Series 1 > Diplomatic correspondence of Jean de Montereul and the brothers de Bellièvre, French ambassadors in England and Scotland, 1645-48 > Volume 1

XXIV
MONTEREUL CORRESPONDENCE
Duke’s party, the disbanding of the army was not only carried
out but the Duke proposed to raise a new one, to be under his
own control. In this he succeeded in spite of the opposition
of the Marquis and the clergy, and amid a good deal of popular
obloquy. Parliament, however, named him leader of the new
army. It being no longer possible to conceal his designs on
England in favour of the king, and as the Scots had made a
great parade of their having French assistance, Mazarin decided
that he had gone far enough in the matter, and Montereul
was consequently recalled. In his last letter from Edinburgh,
he relates his taking leave of the Duke of Hamilton, to whom
he delivered a letter from Mazarin. The former left Edinburgh
the same evening to rejoin the army, then encamped near the
border in order to invade England. The juncture being con¬
sidered critical, Montereul left his brother in Edinburgh to
continue his correspondence for a few weeks longer. The
description this latter gives of Edinburgh at this period is
sufficiently gloomy,—a bad outbreak of the plague that was
daily increasing in virulence throughout the country,—the
dread of an approaching famine,—the want of news from the
army that had invaded England, and a feverish apprehension
as to its fate,—all tended to promote a feeling of general
depression.
No blame was attached to Montereul in France for his
want of success in Scotland, as Lord Clarendon asserts in his
History. It was there considered that he had, on the contrary,
done all that could have been done to avert the fatal calamity
that had so long been impending over the unfortunate king.
On his return to Paris from Edinburgh in the autumn of 1648,
he entered on his duties as Secretary to the Prince de Conti,
and was sent by the French government, at the end of the
same year, again to Rome to treat for obtaining a cardinalship
for that prince. Returning to Paris during the following year,
he was elected a member of the recently formed French