Page:Memoirs of Madame de Motteville on Anne of Austria and her court.djvu/48

26 up the measures he saw were preparing against him, to arrest the Prince de Condé, who, as first prince of the blood, would probably be the leader of the party now beginning to form itself. At the same time he sent orders to the two armies intended to act outside the kingdom, in execution of the great designs of the king who had raised them, to hold themselves ready to sustain the royal authority confided to him [the Maréchal d'Ancre] in case it was attacked in con- sequence of the arrest of the prince. He also raised a third army, to be ready to march more promptly against the first malcontents who ventured to declare themselves.

So bold an action as this and such great preparations confirmed the queen in the high opinion she had of him whose advice she blindly followed, and made her believe she would soon be mistress of the Court and of all France without opposition. It was this that ruined her, as well as the man she had chosen for her first minister. For, as she was persuaded that none could resist her, she imagined she had no need to treat any one with caution, not even the king her son; and she took no heed that he too had a favourite with as much ambition as her own, who, insinuating himself daily more and more, worked so strongly to detach the king from the tenderness he had for his mother that in the end he made him resolve to part from her altogether. This favourite was de Luynes, who, during the time he was the young prince's page, had found means to make himself so agreeable and so necessary to all his pleasures, exercises, and amusements, particularly those of all kinds of hunting where few persons liked to follow him, that the freedom in which he lived with the king raised him at last to the dignity of ''connétable. ''

The French nobles, naturally attached to the princes of the blood, having taken up arms in the provinces, were daily