Between Two Kings

by Lawrence Ellsworth

  “Charles II!” cried Mazarin, his lip curling in disdain. “You received a visit from Charles II?”

  “From King Charles II,” replied Louis XIV, according his fellow grandson of Henri IV the title Mazarin appeared to forget. “Yes, Monsieur le Cardinal, that unhappy prince has touched my heart with an account of his misfortunes. He’s in great distress, Monsieur le Cardinal, and I share his pain—I, who have seen my own throne disputed, and was forced, in the time of unrest, to leave my own capital—I, in short, who understand such misfortune, was moved to help a royal brother now dispossessed and fugitive.”

  “Indeed?” sneered Mazarin. “Why doesn’t he have a Jules Mazarin near him as you do, Sire? His crown would still be on his head.”

  “I know all that my house owes to Your Eminence,” said the king, with some hauteur. “You must believe that, for my part, Monsieur, I will never forget it. It’s because my brother the King of England lacks the minister of genius who saved me that I turn now to that same minister to come to his aid. If you extend your hand over his head, rest assured, Monsieur le Cardinal, that your hand would be able to restore the crown to his brow from where it fell at the foot of his father’s scaffold.”

  “Sire,” replied Mazarin, “I’m grateful for your good opinion of me, but we have no business meddling over there. They are madmen who deny God and behead their kings. They’re dangerous, Sire, and their hands reek with the stain of royal blood. That policy offends me, and I reject it.”

  “Then help us to replace it with another.”

  “Such as?”

  “The restoration of Charles II.”

  “What? My God!” said Mazarin. “Does that poor prince flatter himself that he can grasp such a mirage?”

  “But yes!” replied the young king, intimidated by the difficulties his minister seemed to foresee in the project. “He’s only asking for a million.”

  “Is that all? One little million, if you please?” said the cardinal ironically, his Italian accent creeping out. “One little million, if you please, my brother? Bah! A family of beggars.”

  “Cardinal,” said Louis XIV, lifting his chin, “this family of beggars is a branch of my own family.”

  “And are you rich enough to give others millions, Sire? Do you have such millions?”

  “Oh!” said Louis XIV with an agony in his heart that he struggled not to show on his face. “Yes, Monsieur le Cardinal, I know how poor I am. But I’m sure the Crown of France must be worth a million, and for this good deed, I’m even willing to pledge my crown. There must be a Jewish moneylender who will give me a million for it.”

  “So, Sire, you say you need a million?” asked Mazarin.

  “Yes, Monsieur, that’s what I’m saying.”

  “You’re badly mistaken, Sire, you’d need much more than that. I will show you, Sire, how much you really need. Bernouin! Where are you?”

  “What, Cardinal?” said the king. “Are you going to consult a lackey about my royal business?”

  “Bernouin!” the cardinal called again, appearing not to notice the young king’s feeling of humiliation. “Come here and repeat to me that sum we were discussing just now.”

  “Cardinal, didn’t you hear me?” said Louis, pale with indignation.

  “Don’t be angry, Sire; I manage Your Majesty’s affairs in an open and aboveboard fashion; everyone in France knows I keep an open book. What was I having you do just now, Bernouin?”

  “Your Eminence had me adding up sums, Monseigneur.”

  “Which you did, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, Monseigneur.”

  “To figure the sum that His Majesty needs at the moment, right? Isn’t that what I said? Speak frankly, my friend.”

  “As Your Eminence says.”

  “Well, then! How much did I say I wanted?”

  “Forty-five million, I believe.”

  “And how much do we have if we combine all our resources?”

  “Thirty-nine million two hundred sixty thousand livres.”

  “Very well, Bernouin, that’s all I needed to know. You may leave us now,” said the cardinal, turning his sharp eyes on the young king, who was dumb with stupefaction.

  “But… that is…” stammered the king.

  “Ah, Sire! You still doubt?” said the cardinal. “Well! Here’s the proof of what you just heard.” And Mazarin drew from under his covers the number-filled ledger and presented it to the king, who averted his eyes, so deep was his grief and shame.

  “So, if you want a million, Sire, that’s a million not accounted for here, and it’s actually forty-six million Your Majesty needs. Well, I fear there aren’t enough Jews in the world to lend you such a sum, even if you did pledge the Crown of France.”

  The king, clenching his trembling fists, pushed back his chair. “Then it seems,” he said, “my brother the King of England must die of hunger.”

  “Sire,” replied Mazarin, in a softer tone, “remember this proverb, which I offer you as a basis of sound policy: ‘Rejoice in being poor when your neighbor is poor as well.’ ”

  Louis thought for a few moments, while glancing curiously at the ledger peeking out from under the cardinal’s bolster. “So,” he said, “it’s impossible to fulfill my request for money, Monsieur le Cardinal?”

  “Absolutely, Sire.”

  “Remember that this will make an enemy of him if he regains the throne without my help.”

  “If that’s Your Majesty’s only concern, then he should rest easy,” said the cardinal eagerly.

  “All right, I don’t insist,” said Louis XIV.

  “Have I convinced you, at least, Sire?” said the cardinal, placing his hand on the king’s.

  “Completely.”

  “If there’s anything else, ask for it, Sire, and I’ll be happy to see that you get it, having refused you this.”

  “Anything else, Monsieur?”

  “Why, yes! Am I not in service, body and soul, to Your Majesty? Hey, Bernouin! Torches and guards for His Majesty! His Majesty is returning to his apartments.”

  “Not yet, Monsieur. Since I find your good will at my disposal, I’ll take advantage of it.”

  “Something personal, Sire?” asked the cardinal, hoping that the subject would finally turn to his niece.

  “No, Monsieur, nothing for me,” replied Louis, “but once more for my brother Charles.”

  Mazarin’s expression darkened, and he muttered something that Louis couldn’t hear.

  XI The Politics of Monsieur de Mazarin

  Instead of the hesitation with which he’d approached the cardinal a quarter of an hour before, now there could be read in the eyes of the young king a will to win, an urge that, though it might fail because it wasn’t backed by true power, showed that he would at least keep the memory of a defeat deep in his heart. “This time, Monsieur le Cardinal, it’s for something easier to find than a million in gold.”

  “You think so, Sire?” said Mazarin, regarding the king with that gaze that read what was written on men’s hearts.

  “Yes, I think so, and when you hear what I’m asking for…”

  “Do you think I don’t already know, Sire?”

  “You know what I’m going to ask for?”

  “Listen, Sire, and I’ll tell you what King Charles said.”

  “But you couldn’t!”

  “Listen. He said, ‘And if that stingy Italian peasant…’ ”

  “Monsieur le Cardinal…!”

  “If not his exact words, that was the sense of them. Mon Dieu, I can hardly blame him; everyone is driven by their passions. He said, ‘If that Italian peasant refuses you the million we ask, Sire, and we’re forced, for lack of money, to renounce diplomacy, well! We’ll ask him for five hundred gentlemen.’ ”

  The king shuddered, for the cardinal was right in everything but the number.

  “Isn’t that how it went, Sire?” cried the minister with a note of triumph. “And then he added some lovely, encouraging words, saying, ‘
I have friends on the other side of the Channel, friends who need only a leader and a flag to follow. When they see me, and they see the banner of France, they’ll rally to my side, for they’ll know I have your support. The French flag and uniform are worth more to me than the million that Monsieur de Mazarin has refused us.’

  “For he knew very well that I’d refuse it. ‘With these five hundred gentlemen, Sire, I will conquer, but the honor of the victory will be yours.’ That’s what he said, isn’t it? That or something very similar, embroidering his words with brilliant metaphors and proud imagery, because they’re fine orators in that family. Why, the father even gave a speech on the scaffold.”

  The sweat of shame beaded Louis’s brow. He felt that this insult to his royal brother was an attack on his dignity, but he didn’t know how to respond, especially to the man to whom he’d always seen everyone bow, even his mother.

  Finally, he made an effort. “But, Monsieur le Cardinal,” he said, “he didn’t ask for five hundred men, only two hundred.”

  “You see that I guessed what he was after.”

  “I have never denied, Monsieur, that you see deeper and farther than others, which is why I thought you wouldn’t refuse my brother Charles something so simple and easy to grant as what I ask in his name, Monsieur le Cardinal—or rather in mine.”

  “Sire,” said Mazarin, “I have labored in politics for thirty years, first under Cardinal Richelieu,42 then on my own. My policies have not always been entirely forthright, I admit, but they have never been inept. Now, the idea that’s been proposed to Your Majesty is both dishonest and inept.”

  “Dishonest, Monsieur!”

  “Sire, you signed a treaty with Monsieur Cromwell.”

  “Yes, a treaty on which Monsieur Cromwell signed his name above mine!”

  “Why did you sign it down so low, Sire? Monsieur Cromwell found a good place for his signature, and he took it; that was his way. The point is you signed a treaty with Cromwell—or in other words, England, since when you signed that treaty Monsieur Cromwell was England.”

  “Monsieur Cromwell is dead.”

  “Do you think so, Sire?”

  “Beyond a doubt, since his son Richard succeeded him, and then abdicated.”

  “So he did! Richard inherited from Cromwell upon his death, and England inherited when he resigned. The treaty was part of that inheritance, whether it was in Richard’s hands or in England’s. That treaty is as legal and as valid as ever. Why would you abandon it, Sire? What has changed? What Charles II wants today we didn’t want to give him ten years ago, and don’t want to now. You are allied with England, Sire, and not Charles II. It might have been unseemly, from the family point of view, to sign a treaty with the man who beheaded your father’s brother-in-law,43 and to have contracted an alliance with the body they call the Rump Parliament;44 that might be unseemly, as I say, but politically it was far from inept, since, thanks to that treaty, I saved Your Majesty, who was then still a minor, from the danger of a foreign war during the Fronde45… you remember the Fronde, don’t you, Sire?”

  The young king lowered his head.

  “A war that would have fatally complicated settling the uprisings of the Fronde. And I say to Your Majesty that to change course now without warning our allies would be both dishonest and inept. We’d be going to war without right on our side, and it would justify the same being done to us, for an attack by five hundred men, or two hundred men, or fifty or even ten, is still an act of aggression.

  “A Frenchman is the nation; the uniform is our army. Suppose, for example, Sire, that you were at war with Holland, which sooner or later is bound to happen, or with Spain, which could occur if somehow your marriage fell through”—Mazarin looked closely at the king—“and there are a thousand reasons why that might happen… anyway! In that case, would you approve of England sending the United Provinces or the infanta a regiment, a company, or even a squad of English gentlemen? Would you think that comports with the elements of your treaty of alliance?”

  Louis listened, and thought it strange to hear Mazarin invoking good faith, when he was the originator of so much political chicanery that such tricks were known as mazarinades.46 “However,” said the king, “unless I directly forbade it, I couldn’t prevent gentlemen of our state from going to England on their own account.”

  “You would have to order them to return, Sire, or at least protest their presence as enemies in an allied country.”

  “But see here, Monsieur le Cardinal, surely a political genius like yourself could find a way to help this poor king without compromising ourselves.”

  “But that’s exactly what I don’t want to do, my dear Sire,” said Mazarin. “For my purposes, events in England couldn’t be unfolding better if I’d planned them myself. Governed the way it’s governed, England is a magnet of trouble for all of Europe. Holland wants to protect Charles II? Let Holland do it; the only two maritime powers will clash, we’ll watch as they sink one another’s fleets, and we’ll use the debris to build our own ships, if we can ever afford the nails to do so.”

  “Oh! This all sounds so miserable and petty, Monsieur le Cardinal!”

  “Yes, quite true, Sire, I admit it. More than that: if I admit for a moment the possibility of your evading the terms of your treaty, which happens sometimes when there is a great interest at stake, or the terms bind one too closely; well! You’d authorize the engagement you request, France, or its flag, which is the same thing, would cross the Channel to fight—and France would be defeated.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Ma foi! We know what manner of general His Majesty Charles II is, as we saw at Worcester!”

  “He no longer has to deal with Cromwell, Monsieur.”

  “That’s right: now he has to deal with General Monck, who is far more dangerous. Cromwell was a visionary, a man with moments of exaltation, of expansiveness during which he, that former brewer, overflowed like an overfilled barrel. Then we might taste a drop of his thoughts, which gave us the savor of his intentions, a flaw that enabled us repeatedly to penetrate to Cromwell’s soul, though they claimed that soul was armored in triple brass, as Horace says.47 But Monck! Ah, Sire, God forbid that you must come to grips with Monsieur Monck! He’s the one who in the last year has given me all these gray hairs!

  “Monck is no visionary, no, not he; alas, Monck is a politician. He keeps close, and never overflows. For the last ten years he’s had his eyes fixed on a goal, but no one can figure out what it is. Like Louis XI,48 to prevent anyone from guessing his thoughts of the night before, every morning he burns his nightcap. On the day his plans, slowly and solemnly matured, finally burst forth, they will explode with the certain success of the unexpected.

  “It’s this Monck, Sire, of whom you may never have heard, whose name you may not even know, who stands against your brother Charles II. Charles, believe me, knows that name well, though he doubtless didn’t mention it to you. When you say Monck, you say a marvel of depth and tenacity, the only two things against which spirit and ardor are no use. Sire, I was ardent when I was young, and I always had my wits. I can boast about them, since I’m criticized for them. I got pretty far with those two qualities, the son of a fisherman in Piscina who became prime minister to the King of France, and in that capacity, if Your Majesty will recognize it, I’ve rendered a few services to Your Majesty’s throne. Well, Sire! If I’d encountered Monck along my way instead of Monsieur de Beaufort, Monsieur de Retz, or Monsieur le Prince,49 I’d have been lost. Keep your distance, Sire, or you’ll fall into the clutches of this political soldier. Monck’s helmet, Sire, is an iron coffer in which he locks away his thoughts, and no one has the key to it. I wear only a biretta of velvet,50 Sire, so to him I bow and defer.”

  “What do you think Monck wants, then?”

  “Heh! If I knew that, Sire, I wouldn’t tell you to be wary of him, because then I’d be stronger than he is. But with Monck, I’m afraid to even guess—to even guess, do you understand? For
if I think I’ve guessed what he wants, I’ll stop thinking, and despite myself, I’ll follow my guess. Since that man came to power over there, I’m like those damned souls in Dante whose necks have been twisted by Satan so they walk forward but look backward: I march toward Madrid but look back toward London. To guess, with this devil of a man, is to fool yourself, and if you fool yourself, you’re lost. God forbid I should try to guess what he wants; I limit myself to spying on what he does, and that’s going far enough. Now, I believe—you understand the scope of the word believe?—I believe that Monck, though he doesn’t want to commit himself to anything, is nonetheless eager to succeed Cromwell. Your Charles II has already sent ten envoys with proposals to him, and he’s contented himself with chasing them away, saying nothing more than, ‘Begone, or I’ll have you hanged.’ He’s as silent as a sepulcher, that man!

  “Right now, Monck supports the Rump Parliament, but this support doesn’t fool me: Monck just wants to avoid being assassinated. An assassination would foil him before his goal can be reached, and his goal must be reached; or so I believe. Again, don’t believe that just because I say I believe it, Sire—I only do that out of habit. I think Monck just supports the Parliament until the time comes to dismiss it. You’ve been sent to ask for swords, but those swords are to fight against Monck. God forbid we ever fight against Monck, Sire, for Monck will defeat us, and I could never console myself for being beaten by Monck. That victory would be something that Monck would have been planning for a decade. By God! Sire, out of friendship for you, if not out of consideration for himself, let Charles II retire and keep a low profile. Your Majesty can give him one of your châteaux and a little income. But no! That infamous treaty we were just talking about prohibits Your Majesty from even giving him a château!”

  “How’s that?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty is committed to denying hospitality to King Charles, to deny him France itself. That’s why you must make your royal brother understand that he can’t stay with us, we can’t allow him to compromise us, or I myself…”