Chapter XVI: The Early Years of Louis XIII and the Rise of Richelieu (2)

The king, on retiring, made his entry into Toulouse, the most Catholic of the towns of the south, where he was received with general acclamation. He decided to limit himself during the winter to the keeping open of the communications between Toulouse and Bordeaux. Accordingly he ordered the marshal De Rouquelaure and Bassompierre to besiege the little town of Monheur, which the Calvinists occupied near Tonneins. The camp and the court were full of divisions, as always happens after great reverses. They threw on one another the responsibility for the errors that had been committed. Luynes was naturally the one whom they attacked the most. The most ardent Catholics reproached him with having desired peace too much; the military men with having attempted the siege of Montauban with insufficient forces, through avarice, some said. Father Arnoux, the king’s confessor, and Puisieux, secretary of state, began to rise up against him and tried to destroy his credit. On the 11th of December Monheur capitulated.

_Death of Luynes (1621 A.D.)_

Their lives were granted to the garrison, but the town was pillaged and burned for having given itself to the Huguenots. Three days after, on the 14th, Luynes died suddenly of fever. He was just at the pinnacle of his success. Nevertheless, Louis XIII, in spite of his caution and his ordinary dissimulation, had begun to complain of his yoke, and to lend an ear to the accusations of his adversaries. Luynes had had few friends, and his enemies, whose numbers were increasing, were already attacking him with extreme vigour. His ambition and his avidity, equally unrestrained, had turned everyone against him. The greater number of the authors who were contemporary with him, animated against him by prejudice and the strongest personal feelings, had treated him unfairly, and attributed all sorts of extravagances to him, as, for instance, wishing to see himself made prince of Avignon, or king of Austrasia. His political talents deserve more justice. Firm without illusion, and knowing how to ally moderation with energy, he had conducted the war briskly in the desire to arrive more quickly at a peace which he wished to make prompt and certain. This end he never ceased to pursue, and Richelieu, who gained it, only finished a work that had been begun.[i]

This check saved the Huguenots for the time, although it was counterbalanced by the ascendency of Guise in Poitou. The treaty was concluded in the following year at Montpellier, by which it was stipulated that affairs should be replaced as they were before the war, new conquests restored, and new fortifications demolished. One point the king gained; this was that the Huguenots should no more have a lay assembly. A synod of ecclesiastics was alone allowed them; thus obviating the revival of that republican assembly at La Rochelle, which had roused all the suspicions and energy of king and court. Louis, returning to his capital, was welcomed as a hero. The two queens rivalled each other in the brilliancy of their fêtes. But neither applause nor pleasure could prevent the king from relapsing into that state of apathy which was natural to him. Louis XIII was as completely the _roi fainéant_ as were the last of the race of Clovis and Charlemagne. But times were altered; the tree of royalty had taken root, and stood as erect, when withered and sapless, as when in spring and leaf.

RICHELIEU’S RETURN TO THE MINISTRY

[Sidenote: [1622-1624 A.D.]]

Louis XIII had been inspired by Luynes with an aversion for Richelieu. It was with great difficulty that Marie de’ Medici obtained for him in 1622 the cardinal’s hat stipulated in a former treaty; but all her efforts in procuring him admission to the council were resisted. The marquis de la Vieuville was favourite for the moment, and he strengthened the king’s prejudice against the cardinal. Marie was persevering; and at length Louis yielded. He permitted Richelieu to take his seat at the council table, but on the express condition that he was to be without office, and that he should not consider himself a minister. The cardinal expressed himself perfectly contented with this arrangement: he took his seat; and the inefficacy of all the precautions taken against him soon appeared. They had bound the arms of a giant, who broke his bonds the instant that it pleased him to be free. From the first moment that Richelieu spoke, his genius dominated; and the monarch himself, as well as La Vieuville, cowered beneath an ascendency that they found it vain to dispute.

To secure this ascendency over the monarch, Richelieu scorned to make use of the same means which sufficed La Vieuville and Luynes. Instead of flattering Louis, and directing him in the way of pleasure, the cardinal at first strove to awaken the young king to a sense of the country’s debasement, to its true interests, and its possible glory. He pointed out the turbulent disobedience of the great, the sedition of the Huguenot assemblies, the weakness of ministers, and the disorder of the finances--the consequent poverty and misery of the kingdom, as well as the decay of its influence and dignity in its relations with foreign potentates. He pointed to the house of Austria, daily increasing its strength and extending its territories, at that very moment triumphant from the conquest of the Palatinate, and threatening to crush those Protestant states of Germany which had defied the might of Charles V. Louis listened, and was excited, not indeed to take vigorous counsels himself, but to confide in a minister who had shown himself able to conceive and execute them.[87]

The chief object then coveted by the house of Austria was the possession of the Valtelline, a strip of Alpine territory which might serve to connect the dominions of that family in Germany and in Italy. It had been in subjection to the Grisons, a Protestant race; and Spain seized this pretext to conquer it in the name of the pope. France had opposed this with the usual feebleness of her diplomacy. The first act of Richelieu was to cut short the negotiation, to defy both the pope and Spain, and to send an army under the marshal D’Estrées into the Valtelline, which expelled the Spaniards, and restored the region to its ancient masters.

Richelieu dared to show the same bold front to the Huguenots at the same time. Determined on completely reducing them, his first endeavour was to drive them from Poitou and La Rochelle, where they could at all times receive succours from England, and to circumscribe their influence to the provinces of the southeast. He refused to evacuate Montpellier; and the Huguenots were thus provoked to rebel. The cardinal at the same time deprived them of the aid of the English monarch, with whom he was negotiating the marriage of Henrietta of France, sister of Louis. Rohan, and a great number of the Protestants, thought it on this account imprudent to recommence war; but his impetuous brother, Soubise, made an attack on the port of Blavet, seized some ships that were fitting out there, and sailing thence made a descent upon the island of Ré. He was defeated, the Huguenots being neither decided nor prepared for a general insurrection. The consequence of the rash attempt of Soubise was that in the accommodation that ensued the royalists kept Fort Louis, merely promising not to annoy from it the inhabitants or shipping of La Rochelle.

CONSPIRACY OF THE COURT AGAINST RICHELIEU

[Sidenote: [1624-1626 A.D.]]

Richelieu here postponed his design of completely reducing the Huguenots. The conquest of La Rochelle could alone do this effectually, and that required a large naval force, as well as such preparations of every kind as would ensure success. Besides, for the present, the cardinal was aware that he would soon have to encounter a court intrigue, a triumph over which was more requisite to establish his power than even the subjugation of La Rochelle. The marriage of the princess Henrietta with Charles of England, which had been desired by Richelieu, as securing the previous neutrality of the latter country in a war against the Huguenots, had proved a source of difference rather than of alliance. The gallant Buckingham, who had come to demand and escort back the princess, had excited the jealousy of the cardinal. He had shown at the French court the sample of such a minister as the age esteemed--gay, liberal, handsome, looking as well as wielding command. He had admired the young queen, and had boldly expressed his admiration. His friend, Lord Holland, had paid court to the duchess de Chevreuse, the companion of the queen, and the most lovely woman of the time. Richelieu admired Madame de Chevreuse, nay, by some, is said to have pretended to the queen herself. Whatever was the truth, Richelieu and Buckingham conceived for each other a mutual hatred, which afterwards produced a rupture between their respective sovereigns. And a strong pique at the same time arose between the cardinal and the queen.

Another personage at court, now grown into importance, was Gaston, duke of Orleans, brother of the king. Louis was extremely jealous of him. A tutor, under whom the young duke improved and began to give promise of good conduct and manly virtue, was superseded by a mere courtier, calculated to give lessons in vice and dissipation. Ornano, who succeeded this man, found the prince absorbed in pleasure, and debased. He endeavoured to rouse Gaston, by explaining to him his rank, his hopes; and he did succeed in awakening his ambition. The young duke of Orleans demanded to enter the council. Richelieu, then in the commencement of his influence, replied by banishing Ornano for a time. Gaston relapsed into dissipation, and seemed little inclined to give umbrage or uneasiness to the government.

The worst part of feudal tyranny was that it interfered with the private affections of all men. Richelieu, wielding the power of Louis XIII, was not content with commanding the loyal submission of the first prince of the blood. He thought proper to impose a wife upon him, nay, to choose one. The lady selected was Mademoiselle de Montpensier, rich, lovely, allied to the crown, and heiress of the house of Guise. There could be no objection to such a bride, except the compulsion that gave her. Gaston rebelled. The projected marriage convulsed the entire court, and wellnigh the kingdom also.

Richelieu’s object was to provide an heir to the crown, which Louis seemed not destined long to wear. Anne of Austria, the little queen, as she was called, to distinguish her from the queen-mother, was on the other hand averse to Gaston’s marriage; and she joined the friends of the latter in endeavouring to thwart the cardinal’s plan. Ornano had resumed his influence and station in the prince’s household; and he it was who chiefly urged Gaston to resist. Ornano was arrested. This increased the rage of the duke of Orleans; and at length a plot was entered into and approved by him, to get rid of the domineering Richelieu in the same manner that Ancre had been removed. The cardinal then inhabited a country house at Fleury. Gaston’s servants were to betake themselves thither, under pretence that their master was to honour Richelieu on that day with his company to dinner, and the murder was to have taken place. Richelieu received warning. The count de Chalais, who was to have been the chief perpetrator, ventured to sound a friend, who expressed at once a lively abhorrence of the attempt, and threatened to denounce it. Chalais became alarmed, and, resolving to anticipate the informer, went himself to the cardinal, and made a disclosure. Gaston was astonished, in consequence, by the appearance of the cardinal in his apartment, on the morning appointed for the deed. “I am sorry,” said Richelieu, smiling, “your highness did not give me warning of your intention to make use of my residence. I should have been prepared. As it is, I abandon it to your service.” Having so said, Richelieu handed his shirt to Gaston (one of the ceremonials of etiquette observed at a prince’s levée) and then retired.

The cardinal, not content with thus confounding his enemies, was resolved to punish them and intimidate others by their example. By probing Chalais and his family, it was discovered that the nobles upon whose aid Gaston reckoned were the duke de Vendôme and his brother the grand prior, illegitimate sons of Henry IV. The former was governor of Brittany. Richelieu, dissembling his suspicions, enticed them to repair to the court at Blois, where both were instantly arrested. The imprisonment of all his friends, and the danger of some, would have roused to serious resistance a prince of more energy than Gaston. The young duke was not wanting in indignation; but Richelieu had prepossessed the monarch’s mind, and had taught Louis to believe that his royal life had been aimed at as well as his minister’s; that the young queen, Anne of Austria, was privy to the plot; and that she was to have married the duke of Orleans on his accession to the throne. These accusations hardened and enraged the mind of Louis XIII. Gaston, in the power of the court, was forced to espouse Mademoiselle de Montpensier; the count de Chalais perished on the scaffold; the queen was publicly reproached by her husband with having sought a second marriage, to which she indignantly replied that there was not so much to be gained by the change. Her friend, Madame de Chevreuse, was banished from court. Thus Richelieu, triumphant over his foes, amongst whom the queen and the king’s brother were numbered, showed how fatal it was to provoke his enmity, how fruitless to resist his power.[d]

[Sidenote: [1626-1627 A.D.]]

The Treaty of Montpellier in 1626 granted a hollow peace to the Huguenots; and a few months later, that is to say in May, peace was signed with Spain. Years before, Richelieu, then young and obscure, had often discussed with his friend Father Joseph how best to subdue the neighbouring town of La Rochelle, the stronghold of the Huguenots; and time had not softened his views on the subject. The English people, chafing under the influence of their French and Catholic queen, Henrietta Maria, longed to assert their Protestantism; Buckingham, opposed to her anti-Protestant policy, longed to provoke the French court. What then would better serve their ends than adoption of the Huguenot cause? So war was begun with France. Richelieu brought his forces up under the walls of La Rochelle, and drew a cordon of forts around the unhappy town, cutting off all approaches. To shut the city off from English aid, Richelieu constructed a wonderful mole across the mouth of the harbour. This was built of solid masonry, extending about seven yards from one shore and four hundred yards from the other, the intervening space of six hundred yards being partially blocked with sunken ships and further guarded by a half-circle of ships lashed together with their prows outward. Inside the boom a royal fleet watched against sallies, and outside another fleet watched for the English.[a]

THE SIEGE OF LA ROCHELLE DESCRIBED BY SEIGNOBOS

The work of construction at first went on slowly, and the besieged could do little to hinder it. They could only fire off a few guns or post a few ambuscades in the path of the staff officers as they went from one part of the army to the other; but it was winter time, and bad weather often interrupted the work of construction. The besieged had sent to ask the king of England to help them; and the latter pledged himself “to the mayor, aldermen, peers, and citizens of La Rochelle, to help them by land and sea according to his royal power until a firm peace had been established.” As a result he promised to send an expedition to help them in the spring, and to furnish them with provisions; in the meantime he allowed a collection to be made for their benefit in his kingdom.

The inhabitants of La Rochelle, on their part, engaged themselves to provide pilots for the English, to prepare magazines and shelters on their coasts, and to equip vessels to help in the expedition. And if the king of France should attack the territories of the king of England, they would do all they could to create a diversion. It was agreed that neither the besieged nor the king of England should make any treaty without consulting the other. The king of England had wished to impose two other conditions; he asked the besieged to send him the children of their principal families as hostages, and to receive an English garrison within their walls. They only consented to receive English ships into their harbour. They accepted the king of England as an ally to help them to defend their independence, but they did not wish to have him for a master.

[Sidenote: [1627-1628 A.D.]]

The royal army encamped before La Rochelle did not suffer very much from the winter. A tax had been levied in the principal towns in France which had made it possible to provide the soldiers with good clothing. The construction of the dike provided occupation for the men, and the boats were manned by volunteers from picked regiments. Meanwhile Louis XIII was wearying of this long siege with no fighting. He declared that his health would suffer if he did not go to Paris for a time. Richelieu, fearing lest the king’s departure might have a bad effect on the troops, tried to afford him some distraction by giving false alarms; several times a sortie was announced, and the king remained on horseback all night waiting for it, but the besieged did not make any movement. At last Richelieu felt he could no longer keep the king with the army, so he wrote to him saying that he could now absent himself for a time “without any injury to his cause.”

The king immediately announced his departure. In his absence the cardinal was to be commander-in-chief, he was called “lieutenant-general of the king in the army before La Rochelle.” He had full power over all the troops, cavalry and infantry, and also over the artillery for continuing the siege, and was even empowered to receive the submission of the inhabitants and take possession of the town. The king admonished all the generals and officers to “obey him as implicitly as they would their king.”

On the 10th of February, 1628, Richelieu accompanied the king two leagues from the camp; there they separated, embracing each other at parting. Louis warned the cardinal to take good care of his health; but Richelieu, out of respect for etiquette, had not dared to take his umbrella when accompanying the king, and was very much upset by the winter sun and had five attacks of intermittent fever. After being absent two months and a half, Louis returned to the camp, where he was saluted by salvos from the forts, the batteries, and the dike. He found his army stronger and the military works considerably advanced. He had left his army reduced by illness to eighteen thousand men; but owing to the recruits who had joined from the neighbouring provinces, he now found a force twenty-five thousand strong.

The whole line of circumvallation which was to cut off La Rochelle on the land side was completed and furnished with redoubts. The shore on both sides of the harbour was provided with batteries. The dike was almost finished and was defended by a sort of floating palisade formed of ships linked together. An attempt to surprise the town had failed, owing to bad generalship. But the besieged had been unable to make any sorties or to obtain any provisions; and hunger was beginning to make itself felt in their ranks. The day after his return, on the 24th of April, Louis XIII sent an envoy to call upon the besieged citizens to surrender. According to the custom of the time the summons had to be made by a herald-at-arms, but there was not one with the army and they could not even find the insignia of the office. A tabard had therefore to be prepared in a hurry, a clerk of finance put it on and went forth to play the part of a herald. The besieged refused to receive the summons. A sort of revolution had taken place in La Rochelle. The rich citizens who had hitherto governed the town were anxious to bring the siege to an end, for it was ruining their commerce and exposing them to the wrath of their king. The sailors, who were on the side of resistance, seized the power and elected one of themselves, a captain Guiton, as mayor. Guiton was a bold corsair, of small stature, but brave and energetic. He had a splendidly furnished house, full of flags which he had taken from the ships of his enemies; he was fond of showing them and of saying from what kings and in what seas he had captured them. He was not anxious to be made mayor, but when he took possession of his office, he placed his dagger on the table in the town hall and said to his companions: “You do not know what you have done in choosing me; you had better think well about it, for it will be useless to talk to me about surrendering. If anyone mentions it I will kill him.”

Another English fleet set out to relieve the blockade of La Rochelle, or at any rate to revictual the town. This fleet consisted of thirty vessels and twenty boats laden with provisions and ammunition. It was signalled on the 11th of May by three shots fired from the forts on the island of Ré. The fleet took up its station near the point of the island, opposite to La Rochelle. The besieged fired salvos as a sign of rejoicing, and very soon their ramparts were fluttering with red, white, and blue flags. The royal fleet of thirty-eight ships was divided into four squadrons which were stationed in front of the dike; behind, on the La Rochelle side, the dike was guarded by twenty-six galleys. A light English ship succeeded in passing these batteries and in reaching the harbour; she carried a captain, a native of La Rochelle on board, and he was commissioned to ask his compatriots to open a passage before their harbour, so that the ships laden with provisions might come in. The English fleet, he said, had not come to fight. The inhabitants of La Rochelle and the Protestant refugees on board the English ships begged the admiral to force the passage; he replied that he only had orders to cross to facilitate the entrance of the convoy with provisions, and that he must spare his fleet. On the 18th of May, the English ships set sail, drew close to the harbour, fired a salute, and sailed away to the open sea. The besieged, deserted by their allies, found themselves in a very critical position. One of them proposed to sacrifice himself and save the town by assassinating Richelieu. That was the way in which Orleans had formerly escaped from the duke of Guise. But he would not commit this deed unless he was certain it was not a sin. He consulted Guiton, who replied: “In such matters as this I never give advice.” He asked the pastors what they thought; and they answered: “If God is going to save us it will not be by means of a crime.” So he gave up the idea.

The besieged were suffering much from starvation. The rich still had provisions which they kept concealed, but others were dying of hunger. On the 26th of May they decided to drive out of the town all who were unable to fight--women, children, old men, and all who were infirm. These poor creatures made for the French camp; the soldiers, by the king’s order, received them with a shower of bullets and forced them to go back to the town. The royal troops also destroyed the crops of beans which the besieged had sown at the bottom of the other side of the escarpment.

On the 1st of June some of the citizens who were anxious for peace succeeded in opening communications with Bassompierre, proposing a capitulation; but on the 10th a letter reached La Rochelle from the king of England, promising that he would see his whole fleet destroyed rather than fail to extricate the besieged from the peril they were in. They therefore broke off the negotiations and began firing again. For three months they waited for the promised help, while Richelieu continued his dike. Towards the open sea he had had long beams bound together and fixed in the ground at the bottom of the water to prevent access to the dike, and on the harbour side he had placed a line of ships anchored and chained together. Every day visitors came to the royal camp, and were entertained; and sometimes, to amuse them, a skirmish was got up at which they looked on. The king went out hunting and kept his court just as if he had been in Paris.

Within La Rochelle the famine was becoming terrible. The rich were eating horses, donkeys, dogs, and cats; and even for these they had to pay well, the price of a cat being 45 livres. The poor were no longer able to go and look for dead shellfish cast up by the tide and stranded in the mud, for the guns of the besiegers made this dangerous. They had eaten up all the green stuff and were reduced to boiling pieces of leather with fat and moist sugar. Many left the town and would have given themselves up at the outposts of the royal army; but they were sent back, so that the town might not be enabled to hold out longer by having fewer mouths to feed. The soldiers would take away their clothes and then drive them back to the town with sticks or leather thongs. A great number of the inhabitants had died from illness or privation. Even those who were defending the town were so weak with hunger that they could only walk with sticks; they could hardly drag themselves along and were quite unable to bear arms. Often in the mornings sentinels were found dead of starvation at their posts. Guiton still refused to surrender. He had some of those who wished to capitulate imprisoned, and on the 22nd of July he had three or four beheaded as traitors, and their heads placed on the gates of the town. On the 9th of August the president of the presidial, an inferior court of judicature, was imprisoned in his turn. The councillors were so alarmed that two of them took refuge in the royal camp.

Louis XIII, hearing what great distress prevailed in La Rochelle, on the 16th of August sent a herald-at-arms to call upon the town to surrender. This time it was a real herald in a tabard, cap on head, sceptre in hand. Before him rode two trumpeters bearing waving pennants. They presented themselves at one of the gates and asked to see the mayor. They were kept waiting a long time; then, instead of the mayor, appeared a troop of citizens and soldiers, whose leader told the herald with an oath to go away at once, and pointed to his men’s guns ready cocked for firing. The herald withdrew, placing on the ground two proclamations that he had brought with him. The English fleet, on the point of sailing, had been delayed by the murder of the duke of Buckingham. The longer the siege went on the stronger became the temptation to fly to the royal camp; and the chance of being killed seemed preferable to the certainty of being starved to death. To rid themselves of these obtrusive fugitives the besiegers adopted a cruel plan. They placed gibbets on the line of circumvallation surrounding the town and every time a group of fugitives arrived to give themselves up, they made them draw lots, and the one on whom the lot fell was hanged while the rest were sent back to the town.

On the 29th of August Guiton read the citizens a letter from the king of England saying that help was at hand. It was madness, he said, to hope for mercy from the king of France: if the town surrendered it would be sacked and the men massacred. They must stand firm as long as anyone remained alive to shut the gates. “As for me,” he added, “if I am left with only one other, and without food, I shall be quite willing to draw lots to decide which of us is to eat the other.” On the 3rd of September, Guiton, while speaking to the people who had assembled to hear the Sunday sermon, was interrupted by a woman crying out that her child’s nurse had not tasted food for a fortnight. Guiton to appease the crowd made a pretence of negotiating. He sent two envoys to the king, who received them fairly. But a native of La Rochelle, just arrived from England, managed to make his way into the city in broad daylight and announced that the English fleet was just setting sail; so again the negotiations were broken off. A fortnight later, on the 28th of September, an English fleet of 140 sail carrying 6,000 soldiers arrived, and taking up a position before the harbour, tried to force the passage, which was guarded by the French fleet. The French refugees asked to be allowed to manage the fire-ships which were to be sent against their king. The English wished to work them themselves, but the fire-ships proved a failure, and would not act. They waited for a favourable wind, and on the 3rd of October began firing on the fleet and batteries of the besiegers. The fighting continued for two days without much loss of life, and on the evening of the 4th the English fleet withdrew to the isle of Aix. It remained inactive for some days owing to stormy weather, and, when the wind was once more favourable, the English, instead of making an attack, sent an envoy to Richelieu.

Those inside La Rochelle, seeing they were deserted, resigned themselves to the necessity of suing for peace. Richelieu received at the same time the envoys from the town and those from the French Protestants on board the English fleet. On the 29th of October the capitulation was signed, the inhabitants of La Rochelle acknowledged the great offence of which they had been guilty, “not only in resisting the just wishes of their king, but in joining with foreigners who had taken up arms against the state.” They begged the king to pardon them for this crime, and they placed their town in his hands. The king, taking into consideration “their repentance and protestations of sorrow,” promised them an amnesty, the free exercise of their religion, and the restoration of any of their property which had been confiscated. The officers and nobles might leave the town wearing their swords, and the soldiers carrying white sticks, and they would then be free. On the 30th of October the French army entered La Rochelle and the garrison came out; they were reduced to seventy-four Frenchmen and sixty-two English.[j]

Richelieu showed himself clement towards La Rochelle; there was no vengeance taken, no victims were sacrificed. The town lost its independence, which was, indeed, incompatible with the idea of sovereignty; but its worship and its religious opinions were left free, “the only avowed and open toleration,” says Hume[c] “which at that time was granted in any European kingdom.”[d]

FOOTNOTES

[86] [Henry, duke of Mayenne, son of that duke who was at one time the head of the League.]

[87] [In Richelieu’s _Mémoires_, which he intended to serve as historical material for his biography, it is stated that Richelieu in a single interview dramatically placed this gigantic scheme before the young king, and that Louis from this time was obedient to the minister. This, however, is hardly in agreement with the facts. Richelieu seems hardly to have found his policy at first; and he was not sure of Louis’ constancy until after his success at La Rochelle.]