which geometers use to arrive at their most difficult demonstrations,
suggested to me that all things which came within human knowledge must
follow each other in a similar chain; and that provided we abstain from
admitting anything as true which is not so, and that we always preserve
in them the order necessary to deduce one from the other, there can be
none so remote to which we cannot finally attain, nor so obscure but
that we may discover them." From these glimpses of the twofold nature of
Descartes' method, it will be easy to see into his whole system:
consciousness being the only ground of certitude, mathematics the only
method of certitude.
We may say therefore that the deductive method was now completely
constituted. The whole operation of philosophy henceforth consisted in
deducing consequences. The premises had been found; the conclusions
alone were wanting. This was held to be true of physics no less than of
psychology. Thus, in his _Principia_, he announces his intention of
giving a short account of the principal phenomena of the world, not that
we may use them as reasons to prove anything; for he adds: "we desire to
deduce effects from causes, not from effects; but only in order that out
of the innumerable effects which we learn to be capable of resulting
from the same causes, we may determine our minds to consider these
rather than others."
SIEGE OF LA ROCHELLE
RICHELIEU RULES FRANCE
A.D. 1627
ANDREW D. WHITE
Through the work which Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister of
Louis XIII, performed for that monarch and for France, the
country was lifted from a state of comparative disorganization
and weakness, and started on a fresh career, which led her to
the foremost position among European nations.
At the death of Henry IV, in 1610, his son Louis XIII was but
nine years old, and from 1624 to the end of the reign, in 1643,
Richelieu directed the policy of France. By crushing the
Huguenots as a political party he prepared the way for building
up the power of the King. The Huguenots were aiming at an
independent Protestant commonwealth within the kingdom. When
Richelieu had defeated this project by his victory at La
Rochelle he was free to undertake a readjustment of the
relations between the throne and the grasping nobles. After
accomplishing this he could turn his attention to foreign
affairs.
In the last stage of the Thirty Years' War France under
Richelieu played her part so well that the house of Austria was
humbled, and, although the great Cardinal died before the end
of the war, in the final settlement France received territorial
and political benefits which greatly added to her prestige.
White, our eminent historian, educator, and diplomatist, has
given to the world, in the following narrative and analysis,
the best account of Richelieu's administration to be found in
English.
Thus far the struggles of the world have developed its statesmanship
after three leading types.
First of these is that based on faith in some great militant principle.
Strong among statesmen of this type, in this time, stand Cavour, with
his faith in constitutional liberty; Cobden, with his faith in freedom
of trade; the third Napoleon, with his faith that the world moves, and
that a successful policy must keep the world's pace.
The second style of statesmanship is seen in the reorganization of old
states to fit new times. In this the chiefs are such men as Cranmer and
Turgot.
But there is a third class of statesmen sometimes doing more brilliant
work than either of the others. These are they who serve a state in
times of chaos--in times when a nation is by no means ripe for
revolution, but only stung by desperate revolt. These are they who are
quick enough and firm enough to bind all the good forces of the state
into one cosmic force, therewith to compress or crush all chaotic
forces; these are they who throttle treason and stab rebellion; who fear
not, when defeat must send down misery through ages, to insure victory
by using weapons of the hottest and sharpest. Theirs, then, is a
statesmanship which it may be well for the leading men of this land and
time to be looking at and thinking of, and its representative man shall
be Richelieu.
Never perhaps did a nation plunge more suddenly from the height of
prosperity into the depth of misery than did France on May 14, 1610,
when Henry IV fell dead by the dagger of Ravaillac. All earnest men, in
a moment, saw the abyss yawning--felt the state sinking--felt themselves
sinking with it. And they did what in such a time men always do: first
all shrieked, then every man clutched at the means of safety nearest
him. Sully, Henry's great minister, rode through the streets of Paris
with big tears streaming down his face; strong men whose hearts had been
toughened and crusted in the dreadful religious wars sobbed like
children; all the populace swarmed abroad bewildered--many swooned--some
went mad. This was the first phase of feeling.
Then came a second phase yet more terrible. For now burst forth that old
whirlwind of anarchy and bigotry and selfishness and terror which Henry
had curbed during twenty years. All earnest men felt bound to protect
themselves, and seized the nearest means of defence. Sully shut himself
up in the Bastille, and sent orders to his son-in-law, the Duke of
Rohan, to bring in six thousand soldiers to protect the Protestants. All
unearnest men, especially the great nobles, rushed to the court,
determined now, that the only guardians of the state were a weak-minded
woman and a weak-bodied child, to dip deep into the treasury which Henry
had filled to develop the nation, and to wrench away the power which he
had built to guard the nation.
In order to make ready for this grasp at the state treasure and power by
the nobles, the Duke of Épernon--from the corpse of the King by whose
side he was sitting when Ravaillac struck him--strides into the
Parliament of Paris and orders it to declare the late Queen, Marie de'
Medici, regent; and when this Parisian court, knowing full well that it
had no right to confer the regency, hesitated, he laid his hand on his
sword, and declared that, unless they did his bidding at once, his sword
should be drawn from its scabbard. This threat did its work. Within
three hours after the King's death the Paris Parliament, which had no
right to give it, bestowed the regency on a woman who had no capacity to
take it.
At first things seemed to brighten a little. The Queen Regent sent such
urgent messages to Sully that he left his stronghold of the Bastille and
went to the palace. She declared to him before the assembled court that
he must govern France still. With tears she gave the young King into his
arms, telling Louis that Sully was his father's best friend, and bidding
him pray the old statesman to serve the state yet longer.
But soon this good scene changed. Mary had a foster-sister, Leonora
Galligai, and Leonora was married to an Italian adventurer, Concini.
These seemed a poor couple, worthless and shiftless, their only stock in
trade Leonora's Italian cunning; but this stock soon came to be of vast
account, for thereby she soon managed to bind and rule the Queen
Regent--managed to drive Sully into retirement in less than a
year--managed to make herself and her husband the great dispensers at
court of place and pelf. Penniless though Concini had been, he was in a
few months able to buy the Marquisate of Ancre, which cost him nearly a
half a million livres; and, soon after, the post of first gentleman of
the bedchamber, and that cost him nearly a quarter of a million; and,
soon after that, a multitude of broad estates and high offices at
immense prices. Leonora also was not idle; among her many gains was the
bribe of three hundred thousand livres to screen certain financiers
under trial for fraud.
Next came the turn of the great nobles. For ages the nobility of France
had been the worst among her many afflictions. From age to age attempts
had been made to curb them. In the fifteenth century Charles VII had
done much to undermine their power, and Louis XI had done much to crush
it. But strong as was the policy of Charles, and cunning as was the
policy of Louis, they had made one omission, and that omission left
France, though advanced, miserable. For these monarchs had not cut the
root of the evil. The French nobility continued practically a
serf-holding nobility.
Despite, then, the curb put upon many old pretensions of the nobles, the
serf-owning spirit continued to spread a network of curses over every
arm of the French government, over every acre of the French soil, and,
worst of all, over the hearts and minds of the French people. Enterprise
was deadened, invention crippled. Honesty was nothing, honor everything.
Life was of little value. Labor was the badge of servility; laziness the
very badge and passport of gentility. The serf-owning spirit was an iron
wall between noble and not noble--the only unyielding wall between
France and prosperous peace.
But the serf-owning spirit begat another evil far more terrible: it
begat a substitute for patriotism--a substitute which crushed out
patriotism just at the very emergencies when patriotism was most needed.
For the first question which in any state emergency sprang into the mind
of a French noble was not, How does this affect the welfare of the
nation? but, How does this affect the position of my order? The
serf-owning spirit developed in the French aristocracy an instinct which
led them in national troubles to guard the serf-owning class first and
the nation afterward, and to acknowledge fealty to the serf-owning
interest first and to the national interest afterward.
So it proved in that emergency at the death of Henry. Instead of
planting themselves as a firm bulwark between the state and harm, the
Duke of Épernon, the Prince of Condé, the Count of Soissons, the Duke of
Guise, the Duke of Bouillon, and many others, wheedled or threatened the
Queen into granting pensions of such immense amounts that the great
treasury filled by Henry and Sully with such noble sacrifices, and to
such noble ends, was soon nearly empty.
But as soon as the treasury began to run low the nobles began a worse
work. Mary had thought to buy their loyalty, but when they had gained
such treasures their ideas mounted higher. A saying of one among them
became their formula, and became noted: "The day of kings is past; now
is come the day of the grandees."
Every great noble now tried to grasp some strong fortress or rich city.
One fact will show the spirit of many. The Duke of Épernon had served
Henry as governor of Metz, and Metz was the most important fortified
town in France; therefore Henry, while allowing D'Épernon the honor of
governorship, had always kept a royal lieutenant in the citadel, who
corresponded directly with the ministry. But on the very day of the
King's death D'Épernon despatched commands to his own creatures at Metz
to seize the citadel, and to hold it for him against all other orders.
But at last even Mary had to refuse to lavish more of the national
treasure and to shred more of the national territory among these
magnates. Then came their rebellion.
Immediately Condé and several great nobles issued a proclamation
denouncing the tyranny and extravagance of the court--calling on the
Catholics to rise against the Regent in behalf of their
religion--calling on the Protestants to rise in behalf of
theirs--summoning the whole people to rise against the waste of their
state treasure.
It was all a glorious joke. To call on the Protestants was wondrous
impudence, for Condé had left their faith and had persecuted them. To
call on the Catholics was not less impudent, for he had betrayed their
cause scores of times; but to call on the whole people to rise in
defence of their treasury was impudence sublime, for no man had besieged
the treasury more persistently, no man had dipped into it more deeply,
than Condé himself.
The people saw this and would not stir. Condé could rally only a few
great nobles and their retainers, and therefore, as a last tremendous
blow to the court, he and his followers raised the cry that the Regent
must convoke the States-General.
Any who have read much in the history of France, and especially in the
history of the French Revolution, know in part how terrible this cry
was. By the court, and by the great privileged classes of France, this
great assembly of the three estates of the realm was looked upon as the
last resort amid direst calamities. For at its summons came stalking
forth from the foul past the long train of Titanic abuses and satanic
wrongs; and came surging up from the seething present the great hoarse
cry of the people; then loomed up, dim in the distance, vast shadowy
ideas of new truth and new right; and at the bare hint of these, all
that was proud in France trembled.
This cry for the States-General, then, brought the Regent to terms at
once, and, instead of acting vigorously, she betook herself to her old
vicious fashion of compromising--buying off the rebels at prices more
enormous than ever. By her treaty of Ste. Ménehould, Condé received a
half a million of livres, and his followers received payments
proportionate to the evil they had done.
But this compromise succeeded no better than the previous compromises.
Even if the nobles had wished to remain quiet, they could not. Their
lordship over a servile class made them independent of all ordinary
labor and all care arising from labor; some exercise of mind and body
they must have; Condé took this needed exercise by attempting to seize
the city of Poitiers, and, when the burgesses were too strong for him,
by ravaging the neighboring country. The other nobles broke the
compromise in ways wonderfully numerous and ingenious. France was again
filled with misery.
Dull as Regent Mary was, she now saw that she must call that dreaded
States-General, or lose not only the nobles, but the people. Undecided
as she was, she soon saw that she must do it at once; that if she
delayed it, her great nobles would raise the cry for it again and again
just as often as they wished to extort office or money. Accordingly, on
October 14, 1614, she summoned the deputies of the three estates to
Paris, and then the storm set in.
Each of the three orders presented its "portfolio of grievances" and its
programme of reforms. It might seem, to one who has not noted closely
the spirit which serf-mastering thrusts into a man, that the nobles
would appear in the States-General, not to make complaints, but to
answer complaints. It was not so. The noble order, with due form,
entered complaint that theirs was the injured order. They asked relief
from familiarities and assumptions of equality on the part of the
people. Said the Baron de Séneccé, "It is a great piece of insolence to
pretend to establish any sort of equality between the people and the
nobility": other nobles declared, "There is between them and us as much
difference as between master and lackey."
To match these complaints and theories, the nobles made demands; demands
that commoners should not be allowed to keep firearms, nor to possess
dogs unless the dogs were ham-strung; nor to clothe themselves like
nobles, nor to clothe their wives like the wives of nobles; nor to wear
velvet or satin under a penalty of five thousand livres. And
preposterous as such claims may seem to us, they carried them into
practice. A deputy of the Third Estate having been severely beaten by a
noble, his demands for redress were treated as absurd. One of the
orators of the lower order having spoken of the French as forming one
great family in which the nobles were the elder brothers and the
commoners the younger, the nobles made a formal complaint to the King,
charging the Third Estate with insolence insufferable. Next came the
complaints and demands of the clergy. They insisted on the adoption in
France of the decrees of the Council of Trent, and the destruction of
the liberties of the Gallican Church.
But far stronger than these came the voice of the people: first spoke
Montaigne, denouncing the grasping spirit of the nobles. Then spoke
Savaron, stinging them with sarcasm, torturing them with rhetoric,
crushing them with statements of facts.
But chief among the speakers was the president of the Third Estate,
Robert Miron, provost of the merchants of Paris. His speech, though
spoken across the great abyss of time and space and thought and custom
which separates him from us, warms a true man's heart even now. With
touching fidelity he pictured the sad life of the lower orders--their
thankless toil, their constant misery; then with a sturdiness which awes
us, he arraigned, first, royalty for its crushing taxation; next, the
whole upper class for its oppressions, and then, daring death, he thus
launched into popular thought an idea:
"It is nothing less than a miracle that the people are able to answer so
many demands. On the labor of their hands depends the maintenance of
your majesty, of the clergy, of the nobility, of the commons. What
without their exertions would be the value of the tithes and great
possessions of the Church, of the splendid estates of the nobility, or
of our own house-rents and inheritances? With their bones scarcely
skinned over, your wretched people present themselves before you, beaten
down and helpless, with the aspect rather of death itself than of living
men, imploring your succor in the name of Him who has appointed you to
reign over them--who made you a man, that you might be merciful to other
men--and who made you the father of your subjects, that you might be
compassionate to these your helpless children. If your majesty shall not
take means for that end, I fear lest despair should teach the sufferers
that a soldier is, after all, nothing more than a peasant bearing arms;
and lest, when the vine-dresser shall have taken up his arquebuse, he
should cease to become an anvil only that he may become a hammer."
After this the Third Estate demanded the convocation of a general
assembly every ten years, a more just distribution of taxes, equality of
all before the law, the suppression of interior custom-houses, the
abolition of sundry sinecures held by nobles, the forbidding to leading
nobles of unauthorized levies of soldiery, some stipulations regarding
the working clergy and the non-residence of bishops; and in the midst of
all these demands, as a gold grain amid husks, they placed a demand for
the emancipation of the serfs.
But these demands were sneered at. The idea of the natural equality in
rights of all men--the idea of the personal worth of every man--the idea
that rough-clad workers have prerogatives which can be whipped out by no
smooth-clad idlers--these ideas were as far beyond serf-owners of those
days as they were beyond slave-owners of our own days. Nothing was done.
Augustin Thierry is authority for the statement that the clergy were
willing to yield something. The nobles would yield nothing. The
different orders quarrelled until one March morning in 1615, when, on
going to their hall, they were barred out and told that the workmen were
fitting the place for a court ball. And so the deputies separated--to
all appearance no new work was done, no new ideas enforced, no strong
men set loose.
So it was in seeming; so it was not in reality. Something had been done.
That assembly planted ideas in the French mind which struck more and
more deeply, and spread more and more widely, until, after a century
and a half, the Third Estate met again and refused to present petitions
kneeling; and when King and nobles put on their hats, the commons put on
theirs, and when that old brilliant stroke was again made, and the hall
was closed and filled with busy carpenters and upholsterers, the
deputies of the people swore that great tennis-court oath which blasted
French tyranny.
But something great was done immediately. To that suffering nation a
great man was revealed; for when the clergy pressed their requests they
chose as their orator a young man only twenty-nine years of age, the
Bishop of Luçon, Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu.
He spoke well. His thoughts were clear, his words well pointed, his
bearing firm. He had been bred a soldier, and so had strengthened his
will; afterward he had been made a scholar and so had strengthened his
mind. He grappled with the problems given him in that stormy assembly
with such force that he seemed about to do something; but just then came
that day of the court ball, and Richelieu turned away like the rest.
But men had seen him and heard him. Forget him they could not. From that
tremendous farce, then, France had gained directly one thing at least,
and that was a sight of Richelieu.
The year, after the States-General, wore away in the old vile fashion.
Condé revolted again, and this time he managed to scare the Protestants
into revolt with him. The daring of the nobles was greater than ever.
They even attacked the young King's train as he journeyed to Bordeaux,
and another compromise had to be wearily built in the Treaty of Loudun.
By this Condé was again bought off--but this time only by a bribe of a
million and a half of livres. The other nobles were also paid
enormously, and on making a reckoning it was found that this compromise
had cost the King four millions and the country twenty millions. The
nation had also to give into the hands of the nobles some of its richest
cities and strongest fortresses.
Immediately after this compromise Condé returned to Paris, loud, strong,
jubilant, defiant, bearing himself like a king. Soon he and his revolted
again; but just at that moment Concini happened to remember Richelieu.
The young bishop was called and set at work.
Richelieu grasped the rebellion at once. In broad daylight he seized
Condé and shut him up in the Bastille; other noble leaders he declared
guilty of treason and degraded them; he set forth the crimes and follies
of the nobles in a manifesto which stung their cause to death in a
moment; he published his policy in a proclamation which ran through
France like fire, warming all hearts of patriots, withering all hearts
of rebels; he sent out three great armies: one northward to grasp
Picardy, one eastward to grasp Champagne, one southward to grasp Berri.
There is a man who can do something! The nobles yield in a moment; they
_must_ yield.
But just at this moment, when a better day seemed to dawn, came an event
which threw France back into anarchy and Richelieu into the world again.
The young King, Louis XIII, was now sixteen years old. His mother the
Regent and her favorite Concini had carefully kept him down. Under their
treatment he had grown morose and seemingly stupid; but he had wit
enough to understand the policy of his mother and Concini, and strength
enough to hate them for it.
The only human being to whom Louis showed any love was a young falconer,
Albert de Luynes, and with De Luynes he conspired against his mother's
power and her favorite's life. On an April morning, 1617, the King and
De Luynes sent a party of chosen men to seize Concini. They met him at
the gate of the Louvre. As usual he is bird-like in his utterance,
snake-like in his bearing. They order him to surrender; he chirps forth
his surprise, and they blow out his brains. Louis, understanding the
noise, puts on his sword, appears on the balcony of the palace, is
saluted with hurrahs, and becomes master of his kingdom.
Straightway measures are taken against all supposed to be attached to
the regency. Concini's wife, the favorite Leonora, is burned as a witch;
Regent Mary is sent to Blois, and Richelieu is banished to his
bishopric.
And now matters went from bad to worse. King Louis was no stronger than
Regent Mary had been; King's favorite, De Luynes, was no better than
Regent's favorite, Concini, had been. The nobles rebelled against the
new rule as they had rebelled against the old. The King went through
the same old extortions and humiliations.