La Grande Mademoiselle

Beyond the Tuileries all was confusion. At the last moment the Queen had despatched messengers to summon the courtiers and the courtiers had sent messengers to warn their relatives that the Court was on the march; all had hurried from their homes, and lord and lady were pressing forward toward the Cours la Reine, the gentlemen fastening their garments askew, or wrong side out as they went; the ladies, still in their nightcaps, moving wearily, soothing or upbraiding their weeping children. All wondered what it meant, all asked what the Canaille had done to force the Court to flee.

Mademoiselle was the last to reach the Cours. To quote her own words, she had been "all troubled with joy" when ordered to prepare for flight, because she had believed that her enemies were about to take a step which would force them to look upon the effects of their folly; but the misery of the sudden flitting, the indecent haste, the broken rest, the consciousness of bodily weakness had swallowed up her glee, and she arrived at the Cours in an ugly humour. She ached with cold; she was crowded in the coach; she sought excuses for intimating that the Queen had brought a useless flight upon the Court. The children voiced their woes. Numb with the cold, worn out and querulous, the ladies chided their husbands and the husbands rudely answered. The moon went down upon the wretched exiles; day had not dawned and black night hid the general woe.

They fled in the darkness, cahin-caha, the children sobbing, the women expressing their sufferings in ways equally tempestuous. The Queen was gay; she was running away with Mazarin! "Never," said Mademoiselle, "had I seen a creature as gay as she was! had she won a battle, taken Paris and had all who displeased her put to death, she could not have been happier." They found Saint Germain bare; they had neither furniture nor clothing; they were worn out and anxious, and the château furnished no means of rest or refreshment; the exiles stood at the gates all day watching the highway and questioning the passers-by. No one had seen the luggage or the furniture. Toward night news arrived from Paris; the wains were not coming; the people were angry because the Queen had run away; they had fallen upon the loads; they had broken the courtiers' furniture. Only one load was on the road, – Mademoiselle's; the King's loads had been respected, but they were not to leave Paris.

Mademoiselle had left the bulk of her commodities to be sent out at a later day; only one load belonging to her had started to leave Paris; the people had examined that tenderly and then despatched it for Saint Germain.

No need to watch longer for the loaded wains! The tired courtiers made the best of a bad business; half a dozen of the highest of the Great "shared the Cardinal's two camp-beds"; the quilts on which the children had been bedded on the way from Paris were spread upon the floor. Those who had no mattresses lay upon straw or upon bare boards. The ladies fared worst of all; they had been used to the tender cares of their femmes-de-chambre.

Mademoiselle's spirits rose; she had always boasted that she was "a creature superior to trifles," and the general difficulty had put her on her mettle. Monsieur's wife wept feebly; she told the courtiers of the luxury of her early life, and of her present sufferings. Monsieur's little daughters were restless and displeased. Mademoiselle noted this adventure in her memoirs:

I slept in a vast and finely gilded room, but there was very little fire in it, and it had neither window-panes nor windows, which, as the month was January, was not agreeable. My mattress was on the floor, and my sister, who had no mattress, slept with me. I had to sing to her to put her to sleep; she greatly troubled my sleep. She turned, and re-turned; then, feeling me close to her, she cried out that she "saw the beast," and then I had to sing to her again, and thus the night passed. I had no underclothing to change, and they washed my nightdress during the day and my day-chemise during the night. I had not my women to comb my hair and to dress me, and that was very inconvenient. I ate with Monsieur, who made very bad cheer… I lived in that way ten days, then my equipage arrived, and I was very glad to have all my commodities.

Louis XIV. and little Monsieur played about Saint Germain in the wintry weather, and as the days passed their garments acquired the marks of use. The King's furniture did not arrive, neither did his boxes; the Parisians would not permit them to leave the city. All the gates of Paris were guarded; no one was passed without papers. It was so difficult for people of quality to obtain passports that the ladies ran away in the garb of monks, or disguised in some other way. The Marquise d'Huxelles went through the gates in the uniform of a soldier, with an "iron pot" on her head.134 Paris had never refused its favourite anything, and Mademoiselle's chariots went and came and no one asked what they contained; the belongings of her friends were transported as freely as her own if they were in her boxes or in her wains. In after life she used to call those days "the time of plenty." "I had everything!" she wrote exultantly; "they gave me passports for all that I wished taken out, and not only that, but they watched over and escorted my chariots! nothing equalled the civilities that they showed me."

Time passed; the royal garments were unfit for wear and the Queen, reduced to extremities, begged Mademoiselle to smuggle for her. Mademoiselle granted her request with joy. She recorded the event exultantly: "One has enough of it, – when one is in condition to render services to such people, and when one sees that one is of importance!"

The Parisians had given their favourite a convincing token of their love, and she regarded it as a proof that she was the one best fitted to share the throne of France.

As the Parisians slept well on the night of the Queen's second flight, they were not conscious of their separation from royalty until the morning of the 6th January. The first emotion felt was consternation. Parliament made overtures to the Queen; the Queen rudely repulsed the overtures, and Parliament issued an edict of expulsion against Mazarin. Mazarin expelled, Parliament raised money, and set about recruiting an army. The Council of the Hôtel de Ville, representing Parisian commerce, sent a delegation to the King. Arrived in the royal presence, the deputies fell at the King's feet. They portrayed the horrors of civil war, they explained to the child that to be driven to attack Paris would be abominable. In the midst of his supplications the chief speaker, choked by sobs, cut short his plea. His emotion was more effective than any argument; his tears proved the solemnity of the hour. The King wept bitterly, and, in fact, every one wept but the Queen and Condé, who surveyed the general distress dry-eyed.

When calm was restored Anne of Austria refused to yield. The die was cast; civil war was inevitable. After long deliberation the Hôtel de Ville declared for resistance. The masses of the people were defiant; they accused the royal family of treason; they demanded vengeance.135

At that moment, when the nation stood alone, without a king, when a mob, driven mad by despair, clamoured for justice from the nobles, Mme. de Longueville entered the political field. Nature had not intended Mme. la Duchesse de Longueville for a business career; she was the impersonation of the soft graces of elegant leisure; and even in her grave she charmed men, as she will always charm them while there exists a portrait of her pale hair and angelic eyes, or an historian to recount "the delights of her calm mind illumined by the reflection of celestial light."136 The fashionable education of the day had been her ruin; the little court of the Hôtel de Condé, long sojourns at Chantilly, where people lived as the heroes and heroines lived in Astrée,137 excessive novel-reading and frequent and subtle discussions of "love" had made Mme. de Longueville a finished sentimentalist; and in her path she had found waiting for her a man well disposed and well fitted to exploit her sentimentalism, and bold enough to avow the part played by him in her career.

La Rochefoucauld's ambition was to augment the grandeur of his house, and he could not see why he should not put France to fire and sword, if by doing so he could seat his wife on a tabouret close to the Queen.138 Under his guidance, Mme. de Longueville cast off her sloth and sacrificing her indolence to what she was assured was her "glory," became a political centre and acquired an influence as romantic as herself. Many of the lords who, after the flight of the Court, offered their swords to Parliament "for the service of the oppressed King" (that was the formula), were urged to that action by the persuasive Mme. de Longueville. M. de Longueville was her first recruit, the Prince de Conti was her second.

As soon as it was known that France was preparing for civil war, Mesdames de Longueville and de Bouillon started for Paris. The day after they arrived at their destination they presented themselves at the Hôtel de Ville, saying that they had come "to live right there, in the Town Hall, under the eye of the municipality, as hostages for the fidelity of their husbands."

Imagine [said Retz] these two ladies seated in the portico of the Hôtel de Ville, all the more beautiful because they had arranged themselves as if they had not cared for their appearance, though, in fact, they had taken great pains with it. Each held one of her children in her arms; and the children were as beautiful as their mothers. The Grève was full of people, even to the roofs. All the men shouted with joy, and all the women wept their tenderness. Having been gently led into the street by the aldermen, the Duchesses timidly returned to the portico and seated themselves in their old places. The city authorities then abandoned a vacant room to them, and in a few hours, with furniture and with other articles, they turned the concession into a luxurious salon, where they received the visits of the Parisians that same evening. Their salon was full of people of the fine world; the women were in full evening dress, the men were in war harness; violins were played in a corner, trumpets sounded an answer from the street, and people who loved romance were able to fancy that they were at the home of "Galatée" in Astrée.

So the Parisians were duped in the first days of the Fronde. "Galatée" reigned, and the reign of nymphs is expensive. The Court of the nymphs was daily augmented by general officers who offered themselves to the cause amidst the artless plaudits of the people. The generals were as expensive as the nymphs; they demanded money for themselves and for their soldiers; they exacted from Parliament a promise which Parliament agreed to put into effect whenever it could make terms with the Regent. M. le Prince de Conti demanded an important place at Court, money, and favours for his friends. M. de Beaufort demanded an important position, the government of a province for his father, money and pensions for himself, favours for his friends.

The Duc de Beaufort was a jolly dog whom the people loved. He was called "the King of the Halles," a title which expressed his popularity with the fish-wives, rabbit-pullers, agents of the abattoirs, strong-porters, sellers of mortuary wreaths, cheese merchants, and all the rest. He lounged through the markets and the slums tossing his sumptuous head like a Phœbus-Apollo. He affected the argot of the canaille. His good nature was infectious and although he was an Harpagon and a brigand by proxy, he was a very agreeable courtier.

The Maréchal de la Motte demanded a colonelcy for himself and favours for his friends. Every one wanted something, and all felt that whatever was to be had must be had at once; the time was coming when the nation would have nothing to bestow.

A document now before me contains sixteen names; the greatest names of France.139 The owners of those names betrayed the King for the people because they hoped to gain honours and benefits by their treason. They would have betrayed the people for the King had they hoped to gain more from the King than from the people. The nobility had taken the position held by certain modern agitators; they resorted to base means because they were at an extremity. Like the farmers of France, the nobles had been ruined by the egotism of the royal policy.

They had been taught to think that they could not stand alone. Richelieu had prepared for an absolute monarchy by making them dependent upon the King's bounty; he had habituated them to look for gifts. This fact does not excuse the sale of their signatures, but it explains it. They knew that they had lost everything, they knew that the time was at hand when, should all go, as they had every reason of believing that it would go, the Government would have favours to bestow; they knew that their only means of speculation lay in their signatures. They were not base hirelings, – their final struggle was proof of that! they were the "fools of habit"; Richelieu had taught them to beg and they begged clamorously with outstretched hands, and not only begged but trafficked.

When they demanded honours and favours they did nothing more than their hierarchical head had habituated them to do. So much for their sale of signatures. The fact that they had resolved to make a supreme fight, not for independence, – they had no conception of independence, – but against an absolute monarchy,140 explains the Fronde of the Princes. At the other end of the social ladder the mobility, or riff-raff, had taken the upper hand, dishonoured the people's cause, and made the Parisians ridiculous.

Driven to arms by their wrongs, lured by the magnetic eloquence of the skilled agents of political egotists, led by a feverish army of men who held their lives in their hands, and commanded by women who played with war as they played with love, the soldiers of the Fronde wandered over the country encamping with gaily attired and ambitious coquettes, and with ardent cavaliers whose gallant examples fretted their own enforced inaction. They were practical philosophers, moved by the instinct which sends the deer to its sanctuary. "Country" and "Honour" had come to be but shibboleths: they, the Frondeurs, were of a race apart from the stern regulars who blocked the capital under Condé, and when the time to fight came they ran, crying their disgust so loud that the whole country halted to listen. The public shame was unquestionable, and the national culpability, like the culpability of the individual, was well understood; the cry of "treason" aroused a general sense of guilt. Certain of the men of France had been faithful to the country from the beginning; the nation's statesmen, notably the magistrates, had acted for the public good; but in the general accusation Parliament, like all the other factors of the Government, was branded; its motives were questioned, and the names of honest men were made a by-word.

Passing and repassing, in and out of all the groups and among all the coteries, glided the Archbishop's coadjutor; now in the costume of a cavalier, bedizened with glittering tinsel, now in the lugubrious habit of his office. When dressed to represent the Church he harangued the people wherever he chanced to meet them; the night-hawks saw him disguised and masked running to the dens of his conspirators. Whatever else he was doing, he found time to preach religion, and he never missed a gathering of pretty women.

Meanwhile the price of bread had tripled; the Revolution had reached the provinces, and the generals had signed a treaty of alliance with Spain. This was paying dear for the violins of the heroines of the Hôtel de Ville!

In Parliament the magistrates, the solid men of France, revolted against the seigniors as they had revolted against the barricades. They knew what influences had been brought to bear upon individuals, they had seen the royal power exercised to the ruin of the country, they knew the strength of the mobility, and their own honour had been called in question; but their action was the result of an unselfish impulse. National affection, a natural patriotism, had raised them above fear and above rancour. They were determined to rescue the country, and they had lost faith in all intentions save their own.

Acting on their own counsel and on their own responsibility, they hastened to conclude the peace negotiations of Rueil (11th March, 1649). Their action irritated the generals. Peace thus arranged was not in their plan; it brought them no profit: they argued and bargained.

To quote Mme. de Motteville, they "demanded all France" in payment for their part in the treaty. They made it plain that if they should give their signatures it would be because they had been paid for them. Shameless haggling marked this period of the Fronde. After all those who had influence or signatures to dispose of had plucked the many-membered monarchy even to its pin-feathers, and after each of the assistants had taken a leg or a wing for himself, the generals consented to lay down their arms, and peace was proclaimed to the sound of trumpets.

The day after the proclamation was issued, Mademoiselle asked her father and the Queen for permission to return to Paris.

She wished to see how the Parisians regarded her and how they would receive her. She set out from Saint Germain across the devastated country. The soldiers of both parties had burned the houses, cut down the trees, and massacred or put to flight the inhabitants. It was April, the time when all the orchards are in flower, but the suburbs within six miles of Paris were bare and black; the ground was as lifeless as a naked rock.

"Monday, 8th April," noted a contemporary, "Mlle. d'Orléans arrived at her lodgings in the Tuileries, amidst the great applause of the Parisians. Tuesday, the 9th, every one called on Mademoiselle."

Mademoiselle wrote: "As soon as I was in my lodgings every one came to see me; all Paris came, the highest and the lowest of the party. During my three days' stay in Paris my house was never empty." A second visit to the Tuileries was equally triumphant, and Mademoiselle was confirmed in her determination to accomplish her destiny by marrying the King of France. The project was public property; the capital of the kingdom approved it, and the people were ready to barricade the streets in case the King, the Queen, or the Italian objected to it.

Mademoiselle should sit upon the throne! the People willed it!

At that time a comedy equal to any presented upon the stages of the theatres was played at Saint Germain, and the Queen was leading lady. The chiefs of the Fronde, generals, members of Parliament, representatives of all the corporate bodies and of all the classes – even the humblest – visited the château and assured the Queen of their allegiance. As Mademoiselle said: "No one would confess that he had ever harboured an intention against the King; it was always some one else whom he or she had opposed." The Queen received every one. She was as gracious to the shop-keeper as to the duke and peer. Anne of Austria appeared to believe all the professions that the courtiers made; and all alike, high and low, went away with protestations of joy and love.141 The only one who lost her cue in this courtly comedy was Mme. de Longueville. Her position was so false that though she was artful she quailed; she was embarrassed, she blushed, stammered, and left the royal presence furiously angry at the Queen, although, to quote an ingenuous chronicler,142 "the Queen had done nothing to intimidate her."

Saint Germain returned the visits made by the city, and each courtier was received in a manner appropriate to his deserts. Condé was saluted with hoots and hisses. The Parisians had not forgotten the part that he had played in the suburbs. The other members of the Court were well received, and when the Queen, seated in her coach, appeared, holding the little King by her hand, the people's enthusiasm resembled an attack of hysteria. The city had ordered a salute, and the gunners were hard at work, but the public clamour was so great that it drowned the booming of the cannon, and the aldermen fumed because, as they supposed, their orders to fire the salute had been ignored.143 Exclamations and plaudits hailed the procession at every step. The canaille thrust their heads through the doors of the royal carriage and smiled upon the King; they voiced their praises with vehemence. Mazarin was the success of the day; the women thought him beautiful, and they told him so; the men clasped his hands. Mazarin eclipsed Mademoiselle, and Mademoiselle, neglected by the people, found the time very long.

Speaking of that hour she said, "Never was I bored as I was that day!"

The beauty of the Queen's favourite won the hearts of the people of the Halles, and the royal party entered the palace in triumph. When Anne of Austria first left her palace, after her return from exile, the women who peddled herrings fell upon her in a mass and with streaming eyes begged her to forgive them for opposing her. Anne of Austria was bewildered by the transports of their admiration. They approved of her choice of a lover; they sympathised with her in her love, and they were determined to make her understand it. The Queen's delicacy was wounded by the latitude of their protestations.

Paris had made the first advances and royalty had accepted them. As there were no public "journals," to speak to the country, a ball was given to proclaim that peace had been made, and the ball and the fireworks which followed – and which depicted a few essential ideas upon the sky by means of symbolical figures – acted as official notices. The fête took place with great magnificence the 5th September.

Louis XIV. was much admired, and his tall cousin almost as much so. "In the first figure the King led Mademoiselle," said the Chronicle "and he did it so lightly and with such delicacy that he might have been taken for a cupid dancing with one of the graces." The guests of the Hôtel de Ville, the little and the large Bourgeoisie, men, wives, and daughters, contemplated the spectacle from the tribunes; they were not permitted to mingle with the Court. Anne of Austria watched them intently; she was unable to conceal her surprise at their appearance. The wives of the bourgeois displayed a luxury equal to that of the wives of the nobles. Apparently their costumes were the work of a Court dressmaker. Their diamonds were superb. Anne of Austria had assisted at all the official fêtes of thirty years, and she had never seen such a thing.

The French Bourgeoisie was to be counted; not ignored. The appearance of the bourgeoises was a warning, but the quality either could not, or would not seize it.

When Paris had wept all the tears of its tenderness it returned to its former state of discontent. The whole country was restless; news of revolts came from the provinces. Condé was hated; he was imperious and exacting; he was in bad odour at Court; he had offended the Queen. As Mazarin was in the way of his plans, he had attempted to present the Queen with another favourite. Jarzé, a witless popinjay, was the man chosen by Condé to supplant the accomplished successor of de Richelieu. Jarzé was a human starling; he was giddy, stupid, and in every way ill-fitted to enter the lists with a rival armed with the gravity, the personal beauty, and the subtlety of Mazarin. Jarzé had full confidence in his own powers; he believed that to win his amorous battles he had only to have his hair frizzed and storm the fort. Anne of Austria was sedate and modest and she was deep in love. Jarzé had hardly opened the attack when she ordered him from her presence. Condé, stunned by the effect of his diplomacy, wavered an instant upon the field, but a sharp order from the Queen sent him after his protégé. Anne of Austria felt the outrage, and she vowed eternal anger to Condé.

Condé's lack of tact, coupled with his determination to work miracles, led him into many false positions. He had no political wit, and nothing could have been less like the great Condé of the battle-field than the awkward and insignificant Condé of civil life. In battle he acted as by inspiration. He surged before his armies like the god of war; he was calm, indifferent to danger, impetuous, and terrible; face to face with death, his mind developed and he could give a hundred orders to a hundred persons at once.144 In Parliament, or with the chiefs of his political party, he was as nervous as a woman; he stood trembling, with face paling or reddening, laughing when he ought to weep, and bursting into fits of anger when the occasion called for joy. There was nothing fixed, or stable, in his whole make-up, except his overweening pride and an "invincible immoderation,"145 which eventually precipitated him into the abyss. No one had as much natural wit, yet no one was as fantastic in tastes and in behaviour. He adored literature: sobbed over Cinna and thought Gomberville's Polexandre admirable. He swooned when he parted with Mlle. de Vigean, a few days later he – as Mademoiselle termed it – "forgot her all at one blow." He was a great genius but a crackbrain; a complicated being, full of contrasts and contradictions, but singularly interesting. He has been described as a "lank prince, with unkempt, dusty hair, a face like a bird-of-prey, and a flaming eye whose look tried men's souls."