[
172]
III.
campaign the second.
Mademoiselle went back to
Paris.
Half the population met her outside the walls; she kept up the heroine.
by compulsion, and for a few weeks held her court as
Queen of
France.
If the Fronde had held its position she might very probably have held hers.
Conde, being unable to marry her himself, on account of the continued existence of his invalid wife (which he sincerely regretted), had a fixed design of marrying her to the young
King.
Queen Henrietta Maria cordially greeted her. lamented more than ever her rejection of the “bashful” Charles II., and compared her to the original Maid of
Orleans,--an ominous compliment from an English source.
The royal army drew near; on July 1, 1652, Mademoiselle heard their drums beating outside.
“I shall not stay at home to-day,” she said to her attendants, at two in the morning; “I feel convinced that I shall be called to do some unforeseen act, as I was at
Orleans.”
And she was not far wrong.
The battle of the
Porte St. Antoine was at hand.
Conde and
Turenne!
The two greatest names in the history of
European wars, until a greater eclipsed them both.
Conde, a prophecy of
Napoleon, a general by instinct, incapable of defeat, insatiable of glory, throwing his marshal's baton within the lines of the enemy, and following it; passionate, false, unscrupulous, mean.
Turenne, the precursor of
Wellington rather, simple, honest, truthful, humble, eating off his iron camp-equipage to the end of life.
If it be true, as the ancients said, that an army of stags led by a lion is more formidable than an
