XVII. THE DICTATORSHIP OF RICHELIEU…

XVII. THE DICTATORSHIP OF RICHELIEU

Cardinal Richelieu is one of those men in whose favour the tide of affairs always turns at the critical moment, and who also have skill and courage to take it at the turn. Vigilant, cool, sagacious, and absolutely fearless, he never throughout his life missed a single point in the great game he played; and even with dramatic force knew how to snatch a triumph out of the very clutches of defeat.--KITCHIN.[w]

[Sidenote: [1629-1643 A.D.]]

Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu, grown now through the exercise of his own genius to be the mightiest man in all Europe, was born at the castle of Richelieu in Poitou, September 5th, 1585. He was therefore forty-three years old when the famous siege of La Rochelle, by which he broke the power of the Huguenots in France, was brought to a close. Chronic invalid though he was, he was destined to live fifteen years longer, and during that period to control the fortunes of France, and to exercise a dominating influence in European politics at large; to be recognised everywhere as the greatest statesman of his age. We have already seen enough of him to know that he is a man of the largest ideas, the most indomitable courage, and that he is a born master of men; we must understand also that he is the wiliest of intriguers, the shrewdest judge of human motives; that he has a taste for art and for literature; and that with it all he is not restrained from the successes of practical politics by any undue niceties of conscience. He is perhaps more similar in his mental equipment to Augustus than to any other great man of history; or let us say rather to Augustus with a certain share added of the genius of Julius Cæsar, further modified by some traits of Louis XI.

But why attempt to characterise? We shall see the great cardinal in the full exercise of these powers in the coming years. We shall see him carry war into Italy, acting as his own lieutenant-general. We shall see him take a hand in the Thirty Years’ War, and accomplish by diplomacy the overthrow of the great Wallenstein. We shall see him put down uprisings at home, triumphing over Marie de’ Medici and his other enemies; holding King Louis XIII as a child in leading strings. We shall see him dominating church and state alike, and exercising a permanent influence on the literature of his land through the foundation of the French Academy. And all the while we must remember that this myriad-minded statesman is the most hated of Frenchmen at the same time that he is the most feared. Even those he has benefited do not love him. “Let the world speak well or ill of the famous cardinal,” says Corneille, “neither in my prose nor in my verse will I mention his name; he has done me too much kindness to speak ill of him, and too much injury to speak well.” There is none to speak well of this strange man; but all speak of him with bated breath; all contemplate him with something of apprehension. A weird, incomprehensible figure, he stalks across the scene, lonely, hated, feared,--but always masterful. Let us follow out the details of his life story.[a]

RICHELIEU AND THE KING

The history of Richelieu is obscure as to the essential point, his resources, the ways and means. On what did he live and how? This is not to be seen either in his memoirs or his documents. All that we have of Richelieu’s accounts includes only four years (1636-1640) and in a very confused way gives the ordinary receipts, up to eighty millions. Not a word of anything extraordinary.

In 1636, when France was invaded, a tax on persons in comfortable circumstances (des gens aisés) was created, or rather regulated, and the agents placed everywhere in 1637, with the triple power of justice, police, and finance, collected it with great rigour. But one cannot doubt that something similar existed even before, especially in the passages of armies through certain provinces. Otherwise it is impossible to understand how, with such a deficit under ordinary circumstances, extraordinary and unforeseen expenditures, for wars or subsidies to allies, could have been made every year.

Hence action was variable, intermittent, sometimes brilliant, with relapses due to exhaustion. It was not possible to have a really permanent army. That was evident in 1629, when Richelieu finished the war with the Huguenots, but that with Italy was still in a critical state. He disbanded thirty regiments to raise others six months later. The same way, in 1636, he disbanded seven regiments in January to make them up again in June--an economy of five months, necessary perhaps, but which nearly lost France. In July nothing had been reorganised, and the enemy came to within twenty leagues of Paris.

The suffering of the great man of affairs who directed this machine with its spasmodic movements must have been terrible. And one can easily understand that he was always ill. The insufficiency of his resources, the continual effort to invent impossible money, on the other hand the court intrigues, the pricks of no one knows how many invisible insects, were something to keep him in a terrible agitation. But even that was not enough; twenty other devils haunted this restless soul, like a great ruined mansion--the battle of women, tardy gallantries, moreover theology and the wild desire to write, to make verses, tragedies! What tragedy could be more gloomy than his very person. Macbeth is gay in comparison. And he had attacks of violence in which his inner fury would have strangled him, had he not like Hamlet massacred tapestries with the blows of his dagger. More often he swallowed his bitterness and fury, covered everything with the outward seeming of ecclesiastical decency. His powerlessness, his passion, turned within, worked themselves out on his body; the red iron burned his soul and he was near to death.

His greatest evil was still the king, who might escape him at any moment. Spain, the court, waited for the death of Louis XIII. His wife and his brother looked at his face every morning and hoped. Valetudinarian at the age of twenty-eight, feverish, subject to abscesses which nearly carried him off in 1630, it was in vain he claimed to be alive, to act at times and show courage; it was held that he was dead, at least that no one had need of him. It was a curious union of two invalids. The king would have thought his kingdom lost if Richelieu were wanting. Richelieu knew that, with the king dead, he had not two days to live. So well hated, especially by the king’s brother, he had to plan to die with Louis XIII. Perhaps it was for that reason that he was so pleasing to the king, who was sad, suspicious, and malevolent and who never liked him, but who could always say to himself: “If I die, that man will be hanged.”

This double chance of death, on which the enemies of Richelieu placed their hope, was precisely what made him strong and terrible. He had moments when he talked and acted as though in the presence of death; and then the sublime, which he had sought so laboriously elsewhere, came of itself. He touches it, in fact, in passages of allocution which he had with the king on the return from La Rochelle, in the presence of his enemies, the queen-mother and the king’s confessor, the suave Jesuit Suffren. In this conversation he tells everything, his actual situation, what he has done, what received, what he owns, what he has refused. He has a patrimony of 25,000 livres rental and the king has given him six abbeys. He is obliged to make heavy expenditures, especially to pay for guards, being surrounded with daggers. He has refused 20,000 crowns pension, refused the appointments of the admiralty (40,000 francs), refused the right of admiral (100,000 crowns), refused a million which financiers had offered him in order not to be prosecuted.

He asks for his dismissal, not definitely but temporarily--he may be called back later if he is still alive and is needed. He explains clearly that he is in great danger and that he is obliged sometimes to conceal himself. Does he want to make himself necessary, declare himself indispensable, and so make sure of so much the more power? If that is his end, one must say that the method is very strange and daring. He speaks with the frankness of a man who has no end in view. He dares to give his master, perhaps as a last service, an enumeration of the faults of which the king ought to correct himself. And this was not one of those flattering satires, where one shows a slight fault, a shadow, as a successful method for showing the beauties of the portrait. No, it is a firm, hard judgment, like that of a La Bruyère, of a Saint-Simon, which would penetrate to the depths of a character after a hundred years, a judgment of the dead by a dead person. Quickness of mind and instability, suspicions and jealousy, no assiduity, no application to great things, impulsive aversions, forgetfulness of services, and ingratitude--not a trait is lacking.

The queen-mother must have trembled with indignation, with terror also, perhaps, feeling that the man who would venture such a thing would venture all--and that a man so composed, with death under his feet, would pay little regard to the death of others. The Jesuit must have fallen backwards, plunged into silence and humility. The king felt all this and received it as the testamentary word of one invalid to another, of one dying man to another. Richelieu, being begged and entreated, remained in the ministry. It was difficult for him to retire with affairs at such a crisis. The war with the Huguenots still continued in Languedoc, and the war with Italy was commencing. Richelieu, called by the pope as well as by the duke of Mantua, had a good opportunity which might relieve him from his embarrassments. Victor at La Rochelle, if he saved Italy he might hope that the pope would appoint him legate for life as Wolsey and George d’Amboise[88] had been--real kings and more than kings, since they united the two powers, temporal and spiritual.[b]

RICHELIEU ENTERS THE EUROPEAN ARENA

[Sidenote: [1629-1630 A.D.]]

France had submitted; six years of power had been sufficient for Richelieu to make himself her master; now he turned his incessant activity in the direction of Europe. “He feared the repose of peace,” wrote Nani, the ambassador to Venice, “and believing himself more secure in the turmoil of arms, he was the author of many wars, and of long and weighty calamities. We may say that having reunited divided France, succoured Italy, upset the empire, harassed England, and weakened Spain, he was the instrument chosen by heaven to direct the great events of Europe.”

The liberal, penetrating mind of the Venetian was not mistaken on this point; all over Europe the hand of Richelieu was felt. “Far and near, we must always negotiate,” he said. He had succeeded with negotiations in France, and he carried his ideas further. Numerous treaties had already marked the first years of the cardinal’s power; after 1630 his activity in external affairs was redoubled. From 1623 to 1640 seventy-four treaties were concluded by Richelieu; four with England, twelve with the United Provinces, fifteen with the German provinces, six with Sweden, twelve with Savoy, six with the Venetian Republic, three with the pope, three with the emperor, two with Spain, four with Lorraine, one with the Grison Leagues, one with Portugal, two with the rebels of Catalonia and Rousillon, one with Russia, and two with the emperor of Morocco; such was the network of diplomatic negotiation which the cardinal wove in nineteen years.

While the cardinal was holding La Rochelle in siege, the duke of Mantua died in Italy, and his natural heir, Carlo di Gonzaga, living in France as the duke de Nevers, hastened to take possession of his estates. Meanwhile the duke of Savoy claimed the marquisate of Montferrat. The Spaniards upheld him, and entering the duke of Mantua’s states, lay siege to Casale. When La Rochelle fell, Casale was still resisting; but the duke of Savoy had already seized the greater part of Montferrat, and the duke of Mantua asked help of the French king, whose subject he was. This furnished a new field of battle against Spain.[t]

Nobody could understand why the cardinal thought insignificant possessions at a distance from France, like Mantua and Montferrat, were of such great importance.[89] He was obliged to explain to the king that Casale and Mantua were the citadels of Italy--the most valuable military stations in the basin of the Po; and then war was decided on. Richelieu left on the 29th of December with the title of “lieutenant-general representing the person of the king.” He had doffed the cardinal’s robe to assume the military uniform; under him were the cardinal De la Valette, marshals Montmorency, Schomberg, and Bassompierre, with Sourdis, now archbishop of Bordeaux, as administrative lieutenant. The duke of Savoy declared himself neutral and refused to revictual Casale, though he would allow the French free passage to go to its relief. The cardinal, determined in spite of this treacherous ally to gain possession of the passes into Italy, crossed the Alps at Susa and pretended he was about to march on Turin; he then rapidly marched back and besieged Pinerolo, which capitulated (1630). Spinola hastened to the defence of Piedmont, and owing to his superior forces checked the advance of the French. Louis XIII then took the command of the army himself and conquered the whole of Savoy; but he fell ill and his place had to be taken by the duke de Montmorency, who defeated the Spaniards at Vegliana and took possession of the marquisate of Saluzzo on the 10th of July. However, Mantua had been taken and Casale was sorely pressed, the French army was reduced by sickness, reinforcements were expected from the army in Champagne and money from Paris. The latter, however, did not arrive, for the marshal De Marillac and his brother the chancellor, acting under the influence of the queen-mother, neglected to send it off. Richelieu, rendered uneasy by the intrigues of his enemies, effected a truce through the mediation of the abbé Mazarin,[90] who had been sent from the court of Rome. Mazarin, who was a man of supple and crafty temper, gained and retained the confidence of Richelieu and was destined subsequently to carry on the work which the latter had begun. At the expiration of this truce the serious events which were passing in Germany prevailed on Austria, as we shall see, to conclude a definite peace. This was the Peace of Ratisbon, concluded on the 25th of October, 1630.[d] The emperor agreed to invest the duke de Nevers and withdraw the imperial troops from his states on the Grison passes provided that France would withdraw hers from Pinerolo and Savoy.[a]

ENMITY OF MARIE DE’ MEDICI AGAINST RICHELIEU

The termination of war was the commencement of new perils for Richelieu. He foresaw the fresh efforts of his enemies, and on the return of the court to Paris, he used all the resources of his address to avert and conciliate the resentment of the queen-mother. She dissembled, and did not forgive. Leagued with the Marillacs, and favoured by many of the nobility, Marie laboured to overturn the minister, who defended himself with firmness and adroitness. Louis XIII was of a feeble mind, still more enfeebled by a weak temperament and languid constitution. Resolution was a state above his powers; it was to him an unnatural tension, menacing at each instant a relapse.

Despite of this, he was clear-sighted. He loved France, was alive to its glory and prosperity, and saw that it required the strong hand of Richelieu to govern and to guide. He did not love the minister, indeed; and it was thus the more to his credit that he upheld him from a sense of his talents and utility. When Marie poured into his ear complaints against the cardinal’s insolence, against his tyranny and domineering ambition, Louis allowed that she was right. He acquiesced; and the queen-mother argued from this passive assent that the king shared her aversion and her views against the minister. She would hurry home to her palace of the Luxembourg after such interviews, and confidently assure her followers that her ascendency was complete, that the fall of Richelieu was near. By that hour, however, Richelieu was closeted with the monarch, was unfolding to him his high and masterly views of policy, was exposing the selfish manœuvres of Marie de’ Medici; and had at length gained in his turn such complete ascendency that the feeble Louis would not only assent, but kindle up for the moment with warmth and friendship towards his minister, and then, in confidence, betray the very secrets of his mother’s converse with him. Richelieu thus drew from a certain source the hopes, the plans, and the names of his enemies.

The Day of Dupes

In an interview with his mother, Louis, assenting to the justice of all her complaints against the cardinal, had proposed that his niece first, and then Richelieu himself, should come publicly and ask pardon of Marie at the Luxembourg. The king intended this as a measure of conciliation. The queen accepted it for the sake of seeing her enemy humbled. Accordingly, on the appointed day, Madame de Combalet, the cardinal’s niece, entered, and flung herself at the feet of Marie, imploring her forgiveness. The latter, instead of preserving the disdain that suited her purpose, or of assuming the air of forgiveness that the king desired, was unable to contain her temper, and burst forth in invectives against the suppliant lady. Madame de Combalet retreated, terrified and in tears. The cardinal himself succeeded, equally suppliant, and was received by the same volley of coarse vituperation. Louis XIII, scrupulous in his ideas of dignity and delicacy, shocked at the conduct of his mother, took the part of his minister, and reproved her; but at the same time bade Richelieu, in the same tone of anger, to retire.[e]

Everyone was convinced of the cardinal’s disgrace; it was already satirised on the Pont Neuf, and the little porter of the Samaritaine indulged in a thousand grimaces in imitation of his eminence. At the palace all minds were occupied with the approaching triumph of M. de Marillac, lord keeper of the great seal and fairly popular with the parliament on account of his being known to be for the interests of the queen-mother and Gaston of Orleans.

Already presidents in caps, councillors in scarlet robes, deliberated amongst themselves whether it would be made a criminal action to prosecute his eminence as guilty of tyranny and peculation. The ambassadors, watching the smallest diplomatic step in Paris, announced the inevitable disgrace of Cardinal Richelieu to their courts, and the increasing authority of the queen-mother. The Mémoires[f] relate that Charles I, so ardent a promoter of royal prerogative, replied to the despatch of his ambassador: “The king of France is making a great mistake in disgracing a minister of so great competency.”

Louis XIII had set out for Versailles, that poverty-stricken palace he was too parsimonious to restore, and had there sequestered himself. A great concourse of people filled the apartments of Marie de’ Medici; the crowd surrounded her and Gaston of Orleans; power was about to pass into their hands. The queen-mother, smiling graciously, affectionately held the hand of Anne of Austria, with whom she conversed amicably. They treated each other as mother and daughter, although Anne of Austria, intensely proud of her noble Spanish blood, considered herself superior to a member of the princely and mercantile house of Florence. The court wore a new aspect; it was thought that the days of the regency would be reproduced and Marshal de Marillac, then with the army of Italy, seemed a new Concini destined to enjoy the favours of Marie de’ Medici. But the queen-mother was not sufficiently energetic. Naturally of an indolent disposition, she easily yielded to the Italian far niente, to that nerveless temperament which prevented her from prompt decision in decisive circumstances. She did not join her son at Versailles, but remained to be congratulated by the crowd of courtiers that surrounded her.

[Sidenote: [1630-1631 A.D.]]

During this time the friends of Richelieu were becoming uneasy. Cardinal de la Valette, that devoted prelate, had gone with all speed to Versailles, and had had his arrival announced to the king. The cardinal had been informed by Saint-Simon, the diminutive equerry and favourite, that Louis XIII had spoken of his minister in terms that did not lead one to suppose he was out of favour. La Valette was immediately ushered into the king’s presence and the king smilingly said to him, “Cousin, I think you are surprised at all that is taking place.” “Sire, more than your majesty can imagine.” “Well, cousin, return to Cardinal Richelieu and tell him that he is a good minister, and I desire him to come instantly.” The minister’s friend did not wait to be told a second time. Richelieu, who had retired to a small house in the village of Versailles, immediately hastened to the old palace. The interview took place in the presence of Saint-Simon, the first equerry, and the marquis de Mortemart, the first gentleman of the household. Richelieu, throwing himself on his knees, his customary attitude, thanked the king in humble and submissive terms for the favour he was conferring upon him. Louis showed himself kindly and affable. “Cousin, in you I possess the most faithful and loving servant it were possible to find. I consider myself the more obliged to protect you that I am cognisant of the respect and gratitude you bear the queen, my mother. I would have forsaken you, had you not shown these evidences of your generous nature. Be assured henceforth of my protection. I shall know how to disperse the cabal of your enemies; they abuse the credulity of the queen, my mother, who permits herself to be easily prejudiced. Continue to serve me faithfully, and I will uphold you against all those who have vowed your destruction.” “Sire,” replied Richelieu, “solitude is a necessity to me, and I will never remain at your court against the desire of the queen-mother.” “Cousin, it is not my mother that you need fear, but certain mischief-making spirits about her; I know them and I promise you they will do nothing.”[h] Thus the great cardinal triumphed, while his enemies were rejoicing at his supposed overthrow. The day when the queen-mother and her coterie were thus deceived--the 11th of November, 1630--has passed into history as the “Day of Dupes.”[a]

Exile of Marie de’ Medici

The popular feeling was nevertheless against Richelieu and in favour of Marie de’ Medici, whose munificence and fête-loving habits had won the good will of the Parisians. This had no small weight in detaining the king at St. Germain, where he held his court, and where the two queens appeared, although Louis scarcely spoke to them. Marie bore disgrace and contempt with impatience; but she could now find no one hardy enough to brave the cardinal and espouse her quarrel, except Gaston, her second son, the rash and weak duke of Orleans. The prince imagined a singular mode of vengeance. Accompanied by a body of young and armed companions, he entered the cardinal’s palace, came rudely into his presence, and apostrophised him in a rough and menacing speech. After this bootless outrage, Gaston retired, left the capital, and proceeded to levy troops in the provinces. Louis, on learning this sally of his brother, whom he peculiarly disliked, took up the cause of his minister more warmly; and attributing, not unjustly, the turbulence of Gaston to their mother, he openly reproached her, and warned her to become reconciled to Richelieu. Marie would not abandon her hate; and monarch and minister were obliged to proceed to extremities.

It required much address to bring the king to this point; and Richelieu was only enabled to reconcile Louis to use harsh measures towards his parent by means of the confessors whom he himself had provided for his master. These smoothed away the difficulties presented by the king’s conscience, or rather by his filial habits. Some months passed in vain attempts at accommodation; but the ultimate result was the flight of Gaston and of Marie de’ Medici out of the kingdom. The latter retired to Brussels. Thus Richelieu came triumphant from the second struggle. Bassompierre was sent to the Bastille; the duke of Guise[91] was deprived of his office of admiral, and went on a pilgrimage to Rome. Even the proud and veteran Épernon was obliged to crave pardon. The parliament objected to an ordinance of the king declaring the partisans of Gaston guilty of high treason. They rightly argued that such a condemnation could not be issued without trial or by other than a judge. But even from this just position they were compelled to recede. They were summoned to the Louvre; their edict of objection was cancelled in the presence of Louis and his minister, and the obnoxious ordinance registered in its stead. Richelieu showed a still more culpable contempt for the forms of justice in the trial of the marshal De Marillac. He was brought before a commission, which sat in the cardinal’s country-house at Ruel, accused of a long list of crimes, of all save his true fault of conspiring with Marie de’ Medici. Being convicted, he was beheaded in the place de Grève.

[Sidenote: [1631-1632 A.D.]]

Marillac was the second victim sacrificed to the supremacy of the minister. The desire of vengeance and of blood grows, like other criminal tastes, upon those who indulge and gratify it; and Richelieu stained deeply his high reputation. Hitherto the nobility bore the tyrannic ascendency of the cardinal with jealousy and impatience. They saw plainly that his designs were directed against their power and independence. Still, from want of union, and from the absence of a spirit amongst them capable of coping with their great enemy, they held back, in trembling though indignant submission, looked on while their chains were preparing, and even aided to forge them. Thus they had helped to put down the Huguenots, ever the mainstay of rebellion. They then, when too late, sought to intrigue with Marie de’ Medici against the cardinal. The trial of Marillac, not by his peers but by a mock commission, and the execution of that marshal on no grounds save enmity to the minister, filled all the noblesse with fresh indignation and alarm. And one who, from birth and position, might well take the lead of the highborn of France in this its cause, declared himself unhesitatingly on this occasion.

THE REVOLT OF GASTON AND THE EXECUTION OF MONTMORENCY

The duke de Montmorency was governor of Provence. He had distinguished himself in the Italian war; had never been foremost to complain or to intrigue; but, like his family, had been remarked for moderate and independent principles; tolerant though orthodox in religion; a loyal subject though no fawning courtier. In the king’s extreme illness, he had given his word to protect the minister, and Richelieu had other causes of gratitude.

But Montmorency was now indignant at the insult offered to his rank in the person of Marillac. He felt it equally a shame that the king’s brother, the son of Henry IV, should be driven into exile by the enmity of an upstart minister. Gaston had fled to Lorraine, and there passed his time in the wooing and espousal of the duke’s daughter. Richelieu advanced to Lorraine, and Gaston was obliged to fly. He applied to Montmorency for protection and support, and the duke was both imprudent and generous enough to grant it. This could be done with arms alone. The dukes of Orleans and Montmorency therefore raised a little army, cantoned themselves in Languedoc, and resolved to fight the royal forces, which under Schomberg advanced against them. It appears that the population of the south looked with disfavour on the enterprise of the dukes, either in dread of Richelieu’s power and vengeance, or in dislike of the aristocratic cause. The issue of the rebellion was decided in a skirmish at Castelnaudary, where Montmorency, at the head of five hundred followers, charged the royalists, and was taken prisoner. The news of his capture dispersed his army, and left Gaston no resource but to join his mother at Brussels.

It was now in the power of Richelieu to give an example of his moderation. In pardoning Montmorency, he would have gained many hearts; nor would his power have been less formidable. Gaston even promised to submit, if his generous protector were spared: but Richelieu was inexorable; he knew what would be his own fate if overthrown. He recollected the fall of Ancre, of every favourite and minister whom the nobles had overthrown; and private reasons of vindictiveness concurred with the wish of making a striking example, and by the death of Montmorency giving the same salutary warning to his order as the execution of Biron had proved in the last reign. Richelieu had the power of communicating his own firmness to the king. Louis resisted the supplications of all the nobles of his court, of the princess of Condé, Montmorency’s sister, and even the clamours of the mob, who cried under the windows of the Louvre for mercy. The marshal De Châtillon begged the king to show himself to the people, and to grant to their prayers the life of the first noble of the land. “Should I obey the suggestions of the rabble, I should not act as a king,” replied Louis, displaying that extreme of monarchic arrogance which his posterity so deeply cherished and so dearly expiated. The kingdom’s safety might have been an excuse for cruelty--the pride of the monarch was none.

Montmorency owned his crime, and promised to redeem the disloyalty of a moment by devoting his after life to the king; but he made no mean submissions. In passing to the place of execution, he regarded the statue of Henry IV with emotion. He was the godson of that monarch, who knew how to unite clemency with firmness. But, shaking off thoughts of the past, he pointed onward to the scaffold, which he said was the surest road to heaven. In him perished the last of the lineal descendants of the great constable, the most illustrious of which were still said to be only the younger branch of that noble family.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS

[Sidenote: [1629-1632 A.D.]]

As soon as Richelieu felt assured that the political dissensions of France herself would no longer obstruct his plans abroad, he marched with firm step to that weakening of Spain and upsetting of the empire of which Nani speaks. Henry IV and Queen Elizabeth, in pursuit of the same ends, had sought and found the same allies. But Richelieu had better luck than they for the execution of his designs to run across the king of Sweden.[t]

Gustavus Adolphus was young, active, bellicose and surrounded by a military halo which permitted him to be looked upon as a future champion of Germany against the house of Austria. He had had several clashes with the emperor or his lieutenants over the Baltic towns, and the idea occurred to Richelieu to make use of his sword.[l]

Richelieu arranged a truce between the young king and the Poles with whom he was at war, in September, 1629; he then granted him by the Treaty of Berwald, in January, 1631, a subsidy of 1,200,000 francs, and threw him at Germany, pointing out, to excite his ardour, the immense booty to be seized, his co-religionists to be avenged, and the great rôle to be played on a brilliant stage.

The Thirty Years’ War was then at its height.[92] This struggle, both religious and political, began in Bohemia in 1618, and had extended little by little over the empire. The elector-palatine and the king of Denmark (Christian IV) had been, one after the other, vanquished and humiliated. The imperial army created and commanded by Wallenstein had penetrated as far as the Baltic, crushing under foot on its way, both Germany and her secular liberties. The oft-discussed problem of that country--that is, its partition among independent princes or its union under a single master, was on the point of being solved in favour of unity under the despotism of the house of Austria. Cardinal though he was, Richelieu acted like Francis I, like Henry II, and like Henry IV; he undertook the cause of the German princes without regard to their religion. His confidential agent, Father Joseph, managed the electors so well at the diet of Ratisbon in 1630, that they wrung from the emperor the recall of Wallenstein and the disbandment of his army, after which they refused to give the emperor’s son the title of king of the Romans, which Ferdinand II regarded as the implied price of these concessions. “A miserable Capuchin,” he cried in anger, “has been clever enough to put six electoral hats into his cowl.”

[Sidenote: [1632-1634 A.D.]]

Gustavus Adolphus fell upon the empire like a thunderbolt. He invented new tactics which disconcerted his adversaries. He defeated Tilly near Leipsic, killed him at the passage of the Lech, but was killed himself at Lützen (November 8th, 1632). “The world is for others,” he cried, as he fell. Richelieu picked up the hope and the fortune of the young hero. He was now free from all domestic anxiety and could employ his attention and his strength abroad. He boldly substituted in the struggle against the Austrian house, for exhausted Denmark and for Sweden bereft of her king, France full of youth and ardour.[u]

Richelieu still upheld his alliance with Sweden and the Protestant powers; and thus keeping the force of Austria employed, he was enabled to effect his next ambitious project, which was the occupation of Lorraine.

That province was in its origin feudatory to the empire, and was totally independent of France, except that from vicinity and interest its dukes were far more French than German. The Guises had drawn these ties closer. And now that the duke of Lorraine had harboured the duke of Orleans, and, against the king’s consent, had given him his daughter Margaret in marriage, the latter had reason or pretext for anger. Richelieu, as usual, caused an army, with the king at its head, to march to Lorraine. The duke was alarmed, and sought to parry the attack by offering to espouse Madame de Combalet, niece of the cardinal; but Richelieu refused to sacrifice the interests of the state to the aggrandisement of his family. Perhaps he saw in the offer a trap laid for him. Lorraine was invaded; and Nancy, its capital, besieged. The duchess of Orleans contrived to escape from it to Brussels; but Nancy fell into the power of the king. In vain did the duke negotiate, and make submissions; equally in vain did he resign his duchy in favour of his brother. The capital and fortresses were held in firm possession by Richelieu.

Here fell another noble, or rather an independent prince, from having espoused the quarrel of the duke of Orleans. Whilst the queen-mother gave signs of increased exasperation, by suborning an attempt to carry off the cardinal’s niece, Gaston began to be weary of exile. His favourite, Puylaurens, who had chief influence with him, was still more anxious; and Richelieu offered great advantages to the latter, if he would induce the prince to submit. Gaston at length did so, quitted Brussels abruptly, and repaired to Paris, where he was graciously and splendidly received. Puylaurens received the hand of the cardinal’s niece, and was created duke d’Aiguillon for his services. But Richelieu was a dangerous friend, except to an all-devoted servant. He sought to break Gaston’s marriage; and Gaston was obstinate in resisting. The cardinal laid the blame on the new duke d’Aiguillon, and without further pretext arrested and shut him up in the Bastille, where he soon after perished. Gaston was, as usual, enraged; and, as usual, allowed his rage to evaporate in vain menaces, and in vainer enterprises.

Wars with Austria

[Sidenote: [1634-1635 A.D.]]

The nobles checked, the Huguenot power destroyed, it remained to abase still lower the house of Austria, and to extend the territories of France at its expense. To make the Rhine the limit of the empire was the darling aim of Richelieu, as of Henry IV. Gustavus Adolphus and the Protestant princes of Germany had hitherto been instruments in Richelieu’s hand to effect or further this; but, since the death of the king of Sweden, the emperor had recovered his superiority, had defeated the Swedes, and reduced his enemies. It behooved France no longer to confine her efforts to negotiation; but to draw the sword, if she wished to preserve her ascendency or to prosecute her political schemes. She demanded certain advantages for thus declaring herself; and neither Sweden nor the malcontent Germans were backward in paying the price. Oxenstierna, the Swedish chancellor, ceded the fortress of Philippsburg to France. The league of Protestants put the whole of Alsace and its important fortresses under her protection. Lorraine was already occupied; and now Richelieu pushed northwards, and garrisoned Treves, forming, at the same time, a defensive alliance with Holland. Spain, informed of this treaty, sent an expedition to surprise the town of Treves; and war was in consequence declared by France against the emperor and the king of Spain, in the commencement of 1635. A herald was sent to Brussels to announce it; the last time that this species of feudal etiquette was observed.

Richelieu, the destroyer of the Huguenots, was thus leagued with the Protestant powers of Europe against its Catholic princes--a clear proof that his principles were politic, not bigoted. This war, which lasted thirteen years against the emperor and twenty-five against Spain, produced little glory to the minister, at least from its victories, and has brought as little interest to history.[93] It is marked by as much want of spirit as of talent. Yet the Thirty Years’ War in Germany, then drawing to its close, was marked with both. But religious differences had given ferocity to this war, which was carried on in the heart of Germany, and which put daily at stake the fate of kingdoms, capitals, and creeds. On the other hand, the war which we enter on was merely an extended line of frontier skirmishes, idle sieges, and fitful expeditions, in which Richelieu had the advantage, not from military but ministerial superiority. His vigorous administration enabled France to bear the expense and weight of the war, whilst the house of Austria, from the bad husbandry of more immense resources, became exhausted, and towards the close of it was in a tottering state. As to the lack of able generals, it may be observed that great military talent must necessarily be wanting at the commencement of a war, and that it requires half a score of years’ campaigning for the age and the nation to form its military system anew--the old never sufficing--and to find for that system a head and an arm capable of directing it. Turenne was a young officer at this epoch. It was not till the following reign that he and Condé were able to assert the superiority of French generalship.

[Sidenote: [1635-1636 A.D.]]

France entered on the campaign with four armies--one in the Low Countries, one on the Rhine, the others in Italy, and the Valtelline. The first exploit was one of promise and éclat. The marshal De Brézé was marching to join the Dutch through the country of Liège. Prince Thomas of Savoy, at the head of the Spanish, sought to prevent the junction. He was defeated by Brézé at Avein, and lost all his cannon and colours. Tirlemont was given up to the pillage of the victors. Louvain was besieged, and Brussels threatened. The unfortunate Marie de’ Medici was obliged to fly from the latter town, with the duchess of Orleans, pursued by the good fortune of her enemy Richelieu. Chance, however, may give a victory; talents can alone make the most of it. The French were obliged to retire behind the Maas. They and the Dutch, most ill-assorted allies, laid the blame of tardiness upon each other.

In the following year the imperialists had all the advantage. They penetrated into Picardy, passed the Somme, and took Corbie. Paris was in alarm, and her citizens began to retire southward. It was a critical moment for Richelieu. His ascendency over the king consisted solely in the monarch’s opinion of his sagacity and good fortune as minister. This opinion was greatly shaken; yet Richelieu kept a good countenance, and did all that the emergency required. He made the king show himself to the people; he despatched reinforcements to the count de Soissons, who commanded in Picardy. The Spanish knew as little as the French how to push an advantage. Instead of advancing upon the capital, they passed the time in pillaging, and were soon obliged to retreat. The court advanced to Amiens, whilst the army besieged and endeavoured to retake Corbie.

ATTEMPT TO ASSASSINATE THE CARDINAL

Here Richelieu’s good fortune saved him from new peril. The count de Soissons, son of that prince of the blood whose turbulence made him conspicuous in the first year of the regency of Marie de’ Medici, had stepped from the obscurity in which he had been kept, on the unexpected invasion of his government by the enemy. He had valiantly resisted; but the cardinal, who dreaded the renown of a prince of the blood, avoided placing any large force at his disposal, and at length brought the king himself to command and eclipse Soissons. The count vowed vengeance; he leagued with Gaston, ever ready to commence a plot; and they agreed to assassinate the cardinal at Amiens. Two gentlemen, named Saint-Ibal and Montrésor, were charged with the execution, but were to wait for the signal to be given by the duke of Orleans. An opportunity offered. Richelieu was alone at the foot of his staircase, which he had descended to his carriage, and in the midst of the conspirators. The agents had their hands on pistols, eagerly watching the countenances of both the count de Soissons and the duke of Orleans for the signal. Neither had the courage to give it, and Richelieu walked on; for the moment he was unsuspicious of the danger that he had escaped.

On reflection, the princes saw that the danger lay in having meditated the deed, rather than in having executed it. They tried other means, leagued with the Spaniards, and endeavoured to rouse the nobility to rebel. Épernon, to whom they chiefly applied, bade them, in answer, recollect the fate of Marillac and Montmorency. They did so, and fled from court; the count de Soissons to Sedan, and Gaston to Blois. But the latter was soon brought back by fair words.

CHARACTER OF LOUIS

[Sidenote: [1615-1638 A.D.]]

In the midst of these intrigues, this warfare, these struggles betwixt nations and parties, Louis XIII was perhaps the personage who felt the least interested. “He led,” says Madame de Motteville,[i] “the most wretched and sad life; without court, or friends, or power; spending his time in catching birds, whilst his armies were taking towns.” He was plaintive, melancholy, retiring; not wanting either in good sense or in any other manly quality, perhaps, but cursed with a diffidence that neutralised them all. Thus he despaired of ever finding another minister like Richelieu; and, in fear of offending the cardinal, whom he might have controlled as well as employed, he resigned all authority into his hands. Another idea of his, proceeding from the same diffidence, and a great cause of discontent and sadness with him, was that he despaired to render himself agreeable to the fair sex. He was cursed with a bashfulness and a backwardness that he blushed to avow, and that he concealed under the colour of apathy and suspicion. This kept Louis XIII for a number of years a stranger to his young and not unlovely queen; as the same defect produced, in after years, a similar result with his descendant, Louis XVI. Anne of Austria, piqued by this coldness of her spouse, avenged herself by ridicule and sarcasm. The king’s indifference or distance thus became hatred; and Richelieu, who had cause to dread the young queen, fanned the latter sentiment. Louis nevertheless felt attracted towards female society, and he paid a kind of distant and formal court to Mademoiselle de Hautefort. This young lady as little understood his bashful and susceptible temper as did the queen, and Louis soon accused them both of leaguing together to mock him. The attentions of the king were then turned towards a new object, Mademoiselle de la Fayette, with whom the novel of De Genlis has perhaps rendered the reader familiar. She, of tenderer feelings and more penetration, knew how to appreciate the timid affections of the monarch. She cherished and returned them; never, however, overstepping the bounds of modesty. Louis, whose reserve, or “wisdom,” to use the words of Madame de Motteville,[i] “equalled that of the most modest dame,” at length ventured to propose an apartment at Versailles to Mademoiselle de la Fayette, who replied, after some hesitation, some intrigue, and certain interference, by retiring to a convent. The king wept, and was in despair; but his scruples would not permit him, like Louis XIV, to tear a beauty from the altar. He did not cease, however, to visit Mademoiselle de la Fayette at her convent; and long conversations were wont to pass between them through the grille or iron railing of the parlour. The monarch felt the influence of this virtuous young woman; her counsels, to which her piety now gave weight and her secure position boldness, prompted him to mistrust Richelieu, whom she represented as supporting heresy against Catholicism, and to give peace to Europe.

[Sidenote: [1638-1641 A.D.]]

Another voice, of equal weight with the king, was pouring the same sentiments into his ear. This was his confessor, the father Caussin, whom Richelieu had placed in that station, but who betrayed his confidence. To resist at once a mistress and a confessor was difficult, and the influence of the minister began to totter. One urgent counsel given to Louis by Mademoiselle de la Fayette and Caussin was that he should become reconciled to his queen; they showed, and even proved to him, that his suspicions against her were unjust. Richelieu, who observed the changed sentiments of the king towards Anne of Austria, was alarmed, and tried to prevent the reconciliation that he feared. Suspecting that the queen held a correspondence with Spain, he caused the police to visit and search her apartments at the Val de Grace. But his enemies were too adroit: no discovery was made, and the insult served but to display the unfounded rancour of the cardinal. After this the pious and generous voice of Mademoiselle de la Fayette had more influence; and, obedient to it, Louis XIII became reconciled for the time to his queen. The happy and unexpected consequence was the birth of a prince (afterwards Louis XIV) on the 5th of September following (1638). To this, however, the result was limited. Richelieu regained his ascendency over the king; the confessor was banished; Mademoiselle de la Fayette forgotten; and the queen, though no longer banished from the king’s presence, had as little share as before of his influence or friendship.

The fresh hold which Richelieu here took of the monarch’s confidence was owing, in a great measure, to the success of the war. In the beginning of the campaign two actions were fought at Rheinfelden, in the first of which the gallant duke de Rohan perished; in the second, the duke of Saxe Weimar defeated the imperials, and took their two generals, one of whom, the famous Johann von Werth, was sent to Paris. The principal consequence of this victory was the conquest of Breisach, the chief fortress of Alsace. The name of the town reminds us again of the celebrated Father Joseph, a Capuchin friar, the follower and confidant of Richelieu. We can scarcely imagine a statesman and an ambassador clothed in a monk’s frock and sandals: yet such was Father Joseph, a name more or less mingled in all the intrigues of the French court, and its negotiations with others. His influence was known, and he was dreaded by the court as a kind of evil spirit, in fact the demon of Richelieu. Although the latter never procured for his monkish friend the cardinal’s hat which he demanded, still the people called Father Joseph his “gray eminence,” at once to distinguish him from and assimilate him to his “red eminence” the cardinal. They had been friends from youth; congenial spirits in ambition, depth, and talent: the monk, however, sacrificed his personal elevation to that of the cardinal. Richelieu was much indebted to him: it was Joseph that roused and encouraged him, when stupefied and intimidated by the invasion of Picardy; and it has been claimed that after his death Richelieu showed neither the same firmness nor sagacity.[94] When Father Joseph was on his death-bed, Richelieu stood by it: it was a scene such as a novelist might love to paint. The conversation of the two ecclesiastics was still of this world; and the cardinal’s last exhortation to the expiring monk was, “Courage, Father Joseph, Breisach is ours!” a form of consolation characteristic of both.

REVOLT OF THE COUNT DE SOISSONS (1641 A.D.)

The count de Soissons, on the failure of his scheme against the cardinal, had taken refuge with the duke de Bouillon in Sedan. All the enemies of the latter, especially the exiles, looked towards this prince of the blood as the rallying-point, the support of their cause. Richelieu employed every art to pacify the count, remove his distrust, and entice him to court. All efforts proved vain; and Richelieu was even obliged to purchase the tranquillity of Soissons, and tolerate his independent posture. It was dangerous, however, to let such an example of disobedience subsist; and the cardinal at length sent an army, under the marshal De Châtillon, to reduce Sedan, and take or humble the count de Soissons. Châtillon was both valorous and skilful; but nothing could compensate for the ill humour and backwardness of the troops, who, with their officers, felt more inclined to a gallant prince of the blood than to the domineering cardinal. In an action that took place at La Marfée, near Sedan, the royal troops showed neither alacrity nor determination; and Châtillon, despite his efforts, was completely put to the rout. No obstacle seemed now to prevent the count de Soissons from marching to Paris, when the almost miraculous good fortune of Richelieu saved him from ruin. As Soissons rode over the field of battle, he pushed up his visor with his pistol; it was accidentally discharged, and the victor perished. Report did not fail to say that he was assassinated, and, of course, by the order of Richelieu; but there is no evidence to support such a rumour. Louis, who, on receiving tidings of the defeat, was preparing, with equanimity, to sacrifice the obnoxious minister, was now struck with his unvarying good fortune; and, with a superstitious feeling, bowed still lower to the cardinal’s will. The court did not share the monarch’s obsequiousness.[e]

CAILLET’S ESTIMATE OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF RICHELIEU

[Sidenote: [1624-1642 A.D.]]

Having regarded the great minister of Louis XIII as the politician who, after having conquered Protestantism and the reawakening of feudalism at home, continued abroad the work of Francis I and Henry IV, and finally subdued the power of Austria and laid the foundation of French ascendency in Europe, we hope now to show that Richelieu was as great an administrator as he was a politician, and that the sources of national wealth, as well as what was essential for sound administration, were subjects to which he gave deep and serious attention. It will be seen that he did not suffer the work of regeneration, begun by Henry IV and so disastrously interrupted by the dagger of the assassin Ravaillac, to fall to the ground. Undertaking in his boundless energy affairs of the most varied nature, this great genius gave a powerful impetus in every direction to the national activity, which, having been long restrained or wrongly directed, was ripe for producing great results.

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.

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.]

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XVIII. THE SUPREMACY OF MAZARIN

Any other nation, after its Mazarins, its Fouquets, its Louvois, so many wars, so many glories, so many heroes, so many rascals, would have stayed crushed and never arisen. Nevertheless, France still lives.--MICHELET.[b]

[Sidenote: [1643-1661 A.D.]]

Louis XIII had hastened to carry out all the provisions of Richelieu’s will. His own did not meet with the same fate, for its most important dispositions were immediately modified. While regretfully appointing Anne of Austria regent he had put strong restrictions upon her authority and provided that the partisans of Richelieu, Mazarin and the prince of Condé, were to control the government. He knew the queen had not been unaware of the conspiracies of the court, not even of that of Cinq-Mars, and that she had always listened to Richelieu’s enemies. Towards the end he had drawn nearer to her and his brother, but without granting them his confidence.

[Sidenote: [1643 A.D.]]

Scarcely had Louis closed his eyes when Mazarin resolved to give over the entire government to the queen. Unity and power seemed, to the cardinal, the most necessary thing: he came to an understanding with the bishop of Beauvais, almoner of the queen; he was able to persuade Gaston, Condé, and the other councillors, who withdrew opposition in consideration of the compensation offered them. Consequently, on the 18th of May, parliament met in extraordinary session; the peers were present. The queen attended with the young Louis XIV and held a bed of justice. On the express renunciation of the duke of Orleans and the prince of Condé the assembly unanimously set aside all the restrictions to the queen’s power, and decided that the title of lieutenant-general held by the duke of Orleans would be simply honorary.[c]

The queen-mother was now in her forty-second year. She inspired almost universal sympathy, by her good looks, agreeable manner, and previous misfortunes which now counted for virtues. Age had made her more sedate and more devout; her devotion, however, was still mingled with gallantry, but it was the serious romantic gallantry of Spain which is not incompatible with external dignity and reserve. Facile and genial in ordinary intercourse, but altogether impulsive and insincere when her passions were aroused; going when necessary as far as perjury--though doubtless with the resource of mental reservation--to extricate herself from a wrong step; intrepid by temperament, in spite of more than one act of moral cowardice; of an unconquerable stubbornness in her prejudices and in certain of her attachments, although sensitive to ingratitude; at the same time absolute by her temperament and her principles, and unable through inactivity to exercise the absolute power, her queenly nature was invaluable to a minister capable of making a favourable impression on her head and her heart.

Mazarin made an attack on both of these at the same time, and soon occupied an unshakable position with her. Their correspondence leaves doubt neither as to the passion which this minister expressed and which he inspired in the queen, nor as to the constancy which Anne had at least the merit of preserving in this last passion, which the progress of age did not extinguish.[96]

Mazarin was of the same age as the queen. We may recall his brilliant début as a diplomat thirteen years before, when before Casale he prevented two armies from falling upon each other. Since then he had remained faithfully attached to the interests of France, which had raised him to the cardinalate without his having received holy orders--he never was a priest.[97] He gave himself out to be a Roman nobleman. His enemies denied this, and asserted that his father, a Sicilian merchant, had taken refuge in the states of the holy father, after having gone bankrupt at Palermo. A. Renée[e] has investigated every version of the cardinal’s origin and concludes that his father, the son of a Sicilian artisan, came a fortune-seeker to Rome, where he became chamberlain to the constable Colonna. At all events the mind, the face, the complaisance, and the dexterity of the young Giulio Mazarini won him, at an early age, the patronage of some of the noble houses of Rome, and after having tried the sword, the young adventurer felt his vocation and assumed the soutane as a stepping-stone to diplomacy; at the age of twenty-eight he met Richelieu--we know the rest.

The character and the future of the fortunate Italian were still at this moment a problem for the court and for the public.[d] As yet he frightened no one. He was far from being believed as powerful and especially as much a master of the queen’s mind as he already was. He often spoke of returning to Italy. What then was the astonishment when, on the very evening of the bed of justice, it developed that Anne of Austria had designated him to preside over the council.[c]

It would take a simple mind indeed to believe that an event as foreseen as the death of the king should have taken the queen unawares, that she should not have known which way to turn, and that she should have seriously offered the power to this one or to that. The whole affair was certainly settled beforehand; and for what reason? By reason of her indolence, which told her that a bed already made was better to lounge on, sleep in, than a new arrangement which would oblige her to will, to think. She knew that, ready to set out from London, from Brussels, from Madrid, there was a crowd of exiles, calling themselves martyrs to the queen’s cause, who would demand the crown for their martyrdom. How to satisfy them? She was all ears to him who taught her the sweetness of ingratitude.

In this Mazarin was admirable. He often varied, but never on this point. His character offers the beauty of a well-sustained type which does not contradict itself. Ingrate towards Joseph and Chavigny, who made him in France, he got out of two scrapes during the Fronde by the same means--ingratitude towards Condé and then towards De Retz. Finally he crowned his life with what was worse than all--ingratitude towards the queen, his old-time sweetheart.

The puppets of Richelieu, odious, detested, the Chavignys, the Bouthilliers, were impossible; Mazarin was a stranger, with no ties in France, and ready to depart as soon as he had put the queen au courant. He was packing up his things. A good excuse for remaining. The queen appeared very uncertain. She consulted much, hesitated much. Finally Condé came to tell Mazarin, “ready to depart,” that the queen made him chief of the council, keeping also Chavigny and his father, the chancellor Séguier, the same who had conducted the inquiry against her in 1637.

A mortal blow for Beaufort and the Vendômes, the queen’s friends. When they demanded an explanation she said that Mazarin would not let her forget her friends, that he was au courant of affairs, a stranger, consequently the less dangerous, that he was amusing, but above all disinterested. This disinterestedness was so extreme, and the poor man remained so poor, that after a few years, when he was driven out and wished to return, he was able to raise an army with his own money![b]

BATTLE OF ROCROI (MAY 18TH-19TH, 1643 A.D.)

But before anything could happen, Paris was suddenly struck with a piece of good news which produced the very greatest effect. While under the last reign no great battle had been accomplished by the French armies, that of Louis XIV opened with the victory of Rocroi.

Francisco de Mello had advanced to the frontier of the Low Countries with 28,000 men, counting on profiting by the uncertainty into which the last illness and death of Louis XIII would plunge the French government. France had, on her side, an army in the field to observe him, and it was Louis XIII’s will that this army be placed in command of the duke d’Enghien, son of Condé, a young prince of twenty-two years, the choice of whom must attach his house all the more closely to the future regency. Enghien had served hitherto only as a volunteer; but he had been instructed, exercised, and formed in the best of schools. He had already shown in war a vigour and intelligence which everyone applauded. He inspired confidence both in his officers and his soldiers. They foresaw in him a great captain. As an adviser and to moderate his ardour he had been given an able lieutenant-general, Duhallier, become Marshal de l’Hôpital, and several excellent maréchaux de camp, Gassion, La Ferté-Senneterre, and Sirot.

The Spaniards entered Champagne, and besieged Rocroi. The place, important by its situation at the head of the Ardennes, was in no condition to resist. Enghien, having collected between St. Quentin and Guise 14,000 infantry and 6,000 horse, marched to its relief. On the way he learned of Louis XIII’s death, but the news did not stop him. He resolved to give battle to relieve the tedium of methodic warfare--this was also the advice of Gassion and Sirot. On the 18th of May he arrived before the Spaniards, who, protected by woods through which the French had to pass, were not expecting to see them appear; and the time they took to range themselves for battle permitted the French prince to approach. The day was far advanced and he contented himself with a small amount of cannonading. The next day Enghien ordered the attack at daybreak, for he wished to forestall the arrival of a corps which General Beck was bringing to Francisco de Mello. He himself, with Gassion, charged at the head of the right wing and routed the enemy. The left wing, commanded by Marshal de l’Hôpital and La Ferté-Senneterre, had less success. It disputed its ground but was badly used. Enghien and Gassion, victorious on the right, did not neglect their advantages. They immediately fell upon the Spanish division which was in action with De l’Hôpital, the moment at which, thinking itself victorious, it began to break ranks and was running to pillage the tents of the French. Sirot, in command of the reserves, received the order to advance, and he waited to execute it until the very moment when Enghien and Gassion should have renewed the contest. Then he gave it, and the victory was decided. The two divisions of the enemy broken and put to flight, there yet remained the Spanish reserve infantry which formed a square battalion difficult to penetrate. It was composed of picked veterans and commanded by the old count de Fuentes, who had to be carried in a litter at the head of his soldiers. The victorious Enghien threw himself upon the square, dealt it several sharp attacks, and finally broke it by attacking its rear and flanks while his cannon thundered upon it.[c]

The massacre was appalling. Moved to pity, the duke d’Enghien threw himself between the two armies, commanding his men to spare the vanquished. “All the Spanish infantry,” says La Moussaie, “crowded round him and his commanding officers, seeking shelter from the fury of the French, and more particularly of the Swiss, who could not bring themselves to make prisoners of any.” After giving orders to the prisoners’ guard, the prince collected his troops and prepared to receive Beck, should he have the courage to meet him on the plain. But Gassion shortly returned from his pursuit of the enemy and informed the duke that he had nothing to fear from the German general. Beck had not even passed beyond the edge of the wood, being content with rallying the fugitives, and at the approach of Gassion’s cavalry he had fled precipitately towards Luxemburg.

Seeing his triumph thus complete, the duke d’Enghien, with the Christian piety that never forsook him even in battle, fell on his knees, in company with his whole army, and gave thanks to God for the victory. Thus ended one of the most bloody and most glorious days in the history of France. The battle had lasted four hours. The Spanish army left 8,000 dead upon the field, and 6,000 prisoners in the hands of the French. Among the slain was the brave count de Fuentes. Don Francisco de Mello had been made a prisoner for a few moments, but he managed to escape and took refuge at Mariembourg, then at Philippeville, where he collected the fragments of the Spanish army. Two hundred flags and sixty standards fell into the hands of the French. The Spanish baggage wagons were plundered and were found to contain all the money destined for the pay of the troops. The French lost about two thousand men.[f]

Enghien possessed the power of prompt decision and knew the value of time. He turned his victory to good account by marching immediately upon Thionville, the possession of which was of extreme importance to the Three Bishoprics and at the siege of which Feuquières had come to grief in 1639. Mazarin approved his plan and furnished all that was necessary for the siege. Instead of proceeding with that methodical regularity learned from the Dutch, Enghien pressed his attacks; they were very deadly, especially for the officers, but his plan was to reach his end the more quickly, to astonish the enemy, and to avoid sickness, which was more fatal than artillery in prolonged sieges. Thionville surrendered the 8th of August. The little town of Sierck, which commanded Luxemburg, capitulated a few days later.

Enghien was placed at a bound above all the captains employed by Richelieu. The French army, formed by eight successive years of campaigns, equal at least to those of neighbouring nations, leaving nothing to be desired in instruction, experience of its officers, discipline, good administration, or material organisation, had finally found a leader worthy of it. Enghien, with his eagle glance, great promptitude of execution, and an ardour which he knew how to moderate, disconcerted the rational and prudent tactics of the enemy’s generals. The battle of Rocroi bore witness to the military progress of France, and dealt a serious blow to the prestige of the Spanish armies, when Spain had, for three years, been seeing her power shaken and her resources weakened.[c]

THE IMPORTANTS (1643 A.D.)

The return of Mazarin to power was received with surprise and mortification by the returned exiles, the enemies of Richelieu, those who had deemed themselves possessed of the heart and confidence of the queen. They were for the most part young men, such as the duke de Beaufort, and a host of noble striplings, who were all, nevertheless, profound statesmen in their own esteem.

With pretensions to govern, they found it necessary to alter or conceal their juvenile and frivolous habits; they affected to be grave and sententious, and some even thought it necessary to give time to study and reflection; a whim, the characteristic and beneficial consequences of which are seen in the Mémoires of De Retz and the Maximes of the duke de la Rochefoucauld. The latter was at this time one of the young friends of the queen. Despite the talents that some of these youths afterwards displayed, their present pretensions and demeanour were considered as absurd, and the party was ironically called les Importants, that of the “important.” On the side opposed to them were drawn up Cardinal Mazarin, the old partisans of Richelieu, and, amongst the noblesse, the prince of Condé and his gallant son, the duke d’Enghien.

The queen-regent, as became her position, affected neutrality, but supported her newly chosen minister. The importants, however, hoped to regain the ascendency through the means of Anne of Austria’s old favourite, Madame de Chevreuse, who was now returning from her long exile. This lady had once been all-powerful with the queen: her misfortunes, occasioned by that attachment, gave her, she thought, an increase of claim; she totally put out of consideration how far the policy of a regent might interfere with the affections of a queen, and her party pretensions were as high as her resentments. She was warmly and cordially welcomed back by Anne; Mazarin hastened to conciliate her, and commenced by placing 50,000 crowns before her, asking if he might count her amongst his friends. Madame de Chevreuse required the dismissal of Chavigny, and the cardinal instantly consented to sacrifice the secretary: then came the great demands of the party, viz., that Sedan should be restored to the duke de Bouillon, the government of Brittany to the duke de Vendôme, and that of Guienne to young Épernon; Le Havre, too, was required for the future duke de la Rochefoucauld.

These demands were no less than to re-constitute the power and independence of the grandees, that Richelieu had spent his life and steeped his memory in blood in order to reduce. Anne of Austria and Mazarin, now in the place of authority held by Richelieu, could not but see with his eyes: the adroit Mazarin, however, did not give to Madame de Chevreuse the flat and peremptory denial that would have come from Richelieu’s mouth; he looked complaisant and yielding, and drew on the negotiatrix of the importants to fresh pretensions. One of these was to supersede the chancellor Séguier by Châteauneuf. Now Châteauneuf had presided at the commission which condemned the duke de Montmorency, and to favour him would be to outrage the princess of Condé, sister of that duke. Mazarin pretended to stand out on this point, hesitatingly, no doubt; Madame de Chevreuse insisted; and the cardinal, determined to break with a party whose pretensions were exorbitant, and which sought to replace the aristocracy on its old footing of superiority to government and ministry, affected to break with them rather than insult the family of Condé; thus securing powerful support, and averting the suspicions of the young noblesse from the political jealousy which he bore them.

A rupture was declared; and a lady’s quarrel soon afterwards occurred to precipitate hostilities, and give the minister a pretext for acting. The duchess de Longueville, of the family of Condé, and one of the beauties of the court, was maligned by Madame de Montbazon, sister-in-law of Madame de Chevreuse. The latter found a billet-doux in the handwriting of the former, and addressed, she asserted, to the count de Coligny. This piece of scandal or calumny convulsed the entire circle of influential personages. The duke d’Enghien challenged the duke de Beaufort; the Duke of Guise and the count de Coligny fought in the Place Royal, Madame de Longueville being spectatress of the discomfiture of her chevalier, who died of his wounds. The queen in vain endeavoured to bring about an accommodation. The importants were too deeply mortified, and nothing short of the disgrace of the cardinal would satisfy them. The queen peremptorily refusing this, the duke de Beaufort entered into a scheme for making away with the cardinal by violence. Circumstances occurred to baffle and interrupt the design. Épernon was sounded in the meantime by one of the conspirators, and he instantly betrayed it. The duke de Beaufort was consequently arrested on the following day. Mesdames de Montbazon and Chevreuse were both exiled, as well as the duke and duchess of Vendôme, the dukes of Guise and Mercœur, and other less illustrious nobles. Here is the exculpation of Richelieu, and the excuse of his severity. No sooner is Anne of Austria, his rival and enemy, in the place of power, than she is obliged to adopt his policy and his strong measures, notwithstanding that such acts did violence to her private feelings. She wept on ordering the arrest of Beaufort; but, like the late monarch, she was compelled to sacrifice her feelings to her own interest and that of the state. The reign of the importants lasted three months and a half.

[Sidenote: [1643-1647 A.D.]]

The four years which succeeded 1643 were years of tranquillity to the regent, triumph to Mazarin, and glory to France. The petulance of the noblesse was checked by the discomfiture of the importants. Mazarin, instead of imitating Richelieu and reigning by terror alone, sought to captivate by giving scope to pleasure, and creating a general taste for light and social amusements. He encouraged fêtes and gallantry. He was prodigal of favours, of money, of everything save authority. He bound the noblesse, and their more froward dames and mistresses, in golden and in flowery chains; and those who a year before were clamouring for independent governments, then limited their ambition to a duke’s title. The sage La Rochefoucauld himself has recorded in his Mémoires[m] how he pleaded for this important distinction, in order, as he observes, that his wife might enjoy the privilege of a tabouret or stool at court.[g]

THE EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG KING

Louis XIV, born September 5th, 1638, had now (1645) completed his seventh year; that being the age at which kings passed from the control of women to the control of men, it became necessary to provide him with a governor and a tutor. To Cardinal Mazarin the queen desired to hand over the supreme control of Louis’ bringing up, and for that purpose created for him the post of superintendent of the king’s education.

Several contemporary writers have reproached Mazarin with having directed the education of the young Louis carelessly. La Porte, a groom of the bed-chamber to the king, accused the cardinal of having no other dream than to obtain empire over the young prince’s will by surrounding him with his own family and partisans. Madame de Motteville,[k] without being quite so prejudiced, claims that he thwarted the good intentions of the young prince’s governor, the marquis de Villeroi. Nevertheless, an entry in the note-books proves that even as early as 1647 Mazarin exerted himself to remove from the prince such persons as he thought dangerous. In the case of François de Rochechouart, who enjoyed an old-established credit with the queen, Mazarin declared that a place must not be given him near the king; “for,” he writes, “his incessant flatteries are extremely prejudicial to the king, and prompt him to regard with great displeasure those who speak the truth to him.” Yet one must recognise that during a long period the cardinal, absorbed in politics, paid little heed to the king’s education. It was only during the later years of his life that, having reached the summit of power and glory, he helped by his counsels to inspire in the young Louis habits of order, of regular work, of strong and tenacious will, of supreme and authoritative government. Judging by results, this education was far from being sterile. The king’s governor, intrusted to accompany him everywhere, to watch over his safety and direct his actions, was Nicolas de Neufville, first marquis, then duke and marshal, de Villeroi. This individual had gained a certain renown in war, but it was pre-eminently as a clever and pliant courtier that he shone. He was a willing tool in the hands of the minister. It seems that his rôle was limited to winning the young king’s good graces, to teaching him the ways and manners of the court, in which he himself excelled, and to giving him for companion and favourite his own son, François de Neufville-Villeroi, who became in his turn Duke-Marshal de Villeroi.

The post of tutor was filled by Hardouin de Beaumont de Péréfixe, doctor of the Sorbonne, who ultimately became archbishop of Paris, and to whom we owe a History of Henry IV written for the instruction of Louis XIV. The classical education of the young king was meagre. Madame de Motteville[k] tells us “he was made to translate Cæsar’s Commentaries; he learned to dance, to draw, and to ride, and he was very skilful in all bodily exercises.” The Venetian ambassador, Nani, asserts that the tutor did neglect to teach the young king the principles of virtue.[f]

MILITARY GLORY (1644-1648 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1644-1648 A.D.]]

The year 1644 is marked by the brilliant manœuvres of the duke of Enghien and Turenne.[g] After the capture of Sierck, Enghien drove the Germans back across the Rhine, and crossed after them; he hastened to repair the losses and defeats which the French had met with on the frontier after the death of Marshal de Guébriant, which had occurred at the siege of Rottweil in Swabia (1643). [Guébriant’s army, now badly led by several leaders, had allowed itself to be surprised by the imperials at Tuttlingen.] Enghien found Freiburg im Breisgau taken and the Bavarian general Mercy beneath its walls with an army greater than his own. Enghien had two marshals of France under him, of whom one was Grammont and the other Turenne, who had just been created marshal after having served brilliantly in Piedmont against the Spaniards. The duke and his two generals attacked Mercy’s camp intrenched on two heights. The battle recommenced three times on three different days (August 3rd-5th, 1644). It is said that the duke of Enghien threw his commander’s baton into the enemy’s entrenchments and, sword in hand, went after it at the head of the Conti regiment.[98] The battle of Freiburg, more bloody than decisive, was the duke’s second victory. Mercy decamped four days afterwards. Philippsburg, Worms, and Mainz were the proof and the fruit of the victory.

Enghien returned to Paris, received the acclamation of the people and demanded recompense of the court; leaving his army to the prince-marshal Turenne. But this general, skilful as he was, was beaten at Marienthal (May, 1645). Enghien hastened back to his troops, resumed the command, and joined to the glory of again commanding Turenne that of repairing his defeat. He attacked Mercy on the plains of Nördlingen, and won a great battle early in August. Marshal de Grammont was captured, but so was General Glen who commanded under Mercy, and the latter himself was among the slain. Mercy, who has been reckoned among the great captains of his time, was buried close to the battle-field, and on his tomb was graven, “Sta Viator; Heroem Calcas” (Halt traveller, thou treadest on a hero).

The name of the duke d’Enghien[99] now eclipsed all others. In October, 1646, he besieged Dunkirk in sight of the Spanish army, and was the first to give that place to the French. Such success and such service brought forth less reward than suspicion in the court, and made him as much feared by the ministry as by the enemy. Condé [as we must now call him] was therefore withdrawn from the scenes of this conquest and glory and sent into Catalonia with inefficient and ill-paid troops. He besieged Lerida, but was obliged to raise the siege (1647). A wavering state of affairs soon forced the court to recall the prince to Flanders. The archduke Leopold, brother of the emperor Ferdinand III, was besieging Lens in Artois. Condé, restored to the troops which had always been victorious under him, led them straight for the archduke. This was the third time he had given battle with disadvantage in numbers. He spoke to his soldiers these simple words: “Friends, remember Rocroi, Freiburg, and Nördlingen!”[100] (August 20th, 1648).

He himself relieved Marshal de Grammont, who was about to surrender with the left wing; he captured General Beck. The archduke saved himself with difficulty with the count of Fuensaldaña. The imperials and the Spaniards composing the army were scattered; they lost more than a hundred banners and thirty-eight pieces of cannon, which was a considerable number for that time. Five thousand prisoners were taken; three thousand men were killed; the rest deserted and the archduke was left without an army. Never since the foundation of the monarchy had the French won so many battles in succession, and ones so noted for military ability and courage.

While the prince of Condé was thus counting the years of his youth in victories, and the duke of Orleans, brother of Louis XIII, was upholding the reputation of a son of Henry IV and of France by the capture of Gravelines (July, 1644), Courtrai, and Mardyck (November, 1644), the viscount de Turenne had taken Landau, had driven the Spaniards from Treves, and re-established the elector. In November, 1647, with the help of the Swedes under Wrangel, Torstenson’s successor, he won the battle of Lawingen, and that of Zusmarshausen (May, 1648). He compelled the elector of Bavaria to leave his states, at the age of almost eighty. The count d’Harcourt took Balaguer and beat the Spaniards. They lost Porto Longone in Italy (1646). Twenty vessels and twenty galleys of France, which composed almost the whole navy as re-established by Richelieu, defeated the Spanish fleet off the Italian coast.

This was not all. The French arms had again invaded Lorraine; and Duke Charles IV, a warrior prince, but an inconstant, rash, and unfortunate one, saw himself at the same time deprived of his state by France and kept prisoner by the Spaniards (May, 1644). The allies of France pressed the Austrian power on the north and south. The duke of Albuquerque, the Portuguese general, won the battle of Badajoz from Spain in March, 1645. Torstenson defeated the imperials near Tabor and obtained a complete victory. The prince of Orange, at the head of the Dutch, penetrated as far as Brabant.

The king of Spain, beaten on every side, saw Roussillon and Catalonia in the hands of the French. Naples in revolt against him had just given itself into the hands of the duke of Guise, the last prince of that branch of a house fruitful in illustrious and dangerous men. This one, who had passed only for a bold adventurer, because he did not succeed, had at least the glory of boarding single-handed a bark in the midst of the Spanish fleet and of defending Naples with no other resource than his own courage.

At the sight of so many misfortunes crushing the house of Austria, so many victories accumulated by the French, seconded by the success of their allies, one would have believed that Vienna and Madrid were only waiting to open their gates, and that the emperor and the king of Spain were almost without dominions. Nevertheless these five years of glory, crossed with only a few reverses, brought few real advantages and much spilled blood, but no revolution. If one was to be feared it was for France. She was on the verge of ruin in the midst of this apparent prosperity.[i]

TREATY OF WESTPHALIA (1648 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1641-1648 A.D.]]

Negotiations for peace had been going on for a long time. Proposed in 1641, conferences were opened April 10th, 1643, in two Westphalian cities--Münster and Osnabrück. The questions for consideration were the altering of the map of Europe after a thirty years’ war; of providing the empire with a new constitution; and of regulating the civil and religious rights of the several Christian nations. France was represented at this congress by able negotiators, the count d’Avaux and Abel Servien; but her best diplomats were Condé and Turenne, whose swords had simplified the negotiations by rendering peace a necessity. At the last moment Spain withdrew, hoping to profit by the troubles of the Fronde, then commencing in France. The other countries, in haste to have finished, signed the peace (October 24th, 1648).

During the Thirty Years’ War Austria had striven to stifle religious and political liberty in Germany. Austria being defeated, that against which she had fought remained and increased. The Protestants obtained full liberty of conscience, and imperial authority, but lately threatening, was annulled; the princes of the German states, confirmed in the exercise of complete authority over their territories, had the right of alliance with foreign powers so long as these alliances (so read a vain restriction) were “against neither the emperor nor the empire.”

The two powers which had achieved the defeat of Austria had stipulated for themselves important indemnities. Sweden gained the island of Rügen, Wismar, western Pomerania with Stettin, the archbishopric of Bremen, and the bishopric of Verden--that is to say, the mouths of the three great German rivers, the Oder, the Elbe, and the Weser--with 5,000,000 crowns and three votes in the diet. France continued to occupy Lorraine, promising to restore it to its duke when he should have complied with her conditions. She obtained the empire’s renunciation of all right over the Three Bishoprics--Metz, Toul, and Verdun, which she had possessed for a century; over the town of Pinerolo, ceded by the duke of Savoy in 1631; over Alsace, which was now--with the exception of Strasburg--given to France, carrying her boundaries beyond the Vosges as far as the Rhine. She also obtained Breisach, on the right bank of that river, and her right to garrison Philippsburg was recognised; the right of navigation on the Rhine was guaranteed her.

These were great advantages; because, by recovering Alsace, France covered Lorraine on the side of Germany and established herself to the north of Franche-Comté, which since Henry IV she had enveloped on the south; so that the return to France of these two provinces was only a question of time. Not only were her frontiers now better outlined for defence, but she was able to maintain an offensive position. By the acquisition of Pinerolo France planted a foot beyond the Alps in Italy; by Breisach and Philippsburg, beyond the Rhine in Germany. By opening the eyes of the German states to their right to contract foreign alliances France was always able to buy over one or another of their indigent princes, and by guaranteeing the execution of the treaty, she gave herself the right to interfere in German affairs. The empire--being now no more than a sort of confederation of 360 states, Lutheran and Catholic, monarchical and republican, laical and ecclesiastical--became of necessity the theatre for all sorts of intrigues, the battle-field of Europe, as Italy had been at the beginning of modern times, and for the same reasons--division and anarchy.

The Treaty of Westphalia, which was the foundation for all diplomatic conventions from the middle of the seventeenth century until the French Revolution, put an end to the supremacy of the house of Austria, and rescued the independence of the small states. If the Bourbons had not inherited the ambition of the Habsburgs, and roused against themselves the same coalitions, the Peace of Westphalia would have accomplished the supremacy of France and the political liberty of Europe.

MAZARIN’S DOMESTIC POLICY

[Sidenote: [1646-1648 A.D.]]

While Mazarin gloriously continued the policy of Richelieu, his power in France was being destroyed by factions.[h]

At first he used his power with moderation. He affected, at the beginning of his supremacy, as much of simplicity as Richelieu had displayed of arrogance. Far from employing guards, and keeping up royal splendour, he had at first the most modest retinue. He was affable and even gentle where his predecessor had shown inflexible pride.

But with all this, taxation was necessary to maintain the war against the Spaniards and against the emperor. The finances of France were, since the death of Henry IV, as badly administered as those of Spain and Germany. The excise offices were in chaos, ignorance was extreme, thievery was paramount. The revenue of the state amounted during the first year of the regency to between fifteen and sixteen million livres. This was quite sufficient if there had been any economy in the ministry; but in 1646 and 1647 there were deficits. The superintendent of the finances was at times a Sienese peasant named Particelli Émery, whose soul was even baser than his birth, and whose extravagance and debauchery aroused the nation to indignation. This man invented burdensome and ridiculous expedients. He created and sold posts of inspectors of fagots, of licensed hay venders, of king’s councillors, of wine hawkers; he sold letters of nobility. The debts on the Hôtel-de-Ville at Paris then amounted to only about eleven millions, but the fund-holders were deprived of several quarterly dividends; import duties were increased; several posts of masters of requests (to whom all petitions were intrusted) were created; about eighty thousand crowns of magistrates’ salaries were held back.

It is easy to realise how far the minds of the people were aroused against two Italians, both come penniless to France, who had enriched themselves at the expense of the nation and who now had such a hold over them. The parliament of Paris, the masters of requests, the other courts, the fund-holders, rebelled. In vain did Mazarin remove his confidant Émery from office and relegate him to one of his estates--there was indignation that this man should have estates in France. The cardinal was held in abhorrence, although at this very moment he was consummating the great work of the Peace of Westphalia; for it must be noted that this famous treaty and the “day of barricades” are of the same year, 1648. The civil wars began at Paris as they had begun in England, over a little money. In 1647 the parliament of Paris, in verifying the tax edicts, showed itself spiritedly opposed to them. It acquired the confidence of the people by remonstrances which were very wearying to the ministry. But it did not revolt. Its spirit became embittered and hardened by degrees. The populace might rush to arms at once and choose a leader as they had done with Masaniello at Naples; but magistrates and statesmen proceed with more deliberation, and begin by observing the proprieties as far as party spirit will permit.

Cardinal Mazarin had thought that by skilfully dividing the magistracy he would prevent all troubles, but his cunning was met with inflexibility. He withdrew four years’ salary from all the higher courts, at the same time remitting the paulette; that is to say, exempting the judges from paying the tax devised by Paulet under Henry IV for assuring the magistrates the permanency of their posts and permitting them to sell them. This retrenchment was not an injury, but he did not withdraw the four years’ salary from parliament, thinking to disarm it by this favour. But parliament scorned this mark of grace which exposed it to the reproach of preferring its interests to those of the others; and it did not hesitate to issue an arrêt d’union with the other courts of justice. Mazarin, who was never able to pronounce French, having said that this arrêt d’ognon was an attacking measure, and having had it vetoed by the council, this single word ognon made him ridiculous, and as one never yields to one that is scorned, parliament became more active.

It loudly demanded that all the intendants regarded by the people as extortioners should be recalled, and that the new kind of magistracy instituted under Louis XIII, without the procedure of ordinary forms, should be abolished. This was to please the nation as much as to irritate the court. It desired that, according to the ancient law, no citizen should be put in prison without his natural judges knowing of it within twenty-four hours.

Parliament did more; it abolished the intendants by a decree with orders to the king’s prosecutors in its jurisdiction to inform against them. Thus the hatred of the ministry, supported by the love of the public weal, threatened the court with a revolution. The queen yielded; she abandoned the intendants and asked only that three be retained. In this she was refused. While these troubles were brewing the prince of Condé won the famous victory at Lens, which crowned his glory. The king, who was only ten years old, exclaimed, “Parliament will be very sorry!” These words make it sufficiently evident that the court looked upon the parliament of Paris as an assembly of rebels. Indeed, the cardinal and his courtiers gave it no other name. But the more the parliamentarians were treated as rebels the more resistance they made.[i]

This state of affairs between ruling power and the parliament expressing the feelings of the people brings us to that remarkable revolt known as the Fronde, “the last echo of the civil wars of the sixteenth century.”

“The origin of the name,” says Martin,[d] “seems to have been the comparison made between the young and turbulent conseillers aux enquêtes and the urchins who gathered in the city ditches to indulge in mimic fights with slings (frondes). The malcontents adopted the name of frondeurs, and longed for the glory of ‘slinging the court well’ (bien fronder la cour). The first to adopt this title of frondeur was, it is said, the councillor Bachaumont, son of the president Le Coigneux.” Kitchin[q] says that the name of the Fronde was first adopted by the coadjutor to the archbishop of Paris, Paul de Gondi, of whom we shall presently speak. “The young lords and dames,” says Crowe,[g] “who afterwards embraced the party, willingly adopted a name which so well characterised their petulance, and sportive rather than serious rebellion.” But the Fronde, sportive though it may have been to the nobles, was the cause of immense misery to the people. Famine and pest walked in its train and the country was enormously depopulated.[a]

FIRST INSURRECTION OF THE FRONDE (1648 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1648 A.D.]]

The queen and the cardinal resolved to arrest three of the most stubborn magistrates of the parliament: Novion Blancménil president of a court of justice, Charton president of a court of inquiry, and Broussel former councillor-clerk of the grand chamber. They were the tools of party leaders and not leaders themselves. Charton, a man of very limited abilities, was known by the nickname of “I say this,” because he always opened and closed his remarks with those words. Broussel had nothing to recommend him but his white hairs, his hatred for the ministry, and a reputation for always raising his voice against the court no matter on what subject. His confrères paid little attention to him, but the populace idolised him.

Instead of arresting them without any hubbub in the silence of the night, the cardinal thought to impress the people by having them arrested in broad daylight, on August 26th, 1648, while the Te Deum was being sung at Notre Dame for the victory of Lens and the Swiss of the chamber were carrying into the church the seventy-three banners taken from the enemy. It was precisely this plan that caused the ruin of the kingdom. Charton escaped, Blancménil was taken without difficulty, but it was not the same with Broussel. An old servant, seeing her master thrown into a coach by Comminges, a lieutenant of the bodyguard, collected a mob. It surrounded the coach, which was smashed to pieces; but the French guards lent assistance to Comminges and got Broussel away from his friends. He was taken out on the road to Sedan. The arrest, far from intimidating the people, irritated and emboldened them. Shops were closed. The great iron chains which at that time were at the entrance to the principal streets were stretched across them; barricades were built, and four hundred thousand throats cried “Liberty and Broussel!”[i]

The marshal de la Meilleraie with two hundred guards tried to disperse them; he drove some back to the Pont Neuf, where his progress was impeded, and where he met Paul de Gondi, coadjutor of the archbishop of Paris, so famous later under the name of Cardinal de Retz, who had rushed out in his robes amongst the mob. After having harangued and momentarily tranquillised the populace, De Retz hurried with the marshal to the Palais Royal, to represent the alarming state of the city to the queen. Anne of Austria, who knew the coadjutor’s character, suspected him as one more likely to throw oil than water on the flame. “It is rebellion itself to imagine that the people can rebel,” said she; “you would have me deliver Broussel; I will first strangle him with these hands.” This resentment, seconded by the jeers of the court, had the ill effect of converting De Retz into a dangerous enemy.[g]

The Day of the Barricades (August 27th, 1648)

It is difficult to reconcile all the details of what followed, related by Cardinal de Retz,[j] Madame de Motteville,[k] Advocate-General Talon, and many others; but all agree upon the principal points. During the night which followed the riot the queen had about two thousand troopers, quartered a few leagues from Paris, come into the city to protect the king’s residence. The chancellor Séguier had already proceeded to the parliament accompanied by a lieutenant and several archers to quash all its decrees and even, it is said, to suspend that body.

But during that very night the factionists assembled at the house of De Retz, and everything was arranged to arm the city. The chancellor’s coach was stopped and overturned. He escaped with difficulty, with his daughter the duchess de Sully, who in spite of him had insisted on accompanying him. He retired in disorder into the hôtel de Luynes, jostled and insulted by the populace. The civil lieutenant now took him into his coach, and escorted by two Swiss companies and a squadron of gendarmes attempted to bring him to the Palais Royal. The people fired on them; several were killed and the duchess de Sully was wounded in the arm.

Two hundred barricades were formed in an instant; they were pushed to within a hundred paces of the Palais Royal. The soldiers, after seeing several of their number fall, retreated and looked to see what the bourgeois were going to do. The parliament marched on foot in a body to the queen, across the barricades which were lowered before it, and demanded the liberation of its imprisoned members. The queen was obliged to set them free.[i]

The barricades were immediately levelled, and the people ceased their turbulence and clamour. “Never was disorder more orderly managed,” says Madame de Motteville;[k] “the citizens who had taken up arms to prevent the ascendency of the rabble and to check pillage were little more peaceable than the populace itself, and roared for the liberation of Broussel with equal violence.” The court in yielding had but temporised, however; and it soon made its escape from the capital to St. Germain. Such was the first insurrection of the Fronde.[g]

Cardinal de Retz has boasted of having all by himself armed the whole of Paris on that day (August 27th, 1648), which has been called the “Day of the Barricades” and which was the second of its kind. This singular man is the first bishop of France to plan a civil war without religion for a pretext. He has described himself in his Mémoires,[j] written in a grandiose manner with the impetuosity of genius and an unevenness which are the mirror of his conduct. He was a man who, from the depths of debauchery and the infamous consequences which it brings, preached to the people and made them idolise him. He breathed faction and conspiracy; he had been at the age of twenty-three the soul of a conspiracy against the life of Richelieu; he was the author of the barricades; he precipitated parliament into cabals and the people into seditions. His extreme vanity made him undertake bold crimes in order that they might be talked about. It was this same vanity that made him repeat so often, “I am of a house of Florence as ancient as that of the greatest princes”[101]--he whose ancestors had been merchants like so many of his compatriots.[i]

The hopes of the queen were now in the young prince of Condé. But that young hero, though opposed to the party of the importants, was not yet prepared to martyrise his popularity for Mazarin. He proposed his mediation. Mazarin accepted it, well knowing how soon the hot prince would lose patience at the formal and democratic pleadings of the parliamentary statesmen. De Retz, now the leading man of the popular party, made every effort to gain Condé, who replied, “My name is Louis de Bourbon: I will not shake the throne.” Through his means negotiations were entered into with the court; the elders of the parliament, and Molé, the president, at their head, being anxious to avoid a civil war, whilst the violent party, bestowing on the pacific chiefs the nickname of barbons, pushed matters to extremities. They had revived an old law, passed after the fall of the marshal D’Ancre, which prohibited the administration of the kingdom by foreigners, thus aiming at Mazarin. Still a second accommodation took place: a royal declaration, dated the 28th of October [the very day of the signing of the Peace of Westphalia], accepted the principal articles of the plan of reformation, and the court returned to the capital.

[Sidenote: [1648-1649 A.D.]]

This proved but a hollow truce, entered into by both parties out of respect for Condé, whom both feared and both hoped to gain. The popular party was suspicious; De Retz continued his intrigues; whilst the queen urged Condé to make preparations for defending the royal authority by force. It has been the fate of all attempts to establish liberty in France to be frustrated, not by the opposition of the aristocracy, but by their affecting to abet and adopt its principles.

In the Fronde, the magistracy of Paris, supported by the citizens, endeavoured to supply the want of a national assembly. They framed a constitution; forced it on the court without effusion of blood; and might have succeeded in upholding and perhaps ameliorating it, when the young noblesse interfered, drove the citizens to insurrection first, then to submission, and for the sake of their selfish quarrels, which all their light-heartedness and valour cannot redeem, they sacrificed the last hope that the French had of even a degree of liberty; they pierced the last plank that shut out the overwhelming ocean of despotism. We certainly, of the present day, can look but with a small degree of hope or approbation on a judicial body which grasps at legislative power. But had the noblesse known its true interests, and acted its natural part of mediator, the states-general might have superseded the parliament in its political functions; the moderation of the provincial deputies would have tempered the ardour of the capital, and the ever consecutive extremes of insurrection and pusillanimous submission might both have been avoided.

The old party of the importants now roused itself. The duke de Beaufort escaped from prison. The duke de Bouillon, smarting under the loss of Sedan, joined counsels with him; and both intrigued with the violent men in the parliament to form an insurrection against the court. The duchess de Longueville brought her charms to support the same cause: these decided La Rochefoucauld, her lover, to adopt it. She used all her influence to the same effect with her brother Condé in vain. In default of him, the prince of Conti, his brother, was won over. No cause could subsist, in the opinion of these gentlemen, unless it could boast the name of a prince of the blood. The duchess de Chevreuse, though still in exile, corresponded with the party, and promised to it the accession of the princes of Lorraine. Madame de Montbazon was found united in the same cause with her rival, Madame de Longueville. The marshal D’Hocquincourt offered the strong and important fortress which he commanded, in homage to the charms of the former. “Péronne,” wrote he to her, “is at the disposal of the fairest of the fair.” A crowd of nobles gaily joined the conspiracy; and the court was once more obliged to make its escape from Paris, and retire to St. Germain, in January 1649.[102]

Strong and extreme measures were at last resolved upon, although not prepared with that vigour and foresight that Richelieu would have displayed. Troops, under Condé and the duke of Orleans, prepared to invest Paris, and occupied on either side of the city the bridges of Charenton and St. Cloud; but with only 12,000 men, the utmost of the royalist force, it was impossible to invest the metropolis. A royal order, commanding the parliament to retire to Montargis, was treated by them with contempt. A civic guard was raised, to the number of 12,000, the chief officers, it is remarkable, being lawyers and officers of parliament; the provost of the merchants, however, retained the supreme command. In addition to these, a stipendiary force of 20,000 men was raised in a few days, by means of a house tax, fixed at so much for every plain house-door, and double the sum for the gate which admitted a carriage. The noblesse did not forget their petty ambition, even in adopting the bourgeois cause. The duke d’Elbeuf had first seized on the chief command, and was reluctant to yield it to the prince of Conti. The duke de Beaufort, however, was the most popular chief, owing to his affable manners and handsome person. He was called the roi des halles (the king of the markets). The war, if it can be called such, commenced by the attack of the Bastille, at which the ladies of the party assisted. It surrendered gallantly to these fascinating adversaries. On his side, Condé began to press towards the walls; and some skirmishes took place, in which a few were slain, amongst others the duke de Châtillon.

Two circumstances soon after occurred that much altered the views and shook the resolutions of the court. One was the defection of Turenne, who, won over by his brother the duke de Bouillon, promised to march the army, which he commanded on the Rhine, to the support of the Fronde; the other was the connection of the frondeur nobles with Spain, and the public reception by the parliament of an envoy from that power. This savoured of the inveteracy of the league. The elder magistrates, and principally Molé the president, indignant at this alliance with the enemies of the country, began to exert themselves to frustrate the violent projects of the young noblesse, and to seek an accommodation with the court. The majority of the parliament, already disgusted with the froward, frivolous, and arrogant behaviour of the nobles, came so far into the same views, that Molé himself, with some of his brethren, was despatched to the queen at Ruel, to essay an accommodation. The court grasped at the opportunity, but still negotiated for advantages; whilst Bouillon stirred the populace of Paris against the moderation of the parliament, and urged the alliance with Spain. Molé, determined to disappoint the ambitious duke, signed a treaty with the court in haste, on the 11th of March, ere Turenne could arrive, or Spain despatch its aid.

Great was the indignation of the populace, and of the seditious leaders, at the news of this peace. All cried out treason. Bouillon was confounded, and De Retz perplexed. Molé knew that he risked his life by thus balking the seditious ardour of both the nobles and the mob; but the thought gave him courage, not hesitation. The critical moment was that of declaring the treaty to the assembled parliament. A ferocious crowd, crying “Treason! no peace! no Mazarin!” surrounded the Palais de Justice; and the throng within its walls was scarcely less hostile or less calm. Molé stood up and read the treaty; clamour instantly covered his voice. The prince of Conti exclaimed against a peace concluded without his knowledge, and that of the nobles his friends. “You, then, are the cause,” retorted Molé: “whilst we were at Ruel, you were treating with the enemies of France; you were inviting the archduke, the Spaniard, and the foe to invade the kingdom.” “It is not without the consent of several members of the parliament that we took this step,” replied the prince, not denying the charge. “Name them,” was Molé’s instant retort; “name the traitors, that we may proceed to try and judge them.”

The firmness of the president at once awed the nobles, and won over the majority of the assembled magistrates to support him. The only hope of the favourers of sedition was in the rabble, which, incensed and tumultuous, had penetrated into the passages and corridors of the palace. Some, with poniards and arms, demanded the head of the president. “Give us up the grande barbe” (long beard); so they called the venerable magistrate. Others shouted the word “Republic.” Molé heard them with unshaken courage. Those around besought him to make his escape by a postern. “Justice never skulks,” replied Molé, “nor will I, its representative. I may perish, but will never commit an act of cowardice, which would give hardihood to the mob.” Accordant to this magnanimous resolution, the chief magistrate walked boldly down the principal staircase through the mob, awing the most audacious by his firmness. Even De Retz[j] was lost in admiration; and has recorded that he could perceive in the countenance of Molé, then threatened by the fury of the multitude, not a motion that did not indicate imperturbable firmness, and at the same time a presence and elevation of mind greater than firmness, and every way supernatural. This is one of the noblest exhibitions of courage which history has recorded.

When the chiefs of sedition saw that they could not conquer, and that the treaty would pass in their despite, each hastened to make his private offers and demands of the court. Bouillon wanted Sedan; Turenne, Alsace; Elbeuf, the government of Picardy; Beaufort, to be admiral. They were not listened to. Angered and resolved to proceed to extremities, they wrote to Turenne to advance, and to the archduke to invade the north. But Turenne’s treason was defeated by Erlach, commander of the Swiss--himself obliged to fly; and the archduke, his support failing, retreated. Thus the moderate portion of the parliament, supported by the civic guard, succeeded in restoring peace with the court, despite the opposition of the nobles and the mob. The reader will not fail to remark how distinct these several classes kept from each other, even when in alliance and fighting the same battles; a state of society that has not ceased at the present day to characterise France: whilst in England, the blending of the lower ranks of the nobly born with the higher ranks of the industrious and unennobled, effected by the habits and institutions of the country, have rendered the pernicious line of demarcation betwixt castes and classes almost invisible to the historian.

SECOND ACT OF THE FRONDE; ARREST OF CONDÉ

[Sidenote: [1649-1650 A.D.]]

The scene now shifts, and another act of the Fronde commences, displaying the chief actors in altogether new characters and dresses. No sooner was the peace declared than the prince of Condé, jealous of the cardinal, united with the nobles whom he so lately combated: he visited his sister, Madame de Longueville, became reconciled to her and to La Rochefoucauld; the duke de Beaufort and the coadjutor being the only two that remained at the same time hostile to Mazarin and jealous of Condé. A few nobles, however, were not sufficient to give weight to the demands of the prince, and Mazarin resisted them. The prince, in consequence, saw the coadjutor, and planned, or pretended to form, an alliance with him and the violent members of the parliament. The court, terrified at the prospect of being so abandoned, and of seeing Condé at the head of the frondeurs, granted all the desires of the latter, who, ashamed to break with his new allies, yet left without a pretext to continue his quarrel with Mazarin, “changed his mind three hundred times in three days.” The haughty prince, who hated the parliament and the rabble, at last decided to disappoint the coadjutor; he became reconciled to Mazarin, and of course quarrelled with the frondeurs, whom he accused of an attempt to assassinate him. The same imprudence, the same haughtiness, petulance, and overbearing temper marked the prince to whichever side he leaned, and disgusted both. As a friend he was even more troublesome than as an enemy: Mazarin and the queen felt this; they could no longer tolerate his insolence; and the present moment, as he had left himself no friends in any party, seemed the best opportunity for being revenged on him.

To arrest and send the prince to prison was the old monarchic mode of treating the froward; but one of the articles stipulated by the parliament, and secured to them in the last treaty, was that every prisoner should be interrogated in four-and-twenty hours, and delivered over to his lawful judges. To infringe upon this law might rouse the parliament, and re-excite the rebellion of the Parisians. To secure himself against such an event, Mazarin leagued with--whom? The coadjutor himself, and the most violent of the frondeurs! They, the populace sharing their sentiments, hated Condé for his ancient enmity and his late desertion. De Retz and Mazarin, accordingly, had interviews, the former entering the Palais Royal by night in disguise. The consequence of this secret understanding soon appeared. The prince of Condé, the prince of Conti, his brother, and the duke de Longueville were arrested at the door of the council-chamber, and sent to Vincennes in January, 1650. The dukes de Bouillon and de la Rochefoucauld, as well as the duchess de Longueville, succeeded in escaping; the princesses of Condé were ordered to retire to Chantilly. Bonfires, illuminations, and every sign of joy on the part of the Parisians marked this extreme measure. The popular hatred of Condé and confidence in De Retz lulled for the moment their dislike of the cardinal Mazarin.

Two events which mark the spirit of the time, and which occurred previous to the prince’s arrest, must not be passed over. The honour of a tabouret, or stool at court, was only granted to the ladies of princes of sovereign houses, or to the wives of dukes and peers. Exceptions, however, had been made in favour of the younger branches of the Rohans, the La Trémouilles, and the family of Bouillon. La Rochefoucauld pretended to the same distinction: the prince of Condé supported his claim. The noblesse instantly assembled to the number of eight hundred, and formed a protest against such pretensions, which went, they said, to destroy the natural equality that existed amongst all gently born. The dispute led to a discussion of political rights and principles, then the dangerous mania of the age, and some voices clamoured for the states-general. The French noblesse are entitled certainly to the credit of having demanded these national assemblies at a time when the judicial body or parliament, in whom the favour and confidence of the people were then centred, deprecated any such proposition. It may be asked why the chiefs of the judicature, and such upright lovers of liberty as Molé, were opposed to the convocation of the states-general. The answer is that the example of England, then in the mouths and minds of many, terrified them, and made them prefer their own body as a constitutional check, to such a representative assembly as that which, in the neighbouring kingdom, had begun with civil war, and ended in regicide and despotism. It must be owned they had some cause for fear. A revolution is bad enough; but an imitative revolution, a parody of such a great event, is to be deprecated tenfold, as incurring all the evils and few of the advantages of the convulsion.

Already the people of Paris talked of republics and liberty: the monarchy, they said, was too old, and it was time it should expire. Nay, the duke de Bouillon himself, adopting the revolutionary phrase, proposed on one occasion to purge the parliament. The taste for assembling and debating was general. The annuities charged on the Hôtel-de-Ville were suspended by the troubles: three thousand of these fund-holders, chiefly citizens of Paris, met, drew up resolutions, petitioned, and clothed themselves in black, the uniform of the tiers or third estate. Molé instantly rebuked them, as attempting to form a chambre de communes, a house of commons. The citizens were indignant at the comparison: and this very reproach, that they were imitating the commons of England, had great effect in dissipating their assembly.

RESISTANCE OF BORDEAUX (1650 A.D.)

Principles, however, were soon forgotten in the general sympathy which the misfortunes of Condé excited. The haughtiness, the imprudences of the hero of Rocroi and Lens were now forgotten; and the nobility began to rally to his cause as their own. The court were at first successful in reducing Normandy, the government of the duke de Longueville; but in Languedoc and the provinces on the Gironde, the dukes de la Rochefoucauld and de Bouillon soon gathered an army of adherents, and were joined by the wife and infant son of the prince.

Clémence de Maillé, princess of Condé, had hitherto commanded little respect either from the world or from her husband, who, having married her merely as the niece of Cardinal Richelieu, was ashamed of her humble origin and his own condescension. She now however displayed a heroism and an attachment worthy of the spouse of the Great Condé. The princess escaped with her young son, the duke d’Enghien, from Chantilly, and after some delay in a fortified place, joined the dukes de la Rochefoucauld and de Bouillon in the south. But the noblesse was not then the predominant order in the state, and she was obliged to seek more powerful protection in the parliament of Bordeaux. This provincial court of justice was highly incensed against the duke d’Épernon, governor of Languedoc; and consequently ill-disposed towards the queen and the cardinal, who seconded him. They of course embraced with ardour the new laws established by the parliament of Paris, which gave to the courts of magistracy power to control the measures of government, and which forbade arrests without bringing the accused to speedy trial. They could little comprehend the manœuvres by which De Retz and his violent party induced the parliament of Paris to overlook the imprisonment of Condé. They were eager to take his part and to admit the princess within their walls; but at the same time had considerable distrust of the nobles who supported her, and who were negotiating with Spain. To satisfy these scruples, the princess entered Bordeaux alone; but the popular clamour drowning the voice of the magistrates, she soon had the city at her command, and the dukes de Bouillon and de la Rochefoucauld entered with their troops and took the command.

The queen and Mazarin led the young king and an army commanded by the marshal De la Meilleraie to reduce Bordeaux. Its first feat was to raze Verteuil, the famous château of the La Rochefoucauld family, a barbarous act, and inconceivable in Mazarin, who loved the arts. Bordeaux was then invested, and its suburb was carried after a valiant defence, in which La Rochefoucauld displayed remarkable gallantry. To gain footing in the town itself was soon found impossible, such was the obstinacy of the armed citizens. Whilst Mazarin and the court thus lay encamped before Bordeaux, Turenne had entered the north of France, and was marching without opposition towards the capital, intending to liberate the princes from Vincennes. Condé, confined in the donjon of that castle, whiled away his captivity by cultivating the few flowers that the terrace of his window could contain. “Who would have thought,” exclaimed he, in learning the resistance of Bordeaux, “that my wife should be fighting whilst I was gardening!” The princes were removed from Vincennes to the safer retreat of Marcoussis, and Turenne, who, fearing to indispose the parliament of Paris by appearing at the head of foreign troops, retired again towards the frontier.

DISGRACE AND EXILE OF MAZARIN (1650-1651 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1650-1651 A.D.]]

The coadjutor and the violent frondeurs grew weary of their alliance with Mazarin, into which their fear and hatred of Condé had alone induced them to enter. They not only found Mazarin ungrateful and insincere, refusing even to De Retz the cardinal’s hat that he demanded, but their popularity, which was their chief force, and their influence over the parliament, were rapidly diminishing from their union with the court. Mazarin, suspecting the intention of the frondeurs, and alarmed by the march of Turenne, granted peace to Bordeaux, concluding more a truce than a treaty with the princess of Condé, La Rochefoucauld, and Bouillon.

The minister then returned to Paris, where he found the parliament no longer silent as to the arrest of Condé, but prepared to expostulate, and demand his release. Mazarin caused the princes to be instantly conveyed from Marcoussis to La Havre, where they were still more in his individual power. La Rochefoucauld and Bouillon also returned to Paris; and a series of intrigues took place; these partisans of Condé negotiating at the same time both with the coadjutor and with Mazarin for his release. An alliance with either would effect this, and La Rochefoucauld was in doubt. The coadjutor, in the habit of a cavalier, came by night to the rendezvous at the house of the princess palatine. La Rochefoucauld went in equal secrecy to the Palais Royal. The over-caution of the cardinal lost his cause. La Rochefoucauld pressed him at once to conclude the alliance, and give orders that Condé should be set at liberty. Mazarin hesitated. Unprincipled as he was himself, he could not believe it possible that the friends of Condé could unite with De Retz. La Rochefoucauld warned the cardinal in parting that the morrow would be too late. Mazarin smiled incredulity and irresolution; and the duke, hurrying to the other place of rendezvous, concluded the agreement with the coadjutor. The effects of this alliance were immediately manifest. The majority of the parliament clamoured for the release of Condé, and addressed the queen on the subject. It was necessary to yield; and Mazarin saw that, deserted by all parties, he would infallibly be the victim.

In his rage he anathematised the parliament before the whole court, called it an English house of commons, compared the coadjutor De Retz to Cromwell and himself to Strafford, and declared that, in sacrificing its minister to popular clamour, the crown would, as in the case of Strafford, sacrifice itself. This conversation, being reported to the parliament by De Retz, raised a storm indescribable, and terminated in an address to the queen, desiring that Mazarin should be banished from her councils, and that the prince should be liberated. Nought was left the cardinal but flight. He took his departure immediately. It was agreed that the queen and young king were to follow him, and that, possessed of La Havre and the persons of the princes, they would be able either by open war or negotiation to bring the parliament and the frondeurs to more reasonable terms. This project however failed, through the cunning and activity of the coadjutor, who, learning the queen’s intention of departing, raised a mob round the palace, and made her virtually a prisoner there. Cardinal Mazarin alone found himself without authority. He could not even gain entrance into Havre unless unattended. He entered, nevertheless, saw the captive princes of Condé, Conti, and Longueville, endeavoured to cajole them, and set them at liberty, without receiving in return a single mark of gratitude or regard. Thus every way disappointed, Mazarin resigned himself to his disgrace, and left the kingdom.[103]

CONDÉ IN POWER (1651 A.D.)

The prince of Condé was now all-powerful--the parliament, the Fronde, the noblesse, the populace, had all rallied to him; the minister was in exile, the queen a prisoner. Many blamed him for not setting aside Anne of Austria, and assuming the regency; but he was totally without the qualities requisite for taking advantage of his position; he was too lazy, too confident, too generous, too rash: and, making not a single exertion, the several parties that had united to compel at once his release and the exile of the minister were allowed again to fall asunder, and abandon to the court the recovery of its ancient influence. The noblesse at this period were animated with a strong desire to imitate the magistracy, and, by remaining united, to restore or re-establish the influence of the aristocracy, in opposition both to crown and judicature. They assembled in the convent of the Cordeliers (afterwards doomed to hold a club of a very different kind, that of Danton), and formed a house of peers, discussing state affairs, and fixing the privileges of the nobles. The parliament took fire at this, and forbade the assemblies. The noblesse looked to Condé to head them; but he, without principle or aim, and deeming his interests, as prince of the blood, distinct from those of the aristocracy, held back at this crisis. The noblesse called the assembly of the church, then sitting, to their aid, who protested, and complained that the parliament had altered the ancient constitution of the kingdom, by adding themselves as a fourth and spurious estate to the three established ones of king, lords, and commons. Despite of this, the parliament had force and the popular feeling on its side. The noblesse were obliged to succumb, and dissolved their assembly; not, however, before they had recourse to the queen and the royal authority, who issued a declaration, promising to convoke the states-general for the following September.

Here the queen recovered consideration and authority sufficient to enable her to aim at and grasp more, by allying with the prince of Condé. One of the stipulations betwixt them was that the marriage should be broken off betwixt the prince of Conti and Mademoiselle de Chevreuse. The coadjutor, connected by gallantry and friendship with the family of Chevreuse, was indignant at this, and a quarrel ensued betwixt Condé and the old party of the Fronde. Hence another scene in the drama, which represents Condé insulted by those very men who had been so instrumental in releasing him. De Retz and the prince nearly came to blows in the Palais de Justice; and the former had almost fallen a victim to the passion of La Rochefoucauld, who jammed the coadjutor betwixt two folding doors till he was almost suffocated: the duke at the same time called to one of his friends to stab De Retz, an injunction that was not obeyed, and perhaps not intended to be obeyed. It is, nevertheless, startling to the modern reader to find the courtly author of the Maximes engaged personally in the office and using the language of the assassin.

The consequence of these dissensions was the recovery of her authority by Anne of Austria, who, in affecting to ally with Condé, was merely enticing him to disgust and desert the Fronde. This achieved, she flung off the mask, and Condé found himself as much detested by all parties as a few months back he was their favourite and their rallying word. The prince, thus deserted, endeavoured to make common cause with the noblesse, and clamoured for the states-general; but it was too late: the parliament united with the court in opposing their convocation, and Condé in despair retired from Paris, obliged to seek support in civil war and an alliance with Spain.

RETURN OF MAZARIN (1651 A.D.)

In September, 1651, Louis XIV, then approaching fourteen years of age, was declared to have completed his minority. The day was celebrated with great magnificence. The royal authority remained, however, as before, in the hands of the queen: her only thought was the recall of Mazarin. The attachment borne by Anne to this prelate-minister is inexplicable. She might have reigned supreme, and been the arbiter betwixt contending parties, could she have consented to leave Mazarin in exile. De Retz endeavoured to impress this necessity upon her; but power appeared to her worthless without the cardinal; and no sooner had Condé broken with the parliament, and burst into war against the court, than the minister prepared to return. He levied an army, made an attempt on Brissac, and soon after joined the court at Poitiers, taking as usual the chief seat in the council.[g]

At the first news of his return, Gaston of Orleans, brother of Louis XIII, who had demanded the removal of the cardinal, levied troops in Paris without knowing for what they would be employed. Parliament renewed its decrees; it proscribed Mazarin and put a price on his head. This proscription tempted no one to earn the 50,000 crowns, which, after all, would never have been paid. With another nation and in another age, such a decree would have found executors; but here it served simply to incite fresh pleasantries. The Blots and the Marignys, wits, who carried gaiety into the tumult of these troubles, caused to be placarded all over Paris a distribution of the 50,000 crowns--so much for whoever should cut off the cardinal’s nose, and so much for an ear, so much for an eye, so much to make him a eunuch. This ridicule was all the effect of the proscription against the minister’s person, but his furniture and library were sold by a second decree. This money was destined for the assassin’s pay, but it was dissipated by the depositaries, like all funds that had been raised hitherto. The cardinal on his side used against his enemies neither poison nor steel and, in spite of the bitterness and madness of so much partisanship and hatred, no great crimes were committed. The party leaders were less cruel and the people less furious than in the days of the league--this was not a war of religion.

The spirit of madness which reigned at this time so possessed the whole body of the parliament that, after having solemnly ordered an assassination which everyone ridiculed, it passed a decree by which several councillors should betake themselves to the frontier for information against the army of Cardinal Mazarin: that is to say, the royal army. Meanwhile the king interdicted the parliament of Paris and transferred it to Pontoise. Fourteen members attached to the court obeyed; the others resisted. There were now two parliaments, which, to cap the confusion, thundered against each other with reciprocating decrees, as in the days of Henry IV and Charles VI.

It was precisely at the time when this company was going to extremities with the king’s minister that it declared the prince of Condé, who had only armed himself against this minister, guilty of lèse majesté; and by a turn of mind which its preceding steps could alone make credible, it ordered the new troops of Gaston, duke of Orleans, to march against Mazarin and forbade at the same time any money from the public receipts to be used in maintaining them. We can expect nought else from a company of magistrates, thrown out of their proper sphere, knowing not their rights, their real power, political affairs, or war, assembling and deciding amid tumult, making decisions of which they had no thought the day before, and at which they themselves were afterwards astonished. The parliament of Bordeaux was then serving the prince of Condé, but it kept to a little more rational conduct, because being further removed from the court it was less agitated by opposing factions. More important matters were interesting the whole of France.

THE LAST PHASE OF THE FRONDE

[Sidenote: [1651-1652 A.D.]]

Condé, leagued with the Spaniards, was on a campaign against the king; and Turenne, having quitted these same Spaniards, with whom he had been beaten at Rethel, had just made his peace with the court and was in command of the royal army. The exhausted finances did not permit either of the two parties to maintain great armies, but small ones did not the less decide the fate of the state. Louis XIV, brought up in adversity, went with his mother, his brother, and Cardinal Mazarin from province to province, without having as many troops about his person, by a great deal, as he had afterwards for a single guard in times of peace. Five to six thousand men, some sent from Spain, others raised by the prince of Condé’s partisans, pursued him into the very heart of his kingdom.

Meanwhile the prince of Condé hastened from Bordeaux to Montauban, taking towns and everywhere increasing his party. All the hope of the court lay in Marshal Turenne. The royal army found itself near Gien on the Loire. The opposing force of Condé was some leagues away, under the orders of the dukes de Nemours and de Beaufort. The duke de Beaufort was incapable of commanding anything. The duke de Nemours was braver and more amiable than he was skilful. Both together had demoralised their army. The soldiers of Condé knew that their leader was a hundred leagues away and believed themselves lost, when, in the middle of the night, a courier presented himself at the outposts in the forest of Orleans. The sentinels recognised in this courier the prince of Condé himself, who had come all the way across France from Agen, with many adventures and always in disguise, to place himself at the head of his army.

His presence did much and his unexpected arrival still more. The royal army was divided into two corps. April 7th, 1652, Condé fell upon that which was at Bléneau, commanded by Marshal d’Hocquincourt, and his corps was dissipated as quickly as it had been attacked. Turenne could not even be warned. The terrified Mazarin hastened to Gien in the middle of the night to awaken the sleeping king and himself tell him the news. The little court was in consternation; they proposed to save the king by flight and to conduct him secretly to Bourges. The victorious Condé drew near to Gien; the desolation and the fear increased. Turenne reassured their spirits by his firmness and saved the court by his skill. With the few troops that remained to him he made such fortunate movements that he prevented Condé from following up his advantage. It is difficult to decide which won the more honours, the victorious Condé or Turenne who had robbed him of the fruits of victory.[104] It is true that in this fight at Bléneau not four hundred men were killed; but the prince of Condé was none the less on the point of making himself master of the entire royal family, and of having in his hands his enemy Cardinal Mazarin. It would be hard to find in history any smaller battle with greater interest and more pressing danger.

Condé, who did not flatter himself that he could surprise Turenne, as he had done Hocquincourt, marched his army towards Paris. He hastened to that city to enjoy his glory and the favourable disposition of a blind populace. The admiration they had for his last fight,--all of whose details had exaggerated the hate that was borne for Mazarin,--the name and the presence of the Great Condé, seemed at first to make him absolute master of the capital; but at the bottom all minds were divided. The coadjutor--now become Cardinal de Retz, reconciled in appearance with the court which feared him and which he defied--was no longer the master of the people and no longer played the principal rôle. He ruled the duke of Orleans and was opposed by Condé. Parliament wavered between the court, the duke of Orleans, and the prince. Although all were in accord in crying down Mazarin, each one was nursing his own particular interests in secret; the people were a stormy sea whose waves were driven at chance by many contrary winds.[i]

Condé hoped to find the parliament his ally against Mazarin: but the stern magistrates, though firm in their abhorrence of that minister, were not more favourable to Condé, and openly reproached him with his Spanish alliance. From the parliament he did not scruple to appeal to the people, whose lowest class rose in tumult, and threatened the magistrates. The very courts proved no refuge: councillors and judges were insulted and even beaten as “Mazarins.”

Condé, thus disappointed in the support of the parliament, and of the respectable citizens, could not cope unaided with the royal army. The Parisian rabble, very forward in a riot, could not be made to stand the fire of regular troops. The prince had recourse to the Spaniards, who, themselves busied in the sieges of Gravelines and Dunkirk, induced the duke of Lorraine to march into France and support Condé. The skilful strategy of Turenne, however, compelled this new auxiliary to retreat; and the prince, after a fresh attempt to raise sedition in the capital and control the parliament, was reduced to fight Turenne with far inferior forces. The latter drove him from St. Cloud, and Condé marched to take post at Charenton, when, his rival pressing him closely, as he defiled round the walls of Paris, the prince was obliged to throw himself into the faubourg St. Antoine, behind the entrenchments formerly raised for their defence by the inhabitants.

Battle of St. Antoine (July 2nd, 1652)

The gate of Paris called St. Antoine was then immediately under the Bastille, the cannon of which swept the three roads diverging from it. Condé, denied entrance into the city, was still secure from attack on this side; and, posted in the central position of the gate St. Antoine, he determined to make head against the royalists, who approached to attack him by the three roads. Mazarin and Louis XIV were on the heights, now covered with the cemetery of Père Lachaise, spectators of the ensuing action, the young monarch being most anxious to witness the destruction of this rebellious prince.

The triple attack commenced: that on the prince’s left, commanded by three sworn and personal enemies to him, was defeated by his valour, the chiefs all perishing. The hero then rushed to defend the central street: he met Turenne in person, and there the conflict was more doubtful. “Did you see Condé during the action?” asked someone of Turenne when the affair was over. “I must have seen a dozen Condés,” was the reply: “he multiplied himself.” On the right the action was most bloody: the nobles of the prince’s party were almost all slain or wounded there, amongst the rest La Rochefoucauld, who, struck on the head, was carried off by his wounded son. Turenne was the most powerful; and no chance appeared of Condé’s saving himself and the relics of his army, when the gate of St. Antoine unexpectedly opened to receive him, the cannon of the Bastille at the same time sending their fire up the three attacked streets, and thus effectually checking the progress of the royalists.

This well-timed succour came from Mademoiselle de Montpensier, daughter of the duke of Orleans, whose sympathy for the heroic Condé, now in distress, was aided by the clamours of the populace, enraged at beholding a rash and imprudent but still generous prince sacrificed to the detested Mazarin. She wrung from the municipal officers the orders for opening the gates; herself directed the firing of the guns of the Bastille; nay, her hand is said to have applied the match. Mademoiselle had aspired to the hand of Condé, to that of the king, and might hope at least to espouse a sovereign prince. But Mazarin observed, on seeing the fire of the Bastille, and knowing who commanded it, “That shot has killed the husband of Mademoiselle.”[g]

SECOND EXILE OF MAZARIN

After this bloody and useless combat of St. Antoine the king could not return to Paris; and the prince did not remain there long. Popular feeling and the murder of several citizens, for which he was believed to be responsible, made him odious to the people. [He fled from Paris and joined the Spanish army, October, 1652.] However, he still had his faction in the parliament. This body, now intimidated by a wandering court, and driven after a fashion from the capital to Pontoise, pressed by the cabals of the duke of Orleans and the prince, declared, by a decree, the duke of Orleans lieutenant-general of the realm, although the king was an adult. The two parliaments of Paris and Pontoise, contesting the authority one with the other and issuing contradictory decrees, agreed in demanding the expulsion of Mazarin--so much did the hatred of this minister seem the essential duty of every Frenchman. The court saw itself obliged once more to sacrifice Mazarin whom everyone believed the author of the troubles, but who was but their pretext. For a second time he left the country, and to increase his shame the king must needs make a public declaration dismissing his minister, the while praising his services and deploring his exile.

Charles I, king of England, who had just lost his head on the scaffold, had in the beginning of his troubles abandoned the blood of Strafford, his friend, to his parliament. Louis XIV on the contrary became the peaceful master of his realm by permitting his minister’s exile. Thus the same weakness bore different results. The king of England, in abandoning his favourite, emboldened a people that breathed war and hated kings; and Louis XIV, or rather the queen-mother, by dismissing the cardinal, removed all pretext for revolt from a people tired of war and who loved royalty.

While the state was thus torn at home it had been attacked and weakened abroad; all the benefits of the battles of Rocroi, Lens, and Nördlingen were lost; the important place of Dunkirk was retaken by the Spaniards (September, 1652); they drove the French from Barcelona, they retook Casale in Italy (October, 1652).

Scarcely had the cardinal left for Bouillon, place of his new retreat, when the citizens of Paris, of their own accord, sent to the king and asked him to return to his capital. Louis entered Paris October 21st, 1652, and all was so peaceful that it would have been difficult to imagine that a few days before all was in confusion. Gaston of Orleans, unfortunate in his undertakings, which he never knew how to carry out, was relegated to Blois, where he passed the rest of his life in repentance; and he was the second son of Henry the Great to die without much glory. Cardinal de Retz, as imprudent as he was audacious, was arrested in the Louvre, and after having been sent from prison to prison long led a wandering life which he finished in retreat, where he acquired virtues which his great courage had not known in the agitations of his fortune.

Several councillors who had most abused their ministry paid for their actions with exile; the others withdrew into the limits of the magistracy and others attached themselves the closer to their duties with an annual gratuity of five hundred crowns which Fouquet, attorney-general and superintendent of the finances, gave them surreptitiously. The prince of Condé meanwhile, abandoned in France by nearly all his partisans, and badly assisted by the Spaniards, continued a disastrous war on the frontiers of Champagne. There still remained factions in Bordeaux, but they were soon pacified.[i]

[Sidenote: [1652-1653 A.D.]]

Thus ended the Fronde. Voltaire dismisses it in a few pages, satisfied with recording its bon mots. He seems to have looked upon this civil war as merely a pastime, entered into by a few froward youths and their mistresses. He did not see in it the serious, the sanguinary and unhappy struggle of a nation for its liberty. Even later writers, more profound than Voltaire, have designated the Fronde as “the last campaign of the noblesse.” It was indeed so. But the noblesse formed not the prominent body. It was the parliament, the magistracy, that put itself forward to represent the commons, of which they claimed and established the privileges for themselves. This was, no doubt, an audacious and hopeless enterprise. The states-general, the ancient representative assembly of the nation, was the form to which they should have rallied. But the extravagance of the English parliament deterred them; and they fixed upon their own body, as a less democratic and dangerous assembly, to participate in legislative power. The scheme was new: it was conceived with boldness, and supported with courage; and if the legists failed in arriving at settled liberty by its means, they may plead that representative assemblies have frequently failed in the same endeavour.[g]

MAZARIN AGAIN IN POWER (1653 A.D.)

The calm in the kingdom was the result of Cardinal Mazarin’s banishment; however, scarcely had he been driven away by the general cry of the French people and the king’s decree, when the king made him come back. He was astonished to see himself re-enter Paris all powerful. Louis XIV received him like a father and the people like a master. He held a great reception at the Hôtel-de-Ville amid the acclamations of the citizens; he threw money to the populace, but it is said that in his joy for so happy a change he showed his scorn for the inconstancy or rather the folly of the Parisians. The officers of parliament, after having placed a price on his head like a public robber, sued, almost all of them, for the honour of asking his protection; and this same parliament a short time after condemned by contumacy the prince of Condé to lose his life. They saw the cardinal, who urged this condemnation of Condé, marry to the prince of Conti his brother, one of his own nieces--a proof that the power of the minister was going to be boundless.

The king reunited the parliaments of Paris and of Pontoise; he forbade the assembling of the chambers. Parliament wished to remonstrate, one councillor was sent to prison; several others were exiled: parliament kept quiet; the change had already come.[i]

[Sidenote: [1653-1655 A.D.]]

The events of Louis XIV’s youth were such as to inspire him not only with high ideas of his kingly rights, but to prove to him the necessity of absolute power in the monarch.[105] In the great English rebellion, and in the Fronde, he had seen freedom under its most hideous aspect, and followed by the vainest of results. We can scarcely then blame him personally for his despotic propensities, which, moreover, his manly and ambitious character tended to increase. The young king and his brother Philip, then called the duke of Anjou, were educated in the privacy of the palace. The nieces of the cardinal were their playmates; and Louis formed successive attachments for two of these young ladies, especially for Maria Mancini, afterwards the wife of the constable Colonna. So intimate was the connection betwixt Mazarin and Anne of Austria that many were persuaded of their marriage.[106] Certainly her attachment to him was personal and tender. Louis XIV always preserved for the cardinal a sort of filial reverence: he may be said to have learned in the school of implicit obedience how to be himself despotic.

At intervals, however, the imperious temper of the young monarch burst forth, and betrayed itself. In 1655, the parliament, after registering certain fiscal edicts, thought proper to re-examine them, to complain, and show symptoms of their ancient independence. Louis was at Vincennes, engaged in the chase, when he heard of their conduct. Instantly, without consulting the cardinal, or even tarrying to change his dress, the young monarch galloped to Paris, entered the Palais de Justice and the Hall of Parliament in his hunting habit, booted, and with whip in hand. “Gentlemen,” said Louis to the astonished legists, “everyone is acquainted with the ill consequences of your former assemblies. Their recurrence must be prevented. I command you instantly to cease busying yourself with my edicts. And you, Mr. President, I forbid either to call or suffer such assemblies.” This bold assertion of the royal will from the mouth of a stripling proved sufficient to crush the reviving spirit of the magistracy. It was silent, and obeyed.[g]

WAR WITH SPAIN CONTINUES

Condé, who had become general in the Spanish armies, was unable to revive what he had himself weakened at Rocroi and Lens. He was fighting with raw troops against the veteran French regiments that had learned to conquer under him, and that were now commanded by Turenne. The fate of Turenne and of Condé was to be uniformly victorious when they were fighting together at the head of the French and to be defeated when they were commanding the Spanish.

Turenne had with difficulty saved the wreck of the Spanish army at Rethel when, instead of a general of the king of France, he had been made the lieutenant of a Spanish general; the prince of Condé had the same fate before Arras (August 25th, 1654). He and the archduke besieging this city, Turenne attacked them in their camp and forced their lines; the troops of the archduke were put to flight; Condé, with two regiments of French and Lorrainers, sustained alone the attack of Turenne’s army; and, while the archduke was in flight, he defeated Marshal d’Hocquincourt, repulsed Marshal de la Ferté, and retired victorious, covering the retreat of the defeated Spaniards.

The relief of Arras, the forcing of the lines, and the rout of the archduke covered Turenne with glory; and it is to be observed that in the letter concerning this victory written in the name of the king to the parliament the success of the entire campaign is ascribed to Cardinal Mazarin and that Turenne’s name is not even mentioned. The cardinal had been in fact a few leagues from Arras with the king. He had even been in the camp at the siege of Stenay, which Turenne had taken before relieving Arras. Councils of war had been held in the presence of the cardinal. On this basis he ascribed to himself the honour of the events; and this vanity brought upon him a ridicule that all the authority of his ministry could not suppress. The king was not present at the battle of Arras. He had gone into the trenches at the siege of Stenay, but Cardinal Mazarin was unwilling that he should further expose his person, upon which the tranquillity of the state and the power of the minister seemed to depend.

Thus on the one side, Mazarin, absolute master of France and of the young king, and on the other, Don Luis de Haro, who governed Spain and Philip IV, continued in the name of their masters to carry on the war, but with little vigour.

These two men vied with each other in directing their policies towards forming an alliance with Cromwell, the English Protector, who for some time enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing himself courted by the two most powerful kingdoms of Christendom. The Spanish minister offered to help him take Calais; Mazarin proposed to besiege Dunkirk and restore that city to him. Cromwell had to choose between the key of France and that of Flanders. He was also much solicited by Condé, but he did not wish to negotiate with a prince who had nothing left but his name and who was without a party in France and without power in Spain.

ALLIANCE WITH CROMWELL (1655 A.D.); WAR IN FLANDERS (1656-1658 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1655-1657 A.D.]]

In May, 1655, the Protector decided in favour of France, but without making any special treaty or a division of conquests in advance. He wished to shed lustre on his usurpation by greater enterprises. His design was to wrest Mexico from the Spaniards, but the latter were warned in time. Cromwell’s admirals, however, took Jamaica from them. It was not until after the Jamaican expedition that Cromwell signed his treaty with the king of France, but without making any mention of Dunkirk. The Protector treated as equal with equal; he forced the king to give him the title of brother in his letters. In the copy of the treaty that remained in England his secretary signed before the French ambassador; but he negotiated really as a superior by forcing the king to drive out of his dominions Charles II and the duke of York, the grandsons of Henry IV, to whom France owed an asylum. A greater sacrifice of honour to fortune could not have been made.

While Mazarin was making this treaty Charles II asked for one of his nieces in marriage. The bad condition of his affairs that drove the prince to this step also brought upon him a refusal. It has even been suspected that the cardinal wished to marry to the son of Cromwell the niece whom he refused to the king of England. This much is certain--that when he afterwards saw the way to the throne more open to Charles II he wished to renew this marriage; but was refused in his turn.

The war continued in Flanders with varying success. Turenne, having besieged Valenciennes along with Marshal de la Ferté, suffered the same kind of reverse that Condé had sustained at Arras. The prince, assisted this time by Don John of Austria, who was more worthy to fight at his side than the archduke had been, forced La Ferté’s lines, took him prisoner, and relieved Valenciennes (July 17th, 1656). Turenne did what Condé had done in a similar rout. He saved the defeated army and opposed the enemy everywhere; a little later he even besieged and took the little town of La Capelle (September 27th). This was perhaps the first time that a defeated army had dared to make a siege.

This famous march of Turenne, which was followed by the taking of La Capelle, was eclipsed by an even finer march of the prince of Condé. Turenne had laid siege to Cambray when Condé, at the head of two thousand cavalry, forced a passage through the besieging army, and having driven back all who tried to stop him threw himself into the town (May 31st, 1657). The citizens received their deliverer on bended knees. Thus these two men, opposed to each other, exhibited the resources of their genius. We admire them in their retreats as well as in their victories, in their good conduct and even in their faults, which they were always able to retrieve. Their talents alternately arrested the progress of each monarchy; but the financial disorder in Spain and in France was a still greater obstacle to their success.

[Sidenote: [1657-1658 A.D.]]

The alliance with Cromwell finally gave France a more marked superiority. On the one hand, Admiral Blake was about to burn the Spanish galleons and cause the loss of the sole treasure with which the war could be maintained. On the other hand, twenty English vessels had just blockaded the port of Dunkirk and six thousand veterans of the English Revolution reinforced Turenne’s army. Then Dunkirk, the most important place in Flanders, was besieged by sea and land. Condé and Don John of Austria, having united all their forces, came forward to relieve it. The eyes of Europe were upon this event. Cardinal Mazarin brought Louis XIV near the scene of war without allowing him to get to it, although he was nearly twenty years old. The prince stopped at Calais, and hither Cromwell sent to him a pompous embassy, at the head of which was his son-in-law, Lord Falconberg. The king sent to him the duke de Créqui, and Mancini, duke de Nevers, a nephew of the cardinal, followed by two hundred noblemen. Mancini presented the Protector a remarkable letter from Cardinal Mazarin in which he said that he was sorry not to be able to pay him in person the respect due to the greatest man in the world.

Meanwhile the prince-marshal Turenne attacked the Spanish army, or rather the army of Flanders, near the Dunes. The latter was commanded by Don John of Austria, son of Philip IV and an actress, who two years later became the brother-in-law of Louis XIV. The prince of Condé was with this army but not in command; hence it was not difficult for Turenne to gain the victory (June 14th, 1658). The six thousand English soldiers contributed to the victory, which was complete.

The genius of the Great Condé was of no avail against the best troops of France and England. The Spanish army was destroyed. Dunkirk surrendered soon afterwards (June 23rd). The king came up with his minister in order to see the garrison pass out. The cardinal did not allow Louis XIV to appear either as warrior or as king. He had no money to distribute to the soldiers, and was poorly attended. When he was with the army he dined with Mazarin or with Marshal Turenne. This neglect of royal dignity was not in Louis XIV the effect of contempt for pomp, but of the confusion in his affairs and of the pains the cardinal took to unite splendour and authority in himself. Louis entered Dunkirk only to turn it over to Cromwell’s ambassador, Lord Lockhart. Mazarin tried whether by finesse he could not evade the treaty and not give up the place; but Lockhart threatened, and English firmness got the better of Italian subtlety.

Several persons have asserted that the cardinal, who had attributed to himself the victory of Arras, tried to induce Turenne to yield to him again the honour of the battle of Dunes. Du Bec-Crépin, count de Moret, it is said, came on behalf of the minister and proposed to the general to write a letter in which it would appear that the cardinal had himself arranged the entire plan of operation. Turenne received these hints with contempt and would not make a statement that would have brought disgrace upon a general of the army and ridicule upon a man of the church. Mazarin, who had been so foolish, now had the misfortune of remaining on ill terms with Turenne until his death.

[Sidenote: [1658-1659 A.D.]]

In the midst of this first triumph the king fell ill at Calais and for several days was near death. Immediately all the courtiers turned towards his brother, Monsieur. Mazarin lavished deference and flattery upon Marshal du Plessis-Praslin, the former tutor of this young prince, and upon count de Guiche, his favourite. A cabal was formed in Paris that was bold enough to write to Calais against the cardinal. He made preparations to leave the kingdom and to conceal his immense riches. An empiric of Abbeville cured the king with emetic wine that the court physicians called poison. This good man seated himself upon the king’s bed and said, “This is a very sick boy, but he is not going to die.” When the king became convalescent the cardinal banished all who had intrigued against him.

A few months later Cromwell died (September 13th, 1658) at the age of fifty-five, in the midst of his projects for the strengthening of his power and the glory of his nation. Richard Cromwell succeeded peaceably and without opposition to the protectorate of his father, as a prince of Wales would have succeeded a king of England. The emperor Ferdinand III had died in 1657. His son Leopold, who was seventeen years old and already king of Hungary and Bohemia, had not been elected king of the Romans during the lifetime of his father. Mazarin wished to attempt to make Louis XIV emperor. This was a chimerical idea; it would have been necessary either to coerce or to bribe the electors. France was neither strong enough to seize the empire nor rich enough to buy it; so the first overtures made at Frankfort by Marshal de Grammont and by Lionne were abandoned almost as soon as they were proposed. Leopold was elected. All that Mazarin’s politics accomplished was to form an alliance, known as the League of the Rhine, with certain German princes,[107] to observe the Treaty of Westphalia, and to furnish a check to the authority of the emperor over the empire (August, 1658). France, after the battle of the Dunes, was powerful in her foreign relations through her glory and her arms as well as through the condition to which the other nations were reduced. But the country itself was suffering; it was stripped of money, and there was need of peace.

THE TREATY OF THE PYRENEES (1659 A.D.)

The cardinal had to do two things in order to bring his ministry to a happy close--make peace and insure the tranquillity of the state by the marriage of the king. The intrigues during the latter’s illness made Mazarin feel how necessary an heir to the throne was to the splendour of the minister. All these considerations determined him to marry Louis XIV promptly. Two princesses were proposed--the daughter of the king of Spain and the princess of Savoy. The king’s heart had made another choice: he was desperately in love with Mademoiselle Mancini, one of the cardinal’s nieces. Born with a tender heart and a firm will, full of passion and without experience, he would have been capable of resolving to marry the lady of his choice.

Madame de Motteville, the favourite of the queen-mother, whose Mémoires have a great air of truth, claims that Mazarin was tempted to let the king’s love have its way and to place his niece on the throne. He had already married another niece to the prince de Conti, and one to the duke de Mercœur. The one whom Louis XIV loved had been asked in marriage by the king of England. These were titles enough to justify his ambitions. He adroitly sounded the queen-mother. “I fear,” he said, “that the king has too great a desire to marry my niece.” The queen, who knew the minister, understood that he desired what he feigned to fear. She replied to him with all the haughtiness of a princess of the blood of Austria, daughter, wife, and mother of kings, and with the bitterness which she had felt for some time towards a minister who affected to be independent of her. She said to him, “If the king were capable of this indignity I would place myself with my second son at the head of the whole nation against the king and yourself.”

Mazarin, it is said, never forgave the queen this reply; but he took the wiser course of thinking as she did. He made it a point of honour and merit to oppose the passion of Louis XIV. His power did not need a queen of his own blood to support him. He even feared the character of his niece; and he believed he would further strengthen the power of his ministry by avoiding the dangerous glory of elevating his own house too high.

In the year 1656 he had sent Lionne to Spain to negotiate peace and to ask the hand of the infanta; but Don Luis de Haro, convinced that, feeble as Spain was, France was not less so, rejected the cardinal’s offer. The infanta, daughter of Philip IV by his first wife, was intended for the young Leopold. By his second marriage Philip had at that time only a son whose sickly infancy caused fears for his life. It was desired that the infanta, who might be the heir to many states, should transfer her rights to the house of Austria and not to a hostile dynasty; but finally, Philip IV having had another son, Don Philip Prosper, and his wife being again enceinte, the danger involved in giving the infanta to the king of France seemed to him less great, and the battle of the Dunes made peace necessary to him.

The Spaniards promised the infanta and asked for a suspension of hostilities (1659). Mazarin and Don Luis de Haro repaired to the isle of Pheasants on the frontier of France and Spain. Although general peace and the marriage of the king of France were the objects of their conference, more than a month passed in regulating ceremonies and settling difficulties of precedence. The cardinals called themselves the equals of the kings and the superiors of other sovereigns. France, with greater justice, claimed pre-eminence over the other powers. Don Luis de Haro, however, assumed perfect equality between France and Spain.

The conferences lasted four months. Mazarin and Don Luis employed all the resources of their respective policies; that of the cardinal was strategy, that of Don Luis delay. The latter never gave promises: the former only equivocal ones. The genius of the Italian was to try to surprise; that of the Spaniard, to keep from being surprised.

Such are the vicissitudes of human affairs that of this famous Peace of the Pyrenees, signed November 7th, 1659, not two articles have endured. The king of France retained Roussillon which he would have kept anyway, without this peace, also Artois and Cerdagne; but the Spanish monarchy has no more possessions in Flanders.

But if Don Luis de Haro said that Cardinal Mazarin could deceive, it has been said since that he could foresee. He long meditated the alliance of the houses of France and Spain. This famous letter of his, written during the negotiations at Münster, is cited: “If the most Christian king could have the Netherlands and Franche-Comté as dower upon espousing the infanta, then we might aspire to the Spanish succession, whatever we might have to relinquish to the infanta; and it would not be a very long wait, since there is only the life of the prince her brother that could exclude her from it.” This prince was Balthazar, who died in 1649.

The cardinal was evidently deceived in thinking that the Netherlands and Franche-Comté could be given to the infanta as her marriage portion. Not a single city was stipulated for her dower. On the other hand, important cities that had been conquered, like St. Omer, Ypres, Menin, Oudenarde, and other places, were restored to the Spanish monarchy. Some were retained. The cardinal was not mistaken in believing that this relinquishment would be useless some day. But those who gave him the honour of this prediction make him also foresee that Prince Don Balthazar would die in 1649; that later the three children of the second marriage would be cut off in the cradle; that Charles, the fifth of the male children, would die without issue; and that this Austrian king would one day make a will in favour of a grandson of Louis XIV. But at any rate Cardinal Mazarin foresaw what value this relinquishment would have in case the male line of Philip should become extinct: and after more than fifty years strange events justified him.

Maria Theresa, the infanta, able to have as dower the cities that France restored, brought by her marriage contract nothing else than 500,000 gold crowns; it cost the king more than that to go to receive her at the frontier. These 500,000 crowns, equivalent to 2,500,000 livres, were the subject of a great deal of dispute between the two ministers. In the end France never received but 100,000 francs. Instead of this marriage bringing any other real and immediate advantage than that of peace, the infanta renounced all rights she might ever have to any of her father’s lands. Louis XIV ratified this renunciation in the most solemn manner.[108]

[Sidenote: [1659-1661 A.D.]]

The duke of Lorraine, Charles IV, against whom France and Spain had much cause to complain, or rather who had much to complain of against them, was included in the treaty; but only as an unfortunate prince who was punished, because he could not make himself feared. France restored his states to him, demolishing Nancy, however, and forbade him to maintain troops. Don Luis de Haro forced Cardinal Mazarin to receive Condé into favour again, by threatening to leave in the sovereignty of the prince Rocroi, Le Catelet, and other places of which he was in possession. So France gained both these towns and the Great Condé. He lost his dignity of grand-master of the royal household, which was afterwards given to his son, and returned with scarcely anything but his glory.

Finally (August, 1660) Cardinal Mazarin brought the king with his new queen to Paris.[109] Mazarin acted exactly like a father who would marry his son without giving him charge of his own property. He returned more powerful and more jealous of his power, and even of honours, than ever. He required parliament to address him through deputies. This was something unparalleled in the monarchy, but it was not too great a reparation for the wrong that parliament had done him. He no longer gave his hand to the princes of the blood as formerly. He who had treated Don Luis de Haro as an equal tried to treat the Great Condé as an inferior. He went about with royal pomp, having besides his guards a company of musketeers, which was ever afterwards the second company of king’s musketeers. There was no more freedom of access to him. If anyone was a poor enough courtier to ask a favour of the king, he was lost. The queen-mother, so long the stubborn protectress of Mazarin against France, was without credit as soon as he had no more need of her. Her son, the king, brought up in blind submission to this minister, could not shake off the yoke that she had imposed upon him as well as upon herself; Louis XIV could not reign during the lifetime of Mazarin.

LAST YEARS AND DEATH OF MAZARIN (1659-1661 A.D.)

A minister is excusable for the evil he does when the helm of state is forced into his hands by tempests; but during a calm he is answerable for the good that he fails to do. Mazarin did good only to himself and his family. Eight years of absolute and undisturbed power, from his final return until his death, were marked by no glorious or useful establishment; for the college of the Four Nations was only created by his will.[110]

He controlled the finances like the steward of a lord involved in debt. The king sometimes asked money of Fouquet, who replied, “Sire, there is nothing in your majesty’s coffers, but the cardinal will lend you some.” Mazarin was worth about two hundred millions, reckoning in the money values of to-day (i.e., the middle of the eighteenth century). Several memoirs say that he amassed part of it by means far beneath the grandeur of his position. They relate that he shared with privateer captains the profits of their voyages. This has never been proved; but the Dutch suspected him of it, and they never would have suspected Cardinal Richelieu.[i]

In high spirits was Mazarin at the moment of signing the great treaty at Bidassoa (Treaty of the Pyrenees). He wrote to Paris: “All will soon be over. I shall not stay long in the Basque country, unless I find amusement in watching them hunt whales, in learning their language and their dances.”

However, the dancer was soon smitten by gout. His lungs became affected. The bed of the moribund, covered with cards, was a gaming table over which offices were sold. Cards and the sacrament went pell-mell.[b] It is said that on his death-bed he felt remorse, but outwardly he displayed courage. At least, he feared for his property, and he made the king a complete donation of it believing that the king would return it to him. He was not mistaken; the king returned the gift in three days. Finally he died at Vincennes, March 9th, 1661, and no one but the king seemed to mourn him, for this prince already knew how to dissemble. The yoke was beginning to weigh heavily upon him; he was impatient to reign. Nevertheless he wished to seem affected by a death that put him in possession of his throne. Louis XIV and the court wore mourning for Cardinal Mazarin, an unusual honour, and one which Henry IV had paid to the memory of Gabrielle d’Estrées.

We will not undertake [says Voltaire] to decide whether Mazarin was a great minister or not; his actions must speak for themselves. There is often a popular idea of a vast breadth of mind and an almost divine genius in those who have governed empires with some success. It is not a superior power of penetration that makes statesmen; it is their character. Men, if they have ever so little good sense, nearly all perceive their own interests. In this respect a citizen of Amsterdam or of Bern is as wise as Sejanus, Ximenes, Buckingham, Richelieu, or Mazarin; but our conduct and our enterprises depend solely upon the temper of our soul, and our successes depend upon fortune. For example, if such a genius as Pope Alexander VI or his son Borgia had had to take La Rochelle, he would have invited the principal leaders to his camp under a solemn oath and would have made away with them. Mazarin would have entered the city two or three years later by winning over and dividing the citizens. Don Luis de Haro would not have risked the enterprise. Richelieu built a dyke along the sea, after the example of Alexander, entered and took La Rochelle; but a less strong tide or a little greater promptness on the part of the English would have saved La Rochelle and made Richelieu seem foolhardy.

The character of men can be judged by their enterprises. It may well be said that the soul of Richelieu breathed pride and vengeance, that Mazarin was wise, pliant, and avaricious. But in order to tell in how far a minister has genius one must either have frequently heard him talk, or one must read what he has written. What is seen every day among courtiers often happens among statesmen: he who has most genius fails, while he who has in his character more of patience, force, pliancy, and persistence succeeds. On reading the letters of Cardinal Mazarin and the Mémoires of Cardinal de Retz[j] one easily sees that De Retz was the superior genius. Nevertheless Mazarin was all-powerful and De Retz was overthrown. Finally, it is quite true that to make a powerful minister often nothing is needed but a mediocre mind, good sense, and luck; but to be a good minister a man must have love for the public welfare as his dominant passion. The great statesman is he who leaves to his country great and useful memorials.

The memorial that immortalises Cardinal Mazarin is the acquisition of Alsace. He gave this province to France at a time when France was enraged at him; and by a singular fatality he did more good for the kingdom when he was persecuted than in the tranquillity of absolute power.[i]

Mazarin’s end [says Michelet] was at least consistent with his life--he lived and died a cheat. He believed he had cheated the future. Fortunate player, he had all his plans well laid. The prophecies of his youth were fulfilled. He had appeared, at the age of twenty-five, upon a field of battle crying, “Peace! Peace!” From the noble and serious workers who had died painfully in preparing his opportunities, he filched the glory of the triumphant Peace of Westphalia and that of the Pyrenees. Richelieu sowed, Mazarin harvested. The one created the administration, the army, the navy, and died on the eve of Rocroi. The other spoiled everything and succeeded in everything. Great through the greatness of Condé, and greater through that of Turenne, his position was strengthened by even the futile tempest of the Fronde; he retains at least the honour of that forced and fatal peace into which France fell through sheer lassitude. This pedestal is still left him; his features even after death wear the mask of the Angel of Peace.

Was it really peace? Too late it had arrived: Germany, agonising in ruin, found no peace in the Treaty of Westphalia; Spain, dead and done with, was in no condition to reap benefit from the Peace of the Pyrenees. And France herself, entering by this door into a fifty years’ struggle for the Spanish succession, was to find in this peace fiscal war at home and bloody strife abroad.[b]

FOOTNOTES

[96] [Michelet[b] believes that the love affair of Mazarin and the queen began even earlier than their contemporaries think. He says: “It has been said that Louis XIV was the son of Mazarin--this is certainly wrong. He was of France, ballasted by Austria. But his brother, the second duke of Orleans (born September 22nd, 1640), like the first, Gaston, was thoroughly Italian in spirit and in manner. He was as much Mazarin as Gaston was Concini. I fully appreciate the difficulties. Their contemporaries believe that she did not give herself to him until later. There was at least one entr’acte in her favour.” To a court tradition, related, among others, by the Princess Palatine,[n] mother of the regent, is due a belief that Mazarin’s continued hold over the queen-mother is explained by the fact that they had been secretly married. Kitchin[o] says “there is no reason to doubt that they were actually married.” But Martin assures us that “there is not the slightest indication of this, either in their correspondence or in what we know of the Carnets[p] of Mazarin.”]

[97] [He was, however, a deacon, and so in lesser orders.]

[98] [This statement is not substantiated, and is not to be found in any contemporary writing. The first book that speaks of it bears the date 1694.]

[99] [The aged prince of Condé (Henry II de Bourbon) died December 26th, 1646, when the duke d’Enghien (Louis II de Bourbon) assumed his father’s title. He came to be known as “The Great Condé,” and we shall see much of him in the ensuing pages. He was born at Paris, September 8th, 1621; died, December 11th, 1686. The first prince of Condé (Louis I de Bourbon), whose death at the battle of Jarnac in 1569 will be recalled (see p. 363), was his great-grand-father. This first prince of Condé was the younger brother of Anthony, king of Navarre, the father of King Henry IV. So the Great Condé came honestly by his fighting propensities.]

[100] [Some historians refuse to credit Condé with these words. Indeed, Madame de Motteville reports a much less stirring harangue: “My friends, have good courage; we must of necessity fight to-day. It will be useless to back out. For I promise you that all the brave and the cowardly will fight; the ones of good will, the others through compulsion!” “This was perhaps,” adds Duruy,[h] “the only kind of language to impress the soldiers at that time.”]

[101] [Cardinal de Retz was the descendant of a Florentine family that came to the court of France in the suite of Catherine de’ Medici; it was his grand-uncle who figured so prominently in the massacre of St. Bartholomew. See above, pp. 369, 399.]

[102] [According to Voltaire,[i] so low were the royal resources that almost the entire court had to sleep, while at St. Germain, on straw. They were obliged to leave the crown jewels as security with the usurers. The young king often lacked necessities. The pages of his chamber were dismissed because there were no means to keep them. At the same time Louis’ aunt, Henrietta Maria of England, in refuge at Paris, was reduced to the extremes of poverty; her daughter, afterwards married to Louis’ brother, had to stay in bed to keep warm.]

[103] [He went first to Liège and afterwards to Cologne.]

[104] [In comparing these great rivals, Kitchin[q] says: “It has been well said of these two masters in war, that as Condé grew older he lost his early fire and military insight, without becoming wiser or more prudent, while each campaign made Turenne more daring as well as more skilful. The careers of the two great soldiers form a striking contrast: it is genius without industry pitted against high talent combined with infinite painstaking, and a belief in the scientific treatment of the art of war. The more brilliant Condé was sure to fail when pitted against Turenne.” Vicomte de Turenne (Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne) was a grandson of William the Silent. He was born in 1611 (September 11th, at Sedan), and was therefore now just over forty. Condé was ten years younger (born September 8th, 1621). The span of life of each of the great generals was destined to compass almost exactly the same period; Turenne being just under sixty-four, Condé just over sixty-five, at death.]

[105] [“Joan of Arc made France a nation against the English; Louis XIV made France a state against all Europe. The Fronde had none of these creative ideas--whence its incertitude and its weakness. Louis XIV had the idea of state--whence his firmness, his decision, and that famous phrase, ‘L’État, c’est moi,’ which has been taken for an expression of pride but was an expression of policy.”--SAINT-MARC GIRARDIN.]

[106] [See note, page 488.]

[107] [The three ecclesiastical electors, the duke of Bavaria, the princes of Brunswick and of Hesse, the kings of Sweden and Denmark.]

[108] [It has been suggested that Mazarin purposely made the dowry such as Spain could not well pay, so that the treaty must be broken. That clause once broken, the renunciation of the succession was also void, with the rest of the treaty. If such was really Mazarin’s plan, it was an extraordinary one.]

[109] [The marriage had taken place in June, 1660, at Fuenterrabia in the Pyrenees.]

[110] [We may add that he pensioned several writers--among them Descartes and the historian Mézeray--and that he provided for the splendid Mazarin library, opened later to the public. “Mazarin,” says Duruy,[h] “had the liveliest if not the best taste for art. He brought from Italy a number of paintings, statues, and curiosities--even actors and machinists who introduced the opera into France. In 1655 he founded the Academy of Painting and Sculpture.”]

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