“And, afterwards, when it was mentioned to the Cardinal de Richelieu, he observed that it was very strange that I should ask money of the King for my corn, seeing that I was so rich that I was building a sumptuous house at Chaillot; that I was having such splendid furniture made that the King had nothing like it, and that during the six years I had been in prison I still maintained such great state that it was impossible to equal it.[145] “A few days later, in the same month, the Duke of Weimar was authorised by the King to refresh his army in the county of Vaudemont and in my marquisate of Harouel, which was delivered over to pillage. This he executed so well, that every kind of plunder, cruelty, and atrocity was practised there, and my estate entirely destroyed, save the château, which could not be taken by this army, which had no artillery. “At the end of the month of May the troops of the said Duke of Bernard of Weimar attacked our château of Removille, where five or six hundred peasants of both sexes and of every age had taken refuge. They carried it by assault on the 28th, and killed the men and the old women who were there, carried away the young women, after violating them, and, having pillaged the château, burned it with the children who were in it.” In July of the following year the Château of Harouel, which had been occupied by the troops of the Duke of Lorraine, was bombarded by the King’s troops, and, after seventy cannon-shot had been fired at it, was surrendered to the French commander, who left a garrison of thirty soldiers there, to be maintained at Bassompierre’s expense. In August, 1636, Bassompierre’s niece, Madame de Beuvron, went to the Cardinal to solicit her uncle’s liberty. “But he answered her, in mockery, that I had been only three years in the Bastille and that M. d’Angoulême had been there fourteen; that the duke was returning very opportunely to give some good advice on the subject of my liberation. I omitted to mention that, at the alarm of the passage of the Somme,[146] MM. d’Angoulême, de la Rochefoucauld, M. de Valençay and other persons who had been exiled were recalled; but anger and hatred continued against me in such fashion, that, not only had they neither consideration nor compassion for my long sufferings, but, on the contrary, wished to increase them by this derision and mockery.”