e, and to reach the confines
of Touraine and Poitou; nor would it have been possible for their
Majesties to have reached Bordeaux in safety, had it not been for the
secession of the Comte de Saint-Pol from the faction of the Princes,
together with the impossibility of marching the rebel troops upon Poitou
in so short a space of time. Thanks to this combination of
circumstances, however, the Court arrived without accident in the
capital of Guienne on the 7th of October; where the King and his august
mother were received with great magnificence, and enthusiastically
welcomed by all classes of the citizens, whom the Marechal de
Roquelaure, lieutenant-general for the King in Guienne, and Mayor of
Bordeaux, had adroitly gained, by his representations of the honour
conferred upon them by the sovereign in selecting their city as the
scene of his own marriage and that of his sister, the future Queen of
Spain.[208]

It had been arranged that the royal marriages should be celebrated on
the same day (the 18th of October), at Bordeaux and Burgos; and
accordingly the Duc de Guise, as proxy for the Prince of Spain, espoused
Madame Elisabeth, with whom, accompanied by the Duchesse de Nevers and
the ladies of her household, he immediately departed for the frontier,
after a painful leave-taking between the young Princess and her family;
while the Duque d'Usseda[209] performed the same ceremony for Louis
XIII, with the Infanta Anna Maria of Austria. The exchange of the two
Princesses took place on the 9th of November, in the middle of the
Bidassoa, with a host of petty and futile observances which excite mirth
rather than admiration; but at the same time with a magnificence
surpassing all that had ever previously been exhibited on such an
occasion; the two Courts of France and Spain vying with each other in
splendour and profusion. De Luynes, to whom such a mission appeared
peculiarly adapted, presented to the Infanta the letters of welcome with
which he had been entrusted by Louis XIII and his mother, and which were
received by the Princess with an undisguised delight that the favourite
did not fail to report to his royal master.

The guard with which the Duc de Guise had conducted Madame Elisabeth to
the frontier consisted of fifteen hundred horse, four thousand infantry,
and four pieces of ordnance; and it was with the same troops that he
escorted the newly made Queen of France to Bordeaux, who, previously to
her departure from Burg