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Updated: June 14, 2025
Concini might still be made to feel and to suffer for his fault, but she could not dispense with the society and support of Leonora. The Queen retired to her private closet, and the mistress of the robes was summoned to her presence by a page.
As, however, it was immediately ascertained that the Regent had expressed some suspicions of this interview, and declared the reconciliation which had taken place to be too sudden not to involve some occult purpose, M. de Soissons deemed it expedient to silence her fears by inviting Concini to join the party.
France, governed by Concini and by Spain, was sure to do her best to traverse the designs of the Republic, and, while perfunctorily and grudgingly complying with the letter of the Hall treaty, was secretly neutralizing by intrigue the slender military aid which de la Chatre was to bring to Prince Maurice. The close alliance of France and Protestantism had melted into air.
Concini immediately took the alarm, and hastened to confide his apprehensions to the ministers, whom he knew to be as anxious as himself to undermine the influence of the Duc d'Epernon and the formidable family to which he had allied his interests.
Every grievance under which the lower orders groaned was attributed to the influence of Concini and his wife; they were accused of inciting the Queen-mother to the acts of profusion by which the nation was impoverished; while every disappointment, misfortune, or act of oppression was traced to the same cause.
The ministers had not forgotten that he had been an active agent in the proposed alliance between the Comte de Soissons and Concini, and they did not fail to impress upon the Queen the extreme danger of placing an individual of so resolute and enterprising a character about the person of the heir presumptive.
The King, on ill terms with the Queen, who harassed him with scenes of affected jealousy, while engaged in permanent plots with her paramour and master, the Italian Concini, against his policy and his life; on still worse terms with his latest mistress in chief, the Marquise de Verneuil, who hated him and revenged herself for enduring his caresses by making him the butt of her venomous wit, had taken the festivities of a court in dudgeon where he possessed hosts of enemies and flatterers but scarcely a single friend.
On the same day it was publicly proclaimed in the streets of Paris that all the relatives and adherents of the Maréchale d'Ancre were forthwith to leave the capital, and that the Sieur de Vitry had acted throughout the late execution by the express command of the King; the ministers who had recently held office under the Queen-mother were dismissed, and those whom she had displaced were restored to power; De Luynes was formally invested with the confiscated property of Concini; and a new Government was organized which had for its leading object the subversion of all previously concerted measures.
So powerful was the influence of Eleonora Galigai and her husband, Concini, both Italians like herself, that in that superstitious age it was ascribed to magic. Marie became the mere secretary to record the wishes of these parasites. Concini was made marquis, then minister. Whom he commended was elevated, and whom he denounced was abased.
All the officers of the Crown sought an increase of twenty-four thousand livres to their several pensions; members of the Council, augmented emoluments; governors of provinces, the revenues of these provinces which had hitherto reverted to the Crown; municipal companies, exemptions and privileges previously unthought of; and finally, Concini, who had arrived in the French capital only a few years previously comparatively destitute, set forth his requirements to be these the bâton of Marshal of France, the governments of Bourg, Dieppe, and Pont-de-l'Arche, the proceeds of the salt duties of Languedoc, and those of the reduction accorded at Moissets and Feydant.
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