Portraits of the seventeenth century : historic and literary

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Saint—Betve portraits of the seventeenth century.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

].—CARDINAL DE RICHELIEU (1585-1642) . : I His Letters and State-papers.

I].—HENnRI, Duc DE ROHAN (1579-1638) . dS The Protestant Leader.

I. Cardinal de Richelieu

His Letters and State Papers.

I.

Cardinal de Richelieu.

‘is Letters and State Papers.

HE fate of Cardinal de Richelieu as a man whose pen or whose dictation produced important works is singular. As such he was long ig-

nored or depreciated. When his ‘‘Testament Politique” appeared in 1687, men of judgment recognised the stamp of the master:

“Open his Political Testament,” says La Bruyére, ‘‘ digest that work: it is the picture of his mind; his whole soul is there developed; there we discover the secret of his conduct and of his actions; there we find the source and the fore-shadowing of the many and great events which appeared under his administration; there we see without difficulty that a man who thought with such virility and accuracy must have acted safely and with success, and that he who achieved such great things either never wrote, or must have written as he has done.”

In spite of such testimony, well justified on the reading, Voltaire persisted in regarding that same ‘‘Testament Politique” as nothing more than a collection of futilities or commonplaces. The learned Foncemagne, who applies himself to refute Voltaire with all sorts of good and demonstrative reasons, has not forgotten that of brilliancy of style and literary talent, things so essential in France! Voltaire continued to triumph apparently, or at least to cast trouble into the minds of even the least ordinary readers. Far from considering this memorable treatise and the maxims of State which it contains as emanations of the austere and serious mind and meditative genius of the cardinal, those who attributed such qualities to him regarded the work as a derogation, and the great Frederick, so fitted to appreciate him, wrote, out of complaisance to Voltaire:

“‘ The wisest minds may meet eclipse: Richelieu made his Testament, And Newton his Apocalypse.”

As for the other works, political and historical, of Richelieu, their fate was more singular still. In 1730, appeared, under the odd title of ‘‘History of the Mother and the Son,” meaning Marie de Medicis and Louis XII, a fragment of history beginning at the death of Henri IV, which was attributed to the historian Mézeray, simply because the manuscript was found after his (Mézeray’s) death among his papers. But as in more than one part of the narrative Cardinal de Richelieu spoke in his own name and in his own person, critics took upon themselves to suppose that Mézeray in his youth, out of gratitude for the cardinal’s benefits, chose, in this work, to assume his personality and mask himself under Richelieu’s name; and they thought to explain by this disguise the various in-

CARDINAL DE RICHELIEU.

Shree cas te Nee we congruities of the work. Though the style, at first sight, is more pompous and flowery than that which Mézeray usually employed, which at times has a tone of the frondeur and the republican, there was no cause for wonder, they said, because the author for once had disguised himself as a courtier and wished to be faithful to the spirit of his part. A few good judges were not taken in by such poor reasoning; they recognised the hand of Richelieu himself in more than one passage. Nevertheless, the question was not wholly cleared up till 1823, when M. Petitot obtained permission to publish the cardinal’s own Memoirs which had long lain buried in the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and now form no less than ten volumes of the Petitot Collection.

All was then made plain: Richelieu’s thoughts, of which mere fragments had hitherto appeared, now came together, his words assumed their true tone and all their authority: his style was recognised; for he had a style, such a man could not fail to have one. It was seen that in addition to the glory of doing great things he had conceived the ambition to write of them in detail and extensively, and to compose, not so much his Memoirs properly so-called, as a body of history and of annals: ‘‘I own,” he said, speaking of this work of selection and dictation on which, amid so many other imperative duties, he had spent his vigils, ‘‘] own that although there is more satisfaction in furnishing the matter for history than in giving history its form, there is no little pleasure to me in representing that which was done with so much trouble.”

While he was tasting the ‘‘sweetness of that toil” his illness and the weakness of his constitution, even more than. the pressure of affairs, forced him to interrupt his work; it was then that he wrote the ‘‘ Succinct Narrative” which forms the first chapter, or rather the introduction to the ‘‘ Political Testament.” This narrative is, as he says himself, a ‘‘ shortened picture,” a fine and noble abridged discourse, in which he relates to the king all the great actions of the king, from the time of his (Richelieu’s) second entrance to the ministry in 1624 until 1641. In thus attributing everything to his master and affecting to efface himself he does not fear that posterity will be misled and fail to recognise the man who was the principal instrument of great designs so gloriously executed.

Therefore, whoever desires to-day to know and have in hand all the political and historical writings of Richelieu (Iam not speaking of his controversial writings as bishop and theologian in his diocese), it is necessary to have: 1st his ‘‘ Political Testament,” preceded by the ‘‘Succinct Narrative.” 2nd, his Memoirs printed in the Petitot Collection, and later in that of MM. Michaud and Poujoulat; and, 3rd, the collection of his Letters and State-papers, the first volume of which will appear, by the efforts of M. Avenel, in a few weeks, to be followed by four other volumes in quarto.

Richelieu usually wrote little with his own hand; he dictated; but in this sort of transmission he never allowed a secretary to write as he pleased. His secretaries, among whom one named Charpentier held first rank, were no more than copyists and transcribers. Never was any thing written in his name if he were absent. He did not sign what were called “* office-letters.”

“* Richelieu,” says M. Avenel, ‘‘ had, near his person day and night, several private secretaries, but he had no bureaux [departments]. The secretaries of State, who were no more than head-clerks, came to take his orders and executed, each in his own office, the work agreed upon, submitted it, when necessary, to the prime-minister, but signed it themselves. Richelieu signed only what was written in his own cabinet.”

Many of his letters are dated in the night; he rose when an idea seized him and called a night secretary, who wrote it instantly.

Not only did Richelieu never sign a letter he had neither written nor dictated, but this prime-minister, whose spirit chose to be everywhere present, often dictated letters, instructions and dispatches that he did not sign; these were signed by the secretaries of State or their agents. In a word, Richelieu was apt to do the work of others rather than let any one encroach upon his, or upon his absolute authority. In this immense cabinet labour the part of the secretaries was, as we see, almost nothing and purely material. That of Richelieu was not only chief, but continual and sovereign.

It is a pleasure to approach and study the great man through these new and complete documents which show him to us at his origin and in all the stages of his fortune. Richelieu, born September 5, 1585, the youngest son of an ancient family of Poitou, was at first destined to be a soldier. But one of his brothers who was appointed to the bishopric of Lucon having made himself a Carthusian monk, Richelieu was obliged to take the cassock rather than let the bishopric escape his family. Henri IV named him for it, and negotiated the appointment through his ambassador in Rome. Richelieu was at that time only a few months over twenty years of age; he was forced to make many appeals before he received the pope’s sanction, and went in person to Rome, where he was consecrated April 17, 1607. After his return we find him in his diocese, which had long been without a bishop; for Richelieu’s brother had never resided there, and, in fact, had never been consecrated, nor had his predecessor resided there. The young bishop, arriving in a region full of Protestants and where there had long been much discord, took his episcopal functions seriously, informed himself as to his rights, and did his duty. The town of Lucon was little more than a village, the poor inhabitants of which were crushed by taxes; he writes to obtain some lessening of the burden. In these first letters of Richelieu we are not made conscious of the heart of a pastor, but there does appear a spirit of order and equity which

Cardinal de Richelien. 9 requires that justice and proportionate burdens shall exist around him. He does not fear, in one place, to compare the load laid upon the common people to that of the beasts of burden, which ought to be proportioned to their strength. ‘“‘It is the same thing,” he adds, ‘‘ with subsidies in regard to the common people; if not moderate, even though useful to the public they will not fail to be unjust.”

In all that I have to say of Richelieu shall endeavour to speak with truth, without bias, and with no idea of disparagement; the public mind has abandoned, through experience, that idea, which tended to misconceive and undervalue in him one of the most courageous artizans of the grandeur of France. I shall nevertheless avoid the other extreme, which might go to systematic apotheosis; I shall try to restrain admiration in all that concerns him within the limits of good sense and humanity. He will help me himself to do this, if I may venture to say So, for more than one of the sayings with which he judged of other men can, if turned upon himself, show wherein lay too much passion and harshness.

This powerful being, destined to hold France at his feet and make Europe tremble, began by being very poor and in great straits. He writes as follows to a certain Mme. de Bourges in Paris, who usually did his household commissions and had lately bought the decorations of which his church was in need:

“Madame, I have received the copes you sent me, which came extremely apropos ; they are very handsome, and have been received as such by the company to whom | owed them. . . . Iam now in my barony, beloved, so they try to make me think, by every one ; but I can only tell you so now, for all beginnings are fine, as you very well know. I shall not want for occupation here, I assure you; all is so ruined that much energy will be required to restore it, | am extremely ill-lodged ; I have no place where I can make a fire on account of smoke ; you can imagine that I do not long for the depth of winter ; and there is no remedy but patience. 1 can assure you that I have the worst bishopric in France, the muddiest, the most disagreeable ; I leave you to think what the bishop is. There is no place here to take a walk ; neither garden, nor alley, nor anything whatever; so that my house is a prison.

‘I leave this topic to tell you that we could not find among my clothes a tunic and a white silk dalmatic that belonged to the white damask trimmings which you had made for me ; and this makes methink they were left behind. . . .”

A number of letters to Mme. de Bourges treat in this way of his household and his domestic affairs, about which he jokes rather pleasantly. In his journeys to Paris, whither he came sometimes to preach and to breathe Court air, he feels he wants an abiding place, a house of his own, for convenience and decorum, instead of merely hiring furnished rooms. He consults this same Mme. de Bourges, a good household economist.

“If you will give me good advice,” he writes, ‘* you will oblige me very much, for I am very irresolute, principally about a house, feating the quantity of furniture that may be needed, On the other hand, being of your humour, that is to say, rather vain-glorious, I should like, as I am more at my ease, to make a better appearance, which | could do more conveniently in a house of my own. Poor nobility is quite pitiful, but there is no remedy; against fortune keep good heart,”

Cardinal de Ricbelied, i

Among ieee early letters, where, as | need not remark, we are still amid the language of the sixteenth century, there are some in which Richelieu assumes the bishop, the consoler, and, occasionally, the director of souls. He is adequate and seemly, but little at ease in these rdles. The letters of consolation that he addresses to persons who have lost their nearest and dearest are over-strained, subtle, and suggest even less the contemporary than the pretentious and rather antiquated forerunner of Balzac.’ To the Comtesse de Soissons, on the occasion of the death of her husband, he says, strangely enough and as if to persuade her that she had gained rather than lost: ‘‘If you desire your welfare it is better to have an advocate in heaven than a husband on earth.” On one occasion, giving inward and wholly spiritual counsel to a devout soul tried by discouragements and difficulties in prayer, he attempts the language of mystical science in which he is easily surpassed by the Fénelons and Saint-Frang¢ois de Sales. We find him more in character and in the tone that comes easily to him in the following letter, written to one of his grand-vicars who has taken, he thinks, too much liberty:

SS T6LOn

‘« Monsieur, I have read the letter you have written me touching the differences between the Sieur de La Coussaye and yourself. 1 cannot do otherwise than blame them, desiring that those who handle the affairs of my diocese should live peaceably with one another. | write the same to the Sieur de La Coussaye, and I so inform you, in order

1 Jean-Louis de Balzac, 1594-1654; one of the creators of French prose.

that you may each arrange to live in peace. You are both my grand-vicars, and as such you ought to have no other object than to carry things along to my satisfaction, which can be done, provided it be also to the glory of God. It seems, from your letter, that you were in bad humour when you took your pen; as for me, I like my friends so well that I desire to know only their good humour, and it seems to me that they ought not to show me any other. If a gnat stings you you ought to kill it, and not try to make those who, by the grace of God, are so far saved from such pricking, feel the sting. I know, God be thanked, how to govern myself, and I know, moreover, how those * who are under me ought to govern themselves. . . . I think it right that you should warn me of disorders which may exist in my diocese; but it is necessary to do so more coolly; there being no doubt that heat would, in these days, anger those who have hot blood, like me, if they had no means of warding it off. . . .”

The stage is still narrow. Richelieu in his relations with the outside world is obliged to pay many civilities, practice much suppleness, and bow low before the powers of the day. But wherever he felt himself master he already applied his method and made the stamp of his character felt.

I perceive this no less in another letter addressed to a certain M. de Préau, in which, after speaking of threatened troubles in the interior of France (1612) and omens of war without, he adds, hopefully: ‘‘ The wise conduct, affection and fidelity of many good servitors guarantee us from ills within. As for those without, | shall baptise them with another name if they bring us opportunity to enlarge our borders and cover ourselves with glory at the cost of the enemies of France.” There we hear the instinctive cry of that soul of courage and virtue, which, in its ambitions, was patriotic and French above all else, and was destined in future to fuse its personal passions in the grandeur of its public purpose. There is a saying of Montesquieu which seems to show such absolute misconception that I have difficulty in comprehending how it came from so great a mind: ‘‘ The most mischievous [méchants| citizens of France,” he says in one of his ‘« Pensées,” ‘‘ were Richelieu and Louvois.” We will set aside Louvois, who is not in question here; but Richelieu, a bad citizen of France! To what a point must Montesquieu have been imbued with the old parliamentary spirit, or with the modern philosophic idea, on the day when that saying escaped him! A citizen is precisely what Richelieu was; a patriot, ardent for the public grandeur of the State; as much so, at the very least, as the two Pitts were great patriots and citizens of England.

We see dawning in Richelieu’s Letters the first gleams of his favour at Court, without, however, learning much more about it than he tells us in his Memoirs. His first political act, properly so-called, was the harangue he pronounced in presenting the report of his Order at the closure of the States-General, February 23, 1615. He was chosen as orator, and acquitted himself with honour and applause. A tone of high authority and reason makes itself felt through the pomposity of the speech in certain places. He knew the queen, Marie de Medicis personally, and had already insinuated himself into her confidence. It was about this time that he first saw the Maréchal d’ Ancre.

‘*1 won his heart,” he says, ‘‘ and he formed an esteem for me the first time we conferred together. He told some of his familiars that he had a young man in hand who was capable of teaching a lesson to tutti borbont. The esteem lasted always; but his goodwill diminished wholly; first because he found oppositions in me which he did not expect; secondly, because he noticed that the queen’s confidence leaned wholly to my side! . . .”

What was the state of the kingdom when Richelieu, then thirty-one years of age, became minister for the first time? Although this first and rather obscure ministry, separated from the glorious second by an interval of seven years, lasted only five months (Oct. 31, 1616 to April 24, 1617) we already discover, by looking closely into it, the distinctive features of Richelieu’s policy, the vigorous application of his principles to the same evils he was later to cure, and the dawning efficacy of the same remedies which were on the point of taking effect when the murder of Maréchal d’Ancre stopped all and threw everything into abeyance. Richelieu’s great career was destined to begin twice before succeeding: ‘‘ There are times,” he says, energetically, ‘‘ when Fortune begins but cannot complete her work.”

France, after the death of Henri IV, had fallen from the most flourishing and prosperous condition and government into a miserable state of things. The queen-regent, Marie de Medicis, lazy, obstinate, and without fixed views, was still surrounded by the chief

' The Italian adventurer, Concini; favourite and prime-minister of the queen-regent, Marie de Medicis, assassinated at the instigation of the Duc de Luynes in 1617.

Cardinal de Richelfeu. 15 councillors of Henri IV, Villeroy, Jeannin, the chancellor Sillery, but the hand of the master was henceforth lacking to them. The princes and nobles were lifting their heads on all sides and taking arms; the Protestants seized the occasion to confederate and form a State within the State and against the State. The country had been, since 1610, beneath a continual, and in some sort a chronic Fronde, a Fronde the more dangerous because it was nearer to the League, and chiefly because the great fomenters of trouble had preserved intact their elements of power. In the royal succession, so suddenly brought about by murder, the crown conquered by Henri IV was held, as in the later Fronde, by the hand of a woman on the head of a child. Richelieu, in his Memoirs, has admirably pictured the misery of this period anterior to his coming into office, and what he calls the cowardice and corruption of hearts:

“‘ The times were so miserable,” he says, “‘ that the ablest among the nobles were those who were most industrious in causing quarrels; and the quarrels were such, and there was so little safety in establishing anything, that the ministers were more occupied in finding the Necessary means to preserve themselves than the means that were necessary to govern the State.”

Thus these ministers, the queen’s councillors, men trained and perfected in the old policy, now presented to imminent dangers and the growing exigencies of princes and nobles, nothing better than compromises, delays, and, finally, concessions over which they merely tried to haggle as much as possible. On the morrow

STN re it of the death of Henri IV, the queen might have seen the weakness of her councillors. It was a question of publishing a Declaration in the name of the late king immediately proclaiming her Regent. Villeroy, the boldest among them, offered to draw up the document and sign it; the chancellor Sillery, ‘‘ who had a heart of wax,” says Richelieu, would not seal it, giving as a reason that if he did so the Comte de Soissons would be furious with him and kill him. ‘‘ He ought, on such an occasion,” cries Richelieu, ‘‘to have despised his life for the safety of the State—but God does not give that grace to every man.” He often recurs to this idea: that the courage which undertakes wise and just things for the public good is a special gift of God; and this is not in him a form of words; evidently he believed it. Speaking of the vain and fruitless ending of the States-General in 1614 he adds:

““The whole work of this Assembly had no other effect than to overburden the provinces with the tax to be paid to their deputies, and to show to the world that it is not enough to know evils if there is no will to remedy them; the which will God gives, when it pleases him to make the kingdom prosper, and the great corruption of the ages does not hinder.”

Richelieu is not a philosopher; his lofty mind, which is, above all, a sound mind armed with a great character, pays tribute to the ideas and prejudices of his day. In many places he speaks as if he believed in omens, horoscopes, and sorcery; he is superstitious; but also he is sincerely religious; he believes in the gift of God extended over certain men destined to be

Cardinal de Ricbelien. 17 the instruments of public salvation; if the wrongs committed against public persons seem to him of quite another order from those committed against private individuals, the wrongs done by those public persons themselves seem to him graver and of heavier weight in view of their responsibility and the far extent of consequences. It was he who wrote, on the last page of his Political Testament, ‘‘Many could save themselves as private individuals who damn themselves in fact as public personages.”

Let Voltaire laugh if he likes at these maxims and see therein the trace of a small mind! For all that, they give the only superior morality which serves as guarantee in public personages, which saves them from pure Machiavellianism; we rejoice when we find the sign of this religious spirit under one form or another, this sacred sentiment of divinity invoked and recognised by all great heads and founders of States and leaders of peoples. In some it is but a vain and hollow formula proclaimed on occasions and ceremonies; but in others in whom this basis of belief is real the accent never deceives; we feel it readily.

At sight of the ruin of the kingdom and the weakness of councillors during these years of the regency, Richelieu suffered greatly, asking himself if an avenger would not appear. The queen had no fixed views, and let herself be led sometimes by one and sometimes by another of her ministers, according as she thought herself the better or the worse for the last advice: which is, remarks Richelieu, ‘‘the worst thing in politics, where nothing is so needed to preserve reputation, strengthen friends, and terrify adversaries, as unity of mind and continuance of the same purposes and means.” It was then that he began to take part himself, in the character of confidant, at first secretly, as an unseen counsellor; but, after a certain day, we are conscious, in the actions of the queen, of a persistence and vigour in which they were hitherto lacking.

She had signed the Peace of Loudun, May 3, 1616, for which the rebellious princes made her pay dearly; but what she had done for these pretended reformers and champions of the public weal had whetted rather than sated their insatiable appetites. Returning to Paris with the young king, she found herself compelled to share authority with the Prince de Condé; the mansion of the latter was besieged by the crowd of courtiers and became the true Louvre; the other Louvre being left to solitude. Richelieu, very intimate with Barbin, steward of the queen’s household and a man of good judgment, who had just been appointed secretary of State, must have acted and made his influence felt through him at this decisive moment. The queen, listening to the energetic counsels then given to her, and perceiving the growing intrigues of the Prince de Condé and his allies, the Bouillons, Vendémes, and others, who, under pretext of rising against the Maréchal d’Ancre, were

Cardinal de Richeliet, 19 conspiring against herself and her son, decided to have the Prince de Condé arrested in the Louvre. She chose for the execution of this order Thémines, of whom Henri IV had said to her: ‘‘He is a man who will recognise nothing but the quality of royalty, and will obey nought else ”—a characteristic then becoming rare indeed! Richelieu, who unravels for us all these intrigues and paints them with more than one stroke of Tacitus, adds that Thémines, who arrested the Prince de Condé, if he did well was fully aware of it, for from that day he was never satisfied, no matter what rewards the queen heaped upon him:

“She made him marshal of France, gave him one hundred and some thousand crowns in ready money, made his eldest son captain of her guards, gave to Laugiéres, his second son, the office of first equerry to Monsieur; and yet, with all that, he still whined and complained: so dearly do men sell the little good that is in them, and so small a value do they put on the benefits they receive from their masters.”

Richelieu the historian is full of such strokes of a consummate moralist who has gone, by experience, to the depths of the hearts of men.

As soon as the Prince de Condé was arrested (September 1, 1616), the whole aspect of things changed; the crowd of courtiers who had deserted the Louvre returned to it instantly; each desiring to show himself and testify thus to his fidelity:

‘Some did it sincerely,” says Richelieu, ‘‘ some with intentions and desires quite the contrary; but there were none who did not approve of what her Majesty had done; many even declared that they envied the luck of the Sieur de Thémines, who had had the good fortune to be employed on the enterprise: but the fact was, the Court was at this time so corrupt that it would have been hard to find any other man capable of saving the State by his fidelity and courage.”

The great seigneurs, accomplices of the Prince de Condé, seeing him taken, escaped and left Paris instantly. Pretence was made of pursuing a few, M. de Vendéme for instance; but the desire they had to escape was much greater than the desire to capture them in those sent to do so. Unfaithfulness and disloyalty were betrayed on all sides. The Prince de Condé was hardly arrested before, in order to ransom himself out of prison, he offered to reveal all and betray the secrets of his party and his cabal: ‘‘ which did not show as much generosity and courage,” remarks Richelieu, ‘‘as a man of his condition ought to have.”

It was then that the queen saw herself in the way to form a Council of ministers decisively, having already made certain changes: for the new situation a new policy was needed. The old councillors, Villeroy and Jeannin, were set aside, or nearly so; the Keeper of the Seals, Du Vair, self-styled philosopher and a man of renown in letters, had succeeded Sillery as chancellor, in which office he made a poor figure, and was good only at shackling public business. The very day of the arrest of the Prince de Condé, all the old councillors, including Sully, reappeared at the Louvre to make representations to the queen on this coup d’ Etat, of which they did not appreciate the