THE

BRITISH AND FOREIGN

REVIEW.

ARTICLE I.

Mémoires inédits de Louis Henri de Loménie, Comte de Brienne, Secrétaire d'Etat sous Louis XIV.: 2 tomes: Paris.

Mémoires secrets et inédits de Madame la Comtesse du Barri: 4 tomes: Paris.

Mémoires du Comte Alexandre de Tilly, pour servir à l'histoire des mœurs de la fin du 18ème siècle: 4 tomes: Paris.

THE literature of memoirs is of French origin, and has flourished most luxuriantly in its native soil. Among the antients there were no memoirs—at least in the better times of antiquity. The two great incentives to modern memoir writing-selfconceit, and secret intrigue—were wanting. Talent, merit, and faction—the eloquence of wisdom, virtue, and the passions-rank corruption and lawless force-variously decided the strife of ambition in the democracies of Greece and Italy. The machinery of government was simple and unveiled; and though selfish passions were in fierce activity, public spirit, and public objects, greatly predominated. The actors would transmit their names by inscribing them in the public temple of renown. They had no thought of leaving behind them testamentary packets of egotism or defamation, to be unsealed by posterity. The vices and crimes of the imperial courts, it is true, afforded all the encitements to private memoir-writing; but inventive capacity was exhausted

or what remained of it, was employed-with some rare and bright exceptions-in corrupting what had been invented before. Tacitus, however, mentions memoirs of Agrippina, of which he made use in his annals; and Adrian is said to have left memoirs of his life under the name of one of his secretaries*.

The court of France, and its coteries, have been the chosen foci of scandal, vanity, frivolity, every pursuit of ambition, and every species of intrigue; and the French language, from the point, flexibility, and finesse of its turns of expression, is peculiarly adapted to a species of writing, of which the great staple is satire, pleasantry, conceit, and trifling. Hence the countless brood of French memoirs from Philippes de Commines, Brantôme, Sully, to De Retz, Joly, Dangeau, Rochefaucault, La Fare, St. Simon, Noailles, Montgon, &c.;-from the quaint egotism and gossipping philosophy of Montaigne to the eloquent, melancholy, and most degrading confessions of Rousseau; and down still lower to the coxcomb profligacies of Lauzun and Tilly; the rechauffée of court depravity, pretending to be "memoirs of herself, by Madame du Barri;" the spurious stories of Napoleon and his court, published under the name of a lady notoriously precluded, by her position, from acquaintance with the imperial court and its circles; and the libertine effrontery of that contemporaine, whom the Parisians have aptly styled, " la veuve de la grande Armée." "la

General history has been benefited by the better order of these productions. They have been still more useful to the history of morals and manners. It is in the nature of the most debased human creature to try to recover its level by revenge, and accordingly slaves and sycophants to a despotic, capricious, or vicious will, have sometimes avenged their debasement on its

The diaria mentioned in Tacitus were a species of newspaper, rather than private journal; and as to the chronicles of court news and imperial depravity, kept by freedmen, eunuchs, and other courtiers, so little is known of them, that it is not possible to judge how far they approached the modern form of journals or memoirs. Augustus is stated by Suetonius to have written "aliqua de vita sua;" probably identical with what Appian, in the "Illyrics," assigns to him, under the title of “úñоμνηрата,” and his successor, Tiberius, perhaps in imitation of him, according to the same writer, "commentarium de "vita sua summatim breviterque composuit."

author by revealing his vices or weaknesses to posterity. Even the vile and spurious of the class are not without their value, as tending to illustrate the manners and morals of the age at their respective periods.

The three publications, of which we have prefixed the titles, refer to the most interesting epochs of French court manners; but the first in order is by no means to be confounded with the two succeeding.

Henri de Loménie, Count de Brienne, was the son and successor of a secretary of state; bred up in the court from infancy, in the cabinet from boyhood—the trusted agent of Anne of Austria, and Cardinal Mazarin-the companion in childhood, and confidant in maturer years, of Louis XIV. He was not a historic personage by station or capacity, but there was something original in his character, and in the vicissitudes of his life. A favourite, and courtier in the extremes of favour and disgrace—a dabbler in authorship, gambling, and virtù—a libertine and a devotee— a relapsed reprobate, an exile, and a captive; he wrote his memoirs," to relieve his heart," he says, "by reviewing the "scenes of his youth, as one loves to recall the light of day in "the midst of darkness, or the charms of liberty in a dun"geon." He has, however, fortunately for the world, and meritoriously for a Frenchman, been sparing of his personal adventures, and his memoirs contain not only his own reminiscences of the reign of Louis XIV., but some curious traditions of his father and others respecting the court and government of Louis XIII., Richelieu, and Mary of Medicis. The traits and anecdotes of these personages exhibit a motley-demoralisation, blending the atrocious and the ridiculous, with a sort of whimsical masquerading inconsistency of condition, manners, and character.

He gives a new, graphic, and, most probably, faithful coupd'œil of two remarkable events in the court of Louis XIII.-the murder of Concini, better known as Marshal d'Ancre, and the conspiracy and death of Cinque-Mars. They eclipse the most sanguinary and savage incidents of the seraglio. Louis XIII., too timid to throw off the yoke of the Italian favourite of his Italian mother, hires a band of ruffians to assassinate him.

Who are the assassins, and how are they engaged? Dubuisson, the keeper of the king's cabinet, is deputed by the king to make the proposition to the Baron de Vitri, with the offer of making him a Marshal of France! The baron, a noble of the first rank, runs to thank his gracious majesty for this mark of confidence, and associates with him a dozen other court nobles, including his brother, in the murderous plot. They waylay the unhappy Concini on the Pont du Louvre in open dayfive of them fire into his carriage at once-and all dispute the infamous distinction of having given him his death wound. The king, in the mean time, anxiously waiting the result in his cabinet, hears the shots. "The deed is done," shouts Colonel Ornano, one of the assassins, thundering at the door, and rushing in-" Or ça, ma grosse Vitri," (meaning a rifle, named after the worthy baron)-exclaims the happy monarch-and with the " grosse Vitri" in his hand, he thus thanks the assassins now grouped beneath his window-" Grand mercy, grand "mercy, à vous-à cette heure je suis Roi;" to which they shout in reply, " Vive le Roi-le Roi est Roi."

This is shocking; but worse, if possible, remains. The assassins plundered the mangled corpse of their victim on the spot, of his arms, jewels, and clothes; and the formal partition of the reeking spoils between them was made in the king's cabinet, by the king! Concini left a widow, the famous and unfortunate Leonora Galigai, with a son of tender years. Anne of Austria went in disguise," to see what figure the "widow would make," on her way to the bastille; and knowing that the boy was admired as a dancer, compelled him to dance for her amusement, at a moment when his father's murder, his mother's despair, and the cruel treatment of himself by his gaolers, made him refuse sustenance," pour mourir "de déplaisir."

Richelieu, as yet but Bishop of Luçon, and a secretary of state through the favour and friendship of Concini, figures in the murder with a politic atrocity worthy of his future genius. A letter revealing the plot, the time, and place of its execution, and the names of the assassins, was brought to him in bed the night before; he meditated for a moment on the contents, told the person who brought the letter, "there was no haste

"he would take counsel of the night,"-put it under his pillow-deliberately abandoned his benefactor to assassination -and went to sleep.

The king "was not long a king;" his crime but released him from Concini to subject him to the more imperious domination of Richelieu, and he attempts once more the same mode of dismissing his prime minister-murder.

His instrument now is his favourite, the young CinqueMars-the most glittering personage of the court. This conspiracy against the life of Richelieu, with the king at the bottom, and Cinque-Mars at the head, comprises the princes of the blood-extends to Spain-and is so formidable that Richelieu flies for refuge to a sure friend-the governor of Provence-in the depth of winter, and in the extremity of bad health. But his good fortune and energy soon defeated it, and Louis XIII. had the unparalleled infamy not only to surrender Cinque-Mars to the Cardinal's vengeance, but to brand his memory publicly as a traitor.

Death is the event most trying to human nature, and brought out very remarkably the oppositions of character in the king and his minister. Louis XIII. was haunted by superstitious terror, and the shades of those whose blood he had shed. He once thought he beheld the accusing ghost of Montmorency in the torch-lighted corridors of Ecouen-and never would set his foot in that palace more. These fearful visions hastened his death, according to Brienne, who calls him "ce pieux "monarque;" but adds this solemn warning-" Rois qui versez "le sang retenez cette grande et terrible leçon."

Richelieu, with the hand of death already on him, thought only of his power, his vengeance, and his vanity! Borne on a litter, sick and dying, in the midst of a princely retinue, he had the unhappy Cinque-Mars dragged in his train from Tarascon to Lyons, for execution-saw it done-continued his magnificent and melancholy cavalcade to Paris-and ended there a life of perfidy and cruelty, libertinism and frivolity, without remorse or fear.

This famous minister, and prince of the holy catholic and apostolic church, openly affected intrigues of gallantry at court, with the airs of "a plumed cavalier,” and went out disguised as a layman in quest of nocturnal adventures in the purlieus of the