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She thought that nothing could resist on the field of battle the victor of Rocroy and Lens, seconded by Turenne, who at Stenay had shown such a lively and tender attachment for her, and the sentiment of which she had never ceased to treat with all the exquisite tact of which she was capable.
The nymph was Marguerite de Montmorency, daughter of the Constable of France, and destined one day to become the mother of the great Conde, hero of Rocroy. There can be no doubt that she was exquisitely beautiful.
Portugal had rebelled, and established her monarchy in the house of Braganza: Catalonia, complaining of violated privileges, had revolted to France: Naples was shaken with popular convulsions: the Low Countries were invaded with superior forces, and seemed ready to change their master: the Spanish infantry, anciently so formidable, had been annihilated by Condé in the fields of Rocroy: and though the same prince, banished France, sustained by his activity and valor the falling fortunes of Spain, he could only hope to protract, not prevent, the ruin with which that monarchy was visibly threatened.
The Duke d'Enghien had returned to Paris after Rocroy, and at the end of a campaign in which he had taken a very important stronghold, passed the Rhine with the French army, and carried the war into Germany. The Queen had received him as the liberator of France.
Married at thirteen to the future hero of Rocroy and Lens, both before marriage and again more strongly after, the young Duke had protested by a formal act that he yielded only to compulsion and his respect for paternal authority in giving her his hand.
He told me of the murmur of the elder men of the army that the fiery young inexperienced prince was disregarding all the checks that the old Marshal de l'Hopital put in his way; but he himself was delighted, and made sure of success. The last time he came he told me he heard that Rocroy was invested by the enemy.
Saddled horses were to be prepared for herself and her retinue near the outer bank of the ditch, and nothing remained undecided save the moment of her evasion. She was to proceed at all speed to Pontarmé, where a relay of fresh horses and an armed escort were to await her arrival, and similar arrangements were to be made throughout the whole of the route to Rocroy.
Mounting on the crupper behind one of the officers of the escort, she was then to fly to the frontier, relays of horses having been provided at every stage until she should reach Rocroy, the first pausing place within French territory; a perilous adventure for the young and delicate Princess in a winter of almost unexampled severity.
Not one of them, with the exception of the archduke Albert, seems to have valued the internal interests of the government; and he alone, perhaps, because they were declared and secured as his own. De Mello, after taking some towns, and defeating the marshal De Guiche in the battle of Hannecourt, tarnished all his fame by the great faults which he committed in the famous battle of Rocroy.
In 1650 she was inclined to prefer Mazarin to Condé, and she ventured to advise laying hands on the victor of Rocroy and Lens.
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