The Duchesse de Chevreuse, a life of intrigue and adventure in the days of Louis XIII

Introduction

It may appear a somewhat bold undertaking, after the publication of Victor Cousin's highly valued work {Mme. de Chevreuse, 1862), to write a life of the Duchesse de Chevreuse. But I have ventured to treat the subject afresh, because it has appeared to me that Victor Cousin was unacquainted with a number of documents which throw a new light on the life-story of Cardinal Richelieu's famous opponent; that he did not, perhaps, extract all the advantage he might have gained from the texts published in the Appendix to his work — texts of which, in some cases, fuller and more extensive copies exist than those of which he has made use ; and finally, because, swayed by scruples far removed from those which affect the rights of the historical critic, he thought himself bound to soften down certain of his heroine's regrettable characteristics, and thus render his portrait of her more flattering,

I have taken all these documents in hand again, I have sought out fresh ones, I have made a closer analysis of the feelings of Mme. de Chevreuse. And I believe that I have thus been able to produce a more life-like impression of one of the most representative figures in the aristocracy of the seventeenth century. If the theory that one of the chief elements of history is to be found in the action of individuals — either in solitary instances, and thus ruled by the variations of each person's unstable temperament, or grouped into crowds, and then swayed by the contradictory tides of the collective phenomena produced by "mental contagion " — be a true one, such a psychological study as that I offer here embodies a more exact contribution to the

INTRODUCTION

understanding of a particular period than many a general description, even of the most brilliant kind. And this contribution will be found likewise in the picture drawn of the figures that moved in the circle in which Mme. de Chevreuse lived. I have striven to instil life into these figures — such as Louis XIII and Richelieu, for instance — and to give them their real physiognomies, such as the documents consulted show them to have been, and not transformed, as we find them in novels, and plays, and legend. The links connecting this biography with general history are thus of a quite different nature, enlightening, explanatory.^ History, which has hitherto been solely occupied with wars, negotiations, institutions, and outlines, economic or philosophic, must now be applied to the revelation of "the life " of past ages, in all its immediate and positive reality. Michelet has given us the expression which best fits this particular form, he calls it "resurrection."

The objection advanced against such "resurrections" is that they are fanciful, or "romantic," — the truth, in this instance, is at fault, inasmuch as it resembles an imitation of itself ! This reproach may be justified when the author, untrammelled by the discipline of science, thinks he must add the suggestions of his own capricious fancy to texts which he considers insufficient. But the duty of the historical critic is, on the contrary, to restrict the part played in his work by conjecture within the severest limits, and to seek out, select, and use his documents in sufficient numbers to enable him, with their help alone, to trace the succession of events, and that in the orderly sequence indispensable to the interest inspired by any literary composition.

The form of this work has not permitted me to indicate the authorities consulted at the foot of each page. I have carefully mentioned, in the course of my narrative, the names of the witnesses on whose testimony I have relied : a list of my references will be found in the Appendix, and

vi

INTRODUCTION

I have endeavoured, by means of a number of fairly explicit quotations, to prove that my descriptions are by no means an exaggeration of contemporary opinion. Whatever symptoms of "imagination" may appear in certain passages of my story, my readers will be forced to admit that it faithfully follows the authorities at my disposal. Even more than "the art of telling a tale," history must be "a method " for the discovery, the criticism, the grouping together, of the texts of bygone days.

L. B.

vn

Contents

CHAP. KAGE

I MARIE DE ROHAN : DUCHESSE DE LUYNES I

II THE CHEVREUSE MARRIAGE 28

Chapter 1 Marie De Roil^n : Duchesse De Luynes

The Due de Montbazon— Marie de Rohan Montbazon : her childhood, her character — Her marriage to the Due de Luynes— Anne of Austria — Influence of the Duchess on the Queen— Madame de Luynes disturbs the peace of Louis XIII — Her disgrace — 1600-22.

Towards the middle of the nineteenth century there still stood in the city of Paris, at the corner of the Rue de I'Arbre Sec and the Rue de Bethizy, an ancient dwelling, the elegant decorations of which, defaced though they were, proved it to have been the home, in bygone days, of some important family. At the end of a courtyard to which the action of the weather had imparted a shabby and sorrylooking air, there rose a brick-built facade, with stone chaincourses, crowned by a sharply pointed roof; the windows (those on the ground floor were grated) were flanked, on the upper floors, by pilasters adorned with Ionic capitals. The house dated from the Renaissance period. The property, in the sixteenth century, of Antoine du Bourg, Chancellor of France, and let, at a later date, to Admiral de Coligny, who was murdered within its walls on St. Bartholomew's Day, August 24, 1572; it was purchased, in 1617, by a prominent nobleman, Hercule de Rohan, Due de Montbazon, Peer of France and Grand Veneur to His Majesty. Sauval tells us that M. de Montbazon had the whole edifice repaired and redecorated, that he caused the words " Hotel de Montbazon " to be set over the door in letters of gold; that within its walls he displayed an excessive luxury. The somewhat moderate proportions of the building, as it appeared before its final demolition in 1853, render any explanation of so sumptuous a manner of life somewhat difficult. In the days of Louis XIV the house was no more than a tavern ; previously to that period it had known some palmy days.

This Due de Montbazon was a great personage, indeed. Born of a family whose records — so one of his forefathers asserts, in a memorandum drawn up in the days of Henri III — covered twelve centuries, which was descended from the earliest kings of Brittany, was allied with "the greatest monarchs in Europe, and all the greatest princes of Christendom," was connected with the rOyal family, and had succeeded, for over a thousand years, in transmitting "the rank and honour of its original stock and author" by direct male descent, M. de Montbazon, with his great stature, his imposing air, his broad and energetic countenance, was a worthy representative of his race. The third son of Louis de Rohan, Prince de Guemene, he had become duke on the death of an elder brother, in whose favour King Henri III had erected the estate of Montbazon into a duchy, and had at the same time married that dead brother's young fiancee, Madeleine de Lenoncourt.

His contemporaries all agree in asserting his intelligence to have been exceedingly moderate. Especially did they consider him brutal in his habits. Bautru, who wrote a biting libel on him, crammed with stinging taunts, and entitled O^onandre or the Coarse Felloiv, a Satire, turned him into utter ridicule, never vouchsafing him any name save "Prince of Louts," or "Prince of Bethizy "^an allusion to his house in the street of that name. To complete the picture, M. de Montbazon, like most great gentlemen of that epoch, had the morals of a horse-trooper. At a later date he was to be accused, when Governor of Paris, of going forth in full dress, and attended by mounted guards, to "plunge into debauchery." During his visits to Montbazon, his castle on the banks of the Indre, some three leagues from Tours, or his still more frequent stays at the charming Chateau of Couzieres, close by — a residence of which he was particularly fond — he indulged a passion for a certain courtesan of Tours, named Louise Roger, which supplied the whole province with entertainment. As a just retribution, his wife, so we are told, was constantly unfaithful to him.

The important position to which he rose is explained by the fact that to his name, his title, and his brilliant family descent, he added a perfect fidelity to his King, at a period when fidelity was a virtue rare indeed. He had followed the fortunes of Henry of Navarre. Henri IV, when seated on the throne, kept his kindly feeling for him. There was a story current in the family that when the Dauphin, afterwards to become Louis XHI, was born, Montbazon was in the Queen's apartments at Fontainebleau. The King, issuing from the chamber in which Marie de Medicis lay, to present the newly born Prince to his assembled courtiers, caught sight of Montbazon, and laid the infant in his arms, with the words, " Here's a heavy burden ! It needs a Hercules to carry it ! " M. de Montbazon was with the King when Ravaillac murdered him, in 1610. He continued in the service of Marie de Medicis, and defended her in the civil wars which ensued. He was employed on confidential missions, and zealously performed his duties.

i.\s a reward, honours were showered upon him. He was made the King's Lieutenant in Normandy and his Governor in Picardy; in the year 1619 he was appointed Governor of Paris and the lie de France, and "Grand Veneur" of France shortly afterwards; he was one of the foremost noblemen about the Court.

He married twice. By his first wife, who had been betrothed to his brother, and who died in 1602, after four years of wedded life, at the age of nineteen, he had two children. Twenty-six years later, when he was sixty, he married again. His second wife was "a beauteous damsel," so Souvigny tells us, of eighteen, Marie d'Auverjour de Bretagne, daughter of Charles, Comte de Vertus, whom he carried off from the convent in which the young lady had proposed to take her vows ; a magnificent creature, tall and full bosomed, with a white skin and black hair, a nose a trifle thick and lips a little thin, of imposing presence and passionate temperament : the famous jNIadame de Montbazon of Anne of Austria's Regency.

The elder of the two children by the first marriage was a boy, Louis VII de Rohan, Prince de Guemene; the younger was a girl, and this girl was Marie-Aimee de Rohan, destined, by her first marriage, to become Duchesse de Luynes, and by her second, Duchesse de Chevreuse. Marie-Aimee de Rohan was born in December, 1600, two years after her brother, who came into the world on August 5, 1598. She was given the name borne, in Henri II's time, by a great aunt, Marie de Rohan-Guemene, the friend of the Constable de Montmorency. She could not remember her mother, who died when she was only two years old. Her childhood was a neglected one. The education she received was not of a nature to inspire any predisposition to a virtuous life.

If it be true that Madeleine de Lenoncourt had been unfaithful to her husband before she had reached the age of twenty, she thus gave proof of a temperament which in her daughter's case was sufficiently strongly developed. The father was not in a position to counteract so regrettable a tendency by any opposite qualities of his own, and Marie de Rohan, thus affected by a double dose of hereditary inclination, showed symptoms, at an early age, of a fascinating gift of coquetry, and an alarming lightness of behaviour. Brought up in the house of a parent who certainly never thought of giving her good advice, even when he was not actually setting her a bad example, left to the care of governesses who possessed no authorityover her, she had nobody about her to correct any of the dubious tendencies of her nature. Between Couzi^res, whither she often went, and Paris, which was her real home, she led a life that was little short of being quite independent, a life of pleasure, caprice, and liberty of every kind.

As a comrade she had her brother. In later years they, were to go to law; as children the understanding between them was excellent. Short of stature, ugly, with the small grimacing face of a shortsighted creature trying to see things clearly, short irregular features, and twisted at that, Gu^m^ne was far from attractive-looking : somebody declared he looked like a professional "tooth-drawer." But he was exceedingly witty. Everything he said was amusing. Marie de Rohan, who loved to laugh and scoff, got on well with a brother so perfectly suited to her taste : they were never apart. Tallemant des R^aux tells us that people were "astonished that the son and daughter of M. de Montbazon should have so much wit I "

Thus Marie de Rohan grew up, a spoilt child, in an atmosphere of careless gaiety. Such things as principles and prejudices she hardly possessed. Yet she was the true daughter of her century. She was fully conscious of the position occupied by her family, and that to which her father had attained ; she knew what was her own due, and was never to forget who she was. But considerations of honour were never to stand in her way. Her religious sentiments, we shall see, were those suitable to a woman of her rank, and they were sincere ; but religion was not destined to restrain her actions, any more than honour.

In early girlhood she revealed her possession of the charms which were to have such enduring power. She was pretty, full of refinement and distinction. Her small face, the purest oval, possessed the delicate and aristocratic features peculiar to an ancient and court-bred race. The tempting scarlet lips of her well-modelled mouth offer us some explanation of the passionate adorations she inspired. The wide-open and sensitive nostrils betrayed their owner's inheritance of the maternal temperament. Beneath a smooth forehead and widely opened golden eyelashes, the eyes, above all, drew others to them- — eyes that had a certain reserve in them, a mysterious power of penetration, too, youthful, full of life, haunting and spiritual, at once scornful and captivating. Her hair was fair and silky, her figure slight, supple, not over tall, but well proportioned : altogether a very graceful, refined, and feminine being.

Wherever she went Marie de Rohan stirred innumerable hearts to love. Old and young, noblemen, bourgeois, peasants, every man who approached her fell under the charm. She wrote of herself, "I believe I am fated to be the object of the madness of unreasonable men ! " It was as though she sent forth some heady perfume that had the gift of disturbing even the staidest heart. For a moment it even overcame Louis XIII and Richelieu. A wondrous power of fascination ! Few women of the seventeenth century have wielded so far-reaching and decisive an influence over their contemporaries !

She was quite aware she possessed it, and made no attempt to lessen its power. We shall see her give herself up to her love affairs with a sort of amused and careless indifference. The fact is that she was exceedingly good-natured. And she delighted, besides, in loving and in being loved. It mattered little to her whether the object of her passion were always the same or not : as long as he was in possession, she was faithful to her chosen one. "It was not difficult," said one who knew her well, "to impose any particular lover upon her, but once she had accepted him, she loved him solely and faithfully. She once acknowledged to Mme. de Rhodes and to myself that by some caprice of fortune, as she thought it to be, she had never loved the person best whom she had esteemed the most, except, she added, in the case of her poor Buckingham. In spite of a devotion to her passion, which may be called eternal, though its object was occasionally changed, a whim here and there would turn her thoughts aside. But back she always came, and that with a transport which made her slip appear delightful."

And then Marie de Rohan delighted in fun. Wherever she went she left behind her the fascinating memory of a joyous being. Her cheerfulness vanquished the dreariness of the most gloomy surroundings. "She makes our Court so merry," writes Lord Montague from London, in 1638, to the Commandeur de Souvre, "that you w'ill find it no less pleasing than that of Turin." Her lively conversation, full of quick repartee, proved an activity of mind which was often remarked by Richelieu, whom she drove to despair. Petted wheresoever she chose to go — at Court, to begin with, in the earlier days, before Richelieu's time, at all events; then in Lorraine, where she was treated like a queen ; and in London, above all, where the royal family, Charles I and his Queen Henrietta-Maria, could not bear her out of their sight, and where all the English lords vied with one another in offering her proofs of their admiration, Marie de Rohan was everybody's delight. One understands how Fontenay-Mareuil came to write of her, " Nothing was really impossible to a woman of her beauty and her wit."

Was her judgment sound ? The numerous letters she has left us, scrawled in an untidy and crabbed hand, do not cast much light on the point. They show us a nature that must have been sincere, self-contained, reserved, somewhat precise and cold, as a rule, in business matters ; and never very warm-hearted. Mme. de Chevreuse wrote a " Discourse on Love," which still lies in the manuscript ; its text, which is brief enough, is no more than a vague commentary on Montaigne : we learn nothing from it.

Our best means of knowing her is to follow her in her intrigues.

"An active and restless mind," says Monglat; "more clearly convicted of factiousness than any lady in the kingdom," declares Retz, Mme. de Chevreuse made intrigue the favourite occupation of her whole life. No other person has excelled her in the art of inventing complications, spreading them abroad, tangling them together, and rendering them so formidable as to end, thanks to her external relations and the personal charm she exercised over sovereigns and statesmen, in creating those political dangers which cost the Cardinal de Richelieu many an anxious thought. The author of a Mazarinade, which appeared in the year 1652, ''La Verite pronongant ses Oracles/' gives us the following outline of the activities of Mme. de Chevreuse: "Everybody knows she has given the first impulse to many great movements, and has been the moving intelligence of several great designs; the unhappy thing is that not one that is good has been ascribed to her. She is said to be exceedingly busy, but she never sets anything on a sure foundation ; she is said to be very clever at tangling the skein of an intrigue, but she never can unravel any. She is said to be very clever at finding her way out of a labyrinth, but never does it without first of all getting herself into another. She is said to be a thorough marplot, and that says everything ! " The conclusion the writer draws is that Mme. de Chevreuse was a person of incautious and meddling disposition, and this estimate is fairly justified by facts.

But the author is mistaken on one point — when he ascribes the activity of Mme. de Chevreuse to a regard for her personal interest. St. Simon, too, has said : "Intrigue, obedient to the star of the House of Rohan, served this family's interests." Mme. de Chevreuse was not an interested person. Mme. de Motteville, who saw a great deal of her, thought her rather absent-minded than otherwise, full of fancies, and ruled by passion rather than by reason. Marie de Rohan was neither selfish nor ambitious. She intrigued her whole life long, but it was to amuse herself, and serve the cause of those she loved. " I have heard her say herself," continues Mme. de Motteville, "that no ambition had ever touched her heart, and that she had followed her own pleasure — that is to say, that she had interested herself in worldly affairs solely out of consideration for the persons who had been dear to her." Retz went still further, saying: "If the Duchesse de Chevreuse had been born into the world in a century when there had been no affairs of state, it would never have entered her head that such things existed." It may well be that in other and calmer times Mme. de Chevreuse might have spent her energies on peaceful and beneficent undertakings. But living as she did at a period when her social position and her relations with royalty enabled her to exercise a certain political influence, and being by her nature "fond of gallantry, lively, bold and enterprising," she was in a position, as La Rochefoucauld tells us, "to use all her charms in the endeavour to ensure the success of her plans " : she did attempt it. Unfortunately she harmed all the causes and all the persons she tried to serve. "There was no peace in France," writes Mazarin, "until she had left it." The continuous effort such an existence presupposes makes its insignificant results appear small indeed in proportion.

She had hardly reached her seventeenth year when her father, who was anxious to get her off his hands, cast about for a husband for her. A lucky chance was to bring her a marriage at once brilliant, wealthy, and unexpected.

It was just at this m.oment — in 1617 — that Louis XIII, having put an end to his mother's Regency by the execution of Concini, had taken the reins of government into his own hands. His favourite, at that moment, was Honor^ d'Albert, shortly to become Due de Luynes. M. de

Luynes was a young gentleman of modest extraction, from the Comtat Venaissin, who had reached his thirty-ninth year, and owed his somewhat sudden rise in life to the lively attachment with which he had inspired Louis XIII. The King had showered honours upon him. He had carried his affection to the length of desiring to make a marriage between him and his own natural sister, Mile, de Vendome. But the lady had refused, not considering M. de Luynes a suitor worthy of her: she had set her mind on marrying the Due du Maine. Luynes, timid by nature, alarmed by her resistance, and fearing he might* draw on himself the enmity of the Vendome family and of the Due du Maine, conceived the idea of getting out of his delicate position by marrying somebody else as soon as he could manage it. And then it was that he cast his eyes on Marie de Rohan. She was a most attractive creature. Her family, said to be very rich, was one of the greatest in the kingdom. Louis XIII gave his consent. The Comte de Montguyon was despatched to ask for the young lady's hand. M. de Montbazon had not a moment's hesitation. His private affairs had fallen into confusion. The objection that M. de Luynes came of a family far less illustrious than his own was largely counterbalanced by the prospect of the numberless advantages that should accrue to Marie de Rohan and her kinsfolk from the honour of being allied to the King's favourite. Day by day, the young wife's position would rise higher, as M. de Luynes' favour with the King waxed greater. The father agreed, the daughter made no objection. In those days, and in such great families as those of which I write, difference of age was held to be of no importance.

The marriage contract was discussed. M. de Montbazon promised everything he was asked : a dowry of 200,000 livres — ^the lawyers agreed that he should pay 50,000 livres down the night before the wedding, 100,000 more a year later, and the rest in another two years, with interest on all unpaid sums, and a yearly income of 10,000 livres, as well, to be taken out of the fortune of the bride's mother and grandmother. From the reports of a lawsuit brought by Mme. de Chevreuse against her father, some thirty years later, we learn that M. de Montbazon never paid either the 200,000 Iwres or the promised interest, and that Marie's share of her mother's and grandmother's fortune did not reach the sum of 10,000 livres a year. But M. de Luynes was not very particular. And besides, complications of this sort were common enough in great families, in those days. The arrangements for the ceremony were made.

Before it was celebrated, M. de Luynes bestowed a first proof of his own favour on Marie. He himself was not to become a duke and peer till 1619. According to the custom of the Court of France, Mme. de Luynes, being married to a man of no more than gentle birth, had no right to a seat in the Queen's presence, whereas duchesses, and even the daughters of the other branches of the House of Rohan, could claim a tabouret. Luynes induced the King to decide that his bride should enjoy the same privilege as that possessed by the other ladies of the Rohan family — that of the tabouret, in fact — and that she should preserve it after she became his wife. No protest was raised, and M. de Montbazon was delighted.

There was no grand wedding. On Monday, September II, in the Queen's apartment in the Louvre, and in the presence of the King and a few- of the gentlemen about the Court, the betrothal ceremony was performed and the blessing pronounced, by the Archbishop of Tours, Bertrand d'Eschaux. Two days later, on Wednesday the 13th, the marriage properly so called was celebrated at five o'clock in the morning, in the presence of a small company of witnesses, in the Queen's Chapel at the corner of the old Louvre, on the side looking towards the Pont Neuf. Louis Xni, who had risen at half-past three o'clock in the

^i morning, went to Luynes' chamber to fetch him, and conducted him to the chapel, where the couple were united by that same Archbishop of Tours. In the evening the bridegroom gave a great supper, and then departed with his young wife to the chateau of Lesigny-en-Brie.

L6signy-en-Brie, an ancient turreted dwelling, formed part of the spoils snatched from Eleonora Galigai, the wife of Concini, and Luynes had succeeded in obtaining possession of it only a few weeks previously. He was very much pleased with the property, he was to make great improvements in it, and spend so much money upon it that public opinion was to accuse him of having wasted the treasure of the State in the process. He little dreamt, when he took the new Mme. de Luynes there, that within thirty years, and in the course of civil wars which she would have partly stirred, his house was to be burnt down, with all the papers and correspondence that would have been so precious to the historian !

In Paris M. de Luynes bought his wife the Hotel de la Vieuville, built by the architect Clement M6t^zeau in the Street of St. Thomas du Louvre, on the site of the present Place du Carrousel. He paid 175,000 livres for it, enlarged and beautified it; in later days it was to become the Hotel de Chevreuse.

As the wife of M. de Luynes, Marie de Rohan might aspire to an exceptional position at Court. She was appointed Superintendent of the Queen's Household. Thus did Anne of Austria and the future Mme. de Chevreuse — whose lives were to be so closely mingled for well-nigh half a century — first meet, and meet for their own misfortune.

Their age was the same — both were seventeen. Slight, of middle height, with beautiful, rather short-sighted eyes, quantities of fair hair that waved and curled, a fair white skin, a small and "ruddy" mouth, Anne of Austria, so it was said, was "one of the most beautiful women of her century." This, no doubt, was an exaggeration, for her nose was thick, her eyes were a Httle too big, and her complexion was not satisfactory. But the shape of her face was exquisite, her brow well modelled, her figure charming. In the matter of intelligence she was less well provided ; though she was not a fool, her mind lacked flexibility ; she said little, and her ideas were few and far between. Indolent and lazy like the Spaniard she was, with enough love of admiration to make her play with fire, if not to expose her to the risk of letting it burn her, she was a child, full of easy and passive carelessness, always ready to laugh, rather superficial, and anything but decided in character. Marie de Rohan, "pretty, roguish, and lively," as Tallemant des Reaux tells us, possessed every quality best calculated to exercise the most detestable influence on the young Queen, whom her impetuous gaiety and passionate eagerness completely led astray.

The first meeting was chilly. Anne of Austria disliked M. de Luynes. She had, so she told the English Ambassador, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, "every possible reason for hating him." She endured the presence of the favourite's wife against her own will, and solely because the King insisted upon it. Similarity of age and sentiment was to bring about an understanding, the understanding was to end in liking, and that was to grow into friendship. Marie de Rohan spent all the resources of her fertile mind on the work of attracting the regard of the princess in whose service she was destined to live. She offered her endless proofs of attention to her wishes, gave suppers for her, took an active part in the ballets in which the sovereign danced ; above all, she kept her amused with her merry and frivolous talk. We have some knowledge of the nature of this talk. It was improper beyond all bounds. Mme. de Luynes' education, combined with her own natural predisposition, had given the young wife a strong taste for coarse conversation and coarse stories. At a later period, when Chalais was under trial and cross-examination, he asserted, with some severity, it may be, that "All the said lady's conversation turned on licentious acts, giggling tales, gallantries, and taking God's Name in vain." At the very best, Mme. de Luynes was caught giving the Queen immoral books to read. All these pranks amused Anne of Austria. She was sorry for it afterwards. She told Mme. de Motteville that she "did not then know the danger of living in the society of persons filled with passion and vanity." But by degrees an intimacy sprang up between the Queen and her Superintendent, which wa^ all the closer because Anne of Austria— and she was much blamed for it — somewhat distant and haughty in her treatment of the ruck of her courtiers, admitted those who formed her more immediate circle to a familiarity which was considered excessive.