enveloped him. Schemes and counter-schemes, stratagems and conspiracies,
assassinations and poisonings; all the state machinery which worked so
exquisitely in fair ladies’ chambers, to spread havoc and desolation
over a kingdom, were displayed before his eyes. Now campaigning with one
royal brother against Huguenots, now fighting with another on their
side, now solicited by the queen-mother to attempt the life of her son,
now implored by Henry III to assassinate his brother, the Bearnese, as
fresh antagonisms, affinities, combinations, were developed, detected,
neutralized almost daily, became rapidly an adept in Medician
state-chemistry. Charles IX in his grave, Henry III on the throne,
Alençon in the Huguenot camp--Henry at last made his escape. The brief
war and peace of Mercœur succeeded, and the king of Navarre formally
abjured the Catholic creed. The parties were now sharply defined. Guise
mounted upon the League, Henry astride upon the Reformation, were
prepared to do battle to the death. The temporary “war of the amorous”
was followed by the peace of Fleix.
Four years of peace again--four fat years of wantonness and riot
preceding fourteen hungry, famine-stricken years of bloodiest civil war.
The voluptuousness and infamy of the Louvre were almost paralleled in
vice, if not in splendor, by the miniature court at Pau. Henry’s Spartan
grandfather would scarcely have approved the courses of the youth whose
education he had commenced on so simple a scale. For Margaret of
Valois, hating her husband, and living in most undisguised and
promiscuous infidelity to him, had profited by her mother’s lessons. A
seraglio of maids of honor ministered to Henry’s pleasures, and were
carefully instructed that the peace and war of the kingdom were
playthings in their hands. While at Paris royalty was hopelessly sinking
in a poisonous marsh, there was danger that even the hardy nature of the
Bearnese would be mortally enervated by the atmosphere in which he
lived.
The unhappy Henry III, baited by the Guises, worried by the Alençon and
his mother, implored the king of Navarre to return to Paris and the
Catholic faith. M. de Segur, chief of Navarre’s council, who had been
won over during a visit to the capital, where he had made the discovery
that “Henry III was an angel, and his ministers devils,” came back to
Pau, urging his master’s acceptance of the royal invitation. Henry
wavered. Bold D’Aubigné, stanchest of Huguenots and of his friends, next
day privately showed Segur a palace window opening on a very steep
precipice over the Bayse, and cheerfully assured him that he should be
flung from it did he not instantly reverse his proceedings and give his
master different advice. “If I am not able to do the deed myself,” said
D’Aubigné, “here are a dozen more to help me.” The chief of the council
cast a glance behind him, saw a number of grim Puritan soldiers, with
their hats plucked down upon their brows, looking very serious; so made
his bow, and quite changed his line of conduct.
But Henry--no longer the unsophisticated youth who had been used to run
barefoot among the cliffs of Coarraze--was grown too crafty a politician
to be entangled by Spanish or Medician wiles. The duke of Anjou was now
dead. Of all the princes who had stood between him and the throne, there
was none remaining save the helpless, childless, superannuated youth who
was its present occupant. The king of Navarre was legitimate heir to
the crown of France. “_Espoir_” was now in letters of light upon his
shield, but he knew that his path to greatness led through manifold
dangers, and that it was only at the head of his Huguenot chivalry that
he could cut his way. He was the leader of the nobles of Gascony, and
Dauphiny, and Guienne, in their mountain fastnesses; of the weavers,
cutlers, and artisans in their thriving manufacturing and trading towns.
It was not Spanish gold, but carbines and cutlasses, bows and bills,
which could bring him to the throne of his ancestors.
And thus he stood the chieftain of that great, austere party of
Huguenots, the men who went on their knees before the battle, beating
their breasts with their iron gantlets, and singing in full chorus a
psalm of David before smiting the Philistines hip and thigh.
Their chieftain, scarcely their representative--fit to lead his Puritans
on the battle-field--was hardly a model for them elsewhere. Yet, though
profligate in one respect, he was temperate in every other. In food,
wine, and sleep, he was always moderate. Subtle and crafty in
self-defence, he retained something of his old love of truth, of his
hatred for liars. Hardly generous, perhaps, he was a friend of justice;
while economy in a wandering king like himself was a necessary virtue,
of which France one day was to feel the beneficent action. Reckless and
headlong in appearance, he was in truth the most careful of men. On the
religious question most cautious of all, he always left the door open
behind him, disclaimed all bigotry of opinion, and earnestly implored
the papists to seek, not his destruction, but his instruction. Yet,
prudent as he was by nature in every other regard, he was all his life
the slave of one woman or another; and it was by good luck rather than
by sagacity that he did not repeatedly forfeit the fruits of his courage
and conduct in obedience to his master-passion.
Always open to conviction on the subject of his faith, he repudiated
the appellation of heretic. A creed, he said, was not to be changed like
a shirt, but only on due deliberation and under special advice. In his
secret heart he probably regarded the two religions as his chargers, and
was ready to mount alternately the one or the other, as each seemed the
more likely to bear him safely in battle. The Bearnese was no Puritan,
but he was most true to himself and to his own advancement. His highest
principle of action was to reach his goal, and to that principle he was
ever loyal. Feeling, too, that it was for the interest of France that he
should succeed, he was even inspired--compared with others on the
stage--by an almost lofty patriotism.
Amiable by nature and by habit, he had preserved the most unimpaired
good-humor throughout the horrible years which succeeded St.
Bartholomew, during which he carried his life in his hand, and learned
not to wear his heart upon his sleeve. Without gratitude, without
resentment, without fear, without remorse, entirely arbitrary, yet with
the capacity to use all men’s judgments; without convictions, save in
regard to his dynastic interests, he possessed all the qualities
necessary to success. He knew how to use his enemies. He knew how to use
his friends, to abuse them, and to throw them away. He refused to
assassinate Francis Alençon at the bidding of Henry III, but he
attempted to procure the murder of the truest of his own friends, one of
the noblest characters of the age, whose breast showed twelve scars
received in his service--Agrippa D’Aubigné--because the honest soldier
had refused to become his pimp, a service the king had implored upon his
knees.
Beneath the mask of perpetual, careless good-humor, lurked the keenest
eye, a subtle, restless, widely combining brain, and an iron will.
Native sagacity had been tempered into consummate elasticity by the
fiery atmosphere in which feebler natures had been dissolved. His wit
was as flashing and as quickly unsheathed as his sword. Desperate,
apparently reckless temerity on the battle-field was deliberately
indulged in, that the world might be brought to recognize a hero and
chieftain in a king. The do-nothings of the Merovingian line had been
succeeded by the Pepins; to the effete Carlovingians had come a Capet;
to the impotent Valois should come a worthier descendant of St. Louis.
This was shrewd Gascon calculation, aided by constitutional
fearlessness. When dispatch-writing, invisible Philips, star-gazing
Rudolphs, and petticoated Henrys sat upon the thrones of Europe, it was
wholesome to show the world that there was a king left who could move
about in the bustle and business of the age, and could charge as well as
most soldiers at the head of his cavalry; that there was one more
sovereign fit to reign over men, besides the glorious virgin who
governed England.
Thus courageous, crafty, far-seeing, consistent, untiring,
imperturbable, he was born to command, and had a right to reign. He had
need of the throne, and the throne had still more need of him.
WALLENSTEIN, DUKE OF FRIEDLAND.
BY FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER.
[Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Wallenstein, a distinguished Austrian
general, the most noted opponent of Gustavus Adolphus in the Thirty
Years’ War, born 1583, assassinated 1634. Wallenstein had already
achieved the most brilliant rank among the Imperialist generals,
except Tilly, when the defeat of the latter made the ambitious
soldier, whose great wealth and unscrupulous daring had excited the
jealousy of the Emperor Ferdinand, again a necessity to the
Catholic cause. Wallenstein, who had raised and subsisted an
immense army at his own expense at a time of pressing imperial
need, had afterward been retired from command. When called again to
the help of the imperial cause, Wallenstein dictated his own terms,
which practically left Ferdinand a mere puppet in his hands. Though
Gustavus Adolphus was victor at the battle of Lützen, it was at the
cost of his own life, a result welcomed by the Catholic league as a
great victory. Wallenstein reorganized his army, and was again
ordered by the emperor to lay down his baton on the just suspicion
that he was negotiating with the Swedes disloyally. His official
removal was made known to his principal generals, and Wallenstein,
deserted by a large portion of his troops, was assassinated by a
conspiracy of his minor officers, who had become satisfied that it
would be impracticable to secure his person alive, or to prevent
his immediate junction with the advancing Swedes.]
Count Wallenstein, afterward Duke of Friedland, was an experienced
officer, and the richest nobleman in Bohemia. From his earliest youth he
had been in the service of the house of Austria, and several campaigns
against the Turks, Venetians, Bohemians, Hungarians, and Transylvanians
had established his reputation. He was present as colonel at the battle
of Prague, and afterward, as major-general, had defeated a Hungarian
force in Moravia. The emperor’s gratitude was equal to his services, and
a large share of the confiscated estates of the Bohemian insurgents was
their reward. Possessed of immense property, excited by ambitious views,
confident of his own good fortune, and still more encouraged by the
existing state of circumstances, he offered, at his own expense and that
of his friends, to raise and clothe an army for the emperor, and even
undertook the cost of maintaining it if he were allowed to augment it to
fifty thousand men.
The project was universally ridiculed as the chimerical offering of a
visionary brain; but the offer was highly valuable, if its promises
should be but partly fulfilled. Certain circles in Bohemia were assigned
to him as depots, with authority to appoint his own officers. In a few
months he had twenty thousand men under arms, with which, quitting the
Austrian territories, he soon afterward appeared on the frontiers of
Lower Saxony with thirty thousand. The emperor had lent this armament
nothing but his name. The reputation of the general, the prospect of
rapid promotion, and the hope of plunder, attracted to his standard
adventurers from all quarters of Germany, and even sovereign princes,
stimulated by the desire of glory or of gain, offered to raise regiments
for the service of Austria.
The secret how Wallenstein had purposed to fulfill his extravagant
designs was now manifest. He had learned the lesson from Count
Mansfeld,[25] but the scholar surpassed his master. On the principle
that war must support war, Mansfeld and the Duke of Brunswick had
subsisted their troops by contributions levied indiscriminately on
friend and enemy; but this predatory life was attended with all the
inconvenience and insecurity which accompany robbery. Like fugitive
banditti, they were obliged to steal through exasperated and vigilant
enemies; to roam from one end of Germany to another; to watch their
opportunity with anxiety, and to abandon the most fertile territories
whenever they were defended by a superior army. If Mansfeld and Duke
Christian had done such great things in the face of these difficulties,
what might not be expected if the obstacles were removed; when the army
raised was numerous enough to overawe in itself the most powerful states
of the empire; when the name of the emperor insured impunity to every
outrage; and when, under the highest authority, and at the head of an
overwhelming force, the same system of warfare was pursued which these
two adventurers had hitherto adopted at their own risk, and with only an
untrained multitude?
Wallenstein was at the head of an army of nearly a hundred thousand men,
who adored him, when the sentence of his dismissal arrived. Most of the
officers were his creatures--with the common soldiers his hint was law.
His ambition was boundless, his pride indomitable, his imperious spirit
could not brook an injury unavenged. One moment would now precipitate
him from the height of grandeur into the obscurity of a private station.
To execute such a sentence upon such a delinquent seemed to require
more address than it cost to obtain it from the judge. Accordingly, two
of Wallenstein’s most intimate friends were selected as heralds of these
evil tidings, and instructed to soften them as much as possible by
flattering assurances of the continuance of the emperor’s favor.
Wallenstein had ascertained the purport of their message before the
imperial ambassadors arrived. He had time to collect himself, and his
countenance exhibited an external calmness while grief and rage were
storming in his bosom. He had made up his mind to obey. The emperor’s
decision had taken him by surprise before circumstances were ripe or his
preparations complete for the bold measures he had contemplated. His
extensive estates were scattered over Bohemia and Moravia, and by their
confiscation the emperor might at once destroy the sinews of his power.
He looked, therefore, to the future for revenge, and in this hope he was
encouraged by the predictions of an Italian astrologer, who led his
imperious spirit like a child in leading-strings. Seni had read in the
stars that his master’s brilliant career was not yet ended, and that
bright and glorious prospects still awaited him. It was, indeed,
unnecessary to consult the stars to foretell that an enemy, Gustavus
Adolphus, would ere long render indispensable the services of such a
general as Wallenstein.
“The Emperor is betrayed,” said Wallenstein to the messengers; “I pity
but forgive him. It is plain that the grasping spirit of the Bavarian
dictates to him. I grieve that, with so much weakness, he has sacrificed
me; but I will obey.” He dismissed the emissaries with princely
presents, and, in a humble letter, besought the continuance of the
emperor’s favor and of the dignities he had bestowed upon him.
The murmurs of the army were universal on hearing of the dismissal of
their general, and the greater part of his officers immediately quitted
the imperial service. Many followed him to his estates in Bohemia and
Moravia; others he attached to his interests by pensions, in order to
command their services when the opportunity should offer.
But repose was the last thing that Wallenstein contemplated when he
returned to private life. In his retreat he surrounded himself with a
regal pomp which seemed to mock the sentence of degradation. Six gates
led to the palace he inhabited in Prague, and a hundred houses were
pulled down to make way for his courtyard. Similar palaces were built on
his other numerous estates. Gentlemen of the noblest houses contended
for the honor of serving him, and even imperial chamberlains resigned
the golden key to the emperor to fill a similar office under
Wallenstein. He maintained sixty pages, who were instructed by the
ablest masters. His antechamber was protected by fifty life-guards. His
table never consisted of less than one hundred covers, and his seneschal
was a person of distinction. When he traveled his baggage and suite
accompanied him in a hundred wagons drawn by six or four horses; his
court followed in sixty carriages attended by fifty led horses. The pomp
of his liveries, the splendor of his equipages, and the decorations of
his apartments were in keeping with all the rest. Six barons and as many
knights were in constant attendance about his person, and ready to
execute his slightest order. Twelve patrols went their rounds about his
palace to prevent any disturbance. His busy genius required silence. The
noise of coaches was to be kept away from his residence, and the streets
leading to it were frequently blocked up with chains. His own circle was
as silent as the approaches to his palace. Dark, reserved, and
impenetrable, he was more sparing of his words than of his gifts, while
the little that he spoke was harsh and imperious. He never smiled, and
the coldness of his temperament was proof against sensual seductions.
Ever occupied with grand schemes, he despised all those idle amusements
in which so many waste their lives. The correspondence he kept up with
the whole of Europe was chiefly managed by himself, and, that as little
as possible might be trusted to the silence of others, most of the
letters were written by his own hand. He was a man of large stature,
thin, of a sallow complexion, with short, red hair, and small, sparkling
eyes. A gloomy and forbidding seriousness sat upon his brow, and his
magnificent presents alone retained the trembling crowd of his
dependents.
In this stately obscurity did Wallenstein silently but not inactively
await the hour of revenge. The victorious career of Gustavus Adolphus
soon gave him a presentiment of its approach. Not one of his lofty
schemes had been abandoned, and the emperor’s ingratitude had loosened
the curb of his ambition. The dazzling splendor of his private life
bespoke high soaring projects, and, lavish as a king, he seemed already
to reckon among his certain possessions those which he contemplated with
hope.
Wallenstein, at the age of fifty, terminated his active and
extraordinary life. To ambition he owed both his greatness and his ruin.
With all his failings he possessed great and admirable qualities; and,
had he kept himself within due bounds, he would have lived and died
without an equal. The virtues of the ruler and of the hero--prudence,
justice, firmness, and courage--are strikingly prominent features in his
character; but he wanted the gentler virtues of the man, which adorn the
hero and make the ruler beloved. Terror was the talisman with which he
worked; extreme in his punishments as in his rewards, he knew how to
keep alive the zeal of his followers, while no general of ancient or
modern times could boast of being obeyed with equal alacrity. Submission
to his will was more prized by him than bravery; for, if the soldiers
work by the latter, it is on the former that the general depends. He
continually kept up the obedience of his troops by capricious orders,
and profusely rewarded the readiness to obey even trifles, because he
looked rather to the act itself than its object. He once issued a
decree, with the penalty of death on disobedience, that none but red
sashes should be worn in the army. A captain of horse no sooner heard
the order, than, pulling off his gold-embroidered sash, he trampled it
under foot. Wallenstein, on being informed of the circumstance, promoted
him on the spot to the rank of colonel.
His comprehensive glance was always directed to the whole, and in all
his apparent caprice, he steadily kept in view some general scope or
bearing. The robberies committed by the soldiers in a friendly country
had led to the severest orders against marauders; and all who should be
caught thieving were threatened with the halter. Wallenstein himself
having met a straggler in the open country upon the field, commanded him
to be seized without trial, as a transgressor of the law, and, in his
usual voice of thunder, exclaimed, “Hang the fellow,” against which no
opposition ever availed. The soldier pleaded and proved his innocence,
but the irrevocable sentence had gone forth. “Hang, then, innocent,”
cried the inexorable Wallenstein, “the guilty will have then more reason
to tremble.” Preparations were already making to execute the sentence,
when the soldier, who gave himself up for lost, formed the desperate
resolution of not dying without revenge. He fell furiously upon his
judge, but was overpowered by numbers and disarmed before he could
fulfil his design. “Now let him go,” said the duke, “it will excite
sufficient terror.”
His munificence was supported by an immense income, which was estimated
at three millions of florins yearly, without reckoning the enormous sums
which he raised under the name of contributions. His liberality and
clearness of understanding raised him above the religious prejudices of
his age; and the Jesuits never forgave him for having seen through their
system, and for regarding the pope as nothing more than a bishop of
Rome.
But as no one ever yet came to a fortunate end who quarrelled with the
Church, Wallenstein, also, must augment the number of its victims.
Through the intrigues of monks, he lost at Ratisbon the command of the
army, and at Egra his life; by the same arts, perhaps, he lost what was
of more consequence, his honorable name and good repute with posterity.
For, in justice, it must be admitted that the pens which have traced the
history of this extraordinary man are not untinged with partiality, and
that the treachery of the duke, and his designs upon the throne of
Bohemia, rest not so much upon proved facts, as upon probable
conjecture. No documents have yet been brought to light which disclose
with historical certainty the secret motives of his conduct; and among
all his public and well-attested actions, there is, perhaps, not one
which could have had an innocent end. Many of his most obnoxious
measures proved nothing but the earnest wish he entertained for peace;
most of the others are explained and justified by the well-founded
distrust he entertained of the emperor, and the excusable wish of
maintaining his own importance. It is true, that his conduct toward the
Elector of Bavaria looks too like an unworthy revenge, and the dictates
of an implacable spirit; but still, none of his actions perhaps warrant
us in holding his treason to be proved. If necessity and despair at last
forced him to deserve the sentence which had been pronounced against him
while innocent, still this will not justify that sentence. Thus
Wallenstein fell, not because he was a rebel, but he became a rebel
because he fell. Unfortunate in life that he made a victorious party his
enemy, but still more unfortunate in death, that the same party survived
him and wrote his history.
[Illustration: CARDINAL RICHELIEU.]
CARDINAL RICHELIEU.
BY SIR JAMES STEPHEN.
[Armand Jean Duplessis, Cardinal and Duke de Richelieu, born 1585,
died 1642. Originally trained to arms, as Marquis du Chillon, he
decided to take orders, studied theology and was made Bishop of
Luçon in 1607. During the minority of Louis XIII he enjoyed the
confidence of the queen regent, Maria de’ Medici, and in 1622
received the cardinal’s hat. In spite of the dislike of the king he
became prime minister and practically ruled France till his death.
Though a prince of the Church, Richelieu secretly assisted the
parliamentary party in the English Revolution of 1640; and gave
most important assistance both in money and armies, as a matter of
state policy, to the Protestants during the Thirty Years’ War.]