Chapter XVII: The Dictatorship of Richelieu (2)

Richelieu really laid the foundations on which Colbert and Louvois afterwards built under the eye of Louis XIV. To him is due the final triumph of pure monarchy, of that form of government which alone was legitimate at that time, because it alone could bring about and maintain unity in France. The kingship, elevated into a living symbol of the national welfare and of the best interests of the country, became a sort of rampart behind which Louis XIII’s minister, with indomitable energy, and with that breadth of mind which characterises a great man, carried on for eighteen years the work of monarchical centralisation. What he accomplished during this immortal dictatorship, in the midst of constantly recurring difficulties, is almost incredible. By destroying Protestantism as a political power, Richelieu made a distinct advance towards unity in the state. He gave a very essential bond of union to the higher administration by establishing the council of state, which remained practically unaltered till 1789. He rendered the triumph of monarchical authority over the new feudalism a certainty by lessening the excessive authority which the provincial governors had arrogated to themselves, by establishing resident overseers, who were energetic and obedient servants of the king, in various parts of the country to see that the law was properly administered, that the police were properly organised, and that the interests of the state in financial matters were not neglected; by commanding fortified places to be destroyed; and finally by his treatment of the most important members of the aristocracy as well as of the royal family, whom he punished or even banished when necessary, thus showing that the sword of the law was long enough to reach any head, however highly placed.

He obliged the parliament to keep strictly within the limits of its own judicial functions, and forbade its taking any part whatever in the management of public affairs. He maintained a perpetual struggle against provincial institutions, whose resistance, usually self-interested and unjust, tended continually to fetter the action of the central power. But though he abolished the power of all enemies of the royal prerogative, Richelieu himself was capable of holding very wide and liberal views. If he destroyed Protestantism as a political party, he rose above the religious prejudices of his time by adhering strictly to the terms of the treaties which had been concluded with the Protestants, and by fearlessly bestowing his favours and his confidence on many of them. If he compelled the nobility to renounce their claims to independence, he opened up to them new paths to fortune and power, he enabled them to engage in maritime commerce without any loss of dignity, he admitted them to the royal councils, and he founded schools for them. In short, he wished them to take the lead in the country by superiority of culture as well as of wealth. If he failed to assemble the states-general, he nevertheless did not claim to be independent of public opinion; he frequently summoned assemblies of important people and explained to them, in patriotic language, his great projects for the good of the country; he more than once took for his text the resolutions presented to the states of 1640 by the commons. Lastly, he created one of the most powerful engines of modern civilisation, the periodical press, by authorising the publication, under his patronage, of Renaudot’s _Gazette_.

Absorbed as he was by all these plans and preoccupations, Richelieu nevertheless found time to effect important improvements in all the public services. The statute of January, 1629, drawn up under the direction of Marillac, the keeper of the seals, summarises and completes the great statutes of the sixteenth century, and must be regarded as the most important attempt at codification previous to the time of Louis XIV. A stricter enforcement of police regulations increased the public security, whilst the numerous hospitals and benevolent institutions of all kinds founded at this time greatly ameliorated the condition of the labouring classes. Nor were manufactures, agriculture, and internal commerce neglected. Richelieu encouraged the formation of many companies whose object was to turn to account all the riches of the soil; he had the canal of Briare, begun in the time of Henry IV, finished, and he made wise regulations respecting the taxation of the common people and the allowance of provisions to be given to the troops, which improved the condition of the rural population. He was the creator of military administration; he gave France a merchant navy and a military navy, he organised consulates, concluded commercial treaties with Russia, Persia, Morocco, etc., and did much to encourage early French colonial enterprise. Literature, science, and the arts were also in a flourishing condition during this period. The special patronage accorded by Richelieu to artists and men of letters, whom he extricated from the precarious and humiliating position they had previously occupied; the creation of the French Academy,[95] the reorganisation of the Sorbonne, the foundation of the royal botanical gardens, of the royal press, and of the mint, prove how large a share in the striking development of the national genius which took place during his time may justly be claimed by the great cardinal.

It is difficult to believe that one single man can have carried out successfully so many plans whilst at the same time laying the foundations of internal prosperity and of political ascendency in Europe, and that amid such difficulties as no other statesman has ever succeeded in surmounting. And what makes all this the more wonderful was the frailty of the body which contained this invincible spirit, and which was liable to be prostrated by illness at any moment. Although Richelieu’s health was extremely delicate, and he was constantly falling ill, this extraordinary man seemed able to make his body obey his mind. He usually went to bed at eleven o’clock, and would sleep for three or four consecutive hours; then he would do some writing himself or dictate to a secretary till about six o’clock, at which time he would go to sleep again till between seven and eight, when he rose. Avenel has clearly proved that Richelieu kept some confidential secretaries night and day about his person, but that he had no offices. The secretaries of state, who were nothing more than his head clerks, used to come for his orders, get the necessary work done in their own offices, bring it when required to the prime minister for his inspection, and then signed the documents themselves. Richelieu only signed what was written in his own study. Father Joseph himself does not seem to have been permitted, any more than were the secretaries, the privilege of supervising the minutes signed by the cardinal. The latter wished everything to be seen and done by himself. To our thinking, nothing more striking could be conceived than the picture of this statesman fighting against sleep and death for every moment of his existence, in order to consecrate it to the glory of France.

What is specially characteristic of Richelieu, and gives him a distinct position among the founders of unity in France, is the clearness and the grandeur of his projects. Without foreseeing all the results of his system, results which he would no doubt have been unwilling to accept, he inaugurated with power and splendour that last social phase which the modern world was to pass through, before the light of a new era should shine upon it. Raising the kingship above family ties, and above all the traditions of precedent, he detached from it all foreign elements, and, isolating it within its own sphere, as a pure idea, he made it the living personification of the public welfare and the best interests of the nation. Thanks to this formidable weapon he broke away definitely from the traditions of the Middle Ages, and caused French society to enter once for all on the path of civil unity and equality. From the time of Louis the Fat to that of Louis XIV, the kingship had always pursued the mission which providence seemed to have laid upon it, to draw towards the shadow of the throne all the varied and inimical forces which divided the country between them; but there had been unfortunate intervals when it seemed almost as if the spirit of disaffection and anarchy would finally prevail, as happened after the reigns of Philip the Fair, Charles V, Louis XI, and after the death of Henry IV. From the time of Richelieu, the work of monarchical centralisation met with no further check. The kingship, having reached the height to which this great minister had raised it, was only to descend from that position in order to make way for a still wider and more productive form of government.

THE CHURCH AND THE STATE UNDER RICHELIEU

[Sidenote: [1624-1639 A.D.]]

Two great facts are of paramount importance in the history of the church of France during the first half of the seventeenth century. On the one hand a sort of intellectual and moral regeneration, a true religious renascence, was taking place in her midst, a movement which might be compared to the literary renascence which had taken place in lay society in the preceding century. On the other hand, the question so long debated between the temporal and the spiritual power was at last decided in favour of the former. Richelieu fought desperately against ultramontanism and loudly proclaimed the absolute independence of the civil power, and the necessity of having a national clergy whose interests should be bound up with those of the state.

The religious wars had left the French clergy in a deplorable condition. The church of France was in such a lax state that she seemed in danger of losing the fruits of the victory she had gained, by the incapacity or the vices of her members. However, we may say at once that this state of religious decadence was not irremediable. It was necessary to take prompt measures for reform, but the machinery for the work was there, and in greater completeness than appeared at first sight. It was only awaiting the workmen who were to set it in motion. If the wars of the league were responsible for great crimes and terrible outrages, they had also produced great virtues and fine characters. Men’s minds, somewhat enervated at the beginning of the sixteenth century by the introduction of a new morality, had regained their vigour in the struggle. Having erred temporarily they were nevertheless not weakened, and when the combat was over they felt an intense craving for action and for a living faith; two forces which, well directed, can accomplish wonders.

This condition of mind also explains the very practical tendency shown by the religious movement which then took place. Indeed one of the most remarkable features of this regeneration of French Catholicism was, as Henri Martin[p] observes, the predominance of the practical over the ascetic and contemplative element.

Richelieu did not intend to exclude either the nobility or the clergy from the administration of state affairs; on the contrary he treated the clergy just as he did the aristocracy. He sought to introduce members of the order into the king’s councils, but only on condition that they were sufficiently enlightened to be worthy of such a position. He acted in the same way with regard to the clergy. We see him giving most important positions, both military and naval, to ecclesiastics. What he insisted upon was that these two orders of the nobility and clergy should not subordinate the interests of the state to their own, as they had been too prone to do in former times. He wished the clergy to be part of the state and to belong to the state, and to contribute a fair proportion towards public expenses. In a word, he wished for a national clergy. Therefore in his struggles to maintain, in the civil power as well as in the religious order, the ascendency of the patriotic principles of the true Gallican spirit, Richelieu found himself supported by his bitterest opponent, the parliament, and deserted by the majority of the clergy, who saw in this extension of the civil power the possible abolition of their own privileges. In 1625, the clergy, in order to defend themselves from the constant demands for money made on them by the government, had decided that in future no deputy could vote subsidies under any pretext without having expressly received full powers in the matter, and that the opposition of a single province should be sufficient to annul the resolutions of the assembly. Richelieu replied that he could not admit the principle in virtue of which the clergy were claiming absolute immunity from taxation; that the needs of the state were real, while those of the church were chimerical and arbitrary; that if the king’s armies had not repulsed the enemy the clergy would have suffered much more.

The struggle about taxation between the civil power and the clergy attained still more formidable proportions in 1638. Richelieu seems to have made use of the brothers Dupuy to prepare the ground on which he intended openly to attack the immunities of the clergy in the matter of taxation. Pierre Dupuy in conjunction with his brother Jacques published anonymously, about the middle of 1638, his great work on the _Liberties of the Gallican Church_. He collected in the first volume some very daring tracts on the subject; then, following his usual method, he supported them by a second volume of official acts and significant precedents, systematically arranged under the title _Proofs of the Liberties_. In the tracts, published mostly during the troubles of the league, when the national orthodoxy of France was called in question, it was stated amongst other things that the pope had exercised no jurisdiction at all over the Gallican church during the first six centuries; that in the time of Clovis the sovereign head of the church after Jesus Christ was the king, not the pope; that the pope had no right to issue excommunications outside his own diocese; that there is no instance of either the popes or their legates presiding at any council held in Gaul before 742; that the said popes had not then any title which placed them above the other archbishops, and indeed did not possess any which was not common to them all. As for the proofs, “great care had been taken not to draw deductions from the acts; our kings, the assembled bishops of France, the parliament, and other sovereign bodies, the universities and some of the communities of the kingdom, were the authors of this work.” This was an adroit way of assuming the consent of the whole nation during many centuries.

The clergy understood the significance of the attack, and protested strongly against doctrines which they thought would declare them independent of Rome only to make them the slaves of temporal power. On the 9th of February, 1639, eighteen bishops met at the house of Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld and drew up a letter denouncing “this work of the devil” to their colleagues in a most violent manner. The cardinal undertook to deliver this letter to Richelieu. How the minister replied is not known; but from that time edicts more violent than ever were issued against the clergy.

[Sidenote: [1639-1640 A.D.]]

Amongst the bishops was one, the bishop of Chartres, who was entirely devoted to the cardinal, and who supported him strongly in his struggle with the church. He succeeded, it is said, in recovering a copy of all the edicts issued against the church in the most disturbed times and sent them to the superintendent Bullion. The latter made a report on them to the cardinal, and on the 16th of April, 1639, appeared an edict in which it was set forth that “ecclesiastics, communities, and other persons falling under the statute of mortmain are incapable of holding real property in France, that the king can compel them to pay dues on it within a year and a day of acquiring it, and in default of this the king may add the said property to his own domains; that the king is willing nevertheless to be satisfied with the payment of the indemnity for royal and feudal rights, which is due to him by his claims under mortmain; his majesty commands that these rights shall be sought out wherever they exist, in all sorts of livings, foundations, hospitals, confraternities, etc., excepting only the new communities, established thirty years ago, of the Jesuits and the Carmelites.” The edict commanded that the research should extend as far back as 1520. This was, according to financiers, a matter of nearly eighty millions for the state. A short time after, an order appeared commanding the alienation of 200,000 livres a year on the Hôtel-de-Ville, guaranteed for five years only by the clergy, and imposing on the latter a perpetual responsibility for these 200,000 livres, and this without their own consent. The irritation of the clergy had reached a climax. They protested forcibly against this measure. Richelieu thought it would not be wise to push things to extremities. A declaration issued on the 7th of January, 1640, announced that the king would be satisfied with a levy of 3,600,000 livres as a compensation for his royal rights.

It was then that Dupuy, seeing that the king’s authority was waning, published a violent discourse in defence of the king. Upon this an obscure priest named Hersent undertook in a Latin pamphlet, entitled _Optatus gallus_, to defend the rights of the church and denounce the machinations of those who were trying, he said, to foster schism in France. The parliament by a decision dated March 23rd, 1640, ordered the _Optatus gallus_ to be torn up and burned “as casting doubt on the authority bestowed on sovereign princes by God.” On the 28th of the same month, the archbishop of Paris, F. de Gondi, with Léonor d’Étampes bishop of Chartres, Nicolas bishop of Orleans, and Séguier bishop of Meaux, signed a declaration couched in almost the same terms, and having for its special object to repel most decidedly the accusation of schism made against the cardinal and a portion of the French clergy by the author of the _Optatus gallus_.

As for the government, it recommenced its attacks on the clergy and, no longer satisfied with the 3,600,000 livres at first demanded, it called upon all holders of livings to pay over the sixth part of their income for two years (6th of October, 1640). The edict was published under the seal, and a chamber was established at the Louvre composed of councillors of state, both ecclesiastic and lay, and magistrates, whose function it was to carry out the provisions of the edict and settle the law. Berland, the prior of St. Denis-de-la-Chartre, who, having entered the clerical agency and not being recognised as an agent, had not the keys of the archives at his disposal, had the audacity to break in the doors and carry off the old assessment rolls, amongst them that of 1583, and to hand them over to the superintendent. When the new assessment was drawn up the agents of the clergy were desired to sign it. The abbé Saint-Vincent immediately formed an opposition party. This was suppressed by a decision of the 10th of November, which also forbade the agents “to hold any meeting either general or particular without the king’s permission.” The abbé Saint-Vincent then wrote to the dioceses telling them that all was lost. They decided to write to the cardinal and even the king, to appeal to his holiness, and to order public prayers to be offered up. In short, the clergy were in a state of indescribable tumult. The most violent accusations were hurled against this tyrant, this apostate, who was violating the privileges of the church, and trying to reduce her to a state of slavery which was quite unprecedented. Richelieu, however, who was at this time involved in a gigantic struggle against Austria and Spain, was anxious to be freed from all these entanglements at home. He appeared to give way and agreed to accept from an ecclesiastical assembly what he found it difficult to obtain by force. A general assembly was summoned at Mantes at the beginning of 1641. The government demanded 6,600,000 livres in all. The debate was long and stormy. The sieur d’Émeri was deputed by the king to signify to the archbishops of Sens and Toulouse and the bishops of Évreux, Maillezais, Bazas, and Toulon that they must leave the town, and each one retire to his own diocese without passing through Paris.

On the other hand the minority, who were devoted to Richelieu, made some very bold speeches. The affair finally ended according to Richelieu’s desires. The government reduced its claims to five and a half millions, which were voted by the majority on the 27th of May.[r]

THE CONSPIRACY OF CINQ-MARS (1641-1642 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1641-1642 A.D.]]

One more effort was made to shake off the trammels of the hated cardinal. A conspiracy was entered into to deliver the land by the old Roman method of putting the tyrant to death; and the curious part of the design is that it was formed almost in the presence of the king.[j]

Louis XIII had at that time a favourite, Henry d’Effiat, son of the old marshal and marquis de Cinq-Mars. He was a young man of twenty-two years of age, with a handsome face, finished manners, magnificent and extravagant. The king, always gloomy, found the need of an agreeable person, capable of diverting his thoughts, and even of amusing him. Having formed an affection for Cinq-Mars, he gave him in succession the posts of keeper of the wardrobe and grand equerry. Richelieu, whose close observation extended even over the intimate friends of Louis XIII, did not take umbrage at the favour bestowed upon a young man of so frivolous a nature, son of a father who had been one of his most devoted servants, and step-brother of the marshal De Meilleraie; on the contrary he felt that the equerry usurped the place in the king’s confidence of one of his declared enemies, Mademoiselle de Hautefort.

But Cinq-Mars was a young madman and, as Monglat said, too presumptuous. Intoxicated by his success, thinking he could do in all things as he pleased, he began to show an inordinate ambition. He dreamed of the fortune of Luynes; he wished to be a duke and a peer, and to command the armies. Richelieu treated him like a child. Louis XIII had enough strength of mind to resist these follies, but not sufficient to send him away from him. He quarrelled with him, became reconciled again, and treated him as if he were a spoiled child. They called the equerry “the king’s plaything.” Cinq-Mars--offended at the way in which the cardinal snubbed him, encouraged, moreover, by the society of the Marais in which he was considered a success, and which was not afraid to show political opposition, in words at least--thought that he could, thanks to the liberty which Louis XIII granted him, compass the downfall of Richelieu. Louis XIII, like everyone else, felt the burden of his powerful minister’s rule. He allowed his favourite to talk; he even listened to him willingly, without taking him seriously. At heart he looked upon Richelieu as a necessary man and one whom he could not do without, as much from habit as from a conviction of the superiority of his genius. He told Cinq-Mars that he need never think of replacing him. Cinq-Mars then, with his daring and swift imagination, conceived the most incoherent ideas, such as killing the cardinal, waiting for his death, which the failing condition of his health made him think might be very soon, or bribing Gaston who would become regent if the king were to die. Each day he changed his plans, deciding upon no particular one. He had made vows, and probably more than vows, for the success of the count de Soissons. After the battle of La Marfée, he was advised to leave court, because of the suspicions that had arisen against him; he refused, hoping to refute them by his presence, and to think of some new plan by which he could compass the end he desired.

(1620-1642)]

Notwithstanding the risk, he formed a conspiracy. He tried to come to an understanding with the duke of Orleans, who might become regent, and also with the duke de Bouillon, whose fortress of Sedan was admirably situated to furnish him a refuge should he be obliged to fly from France. It was beginning over again the plot of the count de Soissons. Gaston answered vaguely, according to his custom, leaving others to act, and doing nothing himself. Bouillon showed himself more decided. Although he had accepted from the cardinal the command of the Italian army, he believed himself able, should the conspiracy prove unsuccessful, to withdraw to Sedan, and there await the death of the king. Francis Augustus de Thou, son of the historian, an inconsistent, restless, and nervous person, served as a go-between for the equerry, with the duke de Bouillon, and even with the queen. Bouillon simply observed that an army was necessary to protect Sedan. Cinq-Mars and Gaston then sent into Spain an agent, Fontrailles, with some blank signatures, to demand troops and a subsidy, and to propose a treaty. Olivares seized this opportunity to cause Richelieu trouble. Seriously or not, he accepted the proposals which Fontrailles made to him; he signed the treaty, scarcely discussing the terms of it, and contented himself with exacting from the princes a promise to restore to peace all that France had wrested from Spain. Fontrailles returned to Narbonne, where he found the conspiracy half divulged, and the head equerry decided to undertake nothing until he knew how the cardinal’s illness would end. The duke of Orleans, carried away by the passion and zeal of some of his followers, but always irresolute and full of contradictions, had not left Blois; Bouillon was in Italy at the head of the army, they could not even communicate with one another. Fontrailles took a great deal of trouble to establish a secret correspondence between them. It was not only the illness of the cardinal that induced them to wait, but also the striking failure of the king’s health. Cinq-Mars only looked upon the treaty as a last resource which they could keep back for a time. Gaston demanded that it should be given to him; then when Cinq-Mars, after much resistance, decided to send it to him, he kept it without signing it, or addressing the ratification to the governors of the Spanish Netherlands, as they had agreed to. Fontrailles fled to England.

RECOVERY AND TRIUMPH OF RICHELIEU

For a whole month Richelieu hung between life and death. At last he recovered, not indeed his health, but that energy which even suffering could not keep under. Prostrated by infirmity and pain, he appeared to have scarcely a spark of life, but, notwithstanding, never has one seen a finer example of Bossuet’s _mot_: “A courageous soul is master of the body it animates.” Retiring to Tarascon, a healthful and lonely town, under the care of the count d’Alais, governor of Provence, the cardinal, in spite of illness and absence, did not cease to rule the king, the government, and the army. A rumour was circulated that his retirement was due to fear; his enemies made a last attempt to destroy his influence over Louis XIII, but he triumphed over them on this as on all former occasions. The king, wearied by the length of the siege of Perpignan, and ill himself, left the camp to establish himself at Narbonne. There he fell a prey to the most contrary anxieties. He saw himself beset and spied upon on one side by Cinq-Mars, on the other by Chavigny and the Noyers. But, apart from the fact that he was in no wise willing to sacrifice Richelieu, he could perceive that the principal leaders and officers of the army were partisans of the cardinal, that the vain boastings of the equerry were displeasing to the military men, and that the latter indulged the maddest schemes for making himself well thought of. He was already very weary of his favourite, when on the 10th of June, 1642, he received a copy of the Spanish treaty that Richelieu sent to him at Narbonne by the intervention of Chavigny. How did this copy get into the cardinal’s hands? No one could tell; according to the most likely conjectures, he obtained it through one of his secret agents or by the treachery of the abbé De la Rivière, who sought his favour, or through a servant of the duke of Orleans. Louis XIII was most indignant, and no longer hesitated. On the 12th he ordered Cinq-Mars, De Thou, and two others, to be arrested. Cinq-Mars remained concealed all one day in a house in the town, but he was discovered, and imprisoned in the citadel of Montpellier. Bouillon was arrested in Italy by his brigadiers at the head of the very army that he commanded. Gaston only was not pursued. The abbé De la Rivière came in his name to acknowledge his fault and to beg for the royal pardon.

The king went to Tarascon to the cardinal to assure him that his sentiments had not changed, and that he wished to await with him the end of this great trial. We are told how Richelieu was in bed; how Louis, himself ill, was obliged to have a bed made up for himself by the side of Richelieu, and how they discussed thus the measures they ought to take. They decided that Gaston should be questioned and then pardoned, but on the condition of his making a full confession, the only means of convicting the accused parties. Louis XIII was unable to return to the army; he went to Fontainebleau by easy stages, arriving there the 23rd of July. Whilst on the road he heard of the death of his mother; Marie de’ Medici had left England, where her presence was looked upon as a public encumbrance. Not finding the inhabitants either of Spain or of Holland willing to receive her, she went to Cologne where, at the house of the archbishop elector, she terminated the anxieties of her wandering life. The chancellor and the members of parliament claimed that a prince could not be cross-examined like anyone else, and that it was necessary he should give his declaration in writing. This mode of procedure had been adopted towards the duke of Orleans. The judges received his declaration at Villefranche on their way to Lyons, where the commission would sit. This commission was composed of state counsellors, of masters of requests, and of several members of the Grenoble parliament. Cinq-Mars had been transferred from the citadel of Montpellier to that of Pierre-Scize. De Thou had been taken to Lyons in a boat towed up the Rhone by that of the cardinal. Bouillon was brought there from his side. Richelieu had started by going up the Rhone slowly, for he could not bear the least fatigue. As this navigation was very laborious, he left the river at Valence and was placed in a great litter, or room, made expressly and carried upon the shoulders of his musketeers, who succeeded each other in relays. He was partially paralysed, incapable of moving or even of signing anything; nevertheless he never ceased working, having beside his bed in this portable room a chair and a table for a secretary. In this fashion he arrived at Lyons. He remained there only a few days, leaving before the end of the trial, and continuing his strange journey, partly by land, partly by the Loire and the recently finished canal of Briare.

Gaston’s declarations left no doubt as to the reality of the plot. Cinq-Mars did not deny it; he owned to everything, and appeared before his judges with a bearing as noble as it was courageous. As for De Thou, he had played an absurd part, and one full of contradictions; “he was concerned in everything,” said Fontrailles,[k] “and denied knowledge of anything.” Priding himself upon a scrupulous loyalty and delicacy of conscience, he was made the confidant of all the conspirators and all the conspiracies invented against the cardinal and against the king. He had got it into his head that his name, his character, his title of former minister of state would assure him a high place in the government that should succeed to that of Richelieu. He was then mixed up with the enemies of the cardinal; he had even, which was far more serious, warned the queen of what was being prepared. Of his complicity there was no doubt. His guilt was not so certain.

The judges passed a sentence of death. Cinq-Mars was condemned unanimously; De Thou unanimously but for one voice. The execution took place at once upon a scaffold erected in the middle of the place des Terreaux (September 13th). The grand equerry and his friend died with as much dignity as resignation. De Thou, whose eager mind was filled with the deepest sentiments of religion, showed a martyr’s enthusiasm. Neither of them protested against the blow which struck them, but their youth, the sensation they had caused, the candour of their answers at the trial, their noble bearing upon the scaffold deeply affected the town of Lyons. “M. de Thou,” wrote Marca, one of the judges, “died like a Christian and a brave man. M. le Grand also showed an equal firmness and met his death with an admirable confidence, composure, and Christian devotion.” The sight of this execution awoke a very natural pity, seeing that the public knew little of the details of the plot. It was regarded as the last act of vengeance of a minister who felt his power ebbing with his life.[l]

THE LAST DAYS OF RICHELIEU

[Sidenote: [1642-1643 A.D.]]

The tempestuous year of 1642 was drawing to a glorious close. Fortune, after long wavering, threw itself on the side of France. Austria was humiliated and France was in the ascendency. Henry IV had won independence for her, Richelieu gave her supremacy; the work of Charles V and Philip II was undone forever. France resumed the position at the head of the nations which she had held when she led Europe in the Crusades of the Middle Ages. This grand symphony of victories resounded about a funeral pyre. All these conquered standards were lowered before a dying man. The epic poem that astonished the world for eighteen years was not to lack a majestic end; the hero was to be buried in the triumph which providence did not permit him to complete.

The victory over Cinq-Mars, and above all the general success of the French policy, had for a few months brought back the life that was ebbing away; but the slow dissolution of the worn-out organism had continued. On the evening of the 28th of November Richelieu, after returning from Ruel to the palais Cardinal, was taken with a violent fever, with pain in the side, and spitting of blood; four bleedings were insufficient to allay the fever. On the 2nd of December public prayers were offered for the sick man in all the churches of Paris, and the king came from St. Germain to see him. Richelieu talked to Louis like a man resigned to death, asked him to protect his family in memory of his services, recommended to him the ministers Noyers and Chavigny, and especially Mazarin whom he represented, it is said, as the person most capable of filling his own place; and finally submitted to the king a declaration which he had just had drafted against the duke of Orleans, to exclude that prince from all right to the regency and the administration of the kingdom in case of the death of the king. This was the last service that Richelieu rendered to France.

After the visit of the king the cardinal, feeling worse, asked the physicians how long he might still live. They, wishing to flatter the master to the very mouth of the tomb, replied that there was no need to despair--that God, seeing how necessary he was to the welfare of France, would intervene to save him. The cardinal shook his head and calling back one of the royal surgeons said, “Speak to me with open heart, not as a physician but as a friend.” “Monseigneur,” said the physician, “in twenty-four hours you will be dead or well.” “That’s the way to talk!” said Richelieu, “I like that.” He sent for the curate of St. Eustace, his parish. “Here is my Judge,” he said when the consecrated host was presented to him, “my Judge who is soon to pronounce my sentence. I pray him to condemn me if in my ministry I have followed any other end than the welfare of religion and of the state.” “Do you forgive your enemies?” asked the curé. “I have never had any but the enemies of the state.”

Most of those present contemplated the dying man with admiration, some with fear. “Here,” said Cospéan, the bishop of Lisieux, “is an assurance that dismays me!” Doubtless Richelieu,[m] in order to fortify his conscience, repeated the maxims of those two Latin testaments which contain his supreme thought; his official will in which he disposes of his dignities and his wealth concerns only his family; the other two are addressed to posterity. “I have been severe to some,” he said, “in order to be good to all. I have loved justice and not vengeance.” Was he very sure of it? “I have tried to give to Gaul the boundaries that nature intended for it, to identify Gaul with France, and to establish the new Gaul wherever the old one was.”

On the afternoon of the 3rd of December the king came to see the cardinal for the last time. The physicians, having no more hope, had given up the sick man to empirics, who gave him a little relief. But his feebleness was increasing; on the morning of the 4th, feeling the approach of death, he made his niece, the duchess d’Aiguillon retire, as she was “the person whom he had most loved,” according to his own words. This was the only moment, not of weakness, but of tenderness, that he had; his indomitable firmness had not given way during his long suffering. All present, ministers, generals, relatives, and servants, burst into tears; for this terrible man was, according to the testimony of his least favourable contemporaries, “the best master, relative, and friend that ever was known.” Towards noon he heaved a deep sigh, then a feebler one, then his body collapsed and was still; his great soul was gone. He had lived fifty-seven years and three months, the same number of years as Henry IV.

Human judgments [continues Martin] have been and still are contradictory concerning this minister of salutary harshness, this strong-armed labourer who is accused of having pulled up from French soil the good grain along with the tares. The most opposite opinions are in league for and against his memory. Before 1789 lords and commons, after 1789 ultramontanes and a large part of the liberals heap abuse upon him. Retz[n] claims that Cardinal Richelieu traded on all the evil intentions and all the ignorance of the last two centuries, in order to form in the most legitimate of monarchies the most scandalous and most dangerous tyranny. Montesquieu[o] believes that “the most harmful citizens of France” were Richelieu and Louvois.

On the other hand the partisans of unity and of strong and vigorous power, whether monarchists or democrats, rise in favour of the great man, as do all those who put the love of country above all other social or political sentiments. The _Moniteur_ of 1789, as the mouthpiece of this party, exclaims with the voice of the Revolution itself: “Let the aristocrats rage against the memory of this intrepid minister who overthrew their pride and avenged the people for the oppression of the great. By sacrificing great victims to the tranquillity of the state he became its pacifier. He was the first to apply true remedies to the root of the evil by degrading the intermediate powers that had enslaved the nation for nearly nine centuries. Nothing that can make a vast kingdom powerful and glorious escaped his indefatigable activity.”

The popular instinct however has not decided the question as it has for Henry IV. The abstract and half veiled greatness of this invalid who from his bed overturned empires has not taken hold of the heart and the imagination of the unlettered masses and imprinted its pale mysterious figure in ineffaceable lines. The man who did most for the greatness of France is little known by the French people: is this the punishment for his severity towards the suffering masses and for his harsh maxims? “If the people were too much at ease, it would not be possible to hold them within the rules of their duty.”[p]

When the king heard of the death of his minister he coldly remarked: “A great statesman is dead.” He survived him but six months. A few days before his death he named Anne of Austria regent and Gaston, his brother, lieutenant-general of the kingdom. Louis XIII felt great remorse for the assassination of Marshal d’Ancre and for his treatment of his mother, the queen. He died at the château St. Germain, at the age of forty-two years. One of his contemporaries says of him that he was so indifferent in his government that all the world awaited his death with impatience, even those who owed most to him.[c]

STEPHEN’S ESTIMATE OF LOUIS XIII AND OF RICHELIEU

Louis XIII [says Stephen] was a man of large and just capacity. His ideas of the duties of his station were princely and magnanimous. He lived in profound submission to the law of his conscience, in the fear of God, and in veneration for all men in whom he saw, or thought he saw, any image, however faint, of the divine beneficence and power. But he was of a feeble, indolent, and melancholy spirit. He was habitually wrapt in reveries, sometimes splendid, though more often gloomy; but he was always incapable of prompt or decisive action. Though a king, he never was and never could have been a free man. It was among the necessities of his existence to live under the government of a master. After selecting and rejecting many such, he at length submitted himself to the dominion of Richelieu, and thenceforward endured that bondage to the last. He endured it certainly, neither from attachment nor from fear, but because, as often as he struggled to regain his liberty, his efforts were baffled by his admiration of the genius of his great minister, and by his persuasion that no other man could so effectually promote the welfare of his state and people.

Richelieu, on the other hand, was one of the rulers of mankind, in virtue of an inherent and indefeasible birthright. His title to command rested on that sublime force of will, and decision of character, by which, in an age of great men, he was raised above them all. It is a gift which supposes and requires in him on whom it is conferred, convictions too firm to be shaken by the discovery of any unperceived or unheeded truths. It is, therefore, a gift, which, when bestowed on the governors of nations, also presupposes in them the patience to investigate, the capacity to comprehend, and the genius to combine, all those views of the national interest, under the guidance of which their inflexible policy is to be conducted to its destined consummation. For the stoutest hearted of men, if acting in ignorance, or under the impulse of haste or of error, must often pause, often hesitate, and not seldom recede. Richelieu was exposed to no such danger. He moved onwards to his predetermined ends with that unfaltering step which attests, not merely a stern immutability of purpose, but a comprehensive survey of the path to be trodden, and a profound acquaintance with all its difficulties and all its resources. It was a path from which he could be turned aside neither by his bad nor by his good genius; neither by fear, lassitude, interest, or pleasure; nor by justice, pity, humanity, or conscience.

The idolatrous homage of mere mental power, without reference to the motives by which it is governed, or to the ends to which it is addressed,--that blind hero-worship, which would place Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus on the same level, and extol with equal warmth the triumphs of Cromwell and of Washington, though it be a modern fashion, has certainly not the charm of novelty. On the contrary it might, in the language of the Puritans, be described as one of the “old follies of the old Adam”; and, to the influence of that folly, the reputation of Richelieu is not a little indebted.

In his estimate, the absolute dominion of the French crown and the grandeur of France were convertible terms. They seemed to him but as two different aspects of the great consummation to which every hour of his political life was devoted. In approaching that ultimate goal, there were to be surmounted many obstacles which lie distinctly perceived, and of which he has given a very clear summary in his _Testament Politique_. “When it pleased your majesty,” he says, “to give me not only a place in your council, but a great share in the conduct of your affairs, the Huguenots divided the state with you. The great lords were acting not as your subjects, but as independent chieftains. The governors of your provinces were conducting themselves like so many sovereign princes. Foreign affairs and alliances were disregarded. The interest of the public was postponed to that of private men. In a word, your authority was, at that time, so torn to shreds, and so unlike what it ought to be, that, in the confusion, it was impossible to recognise the genuine traces of your royal power.”

Before his death, Richelieu had triumphed over all these enemies, and had elevated the house of Bourbon upon their ruins. He is, perhaps, the only human being who ever conceived and executed, in the spirit of philosophy, the design of erecting a political despotism; not, indeed, a despotism like that of Constantinople or Teheran, but a power which, being restrained by religion, by learning, and by public spirit, was to be exempted from all other restraints; a dynasty, which like a kind of subordinate province, was to spread wide its arms for the guidance and shelter of the subject multitude; itself the while inhabiting a region too lofty to be ever darkened by the mists of human weakness, or of human corruption.

To devise schemes worthy of the academies of Laputa, and to pursue them with all the relentless perseverance of Cortes or of Clive, has been characteristic of many of the statesmen of France, both in remote and in recent times. Richelieu was but a more successful Mirabeau. He was not so much a minister as a dictator. He was rather the depositary, than the agent, of the royal power. A king in all things but the name, he reigned with that exemption from hereditary and domestic influences, which has so often imparted to the papal monarchs a kind of preterhuman energy, and has as often taught the world to deprecate the celibacy of the throne.

Richelieu was the heir of the designs of Henry IV, and the ancestor of those of Louis XIV. But they courted, and were sustained by, the applause and the attachment of their subjects. He passed his life in one unintermitted struggle with each, in turn, of the powerful bodies over whom he ruled. By a long series of well-directed blows, he crushed forever the political and military strength of the Huguenots. By his strong hand, the sovereign courts were confined to their judicial duties, and their claims to participate in the government of the state were scattered to the winds. Trampling under foot all rules of judicial procedure and the clearest principles of justice, he brought to the scaffold one after another of the proudest nobles of France, by sentences dictated by himself, to extraordinary judges of his own selection; thus teaching the doctrine of social equality, by lessons too impressive to be misinterpreted or forgotten by any later generation. Both the privileges, in exchange for which the greater fiefs had surrendered their independence, and the franchises, for the conquest of which the cities, in earlier times, had successfully contended, were alike swept away by this remorseless innovator. He exiled the mother, oppressed the wife, degraded the brother, banished the confessor, and put to death the kinsman and favourites of the king, and compelled the king himself to be the instrument of these domestic severities. Though surrounded by enemies and by rivals, his power ended only with his life. Though beset by assassins, he died in the ordinary course of nature. Though he had waded to dominion through slaughter, cruelty, and wrong, he passed to his great account amidst the applause of the people, with the benedictions of the Church; and, as far as any human eye could perceive, in hope, in tranquillity, and in peace.[v]

FOOTNOTES

[88] [Thomas Wolsey (1471-1530), the celebrated English cardinal, was prime minister of Henry VIII. Cardinal George d’Amboise (1460-1510) was the minister of Louis XII of France (see pp. 294 and 303).]

[89] [The war in North Italy cut off Spain from the Netherlands, now that England dominated the sea. Hence the great importance of Richelieu’s plan.]

[90] [Giulio Mazarini, born at Piscina, Italy, July 14th, 1602; died at Vincennes, France, March 9th, 1661. He was to be Richelieu’s successor and scarcely his inferior in power.]

[91] [Charles IV, duke of Guise. He died in exile in Italy in 1640.]

[92] [For the detailed history of the Thirty Years’ War, see vol. XIII.]

[93] [As regards what was done by French armies. But of course the allies entered constantly into Richelieu’s plans.]

[94] [Kitchin’s[w] estimate of Father Joseph seems a just one. He says: “It is impossible to say with the Italians, that Richelieu owed everything to him; that Father Joseph not only strengthened him in all the crises of his fortune and gave him wise advice, but that he even invented his policy for him, and supplied him with ideas; yet we must admit that Richelieu owed more to him than to any other person, and that he was thrice happy in such an agent and friend. Yet the difference between them is great: Father Joseph lives in history as an able intriguer; Richelieu as a king among men.”]

[95] [Richelieu formally created the ever afterward famous _Académie Française_ in the year 1635. Its membership was (and is) limited to forty,--the “forty immortals.” Its object was to control the French language, and regulate the literary taste of the people. Its influence has been extraordinary; but the wisdom of attempting to dam up the stream of so limpid a medium as language may be questioned. Membership in the Academy continues to be the highest honour that can be offered a French man of letters. See below, chapter xxi.]