THE CONSPIRACY OF THE DUCHESS DE CHEVREUSE AND THE DUKE DE BEAUFORT TO GET RID OF MAZARIN.

One need not be greatly astonished at such an enterprise on the part of two women of high rank and a grandson of Henry the Great. At that stirring epoch of French history—the interval between the League and the Fronde—energy and strength were the distinctive traits of the French aristocracy. Neither court life nor a corrupting opulence had yet enervated it. Everything was then in extremes, in vice as in virtue. Men attacked and defended one another with the same weapons. The Marshal d’Ancre had been massacred; more than one attempt had been made to assassinate Richelieu; whilst he, on his side, had not been backward in having recourse to the sword and block. Corneille paints faithfully the spirit of the epoch. His Emilie is also involved in an assassination, and she is not the less represented as a perfect heroine. Madame de Chevreuse had long been accustomed to conspiracies; she was bold and unscrupulous. She did not gather round her such men as Beaupuis, Saint-Ybar, De Varicarville, and de Campion merely to pass the time in idle conversation. She had not remained a stranger to the designs they had formerly concocted against Richelieu, for in 1643 she fomented, as we have seen, their exaltation and their devotedness; and it was not unreasonable, certainly, that Mazarin should attribute to her the first idea of the project which Beaufort was to accomplish.

At the same time it must be remembered that the Importants and their successors the Frondeurs denied this project and declared it the invention of the Cardinal. It is a point of the highest historical importance and deserves serious examination, as upon this conspiracy, real or imaginary, as may be determined after careful investigation, rests the fact whether Mazarin owed in reality all his career and the great future which then opened before him to a falsehood cunningly invented and audaciously sustained; or whether Madame de Chevreuse and the Importants, after having tried their utmost against him, now resolving to destroy him with the armed hand, were themselves destroyed and became the instruments of his triumph. The evidence available irresistibly leads to the latter conclusion, and we think that we shall be able to show that the plot attributed to the Importants, far from being a chimÆra, was the almost inevitable solution of the violent crisis just described.

La Rochefoucauld, without having indulged in the insane hopes of his friends and lent his hand to their rash enterprise, made it a point of honour to defend them after their discomfiture, and set himself to cover the retreat. He affects to doubt whether the plot which then made so much noise was real or supposititious. In his eyes, the greater probability was that the Duke de Beaufort, by a false finesse, endeavoured to excite alarm in the Cardinal, believing that it was sufficient to strike terror into his mind to force him to quit France, and that it was with this view that he held secret meetings and gave them the appearance of conspiracy. La Rochefoucauld constitutes himself especially the champion of Madame de Chevreuse’s innocence, and declares himself thoroughly persuaded that she was ignorant of Beaufort’s designs.

After the historian of the Importants, that of the Frondeurs holds very nearly the same arguments. Like La Rochefoucauld, De Retz has only one object in his Memoirs—that of investing himself with a semblance of capacity and making a great figure in every way, in evil as well as good. He is often more truthful, because he cares less about other people, and that he is disposed to sacrifice all the world except himself. In this matter it is hard to conceive the motive for his reserve and incredulity. He knew right well that the majority of the persons accused of having taken part in the plot had already been implicated in more than one such business. He himself tells us that he had conspired with the Count de Soissons, that he had blamed him for not having struck down Richelieu at Amiens, and that with La Rochepot, he, the AbbÉ de Retz, had formed the design of assassinating him at the Tuileries during the ceremony of the baptism of Mademoiselle (de Montpensier). The Co-adjutorship of the Archbishopric of Paris, which the Regent had just granted him, in consideration of his own services and the virtues of his father, had mollified him, it is true; but his old accomplices, who had not been so well treated as he, had remained faithful to their cause, to their designs, to their habitudes. Was De Retz then sincere when he refused to believe that they had attempted against Mazarin that which he had seen them undertake, and which he had himself undertaken against Richelieu? In his blind hatred he throws everything upon Mazarin: he pretends that he was terrified, or that he feigned terror. It was the AbbÉ de la RiviÈre, he tells us, who, in order to rid himself of the rivalry of the Count de MontrÉsor in the Duke d’Orleans’ favour, must have persuaded Mazarin that there was a plot set on foot against him, in which MontrÉsor was mixed up. It was the Prince de CondÉ also who must have tried to destroy Beaufort through fear lest his son, the Duke d’Enghien, might engage with him in some duel, as he wished to do, to avenge his sister, during the short visit he made to Paris after taking Thionville.

To the suspicious opinions of de Retz and La Rochefoucauld let us oppose testimony more disinterested, and before all other the silence of MontrÉsor,[30] who, whilst protesting that neither he nor his friend the Count de BÉthune had meddled with the conspiracy imputed to the Duke de Beaufort, says not a single word against the reality of that conspiracy, which he would not have failed to ridicule had he believed it imaginary. Madame de Motteville, who was not in the habit of overwhelming the unfortunate, after having reported with impartiality the different rumours circulated at Court, relates certain facts which appear to her authentic, and which are decisive.[31] One of the best informed and most truthful of contemporary historians expresses not the slightest doubt on this head. “The Importants,” says Monglat, “seeing that they could not drive the Cardinal out of France, resolved to despatch him with their daggers, and held several councils on this subject at the HÔtel de VendÔme.” That opinion is confirmed by new and numerous particulars with which Mazarin’s carnets and confidential letters furnish us.

The person whom Mazarin signalizes in his carnets and letters as the trusted friend of Beaufort and after him the principal accused, the Count de Beaupuis, son of the Count de MaillÉ, had found means of sheltering himself from the minister’s first searches; he had succeeded in escaping from France and sought an asylum at Rome under the avowed protection of Spain. Mazarin left no stone unturned to obtain from the Court of Rome the extradition of Beaupuis, in order that he might be legally tried. The Pope at first could not refuse, at least for form’s sake, to have Beaupuis committed to the Castle of St. Angelo. But he was soon liberated, and provided with a State lodging wherein he was allowed to see nearly every one who came. Mazarin complained loudly of such indulgence. “It is all arranged,” said he, “that when necessary he may escape, or at any rate the Duke de VendÔme is furnished with every facility for poisoning him, in order that with Beaupuis may perish the principal proof of his son’s treason. If all this happened in Barbary, people would be highly indignant. And this is suffered to take place in Rome, in the capital of Christianity, under the eyes and by the orders of a Pope!”

Failing Beaupuis, Mazarin would have liked to put his hand upon one of the brothers Campion, intimately connected as they were with Beaufort and Madame de Chevreuse, and too closely in the confidence of both not to know all their secrets. He himself complains, as we have seen, of being very badly seconded. And then he had to do with emerited conspirators, consummate in the art of concealing themselves and of leaving no trace of their whereabouts—with the active and indefatigable Duchess de Chevreuse, and with the Duke de VendÔme, who, in order to save his son, set about forwarding the escape of all those whose depositions might help to convict him, or kept them somehow in his own hands, hidden and shut up close at Anet. Mazarin was thus only able to arrest a few obscure individuals who were ignorant of the plot, and could throw no light upon it.

But it is needless to exhaust existing proofs in demonstration of the fact that Mazarin did not enact a farce by instituting proceedings against the conspirators, that he pursued them with sincerity and vigour, and that he was perfectly convinced that a project of assassination had been formed against him, when the existence of that project is elsewhere averred, when, in default of a sentence of the parliament, which could not have been given in the teeth of insufficient evidence, neither Beaupuis, nor the Campions, nor LiÉ, nor Brillet having been arrested, better proof being extant in the full and entire confession of one of the principal conspirators, with the plan and all the details of the affair set forth in Memoirs of comparatively recent publication, but the authenticity of which cannot be contested. We allude to the precious Memoirs of Henri de Campion,[32] brother of Madame de Chevreuse’s friend, whom that lady had introduced also to the service of the Duke de VendÔme, and more particularly to that of the Duke de Beaufort. Henri had accompanied the Duke in his flight to England after the conspiracy of Cinq Mars, and he had returned with him; he possessed his entire confidence, and he relates nothing in which he himself had not taken a considerable part. Henri’s character was very different to that of his brother Alexandre. He was a well-educated man, full of honour and courage, not in the least given to boasting, averse to all intrigue, and born to make his way through life by the straightest paths in the career of arms. He wrote these Memoirs in solitude, to which after the loss of his daughter and his wife he had retired to await death amidst the exercise of a genuine piety. It is not in such a frame of mind that a man is disposed to invent fables, and there is no middle way. What he says is that which we must believe absolutely, or if we have any doubt that he speaks the truth, he must be considered as the worst of villains. No interested feeling could have directed his pen, for he compiled his Memoirs, or at least he finished them, a short time after Mazarin’s death, without thought, therefore, of paying court to him by making very tardy revelations, and scarcely two years before he himself died in 1663. Thus it may be fairly inferred that Henri de Campion wrote strictly under the inspiration of his conscience. One has only to open his Memoirs to see confirmed, point by point, all the particulars with which Mazarin’s carnets are filled. Nothing is there wanting, everything coincides, all marvellously corresponds. It appears, indeed, as though Mazarin in making his notes had had before his eyes de Campion’s Memoirs, or that the latter whilst penning them had Mazarin’s carnets before him: he at once so thoroughly takes up the thread and completes them.

His brother Alexandre, in his letters of the month of August, 1643, had already let slip more than one mysterious sentence. He wrote to Madame de Montbazon in banishment:—“You must not despair, madam, there are still some half-a-dozen honest folks who do not give up.... Your illustrious friend will not abandon you. If to be prudent it were necessary to renounce your acquaintance, there are those who would prefer rather to pass for fools all their days.” Like MontrÉsor, he does not once say that there was no plot framed against Mazarin, which is a kind of tacit avowal; and when the storm burst, he took care to conceal himself, advised Beaupuis to do the same, and ends with these significant words:—“In embarking in Court affairs one cannot be certain of being master of events, and whilst we profit by the lucky ones, we must resolve to put up with the unlucky.” Henri de Campion raises this already very transparent veil.

He declares plainly that there was a project on foot to get rid of Mazarin, and that that project was conceived, not by Beaufort, but by Madame de Chevreuse in concert with Madame de Montbazon. “I think,” says he, “that the Duke’s design did not spring from his own particular sentiment, but from the persuasion of the duchesses de Chevreuse and de Montbazon, who exercised entire sway over his mind and had an irreconcilable hatred to the Cardinal. What makes me say so, is that, whilst he was under that resolution, I always observed that he had an internal repugnance which, if I mistake not, was overcome by some pledge which he may have given to those ladies.” There was, therefore, a plot, and its real author, as Mazarin truly said, and Campion repeats, was Madame de Chevreuse; if so, Madame de Montbazon was only an instrument in her hands.

Beaufort, once inveigled, drew in also his intimate friend, Count de MaillÉ’s son, the Count de Beaupuis, cornet in the Queen’s horse-guards. To them Madame de Chevreuse adjoined Alexandre de Campion, the elder brother of Henri. “She loved him much,” remarks the latter, and in a way which, added to certain ambiguous words of Alexandre, excites suspicion whether the elder Campion were not in fact one of the numerous successors of Chalais. He was then thirty-three, and his brother confesses that he had caught from the Count de Soissons the taste for and the habitudes of faction. Beaupuis and Alexandre de Campion approved of the plot when communicated to them, “the former,” says Henri, “believing that it would be a means for him of attaining to a position of greater importance, and my brother seeing therein Madame de Chevreuse’s advantage and by consequence his own.”

Such were the two first accomplices of Beaufort. A little later he opened his mind on the subject to Henri de Campion, one of his principal gentlemen; to LiÉ, captain of his guards; and to Brillet, his equerry. There the secret rested. Many other gentlemen and domestics of the house of VendÔme were destined to take action in the affair, but were admitted to no confidence. The project was well conceived and worthy of Madame de Chevreuse. There were at most five or six conspirators—three capable of keeping the secret, and who did keep it. Below them, the men of action, who did not know what they would be called on to do; and in the background, the men of the morrow, who might be reckoned upon to applaud the blow, when it had been struck, without it being judged fitting to admit them to the conspiracy. At least Henri de Campion does not even name MontrÉsor, BÉthune, Fontraille, Varicarville, Saint-Ybar, which explains wherefore Mazarin, whilst keeping his eye upon them, did not have them arrested. Neither does Campion speak of Chandenier, La ChÂtre, de Treville, the Duke de Bouillon, the Duke de Guise, De Retz, nor La Rochefoucauld, whose sentiments were not doubtful, but who were not inclined to go so far as to sully their hands with an assassination. And that further explains the silence of Mazarin with regard to them in all that relates to Beaufort’s conspiracy, although he did not cherish the slightest illusion as to their dispositions, and as to the part they would have taken if the plot had succeeded, or even if a serious struggle had taken place.

The conspiracy rested for some time between Madame de Chevreuse, Madame de Montbazon, Beaufort, Beaupuis, and Alexandre de Campion. The final resolution was only taken at the end of July or in the first days of August, that is to say, precisely during the height of the quarrel between Madame de Montbazon and Madame de Longueville, which ushered in the crisis and opened the door to all the events which followed. It was then only that Beaufort spoke of it to Henri de Campion, in presence of Beaupuis. Mazarin’s crime was the continuation of Richelieu’s system. “The Duke de Beaufort told me that he thought I had remarked that the Cardinal Mazarin was re-establishing at court and throughout the kingdom the tyranny of Cardinal de Richelieu, with even more of authority and violence than had been shown under the government of the latter; that having entirely gained the Queen’s mind and made all the ministers devoted to him, it was impossible to arrest his evil designs save by depriving him of life; that the public weal having made him resolve to take that step, he informed me of it in order that I might aid him with my advice and personally assist in its execution. Beaupuis next ‘took up his parable,’ and warmly represented the evils which the too great authority of Richelieu had caused France, and concluded by saying that we must prevent the like inconvenience before his successor had rendered matters remediless.” Such conclusion embodied as nearly as possible the views and language of Importants and Frondeurs, of La Rochefoucauld and De Retz. Henri de Campion represents himself as having at first combatted the Duke’s project with so much force that more than once he was shaken; but the two duchesses wound him up again very quickly, and Beaupuis and Alexandre de Campion, instead of holding him back, encouraged him. Shortly afterwards, Beaufort having declared that he had made up his mind, Henri de Campion gave in on two conditions: “The one,” he tells us, “of not laying his hand on the Cardinal, since I would rather take my own life than do a deed of such nature. The other, that if the Duke should arrange that the project should be put into execution during his absence, I would never mix myself up in it; whereas if he were himself to be present, I should without scruple keep myself near his person, in order to defend him against any mischance that might happen, my duty and affection towards him equally obliging me thereto. He granted me those two conditions, testifying at the same time that he esteemed me more for having made them, and added that he would be present at the execution of the project, so that he might authorise it by his presence.”

The plan was to attack the Cardinal in the street, whilst paying visits in his carriage, commonly having with him only a few ecclesiastics, besides five or six lackeys. It would be necessary to present themselves in force and unexpectedly, stop the vehicle and strike Mazarin. To do that, it was necessary that a certain number of the VendÔme domestics, who were not in the secret, should post themselves daily, from early morning, in the cabarets around the Cardinal’s abode, which was then at the HÔtel de Cleves, near the Louvre. Among the domestics let into the secret, Henri de Campion names positively Gauseville. Over them were placed “the Sieurs d’Avancourt and De Brassy, Picardians, very resolute men and intimate friends of LiÉ.” The pretext given out was that the CondÉs proposing to put an affront upon Madame de Montbazon, the Duke de Beaufort, in order to oppose it, desired to have in hand a troop of gentlemen well mounted and armed. Their parts were allotted beforehand. A certain number were to pounce upon the Cardinal’s coachman, at the same moment that others were to open the two doors and strike him, whilst the Duke would be at hand on horseback, with Beaupuis, Henri de Campion, and others, to cut down or drive off those who should be disposed to resist. Alexandre de Campion was to keep near the Duchess de Chevreuse and at her orders; and she herself ought more than ever to be assiduous in her attentions to the Queen, in order to smooth the way for her friends, and, in case of success, draw the Regent to the side of the victorious.

Several occasions favourable to the execution of this plan presented themselves. In the first instance, Henri de Campion being with his band in the Rue du Champ-Fleuri—one end of which joins the Rue Saint-HonorÉ and the other approaches the Louvre—saw the Cardinal leave the HÔtel de Cleves in his carriage with the AbbÉ de Bentivoglio, the nephew of the celebrated cardinal of that name, with a few ecclesiastics and valets. Campion inquired of one of them whither the Cardinal was going, and was answered—to visit the Marshal d’EstrÉes. “I saw,” says Campion, “that if I had made use of the information, his death would have been inevitable. But I thought that I should be so guilty in the eyes of God and man that I resisted the temptation to do so.”

The next day it was known that the Cardinal would be present at a collation to be given by Madame du Vigean at her charming residence of La Barre, at the entrance of the valley of Montmorency, where Madame de Longueville was staying, and which the Queen had promised to honour with a visit, and who had already set out. The Cardinal was repairing thither, having with him in his coach only the Count d’Harcourt. Beaufort ordered Campion to assemble his troop and to ride after him, but Campion represented to the Duke that if they attacked the Cardinal in the company of the Count d’Harcourt, they must decide upon killing both, Harcourt being too generous to see Mazarin stabbed before his eyes without defending him, and that the murder of Harcourt would raise against them the entire house of Lorraine.

Some days afterwards information was given that the Cardinal was engaged to dine at Maisons, with the Marshal d’EstrÉes, to meet the Duke d’Orleans. “I made the Duke consent,” says Campion, “that should the minister be in the same carriage with his Royal Highness, the design should not be executed; but he said, that if he were alone, he must be killed. Early in the morning he had the horses out and kept himself in readiness at the Capucins with Beaupuis, near the HÔtel de VendÔme, posting a valet on foot in the street to tell him when the Cardinal should pass, and enjoining me to keep with those whom I was accustomed to muster at the Cabaret l’Ange, in the Rue Saint-HonorÉ, very near the HÔtel de VendÔme, and if the Cardinal journeyed without the Duke d’Orleans, I should mount instantly with all my men, and intercept him when passing the Capucins. I was,” adds Campion, “in a state of anxiety which may readily be imagined, until I saw the carriage of the Duke d’Orleans pass, and perceived the Cardinal inside with him.”

At length, Beaufort’s irritation being carried to the highest pitch by the banishment from court of Madame de Montbazon (which was certainly on the 22nd of August), goaded by Madame de Chevreuse, by passion, and by a false sense of honour, he became himself impatient to act. Seeing that, during the day, he encountered incessant difficulties of which he was far from divining the cause, he resolved to strike the blow at night, and prepared an ambuscade, the success of which seemed certain, and the details of which we have from Campion. The Cardinal went every evening to visit the Queen, and returned sufficiently late. It was arranged to attack him between the Louvre and the HÔtel de Cleves. Horses were to be in readiness in some neighbouring inn. The Duke himself should keep watch with Beaupuis and Campion, during the time the minister should be with the Queen, and so soon as he came forth, all three should advance and make a signal to the rest, who, in the meanwhile, should remain on horseback on the quay, by the river side, close to the Louvre. All which could be very well done at night without awakening any suspicion.

It must be remembered that the person who furnishes these very precise details was one of the principal conspirators, that he wrote at sufficiently considerable distance from the event, in safety, and, to repeat it once again, with no interest, fearing nothing more from Mazarin, who had recently died, and expecting nothing from him. It must be also remembered that speaking as he has done, he accuses his own brother; that, without doubt, he attributes to himself laudable intentions and even some good actions, but that he confesses having entered into the plot, and that, if its execution had taken place he would have taken part in it, in fighting by the side of Beaufort. The process submitted to the parliament not having led to anything, through failure of evidence, Campion did not imagine that Mazarin had ever known “the circumstances of the plot, nor those acquainted with it to the very bottom, and who were engaged in it.” He adds also, “that now the Cardinal is dead there is no longer any reason to fear injuring any one in stating matters as they are.” He therefore does not defend himself; he believes himself to be sheltered from all quest, he writes only to relieve his conscience.

From these curious revelations we further learn what importance Mazarin attached to the arrest of Henri Campion; and that writer’s statements are not only substantially confirmed by various entries in the carnets, but read like a translation into French of those pages from the Cardinal’s Italian. “They threw,” he says, “into the Bastille, Avancourt and Brassy, where they deposed that I had mustered them on several occasions, on the part of the Duke de Beaufort, for the interests of Madame de Montbazon, as I had told them. This did not afford any motive for interrogating the Duke, since they owned that he had not spoken to them; thus he would not have failed to deny having given the orders which I carried to them on his part. It was then seen that the process against him could not be carried on before I had been arrested, in order to find matter whereon to interrogate him after my own depositions, and so thoroughly to embarrass us both that every trace of the affair might be discovered. The proof of this conspiracy was of most essential importance to the Cardinal, who directing all his efforts to the establishment of his government, and affecting to do so by gentle means, had been unfortunate enough to be constrained, in the outset, to use violence against one of the greatest men in the realm, for his own individual interest, without a conviction to prove that he was compelled to treat the Duke with rigour. The Cardinal, despairing of being able to persuade others of that of which he was entirely assured, had a great desire to get me into his hands. He was nevertheless of opinion that he must give me time to reassure myself of safety in order to take me with the greater facility.”

We may add to all this that Henri de Campion, sought after sharply, and closely shut up in his retreat at Anet, under the protection of the Duke de VendÔme, having fled from France and joined his friend the Count de Beaupuis at Rome, gives an account of the obstinate efforts made by Mazarin to obtain the extradition of the latter, the resistance of Pope Innocent X., the regard shown to Beaupuis when they were compelled to confine him in the Castle of Saint-Angelo; all of which being equally to be met with in the carnets and letters of Mazarin and the memoirs of Henri de Campion, places beyond doubt the perfect sincerity of the Cardinal’s proceedings and the accuracy of his information.

Are not these, we may ask, proofs sufficient to reduce to naught the interested doubts of La Rochefoucauld and the passionate denials of the chief of the Fronde, the very clever but very little truthful Cardinal de Retz, the most ardent and most obstinate of Mazarin’s enemies? It would seem, indeed, either that there is no certitude whatever in history, or that it must be considered henceforth as a point absolutely demonstrated that there was a project determined upon to kill Mazarin; that that project had been conceived by Madame de Chevreuse, and in some sort imposed by her upon Beaufort with the aid of Madame de Montbazon; that Beaufort had for principal accomplices the Count de Beaupuis and Alexandre de Campion; that Henri de Campion had entered later into the affair, at the pressing solicitation of the Duke, as well as two other officers of secondary rank; that during the month of August there were divers serious attempts to put it into execution, particularly the last one after the banishment of Madame de Montbazon, at the very end of August or rather on the 1st of September; and that such attempt only failed through circumstances altogether independent of the will of the conspirators.

[30] MÉmoires, Petitot Collection, t. lix.