In consequence of this intimation M. le Grand, instead of appearing at Court in compliance with the royal mandate, returned in all haste to Languedoc, and the Duc de Guise found himself deprived of his anticipated assistance.[157] Bellegarde himself, who attributed this attempt to deprive him of his government to the Baron de Luz—­who through the influence of Bassompierre had been reinstated in the favour of the Queen, and had consequently abandoned the faction of the Guises, of whose projects and designs he was cognizant, in order to espouse the interests and to serve the ambition of the Marquis d’Ancre—­vowed vengeance against the recreant baron, and complained bitterly to his friends of the insult to which he had been subjected through this unworthy agency.

The Guises, already apprehensive of the consequences which might accrue to themselves from the defection of M. de Luz, were only too ready to sympathize with the indignant Duke, and unfortunately for all parties they did not confine their sympathy to mere words.  Ever prompt and reckless, they at once resolved to revenge themselves upon their common enemy; nor was it long ere they carried their fatal determination into effect.

FOOTNOTES: 

[131] D’Estrees, Mem. p. 394.

[132] Bassompierre, Mem. p. 78.

[133] Rambure, MS. Mem. vol. vi. p. 81.

[134] Richelieu, Hist. de la Mere et du Fils, vol. i. pp. 175-177.

[135] Siri, Mem.  Rec. vol. ii. pp. 607-612.

[136] Le Vassor, vol. i. p. 127.

[137] Henri de Lorraine, Due d’Aiguillon, who had succeeded to the title of his late father.

[138] Siri, Mem.  Rec. vol. ii. pp. 618-620.

[139] Mezeray, vol. xi. pp. 30, 31.

[140] Siri, Mem.  Rec. vol. ii. pp. 640-642.

[141] Charles de Longueval, Comte de Buquoy, was so eminently distinguished for his military talents that Philip III of Spain and the Emperor Ferdinand II confided to him the command of their joint armies in 1619.  He completely defeated the forces of the malcontents in Bohemia; and then marched upon Hungary, which had just elected Bethlem-Gabor as its sovereign.  In 1621 he overcame the troops of the Magyar monarch, which were entirely routed; but was killed the same year in a skirmish with a small party of the enemy.

[142] Don Rodrigo Calderon was a statesman rendered famous by his extraordinary elevation and his equally remarkable reverses.  Born at Antwerp, the son of a Spanish trooper and a Flemish woman of low extraction, his talents ultimately raised him to the rank of confidant and favourite of the Duque de Lerma, prime minister of Philip III, through whose influence he subsequently became Conde d’Oliva, Marques de Siete-Iglesias, and secretary of state.  In 1618 the disgrace of his patron involved his own ruin.  Accused of having poisoned the Queen Marguerite, he was (in 1619) committed to a dungeon, and two years afterwards was sacrificed by the Conde-Duque d’Olivares to the public hatred against the Duque de Lerma.  He perished upon the scaffold in 1621.