Chapter 7 By Way of a Demonstration
Brussels
Marguerite of Lorraine gave birth to her baby, another girl to the absent Monsieur Gaston’s immense disappointment. The head midwife called a priest immediately and had the child baptized as Henriette Marie Louise. Before any suitably elaborate public baptismal ceremony with heads of state as sponsors could be arranged, after six weeks during which she did not thrive in spite of all efforts to coax her, the sickly infant died in May. “Failure to flourish,” the doctors said for the cause of death.
Lorraine
“There’s no point in trying to take Verdun. It’s too strongly garrisoned. We’ll just bypass it. This expedition is more in the way of a demonstration than a conquest, after all. Making a statement.”
Ignoring the last two sentences, Marchéville focused on the first two, which contained more sense than he’d heard from Monsieur Gaston since they left Flanders. Verdun not only had a French garrison, but a commander with considerably more spine than the man at Stenay.
“You’re absolutely right, Your Highness,” he said. “It’s not even as if we could negotiate with the bishop of Verdun to use him as some kind of a counterweight to the administrator named by your brother. François de Lorraine-Chaligny-Mercoeur has been in exile, under the protection of the archbishop of Cologne, since 1626. His mistress is a charming woman and they have two darling little girls. Her father was a gentleman-in-waiting to the late prince of Phalsbourg.”
Clicquot looked up. “I wonder where Chaligny is now, given the archbishop’s own troubles?”
“Either on the run or already in the Low Countries, frantically negotiating terms with the monarchy.” Marchéville was nothing if not a practical man.
The longer he associated with the younger brother of the king of France, the more clearly he could foresee a day when he, too, would be frantically negotiating terms with a monarchy––just about any monarchy.
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The French garrison at St. Mihiel was also too strong. Not as strong as that in Verdun, but still too strong and also commanded by a stubborn man. Even Gaston admitted that. Where, then? Commercy would do. There was a French governor in place, but Marchéville knew him. Réance was a man who could be bribed.
Once they were safely inside Commercy’s walls, Clicquot dared to ask what the next stage in Monsieur’s plan might be.
Gaston waved his hand. “By being here, I am making a statement that though I have proclaimed all along that I am in Lorraine on my dear Marguerite’s behalf, still, from this standpoint I could head up the Meuse to Neufchâteau and take these regiments into France itself. In a sense, I am just reminding my brother and Richelieu that I am still around.”
Marchéville left the room in disgust.
“Under Richelieu’s influence,” Gaston continued to Cliquot, “my brother does not give the great nobles of France the respect they deserve.”
Cliquot bowed slightly. Beheading did, in many ways, indicate a lack of respect for the beheaded.
“Should I raise my banner against the tyranny of this man who has so misled my brother, many French peers would flock to it.”
They actually might. That was the kind of thinking that resulted in...well...beheading.
Clicquot began to consider his options.
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The ten-day supply of captured Spanish bread ran out. Commercy was not sufficiently provisioned to easily absorb some three thousand hungry soldiers at this time of the year. Within a few days, there were...hardships.
Colonels Haraucourt and Thysac took a stand against letting the other regiments with Gaston maraud through the countryside around Commercy.
Gaston made noises about mutiny.
Haraucourt and Thysac made noises about being patriotic sons of Lorraine.
Once they had left the room, Marchéville pointed out that they were also currently the heroes of the expedition because they had chased Fernando’s Spaniards back into Luxemburg, which made it possible that if Monsieur pressed them to the point of actual mutiny, the lower officers in the other companies might not obey an order to arrest them.
“Well,” Clicquot said, “see what you can do, then.”
“We could always try offering to pay in cash.”