Chapter VI: Part 6

This position attained, Richelieu endeavoured to make the utmost advantage of it. He acquired the good-will of his diocese by rigid attention to the affairs that fell under his jurisdiction; whilst in frequent visits to the capital, he sought to acquire reputation by preaching. In the Estates General of 1614, he was chosen deputy by his diocese, and was afterwards selected by the clergy of the states to present their _cahier_ or vote of grievances to the monarch. It was an opportunity not to be thrown away by the ambition of Richelieu, who instantly put himself forward as the champion of the Queen Mother against the cabal of the high noblesse. He at the same time adroitly pointed out where she might find auxiliaries, by complaining that ecclesiastics had no longer a place in the public administration, and were thus degraded from their ancient and legitimate share of influence. Richelieu was rewarded with the place of Almoner to the Queen; and he was soon admitted to her confidence, as well as to that of her favourite the Maréchal D’Ancre.

In 1616 he was appointed Secretary of State; but aware by what slender tenure the office was held, he refused to give up his bishopric. This excited not only the animadversions of the public, but the anger of the favourite. Richelieu offered to give up his secretaryship, but the Queen could not dispense with his talents. The assassination of the favourite, however, soon overthrew the influence of the Queen herself. Still Richelieu remained attached to her, and followed her to Blois: but the triumphant party dreading his talents for intrigue, ordered him to quit the Queen, and repair to one of his priories in Anjou. He was subsequently commanded to retire to his bishopric, and at last exiled to Avignon. Here he sought to avert suspicion by affecting to devote himself once more to theological pursuits. During this period he published one or two polemical tracts, the mediocrity of which proves either that his genius lay not in this path, or, as is probable, that his interest and thoughts were elsewhere.

The escape of the Queen Mother from her place of confinement, excited the fears of her enemies, and the hopes of Richelieu. He wrote instantly to Court, to proffer his services towards bringing about an accommodation. In the difficulty of the moment, the King and his favourite accepted the offer. Richelieu was released from exile, and allowed to join the Queen at Angoulême, where he laboured certainly to bring about a reconciliation. This was not, however, such as the Court could have wished. De Luynes, the favourite, accused the Bishop of Luçon of betraying him. The Queen sought to regain her ancient authority; the Court wished to quiet and content her without this sacrifice; and both parties, accordingly, after seeming and nominal agreements, fell off again from each other. De Luynes sought a support in the family of Condé; whilst Mary de Medici, refusing to repair to Paris, and keeping in her towns of surety on the Loire, flattered the Huguenots, and endeavoured to bind them to her party. On this occasion Richelieu became intimately acquainted with the designs and intrigues and spirit of the Reformers.

The division betwixt the King and his mother still continued. The discontented nobles joined the latter, and flew to arms. This state of things did not please Richelieu, since defeat ruined his party, and success brought honour rather to those who fought than to him. He therefore exerted himself, first to keep away the chief of the nobility from the Queen, secondly, to bring about an accommodation. The difficulties were got over by the defeat of the Queen’s forces owing to surprise, and by the promotion of Richelieu to the rank of Cardinal. The malevolent coupled the two circumstances together; and even the impartial must descry a singular coincidence. The event, at least, proves his address; for when the agreement was finally concluded, it was found that Richelieu, the negotiator, had himself reaped all the benefits. He received the cardinal’s hat from the King’s hand at Lyons, towards the close of the year 1622.

Not content with this advancement of her counsellor, Mary de Medici continued to press the King to admit Richelieu to his cabinet. Louis long resisted her solicitations, such was his instinctive dread of the man destined to rule him. Nor was it until 1624, after the lapse of sixteen months, and when embarrassed with difficult state questions, which no one then in office was capable of managing, that the royal will was declared admitting Richelieu to the council. Even this grace was accompanied by the drawback, that the Cardinal was allowed to give merely his opinion, not his vote.

Once, however, seated at the council table, the colleagues of the Cardinal shrunk before him into ciphers. The marriage of the Princess Henrietta with the Prince of Wales, afterwards Charles I., was then in agitation. Richelieu undertook to conduct it, and overcame the delays of etiquette and the repugnance of Rome. De Vieville, the King’s favourite and minister, venturing to show jealousy of Richelieu, was speedily removed. The affair of the Valteline had given rise to endless negotiations. The matter in dispute was the attempt of the House of Austria to procure a passage across the Grisons to connect their Italian and German dominions. France and the Italian powers had opposed this by protests. Richelieu boldly marched an army, and avowed in council his determination to adopt the policy and resume the scheme of Henry IV., for the humiliation of the House of Austria. The King and his Council were terrified at such a gigantic proposal: instead of being awed by the genius of Richelieu, as yet they mistrusted it. Peace was concluded with Spain; on no unfavourable conditions indeed, but not on such as flattered the new minister’s pride.

Whilst these negotiations with Spain were yet in progress, the Huguenots menaced a renewal of the civil war. Richelieu advised in the council that their demands should be granted, urging that whilst a foreign foe was in the field, domestic enemies were better quieted than irritated. His enemies took advantage of this, and represented the Cardinal as a favourer of heresy. This charge is continually brought against those who are indifferent to religious dissensions; but it is probable that Richelieu did seek at this time to gain the support of the Protestant party, attacked as he was by a strong band of malcontent nobles, envious of his rise, and intolerant of his authority.

The whole Court, indeed, became leagued against the superiority and arrogance of the Minister; the most _qualified_ of the noblesse, to use Aubery’s expression, joined with the Duke of Orleans, the monarch’s brother, and with the Queen, to overthrow Richelieu. As the Maréchal D’Ancre had been made away with by assassination, so the same means were again meditated. The Comte de Chalais offered himself as the instrument: but the mingled good fortune and address of Richelieu enabled him to discover the plot, and avoid this, and every future peril.

His anchor of safety was in the confidence reposed in him by Louis XIII. This prince, although of most feeble will, was not without the just pride of a monarch; he could not but perceive that his former ministers or favourites were but the instruments or slaves of the noblesse, who consulted but their own interests, and provided but for the difficulties of the moment. Richelieu, on the contrary, though eager for power, sought it as an instrument to great ends, to the consolidation of the monarchy, and to its ascendancy in Europe. He was in the habit of unfolding these high views to Louis, who, though himself incapable of putting them into effect, nevertheless had the spirit to admire and approve them. Richelieu proposed to render his reign illustrious abroad, and at home to convert the chief of a turbulent aristocracy into a real monarch. It forms indeed the noblest part of this great statesman’s character, that he won upon the royal mind, not by vulgar flattery, but by exciting within it a love of glory and of greatness, to which, at the same time, he pointed the way.

Accordingly, through all the plots formed against him, Louis XIII. remained firmly attached to Richelieu, sacrificing to this minister’s preeminence his nobility, his brother Gaston, Duke of Orleans, his Queen, and finally the Queen Mother herself, when she too became jealous of the man whom she had raised. As yet however Mary de Medici was his friend, and Richelieu succeeded in sending his enemies to prison or to the scaffold. Gaston was obliged to bow the knee before the Cardinal. And Anne of Austria, who was accused of having consented to espouse Gaston in case of the King’s death, was for ever exiled from the affections of the monarch, and from any influence over him. If this latter triumph over the young wife of Louis, whose enmity certainly the Cardinal had most to fear, was excited by coldly invented falsehoods, history has scarcely recorded a more odious crime.

It is said that Richelieu himself was enamoured of Anne of Austria, and that he found himself outrivalled by the Duke of Buckingham. What credit should be assigned to the existence and influence of such feelings it is difficult to determine. But certainly a strong and personal jealousy of Buckingham is to be perceived in the conduct of Richelieu. Policy would have recommended the minister to cajole rather than affront the English favourite at a time when the Huguenot party was menacing and the nobility still indignant. The Cardinal had not long before concluded the marriage of the Princess Henrietta with Charles, in order to secure the English alliance, and thus deprive the Huguenots of a dangerous support. Now he ran counter to these prudent measures, defied Buckingham, whom he forbade to visit Paris, and thus united against himself and against the monarchy, two most powerful enemies, one foreign, one domestic.

If Richelieu thus imprudently indulged his passion or his pique, he redeemed the error by activity and exertion unusual to the age. He at once formed the project of attacking the Huguenots in their chief strong-hold of La Rochelle. Buckingham could not fail to attempt the relief of this sea-port; and the Cardinal anticipated the triumph of personally defeating a rival. He accordingly himself proceeded to preside over the operation of the siege. To render the blockade effectual, it was requisite to stop up the port. The military officers whom he employed could suggest no means of doing this. Richelieu took counsel of his classic reading; and having learned from Quintus Curtius how Alexander the Great reduced Tyre, by carrying out a mole against it through the sea, he was encouraged to undertake a similar work. The great mound was accordingly commenced, and well-nigh finished, when a storm arose and destroyed it in a single night. But Richelieu was only rendered more obstinate: he recommenced the mole, and was seen with the volume of Alexander’s History in his hand, encouraging the workmen and overruling the objections of the tacticians of the army. The second attempt succeeded, the harbour was blocked up, and the promised aid of England rendered fruitless. The Cardinal triumphed, for La Rochelle surrendered. In his treatment of the vanquished, Richelieu showed a moderation seldom observable in his conduct. He was lenient, and even tolerant towards the Huguenots, content with having humbled the pride of his rival, Buckingham.

La Rochelle was no sooner taken, and Richelieu rewarded by the title of Prime Minister, than he resumed those projects of humbling the House of Austria, in which he had previously been interrupted. A quarrel about the succession to Mantua afforded him a pretext to interfere; and he did so, after his fashion, not by mere negotiations, but by an army. This expedition proved a source of quarrel between him and the Queen Mother, Mary de Medici, who hitherto had been his firm and efficient friend. Private and family reasons rendered Mary averse to the war. Both the French Queens of the House of Medici had shown the reverence of their family for the princes of the blood of Austria. Mary, on her accession to the regency, had interrupted Henry IV.’s plans for humbling the influence of that house. Richelieu’s endeavour to revive this scheme called forth her opposition. He was obstinate from high motives; she from petty ones. But she could not forgive the ingratitude of him whom she had fostered, and who now dared to thwart and counteract her. The voice of the conqueror of La Rochelle triumphed in council, and his project in the field. The French were victorious in Italy, and the minister equally so over the mind of the monarch.

But Mary de Medici could not forgive; and she now openly showed her hatred of Richelieu, and exerted herself to the utmost to injure him with the King. Though daily defeating her intrigues, the Cardinal dreaded her perseverance, and resolved to drag the King with him to another Italian campaign. Louis obeyed, and the court set out for the south, the Queen Mother herself accompanying it. Richelieu, however, did not tarry for the slow motions of the monarch. He flew to the army, took upon him the command, and displayed all the abilities of a great general in out-manœuvring and worsting the generals and armies of Savoy. In the mean time Louis fell dangerously ill at Lyons. His mother, an affectionate attendant on his sick couch, resumed her former empire over him. At one moment his imminent death seemed to threaten the Cardinal with ruin. Louis recovered, however; and his first act was to compel a reconciliation, in form at least, between the Cardinal and the Queen Mother.

The King’s illness, although not so immediately fatal to Richelieu as his enemies had hoped, was still attended with serious consequences to him. The French army had met with ill success through the treachery of the general, Marillac, who was secretly attached to the Queen’s party: and the failure was attributed to Richelieu.

Mary de Medici renewed her solicitations to her son, that he would dismiss his minister. Louis, it appears, made a promise to that effect; a reluctant promise, given to get rid of her importunity. Mary calculated too securely upon his keeping it; she broke forth in bitter contumely against Richelieu; deprived him of his superintendence over her household; and treated Madame de Combalet, the Cardinal’s niece, who had sunk on her knees to entreat her to moderate her anger, almost with insult. The King was present, and seemed to sanction her violence; so that Richelieu withdrew to make his preparations for exile. Louis, dissatisfied and irresolute, retired to Versailles; whilst Mary remained triumphant at the Luxembourg, receiving the congratulations of her party. Richelieu in the mean time, ere taking his departure, repaired to Versailles, and, once there, resumed the ascendant over the monarch. The tidings of this was a thunderstroke to Mary and her party, who became instantly the victims of the Cardinal’s revenge. Marillac was beheaded; and Mary de Medici, herself at length completely vanquished by her rival, was driven out of France to spend the rest of her days in exile.

Richelieu had thus triumphed over every interest and every personage that was, or was likely to be, inimical to his sway. The young Queen, Anne of Austria, and the Queen Mother, Mary de Medici, had alike been sacrificed to his preeminence; and it appears that he employed the same means to ruin both. One of the weak points of Louis XIII. was jealousy of his brother, Gaston, Duke of Orleans, whom he could never abide. Notwithstanding his sloth, the King assumed the direction of the Italian army, and went through the campaign, to prevent Gaston from earning honour, by filling the place of command. Richelieu made effectual use of this foible; he overcame Anne of Austria, by bringing proofs that she preferred Gaston to the King; and he overcame Mary de Medici by a similar story, that she favoured Gaston, and was paving the way for his succession.

The Duke of Orleans was now indignant at his mother’s exile, and espoused her interest with heat. He intruded upon Richelieu, menacing him personally; nor did the latter refrain from returning both menace and insult. Gaston fled to Lorraine, and formed a league with its duke, and with the majority of the French noblesse, for the purpose of avenging the wrongs of his mother, and driving from authority the upstart and tyrannical minister.

The trial of Marillac had roused the spirit and indignation even of those nobles, who had previously respected and bowed to the minister of the royal choice. This nobleman and maréchal was seized at the head of his army, and conveyed, not to a prison, but to Richelieu’s own country-house at Ruel. Instead of being tried by his Peers or in Parliament, he was here brought before a Commission of Judges, chosen by his enemy. He was tried in the Cardinal’s own hall, condemned, and executed in the Place de Grève.

The iniquity of such a proceeding offered a popular pretext for the nobility to withstand the Cardinal: and they were not without other reasons. Richelieu not only threatened their order with the scaffold, but his measures of administration were directed to deprive them of their ancient privileges, and means of wealth and domination. One of these was the right of governors of provinces to raise the revenue within their jurisdiction, and to employ or divert no small portion of it to their use. Richelieu to remedy this transferred the office of collecting the revenue to new officers, called the _Elect_. He tried this in Languedoc, then governed by the Duc de Montmorenci, a noble of the first rank, whose example consequently would have weight, and who had always proved himself obedient and loyal. Moved, however, by his private wrongs, as well as that of his order, he now joined the party of the Duke of Orleans. That weak prince, after forming his alliance with the Duke of Lorraine, had raised an army. Richelieu lost not a moment in despatching a force which reduced Lorraine, and humbled its hitherto independent duke almost to the rank of a subject. Gaston then marched his army to Languedoc, and joined Montmorenci. The Maréchal de Brezé, Richelieu’s brother-in-law, led the royal troops against them, defeated Gaston at Castelnaudari, and took Montmorenci prisoner. This noble had been the friend and supporter of Richelieu, who even called him his son; yet the Cardinal’s cruel policy determined that he should die. There was difficulty in proving before the Judges that he had actually borne arms against the King.

“The smoke and dust,” said St. Reuil, the witness, “rendered it impossible to recognize any combatant distinctly. But when I saw one advance alone, and cut his way through five ranks of gens-d’armes, I knew that it must be Montmorenci.”

This gallant descendant of five Constables of France perished on the scaffold at Toulouse. Richelieu deemed the example necessary, to strike terror into the nobility. And he immediately took advantage of that terror, by removing all the governors of provinces, and replacing them throughout with officers personally attached to his interests.

Having thus made, as it were, a clear stage for the fulfilment of his great political schemes, Richelieu turned his exertions to his original plan of humbling the House of Austria, and extending the territories of France at its expense. He formed an alliance with the great Gustavus Adolphus, who then victoriously supported the course of religious liberty in Germany. Richelieu drew more advantage from the death than from the victories of his ally; since, as the price of his renewing his alliance with the Swedes, he acquired the possession of Philipsburg, and opened the way towards completing that darling project of France and every French statesman, the acquisition of the Rhine as a frontier.

The French having manifested their design to get possession of Treves, the Spaniards anticipated them; and open war ensued betwixt the two monarchies. The Cardinal allied with the Dutch, and drew up a treaty “to free the Low Countries from the cruel servitude in which they are held by the Spaniards.” In order to effect this, the French and Dutch were to capture the fortresses of the country, and finally divide it between them.

But Richelieu’s views or means were not mature enough to produce a successful plan of conquest. Surrounded as France was by the dominions of her rival, she was obliged to divide her forces, attack on many sides, and make conquests on none. The generals, whom he was obliged to employ, were remarkable but for servility to him, and jealousy of each other. The Cardinal de la Valette headed one of his armies, but with no better success than his lay colleagues. Instead of crushing Spain, Richelieu endured the mortification of witnessing the irruption of her troops into the centre of the kingdom, where they took Corbie, and menaced the very capital.

This was a critical moment for Richelieu, who is said to have lost courage amidst these reverses, and to have been roused to confidence by the exhortations of his Capuchin friend and confidant, Father Joseph. He was obliged on this occasion to relax his severity and pride, to own that the generals of his choice were little worthy of their trust, and to call on the old noblesse and the princes of the blood to lead the French troops to the defence of the country. Both obeyed the summons, and exerted themselves to prove their worth by the recapture of Corbie, and the repulse of the Spaniards. The enemies of the Cardinal were aware how much the ignominy of these reverses, as the result of his mighty plans, must have abated the King’s confidence in him. They endeavoured to take advantage of the moment, and Louis seemed not averse to shake off his minister. There was no trusting the King’s intentions, however, and it was agreed to assassinate Richelieu at Amiens. The Comte de Soissons had his hand on his sword for the purpose, awaiting but the signal from Gaston; but the latter wanted resolution to give it, and Richelieu again escaped the murderous designs of his foes.

The character of Louis XIII. left his courtiers without hope. It was such a general mass of weakness, as to offer no particular weak point of which they could take advantage. Too cold to be enamoured of either wife or mistress, his gallantries offered no means of captivating his favour; nor was he bigot enough to be ruled through his conscience by priestly confessors. It is singular that the gallant, peremptory, and able Louis XIV. was governed and influenced by those means which had no hold upon his weak sire. Still as these were the received ways for undermining the influence of a dominant minister, Louis XIII. was assailed through his supposed mistresses, and through his confessors, to induce him to shake off Richelieu. But all attempts were vain. The ladies Hauteville and Lafayette, who had pleased Louis, retired to a convent. His confessors, who had hinted the impiety of supporting the Dutch and German Protestants, were turned out of the palace. And the Queen, Anne of Austria, with whom Louis made a late reconciliation, the fruit of which was the birth of the future Louis XIV., was exposed to disrespect and insult. Her apartments and papers were searched by order of the Cardinal, a letter was torn from her bosom, she was confined to her room, and menaced with being sent back to Spain.

Richelieu in his wars was one of those scientific combatants who seek to weary out an enemy, and who husband their strength in order not to crush at once, but to ruin in the end. Such at least were the tactics by which he came triumphant out of the struggle with Spain. He made no conquests at first, gained no striking victories; but he compensated for his apparent want of success by perseverance, by taking advantage of defeat to improve the army, and by labouring to transfer to the crown the financial and other resources which had been previously absorbed by the aristocracy. Thus the war, though little brilliant at first, produced at last these very important results. Arras in the north, Turin in the south, Alsace in the east, fell into the hands of the French; Rousillon was annexed to the monarchy; and Catalonia revolted from Spain. Richelieu might boast that he had achieved the great purposes of Henry IV., not so gloriously indeed as that heroic prince might have done, but no less effectually. This was effected not so much by arms as by administration. The foundation was laid for that martial preeminence which Louis XIV. long enjoyed; and which he might have retained, had the virtue of moderation been known to him.

It was not without incurring great personal perils, with proportionate address and good fortune, that Cardinal Richelieu arrived at such great results. The rebellion of the Comte de Soissons, the same whose project of assassination had failed, menaced the Minister seriously. In a battle against the royal army, the Count was completely victorious, an event that might have caused a revolution in the government, had not fortune neutralized it by his death. He fell by a pistol-shot, whilst contemplating the scene of victory. His friends asserted that he was murdered by an emissary of the Cardinal: according to others, the bullet was accidentally discharged from his own pistol.

But the most remarkable plot which assailed Richelieu, was that of Cinq-Mars, a young nobleman selected to be the King’s favourite, on account of his presumed frivolity. But he was capable of deep thoughts and passions; and wearied by the solitude in which the monarch lived, and to which he was reduced by the Minister’s monopoly of all power, he dared to plot the Cardinal’s overthrow. This bold attempt was sanctioned by the King himself, who at intervals complained of the yoke put upon him.

Great interests were at stake, for Richelieu, reckoning upon the monarch’s weak health, meditated procuring the regency for himself. Anne of Austria, aware of this intention, approved of the project of Cinq-Mars, which of course implied the assassination of the Cardinal. No other mode of defying his power and talent could have been contemplated. But Richelieu was on the watch. The Court was then in the south of France, engaged in the conquest of Roussillon, a situation favourable for the relation of the conspirators with Spain. The Minister surprised one of the emissaries, had the fortune to seize a treaty concluded between them and the enemies of France; and with this flagrant proof of their treason, he repaired to Louis, and forced from him an order for their arrest. It was tantamount to their condemnation. Cinq-Mars and his friends perished on the scaffold; Anne of Austria was again humbled; and every enemy of the Cardinal shrunk in awe and submission before his ascendency. Amongst them was the King himself, whom Richelieu looked upon as an equal in dignity, an inferior in mind and in power. The guards of the Cardinal were numerous as the Monarch’s, and independent of any authority save that of their immediate master. A treaty was even drawn up between king and minister, as between two potentates. But the power and the pride of Richelieu reached at once their height and their termination. A mortal illness seized him in the latter days of 1642, a few months after the execution of Cinq-Mars. No remorse for his cruelty or abatement of his pride marked his last moments. He summoned the monarch like a servant to his couch, instructed him what policy to follow, and appointed the minister who was to be his own successor. Even in the last religious duties, the same character and the same spirit were observable. As his cardinal’s robe was a covering and excuse for all crimes in life, he seemed to think that it exempted him from the common lot of mortals after death.

Such was the career of this supereminent statesman, who, although in the position of Damocles all his life, with the sword of the assassin suspended over his head, surrounded with enemies, and with insecure and treacherous support even from the monarch whom he served, still not only maintained his own station, but possessed time and zeal to frame and execute gigantic projects for the advancement of his country and of his age. It makes no small part of Henry IV.’s glory that he conceived a plan for diminishing the power of the House of Austria. Richelieu, without either the security or the advantages of the king and the warrior, achieved it. Not only this, but he dared to enter upon the war at the very same time when he was humbling that aristocracy which had hitherto composed the martial force of the country.

The effects of his domestic policy were indeed more durable than those of what he most prided himself upon, his foreign policy. The latter was his end, the former his means; but the means were the more important of the two. For half a century previous, kings had been acquiring a sacro-sanctity, a power founded on respect, which equalled that of Asiatic despots; whilst at the same time their real sources of power remained in the hands of the aristocracy. From this contradiction, this want of harmony betwixt the theoretic and the real power of monarchs, proceeded a state of licence liable at all times to produce the most serious convulsions. To this state of things Richelieu put an end for ever. He crushed the power of the great nobility, as Henry VII., by very different means, had done before him in England. He made Louis a sovereign in the most absolute sense; he reformed and changed the whole system of administration, destroyed all local authorities, and centralized them, as the term is, in the capital and the court. We see, accordingly, that it was only the capital which could oppose Mazarin; all provincial force was destroyed by Richelieu. He it was, in fact, who founded the French monarchy, such as it existed until near the end of the eighteenth century, a grand, indeed, rather than a happy result. He was a man of penetrating and commanding intellect, who visibly influenced the fortunes of Europe to an extent which few princes or ministers have equalled. Unscrupulous in his purposes, he was no less so in the means by which he effected them. But so long as men are honoured, not for their moral excellences, but for the great things which they have done for themselves, or their country, the name of Richelieu will be recollected with respect, as that of one of the most successful statesmen that ever lived.

His measures with respect to commerce were very remarkable. He proposed to render the French marine as formidable as the French armies, and chose the wisest means in favouring colonization and commercial companies for the purpose. The chief part of their successful settlements in the east and west the French owe to Richelieu. In financial measures he showed least sagacity, and the disordered state in which he left this branch of the administration was the principal cause of the difficulties of his successor.

As a patron of letters, Richelieu has acquired a reputation almost rivalling that of his statesmanship. His first and earliest success in life had been as a scholar supporting his theses; and, as it is continually observed that great men form very erroneous judgments of their own excellences, he ever prided himself especially in his powers as a penman: it was a complete mistake on his part. He has left a considerable quantity of theological tracts of trifling merit.

Not content with his own sphere of greatness, he aspired to the minor praise of being skilled in the fashionable literature of the day; and amused himself by composing dramatic pieces, some of which Corneille was employed to correct. The independence of the poet, and the pride of the patron, led to a quarrel of which we have given some account in the life of the great tragedian. In 1635 Richelieu founded the French Academy. We should expect to find in his political writings traces of the master-hand of one, who, with a mind of unusual power, had long studied the subject of which he wrote. But those which are ascribed to him, for none, we believe are avowed, or absolutely known to be his, are of unequal merit. The ‘Mémoires de la Mère, et du Fils,’ are mediocre, and unworthy of him. The ‘Testament Politique du Cardinal de Richelieu’ (the authenticity of which is strongly contested by Voltaire) bears a much higher reputation as a work upon Government. La Bruyere has said of it, that the man who had done such things ought never to have written, or to have written in the style in which it is written.

There are several English lives of Cardinal Richelieu, most of them published in the seventeenth century, but none which we know to be of authority. In French, we may recommend the reader to the life of Aubery. The best account of Richelieu, however, is said to be contained in the ‘Histoire de Louis XIII.’ by P. Griffet.

_Engraved by W. Holl._

J. H. WOLLASTON.

_From the original Picture by J. Jackson
in the possession of the Royal Society._

Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.

_London, Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]

WOLLASTON.

No record of this eminent philosopher has yet appeared, except his scientific papers, and a few meagre biographical sketches published shortly after his death. It is to be hoped that some one duly qualified for the task will become the historian of his life and labours before it is too late.

William Hyde Wollaston was born August 6, 1766. His grandfather was well known as the author of a work, entitled ‘The Religion of Nature Delineated.’ He completed his education at Caius College, Cambridge. It has been said, in most of the memoirs of him, that he obtained the honour of being senior wrangler. This is a mistake, arising from Francis Wollaston, of Sidney, having gained the first place in 1783. It appears from the Cantabrigienses Graduati that he did not graduate in Arts; but, with a view to practising medicine, proceeded to the degrees of M.B. in 1787, and M.D. in 1793. He was not unversed, however, in mathematical studies. He first established himself as a physician at Bury St. Edmunds, in Suffolk; but meeting with little encouragement, removed to London. Soon after this change of abode, he became a candidate for the office of physician to St. George’s Hospital, in opposition to Dr. Pemberton. The latter was elected, and Wollaston, in a fit of pique, declared that he would abandon the profession, and never more write a prescription, were it for his own father.

He kept to his resolution, hasty and unwise as it may seem; and from this time forward devoted himself solely to the cultivation of science. Even in an economical view he had no cause to regret this, for he acquired wealth by the exercise of his inventive genius. One single discovery, that of a method by which platinum can be made ductile and malleable, is said to have produced him about thirty thousand pounds. It has been objected that he derogated from the dignity of the philosophic character by too keen an eye towards making his experiments profitable: but in this field, if in any, the labourer is surely worthy of his reward; and unless it can be shown that he turned away from any train of discovery, because it did not promise pecuniary gain, surely not a shadow of blame can be attached to him for profiting by the legitimate earnings of his industry and talents. That he was fond of acquiring money, there is good reason to believe; but there is a story, which has been before told, and which we have ourselves some reason to consider authentic, which proves that he could use nobly that which he had gained frugally. A gentleman, in embarrassed circumstances, requested his interference to procure some place under government. He replied, “I have lived to sixty without asking a single favour from men in office, and it is not, after that age, that I shall be induced to do it, were it even to serve a brother. If the enclosed can be of any use to you, in your present difficulties, pray accept it; for it is much at your service.” The enclosure was a cheque for ten thousand pounds.

One of Wollaston’s peculiarities was an exceeding jealousy of any person entering his laboratory. “Do you see that furnace?” he once said to a friend, who had penetrated unbidden to this sacred ground. “Yes.” “Then make a profound bow to it, for this is the first, and will be the last time of your seeing it.” It is not a necessary inference, that this dislike to having his processes observed arose from jealousy either of his fame or his profit: it may have been merely the result of a somewhat saturnine and reserved temper, which seems to have shunned unnecessary publicity on all occasions.

Wollaston was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1793. He was appointed one of its Secretaries, November 6, 1806. His first paper, which is on medical subjects, is published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1797; and, until his death, he continued to be a frequent contributor. His papers amount in number to thirty-nine, and must be well examined before a just idea can be formed of the extent and variety of his scientific knowledge. They embrace various subjects connected with Pathology, Optics, Electricity, Chemistry, Crystallography, and mechanical contrivances of various sorts. He contributed a few papers to other philosophical works. Of the Geological Society he was an active member, though he sent no memoirs to its Transactions; and on the first annual meeting of that body after his death, the president, Dr. Fitton, bore testimony to the high value of his services to the science of Geology.

The lives of Wollaston and Davy began and ended nearly at the same time, and ran parallel to each other; they never crossed. Each was original, and independent of the other; their minds were unlike, their processes different, and the discoveries of one never interfered with those of the other. “The chemical manipulations of Wollaston and Davy,” we quote from Dr. Paris, “offered a singular contrast to each other, and might be considered as highly characteristic of the temperaments and intellectual qualities of these remarkable men. Every process of the former was regulated with the most scrupulous regard to microscopic accuracy, and conducted with the utmost neatness of detail. It has been already stated with what turbulence and apparent confusion the experiments of the latter were conducted; and yet each was equally excellent in his own style; and as artists, they have not unaptly been compared to Teniers and Michael Angelo. By long discipline, Wollaston acquired such power in commanding and fixing his attention upon minute objects, that he was able to recognize resemblances, and to distinguish differences, between precipitates produced by re-agents, which were invisible to ordinary observers, and which enabled him to submit to analysis the smallest particle of matter with success. Davy on the other hand obtained his results by an intellectual process, which may be said to have consisted in the extreme rapidity with which he seized upon, and applied, appropriate means at appropriate moments.

“To this faculty of minute observation, which Dr. Wollaston applied with so much advantage, the chemical world is indebted for the introduction of more simple methods of experimenting: for the substitution of a few glass tubes and plates of glass for capacious retorts and receivers, and for the art of making grains give the results which previously required pounds. A foreign philosopher once called on Dr. Wollaston with letters of introduction, and expressed an anxious desire to see his laboratory. ‘Certainly,’ we replied; and immediately produced a small tray containing some glass tubes, a blow-pipe, two or three watch-glasses, a slip of platinum, and a few test bottles.” We may conclude, however, that this was not the whole of Wollaston’s apparatus, nor he in this quite ingenuous; and the anecdote forms another illustration of his dislike to admitting any one into his workroom.

To this ingenious turn of mind and love of minute accuracy we owe several valuable instruments. Of these the most important is his reflective Goniometer, or angle-measurer, which by calling in the unerring laws of optics, enables the observer to ascertain within a small limit of error, the angle contained between two faces of a crystal, and introduced, in the words of Dr. Fitton, “into crystallography a certainty and precision, which the most skilful observers were before unable to attain.” Another of his contrivances is the sliding Scale of chemical equivalents, an instrument highly useful to the practical chemist. We also owe to him the Camera Lucida, which enables persons unacquainted with drawing, to take accurate sketches of any objects presented to their view. An amusing and characteristic anecdote of his fondness for producing great results by small means, is told by Dr. Paris. Shortly after he had witnessed Davy’s brilliant experiments with the galvanic battery, he met a brother chemist in the street, and taking him aside, pulled a tailor’s thimble and a small phial out of his pocket, and poured the contents of the one into the other. The thimble was a small galvanic battery, with which he instantly heated a platinum wire to a white heat.

We have already spoken of the profits which he derived from the manufacture of platinum. This intractable metal, most valuable in the arts from its extreme difficulty of fusion, and power of resisting almost all agents, was rendered by these very qualities almost incapable of being reduced into that malleable form, in which alone it would be made extensively useful. His method of working it is detailed at length in his last Bakerian Lecture, published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1829, and must be read before a person unacquainted with metallurgy can imagine how tedious and laborious were the processes by which he succeeded in bringing platinum to bear the hammer. By an ingenious contrivance, described in the Transactions of 1813, he drew platinum into wire 1/5000 of an inch in diameter, highly valuable for the construction of telescopes; and even reduced some portions to the inconceivable tenuity of 1/30,000. Several of his papers are devoted to the consideration of platinum, and of the two new metals, palladium and rhodium, which, in the course of his inquiries, he discovered in small quantities in the ores of platinum. These also he succeeded in rendering malleable. Rhodium is remarkable for its hardness, which has caused it to be used to point the nibs of metallic pens.

During the autumn of 1828 Dr. Wollaston suffered from an affection of the brain, of which he died, December 22, 1828, retaining his faculties to the last. During the period of his illness, feeling that his life was precarious, he devoted himself to communicating, by dictation, his various discoveries and improvements to the world. Five papers by him were read during the last session of the Royal Society during that year, in one of which he alludes affectingly to his illness, as obliging him to commit his observations to writing more hastily than he was wont. Another is the Bakerian Lecture on the manufacture of platinum, already mentioned.

Previous to his death he invested 1000_l._ stock in the name of the Royal Society, the interest of which he directed to be employed for the encouragement of experiments in Natural Philosophy. He was never married, and was Senior Fellow of Caius at his death. He was privately buried at Chiselhurst in Kent; of which parish his father had been rector.

Dr. Wollaston’s philosophical character is thus described in the preface to a late edition of Dr. Henry’s ‘Elements of Experimental Chemistry:’—“Dr. Wollaston was endowed with bodily senses of extraordinary acuteness and accuracy, and with great vigour of understanding. Trained in the discipline of the exact sciences, he had acquired a powerful command over his attention, and had habituated himself to the most rigid correctness both of thought and language. He was sufficiently provided with the resources of the mathematics, to be enabled to pursue with success profound inquiries in mechanical and optical philosophy, the results of which enabled him to unfold the causes of phenomena not before understood, and to enrich the arts connected with those sciences by the invention of ingenious and valuable instruments. In chemistry he was distinguished by the extreme nicety and delicacy of his observations; by the quickness and precision with which he marked resemblances and discriminated differences; the sagacity with which he devised experiments and anticipated their results; and the skill with which he executed the analysis of fragments of new substances, often so minute as to be scarcely perceptible by ordinary eyes. He was remarkable, too, for the caution with which he advanced from facts to general conclusions: a caution which, if it sometimes prevented him from reaching at once to the most sublime truths, yet rendered every step of his ascent a secure station from which it was easy to rise to higher and more enlarged inductions. Thus these illustrious men, Wollaston and Davy, though differing essentially in their natural powers and acquired habits, and moving independently of each other, in different paths, contributed to accomplish the same great ends, the evolving new elements; the combining matter into new forms; the increase of human happiness by the improvement of the arts of civilized life; and the establishment of general laws that will serve to guide other philosophers onwards through vast and unexplored regions of scientific discovery.”

BOCCACCIO.

The family of this celebrated writer, who claims a distinguished place among the founders of Italian literature, came from the village of Certaldo, in the valley of the Elsa, about twenty miles south-west of Florence. His father, Boccaccio di Chellino, was a Florentine merchant, who, in his visits to Paris, became acquainted with a Frenchwoman, of whom Giovanni Boccaccio, the subject of this memoir, was born, A. D. 1313. It is uncertain whether Paris or Florence was the place of his nativity. He commenced his studies at Florence, under Giovanni da Strada, a celebrated grammarian; but was apprenticed by his father, when hardly ten years old, to another merchant, with whom he spent six years in Paris. Attached to literature, he felt a strong distaste to his mercantile life. He manifested the same temper after his return to Florence; upon which his father sent him to Naples, partly upon business, partly because he thought that mingling in the pleasures of that gay city might neutralize his son’s distaste to the laborious profession in which he was engaged. Robert of Anjou, the reigning king of Naples, encouraged learning, and his court was the most polished of the age: and during an abode of eight years in that capital, Boccaccio became acquainted with most of the learned men of Italy, especially Petrarch, with whom he contracted a friendship, broken only by death. There also he fell in love with a lady of rank, whose real name he has concealed under that of Fiametta. Three persons have been mentioned as the object of his passion: the celebrated Joanna of Naples, grand-daughter of Robert; Mary, the sister of Joanna; and another Mary, the illegitimate daughter of Robert, who seems to have the best claim to this distinction. It was at Naples, that Boccaccio, inspired by a visit to Virgil’s tomb, conceived his first longings after literary fame. He determined to give up commerce, and devote himself entirely to study; and his father consented to this change, but only on condition that he should apply himself to the canon law. This was a new source of annoyance. For several years he pored over “dry decisions and barren commentaries,” as he expresses himself; until he obtained his doctor’s degree, and was left at liberty to follow his own pursuits.

_Engraved by W. Hopwood._

BOCCACCIO.

_From a Print by Cornelius Van Dalen._

Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.

_London, Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]

After remaining some time at Florence he returned to Naples; where he employed himself in writing prose and verse, the Decameron and the Teseide. His father died in 1349: and having turned his inheritance into money, he travelled to Sicily, Venice, and other parts of Italy, collecting manuscripts, frequenting universities and libraries, studying Greek under Leontius Pilatus of Thessalonica, astronomy under Andalone del Negro, and Roman literature and antiquities. Manuscripts at this time were very costly; and he soon exhausted his patrimony in these pursuits. He then applied himself to transcribing works; and, by dint of expense and labour, collected a considerable library, which he bequeathed to the Augustine friars of Santo Spirito, at Florence. But his means were inadequate to gratify his liberal tastes: and at times he found himself in very straitened circumstances. It is said that he sometimes availed himself of his skill as a copyist, to eke out his resources. In Petrarch he found a generous friend and a wise counsellor.

Boccaccio enjoyed a high reputation among his countrymen for learning and ability; and he was several times employed by them on embassies and affairs of state. But of all his missions, the most pleasing was that of repairing to Padua, to communicate to Petrarch the solemn revocation of the sentence of exile passed on his father during the factions of 1302; and to inform him that the Florentines, proud of such a countryman, had redeemed his paternal property, and earnestly invited him to dwell in his own land, and confer honour on its then rising university. Though much affected by this honourable reparation, Petrarch did not at the time comply with their request.

About 1361, a singular circumstance wrought a total change in Boccaccio’s feelings and mode of life. A Carthusian monk came to him one day, and stated that father Petroni of Sienna, a monk of the same order, who had died not long before in the odour of sanctity, had commissioned him to exhort Boccaccio to forsake his studies, reform his loose life, and prepare for death. To prove the truth of his mission, he revealed several secrets, known only to Boccaccio and Petrarch, to both of whom both the monks were totally unknown. Terrified at this mysterious communication, Boccaccio wrote to Petrarch, expressing his resolution to comply with the advice, and shut himself up in a Carthusian cloister. Petrarch’s answer, which may be found among his Latin epistles, is full of sound sense. He tells his friend, that though this disclosure of secrets, supposed to be unknown to any living soul, appeared a mystery, yet “there is such a thing as artifice in imposture which may at times assume the language of supernatural inspiration; that those who practise arts of this kind examine attentively the age, the aspect, the looks, the habits of the man they mean to delude, his theories, his motions, his voice, his conversation, his feelings, and opinions: and from all these derive their oracles.” He adds, that as to the prediction of approaching death, there was no occasion for a message from the next world to say, that a man past the middle age, and infirm of body, could not expect to have many years to live: and, in conclusion, advises his friend to tranquillize his imagination, and to avail himself of the warning towards leading a more regular life; retaining at the same time his liberty, his house, and his library, and making a good use even of the heathen authors in the latter, as many holy men, and the fathers of the church themselves, had done before him. This letter restored Boccaccio to reason. He gave up his intention of retiring from the world, and contented himself with assuming the ecclesiastical dress; and being admitted to the first gradation of holy orders, he adopted a regular and studious course of life, and turned his attention to the study of the Scriptures.

About the following year he again visited Naples, but he was disgusted by the neglect which he experienced; and, in 1363, he went to Venice, and abode three months with Petrarch. He was sent twice, in 1365 and 1367, to Pope Urban V. upon affairs of the republic. In 1373, the Florentines determined to appoint a lecturer to explain the Divina Commedia of Dante, much of which was even then obscure or unintelligible without the aid of a comment. Boccaccio was chosen for this honourable office, with the annual stipend of one hundred florins. He had long and deeply studied, and knew by heart almost the whole of that sublime poem, which he had several times transcribed. He left his written comment on the Inferno, and also a life of Dante, both of which have been published among his works. But illness interrupted his lectures, and induced him to resort again to his favourite country residence at Certaldo. A disorder of the stomach, aggravated by intense application, terminated his existence, Dec. 21, 1375, at the age of sixty-two. He was buried in the parish church of Certaldo, and the following modest inscription, which he had himself composed, was placed over his tomb:—