Chapter IV · 1644 to 1649.

Campaigns of Condé in Flanders and on the Rhine—Congress and peace of Munster—Madame de Longueville at Munster—Her portrait by Van Hull—Her return to France—Her brother, the Prince de Conti—Sonnets of Voiture and of Benserade—La Rochefoucauld—Commencement of his connection with Madame de Longueville—The first Fronde—Noble conduct of Condé—Madame de Longueville at the hôtel de Ville—Birth of Charles de Paris, Count de Saint-Paul—Peace of 1649.

We have passed over the most truly beautiful period of the youth of Madame de Longueville, that wherein the splendor of her success was not at the expense of her virtue. The time approaches in which she is about to yield to the manners of her age, and to the long combated wants of her heart. The love which she inspired in others, she is, in turn, about to feel herself, and to engage her, at the age of twenty-eight or twenty-nine years, in a fatal connection, which will make her forget all her duties, and turn her most brilliant qualities against herself, against her family, and against France.

In order to measure the fault of Madame de Longueville, it is necessary to know to what grandeur the house of Condé had reached by its faithful service of king and country.

In the history of France, there are no more glorious years than the first six of the Regency of Anne of Austria and of the government of Mazarin,—tranquil at home after the defeat of the party of the Importants, triumphant upon every battle-field, from 1643 to 1649, from the victory of Rocroy to that of Lens, connected by so many other victories, and crowned by the treaty of Westphalia. It is the house of Condé which occupies nearly the whole of this memorable epoch, or therein, at least, plays the most conspicuous part. In the council, M. the Prince seconds Mazarin, as he had done Richelieu, and shares with him the government. The intrepid Brézé, opening the list of the great admirals of the seventeenth century, holds in check or disperses, in the Mediterranean, the fleets of Spain. M. de Longueville, charged with the greatest embassy of the times, places in the diplomatic balance the weight of his name, of his moderation, and of his magnificence. As to the young Condé,—who has not read, at least in Bossuet, his campaigns in Flanders and upon the Rhine? We have shown how valuable to France was the victory of Rocroy, in 1643; those which followed were not less necessary.

We have for some time been permitted to speak of Condé as of a young hero, who owed all his success to the ascendency of an irresistible courage. Let us beware of making him a paladin of the middle age, or a brilliant grenadier like such or such a marshal of the empire, or a captain of the family of Alexander, of Cæsar, and of Napoleon. Like them, Condé had doubtless a genius for war, and, as well as Alexander, he excelled especially in execution, and fearlessly exposed his person; but it seems that the splendor of his bravery had concealed the grandeur and originality of his conceptions, as his extreme youth, at Rocroy, had caused a forgetfulness of the fact that for many years he had studied war with passion, and had already made three campaigns under the most renowned masters. If this were the proper place, and if I dared to encounter ridicule by setting myself up as a military man, I would like to compare the campaigns of Condé, in Flanders and upon the Rhine, with those of General Bonaparte in Italy. They have many things in common: the youth of the two generals,⁠[272] that of their principal lieutenants, the political grandeur of the results, the novelty of the manœuvres, the same strategy, the same calculations served by the same audacity, by the same activity, by the same obstinacy. It is degrading the art of war to measure military success by the number of combatants, for we should thus make Tamerlane and Gengis-Khan the two greatest captains of the world.

The general of the army of Italy, like Condé, had little more than twenty or twenty-five thousand men drawn up in his greatest battles.⁠[273] I can say to the honor of Condé, that he always had before him the best troops and the best generals of his times, among others, Mercy, the first captain of Germany during the seventeenth century.⁠[274] At one time he had under his command only an army composed of different nations, whose jealousies, and even defections, betrayed his greatest designs. At another time he was at the head of fatigued and discouraged troops, whose whole strength was in himself alone. And then—which is, in my eyes, the most certain evidence of a great man—he founded an immense school: he left to France many great generals formed by his lessons, prepared by his hands, and who, at a great distance from him and after him, gained victories. To him are we, in a great measure, indebted for Turenne, who, by seeing his actions at Fribourg and at Nortlingen, added more and more activity and audacity to his other qualities. We are indebted to him for Luxembourg and Conti. We are also indebted to him for many others, who might perhaps have equalled those already mentioned, but whose bright hopes were too suddenly extinguished, Gèvres, Laval, La Moussaye, Châtillon. To all this add that magnanimity of a high-born man, who, instead of attributing the honor of success to himself alone, shared it with all those who served him well, and took pleasure in praising Gassion and Sirot after the victory of Rocroy, Turenne after Fribourg and Nortlingen, and Châtillon after Lens.⁠[275]

Condé conquered at Rocroy by the very simple manœuvre which we have pointed out.⁠[276] The problem was, to arrive in the shortest time and with the greatest force upon the point which was to decide the day. It was evident that, the left wing of the enemy being dispersed, but his right wing victorious and threatening to crush all in its way, it was necessary, at every hazard, to arrest and destroy it. To reach this in the speediest manner possible, from the height of the battle-field where Condé was, the most direct road was to make a passage through the Spanish army, by forcing his last line, and falling afterwards like a thunderbolt upon the rear of his triumphing wing. If the infantry, whose overthrow was sought, had been that of the Count de Fontaine, it would have remained firm, checked Condé, and achieved his destruction; but he knew that this infantry was a mixture of Italians, Walloons, and Germans: he hoped, therefore, to succeed by dint of energy. For this reason he led the charge himself, and performed prodigies of valor with the most severe calculation. Afterwards, when he was complimented on his courage, he replied that he had never shown any except when it was necessary. It is true that heroes alone have audacity at will. He conducted himself almost in the same manner during the following year, 1644, in his great combats with Mercy, near Fribourg. Finding it impossible to separate any of the divisions of the imperial army, which were protected by formidable intrenchments, he attacked them himself with that French fury to which every thing yields;⁠[277] at the same time he sent Turenne, during the night, to a great distance, through frightful gorges, as did Bonaparte in the marshes of Arcola,⁠[278] to take in flank and rear the hostile army, which would have been destroyed, if Mercy, warned in season and confounded by such a manœuvre, had not hastily escaped. In the second battle of Fribourg, Condé renewed this same manœuvre, sending Turenne to a still greater distance than before, in order to cut off all retreat for Mercy, whilst he attacked him in front, and to crush him in his camp or force him to capitulate. The vigilant Mercy escaped a second time; but his retreat, admirable as it was, resembled no less a defeat, for he lost not only the honor of his arms and of the field of battle, but all of his artillery and a part of his troops.

In 1645, Mercy and Condé met again. Mercy had just fought with Turenne at Mariendal. This victory had inflated the courage of the Imperialists, and the emperor and the King of Bavaria were unwilling to make peace. Condé, in again taking command of a defeated army, found it, as in the preceding year, composed of 5000 Weimarians, survivors of the battle of Mariendal, 4000 Swedes, 6000 Hessians, and 8000 Frenchmen, which he had with him. With these 23,000 he conceived the plan of the campaign which was afterwards partly executed by Moreau and completed by Napoleon. He resolved to risk a great battle with Mercy, and after having routed him, to march upon Munich and Vienna, and to dictate peace to the emperor in his capital. This plan failed because Condé was at the head of a combined army; because the Swedes and the Hessians refused to follow the French general to such a distance, and because the Swedes even withdrew. Condé could not expect any aid from France, which was exhausted in order to send five armies into Spain, into Italy, into Lorraine, into Flanders, and upon the Rhine. He abandoned therefore his greatest military conception with sorrow and rage, as did Hannibal when he was compelled to quit Italy: it was his wish to exterminate the army of Mercy. The latter, who knew the man with whom he had to deal, had taken a position quite as strong as that of Fribourg—a position which protected him against the favorite manœuvres of Condé—to cut off the enemy or surprise him at a distance in flank or rear. Turenne declared that to attack an enemy thus intrenched was ruinous; and Napoleon, whom no one will accuse of timidity, was of the same opinion.⁠[279] Condé replied as a politician rather than as a military man, that it was in vain to undertake by any manœuvre to drive Mercy from a position wisely chosen; that it was necessary, therefore, either to attack him or to retreat, and that to retreat would shake the confidence of all our allies, after the defeat of Mariendal and the defection of the Swedes. France was in need of a victory. Condé gained that of Nortlingen, but he gained it, thanks to two accidents upon which he had no right to count—thanks also to the inspiration of a great character. It must be confessed that in execution Condé was never greater. He saw at once that every thing depended upon Mercy’s centre. He made it his own business to attack it. He had one horse slain under him, two wounded, and twenty cuts upon his arms and clothes. Marsin, who under him commanded the French centre, was dangerously wounded, and the intrepid La Moussaye was disabled. The French and the Imperialists, by turns conquerors and conquered, performed prodigies of valor. It was a frightful butchery. Mercy perished in it. In the mean time, Jean de Wert, who commanded the left wing, descended from the height which he occupied, crushed the right wing of the French, and dispersed our reserve, notwithstanding the efforts of his two chiefs, Chabot and Arnauld.⁠[280] It would have been fatal to the whole army, if, instead of amusing himself with pursuing the flying and pillaging the baggage, Jean de Wert had thrown himself upon the rear of our half-destroyed centre, and pressed our left wing between his victorious squadrons and the still entire division of General Gleen. This error, and the death of Mercy, saved Condé, because he knew how to profit by them with incomparable promptitude. He saw that, after having lost his right wing, his reserve, and a great part of his centre, to try to retreat with his left wing was an operation apparently prudent, but really rash, before an enemy which had still great masses of infantry, much artillery, and a redoubtable cavalry; he saw that it was better to maintain the combat, and that by exposing himself to peril, he might possibly conquer. This rapid glance of a strong mind, which seizes and embraces the only means of safety, however perilous it may be, is the characteristic of the genius of Condé. All wounded as he was, harassed with fatigue, but drawing new vigor from the grandeur of his resolution, he places himself at the head of the left wing of Turenne, dashes, as if in the very beginning of the battle, upon the right wing of the enemy, plunges into its midst, and makes prisoner of its commander; then, turning to the right, he throws himself upon the centre of the Imperialists, rescues his own, rallies it, leads it anew to the combat, and, master of the battle-field, prepares himself to meet Jean de Wert, who, returning from his useless pursuit, learning the death of Mercy⁠[281] and the capture of Gleen, amazed at the disaster produced by his absence, dares neither to attack nor to await Condé, but gathers together his shattered army, and flies to Donauwerth. Condé had, in this second combat, another horse killed under him; he also received a pistol-shot, and indeed barely survived his victory. It was at this time that he suffered from that severe sickness, on recovery from which he found that he had lost with his blood and his strength all his passion for Mademoiselle Du Vigean.⁠[282]

Condé is one of the small number of captains who have no less excelled in the art of besieging than in that of combating.⁠[283] After Rocroy, in 1643, he took Thionville, one of the first fortified places of the times. In 1644, he took Philipsbourg, which commanded the upper Rhine. In 1646, having had the wisdom to consent to serve under the Duke d’Orleans, in order to quiet the distrust and please the vanity of this prince; and although placed in command of the army only at the close of the campaign, he terminated it by a memorable siege, in which he covered himself with glory: he took Dunkirk on the 11th of October,⁠[284] 1646.

Accustomed to repair the errors of others, Condé went, in 1647, to take the place of Count d’Harcourt, who had just made a failure before Lerida. Mazarin had wished, several times, to send Condé to Catalonia; his father, M. the Prince, had always opposed it, and all his friends dissuaded him from accepting this command. He certainly showed great deference for Mazarin, by quitting the ordinary theatre of his exploits for a country where it was necessary to engage in a petty war, with an army incapable of giving battle, and, at most, fit only to sustain itself before the enemy. When every one was making sport of the Count d’Harcourt, who had been unable to take Lerida, Condé had the good sense and generosity to defend this excellent general: he thus in advance defended himself. In fact, having arrived in his turn before Lerida, and receiving from France neither the troops which had been promised to him, nor the munitions and artillery, of which he was in absolute need, and not having sufficient force to meet the Spanish army, and not being able to think of assaulting Lerida with a handful of half-dead soldiers, he had the courage to raise the siege and to make a good retreat, preferring the safety of the army to his own reputation. This conduct, sustained by his accustomed hauteur, did him the greatest honor, and proved that he was master of himself and knew how to employ by turns prudence or audacity according as circumstances demanded.

Thus, at Lens in 1648, finding the Archduke Léopold in a position as formidable as that of Mercy at Nortlingen, he saw that it would be highly imprudent to tempt fortune a second time; and, knowing that he had not now to deal with Mercy, he undertook to draw the Archduke Léopold and General Beck upon more favorable ground, in a plain where the principal force of the French army, the gendarmery, commanded by Châtillon, might have a great advantage. Numbers, abundance, and discipline were on the side of the Spaniards; misery and audacity on that of the French. Behind the centre of the archduke were towns and hamlets, forming natural intrenchments. His right, composed of all that remained of the old national bands, rested upon the city of Lens. His left wing was posted upon an eminence, which could not be reached except through the most narrow paths. It was necessary to manœuvre with infinite art to induce an enemy to abandon such an impregnable position. Condé commanded a false retreat, which explained perfectly the weakness of the French army. Beck, deceived, detached the Lorraine cavalry to disturb, and, if possible, to cut in pieces our rear guard, which was promptly enough broken and thrown into confusion. Châtillon marched to their aid with his gendarmery; he drove back the Lorraine troops, and threatened them with slaughter. They could not be abandoned. The archduke sent all his cavalry to their assistance. The combat began; the whole of the hostile army moved and descended into the plain. This was precisely what Condé desired. The very same manœuvre that had failed at Nortlingen, succeeded at Lens. The imperial army had still the immense disadvantage of being obliged to form as it advanced, while the French army had been since morning arranged in good order at the extremity of the plain, upon well-chosen ground. Condé relied especially upon the gendarmery of Châtillon; he had recalled it soon after the first engagement, and had placed it in the second line to give it time to refresh; afterwards, when the two contending bodies had become closely engaged, he let it loose again with its intrepid general, and, after being so useful at the beginning of the fight, it finally decided it by over-throwing every thing in its way. The Spanish infantry remained; it did not show the same obstinacy as at Rocroy, but it cried for life. Old General Beck conducted himself like Fontaine and Mercy: he fought like a lion, was wounded and taken, and he died of despair. The Archduke Léopold, after conducting himself well, escaped into the Pays-Bas with the Count de Fuensaldaigne.

The victory of Lens was as important and as useful as that of Rocroy: to it is due the recommencement of the negotiations of Munster and the conclusion of the treaty of Westphalia. This treaty was the result of the five great campaigns of Condé in Flanders and on the Rhine. Condé was there an armed negotiator, as we might say; M. de Longueville was, at Munster, a pacific negotiator.

Father Bougeant, in his estimable history of the treaty of Westphalia,⁠[285] supposes that Mazarin sent the Duke de Longueville to Munster, “in order to remove from the court a prince capable of exciting troubles in it.” But, in 1645, Mazarin had no more troubles to fear, and the Duke de Longueville was not a man to create them: he suffered himself to be guided at that time, as well as the rest of his family, by the policy of its chief, M. the Prince. It is much easier to believe that it was the latter who gave the embassy of Munster to his son-in-law. Mazarin had not chosen him for his capacity, although he was not deficient in it, but to aid d’Avaux and Servien, who stood in need of him, and to give éclat to the French legation. He remained master of the negotiations, and the Condés must have been flattered to be at the head of the most important diplomatic affair, having already command of the fleet in the Mediterranean, and of the army upon the Rhine.

M. de Longueville had to pursue the great object at which the French cabinet had aimed from the time of Henry IV.,—the enfeebling of the empire to the advantage of France. With this view it was that the very Christian king, the Cardinal Richelieu, and the Cardinal Mazarin united with the Protestant Gustavus Adolphus, drew him into the heart of Germany, him and after him his lieutenants, and sustained Protestant Holland against Catholic Spain. This struggle, which, for thirty years, was carried on with so much éclat, continued for more than twelve years at Osnabrück and at Munster. On the one side were Austria, Spain, and Bavaria, with the ecclesiastical electors of Mayence and of Cologne; on the other, the Protestant powers, Brandenburg, Saxony, Hesse, with their allies, Holland, Sweden, and France. The Protestant party wished to obtain the greatest concessions, and the Catholic party to make the fewest possible. They advanced and receded according to the vicissitudes of war. Richelieu had designated the man, who had all his confidence, Mazarin and the Count d’Avaux, of the powerful family of Messne, to represent France at Munster. When Mazarin succeeded Richelieu in the ministry, he named in his own place Count Abel Servien, uncle of the skilful and judicious Lyonne, who was to him what he had himself been to Richelieu. He retained d’Avaux, who had wit and penetration, uprightness and nobleness, with a degree of piety which made him acceptable to the Catholic powers, but which carried him a little too far to make him accommodating with them, and at the same time more anxious for the advantage of the Church than policy demanded. Servien alone was the depository of the thoughts of Mazarin, and Mazarin, like his predecessor, knew but one interest, that of the greatness of France. He was desirous of obtaining from the empire the whole of Alsace, with some strongholds upon the Rhine, in order to complete the legitimate development of France in that quarter. He had still another ambition, which Richelieu had bequeathed to him, and which he bequeathed to Lyonne: it was that of tearing from Spain the trade of Catalonia, where Richelieu and himself had cunningly carried the war against the Low Countries, without which France has really no northern frontier, and is exposed, after an unfortunate battle, to the passage of a hostile army even to the very walls of Paris. Such were the thoughts which occupied the mind of Mazarin, and which he pursued at once, by means of negotiations and by arms, with the mildness and constancy which characterized this great statesman.

M. de Longueville arrived at Munster on the 30th of June, 1645, at nearly the same time that his brother-in-law, the Duke d’Enghien, was going to take command of the army of the Rhine, in the place of Turenne, who had just suffered a very grave defeat at Mariendal. The victory of Nortlingen, of the 5th of August, 1645, gave the greatest strength to M. de Longueville; and the Duke of Bavaria, the second Catholic power of Germany, who had broken off negotiations after the battle of Mariendal, recommenced them eagerly after that of Nortlingen. The cession of Alsace was then almost gained; but victorious Mazarin could with difficulty renounce the hope which he had long entertained of acquiring the Low Countries from Spain in exchange for Catalonia. Therein resided all the difficulty of the negotiations, the knot which no skill could loosen, and which the sword alone could cut. It was reserved for Louis XIV., at the close of the seventeenth century, after having lost the three statesmen who, for a long time, formed his strength and his glory, Mazarin, Lyonne, and Colbert; it was reserved for him to abandon the schemes of his predecessors, and, when it was proposed that he should receive the Low Countries in return for his rights over Spain, to reject this favor of fortune, which Mazarin and Richelieu would have embraced with transports of joy; this he did for the sake of family interest, staking his own crown for the sake of placing one upon the head of his grandson, and jeopardizing the safety of France without giving to it, even for a quarter of a century, the alliance of Spain. We may remark in passing, that this incredible resolution, poorly covered with an appearance of grandeur, and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, are the two great personal inspirations of Louis XIV.: they determine his policy, internal and external, compared with that of Mazarin, of Richelieu, and of Henri IV. It is impossible to recount all the efforts made by Mazarin, in 1648, to induce Spain to yield to him the Low Countries. He offered, with all Catalonia, the young Louis XIV. for the infanta Maria-Thérissa. At the same time he sent d’Estrades, with whom we have before become acquainted,⁠[286] into Holland, in order to promote the arrangement which he so ardently desired: he went even so far as to propose Antwerp to the commerce of Holland. It was a powerful temptation; but Holland resisted it; she was weary of a war which must thus be prolonged; and besides, she was beginning to be less afraid of Spain, and was hoping a great advantage by acquiring a conquering neighbor instead of a feeble one. Spain, on her side, saw our horizon darkened with new troubles, and, full of hope, she broke off negotiations, made a separate treaty with Holland, and persuaded the emperor to unite with her in a last and powerful effort. One man alone was able to save France, menaced as it was in 1643. This man was the conqueror of Rocroy. It was then that Condé, who was well acquainted with the position of affairs, engaged, upon the plains of Lens, on the 20th of August, 1648, in the memorable battle which we have described, in which he was as prudent as ever Turenne had been, and as bold as his own genius and circumstances permitted. From this moment negotiations were conducted with promptness. On the 24th of October, 1648, was signed, at Munster, the Treaty of Westphalia, which gave peace to Germany for a century, which there strengthened religious liberty, and which acknowledged all the conquests of France over the empire.⁠[287]

Thanks to this treaty, Mazarin had now Spain alone in view, and he hoped soon to bring it to that point which could give to France a frontier on the north similar to that which it had just acquired on the south of Germany. He dreamed of obtaining, at the close of a few more fortunate campaigns, a treaty still more favorable than that of the Pyrenees, in 1660. He had in his hands the conqueror of Lens, whom he hoped to launch upon the Low Countries; it was in his power to send into Spain and into Italy, generals still superior to d’Harcourt and to Schomberg; he hoped to maintain or re-enkindle the insurrection of Naples: a magnificent future was before France. Who deprived her of this future? Who divided and exhausted her strength? Who made her, with a suicidal hand, shed her own best blood? Who sowed discord among the most illustrious of her captains? Who arrested Condé in his course, at the age of twenty-seven years, when he might yet have added so many victories to all those of his youth, when he might have planted the standard of France in Brussels or in Madrid?

The Fronde it was that committed the inexpiable crime of having stopped the rise of Condé and of French grandeur. And, in return, did it increase and develop our old national franchises? Far from that: by an inevitable reaction, it disgusted France, for a long time, with an anarchical liberty, incompatible with public order, with the force of the government and of the nation; it took away from royalty every species of counterpoise; it produced the despotism, at first intelligent and useful, afterwards improvident and grievous, of Louis XIV.

And now, what gave birth to the Fronde, or what sustained it? What raised up the old party of the Importants, stifled, it would seem, under the laurels of Rocroy? What separated the princes of the blood from the crown? What turned against the throne that illustrious house of Condé, which, until then, had been its buckler and its sword? There were doubtless many general causes for all this; but it is impossible for us to conceal one, private, it is true, but which exercised a powerful and deplorable influence—the unexpected love of Madame de Longueville for one of the chiefs of the Importants, who had become one of the chiefs of the Fronde. Yes—I say it with regret—it was Madame de Longueville, who, joining the party of the malcontents, attracted thereto, at first, a part of her family, then her whole family, and thus precipitated it from the pinnacle of honor and glory to which so many services had elevated it.

Let us narrate, as rapidly as possible, what we know of Madame de Longueville, from the moment that we left her until the commencement of the year 1648.

No authentic documents, printed or in manuscript, authorize us to suppose that before the close of the year 1647, Madame de Longueville had ever passed the limits of fashionable gallantry. On the 4th of February, 1644, soon after the adventure of the letters, and of the tragic quarrel which followed it, she gave birth to a daughter, who received the name of her mother and of her brother, Charlotte Louise, Mademoiselle de Dunois, and who died on the 30th of April,⁠[288] 1645. A year after, the 12th of January, 1646, she had a son, Charles d’Orleans, Count de Dunois, who was expected to succeed to the titles of his father, but who, ill-favored by nature, attempted, without success, various careers, and finally buried himself in the Church, at the close of the century, under the name of the Abbé d’Orleans. In 1647, she gave birth to a second daughter, Marie Gabrielle, who died in 1650. We shall presently speak of the last son, who was born during the Fronde.

Madame de Longueville was twenty-five years of age at the time of the duel between Coligny and Guise, in 1644. Each year only added to her charms. The glory of her brother fell upon her, and she responded to it somewhat by her own success at court and in the salons. She acquired more and more the manners of the times. Coquetry and wit formed all her occupation. Her delicate situation not permitting her to accompany M. de Longueville to Munster, in June, 1645, she remained in Paris; she enjoyed it very much, and, whether her heart had already been touched, or whether it was still entirely free, it is clear that she was not very glad, after her confinement, in 1646, to join, under the sky of Westphalia, a husband who was not, as Retz says, the most agreeable man to her in the world.⁠[289] Imagine, in fact, this spoiled child of the hôtel de Rambouillet leaving Corneille and Voiture, all the elegances and refinements of life, to go to Munster, to listen to the German or Latin conversations of foreign diplomatists. It was to her a double exile, for her country was not only France, it was Paris, it was the court, it was the hôtel de Condé, Chantilly, the Place-Royale, the Rue Saint-Thomas du Louvre. It was, however, necessary to obey, and to set off with her step-daughter, Mademoiselle de Longueville, who was already more than twenty years of age. In order to have something of Paris, she took with her several men of letters, and among others, Claude Joly, uncle of Guy Joly, author of the Mémoires, canon of Nôtre-Dame, who remained all his life attached to the Condés, and who made himself known by different works full of learning and of merit;⁠[290] also the academician and oratorian Esprit, one of the frequenters of the hôtel de Rambouillet,⁠[291] who had just been embroiled with the Chancellor Séguier, for having favored the marriage of his daughter, the Marchioness de Coislin, with the son of Madame de Sablé, the handsome and brave Marquis de Laval, who was killed some time after, by the side of Condé, at the siege of Dunkirk. A little before her departure for Munster, Esprit had introduced to Madame de Longueville one of the old favorite poets of Richelieu, Bois-Robert, who had continued to be dazzled with the new éclat of her whom he had formerly admired amid the fêtes of Ruel. It was in the following terms that Bois-Robert relates to Esprit his visit, and describes to him Madame de Longueville. The verses are mediocre, but we must be satisfied, for they hold the place of an infinite number of other verses, which we might with propriety quote, in regard to the same person and the same epoch, and which are still worse:⁠[292]

Madame de Longueville left Paris on the 20th of June, 1646, accompanied by her step-daughter, and with a numerous escort under the command of Montigny, lieutenant of the guards of M. de Longueville. The whole journey from Paris to Munster was a continual ovation. Her course may be followed day by day, and from city to city, thanks to the detailed narrative of Claude Joly. Belgians, Hollanders, Spaniards, Imperialists, and every one strove to show their gallantry to the beautiful ambassadress. Governors went out to meet her at the heads of their garrisons. The keys of the cities through which she passed were offered to her. She had continual escorts of cavalry. The Duke de Longueville went as far as Wesel to meet her. Turenne, who then commanded upon the Rhine, exhibited to her his army drawn up in order of battle. Was it then that the great captain, well known to be sensible to beauty, received the impression which was renewed at Sténay in 1650, and which, prudently preserved by Madame de Longueville, always formed between them a tender and intimate connection?⁠[293]

On the 22d of July she made a triumphal entry into Munster. Holland was too near to her not to tempt her curiosity. She took a walk thither, if we may thus speak.⁠[294] During all the autumn of 1646 and the winter of 1647, she was truly the queen of the congress of Munster. Her graces made their impression upon diplomatists as well as upon warriors. She connected herself particularly, in the French embassy, with Claude de Mesmes, Count d’Avaux, of whom we have already spoken, and who was the friend and correspondent of Voiture, of Madame de Sablé, and of Madame de Rambouillet. We have before us some manuscript letters of d’Avaux to Voiture: they are very agreeable, but not very natural; and, amid Latin quotations, then very fashionable among people who prided themselves upon their erudition, they show us what an impression was made by Madame de Longueville upon the dean of our diplomatic corps. She did not appear very melancholy to d’Avaux; but the rival of Servien was perhaps better fitted to discover cabinet intrigues than to read the heart of a woman.

“It is to⁠[295] Madame de Montausier and to Madame the Marchioness de Sablé that I am indebted for the favors which I have received from Madame de Longueville.... You say that commerce is dangerous with a person so well made, as if the great disproportion and the great distance between those persons and such as myself did not shelter me. You know that the eloquence of Balzac makes no impression upon the mind of a peasant. No, no, I am not afraid. It would be strange enough if in a peaceful assembly I had not sufficient public faith for my preservation, and if, with the passports of the emperor and of the king of Spain, Munster should not be a safe place for me.... I look however, I do not pluck out my eyes. I see beauty greater than I have ever seen before; I see all of what is graceful and charming that can be united, and a something which, it seems to me, can nowhere else be found, with so much majesty:

I admire with you that goodness, that generosity, and those amiable qualities which we shall always vie in praising, but which we can never praise enough. The correctness of that mind, its strength and its extent, astonish me also, and sometimes displease me with myself; for there is in it so much that is extraordinary and above the age and the sex. Suppose that I was made of stuff as combustible as you,⁠[296] who still complain of the trials of youth, how small a spark would set me in a blaze! A précieuse, who has travelled two hundred leagues to join an old husband, who has quitted the court for Westphalia, who is here in continual gayety, who was lately delighted to see a comedy among the Jesuits (truly, however, in good Latin), who gives constrained audiences, who converses pleasantly with M. Salvius, M. Vulteius, and M. Lampadius,⁠[297] who is not frightened if a big Hollander kisses her twice during his regular daily visits, who receives agreeably the civility of another ambassador counselling him to learn German for his recreation, who with all this preserves her embonpoint and pleasant countenance....”

“... I must indeed revenge myself a little now. Some complaints are made here of your taciturnity; but they are uttered by persons of no very great consequence: by no one in fact but Madame de Longueville, and she is hardly worth speaking of. She has paid you some very great compliments; her friends have received orders to solicit your remembrance; she has requested them several times to let her lose nothing in the friendship which you promised her; in short, she has sent you word that she was not proof against such continued indifference, and yet she receives no satisfaction. This is perhaps, as you say, because commerce is dangerous with her, and you yourself take the advice which you give me; but the poor princess cannot be consoled.... Although you were a perfect philosopher, and although you had lost sentiment and life, you should at least speak when Madame de Longueville looks at you, even as did the statue of Memnon when it was illumined by the rays of the sun. If you continue, I doubt not that you will be set down as a mute. Give your orders, if you please. All that I could do for you was to answer your letter to M. the Duke d’Enghien.⁠[298] Madame, his sister, read it with great pleasure; and, M. Esprit entering the room a quarter of an hour afterwards, she was very glad to have another pretext for seeing it again, and left her seat to hear it read once more. This is not all: she requested me to send it to her the next day, with the promise that she would take but a single copy to place among her papers. I will not tell you how much she thinks of it; but will content myself with simply confessing, that it is one of the most delightful things in the world, to see this mouth filled with your praises, and that your name is nowhere more magnificently entertained....”

Voiture is not in arrears with his ingenious correspondent on the account of Madame de Longueville:

“... I am very impatient to witness the return of Madame de Longueville after the conclusion of a good peace. What you say to me of this princess is as beautiful as she is herself, and I shall keep it for her to look at some day.... Tell the truth, my lord: do you think it is possible to find, I do not mean in a single person, but in every thing that is beautiful and lovely throughout the world—do you think it is possible to find so much wit, grace, and charm as there is in this princess? Be on your guard. She writes to us wonderful things concerning you, and of the friendship that exists between you. Commerce is dangerous with her. I assure you besides, that she is as good as she is beautiful, and that there is no soul in the world more lofty or better than hers....”

A little while after, January 9, 1647, he says:

“... Respect has hitherto prevented me from writing to Madame de Longueville; but you make me much more afraid of her by representing her to me as being so serious and so occupied with politics. We take great pleasure in imagining her entertaining M. Lampadius (he is said to be dressed ordinarily in violet satin), M. Vulteius, and M. Salvius, and especially that big Hollander.

“His advice to her to study German for her amusement, has been a subject of great mirth for Madame de Sablé and Madame de Montausier....”⁠[299]

Among the monuments of the abode of Madame de Longueville at Munster, we must place the portrait which was made of her by Anselme Van Hull, and which was engraved with those of M. de Longueville, of d’Avaux, and of Servien, in the collection of portraits of all the princes and diplomatists assembled at Munster.⁠[300] It is a bust. Even in the engraving, mediocre as it is, we perceive the charming softness of the eyes. A mass of blonde hair surrounds her face.⁠[301] Her bosom, partly exposed, appears in its modest beauty. A small collar of pearls adorns a fresh and delicate neck. The following lines, written perhaps by d’Avaux or Voiture, are placed beneath the portrait:

In the mean time, all the circles of Paris mourned the absence of Madame de Longueville. Godeau did not cease to urge her return in the name of the hôtel de Rambouillet:

“Is it not better, madame,” wrote he to her, “that you should return to the hôtel de Longueville, where you are still more powerful than at Munster? Every one is wishing it this winter. My lord, your brother, has returned covered with palms; come back yourself crowned with the myrtles of peace, for it seems to me that it is not enough for you to carry olive branches alone. I dare not explain myself farther, lest I should be guilty of gallantry. This I leave to the Julies and to the Chapelains, etc.”⁠[302]

She had enjoyed sufficiently her brilliant exile, but, with her habitual politeness and sweetness, she dissembled her weariness. In the winter of 1647, she had two reasons for returning to France. Her father, M. the Prince, died at the close of December, 1646: this was an immense loss to his family and to France, and its consequences were soon keenly felt. In addition to this, Madame de Longueville had, for the third time, found herself enceinte at Munster. Her mother was, for this reason, anxious to have her at home; and M. de Longueville was constrained to permit his wife to take the road to Paris.

Her return to France—first to Chantilly, then to Paris—in the month of May, 1647, was a very different triumph from that which characterized her journey upon the Rhine, and into Holland, and her abode at Munster. She found the crowd of her adorers more numerous and more eager than ever; and in the first rank was her brother, the Prince de Conti, who, fresh from college, was taking his first lessons in the world. Let us say a word in regard to this new personage, who now appears for the first time, and who will play a very conspicuous part in the life of Madame de Longueville.

Armand de Bourbon, Prince de Conti, who was born in 1629, was eighteen years of age in 1647. He had a good mind, and not an unpleasant face; but a slight deformity and a certain feebleness of body, rendering him unfit for the army, he was early destined for the Church. He had studied among the Jesuits at the college of Clermont, with Molière, and M. the Prince, before his death, had obtained for him the richest benefices,⁠[303] and demanded a cardinal’s hat. While waiting for this hat, Armand de Bourbon was living at the hôtel de Condé, partly an ecclesiastic, partly a man of the world, all occupied with wit, and greedy of every species of success. The glory of his brother filled him with emulation, and he dreamed himself of warlike exploits. When his sister returned from Germany, he went to meet her, and, dazzled by her beauty, her grace, and her fame, he began to love her rather as a gallant than as a brother.⁠[304] He followed her blindly in all her adventures, in which he exhibited as much courage as lightness. When he had made his peace with the court—thanks to his marriage with a niece of Mazarin, the beautiful and virtuous Anne-Marie Martinozzi—he obtained the command-in-chief of the army of Catalonia, in which capacity he acquitted himself with great honor. He was much less successful in Italy. On the whole, he was far from injuring his name, and he gave to France, in the person of his young son, a true warrior, one of the best pupils of Condé, one of the last eminent generals of the seventeenth century. Constrained, through ill-health, to betake himself again to religion, the Prince de Conti finished, where he had begun, with theology. He composed several meritorious and learned works on various religious subjects.⁠[305] In 1647, he was entirely devoted to vanity and pleasures. He adored his sister, and she exercised over him a somewhat ridiculous empire, which continued during several years.

The court and Paris were then occupied with festivals and enjoyments, which all were eager to share with Madame de Longueville. To please the queen, Mazarin multiplied the balls and the operas. At a great expense he sent to Italy for artists, singers, male and female, who represented an opera of Orpheus, the machinery and decorations of which are said to have cost more than 400,000 livres. The queen delighted in these spectacles. France also, as if touched with its own grandeur, took pleasure in the magnificence of its government, and seconded it by redoubling its own luxury and elegance. The pleasures of wit occupied the first rank. The hôtel de Rambouillet, near its decline, was shedding its last rays. Madame de Longueville reigned there as well as in all the circles of Paris; and, it must be confessed, with her good qualities she had also the defects of the best précieuses. The following is the picture which Madame de Motteville has traced⁠[306] of her person, of the turn of her mind, of her occupations, of her credit, and of that of the whole house of Condé, at this period, which may be considered as the most brilliant of her life: “This princess, who, during her absence, reigned in her family, and whose approbation was sought as if she were a true sovereign, did not fail, on her return to Paris, to appear in greater splendor than when she left it. The friendship entertained for her by the prince, her brother, authorizing her actions and her manners, the greatness of her beauty and of her mind increased so much the cabal of her family, that she was not long at court without almost entirely engrossing it. She became the object of all desires: her clique was the centre of all intrigues, and those whom she loved became also the favorites of fortune.... Her intelligence, her wit, and the high opinion entertained for her discernment, won for her the admiration of all good people, who were persuaded that her esteem alone was enough to give them reputation. If, in this way, she governed souls, she was not less successful by means of her beauty; for, although she had suffered with the small-pox since the Regency, and although she had lost somewhat of the perfection of her complexion, the splendor of her charms exerted a powerful influence upon those who saw her; and she possessed especially, in the highest degree, what, in the Spanish language, is expressed by those words, donayre, brio, y bizarrie (gallant air). She had an admirable form, and her person possessed a charm whose power extended over our own sex. It was impossible to see her without loving her, and without desiring to please her. Her beauty consisted, however, more in the colors of her face than in the perfection of her features. Her eyes were not large, but beautiful, soft and brilliant, and their blue was admirable: it was like that of the turquoise. Poets could compare the incarnation upon her face to lilies and roses only; and the light shining hair which accompanied so many wonderful things, made her more like an angel, such as our poor nature can imagine one, than like a woman.... She was then too much engrossed with her own sentiments, which passed for infallible rules while they were not always so, and there was too much affectation in her manner of speaking and acting, whose greatest beauty was attributable to delicacy of thought and correctness of reasoning. She appeared constrained, and the fine raillery, exercised by herself and her courtiers, often fell upon those who, while rendering her their homage, felt, to their mortification, that honest sincerity, which ought to be observed in polite society, was apparently banished from hers. The virtues and praiseworthy qualities of the most excellent creatures are mingled with things which are opposed to them: all men partake of this clay from which they draw their origin, and God alone is perfect.... In fine, it may be said that at this time all greatness, all glory, and all gallantry were confined to this family of Bourbon, of which M. the Prince was the chief, and that fortune was not considered a desirable thing, if it did not come from their hands.”

It was about this time that the two sonnets of Voiture and of Benserade divided the court and the city, the salons and the academy. Almost all the documents appertaining to this little literary contest have been preserved;⁠[307] but we have discovered some hitherto unknown, which we cannot withhold from the reader, because they show the passion which then existed for literary matters, the ascendency of Madame de Longueville, and the peculiar delicacy of her taste.

Voiture had just died in 1648, and his friends had caught, as the last sigh of his muse, the sonnet to Uranie. At the same time another sonnet appeared, written by one of the rivals of Voiture, younger than himself, and who had not been formed at the hôtel de Rambouillet: it was the complaint of a lover who pretended to be more miserable than Job, because Job could at least groan aloud on account of his misfortune, whilst the poor lover was compelled to suffer in silence:

All the fashionable lovers of the day, the languishing and the dying, admired this description of their martyrdom, the height of sorrow being to suffer without complaining; and it is certain that the close of the sonnet of Benserade is neither without spirit nor without charm. It created a furor. The sonnet of Voiture was of a very different character. It possessed a finished elegance, somewhat feeble it is true, but elevated and animated by a certain passionate accent, which is sweetly felt throughout it. It was of a more distinguished and more rare quality, and for this reason it had at first less success. Balzac⁠[309] composed upon these two pieces a formal dissertation, in which he weighs in the balance of the most scrupulous criticism the merits and the defects of both. Corneille, annoyed by a quarrel which turned attention a little too much from his own works, began to make sport of the two sonnets; afterwards, the affair acquiring more and more literary interest, he engaged in it himself, and took sides with Job against Uranie, in a sonnet in which he does not hesitate to say that Voiture’s is doubtless better conceived, better conducted, better finished, but that he would prefer to be the author of the other. He returns to the charge in an epigram which terminates as follows:

This was a very imposing judgment, and, to all appearance, there was little hope for Voiture, when Madame de Longueville undertook his defence. Her situation was somewhat embarrassing. Her brother, the Prince de Conti, was at the head of the Jobelins, and Esprit, who had accompanied her to Munster, and on whom she might have depended upon any occasion, Esprit, who, without ceasing to be of the Church, was occupied with the most gallant literature, as he will at a future day be occupied with sentences and maxims, had written very warmly in favor of Benserade. But Madame de Longueville was not the person to take the lucky side and to abandon her old friend Voiture. Her authority soon changed the face of the combat.

In the camp of the Jobelins was the Countess de Brégy, one of the ladies of honor of Queen Anne, and wife of a famous ambassador, from whom we have a collection⁠[311] of prose and verse, and some questions d’amour, to which Quinault replied by order of the young king. She was much surprised to learn that Madame de Longueville preferred to the universally applauded sonnet a piece of verse which had not produced a very great effect. She hastened to write to her, asking permission to maintain her own opinion against hers. The following is her letter, with the diplomatic reply of the ambassadress of Munster.⁠[312]

Madame de Brégy to Madame de Longueville.

“Job, in ages past, was scarcely less humiliated than I now am to find myself opposed to the opinion of Your Highness; for if I had not enough sense to conform myself to it, my spirit of divination ought to serve the other in this encounter, and not permit him to endure the shame of seeing himself opposed to sentiments which I have regarded as a rule by which one could never fail. But, since I have taken up the cause of Job, more unfortunate because he suffers at your hands than on account of all his first evils, be pleased, Madame, to allow me an opportunity on Thursday evening to defend an unhappy person, against whom the devil has cunningly excited your persecution, as the only means of divesting him of that patience which he has exhibited for so many ages, and which cannot be preserved when one is despised by you.”

Madame de Longueville⁠[313] to Madame de Brégy.

“Your letter has done more for the sonnet of Job than Benserade himself; and it occasions me so much regret at not entertaining sentiments conformed to those of the person who wrote it, that, if it does not make me alter, it makes me at least condemn my own, thus obtaining from me a preference for Job, which I should have always refused so long as the sonnet had spoken for itself. This, I think, is all that a generous person can do for a party to which she does not belong; and I assure you that if yours is not that of my choice, it is exalted in my esteem. I shall be glad to see you on Thursday, and to hear you advocate the cause of Job; but be admonished, at least, that I will hear you argue against my past sentiments only, consenting no longer to oppose your own, etc.”

The two ladies contended, as we see, in the most courteous manner; but they contended warmly and for a long time. I conjecture that aside from literature there was some secret motive in it all. Madame de Brégy was beautiful and coquettish as well as intellectual. She could, without much difficulty, believe that the piece of Benserade was addressed to her, and that it was an indirect declaration of a somewhat plebeian love, condemned to wear out secretly in suffering. Benserade had, at least, composed for her an epistle, in which he pleads the fear of love as his excuse for flying from her.⁠[314] Madame de Longueville could not have forgotten all the verses which Voiture had written in her praise while yet quite young; and perhaps the latter, on again beholding, in 1647, the noble beauty in all the splendor of her charms, quitting his former familiarity for an affectionate respect, was desirous of ending as he had begun, and dying, as was then said, in the service of her whom he called Uranie, a celestial beauty upon whom he dares scarcely to lift his eyes.

Madame de Longueville thought, moreover, that her preference was supported by very good reason, and in this we are inclined to agree with her. The work of Benserade possesses undoubtedly more wit, invention, and even originality, since it is certainly something quite new to place in the mouth of Job a declaration of love: that of Voiture, to us, possesses a secret and melancholy gracefulness which touches the heart. With Corneille, we find the sonnet of Job prettier, though unnatural—a strange eulogium, and one hardly to be expected here from either party pronouncing it; but the sonnet of Uranie seems to us to proceed more from one in love, and this it is which decides us. Perhaps if Madame de Longueville had conversed with Corneille, she would have converted him in the name of their common principles; she succeeded, at least, in overcoming her brother, the Prince de Conti, who, after having made a sonnet to Benserade, at last took the part of Voiture and of his sister. She launched against him Sarrazin, whose commentary in verse we still possess—a commentary that turns into ridicule the sonnet of Benserade and the opinion of Esprit:

Madame de Longueville herself wrote to Esprit a letter, in which she evinces a fine cultivated literary taste. She acknowledges, in the sonnet of Job, a gallant air and delicacy, but nothing more. With the exception of a few lines, all the others seem to her full of faults, and she carries refinement and preciseness so far as to designate certain expressions of Benserade as disgusting, meaning by this, vulgar. On the contrary, she finds in the sonnet of Voiture, beauty and force of expression, with thoughts which, though not new, possess the sovereign merit of passion. She makes a thousand concessions to Esprit; she asks pardon for her audacity in differing with him;⁠[316] she announces, at the same time, that she means to continue the war; she appeals to all Rambouillet, and jests pleasantly upon this new kind of Fronde.

Madame de Longueville to Monsieur Esprit.⁠[317]

“It is true that I am in the utmost astonishment to find our tastes so different in this matter; and my astonishment is the greater because it seemed to me a subject upon which our sentiments should be the same. For, in short, with the exception of the seventh, eighth, and last lines of the sonnet of Job, I find it not only full of faults, but even of such as you have never been able to endure; its expression goes so far as to be disgusting; whereas, in the piece of Voiture (at least in its last six lines), the most beautiful and forcible expression in the world is united with a thought which, though not certainly new, is so passionate that it should, it seems to me, be more highly esteemed than the mere delicacy which characterizes that of Job. I confess that it has as gallant an air as any thing that I have even seen; also, although I find reason upon my side, I think that if there is none which authorizes the other party, there is at least the greatest cause in the world for preferring its taste; and if one may suffer himself to be seduced without dying of shame, I confess that it is upon such an occasion. This is all that my natural justice can permit me to feel for those who have not followed my sentiments. I send you what will acquaint you with the manner in which my brother has made known his own, that is, his final opinion; for the first was made in prose, and more favorable to Uranie than to Job, but with the declaration that if he should choose to send one of the two sonnets to his mistress, it would be that of Job. Neither party was satisfied with this judgment, not being able to turn it fully to its own account. A more decided one was demanded. There are some who think that even this⁠[318] is not so; but, for my own part, I am contented that Voiture is therein pronounced admirable and grand, and Benserade only gallant and pretty. He has made another sonnet, which I send you also, together with the list of our friends and of our enemies. They have taken sides uninfluenced by prejudice, politics, or any other motives than the force of reason in some cases, and the gratification of taste and blindness of mind in others. But I am not going so far as to use invectives, and I think that there is as little generosity in attacking a father of the Oratoire, as there would be in assailing an unarmed man. I close therefore for the very reason which made me prefer Uranie to Job, and the celestial muse to a man infected from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet.

“I beg you to tell M. the Abbé de Croisy,⁠[319] that I wish him to take my part. I forgot to tell you that we are writing circular letters, and that we expect the opinions of M. and Madame de Montausier, of all Rambouillet, and of M. and Madame de Liancourt. In fine, this matter will not rest here; and if the excitement about it continues, the ministers will be more apt to occupy themselves with it than with the assemblies of the nobility; and the tolerance shown for our seditious manners, is the strongest indication which we have had for a year of the humbling of royal authority, for they are cantonments against the fundamental laws of a well-governed State.⁠[320] In short, God wills it, and we have nothing to say.

“A word of reply in regard to persons of your own party and of mine, etc.”

Madame de Longueville gained the day; all the hôtel de Rambouillet went over to her side, and Benserade, beaten after having been triumphant, thus complained to her who had robbed him of his glory:

We give also this pretty quatrain of Mademoiselle de Scudéry:

Such were the frivolous pastimes, at once innocent and dangerous, of Madame de Longueville. All the prosperities and all the felicities of life surrounded her. Every thing conspired in her favor, or rather against her,—the triumphs of the mind as well as those of beauty, the continually increasing glory of her house, the intoxication of vanity, the secret desires of her heart. The trial was too strong; she yielded to it. In the enchanted circle in which she moved, more than one adorer attracted her attention; one of them succeeded in winning her, according to all appearances, at the close of 1647 or at the commencement of 1648. She was then about twenty-nine years of age.

François, first Prince de Marcillac, afterwards, upon the death of his father, Duke de La Rochefoucauld, was the eldest son of François de La Rochefoucauld, whom Louis XIII. created a duke and a peer in 1622, and of Gabrielle de Liancourt. He was born December 15, 1613, and at an early age married Mademoiselle de Vivonne. He served honorably in Italy and in Flanders, and in 1646 he was wounded at the siege of Mardyck. As Retz says, he was not a warrior, although he was a very good soldier. Without being very handsome, he was well formed and very agreeable. What distinguished him especially was his wit. Of this he possessed an infinite fund, of the finest and most delicate. His conversation was mild, easy, insinuating; and his manners were at once the most natural and most polished. He had a lofty air. In him vanity supplied the place of ambition. At an early age he showed a fondness for distinction and for intrigues. Profoundly selfish, and having succeeded in acquiring a knowledge of himself and in reducing to theory his nature, his character, and his tastes, he set out with contrary appearances, and with those chivalrous manners affected by the Importants. One of his first connections was with Madame de Chevreuse, who gave him to Queen Anne. He entered so earnestly into the interests of the queen and into those of Mademoiselle d’Hautefort, that he conceived or caught the idea of carrying them away. “I was,” says he,⁠[321] “at an age when one loves to perform extraordinary and brilliant things, and I thought that nothing could be more so than to carry off the queen at once from the king, her husband, and from Cardinal Richelieu, who was jealous of him, and of bearing away Mademoiselle d’Hautefort from the king, who was enamored of her.” He did not execute this fine project; but Richelieu, who had some suspicion of all these intrigues, placed him for eight days in the Bastile. It seems that he was not entirely a stranger to the conspiracies of Cinq-Mars. At the death of Richelieu he hastened to Paris, and, when that of Louis XIII. had placed the supreme authority in the hands of Queen Anne, he imagined that his fortune was made. He sought successively various important offices which the queen could not grant, whatever fondness she might have entertained for him. Madame de Chevreuse exacted for her old friend the government of Havre, which was then of the highest consequence; but this government was in the family of Richelieu, and Mazarin could not take it away from the Duchess d’Aiguillon. La Rochefoucauld aspired to the command of the cavalry; he was very brave, but he was not considered capable of such an employment. He tried thus several schemes; the queen applied herself to soothing his disappointments, by manners so tender, as to retain him, as would be now said, in a moderate opposition, and keep him from taking part in the violence of Beaufort. He was not then covered with the disgrace of the Importants, though he shared it to a certain extent; and he did not cease to be, or to seem to be, very much attached, not to the government, but to the person of the queen. He looked continually for some great favor at her hands. These favors not arriving, he determined to procure through intimidation what his fidelity had not been able to secure.

It was during this state of his feelings that he met Madame de Longueville, on her return from Munster, surrounded by the most earnest admirers. The Count de Miossens, afterwards Marshal d’Albret—handsome, brave, full of wit and of talent, as enterprising in love as in war—was paying her a very zealous court. La Rochefoucauld persuaded Miossens, who was one of his friends, that, after all, if he should overcome the resistance of Madame de Longueville, it would only be a victory flattering to his vanity, whilst that he, La Rochefoucauld, would be able to turn it to a very good account. This was certainly a very touching and heroic reason for loving! Corneille did not think of it in the Cid and in Polyeucte. We have, however, done no more than to transfer, with the utmost exactness, a piece from La Rochefoucauld himself, which we will now quote, word for word:⁠[322] “So much unprofitable labor and so much weariness, finally gave me other thoughts, and led me to attempt dangerous ways in order to testify my hostility to the queen and Cardinal Mazarin. The beauty of Madame de Longueville, her wit, and the charms of her person, attached to her all who could hope for her favor. Many men and women of quality strove to please her; and besides all this, Madame de Longueville was then upon such good terms with all her house, and so tenderly beloved by the Duke d’Enghien, her brother, that the esteem and friendship of this prince might be counted upon by any one in the favor of Madame his sister. Many persons vainly attempted this game, mingling other sentiments with those of ambition. Miossens, who afterwards became Marshal of France, persisted in it longest, but with similar success. I was one of his intimate friends, and he told me his designs. They soon fell to the ground of themselves. He saw this, and told me several times that he was about to renounce them; but vanity, which was the strongest of his passions, prevented him from telling me the truth, and he professed to entertain hopes which he had not, and which I knew that he could not have. Some time passed in this way; and, finally, I had reason to believe that I could make a more considerable use than Miossens of the friendship and confidence of Madame de Longueville. I made him believe it himself. He knew my position at court; I told him my views, declaring that my consideration for him would restrain me always, and that I would not attempt to form a connection with Madame de Longueville without his permission. I will even confess that I irritated him against her in order to obtain it, without however saying any thing untrue. He delivered her entirely to me, but he repented when he saw the result of this connection....”

La Rochefoucauld pleased Madame de Longueville, doubtless, by the graces of his mind and the charms of his person, and especially by that glory won for him by his conduct towards the queen, which was enough to dazzle a pupil of the hôtel de Rambouillet. He paid her homage which was, to all appearance, the most passionate in the world. In proportion as he insinuated himself into her heart, he skilfully aroused in her that desire of appearing and of producing an effect, so natural in woman. Little by little, he displayed before her eyes a new object which she had not yet perceived—an important part upon the theatre of events just opening. He transformed her natural coquetry into political ambition, or rather he inspired her with his own ambition.

When Madame de Longueville, touched by the passion shown for her by La Rochefoucauld, had determined to respond to it, she gave herself up to him entirely; she devoted herself to him whom she dared to love; she made it a point of honor, as well doubtless as a secret happiness, to share his destiny and to follow him without looking behind her, sacrificing to him all her private interests, the evident interest of her family, and the strongest sentiment of her soul, her tenderness for her brother Condé.

Oh admirable thing! do you know who it is that commits a crime against this devotion? He precisely who makes his profit in it. La Rochefoucauld expresses himself thus in regard to Madame de Longueville:⁠[323] “This princess possessed all the advantages of mind and beauty to such a degree and with so much charm, that it seemed as if nature had taken pleasure in forming a masterpiece.... But these fine qualities were rendered less brilliant by a stain which was never seen upon a princess of such merit, which found no imitations on those who entertained for her a particular adoration; a stain which so transformed her in their sentiments, that she did not recognize her own. At this time the Prince de Marcillac shared her mind, and as he joined his ambition to his love, he inspired her with a desire for business, to which she had a natural aversion.”

Let us listen to the declared enemy of Madame de Longueville, her step-daughter, the Duchess de Nemours: “It will doubtless cause astonishment⁠[324] that Madame de Longueville should have been one of the first (to join the party of malcontents), she who had nothing to hope from that party, and who had no reason to complain of the court.... M. the Prince felt an extreme tenderness for his sister. She, on her side, humored him, less from interest than from the particular esteem and tender friendship which she had for him. At this time neither she nor the whole cabal showed much wit in their designs; and although they were all possessed of enough of it, they employed it only in gay conversations, only in commenting and refining upon the delicacies of the heart and of the sentiments. They made all the wit and merit of a person to consist in making subtile distinctions and representations, sometimes unnatural enough. Those who made the most display were, in their opinion, the most creditable and most learned persons, and they treated as ridiculous and coarse whatever approached to grave conversation.... It was La Rochefoucauld who gave to this princess so many hollow and false sentiments. As he exercised a very great power over her, and as he seldom thought of any other person than himself, he drew her into all the intrigues in which she engaged, only to be able thereby to promote his own ends.”

Madame de Motteville, whom we must never grow weary of studying and citing when we wish to know and to establish the truth, after having marked the principal motive which urged La Rochefoucauld in his pursuit of Madame de Longueville, adds: “In⁠[325] all that she has since done, it is clearly seen that ambition was not the only thing that occupied her soul, and that the interests of the Prince de Marcillac there held a prominent place. For him she became ambitious, for him she ceased to love repose; and in order to be sensible to this affection, she became too insensible to her own glory.... The declarations of the Prince de Marcillac, as I have already said, had not been displeasing to her; and this nobleman, who was perhaps more selfish than tender, wishing through her to promote his own interests, believed that he should inspire her with a desire of ruling the princes her brothers....”

Finally Retz, who was perfectly acquainted with all the actors and all the actresses of the Fronde, and who, in regard to this epoch, merits not to be believed without reserve, but to be listened to seriously, closes the most charming eulogy upon Madame de Longueville with these words, so often repeated, and which contain the true judgment of posterity: “As her passion obliged her to make politics only a secondary matter, from the heroine of a great party, she became its adventuress.”⁠[326]

We must either renounce all historical criticism, or from these accumulated testimonies, which we could have much increased, we must draw this conclusion: 1, That before her connection with La Rochefoucauld, Madame de Longueville remained entirely unconcerned in every political intrigue; that she was occupied only with intellectual matters and gallantry, suffering herself to be guided absolutely in every thing else by her father and by her brother; 2, That it was not on her account, as has been often repeated, that La Rochefoucauld entered the Fronde; that, far from this, it was La Rochefoucauld, and La Rochefoucauld alone, who, little by little, engaged her in it, designedly and selfishly; 3, That the conduct of Madame de Longueville in the Fronde must be referred to La Rochefoucauld, who governed her, and that the only good thing in her is the character which she exhibited when the intrigue became a tempest, when it was necessary to risk her person; to stake her happiness, her repose, her fortune, and her life, retaining still under the hand of another what she could never lose—the pride of soul and brilliant energy of the sister of the great Condé.

It is not our business here to give a history of the Fronde, to make known its peripetics, its principal personages, the true springs of their actions, their apparent patriotism, their real ambition, their unstable hopes, their perpetual changes. We wish simply to describe Madame de Longueville; it is to her, without separating her from her brother Condé, that we would confine ourselves in this labyrinth of intrigues; here even we will show her only in the first scenes of the Fronde.

As soon as La Rochefoucauld had entered the heart of Madame de Longueville, he occupied it entirely. She employed in his service all the charms of her person, the resources of her mind, the greatness of her heart. Careless of her interests, and turning her back upon the fortunes of her house, she attacked openly, or undermined by artifice, that royalty which her family had supported, and which had been still more the support of her family. Forgetful of her most just resentment, even of her honor, she entered the ranks of those who, in 1643, had endeavored to blast in the bud her fresh and unsullied fame. The daughter of the Condés went over to the Vendômes and to the Lorraines, made common cause with Beaufort and with Madame de Chevreuse, and exposed herself to the risk of encountering in this new circle her old and implacable enemy, Madame de Montbazon. If Guise had not then been at Naples, she would doubtless have testified her perfect change by shaking the hand that had slain Coligny!

In the mean time La Rochefoucauld did not forget his reason for desiring so ardently the conquest of Madame de Longueville. He had wished, as he himself tells us, to reach the brother through the sister, and to draw into the Fronde the house of Condé, which had hitherto been a rampart to the queen and to Mazarin.

M. the Prince had died at the close of 1646, and with him his family had lost its political helm. Madame the Princess remained firmly attached to the queen; but Madame de Longueville succeeded, without much difficulty, in numbering among the malcontents the Prince de Conti, who, while waiting for a cardinal’s hat, was not sorry to make some noise, play some part, and acquire an importance which might make him compare favorably with his brother. She needed no great cunning to draw among the malcontents her husband, who was naturally inclined towards them. But the great difficulty was to win Condé himself.

The latter imagined that he had great cause of complaint against the cardinal. At the death of his brother-in-law, Brézé, in 1646, he asked to succeed him as High-Admiral of France. It was impossible to add this office to the number already possessed by the Condés; but, through management, the queen gave it to no one, and set it down for herself. M. the Prince, who was still living, ambitious and greedy, had warmly resented this refusal. The impetuous Condé had not concealed his anger. He was also much irritated at being sent into Catalonia to replace d’Harcourt, with the promise of every thing necessary to carry on a campaign worthy of him; and that he had been left, without the aid promised and earnestly claimed, between a strongly fortified place, which he could not take by assault on account of the condition of his troops, and a powerful army which he could neither wait for nor reach, so that he was obliged to raise the siege of Lerida, and to retreat in good order before the enemy. He felt that he had done well, but it was the first time that he had given way; in spite of him, his glory suffered by it, and he complained with bitterness of what he called the disloyalty of the cardinal. Finally, he was sent into Flanders to take command of a very feeble army,—not an army destitute of courage, but entirely undisciplined. Besides, it must be confessed, the true genius of Condé was for war. In this, again, he is the first of his age, and equal to the greatest in antiquity and in modern times,—as ardent as Alexander, as resolute as Cæsar, as fertile in expedients as Hannibal, as capable of making precise and vast calculations as Napoleon, which may be seen by the plan of the campaign by which, in 1645, he proposed to dictate peace to the Emperor in Vienna. He possessed all the qualifications of a warrior. He knew not only how to achieve a victory by the boldness of his manœuvres, but he knew how to calculate upon one, and, as Bossuet said of a very different person, he left nothing to fortune which he could accomplish through prudence and foresight. He was as good a military manager as he was an active and enterprising general. He excelled in the art of encamping and of besieging, as well as in that of fighting, and he surpassed Vauban. By turns, he exhibited that audacity which confounded Mercy at Fribourg and at Nortlingen, and that great prudence which led him to raise the siege of Lerida, and which at a later period, in 1675, wearied Montecuculli. With the most happy instincts, he united profound study. In Catalonia he marched with a copy of Cæsar in his hand, explaining it to his lieutenants. He formed the greatest generals, commencing with Turenne, who served under him during two campaigns, and finishing with that Luxembourg who, if he were rejudged, would perhaps be found not inferior to Turenne himself. Let us add this very striking fact: Condé is the only modern captain who never suffered defeat, and who was always victorious when he commanded in chief. Turenne was beaten twice in regular battle—at Rethel and at Mariendal; Frederic commenced with reverses; Napoleon terminated his dazzling career by two frightful routes—Leipsic and Waterloo; Condé alone was ever triumphant. He had arrayed against him the three greatest generals of Europe—Mercy, Montecuculli, and William; not one of them was able to deprive him of even the shadow of an advantage. We might easily extend, without exhausting it, the eulogy of the warrior in Condé; but, we acknowledge it, he had not the qualifications of a great politician, because at bottom he had no true determined ambition. First prince of the blood in a monarchy such as was that of France in the seventeenth century, what could he desire beyond the acquisition of glory? And after Richelieu and under Mazarin, this glory could be reached by him only on the battle-field. It was for this and for this alone that his father had reared him. He was also subjected, at an early age, to that severe discipline of ambition which teaches to speak at the proper moment and to be silent, to exhibit no humor, to keep the eye fixed upon the highest object, never suffering it to be turned aside by secondary interests, or by the caprices of the imagination or of the heart. Such is the ambitious man; such were, more or less, Henri IV., Richelieu, and Mazarin; for it is just to place Mazarin in this illustrious company. All three had a great end to attain, which they pursued with constancy. Condé had no aim; he formed no great design, being by birth as high as he could become—all that he could ever dream of being, unless he acted the madman or the traitor; and he had a mind perfectly correct, with a corresponding heart. His conscience and his good sense told him then that he had nothing to gain by all the intrigues in which others wished to engage him; that his place was near the throne, in order to protect it with his sword against its enemies, whoever they might be, whether at home or abroad. If he had kept this place, he would have attained to a rank much higher than even the usurpation of royalty. Let us not hesitate to look at it, that we may the better feel the greatness of his fall: to his five years of brilliant victories in Flanders and upon the Rhine, from 1643 to 1648, he might, beyond all doubt, have added, during the war which continued between France and Spain after the treaty of Westphalia, new victories, which, in two campaigns, at most, might have forever conquered Belgium, as the preceding had added Alsace to the French territory. He would then, at the age of thirty, have gained as many battles as Alexander, Hannibal, and Cæsar; and still there would have been before him twenty years of vigor, twenty other victories, like that of Senef, for example,⁠[327] which he gained upon the verge of old age, before laying aside his sword, as a monument of what he might have done from 1648 to 1675. Incomparable would have been his destiny had he performed his part as first prince of the blood, firm defender of the crown yet loyal interpreter of the nation; bearing to the queen without frightening her, and to Mazarin, while sustaining him, the legitimate complaints of the nobility, of the parliament, and of the people.

There was, in fact, a cause for the Fronde; Mazarin, almost equal to Richelieu as a diplomatist, had not, in the smallest degree, the genius of his master for the administration of State affairs. Incessantly occupied with increasing the territory and strengthening the royal authority, he attended to little else, and suffered abuses and disorders to creep in everywhere. The great wars which he undertook, the four or five armies which he was obliged to support, had exhausted France, which did not always find in glory a consolation for its misery. It had been necessary to increase the taxes, even to sell the public offices, in order to have means for paying the troops. The authority of the parliament had often been eluded or disarmed. The blood of the nobility had flowed in torrents. The people groaned under the heaviest burdens; and if the sentiment of national grandeur abandoned them even for a moment, the greatness of the evil caused them to utter complaints, and drove them to revolt. I do not accuse the people: they are seldom wrong; they move only when they suffer; they agitate only to improve their condition, or at least to make it less unhappy. It is parties that are culpable, when, instead of striving to afford relief to the evils of the people, they apply themselves to rendering these evils more poignant and more bitter, by inflammatory declamations, thus driving the people beyond all bounds. I pity, in 1648, the people, naturally irritated by the increase of taxes, and by the disorders of the administration; I condemn the Fronde, which, in its chiefs, with few exceptions, was deceitful and corrupt, violent and mad; and I am in favor of Mazarin, without loving him or without being deceived in regard to his defects and his faults, because, after all, he served France well, conducting with great ability its affairs abroad, and diminishing, by the peace with Germany, its misery at home. I admire Condé in this first Fronde, for having resisted his own injuries, the antipathy which he felt for Mazarin, the solicitations of his own family, and of his sister. I shall blame him in the strongest terms when, unfaithful to his fortune and to his glory, sacrificing the part of a principal to that of an accessory, putting temper in the place of policy, he shall engage in the intrigues which he had spurned, and shall allow himself at first to humor, then to serve the Fronde.

He commenced very differently. In the beginning of the troubles, Condé, without having enough of the statesman to crush the sedition in its bud, preserved at least a lofty bearing towards the malcontents; he lent a careless ear to the proposals of his sister, and having no taste for popular agitations, and not more for the tumultuous and often ridiculous deliberations of the parliament, occupied only with the coalition of Spain and of the empire, he went, in the spring of 1648, to take command of the army of Flanders, resolved to strike a blow and to repeat the victory of Rocroy. Not being able to secure him, the malcontents wished at least to profit by his absence. While Mazarin, for the best interests of the country, was demanding its utmost resources, and turning every thing into money, in order to raise additional troops, the Frondeurs, that is, a few of the great lords, supported by a part of the nobility, aroused the people and the parliament, who had not the least idea of the true situation of affairs; for the parliament was not a political assembly, and the people were simply aware that they were suffering. Mazarin, entirely occupied with the peril of the frontier, did not give enough attention to domestic dangers. He had kept very few troops near him, and one fine morning it happened that the Frondeurs took possession of Paris. The battle of the barricades followed close upon that of Lens. On his return, Condé found royalty humiliated, the parliament triumphing and dictating laws to the crown, the Duke de Beaufort, with whom he once thought of measuring swords in defence of the honor of his sister, freed from his prison of Vincennes, and master of Paris by aid of the populace who idolized him; the fickle and vain Abbé de Retz transformed into a tribune of the people; the Prince de Conti into a captain; M. de Longueville under the guidance of his wife and La Rochefoucauld; and the feeble Duke d’Orleans fancying himself almost a king, because he saw the queen humiliated, and because the Frondeurs, cunningly flattering his self-love, were treating him like a sovereign. Condé, at a glance, saw the situation of affairs and his duty also; and, without any hesitation, he offered his sword to the queen.

He had a stormy explanation with his sister.

It is pretended, that for some time their reciprocal tenderness had suffered more than one interruption; that, in 1645, Madame de Longueville had crossed the loves of her brother and Mademoiselle Du Vigean; that, in 1646, Condé, seeing her too intimate with La Rochefoucauld, had caused her to be called to Munster by her husband: but for this we have only the authority of the Duchess de Nemours,⁠[328] and nothing is less probable. The passion of Condé for Mademoiselle Du Vigean extinguished itself, as we have seen, and as all contemporaries affirm. The attentions of La Rochefoucauld to Madame de Longueville may have preceded the embassy of Munster, but they were not observed until 1647, and it is at the close of this year that Madame de Motteville places them, while attributing them especially to the desire of La Rochefoucauld to share the credit of the sister with the brother. But it is very certain, that as soon as the latter remarked this connection, he disapproved of it entirely; and not succeeding in his effort to rouse his sister from the intoxication of a first love, he passed from the most ardent affection to a bitter discontent. In the autumn of 1648, on his return from Lens, this connection had acquired its greatest strength, and become almost notorious. Madame de Longueville, directed by La Rochefoucauld, did then every thing in the world to gain her brother: she brought to bear upon him all her allurements, all her fondlings; she put into operation every thing which she thought might influence this passionate and fickle heart; she failed. He did not succeed in gaining over her his accustomed ascendency. They quarrelled and separated openly. Madame de Longueville plunged more deeply into the Fronde, and Condé applied himself to giving the new Importants a harsh lesson.

It is not my intention to enter into details. I wish simply to show that the brother and sister, in their opposite conduct, exhibited the same blood and the same audacity.

The queen had retired to Saint-Germain with the young king and all the government. Paris was under the absolute control of the Fronde. In spite of the first president, Molé, the l’Hôpital of the seventeenth century, it stirred up the parliament, by the aid of a few ambitious councillors and by seditious and mischievous inquests. It disposed of a great part of the Parisian clergy, through the coadjutor of the archbishop, Retz, who possessed and exercised all the authority of his uncle. It had continually at its head the two great houses of Vendôme and Lorraine, with two princes of the blood, the Prince de Conti and the Duke de Longueville, followed by a very great number of illustrious families. It gave law in the salons, thanks to a brilliant troupe of pretty women, who drew after them the flower of the young nobility. In short, the army itself was divided. Turenne, with his troops, who were stationed upon the borders of the Rhine until the perfect conclusion of the treaty of Westphalia, obedient to the suggestions of his eldest brother, the Duke de Bouillon, who wished to gain his principality of Sedan, had just raised the standard of revolt, and was threatening to place the court between his own army and that of Paris. Add that the parliament of the capital had sent deputies to all the parliaments of the kingdom, and that it was thus forming a sort of formidable parliamentary league in the face of monarchy. Condé took command of all the troops that remained faithful, and everywhere opposed the insurrection. He wrote himself to the army of the Rhine, which knew him, and which, after the route sustained by Turenne at Mariendal, had been led back by him to victory: these letters, supported by the proceedings of the government, succeeded in arresting the revolt; and Turenne, abandoned by his own soldiers, was obliged to fly to Holland.⁠[329] At ease upon this subject, Condé marched upon Paris, and placed it in siege. Instead of disputing the ground, as he might have done, foot by foot, with the sedition, he allowed it the freest course, sure that the spectacle of licentiousness, which could not fail to appear, would, little by little, restore to loyalty those who had for a moment gone astray. He began by calling, in the name of the queen and through his mother, all his family to Saint-Germain. The Prince de Conti and M. de Longueville did not dare to disobey; but La Rochefoucauld saw that the Fronde was in the greatest peril; he hastened after these two princes; he brought them back to Paris, made the Prince de Conti generalissimo, placing under him the Dukes d’Elbeuf and de Bouillon, who shared authority with the Marshal de La Mothe Houdancourt, governor of Paris.⁠[330] As to Madame de Longueville, she excused herself to the queen and to her mother on the grounds of her delicate situation, which would not permit her to undertake the least fatigue. In fact, Madame de Longueville was in this condition, for the last time, in 1648, when, it must be confessed, her connection with La Rochefoucauld was well known. It was in this condition that, willing to share the perils of her friends, proud also of playing a part and of filling all the trumpets of fame, she acted the warrior as well as she was able. There is, it is said,⁠[331] a portrait representing her as Pallas, just as, a little later, Mademoiselle was represented; her light hair covered with a helmet, and her soft eyes trying to wear a martial look. It is at least certain that she shared all the fatigues of the siege, that she was present at the reviews of the troops, at the parades of the citizen soldiery,⁠[332] and that all the civil and military plans were discussed before her. The memoirs of the times are full, in regard to this, of the most curious details. The hôtel de Longueville was continually filled with officers and generals; nothing was seen there but plumes, helmets, and swords.