and another equally stringent against those by whom he should be aided and abetted in his evasion; M. de Villeroy advised that despatches should forthwith be forwarded to the several ambassadors of the French King at foreign Courts to warn the sovereigns of those states against receiving the fugitive Prince within their territories, and to exhort them to take measures for enforcing his return to France; M. de Jeannin declared that the most expeditious method of compelling obedience, and forestalling the inconvenience and scandal of the self-expatriation of the first Prince of the Blood, would be to cause him to be immediately followed by a captain of the bodyguard, instructed to expostulate with him on his disloyalty and imprudence, and to threaten instant war against any state by whom he should be harboured; while when Sully at length spoke it was only to deprecate each and all of these measures, by which he insisted that the monarch would give an importance to the departure of the Prince that his enemies would but too gladly turn to their own account; whereas, if he made no comment upon the flight of M. de Conde, and treated it as a matter without importance, he would at once render him insignificant in the eyes of those sovereigns who would fain look upon him as a martyr, and use him as a means to harass and annoy his own monarch.

Henry was, however, too much excited to defer to the sober reasonings of his finance minister, and declared that he would suffer no petty prince to harbour the first noble of his kingdom without resenting so gross an affront.  The advice of Jeannin suited his views far better, and he accordingly despatched M. de Praslin on the following day to Landrecies with a peremptory order for the return of the fugitives.  His messenger was met by a firm refusal on the part of the Prince; upon which, finding that his expostulations were of no avail, he proceeded, as he had been ordered, to Brussels, where, in an interview with the Archduke Albert,[412] he delivered to him the message of his sovereign, and explained the danger of the position in which he would personally be placed should he venture to oppose the royal will.

This intelligence greatly embarrassed the Archduke, who had already given to M. de Rochefort an assurance of the readiness with which he would offer an asylum to the princely fugitives; but as M. de Praslin continued to press upon him the certain indignation of the French monarch should he venture to receive them at his Court, his previous resolution gave way; and he hastened to despatch a messenger to Landrecies to decline the honour proffered to him by M. de Conde, but at the same time to assure him of a safe passage through his territories.  On the receipt of this unexpected prohibition the self-exiled Prince, who had gone too far to recede, had no other alternative than to proceed through the duchy of Juliers to Cologne; in which, being a free city, and perfectly neuter in the affairs of France and Spain, the chief magistrate granted him permission to reside.