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 III: Goulas on Gaston's Intentions
by Orest Ranum
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No summary of a historical person's views can convey the wealth of possible meanings in a historical and original text. I am an Atticist at heart, and by that I mean that reading the original text alone is infinitely more meaningful than any interpretation or summary of it.(1)
Noémi Hepp does not propose a lengthy portrait of Montrésor, who had, she says, "mené une vie d'opposant congénital, les cibles de son hostilité ayant été successivement Richelieu et Mazarin."(2) As employed in this context, "congenital" is an updated version of the it-is-his-nature argument that Montrésor proposed about Gaston.
Hepp offers a lengthy and highly favorable portrait of Nicolas Goulas, author of the Deffense:
On y verra d'abord la vivacité de son caractère, la vigueur avec laquelle il témoigne de son loyalisme à l'égard du cousin qu'il estime calomnié et, davantage encore, à l'égard de son maître. Il y a de la chaleur et de la générosité, nulle avarice dans les manifestations qu'il donne de son admiration et de sa reconnaissance envers l'un et l'autre. On n'y verra pas moins l'intelligence politique à l'oeuvre dans bien des pages et la culture littéraire qui, concurremment à la vie de cour, a nourri cette intelligence: de Salluste à Tacite, de Plutarque à Machiavel, l'auteur de ces pages circule comme chez lui. On notera aussi, sans qu'il s'agisse seulement de politique, l'acuité du regard critique qui'il porte tant sur les hommes et leur comportement que sur les livres. Bref, dans le caractère et dans l'esprit, la recherche d'une parfaite honnêteté et d'une parfaite justesse.(3)
Nicolas Goulas begins by addressing a person who has lent him Montrésor's Mémoires. He admits that it would not have occurred to him to return to thinking about those years of service in the household of Gaston d'Orléans; but Montrésor "[traite] si mal les personnes qui m'ont esté les plus cheres et dont j'ay tant receu de marques d'une sincere et pure amitié" (194) that he must reply, in order to "détromper ls gens." He then confesses that he is going to write against Montrésor, who is a friend.
Goulas feels "pushed" to do so: he is "pouss[é] par le devoir de Chrestien et d'homme de bien de rendre temoignage à la verité et decouvrir l'escume et le venin de la calomnie ...," a remark followed by questioning whether he has the talent to do what he is setting out to do. He states that he does not lack the talent to help a friend and guaranty the innocent. "Foam" and "venim" are the first words he uses to characterize Montrésor's Mémoires. There will be many other words like these. And throughout, Goulas will have in mind the friendship that he had, and in some unspecified way still has, with Montrésor. Goulas does not offer an extended "philosophy" of friendship, but it becomes clear that he considers it a relation that cannot really be broken; so, as we shall learn, Montrésor becomes someone else as a result of his obsessive opposition to Richelieu. Thus ― in what amounts to an account of how Montrésor betrayed a friend ― friendship, and the breaking of that friendship as a result of his political frenzy, almost determines irony, rather than satire, as the style. In the vivid accounts of scenes where Montrésor is speaking to Gaston in the ruelle, Goulas uses the words prosnes and preches, not conseil or avis, implying the style and tone of a zealous preacher. Goulas notes how Gaston interrupts Montrésor by asking Goulas to bring him a book. On another occasion, three courtiers come in at a moment that is inconvenient for Montrésor; Goulas lets us infer that Montrésor gets his message across to Gaston. At one point, with obvious satisfaction Goulas notes that the prince had asked Montrésor to keep by him all night, but Montrésor left, presumably for his own bed. Gaston duly noted that fact the next morning. This score-keeping about attentiveness is characteristic of the circles around les grands, but only rarely is the evidence, albeit biased, so explicit.
According to Goulas, Gaston considered Montrésor "comme de braves gentilz hommes, gens de coeur et bien intentionez, mais ilz ne voyoient point d'experience de grandes affaires ...."(4)
In addition to the ironic use of words such as ministre, to describe how Montrésor claims to counsel Gaston, there are phrases about the differences between what is said and what is thought. Goulas very probably knew about the debate over dissimulation that had been running through both serious works on political ethics (Machiavelli, Bodin, Lipsius, and Naudé), but also knew it was a charge that could be made as invective in a pamphlet. Instead, as we shall explore, it is Montrésor's explicit, obsessive pressure on Gaston to reject negotiating with his royal brother, in favor of plotting to kill Richelieu and leaving the realm to join Soissons in rebellion in Sedan that Goulas opposed.
In reference to Gaston, Goulas remarks: "Mais il parloit au plus loin de sa pensée" (227). In another instance, when Fiesque does not really know whether to go to Sedan, as ordered, Goulas writes: "... leur disoit d'une façon et pensoit de l'autre?"(5); and when faced squarely with the decision about whether to go through with the plot to kill Richelieu, Gaston says only some "paroles confuses."(6) While the prince is not the only one with play between thought and language, it is he who is most often reported as having this characteristic; and in the instance involving Fiesque, noted above, again it was Gaston who was most frequently observed as not perhaps saying what he thinks.
Studied vagueness thus comes in, in stark contrast with strident, forceful, obsessive invective by Montrésor, the "ministre" who tries to convince Gaston to go deeper into rebellion. Goulas makes clear his criticism of Montrésor as a writer, all the while keeping up a denigrating vocabulary to describe both the manner and the message. "Fadaises" and "galimatias" are words that pepper Goulas's text, but he goes deeper, to describe "son lasche et honteux traffic? Qui n'a pas sceu son ordure et son infamie?"(7) Montrésor has "trempé sa plume dans le mensonge,"(8) and "sa vanité lui preste des hyperboles durant toute cette narration," in order to "eschauffer son maistre."(9) Montrésor's speech is made of "emportemens, saillies, et injures"(10) so much so that he cannot be understood, and may himself not have understood. His speech becomes "merveilleux,"(11) the speech of an "excité." There are pages of grammatical, stylistic, and factual criticisms of Montrésor's text.
Humanists in the early-modern centuries cherished the metaphores about honorable action, not only with the sword but also with the pen. Lower in rank than Montrésor "mais non sans naissance,"(12) Goulas slashes and cuts Montrésor's prose with his pen and his un-pedantic learning. He cannot keep himself from showing his mastery of a more learned politics, to undermine Montrésor's. "You should have done it and not told me about it," which is the venerable retort of the master politician whom a subordinate has just been told of an unethical option that would have strengthened the politician's power; but the subordinate had carried out the option. Instead of stating the point in simple terms, Goulas remembers Pompey's missed opportunity to capture Augustus and Lepidus, who had come alone in a small boat but were allowed to escape.(13)
Goulas does, of course, understand Montrésor, and he continues by pointing out the contradictions and inconsistencies in what the "minister" says. At this point, 1636-1637, Gaston is defending his marriage with a Lorraine princess, while Montrésor and his cousin, Saint-Ibar, are trying to convince the prince to, as Goulas puts it, put Aiguillon, Richelieu's niece, in Gaston's bed! This proposal was certainly contradictory, from the viewpoint of consistency in the message given to the French public by Gaston's letters, which stated that the Lorraine marriage was in fact legitimate. Montrésor and Saint-Ibar knew of Richelieu's ambition to marry his nieces into the royal family, which did in fact happen with the Condé/Maillé-Brezé marriage in 1641. It could be supposed that Richelieu would assure the king's approval for such a marriage, and that an immense dowry, an office, and a duchy or two, might be added in the bargain. Goulas no doubt knew about this hypothetical marriage proposal; but he chose to emphasize the contradiction between it and Gaston's stated public aims, which were to have his marriage with the Lorraine princess declared lawful. The Aiguillon marriage plan was that of an excité; it was a mésalliance.
Other contradictions involve whether or not Gaston gave his word to join in rebellion with Soissons, and to leave the realm by going to Sedan; but here Goulas admits to being on shaky ground, because he does not know exactly what the prince has said. But all possible contradictions and assertions need not be explored here, in order to grasp the overall cumulative aim in Goulas's Deffense.
While these are not the formal portraits of the sort found in fiction and history and studied by J. Plantié,(14) Goulas does provide character sketches of the major personalities in Gaston's immediate household. In Montrésor's Mémoires, Gaston himself is portrayed as incapable of carrying out lofty plans (grands desseins) that have been proposed by someone else, or by himself, because he does not possess a génie élevé.(15) Goulas portrays him as someone who is "guay et enjoué," and who has an "esprit souple et complaisant." By contrast, Montrésor, according to Gaston, "estoit d'une piece," always choosing "le parti de la violence." For Goulas, Gaston was "plein de bonté, fort irresolu, et attendoit toujours beaucoup du benefice du temps."(16) While Goulas does not describe Montrésor's nature, he brings out the differences between the irresolute prince's character and Montrésor's consistent emphasis or advice to rebel and to reject the terms of accommodation offered by Louis XIII and Richelieu:
[Montrésor] estoit tres severe et tres serieux et son maistre guai et enjoué, l'esprit en estoit d'une piece et S.A.R. [Gaston] avoit l'esprit soupple et complaisant. M. de Montrésor prenoit tous jours le parti de la violence, portoit tout à l'extresme, ne cognoissoit point les voyes moyennes et Monsieur estoit plein de bonté, for irrésolu, et attendoit tousjours beaucoup de benefice du tems comme on parle en Italie, enfin c'estoient le feu et l'eau, deux opposez qui n'estoient pas pour compater ensemble, et s'approcher sans desgoust.(17)
More generally, "Monsieur, comme tous les autres princes, ou pour mieux parler tous les hommes, estoit fort jaloux de ses interestz et extremement curieux, et affin d'estre averti de ce qui se passoit chez lui, et de ce qui se disoit ... [et] mettoit mal ensemble ses principaux serviteurs et fomentait la division," a maxim, says Goulas, that Gaston learned from his father.(18) Gaston was born in 1608; his father was assassinated late in 1610. There certainly was an oral tradition about Henry IV's relations with his householders and councilors that Gaston could have picked up. But that is essentially what a maxim is, a principle that is timeless, irrespective of whether it is specifically associated with someone at a specific time. Montrésor frequently expresses frustration at indecision and delay. For him, the failed assassination attempt was an occasion that had been missed. For Gaston, delay, and the continual shifting of court intrigue, might provide opportunities.
In addition to contrasting Montrésor's traits and Gaston's, Goulas emphasizes the former's vanity(19) and his self-enhancement, that is, his tendency to se prévaloir and to denigrate others.(20) Goulas claims that Montrésor thought that Richelieu had a médiocre esprit. At no point does Goulas suggest that he perceives Montrésor as a hero. In rejoinder to Montrésor's hammering about being un gentilhomme d'honneur, in the Deffense, Goulas says: "Le véritable honneur est de ne pas ruiner sa patrie" (p. 37). Not a few of Richelieu's critics declined to oppose him, owing to the coherence and apparent success of his foreign policy. This patriotism could extend to a questioning of the claims to leadership grounded on claims of birth, the very claim in Montrésor's notion of honor.
La Rivière, d'Elbène, Chaudebonne, and Condren (Gaston's confessor) are also portrayed, but the most developed characterization is that of Saint-Ibar, Montrésor's (and Retz's) cousin, a fellow high-minded plotter whom Montrésor praises as being greater than Caesar and Alexander.(21) According to Goulas, Saint-Ibar holds himself in too high esteem; but despite his drinking, he has a "triste figure," according to Gaston.(22) The prince's cutting observation set off a flurry among those around him, as both Saint-Ibar and Montrésor feared losing favor. As someone linked to the court, it would be Saint-Ibar who revealed the plot to rebel with Soissons; but the leak does not seem to have altered Gaston's outlook, though it very probably made Montrésor more intense and strident in his attempts to convince Gaston to join Soissons in revolt in Sedan. It also helps account for Gaston's extreme nervousness (frayeur) in the weeks that followed.
After a particularly explosive confrontation, in a room not far from Gaston, Léonard Goulas feared he would be assassinated by Montrésor and Saint-Ibar; but the prince declined to approve, and a life was spared.(23)
Stepping back, it is possible to discern two quite specific cliques in Gaston's household, with Montrésor and Saint-Ibar favoring a policy of revolt, and Chaudebonne, Léonard Goulas, and undoubtedly our author, Nicolas Goulas, in the camp of accommodation. D'Espinay ― who despite Montrésor's claims to that honor was Gaston's most confidential householder ― seems to stay somewhat distant from the fray, as does La Rivière. Once the court knows about the plot, Chavigny arrived and, along with d'Espinay, pressed Gaston to admit what had been afoot. In the end, Goulas asserts that, all along, Gaston had intended to accept the 400,000 livres and the "places de sécurité" offered by his brother, and that he had never intended to go deeper into rebellion by leaving the realm to join in a conspiracy with Soissons. In other words, Gaston had led on the "minister" and his cousin. In effect, he had duped them and had not sought to include them in the "accommodement." Indeed, Gaston left them without funds and subject to arrest, trial, and execution for treason. Exile in England was Montrésor's only recourse, but he would return and plot again and again against Richelieu and his successor. Was Goulas correct? Had Gaston only deceived Montrésor? If he had remained quietly absorbed in the building Mansart was constructing for him at Blois, or in his collection of "velins" (that is, flowers painted on velum), the case for Goulas's views would be strong; but of course, Gaston would become deeply engaged in the Cinq-Mars affair, which broke in the summer of 1642. Again, a plot to assassinate (the dying) Richelieu and to accept Spanish gold to further the cause of peace, would suggest that at some point Gaston had in fact toyed with a joint conspiracy with Soissons from Sedan four years earlier.
As a writer, Goulas enjoys peppering his text with references and parallels to persons and incidents from Roman history or from the Bible, with allusions to Montrésor's purported Stoicism, and with metaphors that are quite obvious, not recherchés. Having noted that some heroes become men and some men become heroes, he refers to the hunger that makes parrots and magpies talk,(24) anent the confusion over whether it had been Mazarin or the Duc de Joyeuse who had assigned an abbey to Montrésor. Another example is fire and water, to illustrate how Gaston's and Montrésor's temperaments differed.(25) Finally Goulas remarks about how the ice thickened only half way, a reference to Montrésor's unwillingness, after returning from Guyenne, to have friends who did not think the way he did.(26)
While exiled in England, and "sans beaucoup de moyen de subsister, l'on assure qu'il se repentist comme Brutus d'avoir inutilement servi la vertu, et se promit, revenant en France, de se corriger de sa passion."(27) Goulas does not seem to think that a parallel with so illustrious a plotter and assassin as Brutus might elevate Montrésor's actions in the minds of readers who viewed Caesar's murder as an act of heroic vertu. Machiavelli came to Goulas's mind several times, as he wrote, but always for the congruence of Montrésor's actions and the immoral maxims of Machiavelli's Prince, not with the classical Republicanism of the Discourses.
In what reads as a peroration, Goulas evokes his earlier friendship with Montrésor and alludes to Saint-Ibar and how "cette présomption malheureuse, cette enflure, cet orgueil, ce génie de Saint-Ibar ne lui ait attiré la colere du Ciel."(28)
God opposes "les superbes" and raises up the humble. Take Nebuchadnezzar, king of Bablylon, who was seen eating grass along with oxen! Goulas says that, in "l'histoire Sainte et profane," there are many other examples of persons brought down, and he implies that this might well have happened to someone who thought he could "conduire la fortune d'un fils de France" and who "voyoit si petit le Cardinal de Richelieu."(29)
The references to Stoicism are more difficult to interpret, presumably because they too are ironic. There are three:
1) Montrésor has not always behaved according to the "laws of honor": "néamoins il passa de la sorte et je fus obligé de conclure que le stoïque s'étoit mitigé. Et ... qu'il n'ignoroit pas les maximes du fameux secretaire de la republique de Florence."(30)
2) About Montrésor: "Qui n'a pas rougi pour lui qui avoit perdu toutte honte et qui d'un visage severe et stoique se prostituoit à la faveur, criant probité, generosité, fidelité, preud'hommie?"(31)
3) "Il me semble, n'en deplaise à la preudhommie de M. de Montresor, q'un stoique de son poids, avant que de taxer de trahizon des personnes de merite ..."(32)
Occurring within less than eight manuscript pages, the references to Montrésor's alleged stoicism suggest that this moral ideal is held up in order to list the shortcomings, that are the opposite of stoicism. Here the contrast between what is said and what is done is ethical and not, as previously described, an informal dissimulation behind what is said and what is thought. And just the opposite of what Montrésor has done, is an informal, applied distillation of Stoic ethics.
In the previous, quite typical references to Machiavelli, already noted, it is also evident that his is also the opposite of Stoic ethics. In one instance, however, Goulas makes a specific parallel to what he refers to as the capitolo dele congiure, the necessity (and difficulty) of secrecy in conjurations (a collective swearing to carry out an action) from Book III, 6, of the Discourses. Goulas describes how the plot to assassinate Richelieu was leaked by yet another of Saint-Ibar's cousins, thereby, to no little pleasure for the writer, confirming Machiavelli's maxim that secrecy is very difficult to maintain in conjurations. In the heat of drafting this Deffense, Goulas apparently would recall a precise thought that took the form of a little phrase, as is the case here. He does not weigh down his text with lengthy quotations from, say, Seneca or Machiavelli; instead, he relies on his reader to elaborate upon the parallel, or reflect on it. For a courtier whose intellect has prompted him to read generally, this is a display of reading, if not of learning ― perhaps not solely for self-edification, but in an attempt to understand court politics in more general historical terms.
Not that it is the public aspect of Stoic thought that engages Goulas about Montrésor. The personal pursuit of ataxia, or freedom from emotional upset, was far from characteristic of Montrésor's behavior during the time he was "minister" to Gaston. His "according to nature" argument about Gaston has Stoic or neo-Stoic resonances.(33)
Before concluding this section, let us explore Goulas's
understanding of Gaston, to see if it sheds light on the general history
of the history of intentionality. Louis XIII is simply "le roi" in
Goulas's text, and there is no attempt to explore his character or his
motives in keeping Richelieu. The latter is seen as attempting to "gagner"
Gaston away from his rebellion over the Lorraine marriage; and it is
suggested that the army command granted to Gaston in 1636 resulted from
the Cardinal's effort to split Gaston and Soissons! In the end, Goulas
sees Gaston as a prudent prince who prefers pensions and places de
sureté to rebellion; but absent the threat of rebellion, his kingly
brother would never have made such generous concessions to recover his
brother's good will.
Montrésor claims to have been betrayed by Gaston, but Goulas concludes that he cannot have it both ways, by claiming to have the prince's confidence yet asserting that he, Montrésor, has been betrayed. Digging deeper, Goulas generalizes about princes in general: court life is like the hunt; princes learn to be served, not from affection but from interest, and they "succoient cette creance avec le lait et que c'est la premiere leçon qu'ilz apprennent de leurs gouverneurs, lesquels taschent de les mettre en deffiance de tout le monde."(34)
By the 1660s, when Goulas was writing, the word intérêt had ceased to be the jargon it had been a generation earlier, when the Duc de Rohan wrote his De l'intérêt des Princes.(35) Goulas does not refer to Rohan in the Deffense, nor does he oppose honor and interest, as Montrésor often does. The latter's negative almost immoral sense is far from intérêt as Rohan uses the word. Goulas does not give intérêt a negative connotation; thus he approaches the meaning that Rohan made into an analytical concept. When Montrésor accepts the offer of an abbey, Goulas takes no small pleasure in pointing out that this is a contradiction for an homme d'honneur. Montrésor is, and always will be beholden to the person or persons who intervened on his behalf to obtain an abbey (Joyeuse? Mazarin?), a less stoic status indicative that interest, not honor, is at work.(36)
Goulas seems content with asserting that Gaston acts out of interest. He seems not to wish to seek other interpretations or to dig further into Gaston's psyche. Montrésor describes actions founded on interest as degrading and dishonorable. By contrast, Goulas takes pleasure in remarking that Montrésor had accepted the offer of an abbey, certainly an action inconsistent with his claims to remain at liberty: accepting a benefice made him beholden to the person or persons who had proposed it to them. Goulas seems unable to ask whether Gaston accurately perceived his interest. He leaves it to his reader to infer that he, too, had served out of interest for 33 years. There is not the slightest expression of friendship or affection for Gaston.
Goulas's assertion that the prince rebelled out of "interest" takes on more importance when we recall his mother's behavior during the rebellions that she led in the spring of 1619 and the summer of 1620. In both cases, the King pardoned her and her clients, and he supplied troops and cash, and canceled debts! Gaston's rebellions take on more significance when Goulas's insight and Marie's rebellions are kept in mind. Sharon Kettering's analyses of the role that Luynes played as principal councilor to Louis, clarifies how Marie would do battle with anyone whom the King took on as principal councilor.(37)
* * *
Though written in a genre different from the mémoires (the Deffense is in many ways a factum), Goulas's account of Montrésor's career in Gaston's household complements what Montrésor says in his Mémoires. Having noted that he himself is on closer terms with Gaston, Goulas continues by characterizing all the major relations among the prince, his householders, and the court. Though (both in or near Brussels) Gaston is brouillé with his disgraced mother, who is doing everything she can to bring about Puylaurens's disgrace and his consequent fall from his privileged position of confident to Gaston. Why? Because Puylaurens is seeking an accommodement with the King and Richelieu. And, of course, she does not wish to have her own advice to her elder son be filtered through Puylaurens.
Another householder, Guy d'Elbene, is disgraced just when Montrésor is gaining Gaston's confidence. Goulas describes Montrésor's rise thusly:
M. de Montrésor alors commença d'entrer assez avant dans la confiance de Monseigneur, et crut l'occasion fort belle pour faire chasser M. d'Elbène. Il luy en parle, il le presse, il le tourmente, enfin il le persuade, et la résolution fut prise que, dès qu'il se présenteroit au voyage de Blois, où l'on alloit, il auroit le coup. M. Goulas en sut quelque chose et se tint à Paris.(38)
Like Puylaurens (and many other over the decades), d'Elbène favored an accommodement with the King and the Cardinal. Before the plot with Soissons could be set in place, opponents to it had to be disgraced or rendered inert.
By lying low or keeping out of the way, Goulas survived; but during and after the elaborate and confrontational session over drafting the terms of the accommodement, he would feel his life was in danger as a result of the clash with Montrésor over the "et" and the "ou," that is a settlement involving the acceptance of Gaston's marriage to a Lorraine princess "and/or" a fortified town presumably close to the frontier.
Gaston asked that the draft of the letter be read, and then he sought the opinions of those present. After a period of silence, he ordered Montrésor to say what he thought. Lashing out at "every line and comma" of the text, Montrésor accused Léonard Goulas of betraying his master by including only the marriage, not the fortified town, in the letter addressed to Louis XIII. This charge of betrayal unleashed the following heated response to Montrésor, in everyone's presence:
... M. [Léonard] Goulas, étonné de son audace, et blessé mesme au dernier point de ce qu'il avoit dit qu'il trompoit son maistre, luy repartit brusquement que c'étoit luy qui s'efforçoit de le tromper et de le perdre, le voulant l'embarquer sur les chimères à ruiner le royaume; qu'il avoit trop d'intérest de ne le pas faire, étant présomptif héritier de la couronne ....(39)
Gaston went to Goulas's room after the storm and assured him of his support. The letter contained no reference to a fortified town as a condition for returning to the King's good graces. This was a defeat for Montrésor, and it undermined the possibilities that Gaston would revolt, in alliance with Soissons.
With Puylaurens and d'Elbène out of the prince's household, "le parti de la violence" led by Montrésor (it included Saint-Ibar, Hyppolite de Béthune, and Fontrailles), and the explosion over negotiating an accommodement, ended in what Montrésor could only consider as defeat. Yet the social frame of the relationship ― the princely household ― would continue: one member would attempt to dominate Gaston's political-courtly actions, a counciliar role that Montrésor accused Richelieu of playing with the King. All the verbal pressuring and confrontations need not be listed here, but there is one more initiative on Montrésor's part that ought to be noted, and eventually studied in greater depth.
Prior to the failed assassination attempt on Richelieu in October 1636, an anonymous "petit écrit" was redacted regarding the "et" and the "ou" used in the accommodement ― which Georges Dethan believes was drawn up by Montrésor. It was signed: "Le Fidèle." Goulas refers to it in the Deffense(40) and remarks on "l'étrange paresse dans laquelle vous laissez endormir vostre esprit."(41) The resort to writing when speaking, cajoling, and verbally coercing are proving unconvincing, probably accounts for why this "petit écrit" that has survived (but has never been edited) in the Archives des Affaires Etrangères, séries France, vol. 826, fols. 254-258. Digny is given as the location: it is a small town some 25 kilometers southwest of Dreux. Writing that functions as a desperate effort, once speech has failed to bring about the desired action, is a subject far too big to be explored here; but this would seem to be an interesting example. Goulas mentions the "petit écrit" in order to refute Montrésor's charge that it had been written by Léonard Goulas,(42) and he seems to want his reader to infer that it was by Montrésor himself!
* * *
In Condé in Context, Mark Bannister has empirically worked out the shifts in heroic exemplarity in the prince's career as a result of the panegyrical impulses that developed about the Sun King and that veiled the glory of the victor of Rocroi. His introductory chapter on the heroic thought and images made manifest and historical by Condé's military career, does not shed light on Montrésor's possible claims to heroism as a would-be assassin. Once Bannister confronts thinking that is mythical, he says that is what it is, and he goes on. The French today can still refer to thought, actions, and especially very difficult choices, as being "Cornélien." The cultural and social constructs that Corneille develops in his plays have forms of government, binaries such as Fortune and Providence, and benefits and gratitude; but I shall leave it to others to research whether honor versus interest is the leitmotif in any one of them. Montrésor is characterized by an intensity of engagement as a councilor to the prince, to the point that his self-control in the prince's presence becomes uncertain. After all these centuries, emotional intensity, intensity of speech, and a kind of pursuit with argument until, in order to have silence, the prince appears to agree with him, may be sensed when reading Montrésor. Nicolas Goulas's account of these exchanges between the prince and his "minister" confirm this.
In the Essays, I, 1, Montaigne characterizes a number of tense confrontations, in some instances between individuals, and in others between an individual and what may be a large group. The examples are generally set in a military environment, but not in battle. When a victorious emperor authorizes the gentils-femmes of the defeated to leave, "d'un coeur magnanime" they picked up their husbands and left, to the "si grand plaisir à voir la gentillesse de leur courage." On another occasion, Pompeius pardons an entire city out of consideration for the "vertu et magnanimité" of one citizen, Zeno. Not virtue alone, but virtue with magnanimity; and it is this ethical construct that characterizes Corneille's heros and which Marc Fumaroli has so learnedly explored.(43) Very generally speaking, the Cornélien hero, as studied by scholars, may have different personality traits, but a single model usually is articulated in them. In Fumaroli's study of magnanimity, there are two models; and for Lucan one model is fundamentally contemplative, and for the stoic it is incarnated in ataraxia, while the other model is an offensive energy that takes scruples lightly. In the Pharsalia, the first is exemplified by Pompey, and the second by Caesar. This presentation is much too brief for what is a complex, evolving, moral-psychological construct; but it suggests that Montrésor's thought and his advice to Gaston do not derive from magnanimity. The role or office of councilor, advisor, confident, or favorite lacked the potential for demonstrating a grande âme. Prudence, not virtue, is its positive moral range.
In Corneille's tragedies there are favorites, councilors, and ministers, and they do not begin with or develop magnanimity. This is not to say that, following Montaigne, a magnanimous action may not be taken by someone who is truly magnanimous, for example, the wives who carried off their defeated husbands.
Neither Maxime nor Cinna are councilors to Augustus; they are potential companions in arms and friends. Sévère in Polyeucte is a favorite, but he does not advise or interact about politics with Décie, nor with the opportunistic and morally ambiguous Félix, nor with the latter's confident, Albin. More intriguing, in La Mort de Pompée, is the role played by Photin, Cleopatra and Ptolemy's principal councilor in Egypt. He has vision, analytical powers that enable him to give authoritative advice about the gravest matters of dynasty and state. In his speeches there is near chicanery, rather than prudence; they almost have the air of a tirade:
Je sais mieux conformer les remèdes au mal:
Justifions sur lui la mort de son rival;
Et notre main alors également trempée
Et du sang de César et du sang de Pompée,
Rome, sans leur donner de titres différents,
Se croira par vous seul libre de deux tyrans. (IV, 1)
Photin has bees in his bonnet. He allows logic to prevail over caution and the unknown. Montrésor might well have been too blind to see himself in Photin; but with his usual intelligence, sustained by unusual lassitude and inaction, Gaston might just have seen his "minister" in this mock-heroic role. The play was dedicated to a principal minister, Cardinal Mazarin! It came out in 1644. In his insightful reading of La Mort de Pompée, David Clark does not comment on Photin's role. He remarks that Pompey, not Photin "is truly the hero of time gone."(44) Fumaroli (after Lucan) proposes that Pompey incarnated the more contemplative magnanimity, at once republican and controlled, whereas Caesar was endowed with the offensive, convention-breaking magnanimous and virtuous hero on the way to becoming the first Roman god-princeps.
But to return to our question. The answer must be: neither Photin nor Montrésor were heroes!
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Notes
1. Marc Fumaroli, L'Age d'or de l'éloquence (Geneva: Droz, 1980), passim.
2. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 188.
3. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 186.
4. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 215.
5. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 232.
6. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 240.
7. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 197.
8. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 201.
9. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 210.
10. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 229.
11. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 232.
12. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 229.
13. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 221: Hepp notes that the episode is from Plutarch's Life of Antony.
14. Jacqueline Plantié, La Mode du portrait littéraire en France (1641-1681) (Paris: Champion, 1994), passim.
15. Montrésor, Mémoires, p. 242.
16. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 198.
17. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 198.
18. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 198.
19. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 198.
20. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 225.
21. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 217.
22. N. Goulas, Deffense, 218.
23. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 230.
24. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 197. Goulas refers to Montrésor with contempt, referring to him as "nostre héro," p. 196.
25. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 198.
26. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 235.
27. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 196.
28. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 256.
29. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 257.
30. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 195.
31. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 197.
32. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 201. See D. Crouzet's very cogent remarks on politics and neo-Stoicism in Les Guerriers de Dieu (Paris: Champs Vallon, 1990), II, pp. 556-558.
33. M. Morford, Stoics and Neo-Stoics: Rubens and the Circle of Lipsius (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 215.
34. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 205.
35. Henri, duc de Rohan, De l'Intérêt des Princes (first edition, Paris, 1638), ed. by C. Lazzeri (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1995). The Introduction is one of the finest studies of the history of a word-concept that I know.
36. At the time, many interpreted Montrésor's acceptance of the revenues from an abbey as in profound contradiction with his persona as a gentilhomme d'honneur, and historians have loved to comment on it ever since. More specific facts about Montrésor's pensions are in M. Laurain-Portemer, Etudes Mazarines (Paris: Laget, 1997), pp. 857, 960.
37. Sharon Kettering, Power and Reputation at the Court of Louis XIII (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 2008), pp. 143-157.
38. N. Goulas, Mémoires, I, p. 286.
39. N. Goulas, Mémoires, I, p. 307.
40. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 229.
41. Dethan, La Vie de Gaston d'Orléans, p. 169, April 6, 1636.
42. N. Goulas, Deffense, p. 229.
43. Marc Fumaroli, "L'Héroisme cornélien et l'idéale de la Magnanimité," in Héroïsme et Création littéraire, colloque de Strasbourg (Paris: Klincksieck, 1974), pp. 53-76. It is possible to attain a certain sublime in scholarship. The term "honor" is juxtaposed with obedience to the laws of the state against dueling; but magnanimity is not mentioned in this context (Essays, I, 23). Honor and nobility are paired, perhaps more social than magnanimity, which describes a presence, an action perceived by the beholder.
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