world’s noblest crowns; all that can be given of the glories of birth and rank gathered upon a head which is afterwards exposed to all the insults of fortune; the good cause at first rewarded by success, then met by sudden turns and unheard-of changes; rebellion long restrained, at last over-riding everything; unbridled licentiousness; the destruction of all laws; royal majesty insulted by crimes before unknown; usurpation and tyranny under the name of liberty; a queen pursued by her enemies, and finding no refuge in either of her kingdoms; her own native land become a melancholy place of exile; many voyages across the sea undertaken by a princess, in spite of the tempest; the ocean surprised at being crossed so often, in such different ways, and for so different causes; a throne shamefully destroyed and miraculously restored.  Those are the lessons which are given by God to the kings; thus does He show to the world the emptiness of its pomps and splendors.  If I lack words, if expression is unable to do justice to a subject of such magnitude and loftiness, things alone will speak sufficiently; the heart[5] of a great queen, formerly raised by long years of prosperity and suddenly plunged into an abyss of bitterness, will speak loudly enough; and if private characters are not allowed to give lessons to princes upon such strange occurrences, a king lends me his voice to tell them.  “Et nunc, reges, intelligite; erudimini, qui judicatis terram:”  Understand now, ye kings of the earth; learn, ye who judge the world.

[Footnote 5:  The Queen’s heart was kept in the church where Bossuet was speaking.]

But the wise and religious Princess who is the subject of this discourse was not simply a spectacle presented to them that they may study therein the counsels of Divine Providence and the fatal revolutions of monasteries:  she was her own instructor, while God instructed all princes through her example.  I have said already that the Divine Lord teaches them both by giving and by taking away their power.  The Queen of whom I speak understood one of these lessons as well as the other, contrary as they are, which means that in good as well as in evil fortune she behaved as a Christian.  In the one she was charitable, in the other invincible.  While prosperous she made her power felt by the world through infinite blessings; when fortune forsook her, she enlarged her own treasure of virtues, so that she lost for her own good this royal power which she had had for the good of others.  And if her subjects, if her allies, if the Church Universal were the gainers by her greatness, she gained by her misfortunes and humiliations more than she had done by all her glory.

THE GREAT REBELLION