The substance of the letter (given in full in Note I.) is to the following effect.  P. du Moulin (Paris, May 19/29 1669) writes to Arlington.  Ever since, Ruvigny, the late French ambassador, a Protestant, was in England, the French Government had been anxious to kidnap Roux de Marsilly.  They hunted him in England, Holland, Flanders, and Franche-Comte.  As we know from the case of Mattioli, the Government of Louis XIV. was unscrupulously daring in breaking the laws of nations, and seizing hostile personages in foreign territory, as Napoleon did in the affair of the Duc d’Enghien.  When all failed Louis bade Turenne capture Roux de Marsilly wherever he could find him.  Turenne sent officers and gentlemen abroad, and, after four months’ search they found Marsilly in Switzerland.  They took him as he came out of the house of his friend, General Balthazar, and carried him to Gex.  No papers were found on him, but he asked his captors to send to Balthazar and get “the commission he had from England,” which he probably thought would give him the security of an official diplomatic position.  Having got this document, Marsilly’s captors took it to the French Ministers.  Nothing could be more embarrassing, if this were true, to Charles’s representative in France, Montague, and to Charles’s secret negotiations, also to Arlington, who had dealt with Marsilly.  On his part, the captive Marsilly constantly affirmed that he was the envoy of the King of England.  The common talk of Paris was that an agent of Charles was in the Bastille, “though at Court they pretended to know nothing of it.”  Louis was overjoyed at Marsilly’s capture, giving out that he was conspiring against his life.  Monsieur told Montague that he need not beg for the life of a would-be murderer like Marsilly.  But as to this idea, “they begin now to mince it at Court,” and Ruvigny assured du Moulin “that they had no such thoughts.”  De Lyonne had seen Marsilly and observed that it was a blunder to seize him.  The French Government was nervous, and Turenne’s secretary had been “pumping” several ambassadors as to what they thought of Marsilly’s capture on foreign territory.  One ambassador replied with spirit that a crusade of all Europe against France, as of old against the Moslems, would be necessary.  Would Charles, du Moulin asked, own or disown Marsilly?

Montague’s position was now awkward.  On May 23, his account of the case was read, at Whitehall, to the Foreign Committee in London.  (See Note ii. for the document.) He did not dare to interfere in Marsilly’s behalf, because he did not know whether the man was an agent of Charles or not.  Such are the inconveniences of a secret royal diplomacy carried on behind the backs of Ministers.  Louis XV. later pursued this method with awkward consequences.[1] The French Court, Montague said, was overjoyed at the capture of Marsilly, and a reward of 100,000 crowns, “I am told very privately, is set upon his head.”