vexation and disgust. Yet Clémence deserved other usage. Her person was small, but her complexion was fine, and her eyes very beautiful, and Madame de Motteville, no prejudiced chronicler, adds, that whenever she was pleased to speak, she acquitted herself spirituellement. The rare excellences of her character only emerged into notice after she had spent many miserable years in her new position.

The duke, on shaking off his fever, immediately rejoined the army of La Meilleraie, and served out the rest of a not very distinguished campaign. Next year Louis XIII., though almost dying, insisted on taking the field in person, and D'Enghien accompanied him to the Spanish frontier. The operations ended in the entire conquest of Roussillon. The duke had again covered himself with honour, especially at the siege of Perpignan.

He was

On his way back from Roussillon, he passed through Lyons, but neglected to visit its archbishop, the Cardinal Alphonse de Richelieu. On reaching Paris he waited on the minister, who asked him how he had found his brother at Lyons. obliged to confess that he had not seen the archbishop. The minister made no observation at the time, but explained himself an hour after to the Prince of Condé, who ordered his son instantly to retrace his way to Lyons. He obeyed, and after a journey of 200 leagues over bad roads in bad weather again reached Lyons: but Alphonse had been informed of his compulsory travels, and, no doubt on his brother's suggestion, removed to Marseilles. The duke followed him thither, and then made the best of his way back to Ruel; Richelieu repeated his question about his brother's health, and having received an answer, appeared satisfied.

The great Cardinal was himself to the last-and he was now near his end. Most sick men who meet death in the possession of their faculties have sufficient internal indications of the approaching fate. On the 4th of December, 1642, Richelieu sent for the king to his bedside, and asked and received a solemn promise that his last arrangements should be punctually obeyed. He had disposed of every great office in France, as if France had been his patrimonial possession-and, among other appointments, named his secretary, Mazarin (originally a domestic), as his successor in the ministry. Dismissing the king, who was almost as ill as himself, he invited the attendance of his confessor; and various bishops and abbots then assembled about him to be edified with the calm piety of his last sacraments. He died in their presence without a groan. A murmur of devout admiration was echoed through the group of prelates. The Bishop of Nantes, who had more shrewdness than the rest,

VOL. LXXI. NO. CXLI.

I

rest, or more candour, or perhaps only more malignity, ventured to whisper, Profecto nimium magna illa tranquillitas me terrebat.' Such was the parting of this haughty, bloody priest. The weak king, who had feared him living and dying, and who seemed to fear him even when dead, was not to survive his master-minister long: but he could not imitate the tranquillity that terrified Bishop Corpeau. When his agony seemed to be over, there was an eager whispering among the attendants at the foot of the royal bed. The little dauphin, now seven years old, understood their meaning, and exclaimed with childish exultation, Je suis Louis Quatorze!' Louis Treize gathered strength

for one shriek of Pas encore!' and expired (May 14, 1643).

Richelieu's life had been spent in the endeavour to break down the ancient aristocracy of France, and convert the monarchy which he wielded into a pure despotism. The union of imperturbable courage and unfathomable perfidy had seemed towards the close entirely triumphant; but though Louis XIII. and Anne of Austria upheld his system to the utmost of their means and understanding after he was no more, the great nobility, headed by the princes of the blood, were not prepared to see that system continued under his Italian successor. The supple foreigner foresaw how easily a national prejudice might be nurtured to his embarrassment, and at once yielded on various points of formality and precedence which had given greater offence than weightier encroachments could do to the brother of Louis XIII. But the demand of the Condés was a serious one-it was no less than the immediate command of the army on the Flemish frontier for the Duke d'Enghien-now in the twenty-second year of his age. He had given abundant proofs of daring courage-but could not by possibility have exhibited possession of any other quality which such a post required. But the heir of Condé was also the husband of Richelieu's niece, and Mazarin shrunk from the risk of irritating at once two great interests in the state, Shortly before the king's death the young duke was appointed; and the indignation of the public had hardly been expressed before it was most effectually rebuked: for, however mean and profligate the act of the government had been, it was done for a warlike genius of the first order; and he who had only served two campaigns as a volunteer, was hardly a fortnight in the supreme command ere he had won a great battle against the best generals and troops of the Spanish monarchy-the battle that more than any other one on record (except Trafalgar) weakened and lowered that once haughtiest of powers-the greatest in which the French arms had been victorious for nearly 400 years.

We have heard that when the conqueror of Assaye was appointed to the Copenhagen expedition in 1808, there was great fear at

the

the Horse Guards, where the prejudice against Indian officers still lingered: so a most reputable veteran was joined as second in command, in hope and expectation that his advice would be relied on whenever difficulty occurred. It is said that the perfect composure with which this worthy man found his suggestions attended to during the voyage-though the subjects then in question must needs have been of the smallest importance-inspired him with full confidence that in the hour of conflict he was to be the real chief. But when that hour approached, says the story, the only reply he received to a well-set oration detailing a well-meditated plan of action, was a request that he would immediately place himself at the head of a particular division, and attend to certain orders comprised in half-a-dozen words. Whether this incident be or be not destined to find a place hereafter in the authentic history of the Duke of Wellington, it had an exact prototype in the first field of Condé. The Maréchal de l'Hôpital was attached to him as his Mentor; when the young general announced his intention of opening the campaign, not by a siege, but a battle, the senior remonstrated and all but rebelled. Take,' said D'Enghien, 'the command of the second line-I charge myself with the event.' The king is just dead,' rejoined the Maréchal'the queen-regent's government is hardly yet settled. The enemy are aware of the fatal consequences which a defeat must at this moment bring to France. It is no time to run the risk of such a calamity.' 'I shall never witness it,' answered the juvenile chief. 'I shall enter Paris a conqueror or a corpse-to the head of the second line!'-and L'Hôpital covered his hoary head, and obeyed.

The Spaniards were led by Melo and Fuentes, and their army, greatly superior in numbers to the French, included a large body of splendid cavalry, and the flower of the long unrivalled infantry -the famous Tercios. Lord Mahon's narrative of the day of Rocroy (19th May, 1643) is a masterly one-but we cannot afford to extract more than the beginning and the conclusion. Military readers are already familiar with the strategy of the action, and unmilitary readers would learn little from a brief summary :

'La nuit qui devait être la dernière de tant de milliers d'hommes, fut froide et obscure, et les soldats des deux armées eurent recours à la forêt voisine. Ils allumèrent une si grande quantité de feux que toute la plaine en était éclairée; on voyait dans le lointain Rocroy, le prix promis à la victoire du lendemain, et les deux armées paraissaient n'en former qu'une, tant les corps de garde étaient rapprochés. On eut dit qu'une espèce de trève les unissait pendant quelques heures, et rien n'interrompait le calme de la nuit, hors à de longs intervalles quelques

coups de canon qui partaient de la ville assiégée, et que les échos de la forêt semblaient redoubler. Le Duc d'Enghien se jetant auprès d'un feu de garde, et s'enveloppant de son manteau, s'endormit en peu d'instans. Son sommeil fut si profond, qu'il fallut le réveiller le lendemain quand le jour commença à poindre; c'est le même trait qu'on raconte d'Alexandre le matin de la victoire d'Arbelles.

Se levant sans plus tarder, Enghien se laissa armer par le corps, mais au lieu de casque ne voulut mettre qu'un chapeau garni de grandes plumes blanches. Il se rappellait, sans doute, le mot célèbre de son cousin, le Grand Henri, "Ralliez-vous à mon panache blanc :" et en effet les plumes qui brillaient sur la tête d'Enghien servirent dans la mélée à rallier auprès de lui plusieurs escadrons qui, sans cet ornement, ne l'auraient pas reconnu. Alors il monta à cheval, et parcourut les rangs en donnant ses derniers ordres. Le mot de ralliement était 66 Enghien." Les officiers se rappellaient avec plaisir le combat de Cérisoles, gagné un siècle auparavant par un prince du même sang et du même nom, tandis que les soldats, touchés de la jeunesse et de la bonne mine de leur Général, le recevaient partout avec des cris de joie. Toutes les dispositions étant faites, les trompettes sonnèrent la charge, et à l'instaut même Enghien partit comme la foudre à la tête de la cavalerie de la droite.

*

*

*

'Dans cette bataille, disputée avec tant d'acharnement pendant six heures, la perte des Français est évaluée par eux-mêmes à deux mille hommes tués ou blessés, mais fut, sans doute, plus considérable. Celle des Espagnols fut immense, et leur infanterie surtout, qu'on avait regardé comme invincible depuis la grande journée de Pavie, fut détruite plutôt que vaincue à Rocroy. Telle était la fierté de ces vieilles bandes. si célèbres dans toute l'Europe, qu'un officier Français ayant demandé le jour suivant à un Espagnol, combien ils avaient été avant le combat, "Il n'y a," répondit celui-ci, "qu'à compter les morts et les prisonniers!" Toute l'artillerie Espagnole, consistant de vingt-quatre pièces, et leurs étendards, dont on comptait jusqu'à trois cents, tombèrent dans les mains des vanqueurs. Le duc reçut trois coups de feu dans la bataille, deux dans sa cuirasse, et un autre à la jambe, qui ne lui causa qu'une meurtrissure; mais son cheval fut blessé de deux mousquetades. On voit qu'il n'était pas moins bon soldat que grand capitaine.

Il serait difficile de décrire les transports de surprise et de joie avec lesquels on reçut à la cour, encore mal affermie, la nouvelle de cette victoire. On la regarda avec raison comme la plus grande bataille que les Français eussent gagnée depuis celle de Bouvines. Ici commence cette carrière de gloire qui illustra le siècle de Louis XIV., et qui s'arrêta enfin devant les épées d'Eugène et de Marlborough. Et si ce fut avec raison que Louis XIV. prit le soleil pour sa devise, on peut dire que Rocroy en était l'aurore, comme Hochstedt en fut le déclin.'— pp. 27-37.

The army of Melo was by this one blow reduced to nothing. The young conqueror proposed instantly to carry the war beyond the frontier, and besiege Dunkirk: but the sinews of war

were

were wanting—the exchequer at Paris was exhausted. A foreign campaign had not entered into the contemplation of Mazarin. Having, therefore, taken Thionville, and placed the whole frontier in a state of security, he appeared in Paris. He was received with an enthusiasm not surpassed by that which welcomed Napoleon from the first of his Italian campaigns. The king was a childhis uncle an intriguing coward-the regent was an unpopular Spaniard-the minister a more unpopular Italian. France had wanted a great man to rally round as the hope and safeguard of the throne and the country-and she hailed him in a prince of twenty-two. The queen gave him the governments of Champagne and Stenay: the baton of maréchal, which was his due (since Melo's had been taken in the field), he desired to yield to the officer who had best seconded him at Rocroy-M. de Gassionand he distributed all his prize-money among the soldiery.

His wife had been delivered in his absence of a son. D'Enghien embraced the infant with tenderness; but treated the mother with the hardest indifference. While Richelieu lived, the husband's neglect had been in some measure compensated by the assiduous attentions of his father and his sister: but the Prince of Condé now revenged what he felt to have been his own meanness in the solicitation of the alliance, on the innocent prize and victim of his selfish intrigue; and the angelic Geneviève, having herself just formed a marriage of mere worldliness in the very pride of her youth and beauty, avowed her scorn and contempt for the low match into which her brother had been betrayed. She had wedded the Duke of Longueville, a man advanced in age and ignoble in person: but the representative of Dunois possessed enormous wealth, and was Governor of Normandy. Within a few months she found other consolations in the homage of the young Count de Coligny-the first of as long a catalogue of lovers as ever made the boast of a coquette. A tender billet, whether forged or genuine, was picked up on the parquet of a rival beauty, Madame de Montbazon. She was a Lorraine, and hated all the race of the Condés. Her own favoured lover at the time was a bastard of royal blood, the Duke de Beaufort. The scandal was blazoneda rencounter occurred between Beaufort and Coligny, in which the latter was mortally wounded under the eyes of his mistress. The queen caused Beaufort to be confined at Vincennes, and ordered the Duke of Guise and other chiefs of the Lorraine faction into banishment. These persons had in former days been the chosen and steadiest friends of Anne of Austria-but she had by this time, if not earlier, surrendered herself, soul and body, to Mazarin;