onvenience sake) is
Francois Duval, Marquis de Fontenay Mareuil. Fontenay was a soldier, a
courtier, and a diplomatist, in which last character he visited England.
He has left us connected memoirs from 1609 to 1624, and some short
accounts of later transactions, such as the siege of La Rochelle, and
his own mission to Rome. Fontenay is a simple and straightforward
writer, full of good sense, and not destitute of narrative power. To
Paul Phelypeaux de Pontchartrain (1566-1621) we owe a somewhat jejune
but careful and apparently faithful account of the minority of Louis
XIII. A short and striking relation of the downfall of Concini is
supposed to be the work of Michel de Marillac, keeper of the seals
(1573-1632), afterwards one of the victims of Richelieu. Henri de Rohan
(1579-1638) is very far superior to the writers just named. Of the
greatest house, save one or two, in France, he travelled much,
distinguished himself in battle, both in foreign and civil war; was once
condemned to death, made head for a time against all the strength of
Richelieu; was near purchasing the principality of Cyprus from the
Venetians, and establishing himself in the east; was recalled, commanded
the French forces with brilliant success in the Valtelline, and met his
death under Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar at Rheinfeld. Besides his memoirs he
wrote a book called the _Parfait Capitaine_, and some others. The
memoirs extend from the death of Henri IV. to the year 1629, and have
all the vigour and brilliancy of the best sixteenth-century work of the
kind. A further account of the Valtelline campaign is also most probably
Rohan's, though it is not written in the first person, and has been
attributed to others. Of still greater personal interest are the memoirs
of Francois, Marechal de Bassompierre, another of the adversaries of
Richelieu, and who, less fortunate than Rohan, languished twelve years
in the Bastille. Few persons played a more active part in the first
years of the reign of Louis XIII. than Bassompierre, and no one has left
a livelier description, not merely of his own personal fortunes, but of
the personality of his contemporaries, the habits and customs of the
time, the wars, the loves, the intrigues of himself, his friends and his
enemies. He has not the credit of being very accurate, but he is
infinitely amusing. His memoirs were written during his sojourn in the
Bastille. This was terminated by the death of Richelieu, but
Bassompierre