The
Ranums'
Panat Times
Volume 1, redone Dec. 2014
Counseling Assassination in 1636: A Study of Montrésor's and Goulas's Political-Ethical Vocabularies
Part II: An Essay on Understanding Princely Intentions
by Orest Ranum
return to Title page to select another section
The Grande Mademoiselle expounded on the topic: "Il faut que les intentions des grands soient comme les mystères de la foi; il n'appartient pas aux hommes d'y pénétrer; on doit les révérer et croire qu'elles ne sont jamais que pour le bien et le salut de la patrie."(1) A reader of her Mémoires suggests that, a princess herself, Mademoiselle did indeed seek to understand princely intentions, notably the particularly elusive ones of her father, Gaston d'Orléans. She throws a veil over some of the more sordid battles with her father over money, but she lets us know that, for a highly intelligent woman, the perception of human intentions, including those of princes, is inextricably being human. Is it part of human nature, as manifest in all social relations, to seek to perceive the intentions of those with whom one is in relation? Framed in this way, the question seems to go beyond the range of history.
A historian might do a close reading of Mademoiselle's Mémoires, in order to pull together all the evidence about princely intentions. Such a project is perfectly viable, but for now at least I would like to propose two close readings: readings of the memoirs of two householders who clashed over interpreting and advising Mademoiselle's father, Gaston d'Orléans (b. April 25, 1608).
The favorite son of Marie de Médicis, Gaston spent his career waiting and hoping to be king, which meant spending thirty years (until 1638) hoping that his brother would die childless, and soon. Clashes with his brother and his mother occurred throughout his life. These clashes often descended into conspiracy, civil war, and utter and continual distrust among all who lived around any of the three. Perceiving Gaston's intentions, trying to influence him and to surround him with courtiers who could "manage" him, continued for decades. In fact, Mademoiselle's boutade about princely intentions with which this section began, may well have been formulated out of frustration and failure to establish understanding and trust with her father.
In a monarchical political culture, a prince who is heir to the throne is presumed to have a coherent command over his own presence and actions, as advised by his councilors and householders.(2) Over the decades, literally dozens of high-ranking nobles, parlementaire judges, royal councilors, and country nobles would initially act and speak on this assumption. But soon, once daily relations, and after months or even years of trying to "serve" the prince, their letters or personal memoirs would contain expressions of frustration and misunderstanding, and a sort of alienation would develop. Over the decades, a veritable archive of sources would be produced, commenting or seeking to understand Gaston. Much has survived. Not that the rebellious prince was unknown in French history; quite the contrary. But a prince who plotted, who authorized contacts with foreign powers, who created alliances with other rebel princes to form a "party" and who then neither carried out the plot nor defended his fellow plotters when they were charged with the capital punishment for lèse-majesté: in all of this, Gaston was unique! In the Fronde, he first sought to support the regent, Anne of Austria, and her minister, Mazarin; but then he became a sort of weathervane in a storm, pointing virtually in all directions at once. Humiliated and unsupported by any and all except the most opportunist who hoped for a good meal, Gaston retired to his beloved Limours and to Blois, where he looked over his magnificent collection of flower paintings and consulted doctors about his gout. Completely intertwined with conspiracies and rebellion, his first marriage ended in the precocious death of his bride, and his second marriage involved a painful separation, followed by a reunion after Richelieu's demise.
But our purposes here center on the prince's intentions as they were perceived, reflected upon, and integrated into moral-philosophical thought. The actual life of Gaston was carefully reconstructed by my late dear friend, Georges Dethan. He sums up his "portrait" of Gaston by noting:
Gaston d'Orléans n'était pas fait pour la politique, car il manquait de cette fermeté de décision, de cette continuité de vues, de ce constant souci des affaires, qui furent l'apanage de son grand adversaire, Richelieu. Ses goûts ne l'y portaient pas, mais plutôt à la vie militaire, surtout aux arts, à l'étude, aux plaisirs. Une persécution soufferte depuis l'âge de dix-huit ans le contraignit à l'opposition, tandis que la jalousie fraternelle l'éloignait des champs de bataille. Ses premières révoltes d'adolescent ne relèvent d'aucun plan préconçu; elles eurent pour origine des déboires personnels: mariage forcé, amours contrariées, commandements refusés ou enlevés, serviteurs menacés, arrêtés, exécutés.(3)
When Dethan turns to Montrésor, he begins by noting that "Montrésor a été diversement jugé"; and he sums up by saying: "En fait, c'était un aigri, un de ces éternels mécontents qu'aucune faveur ni révolution ne satisfit, peut-être même un amant masochiste du malheur ..."(4) Two other portraits of Montrésor nuance Dethan's but do not really negate it.
In Le Devoir de Révolte (1989), Arlette Jouanna offers a subtle reading of Montrésor's Mémoires, elucidating the lofty political and moral ideals that cohere into a general perspective and that confirm the thesis that aristocratic rebels (1559-1661) lash out at officials and institutions, called Absolutist, that were undermining their political powers and ranks in the Monarchy. For Jouanna, these were "courtisans pour conserver la mémoire des idéaux anciens, rajeunis par le culte des valeurs héroïques et par l'exigeante morale stoïcienne alors à la mode" (p. 258).
It will not be our purpose to reconstruct in some Rankean fashion what "actually happened," as we pursue the terms that Montrésor and his fellow Gastonian householder, Nicolas Goulas, employed to express intentions; but as Jouanna stresses, the pressures put on the princes by their householders, to protest, to conspire, and in the end to attempt murder in order to rid France of "tyrants" such as Richelieu and Mazarin.(5)
Arlette Jouanna's insightful and learned analysis provides the public-life frame for Montrésor's memoirs; and while recognizing that the motives of the aristocratic rebels were not always as constitutional, she successfully makes the case for the existence of a disinterested public current running through the opposition to increased powers and to non-consultation on the part of many great and lesser nobles. This work is, in fact, a deepening elaboration of her 1977 Ordre social: mythes et hierarchies dans la France du XVIe siècle. Finally, with Jouanna as a pioneer, social history imprisoned in sociology and other functionalisms again included (as an atticist would do) the actual sources, the voices of the past that had been submerged for several decades, beneath numbers and concepts.
Less oblique than Dethan about the harsh consequences of Gaston's military defeat in the rebellion that would seal the fate of the Duc de Montmorency, Jean-Marie Constant reconstructs the bitter and conspiratorial atmosphere that prevailed in the early 1630s. Puylaurens, Gaston's principal councilor, was arrested on Richelieu's orders, allegedly because he had not informed either the King or the Cardinal about a letter that Gaston had written to the pope while exiled in Brussels. A subject who possessed information about any and all unauthorized contacts between another subject and a foreign power, was automatically guilty of lèse-majesté unless he quickly informed an official. In addition, one of the terms of the royal declaration requiring Monsieur's submission, was that any and all communications with foreign powers must be declared.(6)
Thanks to a marriage alliance between his cousin and Puylaurens, rounded out with a specially created duchy and a lot of money, the Cardinal still hoped that Puylaurens would become one of his "fidèles." Such would not the case.(7) Claude de Bourdeille, comte de Montrésor, was in the prince's household, waiting for the opportunity to become his principal advisor. A parent of Puylaurens, Montrésor benefitted from the disgrace of Puylaurens. Montrésor accuses Richelieu of breaking his solemnly-given word.(8)
Relying of Montrésor's memoirs, Jean-Marie Constant presents a narrative of the highly-charged atmosphere during the years separating Montmorency's death from Richelieu's. This is a very suggestive starting point from which to try to discern Gaston's intentions and presuppositions about princely powers within a Monarchy that was ruled by a harsh, legalistic brother.
Without taking the necessary pages to summarize Bercé's Jouanna's, and Constant's analyses of aristocratic thought on what may properly be referred to as "constitutionalism," it is interesting to sum up Montrésor's views and to contrast them with Goulas's views in the Deffense.
Montrésor does not expound on tyranny as an abuse of political power(9); he alludes to Richelieu's authority and his domination, but the charge that counts the most for him is the Cardinal's declaration of war (of course, it was Louis XIII who declared the war) against Spain without assembling the estates or the grands, who:
devoient être appelées dans une délibération de cette nature, suivant ce qui s'est toujours pratiqué (mais l'orgueil du cardinal étoit au dessus des formes) il prit cette importante résolution, qui alloit troubler tous les Etats de l'Europe, avec des gens tout soumis à ses volontés.(10)
A vision of what Russell Major referred to as the "Renaissance Monarchy" is present here, as is that sense of time, the past, that Alain Niderst has called "nostalgia." There is no strong objection to declaring war as such; rather, it is how it has been done, and without preparation: "Cette grande entreprise faite en un jour, qui devoit être de longtemps préméditée, pour que les préparatifs nécessaires à la soutenir avec réputation ne manquassent point...."(11)
Montrésor accuses Richelieu of being "emporté par son impétuosité naturelle, que je ne saurois nommer que fureur désespérée, et lui un fléau de Dieu pour le châtiment des hommes, qui engagea la France dans un dessein duquel lui seul étoit capable de se résoudre."(12)
For Montrésor, the war strengthens Richelieu's intérêt
particulier; and he, Montrésor, was living in:
la croyance que
la sûreté et la grandeur de Monsieur ne se pouvoient renconter que dans
l'abaissement du cardinal, ou, pour m'y expliquer plus clairement et
selon mes intentions, par sa perte absolue. Mais comme toute l'autorité
étoit entre ses mains, et qu'il étoit en pouvoir de répandre ses
bienfaits et ses grâces sur ceux qui s'attachoient à lui, et d'imprimer
par sa sévérité la terreur dans la plus grande partie des gens capables
de travailler à sa ruine...(13)
Montrésor saw his task, bringing down the Cardinal, as extremely difficult. Richelieu's "prodigieuse ambition" and his willingness to sacrifice the nobility and his acceptance of "la misère des peuples," obliged Montrésor to do something. He does not accuse Richelieu of declaring war in order to stay in power. (Mazarin would be accused of prolonging the war for this very reason.)
Montrésor's next important theme is that princes can quickly recover from a loss of reputation; thus, in effect, Gaston can regain "l'estime publique" after the quashing of the rebellion that had ended in Montmorency's trial and execution. The first thing to do would be to work out an alliance between Gaston and the Duc de Soissons, that is, to "les unir tellement d'intérêts que les artifices du cardinal ne les pussent diviser."(14) Having noted that the house of Guise has been so weakened that its help cannot be expected, he considers the prospects for rallying the ducs d'Epernon, Bouillon, and Retz to an anti-Richelieu party. But first things first. His first cousin, Saint-Ibar, and intimate of the duc de Soissons, must be brought along to help create the Gaston-Soissons alliance.
Regarding the legality of Gaston's marriage, celebrated without his royal brother's consent, Goulas ridicules Montrésor's assertions about its legal status:
... que le Roy n'opposoit aux formalitez requises observées en ce mariage [sic] que les lois fondamentales du Royaume qui n'estoient escrittes en aucune part, et sur ce sujet, purement imaginaire, comme si les lois des Estatz et des monarchies, aussi anciennes qu'eux, devenoient nulles pour n'estre pas escrittes, et si la succession de masle à masle à la Couronne de France estoit une chose purement imaginaire à cause que nous ne saurions pas produire l'autographe de Merovée ou des prestres saliens auxquels on peut attribuer l'establissement des lois saliques.(15)
With derision, Goulas has characterized Montrésor's thought to the point that it is impossible to establish with certainty what had been argued. Still, it seems that, after charging Richelieu with not having respected consultative procedures prior to counseling the King to declare war, here he disparages and denies the cogency of the (unwritten) constitution regarding the legality of Gaston's marriage.
While the informal aspects of the debate between Goulas and Montrésor may seem conversational, in fact it was much too intense and adversarial to conform to early-modern notions of conversation. When Goulas takes up his general confrontation (and refutation) of Montrésor, concerning Richelieu's tyranny, he writes:
... d'accord, je veux qu'il soit bon de le destruire, qu'il soit expédient, qu'il soit utile au Roy et à l'Etat, au peuple; par malheur, le Roy n'en est pas persuadé et croit que ce que vous appellez tyrannie est son service, et veut maintenir le tyran. Et qui sera le tyran en cette rencontre? ou celui qui se met en devoir d'imposer des lois au souverain, ou celui qui deffend son authorité attaquée, et se rescrire que c'est à lui de prescrire des lois à ses sujets?(16)
Goulas continues in the same vein about the ways in which Montrésor had excroquée the promise that lay between Gaston and Soissons and which Gaston failed to keep; but he did not have to keep it, because he was the maître.
Continuing to vituperate, Goulas sums up Montrésor's views on Gaston's "nature": "enfin une pauvre créature qui fait pitié à quiconque ne manque point de sens et de jugement,"(17) it would be better for his advisors to oblige him to stay in his maison, rather than encouraging him to civil war or to expose himself at the head of a foreign army, dethrone the King, his brother, and ruin his Etat.(18)
A quick glance at Montrésor's genealogy reveals that his name was Claude de Bourdeille, comté de Montrésor. Historians almost always mention that he was the grand-nephew of Pierre, abbot of Brantôme, author of Les Vies des grands Capitaines, and of Les Dames galantes; but they rarely mention that the Abbot had fought on the side of the Guises during the Wars of Religion. Another glance at the genealogy reveals that the baptismal name Claude is an old family name, passed down in its different branches from generation to generation, just as "Guy" was for the Lavals, and "François" was for the La Rochefoucaulds.
Montrésor says, at one point, that there is no need for princes to read. He may have thought the same about himself. His Mémoires are intensely and clearly written, but without allusions to historical or other writing. Did he at least read his uncle Brantôme's Vies des grands capitaines? This work partakes more of what J. Huizinga calls "historical ideals of life" (see my Artisans of Glory, p. 19), that is, exemplary heroic biography, in the case of Brantôme. Montrésor probably did not see himself as commanding an army; but as Madeleine Lazard has put it:
Le classement des Vies est en lui-même significatif: conformément à la hiérarchie féodale de la chevalerie, les rois y sont mêlés aux grands seigneurs ― le souverain est encore pour lui [Brantôme] auquel ils doivent rendre l'hommage et le service des armes, et dont ils demeurent les vassaux, en vertu d'un contrat d'homme à homme.
There is an affinity and perhaps a congruence between Brantôme's aristocratic ideal and Montrésor's insistence on honor over interest. Brantôme put all this succinctly, regarding the attitude of nobles toward Francis I, whom they saw as "jeune, prest à entreprendre la guerre et libéral pour récompenser les siens."(19) It would be risky indeed to suggest any direct influence. As Arlette Jouanna has very effectively reconstructed it, aristocratic thought was at once general and particular, with, as Ellery Schalk sought to elucidate in his From Valor to Pedigree (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), strong continuities and subtle shifts in attitudes.
While Montrésor was actively participating in a series of plots with Gaston (Amiens, 1636; Cinq-mars, 1642; Importants, 1643; Fronde des princes, 1651), his cousins, the Matha, were commanding regiments and dying in battle. This may seem irrelevant, but several of his contemporaries ― among them Retz ― would characterize Montrésor as lacking courage at just the moment when strong action would determine success or failure.
Mademoiselle de Montpensier (that is, Gaston's daughter known as the "Grande Mademoiselle") refers to Montrésor as "mon proche parent."(20) That statement makes it unnecessary to set out here the parental connections between the Montpensiers and the Bourdeilles.
Similarly, the Grande Mademoiselle notes that, regarding a possible relation between Montrésor and Mlle de Guise, the sister of the duc de Guise and the duc de Joyeuse, he was a "trop proche parent de la maison, et homme de mérite."(21) Few people in the Ancien Régime were more attuned to dynastic powers, ranks, and honors than was Mademoiselle; so when she called Montrésor a "parent," she meant it; and when she referred to him as a "proche parent" of the Guises, she likewise knew what she meant. In neither instance did the relation stem from a vague, remote marriage tie of long ago!
Parental ties, however, did not bring Montrésor to anywhere near the rank of the Bourbon-Montpensiers or the Lorraine-Guises. All this would be apparent when Montrésor and Mlle de Guise formed an intimate and steady relationship, not just an affair. Patricia M. Ranum's Portraits around Marc-Antoine Charpentier (Baltimore: The Author, 2004) takes up Montrésor's career after the period covered in his memoirs, 1632-1647.
Montrésor thanks Mlle de Guise for her successful efforts in releasing him from prison in May or June 1647.
* * *
Richelieu's tripartite program included what he considered a success, namely, to "rabaisser les grands." The Lorraine dynasties ― that is, the dukes of Lorraine, Guise, Elbeuf, and Lillebonne (but not Harcourt) ― along with their alliances to the Montpensier and Joyeuse dynasties, and their control over major governorships, the Mediterranean navy, episcopal sees, and rich convents and monasteries, had gained enormous power and wealth in the last half of the sixteenth century. The illegitimate sons and daughters of Henry IV, particularly the Vendômes, Beaufort, Mercoeur, and Soissons, all intermarried, and married high-ranking families. Generation after generation they strove to have their titles fully recognized and their not-very-large estates increased. Richelieu had read the projectors who argued that increased powers for the state could only come from lessened powers for foreigners in French monetary markets; and he may have believed that it was necessary to "rabaisser les grands" in order to rehausser the powers of the King.
Richelieu's project to join the two admiralties into one grand admiralty that he himself would administer, put the Guises, Montmorency, and the Cardinal on the road to conflict. The Duc de Guise took his removal (albeit with compensation!) as a humiliation; Richelieu wanted to build fleets that might challenge Spanish power in the Mediterranean. With remarkable economy and historical profundity, Noémi Hepp explores Montmorency's fate.(22)
Montrésor spent most of his adult life in the circles of "malcontents," the Lorraines and the Vendômes, which was not incompatible with his 22 years (his own words) of service in the household of Gaston d'Orleans (c. 1626-1647). Not that relations were not stormy with other prominent families, notably the Nogaret d'Epernon-La Valette clan; but Montrésor spent less time with them, probably because both the Guises and the Vendômes were in rivalry with them ― which was also true with the Montmorencies, likewise a family that felt humiliated and unrecompensed, "after services," as a result of Richelieu's decision not to turn the governorship of the citadel of Montpellier over to them.
Constant is correct to place Montrésor among a new generation of conspirators. Too young to have participated in the rebellion of 1615-1617, or in that of 1619-1620, or in the various Protestant rebellions led by the Rohan-Soubise clan, Montrésor's historical vision dated, as we shall discover, from the Cinq-mars-de Thou, Gaston-Bouillon plot of 1642.
While it is also correct to refer to all of these conspirators as noble or aristocratic, the nobles of royal descent, legitimate or not, the foreign princes, and the dukes and peers constituted such a high, powerful, and wealthy elite that the rest of the Second Estate were sometimes considered only for the services they might possibly render. What follows is not a social interpretation of conspiracy, but rather a context for understanding Montrésor's views on the monde. What would seem to be dismissible as mere snobbery on his part toward many of Gaston's householders, was in fact disdain, condescension, and cruel rudeness.
* * *
We have already noted that Montrésor claims to have served Gaston for 22 years; but at another point he says "dès mon enfance, j'avais l'honneur de me donner à M. le Duc d'Orléans" (p. 215). There may well have been some encounter in which Montrésor, as a child or a young adolescent, offered to serve the prince and heir to the throne, a not atypical gesture for a young noble in the presence of a prince; but it may only have been in 1626, when he was about 20 and when his illustrious cousin, Marie de Bourbon-Montpensier, married Gaston, that Montrésor more firmly and formally entered a royal household of between 60 and 70 householders. The household rosters for 1627 edited by E. Griselle do not include him, however. The Goulas (Léonard, secrétaire des commandements, and François, his brother, intendant des bâtiments (and several over Goulas as well) were already householders at that time. This indicates that while Montrésor may have had higher aristocratic pretensions, he did not attain seniority as a regular pensioned householder before the Goulas brothers did. This point may become more significant when the Goulas are presented in the second part of this essay. But even at this point we can think of the Goulas as standing "in order" near their master at some official greeting, whereas it is uncertain whether Montrésor ever had the right to join them down the line. Later, at some time that only further research will yield, Montrésor became Gaston's grand veneur, a high-ranking office (venal) charged with organizing the hunt. The prince gave Montrésor the cold shoulder as the Cinq-Mars Conspiracy broke, after which Montrésor fled to England.(23) Later, when a royal guard ordered him and his cousin, Saint-Ybar, to leave Paris that very day, Montrésor took the shock reasonably well; but when the Vendômes received them in "la plus étrange façon," the reality of a second disgrace overcame him.
Did Montrésor fully comprehend exactly who participated in the Cabale des Importants? The plot, first by Beaufort and secondarily by Chevreuse-Châteauneuf, next with Châteauneuf himself as chef, and finally by the Duc de Guise, did not manage to integrate and inform all the malcontents at once. Montrésor's account of keeping Mme de Chevreuse's jewelry for her, and his being embastillé for it, occurred when Le Tremblay was still governor of that fortress. Chevreuse probably thought that Gaston's householders would be safer from arrest than anyone in her circle; yet she wanted her wealth kept safe by someone who was opposed to Richelieu's creatures, and then to Mazarin. Le Tremblay was replaced as early as mid-June 1643,(24) just about when Montrésor was in the Bastille for fourteen months. In addition to the Guises, the Prince of Orange wrote to the Queen Regent and Mazarin on his behalf; but his bitterness becomes manifest when he asserts that Gaston d'Orléans did not lift a finger for him.
The lengthy account of his interview with Mazarin after his release poses several questions about the Cardinal's intentions. Montrésor expressed his gratitude for being released, whereupon Mazarin launched into a general summary of military and diplomatic policies during a year that had not gone well for France. Landrécies had been occupied by the Spanish, and Condé's efforts to capture Lérida would fail by mid-June 1647.
Mazarin asked Montrésor to tell him what he thought of Abbé de la Rivière, who had long since become Gaston's principal confident. As we shall see, Montrésor detested La Rivière and blamed him for the death of his cousin de Thou, executed after the Cinq-mars conspiracy of 1642. After some phrases about not wishing to discuss la Rivière's character, Montrésor became openly candid and described La Rivière as: "fort ambitieux, peu secret, et d'un talent fort médiocre, et de plus infidèle et fort ingrat ... et que j'étois si peu dissimulé, que je m'étois jamais pu témoigner à son Eminence que j'étois son serviteur, lorsque je n'avois pas une véritable intention de l'être.(25) The Cardinal seems not to have shared with Montrésor his views of La Rivière. Instead, he turned around and asked Montrésor to return to Gaston's service!
Mazarin would press him very emphatically on this point, saying that the prince, the queen regent, and he desired it; but Montrésor refused. His cousin, the comte de la Châtre, claimed that Gaston wrote to Montrésor while the latter was exiled in England and asked him to return.(26) But what were Gaston's intentions? Montrésor asserts that Gaston's cool greetings indicated that he did not really want him back. Montrésor had let Mazarin understand that so long as La Rivière was Gaston's principal confidant, he would not return to the prince. Ever since the difficult accommodement after the Cinq-mars conspiracy, La Rivière had quite successfully managed Gaston, and Mazarin was grateful for this. It is not at all certain that, his protestations to the contrary, Mazarin really wanted Montrésor at the prince's side once again.
* * *
How should a prince ― in this case, Gaston d'Orléans, until 1638 heir to the throne ― conduct his political life? Claude de Bourdeille, comte de Montrésor, answered this question emphatically by insisting on an overt, even public awareness of illustrious action worthy of a prince. Montrésor implicitly condemns the petty court squabbles with which Gaston's name had become associated. The illustrious action that he would advise Gaston to take, would be to rebel and assassinate Richelieu. After the arrest of Puylaurens, Gaston called Montrésor into his cabinet and asked him to be his principal confident. As Montrésor put it: "Ce fut en cette sorte [sic] que j'entrai dans l'honneur de sa confiance."(27) After characterizing the others in Gaston's immediate circle (d'Elbène, La Rivière, and Léonard Goulas, the least dangerous of the three), Montrésor remarks:
Je commençai d'espérer de pouvoir plus facilement entreprendre, pour le service de mon maître, des choses de plus grande conséquence que des intrigues et des démêlées de cette nature, pour lesquelles il me semble que ceux qui font une particulière profession d'honneur doivent toujours avoir une extrême aversion."(28)
In rhetoric, even in simple logic, after such a statement the reader expects an example of an honorable action; and very good writer that he is, Montrésor supplies one, namely that a war with Spain was declared without the consent of either an estates-general or the grands, the great nobles of the realm. Richelieu ought to have meditated on this decision and prepared for war, so that there could be no disgrace or dishonor in defeat. Instead, the Cardinal was "emporté par son impétuosité naturelle, que je ne saurois nommer que fureur désespéré, et lui un fléau de Dieu pour le châtiment des hommes."(29) As Jouanna has so carefully and convincingly elucidated, rebellious nobles and princes steadily evoked constitutional violations by kings and their ministers, regarding decisions about war and peace. Here Montrésor differs from the dévots who sought accommodation with the Hapsburgs and a continued policy of repressing heresy.
After the royal victory at Avein (or Les Avins, May 22, 1635), won by Maréchal de Châtillon ― Montrésor calls it "un bonheur très extraordinaire" ― the Spanish armies captured La Capelle, Roye, and then Corbie in August 1636. This was followed by a tremendous new and "popular" mobilization by the King himself and Gaston, who at the head of quickly mobilized forces that recaptured Roye in September.
Montrésor arranged the plot to assassinate Richelieu in October of that year; Corbie would be retaken in mid-November. Thus the principal glorious action worthy of a prince was planning Richelieu's assassination, and that during a time when the Parisians feared being besieged by Spanish troops. Once France was rid of the Cardinal, according to Montrésor's plans the next step would be to unite the Comte de Soissons, his followers, and his troops with Gaston's forces. Next on the list was the humiliation of the Guise, Epernon, Bouillon, and Retz ducal clans, the implication being that they all might join in an effort to rid the realm of Richelieu and the Spanish. Since Gaston's royal brother was often at the sites, if not in command, Montrésor's plans for rebellion and asassination did not compare well as grandes actions, but ...
What the King might be thinking simply did not occur to Montrésor; his attention was on Gaston and what attentions he should be paid.
Up to this point, Montrésor has remained silent about how he planned to alter France's foreign policies; but he faced squarely the issue of whether he would be able to convince Gaston to make a bold decision and carry it out. A showdown with the Cardinal would be inevitable, but Montrésor doubtlessly knew of Gaston's irresolution, dissimulation, and deception, and how it had forestalled or undermined previous efforts to bring about major changes in royal policy:
La condition des princes est tout-à-fait différente à celle des particuliers: leur naissance a cet avantage, avec une infinité d'autres, qu'ils regagnent fort aisément, quand il leur plaît de se faire valoir, la réputation perdue, comme ils ne succombent pas dans les fautes qu'ils ont commises, ainsi que font les personnes privées, qui ne s'en relèvent jamais. J'estimois que Monsieur se pourroit remettre en créance, les fautes dans lesquelles il étoit tombé ci-devant en partie rejetées sur ceux qu'il avoit employés à son service, qui avoient eu plus de soin de leurs intérêts que de sa gloire, qui consistoit à se rendre digne de l'estime publique, et qu'ayant confiance à des serviteurs moins intéressés, il seroit à couvert de ce dernier inconvénient, qui étoit l'origine de tous les malheurs qui lui étoient arrivés; et par conséquent qu'il ne falloit pas désespérer de voir sa réputation rétablie, et de pouvoir, par son moyen, procurer une résolution favorable aux gens de bien qui le combleroient de bénédictions, que Dieu a permis quelquefois pour chàtier les ministres superbes et soulager les innocens opprimés.(30)
The prince had to be brought to believe that the past humiliations that he had partly blamed on his advisors, could be passed off by asserting that these same advisors had acted from self-interest instead of from concern for his glory. As used here, créance is something like "credibility," and the estime publique that was now lacking could be restored. The humiliation most in Montrésor's mind at this point was the arrest of the prince's principal advisor, Puylaurens (February 1635), without informing the prince prior to taking action. How would Gaston be able to build an opposition party when his enemy has the King's ear? Puylaurens would be left to rot in a humid tower of the chateau de Vincennes, and Gaston had no success whatever at obliging his brother to take his views into consideration.
All through the Mémoires, Montrésor remarks on the presence of his brother, of one or another of his cousins, or of an "ami intime". His pride in these relations is evident, but he does not seem to consult with all of them or share all his secrets and plans with them. Like many other nobles, Montrésor expects unfailing, unquestioned support from these cousins and friends, should a show of force be necessary. Like the La Trémoille, the La Rochefoucauld, and the de la Force out in the provinces, hundreds of gentilhommes will answer the call of their lord and governor without asking any questions. Once together, and perhaps still on horseback and armed, declarations would be made, and a dialogue would start, as Yves-Marie Bercé has shown,(31) Montrésor's cousins and friends bring honor and dignity to him in a similar way.
His first cousin, Henri d'Escars de Saint-Bonnet, sieur de Saint-Ibar, probably played, or at least claimed to play a confidential advisory role in the household of the count de Soissons. The last of Henry IV's illegitimate sons, Louis II de Bourbon, comte de Soissons spent years planning ways to gain more precedence than the Condé, an impossibility. In the flurry to throw the Spanish out of the northern French towns they captured in the spring of 1636, Soissons and Gaston were both given commands over armies that not only held their own but actually pushed the Spaniards back from the outpost captured a few months earlier.
Conspiring with Saint-Ibar and with the apparent complicity of Gaston and Soissons, Montrésor planned an assassination attempt on Richelieu. It it is probable that the two princes had resolved to oppose Richelieu, but it is unclear whether they agreed on an assassination. Montrésor characterizes Soissons as a "homme de hauts desseins."
As for the aim of the conspiracy (perhaps it was never a conjuration in the sense of taking a collective oath), the terms used were pretty vague, most notably the phrase "s'assurer de la personne du cardinal."(32) Montrésor, Saint-Ibar, and very probably Soissons, plus two others who may have lacked zeal, came together at the bottom of a stairway in Amiens (October 1636), just as Richelieu was coming down to leave. Gaston was also present, but at the crucial moment he turned on his heels and quickly mounted the stairs. What had been the prince's intentions, when he allowed his ally and his householders to go this far, and then refused to go all the way? Gaston was not given to violence. Also, shedding the blood of a priest would certainly have been difficult for him to do; but the fault-line between his non-violence and the advice he received at various times in his life to resort to it, made him feel insecure and fearful. Several people could have been killed, had the Cardinal's guards and valets advanced toward the stairs he was ascending. Montrésor had asked for written orders, and Gaston had declined to give them.
After this failure, Montrésor was sent south to Bordeaux, to try to convince the Nogent de la Valette d'Epernon clan to join Gaston and Soissons's efforts to create a parti. The reception proved to be polite but very cool to the idea. Epernon reminded Montrésor of the fate of Chalais, a conspirator (1626) who was executed while his fellows, among them Gaston, were purged or pardoned. When Montrésor reported his failure to Gaston back in Blois, he found the prince wracked by "grandes inquiétudes" and his householders in a "grand étonnement." Soissons and Montrésor responded to this fearfulness by urging Gaston to flee to Sedan, the little principality beyond the French border that belonged to the Huguenot La Tour d'Auvergne-Bouillon clan. Montrésor employed all his analytical skills and rhetoric to convince Gaston to go to Sedan; departure dates were selected, but Gaston would not flee. The climate of fear became so strong that Gaston thought there must be troops posted along the itinerary to arrest him.
Through an intermediary, Léon Bouthillier, comte de Chavigny, secretary of state and trusted councilor close to Richelieu, the King made concessions to Gaston and offered to forgive him and pay his debts. Montrésor sensed that he was losing ground, and at that point he turned toward an analysis of his master that lay deeper than princely rank yet was compatible with it:
Les hommes, de quelque qualité qu'ils puissent être, que la nature n'a pas destinés à se mêler d'affaires importantes, et dont la bonne ou mauvaise conduite règle quasi toujours les événemens, sont si gênés, lorsqu'ils jouent, par les conseils des génies plus élevés que les leurs, un personnage forcé, qu'il est impossible qu'ils soutiennent long-temps un procédé entièrement opposé à leur inclination, et au-dessus de leurs forces et de leur tempérament.
M. le duc d'Orléans, pour agir conformément au sien, se rendoit ingénieux à se tromper dans ses propres intérêts, et croyoit, en abusant ses plus assurés et fidèles serviteurs, qu'il se garantissoit du péril qu'il se figuroit de courir; persuadé que les longueurs et les remises lui devoient procurer de notables avantages, quoiqu'en effet ce fût sa ruine évidente, par la diminution de son crédit et de sa réputation, qui maintient seule la créance que les princes se doivent acquérir pour se conserver dans le rang que leur naissance leur donne, contre l'autorité illégitime des favoirs et des ministres des rois leurs souverains, qui l'usurpent sans comparaison plus grande qu'elle ne leur est due et ne peut leur appartenir, selon les lois de l'Etat.(33)
By "nature" Gaston is incapable of following "les conseils des génies plus élevés que les leurs." A prince of the blood and an heir to the throne? Montrésor does not characterize himself as being among "les génies"; but such is the logical inference in a text where he recounts the advice he gives and his attempts to bring Gaston to rebellious action. The argument grounded on Gaston's nature, his ingenium, would upset Nicolas Goulas and would be a prime reason for his writing La Deffense, a text that will be interpreted in the last part of this essay.
Ingenium had neither positive nor negative connotations, nor did génie, which is derived from it; but in the course of the seventeenth century, it would take on the positive valence that we know today. Gaston Cayrou's Le Français classique (Paris: Didier, 1948), pp. 436-437, includes quotations from six major authors that mark out the evolution of the meanings of the word; and he notes how Boileau uses the word in both senses! "Je mesure mon vol à mon faible génie" (Discours au Roi, V, 14), and ""Mais quand il faut railler, j'ai ce que je souhaite/ Je sens que mon esprit travaille de génie" (Satire, VII, v. 41).
Montrésor uses the word génie in the neutral sense, to describe Gaston's nature; but in the phrase "... les conseils des génies plus élevés que les leurs ...," he strongly implies the second sense, the genius with a superior mind. The phrase "génies plus élevés" is also part of the "order of nature": things of the spirit are higher, one might say more cerebral. The early modern body was seen as being constituted of so many layers of noble, less noble, and downright ignoble masses and liquids. Montrésor might have expressed love for the prince, and having argued that "this is his nature," concluded that he had been wrong to press him to do things contrary to his nature. But he did not. Montrésor's plans had been undercut as a result of Gaston's not keeping his word, or so Montrésor reported to Soissons.
Montrésor's frequent references to his brother, his cousins, his intimate friends or just his friends, were linked to an outlook of confidence, trust, and word-keeping ― social relations that had aristocratic resonances rooted in late-medieval culture and antique moral and political thought.(34) With bitterness and feelings of betrayal, Montrésor continues about Gaston:
Les dissimulations et les fausses espérances accompagnées d'une infinité d'artifices, firent concevoir à Son Altesse qu'un accommodement qui ne regardoit que sa personne suffisoit; et qu'elle devoit, dans les règles de la prudence, passer par dessus toutes les considérations qui pouvoient lui être alléguées par ceux qui n'avoient pour objet que de porter les choses à l'extrémité, et se rendre irréconciliables avec le cardinal de Richelieu, plutôt par la haine violente conçue contre lui, que par le zèle (à ce qu'ils lui faisoient entendre) qu'ils protestoient d'avoir pour son service.
Monsieur, prévenu de l'impression que des gens si intéressés prirent soin de lui donner, feignit une seconde fois d'avoir la goutte, pour se pouvoir, plus honnêtement, défendre de partir pour aller à Sedan, ainsi qu'il s'étoit engagé par sa parole portée par diverses personnes à M. le comte, et par l'écrit que Beauregard lui avoit rendu de la part de Son Altesse.(35)
Gaston could have asked for declarations of freedom to go about the realm, pensions, possible approval for a marriage proposal for any or all of his householders who were in jeopardy and very probably without money; and Louis XIII would have provided them, because he wanted a settlement with his brother. But no, Gaston only presented conditions for himself.
An intense confrontation involving anger and raised voices occurred over the draft of the proposed settlement. Montrésor sets the scene: Léonard Goulas reads the draft he has prepared, and Gaston, Montrésor, and other householders listen. It is rare to find such a revealing account of what social relations could be like in the household of a grand, and how the epistolary presence would be constructed. When the reading was over, Monsieur asked for opinions but nothing was said. He then turned to Montrésor and "ordered" him to give his opinion:
Je dis que puisqu'il me le commandoit, la fidélité que je devois à son service m'empêchoit de lui céler ce que je pensois de cette instruction, que je n'estimois ni bien conçue ni bien écrite.
Goulas, se sentant piqué, me repartit ce que c'étoit que j'y trouvois à redire; je lui répondis avec assez de froideur que je le ferois remarquer à Monsieur lorsqu'il me le commanderoit.
Monsieur l'ayant ainsi trouvé bon, je la pris, et lui fis voir dans la première page combien il lui importoit qu'elle fût supprimée. Il en raya sept out huit lignes de sa main.
Goulas offensé me prit à partie, et s'échauffant trop en la présence de son maître, m'obligea à lui dire que je n'étois pas homme ni pour tromper Monsieur, ni pour souffir qu'il fût trompé.
Il fut outré des termes desquels je m'étois servi, et, ne gardant plus de mesure, il me nécessita, pour dernière réponse, à lui faire sentir qu'il n'eût point à se méconnoître; que nous devions tant de respect à Son Altesse, qu'il ne falloit jamais le perdre; et qu'il rappelât sa mémoire, et se souvînt du petit écrit qu'il y avoit si peu qui avoit été fait dans ce lieu même où nous étions, et que l'équivoque de et et de ou me sembloit de conséquence.
Il ne lui en fallut pas dire davantage pour le rendre muet, avec une confusion à faire pitié.
Je ne m'étois point ému, et Son Altesse continuant à m'interroger, ces messieurs n'ayant pas ouvert la bouche sur ce que Monsieur leur avoit fait connoître, je repris le discours que j'avoit commencé, et y ajoutai que cette pièce curieuse, qui n'avoit pas été faite en un moment, je ne demandois qu'une demi-heure pour remarquer dans les marges ce que je devois y blâmer; mais je pensois que, pour le plus court et le plus utile, il seroit plus à propos de la jeter au feu, et d'en faire une autre, dans laquelle Monsieur eût un style plus conforme à la dignité de sa personne, et qui expliquât autrement ses intérêts.(36)
The division of Gaston's household into two parties, with Montrésor leading one of them and favoring the "rabaissement du cardinal," and the other, led by Léonard Goulas, favoring a settlement with the King and the Cardinal, collapsed only after numerous confrontations. The confrontations ended when La Rivière replaced Montrésor as Gaston's principal confident. Gaston's voice can be heard through Montrésor's summary of the clash: "Ce n'étoit pas son intention qu'il me déguisoit, me disant lorsqu'il croyoit qu'il falloit aller à Sedan ...."(37) But the cabale contraire came to the fore with a flattering panegyric of the Cardinal, ostensibly written by the prince. As a result of the settlement between the two royal brothers, Montrésor decided to leave Gaston's service; but almost simultaneously he discovered that Gaston had ceased confiding in him. Montrésor admits to doing everything in his power to stop La Rivière's ascent, but to no avail. He says: "Les cours des princes sont composés de beaucoup de sortes de gens; mais il y en a peu qui préfèrent leur honneur à leurs intérêts, et qui se plaisent à soulager leurs amis lorsqu'ils se rencontrent embarrassés dans les affaires ...".(38)
Honor versus interest was not the only binary formula dear to Montrésor. when Gaston made his accommodement with the King and the Cardinal, the latter triumphed by "fortune rather than prudence."
Social differences remained below the surface in Montrésor's relations with Goulas, but it would be emphatically articulated about La Rivière. As we have already seen, when Mazarin asked Montrésor what he thought of La Rivière, Montrésor claims to have told him what we reported earlier. But as if this harsh attack were not enough, Montrésor takes pleasure in recounting how La Rivière and his "ami intime," Béthune, refused to greet him: "La Rivière y passa, qui en reçut de grandes civilités, excepté de nous deux [Béthune and Montrésor], qui ne crûmes pas devoir ôter nos chapeaux pour un pareil personnage."(39) And he continues: "Notre visite fut, par cette rencontre, peu agréable à Son Altesse [Gaston], qui ne daigna pas nous regarder, et par conséquent elle fut fort courte."(40) There is little doubt that Montrésor's interpretation of Gaston's reception was the correct one. When Guy d'Elbène was disgraced, Gaston summed up his own conduct thusly: "J'étais très mal satisfait de D'Elbène et même le lui avais témoigné par la mine que je lui faisais."(41)
Just why Mazarin, the Queen Regent, and the Maréchal d'Estrées wanted Montrésor to return to Gaston's household remains a mystery. There is a strong possiblity that Gaston had asked them to. The prince did not like to lose, nor to disgrace anyone with whom he had become intimate.
Montrésor had tried, and failed, to convince Gaston to conduct his political life in conformity with his exalted rank. He had used all the arguments, and he certainly won his assent to support an assassination attempt against Richelieu, and a rebellion that Soissons ― and very probably Vendôme, Beaufort, and perhaps Bouillon ― would have joined in 1636-1637. Montrésor's name must be chalked up on a long roster of advisors and would-be advisors who failed to convince the prince to carry out his intentions. As Montrésor remarks: "Cepandant Monsieur, agité de ce qu'il avoit à choisir ou à laisser, ne se déterminoit à rien, et le temps, qui ruinoit les affaires, s'écouloit insensiblement."(42)
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Notes
1. Mlle de Montpensier, Mémoires, ed. Chéruel (Paris: Charpentier, 1858), II, p. 22. The toile de fond of this part of the essay is the biography of Gaston d'Orléans by my late very dear friend, Georges Dethan, La vie de Gaston d'Orléans. It contains a chapter on the prince's householders and their divisions, as well as a narrative of the failed plot against Richelieu's life at Amiens, October 1636. There is also an important note about the true author of the so-called Mémoires of Gaston d'Orléans by Jean Lasseré.
The corps of Dethan's biography is fundamentally the same as the
edition published by Fayard in 1959, a work that, at the time, I
characterized in a review as written for the "sophisticated general
public." I was too immature then to distinguish the quality of some
biographies from the poorly researched, pulp, biographie bourgeoise
that had, as a genre, survived World War II.
Dethan characterizes
his thesis for the Ecole des Chartes as a "travail d'école." If a copy
were generally available, it would be possible to know when Montrésor
became Gaston's grand veneur. Materials from the household
rosters in the Arsenal that Dethan studied would complement what
Griselle published. I hope to supply an annexe to this essay
after consulting Dethan's holograph thesis.
The indisputable introductions to the general questions on aristocratic behavior are referred to in my essay, but I wish to note that Yves-Marie Bercé's Histoire des Croquants (Geneva/Paris: Droz, 1974), two vols., and Arlette Jouanna's L'idée de race en France au XVIe siècle (Montpellier: Université Paul Valery, 1981), marked the first great refinements in writings on the subject, as it emerged from the Boris Porchnev-Roland Mousnier debate. Bercé cites Montrésor's Mémoires à propos of how much provincial nobles in the South West detested Richelieu in 1636. (I, p. 395).
2. There is a rich literature on the council, but for our purposes the most illuminating is Madeleine Bertaud, "Le Conseiller du Prince d'après les Mémoires de Richelieu," in N. Hepp and J. Hennequin, eds., Les valeurs chez les mémorialistes du XVIIe siècle avant la Fronde, Colloque de Strasbourg, no. 22 (Paris: Klincksieck, 1979), pp. 111-129.
3. Dethan, La vie, p. 337.
4. Dethan, La vie, pp. 121f.
5. Arlette Jouanna, Devoir de révolte, p. 441, n. 44.
6. Lasserré, Mémoires, Nouvelle collection des Mémoires, ed by Michaud and Poujoulat (Paris: Fechoz and Letouzez, 1881), XXIII, p. 596.
7. Dethan, Vie de Gaston d'Orléans, chap. 6.
8. Montrésor, Mémoires, p. 197.
9. Is it accidental that the words "tyrant" and "tyranny" do not appear in the Index of W.F. Church's Richelieu and Reason of State (Princeton: Princeton U.P., 1972)? I doubt it. Of the literature on tyranny, J. Truchet comes closest to the persisting mental framework about it in Gaston's household: "La Tyrannie de Garnier à Racine," in Noémi Hepp and Madeleine Bertaud, eds., Colloque de Strasbourg, no. 24 (Paris: Klincksieck, 1985), pp. 257-264; and more generally, Roland Mousnier, Assassinat de Henri IV (Paris: Gallimard, 1964).
10. Montrésor, Mémoires, p. 202.
11. Montrésor, Mémoires, p. 202.
12. Montrésor, Mémoires, p. 202.
13. Montrésor, Mémoires, p. 202.
14. Montrésor, Mémoires, p. 203.
15. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 205.
16. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 246.
17. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 246.
18. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 247.
19. Madeline Lazard, "Entre Mémoires et autobiographie: Brantôme," in Le Genre des mémoires, ed. ADIREL, Colloques de Strasbourg, 1994 (Paris: Klincksieck, 1995), p. 278.
20. Montpensier, Mémoires, I, p. 115.
21. Montpensier, Mémoires, I, p. 119.
22. Noémi Hepp, "Considérations morales et politiques autour d'H. de Montmorency," in K. Cameron and E. Woodrough, eds., Ethics and Politics in Seventeenth-Century France (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1996), pp. 83-91.
23. Montrésor, Mémoires, p. 273.
24. Adolph Chéruel, Histoire de France pendant la Minorité de Louis XIV (Paris: Hachette, 1879), I, p. 118; Victor Cousin, Madame de Chevreuse (Paris: Perrin, 1886), p. 298.
25. Montrésor, Mémoires, p. 232.
26. Montrésor, Mémoires, p. 281.
27. Montrésor, Mémoires, p. 199.
28. Montrésor, Mémoires, p. 202.
29. Montrésor, Mémoires, p. 202.
30. Montrésor, Mémoires, p. 203.
31. Yves-Marie Bercé, Histoire des Croquants, pp. 119-139.
32. Montrésor, Mémoires, p. 204.
33. Montrésor, Mémoires, p. 213.
34. Georges Dethan, Mazarin et ses amis (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1968), learnedly brilliant on clientage and friendship.
35. Montrésor, Mémoires, p. 213.
36. Montrésor, Mémoires, p. 211.
37. Montrésor, Mémoires, p. 211.
38. Montrésor, Mémoires, p. 221.
39. Montrésor, Mémoires, p. 233.
40. Montrésor, Mémoires, p. 233.
41. Dethan, Vie de Gaston d'Orléans, p. 168.
42. Montrésor, Mémoires, p. 208.