferences were held, in
which the Chancellor treated the First President of the Parliament with a
sort of contempt that was almost brutal. Nevertheless the Parliament
carried all before them.

In October, 1648, the Parliament adjourned, and the Queen soon after
returned to Paris with the King.

The Cardinal, who aimed at nothing more than to ruin my credit with the
people, sent me 4,000 crowns as a present from the Queen, for the
services which she said I intended her on the day of the barricade; and
who, think you, should be the messenger to bring it but my friend the
Marechal de La Meilleraye, the man who before warned me of the sinister
intentions of the Court, and who now was so credulous as to believe that
I was their favourite, because the Cardinal was pleased to say how much
he was concerned for the injustice he had done me; which I only mention
to remark that those people over whom the Court has once got an
ascendency cannot help believing whatever they would have them believe,
and the ministers only are to blame if they do not deceive them. But I
would not be persuaded by the Marshal as he had been by the Cardinal, and
therefore I refused the said sum very civilly, and, I am sure, with as
much sincerity as the Court offered it.

But the Cardinal laid another trap for me that I was not aware of,--by
tempting me with the proffer of the Government of Paris; and when I had
shown a willingness to accept it, he found means to break off the treaty
I was making for that purpose with the Prince de Guemende, who had the
reversion of it, and then represented me to the people as one who only
sought my own interest. Instead of profiting by this blunder, which I
might have done to my own advantage, I added another to it, and said all
that rage could prompt me against the Cardinal to one who told it to him
again.

To return now to public affairs. About the feast of Saint Martin the
people were so excited that they seemed as if they had been all
intoxicated with gathering in the vintage; and you are now going to be
entertained with scenes in comparison to which the past are but trifles.

There is no affair but has its critical minute, which a bold
statesmanship knows how to lay hold of, and which, if missed, especially
in the revolution of kingdoms, you run the great risk of losing
altogether.

Every one now found their advantage in the declaration,--that is, if they
understood their own interest. The Parliament had the honour of
reestablishing public order. The Princes, too, had their share in this
honour, and the first-fruits of it, which were respect and security. The
people had a considerable comfort in it, by being eased of a load of
above sixty millions; and if the Cardinal had had but the sense to make a
virtue of necessity, which is one of the most necessary qualifications of
a minister of State, he might, by an advantage always inseparable from
favourites, have appropriated to himself the greatest part of the merit,
even of those things he had most opposed.

But these advantages were all lost through the most trivial
considerations. The people, upon the discontinuation of the
Parliamentary assemblies, resumed their savage temper, and were scared by
the approach of a few troops at which it was ridiculous to take the least
umbrage. The Parliament was too apt to give ear to every groundless tale
of the non-execution of their declarations. The Duc d'Orleans saw all
the good he was capable of doing and part of the evil he had power to
prevent, but neither was strong enough to influence his fearful temper;
he was unconscious of the coming and fatal blow. The Prince de Conde,
who saw the evil to its full extent, was too courageous by nature to fear
the consequences; he was inclined to do good, but would do it only in his
own way. His age, his humour, and his victories hindered him from
associating patience with activity, nor was he acquainted, unfortunately,
with this maxim so necessary for princes,--"always to sacrifice the
little affairs to the greater;" and the Cardinal, being ignorant of our
ways, daily confounded the most weighty with the most trifling.

The Parliament, who met on the 2d of January, 1649, resolved to enforce
the execution of the declaration, which, they pretended, had been
infringed in all its articles; and the Queen was resolved to retire from
Paris with the King and the whole Court. The Queen was guided by the
Cardinal, and the Duc d'Orleans by La Riviere, the most sordid and
self-interested man of the age in which he lived. As for the Prince de
Conde, he began to be disgusted with the unseasonable proceedings of the
Parliament almost as soon as he had concerted measures with Broussel and
Longueil, which distaste, joined to the kindly attentions of the Queen,
the apparent submission of the Cardinal, and an hereditary inclination
received from his parents to keep well with the Court, cramped the
resolutions of his great soul. I bewailed this change in his behaviour
both for my own and the public account, but much more for his sake. I
loved him as much as I honoured him, and clearly saw the precipice.

I had divers conferences with him, in which I found that his disgust was
turned into wrath and indignation. He swore there was no bearing with
the insolence and impertinence of those citizens who struck at the royal
authority; that as long as he thought they aimed only at Mazarin he was
on their side; that I myself had often confessed that no certain measures
could be concerted with men who changed their opinions every quarter of
an hour; that he could never condescend to be General of an army of
fools, with whom no wise man would entrust himself; besides that, he was
a Prince of the blood, and would not be instrumental in giving a shock to
the Throne; and that the Parliament might thank themselves if they were
ruined through not observing the measures agreed on.

This was the substance of my answer: "No men are more bound by interest
than the Parliament to maintain the royal authority, so that they cannot
be thought to have a design to ruin the State, though their proceedings
may have a tendency that way. It must be owned, therefore, that if the
sovereign people do evil, it is only when they are not able to act as
well as they would. A skilful minister, who knows how to manage large
bodies of men as well as individuals, keeps up such a due balance between
the Prince's authority and the people's obedience as to make all things
succeed and prosper. But the present Prime Minister has neither judgment
nor strength to adjust the pendulum of this State clock, the springs of
which are out of order. His business is to make it go slower, which, I
own, he attempts to do, but very awkwardly, because he has not the brains
for it. In this lies the fault of our machine. Your Highness is in the
right to set about the mending of it, because nobody else is capable of
doing it; but in order to do this must you join with those that would
knock it in pieces?

"You are convinced of the Cardinal's extravagances, and that his only
view is to establish in France a form of government known nowhere but in
Italy. If he should succeed, will the State be a gainer by it, according
to its only true maxims? Would it be an advantage to the Princes of the
blood in any sense? But, besides, has he any likelihood of succeeding?
Is he not loaded with the odium and contempt of the public? and is not
the Parliament the idol they revere? I know you despise them because the
Court is so well armed, but let me tell you that they are so confident of
their power that they feel their importance. They are come to that pass
that they do not value your forces, and though the evil is that at
present their strength consists only in their imagination, yet a time may
come when they may be able to do whatever they now think it in their
power to do.

"Your Highness lately told me that this disposition of the people was
only smoke; but be assured that smoke so dark and thick proceeds from a
brisk fire, which the Parliament blows, and, though they mean well, may
blaze up into such a flame as may consume themselves and again hazard the
destruction of the State, which has been the case more than once. Bodies
of men, when once exasperated by a Ministry, always aggravate their
failures, and scarcely ever show them any favour, which, in some cases,
is enough to ruin a kingdom.

"If, when the proposition was formerly made to the Parliament by the
Cardinal to declare whether they intended to set bounds to the royal
authority, if, I say, they had not wisely eluded the ridiculous and
dangerous question, France would have run a great risk, in my opinion, of
being entirely ruined; for had they answered in the affirmative, as they
were on the point of doing, they would have rent the veil that covers the
mysteries of State. Every monarchy has its peculiar veil; that of France
consists in a kind of religious and sacred silence, which, by the
subjects generally paying a blind obedience to their Kings, muffles up
that right which they think they have to dispense with their obedience in
cases where a complaisance to their Kings would be a prejudice to
themselves. It is a wonder that the Parliament did not strip off this
veil by a formal decree. This has had much worse consequences since the
people have taken the liberty to look through it.

"Your Highness cannot by the force of arms prevent these dangerous
consequences, which, perhaps, are already too near at hand. You see that
even the Parliament can hardly restrain the people whom they have roused;
that the contagion is spread into the provinces, and you know that
Guienne and Provence are entirely governed by the example of Paris. Every
thing shakes and totters, and it is your Highness only that can set us
right, because of the splendour of your birth and reputation, and the
generally received opinion that none but you can do it.

"The Queen shares with the Cardinal in the common hatred, and the Duc
d'Orleans with La Riviere in the universal contempt of the people. If,
out of mere complaisance, you abet their measures, you will share in the
hatred of the public. It is true that you are above their contempt; but
then their dread of you will be so great that it will grievously embitter
the hatred they will then bear to you, and the contempt they have already
for the others, so that what is at present only a serious wound in the
State will perhaps become incurable and mortal. I am sensible you have
grounds to be diffident of the behaviour of a body consisting of above
two hundred persons, who are neither capable of governing nor being
governed. I own the thought is perplexing; but such favourable
circumstances seem to offer themselves at this juncture that matters are
much simplified.

"Supposing that manifestoes were published, and your Highness declared
General of the Parliamentary Army, would you, monseigneur, meet with
greater difficulties than your grandfather and great-grandfather did, in
accommodating themselves to the caprice of the ministers of Rochelle and
the mayors of Nimes and Montauban? And would your Highness find it a
greater task to manage the Parliament of Paris than M. de Mayenne did in
the time of the League, when there was a factious opposition made to all
the measures of the Parliament? Your birth and merit raise you as far
above M. de Mayenne as the cause in hand is above that of the League; and
the circumstances of both are no less different. The head of the League
declared war by an open and public alliance with Spain against the Crown,
and against one of the best and bravest kings that France ever had. And
this head of the League, though descended from a foreign and suspected
family, kept, notwithstanding, that same Parliament in his interest for a
considerable time.

"You have consulted but two members of the whole Parliament, and them
only upon their promise to disclose your intentions to no man living. How
then can your Highness think it possible that your sentiments, locked up
so closely in the breasts of two members, can have any influence upon the
whole body of the Parliament? I dare answer for it, monseigneur, that if
you will but declare yourself openly the protector of the public and of
the sovereign companies, you might govern them--at least, for a
considerable time--with an absolute and almost sovereign authority. But
this, it seems, is not what you have in view; you are not willing to
embroil yourself with the Court. You had rather be of the Cabinet than
of a party. Do not take it ill, then, that men who consider you only in
this light do not conduct themselves as you would like. You ought to
conform your measures to theirs, because theirs are moderate; and you may
safely do it, for the Cardinal can hardly stand under the heavy weight of
the public hatred, and is too weak to oblige you against your will to any
sudden and precipitate rupture. La Riviere, who governs the Duc
d'Orleans, is a most dangerous man. Continue, then, to introduce
moderate measures, and let them take their course, according to your
first plan. Is a little more or less heat in Parliamentary proceedings
sufficient reason to make you alter it? For whatever be the consequence,
the worst that can happen is that the Queen may believe you not zealous
enough for her interest; but are there not remedies enough for that? Are
there not excuses and appearances ready at hand, and such as cannot fail?

"And now, I pray your Highness to give me leave to add that there never
was so excellent, so innocent, so sacred, and so necessary a project as
this formed by your Highness, and, in my humble opinion, there never were
such weak reasons as those you have now urged to hinder its execution;
for I take this to be the weakest of all, which, perhaps, you think a
very strong one, namely, that if Mazarin miscarries in his designs you
may be ruined along with him; and if he does succeed he will destroy you
by the very means which you took to raise him."

It had not the intended effect on the Prince, who was already
prepossessed, and who only answered me in general terms. But heroes have
their faults as well as other men, and so had his Highness, who had one
of the finest geniuses in the world, but little or no forethought. He
did not seek to aggravate matters in order to render himself necessary at
Court, or with a view to do what he afterwards did for the Cardinal, nor
was he biassed by the mean interests of pension, government, and
establishment. He had most certainly great hopes of being arbiter of the
Cabinet. The glory of being restorer of the public peace was his first
end in view, and being the conservator of the royal authority the second.
Those who labour under such an imperfection, though they see clearly the
advantages and disadvantages of both parties, know not which to choose,
because they do not weigh them in the same balance, so that the same
thing appears lightest today which they will think heaviest to-morrow.
This was the case of the Prince, who, it must be owned, if he had carried
on his good design with prudence, certainly would have reestablished the
Government upon a lasting foundation.

He told me more than once, in an angry mood, that if the Parliament went
on at the old rate he would teach them that it would be no great task to
reduce them to reason. I perceived by his talk that the Court had
resumed the design of besieging Paris; and to be the more satisfied of it
I told him that the Cardinal might easily be disappointed in his
measures, and that he would find Paris to be a very tough morsel.

"It shall not be taken," he said, "like Dunkirk, by mines and storming;
but suppose its bread from Gonesse should be cut off for eight days
only?"

I took this statement then for granted, and replied that the stopping of
that passage would be attended with difficulties.

"What difficulties?" asked the Prince, very briskly. "The citizens? Will
they come out to give battle?"

"If it were only citizens, monseigneur," I said, "the battle would not be
very sharp."

"Who will be with them?" he replied; "will you be there yourself?"

"That would be a very bad omen," I said; "it would look too much like the
proceedings of the League."

After a little pause, he said, "But now, to be serious, would you be so
foolish as to embark with those men?"

"You know, monseigneur," I said, "that I am engaged already; and that,
moreover, as Coadjutor of Paris, I am concerned both by honour and
interest in its preservation. I shall be your Highness's humble servant
as long as I live, except in this one point."

I saw he was touched to the quick, but he kept his temper, and said these
very words: "When you engage in a bad cause I will pity you, but shall
have no reason to complain of you. Nor do you complain of me; but do me
that justice you owe me, namely, to own that all I promised to Longueil
and Broussel is since annulled by the conduct of the Parliament."

He afterwards showed me many personal favours, and offered to make my
peace with the Court. I assured him of my obedience and zeal for his
service in everything that did not interfere with the engagements I had
entered into, which, as he himself owned, I could not possibly avoid.

After we parted I paid a visit to Madame de Longueville, who seemed
enraged both against the Court and the Prince de Conde. I was pleased to
think, moreover, that she could do what she would with the Prince de
Conti, who was little better than a child; but then I considered that
this child was a Prince of the blood, and it was only a name we wanted to
give life to that which, without one, was a mere embryo. I could answer
for M. de Longueville, who loved to be the first man in any public
revolution, and I was as well assured of Marechal de La Mothe,--[Philippe
de La Mothe-Houdancourt, deceased 1657.]--who was madly opposed to the
Court, and had been inviolably attached to M. de Longueville for twenty
years together. I saw that the Duc de Bouillon, through the injustice
done him by the Court and the unfortunate state of his domestic affairs,
was very much annoyed and almost desperate. I had an eye upon all these
gentlemen at a distance, but thought neither of them fit to open the
drama. M. de Longueville was only fit for the second act; the Marechal
de La Mothe was a good soldier, but had no headpiece, and was therefore
not qualified for the first act. M. de Bouillon was my man, had not his
honesty been more problematic than his talents. You will not wonder that
I was so wavering in my choice, and that I fixed at last upon the Prince
de Conti, of the blood of France.

As soon as I gave Madame de Longueville a hint of what part she was to
act in the intended revolution, she was perfectly transported, and I took
care to make M. de Longueville as great a malcontent as herself. She had
wit and beauty, though smallpox had taken away the bloom of her pretty
face, in which there sat charms so powerful that they rendered her one of
the most amiable persons in France. I could have placed her in my heart
between Mesdames de Gudmenee and Pommereux, and it was not the despair of
succeeding that palled my passion, but the consideration that the
benefice was not yet vacant, though not well served,--M. de La
Rochefoucault was in possession, yet absent in Poitou. I sent her three
or four billets-doux every day, and received as many. I went very often
to her levee to be more at liberty to talk of affairs, got extraordinary
advantages by it, and I knew that it was the only way to be sure of the
Prince de Conti.

Having settled a regular correspondence with Madame de Longueville, she
made me better acquainted with M. de La Rochefoucault, who made the
Prince de Conti believe that he spoke a good word for him to the lady,
his sister, with whom he was in, love. And the two so blinded the Prince
that he did not suspect anything till four years after.

When I saw that the Court would act upon their own initiative, I resolved
to declare war against them and attack Mazarin in person, because
otherwise we could not escape being first attacked by him.

It is certain that he gave his enemies such an advantage over him as no
other Prime Minister ever did. Power commonly keeps above ridicule, but
everybody laughed at the Cardinal because of his silly sayings and
doings, which those in his position are seldom guilty of. It was said
that he had lately asked Bougeval, deputy of the Grand Council, whether
he did not think himself obliged to have no buttons to the collar of his
doublet, if the King should command it,--a grave argument to convince the
deputies of an important company of the obedience due to kings, for which
he was severely lampooned both in prose and verse.

The Court having attempted to legalise excessive usury,--I mean with
respect to the affair of loans,--my dignity would not permit me to
tolerate so public and scandalous an evil. Therefore I held an assembly
of the clergy, where, without so much as mentioning the Cardinal's name
in the conferences, in which I rather affected to spare him, yet in a
week's time I made him pass for one of the most obstinate Jews in Europe.

At this very time I was sent for, by a civil letter under the Queen's own
hand, to repair to Saint Germain, the messenger telling me the King was
just gone thither and that the army was commanded to advance. I made him
believe I would obey the summons, but I did not intend to do so.

I was pestered for five hours with a parcel of idle rumours of ruin and
destruction, which rather diverted than alarmed me, for though the Prince
de Conde, distrusting his brother the Prince de Conti, had surprised him
in bed and carried him off with him to Saint Germain, yet I did not
question but that, as long as Madame de Longueville stayed in Paris, we
should see him again, the rather because his brother neither feared nor
valued him sufficiently to put him under arrest, and I was assured that
M. de Longueville would be in Paris that evening by having received a
letter from himself.