His Most Christian Majesty Louis the Fourteenth by the Grace of God, of the
Kingdom of France and of His other Realms and Territories, King
to General le Duc Alain de Mylcandonai
Given your grave disappointment regarding the appointment of Duc von
Fersen as our Minister of State, we are willing to indulge your
correspondence on matters concerning rumors. Rumors are usually wildly
inaccurate and this one seems to fare no better than the rest. We would
not leave such an important post unattended for the duration of September;
that alone should have hinted at the erroneous nature of the libel. Time
spent with the Princess is no doubt sweet, but had you attended the
Ministerial meeting held by Duc von Fersen at the end of September, you
would have been in the company of Duc Senior and the delightful Jenny, as
well as Duc de l'Aubergine, Comte Rhett R'Ded, and Vicomte Rougeur Homard,
all of whom diligently discussed the summer campaign. This alone would
have served to convince you that our good Duc had not yet departed.
While it is accurate to say treasonous charges were brought against
Duc Senior, there is nothing more you may say. In drawing a comparison
between The Traitor and Duc Senior, you omit one fact: we pronounced a
sentence of immediate death for The Traitor and never did likewise for the
Duc. You have abrogated our right to pass judgement and done so yourself;
this in turn has led you down a primrose path littered with assumptions
about why the good Duc has been asked to take the Governorship of
Hispaniola. Had you attended the meeting and learned that we shall rid
ourselves of the thorn that is Spain this next summer, you could have drawn
a much different conclusion that mayhap would have kept you from the
assumptions that have so led you astray.
Though you are poised to marry our daughter, this does not give you
the right to pass judgement where the King alone treads. You have clearly
done so with regard to the guilt of the good Duc, and moreover, you are
brazen enough to say so in a letter to us. We shall indulge you and treat
this missive as the expressions of an over-worked spleen. Be certain that
you are corrected with regard to the matter of the Duc in so much as we
have never passed judgement on the affair; our decision not to do so is no
invitation for you to rule in our stead.
As for the friends that supported you, we feel you do them a great
injustice or else friends they are not. No noble gentleman would act in
the manner you have outlined; it would make them little better than
Shylocks to weigh the odds and only give word to a matter if they felt
certain to win. A worthy noble offers the best advice he can to his
monarch. Though you accord a flattering power to the old Duc, the matter
was by no means certain and every word uttered was weighed carefully. If
we indulged your view and believed that you did indeed have the true
measure of your gentlemen friends, in so much as they would not have
supported you in the face of opposition - in this case a single noble, you
have surrounded yourself with men who would better serve in the Bawdy House
than in our government. Knowing as we do some of the nobles who supported
your cause, we can assure you that you have not taken their full measure -
they are noble men who would not offer their monarch false advice, nor
waver in the face of competition.
Consider the appointment a battle well-fought, not the end of the war.
For a gentleman who will likely be standing by our side in a few months,
you have little to lament and much to which you may look forward. To spoil
the victory of another, unintentional as your efforts may be, is hardly the
actions we would expect from a son-in-law.
Louis
