FROM THE CRUSADES TO THE
FRENCH REVOLUTION

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LA TREMOILLE FAMILY

WINIFRED STEPHENS

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BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

1914

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PREFACE

Without exaggeration it may be said that in the
history of France few families, if any, have played
a more persistently prominent part than the house of
La Tremoille.-^ For five centuries, from the Crusades to
the Revolution, the La Tremoille stock has never failed
to produce men of mark, and women too. Whether
for good or for evil La Tremoilles have stamped their
personalities on those great movements which have
built up modern France : on the Crusades, on the
Hundred Years War, on the Italian campaigns, on the
religious strife which followed the Reformation, on the
Fronde, and, during the Revolution, on the death struggle
of that ancien regime with which they had been so
intimately associated.

Outside France, too, in the affairs of England and of

The Author regrets the oversight by which there was
omitted from the preface the expression of her gratitude
to the late M. Honors Champion and M. Edouard
Champion for many kind services rendered to her during
the progress of this book, and for their permission to
reproduce certain illustrations in volumep published by
them.

vi PREFACE

one chapter in the history of other states. Such an
undertaking the hmits of the present volume forbid.
My readers must brook abridgment.

The persistent dominance of the La Tremoille hne the
modern eugenist will ascribe to the care of its members
always to choose their consorts from the most vigorous
famines of the day — Montmorency, Nassau, Arragon,
Stanley, Conde, Hesse Cassel, Sobieski — to mention only
a few of the influential houses to which they were aUied.
But the La Tremoilles have not always been equally
powerful. Their wealth and influence attained its zenith
towards the end of the sixteenth century, during the life-
time of Claude, the second Duke. Then with their 1,700
vassals, a larger number than were included in any other
French fief, the heads of this house were nothing more or
less than kinglets of western France. At Laval and at
Thouars, their Breton and Poitevin capitals, they kept
truly royal state. On the banks of the little river Thouet
they raised a princely pile ^ which cast into insignificance
such royal residences as Marly and Chenonceaux. Had
any La Tremoille a grievance against the Crown, which not
infrequently happened, in a very short time he could equip
and put into the field an army of several hundred men.

But, towards the middle of the following century, the
tide of their success changed and their fortunes began to
ebb. In the civil war of the Fronde, that last great struggle
of the French nobility against the centralised government
of Richelieu and Mazarin, a government intended to thwart
the aspirations of the nobles and to degrade kinglets into
courtiers. La Tremoille wealth, freely expended on the side
of the nobility, dwindled, estates grew encumbered and
their owners burdened with debt.

1 Still standing to-day and used as a prison. See illustration.

PREFACE vii

Henceforth the Dukes of La Tremoille found it
impossible to keep up the double state of a hotel in Paris
and a court in the west. They were now compelled to
choose between the prestige of a great feudal lord in the
provinces and the glamour of a grandee at court ; they
elected the latter, and they began to reside more and
more at Paris. Poitevins and Bretons came to know
them no more. Thus, on the La Tremoille estates, as
throughout the rest of France, there grew up that
disastrous system of absenteeism, which caused the feudal
yoke so to chafe the necks of its wearers that ultimately,
with one great throb of agony, they cast it off.

As long as the Dukes of La Tremoille lived amongst
their vassals, taking a personal interest in their concerns,
feudal burdens, though heavy, were bearable. At the
bidding of the Duke and Duchess living in their midst
the people of Thouars had been content to slave, to give
their labour, as well as their money, for the building of
that huge castle which still dominates their town. But
when their princes left them to return only at rare
intervals, and then without ceremony or even incognito,
when they ceased to hold in those lordly halls the annual
gatherings of their numerous vassals, when the courts of
Thouars ceased to resound beneath the armed feet of
goodly companies assembling to be led to battle by their
chief, when corvees had to be rendered and feudal dues paid
to an absent and unknown lord, then the gorges of sturdy
Bretons and Poitevins rose against the injustice of the
ancien regime ; Thouars became one of the first pro-
vincial cities to set up a Jacobite club, and soon the broad
lands of the La Tremoilles were seized by the Government
of the Revolution.

But it is important to remark that when the state took

viii PREFACE

possession of the La Tremoille property, and the Jacobins
of Thouars could range at will through the lofty halL of
the castle on the Thouet, it was only on the property of
the Duke of that day that they wreaked their vengeance.
The portraits of hia ancestors, with one exception,^ they
venerated and even carried off to their own homes in
order to save them from desecration by strangers.

While Sans-CuloUes were profaning the homes of his
ancestors, the Due de La Tremoille, Charles Bretagne,
was reduced to wandering over the face of Europe serving
in foreign armies against his republican countrymen.
His eldest brother, leading the forlorn hope of the ancien
regime in La Vendee, was taken, and by a Republican
court martial condemned to die beneath the walls of his
own castle of Laval. A few months later another brother
was guillotined at Paris.

After the Revolution turmoil had subsided, the late
Duke, Louis Charles de La Tremoille, devoted many years
to making known the history of his illustrious family.
And it is chiefly from the La Tremoille archives as pub-
Hshed by Duke Louis that the story told in this book has
been derived.

The history of these archives is in itself a romance.
When in the seventeenth century Marie de la Tour
d' Auvergne and her husband, Duke Henry de La Tremoille,
built their great chateau on the Thouet, they constructed
in one of its towers a strong room with a heavy iron door,
and here they placed the family records which had
accumulated through the ages. In the previous genera-
tion at Duke Claude's request these documents had been
classified and arranged by two eminent archivists of the
day, the brothers Scevole and Louis de Sainte-Marthe.

^ That of Marie de la Tour d'Auvergne. See post, 200.

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PREFACE

These historians composed a summary of their researches,
which, after their death, was pubHshed by their son and
nephew, Pierre Scevole de Sainte-Marthe. This,^ the
earhest known history of the La Tremoilles, appeared in
1668.

For a century and more the La Tremoille archives
rested in peace in the muniment room of Thouars. Then
the Revolution broke out and the Poitevin town became
one of the centres of the war waged in the west by the
courageous supporters of monarchy. More than once the
chateau had to stand a siege, and more than once it
narrowly escaped being burnt to the ground. But
through all these dangers, though riddled with bullets, the
iron door kept out the besiegers and the archives remained
intact.

The time came, however, when the La Tremoilles,
having emigrated, their chateau, as we have said, was
seized by the Revolution Government. Then the muni-
ment room became public property. Then the battered
iron door was left to swing on its hinges, the chests were
rifled and their contents exposed to the ravages of auto-
graph hunters, of rats and of damp, while the finest pieces
of parchment the good wives of Thouars eagerly appro-
priated to serve as covers for their jam pots. So, when
Revolution wrath had subsided and Duke Charles asked
Napoleon's Government to restore his family records, the
steward sent down to Thouars to examine them, found
the contents of two chests, such as remained of them,
strewn like so many scraps of waste paper on the floor of
the muniment room. But the papers in the four remain-
ing chests appear to have been untouched, and they con-
tained enough material for the composition of a connected

^ " Histoire G6n6alogique de la Maison de Tr6moille."

X PREFACE

family history. Some twenty years later, when in 1830
Duke Charles took for his third wife the Comtesse de
Serrant, these documents, securely packed in eighty cases,
were removed to the chateau of Serrant, where most of
them remain to this day.

Nevertheless, the true value of these records was not
rightly estimated until the middle of the last century,
when M. Paul Marchegay, archivist, of Maine-et-Loire, in
search of letters from Madame de Sevigne to a La Tre-
moille princess,^ obtained permission to examine them.
Of the letters he sought not one did M. Marchegay dis-
cover,^ but he found others equally interesting, written by
Louise de CoHgny, sister of the famous Admiral and third
wife of WiUiam the Silent, to her step-daughter, Charlotte
Brabantine, who had married Duke Claude de La Tre-
moille. These, with other valuable letters of the same
period, M. Marchegay pubHshed in three volumes.^

Following in M. Marchegay's footsteps and with his
assistance Duke Louis de La Tremoille undertook for
publication a systematic arrangement of the family
archives. In 1877, there appeared for private circulation
a fine folio, the " Chartier de Thouars," a copy of which the
Duke presented to the British Museum. Then between
1890 and 1896 he gave to the pubhc five handsome volumes
entitled " Les La Tremoille pendant cinq siecles.*'

From these and other minor publications it will be seen

1 See post, 203 et seq.

2 They were found elsewhere and inserted by M. Monmerqu6 in his
edition of Madame de Sevigne's letters.

3 " Lettres de Louise de Coligny . . . a . . . Charlotte Brabantine
de Nassau, Duchesse de La Tremoille," 1872 ; " Lettres d'Elisabeth de
Nassau, Duchesse de Bouillon, a sa soeur Charlotte Brabantine de
Nassau, Duchesse de La Tremoille," 1875 ; " Correspondance de Louise
de Coligny recueillie par P. Marchegay," 1887. See also by the same
author, " Recherches historiques sur le d^partement de La Vendue,"
1859, and " Cartulaires du Bas-Poitou," 1877.

PREFACE xi

that, despite many serious losses, there remained of the
La Tremoille documents an invaluable collection including
letters from kings and princes, correspondence between
other great historical personages and, by no means the
least interesting to English readers, the letters of that
famous Charlotte de La Tremoille, Countess of Derby,
that Lady of Lathom whom Sir Walter Scott has so
admirably depicted in " Peveril of the Peak."

For four centuries at least, from Froissart downwards,
French chronicles, memoirs and histories abound in
references to the members of this house.

The earliest biography of a La Tremoille was written
in the sixteenth century by Jean Bouchet, a Poitiers
lawyer, and a retainer of the great Count Louis de La
Tremoille.-^ In terms of extravagant adulation Bouchet
tells the story of his master's adventurous career and of
the Italian wars in which he commanded the armies of
three successive French Kings.

The most recent biography of a La Tremoille is a
volume by Edouard Barthelemy, telling the tragic story
of Charlotte de La Tremoille, Princesse de Conde, who was
accused of poisoning her huiband. Of that other and
later Charlotte, the Lady of Lathom, there are two
excellent biographies, one in EngHsh by Guizct's daughter,
Madame de Witt, and another more recent, in French, by
Leon Marlet.^ No less than four members of the family
have written their own memoirs. The letters of several
others have been published. For example, the corre-
spondence of his illustrious kinswoman, the Princesse des
Ursins, on the question of the Spanish succession, the Due

1 This life is included in Michaud and Poujoulat's collection of French
memoirs, Series I., Vol. IV.

2 A third, by Miss Rowsell, contains nothing which is not to be found
in Madame de Witt's book save several inaccuracies.

xii PREFACE

de La Tremoille has published in no less than six magnifi-
cent quarto volumes. All these sources I have con-
scientiously consulted, and detailed references to them
will be found in the following pages.

It now only remains for me to express my thanks to
those who by their kindness have facilitated the illustra-
tion of this book : to Madame la Duchesse Douairiere de
La Tremoille for her gracious permission to reproduce
pictures and portraits contained in the publications of
the late Due de La Tremoille ; to Mrs. Aubrey Le Blond,
herself a descendant of a Princesse de La Tremoille, for
generously placing her portrait album at my disposal ;
to Count Bentinck and Mr. Aldenburg Bentinck for their
permission to reproduce portraits in their possession ; to
Miss Evelyn Glover, for an excellent photograph of the
Castle at Vitre; and to Miss Dorothy McDougall for
supplying me with an interesting collection of pictures of
Poitou.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAP.

PAGE

Preface v

I. La Tremoilles in the Crusades and the English

Wars. 1040 — 1397 i

II. Georges DE La Tremoille. 1382 (?) — 1446. . 16

III. Two Loyal Servants of King Louis XI. . 42

IV. La Tremoilles in the Italian Wars . . 51
V. La Tremoilles in the Wars of Religion . 92

VI. The Lady of Lathom. 1559— 1664 . . . 122

VII. Henry Charles de La Tremoille, a Hero of

THE Fronde. 1620— 1672 .... 173

VIII. La Bonne Tarente and her Daughter, as they

APPEAR in the Letters of Mme. de S^vigne . 203

IX. "A Lieutenant of Mme. de Maintenon," La

Princesse des Ursins. 1642 (?) — 1722 . . 213

X. The Princesse de Talmond, Prince Charlie's
Egeria, and other La Tremoilles of the
Eighteenth Century . . . . •257

XI. The Family During the Revolution. 1764—1839 273

Index , 3^7

xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

TO PACE
PAGE

James Stanley, Earl of Derby, Husband of Charlotte

DE La Tr^moille (from a picture by Vandyke) , .136
Charlotte de La Tr^moille, Countess of Derby, with
HER Husband and their Daughter Catherine (from
a picture by Vandyke) . . . . . .154

Henry de La Tri^moille, Due de Thouars . .174

Henry Charles de La Tr:6moille, Prince de Tarente . 186
Marie de La Tour d'Auvergne, Duchesse de La

Tr^moille et de Thouars ..... 200

The La Tr^moille Chateau at Vitr^. . . . 204

Charlotte Am:6lie de La Tr:^moille, Princess of

Altenburg ........ 206

Count Griffenfeld ....... 208

Francois de La Tri^moille, Marquis de Noirmoustier . 214
Marie Anne de La Tr]6moille, Princesse des Ursins . 224
Madeleine de La Fayette, Duchesse de La Tr^moille,
and her Son, Armand Ren]^, Due de La Tr^moille
(from a picture attributed to fervas) .... 260

Facade of the Hotel de La Tr^moille at Paris . 274
Marie Antoinette after the King's Death (from a
portrait drawn in the Temple and presented to the Princesse
de Tarente) ........ 282

Emmanuelle de Chatillon, Princesse de Tarente . 292
Antoine Philippe, Prince de Talmond . . . 298
The Chateau of Serrant, Residence of the present

Due DE La Triemoille . . . . . .314

FROM THE CRUSADES TO THE
^FPvENCH REVOLUTION

CHAPTER I

LA TREMOILLES IN THE CRUSADES AND THE ENGLISH WARS.

1040— 1397

There is nothing to especially distinguish the small
market town of La Tremoille, in Poitou, from hundreds
of other agricultural centres scattered here and there
throughout the length and breadth of France. The little
river Benaize, on which La Tremoille stands, is spanned
by the usual solid stone bridge. From the bridge end
there rambles up aimlessly into the country-side the
usual Grand' Rue, with its side paths of irregular paving
stones and its rough cast, slate-roofed houses, many with
shop fronts, and generally of two stories, broken occa-
sionally by a low gable end or the addition of a third floor.

This is the little town which gave its name to, or
received its name from, the La Tremoilles, of whom one,
Pierre de La Tremoille, living in 1040, is the earliest
known representative. But in days yet more remote, a
lordship of La Tremoille formed part of the domain of the
Counts of Poitou, and eventually became a separate fief
held by younger members of the Count's family.

Of these early Sieurs de La Tremoille, little is known,
save that from the days of Piierre onwards, they grew
in wealth, dignity, and dominions. Later from simple
lords or seigneurs they rose to be counts, then dukes,

C.R. B

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A • :-• 't > : '..* ••: i F'mU. THE CRUSADES

then princes, always, as we have said, allying themselves
with great houses, notably in the sixteenth century with
that of Arragon, through which they assumed the title of
Princes of Taranto, and claimed a right to the crown of
Naples, enjoying at the French court for nearly loo years
privileges only accorded to foreign princes.

Down through all the ages of the family history the
La Tremoille women have ever occupied a position of
unusual honour. While the descent of the French
Monarchy was subject to the restrictions of the Salic Law,
not so the Duchy of La Tremoille, which, in the event of
the failure of male heirs,^ was held capable of descending
through the female line. La Tremoille princesses, in the
seventeenth century, attained to the highest of court
honours, that of " having the tabouret," as it was called,
which meant that from the tender age of seven a princess
of this house might in her sovereign's presence remain
proudly seated on a folding chair without arms or back,
called a Tabouret.

Of the earliest La Tremoilles we know the bare fact
that they took part in the Crusades ; that Guy L accom-
panied Godefroi de Bouillon to the Holy Land in 1096 ;
that Guy's son, Guillaume IL, went with Louis VH. on
the second Crusade, in 1147 ; and that Thibaud or
Imbaud, with his three sons, in 1248, followed St. Louis
on his disastrous African expedition. But of Thibaud
we know also that in the narrow streets of an African
town, Mansourah, whither the vanguard of the Crusaders
had been led by the rash zeal of the Comte d'Artois, the
King's brother, he and his sons, with the flower of French
chivalry, assailed by the Saracens with " arrows and
pieces of wood," fell fighting gloriously.

1 This event has never yet occurred.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 3

Not, however, before the thirteenth century is it
possible to piece together anything hke a connected
history of this house. And the first La Tremoille of whom
we possess any detailed knowledge is Guy VL whose
parents were Guy V., Grand Panetier^ of France in 1353,
and Radegonde Guenaud.^

Born about the middle of the fourteenth century,
Guy VL, on his father's death, entered into vast posses-
sions, broad lands in such different parts of the kingdom
as Poitou, Berry, Bourbonnais, Burgundy, Limousin,
Orleannais, Savoy and I'lle-de-France. This extensive
domain was further augmented by his marriage with
Marie de Sully, one of the wealthiest heiresses of her day.
It was Marie who brought her husband that great castle
of Sully on the Loire, not far from Orleans, one of the
most princely of La Tremoille residences. Despite the
renovations and additions of four centuries, in its great
central wing it still perpetuates the memory of the opulent
Madame Marie.

When still young, Sieur Guy, was already renowned as
un brilliant chevalier. It was in that desultory warfare
by which, after Cregy and Poitiers, the English gradually
lost the conquests they had won that Guy de La Tre-
moille won his spurs. In 1382, in the Cathedral of St.
Denis, from the hands of his sovereign, Charles VL, Guy
received the glorious orifiamme of Clovis and of Charle-
magne, the sacred standard of France, woven of costly
silk, called sandal, and edged about with tassels of green,
which he bore gallantly before his king into battle
with the English. Two years later Guy was appointed

* Master of the King's pantry.

2 For Guy's other children, see Anselme, " Histoire G6n6alogique et
Chronologique," IV., i8i.

B 2

4 FROM THE CRUSADES

one of the ambassadors to cross the Channel and treat of
peace with England. There so deeply did he impress
the EngHsh as a gallant knight, that two years later
still, Sir Peter Courtenay journeyed into France with no
object but to break a lance with this expert warrior.

Together Guy and his adversary tilted before the King
and his court, while the Duchess of Burgundy, wife of the
great Philip the Bold, commanded prayers to be offered
for the success of the French champion. But King
Charles, hesitating to take sides, and equally dreading the
mischance of either combatant, of his good vassal, or of
his trustful guest, after a few bouts ordered the lists to be
closed before either knight had won any vantage.

At such treatment we are not surprised to find Sir
Peter bitterly incensed. Only with rich gifts and fair
words was his anger appeased ; but even these did
not entirely content him, for on the way home he
complained bitterly of the French King's action. The
numerous heralds, who had accompanied the knight from
England, were perhaps better pleased, for they had
received between them from the King's uncle, the Duke
of Burgundy, no less a sum than 150 francs, which is more
than ten times as much in modern money. Meanwhile,
the great Duke PhiHp testified his appreciation of the
valour and prowess of his cher et feal cousin, as he called
LaTremoille, by appointing him his executor, and directing
that on his death he should be interred at the Duke's
feet in the Carthusian monastery of Champnol-les-Dijon.
Here we note the earliest evidence of that close connection
between the La Tremoilles and the Dukes of Burgundy,
which was to endure for more than a century.^

1 Some writers describe the La Tremoilles as of Burgundian origin.
It is certain that from very early times they held lands in Burgundy.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 5

Closely associated with his suzerain, Duke Philip, was
Guy de La Tremoille in that monster expedition against
England, which was one of the greatest wonders and the
most disastrous failures of the age. For like Napoleon's
expedition, this vast host, having assembled through
many months on the coast of Flanders, never even
succeeded in crossing the Channel.

" The biggest fleet that had ever been seen since the
creation of the world," 1,400 ships, hired or purchased
from well nigh every maritime power in Europe, Duke
Philip, during the summer of 1386, assembled in Flemish
harbours. Meanwhile to the camp at Arras there
flocked the flower of French chivalry, hundreds of knights,
who lavished on their accoutrement untold sums, for
which they looked to recoup themselves by booty captured
in England. Covered with silken tents from which
floated all the pomp of heraldry — lions, dragons, and
unicorns, destined to defy the leopards of England — the
camp at Arras in its magnificence anticipated the Field
of the Cloth of Gold. Accompanying the knights was a
vast host, mustering no less than 8,000 men-at-arms and
60,000 foot-soldiers ; while for the feeding of this great
multitude there was gathered from every part of France
vast store of victuals — hay, oats, wine, sacks of flour,
barrels of salt and of onions, and casks filled with yolks
of eggs.

But the crowning glory of Duke Philip's preparations
was a complete wooden town with houses, towers and
palisades, constructed in Breton forests, and intended to
be set up on British shores, where it was to form a kind of
moveable Calais for the shelter of French troops. No
less than seventy-two vessels were sent to convey this
marvellous triumph of mediaeval engineering to Flanders.

6 FROM THE CRUSADES

But now mischance began to overtake Duke Philip's scheme.
Between Flanders and Brittany, tempests beat upon the
wooden town, and shattered it to pieces. Meanwhile the
host at Arras was awaiting the coming of the King who
was to command it. But quarrels at court and jealousy
of Duke Philip were delaying the King's departure, and
the summer months were fleeting by. When at length
he arrived at Arras, the most favourable time for
crossing had passed, autumn had set in, the ruined
knights had begun to return to their mortgaged demesnes,
the vast host was dwindling ; then the equinoctial gales
began, the sea guarded Great Britain.

" And Ocean 'mid his uproar wild
Spoke safety to his island-child." ^

Thus vanished Guy de La Tremoille's first and only
opportunity of displaying his warlike prowess on English
soil.

Then for a while there was peace between France
and England. So now warriors on both sides the Channel
might together turn their arms against the Infidel. In
1389, as in St. Louis' day, it was against the African
Miscreant that the Crusade was directed. Guy de La
Tremoille, with his brother Guillaume, and his brother-
in-law Sully, was not loath, we may be sure, to follow
the Due de Bourbon, another of the King's uncles, who
led the French Crusaders.

In some of his most picturesque passages, Froissart has
described the voyage of these " Christen men " to what
he calls " the town of Afryke," the modern Almalia, very
near the site of ancient Carthage.

" The trumpets blew up at their departing," writes

1 Coleridge, " Ode on the Departing Year," quoted by Michelet, " Hist,
de France." Bk. VII., Chap. II.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 7

the historian,^ ''and it was great pleasure to behold how
they rowed abroad in the sea, which was peaceable, calm
and fair, showing herself desirous that the Christen men
should come before the strong town of Afryke. The
Christen navy was goodly to regard, and well ordered ;
and it was great beauty to see the banners and penons of
silk, with the arms and badges of the lordes and other,
waving with the wind, and shining against the sun.
Coming to the haven of Afryke, the Christen men lodged
all night there. The next morning the weather was fair
and clear, and the air in good temper, and the sun rose,
that it was pleasure to behold. Then the Christen men
began to stir and to make ready to take land. Then
trumpets and clarions began to sound in the galleys and
vessels, and made great noise. And about nine of the
clock, when the Christen men had taken a little refreshing
with drink, then were they rejoiced and lighted. And,
according as they had appointed before, they sent in first
their light Vfessels called brigandyns, well furnished with
artillery ; they entered into the haven, and after them
came the galleys and the other ships of the fleet in good
order.

"And, turning towards the land by the sea side, there
was a strong castle with high towers, and especially one
Tower which defended the sea side and the land also ;
and in this Tower was a bricoU or an engine which was not
idle, but still did cast great stones among the Christen
men's ships. And likewise in every tower of the town
on the sea-side, there were engines to cast stones."

Despite these stones which assailed them, the " Christen
men" appear to have received no great hurt in landing.
And without further let or hindrance from the Saracens,
they pitched their tents upon the shore, Guillaume de La
Tremoille's on the right of the Duke's from which floated,
his banner covered with flowers de luce, with Our Lady

1 Lord Beraer's Trans., ed. 1812, II., 499.

8 FROM THE CRUSADES

in the midst and the arms of Bourbon at her feet. Next
to Guillaume's tent came the Comte de Sully's, and then
Sire Guy's.

From the walls of Afryke " the false Saracens " had
watched the ** Christen men " disembarking, and had mar-
velled to see them approach the shore in Httle boats.
But, save for the throwing of stones, the Infidel made no
attempt to prevent their landing.

Soon, however, tidings of the enemy's descent upon
their coasts were bruited abroad in the country round
about Afryke ; and a great Saracen army came and
encamped over against the " Christen men " on the sea-
shore.

Then there began what was little more than a long
drawn out tournament. On the second day in the morn-
ing, the Saracens came to skirmish with the " Christen
men ; " and the skirmishing endured the space of two
hours. The Saracens would not fight hand to hand, but
they fought with casting of darts and shooting, and
would not foolishly adventure themselves, but wisely and
sagely " reculed."

Among the Saracens was one knight who especially
distinguished himself. His name was Agadingor Doly-
ferne {sic), and his father was the Duke of Olyferne.
Agadingor was always well mounted on a light and ready
horse, " which seemed as if he did flie in the air." Armed
he was with three feathered darts, and right well could
he handle them. About his head he wore a long white
towel. His apparel was black, and his own colour
brown. The knights of France would fain have taken
him, but they could never entrap or enclose him, so swift
was his horse, and so ready to his hand.

The " Christen men " said they thought he did such deeds

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION g

for the love of some young lady of his country. And true
it was that he loved entirely the lady Azala, daughter of
the King of Tunis. " I cannot tell/' says Froissart as
he relates this story, " if they were married together after
or not."

After some weeks of this skirmishing, the Saracens
bethought them to send a messenger to the "Christen men "
to inquire of them wherefore they had come against the
town of Afryke. So they took an interpreter, who spoke
Italian, and sent him. On the way to the Christen
camp the interpreter met a Genoese, and together they
went to the " Christen men " and asked them wherefore
they had come to Afryke.

Then the Due de Bourbon held a council of war in his
tent, summoning no doubt the two La Tremoilles and
their brother-in-law Sully. And, after deliberating as to
what answer they should send to their enemies, the
knights told the interpreter to say that because the
Saracens had crucified Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
therefore had the Christen men come against them.

When the interpreter rendered this answer to those
who had sent him, the Saracens did nothing but laugh,
and say how that answer was nothing reasonable, for it
was the Jews who put Christ to death, and not they.

Now this skirmishing and curvetting in the plain had
already lasted a month, and no attack had yet been made
upon the town. Soon after the answer had been sent to the
Saracens, the " Christen men " stormed Afryke and entered
within the walls, where many of their number were slain,
and whence they were forced to retreat, having failed to
capture the town. Then great discontent arose in the
army. The Due de Bourbon was arrogant and lazy.
Famine and pestilence attacked the " Christen men," and

10 FROM THE CRUSADES

also many died of the great heat. Moreover, the knights
began to fear the treachery of the Genoese, whose ships
had brought them to Afryke. And so, seeing there was
nothing more to be done, the " Christen men " — such of
them as were left — returned crestfallen to their own homes.

The La Tremoille brothers were among those who had
escaped the mischance of war, famine and disease. They
with their companions-in-arms assigned the ignominious
failure of the expedition to the incompetency of its
leader, the Due de Bourbon, who had done nothing but
lounge idly at his tent door, surveying his camp in super-
cilious taciturnity.

Nothing daunted, however. Sire Guy and his brother
began to dream of new conquests. And soon we shall
find them setting forth on another crusade. Meanwhile,
Guy's sword was not allowed to rust in its scabbard.
When there were no English to fight in France, he was
ready to strike a blow for any righteous cause that might
present itself. Accordingly in the Tremoille archives we
find evidence of numerous sums of money received by
Sire Guy, as the reward of his military services, from
various European potentates, from Pope Clement VII.,
from Galeas Visconti Duke of Milan, from the Duchess of
Brabant, and from the Queen of Naples and Jerusalem.
Not that Guy de La Tremoille was a mercenary soldier.
He offered his services freely ; but when they had been
rendered he was apparently not above accepting some
financial acknowledgment of them.

In 1391, Charles VI. tendered to Guy de La Tremoille
the highest military honour he had to bestow, the sword
of the Constable of France. The previous Constable,
Olivier de Clisson, unpopular at court, had been deprived
of his office, and an attempt had been made to assassinate

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ii

him. But Olivier had been Count Guy's friend and com-
panion-in-arms, and La Tremoille loyally refused to
profit by his friend's disgrace.

Instead he went with King Charles on an expedition to
punish the would-be murderer, who had taken refuge in
the heaths of Brittany. It was with Count Guy at his
side that, in the broiling August heat, the King at the
head of his barons rode forth into the west country, and
there was overtaken by the first of those terrible attacks
of madness which were to plunge the realm into ruin and
confusion.

Soon afterwards, another truce^. having been signed
with England, and sealed by the marriage of the French
King's little daughter Isabelle with Richard IL, the
widower King of England, French and English knights
again prepared to wage war in common against the
Infidel. And again Guy and Guillaume de La Tremoille
took the cross.

At the request of Sigismund, King of Hungary, the
Crusaders directed their march towards the Balkans,
where that great Ottoman leader, Bajazet, surnamed
Ildemin or Lightning, was laying waste the country with
fire and sword, advancing to the walls of Constantinople,
and boasting that he would feed his horse with a bushel
of oats on St. Peter's altar at Rome.

This time the French Crusaders were led by the King's
cousin, the young Comte de Nevers, eldest son of Duke
Philip, and later to be known as John the Fearless. On the
most extravagant and luxurious scale did the French
knights make their preparations. Their banners and
saddle cloths were embroidered in gold and silver, their

1 Signed in 1395 for three years, and in the following year prolonged
for twenty-eight.

12 FROM THE CRUSADES

tents were of satin ; carts laden with silver plate and
delicate wines followed the army.

Thus equipped, gay and joyous as if for a tournament,
commanded by the flower of French chivalry, the crusad-
ing host, some 10,000 strong, set forth to join in Hungary
the German, PoHsh, English and Hungarian troops
collected by Sigismund.

No sooner had the Crusaders joined forces than
dissension broke out in the councils of war. The cautious
Sigismund wished to remain on the defensive, while the
headstrong French knights insisted on immediately
marching in search of the enemy.

Having crossed the Danube at Orsova, the Crusaders
proceeded to lay siege to the town of Nicopolis. Then,
with a rapidity which justified his name, Bajazet, raising
the siege of Constantinople, descended upon the Crusaders
before they had the slightest idea that he was even in the
neighbourhood. The French lords were at table and
already heated with wine, when their scouts brought in
the news that Bajazet was upon them. Again the
impetuous Comte de Nevers, rejecting the Hungarian
King's counsels of caution, insisted on leading his troops
to the attack. And at first he was victorious, forcing a
rampart of stakes and overcoming even the Janissaries
themselves. Then, inflated with pride and zeal, he
committed the error of the Comte d'Artois at Mansourah,
and allowed the French vanguard to be cut off from the
main body of the army. Overwhelmed by numerous
squadrons which issued from the woods, these intrepid
warriors were surrounded on all sides.

The rank and file, having refused to abjure their faith,
were to the number of 10,000 beheaded in the con-
queror's presence. Nevers and four and twenty knights

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 13

who had escaped slaughter were kept as prisoners and
held to ransom. Among them were Lord Guy and his
brother.

That year, as the King was keeping Christmas, at Paris,
in his H6tel of St. Paul, there dashed into his presence a
messenger from the east, all booted and spurred and dust
stained with travel. He was one of the twenty-five
prisoners taken at Nicopolis, and Bajazet had released
him in order that he might carry to France tidings of the
disaster.

It was only with the greatest difficulty that the
enormous ransoms which the Turk demanded could be
collected. Lord Guy's for the most part was borrowed
from the Pallavicini at Geneva. Meanwhile, in order to
appease the conqueror's wrath, and secure good treat-
ment of the prisoners, King Charles and Duke Philip sent
him rich gifts — a gold salt-cellar of curious workmanship,
a cast of Norwegian hawks, and six horse-loads of scarlet
cloth, of fine Reims linen and of Arras tapestry, repre-
senting the battles of Alexander.

For nine months the prisoners were dragged from place
to place in their conqueror's train. And then at length
their ransoms arrived.

Before they left him, Bajazet let flie at his prisoners
one parting shaft of derision. Summoning the French
knights to his presence, he cried : " Raise what puissance
ye will, spare nought, and come against me a second time.
Ye shall find me always ready to receive ye in the field in
plain battle." To point this mockery, and to reciprocate
the French King's gifts, Bajazet sent him a mass of iron,
a suit of Turkish armour made of wool, a drum and bows
with strings made of human entrails.

From Bajazet's camp the French knights sailed in

14 FROM THE CRUSADES

galleys to the island of Rhodes, staying on their way in
the port of Mathelyn. There Guy and his brother were
graciously received by the Lady of Mathelyn, who, we
read, was as well assured of herself as any lady in Greece,
for had she not been brought up at the Emperor Con-
stantine's court with the Lady Mary of Bourbon ? And
from her she had learnt French nurture, '* for in France
the lords and ladies were more honorable than in any
other countries."

By the Lady of Mathelyn the French knights were
newly apparelled in shirts, gowns, and other garments of
fine damask, according to the usage of Greece. Then,
proceeding to Rhodes, they received from the Grand
Prior some gold and silver of which they stood in dire
need.

But to Sire Guy it was not given to return to his native
land, nor to be buried at Dijon as Duke Philip had directed.
For he had never recovered from the wounds received at
Nicopolis. At Rhodes a fever fell upon him, and he died
on May 4th, 1397, and was buried in the Church of St.
John, " the lords of France doing his obsequy right
reverently."

Meanwhile, away in France, Marie de Sully was looking
eagerly for her husband's return. On May 22nd, 1397,
Duke Philip had sent her word that Sire Guy was well,
that his ransom had been paid, and that he was on his
way home. On August 7th, when she was in her chateau
of Craon, came the news that Guy lay dead in the Island
of Rhodes.^

A life full of care Dame Marie must have led during her
husband's absences on the Crusades. For to raise funds
ior these expeditions his lands had been heavily mort-

1 Bertrand de Broussillon, " La Maison de Craon," II., 38.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

gaged, and on Marie it had devolved to pay the interest
on the money lent, and out of such revenue as remained
to keep the princely household going. Now she was left
a widow with seven children, four sons and three daughters.
Perhaps it was to provide herself and her family with a
protector that, soon after Guy's death, she gave a step-
father to her children in the person of Charles d'Albret,
Constable of France. By him she was to become the
ancestress of French Kings, of whom the first was the
famous Henry Quatre.

i6 FROM THE CRUSADES

CHAPTER II

GEORGES DE LA TRl^MOILLE. I382 (?) — 1446
" A kind of Gargantua, who devoured the country." ^

Towards the dawn of the fifteenth century, disruptive
forces were everywhere at work throughout Christendom ;
and among the most powerful were the violence and greed
of barons like Georges de La Tremoille.

*' Luxury and vice such as 'twere piteous to tell of had
kindled against the French the wrath of Heaven, and in
the divine hand the King of England was but a rod for
chastisement." This was the consolation which Henry V.
addressed to Charles, Duke of Orleans, who, having been
taken prisoner at Agincourt, in abject grief and utter
desolation was refusing food and drink, like many a
prisoner of later date.

But in his complacent self-satisfaction, Henry V.
failed to discern the true cause of the wickedness he held
himself divinely appointed to punish. He would have
been the last to admit that his own people, by their
perpetual invasions of French territory, had created that
prolonged disorder, during which French barons became
monsters of iniquity preying upon women and children,
and scrupling not even to enter into contracts with the
Evil One.

Almost incredible are the hideous crimes said to have
been committed in France in those days. The story of
the ghastly enormities perpetrated by Gille de Rais, the

1 "The Life of Joan of Arc," translated from the French of Anatole
France, I., 147.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 17

original of Blue Beard, is well known. And Gille was a
relative of La Tremoille. The brutality of Georges de La
Tremoille himself has seldom been equalled. By his
persistent cruelty he caused the death of his first wife.
But the victim who suffered most from his cruelty was
hapless France. Poverty stricken she was when he
found her ; yet by his ruthless extortions " he stripped
her to the bone, and left her a bloodless corpse, a mete
skeleton."

Georges, the eldest son of Guy de La Tremoille and
Marie de Sully, was born in the early eighties of the
fourteenth century. He was brought up in the house-
hold of the Burgundian dukes, first by Duke Philip and,
after his death, by his son, John the Fearless.

In 1407, Georges became Duke John's chief Chamber-
lain, and in that year fought with the Burgundian forces
against the citizens of Liege at the battle of Tongres.
Then King Charles VI. appointed him Master of Woods
and Waters, and Governor of Dauphine. By this time
La Tremoille was one of the boon companions of the
worthless Dauphin Louis, ^ generally known as the Duke
of Guyenne. And in that capacity he played no incon-
siderable part in the troubled events of 14 13, one of the
most revolutionary years in French history.

Charles VI. was now hopelessly mad, and the royal
power was alternately exercised by the leaders of the
Burgundian and Orleanist factions, Duke John and
Bernard, Count of Armagnac. As leader of the Orleanists,
henceforth to be known as Armagnacs, Count Bernard
had succeeded Louis, Duke of Orleans, murdered some
six years earlier by Burgundy's paid assassins.

1 Three of Charles VI. 's sons in succession bore the title of Dauphin :
Louis, who died in 1415 ; then Jean, who died in 1416 ; and then
Charles, who, in 1422, succeeded to the throne as Charles VII.

C.R. C

i8 FROM THE CRUSADES

In 1413, however, Burgundians and Armagnacs alike
were superseded by the dominance of the Butchers or
Cabochiens, the richest, the oldest, and the most in-
fluential of the trade corporations of Paris. Including
not merely slaughterers and sellers of cattle, but tanners,
leather-workers and tripe-dealers, the Butchers were
proud to trace back the origin of their corporation to
Roman times. Indeed, they considered themselves a
commercial aristocracy. Kings and courtiers did not
disdain to don the white hood which was the sign of their
order. The Butchers' shops descended like feudal fiefs
from father to son. Their nobility were the families of
St. Yon, of Thibert and of Legoix, who constituted what
was called La Grande Boucherie, and who dwelt near the
present Tour St. Jacques, behind what was then the
Chatelet Prison. In those days the citizens of Paris were
organised into quarters, each quarter into hundreds, and
each hundred into groups of ten. Every quarter had its
captain or quarienier, whose duty it was to command the
watch, and to provide for the defence of his district. In
1413, the captain of the Butchers' quarter was Jean
Caboche, who gave his name to the fraternity.

The quarter of Jean Caboche, consisting of an army of
slaughterers, salesmen and apprentices, was a formidable
force which had to be reckoned with in all city riots.
Indeed, considering on the one hand the Crown's weakness
and the feuds among the barons, and on the other the
Butchers' wealth and compact organisation, it seemed
not unlikely that this corporation of Parisian tradesmen
might one day come to rule the kingdom.

Duke John of Burgundy was quick to grasp this
situation and to turn it to his own advantage, wherefore
he made friends with the Butchers, sending them every

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 19

year casks of choice wine from his rich vintage of
Beaune.

Precisely how far this aUiance between Burgundy and
the Butchers extended and how much it involved is
difficult to tell. At times Duke John seemed to be
using the Cabochiens as his instruments, at others the
tradesmen seemed to be bending the great Duke to their
will and employing him to carry out a policy which was
all their own. In the tangled turmoil of events in 1413
it is impossible to say whether it was Burgundy who
incited the Butchers or the Butchers Burgundy. But
one point is clear : the Butchers believed that all the
woes from which France was suffering were caused by
the King's lunacy, which was a punishment sent from
God^ ; and they held that it was for the sins of royalty
God had smitten the King with madness, and struck
down his brother, the Duke of Orleans. The Butchers'
one hope for the Kingdom of France lay in La Tremoille's
friend, the Dauphin Louis ; but this hope was tempered
by the fear lest he should resemble his father.

In this year, 1413, Louis was seventeen, a much more
mature age then than now. For at fifteen Louis' cousin,
Charles, Duke of Orleans, was a married man, the father
of a family, and the nominal leader of a great party.
Yet at seventeen the Dauphin was set on nothing save
pageantry and pleasure. This frivolity, however, the
Butchers attributed to evil influences, one of the most
pernicious of which they considered to be his friendship
with La Tremoille. There was no man in France whom
the Butchers more bitterly hated. And to separate him
from the Dauphin became one of their chief objects
throughout this year. Had it not been for the powerful

1 Michelet, " Hist, de France," Bk. VIII., Chap. III.

C 2

20 FROM THE CRUSADES

influence which Duke John exercised on his behalf,
Georges would doubtless have shared the fate of other
members of the Dauphin's circle, whom the Butchers
drowned in the Seine or imprisoned in the Louvre. The
following graphic details of one of La Tremoille's
encounters with these tradesmen have been preserved in
a chronicle of the period/

It fell out that upon July loth, 1413, as a little before
midnight, a company of Butchers, led by one, Helion de
Jacqueville, a knight of Beauce, were returning from
their patrol of the city to their quarters in St. Jacques
that they passed by the Hotel de Guyenne, the Dauphin's
palace in the Rue St. Antoine. There the puritanical
ears of the watch were offended by the sound of music
and of dancing. Highly improper did it seem to Jacque-
ville and his men that the heir to the fair realm of France
should be keeping high revelry at that hour of the night.
With other functions of government the Butchers had
already assumed the censorship of public morals. And
in this capacity they forced their way into the palace,
penetrating even into the royal presence chamber.

There finding the Dauphin dancing with his lords and
ladies, Jacqueville rated his prince soundly for being a
profligate and a spendthrift. But La Tremoille, who was
standing by, was the last to tolerate such an intrusion
on his own and his prince's pleasures. To Jacqueville's
sermon La Tremoille retorted that it was grossly imper-
tinent to address the Dauphin thus, and at such an hour
to intrude on the royal presence. In the violent dispute
which ensued Louis, in self-defence, drew his dagger and
three times smote Jacqueville on the breast, but did

1 Juvenal des Ursins, " Histoire de Charles VI., Roi de France," ed :
Michaud et Poujoulat, Ser. I., Vol. II., p. 48.5.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 21

him no hurt, because the knight wore a coat of mail
beneath his cloak. On the morrow, the Butchers were
preparing to take and slay the proud baron who on the
previous evening had bearded them in the Dauphin's
chamber, when Burgundy intervened on behalf of his
vassal, and saved La Tremoille's life.

The arrogant Cabochiens, however, were heading for
a fall. The other Parisian corporations would not long
brook the insolence of the Butchers. The Carpenters of
Paris, declaring they would soon see whether there were
not in the city as many hewers of wood as slayers of
beasts, called to their aid the Duke of Orleans and the
Count of Armagnac, who, with a powerful force, were
marching towards the capital.

On his rivals' entrance into Paris, on August 23rd, Duke
John prudently withdrew, taking the poor, mad King with
him. But a party of citizens intercepted the Duke's com-
pany at Vincennes and brought the King back to his
capital. Two of the Butchers' leaders were executed, and
their quarters in St. Jacques were razed to the ground.

La Tremoille did not, as we might expect, accompany
Duke John into exile. Now that the Armagnacs were
in the ascendant, and his enemies, the Butchers, deposed
from power, Georges forgot the gratitude he owed to
Burgundy, and, remaining in Paris with his friend the
Dauphin, threw in his lot with the new government. In
1416 we find King Charles undertaking to pay La
Tremoille 10,000 francs if he will raise a company
of men-at-arms to proceed against the English and the
Burgundians. Georges duly performed his part of the
bargain. But, when he found that Charles was not so
ready to perform his. La Tremoille paid himself the
10,000 francs out of the purse of one of the King's

22 FROM THE CRUSADES

tax-gatherers who, with a goodly sum collected in Orleans
and destined for the royal exchequer, had the misfortune
to pass by Sully on his way to court.

When the Dauphin's dissolute court was scattered on
Louis* death in 1415, La Tremoille speedily joined the
no less licentious circle which gathered round Queen
Isabelle at her palaces of Vincennes and Melun.

No name in French history is more execrated than
that of Isabelle, Charles VL's Queen ; for she it was
who some years later sold France to the English. Yet
her sad history must arouse pity even in the most
censorious breast. Radiantly beautiful in youth, she
was passionately adored by her royal husband. Then
lunacy converted Charles VL from the most amorous
into the most persecuting of consorts. He, whom
Isabelle's portrait had once struck dumb with admiration,
was now driven frantic by the mere sight of her arms
quartered with his own. To save her life the Queen was
compelled to establish herself in a separate residence,
where her weak, voluptuous nature found consolation in
the attentions of numerous admirers. Among them was
her brother-in-law, Louis, Duke of Orleans. And it
was as, with a song upon his lips, he rode carelessly out
of the gateway of the Queen's Hotel, Barbette, into the
darkness of the night that Louis had been set upon and
slain by the Duke of Burgundy's hired assassins.

Shunning an abode haunted by so sad a memory, the
pleasure-loving Queen removed to Vincennes. There
she rapidly sank into a valetudinarian and sybaritish
old age. She, who had once been the most graceful and
agile of horsewomen, grew so corpulent that her valets had
to carry her in a chair from room to room. At Vincennes,
while the peasants of France were starving, Isabelle

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 23

hoarded treasure, and lavished vast sums on all manner
of whimsies, on aviaries of singing birds, on menageries,
and on marvellous medicines.

To the Queen, in 1415, resorted, as we have said,
La Tremoille and all the dead Dauphin's boon com-
panions. And one is not surprised that to contemporary
moralists, scandalised by the manners of the Vincennes
court, the spindle legs of these gay gallants encased in
the tightest of hose and the high-horned, wide-eared
head-dresses of their ladies, appeared somewhat devilish.

Soon, however, serious national matters claimed even
the attention of these voluptuous courtiers, for the knights
of France were summoned to resist Henry of England
upon the field of Agincourt. And there, on October 25th,
1415, La Tremoille was taken prisoner. Happily for
him, but unhappily for France, he was not considered
sufficiently important to be carried away to England
with prisoners of higher rank, such as the Duke of Orleans,
the Duke of Bourbon, the Count of Vendome and the
Count of Richemont. So, on November 29th, having
received from King Henry a robe of fine damask, and
undertaken to pay a heavy ransom at the great Lendit
Fair at St. Denis on the following Midsummer Day,
La Tremoille was liberated at Calais.

We suspect that it was to help pay his ransom that
Georges now resolved to take a wife. The unhappy
victim he selected was a great heiress, ten years his
senior, a princess of the blood royal, Jeanne, Countess of
Boulogne and of Auvergne, once the adored wife, and
now the widow of the old Duke of Berry.

Only four months after the Duke's death, in the year
after Agincourt, Jeanne d* Auvergne and La Tremoille
were married.

24 FROM THE CRUSADES

In the contract signed at Aigueperse, Jeanne unwisely
agreed that she and her husband should hold all their
property in common. Of this generosity she soon had
reason to repent ; and, falling out with her rapacious
husband, she settled all her wealth on her cousin, Marie
d'Auvergne. Meanwhile the Duke of Burgundy, who
was Jeanne's overlord, refused to deliver into her husband's
hands the county of Boulogne. So, La Tremoille, doubly
disappointed in his greed, vented his fury on his miserable
wife, whom he imprisoned in a lonely castle of Auvergne
until, in 1418, death came to her release.

La Tremoille was now fully launched on a career of
rapine and violence. In the neighbourhood of his great
castles peace and security were unknown. In order
to further his covetous designs he did not hesitate to
lay waste whole districts with fire and sword ; and from
the confusion and disorder already existing in France
he made ready to suck no small advantage. Although
more than once he was employed to negotiate terms of
peace between English and French, Burgundians and
Armagnacs, peace was the very last thing he wanted.
Had his negotiations been successful, which they never
were, he would have pleaded in the words of the trouba-
dour, Bertrand de Born : " When there is peace on every
hand let a strip of war be left for me."

In 1418, La Tremoille, apparently without any provoca-
tion, had seized Gouge de Charpaignes, Bishop of
Clermont, and imprisoned him in his castle of Sully,
intending to keep him there until he should pay the
ransom his captor demanded. And it was only the
appearance before Sully of the Dauphin himself at the
head of a formidable army that set the unhappy bishop
at liberty.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 25

Now, on his wife's death La Tremoille determined that
at any cost he would conquer her inheritance ; and with
this object he sent an army into Auvergne. But again
his lawless plans were thwarted by the Dauphin, who,
in 1423, despatched against him Marshal Gilbert de La
Fayette at the head of a formidable force. La Tremoille
withdrew his troops from Auvergne, but he never forgave
the general who had compelled him to do so ; and when,
some years later, he became minister of the Crown, one
of his first acts was to deprive La Fayette of the command
and to banish him from Court, appointing in his stead
his (La Tremoille's) own notorious cousin, Gille de Rais.

After the signing at Troyes in 1420 of that disastrous
treaty which made King Henry V. of England heir to
the French crown, France became divided into two
hostile kingdoms : roughly speaking, the country north
of the Loire acknowledged the King of England and was
friendly to his great ally the Duke of Burgundy, while
the country south of that river was friendly to the
Armagnacs and loyal to the mad King's son, the Dauphin
Charles, known as " the King of Bourges," because he
made that city his capital.^

La Tremoille would doubtless have preferred to remain
a free lance, independent of either potentate ; but recent
events had shown him the disadvantages of such an
attitude. His defeat in Auvergne convinced him of the
prudence of throwing in his lot with one party or the
other, and he selected the Dauphin's because over it,
being the weaker, he would have the best chance of
domineering.

La Tremoille's choice was fraught with the direst

1 Charles VI. and Henry V. died in the same year, 1422. Following
the custom of the time, we shall describe Charles VII. as Dauphin until,
in 1429, he was crowned by Joan of Arc at Reims.

26 FROM THE CRUSADES

consequences for France. As Councillor-Chamberlain he
came to exercise over the Dauphin's mind the most
disastrous influence. In the years which preceded La
Tremoille's rule the Prince had shown himself capable of
acting with wisdom and vigour, after La Tremoille's fall
Charles developed into a wise and energetic monarch ;
but during the years of La Tremoille's ministry he was
the meanest, the most phlegmatic, and the most abject of
princes. That this monster of iniquity, " this Gargantua
who devoured the country," did not succeed in per-
manently ruining France is chiefly due to Joan of Arc's
heroic example and inspiring initiative.

Precisely how La Tremoille came to exercise so
pernicious an influence over the Dauphin is somewhat
mysterious. The first sign of their alliance was Charles's
despatch of La Tremoille in December, 1425, on an
embassy to Burgundy at Bruges. And it was on this
journey, that at the hands of a free lance, Perrinet Gres-
sart, the Dauphin's emissary suffered that fate which he
had so often inflicted on others : he was detained in the
citadel of La Charite until he had paid Gressart 14,000
crowns, as well as another 6,000 in the shape of gifts
which the prisoner was compelled to bestow on the
captains and wife of his captor. One might chuckle ^vith
delight to find La Tremoille thus being paid in his own
coin, did not the ultimate advantage which he was
careful to derive from his imprisonment suggest that,
after all, the incident had been planned by the prisoner
himself, with a view to compensation. For, on La
Tremoille's return to court we find him extracting from
the Dauphin the greater part of his ransom and rich lands
in Poitou^ to boot, while no less than seven years later

The lordship and bishopric of Melle.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 27

this same imprisonment gave him an excuse for squeezing
out of the Duke of Burgundy a sum of 18,000 crowns.

Quitting Perrinet Gressart's castle, La Tremoille pro-
ceeded to Bruges. Concerning the success of his mission
to Duke PhiHp ' we know nothing. The only incident of
this embassy which has come down to us is that the
Dauphin's ambassador, when he left the city, carried
away with him the wife of one of the citizens, who in the
following year was clamouring to be restored to her
husband.^

La Tremoille, nothing daunted by his failure to secure
his first wife's inheritance, was now casting about for her
wealthy successor. One of the most richly dowered
ladies of the Dauphin's court was the beautiful Catherine
de rile Bouchard, Countess of Tonnerre. She happened
to be married already, but inconvenient husbands and
wives were not difficult to get rid of in those days. Indeed,
Catherine's husband, Pierre de Giac, had himself disposed
of her predecessor in a manner almost too brutal to bear
mention. True, Pierre de Giac was at this time the
Dauphin's prime favourite, but that circumstance pre-
sented no difficulty, for Charles was used to having his
favourites forcibly removed ; and the removal of this
one was probably facilitated by the connivance of the
favourite's wife, and certainly by that of the Constable,
Arthur de Richemont. The manner of its accomplish-
ment was characteristic of that brutal age.

Giac was with the Dauphin at his chateau of Issoudun,
when, on the morning of February 8th, 1427, as he lay in
bed with his wife, Catherine, the favourite was rudely
awakened by a loud knocking at his door. " Who is

1 John the Fearless had been murdered in 141 9 on the Bridge of
Montereau.
^ E. Cosneau, " Le Conn6table de Richemont," 141, note 4.

28 FROM THE CRUSADES

there ? " he cried. " The Constable/' was the reply.
*' Then I am a dead man," groaned Giac, who knew
Richemont to be his enemy. The door was broken
open and the favourite, clad only in nightgown and
shppers, dragged out of the palace and placed on horse-
back. Catherine the while had flown to her jewel chest,
eager to secure it for La Tremoille, who was probably
already her lover. Everything was done as quietly as
possible for fear of rousing the Dauphin, who was strongly
attached to his favourite. But Charles became aware of
confusion in the palace, and inquired what was going
forward. He was told that what was happening was for
his good.

Meanwhile, Giac had been hurried off to the chMeau of
Dun-le-Roi, which belonged to Richemont's wife, the
Duchesse de Guyenne, widow of the Dauphin Louis.
Thence, after a mock trial, an executioner having been
brought from Bourges, Giac was cast into the River
Auron and drowned. Meanwhile, La Tremoille anxiously
rode to and fro nearby, impatient for news that Catherine's
husband had ceased to breathe. On hearing that his
mistress was free, he rode to join her in her castle of Meun,
where she was waiting to bestow upon him the jewels she
had so carefully guarded from the cupidity of her husband's
murderers. After spending some months together at
Meun, La Tremoille and Catherine repaired to the former's
chateau of Gen9ay in Poitou, where they were married on
July 2nd. Their wedding, following so soon on Giac's
death, caused some astonishment even among the
Dauphin's unscrupulous courtiers, who thought that
Catherine might have had the decency to wait a little
longer before marrying her husband's murderer.

As for the Dauphin himself, after he had recovered

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 29

from his first indignation at his favourite's treatment, he
easily consoled himself with his successor. This was
an obscure person, one Camus de Vernet, knight of
Beaulieu, who was no better than his predecessor, and
who came to as untimely an end.

After the assassination of Camus, which took place
before the Dauphin's very eyes, La Tr6moille persuaded
the Constable to install him as Charles's chief favourite.

Arthur de Richemont, one of the few disinterested
barons of that day, despite the part he had played in
Giac's assassination, was in many respects a fine figure.
In astuteness and insight into character, however, he must
have been deplorably lacking, or he would never have
placed in a position of such power so rapacious a person
as La Tremoille.

The Dauphin was wiser than his Constable ; for,
trembling to see Richemont confide in La Tremoille,
Charles said : " You will repent it, for I know him better
than you do." To this feeble remonstrance the Constable
paid no heed ; but alas ! Charles's words proved only too
true, and it was in his treatment of Richemont himself
that La Tremoille first verified his Prince's prognostica-
tion. The Dauphin was cowed into banishing the Con-
stable from court and bestowing his governorship of
Dauphine upon his rival.

La Tremoille was now supreme ; as Councillor-
Chamberlain, for six years he ruled ; and he was one of
the most terrible scourges France has ever known ; never,
not from Clovis to Charles X., have the national fortunes
sunk so low as during that six years of La Tremoille's
power.

With half France, including the French capital, given
up to the English, with an English army about to cross

30 FROM THE CRUSADES

the Loire to conquer the remaining half, La Tremoille's
only thoughts were the filling of his private purse and the
avenging of his private quarrels.

For some years before he became the Dauphin's
favourite he had been nothing more or less than the
Grand Usurer of the kingdom. He was the first of those
great tax-farmers, those leaches who, sucking the nation's
life-blood, were to prey upon the national exchequer.
And while in those terrible times the King went in tatters
and brave soldiers of the Crown and disinterested leaders
remained unpaid, for La Tremoille money was always
forthcoming. In his private war with Richemont and his
allies. La Tremoille, taken prisoner in the Castle of Gen9ay,
insisted on the Dauphin paying his ransom to the tune of
10,000 crowns.

Soon, however, even while the Councillor-Chamberlain
with havoc and vvdth bloodshed was rending the fair
realm of France, there appeared in more than one quarter
of the kingdom signs of a new spirit which was ultimately
to defeat La Tremoille and all his nefarious projects.
The outrages of the barons and the invasion of a foreign
foe gave birth among the oppressed and the conquered to
a sentiment of nationaUty, which was even now reveahng
itself in different parts of the country : on the Loire,
where the neighbouring towns were straining every nerve
to succour the gallant citizens of Orleans besieged by the
English ; in the Dauphin's own circle, where his mother-
in-law, Yolande of Arragon, Duchess of Anjou, and Queen
of Jerusalem and Sicily, one of the best and bravest
women of her time, with political insight and pity for her
persecuted country, was devising La Tremoille's fall ;
and in distant Lorraine, whence a peasant maid at the
behest of heavenly voices was setting forth to deHver France.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 31

One isolated good deed, but that a purely negative and
an unconsciously meritorious one, may be placed to La
Tremoille's account : he offered no opposition to Joan of
Arc's employment in the Dauphin's service, and dispatch
to the relief of Orleans.

Joan at her trial related that La Tremoille was present
among the crowd of courtiers round the Dauphin in the
castle of Chinon on that evening in March, 1429, when,
clad in doublet and hose, with her hair cut round like a
boy's, the maid was ushered into her Prince's presence.
A few days later, one morning after mass. La Tremoille
^vith the Dauphin and the Duke of Alen9on had a private
interview with her. Then he heard her promise the
Dauphin that the King of Heaven would do for Charles
what He had done for his predecessors, and restore him
to his father's dominions.

After events prove that such a consummation was
far from the Councillor-Chamberlain's desire. All he
expected Joan to do was to restore French courage and
initiative so far as to enable them to continue the conflict
with the English. La Tremoille wished neither com-
batant to be completely victorious ; but when Joan
appeared, there seemed a danger that the EngUsh would
establish their dominion throughout the land. It was to
avert what would have been a personal catastrophe as
well as a national disaster that La Tremoille received Joan
and sent her with an army to relieve Orleans.

But after her glorious victory at that city, followed by
a month of marvellous successes in the Loire valley, La
Tremoille, fearing lest Joan should cast the weight of
conquest too strongly on his own, the French side,
began to oppose her and her forward policy. The first
conflict between the Maid and the Minister occurred

32 FROM THE CRUSADES

over the question of the Constable's restoration to
power.

During the Loire campaign, La Tremoille had held
aloof from the army, keeping watch and ward over the
Dauphin, jealous lest he should fall under the influence of
some rival favourite, detaining the Prince in one of the
Loire chateaux, most of the time in the great La Tremoille
stronghold of Sully. During the Minister's absence, and
directly contrary to his command, Arthur de Richemont,
with a company of Breton troops, had been permitted to
serve in the royal army, and to take part in the crowning
victory of Pathay.^ No sooner was the battle won, than
in their gladness and gratitude to the Constable for the
aid he had generously granted them, Joan and the Duke
of Alen9on solicited Richemont's recall. It is the
unanimous opinion of expert historians, that had this
request been granted, had the Dauphin's army made
common cause with the troops which Richemont and his
brother, the Duke of Brittany, could raise in western
France, the English might speedily have been driven
from the country. But La Tremoille was determined not
to be reconciled with his rival ; and at his Minister's
bidding, the Dauphin resolutely refused the Maid*5
request.

It now became obvious that as long as La Tremoille
remained in power the complete discomfiture of the
English would be impossible. In the Dauphin's council
there were now two parties and two policies : a forward
policy advocated by Joan^ and Alengon, her " fair Duke,"

1 June, 1429. For a picturesque account of the meeting of the Maid
and the Constable, see Anatole France, " Joan of Arc," Eng. trans. I.,

364-

2 Joan was seldom actually admitted to the councils of war. She
had, therefore, to rely upon Alen9on to advocate her views, which he
did loyally.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 33

as she called him ; and a temporising policy advocated
by La Tremoille and his ally, the Dauphin's Chancellor,
Regnault de Chartres, Archbishop of Reims.

On one point the forward party won the day : they
succeeded, possibly against the will of the Chancellor
and the Chamberlain,^ in conducting the Dauphin to
Reims for his coronation. But on the way to Reims the
two parties were in constant conflict, in which Joan was
generally worsted. The Maid was for storming the
hostile cities which refused to admit the Dauphin's army
within their gates ; but here for the most part, and
notably at Auxerre and Troyes, La Tremoille imposed
his more moderate policy, from which, as usual, he reaped
personal advantage ; in the case of Auxerre, at any
rate, the 2,000 crowns paid by the citizens in return
for a promise not to storm the town were pocketed
by the Minister. After the coronation dissensions
between the parties broke out anew, Joan and " her
fair Duke " and a powerful faction of the nobility were
for marching straight on Paris ; La Tremoille, whom
Charles at his crowning had created Count, wished to
return to the south of the Loire and to negotiate with
Burgundy. Now, as always, the Chamberlain had his
private advantage in view ; through Burgundy's influence
Georges wished to recover certain Burgundian lands,
formerly belonging to him, which the Duke of Bedford
had conquered and bestowed on La Tremoille 's younger
brother, the Sieur de Jonvelle. In achieving the second
part of his project the Minister was partially successful,
and a truce for fifteen days, afterwards prolonged, was
signed with Burgundy. But in the first of his designs
he was thwarted by the EngHsh, who cut off the retreat

1 This matter is obscure and has been much discussed.
C.R. D

34 FROM THE CRUSADES

of the French towards the south. Thus, much against
their will, Charles and La Tremoille were forced into the
neighbourhood of Paris, where a series of skirmishes took
place with the English, under the Duke of Bedford, who
was Regent for the infant King, Henry VI.

In one of these skirmishes at Crepy-en-Valois, France
came near to being delivered from her oppressor, for
La Tremoille, contrary to his custom of keeping out of
action, mounted a charger richly caparisoned, and, lance
in hand, rode into the heart of the meleo. There, falling
from his horse, he would have been slain had not some
misguided Frenchman come to his aid.

Still avoiding Paris, Charles, after Crepy, entered
Compiegne.^ And there La Tremoille re-opened negotia-
tions with Burgundy, attempting to detach him from the
English alliance, by offering to make him master of
Compiegne. But the citizens of the town refused to be
handed over to the Duke. Then, rather than come to a
rupture with Philip, La Tremoille carried out one of the
most amazing pieces of diplomacy known in history :
towards the end of August, Joan and " her fair Duke "
had left Compiegne with the object of attacking Paris,
of which city the English had appointed Philip governor ;
after their departure La Tremoille and Charles seem to
have promised Burgundy that the attack on Paris should
not be seriously prosecuted, and on this condition the
truce was renewed.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the operations were
somewhat desultory when, on September 8th, an attempt
was made to storm the capital. In vain Joan, standing
on a mound outside the St. Honore Gate, called on the
citizens to surrender in Jesus' name, threatening, if they

1 On August 1 8th, 1429.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 35

yielded not before nightfall, to enter by force and put all
to death without mercy. Joan knew nothing of the
negotiations at Compiegne. But at nightfall, instead
of, as she had hoped, entering triumphantly into Paris,
the Maid lay wounded beneath the shelter of a breast-
work, urging her men to fill up the moat with faggots
and to storm the gates of the city. La Tremoille, however,
was commanding the combatants to retreat. Joan
refused to obey him, until her Duke sent for her, and even
then, as two knights carried her off the field, she was
murmuring, " In God's name, the city might have
been taken. '*

It did not accord with La Tremoille's purpose that
Paris should be taken, or that Joan should win any more
decisive victories. Therefore he persuaded Charles to
refuse Alengon's request that the Maid might be sent
with him to cut off the base of the enemy's communications
in Normandy, and he kept her in the Loire valley, where
there was no chance of her being able to strike a decisive
blow. Here, although but ill supported, Joan, by her
heroism and persistence, succeeded in taking by storm
the town of St. Pierre-le-Moustier, but she was repulsed
at La Charite.

Even such partial success was not to La Tremoille's
liking. Therefore for some weeks in the spring of 1430,
he detained the Maid with the King and himself in his
castle of Sully. Many a time during those weary
weeks of waiting must Joan have gazed regretfully from
the towers of Sully up that great northern road leading
to Paris and to those fields of battle, whither she longed
to return.

At length, in the last days of March, the Maid, with a
small body of soldiers, was permitted to fare forth.

D 2

36 FROM THE CRUSADES

La Tremoille's hopes of a compact with Burgundy had
been finally disappointed by a renewal of the alliance
between Duke Philip and England. And so Joan was
left free to open that last campaign which was to end
in her capture by the Burgundians outside the walls of
Compiegne.

There are those who do not hesitate to accuse La
Tremoille of having planned the capture of the Maid.
That at almost every turn he had thwarted her patriotic
designs there is no doubt whatever, but that he deliber-
ately betrayed her into the hands of the Burgundians
has never been sufficiently proved. The Chamberlain's
record is black enough without this charge being laid
to his door.

If from such a crime he may be exonerated there is,
however, another offence towards the Maid, and one
equally heinous, of which he must be accused. In the
cruel indifference to Joan's fate displayed by the King
and his council, we cannot fail to trace the influence of
La Tremoille. During the year which elapsed between
her capture at Compiegne in May, 1430, and her execution
at Rouen in May, 1431, not an effort was made for her
deliverance. La Tremoille was then all powerful at
court, and had he made the slightest movement either
diplomatic or military for Joan's rescue he would doubt-
less have been seconded by many among the King's
nobles. But for the Chamberlain the Maid was nothing
more than a kind of charm, a figure-head to encourage
the army. And, Joan taken, any other charm would
do equally well, a shepherd-boy with stigmata from the
heaths of Gevaudan or a devout woman from La Rochelle,
one of the Maid's own companions.

Fortunately for France the years of La Tremoille's

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 37

power were already numbered. His increasing arrogance
and greed were raising against him among the French
nobility a powerful party led by Queen Yolande, the
Constable and the Constable's brother, John, Duke of
Brittany. At the close of one of the Chamberlain's
devastating private wars against Richemont, Queen
Yolande negotiated a treaty by which La Tremoille was
to deliver the town of Montargis to the Constable. But
before the surrender of the town took place it fell into the
hands of the English, and — so it was believed — with the
connivance of the Chamberlain.

So dastardly a deed brought to a head the hatred of
the King's favourite. In the same year, 1431, at the
funeral of the Duchess of Brittany, which took place at
Vannes, a plot was formed against La Tremoille's life.
It took effect in the following June (1433), when the
Chamberlain was with the King at Chinon, lodged in
that very Coudray Tower which had sheltered Joan four
years earlier. Admitted to the tower by night through
a postern gate, four of the conspirators, among whom was
La Tremoille's own nephew, Jean de Bueil,^ followed by
some twenty men-at-arms, made their way to the
Chamberlain's room. There, in the struggle which
ensued, La Tremoille received a sword-thrust in the
stomach ; but like the wicked of the Psalmist, " enclosed
in his own fat," for he was a very barrel of a man, his
" Falstafhan paunch " saved his life. And Jean de
Bueil was content to carry him off a prisoner to the
Chateau of Montresor. There he who had so often
exacted an exorbitant ransom from others was him-
self compelled to buy his liberty with 4,000 crowns
and a promise to keep away from the King and from

* His father was La Tremoille's brother, the Sieur de Jonvelle.

38 FROM THE CRUSADES

affairs of state. The King's quarters at Chinon were
almost opposite his favourite's, and, as at the time
of Pierre de Giac's arrest, Charles was roused in the
night by the sound of mailed feet and the clashing of
arms. But once again it was not difficult to per-
suade him that the disturbance augured nothing but
good. And we cannot beHeve that Charles grieved
at being rid of this monster who was devouring his
kingdom.

Queen Yolande had now no one to oppose her beneficent
designs : she was able therefore to restore the Constable
to power, to encourage Charles to adopt as his favourite
her own son, Charles of Anjou, and to receive as his
mistress the famous and fascinating Agnes Sorel.

Under Angevin influence the King became a new man,
displaying energy, prudence and courage, and appearing
the precise contrary of that roi faineant who used, in
La Tremoille's day, to skulk in some distant castle far
removed from the enemy and the battlefield.

Under the rule of this new Charles VII., resistance to
the English was vigorously organised, Paris was taken,
peace made with Burgundy, and the invaders driven
back until they retained only the maritime provinces ;
at the same time the power of the turbulent French
barons was curbed, and that work of centralisation begun
which was carried on and completed by Charles's great
successors, Louis XL, Henry IV. and Louis XIV.

Not without a struggle, however, was this great work
inaugurated. On his vast domains in Poitou, Limousin,
Anjou, Touraine and Berry, La Tremoille was still
powerful ; Jean de Bueil's mercy — or was it his
greed for the 4,000 crowns ransom ? — had left the
monster's wings insufficiently cHpped. His castles were

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 39

centres of brigandage and sedition to which resorted all
the discontented nobles of the realm. Here was hatched
that wide-spreading revolt of the French barons known as
" the Praguerie." ^ The immediate cause of this rising
was the royal ordonnance issued in 1439, which summoned
before the King's court all barons who in defiance of the
King had arrogated to themselves the right to impose
taxes in their dominions, who had appropriated the royal
taxes or interfered with their collection. The ordonnance
was clearly aimed against La Tremoille and his associates ;
and it was the signal for their concerted movement
against the Crown.

The barons chose for their leader no less a per-
sonage than the Dauphin, the King's own son, who
later as Louis XL was to prove the most formidable foe
to those ambitions of the nobility which he was now
furthering.

Louis demanded that the control of public affairs
should be placed in his hands. To the standard of revolt
which he raised at Blois in 1440, flocked not only barons
but princes of the blood royal, among them Joan's
*' fair Duke," Alengon, while from Poitou La Tremoille
wrote that he would command the forces of the rebels
in that province.

It seemed as if the fire of civil strife were about to be
rekindled throughout the kingdom. But the promp-
titude and vigour of the King and his Constable imme-
diately quenched the flame. Rightly regarding La
Tremoille's rising in Poitou as the focus of discontent,
Charles and Richemont marched straight into that
province, and in a few weeks from the raising of the rebel

1 After the Hussite rebellion in Bohemia, which some time before
had centred at Prague.

40 FROM THE CRUSADES

standard sedition was completely quelled, and the barons
were summoned to appear before the King's court.
Among the rebels there was one whom the King refused
to see : La Tremoille he would not admit to his presence.
But this wily baron, ever eager to safeguard his own
interest, had obtained in writing from the Dauphin a
promise of his support, and a guarantee that as long as
he lived he should enjoy his pension and other revenues.
In accordance with this undertaking Louis refused to
submit to his royal father unless the King agreed to
pardon La Tremoille. Charles, however, refused to
grant his son's demand. *' Then I shall go back with
the rebels," said Louis. " The doors are open to you,"
replied the King, " and if they are not wide enough, I
will cause some hundred feet of the wall to be broken
down so that you may pass through at your will."
Charles's firmness won the day, and reduced all the
revolted barons to submission.

As long as La Tremoille lived, however, Poitou con-
tinued a centre of discontent. In 1442, Charles was
compelled again to proceed in person against his former
favourite, and to capture several of his strongholds.
Nevertheless, the Chamberlain continued his old work,
and, in 1446, an action was brought against him in the
King's court for spoliation and homicide. Yet, but a
short time afterwards, in March that year, when the new
Duke of Brittany, Francis I., came to render homage
to King Charles, we find La Tremoille appearing once
more at court in all the state of his high office of CounciUor-
Chamberlain. In the following May, a pardon for all
past offences, which fifteen years earlier he had wrested
from his docile master, was registered among the royal
charters.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 41

But possibly by that time the culprit was already
beyond the reach of any human pardon, for on the
6th of that month La Tremoille expired in his castle of
Sully, where he was buried ; and France was delivered
from one of the most terrible of her oppressors.

42 FROM THE CRUSADES

CHAPTER HI

TWO LOYAL SERVANTS OF KING LOUIS XI

LOUIS DE LA TREMOILLE, DIED I481.
GEORGES DE LA TREMOILLE, SEIGNEUR DE CRAON, DIED I483.

Later La Tremoilles were hardly proud of their notori-
ous ancestor. From the recesses of the family cupboard,
down through succeeding ages, the bloated features of
the Councillor-Chamberlain, " that toper, that barrel
of a man/' grinning like an ogre, haunted his posterity.
His very physical semblance was abhorred, and when-
ever one of his descendants began to display a tendency
to his forbear's corpulence it was striven against by
violent exercises worthy of a mediaeval Sandow.

Fortunately for France and for the La Tremoilles,
while the Chamberlain's physical features reproduced
themselves in his sons, his grandsons, and even his great-
grandson, this was not the case with his character ;
and it is only in his remote descendant, Catherine
de Medicis,^ in her unscrupulous egoism and in her
disruptive policy, that Georges' moral defects were
continued. Meanwhile, for the sins of their father and
grandfather, La Tremoilles were striving to atone by
the loyalty and courage with which they served the
French crown and the French nation.

The Chamberlain's two sons — Louis, and especially

* See genealogical table, p. 43, n.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 43

his second son, a second Georges, the famous Seigneur
de Craon — as loyal servants of King Louis XL did their
best to destroy their father's wicked work, and out of
that chaos for which he was largely responsible, to create
a new French nation, the most compact, the most har-
monious, and the most united in Europe.

When the Councillor-Chamberlain died, his wife
Catherine was still living. She resided in her lordly
castle of lie Bouchart. And there, though her sons
were well past the age when boys were accustomed
to escape from their mother's control, she kept them
in tutelage, expecting them to obey a poor relation,
one Pean de la Vallee, whom she had set over her house-
hold. Louis and Georges, already chafing beneath the
maternal yoke, absolutely refused submission to their
mother's steward, who by his malgracieux treatment
of the youths drove them to flee from lie Bouchart,
Louis to his chateau of Bommiers in Berry, Georges to
the court of Duke Philip at Brussels. Thence, after a

Genealogical Table showing the Descent of Catherine de
Medicis from Georges de La Tremoille.

Georges de La Tremoille

Louis I. Georges, Louise m. Bertrand VL, Comte d'Auvergne
Seigneur et de Boulogne, grandson of

de Craon Marie d'Auvergne, Jeanne

d'Auvergne's cousin.

Jean de" La Tour, Comte d'Auvergne, in.
Jeanne de Bourbon.

Madeleine de La Tour, m. (Jan., 1518) Lorenzo
di Medici, Duke of
Urbino.

Catherine' de Medicis.

44 FROM THE CRUSADES

while, Georges was induced to return to He Bouchart by
his mother's promise to marry him to a wealthy heiress,
the daughter of the Seneschal of Normandy. On inquiry,
however, the conditions of this marriage proved to be
less advantageous than the young Seigneur de Craon
had believed. Still, he stayed on at his mother's castle,
apparently plotting against her steward, for, at a hunting
party in 1458, Georges took Pean prisoner and carried
him off to Burgundy. There, on the steward's promising
to break off all relations with the Countess, Craon set him
at liberty. But no sooner was Pean free than he cited his
captor to appear and answer for his violence before the
chief magistrate of Touraine at Chinon. Georges, how-
ever, pleading ill-health as a reason for his non-appearance,
appealed to the King to pardon him ; and in this appeal
he was supported by his mother, who may have grown
as tired of her old favourite as many years previously she
had done of her first husband. Charles VII. granted
the pardon. And in the document which awarded
it may be read all the incidents of the Seigneur
de Craon's quarrel with his mother's steward, related,
it must be remembered, entirely from Craon's point
of view.

Like his great contemporary, the historian, Philippe de
Commines, Georges de Craon having first served the
Dukes of Burgundy, Philip the Good and his son Charles
the Rash, transferred his allegiance to their mortal
enemy, the King of France, Louis XL, who succeeded
to the throne in 1461.

For nine years, from 1468 till 1477, Craon, alike in the
council-chamber and on the battle-field, was one of
King Louis' most effective instruments in that long struggle
with Duke Charles of Burgundy, whose defeat and death

ALL THAT REMAINS OF THE CASTLE OF L' ILE BOUCHART

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 45

at the battle of Nancy was to be one of the chief corner-
stones in the building of modern France.

It was during the sack of Liege, in 1468, that Craon
and King Louis met and came to terms. The King
shortly before, having gone to Peronne to confer with
his enemy, had there been taken prisoner and only released
in exchange for a promise to aid Burgundy in besieging
the town of Liege. At this siege Craon was present in
command of a Burgundian company and charged with
defending the outposts. In this capacity he gallantly
repulsed a night sortie, pursuing the besieged within
the gates and thus giving the signal for a general attack,
which resulted in the capture of the city.

Struck with admiration of La Tremoille's prowess,
Louis determined to win him for his own service. What
means he employed, whether he offered bribes in the form
of high ofhce and rich lands, or whether he relied solely
on his own magnetic personality and power of persuasion
we do not know. At any rate, he induced Georges de
Craon to forsake the Duke ; and straightway the Seigneur
was admitted to the King's Council and created Lord
High Chamberlain.

More a conflict of keen wits than of weapons of war
was this duel between France and Burgundy. The diminu-
tive figure of Louis XL, his foxy face, with its hawk-like
nose, its sly eyes and thin lips, suggest the diplomatist
rather than the warrior. More than once a great army
was discomfited by Louis' wiles. And Craon was almost
as able a diplomatist as his master. La Tremoille was
present at that mysterious interview on a bridge over
the Somme, which resulted in the Treaty of Picquigny,
when the sovereigns of England and France leered at
one another through a barrier of lattice-work, and the

46 FROM THE CRUSADES

English King was induced, without striking a blow, to
withdraw his lordly host from French territory.

But the Seigneur deCraon's two most brilliant diplomatic
achievements were the winning for France of two powerful
allies, Rene 11.,^ Duke of Lorraine, and the Confederation
of the Swiss Cantons.

One of Duke Charles's ambitious projects was the
conquest of Lorraine, which, extending as it did from
Verdun on the north to Franche Comte on the south, cut
his Burgundian possessions in two. Craon, who was
then Governor of Champagne, was the Duke of Lorraine's
neighbour. This gave him an opportunity of working on
Rene's fears of Burgundian conquest, and on his hopes of
French reward, and by these means of winning, in the
year 1474, his alliance for Louis XL Then, in conjunction
with Rene, Craon laid siege to Pierre Fort and captured
this Burgundian stronghold, which was but five miles
from the Lotharingian capital of Nancy. Duke Charles,
however, retaliated by overrunning Lorraine and annexing
it. Now it seemed as if Rene had done a foolish thing in
throwing in his lot with the French King. But Rene's
day of vengeance was to come.

Meanwhile, Craon had been contracting that other
alliance, with the Swiss Cantons. Liberally bribed with
French gold, the Swiss entered into a covenant with King
Louis for ten years, and in the autumn of this same year,
1474, invaded the Burgundian province of Franche Comte,
defeating the Burgundians at Hericourt and sacking
Pontarlier. Two years later Charles, uniting all his
forces against the Cantons, met the Swiss near Lake
Neufchatel, where he suffered two serious defeats at
their hands in the battles of Grandson and Morat.

1 Reigned from 1473 — 1508.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 47

Before Burgundy could recover from these disasters,
Rene had begun to reconquer his duchy ; he had already
recaptured Nancy and other fortresses when Charles led
an army against him. On January 5th, 1477, beneath
the walls of his capital, Rene at the head of a Swiss army
inflicted a crushing defeat upon the Duke of Burgundy.
Already the two alliances negotiated by the Sire de Craon
had served their purpose : Lorraine was safe from
Burgundian ambition and the power of Charles le
Temeraire lay in the dust.

At the close of the battle, the Duke himself was missing.
His fate was uncertain ; and in the letter which the Sire
de Craon despatched to his royal master, all he could tell
was that Burgundy had suffered a crushing defeat. But
that was good enough for Louis ; whether Charles were
ahve or dead, these tidings filled the King with exaltation.
And straightway, by that royal post which he was the
first to institute in France, he despatched to his Governor,
Craon, the following letter : —

" Monsieur le Comte, my friend, I have received your
letters, and heard the good news they contain, for which
I thank you with all my heart. Now is the time to employ
all your five natural senses in order to put the duchy and
county of Burgundy into my hands. And, if so be that
the Duke of Burgundy is dead, then as Governor of
Champagne, enter the said country with your army, and,
as you love me dear, hold it for me. Among your men-
at-arms keep order as if you were in Paris, and prove to
the inhabitants that I intend to treat them as well as any
of my subjects.

" With regard to our goddaughter,^ I intend to conclude
the marriage, which already I have negotiated, between
her and my Lord the Dauphin.

^ Mary, daughter of Charles the Rash, and his heiress, for he left no
son. She afterwards married Maximilian of Austria, later Emperor.

48 FROM THE CRUSADES

" My lord Count, I do not wish you to enter the afore-
said countries or to mention the above in the case that
the Duke of Burgundy should be still hving. And in this
matter I trust to you to serve me.

" Farewell. Written at Plessis-du Pare/ the 9th of
January.

Signed " Louis.'' ^

The messenger who bore this letter met upon the road
another messenger from the Sire de Craon, who was
travelling to the King with the news of his great enemy's
death. For a whole day after the battle the Duke's fate
was unknown. The engagement was fought on a Sunday,
and it was not until the following Monday evening that
there was brought to Duke Rene an Itahan page who told
how he had seen Burgundy fall. After a long search on
the battlefield, the Duke's body was found. Though
covered with wounds, it was not so defaced that it could
not be recognised by his laundress, his valet, and his
doctor.

The Battle of Nancy marks the climax in the Seigneur
de Craon's prosperity. After that victory there began
to come upon him the physical and moral defects of his
family. *' The said Seigneur de Craon was an exceedingly
fat man," writes Commines.^ And with his father's
corpulence, Craon began to reveal a tendency to develop
his father's vices. In the Duchy of Burgundy, where
King Louis, after Nancy, had established him in command.
La Tremoille permitted and possibly even perpetrated
grandes pilleries, while by arrogance and quarrelsomeness
he alienated one of Louis' most powerful allies, the

1 Doubtless Louis' favourite residence in Touraine, better known as
Plessis-les-Tours.

2 See " Archives d'un Serviteur de Louis XI.," pp. iv. and v.
8 " M6moires." ed. Mich, et Poujoulat, Ser. I., Vol. iv., 145.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 49

Prince of Orange. The Prince retaliated by raising a
great part of the duchy against the French. Consequently
after he had suffered a severe defeat at the Battle of Dole,
Craon was deprived of the Burgundian command.

After this disgrace La Tremoille retired from public
life. But he had learnt his lesson. On his estates in
Barrois and Mayenne, where he spent the remnant of his
days, he lived as a law-abiding vassal of the King, occupy-
ing himself in good works and pious foundations. At his
chateau of Craon in Mayenne he died in the year 1481.

His domestic experiences were not unlike his father's,
for Craon's consort, Marie de Montauban, like his father's
first wife, Jeanne, ended her life in prison. Accused
of betraying her husband and even of plotting with
one of her lovers to poison him, Marie was con-
demned by order of Louis XL to perpetual imprisonment.
She died without children ; and her husband bequeathed
all his vast estates to his elder brother, Louis.

Louis de La Tremoille, having served in the army of
Charles VI L against the English, on the accession of
Louis XL retired to his estates, where he lived the life of a
pious country gentleman. By his loyalty and orderliness.
Count Louis, although holding aloof from public affairs,
was a tower of strength to his sovereign in that part of
France. Had La Tremoille with his great wealth and
numerous vassals thrown in his lot with the discontented
barons, that Mad War which broke out some years after
his death might have occurred earlier, and been less
worthy of its name. Yet La Tremoille had better
reasons for quarrelling with his sovereign than many of
his discontented neighbours. For the greater part of the
vast inheritance, the estates of Talmond and of Thouars,
which should have come to him with his wife Marguerite

C.R. E

50 FROM THE CRUSADES

d'Amboise^ had been seized by the King, who had bestowed
them on his favourites. How by the persistence of Louis'
famous son, Count Louis IL, these estates were regained
and united to the family dominions is another story which
shall be told in the following chapter.

1 The daughter cf Louis, Vicomte d'Amboise.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 51

CHAPTER IV

LA TREMOILLES IN THE ITALIAN WARS

LOUIS II., 1460 — 1525. CHARLES, I485 — 1515.

FRANCIS, 1502 — 1542.

While Craon was fighting the King's battles, in his
brother's chateau of Bommiers, in Berry, was growing
up a golden-haired, hazel-eyed boy, Louis, the son of
Louis. This youth was to be the typical knight of
chivalry, and by his lustrous deeds to atone for the
family ogre's villainy. In the midst of the family picture
Louis II. de La Tremoille stands out like a veritable
demi-god. His well-knit frame, curly locks, aquiline
nose, and decided chin are those of the verie parfit gentil
knyghte. " The greatest captain of the world," his
contemporaries called him, " the glory of his century,"
" the jewel of the French monarchy," and, like Bayard,
" the knight without reproach." ^

Yet despite his heroic qualities Louis did not stand
aloof from his comrades, proudly looking down on them
from a pedestal of stern virtue. With his companions
in arms he was hail-fellow-well-met. And though, in
writing, they may have lavished upon him the laudatory
epithets we have quoted, in speech they called him by
a nickname, suggested by his favourite oath Lavraye-corps-

^ Bayard, however, was " the knight without fear and without
reproach."

£ 2

52 FROM THE CRUSADES

Dieu, a pseudonym, somewhat profane, and a trifle
lengthy, but doubtless familiarly contracted.^

The story of Louis' career was recorded by one of his
own retainers, Jean Bouchet, a Poitiers lawyer, in a
biography entitled " Le Panegyric du Chevalier sans
Reproche."^

The extravagant adulation of this book cannot fail

to fill with misgiving the critical modem reader. And

in order to gratify his judicial sense we have searched

diligently but with no great success in the La Tremoille

archives for the reverse side of Bouchet's flattering

picture. Our hero's gravest failings, as revealed by these

family documents, are a tendency to hold too loosely

the strings of his well-filled purse and a passion for

games of chance. With King Francis, his mother,

Louise of Savoy, and his much-tried Consort, Queen

Claude, La Tremoille lost heavily at cards. We may

conclude, therefore, that when Louis' good wife, Gabrielle

de Bourbon, is found pledging her jewels and silver plate,

and converting her ornaments into golden crowns of the

sun, it may not always have been to pay for the equipment

of her husband and his retainers in expeditions of war.

But when all is said these are no very serious offences ;

card-playing for high stakes was common in those days,

and excessive liberality may almost be regarded as a

weakness becoming to a hero.

Louis opened his career in the truly heroic manner
by running away from home. In his childhood at
Bommiers, with his younger brothers, Jean, Jacques
and Georges, he had played at being a soldier. Trained

1 See Brant6me, " (Euvres Completes/' ed. Lalanne, II., 393
et seq., where he cites the favourite oaths of great captains. The most
curious is that of La Roche-du-Mayne, Teste Dieu pleine de reliques.

a Ed. Mich, et Pouj., Ser. I., Vol. IV., 405—478.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 53

to run, to wrestle, to leap, to draw the bow and to wield
the sling, he and his brethren loved to fight sham battles
and engage in sham sieges. But soon of this world of
make-believe Louis wearied. His first taste of real life
came when he was permitted to ride forth with his
father to hunt in the forests of Berry, and then sport so
absorbed him that he would pass whole days without
food or drink.

But not even the excitement of the chase satisfied his
craving for adventure. Stories of the King's court and
of the band of noble youths whom Louis XL was gathering
round the Dauphin and training for knightly deeds,
penetrated even to remote Bommiers, and young La
Tremoille longed to enter this school of chivalry. It was
therefore a bitter disappointment when the Count, because
of his quarrel with the King, refused his sovereign's
demand that the young Louis should join the youthful
band at court, those striplings whom the King was
bringing up, not entirely for their own good but also as
hostages for their Sires' loyalty.

Shortly afterwards, during a long night in the forest,
when, having lost his way on one of his hunting expedi-
tions, Louis had ample time for meditation, he resolved
that should his father continue to refuse to send him to
court, he would take the matter into his own hands and
set forth on his own account.

The Count proving obdurate, the young Louis took
with him as companion another noble youth, and secretly
started. But his absence was soon discovered ; he was
overtaken and ignominiously brought home.

Barely had the truant returned when there reached
Bommiers a second royal messenger, summoning the
boy to court in tones so peremptory that this time his

54 FROM THE CRUSADES

father dared not disobey. So our hero, instead of
being punished for his truancy, heard the welcome news
that his dearest wish was to be gratified. A fortnight
later, in high glee as we may imagine, clothed in rich
attire and accompanied by the comrade of his former
evasion, Louis set out on his adventures.

Having been graciously welcomed at court by the King
and by his uncle, the Seigneur de Craon, the young
La Tremoille was admitted to the circle of noble youths,
whom the King in his capacity of " universal guardian "
had gathered round the Dauphin Charles.

And there in courtly duties and martial exercises
Louis' days passed pleasantly. A fear, however, began
to haunt this fair stripling ; his figure began to fill out
too rapidly, and there came upon him the horrid dread
of his grandfather's bloated obesity ; wherefore, with
renewed vigour, he engaged in all manner of violent
exercises, subjecting himself to the severest discipline
of diet, with the result that his persistent efforts were
rewarded, the terrible fate of a resemblance to the family
ogre was averted ; and Louis remained slim and agile
to the end of his days.

" A young shoot, plucked withal from an old Bur-
gundian stock, yet growing to be a hedge of defence for
the realm of France, and a rod wherewith to beat
Burgundy," thus did the wily King, with a gleam in those
foxy eyes of his, describe Count Louis' son. Thirteen
years old was Louis when he came to court ; five years
he passed in martial and courtly training. Then at
eighteen he was at length permitted to engage in active
service, and to accompany his uncle Craon to the conquest
of Burgundy.

So fair a youth was not destined to escape the darts

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TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 55

of love, and Bouchet, in the long-winded fantastic
manner of the mediaeval romance, spins out to an inter-
minable length the story of his hero's first gallant adven-
ture. But doubtless our readers will brook abridgment
and rest satisfied to know that, as frequently happened
in mediaeval story, the lady of Louis' desire was already
the wife of another, and of the lover's most intimate
friend ; that while Louis' Dulcinea returned his love,
and while the lovers confessed their passion to one
another, they successfully concealed it from the husband
until one day their amorous glances betrayed them ;
but that, still true to the heroic tenor of the popular
tale, the husband, magnanimously relying upon the
honour of his wife and friend, placed no obstacle in the
way of their meeting ; and that thus trusted the lovers
felt bound to subject their passion to their honour.
Fortunately, such a stern trial of their virtue Louis and
his lady had not long to endure, for soon the knight was
summoned from court to Bommiers, where his father
lay at the point of death. There, surrounded by his
children. Count Louis passed away in the year 1483.

Our hero was now Count of La Tremoille, the possessor
of a great fortune and the lord of vast domains. And
we hear nothing more of his romantic affection. Descend-
ing rapidly from high-flown romance to mere material
concerns, the Count's chief object now became to obtain
from the King the restoration of those confiscated lands,^
that part of the Amboise inheritance which, as we have
said, Louis XL had bestowed on his favourites.^

Accordingly, soon after his father's funeral, the Count

1 Besides Thouars and Talmond, these estates included the lordship
of Mauleon, the principalities of Berrie, He de Rh6, Marans, and other
lands in Poitou and Saintonge.

* One of them was the historian, Philippe de Commines.

56 FROM THE CRUSADES

set forth with his brothers for the Touraine chateau of
Plessis-les-Tours, where the King was residing. At
Plessis, by the intervention of the Archbishop of Tours,
La Tremoille's complaint was presented to Louis, who
promised to restore the confiscated dominions. But
death overtook him before he had time to fulfil his
undertaking. It was left for King Louis' virile daughter,
Anne de Beaujeu, who, during the minority of her
brother, the thirteen-year-old Charles VIIL, practically
ruled the kingdom, to fulfil her father's promise to La
Tremoille. On September 30th, 1483, the rich estates of
Amboise passed into Count Louis' possession. Hence-
forth Louis and his descendants, as well as Counts of
La Tremoille, were Viscounts of Thouars ^ and Princes of
Talmond.

The town of Thouars,^ on the Thouet, which now
belonged to the La Tremoilles, had once, during the
English occupation of western France, been a favourite
residence of English kings. Henry H. built there a palace
with two towers, la Tour au Prev6t and laTourGrenetiere,^
of which the ruins may be seen to-day. The fagade of
the old palace, bearing the arms of the kings of England,
was still standing at the Revolution. But the Republican
government insisted on the then occupant, Madame de
Bournisseaux, removing the sign of royalty from its walls.
After 1483, Thouars may be regarded as the La Tremoille
capital in the west. In the ancient palace of English kings
the La Tremoilles lived until the seventeenth century,
when a duchess of La Tremoille built on the banks of the
Thouet one of the most magnificent chateaux in France. "*

1 Thouars was to be created into a duchy by Charles IX. in 1563.

2 In the department of Sevres.
8 See illustration.

^ See ante, VI., and post, 133 and]2oo.

LA TOUR AU PREVOT
Part of the old La Tr^moille chateau at Thouars, built by King Henry II of England

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 57

Thouars was of great ecclesiastical importance, for
within its walls lay buried St. Laon de Cursay, to
whose shrine for many a year had flocked multitudes
of the mentally afflicted. Marvellous miracles had been
worked there, and, besides the church named after the
saint and built over his tomb, numerous other sacred
edifices had been erected.

Count Louis and his pious wife, Gabrielle de Bourbon,
richly endowed all these ecclesiastical foundations, while
not far from their palace they built the fine church of
Notre Dame. In a chapel of this church dedicated to
St. Medard were to be buried the La Tremoilles of future
generations. The fine tombs of Count Louis and his
wife in the choir were destroyed at the Revolution ; but
in the crypt the bodies of their descendants to this day
rest in peace. ^

Anne de Beaujeu had inherited her father's shrewdness.
Therefore she was quick to realise the importance of
securing the services of so brilliant a knight as Louis de
La Tremoille. She admitted him to the royal council,
and proposed his marriage with Gabrielle de Bourbon, a
princess of the blood royal, a descendant of St. Louis,
and a daughter of the Count of Montpensier. Louis,
completely cured of his earlier romantic attachment,
gladly welcomed Anne de Beaujeu's proposal, and when
he saw Gabrielle's portrait, he became still more eager for
the match. To this ardent lover's disappointment,
Madame de Beaujeu refused to permit him to conduct
his wooing in person. A gentleman of the court was
charged to journey into Auvergne, to the castle of Mont-
pensier, where the lady dwelt, and to bear a letter

1 The late Duke, Louis Charles de La Tremoille, however, was
interred at Serrant.

58 FROM THE CRUSADES

proposing the marriage. But Louis, determined to
circumvent Madame's prudent designs, like a true knight-
errant disguising himself as one of the messenger's
retainers, accompanied him to Auvergne. There he
penetrated into the Montpensier chateau and himself
presented the letter. Then for his pains the masquerading
suitor was fully rewarded by hearing Mdlle. de Mont-
pensier say as she read the missive, that though she had
never seen the Comte de La Tremoille, his fame was so
fair, that she would esteem herself happy in becoming his
wife.

Gabrielle, as may be imagined, was only flattered when
she discovered the trick her gallant had played her. The
course of their love ran smooth, and, on July 28th, 1484,
at the castle of Escolles in Auvergne, they were married.

Bouchet in his biography of La Tremoille draws a
striking picture of Countess Gabrielle, representing her as
a fine type of the cultured Frenchwoman in austere pre-
Renaissance days, before the Italian wars had introduced
into French chateaux Italian luxury and freedom.

Unlike her husband, Dame Gabrielle had literary tastes.
She was even the author of treatises, the solemn tenor of
which is betokened by such titles as le Chasteau de Sainct
Esprit, V Instruction des Jeunes Filles, and le Viateur.
These works the excellent Bouchet found to be so well
written, that he had difficulty in believing they were by a
woman — i.e., until he recollected that Madame Gabrielle
had had the good sense to appeal to his sound judgment
and that of other members of the superior sex for advice
as to their composition. For Madame Gabrielle knew her
place as a mediaeval woman. She recognised the limits
that men set to her poor feminine intelligence ; and,
though a devout Christian, she forbore to inquire too

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 59

closely into the mysteries of religion, exercising a discre-
tion which the good Bouchet highly commends. For the
Poitiers lawyer the Countess was an ideal woman ; and
in terms of the highest praise, he recounts how she used
to spend her day. Having paid her devotions, she passed
most of her time in embroidery and other domestic
avocations, surrounded by her numerous ladies, who all
belonged to noble houses. Then for a space she would
withdraw into the privacy of her book-lined closet to read
some history or moral discourse, or herself compose one
of her pious treatises.

Dame Gabrielle's love of letters was inherited by her
son Charles, Prince de Talmond, born the year after his
parents' marriage, and in early years the author of elegant
epistles and rondeaux. If in mind Prince Charles
resembled his mother, in physique he was a true La
Tremoille. And in his case not the severest discipline or
the most violent exercise succeeded in counteracting the
family corpulence : had death not cut short his career
he would probably have become as fat as his great-
grandfather.

But we are anticipating. We must return to a time
before so dark a destiny threatened the Prince, when he
was but an infant in the cradle. In 1485 a number of dis-
contented nobles, led by the King's cousin, Louis Due
d'Orleans, who aimed at replacing Anne de Beaujeu in the
Regency of the realm, rose in rebellion, and waged another
mad war. The revolt had lasted but a few months,
when, being utterly worsted, the rebels laid down their
arms. Shortly afterwards, however, the malcontents
formed a new league in which they included Maximilian,
Archduke of Austria. War broke out again in 1487. It
was waged chiefly in Brittany, where Nantes obstinately

6o FROM THE CRUSADES

held out against the forces of the French crown. This
check before Nantes induced Madame de Beaujeu, on
March nth, 1487, to send into the rebelHous province
another army, finely equipped, and supported by an
excellent body of cavalry. This force she placed under
La Tremoille's command. Count Louis was totally
lacking in experience of military leadership. Yet by
brilliant success, he fully justified the Regent's choice.
Having taken the town of Fougeres, Louis attacked the
rebels in the open field, and, at St. Aubin-du-Cormier,
charging in perfect order but with Frankish fury
{francisque fureur), his troops routed the malcontents,
taking Louis d'Orleans himself prisoner.

The victory of St. Aubin-du-Cormier ended the civil
war. La Tremoille was now in high favour at court.
Charles VHL, who had attained his majority and taken
the government into his own hands, appointed Louis to
be one of his chamberlains, and as a reward for his conduct
of the Breton campaign bestowed upon his cher et feal
cousin the captaincy of Fougeres, with a pension of
2,000 livres tournois. Other offices and emoluments were
to follow.

Two years later, when there was a prospect of war with
England, the King appointed Louis lieutenant-general
in the provinces of Poitou, Saintonge, Angoumois, Anjou,
and in the marches of Brittany. But the war came to
nothing, for Henry VIL, like his predecessor, Edward IV.,
was bought off by the French King, and withdrew his
army without doing more than lay siege to Boulogne.^

It was not in battle against England that La Tremoille
was to win his laurels. By this time Charles's attention
was being attracted elsewhere. The King had persuaded
^ This agreement is known as the Treaty of Estaples, 1492.

[Giraudon. Photo

LOUIS II, COMTE DE LA TREMOILLE
From a portrait by Ghirlandajo, at Chantilly

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 6i

himself that, through his grandmother, Marie d'Anjou, he
had a right to the crown of Naples ; and there was coming
upon him that passion for Italian conquest which for
half a century was to obsess French sovereigns.

Among all the turbulent princes of Italy none was
more ambitious than Ludovico Sforza of Milan, usually
known as II Moro, and one of the most striking figures of
the Renaissance. In this year, 1492, Ludovico fanned
Charles's ambition by sending to his court an embassy
instructed to encourage the King to assert his claim to
the Neapolitan kingdom.

What were the precise proposals made by the
ambassadors is uncertain, but it is perfectly clear that
their motive was to divert Charles in his proposed Italian
expedition from any enterprise against the Duchy of
Milan. Through his kinswoman, Valentine Visconti,
daughter of the Duke of Milan, the King might possibly
have laid claim to that duchy ^ ; but on Milan Ludovico
himself had designs. He had already usurped the
government and thrust himself into the position of
Regent for his nephew, the Duke Galeazzo, whom he
had cast into prison. Now Galeazzo's father-in-law was
the King of Naples, and Sforza's design was, by bringing
King Charles against the Neapohtan kingdom, to prevent
Naples from intervening on his son-in-law's behalf in
Milan. The scheme was successful. And, when in
1494, Charles invaded Italy, it was against Naples alone
that his arms were directed. Milan's turn was to come
later.

In the previous year, if we may believe Jean Bouchet,
La Tremoille had been despatched on a mission to Pope

1 Eventually Charles VIII. 's cousin, and successor, Louis XII., who
was directly descended from Valentine, did claim it.

62 FROM THE CRUSADES

Alexander VI., whose alliance the King eagerly coveted.
No other authorities,^ however, mention Louis as one of
the ambassadors to Rome. The Count we know was
appointed lieutenant-general in the King's army. And
it seems likely that La Tremoille accompanied Charles
when, in August, 1494, he crossed the Alps by the
Mont Genevre.

There is, likewise, every reason to believe that Count
Louis participated in that crescendo of marvels, that
march of the Northerners, tramping over the ancient
Italian roads lying white in the autumn dust, from Pa via
to Florence, from Florence to Rome, and from Rome to
Naples.

That La Tremoille was with the King at the famous
capture of Fort San Giovanni, which laid Naples at the
feet of the French, there is no doubt. For to Count Louis
redounded all the honours of that glorious day.

With the true instinct of a successful commander
Louis was always careful for the physical condition of
his soldiers. And on the morning of the attack on San
Giovanni, at his own expense, he had the gunners served
with wine. The cannonading lasted four hours, at the
end of which time the Count, at the head of three com-
panies, led the assault and was the first to set foot within
the walls of the town. No sooner, at the head of his
first company, had he planted his standard in the breach
than it was seen to float from another which had been
simultaneously effected by the second company. So
great was the " Frankish fury " that in the space of an
hour the town lay at the invader's mercy. Then, crossing
the Liris and threatening the enemy on the flank and

1 See Delaborde, " rExpedition de Charles VIII.," 322, according
to whom the ambassadors were d'Aubigny, Perron de Baschi, President
Matheron, and Bidan, superintendent of finances.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 63

rear, Charles compelled the Neapolitan army to retreat
to Capua, while he, on February 22nd, entered Naples.

Of the spoils of the Neapolitan kingdom, which Charles
distributed among the nobles of his army. La Tremoille
appears to have received his share. But, once the
plundering over, the French King and his generals were
anxious to return to their native land. Like their
country-woman of a later date, who, when she gazed on
the blue waters of the Bay of Naples, longed for the mud
of her natal Rue du Bac, Charles's nobles beneath those
sunny skies longed to be back among the clouds and
mists of their northern fatherland. Moreover, the
King's allies were turning against him. Sforza, having
secured for himself the Duchy of Milan, ^ was uniting in
a league against the French, Venice, the Pope, the
Emperor, Ferdinand of Arragon and Isabella of Castile.

Threatened with isolation in a hostile country, King
Charles began to prepare for a return to his base of
operations. In Naples he stayed only long enough to
make a triumphal entry on May 12th, and to install the
Comte de Montpensier, La Tremoille's brother-in-law,
as his viceroy. Then, a week later, Louis with the King
and his army turned his steps northward. The progress
of the French was rapid ; entering Rome, whence the
Pope had fled, on June ist, on the 13th they were at
Sienna, on the 23rd at Pisa. At Poggibonsi, Charles
gave audience to Savonarola, to whom he confessed,
and from whose hands he received the Eucharist.

North of Pisa, at Sarzana, the invaders were confronted
by a perplexing alternative : whether to take the coast
road winding along the Gulf of Genoa or, marching north
by way of Parma and Piacenza, to cross the Apennines

* Galeazzo had died in prison.

64 FROM THE CRUSADES

into the Lombard plain. Both roads were equally
difficult for a large army encumbered with a train of
heavy artillery : the coast road, as travellers by train from
Genoa to Florence will recollect, is bounded on the one
hand by the sea, and on the other by high mountains ;
the inland road ran over the precipitous peaks and
through the narrow gorges of the Apennines ; in both
directions the King had good reason to beheve a hostile
army awaited him. Rather than fall into the enemy's
hands between the sea and the mountains, Charles
elected to cross the Apennines. And it was this deci-
sion which gave La Tremoille the opportunity of per-
forming the most glorious of all his exploits. The ascent
was made from Sarzana, not far from the famous
marble quarries of Carrara, in that wild, picturesque
country with which Andrew Wilson's landscapes have
rendered us so familiar. But as they neared the higher
peaks of the Apennines, covered with dense forests,
the French commanders were met by an almost in-
superable difficulty : how to convey over these precipi-
tous mountains their train of fourteen huge cannon, each
of which was usually drawn by thirty-five horses. In
this dilemma the Swiss came to their rescue. These
mercenaries by plundering a captured town in violation
of the King's command had fallen into disfavour. Being
anxious to reinstate themselves in their employer's good
graces, they proposed to harness themselves to the guns
and to drag them over the mountain. Their offer was
eagerly accepted.

Now, while the master-gunner, Jean de la Grange,
arranged the technicalities of this tremendous under-
taking, it was La Tremoille who supervised its execution.
And to him is chiefly due the perfect success of this

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 65

Herculean enterprise, the transport of fourteen enormous
cannon over a pathless mountain in the scorching July
sun. To prepare a way for the guns to pass, trees had
to be cut down, rocks exploded, and the ground levelled.
In all these works Count Louis personally took part.
Clad only in doublet and hose, he worked in harness side
by side with the Swiss, and with his own hand bore over
the mountain helmets full of heavy cannon-balls. All
the while with characteristic French patience and cheer-
fulness he was encouraging the soldiers by offering rewards
to those who should first drag their gun to the summit,
and now, as at San Giovanni, providing wine with which
to quench the men's parching thirst. Thus encouraged
by their heroic captain, and inspirited by the martial
music of trumpet, fife and drum, inciting one another to
new efforts by those curious cries which their descendants
even to-day call over the Alpine valleys, the Swiss at
length succeeded in dragging up to the top of the mountain
all the fourteen cannon. Then came the descent, which
was even more difficult than the ascent had been. For
the guns were allowed to go down by their own weight ;
and the Swiss, roped to the backs of them to steady
their descent, were in danger of being carried away by
the impetus of the artillery. To La Tremoille's care-
fulness it was mainly due that during this dangerous
business not one life was lost. And at the end of two
days, the Count, burnt to a blackamoor by the sun,
triumphantly told the King that his artillery train had
crossed the mountains and lay safe on the boulder-strewn
bank of the River Taro.

Charles was overjoyed ; and to his indomitable general
the words with which the King welcomed these tidings
must have been highly gratifying : " To-day, my cousin,"

C.R. F

66 FROM THE CRUSADES

said the King, " at the risk of your own person, which
you are very ready to hazard in the service of me and
mine, you have accomphshed more than Hannibal of
Carthage, or JuHus Caesar. And I promise you that
when I see you again in France such rewards shall be
bestowed upon you as shall inspire others with a wish
to serve me/'

La Tremoille, with a noble knight's true modesty,
replied : '' Sire, I regret that my mind and body cannot
better serve you ; no other reward do I desire than your
grace and goodwill." ^

But the invaders had not yet overcome all their
difficulties. And before they could cross the Alps they
had to force their way through the enemy's army at
Fornovo, where, on July 5th, La Tremoille commanded
the rearguard, which appears to have borne the brunt of
the fighting. Immediately on his return to France,
Charles, remembering his promise, appointed his
brilHant general High Chamberlain.^

Two years and a half later, on April 7th, 1498, the
King died childless, leaving as his heir his cousin Louis,
Duke of Orleans, whom La Tremoille had taken prisoner
at St. Aubin-du-Cormier.

The accession to the throne of King Louis XH., the
Count's sometime prisoner naturally filled La Tremoille
with misgiving. But the new sovereign prudently
announced that the King of France did not intend to
avenge the wrongs of the Duke of Orleans. And with
magnanimity, mingled no doubt with shrewdness,
Louis not only confirmed La Tremoille in the possession

1 Bouchet, 437.

2 Premier Chamhellan. For three generations La Tr^moilles held
this office: Georges under Charles VII., the Seigneur de Craon under
Louis XL, and now Count Louis.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 67

of those lands, offices and pensions which he had enjoyed
under King Charles, but admitted him to his innermost
councils.

In the year of his accession two problems perplexed
the King, and in the solution of both he employed
La Tremoille.

First, he was thinking of divorcing his wife, Jeanne
de France, the plain, deformed little daughter of Louis XL
Jeanne's story is a sad one. She had been the victim of her
father's ambition and revenge. Usually royal marriages
are planned for the continuity of a house ; the object of
this one was the reverse, it was designed to extinguish
the house of Orleans. At the time of Jeanne's marriage
to Louis of Orleans the direct succession to the crown
depended on the thinnest of threads, on the life of a six-
year-old child, Louis XL's only son. The idea that an
Orleans, a member of the bitterly hated younger branch
of his family, should one day succeed him Louis could
not tolerate. So to the head of the Orleans house, to
his cousin Duke Louis, he gave to wife a princess whom
he believed would have no children, his own poor little
afflicted daughter, Jeanne.

Heartily as he detested the marriage, Orleans was not
then in a position to resist. Like everyone else at
Louis XL's court, he must needs bow to that monarch's
will. Whether the union was ever more than nominal
was later to be debated : the husband declared it was not,
the wife asserted the contrary. At any rate, when, after
twenty-two years of at least nominal marriage, Orleans
ascended the throne as Louis XI I. , he determined to
untie the knot which bound him to Jeanne.

Too close a blood relationship was the pretext the King
pleaded when from the Pope, Alexander VL, he demanded

68 FROM THE CRUSADES

a bill nullifying his marriage. But in reality two other
considerations, both of them perfectly legitimate according
to the standards of that age, compelled the King to take
a step which was much more usual in those days than now :
first, he desired an heir ; second, he longed by marriage
with his predecessor's widow, Anne, the wealthy and
powerful Duchess of Brittany, to unite to the French
crown that last of the great independent feudal fiefs.

The King, not unnaturally, hesitated to himself broach
to Jeanne the subject of the dissolution of their union.
But La Tremoille and the Queen had been friends ever
since their childhood, when Jeanne was living at the
castle of Linieres, not far from Bommiers. So it was
La Tremoille whom the King entrusted with the dis-
agreeable task of making known to the Queen her royal
husband's wishes. And Louis knew enough of his
emissary to be sure that he would perform his graceless
mission in the most graceful manner possible. The
King was not mistaken. In his difficult interview with
Jeanne, La Tremoille, showed himself at once diplomatic
and delicate. He began by assuring the Queen that
the King loved her beyond any woman in the world ;
an assurance which was not unnecessary in face of the
persistent neglect with which Louis had treated his wife
throughout the long years of their marriage. Had the
Queen been able to continue the royal line, said the
ambassador, then her consort would have been only too
happy to end his days in her sainted society.

Apparently Jeanne received her lord's proposal with
the resignation of a Griseldis. But, as La Tremoille was
leaving her, she bade him entreat the King to take counsel
and not to marry from motives of passion, of ambition, or
of avarice.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 69

But Jeanne's warning was too late a day. Already,
as we have seen, Louis' mind was made up ; already the
machinery for the dissolution of his marriage had been
set working, and the King and the Pope had struck
a bargain : in return for a papal bull appointing a
commission to inquire into the validity of the royal
union, the Pope's son, Caesare Borgia, was to receive a
rich wife, Charlotte d'Albret, with the fat lands of the
duchy of Valentinois.^

To save appearances a papal inquiry was necessary.
It opened at Troyes, on August loth, 1498, in the house
of the Dean of the Chapter. There, after much hesitation
and anguish of heart, Madame Jeanne de France, the
daughter and wife of kings, made up her mind to appear
in order to contest Louis' assertion that their marriage
had never been consummated.

Nothing but a strong sense of religious duty could
have induced the timid Jeanne, who, in her father's
presence, out of sheer shyness, used to shrink behind
her governess, to come forth from her retirement into
the ignominous publicity of a court of law. But to her
marriage was a sacrament, and to preserve its sanctity
she consented even to reveal the tender hidden things of
her inmost heart.

Yet Jeanne's evidence, torn from her at the cost of so
much suffering, was of no avail. The commission sat
for four months, but without waiting for its decision the
Pope signed the dispensation for Louis' marriage with
Anne of Brittany. In that month of August the King,
with the Duchess and La Tremoille, was at Etampes,
signing, with Count Louis as guarantor and witness, a

1 The marriage was celebrated at Blois in 1499 ; and it was the
daughter of Ccesare and Charlotte whom La Tremoille, after Gabrielle's
death, married for his second wife.

70 FROM THE CRUSADES

solemn promise to marry Anne within a year or to
surrender to her the Breton towns of Nantes and
Fougeres, of which La Tremoille was captain.

Anne, for her part, by virtue of a clause in her marriage
contract with Charles VIIL, which obliged her to marry
the King of France, his successor, promised in writing
to marry Louis as soon as the papal inquiry should be
completed. Before the close of the year the marriage
took place. And Jeanne retired to her appanage at
Berry, where six years later she died in such odour of
sanctity that some years later she was beatified.

For his son's marriage with Charlotte d'Albret the Pope
had paid a further price in promising his support to King
Louis in the expedition he was then preparing against
the Duchy of Milan. For Louis XIL shared his pre-
decessor's passion for Italian conquest. On his accession,
Louis had assumed the titles of Duke of Milan and King
of Sicily. But, as grandson of the Milanese princess,
Valentine Visconti, it was Milan rather than Naples that
first attracted his ambition.

Therefore, in 1499, the year after his accession, having
isolated his prey by a formidable network of alliances,
including the Pope, the King of England, the King and
Queen of Spain, Scotland, Portugal, Venice, Hungary,
Bohemia, Switzerland and even the Empire, Louis
despatched an expedition against Milan under the leader-
ship of Trivulzio, a Milanese exile. La Tremoille would
appear to have been a more natural commander. But
it now became obvious that there was some influence
at court working against him. It cannot have been the
King's influence, for Louis XIL, as we have seen, had
completely taken his sometime captor into his confidence.
More probably it was the Queen's malevolence that caused

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 71

Count Louis to be passed over, for the cold, vindictive
Anne of Brittany had never forgiven him for having in
earher days besieged her good Breton towns and overrun
her duchy. Not under La Tremoille, therefore, but under
Trivulzio, the French army crossed the Alps. Yet,
although La Tremoille did not take part in this expedition,
we must follow it briefly in order to understand the
Count's subsequent doings.

Against the invading force of the French King, leagued
with all the great Continental powers, the Duke of Milan
felt he had no possible chance. He therefore decided to
flee from his duchy, and, while raising a formidable army
of mercenaries, to endeavour to break up the league of
his enemies. The first member he succeeded in detaching
was the Emperor Maximilian. Meanwhile, in September,
1499, Trivulzio and the French, having overrun the
greater part of the Milanese, were able to enter the city
and buy out the Duke's garrison from the citadel. Towards
the end of the month King Louis himself crossed the Alps
to take possession of his conquest, and on October 6th
made his solemn entry into Milan. Then, after spending
a month in regulating the affairs of the duchy, he returned
to France, leaving Trivulzio in supreme command.

But the Italian's arrogance was so overbearing and his
exactions so heavy, that the Milanese rose in revolt, and
on February 3rd, 1500, Trivulzio, hearing that the fugitive
Duke with an army of Swiss mercenaries was approaching
the city, deemed it wise to withdraw with his army, leaving,
however, a French garrison in the citadel. On February
5th, Sforza re-entered Milan, greeted by enthusiastic
cries of " Moro, Moro." But all his efforts to capture the
citadel were unavailing ; so he must needs content him-
self with taking the neighbouring town of Vigevano,

72 FROM THE CRUSADES

whence he advanced to Novara. There, on March 21st,
he compelled the French to capitulate.

By this time Trivulzio had made himself cordially
disliked and distrusted by his companions in arms. And
Louis was driven to the conclusion that, unless his
Italian army were to be utterly routed, he must appoint a
new and trusted general. No one was better fitted for
such a responsible post than La Tremoille, and, disregard-
ing all remonstrances, it was La Tremoille whom the
King now chose to lead his reinforcements into Italy,
and to join Trivulzio in command.

On March 26th, 1500, with 500 men-at-arms and an
excellent train of artillery. Count Louis joined hands
with Trivulzio at Mortara, where, a few days later, he
was further reinforced by 14,000 Swiss, bringing the
number of his troops up to 30,000.

In the almost incredibly brief interval of nine days,
the Count converted Trivulzio 's discontented and mutinous
army into the finest force ever commanded by a French
general for more than a century.^ Preceded by a banner,
on which were painted a whip, a torch and a blood-stained
sword, at the head of his lordly host La Tremoille,
on April 5th, set forth for Novara.

Before this town, on the banks of the Sesia, the Duke of
Milan was encamped with a force in numbers slightly
superior to that of his adversary, but in morale vastly
inferior. For the Duke's army, consisting of Swiss,
Germans, Burgundians and Italians, all clamouring for
arrears of pay, was disunited and discontented.

On the day after their departure from Mortara, La
Tremoille and his men took up their position over against
Sforza before Novara. For the two following days there

1 Auton, " Chroniques," ed. Maulde la Claviere, 241 et seq.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 73

was indecisive skirmishing. Meanwhile the troops on
both sides, many of whom were compatriots, were
fraternising. From their countrymen in the Count's
service, the Duke's Burgundians, Swiss and ItaHans were
learning that against so excellently organised a force
Sforza's disintegrated host had not the remotest chance
of victory. Wherefore, during the night of April 7th,
vast bodies of the Duke's soldiers slipped off, some to
take refuge within the walls of the town, others to cross
the Sesia and return to their native land. Consequently,
when the Duke of Milan awoke in the morning it was to
find that a great part of his army had melted away.

On that day, which was April 8th, the French closely
invested Novara. And then Sforza's Swiss, seeing their
cause to be hopeless, opened negotiations with La
Tremoille, demanding a safe conduct to their native land.
But before the French general would accede to their
request he demanded the Duke's surrender. Even to
these mercenaries so open an act of treachery was odious.
At first they hesitated ; and it was only after a whole
day's bargaining that, on the 9th, they agreed not to
resist their leader's capture, if, during their retreat, he
should be discovered in their ranks.

The events which followed are somewhat obscure.
But it appears that La Tremoille, determined not to permit
so valuable a prize to escape him, ordered the Swiss, as
they withdrew, to defile singly beneath a pike held over
their heads by the French soldiers. Seeing that some
thousands of Swiss soldiers still remained in Novara,
it may be imagined that the process was a somewhat
lengthy one. After it had lasted three hours, there passed
beneath the pike one with a careworn look and furtive
glance, whose marked features, colossal height and

74 FROM THE CRUSADES

distinguished bearing were unmistakable — the Duke of
Milan was recognised and arrested.^

Thus, for a second time within but a few years, had it
fallen to La Tremoille's lot to capture the leader of a
hostile army. And in the King's judgment Novara must
surely have atoned for St. Aubin-du-Cormier.

It was Count Louis himself who wrote a long letter to
the King announcing the Duke of Milan's capture.
Louis received the news at Lyons early one morning,
before he was up. And at once he hastened to announce
it to the Queen. " Madame," he cried, on entering
Anne's chamber, " will you believe it, La Tremoille has
taken Louis Sforza ! " But Anne refused to believe it,
until Louis repeatedly assured her that it was certain,
and that a sovereign of France never had a better or
more loyal servant, or one more successful in his under-
takings.

Well might the King of France rejoice, for among all
his enemies Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, was the
most formidable.

The husband of Beatrice d'Este, the Duke of Ferrara's
brilliant and graceful daughter, who happily did not live
to see her husband's ruin, Sforza was the patron of litera-
ture and of art. To the brutal virility of a condottieri he
united the taste and the learning of a polished gentleman
and a refined scholar.

There are those who consider that because Sforza
brought the French into Italy he was a traitor to his
native land. But such detractors forget that in those
days Italy was but a geographical expression, that her
numerous independent states were separate entities, and

1 Bouchet says he was wearing the habit of a Franciscan friar : that
he should have donned such a disguise is improbable, for it would only-
have rendered his striking personality more recognisable.

UlflQVIClBMORE
£COLE MILANAISE

[Giraudon, Photo
From a portrait of the Milanese School now in the Louvre

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 75

that when Sforza invited Charles VIII. to cross the Alps
and attack Naples, he was merely opposing a hostile
power. That the Duke of Milan was a usurper
who had ousted his nephew, Galeazzo, from power
no one can deny. And for this treachery La Tremoille's
captive paid the penalty to the uttermost in long
years of imprisonment and a miserable death in a
foreign dungeon.

Transported with joy at his enemy's capture, Louis
wrote no less than three letters to La Tremoille, urging
him to lose no time in sending his prisoner to France,
and to neglect no precaution to prevent his escaping on
the road. " For I have a marvellous desire to see him
over here . . . and I shall never be at ease until I
behold Ludovico on this side the mountains," ^ wrote
Louis from Lyons.

As soon as the King's commands were received, Sforza,
who for the time being had been confined in the citadel
of Novara, was placed in an iron cage covered with
wood and taken first to Lyons that the King might
behold his fallen foe, and thence to the castle of
Lys-Saint-Georges in Berry, where he died eight years
afterwards.^

Having conquered Milan, King Louis next proceeded
against Naples. And in the plans made for the conquest
of the Neapolitan kingdom. La Tremoille was treated
just as he had been when the conquest of Milan had been
undertaken. Now again he found himself passed over
and replaced by Italians. This time the Queen's
influence is perfectly obvious. There is no doubt that
it was at her suggestion that the King detained Count

1 " Chartier de Thouars," 32 and 33.

2 There appears to be no authority for the tradition that he died in
the chateau of Loches in Touraine.

76 FROM THE CRUSADES

Louis at home to guard the coast of Anne's duchy ^
against a possible EngHsh invasion.

" At the instance of our very dear and greatly beloved
companion " (notre tres chtre et ires aim^e compaigne) , so
runs the official document of La Tremoille's nomination,^
the King committed to his loyal servant's charge watch
and ward over the Breton coasts in addition to the
defence of those of Guyenne which he already exercised.

But now again, as during the Milanese conquest, the
ItaHan commanders having proved incompetent, the
King was glad to supersede them by Frenchmen, one of
whom was La Tremoille.

It was in August, 1503, that for the third time Count
Louis crossed the Alps into Italy. On the i8th of the
month, the Pope, Alexander Borgia, died. And King
Louis, hoping to secure the election to the papal chair
of his minister, La Tremoille's uncle, Georges d'Amboise,
and thinking that the presence of a French army near
Rome might further this design, ordered the Count to
linger round the Holy City instead of marching on Naples.

La Tremoille had not been well when he left France,
and the effect of the Italian heat of those summer months,
aggravated, perhaps, by some disappointment at being
withheld from active service, was not to improve his
health. He grew rapidly worse until his doctor, des-
pairing of his life, demanded his recall. Louis replaced
the Count by his old enemy at Fornavo, Gonzaga, Marquis
of Mantua, who, like many another Italian general in
those wars, had gone over to the French. Gonzaga took
the command, and La Tremoille regretfully returned to
France.

1 The Queen's duchy of Brittany was not formally united to the
crown until after her death.

^ " Les La Tremoille pendant cinq si^cles," II. 128 129

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 77

Their general's illness was only the beginning of the
French misfortunes. Gonzaga soon became unpopular
with the troops and resigned, leaving the army leaderless,
disunited and undiscipHned, to be completely routed by
the Spanish general, Gonzala.^

Meanwhile, La Tremoille was in for a year's serious
illness. The King grieved sorely over his indisposition,
for the Count was one of the few at court who were ever
ready to serve their sovereign without clamouring for a
reward. Despite his disinterestedness, however, he was
not to go entirely unrecompensed. On his recovery,
the King appointed him governor of the rich province
of Burgundy. This was a " fine estate and one eagerly
desired by all good people." Yet the office was far from
being a sinecure ; for as a frontier province Burgundy
was constantly open to attack. The Mayor of Dijon
welcoming the new Governor into his capital did
not conceal how much was expected from him. The
Burgundians looked to La Tremoille, he said, and to the
renown of his victories to serve them as a rampart
against the sudden movements of the industrious
Flemings, the pertinacious Hainaulters, the pillaging
Swiss, the greedy Germans, and all those who were
envious of the frugality and the wealth of these bounti-
fully gifted people. Burgundy was, indeed, the wealthiest
of French provinces, and on that account there were few
French nobles who could have been trusted to govern
it. But La Tremoille, being totally devoid of avarice,
appears to have kept his hands immaculate, " uncor-
rupted," says Bouchet, " by gifts of gold or silver."

Despite the cares of his new office, Louis still required
the Count's services in Italy. And in 1507 we find him

1 On the Garigliano, December, 1503.

78 FROM THE CRUSADES

accompanying the King to suppress a revolt of Genoa
against French rule. This done the King proceeded to
Milan, and thither went with him three La Tremoilles,
Count Louis, his son, Charles, Prince of Talmond, and
his brother, Jean.

Jean was the first of the La Trdmoille cardinals.
Having entered the Church in early years he rose rapidly,
chiefly through his brother's influence, to be Bishop of
Poitiers and Archbishop of Auch. He was a typical
prince of the Church, and as great a pluralist as our own
Cardinal Wolsey, for in addition to his bishopric and
archbishopric he enjoyed the revenues of half the
bishopric of Agen, of eight abbeys and of one priory.
With an income of 50,000 livres he lived in great
state with fifty horses in the stable, a magnificent train
of falcons, and a master falconer, who was one of the
most famous in his day and generation.

Jean had been made a Cardinal by Julius IL in 1506.
And in this year, 1507, he was on his way to Rome to do
homage to the Pope. But at Milan he was stricken with
fever and died. His body, having temporarily rested in
a Franciscan church of the city where the Cardinal had
been accustomed to hear mass, was eventually taken to
France and buried at Thouars, in the church of Notre
Dame.

Twice again during the reign of Louis XK. was Count
Louis to visit Italy, in 1509 and in 15 13. In the former
year the Count and his son, the Prince de Talmond,
distinguished themselves at Agnadello, where the King
defeated the Venetians. In 15 13, once again in joint
command with Trivulzio, La Tremoille led an unfortunate
expedition against the members of the newly-formed
Holy League. By a curious coincidence the chief

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 79

engagement was fought on the scene of the Count's
famous capture of Ludovico Sforza, outside the walls of
Novara. But now the fortunes of war were reversed,
and La Tremoille suffered defeat at the hands of the
Swiss, whom formerly he had conquered. Having lost
all their artillery and stores, Louis and his fellow com-
mander were compelled to retreat hastily into France
by the passes of Susa and Mont Cenis.-^

In the previous year the French had lost Milan, and
the last of King Louis' Italian campaigns had been fought.
Not that he had relinquished his designs on Milan or
on Naples, for he devoted the remainder of his reign
to preparing a formidable expedition, the undertak-
ing of which death compelled him to leave to his
successor.

After his defeat at Novara, La Tremoille hastened to
his province of Burgundy, which had already been
invaded by the victorious Swiss. Strengthened by
imperial support, they were investing Dijon with an
army of 60,000. Count Louis sent an urgent request
to the King for reinforcements. But, as the English
were at that time invading France on the north, no army
was forthcoming, and La Tremoille was forced to buy
off the invaders with a promise of 400,000 crowns.^

The news of this humiliating treaty was a great blow
to the King, who was at first inclined to severely censure
its author ; but, when it was represented to him what
enormous odds were against his general, his common
sense vanquished his chagrin and La Tremoille was
forgiven.

^ Bouchet exonerates his hero from any blame in this reverse, saying
that the defeat resulted from Trivulzio's refusal to follow his colleague's
advice.

2 See Brantome " Les Grands Capitaines Fran9ais," ed. Lalanne,
II., 393 ^i seq.

8o FROM THE CRUSADES

In the following year his old enemy, Queen Anne,
having died, the Count, with a train of other distin-
guished knights rode out of Abbeville to meet his
sovereign's bride, Mary Tudor, and to escort her to her
husband. The King survived his third marriage but a
few months. In January, 1515, he died, leaving his
throne and his Italian quarrels to his kinsman, Francis
of Angouleme, Duke of Valois.

One of the first acts of King Francis was to confirm
La Tremoille in the possession of all his estates and
offices. At the court of the new King, says Michelet,
the veteran commanders. La Tremoille and Trivulzio,
were like two pieces of old furniture which had served
their turn.^ Yet Francis did not despise his " old
furniture." And, when a few months after his succession,
in August, 1515, in pursuance of his predecessor's design,
he led over the Alps an army more powerful than any
yet raised in the wars. La Tremoille went with him.
With the old Count were his son, Charles Prince de
Talmond, and his grandson, Francis, who was but a
boy of thirteen.

King Francis was obviously bent on honouring the
La Tremoilles, for it was to the wardship of his namesake,
this boy of thirteen, that the King committed the first
distinguished prisoner taken in the campaign, Prospero
Colonna, whom Francis de La Tremoille conducted right
across France to his Poitevin prison in the castle of
Montegu.^

The boy's father and grandfather meanwhile were
with the French army at Novara avenging Count Louis'
defeat of two years earlier, and winning back the lost

1 Michelet, " Hist, de France an SeiziSme Si^cle," Bk. I., Chap. XIII,

2 Brantome " CEuvres Completes " (ed. Lalanne), V. 146.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 8i

artillery. Then the French encamped by the Roman
road, ten miles from Milan city, close to the village of
Marignano.

There, on the afternoon of September 13th, as King
Francis was in his tent trying on a new suit of German
armour, he heard that the enemy's Swiss mercenaries
had come out of Milan, and that in battle array some
30,000 strong they were rapidly advancing to the
attack.

Of the two days' battle which followed accounts vary.
During the hours of darkness which suspended the fighting,
while their adversaries were refreshed by food and drink
from Milan, the hungry French lay all night under arms.
Having called for a glass of water, the young King found
it mingled with gore. Thirsty, he retired to his rest
beneath a gun-carriage, having first extinguished his
fire so that unseen he might observe what his men were
doing. Close beside him lay La Tremoille. The Prince
de Talmond was in another part of the camp with his
cousin. Constable Bourbon.

With early dawn the struggle was renewed. It was,
as Trivulzio called it, "a battle of giants," and long did
the issue tremble in the balance. The tide turned in
favour of the French when Alviano, the general of the
Venetian Republic, the only Italian ally of France, came
up with a body of horse. Alviano's arrival, like that of
Bliicher at Waterloo, took the heart out of the enemy.
Soon afterwards they retreated, leaving, so it is said,
no less than half their number, 15,000, on the field.

The French, too, had lost heavily. And Count
Louis' son, Charles, Prince de Talmond, lay dying,
wounded in sixty-two parts of the body.^

1 We quote Bouchet.
C.R. G

82 FROM THE CRUSADES

It was the young King who took upon himself the
terrible task of breaking to the Count that he must not
hope for his son's recovery. Charles died thirty-six hours
after the battle.

Though grieving deeply over the death of his only son,
La Tr^moille, with characteristic devotion to duty,
remained with the army. To the care of his grand-
son's tutor, Regnaud de Moussy, he committed his
son's body. Slowly and pompously it was conveyed
through France to Thenars to its last resting-place
in the church of Notre Dame by the side of Cardinal
Jean.

A messenger from her husband had borne to Gabrielle
de Bourbon the sad tidings of her son's death. Despite
the spiritual consolations of her nephew, the Bishop of
Poitiers, who was with her at the time, Gabrielle was
unable to practise those counsels of resignation she sent
to her husband, and, sinking beneath the blow, she died
of grief in the following year.

Thus there passed away one of the finest types of old
French feminity. Bouchet, whose literary tastes made
him her favourite companion, describes her as a woman
of few words, temperate,^ grave, magnanimous, and above
all things, pious. Dignified and distant in public, among
the ladies and gentlemen of her household, and those she
knew well, she was always gracious and familiar, ready
with kind words and wise counsel, but disliking scandalous
and licentious talk.

The death of the Prince de Talmond left as heir to the
La Tremoille estates the young Francis, whose mother,
Louise de Coetivy, was first cousin to the King of

* " EUe se contentoit de peu de viandes aux heures accoutu-
m6es."

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 83

France.^ The uncertain life of a boy of thirteen was but a
slender thread on which to hang the hope of the perpetua-
tion of the La Tremoille line. And it may have been
primarily for the purpose of furnishing his family with
another heir that Count Louis, despite his deep grief at
Gabrielle's death, only a year afterwards took to himself
another wife, Louise d'Albret, Duchess of Valentinois and
only child of Csesare Borgia and Charlotte d'Albret.^ While
the lately disconsolate widower was fifty-seven, his bride
was but a girl of seventeen. The Count's friends expressed
their amazement at his choosing a successor to the highly
virtuous Gabrielle de Bourbon from the decadent Borgia
house. Louis is said to have made the astounding reply,
that it was precisely because Louise came of a stock
the virtue of whose women had never been questioned,
that he had chosen her. If tradition speak true, there was
certainly no question about the virtue of the Borgia
women : for one cannot question what does not exist.
But perhaps that was hardly the Count's meaning.
Louis may have been closing his eyes to the Borgia family
history, and thinking only of the maternal side of his
wife's house, of the d'Albret women, who had on the
whole, been beyond reproach.

Both Louise's parents were dead at the time of her
wedding. And apparently it was by the King's mother,

1 John of Angoulfime.

1 I

Charles m. Louise of Savoy. Joan m. Charles de Coetivy,

Comte de Taillebourg.

Francis I. Louise de Coetivy m. Charles

de la Tremoille.

* See ante, 69 and note.

Francis de la Tremoille.
G 2

84 FROM THE CRUSADES

Louise de Savoie, of whom Mdlle. d'Albret was a lady-in-
waiting, that the marriage was arranged. After Gabrielle's
death, Count Louis had been much at court, losing large
sums of money at games of chance, and it may have been
while playing at trictrac or oie that Madame de Savoie
suggested to the Count that he might fill his rapidly
emptying purse, and at the same time secure the con-
tinuation of his house, by espousing the wealthy young
Duchess of Valentinois.

Marriages were just then running in Louis' mind.
And in order to make doubly secure the La Tremoille
succession, in this same year, 15 17, he betrothed his
niece, Jacqueline, daughter of his brother, Georges,
Seigneur de Jonvelle, to the friend of the King's boyhood,
Anne de Montmorency, who later as Constable of France
was to be one of the century's most prominent figures.
In the event of the Count and his brother dying without
male heirs, Montmorency was to inherit the La Tremoille
title and possessions. But Jacqueline was not yet of a
marriageable age, and when she became old enough,
Montmorency had changed his mind, so this wedding
never took place.

For the first few years after his second marriage Louis'
sword rested in the scabbard. With three young Kings
on the three greatest thrones of Europe, Henry VIIL in
England, Charles in Spain, Francis in France, Christen-
dom was en fete, and jest and laughter, hunting and
dancing were the order of the day. The French court
was the gayest of all ; and the Spanish ambassadors,
following the King from chateau to chateau, complained
that they could never obtain an audience from the
pleasure-loving monarch : in the evening he was too busy
with banquet, concert and dance ; in the early morning

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 85

too sleepy, and no sooner up and awake than off to the
greenwood with the hunt.

Every poHtical event was eagerly used as an excuse for
more festivity. In December and January, 15 18 — 1519,
the court was at Paris entertaining with jousts, banquets,
balls and hunting parties four English ambassadors, the
Lord Chamberlain, the Prior of St. John's, the Captain of
Guisnes, and the Bishop of Ely.^ On December 23rd, the
King offered these ambassadors one of the most magnifi-
cent royal banquets recorded in history. It was given in
the great court of the Bastille, which for the purpose was
roofed with sail-cloth and lined within by pleached box,
from which hung oranges and other fruits. The feast was
followed by a dance, and in the small hours of the morning
the entertainment closed with an elaborate collation of
sweetmeats served by court ladies.

On January ist La Tremoille followed suit, and pre-
sented the ambassadors with a sumptuous repast in his
Hotel des Creneaux.^ According to the family records,
this was a truly Gargantuan feast. The bill, preserved
for us by the piety or admiration of the host's descendants,
spreads itself over nine royal octavo pages. Every variety
of edible fish, flesh and fowl seems to have been there.
The board groaned beneath 25 lbs. of beef, twenty-
three fat capons, eight pigs, twelve dozen larks, seventy-
one pigeons, twelve large hams, five salmon, twenty-four
eels, 1,100 herrings, 800 oysters, snails, of which we hope
the English guests did not partake, and all manner of
other fish. The venison the King himself provided.
Of the salad let modern housewives take note : there were

1 " Cal. St. p. Yen. II." (1509 — 1519), 480, 482, 485 et seq.

2 Probably the magnificent mansion he had recently built on the
outskirts of the Latin quarter. It was afterwards known as the Hotel
de La Tremoille. See post, 274, n. 5.

86 FROM THE CRUSADES

eighteen dishes of it, arranged artistically in the form
of flowers and foliage, and its ingredients were
endive, beetroot and olives. Fruits and sweetmeats
were not lacking, and the long list of spices used in the
cooking would excite envy in the breast of any votary
of the cuHnary art. The King lent silver plate, and so
did several of the nobles. Twenty-six lbs. of candles
illuminated the feast, the total cost of which amounted
to 676 livres tournois.

In La Tremoille's recently replenished purse another
big hole was made in the following year, when the Count
and his grandson accompanied King Francis to that
culminating glory of these festive years, the Field of the
Cloth of Gold. It was, as Michelet calls it, "a duel of
expenditure," for the nobles of England and France,
each nation vying with the other in magnificence, sold
and mortgaged castles and lands to procure for the
adorning of themselves and their retainers gold and silver,
jewels, satins and velvets. In such grandeur La Tremoille
could not be behind the rest. And for his own and his
grandson's accoutring no doubt his bride's fortune
proved useful.

From the family accounts we learn that it was to his
apothecary, Jean Billard, that Louis entrusted the care
of his equipment, the ordering of cloaks in the Spanish
mode fashioned out of " cloth of velvet," a robe of violet
velvet and sundry other garments, as well as clothes
for the men-at-arms and coverings for their horses, and
the painting of the Count's standard, with three banners
for trumpeters and cornets to boot.

Thus equipped, we may be sure that old Louis and young
Francis de La Tremoille ruffled it well among the glittering
splendours of the golden field. And there it may have

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 87

been that for the young Prince of Talmond was arranged
that iUustrious marriage with the heiress of the house
of Laval, which was celebrated in the following year.

The Prince's grandmother had been a princess of the
royal Bourbon house, his mother first cousin to the King,
and now the Prince himself was to marry a King's grand-
daughter. The grandfather of his Breton bride, Anne de
Laval, was Frederick of Arragon, King of Naples. And
through their Neapolitan ancestors we shall find Anne
de Laval's La Tremoille descendants calling themselves
Princes of Tarente or Taranto, and for two centuries
claiming the Neapolitan crown. -^

With the Field of the Cloth of Gold the fat years of
feasting came to an end. In the lean years which followed
the veteran Count Louis rendered valiant service to France.
The Kings who had so cordially embraced at Ardres
were soon falling out. An English army invaded the
north, while the Emperor attacked France in the south.
Had it not been for La Tremoille's skilful conduct of the
northern campaign, the English might have marched on
Paris. But, though so badly provided with troops
that, as soon as he had effectually defended one stronghold
he must needs move his men to secure the next. Count
Louis succeeded in driving back the English, not, however,
before they had approached to within twenty miles of
Paris.

This was in the year 1422, just after Bourbon, Constable
of France, Count Louis' nephew had inflicted a crushing
blow on his country by deserting to the enemy.

In the following year we find Louis enjoying a brief
interval of repose and relaxation at court, where on
July 12th he paid four livres of Tours to the King's
1 See post, 155 and n. 2 and 289 and n. i.

88 FROM THE CRUSADES

cornets and trumpeters in acknowledgment of " the
pastime which they had that day afforded him."

After spending some months in Burgundy defending
his province against imperial attack, Louis joined his
King near Avignon in October, 1524, and then for the
eighth^ and last time crossed the Alps into Italy to take
part in the famous Pavia campaign.

The object of this expedition was the reconquest of
Milan. Making straight for this city, Francis, although
he failed to capture the citadel, succeeded in taking
the town and driving out the imperial generals Bourbon,
Pescara and Charles de Lannoy. The two latter en-
trenched themselves in the neighbouring town of Lodi,
while Bourbon crossed the Alps to raise reinforcements
in Switzerland and Germany.

Then the King made a fatal mistake, which was to
cost him his liberty and La Tremoille his life. Instead
of immediately besieging the enemy in Lodi, Francis
wasted the winter months in a useless siege of Pavia, and,
filled with vain confidence by his victory at Milan, disas-
trously weakened his army by detaching a large part
of it under the Duke of Albany for the conquest of Naples.

December and January, the last months of his life.
La Tremoille passed in the great camp which the French
constructed round Pavia. It was like a huge town,
with a population of merchants, victuallers and women
as well as soldiers, amounting to no less than 70,000
souls.

The King, given up to gaiety and all the soft volup-
tuousness of his beloved Italy, was residing in the neigh-
bouring chateau of Mirabello. But his generals were

1 The dates of Count Louis' Italian campaigns are 1494, 1500, 1503,
1507. 1509. 1513, 1515. 1524— 1525.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 89

not so comfortably quartered, and La Tremoille may
have been one of those who was reduced to go and warm
his hands at his royal master's fire.

Meanwhile the imperial forces were concentrating at
Lodi. Bourbon had arrived with reinforcements, and
late in January the imperial commanders decided to
come to the relief of the inhabitants of Pavia, who were
reduced to great straits. On January 24th the imperialists
left Lodi, and a week later took up their position within
a mile of the French outposts before Pavia. The French
were now as if besieged between Pavia on the one hand,
and the relieving force on the other. Some weeks
were occupied in skirmishing between the two armies.
But on February 25th, the imperialists having during
the night obtained possession of the park of Mirabello,
the battle was engaged.

Conflicting accounts render it difficult to ascertain what
actually took place at Pavia. But concerning the chief
incident of the battle, there is no doubt : the King,
accompanied by La Tremoille, threw himself so rashly
upon his enemies that his infantry found it impossible
to follow. Francis and the gentlemen of his household
were isolated.

La Tremoille, ever in the thickest of the melee, was
wounded in the face beneath the eye ; and his horse,
likewise wounded, was about to fall beneath him, when a
certain Jacques de la Brosse, who had once been the
Count's page, offered Louis his horse. Then, remounted,
La Tremoille, despite his wound, hastened to his
sovereign's side, but only to fall, disabled by an arquebus
shot, and this time mortally wounded.

Close at hand at this moment was La Tremoille 's
grandson, Francis, who, to avenge his grandsire's death,

90 FROM THE CRUSADES

throwing himself into the heart of the battle, was sur-
rounded by foes on every hand, and taken prisoner.

A similar fate had overtaken the King himself, while
many of La Tremoille's companions-in-arms lay with him
dead upon the battlefield.

Like most warriors, Count Louis had looked forward to
death in action. But he who had so often seen the dead
bodies of wounded generals lying defaced and un-
recognisable had conceived a curious design for diverting
from himself a fate so undesirable ; he had told his
friends that in the case of his being killed in battle his
body might be identified by the unusual length of the
nail of his big toe on the right foot, and Bouchet relates
that it was by this mark that the Count's body was
recognised. It was borne into one of the churches of
Pavia. There it remained until, embalmed with myrrh
and aloes, and enclosed in a cofhn, it was conveyed in
great pomp and magnificence from Italy into France, and
by way of Lyons, Loudun, and He Bouchard to Thouars,
where in the church of Notre Dame it found its last
resting-place in a gorgeous tomb by the side of Gabrielle
de Bourbon.

On the day of Louis' funeral at Thouars, tidings
reached the castle that the new Count Francis had
returned to Lyons, having paid his ransom of no less than
9,000 crowns to his three captors, Francesco di Miranda,
Alvaro di Cartagena and Andrea di Malo.

Exorbitant as was the amount of this ransom, Francis
was well able to pay it ; for, as we have seen, his wife had
brought him a huge fortune. The new Count is said to
have been the wealthiest of all the La Tremoilles.

Without playing so important a part in public affairs
as his grandfather, Count Francis served the King faith-

p-'

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 91

fully in his Italian wars. But it is chiefly as a provincial
administrator that he is remembered. As lieutenant-
general of Poitou, Saintonge and Aunis, he protected
agriculture. Like his great-grandfather, the first Louis,
he was an ideal country gentleman, and he died peace-
fully in his bed, in his chateau of Thouars, at the
comparatively early age of forty.

Two years before his death he had been charged by the
King to welcome to Poitiers the Emperor Charles V. on
his progress through France.

The eldest of his eleven children, a third Louis,
succeeded to his domains, and, as we shall see in the next
chapter, threw himself heartily into the struggle between
Catholics and Protestants.

92 FROM THE CRUSADES

CHAPTER V

THE LA TREMOILLES AND THE WARS OF RELIGION

LOUIS III., VICOMTE AND THEN DUG DE THOUARS, I522 — 1577-
CLAUDE, DUG DE THOUARS, I566 — 1604.

CHARLOTTE DE LA TREMOILLE, PRINGESSE DE GONDE, 1568 — 1629.
HER SON, HENRI DE BOURBON, FRINGE DE GONDE, I588 — 1646.

The French Wars of Religion followed hard upon the
conclusion of the Italian campaigns. When the safety-
valve for baronial turbulence afforded by foreign warfare
was closed, then the nobles turned against each other at
home. For half a century they wasted France in a civil
war, which was fought in the name of religion, but was
nothing more nor less than a struggle between rival
political factions.

In this conflict the La Tremoilles played an important
part, fighting first on the Catholic side, and then for a
generation espousing the Protestant cause.

Louis 1 11.,^ eldest son of Francis de La Tremoille,
having served in the Catholic army during the early
years of the civil war, was, in 1576, appointed lieutenant-
general of a Poitevin army raised to fight against the
Protestant leader, the Comte de Lude. Only for a few
months, however, did La Tremoille occupy this prominent
post ; for in the following year, while besieging the strong-

1 1522 — 1577. In 1550 he was sent to England as one of the hostages
for the execution of the Treaty of Boulogne.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 93

hold of Melle, he was stricken with an illness which
proved fatal on the very day of the town's surrender/

Louis was one of the richest of the La Tremoilles.
Partly on this account, but also as a reward for his
services to the crown, Charles IX. had converted the
viscounty of Thouars into a duchy,^ with the unusual
proviso, that in default of heirs male it was to descend
through the female line. In 1594 Louis had married
Jeanne de Montmorency, daughter of the great Constable
Anne. By her he left two children, a son Claude, born in
1566, and a daughter Charlotte, two years younger.

In the province of Poitou, and especially in the town
of Thouars, during Louis' lifetime, Protestantism had
been making rapid progress. Berthre de Bournisseaux, a
Catholic historian,^ relates that a whole convent of nuns
had been converted and conducted by their abbess to
Geneva, there to publicly abjure the religion of their
fathers. Meanwhile, their fellow -converts at home were
plundering churches, breaking sacred vases, and throwing
to the four winds all the holy relics they could lay hands
on. Ascending the pulpit of the church of Notre Dame,
at Thouars (again we cite the Catholic historian), an ex-
Carmelite, united in unholy wedlock to a woman whose
husband was still alive, uttered such terrible blasphemies
that the scandalised congregation rose, dragged him from
the church and straightway hanged him in the street
outside.*

All these disorders Duke Louis seems to have regarded
with a serenity unworthy of so stalwart a defender of
the faith. It was not until the Huguenots had introduced

^ March 25th, 1577.

2 By letters patent, registered October 21st, 1563.
8 " Hist de la Ville de Thouars " (1824), 173 et seq.
* September 30th, 1561.

94 FROM THE CRUSADES

into Thouars for their protection a company of 500 foot
soldiers, lodging them in the churches and the priests'
houses, that the Duke somewhat tardily put forth his
hand and asserted his authority. The Catholic worship,
which had for some months been suspended, was restored.
But down to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes,
Calvinism continued to flourish in Thouars and the
neighbourhood.

It was in troublous times, therefore, that Louis* death
left his wife, Jeanne de Montmorency, a widow, and his
heir, the young Duke Claude, her son, but a boy of eleven
years old. But Jeanne was as resolute a person as her
father ; and she brought up her children with great
strictness. Probably not a little of Claude's high principle
and unswerving devotion to duty was due to his mother's
influence and training.

Hitherto, with the one exception of Gabrielle de
Bourbon, there has been little to say of the La Tremoille
women. But we are now approaching a period when the
women of this great family in vigorous character and
decisive action vied with the men, and even surpassed
them.

Two years after her husband's death, the Duchesse de
La Tremoille, believing Claude to have learnt all that his
home tutor could teach him, sent her boy to Paris with a
letter ^ to one. Monsieur Rouhet, whom she requested
to select from the colleges a learned man [un homme docte)
worthy to instruct her son.

As soon as he was of an age to bear arms Claude took
service in the Catholic army, and was soon commanding
a company of cavalry for King Henry HL But even

* See " Jeanne de Montmorency . . . et sa Fille, la Princesse de
Cond6/* published by the Due de La Tremoille, 1895, p. 5.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 95

in those early years Claude must have been a strenuous
youth, whom so decadent a monarch was not likely to
inspire with any enthusiasm. Moreover, contact with
the Calvinists of Poitou had doubtless already shaken
Claude's orthodoxy. So we are not surprised to find that
when, in 1585, the Duke de Mercceur at the head of a
Catholic force invaded Poitou, the young Duke de La
Tremoille threw in his lot with the Protestants and joined
Henry de Bourbon, Prince de Conde, who was besieging
Brouage.

It was indicative of his brave and resolute spirit that
Claude de La Tremoille should have joined the Protestants
at a time when their cause seemed most desperate. In
Holland in the previous year the champion of the
Protestant faith, William the Silent, had been shot by a
Catholic fanatic. In England plots were thickening round
Queen Elizabeth. In Spain, King Philip was preparing
the great Armada, designed, with one blow, to destroy the
reformed religion in these Islands. In France this year,
1585, witnessed the formation of the great Catholic
League, and the papal excommunication of the Protestant
leaders, Henry of Navarre and his cousin the Prince de
Conde.

One of the results of Claude's joining the Protestants
at Brouage was that during the siege their leader Conde
went off to the La Tremoille castle of Taillebourg, there
to pay his addresses to Mdlle. de La Tremoille, Claude's
sister Charlotte, then a maiden of seventeen.

Conde had for eleven years been a sonless widower,
his first wife, Marie de Cleves, having died in 1574. And
Charlotte's beauty and intelligence, so we are told, were
already famous throughout the land. Her intelligence
we may credit, but her beauty — if we may judge from her

96 FROM THE CRUSADES

portraits — would not have appealed to the modern
suitor. The high, aggressive forehead, the prominent
eyes, heavy nose and thick lips, suggest ability and
intelligence. But from the pictures of Charlotte we
possess, it is hard to guess wherein lay that charm,
which — if we may believe the gossips of the day — capti-
vated two royal Henries in succession.^

Neither had Conde any physical attractions to recom-
mend him : small and insignificant of figure, with
prominent features and abundant wrinkles, he looked
considerably older than his age, which was then thirty-
three. Yet these two plain persons — for we must call
Charlotte plain — were about to engage in one of the
most thrilling romances of history, by the side of which
many a romance of fiction grows dull and pale.

Charlotte, before she saw Conde, had made him
her hero. His leadership of the Protestant party since
1574 had won him a reputation for valour and prowess,
which appealed to Mdlle. de La Tremoille's imagination,
quickened by the perusal of those popular romances of
chivalry, which she had eagerly devoured in secret when-
ever she could escape from her mother's supervision.

Conde, before he saw Charlotte, had been attracted
by the idea of marriage with the wealthy, clever and
** beautiful " Mdlle. de La Tremoille. And both parties,
when they met, remained enamoured of each other.

The unconventional conditions of their first meeting
heightened the romance of their relationship. For the
Duchess de La Tremoille, journeying from Thouars to

1 The scandalmonger, Brantome (see " CEuvres," ed. Lalanne, IX.
Ill), accuses her of having been Henry III.'s mistress. That she
was the mistress of Henry IV. is suggested in the article in "La Bio-
graphie Universelle," on what authority we cannot divine, all the
evidence we can discover going to prove that there was never any
love lost between Henry of Navarre and the Princesse de Conde.

[A. Giraudon, Photo
CHARLOTTE DE LA TREMOILLE, PRINCESSE DE CONDE
From a portrait by Fran9ois Quesnet in the Biblioth^que Nationale, Paris

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 97

Taillebourg to chaperon her daughter, had been delayed.
So Charlotte in solitary state received her suitor and
entertained him with the perfect assurance of seventeen
summers, and the perfect serenity of une grande dame.

To Conde, Charlotte appeared the most beautiful woman
in the world. To Charlotte, Conde appeared the greatest
hero. He came to her but poorly attended, like a typical
knight-errant, with a following of only three or four
men-at-arms. That her lover should thus for her sake,
and in open war, hazard his precious life, made Charlotte
adore him more than ever. The garrison of her castle
numbered no more than twenty-four men-at-arms.
She trembled for her Prince's safety. But she did her
best to minimise the risk he was running. At night,
while her suitor slept soundly after his journey, this
maiden of seventeen kept watch and ward. She super-
intended the changing of the sentinels, and patrolled
the ramparts, peering out into the darkness to make sure
that no danger threatened her sleeping hero. Before his
departure on the morrow Conde recorded in writing a
promise to marry his brave hostess.

But, alas ! before that promise could be kept, danger
and disaster overtook the adventurous lover. Leaving
his infantry to continue the siege of Brouage, Conde
proceeded from Taillebourg to attack Angers. On the
way there he met Madame de La Tremoille. At first the
Duchess had favoured the proposed marriage ; but now,
as Conde wrote hurriedly to Charlotte, for " some unknown
reason " she looked coldly on his suit. This " unknown
reason" is not difficult to divine ; the King was said to
have declared against the union, and Conde's prospects
were steadily darkening.

Having met with a humiliating repulse before the walls

C.R. H

98 FROM THE CRUSADES

of Angers, the Prince, accompanied by Claude de La
Tremoille, fled to St. Malo, where he took ship for
Guernsey. And there, from October to January,^ he
remained in exile, vainly soliciting help from England.

Meanwhile Jeanne de Montmorency had joined her
daughter at Taillebourg. There the stern Duchess found
herself defied by the iron will of her daughter of seventeen.
Charlotte refused to break off her engagement to Conde ;
she likewise refused at her mother's bidding to surrender
her brother's castle of Taillebourg to the approaching
Catholic army.

Jeanne, in high dudgeon, was reduced to leaving her
daughter in command at Taillebourg. And shortly
afterwards the castle was besieged by the King's troops.

Taillebourg, as we have said, was but meagrely garri-
soned. It was also poorly provisioned, as well as being
surrounded by the town and difficult to defend. Nothing
daunted, however, Charlotte, like her niece the Lady of
Lathom, fifty years later, made every preparation for a
gallant defence. The only cannon she possessed, two
small culverins, she placed at the gateway leading to the
town, and in the night, letting one of her servants down by
a rope from a castle window, she sent him with letters
imploring help from the nearest Protestant army. This
force, commanded by her kinsman, the Comte de Laval,
quickly came to her aid and dispersed the besiegers.

Encouraged by her success at Taillebourg, this girl
of seventeen next began to scheme for her lover's return
to France, and with this object she went to La Rochelle.

One day in January, just as Conde and La Tremoille,
disappointed in their hope of help from England, were
reduced to the lowest depths of despair, they perceived

I 1585— 1586.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 99

approaching the Guernsey harbour two French ships of
war. These vessels had been sent by Charlotte from
La Rochelle. They were commanded by that stalwart
Protestant, that " Pope of the Huguenots," as he was
called, M. du Plessis-Mornay, who bore a letter from
Mdlle. de La Tremoille to her betrothed.

Joyfully returning to La Rochelle on the warship, the
exiles were welcomed by their fair deliverer, who, a few
days later, on January 19th, was formally affianced to
her hero. And, on the following March i6th, the consent
of Madame de La Tremoille having been gained, the
marriage was celebrated very simply, but, as it would
seem, very appropriately, at that chateau of Taillebourg
which the bride had so gallantly defended. Almost
immediately afterwards the bride and bridegroom
parted, for Conde must needs take the field against the
Catholics.

Shortly before her marriage La Princesse de Conde had
publicly embraced the Protestant faith. A year later
her brother followed her example. Claude had been
slow to change his opinions, but once having adopted the
religion, as it was called, he became a pillar of the faith.
No mere political Protestant he ; in the fervour of his
religious belief, and in the strictness of his religious
practice, he resembled the English Puritans. His two
most intimate friends were those bulwarks of Protes-
tantism, M. du Plessis-Mornay and Agrippa d'Aubigne.
With Henry of Navarre, whom he regarded as a sceptical
time-server, Claude had no sympathy whatever ; and
we shall frequently find him withdrawing from the field
of action, disgusted with Henry's two-facedness : he
died in the shadow of the King's wrath, " overwhelmed,"
says d'Aubign^, " by the King's hatred." At the time

H 2

100 FROM THE CRUSADES

of the memorable reconciliation between Henry and
d'Aubigne, so graphically related by the latter, the King
reproached his former friend with having cared too much
for La Tremoille. " It was a friendship made in your
service," objected d'Aubigne. " Yes," replied Henry
reproachfully, " but when I began to hate him, you did
not cease from loving him." ^

At Henry's brilliant victory of Coutras, won over the
Due de Joyeuse on October 20th, 1587, Claude was present.
For Claude's sister, Charlotte, this Protestant victory of
Coutras was to be fraught with the direst consequences.
The Prince de Conde, who took part in the action, by
a fall from his horse sustained an internal injury to which
the ignorance of sixteenth century surgery attached no
importance, not even when for five months it was followed
by frequent attacks of fever, violent pain in the stomach,
and occasional sickness. And when, on March 5th, 1588,
Conde died, the doctors regarded his death as so sudden,
and so mysterious that they demanded a post-mortem
examination, as the result of which they declared the
Prince to have died of poisoning. This was the
verdict of five physicians and surgeons ; and no one
called it in question except the medical faculty of
Montpellier. But not even the Montpellier doctors
seem to have connected Conde's death with his fall at
Coutras.

Even more disastrous than the doctors' obtusity was
the malice which accused Charlotte of being her husband's
murderer. This terrible charge was unsupported by a
particle of evidence save a few wild words uttered by one
of the witnesses under torture, and afterwards denied.
Before her marriage Charlotte may have been fast ;

* D'Aubign^, " M6moires," ed. le Baron de Ruble, 108.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION loi

as we have said ^ she was the reputed mistress of Henry III.
But that after her marriage to Conde she carried on an
intrigue with her page, in order to marry whom she
murdered her husband, which was the charge brought
against her, would be highly improbable even if the cause
of Condi's death were less obvious.

In those days lack of evidence mattered nothing, and
Charlotte, though she was never brought to trial, was
universally regarded as her husband's murderess, and for
seven years, until 1595, kept in the strictest confinement.
Had she not been expecting a child at the time of the
Prince's death she would probably have been subjected
to torture.

When in her prison of St. Jean d'Angely^ on Sep-
tember ist, 1588, Charlotte gave birth to a son, his
legitimacy was questioned. It was not until four years
later, when Henry of Navarre had ascended the French
throne, and when, being without legitimate heirs, it suited
his purpose to make Charlotte's son his godchild and heir-
apparent to the French crown, that the King acknow-
ledged him as Conde's son and a Prince of the Blood.
The King's recognition of her son's legitimacy greatly
improved Charlotte's position by helping to clear her
from the charge of unfaithfulness to her husband.

Soon afterwards, the severity of her captivity was so
far relaxed tfcat she was allowed to leave her prison
twice a week, in order to attend divine service. Yet,
though still untried and unconvicted, she was regarded
as a murderess. And the Calvinist ministers of St. Jean
d'Angely refused to administer the Sacrament to her.
In vain was there shown to them a letter from the King

1 See ante, 96, n.

2 In the province of Saintonge, on the high road from Saintes to
Poitiers, and about sixty miles from the latter.

102 FROM THE CRUSADES

permitting to the Princess all the consolations of her
religion. The Protestant pastors remained obdurate.
Then it became necessary for the Duke of Thouars him-
self to interfere, and the influence of so powerful a pillar
of the Reformed Church effected what the command of
an apostate King had failed to accomplish : at the Duke's
request a special consistory was summoned, which granted
the Princess the privilege she coveted.

During all these years Charlotte had had no oppor-
tunity of clearing herself from the infamous charge under
which she laboured. Time and again she had appealed
for judgment to the Parlement of Paris, the highest
court in the realm, and the only one which she as a
princess held entitled to pass judgment upon her.

But it was not until 1595, seven years after her hus-
band's death, that the King allowed her appeal. Then
at length she was freed from captivity, and permitted to
leave St. Jean d'Angely on the solemn promise, for the
performance of which her brother and other great nobles
stood surety, to appear before the Parliament at Paris on
the following July 22nd.

There and then the Princess de Conde did duly appear ;
but her two chief accusers, her brothers-in-law, the Prince
de Conti and the Comte de Soissons, failed to answer the
Parliament's summons, and so in their default there was
nothing to be done but to declare the accused innocent.
Thus at length, after seven interminable years of terrible
suffering, Charlotte's ordeal came to an end. But there
is little doubt that her acquittal was merely a political
move on the part of the King. It did not suit him for the
mother of his heir to lie in prison under the accusation of
murder.

Indeed, all the while the Princess may have been

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 103

merely the King's scapegoat. For there were those who
were indined to accuse Henry himself of having instigated
his cousin's murder. The two Protestant leaders had
been known to be rivals, each jealous of the other's power
and influence. Against Henry there was no more evi-
dence than against the Princess. But the King was
doubtless glad to have some one on to whom to cast the
opprobrium of the supposed crime, until the indignation
it had aroused had somewhat abated. Almost from the
first Henry seems to have persuaded himself of Charlotte's
guilt. " A dangerous beast is a wicked woman," he
wrote to his mistress, La Belle Corisande,^ soon after
Conde's death. And even after he had permitted her
rehabilitation, we doubt whether the King allowed him-
self to believe in her innocence ; for, while lavishing
favours upon the young Prince de Conde, Henry always
treated Conde's mother with marked coldness. Possibly,
had it not suited the royal purpose, Charlotte might
have been left to languish like a condemned criminal
in perpetual captivity.

In reviewing the history of this cause celebre, one cannot
help feeling astonished that a family so powerful as the
La Tremoilles should have permitted Charlotte to sniffer
for so long such terrible injustice. Her mother, we know,
did all she could to rehabilitate her. As soon as she heard
of the accusation, the Duchess journeyed to St. Jean
d'Angely, but when there she was refused admission to
her daughter's prison.^ Charlotte's brother, however,

1 " La Princesse de Conde," Ed. Barth61^my, 236.

2 M. Barth616my represents Jeanne as having done nothing for her
daughter ; surely he cannot have seen a letter reproduced in " Jeanne
de Montmorency et sa Fille," 7, relating the Duchess's journey to
St. Jean d'Ang61y, and her efforts on her daughter's behalf. Several
other letters in this volume prove how energetically the Duchess
strove to obtain her daughter's freedom and justification.

104 FROM THE CRUSADES

the powerful Due de Thouars, was the most influential
member of her family. And we cannot discover that he
ever actively bestirred himself to clear his sister from so
horrible a charge. Apparently his only intervention on
her behalf was when the ministers of St. Jean d'Angely
refused her the Sacrament. Can it have been that,
influenced by his friends, Conde's brothers, he believed
his sister guilty of so dastardly a deed, and that he only
changed his attitude towards her when the sun of royal
favour seemed about to shine upon her and hers ? With
Calvinistic fatalism La Tremoille may have regarded
Charlotte's sufferings as a divine punishment for her sins.
If Claude had heard Brant ome's story of the intimacy
between the Princess and Henry HI., that in itself would
have been suflicient to prejudice the Protestant Duke
against his sister, and to account for his lukewarmness in
her cause. For, although La Tremoille was himself the
father of a son born out of wedlock, his Calvinism rendered
him censorious of the failings of others, especially of his
own sister. Even after Charlotte's acquittal, there is no
evidence of any friendly intercourse between the brother
and sister. During the Duke's last illness they were on
such bad terms that the Duchess refused to admit her
sister-in-law to Claude's chamber, pleading that the sight
of the Princess would kill her husband.

As a brother, therefore, Claude de La Tremoille does
not win our admiration ; but in his public capacity, as a
soldier and a defender of the Protestant faith against the
attacks of the great Catholic League, he appears to
greater advantage.

From the time of his return from Guernsey in 1586
until the pacification of Nantes in 1598, not a year passed
without finding the Due de Thouars in the field against

.,.-j^'
*^^*

^i^-

JEANNE DE MONTMORENCY, DUCHESS DE LA TREMOILLE
From a portrait of the Clouet School

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 105

the enemies of Protestantism. In 1586, his horse was
killed under him during an expedition in which he
besieged and took his own castle of Talmond which the
CathoHcs had captured. In the next year he commanded
a body of light cavalry at Coutras, and in 1588 covered
the attack on the sea-port of Marans, afterwards inflicting
a check upon the Catholics near Poitiers. In 1589 we
find him aiding the Bearnais ^ to besiege the Norman
chateau of La Garnache, and later in the same year
saving Tours and the King, Henry III., who was then
residing within its walls, from capture by the Due de May-
enne, then commanding the forces of the League.^ In
this year, on August 4th, Henry III. was assassinated,
and Henry of Navarre became King of France. But for
some time a large part of the nation refused to recognise
him. And, in order to conciliate these malcontents, the
King, on August 4th, issued a declaration promising to
respect the Catholic religion, and to himself receive
instruction in it.

To so stalwart a Protestant as Duke Claude this com-
promise seemed a betrayal of the sacred cause. He re-
fused to fight for a Sovereign pledged to support " popish
idolatry," and with a large company of Poitevins and
Gascon reformers withdrew on to his own estates.

In the following year, however. La Tremoille appears
to have thought better of his resolution. Possibly it was
the invasion of France by a Spanish force under the Duke
of Parma, who came to support the League, that drew
the Duke once more into action. Raising a force of

1 A name by which the King of Navarre, also Seigneur de Beam, was
frequently known among his contemporaries. Catherine de Medicis
used to call him " mon petit Bearnais."

2 After Guise's assassination at Blois, on December 23rd, 1588,
Henry of France and Henry of Navarre had agreed to make common
cause against the League.

io6 FROM THE CRUSADES

500 gentlemen and 2,000 infantry, and equipping them
all at his own expense, he joined the King's army, and,
by breaking up a squadron of Walloons, won his share
of glory in the great victory of Ivry. Later he took
part in the long and unsuccessful siege of Paris. In
1592, he was present at the siege of Rouen, which was
relieved by the Duke of Parma, and in 1595 at Henry's
final defeat of the Spaniards at Fontaine-Frangaise.

Though a valiant soldier. La Tremoille had a tender
heart ; at least, when neither religion nor morals were
concerned. And his friend, D'Aubigne, relates ^ how
one day, when they were passing by a place where
terrible slaughter had occurred, the Duke turned pale and
trembled, while his companion took. him by the hand,
saying : " Comrade, you must look at these things
boldly, for in our life one has to accustom oneself to the
sight of death."

It was in the year of Fontaine-Fran9aise, in 1595, that
the King rewarded La Tremoille's services by converting
his duchy into a duche pairie,^ or duchy with a peerage
attached. So Claude was now admitted to the mystic
circle of the twelve peers of France, a company descended
from the dim mists of the Dark Ages, for it had been
called into being by no less a hero than the Emperor
Charlemagne himself. But it was not until four years
later that this high honour was publicly conferred upon
La Tremoille. Then, by an elaborate ceremony performed
by the Parlement of Paris, in the presence of the King
and all the court, he was admitted to the company of
the twelve.^

1 " Memoires," ed, le Baron de Ruble, 109.

2 The peerage, unlike the duchy, descended only to heirs male, and
in their default became extinct.

•^ It is described by Louise de Coligny, the step-mother of the Duchesse
de La Tremoille, in one of her letters to her daughter. See " Lettres

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 107

In bestowing a peerage upon La Tremoille, Henry's
motive was that proverbial gratitude which anticipates
services to come while rewarding those that are past,
for in the settlement with the Protestants which was to
follow his accession to the throne of France^ the King
hoped to gain the support of the greatest Protestant
leader in the west.

But the Due de Thouars was not to be bribed ; while
accepting his peerage as a royal acknowledgment for all
he had done in the past, Claude was determined to
preserve an independent attitude in the future. In
1596, we find him seizing, for the payment of the
Protestant garrison of Thouars, funds belonging to the
crown, and in 1597 battling nobly for the Protestant
cause in the negotiations which were to terminate in
the Edict of Nantes. To La Tremoille's refusal to
compromise were largely due those highly advantageous
terms which the Edict granted to the Huguenots.

In order to discuss the terms of the settlement, a great
assembly of deputies from the Huguenot churches was
summoned to meet at Chatellerault on June i6th, 1597.
And of this assembly the Due de Thouars was elected
President. The fact that he was then suffering from an
attack of his lifelong enemy, the gout, probably did not
increase his amenability ; and soon, disgusted with the
moderate demands of the deputies, he withdrew to
Poitou, and there occupied himself in raising troops to
be employed against the crown in case the assembly
failed to arrange a settlement. Towards the close of
the year, however, the Protestant churches persuaded

de Louise de Coligny . . . i . . . Charlotte Brabantine de Nassau,
Duchesse de La Tr6moille," ed. Marchegay, 1872, 10.

^ Henry of Navarre was crowned King of France at Chartres on
February 27th, 1594.

io8 FROM THE CRUSADES

La Tremoille to return to Chatellerault and resume his
presidency. Here he repulsed all the attempts of the
King's emissaries, Gaspard de Schomberg and the
President de Thou, to buy his submission with the promise
of a pension for himself and high ofhces for his friends.
Indignantly addressing these tempters, the Duke
exclaimed : " Gentlemen, I excuse you, for you come
from extinguishing the League, the members of which
you found swollen with private interest. To prick such
persons in their most sensitive spot was enough to reduce
the whole party to nothing. To show you that such
conditions do not exist among us, let me tell you that
were you to give me half the kingdom and to refuse those
poor folk in the hall liberty to serve God in safety, it
would profit you nothing. But if you grant them such
things as are just and necessary, then the King may hang
me at the door of the assembly, and you will still have
accomplished your mission and established your work on
a sure foundation.''

Marvelling at these words, the President de Thou
turned to D'Aubigne, and asked whether there were many
Huguenots like this.

Still finding it impossible to procure what he con-
sidered fair terms, La Tremoille, on March 6th, again
withdrew into Poitou, and this time he did not return.

His successor in the presidency proved more docile,
and on April 13th, 1598, the Edict of Nantes was signed
and declared irrevocable.

Considering the ideas of religious toleration then
prevalent, the provisions of the Edict were quite as
favourable as the Protestants had any right to expect.
They were granted the free exercise of their religion in all
places where it had been established in the two preceding

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TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 109

years, in those named in the Edict of 1577, and in one
city or town in every district of a seneschal where its estab-
lishment did not infringe treaties already made with
Catholics. Further, no less than 100 strongholds, some
of them extremely defensible, like Montpellier, Montauban
and La Rochelle, were left for eight years in the possession
of the Protestant party ; and, while the Huguenots were
to appoint the governors of these places, the Catholic
state undertook to pay them and their garrisons. When
we remember that, in addition to these privileges Protes-
tants were to be admitted to all colleges, schools and
hospitals, to all offices and employments, without sub-
mitting to any oath or ceremony contrary to their
conscience, and that they were to be permitted to found
schools and colleges of their own, we realise how great was
the strength of the Protestant party as established by the
Edict of Nantes, and how high a price La Tremoille's firm-
ness compelled King Henry to pay for Protestant support.

Whilst at Chatellerault, La Tremoille had not been
wholly absorbed in the negotiations between the King and
the Huguenots ; other matters, one of which was extremely
personal, had engaged his attention. For some years he
had been in search of a wife, and now, in 1597, he was
proposing to marry Charlotte Brabantine de Nassau,^ the
daughter of that great hero and martyr of Protestantism,
WiUiam the Silent, Prince of Orange.^

Wilham had been four times married ; and the lady
whom La Tremoille was courting was the Prince's daughter
by his third wife, Charlotte de Bourbon,^ daughter of
Louis, Due de Montpensier.

1 Born at Antwerp on September 27th, 1580.
^ He had been assassinated in 1584,

8 Before embracing " the religion," Charlotte had been abbess of
the Convent of Jouarre. William's other wives were Anne d'Egmont,

no FROM THE CRUSADES

The marriage contract between Claude de La Tr^moille
and Charlotte of Nassau, drawn up at Chatellerault, was
signed by the bride's brother, Maurice of Nassau, Prince of
Orange, in his camp before the town of Oldenzeel, on
October 23rd, 1597. The bridegroom, being too much
occupied with political affairs to leave his country, the
Princess Charlotte, accompanied by her step-mother
Louise, Coligny's daughter, and her governess, journeyed
to Thouars, where in March, 1598, the marriage was
celebrated.

At first Henry IV. seems to have considered himself
slighted because La Tremoille had not consulted him
before asking for the hand of a foreign princess. So
Claude deemed it prudent to despatch an emissary to
court in order to explain his action to the King. The
emissary was apparently successful, and Henry must
have relented, for the year after the wedding we find him
graciously granting, as a sign of his favour, to the servants
of La Dame de La Tremoille, Duchesse de Thouars, per-
mission to bear muskets throughout the length and
breadth of her lands, and to shoot such game " as are not
forbidden by royal ordinances." ^

Both for husband and wife, Claude's marriage appears
to have been a very happy one. Abundant evidence of
their affection for one another may be found in the
interesting letters of Charlotte's step-mother, Louise de
Coligny.

Interspersed with family matters and scenes of country
life are vivid descriptions of everyday doings at the
French court. There we see the ladies quarrelling over

Anne, daughter of Maurice, Elector of Saxony, and Louise de Coligny,
daughter of the Admiral and widow of Charles de T^ligny, who perished
in the massacre of St. Bartholomew.

1 " Les La Tremoilles pendant cinq Si^cles," IV., 31.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION iii

precedence, while those whose privilege was beyond
dispute sit serenely on their tabourets round Queen Marie
de Medicis, all busily at work embroidering a vast counter-
pane. That Louise and her step-daughter were on the
best of terms is proved by the playful manner in which
the Admiral's daughter twits Madame de La Tremoille for
her disgraceful handwriting : "I am sure you will find it
as difficult to read mine as I do yours," she writes,
" because for you every day calligraphy must become
more and more of a lost art." ^

As one reads these lively letters, one would never dream
through what terrible tragedies their writer had lived in
earlier years — that, by the hands of Catholic assassins, she
had been orphaned and twice widowed.^ Yet even over
Louise's gaiety serious concerns do occasionally cast their
shadow : that eternal lack of pence, which in days of civil
war harassed all classes, makes itself felt in the Princess's
reiterated request for the repayment of certain monies
which she had lent to the Duke at the time of his marriage.
In her letters to her step-daughter the plaintive request
occurs over and over again like a refrain ; " I would come
and visit you at Thouars if only La Tremoille would pay
me my money ; " " I hear that the Duke is to visit Paris,
remind him to bring my money with him," and so forth.
No wonder that Claude was in financial difficulties, seeing
what vast sums he had expended on the equipment and
maintenance of troops during the religious wars. But
in the end the loan was repaid, although not long after-
wards we find the Duke compelled to raise money by

1 " Lettres de Louise de Coligny . . . a . . . Charlotte Brabantine
de Nassau," 9 — 10.

2 Her father, Admiral Coligny, had been killed on the eve of the
Massacre of St. Bartholomew (1572), during which her first husband,
Charles de Teligny, perished ; while her second husband, William, Prince
of Orange, was shot by the fanatic, G6rard, shortly after their marriage.

112 FROM THE CRUSADES

selling to Maximilien de Bethune, Marquis de Rosny, the
fine old La Tremoille chateau of Sully, which, as will be
remembered, had been in the family for over 200 years.

Despite this financial misunderstanding, Louise was
sincerely attached to her son-in-law. And perhaps what
pleased her most in him was his affection for his wife.
" Your husband is passionately in love with you," she
writes to Charlotte. But Madame de La Tremoille did not
need this assurance, for at that time Claude was writing
her amorous letters, one of which, dated Paris, June 27th,
1598, has been preserved in the La Tremoille archives.^

After referring to the petty jealousies and quarrels of
the court, and expressing solicitude for his wife's health,
Claude writes : ** I greatly desire to see you. Besides
the affection for you which my duty enjoins upon me,
believe me, my dear lady, all my inclination is to love you
passionately. Never doubt it, and believe that I adore
you as much as it is possible to adore anyone. Often do
I recall my delight in your presence and my joy in your
young beauty.^ My imagination leads me to tell you of
my ardour. When we are parted my greatest joy is to
think of you. Farewell, my heart, a thousand and a
thousand times do I kiss you ; and rather would I die
than that the affection which I am sure you bear me
should diminish."

On December 22nd, 1598, Charlotte gave birth to a
son,^ whom his fond grandmother hears is "a child
so handsome, and so fat that he might well be
mistaken for a Dutch baby." * " His uncle," ^ she

1 " Le Chartier de Thouars," 108.

2 Born in 1580, the Duchess was eighteen at the time of her marriage,
while her husband was thirty-two.

8 Henry, Due de La Tremoille.
^ " Lettres," 8.

5 The Due de Bouillon, who had married another daughter of William
the Silent.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 113

continues, " swears that he is like his own little daughter,
but that is pure imagination, since he has never seen
him.'* ^

Then there followed in succession three other children :
in December, 1599, Charlotte,^ who married Lord Strange,
later Earl of Derby ; in October, 1600, Elizabeth, who died
in infancy ; and about March, 1602, Frederic, who took
the title of Comte de Laval, and was killed in a duel at
Venice in 1642. Claude's domestic bliss was but short-
lived. Despite annual visits to French watering-places,
his old enemy, the gout, was growing more and more
importunate. The lively Louise in one of her letters^
pictures her son-in-law in his bath. " I can see," she
writes, " his fat valet, bearing with all his weight on the
Duke's shoulders in order to emerse him in the mud, and
all the while pulling wry faces as he sees his master's skin
defiled with mire, but mire which is salutary, since it
does him so much good."

The baths failed to effect a cure, and in October,
1604, while his daughter Charlotte lay ill of the small-
pox, the Duke died at Thenars, in the presence of his
old friend, M. du Plessis-Mornay.

The latter and Agrippa d'Aubigne were present, on
October 26th, at the opening of La Tremoille's will.
This is a striking document,* expressing the Duke's stern
Huguenotterie and unrelenting Calvinism. After making
a profession of faith in " the true and perfect rehgion of
Jesus Christ as professed by the reformed Churches of
France," Claude proceeds to threaten with his curse any
of his children who, forsaking *'this true and perfect"

1 "Lettres." ii.

2 She became the famous Lady of Lathom, of whom more hereafter.
^ Dated October, 1600.

< See " Les La Tr^moilles pendant cinq Si^cles," IV., 34.

C.R. I

114 FROM THE CRUSADES

religion in which alone lies salvation, shall marry outside
the reformed Church.

Claude's terrible injunction, however, proved un-
availing : only fourteen years later, his son and successor,
Henry de La Tremoille, braving his father's curse,
having been instructed by Cardinal Richeheu, in the
camp before La Rochelle, abjured his father's religion,
and returned to the bosom of the Catholic Church.

Henry's abjuration did not end the La Tremoille
connection with Protestantism. His wife, Marie de la
Tour, remained a Calvinist, and his son and daughter both
reverted to their grandfather's religion.

Meanwhile, Henry's Aunt Charlotte, the famous Princesse
de Conde and her son had some years before Claude's
death^ been received back into the Roman Communion.

While Claude died at thirty-eight, Charlotte lived to be
an old woman. In 1604, the Princess's adventurous
career had still many years to run — years in which her
inflexible will and imperious temper were to involve her
in more than one serious dispute, and even in civil war.

In 1596, she with her son had taken up her abode at
St. Germain. As governor to the young Prince, then
the recognised heir-presumptive to the throne of France,
the King had appointed the Marquis de Pisani. For this
important office Henry could hardly have chosen a man
more eminent in council and in war. Besides being a famous
marshal, Pisani was a veteran diplomatist. But to us his
chief interest is the reflected glory which he gains from his
daughter, the briUiant Marquise de Rambouillet, the mis-
tress of what is commonly held to be the first French Salon. ^

^ In 1596.

2 In reality, other Salons less famous but equally distinguished,
Louise Labe's at Lyon and Madame de Morel's at Paris, had flourished
in the sixteenth century.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 115

That the Marquis de Pisani was not a very tactful tutor
appears from a letter he wrote to King Henry soon after
his appointment. The Princess and her son had just
arrived at St. Germain. " Madame, his mother, takes
great care of him," writes Pisani. But he goes on to
complain that the Prince has no establishment of his own,
not even a piece of furniture, that he sleeps in his mother's
room, and that his Governor can never see him in the
morning and evening to correct ''sundry little faults
which time will increase, if they be not checked early." ^

This attempt to thrust himself in between mother and
child caused the Princess to dislike Pisani ; and from first
to last they were sworn foes, for ever disputing as to the
method of their charge's upbringing. "It is pitiable to
see how this little Prince is being treated," wrote his
Governor.^

Pisani's method was probably the best ; at any rate
the following anecdote related by Tallemant des Reaux
makes the tutor's regime appear to have been bottomed
in sound sense. Riding along the road one day on their
way to the hunt, the Marquis and his pupil passed a
peasant, who in humble loyalty prostrated himself at
his prince's feet. But the young Conde went on his way,
paying no heed to the man's salutations, not even by
so much as a nod. " Monsieur," remonstrated his
Governor, " there may be no one lower than that man,
as there is no one higher than you ; but if he and his
equals did not cultivate the land, you and your equals
would be in danger of dying from starvation." ^

Perhaps the imputation of insensibility to feminine
charms under which Conde was to labour in after years

Barth^l^my, " La Princesse de Conde," 205.
2 Ihid., 93.
' Tallemant des R6aux, " M^moires," ed. 1834, I. 32.

I Z

ii6 FROM THE CRUSADES

arose from the strictness of his upbringing ; for we are
told that when he and the future Queen of Rambouillet
were children together, in one of their games, he took
the little girl's head in his hands and kissed her, an
indiscretion for which, so runs the tale, he was punished
so severely that he ever afterwards disliked women. ^

The perpetual bickerings between Charlotte and her
son's Governor only came to an end when, in 1599,
Pisani died, and Henry IV. appointed to succeed him
a man after the Princess's own heart, the Comte de Bellin,
a former general of the League.^

But by that time the young Conde's importance was
beginning to dwindle, for Henry IV., having obtained a
divorce from his first wife. Marguerite de Valois, had
married Marie de Medicis, who was about to bear him an
heir. ** When I wished to make my nephew a King, I
gave him the Marquis of Pisani," said Henry, " when I
wished to make him a subject I gave him the Comte de
Bellin." ^

Pisani had died at the Princess's residence of St.
Maur-les-Fosses, an ancient Abbey, not far from Paris,
once belonging to Catherine de Medicis, and after her
death purchased by Charlotte's mother. The Abbey,
with the rest of Jeanne de Montmorency's estate, had on
her death, in 1596, passed into her daughter's possession ;
and La Princesse de Conde was now a rich woman.
Her wealth, however, did not hinder her from waging a
warfare of words with that skilful financier. Sully, on
the questions of the amount of her son's pension and the
sum to be expended on the maintenance of his household.

Having withdrawn to St. Maur in order to escape

1 Tallemant des R6aux, op. cit. I., 32.

2 Ibid., 32.
s Ihid., 32.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 117

from an epidemic which was ravaging St. Germain,
the Princess continued to reside at the Abbey until the
close of Henry's reign ; for the King, persisting in his
dislike of his cousin's widow, always met with coldness
her various attempts to obtain a position at court.

Only once during the ten years which preceded Henry's
assassination ^ do we find her appearing at Paris. That
was in March, 1609, on the occasion of her son's marriage
with the beautiful Charlotte de Montmorency.^ Then
the Princess de Conde was present with all the court
at the formal betrothal in the Louvre gallery at
Chantilly.

With Mdlle. de Montmorency, who was considered
by all the court gallants to be perfect in beauty and in
grace, the King was passionately in love. And it was in
the hope of making her his mistress that Henry had
chosen for her husband the cold-blooded Conde, the reputed
misogynist of the court. But the King was mistaken in
his cousin ; Conde did not prove the accommodating
husband he had hoped ; for, suspecting the royal designs,
he obtained permission to take his wife to Moret, on the
edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau, and thence, putting
her on a pilHon behind one of his valets, he carried her
off in haste to the Low Countries.

The news of his lady's departure was brought to the
King at Paris as he sat at cards with some nobles of the
court. " My friend, I am lost," whispered the King to
his partner, " take care of my money and keep the game
going while I enquire into this matter."^ Having learned

1 May, 1610.

2 Daughter of the Constable, Henry de Montmorency, known earlier
as Mar^chal de Damville, son of the famous Anne de Montmorency.

8 " M^moires," Bassompierre, ed. Mich, et Poujoulat, S6rie II.,
Vol. VI. 67.

ii8 FROM THE CRUSADES

that the tidings were only too true, Henry flew into a
violent passion. Summoning his ministers, he inquired
first from one, then from the other, what was to be done,
while the cautious Sully nearly drove his master to despera-
tion by counselling him to do nothing. Far from following
Sully's advice, Henry, in the hottest haste, despatched a
gentleman of the court to pursue the fugitives and, if
possible, persuade them to return ; but, in the event of
his failure, the messenger was instructed to warn the
powers of the Low Countries that they would incur the
enmity of the King of France if they granted harbourage
to the runaway couple.

In both missions Henry's messenger failed, for Conde
and his bride crossed the frontier and found refuge at
Brussels. There the lady stayed until the King's death.
Conde, as soon as his wife was out of the King's way,
ceased to take any interest in her and, escaping in disguise,
went off to Italy. He was at Milan when the news of
Henry's assassination reached him and brought him
back to Paris.

Marie de Medicis, who had seized the Regency on her
husband's death, dreaded Conde's return, fearing that,
as a Prince of the Blood, he might claim the right to rule
during the King's minority. But, although he entered
the capital in a somewhat redoubtable manner, at the
head of 1,500 gentlemen, Conde proved ready to sell his
birthright for a pension of 50,000 crowns and the Hotel
de Gondi.^ Afterwards, he installed his mother in
a little hotel in the Rue de Conde close by. Then, in
these two palaces, the Prince and Princess Dowager
proceeded to hold a veritable court, and to gather round

^ Later known as the H6tel de Conde. Pulled down in the
eighteenth century ; it occupied almost exactly the site of the
modern Theatre de I'Odeon.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 119

them a party of opposition to the government of the
Queen Regent and of her favourite, Concini, best known
as the Marechal d'Ancre.

The chief point of their attack was the government's
foreign poHcy, the Franco-Spanish aUiance, which was to
be cemented by a double marriage, that of Louis XI I L
with Anne of Austria, PhiHp III.'s eldest daughter,
and of Elizabeth of France with the Prince of the Asturias.
Twice, in 1614 and 1615, did Conde and his associates
have recourse to arms. Although they failed to prevent
the Spanish marriages — that of Louis XIII. was cele-
brated in the Cathedral of Bordeaux in November,
1615 — they succeeded in forcing the government to
summon the States General — for the last time before
the Revolution. They succeeded also in extracting from
the crown vast sums of money, which were paid into the
Prince's exchequer. Indeed, from the two agreements
of Sainte Menehould and Loudon, Conde acquired so
much power and importance, which he used with so much
insolence, that he seemed to eclipse the authority of the
Queen : the finances were abandoned to his direction ;
no ordinance was issued without his signature ; and,
while the Louvre was deserted, to Conde's hotel such
crowds resorted that it was difficult to approach the gates.
So powerful a rival Marie de Medicis could not possibly
tolerate. While apparently all smiles and graces to the
Prince, she was in reality planning his arrest. This took
place one morning, September ist, 1616, in the King's
chamber in the palace of the Louvre.^

Very soon afterwards the Princess Dowager, in her hotel,
received the news that her son had been assassinated.

1 It is graphically related in " L'Histoire des Princes de Conde," by
the Due d'Aumale (1886), III. 85—87.

120 FROM THE CRUSADES

Charlotte was by that time a middle-aged woman of
forty-eight, but the courage and decision of early years
now returned to her. This was the kind of occasion
when she appeared to greatest advantage. Immediately
she ordered her coach, and, accompanied by an imposing
escort on horseback, drove through the streets of the
capital endeavouring to raise Paris on her son's behalf.
Leaning out of the carriage window, her face bathed in
tears, she cried : ''To arms, gentlemen of Paris ! The
Marechal d' Ancre has slain Monsieur le Prince ! To arms,
all good Frenchmen ! " And her escort re-echoed the
cry.

But this dramatic scene availed nothing. While a few
shops were shut for fear of disturbance, the phlegmatic
Parisians looked on, and laughed when one feeble old
woman stretched a chain across the street.

Having driven down to the Pont de Notre Dame,
Charlotte, convinced of the failure of her attempted coup
d'etat, ordered her coachman to turn round, and with her
escort went back to her hotel, where she found some
thirty of her friends assembled. Having learnt from them
that, after all, her son was alive although a prisoner, she
adopted her friends' advice to renounce all attempt to
raise a rebellion.^

This, as far as we know, was the Princess's last sensa-
tional appearance in public. During her son's imprison-
ment, first in the Bastille, then at Vincennes, she made
every effort for his deliverance, and vainly solicited
the interference of James I. of England on his behalf.
But Conde was not released until 1619. Some time before,
his wife had joined him at Vincennes, where in this year

1 The only disorder which actually took place was the sacking of the
hdtels of Concini and of his secretary by the mob, under the leadership
of one Picard, a shoemaker.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION I21

she gave birth to a daughter, who was to become the
famous Duchesse de Longueville/

Of Charlotte de La Tremoille's last years there is little
to relate. Like that other turbulent Frenchwoman,
Georges Sand, after a tempestuous youth and maturity,
the Princess enjoyed a peaceful old age. She became
reconciled to her sister-in-law, the Dowager Duchess of
Thouars, with whose eldest son Henry, Due de Thouars,
she had been for some years corresponding on friendly
terms. She lived to see the head of the La Tremoille
house return to the Catholic faith, and she died in the
following year, on August 29th, 1629, in her hotel at
Paris.

Her body was buried in the Convent of the Ave Maria,
where an elaborate monument was erected to her memory.^
Her heart was placed in the burial-place of the Condes at
Valery, near Montereau.

The story of her son's life after her death belongs to
the history of the House of Conde. Here it may suffice
to say that he became the bitter enemy of the Huguenots,
fighting against them in the expedition to the He de Re,
and retiring from the army rather than make peace with
those into whose church he had been born. Ever careful
to secure his own personal advancement, he married his
son, then the Due d'Enghien, to the niece of Cardinal
Richelieu. Surviving until 1646, he lived to see the
dawn of that son's military glory.

^ Two years later was born Condi's son, Louis, who was to be known
as " le Grand Conde."
2 See illustration.

12^ FROM THE CRUSADES

CHAPTER VI

THE LADY OF LATHOM. 1559 — 1664

Now we come to a La Tremoille who is no stranger
to English readers. For Charlotte de La Tremoille,
Duke Claude's daughter, stands immortalised in one of the
most popular of our novels, in " Peveril of the Peak."
Students of history know her as the stern Countess of
Derby who gallantly defended Lathom House against
the Parliamentarians. Readers of fiction remember her
chiefly as the imperious lady in Scott's novel, who,
advancing suddenly from behind the arras in the gilded
chamber of Martindale Castle, startled little Peveril and
the baby Alice at their play.

While the Lady of Lathom's gifted biographer,^ Madame
de Witt, accused Scott of travestying the Countess, and of
degrading one of the noblest of women into a mere heroine
of melodrama, others may marvel at the accuracy with
which the novelist has caught and rendered the spirit of
Charlotte de La Tremoille. Scott may have availed
himself of the novelist's license to twist and distort facts.
Indeed, in his introduction to " Peveril of the Peak,"
he admits that he has dared to transform into a Catholic
so stalwart a Protestant as Duke Claude's daughter.
He might also have admitted that at her door instead of
at her son's, he has laid the guilt, if guilt it were, of the

1 The two best biographies of the Lady of Lathom are one by Madame
de Witt (translated into English, 1869), and another bv L6on Marlet
(1895).

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 1^3

traitor Christian's summary execution. But for these
violations of the letter of history his adherence to its
spirit amply atones ; and no one has ever passed a truer
verdict upon Charlotte's character than Sir Walter's
description of the famous Countess as " a man when so
many men proved women."

Charlotte was every inch a heroine and every inch the
granddaughter of WiUiam the Silent. Not only from her
illustrious lineage, however, but also from her strenuous
upbringing, she derived that heroism with which she
ever confronted the vicissitudes of her tempestuous life.

She was, as we have said, a mere child when her father
died. And it was to two stern Protestant women, her
step -grandmother, Louise de Coligny, the Admiral's
daughter, and her mother, Charlotte Brabantine, the
daughter of William the Silent, that fell the care of her
nurture and education. The chief object of these
Calvinist dames seems to have been to tame their
young charge's turbulence and to break her will. This
they never completely achieved. They did succeed,
however, in refining Charlotte's passionate turbulence
into that calm courage and her obstinate self-will into
that persistent tenacity which were eventually to render
her the brave defendress of her husband's house and lands.

There is little doubt that all seventeenth century
children, but especially those of Puritan parents, were
more strictly brought up than are the children of to-day.
It was, therefore, in accordance with the custom of the
age that Charlotte's childhood should have been a series
of chastisements. In mortal terror of these punishments
we find the child in her own early letters, and in those of
her mother and grandmother, constantly protesting her
resolution " to be good." But that this resolve frequently

124 FROM THE CRUSADES

shared the proverbial fate of such determinations may be
gathered from the numerous references in her relatives'
letters to a generous administration of the rod.

" I have her well flogged whenever she deserves it,"
wrote her grandmother at the Hague, where Charlotte
was then staying ; and again, " her governess does not
spare the cane." Even the child's absent mother from
distant Thouars collaborated in her little girl's punishment,
and when she heard that Charlotte had been naughty
refused to send her a New Year's gift.

Mdlle. de La Tremoille's weaknesses were those of most
little girls of her age : a love of play, a lack of application
and a fondness for dress. But the Calvinist minds
of her guardians tortured these healthy symptoms
into signs of original sin, which, if not nipped
in the bud, would bloom later into vices hideous and

deadly. " To-day, Sunday " triumphantly writes

Charlotte's grandmother, " she is crying because she
is not allowed to wear her best frock."

Yet even Coligny's daughter permitted some worldly
amusements. Charlotte went to parties. But the heart
of her absent mother was filled with misgiving when she
heard that her little daughter had been the belle of a
babies' ball. Such vanities could only have one result,
and surely enough, so she gathered from the next letter,
that result followed. Charlotte was said to be showing
a dangerous fondness for the opposite sex, for she had been
found talking privily to her grandmother's nephew, a
youth in his teens, one of the Chatillons who was staying
at the Hague.

In those days the young ladies of the Dutch capital
were reputed fast, and the influence of these flighty
damsels Charlotte's mother feared was beginning to

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 125

bear poisonous fruit in her little girl of ten. So Mdlle.
de La Tremoille was recalled from the snares of the Hague
to the cloistered retreat of her Poitevin home. In vain
did Louise and the castigating governess write protesting
that Charlotte's flirtation with Chatillon was but an
exception, and that usually she regarded her boy friends
with the proudest disdain. WilHam the Silent's daughter
was not to be convinced, and Charlotte came home.

Very absurd to us to-day seems all this fuss over a
boy and girl's harmless conversation. But we must
remember that in the seventeenth century maidens grew
up quickly, that a girl of ten was then regarded as a
young miss of seventeen would be now, and that in ques-
tions of morals Calvinists have always tended to make
mountains out of mole-hills.

At Thouars, Charlotte had no playmates of either sex
to join her in those games of which she was reputed so
inordinately fond. For her only sister Elizabeth had
died of that same epidemic of small-pox which, at the
time of her father's death, had smitten Charlotte. Her
eldest brother, Henry, gloomy and taciturn, was no
cheerful companion when at home, and frequently he
was absent on those distant travels which were then held
necessary for the education of a complete gentleman.

With what meticulous care Madame de La Tremoille
educated her children may be seen in the list of instruc-
tions^ with which she equipped her son, when, in December,
1613,^ the young Duke, then a boy of fifteen, set out for
Holland, there to visit his uncle, the Stadtholder, Prince
Maurice of Nassau. In these instructions we find the
length of the traveller's absence, not more than four or

1 " Chartier de Thouars." 124 — 125.

' Two years later Henry visited Switzerland and Italy.

126 FROM THE CRUSADES

five weeks, carefully specified, a list of the towns he is
to visit — on no account must he miss Delft and Leyden —
admonitions as to his expenditure — at the Hague he
may buy himself a complete outfit, but nothing must
be purchased save by the advice of those who accompany
him — and rules for his daily conduct — an hour every
afternoon must be set aside for some profitable exercise,
all that is remarkable in the places visited must be
observed and written down, but above all things, the
traveller must not forget to pray every night and morning,
" remembering that without God he can do nothing."

Charlotte's youngest brother, Frederic, Comte de Laval,
was her favourite. To him she was devotedly attached,
and over his babyhood she watched with all the passionate
tenderness of a loving little mother. Frederic's was a
cheerful spirit ; but, alas ! his natural gaiety, reacting
against Calvinist strictness, was to lead him into wild and
yet wilder courses, until finally he perished in a duel at
Venice. Not long after her return from the Hague,
however, Charlotte and Frederic were parted, for the
young Comte de Laval was sent away from home to
pursue his studies at the University of Sedan.

Meanwhile, Mdlle. de La Tremoille's own edu-
cation was progressing apace, and she could write to her
mother : " Thank God, you will find me quite learned.
I know seventeen Psalms, all the quatrains of Pibrac, all
the huitains of Zamariel, and above all, I can talk Latin. ^
But these serious studies, while developing a strenuous-
ness of character which was to prove valuable in after

1 Charlotte de La Tremoille's letters quoted in this chapter may be
found in the two biographies of the Lady of Lathom already referred to.
Both Madame de Witt and Leon Marie t claim to have copied the letters
direct from the original MSS., which are in the possession of the Duke
de La Tr^moille.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 127

years, can hardly have enlivened the little girl's solitude.
Among her seventeen Psalms would doubtless be those
two Huguenot favourites, the battle psalm as it was called :
" Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered ; let them
also that hate Him flee before Him," and that eloquent
lamentation, " My tears have been my meat day and
night . . . O my God, my soul is cast down within me
... all Thy waves and Thy billows are gone over me."
Natural enough may these curses and wailings sound upon
the lips of a mature Calvinist, but in the mouth of a
mere babe they strike one as somewhat inappropriate.

No more likely to foster the blithe spirit one likes to
associate with childhood were the verses of the Calvinist
agitator, Zamariel or Chandieu, on the vanity of all things
human, or those moral quatrains of Pibrac, which for
seven generations boys and girls were required to commit
to memory. Two lines of these quatrains : " Love the
state as thou findest it ; be it royal then love royalty," ^
must have stamped themselves upon Charlotte's memory,
and from them she must have derived inspiration for her
whole career ; indeed, she might have chosen them as her
motto.

Already a regime of chastening and chastising was
casting a gloom over Charlotte's natural cheerfulness. She
was rapidly losing her love of play, and at fifteen we
find her wondering whether a ball were really worth the
trouble. Yet some sparks of fun still remained to her,
and she could laugh at the exaggerated seriousness
of a Protestant pastor denouncing certain wedding
festivities she had attended. " How he did scold,"

^ Ayme I'estat tel que tu le vols estre :
S'il est royal, ayme la Royaute.

Quoted by Montaigne, " Essais," Bk. III. : " De la Vanit6."

128 FROM THE CRUSADES

wrote the maiden ; " why, he nearly mentioned us all by
name, and yet I assure you we had done nothing to
deserve such reproaches."

In 1619 life grew less solitary for Charlotte, for in that
year her brother Henry brought home to Thouars his
young bride and cousin, Marie de La Tour d'Auvergne,
daughter of the Due de Bouillon. Plain, grasping, and,
above all, ambitious, Marie cannot have been a very
attractive companion ; yet some good qualities must have
been hers, for she and Charlotte were speedily united in
a friendship which endured until Charlotte's death. In-
deed, it is from the correspondence of the sisters-in-law,
preserved in the archives of Thouars, that we derive much
of our information concerning our heroine's career.

Visits to Paris, too, in company with her mother, who
was conducting a law-suit there, occasionally broke the
routine of life at Thouars. And, now that Charlotte was
growing up, came the diversion of various proposals of
marriage, for Mdlle. de La Tremoille, one of the wealthiest
heiresses in Europe, was naturally much sought after.

Not among the Italianate nobles of Marie de Medicis'
dissolute court was the Duchess likely to find a
suitable husband for her daughter. Moreover, according
to her father's will, Charlotte's mate must perforce be a
Protestant. But French Protestants in those days were
rapidly dwindling in power, wealth and importance.
Charlotte's choice, therefore, was very limited ; and so it
fell out that at the age of twenty-six she was still to
marry.

It was doubtless with the object of marrying her
daughter that in 1626 Madame de La Tremoille took her
to Holland. At the Hague, Charlotte revisited the scene
of her infantile gaieties, and wrote to her sister-in-law at

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION I2g

Thouars a somewhat doleful letter, in which, after
mechanically describing the magnificent feting of the
Persian Ambassador, she moaned over " the horrible
laws " of the Persians, especially with regard to women,
over the lack of religious zeal in Flanders, and finally over
the perplexities of life in general. " More and more is it
borne in upon me,*' she groaned, " how difficult a place
the world is to live in. May God guide us, and
may He grant unto you, my heart, a full measure of
contentment."

The hospitable Dutch court was then sheltering the
exiled King and Queen of Bohemia, Frederic, Elector
Palatine of the Rhine, and his fascinating wife, Charles I.'s
sister, Elizabeth Stuart, known in history as " the Queen
of Hearts." ^ Elizabeth's husband was the Duchess's
nephew, and the La Tremoilles soon after their arrival
joined that distinguished circle gathered round the
sovereigns in exile. To the match-making Queen it was
a great advantage to have the hand of a wealthy heiress
to dispose of, and from among the young English noblemen
who had flocked to the Hague to do homage to Elizabeth's
charms, she was not long in selecting a husband for
Charlotte. Possibly among " the perplexities of life "
which then afflicted Mdlle. de La Tremoille were the
rival appeals to her affections of the addresses of James
Stanley, Lord Strange, and her love for her motherland.

As for Madame de La Tremoille, she had no doubt
whatever as to the reception to be given to Lord Strange's
wooing of her daughter. For James Stanley, besides
being a staunch Protestant, was son and heir to the Earl
of Derby, whose vast estates in Lancashire and Cheshire,
and whose so-called sovereignity of the Isle of Man,

1 See Sir Henry Wotton's verses to Elizabeth of Bohemia.
C.R. K

130 FROM THE CRUSADES

rendered him one of the greatest and wealthiest of
English nobles. The Stanleys, moreover, on the female
side, were of royal blood, being descended from Mary
Tudor, daughter of King Henry VII. ^

The fact that Lord Strange was two years Charlotte's
junior did not seem to the Duchess any serious objection,
and she gladly gave her consent to the wedding, which
was celebrated at the Hague in July. Soon afterwards
the bride and bridegroom, accompanied by the bride's
mother, set out for England.

They reached London in the midst of a court crisis. In
the previous summer Charles I. had wedded his French
bride, Henrietta Maria, the daughter of King Henry IV.
The first years of their married life had been one long
series of disputes, which the King had just now brought
to a climax by his peremptory dismissal of the Queen's
French attendants, whom he had ordered to pack up and
depart at a few days' notice. This summary measure,
while delighting Londoners and members of Parliament,
with whom the French papists were most unpopular,
threw Henrietta Maria into such a fury that she and her
husband were barely on speaking terms.

1 The illustrious descent of Charlotte and her husband may be seen
from the following genealogical table, printed in Horace Walpole's
■' Letters," Cunningham edition, VI. 372, note: —

Henry VII.

Charles Brandon, Duke of
SuUolk = Mary Tudor.

L. de Bourbon, William, Anne de Montmorency W. Cecil, Eleanor = Clifford,
D. de Mont- Pr. of (Constable of France) = Lord Earl of Cumber-

pensier. Orange. Madeleine de Savoie. Burleigh. land.

Marie = William the Jeanne = Louis, ist D. Anne = Vere, Margaret = Earl of
I Silent. de La Tr6moille. E. of Oxford. Derby.

I III

Charlotte Brabantine de Nassau = Claude, and Elizabeth = William,- 6th Earl

D. de La Tr6moille. of Derby.

Charlotte de La Ti6moille = James, 7th Earl of Derby.

CHARLOTTE DE LA TREMOILLE, COUNTESS OE DEKHV
From a oictiire by Vandyke

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 131

Madame de La Tremoille and her daughter, arriving
only a few days after the departure of the French retinue,
came in the very nick of time ; for the French nationaUty
and the Protestant faith of Lady Strange and her mother
at once rendered them popular with both sides in the
dispute — ^with the homesick Queen, eager to welcome her
fellow-countrywomen, and with King and Parliament
ready to trust these new foreigners because of their
Protestant religion.

Charles, therefore, encouraged the new arrivals to stay
at court, granting them those apartments in St. James's
Palace which had recently been vacated by the Queen's
French household. But it must have been some time
before Lord and Lady Strange and the Duchess Dowager
could actually take up their abode in these quarters, on
account of their previous occupants' lack of cleanliness,
which, we are told, had rendered them totally uninhabit-
able. Madame de La Tremoille was now appointed Lady
of the Queen's Bedchamber, a position in which, after
her return to France in October, 1626, she was suc-
ceeded by her daughter.

For some months Lady Strange lived in London, and
apparently it was not until the autumn of 1627, when her
husband was associated with his father, the Earl of
Derby, in the lieutenancy of Lancashire and Cheshire,
that Lord Strange took his bride to her northern home
and introduced her to her father-in-law, who was then
living at Chester.

With gracious Enghsh kindness and old-world courtesy
the Earl received his daughter-in-law, speaking to her in
French, calling her " Lady " and " mistress of the house,"
a position he said he wished no other woman to hold.
With her princely residence of Lathom House Lady

K 2

132 FROM THE CRUSADES

Strange was delighted, as well she might be, for the
mansion was one of the finest in England. Indeed, at that
time everything smiled upon her, and through her
husband's devotion the world seemed to have grown " a
less difficult place to live in." "He shows me the utmost
affection, and God gives us grace to live in much happiness
and peace of mind," she wrote. Within a year of their
marriage, without a word from his wife, and despite
serious financial difficulties in which his family were
involved, Lord Strange settled a sum of £2,000 upon his
lady. This jointure she considered extremely generous,
especially as only a very small part of her own marriage
portion had then been paid. It is doubtful whether the
whole sum of £50,000 promised in her marriage contract
ever reached her. At any rate, her brother, Duke Henry,
for some years postponed payment of a great part of it,
and Charlotte was constrained to write continually to her
mother and sister-in-law expressing her annoyance that
she should have brought nothing but expense to a family
from whom she had received so much kindness. At one
time she even hinted at the suspicion that her brother was
trying to possess himself of her fortune, and no doubt she
was all the more inclined to distrust him when, in 1628,
he abjured his father's faith, and returned to the Church
of Rome.

In La Tremoille's excuse it may be urged that, owing to
constant civil war, now followed by war with England, his
estates had become so encumbered that it was difficult
for him to pay either the capital or the interest of his
sister's fortune. Moreover, the Duke was certainly not
a good business man, for we find him selling to Cardinal
Richelieu the domain of L'lle Bouchard for a sum which
barely covered the value of the forest timber, and making

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 133

an equally bad bargain when he parted with a portion of
the famous forest of Broceliande.^

Nevertheless, despite her husband's financial em-
barrassments, Marie de La Tour was at this very time
building that magnificent chateau of Thouars which, with
its four great towers and fine river frontage, dominating
the country-side for miles around, belies Henry's plea of
poverty and justifies Tallement des Reaux in charging
the Duchesse de La Tremoille with ambition. For the
aspiring Marie de La Tour determined to copy no less a
personage than that great builder of the previous century,
Catherine de Medicis, and it was according to the plans
which Philibert de I'Orme had drawn for the Tuileries
that the Duchess was now building her castle at Thouars.
Possibly, however, Marie, more fortunate than Charlotte
in the payment of her dowry, may have been using her
own marriage portion for the building of the family
mansion. The association of her name, rather than that
of her husband, with the chateau would indicate that such
was the case, and if so, then the rising of that lordly pile
on the steep bank of the river Thouet is not inconsistent
with the Duke's protested poverty.

Except for these financial cares, Charlotte's early
married years passed peacefully, disturbed only by those
natural vicissitudes of life and death which ever attend
the destinies of mortals. In 1631, her mother died, but
even so heavy a blow was perhaps easier to bear than the
vicious courses in which her favourite brother, Frederic,
Comte de Laval, was indulging, in the Netherlands,
and in London. In London he had formed a union
with a woman of the middle class, a Miss Orpe, who, after
having born him several children, inflicted a heavy blow on

* Then called Quintin, and afterwards known as the ForSt de Lorges.

134 FROM THE CRUSADES

the La Tremoille family pride by claiming to be his wife
and assuming the title of Comtesse de Laval.

Charlotte first became a mother in January, 1628.
In that year her son Charles, afterwards Lord Derby, was
born and there followed in rapid succession eight other
children, of whom six lived to grow up.^

Of English nurses and English nursing Lady Strange
had no opinion whatever. The English custom of giving
infants the full use of their limbs, instead of binding them
tightly on to a cushion, seemed to this Frenchwoman
utterly barbarous. And one night she was horrified to
find her baby boy of but three days old lying in his
cradle sucking his thumb. " Just imagine ! " exclaimed
this outraged parent in a letter to her sister-in-law.
And later to her mother she wrote, " Why, in this country
they put infants of a month or six weeks into robes,
and I am thought out of my senses because I have not
provided any dresses for my baby." No doubt poor
Lady Strange found her opinion of English child-nurture
only too forcibly confirmed when her baby Charlotte
died from being overlaid by her nurse.

Soon after 1 631, in order to arrange her mother's affairs.
Lady Strange undertook a journey to Holland, hoping,
but vainly as it proved, at the same time to exercise
some salutary influence over her favourite brother, who
was then at the Hague.

Meanwhile, in England, the political horizon was
darkening, and every day the country was drawing nearer
to civil war.

Lord Strange, despite the high office he held — as well

1 Charlotte, Henrietta Maria, Catherine, Amelia Anna Sophia,
Edward, William and two other sons, Henry Frederick and James, who
both died in infancy. See " Stanley Papers," Vol. II., Part III.,
pp- cclxxxviii. — ccxcii.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 135

as being with his father joint Heutenant of Lancashire
and Cheshire, he was Chamberlain of Chester and Lord
Lieutenant of North Wales — never took any very active
part in politics. Only now and again did he attend the
meetings of Parliament in London. His tastes were
those of the country gentleman ; and he loved to spend
his days on the hunting field or in his magnificent houses
of Lathom and Knowsley, surrounded by his retainers,
entertaining with princely hospitality large companies
of friends.

" The air of London disagrees with him/' wrote Lady
Strange, and glad she was that he did not go there often,
for, as she added, " in these times there is always some-
thing to fear.'* Still for such leaders of the aristocracy
as were Lord and Lady Strange, it was necessary that
sometimes they should put in an appearance at court.
And so, in 1630, we find them both figuring in royal
pageantry : Charlotte's husband in Ben Jonson's masque,
" Love's Triumph through Callipolis," where fifteen lovers
ranged themselves seven and seven aside, with the King
in the centre, and each with a cupid bearing a lighted
torch before him. Lord Strange not inappropriately
representing the secure lover ; Charlotte herself, in
another masque, was one of a circle of nymphs, who,
dressed in white, embroidered with silver, sat round the
Queen in her bower. ^

But in the early years of her motherhood such court
festivities were not greatly to Charlotte's taste ; and she
preferred to remain quietly at home busily plying her
needle over those numerous tiny garments necessary for
her increasing household.

Then, in 1642, those war clouds which had so long been

1 Peter Draper, " The House of Stanley " (1864), 77.

136 FROM THE CRUSADES

gathering burst, and the King and ParHament took up
arms.

For so peaceable a man as Lord Strange the position
was extremely difficult. He shared the opinion of
Lord Kingston, who to the Parliament emissaries is said
to have replied : " When I take arms with the King against
the Parliament, or with the Parliament against the King,
let a cannon bullet divide me between them." ^

At first, in his own county of Lancashire, Lord Strange
endeavoured to arrange a compromise between the
disputants. Then, having failed, he yielded to his wife's
influence and declared for the King.

Faithful to her early teaching, and believing strongly
in the divine right of kings, to Lady Strange the support
of royalty was a religion. Pibrac's line, learnt long ago
at Thenars, " Love the state as thou findest it, if it be
royal, love royalty," she had never forgotten. And now,
putting aside all considerations of personal safety on her
own, her husband's and her children's behalf, she urged
Lord Strange to join the King, who was then at York.

James Stanley, showing now as always perfect confi-
dence in his wife's judgment, adopted her counsel. But
Charlotte, though she might guide the course of her
husband's action, could not convert the country gentleman
into a general or a soldier ; and throughout the civil war
the career of Lord Strange, who, in this year 1642, by
his father's death became Earl of Derby, though distin-
guished by admirable courage and crowned by a martyr's
death, was little but a series of misfortunes and failures.

His attempts to raise Lancashire in the King's cause,
and to take Manchester and Warrington were attended
with ill success. The troops, which he had raised and

1 See " Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson " (1906), 120.

JAMES STANLEY, EARL OF DERBY
Husband of Charlotte de La Tr^moille

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 137

equipped at his own expense, were almost everywhere
defeated, and in May, 1643, leaving his army in command
of Lord Molyneux, who was even unhappier than his
predecessor, Derby, went to York, to beg the Queen to
place at his disposal some of the reinforcements she had
recently brought from Holland.

Meanwhile Lady Derby dashed off a few hurried lines
to her cousin, Prince Rupert,^ whom she knew to be in
Staffordshire, but two days' ride from Lathom, entreating
him to come to their aid. " Take pity upon my husband,
my children and me," she wrote, " for we are ruined for
ever if God and your Highness have not compassion upon
us." In a very different tone was this hurried note from
the letter, which, a year previously, soon after Prince
Rupert's landing at Tynemouth, Charlotte had written
to her kinsman. Then she had done no more than
request the Prince to use his influence with the King
to induce him to send reinforcements to Lancashire.

While Derby was with the Queen at York, he heard
that his subjects in the Isle of Man, having revolted
from his rule, were negotiating with the Scots. The latter
were then planning an invasion of England, in which
they hoped to make Man their basis of attack upon the
English coast.

In deciding, after some perplexity, to cross over to

1 Lady Strange was first cousin to Rupert's father, the Elector
Palatine.

William of Orange.

i I

Charlotte Brabantine = Claude de La Tr^moille. Louise Julienne =

I the Elector Palatine.

I I

Charlotte, Lady Strange Fr^d^ric, Elector Palatine

(afterwards Lady Derby). = Elizabeth Stuart.

Prince Rupert.

138 FROM THE CRUSADES

Man and to leave Lathom to the mercy of the Parliamen-
tarian army then approaching it, Lord Derby must have
known he had his wife's approval, for Charlotte would
never have allowed her own or her family's safety to
stand in the way of the defence of the royal cause. But,
indeed, her position was dangerous. For no sooner was
the Earl out of the country, than the Governor of
Manchester sent an envoy to demand that Lady Derby
should submit to his terms or surrender her house.
Although Charlotte replied proudly that it suited her
to do neither, the reflection that Lathom was but ill
armed and provisioned reduced even a La Tremoille to
compromise. And so she agreed to give up to the Round-
heads such lands as were outside her park wall, stipulating
that she should be permitted to remain in peace in her
house and to retain a sufficient garrison to protect herself
and her household from the insults of the soldiers.

Lady Derby could not have made a wiser move, for
in view of the siege, which she wisely saw to be inevitable,
she was now able to concentrate all her attention on the
defence of her house and grounds, while, by the surrender
of her outlying possessions she gained time — a respite of
no less than eight months — which she busily occupied
in strengthening her garrison, organising her defence,
and provisioning Lathom.

We must now describe the position and structure of
that mansion, which was about to sustain one of the most
famous sieges in English history. Lathom House was
so spacious that at one time it is said to have accommo-
dated no less than three Kings and their retinues. Yet,
in spite of its size, all writers agree in describing it as
one of the most defensible dwellings in the kingdom.
Girt about with high walls two yards in thickness, and

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 139

protected by nine lofty towers, it lay in a hollow,
surrounded by hills, sloping so rapidly as to render it
impossible to construct any fortifications on them or
to work artillery with impunity from the castle walls.
Beyond the ramparts was a moat eight yards wide and
two yards deep, bordered by a strong wall of palisades,
and only to be crossed from strongly fortified postern
gates at the discretion of the garrison. In the midst of
the house was a high building, known as the Eagle Tower,
and commanding all the rest. The gatehouse was
high and strong, with a tower on each side of it. In
the towers and on the ramparts were placed eight or
nine small pieces of ordnance and some murderers, or
large blunderbusses, which moved upon a pivot and a rest.

Throughout her precious eight months* respite, steadily
and secretly Lady Derby assembled her garrison and
gathered in her provisions, the men came in at night
bearing victuals and ammunition ; yet, despite all the
Countess's efforts, there was a scarcity of the latter
throughout the siege, and Lathom's defenders had always
to be sparing of their powder and shot.

In the end the garrison numbered 300. These men
the Countess divided into six companies under six captains,
chosen for their courage and integrity, and each responsible
for the training of his company. Over them all Lady Derby
appointed as major a Scotsman, one Captain Farmer,
who was very skilful in war, having served in the Low
Countries.^ But Captain Farmer, in his turn, received
his orders from the Countess, for over household and
garrison Charlotte reigned supreme.

So stealthily had all these works been carried out that
the Parhamentarian troops, who, under Colonel Rigby,

^ He afterwards fell at Marston Moor.

140 FROM THE CRUSADES

were constantly harrying the neighbourhood, had not
the remotest idea of the increase in the garrison, nor of
the extent of the defences of Lathom House.

Some idea, however, of what had been taking place
dawned upon the Roundhead general when, early in
February, 1644, a reconnoitring party, having approached
to within gunshot of the walls, was welcomed with such
a volley of musketry that several of their number were
slain and one was taken prisoner. On the following day,
February 24th, a council of war was held at Manchester,
and it was decided to open a regular attack on the mansion.
The next day being Sunday, the pulpits of Wigan, the
nearest town to Lathom and but six miles distant,
resounded with anathemas hurled at " the wicked woman
of Babylon," who was opposing the progress " of the
Lord's chosen people," and one preacher, converting his
sermon into an announcement of the siege, which was
to open on the morrow, blew a trumpet blast from the
fiftieth chapter of Jeremiah, calling on the people to put
themselves " in array against Babylon round about " :
" all ye that bend the bow," he cried, " shoot at her,
spare no arrows ; for she hath sinned against the Lord."

The Puritan preacher doubtless hoped a very few Sab-
baths hence to preach another sermon, taking for his text
the next verse : " Shout against her round about : she
hath given her hand : her foundations are fallen, her
walls are thrown down : for it is the vengeance of the
Lord : take vengeance upon her."

But " the woman of Babylon " was not to be so easily
vanquished ; and as long as Charlotte de La Tremoille
commanded within the walls of Lathom, they stood
firm against the forces of the Parliament.

Of the details of this memorable siege we are fortunate

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 141

in possessing a graphic account written by an eye-witness,
one of the Countess's Httle band of defenders. This
narrative is to be found printed at the end of Bohn's
edition of the " Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson." Two
manuscripts of it still exist, one in the Ashmolean Museum,
Oxford/ another among the Harleian MSS. in the British
Museum.^ Which of Lathom's defenders wrote this story
is a question which has been much disputed. It may
have been Edward Halsall, a youth of only seventeen
at the time of the siege, or, more probably, a maturer
soldier, Chissenhall by name, one of Charlotte's captains.^

It was on Tuesday, February 27th,* that Lathom
was completely invested. Then the troops of Sir
Thomas Fairfax encamped round about the house at the
distance of a mile or two. But before the actual attack
began, a week passed in negotiations between Lady Derby
and Parliamentary envoys. One set of proposals after
another she refused, replying finally that she declined
all their articles, and was truly happy in that they refused
hers, for she would rather hazard her life than offer the
like again. Then she added defiantly that, though a
woman and a foreigner, divorced from her friends and
robbed of her estate, she was ready to receive the enemy's
utmost violence, trusting in God for protection and
deliverance.

The next morning^ when the Countess's household
awoke, it seemed to them that the siege had begun in
real earnest. For during the night, at about a musket-
shot's distance from the house, on the sloping ground

1 A Wood MS. d. 16.

2 No. 2043.

» Another account of the siege may be found in the " Memoirs of
John Seacombe " (1821).
4 N.S. March 7th.
» March 6th O.S.

142 FROM THE CRUSADES

surrounding it, the Parliamentarians had been throwing
up earthworks for the protection of the ordnance which
were to fire upon the towers of Lathom. These earth-
works, during the following days, were continued by the
people of the country-side, who, much against their
will, had been pressed into the Parliamentarian service
by Fairfax and his colonels. Apparently the sympathies
of these country folk were royalist. And although,
instigated by Fairfax, six of them waited on Lady Derby
to represent to her that it would be for their benefit if
she would consent to treat with the Parliamentarians,
when she explained to them her reasons for resisting,
they went away crying : *' God save the King and the
Earl of Derby ! '*

Fairfax, however, still delayed to open the attack,
either because he regarded the siege as hopeless, or
because this chivalrous general disliked making war upon
a woman. So, on Monday, March nth, he renewed
negotiations, which proved as fruitless as the earlier ones
had been. And on the following day it was the besieged
who opened the attack. A hundred foot, supported by
twelve horsemen, boldly sallied forth from Lathom gates,
went right up to the enemy's works without firing a shot,
then, proceeding to fire, drove them from their holes,
slaying thirty, taking forty arms, one drum and six
prisoners without any injury to themselves.

These sallies repeated on succeeding days inflicted great
hurt on the besiegers, and also unhappily on the poor
country folk at work in the trenches. The enemy
replied by attempting to bombard the house. But the
configuration of the land rendered their cannon useless.

*' On Tuesday night," writes our eye-witness, " they
brought up one piece of cannon. On Wednesday morning

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 143

they gave us some sport. They then played their cannon
three shots, the ball a twenty-four pounder. They first
tried the wall, which, being found proof without yielding
or showing the least impression (sic), they afterwards shot
higher to beat down the pinnacles or turrets, or else to
please the women that came to see the spectacle."

Dismayed by the failure of his bombardment, Fairfax
made another attempt to bring the Countess to terms,
and this time he thought to possess an infallible argument
in a letter from Lord Derby which had just reached him.
The Earl had returned from Man, and, alarmed by the
news of his wife's danger, he asked Fairfax to permit the
Countess and her children, should it seem good to her, to
leave the house and proceed to a place of safety. But
Lord Derby, when he penned that request, had no idea of
his wife's spirit. To such a Minerva " it did not seem
good " to leave her home in the hour of danger, for
Charlotte knew full well that she was the soul of the
defence, and that in her absence Lathom would soon be
taken. So, thanking Sir Thomas for his courtesy, the
Countess professed her willingness to adopt her Lord's
suggestion, but only when she herself was fully persuaded
that such really was his pleasure. The blockade was
then resumed. But soon afterwards, Lady Derby,
taking advantage of a sally, contrived to get two
messengers through the enemy's lines, one bearing a
letter to her husband, and the other one to Prince Rupert.
The latter was written in a very different tone from the
despairing request she had addressed to her kinsman but
a year ago. By now Charlotte de La Tremoille had
proved her mettle, and this, her third appeal to her
cousin, reveals a serenity and strength which is truly
admirable in a lone woman and a foreigner at the

144 FROM THE CRUSADES

head of a small garrison, besieged by an army of
3,000 men.

" Sir," wrote the Countess, " I make bold to write
these lines to your Highness to implore you very humbly
to be so kind as to converse with the bearer of this letter
touching the condition of this country, which has great
need of your presence, as your Highness will be able to
gather for yourself from the words of my messenger, in
whose hands I leave it, while I entreat you believe me
more than any one, Sir, the very humble and very
obedient and very faithful servant of your Highness.

" C. DE Tremaille." ^

Though the Countess was thus reduced to imploring aid
from her husband and her cousin, the besiegers v/ere
beginning to despair of ever forcing her to surrender by
human means at any rate. And so they resolved to
beseech the divinity to intervene on their side. " All
ministers and other well- affected persons " of Lancashire
were called upon to commend the Parliament's case to
God. Meanwhile, those " well-affected " persons who
had been bombarding Lathom desisted from action, in
order, as our eye-witness puts it, " to sleep out four days
in the pious exercises of prayer and supplication."

The Countess and her household used this respite to
prepare a somewhat rude awakening for these pious
sleepers. And, on April loth, the besieged sallied forth
and attacked the enemy's lines with such vigour, that all
their cannon were nailed, fifty of their men slain, sixty
arms taken, with one set of colours and three drums, all
with the loss to the assailants of only one man. The
besiegers' most formidable weapon, however, Charlotte's
men failed to damage : the Parliamentarians had recently

* Charlotte's usual way of writing her name.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 145

brought from London a huge mortar, which was a form of
artillery but newly invented. The Lathom soldiers did
their very best to silence this redoubtable engine of war ;
they nailed it, and battered it with smith's hammers, but
all to no purpose, for its mouth was too wide to be stopped.
And for the next thirteen days the mortar was destined
to inflict considerable damage on the house and its
occupants, but not nearly such serious injury as it might
have caused had the firing of it been properly under-
stood. Not even Lathom's stout ramparts could have
stood firm against shells and stones fifty-three inches
in diameter, had they been fired so as to describe that
peculiar curve which rendered the mortar the most
deadly engine of attack upon a house lying in a hollow
like that now being assailed. The inexperience of the
gunners, however, caused the balls generally to follow a
horizontal direction, and only now and again to do
any serious damage. Once a ball fell into the dining-
room where the Countess and her children sat at meat,
and twice shells entered Lady Derby's bed-chamber ;
but almost miraculously on neither occasion was anyone
hurt. And it was only with great difiiculty that the
Countess could be persuaded to change her room, which
seemed especially open to attack, for once previously,
before the mortar's arrival, a saker bullet had come in
through her window.

But nothing dismayed the Countess or shook her
determination to continue her resistance. Never would
she yield as long as a roof remained over her head,
she protested. And at length Fairfax, who was badly
wanted in other parts of the country, grew tired of so
unprofitable an enterprise. On April 24th he marched
off, leaving the conduct of the siege to Colonel Rigby, a

C.R. L

146 FROM THE CRUSADES

gruff, uncouth attorney, very different from his courteous
and cultured superior.

In keeping with Rigby's character was the insolent
tone of the message by which, on the day after his
general's departure, he called upon Lady Derby to sur-
render before eight o'clock on the following afternoon.
But in the Countess, Rigby had met his match. Haughtily
tearing up the Colonel's missive, she told his messenger
that as a reward for his pains he deserved to be hanged
at her gates, and that to the traitor who sent him he
might say that neither house, goods nor persons should
he have, that rather than fall into his hands she would
set fire to the place and consign herself, her children and
her soldiers to the flames.

These were bold words ; and on hearing them the
garrison shouted : " We will die for his Majesty and your
Honour. God save the King ! "

For herself. Lady Derby knew no fear. Yet, despite
the brave defiance she had sent to Rigby, there were
moments when she trembled for her children. " The
little ladies," writes the eye-witness, " had stomachs
to digest cannon, but they, no more than the stoutest
soldiers, had hearts for grenades."

So, no sooner was the messenger departed than the
Countess summoned a council of war, and told her
captains that something must be done to stop the mouth
of the mortar. As the result of these deliberations
another sally was made, which was to prove the boldest
and bravest of the siege. At four o'clock the next
morning, while the besiegers were asleep, Lady Derby
herself, with most of her garrison, issued forth from the
gates. They approached the mortar and took possession
of it ; then the soldiers, encouraged by their gallant

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 147

Countess, dragged it inside the ramparts. There in the
courtyard, Hke a dead Hon, lay the monster that had
frightened the brave defenders of Lathom from their
meat and sleep. '' Everyone had his eye and his foot
upon it, shouting and rejoicing as merrily as they used
to do with their ale and their bagpipes."

And even Charlotte de La Tremoille, never very joyful
at the best of times, and grimmer than ever now after
eight anxious weeks of suffering — even Charlotte was
jubilant, and in her gladness she instructed her chaplain,
the Reverend Mr. Rutter, to hold a public thanks-
giving.

Rigby, too, had arranged a thanksgiving for that day,
and had invited the people of the countryside to come
and see the walls of Lathom House fall beneath the
mortar's volleys of shot and shell ; but now his great
battering-ram lay silent and secure within the enemy's
gates, and there remained for the Colonel nothing but
rage and mortification. In despair he appealed to the
County Committee to send him reinforcements. *' We are
obliged to drive them back as often as five or six times
in the same night," he wrote. " These constant alarms,
the strength of the garrison, and the numerous losses
we have had, oblige the soldiers to guard the trenches
sometimes two nights running. My son does this duty
as well as the youngest officer. And for my own part,
I am ready to sink under the weight, having worked
beyond my strength."

In response to Rigby's request Colonel Holland was
sent from Manchester with reinforcements. But these
new troops seem to have been singularly ineffective ;
and we read that after the mortar's capture until the
raising of the siege on May 26th, the garrison enjoyed a

148 FROM THE CRUSADES

continued calm, so that they were scarce sensible of a
siege save for the restraint put upon their liberty.

On May 23rd Rigby sent another and the last of his
insolent messages, to which Lady Derby replied as
defiantly as before, that unless the enemy would treat
with her lord, they should never have her or any of her
friends alive.

The Countess, when she sent this defiance, had no idea
that her lord was then close at hand. But that very
night one of her scouts returned to Lathom and told how
Prince Rupert was in Cheshire, and with him the Earl,
and that they were coming to raise the siege.

From more than one quarter Prince Rupert had been
urged to go to his gallant cousin's rescue ; her husband
had implored the Prince's help, so had the Royalist
commander of Chester, and finally the King himself
wrote that while desirous not to interfere with his
nephew's plans, he would be glad to learn that the
Countess of Derby was out of danger. Thus it fell out
that the Prince, having been joined by Derby, was now
marching to Lathom.

The news that on May 25th Rupert had taken Stockport
reached the besiegers on the following day. That night
they broke up their camp and vanished in the darkness,
so quietly that the inhabitants of Lathom knew nothing
of their departure ; and the Countess, when she awoke
on the morning of the 27th, beheld with immense astonish-
ment and unspeakable relief that the enemy had departed.

On the evening of the following day the Earl and his
Countess were reunited. Between the Parliamentarians*
flight and Derby's return had intervened the RoyaHst
capture of Bolton-le-Moors, where Stanley and Rupert
wreaked their revenge on Rigby and his men for all the

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 149

suffering they had for eight weeks been inflicting on the
Countess and her children.

The Earl, on his return to his damaged home and to
his brave wife and children, had been preceded by Sir
Richard Crane, who came on the part of Prince Rupert
to lay at his courageous cousin's feet twenty-two flags
captured from the enemy at Bolton, and to announce
to her that the Prince was pleased to accept her invitation
to spend a few days at Lathom on his way to York.
Charlotte, therefore, made haste to prepare to receive
her princely cousin with as good cheer as might be, in
a house strangely shattered by the siege, and still bearing
traces of the work of the enemy's cannon.

Rupert was then at the height of his renown. His
arrogance and hot-headedness had not yet alienated the
cavaliers, who, in this year 1644, regarded the King's
nephew as almost invincible. Lady Derby and her cousin
must have been well acquainted by repute, for it was
the Prince's mother, the fascinating Elizabeth Stuart,
who, at the court of the Hague, had arranged Charlotte's
marriage ; but at that time young Rupert himself was
away at the University of Ley den. Probably, therefore,
the cousins never met until that glad summer day,
when the Prince of five-and-twenty, the handsomest and
bravest commander of the time, rode proudly through
the battered gates of Lathom to congratulate, in a voice
half broken with emotion, his valiant kinswoman on the
glorious victory she had won.

Many a noble and many a royal guest had in times past
been royally entertained beneath Lathom's hospitable
roof. But now, with the resources of her house all
wasted by the siege, with her jewels pawned to raise
money for the defence of her home, with robes of state

150 FROM THE CRUSADES

laid aside, and triumphs of costume and drapery for-
gotten, Charlotte found court ceremonial impossible.
Yet never was guest welcomed with greater rejoicing, and
never did more fervent thanksgivings rise from the
chapel than on the occasion of Prince Rupert's coming
to Lathom.

During this brief visit the Prince was busily occupied
in arranging for the repair and strengthening of the
fortifications of the house, and in rewarding the officers
who had so gallantly served their King and their lady.
Before his departure, Rupert advised the Countess to
retire with her children to the Isle of Man, enjoining her
to take great care of her sons and daughters, for, he said,
'' the children of such a father and mother will one day
render to their King as much service as yours has received
from you.'*

It was not, however, until more than three weeks after
the Royalist rout at Marston Moor that Charlotte
adopted her cousin's counsel. The battle was fought on
July 2nd ; and on the 30th Lady Derby and her children
crossed over to the Isle of Man. Whether the Earl
accompanied them we do not know. But, if he did, his
stay in the island was brief, for in September we find
him back at Lathom, which was again being besieged by
the Parliamentarians. The siege dragged on for over
a year. Not until December, 1645, did the gallant
garrison surrender. By that time the Earl had rejoined
his family in the Isle of Man, and it was there that they
heard of the wanton destruction of their beautiful home,
how it had been razed to the ground, all its valuable
furniture and works of art scattered or demolished, and
only a few timber buildings left to mark the site of the
lordly Lathom.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 151

For the Earl and Countess of Derby, as indeed for all
Royalists, the next five years, from Lathom's fall in
December, 1644, until the King's execution in January,
1649, were full of suffering and anxiety. Most of this
time the Countess spent in the Isle of Man. And from
her letters to her sister-in-law, Marie de la Tour, Duchesse
de La Tremoille, we learn that to grief over national
affairs were added family troubles. These arose chiefly
from the conduct of her eldest son, Charles, Lord Strange,
then a youth of eighteen. Only a year after Lathom's
fall, Charles departed secretly from the Isle of Man, and,
crossing over to Ireland, made his way thence to Paris.
He left behind him letters saying that he was going to his
Aunt, the Duchess. And to her Lady Derby wrote,
imploring that for her sister's sake she would receive the
truant kindly and be a mother to him, *' all the more,"
she adds, " because what he has done has offended
Monsieur his father and me. If he obeys you he will the
more readily obtain our pardon."

Such kindness the Countess was entitled to expect from
her sister-in-law ; for, as we shall see in the next chapter,
many years earlier the Derbys had hospitably received
into their London house the Duchess's own runaway son,
Henri Charles de La Tremoille. Marie de la Tour,
therefore, was only too wilHng to grant her sister's
request, winning her gratitude and that of her husband,
who wrote to Madame de La Tremoille that he could
never sufficiently thank her for the care she had deigned
to take of his truant son.

Their first-born's evasion must have been a great
disappointment to Lord and Lady Derby. For, from his
cradle they had spared no pains, by dint of careful tuition
and advice, to fit him for the exalted position he was one

152 FROM THE CRUSADES

day to occupy. Among the Stanley papers is a volume^
of rules and aphorisms written by Lord Derby for his
son's benefit, and dealing with every phase of behaviour,
and every vicissitude of life, health, table manners,
expenditure, the regulations of a household, and especially
the choice of a wife. " Choose not a dwarf or a fool,"
Charles was advised, " for the children of one will be
pigmies, and the other your disgrace by a continual
clack; there is nothing more fulsome than a she-fool."
Looking still further ahead, the Earl admonishes his son
to bring up his children with " learning and obedience,
yet without austerity, praising them openly, and repre-
hending them secretly.''

But, above all things, Charles is enjoined to cultivate
home life and to avoid travel, especially in Italy, because
in that country " is nothing to be learned but pride, vice,
luxury, and atheism, with a few useless words of no
profit." " For words," the Earl insists, " you have no
need to travel, your mother having conferred on you the
benefit of her language."

But travel was the one thing Charles Stanley desired,
partly, no doubt, in order to escape from his father's
persistent aphorisms and his tutor's virtuous precepts ;
and so, eluding the vigilance of the learned Mr. Rutter,
he exchanged the monotony of life in the Isle of Man for
the livelier atmosphere of Paris.

Eventually Lord Strange was to win his father's for-
giveness, and to prove a loyal and affectionate son. But
with his mother henceforth he was never on the best of
terms. Charlotte could not recover from her disappoint-
ment at her boy's truancy. To her sister-in-law she

1 Part III., 1S67, 42 et seq. " The Stanley Papers " have been
published by the Chetham Society.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 153

wrote of him as " a useless creature," and one from whom
all she could expect was that he should eschew evil
practices, and avoid following the example of his uncle,
the Comte de Laval, Charlotte's favourite brother, who
three years earlier had died from wounds received in a
duel.^ Nevertheless, for this '* useless creature " Lady
Derby was careful to draw up a programme of studies,
to pursue him with reams of judicious advice, to scheme
for his worldly advancement by asking the Duchess to
present him to Henrietta Maria and the Prince of Wales,
who were then in Paris, and to plan sending him to learn
the art of war from his kinsman, the great Turenne.

Soon, however, the Countess's attention was diverted
from her truant son by a new danger which threatened
her husband. Towards the close of 1646 negotiations
were in progress between the Scots, whom the King had
joined at Newcastle, and the members of the Long
Parliament. As part of the projected settlement it was
proposed to proclaim an amnesty for the King's sup-
porters ; but from that pardon certain eminent Royalists
were to be excluded, and among them was Lord
Derby.

With her usual indefatigable energy, the Countess
resolved to undertake the hazardous and difficult journey
to London, there to petition the Parliament to include
her husband in the Amnesty Bill. Having waited long
and anxiously for a passport, she received it in mid-
January. And then, in tempestuous weather, and
embarking in an unseaworthy boat. Lady Derby bade
farewell to her fearful husband and children, and after a
forty-eight hours' passage, landed safely in Lancashire.

* Fought at Venice with Le Coudray Montpensier in February,
1642.

154 PROM THE CRUSADES

There she spent a fortnight procuring money for her
further journey. On March loth she was at Chelsea ;
and in London or its neighbourhood she remained for
over a year negotiating with the ParHament, and not
without success.

Some weeks after her arrival she was able to write to
her sister-in-law, ** that the Lords have already struck
out Monsieur your brother-in-law's name from the list of
exceptions. ... It passed without any opposition, but
the Commons have done nothing, as it has not been sent
to them yet from the Lords ; but I am encouraged to
hope that, with God's help, there will be no difficulty."

In the autumn of this year, probably owing to Lady
Derby's intervention, one-fifth of the Earl's estate, which
had been confiscated by Parliament, was granted to his
children. The Manor of Knowsley, with its house, lands
and appurtenances, was included in this restoration, and
thither the Earl sent his daughters, Catherine and
Amelia, to reside at Knowsley under the protection of
Sir Thomas Fairfax, in order that they might keep
possession of the house and receive that part of
their father's income which Parliament had granted
them.

It was in September, 1647, that Lady Derby twice
visited the King at Hampton Court. Of her second
visit she writes : " He is hopeful about his affairs. The
Princes, his children, see him two or three times a week ;
they are living only three miles from Hampton Court,
the finest of his houses."

While thus earnestly engaged in matters which so
vitally concerned her husband and children. Lady Derby
never lost interest in the doings of her relatives in France.
Her heart swelled with family pride when her brother.

CHARLOTTE DE LA TREMOILLE, COUNTESS OF DERBY, WITH HER

HUSBAND AND THEIR DAUGHTER, CATHERINE

From a picture by Vandyke, in the collection of the Earl of Clarendon

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 155

Duke Henry, at the Council of Munster^ in 1648, laid
claim to the kingdom of Naples.'^

But her pride fell when, shortly afterwards, her dead
brother's mistress. Miss Orpe, claimed his estate and
assumed the title of Comtesse de Laval. ^ Miss Orpe was
connected with the English Royal household, and in the
suit she brought against the house of La Tremoille was
protected by Queen Henrietta Maria. Despite this
powerful patronage, however, " that woman," as the
Countess described the plaintiff, lost her case, and the
Laval estate was divided between Count Frederic's
brother and sister.

While she was in London, the Countess was writing
to her sister-in-law long lamentations over the woeful
plight to which the Parliament's government had reduced
her adopted land. " On every hand," she wrote, " were
discontent and disagreement, falling out between Lords
and Commons, and between the Parliament and the
army, but worst of all the abuse of religion, the disregard
of God's commandments, books printed which deny the
Holy Ghost, the Lord's Prayer neglected, the Sacraments
administered according to the fancy of the administrator,
any one allowed to preach, even women, baptism thought
nothing of, and not administered to children, and worse
things which make all who have any religion left shudder."

In the spring of 1648 lack of pence compelled Lady

1 Summoned to adjust the conflicting demands of the numerous
Princes engaged in the Thirty Years War.

2 Through his ancestress, Anne de Laval, granddaughter of Fr^d^ric,
King of Naples, and wife of Fran9ois de La Tremoille (see ante, p. 87).
For two centuries the kings of France had claimed to be kings of Naples.
They now abrogated their claim in favour of the La Tremoilles, who
continued to assert theirs down to the end of the eighteenth century.
And in virtue of this pretended right the eldest son of the house hence-
forth (until 1 81 5) was styled Prince de Tarente. See " Les La
Tremoilles pendant cinq Siecles," IV., 12s et seq.

" See ante, p. 134.

156 FROM THE CRUSADES

Derby to leave London without having obtained her
object, for the Commons had not yet undertaken to
include her husband in the Amnesty Bill. But she
hoped much from the divisions among her enemies.
These hopes were destined to disappointment.

On her way back to the Isle of Man, the Countess
visited her daughters at Knowsley. In February, 1649,
she was back again in the Island. And there she and her
husband heard of the King's execution.

For this event they had long been prepared. Years
before, at the time of Strafford's death,^ Lord Derby had
described the Parliament as *' wolves, that, after their
first tasting of man's blood, grow bold, and mad of more
. . . worse than beasts, they make noe difference of
drinkes ; for they now become ravenous of royall blood."

It was not until six months after the King's execution
that Lady Derby's petition to the Parliament received
any definite answer. Then, on July 12th, Lieutenant-
General Ireton, on the Parliament's behalf, proposed to
the Earl, that in return for the peaceable possession of
half his estate, Derby should surrender the Isle of Man.

The vehemence with which the Earl rejected this
proposal suggests that Charlotte was responsible for the
terms of his reply, which were remarkably like those in
which she had been wont to answer the envoys of Fairfax
and Rigby during the siege of Lathom.

" I scorn your profiers, disdain your favour, and abhor
your treason," wrote the Earl, " and am so far from
delivering up this Island to your advantage, that I will
keep it to the utmost of my power and your destruction.
Take this for your final answer and forbear any further
solicitations ; for if you trouble me with any more

1 May, 1641.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

157

messages on this occasion I will burn the paper and
hang the bearer. This is the immutable resolution and
shall be the undoubted practice of him who accounts
it his chiefest glory to be

" His Majesty's most loyal and obedient servant,

" Derby." ^

This virulent defiance having convinced the Parliament
of the vanity of all attempts at negotiation, they then
proceeded by force of arms to try and conquer the Island.

But for some time the Earl had been collecting and
equipping a fleet, and with this ever active and efficient
little navy, he continued to guard the Island from Round-
head attacks, so that Man became a sure and safe refuge
for Royalist refugees, whom, in spite of their poverty,
Lord and Lady Derby hospitably entertained at Castle
Rushen.

The story of these years, of the straits to which the
Countess was reduced, even in order to clothe her waiting-
women, of the hair -breadth escapes of her husband
and his retainers from the guns of the Parliament's
vessels constantly hovering round the coast, forms one
of the most thrilling chapters in the history of Charlotte
de La Tremoille's romantic career.

So much care and anxiety now had their natural
effect even on the Countess's vigorous constitution ;
she fell ill, and for a time her life was despaired of. So
beset was she by dangers and difficulties that, on her
recovery from seven weeks' illness, she wrote to her
sister-in-law that " had it been God's will," she would
have been well satisfied to quit " this miserable world."
At the same time she mourns over the condition of her
adopted land, in which the sects were increasing daily,
1 " Stanley Papers," Part III. Vol. I., cliv.

158 FROM THE CRUSADES

where the Koran was printed with permission, where
it was common to deny both God and Jesus Christ, and to
beheve only in the spirit of the Universe, where baptism
was made a joke of, where a Puritan minister maintained
openly in church that there was no greater divinity than
himself, and that, as he was not God, therefore God did
not exist.

In another letter Lady Derby related how one of the
Earl's retainers, returning from Scotland, described the
burning of sorcerers who declared that they were always
with Cromwell when he fought. Another, in prison at
Edinburgh, afhrmed that he had been present when
Cromwell renounced his baptismal vow.

Many other equally slanderous tales did the Countess
repeat for the benefit of her sister-in-law. Perhaps some
of them were not without foundation. Everyone knows
that during that century hundreds of witches and wizards
were burnt, especially in Scotland, and that under torture
no statement was too wild for those poor wretches to make.
But the majority of these stories were undoubtedly mere
inventions, chiefly significant as showing that Cavaliers
and Puritans, like many politicians of the present day, were
only too eager to credit the most absurd tales told at the
expense of their opponents.

After awhile the Parliament, having failed to capture
the Isle of Man by their war vessels, attempted to wring
its surrender from the stalwart Derby by ill-treatment
of his daughters. Catherine and Amelia were removed
from Knowsley to Liverpool, where they were lodged in
a miserable, ill- ventilated house, strictly watched, and
not allowed to go a few miles from their abode without
permission. While the Parliament thus held the Earl's
daughters as hostages, they sent word to their father that

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 159

if he would surrender Man the ladies should be set at
liberty. But this stratagem was no more successful than
previous devices had been in bringing the proud Earl to
submission ; and Derby answered that his children should
never be redeemed by disloyalty.

While doubtless approving of her husband's reply,
Charlotte's maternal heart bled at the news of her
daughters' sufferings. " I hear they are bearing it
bravely," she wrote to the Duchess, " and I have no
doubt this is true of the eldest ; but my daughter Amelia
is delicate and timid, and is undergoing medical treat-
ment by order of Monsieur de Mayerne." ^

In the midst of her fears for her daughters another
blow fell upon Lady Derby. She heard that her son,
who was in Holland, was about to marry a Mdlle. Rupa,
a young 'German lady, high born but penniless. In
the present state of the family fortunes such a match
was not to be dreamt of. And to prevent it the Countess
immediately set out for Holland, by way of Scotland.
But there her progress was arrested. For, landing in
Kirkcudbright, she found herself in the presence of an
English army which was marching to Dunbar ; then she
discovered that without a passport it was impossible for
her to continue her journey ; and, after a fortnight spent
in vainly endeavouring to obtain one, she was reduced
to returning to Man.

Lord Strange married Mdlle. Rupa, and then attempted
to compensate for his wife's lack of fortune by obtaining
from the Parliament a portion of his father's confiscated
revenue. With this object Lord and Lady Strange
came to London. Their negotiations with the Parliament,

^ Sir Theodore Turquet de Mayerne (1573 — 1655), a Genevese who
had been physician to Charles I.

i6o FROM THE CRUSADES

which Lord Derby described as " going over to the rebels,"
drove their parents into a fury, and no doubt confirmed
the Countess in her opinion that her eldest son was but
a " useless creature."

During her brief stay in Scotland Lady Derby had
waited on Charles 11. , whom she found, so she wrote
to the Duchess, behaving with wonderful prudence.
Indignantly the Countess rejected the charge then being
spread abroad that her King was a Catholic. "He is
as true a Protestant as ever," she wrote. But she pitied
him in being obliged to listen to horrible sermons against
his father, delivered by persons whom she called
" atheists."

Charlotte's loyalty must have been severely tested
when, a few months later, she heard that on his coronation
at Scone ^ Charles had subscribed to the Solemn League
and Covenant, thereby admitting his father's sin, and
his mother's idolatry.

The King himself sent word to Lord Derby that the
Scotch Presbyterians had determined to make common
cause with English Royalists, and to restore him to the
throne. These tidings Charlotte and her husband
received with great joy. And henceforth the Earl held
himself in readiness to join his sovereign whenever the
summons should reach him. Meanwhile, throughout the
summer of 165 1, Derby busied himself in organising his
gallant little navy, and in completing the defences of Man,
so that in his absence the Island might continue to defy
the enemy.

Finally, in August, came the call which for ever was to
part Lady Derby from the devoted husband who for
twenty-five years had been her lover and friend.

1 January, 1651.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION i6i

For a while storms delayed his departure. " The wind
is unmercifully cruel/' wrote his brave daughter Henrietta
Maria. But it must have been with mixed feelings of
impatience and apprehension that she and her mother
listened to the howling of the tempest round the walls of
Castle Rushen.

'* It begins to be fair," she adds in the same letter.
And on August 12th, Derby wrote : " my little vessel
will be ready this tide."

Three days later he was in Lancashire. Then began a
period of anxious suspense for Lady Derby and her
children left behind in the Isle of Man.

Of her husband's desperate adventures from his landing
in Lancashire, until his execution at Bolton-le-Moors,
Charlotte knew nothing at the time. Of his successful
raising of the county for the King, of his grievous wound-
ing and defeat at Wigan, of his escape in disguise to
Worcester, of his saving the King's life after the battle,
of the exhausted Earl's own surrender to the Parlia-
mentarians, of his imprisonment, trial and execution,
not one word penetrated to his wife in her island home
until after Derby had breathed his last on the scaffold —
of all these sad happenings she heard nothing until the
tidings reached her of her husband's death at Bolton on
October 15th.

When and how news of this tragedy first came to the
Countess we do not know. But that some time or other
the Earl's trusty chaplain, the Reverend Humphrey
Baggerley, performed his lord's behest by delivering his
letters to Charlotte, and telling her of the Earl's last
moments, we do not doubt. From Baggerley, Lady
Derby must have learnt that her lord had died bravely
for God, the King, and the laws, that shortly before the

C.R. M

102 FROM THEiCRUSADES

end he had spoken of his honour and respect for his lady,
and of her goodness as a wife, that he had remembered
his eldest daughter, " Mall," ^ and his sons,^ " the honour-
able little masters," and that but a few hours before his
execution he had drunk a cup of beer to his lady and
their children.

In the two letters which the chaplain delivered to Lady
Derby, the Earl took a tender pathetic farewell of his
wife and children. To his lady, referring to earlier
letters, which likewise did not reach her until after his
death, he wrote :

** My dear Heart, I have heretofore sent you comfort-
able lines, but, alas ! I have now no word of comfort,
saving to our last and best refuge, which is Almighty God,
to Whose will we must submit. ... I conjure you, my
dearest heart, by all those graces which God hath given
you, that you exercise your patience in this great and
strange trial. If harm come to you, then I am dead
indeed, and until then I shall live in you, who are truly
the best part of myself. When there is no such as I in
being, then look upon yourself and my poor children ;
then take comfort, and God wiU bless you." ^

To his "poor children," to "little Mall, Ned and
Billy," of whom he had often thought and spoken during
his captivity, the Earl wrote ^ :

" I remember well how sad you were to part with me,
but now I fear your sorrow will be greatly increased to be

1 Derby's two younger daughters, Catherine and Amelia, the Parlia-
ment had established at Chester shortly before their father had been
brought there as a prisoner. The Stanley girls were permitted to visit
the Earl in prison and to bid him farewell on his way to execution.

2 As soon as he heard of his father's imprisonment, the Earl's eldest
son, Lord Strange, had, with his wife, come to Chester. And there he
and Lady Strange were completely reconciled to their father.

• See Seacombe, op, cit., 185 — 186.

* Ibid., 186—187.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 163

informed that you can never see me more in this world ;
but I charge you all to strive against too great a sorrow :
you are all of you of that temper that it would do you
harm. My desires and prayers to God are, that you may
have a happy life. Let it be as holy a life as you can, and
as little sinful as you can avoid or prevent. I can well
now give you that counsel, having in myself at this time
so great a sense of the vanities of my life, which fill my
soul with sorrow ; yet I rejoice to remember that when I
have blessed God with pious devotion, it has been most
delightful to my soul, and must be my eternal happiness.
" Love the Archdeacon,^ he will give you good precepts.
Obey your mother with cheerfulness and grieve her not ;
for she is your example, your nursery, your counsellor,
your all under God. There never was, nor ever can be a
more deserving person. I am called away, and this is the
last I shall write to you. The Lord my God bless and
guard you from all evil. So prays your father at this
time, whose sorrow is inexorable to part with Mall, Ned
and Billy. Remember,

" Derby."

Lord Derby had anticipated that after his death his
gallant wife would have great difficulty in maintaining
her defence of Man. And in more than one of his letters
the Earl had advised Charlotte to surrender the Island to
the Parliament on the best terms she could secure for
herself, her children and the inhabitants, and then to
retire with her family to some place remote from the war.
Lord Derby's fears proved to have been well justified.
But Charlotte de La Tremoille's stout heart could not
bring itself to follow her lord's counsel. And when two
of the Parliament's colonels, Duckenfield and Birch, with
ten ships of war, approaching the Island, summoned the

1 Mr. Rutter, who had been tutor to Lord Strange.

M 2

i64 FROM THE CRUSADES

Countess to surrender, Lady Derby, as in Lathom days,
boldly bade them defiance.^

Into the Countess's mouth on this occasion, Scott, in
*' Peveril of the Peak," puts just such words as she might
actually have spoken. Referring to this event in after
years, he makes her say : —

" I would have held . . . that island against the knaves
as long as the sea continued to flow around it. Till the
shoals which surround it had become safe anchorage, till
its precipices had melted beneath the sunshine, till of all
its strong abodes and castles not one stone remained upon
another, would I have defended against these villainous
hypocritical rebels my dear husband's hereditary
dominions."

Vain were all Lady Derby's courage and heroism.
The Island was undermined by treason. Treachery did
what force could never have accomplished. The Governor
of Man, William Christian, in whom the late Earl had
placed implicit confidence, was, in league with the enemy.
Led by Christian, the very night after the arrival of
the Parliament's ships, the Manxmen rose in a body,
seized Castle Rushen, where Lady Derby was then
residing, and prepared to hand the whole island over to
the enemy.

Meanwhile, in the other fortress of Man, in Peel Castle,
which at high tide formed an island of itself, there still
held out a brave body of men commanded by a gallant
royalist. Sir Philip Musgrave. The Parliamentarians, in
negotiating with the captive Countess, offered her life,
liberty, and all her goods if she would abandon this little
band of defenders unconditionally into their hands. But

1 It is doubtful whether at that time Lady Derby had received her
husband's letters. It may have been those Parliamentarian generals
who sent her news of the Earl's death.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 165

those who made such a proposal Httle knew the loyalty
of a La Tremoille. Their offer Lady Derby rejected with
the utmost scorn, replying that she preferred to remain a
prisoner rather than abandon a single man who had been
faithful to her. So with the greater part of her personal
property in the Island, the Countess purchased the lives
of Musgrave and his men.^ Out of all her goods, 400
crowns worth of silver plate was allowed her, just sufficient
to pay for the passage to England of herself and her
children.

Under Musgrave's escort, Lady Derby and her family,
after a stormy crossing, landed at Beaumaris. There they
bade farewell to their brave comrade ; Sir Philip took his
way to the north, while the Countess and her children, we
presume, journeyed to London. For it was there that in
the following March, Lady Derby resumed her corre-
spondence with her sister-in-law, in a letter ^ from which
we obtain our only reliable information concerning her
departure from Man.

During the eight years between her arrival in England
and the King's restoration. Lady Derby was chiefly
concerned in endeavouring to rescue from Parliamen-
tarian confiscators the remnants of her own and her
husband's fortune, in marrying her daughters, and in
providing for the advancement of her two younger sons.

After three years she succeeded in recovering her own
dowry and the estate of Knowsley, whither she retired,
glad to leave London, where she found living too expensive
for her very limited resources.

The year after the surrender of Man, Lady Derby

^ This agreement was signed on November nth, 1651.

2 This letter contradicts the statement made by more than one
authority that for several months after the Island's surrender the
Countess was kept a prisoner in Man.

i66 FROM THE CRUSADES

married her second daughter, Catherine, to Henry
Pierrepont, Marquis of Dorchester, a middle-aged widower,
very rich, but one of the most eccentric persons of his
time. Dorchester, by adopting the medical profession,
had scandalised the nobility and terrified all his friends
and relatives for whom he insisted on prescribing. By
the time Catherine Stanley married him he was said to
have already killed his daughter, his coachman, and five
other patients. In the end he himself is said to have died
of his physic. But unfortunately for Catherine that
Nemesis did not overtake him until she had been ten
years in her grave. Yet a naturally strong constitution
had enabled her long to resist her husband's medica-
ments, and, victimised by his extravagant whims and
irascible disposition, to live through twenty-seven years
of married misery.

Lady Derby, who at first exulted in procuring so
wealthy a husband for her daughter, only three months
after the wedding, realised that she had made a hideous
mistake. Therefore in mating her two other daughters
she avoided eccentricities. Henrietta Maria and Amelia
were lucky in being united to quite commonplace persons.
Henrietta's spouse, William Wentworth, second son of the
famous Earl of Strafford, inherited none of his father's
gifts and probably proved a placid husband.

Amelia, a clever and attractive brunette, " with an
equal and patient temper," in her marriage with John,
the second earl and first Marquis of AthoU, appears to
have been the most fortunate of the sisters. Her wedding,
which took place on May 5th, 1659, rendered her, as she
wrote, " the happiest creature alive," and the happiness
seems to have endured. She bore her husband three
sons, the eldest of whom, John, became first Duke of

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 167

AthoU. The Marquis died in 1703. His wife was
living in 1691, but the date of her death is uncertain.

While Lady Derby was busy marrying her daughters,
she was sending her two youngest sons abroad. Edward,
her second son, she had despatched, in 1654, to his aunt,
the Duchess, enjoining on him to show her the same
affection, respect and obedience as he had rendered to his
mother. " He has some knowledge of mathematics,
painting and surveying," she wrote. " He is gentle, and
of a good disposition, brave, but without pride, a very
common vice of his nation." That lack of pride or that
dignified modesty has ever been one of the finest
characteristics of the typical English country gentleman,
and it was from his father that Edward Stanley had
inherited it.

In 1657, William Stanley joined his brother in France.
" Poor children," wrote their mother, " they must needs
seek their fortunes abroad, since they have nothing to
hope for from the land of their birth."

From her eldest son, Charles, now Lord Derby, Char-
lotte continued estranged. Not even his devotion to his
father in his imprisonment could win his mother's
forgiveness. Charles is said to have ridden from Chester
to London and back in twenty-four hours, in order to
petition Parliament to annul the capital sentence passed
by court-martial on his father. But nothing could make
Charlotte forget that her first-born had run away^from
home, had wedded a wife without a dowry, and had
negotiated with the ParHament. " Worse than the
prodigal son," she calls him. And to her daughter-in-law
she was equally unjust. " There never was so malignant
a nature as that woman's, who has nothing good or
pleasant about her," she wrote.

i68 FROM THE CRUSADES

Despite these hard words, however, motherly love was
not utterly extinguished in Charlotte's heart ; and the
approach of danger fanned that spark into a flame.

In the Royalist rising which took place in Lancashire
in 1659, Lord Derby, having been defeated at Nantwich,
was taken prisoner. His wife joined him in prison.
And then Charlotte welcomed to her home at Knowsley
his nine little children, one of whom was an infant but a
few weeks old. At the same time, the Countess wrote to
her sister-in-law entreating her to procure the inter-
vention of the French ambassador in England, Monsieur
de Bordeaux, on her nephew's behalf. Apparently this
intervention took place and succeeded ; for Derby, after
having been imprisoned first at Shrewsbury, and then in
the Tower of London, was set at liberty.

No sooner was her son out of danger than Charlotte's
bitterness against him returned. She accused him of
cheating her out of a share in the revenues of the Isle of
Man, which she said his father had assigned to her for
twenty-one years.

As to the merits of this quarrel we cannot attempt to
judge. But the vindictiveness with which the Countess
pursued it is revealed in her letters. Another document
shows her inconsistency : in her will, dated 1654, while
'' trusting in Jesus to forgive her own misdeeds," she
refuses to pardon her son, and cuts him off with £5.

We must not, however, be too hard on Charlotte by
demanding from her virtues not in accordance with the
spirit of the age, or with her own upbringing. The
austere Calvinist faith in which she had been nurtured,
encouraged an unforgiving disposition. Moreover, the
Countess, like the rest of us, suffered from the vices of her
virtues ; and it was the same stem resolution which had

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 169

enabled her to hold Lathom against the Parliamentarians,
that now rendered her implacable in resentment. We
may also suspect that Charlotte and her eldest son were
too much alike in disposition to have ever been excellent
friends. Charles Stanley had all the La Tremoille
characteristics ; he, unlike his brother Edward, was
proud, and at the same time, impulsive, resolute and
vigorous.

Meanwhile, despite the failure of the Lancashire rising.
Royalist feeling was growing throughout the country,
and the Republican party was daily becoming more
disintegrated. Lady Derby was now filled with hope,
especially when General Monk set out from Scotland on
his famous march to London.

" General Monk has seized Berwick . . . where he is
now negotiating some kind of treaty with Lambert,"
wrote Charlotte. " God in His goodness will bring out
order from disorder.*'

And her hopes were not disappointed. Events moved
rapidly. On February nth, 1660, Monk led his troops
into London. On May 7th, Lady Derby could write that
Parliament had " done justice and recognised his Majesty."
"It is true that this passes human wisdom," she ex-
claimed ; " it is beyond our understanding, and can never
be enough admired."

By this time the Countess's two eldest sons had taken
their places in Parliament, the Earl in the House of Lords,
his brother William in the Commons, but not without
considerable opposition. The youngest, Edward Stanley,
was abroad with the King, standing high in his Sovereign's
favour. In such stirring times the Countess could no
longer remain in exile at Knowsley. If only for her
children's interests, she must needs come to London. It

170 FROM THE CRUSADES

was difficult, however, for her to afford the journey and
the expense of hving in the capital. But, summoning all
her resources, in May she arrived in town.

As she had anticipated, after years of country life, the
sight of the great world and its rejoicings filled her with
mingled thoughts. But she would not permit the con-
templation of her own misfortunes to cloud her joy at her
Sovereign's restoration. '* We may well say God hath
done wonders," she wrote, " for which may His name be
for ever blessed.''

From the King, both for herself and her children. Lady
Derby hoped much. Alas ! those hopes were destined to
disappointment. Had her loyalty permitted, the Countess
at the close of her life might have echoed the Psalmist's
cry: " Put not your trust in princes . . . in whom there
is no help." Charles no doubt found it impossible to
gratify all those who looked to him for the reward of past
services. Yet one would have thought that the defender
of Lathom, and the widow of one who had died in his
cause, had a first claim upon his gratitude.

True, the King was lavish in his promises, true he was
all kindness, courtesy and sympathy to the widow,
visiting her unceremoniously when she was ill, and
winning her heart, so that she described him as " the
most charming prince in the world." Yet this Prince
Charming, while rewarding others who had served him
less faithfully, did nothing but dangle before Charlotte's
aspiring gaze the uncertain hope that if the Queen bore
him children. Lady Derby should be their governess.

For Lady Derby's sons the King did practically
nothing. All that William Stanley received was a
cornetcy in the Guards. The King's brother, the Duke of
York, showed a truer appreciation of the services rendered

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 171

by this family to the royal cause by appointing Edward
Stanley to be first and sole gentleman of his bedchamber.
Meanwhile the " worse than prodigal son/' possessed by
his mother's vindictiveness, had fallen into disgrace by his
summary execution of the traitor, William Christian, thus
violating the Act of Indemnity, and laying himself open
to a charge of murder. From this charge Lord Derby
was fortunate in escaping with no heavier penalty than
the confiscation of part of his estates and banishment
from court.

These bitter disappointments, however, Charlotte in
that glorious year of the Restoration did not foresee.
Then in the fulness of hope she could participate in
royalist rejoicing. And in an unusually cheerful spirit
in this and following years, she wrote to her sister-in-law
of the gay doings at court and in town, of the coronation,
of the Queen-Dowager's return, of the marriage of the
King and the Duke of York, also, alas ! — and with no less
satisfaction — of those dire deeds of revenge which sullied
the King's return, of that black day, January 30th, 1661,
the twelfth anniversary of Charles I.'s death, when the
exhumed corpses of Cromwell, Ireton and Bradlaugh
were dragged on hurdles through London streets, hanged
at Tyburn gate, and buried beneath it.

Towards the end of her life. Lady Derby found it im-
possible to meet the expenses involved by residence in
London. She was in debt ; tradesmen were beginning to
dun her, and even to refuse to supply her with necessaries.
Therefore, she retired to Knowsley ; and there during the
severe winter of 1662-3 she fell ill. Although from that
sickness she recovered, another followed ; and on
March 31st, 1664, she died at the age of sixty-five.

In her will she had pathetically begged "to be buried

172 FROM THE CRUSADES

near her dear lord and husband in the parish church at
Ormskirk in Lancashire, "if it may be without un-
necessary expense." Possibly the expense was deemed
unnecessary. At any rate, this testamentary request was
ignored until nine years after Charlotte's death. Then,
and not till then, were her remains interred in Ormskirk
Church, and after her name in the parish register were
inscribed the words : post funera virtus.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 173

CHAPTER Vn

HENRY CHARLES DE LA TREMOILLE, A HERO OF THE FRONDE.

1620 — 1672

The heads of the La Tremoille family may be classed in
two categories, those who played a prominent part in war
and in national affairs, and those who lived quietly the
lives of country gentlemen.

To the second category, in the last part of his Hfe,
belongs Lady Derby's eldest brother Henry, Due de
Thouars. Having served his King in many campaigns,
Henry, at the age of forty-five, on the death of Louis XHL,
just at the time when across the channel his sister was
holding at bay the Parliamentarian army, retired from
pubhc affairs. On his estates in Poitou and Brittany he
passed the remainder of his days, keeping aloof alike from
the troubles of Louis XIV. 's long minority, and from the
splendour of his personal rule. In the quietude of this
rural existence the Duke's life was prolonged to what was
then the extremely advanced age of seventy-six. Out-
living his wife and eldest son, he died in 1674.

But during this long retirement, Henry by no means
lost interest in pubhc affairs. And in 1658, on the death
of Oliver Cromwell, we find him writing^ to the exiled
Queen of England, Henrietta Maria, a letter permeated
not only with ardent monarchism, but with that religious

1 The letter dated October ist, 1658, appears in the " Registre de
Correspondance et Biographie du Due Henry de La Tremoille," par
Hugues Imbert (Poitiers, 1867), 53.

174 FROM THE CRUSADES

bitterness which too often characterises those who have
changed their faith. ^ *' Madame/' he wrote, " my
isolation from court and from society hath alone deferred
the performance of my duty in giving expression to my
feelings on the death of the common enemy of princes, of
religion, and of your Majesty. The public and my own
personal joy [at this event] is augmented and intensified
by the desire and the hope to behold the King, your Son,
established upon the august throne of an empire once so
prosperous, but now to the horrible scandal of all Christen-
dom, ruined by heresy, impiety and rebellion. We hoped
from divine justice a chastisement which it seems pleased
to reserve for another life, possibly because in this one
there exists no punishment proportionate to crimes
unparalleled throughout all time."

The Duke's change of religion must have caused
considerable dissension in the ducal household, where the
Duchess, the stern Marie de la Tour, remained true to
Protestantism, and where the children, two of them,^
although the Duke had insisted on their all being admitted
with him into the Catholic Church, afterwards reverted to
their mother's faith.

By Marie de la Tour, Henry had five children : Henry
Charles, Prince de Tarente ; Louis Maurice, Comte de
Laval, who served with the Due de Longueville in his
Italian campaigns ; Armand Charles and Elizabeth, who
both died in childhood; and Marie Charlotte, who at
Paris on July i8th, 1662, married Bernard of Saxe
Weimar, son of the Duke of Saxe Weimar ; she became a
widow in 1678, and died of apoplexy in 1682.^

1 For the Duke's abjuration of the Protestant religion, see ante,
132.

2 The Prince de Tarente and his sister, Marie Charlotte.

* In " La Galerie des Portraits de Mdlle. de Montpensier " (see ed.
Barth^lemy, 50 — 54), Mdlle. de La Tremoille in terms by no means

HENRYDELATREMOfLLlT, - |tllMj:^f^^^ 1%/ ucnJDucdeThounrs,PairdeFravce,
, Vruice deVarente erdpTnliTiotuLCointedh , ^W^'\r^^p/)^LaualVillefmucheMoutJon:rnillehoui^^
\'benon,Quynes etlonuellesMtcomte de'Ren ' \,^J^^^Uies,et deBnis.Rnrou deVitre'Didone.Bcrric.
\ PtMniileon. Ma njuis dEfpinay^fCheuaht-r^- *, ' ' ' ^ -^de: ordrcs dit Roy Els de Claude dejaTiriiiodk

l^iu dei:'houa>y.VdirdeFmncejet de CharhneBi alatin'iie de NaJlaiifiUt' dcliiuUlnnvtePriucr d'Omtiqc.et-
dechadottc dpBonrbon Monfpm/t'er.nnfqtiitn Thoimrj en iSp^, Ilrecncillit-en ldnnect6oj Injttcce-

jjion del a rv aijcn d cLauah qiii par reprafentaon de Charlotte d/KrnqcnVrinccfje deTliranteJn bii^nWin-
Ma rendu feiil etVriiquphpritierdr Frederic dArajjon Roy del^aplej et d'Anne dejaiioyejou cfpoiif-.
( Tdle d'Ani?T)uc dp Jnuoyp et dlolaud de France; II efponja en t6ip Marie clclaTourD'AuueranpJiUc dr
[ llenrydclnTcurDiic cte Butllon.VriuceSotitieratn deJeaan.el- dEliT^het de NaJJau .

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 175

It was to his eldest son, Charles, famous in history as the
Prince de Tarente, that the Duke looked for the main-
tenance of the family tradition of prowess in war and
activity in national affairs. And in 1656, in order to
help him to maintain this position, Henry, Hke a latter-
day King Lear, actually ceded to his son the duchy of
Thouars with its title, chateau, lands, and all other
appurtenances. Charles in his father's stead became a
peer of France, and took his place in the Paris Parlement.
But such fame had he won as Prince de Tarente that until
the day of his death, in 1672, he was known by no other
title.

For the Prince de Tarente's eventful career we are
fortunate in possessing an excellent authority in the
shape of his own Memoirs,^ told in his own words for
the benefit of his children.

Of this valuable little book, as far as we can ascertain,
there exists only one edition, that printed at Liege in
1767. But the Due de La Tremoille possesses two
manuscripts of the work enriched with corrections and
additions. It is mainly from this narrative that the
following story of the Prince's life is derived.

Born at Thouars on December 17th, 1620, in his
earliest years Charles was extremely delicate. He was
about seven years old when his father became a Catholic ;
and then the boy's education was confided to a Jesuit
priest, who taught him, in addition to mathematics and
drawing, to speak Latin with as great facility as his
mother tongue. Later, Charles was sent to the Academy

flattering gives a description of her own character and personal
appearance.

^ " Memoires de Henri Charies de La Tremoille, Prince de Tarente,"
a Li^ge, chez J. F. Bassompierre, Imprimeur de son Altesse et Librairie,
1767.

176 FROM THE CRUSADES

of one Sieur Benjamin, where he had for playmate and
friend his cousin the Due d'Enghien,^ who, as the great
Conde, was to exercise a dominant and disastrous influence
over his career.

His schooldays ended, Charles returned to Thouars.
There he found time hang heavily on his hands. The
humdrum life of a country gentleman was not to the
taste of this aspiring youth. The blood of his warrior
ancestors boiled in his veins, and he longed to go forth
and win his spurs in the field of war. The example of his
great forbear, Louis de La Tremoille, the " Knight
without Reproach," fired his ambition. And we are not
surprised to find him following in Louis' footsteps and
running away from home.^ But Charles's escapade met
with better success than Louis', for while the fifteenth
century truant had been ignominiously caught and
brought home, his descendant succeeded in reaching
Dieppe and embarking on a boat which carried him to
England. In after years. La Tremoille confessed to his
children, that his success in getting away was largely due
to his Protestant mother, who, eager to remove her son
from his father's Catholic influence, had connived at his
flight. But England was not the destination on which
the truant had set his heart. His ambition was to trail
a pike in the Low Countries, that great school of war
whither his great-uncle,^ the Stadtholder, Frederick,
Henry of Nassau, by his brilliant campaigns against the
Spaniards, was attracting all the gallant youth of Europe.

The tempests of the Channel and the qualms of sea-
sickness, however, so cooled the Prince's ardour that by

. 1 The grandson of Charlotte de La Tremoille, Princesse de Cond6.
2 See ante, 53.

^ Frederick Henry was the son of William the Silent, and the
brother of Charlotte Brabantine, wife of Claude de La Tremoille, who
was our hero's grandmother.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 177

the time his captain landed him at a Devonshire sea-port
he had for the moment lost all taste for adventure ; and
gladly did he accept his Aunt and Uncle Derby's invitation
to spend two months with them in London.

During this time La Tremoille's diplomatic mother was
winning her husband's pardon for their son, and obtaining
his consent to Charles's design of joining his great kinsman
in the Netherlands. So completely successful was her
intercession, that the Duke promised Charles an allowance
of 30,000 livres per annum, to which amount Marie de la
Tour, from her private purse, added a considerable sum.

It was during his stay in England that the Prince
rejoiced his mother's heart by resolving to return to the
Reformed faith, a resolution to which he gave effect
immediately on his arrival at the Hague.

In that year, 1639, the Dutch court was busy with
negotiations for the marriage of the Stadtholder's son,
Prince William, with the English Princess Mary, eldest
daughter of Charles I. The marriage was arranged in the
following year, and La Tremoille was invited to accompany
the bridegroom, who was but a boy of sixteen, to his
wedding in London.

But on the eve of departure Charles met with an
adventure which came near to upsetting his English
visit.

This youth of twenty had employed his time at the
Dutch court by falling in love with his cousin, Louisa
Henrietta, the Stadtholder's daughter. And when the
royal party found itself hindered from starting and
windbound in Brill harbour, our young adventurer
profited by the delay to slip back to the Hague and bid
his dear cousin one more farewell. Then on the morrow,
fearing lest the Prince might have set forth without him,

C.R. N

178 FROM THE CRUSADES

he returned with all possible speed to the coast, and, in a
little boat, with one sailor and an officer of his suite, set
out for Brill. Five miles from land, however, as ill luck
would have it, they were caught in a squall. The seaman
promptly lost his head, while the landsmen fell a-pray-
ing. From these pious exercises they were speedily
diverted by the mariner joining them. This La Tremoille
could not endure. It was all very well for landlubbers to
pray, but from a sailor his passengers expected more
active measures. So, in the most violent Flemish he
could command, Charles rounded on the praying sailor,
explaining to him forcibly, that faith without works is
dead. The works which followed this adjuration, how-
ever, bid fair to be the death of these seafarers : for with
La Tremoille at the helm and the boatman obeying his
orders by sailing in the teeth of the storm, things went
from bad to worse : first their mast was shattered, then
they themselves were plunged up to their necks in water,
and finally the barque capsized. Afraid lest the land was
too far away for them to swim to, they clung to their over-
turned craft, and just managed to keep afloat until the
tempest abated and their boat righted herself. Eventu-
ally, after a voyage of three hours, which ought not to
have lasted more than forty-five minutes, they reached
Brill in time to join the Prince and his escort.

Overtaken by no further adventure and escorted by the
Dutch fleet, the royal party crossed the sea and sailed up
the Thames to Gravesend.

Here they were met by the Ambassadors from the Low
Countries, and by royal coaches which conveyed them to
Whitehall, where Prince William, and — we may presume
— La Tremoille with him, was presented to their Majesties.
Thence, after visiting the Princes and Princesses at

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 179

Somerset House, they proceeded to their own quarters
near by, in that curious assemblage of detached buildings
known as Arundel House. Despite its lack of archi-
tectural beauty, Arundel House, filled as it was with
priceless works of art, had for years been deemed a worthy
residence for distinguished foreign visitors to London.
Sully had stayed there when he was French Ambassador
in the reign of James L

At this point La Tremoille's Memoirs are disappointing.
Of the royal wedding there was little to tell, for it was
celebrated quietly on May 2nd, 1641, on the very day
when King Charles was making one of his attempts to
gain military control over the Tower of London ; and we
may pardon our author if of the unceremonious espousal
at Whitehall of the little girl of ten by the boy of sixteen
he has not a word to say. But of the impression made
upon the young foreigner's mind by the condition of
England at that time, of an England on the eve of civil
war, of an England in which the Archbishop of Canterbury
lay impeached on a charge of high treason in the Tower,
and in which the King's first minister was but a few days
later to lose his head, we might have expected to have
been given some idea. At that time such subjects,
however, did not interest our Memoirist. War and
women were the matters of most moment to him then,
and war for him, as for many another in that day, too
often meant mere revenge for private wrongs.

So during his English visit he was completely absorbed
with what he proudly describes as his " first affair of
honour since he came into the world." It arose out of
a dispute with Count Henry of Nassau, who wished to
occupy a dressing-room which had been assigned to La
Tremoille. This wonderful duel, much to the would-be

N 2

i8o FROM THE CRUSADES

warrior's chagrin, never took place, for the young Prince
of Orange bound him over to keep the peace while in
England, and on his return to Holland the Stadtholder
forbade him to fight.

From personal affairs of honour La Tremoille was soon
diverted by the wider operations of the Thirty Years' War.
In the summer of 1641, Frederick Henry appointed him
colonel of a cavalry regiment ; and in this capacity La
Tremoille, so he tells us, distinguished himself for vigour
and valour, remaining four consecutive nights on horse-
back to avoid a surprise by the enemy. But this excess
of youthful ardour resulted in an illness which before the
close of the campaign compelled the young colonel to
withdraw from action.

By the next year he was well enough to take the field
again. And now " the vivacity of his youth," as he calls
it, involved him in a second affair of honour, which
proved more serious than the first. Encamped before
Rhimbergue, he fought a duel with Prince Radzivill,^ one
of Elizabeth Stuart's numerous admirers. His antagonist
wounded him so severely in the right arm, four inches
above the wrist, that the limb was nearly severed.^

" Straightway," writes Tarente, " my sword flew out of
my hand. I fell, and Prince Radzivill's people raised me
and tied up my arm in order to stop the flow of blood, for
I was bleeding profusely. A messenger hastened to
Rhimbergue for a surgeon; and came back with one called
Le Sage, who saved my life by his diligence. In order to
stanch the blood he was obliged to bind several veins
(sic) and arteries, which operation gave me intense pain.
I was carried to Rhimbergue ; and there Le Sage, having

1 There were several princes of that name who distinguished them-
selves in this century. This was probably Janussius II., Grand
Chamberlain of Lithuania. See Moreri's Dictionary, under Eadzivill

2 " M^moires," 19.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION i8i

permitted me to rest for an hour, effected other Hgatures,
which caused me even worse pain than the first. Yet,
notwithstanding all that I had suffered, the following
night I slept soundly, and three weeks later a party of
2,000 horse having approached our quarters, I mounted
and charged them."

But an injury such as La Tremoille describes could not
be cured in three weeks, and a year later the wound was
still troubhng him. Then, when the campaign of 1643
was over, he returned to France to take the waters of
Barege in order to strengthen his arm ; and, after having
greatly benefited from a month's treatment, he visited
his parents at Thenars. There the subject of his marriage
was mooted. The bride whom the Duke and Duchess had
chosen for their eldest son was a great heiress, Mdlle. de
Rohan, who, on account of her vast wealth, was one of the
greatest matches in Europe. Already she had refused
several distinguished suitors, among them La Tremoille's
kinsman. Prince Rupert. But Mdlle. de Rohan's wealth
had no attraction for La Tremoille, who was still deeply
in love with his cousin Henrietta ; and during his stay at
Thouars he persuaded his parents to do what they could
in that quarter to further his suit.

Returning to Holland, Tarente was in time to engage
in the campaign of 1644, in which he had an extra-
ordinary adventure. The plague was then devastating
the Low Countries. After a long night march, La
Tremoille with his regiment entered a village, where,
worn out with fatigue, he went into one of the first
houses he came to. There, without undressing, he threw
himself on a bed and slept soundly. Suddenly he was
awakened by the noise of trumpets ; and, on opening his
eyes, saw standing by his bedside the village priest, who

i82 FROM THE CRUSADES

told him that the plague was rife in that village, and that
he was in an infected house ; he believed, moreover,
added the priest, that the house contained the bodies of
its master and mistress, who, having died of the plague,
were about to be interred when the army entered the
village. " If we look we shall find them," said the priest.
And he was not mistaken. The bed on which La Tremoille
had been calmly reposing for an hour was unmade, and
there beneath the mattress were the two corpses.-^

By a marvellous stroke of luck La Tremoille escaped
infection and returned to the Hague, where he continued
to pay his addresses to his cousin. Many pages of the
Memoirs are devoted to this love story. The lady herself
apparently returned La Tremoille's affection ; the
Stadtholder favoured his suit ; but in the Stadtholder's
wife, the Princess of Orange, Emilie of Solms, he had a
formidable adversary. She had first determined to
marry her eldest daughter to the Prince of Wales ; but as
the royal fortunes in England darkened, she selected as
her son-in-law Frederick William, Elector of Branden-
bourg, who was later to be known as the Great Elector.
True to her cousin, however, Henrietta was obdurate,
and, when the wedding day arrived, the bride had to be
conducted to the church by force. In other respects,
too, the bridal was a sad one, for Henrietta's illustrious
father, Frederick Henry, was lying at the point of death,
attacked by a mental malady.

Shortly afterwards the family was summoned to his
death-bed ; and Tarente tells us that he could not restrain
his tears when he saw this famous captain, " who for so
many years had gloriously commanded the armies of the
United Provinces, and ruled the Republic with such

1 " M6moires." 28.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 183

great wisdom and authority, stretched upon his bed with
less understanding than an infant." Frederick Henry
had indeed been one of the most striking figures of the
age ; by his mihtary and poHtical talents, by his wisdom
and his diplomacy, he had brought his country to the
height of prosperity. It must have been inexpressibly
sad to see such a ruler laid low and deprived of intellect.
A few days later, in March, 1647, William the Silent's
great son passed away. " His death," writes La Tre-
moille, " deprived me of all desire to establish myself in
Holland." So, bidding farewell to his former love,
whom he counselled to do her best to forget him, and to
live happily with her husband, the Prince de Tarente
returned to Thouars.

Soon after his arrival negotiations for his mairiage
with a member of the distinguished German house of
Hesse Cassel were opened, and in a few months carried
through. In September, 1647, the La Tremoille emissary,
one Dumontal by name, was despatched to Cassel for the
drawing up of the marriage contract ; and in the following
May, " with more ceremony than he liked," in the
Protestant church of Cassel, the Prince de Tarente was
united to the very noble and illustrious Princess, Madame
Emilie, Princess Landgrave of Hesse.

The new Princesse de Tarente, who was later to become
the friend of Madame de Sevigne, and to figure in her
letters as la bonne Tarente, was the daughter of the late
Landgraf of Hesse Cassel, Wilhelm V. Her mother, one
of the strongest-minded women of the age, was Countess
of Hanau Muntzenberg,^ and lady of other extensive

1 Her husband died in 1637, leaving his estates heavily burdened
with debt, which his widow during her son's long minority succeeded
in paying off. She was also able to raise and to maintain on the side
of France in the Thirty Years' War a force of 6,000 foot and 4,000 horse.

i84 FROM THE CRUSADES

domains, the guttural names ^ of which, grating on the ears
of Madame de Sevigne, were to suffer cruel distortion
and merry mockery from the pen of that brilliant letter-
writer.

In his own marriage, the Prince de Tarente did not
succeed in practising the wise counsel he had given to his
former love : he and his wife, if we may believe the
Memoirs ^ of their daughter, Charlotte Amelie, Countess of
Altenburg, did not live happily together. In his own
Memoirs the Prince very seldom mentions his wife.

After the Treaty of Westphalia had made peace
between the United Provinces and Spain, Holland ceased
to afford La Tremoille a field for his warlike activities.
He discovered one, however, in France, where the war
which continued with Spain was soon to be complicated
by the internal struggles of the Fronde.^

With the wisdom of after years, the Prince looked back
regretfully on this period of his life. " Those events,"
he wrote, referring to the Fronde, " did more than any-
thing else to injure my own fortunes, and those of my
house." And, indeed, never in French history was there
such a medley of inconsequence and folly as that into
which La Tremoille, by the influence of his cousin, the
Prince de Cond^, was now being drawn.

The objects of the Frondcurs were purely personal.
Hatred of Cardinal Mazarin, the young King's chief

Meanwhile her court became a school of manners, whither princes
flocked to learn the fine art of commanding others and of commanding
themselves. See Moreri's Dictionary, under Plesse Cassel, Amelie
Elizabeth.

1 Catzenelmbogen, Dietz, Ziegenhaim, Nidda.

2 Of these interesting " Memoirs," the original MS. in French is in
the Grand Ducal Library at Oldenburg ; translated into German, it
has been published with an introduction, notes and commentary by
Dr. Reinhard Mosen (Oldenburg, Leipzig, 1892). Mrs. Aubrey
Le Blond is preparing an English version.

^ So called from the slings or Frondes used by Parisian street arabs
in their gutter-play. This civil war broke out in 1648.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 185

minister, inspired them all. In La Tremoille's case it
was his desire to oust the Rohans from the presidency
over the provincial parliament, the estates of Brittany,
that induced him to throw in his lot with the rebellious
nobles. Mazarin had favoured the Rohans. The Prince
de Conde, Tarente's cousin, and the leader of the Fronde,
promised to espouse his kinsman's cause if he would
intervene actively on his side in the civil war.

Thus was La Tremoille drawn into that vortex of
romance, lawlessness and hizarrerie which for some years
threatened to shipwreck the fortunes of France. On
October ist, 165 1, we find him accepting Conde's com-
mission to raise a regiment of thirty companies in Poitou.

Among all the confusion of the Fronde, one circum-
stance stands out distinctly ; the whole movement was
dominated by women, by a group of Amazons, who were
at once its instruments and its motive power, chiefly by
two duchesses and two princesses, Chevreuse and Longue-
ville, the Palatine,^ and the Great Mademoiselle. This
brilliant, beautiful and fascinating quartette, mingling
their political intrigues with those of love, played with
the honour and the lives of men, and two of them,
Chevreuse and the Palatine, did not scruple to disport
themselves on the highways in masculine attire.

Of the Palatine it was said that not even Elizabeth of
England had more capacity for governing a state.
Madame de Longueville's'^ gifts were her blonde hair
and charming eyes. But by far the most influential
and the most bizarre of the Frondeuses was the Great
Mademoiselle, Anne de Montpensier, daughter of Gaston,

1 Anne de Gonzague, second daughter of Charles de Gonzague,
Due de Nevers, and of Catherine of Lorraine.

2 Bom in a prison, she died in a convent. She was sister to the
Great Cond6, and cousin, therefore, to the Prince de Tarente.

i86 FROM THE CRUSADES

Duke of Orleans, and grand - daughter of King
Henry IV.

With the Great Mademoiselle's two most striking
achievements during the Fronde, the capture of Orleans
and the battle of the Porte St. Antoine, the Prince de
Tarente was more or less connected.

After the Princess's ludicrous entry into Orleans,
which, as related in her own Memoirs, reads like an
absurd travesty of Jeanne d'Arc's entering the city,
la Grande Mademoiselle amused herself by receiving
presents of bonbons from the city council and by seizing
and perusing the various despatches which passed through
the town. When these chanced to contain love stories,
or to reveal family secrets, the conqueress of Orleans was
mightily diverted. One of these captured despatches,
which to the Princess was very uninteresting, to Tarente
was highly important ; and to him Mademoiselle had the
good sense to send it. The possession of this letter
enabled the Prince to save his chateau of Taillebourg
from being razed to the ground by one of Mazarin's
generals. But, balked of their prey in one direction, the
Prince's enemies turned in their wrath against the most
lordly of all the La Tremoille castles and threatened to
besiege Thenars, where Duke Henry and his Duchess
were then residing.

It was to obtain a force for the protection of his own
dominions that in March, 1652, Tarente, having resigned
the command which for some months he had been
exercising in Guyenne and Saintonge, went to Paris and
there witnessed the Great Mademoiselle's second exploit.

The Prince found Paris in a state of the utmost disorder.
In the absence of Mazarin and the court, the feeble,
vacillating Duke of Orleans, Mademoiselle's father, who

HENRY CHARLES DE LA TREMOILLE, PRINCE DE TARENTE

From a photograph by Mrs. Aubrey Le Blond of a picture belonging
to Mr. Aldenburg Bentinck at Indio.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 187

should have been at the head of affairs, was proving
himself totally incompetent. Waves of riot and robbery
surged up to the very gates of his palace, the Luxembourg.
Only a few yards away, in the Rue de Tournon, a President
of the Parlement was nearly murdered. The most
brilliant figure of the day. Cardinal de Retz, in his Memoirs
tells how he went in hourly fear of death by assassination.

The horror of this state of things appears to have
impressed La Tremoille, for, when Conde came to Paris
in April, we find the Prince vainly endeavouring to
persuade his kinsman to make peace.

In May, Mademoiselle left Orleans, and entered Paris,
where she took up her abode in the Tuileries. On the
way she had been besieged in Etampes by Mazarin's army
under Turenne.

Coming away from the Protestant sermon at Charenton
one Sunday morning. La Tremoille heard of the raising of
the siege of Etampes and the march of Turenne towards
Paris. Hastening to the Hotel de Conde,^ near the
Luxembourg, the Prince de Tarente was in time to assist
at a council of war, which resulted in the raising of a
citizen army. With this force Conde, and La Tremoille
with him, marched out to St. Cloud, while Turenne took
up his position a little further north, on the opposite bank
of the Seine, at St. Denis. A good deal of skirmishing
took place between the two forces. And La Tremoille
relates how, during a night attack on the village of St.
Denis, he and his men crossed the moat up to their necks
in water, and drove the Swiss guards, who were holding
the village for Turenne, to take refuge in the Abbey.
But two days later the King's troops recaptured St. Denis,

* The present Rue de Conde takes its name from the old hotel, of
which nothing remains.

i88 FROM THE CRUSADES

and Conde soon began to find his position at St. Cloud
untenable.

He then resolved to transfer his army to Charenton ;
and, in order to avoid making a long detour, he asked the
municipality of Paris to allow his force to pass through
the city. This permission, however, was refused. And
thus it came about that on the night of July ist, as
Mademoiselle was leaning out of her window in the
Tuileries, she heard the sound of drums and trumpets,
and saw in the distance a whole army beginning to
defile past on the other side of the ramparts.^

Close on Conde's rear Turenne's army was pressing ;
and at dawn in the Faubourg St. Antoine a battle engaged,
in which the Ff^ondeurs, with their backs to the St. Antoine
gate, soon began to have the worst of it. Then it was
that Conde despatched in all haste a message to the
Luxembourg, imploring the Duke of Orleans for aid. But
Gaston, as was his wont in every crisis, pleaded illness and
refused to see the messenger, who speedily went to the
Tuileries and knocked up Mademoiselle. It was six
o'clock in the morning. The heroine of Orleans had
passed but four hours in bed, for until two o'clock she had
been at her window watching the troops on the march. In
a trice, however, she was up and away to the Luxembourg,
weeping and storming at her phlegmatic father, until,
merely to get rid of her, he bade her be gone to the Hotel
de Ville to command the municipality to open its gates to
Conde and his army. Then, tearing through the streets,
forcing her way through the mob which thronged the Place
de Greve into the presence of the Provost of the Merchants,
the aldermen and the governor of Paris, assembled in

1 " Memoires de Mdile. de Montpensier," ed. Mich, et Poujoulat,
S6r. II., Vol. IV., ii8.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 189

the Hotel de Ville, she read them a letter from her father,
asking them to excuse his absence through illness and to
listen to his wishes as expressed by his daughter. These
wishes were that the municipality should not only send
an armed force to Conde's aid, but that they should
reverse their previous decision and permit his army to
pass through the city. It was hard for these civic
dignitaries thus to eat their own words, and not until
they had deliberated long and caused Mademoiselle to
suffer an agony of suspense, did they agree to obey the
Duke's orders.

Meanwhile, Conde, with whom Mademoiselle imagined
herself ardently in love, was in danger of defeat and death
at the city gate. Of the events which there transpired,
La Tremoille in his Memoirs gives a vivid account, which
for the most part may be related in his o^vn words.

" Two harmless wounds I received in this action," he
writes, " one in the belt of my cuirasse, the other in my
helmet. In the place of the Due de Nemours, who had
been wounded in the hand I offered the Prince [Conde]
to command the vanguard, a proposal he received gladly.
But, as I was advancing at his side, my horse fell, killed
by a canon ball. Whereupon the Prince, thinking that
I too had been struck, cried aloud, ' Alas ! unhappy that
I am to have lost the last of my friends.' But I from
beneath my horse called out that I was unharmed and
suffering only from the bruises inflicted by my own
armour during my fall. Straightway a soldier brought
me another horse, which I mounted."

Meanwhile, continues La Tremoille, Mademoiselle,
*' with a courage worthy of her birth, and far superior to
that of her sex, had come to the Porte St. Antoine, where
she persuaded the people that we were fighting for their
liberty and for the banishment of a Minister who oppressed

igo FROM THE CRUSADES

them. All she could do, however, was to induce them to
open the gates so as to let pass the baggage of our army ;
and meanwhile she wrote a note to the Prince, entreating
him to save his life by coming in with the baggage.
This he refused to do. Later, owing to Mademoiselle's
persuasions, a Parisian force came out to join us. And
at length the citizens listened to her entreaties, and
opened the gates to all of us while the canon of the
Bastille were fired on Turenne's army.''

La Tremoille's account of these proceedings differs in
one or two details from that given by Mademoiselle in her
Memoirs. For example, the former would indicate that,
after winning the consent of the city council to open the
gate. Mademoiselle had some difficulty in persuading the
citizens to carry out the council's command. Made-
moiselle herself does not mention this. But, however it
may have been, Paris was now enthusiastically Frondeur.
Conde and Mademoiselle were the heroes of the hour.
La Tremoille shared their triumph. With his cousin,
Tarente went to the Luxembourg, where Gaston d'Orleans
received him, " doing me the honour," he writes, " to say
that I had caused him more anxiety than anyone."

During the weeks that followed, Paris was in an uproar.
Its fickle citizens vacillated from side to side, while the
leaders of both parties were negotiating or playing at
negotiations, as was their custom throughout the Fronde.
And meanwhile Mazarin was trying to use La Tremoille 's
known discontent with his position in Conde's army to
detach him from his cousin. But the Cardinal did not
succeed ; Tarente 's affection for the Prince won the day ;
and when the latter fell ilP in September, it was La

* Cond6 was suffering from the stone, a malady he had inherited
from his father.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 191

Tremoille who commanded his troops in the constant
skirmishings with the royal forces outside the city gates.

The Parisians soon grew tired of feeding Conde's army,
and, victuals having been refused, the leader of the Fronde,
on October 14th, was compelled to quit the capital.^
With him went La Tremoille. They directed their march
to Champagne, where, as the result of a series of brilliant
military operations, Conde captured several towns. He
was unable to hold them, however, for any length of time ;
and, finding it impossible to take any firm foothold in this
province, he made his way to the northern frontier.
There La Tremoille remained with him while he was
recovering from another illness in his great forest-girt
fortress of Stenay, through the winter of 1652-3. And
it was then that the Prince de Tarente followed his leader,
who had been appointed general of the Spanish forces, and
openly joined the enemy of his country.

In the summer of this year the Prince left his cousin for
a while in order to go to Holland and raise money.
Returning to the French frontier. La Tremoille found
Conde again stricken with illness, while his troops were
about to attack the town of Rocroy. Then Tarente, so
he tells us, took the command, and after a siege of twenty-
two days, captured the town.^

But Conde's army, writes the Prince, was in a terrible
plight, two-thirds of the cavalry unmounted, and the rest
of the soldiers wretchedly accoutred. Willingly would
La Tremoille have equipped them at his own expense, had
he been able. But his fortune was spent and his credit
exhausted, as well as that of his friends. Indeed, for

1 Cardinal de Retz, "Memoires," ed. Mich, et Poujoulat, Ser. III.,
Vol. I., 396 — 400.

2 The great History of the Princes of Cond6, by the Due d'Aumale,
Vol. VI., Chap. 5, while stating that Cond6 was ill at this time, makes
no mention of La Tr6moille's command.

192 FROM THE CRUSADES

generations the La Tremoille treasury was to suffer from
deplenishment through the Prince de Tarente's lavish
expenditure during this civil war.

Hopeless of achieving anything with so miserable a
force, the Prince threw up his command and returned to
Holland.

At Spa in the previous summer he had met the exiled
Charles II. of England, who, having been turned out of
France, where his presence impeded Mazarin's negotia-
tions with Cromwell, had come to drink the waters with
his sister Mary, the Dowager Princess of Orange. While
residing in France, Charles had played a prominent part
in the interminable negotiations between Frondeurs and
Royalists ; and there doubtless he had met La Tremoille,
whose importance and capacity must have made a great
impression on the King. For Charles now conferred on
him one of the highest honours left to the banished
monarch to bestow, he invested him with the Order of the
Garter. But in return for this favour, Charles asked the
Prince to do him a service, which La Tremoille found it
impossible to perform, viz. : to effect a reconciliation
between the Princess of Orange and her mother-in-law,
that quarrelsome Emilie de Solms, who had never forgiven
Tarente for aspiring to the hand of her daughter.

Once having cut himself adrift from his country. La
Tremoille grew extremely eclectic in his foreign relations.
Having drawn sword for the Catholic King, and accepted
high honour from Charles, the Prince now negotiated
with the champion of Protestantism and Charles's mortal
enemy, Oliver Cromwell. While still at Spa, La Tremoille
received an emissary from the Protector, who asked him
to lead a movement of the French Protestant churches
against the French crown. But the Prince's Protestantism

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 193

was purely political, and in so rash an enterprise he
refused to involve himself unless the Protector would
undertake to appear in Languedoc. This was impossible ;
and so the negotiations, during which La Tremoille had
been careful not to commit himself in writing, fell through.

In the winter of 1654 — 5 the Prince was at the
Hague, where his hospitable reception encouraged him to
send for his wife, the Princess Emilie, and his sister, Marie
Charlotte. And it was at the Hague, in May, 1655, that
his eldest son, Charles, was born. He already had a
daughter, Charlotte Emilie.^

Despite his father's poverty, the baptism of the infant
Prince on July i8th was a magnificent and gorgeous
ceremony, which is described in detail in a document of
the La Tremoille archives.^ For sponsors the babe had
the Estates of the United Provinces, represented by the
deputies of Guelders, Holland, Zealand, and Utrecht ; the
King of Sweden, Charles Gustavus,^ represented by Baron
Spar ; and his aunt. Mademoiselle de La Tremoille.

Amidst a huge concourse of people assembled from all
the neighbouring towns, preceded by a body of troops and
followed by all that was most distinguished at the Dutch
court, this tiny scrap of humanity, smothered in jewels
and cloth of silver, lying on a cushion of the same, from
which depended an interminable train borne by two noble
damsels, was carried by his aunt, Marie Charlotte, to the
Protestant Temple at the Hague.

There he received the names of Charles, after his royal
godfather, of HoUande, after one of his mother's kinsmen,
and of Belgique, after the Estates. A luxurious banquet

* Known also as " Amelie."

^ " Les La Tremoilles pendant cinq Siecles," IV., 203 — 206.
^ Cousin and successor of the famous Christina, who had abdicated
in the previous year.

C.R. O

194 FROM THE CRUSADES

followed the christening. From seven o'clock in the
evening until four in the morning the illustrious guests
were entertained, their ears diverted " by the flourishing
of trumpets, the sound of timbrels, and the harmony of
viols, and their palates flattered by the delicacy and
diversity of the viands set before them." A few days
later the Estates bestowed upon their godson a pension
for life of i,ooo golden florins, to begin on July i8th in the
following year.

Throughout 1655, high pomps and pageants were the
order of the day at the Dutch court. In one of her lively
letters to her nephew Charles II., Elizabeth of Bohemia
tells of a court ball at which the King's sister, the Princess
of Orange, appeared as an Amazon, and the Princesse de
Tarente as a shepherdess. For the Princesse de Tarente
such pastimes might be all very well, but such a life of
mere court gaiety irked her husband's martial soul.
Now that the war was over, Holland was no place for him.
His active mind longed for battles and sieges, or, failing
them, for a political career. And so, towards the end of
this year, we find him soliciting from the French court
pardon for his treason and permission to return to the
land of his birth. Both these requests Mazarin, now
completely reinstated in power, granted with apparent
magnanimity. But the wily Cardinal had his own ends
to serve. La Tremoille, however, was qilick to discern
them. He was not to be hoodwinked by " the suave,
affable and insinuating air " with which Mazarin greeted
him on his arrival in Paris. The Prince realised imme-
diately that this arch schemer wanted to use him as
mediator with the still implacable Conde ; and La
Tremoille, much to the disappointment of his relatives,
refused thus to be made a tool of. In a very irreconcilable

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 195

mood, therefore, he left Paris to go down and visit his
parents at Thouars.

It was there and then that Duke Henry resigned the
dukedom of Thouars into his son's hands. ^ And the
Prince went back to Paris to take his seat in the
Parlement.

Mazarin had already begun to take his revenge for La
Tremoille's obduracy by inciting the young Louis XIV.
to find fault with the Prince for having without his
sovereign's permission accepted an Order from a foreign
king. But by some means or other Louis had been won
over to La Tremoille's side, and on the previous ist of
November the Prince de Tarente had received his King's
permission to wear the Garter. All the while, however,
Mazarin continued to plot against him. And the Prince's
attempt to rouse the peasants of Poitou to resist the
imposition of the salt tax did not render the Minister
more friendly.

In the spring of 1656 the court was at Compiegne ;
and thither La Tremoille was summoned to join it. The
Cardinal was amiability itself. He engaged the Prince in
long conversations, which always terminated with an en-
treaty that he would renounce Conde and aU his works.
Then, finding the Prince hopelessly obdurate, Mazarin
changed his tactics ; La Tremoille suddenly found
himself arrested, hurried into a coach with an officer
and two guards, and whirled away to the citadel of
Amiens.

" I have heard with great sorrow of your son's im-
prisonment. I have since learnt . . . that his life is not
in danger, for which I bless God. ... I do not doubt that,

^ The document of abdication is dated January 20th, 1656 (" Les
La Tr^moilles pendant cinq Siecies," IV., 177).

O 2

196 FROM THE CRUSADES

with God's help for which I pray, he will soon recover his
liberty." Thus wrote Lady Derby to her sister-in-
law.^ And we may be certain that the energetic Marie
de La Tour left not a stone unturned in her efforts to
obtain her son's liberty.

Fortunately, on his way to prison. La Tremoille had
fallen in with a knight of his mother's suite, by whom he
had been able to send a message, not only to the Duchess,
Marie, but to the Elector of Brandenbourg, husband of his
former love, to the King of Sweden, his son's godfather,
to the Landgraf of Hesse Cassel, his brother-in-law, and
to his good friends, the States General of the United
Provinces, all of whom he implored to intervene on his
behalf. Through their influence probably, and through
the kindness of the governor, he was leniently treated in
prison, permitted to walk on the ramparts of the fortress,
to converse with the townsfolk, and to communicate with
his friends. His mother also was allowed to visit him
and to discuss with him plans for his liberation. She
had doubtless already interceded with Mazarin, and now
she came to implore her son as the price of his freedom to
give an undertaking, should the Cardinal require it, that
he would leave the country. This La Tremoille promised
to do. Meanwhile, in case his relatives' intercession
should fail, he was laying plans for his escape : a faithful
friend had smuggled into his prison ropes and an anchor,
with which to attach them to the wall ; another friend
was sounding the moat, and yet another had horses in
readiness.

All these contrivances, however, proved unnecessary ;
for Mazarin agreed to the Duchess's conditions and
released her son, permitting him to come to Paris to

1 See Madame de Witt, " The Lady of Lathom," 221.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 197

arrange his affairs before starting for abroad. At the
Porte St. Antoine, La Tremoille's mother awaited him,
and while he was in Paris busied herself with further
negotiations on his behalf, which resulted in a permission
to go down to Brittany and spend six weeks with his
father. During this time other friends were working for
him, notably his kinsman, the Due de Noirmoustiers,
and with such success that the decree of banishment
from France was commuted into banishment from
Paris.

But for three years longer, until the Treaty of the
Pyrenees in 1659, the Prince was far from being a free
man. Mazarin controlled his movements, forbidding
him to visit discontented Poitou, banishing him from his
Breton estates, and finally commanding him to reside
either at Troyes or at Auxerre. There is reason to be-
lieve, also, that all this while La Tremoille was intriguing
with Conde and fanning discontent with Mazarin's
government. Finally, however, the Treaty of the
Pyrenees ended civil as well as foreign war. Conde sub-
mitted, and the King and Queen received La Tremoille
at Toulouse. " The King told me he had forgotten
everything," wrote Tarente, " and that in the future he
would give me proofs of his affection.'' Conde was now
free to return to France ; and after some years' separation
there was an affectionate meeting of the cousins at Dijon,
where La Tremoille promised to do his best to restore
Conde to the Cardinal's good graces.

It was not, however, until after Mazarin 's death in
1661 that Conde and Tarente were completely reinstated
in all honour and greatness at court. Then at length
Louis XIV. granted to La Tremoille that dignity so long
solicited by bis house of presiding over the Assembly of

igS FROM THE CRUSADES

the Breton Estates. And the Prince's conduct of the
session rendered him highly popular with the King, for
at La Tremoille's suggestion a sum of no less than
400,000 livres, afterwards doubled, was granted to the
Crown.

In the following year, on July 20th, 1662, La Tr^moille
married his sister Marie Charlotte to Bernard of Saxony,
Duke of Jena, fourth son of the Duke of Saxe Weimar.
And on this occasion Tarente obtained from Louis XIV.
the official recognition of the title of Prince and Princess
for all the members of his house, titles which they
had assumed since the end of the fifteenth century,
but were apparently only now officially permitted to
bear.

Then it was that La Tremoille ladies first began to
enjoy that honour so greedily coveted by all high-born
French dames and damsels of remaining seated on a
tabouret or armless chair in the presence of their Sovereign.
Charlotte Amelie tells ^ how to her great chagrin, on
her promotion to the tabouret at the age of ten, her
La Tremoille pride and person suffered a humiliating fall.
The Princess being very small and the tabouret very high,
she had to be lifted on to it by an Abbe of the Queen's
household. But he placed her too far forward on the
stool, and she, trying to seat herself more comfortably,
fell off, amidst the loud laughter of the assembled court.
Other privileges only granted to foreign princes were
now accorded to the La Tremoilles. For as Princes of
Taranto they now asserted their right to the Neapolitan
crown, which they claimed to have inherited from their
ancestress Anne de Laval, grand-daughter of Frederick of
Arragon, King of Naples, who in 1521 married Frangois
1 Memoirs, 19. See ante, 184, n. 2.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 199

de La Tremoille.^ This right, maintained for over a
hundred years, and discussed lengthily during the
negotiations which preceded the Treaties of Westphalia,
Nymwegen, Ryswick and Utrecht, was asserted for the
last time in 1748.

After Marie Charlotte's wedding the Prince and
Princesse de Tarente accompanied the bride and bride-
groom to Germany. Then, leaving his wife at Hesse
Cassel, the Prince went to Holland. So warm a welcome
did he receive from his old friends at the Hague that a
visit of three weeks was prolonged into a residence of
three years, during which La Tremoille engaged in a war
between the United Provinces and the Bishop of Munster,
and received the governorship of the fortress of Bois-
le-Duc.

His mother's death in 1665 brought him back to
France. Marie de La Tour's striking personality had
impressed itself strongly on the inhabitants of Thouars,
where she died and was buried. In a history of the town,^
we read that for many a year the inhabitants had trembled
before the terrible duchess, not because she was unjust,

1 Frederick of Arragon, King of Naples, who ascended the
throne in 1496.

I
Charlotte w. le Comte de Laval.

Anne de Laval m. (151 1) Fran9ois de la Tremoille.

Louis de La Tremoille,
ist Due de Thouars.

Claude, Duo de Thouars.

Henri, Due de Thouars.

I
Charles Henry, Prince de Tarente.

See Introduction to " M^moires de Charles de La Trdmoille, Prince
de Tarente," and " Les La Tr^moilles pendant cinq Sidles," V., 202, 203.
2 Berthre de Bournisseaux, " Histoire de la Ville de Thouars depuis
I'An 759 jusqu'en 1815 ..." (Niort, 1824).

200 FROM THE CRUSADES

but because they knew that to the uttermost farthing,
with unbending severity, she would always extort from
her husband's vassals the payment of every feudal due,
alike in labour, in coin, and in kind. At the time when
Thouars Castle was in building, the artisans and labourers
were so oppressed by her exactions that for long after-
wards they cursed her name and her memory. Genera-
tions later, at the time of the Revolution, when the mob
broke into the chateau, hers was the only portrait which
was desecrated. While the picture of the tyrannical
Marie was covered with filth, those of her kinsfolk, many
of them, were carried off by the townspeople to be hung
in their houses as objects of veneration. Owing to her
Protestant faith, which she had held firmly to the end,
Marie's Catholic husband would not allow her to be buried
with the other La Tremoilles in the consecrated Catholic
church of Notre Dame. At the southern comer, therefore,
of the main wing of the chateau a vault was prepared, and
there the remains of Marie de La Tour d'Auvergne rest in
peace, having escaped the fury of the Revolutionaries,
who, leaving this Protestant grave unharmed, spent their
wrath on the desecration of the tombs in the neighbouring
chapel. Now and again, however, the ravages of time
have threatened to accomplish that which revolutionary
anger spared ; the eastern wall of the vault has more than
once needed reparation, and when cracks appear in it
the Thouarese say that it is because Marie de La Tour
wants fresh air.

After his mother's death, the Prince de Tarente with
his wife and three children left Holland to take up his
residence at Thouars with the old Duke Henry, who was
now bedridden with gout. And there, occupied in
administering his estates, and in occasionally presiding

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TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 201

over the meetings of Breton deputies, Charles de La
Tremoille passed the last seven years of his life. The
differences which had always divided the Prince and
Princess were increased when, in 1670, Tarente reverted
to his father's faith, and was admitted by the Bishop of
Angers into the Catholic Church.

Madame de Tarente remained the staunchest of
Protestants, and took her husband's change of religion in
the most tragic manner. Her example was followed by
her daughter Charlotte Amelie, who relates in her Memoirs
how by her father's apostasy the household at Thouars
became divided against itself. Nothing indicates more
clearly the bitterness of religious strife in those days than
the story of how the Prince's eldest son was separated
from his mother and sister, and conveyed away to Angers,
where six weeks* virtual imprisonment and the society
of monks and priests reduced him to embracing his
father's religion.

Fearing that her daughter too would be forced into
the Catholic Church, Madame de Tarente obtained from
her kinswoman, the Queen of Denmark, an invitation for
Charlotte Amelie to become lady-in-waiting at the Danish
court. Then, its acceptance having been forbidden by
the Prince de Tarente, who was devotedly attached to his
daughter, the Princess surreptitiously obtained a pass-
port from Louis XIV., and during her husband's absence
at Paris set forth for Denmark.

Meanwhile the King chanced to remark casually to
Tarente that he heard his daughter was going to Den-
mark. " No," replied the Prince, " I have refused my
consent." " But I," said Louis, " have signed her
passport." Forthwith, Tarente left the court and
started for Thouars, hoping to be in time to prevent his

202 FROM THE CRUSADES

daughter's departure. At Blois he fell in with the
travellers. There was a terrible scene between husband
and wife, at which Charlotte AmeHe was present. But
Madame de Tarente won the day and carried off her
daughter to Denmark.

In high dudgeon the ladies parted from the Prince, whom
they were never to see again, for, before the travellers
arrived at Copenhagen, news reached them of La Tre-
moille's sudden death at Thouars on September 14th,
1672.

Four of the Prince de Tarente's children survived him :
two daughters, Charlotte Amelie the eldest, whose
adventures at the Danish court are related in the next
chapter ; Marie Sylvie Brabantine, who, bom in 1666,
died at Paris in 1693, apparently unmarried ; a third
daughter, Henriette, bom in 1662, died in 1665 ; and two
sons, Charles Belgique HoUande, who succeeded his father
as Due de La Tremoille, and Frederic Guillaume, who,
having entered the Church and become Abbe de Sainte
Croix, later exchanged the ecclesiastical state for the
army.^

1 See post, 260, and n., also Anselme, "Histoire G^nealogique," IV.,
173. Bournisseaux, " Histoire de la Ville de Thouars," 202, says he
remained in the Church, becoming Cardinal and Archbishop of Cambrai.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 203

CHAPTER Vni^

LA BONNE TARENTE AND HER DAUGHTER, AS THEY APPEAR
IN THE LETTERS OF MADAME DE SEVIGNE

Our friends across the Channel, we know, have a
faculty for seeing the ludicrous side of things in general,
and of their foreign neighbours in particular. Many an
English character stands impaled on French satire for as
long as the French language shall last, and Germans have
suffered even more from the brilliance of Gallic wit and
the malice of Gallic raillery.

But there is no malice, although some raillery and
much wit, in the portrait which Madame de Sevigne in
her famous letters draws of her German friend, Charles
de La Tremoille's widow, the Princesse de Tarente, or
la honne Tarente as the letter-writer generally calls her.

After the Prince's death, Madame de Tarente used to
reside during the summer in the La Tremoille chateau of
Vitre. There she found herself but two miles from the
Marquise de Sevigne *s country seat of Les Rochers. The
Princess and the Marchioness rapidly struck up a friend-
ship. Both Madame de Tarente's royal connections and
her travels in Europe deeply impressed Sevigne. " La
honne Tarente is related to all the royalties in Europe," she
wrote. And on one of the rare occasions when she found
the Princess out of mourning, " I am pleased to see that the
health of Europe is good," exclaimed the Marchioness.

1 This chapter appeared in The Englishwoman, and it is a pleasant
duty to thank the Editor, Miss Goodman, for her kindness in permitting
its reproduction.

204 FROM THE CRUSADES

In the eyes of Sevigne, who had never been out of
France, Tarente's two visits to Denmark, and frequent
sojoumings in Holland, constituted her a great traveller.
" That's what I call travelling," wrote the Marquise,
and she took it in all seriousness when her friend
asserted that she was never so well as when going round
the world.

Some journeys, short but formidable in those days of
bad provincial roads, the Princess and the Marchioness
undertook in company. Together they visited their
country neighbours, and even went so far as the capital
of their province, Rennes. In one remote country house
they were surprised to find the most elegant repast they
had partaken of for a long while : turtles and quails,
peaches and pears as fine as those of the Hotel de Ram-
bouillet at Paris, led them to reflect that money, even in
the heart of the provinces, can procure anything.

It was on one of the hottest days in August that the
two ladies made what was nothing more or less than a
triumphant entry into Rennes. This ceremony Madame
de Sevigne describes in one of her liveliest letters. She tells
how they were met a short distance out of the town by a
company of guards, then by the Governor of the Province
with two Presidents of provincial parlements and eight
other dignitaries. " We stopped," writes the Marchioness,
" we kissed, we perspired, we talked, not knowing what
we said, we advanced in a six-horsed coach, followed by
five such coaches and by six others drawn by four horses.
We listened to trumpets, to drums, and to people who
were all determined to shout out something . . . then,
alighting at the Governor's house, we were received by
his wife and four dames and four damsels of quality. We
all kissed, men as well as women ! How odd it was !

o
IS
•w

<5
»-)

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 205

But the Princess set the example and I followed with
amiable alacrity. In the end, so intense was the heat,
and so copiously were we perspiring, that our cheeks
stuck together in perfect union. Extricating ourselves
with difficulty, we returned to our coach, so dishevelled as
to be quite unrecognisable."

Once established in the country for the summer, it was
seldom that the two friends could be induced to quit their
peaceful parks and linden groves. There for some years,
from 1675 until 1685, they were accustomed to spend
July, August, and September, exchanging ceremonious
visits or dropping in unexpectedly and vying with one
another in the preparation of elaborate fricassees or simple
alfresco luncheons. Sauntering along those garden walks
of Les Rochers, which, still redolent of the atmosphere of
the Hotel de Rambouillet, even to-day bear the names
given them by the Pr&cieuse Marquise, *'the Temperament
of my Mother," " the Honour of my Daughter," " the
Infinite," " the Echo," " the Solitary," these two high-
bom dames exchanged many a confidence and told many
a tale on all manner of topics, ranging from drugs and dogs
to daughters.

The talk fell on dogs one day when Sevigne whistled to
a neighbour's spaniel who crossed their path. " What !
you know how to call a dog ! " exclaimed her companion,
marvelling at the variety of her friend's accomplishments.
" I will send you one of the prettiest in the world." " No,
thank you," replied the Marquise, " I have decided not
to be led into any such kind of attachment."

Her protests were vain, however. For a day or two
later there arrived at Les Rochers a servant carrying " a
little dog's house, delicately perfumed and extremely
beautiful." In it was a lovely little creature, ** such ears.

2o6 FROM THE CRUSADES

such a silky coat, such sweet breath, as tiny as a sylphid,
as fair as a fairy/'

*' Never was I more surprised or embarrassed," writes
the Marquise. " I wanted to send him away, but could
not find it in my heart to do so. And so he stays, sleeping
in his little house in my maid's room, and eating nothing
but bread. His name is Fidele. He is so pretty, such a
dear, such pretty little ways, such perfect behaviour. I
am resolved not to love him, but he begins to grow fond
of me, and I fear lest I may succumb. But if I did, how
could I ever face Marphise [her little dog in Paris] ?
For I have aspired to that perfection of never loving but
one dog in defiance of M. de la Rochefoucauld's maxim
that there may be many women who have never had a
love affair, but very few who have had only one. The
thought of Marphise obsesses me. I can't imagine what
to say to her or how to excuse myself. This is the kind of
thing that makes one untruthful. All I could do would
be to tell her how the entanglement arose. It is just one
of those embarrassments which I had made up my mind
to avoid. What a striking example of human weakness is
this disaster which has befallen me at Vitre ! "

The gift of a lap-dog was only one of the many kind-
nesses which la bonne Tarente pressed upon her somewhat
reluctant friend. The Princess was one of those practical
housewives, who have a remedy for every disease and
every accident, and who, when accidents and diseases do
not exist, insist on inventing them. She loved to relate
the wonderful cures effected by her wonderful medicines.
" She tells me she has studied physic in Germany," wrote
the Marchioness, " but I think it must have been after the
manner of the Medecin malgre lui." And, indeed, Tarente
was inclined to hold with Moliere's " doctor, against his
will," that physic is as necessary in health as in sickness.

CHARLOTTE AMELIE DE LA TREMOILLE,
PRINCESS OF ALTENBURG

From a miniature at Middachten, belonging to Count Bentinck
photographed by Mrs. Aubrey Le Blond

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 207

But Sevigne did not agree with her. *' I am quite ready
to take her nostrums when I am ill ; but why should I
when I am well ? " she protested.

When illness came, however, she was not so very docile
a patient. Medicinal tea-drinking was then the vogue,
and the Princess's family was much addicted to it. Her
nephew, the Landgraf, so she said, took forty cups every
day, but Sevign^ did not believe her. The Princess
herself took twelve. Yet when she prescribed one modest
little cup for the Marquise, her friend turned from it with
horror, declaring it would make her sick.

The Princess's passion for medicaments as well
as her Teutonic wit (" she did not lack wit of a kind*'
wrote Sevigne), were fully compensated for by the fact
that she too had a daughter, Charlotte Amelie, whom at
the close of the last chapter we left arriving with her
mother at the court of Denmark.

Before her journey to Denmark, numerous husbands,
among them two future kings of England, William of
Orange and James, Duke of York, had been proposed for
Charlotte Amelie. But at Copenhagen she herself
conquered two illustrious hearts : George of Denmark, the
King's brother, a handsome gallant prince, and Griffen-
feld, the King's minister, a wine merchant's son who had
risen rapidly to be the ablest diplomat in Europe, and one
of the wisest statesmen Denmark has ever produced, both
fell in love with her.

The rival claims of those two suitors were discussed at
length in the linden groves of Les Rochers and in Madame
de Sevign^'s letters to her daughter. All Griffenfeld's
recommendations were eclipsed by his not being a gentle-
man bom. * ' The mere thought of it is enough to make
one faint," wrote the Marchioness^ and Charlotte Amelie

2o8 FROM THE CRUSADES

shared her opinion, defying the King and Queen, who had
determined that she should marry the minister.

To the Prince, on the other hand, Mdlle. de La Tremoille
was ready to give her heart. But for him the King and
Queen had more ambitious designs, and eventually, in
1687, they married him to the Princess Anne, afterwards
Queen of England.

Thus disappointed, Charlotte Amelie wept and entreated
the King and Queen to send her back to France. But her
royal cousins refused ; and the distressed maiden was
reduced to pouring out her woes to her mother in
voluminous letters, which were shown to Sevigne, and
commented on unfavourably by that mistress of the
epistolary art. Writing to her daughter, the Marquise
described them as " in no style whatever, my dear, and
filled with dear mamas and other childish epithets,
although she is twenty.''

A war between Denmark and Sweden soon carried
Mademoiselle's two suitors to the front. The minister,
whom she was never to see again, took a dignified leave
of his lady, entreating her to grant him her esteem
if not her love.

A year later, falsely accused by his enemies at court of
plotting against the King, this eminent statesman, in spite
of the excellent reforms he had accomphshed in Denmark,
was tried and condemned to death. Conducted to the
scaffold, he was about to lay his head upon the block,
when a messenger arrived to commute the death sentence
into one of banishment. Some years later Griff enf eld
died in exile.

Mdlle. de La Tremoille was not long in recovering
from her attachment to the Prince. Her ambition, so she
confided to a friend, was now to be the widow of a Dutch-

■M'.i^Mm*mM^Mimitim

('/r./A /inr f/iipiJi

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 209

man with a castle. Some time after, a gentleman came to
her saying that a friend of his was a Dutchman, and had a
castle, and that he was so deeply in love with Made-
moiselle, that if she married him, he would be sure to die
of happiness in six months. Then he declared himself to
be the friend, and Charlotte Amelie married him forthwith
without waiting for the permission of her family.

La bonne Tarente was furious, and flew to her neighbour
for consolation. But Sevigne took Charlotte Amelie's
part, maintaining that she had done quite right to marry
this Count Anthony of Altenburg (Ochtensilbourg she
called him with her mania for distorting German names),
who, although of somewhat equivocal origin, was a cousin
of the King of Denmark, and the richest nobleman, and
the most perfect gentleman in the world.

The romantic story of Count Anthony's birth has
formed the subject for several novels. His father. Count
Anthony Gunther, had in early years contracted a secret
marriage with a noble Hungarian lady, Elizabeth von
Ungnad, of great beauty and many accomplishments.
But the Count's mother had planned for her son a still
greater alliance, and, through one of her courtiers,
succeeded in gaining possession of the marriage contract
and committing it to the flames. The lady Elizabeth, in
despair at the destruction of her marriage lines, fled to a
friend at whose castle she gave birth to the son who was
to become Charlotte Amelie's husband. Count Gunther
married a princess of Holstein, while EHzabeth was
subsequently united to a nobleman of Friesland. In
later years Count Gunther, repenting of the injury he had
done his son, obtained the Emperor's permission to
restore him to all his legitimate rights. Anthony eventu-
ally succeeded his father as Count of Altenburg, and took

C.R. p

210 FROM THE CRUSADES

his seat in the Imperial Diet, a privilege only accorded to
the members of reigning houses.

Charlotte Amelie, by marrying Anthony, had therefore
made for herself a very brilliant match. " Yet," wrote
Madame de Sevigne, " all Germany groans at the insult
inflicted on the escutcheon of la bonne Tarente . . . who
is very angry." But after a while the Princess was
somewhat pacified, especially when there arrived letters
telling of her daughter's wealth and happiness, and of
the grand state she kept in her husband's dominions on
the banks of the Weser, where she was entertaining the
King and Queen of Denmark with all their court.

But alas ! Count Anthony was in too great a hurry to
keep the promise he had made when first urging his suit.
Then he had undertaken to make his wife a widow six
months after their marriage. He anticipated his engage-
ment by eight weeks. Four months after her wedding
the Countess of Altenburg had realised part of her
ambition : she was the widow of a Dutchman, but not
unhappily v/ith a castle.

For Count Anthony's daughter by a previous marriage
claimed all his dominions and all his property for her
husband, and persisted in the claim even when some
months later the widowed Countess gave birth to a son.

Beset by eveiy kind of persecution, Charlotte Amelie
took her child to Vienna to plead his cause at the Imperial
Court. There she arrived travel-stained and weary,
poverty stricken and in old-fashioned clothes, for it was
only by selling her service of plate that she had succeeded
in collecting enough money for the journey. The
Viennese ladies-in-waiting laughed at her quaint appear-
ance. But the Empress exclaimed : " That lady is the
descendant of KJDgs, and it is rather for me to do her

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 211

homage than for her to seek me." The Empress befriended
her, and the infant Count was restored to his father's
dominions. Charlotte Amehe's son hved to have a
daughter, Charlotte Sophie,^ whose hand, after being
solicited by six princes of reigning German houses, was
eventually bestowed on Count Bentinck, the second son
of William III/s trusted friend, the Earl of Portland.

To Charlotte Amelie's misfortunes after her husband's
death, Madame de Sevigne's letters make no allusion.
For this part of her story we are indebted to her own
Memoirs, the original MS. of which is preserved in the
Grand Ducal Library at Oldenburg.^

Five years after Charlotte Amelie's marriage the inter-
course between her mother and the Marchioness came to
an end. Then by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes,
in 1685, the Princess de Tarente was driven from France.
Previous to that year she had been free to exercise her
own religion, " to work out her own damnation in perfect
liberty," as her quizzical Catholic neighbour was pleased
to word it, *' and to indulge in as many fasts and retreats
as we who possess the reality." But in 1685, the good
Tarente returned to her Fatherland, to Frankfort, where
she died of smallpox in 1692. Years after they had
parted, Madame de Sevigne looked back tenderly on their
friendship. Writing to her daughter in 1689, she refers
to a story which reminds her of the tales told by " the
good Princesse de Tarente."

1 See her Life and Times, by Mrs. Aubrey Le Bio ad, ia two
volumes, published by Hutchinson, 191 1.

2 See ante, 184 and note 2.

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212

FROM THE CRUSADES

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TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 213

CHAPTER IX

"a lieutenant of MADAME DEMAINTENON," LA PRINCESSE
DES URSINS. 1642 (?) — 1722

Since the fifteenth century, we have been following
exclusively the fortunes of the eldest, the Thouars branch
of the La Tremoille family. We must now go back a
hundred years to the time when from Frangois de La
Tremoille's younger sons, Georges and Claude, there
sprang the houses of Olonne and Noirmoustier. The
Counts of Olonne, endowed later with the marquisate of
Rohan, continued until 1708. Perhaps the best known
among them was Count Louis, who was the friend cf
Saint Evremond, with whom he corresponded on the
relative merits of Burgundy and Champagne.-^

The house of Noirmoustier, endured but a few years
longer than that of Olonne. It died out in 1733. Its
barons rose to be marquises in the sixteenth, and dukes in
the seventeenth century. And it was towards the end of
its existence, that this branch of the family produced one
of the most notable of all the La Tremoilles, Marie Anne
de Talleyrand, Princesse de Chalais, later Princesse des
Ursins.

The La Tremoille tree had already borne two women
famous in war ; it now brought forth one, Madame des
Ursins, who was no less renowned in diplomacy. Had
she lived in our time she might have been described as a

* T£illemant des Reaux, " Historiettes," ed. Monmerqu6, II. 429.

2i4 FROM THE CRUSADES

"militant/' for even Sainte-Beuve, although he relegates
her to the second rank among stateswomen, admits that
she was equal to upsetting at least ten governments.

Three clever women, Fran9oise d'Aubigne, Marquise de
Maintenon, Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, and
Marie Anne de La Tremoille, Princesse des Ursins, in the
late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, played
important parts in European politics. But of the three,
we may safely assert our La Tremoille Princess to have
been the cleverest. The numerous volumes of her
correspondence, which for more than a hundred years
have been appearing, all prove the significance of her
action during that critical period of European history
extending from the Treaty of Ryswick, in 1698, until the
death of Louis XIV. in 1715. There is no doubt that at
this time her diplomacy contributed to introduce the
Bourbons into Spain, and to establish them firmly on the
Spanish throne.-^

Marie Anne de La Tremoille was bom about 1642, the
precise year is uncertain. Her great grandmother, the
famous or infamous Madame de Sauves, figures in the
Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois as one of the most
attractive and one of the most unscrupulous members of
Henry UL's dissolute Court. Charlotte de Semblangay,
Madame de Sauves, who, for her second husband, married
Francois de La Tremoille, Marquis de Noirmoustier, must
have been extremely beautiful ; a veritable Circe Mar-
guerite calls her. And not unnaturally all the courtiers

1 On La Princesse des Ursins a whole library has been written. The
works chiefly consulted for this Chapter are : the Due de La Tremoille's
" Madame des Ursins et la Succession en Espagne (six vols.) ; Geoflroy,
" Lettres Inedites de la Princesse des Ursins," (1859) ; and " Lettres
Inedites de Madame de Maintenon et de Madame des Ursins " (1826) ;
Fran9ois Combes " La Princesse des Ursins" (1858) ; and St. Beuve's
essay in the " Causeries du Lundi," V., 319 et seq.

FRANCOIS DE LA TREMOILLE, MARQUIS DE NOIRMOUSTIER
From a drawing by Benjamin Foulon

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 215

were in love with her, but especially the two royal princes,
Marguerite's brother, Fran9ois, Duke of Alen9on, and her
husband, Henry of Navarre. Indeed, Marguerite would
have us believe that it was Charlotte who first caused a
coolness between herself and her husband.

Her gift for intrigue, Madame de Sauves apparently
bequeathed to her grandson. La Princesse des Ursins'
father, Louis de La Tremoille, who exercised it in another
direction. Like his cousin, Henry Charles, Louis de La
Tremoille was an eminent Frondeur ; and as such he is
frequently mentioned in the brilliant Memoirs of his
friend, the Cardinal de Retz. So skilfully did Louis
succeed in steering the barque of his fortune over the
shoals and quicksands of this civil war that, escaping
disgrace and imprisonment, he succeeded in 1650, in
securing a dukedom, although, on account of his participa-
tion in the Fronde, he could not obtain its registration.
So the title of Duke of Noirmoustier remained merely
honorary until 1707.

Louis married Renee Julie Aubry, who belonged to one
of those leading legal families knovm in France as la
noblesse de robe ; and on his death, in 1666, he left six
children : a son Antoine Frangois, styled the Duke of
Royan and Noirmoustier ; a second son, Joseph Emmanuel,
who entered the Church and became a Cardinal ; another
son Robert who died young ; and three daughters, Marie
Anne, who became the famous Princesse des Ursins ;
Yolande Julie, Marquise de Royan ; and Louise Angelique,
Duchesse de Lanti.^ While plentifully endowed with
brains, this generation of the younger La TremoiUes was
curiously afflicted with physical infirmity, for the Duke,
after an attack of small-pox became blind, Robert was

1 There were other children who died before their father.

2i6 FROM THE CRUSADES

dumb, the Cardinal a hunchback, and the Princesse des
Ursins all her life a sufferer from defective sight.

The adventurous career of Marie Anne de La Tremoille
began young. When she was only about one and twenty
her husband, Adrien Blaise de Talleyrand,^ Prince de
Chalais, killed his adversary in a duel, and was obliged to
flee from France.^ His young wife followed him, and for
a while they lived in Spain.

During the four years of her married life in Paris, la
Princesse de Chalais had made her debut in the society
of the Salons. The first glory of the greatest, the
H6tel de Rambouillet , had by that time faded, but other
Salons had succeeded it, and the most distinguished was
the Hotel d'Albret, which was the Salon frequented by
La Princesse de Chalais and her husband. Here our
Princess used to meet a woman who was eventually to
exert a powerful influence over her career, Frangoise
d'Aubigne, then the poverty-stricken widow of the poet
Scarron, but later the famous Madame de Maintenon.
In after days when both these great ladies had attained
to the height of their fortune they used to talk together of
these early experiences. And the Princess would tell
how as a young wife at the Hdtel d'Albret, she was piqued
to see the hourgeoise Madame Scarron, who was but a few
years her senior,^ surrounded by great wits and statesmen
deferentially hanging on to this young nobody's words
while she, a Princess, was left to chatter with the
younger members of the company. Then Madame de
Maintenon, would retort that, after all, her lot in those
days was not so greatly to be envied for often did she

1 Of the same family as the great diplomatist I'Abbe Talleyrand.

2 The date of this duel is variously stated, but it probably took
place between 1663 and 1666.

^ She was born in 1635.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 217

long to escape from the high seriousness of her elders,
and to join in the noisy prattle of those of her own age.-^

After some years residence in Spain, the Prince and
Princess de Chalais proceeded to Rome, and thence they
decided to go to Venice. The Prince went on before his
wife ; but, at the village of Maestro not far from Venice,
he was taken suddenly ill and died in the year 1670.

It was at Rome that Marie Anne received the news of
her husband's death, and at Rome she continued to
reside, although there was now nothing to prevent her
returning to France. But in the Holy City she had
already made many influential friends, among whom was
Cesar d'Estrees, Bishop of Laon, the representative of
Louis XIV. at the papal court, and soon^ to be made a
Cardinal.

As was frequently the custom of widows in those days,
the Princess for some years after her husband's death
resided in a convent. But her retirement did not prevent
her from visiting the chief salons of Roman society,
where she seems to have been greatly admired. Although
not exactly a beauty, she was extremely attractive, with
an animated expressive countenance, beautiful blue eyes,
a charming mouth, and a very fine figure. Moreover,
her manners were ingratiating, her voice melodious, and
her conversation highly entertaining. Dulness and
melancholy she could not abide, and she sympathised
with her sister the Duchesse de Lanti, whose first require-
ment when engaging a gardener was that he should look
gay and be cheerful.

Brilliant as a diamond, the Princess had something of
the hardness of that jewel. Yet to her first husband she

^ Madame de Caylus, " Souvenirs " (Mich, et Poujoulat, 1839),
Ser. III. Vol. VIII., 47S.
2 1674.

2i8 FROM THE CRUSADES

must have been really attached, or she would not have
committed what the worldly Madame de Sevigne de-
scribed as "the madness'' of following him into exile;
and her efforts to make the fortunes of her relatives
would indicate that she was not devoid of ordinary
family affection. But that she lacked any true tender-
ness of heart may be seen in various passages of her
letters : for example, where she marvels at her sister's
grief at the death of her little girl, because " after all she
was not her only child," or where on the death of a baby
of two, she writes to the parent : "It can cause you no
great sorrow for at that age you could not know whether
the infant would bring you joy or sadness." Had the
Princess herself been a mother, perhaps she might have
written differently. But, as we shall see, ambition, not
love, was her devouring passion.

And this lofty ambition she was soon in a position to
gratify. For through the Cardinal d'Estrees, she received
a proposal of marriage from the first noble in Rome,^
Flavio, Duke of Bracciano, a grandee of Spain and the
head of the Roman house of Orsini. Ever since the
twelfth century, when leaving their native town of
Spoleto,^ the Orsini had settled in Rome, they had been
eminent for their number, their valour, their wealth, and
the strength of their towers. The honours of the Senate,
of the Sacred College, and even of the Papacy^ had been
theirs ; they had furnished with queens, France, Naples
and Navarre ; and during their prolonged rivalry with the
Colonna, one large district of Rome extending along the

1 " Le premier la'ique de Rome," St. Simon calls him (" Memoires,"
ed. Regnier, V., 41).

2 Their remoter origin may have been French and they may have
been allied to the famous fifteenth century family of Ursins.

* No less than six times.

TO THE FRENCH I^EVOLUTION 219

left bank of the Tiber, from the Ponte St. Angelo to the
Ponte de 'Quattro Capi, was little more than an Orsini
fortified camp.

As we shall see, to identify Louis XIV. with her personal
fortunes was ever a part of the Princess's policy, and so it
was not until she had obtained permission from " the
Great King," that Marie Anne de La Tremoille, then
about thirty, consented to wed this middle-aged widower
of fifty-five.^

Hitherto the Princess had been merely a leader of
society. But now as the first citizenness of Rome, and
as mistress of a leading Roman Salon, she began to serve
a political apprenticeship which was to fit her for a
greater career. It was in Rome that she acquired that
knowledge of men's hearts which rendered her one of the
most eminent diplomatists of her day.^ And indeed,
it is difficult to imagine any city or any circle better fitted
for such a training. Rome the centre of the European
western world, with its pathetic ruins of so many civilisa-
tions, with its relics of so many political systems, with its
magnificent monuments, the scattered fragments of which
surpass the most eloquent description, can never fail to
fire even the most sluggish imagination.

The Rome of the Duchess of Bracciano was beginning
to be Rome as we know it. For several decades the city
had been enjoying comparative peace. Freed from
foreign invaders by the retirement of the French from
Italy and from intestine strife by the cessation of the
feuds between the great families, Roman nobles had had
leisure for the beautification of their city and especially

1 The Duke of Bracciano was born in 1620, his second marriage took
place in 1675.

2 La personne du monde la plus propre a I'intrigue, St. Simon calls
her, adding et qui avail passi sa vie a Rome.

220 FROM THE CRUSADES

of their private palaces. In 1675, the great artistic
genius of the age, the Michael Angelo of the century,
Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, at once sculptor, painter and
architect, was adorning with his monuments the squares,
the palaces and the churches of Rome. Our Duchess
must have gazed with wonder on the great works of his
hand, on the grand colonnade before St. Peter's, on the
Barberini palace, on the dolphins of the ingenious Barberini
fountain in the square, and on the elephant bearing its
ancient obelisk in front of Santa Maria sopra Minerva.
But nowhere did the great artist more lavishly display
his gifts than in the fountains which adorn the Piazza
Navona, where the Duchess now came to live.

From very ancient times the Piazza Navona, the Circus
Agonalis^ of imperial Rome, had been the bustling centre
of civic life. And now, in 1675, its importance had by no
means dwindled. Here, as from time immemorial, was
still transacted the business of those lotteries which even
to-day figure large in an Italian's life. Here on high
holidays, the square was flooded for the celebration of
those famous Naumachia, which in the following century
were to entertain the exiled Stuarts. Here in the balcony
of the Orsini palace," many a scene of pomp and splendour
was to be enacted for the benefit of the Roman populace.
This great mansion stood at the southern angle of the
square on the site now occupied by the Palazzo Braschi.
Close at hand was the mutilated statue of Patroclus, on
which for years the Romans had been wont to hang
satirical remarks about their fellow citizens. Owing to
the skill of the tailor Pasquino in composing these gibes,
the statue was named after him, the lampoons themselves

1 Agona became Nagona, hence the modern Navona.

2 Later, in the eighteenth century, the Orsini resided, as they do
now, in part of the Theatre of Marcellus.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 221

christened Pasquinadi, and the name of the sartorial wit
extended to the neighbouring palace, so that the Palace
of the Orsini became the Palazzo Pasquino.

A circumstance which seems to be strangely discordant
with the high dignity of the Orsini family appears in one
of the Princess's letters where we find that the outer
rooms of the palace, probably those giving on the square,
were let to some thirty shopkeepers. Moreover, these
tenants were not even of good reputation, for years later,
after the Duke's death, and as the result of police investi-
gations, one shop was discovered to be a smugglers' den,
and another a nest of gamblers. Yet they and the
Duchess depended for their water-supply on the self-same
fountain, that in the palace court-yard ; Bernini's foun-
tains in the square were apparently only for show. And
we can well imagine the tradesmen's wives, bearing bronze
pitchers poised skilfully on their heads, eternally gossip-
ing round the fountain in the court-yard.

Notwithstanding its shop frontage, the Palazzo Pasquino
was one of the most princely residences in Rome, filled
with costly and countless tapestries, pictures, statues and
all manner of artistic treasures. And here the brilliant
Duchess, in all the maturity of her dazzling charms, opened
a salon which became a second Hotel de Rambouillet. To
the Pasquino Palace for some seventeen years flocked all
that was most distinguished in Rome, — Cardinals, princes,
ambassadors, and great ladies, attracted by the wit and
the charm of Madame la Duchesse and of her sister,
Louise Angelique whom she had married to an Italian
nobleman, the Duke of Lanti. The comedies and
concerts given by the Duchess of Bracciano at the Palazzo
Pasquino were the great events of Roman society, talked
of and written about for months beforehand. In a letter

222 FROM THE CRUSADES

to the Duchess of Lanti in 1685, the Princess mentions as
one of her visitors a Mr. Talbot. This may have been the
famous Dick Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnel/ a veritable Don
Juan and a bigoted Roman Catholic, who was sus-
pected of attempting to murder Cromwell and of
being implicated in the Popish Plot. For the latter
offence he was in exile between 1679 and 1685, and
may very likely have visited the Duchess of Bracciano
in Rome.

In the gay salon of the Palazzo Pasquino there was one
person who was not happy. The master of the house felt
himself overshadowed by his brilliant and imposing wife,
who was also his intellectual superior. Moreover, the
elaborate costly entertainments the Duchess devised
tended to increase the financial embarassments from
which for some years the Duke had been suffering ; for
his estates though vast were heavily mortgaged. These
causes probably led to an estrangement between husband
and wife which, by the year 1685, had become so serious,
that the Duchess was glad to leave her husband and to
visit France.

Between that date and 1698, when the Duke died, his
wife spent long periods in her native land. She wrote
frequently to her friends in Italy from Paris, Versailles,
Fontainebleau, Vichy, and also from St. Germain, whither
she had gone to be present at the confinement of her
friend, the exiled Queen of England. During these
visits our Duchess was careful to cultivate court friend-
ships, renewing her acquaintance with Frangoise
d'Aubigne, now Marquise de Maintenon and wife of
Louis XIV., ingratiating herself with Le Grand Monarque
himself, and with his minister of foreign affairs, le Marquis

1 See "Dictionary of National Biography," under Talbot, Richard.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 223

de Torcy, and impressing all these personages with her
ability and her desire to serve France.

One of her most valuable friends at the French court
was La Marechale de Noailles, who, despite her large
family of twenty-one children, was ever ready to further
her friend's fortunes at the French court. Adrien
Maurice, the eldest of the twenty-one, had married
Madame de Maintenon's favourite niece. Mademoiselle
d'Aubigne. So Madame de Noailles was a powerful
person at Versailles ; and while she did her best for the
Princess, Madame des Ursins in return tried to marry off
some of the Marechale's daughters. " If only you will
get me this appointment in Spain,'* she wrote, " at
Madrid I can find husbands for a dozen of your girls."

Returning to Rome, the Princess there followed the
same policy of self-advancement which she had pursued
in France. Thus she succeeded in gaining a footing at the
papal court, where the Pope, Innocent XII., declared her
advice to be better than that of many cardinals, and at the
Spanish embassy, where Cardinal Portocarrero, Bishop
of Toledo, became her intimate friend. It is impossible
to exaggerate the importance of these friendships, which
were later to exercise a powerful influence not only on the
Princess's personal career, but on the course of European
politics.-^ For at Rome and elsewhere, these friendships
were to prove very useful to the cause of France.

It was Portocarrero who, shortly before the Duke's
death, effected a reconciliation between the Princess and
her husband, so that Bracciano when he died left his
widow all his vast domains which, however, were
heavily burdened with debt. Moreover, on her husband's
decease, Marie Anne found herself involved in a law suit

> See post, 228.

224 FROM THE CRUSADES

with a rich Roman noble, Don Livio Odescalchi, who
contested the succession contending that the Duke had
adopted him as his son and heir. The legal proceedings
continued for some years, during which the Duchess, as
was her wont with those who opposed her, wrote numerous
letters to her friends which were most damaging to her
adversary, whom she did not hesitate to describe as
ce crasseux de prince. In the end, and partly through
the intervention of Louis XIV., Don Livio purchcLsed
Orsini's country estates and the title of Duke of Bracciano
for 2,000,000 livres, while leaving to the Duchess the
Palazzo Pasquino with its furniture and the right to style
herself Princess Orsini, or, as she was more commonly
called " Princesse des Ursins."

After her husband's death the Princesses relations with
the French court became closer, and her salon more
political. Now, almost equally with the Ambassador,
she was regarded as the representative of France in Rome.
In 1699, Louis XIV. granted her a pension. And about
the same time she was permitted to affix the arms of
France to the gates of her palace, a privilege which the
King had withdrawn from Bracciano on account of his
having taken the Pope's part in a dispute about the
status of the French ambassador in Rome.

Of the restoration of the French arms to her palace
wall, Madame des Ursins made a great public event. No
pomp or pageantry was omitted. The occasion was a
high day and a holiday in Rome. In the morning a vast
throng assembled in the piazza to listen in silence while
the praises of Le Grand Monarque were read in the palace
balcony. In the evening the halls of the Palazzo Pasquino
were crowded with a distinguished company of great
Roman ladies, ambassadors, cardinals and cavallieri,

MARIE ANNE DE LA TREMOILLE, PRINCESSE DES URSINS

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 225

before whom artistes from the Pope's own chapel per-
formed a cantata specially composed and representing
three majestic personages, Glory, Religion and the Tiber.

The French Ambassador, the Prince of Monaco, who
was an intimate friend of Madame des Ursins, did not
neglect to send "the Great King" a detailed account
of all these proceedings.

With Monaco's predecessor at Rome, the Cardinal de
Bouillon, Madame des Ursins had been on anything but
amicable terms, for she had a faculty for making enemies
as well as friends. Complaints of " this little man who is
craftier than you could possibly imagine," fill pages of the
Princess's letters to la Marechale. Involved in this
quarrel with the Cardinal was the Princess's brother, the
Abbe de Noirmoustiers, whom she had brought to Rome
and raised to an influential position only, as she com-
plained, that he might side with " her implacable enemy "
against her.

According to the Duke of Berwick,^ James II. 's natural
son, who visited the Princess in Rome, the quarrel turned on
the most trivial questions, mere matters of etiquette : the
Cardinal felt slighted because, at the time of Bracciano's
death, he had been left to dine alone in an ante-chamber
of the Palazzo Pasquino, and had not, as etiquette
required, been invited to the Duchess's room, there to
partake of his repast at the foot of her bed. On her part,
the Duchess was furious because the Cardinal had denied
her what she claimed as the special privilege of the Orsini
family, the right to hang her palace with purple, the
mourning colour of kings and cardinals. We suspect,
however, that the true cause of the quarrel lay deeper

1 "Memoires du Mar^chal de Berwick," ed. Mich, et Poujoulat,
Ser. III., Vol. v., 345.

C.R. Q

226 FROM THE CRUSADES

than these querulous quibblings, and that it sprang from
a very natural jealousy between the accredited ambassador
of France and the highly trusted but unofficial agent of
the French King. A similar coolness arose when the
Princess went to Spain, and in both cases she obtained
the recall of her enemy.

Bouillon's successor, the Prince of Monaco, profiting
from his predecessor's experience, was careful not to
openly oppose this all-powerful lady ; at the same time,
determining not to be under her thumb, he declined her
repeated invitation to reside in her palace ; and he adroitly
urged as his reason just that consideration which such a
queen of intriguers would most readily appreciate, viz. :
that a public association with the Ambassador might
weaken the indirect influence which it was important for
her to exercise in favour of France.

A time was now approaching when Madame des Ursins
was to need the help of every friend and the employment
of every influence, whether secret or avowed. For in the
crisis to which Europe, in the last years of the century,
was rapidly hastening, the Princess perceived a field for
the employment of her diplomatic gifts far wider than any
upon which she had entered hitherto. And here in our
personal history we must pause for a moment to take a
bird's-eye view of the condition of Europe in 1698 and
1699.

In those years the great Spanish Empire upon which the
sun never set, that vast assemblage of states built up
throughout a hundred years by an accumulation of
inheritances, was threatened with dissolution. The child-
less weakling who now sat upon the throne of Charles V.
and Philip II. was swiftly sinking into his grave, while
some half-dozen great princes of Europe with covetous

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 227

eyes were watching his decline, eager to pounce on his
possessions. The Duke of Savoy, the Duke of Orleans,
the King of Portugal, the Electoral Prince of Bavaria, the
Emperor Leopold and Louis XIV. all considered they had
a right to don the crown about to fall from the feeble
head of King Charles II. of Spain.

But outside this group of claimants there was a power
which had already asserted its strength in Europe and was
prepared, if need were, to do so again. The power or twin
powers of Holland and England, now united under one
ruler, WiUiam, Stadtholder of Holland and King of
England, were determined to prevent any one European
prince from entering into the undivided inheritajice of
Philip II. These maritime powers, as they were called in
the diplomatic parlance of the day, negotiated the two
partition treaties of 1698 and 1700. By the first the
Spanish dominions were divided between Louis' son, the
Dauphin, the Emperor's son, the Archduke Charles, and
the Electoral Prince of Bavaria, whose share included the
kingdom of Spain. Only a few months after the signing
of this treaty by France, England and Holland, the death
of the Electoral Prince rendered another treaty necessary.
Therefore, at the Hague in March, 1700, the three Powers
executed another partition of the Spanish dominions
between the two remaining princes, the Dauphin and the
Archduke Charles, to the latter being assigned the crown
of Spain.

But while the three northern powers were thus carving
up the Spanish dominions, the Spaniards themselves
had their own views as to the fate of their kingdom and
its dependencies ; and one idea they held most strongly :
they were determined that never should the monarchy
of Philip II. be dismembered, and that whosoever,

228 FROM THE CRUSADES

whether Habsburg or Bourbon, succeeded to a part,
must necessarily succeed to the whole.

Simultaneously therefore with the negotiations at the
Hague were proceeding others at Madrid. These were
carried on by the French and the Austrian Ambassadors
in the interests, on the one hand, of the Bourbon, and on
the other of the Habsburg claimant. Each ambassador
was endeavouring to persuade Charles II. to make a will
bequeathing the whole of his dominions to the claim-
ant he (the ambassador) supported — in the case of
Comte d'Harcourt, the French Ambassador, it was the
Dauphin or one of his sons ; in the case of Comte
d'Harrach, the Austrian Ambassador, it was the Archduke
Charles.

Louis XIV. therefore was conducting two sets of
negotiations in contrary directions ; whUe at the Hague
he was promising the maritime powers that the Spanish
dominions should not pass into one hand, at Madrid he
was straining every effort to obtain the whole inheritance
for a member of his family. And in the end it was the
French Ambassador at Madrid who won the day. In
addition to his own brains, which were some of the
sharpest, Comte d'Harcourt was able to employ in the
French interest the influence of Portocarrero, who had
now returned to Madrid from Rome, where La Princesse
des Ursins had won him for the French cause. At length
the scale was finally turned in favour of France, by a
letter received by Charles II. from the Pope, Innocent XII.
He, too, Madame des Ursins had won for France, and now
he wrote advising the King to leave his dominions to the
grandson of Louis XIV. Charles II., who was a devoted
son of Mother Church, obeyed the Pope's behest, and on
October 2nd, 1700, made a wiU leaving to Philip, Duke of

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 229

Anjou, the Dauphin's second son, the monarchy of Spain
with all its dependencies.

A month later, on November ist, Charles died. There
were few who knew the contents of the King's will. The
French Ambassador himself was ignorant of the success
of his intrigues.

The announcement of a decision which was of such vast
importance not only for Spain but for the whole of western
Europe attracted to the palace a curious crowd. The
will was opened in the Council Chamber of the late King,
in the presence of his Junta or Cabinet. What happened
outside has been graphically described by St. Simon.^
" All the rooms adjoining the Council Chamber, where the
will was being read," he writes, '* were crowded almost to
suffocation. The foreign ambassadors were conspicuous
as they pushed eagerly forward, each anxious to be the
first to inform his court of the choice made by the King.
Blecourt ^ was there, for he was as ignorant as they re-
specting the secret. Count d'Harrach, the Emperor's
ambassador, was standing just in front of the door of the
Council Chamber. He bore himself triumphantly, for he
relied upon the will's being in favour of the Archduke,
and his hopes for his own future were high. At last the
door opened for a moment and there appeared the Duke
of Abrantes, a man greatly feared for his malicious wit.
He had slipped out of the Council Chamber as soon as the
reading of the will was over for the enjoyment of dis-
closing the great secret. Instantly he was beset by the
crowd. He gazed calmly upon them, but maintained
a solemn silence. Blecourt approached. The Duke
regarded him vacantly, and then, turning away his head,

* In his " Memoires," ed. Regnier, VII., 291 — 292.

* The French Ambassador who had succeeded Harcourt.

230 FROM THE CRUSADES

appeared to be searching for some other person. This
action surprised Blecourt, and was interpreted by all as
auguring ill for France. Suddenly the Duke seemed to
become aware of the presence of Count d'Harrach. A
joyful expression illumined his countenance, and throwing
himself into his arms, he exclaimed aloud in Spanish,
* Senor, it is with great pleasure ' — here he made a
pause and again embraced him, * Yes, Seiior, it is with
heartfelt joy that from henceforth ' — here he made a
second pause. ' It is indeed with infinite satisfaction
that I now part from you and take a final leave of the
august house of Austria.' Count d'Harrach's astonish-
ment and indignation deprived him of all power of
utterance. He stood quite still for a moment, and then
left the room, fuming with rage and disappointment."

In London and Amsterdam, in Vienna and Rome, where
no one knew of Louis' intrigues at Madrid, the great
question was whether the French King, in defiance of the
Partition Treaty, would accept for his grandson the
bequest of Charles II. Madame des Ursins, who had so
effectually seconded Harcourt's scheming, can have had
no doubt as to the result of that conference, which Louis,
as soon as the contents of the will were communicated to
him, made a point of holding with his ministers. And
there can have been no surprise in that astute lady's mind
when shortly afterwards she heard that Louis had sum-
moned his grandson in order to declare to him his decision
in the presence of the whole court. " Sir," said Louis,
pompously addressing the young Prince, " the King of
Spain has made you King ; the grandees invite you ; the
people long for you, and I consent ; to be a good Spaniard
will henceforth be your first duty ; but remember that
you were born a Frenchman." On November 24th

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 231

Philip V. was proclaimed King of Spain ; and a few days
later, on December 4th, the new King, then a youth of
seventeen, set forth for his dominions, his grandfather
bidding him farewell in majestic words which have
become famous : " Go, henceforth the Pyrenees have
ceased to exist/'

At first it seemed as if Europe would quietly acquiesce
in the accession of a Bourbon to the throne of Spain.
Europe was tired of war, and especially England, which
hitherto had borne the brunt of the great struggle against
Louis XIV. In England, William, who would willingly
have reopened the conflict, was becoming more and more
unpopular, and the Tories, who were then the peace party,
were in the ascendant. Had not Louis himself committed
an extraordinary blunder there might have been no war
of the Spanish succession. On September 6th, 1701, the
exiled King, James II., died at St. Germain, and straight-
way, Louis, violating a clause in the Treaty of Ryswick
which pledged him to withdraw all support from the
exiled Stuarts, recognised his son James as King of
England. Instantly English apathy vanished. Whigs and
Tories joined in condemning the action of the French court.
From London and from every corner of the realm resounded
a cry for war. Assured of England's help, Holland and
Austria took up arms ; the Archduke Charles having
formally laid claim to the Spanish monarchy on
May 15th, 1702, a declaration of war was published
simultaneously by England, Holland and the Empire.

In the direction of this war and indeed in the course of
European history for the next fourteen years Madame
des Ursins was to play a prominent part. On hearing
that the Great Monarch had accepted King Charles's
bequest for his grandson, the Princess had written con-

232 FROM THE CRUSADES

gratulating Louis on the *' great event," which, as she put
it, " seemed to have happened expressly in order to raise
His Majesty's glory far above the imagination of man-
kind/' At the same time in a letter to Torcy she rejoiced
over the accomplishment of that affair, which for fear of the
misfortunes it might give rise to had caused all Europe to
tremble, but was now by the merit of the King alone, the
sovereign arbiter, arranged for the peace of Christendom.
" What glory, O my God," she concluded, '' but also
what moderation ! "

In the accomplishment of this great affair Madame des
Ursins was not slow to discern a way to her own advance-
ment, and in what manner with admirable lucidity she
explained in a letter to la Marechale. Philip must be
provided with a wife, wrote this wily intriguante, and as
Philip himself was but a youth his wife also must be
young. She would require therefore an accomplished
woman of the world to direct her, one preferably who
should be devoted to French interests and willing to
exercise French influence at Madrid ; but who was so
fitted to occupy such a post as the writer of this letter ?
Had she not effectively proved her skill in diplomacy and
her devotion to the interests of France ? Was she not
also the widow of a grandee of Spain, and pecuHarly fitted
for life at the Spanish court by her knowledge of the
language and her earlier residence in the country ?

As to the bride who should be chosen for the young
King, Madame des Ursins also had her views.

And she suggested Marie Louise, second daughter of
Victor Amadeus, Duke of Savoy, sister to the graceful
and popular Marie Adelaide, the wife of the Duke of
Burgundy, the Dauphin's eldest son.

The letter containing all these proposals la Marechale

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 233

showed to Madame de Maintenon, who doubtless com-
municated its contents to the King. And Louis seriously
considered them. The eminent success of the Duke of
Burgundy's marriage with Marie Adelaide, who was a
great favourite at court, inclined the King to select
another bride from that family. Moreover, as Victor
Amadeus was aspirant to the crown of Spain, the alliance
would have the advantage of uniting two claims. And
so Madame des Ursins' advice was adopted ; and the
King decided to marry his grandson to the Savoyard
Princess, and to make Madame des Ursins her chief
lady-in-waiting or Camerera Major.

Early in May, 1701, the news of her prospective appoint-
ment reached Madame des Ursins. On June 20th she
received from His Catholic Majesty, King Philip V., the
official announcement that she had been appointed
Camerera Major and had been chosen to accompany his
bride to Madrid. But she had already begun her prepara-
tions for departure, and had ordered her travelling coach
and the liveries for her servants.

On September nth Philip married Marie Louise -^ by
proxy at Turin. The bride was but a child of thirteen,
very young to be sent abroad in such troubled times and
into such a disturbed country. Nevertheless, only a few
days after the wedding, accompanied by her confessor and
a suite of Italian ladies and gentlemen, she set forth for
her husband's kingdom. At Villafranca, a port of Savoy,
not far from Nice, the Queen met Madame des Ursins, and
the first impression which this great lady made upon the
royal bride appears to have been favourable. From
Villafranca the company proceeded by sea to Antibes.

^ By her mother, Anne d'Orl^ans, daughter of Henrietta Maria of
England, and the Duke of Orleans, Marie Louise was the great-grand-
daughter of our King Charles I.

234 FROM THE CRUSADES

There they were detained by contrary winds, which
pursued them so furiously when they continued their
voyage that the Queen, who was a bad sailor, suffered
greatly. Therefore, at the instance of Madame des
Ursins, Louis gave them permission to continue their
journey by land. At Figueras, on the Spanish frontier,
the Camerera Major insisted on the return to Savoy of
the Queen's Italian suite. Thereby she completely lost
her little mistress's favour ; and it was weeks before she
could win it back again. The Duchess of Burgundy, the
Queen's sister, on her way to France, had submitted
without a murmur ; but the Queen was furious at thus
being left with strangers, and she took a dislike to Madame
des Ursins, which it took all the Camerera Major's tact
to overcome.

It was at Figueras, too, that the King met his bride.
And not unnaturally he found her in a very bad temper,
which considerably marred the completion of the wedding
ceremonies. At least, such is the story which St. Simon
says was told by the Marquis de Louville, who as the
young King's adviser had accompanied him to Spain.

That Philip, who had no reason for sharing his wife's
dislike of her Camerera Major, soon became attached to
Madame des Ursins, we may learn from an amusing letter
in which the latter described her new duties.

" How Madame de Maintenon would laugh," she
writes, " if she knew all the petty offices I have to perform.
Tell her, I entreat 3''ou, that it is I who have the honour to
present the King with his dressing-gown when he goes
to bed, and to give him his slippers when he rises. This I
might not object to ; but every evening when the King
enters the Queen's chamber, the Count of Beneventum
entrusts me with his Majesty's sword . . . and with a

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 235

lamp which I generally upset over my clothes. Really,
it is too ridiculous. The King would never get up if I
did not draw his curtains ; and it would be sacrilege for
any one else to enter the room when the King and Queen
are in bed. The other day the lamp went out because I
had spilt half the oil ; I did not know where the windows
were, having reached the place the previous night when
they were closed ; I thought I should have broken my
nose against the wall, and for a quarter of an hour there
were the King of vSpain and I knocking up against the
furniture feeling for the shutters." ^

This meticulous ceremonial was a part of that elaborate
etiquette which rendered the Spanish court the dullest
place in the world. The wife of a previous French
Ambassador at Madrid had described the gloom of
existence there as so crushing that on entering the Queen's
chamber one seemed to feel it, to see it, and to touch it.
This gloom Madame des Ursins set herself to dissipate by
employing all the ingenuity which she had formerly
displayed in her Roman salon, in organising concerts,
balls and comedies for the amusement of the royal couple.
Italian music was then beginning to be the vogue, and it
was the Princess who first introduced it into Spain. The
chief amusements of Philip's predecessors seem to have
been hunting and the watching of those terrible autos-
da-fe, relics of mediaeval barbarism which the Spanish
Inquisition still retained. " Charles II.," writes Macaulay,
" enjoyed with the delight of a true Spaniard two delight-
ful spectacles, a horse with its bowels gored out, and a
Jew writhing in the fire." It was Madame des Ursins,
who, from the time of her arrival in Spain, openly

* Written from Barcelona to Madame deNoailles on December 12th,
1 70 1. See " Lettres In^dites de la Princesse des Ursins " (Geoffrey,
1859), p. 144.

236 FROM THE CRUSADES

condemned these hideous scenes and prevailed upon
Philip V. to discontinue them.

The King's confidence the Camerera Major won rapidly
and completely, but with the Queen it was different.
And Marie Louise was long in forgetting how the Princess
had parted her from her countrywomen and left her to
strangers. One is not surprised, therefore, at the note
of sadness in the letters which during the first weeks of
her married life the little Queen wrote to her grand-
mother, the Dowager Duchess of Savoy. Of " the
lounging, moping boy " who was her husband, Marie
Louise writes, '' I wish the King would talk more " ; then
in another letter, " Hunting is the King's favourite amuse-
ment ; he goes out every day. I sometimes visit convents,
which are ugly, or go into the garden. To-day, because it
is Sunday, the King will come with us."

Madame des Ursins had to exercise all her tact and
charm before she could gain the affection of the home-
sick Queen. '' The King is a charming Prince whose
confidence I hope to win. Would to God the Queen
resembled him," she wrote. But the Queen's affection
was all the more durable for not being lightly given.
After a time Marie Louise yielded to the Princess's
attractions, and, once having forgotten her grievance,
became her devoted and lifelong friend.

Spain under Philip V. may be compared to the house-
hold of Themistocles, for while in the latter it was the wife
who ruled Themistocles, and the baby who ruled the wife,
and therefore the baby who ruled the house, so in Spain it
was the Queen who ruled Philip V., Madame des Ursins
who ruled the Queen, and therefore Madame des Ursins
who ruled Spain. According to Louville, Philip V. was a
prince " who does not reign, and who never will." On the

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 237

whole, the influence exerted by Madame des Ursins was
for the good of the country. The Princess was resolved
to render her royal pupil not only happy, but useful.
And her design in this respect was soon seconded by
fortune. For, but a few months after his marriage, King
Philip left Barcelona to conduct the war in Italy, and the
Queen was appointed regent during his absence. The
Princess contrived that the Queen's office should be no
sinecure. Immediately she carried her off to Sarra-
gossa. There, always with her Camerera Major at her
elbow, the Queen presided over the meeting of the
Estates of Castile, much to the chagrin of the deputies,
who demurred to the presidency of a woman. Then
Marie Louise was taken to Madrid, where her indefatigable
gouvernante insisted on her being present at the meetings
of the Council or Junta, always well chaperoned by the
Princess, who had no right whatever to be there, but who
eagerly seized on this opportunity to penetrate into the
secret mysteries of Spanish government. During those
interminable discussions, which lasted usually for six
hours, while the little Queen was permitted to amuse
herself with needlework, her lady-in-waiting listened
eagerly, losing not a word, and carefully reproducing these
debates in her letters to Louis XIV.

Those were troubled times for Spain, for in September,
1702, while the King was still absent, the English fleet
under the Duke of Ormond entered the harbour of Cadiz
and landed an army. The landing of English soldiers,
however, was not altogether a misfortune for the Spanish
government. The barbarity and greed of the invaders
so roused the Spanish national spirit that the peasants to
a man volunteered to fight in defence of their country,
while nobles and farmers, and even poor folk, gave all

238 FROM THE CRUSADES

that they had to repulse the foreigner. Madame des
Ursins took care that in this crisis the Queen should
appear as the organiser of defence, and it was to her that
the parish priests brought the savings of their parishioners.
One came bearing 120 pistoles. " My flock are ashamed
to send you so little," he said, " but they beg you to
believe that in this purse there are a hundred and twenty
hearts faithful even to the death." The Queen gave her
own jewels for the payment of soldiers. She herself
offered to go to the coast.

By this time all misunderstanding between Madame
and her royal pupil had vanished, and when, early in
1703, King Philip returned to Spain he found them in
perfect accord. He himself, during his absence, had so
pined for his wife that on his return he fell more passion-
ately in love with her than ever and more completely
under her influence.

But that Spain should be governed by two women was
the last thing desired by the two Cardinals, the Princess's
two old friends, Portocarrero and Estrees, who with her
help had been chiefly instrumental in bringing the
Bourbons into Spain. It was not in order to make
Madame des Ursins the arbiter of Spanish destinies that
they had raised Philip V. to the throne. Cardinal
d'Estrees was now French Ambassador at Madrid. Porto-
carrero was the president of the Junta. But they both
speedily became such formidable rivals that Madame des
Ursins began to scheme against them. By representa-
tions to Versailles she obtained Estrees' recall ; Porto-
carrero she persuaded to accept military office, and thus,
according to a Spanish law, to effect his own exclusion
from the Junta. Even then, however, the Princess's
triumph was by no means secure ; for the Cardinal

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 239

d'Estrees was succeeded by his nephew, the Abbe
d'Estrees, who, although he was apparently content to
be Madame's subordinate, was all the while working
secretly against her and complaining of her conduct in
the despatches he sent to France.

Beginning to suspect this treachery, the Princess
intercepted one of the Abbe's despatches, wherein she
found her suspicions fully justified ; for in this document
the Ambassador descanted at length on the scandalous
relations which were said to exist between Madame and
her secretary d'Aubigne, whom she had brought from
Italy. How much truth there was in these allegations it
is impossible to tell, neither can we be certain as to what
happened to this despatch after the Princess had read it ;
for two conflicting stories are told as to its fate, one by
the Duke of Berwick, who was at that time commanding
the French troops in Spain, and the other by that malicious
raconteur St. Simon.

St. Simon's story, though probably false, is too
amusing not to be repeated here. He tells how Madame
des Ursins, having read with comparative calm a long
list of accusations against her and her secretary, came to a
statement that they were married. This was too great an
insult to the pride of a high-born dame ; the charge that
d'Aubigne was her lover she might endure, but that she
had married the son of a Paris attorney was too much.
In her indignation she took up her pen and wrote in the
margin : '' Married ! certainly not ! " ^ Then, oblivious
of this tell-tale comment, she sealed up the despatch to
look as if it had never been opened and forwarded it to
France. Louis, as was his custom, had the ambassador's
letter opened and read before his Council, and great was
* Pour manes non.

240 FROM THE CRUSADES

the merriment at the reading of the Princess's impetuous
marginal denial of the Abbe's accusation. Such conduct,
however, was beyond a joke, and anger soon succeeded
mirth in the breasts of the King and his counsellors.

It is hardly necessary to point out the improbability of
St. Simon's story. Madame des Ursins was no fool to
commit such a blunder, neither did she ever allow herself
to be carried away by indignation. For what most likely
happened we must turn to the Duke of Berwick's Memoirs,
where he relates, that, having taken a copy of the letter,
the Princess added to the original her contravention of the
Ambassador's slander, and with complaints of his perfidy
forwarded the packet to the King.

Whatever the details may have been, it was this incident
which caused Madame des Ursins' fall, and closed the first
period of her rule in Spain. For some time there had been
two parties at the court of France, the Princess's friends,
notably La Marechale de Noailles and the former Spanish
Ambassador, Comte d'Harcourt, who through Madame de
Maintenon, besieged the Monarch's ears with praises of
the Princess ; and her enemies, the chief of whom was
Cardinal d'Estrees, who were equally untiring in their
complaints against her. For some time Louis had been
inclined to agree with the latter ; and the intercepted
despatch decided him. In May, 1704, Madame des
Ursins was recalled. " At length, Madame," she wrote
to la Marechale, " falsehood has conquered truth, and
although I may say that never did anyone serve the King
with greater zeal and with greater honesty, yet I am
treated as a criminal who has betrayed the state while
my accusers glory."

The Princess's mission in Spain now appeared an utter
failure. Her enemies must have thought that the

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 241

diplomatic career of this elderly woman of over sixty was
at an end and that nothing remained for her but to with-
draw quietly to Rome. Madame des Ursins, however,
was not one to be vanquished by adversity : it was in
times of mischance that her gifts best displayed them-
selves ; and she never appeared more brilliant than when
in a few months she converted this humiliating defeat
into a glorious victory.

Her method was first of all to gain time : she was in no
hurry to obey Louis* command and to leave the Spanish
capital. When at length she did comply it was only to
withdraw to Alcala, about twenty miles from Madrid, and
there she lingered for five weeks before leisurely pursuing
her journey to Bayonne. Then, instead of making for
Rome, as her enemies hoped and expected, she went to
Toulouse and waited.

Meanwhile in Madrid, since her departure, things had
been going from bad to worse : the King and Queen were
disconsolate at the Princess's recall ; the Spaniards, too,
with whom she was very popular, mourned her absence,
and none of these circumstances escaped the knowledge
of Louis XIV., who, at the same time, was constantly
hearing of the injustice of her treatment from Madame de
Maintenon and Comte d'Harcourt. Finally, in December,
1704, the Princess obtained just what she wanted — a
summons to appear at Versailles ; and now she did not
delay, but straightway obeyed the King's command.
Before the end of January, despite the severity of the
weather, she had travelled north and reached Paris.

At the French court she carried everything before her.
During her previous visits she can have known little of the
King. During her three years' residence in Spain, Louis
had shown respect for her judgment, and on one

C.R. R

242 FROM THE CRUSADES

occasion^ he even countermanded an order at her
request.

But any esteem in which Louis may have previously
held Madame des Ursins was far beneath that he now
formed of her. Now she captivated him by her grace and
her ability. For hours she remained closeted with the
King and with Madame de Maintenon discussing the
affairs of Spain. In public the King paid her almost as
much deference as if she had been a Queen. At one of the
court balls she was seen carrying in her arms a little
spaniel, a privilege accorded to no other lady at court,
and the King actually caressed it during one of the dances.
Sainte-Beuve paints a charming picture ^ of the delightful
intercourse enjoyed by these three eminent personages,
the great King, Madame de Maintenon and Madame des
Ursins. With the last as a third " even the King's inter-
course with Madame de Maintenon assumed a new fresh-
ness. But of the three," Sainte-Beuve ventures to say,
" it was Madame des Ursins who most powerfully
dominated the situation, who was the most detached
from her part and yet who played it the best."

From the moment of the Princess's arrival at Versailles
her return to Spain had been a foregone conclusion ; but
her cause was greatly strengthened by the communica-
tions which the King was receiving from the Due de
Gramont, then French Ambassador at Madrid. These
despatches convinced Louis of Philip's incapacity to
govern on his own account, of the Queen's devotion to
Madame des Ursins and of her indignation at the disgrace
of her Camerera Major, which had struck a serious blow

1 When he had revoked his instructions to the Spanish Government
to confiscate the treasure of other nations brought in Spanish galleons
into Vigo Bay.

"^ " Causeries du Lundi," ed. 1852, V., 331

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 243

at French influence at Madrid. Thus Louis was driven
to the conclusion that Madame's return to power was the
only possible way of restoring amicable relations between
the two countries ; and apparently when she had been
but a few weeks at Versailles the King requested her to
return to Spain. But now she was on her dignity. Now
it was her turn to hang back. Now she must have some-
thing better than her former equivocal position at Madrid ;
now the King must not only extend her powers, he must
definitely recognise them. And so, at Marly, in an
interview between that imposing trio, the Great King,
the Great Marchioness and the Great Princess, a document
was drawn up and committed to the care of Madame de
Maintenon. In this document Louis undertook to
increase the Princess's pension, to communicate in future
with her direct and not by the intermediary of any
ambassador, to pay no heed to any calumnies against her,
to relieve her of the duties of Camerera Major, which
restricted her independence, to appoint as ambassador
one of her friends, Amelot, Marquis de Gournay, and
finally to contrive that she should be consulted as to the
appointment of Spanish ministers.

Such measures practically placed the government of
Spain in the hands of the Princesse des Ursins, and
constituted her the acknowledged agent of France at
Madrid. Her triumph was supreme, she had now surely
attained the height of her ambition. And yet, if we may
believe St. Simon — and in this matter there is no reason
to doubt him — this ambitious woman was not satisfied, she
aspired to a position still loftier. From January till June
she lingered at the French court. Madame de Maintenon
could not understand why. She had conquered, she had
triumphed brilliantly, why did she not set out to enjoy

R 2

244 FROM THE CRUSADES

the fruits of her victory ? " There is something I cannot
understand about Madame des Ursins/' wrote the
Marchioness, " she can't be induced to depart/' St.
Simon suggests, and with no improbabiUty, that the
feeble health of Madame de Maintenon and the impression
which the Princess had obviously made upon the King had
so inflated her ambition that she hoped in the event of
the Marchioness's demise to become Queen of France, for
we may be sure that she would never have consented to
a morganatic marriage with the King. But Madame de
Maintenon recovered, the Princess's dream vanished ;
and, on June 29th, 1705, we find her at Amboise, en route
for Spain.

Her journey to Madrid was a triumphal progress.
'' Spain receives me," she wrote, " with every conceivable
honour and demonstration of joy." Wherever she
passed, dances, games, bull fights, fireworks and the
discharge of cannon greeted her return. A few miles
from Madrid, the French Ambassador came out to meet
her. After he had entertained her at a superb banquet,
the King and Queen themselves arrived with the whole
court. Then in pomp and magnificence they escorted her
into the capital, which, amidst the applause of the people,
she entered on August 3rd.

It is during the time of her second rule in Spain, between
1705 and 1714, that Madame des Ursins appears to the
greatest advantage. She returned to find the country a
prey to two evils, civil war and foreign invasion. A strong
party led by the Admiral of Castile had gone over to the
Austrian Archduke Charles, who called himself King
Charles HI., and who was then commanding the army
sent by the allies to drive the Bourbons from the Spanish
throne. Meanwhile an English fleet cruising off the coast

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 245

supported the land forces and constantly threatened the
harbours of Spain with pillage and desolation. In the face
of these disasters nothing but the fortitude, the hopeful-
ness, the resource and the energy of Madame des Ursins
could have preserved the throne of Spain for the house of
Bourbon.

Madame de Maintenon, blissfully ignorant of the
Princess's dream of succeeding her, was now her intimate
friend and her most regular correspondent. In her letters
she marvels at the cheerfulness with which the Princess
breasted this sea of troubles. " My temperament is my
best friend,"^ Madame des Ursins wrote. "Among the
many gifts I have received from God is the gift of cheer-
fulness, which enables me to despair of nothing. I am
firmly persuaded that with courage, with diligence and
with firmness one may overcome the greatest difficulties,
provided always that those who act desire the public
good." ^ And throughout those dark days " the public
good " that Madame des Ursins desired seems to have
been that of Spain, for whose sake she even dared to differ
from " the Great King."

On reaching Madrid in the summer of 1705, she found
that the allies were rapidly conquering Catalonia and
besieging its chief city Barcelona, which fell into their
hands on October 9th. The Princess's letters at this
time to Chamillard, Minister of War and Finance, to
Madame de Maintenon and to La Marechale de Noailles
are full of entreaties for help. After the loss of Barcelona
she wrote : "If only at the beginning of the war France
had sent us two or three thousand men through Roussillon,
we should now be as well as we are badly off. That the

1 See Geoff roy, " Lettres In6dites de Madame de Maintenon et de
Madame des Ursins," p. 259.

2 Ibid., p. 256.

246 FROM THE CRUSADES

succour did not come was not my fault, for I wrote to
your court that it was absolutely necessary/' ^

In spite of the Princess's admirable efforts the prospects
of the Bourbons in Spain grew steadily darker until, in
1706, the approach of the allies drove the King and Queen
from the capital. " We departed without the barest
necessities," wrote Madame des Ursins.^ " At first the
Queen was without a bed. Fortunately the Chevalier de
Bragelonne, who commanded our French escort, had a new
one, which came in very useful. But other things were
not so easily supplied, for (on the first day) Her Majesty
had only two eggs for supper, and much the same fare on
the morrow." ^

While the King joined the army, the Queen with
Madame des Ursins, one lady-in-waiting and a maid was
left at Burgos ; and thence with her accustomed gaiety
the Princess sent Madame de Maintenon an amusing
description of their quarters. " My apartment," she wrote,
** consists of only one room some twelve or thirteen feet
square. A large window, which refuses to shut, occupies
nearly the whole of one wall ; a low door leads into the
Queen's chamber, and a smaller one into a winding passage
which I never dare enter, although there are two or three
lamps burning in it, because it is so badly paved that I
should break my neck. I can't say that the walls are
white, because they are very dirty. My travelling bed is
my only piece of furniture, save for a folding chair and a
deal table which serves for my toilet, and on which I write
and eat my dessert from the Queen's table.

" At all this Her Majesty does nothing but laugh, and I
join her."

^ Geoffrey, op. cit., p. 207.
2 Ibid., p. 249.
^ Ibid., p. 249.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 247

One is glad to find that such astounding equanimity in
misfortune did not remain unrewarded ; after a few
weeks' occupation of the capital the allies retreated, and
the King and Queen with Madame des Ursins returned
to Madrid.

Some months earlier, on December 8th, 1705, the
Princess had written at great length ^ to Chamillard on
the conduct of the war, and in this letter she had entreated
that her old friend, the Duke of Berwick, who in the
previous year had been recalled to France, should be sent
back to Spain to command the King's army. Her request
had been granted, ** This great devil of an Englishman,"
as Berwick was called in Spain, realised all Madame des
Ursins' hopes, and it was Berwick's advance which had
driven the allies out of Madrid. Now the Princess made
superb efforts to efficiently equip his army. In the
province of Burgos she raised 8,000 pistoles, in another
15,000, and in wealthy Andalusia still more. Money,
food and clothing poured into Berwick's camp ; and, as
King Philip admitted in a graceful letter to the Princess,
it was owing to her energy and resource that he was now
able to feed, to clothe and to pay his soldiers.

Madame des Ursins' noble exertions received their
recompense when, at Almanza,^ on April 25th, 1707,
Marshal Berwick inflicted a crushing defeat on the allies.

This victory for a time completely restored the fortunes
of King Philip V. ; and by the end of the year the only
part of Spain held by the allies was the northern province
of Catalonia. The news of the battle was received with

* The letter occupies eight pages (213 — 221) of Geoffrey's book.

2 The only battle recorded in which an English general at the head
of a French army defeated an English army commanded by a French-
man. The Englishman was, of course, Berwick, the Frenchman, Henri
de Ruvigny, Lord Galway.

248 FROM THE CRUSADES

great rejoicing both in France and at Madrid. Madame
des Ursins herself had the joy of announcing it to the
King and Queen. Madame de Maintenon, in one of her
liveHest letters, related how the news reached the French
court.-^ " You know, Marly,'* she writes, " and my apart-
ments there ; the King was alone in my little room ; and
I in my boudoir, which serves as a passage, was sitting
down to table, when an officer of the guards announced at
the King's door, M. de Chamillard. The King replied,
' What, is it he ? ' for naturally he was not expected. I,
very much astonished, threw down my napkin, as M. de
Chamillard, crying ' It is good news ! ' went straight in to
the King . . . and, as you may imagine, Madame, I went
in also. Then I heard of the defeat of the enemy's army
and returned to my supper in high spirits."

The year 1707 was one of rejoicing at the court of
Spain, for on August 25th a prince was born to the King
and Queen. We are amused to find Madame des Ursins
taking credit to herself for this auspicious event. The
Spaniards, she writes, would have blamed her had their
Queen not born an heir. For months the Princess had
been on the tip-toe of eager expectation. Long letters
on the subject had passed between the two childless old
ladies who then controlled the courts of Versailles and
Madrid, Madame des Ursins asking for advice as to the
selection of nurses for the royal infant, Madame de
Maintenon counselling Madame des Ursins to study a
graceful attitude for rocking the cradle.

Meanwhile, although fortune was favouring the
Bourbons in Spain, in Italy and the north the military
gifts of Prince Eugene and the Duke of Marlborough were

1 " Lettres In6dites de Madame de Maintenon et de la Princesse
des Ursins," I., 120.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ^49

driving Louis XIV. to despair. He was beginning to
feel the task of maintaining his grandson on the throne of
Spain to be an intolerable burden. The terrible disasters
of 1709, the defeat of Malplaquet, and a severe winter
followed by plague and famine, confirmed Louis in this
idea, in which he was supported by Madame de Maintenon,
who desired peace at any price. On this point she had
long and bitter discussions with Madame des Ursins, who
would never for a moment entertain the idea of abandon-
ing Spain to the Austrians, not even when in September,
1710, the court was again driven from Madrid. In that
year, as in 1707, the allies were unable to hold the capital
for long, and by December the King and Queen were back
again in their capital. Meanwhile the skilful operations of
Venddme caused the enemy to retreat northwards, until
once again they were confined within the mountainous
strongholds of Catalonia.

This advantage gained by the French in Spain doubtless
influenced those negotiations for peace which were now
being carried on by the warring Powers. Events in the
Peninsula, added to the death of the Emperor Joseph,
which, leaving the Archduke Charles the most likely
successor to the Imperial throne, rendered his rule in
Spain an even greater threat than that of Philip V.
to the balance of power in Europe, completely altered
Louis XIV. 's position. The King now looked for con-
cessions in return for any sacrifices he might make.
From this time the abandonment of Spain to the Austrian
house became out of the question, and Madame des
Ursins' mind was set at rest.

But no sooner was she relieved from anxiety on behalf
of her adopted land and her beloved sovereign than her
inveterate ambition returned, and she began to scheme

250 FROM THE CRUSADES

on her own account. As a part of the settlement which
the European Powers were then negotiating, King PhiHp
proposed that on Madame des Ursins and her heirs in full
sovereignty should be settled the Duchy of Limburg in
the Low Countries. That the King of Spain should wish
to bestow on his faithful friend and wise counsellor some
acknowledgment of the valuable services she had rendered
to him and to his kingdom was only just ; but that when
this proposal met with opposition Madame des Ursins
should have so far insisted on her claims as to drag out
the negotiations and to postpone the peace, of which
Europe, and Spain specially, stood so greatly in need,
seems strangely discordant with the patriotism she had
shown earlier in the war ; and her old friend the minister,
Torcy, did not hesitate to denounce her for this action.
While England and Holland were not indisposed to accede
to the Princess's demand and to insert the grant of
sovereignty in the Peace of Utrecht, the Emperor would
not hear of the dismemberment of the Netherlands. And
finally, Louis XIV. had to intervene, and to insist on his
grandson's commuting the sovereignty of Limburg into
a money pa^^ment in order that a European settlement
might be arrived at.

Even then, after she had been omitted from the Treaty,
Madame des Ursins, with her invincible hopefulness,
refused to abandon the idea of one day ruling in her own
right. Before the Peace of Utrecht she had persuaded
King Philip to issue a decree calling upon the grandees
to address her as ** your highness." Her overweening
ambition at this time made her the laughing-stock of
Europe and appealed to the humour of Lord Bolingbroke,
who, during the negotiations, wrote her a letter/ in which

1 See his " Letters and Correspondence " ed. Parke, 1798. III., 345-

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 251

he " your highnessed " her at every line, thinking, as he
explained to a friend, that in the absence of means for the
gratification of her avarice it might be prudent for England
to flatter her vanity.

Meanwhile the Princess insisted on assuming sovereign
state ; on her journeys she was escorted by a detachment
of the King's guard. She believed that one day Limburg
would be hers, and when that day should come, she had
resolved to exchange it for a part of Touraine. So
absurdly sanguine had she become in her old age that she
secretly despatched her secretary d'Aubigne to purchase
property near Amboise, and there to construct a vast
edifice which was nothing more or less than a royal
palace.-^

But while she was building these airy castles in Spain,
and a more substantial one on the Loire, a turn in the
wheel of fortune caused the former to vanish like a
morning mist, while the latter remained only to be known
as the Princess's folly. For on February 14th, 1714, the
thread, from which the Princess's vast influence depended,
snapped, and Marie Louise, Queen of Spain, died.

For a time this reverse seems only to have inflated the
Princess's already overweening ambition, and at first she,
an old lady of over seventy, seems to have conceived the
extraordinary design of marrying the King of Spain, who
was forty years her junior. Louis XIV. and Madame de
Maintenon, knowing her strength of will and the King's
weakness, greatly feared that she would achieve her
object. And it appears to have been their opposition
which brought the Princess to her senses. Then, as if in
order to prove to them that she had never intended to do
anything so absurd, she hurriedly and without waiting to
1 The chateau of Chanteloup.

252 FROM THE CRUSADES

hear from Versailles, arranged to marry Philip to a
Princess of Parma, Elizabeth Farnese. As far as she
herself was concerned, Madame des Ursins could not
possibly have made a more unfortunate choice. In
Elizabeth she met her match. This princess was born
for sovereignty. Frederick the Great said of her, that she
possessed all the pride of a Spartan, the obstinacy of an
Englishwoman, the vivacity of a Frenchwoman, and the
craft of an Italian. When she came into Spain, one thing
she had determined — that she would not be ruled by the
old lady who had so long dominated her predecessor.

The marriage was to take place in December at Guada-
laxara, w^here on the 22nd King Philip arrived, accompanied
by Madame des Ursins. There the Princess left the King
to await his bride, while she pushed on to meet Elizabeth
at a neighbouring village where she was to spend the
night. In elaborate court dress, Madame des Ursins was
ushered into the Queen's presence, but only to receive an
icy reception. In the course of conversation the royal
bride took exception to her visitor's dress and to her
manners. The Princess, who considered that both were
perfectly correct, attempted to justify herself. Where-
upon the Queen flew into a temper and commanded " this
mad woman," as she called her, to leave her presence.
When Madame des Ursins hesitated, Elizabeth, seizing
her by the shoulders, pushed her out of the room, at the
same time calling for the lieutenant of the guards and the
equerry. The first she commanded to arrest Madame des
Ursins, the second to prepare a six-horsed carriage, and
in it to drive the Princess post haste to the frontier.
When the lieutenant represented that the power of
arresting a personage of such high rank as the Princess
belonged to the King alone, the Queen retorted, what was

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 253

perfectly true, that she had in her possession a royal order
commanding the lieutenant to obey her in everything.

Madame des Ursins, therefore, was helpless. Without
allowing her time to pack up anything or to take any food
with her, or even to change her court dress, the Queen had
her and her maid unceremoniously bundled into a coach
and driven out of Spain. It was seven o'clock on
Christmas eve when she started. The night was so
bitterly cold that before morning the coachman's hand
was frozen off. It is astonishing that at her age the
Princess should have been able to survive such a terrible
ordeal. At Bayonne she halted in her enforced flight, and
wrote to Louis XIV. of the gross indignity to which she
had been subjected. To Philip V. she knew but too weU
it would be useless to appeal, for she realised that as he
had been completely dominated by his first wife, so he
would be by the second. To her great consolation the
Princess received a letter written with the Great King's
own hand, condoling with her in her misfortune, and
inviting her to come to Paris. That long journey from
Bayonne to Paris, which once before she had taken in
mid-winter, she now made for the second and last
time. Arriving in Paris in the middle of February, 1715,
she took up her abode with her brother, the Duke of Noir-
moustiers, and waited for a summons to the royal presence.

But that summons was long delayed. At the French
court powerful influences were working against her.
Louis XIV. and Madame de Maintenon, since the rumour
of her design to marry Philip V., were somewhat afraid
of her ambition. Moreover, even Louis' influence was
waning ; the Great King was ill, his long reign was draw-
ing to a close, the star of the future Regent, the Duke of
Orleans, was in the ascendant, and the Duke and his

254 FROM THE CRUSADES

mother, the erratic Princess Palatine, were Madame des
Ursins' bitter enemies. So the Princess waited and
waited. When at length the summons to Versailles
reached her and she went to lay her grievances before the
King, her audience was a terrible disappointment. It
lasted but half an hour, followed by an hour with Madame
de Maintenon and a dinner with Torcy, the Minister of
Foreign Affairs. Not even invited to stay the night, the
Princess returned to Paris the same day, depressed to
think how different was this cold reception from that
brilliant triumph which had greeted her at Versailles at
the time of her first fall from power.

The Princess was advised to retire to Italy. But before
leaving Paris, she requested and obtained one parting inter-
view with the King. Then Louis and Madame de Maintenon
received her at Marly as coldly and as briefly as before ;
and there she took her last leave of the King and of his wife.

By slow stages, hoping still for some turn of fortune
in her favour, and still uncertain as to the place of her
retirement, Madame des Ursins made her way south. At
Lyons the news of the King's death and of the Regency of
the Duke of Orleans reached her. From that moment
any desire she might have had to remain in France was
extinguished. To Madame de Maintenon she wrote con-
gratulating her on finding a retreat at St. Cyr ; "as for
me,*' she added, " I know not where to go and die."
Rome of all places would most naturally attract her ; but
she feared the reception she might meet with from the
Pope, and perhaps she hesitated to return in disgrace to a
city where she had once been so powerful and so popular.
So, for a while, she resided at Genoa, until, through his
ambassador, Philip V., who, despite his second wife's
domination, still nourished a certain kindness for his old

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 255

friend, informed her that the Pope would receive her
kindly. In 1718, therefore, after seventeen years' absence,
Madame des Ursins returned to Rome. It was as King
Philip had promised, the Pope, and not only the Pope,
but his court and his cardinals received her with all
possible respect and honour. One of those cardinals was
her own brother, raised some years earlier to that dignity
by his sister's influence, and now, by the same means,
Ambassador of France at the papal court.

The Palazzo Pasquino had some time before passed out
of Madame des Ursins' possession. But the house she now
occupied, although probably less pretentious, was comfort-
able and commodious enough for the French Ambassador,
the Abbe de Tencin, to wish to live in it after her death. ^

At Rome the Princess met another exile, James,
Chevalier de St. Georges, the Old Pretender, whom a
clause in the Treaty of Utrecht had banished from French
dominions. She had known the Prince as a boy, and, as
we have seen, been an intimate friend of his mother.
The year after Madame des Ursins' arrival James married
Clementine, daughter of the famous Jean Sobieski.
With the Stuart bride the Princess became intimately
associated, and ^in ^the court of the exiled Stuarts she
played in miniature the same part which in earlier years
she had acted on a grander and a more extensive stage.

Retaining almost to the end her powers of body and of
mind, she died in September, 1722, after three days'
illness, during which she was visited by the Princess
Sobieski. While leaving all her possessions outside Italy
to her brother, the Duke of Noirmoustiers, and her Orsini
property to her nephew, the Duke of Lanti, she bequeathed
a gold snuff-box set with diamonds to the Pretender, and
1 " Madame des Ursins et la Succession d'Espagne," VI., 351.

256 FROM THE CRUSADES

a gilded toilet-set that had once belonged to the Queen of
Spain to the Princess Sobieski.

Sainte-Beuve at the end of his second causerie on the
Princess admits that he had intended to represent Madame
des Ursins as an example of the undesirable female
politician. But Sainte-Beuve, like Balaam, having gone
forth to curse, remained to bless. Captivated by her
charms, even through the pallid medium of books, he was
compelled to recognise her usefulness. And indeed with
that charm which captivated Sainte-Beuve, and without
which no woman politician can achieve success, Madame
des Ursins was bountifully endowed. It was a charm of
manner and also of appearance as the portrait illustrating
this chapter must testify.

The Princess's brother, the Cardinal de La Tremoille,
had two years earlier preceded her to the grave. No one
could have been less ecclesiastically minded than this
little hunchback Cardinal, who as a wit and a libertine
was the complete type of an eighteenth century abbe.
As we have seen, he owed much to his sister, with whom
nevertheless he was constantly quarrelling. His house-
hold was the most disorderly in Rome, and although the
beneficiary of many high ecclesiastical offices and vast
church lands, he died a bankrupt.

A very different person was Madame des Ursins* elder
brother, the Duke of Noirmoustiers. Notwithstanding
his blindness, he was a man of wide interests and high
culture, esteemed by a large circle of friends, who on
matters of art or of affairs bowed to his opinion as to that
of an oracle. The Duke died some years after his famous
sister, at the age of eighty. His second wife lived on
until 1733. And with her death this branch of the La
Tremoille family became extinct.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 257

CHAPTER X

THE PRINCESSE DE TALMOND, PRINCE CHARLIE'S EGERIA,
AND OTHER LA TRl^MOILLES OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

We have now reached the period of La Tremoille
decHne. While with Duke Henry and Duchess Marie the
house attained the apogee of its grandeur, with the Fronde
and the dissipation of the family fortune by the Prince
de Tarente there set in a steady diminution of wealth and
of authority, which ended in the debacle of the Revolution.
Throughout the eighteenth century, as we have seen,^ the
Dukes, unable to keep up the double state of an establish-
ment in the west and a hotel at Paris, were content to
abandon their country seats for the capital. The Prince
de Tarente's son, Duke Charles Belgique, lived almost
entirely at Paris, in a house on the Quai Malaquais, where
he died in 1709.

Nothwithstanding a goodlier array of titles than had
been borne by any of his ancestors,^ Duke Charles, at once
duke, prince, count, baron, viscount, marquis, peer of
France and first gentleman of the bedchamber, was much
less powerful than the mere Seigneurs of La Tremoille in
the twelfth century. For we find him compelled through
poverty to relinquish the grand state of a great feudal

1 Preface, p. VII.

2 Due de La Tremoille, de Thouars and de Loudun, Prince de Tarente
and de Talmond, Comte de Laval, de Montfort, de Guines, de Jonvelle
and de Taillebourg, Baron de Vitr6, de Mauleon, de Burie and de Didonne,
Vicomte de Rennes, de Bais and de Marsille, Marquis d'Espinay.

C.R. S

258 FROM THE CRUSADES

suzerain, living in the midst of numerous vassals, who
would expect to be entertained in princely fashion after
the manner of the La Tremoilles of yore.

For this woeful deplenishment of the family exchequer,
the Prince de Tarente must not be held solely responsible.
It had been largely drawn upon by the Prince's parents
for the erection on the bank of the Thouet of their mag-
nificent chateau, which, converted into a state prison,
stands to-day as the expression of that pride which pro-
verbially heralds a fall. But there was yet another event
which helped to empty the La Tremoille purse, and with
that neither the Duke, the Duchess nor the Prince had
anything to do. Louis XVL's Revocation of the Edict
of Nantes, by driving from France the Protestant tanners
of Thouars, the most industrious and the most prosperous
of its inhabitants, while inflicting an irretrievable disaster
on the town and the province, considerably curtailed
the La Tremoille income.

Of the four Dukes of Thouars and La Tremoille from
the Prince de Tarente down to the Revolution there is
little to tell. Neither of them possessed any very striking
personality. Three, Charles Belgique (1655 — ^7^9)'
Charles Louis Bretagne^ (1685 — 1719), and Jean Bretagne
(1737 — 1792), were soldiers. But Charles Belgique was
compelled by ill-health to retire early from the army.
Charles Louis Bretagne and Jean Bretagne were field
marshals, in which capacity the former commanded at
Oudenarde and Malplaquet. Both Charles Belgique and
Charles Louis were first Gentlemen of the Bedchamber to
Louis XIV., an office which the latter continued to hold
under Louis XIV. 's successor. Charles Armand Rene

* The name of Bretagne was given to him because the Breton Estates,
of which his father was President, stood as his godfather.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 259

(1708 — 1741) made a new departure in the history of his
line. Hitherto the La Tremoilles, had distinguished them-
selves rather in the sphere of action than in that of
thought. But Armand Rene must have added to the
ability of a man of action — he was a brilliant soldier —
some intellectual qualifications, for we find that on March
6th, 1738, he was received as a member of the French
Academy, a new honour for a La Tremoille, but one which
was to be renewed in the following century ; then the
late Duke, by his careful arrangement and publication
of the family records, won a seat among the Immortals.

Throughout the century, despite their diminished
wealth, the La Tremoilles pursued their ancient policy of
mating only in the noblest houses of the da}^ Charles
Belgique married Madeleine de Crequy,^ daughter of
Charles de Crequy, Prince de Poix ; Charles Louis took
to wife Marie Madeleine, only daughter of Rene Armand
Motier de La Fayette ; Charles Armand Rene followed
the example of his ancestor Duke Henry and married
into the house of Bouillon, his wife Marie Hortense
was the daughter of the Duke Emmanuel Theodore de
La Tour d'Auvergne. Jean Bretagne was twice married :
first in 175 1 to Marie Genevieve de Durfort, who died
without children in 1762 ; and afterwards to Marie
Maximilienne de Salm-Kerbourg, daughter of a German
Prince and Princess, who died in 1790, two years before
her husband, leaving four sons.

Considering the noble zeal shown by these sons, during
the Revolution period, in risking and forfeiting their lives
in defence of the French monarchy, had not the Princess
de Salm proved more prolific than the wives of earlier
eighteenth century La Tremoilles, the line would have

* She died two years before her husband, 1717.

S 2

26o FROM THE CRUSADES

become extinct, for both Charles Louis Bretagne and his
successor Charles Armand Rene had only one son.

It is, however, to the younger La Tremoille branch, to
the wife of a Prince de Talmond, that in this century we
must look for that vein of romantic adventure which
never fails to enliven the history of this house.

The Prince de Tarente's second son,-^ Frederic Guillaume,
bore the title of Prince de Talmond and bequeathed it to
his son, Anne Charles Frederic. It is the story of this
Prince's consort that is the subject of this chapter.

Now, but not for the first time, we shall find the
destinies of La Tremoilles touching those of the house
of Stuart. We have already seen Charlotte de La
Tremoille entertaining her cousin, Prince Rupert, at
Lathom House, the Prince de Tarente receiving the
Garter from the exiled Charles II., the Princesse des Ursins
staying with Mary of Modena at St. Germain, and later,
in the days of her adversity, dominating the court of the
elder Pretender at Rome. Now La Tremoilles and Stuarts
were to be associated in a romantic connection which to
neither house was to bring honour or prosperity.

* Henry Charles, Prince de Tarente.

Charles Belgique Hollande, Frederic Guillaume, Prince de Talmond,
Due de La Tremoille. 1668 — 1739,

took orders and became Abb6 of
Charroux and Canon of Strasbourg,
1689 ; left Church for array and became
Lieutenant-Gen eral in 1710 ; married
Antoinette de Bouillon in 1 707, by whom

» he had several children. The eldest =

Anne Charles Fr^d^ric, Prince de
Talmond, Brigadier of Cavalry, 1743 ;
created Duke of Chatellerault, 1749 ;
died 1759. Married, 1730, Marie Louise
Jablonowski, first cousin of King
Stanislas of Poland.

Louis Stanislas, Duke of Chatellerault.

MADELINE DE LA FAYETTE, DUCHESE DE LA TREMOILLE AND

HER SON, ARMAND RENE, DUC DE LA TREMOILLE

From a picture, attributed to Jervas, belonging to Mr. Aldenburg Bentinck,
photographed by Mrs. Aubrey Le Blond

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 261

The Prince de Tarente's grandson, besides being a
brilliant general, was a gallant courtier, in high favour
with King Louis XV. And it was at Louis' court at
Chambord, in 1730, that for his sins the Prince de Talmond
met and married one of the most attractive and capricious
women of her time, a Polish Princess, Marie Jablonowski,
first cousin to Stanislas, the exiled King of Poland, with
whose daughter, Queen Marie Leczsinki, she had come
to France. But more important than either of those
relationships and fraught with more serious consequences
was Princess Marie's cousinship to Prince Charles
Edward Stuart, through his mother. Princess Sobieski.

Some years after her marriage we find the Princesse de
Talmond in Paris, in the fashionable philosophical circles
of that day, the friend of Montesquieu, of Voltaire and of
that most brilliant of eighteenth century, Salonnieres
Madame du Deffand.

In this same circle, possibly introduced into it by his
beautiful cousin, moved Prince Charles Edward during
the years of defeat and despair which followed Culloden.
Of the Princess, Voltaire wrote that she was endowed with

" Le gout qu'on ne trouve qu'en France
Et Tesprit de tons les pays." ^

Madame du Deffand, who never indulged in undiluted
praise, draws a less flattering portrait of her.

" Madame de Talmond," she writes, " has beauty and
wit and vivacity ; that turn for pleasantry which is our
national inheritance seems natural to her. . . . But her
wit deals only with pleasant frivolities ; her ideas are the
children of her memory rather than of her imagination.
French in everything else, she is original in her vanity.

1 Quoted by Andrew Lang, " Life of Prince Chajrles Edward Stuart,"
(1903), p. 343.

262 FROM THE CRUSADES

Ours is more sociable, inspires the desire to please, and
suggests the means. Hers is truly Sarmatian, artless and
indolent ; she cannot bring herself to flatter those whose
admiration she covets. . . . She thinks herself perfect, says
so, and expects to be believed. At this price alone does
she yield a semblance of friendship ; semblance, I say,
for her affections are concentrated on herself. She is as
jealous as she is vain, and so capricious as to make her at
once the most unhappy and the most absurd of women.
She never knows what she wants, what she fears, whom she
loves, or whom she hates. There is nothing natural in her
expression ; with her chin in the air she poses eternally
as tender or disdainful, absent or haughty ; all is affecta-
tion. . . . She is feared and hated by all who live in her
society. Yet she has truth, courage and honesty, and is
such a mixture of good and evil that no steadfast opinion
about her can be entertained. She pleases, she provokes ;
we love, hate, seek, and avoid her. It is as if she com-
municated to others the eccentricity of her own caprice.'*

This description, while obviously not charitable, is
stamped with that keen discernment of character for
which the wiitex' was famous ; indeed, it is in perfect
accord with what we know of Madame de Talmond's
behaviour tow^ards Prince Charles. To the story of their
relations as told by Argenson in his " Memoirs,'* the late
Mr. Andrew Lang, in his two volumes entitled " Pickle
the Spy " and the life of '' Prince Charles Edward,*' has
added details derived chiefly from the Stuart papers at
Windsor and from some Additional MSS. in the British
Museum. In the course of unravelling the mysterious
skein of the Prince's career during the years which
followed Culloden, Mr. Lang has revealed the important
part played by Madame de Talmond in this chapter of her
royal cousin's life.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 263

As the defeated hero of the great '45, the bonnie Prince
naturally appealed to feminine imagination. " In Paris,
the year after CuUoden/* writes Argenson, " women were
literally pulling caps for Charles/* In a manuscript play
by the minister ^ he represents ** Madame de Talmond and
another noble lady fighting like fish-fags over the object
of their admiration." But it was Madame de Talmond
who, despite some ten years' seniority to the Prince,
conquered in the end, and ruled her victim with fire and
fury. " vShe was certainly his Egeria, probably his
mistress," writes Mr. Lang. She, with other distinguished
friends, was invited by Charles to a gorgeous supper at
Paris in 1748, for which the Prince ordered a new service
of plate worth 100,000 francs, and insisted on the gold-
smith's preferring his order to the King's. In the opinion
of the Old Pretender, Madame de Talmond, during these
desperate years, was encouraging his son in every kind
of folly. It was she who was held responsible for his
indifference to religion, for she was accused with having
infected him with her free- thinking principles. And
indeed it seems probable that when in this same year
Louis XV., by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, promised to
expel Charles from his dominions, the Princess encouraged
him to defy the French monarch and refuse to go.

At that time Charles was daily visiting Madame de
Talmond in her h6tel. Her husband not unnaturally
objected and complained to the King that every day the
Prince entered his gardens uninvited, and walked beneath
his windows. Acting on the King's advice apparently,
the Prince de Talmond instructed his footmen to refuse
Charles admission. Therefore, one day when the Prince

1 Entitled " La Prison du Prince Charles Edouard Stuart." Published
later by the Due de Broglie, in " La Revue d'Histoire Diplomatique,"
No. 4, Paris, 1891.

264 FROM THE CRUSADES

arrived as usual at two o'clock in the afternoon, he was
told that no one was at home. Flying into a fury, Charles
declared it to be a He. But it was perfectly true, for
Madame de Talmond had gone to the Queen. She
explained to her lover when they met that after all she
must obey her husband, and that if even the King wished
to enter her house against her husband's will, he would
be refused admission. vSuch defiance, however, only pro-
voked Charles further. At eleven o'clock that night he re-
turned, and, finding all doors closed against him, declared
that he would force an entrance. It was only with the
greatest difficulty that his companion, Bulkeley, a
brother-in-law of Marshal Berwick, and also a friend of
Montesquieu, dissuaded him from so violent and un-
dignified an enterprise.

This incident was but the first in that series of quarrels
between the Prince and Madame de Talmond which
continued throughout their liaison.

A few days later, as he w^as coming out of the opera,
Charles was arrested and confined in the chateau of
Vincennes. At the same time one of the Prince's servants
was arrested also. Thereupon his mistress wrote curtly
to Maurepas : " Sir, the King's laurels are in full flower,
and the imprisonment of my lacquey cannot add to their
glory. I pray you release him." Maurepas' reply to this
letter was the banishment of the Princess herself ; she
was bidden retire to Torraine, where she joined her
exiled cousin Stanislas. Charles, after a few days' im-
prisonment in the fortress of Vincennes, was conducted
out of Paris, where he never appeared openly again.
Probably he went for a short time to Avignon. But for
the next few months his movements mystified all the
ministers of Europe, who hazarded many a wild guess

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 265

as to his whereabouts. Mr. Lang, with the help of the
Stuart papers at Windsor, has traced him to Lorraine,
where on April 3rd, 1719, he was residing at Luneville, in
the house of Stanislas' physician, and drawing up a plan
for his return to Paris. -^

Apparently he was successful, for in June Mr. Lang
finds him in the French capital. Grimm, the Paris
correspondent of the Empress Catherine the Great, states
that in this city he was in hiding for the next three years.
More probably he merely visited it, in disguise, at frequent
intervals.

It is fairly certain that during these visits his place of
concealment was the famous convent of St. Joseph, in the
Rue St. Dominique in the Faubourg St. Germain. Madame
de Montespan, Louis XIV. 's famous mistress, had founded
this convent when her reign at court was over. Attached
to it were rooms in which ladies of rank might make a
retreat or permanently occupy chambers. Such a suite of
rooms belonged to Madame de Talmond. In another
Madame du Deffand had established her famous salon,
receiving, in her yellow moire drawing-room, decorated
with flame-coloured rosettes, the greatest wits of the age.
Into this yellow salon, in the early hours of the evening,
Madame du Deffand's romantic young companion, Mdlle.
de Lespinasse, used to descend to meet a few of the
choicest spirits, and furtively skim the cream of the con-
versation before her aged employer appeared. Here, too,
lived a lad}' of Jacobite sympathies, Madame de Vasse.
She, also, had a gifted young companion, Mdlle. Ferrand,
of whom we shall hear more hereafter.

In Madame de Talmond's apartment was a small
dressing-room which could be approached by a secret
1 " Pickle the Spy," p. 71.

266 FROM THE CRUSADES

staircase. And here, during his fugitive visits to Paris,
Charles was concealed. In this retreat, and in Madame
du Deffand's rooms, he may have conferred with his
supporters. Bulkeley, we know, attended that lady's
famous Monday evenings, and Montesquieu, another
habitue, had pronounced Jacobite sympathies. Charles
seldom ventured out of doors, although once, in 175 1,
he was recognised at a masked ball at the opera
house.

This was no life for an adventurous high-spirited
Prince. The society of philosophers and fair females
might be all very well as a recreation, but when Charles
saw no one else day or night he grew morbid and cantan-
kerous, while the w^eakness which was ultimately to prove
his ruin began to grow upon him.

Madame de Talmond, for her part, had been ready to
do anything for her bonnie Prince, when, glorified by the
romance of a desperate attempt valiantly hazarded and
bravely lost, he had appeared in Paris. But when the
months dragged on, and her heroic Prince Charming sank
into a mere hunted fugitive, she began to grow tired of
him. Of this there is evidence in many of the Windsor
notes : scribblings of violent wrath or of passionate
affection hastily penned in reply to the remonstrances of
Madame de Talmond, who is addressed as L. P. D. T., or
as Madame de Bauregor (Beauregard). In one of these,
with mock ceremony, Charles writes : —

" We undertake in every point to carry out the will and
the arrangements of our faithful friend and ally, L. P. D. T. ;
and to withdraw at such hours as may please the said P.,
either of the day or night, from her estates, in testimony
whereof we sign. — C." ^

1 Nous nous prometons de suivre en tout les volontes et les arrange-
mens de notre fidele amie et alliee, L. P. D. T. ; nous retirer aux heures

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 267

In another he complains of his lady's persistence in
maintaining even in the most palpable matters that black
is white, and white black, and refusing to acknowledge
herself in the wrong even when she felt that she was.
Such charges surely, from the beginning of time, in every
lover's quarrel have been levelled by the man against the
woman. And whether they arise from innate feminine
perversity or from masculine inability to adopt the
feminine point of view, who would venture to say ?

In this same letter, written on March 28th, 1750,
Charles continues in an aggrieved tone.

" If you don't wish to help me, then it is useless for me
to tell you of my concerns ; if you do wish to protect me,
then don't make my life unhappier than it already is.
If you want to part from me, then tell me so in good
French or Latin." ^

Notwithstanding their disputes, Madame de Talmond
continued to influence the Prince. And it was probably
by her advice that in the autumn of 1750 Charles indulged
in the forlorn hope of a secret expedition to England.
Before he left Paris, he committed to the Princess's care
letters to be given to Louis XV. in the event of Charles's
death, and a document marked, " Credentials given ye
1st September, 1750, to ye P. T." (Princesse de Talmond),
asking the King to regard " Madame La P. de T. ma chere

qu'il lui conviendra a la ditte P., soit du jour, soit de nuit, soit de ses
6tats, en joy de quoi nous signons, C." Quoted by A. Lang, " Pickle
the Spy," pp. 92 — 93.

1 " March 28, 1750. A Madame Bauregor, — Si vous voules me
servire, il ne faut pas me soutenire tou jours que Blan (blanc) est noir,
dans les choses les plus palpable : et jamais Avouer que vous aves tort
meme quant vous le santes. Si vous ne voules pas me servire, il est
inutile que je vous parle de ce qui me regarde : si vous voules me
protege, il ne faut pas me rendre La Vie plus malheureuse qu'il n'est.
Si vous voules m'abandoner il faut me le dire en bon Francois ou
Latin." Quoted by A. Lang {ibid., p. 95).

268 FROM THE CRUSADES

cousine/' as the Prince's representative. On the eve of
starting Charles commanded from Le Brun a miniature of
himself with all the Orders, which Mr. Lang suggests may
have been a parting gift to Madame de Talmond.

Apparently no plans had been made for an organised
rising in the Prince's support. Charles probably went
over partly to see how matters stood, and partly to escape
from the boredom of a tedious solitude in hiding, broken
only by daily quarrels and reconciliations with Madame de
Talmond.

In London, however, Charles ventured to stay but a
few weeks, just time enough to become a member of the
Church of England, to hold a secret conference with his
supporters in Pall Mall, to inspect the defences of the
Tower, to alarm a Jacobite lady by appearing unex-
pectedly at her party, and to drink tea with a Jacobite
gentleman, whose servant detected a resemblance between
his master's visitor and the busts of the Prince which were
being sold in Red Lyon Square. Nevertheless, despite
the lady's alarm and the servant's discernment, the
English Government, searching every town in Europe for
the Young Pretender, never dreamt of his being at their
very doors. By the end of September he was back again
in Paris.

Their short separation had rendered the lovers more
congenial to one another ; and among the Stuart papers
of this period are numerous tiny notes, easily concealed,
and doubtless, says Mr. Lang, '' passed to the lady
furtively," in which Charles protests his passionate
adoration.

But this billing and cooing did not last long. The
Prince soon began to suspect Madame de Talmond of
betraying him politically, while the Princess was ever

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 269

haunted by suspicion of another kind of treachery.
Their quarrels grew more and more violent, frequently
culminating in blows, until the other inmates of St.
Joseph could endure such scenes no longer, and Madame
de Vasse insisted on the pair leaving the convent. On
the eve of starting for Lorraine, Madame de Talmond
wrote to Charles doubtfully : "If you are to me that
which you ought to be, then I embrace you tenderly."

Her suspicions increased when she found that Charles
was corresponding with another fair resident at St. Joseph,
with the highly gifted and philosophical Mdlle. Ferrand.-^
To this learned lady the Prince, always a voracious reader,
used to write asking for all manner of books, from works
on philosophy to the popular novels of the day : " Clarissa
Harlowe," " Joseph Andrews," and *' Tom Jones," in
French as well as English. But not only with his literary
commissions did the Prince charge his erudite correspon-
dent : she was requested to procure for him such homely
articles as a razor-case with four razors, a shaving-mirror,
and a strong pocket-book with a lock. There is no reason
to believe, however, that Mdlle. Ferrand in her short
life — for she died when quite young, in 1752 — ever became
more than a friend to the Prince, although Madame de
Talmond persuaded herself of the contrary. And it was
chiefly the Princess's jealousy of Mdlle. Ferrand that
caused her to leave the Prince late in 1750. After this
rupture, in Charles's letters to Mdlle. Ferrand, the once
adored cousin figures as "la vieille tante " or "la vieille
femme.*' And matters were not improved when the
Prince's correspondent showed one of these letters to
the lady in question. But such indiscretions were

* Mr. Lang in " Pickle the Spy " claims to have identified her with
a Mdlle. Luci of Charles's correspondence.

270 FROM THE CRUSADES

necessarily rare, for the ladies, as may be imagined, were
not often on speaking terms. Their intercourse was
generally carried on in a series of dignified notes, many
of which, copied in the Prince's own handwriting, are
preserved among the Stuart papers.

The " last words " between Charles and Madame de
Talmond were exchanged in the summer of 175 1. Mdlle.
Ferrand died in the autumn of the following year. By
that time Charles had returned to his former mistress.
Miss Walkinshaw.

As far as can be ascertained, Charles and the Princess
never met again. Years afterwards, in 1765, Madame de
Talmond was in Rome. And then Cardinal York wrote
to his brother : —

" She (the Princess) alw^ays speaks of your Royal
Highness with the greatest regard and respect, and really
seems to be sincerely attached to you. She complains
that she never can hear of you, and thinks she deserves a
share in your remembrance."

The Princess had then been six years a widow. Her
much-tried husband before his death had persuaded her
to renounce her philosophical opinions and return to the
Catholic Church. She was now extremely devout.

In the following year she was at Paris occupying
" charitable apartments '' in the Luxembourg. And it
was there that Horace Walpole visited her.

With the affectation of a man of the world, Walpole,
writing to his friend Gray, would have him believe that it
was something of a bore to be obliged to visit this middle-
aged Princess. But in reality he must have been curious
to see the fair shrew about whose quarrels with her
princely lover he must frequently have heard from

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 271

his '' old blind one/' as he called his friend Madame
du Deffand.

" I have been sent for about like an African prince or a
learned canary-bird/' he writes, " and was, in particular,
carried by force to the Princess of Talmond, the Queen's
cousin, who lives in a charitable apartment in the Luxem-
bourg, and was sitting on a small bed hung with saints and
Sobieskis, in a corner of one of those vast chambers,^ lit
by two blinking tapers/'

When after stumbling over a dog, a cat, a footstool,
and other things, Walpole reached her presence, she had
not a syllable to say to him. But the spirit of earlier
days, when for her men had existed only to receive her
commands, soon returned, and before her visitor left she
had so far recovered her conversational powers as to beg
him to send her a lap-dog.

Not long afterwards, Walpole, writing to George
Montagu, relates how one morning the Princess sent him
a picture of two pug dogs and a black and white greyhound
wretchedly painted. At first Walpole could not conceive
what he was to do with " this daub," but in an accompany-
ing note the Princess warned him not to hope to keep it.
It was only to imprint on his memory the size and features
and spots of " Diana," her departed greyhound, in order
that he might get her exactly such another. " Don't you
think my memory will return well stored," asked the
cavalier, " if it is littered with defunct lap-dogs ? She is
so devout that I did not dare send her word that I am not
possessed of a twig of Jacob's broom, with which he
streaked cattle as he pleased."

This for some time appeared to be our last glimpse of

^ Horace Walpole, " Letters," ed. Cunningham, IV., 472, 490 ; and
" Lettres de la Marquise du Deffand ^ Horace Walpole," ed. Paget
Toynbee, 191 2, II., 565, note.

272 FROM THE CRUSADES

the Princesse de Talmond. But in the recently pubHshed
letters of Madame du Deffand to Horace Walpole^we
find that brilliant and malicious lady giving an inimitable
description of the Princess's death-bed scene.

In a letter dated December 29th, 1773, Madame du
Deffand writes : —

" I may tell you that this letter will not be long. For
the news I have to announce is not sufficiently interesting
to require me to sacrifice my hope of sleep. That hope
will be vain perhaps. I have long lost the habit of
sleeping. But Madame de Talmond has lost the habit
of living. So she has surpassed me. She died on the 25th
of this month like a veritable heroine of romance.

'' On the eve of her death she had her doctors, her con-
fessor and her steward round her bed. To her doctors she
said : ' Gentlemen, you have killed me, but it was accord-
ing to your rules and your principles ;' to her confessor :
' You have done your duty by inspiring me with great
terror ' ; to her steward : ' You are here at the request
of my servants, who wish me to make my will. You are
all playing your parts well, but you will agree that I also
am not playing mine badly.'

*' Then she confessed, received the Communion, and
added a codicil to her will which she had made some time
before. Madame Adelaide ^ she created her sole legatee.
Her jewels she bequeathed to Madame Adelaide and her
sisters,^ her watch and her porcelain to M. de Maurepas,
and small legacies to old friends with whom she had
quarrelled, and who had figured in her former will which
she had not revoked. For her burial," concluded
Madame du Deffand, '' the Princess had prepared a gown
of blue and silver and a beautiful lace cap ; but the Arch-
bishop, disapproving of such display, commanded that
gown and cap should be sold for the benefit of the poor."

^ Ed. cit., 1912, II., 564 — 565.
2 Louis XV. 's eldest daughter,
^ A toutes mesdames.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 273

CHAPTER XI

THE FAMILY DURING THE REVOLUTION.
1764— 1839.

One can hardly imagine irony more grim than that
with which, on the verge of the Revolution, the pastoral
pictures of the French nobility represent France as a land
where it is always afternoon. In these pictures, the
inhabitants of France seem to have no other care than to
play at being peasants and peasantesses, and to follow the
example set by their fascinating Queen, who, in white
cambric frock, straw hat and muslin fichu, superintends
the milking of cows in her hameau at Versailles.

Then, as now, the simple life was all the fashion. To the
rumbling thunder of the Revolution these fine folk in
their mock simplicity turned a deaf ear. If ever an echo
of its rolling broke in upon their complacence they drowned
it by tuning up their violins for villagers to dance to.

Such thoughts are suggested by an interesting La
Tremoille group which represents the Ducal family
some ten years before the outbreak of the Revolution.-^
Here the Duke and Duchess, Jean Bretagne^ and Marie de
Salm, seated upon a rock, in a garden, with a rivulet
flowing at their feet, are surrounded by their four sons,
boys of some ten or twelve summers, all busily engaged
in various rural pursuits.

1 Reproduced in " Souvenirs de la Revolution," published by Duke
Louis Charles, 1901.

1737— 1792.

C.R.

274 FROM THE CRUSADES

The Prince Talmond/ who was to die a brave death in
La Vendee, is placidly watering plants ; while his twin
brother, Charles Auguste,^ whose own head was to fall
beneath the guillotine, here, armed with garden shears,
is apparently intent on himself decapitating innocent
flowers. The other two brothers, eldest and youngest of
the family, the Prince de Tarente ^ and the Prince de La
Tremoille,* both destined to wander through Europe
serving in foreign armies against their Sans-culottes
countrymen, now, equipped one with gun the other with
fishing rod, figure as the sportsmen of this family picture.

Real country life played no part in the upbringing of
these four brothers. The La Tremoilles had long ago
forsaken their country castles for residence in Paris.
There Duke Jean occupied a hotel in the Palais Royal,
which was then the most fashionable quarter.

With the shifting of the centre of fashion from the left
to the right bank of the Seine, the La Tremoilles had
abandoned their beautiful mansion,^ one of the finest
gems of fifteenth century architecture, which the great
Louis de La Tremoille had, in 1490, built near the
Luxembourg.

Then, as now, however, the intellectual centre con-
tinued on the left bank, and it was at the college of Plessis,
incorporated by Cardinal Richelieu's will with the
Sorbonne, that Duke Jean's sons were educated. After a

1 Antoine Philippe de La Tremoille, 1765 — 1794.

2 He became Dean of Strasbourg, and was executed in June, 1794.
^ Charles Bretagne, later Due de La Tremoille, 1764 — 1839.

* Louis Stanislas Kotzka, 1768 — 1837.

* See Viollet-le-Duc, " Dictionnaire Raisonn6 de 1' Architecture Fran-
caise," 1858 — 1868, VI., 282 — 284. Its chief entrance was in the
Rue des Bourdonnais, but its garden extended to the Rue Tirechappe.
In 1840 the hotel was still standing. Then Viollet-le-Duc, in collabora-
tion with the Commissioners of Historical Monuments, endeavoured in
vain to save it from destruction. All he could do was to procure the
preservation in the Musee des Beaux Arts of a few of its fragments.

FACADE OF THE HOTEL DE LA TREMOILLE AT PARIS

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 275

few years at college three of the princes, Charles Bretagne,
Antoine Philippe and Louis Stanislas, entered the army.
Charles Auguste took orders and became eventually Dean
of Strasbourg.

The eldest son, Charles, Prince de Tarente, was married
young, when a mere boy, at the age of sixteen, to a great
heiress, Emmannuelle, the Duchesse de Chatillon's second
daughter, who was a year and a half her husband's senior.
In the Prince's extremely frank Recollections,-^ written
after the turmoil of the Revolution had subsided, he
admits that at the time of their marriage, his bride's only
attraction was her expectation of an income of 200,000
francs. For, as a girl of seventeen, Emmannuelle, who
was later to develop into a handsome woman, was nothing
but a shy gawky miss. From so unalluring a wife,
Emmannuelle's boy bridegroom did not grieve to find
himself compelled to part immediately after the nuptial
ceremony by a summons to join his regiment in Normandy.

Their military duties left the La Tremoille princes
ample time for the pursuit of pleasure, which they eagerly
followed, not along those rural paths which their family
portrait might suggest, but amidst the gaieties and
dissipations of towns and watering-places, where the
playthings they most affected were not garden shears or
watering-pots or pruning hooks so much as race-horses,
cards and the wiles of fair women.

Brave soldiers they all were, but voluptuaries too.
The Prince de Tarente in his Recollections does not hesi-
tate to confess as much. There he admits that at nineteen
he lost a fortune in one bout of card-playing which lasted
twenty-four continuous hours, and that to pay his

1 Published by his son, Duke Louis Charles, in " Les La Tr^moilles
pendant cinq. Si^cles," Vol. V. Passages from them also the Dufte
has included in " Les Souvenirs de La Princesse de Tarente."

T Z

276 FROM THE CRUSADES

gambling debts his mother persuaded the Duke, his
father, to mortgage lands near Thouars.

After this disaster the Prince de Tarente vowed to
abjure cards, and to the letter of his resolution he
vigorously adhered for the rest of his days. But other
games of chance as well as amours, horse-racing, and at
least two duels contributed to his adventurous career an
equal excitement.

This gay life, doubtless the typical existence of many a
young French noble of that time, the Prince frankly
describes in his Souvenirs : —

" For two summers," he writes, " I visited the Spa of
Plombieres, where I ran my horses against the English,
among others the Duke of Bedford.-^ My losses were
about equal to my gains. But the dash I was cutting
attracted the attention of a lady, who was then the rage,
rather for her wit than her beauty, for her face was
merely fresh and animated. With my philosophical
(sic) ideas as to the fairness of women I should have
preferred a pretty, fresh grisette to a princess devoid of
those real attractions ; so I began by chaffing the assiduous
courtiers of this queen of fashion. She, piqued by my
behaviour, swore to attach me to her train. She
succeeded. Nevertheless I remained heart-whole, and
my flattered pride was the only tie which for four or
five years bound me to her."

The Prince de Tarente was the most dissipated of the
three brothers. But Antoine, the La Vendee hero, was
almost as much addicted to pleasure. At twenty -five he
was already afflicted with the family's tendency to
corpulence, and with so much more than a tendency to the
family gout that at times during the La Vendee campaigns

1 This was Fox's famous friend, and Burke's Mte noir, ruthlessly-
satirised in the " Anti- Jacobin."

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 277

he was disabled from going into action. This weakness,
however, did not prevent him from playing a heroic part
during the La Vendee struggle. Yet war did not absorb
him so deeply but that he found time during its progress
for more than one amorous intrigue.

Prince Louis de La Tremoille, the youngest of the three
brothers, served the royal cause as a soldier in La Vendee
and as a diplomat at various European courts. Yet he,
too, was capable of controlling his royalist ardour in order
for a while to pursue his own interest. For some years
during the Revolution period he became a fortune-hunter,
and we shall find him dancing attendance on his aged
kinswoman Sophie, Countess Bentinck,^ in the vain hope
that she would make him her heir.

It was probably soon after the famous Quatorze Juillet
that Duke Jean and his Duchess committed what the
Republicans described as " the crime of emigration," and
sought refuge in Savoy, turning their backs upon a land
which, in their opinion, hordes of barbarians were striving

1 Table showing the relationship of Sophie, Countess Bentinck, to
the La Tr^moilles : —

Charles Henry, Prince de Tarente, d. 1 670.

Charles Hollande, Charlotte Am^lie,

Due de La Tremoille. Comtesse d'Altenburg.

Charles Bretagne, Anthony, Comte d'Altenburg.

Due de La Tremoille. I

I I

Charles Armand Rene, Sophie, m. Count Bentinck,

Due de La Tremoille. 2nd son of the ist Earl of

I Portland.

Jean Bretagne,
Due de La Tremoille.
I

Charles Bretagne, Louis, Prince de
Due de La Tremoille. La Tremoille.

278 FROM THE CRUSADES

to convert " into a savage country peopled by a few
tribes of cannibals." But the La Tremoilles had a
further inducement for their flight, in the fact that the
Duchess was suffering from consumption, of, which she
died at Nice in 1790.

Round their beloved mother's death-bed gathered her
four sons, coming, three of them from France, and the
eldest, Charles Bretagne, from Turin, which was then the
headquarters of the royal princes. After the funeral of
the Duchess, leaving their father with his youngest son in
Savoy, where two years later, in May, 1792, the Duke
died at Chambery, the La Tremoille brothers dispersed,
never, all four of them, to meet again. Two, as we have
seen, were to perish during the Revolution ; two, after
many adventures in various countries of Europe, returned
with ruined fortunes and disappointed hopes, to settle in
their native land.

A few months after Duke Jean's death, the Revolution
Government, seized the La Tremoille estates, by virtue
of two laws passed by the Legislative Assembly decree-
ing the confiscation of emigrants' property. In vain did
the family represent that Duke Jean was not an emigre,
having left France on account of his wife's health ; the
Revolutionaries continued to hold those vast domains in
the west, accumulated in La Tremoille hands throughout
five centuries. Seven years later by the Directory's
order we find the Thouars lands being sold by auction
for the State's benefit.

At the time of her mother-in-law's death, the Prince de
Tarente's wife, Emmannuelle de Chatillon, was in Paris.
In 1785 she had become lady-in-waiting to Marie
Antoinette ; and with the beautiful Queen whom she
adored, she remained through all the crises of the

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 279

Revolution until that fatal day when V Autrichienne was
imprisoned in the Temple.

So, while her husband had been flaunting fashion at
race-courses and spas, the Princesse de Tarente had
remained in the heart of things at Paris. She had now
grown into a beautiful, clever woman. And La Tremoille
in describing his dissipations at Plombieres boasts of his
conjugal fidehty : —

" All this while," he writes, " I did not neglect my
wife. Her only failing was that she did not bear
me children. However, in the winter of 17S8 — 9, she
gave birth to a daughter, whom we called Caroline. I
learnt her death in the beginning of 1791, at Turin, that
earUest nest of the emigrants, where I had joined the
Comte d'Artois.'*

Emmannuelle de Chatillon can never have laboured
under any illusion with regard to her husband. From
her wedding day, when he left her at the church door,
until the end of her life, she seems to have regarded him as
a wayward child. Her affection for the Queen was her
great passion ; and when the Prince de Tarente wrote
asking his wife to join him abroad, she refused to forsake
her mistress.

The Princess as well as her husband has left us her
recollections. In the thrilling pages of this, one of
the most interesting of Revolution records, the writer,
with graphic pen, describes the most stirring events of
those stirring times, from the terrible October days
when the Baker, the Baker's wife and the Baker's boy
were brought by a howling mob from Versailles to Paris,
all through the confinement of that Baker's family in the
Tuileries, until the fatal morning of August loth, 1792,

28o FROM THE CRUSADES

when they walked into the Hon's mouth and took refuge
with the Assembly.

From a window in the Palace, on that sad morning, the
Princess watched her beloved Queen, with her husband,
children and sister-in-law, walk across the gardens to the
Monastery of the Feuillants, there to throw themselves on
the mercy of the Convention. Madame de Tarente then
little thought that she was gazing on her adored sovereign
for the last time : she expected the royal family to
return in an hour or so. But very soon after their
departure the sound of firing was heard, and the noise of
the mob breaking into the Palace. The Princess with
other ladies of the Queen's suite locked themselves in one
of the royal apartments. There, like persons frightened
by a thunderstorm, they drew down the blinds, closed the
shutters and lit all the candles, hoping thus to shut out
the hideous yells of the mob, the noise of firing, and the
sight of the grim scenes which were being enacted in the
Palace gardens. But the infuriated horde soon broke
through all the bolts and bars which these defenceless
women had erected against them. In the midst of the
panic and confusion which ensued one of the invaders, his
dark heart illuminated by a flash of pity, cried, " don't
hurt the women." Madame de Tarente immediately
seized her opportunity, and entreating mercy, obtained
protection for herself, for a young girl who had been com-
mitted to her charge, and for an elderly lady. Their
deliverer, conducting them through the desolated Palace,
past the dead bodies of the King's retainers, brought them
out by a side door on to the quay near the Pont Royal.
There he left them to contend alone with new adventures.
Making their way along the lower path by the riverside,
the fugitives attracted the attention of loiterers on the

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 281

opposite bank : they were fired upon and then seized by
a group of Revolutionaries. Dragged in the broihng
August sun across the Place Louis Quinze/ these unhappy
women were taken to a committee of the Section sitting
in the Rue Neuve-des-Capucins. There, in a member of
the committee they were fortunate in finding a protector.
Dismissing the angry mob with the promise that the
captives should be brought to justice, he welcomed the
ladies kindly and, after their pursuers had dispersed, sent
them well guarded to the house of Madame de Tarente's
grandmother, the Duchesse de la Valliere.

In her grandmother's house for some days the Princess
remained in concealment, longing to join her Queen in the
Temple prison, and filled with envy when the young
companion of her escape, Pauline de Tourzel, was sum-
moned to her Sovereign's side.

It was not the Temple but the Abbaye prison that
awaited Madame de Tarente. Her hiding place was dis-
covered, and to the Abbaye, after trial by one of the
Revolution committees, she was taken on August 27th.
Her entrance into that grim abode she has vividly de-
scribed in her Recollections. Dragged through what
appeared hke a narrow slit in the wall, as the prison door
banged behind her, its noise resounded to the depths of her
heart.

" At the sound of the shooting of the bolts,'* she
writes, " I felt myself cut off from the whole world. It
was ten o'clock in the evening. A horrible smell of gin
made me feel sick. With morbid curiosity I gazed around
me, but could see nothing."

For eight days Madame de Tarente remained in the
Abbaye. On September 2nd began the terrible prison

^ Now Place de la Concorde.

282 FROM THE CRUSADES

massacres. All the hideous scenes of those two black
days and nights the Princess paints in striking colours.
She herself only narrowly escaped sharing the horrible
fate of the Princesse de Lamballe. By a marvellous piece
of good fortune, Madame de Tarente's sufferings had from
the first inspired pity in the heart of a certain M. Chancey,
a member of the committee which had tried her. Now
for the second time she owed her deliverance to a Revo-
lutionary. And it was through M. Chancey's efforts,
seconded by what can only be described as wonderful good
luck, that the Princess escaped with her life.

Into the gory hands of the murderous mob pressing
round the prison gates like hungry beasts of prey, Madame
de Tarente was delivered, not as a victim to be slaughtered,
but as a captive wrongly accused, whose innocence had
now been estabhshed. " A triumph for Madame," cried
her saviour. Two hundred voices echoed, " A triumph
for Madame." And almost fainting, but clutching
tightly in her hand the dirty, crumpled, mud-bespattered
scrap of paper, which was the charter of her liberty, the
Princess was raised shoulder high and carried through the
crowd, who as warmly applauded her escape as but a few
moments before they had welcomed the dying groans of
their victims. Entering a carriage waiting at the end of
the street, Madame de Tarente was driven to the house of
her mother, the Duchesse de Chatillon, in the Rue du Bac.

But there the Queen's ci-devant lady-in-waiting was by
no means safe from Republican hatred ; and so, yielding
to her friends' entreaties, she consented to emigrate. At
six o'clock in the morning, on September 13th, accom-
panied by her brother-in-law, Antoine PhiUppe, Prince de
Talmond, she passed through the garden gate of the
Duchess's house and walked down to the Pont Royal,

MARIE ANTOINETTE AFTER THE KING'S DEATH
From a portrait drawn in the Temple and presented to the Princesse de Tarente

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 283

where she entered a cab, a curious kind of a vehicle, so it
seemed to her, for an aristocrat to drive in. By this
plebeian mode of conveyance she reached Amiens.
Thence the bourgeois cab returned to Paris, while its
occupants in a phaeton continued their way as far as
Boulogne.

There, having been warned that Revolutionary agents
were observing their movements, it was deemed dangerous
to wait for the packet which should start for England on
the morrow. So, at midnight, crouching in the hold of a
dirty little boat, to which she had been carried by a still
dirtier sailor, Madame de Tarente Wc^tched the dark blue
sky, the glittering stars and the receding shores of France.

The land of her birth she was never to see again, except
once, years later, when for a brief space, before starting
for a distant land, she returned to visit her little daughter's
grave.

In this hazardous voyage the Princess was still accom-
panied by her faithful brother-in-law, Talmond, who
but a few months later was to give his life for the King in
La Vendee. This was Talmond's second visit to England
that year. During the Revolution period the La Tremoille
brothers were constantly crossing the Channel to visit
their friends among the EngHsh aristocracy, and to solicit
aid from the English Government for the royal cause in
France.

Among the La Tremoilles' friends in England was the
Marquis of Queensberry, the famous " old Q." He now
placed at the Princess's disposal his beautiful villa at
Richmond, where, during her five years' residence ^ in
England, Madame de Tarente dwelt, in company with

^ 1792 — 1797.

284 FROM THE CRUSADES

that fair lady of disputed parentage, Maria Fagniani
afterwards Countess of Yarmouth.^

It was at Richmond that the Princess wrote her
Recollections. And it was there that she was rejoined by
her husband. The Prince de Tarente, or Due de La
Tremoille,^ as he now by courtesy might be called, his
father having died in this year, was then living with other
French nobles in a house at Bedford. After a series of
disasters resulting from what he has himself described as
" his natural frivolity and thoughtlessness," his estate had
been considerably reduced, and, when his wife arrived in
England, the Duke was in great financial embarrassment.

The story of his life since his mother's death in 1790
is the record of constant wanderings through Europe in
search of pleasure, or in the performance of some diplo-
matic mission — driving in a cabriolet from Turin to
Rome, and from Rome to Mantua, riding post-haste,
almost incessantly, so he says, for four days and five
nights from Mantua to Nice. Then there followed a gay
winter in London, where the Prince of Wales regarded
him as a leader of fashion, admiring his shoe-buckles and
borrowing his valet. In the spring, in the midst of a ball,
where he was " dancing with a fair one who was by no
means deaf to his gallant propositions," the news of the
French Republic's declaration of war summoned him
back to the Continent.

Joining the Comte d'Artois, to whom he became aide-
de-camp. La Tremoille soon found himself at Coblentz,
where he was bored to death by the constant bickerings of
the royalist leaders, and by the seriousness of the emigre
women.

1 Both "Q." and George Selwyn claimed to be her father.

2 All titles of nobility had been abolished by the National Assembly
in the early days of the Revolution.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 285

"The ladies here freeze me/' he wrote to the Duchesse
de Piennes in England. " For the five days I have been
here I have not been able to say a single word to them . . .
I can't endure women who want to direct empires and who
think of anything save their own and others' pleasure."

Over the campaign of 1792 the Prince in his Recollec-
tions passes lightly, forbearing to mention that at his own
expense he raised and equipped a company of hussars.

At the close of the campaign, when the army went into
winter quarters, he obtained permission to go to Vienna,
where he hoped to obtain an imperial fief to compensate
for his lost French estates.

The gaieties of his life in London during the previous
winter and of a visit to the waters of Spa in the spring,
combined with the expenses of the war, had drained his
purse. And in order to recover his fortunes, La Tremoille
listened readily to an adventurer, one Comte Armand,
whom he met on the road to Vienna, and who boasted
that he was possessed of an infallible tip for winning huge
sums at rouge et noir. Count Armand attached himself
to the Duke, and soon became his evil genius. It was at
the Count's suggestion that, in order to obtain money for
his hazardous play. La Tremoille borrowed from the
confiding Due de Richelieu, then at Vienna, a valuable
family heirloom, in the shape of a sword set with diamonds.
The only bankers likely to offer an adequate sum on the
security of the sword were to be found in London. Conse-
quently La Tremoille, \vith his sword and his bad angel,
without waiting for the Emperor's reply to his request,
set out to drive across Europe.

It was late autumn ; the weather was abominable, and
the roads worse ; moreover, in order to avoid falling in
with the RepubHcan army, the Duke and his companion

286 FROM THE CRUSADES

were compelled to follow circuitous routes and by-ways,
on one of which their carriage was overturned. In the
end, however, they reached Ostend in safety, and there
embarked for London. At the Court of St. James's, La
Tremoille received a hearty welcome. With the money
raised on the sword he was able to bay horses and set up a
large establishment. The Prince of Wales carried him off
to Basingstoke ; the Duke of Bedford, with whom we
found him consorting at Plombieres, invited him to hunt
at Woburn Abbey. Armand meanwhile was left in
London to stake what remained of the borrowed capital
at rouge et noir.

In such gay society, while his wife was in the Abbaye
prison, and his Sovereign was being tried for his life, the
Duke passed the autumn and winter of 1792 — 3.

" Our amusements," he writes, " were hardly decorous,
for with the Prince of Wales the order of the day was to
drink without ceasing, so that when bedtime came I could
not stand upon my legs."

From such conviviality in the country La Tremoille was
summoned back to London by the news that Count
Armand's infallible tip had failed, that luck was turning
against him, and that the money raised on the sword was
vanishing rapidly. The Duke returned to London to find
himself once again reduced to poverty. He sold up his
estabHshment, which, he writes, had become a refuge for
French adventurers of both sexes, " a veritable den of
thieves," and went down to Bedford to join his friends,
the Duke and Duchess of Piennes. Thence he went over
to Richmond to visit his wife.

The meeting between the Duke and Duchess can hardly
have been a very pleasant one. While Madame de
Tarente had been loyally serving her King and Queen,

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 287

enduring imprisonment and risking death for their sakes,
her husband had been absorbed in the pursuit of pleasure.
Madame de Tarente was scandaHsed by his foUies ; but
while reproaching him bitterly, she generously placed
her fortune at his disposal. His wife's financial help,
however, the Prince refused ; " she needed all her
resources for herself," he writes.

Soon afterwards came the news of the execution of
Louis XVL, which was followed by England's declaration
of war against the French Republic. For service in this
war several new cavalry regiments were raised ; and over
one of them La Tremoille would have received the
command, had it not been for what the Duke himself
describes as his own stupid blunder. It happened in the
following manner. As he was passing by Mrs. Fitz-
herbert's house in London, the Prince of Wales came to
the window and called out : " My dear Prince, I have
\ some good news for you ; I appoint you colonel of a
regiment of light cavalry we are about to raise ; you are
to enter our service.'' To this announcement La Tre-
moille answered : " I am truly sensible of the amiability
of your Royal Highness, but, having taken service with
Monseigneur, le Prince de Conde, I cannot accept your
Highness '3 offer without his permission." No sooner
were the words out of his mouth than La Tremoille
realised their awkwardness ; for the Prince turned pale
with anger and said : "If that is so, then consider my
proposal as if it had never been made, and I wish you
good luck."

From that day all relations between the Duke and the
Prince of Wales ceased. For La Tremoille's character
this breach with his royal friend was by no means
disastrous, for it converted him from a mere pleasure-

288 FROM THE CRUSADES

seeking man of fashion into an energetic, courageous
soldier, fighting with loyalty and devotion in his Sovereign's
cause.

Immediately after his quarrel with the Prince La
Tremoille left England for the Continent. But, although
he had thus thoughtlessly represented himself as engaged
to the Prince de Conde, he knew full well that in Conde's
army he would not be likely to find employment. For
the royalist princes, especially the Comte d'Artois, could
not forgive him for forsaking them and going to England
after the campaign of 1792.

Nevertheless, disembarking at Ostend, the Duke,
accompanied by his brother, Prince Louis, proceeded to
join Conde's army on the Rhine. On the way he passed
through Brussels, where he borrowed money from his
mother's relatives on the security of her estate. But on
his arrival at Bingen, then the headquarters of the emigres,
La Tremoille found himself regarded as a deserter because
of his winter spent in England.

He, therefore, resolved to return to Vienna and investi-
gate the progress made by his demand for an imperial
fief which the Emperor had referred to the Aulic Council.
At Vienna he found that the Council, before granting his
request, would require the production of a capital sum
which far exceeded his means.

The next chapter of his adventures may best be related
in the Duke's own words.

" I became intimate," he writes, " with the amiable
Marquis del Gallo, Neapolitan ambassador at the court of
Vienna, who offered me the rank of colonel aide-de-camp
to his sovereign with a salary of 8,000 to 10,000 francs.
I accepted, forgetting that I was thus tacitly renouncing
my family's claim to the kingdom of Naples. The

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 289

recognition of my title, Prince of Taranto/ was refused
and I was treated as a grandee of Spain. True I was
addressed as Excellency, but then German princelets were
called your Highness, while I was only Signor Principe
like the grandson of any fishmonger rich enough to buy
the title."

Having accepted Gallo's offer. La Tremoille apparently
went to Naples. For he goes on to relate his dealings
with the famous Englishman who was at that time
governing the Neapolitan kingdom.

" In my first interview with General Acton,^ the
favourite minister of Queen Caroline and more powerful
than King Ferdinand," he writes, " I realised that in
order to please him I must become the chief of his shirri,
see everything, hear everything, then report everything.
If I would consent, then I should be colonel of a
Macedonian (or an Albanian) regiment in garrison at
Naples, a horde of scoundrels always hatching revo-
lutionary plots which had to be discovered. But I had
no wish to serve as chief of police to this hard-featured,
tyrannical-looking, atrabilious satrap. After dinner I
gave him to understand that the Marquis del Gallo had
spoken to me of the rank of a colonel aide-de-camp to the
King, with the command of an auxiliary corps in Lom-
bardy. The next day the King and Queen most
graciously received me. Two days later I had my com-
mission and set out for Lombardy, there to join five
cavalry regiments, commanded by Cuto. This old general

1 Henceforth until its formal recognition by Louis XVIII. in 1819,
the title " Prince of Taranto " seems to have been in abeyance. After
Wagram, Napoleon created General Macdonald Duke of Taranto.

2 Sir John Acton (1736 — 1811), son of a London goldsmith and a
French lady of Besan9on, where Acton was born. Having entered the
Tuscan navy, Acton so distinguished himself in that service that he was
entrusted with the organisation of the Neapolitan naval forces. He
then became Commander-in-Chief of the Neapolitan army and Prime
Minister. He detested the French, and his influence over Queen
Caroline, whose lover he is said to have been, was disastrous for the
kingdom of Naples.

C.R. U

290 FROM THE CRUSADES

treated me with the coldest and most casual politeness.
He wrongly regarded me as General Acton's spy, and
seemed determined to prove me as useless as the fifth
wheel of a cart. He gave me nothing to do and every day
when I asked him for orders, he would reply : '* Nothing
at all ; niente a fatto." I sat at his table with his two
aides-de-camp ; but it was far from good, for he was a
veritable skinflint."

To his great relief, after a short time with this old
curmudgeon, La Tremoille was ordered to join Radetzky,
chief staff officer and aide-de-camp to Beaulieu, who in
1796 was appointed commander-in-chief of the Austrian
army in North Italy. In Radetzky 's service there was
no lack of employment. La Tremoille's knowledge of
German and Italian rendered him invaluable as corre-
spondent of the army, while his quickness of perception
and the alertness of movement he had cultivated in the
hunting field enabled him to do first-rate work as a scout.

In that memorable retreat of Beaulieu's forces pursued
by Buonaparte across the plain of Lombardy, La Tremoille
commanded in the rearguard. He was present at the
Battle of Lodi. That action, though it lasted but twenty
minutes, involved, writes the Duke, the most terrible
slaughter he had ever seen.

During the following day and two nights Radetzky kept
La Tremoille busy reconnoitring. For the whole of the
day after Lodi, from four o'clock in the morning until
darkness fell, he had not a moment in which to take food.

" On the second night," he writes, '* Radetzky entrusted
me with the delicate and difficult task of reconnoitring
along the Adigio and of distinguishing between our friends
and our foes. . . . The troops were so close together that
in the darkness it was difficult to tell whether the fires in

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 291

the bivouacs belonged to the French or to the Austiians.
We were surrounded by them. One attracted my atten-
tion. It was a Httle off the road leading up to the Gam-
barani Bridge. This was no joke, and it was imperative
to discover to which side it belonged. I had only taken
my orderly with me. Him I left to look after my horse.
Then, crawling on my stomach, noiselessly through the
vines, I came to within fifteen feet of a French bivouac
fire. They had two or three wounded with them. They
were swearing and cursing the Austrians, whom they said
they would like to throw into the Adigio. And in truth
they were on the point of doing it. Yet we were still in a
position to cross the river."

Then the Duke relates how this passage was effected in
the darkness, how the wheels of carts and gun-carriages
,were bound round with straw, and how, thanks to German
taciturnity, a column of 9,000 to 10,000 men with all their
artillery and baggage wagons passed 300 paces from the
enemy's main body without being heard.

La Tremoille was uncertain whether, during this
campaign, he ever actually saw Buonaparte. There was
a general on horseback on the Bridge at Lodi who may
have been he. But he was enveloped in smoke, and the
Prince, from portraits he saw afterwards, thought it more
likely to have been Augereau.

The crossing of the Adigio closed the campaign of 1796.
His Neapolitan cavalry, under the command of a brave
Spaniard, Marshal Ruitz, La Tremoille sent into winter
quarters in the Tyrol, while he himself visited Lausanne,
Turin and Venice. Count Radetzky, highly pleased with
his services, had mentioned him in the most flattering
manner in the reports he had sent to Vienna.

It was about this time that the Duchesse de La
Tremoille, whom her husband had left in England, was

u 2

292 FROM THE CRUSADES

invited by the Czar and Czarina to become lady-in-waiting
at the court of St. Petersburg.

Paul I. and his wife, Maria Feodorovna, before their
accession to the throne of all the Russias, had visited
Paris incognito as the Comte and Comtesse du Nord.
And there at the house of her grandmother, the Duchesse
de la Valliere, Madame de Tarente had made their
acquaintance. She now accepted their invitation, and set
sail for Cronstadt on board a Russian frigate which they
had sent for her. In Russia, suffering much, as long as he
Hved, from the vagaries of the eccentric Czar Paul,^ the
Duchess continued to reside until her death in 1814.
That her husband did not join her there was not his fault ;
for from his wife's correspondence ^ we learn that he more
than once proposed coming to St. Petersburg. But after
his unfortunate experience in England no doubt the
Duchess dreaded for him an idle life of pleasure among the
French emigres who had thronged to the Russian capital.
And she was doubtless right. For the Duke's voluptuous-
ness and frivolity must there have led him into follies as
wild as those he had committed in England and elsewhere.
It was also more in accordance with the traditions of
his house that he should remain in Italy fighting against
the enemies of his King.

Unhappily, however, through the campaign of 1797, as
the result of a disagreement between Austria and Naples,
there was nothing for La Tremoille to do but vegetate at
Naples. This he detested. Naples did not possess the
attractions of London or Vienna. Moreover, he was
surrounded by enemies, for Queen Caroline, Sir John

1 Fortunately he died in 1801. For an interesting account of his
reign, see K. Waliszewski, " Le Fils de la Grande Catherine " (191 2).

2 Published with her " Souvenirs " by Duke Louis Charles de La
Tremoille.

EMMANUELLE DE CHATILLON, PRINCESSE DE TARENTE
AND DUCHESSE DE LA TREMOILLE

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 293

Acton and the notorious Lady Hamilton, who was then
very powerful at Naples, all disliked the French. The
Neapolitan officers, too, were jealous of this French Duke,
and accused him of treachery in the previous campaign.

The King, however, remained his friend; and in the
following year La Tremoille received a command in
General Mack's army, first under the Prince of Hesse
Philipstal, whom he disliked for having worsted him in
love, and then under a personal friend, the Chevalier de
Saxe. In the neighbourhood of Rome there was a good
deal of fighting with the French. At Civita Castellana,
Saxe received a bullet in the stomach, whereupon his
troops, crying " the general is dead," turned and fled in
disorder. There was a general rout, and the soldiers fired
upon their officers when they attempted to rally them.

In the place of Saxe, who was unable to travel, La
Tremoille was summoned to Rome to report on this
disaster to Acton and King Ferdinand. The Duke him-
self was suffering from an attack of fever and was almost
delirious. Although the King and his minister received
him kindly, La Tremoille a few days later read in the
newspaper that he was accused of treason and held
responsible for the rout at Civita Castellana. Considering
the number of enemies he seems to have made at the
Neapolitan court no one can be astonished at this charge
being brought against him. No accusation could have
been more serious. On a similar charge Great Britain
only a few decades earlier had tried and condemned to
death a distinguished admiral. From so uncivilised a
power as Naples then was La Tremoille could expect no
better treatment.

The circulation of so terrible a report filled the Duke's
relatives with horror. His only surviving brother,

294 FROM THE CRUSADES

Prince Louis de La Tremoille, was then living with
Countess Bentinck at Hamburg. And in a letter to her
grand-daughter in London the Countess writes ^ :

" We have had a very unpleasant time here the last
three or four weeks. . . . The Italian newspapers, copied
by those of the Empire, told us cruel, humiliating news of
the Due de La Tremoille, Prince de Tarente . . . whose
brother. Prince Louis de La Tremoille, was, and still is,
staying with me. The Duke is a general in the King of
Naples' service, and was commanding the advance guard
at the Battle of Calvi.^ The papers said that the chief
cause of the loss of this decisive battle was the treachery
and cowardice of the Duke. You can imagine that this
was enough to strike us to the soul with horror. Two
brothers ^ have already died like heroes in God's cause and
the King's, and the one who is here has sacrificed himself
for the last seven or eight years, and has given up such
small means as were left him, has lost his health and has
risked his life at least twenty times. He was absolutely
petrified with horror. In fact, I heard he would not be
able to survive the frightful idea of seeing the head of his
house covered with shame."

Later in this same letter, the Countess relates how the
cloud of their sorrow lifted in an unexpected manner.

" In spite of the enormous difficulty," she continued,
*' which the court of Vienna itself experiences in obtaining
news from those Italian places, we were so fortunate as to
receive two letters (one from a general officer of first rank
and in the same service) which not only completely efface

1 On February 19th, 1799. The original letter is in the possession of
Mr. Aldenburg Bentinck at Indio, in Devonshire. It is quoted by
Mrs. Aubrey Le Blond in her " Life of Sophie, Countess Bentinck,"
II., 210 — 211.

2 Presumably the same as Civita Castellana.

^ Antoine Philippe, Prince de Talmond, condemned to death by the
revolutionary court-martial and executed. Charles Auguste, Dean of
Strasbourg, guillotined at Paris.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 295

that black calumny, but tell us that, far from being want-
ing in courage and fidelity to his sovereign and benefactor,
the Duke de La Tremoille in resisting those traitors who
wished to give themselves up to the French did everything
that the greatest zeal and valour could inspire, and nearly
fell a victim himself, but escaped as by a miracle from the
rage of those regiments who had been corrupted and
seduced by the French. Neither he nor his colleague, the
brave ChevaHer de Saxe, could avoid their malicious and
infernal slanders, the falsehood of which is now publicly
proclaimed, and the King, his master, is informed of and
touched by his fidelity, his innocence and his misfortune.
We were transported with joy at the news, which gave new
life to our amiable young Prince, who has made himself
loved and esteemed by everyone and whose state was
pitiable. I entreat you to tell all this to the Duke of
Portland ; the Prince also urgently desires it, considering
his esteem one of the greatest treasures in the world and
knowing his brother's honour safe in the eyes of the
majority when the Duke himself pronounces it to be above
reproach."

Unhappily, this rejoicing was premature. The evil
reports continued ; and five months after she wrote this
letter, the Countess enters in her diary : " The Prince de
La Tremoille left to-day, having given me terrible news
last night at midnight." ^

The " terrible news " to which the Countess referred
concerned doubtless the doings of the Duke since the first
appearance of that fatal slander. In a furious letter to
Acton, in which he wrote that to be a private soldier in
La Vendee was better than being general under such a
minister, he resigned his commission. Then, dismissing
his aide-de-camp and his servants, accompanied only by
one Hungarian soldier, he left Rome, and by way of

^ On July 4th, 1799. See Mrs. Aubrey de Blond, op. cit. II., 233.

296 FROM THE CRUSADES

Orbit ello went to Florence. There his cousin, the Marquise
de GroUier, and an old friend, the Bailli de Crussol, a
former captain under the Comte d'Artois, afraid to receive
one labouring under so terrible an accusation, sent him to
the Vanini inn, where he was betrayed into the hands of
the Neapolitan Minister, who had him arrested.

After a brief confinement in the citadel of Leghorn,
La Tremoille was taken to Palermo, whither the
Neapolitan court had fled from the Revolution in Naples.
In Sicily, writes the Duke in his Souvenirs, the King and
Queen were inclined to be indulgent and to recommend
him to the court of Denmark. But the malice of the
" atrabilious satrap " still pursued him. The only con-
dition on which Acton would liberate him was that he
should make good his bravado and become a soldier in
La Vendee. With this object the Duke was permitted to
embark at Trieste, from which port he travelled to
Hamburg, en route for England, whence he was to cross the
Channel into Normandy. At Hamburg La Tremoille met
his brother Louis, who arranged his passage to England in
company with General Frotte, who was likewise on his way
to Normandy. Prince Louis, although convinced of his
brother's innocence, had no belief in his judgment. He
was always dreading that the Duke would perpetrate
some new folly. To the life his eldest brother had
previously led in England Louis referred as to a time when
he " was completely crazy, with his diamonds, and his
swords and his fatal dreams, when it was a pity for his
reputation and his own good that England had no lettres
de cachet or petites maisons."

Now at length the Duke's misfortunes seem to have
sobered him. And the rest of his life was comparatively
uneventful. After two months' guerilla warfare in

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 297

Normandy, during which his only adventure was to
receive several musket shots in his clothes, he left the
west when Buonaparte was attempting its pacification and
went to Paris. There for two years he remained hiding in
the house of a Swiss friend. Then, in 1803, as major-
general he entered the service of the Grand Duke of
Baden.

Among Prince Louis* correspondence has been dis-
covered an anonymous document, but apparently written
by a Neapohtan officer, confessing that the Duke had
been treated with gross injustice. " We annoyed him in
every possible way," it runs, " because we were shocked
to see a foreigner colonel of a regiment in which the first
families in the kingdom in vain solicited a sub-
lieutenancy." Then testifying to the Duke's charm of
manner, the writer continues : " But he vanquished us
by his personality. He proved to us that he knew more
than we did, and we would now always gladly serve under
his orders."

Louis de La Tremoille, hoping that the Countess would
make him her heir, continued at Hamburg until her death
in 1 80 1. But, although for years he had practically ruled
her household, he had been unable to ingratiate himself
sufficiently for her to bequeath him her property. " Her
arrogance was inconceivable, her disposition of iron, and
her heart of stone," wrote the Duke, and at her death his
brother found himself homeless and with " nothing more
than the emigrant's little bundle," with which he had
arrived. Then he went to Paris in search of a rich wife,
and in 1803 married Genevieve Adelaide, Comtesse de
Langeron.

There for a time we must leave him in order to trace
the more tragic career of his twin brothers, the Prince de

298 FROM THE CRUSADES

Talmond and the Abbe de La Tremoille. The Prince we
left in England, whither in the autumn of 1792 he had
conducted his sister-in-law, the Princesse de Tarente, after
her miraculous escape from the September massacres.
After establishing Madame de Tarente at Richmond, Tal-
mond probably spent the winter in this country ; for, while
the royalist armies were in winter quarters, he could best
serve their cause by endeavouring to procure from our
government help for the royalist rising in Western France.

Moreover, during his visit to England in the spring,
Talmond's possession of a wife and son in France had not
prevented him from following his eldest brother's example
and falling a victim to the charms of an English gentle-
woman. Her name is usually not mentioned. One
authority ^ only refers to Talmond's mysterious mistress
as " Lady Brighton."

It was doubtless in January, 1793, that news of his
King's execution tore the Prince from the pursuit of
pleasure to fight for the cause in which he was to perish.
The parting of the lovers was sad and solemn. In the true
romantic manner they broke a ring in two halves, and, each
taking one, exchanged a promise that whenever either
sent the other a fragment of this ring the receiver should
take it as a peremptory summons to the sender's presence.

Then Talmond, quitting our shores for ever, passed
secretly over to France and in disguise appeared on his
hereditary dominions in Maine.

But to effectively disguise himself was difficult for this
handsome, striking, well-built Prince of twenty -five. He
was soon recognised and imprisoned at Angers. His
captors intended to take him to Paris for trial. But their

1 Cretineau Joly, " Histoire desG^n^raux et Chefs Vendeens" (1838),
225, who describes Lady Brighton as Talmond's fiancee.

ANTOINE PHILIPPE PRINCE DE TALMOND

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 299

delay in the accomplishment of this design permitted the
Abbe de La Tremoille, who was in the capital, to intercede
with the Convention on his twin brother's behalf. All
that the Abbe could obtain, however, was a promise of the
Prince's liberation in exchange for an undertaking to leave
Western France. Of such a desertion Talmond was
incapable. Consequently he remained a prisoner. And
orders were given for his conveyance from Angers to
Laval. On the road, by bribing his guards, Talmond
contrived to escape and to make his way into La Vendee,
to Chatillon, where a royalist council was then sitting.

The commander of the royalist forces. La Rouerie, had
recently died ; and possibly Talmond may have hoped
to succeed him. But, although his good looks and his
brave, generous and genial disposition won him popu-
larity with the rank and file, the nobles commanding in
the royalist army regarded him with jealousy and sus-
picion. These gentlemen, many of them, had been among
the 1,700 vassals who during Vancien regime had owed
allegiance to the Dukes of La Tremoille. And now they
hesitated to take any step which might tend to restore
the dominance of that family in Western France. It was
impossible, however, to avoid giving Talmond some com-
mand. And the son of an Angevin cobbler who had just
been appointed general of cavalry resigned in favour of
the Prince, in whose regiment he consented to serve as a
lieutenant.

Henceforth, whenever the hereditary gout permitted
him to go into action, Talmond distinguished himself by
dashing courage and unflinching fortitude. More than
once his invincible ardour converted what would have
been a disastrous defeat into a glorious victory.

Yet all the heroism of the royahst troops was powerless

300 FROM THE CRUSADES

against the able commanders and the revolutionary zeal
of the Sans-culottes. Defeat followed defeat, while La
Vendee was wasted with fire and sword, and the houses of
the loyal peasants burnt to ashes. Their occupants,
homeless wanderers, whom no hardships could alienate
from their devotion to the Crown, with their old men,
their women and their children, attached themselves to
the army for protection and followed it in its march.

In a once fertile country transformed by hostile armies
into a veritable desert, to feed this swelling multitude
became increasingly difficult. And certain of the generals,
among whom Talmond was one, proposed that the army
with its throng of dependants should cross the Loire, into
the less wasted province of Maine, where it was hoped a
more effectual resistance might be organised.

On this question there was a heated debate in the coun-
cil of war. Talmond, impetuous, sanguine and totally
lacking in sound judgment, eagerly supported the pro-
posal to cross into Maine, where in his ancestral dominions
of Laval he expected to do great things for the royal cause.
The general in chief, the Comte de La Rochejaquelein,^ on
the other hand, strongly opposed this project. Not only did
it involve the abandonment of La Vendee to the Revolu-
tionaries, but it entailed the enormously difficult enterprise
of conveying across a broad river a whole army encumbered
by hundreds of wounded, by thousands of old men, women
and children, and by cart-loads of such household goods
as they had succeeded in rescuing from the hands of the
spoiler. In the council of war, however. La Roche-
jaquelein was outvoted. The passage was resolved upon,

1 Two La Rochejaquelein brothers distinguished themselves in the
La Vendee wars : the Comte Henri, who, after Lescure's death, was
elected Commander-in-chief, and the Marquis Louis, who held a
subordinate command.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 301

and to Talmond was confided the task of procuring means
of transport.

To provide sufficient boats for so vast a multitude was
naturally impossible. Utter confusion reigned, panic pre-
vailed, and the crossing of the river was a veritable sauve
qui petit. Madame de La Rochejaquelein, who, with her
dying husband, the wounded M. de Lescure,^ was following
the army, having watched the crossing from a hill near the
river, has thus graphically described it in her Memoirs ^ :

" The heights of vSt. Florent form a kind of semi-circle,
from the foot of which a great level plain stretches down
to the Loire, which is very wide at this place. Eighty
thousand people crowded into this valley : soldiers,
women, children, old men and wounded, all pell-mell,
fleeing from fire and murder. Behind them they could see
the smoke of their villages which the Republicans were
burning. Nothing was to be heard save groans, cries and
sobs. In this confused mass everyone was trying to find
his relatives, his friends, his defenders. An unknown
destiny awaited these people on the opposite bank.
Nevertheless they were as eager to reach it as if they were
certain of finding there the end of all their sorrows. A
score of old leaky boats were incessantly crossing the river
bearing crowds of fugitives to the opposite bank. Others
tried to cross on horseback, while those left behind
stretched out their arms to their comrades already landed,
entreating them to come to their rescue. Far away on the
other side of the river one could dimly discern and faintly
hear another great multitude. A little island in the
middle was covered with people. Many of us compared
all this disorder and despair, this terrible uncertainty as
to the future, this surging crowd, this valley with a river
to cross, to the pictures of the terrible Day of Judgment."

1 She married Louis Marquis de La Rochejaquelein after the death
of Lescure, which took place soon after the crossing of the Loire.

2 Ed. 1822, 248.

302 FROM THE CRUSADES

In a boat, rowed by a poor priest who was worn out
with eight hours at the oar, Madame de La Roche jaquelein
and her friends were taken across. When they landed,
there on the bank, seated on the grass, were crowds of
Vendeans waiting for their friends to come over.

That the whole army with its vast throng of followers
was eventually conveyed over the river speaks well for the
Prince de Talmond's organisation. Once on the opposite
bank, again at Talmond's suggestion, the Vendeans
marched towards Laval. The town was held by the
Republicans. But the Prince was confident of being able
to capture it and to raise the country.

This march of the Vendean host was a marvellous
sight. The vanguard of soldiers with a few cannon was
followed by a disorderly crowd, women carrying their
infants, old men supported by their sons, wounded barely
able to drag themselves along, and with them artillery and
carts and baggage wagons all mingled together and block-
ing the road so that sometimes it was impossible to
advance. After halting for a few hours at Chateau
Gonthier, the Vendeans approached Laval, where the first
of Talmond's anticipations was fulfilled, for the 15,000
Republican defenders of the town fled before the royalist
advance. But in the second of his calculations the Prince
was disappointed : the surrounding country did not, as
he had expected, take up arms for the royal cause. Only
a few thousand peasants came in, young men from remote
Breton villages, looking like savages with their long hair
and goat-skin coats, as, waving sticks from which floated
white handkerchiefs, they entered the town crying vive
le roi !

During the nine days that the Vendeans stayed at Laval
more than one Republican attack was successfully

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 303

repulsed ; and in these actions, which inflicted great loss
on the enemy, Talmond was one of those who most
brilliantly distinguished himself.

Meanwhile, however, serious dissensions had broken out
among the generals ; the royalist commanders held con-
flicting opinions as to their next move. Some were for
returning across the Loire, others for attacking Nantes.
Talmond, feeling sure of Brittany, proposed the wildly
impracticable project of a march on Paris. This sugges-
tion was wisely combatted by M. de La Roche jaquelein,
who urged that these western peasants would never be
persuaded to go so far from home, and that with winter
approaching — it was then the beginning of November —
the march across France of so heterogeneous a multitude
would inevitably be attended with disaster.

Eventually, when on November 2nd, the Vendeans left
Laval, the next object of their attack was uncertain.
They marched, however, in a north-westerly direction and
made their first important halt at Fougeres, that Breton
town which three centuries earlier the Great Louis de La
Tremoille had captured from turbulent nobles in rebellion
against the King.^

At Fougeres the royalist generals came to an under-
standing. Ever since the winter of 1792, when the nobles
of the west had first formed a league for the support of the
monarchy, they had been imploring help from England.
It was to enforce this demand that in the following spring
the Prince de Talmond had first visited England. Nothing
very definite had been promised, but the French royalists
lived in hope ; and now it was resolved to lead the
Vendeans down to the sea shore, there to capture some
port which might serve as a basis of communication with

* See ante, 60.

304 FROM THE CRUSADES

England, and as a dwelling-place for those thousands of
women and children who encumbered the army. The
port decided upon was Granville, on the Breton coast, not
far from St. Malo.

By way of Dol and Avranches the Vendeans proceeded.
At Avranches all the non-combatants were left behind,
while the army, some 30,000 strong, continued to Gran-
ville. There, although at first the enthusiasm and valour
of the besiegers won the day and carried the suburbs,
finding that no adequate preparations had been made for
an attack, the Vendeans were discouraged. The cannon
on the ramparts drove them back, and although they
continued before the town for thirty-six hours, they were
ultimately forced to retreat and return to Avranches.

On the night before the attack on Granville a romantic
incident had happened to the Prince de Talmond. It will
be remembered that on the eve of his final departure from
England, the Prince had broken a ring and exchanged a
solemn promise with a mysterious lady. On this night,
there was brought to him at Avranches in a sealed packet,
presented by two English sailors, the lady's half of the
ring with a reminder of his promise and an announcement
that an English ship lay off the Breton coast ready to
convey the Prince to England. Talmond was on the horns
of a dilemma. To at once keep faith with his lady and his
King was impossible, to one or the other he must break
his word : he chose to prove false to the lady ; and in
prophetic words he wrote to her : *' I have promised to
defend the cause in which I have drawn my sword. I
believe it to be right. To forsake my comrades-in-arms
would be to break my word. Till death I shall share their
labours and their dangers." While refusing to himself
embark on the English vessel, Talmond determined to

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 305

send on board three ladies who were with the army and
who were anxious to reach Jersey. Two of them, Madame
de Cuissard and Madame de Fay, were wives of emigrants,
but it was for the safety of the third, Mdlle. Sidonie^
Madame de Fay's fascinating sister-in-law, that Talmond
was most concerned. Indeed, we suspect that Mdlle.
Sidonie's attractions, in obscuring those of her English
predecessor, had considerably facilitated the Prince's
choice between loyalty to his King and faithfulness to his
mistress.

Before the Prince could carry out his project, however,
the attack on Granville intervened, and it was not until
the night after Granville that Talmond and his fair friends
could set out for the coast. Shortly before daybreak, they
left Avranches accompanied by another officer, ten horse-
men and a priest. But on arriving at the seaside they
found that, owing to the lowness of the tide, the English
ship could not put into shore, and that in order to embark
it would be necessary for the ladies to ride some distance
on horseback through the water.

This they were afraid to do ; and, hearing of the
approach of Republican soldiers the party turned round
forthwith and rode back to Avranches, having been
absent no longer than three hours. -^

But, during that short time, much had happened. An
ex-gamekeeper, Stofflet, who commanded the Angevin
and Poitevin part of the army, informed of Talmond's
mysterious disappearance, rushed to the conclusion that

1 Mme de La Rochejaquelein's " Memoires," ed. cit., 301 — 303 ;
Cr6tineau Joly, " Histoire des G6n6raux et Chefs Vendeens " (1838),
225 — 6 ; the latter royalist, Catholic and inclined to favour Talmond.
Other authorities (see Chassin, " La Vendue Patriote," III., 311, and
note) state that Talmond intended to desert the army, that he offered
a fisherman 100 louis-d'or and two of his best horses to carry him to
Jersey, and that his brother officer, Beauvolliers, took with him the
royalist war-chest.

C.R. X

3o6 FROM THE CRUSADES

he had deserted ; immediately he despatched a body of
troops to bring him back, and seized the horses and all the
other possessions which the Prince had left at Avranches.
When Talmond returned, without even having met the
soldiers sent in his pursuit, he was naturally furious to
find that so slanderous an interpretation had been put
upon his absence. Nevertheless he magnanimously
forgave Stofflet, realising, doubtless, that it was defeat
and disappointment that had rendered the general so
absurdly suspicious.

Indeed the desperate straits to which their failure to
take Granville had reduced the royalist leaders were
enough to account for any error in judgment. The
generals were at their wit's end to know what to do with
these thousands of poor ruined folk whom they had led
far from their native province, in the hope of finding some
new home north of the Loire. The Vendeans themselves
were clamouring to be conducted back across the river ;
and the generals, at the end of their own resources,
resolved to accede to this demand.

During the month which elapsed between the defeat of
Granville on November 14th, and the arrival of the
Vendeans at the Loire on December 15th, the two principal
events were the battles of Dol and Le Mans, in both of
which Talmond played a prominent part.

Their sorrowful retreat southwards the Vendeans sus-
pended for a few days in order to rest in the little town of
Dol. There at midnight they were attacked by a formid-
able republican force and at first utterly routed. As
day dawned, however, the Prince de Talmond was able
to turn what threatened to be a crushing defeat into a com-
plete victory. All through those hours of desperate fight-
ing in the darkness, through the panic and confusion in

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 307

the narrow streets of Dol, away to the right of their main
body the Vendeans had heard continuous firing. This
proceeded from a cannon which the Prince de Talmond
was discharging. The gunners having abandoned it, the
Prince and two brother officers themselves served it
steadily all through the night. Luckily the morning mist
which came up at daybreak enabled Talmond to deceive
the enemy as to the strength of his forces. In reality, he
had no more than 400 men ; but, inspired by their
leader's valour, these 400 made such gallant stand that
their fleeing comrades, inspired by their resistance, rallied ;
and through Talmond's courage the tide of battle turned.

" This battle did great credit to M. de Talmond.
M. de La Rochejaquelein and all the army delighted to
assure Talmond repeatedly that we owed him our salva-
tion,'* writes Madame de La Rochejaquelein in her
Memoirs, and she was no friend to the Prince.-^

But at Le Mans, Talmond's heroism, though again
signally displayed, was powerless to avert the Vendean
defeat before the walls of that town.

Then followed an unsuccessful attempt to recross the
Loire, and the separation of the commander-in-chief from
his army. La Rochejaquelein, having crossed to the
southern bank in order to take possession of some boats,
was attacked by the Sans-Culottes, and compelled to take
refuge in the woods.

After this disaster the Vendean forces began to break
up. Those who were able returned singly or in groups to
their homes across the river. Of the troops that remained
together, after the loss of La Rochejaquelein, it was
necessary to elect a commander. The Prince de Talmond

^ P. 317.

X 2

3o8 FROM THE CRUSADES

expected to be chosen. And when he found himself passed
over for a mere country gentleman, he resolved to leave
the Vendean army in order to raise a force of his own.

Despite past disappointments, his hopes still centred
in Laval. And he was making his way thither, when he
fell in with a party of Republicans, who took him prisoner.
There was nothing to indicate the prisoner's rank, and the
Prince would probably have been liberated had not the
daughter of an innkeeper, whom Talmond had assisted
during the crossing of the Loire, recognised him, and cried,
** Why, it is the Prince de Talmond ! "

Taken before the Republican general, Beaufort, the
Prince proudly acknowledged his identity. " Yes," he
said, " I am the Prince de Talmond. Sixty-eight battles
in six months fought against the Republic have made me
familiar with death. A La Tremoille, son of the lords of
Laval and Vitre, myself a Prince, I was bound to serve
my King. By knowing how to die, I shall prove that I
was worthy to defend the throne."

The Sans-Ctiloites were highly elated by their capture
of this " sovereign of Maine and Normandy," as they
described Talmond, this " Capet of the brigands, worthy
to figure on the same stage as his dead confrere."

Pending the decision as to the place of his trial and
execution, the Prince was imprisoned at Rennes. The
winter dampness and cold of his Breton prison, intensify-
ing the twinges of hereditary gout, reduced this brave
soldier, who had never flinched before danger in the field
or hardship on the march, to appeal to the pity of his
captors. To the Republican general, Rossignol, Talmond
wrote from Rennes the follo\ving pathetic, but dignified,
letter ^ : " Citizen General, the enemy whom fate has

1 See " Chartier de Thouars," 378.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 309

delivered into your hands appeals to your justice and
humanity to deal with him a little less rudely than to
confine him where he is at present, in a room without a
fire, where he is dying of cold and damp. Whenever he
wishes to procure anything for himself, he is met with a
refusal which he is told is the General's order. He finds it
hard to believe that such orders come from you, and that
after having fought against him bravely and loyally, you
can take pleasure in thus torturing him in his last moments.
This very day he has been refused fish, in the fear,
apparently, that he might endeavour to choke himself.
Be assured. General, that such a design is far from enter-
ing his head, and that, after having so often braved death,
he knows how to await it with perfect composure. Be
assured also that he will not try to escape, and that in
this respect you may place more reliance on his brigand's
word than on all the sentinels in the world. Be so kind
therefore as to order him a fire and such food as he can eat
and you may always count on the gratitude of one, who,
after being your enemy, hopes, at least, to merit your
esteem."

During his cross-examination by the Republican
general, Rossignol, at Rennes, Talmond was questioned
as to his communications with England. His replies
were so characteristic of his brave loyalty to the cause
for which he was about to die, that they demand full
quotation here :

" Did you not," asked General Rossignol, the President
of the court, " carry on a correspondence with England,
who promised, at some time not specified, to send you
men, victuals and ammunition and especially to collabo-
rate with you in an attack on Granville ? "

Talmond. " Yes."

310 FROM THE CRUSADES

RossignoL " Then why did this attack fail ? '*

T almond. " Reports dishonouring certain of the
leaders had been circulated in the royal army, which on
that account failed to charge with its accustomed ardour.
Moreover the English broke their word and physical and
local causes prevented them from disembarking/' ^

RossignoL " If England broke her word to you then
you must owe her ministers a grudge, and being quit of
any obligation to them, there can be no reason why,
before you die, you should not serve your country by
revealing the plots laid against her/'

T almond. " I am resolved to go to the grave bearing
with me the esteem of all parties. You cannot have
hoped that I should dishonour myself by such baseness.
Whether they were friendly or hostile, we and the foreign
powers served the same cause.'*

A Poitevin emigre, who met Madame de Tarente in
England, spoke truly when he said that her brother-in-law
had replied to his accusers like a god. That same noble
loyalty, high courage, and proud dignity which inspired
these words the Prince de Talmond displayed to the end.

Meanwhile the unhealthy condition of the Rennes
prison had caused the outbreak of an epidemic, to which
Talmond, exhausted by cold, hunger and illness rapidly
succumbed. It was because the serious state of his health
threatened to deprive them of their victim, that the
Revolution authorities, denying the Prince's request to be
tried at Paris, hurried him before the Revolution court-
martial at Vitre.

On the way thither the Prince became so iU that he was
thought to be dying. At his trial the acute sore throat,
which was one of the worst symptoms of the Rennes
epidemic, hardly left him any voice with which to reply to

1 This answer is vague, but thus is it reproduced by Chassin in
" La Vendue Patriote, III.," 545.

TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 311

his accusers. But such words as he was able to utter
were bravely spoken. To the charge of treason Talmond
replied : " Only if I had done otherwise than I have
should I have deserved to be called a traitor.'*

From the moment of his arrest the Prince must have
known that he was foredoomed. The Vitre court con-
demned him, " as one of the infernal horde of the brigands
of La Vendee," to suffer the confiscation of all his property
by the state, if that had not already been done, and to be
delivered into the hands of the '* Avenger of the People "
— for with this proud title they styled the executioner —
within four hours to be put to death on the public square
of Laval.

The brevity of the interval between the pronounce-
ment of the sentence and its execution was due, no
doubt, to the judge's fear lest a natural death should
rob them of their valuable victim and avert so striking
an example of popular vengeance as the capital
punishment of this great noble in the very heart of
his own domains.

It was on January 27th, three weeks after his arrest,
that Talmond was conveyed to Laval, that town which
he had so sanguinely hoped to make the centre of a royalist
revival.

On the way the miserable horses, commandeered by the
Sans-Culottes to draw their prisoner's conveyance, broke
down ; and the condemned Prince must needs wait by
the roadside until others had been procured.

Arrived at the place of execution, the " Avenger of the
People " seemed to hesitate to exact retribution from his
princely prey. Whereupon Talmond adjured him not to
delay, saying, " I have done my duty, now it is for^'you to
do yours."

312 FROM THE CRUSADES

The Prince, by his wife Henriette d'Argouges, left one
son, Leopold, a boy of seven, who at the time of his father's
death was with his mother in Switzerland.

When he grew up Prince Leopold was forced to serve
in Napoleon's army, and by his display of hereditary
courage won the Emperor's praise in the Russian
campaign. In 1814, the Prince de Talmond joined his
King, Louis XVIIL, in London. Thence, having been
appointed colonel of a French regiment of dragoons, he
returned with his sovereign to Paris. A year later, on
November 7th, 1815, he died. Leopold, in 1812, had
married Felicie de Durfort Duras, by whom he had no
children.

Prince Antoine's widow, Henriette d'Argouges, in 1819,
married Auguste de La Rochejaquelein, younger brother
of the famous La Vendee general.

Six months after his twin brother's execution, the Abbe
de La Tremoille, in a similar manner, suffered death at
Paris. -^

The story of his accusation and trial in the Salle de
I'Egalite of the Palais de Justice, by the Revolution
Tribunal, throws a strong light on the proceedings of the
Revolutionists during those last days of the Reign of
Terror. That was a time when no proofs of the guilt of the
accused were demanded. " There never are any proofs,"
says the leader of the jury in " Les Dieux ont Soif." ^ In
those days men judged with the heart not with the reason,
and they always condemned ; for their hearts told them
that it was only by the removal of every possible enemy
that the Republic could endure.

Thus it came about that the Abbe de La Tremoille and

1 On June 15th, 1794.

2 Anatole France, 191 1.

ro THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 313

forty other accused, all completely unknown to one
another, were thunderstruck to find themselve.-) hurried
before the Revolution Tribunal, and embraced in the
common charge of conspiring the death of Robespierre. It
was not these innocent royalists, but the Republicans them-
selves who, but a month later, were to plot the tyrant's
death. Had only La Tremoille's trial been postponed a
few weeks, he with hundreds of other prisoners might
have profited from the Incorruptible's sudden execution.

At the Abbe's trial no attempt whatever was made to
establish the formal charge under which he laboured.
The cross-examination turned chiefly on the intercourse
between La Tremoille and his late brother Talmond, when
the latter was passing through Paris on his way to La
Vendee.-^

" You did not speak the truth when you said you had
only once seen your brother."

" I don't pretend to say I only saw him once," was the
reply. " I saw him five or six times at the Opera ; and
then I told him he was a great fool and that he would be
arrested."

It was not however on the charge of comphcity with his
brother, but with these forty persons, none of whom he
had ever seen before, that the Abbe was condemned and
harried to the scaffold, where he perished beneath the
guillotine on June 15th, 1794.

In the following year Prince Louis de La Tremoille took
his brother's place in La Vendee, and for a while served
under the Comte de Puisaye.

After the Quiberon disaster, La Tremoille strongly
advocated peace and helped to negotiate it. Prince

* See Wallon, *' Histoire du Tribunal Revolutionnaire de Paris,"
ed., 1881, IV., 198—200.

314 FROM THE CRUSADES

Louis' campaign in La Vendee followed by the Duke's
three months' service there in 1798 closed for a while the
La Tremoilles' participation in the warfare of the Revolu-
tion period. Louis continued to act as the trusted agent
of Louis XVIIL, both in Paris and other European cities.
During the Hundred Days he was sent to the west of
France to see if he could raise that region against
Napoleon. But his efforts met with complete failure, and
he was glad to accept from Napoleon's general, Foy, a
passport into England.

On the restoration of the monarchy after Waterloo, the
La Tremoilles were reinstated in all the honours and
emoluments which their ancestors had enjoyed.

Prince Louis' first wife, the Countess of Langeron,
having died, he married, in 1834, Augusta Murray,
Countess of Dunmore. Three years later he died at
Aix-la-Chapelle. Though the least interesting, he was
probably the most level-headed of the four brothers.

Meanwhile, the head of the house hkewise had been
twice a widower ; Emmannuelle de Chatillon, as we have
seen, died at St. Petersburg in 1814 ; three years after,
the Duke married Marie Virginie, Comtesse de Saint-
Didier, who, after having borne him two daughters,^ died
in 1829 ; in the following year La Tremoille took to him-
self a third wife, Josephine-Eugenie- Valentine Walsh,
Comtesse de Serrant.

The Comtesse de Serrant, who belonged to the famous
Irish Jacobite family of Walsh, was a great heiress.
Through her marriage with the Duke there came into the
possession of the La Tremoilles the magnificent chateau
of Serrant, near Angers, which is at present the favourite
family abode. The Comtesse de Serrant was the mother

1 One became Princesse de Salm, the other Baroness of Wykerslooth.

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TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 315

of the late Duke, who, besides his invaluable publication
of La Tremoille documents, has written two records of his
mother's family.-^

And here we must leave Charles Bretagne de La
Tremoille. His varied adventures on the battlefield, in
a Neapolitan dungeon, on the turf, at the gaming
table, in the ball room, and in the alcove are at an end.
At six and sixty, he is range, and about to settle down to
domestic felicity.

" There are two births ; "
sang WilHam Cartwright in his verses " To Chloe,"

" the one when light
First strikes the new awaken'd sense ;
The other when two souls unite.
And we must count our life from thence :
When you loved me and I loved you
Then both of us were born anew.''

In such ardent words, had the Due de La Tremoille been
a poet, he might have sung of his marriage with Valentine
de Serrant ; for even the prose of his " Recollections "
glows with the passion inspired by this attractive lady,
to the happiness of his union with whom the Duke, in his
" Recollections," has consecrated a rapturous paragraph.
It forms a fitting close to the story of his chequered
career. It may also afford a not inappropriate con-
clusion to the history of his famous house.

Referring to the uneventfulness of his later life, the
Duke writes :

*' One day alone stands out in my memory, Sep-
tember 14th, 1830, when to the friendship of poor

1 One, translated into English under the title of " A Royal Family,
Irish and French, and Prince Charles Edward," (1904), and another,
" Mon Grand-pere, (Philippe Fran9ois Walsh) k la cour de Louis XV.
et a celle de Louis XVI." (1904).

3i6 FROM THE CRUSADES TO THE REVOLUTION

Archambauld de Talleyrand Perigord, I owed the hand
of Mdlle. Valentine de Serrant, that ravishing and angelic
being to whom I am indebted for so much happiness.
Here I must close, being incapable of adequately
depicting that angel of goodness whom I shall adore
until I draw my last breath."

INDEX

Abba YE, prison, 281, 286
Abbeville, 80
Abrantes, Duke of, 229
Acton, Sir John, 289 & n. 2, 290,

293. 295, 296
Adelaide, Princess of France, 272
Adigio, R., 290, 291
Afryke, town of, 6 sqq.
Agadingor, 8
Agen, 78

Agincourt, Battle of, 16, 23
Agnadello, Battle of, 78
Aigueperse, 24
Aix-la-Chapelle,

death of Prince Louis de La

Tremoille at, 314
Treaty of, 263
Albany, Duke of, 88
Albret,

Charles d', marries Marie de
Sully, Dame de La Tre-
moille, 15
Charlotte d', 69 & n., 70, 83
Hotel d', 216

Louise d', Duchesse de Valen-
tinois, second wife of Louis
II., Comte de La Tremoille,

83.84

Alcala, 241

Alen^on,

Francois Due d', 215

Jean Due d', 31, 32 & n., 34,

35. 39
Alexander, Emperor, 13
Alexander VI., Pope, 62, 63, 67,

69, 76
Alice (in " Peveril of the Peak "),

122
Almanza, Battle of, 247

Alps, the, 62, 66, 71, 75, 76, 80, 88
Altenburg,

Anthony, Count of, 209, 210,
277

Charlotte Am61ie, Countess of.
See La Tremoille.

Gunther, Count of, 209
Alviano, General, 8i
Amboise, 251

Georges d', 76

La Tremoille estates of , 55, 56

Marguerite d'. See Mar-
guerite.

Mme. des Ursins at, 244
Amiens, 195, 283
Ancre, Mar6chal d'. See Concini,
Andalusia, 247
Angelo, Michael, 220
Angers, 97, 98, 201, 298, 299, 314
Angouleme,

Charles of, 83 n. ^

Francis of. See Francis I.,
King of France.

Joan of, 83 n. ^

John of, 83 n. ^
Angoumois, 60
Anjou,

Charles d', 38

Marie d', 61

province of, 38, 60

Yolande d'. See Yolande.
Anne of Austria, 119

d'Egmont, 109 n. ^

of Saxony, no «.

Queen of England, 208
Antibes, 233
Antwerp, 109 n. ^
Apennines, the, 63, 64
Ardres, 87

3i8

INDEX

Argenson, 262, 263

Argouges, Henriette de, Princesse

de Talmond, 312
Armagnac,

Bernard, Count of, 17, 21
faction of, 21, 24, 25
Armand, Count, 285, 286
Arragon,

Charlotte of, igg n.^

Ferdinand of, 63

Frederick of, 87, 155 n., 198,

199 n. 1
house of, vi.
Arras, 5, 6, 13
Artois,

Charles, Comte d', 279, 284,

288, 296
Robert, Comte d', 2, 12
Arundel House, 179
Asturias, the Prince of, 119
AthoU, John, Marquis of, 166, 167
Aubign^

Agrippa d', 99, 100, 106, 113
d'. Secretary of La Princesse

des Ursins, 239

Fran^oise d'. Marquise de

Maintenon, 214, 216, 222,

223, 233, 234, 241, 242, 243,

244, 245, 249, 251, 253, 254

Aubigny, d', 62 n.

Aubry, Renee Julie, Duchesse de

Noirmoustier, 215
Auch. See Jean de La Tremoille,

Archbishop of, 78
Augereau, General, 291
Aunis, 90
Auron, R., 28
Auvergne,

Jeanne d'. See Jeanne.
Marie d', 24
province, 24, 57, 58
Auxerre, 33, 197
Ave Maria, convent of, 121
Avignon, 87, 264
Avranches, 304, 305, 306
Azala, daughter of the King of
Tunis, 9

Babylon, 140

Bac, Rue de, 63, 282

Baden, Grand Duke of, 297

Baggerley, the Rev. Humphrey,

161
Bais, 257 n. ^
Bajazet (sumamed Ildemin), 11,

12, 13
Balkans, the, 11
Barberini Palace, 220
Barbette, Hotel de, 22
Barcelona, 235, 236, 245
Barege, 181
Barrois, George de Craon's estates

in, 49
Barthelemy, Edouard, xi.
Baschi, Perron de, 62 n. ^
Basingstoke, 286
Bastille, the, 85, 120
Bavaria, Electoral Prince of,

227
Bayard, 51 n.
Bayonne, 241, 253
Beauce, 20
Beaujeu, Anne de, 56, 57, 59,

60
Beaulieu, General, 290

knight of, 29
Beaumaris, 165
Beaune, wine of, 19
BeauvoUiers, 305 w.
Bedford,

Francis, Duke of, 276 & n.,

286
John, Duke of, 33, 34
town of, 284, 286
Bellin, the Comte de, 116
Benaize, R., i
Beneventum, Count of, 234
Benjamin, Sieur, 176
Bentinck,

Charlotte Sophie, Countess,
211 & n. 1, 277 & n. 1, 294
& n. 1, 295, 297
Count, 211
Bernard, Count of Armagnac.

See Armagnac.

INDEX

319

Bernini, Giovanni Lorenzo, 220,

221
Berrie, principality, 55 n. ^
Berry,

appanage of Jeanne de France,
70

duchy, 75 n.'^

forests of, 53

Jean, Duke of, 23

La Trdmoille lands in, 38, 43^

Berwick,

Duke of, 225, 239, 240, 247

& n., 264
town, 169
B6thune, Maximilien de. Marquis
de Rosny, Due de Sully, 112,
116, 118, 179
Bidan, 62
Billard, Jean. 86
Bingen, 288
Birch, General, 163
Blecourt, French Ambassador at

Madrid, 229, 230
Blois, 39, 69 n., 105 n. 2
Bliicher, General, 81
Bohemia, 70, 128

Elizabeth, Queen of. See
Stuart, Elizabeth.
Bois-le-Duc, 199
Bolingbroke, Lord, 250, 251
Bolton-le-Moors, 148, 149, 161
Bommiers, chateau, 43, 51, 52, 53,

55.68
Bordeaux, 119
M. de, 168
Borgia, Caesare, 69 & w., 83

Pope. See Alexander VI.
Born, Bertrand de, 24
Bouchet, Jean, xi., 52, 55, 58, 59,
61, 74 n., 77, 78 «. 1, 81 «,, 82, 90
Bouillon,

Antoinette de, 260 w. ^
Cardinal de, 225, 226
Elisabeth, Duchesse de. See

Nassau.
Emmanuel Theodore, 259

Godefroi, Due de, 2

Henri, Due de, 112 & n. '^^

113

Marie Hortense de. See La
Tremoille.
Boulogne, 283

county of, 24

Jeanne, Countess of La Tre-
moille, 23, 24, 25

siege of, 60

Treaty of, 92 n. ^
Bourbon,

Charlotte de, third wife of
William the Silent, 109 &

Constable of France, 81, 87,

88, 89
Gabrielle de, Countess of La

Tremoille. See Gabrielle.
Henri I., Prince de Cond6, 95

sqq.
Henri II., Prince de Cond6, 92,

loi, 103, 1145^^.
John I., 23
Louis, Due de Montpensier,

130 w.
Louis II., Due de, 6 sqq.
Louis Joseph, Prince de

Conde, 287, 288
Louis, " the Great Conde," as

Due d'Enghien, 121 & n.,

176
as Prince de Conde, 184, 185,

187, sqq., 194. 197
Marie de, 130 n.
the family of, 87
the house of, in Spain, 214,

244, 245, 246, 248
Bourdonnais, Rue de, 274
Bourges, 25, 28
Bournisseaux,

Berthre de, 93
Mme. de, 56
Brabant, Duchess of, 10
Bracciano,

Duchess of. See Talleyrand

Marie Anne de.

320

INDEX

Bracciano — continued.

Flavio, Duke of, second hus-
band of La Princesse des
Ursins, 218, 219 & n. 1,
221 sqq.
Livio Odescalchi, Duke of, 224
Bradlaugh, Regicide, 171
Brandenbourg, Frederick William,

Elector of, 182, 183, 196
Brandon,

Charles, Duke of Suffolk,

130 n.
Eleanor, 130 n.
Mary, Duchess of. See Mary.
Brantome, 104
Braschi, Palazzo, 220
Brighton, Lady, 298
Brill, 177, 178
Brittany, 173, 197

Anne, Duchess of, 68 sqq.
Barons' War in, 59
duchy and province, 76 w.^, 303
estates of, 185
Francis, Duke of, 40
John, Duke of, 32, 37
marches of, 60
Broceliande, 133 & n.
Brouage, 95, 97
Bruges, 26, 27
Brussels, 44, 118
Bueil, Jean de, 37, 38
Bulkeley, friend of Prince Charles

Edward, 264, 266
Burgos, 246, 247
Burgundy,

Duchess of, 4
duchy and province of, 79
Dukes of,
Charles the Rash, 44, 45, 47

& n., 48, 54
John the Fearless, 11, 12,

17 sqq.
Philip the Bold, 4, 5, 6, 11^

13. 14, 17
Philip the Good, 25, 26, 27,

33, 34, 36, 38, 44
faction of, 17, 18, 21, 24, 36

Georges de Craon conquers,

54
governs, 48
La Tr^moille defends against

the Emperor, 88
La Tremoille lands in, 3, 4 n-
Louis 11. de La Tr6raoille.
Governor of, 77
Burie, 257 n. 2
Burke, Edmund, 276 n. ^
Butchers, Corporation of. See
Cabochiens.

Caboche, Jean, 18

Cabochiens, faction of, 18 sqq.

Caesar, Julius, 66

Calais, 23

Capua, 63

Caroline, Queen of Naples, 289 &

n. 2, 292, 296
Carrara, quarries of, 64
Cartagena, Alvaro di, 90
Carthage, 6, 66
Castile,

Admiral of, 244
Isabella of, 63
the estates of, 237
Catalonia, 245, 247, 249
Catherine, Empress of Russia,

265
Cecil,

Anne, 130 n.

William, Lord Burleigh, 130 n,
Chalais,

Adrien Blaise, Prince de. See

Talleyrand.
Marie Anne, Princesse de.
See Talleyrand.
Chambery, 278
Chambord, 261
Chamillard, French War Minister,

245, 247, 248
Champagne,

Georges de Craon, Governor

of, 46, 47
the Prince de Tarente's cam-
paign in, 191

INDEX

321

Champnol-16s-Dijon, 4
Chancey, Monsieur, 282
Chandieu. See Zamariel.
Chanteloup, chateau, 251
Chantilly, 117
Charenton, 187, 188
Charles VI., King of France, 3, 4, 6,
10, II, 13, 17, 19, 22, 25 n.
as crowned King, 25 n., 33

sqq.
as Dauphin, 17 n., 25 & n.,
sqq.
Charles VIII., King of France,
as Dauphin, 47, 53, 54
as King, 56 sqq.
Charles IX., King of France, 56 w. 1
Charles I., King of England, 130,
131, 136, 137, 148, 150, 151, 153,
154, 156, 159 M., 171, 177 sqq.,
233 n.
Charles II., King of England,

after Restoration, 165, 170,

171
as nominal King, 160, 174,

192, 194, 260
as Prince of Wales, 153, 182
Charles V., Emperor,
as Emperor, 91
as King of Spain, 84, 226
Charles II., King of Spain, 227

sqq.
Charles, Archduke of Austria, 227,

228, 231, 244, 249
Charles, Earl of Derby. See

Derby.
Charles Gustavus, King of Swe-
den, 193, 196
Charles, Prince de Talmond. See

Talmond.
Charlotte Brabantine de Nassau,
Duchesse de Thouars. See
Nassau.
Charlotte de Bourbon, William the

Silent's wife. See Bourbon.
Charlotte de La Tremoille, Prin-
cesse de Conde. See La Tre-
moille.

C.R.

Charlotte de La Tr6moille, Coun-
tess of Derby. See La Tre-
moille.
Charpaignes, Gouges de, 24
Charroux, Abbe of. See Talmond,

Frederic Guillaume, Prince de.
Chartres,

Regnault de. Archbishop of

Reims, 33
town of, 107 w. 1
Chateau-Gonthier, 302
Chatelet, prison, 18
Chatellerault, 107 sqq.

Dukes of. See Talmond,
Princes of.
Chatillon,

Duchess of, 275, 282
Emmanuelle de. See Tarente,

Princesse de.
town of, 299
Chatillons, the, 124
Chelsea, 154

Chenonceaux, chateau, vi.
Chester, 131, 135, 148, 162 n. ^
Chevreuse, Duchesse de, 185
Chinon, 31, 37, 38, 44
Chissenhall, Captain, 141
Christian, William, 123, 164, 171
Churchill, Sarah, Duchess of Marl-
borough, 214
Civita Castellana, Battle of, 393,

394 w. ^
Claude, Queen of France, 52
Clement VII., Pope, 10
Clermont, Bishop of. See Char-

paigne. Gouges de.
Clifford, Earl of Cumberland,

130 «.
Clisson, Olivier de, Constable of

France, 10, 11
Coblentz, 284
Coetivy,

Charles de, 83 m. ^
Louise de. See Louise.
Coligny,

Admiral, x., no, in w. *
Louise de. See Louise.

322

INDEX

Colonna,

house of, 218, 219
Prospero, 80

Commines, Philippe de, 44, 55 n.^

Compiegne,

Charles VII. enters, 34
Joan of Arc taken at, 36
negotiates with Burgundy, 34,

35
Prince de Tarente arrested at,

195
Concini, Mar6chal d'Ancre, 119,

120 & «. 1
Cond6,

Charlotte de La Tremoille,
Princesse de. See La Tre-
moille.
H6tel de, 118, 187 & «.
house of, vi., 121
Princes of. See Bourbon.
Rue de, 118, 187 w.
Constantinople, siege of, 12
Conti, Prince de, 102
Copenhagen, 202, 207
Corisande (" La Belle "), 103
Coudray, tower of, 37
Courtenay, Sir Peter, 4
Coutras, Battle of, 100, 105
Crane, Sir Richard, 149
Craon,

chateau, 14, 49

Georges, Seigneur de. See

La Tremoille.
house of, 14 w.
Cre9y, Battle of, 3
Creneaux, Hotel de, 85
Cr^py-en-Valois, skirmish at, 34
Crequy,

Charles de. Prince de Poix,

259
Madeleine de, Duchesse de
La Tremoille. See La Tre-
moille.
Cromwell, Oliver, 158, 171, 173,

192, 222
Cronstadt, 292
Crusades, v., i, 2, 6, 10, 14

Crussol, the Bailli de, 296
Cuissard, Mme. de, 305
Culloden, Battle of, 261, 262, 263
Cuto, General, 289

Danube, R., 12

Dauphin^, 29

Delft, 126

Denmark, George, Prince of, 207,

208
Derby, Countesses of,

Charlotte de La Tremoille.

See La Tremoille.
Helen de Rupa, as Lady
Strange, 159
Derby, Earls of,

Charles Stanley, as Lord Strange,

134

marries Mdlle. Rupa, 159
negotiates with the Par-
liament, 159, 160
runs away from home,
151 sqq.
as Earl of Derby,

after the Restoration sits
in House of Lords,
169

William Christian, 171
inherits La Tremoille

temperament, 169
quarrels with his mother,

167, 168
taken prisoner at Nant-
wich, 168
James Stanley,

as Earl of Derby, 136 sqq., 177
as Lord Strange, 113, 129
sqq.
William Stanley, 129, 130 & n.,

135
Dieppe, 176
Dijon, 14, 77, 79
Dol, 304, 306, 307
Dole, Seigneur de Craon defeated
at, 49

INDEX

323

Dorchester, Marquis of. See
Pierrepoint, Henry.

Duckenfield, General, 163

Du Defifand, Mme., 261, 262, 265,
271, 272

Dunbar, 159

Dun-le-Roi Chateau, 28

Dunmore, Augusta Murray, Coun-
tess of, Princesse de La Tre-
moille, 314

Durfort Duras, Felicie de, Prin-
cesse de Talmond, 312

Edinburgh, 158

Edward IV„ King of England, 60
Egeria, Prince Charlie's. See Tal-
mond, Marie Jablonowski, Prin-
cesse de.
Elizabeth of France, daughter of
Henry IV., 119
Queen of England, 95
Queen of Spain. See Farnese.
Ely Bishop of, B>s
Enghien, Due de. See Bourbon,

Louis de.
EscoUes, castle, 58
Espinay, 257

Estaples, Treaty of, 60 n.
Este, Beatrice de, 74
Estr6es,

Abb6 d', 239, 240
C6sar, Cardinal d', 217, 218,
238, 239
Etampes, 69, 187
Eugene, Prince, 248

Fairfax, Sir Thomas, 142, 143,

145, 154, 156
Farmer, Captain, 139
Farnese, Elizabeth, Princess of

Parma, Queen of Spain, 252
Fay, Mme. de, 305
Ferdinand, King of Naples, 289,

293. 296
Ferrand, Mdlle., 269, 270
Feuillants, monastery of, 280
Figueras, 234

Fitzherbert, Mrs., 287
Flanders, 5, 6
Florence, 62, 64, 296
Fontainebleau, 117
Fontaine-Fran9aise, Battle of,

106
Fornova, Battle of, 66, 76
Fougeres, 60, 70, 303
Fox, Charles James, 276
Foy, General, 314
Franche, Comte, 46
Francis I., King of France, 52, 80

sqq.
Frankfort, 211
Frederick the Great, 252

Elector Palatine, 129, 137 n.
Froissart, xi., 6, 9
Fronde, the, v., vi., 173, 184 sqq.,

215
Frotte, General, 296

Gabrielle de Bourbon, Countess
de La Tremoille, 52, 57, 58, 59,
69 n., 82, 83, 84, 90, 94
Gallo, Marquis del, 288, 289
Gambarani Bridge, 291
Garigliano, R., 77 w.
Gengay, chateau, 28, 30
Geneva, 13, 93
Genevieve, Adelaide. See Lange-

ron. Countess of.
Gen^vre, Mont, 62
Genoa, Gulf of, 63

town of, 64, 78, 254
George, Prince of Denmark. See

Denmark.
George, Prince of Wales, 284, 286,

287
Georges, first Count of La Tre-
moille. See La Tremoille.
Georges de La Tremoille, Seigneur
de Craon. See La Tre-
moille.
de La Tremoille, Seigneur de
Jonvelle. See Ija. Tre-
moille.
G6rard, 11 1 «. 2

324

INDEX

G6vaudan, 36

Giac, Pierre de, 27, 28, 38

Gille de Rais, 16, 17, 25

Gondi, Hotel de, 118

Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, 76,

77
Gonzague, Anne de (known as " La

Palatine "), 185
Gonzala, 77

Gournay, Amelot, Marquis de, 243
Gramont, Due de, 242
Grandson, Battle of, 46
Granville, 304, 305, 306, 309
Gravesend, 178
Gressart, Perrinet, 26, 27
Grdve, Place de. 188
GrifEenfeld, suitor of Charlotte
Amelie de La Tremoille, 207,
208
Grimm, 265

Grollier, Marquise de, 296
Guadalaxara, 252
Gu^naud, Radegonde, 3
Guernsey, 98, 99, 104
Guines, 257
Guise, 105 «. 2
Guisnes, Captain of, 85
Guyenne,

Duchesse de, 28

Duke of (Dauphin Louis), 17
& «., 19, 20, 21, 22, 28

Hotel de, 20

province, 76, 186

Hague, the, 124, 125, 126, 128,

129, 130, 134, 149, 177. I93» 199'

227, 228
Halsall, Edward, 141
Hamburg, 294, 296, 297
Hamilton, Lady, 293
Hampton Court, 154
Hanau Muntzenburg, Countess of,

183 & n 1 184
Hannibal, 66
Harcourt, Comte d', 228 sqq., 240,

241
Harrach, Comte d', 228, 229, 230

Henri de Bourbon, Prince de

Cond6. See Bourbon.
Henri IH., King of France, 94,

96 & n., loi, 104, 105 & n. 2,

214

Henri IV., a descendant of Marie
de Sully, 15

as King of France, centralises
the French Government, 38.
105, 107, & n. 1, 109, 186
sqq.
as King of Navarre, 95, 96,
99, 100, loi, 102, 103, 105,

215
Henrietta Maria,

as Duchess of Orleans, 233 «.
as Queen Dowager, 171
Queen of England, 130, 131,

135. 137. 153. 155. 173
Stanley. See Stanley.
Henry II., King of England, 56
Henry V., King of England, 16, 23,

25
Henry VI., King of England, 34
Henry VII., King of England, 60,

JO. 131
Henry VIII., King of England,

84
Hericourt, Battle of, 46
Hesse Cassel, Emilie, Princess of,
as Princesse de Tarente, 183,

193, 194. i99i 201, 202
as the friend of Mme. de

Sevigne, 203 — 211
house of, vi.

William V., Landgraf, 183
his son, Landgraf, 196
Hesse Philipstal, Prince of, 293
Holland, Colonel, 147
Hungary, 70
Hutchinson, Colonel, 141

Ile Bouchard,

Catherine de 1', Countess of

Tonnerre, 27, 28, 43, 44
Chateau de 1', 43, 44. 90
domain of, 132

INDEX

325

He de Rhe, 55 n. *

Innocent XII., Pope, 223, 228

Ireton, Lieu tenant-General, 156,
171

Isabelle,

Queen of England, n
Queen of France, 22, 23

Issoudun, cMteau, 27

Ivry, Battle of, 106

Jacqueville, H61ion de, 20
James I., King of England, 120,

179
James II., King of England,
as Duke of York, 170, 207
as King in exile, 225, 231
James Stanley. See Derby, Earls

of.
James the Old Pretender, 231, 255,

260, 263
Jean, Dauphin, died 1416. .17 n.
Jeanne, Queen of France, 67 — 70
Jeanne d'Auvergne,

wife of Georges, Comte de La
Tremoille, 23, 24, 25, 27,
49
Jeremiah, 140
Jersey, 305 n.
Jerusalem,

Jeanne II., Queen of, 10
Yolande, Queen of. See
Yolande.
Joan of Arc,

relations with Georges de La

Tremoille, 31 — 36
relieves Orleans, 186
saves France from the Eng-
lish, 26, 30
John the Fearless. See Burgundy,

Dukes of.
Jonson, Ben, 135
Jonvelle, Sieur de, 33, 37 n.
Conte de, 257 n. 2
Georges de La Tremoille,
Seigneur de. See La Tre-
moille, Georges,
Joseph, Emperor, 249

Jouarre, 109 «. *
Joyeuse, Due de, 100
Julius II., Pope, 78

Kingston, Lord, 136
Kirkcudbright, 159
Knowsley, 135, 154, 156, 158, 165,
168, 169, 171

LABfe, Louise, 114 ». 2
La Brosse, Jacques de, 89
La Charite, 26, 35
La Fayette,

Gilbert de, 25

Marie Madeleine de. See La
Tremoille.

Rene Armand Mottier de, 259
La Garnache, chateau, 105
La Grange, Jean de, 64
Lamballe, la Princesse de, 282
Lambert, General, 169
Lang, Andrew, 262, 263, 265 sqq ,
Langeron, Genevieve Adelaide,
Countess of, wife of Prince
Louis de La Tremoille, 297, 314
Languedoc, 193
Lannoy, Charles de, 88
Lanti,

Louise Angelique, Duchesse
de, 212, 215, 217, 221

the Duke of, 255
Laon, Bishop of, later Cardinal

d'Estrees. See Estrees.
La Roche-du-Mayne, 52 n. ^
La Rochefoucauld, 206
La Rochejaquelein,

Auguste de, 312

Henri, Comte de, 300 & n. ^

Louis, Marquis de, 300 & n.,

307
Mme. de, 301 & n., 302, 305 n.,

307
La Rochelle, 36, 98, 99, 109, 114
Lathom, the Lady of. See La

Tremoille, Charlotte, Countess

of Derby.

326

INDEX

Lathom House, 131, 135, 137 sqq.,

156, 164, 169, 170, 260
La Tour d'Auvergne, Marie de,
Duchesse de La Tremoille. See
La Tremoille.
La Tour-Landry, Antoinette de,

212
La Tr6moille,

duchy of Thouars and La Tre-
moille,
creation of, 93

its descent to females in
default of heirs male, 2, 93
family of,

archives of, viii. sqq.
biography of a La Tremoille,

xi.
decline, vi., vii.
earliest known history of,

ix. & n.
height of their wealth and

influence, vi.
most recent biography of a

La Tremoille, xi.
Paris mansion of (Hotel des
Creneaux), 85 & n.^, 274
& n.^
persistent dominance of, vi.
seizure of lands by Revolu-
tion Government, viii., 278
the La Tremoille women, 2
their role in French history, v.
market town of, i, 257
spelling of name of, v. & n.
Seigneurs de, i, 257
Guillaume II., 2
Guy I., 2
Guy v., 3
Guy VI., 3, 17

Ambassador in England, 3
dies at Rhodes, 14
dominions of, 3
fights against the English, 3
fights in the Crusades, 6 — 10
marries Marie de Sully, 3
other warlike expeditions,
11 — 14

refuses to be constable, 1 1
taken prisoner at Nicopolis,

tilts with Peter de Courte-
nay, 4

with Philip of Burgundy
prepares to invade Eng-
land, 5, 6
Pierre, i

Thibaud or Imbaud, 2
Counts of,

Georges, First Count,

appropriates the King's
taxes, 22

attempts to seize his wife's
lands, 25

becomes Dauphin's chief
favourite, 29

character of, 16, 17

created Count, 33

death at Sully, 41

does not bequeath moral
defects to descendants,
except, perhaps, Cathe-
rine de Medicis, 42, 43 n.

fights against the English,
21

friendship with the Dau-
phin, 17, 19

goes on an embassy to
Bruges, 27

his fall from power, 37 — 40

imprisons Gouges de Char-
paignes, 24

joins Dauphin after Treaty
of Troyes, 25

joins Queen Isabelle's court,
22, 23

liberated, 23

marries Jeanne d'Auvergne,

ill-treats her, 24

her death, 24

murders Pierre de Giac, 27

28
obesity of, 37, 42, 48, 54,

INDEX

327

La Tr6moiIle — continued.
Counts of — continued.

Georges, First Count — con-
tinued.

quarrels with Constable
Richemont, 29

quarrels with the Butchers,
20

relations with Joan of Arc,
31—36

rules as Councillor-Cham-
berlain, 26, 29, 30, 32,
66 n.

schemes to marry Catherine
de rile Bouchard, 27

taken by Perrinet Gressart,
26

taken prisoner at Agin-
court, 23
Louis I., Second Count, 42,

43. 49. 50. 51. 53. 55
Louis II., Third Count,

a witness to Louis XII. 's

contract with Anne of

Brittany, 69
Anne's dislike of him, 70,

71. 75

appointed King's Chamber-
lain, 60

Battle of Marignano and
death of his only son, 81,
82

betrothes his niece to Mont-
morency, 84

biography by Bouchet, xi.,
52

builds mansion in Paris,
and there entertains
English ambassadors, 85
& M., 86, 274 & n. »

captures Ludovico Sforza,

73. 75

commands against re-
bellious nobles in Brit-
tany, 60, 303

delivers Paris from the
English, 87

dies at the Battle of Pavia,

89
embassy to the Pope, 61, 62
endows churches at

Thouars, 57
escorts Mary Tudor at

Abbeville, 80
established in possession of
lands and offices by
Louis XII., 66
established in possession of
lands and offices by
Francis I., 80
father's death, 55
first Italian campaign, 62 —

66
fourth, fifth and sixth

Italian campaigns, 78

funeral progress through

Italy and France, burial

at Thouars, 90

Governor of Burgundy, 77

guards French coast against

the English, 76
last Italian campaign, 88 —

90
lieutenant-general in Eng-
lish wars, 60
marries Gabrielle de Bour-
bon, 57, 58
marries grandson to Anne

de Laval, 87
negotiates Louis XII. 's
divorce from Jeanne de
France, 67 — 68
obtains restoration of for-
feited estates, 50, 56
on Gabrielle's death,
marries Louise d'Albret,
69 & «.. 83—84
on the Field of the Cloth of

Gold, 86
page at Louis XL's court, 54
returns to France ill, 76, 77
romance, 55

runs away from home, 52,
53. 176

328

INDEX

La Tr^moille — continued.
Counts of — continued.

Louis II., Third Count — con-
tinued.
second Italian campaign,

72—75
seventh Italian campaign,

80—82
third Italian compaign, 76
treats with the Swiss in

Burgundy, 79 & n.
victory of Novara, 80
youth at Bommiers, 513 — 5
Francis, fourth Count, 80, 82,
83 n. 1, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91,
92, 155 n. 2, 198, 212, 213
Dukes of Thouars, also styled
Dukes of La Tremoille,
vii., I
Louis III., first Duke, 91 sqq.,

130 n., 199 n. 1, 212
Claude, second Duke, 92, 122,

130 n., 137 n., 176 n. ^

199 n. 1
at Battle of Coutras, 100,

105
at Battles of Ivy, Fontaine-

Frangaise, sieges of Paris

and Rouen, 106
becomes a Protestant, 99
birth, 93
classifies family archives,

viii.
financial difficulties, 1 1 1
flees to Guernsey, 98
happiness of married life,

no, 112
illness and death, 113
joins Protestants, 95
marries Charlotte of Nassau,

109, no
one of the twelve peers of

France, 107
power, vi.
presides over negotiations

for the Edict of Nantes,

107 — 109

quarrels with Henry of

Navarre, 99, 100
relations with his sister

Charlotte, 102 — 104
serves in Catholic army, 94
services rendered to the Pro-
testant cause, 104, 105
upbringing, 94
will, 113, 114
Henry, third Duke, viii., 186,

199 n. 1, 257
abjures Protestantism, 114,

132, 174 & n.
bedridden with gout, 200
birth, 112 & «. ^
character, 125
claims kingdom of Naples,

155 & n. 2
corresponds with his aunt

Charlotte, 121
financial embarrassments,

neglects to pay his sister's

dowry, 132, 133
life as a country gentleman,

173
marries Marie de La Tour

d'Auvergne, 128
renounces his dukedom and
peerage in favour of his
son, 175, 195 & n.
travels, 125 & «., 126
writes to Henrietta Maria
on Oliver Cromwell's
death, 173 Sc n., 174
Henry Charles, fourth Duke.

See Tarente, Prince de.
Charles Belgique Hollande,
fifth Duke, 193, 257, 258,
259 & n., 260, 277
Charles Louis Bretagne, sixth
Duke, viii., ix., x., 258 sqq.,
277 n.
Charles Armand Ren6, seventh

Duke, 260, 277 n.
Jean Bretagne, eighth Duke,
258, 273, 274, 277 & w., 278,
284

INDEX

329

La Trdmoille — continued.

Dukes of Thouars — continued.
Charles Bretagne, ninth Duke,
as Due de La Tr^moille,
financial embarrass-

ments, diplomatic mis-
sions, visits to England,
284—287
as Prince de Tarente, 274
& n. ^ 275, 276, 277 n.,
278, 279, 284, 285
his recollections, 275, 276,
285, 288, 290, 291, 296,
316
in Neapolitan army, and
relations with Sir John
Acton, 288, 296
in Normandy and La Ven-
dee, 297, 314
marriages, 275, 314, 315,
316
Louis Charles, tenth Duke,
viii., X., xi., xii., 57 n., 315 &
n. 1
Duchesses of,

Charlotte Brabantine, wife of
Duke Claude. See Nassau.
Emilie of Hesse Cassel, wife of
Duke Henri Charles. See
Hesse Cassel.
Emmanuelle de Chatillon,
first wife of Duke Charles
Bretagne. See Tarente,
Princesse de.
Jeanne de Montmorency, wife
of Duke Louis. See Mont-
morency.
Josephine Eugenie Valen-
tine Walsh, third wife of
Duke Charles Bretagne.
See Walsh.
Madeleine de Cr^quy, wife of
Duke Charles Belgique, 259
Marie de La Tour d'Auvergne,
wife of Duke Henry, viii. &

«., 56, 133, 151. 155, 157
sqq., 165, 167, 168, 171, 174,

177, 186, 196 197, 199, 200

257
Marie Genevieve de Durfort,
first wife of Duke Jean
Bretagne, 259
Marie Hortense de Bouillon,
wife of Duke Charles Ar-
mand Ren6, 259
Marie Madeleine de La
Fayette, wife of Duke
Charles Louis Bretagne, 259
Marie Maximilienne de Salm-
Kerbourg, second wife of
Duke Jean Bretagne, 259,
273, 276 sqq., 288
Anne Charles Frederic de. See

Talmond, Prince de.
Armand de, 174
Caroline de, 279
Charles Angus te, Abbe de, and
Dean of Strasbourg, viii.,
274 & n. ^ 275, 298, 299, 312,

313
Charlotte Am61ie or Emilie de.
Countess of Altenburg, 184 &
n. 2, 193 & n. 1, 198, 201, 202,
207 sqq., 277
Charlotte de, Princesse de

Conde, 92
biography of, xi.
birth, 93

changes of religion, 99, 114
imprisoned on charge of

murdering Conde, 100 — 103
last years, death and burial,

121
leader of a faction in Paris,

118 — 120
marriage, 99
quarrels with her son's tutor

and with Sully, 115, 116
wooed by the Prince de Cond6,

95—99
Charlotte de, Countess of Derby
(" the Lady of Lathom "),
action on the outbreak of
civil war, 136, 137

330

INDEX

La Tremoille — continued

Charlotte de, Countess of Derby
— continued.

at Knowsley during the Com-
monwealth, 165

betrayal by Christian and
return to England, 164, 165

biographies of and literary
allusions to, xi. & n. 2, 122 &
n., 126 n., 164

birth, descent and upbringing,
113, 123 — 126, 127, 130 w.

careers of her younger sons,
167

correspondence with her
sister-in-law, 128, 129, 151,
^55. 157 sqq., 165—167,
168, 196

death at Knowsley, 171

defends Lathom House, 98,
122, 142 — 148

early married life in England,
130—132

hears of her husband's execu-
tion, 161, 164 n.

her will and burial, 171, 172

holds out in Isle of Man
against the Parliament, 163

in London after the Restora-
tion, 169 — 171

in Scotland, 159

life at court, 135

life in the Isle of Man, 151 —

165
marriages of her daughters,

166
motherhood, 134, 135
negotiates with parliamen-
tarian envoys, 141
petitions Parliament on her

husband's behalf, 153 — 156
prepares for the siege of

Lathom House, 138, 139
quarrels with her eldest son,

152, 153, 167, 168
receives Rupert at Lathom,

149, 150, 260

receives the Prince de Tarente

in London, 177
sends her son Edmund to

France, 167, 171
suitors and marriage to Lord

Strange, 128, 129, 130
visits Charles I. at Hampton

Court, 154
visits Holland, 134
writes to Prince Rupert, 137,

143. 144
EHzabeth de, Duke Claude's

daughter, 113, 125
Elizabeth de, Duke Henry's

daughter, 174
Frederic de, Comte de Laval,

113. 126, 133, 134. 153 &«., 155
Frederic Guillaume de. Abbe

de Sainte- Croix, later lieu-
tenant-general, 202 & «., 260

& n. 1
Georges de, Seigneur de Craon,

42 sqq.
Georges de. Seigneur de Jon-

velle, 52, 84
Guillaume de, brother of

Seigneur Guy, 6, 7, 8, 11
Henriette de, 202
Jacqueline de, 84
Jacques de, 52
Jean de. Archbishop of Auch

and cardinal, 52, 78, 82
Joseph Emmanuel de. Abbe de

Noirmoustier and cardinal,

216, 225, 255, 256
Louis Maurice, Comte de Laval,

174
Louis Stanislas Kotzka, Prince

de, 274 & n. *, 275, 277 & w. ^

288, 294 sqq.. 313, 314
Marie Anne de, Princesse des

Ursins. See Talleyrand,

Marie Anne de.
Marie Charlotte, 174 & wn. 2 & ^,

193, 198
Marie Sylvie Brabantine, 202
Robert, 212, 215

INDEX

331

Lausanne, 291
Laval,

Anne de, wife of Francis,
Comte de La Tremoille, 87,
155 n. 2, 198, 199 n. 1
chateau of, vi., viii., 299, 308,

311

Counts of, 257 and passim

estates of, 155, 300, 302, 303

Frederic, Count of. See La
Tremoille.

Louis Maurice, Count of. See
La Tremoille.
Lavallee, Pean de, 43, 44
La Vendee, viii., 276, 277, 283, 295,

299, 300. 312, 313, 314
Lear, King, 175
Le Brun, 268
Leghorn, 296
Legoix, family of, 18
Le Mans, Battle of, 306, 307
Leopold, Emperor, 227
Le Sage, 180

Lescure, Commander of Royalists
in La Vendee, 300 n., 301 & n. ^
Lespinasse, Mdlle. de, 265
Les Rochers, 203, 205, 207
Leyden, 126, 149
Liege, 17, 45, 175
Limburg, 250, 251
Lini^res, ch§.teau, 68
Liris, R., 62
Liverpool, 158
Loches, chateau, 75 n.
Lodi,

battle, 290, 291

town, 88, 89
Loire, R., 25, 30, 251

crossing and recrossing of, by
the Royalist rebels in 1793,
300—302, 303, 306, 307

Joan of Arc's victories on, 31,
32. 35
Longueville,

Due de, 174

Duchesse de, 121, 185 & n. *
L'Orme, PhiUbert de, 133

Lorraine,

Duke of, Ren6 II. See Ren6.
province, 46, 47, 264, 265, 269
the maid of, 30
Loudun, 90, 119, 257
Louis VII., King of France, 2
Louis IX., St., King of France, 2, 6
Louis XI., King of France, 38
as Dauphin, 39, 40, 67
as King. 44 sqq., 53 sqq.,
66 n., 67
Louis XII., King of France,

as Due d'Orleans, 59, 60, 66,

67, 80, 79
as King, 61 n., 67 sqq.
Louis XIII., King of France, 119,

173
Louis XIV., King of France, 38,

173, 195, 197, 198, 214, 219, 222,

224, 225, 227, 228, 230 sqq., 237,

239 sqq., 248 sqq., 253, 254,

258
Louis XV., King of France, 261,

263, 264, 267
Louis XVI., King of France, 279,

286, 287
Louis XVI 1 1., King of France,

289 n. 1, 312, 314
Louis, Dauphin, died 1415. See

Guyenne, Due de.
Louis de La Tremoille. See La

Tremoille.
Louis, Due d'Orleans. See Or-
leans.
Louise de Coetivy, mother of

Francis, Comte de La Tremoille,

82, 83 n. 1
Louise de Coligny, x. & n. ^ 106

&n. 8, iio&w. 1, III &nn. 1 Sc"^,

112, 113, 123, 124
Louise Julienne, William the

Silent's daughter, 137 n.
Louise of Savoy, 52, 83 n. ^ 84
Louville, Marquis of, 234, 236
Luci. See Ferrand, Mdlle.
Lude, the Count of, 92
Lun^ville, 265

332

INDEX

Luxembourg, 187, 188, 190, 270,

271, 274
Lyons, 74, 75, 90, 114 & m. 2, 254
Lys-Saint-Georges, castle of, 75

Macaulay, 235

Mack, General, 293

Maestro, 217

Maine, 298, 300

Maine-et-Loire, x.

Maintenon, Mme. de. See
Aubigne, Fran9oise de.

Malaquais, Quai, 257

Malo, Andrea di, 90

Malplaquet, Battle of, 249, 258

Man, the Isle of, 129, 137, 138, 143,
150, 151, 1565^^., 163, 164, 165,
168

Manchester, 136, 138, 140, 147

Mansourah, Battle of, 2 — 12

Mantua, 284. See Gonzaga, Mar-
quis of.

Marans, 55 n. ^, 105

Marcellus, theatre of, 220

Marchegay, Paul, x.

Marguerite d'Amboise, Comtesse
de La Tremoille, 49

Marguerite de Valois. See Valois.

Maria Fagniani, Comtess of Yar-
mouth, 284

Maria Feodorovna, Empress of
Russia, 292

Marie Adelaide, Duchess of Bur-
gundy, 232, 233, 234

Marie Antoinette, 273, 278 —
281

Marie de Cleves, 95

Marie Jablonowski. See Talmond,
Princesse de.

Marie de La Tour d'Auvergne.
See La Tremoille, Duchess of.

Marie de Montauban, wife of
Georges de Craon, 49

Marie de Sully. See Sully.

Marie Leczinski, Queen of France,
261, 271

Marie Louise, Queen of Spain, 232

sqq., 237, 241, 242, 244, 246, 248,

251, 252
Marignano, Battle of, 81
Marlborough, Duke of, 248
Marlet, Leon, xi., 122 & w., 126 «.
Marly, chMeau, vi., 243, 248, 254
Marsille, 257 «. 2
Marston Moor, Battle of, 139 n.,

150
Martindale Castle, 122
Mary of Burgundy, daughter of

Charles the Rash, 47 n.
Mary Stuart, Princess of Orange,

177, 192, 194
Mary Tudor, Queen of France, 80

130 w., 131
Mathelyn, 14
Mauleon, 55 n. 1, 257 n. 2
Maurepas, 264, 272
Maurice,

Elector of Saxony, no n.
of Nassau. See Nassau.
Maximilian, Emperor,

as Archduke of Austria, 47 n.,

59
as Emperor, 71
Maximilien de Bethune, Marquis

de Rosny. See Bethune.
Mayenne,

Duke of, 105

Georges de Craon's estates in,
49
Mayerne, Sir Theodore Turquet de,

159 & n.
Mazarin, Cardinal, vi., 184 sqq.,

190, 192, 194 sqq.
Medicis, Catherine de, 105 n.^,
116, 133
descent from Georges de La
Tremoille, 42, 43 n.
Medicis, Marie de, in, 116, 118,

119, 128
Melle,

bishopric of, 26 n.
fortress of, 93
Melun, 22

INDEX

333

Mercceur, Duke of, 95

Meun, castle, 28

Michelet, 80, 86

Milan, 61, 71, 78, 79, 81, 119

duchy of, 61, 63, 70, 71, 88

duke of, 61, 70
Mirabello,

chateau, 88

park, 89
Miranda, Francisco di, 90
Modena, Queen of England, in

exile, 222, 260
MoliSre, 206
Molyneux, Lord, 137
Monaco, Prince of, Ambassador at

Rome, 225, 226
Monk, General, 169
Montagu, George, 271
Montaigne, 127 «.
Montargis, 37
Montauban, 109
Mont Cenis, 79
Montagu, chateau, 80
Montereau, 27 n. 1, 121
Montespan, Mme. de, 265
Montesquieu, 261, 264, 266
Montfort, 257 n. ^
Montmorency,

Anne de, 84, 93, 130 n.

Charlotte de, Princesse de
Cond6, 117, 118

Henry de, Mar6chal Damville,
117 n. 2

house of, vi.

Jeanne de, Duchesse de La
Tr6moille, 93, 94, 96 sqq.,
103 & n., 116, 130 n.
Montpellier, 100, 109
Montpensier,

Anne de, " the Great Made-
moiselle," 185 & n. 2, 186,
187, 188

castle of, 57, 58

Counts of, 57, 63

Dukes of. See Bourbon.
Montr6sor, chateau, 37
Morat, Battle of, 46

Morel, Mnje. de, 114 n.

Moret, 117

Mortara, 72

Moussy, Regnaud de, 82

Munster,

Bishop, 199

Council, 155
Musgrave, Sir Philip, 164, 165

Nancy, Battle of, 45, 47, 48
Nantes, 59, 60, 70, 303

Edict of, 107, 108, 109
pacification of, 104
revocation of Edict, 94, 211,
258
Nantwich, Battle of, 168
Naples, 2, 62, 63, 70, 288, 289, 296
Bay of, 62
crown of claimed by,

Charles VIIL, King of
France, and his successor,
61, 155 n. 2
Dukes of La Tr6moille and
Princes of Tarente, 155
& n. 2, 198, 288
Kings of, 61, 87, 289, 293, 296
Queens of, 10, 289, 292, 296
state of, 75, 76, 79
Napoleon, ix., 5, 90, 91, 289 n. ^

297, 312, 314
Nassau,

Charlotte Brabantine,
Duchesse de La Tremoille,
X. & n. 3, 109 sqq., 121 sqq.,
128 sqq., 133, 137 n., 176 «. »
Frederick Henry, Prince of
Orange, 176 & n.^, 177, 180
182, 183
Henry, Count of, 179
house of, vi.
Louisa Henrietta of, 177, 181,

182, 183
Maurice, Prince of Orange,

no, 125
William II., Prince of Orange,
177/ 178, 180

334

INDEX

Nassau — continued.

William III., Prince of Orange.
See William III., King of
England.
Navona, Piazza, 220 & n. ^
Neufchatel, lake of, 46
Neuve-des-Capucins, Rue, 281
Nevers, Comte de. See John the

Fearless, Duke of Burgundy.
Newcastle, 153
Nice, 278

Nicopolis, Battle of, 12, 13, 14
Noailles,

Adrien Maurice de, 223
La Marechale de, 223, 225,
240
Noirmoustier,

Abbe de. See La Tremoille,

Joseph Emmanuel.
Antoine Francois, Due de,

212, 215, 253, 255, 256
Claude, Baron de, 212, 213
Frangois, Marquis de, 212,

214
Louis, Due de, 197, 212, 213
Louis, Marquis de, 212
Novara, 72, 73, 75, 78, 80

Odescalchi, Don Livio, 224

Oldenburg, 211

Oldenzeel, no

Olonne, Georges, Comte d', 212,

213
Olyferne, Duke of, 8
Orange,

Maurice, Prince of. See
Nassau.

William the Silent, Prince
of. See William.

William VIL, Prince of, 49
Orbitello, 296
Orleans,

Anne d', 233

Charles, Due d', 16, 19, 21,

23
family of, 67

Gaston, Ducd', 185. 186, 188,

189, 190
Joan of Arc's relief of, 31, 186
Philippe, Due d', 227, 253,

254

siege of, 30

" the Great Mademoiselle "
at, 186

town of, 22
Ormond, Duke of, 237
Ormskirk, 172
Orpe, Miss, 133, 134, 154
Orsini,

estates of, 224, 255

palace of, 220, 221

the house of. 218 n. 2, 219, 221
Orsova, 12
Ostend, 286, 288
Oudenarde, Battle of, 258

Palatine, La. See Gonzague
Anne de.
Charlotte Elisabeth, Prin-
cesse de, 254
Pallavicini, the, 13
Palermo, 296
Paris,

besieged by Huguenots, 106
besieged by Joan of Arc, 34
taken by Charles VIL, 38
threatened by the English
and defended by La Tre-
moille, 87
Parma,

Duke of, 105, 106

Princess of. See Farnese,

Elizabeth,
town of, 63
Pasquino,

palace, 221, 222, 224, 225,

255
the tailor, 220
Pathay, Battle of, 32
Patroclus, 220

Paul I., Emperor of Russia, 292
&n.

INDEX

335

Pavia,

Battle of, 89, 90
campaign of, 88
siege of, 88, 89
town of, 62, 88, 90
Peel Castle, 164
P6ronne, Louis XI. taken prisoner

at, 45
Pescara, General, 88
" Peveril of the Peak," xi., 122,

164
Philip II., King of Spain, 95, 226,

227
Philip III., King of Spain, 119
Philip IV., King of Spain, 228,
229, 233 sqq., 241, 249, 244, 246
sqq.
Philip the Bold. See Burgundy,

Dukes of.
Piacenza, 63
Pibrac, 126, 136
Picard, 120 n.
Picquigny, Treaty of, 45
Piennes,

Due de, 286
Duchesse de, 285, 286
Pierre Fort, fortress, 46
Pierrepont, Henry, Marquis of

Dorchester, 166
Pisa, 63

Pisani, Marquis de, 114, 115, 116
Plessis, College of, 274
Plessis-du-Parc, 48
Plessis-les-Tours, 48 n., 56
Plessis-Mornay, M. du, 99, 113
Plombieres, 279
Poggibonsi, 63
Poitiers,

Battle, 3

Bishop. See 1.2l Tr6moille,

Jean,
town, xi., 59, 82, 91, loi n. 2,

105
Poitou, xii., I, 3, 26, 28, 39, 40,

55 n. 1, 60, 91, 93, 95, 107, io8,

i73> 185, 195, 197
Pontarlier, 46

Portland,

Duke of, 295

Earl of, 211
Portocarrero, Cardinal, 223, 228

238
Portugal, 70
Praguerie, the, 39 & n.
Puisaye, Comte de, 313
Pyrenees, 231

Treaty of, 197

QuEENSBERRY, the Marquis of,

283, 284 n. 1
Quiberon, 313

Radetzky, General, 290, 291

Radzivill, 180 & w.

Rais, Gille de, 16, 17, 25

Rambouillet,

Hotel de, 204, 205, 216, 221
Marquise de, 114, n6
Salon de, 114 & «. 2

Reaux, Tallemant des, 115 & «. »,

133
Regnault. See Chartres, R6g-
nault de, Archbishop of Reims.
Reims, 13

Charles VII. crowned at,
25 n., 33
Ren6 II., Duke of Lorraine, 46,

47. 48
Rennes, 204, 257 n. 2, 308, 309, 310
Retz, Cardinal de, 187, 215
Rhimbergue, 180
Rhodes,

Grand Prior of, 14

Seigneur Guy dies at, 14
Richard II., King of England, 11
Richelieu,

Cardinal, vi., 114, 132, 274

Due de, 285
Richemont, Count of, 23, 27 & n.

28, 29, 32 & n. 1, 37, 38, 39
Richmond, 283, 286, 298
Rigby, Colonel, 139, 145, 146, 147,

148, 156
Robespierre, 313

336

INDEX

Rocroy, 191

Rohan,

house of, 185
Mdlle. de, 181
Rome, 62, 63, 76, 78

Duke Charles Bretagne de La

Tr^moille at, 284, 293, 295

La Princesse de Talmond at,

270
La Princesse des Ursins re-
sides at, 217 — 233, 255 —
256
Rosny, Marquis de. See B6thune,

Maximilien.
Rossignol, General, 308, 309, 310
Rouen, 36, 106
Rouhet, 94
Roussillon, 245
Royan, Yolande Julie, Marquise

de, 212, 215
Ruitz, Marshal, 291
Rupa, Helen de. See Derby,

Countess of.
Rupert, Prince, 137 & w., 143, 144,

148, 149, 150, 181, 260
Rushen, Castle of, 157, 161, 164
Rutter, the Rev. Mr,, 147, 152, 163
Ruvigny, Henri de. Lord Galway,

247 n. 2
Ryswick, Treaty of, 199, 214, 123

St. Angelo, Bridge of, 219
St. Antoine,

Battle of the Gate of, 186,
187, 190

Gate, 197

Rue, 20
St. Aubin-du-Cormier, Battle of,

60, 66, 74
St. Bartholomew, massacre, now.,

Ill n. 2
St. Cloud, 187, 188
St. Cyr, 254
St. Denis,

cathedral, 3

fair, 23

faubourg, 187

St. Didier, Marie Virginie, Com-
tesse de, second wife of Duke
Charles Bretagne de La Tr6-
moille, 314

St. Dominique, Rue, 265

St. Florent, 301

St. Germain, 114, 115, 117, 222
231, 260, 265

St. Honore, Gate, Joan of Arc at,

34
St. Jacques Tower, 18, 21
St. James's Palace, Court, 131

286
St. Jean d'Ang61y, loi, 102, 103

& n.
St. John's, Prior of, 85
St. Joseph, Convent of, 265, 267
St. Laon de Cursay, 57
St. Malo, 98, 304
St. Maur-les-Fosses, 116
St. Medard, chapel, the La Tre-

moille burying place, 57
Saint Paul, Hotel de, 13
St. Peter's at Rome, 11, 220
St. Petersburg, 292, 314
St. Pierre le Moustier, 35
St. Simon, 229 & n. ^ 234, 239,

240, 243, 244
St. Yon, family of, 18
Sainte-Beuve, 214, 242, 256
Sainte-Croix, the Abbe de. See

"Ldi. Tremoille, Frederic Guil-

laume.
Sainte-Marthe,
Louis de, viii.
Pierre Scevole de, ix.
Scevole de, viii.
Sainte Menehould, 119
Saintes, loi
Saintonge, 55 n. 1, 60, 91, loi w. 2,

186
Salm, Princesse de, 314 n.
San Giovanni, fort, 62, 65
Sand, Georges, 121
Saracens, the, 2, 7, 8, 9
Sarragossa, 237
Sarzana, 63, 64

INDEX

337

Sauves, Charlotte de SemblaiKjay,
Mme. de, wife of Fran9ois de
Noirmoustier, 214, 215
Savoie, Madeleine de, 130
Savonarola, 63
Savoy, 277, 278

Dowager Duchess of, 236
Victor Amadeus, Duke of,
227, 232, 233
Saxe, the Chevalier de, 293, 295
Saxe Weimar, Bernard of, Duke of

Jena, 174, 198
Scarron, Mme. See Aubign6,

Fran9oise de.
Schomberg, Gaspard de, 108
Scone, 160

Scott, Sir Walter, xi., 122, 164
Sedan, 126

Selwyn, George, 284 n.
Serrant,

chateau, x., 314

Louis Charles, Due de La

Tr6moille, buried at, 57
Valentine, Comtesse de. See
Walsh.
Sesia, R., 72
S6vign6, Mme. de, x. & n. 2, 183,

203 sqq., 218
Sforza, Ludovico {II Moro), 61
as Duke of Milan, 63, 71 sqq.,
78
Shrewsbury, 168
Sicily,

King of, 70
Queen of, 30
Sidonie, Mdlle., 305
Sienna, 63

Sigismund, King of Hungary, 11, 12
Sobieski,

Clementine, wife of the Old

Pretender, 255, 256, 261
house of, vi., 271
Jean, 255
Soissons, Comte de, 102
Solms, Emilie of, Princess of

Orange, 182, 192
Somerset House, 179

C.R.

Somme, R., 45

Sophie, Countess Bentinck. See

Bentinck.
Sorbonne, the, 274
Sorel, Agnes, 38
Spa, 192, 285
Spar, Baron, 193
Spoleto, 218
Stanislas, King of Poland, 260 w. ^

264, 265
Stanleys, the, vi., 130

Amelia, 134 n., 154, 158, 159,

162 n. 1, 166, 167
Catherine, 134 & n., 154, 158,

159, 162 n. ^ 166
Charlotte, 134 & w. 1
Earls of Derby. See Derby.
Edward, 134 «., 162, 167, 169,

171
Henrietta Maria, 134 n., 161,

162, 166
Henry Frederic, 134 «.
James, 134 n.
Papers, 134 n., 152 & n.
William, 134 w., 162, 167, 169,
170
Stenay, 191
Stockport, 148
Stofflet, 305, 306
Strafford, Earl of, 156, 166
Strange. See Derby, Earls of, and
La Tremoille, Charlotte, Lady
Strange.
Strasbourg. See La Tr6moille,
Frederic Guillaume, Canon of,
and Charles Auguste, Dean of.
Stuart,

Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia,
129 & n., 137 n., 149, 180,

194
Prince Charles Edward, 261

sqq.
Sully, chateau, 3, 22, 24, 32, 35, 41,

112
Comte de, 6, 8, 9
Due de. See B6thune, Maxi-

milien.

338

INDEX

Sully — continued.

Marie de. Dame de La Tr6-
moille, 3, 14, 15, 17
Susa, pass of, 79
Switzerland, 70
Swiss Cantons, 46

mercenaries, 64, 65, 71, 72,
73, 79. 81

Tabouret, honour of occupying,
accorded to La Tremoille prin-
cesses, 2, III, 198
Taillebourg, castle, 95, 97, 98, 99,
186
Counts of,

Charles Belgique, 257 w. ^

Charles de Coetivy, 83 n. ^

Talbot, Richard, Earl of Tyr-

connel, 222
Talleyrand,

Adrien Blaise de. Prince de

Chalais, first husband of La

Princesse des Ursins, 216

Marie Anne de, Princesse des

Ursins,

authorities for the life of, 214

n.
builds chateau on the Loire,

251

character of her relations with
the King and Queen of
Spain, 234, 235, 236, 238

coldly received by Louis XIV.,
leaves France, resides at
Genoa, 254

conducts Marie Louise to
Spain, 233, 234

contributes to the establish-
ment of the Bourbons on
the Spanish throne, 214,
228, 230, 231, 238

correspondence of, xi.

corresponds with.

Lord Bolingbroke, 250, 251
Mme. de Maintenon, 245,
246, 248

Mme. de Noailles, 223, 225,
232, 234, 245
descent, parentage and birth,

212, 214, 215

driven from Spain by the new
Queen, Elizabeth, 251 — 253

early married life in Paris, 216

end of her first period of power
and residence at Versailles,
240 — 244

endeavours to obtain inclu-
sion in the Treaty of
Utrecht, 250 — 251

events leading to her fall, 238,
240

excites the jealousy of minis-
ters and ambassadors at
Madrid, 238

her boundless ambition, 218,
250, 251

her policy saves Spain for
the Bourbons, 245

her Roman Salon, 219, 221,
222

importance of, in her family
and in European history,

213, 214, 223, 226, 231

is present at State councils,

237

lawsuit with her second hus-
band's heir, 224

lives in Italy, moves in
Roman society, 217

marriages, 216, 218, 219

relations with the French
ambassadors at Rome, 225,
226

return to Spain, 244

returns to Rome, figures at
the court of the Old Pre-
tender, dies at Rome, her
will, 255, 256, 260

schemes to marry the King of
Spain to Marie Louise of
Savoy, and to get herself
appointed Camerara Major,
232, 233

INDEX

339

Talleyrand — continued.
Marie Anne de — continued.
unofficial representative of
France at Rome, 223, 224
visits France, 222, 223, 260
P^rigord, Archambauld de, 316
the Abbe, 216 n.^
Talmond,
castle of, 105
estates of, 49, 55 «. *
Princes of,

Anne Charles Fr6d6ric, 260 &

n. 1, 261, 263, 264, 270
Antoine Philippe, 298, 313
at college, 274
commands in Royalist

army, 299
distinguished at battles of
Dol and Le Mans, 306,

307

distinguished in defence of
Laval, 302, 303

enters the army, 275

expedition to the coast,
305 & n.. 306

fondness for pleasure, 276

imprisonment and escape,
298 — 299

imprisonment, trial and
death, 308 — 311

in family group, 274 & w. ^

joins the Royalists in the
West, 298—308

leaves the Vendean army,
308

organises the crossing of
the Loire, 300, 302

parts from his mistress.
Lady Brighton, 298

receives mysterious mes-
sage from, 304

visits England, 282, 283,
298, 303, and escorts
his sister-in-law to Rich-
mond, 282, 283, 298
Charles, 59, 78, 80, 81, 82,

83 «.^

Francis. See La Tremoille

Count of.
Fr6d6ric Guillaume, 260 &n.^.
Leopold, 312

Louis Stanislas, Duke of
Chatellerault, 260 n. *
Princesses of,

F61icie. See Durfort Duras*
Henriette. See Argouges.
Marie Jablonowski, 257 — 272
death and testament de-
scribed by Mme, du
Deffand, 272
liaison with Prince Charles

Edward, 261 — 270
marries Prince de Talmond,

261
visited by Horace Walpole,
271
Taranto or Tarente,
Princes of, 257 n.

claim the crown of Naples, 2,

87, 198, 199, 288, 289 & n.
Henry Charles, Due de La
Tremoille, but better
known as le Prince de
Tarente, 174, 199, 203,
215, 257, 258, 260 & n. 1,
261, 277 n.
arrest, imprisonment and

release, 195, 196
at the Court of the Nether-
lands, 177
becomes Due de La Tre-
moille during his father's
lifetime, 175, 195
birth and upbringing, 175,

176
commands in the Thirty

Years' War, 180, 181
death at Thouars, 202
engages in the Fronde, 184

sqq.
family controversies conse-
quent on his return to
the Catholic Church, 201,
202

340

INDEX

Taranto or Tarente — continued.
Princes of — continued.

Henry Charles, Due de La

Tremoille — continued.
fights in the Battle of the

Porte St. Antoine, i88—

190
first affair of honour, 179
friendship with the Due

d'Enghien, later " the

Great Cond6," 176, 184,

187
granted the presidency of

the Breton estates, 198
invested with the Order of

the Garter by Charles II.,

192, 195, 260
marries Emilie of Hesse

Cassel, 183, 184
Memoires, 175 & n., 179,

182, 184, 189, 190
negotiates with Cromwell,

192, 193
proposals of marriage, 181
received by the King and

Queen at Toulouse, 197
residence in Holland, 192 —

194
resides at Thouars, 200
resigns his command, 192
returns to France, 194
runs away from home, 176
second affair of honour, 180
shipwreck, 178
summoned to France by

his mother's death, 199
visit to Hesse Cassel and

third residence in Hol-
land, 199
visits London, 151, 177,

178, 179
title confirmed by Louis XIV.,

198
Emmanuelle de Chitillon,
Princess of,
emigrates to England, 283.

298

escapes from the September

massacres, 282
escapes from the Tuileries on
the loth of August, 1792,
280, 281
her Souvenirs, 275, 279, 284
in the Abbaye prison, 281
life in Russia, and death at

St. Petersburg, 291, 292
lives at Richmond, 283, 284
marries Charles Bretagne,
Prince de Tarente, 275 & «.,
310
meets her husband in Eng-
land, 286, 287
with Marie Antoinette during
the Revolution, 279 — 281
Taro. R., 65

Teligny, Charles de, no w., iii w. 2
Tencin, the Abbe de, 255
Themistocles, 236
Thibert, family of, 18
Thou, President de, 108
Tiber, R., 219
Tirechappe, Rue, 274
Toledo, Bishop of. See Porto-

carrero, Cardinal.
Tongres, Battle of, 17
Tonnerre, Countess of. See He

Bouchard, Catherine de V.
Torcy, Marquis de, 223, 232, 250,

254
Toulouse, 197, 241
Touraine, 38, 44, 56, 75 n. 2, 251
Tournon, Rue de, 187
Tours, 105

Tourzel, Pauline de, 281
Trieste, 296
Trivulzio, 70, 71, 72, 78, 79 n. »,

80, 81
Troyes,

town of, 33, 69, 197
Treaty of, 25
Tuileries, palace, 133, 187, 279,280
Tunis, King of, 9
Turenne, General, 1 53, 187, 188, 190
Turin, 233, 278, 279, 291

INDEX

341

Tyburn, 171
Tynemouth, 137
Tyrol, 291

Unguad, Elizabeth von, 209
Ursins, La Princesse de. See

Talleyrand, Marie Anne de.
Utrecht, Treaty of, 199, 250, 255

Valentinois,

lands of, 69

Louise d'Albret, Duchesse de.
See Albret.
Val^ry, 121

Valli^re, la Duchesse de, 281, 292
Valois,

Francis, Duke of. See Fran-
cis I., King of France.

Marguerite de, divorced wife
of Henry IV., 116, 214, 215
Vannes, 37

Vasse, Mme. de, 265, 269
Vendome,

Count of, 23

Duke of, 249
Venice,

city of, 113, 126, 217, 291

state of, 63, 70
Verdun, 46
Vere,

Earl of Oxford, 130 n.

Elizabeth, iin.
Vernet, Camus de, 29
Versailles, 222, 223, 238, 241, 242,

243, 248, 252, 254, 273
Vichy, 222

Vienna, 210, 285, 288, 291, 294
Vigevano, 71
Vigo Bay, 242 n.
Villafranca, 233
Vincennes, 21, 22, 23, 120, 264
Visconti,

Gal6as, Duke of Milan, 10

Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, 61,
63 n., 75

Valentine, 61 & n.

Vitr6, 203, 206, 257 «. 2, 308,

310
Voltaire, 261

Wagram, Battle of, 289 m.*

Walkinshaw, Miss, 270

Walpole, Horace, 130 n., 270, 271,

272
Walsh,

family of, 314

Josephine Eugenie Valentine,
Comtesse de Serrant and
Duchesse de La Tremoille,
X., 314, 315, 316
Warrington, 136
Waterloo, Battle of, 81, 314
Wentworth, William, 166
Weser, R., 210
Westphalia, Treaty of, 199
Whitehall, 178, 179
Wigan, 140, 161
WiUiam III., King of England,
as King of England, 227, 231
as Prince of Orange, 207, 211
William the Silent, Prince of
Orange, x., 95, 109, 11 1 n. ^,
112 n.'^, 123, 130 n., 137 n.,
176 n. 8, 183
Wilson, Andrew, 64
Windsor, 262, 265, 266
Witt, Mme. de, xi., 122 & «., 126 n.
Woburn Abbey, 286
Wolsey, Cardinal, 78
Worcester, Battle of, 161
Wotton, Sir Henry, 129 n.
Wykerslooth, Baroness of, 314 n.

Yarmouth, Countess of. See

Maria Fagniani.
Yolande of Arragon, Duchess of

Anjou, 30, 37, 38
York,

Cardinal, 270
city, 136, 137, 149
James, Duke of. See James
II., King of England.

Zamariel, 126, 127

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