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On the 5th of May, M. d'Alincourt arrived at Fontainebleau from Florence, with the intelligence that, on the 25th of the preceding month, the contract of marriage between the French monarch and the Princesse Marie de Medicis had been signed at the Palazzo Pitti, in the presence of Carlo-Antonio Putéi, Archbishop of Pisa, and the Duke of Bracciano; and that the bride brought as her dowry six hundred thousand crowns, besides jewels and other ornaments of value.
The son-in-law of Louvois accused him of being most courageous in his gallery, but of turning pale on the eve, and at the moment, of an action; and D'Alincourt, son of Villeroi, carried his outrages further still. No one knows better than myself how unjust these accusations were, and are.
Nor was it until the Duke urged upon him the necessity of selecting such of his nobility as it was his pleasure to entrust with the management of the affair in conjunction with the ambassador whom the Grand Duke, her uncle, was about to despatch to Paris, that, by dint of importunity, he was induced to name M. de Sully himself, the Constable, the Chancellor, and the Sieur de Villeroy, whose son, M. d'Alincourt, had previously been sent to Rome to offer the acknowledgments of Henry to his Holiness for the dissolution of his marriage with Queen Marguerite, and to apprise him of that which he was desirous to contract with Marie de Medicis.
Mme. de Prie and M. le Duc, having planned to deprive M. Fleury, the minister, of his power,—he had been the king's preceptor,—suddenly had the tables turned against them. Both were exiled, and a new coterie of ladies came into power; the Duchesse d'Alincourt replaced Mme. de Prie, and the king and M. Fleury themselves took up the affairs of state.
This duty performed, M. d'Alincourt solicited the permission of the Pope to accompany Sillery to Florence to pay his respects to the Princess and to negotiate the alliance; and having obtained the required sanction, the two nobles set forth upon their embassy, quite unaware that the preliminaries were already nearly concluded.
M. de Villeroy had purchased the government of Lyons from the Duc de Vendôme, for his son the Comte d'Alincourt, having at the same time disposed of the appointment of Lieutenant of the King previously held by the Count, and this arrangement was no sooner concluded than he resolved to solicit from the Queen a force of three hundred Swiss Guards to garrison the city; a demand in which he succeeded in interesting Concini, and to which he consequently anticipated no opposition on her part.
Sully, although previously solicited by the Queen to support the proposal, resolutely refused to do so, alleging that he would never consent to see the King subjected to an outlay of twelve hundred thousand livres in order to enable M. d'Alincourt to pocket one hundred thousand, and that Lyons, by the treaty concluded with the Duke of Savoy, had ceased to be a frontier town, and consequently required no garrison.
The son-in-law of Louvois accused him of being most courageous in his gallery, but of turning pale on the eve, and at the moment, of an action; and D'Alincourt, son of Villeroi, carried his outrages further still. No one knows better than myself how unjust these accusations were, and are.
Having made his report, and delivered his despatches, M. d'Alincourt placed in the hands of the King a portrait of Marie richly set in brilliants, which had been entrusted to him for that purpose; and the lover of Madame de Verneuil found himself solemnly betrothed.
The son-in-law of Louvois accused him of being most courageous in his gallery, but of turning pale on the eve, and at the moment, of an action; and D'Alincourt, son of Villeroi, carried his outrages further still. No one knows better than myself how unjust these accusations were, and are.
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