FRANCE UNDER RICHELIEU AND MAZARIN
Character of Richelieu--The principles of his government--Defects
of his policy--Character of Louis XIII.--Position and
organisation of the Huguenots--The rising of 1625--Edicts against
the nobles--Conspiracy of Vendôme--War with England--Siege
of La Rochelle--Destruction of the political power of the
Huguenots--Administrative reforms--The Day of Dupes--Rising of
Montmorency--Conspiracy of Cinq Mars--Centralising policy of
Richelieu--The regency of 1643--Character of Mazarin--Outbreak of the
Fronde--Constitutional claims of the Parlement--Unpopularity of the
prime ministership--Weakness of the Parlement--The lead taken by the
nobles--Factiousness of the movement--Flight of Mazarin--The Fronde in
the provinces--End of the Fronde--Last years of Mazarin.
[Sidenote: =Character of Richelieu.=]
The well-known portrait of Richelieu in the gallery of the Louvre shows
us the features of a man who under the outside of an aristocratic calm
conceals a highly nervous and anxious temperament. There is not a trace
of brutality, not a suggestion of coarseness, in the finely moulded
features. At the first glance there seems almost a want of power in
the delicate oval of the pale and attenuated face. Here is no Henry
VIII. to trample on the laws alike of God and man in order
to satisfy the demands of an imperious will, and rivet the chains
of slavery on a panic-stricken people. Here is no Cromwell to march
ruthlessly to his goal, over the constitution of his country, through
the blood of his king, in the fervid enthusiasm of a divine mission.
Here surely is no Napoleon to treat in callous selfishness human life
and national faith as nothing in comparison to military glory and
personal ambition. Yet the charges against Richelieu writ large on
the page of history are precisely those which his portrait repudiates.
Indiscriminate severity, ruthless barbarity, inordinate ambition,
personal tyranny, such are the accusations levelled against him as
a statesman and as a man. He is depicted as one who governed, and
who preferred to govern, by terrorism and espionage, who struck down
remorselessly and indiscriminately all who dared to oppose him, who
established the ascendency of a gaoler over the weaker nature of the
miserable king, who made France drink deep of the intoxicating potion
of military glory in order that she might not feel the ever tightening
chains of civil slavery. Even those who applaud his patriotism, and
recognise him as the author of the greatness of France admit the
charges of ruthlessness and barbarity made against his government by
apologising for them.
[Sidenote: =Principles of his government.=]
The home policy of Richelieu, less perhaps than that of any other
statesman, admits of palliatives and excuses. It is etched sharply
on the plate of history in white and black. There are no neutral
tints. He took for his motto that of the Romans of old, _Parcere
subjectis et debellare superbos_, and if ever such a principle
is admissible in human affairs it was admissible in France in the
days of Richelieu. But it is clear the principle must be pronounced
justifiable, not merely excusable, before the muse of history can
smooth over the harsh black lines of the portrait which she has been
accustomed to draw. A statesman may in the course of difficult affairs
be betrayed into the commission of a great crime, as was Theodoric in
his participation in the murder of Odoacer, and his character may yet
stand out from among men noble and true, though his name must go down
to posterity linked with a thousand virtues and one crime. But the
conduct of a ruler, who deliberately from first to last acts upon an
immoral principle of government, and steadily carries it out through
his whole career, admits of no palliation. He may blunder perhaps into
a noble and patriotic action as did Napoleon in the restoration of
Christianity in France, but that cannot affect the general severity of
the condemnation. So it is with Richelieu. We cannot pick and choose
among his actions, admit that in one execution he was right, in another
he was wrong. We cannot plead that a policy of terrorism is criminal,
but in his particular case there was much to diminish the guilt. He
will have none of such compromises and such excuses. Deliberately,
unhesitatingly, in his lifetime he chose a policy stern, terrific,
pitiless, and he carried it out relentlessly but not revengefully. Men
accuse him of never sparing even the dupe and the fool, they do not
accuse him of destroying the innocent. Not like Henry VIII.
did he ever put men to death because they might at some future time
prove seditious. Not like Charles II. did he permit innocent
lives to be sworn away wholesale rather than face the danger of a
popular tumult. No, all who suffered under him were legally guilty,
but nearly all who were legally guilty suffered. It was a terrible
policy--the extermination of the evil-doer, the establishment of the
structure of firm government in the blood of its enemies,--but it is
the policy which Richelieu adopted and defended in his lifetime, and
for which for two centuries and a half he has stood at the bar of
public opinion, pleading, as every line in his portrait shows, not
palliation, not excuse, but the calm conviction of a man who knows that
he is in the right.
[Sidenote: =Their justification.=]
There are times in the history of nations as in the history of
individual man, when the only possibility of safety and health lies
in the rigorous application of the knife. Such a state of disease
the body politic had reached in France, as it seemed to Richelieu,
in the seventeenth century. The poison of separation and anarchy had
been imbedded too deep in the system by the civil wars of the last
century, for the ordinary remedies of steady and firm government to
have any effect. As long as the Huguenots were forming themselves
into a political organisation in rivalry to the government of France,
and as long as the nobles were bent upon making all government
impossible in order that they might personally profit from the evils
of anarchy, there was a cancer eating into the heart of France which
made national death inevitable. The only hope of saving life lay in
the unsparing excision of the malignant tissue. If only one fibre was
left it would soon become a fresh root of the fell disease. For it
must be remembered that Richelieu had to deal with a nation which had
no power of defending itself against the evils which threatened to
destroy it. There was too little cohesion among the various provinces
seignories and towns, of which France was made up, to admit of any
united action. Excepting so far as the royal authority made itself
felt, the administration of the country districts was still feudal,
in the hands of the seigneurs and their officers, and that of the
towns was aristocratic, in the hands of the richer citizens and their
officers. The whole of the local administration was thus absorbed by
the aristocracy and the official classes. Intensely jealous both of
the king above them and of the people below them, they were still too
divided in rank and too narrow in sympathies to take the direction
of affairs into their own hands. When they met together as in the
States-General of 1614 they disclosed the most deep-seated rivalries.
The days of the political triumphs of their natural leaders, the great
nobles, had been the darkest and most miserable which France had ever
experienced. Incapable of good they were potent only for evil. Their
privileges, their authority, their prestige barred the way of the
simplest administrative reforms. Equal administration of justice,
equal taxation, free circulation of commodities within the country
were impossible as long as the seigneurs held their special fiscal and
judicial powers in their own districts. From classes whose one idea of
government was the maintenance of personal and class privilege nothing
could be hoped. They formed an impenetrable barrier of obscurantism
in the way of good government. Interested in the maintenance, not in
the suppression, of abuse, they kept the people down with one hand in
misery and degradation, while with the other they sought to terrify the
king into tutelage. Duller eyes than those of Richelieu might easily
have seen that with such an enemy there was no middle course possible.
Feudalism as a political power must be stamped out or it would kill
France.
[Sidenote: =Limitations of his policy.=]
If Richelieu had lived three centuries earlier or a century later he
might have endeavoured, as Edward I. or Burke would have
endeavoured, to plant the roots of his new government deep in the
affections of the people by enshrining it in permanent institutions.
A wise and thoughtful statesmanship, which, in destroying the power
of feudalism utterly, could have replaced it by an alliance of the
powers of the Crown and of the people, would have been indeed an
unique blessing not only for France but for Europe. Institutions which
could have brought into mutual contact the interests of the peasant,
the bourgeois, and the roturier, and could have combined them with
the interests of the Crown, would soon have given a quick-witted
people like the French what they most wanted--political education. An
aristocracy as capable and as generous as the French noblesse would not
long have sulked like Achilles in his tent, but would soon have been
found in its proper place as the leader of the people, claiming the
privilege of the post of danger by the right of truest worth. But a
policy such as this was possible only for one who combined sympathy for
the people with rare political foresight. Richelieu possessed neither,
and was born in an age unfavourable to both. A clear sharp eye to the
present and immediate future, indomitable courage, quick decision,
inflexible will, such were the gifts he brought to the service of
France. For her service he used them without a thought for any one
else. He gave her national unity. He secured for her religious peace.
He centralised all the forces of the nation under the Crown. He made
that Crown the chief among the powers of Europe. He planted the seeds
of a colonial empire, and nourished the budding germs of artistic and
literary excellence. But he effected no financial or judicial reform.
He stirred not a finger to relieve the social burdens of the people. He
even increased their misery and would not listen to their complaints.
Everything for the people and nothing by the people has been taken as
the motto of beneficent despotism. Richelieu cannot lay claim even to
that. For France collectively he had an intense and vivid love. For her
greatness he willingly spent himself. For the French people considered
as social units, as individuals, or as classes, he cared not an atom.
He struck to the earth the political power of the nobles, because as
long as it existed France could neither be great nor united. He never
attempted to interfere with one of their social privileges, though
it was by those that they made the lives of the bulk of the French
peasants hideous and miserable. As a benefactor of the French people
he is as infinitely below Sully and Colbert as he is above them in
statesmanship. A wretched financier, an incapable administrator, prompt
to demand the obedience of the people whom he governed, and careless
of their happiness, without one spark of sympathy, without one touch
of weakness, Richelieu stands before us as the embodiment of intellect
and of will. His business was with _la haute politique_. That
he understood. To that he devoted all his energies. In that he shone
supreme. With unerring quickness of intellectual judgment he singled
out at once the true obstacles to the greatness of France. He found
them in the national disintegration brought about by the civil wars,
and largely fostered by the Huguenots, and in the anarchical tendencies
of the higher nobility. With true political insight he saw that with
a professional army at his back and the sentiments of loyalty and
national unity to support him, there was nothing which could stop the
ultimate victory of the Crown, save the weakness of the Crown itself.
For some years the struggle was intense, but his indomitable will in
the end gained the day. When he had once won the confidence of the
cautious and suspicious king the contest was practically over, and he
was free to turn his attention almost wholly to foreign affairs. By a
policy eminently skilful, if morally unjustifiable, he contrived to
hide the scars of civil dissension by the lustre of military glory,
and to provide a more congenial and patriotic sphere for the energies
of a nobility whom he had deprived of political influence, by summoning
them to win for France the victories which were to make her king the
leader of Europe.
[Sidenote: =Character of Louis XIII.=]
The greatness of the reign of Louis XIII. begins with the
ministry of Richelieu, and the death of the king followed so close
upon the death of the minister that the fame of the master has become
wholly overshadowed by the greatness of the servant. When Richelieu
was on the stage there was indeed but little room for any one else.
Yet it does not appear on closer inspection, that Louis was either the
personal or political nonentity which he has often been described.
His character was indeed singularly unlike that of his father or
his son, and in so many respects different from the ordinary French
type, that perhaps French historians have done him but scant justice.
His temperament was cold, heavy, and passionless, his mind slow and
reserved, but tenacious, and at times obstinate. A man of few friends
and no intimates, hardly if at all susceptible to the influence of
women, without strong desires or ambitions, without many interests, yet
one who kept a shrewd and watchful eye upon the world. Very cautious
and patient in making up his mind, suspicious of all but a very few,
when his decision was taken he acted firmly, boldly, straightforwardly,
and never went back. Strangely enough his real interests were in the
more strenuous affairs of out-door life. Like James I. he
was passionately fond of hunting, unlike him he was almost more fond
of war. No mean soldier himself, he was a very good judge of military
capacity in others, and was never so well and never so happy as when
on campaign. Many of the officers who did so much to establish the
credit of the French armies at the beginning of the next reign, like
Fabert, owed their promotion to the skilled eye and firm friendship of
Louis XIII. His relations with his mother Marie de Medici and
his great minister show him to have been a man of more than ordinary
tact. It was by no means easy to keep the peace between the two, when
Marie believed herself to have been basely deserted, and Richelieu had
not a friend at court save the king himself. It was still less easy to
maintain the minister against the incessant and malevolent attacks of
his enemies, and yet preserve the independence of action and reserve
of judgment necessary to prevent the king from degenerating into
the partisan. But in this he succeeded remarkably well. He trusted
Richelieu far more sincerely than Richelieu trusted him, and it is
interesting to notice in their correspondence at critical moments,
that it is the king who becomes more calm, more collected, more
dignified, as the intensity of the crisis increases, while Richelieu
is torn by doubts and hesitations and seems overwhelmed by anxieties
and fear. But in reality Richelieu never had any good reason to doubt
the friendship or support of the king. Louis had the gift, rare in men
in his position, of knowing when to act and when to remain quiet. He
never suffered his minister to forget that he was a minister and not
a king. Richelieu never assumed so large a part of the functions of
royalty as did Buckingham in England. He was a Wolsey, not a _maire
du palais_. But on the other hand Louis had the sense to see that
if a king is fortunate enough to have a Richelieu for his minister he
must give him a free hand. He held the scales of justice even between
his minister and his court, he suffered no mean motives of jealousy to
detract from the fulness of his confidence, and he was content to be
classed by posterity among the makers of the French monarchy, because
he had had the fortune to be the maker and master of the greatest of
French ministers.
[Sidenote: =Position of the Huguenots, 1622.=]
The peace of Montpellier, concluded between Louis and the revolted
Huguenots in October 1622, was one of those treaties which are not so
much a conclusion of a struggle as a preliminary to its recommencement.
It left the questions at issue not merely unsolved but intensified.
Huguenotism, always quite as much a political as a religious movement,
had derived its aspirations and drawn much of its strength from the
desire of independence arising from the jealousy of the king of Paris,
which was characteristic of the south of France, and from the jealousy
of the French crown, which was characteristic of the French nobility.
It was among the towns of the south of France and among the smaller
nobility--the country seigneurs--that it spread with the greatest
rapidity. Its strongly self-centred and individualistic creed fell in
naturally with their passionate love for their privileges and their
intense dread of the central government. Ever since the Huguenots
became a power in the land, the tendency of their policy had been
towards independence, all the more significant because it came about
without any defined cry for separation. Aided by the weakness of the
crown Huguenot towns, such as La Rochelle, Montauban and Nismes, during
the civil troubles became self-governing communities independent of
the French government, and had been practically recognised as such
by various treaties during the wars, and by the Edict of Nantes.
[Sidenote: =Their organisation.=] Huguenot organisations under the
name of ‘circles’ parcelled France out into districts under regular
officers for the purposes of defence and offence from end to end. In
many parts of the country this organisation consisted merely upon
paper, but in the north where the influence of the duke of Bouillon
was great, and over large districts of the south it was a dangerous
and menacing reality. In the strong words attributed to Richelieu, the
Huguenots shared the government of France with the king. In the revolt
of 1621, although the leaders probably never intended to do more than
frighten the Crown and secure their own political position, many of
the rank and file were openly fighting for independence. To the Crown
therefore it had become essential to crush the power of the Huguenots
if it wished to be supreme over France. To the Huguenots it was no
less essential to conquer the Crown if they wished to secure their
independence.
In such a state of affairs the treaty of Montpellier was obviously but
a breathing space in the combat. Both sides saw that at that moment
neither of them could win a decisive victory, and both were content
to wait for a more favourable opportunity. [Sidenote: =Rising of
the Huguenots, 1625.=] That opportunity seemed to have come to the
hot-headed Soubise, the brother of Rohan and the head of the circle
of La Rochelle in 1625. The new minister was hardly yet settled in
his saddle. It was no secret that he was surrounded by enemies of all
kinds, from the king’s brother Gaston of Orléans down to the pages of
the royal household. He had just engaged the forces of France in the
question of the Valtelline, and had incurred the enmity of the more
strenuous of the Catholic party by making war upon the soldiers of the
Pope. Surely a rising of the Huguenot organisations at such a moment
could not fail to be successful at least in overturning the rash and
unpopular minister. Since Richelieu had been in power he had been
diligently forming a nucleus of a royal navy, and at the beginning of
1625 the six vessels of war, which were the outcome of his efforts,
were gathered in the little port of Blavet in Brittany. Soubise by an
act of happy daring seized the whole of them on the 17th of January
1625, and, establishing himself on the islands of Rhé and Oléron,
prepared, now that he was undisputed master of the sea, to defy any
attack which the royal forces might direct against the walls of La
Rochelle. But Richelieu was not so easy out-generalled. He at once
withdrew from the affairs of Italy, procured ships from Holland and
England, after long and tortuous negotiations in which he completely
outwitted Buckingham, and manning them with French sailors inflicted a
crushing defeat upon Soubise in September 1626, and forced him to take
refuge in England. The crisis had been, however, sufficiently acute
to show Richelieu that it was not safe to undertake responsibilities
abroad as long as his enemies at home were so watchful and unsubdued.
He must establish his authority on a firm basis in France, before
he could run the risk again of having to deal with foreign war and
internal revolts together. On the 5th of February he put an end to the
Huguenot rising by renewing the terms of the treaty of Montpellier. In
March the treaty of Monzon relieved him for the moment of all danger
from the side of Spain, and he felt that the time had then arrived when
he might safely proceed to strike the first blow at the power of the
nobles.
[Sidenote: =Edicts against duelling and private castles, 1626.=]
In the summer of 1626 two edicts were issued in pursuit of this
policy. By the first all duelling was declared punishable by death.
By the second the destruction of all fortified places not situated on
the frontier was ordered. These two laws struck at two of the most
cherished privileges of the nobles and the greatest dangers of the
state. The right of an independent tribunal of arms, by which all
personal questions arising in their own order should be adjudicated,
was one incompatible with civilised and authoritative government. The
fortified town and the fortified castle formed the natural home of
both sedition and oppression, and Richelieu, in determining to sweep
them away in France, was merely taking a course which all restorers
of order in all countries had felt themselves obliged to take. Like
Henry II. of England he found that fortresses in the hands of
a territorial nobility were inconsistent with the power of the Crown.
But the nobles were not going to submit to legislation of this sort
without attempting a counter stroke. [Sidenote: =Suppression of the
conspiracy of Vendôme and Chalais, 1626.=] Gaston of Orléans, the
king’s brother, with the duc de Vendôme the son of Henry IV.
and Gabrielle d’Estrées, the comte de Soissons another prince of the
House of Bourbon, the duchesse de Chevreuse a friend of the queen and
a born _intrigante_ and tireless enemy of the cardinal, became
the leaders of a plot to depose the king, to assassinate Richelieu,
and put Gaston on the throne. It was soon discovered. Gaston to save
his own life basely surrendered his friends and associates to the
ruthless mercy of Richelieu. The comte de Chalais suffered for him on
the scaffold, another of his associates, Ornano, in prison. The duc de
Vendôme, the duc de la Valette son of the old duc d’Epernon, Madame
de Chevreuse, the comte de Soissons were all banished, and Richelieu
rid himself at one blow of the most dangerous of his enemies. The
nobles were astonished at his audacity. They could not believe that
any one would dare so to treat the noblest of their order, but in the
following year they received a lesson which startled them still more.
[Sidenote: =Execution of Montmorency-Bouteville, 1627.=] The comte
de Montmorency-Bouteville, one of the famous family of Montmorency
and a noted duellist, fought a duel in open day in the midst of
Paris in disregard of the royal edict. Richelieu had him immediately
arrested and put to death on the scaffold on the 21st of June 1627. The
execution of one of the noblest of French subjects, for the exercise
of one of the commonest and most cherished privileges of the French
nobility, showed them more clearly than anything else had yet done,
that the minister at the head of the government was determined to be
their master.
[Sidenote: =War with England, 1627.=]
Hardly had Richelieu emerged in triumph from his first contest with
the nobles, than he found himself involved in an unnecessary war with
England and the Huguenots. The treaty between France and England on
the occasion of the marriage between Henrietta Maria and Charles
I. contained provisions which were absolutely certain to
lead to mutual recriminations sooner or later. Charles had promised
publicly to permit his wife to keep her French household, and have
complete control over the education of the children till they were
thirteen years of age. Privately he had bound himself to tolerate Roman
Catholicism in England. But he very soon found that, in the excited
and unreasonable temper of the English people, it was impossible for
him even to pardon Roman priests condemned under the penal laws.
Neither in the interests of his domestic life could he permit a band
of mischief-making women to alienate from him the affections of his
child-wife. In both these matters he found himself compelled to break
his word. Louis on his side set at naught his own verbal promise to
permit Mansfeld and the English contingent to march across France to
attack the Palatinate, and so in the eyes of the English court became
largely responsible for the terrible misfortunes of the year 1626 in
Germany. When Richelieu in further pursuance of the treaty had demanded
from Charles a loan of ships to use against Soubise and the revolted
Huguenots, Buckingham had set his wits against those of Richelieu to
avoid carrying out his obligation in fact, while he outwardly professed
to be eager to do so, and even condescended to the trick of organising
a sham mutiny on board the fleet. But in the end he was outwitted, and
the spectacle of English ships in the French fleet, which defeated
Soubise and the Huguenots, so exasperated the Protestant party in
the English Parliament, that Buckingham from motives of self-defence
as well as from those of wounded pride declared war against France
in order to shift the odium from himself to Richelieu, and to pose
before the world as the champion of the Protestant cause. [Sidenote:
=Siege of La Rochelle, 1627.=] In July 1627 Buckingham, at the
head of a large but ill-appointed fleet, appeared before La Rochelle,
and occupying the island of Rhé besieged the fort of S. Martin. The
Rochellois much against their will felt compelled to make common cause
with the English, and the Huguenots in the south of France seized the
opportunity once more to rise into revolt under Rohan. Richelieu found
himself again threatened by a formidable combination of foreign and
domestic enemies, and determined this time to have recourse to no half
measures. In November Buckingham was obliged to withdraw from before
the unconquered S. Martin and sail back to England for reinforcements.
Richelieu himself formed the siege of La Rochelle. Recognising at once
the impossibility of capturing a city open to the sea and surrounded
by marshes by attack on the land side only, he began the gigantic
work of building a mole right across the mouth of the harbour. Thus
he hoped to cut off the city wholly from the possibility of relief
from the sea, while the rigid lines of circumvallation drawn round the
town prevented any attempt at introducing provisions from the land
side. For five months the weary work went on. It was a race against
time. All depended on the question whether the mole could be finished
before the English fleet reappeared. Day and night in spite of many
blunders and some misfortunes the huge mass slowly grew. The two wings
approached nearer to each other, garnished with towers and palisades
and batteries, until by the end of April 1628 the aperture between
the two was small enough to be closed by a bridge of boats made into
floating batteries, and fastened together by stout iron chains and
defended by wooden stockades. It was hardly finished when the English
fleet was sighted. For fifteen days the English hurled themselves
with renewed and despairing vigour against the fortifications, but
without success. On the 18th of May they sailed home and left La
Rochelle to starve. [Sidenote: =Capture of La Rochelle, 1628.=]
Victory was now but a question of time. Early in October the English
fleet reappeared, but did not even dare to face the now impregnable
defences of the besiegers. On the 28th the heroic Guiton worn out by
famine accepted the inevitable. La Rochelle surrendered to the royal
forces, its municipal privileges were abolished, its fortifications
destroyed, its government placed in the hands of royal officials.
Liberty of conscience was guaranteed to the citizens, but all vestige
of independent authority was absolutely taken away.
[Sidenote: =Pacification of the south, 1629.=]
After the capture of La Rochelle it was a comparatively easy matter
to crush out the rebellion in the south. Early in 1629 the king put
himself at the head of his army, marched into Languedoc and the
district of the Cevennes, capturing the towns and destroying the
castles. Rohan and the Huguenot leaders finding they could get no
material assistance from Spain were obliged to submit. By the peace
of Alais concluded in June 1629 the Huguenots ceased to retain any
political power in France. Their guaranteed towns were handed over to
the royal government, their fortresses were razed, their organisation
was destroyed, their right of meeting was taken away, but their liberty
of worship remained unimpaired.
The peace of Alais marks the end of the first act of the great
drama which was being played by Richelieu in the history of France,
the completion of the first, if not the most difficult, of the
tasks to which he had devoted himself. [Sidenote: =Destruction of
the political power of the Huguenots.=] By it the policy of the
Edict of Nantes was carried to a legitimate conclusion. Religious
peace was ensured by the recognition of religious division, while
the danger that religious division should impair the national unity
was effectually removed. It was a policy of national unity not of
national uniformity. Richelieu did not care that all Frenchmen should
be made outwardly to profess the same religious or political creed,
should wear outwardly the same religious or political dress, as long
as they were whole-hearted in the service of the Crown, as long as
their liberty was not a weakness to the state. That it could not fail
to be a source not merely of weakness, but of serious danger, to the
state, as long as it was based upon political privilege and defended
by political organisation, had already been abundantly proved in the
course of the reign of Louis XIII. Every time that France had
been threatened by the hostility of her neighbours, whether of Spain
or England, a rising of the Huguenots had turned a serious foreign
war into an acute national crisis. Every time that the Huguenots
had risen in revolt they had allied themselves with the national
enemies. Twice already had Richelieu’s plans for the development of
France been thwarted by the determination of the Huguenots to prefer
their independence to their patriotism, and to look upon the foreign
entanglements of the government merely as their opportunity. When a
powerful political organisation deliberately sets itself to profit
by the dangers of the nation, and to pursue its own interests to the
detriment of those of the nation, it must either crush the government
or be crushed by it. Richelieu enlisted the whole forces of the state
in the campaign against the Huguenots, because he saw clearly that
as long as their religious privileges were based on the possession
of political power, the political exigencies of their position, and
the fancied necessities as well as the inherent tendencies of their
religion, must make them the enemies of France. The destruction of La
Rochelle and the peace of Alais changed them at once from a formidable
political party into a harmless religious sect. They ceased to be a
danger to the state through their want of patriotism and desire for
independence. They became a strength to France through their frugality,
their manual skill, and their morality. Grateful for religious
toleration and satisfied with it, in less than a generation they were
found among the staunchest supporters of the monarchy, and effectually
proved their gratitude by never stirring a finger to increase the
embarrassments of the Crown in the perilous days of the _Fronde_.
[Sidenote: =Administrative reforms.=]
By the end of the year 1629 Richelieu might well look back with pride
at the success which had attended his efforts to establish the unity
of the nation by consolidating its forces under the power of the
Crown. He had crushed a plot of the most formidable of his enemies at
court. He had established his ascendency over the mind if not over the
affections of the king. He had purified the financial administration
so that a larger proportion of the taxes found their way into the
treasury. He had put down a dangerous right of private war on a small
scale under the guise of duelling. He had destroyed the castles and
fortresses over large districts of France, notably in Brittany and the
southern provinces. He had laid the foundation of the French navy. He
had destroyed the political power and organisation of the Huguenots.
But there was still much to be done. As long as the administration
of the country and the raising and control of the army were in the
hands or under the direction of the territorial nobility, all that
he had hitherto accomplished was dependent upon his own precarious
life and the still more precarious favour of the king. A successful
court intrigue might destroy the whole structure at a blow, and throw
France back into the slough of anarchy and peculation from which he
had raised her. To obviate this danger he applied himself during the
rest of his life, as far as internal politics were concerned, to two
special objects, the establishment of a bureaucracy--a civil service
under the direct control of the Crown--and the organisation of the army
upon a professional basis. In carrying out this latter object he had
to proceed very carefully, partly owing to financial considerations,
and partly to the necessity he felt for providing in the army a sphere
of activity for the nobility, whose political and administrative power
he was taking away; and it was not till the time of Louvois that the
French army became thoroughly professional. But the active and open
warfare in which France became engaged after 1635, as well as the
growing importance of the infantry, enabled him to do much in the way
of raising and organising infantry regiments directly by the Crown,
without the interposition of any noble as colonel, and of appointing
and promoting officers such as Fabert and Catinat, who did not belong
to the noble class. For many years the nobles considered it below their
dignity to serve in infantry regiments, a fortunate prejudice which
made it easier for the government to get direct control over that
important department of the army.
[Sidenote: =Illness of Louis XIII., 1630.=]
The year 1630 saw a vivid illustration of the danger to which the new
system of government was exposed from the possible success of a court
intrigue or the death of the invalid king. On his way back from the
army in Italy to Paris, Louis was taken suddenly ill at Lyons with
dysentery. For some days he hung between life and death. On the 22d of
September all hope was given up. Gaston hurried to Paris to secure the
government. The queen and the queen-mother made arrangements for the
arrest of the cardinal, while Richelieu himself, seeing the labours
of his life at an end, prepared to fly. But the king’s constitution,
much more vigorous than historians have supposed, triumphed not only
over the disease but over the physicians. In spite of having been
bled seven times in one week he still retained strength enough to
rally, and Richelieu remained for the moment safe. His enemies had
to alter their plans. [Sidenote: =The day of Dupes, 1630.=]
Determined not to be baulked of their prey the queen-mother and the
queen organised a plot against the minister, which was joined by the
two Marillacs, Bassompierre, and Orléans. On the 11th of November
Marie in the presence of the king poured forth a torrent of furious
invective against Madame de Combalet the niece of the cardinal. On
Richelieu’s entrance the storm was directed against him. Accusing him
of treason and perfidy, she demanded from Louis his instant dismissal,
and called upon the king to choose between his minister and her. For
some hours Louis was in great doubt, and the fate of Richelieu hung
in the balance. He even signed an order intrusting the command of
the army to the maréchal de Marillac. All the courtiers thought the
reign of Richelieu was over. Worn out and sick at heart, the king,
to free himself from fresh importunities, retired to his hunting-box
at Versailles; but once away from the pressure of the courtiers his
good sense and patriotism reasserted their power, and he determined to
support his minister even against his wife and his mother. Sending for
Richelieu privately to join him at Versailles, he put himself entirely
into his hands, and the Day of Dupes was over. The vengeance of the
outraged minister was terrific. Gaston of Orléans fled to Lorraine,
Marie to the Spaniards at Brussels, the maréchal de Marillac was
executed, his brother the chancellor died soon afterwards in exile,
Bassompierre was imprisoned, the duchesses of Elboeuf, and Ornano
banished, and the household of the queen filled with the cardinal’s
nominees.
[Sidenote: =Rising of Orléans and Montmorency, 1632.=]
But exile increased rather than appeased their hatred of their
conqueror. Gaston of Orléans, who had married the sister of the duke of
Lorraine strongly against the wishes of Louis, who would not recognise
the marriage, organised a fresh plot against the cardinal in 1632.
To bring about the ruin of his hated enemy, he did not scruple to
ally himself with the enemies of his country. A combined force of
Lorrainers and Spaniards was to invade France from the north-east,
while the maréchal de Montmorency, the governor of Languedoc, raised
the south. But Richelieu’s good fortune did not desert him. The Swedes
defeated the Spanish force on the Rhine, before it had even reached
the frontiers of France. Lorraine, instead of France, had to bear the
brunt of invasion, and 25,000 men under Louis himself quickly overran
the country, and brought it permanently under French administration,
although it was not formally united to the French monarchy till a
century later. Meanwhile, Gaston of Orléans, at the head of a few
thousand horsemen, had made his way to Montmorency in Languedoc,
endeavouring to raise the country as he went against the iniquities
of the minister. Not a man stirred. France had begun to realise that,
harsh and oppressive as the government of Richelieu might be, it was
far more just and far more tolerable than that of the nobles. In
Languedoc Montmorency had succeeded in collecting a small army through
his own personal popularity and the support of the estates, but the
people refused to move, and he was powerless in the face of Schomberg
and the royal troops. At Castlenaudary, on the 1st of September
1632, he was defeated and captured. On the 30th of October the last
representative of the most illustrious of the great territorial nobles
of France bowed his head before absolute monarchy on the scaffold.
[Sidenote: =Suppression of the enemies of Richelieu.=]
A fresh proscription instigated by the implacable justice of the
cardinal decimated Languedoc. The estates were dispersed, many of the
nobility and gentry executed or sent to the galleys, five bishops
deposed, the castles and fortifications of the towns destroyed. The
hateful and miserable author of all this misery, Gaston himself,
alone escaped. Protected by his birth and his readiness to betray
his friends, he was permitted to take refuge in Brussels. There, in
conjunction with the queen-mother and the Spaniards, he renewed his
plots against France and the cardinal. But Richelieu now felt himself
so thoroughly the master both of the nobles and of the nation, that
Gaston was more dangerous to him as an open enemy than he would be
as the leader of the disaffected at home. The promise of the king’s
favour, and renewed gifts to himself and his friends, soon induced
him to betray the queen-mother and his hosts. In October 1634 he left
his wife and his mother, was formally reconciled to the king and the
cardinal, and retired into private life at his castle of Blois. Marie
took refuge with her daughter in London, and Richelieu, freed for the
time from all anxiety as to revolts and court intrigues, was enabled
to turn his whole attention to the aggrandisement of France. In the
following year, 1635, he entered openly into the Thirty Years’ War.
[Sidenote: =Conspiracy of Cinq-Mars, 1642.=]
Once more but a few months before his death had Richelieu to defend
himself against a court intrigue, but it was one which had its roots
far more in personal ambition than in serious political rivalry.
Cinq-Mars, the son of the marquis d’Effiat, the superintendent of
finance, chafing under the stern and all-pervading masterfulness of the
cardinal, abused his position of intimacy with the king, to try and
poison his mind against his minister, who at that time was thought to
be dying. Gaston, that veteran intriguer, and the duc de Bouillon the
lord of the feudal dependency of Sedan, gave some political importance
to the intrigue by lending it their countenance. The system of
espionage established by Richelieu was far too good to permit intrigues
of that sort to pass unnoticed. Still neither Richelieu nor the king
interfered until they received proof that Cinq-Mars was actually
in communication with the national enemy, the Spaniards. Then they
struck, and as usual struck hard. The duc de Bouillon was compelled to
surrender Sedan to France. Cinq-Mars and his friend de Thou perished
on the scaffold, the last of a long list of victims, including five
dukes, four counts, and a marshal of France, who were sacrificed by the
pitiless cardinal to the genius of his country.
[Sidenote: =Centralising policy of Richelieu.=]
It is easy to fix the eyes so intently upon the destructive side of
Richelieu’s war with the nobles as to forget that in his sight it was
by far the least important part of his work. The execution of traitors
and peculators, the banishment of conspirators and _intrigantes_,
were necessary steps towards the abolition of their political power,
not the satisfaction of private vengeance. As with the Huguenots,
so with the nobles, he did not wish to root them out, but to make
them powerless for evil. As long as they enjoyed in right of their
birth political power, based upon personal privilege and territorial
possessions, so long would they refuse absolutely to render themselves
amenable to the new institution of the prime-ministership, and would be
always in danger of preferring the interests of their order to those of
the state. When once they had been deprived of territorial power, they
would naturally become the foremost servants of that Crown of which
they had before been the rivals. They would be eager to serve, where
before they had been determined to rule. Throughout the government
of Richelieu the work of centralisation goes steadily on. A powerful
structure of royal government is gradually built up, and the abortive
plots, and the subsequent executions, mark the chafings of those who
felt that power was slipping steadily away from them, and by a sure
instinct directed their efforts against the man who was identified with
the system which they hated. The destruction of the feudal castles,
the development of the professional army, the substitution of royal
administrative officers for those of the territorial nobles in Brittany
and Languedoc, after the rebellions of Vendôme and Montmorency,
the administration by the Crown directly through its own officials
of the Huguenot towns, after the peace of Alais, and of Lorraine
and Sedan after their conquest, the establishment of a royal post
throughout the kingdom, were all steps in the direction of undermining
the political power of the nobles. [Sidenote: =Appointment of
Intendants, 1637.=] Finally in 1637 came the greatest blow of all.
For many years Richelieu had been in the habit of appointing royal
commissioners, under the name of Intendants, to take cognisance of
certain matters of local administration, usually of a judicial nature.
In 1637 by a royal edict, he appointed Intendants in each province,
and placed in their hands the whole financial, judicial and police
administration. The effect of this was to concentrate powers, which
had hitherto been enjoyed by the territorial nobility and the local
administrative bodies, wholly in the hands of officials appointed
by the minister and responsible to him alone. It created in fact a
permanent civil service of professional men of the middle class,
entirely dependent upon the royal favour, and thus did much to foster
the growth of absolute power, and to give stability to the government,
while checking the separatist tendencies of the local authorities.
[Sidenote: =The Regency of 1643.=]
The value of the administrative system organised by Richelieu soon
became evident, when in the year 1643 France found herself once
more threatened by the minority of the king and the weakness of a
regency. The great cardinal maintained after his death the social
and political order to the preservation of which he had devoted his
life. The strength of the bureaucracy and the memory of the government
of Richelieu alone preserved the authority of the monarchy amid the
follies and the treasons of the _Fronde_. Richelieu himself died
on the 4th of December 1642, and Louis followed him to the grave on
the 14th of May 1643, leaving the crown to his infant son only four
and a half years old. It was an anxious crisis for France. Louis
XIII. in his distrust of his wife, Anne of Austria, whose
influence had been from the time of her marriage uniformly exercised
against the policy of the king and Richelieu, had endeavoured to
control her exercise of political power after his death by nominating
in his will a council of state, without whose advice she was powerless
to act. But Anne, whose character developed with her responsibilities,
would have none of such restrictions. Going to the Parlement de
Paris she asked them boldly to annul the will of her husband in the
interests of herself and her son. The Parlement were by no means loth
to add to their political privileges that of pronouncing a decisive
word on the government of France. Without hesitation in their own
interests they cancelled the will of the late king, suppressed the
council of regency, and handed over the government of the country to
Anne absolutely. It was an ominous thing that so soon after the death
of Richelieu personal interests should again come to the front. But
fortunately for France among those personal interests one was quickly
seen to predominate over all others, which ensured the continuation
of the policy of the great cardinal. [Sidenote: =Mazarin appointed
chief minister.=] Ever since the death of the Père Joseph, Richelieu
had intrusted the details of his foreign policy to the management of
the astute Italian Giulio Mazzarini, who attracted his notice in the
negotiations with the Pope in 1628, entered the service of France at
his request in 1639, was rewarded with a cardinal’s hat in 1641, and
was recommended to Louis by Richelieu as his successor in the prime
ministership on his deathbed in 1642. By his cleverness, tact, and
the gracefulness of his manners, Mazarin succeeded in making a deep
impression upon the fastidious and loveless Anne of Austria. Surrounded
by interested and selfish nobles, anxiously solicitous for the welfare
of her son, she felt the necessity of a stronger arm on which to lean,
and a sympathetic heart to which she might cling, and she chose Mazarin
as the person whom she could intrust with the confidences of her
womanly nature. Whether they were eventually secretly married or not is
one of the unsolved problems of history, but that during the rest of
their lives they were united by the strongest bonds of mutual affection
and respect is beyond a doubt. To the astonishment of all who were not
in the secret, Anne signalised her assumption of power by confirming
Mazarin in the position of chief minister to which he had been
designated by Richelieu, by continuing the foreign and domestic policy
of the great cardinal, and by exiling afresh the dukes of Vendôme
Mercoeur and Guise and the duchess of Chevreuse who were already
portioning out the vengeance they would take on the cardinalists.
[Sidenote: =Character of Mazarin.=]
Cardinal Mazarin was a very different character from his great
predecessor. He was altogether of meaner mould. Richelieu was a man
of original genius, who had made for himself his own position in the
world, and had been the architect of his own fame. Mazarin would never
have emerged from the ruck of mankind had not Richelieu led the way
and given him a task to perform. It was his business to maintain,
carry on, develop, that of Richelieu to create and establish. Soft and
conciliatory in manner, graceful in address, tactful and considerate
in business, deferential without being obsequious in conversation, he
disarmed his opponents instead of conquering them, he persuaded instead
of frightening them. Management not action was his strong point,
finesse and diplomacy not the scaffold and the sword his weapons. An
absolute master of dissimulation, he crept catlike through life, the
outward picture of trustful innocence, concealing a callous heart and
poisoned claws. It was a character as hateful to the open-hearted
Frenchman as to the honest Englishman, and even if it had not been
disfigured by the grossest avarice, could never have made itself
tolerable to either. Italian to the backbone in his suppleness of
character, his love of finesse, his courtly manners, his advancement
of his relations, his art collections of rare books and sculptures, in
the meanness of his avarice and in the prodigality of his display, he
was looked upon by the French nobles and the bulk of the French people
as a foreigner, who, having by unworthy arts made himself the master of
the affections of a silly woman, a foreigner like himself, had fastened
like a leech upon France and was sucking its lifeblood with insatiable
voracity. Nothing can exceed the virulence of the hatred with which
Mazarin was regarded. Not even the triumphs of the Thirty Years’ War
and the peace of Westphalia, not even the battle of Rocroy and the
intoxicating cup of glory which he offered to France could save him
from the indiscriminating and loathsome abuse showered on him by that
strange outburst of patriotism and selfishness, liberty and frivolity,
known as the Fronde, of which hatred to him was the chief factor.
[Sidenote: =Outbreak of the Fronde.=]
Ever since the dissolution of the Estates General of 1614, the
Parlement de Paris had been growing in political importance. The
hereditary nature of the offices of its members, the increased
consideration shown to the classes from which they sprang by Richelieu
in his war against the nobility, the double appeal to them in 1610
and 1643 to settle the government of France had all done much to
persuade them of their power. The success of the rebellions against
the royal authority in Spain and in England no doubt stimulated their
desire to strike a blow for themselves and for liberty. An ill-advised
imposition of an _octroi_ duty upon all commodities entering
Paris, issued in January 1648, gave them the opportunity of playing the
part of constitutional leaders. The Parlement refused to register the
edict. The court on this brought the boy-king down to the Parlement,
and in a _lit de justice_ the registration was effected.
[Sidenote: =Constitutional claims of the Parlement, 1648.=] But
the absurdity of trying to settle a grave constitutional question by
the intervention of a boy of nine years old was too patent even for
lawyers to swallow, and on the 16th of January the Parlement solemnly
pronounced the registration illegal and invalid. A compromise was
arrived at with regard to the particular question at issue, but the
Parlement, so far from surrendering its political claims, appointed a
committee consisting of representatives of its three chambers to take
the reform of the state into consideration. On the 29th of June this
representative committee called the Chambre de S. Louis issued its
programme. [Sidenote: =Its programme of reform.=]It demanded the
suppression of the Intendants, the reduction of the _taille_ by a
quarter, that every one arrested by order of the government should be
brought before a magistrate within twenty-four hours of his arrest,
and that the Parlement should have control over taxation. Here were the
germs of a constitutional reform, which, if it could have been carried
out, might have saved France from the worst evils of despotism without
seriously impairing the royal authority. The establishment of a check
on the financial administration, and of the principle of Habeas Corpus,
even though lodged in an unrepresentative body like the Parlement,
would have at least saved France from the collapse of the next century,
and might have been the beginning of true constitutional life. But it
was not to be. Mazarin appeared to yield to the storm, issued some of
the decrees asked for, and waited his opportunity. The news of Condé’s
victory at Lens seemed to be the opportunity he desired. [Sidenote:
=Arrest and release of Broussel.=] Under cover of a Te Deum sung
in Nôtre Dame for the victory, Broussel the leader of the agitation
against the court was arrested and put into prison. When this became
known all Paris was seized with uncontrollable excitement. The long
suppressed hatred of Mazarin burst out in fury. Barricades were raised.
The citizens were armed and the Parlement accompanied by a furious
and enthusiastic crowd marched in a body to demand the release of
Broussel. The court was again obliged to yield, and Broussel was set
at liberty, but as before Mazarin only drew back in the hope of making
his final spring more effective. The peace of Westphalia would shortly
put a disciplined army at his disposal, and then the position of the
government would be impregnable. Paris might rage as much as it liked,
but the days had gone by when the caprice of Paris decided the fortunes
of France. Never was politician more mistaken. On the 13th of September
the court withdrew to Ruel to free itself from the constant danger of
tumults. Paris was immediately in an uproar. [Sidenote: =Acceptance
of the reforms by the court, 1648.=] Persuaded by the clever and
unscrupulous Gondi, bishop-coadjutor of Paris, a man who had nothing
ecclesiastical about him except his title, Condé the military hero of
the hour declared for the Parlement, and the court once more following
the favourite policy of Mazarin had to procrastinate. It returned to
Paris, and on the 24th of October 1648 published an edict accepting and
enforcing the whole of the demands of the Chambre de S. Louis.
[Sidenote: =Unpopularity of the prime-ministership.=]
Thus far the struggle had been in its main aspects constitutional.
The Parlement de Paris, aided by the populace of the city, and taking
advantage of the unpopularity of Mazarin, was endeavouring to curb
the caprice of an irresponsible prime minister by assuming to itself
control over the finances, and obtaining for all Frenchmen security
against arbitrary arrest. Men felt vaguely that the constitution of
France had altered in a way contrary to their interests of recent
years. It was one thing to acknowledge the personal authority of the
king as supreme, when it had to be exercised largely through local
governors who were practically independent, and was from its very
nature subject to the limitations which necessarily followed from the
different characters of the supreme rulers. It was quite another thing
to acknowledge that that personal supremacy could be delegated, and
to be required to pay the same implicit obedience to a prime minister
ruling through a bureaucracy of his own nominees when the king himself
was a minor. The pressure of despotic rule had hitherto been little
felt in France by the noble or the professional classes. They did not
object to acknowledge and obey the will of a Henry IV., while a Henry
III. hardly presumed to ask them to do so. It was quite a different
thing when they were called upon to pay implicit reverence to a Mazarin
following a Richelieu, when Louis XIII. seemed a _fainéant_ and Louis
XIV. was a boy. And behind the actual revolt against the irresponsible
will of the minister lay the old rivalry between local authority and
centralised administration. All local authorities whether of the
governors or of the estates or of the Parlements had suffered under
the centralising hand of Richelieu. In many cases they had been rooted
out. France was becoming a _tabula rasa_, on which the hand of the
king, or, worse still, of the minister, was alone visible. [Sidenote:
=Importance of the reforms.=] So the Parlement de Paris felt, when
it embarked on the struggle with the Crown, that it had behind it
not merely the turbulence of a great city, or the bastard enthusiasm
produced by professional agitators, but also a mass of thoughtful
public opinion, traditions which lay deep in French history, and the
political instincts of a growing nation. The example of England was
sufficient to show that if it could, by whatever machinery, put an
effectual check on the power of arbitrary taxation and the power of
arbitrary imprisonment enjoyed by the government, it would have planted
a seed from which the tree of liberty would assuredly spring. Of the
four chief points of the charter of reform wrung from the Crown in
October 1648, two, the reduction of the _taille_ and the abolition of
the Intendants, were merely passing remedies for special grievances
of the time; the other two, the control over taxation and the Habeas
Corpus, enunciated principles of government for the future, which if
they could have been enforced, would have infallibly altered the whole
history of France.
[Sidenote: =Weakness of the Parlement.=]
Unfortunately the Parlement itself was a body wholly unfit to lead a
constitutional struggle. A close corporation of magistrates without
representative character, without legislative or political rights,
without traditions to which to appeal, without force on which to rely,
was ludicrously unfit to stand forth as the champion of national
interests against a Crown, which at that very moment had assumed the
headship of European politics. Its ally the city of Paris was more
unfit still. The close-fisted _bourgeoisie_, anxious for its
privileges, and trembling for its money-bags, the turbulent populace
of the streets intoxicated with its own importance, a small knot of
interested agitators like Gondi, a larger body of selfish aristocrats
and frivolous women, half fools, half knaves, like the duke of Beaufort
and the duchesse de Longueville, were not the stuff of which successful
constitutional revolutions are made. As a natural result the movement
began at once to deteriorate. Hatred of Mazarin was a common factor
between the constitutionalists of the Parlement, the populace of the
streets, and princes of the blood-royal and the nobility. [Sidenote:
=The lead taken by the nobility and the populace.=] To gain the
support necessary to meet the forces of the Crown, the Parlement had to
rely on the city and to appeal to the nobles. The latter eagerly joined
the movement in order to recover their old political influence and to
oust the hated minister. They cared not a sou for the Parlement. In
their heart of hearts they hated and they dreaded the _noblesse de la
robe_ and their constitutional ambitions. They wanted back the old
days of private anarchy and public plunder. They loathed the very idea
of constitutional reform and common right. From the moment that the
nobles took the direction of the movement it loses its constitutional
character, it becomes only the last and the basest act in the long
drama of the struggle between the nobles and the royal authority, it
has for its direct and most unmistakable object, not the amelioration
of a down-trodden people, but the overthrow of an unpopular minister.
[Sidenote: =Factiousness of the movement.=]
From this point then the _Fronde_ loses its chief interest and
its story may be briefly told. Seeing the weakness of the court, the
nobles flocked to take the leadership of the movement out of the hands
of the Parlement and Gondi. The prince de Conti, the duc de Bouillon,
the duc de Beaufort the popular _roi des halles_, the due de
Longueville and his intriguing fascinating wife, all rushed to Paris.
Even Turenne, the patriot and the incorruptible, was for the moment
seduced by the duchesse de Longueville to draw his sword against the
court. Mazarin however succeeded in detaching Condé from the side of
the rebellion. On the 6th of January 1649 the court fled secretly to
S. Germain, and nominating Condé to the command of its army prepared
to bring Paris to its senses by open war. But for the time both sides
shrunk from so terrible an alternative, and through the intervention
of Molé, the president of one of the chambers of the Parlement and a
man of unblemished integrity, the peace of Ruel was arranged on the
1st of April 1649 on the basis of the _status quo_. [Sidenote:
=The Peace of Ruel, 1649.=] For nearly a year quiet was restored,
but it was a peace only in name, the intrigues, the libels, and the
agitation continued as before. Condé in particular made himself
odious to every one by the insolence of his pride and the theatrical
ebullitions of his passionate nature. Even the patience of Mazarin
became exhausted, and on the 18th of January 1650 he astonished France
by suddenly committing Condé Conti and Longueville to prison. It was a
gross blunder. [Sidenote: =Imprisonment of the princes, 1650.=]
The imprisonment of the princes gave his enemies what they most wanted,
a common rallying cry, while the arbitrary character of the proceeding
disgusted moderate men. The feeling became general that France would
never gain peace as long as Mazarin remained at the head of affairs.
The provinces of Normandy Guienne and Burgundy declared against the
court, and the _Fronde_ recommenced with a definite programme of
the release of the princes and the banishment of Mazarin. [Sidenote:
=The risings in the provinces.=] Like so many other risings
against royal authority, it took the outward form of a rising in the
true interests of the Crown to rid it of a bad and incapable minister.
The revolts were put down in Normandy and Burgundy without difficulty,
in Guienne by the capture of Bordeaux after a protracted siege by the
queen-mother and the young king in person, but the flame continued to
spread. Paris declared against the court. The duc d’Orléans joined the
movement. Turenne invaded France at the head of a Spanish army, but was
defeated by Duplessis near Rethel on the 17th of December. Mazarin,
ever timid, determined to yield. [Sidenote: =Flight of Mazarin,
1651.=] In January 1651 he left France secretly, having ordered the
release of the princes, and betook himself to Brühl in the electorate
of Köln from whence he still directed affairs by correspondence with
the queen-mother and the ministers, Lionne Letellier and Servien. On
the news of the retirement of Mazarin, the _Fronde_ was beside
itself with joy, the Parlement passed a decree of banishment against
him, and sold his library and works of art. Paris treated the court as
its prisoners, and received the princes in triumph on their return from
prison in February 1651. But Condé soon made himself more intolerable
to the leaders of the _Fronde_ by his rapacity and violence than
he had been before to Mazarin; and Anne by a clever move was able to
detach the _Frondeurs_ from him and drive him into open rebellion
against the young king who had just been declared of age.
[Sidenote: =The movement a struggle between the nobles and the
Crown.=]
The quarrel now openly appeared in its true light of a struggle between
the nobles and the king. Condé, supported by Nemours, Le Rochefoucauld,
La Tremouille and others of the nobles, raised the south in revolt.
Anne and the king on their side put three armies in the field. Turenne
came back to his allegiance, and Mazarin returned from his self-imposed
exile and joined the court at Poitiers on the 28th of February 1652.
For eight months civil war raged and France lay at the mercy of
rival armies, while the foreign enemy took advantage of her misery
to advance his frontiers in the north-east. It looked as if the very
policy which Richelieu and Mazarin had carried out so ruthlessly at
the expense of Germany was about to recoil on the head of France. But
no sooner were the two sides definitely arrayed against each other
as the party of Condé and the nobility against the party of Mazarin
and the royalists, than it was seen that though Paris would fight to
the death against Mazarin, France would not fight against the king.
Condé found no adequate support in the country. Foiled by the superior
military genius of Turenne near Blenau in April, he was defeated at
the Faubourg S. Antoine in July, and must have been utterly destroyed,
had not the energy and enthusiasm of Mademoiselle, the daughter of
Gaston of Orléans, persuaded the citizens of Paris to admit him and
his beaten army within the walls. [Sidenote: =Quarrel between Condé
and Paris.=] But Paris had no love for Condé. It simply cherished
an undying hatred for Mazarin, and a supreme conviction of its own
importance. It was the only force in France still opposed to the
court, and Mazarin found himself in consequence the only obstacle to
peace. By a voluntary retirement to Sedan in August 1652, he built
a bridge by which the Parisians could return to their allegiance to
the king without compromising their opposition to the minister. They
eagerly availed themselves of it. Condé, finding himself deserted on
all sides, openly joined the enemies of France, and carried on for
eight years more a foreign war against his country as the leader of
the armies of Spain. [Sidenote: =Flight of Condé, and the end of
the Fronde, 1652.=] On the 21st of October Louis entered Paris at
the head of his army and the _Fronde_ was at an end. From that
moment the royal authority shone out pre-eminent over all the forces
of the country until the Revolution. Constitutionalism as well as
privilege, local feeling as well as legal right lay helpless before
the all-mastering Crown. The leaders of the _Fronde_ were exiled,
many of its supporters put to death on various pretexts, none of them
admitted even to the shadow of political power. The Parlement were
forbidden to deal either directly or indirectly with the affairs of
state. For a century it became but the registration office of the royal
edicts and the channel of the royal justice, while the nobles, deprived
of all political power and sadly weakened in local influence, accepted
the service of a splendid court in willing exchange for the precarious
dignity of half-independent feudatories.
[Sidenote: =Return of Mazarin to power.=]
When the triumph of the court was assured, Mazarin emerged from his
retirement and again took up the reins of government. For the nine
years that were left to him of life and power, he strove to repair
the havoc wrought by the _Fronde_ in his private fortune and his
public policy. His best efforts were directed to the maintenance of
the war with Spain, which with the help of England was brought to such
a successful issue by the peace of the Pyrenees in 1660. In domestic
affairs he paid little attention to anything except the amassing of
a prodigious fortune in the management of which Colbert received his
first lessons of finance. He had none of Richelieu’s love for the
greatness of France. He did nothing for her arts, her literature, or
her sciences. He cared even less than Richelieu for the welfare and
happiness of the people. His financial administration was corrupt
to the core; offices were sold, revenue anticipated, state property
alienated for the personal advantage of the cardinal. Had it not been
that he was soon succeeded by the best finance minister that France
ever produced, the world would not so lightly have passed over the
fact that Mazarin on his death in March 1661 bequeathed to Louis
XIV., not merely absolute power at home and the leadership of
Europe abroad, but a home administration at once so oppressive and so
corrupt, that had it lasted but a few years longer, France could hardly
have escaped hopeless bankruptcy and irretrievable ruin.