A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 5Guizot, François
History
A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 5
Guizot, François
France -- History
The coadjutor left the Palais-Royal “in what is called a rage;” and he
was in a greater one in the evening, when his friends came and told him
that he was being made fun of at the queen’s supper-table; that she was
convinced that he had done all he could to increase the tumult; that he
would be the first to be made a great example of; and that the Parliament
was about to be interdicted. Paul de Gondi had not waited for their
information to think of revolt. “I did not reflect as to what I could
do,” says he, “for I was quite certain of that; I reflected only as to
what I ought to do, and I was perplexed.” The jests and the threats of
the court appeared to him to be sufficient justification. “What
effectually stopped my scruples was the advantage I imagined I had in
distinguishing myself from those of my profession by a state of life in
which there was something of all professions. In disorderly times,
things lead to a confusion of species, and the vices of an archbishop
may, in an infinity of conjunctures, be the virtues of a party leader.”
The coadjutor recalled his friends. “We are not in such bad case as you
supposed, gentlemen,” he said to them; “there is an intention of crushing
the public; it is for me to defend it from oppression; to-morrow before
midday I shall be master of Paris.”
For some time past the coadjutor had been laboring to make himself
popular in Paris; the general excitement was only waiting to break out,
and when the chancellor’s carriage appeared in the streets in the
morning, on the way to the Palace of Justice, the people, secretly worked
upon during the night, all at once took up arms again. The chancellor
had scarcely time to seek refuge in the Hotel de Luynes; the mob rushed
in after him, pillaging and destroying the furniture, whilst the
chancellor, flying for refuge into a small chamber, and believing his
last hour had come, was confessing to his brother, the Bishop of Meaux.
He was not discovered, and the crowd moved off in another direction. “It
was like a sudden and violent conflagration lighted up from the Pont Neuf
over the whole city. Everybody without exception took up arms. Children
of five and six years of age were seen dagger in hand; and the mothers
themselves carried them. In less than two hours there were in Paris more
than two hundred barricades, bordered with flags and all the arms that
the League had left entire. Everybody cried, ‘Hurrah! for the king!’ but
echo answered, ‘None of your Mazarin!’”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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