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Updated: June 18, 2025
Gabrielle d'Estrées was the daughter of Antoine d'Estrées, fourth of the name, Governor, Seneschal, and first Baron of Boulonnois, Vicomte de Soissons and Bersy, Marquis de Coeuvres, Knight of the Orders of the King, Governor of La Fère, Paris, and the Isle of France; and of Françoise Babou, second daughter of Jean, Seigneur de la Bourdaisière, and of Françoise Robertet.
Whether from gout, fever, or the pangs of disappointed love, he became seriously ill. Furious with every one, with Conde, the Constable, de Coeuvres, the Queen, Spinola, with the Prince of Orange, whose councillor Keeremans had been encouraging Conde in his rebellion and in going to Spain with Spinola, he was now resolved that the war should go on.
Acting under the advice of the Prince of Orange, he expressed his willingness to retire to some neutral city of Germany or Italy, drawing meanwhile from Henry a pension of 40,000 crowns a year. But de Coeuvres firmly replied that the King would make no terms with his vassal nor allow Conde to prescribe conditions to him.
Meantime Henry had despatched the Marquis de Coeuvres, brother of the beautiful Gabrielle, Duchess de Beaufort, and one of the most audacious and unscrupulous of courtiers, on a special mission to Brussels. De Coeuvres saw Conde before presenting his credentials to the Archduke, and found him quite impracticable.
The irrepressible de Coeuvres, even then hardly willing to give up the whole stratagem as lost, was at least determined to discover how and by whom the plot had been revealed.
In a cemetery piled three feet deep with snow on the evening following that mid-winter's night which had been fixed for the Princess's flight, the unfortunate ambassador waited until a certain Vallobre, a gentleman of Spinola's, who was the go-between of the enamoured Genoese and the Princess, but whom de Coeuvres had gained over, came at last to meet him by appointment.
Acting under the advice of the Prince of Orange, he expressed his willingness to retire to some neutral city of Germany or Italy, drawing meanwhile from Henry a pension of 40,000 crowns a year. But de Coeuvres firmly replied that the King would make no terms with his vassal nor allow Conde to prescribe conditions to him.
The irrepressible de Coeuvres, even then hardly willing to give up the whole stratagem as lost, was at least determined to discover how and by whom the plot had been revealed.
Finally, the precise night of her flight was decided on; and this had no sooner been determined than M. de Coeuvres despatched a courier to the Connétable, informing him that there now remained no doubt of the immediate return of the Princess to his protection.
And when the Archduke declined with dignity to be guilty of any such breach of the law of nations, Henry dispatched Coeuvres secretly to Brussels to carry off thence the princess.
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