“The consequences of the affair would have been less injurious, however, had it been managed, even as it stood, with better judgment and temper.  But it was improperly entrusted to the Baron de Breteuil and the Abbe Vermond, both sworn enemies of the Cardinal.  Their main object was the ruin of him they hated, and they listened only to their resentments.  They never weighed the danger of publicly prosecuting an individual whose condemnation would involve the first families in France, for he was allied even to many of the Princes of the blood.  They should have considered that exalted personages, naturally feeling as if any crime proved against their kinsman would be a stain upon themselves, would of course resort to every artifice to exonerate the accused.  To criminate the Queen was the only and the obvious method.  Few are those nearest the Crown who are not most jealous of its wearers!  Look at the long civil wars of York and Lancaster, and the short reign of Richard.  The downfall of Kings meets less resistance than that of their inferiors.

“Still, notwithstanding all the deplorable blunders committed in this business of De Rohan, justice was not smothered without great difficulty.  His acquittal cost the families of De Rohan and De Conde more than a million of livres, distributed among all ranks of the clergy; besides immense sums sent to the Court of Rome to make it invalidate the judgment of the civil authority of France upon so high a member of the Church, and to induce it to order the Cardinal’s being sent to Rome by way of screening him from the prosecution, under the plausible pretext of more rigid justice.

“Considerable sums in money and jewels were also lavished on all the female relatives of the peers of France, who were destined to sit on the trial.  The Abbe Georgel bribed the press, and extravagantly paid all the literary pens in France to produce the most Jesuitical and sophisticated arguments in his patron’s justification.  Though these writers dared not accuse or in any way criminate the Queen, yet the respectful doubts, with which their defence of her were seasoned, did indefinitely more mischief than any direct attack, which could have been directly answered.

“The long cherished, but till now smothered, resentment of the Comtesse de Noailles, the scrupulous Madame Etiquette, burst forth on this occasion.  Openly joining the Cardinal’s party against her former mistress and Sovereign, she recruited and armed all in favour of her protege; for it was by her intrigues De Rohan had been nominated Ambassador to Vienna.  Mesdames de Guemenee and Marsan, rival pretenders to favours of His Eminence, were equally earnest to support him against the Queen.  In short, there was scarcely a family of distinction in France that, from the libels which then inundated the kingdom, did not consider the King as having infringed on their prerogatives and privileges in accusing the Cardinal.