into the hands of his widow, Marie de Médicis, a weak and frivolous
woman. Under her regency all kinds of evils accumulated. So many
conflicting interests and animosities existed that there was little
short of anarchy. There were not popular insurrections and rebellions,
for the people were ignorant, and were in bondage to their feudal
masters; but the kingdom was rent by the rivalries and intrigues of the
great nobles, who, no longer living in their isolated castles but in the
precincts of the court, fought duels in the streets, plundered the royal
treasury, robbed jewellers and coachmakers, paid no debts, and treated
the people as if they were dogs or cattle. They claimed all the
great offices of state, and all high commands in the army and
navy; sold justice, tampered with the law, quarrelled with the
parliaments,--indeed, were a turbulent, haughty, and powerful
aristocracy, who felt that they were above all law and all restraint.
They were not only engaged in perpetual intrigues, but even in
treasonable correspondence with the enemies of their country. They
disregarded the honor of the kingdom, and attempted to divide it into
principalities for their children. "The Guises wished to establish
themselves in Provence, the Montmorencies in Languedoc, the Longuevilles
in Picardy. The Duke of Epernon sought to retain the sovereignty of
Guienne, and the Duke of Vendôme to secure the sovereignty of Brittany."
One wanted to be constable, another admiral, a third to be governor of a
province, in order to tyrannize and enrich themselves like Roman
proconsuls. Every outrage was shamelessly perpetrated by them with
impunity, because they were too powerful to be punished. They
assassinated their enemies, filled the cities with their armed
retainers, and made war even on the government; so that all central
power was a mockery. The Queen-regent was humiliated and made
contemptible, and was forced, in her turn and in self-defence, to
intrigues and cabals, and sought protection by setting the nobles up
against each other, and thus dividing their forces. Even the
parliaments, which were courts of law, were full of antiquated
prejudices, and sought only to secure their own privileges,--at one time
siding with the Queen-regent, and then with the factious nobles. The
Huguenots were the best people of the land; but they were troublesome,
since they possessed cities and fortresses, and erected an _imperium in
imperio._ In their synods and assemblies they usurped the attributes of
secular rulers, and discussed questions of peace and war. They entered
into formidable conspiracies, and fomented the troubles and
embarrassments of the government The abjuration of Henry IV. had thinned
their ranks and deprived them of court influence. No great leaders
remained, since they had been seduced by fashion. The Huguenots were a
disappointed and embittered party, hard to please, and hard to be
governed; full of fierce resentments, and soured by old recollections.
They had obtained religious liberty, but with this they were not
contented. Their spirit was not unlike that of the Jacobins in England
after the Stuarts were expelled from the throne. So all things combined
to produce a state of anarchy and discontent. Feudalism had done its
work. It was a good thing on the dissolution of the Roman Empire, when
society was resolved into its original elements,--when barbarism on the
one hand, and superstition on the other, made the Middle Ages funereal,
dismal, violent, despairing. But commerce, arts, and literature had
introduced a new era,--still unformed, a vast chaos of conflicting
forces, and yet redeemed by reviving intelligence and restless daring.
The one thing which society needed in that transition period was a
strong government in the hands of kings, to restore law and develop
national resources.
Now amid all these evils Richelieu grew up. Under the guise of levity
and pleasure and good-nature, he studied and comprehended all these
parties and factions, and hated them all. All alike were hostile to the
central power, which he saw was necessary to the preservation of law and
to the development of the resources of the country.
Moreover, he was ambitious of power himself, which he loved as Michael
Angelo loved art, and Palestrina loved music. Power was his
master-passion, and consumed all other passions; and he resolved to gain
it in any way he could,--unscrupulously, by flatteries, by duplicities,
by sycophancies, by tricks, by lies, even by services. That was his end.
He cared nothing for means. He was a politician.
The progress of his elevation is interesting, but hideous. Armand Jean
Duplessis was born in 1585, of a noble family of high rank. He was
designed for the army, but a bishopric falling to the gift of his
family, he was made a priest. He early distinguished himself in his
studies, for he was precocious and had great abilities. At twenty he was
doctor of the Sorbonne, and before he was twenty-one he received from
the Pope, Paul V., the emblems of spiritual power as a prelate of the
Church. But he was too young to be made a bishop, according to the
canons,--a difficulty, however, which he easily surmounted: he told a
lie to the Pope, and then begged for an absolution. He then attached
himself to the worthless favorite of the Queen-regent, Concini, one of
her countrymen; and through him to the Queen herself, Marie de Medicis,
who told him her secrets, which he betrayed when it suited his
interests. When Louis XIII. attained his majority, Richelieu paid his
court to De Luynes, who was then all-powerful with the King, and who
secured him a cardinal's hat; and when this miserable favorite
died,--this falconer, this keeper of birds, yet duke, peer, governor,
and minister,--Richelieu wound himself around the King, Louis XIII., the
most impotent of all the Bourbons, made himself necessary, and became
minister of foreign affairs; and his great rule began (1624).
During all these seventeen years of office-climbing, Richelieu was to
all appearance the most amiable man in France; everybody liked him, and
everybody trusted him. He was full of amenities, promises, bows, smiles,
and flatteries. He always advocated the popular side with reigning
favorites; courted all the great ladies; was seen in all the fashionable
salons; had no offensive opinions; was polite to everybody; was
non-committal; fond of games and spectacles; frivolous among fools,
learned among scholars; grave among functionaries, devout among
prelates; cunning as a fox, brave as a lion, supple as a dog; all things
to all men; an Alcibiades, a Jesuit; with no apparent animosities;
handsome, witty, brilliant; preacher, courtier, student; as full of
hypocrisy as an egg is of meat; with eyes wide open, and thoughts
disguised; all eyes and no heart; reserved or communicative as it suited
his purpose. This was that arch-intriguer who was seeking all the while,
not the sceptre of the King, but the power of the King. Should you say
that this non-committal, agreeable, and amiable politician--who
quarrelled with nobody, and revealed nothing to anybody; who had cheated
all parties by turns--was the man to save France, to extricate his
country from all the evils to which I have alluded, to build up a great
throne (even while he who sat upon it was utterly contemptible) and make
that throne the first in Europe, and to establish absolutism as one of
the needed forces of the seventeenth century?
Yet so it was; and his work was all the more difficult when the
character of the King is considered. Louis XIII. was a different kind of
man from his father Henry IV. and his grandson Louis XIV. He had no
striking characteristics but feebleness and timidity and love of ignoble
pleasures. He had no ambitions or powerful passions; was feeble and
sickly from a child,--ruled at one time by his mother, and then by a
falconer; and apparently taking but little interest in affairs of state.
But if it was difficult to gain ascendency over such a frivolous and
inglorious Sardanapalus, it was easy to retain it when this ascendency
was once acquired. For Richelieu made him comprehend the dangers which
menaced his life and his throne; that some very able man must be
intrusted with supreme delegated power, who would rule for the benefit
of him he served,--a servant, and yet a master; like Metternich in
Austria, after the wars of Napoleon,--a man whose business and aim were
to exalt absolutism on a throne. Moreover, he so complicated public
affairs that his services were indispensable. Nobody could fill
his place.
Also, it must be remembered that the King was isolated, and without
counsellors whom he could trust. After the death of De Luynes he had no
bosom friend. He was surrounded with perplexities and secret enemies.
His mother, who had been regent, defied his authority; his brothers
sought to wear his crown; the nobles conspired against his throne; the
Protestants threatened another civil war; the parliaments thought only
of retaining their privileges; the finances were disordered; the
treasures which Henry IV. had accumulated had been squandered in bribing
the great nobles; foreign enemies had invaded the soil of France; evils
and dangers were accumulating on every side, with such terrific force as
to jeopardize the very existence of the monarchy; and one necessity
became apparent, even to the weak mind of the King,--that he must
delegate his power to some able man, who, though he might rule
unscrupulously and tyrannically, would yet be faithful to the crown, and
establish the central power for the benefit of his heirs and the welfare
of the state.
Now Richelieu was just the man he needed, just such a man as the times
required,--a man raised up to do important work, like Cromwell in
England, like Bismarck in Prussia, like Cavour in Italy: doubtless a
great hypocrite, yet sincere in the conviction that a strong government
was the great necessity of his country; a great scoundrel, yet a
patriotic and wise statesman, who loved his country with the ardor of a
Mirabeau, while nobody loved him. Besides, he loved absolutism, both
because he was by nature a tyrant, and because he was a member of the
Roman Catholic hierarchy. He called to mind old Rome under the Caesars,
and mediaeval Rome under the popes, and what a central authority had
effected for civilization in times of anarchy, and in times of darkness
and superstition; and the King to him was a sort of vicegerent of divine
power, clothed in authority based on divine right,--the idea of kings in
the Middle Ages. The state was his, to be managed as a man manages his
farm,--as a South Carolinian once managed his slaves. The idea that
political power properly emanates from the people,--the idea of Rousseau
and Jefferson,--never once occurred to him; nor even political power in
the hands of aristocrats, fettered by a constitution and amenable to the
nation. A constitutional monarchy existed nowhere, except perhaps in
England. Unrestricted and absolute power in the hands of a king was the
only government he believed in. The king might be feeble, in which case
he could delegate his power to ministers; or he might be imbecile, in
which case he might be virtually dethroned; but his royal rights were
sacred, his authority incontestable, and consecrated by all usage and
precedent.
Yet while Richelieu would uphold the authority of the crown as supreme
and absolute, he would not destroy the prestige of the aristocracy; for
he was a nobleman himself,--he belonged to their class. He believed in
caste, in privileges, in monopolies; therefore he would not annul either
rank or honor. The nobles were welcome to retain their stars and orders
and ribbons and heraldic distinctions, even their parks and palaces and
falcons and hounds. They were a favored class, that feudalism had
introduced and ages had indorsed; but even they must be subservient to
the crown, from which their honors emanated, and hence to order and law,
of which the king was the keeper. They must be subjects of the
government, as well as allies and supporters. The government was royal,
not aristocratic. The privileges of the nobility were social rather
than political, although the great offices of state were intrusted to
them as a favor, not as a right,--as simply servants of a royal master,
whose interests they were required to defend. Some of them were allied
by blood with the sovereign, and received marks of his special favor;
but their authority was derived from him.
Richelieu was not unpatriotic. He wished to see France powerful, united,
and prosperous; but powerful as a monarchy, united under a king, and
prosperous for the benefit of the privileged orders,--not for the
plebeian people, who toiled for supercilious masters. The people were of
no account politically; were as unimportant as slaves,--to be protected
in life and property, that they might thrive for the benefit of those
who ruled them.
So when Richelieu became prime minister, and felt secure in his
seat,--knowing how necessary to the King his services were,--he laid
aside his amiable manners as a politician, and determined as a statesman
to carry out remorselessly and rigidly his plans for the exaltation of
the monarchy. And the moment he spoke at the council-board his genius
predominated; all saw that a great power had arisen, that he was a
master, and would be obeyed, and would execute his plans with no
sentimentalities, but coldly, fixedly, like a man of blood and iron,
indifferent to all obstacles. He was a man who could rule, and
therefore, on Carlyle's theory, a man who ought to rule, because he
was strong.
There is something imposing, I grant, in this executive strength; it
does not make a man interesting, but it makes him feared. Every
ruler,--in fact every man intrusted with executive power, especially in
stormy times,--should be resolute, unflinching, with a will dominating
over everything, with courage, pluck, backbone, be he king or prime
minister, or the superintendent of a railway, or director of a lunatic
asylum, or president of a college. No matter whether the sphere be large
or small, the administration of power requires energy, will, promptness
of action, without favor and without fear. And if such a person rules
well he will be respected; but if he rules unwisely,--if capricious,
unjust, cruel, vindictive,--he may be borne for a while, until patience
is exhausted and indignation becomes terrible: a passion of vengeance,
like that which overthrew Strafford. Wise tyrants, like Peter and
Frederic the Great, will be endured, from their devotion to public
interests; but unwise tyrants, ruling for self-interest or pleasure,
will be hurled from power, or assassinated like Nero or Commodus, as the
only way to get rid of the miseries they inflict.
Now of the class of wise and enlightened tyrants was Richelieu. His
greatness was in his will, sagacity, watchfulness, and devotion to
public affairs. Factions could not oust him, because he was strong; the
King would not part with him, because he was faithful; posterity will
not curse him, because he laid the foundation of the political greatness
of his country.
I do not praise his system of government. On abstract principles I feel
that it is against the liberties of mankind; nor is it in accordance
with the progress of government in our modern times. All the successive
changes which reforms and revolutions have wrought have been towards
representative and constitutional governments,--as in England and France
in the nineteenth century. Absolutism or Caesarism is only adapted to
people in primitive or anarchical states of society,--as in old Rome, or
Rome under the popes. It is at the best a necessary tyranny, made so by
the disorders and evils of life. It can be commended only when men are
worse than governments; when they are to be coerced like wild beasts, or
lunatics, or scoundrels. When there is universal plunder, lying,
cheating, and murdering; when laws are a mockery, and when demagogues
reign; when all public interests are scandalously sacrificed for private
emolument,--then absolutism may for a time be necessary; but only for a
time, unless we assume that men can never govern themselves.
In that state of society into which France was plunged during the
regency of Marie de Médicis, and at which I have glanced, absolutism
was perhaps a needed force. Then Richelieu, its great modern
representative, arose,--a model statesman in the eyes of Peter
the Great.
But he was not to reign, and trample all other powers beneath his feet,
without a memorable struggle. Three great forces were arrayed against
him. These were the Huguenots, the nobles, and the parliaments,--the
Protestant, the feudal, and the legal elements of society in France. The
people,--at least the peasantry,--did not rise up against him; they were
powerless and too unenlightened. The priests sustained him, and the
common people acquiesced in his rigid rule, for he established law
and order.
He began his labors in behalf of absolutism by suppressing the
Huguenots. That was the only political party which was urgent for its
rights. They were an intelligent party of tradesmen and small farmers;
they were plebeian, but conscientious and aspiring. They were not
contented alone to worship God according to the charter which Henry IV.
had granted, but they sought political power; and they were so
unfortunate as to be guilty of cabals and intrigues inconsistent with a
central power. They were factious, and were not disposed to submit to
legitimate authority. They had declined in numbers and influence; they
had even degenerated in religious life; but they were still powerful
and dangerous foes. They had retreated to their strong fortress of La
Rochelle, resolved, if attacked, to fight once again the whole power of
the monarchy. They put themselves in a false position; they wanted more
than the Edict of Nantes had guaranteed.
Unfortunately for them they had no leaders worthy to marshal their
forces. Fashion and the influence of the court had seduced their men of
rank; nor had they the enthusiasm which had secured victory at Ivry. Nor
could they contend openly in the field; they were obliged to intrench
themselves in an impregnable fortress: there they deemed they could defy
their enemy. They even invoked the aid of England, and thus introduced
foreign enemies on the soil of France, which was high-treason. They put
themselves in the attitude of rebels against the government; and so long
as English ships, with supplies, could go in and out of their harbor,
they could not be conquered. Richelieu, clad in mail, a warrior-priest,
surveyed with disgust their strong defences and their open harbor. His
artillery was of no use, nor his lines of circumvallation. So he put his
brain in motion, and studied Quintus Curtius. He remembered what
Alexander did at the siege of Tyre; he constructed a vast dyke of stone
and timber and iron across the harbor, in some places twelve hundred
feet deep, and thus cut off all egress and ingress. The English under
Buckingham departed, unable to render further assistance. The capture
then was only a work of time; genius had hemmed the city in, and famine
soon did the rest. Cats, dogs, and vermin became luxuries. The starving
women beseeched the inexorable enemy for permission to retire: they
remembered the mercy that Henry IV. had shown at the siege of Paris. But
war in the hands of masters has no favors to grant; conquerors have no
tears. The Huguenots, as rebels, had no hope but in unconditional
submission. They yielded it reluctantly, but not until famine had done
its work. And they never raised their heads again; their spirit was
broken. They were conquered, and at the mercy of the crown; destined in
the next reign to be cruelly and most wantonly persecuted; hunted as
heretics by dragonnades and executioners, at the bidding of Louis XIV.,
until four hundred thousand were executed or driven from the kingdom.
But Richelieu was not such a bigot as Louis XIV.; he was a statesman,
and took enlightened views of the welfare of the country. Therefore he
contented himself with destroying the fortifications of La Rochelle,
filling up its ditches, and changing its government. He continued, in a
modified form, the religious privileges conceded by the Edict of Nantes;
but he kept a strict watch, humiliated the body by withholding civil
equalities and offices in the army and navy, treating with disdain their
ministers, and taking away their social rank, so that they became
plebeian and unimportant. He pursued the same course that the English
government adopted in reference to Dissenters in the eighteenth century,
when they were excluded from Oxford and Cambridge and church
burial-grounds. So that Protestantism in France, after the fall of La
Rochelle, never asserted its dignity, in spite of Bibles, consistories,
and schools. Degraded at court, deprived of the great offices of the
state, despised, rejected, and persecuted, it languished and declined.
Having subdued the Huguenots, Richelieu turned his attention to the
nobles,--the most worthless, arrogant, and powerful of all the nobility
of Europe; men who made royalty a mockery and law a name. I have alluded
to their intrigues, ambition, and insolence. It was necessary that they
should be humiliated, decimated, and punished, if central power was to
be respected. So he cut off their towering heads, exiled and imprisoned
them whenever they violated the laws, or threatened the security of the
throne or the peace of the realm. As individuals they hated him, and
conspired against his rule. Had they combined, they would have been more
powerful than he; but they were too quarrelsome, envious, and
short-sighted to combine.
The person who hated Richelieu most fiercely and bitterly was the
Queen-mother,--widow of Henry IV., regent during the minority of Louis
XIII. And no wonder, for he had cheated her and betrayed her. She was a
very formidable enemy, having a great ascendency over the mind of her
son the King; and once, it is said, she had so powerfully wrought upon
him by her envenomed sarcasms, in the palace of the Luxembourg where she
lived in royal state, that the King had actually taken the parchment in
his hand to sign the disgrace of his minister. But he was watched by an
eye that never slept; Richelieu suddenly appearing, at the critical
moment, from behind the tapestries where he had concealed himself,
fronted and defied his enemy. The King, bewildered, had not nerve enough
to face his own servant, who however made him comprehend the dangers
which surrounded his throne and person, and compelled him to part with
his mother,--the only woman he ever loved,--and without permitting her
to imprint upon his brow her own last farewell. "And the world saw the
extraordinary spectacle of this once powerful Queen, the mother of a
long line of kings, compelled to lead a fugitive life from court to
court,--repulsed from England by her son-in-law, refused a shelter in
Holland, insulted by Spain, neglected by Rome, and finally obliged to
crave an asylum from Rubens the painter, and, driven from one of his
houses, forced to hide herself in Cologne, where, deserted by all her
children, and so reduced by poverty as to break up the very furniture of
her room for fuel, she perished miserably between four empty walls, on a
wretched bed, destitute, helpless, heartbroken, and alone." Such was the
power and such was the vengeance of the cardinal on the highest
personage in France. Such was the dictation of a priest to a king who
personally disliked him; such was his ascendency, not by Druidical
weapons, but by genius presenting reasons of state.
The next most powerful personage in France was the Duke of Orleans,
brother of the King, who sought to steal his sceptre. As he was detected
in treasonable correspondence with Spain, he became a culprit, but was
spared after making a humiliating confession and submission. But Condé,
the first prince of the blood, was shut up in prison, and the powerful
Duke of Guise was exiled. Richelieu took away from the Duke of Bouillon
his sovereignty of Sedan; forced the proud Epernon to ask pardon on his
knees; drove away from the kingdom the Duke of Vendôme, natural brother
of the King; executed the Duke of Montmorency, whose family traced an
unbroken lineage to Pharamond; confined Marshal Bassompierre to the
Bastile; arrested Marshal Marillac at the head of a conquering army; cut
off the head of Cinq-Mars, grand equerry and favorite of the King; and
executed on the scaffold the Counts of Chalais and Bouteville. All these
men were among the proudest and most powerful nobles in Europe; they all
lived like princes, and had princely revenues and grand offices, but had
been caught with arms in their hands, or in treasonable correspondence.
What hope for ordinary culprits when the proudest feudal nobles were
executed or exiled, like common malefactors? Neither rank nor services
could screen them from punishment. The great minister had no mercy and
no delay even for the favorites of royalty. Nay, the King himself became
his puppet, and was forced to part with his friends, his family, his
mistresses, and his pleasures. Some of the prime ministers of kings have
had as much power as Richelieu, but no minister, before or since, has
ruled the monarch himself with such an iron sway. How weak the King, or
how great the minister!
The third great force which Richelieu crushed was the parliament of
Paris. It had the privilege of registering the decrees of the King; and
hence was a check, the only check, on royal authority,--unless the King
came in person into the assembly, and enforced his decree by what was
called a "bed of justice." This body, however, was judicial rather than
legislative; made up of pedantic and aristocratic lawyers, who could be
troublesome. We get some idea of the humiliation of this assembly of
lawyers and nobles from the speech of Omer Talon,--the greatest lawyer
of the realm,--when called upon to express the sentiments of his
illustrious body to the King, at a "bed of justice": "Happy should we
be, most gracious sovereign, if we could obtain any favor worthy of the
honor which we derive from your majesty's presence; but the entry of
your sacred person into our assembly unfits us for our functions. And
inasmuch as the throne on which you are seated is a light that dazzles
us, bow, if it please you, the heavens which you inhabit, and after the
example of the Eternal Sovereign, whose image you bear, condescend to
visit us with your gracious mercy."