Abraham Fabert, Governor of Sedan: Marshal of France, the First who Rose from the Ranks, His ...

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Author's Preface

Who was Abraham Fabert, and why should an account of him be written in English ?

The biography now offered to the public had this natural origin. Many years ago, while travelling for rest and recreation, the author picked up at an Edinburgh book-stall a copy of the Vie de Fahert par le Pere JBarre, and read it for amusement. Until then he knew no more of Fabert than this — that he was a Marshal of France whose statue he had seen at Metz, that his name figures in the Appendix to Voltaire's Si^cle de Louis XIV,, and that it was mentioned here and there by other historians. The two little brown volumes of the Canon of St. Genevieve, however, disclosed the character of a man, so diflFerent in many respects from that of the French soldiers of his time, that the author was led to push his inquiries farther and deeper; and thus he came to admire, and felt constrained to write out his estimate of the adventures, attainments, and high qualities of this Fabert. Some pro^jress had been made, in hours of leisure, when a new French life of his hero was announced ; and then, thinking it would be needless, the work was laid aside. The new Life, by Colonel Bourelly, is full, complete, based on profound researches, a genuine example of exhaustive investigation and conscientious labour ; but it is not suitable to the British public. In due time the desire to set forth the merits of the printer's son who became a Marshal, of the brave, faithful, and studious soldier, of the Governor who took his duties to heart, of the wise administrator and enlight* ened economist, sprang up afresh, and the result of yielding to temptation is contained in the following pages.

The author trusts they will show, contrary to Voltaire's opinion, that there was something "extraordinary" in the man's career besides the fact that he succeeded " solely by his merit," and that he refused the Coo^don Bleu rather than vi PREFACE.

forge evidence of noble birth for three generations. He was,

indeed, almost an unique figure in a tumultuous and

J dramatic period ; and the* sketches of " his times," which

' began with Henry IV. and ended with the death of Mazarin,

are essential as indications of the environment in which he

' lived. The events and the characters of that sixty-two years

have furnished themes for many pens ; this humble attempt

follows the course of one who was not in the front rank, but

who, on that account, is no less worthy of remembrance and

honour. Enough ; the book must now speak for itself.

G. H.

Kensington^ February ^ 1890.

EDITOR'S PREFACE.

In publishing this Life of Marshal Fabert the nearest relatives of the late George Hooper are actuated by a desire to carry out what they know to have been his wishes.

Shortly before his sudden death in May, 1890, my father had revised the manuscript of this his latest and, as it unhappily proved, his last work, and prepared it for the press. Perhaps some further alterations in the text would have been made by the author before he actually placed it in the printers' hands, but whatever his intentions in this respect may have been, the book must now appear substantially as he left it two years ago, A few obvious and trifling verbal errors have been corrected, and an Index has been added, but no material changes have been made in the work itself. The index has been constructed on the plan of including, so far as possible, only subjects having a direct bearing on Fabert himself, but some departures from this rule have been judged expedient.

The portrait of the Marshal prefixed to the volume is copied by the Autotype Company from a print in the British Museum.

WvNNARD Hooper.

Contents

PAGE

INTBODUCTION

CHAP.

Introduction

Abraham, son of Abraham Fabert, was bom at Metz on *. October 11, 1599. The interest which he inspires is grounded on his exceptional career and character. He came of a family of printers and booksellers; he was renowned as a brave soldier in a period conspicuous for reckless personal valour ; he was an able and honest man of business, a disinterested public servant, a statesman whose administrative and economical ideas were in advance of his time ; and finally, he rose from the ranks by hard work and sheer merit to the dignity of Marshal of France, — ^he was, indeed, the first French soldier, not belonging to the noblesse of the sword or the gown, who, to use a modem phrase, found a Marshal's b&ton in his knapsack. He did not, like some of the Napoleonic Marshals, start from the lowest rung of the social ladder, but he was without those conventional qualifications, which, in his day, and long after, were regarded as the conditions precedent to the highest promotion ; and his sense of honour was so refined that he would not stoop to invent or purchase a pedigree from obliging heralds. That was not a common virtue. Witty Madame Comuel said of Louis XIV. in his prime, that she did not know why folks thought the King

did not love Paris, seeing that he had made such a number of

B her burghers Knights of his Orders; and when an Archbishop of Sens, because he knew he was not, and that the statutes required that he should be a noble of three descents, refused the Cordon Bleu, St. Simon scornfully exclaimed, *'He imitated M. de Fabert. These two stand alone." The others complied with an easy custom winked at by the King. Fabert, like the prelate, was more fastidious. He had his faults, but baseness was not among them ; and even with the frailties he had, he may fairly stand as a representative of courage, perseverance, tolerance, industry, and probity, in a selfish, bigoted, and venal age.

His earliest recorded ancestor is a certain Isaiah, an Alsatian, who dwelt in Strasburg and had property in Lorraine, which entitled him to be called seigneur of Xonville, a village near Metz not far from the battle-field of Mars la Tour. He had a son named Mangin, and this Fabert accepted from Charles III., Duke of Lorraine, the post of Master and Director of the Ducal Printing Establishment at Nancy, at a salary of two thousand crowns, high pay for that period. Three facts are known of Mangin, printer to the generous Duke — ^his marriage at his father's cJidtel in 1551, his subsequent removal from Nancy to Metz, and his purchase of the castle and lands of Moulins, three miles from the city, to this day the property of his descendants. He is said to have been ennobled by the Duke, but the fact is doubtful. If little is known of the founder of the Fabert family, his son Abraham has had better fortune. He also was a printer ; he fought for Henry IV. against the League; aided in the capture of Mars la Tour, then written Malatour, and of Conflaus ; served many years as " Maitre Echevin^* or High Sheriff of Metz, printed books, and prospered in many ways. When ennobled by Henry, in 1603, he was styled ''commissaire ordinaire de notrc Artillerie 68 govvemement de Metz, Thoul, Verdun" ** Jieput6 ysm de noble race,'* he is made and de-

INTRODUCTION. 3

dared to be a " gerUMomme" with the title of *^ Ecuyer'* He had ten children, three of whom only survived, Francois, Abraham, and Anne. He may be said to have built up the house on the foundations laid by his father ; and it was his services to Henry lY. and to the famous Duke of £pemon, a favourite, but, as St. Simon asserts, never a "mignon" of Henry III., which created those opportunities of earning distinction so eagerly and resolutely seized by Abraham the Younger. His father's reputation in Lorraine rested upon the excellence of the works which came from his printing office ; works even now coveted by collectors as specimens of typography ; but most upon his tact and judgment as an administrator. Thus he was a country squire by virtue of , his little seignory outside Metz on the *' road to France/' a j sort of chief Magistrate in the city ; a renowned printer, an / artillerist, and, as we shall see, an enterprising speculator, who ventured to lease the iron works at Moyoeuvre on the Onie.

Abraham the Younger was born two years before the son of Henry IV., the prince with whom, as Louis XIII., he was destined to have such intimate relations. Bichelieu was a youth, still uncertain whether it would be his lot to wear a mitre or a helm, and Mazarin, whom Fabert outlived, had not se^n the light. The end of the sixteenth century was, indeed, a point in time marking a new epoch in French history. The desolating wars waged in the name of religion, for social and political ends, had terminated in a compromise. When Henry IIL, who carefully planned the murder of Henry, Duke of Quise, in the Castle of Blois, fell himself under the blow of an assassin, the Catholic League was avenged, but the stroke of vengeance not only destroyed a hated monarch, it virtually destroyed the League. Henry of Navarre became King, de jure, and he soon took the step which made him Eang, de facto. He was duly converted to the faith of the majority, " Paris was well worth a mass." The greater part of the Catholic noblesse rallied to his white plume, and the rivalry between the old Duke of Mayenne and the young Duke of Guise did the rest. The House of Guise, which so nearly succeeded in capturing the throne of France, fell back into the ranks of courtiers ; the House of Bourbon, by capitulation as well as craft and valour, retained its lofty place; and, although the Church, the sects, the great nobles and the lawyers wrestled fiercely with the sovereign power, that power in the end issued from the long and sanguinary conflict absolute and supreme.

Fabert was bom when the period of change had just begun. The waves of revolution had not altogether subsided; the disorder in every department of the State was appalling ; the hostile social and political forces were still in arms; the financiers and tax-gatherers alone were flourishing; the people were steeped in misery. £ut a master mind had gained an initial control over the elements of confusion, and there was at least the hope that strength and honesty would bring some of the blessings of tranquility and order. That hope was in a great measure fulfilled by the labours of Henry and Sully, men so nearly of an age, the King being only seven years older than his friend and servant, and so finely tempered, that, although they differed profoundly in character, they could work together effectively to secure objects dear to each — the establishment of order in the administration, the restoration of honesty in the management of the finances, and the organization of France as a great power.

At the end of the sixteenth century they had only taken the initial steps in their arduous enterprise. France had no commerce; no ships; properly speaking, no army. The King's revenue was precarious, for the taxes and treasuries were in the hands of corrupt and plundering officials. The governors of provinces gave themselves airs of independence.

INTRODUCTION. 5

and treated with the monarch. The League was, indeed, subdued, but the embers of that devastating invention of the Quises still smoked ; the Huguenots, alarmed and indignant at the King's conversion, wavered between rebellion and obedience ; while Austria and Spain — Philip II. had only just ended his long and pernicious career — threw a black shadow, not only over perturbed France, but over Holland, England, and Protestant Germany. It was the business of the shrewd and jovial Eling and his crafty but honest minister to coerce and conciliate internal opposition ; to extinguish debt, relieve the taxpayer by destroying his oppressor, the lawless taxcollector; to create a surplus; and to organize a power which would enable France to take her own line even in the teeth of the Spanish Court and the Holy Roman Empire.

When Henry was assassinated, in 1610, he had gone far towards the accomplishment of this stupendous task. He had made his country a flourishing State ; he possessed a vast treasure in the Bastille, where Sully kept watch and ward ; he was the head of a fine army, and had a " great design " on foot which was directed, nominally, towards the political and territorial reformation of Europe, but was really devised with intent to enlarge and strengthen the power of France. To use the language of Augustin Thierry, an impartial witness, he desired to preserve France from the danger to which she was exposed by the preponderance of Austria, and " at the same time give France herself a preponderating position by re-constituting Europe on a new principle, that of the independence and equality of States."

He proposed to reduce the then existing States to fifteen, having theoretically equal power. It is a curious fact that at this date, 1890, the number of sovereign states in Europe, excluding Turkey, is just one more, — sixteen ; but, of course, neither they, nor their dynamical relations to each other, correspond with the dream of Henry IV.

Metz, at the end of the sixteenth century^ had heen virtually an "annexe" of France for nearly fifty years* When Maurice of Saxony planned his daring entei'prise against the Kaiser, Henry II. became his willing ally, and while Maurice hunted Charles Y. from Innspruck, Henry laid hands on Toul, Verdun, and Metz, gaining the last by an adroit stratagem, with the fuU connivance of the anti- Imperialist party in the city. Charles signed a peace with his astute Qerman antagonist — ^the peace of Passau, in its day a great Protestant and German victory — and then marched with his whole military force to wrest Metz from the grasp of the French King. Forewarned, Henry threw five thousand men, mostly trained soldiers, but including a band of fighting French nobles, into the place, and had the wit to put at their head Francis, Duke of Quise.

This capable and resolute leader, razing abbeys, monasteries^ churches, faubourgs on both banks of the river, expelling the " useless mouths," and making, in other ways, the most of the three months allowed him for preparation, was in ample readiness for battle, when, in the autumn of 1552, Charles sat down before the city. It was so well defended by Quise and his men, that the proud Kaiser, although he was aided by Alva, and the brilliant yet erratic Albert, nick-named " Alcibiades," Markgraf of Baireuth, called by the French "the Marquis of Brandenbourg," was compelled by valour, snow, and rain, to withdraw, in deep distress of mind, from the scene of a failure as conspicuous and significant as any in history.

Thus was Henry's appropriation of Metz made good by Francis of Quise. New defences were built, a new city planned, and Metz, says a French author, himself a Messin, " bought the sorrowful privilege of becoming one of the most formidable bulwarks of France by the loss of part of her population, of her monuments, and her commercial resoiurces,"

INTRODUCTION. 7

When Fabert was bom, the havoc wrought by the siege had long been repaired, although the grand edifices on the left bank were gone for ever. The extent of the city was diminished, but much of its old beauty remained, and the elder Fabert (1610) celebrates its pleasant situation, its spaciousness, its fine bridges and beautifiil rivers, its Champ-&-Seille surrounded by arcades, and affording a field for ten thousand men in order of battle, its scores of churches, all surpassed by the towering Cathedral, its pleasant approaches, its gardens, water-mills, quaint walls, and round towers, the abundance of Boman ruins, and the Bridge of the Dead over the Moselle, which led to the city "from the side of France/' The ancient square citadel, standing between the rivers, was enclosed by more pretentious works which did not win the approbation of Henry IV. ; and the mound-like retrenchments, thrown up by Guise, still rose above the archaic ramparts, some traces of which remained to our day.

There were no fortifications on the left bank under the abrupt hills. The western defences ran along the right bank, and the ''road to France/' carried on bridges over the Moselle, turned southwards and passed by the stout little ch&teau of Moulins, the seigneury of Fabert's father, before it ran westward by Mars la Tour, where there was also a ch&teau which he had helped Henry's troops to snatch from the Leaguers, and so onward to Verdun by routes long familiar to the soldier-student, and nearly identical with those trodden by the Roman Legions, highways repaired by the famous Brunhild, and in several places still bearing her name. Below Metz lay Diedenhof, or Thionville, then, as now again, an imperial city ; and above on the Meurthe, Nancy, whence the Duke of Lorraine looked jealously on the French who had deftly appropriated the large slices cut from his Dukedom.

So far as the Messins were concerned, having tried and failed to govern themselves as burghers of a free city, they, or a party among them, had called in the French King, whose sway they preferred to that of the Emperor, and still more to that of the Bishop. The King gave them a governor and a garrison; but their ancient municipal institutions survived for a century and more, and Metz grew gradually less German and more French. And a fine conquest it was for France. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Messin was famed for its wealth of com, wine, meat, and fish, its grassmeadows, vineyards, salt-works, minerals, and woods ; and the site of its chief city on the road firom the west to the east enabled its bluff, valiant, energetic, and iodustrious inhabitants to draw profit from these great advantages.

They were compounded of many peoples, a result not wonderful in a border city, which had been a great Roman station, the capital of the Frankish Kingdom of Austrasia, a Reichstadt, and free town ; and the mixture of races had produced a community with distinctly more liking for the French Monarchy than for the Holy Roman Empire, probably because their pride revolted against the arrogance of the Emperor, and they had not yet tasted the tyranny of the King. Indeed, Henry, in the manifesto which he issued in the spring, when he took the field to aid Maurice, styled himself " Protector of the Liberties of Germany and of its captive Princes," and gave out, as other Frenchmen did after him, that he was under arms to restore the shattered constitution of the Empire, and " secure the privileges and independence of all the members of the Germanic body." Whether the Messins believed him or not, they fell, and remained under his sway long after Maurice had gained that object, and had wruDg the Passau Treaty from the sullen Kaiser,

V i