Charles de Retz

“ The clergy favored a settlement, and the news of the execution of Charles I shocked the consciences of the more reasonable men on both sides. The loss, too, on February 25th, of the town of Brie-Comte-Robert increased enormously the difficulty of securing supplies. Though De Retz remained master of the Parisian populace, and intractable, and though the nobles of the Fronde stood aloof, moderate counsels prevailed, and on February 28th the Parliament decided to send deputies, who should treat, not with Mazarin, but with the courts. ”

“ He came to London in 1660, and received not only promises of support from the king, but large sums of money, on condition that he would promote the objects which Charles was pursuing in the court of Rome. These objects were of such importance that the notion of a marriage with one of the nieces of Mazarin was entertained for a moment by Charles as a means of securing them, [16] and was eagerly adopted by Retz for the purpose of recovering his favour at Paris. Mazarin despatched a special envoy to England charged with the mission of promoting the match. ”

“ We must suffer in their cause; when they sacrifice us to the interests of their throne we may perish, for we die as much for ourselves as for them, but our name and our families perish not. Ecco!”
“You are right as to yourself, Albert; for they have given you the ancient title and duchy of de Retz.”
“Now listen to me,” replied his brother. “The queen hopes much from the cleverness of the Ruggieri; she expects them to bring the king once more under her control. When Charles refused to use Rene’s perfumes any longer the wary woman knew at once on whom his suspicions really rested. ”

“ He was most mindful of his promise; was not to be biassed by all the offers of Spain or the Empire, but rejected with indignation the overtures of Saint-Ibal and of Bardouville, who would have persuaded him to take up arms. Campion, one of his domestics, whom he had left at Paris to mind his affairs at Court, told me these particulars by the Count’s express orders, and I still remember this passage in one of his letters to Campion: “The men you know are very urgent with me to treat with the enemy, and accuse me of weakness because I fear the examples of Charles de Bourbon and Robert d’Artois.” ”

“ Paul de Gondi, afterwards known as Cardinal De [Pg 235] Retz, then coadjutor of the Archbishop of Paris, and the leading spirit with the populace, hurried to the palace, accompanied by Marshal de la Meilleraie.
"The city is in a frightful state," they told the queen. "The people are furious and may soon grow unmanageable. The air is full of revolt."
Anne of Austria listened to them with set lips and angry eyes.
"There is revolt in imagining there can be revolt," she sternly replied. "These are the ridiculous stories of those who favor trouble; the king's authority will soon restore order." ”

“ His uncle, who was old, indolent and absurdly proud, had lived in great seclusion; Retz, on the contrary, gradually acquired a very great influence with the populace of the city. This influence he gradually turned against Mazarin. No one had more to do than Retz with the outbreak of the Fronde in October 1648, and his history for the next four years is the history of that confused and, as a rule, much misunderstood movement. Of the two parties who joined in it Retz could only depend on the bourgeoisie of Paris. ”

“ Retz had twice driven Mazarin out of Paris and once out of France. But Mazarin had proved the better stayer. He had returned, put Retz to flight, and died worth forty millions. Retz came back, made a good end, and only just cleared his debts. And what had it all been about? Some say, Anne of Austria, an elderly, ill-tempered, fat woman; some say vanity, some ambition. I say, Il Talento and the joy of battle: the brain taut, the eye alert, the sword-hand flickering like lightning on a summer night. ”

“ Retz himself admits this in the following passage, too famous to be omitted here, though we must first remark that even if it have a groundwork of truth, the coloring is greatly exaggerated: [11] "I never saw any one else," he says, "in whom intuition could supply the place of judgment. She often suggested expedients so brilliant that they seemed like flashes of lightning, and so wise that they would not have been disowned by the greatest men of any age. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Twisting and untwisting his chaplet of beads about his long fingers, his eyes averted, the King heard each in turn. Then he looked up. His glance, deliberately ignoring Guise, settled upon the Duke of Retz, who held aloof.
“And you, Monsieur le Marechal, what is your counsel?”
Retz drew himself up, as if bracing himself to meet opposing forces. He was a little pale, but quite composed.
“If there is a man whom I should hate,” he said, “it is this Gaspard de Coligny, who has defamed me and all my family by the foul accusations he has put abroad. ”

“ Among other things it was hinted that Mazarin, having re-entered France, was marching at the head of a foreign army on Paris, with the avowed object of razing it to the ground.
De Retz, laughing in his sleeve, went about attended by a numerous and well-armed retinue to protect him from being murdered; Condé followed his example, and the petits maîtres swaggered more than ever, especially when they met the friends of De Retz; at the Hôtel Vendôme, the Duke of Beaufort stayed in bed, having, according to rumour, been poisoned ”

“ From the Chabot family the lordship passed to the Lavals. Gilles de Laval, sire de Retz (1404–1440) , the comrade-in-arms of Joan of Arc and marshal of France, gave himself over to the most revolting debauchery, and was strangled and burned at Nantes. The barony of Retz passed successively to the families of Tournemine, Annebaut and Gondi. In 1581 it was erected into a duchy in the peerage of France (duché-pairie) for Albert de Gondi, marshal of France and general of the galleys. Pierre de Gondi, brother of the first duc de Retz, became bishop of Paris in 1570 and cardinal in 1587. ”

“ His debts were enormous, and in 167 5 he resolved to make over to his creditors all his income except twenty thousand livres, and, as he said, to “ live for ” them. This plan he carried out, though he did not succeed in living very long, for he died at Paris on the 24th August 1679. One of the chief authorities for the last years of Retz is Madame de Sévigné, whose connexion he was by marriage. Retz and La Rochefoucauld, the greatest of the Frondeurs in literary genius, were personal and political enemies, and each has left a portrait of the other. ”

“ The dismay spread through the country by the revelations already made, demanded that religion and morality, which had been so grossly outraged, should be speedily avenged. People wondered at the delay in pronouncing sentence, and it was loudly proclaimed in Nantes that the Sire de Retz was rich enough to purchase his life. It is true that Madame de Retz solicited the king and the duke again to give pardon to her husband; but the duke, counselled by the bishop, refused to extend his authority to interfere with the course of justice ”

“ Honest men and honourable like Earl Douglas do not wed with the niece of Gilles de Retz. I had thought my heart within me to be as flint in the chalk, yet now I pray you on my knees to leave me. Take your thirty lances and your young brother and ride home. ”

“ Cardinal de Retz was removed to the castle of Nantes, whence he managed to make his escape in August, 1653; for nine years he lived abroad, in Spain, Italy, and Germany, everywhere mingling in the affairs of Europe, engaged in intrigue, and not without influence; when at last he returned to France, in 1662, he resigned the archbishopric of Paris, and established himself in the principality of Commercy, which belonged to him, occupied up to the day of his death in paying his debts, doing good to his friends and servants, writing his memoirs, and making his peace with God. ”

“ Market-women embraced princes, prelates governed armies, court ladies led the mob, and the mob, in its turn, ruled the city." [C]
[Pg 49]
Chapter II. The Boy-King. 1650-1653
M. de Retz. The reconciliation between the court and the Fronde was very superficial. The old antagonism soon reappeared, and daily grew more rancorous. To add to the embarrassment of the court, Monsieur, the duke of Orleans, became alienated from Mazarin, and seemed inclined to join the Fronde. The most formidable antagonist of the cardinal in the Parliament was M. de Retz. ”

“ After the historian of the Importants, the memoirist of the Frondeurs holds nearly the same language. Like La Rochefoucauld, Retz has but one aim in his memoirs—that of giving himself a statesmanlike air, and of making a conspicuous figure in every thing, both good and evil. He is often more veracious, because he exercises less circumspection for others, and is more disposed to sacrifice everybody, himself excepted. ”

“ Mazarin judged after himself a man who resembled him in many respects, but not in all. Moreover, he feared lest he might seek to win the Queen’s affection from him; and that fear was not groundless. De Retz saw himself the object of the suspicions and afterwards of the machinations of a power which laboured at his destruction, whilst for that power he was compromising his influence and his popularity. To reacquire it, he hastened, therefore, to throw himself with all his adherents on the side of the Princes, and saw no safety but in their deliverance. ”

“ This last part of the Count's speech instantly let me into the secret of Monsieur de Retz's first visit to me. My good landlady's tongue had probably not been idle concerning what she conceived my necessitous situation; and, upon the alert for all such cases of what Monsieur le Comte called higher pauperism, De Retz had lost no time in seeking to gain me, as he had probably gained many others, by a display of well-timed and discriminating charity.
God knows, I was not a man to look upon wealth and splendour as a virtue in others, nor to regard misfortune and poverty as a vice ”

“ Every defeat—and the Parisians were always defeated—formed a subject for songs and mockery. Councils of war were held in taverns, and [Pg 219] De Retz was seen at a sitting of the Parlement in the hall of St. Louis with a poignard sticking out of his pocket: "There is the archbishop's prayer-book," said the people. The more public-spirited members of the Parlement soon, however, tired of the folly; Mazarin won over De Retz by the offer of a cardinal's hat, and a compromise was effected with the court, which returned to Paris in April 1649. ”

“ I was now introduced in form to the friends of Monsieur de Retz: they were all old men; and had, in truth, nothing remarkable in their appearance. Monsieur de Vitry, celebrated in history as the man who, at the command of Louis XIII., shot the Maréchal d'Ancre on the very steps of the Louvre, was the only one whose countenance promised anything like vigour; but it was not to him that De Retz had addressed himself in his present negotiation, but to Monsieur de Cramail, whose face at all events did not prepossess one in favour of his intellect. ”

“ 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 [346] (the quarter of Notre Dame) the Parisians were preparing for battle ”

“ In 1652, the accumulated blunders of Condé brought her back again and for ever to Anne of Austria and Mazarin. She did not endorse De Retz’s foolish idea of constructing a third party during the revolt, nor dream of a government shared between Condé and Mazarin, with a worn-out parliament and the fickle Duke d’Orléans. Her politic instinct told her that, after an intestine struggle so long sustained, a solid and durable power was the greatest necessity of France. Mazarin, who, like Richelieu, had never opposed her but with regret, sought for, and was very glad to follow her advice. ”

“ But before confiding anything to Henriet, De Retz made him take a solemn oath never to reveal what he was about to tell him. The oath taken, the Sire de Retz, addressing the three, said that on the morrow an officer of the duke would take possession of the castle in the name of the duke, and that it was necessary, before this took place, that a certain well should be emptied of children’s corpses, and that their bodies should be put into boxes and transported to Machecoul. ”

“ After Retz’s death, the Président Hénault, writing about his Memoirs, asked how one was to believe that a man would have the courage, or the folly, to say worse things about himself than his greatest enemy could have said. The answer, of course, is that Retz had no suspicion that he was saying bad things about himself. He said a great deal that was not true. Other chronicles of the Fronde give detailed accounts of such days as that of the Barricades, with not a word of the Coadjutor in them. ”