ans, wrote to that Prince to
explain their motives and purposes, and to induce him to join in the
conspiracy. For once, however, Monsieur, much as he delighted in feuds
and factions, declined to take any part in their meditated resistance to
the ministerial authority, his own position having been rendered so
brilliant through the policy of the Cardinal that he feared to sacrifice
the advantages thus tardily secured; while, moreover, not satisfied with
returning evasive answers to M. de Soissons, which induced that Prince
to pursue the correspondence under the belief that his arguments would
ultimately induce Monsieur to join their party, he had the baseness, in
order to further his personal interests with the all-powerful minister,
to communicate to him the several letters of the Count immediately that
they reached him.

Irritated by the contemptuous epithets applied to him in these unguarded
epistles, and anxious to avert a danger which the delay of every
succeeding hour tended to render still more threatening, Richelieu
determined at once to attack the stronghold of his enemies; and an army
under the command of the Marechal de Chatillon was accordingly
despatched against Sedan. The result of the expedition proved, however,
inimical to the interests of the Cardinal, as the royal general was
utterly defeated, and more than two thousand of the King's troops,
together with the artillery and the treasure-chest, fell into the hands
of the rebels. The battle, fatal as it was in the aggregate,
nevertheless afforded one signal triumph to Richelieu in the death of
the Comte de Soissons, who was killed by the pistol-ball of a gendarme,
to whom, as a recompense for the murder of his kinsman, Louis XIII
accorded both a government and a pension. Dispirited by the fate of the
young Prince, to whom he was tenderly attached, Bouillon attempted no
further resistance, but tendered without delay his submission to the
sovereign, and received in return a free pardon, together with all those
individuals who had joined his banner, save the Duc de Guise, who, not
having been included in the treaty, was condemned _par contumace_.[232]

This result, so strongly opposed to the ordinarily severe policy of
Richelieu, was not, as must at once be apparent, obtained through his
influence. Powerful as he was through the King's sense of his own
helplessness, he had been throughout the whole of his ministerial career
thwarted at times by the ruling fav