quarters at Rouen.  “Where have you left the king?” asked the Duke of Longueville.  “At Pontoise, my lord; but he is by this time far advanced, and is to sleep to-night at Magny.”  “Where do you mean to quarter him here?” asked the duke.  “In the house where you are, my lord.”  “It is right that I yield him place,” said the duke, and the very same evening took the road back to the district of Caux.  It was under this aspect of public feeling that an embassy from the king and a pacific mission from Rome came, without any success, to Rangers, and that on the 4th of July, 1619, a fresh civil war between the king and the partisans of the queen-mother was declared.

It was short and not very bloody, though pretty vigorously contested.  The two armies met at Ponts de Ce; they had not, either of them, any orders or any desire to fight; and pacific negotiations were opened at La Fleche.  The queen-mother declared that she had made up her mind to live henceforth at her son’s court, and that all she desired was to leave honorably the party with which she was engaged.  That was precisely the difficulty.  The king also declared himself resolved to receive his mother affectionately; but he required her to abandon the lords of her party, and that was what she could not make up her mind to do.  In the unpremeditated conflict that took place at Ponts de Ce, the troops of the queen-mother were beaten.  “They had two hundred men killed or drowned,” says Bassompierre, “and about as many taken prisoners.”  This reverse silenced the queen’s scruples; there was clearly no imperative cause for war between her and the king, and the queen’s partisans could not be blind to the fact that, if the struggle were prolonged, they would be beaten.

The kingship had the upper hand in the country, and a consent was given to the desired arrangements.  “Assure the king that I will go and see him to-morrow at Brissac,” said the queen-mother.  “I am perfectly satisfied with him, and all I think of is to please him, and pray God for him personally, and for the prosperity of his kingdom.”  A treaty was concluded at Angers on the 10th of August, 1620; the queen-mother returned to Paris; and the civil war at court was evidently, not put an end to never to recur, but stricken with feebleness and postponed.

Two men of mark, Albert de Luynes and Richelieu, came out of this crisis well content.  The favorite felicitated himself on the king’s victory over the queen-mother, for he might consider the triumph as his own; he had advised and supported the king’s steady resistance to his mother’s enterprises.  Besides, he had gained by it the rank and power of constable; it was at this period that he obtained them, thanks to the retirement of Lesdiguieres, who gave them up to assume the title of marshal-general of the king’s camps and armies.  The royal favor did not stop there for Luynes; the keeper of the seals, Du Vair, died in 1621; and the king handed