Louis XIV and La Grande Mademoiselle, 1652-1693. Arvede Barine
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Louis XIV and La Grande Mademoiselle, 1652-1693
PREFACE
IN the volume entitled The Youth of La Grande Mademoiselle I have tried to present the conditions of France during the period in which the ancient liberties of the people and the turbulent society which had abused its privileges suffered, in the one case death, in the other extinction.
As is always the case, a lack of proper discipline had prepared the way for absolute rule, and the young King who was about to assume full power was an enigma to his subjects. The nearest relatives of Louis had always found him impenetrable. The Grande Mademoiselle had been brought up side by side with her cousin, but she was entirely ignorant of his real character, knowing only that he was silent and appeared timid. In her failure to understand the King, Mademoiselle showed herself again a true child of her century.
At the moment in which the Prince assumed full power, his true disposition, thoughts, and beliefs were entirely hidden from the public, and Saint-Simon has contributed to this ignorance by prolonging it to posterity. Louis XIV. was over fifty when this terrible writer appeared at Court. The Mémoires of Saint-Simon present the portrait of a man almost old; this portrait however is so powerful, so living that it obliterates every other. The public sees only the Louis of Saint-Simon; for it, the youthful King as he lived during the troubled and passionate period of his career, the period that was most interesting, because most vital, has never existed.
The official history of the times aids in giving a false impression of Louis XIV., figuring him in a sort of hieratic attitude between an idol and a manikin. The portraits of Versailles again mask the Louis of the young Court, the man for whose favour Molière and the Libertines fought with varying chances of success.
In the present volume I have tried to raise a corner of this mask.
The Mémoires of Louis XIV., completely edited for the first time according to any methodical plan in 1860, have greatly aided me in this task. They abound in confessions, sometimes aside, sometimes direct, of the matters that occupied the thoughts of the youthful author. The Grande Mademoiselle, capable of neither reserve nor dissimulation, has proved the next most valuable guide in the attempt to penetrate into the intimate life of Louis. As related by her, the perpetual difficulties with the Prince throw a vivid light upon the kind of incompatibility of temper which existed at the beginning of the reign between absolute power and the survivors of the Fronde.
How the young King succeeded in directing his generation toward new ideas and sentiments and how the Grande Mademoiselle, too late carried away by the torrent, became in the end a victim to its force, will be seen in the course of the present volume, provided, that is, that I have not overestimated my powers in touching upon a subject very obscure, very delicate, with facts drawn from a period the most frequently referred to and yet in some respects the least comprehended of the entire history of France.
CHAPTER I
THE Fronde was an abortive revolution. It was condemned in advance, the leaders having never clearly known what ends they were seeking. The consequences of its failure proved to be of profound importance to France. The civil disorders existing between 1648 and 1652 were the last efforts of the French against the establishing of absolute monarchy, to the strengthening of which the entire regency of Anne of Austria had tended. The end of these disorders signified that the nation, wearied and discouraged, had accepted the new régime. The result was a great transformation, political and moral, so great that the Fronde may be considered as clearly marking a separation between two periods of French history – a deep abyss as it were between the times which precede and those which follow.
The leaders of the Fronde had been dispersed by the return of the King to his capital on October 21, 1652. When the exiles returned, some sooner, some later, the last after the Peace of the Pyrénées (November 7, 1659), so great a change had taken place in ideas and customs that more than one exile felt himself in a strange land.
It was necessary to adjust oneself to the new atmosphere. It was very much the same situation – though the Frondeurs were under much lighter accusations – as that experienced by the émigrés returning under the Consulate. The Princess, the events of whose heroic years have been related, offers an excellent example of this condition.
When the Grande Mademoiselle, who had urged on the civil war in order to force Louis XIV. into marriage with herself, obtained at the end of five years, permission to return to Court, she brought with her the old undisciplined habits which were no longer in fashion, and in the end incurred much that was disagreeable. Exile had not weakened her pride. According to a celebrated formula, she had learned nothing, she had forgotten nothing; she remained that person of impulse of whom Mme. de Sévigné said, "I do not care to mix myself with her impetuosities."1
Far be it from me to reproach Mademoiselle! All honour be to her who stood firm in the age of servility which succeeded the Fronde! In other respects exile had been most healthful for her. She had been obliged to seek in herself resources the finding of which surprised her. Mademoiselle naïvely admires herself in her Mémoires2 for never having experienced a single moment of ennui "in the greatest desert in the world," and surely she deserves praise, as her first experiences at Saint-Fargeau would have crushed most women.
The reader will be convinced of this if he imagines himself in her company the night of arrival in the early days of November, 1652. At the end of The Youth of La Grande Mademoiselle we left her weeping without shame before her entire suite. Her dream of glory had evaporated. Anne-Marie-Louise d'Orléans would never be queen of France. She would take no more cities; pass no more troops at review to the sound of trumpet and cannon. Three weeks previous, the great Condé had treated her as a companion in arms. She rejoiced the soldiers by her martial carriage, and any one of them would have been not only surprised but very indignant if it had been suggested that she was capable of being almost as cowardly as her father, the "triste Gaston."
Now all that was finished, even the romantic flight. While playing hide-and-seek with imaginary pursuers, the Grande Mademoiselle had fallen into a state of physical and moral prostration. The heroine of Orléans and of Porte Saint-Antoine sobbed like a little child because she "had too much grief" and was "too afraid"3; the aspect of her future home had taken away the last remnants of courage.
The Château of Saint-Fargeau, begun under Hugh Capet and often repaired, particularly during the fifteenth century, seemed more like a fortress than a peaceful dwelling. Its heavy mass dominated the valley of the Loing, a region of great and dense forests, with few clearings. Itself enveloped with brushwood and protected by deep moats, the château harmonised well with the surroundings. Its windows opened at a great height above the ground, and its towers were strong. The body of the building was massive and bare, united by strong ramparts forming an enceinte irregular with severe appearance.
The ensemble was imposing, never smiling. Saint-Fargeau, long uninhabited, was almost a ruin filled with rats at the time when Mademoiselle presented herself as a fugitive. She was shown into a room with a prop in the centre. Coming from the palace of the Tuileries, this sight overwhelmed her, and made her realise the depth of her fall. She had an access of despair: "I am most unfortunate to be absent from Court, to have only a dwelling as ugly as this, and to realise that this is the best of my châteaux." Her fear became terror when she discovered that doors and windows were lacking. A report came from a valet that she was sought for imprisonment, and she was too confused to reflect that if the King had ordered her arrest locks would have been useless.
She continued her journey to reach a little château, situated two leagues from Saint-Fargeau, which was reported safer. "Imagine," says she, "with what pleasure I made the extra journey. I had risen two hours before daylight; I had ridden twenty-two miles upon a horse already worn out with previous travel. We arrived at our destination at three in the morning; I went to bed in haste." The crisis
Letter of January 19, 1689.