Historical Tales [calibre 5.4.1]

This letter yields a curious revelation of the secret history of a royal court. There have been few kings with whom such impudent independence would have served. Louis XIII. was one of them. Cinq-Mars seems to have known his man. The quarrel was not of long continuance. Richelieu, who had first placed the youth near the king, easily reconciled them, a service which the foolish boy soon repaid by lending an ear to the enemies of the cardinal. For this Richelieu was in a way responsible. He had begun to find the constant attendance of the favorite upon the king troublesome to himself, and gave him plainly to understand so. "One day he sent word to him not to be for the future so continually at his heels, and treated him even to his face with as much tartness and imperiousnesss as if he had been the lowest of his valets." Such treatment was not likely to be well received by one of the independent disposition of Cinq-Mars. He joined in a plot against the cardinal.

The king was ill; the cardinal more so. Gaston, Duke of Orleans, was again in Paris, and full of his old intriguing spirit. The Duke of Bouillon was there also, having been sent for by the king to take command of the army of Italy. He, too, was drawn into the plot which was being woven against Richelieu. The queen, Anne of Austria, was another of the conspirators. The plot thus organized was the deepest and most far-reaching which had yet been laid against the all-powerful minister.

Bouillon was prince-sovereign of the town of Sedan. This place was to serve the conspirators as an asylum in case of reverse. But a town was not enough; an army was needed; whence should it come? Spain might furnish it.

The affair was growing to the dimensions of a conspiracy against the crown as well as the minister. Viscount de Fontrailles, a man who detested the cardinal, and would not have hesitated to murder him as a simpler way of disposing of the difficulty, was named by Cinq-Mars as a proper person to deal with the Spaniards. He set out for Madrid, and soon succeeded in negotiating a secret treaty, in the name of the Duke of Orleans, by whose terms Spain was to furnish the conspirators with twelve thousand foot, five thousand horse, and the necessary funds for the enterprise. The town of Sedan, and the names of Cinq-Mars and Bouillon, were not mentioned in this treaty, but were given in a separate document.

While this dangerous work was going on the cardinal was dangerously ill, a prey to violent fever, and with an abscess on his arm which prevented him from writing. The king was with the army, which was besieging Perpignan. With him was Cinq-Mars, who was doing his best to insinuate suspicions of the minister into the mind of the king. All seemed promising for the conspirators, the illness of the cardinal, in their opinion, being likely to carry him off in no long period, and meanwhile preventing him from discovering the plot and setting himself right with the king.

Evidently these hopeful people did not know the resources of Cardinal Richelieu. In all his severe illness his eyes had not been blind, his intellect not at rest. Keen as they thought themselves, they had a man with double their resources to deal with. Though Richelieu was by no means surrounded by the intricate web of spies and intrigues with which fiction and the drama have credited him, he was not without his secret agents, and his means of tracing the most hidden movements of his enemies. Cinq-Mars lacked the caution necessary for a conspirator. His purposes became evident to the king, who had no thought of exchanging his great minister for a frivolous boy who was only fitted to amuse his hours of relaxation. The outcome of the affair appears in a piece of news published in the Gazette de France on June 21, 1642.

"The cardinal-duke," it said, "after remaining two days at Arles, embarked on the 11th of this month for Tarascon, his health becoming better and better. The king has ordered under arrest Marquis de Cinq-Mars, grand equerry of France."

Had a thunderbolt fallen in their midst, the enemies of Richelieu could not have been in greater consternation than at this simple item of news.

How came it about? The fox was not asleep. Nor had his illness robbed his hand and his brain of their cunning. The king, overladen with affairs of state from which his minister when well had usually relieved him, sent a message of confidence to Richelieu, indicating that his enemies would seek in vain to separate them. In reply the cardinal sent the king a document which filled the monarch with an astonishment that was only equalled by his wrath. It was a copy of the secret treaty of Orleans with Spain!

The king could hardly believe his eyes. So this was what lay behind the insinuations of Cinq-Mars? An insurrection was projected against the state! The cardinal, mayhap the king himself, was to be overthrown by force of arms! Only the sleepless vigilance of Richelieu could have discovered and exposed this perilous plot. It remained for the king to second the work of his minister by decisive action. An order was at once issued for the arrest of Cinq-Mars and his intimate friend, M. de Thou; while a messenger was sent off in all haste to the army of Italy, bearing orders for the arrest of the Duke of Bouillon at the head of his troops.