La Grande Mademoiselle

CHAPTER V

I. The Beginning of Trouble – Paris and the Parisians in 1648 – II. The Parliamentary Fronde – Mademoiselle Would Be Queen of France – III. The Fronde of the Princes and the Union of the Frondes – Projects for an Alliance with Condé – IV. La Grande Mademoiselle's Heroic Period – The Capture of Orleans – The Combat in the Faubourg Saint Antoine – The End of the Fronde.

I

Few political crises have left, either upon participants or upon witnesses, impressions as diverse as the impressions left by the Fronde. As examples of this fact take Retz (whose Mémoires are the epopee of revolutionary Paris), Omer Talon, the Queen's friend, M. de Motteville, La Rochefoucauld, duke and peer, Gaston d'Orléans, de Beaufort, Anne de Gonzague, Mme. de Chevreuse, and all the messieurs and mesdames whose ways of thinking we know. They furnished the divers views of the Fronde from which we gain our knowledge of that event, and as they deduced their impressions from the effect which the Fronde had upon their personal interests or sympathies, and from their mental conditions, it is difficult to form an independent or a just idea. Versatile and brilliant imaginations have left kaleidoscopic visions of a limited number of very plain realities, and as the only means of giving uniformity and sequency to a narrative which, though it covers various periods, is circumscribed by certain limits, is to make a selection from the many means of study furnished by a voluminous mass of documents, I have detached from history nothing but the facts which were connected with the life of the person around whom I have woven this narrative.

By relating everything concerning La Grande Mademoiselle and by showing her actively engaged in her daily pursuits when the Fronde took shape and during the war, I have hoped to make visible to the reader at least one figure of the most confused of all the harassed epochs of our modern history.

Mademoiselle's point of view may not have been one of the best, but it had at least one merit: it was not the point of view of an ordinary observer. The Fronde was La Grande Mademoiselle's heroic period, and her reasons for embracing the cause were fit for the fabric of a romance. She intended to marry, and a marriage appropriate to her high station required the veiling smoke of the battle-field and the booming music of great guns. She entered the army and played her part with such spirit that, according to her own story, she wondered to the end of her days how she could have committed so many follies. These pages are written to explain the mental condition which evolved not only La Grande Mademoiselle's follies but the follies of many of her countrymen.

It is evident from the memoirs on record that Mademoiselle did not expect a revolution, but in that respect she was as clear-sighted as her contemporaries; no one looked for any change. Four years had passed since the people raised the barricades, and all that time Paris had growled its discontent. Neither the Regent nor the courtiers had cared to ask what the canaille were thinking. The curés had been driven from the devastated country parishes to beg bread and shelter in the monasteries, and the industrious French people who had always been neat and merry lay in rags on their sordid beds, dying of famine because the usurers of the State – the national note-holders – had seized their tools and confiscated all means of paying the labourer.

In 1644 the people invaded the Palais de Justice and noisily protested against the new tax. They ordered Parliament to take their threats to the Queen. The Queen refused to remit the tax, and the city immediately assumed the aspect which it habitually wore on the eve of revolution. Groups of men and women stood about the streets, the people were eager and excited, – they knew not why. Business was suspended. The shopkeepers stood on their doorsteps. The third night after the Queen refused to listen to the appeal of the people, the milk-soup boiled over! Bands of men armed with clubs descended from the faubourgs, crowded the streets of Paris, and, to quote an eye-witness, "they gave fright enough to the city where fear and like emotions were unknown." After a few hours the crowd dispersed and the city became calm. But the road was clear, the canaille had found the way; they knew that it was possible to arm with clubs, or with anything that they could handle, and surge into the streets against the Crown. From that hour forerunners of the approaching storm multiplied. Parliament openly sustained the demands of the people. In Parliament there were natural orators whose denunciations of the causes of the prevailing misery were brilliant and terrible. The people's envoys accused the Regency of permitting the abuses, the injustice, and the oppression which had wrecked the peace of France. They persisted in their protestations, and the Majesty of the Throne could not silence them. At the solemn sessions of the beds of justice and in the Queen's own chambers they presented their arguments, and with voices hoarse with indignation, and with hands raised threateningly toward heaven they cried their philippics in the Queen's ears. Seated beside his mother the child-king looked on and listened. He could not understand the meaning of all the vehement words, but he never pardoned the voices which uttered them. The Court listened, astonished.

Mademoiselle weighed the words of the people, she paid close attention, but her memoirs do not speak of the revolts of public opinion. She was as unconscious of their meaning as the Queen, – and to say that is to tell the whole story. Only sixty years before that time the barricades of the League had closed the streets of Paris, and only ten years before the theatre lovers had witnessed a comedy called Alizon, in which one of the ancient leaguers had fixed such eyes upon the King as our Communardes fixed upon the Versaillais. No one had forgotten anything! The Parisians had kept their old arms bright; they were looking forward to a time when arms would be needed; yet the Regent thought that when she had issued an order commanding the people not to talk politics she had provided against everything.

The nation's depths, as represented by the middle classes, had found a new apostle in the person of a member of the Parliament, "President Barillon." Barillon had been a pillar of the Government, but his feelings had changed. Mme. de Motteville, who was in warm sympathy with the Regent, wrote bitterly of his new opinions. She said:

That man has a little of the shade of feeling which colours the actions of some of the men of our century who always hate the happy and the powerful. Such men think that they prove their greatness of heart by loving only the unfortunate, and that idea incessantly involves them in parties, and makes them do things adverse to the Queen.

The Court was as blind as the Queen's friend; it could not see that the day was coming when the determination to abolish abuses would sweep away the ancient social forms before their eyes. In the opinion of the Queen the criticisms and the ideas of the King's subjects constituted felony, and it was Barillon's fate to go down. Barillon had been the Queen's devoted friend and champion. After the King died he had worked hard to seat the royal widow on the throne. He believed – no one knew what excuse he had for believing such a thing – that the Queen shared his ideas of the rights of the poor and the humble, and that she believed as he believed: that kings owed certain duties to their subjects. Barillon was not forced to wait long for his enlightenment. Anne of Austria was a woman of short patience, and advice irritated her. As soon as the President's eyes were opened to the truth he rushed headlong into the arms of the Opposition. Anne of Austria scorned "his treachery to the Crown." His impassioned thoughts of divine justice were enigmatical to the sovereign understanding. She was enraged by the obstinacy of her old friend, and by her orders he was cast into the prison of Saint Piguerol, where he died, as the just Motteville said, "regretted by every one." Barillon was the precursor of the "Idealogues" of the eighteenth century and of the Socialists of our own day.

The Queen was one of the people who seem to have received eyes because they could not be blind without eyes. The King's porringer was empty because the King had no money. The Queen, his mother, had pawned the jewels of the crown to appease her creditors, yet she was indignant when the bourgeois said that France was bankrupt. She did not attach any importance to "that canaille," – as she called the Parliament, – but she regarded criticism or disapproval as an attempt upon the authority of her son. As she expressed her exotic ideas freely, the bourgeois knew what she thought of them, and her abusive epithets were scored to the credit of the Opposition. As much from interest as from sympathy the Opposition invariably sustained the claims of the people. "The bourgeois were all infected with love for the public welfare," said the gentle Motteville bitterly. So the Court knew that in case of difficulty it could not count upon "that canaille."

Neither could Parliament count upon itself. There were too many counter-currents in its channels, too many individual interests, too many ambitions, too many selfish intrigues, to say nothing of the instinct of self-preservation which had turned the thoughts of the nobles toward a last desperate attempt to prevent the establishment of the absolute monarchy. They had resolved to make the attempt, and by it they hoped to save the remnant of their ancient privileges. They would have been justified in saving anything that they could lay their hands on, for no man is morally bound to commit suicide. In point of fact the only thing which they were morally bound to do was to remember that duty to country precedes all other duties, but in that day people had a very dim idea of duty to country. La Grande Mademoiselle believed that the King's right was divine, but she did not hesitate to act against the Court when her personal interests or the interests of her house demanded such action. After the "Affair Saujon,¹²⁷" she practically retired from Court. Alluding to that fact, she said: "I did not think that the presence of a person whom the Queen had so maltreated could be agreeable to her Majesty."

She made long visits at her château of Bois-le-Vicomte, near Meaux. Her little court knew her prejudices and respected her feelings. She regarded the success of the French arms as a personal misfortune, because a French victory conferred more glory upon Monsieur le Prince. The death of the elder Condé had not lessened the insolent pretensions of the second junior branch, and the honours claimed by the hawk-eyed general afflicted the haughty Princess d'Orléans, who had no valiant soldier to add glory to her name.

Referring to the battle of Lens Mademoiselle said:

No one dared to tell me of it; the paper containing the account of it was sent to me from Paris, and they placed it on my table, where I saw it as soon as I arose. I read it with astonishment and grief. On that occasion I was less of a good Frenchman than an enemy.

This avowal is worthy of note because it furnishes a key to the approaching national crisis. Mademoiselle's treason was the crime of architects of the Fronde; of the Nobility first, afterward of all France. Mademoiselle wept over the battle of Lens, and when her father commanded her to return to Paris to appear with the Queen and to join in the public rejoicings her grief knew no bounds. The scene in the Palais Royal had destroyed her confidence and her sympathy, and she could not have "rejoiced with the Queen" on any occasion; but her father's commands were formal, and she was forced to assist with the Court (August 26th) at Notre Dame, when the Te Deum was chanted in thanksgiving for the victory of France.

On that occasion [said Mademoiselle] I placed myself beside Cardinal Mazarin, and as he was in a good humour I spoke to him of liberating Saujon. He promised me to do all in his power. He said that he should try to influence the Queen. I left them all at the Palais Royal and went away to get my dinner, and when I arrived I was informed of the clamour in the city; the bourgeois had taken arms.

The bourgeois had taken arms because of the unexpected arrest of two members of Parliament. "Old Broussel" was one of the two, and to the people he personified the democratic and humanitarian doctrines of President Barillon, who had died in his prison because he had angered the Queen by pleading the people's cause. The news of his arrest fell like a thunderbolt, and the people sprang to arms. The general excitement dispelled Mademoiselle's grief; she was not sorry for the uprising. She could not see anything to regret in the disturbance of the monarchy. Monsieur and the Queen had shown her that her interests were not theirs, they had tormented and humiliated her, and it pleased her wounded pride to think that her enemies were to be punished. The Tuileries were admirably situated for the occasion. Should there be a revolution it could not fail to take place under her windows, and even were she to be imprisoned – as she had been before – she could still amuse herself and witness the uprising at her ease. At that time there were no boulevards; the Seine was the centre of the capital. It was the great street and the great open hall in which the Parisians gave their fêtes. Entering Paris either from Rouen or from Dijon, travellers knew by the animation on the water when they were near the city. From the Cours la Reine to the little isle Saint Louis the river was edged with open-air shops and markets. On the river were barges laden with merchandise, with rafts, with water-coaches (which looked like floating houses), and with all the objects that man sets in the public view to tempt his fellows and to offer means of conveyance either to business or to pleasure. At various points the bargees and other river-men held jousts. All through the city there were exhibitions of fireworks and "water serenades," and along the shore, or moving swiftly among the delicate shallops and the heavy barges were gilded pleasure galleys with pennants flying in the wind.

The light, mirrored by the water, danced upon the damp walls of the streets which opened upon the quays.

The Seine was the light and the joy of Paris, the pride of the public life. Its arms enveloped Notre Dame, the mass of buildings called "the Palais," the Houses of the Parliament and the Bourse, an immense bazar whose galleried shops were the meeting-place of strollers and of gossips. A little below the Palais stretched the Pont-Neuf, with its swarms of street peddlers, jugglers, charlatans, and idlers who passed their days watching the parade of the people of Paris. "The disinherited," unfortunate speculators in the public bounty, sat apart from the stream of travellers, preparing for their business by slipping glass eyes into their heads, or by drawing out their teeth the better to amuse the public and to solicit alms.

All the emotions of the people were manifested first upon the river. The Seine was a queen; we have made it a sewer.

Even then Paris was a great cosmopolitan city, capable of receiving the people of the world; it was the only place in Europe where a palace could be made ready for guests in less than two hours. In less than one hour the hosts of the inns prepared dinner for one hundred guests at twenty écus a cover.

Yet in many respects the powerful city was in a barbarous condition; it was neither lighted nor swept, and as its citizens threw everything out of their windows, the streets were paved with black and infected mud. There was little or nothing like a police system, and the city was sown with "places of refuge" (a survival of the Middle Ages), which served as hiding-places for highwaymen and other malefactors, who enshrined themselves among the shadows and lay in wait for the weak or the unwary.

At that time the Duc d'Angoulême, the illegitimate son of Charles IX., used to send his servants into the streets to collect their wages from the passers-by. Having collected their money, the clever fellows returned to the ducal palace. The Duc d'Angoulême possessed the right of shelter, and his palace was vested with all the power of the horns of the altar: once within his gates, the criminal was in safety and "inviolable."

The Duc de Beaufort used to send his servants out into the streets to rob travellers for his personal benefit. When the robbers were arrested their proprietor demanded their release and made great talk of an indemnification.

The excessively mobile Parisian character has changed many times since the day of the Duc de Beaufort; but the people of the present are counterparts of the people of the times¹²⁸ of Louis XIII. and the Regency. One of Mademoiselle's contemporaries said: "The true Parisians love to work; they love the novelty of things; they love changes in their habits; they even love changes in their business. They are very pious, and very – credulous. They are not in the least drunkards; they are polite to strangers."

Subtract the piety and add absinthe, the mother of Folly, and we have the Parisians of our own day. They too are industrious; they are always changing something; they are changeable in themselves; they are credulous; they call religion "superstition," but they believe in "systems," in "panaceas," in high-sounding words, and in "great men" – men truly great, or spuriously great; they still cherish a belief in revolutions. They are as ready now as they were centuries ago to die for an idea, for a Broussel, and for much less than a Broussel. Just such Parisians as we meet in our daily walks raised the barricades in 1648. Broussel's windows looked out upon the river; the boatmen and the people of the water were the first to hear of his arrest, and they rushed crying into the streets; the people of the Halles joined them; and the "good bourgeoisie" followed the people's lead. The tradesmen closed their shops, the chains were drawn across the streets; and in the twinkling of an eye Paris bristled with antiquated firearms like an historical procession.

Mademoiselle, who heard the noise, ordered her carriage, and went out to pass the barricades. She had never seen the mob as she saw it then. The people swayed forward to meet the insolent noble who dared to defy them; but when they recognised their Princess, their hoarse cries turned to shouts of welcome, and eager hands raised the chains. Then, haughtily ignoring their fond smiles, Mademoiselle passed and the chains fell behind her.

So, with the canaille hailing her, she reached the Luxembourg, turned and recrossed the river, firm in her power as the Princess of the people. She had seen the barricades, and the sight was to influence her life.

She returned to the Tuileries in a glow not of triumph, – she had never doubted the people, – but she had passed the barriers raised by the people against her enemies, and the people had confirmed her right to rule, while the Regent trembled!

The Granddaughter of France was the real head of the people, and as the faëries had been present at her baptism, obstacles and monsters vanished at her approach.

With tender pride the people watched her progress; their favour was never based upon reason; they did not ask why they loved the haughty Princess who called them "Knaves" and considered them fit for the scaffold or the fagots. She was their goddess, and whenever she appeared they fell at her feet and worshipped her.

The Court did not approve of Mademoiselle's democratic popularity. When she arrived at the Tuileries she was imprisoned in her room; but as the whole Court was imprisoned, and as no one dared to cross his threshold, she was not inclined to murmur. Upon the whole the situation pleased her. She watched the pale, frightened faces of the courtiers with secret joy. Until then the Court had taken the people's threats for jests, but the barricades had opened their eyes to the danger of their position; the mob was at the palace gates, and no one knew how soon it would be in the palace! Mademoiselle was in high spirits. Standing at her open window, she watched the people; they were massed upon the quays eating and drinking by the light of little bonfires; many of them stretched out upon the ground where they could watch her and slept there until morning.

The night was calm, but Mademoiselle said of the day which followed it:

Early in the morning I was awakened by the Long Roll; the troops were starting to take back the Tour-de-Nesle, which some of the wretches had captured. I sprang from my bed and looked out of my window; it was not long before they came back; some of them were wounded, and I was seized with great fear and pity.

The canaille crowded the rue des Tuileries; the men carried swords, and they did it so awkwardly that Mademoiselle laughed at them.

The courtiers were prisoners; all the streets were barricaded with wine-butts filled with earth and with manure. Given time, skilled workmen could not have raised a more effective obstacle; it was good work, well done, and as a symbol of the strength and the intention of the people it was redoubtable.

The barricades of the Fronde, floating the old banners of the League, had evoked the past and touched the revolutionary current in the abandoned souls of the Parisians. Retz claimed that his hand fired the powder, and to do him justice, though his Memoirs make a great deal of the part that he played in the Fronde, they tell less than the truth. He might have said without boasting that he held Paris in the hollow of his hand. He had worked hard to acquire the power by which he bent the people to his will. Vincent de Paul had been his tutor, and Retz had been an unworthy pupil; he had remembered but one of Père Vincent's many lessons of brotherly love. His mind had seized the warning: "Know that the people is a Being, to be considered; not an inanimate object to be ignored," and from that simple precept he had deduced utilitarian conclusions fitted for his personal service, and drawn from them a plan for his own conduct. The principle of man's humanity had given him his idea. He had based his system on the susceptibility of men to the influence of intelligent suggestion, and by the judicious warmth of his sympathy he had surrounded himself with just such elements as his plan required.

This young Abbé Retz was the coadjutor of his uncle, the Archbishop of Paris. He was of an excellent family. He was astute, and, having decided to turn the people to account, he applied his mind to the task of learning the opinions of the lockpickers and ruffians of the city. His office gave him the right to go everywhere and to be seen in all company. He frequented the cellars and the garrets, he fraternised with the cut-throats, he distributed alms, and as equivalent for what he gave received instruction in the magic vocabulary of the men who shut the streets of a city as easily as a warder shuts a door; he studied the ways of the canaille seven years, living hand-in-glove and cheek-by-jole with the men of the dens; he studied his world as he studied the policy of the ministry and the face of the Queen; and when he felt that the footing of the Court was insecure he broke away from Royalty and put into action the science of the cut-throats. To act the part of Marius or Coriolanus before the people was to satisfy an ambition which had haunted him since he had first read Plutarch. Retz was the type of the hero of romance at a time when Corneille met his models in the public streets.

He cared more to excite the admiration of the masses than to acquire position or money; he was influenced more by passionate love of brilliant and extraordinary exploits than by ambition, because he knew that his exploits made the people admire him. In his opinion an out-and-out adventure was worth more than all else, and no condition seemed to him as desirable as the life of a conspirator. He was called le petit Catilina, and the title pleased him better than any other. His "popolo," collectively and individually, gloried in him, understood him, trusted him, and sympathised with him in all his longings. He was at home and at ease and as safe as in the archiepiscopal palace in the most dangerous of their dens.

He was the subject of all species of critical judgments; La Rochefoucauld and Saint Simon spoke admiringly of his "prodigious genius." Anne of Austria called him a "factionist." Mazarin, who as he loved neither virtue nor vice, could not judge justly of one of Plutarch's heroes, did not like Retz; but he feared him. Mademoiselle said in her memoirs: "The Cardinal tells me that he believes that Retz has a black soul." People who knew no better laughed at the Archbishop's nephew, and Retz involuntarily fostered their delusion. His swarthy face, crooked legs, and near-sighted awkwardness were well fitted to call forth the gayety of light-minded courtiers. To add to his questionable appearance, he robed himself in the costumes of a cavalier; his doublets and other garments were of gaudy stuffs, belaced and bedecked with baubles which were in all respects, and without any qualifying reservation, beneath the notice of a serious or an appreciative gentleman. His personal carriage (a prancing and tiptoeing swagger) impressed strangers with the idea that he was an unfortunate ballet-master whose troubles had dethroned his reason. But there are men upon the earth who are so constituted that they can support all the ridicule that can be heaped upon them; Retz was one of them; the fact that he was pleasing to women proves it.

While this enterprising episcopal agitator was engaged in earnest contemplation of the first effects of the mischief that he had made in his own quarter (the quarter of Notre Dame) the Parisians were preparing for battle; the fathers were polishing their muskets, the children were sharpening their pocket-knives. But Paris was calm, the rioters had gone back to the faubourgs. The streets were clear between the Tuileries and the Palais Royal, and Mademoiselle paid a visit to the Queen. She was in the Queen's salon when the Parliamentary deputation arrived, acting under stern orders from "the nation's depths," to demand the release of Broussel. Anne of Austria was angry; she refused the demand and the deputies went back to the bourgeoisie. They were not gone long; Mademoiselle was still with the Queen when they returned with the people's ultimatum: The people will have Monsieur Broussel! Anne of Austria was not dull and every possible contingency had been covered by her astute mentor. She ordered Broussel's release and the deputies departed, calm but triumphant.

Mathieu Molé negotiated the release, and while he talked to the Queen a member of Parliament, accompanying him, explained the political situation to Mademoiselle. The deputy's discourse was a clear statement of ugly facts and their consequences; it gave Mademoiselle an insight into the reasons and the secret views of the magistrates. The canaille spoke so loud that all the world could hear; the people's messengers held their heads as high as the nobles. As Mademoiselle watched "the long robes" file out of the royal presence she realised that all the riots and all the menaces had been but the beginning; she knew that the time was coming when, married or not married, every woman in France would be given her chance to do her duty.

When Broussel returned to the people the barricades disappeared; but the canaille was still nervous; a practical joker cried out that the Queen was preparing another Massacre of Saint Bartholomew, and the old muskets followed by the pocket-knives rushed into the streets. Another joker said that the Queen of Sweden with her army was at the gates of Saint Denis, and a prolonged roar was heard and the mob filled the streets and began to pillage. So, amidst alarms and alternations of hope and fear, the days passed for a time. The people of Paris rioted, then returned to their wretched homes. Whatever the day had been, the night brought vigilance. All slept dressed, ready for action. Mademoiselle, who was everywhere at once, was not afraid. When the canaille growled the loudest she went her way. She was happy; she revelled in sound and in movement and in the fears of the Court. At a ball in the rue Saint Antoine she heard shots fired all night and "danced to the music of the guns."

The Queen was anxious to be far from Paris; Mazarin too craved rest; but the royal habit of carrying about all the furniture of the household made secret escape difficult. The people were watching the Palais Royal; they were determined that the Queen should not leave them. Nevertheless the Court decided to make the attempt.

Apparently there had been no change at the royal palace; the roast-hasteners and the soup-skimmers were in their places, and all the mouth-servants were watching with ears pricked to hear the first whisper of an order, ready to hand water or to run at the beck and call of the myrmidons of the myrmidons. In the streets around the palace lounged the people, silent and sullen, giving vent to angry criticisms or watching for "tall Mademoiselle." Mademoiselle appeared frequently at her windows, and the people greeted her with friendly cries. Paris was calm; the silent river, bearing its gilded galleys, its charlatans, jugglers, serenaders, and shouting and singing river-men, ran by under its bridges as it had always run; the Parisians laughed at their own suspicions; one group left its post, then another, and thus, gradually relaxing their vigilance, the King's warders returned to their homes. The 12th September, before daylight, a few wains loaded with furniture crept away from the Palais Royal and took the road to Rueil. At daybreak the more suspicious of the Parisians approached the palace and watched and listened. Evidently the royal life was still progressing in regular order. The following morning before Paris was awake the young King was drawn from his bed, dressed, carried out into the courtyard, hidden in a coach, and set upon the road taken by the furniture. Mazarin accompanied him. Anne of Austria, "as the most valiant" (to quote the words of Mme. de Motteville) remained in the palace to cover the retreat of her Minister. In the course of the morning she was seen in various parts of Paris; that evening she vanished as the King and the Cardinal had done before her.